Delia D'Ambra
Appearances
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Literally five months ago, so news agencies in North Carolina, and I'm really tied in with a lot of journalists still in North Carolina, and they have been following Asha's case. They noticed that the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office, the FBI, the NCSBI... have like descended on some properties and they are up to something in Shelby.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
There's a noticeable flurry of activity on these properties in Cleveland County and also in a nearby county called Lincoln County. And one of the biggest things that emerges is that an older model green vehicle is seen being towed from one of those locations. And I actually dug up a clip from WBTV of this car. So I want everyone to take a look. And Ashley, you can see it too.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Oh, I have friends. Phone a friend. I have friends. So what did you find? So according to the warrants, authorities visited and searched structures and land on a few properties in close proximity to one another in Cleveland County. Like, so they were on, like, similar parcels or whatever.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
They also went to a property in Mecklenburg County, which is closer to Charlotte, so more in the Charlotte area. All of the properties in Cleveland County were owned by a couple named Roy and Connie Dedman. Roy and Connie have three daughters, Lizzie, Sarah, and Anna Lee. The daughters are all adults now, but back in February 2000 when Aisha disappeared, they were teenagers.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
So Lizzie's the oldest. She was 16, Sarah was 15, and Anna Lee was 13. Mm-hmm. And the property in Charlotte that was searched in 2024 was actually associated with the youngest, Anna Lee. And the warrants state that investigators were looking for physical evidence specifically related to Asha's disappearance. And this included a lot of things like photos, kids' clothing.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
They seized the Deadman's electronic devices, like accessories. Notebooks, business records, their cell phones, some of the daughters like personal journals, a rifle. And they were also allowed to take any and all records for a man named Russell Bradley Underhill, who was a tenant at one of the family's homes in 2000.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
So the reason that any of these folks came on investigators' radar in 2024 was because they found, with modern DNA testing, the presence of Russell's DNA and a hair that was an identical genetic match to the Deadman's youngest daughter, Anna Lee. And that was on Asha's shirt and from the trash bag that her book bag was found in.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Like, as far as nobody's reported that they did. Yeah, they did not know one another. They didn't go to the same church or anything like that kind of thing.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, exactly. And at least according to the search warrants we have, that's like the case, right? Like so what's super interesting is that in February 2000, Roy and Connie's friend, this like Russell Underhill guy, he was having health issues and being cared for by a place called Cleveland Health Care.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
And as a part of his care, which like Roy was in charge of because like he and his wife actually like owned another facility called Northbrook Rest Home. Roy would sometimes send his eldest daughter, Lizzie, to transport patients like from that facility to like an area hospital called Broughton Hospital.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, it is really wild because I was also just texting you like a week ago saying like, hey, I'm looking at maybe like what's the next thing for Counter Clock? Like what's the future season of Counter Clock or whatever? And so I had brought up to you, I was like, you know, is there a world in which I can do a missing persons case on CounterClock? I was like, I needed the actual time. I know.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah. And like Royce is like emergency contact. Like they're like clearly very close. They're helping this man with his health. Now, in 2000, the Deadman's house was about six minutes away from where Asha was last seen walking on Highway 18 by those witnesses.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
And that road is what investigators say is like the most logical route for Lizzie, Roy's oldest daughter, to have taken if she was making like one of those hospital runs for her dad. And the search warrants also clarified that the vehicle she used for those trips was, quote, unreliable. So what's like the implication there, it being unreliable?
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
So I think it's just saying like it's an older car, right? Like it's not a brand new car. Maybe an older green car? Right, yeah. So the search warrants go on to explain that Roy Dedman has 29 different vehicles like registered in his name. And three of those are green.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Now, when authorities interviewed Sarah, the middle daughter, in September 2024, she told them that back when she was a teenager, she drove a dark green AMC Rambler that her dad had given to her in 1999. And the search warrants actually include a photo of that exact car, which everyone can see. It's a black and white photo, so it's hard to kind of tell there's like no color, which kind of sucks.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
But it's actually pretty similar looking to the two car images that the FBI released in 2016, you know, the Lincoln and the Thunderbird or whatever, that they believe Asha was seen being put into or pulled into. And if you look kind of closely, it even has like some front end damage that's pretty noticeable.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, I would be like, now I want to go in them more than anything now that I'm renting from you. Did you also, like, see that part about the hole? Yes.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
So around the same time that authorities, like, also, like, speaking, like, with this tenant or whatever, they speak with a woman named Laura Dedman, who I think is related to Roy. I mean, obviously they have the same last name. But she tells them that several years before this, She saw Roy digging a hole at that property that was not just like a small hole for like a fence post or something.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
This might be the worst idea I've ever had. I know. Because I've never done that. I've never done a missing case on CounterClock. Like in order to do that, it would have to be like the right fit. And we were kind of like talking about it. And really like Aisha's case came to top of mind.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
This hole was chest deep. And this is after what year? After 2000? No, this is after like 2016. This is like fairly recently up until 2024. So like just a couple of years before 2020.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, and I think, like, right after this, an attorney representing Roy and his family, he, like, makes some public statements about how, like, that's a really important point. You know, he's like, hey, this family has been named as suspects, but they deny any and all involvement in what happened to Asha Degree.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
But also to, you know, where she disappeared from is not that far from like the Winston-Salem area and the Charlotte area, which is where I spent a ton of time for. Those are your stomping grounds. I know, for Counter-Clock Season 7. So I've really been inundated in that area. And so, you know, it made me have more interest with that.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Right. Like, it's kind of one of those things, like, are we really going to blame, like, the dead guy who died just a couple years after she disappeared who, like, can no longer be questioned or investigated?
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, I think that's like just one way of describing it. So, like, looking through the warrants, because I, like, went through all of them page by page, and they are specifically for the contents of three Apple iPhones. One that belongs to Lizzie, another that belongs to Roy, and another that belongs to Sarah.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
But then also, I'd interviewed an FBI agent a couple years back for Dark Arenas. His name is Jim Granosio. And he actually was the FBI CARD team leader on Aisha's case. And CARD is Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team for the FBI. So I got to know like some people with the FBI that had worked the case. Like I felt like I had some ends.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, I did. And so, like, there's a couple exchanges, but there is a text exchange between Anna Lee and Lizzie on September 10th, 2024, where Anna Lee says... I am so sorry I just said all that. I am just in complete shock. And then later that same day, Sarah texted Lizzie. They think it's our shirt. It's not her shirt. Her mom said it wasn't hers. I don't remember that shirt. I'm scared, though.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yes, that's what I have to assume they're referring to because that's all we kind of know at this point. So the next day, September 11th, 2024, Lizzie's ex-husband texted her that he was sorry, like her family was going through this situation. And then a few hours after that, Anna Lee texted Lizzie. Youngest texting oldest. Yeah. Lizzie, you don't need to be talking to anyone.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
I'm at the lawyer's office now. They advise we should all not talk to them without representation. Now, Lizzie then texted her ex-husband. This is going to get nothing but worse. I'm talking to my doctor at five to get something for my nerves. I'm just so worried. So, so worried. I mean, it's a nightmare that's going to keep getting worse.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
I can see nothing good happening anytime soon, and I'm an optimist.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
It's wild, like, when you read texts, like, you know, I think we should all keep the caveat of, like, yes, they are texts. They're just words on a page. But at the same time, like, it is, like... It's clear what they're talking about. Yeah, it's clear what they're talking about, yeah.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, like on their face, these messages, they don't sound or look great.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
And so that's why I kind of was like, maybe as a journalist, this is like my way of trying to tackle it or whatever.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, like that's what I was going to say, too. It definitely feels like to me that maybe something tragic happened back in 2000. But then like everything that's gone on since then is just. Very suspicious.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, I think it's like that question of, again, why did she leave her house if she left willingly? Like, was she lured? Like, I don't know. There's so many questions about her exiting her home, like her safe place, right? Right.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
and going on this road the only thing that comes to mind for me is that we know highway 18 was going towards shelby it was in the direction of her school um she took the bus on that road yeah like she had her book bag the book that's in her bag the dr seuss book is actually a library book from her school so you know that's in the bag it's like is she going just like her on her own little like adventure to have her own time and then it's going to be back before they have to go school like there's just so many question marks around that for sure
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah. So I actually made my first I told you I made my kind of like first pass at reaching out to the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office, which is in charge of Asia's case. And I knew like, OK, I need them to kind of be on board. Right. And so then ghosted like nothing. And then all of these things happen. I'm like, OK, yeah, they've been like this all makes sense. You know why I didn't go back.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
And I think that's why, too, they are trying so hard to connect the routes between these families' homes, the healthcare facilities. Like, that's a really critical thing for law enforcement is figuring out, like, could they have been on that road? When? Why? All those sorts of things.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
No, I know, though, Ashley, I feel like we're always like, meh, on polygraph tests. But like to me, though, it seems like somewhat notable that they were like, let's double down on this. Let's like make sure he, you know, passes this test to make sure he's not just like making this up and like trying to draw attention to himself.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Earlier this month, they told WBTV and reporter Ken Lemon that, like, they're always going to hold out to hope that, like, their baby girl will come home to them one day. And Aisha's mom, Iquilla, told the news agency, quote, I believe she is still alive. And until somebody can prove me wrong, I'm still going to believe that because I have hope. End quote.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Hi, everybody. Delia DeAmbra here, host of Counter Clock and Park Predators and proud North Carolina resident for most of my life.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
No. No, I was at home. And honestly, I think it was like within an hour of you sending me like that first text a couple days ago. You're asking me like, hey, come to Indy in February from Florida, which like for anything other than the Asian degree case, like, no, I would not do. But because it is this case, I knew like, OK, I got to get my hands on these search warrants. I'm totally down.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Right. Yeah. I remember that theory cropping up early on. Like, did she just decide to leave her life? But I don't think that lasted very long because I think it became pretty clear, at least from information her parents told authorities, that Aisha, just like she wasn't the kind of girl to venture off like that on her own. And she's nine. She's like still little, too. Yeah.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
And she like reportedly was very timid, shy, super afraid of the dark and stuff. So and not to mention she had, by all accounts, a really good home life. Exactly.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Right. Yeah. I remember the key thing. And I don't think anyone disputes that she physically left on her own. But I think the big question is why. And I know there was some coverage that said she'd fouled out of a basketball game the Saturday night before she vanished. But like, that's hardly a reason to just like take off. I mean, I know that you're nine years old, but no.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
But then like two days later, though, don't the cops find some of her stuff?
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, yeah. Like, so his partner at the time was like, wait a minute. That's a big red flag. Like, you need to call the sheriff's office because they knew about Asha's case. And they knew, like, what was going on. There was this little girl missing. Even?
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
It really does. And I've known about this case probably, you know, she was nine years old when she disappeared on Valentine's Day in 2000. And so I've known about it for a long time. And it really is one of those cases where, you know, if you're local and it was locally known well, but like agencies and news outlets outside of the state of North Carolina really didn't cover it much until recently.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, and I think the reward actually got up to like $45,000, but like nothing. And it really isn't until 2016 because that's when the whole like, I think the green car thing comes out, right?
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, they're both, I would say, kind of, I would describe them as like a two-door boat-like sedan. And they do look very similar, yeah.
Crime Junkie
UPDATE: Asha Degree
Yeah, it's clearly something the sheriff's office and the FBI discovered at some point in their investigation, right? Like, something led them to blast that out to the community about this car and the sighting and everything.
Park Predators
The Loner
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I'm going to tell you about today is harrowing. It takes place along Dismal Creek, which intersects with a portion of the Appalachian Trail on the border of Virginia and West Virginia. In that area is the AT's Wapiti Shelter, a small wooden structure that's widely used as a camping spot by hikers traversing the famous trail.
Park Predators
The Loner
So getting an interview with him was not going to happen. But since they were already there and had the proper paperwork to take a look around, they searched the house for anything that might be helpful to their investigation. When they went into rooms that Randall mainly used, they found some disturbing items.
Park Predators
The Loner
There were a bunch of pictures of naked women all taped together, a knapsack, a torn jacket, and a pair of what were described as cut-off shorts with red stains on them. Curious about those red stains, investigators collected the shorts' evidence and at some point shortly thereafter had them tested to see if it was blood.
Park Predators
The Loner
And wouldn't you know it, the results from that testing proved that not only were the stains human blood, but it belonged to Susan Ramsey. So with that information in hand, investigators knew Randall was most likely their guy. There was just one problem. No one knew where he was.
Park Predators
The Loner
In early June, not long after Giles County deputies searched Randall's mother's house in Virginia and discovered a pair of shorts with Susan's blood on them, investigators caught up to him in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And when I say caught up to him, I mean more like caught up to something that belonged to him.
Park Predators
The Loner
According to coverage by the Associated Press, on Monday, June 8th, almost a week and a half after Robert and Susan's bodies were found, law enforcement in Myrtle Beach located a four-wheel drive pickup truck that belonged to Randall in some woods. It had been left abandoned and a handwritten note was found inside the ashtray.
Park Predators
The Loner
However, at the time, authorities wouldn't release what exactly that note said. I did find a handful of articles published later, though, that reported the message loosely mentioned Robert and Susan's deaths. So, yeah, pretty damning stuff.
Park Predators
The Loner
A few days later, on Thursday, June 11th, investigators publicly identified Randall as their prime suspect and issued arrest warrants for him, but they still couldn't pin down where he was.
Park Predators
The Loner
Referring to how the Mountford family felt toward the suspected killer during this time, Robert's father, Robert Mountford Sr., told the Roanoke Times, quote, It will make us feel much easier when he is apprehended. We do not hold any animosity or hatred. We do want to see him caught for the safety of other hikers. Hate only breeds hate. End quote.
Park Predators
The Loner
The next day, the FBI joined South Carolina and Virginia investigators who were trying to track down Randall and even issued a federal warrant that charged him with illegal interstate flight to avoid prosecution. The search for him dragged on for several days, though, without fruitful results. And at one point, authorities even considered that maybe Randall had died by suicide.
Park Predators
The Loner
But those suspicions quickly disappeared on the morning of Monday, June 22, when investigators found him at a makeshift campsite in a remote section of woods not far from where he'd abandoned his pickup truck.
Park Predators
The Loner
I know, I was kind of surprised that Randall was seemingly there the whole time, too, and I'm not sure what that says about authorities' search efforts, but according to an article by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, It seems that investigators had initially searched that area, but once the manhunt for Randall slowed, they got the idea to go back and look again, you know, just in case.
Park Predators
The Loner
And that's when they found him and arrested him. After a somewhat lengthy but unsuccessful fight to avoid extradition back to Virginia, Randall was eventually returned home on July 19th to face the charges against him. But when detectives sat him down to discuss Robert and Susan's murders, he wouldn't cooperate. He simply said he didn't want to talk about it.
Park Predators
The Loner
Interestingly, prior to being extradited back to Virginia, an attorney who'd represented Randall in South Carolina told the Associated Press that he, meaning Randall, was unable to recall his own name, said he didn't know anything about Robert or Susan's murder, couldn't tell officials where he was from, or even how he'd ended up in South Carolina. I know, strange.
Park Predators
The Loner
His lawyer said that even when Loretta, Randall's mom, came to visit him in jail, Randall indicated that he didn't know who she was. In the wake of his arrest, reporters Chuck Burris and Cheryl Downey Laskowitz interviewed several people who knew Randall and learned that he'd never been in trouble with the law.
Park Predators
The Loner
Randall was an only child who'd lived most of his life in Giles County with his mother and aunt and uncle. One of his neighbors and a former teacher described him to the Roanoke Times as a good boy who seemed to spend a lot of time hunting in the woods. As far as any of them knew, he was just a normal, quiet kid who didn't have many friends and didn't stick out in a crowd.
Park Predators
The Loner
Reporter Mike Gangloff told producers for Dead Silent that Randall was a bit of an outcast who usually stayed home with his mom or walked alone in the National Forest collecting arrowheads. During his youth, his uncle had taken him hunting, fishing, and camping in the National Forest a few times in areas along the Appalachian Trail.
Park Predators
The Loner
About a month before Susan and Robert's murders, Randall had left his job as a welder at a mining equipment plant in Parisburg. And based on what I read in the coverage, that departure was because of differences between him and the company about his work performance.
Park Predators
The Loner
When hikers and organizations associated with the AT learned he'd been arrested for Robert and Susan's murders, many of those folks were elated. The director of the Appalachian Trail Conference told reporter Robert Brickhouse that the entire incident would most likely make travelers more vigilant. He stated, "...I think the memory will linger, certainly. Perhaps that's not bad.
Park Predators
The Loner
It will encourage people to be cautious, but it doesn't indicate that the trail itself is an undesirable place to be." End quote. While the manhunt and everything for Randall was going on, Robert Mountford's family laid him to rest in Maine with more than 300 people attending a service in his honor. His body was later cremated. Susan was laid to rest at the Sims Family Cemetery in Michigan.
Park Predators
The Loner
During Randall's first appearance in court on July 22nd, the judge appointed two public defenders to represent him and ordered he be held under a $200,000 bond. With the case headed toward trial, the lead prosecutor said the state felt like it had a strong case for murder, even though nearly all the evidence was circumstantial and there were no witnesses.
Park Predators
The Loner
At that time, the only physical evidence the prosecution had was the book that had been found with blood in it that contained Randall's fingerprint. Which, by the way, that blood was type B, the same type as Robert's.
Park Predators
The Loner
There was also a plaid shirt with blood on it, bloody wooden boards from the trail shelter, a pair of jeans, presumably Randall's, with blood on them, and a pair of cut-off jeans with blood on them.
Park Predators
The Loner
Because Randall's former attorney in South Carolina had said his client was unable to remember who he was or his mom and all that stuff, the judge presiding over the case ordered Randall undergo a mental health evaluation to determine whether or not he had in fact suffered some kind of amnesia or perhaps something else.
Park Predators
The Loner
Two months later in September, doctors who did that evaluation determined he was competent to stand trial because he was quote, utilizing a selective self-serving memory, end quote. AKA, he hadn't forgotten who he was or who Robert and Susan were, he was just choosing not to remember.
Park Predators
The Loner
On Friday, May 29th, 1981, a few days after Memorial Day weekend, a group of hikers staying at a hostel near the Appalachian Trail in Parisburg, Virginia, were growing increasingly worried. Two fellow travelers they'd expected to arrive nine days earlier had still not shown up. The overdue hikers were 27-year-old Robert Mountford Jr.
Park Predators
The Loner
In the months after Randall's arrest, things on the AT went back to normal in some respects, but overall, the number of people hiking through the particular section that Robert and Susan were killed on was less than previous years. A field rep for the Appalachian Trail Conference told the Associated Press, quote, End quote.
Park Predators
The Loner
Still, travelers were encouraged to contact friends and family regularly while hiking and stay away from locations that could be accessed by just anyone. As Randall's case got closer to trial, his defense lawyers requested that he be tried separately for Robert and Susan's murders. And so because of that, each murder charge was individually considered by a Giles County Circuit Court grand jury.
Park Predators
The Loner
In early December, that panel decided to indict him for both killings, and his trial for Susan's murder was set to start on March 22, 1982, with Robert's following shortly after that in late April. However, quite a few things happened before that point. Randall's defense team fought hard to have all of the evidence related to the search of his pickup truck in Myrtle Beach suppressed.
Park Predators
The Loner
This included that note which had loosely referred to Robert and Susan. His lawyers argued that South Carolina authorities had failed to obtain a search warrant when they initially entered his vehicle and retrieved the note. Therefore, it shouldn't be allowed in as evidence.
Park Predators
The Loner
Handwriting experts for the state had apparently determined after obtaining some other writings from Randall that most of the characters and letters in that suspicious note were very similar to his handwriting. So it was kind of a big deal for the state to make sure that piece of evidence didn't get tossed out before trial.
Park Predators
The Loner
Something else the defense wanted quashed was Randall's first mental health evaluation. To deal with that request, doctors at the University of Virginia School of Medicine conducted a second psychiatric evaluation on him in early March 1982. But once again, the staff determined that he was competent enough to stand trial.
Park Predators
The Loner
In the end, though, all of this back and forth about evidence and competency didn't matter because according to Estes Thompson's reporting for the Associated Press, on March 23rd, 1982, on what was supposed to be the first day of his trial for Susan's murder, Randall decided to plead guilty to two counts of second-degree murder for both killings.
Park Predators
The Loner
The judge overseeing the case sentenced him right then and there to 30 years in prison, 15 years for each count to be served consecutively. Because Randall didn't have a prior criminal record, he would be eligible for parole after serving at least a fourth of his sentence, which equated to seven and a half years.
Park Predators
The Loner
Susan's parents were in court when he entered his plea and told the press afterwards that they thought the punishment the judge doled out was fair, and they were essentially just glad to know their daughter's killer would spend time behind bars. Robert's family mostly felt the same way, except for his younger brother, Steve.
Park Predators
The Loner
He told Roanoke Times reporter Pam Chesser that he didn't feel the punishment fit the crime. To put it in his own words, he said, quote, He later continued, quote, There's not enough devils, there's not enough gods to bring Bob back, end quote. Another person who took issue with Randall's seemingly light sentence was a man named Warren Doyle.
Park Predators
The Loner
and 26-year-old Laura Susan Ramsey, who it appears was most often referred to by her middle name, Susan. So for the rest of this episode, that's what I'm going to refer to her by. At some point on that Friday, the folks at the hostel got so concerned about the pair that they contacted their families to let them know what was going on.
Park Predators
The Loner
Warren was a 32-year-old trail hiker and college professor from West Virginia who'd traversed the AT four times. He took it upon himself to protest and picket in front of the Giles County Courthouse the day after Randall's plea deal was signed.
Park Predators
The Loner
According to another article by Pam Chesser for the Roanoke Times, even though Warren wasn't from the immediate area and didn't know Robert and Susan personally, he was deeply unsatisfied with the outcome of the case. He expressed that he felt there should have been a jury trial and Giles County citizens should have had the opportunity to decide Randall's fate for themselves.
Park Predators
The Loner
In a photo featured alongside the article, you can see Warren carrying a sign that reads, quote, Did Bob and Sue plea for their lives? Did Randall Lee Smith give them a bargain? Shame on the murderer. Shame on our judicial system. One knifes the living, the other knifes the survivors. End quote.
Park Predators
The Loner
Even though Warren's protesting wouldn't change the outcome of the case, he still felt like it was his duty to at least get citizens of Giles County to question the fairness of Randall's plea deal. He was even hopeful some kind of formal rally would be held, but because he wasn't from Giles County, he didn't feel it was his place to pull something like that together.
Park Predators
The Loner
He told Pam Chesser, I feel that local citizens should organize it. There are people who are concerned. They like living in Giles County, but they feel like this gives them a black eye. End quote.
Park Predators
The Loner
One of the reasons Randall received what some folks viewed as a lenient sentence was because the prosecutor did not feel confident that the evidence the state had against him was strong enough to prove premeditation. The prosecution also couldn't determine a motive for the murders, which in a first-degree murder case is something jurors like to see laid out for them.
Park Predators
The Loner
Underlying frustrations about Randall's plea deal boiled over a few years later in 1986 when it was announced that he was up for parole. According to an article by Lawrence Hammack for the Roanoke Times, less than five years into his sentence, Virginia's state parole board was considering letting Randall out early. And Robert and Susan's families were not happy about that.
Park Predators
The Loner
Robert's father, Robert Mountford Sr., told the newspaper, quote, he's not even serving for one death, let alone two. What he got was little enough. To be paroled in as little as five years would be a complete travesty of justice. He later continued, this is something that we are going to have to live with for the rest of our lives. We won't get paroled in 10 years or in 15 years.
Park Predators
The Loner
We won't ever get paroled, end quote. Susan's dad, Bud Ramsey, shared similar feelings. He said in part, quote, End quote. Even more frustrating was the fact that neither of the victims' families had been notified by the parole board that Randall was up for early release. They'd only learned about him possibly getting out early after a newspaper reporter contacted them via phone and told them.
Park Predators
The Loner
Susan's parents, Jenny and Bud Ramsey, lived near Cleveland, Ohio, and Robert's family was in Dover, Foxcroft, Maine, though Robert himself lived about an hour southeast of there in Ellsworth, Maine.
Park Predators
The Loner
In response to the idea that Randall could be freed sooner than expected, Robert and Susan's relatives and supporters pushed back against Randall's parole and aggressively campaigned to the media, parole board, and politicians to make sure he was kept behind bars. Jenny Ramsey, Susan's mom, said that she was worried by the thought of Randall roaming the streets again as a free man.
Park Predators
The Loner
Other loved ones said they were concerned he would kill again, maybe even on the AT, if he was given the opportunity to return home. A former Giles County Sheriff's deputy told producers for Dead Silent that he had serious concerns about Randall getting out. He straight up said he had no doubt he would re-offend.
Park Predators
The Loner
In the end, the parole board decided not to grant Randall early release in 1986, and they continued to deny his requests at least seven more times until 1996. In September of that year, after serving 15 years in prison, the state of Virginia decided it was time to set Randall free. The now 43-year-old was paroled but under 10 years supervision and returned home to Parisburg to live with his mom.
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But that would not be the last time anyone heard about him or his propensity for violence. Not by a long shot. On Tuesday, May 6th, 2008, 37-year-old Scott Johnston was driving along a narrow, bumpy gravel road deep in the woods near Dismal Creek in Virginia when all of a sudden a dog appeared out of nowhere right in front of him.
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He immediately could tell something wasn't right with the animal because it was noticeably skinny and appeared to be very hungry. Scott even began to rummage around in his truck to see what he might have to feed it. Curious about where the dog had come from in such a remote landscape, Scott glanced around and that's when he noticed something else unexpected emerge from the brush.
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Media coverage at the time reported that investigators learned from store operators in the area of Crandon, Virginia, which is near the AT in nearby Bland County, that Robert and Susan had been spotted at that shop on May 19th.
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A gaunt looking man with a white beard wearing camouflage clothes and boots. The guy quickly signaled to Scott that the dog was his and the two of them ended up having a conversation for a few minutes before eventually parting ways.
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Scott didn't really think about the encounter with the man in the woods again after that because he had more pressing things on his mind, like going fishing and meeting up with his best friend, 33-year-old Sean Farmer, who was scheduled to arrive later that afternoon and meet him at a backcountry camping spot the pair usually used whenever they went fishing at Dismal Creek. Thank you. Thank you.
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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . . . .
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When investigators checked log books at several trail shelters along the AT after that point, they didn't see any entries that had been left behind by Robert or Susan, which I imagine felt kind of odd. However, a couple who was hiking the trail about a week behind the pair knew them well and told authorities that notes from the missing duo were present at shelters further back on the trail.
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In fact, the last note they'd found that was penned by Robert and Susan was at a shelter near Mount Rogers, Virginia in Jefferson National Forest. So with this information in mind, authorities were able to narrow down with some specificity where Robert and Susan had essentially dropped off the radar.
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It's technically located in Giles County, Virginia, but we're not talking about a place that's a hop, skip, and a jump from the nearest town or anything. It's out there, in thick woods, intentionally placed in a remote location, but easily accessible to hikers wanting to take a rest.
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According to additional coverage by the Roanoke Times, the next day, Saturday, May 30th, a full-scale search got underway. The Giles County Rescue Squad, along with numerous other rescue crews from neighboring agencies, scoured roughly 32 miles of the AT between Giles and Bland counties, looking for any sign of the missing couple.
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., en P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P,實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a in , , , , , ,, P P P P P P P P,實, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . P a . . . . . .. a, P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P,實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a in That same article explained the only reason Randall was released early in 1996 was basically due to a technicality.
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The reason searchers focused on this specific 32-mile stretch of the trail was because a witness had come forward on Friday the 29th and said that they'd previously seen the couple headed in that direction.
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You see, in 1994, so two years before he got paroled, Virginia's governor had abolished the state's parole system. But because Randall had killed Robert and Susan in 1981, he was afforded the opportunity of early release. I guess the parole abolishment only applied to offenders who'd committed crimes after 1994, not before.
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Even more unnerving to me is the fact that where Randall tried to kill Sean and Scott is only about two miles away from the Wapiti shelter. So to say that he literally returned to the same hunting ground is 100% accurate. Despite the fact that there were two law enforcement investigations into his crimes, no one has ever been able to determine why he did what he did.
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That particular stretch was also deemed to be some of the roughest terrain to hike, so I think the thinking there was that if Robert and Susan were both alive and well seen hiking through that stretch of the AT, then it was natural to assume that maybe whatever happened to them occurred there. Basically, it was just the authorities' most logical way of narrowing down the search radius.
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It remains the one nagging unanswered question in this whole story. According to Dateline's reporting on this case, after he was caught and subsequently died in custody, authorities were able to locate a stash of things he'd collected in the woods.
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Among those items were a pair of sunglasses that belonged to Scott, meat cleavers, at least 20 knives, several drawings and papers with what have been described as prayers on them. Some of those writings were described by police as super bizarre, and police said they aligned with the Wicca religion, which is rooted in worshiping nature.
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Whether or not that had any bearing on why Randall did what he did, we'll probably never know. What I do know is that Scott and Sean are incredibly lucky men, and Robert and Susan should be remembered as the seemingly wonderful and caring people they were, not just murder victims.
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I mentioned earlier just how much these young people had given to this world in their short lives, and it's heartbreaking to think about how much more they could have done if not for what befell them. I found a touching tribute to Susan on the website for Sims Family Cemetery that, by all accounts, appears to be something one of her family members wrote.
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And I think it's something all of you should read for yourselves, so I'll link out to it in the show notes and blog post. But it discusses what a fun, lively, and caring person she was. A homecoming queen, talented musician and singer, jokester, counselor, sister, and friend.
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The last few lines of the tribute state, Susu was taken from us far too early, even as she was just blossoming into full womanhood. In her time on this earth, however, she touched so many lives and gladdened so many hearts. It is no coincidence that she died while in the act of helping people. It's what she did. She was, as her epitaph proclaims, a ray of sunshine. End quote.
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Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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At some point on that Saturday, both Robert and Susan's parents arrived from Maine and Ohio to assist with the ongoing efforts, and searchers brought in tracking dogs to try and speed up the progress. By 7 p.m. that night, though, the case took a turn for the worse when crews discovered a body in the woods.
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Roland Kidwell reported for the Roanoke Times that investigators with the Virginia State Police and Giles County Sheriff's Office located what they believed were Susan's remains not far from the Wapiti shelter. which is a wooden log shelter about 200 yards from the AT and roughly six to seven miles from the nearest accessible road.
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The following afternoon, Sunday, May 31st, searchers went back out to the woods with dogs and quickly came across another body that investigators believed was Robert's. The next day, June 1st, when the deputy chief medical examiner for Western Virginia conducted the couple's autopsies, he and the Giles County medical examiner weren't sure at first how the pair had actually died.
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at the time a special agent for the state police couldn't release any information about the crime or crime scene and honestly at that point even if he could have he literally wasn't able to confirm if the victims had been killed by another person or not like i said they suspected foul play but didn't have much to really prove it yet and i think the reason for that was likely the deteriorated condition in which robert and susan's bodies were found when they were discovered
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You see, according to a retired Giles County deputy sheriff who spoke with producers for a TV program titled Dead Silent, authorities believe that Susan and Robert had likely stopped to camp at Wapiti Shelter on May 19, about a week before their bodies were found, and died sometime shortly after that. The deputy M.E.
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The National Park Service's website for the AT warns that enjoying the trail and all its beauty requires visitors to have a certain level of vigilance and awareness of the terrain and people around them. The 2,000-mile-plus trail is generally considered safe, but as you all know from previous cases I've covered on this show, it has seen its fair share of violent crime over the years.
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who did their autopsies ultimately used their dental records to confirm their identifications because their remains had already undergone the effects of decomposition. According to later coverage by the Associated Press via the Danville Register and Bee, as well as the Daily Progress, the deputy M.E.
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ultimately concluded that Susan had been beaten and stabbed multiple times and Robert's cause of death was three gunshot wounds to his head from a small caliber firearm. The Roanoke Times reported that lab tests showed Susan had not been sexually assaulted. But again, all the Emmy had to work with were her decomposed remains. So who knows?
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Once news of the murders got to the public, folks who were familiar with that section of the Appalachian Trail or who were planning on hiking it were terrified. Reporter Mike Gangloff told producers for Dead Silent that for several days, authorities shut down a portion of the AT around the shelter, and there was a noticeable police presence in the woods while the investigation was ongoing.
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A priest at a local Catholic church, which operated as a hostel for some 400 trail hikers each year, told reporters Roland Kidwell and Richard Pryor that the killings really scared folks who were staying at the hostel.
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The Appalachian Trail Conference, which is now known as the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, also addressed the murders by issuing a warning encouraging hikers to go around the part of the trail that Robert and Susan had been killed on.
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This was mostly for people's own safety, but also because law enforcement needed to preserve as much evidence as possible without having random folks just traipsing through what could be very well the same ground the killer or killers walked on.
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Based on everything I read about Robert and Susan, they seemed to be really nice and caring people who were experienced when it came to traversing the outdoors. For example, prior to starting his hike on the AT, Robert had recently left his job at a place called the Homestead Project, which was a residential treatment center for young people experiencing difficulties in Ellsworth.
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Susan, who had relocated from Ohio to Maine, worked at that same center with Robert as she'd been involved in the organization's outdoors program. Prior to his time at the youth center, Robert had also worked as a social worker for Maine's Child Protective Services and the Bangor Mental Health Institute.
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Susan had attended graduate school in New England and studied subjects like art therapy, which is now considered a legitimate form of therapy, but at the time was described by UPI News as a, quote, experimental method of working with emotionally unstable people, end quote.
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During her time at the Homestead Project, Susan was known for her unwavering belief that every single person was important, no matter what they were dealing with. One reason Robert had decided to hike the AT in the first place was to raise money for a mental health services facility his mother was the director of.
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A former co-worker told the Roanoke Times that hiking the AT had also been a long-time dream of Robert's, and he'd started preparing for the trek about a year in advance. Susan had only planned to join him for a portion of the trip.
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At the beginning of May, she used two weeks of vacation to travel from Maine and hike with him on the trail from Damascus, Virginia, near the Tennessee border, to Parisburg, Virginia, which is about 45 minutes northeast of the Wapiti Shelter by car, or just under seven hours if you're on foot.
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And actually, when I looked up how long this would take to walk from Damascus to Parisburg on Google Maps, it didn't find a route that calculated the exact time or distance via the Appalachian Trail, but my best estimate is that it would have required at least a few days to traverse given that there are changes in elevation and it's not a perfectly straight line.
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An NPS warning online states, quote, Acts of kindness and trail magic are so common on the AT that it's easy to forget you could encounter someone who does not have your best interest at heart, or who may even seek to harm you. This is more likely to occur near roads or occasionally at shelters, but it can happen anywhere, end quote.
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Anyway, what is clear from the source material is that when this crime occurred, Robert was only about two months into his journey. He started on April 1st and intended to hike for six months, with an anticipated completion date sometime at the end of September.
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According to UPI's reporting, on May 16th, Susan had called the director of the Homestead Project, asking if she could get a little bit more time off to hike with Robert, but promised she would come back to Maine by bus on the 24th. But as we know, Susan never caught that bus.
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And when the 24th rolled around and she didn't arrive, one of her coworkers at the Homestead Project, who was supposed to meet her, knew that was unlike her. This coworker knew Susan was normally really responsible and she would have called if she was gonna be late.
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But I guess at the time, alarm bells didn't go off because we know that Susan wasn't reported missing until a few days later when it became very apparent on the 29th that something was very wrong.
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Susan's father, Bud Ramsey, told the Associated Press via the Daily Progress that he hadn't thought twice about his daughter's safety while she was hiking the AT because he knew she was an experienced hiker who had survival skills and wilderness training. In fact, several years before this, in 1977, Susan had driven alone across the country to visit Yellowstone National Park.
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On her way back home to Ohio, she'd gotten caught in a blizzard in Wyoming and encountered a herd of elk that damaged her car. She actually ended up stuck in Wyoming for more than a week by herself, but eventually made it back home in one piece.
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Now, as far as whether there was anything romantic going on between her and Robert during their travels, Bud told the news services that the pair may have had a spark or some kind of crush between them, but they were not, to his knowledge, in a deeply involved relationship or anything like that.
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Over the course of a few days after the bodies were discovered, investigators processed the crime scene and noticed a few things that stuck out. According to coverage by the Associated Press, both of the victims' bodies were found in sleeping bags, and it appeared that someone had used vegetation to try and conceal them and a few of their personal belongings.
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According to information their family shared with the press, both Robert and Susan were known to hike in boots and carry knapsacks and valuable cameras with them. Authorities determined that Susan's camera was still at the crime scene, but the film inside of it had been removed.
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Interestingly, Susan's dad told the Associated Press that the actual sleeping bags his daughter and Robert's bodies were discovered in did not belong to them. And even more bizarre, the bags that were theirs were missing. He also noted that the Emmy had found defensive wounds on Susan's hands and arms, indicating that she'd tried to fight off her attacker.
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That same article reported that the logbook for the Wapiti shelter was also missing along with personal travel logs that Robert and Susan usually carried in their knapsacks. according to coverage by UPI via the Suffolk News-Herald.
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On June 3rd, authorities were continuing to search the crime scene and surrounding area for clues, but they ran into some bad weather which hampered their efforts to preserve things like foot tracks.
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Despite that, they were still able to interview at least a dozen witnesses who'd been on the trail, as well as gather additional information that supported a theory they were beginning to feel very strongly about, which was that the murders had likely occurred around the same time and several days before the victims' remains were found.
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On June 5th, nearly one week into the murder investigation, authorities announced they were looking for a man between the ages of 25 and 30 who might be a prime suspect. They didn't tell reporters the guy's name, but said he'd been attending a local community college in a neighboring town.
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Investigators described the man as somewhere between 5'8 to 5'10, with dark hair and a short beard, and was wearing a green fatigue shirt, jeans, and work boots. He was also said to have what was described in a publication at the time as a strong rural accent. All of this information had come from hikers who said they'd seen a man matching that description speaking with Susan on May 19th.
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At that time, the guy had been carrying a sleeping bag, dark-colored plaid flannel shirt, and a hunting knife in a sheath. Thanks to this description, law enforcement created a composite sketch of the man, but they refused to publicly release his name.
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While investigators waited for additional info to come in, they seized wooden boards from the inside of the shelter that had bloodstains on them and continued combing through the woods around the crime scene. Amazingly, they hit a stroke of luck when they discovered Susan's backpack with a paperback book still inside it.
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When they flipped open the novel, it had what looked like smudges of blood on some of the pages. Fortunately for investigators, there was a fairly visible fingerprint impression in that blood. So I imagine excited about this crucial lead, they quickly had it analyzed and it came back as belonging to a 27-year-old man from Parisburg, Virginia named Randall Lee Smith.
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The reason they were able to find a match for his prince so easily was because Randall had worked as a welder in shipyards in Norfolk, Virginia, where a ton of vessels for the United States Navy are made and docked. I couldn't tell from the source material, though, if Randall was the same guy that law enforcement said they'd been looking for, or if that was another person.
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But if that guy and Randall were one and the same, then I think maybe the discovery of the bloody fingerprint in the book at the crime scene had to have occurred before investigators issued that message to the public about the dark-haired guy from the composite sketch. I don't know for sure, though. Like I said, that part of the story is a bit confusing.
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But either way, when investigators with Giles County Sheriff's Office went to Randall's house, his mother Loretta answered the door. And right out the gate, she told them she thought she knew why they were there, but she wasn't going to let them come inside without a warrant. Fortunately, authorities had one of those. But when they got inside, Randall was nowhere in sight.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in Ouachita National Forest in Oklahoma. There's a significant portion of the forest that exists in Arkansas, too, but the crime I'm going to be talking about happened in a section located in Oklahoma.
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According to reporting by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the trial was supposed to get underway on July 5th, 2005, nearly two years after the murders.
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But in an unforeseen twist, about a week before that, on June 30th, Edward decided to plead guilty to two counts of first degree murder, two counts of using a firearm during a violent crime, one count of robbery with a firearm, and one count of burglarizing an automobile.
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Interestingly, he decided to go this route on his own accord without any deal or assurances from the government that he would get leniency. So the death penalty was still on the table when the case headed into the sentencing phase a week or so later. By that point, federal prosecutors weren't so sure that Edward's story about robbing the couple had been his only motivation for the crime.
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Instead, government officials theorized that Edward had taken the chick's stuff several hours after committing the murders to simply stage a robbery. During the sentencing hearing, the federal prosecutor described Edward as a, quote, cold-blooded, calloused, calculating, cruel, cowardly, and camouflaged double murderer, end quote, who'd planned months ahead of time to carry out his horrible crime.
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Even though investigators had found proof that he'd used Charles and Shirley's credit cards more than 20 times after their murders to purchase things like gas and tires for his truck, an engagement ring for his girlfriend, and meals at restaurants, they believed that the shopping spree was just an afterthought.
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The staged robbery accusation that prosecutors put forth was hotly debated though, because despite there being some forensic evidence that indicated Charles's body may have been moved from an upright position to a flat position several hours after he'd gone into rigor mortis, it was difficult for anyone to know for sure, simply because of how blood had pooled in different places in his body.
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It's not super clear from the available source material, but it seems like the prosecution's argument was that Edward had initially left the crime scene after the shootings, but then returned about six hours later to take cash and a credit card from Charles's corpse, which he likely could have only done if he'd moved his body in the process.
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But regardless of when exactly the robbery actually happened, it's clear that the crux of the government's case was that Edward had hatched a plan to transform himself into a predator, a sniper, well before the murders. The prosecutor alleged that that was why he'd made the camouflaged ghillie suit, outfitted his rifle in the same fashion, and mounted a powerful scope on it.
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It was all a part of a master plan to live out a fantasy of sport killing. And apparently, this wasn't Edward's first time playing dress-up and watching people in the woods.
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A guy named Daniel Love testified during the sentencing hearing that sometime in the spring of 2003, so just a few months before the chicks were killed, Edward had told him that he'd worn his ghillie suit and snuck up on two people having sex in a car in a park in the general area of Winding Stair Campground.
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After listening to that story, Daniel said he told Edward not to do that kind of thing again or else he might get into a violent confrontation with someone. But he said Edward just kind of walked away and seemed frustrated.
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Prosecutors also emphasized to jurors that they believed Edward had attempted to create a false alibi for himself for July 10th by trying to get one of his pals to say he was with him and telling his girlfriend at the time that he was going on a fishing trip with that friend.
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According to court documents, Edward had approached one of his buddies named Danny in the late afternoon early evening on July 10 and asked him to go snake hunting, but Danny declined because he wanted to go to a casino with his sister that evening.
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Edward's girlfriend, a woman named Michelle, testified that Edward had called her on the morning of July 10th and said he wouldn't be coming over to her house right after work because he'd made plans to go fishing with Danny.
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And because no evidence was ever found that supported Edward had gone on a fishing trip, that's why prosecutors thought all those comments he'd made to Danny and Michelle appeared as if he'd been trying to set up an alibi for himself. In later testimony, Danny remarked that it wasn't all that strange for Edward to have a ghillie suit and camouflaged rifle with a scope on it.
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Those were things he said a lot of hunters used. Danny explained that he'd gone hunting for squirrels with Edward in the past, and during those trips, Edward had been in his ghillie suit carrying his camouflaged gun. Danny said he knew Edward preferred to hide and wait for squirrels to come to him.
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But prosecutors pushed the narrative that Edwards' desire to blend in with the environment around him had graduated to a new level by July 2003. One attorney for the government said, quote, he had mastered his craft, he had practiced with squirrels, and now he was moving to humans, end quote.
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The government's lawyers made sure to bring Edwards' homemade ghillie suit in for the jury to view, so that they could see its hundreds of head-to-toe strands of yarn that made it fairly indistinguishable from the forest that surrounded the crime scene.
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Referring to what Shirley's last moments alive would have been like, one prosecutor pointed at the suit and told the courtroom in part, quote, This is what she sees, this creature coming from the woods toward her. For Shirley Chick, death took this form, end quote.
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On the other side of the aisle, though, was Edward's defense attorney, who argued that starting at the age of 16, her client had suffered from chronic depression, and as a newborn baby, he'd suffered from a respiratory distress syndrome that was known to cut off oxygen to the brain for stretches of time and could cause brain damage.
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The defense also explained that Edward had injured his head multiple times during his youth and experienced a loss of consciousness while he'd served in the Navy. His medical records showed that he'd been prescribed at least five different antidepressants throughout his life, including one drug called Effexor.
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The defense claimed that Effexor was what had set off a bad chain of events that led to the bloodshed at the Winding Stair Campground on July 10th, 2003. The defense argued that leading up to the murders while taking Effexor, Edward had experienced hallucinations, insomnia, and dramatic weight loss.
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On the afternoon of Friday, July 11th, 2003, a man riding his motorcycle through the Winding Stair Campground in Washington National Forest came upon a campsite. Right away, he noticed a person lying on the ground and realized something was very wrong. He quickly left and reported what he'd found to the authorities.
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He was reported to have taken an increased amount of the drug prior to the crimes, which medical studies indicated was associated with behavioral side effects like compulsive aggression and violent behavior. His attorney called two psychiatrists to testify about their client's documented history of mental illness and the potential side effects of the antidepressant.
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One of those expert witnesses determined that at the time of the murders, Edward had bipolar disorder. Both doctors' opinion was that his use of Effexor had caused him to have what they referred to as a manic flip. And it was that event, they said, that had caused him to have impaired judgment and commit the murders.
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Referring to the risk of unforeseen consequences when treating individuals with bipolar disorder with Effexor, one of the psychiatrists said in part, quote, You may treat the depressions with an antidepressant, but there's a risk when treating someone with bipolar disorder that you might actually not only go past treating depression, but put them in a manic episode or give them symptoms of mania.
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The term that is described in the literature is called switching. They continued, in the same way that some people have unusual responses to penicillin or unusual responses to other types of medicine, there are people who have unusual responses to antidepressants as well. And one of the unusual responses for someone that is bipolar is to switch into mania, end quote.
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When Edward's ex-wife testified at his sentencing hearing, she told the court that prior to the murders, Edward was often moody, depressed, and sometimes angry. But after his arrest, when he was put on new medication, he was capable of having normal conversations with her about their kids.
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The government's experts agreed with the defense's argument that Edward had been diagnosed with depression, but they stopped short of conceding that the drug Effexor and its side effects were why he'd murdered Charles and Shirley. Essentially, prosecutors told the jurors that Edward couldn't blame the antidepressant for his homicidal actions.
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Ultimately, on July 22, 2005, jurors voted in favor of capital punishment. Kerry Kopernol reported for the Daily Oklahoman that it was the first time in 12 years a jury had sentenced a defendant to death. Edward became the 41st person to be sent to Oklahoma's death row in the federal system.
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After the sentence was handed down, Shirley Chick's sister told reporters that she was grateful for the jury's decision, but it was all just very bittersweet. She said, quote, we can't bring them back. That in itself is an injustice, end quote.
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Three years later, in 2008, Edward appealed his death sentence by claiming the federal government should not have had jurisdiction over the case and he didn't get a fair trial in the sentencing phase. But an appeals court denied his petition and ordered that a panel of judges not rehear his case.
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In April 2010, almost seven years after the murders, a federal defense attorney submitted a filing to get Edward's death sentence vacated or corrected. In that document, the lawyer claimed that in addition to his client's history with depression and bipolar disorder in 2003 and prior to 2003, he'd also had organic brain damage, which impaired his frontal lobes.
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The attorney explained that Edward had grown up in a dysfunctional household and both his parents had come from families where gambling, mental health conditions, alcohol use, sexual abuse, and violence had been present.
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And not long after that, personnel from the Leflore County Sheriff's Office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation arrived. What investigators found was a man lying face down next to a picnic table, and his right foot was missing a shoe. A short distance away, they located a woman's body near a 1996 Ford Econoline van.
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A big claim the appellate attorney made in this motion was that Edward's original trial attorney, a court-appointed public defender, had failed to appropriately incorporate his background as part of his mental illness defense.
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This attorney felt that jurors should have known more about Edward's childhood, the issues that his family struggled with, and the fact that his own sister had admitted their household had not been a nurturing or loving one to grow up in.
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The appellate attorney wrote that the original lawyer had been ineffective because she'd been too overburdened with her own workload to adequately represent Edward. He also said she'd failed to explain to jurors the medical reasons why Edward had brain damage and his mental health complications overall.
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What's kind of wild is that in a post-conviction declaration interview, the original trial lawyer actually kind of agreed with some of these accusations about her work. She said, quote, there is no question in my mind that the bulk of the above described errors were a result of my being overburdened by essentially functioning without co-counsel in this complex and difficult case, end quote.
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From reading the court documents, it's clear that the central focus of the appellate attorney's argument was that the jury at Edward's sentencing hearing should have been able to consider the totality of his mental health condition when deciding whether or not to send him to death row.
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Essentially, the point was that all of Edward's past psychiatric history needed to be evaluated, separate from whether or not he'd suffered a manic flip after taking an increased dose of Effexor prior to the murders.
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The other big point the defense made in their motion to vacate was that they said it was unconstitutional in the state of Oklahoma to execute a person who was severely mentally ill and could be considered incompetent.
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The federal court in the Eastern District of Oklahoma had a lot of time to review this motion because for several years, prosecutors for the government and Edward's post-conviction defense attorney kept submitting a bunch of new exhibits and filings. In the end though, on December 15th, 2016, Edward lost his bid to have his death sentence set aside or corrected.
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He filed more post-conviction motions in 2019 and a higher court actually ended up sending his case back to a lower district court for an evidentiary hearing. That court was tasked with deciding whether or not his original public defender had been ineffective for failing to investigate and present evidence of his organic brain damage during his sentencing hearing in 2005.
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As recent as early December 2024, an evidentiary hearing was being held in federal court in the Eastern District of Oklahoma. But then, on December 23rd, 2024, the White House announced that President Joe Biden had chosen to commute 37 federal death row inmate sentences. They would all get life without the possibility of parole instead of execution. And one of those 37 inmates was Edward.
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At last check, he's still serving his time at a federal prison. He's currently 57 years old. As I wrap up this episode, I can't help but reflect on just how much Charles and Shirley's life story is reflective of my own experiences in the outdoors.
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They were avid campers who were doing what so many of us do on a regular basis, visiting a serene landscape and spending nightfall enjoying nature at a campsite. They were innocent victims who were killed in a brutal way, a truly heartless way.
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Both were dead from apparent gunshot wounds, and sitting in the area around the bodies were some camping supplies and a tent. When investigators examined what they assumed was the victim's van, they noticed it had a Texas license plate on it and the driver's side window had been busted out.
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I hope that despite the legal battle that's still waging in Oklahoma, their families have found peace over these 21 years that have passed since their deaths. I saw a quote while researching this story that I think we should all remember.
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It came from a spokeswoman for the National Forest who told the Associated Press after the murders, quote, This reminds us that evil doesn't just live in the city. It comes to the country, too. End quote. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.
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And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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There was glass scattered inside and a few pieces had landed in a pool of dried blood near the runners of the passenger side door well and on some sandals sitting in the same area. Special agents with the OSBI found registration information that indicated the vehicle belonged to 47-year-old Charles Chick and his wife, 50-year-old Shirley Chick.
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The 1.8 million-acre forest is generally known for having great mountain views and plenty of places to soak in the scenic landscape while driving. Visitors can camp in pretty much any style they want. There are designated camping areas that have rustic tent pads, but there are also spots where you can pull up in an RV and essentially glamp in style if you prefer that. According to the U.S.
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The couple was from Hearst, Texas, a city no more than four and a half hours southwest of Winding Stair Campground. Tony Thornton reported for the Daily Oklahoman that when authorities took a closer look at the victims' bodies, they determined the pair had likely been dead for about 24 hours.
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Based on what I read in the source material, it seems like the consensus was that the OSBI agents saw some signs of decomposition, but nothing that indicated Charles and Shirley had been there for weeks or months or anything like that. Curiously, there was no sign of a firearm or weapon at the scene, which prompted investigators to quickly rule out a murder-suicide scenario.
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Something else that caught law enforcement's attention was that none of the couple's camping gear appeared to be packed. In fact, it was all sitting out like they'd been using it, which I imagine indicated to investigators that the victims hadn't just arrived at the campsite or been in the middle of packing up to leave when they died.
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After assessing the crime scene, investigators sent Charles and Shirley's bodies to the state medical examiner's office in Tulsa for autopsies. When the press got wind of what had happened, OSPI agents were tight-lipped when it came to identifying who the victims were, what kind of wounds they had, or what their cause of death might be.
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Until the ME's office could confirm from dental records that the two dead campers were in fact Charles and Shirley, all the authorities would tell reporters was that the case was a homicide and the victims were white, between 40 and 50 years old, and not from Oklahoma.
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From Tuesday night, July 15th, into Wednesday morning, July 16th, investigators were able to successfully match the chick's dental records with their bodies. And that's when they issued an update to the media. A spokeswoman for the OSBI announced that Charles and Shirley had both died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head, which authorities believed had been fired from a small caliber firearm.
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Winding Stairs records showed that Charles and Shirley had registered at the campground three days before they were discovered dead. So if my math is right, that would mean they'd arrived sometime on July 8th. Finding anyone who may have interacted with them after that was a top priority for investigators.
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So detectives spent Wednesday, July 16th interviewing people, and a spokeswoman for the OSPI told news publications that investigators had developed the names of a few people they thought could help them identify new leads. But she stopped short of labeling those individuals as suspects.
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Tulsa World reported that the OSPI wanted to speak with any visitors to the National Forest who may have interacted with the chicks or spoken with them during their trip. The OSBI emphasized that detectives were chasing any and all information that came in, including leads that were outside the state of Oklahoma.
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The agency's spokeswoman told the Associated Press, "...we're following leads left and right, hot and heavy." In the wake of the murders, the Leflore County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Forest Service beefed up patrols in recreation areas surrounding the Winding Stair Campground.
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A federal official told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the killings were the first murders to occur in the National Forest since it opened in 1907. So I imagine this crime was truly foreign territory for investigators. Meanwhile, news had spread to Texas about the couple's deaths.
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Forest Service's website, Ouachita National Forest is the oldest and largest national forest in the southern United States. A lot of people like to experience the great outdoors there in more secluded, quiet spaces that sit outside of designated campgrounds.
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The maintenance manager of the apartment building they lived at in the city of Hearst told Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Domingo Ramirez Jr. that Charles and Shirley were both really big outdoor enthusiasts. He said he'd known them for 20 years, and in that time, he felt like he'd seen them go camping just about every weekend.
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When they weren't traveling, Shirley worked as a freelance computer programmer and Charles wrote instruction manuals for F-16 aircrafts at Lockheed Martin, which is an aerospace and defense technology company with a global and domestic footprint.
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According to an article Kerry Kopernol wrote for the Daily Oklahoman, the pair had grown up in the same Detroit, Michigan neighborhood together, but didn't really come to know one another until they were older. They eventually got married in a small sunrise elopement ceremony in Big Bend National Park in the mid-1980s. And after that, they set out to travel as much as possible.
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They even kept a journal of all the spots they'd stopped to camp at, as well as people they'd met throughout their many years of traveling. Authorities had actually discovered this journal at the crime scene and found more than a thousand entries in it. It was full of information about people the chicks had met between the East Coast and West Coast of the United States.
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Charles and Shirley's loved ones said that despite them never becoming parents themselves, the couple was close with their friends' and relatives' children and considered many of them their own. Ralph Marler reported for Tulsa World that the couple was laid to rest on July 19th in Portland, Tennessee, close to Shirley's sister.
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Their graves overlooked a pasture that her sister told the Daily Oklahoman reminds her of a campground. A few days after news of the murders got out, authorities received a tip that changed the course of their investigation.
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A 33-year-old woman from Worcester, Oklahoma, which is less than 50 minutes away from Winding Stair Campground, called in to report that she might know who the chick's killer was. This tipster's name was Carol Lamb, and she explained that just a month earlier, in June, she'd parted ways with a guy she'd been living with for four years named Edward Leon Fields Jr.
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She said that ever since they'd split up, he'd been living in campgrounds in Washington National Forest, as well as campsites around Worcester Lake. Carol told investigators that in the time she'd been with Edward, he'd shown her a .22-caliber rifle that he owned which had a scope on it, along with a handmade camouflage suit that was comprised of thick, rope-like burlap fabric strips.
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When detectives asked her where Edward kept all that stuff and what kind of vehicle he drove, she told them he owned a 1989 dark blue 1500 Chevy pickup truck. And it was probably where all his stuff was, since they were no longer living together.
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This is what's referred to as dispersed camping, and although the experience may bring solitude, it does mean that you volunteered to essentially be on your own. I personally know a lot of folks who choose this option when they visit national forests, but in the summer of 2003, a couple on a camping trip in Ouachita didn't go that route.
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With that information in hand, investigators went through a list of names of people they'd identified as having been in the National Forest when Charles and Shirley were killed. Based on what I found in the source material, it doesn't appear they saw Edward's name on that list.
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But they did find a man from Louisiana who told them he'd seen a dark blue pickup truck with the number 1500 on the side of it at Winding Stair Campground on July 8th. So now that it was Friday, July 18th, investigators were eager to speak with Edward Fields Jr. They specifically wanted to know where he'd been more than a week earlier.
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By the time authorities tracked Edward down at a plastics warehouse on the afternoon of Friday, July 18th, that he was working at in the town of Poteau, Oklahoma, they learned from the state crime lab that the bullets found in the chick's bodies had come from a .22 caliber firearm. And forensic techs had identified six different spots at the crime scene where burlap fibers had been left behind.
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The makeup of those fibers closely matched the type of material Carol Lam had told investigators that Edward's homemade camouflage suit was made of. So with an arrest warrant and search warrant in hand, FBI and OSPI agents took 36-year-old Edward into custody at his place of employment and arrested him on suspicion of Charles and Shirley's murders.
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At the time, Edward was living out of his Chevy pickup truck, and when special agents searched it, they seized his camouflage suit, his .22 caliber rifle, prescription medications, and some computers.
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Though investigators felt pretty confident his gun was going to be a match to the slugs found in the victims, they still had to send it off for ballistics testing to confirm whether or not it was actually used to kill the chicks. Meanwhile, Edward was held at the Leflore County Jail without bond while federal first-degree murder charges were pending.
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Since the couple had technically been killed on federal land, that's why the feds got involved. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Associated Press reported that the following Monday, July 21st, he had a hearing before a magistrate and was denied bail. After that, he was transferred to a federal facility to await a grand jury's decision on whether to formally indict him for the crime.
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A spokeswoman for the OSBI told reporters that investigators believed Edward had seemingly chosen Charles and Shirley at random because there didn't appear to be any connection between him and the couple. What was clear, though, from the evidence the OSBI had gathered so far was that Edward had apparently premeditated the crime.
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Clues that agents felt confident pointed to that were the .22 caliber rifle and the camouflage suit they'd found in his truck. Most of the source material refers to this suit as a ghillie suit, which, if you've never Googled what that is, stop right now and look it up, because it's pretty wild. Literally, it's a full-body disguise that makes a person blend into vegetation or a forest environment.
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It's the stuff of my nightmares, but I know it's mostly used by hunters so they can go unseen by game. Something else investigators used to establish probable cause to arrest Edward was that Carol Lamb, his ex-partner or roommate, I'm not really sure what they were, had mentioned that the week of the killings, he told her he was going to take his own life.
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And then shortly after the chicks were killed, she'd met up with him and he told her that on the evening of July 10th, he crept up on a couple in their car and watched them, then retreated to his truck to put on his ghillie suit and returned to where the couple was and done, quote, something real bad. End quote.
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Now, if you ask me, that's pretty damning testimony and grounds for investigators to take a hard look at Edward. What no one could quite figure out, though, was why. Why had Edward done this?
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The Daily Oklahoman in Tulsa World reported that he'd worked for the state's Department of Corrections as a prison guard and food service supervisor from 1995 until 1999, and he had no criminal history that the OSBI could find. Apparently, when he left the Department of Corrections, there was no bad blood or any major event that would have sent him down a bad path.
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But on Wednesday, July 23rd, right before a detention hearing in federal court, Edward's mental competency came into question when he attempted suicide. An article by Rod Walton explained that just a few hours before he was due in court, Edward got a hold of a sharp object in his jail cell and cut himself.
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Later reporting by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram confirmed that object was a blade from a plastic razor. The coverage also details that Edward had claimed to be hearing voices. His arm was treated with staples and stitches at a local hospital and he survived.
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A few days later at a competency hearing, the judge presiding over his case determined that despite his suicide attempt, he was competent to stand trial. He was eligible to receive the death penalty if convicted, with the alternative being life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Three days after the competency hearing, a grand jury formally indicted Edward for Charles and Shirley's murders, as well as additional charges for robbery, automobile burglary, and using a firearm in a crime of violence. Now, you might be asking, wait, where did the robbery and burglary charges come from?
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Well, according to the available source material, investigators had gotten Edward to confess after his arrest. They said he'd admitted to targeting the chicks on July 10th because he'd needed money. They also claimed he'd admitted to taking $340 in cash, a credit card, a camera, and binoculars from the couple.
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An FBI agent who testified at a preliminary hearing said that about eight days after the murders, Edward had decided to come clean to the authorities about how he stalked Charles and Shirley after noticing them from an overlook.
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Court documents and one article I found by the Daily Oklahoman reported that Edward had actually observed the chicks in the campground not long after they'd arrived and thought they were nice people.
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However, in his confession, he said that around sunset on July 10th, while wearing his ghillie suit, he'd laid down on his stomach, sneaked up to the couple's campsite and watched them for about 20 minutes. Then he shot Charles in the head from a distance while the 47-year-old was getting up from a picnic table to head to the couple's tent.
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Almost immediately after firing that shot, he aimed his rifle at Shirley, who was frantically running toward the couple's van. His first shot missed her, but the one after that struck her in the foot. He then got closer and fired another round that hit her in the head as she attempted to get into the van's passenger door.
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When she went down, he said he shot her in the head again to make sure she was dead. The FBI agent who testified said that Edward also admitted to walking up to Charles' body and shot him in the head a second time too to make sure he wouldn't survive either. It would take about two years, though, before this information would go before a jury.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today is one that is just downright chilling. Everything about it will give you full-body chills because it involves two victims that seem like they should have been the least likely people to have been targeted.
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I've never heard of anybody getting robbed in the woods before. End quote. What the two murders communicated to outdoor enthusiasts was that whoever was responsible for the crimes was brave enough to walk up to a person who was armed and attack them. That fact alone indicated that the perpetrator or perpetrators were extremely brazen.
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It certainly seems unusual to me that someone would choose to target a victim who very easily could have returned fire or somehow injured them during the attack. And yet that was looking more and more like the type of person or people that law enforcement was dealing with.
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Other hunters from Florida told the New York Times that because of what had happened to Greg and Don, they planned to go hunting in pairs instead of by themselves, you know, as a means of extra protection. When the victims were killed in late November 1993, there were several weeks still left in the deer hunting season.
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Authorities cautioned hunters to be careful in the woods because investigators were genuinely concerned that whoever the killer or killers were, they could and likely would kill again. Clay County Homicide Detective Jim Redman used this to his advantage. Early on in the investigation, he came up with a plan to try and lure the suspect or suspects out.
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He dressed in hunting attire, grew a beard, and went into Camp Blanding Wildlife Management Area where investigators suspected the killer or killers might be. He perched himself under the very tree where Greg Wood had been murdered and waited. He was essentially using himself as human bait, but don't worry, he wasn't totally alone.
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FWC officer Steve Chance was fairly close by and armed with a scoped rifle just in case things went sideways. But hours and hours went by and nothing happened. The undercover sting operation was a bust and investigators were no closer to identifying who was responsible for the murders. Six months went by, and then a year, and not a whole lot of progress was made in either case.
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After year one, Task Force Orion disbanded, and almost two years later in 1995, concerns were still high in the hunting community that someone had gotten away with two brutal murders. In those two years or so, Greg's loved ones erected a memorial plaque for him at the entrance of Camp Blanding Wildlife Management Area.
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It stated, quote, in loving memory of Greg Wood, may all who pass here go with peace in harmony with nature and all mankind, 11-24-93, end quote. Jim Redman wrote in his article for Outdoor Life magazine that within six months of the murder, the reward for information was increased to more than $45,000. And he chased down a handful of potential leads in other U.S.
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states, including similar kinds of crimes. But nothing panned out. It was frustrating, and investigators began to wonder if perhaps robbery wasn't the killer's only motive. Other than the two victims' wallets and the firearms that had been stolen from Greg and the knife that was taken from Don, there wasn't much else of value for the killer to make off with.
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And typically, hunters were not known to carry much cash in their wallets while out in the woods. So theoretically, whoever robbed the victims likely didn't get away with much, which was just another detail that didn't quite make sense to authorities. In the summer of 1996, Jim Redman turned to the media for help.
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He agreed to participate in the pilot season of Cold Case Files, which I think at that time was a CBS program just called Cold Case. The segment aired the following year in April 1997, and right away Jim started receiving a bunch of new leads and information. At that point, it had been almost four years since Don and Greg's murders, and investigators really needed to catch a break.
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In August of that year, that's exactly what happened. One of Greg Wood's long-lost stolen guns turned up. On August 6th, 1997, nearly four years after Dawn and Greg were murdered, a records clerk for Putnam County Sheriff's Office in Florida sat down to enter a pawn shop ticket into her computer database that kept track of firearms and their serial numbers.
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This clerk would then cross reference guns she entered against lists of missing or stolen firearms in the NCIC database. She was surprised to discover that the gun from the pawn shop ticket got flagged as a .357 Smith & Wesson that had been reported stolen out of Clay County some four years earlier.
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When she looked to see where it had been pawned, she read that it had been involved in a transaction at a store called Super Pawn in Palatka, Florida.
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and just to give you some geographical context palatka is a little less than an hour southeast of camp landing wildlife management area where greg wood was killed so not very far away from his crime scene at all within a short amount of time putnam county investigators got in touch with clay county sheriff's office and together detective jim redmond and a putnam county detective traveled to the super pond in palatka to interview the owner
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The pawn shop owner revealed that a woman had sold him the gun, and in exchange, he'd given her about $75 in cash. Thankfully, the owner still had the firearm in his store, and Jim Redman was able to seize it as evidence. From there, he and the Putnam County detective worked to trace how many hands the gun had passed through since November 1993.
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They started with the woman who'd pawned it at Super Pawn, and she revealed she'd gotten it from her boyfriend. That guy told authorities he'd purchased it from a 14-year-old who eventually confessed that he'd stolen it from a truck in Hastings, Florida.
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What's really cool is that Jim Redman and his team were able to trace the gun through 14 different people before eventually identifying the folks who owned the truck it was reported stolen from. Those people were a set of brothers named Michael and Paul Tyler.
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Now, Michael and Paul were kind of interesting guys because they were both avid hunters and kind of fit the general suspect profile for the person law enforcement suspected killed Don and Greg. Paul and Michael were both outdoorsmen, white, in their 30s to 40s, and of course, had been in possession of Greg Wood's stolen handgun.
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However, upon closer examination, Jim Redman learned that Michael and Paul both had solid alibis. For example, on the day Greg was killed, they were working together for a tractor dealership making a delivery in the town of Belle Glade, Florida, nearly five hours south of Camp Blanding Wildlife Management Area.
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The brothers were able to prove their alibis from delivery paperwork they'd turned in to their employer. But even with the two of them off the board as suspects, homicide investigators still needed to know how they'd ended up with Greg Wood's stolen revolver.
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When Jim Redman interviewed them, he learned that Paul and Michael had received the gun from one of their cousins, a guy named Jimmy Ray Beagle. Now, what's super interesting about Jimmy Ray is that authorities learned from Paul and Michael that he'd also sold another family member a shotgun around the same time he sold them Greg Smith and Wesson.
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And wouldn't you know it, the shotgun Jimmy Ray was reported to have sold was a Remington, the same type that Greg Wood owned. So with all of that information in mind, investigator Redman decided to really narrow in on Jimmy Ray as a suspect. He learned that the 39-year-old had made many attempts to work as a police officer, but never quite made the cut.
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So instead, Jimmy Ray had found employment as a security guard. Investigators also learned that Jimmy Ray had a fixation with firearms and was known to his family to be a bit odd. His cousins, Paul and Michael Tyler, told authorities that on the day Jimmy Ray had sold them the .357 Smith & Wesson, they'd curiously asked Jimmy Ray where he'd gotten it from.
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But Jimmy Ray didn't really give them a straight answer. All he said was that the guy it had belonged to wouldn't be needing it anymore. And that was it. End of conversation. Now, I don't think at that moment Paul and Michael thought anything was super sinister about Jimmy Ray's vague remark, but in hindsight, they realized it was kind of strange.
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Strange enough that the brothers began to wonder if Jimmy Ray might be hiding something. So Paul decided to wear a wire and record his conversations with his cousin. All the while, investigator Jim Redman was taping those interactions and listening in.
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In one conversation, Paul told Jimmy Ray that he was upset because the FBI and police had come to his workplace and asked about the origin of the Smith & Wesson revolver because they believed it was involved in a murder. Paul basically lamented that he was upset because now he and Michael were being investigated for a murder they had nothing to do with.
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The goal, of course, in all of this was to get Jimmy Ray to speak up and say something to comfort Paul or defend him. But Jimmy Ray never did. Paul told producers for Cold Case Files that Jimmy Ray was very cold when it came to the woes Paul was pretending to face and acted like he could care less that Paul and Michael might have a man's murder pinned on them.
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Paul and Jimmy Ray continued to talk about the issue over the course of several conversations. And at one point, Jimmy Ray told Paul that he knew exactly who Jim Redman was and started advising his cousins on how to deal with law enforcement. Jimmy Ray assured Paul that he would go speak with Redmond in person to clear up the whole thing.
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He eventually did that on March 24th, 1998, several months after coming onto investigators' radar as their prime suspect. Some of the source material states that law enforcement had interviewed Jimmy Ray three times before that date, though.
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However, I'm not sure how long those interviews lasted or what all was discussed in them, or if Jimmy Ray ever became aware that he was law enforcement's prime suspect.
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I should also mention, too, that there was a short period of time in November and December 1997 where investigators all the way in Ohio thought a murder suspect they had in custody there was possibly involved in what happened to Greg and Dawn. But in the end, that was not the case.
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On Friday night, November 19th, 1993, a man named Joe Hill arrived at the Cobb Campgrounds in Osceola National Forest to meet up with his dad, 63-year-old Don Hill. Just prior to this, Don had gone ahead of his son and set up a small camper trailer at the campground and spent that Friday hunting in the forest.
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The guy from Ohio was suspected of at least five murders, two of whom were hunters, and all of which had occurred between 1993 and 1997. The reason he came on Florida investigators' radar at all was because he'd lived in Florida in November 1993 and become a convicted felon there for a drug offense.
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My point, though, in mentioning him is because if you look up news coverage on this case, you'll see that even though Detective Jim Redman was solidly pursuing Jimmy Ray Beagle as a prime suspect by the end of 1997, he was also still considering potential leads in other states. You know, just doing his due diligence, I guess.
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Anyway, on March 24th, 1998, it was clear that Jimmy Ray was the main person Florida authorities were looking at for the unsolved Hunter homicides. And in order to try and get him to confess, Investigator Redman came up with a unique plan to confront Jimmy Ray inside a Clay County Sheriff's Office substation when he arrived for his formal interview.
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During his research about Jimmy Ray, Investigator Redman had learned that Jimmy Ray claimed to have recently become a new Christian. So Redman wanted to set up the interrogation space to sort of tap into Jimmy Ray's faith. You know, things like heaven and hell, right and wrong, salvation and condemnation, that sort of thing.
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Redmond dressed himself in a black sports coat with a white collar underneath, which kind of gave him the appearance of a member of the clergy. On one side of the interview room, he set out all of the crime scene photos of Dawn and Greg, as well as some evidence and the pawn shop ticket for the Smith and Wesson. On the other side of the space, he set up an open Bible.
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Softly playing from speakers in the room were the recorded wiretaps that investigators had captured between Paul and Jimmy Ray throughout the course of their investigation. Basically, Detective Redmond was subtly going to imply to Jimmy Ray that he could either choose to tell the truth and come clean, or he could not cooperate and face judgment. When Jimmy Ray arrived around 12.30 p.m.
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on the 24th, he was reported to be very surprised and confused by the interrogation setup. But over the course of the next 45 minutes to an hour, he revealed incriminating details about Don Hill's murder in Osceola National Forest. and he said he'd stumbled across Greg Wood's body at Camp Blanding a few days afterwards.
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Before continuing to talk, though, Jimmy Ray asked for a bathroom break and was directed to the restroom in the sheriff's office. But several minutes went by, and eventually Detective Redman realized Jimmy Ray had not returned to the interview room. Redman then knocked on the bathroom door several times, but Jimmy Ray refused to exit.
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This went on for a little while, but after four more failed attempts to get Jimmy Ray to cooperate, Detective Redman kicked in the door to the restroom and crashed down onto the floor. When he looked over, he found himself staring at Jimmy Ray, who was crouched in a fighting position and pointing the barrel of a gun right in his face.
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They were hunters, armed veteran outdoorsmen whose killer, in my opinion, took a huge risk attacking them, but somehow succeeded. The crimes unfolded in two different recreation spaces, Osceola National Forest and Camp Blanding Wildlife Management Area, which are both in Florida. According to the U.S.
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Jimmy Ray threatened to kill Detective Redman if he didn't leave the room immediately. Turns out when Jimmy Ray had first arrived at the substation, deputies didn't think to pat him down for weapons.
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When Joe arrived, though, he discovered that his father's trailer was locked, which felt odd to him, because he fully expected his dad to be inside and settling in for the day. The only rational explanation Joe could come up with as to where Don might be was that maybe his dad had taken a quick trip to get supplies or something in nearby Lake City, which was only like 15 miles away.
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They knew that as a security guard, he had a valid license to carry a concealed firearm, but they assumed that since he'd come in willingly, he wasn't armed, which turned out to be a big mistake on their part. But anyway, after Detective Redman got to safety and strapped himself with a protective vest, the sheriff's office and its SWAT team went into full-blown hostage negotiation mode.
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This lasted for nine hours, and during all that time, Jimmy Ray passed several messages to Detective Redman underneath the bathroom door that detailed more about the circumstances surrounding Greg and Don's murders, including how he'd cut both of their belts in the back, a detail that had not been previously known to the public.
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During the standoff, Jimmy Ray also scribbled notes and drawings on surfaces inside the bathroom. It was in those writings that he ended up confessing to even more crimes, including the arson of his own home for insurance money and other offenses. At various times, he broke out in singing religious songs and could be heard throughout the sheriff's office building.
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All of this seemingly bizarre behavior led investigators to grow concerned that Jimmy Ray might be intending to die by suicide. So before midnight on the 24th, the sheriff's office's SWAT team devised a plan to pump chemical gas into the restroom where Jimmy Ray was to try and force him out, I guess before he could do something drastic.
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But after like 10 minutes of that, Jimmy Ray realized what authorities were doing and he opened fire on the SWAT team through the roof and door of the bathroom. The source material doesn't mention any deputies being hit or injured, but what is clear is that Jimmy Ray eventually took his own life with his firearm.
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In the aftermath of the shootout, it was clear to investigators that they'd caught Greg and Don's murderer. I mean, the sheriff's office even said that much to the press. But unfortunately, they weren't able to bring Jimmy Ray to justice, at least not in the way they'd hoped. To this day, some might argue that the true motive behind why Jimmy Ray did what he did is still a bit of a mystery.
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A lot of folks, including Detective Jim Redman, believe it was as simple as greed. Jimmy Ray wanted what Don and Greg had that was valuable, so he took it by force. An article by the Associated Press stated that at the time of the killings, Jimmy Ray said he was desperate for money after having some of his stuff repossessed and losing his business and home.
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In his communications with investigators during his final hours, he indicated there was no reason why he'd specifically targeted Greg Wood and Don Hill, which, if true, means they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. What's super tragic is that it was reported Jimmy Ray likely only got $20 in cash from both of his victims' wallets, plus $75 for selling Greg's handgun.
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So in total, less than $100. It's heartbreaking to think that was his reason for taking two lives, for gunning down in cold blood two men who had families and people who loved them. I think this is a reminder for all of us, especially those of you listening who are into hunting, to be vigilant. In no way are Greg Wood and Don Hill to blame for what happened to them.
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They are both innocent victims in this case. But it's important to remember, just because someone may approach you and be dressed like you or appear to share the same hobbies as you, you can't let your guard down. Because sometimes, predators are much closer than you may think. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production.
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You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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Because Joe hadn't seen Don's 1989 maroon and silver Chevy pickup parked near the camper trailer when he'd arrived, that indicated to him that Don had probably just left the area for a little bit. Figuring his dad would be back soon, Joe decided to stay put and wait for Don to return. But when one hour went by and then two, that's when Joe realized something wasn't right.
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So he used a payphone at the campground to call his mom at his parents' house in Orange Park, Florida. But she told Joe that she hadn't heard from Don since much earlier in the day. I imagine not wanting to send his mom into a panic or anything, Joe downplayed the situation as a big misunderstanding and told her not to be too concerned. However, deep down, he was definitely worried by that point.
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Joe spent the night of the 19th either there at his dad's vacant campsite or at his own home. It's hard to tell from the source material. But whatever it was, by the time the sun rose the following morning, Saturday, November 20th, he was determined to figure out what was going on with his dad.
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So he decided to drive around Osceola National Forest and look in a few places that he knew his dad liked to hunt in. He searched high and low for any sign of his father's Chevy pickup and even drove on overpasses along Interstate 10, which cuts right through the National Forest. He also drove several main roads and forest roads until finally he spotted the vehicle.
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It was parked on the side of what I think was a more rural side road called Dobson Grade Road, but when Joe looked inside of the Chevy, Don wasn't there. Unsure where his father could be, Joe yelled out Don's name several times, hoping that he would respond.
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As Joe hollered, he began walking down what's known as a fire break, which is a man-made path in the forest that has been cleared of vegetation in order to stop a wildfire from spreading if one comes along. And as Joe got further and further down this fire break, he saw what he recognized as a tree stand, which essentially was a ladder going up a big pine tree.
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And once he was right in front of it, he saw his father's body lying on the ground. Don's fairly new .30-30 caliber Winchester rifle was still slung around his right arm and laying across his body, which was lying on its right side.
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Joe immediately saw that his dad had sustained a lot of trauma to his head, and the sight was so disturbing that he quickly retreated from the area and jogged back to where he'd parked his own car to get help. Not long after Joe made this discovery, the Baker County Sheriff's Office became aware of the situation and sent deputy sheriffs to the scene.
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the Florida Department of Highway Patrol also dispatched some of its troopers to assist in the investigation. Shortly after law enforcement arrived, Don's body in the tree stand it was at the base of was cordoned off and one of the first homicide investigators to arrive was a lieutenant from the sheriff's office named Charlie Sharman.
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Charlie had been off duty when he got the call about a hunter who died of an apparent gunshot wound. And actually, when he arrived, Charlie was wearing casual clothes, a sweatshirt, boots, and blue jeans. But despite his informal attire, he jumped right into detective mode.
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Department of Agriculture's website, Osceola National Forest is somewhere people visit to disconnect with their normal lives and take solace in nature. It's known for having an abundance of trails and great areas to fish, camp, swim, and hunt. It's located in northern Florida, about a 45-minute drive west of Jacksonville. It actually butts right up to the Georgia border.
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After observing Don's body and the environment around the tree stand, Charlie concluded that the 63-year-old had most likely not died as a result of a hunting accident. For one thing, Don had been shot at least twice at close range, once in the head and once in his back. The ammunition that had been used appeared to have come from a shotgun, not a Winchester rifle like the one Don was carrying.
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Another clue authorities noted was that it seemed as if Don had been assaulted from behind while already in the tree stand or possibly when he was climbing out. There were also a few indications that someone had tried to clean up the crime scene. What exactly those clues were, though, I couldn't find specifically stated in the available source material.
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An article by Jim Redman for Outdoor Life magazine and an episode of Cold Case Files called The Hunter Homicides later reported that Don's belt had been cut and a hunting knife in a sheath that he was known to keep on him was gone, as well as his wallet. Investigators suspected that both items had presumably been stolen by whoever had attacked him.
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The totality of the crime scene as a whole caused investigators to suspect that Don had not done this to himself. I mean, the fact that he'd been shot twice with ammunition suspected to have come from a firearm that didn't belong to the gun he was hunting with was a strong indicator that he'd not died by suicide or some kind of bizarre hunting accident. That just seemed physically impossible.
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Plus, when he was found, he was wearing his bright orange hunting vest, another obvious sign that it would have been very unusual for a fellow hunter to mistake him for an animal or something. The Tampa Bay Times, formerly the St.
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Petersburg Times, reported that at some point in the investigation, authorities received a tip about a blue van that had been spotted in the general area where Don was found. But it seems like the details about who was driving that vehicle or what direction it left in were minimal.
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Over the next few days, as news of Don's death got out, other hunters who frequented Osceola National Forest and other recreation spaces were a bit spooked, to say the least. Don was a retired Navy chief petty officer originally from San Diego, California, who by all accounts was very familiar with the landscape he'd gone hunting in.
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At the time of his death, he lived in Orange Park, Florida with his wife, which is about an hour southeast of where he'd gone hunting. So I imagine it was really alarming to other outdoors enthusiasts to see such a seasoned local hunter get gunned down in what appeared to be cold blood.
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And their fears would only ratchet up that much more when yet another hunter from Orange Park turned up dead, mere days after Don's body was found. On November 24th, several days after Don Hill's death, a woman named Mary Marzola, who was some 50 miles away in Clay County, Florida, spoke with her boyfriend, 35-year-old Greg Wood, about what his plans were for the day.
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Greg and Mary lived together along with their daughter in Orange Park, and while normally Greg would have been working his shift at a business in nearby Jacksonville called Sun Golf, teaching golf lessons or making sales, he happened to have November 24th off. So he told Mary that he was thinking of going duck hunting in St. Augustine, Florida, but he wasn't sure yet.
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He remarked that if he did end up doing that, he'd be sure to leave her a note at their place indicating that's what he decided to do. But when Mary got home from work that evening, she didn't find Greg or any message from him. She checked the closet in their house and discovered his .308 rifle was still inside, which indicated to her that he hadn't ended up going duck hunting after all.
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The Camp Blanding Wildlife Management Area sits about an hour southeast of Osceola National Forest, and it's located basically right between the cities of Jacksonville and Gainesville. It encompasses more than 56,000 acres, some of which is closed to visitors and hunters during the year because the Florida Department of Military Affairs operates on it.
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It wasn't until a little while later when Mary talked with her mom, Ginger, that she learned Greg had spoken with Ginger around 3.30 p.m. that day and arranged for Mary's daughter to go to Ginger's house after school while he went out for a while. During his conversation with Ginger, though, Greg had failed to specify where exactly he was going or what he was planning to do on his day off.
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So Mary was just left with a lot of unanswered questions as the night got later and later and she still had not heard from Greg. Her concern grew stronger as more time went by, so with few options to turn to, she called Greg's loved ones and friends to see if any of them knew where he was, but no one did.
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To figure out if he'd traveled to Camp Blanding, Mary phoned the management area's office and told an FWC employee what Greg looked like and the type of car he drove, which was a gray Mazda.
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The next day, November 25th, which also happened to be Thanksgiving Day, Greg's father, Don Wood, and one of his brothers, Vigo, thought it would be worth a shot to look for him at Camp Blanding Wildlife Management Area because they knew it was one of his preferred hunting spots.
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The article by Jim Redman for Outdoor Life Magazine states that in addition to the .308 rifle Greg had left at his home, he also owned a 12-gauge Remington shotgun as well as a .357 Smith & Wesson handgun. Apparently, Mary had not checked to see that those two firearms were missing when she'd gone through their house the first time.
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When Viggo and Don went out to the wildlife management area to start looking for Greg, it seemingly didn't take them long before they found his car parked on the side of a paved road near a hunting blind that was one of his favorites. The episode of Cold Case Files I mentioned earlier stated that the Mazda was near a body of water called Kingsley Lake.
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But despite searching high and low in that area for Greg, his brother and father didn't find him. So Don left Vigo by the Mazda and drove to Camp Landing's check-in station to report that they'd found the car, but not Greg. The employee working at the check-in station gave that information to an FWC officer named Steve Chance, who then joined Don and headed back to meet up with Vigo.
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Steve was a great addition to the search effort because he had more than 20 years of experience tracking and finding people in the woods, especially lost hunters. During his and Don's ride to meet up with Vigo, Steve asked the nearby Jacksonville Sheriff's Office to send a helicopter to help in the search.
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But before that aircraft even got off the ground, Steve canceled the flight because when he and Don made it back to Vigo, they learned that Vigo had already found Greg's body. Turns out in the time Don had been gone, Vigo had continued to look for his missing brother and eventually found him lying on the ground next to a fallen tree.
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He was positioned on a path just a few hundred yards away from the hunting blind that Don and Vigo had previously checked. I think that was the same one that seemingly was Greg's favorite. Anyway, it was obvious from looking at his body that he'd been shot execution style in the back of his head at close range with a shotgun. And he'd been dead for some time.
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Right away, FWC officer Steve Chance noticed several things at the scene that looked suspicious to him. One, Greg's wallet was nowhere to be found, and it was obvious that his belt had been cut. Two, the Remington shotgun that he was believed to have been carrying was also missing, as well as the Smith & Wesson handgun and holster he usually kept on him while hunting.
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When portions of Camp Blanding are open, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission monitors its use for fishing, hiking, hunting, and other recreational activities. FWC has strict guidelines that hunters must follow if they want to catch game there.
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He was also wearing a bright orange hunting vest, making it seemingly impossible for him to be mistaken in the woods for anything other than a hunter. A Clay County Sheriff's Office homicide detective who responded to Greg's death investigation shortly after his body was discovered was a guy named Jim Redmond.
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Jim authored the Outdoor Life Magazine article on this case that I mentioned a little bit earlier, which was a crucial piece of source material. Jim was informed by Officer Steve Chance that the circumstances surrounding Greg's death felt eerily similar to Don Hill's death. It also wasn't lost on him that Don had been slain just a few days prior in a similar type of recreation space.
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And some of his personal belongings, just like Greg's, were missing. To help Jim and his team process the crime scene, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement provided crime scene techs to collect evidence and take pictures.
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Blood spatter on the plants and ground around Greg's body, as well as his positioning, caused Jim Redmond to suspect that Greg most likely had been kneeling down, possibly praying when his killer shot him from behind. Unfortunately though, there wasn't much else in terms of physical evidence at the crime scene. No shell casings left behind, no hairs, no fingerprints, and no fibers.
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One of the first phone calls Detective Redman made after leaving the crime scene was to officials in Baker County who were investigating Don Hill's murder. That agency also had very little physical evidence to work with, but the two agencies almost immediately joined forces because investigators strongly suspected the same perpetrator or perpetrators could be responsible for both crimes.
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On December 8th, Baker County and Clay County Sheriff's Offices, along with employees from FWC, the U.S. Forestry Service, now known as the U.S. Forest Service, FDLE and the Camp Blanding Military Police formed a task force that they named Task Force Orion. The name was derived from the constellation Orion, which, if you're unfamiliar, is known as the Hunter.
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Around that same time, authorities also set up a tip hotline and offered a $20,000 reward for information. They even made sure to submit details about Greg Wood's two missing firearms into the National Crime Information Center database, also known as NCIC. You know, in the event that the stolen guns ever popped up in a transaction or crime scene somewhere else in the country.
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There were no hits right after they first submitted the two guns' data, but law enforcement remained hopeful that lead would eventually go somewhere. In the meantime, news publications across the country picked up the story, and I think that's when the reality that someone or a group of people were potentially hunting hunters in Florida really set in for outdoor enthusiasts.
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It was downright scary. One murder was one thing, but two was super unusual. A guy who owned a hunting business in Orange Park where both victims were from told the Tampa Bay Times, formerly the St. Petersburg Times, quote, Somebody is stalking people. You're going to have to become wary of strangers. I think this is a crazy person doing this.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I have for you today is a crime that still needs to be solved. This October marks the 35-year anniversary, and for many of you listening, it might be your first and only time you're hearing about this case.
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Perhaps the attack was the result of a vendetta or retribution because Harry had stolen from someone higher up in the drug trade. I think it's also possible they speculated that another local fisherman who was involved in the same illegal activity as Harry might have wanted to eliminate him as competition. Now, I know these theories are specific, but they're not necessarily unfounded.
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Mike Vogel and Jim Kenville told me during their interviews that Harry was a boisterous man who at times could come off as obnoxious. He liked to fish in whatever body of water he wanted to, and he didn't like anyone telling him what he could or couldn't do. Apparently, there were several people in his industry who just straight up didn't like him. So the suspect pool was robust, to say the least.
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Still, the one thing that stuck out about the crime was the timing of it. If this was a targeted killing, how would the perpetrator or perpetrators known where Harry would be on the morning of the crime? In the first few days of the investigation, the sheriff's office was able to determine Harry and Stanley's movements leading up to their murders.
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They interviewed Harry's girlfriend, a woman named Joyce Rhodes, who lived with him in a trailer in Placida, Florida, right near the Intracoastal Waterway. Their small community called Thunderation Way was home to a lot of local fishermen, including some of Stanley's family members.
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Joyce told investigators that on the morning of the crime, Harry had woken up not feeling well, but that wasn't necessarily out of the ordinary. She said that he usually had rough mornings because of his health, and he suffered from swelling in his feet, to the point where he had to take aspirin on a regular basis.
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In fact, she said his health had deteriorated so much that he'd considered calling it quits as a fisherman either that year or the next. Sometime in the morning on the day of the crime, he and Stanley had boarded his red mullet boat and made their way through a series of shallow channels toward Gasparilla Marina and went to a pier that was located in the Gasparilla fishery.
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By 7.30 or 7.45, they'd purchased gas, filled a large cooler on his boat with ice, and then left in the direction of Rambler Hole. During my interviews with Jim Kinville and Mike Vogel, they said they believed the murders happened shortly after the pair left the marina and arrived to set their nets in the cove. So sometime between eight and nine o'clock in the morning.
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An article on the sheriff's office's website states that additional witnesses reported seeing Harry's boat enter the fishing inlet around 8.30 a.m.
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And since we know that the state park worker heard some gunshots and the pontoon boat witnesses saw the green mullet boat leaving the cove around 9 o'clock, or shortly after, then I have to assume the time frame of the murders is somewhere in the ballpark of half an hour, give or take a few minutes.
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This estimate is supported by the fact that personnel for the sheriff's office told the press in 1990 that they didn't think either victim had been dead very long before they were found. So all things considered, I think it's safe to say that the window of time that the killings happened was rather small.
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Jim Kimball told me that Rambler Hole was a common place for Harry to fish from mullet, and there would have been a handful of local residents who knew that was one of his usual fishing spots. I guess there's also the possibility that the killer or killers were unfamiliar to Harry's usual routine and could have just followed him and Stanley in there.
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But to me, that scenario seems less likely because that would mean the perpetrators would have had to have been watching Harry from the moment he and Stanley left his house in Thunderation Way, then trolled behind his boat through a series of narrow channels all the way to the marina, then up the intercoastal waterway to the cove.
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In that scenario, it seems like the suspects would have risked losing the element of surprise if they'd been behind Harry's boat the entire time. I guess anything is possible, but for some reason, the killers followed them the whole time scenario just doesn't land with me. Anyway, something that was established with a bit more certainty was that Stanley most likely wasn't a target of the crime.
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According to everyone I spoke with and the documented source material, he was intellectually disabled. Melanie, Harry's daughter, who'd grown up with Stanley, described him as having Down syndrome. One local fisherman told reporter Jim Greenhill that even though Stanley's intellectual functioning was limited, he was very loyal to Harry.
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Around nine o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, October 9th, 1990, a worker inside Don Pedro Island State Park in Florida was going about their morning duties when they heard what sounded like gunshots.
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He was physically strong and enjoyed working for him on the mullet boat. Sometimes he'd even work for other fishermen too who needed an extra hand. Melanie said there was nothing Stanley wouldn't do for her father and vice versa. So no one who knew Stanley could think of anyone who'd want him dead.
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It's safe to say that the sheriff's office believes he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And because he was a witness, he was taken out as well. Mike Bogle told me and Fox 4 reporter Caitlin Knapp that it's still investigators' belief Stanley was killed for no reason other than he was there and saw what happened to Harry.
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Something interesting I learned during my interviews, though, was that usually Harry armed himself with either a shotgun or what Melanie described as a pearl-handled or nickel-plated .45 caliber revolver. She said that her dad always kept that gun in his waistband, but curiously, it was not recovered at the crime scene, and according to her, its whereabouts have never been determined.
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She believes that whoever murdered Harry took it from him. According to that piece by Jim Greenhill I mentioned earlier, back in October 1990, Joyce, Harry's girlfriend, said that on the morning of the crime, Harry didn't arm himself, which to her indicated that he wasn't expecting to encounter any sort of threat during that particular fishing trip.
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So I think the logic there is if he had anticipated a confrontation with someone or suspected an enemy was going to attack him, he would have prepared himself. Local fishermen emphasized in their interviews with the news press that Harry was not someone to mess with. Even though he was large, they said he was quick and would resort to violence if he needed to.
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Joyce said there was no way he would have let someone onto his boat that he didn't know. Which is why cold case detective Mike Vogel told Fox 4 that his team firmly believes there was more than one person involved in this crime.
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His theory is that the killers arrived in another boat, boarded Harry's vessel, then a confrontation occurred which resulted in Harry being shot, beaten over the head, and that Stanley was killed because he was merely a witness.
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Now, to give you a better sense of where the state park is, it's sort of split between the mainland of Cape Haze, Florida, and the barrier island of Don Pedro Island, which can only be accessed by ferry, kayak, or private boat. On one side of the island is the Gulf of Mexico, and on the other side is what's known as the Intracoastal Waterway.
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When I interviewed Mike and Jim, they told me that on the morning of the crime, one of Stanley's relatives who lived either in or near Thunderation Way, near Joyce and Harry, told Stanley that it might be wise for him to avoid going fishing with Harry. Jim says their follow-up interview with this family member revealed that statement was meant to be a warning of sorts.
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Almost as if this relative knew that something was going to happen to Harry that morning and they wanted Stanley to be spared. But unfortunately, the person who made that statement is now dead. And over the years, the sheriff's office has had a very difficult time getting individuals in both men's families to clarify what this alleged statement meant or if there was any validity to it.
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Understandably, in the wake of the murders, Joyce Rhodes went into a state of deep sadness. According to the news press article I mentioned a second ago, she and Harry had plans to get married and move to where he was from in English, Florida. Before his untimely death, she promised Harry that if anything ever happened to him, she would never marry anyone else.
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For her own protection, a neighbor in her and Harry's community removed Harry's shotgun and all the knives from their trailer because the community feared that she may harm herself in the midst of her grief.
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I was unable to get a hold of Joyce for an interview while researching this episode, but back in October 1990, she told the Fort Myers News Press, quote, When you have a true bonding love, you know you've really got something. I didn't know what it was till I hit here. We had a wonderful 13 months together, and I guess that'll have to do me for the rest of my life. End quote.
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Meanwhile, Melanie, who, like I said earlier, was just 16 years old at the time, was very much kept in the dark about what was going on in her dad's case. At the time, her parents had been divorced for many years, and she was living with her mother in Volusia County, more than three and a half hours away on the east coast of Florida.
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However, she had maintained a healthy relationship with her dad over the years, even though her mom remarried. She told me that her older sister, Margaret, who was in her early 20s and married in 1990, was much more involved in what was happening in Placida.
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Melanie thinks that perhaps in an effort to shield her and her mother from potentially nefarious actors in Harry's life, considering his alleged ties to the drug trade, her stepdad basically wanted nothing to do with the murder investigation in Charlotte County and intentionally avoided asking a lot of questions. Two months into the investigation, authorities were hitting wall after wall.
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By mid-December 1990, they still hadn't identified the owner or operators of the green mullet boat seen leaving the crime scene. And a spokeswoman straight up told the Fort Myers news press that the department could not catch a break.
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By February of 1991, four months after the killings, the sheriff's office announced that they'd had some success gathering additional interviews with local and non-local residents who had initially been tight-lipped or reluctant to talk. but they still needed more cooperation from the community to move the needle in the case.
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According to my interviews with law enforcement, the worker who heard the gunshots was on the barrier island portion of the park, so surrounded by water, and in a section that was near a popular fishing cove known as Rambler Hole.
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Unfortunately, that cooperation never came, and for the rest of the 1990s, the case went cold. Melanie told me during her interview that around the year 2000, when she was around 25 years old and her sister Margaret was in her 30s, the two of them went to the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office because the department was planning to, in her words, burn her father's mullet boat.
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I asked Jim Kenville and Mike Vogel about this, and they confirmed that Harry's mullet boat, an integral piece of the crime scene, was in fact destroyed because it had sat in storage in the sheriff's office's evidence lot for many years and gotten damaged.
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It hadn't been kept in a climate-controlled facility because I'm not sure if that kind of resource was even available to the sheriff's office in the 90s and 2000s. It wasn't until 2009 or so that Mike Vogel and his team of cold case detectives took up the case and began reinvestigating it.
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They had a handful of unsolved murders they were responsible for working on, and so they didn't really get focused on Harry and Stanley's case until 2010 or 2012. When they did finally start pounding the pavement, they took a trip to Levy County, Florida, which is where both victims had connections to and still had living relatives.
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But even after they conducted several interviews, nothing pointed them in a solid direction or got them closer to identifying the killer or killers. So they set the case aside once again, and it's only been within the last two years or so that they've picked it up and really started taking a hard look at everything.
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Mike told me they've gone through several boxes of evidence, read countless reports, and poured over many drawings and photographs, all of which were archived back in the early 90s. In 2022, he sent fingernail scrapings from both victims to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for additional testing, trying to locate DNA. But those results came back as negative. No DNA was present.
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So Mike told me one angle he and his cold case team decided to really hone in on was Harry's alleged connection to the drug trade in the late 80s and early 90s. they started looking at other unsolved homicide cases in the area that might be linked. Turns out, there was one, and it is eerily similar to Harry and Stanley's case.
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There was very little original source material still out there when I dove into researching it, which can sometimes make covering stories like this challenging. But thankfully, I was able to interview former and current law enforcement investigators, as well as one of the victim's daughters. And it was through those conversations that a lot of new information came to light.
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Right around the same time the park employee heard the gunshots, a group of people in a pontoon boat cruising into Rambler's Hole came upon another boat that was just floating freely. There seemingly was no anchor or people around. It appeared to drift and getting closer and closer to the mangrove trees that encompassed the cove.
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Press rewind with me for a bit, all the way back to Thursday, November 13th, 1986, more than four years before Harry and Stanley's murders.
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Around 1130 that morning, two commercial fishermen working a few miles south of Placida in a body of water known as the Boca Grande Channel, which sits in nearby Lee County, discovered the decomposing body of a man who'd been shot once in the back of the head and weighted down with a 40-pound cinder block fastened around his neck.
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According to an article by the Fort Myers News Press, due to the state of his body, Lee County authorities determined he'd been in the water for as long as possibly three days, though his obituary stated his official date of death was said to be Wednesday, November 12th.
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The weekend after the victim was discovered, officials identified him as 33-year-old Alfred Eugene McCraney, who'd lived a majority of his life in Yankee Town, Florida, but had been working as a mullet fisherman and shrimper off the coast of Newport Ritchie, Florida.
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And just to give you some quick geography context, Inglis, which is where Harry and Stanley had connections to, is very close to Yankee Town, where Alfred was from. And the Boca Grande Channel is a little over 10 miles south of Rambler Hole, where Harry and Stanley would be killed in October 1990. But to be more accurate, those 10 miles or so is much quicker by boat.
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So we're talking maybe a 15 to 20 minute boat ride, if I were to guess, based on my own experience boating in that area. Yeah. Anyway, Ned Barnett reported for the St.
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Petersburg Times, which is now known as the Tampa Bay Times, that Alfred, who actually preferred to go by his middle name Eugene or Jean, shared three children with an ex-wife who said that he was one of those people who just sort of went wherever the wind blew him. He enjoyed working jobs that kept him on the water and, in general, got along well with most people.
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Prior to his death, he'd gotten in trouble with the law a few times for minor offenses, but he'd gone to prison for those offenses and been released in 1971, some 15 years before his murder. His ex-wife told Ned Barnett that after getting out, Gene was a reformed man as far as his troubles with the law.
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He found work as a commercial fisherman and lived in a lot of different places on the west coast of Florida. He was the youngest of 11 siblings, and according to his ex-wife, lived, quote, the fast lane life, end quote. His former brother-in-law told Ned Barnett that Gene had a certain charisma to him, plus he was good-looking and had a personality that women liked.
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He'd been married two times and in total had four children, three daughters and a son. He was smart and had many talents, which his ex-brother-in-law indicated he didn't seem to put to good use. He explained that Gene would do wrong things but was never a violent person. It was apparently known, at least according to his former brother-in-law, that Gene had enemies in Lee County.
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Reportedly, he'd gone down to that area on November 11th to visit with one of his cousins who lived there. But when authorities spoke to that relative, he said he didn't even know Gene was coming to Lee County.
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As the people in the pontoon boat got closer, they realized the floating vessel was a red mullet boat, which was a type of watercraft that local commercial fishermen used. Mullet boats are a common site on the Intracoastal Waterway, which is the main waterway that Rambler Hole connects to.
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He'd only found out about the murder after reading somewhere that a man's body had been found in the Boca Grande Channel, and authorities had released that the guy had a distinct Tweety Bird cartoon tattoo, as well as several names, which turned out to be Gene's children and one of his ex-wife's names.
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On Wednesday, November 19th, almost a week after his body was discovered, Gene's family held a funeral service for him in Inglis. His four children and both of his ex-wives attended, along with roughly 100 other relatives.
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As far as the murder investigation, Lee County Sheriff's Office had some physical evidence, like the cinder block and instrument tied to Gene's neck to work with, but no eyewitnesses. They told St. Petersburg Times reporter Deborah Robbins that detectives were confident that Gene had been killed elsewhere and then dumped in the channel.
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No boat was floating near his body when he was found, so that pretty much eliminated the possibility that he was tossed overboard his own vessel or another watercraft that was then abandoned.
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The sheriff's office clarified that one of the reasons why his body had not been found sooner was because the heavy cinder block that had been used to weigh him down had successfully kept him moored beneath the surface of the channel for at least a day or so. But then once his body began to decompose and the gases from that process built up, his corpse was forced to the surface.
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By the time his funeral service ended, law enforcement hadn't made much progress in the case, and there didn't appear to be any named suspects, persons of interest, or clear motive. To this day, Gene's case remains unsolved, and according to Jim Kenville and Mike Vogel, they think they know why.
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During my interviews with them, they stated they have reasonable suspicions that Harry and Stanley's case might be connected to Gene's case. They wouldn't share with me what specific evidence or interviews they have that support their suspicions, but they did say that Harry's name came up in Lee County's investigation into Jean's murder, either back in the late 80s or in the years since.
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Jim and Mike said at one point the Florida Department of Law Enforcement even got involved with both Charlotte County and Lee County's investigations, but it seems like it was difficult to prove a definitive connection. But the assumed nexus, of course, was that the victims were involved in the drug trade somehow.
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Other than my interviews with Mike and Jim, though, I wasn't able to find any reporting that stated outright that Lee County authorities established Jean was tangled up with drug trafficking or anything like that. So that part is still a bit unclear.
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However, the fact that both he and Harry ended up murdered in really brutal ways just a few years apart in waterways that were extremely close to one another, with execution-style gunshot wounds to the back of their heads, are similarities that are difficult to ignore.
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Jim and Mike told me that in their opinion, one reason why so many local residents of Placida and many of the victims' family members in Levy County remain so reluctant to talk about the crimes is because they're still afraid of potential retribution, even this many years later. As of September 2024, Mike had identified a person of interest.
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Like I said in the intro, I've personally ventured through this area myself, and if you check out the blog post for this episode, there's a map I've created to help you understand what I'm describing.
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He told me that after looking through some old case reports, he discovered this person was actually identified way back at the beginning of the original investigation. But for whatever reason, the man's information just wasn't thoroughly followed up on. He said that the person of interest is a white guy who's now in his early 70s and is still alive.
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According to Mike, the guy had close ties to the fishing industry in Placida back in the 1990s and was suspected of being involved in drug smuggling. Mike needs to do more digging, though, and interviews to even come close to be able to make an arrest or move forward.
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Another theory the department has had to consider over the years is that maybe someone within Harry's own family wanted him dead and killed Stanley because he was unfortunately collateral damage. Melanie, Harry's daughter, told me during her interview that before her sister Margaret died in 2022, she was convinced that her ex-husband was responsible for the murders.
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According to Melanie, not long before Harry and Stanley were killed, Margaret had given birth to her and her husband at the time's first child. After the baby arrived, Margaret became ill and spent several days in the hospital and nearly lost her life after undergoing open-heart surgery.
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Apparently, Harry got so upset with Margaret's husband over this incident that he beat him up for allegedly leaving Margaret to die in the hospital. Immediately following this situation, Margaret allegedly told Melanie that Margaret's husband visited her while she was recovering in the hospital and sexually assaulted her. Not long after this incident, Harry and Stanley were killed.
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Mullet boats, which are historically flat on the bottom, are made of mostly wood and are great for getting into shallow bodies of water, like Rambler Hole, which kind of acts as a dead end for mullet fish once they've swam in there. Every year between August and November in Florida, mullet run in massive schools and end up in warmer waters. And these kinds of inlets are good places to catch them.
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For years and years after Margaret divorced her ex-husband, she would often tell Melanie that she suspected he might have killed Harry and Stanley because he worked as a fisherman and knew people who were making money from the drug trade. She also believed her ex wanted to kill Harry before Harry could possibly beat him up again for what he'd allegedly done to Margaret.
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Mike Vogel told me he got the chance to speak with Margaret several times before her death, and she made similar claims about her ex-husband that she'd shared with Melanie. I wasn't able to corroborate that with the sheriff's office reports, though, because the agency was unable to provide me with any official records in this case due to it still being an active investigation."
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But Mike told me that Margaret's ex-husband was considered as a possible suspect at one point. But unfortunately, according to Mike, Margaret's stories varied over the years. Melanie told me that after the murders, her sister was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and continued to have health issues.
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Melanie said the loss of their father had taken a heavy toll on Margaret and she would spend periods of time in the hospital and sometimes even live unhoused. Melanie says she believes her sister might have been telling the truth, but it's hard to know for sure. At this point, all she wants is answers, a name, something to give her closure.
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She told me that she would love to be able to tell her sister's ashes who murdered their dad and Stanley. She desperately wants to close the book on this terrible crime that has loomed over her life for nearly 35 years. She told Fox 4's Caitlin Knapp that she doesn't have animosity towards anyone anymore.
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She understands why certain people who might have important information have kept quiet all these years. But in her words, quote, enough time has passed. Come forward, end quote.
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If you know anything about the unsolved murders of Harry Billy Scott and John Stanley Smith on October 9th, 1990, please call the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Unit Cold Case Detectives at 941-575-5361 or email them at coldcaseatccso.org. Tips and information can also be submitted to Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers at 1-800-780-TIPS.
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You will remain anonymous and are eligible for a cash reward of up to $5,000. All of the phone numbers and email addresses I've mentioned will be linked out in the show notes and available on the blog post for this episode. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.
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And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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Anyway, when the group of people in the pontoon boat got close enough to cruise by the adrift mullet boat, they saw something disturbing. A person's foot was sticking up in the air and it was clear that something bad had happened. A short distance away from the vessel, the witnesses also discovered something orange floating beneath the surface of the water that looked suspicious.
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So I imagine not wanting to waste time and having no idea what exactly they just stumbled upon. The group of people immediately alerted workers at the state park, and by 10.30 a.m., a deputy with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office Marine Unit arrived. Shortly afterwards, he was followed by more investigators from the Sheriff's Office.
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One of those people was a man named James Kenville, who goes by Jim. Jim is a major with the sheriff's office now, but back in October 1990, he hadn't been a detective for very long. When he showed up to the scene, his colleagues had already secured everything as best as they could. They'd managed to get the mullet boat under a nearby bridge and tie it down.
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And putting it under the bridge was crucial because rainy weather had moved into the area and the sheriff's office wanted to preserve as much blood and physical evidence as they could. Especially considering the fact that their crime scene was already challenging enough, having originated out in open water on a fishing vessel that was naturally wet.
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With the boat secured, authorities then turned their attention to two victims who'd been discovered at the scene, 42-year-old Harry Billy Scott and 32-year-old John Stanley Smith, who everyone referred to as Stanley.
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Jim Kenville immediately recognized both men because he'd grown up in the coastal villages of Charlotte County and knew Harry worked as a mullet fisherman and Stanley was his first mate. According to Jim, Harry was found in the front of his red mullet boat, where he'd normally sit to captain it. But Stanley was a short distance away, floating three feet below the surface.
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He was wearing an orange slicker, which is a type of raincoat fishermen use. So him having that particular piece of clothing on explained the orange-colored item that the pontoon witnesses had first noticed beneath the water's surface. Essentially, they'd been looking at Stanley's body, but just didn't know it.
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There's also something else you should know going into this episode, and that's the crime scene, Don Pedro Island, Florida, which is home to Don Pedro Island State Park, literally butts up next to some property my husband and I bought a few years ago. So to say this crime happened in my backyard is an understatement, but it was 30 years before we came into the picture, so there's that.
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At some point on that Tuesday, staff from the sheriff's office covered Harry's fishing boat with tarps and transported it along with both victims' bodies to the shore.
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Melanie Scott Fowler, Harry's daughter, who was 16 years old at the time, told me during her interview that because her dad was such a large man, some 440 pounds, the sheriff's office had to use a crane to lift his body and get it safely onto dry land. Lori Windham reported for the Fort Myers news press that their autopsies were scheduled for the following day.
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By that point, word had spread that two fishermen had been found dead, and local newspapers were all over the story. The sheriff's office confirmed to reporters that foul play was suspected in the case.
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Both victims' autopsies were done the next day, Wednesday, October 10th, and though I wasn't able to get a copy of those reports for myself, Jim Kenville and current Charlotte County Sheriff's Office cold case detective Mike Vogel filled me in on the important details, some of which have never been shared publicly until now.
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Jim and Mike said that the medical examiner determined both victims had been shot, and it was clear that Harry had suffered far more violence than Stanley. He'd been shot at least five times, four in his body, and at least once in the back of his head. The shooter or shooters had used two different caliber guns, a 9mm and either a .357 or .38.
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He'd also been struck over the head multiple times with an object that law enforcement surmised had to have been heavy because there were five fairly deep lacerations on his head. Jim told me that because the assault on Harry seemed to be contained to the front of the boat, that indicated whoever killed him might have boarded the vessel in order to carry out the attack.
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It's unclear though from my conversation with him what injuries came first, the blows to Harry's head or the multiple gunshot wounds. Whatever the exact sequence of events though, Jim told me that he's certain of one thing, Harry's murder occurred very quickly.
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Mike Vogel told me that one explanation as to why the killer or killers chose to shoot Harry so many times was because, like I mentioned earlier, he was a very large man. His own family was comfortable with me describing him as a man who was overweight, and so law enforcement believed that the four shots to his body were not necessarily fatal due to his large size.
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However, the gunshot wound to his head, which entered behind his left ear, seemed to be the fatal shot. I've seen this type of gunshot sometimes referred to as an execution-style wound. The fact that Harry had also been beaten with something was even more interesting to investigators because it seemed like a case of overkill or perhaps evidence that the killer or killers were frustrated with him.
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Stanley, on the other hand, had only been shot once. The bullet that killed him entered through his chest and pierced his heart. The only other wound the medical examiner noted on his body was an injury above his left eye, which investigators theorized could have come from him possibly hitting his head on something while exiting the boat or trying to get away.
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The caliber of ammo used to kill him was determined to be the same .38 or .357 caliber firearm that had caused some of Harry's gunshot wounds. So to recap, because I know that's a lot of info, both men were shot. Harry at least five times and Stanley only once.
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Law enforcement believed at least two different guns had been used, plus possibly some other object that caused the deep lacerations to Harry's head. And maybe that injury above Stanley's eye.
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According to an article by Mary Hawk for the Fort Myers News Press, on Thursday, October 11th, the day after the autopsies concluded, the ME's office released some of its findings, and it seems like that's when the local media really began to start digging into the story. A double murder like this was big news, and the thought of a killer still being at large was alarming.
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Jim Greenhill reported for the Fort Myers News Press that local fishermen began arming themselves when they went to work, and there was a general sense of fear within the commercial fishing industry that danger was afoot. Investigators were looking at only a few scenarios that made sense. There was either one shooter with two different guns, or two or more shooters with two different guns.
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The option authorities were leaning toward more, though, was the latter. And that's because of some information they learned after speaking with the witnesses in the pontoon boat who discovered the crime scene. Investigators learned that around the same time that group entered Rambler Hole, they were passed by a green mullet boat that was leaving the cove at a very high rate of speed.
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The eyewitnesses told authorities that there were two men inside that speeding boat, and one of them appeared to be trying to hide himself from view. The other man who was driving was described as a white male with no shirt on who had a noticeably large stomach and bright red hair that was whipping in the wind.
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The witnesses said that the red-headed man's hair was so unique that, to them, it almost seemed like it was fake or could have been a wig, but they didn't know for sure. When investigators pressed the witnesses for more details about the green mullet boat, they couldn't give them any. No one had managed to catch the vessel's hull number.
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The one detail they did clarify, though, was that its paint color was more of a puke green, as opposed to another shade of green like a sea green or hunter green. Which, in my opinion, is actually kind of a good clue, at least in terms of narrowing down shades of green.
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Something else the witnesses were sure of was that it was a mullet boat, so flat-bottomed, made mostly of wood, not a fancy speedboat, pontoon boat, or sailboat, which, again, was at least something substantial that authorities could follow up on. Meanwhile, other investigators had impounded Harry's boat at the sheriff's office and begun thoroughly processing it for evidence.
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But I don't have a ton of detail about what exactly they found, because the case is still an open homicide. However, Mike Vogel, the current cold case detective for the sheriff's office, told me that deputies did end up finding a round from a bullet lodged in a piece of wood plank on the inside of the vessel.
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When I asked him if he thought that round might be a shot that maybe had missed Harry, he said it was either that or a round that went through Harry's body and was then embedded in the boat. He's unsure which exactly, but he told me if he had to guess, he thinks it's most likely a shot that missed Harry.
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I'm personally most interested in the fact that it was embedded inside the vessel, because to me that's just another sign that points to the killer or killers being on Harry's boat with him when the shooting happened. I mean, think about it.
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If the shooter or shooters started firing while still outside the boat, then you'd expect a round that missed Harry to damage the outside of the vessel, not end up on the inside. I mean, I guess anything is possible, and since I don't have access to the entire case file, there are things I'm certainly missing.
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But I shared my observation with Mike Vogel, and he agreed that my theory made sense, and I took that as sort of a wink-wink, you got a good point kind of thing. Anyway, despite not having the clearest picture of what shots were fired when and from what angle, the sheriff's office still had to do their best to find firearm evidence that might lead them in a better direction.
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But unfortunately, no weapons or shell casings were found on Harry's boat. And Mike believes that when divers searched the water in the cove back in the day, they also didn't find any firearms or casings. Mike told me that if the shooter or shooters had used a revolver, then the casings not being anywhere at the crime scene makes total sense.
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Because a revolver would have retained any spent casings in its chamber after being fired. But if the perpetrator used a semi-automatic gun, then the spent casings would have definitely been ejected. Mike thinks in that scenario, the casings just most likely went into the water and the investigators were unable to find them.
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I can kind of attest to this, because the water in that area when I've been there is brackish, and once something goes in there, there's sediment and just a poor quality of vision that makes it hard to find things. We lost the nozzle to a hose for our boat in this kind of scenario, and we never found it. So I totally get what he means.
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Anyway, with little in terms of physical evidence to look into, investigators back in 1990 decided to follow up on the green-colored mullet boat that had been seen speeding away from Rambler Hole around the time of the murders.
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Jim Kenville told me during his interview that the sheriff's office spoke to a lot of people in several different fishing villages near the state park about the boat, but few residents recognized its description.
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Investigators located a few boats that were reportedly similar to it, but in the end, none of those vessels were the right one, and the sheriff's office determined that the watercraft they were looking for was most likely not from the Charlotte County area. And so the big question became, where the heck was it from?
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And equally as important, why would the two men seen on it have wanted to kill Harry and Stanley, if in fact those men were the responsible party? Turns out there might have been hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of reasons why someone would want to harm Harry Billy Scott.
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It didn't take long after the murders for investigators with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office to begin hearing rumors that Harry was suspected of being tangled up in the drug trade. According to Mike Vogel and Jim Kenville, investigators learned after speaking with staff from the U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection and the U.S.
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Coast Guard that Harry's name had come up in investigations related to offshore drug smuggling. Interviews from those agencies indicated that local fishermen like Harry were suspected of driving their vessels offshore, picking up bundles of illegal drugs from suppliers, and then bringing those parcels back to the mainland. And it wasn't like this was some huge secret either.
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Jim told me that as far as Harry's involvement in this kind of activity went, it was almost common knowledge amongst the locals. Melanie, Harry's daughter, told me during her interview that even though her parents divorced at a young age, her dad would always make sure that she and her mom were taken care of. He'd send money, buy Melanie's mom nice cars and so on.
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And once Melanie became an adult, she looked back on this kind of thing, did the math, and realized that her father's work as a fisherman probably wasn't the only thing financing those gifts. So with this information as background about Harry, investigators were more suspicious than ever that whoever was responsible for the crime had specifically targeted him.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I'm going to tell you about today is a mystery that has confounded law enforcement for more than 40 years. And it's a case that online sleuths have been obsessing over, I feel like, for as long as the internet has been around. It's a missing persons case from the early 1980s that has quite a few twists and turns.
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I just can't let her go." End quote. Robert Stack reported for Unsolved Mysteries that the man who said he'd taken Nyleen referred to her by her middle name, Kay, instead of Nyleen, which makes sense with why in the letter the suspect used the name Kay instead of Nyleen when talking about the girl he'd picked up on the side of the road.
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Anyway, the initial call to Nick Mick and the letter to the Child Find of America organization were followed by several more phone calls to authorities and Nyleen's parents, as well as additional letters. Investigators presumed that all of the writings and calls were coming from the same mystery man, but they just didn't know who the heck he was.
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At the time, the FBI was able to trace his calls and letters to post offices in Madison, Wisconsin, and a phone booth inside a pharmacy in the town of Edgerton. But Nancy Marshall told Unsolved Mysteries that as soon as the feds zeroed in on specific locations in those cities, the calls and letters abruptly ceased.
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An article by Denise Sanders for the Wisconsin State Journal reported that the FBI knew for sure that the last phone call made from a telephone booth in the Madison area occurred on May 9th, 1986. A month later, in June 1986, the last letter postmarked from Madison was sent out, but another one never followed.
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The area gets the latter part of its name from the renowned military explorers Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, who ventured into what was in 1804 a vast western territory in the United States known as the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark's journey encompassed nearly 8,000 miles from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back.
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The FBI also clarified to Denise Sanders that at least three letters had been mailed directly to Nyleen's mother and stepfather. So just doing the math here, because I know it's confusing, I think that makes at least six letters total that the alleged suspect sent out. Three to the Child Find of America organization and three to Nyleen's parents.
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There might have also been more or less, but it's hard to tell from the source material. And then if you tally up the phone calls, there was at least one to Nick Mick and two others, so three total, maybe more.
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Again, there's not a ton of clarity on this, but I think the point is, whoever this guy was, if in fact the caller and the letter writer were the same person, he was definitely reaching out a lot. Which, to me, if it was just some sick person pulling a hoax, that's a pretty elaborate hoax to carry on with for such a long period of time.
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Plus, the level of detail in the letters that were mailed makes me wonder if this guy may have actually had Nyleen and truly was taunting her family and police to torment them.
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For example, the anonymous man claimed in one of his letters that his parents and younger sister had all died in a car accident when his sister was nine years old, which to me is pretty specific information that could have given away his true identity, but yet it was vague enough to keep investigators in the dark.
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He also talked about how he lived off an investment income, homeschooled Nyleen and worked from home, which again is fairly specific information. But who knows, maybe everything he claimed was made up and just a bunch of lies meant to throw off investigators. It was hard for law enforcement to know.
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The sheriff of Jefferson County explained to reporters that he even wondered if the person behind the anonymous letters and phone calls was legit. However, he couldn't let his own doubt stop his department from considering every possibility.
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But something that did apparently give credence to the letter writer was the fact that he reportedly included details about Nyleen's case that had not been publicized. None of the source material goes into detail about what exactly those details were, but apparently he claimed to know enough that authorities felt there was some legitimacy to his claims of having taken her.
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According to the Unsolved Mysteries episode that I mentioned earlier, the man who wrote the letter said he'd traveled frequently with Nyleen all across the country, to Canada, to Puerto Rico, and to Europe. So who knows, maybe some of the reported sightings that tipsters contacted authorities about were in fact credible. I mean, think about it.
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If Nyleen was really abducted by a stranger and then taken to a bunch of different states and countries as she grew older, then the sheriff's office getting a bunch of calls from people all over the country claiming they spotted her might have been legit. If she was constantly being moved around, then a lot of people would have likely seen her.
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Even more puzzling, the letter writer never asked for a ransom. In his messages to her family, he expressed that he was raising Nyleen as his own and had no plans to return her. One FBI agent told Denise Sanders that it was possible the kidnapper's motive was never about money. It could have been that he just wanted a kid of his own, and so he decided to steal someone else's.
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And honestly, if there is any credibility to the letters, I can kind of see the point that the FBI agent was making. For example, if you go back to that one sentence from the letter to the Child Find of America organization that stated, quote, I realize how much her family must miss her, but I love her and I have her. I just can't let her go, end quote.
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During their trailblazing, they faced many challenges, unforeseen obstacles, and mortal threats. And the same could be said about the investigation into the disappearance of Nyleen Marshall, a four-year-old girl who vanished from the forest in seemingly the blink of an eye while at a family outing.
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That seems like a clear indication that the suspect was extremely possessive over her. After the Unsolved Mysteries episode aired in November 1990, at least 10 folks called into the sheriff's office within an hour of it being broadcast to report that they'd either seen Nyleen or wanted more photos of her so they could be on the lookout.
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What the producers of the TV program didn't know was that somewhere on the other side of the screen, a school teacher near Point Roberts Island, Washington, which sits along the US-Canada border, had seen Nyleen's picture and thought they recognized her. This teacher contacted the show, and within days, authorities located a 13-year-old girl on the remote island who looked a lot like Nyleen.
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But remember, this is late 1990 when this is happening, so Nyleen would have been about 12 years old at the time, aged more than seven years at this point. Unfortunately, law enforcement quickly learned that the 13-year-old girl from Point Roberts Island was Monica Bonilla, a girl from the Los Angeles area who'd been missing since September 1982.
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According to a piece by Linda Rapatoni for the Los Angeles Times and an article by Lisa Meister for the Independent Record, Monica's father had kidnapped her from her mother's house in California when she was just five years old. Growing up, he told her that her mother had died and he started calling her by a different name.
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So for most of her life, Monica seemingly had no idea she was listed as a missing child. When all this came to a head, authorities arrested Monica's father for kidnapping and reunited her with her mother in California, who by that point had remarried and had another kid. Monica told the Los Angeles Times that she was thrilled to go home and meet her new sibling.
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Back in Montana, investigators working on Nyleen's case were disappointed the lead hadn't led them to Nyleen. But they were at least glad to know that Monica had been found and her mother's search for her was over. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and the FBI continued to follow up on hundreds of tips about Nyleen that were generated thanks to the Unsolved Mysteries segment.
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But several more months passed by before they got their next good lead. According to an article by Grant Sosick for the Independent Record, in August of 1991, eight years after Nyleen disappeared, a 42-year-old man named Richard James Wilson confessed to killing her, as well as another woman from the Great Falls, Montana area.
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Richard had been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor in 1984, so I imagine he checked a lot of boxes for authorities as far as suspects go. However, there was some concern that his so-called confession was not legit. He was reported to have a history of mental illness, and according to the sheriff's office, he'd begun to walk back some of his initial statements after coming forward.
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So investigators just weren't sure he was telling the truth when he claimed to have killed Nyleen and the other victim from Great Falls. Still, the sheriff's office investigated Richard's claims and even sent out search crews to excavate remote sites in Jefferson County and nearby Lewis and Clark County that he claimed he took Nyleen and his other victim to.
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Authorities were looking for evidence of human remains, and according to another article by Grant Sosick for the Independent Record, authorities explored a mine shaft near where Nyleen vanished and found some bones, but they appeared to belong to animals. To be extra sure, investigators sent off the bones for testing, but I couldn't find in the source material what the results of those tests were.
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All I know is that based on the coverage, they clearly did not belong to Nyleen because her case remains unsolved. Investigators also search for remains associated with the other victim Richard claimed to have killed, but it doesn't seem like authorities located any evidence to support that story either.
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Eventually, Richard was released from custody because investigators couldn't charge him with a crime. They'd found no solid proof connecting him to Nyleen's case or his other alleged victim's murder.
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The next lead that drummed up interest, at least for a short time, came in 1998 when a hospital nurse in New Orleans watched a rerun of the Unsolved Mysteries episode that had previously aired covering Nyleen's case. This nurse thought that Nyleen might've been a young woman who'd been admitted to the hospital she worked at two years earlier in like 1996.
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According to the source material, the nurse remembered the girl because at the time the patient was in her late teens. So right about the age Nyleen should have been. But the girl couldn't tell the hospital staff anything about herself. She'd only referred to herself by the name Helena and claimed that her mother's name was Nyleen.
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When the nurses asked her about her upbringing, she claimed she'd been raised in a foreign country, but the staff noticed she didn't have an accent, so that felt off to them.
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To make things even stranger, an unidentified man had brought the pregnant girl in to have a baby, but when the nurses started asking questions about who they were and their medical histories, the pair had abruptly left the hospital. In 1998, when the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office learned all this information about the mystery couple, they got kind of excited.
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Investigators were eventually able to connect with the folks in New Orleans and track the mystery girl to Oklahoma City. She agreed to have her blood drawn and compared to Nyleen's birth father, but the results came back and definitively concluded that she was not Nyleen. After that, things went quiet once again. The case got colder and colder until 2002.
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19 years after Nyleen disappeared from Montana, detectives with the Dane County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin started digging into her case from their end of things. If you'll remember, in 1986, the FBI had successfully been able to trace a lot of those anonymous calls and letters that went to Nyleen's parents and missing children's organizations to Edgerton and Madison, Wisconsin.
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Well, because so much time had gone by and authorities hadn't learned much new information, Dane County detectives told WISC-TV that they suspected the reason for that was because Nyleen might have been living in their community all along, but she just didn't know her true identity. They surmised that she'd probably been given a new name or been called Kay most of her life.
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Because it was 2002 at that point, Nyleen would have been 23 years old. And thanks to advances in technology, a new computer-generated, age-progressed photo of her was created to give people an idea of what she would look like after so many years. Authorities encouraged Dane County residents to study that image and think of anyone they may have known growing up who resembled Nyleen's appearance.
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Behind the scenes, investigators also distributed confidential information about the case to area dentists and physicians, hoping that one of them may have had Nyleen, or Kay, as she might have been called, as a patient. An article in the Billings Gazette stated that at the time, Nancy and Kim Marshall were no longer living in the U.S.
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They'd moved to Japan by 1994, but still occasionally kept in touch with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office about their daughter's unsolved case. Unfortunately, despite law enforcement's renewed efforts in 2002, they were never able to determine whether Nyleen had been taken by someone or just gotten lost.
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The sheriff of Jefferson County had previously told the Missoulian, quote, no clothes, no body, no bones. There was also nothing in the way of positive evidence to say she was abducted, end quote. According to the Charlie Project, at one point authorities considered the possibility that Nyleen's stepfather, Kim, might have been involved in what happened to her.
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But there was no evidence discovered that proved that theory, and honestly, I couldn't find much in the way of credible research material that went into detail about that part of the story. Brian Myers reported for The Grunge that Kim was eventually cleared as a suspect, but I have no idea how.
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Other sources talked a little bit about how Nyleen's birth father, Bill Briscoe, was never a part of her life and he and Nancy divorced shortly after she was born. But there was nothing that reported on if there were any issues between Bill, Kim, Nancy, and Nyleen, or Nyleen's six-year-old brother, who'd also come from Nancy's previous relationship.
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In a bizarre twist, Nancy herself ended up becoming a murder victim in July 1995. Articles by Carolyn Farley and Leslie McCartney for the Independent Record, as well as that blog I mentioned earlier called Lost and Found, explain that she was found sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled in a hotel bedroom in Mexico City, Mexico.
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The source material reported that the reason Nancy was even in Mexico in the first place was because the marshals were planning to move there from Japan for Kim's job. She'd gone ahead of them to scout out places to live. Mexican authorities initially ruled her death as a suicide. However, Kim really pushed back on that conclusion.
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He hired a private investigator to do more digging and discovered that Nancy's hotel door had been kicked in. Her hands had been tied behind her back and a bottle of perfume, a wristwatch, and her wedding ring were all missing. Initially, Kim had to agree with the suicide ruling to get his wife's body back to the U.S. for burial.
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But as Leslie McCartney reported, Nancy's manner of death was eventually relabeled to undetermined or under investigation. To date, though, it doesn't appear that law enforcement in Mexico has ever resolved it. Nancy's sister, Mickey, told the Independent Record that she never believed Nancy died by suicide. She said that she would have never left her two other children by choice.
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As truly wild as the circumstances of Nancy's death are, it doesn't appear that whatever happened to her has been formally connected in any way to Nyleen's missing person case. In 2017, the sheriff of Jefferson County told KXLH News' Helena that investigators from his department had re-interviewed at length the people who were with Nyleen and her parents on the day she disappeared.
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But nothing new has been uncovered. He also said that deputies have been back out to the Elkhorn Mountains over the years to excavate sites of interest, do runs with cadaver dogs, and conduct additional searches for body parts or remains. But they've never found anything they can definitively link to Nyleen's case.
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He outright said he thought Nyleen was probably dead, which I'm inclined to agree with, simply because of how much time has passed and the fact that there's been no sign of her. In that interview Nancy did with Unsolved Mysteries before she died, she said that everywhere she went, she always searched for her missing daughter. She said, quote,
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Sure, I look like I'm having a good time, but I'm looking for my child every minute that I'm out." I've heard that same thing echoed by other families I've worked with in my career who have a missing kid or loved one. They constantly find themselves looking into the faces of total strangers, wondering, what if? What if that's my child?
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What if that's them, but just 5, 10, 20 years older than I remember them? I can't imagine how exhausting and heartbreaking that must be. The only thing I can hope for is that somewhere, somehow, Nancy and Eileen have been reunited. Maybe they're finally both at rest.
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If you know anything about the disappearance of Nyleen K. Marshall from 1983 or grew up with a young woman who went by the name Kay, who would be about 46 years old today, please contact the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in Montana or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Information for both of those entities is on the blog post for this episode and in the show notes.
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On the afternoon of Saturday, June 25th, 1983, a group of families who were all part of a ham radio club were hanging out near Maupin Creek in the Elkhorn Mountains of Helena National Forest. While the adults were enjoying themselves around the picnic area, a handful of their young children were playing and catching frogs near some beaver dams along the waterway.
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Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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Among the parents in the group were Kim and Nancy Marshall, who had a four-year-old daughter named Nyleen. Kim, who was actually Nyleen's stepfather, was a member of the Capital City Radio Group, which was the organization putting on the picnic. The family was from the nearby town of Clancy, Montana, which is about 25 minutes away from the Maupin Creek Recreation Area.
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You can almost hear the goat of true crime himself, Robert Stack, narrating the details. And speaking of Robert, Unsolved Mysteries way back in the day did a segment about this case. It's one of the sources I used for this episode.
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For those of you listening who may be familiar with this part of Montana but want a better sense of where this gathering was in relation to a larger city, it's about 35 minutes southeast of Helena. Anyway, around 4 p.m., Kim and Nancy realized they hadn't seen Nyleen in a while.
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The source material isn't super specific on how the next sequence of events unfolded, but rather quickly it became clear that all of the other children in the group were accounted for except Nyleen. She was nowhere to be found.
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Emily Thompson's coverage of this case for Morbidology stated that in addition to Nyleen, Kim and Nancy also had two other young children, a six-year-old son and a 22-month-old daughter, who I have to assume were on this trip too, or if not, being babysat by someone or in the company of other relatives.
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Some source material stated that Nyleen reportedly walked away from Kim and Nancy, maybe without permission or something. But other articles I found indicated that she was allowed to go play with the group of kids by the creek, but because she was younger, she just sort of fell behind.
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But either way, what's undisputed is that she was not within eyesight of her mom and stepdad for a period of time. Not long after realizing she was missing, Nancy and Kim contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, and eventually other agencies like the FBI got involved to help look for Nyleen. She was described as white with blue eyes, brown hair, and weighed roughly 28 pounds.
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She had a chip in her upper right front tooth and a small mole above her right eye. She also had noticeable dimples on each cheek, which if you look at a picture of her, which is on the blog post for this episode, you'll see exactly what I mean. Her precious face is just the epitome of a sweet little girl.
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The sheriff's office wasted no time assembling a full-scale search for her, and even tagged team with the Lewis and Clark County Search and Rescue Organization, which specialized in searching for missing people in rugged terrain. Together, the agencies dispatched hundreds of searchers and volunteers into the hillsides and woods around where Nyleen had last been seen.
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But forget TV programs, news clippings, and anniversary specials for just a second, and rewind with me all the way back to late June 1983 in Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana. Because understanding where this story takes place, I think, is critical to hopefully one day figuring out what happened. According to the U.S.
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One man who took part in the search effort told KRTV's news Mackenzie Frost that he and other volunteers walked arm's length away from each other across huge search grids looking for any trace of Nyleen. Unfortunately, though, teams didn't have any luck that Saturday evening.
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In the following days, authorities checked out old mine shafts and utilized search dogs, infrared sensors, divers, helicopters, and airplanes. But again, nothing surfaced. It was as if Nyleen had vanished into thin air. After five days of searching, things were not looking good. Temperatures in the forest had started to drop and rain and snow had fallen on the ground.
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Hope that Nyleen could survive such conditions was dwindling. KRTV News reported that she'd been in a yellow T-shirt and shorts and was barefoot when she disappeared. So not exactly ideal clothing for surviving winter weather outdoors. From the start, the information law enforcement had to work with was scant.
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They mostly relied on what other kids who'd been playing with Nyleen remembered seeing during those last few moments she was accounted for. According to what Nancy, Nyleen's mother, told Unsolved Mysteries, two girls playing in the same area as Nyleen said they'd walked by her while she was sitting alone by the creek.
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As they passed her, they noticed a man in a purple-colored jogging suit step out from behind a tree and start talking to her. One of the girls said she didn't recognize the man, which to me indicates he probably wasn't part of the group of families that were hanging out together.
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But anyway, the girl who didn't recognize the jogger also said she'd overheard Nyleen say to him, "...my brother can run faster than you." Shortly after that sighting, another young girl said she'd also walked past Nyleen and the mystery man and saw him get closer to Nyleen.
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And if that wasn't enough eyewitness information, there was yet another kid, a six-year-old boy who'd seen Nyleen right before she disappeared. He told authorities that Nyleen had told him that the man in the jogging suit had told her, quote, follow the shadow, end quote. And then that was it. Nyleen was never seen again.
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According to the available source material, everyone in the group of people Nyleen's family was with were folks that the marshals knew. So the mystery man in the jogging suit who no one could peg as a person involved in the picnic event was definitely someone law enforcement keyed in on as suspicious, especially if they were dealing with a possible abduction scenario.
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There was one article I saw in the Wisconsin State Journal that reported a Forest Service road was apparently near the spot where Nyleen was last seen, which might indicate there was at least one route that a potential abductor could have gotten into the area fairly undetected.
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But this wasn't a detail I saw repeated in a majority of the source material, so I don't know for sure like how visible or close this road was to her last known location. But what I do know is that none of the reporting indicates that like a suspicious vehicle was seen in the area, which is something you'd expect if a kidnapper had driven a car to the crime scene.
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Anyway, what's kind of interesting to me is that several days into the search, authorities made a fairly bold announcement and told reporters that they were leaning towards ruling out abduction or foul play because they believed where Nyleen vanished from was just too remote of an area for someone to kidnap her without anyone in her family's friend group noticing.
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Department of Agriculture Forest Services website, the National Forest is divided into two parts by the Continental Divide and spans 2.8 million acres across north-central Montana. According to the National Forest Foundation's website, the forest was only known as Helena National Forest in 1983.
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On July 4th, which would have been nine days after she vanished, authorities called off the search entirely. In a statement that one of his deputies read to the press over the phone, the sheriff of Jefferson County stated, quote, We have continued the search as long as there has been a reasonable chance that Nyleen would be found alive.
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After conferring with medical authorities throughout the nation, a decision was made to wind the search down. Heavy rains and low temperatures have made the youngster's survival virtually impossible, according to the medical experts. End quote. But some folks who'd helped out in the search weren't ready to call it quits so quickly.
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According to an article by the Associated Press, a guy named Jack McFarlane, who was just someone who lived in a town a few hours away and volunteered to look for Nyleen, said that he just couldn't walk away from the case because he felt deep down that she was still out there alive somewhere.
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His familiarity with the Elkhorn Mountains, either from before or during the search for Nyleen, caused him to think that there might be enough berries and fresh water available for her to survive on. Which feels like a bit of a stretch to me, but I get it. Jack just didn't want to give up.
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He told the Associated Press that it was difficult for him to just abandon the search, and that if he quit, it was like he was letting Nyleen down. Jack spearheaded his own effort to gather local volunteers to keep searching, but unfortunately, they didn't have any success in locating Nyleen. According to Emily Thompson's coverage for Morbidology in a blog called Lost and Found,
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At some point, authorities were able to create a composite sketch of the suspicious man who'd been seen talking to Nyleen. The blog said that a hypnotist helped pull info from the sketch out of folks who'd been near the creek the day she disappeared. But I have to also assume this image came as a result of law enforcement working with the kids who'd seen the jogging suit guy.
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However, I'm not 100% sure because the source material that's out there doesn't say this specifically. But what I do know is that eventually the composite sketch was distributed to the public and investigators got a few leads from it.
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The image reportedly led authorities to look at a man who was wanted out of state for child molestation and grand larceny, as well as a number of other guys who were wanted for anything from abduction to murder to crimes associated with child sexual abuse material. Not good stuff.
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One of these reported persons of interest even had a photo in his apartment of a girl who looked like Nyleen and appeared to have been beaten. But ultimately, the child in the photo was ruled out as being the missing four-year-old. And it seems like investigators also ruled out the men as suspects, despite how well they fit the profile of a potential abductor in Nyleen's case.
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In October, four months after she disappeared, Nyleen's picture was featured in a nationally broadcast television program alongside nine photos of other missing children from the United States. But unfortunately, it didn't drum up any new leads for investigators. Meanwhile, the rest of Nyleen's family had to move on, but they never stopped wondering what had happened to her.
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Her older brother often expressed to his parents that he missed Nyleen a lot and wished he could still play with her. Like I mentioned earlier, at the time Nyleen vanished, he was six years old, and their younger sister was only 22 months old.
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In 2015, it merged with the Lewis and Clark National Forest and is now called Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest. From 1880 until 1940, there was a massive mining boom in the mountainous regions of the forest. And that activity, unfortunately, left a lot of inactive mines and abandoned shafts behind.
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In October 1985, more than two years after Nyleen disappeared, a new law went into effect that required law enforcement agencies to react more quickly to reports of missing children and get information about those cases over to the U.S. Justice Department's Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit, Montana office.
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According to an article by Eric Williams for The Independent Record, in 1985, there were only five missing school-age kids from Montana on the national list of missing children in the entire U.S. After the new legislation went into effect, law enforcement investigators were required to send all reports of missing children to the federal government.
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State officials would then send monthly reports about the kids to all of the schools in the state. The law also required schools to get in touch with a student's parents if they were a no-show at school.
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Which, like, how that was not already a thing, I don't know, but I guess it was the 80s, and of course, my millennial brain thought basic procedures like this would have already been in place, but clearly they were not.
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Anyway, throughout the rest of the 1980s, Nyleen's photo and information were continuously circulated in newspapers across the country and featured on milk cartons, but very few credible tips came in. Then, in June of 1990, one of Nyleen's uncles told authorities that he'd seen a composite sketch of a man and a woman who were wanted in another state for child abduction.
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And he believed he recognized them as two people who may have been a part of the initial search for Nyleen back in late June to early July of 1983. I imagine investigators looked into this lead, but it doesn't seem like it amounted to much because those two folks were never named as suspects and no arrests were ever made.
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I don't even know if these two people were even identified or arrested for the child abduction they were alleged to have done, at least not from the available source material. Then, in late November 1990, five months after Nyleen's uncle came forward, Unsolved Mysteries aired its episode about her case, which featured interviews with Nancy, her mother, and the undersheriff of Jefferson County.
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And it was the new information revealed in that segment that changed everything about the case. Unsolved Mysteries
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According to what investigators told Unsolved Mysteries and an article in the Independent Record, on November 27th, 1985, two and a half years after Nyleen disappeared, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had gotten a phone call from a man who said he'd abducted Nyleen.
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Two months later, in January 1986, the same guy reportedly sent a typewritten letter to the Child Find of America organization claiming the same thing. According to what Jefferson County's undersheriff told Unsolved Mysteries, the man expressed that he was taking good care of Nyleen. However, he also alluded to sexually abusing her.
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The letter read in part, quote, "'I picked Kay up on the road in the Elkhorn Park area between Helena and Boulder. She was crying and frightened and as I held her, she was shaking and I decided that I would keep her and love her. I took her home with me,' he continued on.
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Those ruins still remain in places today and pose a serious risk to visitors because some of them are unstable and contain large volumes of heavy metal mining waste.
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"'She is a sweet little girl and it is because how much I have grown to love her that I realize how much her family must miss her.' But she has adjusted and seems happy. She trusts me and isn't afraid. We play a lot and she laughs when we clown around. She smiles and acts coy when I tease her. She giggles when we snuggle and hugs me sometimes for no apparent reason. I love her and I have her.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 2)
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and this is the second of two episodes covering the murder of Kathy Sposito in Prescott National Forest in June 1987. If you haven't listened to part one, I recommend you press pause and jump back.
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Eventually, some other party goers realized what was going on in the room and broke down the door. But in the commotion, Brian got away. Fortunately, not for long because the cops caught up to him and he was later taken into custody.
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According to investigative records, in November and December 1990, he was tried for that offense in Yavapai County Superior Court, but the jury ultimately found him not guilty due to some discrepancies in the eyewitness's testimony.
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For his prior offense of check forgery, he was given three years probation and sent on his way, but he later violated the terms of that release and ended up spending a year in jail. He was temporarily released in the spring of 1993 and returned to Prescott. But later that summer violated his parole again, and when a warrant for his arrest was issued, he absconded to Kentucky.
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In late January 1994, still a wanted man, he ultimately died by suicide with a firearm. His mother said that growing up, her oldest son was always a gentle, loving person who'd usually be by himself.
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She said Brian didn't have a lot of friends, and she referred to him as a loner who, to her knowledge, didn't get his first girlfriend until he met the mother of his child between junior and senior year of high school. After he entered the military, she said he began to change and she didn't recognize the person he was. After he died, Brian's body was buried in Kentucky.
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In order to exhume him to retrieve a fresh DNA sample, Arizona investigators needed his mother to give them consent to essentially break open his grave and retrieve his remains, which she eventually did.
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In November 2022, the exhumation happened, and a few months later, in March 2023, results confirmed by direct comparison that Brian Scott Bennett was the man responsible for sexually assaulting victim number two in April 1990.
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Authority's next move was to see if new technology could detect whether his DNA was on the murder weapons in Kathy's case, specifically the two rocks and Craftsman ratchet wrench that had been found at the crime scene. According to the source material, it seems like detectives really favored reexamining the wrench because it had more places that DNA might have been deposited.
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Turns out their hunch was right. Advanced test results showed that the wrench had several different DNA profiles on it because a few people had handled it after the crime. But the two major profiles with the highest concentration belonged to Kathy and a male whose DNA had a lot of similar markers to Brian.
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It wasn't a 100% match, but enough likelihood for officials to conclude that Brian had held the wrench and left some of his DNA on it. In August 2023, the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office held a press conference formally announcing him as Kathy's likely killer. At that point, they considered her case solved.
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For the 35 years it had gone unsolved, though, Ryan never came on investigators' radar until forensic testing ramped up in 2020 and 2021. Throughout the late 80s, the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, his name was never mentioned, and he'd never been convicted of any violent crimes in Arizona. But maybe he should have been.
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That's the voice of a woman named Renee Sandoval. In August 2023, at the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office's press conference about Kathy's case, Renee spoke and publicly identified herself because she had a powerful story to tell.
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On June 2nd, 1993, nearly six years after Kathy's murder and almost three years after victim number two's sexual assault, Renee was getting into her car outside a post office in Prescott when a man kidnapped her at knife point, stole her jewelry, and sexually assaulted her in his car. He then drove her into the woods outside of town, sexually assaulted her again, and threatened to kill her.
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At 7.20 in the morning on Sunday, April 22nd, 1990, a 33-year-old woman was hiking alone down Thumb Butte Trail in Prescott National Forest when she heard what sounded like a person running up behind her. Initially, she assumed it was someone jogging the trail, so she stepped aside to let them pass her. But as soon as she did, she felt the person shove her forward and push her to the ground.
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Thankfully, a police officer passing by the car stopped because he noticed that the headlights weren't dimmed. Shortly after stumbling upon the crime in progress, Renee was rescued. At the time, she positively identified her assailant as Brian Scott Bennett, a young man from Prescott who'd been temporarily released from prison nearly two months earlier.
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The police department arrested him for Renee's kidnapping and sexual assault, but unfortunately, the case against him didn't move forward and charges were never filed. According to the source material, the case fell apart due to lack of evidence and discrepancies in statements.
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But Renee said during the 2023 press conference that she just tried her best to put what had happened to her and the lack of justice out of her mind because she had to move on with her life and raise her young daughters.
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One day, three decades later, she received a call from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office notifying her that Brian Scott Bennett had been identified as victim number two's assailant from 1990 and Kathy Sposito's murderer from 1987. Renee was floored to learn there were so many other victims.
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During the 2023 press conference, the sheriff's office said that in the four cases they'd been able to link Brian to, they believed he'd acted alone. There was no indication anyone had helped him. If Kathy was his first victim, he'd been just 16 years old at the time.
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What's particularly eerie is that when the sheriff's office released their findings, they tracked down a Prescott High School yearbook photo of Brian from the mid-1980s. And his picture is a dead ringer for the young man that victim number two had described to authorities after her assault in April 1990.
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Now, I know I said earlier that investigators showed that woman a high school yearbook a few months after the crime and she didn't identify anyone. But I have to wonder if maybe detectives just didn't go far enough back and show her a yearbook that Brian would have been in.
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Otherwise, you'll be thoroughly confused, and I promise you the small details of this decades-long investigation are important to understanding the entire picture. So I don't want you to miss a beat. In part two, I'm going to be going back in time myself because there's a timeline to this case that is vitally important to follow.
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We know from the Sheriff's Office's findings that he dropped out of high school in January 1988, so he wouldn't have been in yearbooks published after that year, and there's a good chance he wasn't even in that one. Another circumstantial connection linking Brian to Kathy's murder was that she was shot with a .22 caliber firearm, which was never found after the crime.
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In 1994, Brian died by suicide with the same caliber gun. According to the sheriff's office, the firearm from his suicide and the bullet evidence recovered in Kathy's case has never been compared. And I think that's because the sheriff indicated Brian's firearm was too old to be compared or something, or maybe the ballistic evidence was too degraded.
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During the fall, she cut her left knee open, but that was the least of her worries in the moment. The person who'd pushed her was a young white man with blonde hair and buck teeth, who she didn't recognize. She struggled, but the stranger made her stay down and told her to lie still and be quiet.
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I don't know the details on that for sure because the sheriff's comments were a little vague, but I think the assumption is that Brian's gun being the same caliber as the gun that was used to kill Kathy is just one more puzzle piece that circumstantially links him to her murder.
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Sheriff David Rhodes told news reporters that his office hadn't found any evidence that Brian knew Kathy prior to attacking her. He'd essentially stalked her in the woods and ambushed her for no apparent reason, similarly to how he'd attacked his other victims. I think a lot of people who've worked this case assume that he had a sexual motive just because of what's been determined in other cases.
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But the Emmy who did Kathy's autopsy didn't find any signs of sexual assault, so I don't know if that really was his motive in her case. The sheriff told the press that Kathy's murder had all the telltale signs of extreme overkill. And I have to agree. At the conclusion of the press conference, the sheriff's office said that they suspected Brian might be responsible for other crimes.
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They wanted the public to be aware that he was known to sometimes go by the name Scott Bennett instead of Brian Scott Bennett. And before his death in 1994, he'd spent time in Arizona, North Carolina, California, Kansas, and Kentucky during his short stint in the Army.
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The sheriff emphasized that due to the nature of Brian's known crimes, it was highly unlikely the four cases Yavapai County had identified were the only ones. According to Bianca Bono's reporting for 12 News, Brian's DNA is now in a nationwide database for other agencies to check their unsolved cases against.
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In his comments, Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes categorized Brian as a serial predator, someone who lives among residents for a long period of time and can go completely undetected, someone who hunts in the areas they know and commits crimes that change the course of many people's lives.
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Sal Sposito, Kathy's brother, told 12 News after the press conference that finally having an answer to the mystery of who killed his sister was comforting. He said, quote, I thought I would just go on not knowing, and to get an answer like this was a big relief, end quote.
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A big relief indeed for those of us still here and for people like Kathy, who I like to imagine are somewhere at peace hiking the amazing hilltops of the afterlife. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No.
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He then picked up a jagged rock that was roughly the size of a softball and held it up as if he was going to strike her with it, but he didn't. He then sexually assaulted her and afterwards ran off in the same direction he'd come from, which was further up the trail.
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It took the victim about five minutes before she made it down to the Thumb Butte Campground parking lot area and flagged down a woman who operated the facility. She told the staffer what had happened to her, and immediately the woman realized the victim was injured and needed help.
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According to police reports, the victim had been camping with her boyfriend and a larger group of friends at a nearby program center, but she decided to take a morning walk by herself to find a restroom. Within minutes of getting help, the victim was on her way to Yavapai Regional Medical Center to be evaluated. And by 8.10 a.m., she reported her assault to the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office.
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About 20 minutes later, deputies arrived at the hospital to interview the woman and start their investigation. The first thing they wanted to know was what her attacker looked like. She told them he was a young white male who was probably between 15 and 19 years old with thin blonde hair. He was either 5'5 or 5'6 with a wavy haircut that was short in the front and longer in the back.
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She'd also noticed some other unique details about him, like his slight buck teeth, a gold cross earring in his left ear and a tattoo on his upper right arm. She remembered he'd been wearing what looked like dark jeans, a blue scoop neck sleeveless t-shirt and white tennis shoes. He'd also set down a pack of Marlboro cigarettes on the ground next to her head during the attack.
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She'd gotten a pretty good look at that tobacco box and noticed it was white and gold and had a piece of paper with a telephone number on it tucked inside the cellophane wrapper. But unfortunately, she couldn't remember all the digits. Before the victim left the hospital, she allowed doctors and law enforcement to collect a sexual assault kit and keep all of her clothing as evidence.
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Hospital staff also retrieved biological samples from her boyfriend because she said the two of them had been sexually active the previous night and authorities wanted a comparison for elimination purposes.
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I want to be sensitive here and not go into unnecessary details, but it's important to note that the type of sexual assault the victim endured may not have resulted in the suspect depositing semen. At least that's what I gathered from reading the detailed police reports for the case and the victim's own statements.
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However, there was one report that said a semen stain was found on her sweatpants, but the victim clarified that may have belonged to her boyfriend. A few days into the investigation, detectives spoke with the victim again and showed her several photos of men that they thought might be potential suspects, but she didn't identify any of them as the person who'd attacked her.
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To quickly refresh your memory, Kathy was killed while hiking on Thumb Butte Trail on the morning of Saturday, June 13, 1987. She'd been beaten, cut with a sharp object, and shot in the left eye. Several people on the same trail she was walking heard her scream for help but didn't get to her in time.
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Authorities also had her look through a Prescott High School yearbook, but she didn't pick out anyone that looked like the young man who'd assaulted her. After that, the investigation stalled. Months went by with no new leads, and detectives re-interviewed the victim again in August of 1990, but unfortunately, nothing new surfaced.
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The victim was certain, though, that if she ever saw her attacker again, she'd be able to identify him. The April 1990 sexual assault happened almost three years after Kathy Sposito's murder. The victim in that case has never been publicly identified, nor should she ever be. So I'm just gonna refer to her as victim number two.
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The fact that her assault and Kathy's murder happened just a few years apart, though, on the same trail, certainly stuck out to authorities. But from reading the source material and police reports, it doesn't seem like an official connection was ever documented on paper.
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It wasn't until around 2015 or 2016 when a new cold case detective from Yavapai County Sheriff's Office named Dan Pritchard took over Kathy's case that potential dots started to get connected. According to Dan, the Sheriff's Office had only been looking at the murder case one way for a long time, and he felt like the department needed to explore other ways to try and solve it.
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This, of course, included retesting old evidence with new technology, as well as taking a look at other violent crimes that had happened around Prescott in roughly the same time frame Kathy was killed. And that's when his team rediscovered victim number two's case.
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For a while, Dan and other detectives, along with a group of volunteer cold case investigators, focused heavily on a man named Ed Gumm. Ed was a convicted felon who'd been released from prison in 1986 after serving time for attempted sexual assault and moved to Prescott right after.
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He took a job cutting firewood and doing construction for a while, but was later convicted for sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint in 1991 at a place called Granite Dells. That recreation space is about 20 minutes northeast of the Thumb Butte Trailhead. When Ed worked as a firewood cutter, he'd spent a lot of time going in and out of different parts around Thumb Butte.
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So I imagine authorities felt like he could have been aware of good places to hide to find potential victims. Investigators interviewed Ed in prison in 2017 and 2018 because he'd been put there for unrelated crimes. And he told them that back in 1987, he didn't go to Thumb Butte often. However, he had hiked on the trails a few times while waiting for his wife to get off work.
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Before speaking with Ed, detectives had done their homework and interviewed some of his family members and friends. What they learned from those folks was that Ed liked to party, fish, and camp in Prescott National Forest on a regular basis in the late 1980s. One of his friends told investigators that Ed usually kept a firearm with him while he was in the woods.
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At the crime scene, authorities found two rocks with hair and blood on them, a .22 caliber cartridge case near her body, and a long trail of blood leaning from her final resting place about 130 feet up the trailhead, near where a female hiker discovered a metal ratchet wrench laying on the ground.
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And another man straight up told detectives that Ed had confessed to killing Kathy after seeing a news report about her murder on the news. When investigators confronted Ed with this information, he admitted to having firearms in 1987, which included a shotgun, a .22 Marlin brand rifle, and a .22 caliber Ruger revolver he'd borrowed from his brother.
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But he clarified that he'd never taken the Marlin rifle with him while hiking because he said it was too bulky. He said he preferred to carry his brother's gun while in the woods. Obviously, Ed admitting he had access to a .22 Marlin brand rifle piqued investigators' interest because they knew Kathy had been shot with a .22 Marlin brand firearm.
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When the sheriff's office asked Ed directly if he was responsible for Kathy's murder and victim number two sexual assault in 1990, he told them he wasn't. When detectives asked him to take a polygraph to prove he was telling the truth, he agreed to, but the results came back showing that he'd failed.
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His explanation for those results was a confession, not for Kathy's murder or what happened to victim number two, but to a handful of other secrets he'd been keeping. After Ed Gumm failed his polygraph examination, he confessed to 10 other sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults in the Prescott area between 1986 and 1987, three of which had occurred near Thumb Butte Recreation Area.
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In case you didn't catch that, I said 10 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults, three of which happened in the exact same area victim number two was attacked and Kathy was murdered. Ed told authorities that he remembered every sexual assault he'd ever committed, and Kathy and victim number two weren't two of them.
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He said the women he'd assaulted at Thumb Butte were victims he'd either picked up in his car and driven there or women he bumped into while hiking the trail system. The best way for officials to rule him in or out, though, as a suspect for either crime was to compare his DNA to the evidence.
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According to police reports, all of the original case evidence from victim number two's 1990 assault had been destroyed at some point after the crime. But the state lab had kept a few cuttings from her sweatpants in storage, one of which had a semen stain on it. The sheriff's office had also submitted 46 pieces of evidence in Kathy's case for DNA analysis.
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But in 2018, the only fruitful results they'd gotten showed unknown male DNA that had been found beneath her fingernails and was part of a mixture on one of the rocks used to bludgeon her. DNA results for the bike helmet and ratchet wrench had come back as inconclusive due to insufficient DNA. But times were changing, and the sheriff's office remained hopeful.
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Throughout this whole process, a detective working the case visited victim number two and got samples of her and her husband's DNA. Because turns out, the guy who was her boyfriend back in April of 1990 ended up becoming her husband. The state lab needed more recent DNA samples from both of them for elimination purposes. And the couple had no issue letting investigators collect buckle swabs.
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A few months later, the results came in and confirmed that most of the DNA from the 1990 sexual assault evidence belonged to victim number two and her partner. But the semen stain on the sweatpants contained an unknown male's DNA. Investigators uploaded that profile into CODIS, but there wasn't a hit. Ed Gumm was formally cleared at that point because his DNA wasn't a match to the profile either.
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Now, I imagine that must have felt like a huge blow to investigators, but the sheriff's office persisted. Their next move was to see if the unknown DNA from victim number two's case was good enough to sequence for familial DNA matches. Turns out, it was.
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The state lab successfully compared that profile to men who were already in Arizona's convicted offender database, you know, to see if any of them were a brother or father or son of the perp, but the results were negative. Detectives then sent the DNA profile to a private forensics lab to conduct genetic genealogical analysis.
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In April of 2020, the lab developed a DNA snapshot that showed investigators the approximate eye color, hair color, skin color, and genomic ancestry of the 1990 sexual assault suspect.
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A few months later, in November 2020, genealogical analysis of the DNA samples matches was conducted and led to a tentative identification that was one of two brothers, both of whom had lived in Prescott in the late 80s and early 1990s. The two men were originally from Kentucky, but had moved to central Arizona during their youth.
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In 2020, by the time investigators learned about them, one was still alive, but the other had died way back in 1994. Before his death, though, he had a daughter with his ex-wife, so the sheriff's office got in contact with the daughter to see if she'd be willing to provide a sample of her DNA, which she did. Her father's name? Brian Scott Bennett.
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Brian's living brother wasn't quite as helpful as Brian's daughter had been. He refused to give investigators his DNA. However, eventually, thanks to some help from the Kentucky State Police, the sheriff's office got it by collecting some of his trash.
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In May 2021, the private forensics lab that had done all the testing in victim number two's case compared Brian's daughter's DNA to the unknown male DNA profile from the semen stain and confirmed that the assailant in that case was a paternal relative of Brian Bennett's daughter. a.k.a. most likely Brian.
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But until the lab could do a direct comparison with a fresh sample of Brian's DNA, things were still a bit uncertain. Around the same time this was all happening, the sheriff's office received additional information from the DPS crime lab that really made everyone stop and take a beat.
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It had taken a few years, but staff had successfully compared the unknown male DNA profile from victim number two's case that was now looking like it belonged to Brian Scott Bennett to the unknown DNA profile in Kathy's case. If you remember, lab techs had been able to isolate a male profile from blood found in her mouth and from one of the rocks used to beat her.
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According to police reports, every single genetic loci on those two DNA profiles matched. meaning the same person had likely committed both crimes. This was a huge break for detectives. It officially linked the two cases, but they still needed to be absolutely certain that Brian Bennett was the man they should be looking at for both crimes.
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He was definitely the prime suspect in victim number two's assault. There was no question there. But with the newest development, he'd shot straight to the top of the suspect list in Kathy's case too. Detectives were more determined than ever to get a fresh sample of his DNA to do a direct comparison. Just using his daughter's DNA wasn't going to cut it.
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But like I said earlier, Brian had died in 1994, so it was gonna be tricky. Brian's brother had been ruled out forensically of any involvement, but detectives still wanted to speak with him. So in September 2022, they drove to where he and his mother lived in Kentucky and interviewed him.
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He told investigators that he and his brother had lived in Prescott back in the day, but they moved to North Carolina and then eventually Kentucky. He said he didn't know anything about Kathy's murder or victim number two sexual assault in Thumb Butte.
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After interviewing him, detectives spoke with his mother, and she told investigators that in 1987, her son Brian was 16 years old and attending Prescott High School. At the time, he had a girlfriend who he later married and shared a daughter with. After dropping out of high school in 1988, he'd bounced around Prescott for a few years before joining the Army and eventually moving to North Carolina.
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A year or so into his military career, though, he decided to abandon his post and go AWOL. During that time, he'd separated from his wife, who moved to California with their daughter. In early 1990, Brian had returned to central Arizona and gotten arrested by the Prescott Police Department for forging checks.
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Almost two months after that, Chino Valley police officers arrested him for attempting to sexually assault a woman at a Fourth of July party. In that case, the victim claimed that after she'd started to feel unwell, she went to lay down in a room. Shortly after she sat down, Brian followed her inside and locked the door. He then tried to sexually assault her and threatened to harm her.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I'm going to tell you about today was just so powerful and complex that I decided to bring it to you in two parts. I literally received more than 250 pages and documents from the investigating agency that worked this case in order to put these episodes together.
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One of those witnesses had been at a gas station, and the other had been in a pizza shop and seen Kathy buy food and talk with the clerk of that store.
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Authorities continued to find and interview people who'd interacted with her Friday night, and they ended up speaking with a bartender at a restaurant called Murphy's, who said she'd seen Kathy having a beer and hanging out with a 29-year-old man named Jim on the night of June 12th.
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This bartender told police that Jim and Kathy appeared to be on a date, and they'd stayed at Murphy's from roughly 9 to 10 o'clock that night. Another restaurant employee remembered the same thing.
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Over the course of more interviews with some of Kathy and Jim's friends, police discovered that she may have gone home with him on the night of June 12th after leaving Murphy's, but there were some discrepancies about that. For one thing, the bartender who remembered seeing Jim and Kathy on their so-called date was sure that it happened on the night before she was killed.
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But when detectives spoke with Jim, he explained that he and Kathy had hung out at Murphy's on June 5th, a little over a week before the crime. He said she'd called him that evening and asked to hang out. While they were together at Murphy's, she mentioned she didn't want to be alone. So they'd gone back to his place and eventually had sex, but the next day he drove her home.
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They'd hung out inside her house for a short time, but then he left. He swore that was the last time he'd seen her. Jim and his roommate told investigators that in the weeks leading up to the crime, Kathy had seemed down, like something or someone was bothering her. He and his roommate said they thought she might have even been fearful someone was after her.
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When investigators questioned Jen, though, about what he was doing on the morning of Saturday, June 13th, he said he'd woken up and worked on a car in his driveway and then around noon had driven his motorcycle to Thumb Butte to see if anyone he knew was hanging out there. He claimed when he arrived, police were already there and crime scene tape was up.
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Something that kind of supported Jim's account of not being with Kathy on the night of June 12th was that authorities had spoken with a group of campers who remembered bumping into her inside a store near the National Forest between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., the same timeframe she was supposedly with Jim at Murphy's. So that timeline conflicted with the bartender's statements for sure.
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Anyway, a guy in the group of campers who'd spotted Kathy said she was alone. He'd asked her if she wanted to come hang out with him and his friends for the night in a clearing known as Wolf Creek, but Kathy said, no thanks. She'd mentioned she wanted to visit the Thumb Butte Trail the following day.
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Based on what I read in the police record for this case, this Jim guy was someone investigators focused on initially. And I mean, they kind of had good reason to, because he made a couple of very odd statements that had gotten law enforcement's hackles up.
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For one thing, one of the witnesses who'd been leaving the Thumb Butte Trail area the morning of the crime and saw Kathy ride up on her bike told police that they'd also seen a guy driving a late 60s Chevy sedan in the same direction as her. When authorities showed this witness a photo lineup, he picked out Jim's photo as the person who'd been behind the wheel of that car.
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Adding fuel to detectives' suspicions about Jim was the fact that the year, make, and model of the Chevy in question matched the kind of vehicle his roommate owned at the time. On top of that, his landlords told police that two days after Kathy's murder, he'd mentioned that he'd been allowed into the county morgue and viewed her body.
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Oh, and when he'd admitted to hooking up with Kathy, Jim reportedly had a steady girlfriend. Naturally, investigators tried speaking with his girlfriend, but they never got ahold of her. Additionally, two other people who had conversations with Jim after the murder said he declared that he was probably the last person to see Kathy. Yeah, I know what many of you are probably thinking.
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This guy is a red, red, red flag. And trust me, I get it. But Jim wasn't the only man in Prescott that authorities had to consider as a possible person of interest. Not by a long shot. People who knew Kathy said she was friendly, well-liked, and easily drew people to her. Authorities interviewed a lot of men in town, including Jim's roommate, Gary, and Kathy's boyfriend, David.
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But he could prove he was in Alaska when the murder happened. Law enforcement also considered the unhoused man who lived in the National Forest as a person of interest, but ultimately didn't find anything that pointed to him being involved.
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According to police reports, one of Kathy's friends from college told detectives that she and Kathy had both done some modeling for a local painter, and she thought Kathy had even posed nude a few times. When detectives interviewed that artist, he was cooperative and confirmed that, yes, he'd photographed Kathy twice, but had never produced any paintings from the pictures he took.
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However, he later told reporter Jennifer Arp with the Prescott Courier that he was attracted to Kathy's face and he had actually painted several portraits of her, some of which he later hung in his home and personal gallery after the crime.
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There was another local man who confided in a female friend of his that he enjoyed sitting and watching young women at Prescott College and fantasizing about them. He told his friend that he knew who Kathy was and referred to her by some sexual nicknames that I don't even want to mention here because they're just too much.
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But this guy was actually an old friend of Christine's, Kathy's roommate, and he told the person he confided in that he was glad she'd moved in with Christine so that he could be closer to her. I know, absolute creep. But detectives spoke with this man, and he was open about his familiarity with Kathy. He said he'd asked her out once, but she turned him down.
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He was a member of the Golden Circle Pyramid Scheme group that Kathy was a part of, and over time, he'd developed a crush on her. He clarified that the sexualized comments he'd made about her were just his way of describing her as beautiful. He swore to detectives that he would never have hurt her.
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Around 8.10 in the morning on Saturday, June 13th, 1987, a husband and wife named Roger and Opal were walking up the East Trail of Thumb Butte in Prescott National Forest when they came across the bloody body of a young woman just lying on the trail. Roger reached out his hand to check for a pulse on the woman's neck, but didn't find one.
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But as disturbing as all that was, though, it didn't even come close to a strange encounter one of Kathy's acquaintances had with an unknown man on Thumb Butte Trail about three weeks before the murder. That story and several other witness accounts from the day of the crime were what would really get law enforcement's attention and refocus the investigation.
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Two days after the crime, the sheriff's office got a call from a woman named Jean, who told detectives that she'd been hiking with her dog on Thumb Butte Trail on the morning of Saturday, June 13th, and heard something concerning. She said around 8 a.m.
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towards the end of her walk, she'd stopped at a water faucet to give her dog a drink, and she'd heard what sounded like a woman's voice cry out, help me. Those words were immediately followed by utterances of someone in pain and noises that Jean described as sounding like twack, twack, twack, followed by silence.
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Jean said that what she'd heard concerned her so much that she actually called out towards the trail to see if everything was all right, but no one replied. She then asked a guy sitting at a picnic table in the campground to go up the trail with her so that they could investigate the source of the sounds, but he refused.
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The guy at the picnic table, by the way, was the unhoused man who lived in the forest that police got a statement from earlier. After taking down Jean's information, detectives then spoke with the woman who'd been hiking alone and picked up the ratchet wrench on the trail. She'd given a brief statement on the first day of the investigation, but then left the National Forest.
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Her full account wasn't taken down by the sheriff's office until days after the crime. During this longer interview, she told police that while walking the trail, she'd heard some strange sounds, but her account was a little bit different than Jean's because she'd been further up the trail. This witness said she'd heard what sounded like an argument between a man and a woman followed by a gunshot.
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She initially suspected something was wrong, but after thinking about it, she decided to write it off as a couple quarreling or maybe kids hunting squirrels. She wasn't sure if the sounds were even connected to one another, but she had managed to catch two words the female voice had said, help me. Clearly this witness wanted to believe the best in the situation.
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Someone who didn't take that same posture though and was much more suspicious like me was an acquaintance of Kathy's named Janet. She told investigators that about three weeks before the murder, she'd been hiking the Thumb Butte Trail alone between seven and eight o'clock in the morning when she encountered a guy that made her feel unsettled.
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She told detectives that the man was large, tall, had straight blonde hair, and wore glasses. He was carrying a two-foot-long leather case with a shoulder strap, and just something about him scared her.
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She said she'd pass by him on her way up the trail, and when she'd come back down, she said she felt so frightened that she actually picked up two rocks in each hand just in case the guy came toward her. But thankfully, he didn't try anything, and she made it out safe and sound.
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After gathering those interviews, authorities were about two weeks or so into their investigation and the Arizona Department of Public Safety's crime lab had new information for them. DPS staff had determined that the bullet pulled from Kathy's body was consistent with having been fired from a 22 caliber Marlin brand lever action rifle.
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He and Opal then quickly hiked back down to a nearby campground and flagged down a passing motorist who helped them report what they'd found to the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office. While the couple waited for authorities to arrive, they didn't sit idle. They returned to where the woman's body was so they could cover her with a wool blanket.
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The sheriff's office had also sent in several hairs and fibers collected from her body, and those results indicated that the items were not associated with Kathy, which meant, theoretically, they could have belonged to her killer or killers. While the sheriff's office continued their efforts, Kathy's parents and two brothers in New York mourned her death.
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They'd held a funeral on June 20th and buried her in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. As news of the crime spread, it rocked people who were living in Prescott because the Thumb Butte Trailhead was popular and had very little crime.
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According to a broadcast by AZ Family that aired after the crime, people who were walking in the recreation area said they were afraid to hike alone in light of what had happened. The terrain around the trail Kathy had been killed on was full of thick brush and trees, which made it difficult to see someone who might only be a few feet away.
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One visitor told the news outlet that whoever committed the crime probably used the landscape to hide in. Months passed, though, and then years, and no new updates in the case came. Police reports indicate that Jim and his roommate Gary stayed on investigators' radar as possible suspects throughout the 1990s and all the way through the year 2000.
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They're even still mentioned regularly in investigators' reports from 2014. And that's because the cold case detective who was reviewing the case at that time saw that in 1987, the ME had noticed that one of Kathy's teeth had been punched out. The examiner surmised that perhaps her attacker's fist had made contact with her teeth and possibly been cut in the process.
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So he'd taken oral swabs of her mouth before releasing her body for burial. And so the detective in 2014 wondered if maybe the killer's DNA might still be on some of those oral swabs. Turns out he was onto something. Because additional forensic testing in 2014 identified an unknown male DNA profile from blood left in Kathy's mouth,
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But when it was compared to Jim, who voluntarily provided a DNA sample, it wasn't a match. And so it seems like at that point, he was cleared. His roommate from 1987, Gary, wasn't as cooperative, and he ultimately refused to give the sheriff's office his DNA. But they eventually pulled a piece of his discarded floss from somewhere and had it tested. The results also excluded him as being involved.
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I imagine investigators were a bit down at that point because those were two guys they had focused on. But they remained dedicated. And when I say dedicated, I mean the sheriff's office left no stone unturned. They even revisited that local artist who'd taken nude photos of Kathy as a potential suspect. But that guy had died in 1992.
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So instead of getting a DNA sample from him, detectives swabbed his brother, who was living in Hawaii. However, familial comparison eventually ruled the artist out as well. Around this same timeframe, so the 20 teens, the detectives also had Kathy's bike helmet reviewed for latent prints.
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But on their way, they encountered another hiker who said she'd stumbled across the body too. This woman had been walking down the trail back toward the parking lot when she noticed the victim. She stopped to check for a pulse, but just like Roger, discovered the woman didn't have one.
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The crime lab found one, but it didn't belong to anyone in Arizona's automated fingerprint identification system. So that evidence was basically a dead end. A few years later, in 2016, Kathy's brother Sal and a detective from the sheriff's office traveled to Thumb Butte Trailhead together and walked the path Kathy had been killed on.
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Sal later told 12 News' Erica Stapleton that despite how beautiful the area was, it only brought him pain. In that same interview, he said that whoever murdered his sister must have had a lot of rage and anger to do what they did to her. And he just hoped that one day the mystery would finally be solved. By that point, he was really the only person left speaking publicly about his sister's case.
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Their dad had passed away in 2010, and their mom died a few years after that. Sal told Erica Stapleton that Kathy's death had impacted their mom the most, and he believed she died of a broken heart from never knowing who killed her daughter. Unfortunately, after that, Kathy's story just faded from mainstream news outlets.
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The case itself, though, never left the hearts of people living in Prescott who were around in 1987, or folks who'd known Kathy as a teenager and young woman. According to reporting by A&E, one of Kathy's high school classmates visited Prescott years after the murder and saw a poster of her in a store window.
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And I guarantee you it's a story you won't be able to stop thinking about for a long, long time. It happened in Prescott National Forest in Arizona, which bears the moniker where the desert meets the pines. It's more than a million acres in size and is a go-to destination for hikers and campers because it sits in central Arizona and has a typically mild climate. According to the U.S.
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Just seeing that reminder that the case was still unsolved prompted this former classmate to write an email to Kathy's high school alumni group, asking them to keep her soul and case in their prayers. As part of the cold case investigation, detectives even interviewed one of Kathy's former boyfriends from before she even moved to Arizona.
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And he said that for the most part, Kathy lived a good lifestyle. She didn't do hard drugs that he knew of and only drank on occasion. He believed she'd moved to Prescott to enjoy more of the outdoors and escape city life.
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In 2017, around the 30th anniversary of the crime, the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office tried to renew interest in the case by partnering with Yavapai Silent Witness and offering a $10,000 reward for information.
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Detectives specifically said they wanted to locate a small caliber firearm they believed had been used in the murder and might've been discarded afterwards in the forest around the Thumb Butte and Castle Canyon area. They wanted anyone who might've found a gun matching that description to come forward. but it doesn't appear that anyone did because more time passed without answers.
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Because this other hiker had been coming from the opposite direction of Roger and Opal, she'd covered ground that they hadn't. And about 130 yards or so further up the trail from the dead woman's body, she'd found a Craftsman brand ratchet wrench laying on the ground.
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However, the sheriff's office didn't give up hope that somehow a new clue would surface. In the background, things were happening. A volunteer crew of cold case investigators had been assembled and they were meticulously rereading the old case reports and doing an inventory of what original evidence could be retested for DNA.
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Between 2017 and 2018, new forensic testing results came in and revealed there was an unknown male DNA profile beneath one of Kathy's fingernails that didn't match anyone in Arizona's CODIS database. Test results for one of the rocks believed to be a murder weapon also had unknown male DNA on it. But it was a mixture of two profiles, one of which couldn't exclude Kathy as a possible contributor.
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DNA results from the bike helmet and ratchet wrench were unfortunately inconclusive due to insufficient DNA. But that would change in just a matter of years as new technology came into the picture. Waiting right around the corner was the big break authorities needed.
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A break that would cause them to rethink everything they'd ever known about this case and make them look at crimes exactly like it as well as several new suspects. I'm unpacking all of that in part two. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.
Park Predators
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And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Park Predators
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Now, I imagine a metal wrench just laying out on a nature trail like that seemed out of place to this woman, which is probably why she picked it up. So when she had her encounter with Roger and Opal, they had their wool blanket in their hands and she had the ratchet wrench.
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Roger and Opal returned to the parking lot area, and the female hiker went back to the body and laid the wrench down a few feet away from the deceased woman so that responding deputies would find it, and I imagine so that she wouldn't be implicated in whatever had gone down.
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Thumb Butte Trailhead is about a 10-minute drive from downtown Prescott, so it didn't take too long before the sheriff's office got on scene about 9, 9.30 a.m. According to police reports, the initial witnesses had all left the scene by the time the homicide investigator arrived.
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So instead of interviewing them face to face, the main detective collected the wrench and wool blanket as evidence, then gathered the witnesses' written statements from Forest Service employees to follow up on later. After that, he began examining the victim and the crime scene.
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One of the first things he observed about her was that she was lying face up with a blue canvas backpack still on, and it was tucked beneath her. Inside, authorities found a wallet with an ID that belonged to 23-year-old Catherine Ann Sposito, who's referred to throughout the source material as Kathy. Her chest, arms, face, and legs, pretty much her entire body, were covered in blood.
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Her long, dark hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and she was wearing red shorts, a pink and blue bikini top, white leather tennis shoes, and gray socks. She also had a bright yellow bicycle helmet fastened to her backpack. She didn't have any jewelry on, just a purple colored ribbon tied around her neck.
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And just to clarify this detail a little more, because I initially had some questions about it, the source material doesn't indicate that this ribbon was a ligature or anything. I think it was just assumed it was being worn as some kind of accessory, like you'd wear a necklace.
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Anyway, in addition to all that stuff, a detective noticed that some of the blood on Kathy's body was dry and there were a lot of intersecting and overlapping spatters and drops on her legs and arms, which suggested she might have been moved after being attacked. He also noticed blood had begun to settle in parts of her body that, based on her position, shouldn't have been there.
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This is what's known as lividity. The detective's suspicion was confirmed when he found a visible blood trail leading up the hiking path about 130 feet away from Kathy's body. This would have been headed toward where that female hiker found the ratchet wrench.
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The investigator theorized that Kathy had either been carried or perhaps dragged to her final resting place, or she'd managed to get there on her own before collapsing.
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He continued processing the crime scene and found several large and small spots of blood near her body, which only made him more certain that her assault had started somewhere else further up the trail and then ended at her final resting place. Unfortunately, the area where the crime happened was rocky and hard to navigate.
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And to make matters worse, the detective learned that several people, including first responding deputies, Forest Service employees, and visitors, had all walked on the trail above and below where Kathy was located. So it was difficult for him to know for sure whose shoe prints were whose and whether or not any footwear evidence on the trail might've belonged to a potential suspect.
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Despite this setback, the sheriff's office combed the area for additional clues, searching for anything that might be a lead. They didn't have to go too far to find something crucial. Sitting on the ground about six feet away from Kathy's body was a .22 caliber cartridge case that appeared to belong to a rifle. They also located two rocks further up the trail that had hair and blood on them.
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Department of Agriculture's website, it became a national forest in 1907, and in the years after that, kept expanding its boundaries to include Verde and Tosea National Forests. It's known for having an abundance of archaeological sites that house art and artifacts that different people groups left behind hundreds and even thousands of years ago, as far back as the Pueblo period.
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Shortly after 11 a.m., Kathy's body was removed from the crime scene and sent to the county morgue for an autopsy. While detectives waited for that examination to wrap up, they began interviewing people who'd been in the forest earlier that morning and walked the roughly two-mile trail along Thumb Butte.
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They spoke to an unhoused man who said he'd been reserving a picnic table for a family and friends of a woman he just met between 6.30 and 7 a.m., He said he'd seen a woman matching Kathy's description ride her bike to the trailhead, chain it to a Forest Service sign, and start walking up the trail at approximately 7 a.m.
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He said they'd briefly chatted right before she took off, and about 15 to 30 minutes later, he heard a scream and what sounded like a firecracker going off. The noises didn't really alarm him though, because he said he usually heard kids or people screaming while using the trail.
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A few minutes after hearing the scream, he saw a couple head up the trail, but shortly after that, they returned to the parking lot area where the picnic tables were and said they'd found a woman's body. Authorities also spoke with another couple who'd been on their way out of the area around 7 a.m., and they confirmed a young woman riding a bike had passed them.
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Another witness also came forward and said she'd been finishing a run around that same time and remembered seeing a young woman go up the East Trail. So by noon on the 13th, the homicide investigation was in full swing, thanks to these witness statements and the physical evidence the detective had located on the trail.
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Authorities went to Kathy's address in Prescott to see if she had any next of kin in the area. But when they knocked on the door, no one answered. They spoke with one of her neighbors named Paula, who informed them that Kathy had a roommate named Christine, but she was at work and might not be home for a day or so.
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Around 1.30 p.m., investigators got a hold of staff at Prescott College, who were able to provide them with contact information for Kathy's next of kin. Not long after that, detectives got in touch with her family members in New York. She was originally from Brooklyn but had moved to Prescott in 1985 to attend the local college there.
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She was scheduled to continue taking classes in the fall of 1987 and was interested in wilderness studies, rock climbing, and landscape exploration. During school, she'd started dating a guy named David, but after classes let out in mid-May, he'd moved to Alaska for a summer job. David moving away had apparently made Kathy feel a bit down.
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And according to police reports, at the start of June, she told her friends that she wanted to get away from Prescott for the summer too. Based on what I read in the source material, it's clear that Kathy loved the outdoors and spending time in nature. She enjoyed camping, hiking, and riding her bike whenever she got the chance.
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And according to police reports, right before she was killed, she'd just returned from a road trip to Zion National Park with a friend. The pair had stayed in Utah from June 7th until the afternoon of Friday, June 12th, the day before the murder. While she'd been living in Prescott, she'd waitressed at a few different restaurants and eventually bought a car to get herself around town.
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At some point before she was killed, though, that car had started giving her problems, so she'd taken it to a local repair shop to get it worked on. According to what her friends told the sheriff's office, she'd resorted to using her bike as her main means of transportation until her car was operational again.
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A few hours after her body was found, the county's medical examiner performed her autopsy. He determined that she'd suffered multiple blunt force wounds to the top, sides, and back of her head, and a gunshot wound in her left eye.
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He believed the perpetrator or perpetrators had used rocks or perhaps the ratchet wrench found at the crime scene to beat Kathy to death, and towards the end of the assault had chosen to shoot her. He also found cuts on her hands, head, and right ear that he believed had come from a sharp instrument like a knife.
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There's a rich history of generational human activity in the forest, which is one feature that attracts a lot of visitors and researchers. But in the spring of 1987, there was one person who came to the forest and left a mark so memorable and so disturbing that he would become the obsession of local authorities for more than three decades.
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He suspected Kathy's body had been moved, but he wasn't sure exactly how because he didn't find any evidence that she'd been dragged. So I think the conclusion there was that she most likely ran from her attacker after sustaining some initial injuries to her head.
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And she'd made it down the trail about a hundred yards or so before the suspect or suspects caught up to her and delivered some final blows before shooting her. And speaking of the gunshot wound, the Emmy's findings about that were pretty interesting too.
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He determined that the bullet had traveled downward through her left eye while it was open, and it had lodged in the muscles of her neck, right below her skull. Small burns were around the entry wound, which the ME said meant the firearm had likely been held less than a foot from her face when it was fired.
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The examiner's final conclusion was that the gunshot wound alone probably wouldn't have killed her. It was the combination of blood loss and trauma to the brain that had caused her to die. There were no obvious signs of sexual assault, but the M.A. took vaginal samples from her body anyway, just to be sure.
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He also collected several hairs, fingernail clippings, and the .22 caliber bullet from her neck and turned those over to investigators. He told law enforcement that he felt confident Kathy had been attacked while in a seated position and that the suspect or suspects had stood over her while hitting her in the head.
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Because the trajectory of the bullet wound was slightly downward, he believed that whoever killed her had been standing over her when they fired.
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He estimated her body had only been laying on the trail for about 15 or 30 minutes before she was found, which to me is sort of wild to think about because that would mean whoever killed her had to have made a very, very quick covert getaway to be able to do everything they did and go undetected.
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I mean, especially because we know there were other visitors and witnesses in the area not long after Kathy was murdered. The next day, Sunday, June 14th, a detective interviewed Christine, Kathy's roommate. She explained that she'd been sharing a place with Kathy since September of 1986.
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And I imagine investigators figured Christine would probably know the most about Kathy's normal routine, you know, stuff like who her friends were and so on. But Christine told police that in early June, she'd been in the middle of moving in with her boyfriend, Bob, so she hadn't actually been staying at her and Kathy's place very much.
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She'd also been working at a local girls' support shelter, which was a job that required her to sometimes spend the night and work back-to-back days before being able to come home. Christine told investigators that the last time she'd seen Kathy was on June 6th, roughly a week before the murder. They'd been at a barbecue together at a mutual friend's house.
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Even though her last sighting of Kathy wasn't super helpful to detectives, Christine was able to give them access to her roommate's personal effects, which included some papers.
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When investigators went through those documents, they found a letter that Kathy's boyfriend, David, had written to her earlier in the summer that explained he wanted to get involved in a pyramid scheme called the Golden Circle and maybe start a variation of it in Prescott.
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Christine clarified in her interview that there were several folks in town, including Kathy, herself, and her boyfriend, Bob, who were all a part of this Golden Circle venture. The barbecue she and Kathy had attended the previous week was a gathering for everyone who was interested in doing it.
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According to police reports, investigators spoke with a few other people from the Golden Circle barbecue gathering, but nothing they said appeared to have moved the investigation forward.
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Paula, the woman who lived next door to Christine and Kathy, told detectives that on the morning of the crime, she'd been outside with her dog around five o'clock and noticed that Kathy's bicycle wasn't propped up against the side door of Kathy and Christine's house, which was unusual because that's where Paula said Kathy normally left it.
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This detail caused detectives to wonder where Kathy had been so early in the morning on Saturday. If her bike was gone at 5 a.m., two hours before witnesses saw her riding it into the Thumb Butte Trailhead area, did that mean she'd stayed somewhere else Friday night? And if so, had anyone seen her?
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To find out more about Kathy's whereabouts, on Friday night, June 12th, detectives spoke with the manager of a Mexican restaurant in Prescott that she worked at, and he told investigators that he'd spoken to her on the phone around 4 p.m. on Friday. She'd called to make sure she was on the schedule to start waitressing at 5 p.m.
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that night, but apparently their wires had gotten crossed and Kathy was actually supposed to have worked during the day on June 12th, which meant by the time she called and spoke with her manager, she'd already missed her shift. So her boss ended up telling her not to worry about it. They'd gotten someone else to cover for her and she didn't need to come in.
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Later that night, Kathy had also spoken on the phone with the friend she went to Zion National Park with earlier that week. And they talked about the issues with her car and her possibly buying a new one. During that conversation, Kathy didn't mention anything about going to Thumb Butte the following day.
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But the friend told police that he'd heard dishes and stuff clanging in the background and assumed Kathy was at her house doing chores since she'd been out all week with him. And just to clear up any questions here, Kathy and this guy who went to Zion National Park with her were just friends. He knew her roommate Christine and Christine's boyfriend Bob, which is how he got connected with Kathy.
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There's no indication from the source material there was anything more than a friendship between them. But the information he provided police about Kathy possibly doing her dishes at home was corroborated by Christine, because she later told authorities that prior to Kathy going to Utah on the 7th, she'd left dirty dishes in their sink.
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But when Christine got home on the afternoon of June 13th, the day of the murder, she'd noticed that someone had done all the dishes. And because detectives knew Kathy had only been in Prescott for a matter of hours after her road trip to Zion, I think it's safe to say they assumed she was home Friday evening at some point.
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But when exactly she left to go out on her bike to Thumb Butte, or if she'd stopped anywhere before that, was what investigators needed to pin down. They ended up speaking with two men who reported seeing Kathy riding her bike in town between 5 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. on Friday.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and I know I told you we were off this week, but I wanted to make sure you guys got your fix. Today's episode, The Amazon, is one I covered a few years ago on the show, but there have been a few updates in the case since it first came out, so I wanted to get it in your ears again.
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He said shortly after the initial searches had gotten underway on Sunday afternoon, a surveillance team employed by his organization that was stationed somewhere along the river near the community Dom and Bruno had last been seen passing, said that the boat owned by the illegal fishermen who'd gotten into it with Bruno had been spotted trolling not far behind Bruno and Dom's boat during the hours they'd gone missing.
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Which, I mean, talk about sus. This information, along with the fishermen's names, were provided to federal police investigators, but according to UNIVASA staff, the lead wasn't followed up on right away, a reality that upset many people who worked for the organization. An attorney told the Washington Post, quote, My frustration goes beyond just a slow search mission.
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We need to know the motives and circumstances behind the disappearance of Dom and Bruno. These are armed gangs that are causing violence not only against indigenous, but also our partners. There needs to be investigation by police, end quote.
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According to Tom Phillips' reporting for The Guardian, by the end of the day on Tuesday, June 7th, police detectives announced they were treating the case as a criminal matter and had interviewed at least five people, four of which they labeled as witnesses and one they categorized as a suspect.
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That same article also mentioned that 24 hours into the investigation, Brazil's army had finally come around and sent a patrol into the valley on a boat to help. By that point, the public outcry from the men's family and friends that the Brazilian government wasn't doing enough to find them had gotten so loud that then-president Jair Bolsonaro couldn't ignore it.
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It was widely known that Bolsonaro wasn't a fan of the work that men like Dom and Bruno were doing. The Associated Press reported that he wanted there to be more development in the Javari Valley, not more measures put in place to conserve it.
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When he took office as president in January 2019, he quickly became a strong voice downplaying the importance of setting aside more protected lands for indigenous people. According to CNN, Bolsonaro's entire campaign running up to election day had focused on what kinds of future efforts could be made to explore the untouched territories of the Amazon for farming and natural resource extraction.
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One of his first actions as president was cleaning house at the Brazilian Indigenous National Foundation and transferring the organization out of Brazil's Ministry of Justice Department to the Ministry of Agriculture.
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He also ousted many longtime environmentally conscious leaders from the organization and put men like Bruno, who were leading operations and programs to reach isolated people on administrative leave. Two days after the men vanished, Bolsonaro issued a blunt initial response that rubbed folks who knew Dom and Bruno the wrong way.
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No technology, no modern infrastructure, completely indigenous. They live off the land and speak languages unique to their tribes. Many of these folks live in the Javari Valley Indigenous Reservation, which was established by the government in 2001. This vast protected land converges near the Itui and Itakwai rivers.
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Bolsonaro told news outlets, including CNN, "...two people alone on a boat, in a region like that, completely wild. It's an unrecommended adventure. Anything can happen. It could be an accident. It could be that they have been executed. Anything could have happened. We hope and pray to God that they will be found soon."
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Now, I don't think he necessarily intended to sound cavalier with his statement, but many people close to Bruno and Dom and others who opposed the president's stance on environmental issues felt like it was a backhanded way of questioning the men's mission and purpose.
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Basically, see, this is what happens when you unnecessarily go to places you shouldn't and do stuff that's dangerous kind of thing. But even though Bruno was on administrative leave during the summer of 2022, the 41-year-old was as dedicated as ever to working with indigenous communities in the Javari Valley and being a guide for journalists like Dom.
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At 57 years old, Dom was an established foreign correspondent who didn't shy away from the opportunity to cover controversy. He'd spent the last 15 years living in Brazil. According to his obituary by The Guardian, he met his wife Alessandra in 2013, and the two had gotten married in 2015.
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Through tough times, Dom had remained dedicated to telling gripping stories about Brazilian residents living in remote regions of the Amazon, even when his dedication required him to make several expensive trips that neither he nor his research grant sponsors could afford.
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The Guardian reported that in the summer of 2022, he and his wife had been forced to move to the less expensive Brazilian city of Salvador to live because he was relying on supplemental income from his family members in Britain to make ends meet. Still, Dom hadn't wavered. He knew his life's calling was to report about the travesties taking place in the Javari Valley.
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According to reporter Jonathan Watts, Dom's first visit to Brazil had been in 1998, after his first marriage in England had ended, and while in the country, he decided to start over and move to South America full-time. Brazil was completely different from where he'd grown up in the small town of Bebbington, Merseyside, England, with his parents and two siblings during the 1960s and 70s.
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In addition to having an insatiable appetite for storytelling and writing, Jonathan Watts wrote that Dom loved music. Growing up, everyone in his family had a guitar or sang. As a young man, he'd scratched and clawed his way through a college education and then wandered through various countries playing music and writing.
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In the 90s, his passion for music led him to pursue a writing and publishing career in that genre. But ultimately, his interest in South America's political and environmental conflicts had been what had kept him working as a full-time foreign correspondent. Dom had taught himself to speak fluent Portuguese, which was a huge help navigating his way through stories in Brazil.
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He'd been contracted for prestigious newspapers and magazines across the globe, which included The Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and others. Leading up to 2022, Dom had extensively covered several environmental disasters in the Amazon, two of which were results of failed iron ore mining operations.
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He'd seen firsthand how the influx of natural resource extraction was devastating ecosystems in the pristine landscapes. In 2018, he joined Bruno for a trip into the Javari Valley for the first time to see how companies and illegal hunters and prospectors were impacting native uncontacted tribes.
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Sometimes I heard British journalists pronounce the name of that second river as Itaki River, but Portuguese sources pronounce it Itakwai, so I'm going to go with Itakwai. In June of 2022, Dom and Bruno set out on an expedition to visit an uncontacted people group. But during a short two-hour boat ride, they disappeared.
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And after seeing how much of the indigenous people's land was being destroyed by outside forces, Dom couldn't stop writing about all the issues that were going on. Unfortunately, the stories he'd written were so explosive, they'd made him a handful of powerful enemies. One in particular, and you guessed it, it was Jair Bolsonaro.
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According to Jonathan Watts reporting for The Guardian, during a press conference in 2019, after Bolsonaro had just officially won the presidential election, Dom asked him what his administration was going to do to address an increase in forest fires that had been plaguing the Amazon. And Bolsonaro barked back, quote, the Amazon is Brazil's, not yours, end quote.
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So yeah, these two guys weren't friendly. But this tension only proved to fuel Dom's fire as an investigative journalist. The whole reason he was traveling with Bruno in the summer of 2022 was because he was in the middle of writing a book about all the messed up things that were happening in the Javari Valley. Things that he felt were being ignored by the Brazilian government.
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He titled the novel, How to Save the Amazon. A big focus of the book was going to be how unwarranted contact with remote indigenous tribes was extremely dangerous and what solutions could be generated in the future.
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According to the website Survival International, forced contact with indigenous tribes in the Javari Valley had been happening for decades, all the way back to the 1970s, and it came at a very high human price.
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An article on the site describes how non-native visitors like missionaries brought diseases like the measles and the flu to these remote people groups and all but wiped them out because the indigenous tribes had no built-up immunity to those ailments.
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The article also details how during the 1980s, when big oil companies like Shell ventured into the valley in search of untapped oil reserves, their crews bumped into one particularly isolated tribe. And in a matter of a few years, roughly half of the people in that tribe died from different diseases. Diseases they likely would never have been exposed to if they hadn't met the oil explorers.
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Because there are so many ways unwanted contact with indigenous people groups can go wrong, the governments of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, which all border the Javari Valley, had measures in place to protect the indigenous lands and make sure no contact was forced on natives. But as you probably guessed, those rules were constantly being broken by non-indigenous residents.
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A local activist who knew Bruno and Dom told The Guardian's Tom Phillips that because President Bolsonaro's administration so heavily promoted development in the Amazon, an anti-conservation message had slowly galvanized non-indigenous citizens over time to become more violent with activists in the valley and essentially treat the region however they wanted.
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Illegal mining, logging, and poaching had all increased under Bolsonaro's administration. This activist told The Guardian in part, quote, the invaders felt empowered and became more aggressive. They are veritable gangs and they are very violent, end quote.
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Regarding how tense things had gotten to keep non-native visitors out of the Javari Valley indigenous reservation land, a former FUNAI official told the Associated Press, quote, To this day, the locals don't accept that they can't fish, hunt, or cut wood there. Colombians and Peruvians also considered the area as a reserve for them to take whatever they want, end quote.
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So there was no question by the summer of 2022, violence had permeated the Javari Valley because of the stringent protective initiatives put in place over the decades. And then a systematic dismantling of those initiatives under new political leadership.
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Multiple news outlets reported that gunfire battles had broken out between clashing drug cartels, as well as non-indigenous and indigenous people groups. Some FUNAI workers had either been killed or gone missing while living in or traveling through the Javari Valley.
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In 2019, a man who was employed to root out and report illegal logging and poaching operations was shot to death, and his case has never been solved. But to get back to the search for Dom and Bruno, all day Tuesday, so two days after they disappeared, more search and rescue resources joined the efforts to find them.
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This time, the Amazon Military Command and the Brazilian government's military-trained officers with faster boats, diving equipment, and investigating expertise combed the Javari Valley. That afternoon, Bruno's brothers and partner, Beatrice, spoke publicly about the case and told CNN that they wanted everyone who was searching for the men to work hard and smart.
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They cautioned crews to remember to respect indigenous land if they met uncontacted people groups while looking for Dom and Bruno. Beatriz also told a local newspaper that she was distraught not only for herself, but for her two and three-year-old sons.
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The source material isn't clear as to whether Bruno was their dad, but still, I must imagine he definitely cared for them and was part of their lives.
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According to Andrew Downey and Cayo Briso and Tom Phillips reporting for The Guardian, on Wednesday, three days into the search, the police officially announced they'd interrogated a handful of people and arrested two men so far in their investigation.
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One of the two guys that had been detained, who authorities didn't name, had been arrested for having drugs, a firearm, and ammunition that was illegal. The other guy, whose name was Amardio da Costa de Oliveira, also had been arrested for the same offenses and questioned in relation to Dom and Bruno's case.
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And according to the article, that's because Amardio was the fisherman who threatened Bruno and his men on Saturday morning with the gun. You know, the guy who'd been well-documented in pictures? Yeah, well, in addition to undergoing an interrogation, police also took his boat to search for additional clues.
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On Wednesday, authorities also announced that they were widening the search for Dom and Bruno, and by that point had roughly 250 people out looking for them. They utilized airplanes, drones, and 16 boats to scour as much of the landscape as possible, but still nothing had turned up. Not a scrap of clothing, not a piece of equipment, the missing boat, nothing.
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The Brazilian army had also dedicated more personnel to go into remote parts of the jungle, but those efforts also hadn't pushed the investigation forward. What's interesting to me is that even though three full days had passed with no sign of the two men, investigators were still reluctant to say on the record that they believed something bad had happened to Dom and Bruno.
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Instead, federal police detectives said they genuinely thought the pair was still alive, saying, quote, End quote. But despite that, authorities were still side-eyeing Amardio and not letting him go anywhere. So they kept him detained in jail while they continued their investigation.
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According to Andrew Downey's reporting for The Guardian, by the end of the first week of searching, things were looking grim. And it only got worse when authorities announced they'd found something disturbing floating in a portion of the Atagwe River, not far from Atalaya de Norte. Human remains.
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According to Andrew Downey's article, federal police investigators told the press that on Friday afternoon, five and a half days after Dom and Bruno were last seen, searchers had found, quote, authorities didn't clarify what this material was, just that it was human and suspicious.
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This story hits especially close to home for me because I'm a working journalist, and even though this show isn't one where I always feature my own original reporting, I know all too well from producing another show I host called CounterClock that sometimes being the person who's examining and uncovering controversial issues comes with a certain level of danger.
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But police did reveal that during their search of Amardio's boat, they'd found blood, but wouldn't say whether it belonged to Bruno or Dom. The only thing investigators would confirm was that samples of the blood from the boat and the human remain material from the river were going to be sent off to a forensic examiner.
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DNA samples from Dom's house in Salvador and samples from Bruno's relatives were also gonna be collected for comparison. The Guardian reported that shortly after that, more ominous clues surfaced.
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Tom Phillips reported that on Saturday, a small platoon of indigenous residents who'd been searching in tributaries near where the men vanished found a blue tarp tied around a tree that they recognized as having come from a local group of indigenous workers.
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Floating in the water not far from the tarp were a pair of men's trousers, which I think refer to pants, boots, and a health care card that were quickly identified as belonging to Bruno. Also with those items was a backpack with another set of boots and more articles of clothing in it that were later determined to be Dom's.
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The Guardian also published that a backpack, laptop computer, and sandals were discovered near Amardio's house, which was located on the river.
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So I'm not sure whether this article was referring to the same stuff from the previous article I just mentioned or something different, but based on what I could gather, it seems like Amardio's house wasn't too far away from where the men's clothing and boots were discovered by the tied-up tarp.
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Anyway, forensic investigators took all of Dom and Bruno's personal items as evidence and continued to meticulously dig around the spot where the stuff had turned up. On Monday, June 13th, Brazil's ambassador to the UK incorrectly broke news to Dom's family, mistakenly telling them that his body had been found instead of just some of his belongings.
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And almost as quickly as he'd released the false information, his office had to go into damage control and apologize, which wasn't a great look and really portrayed to the public that the Brazilian government and its search crews on the ground were not communicating well, as many people already suspected.
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The next major update came the following day when authorities announced they were upgrading Amardio to prime suspect for alleged aggravated murder and arresting his brother Osne de Costa de Oliveira in connection with the case. When officers took Osne into custody, they'd served a couple of search warrants that allowed them to seize several bullet casings and an oar from a boat as evidence.
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The next day, Wednesday, June 15th, federal police officials announced the truth had finally come out.
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According to reporting by Metropolis and Andrew Downey and Tom Phillips for The Guardian, while being interrogated on Tuesday night, Amardio had cracked and confessed to murdering Dom and Bruno and enlisting other men to help him bury their bodies in a remote secluded spot in the jungle about two miles inland from the banks of the Itagüey River.
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According to Terrence McCoy's reporting for the Washington Post, Amadio told investigators that after seeing Dom and Bruno pass by in their boat, he and his men had followed the pair and shot at Bruno, who he said returned fire with a .38 Taurus handgun he kept on him.
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But Bruno's pistol was no match for Amadio's shotguns, and eventually Dom and Bruno's boat crashed into some trees along the banks of the river. Both men had been fatally shot. Amardio said after getting their bodies off the boat, it had taken at least four hours to try and burn them.
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And when that ultimately failed, they'd partially dismembered them with a machete and then sunk their boat so that no one could find it. Amardio claimed his brother Osne and a third man named Jefferson de Silva Lima had helped him every step of the way.
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After confessing on Tuesday night, Amardio then spent the early hours of Wednesday morning accompanying police investigators as well as Army and Navy officers to the shallow burial site where he and his accomplices had discarded Dom and Bruno's remains.
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A few hours after locating the victims, police investigators respectfully removed the remains and took them by boat to Atalaya de Norte to be transported out of the valley. Forensic tests came in a few days later and confirmed without a doubt that the remains were Dom and Bruno.
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When word of this development got out, Dom's wife Alessandra released a statement expressing her sadness as well as bittersweet relief. She said, quote, this tragic outcome puts an end to the anguish of not knowing Dom and Bruno's whereabouts. Now we can bring them home and say goodbye with love, end quote.
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Shortly after the bodies were found, police announced they believed as many as five men were involved in the murders and the attempted cover-up. This number included the Oliveira brothers and their friend Jefferson. However, the government didn't go as far as to say that investigators thought a larger criminal organization was behind the killings.
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Around 9 o'clock in the morning on Sunday, June 5th, 2022, a man named Orlando Posuelo, who worked for the organization named the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley, also known by the acronym UNIVAJA, which I believe is pronounced Univaza, noticed something odd. Two men he was expecting to arrive via motorboat at his outpost in the town of Adelaide du Nord were late, really late.
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Univaza staff, on the other hand, definitely thought an organized crime group that profited from illegal fishing had hired the Oliveira brothers to carry out the crime. The agency even went as far as filing a long report begging the Brazilian government to thoroughly investigate the suggestion. But those efforts fell on deaf ears.
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A few days after the bodies were sent off for examination, Bruno and Dom's autopsy results were released to the media. The reports confirmed they'd both been shot to death with a shotgun and then partially burned and dismembered before ultimately being hastily buried in the muddy jungle.
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Within a day of that information being released, Jefferson Da Silva Lima, the third man involved in the plot, turned himself into the authorities and confessed to helping commit the crime.
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Andrew Downey, Oliver Laughlin, and Robert Coz reported for The Guardian that after Jefferson came clean, federal police detectives investigated a handful of other men who they believed might be connected to the case. And one of those guys gave them false documents while being questioned, but he was never arrested in relation to the murders.
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By the end of June, Bruno and Dom's missing boat had been located and dredged from the Atakwe River. It was processed for evidence, and according to Andrew Downey's reporting, Dom and Bruno's killers had weighed it down with six bags of soil and sunken it 20 to 30 meters beneath the murky river's surface.
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At the end of July, prosecutors in Brazil formally charged the Oliveira brothers and Jefferson for Dom and Bruno's murders. The government said the only reason the local men had attacked the pair was because they'd resented Bruno's work in the Amazon, had a personal vendetta against him, and did not want Dom, his companion, to publish the pictures and eyewitness accounts of their illegal fishing.
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There was no mention of any possible connection to a larger criminal organization. A Washington Post article written by Terrence McCoy went into detail about how Amardio had fostered a deep personal hatred toward Bruno and the organizations he was associated with.
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In short, the piece discussed how, as a young man, Amardio had experienced a lot of personal and financial turmoil in the region and grew resentful of increased restrictions on fishing and hunting. By early August, though, federal police investigators had changed their tune a bit in regard to how big the conspiracy surrounding the killings might have been.
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The Guardian reported that authorities arrested five other people who they claimed participated in Dom and Bruno's makeshift burial in the jungle, one of which was the known ringleader of a, quote, illegal fishing mafia based in the Amazon region, end quote.
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Apparently, this guy was the person providing boats, fuel, firearms, and supplies to illegal fishermen so they could conduct their operations in the jungle. He was released on bail shortly after his arrest, which only frustrated people advocating for harsher restrictions for the suspects involved in the murders.
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In May 2023, something that threw a bit of a wrench into things was that the defendants began claiming they'd killed Dom and Bruno in self-defense, an argument that many people who were following the story were shocked by. By September 2024, Brazilian appeals judges had decided to drop murder charges from Osnei da Costa de Oliveira entirely.
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Charges against his brother, Amardio, and the other defendant, Jefferson da Silva Lima, remained in place, though. That decision to exclude Osnei came as a result of the court determining there was insufficient evidence of authorship or participation in the crime by him to move forward to trial.
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The Guardian reported that prosecutors still have the option to appeal the ruling and file new charges, but I couldn't find any further source material about whether they've done that.
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Another piece by The Guardian that was published in November 2024 stated that eventually prosecutors charged a total of nine people who they believed were involved in the killing, including a guy named Ruben Dario da Silva Vilar, who was dubbed the mastermind.
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I believe he was that person I told you about earlier who was supplying fuel and firearms to illegal fishermen in the Amazon region, basically the illegal fishing mafia boss. But I've yet to see any news coverage published that states when any criminal trials for these folks will begin, so we'll just have to wait and see. One thing I do know for sure is that Bruno and Dom are gone.
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However, their impact will never be forgotten. Unfortunately, they'll never see the beauty of the Amazon rainforest ever again, but the work they accomplished there while they were alive, and some would argue are still accomplishing even in death, is unmatched.
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Their families and supporters continue to publicly express grief over their loss, and thousands of Brazilian citizens have rallied against the government to reform laws and regulations that seek to develop the Amazon rainforest. The fight that Dom and Bruno were taking part in is still far from over, and they deserve to have the world remember their names. So this is for you, Dom and Bruno.
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A few days earlier, longtime Univaza associate Bruna Pereira had called Orlando from a region of the Javari Valley near Peru to tell Orlando that he and his passenger, 57-year-old British journalist Dom Phillips, would be arriving by 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. But 8 a.m. had come and gone, and then 9 a.m., and there was still no sign of the two men.
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May you rest in peace and forever be known. Park Predators is an audio Chuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No.
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The city of Atalaya de Norte was where most everyone entered or exited the Javari Valley, so Orlando knew that Bruno and Dom not showing up wasn't a good sign. The men's absence indicated they'd either made last-minute plans to stay longer inside the valley without telling anyone, or something had happened to them while they'd been boating on the Atui or Itaquai rivers.
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Those were the bodies of water they would have had to have taken to get back to Atalaya de Norte. The Washington Post reported that by 10 a.m., Orlando couldn't bear waiting around for Dom and Bruno any longer without doing something. So he went out on the river with another staffer to look for them, but had no luck.
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Other source material says that a few hours later, around 2 p.m., more people joined to help and went out in boats to go on a longer stretch of the Atacway River near Atalaya de Norte. The goal was to search for the men, but after scouring a few miles of shoreline, treeline, and open water, no sign of the men or their boat turned up.
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Another search party of Univaza volunteers went out around 4 o'clock, this time in a slightly bigger vessel, but just like the groups before them, they couldn't find a trace of Dom or Bruno. The source material isn't clear on when exactly government agencies were made aware of the situation and responded.
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But the best I could gather was that on Monday morning, the Brazilian Navy and the federal police were alerted about what was going on. And those agencies dispatched additional personnel to help look for Dom and Bruno. According to BBC News, the Navy promised to supply more resources, including a helicopter, two larger boats, and another kind of watercraft on Tuesday morning.
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But the Amazon Military Command, a branch of the Brazilian Army, wasn't so quick to mobilize its resources. The Guardian reported that a spokesperson for the Army said he had to wait for government officials to order military personnel to get involved. And until that happened, the Army's hands were tied.
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Today's story is about exactly that, two men, an indigenous and a British journalist who were determined to expose illegal natural resource extraction happening in the Amazon, but ultimately paid the price for their righteous endeavor with their lives.
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Still, the additional beefed-up resources that did come in during those first 24 hours were a huge relief for the local indigenous leaders with Univaza, whose search parties were already stretched thin. It was clear from the outset, though, that the folks with Univaza didn't think the Brazilian government was acting fast enough to help find the men.
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Many workers, like Orlando Pozuelo, thought Brazil's military resources should have been sent out as soon as Dom and Bruno were reported missing, instead of being caught in political limbo. But military or no military, the Brazilian federal police did get investigators into the valley the day after Dom and Bruno vanished.
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And when those detectives arrived, right away they started conducting interviews with the Univaza staff in Atalaya do Norte. After speaking with some of those folks, police determined that Bruno and Dom had actually entered the Javare region the week before they disappeared.
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The Guardian reported that Dom's family had last heard from him on Wednesday, June 1st, while he'd been flying from his home in Salvador, Brazil, to meet Bruno.
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Authorities learned that after the men connected in Adelaide du Nord, they'd gotten into a boat on Friday, June 3rd, and traveled to a remote village along the western side of the valley near Peru's border to meet with a group of uncontacted people.
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Witnesses who knew the details of the men's travel itinerary told investigators that Dom had planned to interview several natives from that tribe on Friday and Saturday, and then the duo was expected to journey back to Adelaide du Nord on Sunday morning. On their way back, they were supposed to pit stop in Riberia São Rafael, a small indigenous community on the Atacuai River.
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When authorities spoke with people in that village, everyone there said they'd last seen Dom and Bruno around 6 a.m. on Sunday, June 5th. And data that UNIVASA staff provided tracing the men's satellite phone communications confirmed that. According to witnesses at São Rafael, before leaving, Dom and Bruno had spoken with the wife of a guy who was in charge of that community.
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Agência Brasil reported that Bruno had prearranged a meeting with this community leader to discuss how the village could improve combating intruders who were conducting illegal activities. But when he and Dom had arrived, the leader wasn't there, so the men spoke with the guy's wife instead and then left shortly after that.
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Bruna Pereira and Dom Phillips' case unfolded in the summer of 2022 in one of the most beautiful and dangerous landscapes in the world, South America's Javari Valley in the Amazon. This region is one of the most remote places on the planet and is situated where the borders of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia meet.
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News outlets reported that sometime after 6 a.m., but before 9 a.m., more witnesses in a small community between Sao Rafael and Adelaide du Norte had reported seeing a boat matching Dom and Bruno's pass by. But the articles don't say what specific time in the morning this sighting happened. After that, the men's trail went cold. Just nothing.
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The Brazilian Indigenous National Foundation, or FUNAI, who Bruno had been associated with for years, told several news outlets that the men's journey wasn't supposed to be complicated. Their two-hour boat ride to the entry and exit point of the valley was a routine trip Bruno had made many times.
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For several years prior to this, Bruno had worked as a regional coordinator for the Indigenous National Foundation's outpost in Adelaide Nord. So him getting lost just wasn't something anyone thought was likely. He knew that area like the back of his hand, getting turned around would have been extremely out of character for him.
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A theory law enforcement considered on day one of the investigation was whether the men's boat had stalled or perhaps sank and they'd been left stranded somewhere in the jungle. Dom's wife, Alessandra, told The Guardian that in a strange way, that suggestion gave her some comfort.
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She told the publication, "...all I can do is pray that Dom and Bruno are well, somewhere, and unable to continue with their journey because of some mechanical problem, and that all this will end up being just another story in these full lives of theirs." But the men's boat becoming disabled or sinking didn't make sense to the staffers who'd been expecting the men.
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You see, those workers knew that the boat Bruno and Dom had taken only had a 40-horsepower engine in it. It was new, plus the men had taken 70 liters of extra fuel, seven empty gas cans, and a satellite phone with them. So their vessel failing and then them not being able to contact the outside world for help just seemed like an unlikely scenario.
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When word of the men's disappearance made news headlines on the morning of Monday, June 6th, the day after they were reported missing, the story spread like wildfire. By nightfall on Monday, Dom's family members in Britain and staff at the news publication he worked for, The Guardian, took to social media to express their concerns and begged the Brazilian government to take the matter seriously.
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Everyone who knew the nature of that part of the Amazon knew that time was of the essence. They feared that if search and rescue teams didn't swarm the jungle along the section of river where the men had last been seen fast enough, the duo would perish from either encountering hostile people or dangerous wildlife.
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According to The Guardian, Dom's sister posted a video online that said, quote, we are really worried about him and urge the authorities in Brazil to do all they can to search the routes he was following. If anyone can help scale up resources for the search, that would be great because time is crucial, end quote.
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It's made up of tens of thousands of square miles of thick jungle and waterways, and it's not the kind of place you want to wander into on your own. According to the news source France 24, for decades this region has been plagued with violent crime, drug trafficking, and illegal fishing and logging on protected lands.
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Dom's wife voiced the same sentiment and requested the Brazilian government work with a sense of urgency. The Guardian's editor, Jonathan Watts, released an official statement for the publication that said, The Guardian is very concerned and is urgently seeking information on Phillips' whereabouts.
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We are in contact with the British Embassy in Brazil and local and national authorities to try and ascertain the facts as soon as possible." The organization Human Rights Watch also vocalized its concerns about the men's disappearance and called on Brazil's government to act more swiftly.
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The entity's director wrote, "...it is extremely important that Brazilian authorities dedicate all available and necessary resources to the immediate execution of the searches in order to guarantee as soon as possible the safety of the two."
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I mentioned it a second ago, but the glaring fact that was apparent to Dom and Bruno's families and all the organizations advocating for them was that where they'd been working in the Javari Valley was known to be extremely unstable and prone to violence. In fact, it was almost guaranteed the pair would encounter some level of danger while in that part of the Amazon.
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And according to Orlando Pozuelo, the man who first noticed they were missing, a somewhat violent encounter was exactly what had happened hours before Dom and Bruno vanished. The End
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Orlando told the Washington Post that while Dom and Bruno had been traveling through the Javari Valley, they'd been documenting every time they saw someone illegally fishing, especially if those people were folks that Bruno knew had made threats against conservationists like him in the past. Now, for context, harassment wasn't new to either Dom or Bruno.
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They'd received numerous death threats for years, and some threats had even come in right before they left for their trip. The Brazilian government, the federal police, and the National Human Rights Council were all aware that had happened.
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In fact, Tom Phillips reported for The Guardian that a publication called O Globo published that shortly before leaving for their trip, Bruno had been handed a written threat that said, quote, we know who you are and we'll find you to settle the score, end quote. So yeah, the message from Bruno and Dom's haters was real.
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According to G1 Brazil, Bruno was used to continuous aggressions coming from miners, fishermen, and loggers because of the work he was doing to preserve indigenous land and protect the native people who lived in the Javari Valley. Dom, for all his years of expository work, had also endured hardships because of the truths he'd written about.
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The natural camouflage the Amazon provides is the main reason why criminals conducting these illegal activities operate there. Depending on which source material you read, there are anywhere from 20 to 26 different indigenous groups living in the valley, a dozen or so of which are categorized as uncontacted people, meaning they live in isolation from the rest of the world.
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Still, their friend Orlando Pozuelo told the police that an incident that had occurred on the Atacuayu River the very weekend Dom and Bruno had vanished was suspicious and should be investigated further. He said that sometime on Saturday morning, Bruno had called up to the Univaza staff to let them know that while he and Dom had been boating, they'd stumbled upon some men illegally fishing.
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According to the Washington Post and The Guardian via the Associated Press, during this interaction, the fishermen had become hostile with Bruno, and one of them flashed a gun. Orlando said while the threat had unfolded, Bruno was able to snap a picture of the menacing man's face, and some of the other men in Bruno's group, including Dom, had documented the threat.
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Orlando said Bruno planned to bring all that footage back with him to Adelaide du Nord to notify police and government officials. And there was something else Orlando told the Washington Post he'd mentioned to police that he thought was vitally important.
Park Predators
The Campfire
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I'm going to tell you about today is a harrowing one. It happened more than 50 years ago, but still remains one of the most notorious multi-victim homicide cases in the state of Iowa. At least two books have been written about it, and television programs for Oxygen and Investigation Discovery have both covered it.
Park Predators
The Campfire
On November 29th, so almost two weeks to the day after the crime, Allen, David, and J.R. were each arrested and charged individually with four counts of murder. Between the end of 1973 and February 1974, David decided to cooperate with investigators and essentially flip on his brothers.
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He claimed that initially they'd just gone to Gitche Manitou to poach deer, but when they stumbled upon the group of teenagers around their campfire, David said something changed. He claimed that Alan had gotten a look in his eyes that David knew wasn't good. And before he knew it, his older brother had shot Roger Essam. Then J.R. had started firing.
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The Campfire
And though the source material doesn't explicitly say this, it seems like it was a round from J.R. 's gun that struck Stewart. But what is clear is that this sequence of events actually aligned with what Sandra had already told investigators. So I think the fact that David's story, for the most part, corroborated Sandra's story kind of gave it some credibility.
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The Campfire
Anyway, according to the rest of David's confession, he said that when Alan took Sandra to the pickup truck, he and JR rounded up the three boys. Then he and JR got into Stuart's van and shone the headlights on Mike, Dana, and Stuart. And with the boys seemingly blinded by the light and unable to see anything in front of them, JR quickly jumped out of the van and started shooting at them.
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The Campfire
Dana was struck first, then Stuart, and lastly Mike. David claimed that he'd also shot Stuart, but clarified that he believed the teen was already dead from JR's shots by that point, and so he wasn't personally responsible for taking his life. In exchange for this information, prosecutors allowed David to plead guilty and ask for leniency from the court.
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The Campfire
According to an article by Nick Lamberto for the Des Moines Register, David formally accepted his plea deal on February 12th, 1974, almost three months after the crime. The judge weighing his case had to determine if his murder counts would be for first degree or second degree. If it was first degree, then he was facing a mandatory life sentence.
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The Campfire
But if the judge went with second degree, then his sentence would have been anywhere from 10 years to life. At a degree of guilt hearing for him a week later in Lyon County District Court, Sandra took the stand as a witness and described to the judge the events of November 17th, 1973. The prosecutor assigned to the case knew that her testimony would go a long way.
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The Campfire
He didn't want the judge to buy David's story that he'd shot Stuart Beatty after the teen was already dead. That claim, the attorney believed, was just David's attempt at skirting responsibility for committing cold-blooded murder.
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The Campfire
The prosecutor was convinced that David had conspired with his brothers to kill all living witnesses after Alan shot and killed Roger Essam where the teens had been having their campfire. David's defense lawyer disagreed with that portrayal, though.
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The Campfire
He said that his client had simply gotten caught up in the moment and partaken in the shooting of the Beatty brothers and Mike Hadrith because he'd seen his younger brother J.R. do it. During her time on the stand, Sandra explained that she and her friends had gone to Gitche Manitou to hang out because it was a popular spot for young people.
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She described how shadowy figures had appeared near their campfire and then Roger and Stuart were shot. Other details she shared were that Mike had actually asked the shooters a question and then he'd been struck too, but not fatally.
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Initially, after the gunfire subsided, she'd tried to play dead on the ground, but one of the Fryer brothers discovered she was faking it and told her to stand up and walk. Under cross-examination, David's defense lawyer asked her a lot of questions about her drug use that night and whether her perception of things could have been flawed due to being under the influence of marijuana.
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For example, the lawyer pointed out that Alan Fryer's pickup truck was actually blue, not orangish-brown like she'd initially described it to police. But 13-year-old Sandra's response to that discrepancy was that she'd been processing a lot during the traumatic events of seeing her boyfriend killed, then being abducted, and eventually sexually assaulted.
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She claimed that her flashbacks of November 17th convinced her that Alan's truck was orangish-brown. Ultimately, the judge weighing David's case determined that he was in fact guilty of maliciously killing Stuart Beatty and sentenced the 24-year-old to life in prison. Murder charges against him for the other three boys' deaths were later dropped by Lyon County authorities.
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During David's degree of guilt hearing, his brothers, Allen and J.R., were kept in separate jails under substantial bonds. At their arraignments, they both pled not guilty and opted to put their fate in the hands of jurors. A few months later in May, Allen's case went to trial first. His defense seemed to hinge on the firearm evidence that authorities had uncovered since the murders happened.
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Turns out, on the night of the crime, Allen said he'd been carrying one type of shotgun, and his brothers were armed with different caliber shotguns. Investigators determined that only one round from the gun Allen claimed to have been carrying ended up in Mike's body.
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Other shots from JR's gun were also found in Mike, and it was those shots that were believed to have been the rounds that killed him. So Allen's defense claimed that was proof that he had not actually murdered anyone. But the prosecutor disagreed and said that the ballistics information only showed what ammunition ended up in what victim, not who'd actually pulled the trigger of which gun.
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He suggested that Allen very well could have fired any one of the guns he and his brothers brought that night or used more than one type of shotgun shell in the weapon he said he'd handled. In the end, Allen's jury agreed with the state's point of view because it took them less than six hours to find him guilty of four counts of first-degree murder.
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He was sentenced to four concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole. However, just a few weeks after Allen's trial concluded, the case took another bizarre twist when both he and his youngest brother, J.R., disappeared. According to multiple news outlets, on the morning of June 19, 1974, staff at the Lyon County Jail in Rock Rapids, Iowa, discovered that Allen and J.R.
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Fryer had escaped from their cells overnight and were nowhere to be found. At the time, they'd each been held on separate floors of the jail because Allen was awaiting transport to a state prison, and J.R. had not yet gone to trial. Plus, authorities just didn't want the brothers anywhere near one another in the event they tried to pull off a jailbreak.
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Well, apparently sometime around midnight on June 18th, Allen discovered that new locks had recently been installed on the cells but had not been welded into place yet. So he fashioned a piece of wire from his bed into a makeshift ratchet wrench and freed himself. He then got a hold of a set of keys and went to the first floor of the jail where JR's cell was and sprung him free too.
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When the two men were discovered missing around 8 a.m. on the 19th, the Lyon County Sheriff's Office immediately launched a manhunt. Members of law enforcement also went to Sandra Chesky's house to make sure she was okay. They were very worried that Allen and J.R. might try to harm her since she was the only living witness against them. And she was scheduled to testify at J.R.
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's upcoming murder trial. According to Investigation Discovery's episode of No One Can Hear You Scream, armed Iowa DCI special agents stood watch inside Sandra's house 24 hours a day to make sure neither of the suspects would come for her.
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Roughly 48 hours into the manhunt, authorities got word that the Fryer brothers had stolen a car right after escaping and driven it some 500 miles away to Gillette, Wyoming, where they struck a pedestrian. That incident led to a high-speed chase and ultimately ended with both men being arrested and charged with the federal crime of interstate transportation of a stolen motor vehicle.
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About three weeks later in early July, J.R. was extradited back to Iowa and arraigned in federal court. His trial for the Gitche Manitou slayings began five months later on December 11th, 1974, a little more than a year after the crime.
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Leading up to the trial, his defense had filed a change of venue request and successfully gotten his trial moved an hour east to Spirit Lake, Iowa instead of Lyon County. Naturally, the state's star witness was Sandra Chesky. For several hours, she testified about what happened to her and her friends and recounted in excruciating detail everything that Alan, David, and J.R. had done.
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She once again identified J.R. as the person who'd sexually assaulted her outside of the farmhouse. But according to that investigation discovery episode I mentioned earlier, JR was never actually charged for the sexual assault. Basically, how the interviewee explained it was that authorities wanted to avoid having to put Sandra through the trauma of testifying in a separate sexual assault trial.
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So they decided to only go after JR for the first-degree murder charges. During Sandra's testimony, jurors heard how the brothers had claimed to be police officers on a drug raid and that Allen's apparent reason for separating Sandra from Mike, Dana, and Stuart was because he allegedly said, quote, you were too young to be busted in a drug deal like this, end quote.
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In addition to Sandra, a special agent from the Iowa DCI testified and recounted that after J.R. was first arrested, he told investigators that he and his brothers had spotted the group of teens and then one of them said, quote, they've got marijuana down there and we've got to get it, end quote.
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That was reportedly believed to be a possible motive for the whole thing, to rob the teens of what turned out to be a meager amount of marijuana. The special agent said that J.R. claimed he'd only fired a warning shot into the air before approaching the teens at their campfire. And it was Alan who'd leveled a shotgun at Roger and took the first life. After that, J.R.
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said he'd tried to drive away in Stuart Beatty's van, but it stalled. Shortly after that, he said he heard shots ring out, and then he and David managed to start the van up again and get out of there. Then the two of them met up with Alan at the farmhouse, and that's where he claimed both he and Alan had sexually assaulted Sandra.
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On Sunday, November 18th, 1973, a man and woman driving through Gitche Manitou State Preserve in Iowa were having a normal morning test driving a car they were thinking about buying when suddenly they noticed something strange laying in a patch of thick grass on the side of the road.
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Afterwards, he said he and David left and he eventually returned to jail for that work release program he was in. Obviously, J.R. 's version of events, as told by the special agents in court, stood in stark contrast to what Sandra remembered. Her recollection of the crime was that J.R. was very much an aggressor.
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She'd even testified that he'd threatened her and the boys by saying, quote, stand right where you are or I'll blow your heads off, end quote. In the end, the jury believed Sandra and the prosecution's narrative of the crime. After deliberating for nearly a dozen hours, they voted to find J.R. guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Mike, Dana, and Stuart.
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He was only found guilty of manslaughter and the death of Roger Essam. At his sentencing hearing in early January 1975, a judge gave him three life sentences plus eight years for the manslaughter charge. Basically, he was never getting out of prison.
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In the wake of the Fryer brothers being caught and their legal battles ending, people sat back and tried to comprehend what the true motive was for the crime. You know, understand why. The prosecutor for the state had repeatedly emphasized in court that there didn't appear to be a strong motive, at least not one he could put his finger on.
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Like I mentioned earlier, there was some discussion that maybe robbing the kids of their marijuana was one motive, but that was never definitively proved. At one point, the prosecutor remarked, quote, this was a brutal, deliberate slaying of four young people without any rhyme or reason or excuse or anything else.
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It was a senseless, brutal massacre of four young people, pure and simple, end quote. Investigators and other attorneys who'd been involved in the case also couldn't pinpoint why exactly the brothers had done what they'd done. In May 1975, Allen, the eldest, filed an appeal in Iowa's Northern Federal District Court, but in 1982, it was denied.
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In 1985, he again requested a new trial, but that was also later denied. His younger brothers, David and JR, had made appeals too, but were both unsuccessful in getting their convictions overturned.
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In an interview with the Des Moines Register, David revealed that if all of his appeals continued to get denied, he was going to write a letter to Iowa's governor asking that his life sentence be changed to capital punishment because he didn't want to live the rest of his life in a prison. He claimed he'd rather be put to death than be with other inmates who he claimed were, quote, end quote.
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As they got closer to the mysterious objects, the more they slowed their car down until finally the man behind the wheel pulled over and got out. He instructed his wife to just stay put in the car while he walked toward the section of tall weeds to investigate.
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In that same article, David stated that before he and his brothers got caught, he'd attended one of the victim's funerals. He explained that he wasn't even sure why he went, he just did. From reading the available source material which discusses the Fryer brothers' upbringing, it's clear that their environment growing up was not a positive one.
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Their parents had 13 children in all, and each of the brothers dropped out of grade school during their elementary years. Their father was reported to be very overbearing and abusive, and their mother didn't do much to help the boys deal with him. From a very young age, Alan, David, and JR mostly relied on one another, and as a result of that, they grew extremely close.
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But let me be clear, in no way am I saying that this information about their childhood is an excuse for their homicidal actions. Who they became may have some connection to the circumstances of their upbringing, but I'm a firm believer that we're all responsible for our individual actions.
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An article by the Des Moines Register stated that supposedly the fracture effect the slaying had on the victims' families was long-lasting and immense. After speaking with and exchanging emails with Mike's younger sister and Stuart and Dana's surviving siblings, I learned that over time, some family members of theirs just had to leave Sioux Falls altogether to try and heal.
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Staying in town was just too painful. Mary, Stuart and Dana's youngest sister, explained to me that her older siblings, who were closer in age to her brothers who died, experienced a variety of different struggles in their lives after the crime.
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A few of the victims' siblings, who are now deceased, spoke to various news publications over the years, and they all seemed to say the same thing in one way or the other. Dana, Stuart, Mike and Roger were all good kids. Best friends who lived a lot of their young lives together and who tragically died together.
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They were innocent children in so many ways who did nothing to deserve what happened to them. As of this recording, all three of the Fryer brothers are in their 70s and 80s and still serving their prison sentences at Fort Dodge Correctional Facility.
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In the many years since the Gitche Manitou slayings, Sandra Chesky became a wife, mother, and grandmother, and she's become more vocal about telling her story. But it wasn't always that way. She told producers for Investigation Discovery that throughout the 1970s and 80s, she experienced a lot of shame for being the only survivor of the massacre.
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But just a few feet into his trek, he abruptly stopped because there, lying face down in the grass, were the bloody bodies of three young men who all appeared to have been shot in their backs and chests with a shotgun. The victims were clearly dead and laying near a small parking area not far from an entrance to the preserve.
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She also felt like some members of the media and people living where she was from still doubted her story. She explained in the television program that it was really freeing to get to a place in her life where she felt safe and proud to tell her story and herald the friends she was with in 1973 for being heroes.
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She told the Des Moines Register that even at 13 years old, despite all of the forces that were telling her to stay silent, she was strong enough to know that she was the only person in the world who could make sure her friends' killers went to prison. And so she did what she had to do.
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She went to court as many times as necessary to forever keep the predators who preyed on her and her friends behind bars. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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Not long after the couple found the bodies, members of law enforcement from Minnehaha County Sheriff's Office, Lyon County Sheriff's Office, and Sioux Falls Police Department were alerted to the situation and responded to the scene.
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The available source material seems to indicate that because this type of crime was so unusual for the local jurisdictions, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation was called in to handle the case and process the crime scene. Based on what I found in the source material, this entity used to be called the Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigations, but it now has a new name.
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A listener wrote to me last year and suggested I feature the case because it seemed like a story that was appropriate for this audience, and after researching the details of the crime, I can say that they were absolutely right.
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Just so there's no confusion, I want to refer to it by what it's known as now. Anyway, when DCI agents arrived and started trying to piece together what had happened, they walked a short distance away from the three bodies in the grass and into a clearing that seemed like a place you'd have a campfire.
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There, they made another horrific discovery, a fourth victim, a young man dead from a shotgun blast to the head. Sitting near his body was a partially smoked marijuana joint, a guitar leaned up against a tree, and several spent shotgun shells scattered on the ground.
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DCI agents collected those shells as evidence and quickly determined they belonged to three different caliber shotguns, a 12 gauge, a 16 gauge, and a 20 gauge. Based on everything at the scene, it became pretty clear that the campsite was the location where the initial attack had begun.
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The victim whose body was there seemed to have been killed there, and most likely the three other victims who'd ended up in the grass had been transported away from the campfire area and then fatally shot. Why? Investigators weren't sure yet, but for the time being, they needed to focus on something else equally as important, identifying all the victims.
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After checking the young men's wallets, investigators discovered that the three victims in the field were 15-year-old Mike Hadreth, 18-year-old Stuart Beatty, and Stuart's younger brother, 14-year-old Dana Beatty. The lone victim at the campsite was 17-year-old Roger Essam. All of the boys were from the Sioux Falls, South Dakota area, a city about 20 minutes northwest of Gitche Manitou.
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When law enforcement contacted each of the teens' families to break the bad news about the murders, many of the boys' relatives reacted how you'd expect. They were devastated and shocked. I was actually able to speak with some of Mike and Stuart and Dana's other siblings, and they told me the same thing, that losing them was absolutely heartbreaking.
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I was simultaneously heartbroken and riveted with the information I read about because, despite four people losing their lives in what I can only describe as something out of a nightmare, there was someone who survived this terrible tragedy. An individual that, to this day, is nothing short of a hero for ensuring justice was served so many decades ago.
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Stuart and Dana, for example, came from a family of seven siblings, and their surviving sister, Mary, explained to me that even though she was just nine years old when this happened, she remembers her brothers were the most kind-hearted and loving people. She doesn't have one bad memory of them.
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When their family received the news from law enforcement about what had happened to Stuart and Dana, her mother was actually in the hospital and it was one of her older sisters who took the phone call from authorities. Investigators asked all of the victims' loved ones if any of the young men had any enemies, but no one could think of a single person who would have wanted to hurt them.
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According to Investigation Discovery's series No One Can Hear You Scream, which featured this case in an episode titled Gitche Manitou Massacre, the Beatty brothers were from a close-knit family, and both young men enjoyed playing a guitar that they shared. So I think the instrument that was found at the crime scene was assumed to belong to them.
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Shortly after the bodies were discovered, word got around town about the brutal killings, and residents in Sioux Falls and I imagine Greater Lyon County were gripped with fear. Folks began arming themselves and locking their doors, fearful that the killer or killers who were still on the loose would strike again.
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No one could wrap their minds around why someone would commit such a heinous crime in a peaceful recreation space like Gitche Manitou. Back at the crime scene, DCI agents had wrapped up the evidence collection phase of their investigation and shifted their focus to finding potential witnesses who might have seen what happened leading up to the murders.
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Later that afternoon, November 18th, they got the surprise of their lives when a 13-year-old girl from the Sioux Falls area of South Dakota walked into the Sioux Falls Police Department and told authorities that she'd been inside Gitche Manitou on the night of the crime with Mike, Roger, Stuart, and Dana. This young woman's name was Sandra Chesky, and she claimed that around 9.30 p.m.
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on Saturday, November 17th, she'd arrived at Gitche Manitou State Preserve with her boyfriend, Roger, and the other three boys in Stuart Beatty's blue van. For a while, they just hung out, smoked two marijuana joints and had a campfire. But then suddenly they'd heard some sounds in the woods that made them think at first animals were nearby.
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But then after a bit more rustling, they began to suspect it was actually people. Shortly after that, three silhouettes just appeared out of nowhere, about 15 yards away from their campfire. She said that Roger and Stuart went to investigate who the figures were and even yelled out things like, who's there and hello? But the looming silhouettes didn't reply.
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Within a few seconds of the two boys going to check things out, a shotgun blast pierced the night air and Roger immediately fell to the ground. Sandra said that right after that, a second shot rang out and Stuart began to yell that he'd been shot.
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The three attackers then emerged from the woods, got Stewart on his feet, and forced him, Sandra, Dana, and Mike down a path that led away from the teen's campsite. When the group got to the end of that trail, one of the three assailants put Sandra in a pickup truck, but the other two attackers marched Mike, Dana, and Stewart in the opposite direction towards Stewart's van.
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Sandra also told police that the three men claimed they were members of law enforcement who were doing drug raids in the area, which is why she said she'd chosen not to resist them. She told producers for Oxygen's killer siblings that she believed she could trust the men since they'd claimed they were the cops.
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It takes place in Gitche Manitou State Preserve, which is located in the far northwest corner of Iowa, right along the South Dakota border. According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the preserve is 91 acres and considered one of the most remote places in the state.
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Like, she honestly thought that as long as she did what they told her to do, she wouldn't get in trouble for smoking that marijuana joint with her friends. She told authorities that two of the guys in the group kept referring to the man who'd put her in the pickup truck as the boss.
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When she described the men to police, she said that the heaviest set in the trio was called JR, and the other one, who wasn't the boss or JR, was a thinner man with blonde hair who had gone by the nickname Hatchetface. Sandra told police that after the boss separated her from Mike, Dana, and Stuart, he drove her out of the preserve and she never saw any of the boys again.
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While she and the man were riding around in his pickup, he'd asked her where she lived and promised to take her home. But after a few hours of driving country roads seemingly not in the direction of her house, Sandra realized she might not be going home and something was definitely wrong.
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She told investigators that the whole time this was happening, the boss kept telling her that Stewart was going to be okay because the guns they were using weren't actually loaded with real bullets. Instead, they had tranquilizer cartridges in them.
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The boss even claimed that the round he'd shot Stewart with had misfired, which was why he was screaming out in pain, but the round that it hit Roger had fired properly, which is why he was still back at the campsite, seemingly unresponsive.
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Her captor eventually took her to an abandoned farmhouse where they met up with the two other assailants and then the man who went by the initials JR sexually assaulted her in the boss's truck. Then the boss ordered her to go into the farmhouse with him, but she refused.
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She told police and eventually producers for Investigation Discovery that she believed in her gut that if she stepped foot through that building's front door, she wasn't going to come back out alive. And by some miracle, her adamant refusal worked because the boss ended up not making her go inside. Instead, he put her back in the pickup and drove her home.
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She said when they pulled into her driveway around 5 o'clock in the morning, he told her not to tell anyone about what had happened or else he'd come back and kill her. Now, as astonishing as Sandra's story was, homicide investigators weren't quite sure what to make of it.
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On one hand, they had a 13-year-old girl who claimed she was the sole survivor and only eyewitness of a brutal attack that had left four of her friends dead. She might hold the key to solving the crime. But they also had to consider the possibility that she'd known the perpetrators or was maybe even involved herself.
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It's widely known for having a lot of pink quartzite, an extremely hard rock that begins its lifespan as sandstone, but over time transforms into a really durable substance after being exposed to a lot of heat and pressure. Gitche Manitou is an indigenous phrase that, when translated into English, means great force of nature or great spirit.
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To figure out which one it was, the police asked Sandra to take several polygraphs and she passed all of them with flying colors. So from that point on, it seems like investigators took her story at face value and began treating her less like a potential suspect and more like the valuable eyewitness that she was.
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To keep her safe from the suspects who were still at large, authorities had her live temporarily at the county's detention center so she would be protected at all times. Over the course of the next few days and several follow-up interviews, she provided investigators with more and more details about what she remembered from the night of November 17th.
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For example, she described the pickup truck she'd been forced into as an older model Chevy with brownish colored paint. She also said it had a cracked windshield, gun rack inside on the back window, and a unique looking glove compartment in the dashboard.
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She also met with a forensic sketch artist to help police come up with a composite drawing of the man she'd come to know as the boss and his other accomplices. After developing those sketches, authorities spent several more days driving Sandra around on roads in a 50-mile search grid adjacent to Sioux Falls.
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They wanted to see if she could pick out anything she recognized from the night of the crime, like the farmhouse, for instance. They spent day after day doing this, but every time they took her by a structure that looked like a farmhouse, she'd tell them that it wasn't the right one. After about two weeks of doing this, things were not looking good.
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But then, in late November, something astonishing happened. While on yet another drive with investigators, Sandra did a double take at a random farmhouse.
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Nearly two weeks after she first came forward to investigators, Sandra and a few deputies from the local sheriff's office were riding around in the countryside when she suddenly paused and said she thought a structure they were nearing looked familiar.
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As they pulled in to get a better look, a man driving a pickup truck was leaving the property at the same time and passed them headed in the opposite direction. In that moment, Sandra let out a scream because she'd seen the driver's face clear as day when he went by, and she recognized him as the man who'd abducted her. She pointed at the guy and shrieked to investigators, quote, That's him.
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That's the boss. That's him. End quote. Right away, a deputy took Sandra out of the cruiser she was riding in, and another deputy hightailed it after the pickup. About a quarter mile down the road, he caught up to the driver and initiated a traffic stop. As soon as the deputy walked up to the window, he immediately noticed that the guy had an uncanny resemblance to the composite sketch.
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And when he asked the man what his name was, the driver told him he was Alan Fryer. Immediately following this traffic stop, Allen was brought in for questioning but denied any involvement in the murders from November 17. He claimed that he'd been out hunting with his two brothers, James and David Fryer.
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Investigators quickly learned that 29-year-old Allen was the eldest of the three brothers, and 21-year-old James, the youngest of the group, often went by the nickname J.R., One investigator told producers for Oxygen's episode of Killer Siblings that during Allen's initial interaction with authorities, he said, quote, I didn't shoot anybody. My brothers did, though. It was my brothers. End quote.
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And I imagine anyone who's been to this recreation space would agree with that moniker. It truly is a force of nature with its stunning views, unique geological formations, and more than 130 species of plants. It's also a fitting description for the lone survivor in this story.
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According to the coverage I was able to find, all of the Friars were convicted felons and had participated in crimes, including one incident where 24-year-old David had been caught as a teenager hanging out of a vehicle, shooting people with a .22 rifle. James, or JR as most people called him, was known to be quiet and kind of awkward. He reportedly had limited social skills and frightened people.
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According to the Associated Press, Nick Lamberto's reporting for the Des Moines Register and a piece by Thomas Slaughter for the Rapid City Journal. On November 17th, 1973, so the day the Gitche Manitou killings happened, J.R.
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was actually an inmate at nearby Minnehaha County Jail, but had been allowed out to participate in a work release program which permitted him to come and go from jail even though he was an inmate. Within a matter of hours of Allen being taken in for questioning, investigators got a hold of both David and J.R. too.
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When authorities put the brothers in a suspect lineup and asked Sandra to pick out her and her friend's attackers, she immediately pointed to the Fryer brothers. She stated that J.R. was the person who'd sexually assaulted her, David was the one who went by Hatchetface, and Allen was who the group had referred to as the boss.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Ilya D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to unpack today is one that I imagine very few of you have ever heard of. It's a story about one man's terrible death, but it's also a tale about a group of people's decisions to make a series of bad choices that ultimately led to murder and their own demise.
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When detectives pressed Amanda for more details, like what exactly they'd done with Christopher's body, she revealed that they'd gone to a Walmart and Lowe's home improvement store after the crime and purchased several gallons of bleach, a blacklight, and a big tote. She said Tim planned to use the blacklight at Crystal's apartment to try and find traces of blood.
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Tim paid for all the purchases in cash, and they then returned to Crystal's place to clean up the crime scene. Part of that process included mopping up Crystal's floor and stripping off all of their clothing and shoes. Tim also cut off Christopher's clothes and put everything in a trash bag.
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Amanda said she definitely remembered another man other than Tim helping them do all this stuff, but she wasn't 100% sure what the guy's name was. Later, though, she offered up the name Rusty Hyde. She described how Tim and Rusty moved Christopher's body into the tote, put the tote into Rusty's trunk, then they all drove to Cherokee National Forest.
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Shortly after pulling down a remote gravel road, they all got out and Tim and Rusty unloaded Christopher's body and poured gasoline on him. Then they lit him on fire. Afterwards, they rolled him down an embankment and left. On a trail about a quarter mile up the road, they burned Christopher's backpack, cell phone, and the trash bag full of everyone's clothing and shoes.
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Amanda's detailed confession was the break investigators needed. They now had a clearer picture of what had happened to Christopher. And perhaps equally as important, they knew that Tim and Crystal had not been truthful during their initial interviews. As part of her confession, Amanda agreed to take detectives to the location where she and her accomplices had dumped Christopher's body.
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It was a spot inside the National Forest near the Tennessee-North Carolina border that happened to be close to where some of Tim's relatives lived. By that point, it was early February and snow had fallen. Amanda and the investigators searched and searched, but they weren't able to find Christopher's body or the burn pile where the group had discarded the other evidence.
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Authorities realized their only option was to wait out the weather and come back when things cleared up. While they waited, they started digging into Rusty Hyde, the alleged fourth participant in the crime. They discovered that he had a criminal history in nearby Sullivan County and drove the type of vehicle that Amanda said Christopher's body was transported in.
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Around the same time detectives were learning about Rusty, they'd also gone to collect surveillance video from the fast food restaurant, the Walmart, the Lowe's in Kingsport, and all the places Amanda said that her group had been.
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According to police reports, they got lucky and found some footage of Amanda and her friends purchasing the items that they said they'd used to discard Christopher's body. Something I found interesting, though, is that before KPD interviewed Amanda on February 9th and got the surveillance video, they roped in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to help them with the case.
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KPD asked the TBI agents to examine some of the forensic and physical evidence the police department's crime scene techs had already taken from Crystal's apartment. Once all the paperwork went through, that stuff was sent off to the TBI's crime lab in Knoxville for testing.
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But police reports also stated that the TBI then processed Crystal's apartment a second time on February 11th, a few days after Amanda gave her confession. I have to imagine their reason for doing this was just to make sure nothing was overlooked.
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But while the TBI was there, they spoke with a few of Crystal's neighbors, who told them that they suspected drug activity had been going on at her apartment. But other than that, it doesn't seem like her neighbors saw anything else that was useful to the investigation.
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The next day, February 12th, the police spoke with one of Rusty Hyde's brothers, who informed them that the car Rusty had been driving in December of 2015 was now in a car sales lot he worked at. Rusty's brother said when Rusty had brought it to him, he'd cleaned it out.
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I imagine that was not what authorities wanted to hear, but still, they took the car as evidence and did their own sweep just in case some evidence might have been left behind. The source material doesn't specify, though, if they ever found anything. Shortly after all of that, detectives got a hold of Rusty and he agreed to do an interview.
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He told them straight up that he'd helped Tim, Crystal, and Amanda dispose of Christopher's body a few days after Christmas Day in 2015. Much of his story matched with Amanda's confession. What's wild to me, though, is that Rusty wasn't taken into custody at that time. It appears the police just let him walk.
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On Wednesday, January 27th, 2016, a detective corporal with the Kingsport Police Department in Tennessee named Martin Taylor was on his desk phone speaking with a woman named Melissa. Melissa told Martin that she was worried. She hadn't heard from her brother, 39-year-old Christopher West, since December 1st, 2015, nearly two months earlier. And it wasn't like he'd only been absent from her life.
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While searching the location where Amanda had told them to look for Christopher's body, investigators stumbled across a set of badly decomposed human remains in the area that Snow had previously kept them from traversing. Only this time, the ground wasn't covered in snow, and the remains were clearly visible from about 25 yards off the side of the road.
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Authorities also found a burn pile with charred remnants of a computer, clothing, smartphone, and blue rubber gloves. The next day, a pathologist at a local medical college conducted an autopsy on the human remains. And not long after that, confirmed they belonged to Christopher. With his body officially found, investigators could now set their sights on closing in on all of the alleged killers.
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It took a few months for the case to come together, but on April 20th, 2016, almost four months after Christopher was last seen alive and two months after his remains were discovered, the Kingsport Police Department arrested Tim, Crystal, and Amanda for first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. They were each held under a $500,000 bond.
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The arrests came as a result of a grand jury indictment, and Rusty Hyde was never charged. At the time of her arrest, Crystal was in Mount Carmel, Tennessee, and Tim and Amanda were being housed at the Sullivan County Jail for unrelated crimes. In June, the defendants appeared in court for the first time and their trial was scheduled for February of 2017.
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A few months later, in August, with a seemingly rock solid case against them, they all ended up pleading guilty to second degree murder and abuse of a corpse. Based on what I read in the police documents, it seems like the prosecutors agreed to downgrade the first degree murder charges to second degree murder.
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First degree almost certainly would have meant more prison time, and second degree obviously was less. When they were sentenced in August and September 2017, Crystal and Amanda each got 25 years in prison, and Tim was given 32 years.
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During the sentencing hearing, Christopher's brother-in-law, Robert, spoke in court and expressed that Christopher was like a brother to him and losing him was devastating to his entire family, including his wife, Melissa, and Christopher's nieces and nephews who considered him to be their favorite family member.
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He explained to all of the defendants that forgiving them was going to be difficult and remarked, quote, The Bible says forgive and we are not to judge. My faith and more importantly, my wife's faith has carried us to this point. I hope that every day of your sentence is just a preview of your time in hell.
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I will forgive someday, but I will never forgive what you have taken from me, my family, and this world. You had no right. End quote. In his interview with me, Robert said that it took everything in him to get those words out and not explode with anger in court. He told me he's still angry with the situation and upset with what the defendants took away from his wife and his children.
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Melissa told me that she agreed with prosecutors to not go to trial against the defendants because, in her heart, she just wanted the whole thing to be over. Her perspective then and now is that vengeance isn't hers, and she firmly believes that the defendants will receive their fair punishment either in this life or whatever comes next. Today, Tim McEachern remains in prison in Tennessee.
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He's 53 years old and isn't scheduled for release until the year 2040. Amanda is 37 and still incarcerated. She won't get out of prison until 2038. Crystal is 34 and still serving time at a penitentiary in Tennessee. Her sentence is scheduled to end in 2037. Something important I took away from researching the story is just how important every single choice is that we make in this life.
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To Melissa's knowledge, Christopher hadn't contacted any of his family members or friends since that date, which Melissa indicated to Martin was unusual. Martin told Melissa that he and his colleagues would investigate what was going on and open a missing persons case for Christopher. However, in the back of Martin's mind, he couldn't shake a sinking feeling.
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From the people we associate ourselves with to the situations we find ourselves in, to the lines we're willing to cross. Everything we do in life comes down to making good or bad choices. It's clear from law enforcement's records that even Christopher himself had made mistakes in his life.
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His sister Melissa told me that he'd fallen into drug use and their relationship had good moments and bad moments before his murder. For example, in late October 2015, a few months before he was killed, Christopher had gotten out of jail after spending four years behind bars.
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He and Melissa had an argument sometime around Thanksgiving, and she told me that the last thing she said to her brother was, when he found God, he would find her. Despite Christopher's rough lifestyle, that still doesn't mean he deserved what happened to him.
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Robert, his brother-in-law, told me that he and his wife would not have been surprised if Christopher's death had come from some other means related to drugs, but they never thought in a million years that anything like this would happen to him.
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And something I want to address, because it's an important point Melissa and Robert noted in their conversation with me, is that during Crystal's interview with police, she retracted her claim that Christopher had sexually assaulted her. Melissa told me that she and her family always believed that accusation was a lie because Christopher was not the type of person to do such a thing.
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Melissa said that Christopher wasn't an aggressive person, even when he was using drugs, and that false accusation that Crystal made about her brother bothered her for a long time, until she was finally informed by police that Crystal had admitted to the whole thing being a lie.
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It would seem from the source material that methamphetamine use by all of the defendants was a contributing factor in their decision-making. Particularly Tim's, but how much so, I don't know. That's a question only he can answer. From everything I was able to gather about Christopher, it seems like he had a rough go in life.
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But still, he was a human being with family members and friends who still love and miss him very much. Melissa says Christmas Day in their household has never been the same. One of her sons has even named his children after Christopher to try and keep his memory alive. The fact that the beauty of Cherokee National Forest was used to try and cover up his grisly murder is a disturbing thought.
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Had it not been for better weather descending upon his final resting place, who knows, he may have never been found. I guess in a way, he has nature to thank for revealing the one thing that allowed investigators to take his case across the finish line. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.
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The Accomplices
And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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The Accomplices
You see, just one day earlier, on January 26th, another detective from his department had shared with him that a confidential informant for KPD had reported a possible murder of a man in Kingsport. That murder had apparently happened in December 2015.
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This case is so obscure that I could not have covered it without access to the police reports. Thanks to some digging and a helpful chat with one of the investigators who worked the case, as well as the victim's closest relatives, I got a hold of all the information I needed, and I think I've crafted what is probably the most comprehensive telling of this story to date.
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Martin understood this information had come secondhand from a CI who wasn't one of his, so he wasn't sure how legit the story was without doing some further investigating. He also had no way of knowing if the alleged murder victim his colleague claimed the CI was talking about was connected to his missing persons case. But call it a cop's instinct because Martin definitely had his suspicions.
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According to police reports, between January 26th and January 27th, he started poking around and speaking with some other detectives at KPD. What he learned was that the CI who'd contacted his colleague was a local woman named Andrea Mullins. Andrea's story was that on January 16th, 2016, she'd picked up her 28-year-old daughter, Amanda LaForce, from jail in nearby Sullivan County.
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And while they were driving, they'd talked in the car. Amanda confessed to her mom that she, her boyfriend, Tim McEachern, and another one of her friends named Crystal Lane had killed a man on Christmas Day at Crystal's apartment in Kingsport.
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According to what Amanda told her mom, sometime in mid-December, Crystal had disclosed to her and Tim that a guy who went by the nickname Smurf had sexually assaulted her. Crystal's claim had upset Amanda and Tim so much that together, the trio had come up with a plan to retaliate against Smurf for the assault.
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Amanda told her mom that on Christmas Day, she and Crystal had asked Smurf to come to Crystal's apartment under the guise that the three of them would have sex together as a group. When he arrived, though, the women and Tim ambushed him, tied him up with duct tape, beat him, and killed him. Afterwards, they transported Smurf's body to a national park.
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To make sure he wasn't found, they set him on fire and rolled him several hundred feet down an embankment. After that, they drove a little further down the road and discarded Smurf's backpack and set his clothing on fire. Then they spent several days cleaning up Crystal's apartment to remove evidence of what they'd done.
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Now, Andrea's story was pretty wild and KPD detectives were initially a bit wary of taking it at face value because when questioned further, she'd indicated she wasn't even sure if the information was true. Plus, she couldn't provide investigators with Smurf's true identity or a specific location of where his body allegedly had been dumped.
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But authorities couldn't just sit on this information and do nothing. So despite not having a body and only Andrea's word to go on, Martin and two other detectives decided to dig a bit further into the four people who were supposedly involved in this situation. They uncovered that Smurf was in fact an alias for Christopher West.
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And he'd been a confidential informant in a recent KPD homicide investigation. He also had a criminal record in Kingsport dating back to 2012 for everything from drugs to theft to shoplifting. According to a news release issued by KPD, Christopher was described as having short brown buzzed hair, brown eyes, a thin mustache, goatee, and weighed 160 pounds.
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At the time, authorities couldn't find a permanent address for him, but they did say a noticeable feature was a blue rose tattoo in the middle of the back of his neck. Amanda LaForse, Andrea's daughter, had a criminal history too, and her boyfriend, 44-year-old Tim McEachern, also had a few run-ins with the law.
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It happened in 2015 in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest, which is a roughly 650,000-acre tract of public land divided by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The National Forest butts up to other national forests in neighboring states like Virginia and North Carolina. And if you've ever been there, then you know this is a special and beautiful place.
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Police reports indicate that he'd been suspected of several area burglaries and was accused of beating up a man. 25-year-old Crystal Lane was the other woman in their friend group, and she'd been picked up for an unrelated drugs and weapons case not long before Christopher was reported missing.
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So on the afternoon of January 27th, with all this information in hand, KPD detectives paid Crystal a visit. However, when they got to her apartment, they discovered the front door was ajar and everything inside had seemingly been ransacked. Crystal wasn't there and the unit was in such a state of disarray that the investigators naturally thought a burglary had occurred.
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There were some personal items strewn on the floor, dresser drawers tossed open and emptied, and Crystal's couch had also been turned over. Not long after discovering the messy scene, a detective spoke with one of Crystal's neighbors, who told them that Crystal was at the Hawkins County Jail. Right away, the investigators verified that information and went over to the jail to interview her.
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According to police reports, she agreed to chat, but immediately denied any involvement in a murder and said she'd never been sexually assaulted by Smurf, aka Christopher West. When investigators pressed her about what she'd been doing on Christmas Day 2015, she explained that she'd had Christopher, Amanda, Tim, and two other men over at her place.
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But at some point that evening, Christopher had left with Amanda and one of the other guys to go buy drugs. Shortly after that, she said Tim left too, and about an hour later, everyone returned to her apartment except Christopher. She told authorities she didn't know where he was or if anything had happened to him.
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The best she could do was give them the names of a few people she knew he hung around with. Investigators also asked Crystal if they could search her apartment and she agreed. Then they ended the interview. And I imagine hope that more information would come to light as they kept working.
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The next day, January 28th, Detective Martin Taylor spoke with an incarcerated friend of Christopher's named Larry, who told them that he was really worried something bad had happened to Christopher. Larry said that his wife would get a call from Christopher on a daily basis, but she had not heard from him since 10 p.m. on Christmas Day.
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There had also been no recent activity on Christopher's Facebook profile, which was also something Larry said was out of the norm. Around the same time police were getting that information from Larry, they'd gone to Crystal's apartment and searched it for forensic evidence that might be related to a homicide.
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According to police reports, amongst all the junk and mess laying around, they found a reddish brown stain, which they believed could be blood. That same day, they connected with Melissa, Christopher's sister, and one of his friends who provided them with two phone numbers for him.
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Detectives traced those numbers, but unfortunately, the ping data could only show them that the phones associated with those numbers were turned off and had been for a while. Authorities couldn't determine where the devices had last been used or who Christopher had last contacted.
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From reading the source material, it seems like the phone numbers he had might have belonged to prepaid phones because one police report stated that one of the numbers was due to expire in January 2016, which makes me think Christopher probably didn't have a standard cell phone situation.
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A stretch of the Appalachian Trail cuts through it and there are some really spectacular wooded areas that lead to panoramic views, quiet creeks, serene rivers, and several waterfalls. You can camp, go rafting in seven whitewater rivers, meander on scenic drives, or stay at one of the many campgrounds.
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Anyway, investigators also learned from speaking with that friend who'd given them one of Christopher's numbers that he'd sent them a Facebook message at 10.04 p.m. on Christmas night, wishing them a happy holiday. After that, the friend hadn't heard from Christopher again and said that he'd stopped responding to their messages altogether.
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By February 1st, investigators felt pretty confident that something was amiss. So they went back to speak with Crystal Lane again at the Hawkins County Jail. She agreed to let authorities take a sample of her DNA to compare to that reddish-brown stain in her apartment, but she refused to do another interview.
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That same day, the police department got a call from a neighboring sheriff's office in Virginia that told them Amanda LaForse's brother was reporting that she'd confessed to killing Christopher. So if you're keeping track, Amanda's brother and her mother, Andrea, are both saying that Amanda had spoken about committing a murder sometime in December 2015.
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The one person who KPD investigators hadn't spoke with yet or been contacted about was Tim McEachern. So Detective Martin Taylor decided to run a bit of a ruse to see if he could get Tim to willingly come into the police department for an interview, but just not tell him exactly what it was about.
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Martin's pitch to Tim over the phone was that he wanted to talk to him about a report of a stolen vehicle. Tim voluntarily came in to talk with authorities, but after a few minutes, the focus of his interview shifted from a discussion about a stolen car to Christopher West being missing.
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According to police reports, Tim told detectives that the last time he'd seen Christopher was on December 25th at Crystal's apartment. He said that Amanda and Crystal had arranged to have group sex with Christopher and Tim, but Christopher apparently hadn't been told that another guy was gonna be involved in the sexual activity.
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So Tim said when Christopher arrived, he was a bit surprised and embarrassed. And after about an hour, Tim said Christopher left to go buy drugs with a guy Tim didn't know. Not long after that, Tim said he, Amanda, and Crystal got dinner from a local fast food restaurant and went driving for about two hours before calling it a night.
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When detectives pressed him for more details about Christopher, Tim said he didn't know where he was and denied assaulting him or having any involvement in his disappearance. Tim suggested that Crystal's claim that Christopher had sexually assaulted her could be true, but as far as he knew, that story was just a rumor.
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Before the interview ended, Tim told police that it was common knowledge that the Aryan Nation gang operated in the area and collected drug debts from people. He seemed to suggest that it may have been one of those folks who was responsible for whatever had happened to Christopher.
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The day after authorities interviewed Tim, they visited Amanda LaForse's brother and mother in Virginia because they needed to get even more detail from Andrea about Amanda's so-called confession. They were going to need a lot more ammo to try and crack Tim and Crystal.
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According to police reports, Andrea claimed that her daughter claimed to have used a small baseball bat and taken turns with Crystal beating Christopher. Tim had reportedly come over ahead of time and hid inside Crystal's apartment to help the women.
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Andrea's statements to police include a lot of other horrific details that I don't think are necessary to go into for the sake of Christopher's loved ones potentially hearing this episode. But what's important to know is that in the end, Andrea said Amanda claimed it was Tim who delivered the final blow that killed Christopher.
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And afterwards, the trio stored his body in Crystal's laundry room and went to a local Walmart to buy a tote and cleaning supplies. Two days later, on the morning of December 27th, they'd placed his body in a tarp, put him in the tote, carried him to the trunk of a car, and transported him to Cherokee National Forest, which was about an hour and a half away from Crystal's apartment.
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On their way to dispose of him, the trio stopped for breakfast and joked about whether Christopher would want a bite to eat. When they arrived in the forest, they used gasoline to set him on fire and eventually pushed his body down a steep embankment.
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On their way out of the area, they'd burned all of their clothing along with Christopher's at a remote spot about a quarter mile down the road from where they'd left his body. Unfortunately, investigators still didn't know where this alleged dump site was located.
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And just like the first time they'd heard this story, the information was only coming from Andrea, not directly from Crystal, Tim, or Amanda. But that was about to change, because there was still one member of the group who investigators had not personally spoken with face-to-face. And what she had to say would bust the case wide open.
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On February 9th, 2016, almost two weeks after Christopher was first reported missing, Kingsport police detectives interviewed Amanda LaForce in person. At the time, she was sitting in the city jail for an unrelated incident involving a stolen vehicle. Around 10.15 in the morning, investigators sat her down and asked her if she knew anything about Christopher West's disappearance.
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Amanda willingly agreed to chat with detectives and offered up a confession of sorts. She said that a few days before Christmas 2015, her friend Crystal had disclosed to Tim that she'd been sexually assaulted by Christopher. That information reportedly made Tim so enraged that he expressed he wanted to harm Christopher for what he'd allegedly done to Crystal.
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Amanda said the trio then came up with a ruse to lure Christopher to Crystal's apartment on Christmas Day so that Tim and Crystal could enact retribution. She said as soon as Christopher walked into Crystal's front door, Tim, wearing a ski mask, ambushed him in the kitchen and put him in a chokehold. After that, Amanda said she overheard Tim and Crystal beating him with a small baseball bat.
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She claimed that she left the room during the assault and went upstairs because she didn't want to be involved. However, a short time later, she overheard Tim and Crystal talking about how if she, Amanda, wasn't going to join them in the crime, then they might need to take care of her, too.
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Amanda said that statement frightened her, so from that point forward, she'd come downstairs and decided to go along with what Tim and Crystal were doing to seemingly protect herself. She told detectives that when she came back downstairs, she saw Christopher bound with tape lying motionless on a blanket.
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Tim then confirmed that he was dead, and he and Crystal dragged his body into her laundry room. Amanda told authorities that she and her friends had all been doing crystal meth prior to Christopher coming over. And she swore she had no idea that Tim and Crystal were actually going to kill him. She just thought they were going to beat him up.
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The Trappers
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today requires a little bit of time travel. It took place more than 100 years ago at Little and Big Lava Lakes in Oregon's Deschutes National Forest. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website, Little Lava Lake sits about half-mile south of Big Lava Lake.
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Investigators were dealing with an imposter, and most likely someone who was directly involved in Ed, Dewey, and Roy's disappearance. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence that the three men had last been seen alive on January 15th, and then just a few days later, someone pretending to be one of them showed up in Portland hawking the very fox pelts that were missing from the cabin.
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One of the men who sold the furs was described as about 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighed roughly 150 pounds, and had donned a beaver skin hat and khaki clothes. The day after learning about this lead, authorities got a tip that the fifth missing fox skin had been sold in the Klamath Falls area of Oregon, which is about five hours south of Portland and two hours south of Bend.
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By April 21st, Deputy Sheriff Adams and a colleague had traveled to that area to investigate. But according to news coverage at the time, that lead turned out to be a dead end and not related to the case. When Investigator Adams returned to Little and Big Lava Lakes and resumed his investigation on April 23rd, that's when things in the case changed dramatically. Around 5.30 p.m.
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on that day, while walking to Big Lava Lake with Hervey Ennis to catch some fish for what I presume was everyone out at the lake's dinner for the evening, Adams and Hervey spotted three objects floating near one another on the surface of the water in a spot where some ice had thawed and broken up. The pair immediately got into a boat and headed toward the dark objects.
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When they arrived, it became obvious the ominous shapes were the bodies of the three missing trappers. According to Melanie Tupper's book and coverage by the Oregonian, Ed and Roy were both face down in the water and Dewey was face up.
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All three were quickly identified by folks present at the scene who knew them, and shortly afterward, their bodies were transported a short distance from shore and anchored in the water until the coroner could arrive. That night, Deputy Sheriff Adams traveled back to Bend to inform his boss of the discovery.
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Meanwhile, Ed Logan and Hervey Ennis stayed at the lava lakes to watch over the trappers and make sure no one messed with their bodies. As far as what was found with the men and what kind of injuries they sustained, the available source material varies a little bit, but overall, here's what I gathered.
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Dewey, the youngest of the trio, had been struck in the head with some sort of blunt object, possibly a hammer, and he'd also been shot in his left forearm with a shotgun. A hat was reported to be either still on him or floating in the water or ice nearby. Ed, the eldest, had been shot in the head with a shotgun, but a pair of glasses were reportedly somehow still on his face when he was found.
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He'd also been shot at least once in his throat with a .38 caliber round from a revolver. Roy had been shot in the head with a revolver, and the bullet was said to have entered near the back of his right ear. He'd also sustained a wound to his right shoulder from a shotgun. Both of his injuries appeared to have come from the shooter standing behind him when they fired.
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All three victims' manners of death were eventually ruled as homicide, and their date of death was determined to be on or soon after January 15, 1924. Dewey left behind his mom and sister, who lived in Portland, and several other siblings. Ed was survived by two daughters and several brothers and sisters. Roy was mourned by his mom, Sarah, and two sisters.
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Interestingly, when all of them were found, none of them were dressed in attire that you'd typically wear in cold weather. So no heavy coats, jackets, nothing like that. which kind of surprised investigators because it seemed odd that the seasoned outdoorsman would have ventured into the cold without at least a jacket on.
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By mid-April 1924, a woman named Sarah Wilson was extremely worried. You see, it had been several months since her 36-year-old son, Harry Leroy Wilson, who often just went by Roy, had left their home in Bend, Oregon and headed about 25 miles southwest to Little Lava Lake in Deschutes National Forest. The last time Sarah had physically seen Roy was around Christmas of 1923.
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Based on this observation, the predominant theory investigators ran with was that someone had likely lured the three men out of the cabin while they were in the middle of eating or settling in for the day. That's based on what I gathered.
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That would explain why they'd left their boots inside and not put on more appropriate clothing, not to mention food, which was in the middle of being cooked and eaten, was abandoned. Also, the Oregonian reported an interesting detail about Ed Nichols' glasses. Apparently, he had two different pairs, one for seeing when he was outside and another for just reading.
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And it was the pair for reading that was still on his face when he was discovered in the lake. So that detail only further supported law enforcement's theory that he and the others had most likely been inside the cabin when something or someone got their attention to make them curious enough to go outside.
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The Trappers
That same piece by the Oregonian also stated that during a subsequent search of the cabin on April 24th, authorities had located a hammer with blood on it buried in the dirt floor of the cabin.
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The Trappers
In light of all that information and findings from the coroner's review of the men's bodies, Deputy Sheriff Adams told local newspapers that he believed at least two people had been involved in the murders, with one acting as a distraction to get the three trappers out of their cabin and the other lying in wait to ambush them.
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Adams explained that the evidence he'd gathered so far strongly indicated the attackers shot and beat the victims closer to the cabin and then loaded their bodies onto the wooden sled and transported them to Big Lava Lake to dispose of them in the ice.
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I said shot and beat in that last part because it was believed that perhaps Dewey had initially been able to make a run for it but then was overtaken east of the cabin and bludgeoned to death, which explained the partial skull fragments that had been observed in that location early on.
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Adams said that after committing the crime, the assailants had stolen whatever animal pelts the victims had already produced for the season and then skinned the live foxes near the cabin for additional furs. On April 25th, more than three months after Ed, Dewey, and Roy were last seen alive, all of them were buried side by side at Greenwood Cemetery in Bend.
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That same day, the county coroner's inquest concluded, and he determined that all of the men had been shot with what he described as heavy game shot, and it was possible at least one of the victims' own firearms had been used in the crime. Though that's not a fact I saw emphasized in later reporting, so I'm unsure how accurate that is.
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What's wild to me, though, is that around this same time, more information about the blood previously taken from the crime scene was discussed publicly. Apparently back when that one sample from the wooden sled had first been tested and determined not to be human, that was incorrect.
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After the first microscopic exam, the sheriff had sent the blood sample to what was known at the time as the University of Oregon Medical School for a second opinion from a pathologist. And wouldn't you know it, when analysis from that testing came back in late April after the bodies were found, it was confirmed as human.
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I'm not sure who the heck had looked at the sample the first time around, but whoever they were, they were not very good at their job because they were definitely wrong.
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But with that issue finally cleared up, it meant that law enforcement's journey was kind of just beginning, because now they needed to hone in on a killer or killers, which required them to consider a handful of scenarios and figure out if any of the three victims might have had enemies.
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The Trappers
Initially, Dewey's brother, Owen, and Roy's brother-in-law, Hervey, had indicated that to their knowledge, none of the men were at odds with anyone. But upon closer inspection, that wasn't exactly true.
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The Trappers
According to coverage by the Bend Bulletin, in early April 1923, so less than a year before Ed, Dewey, and Roy were killed, Dewey had been tried in Bend for sexually assaulting a young woman in his car in November 1922. That trial was super short, and it took jurors just seven minutes to find him not guilty.
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The Trappers
I wish I could tell you more about this situation and how the outcome was viewed by the community or the victim and her family, but there's very little coverage still out there about it, and I don't really know anything more than what I just told you.
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The Trappers
At that time, he and one of his friends, 53-year-old Ed Nichols, had traveled from a cabin they worked at at Little Lava Lake to spend time with loved ones for the holidays. Sometime shortly after the festivities ended, the men departed and traveled back to the rural cabin. Joining them was another friend, 23-year-old Dewey Morris, who'd actually worked with Roy as a logger in the past.
Park Predators
The Trappers
Melanie Tupper wrote in her book, The Trapper Murders, that the young woman in that case came from a prominent family, and after the trial concluded, the whole thing was written about by the press at the time as sort of a laughable matter. But it definitely sticks out to me that this trial happened fewer than nine months before Dewey and his friends were eventually murdered.
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The Trappers
It's hard not to wonder if maybe there could have been some kind of connection. But I'm not sure that law enforcement back in the day was willing or able to make that kind of leap.
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The Trappers
Because according to the available source material, one of the stronger theories law enforcement latched onto very quickly was that someone who'd had a vendetta or beef with perhaps the cabin's owner, Ed Logan, or one of the trappers themselves was responsible. Turns out there was such a person. His name was Charles Kimsey.
Park Predators
The Trappers
According to an article by Scott Elness for Central Oregon Daily News and other sources, in the early 1920s, both Alan Wilcoxon and Ed Logan had employed Charles at their businesses. In fact, the then 38-year-old had worked specifically during the 1922-1923 trapping season alongside Ed Nichols around the Lava Lakes. And just like Ed Nichols, he was responsible for tending to Ed Logan's fox farm.
Park Predators
The Trappers
At that time, though, it seems as if Charles had gone by the alias Lee Collins. So apparently neither Ed Logan or Ed Nichols knew him by his true identity, Charles Kimsey. If they had, they would have learned he was a wanted fugitive from Idaho who was on the run absconding from a 14-year prison sentence.
Park Predators
The Trappers
In the spring of 1923, Ed Logan had a disagreement with Charles, and as a result, Charles ended up stealing furs, jewelry, and money from him and Ed Nichols. After that, he fled the area.
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The Trappers
Within a few weeks, his real identity became known to the press because according to articles by the Bend Bulletin and the Oregonian, he committed a vicious robbery in August of 1923, not far from Bend, which involved carjacking and kidnapping. In that incident though, the victim survived.
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The Trappers
Charles wasn't immediately caught for that offense, which meant during the timeframe that Ed, Dewey, and Roy were killed, his whereabouts were unknown. In late 1923 and early January 1924, there had been some suspected sightings of an unknown man or person riding on horseback in Lapine, which was the closest town to the Lava Lake's cabin.
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The Trappers
But no one could definitively put Charles in the company of the three trappers. And it's not like anyone confirmed that that unknown person on the horse was Charles.
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The Trappers
But interestingly, Roy Wilson had served in the United States Marine Corps during World War I, and even though he hadn't spent time overseas, he was still a trained Marine and was described as a rugged person who would have probably had the skills necessary to fight off an attacker, or at least put up a decent fight if he'd seen one coming.
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The Trappers
His background might explain why Ed Nichols invited him to spend the winter with him in Dewey at Ed Logan's remote cabin in 1924. You know, to have a little extra muscle around. Especially considering the fact that Ed Nichols knew that Charles Kimsey, who'd already robbed him and Ed Logan once before, was still at large.
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The Trappers
To do their due diligence, authorities in Portland decided to show a photo of Charles to the police officer who'd bumped into those two fur sellers. You know, the pair that reportedly went on to sell several pelts to Carl Schumacher? Well, when that officer saw Charles' picture, he identified him as one of the men in that duo who'd been hawking the furs.
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The Trappers
Before setting off with his companions, Roy told his mom that he'd come home sometime in February. But when that month came and then went, and then the next, and Roy was still not home, that's when Sarah realized something wasn't right. It's hard to tell from the available source material if she got in contact with Ed or Dewey's family members during this time.
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The Trappers
Carl, on the other hand, though, couldn't make a 100% I.D., He said that Charles Kimsey sort of looked like the man who'd sold him the furs, but he couldn't be absolutely sure. He was kind of incredulous about the whole thing, telling the Oregonian, quote, I remember the fellow well. You would think that a man with that crime hanging over him would be secretive and nervous, but he was not.
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I remember him so well because he stayed in the store and talked so long, end quote. With suspicions mounting about Charles' potential involvement in the triple homicide at Lava Lakes, the sheriff of Deschutes County issued a $1,500 reward for his capture, which, remember, back then was a lot of money.
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The Trappers
Investigators in Idaho learned from a woman who'd been close with Charles there that he might have returned to the Lava Lakes cabin in January 1924 to enact retribution against Ed Nichols. because he was still holding a grudge about what had happened with his job the previous year.
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The Trappers
As the investigation progressed, law enforcement learned that between January 19th and January 22nd, 1924, Charles and an unknown associate had been spotted at cabins along the McKenzie River, which is northwest of the Lava Lakes. So, essentially en route to that fur store where the stolen fox pelts were sold.
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The Trappers
Unfortunately, though, Charles seemed to stay one step ahead of investigators and eluded arrest for months, and then years. He didn't resurface again until mid-February 1933, nearly a decade after the Trapper murders. According to coverage by the Bend Bulletin, he was captured near Kalispell, Montana after living for a while under an alias and residing as a recluse off the grid.
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The Trappers
During the 10 years or so he'd lived on the lam, he'd been suspected of several more crimes, which included forgery, theft, and the attempted murder of a Montanan sheep herder and the murder of an architect from Utah, whose skeletal remains were found dumped near Las Vegas, Nevada in 1927. When Charles was finally captured in 1933, he was 47 years old.
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The Trappers
It took a few weeks for law enforcement officials to confirm his identity from his fingerprints. However, once his identity was proven and arrest warrants for murder were issued against him for the Lava Lake slayings, he denied any involvement in or having knowledge of that crime. He claimed when the murders happened, he was all the way in Colorado working on a railroad tunnel project.
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The Trappers
That alibi was proven false, though, when investigators looked into it and determined that he'd only worked on the tunnel project from December 16th, 1923 until January 6th, 1924, meaning he could have had time to travel from Colorado to Oregon in order to commit the murders.
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The Trappers
Melanie Tupper explained in her book that when Charles was brought back to Oregon in March 1933, he was questioned about the Trapper murders and put in a police lineup. The Portland police officer who 10 years earlier had identified him from a photograph as one of the men who'd been looking to sell furs could no longer pick him out, likely due to so much time going by.
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The Trappers
Carl Schumacher was also unable to identify Charles from the lineup, again, likely because nearly a decade had passed by that point. So the first case Charles was indicted for and went to trial for was not the triple homicide, but rather the assault and robbery he'd committed the summer before where the victim survived.
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The Trappers
Though the court proceeding for that case had nothing to do with the Trapper murders, many of the people who attended the trial were more interested in the Lava Lakes case than anything else. News coverage from the Times stated that no less than 150 people crowded into the courtroom to watch the trial, despite those proceedings not really getting into the unsolved homicides.
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The Trappers
But what I can tell you is that she was not the only relative who was worried about the overdue men. On Sunday, April 13th, one of Dewey's brothers named Owen Morris and Roy's brother-in-law, Hervey Ennis, decided to go out to Little Lava Lake and figure out what was going on.
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The Trappers
The robbery and assault trial wrapped up on April 22, 1933, with a conviction. And though a lot of people over the years have incorrectly assumed Charles was found guilty of the Trapper murders in those proceedings... He actually wasn't. He was only found guilty of robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon, thanks mostly to the surviving victim of that crime testifying against him in court.
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The Trappers
Charles was sentenced to life in prison, the maximum sentence the judge could give him. Interestingly, in 1940, about seven years into his sentence, when he came up for parole, he listed Alan Wilcoxson as a character witness. You know, someone who was supposed to say good things about him.
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The Trappers
And that's so wild to me because Alan was also the last person who saw Ed, Dewey, and Roy the night they were believed to have been attacked and killed. So what this means is that Charles was close enough to Alan to trust him to be a character witness in front of the parole board, which ultimately resulted in him getting put into a work release program versus serving all of his time behind bars.
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The Trappers
Author Melanie Tupper pointed out in her book that a few years prior to operating Elk Lake Camp near the Lava Lakes, Alan Wilcoxon had befriended Charles and possibly even dabbled in distilling moonshine in the Cascade Lakes region. which was an endeavor that very easily could have involved Charles. Whether there's any truth to that allegation, though, is something we'll probably never know.
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The Trappers
As far as is documented, Allen was never considered a suspect in the murders. In 1927, a few years after the crime and several years before Charles would ever be apprehended, the lead investigator for Deschutes County Sheriff's Office in the Trapper homicides, Clarence Adams, died in an automobile accident and was unable to continue pursuing the case.
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The Trappers
It's worth noting, though, that Charles Kimsey didn't stay out of trouble for long. After 1940, he was assigned to that work release type program I mentioned a second ago, but escaped from that in 1945, only to be caught and sent back to prison until he was paroled for good in August of 1957.
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The Trappers
According to Melanie Tupper's book, he lived the rest of his life a free man and died in 1976 in his early 90s. If he was the true perpetrator of the Lava Lakes murders, he never faced justice for those crimes. And any suspected accomplice he may have had has also skirted responsibility.
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The Trappers
The cabin where the murders occurred is said to be long gone, and its exact location remains a mystery due to how much time has passed and development has come to that region. It was believed to be somewhere in the woods near the northern shore of Little Lava Lake.
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The Trappers
Weather conditions had improved greatly by that time, and so the roads were clear enough for them to drive some of the way and then snowshoe about seven miles or so to get to the trapper's cabin. The terrain they had to trek on foot wasn't treacherous, but it also wasn't a cakewalk. There was still a lot of snow on the ground. But eventually, Hervey and Owen did make it to the cabin.
Park Predators
The Trappers
In the years since the crime, three buttes roughly six miles southeast of the lake were named the Three Trappers in honor of Ed, Dewey, and Roy. Something I read while researching this case that stuck out to me had to do with Sarah Wilson, Roy's mother. A few articles I saw reiterated that from the get-go, she suspected something nefarious had befallen her only son.
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The Trappers
Despite family members and friends early on trying to talk her out of those fears, she insisted that Roy and his companions had been murdered. No one seemed to listen to her until the truth finally surfaced. Maybe this is a reminder that sometimes mothers know best, perhaps better than most. A quick reminder that Park Predators is off next week.
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The Trappers
But don't worry, I'll be back the following week with another episode. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Park Predators
The Trappers
Both bodies of water are byproducts of lava flows that, a long time ago, formed dams on their shorelines. Even though Little Lava is only 130 acres in size, it's actually the source of the Deschutes River, so talk about small but powerful. Both lakes are also teeming with trout, whitefish, and other species of fish.
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However, when they arrived, no one was there. Unsure of what else to do, the pair looked around inside and noticed a few things that seemed unusual. Dishes were left sitting on a table and utensils and cookware with food still on them were laying around and showed signs of mold. Firearms and traps were also inside the cabin and trash was scattered on the floor.
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The Trappers
There was extra clothing and supplies that didn't appear to have been used. Hervey and Owen also found boots and snowshoes that reportedly belonged to Ed, Dewey, and Roy, cleaned and left near the front door. There was also a calendar that was still displaying January as the month, not April.
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The Trappers
So it was almost like the cabin had been frozen in time for three months, which I imagine felt eerie to Hervey and Owen. Another clue that indicated no one had been there in a while was the presence of equipment that Ed, Dewey, and Roy would have normally used in their trapping duties. Except the stuff was in a state of neglect, which indicated the men had not been actively using it.
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The Trappers
Other than everything just seemingly sitting idle, there really wasn't anything that indicated a struggle or violent encounter had occurred. There was nothing like a note or message that explained where the missing trio was. When Hervey and Owen checked outside, they made another discovery that felt unusual.
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The Trappers
Several pens that the cabin's owner, a guy named Ed Logan, kept live foxes in were all empty. The source material doesn't state exactly how far these pens were from the cabin, but it's believed that the cages were close by.
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The Trappers
Anyway, the pens being vacant was not a good sign, so I imagine figuring out whether the foxes had somehow escaped on their own or if they'd been stolen, Hervey and Owen investigated the animals' food supply. But that only led to more questions, because when they checked the foxes' feed pans, they realized there was a lot of food still left in them.
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The Trappers
In fact, according to Melanie Tupper's book, The Trapper Murders, and coverage by the Bend Bulletin, Hervey and Owen had been informed before heading out to the cabin that food for the foxes had been delivered around January 13th, 1924. So a long time before they got there.
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The Trappers
And yet, when the two of them saw how much food was still untouched, they realized the foxes could not have been fed after mid-January. Around the same time Hervey and Owen noticed the empty fox pens and excess food, they came across something else even more alarming.
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The Trappers
In a patch of snow roughly 30 feet west of the cabin, the pair found what looked like a blood stain, three pistol shells and five shotgun shells. On the other side of the structure, about 10 feet away from the cabin, they stumbled across what appeared to be pieces of a skull.
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The Trappers
The source material doesn't say whether they collected any of that stuff, though, because additional coverage by author Melanie Tupper explains those items stayed in the snow for several more days. After clocking all these suspicious things, the men followed a pair of tracks in the snow that led from the cabin all the way to Big Lava Lake, which was at least a half mile away.
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The Trappers
The tracks ended near some ice on the shore of the lake right next to a six-foot-long wooden sled that Hervey and Owen recognized as belonging to Ed, Dewey, and Roy. It was the kind of sled you could pull by hand, and they were known to use it to haul things while doing work for Ed Logan. When Hervey and Owen found it, they noticed bloodstains on it, which again, probably gave them a bad feeling.
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The Trappers
The state record for the largest brook trout ever snagged in Little Lava Lake was nine pounds, six ounces. And that was back in 1980. Decades before that, though, something else was discovered in and around these bodies of water that made the history books. And it had nothing to do with fishing.
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Two days later, on April 15th, the sheriff of Deschutes County officially opened an investigation into the matter. He assigned a deputy sheriff named Clarence Adams to head up the search for the missing men and travel out to the cabin to piece together the bizarre scene that Hervey and Owen had found.
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The Trappers
And to say that Deputy Sheriff Adams was built to spearhead a case like this is an understatement. Turns out, prior to working for the sheriff's office, he'd been a game warden in the area and, as a result, was familiar with the landscape around both lava lakes. He also knew fairly well the 30-mile stretch of landscape where trappers like Ed, Dewey, and Roy would historically set their trap lines.
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The Trappers
In addition to the cabin the three men had been staying in, there were three other cabins on that 30-mile stretch of terrain, and investigator Adams planned to check all of those locations for clues.
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The Trappers
He needed to figure out if maybe something had happened to the missing men while they were out in the forest working their traps, or if they'd been victims of maybe a theft that turned into foul play.
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The Trappers
The latter was quickly becoming the strongest theory authorities were considering, probably because of the blood and firearm evidence that had been discovered, and the fact that no one had seemingly heard from any of the missing trappers in several months.
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The Trappers
To gather as much intel as possible, Deputy Sheriff Adams enlisted help from the acting supervisor of Deschutes National Forest and rangers in the Greater Cascade Lakes region. Through this network of people, he learned that an up-and-coming resort developer and businessman from near Bend named Alan Wilcoxon had visited with Ed, Dewey, and Roy on the evening of January 15, 1924.
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The Trappers
Allen operated the Elk Lake Camp, some five or six miles north of the lava lakes, and he knew Ed Logan, the man Ed Nichols and the others worked for. So since Allen's place was so close by, it made sense for him to pit stop at the cabin and see the trappers. When investigator Adams spoke with Allen, he said that while he'd been with the men, nothing had seemed out of the ordinary.
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The Trappers
They had a good evening together and chatted about how much money the three of them had made fur trapping over the winter, which was reportedly like $3,000 worth of skins at the going currency rate back then. On April 15th, Ed Logan, the owner of the remote cabin, along with two more of Dewey's brothers, traveled from Bend to the Lava Lakes to get involved in the investigation.
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The source material isn't super clear on specifics, but it appears those guys and others, along with members of law enforcement, formed an official search party for Ed, Dewey, and Roy at that point.
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The Trappers
Melanie Tupper's book, The Trapper Murders, refers to this search effort as the second search effort conducted for the men, since, you know, Hervey and Owen had technically been to the cabin first on their own.
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The Trappers
Anyway, on the 15th, during the second search, the sheriff also ordered a boat crew go out on Little Lava Lake and a nearby reservoir to see if the missing trappers had possibly fallen through the ice somewhere in those locations and become trapped.
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The Trappers
Back at the cabin, investigator Adams and other folks in the search party looking for Ed, Dewey, and Roy came across at least five fox carcasses that Hervey and Owen had seemingly missed during their initial trip. These carcasses were completely skinned of fur and discarded in some brush not far from the pens the animals were normally kept in.
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The Trappers
The foxes themselves were valued at around $1,800 for that time period, which would be somewhere in the ballpark of slightly more than $33,000 today. Now, what made the discovery of the carcasses so odd was the fact that there were no fox pelts anywhere inside or outside the cabin.
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The Trappers
So if Ed, Dewey, and Roy had killed the foxes and skinned them, it didn't really make sense that the furs were nowhere to be found. Unless for some reason the trio had left with the pelts and tried to sell them, but based on the available source material I could find, that wasn't something Ed Logan had tasked the men with or instructed them to do.
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The Trappers
There was also no sign that the missing men had tended any of their previously set trap lines. So law enforcement's growing suspicion was that something untoward had happened to them. The next day, April 16th, Deputy Sheriff Adams traveled back to Bend to fill in the sheriff about what he'd seen at the cabin and what was going on with the investigation.
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The Trappers
On that return trip, he'd brought with him a sample of the blood that had been found on the wooden sled abandoned at Big Lava Lake. Deep down, investigator Adams was one of those folks who suspected murder was afoot.
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The Trappers
And he thought that the blood might belong to one of the missing men if perhaps they'd been killed closer to the cabin and then their bodies were transported on the sled and dumped in the lake. As interesting of a theory as that was though, when results from a microscopic examination of the blood came back two days later on April 18th, the findings indicated it wasn't human.
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The Trappers
No source material confirms for sure whether whoever examined it suggested it could have belonged to a fox or some kind of other animal, but at that point in the case, the blood was not believed to have come from a person. Still, law enforcement strongly suspected that the three missing trappers had been killed by someone, not died accidentally or gotten lost, but murdered.
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The Trappers
They didn't have bodies to prove that, but there was strong circumstantial evidence that pointed to homicides. An article published by the Oregonian just a few days into the investigation detailed how the sheriff of Deschutes County was convinced Ed, Dewey, and Roy had been sunken in Big Lava Lake after being killed by an unknown perpetrator or perpetrators who'd stolen fox pelts from them.
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The Trappers
The problem was, with no bodies to support that assumption, the case couldn't go anywhere beyond just theories. That is until Ed Logan, the cabin's owner, took a walk across the still-frozen Big Lava Lake on April 19, 1924. He made it about 100 yards across the ice when he noticed a hole that had been either cut or hacked through the top of the lake.
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The Trappers
It was apparently just the right size to fit a person's body through and was reportedly in the shape of a circle. All things considered, it looked out of place on the otherwise solid slab of ice. Ed Logan notified investigator Adams about this discovery, and shortly thereafter, Hervey Ennis, Roy's brother-in-law, and Owen Morris, one of Dewey's brothers, found out about the hole.
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The Trappers
When Deputy Sheriff Adams took a closer look at the opening, he found what looked like blood around it and a piece of light brown hair near the edge that he suspected had come from a person's head. Until the ice melted, though, Adams and those helping him couldn't really do much more investigating. It's not like they could dive down into the frigid water or break up the ice themselves.
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The Trappers
So for the time being, they were sort of at the mercy of Mother Nature. While law enforcement waited, they continued to scour the trap lines the missing men were known to use, you know, to make extra sure they weren't in any of those locations or out in the forest somewhere. But it became clear that the trappers were not in any of those places.
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The Trappers
It was also around this same time that the sheriff's office learned about an interesting transaction that had occurred about three hours northwest of Bend, all the way in Portland, Oregon. A transaction that would change the course of their investigation. The End
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The Trappers
According to Melanie Tupper's book that I've mentioned a few times already, on April 19th, just a few days into law enforcement's investigation, authorities learned that four of the five missing fox skins that had presumably been scalped from the live foxes at Ed Logan's cabin had been sold to a fur trading business in Portland called the Schumacher Fur Company.
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The Trappers
The operator of that store, a guy named Carl Schumacher, had been keeping up with the newspaper stories about the missing trappers. And because he worked in that industry, he just found the whole thing kind of interesting.
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The Trappers
So when a game warden assisting in the investigation happened to randomly come into his store and ask where some of his recent fox pelt inventory originated from, Carl sort of had an OMG moment and volunteered that he'd recently had two men visit his store from Bend peddling a bunch of fox skins.
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The Trappers
This information piqued investigators' interest, and they soon learned from Carl's purchasing records for January 1924 that on the 22nd of that month, he'd bought four fox skins from an out-of-town trapper. Even more interesting was the fact that the person who'd made that transaction with Carl claimed to be none other than Ed Nichols, one of the missing trappers.
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The Trappers
The man who claimed to be Ed had even produced Ed's trapping license when asked. Further testimony that somewhat corroborated Carl's account came from a police officer in Portland who reported he'd bumped into two men in January 1924 who were walking through town with a bunch of furs they were trying to sell.
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The Trappers
The travelers had stopped this officer to ask for directions to fur trading shops, and while they chatted, the officer learned the men had recently come from Bend. When authorities investigating the missing trappers case showed a photograph of Ed Nichols to the policeman and Carl Schumacher, it became clear almost immediately that the person they'd both interacted with was not the real Ed Nichols.
Park Predators
The Girls
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I'm going to share with you today is one that's filled with a lot of twists and turns, perhaps as many ups and downs as the hilly landscape it took place in. As a mother to a young child, it's one of those stories that genuinely broke my heart and is still a case I find myself thinking about in quiet moments.
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The Girls
It was the plastic grocery bag that Lena and Stina Sophia had taken with them when they went swimming. According to what an investigator and lawyer told producers for the Banahaya killings docuseries, it took another week after the park workers collected the trash bins for the police to actually go through them.
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The Girls
So investigators were way behind the eight ball by the time they got their hands on the plastic grocery bag evidence. And just like the used tarp situation, some members of the press criticized the police for the trash bin mistake. But be that as it may, what's more important in the overall scheme of things is that authorities did eventually secure the grocery bag as evidence.
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The Girls
They determined that it had been discarded in a bin near a football field on the northeast side of the park next to a neighborhood of Christianson called Egg. The football field took roughly eight minutes to walk to from lake number three. So it was a feasible distance for the killer or killers to have traversed after the killings if they were the person who put the bag there.
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The Girls
With the crime scene processed and the plastic bag in their possession, the police continued to try and find everyone who'd visited Banahaya on the evening of the crime to see if anyone suspicious had been seen in the key areas of interest. They spoke with several witnesses who helped them narrow down the timeline of when the murders had taken place.
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The Girls
One witness who'd been walking on a trail that led from Stina Sofia's neighborhood to Lake No. 3 said that around 6.35 p.m., they'd bumped into the girls as they made their way to the swimming hole. Authorities also interviewed two university students who said they'd been swimming at Lake No. 3 around 6.35 p.m., and they also remembered seeing Lena and Stina Sofia.
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The Girls
The students told police that they'd left around 6.50 p.m., and when they last saw the two girls, they were playing in the water by themselves. Another witness who came forward said they'd been out for a run and made a lap around lake number three at around 7.05 p.m. However, they didn't remember seeing anyone in the water at that time.
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The Girls
Several witnesses who'd also been at lake number three around seven o'clock reported the same thing, that the girls were not in the water. So taking all of these statements into account, the police realized that whatever had happened to Lena and Steena Sophia had most likely occurred sometime between 6.50 p.m. and 7.05 p.m.
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The Girls
As part of their investigation, they checked in with several known sex offenders in the city and canvassed an area of Christianson that was a known hangout for substance users. But no concrete suspects emerged. Authorities even looked into patients at a psychiatric hospital in the Egg neighborhood. But just like with the canvas of the registered sex offenders, no one surfaced as a viable suspect.
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The Girls
Other efforts by the police to try and identify the perpetrator or perpetrators involved checking local ferry and air manifests and license plates on cars, as well as looking at surveillance footage, but it seemed like no matter how wide of a net they cast, nothing helped push the investigation forward.
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The Girls
Around 7.30 p.m. on Friday, May 19, 2000, Jostein Søstrenund was sitting at his home in the grim borough of Kristiansand, Norway, watching the clock. With each passing minute, he was growing more and more worried. His 8-year-old daughter, Stina Sofia, and her friend, 10-year-old Lena Paulsen, were overdue from an evening swim in Banahaya Recreation Area.
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The Girls
Detectives even obtained phone traffic data from the local telephone companies that serviced the region, but analyzing all of that data was going to take some time. While they waited, officers hit the streets hard and canvassed door-to-door in neighborhoods around the park that butted up to the forest.
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The Girls
This included Grimm, where Steena Sophia and Lena departed from, as well as Egg, the neighborhood closest to the football field where the plastic grocery bag had been thrown away. A lot of residents in those neighborhoods gave police names of people they felt investigators should look at as potential suspects.
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The Girls
But out of everyone on the list, two names emerged that authorities felt were worth taking a serious look at. They were 19-year-old Jan Helge Andersen and 21-year-old Viggo Kristiansen. The two young men were close friends who were from Egg and had reputations for playing what residents referred to as war games in their neighborhood.
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The Girls
At some point in the investigation, authorities had received an anonymous letter about them that stated, quote, To the investigators of the child murders in Banahaya, we advise you to check out two youths in the egg area who've been frightening local children for a long time. They're Vigo Christensen and Janhelga Andersen. They've been behaving strangely for some time.
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The Girls
They play war games, climb trees, dress up as soldiers. I find this odd because they are adults, end quote. During door-to-door canvassing on May 22nd, three days into the investigation, authorities spoke with Vigo and Jan Helge at their respective homes. Vigo's alibi for the evening of the crime was that he'd been home with his parents until around 10 p.m.,
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He said they'd left to go for a walk around 10 o'clock and he'd stayed back to babysit his three-year-old nephew. At some point earlier in the evening, he remembered Jan Helge had shown up to hang out and when he was done babysitting his nephew, they'd sat outside in his backyard together until about 11.30 or 11.45 p.m.
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Jan Helge's statements during police's door-to-door canvassing was similar to Vigo's. He said he'd gone over to Vigo's house around 8 p.m., but briefly went home to take a shower between 8.30 and 8.45, then returned and hung out with Vigo until just before midnight. Without much else to confront the young men with, investigators had to let their suspicions about them just sit for the time being.
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Authorities prioritized digging further into the young men's backgrounds, but they were also looking at other potential suspects and focused on developing a criminal profile of the offender, you know, to get a better idea of the type of individual who would be capable of carrying out such a violent crime.
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The results of the profiling work indicated that the crime had been committed by only one person, a male, who'd viewed Lena and Stina Sophia as victims of opportunity, Whoever the killer was, he was an ordinary individual who few people would suspect of committing such a heinous crime. What's interesting is that Jan Helge generally fit that characterization.
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He was a young man who didn't have any major criminal red flags in his background and was described as a shy, quiet, polite teenager who was an active member of the Home Guard Youth Division in Kristiansand, which I mentioned earlier was that training program for young people who wanted to learn about weapons and survival skills.
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Viggo, on the other hand, was slightly older than Jan Helge, and he'd engaged in criminal behavior in the past, which had earned him a reputation of being a bit of a troublemaker.
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His brother confirmed for producers of the Banahaya Killings docuseries that Viggo had done some bad things during his youth, but every time he was caught for his crimes or confronted with allegations, he'd admitted to whatever it was he'd done. The other source material I found stated that between 1994 and 1996, he sexually assaulted several minors while he was a minor himself.
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The source material states that he eventually confessed to those crimes and was convicted of those offenses. While investigators absorbed the results of the offender profile and compared it to Vigo and Jan Helge, trying to figure out if they could be involved, they received testing results for items of evidence that had been collected at the crime scene.
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About an hour earlier, around 6.30 p.m., the girls had left the house together to go to Lake No. 3 in the park, which was only a few minutes away from Grimm. And Eustine thought it was unusual for them to have taken so long to get to the lake, swim, and then return. So, unsure what was going on, he did what I imagine most dads would do in this situation.
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Investigators learned that a single male pubic hair had been discovered on one of the victim's bodies. Curious as to who it belonged to, they sent it off for additional testing. But those results wouldn't come back for at least a few months. Meanwhile, on May 30th, 11 days after the crime, residents of Christensen gathered for Lena and Stina Sofia's funerals.
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At a cathedral in town, Lena's casket was decorated with flowers and candles, and her father, Arne, gave a speech thanking everyone in attendance for sharing the pain that he and his ex-wife, Clara, were going through. He described their grief as difficult, but wanted to celebrate the good memories they'd made with their only daughter.
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He said, quote, We are privileged to have experienced 10 good years with Lena. Today I'm determined that she smiles where she is. Arne's speech was followed by a statement from the mayor, with other family members laying wreaths close to her casket, and several of her classmates placing roses on her coffin. The next day, a memorial march was held inside the park in the girls' honor.
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More than 2,000 adults and children attended and walked on the trail from Grimm to the swimming lake, where they left teddy bears and notes as they marched. Around that same time, police really began to look further into Vigo and Jan Helge, because additional tips had come in that seemed to point the finger right in their direction, particularly in Jan Helge's direction.
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According to the docuseries, The Banahaya Killings, three witnesses had come forward shortly after the crime and said that they'd seen a suspicious-looking man lingering near one of the restroom facilities along Lake No. 3 between 9 and 10 o'clock on Thursday, May 18, the night before Lena and Steena Sophia were killed.
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The first of these three witnesses described the suspicious man as squatting on the ground. The second witness said he was wearing a tracksuit and standing between the toilet facility and the woods, just staring at something in the landscape. The third witness was a woman who told police that when she'd first seen the man, he'd initially frightened her.
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But that feeling quickly went away because when she got closer to him, she'd recognized him as none other than Jan Helge Andersen, a teenage boy she was familiar with. She told police that she'd greeted Jan Helge by saying hi, but he didn't really engage with her.
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So after she did another lap, she saw him again and asked him if he was still there, to which he responded, yes, and mentioned that he was just there waiting for someone to meet him. Additional reports of Jan Helge being in the park the night before the murders also surfaced during the course of police's investigation.
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One report came from the mother of a boy who was in the Home Guard Youth Division with Jan Helge. This woman told police that her son had been running in Banahaya and bumped into Jan Helge while he was sitting by a tree. Her son described Jan Helge as acting strangely in that he seemed like he was, quote, about to lose it, end quote.
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The 19-year-old declined an invitation to join his home guard buddy for a run, and when the two parted ways, he remained sitting alone by the tree. On June 4th, 16 days after the murders, the police asked Jan Helge and Viggo to come into the police station for questioning.
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He got on his bicycle and rode the trail the girls could have taken to get into Banahaya. He cycled all the way to the jetty at lake number three, which is where his daughter and her friend had asked to go. But when he arrived, the area was empty. No one was around, and he definitely didn't see the girl swimming in the lake. But he didn't go into full-blown panic mode right away.
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The young men agreed to talk, but when they gave their statements, law enforcement began to notice a few differences between the stories they'd provided to police on May 22nd during the door knock interviews and the version of events they were presently giving. For example, Vigo told police during his sit-down interview that he'd been at his house from 6 to 9 o'clock on Friday, May 19th.
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But in his first chat with police, he'd said he was home the entire night. So this deviation from his previous statement made authorities side-eye him. When given the chance to clarify if he'd been in Banahaya at all on May 19th, he told them he hadn't been.
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Jan Helge's story, the first time he'd been questioned, was that he'd started hanging out with Vigo around 8 o'clock on the evening of the crime. However, during his sit-down interview with police, he said he'd been at the entrance to Banahaya a few hours before going to Vigo's house.
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He said he'd been at the park because the Home Guard Youth Division usually met for a training run every Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. However, on Friday, May 19th, none of his buddies had shown up for the scheduled exercise, so he'd done it by himself.
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He told investigators that he'd run north in the park, passed some fields and lakes, then returned via the same route and eventually ended at Vigo's house in Egg. Investigators weren't sure if the young men were being 100% honest with them, though. But without anything more incriminating to confront them with, the police once again had to let their suspicions about them lay.
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But that didn't last long, because shortly after that, detectives heard from a witness who'd been walking in the park at 6.30 p.m. on the night of the crimes. This witness told investigators that they'd seen a young man emerge from the woods near the football field adjacent to Egg, who seemed to be searching for something.
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They told police that the mysterious figure appeared to be between 18 and 20 years old. And after seeing him the first time near the football field, they bumped into him again on the west side of the trail, closer to the swimming lakes. Authorities showed this witness a photo array of 10 young men. And wouldn't you know it, he picked out Jan Helge's picture without hesitation.
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So this development all but confirmed for police their growing suspicion that Jan Helge had not been truthful with them the first few times around. The fact that someone had seen him on a trail in the park in the opposite direction of where he told authorities he'd been at 6.30 p.m. was enough of an inconsistency for police to bring him back in for another round of questioning.
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At that time, detectives didn't ask Vigo for another interview, though. They were strictly focused on speaking with Jan Helge. During this questioning, I imagine investigators got a bit more direct with him, but he denied being in the west part of the park on the evening of Friday, May 19th. He insisted that he hadn't gone past the entrance gate.
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He doubled down about this even when authorities confronted him with the information from the witness, who said they'd bumped into him on the west side of the swimming lakes at 6.30 p.m., But once again, like it or not, the police didn't have enough evidence to hold him for additional questioning or arrest him.
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But that changed sometime later, on July 11th, when investigators received even more information that made Jan Helge and Vigo look bad. A guy who'd been parking a car near an entrance to the park alongside Egg on the night of the crime came forward and told police that he'd seen a young man ride up to the location on a bicycle around 5.50 p.m., go into the park in the direction of Lake No.
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He figured maybe Stina, Sofia, and Lena had just taken another route home, which is why he hadn't come across them on his way into the park. As he biked back to Grimm, he hoped that they might have taken another route home. But once again, he didn't find them.
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3, and then return a few minutes later with another boy walking next to him. Though this witness didn't recognize the young man he saw, police felt pretty sure it was Jan Helge and Viggo. So on July 14th, continuing to follow their hunch about the young men, investigators brought both of them back in for questioning.
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By this point, the murder investigation had been underway for almost two months, and it was safe to say that Vigo and Jan Helga were law enforcement's prime suspects. During Vigo's interview, he admitted to police that he'd forgotten to tell them he'd ridden his bike to Banahaya on the evening of Friday, May 19th.
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Earlier that day, he said he'd gotten locked out of a shed he spent a lot of time in behind his parents' house, and Jan Helga was the only other person with a spare key. So around 5.45 p.m., he'd called Jan Helga's house to ask him for the key, but his dad answered and told him his son was in Banahaya going for a run.
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Shortly after that, Vigo had ridden his bike into the park and cycled up to lake number three to look for his friend, and eventually found him back at the playground next to the entrance of the park closest to Egg. This would have all been happening between 5.45 p.m. and 6.05-ish p.m., so before Stina Sofia and Lena had even left Stina Sofia's house.
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But regardless of the timing being seemingly irrelevant to the crime, Vigo's story did put him and Jan Helga together at the park within an hour of when the authorities believed the girls had been killed. Which made investigators seriously suspect that perhaps the young men had committed the crime together.
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I mean, even though the criminal offender profile indicated the killer was one person, it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that two people could have been involved. During Jan Helge's interview, he corroborated a lot of the same information Vigo had provided.
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The two of them had met up around 6 o'clock at the playground near the park entrance by egg so Vigo could get the spare key to his shed, and then by 6.05 p.m. they'd parted ways. Jan Helge said he'd then gone for a run north and Vigo had cycled home. When their interviews with police wrapped up, authorities were more convinced than ever that the young men were hiding something.
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So they decided to see if they could search their homes and Vigo's backyard shed and egg to determine if it held any clues that might be related to the murders. The only problem was investigators couldn't physically carry out the search without charging Vigo or Jan Helge with a crime.
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Interestingly, the police found a way around that legal hurdle by resurrecting a previous criminal investigation that had involved Vigo. Turns out, about 16 months before Stina Sofia and Lena's murders, Vigo had been suspected of peeping into a woman's windows in his neighborhood. He eventually came clean about that crime and was said to be remorseful for his actions.
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When he returned to his neighborhood, he continued to ride around looking for them and even went over to another neighboring park called Ravnadalen. But he was met with the same results. The girls were nowhere to be found. At that point, it was 10.10 p.m. and the sun had already set. So Eustine decided enough was enough. And he alerted the Christianson police about what was going on.
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But because it was an unresolved criminal case, that allowed the police a way to legally search his shed. And when they did, what they found inside was disturbing. According to the docuseries, The Banahaya Killings, when authorities got a look inside Vigo's backyard shed and egg, they found a trove of pornographic videos, magazines, violent movies, and adult toys.
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There was also a toolbox with a couple of knives in it, which I imagine seemed rather ominous to police detectives, considering the fact that Stina Sofia and Lena had both been stabbed and the murder weapon had never been found.
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A local journalist who spoke with the producers for the documentary described Vigo's shed as less of a utility shed and more of like an old potato cellar that had been converted into a man cave of sorts. And it was even reported that he lived in it.
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What the contents of the shed communicated to members of law enforcement who were eyeing him and Jan Helga for the Banahaya murders was that he was a young man who liked knives and was obsessed with sex.
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Unfortunately, even after all the interviews police had done with the young men and the results of the shed search, there still wasn't enough physical evidence for detectives to arrest them for the crime. Now, don't get me wrong, there were definitely some investigators who were chomping at the bit to slap cuffs on Vigo and Jan Helge.
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But there were also others, who I guess had more say, who knew the case likely wouldn't hold up in court. That changed though just a few weeks later in August, three months after the murders. At that time, the police were still in the process of trying to determine the identity of the pubic hair that had been found on one of the victims.
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They were certain it had come from the perpetrator, but without a DNA match, the hair's true source remained a mystery. Thankfully, they got their answer a few weeks later in early September, when test results for the hair in question came back as a match for none other than Jan Helge.
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I don't know exactly how police got a sample of his DNA for comparison, but I have to assume they did at some point, either voluntarily or covertly, because otherwise I don't know how they would have determined that it belonged to him. But regardless, with the DNA match confirmed, authorities were finally able to move in on and arrest Janhelga and Vigo.
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And on September 13th, police charged both of them with sexual assault and murder. When investigators sat them down and got them talking, their stories were drastically different. Jan Helga quickly confessed to being involved in the girls' murders, but said that he'd only killed Stina Sofia, not Lena. He said he'd never wanted to partake in the crime, but Vigo had forced him to.
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He explained that he and his friend had bumped into the girls as they got out of Lake No. 3, and that Vigo had asked for their help finding some kittens in the woods. The girls agreed to join the young men, but eventually Vigo pulled out a knife and threatened them.
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Then he sexually assaulted Lena, stabbed her, sexually assaulted Stina Sofia, and then threatened Jan Helge to kill her, which he said he did out of fear of what Vigo would do to him if he didn't. Vigo's version of events, on the other hand, were entirely different. He denied any involvement in the murders and maintained his innocence, in spite of his friend painting him as the mastermind.
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Essentially, it came down to the younger of the two suspects pointing the finger at the older one and calling him the ringleader, which I imagine is a narrative that police investigators had already started to invest in. But until they heard it from Jan Helga's mouth directly, they just hadn't run very far with it.
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According to the available source material, it was at this time he officially reported the girls missing. When investigators filled out the missing persons reports, they relied on Youstein to give them information about the girls' last movements.
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Shortly after the arrest, the police held a press conference and told folks that all along they'd been operating under the assumption that two people had sexually assaulted and killed Stina Sofia and Lena. Which, based on what I gathered from reading the source material, was definitely a change in tune for police.
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But regardless of whether they were saying that because it really was their theory all along or they were just trying to save face, the fact that they'd arrested someone for the crime was what most folks were paying attention to. Residents of Christianson were extremely relieved that the killers had reportedly been caught.
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A few months later, in mid-February 2001, Vigo and Jan Helga were indicted, and by June 1st, each had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Jan Helga received 17 years, and Vigo was sentenced to 21 years. From what I gathered in the available source material, the court relied heavily on Jan Helga's version of events, which pinned Vigo as the mastermind of the whole thing.
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Essentially, the judges determined that it was Vigo who'd carried out the murders to cover up the fact that he'd sexually assaulted both Stina Sofia and Lena. As time passed, though, Vigo and the people who supported him continued to protest his innocence. They claimed that Jan Helge had lied in his confession and Vigo was never involved in the crime.
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But no one could understand why Jan Helge would rope Vigo into something so horrific if, in fact, it wasn't true. The judges who decided the young man's fate certainly couldn't find a motive for Jan Helga pointing the finger at his friend unless it was actually what happened. The court stated, quote, The court places trust in Andersen's statement that he was with Christensen at the relevant time.
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The two were very good friends, and it's not possible to see a motive for Andersen to wrongfully involve Christensen in the case. End quote. But a law professor who spoke with producers for the Banahaya Killings docuseries pointed out that Janhelga would have been really motivated to say Vigo was involved in the crime because, by doing so, he essentially deflected a lot of blame away from himself.
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He explained that he'd given Stina Sofia and Lena permission to go swimming alone, and when they departed his house around 6.30 p.m., they'd been carrying their swimsuits, towels, and a bottle of fizzy drink in a plastic grocery bag.
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It happened in Norway's Banaheja Recreation Area in the city of Kristiansand 25 years ago. According to VisitNorway.com, this area is a space that's easily accessible from nearby residential neighborhoods and known for being a great place to swim, fish, and walk trails. Banahaya consists of a three-mile loop that AllTrails.com estimates takes the average person a little over an hour to finish.
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Basically, Janhelga benefited from saying that it was Vigo, the 21-year-old who'd influenced him, a 19-year-old, to partake in such a heinous act. In the end, Janhelga received less prison time, and the media didn't paint him as the main perpetrator.
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Court documents filed during an appeal in January 2002 stated that forensic psychiatric experts who'd evaluated Vigo shared in court that he had an emotionally unstable personality disorder, was emotionally unstable, and had pedophilic tendencies, which is Norway's 2002 way of saying what is commonly known in the US as borderline personality disorder.
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Ultimately, the appeals court denied him relief, but agreed to increase Jan Helge's sentence from 17 years to 19 years. In a statement to TV2, which was later translated into English, Ada, Stina Sofia's mom, said, "...we can never be completely satisfied when the court does not choose to use the law's strictest punishment.
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Nevertheless, we are happy that Jan Helge Andersen did not even get less than 19 years." By 2006, though, Norway's government had granted Jan Helge temporary leave from prison one weekend every month, much to the dismay of the girl's family members, particularly Ada. She complained to the Oslo District Court more than once and actually ended up suing the state over the issue.
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By 2007, she was able to successfully change the law so that survivors of serious criminal cases could object to a prisoner receiving leave, and so could their relatives. In 2008, while serving his time in prison, Vigo gave his first public interview to reporter Anna Norberg and maintained that he was not responsible for what happened to Stina Sofia and Lena.
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He claimed he'd been convicted based on people's feelings, not evidence. He remained as resolved as ever to fight for his exoneration. He wanted a retrial, period. Up until that point, he'd never admitted guilt and there was no physical evidence that proved he was involved. It had always been Jan Helge's word against his.
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After fully taking over Viggo's case in 2002, his post-conviction lawyer spent over five years sending half a dozen requests to Norway's Criminal Cases Review Commission, explaining why Viggo should get a new trial. Those documents argued a few things that his defense team felt proved that he could not have committed the crime.
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According to the docuseries, The Banahaya Killings, and additional reporting by Norwegian news outlets, Lena had made plans to sleep over with Stina Sofia Friday night while her father, who she was visiting for a few days, was out of town.
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One had to do with his cell phone activity during the timeframe the girls were killed. The defense team had reviewed every text message and phone call he'd made on Friday, May 19, 2000. And they discovered that between 7 p.m.
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and 8 p.m., which was the time frame authorities believed the murders happened, Vigo's device had made calls and received and sent text messages in a service area that was close to his home, but well outside the coverage area of the crime scene.
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Experts from local phone companies determined without a doubt that the base station his cell phone activity went through could not have received signals from devices anywhere near the crime scene. Oh, and these experts, they had decades of experience working for the various phone companies in Christianson, who owned the telephone signal infrastructure.
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So they knew their stuff and were the most qualified people to ascertain this information. In addition to the cell phone activity analysis, Vigo's defense team also wanted the DNA evidence that had been presented at his trial to be reevaluated. The only DNA that had ever been found and identified conclusively from the crime scene was Jan Helge's.
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It was revealed during the men's trial that another profile had also been discovered. But a forensic crime lab in Spain couldn't determine for sure if it belonged to Vigo or Jan Helga, or another person. So basically, the lab could only say that the sample contained traces of male DNA, and neither Vigo nor Jan Helga could be ruled out as a contributor.
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What's wild, though, is that a DNA analyst who spoke with producers for the Banahaya killings docuseries said the DNA findings from the Spanish lab were, in her opinion, weak or procedurally imprecise. For example, she said that whenever a male DNA profile is evaluated as evidence in a criminal case, a lot of different boxes have to be checked in order to determine its legitimacy.
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At the time of the docuseries filming, it was typical that anywhere from 17 to 30 areas of the profile had to be tested to assess it for direct comparison to a known individual. But back in the day, in Vigo and Jan Helge's case, the unknown male DNA profile had only been tested in one location. One.
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You see, Stina Sofia and Lena's parents were both divorced and remarried, and so the two of them being in Grimm at their dad's homes that particular weekend was a result of the custody agreement their parents had worked out. Anyway, the reality that two young girls had gone missing in such a popular recreation area was concerning to the police.
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So like well below the acceptable standard, at least according to that forensic analyst who spoke with the docuseries. which is why Vigo's defense team demanded the DNA evidence be reevaluated to either include him or exclude him once and for all.
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By this point, a lot of questions had also started to surface about the integrity of Jan Helge's confession and more so how law enforcement elicited it from him. ABC News reported that a retired FBI profiler named Greg McCrary had reviewed the Christian Son Police's interrogation of Jan Helga and discovered numerous issues with the way investigators went about questioning the then 19-year-old.
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For example, McCrary wrote in his report that detectives had first suggested to Jan Helga that two people were involved in the crime and that maybe he'd been influenced by Viggo. McCreary also believed that the DNA evidence allegedly linking Vigo to the crime had been misstated.
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To make matters even more complicated, in 2016, after only serving 16 of his 19 years in prison, Jan Helge was paroled and got out early. He moved to a city in Norway about two and a half hours northeast of Kristiansand.
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NRK reported that because he wasn't shying away from coming to the city, some of the victim's family members were concerned they would potentially see him out and about, which I imagine was the last thing they wanted. Meanwhile, Vigo's defense team continued to fight for his innocence in court. They petitioned his case six times, but were rejected.
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However, by 2020, their seventh attempt was granted. Norway's Criminal Cases Review Commission decided to formally review Vigo's claim and take a fresh look at the double murder case. That same year, Lena and Stina Sofia's parents spoke out publicly for the first time as a collective group about how they felt regarding his claims.
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They stated to NRK that they were tired of the case still dragging on. At that point, it had been 20 years since their daughters were murdered, and even though they agreed that Vigo should get a retrial if he was potentially innocent, they were not convinced that he and his legal team had discovered anything new in the case that merited it being rehashed.
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It took a few months for Norway's Commission for the Resumption of Criminal Cases to thoroughly review Viggo's petition. But on June 1, 2021, the country's Supreme Court finally ruled on the matter. And the news was a bombshell. He was no longer suspected of the crime.
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As a result of the court's ruling, he was released from prison and a few months later in November 2021, the previously unknown male DNA profile that had been analyzed but never conclusively identified was tested again. The results confirmed it belonged to Jan Helge Andersen, not Vigo.
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Most importantly, additional testing carried out during Vigo's post-conviction fight revealed Jan Helge's DNA was also in three different places on evidence samples collected from Lena's body and clothing. That information directly contradicted his previous confession in which he said he'd only killed Stina Sofia.
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So they wasted no time organizing a formal search, and by the next morning, Saturday, May 20th, helicopters, scent dogs, and more than 100 volunteers from the Red Cross and local communities descended on Banahaya to look for the girls.
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Basically, it brought into question all of his previous testimony, which the police and trial court had relied so heavily on back in 2000 and 2001. In 2022, the year after the new DNA results came in, Vigo was formally exonerated of the Banahaya murders. And Norway's director of public prosecutions publicly apologized for the office's role in wrongfully convicting him.
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A few months later, in March of 2023, the criminal case against Jan Helge, specifically for Lena's murder, was requested to be reopened. And in June, that's exactly what happened. It took some time for the court to do its thing, but a little over a year later, in July of 2024, he was convicted of Lena's death and sentenced to additional prison time.
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TV2 reported that Lena's parents, Arne and Clara, attended the trial and testified as witnesses. According to coverage by NRK, when it came time for sentencing, Jan Helga only got two years for his role in killing Lena.
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I don't know for sure how the laws work in Norway, but I have to assume that maybe one reason his sentence was so short was because he'd already served 16 years before being paroled early. Maybe two years was like the maximum amount of time the court could give him in light of everything that had happened, and the fact that prosecuting him for Elena's death was so delayed.
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But even with getting so little punishment, Jan Helga's defense team announced they would appeal his conviction. According to coverage by NRK, in September 2024, he was granted a new trial, which is scheduled to take place in 2025. The girls' parents have filed their own civil case in court, claiming they've endured lost wages and mental anguish throughout these many years of going to court.
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Throughout the years, the girls' parents also criticized local and international media outlets for sensationalizing their daughters' stories. They described the experience of having books, podcasts, and documentaries made about the murders as distracting, painful, and sad. They emphasized that they didn't want the tragedy they'd experienced to become entertainment for people.
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I hope if they hear this episode, they understand that's not what I or AudioChuck is about. What happened to Lena and Steena Sophia was a tragedy that should be handled with extreme care as a storyteller. It's why I haven't gone into the details that some publications and court records have. And it's also what makes the why behind telling this story so important.
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Law enforcement set up a command center in a parking lot next to a pond in the park, and from there, they dispatched various search crews to comb the landscape for any sign of Lena and Stina Sofia. In order to cover as much ground as possible, volunteers split up into multiple groups, and each one focused on a different area of the park. The main grids of interest were near Lake No.
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I believe that the girl's case is one that, in spite of all the tragedy, to Stina Sofia's mother Ada's point, should and can have some good come out of it. Shortly after the Banahaya murders happened, Stina Sofia's mother Ada established a foundation in her daughter's honor, aptly called the Stina Sofia Foundation.
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That organization fights for children's rights, educates kids, and advocates for minors who've suffered violence or abuse. Staff members also help relatives of murdered children navigate the criminal justice system.
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In connection with this episode, AudioChuck has committed to donating $5,000 to the Stina Sofia Foundation, funds that will go to support the organization's mission to advocate for minors and protect those who've suffered violence or abuse. We've dropped a link to their website in our show notes for this episode, where you can learn more about the foundation and donate as well if you're able to.
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For more than a decade after the crime, when the organization's first coping center was built, Ada and her team used a coffin as a foundational stone for the structure. Placed inside of that coffin was a silver piece of jewelry, like a necklace that had a teddy bear pendant on it. This accessory was something Stina Sofia had been wearing when she was killed.
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Years after the murders, police had given it back to Ada and she couldn't think of a more appropriate item to put inside the cornerstone of the building. She told NRK that the necklace would act as a symbol for every child who hadn't made it out of a violent situation or who would never get the chance to stay at the foundation's coping center.
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In so many ways, I'm in awe of Ada's resilience as a parent. She and her ex-husband, Eustine, as well as Lena's parents, Arne and Clara, should be people you think about when you turn off this episode. Vigo should also cross your mind. He was wrongfully convicted of a crime that he didn't commit.
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It just goes to show you that the criminal offender profile, which had been developed by the NCIS so many years earlier, which indicated that only one person was behind the crime, was, in the end, right. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.
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And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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3, portions of neighboring Ravnadalan Park, and another adjacent recreation space called Bimarka. These were all woodland areas that investigators suspected the girls might have gotten lost in. And I say gotten lost because that's genuinely the mindset law enforcement had during that first day of searching.
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Christianson's police chief of staff told reporters that the department was simply treating the case as a missing persons investigation at that time. Investigators had found nothing that indicated the girls had fallen victim to a crime. So basically, until the police had more information or evidence to go off of, they had to consider all possible scenarios.
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And for whatever reason, at the top of their theory list was the optimistic notion that the girls had simply gotten lost. As the search continued, volunteers walked in lines several meters away from one another and scoured the landscape for any trace of the girls. If they found something of interest, they were instructed to holler out the word, here. But unfortunately, that didn't happen.
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As Saturday dragged on, teams were assigned to look in sections of the forest west of the swimming area that Lena and Stina Sophia were supposed to have visited. But again, they came up empty-handed. Seemingly, even the dogs that were being used to try and locate the girls hadn't picked up their scents. As Saturday came to a close, things were looking bleak.
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It had been more than 24 hours since the girls vanished, but search crews refused to give up. They continued to work throughout the night, and law enforcement held a press conference that evening and released photos of both girls to the public in an attempt to drum up leads that might explain where they were.
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On Sunday morning, May 21st, with still no sign of them, journalists and some volunteers began to suspect that something untoward had happened. One searcher named Stein Borgersen told producers for the Banahaya Killings docuseries that he felt compelled to travel to Kristiansand and help out with the search.
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He didn't live in town, but he was the regional head of a youth organization known as the Home Guard, which trained boys and girls ages 16 to 21 how to survive in the outdoors and how to handle weapons safely. Stein was kind of a great asset to bring on in the search effort because he had survivalist and tracking skills that not everyone involved specialized in.
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When he came on board on Sunday, he brought a team of folks with him to Banahaya and was genuinely hoping to make a difference in the search. But for the first few hours of the day, there wasn't much progress. Divers searched lake number three just in case Lena and Steno Sophia had ended up there, but frustratingly, they didn't find anything.
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Later that day, a 17-year-old volunteer named Annette reported to the search's command center that a male volunteer she'd spoken with said he'd found a piece of clothing off a nearby trail. Administrators instructed Annette and the other searcher to go back to the spot and follow up.
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I'll go ahead and tell you up front, there are a lot of Norwegian names and pronunciations in this episode that I've tried my very best to deliver correctly. But I'm a native English speaker, so there may be some names or locations I don't say perfectly. That's just the reality of taking on a case in a nation that's foreign to me.
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When they did, they realized it was in a low-lying area near the base of a stone retention wall, located roughly 100 or 200 meters off the trail. In order to thoroughly search it, Annette and her companion had to get down on their knees.
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As they started pulling out multiple pieces of clothing, they realized that the items had clearly been intentionally put there, either hidden or just obscured from plain view. The items included a bikini bottom, a white cap, a silver sandal, a top, a blue cap, a blue swimsuit, and a towel with a dolphin on it.
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As the pair removed each item, Annette noticed the stuff was covered in blood, which gave her a sinking feeling. Piece by piece, they placed the items inside a bag Annette had brought with her, and by 4.30 p.m., she and the other searcher helping her had delivered everything to the command center.
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Not long after that, officials in charge of the search sent Stein Borgeson and his team to secure the spot where the stuff had been found. Christensen police requested additional police dogs to come to the area to investigate further. But unfortunately, the animals weren't available at the moment. So Stein and his team basically just had to sit and wait it out.
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But it didn't take very long before Stein got bored of that and decided to walk around the site and do his own sweep for clues. As he walked around, he noticed that some of the vegetation near the spot seemed to be unnaturally broken. He observed a snap twig on a large pine tree that felt off to him.
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What I gathered from reading and watching the source material is that to Stein, the twig just looked like it had been intentionally broken, not as if it had been snapped in a natural way. So I guess him being the woodland expert he was, he just had a gut feeling that the broken twig seemed out of place. So he followed that hunch and continued to look around for more clues.
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A short distance away from the snap twig, he saw what he believed was an unusual area of elevation on the ground covered in vegetation. To him, the disturbed earth appeared to be man-made, and when he approached it and lifted up some branches, he discovered a gruesome sight that confirmed his worst suspicions. There, underneath all the debris, were the dead bodies of Lena and Stina Sophia.
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A few hours after the discovery of the girls' bodies, the Christian Sun Police held a press conference and delivered the heartbreaking news to the media. The investigators' missing persons case had officially become a homicide investigation.
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Back at the crime scene, detectives called in a specialized forensic unit from the National Criminal Investigation Service, also known as NCIS, to help process the scene and remove the girls' bodies. But there was a bit of a snag. That special forensic team wouldn't be able to get to Banahaya until the following morning, Monday, May 22nd.
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So while everyone waited, Stein Borgersen, the outdoorsman who'd found the bodies, ordered 70 of his team members to keep watch over the burial site overnight to make sure no one disturbed the bodies or contaminated the crime scene. When Monday morning came around, teams were finally able to remove Lena and Stina Sofia's bodies from the park, and they transported them for autopsies.
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While investigators waited for those examinations to conclude, they got to work trying to understand the crime scene itself. But once again, they ran into some logistical challenges. You see, Sunday night into Monday morning, rainy weather had moved into the area.
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So in an attempt to preserve potential evidence, the police used an officer's personal tarp to cover the burial site where Stina Sofia and Lena had been hidden. I'd imagine that when that detail leaked to the press, journalists speculated that the TARP situation might not have been the best call by the police.
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You know, considering the fact that it had been used and was a personal possession of one of the officers. But used TARP or not, the NCIS team processed the area where the girls' bodies had been found. And it became evident right away that whoever had put them there made a concerted effort to conceal their bodies from view.
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The killer or killers had laid lots of twigs and vegetation over top of them, which folks at the scene believed would have taken some time to do. The location of the burial site was roughly 75 meters off the designated trail that ran alongside the west side of Lake No. 2, so not exactly close to Lake No. 3, which is where the girls were supposed to have been swimming.
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To me, that indicates that their attacker or attackers forced them to that location or got them there somehow. Because it was a spot they had not told Stina Sofia's father they were planning to go to. Anyway, a few meters away from where they'd been buried, investigators found another suspicious location in the forest.
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There was a large amount of blood on the ground there, which indicated to authorities that the murders and burial had occurred in separate locations. Investigators thoroughly collected physical evidence from all of these areas and even cut out a small section of the forest floor to examine later on for traces of hair or other potentially relevant debris.
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Meanwhile, the girls' autopsies revealed that they'd both been sexually assaulted and killed with a sharp object, like a knife. Stina Sofia had been stabbed once in the neck and Lena had been stabbed three times, twice in the neck and once in the chest. The wound to her chest had sliced through her shirt, which meant she was clothed when she was attacked.
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Something else noteworthy about their clothing was that when Lena and Steena Sophia were discovered, they were wearing one another's trousers, a detail that I have to assume stuck out as odd to investigators.
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According to what a forensic consultant told producers of the Banahaya killings docuseries, the girls wearing one another's trousers suggested that whoever had killed them possibly took the time to redress them after sexually assaulting them, but before killing them. And while doing that, their clothing had clearly gotten mixed up.
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This forensic consultant also believed that the wounds to both girls' necks were extremely similar and had likely come from the same sharp weapon, which begged the question, had the killer or killers taken the knife or sharp object with them, or could it still be in the park somewhere?
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Unfortunately, additional searches for it on Monday were unsuccessful because the forest's hilly terrain and numerous lakes made it very challenging for searchers to scour for such a small item. As crews continued to work, news about the murders began to circulate in Christianson. And it didn't take long before the story blew up.
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People wanted to know everything about the police's investigation, who any potential suspects were, who the victims were, and so on. One journalist told producers of the Banahaya Killings docuseries that the city as a whole essentially went into a state of emergency because of what had happened.
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Parents told reporters that they were watching their children more closely after the crime, and they felt like the murders had completely shattered Christian Son's previous reputation as being a family-friendly place to live. The girls' deaths had a profound effect on other children and people in the city, too, who were friends with or roughly the same age as Lena and Stina Sofia.
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Annette, the 17-year-old volunteer who'd first discovered what was believed to be the girls' bloody clothing and belongings, told the docuseries that she was horrified by the crime and became afraid of the dark after it happened. She said that she didn't go back to Banahaya for 20 years afterwards.
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The thought that there was some unknown child killer potentially walking amongst the citizens of Christianson scared a lot of people. Authorities were under tremendous pressure to make headway in the case.
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But despite what police relayed to the public about their progress to investigate the crime, there were some major errors in the investigation that happened during those first few days that opened them up to a lot of scrutiny.
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For example, six days after the murders, Park employees emptying out trash bins in the forest discovered that none of the receptacles had been secured by law enforcement at any point after the crime. While making their rounds, these employees had unknowingly discovered a major piece of evidence just sitting in one of the bins.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today came to me in a unique way. My friends Britt and Ashley over on Crime Junkie did a deep dive into a notorious missing persons case at Indiana Dunes National Park in their home state of Indiana.
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This guy's name was Timothy Buss, and actually when Timothy committed that 1981 murder, he was just 13 years old, which is possibly one of the reasons why he got paroled in 1993 and didn't serve the full 25 years he was supposed to for that crime.
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Anyway, within a week of Christopher's disappearance, authorities learned that Timothy matched the description of a man who several eyewitnesses had seen fishing on the river and walking with Christopher on the evening he vanished. Even more incriminating, Timothy's vehicle was similar to a car that had been seen in the Aroma Park area.
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And when investigators searched it, they found blood in the trunk. He'd also washed a pair of boots he owned and tossed them in the trash. On Friday, August 11th, four days after Christopher vanished, investigators from Kankakee County arrested Timothy and charged him with kidnapping.
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Unfortunately, they couldn't yet charge him with murder because Christopher was still technically missing, and lab tests for the blood found in Timothy's truck had not yet confirmed whether it even belonged to the 10-year-old.
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In the meantime, searchers continued to scour the woods in and around Aroma Park and turned up further clues like a pair of undergarments and a strip of fabric that matched the color of Christopher's shirt.
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However, just over a week after he disappeared, everyone's worst fears were realized when authorities discovered a shallow grave in Kankakee River State Park, which sits on the border of Kankakee County and Will County. Inside the makeshift grave were Christopher's remains. His autopsy results later showed he'd been stabbed and sexually assaulted.
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There are actual sand dunes there, and it took decades for state legislators and activists to make sure they were protected and preserved. In August of 1995, though, something terrible happened in one of those dunes that shook northwestern Indiana and northeast Illinois residents to their core. The brutal murder of a teenage girl on her birthday devastated her family and community.
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In total, between the searches for him and what investigators found at the shallow gravesite, roughly 100 items of potential evidence were collected as part of the case. At a vigil held in his honor at a local church shortly after the discovery, his heartbroken mother read a eulogy that stated, quote,
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Christopher's father, whom he actually lived with most of the year in Washington state, also spoke publicly about the tragic loss of his son and swift arrest of Timothy Buss. He stated, quote, Because of the timing of Christopher's abduction and murder and the fact that his slaying had quickly been tied to Timothy, it made it impossible for his case to be linked with Jonas's and Sarah's.
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But the fact that his kidnapping and murder was still so fresh in people's minds, I think that fed parents and guardians growing fears about the safety of their children. I also want to clarify here before I go on that Timothy Buss was eventually convicted in 1996 for abducting and killing Christopher.
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He was later sentenced to death, but had his sentence commuted to life in prison in 2003 by Illinois' then governor, George Ryan. As of this recording, he is still an inmate in the Illinois Department of Corrections. An article Kim Liebler wrote for The Times addressed the topic of children's safety in light of all the recent violence against kids in the region.
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In the piece, investigators from all the agencies involved in the separate cases stated that they did not think any of the killings were connected. A Gary Petey detective who was working on Nikita Moore's case told the newspaper that it was highly unlikely Nikita's killer was the same person who'd murdered Sarah Paulson, simply because the two victims' ages were so different.
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Nikita was 14 and Sarah was 8, and this detective said she firmly believed that this was the case. Another Gary Petey detective told the Times that he didn't think Jonas' killer was responsible for Sarah's murder. In his opinion, there were just too many differences between the crimes.
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For example, Jonas had been beaten and found much further away from her bike and home, whereas Sarah had been strangled and her body and bike had been left basically in her own backyard. Their ages were also very different. Jonas was 15 and Sarah was eight.
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However, I was thinking a little bit more about this detective's comments while researching this episode, and I found myself wondering if maybe it was possible, since Janice had learning disabilities, that she might have come across much younger than she actually was.
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I don't know this for sure, but it's one possibility that the detective who made those comments to the Times may or may not have considered. Now, even though authorities were collectively downplaying the theory that there was one serial predator to blame for Jonas, Sarah, and Nikita's cases, that didn't stop them from issuing warnings to families to be more vigilant of their children.
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And people took those cautions to heart. In fact, a lot of folks stopped going to playgrounds and parks altogether. And one mother said she wasn't sure if she should even let her kids walk down their street to play with their friends anymore.
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By August 24th, neither Gary PD nor Portage authorities had made much headway identifying a suspect or suspects in Jonas or Sarah's deaths, despite a $15,000 reward being offered in Sarah's case, and then later increased to $20,000 and then $40,000. But investigators tried not to let that stall them.
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Portage police detectives sent evidence to the Indiana State Crime Lab for additional evaluation and looked into people listed on the state sex offender registry. They also interviewed and took biological samples from a man from Chicago and questioned a guy living near Sarah's neighborhood who'd previously been convicted of sex crimes against young girls.
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But even with all those good leads, authorities seemingly kept hitting dead end after dead end. On Friday, August 25th, a few days after Sarah's murder, her parents, friends, and several hundred attendees laid her to rest at a cemetery in Portage. That same day, the family issued a statement that read in part, quote,
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The family of Sarah Lynn Paulson wished to publicly express their heartfelt thanks to their friends, relatives, and the entire community for their generous outpouring of support in response to the tragic death of their daughter. Your prayers and support mean a lot to our family at this time. The response has been overwhelming and we just want to tell everyone, thank you. End quote.
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The day after the funeral, investigators announced that a witness had come forward and reported they'd seen a black man wearing a blue and red work shirt walking away from the general area where Sarah had been killed. They described him as acting very nervously.
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Portage investigators jumped on this tip and attempted to find the guy and even canvassed businesses in the area looking for workers who wore that kind of clothing, but they were unsuccessful. They also put out a sketch of the work shirt on the news, but no one who called in about it could confirm what kind of logo it was or the type of company it belonged to.
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This tip was considered critically important, though, because the man who'd been donning the work shirt had been spotted between 11.40 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. on August 22nd, which was the approximate timeframe investigators believed Sarah's killer committed the crime and then fled.
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Shortly after that update came out, authorities announced they wanted to speak with a white man in his 30s about Sarah's case. This man was a different person than the guy who'd been seen in the work shirt, but whether or not they ever spoke with that white guy is unclear.
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What I can tell you is that while these leads were being chased down in Sarah's case, Portage police officials stayed in contact with the FBI and Gary Petey detectives, who were still trying to solve Jonas' murder.
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By early September 1995, investigators working Sarah's case had looked into and eliminated several potential suspects, including that guy from Chicago that authorities had retrieved samples from. And I couldn't find much about where progress in Jonas' case was at that point in time, but it doesn't appear there was much as far as new information.
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And that might have to do with the fact that in early September, Jonas' case was lumped into a group of other murders that a newly formed task force had determined all occurred in the city between May and August 1995. These seven cases included Jonas' slaying and the murder of that other Gary teenager I mentioned earlier named Nikita Moore.
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Sarah Paulson's murder was not included in this task force's probe because all the victims they were looking into were black females who'd either been beaten or strangled and were discovered unclothed or partially clothed in wooded areas in Gary. Basically, there was a fairly distinct pattern in those seven killings, which didn't match aspects of Sarah's murder.
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Ken Koski reported for The Times, though, that while the task force worked its cases, Portage Police stayed busy doing their own thing chasing down leads in Sarah's case. Kim Liebler reported for The Times that Gary Petey investigators believed the seven victims from Gary, which, like I mentioned a second ago, did include Jonas and Nikita, might be the work of one serial killer.
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But until they could study the crimes further, they weren't sure of anything. They admitted there was a clear pattern as far as race, injuries, and location of the bodies. But Jonas and Nikita's cases differed slightly in that they were both teenagers, and all the other Gary victims were in their mid to late 20s to early 50s.
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Unfortunately, I couldn't find much else about this task force's work, though, after September 1995, because the coverage just kind of dropped off after that. The next big headlines that came up were all related to Sarah's murder investigation.
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You see, in early November 1995, the homicide investigation into her death broke wide open when authorities identified and arrested a convicted rapist named Eugene Britt for the crime. Eugene, as it turns out, would become a notorious name in the state of Indiana for a slew of horrific murders and sexual assaults. most of which included cases that the Gary Task Force had looked into.
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For those of you in Indiana or the Midwest who may be familiar with the name Eugene Britt, I probably need not say more. But for listeners who don't know who he is, I want to give you a quick rundown. In 1993, Eugene had been released from prison after serving 15 years for a sexual assault he'd committed in 1978.
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In August of 1995, he was 37 years old and living in Portage, Indiana, at a shelter for the unhoused, but had a job at a Hardee's fast food restaurant in town, which required him to wear a uniform or work shirt.
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According to coverage by the Associated Press, he'd come onto law enforcement's radar in Sarah's case after that eyewitness reported seeing a man who looked like him near where she'd been killed. So based on that, I think it's safe to say that Eugene was the guy who'd been seen wearing that apparently very unique blue and red work shirt police had such a hard time initially identifying.
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Anyway, Portage investigators determined that fibers from Eugene's uniform were similar to fibers that had been discovered underneath Sarah's fingernails.
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When he was taken into custody, investigators seized a pair of sneakers he was wearing as evidence, and upon further examination, realized those shoes had a remarkably similar tread to shoe prints discovered at Sarah's crime scene, which was not information that had previously been publicized, at least not that I could find.
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After his arrest, Eugene didn't cooperate with Portage police investigators right away. But after a few days in custody and like a pastor associate of his talking with him, and an eight-hour interrogation, he eventually came clean. He admitted to killing and sexually assaulting Sarah, as well as murdering around a dozen other people in both Gary and Portage, Indiana.
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Some of the crimes he confessed to were deaths the police didn't even know about. For example, as part of his confession, he agreed to lead investigators to one woman's body. And lo and behold, when he took police to the remote area he claimed he'd placed her remains in, they found a woman's skeletal remains. He would later go on to lead officials to even more victims.
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According to coverage by the Associated Press, Eugene said all but one of his victims were women or girls who he'd either beaten to death or strangled. He claimed that not all of the slayings involved sexual assault, though. He said he'd only done that to five of his victims, but, I mean, I don't know how much stock we can put in the word of a self-admitted serial killer.
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And in true Crime Junkie fashion, the more they learned about that case, the more rabbit holes they found, as well as other cases that needed deep dives too. So our teams joined forces this week to feature two different cases which aren't related but both happened in the same national park.
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Anyway, Eugene confessed that at least seven of his murders had occurred in Gary between May and September 1995. But interestingly, he did not take credit for Jonas's abduction and murder. And it doesn't appear investigators working her case found anything that tied him to her death. No physical evidence, circumstantial evidence, witness sightings, nothing.
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But him being arrested for Sarah's murder and taken off the street at least gave the public some sense of relief. However, law enforcement's journey toward justice had kind of just begun at that point because they still had to figure out if he might be responsible for the murders of all those other victims who'd been killed in Gary in 1995.
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You know, victims like Nikita Moore and the other five women who the Serial Killer Task Force had looked into back in September. Unfortunately, definitive legal consequences about what crimes Eugene was responsible for wouldn't come until several years after he was caught.
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In November 1999, instead of going to trial for Sarah's murder, he took a plea deal which allowed him to avoid the death penalty. He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Seven years later in 2006, he was convicted of Nikita Moore's sexual assault and murder, the sexual assault and slaying of a 24 year old woman named Tanya Dunlap, the sexual assault and murder of a 41 year old woman named Maxine Walker, and the sexual assault of a 13 year old.
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The news coverage from 2006 explains that originally he'd been facing charges for the crimes I just listed, plus three of the murders from Gary that the serial killer task force had looked into. But those three cases were eventually dropped as part of the plea deal. Which is super frustrating to me because according to coverage by the Associated Press, Eugene didn't deny killing those women.
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Around 6.30 p.m. on Monday, August 7th, 1995, a woman named Johnny White was at her home in Gary, Indiana with some of her other children when she realized that her daughter, Janice, who was often referred to by the nickname China, had not come home from riding her bike. Now, this was kind of odd to Johnny because that day, the 7th, was actually Janice's birthday, like the day she turned 15.
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In fact, he fully confessed to those crimes. But I don't know, maybe there just wasn't enough evidence in those cases, or it was a compromise prosecutors had to make to ensure he was put away forever. Like I said, it's super frustrating, but that's the American justice system for you.
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In court at his sentencing, Eugene wept over the impact of his crimes and said, quote, I'm truly sorry for my sins and I take full responsibility for my actions. Ain't nobody but myself. God knows I'm guilty. God knows I'm guilty. End quote. As of this recording, Eugene is still incarcerated in the Indiana Department of Corrections.
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He's 67 years old, and there are a lot more articles out there that go into much further detail about him and his crimes. But I don't want to use my time here giving him any more attention than what's necessary. It was definitely a good thing for humanity that he was caught and prevented from taking even more lives.
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I'm sure his arrest and conviction must have been especially important to Sarah Paulson, Nikita Moore, and the other victims' families. But unfortunately for Jonas White's loved ones, the end to his reign of violence in northern Indiana didn't bring them any closer to identifying her killer.
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In fact, based on everything I've researched and read, it appears Janice's case went cold after the late 1990s, despite the FBI offering up a $3,000 reward for information in 1997. Her mom, Johnny, passed away about a decade after that in 2008, never knowing who killed her daughter.
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And the case sort of faded from the spotlight for several more years until September 2015, more than 20 years after the crime. That's when seemingly out of nowhere, the FBI made an arrest. They charged a 34-year-old man from Gary, Indiana named Barry Taylor for making a false statement to FBI agents in regards to Janice's case.
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According to a federal indictment filed a few days before his arrest, at some point in the murder investigation, the FBI's lab had tested Janice's clothing and discovered there was semen present on her underwear. They subsequently tested that semen sample for DNA and discovered it belonged to an unknown male.
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By January 2012, the Feds had done more investigating and developed enough probable cause to suspect that that unknown profile might belong to Barry Taylor. Now, I'm not sure exactly how all this happened. Like, I don't know the ins and outs of what led the FBI to his doorstep, but whatever the case was, they ended up interviewing him on January 15th, 2012.
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During that conversation, two agents asked Barry if he'd had any kind of relationship with Jonas back in August, 1995, which by the way, at that time, he would have been 15 years old too, just like Jonas.
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So I think what the agents wanted to get to the bottom of was if maybe there could have been some sort of sexual encounter between the two teens on the day she was killed that either innocently or perhaps not so innocently could explain things a bit more.
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But Barry denied being sexually involved with Jonas as a teenager, and when the ages asked him if there was any reason why his DNA might be on her clothing, he said no. But that wasn't a smart answer, because before the two agents left, they presented a search warrant to Barry and asked him for an oral swab of his DNA, which he consented to.
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And about two months later, on March 13th, the findings came back with damning results. The DNA from the semen found on Jonas' underwear belonged to him. But like I mentioned a few minutes ago, when the FBI formally arrested Barry in September 2015, they didn't charge him with murder. They only arrested him for making false statements to federal agents.
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At the time, he had a prior juvenile record that was not detailed in the available source material, and he'd been arrested and convicted as an adult for crimes like possession of a controlled substance, reckless driving, burglary, and possession of stolen property. At his first appearance in court a few days after his arrest, he was issued a $20,000 bond, which he posted and was released on.
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His trial was originally scheduled for December 2015, but was later pushed to March 21st, 2016. According to court records, a few days before that trial date, Barry ended up reaching a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
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And around 6 p.m., shortly after blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, she told her family she wanted to ride her pink and purple bike up and down their street. When she left, everyone assumed she wouldn't be gone long. But when 6.30 p.m. rolled around and dusk had settled in and Janice was still not back, that's when her mom became concerned that something wasn't right.
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In exchange for admitting that he lied to the FBI about having sex with Jonas in August 1995, Barry was sentenced to 15 months in prison, followed by two years of supervision. The judge who handed down the sentence to Barry in court said, quote, What you did was stupid. I don't know how else to say it. It's important for you to be honest with federal investigators.
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That being said, you're a human being, end quote. After everything was said and done, Barry wasn't required to pay restitution to any members of the White family, and he was never charged in relation to Jonas' murder. According to his inmate profile with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, he was released from prison in August 2017.
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To date, no one has been arrested or held criminally responsible for killing Jonas. I reached out to the FBI's Indianapolis field office while writing this episode, and a public information officer confirmed that the homicide case still remains active with the Bureau. Where I'm left after researching the story and all the others I mentioned in this episode is just sort of sad.
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There's a part of me that feels justice was served in some of the cases, but then with Janice, I feel as if so much more could have and should have been done to get to the bottom of what happened to her.
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If there's one thing that's clear, it's that she was a young, beautiful girl who had her entire life ripped away from her by a predator who I believe was intimately familiar with Gary, Indiana and Indiana Dunes National Park.
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If you're listening to this episode and feel you may know something that could help bring resolution to her case or identify the true perpetrator, please reach out to me through the Park Predator social media pages and contact the FBI. You can call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov. The agents working her case are aware of this episode's release and are ready to receive any tips.
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Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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And she called the Gary Police Department to report Janice missing. The source material isn't super clear what the department did right away to address the situation, or like exactly how many officers from the police department came out to the White's home.
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But what I can tell you is that according to coverage by Kim Liebler for The Times, at some point on Monday evening, someone found Jonas' bicycle abandoned near Indiana Dunes National Park, but Jonas was nowhere to be found.
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And to give you all some quick context for just how close the Whites lived to the park, their home was on Hamilton Street, which is literally surrounded by woods, sand dunes, and a body of water, and it's a little over a 10-minute walk from their house to the southernmost point of Lake Michigan, which is actually near a scenic spot in the park called Miller Woods Beach.
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So when I say Janice went to ride her bike on her family's street, there's really only Hamilton Street and like a handful of other small neighborhood streets that she could have gone down. And actually, where their house was on Hamilton was at the dead end of the street. So we're talking about a super small residential area enclosed by nature.
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Anyway, the next day, Tuesday, August 8th, desperate to find out where she was, Jonas' family members, which included two of her older brothers, Anthony, who was 16, and another brother who actually lived in Chicago, did their own search and then later joined investigators to comb the surrounding areas looking for any sign of their missing sister.
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Based on what I read in the source material, on Tuesday night while that search was underway, Anthony and the other brother sort of broke off on their own to scour a section of sand dunes about two miles away from where their sister's bike had been found. And as they were searching, Anthony stumbled upon who he recognized as his sister, but she definitely wasn't alive anymore.
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She was partially clothed, lying face down in one of the dunes, and she'd suffered what appeared to be severe head injuries. Horrified by the discovery, Anthony and his brother sprinted back to their mom's house and told her what they'd found. Word quickly spread to investigators and within a matter of minutes, Anthony escorted four detectives to the spot in the park where he'd found his sister.
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After you listen to this episode, go over to the Crime Junkie feed and check out their episode titled Infamous, The Indiana Dunes Disappearances. If you're part of the Crime Junkie fan club, it's available ad-free. Something I discovered while looking into this particular park is that prior to 2019, it was referred to as the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
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When the group arrived and authorities realized that the specific location where Janice's body was wasn't a place that most people could easily get to, investigators told reporter Kim Liebler that it was a secluded spot most visitors wouldn't bother walking to unless they liked to hike the sand dunes.
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In that same article by the Times, detectives stated that they didn't find any evidence around or leading to Janice's body that indicated she'd been dragged to the location. making investigators, I imagine, even more curious about how she'd ended up there, and furthermore, why her bike had been found so much further away.
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After her body was removed from the scene and taken for an autopsy, it was determined she'd likely died sometime on Monday night after being hit on the head with a blunt object, which had fractured her skull.
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On Wednesday, two days after she vanished and one day after her body was found, investigators sent off evidence samples retrieved from her body to determine whether or not she'd been sexually assaulted. But those results weren't available right away, though. So in the meantime, authorities continued to focus on identifying a possible suspect or suspects. But they didn't go too far from home.
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One of the first people on detectives' radar was Anthony, Jonas' 16-year-old brother. I think because he'd been the one to find her body and was able to lead investigators straight back to it, that made some folks in the police department wonder if maybe he could have been involved.
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But that theory went away almost as soon as it formed, because both Anthony and his mom willingly spoke with investigators at the police station on Wednesday night, and shortly thereafter, authorities ruled him out as a suspect.
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One detective told the Times that really the main reason police wanted to interview Anthony so early on wasn't because they genuinely believed he was involved, but because they needed him to walk them through how he'd found his sister's body, which turns out was literally described as a one in a million chance.
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Apparently, he just happened to glance in the right direction while searching the dunes with his older brother, and that's when he spotted his sister's remains. Which again, I think kind of reinforced for investigators the idea that maybe whoever killed Janice was familiar enough with the park to attempt to conceal her body in a location they didn't think anyone would think to check.
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Janice was described by her family and high school teachers as a timid girl who had learning disabilities, but was very active with her schoolwork. One of her special education instructors told the Times that the murder was shocking because she fully expected to have Janice in her class when the teens started the 10th grade that fall.
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This teacher also told the newspaper that Janice was quote unquote, shy and malleable. On Thursday, August 17th, 10 days after she disappeared and was killed, her family laid her to rest at a cemetery in Alsop, Illinois.
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During a memorial service in Gary right before that, Janice's older sister became so overwhelmed with grief as the casket was being taken to the hearse that her brothers had to lovingly restrain her from draping herself on top of it. That image just goes to show you how powerfully devastating Janice's death was to her family.
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Shortly after learning of her daughter's murder, Johnny told reporter Kim Liebler, quote, I'll never know what she wished for when she blew out the candles. Her wish will never come true. I'll never know what she wished for, end quote.
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While the Whites grieved, authorities made it their priority to speak with the family's neighbors to try and find anyone who might have seen something unusual on the night John has disappeared. Around that same time, the FBI took over the murder investigation because the land where the crime happened was technically federal property.
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But now it's known as the Indiana Dunes National Park. It's situated on the southernmost end of Lake Michigan, very close to Illinois' border with Indiana. According to the National Park Service's website, for thousands of years, the lake's whipping winds and waves have formed and reshaped the roughly 15,000-acre park. There are wetlands, woods, prairies, and plenty of shoreline.
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I also saw some coverage that later stated authorities did end up getting the results from Jonas' sexual assault evidence kit, and the findings confirmed that she had been the victim of a sexual assault. As the days dragged on, though, with no arrests, the Gary community began to worry about a killer on the loose. And their fears weren't just mounting because Jonas's case had seemingly stalled.
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People were fearful because another young girl riding her bike about 15 minutes away from where Jonas lived turned up dead.
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According to an article by Ken Kosky for The Times, on Tuesday, August 22nd, 1995, just over two weeks after Jonas was murdered, an eight-year-old girl named Sarah Paulson, who lived in the nearby city of Portage, Indiana, which is basically right next door to Gary, was found brutally murdered while out on a bike ride.
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In an eerie similarity to Jonas's case, Sarah was also found partially undressed lying face down in a wooded area close to her home. The two big differences between her crime scene and Jonas's was that one, Sarah's bike, which also happened to be pink and purple, like Jonas's, was found close to her body.
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According to the coverage, it was anywhere from a few feet away to less than 50 feet away, not in an entirely different location, as was the case with Janice. And two, Sarah had been found about 100 yards behind the row of homes her family's house was close to, so literally right down the street. Janice's body, on the other hand, had been discovered a decent distance away from her home.
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From the start, Sarah's death was investigated as a homicide. And after her autopsy was conducted the night her body was found, the coroner's office determined she'd been strangled and sexually assaulted. Now, the timeline of Portage Police Department's actions involving Sarah's murder was a bit more condensed, simply because she'd been found almost right away.
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According to news reports, she disappeared sometime after 11.30 a.m., but around 12.20 p.m., a woman walking her dog in a wooded area near the Paulsons' home discovered the little girl's body. So the time frame of her murder was super small, roughly 40 minutes between the last time she was seen alive and when her body was found.
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The woman who discovered her initially shrieked because she was so horrified by the sight. In fact, another eight-year-old girl who was playing in that exact same wooded area heard that woman scream and was so frightened she straight up left the woods as fast as she could. Naturally, Sarah's murder gripped the Portage community with fear. I mean, that's exactly what I would expect.
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A vicious slaying of such an innocent child would send most residents' sense of terror through the roof. One mother from Portage told Ken Koski, quote, This is just too close to home. We used to ride horses back there. We were never afraid to go there. What is the world coming to? Kids aren't safe. It's nothing like when I was young.
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You get one evil person who took it out on a little innocent girl. I hope they get whoever did this. End quote. Sarah was expected to start the second grade when summer ended, and her friends described her as quiet, kind, sometimes a bit of a prankster, and full of life. But she was not the type of kid who would strike up a conversation with a stranger or go off with someone she didn't know.
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One girl who was friends with her and saw her playing shortly before she was killed told the Times that Sarah was fast and strong, and it would have been out of character for her to go into the particular part of the woods behind the homes where her body was found.
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If you're interested in hiking, there's lots of that, too. More than 50 miles of trails. In the wintertime, the beaches in the park are covered in snow and ice, but in the spring and summer, life flourishes. Wildflowers, maple trees, and a large variety of birds showcase just some of the park's natural beauty. And in case you thought the dune part of the name was just for show, you'd be wrong.
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In the wake of the crime, parents and kids in the Paulsons' neighborhood told reporters about a few different incidents that had happened in the days leading up to Sarah's murder that were now, in hindsight, even more unsettling.
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One mother said that sometime shortly before Sarah's death, a man driving an old black rusted pickup truck with a crack in the windshield had followed her daughter home and then circled their house. She described this guy as having a beard and dark hair that went down to his shoulders.
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The incident of him circling their house was so eerie to her that she'd gone the extra step and called the police, but nothing seemingly came of her report and no one was arrested.
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A few other children from the neighborhood said that the Friday before Sarah's murder, a man they seemingly didn't know had chased them through the neighborhood, but he'd been unable to catch any of them because he was on foot and they were riding their bikes.
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I think it's safe to say with all of these reports circulating, plus Sarah and Jonas' murders happening so close together just a few weeks apart, caused people to wonder if maybe everything was connected.
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It's also probably a good time for me to mention that in addition to Sarah and Jonas' cases, there had been other child abductions and murders in the greater Northern Indiana and Northeast Illinois area during the summer of 1995. In June, just two months before Jonas and Sarah's deaths, a 14-year-old girl named Nikita Moore had been murdered and dumped in some woods close to her house in Gary.
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And there was also another case just about an hour and 25 minutes southwest of Gary in Aroma Park, Illinois, that involved a young boy. According to reporting by the Associated Press, on the evening of August 7th, so the same day Jonas disappeared, 10-year-old Christopher Meyer vanished in a recreation space close to his mom's house.
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He'd been walking and riding his bike along some trails next to the Kankakee River when he went missing. Organized searches on land and in the water got underway right away, but despite not finding Christopher, investigators from the Kankakee County Sheriff's Department did manage to locate his bicycle near a boat launch about a mile away from Aroma Park. And his shoes were also recovered.
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Around that same time, they received several good tips that allowed them to quickly zero in on a 27-year-old man from nearby Joliet, Illinois, who'd been paroled two years earlier in 1993 for, wait for it, murdering a five-year-old girl more than a decade earlier in 1981.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I'm going to tell you about today is one that quite literally brought the state of New York and maybe even the entire world to a standstill in the fall of 2023. It felt like every update that showed up on social media about this case caused parents and guardians of children to take pause and worry. I know I did.
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Because according to Elizabeth Wolfe and Selena Tabor's reporting for The Independent, Craig wasn't playing ball. He asked for a lawyer and declined to answer any of law enforcement's questions. Janae and Trisha clarified in their podcast that the family did not know or have any interaction with Charlotte's abductor prior to the crime, nor was there any indication that he'd known them.
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This was truly a case of stranger abduction. The only other person who could give authorities crucial information about what Craig had done during those hours Charlotte was missing was Charlotte. But for the time being, investigators refrained from interviewing her until a forensic interviewer who was trained to question young people could sit down with the nine-year-old.
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In the meantime, investigators wanted to see if there was any video of Craig driving away from the state park on the evening of September 30th in the direction to his mother's property. Authorities asked people with properties along that route to check their cameras to see if any had captured images of Craig's vehicle.
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They also gathered information about his cell phone pings and were able to determine that his device had in fact been in the area where Charlotte was taken on the evening of September 30th. Janae and Trisha mentioned in their podcast that investigators were also able to use the GPS system in Craig's truck to track his movements throughout that entire day.
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Turns out, he'd driven to the state park in the morning, then left at some point to ride by a local theme park. He'd also been by a local college and shopping center before eventually returning to the state park on the evening of the abduction. I imagine these findings are what prompted investigators to dig more into the 46-year-old's background.
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And according to the source material, the picture wasn't pretty. The Albany Times Union reported that more than a year before Charlotte's abduction, he'd been suspected of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl who was friends with his family. The New York State Police had investigated those allegations when the victim came forward in the summer of 2023, many months after the incident.
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But ultimately, authorities closed the case without filing any charges. There were also police and court records from April 2017 that showed he'd been previously arrested and charged for choking a person during a domestic dispute. That offense was just considered a misdemeanor, though, and it's unclear from the available source material if he was ever actually prosecuted.
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These were just incidents that were known to the authorities, though. There was another story one of his neighbors named Carol Brown had shared with NBC that is particularly eerie. According to Madison Lambert, Kathy Park, and Daniel Arkins reporting, Carol had caught Craig near her nine-year-old grandson in the summer of 2023 while the youngster was doing some yard work for her.
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She noticed Craig in her yard when her dog had barked loudly, and she went to see what was up. She said when she looked over where her grandson was working, he saw him standing over the boy. When she asked him what he was doing, Craig said he was just talking to her grandson about the weed whacker.
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But when Carol pressed him with more questions, he just started to back away and very quickly got on a bike and rode off. I know, really creepy. But according to the governor's statements to the press, Craig had never been a registered sex offender. So who knows what his motives were during his interaction with Carol's grandson.
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The Daily Mail reported that Craig himself was a father of three kids, and he'd been battling a chronic illness. His condition had apparently gotten so bad that he'd fallen behind on his rent payments. About a month before Charlotte's abduction, he'd moved into a camper van behind his mom's house. The details of his living situation are kind of unconventional.
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But according to that same piece by the Daily Mail, he lived for half of a week at his own residence, which was a three-bedroom home not far from Charlotte's family's house. While he was there, he'd spend time with his own daughter, who was 11 years old. But then the rest of the week, he'd be at his mother's property.
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His neighbors told reporter Emma James that his two oldest sons, who were in their 20s, lived at Craig's house. Neighbors on Jones Street who'd known Craig and his siblings for many years said that growing up, his mother appeared to struggle with alcoholism, and there were even times where she'd locked her kids out of the house.
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Around 6 p.m. on Saturday, September 30th, 2023, a group of children staying at Moreau Lake State Park in New York were riding their bikes in a wooded campground area known as Loop A when some of them decided to call it quits for the day.
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These neighbors said that when that would happen, they'd make sure Craig and his siblings were fed and taken care of. They were surprised to learn that he'd moved back onto his mother's property in 2023, because as far as they knew, the relationship between him and his mom wasn't good.
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They believed that she probably never even picked up on the fact that he'd brought home a little girl who wasn't his own daughter and was keeping her hidden in his camper van on the property. The only unusual thing people living close to Craig's mother's property had noticed prior to the kidnapping was that a few months earlier, he'd covered up the windows of his camper van.
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In hindsight, they told the Daily Mail that they thought that may have been an indication that he prepared ahead of time to do the abduction. That realization was a tough one for residents to process. One of them told reporter Emma James, quote, we didn't hear or see anything. It's awful to think that she could have been screaming in there and we had no idea, end quote.
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In mid-November 2023, a little over a month after the kidnapping and rescue, prosecutors tacked on four additional charges against Craig for predatory sexual assault on a child, sexual abuse, and endangering the welfare of a child. He pleaded not guilty to all of them and remained in the Saratoga County Jail without bail. His trial was scheduled to begin in April 2024.
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In the meantime, Charlotte's family tried to resume some semblance of a normal life, for Charlotte's sake. Christmas passed, and then the new year began. In late February, about two months before everyone was scheduled to head to court, Craig and his defense attorney decided to change course. According to reporting by the New York Post, he took a plea deal.
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At his formal sentencing hearing on April 17, 2024, he got 25 years to life in prison for the kidnapping charge and 22 years to life for predatory sexual assault of a child, a total of 47 years. By taking this route, the defense spared Charlotte and her family the headache of having to go through a criminal trial.
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It also meant that Charlotte wouldn't have to testify against her abductor and see him face to face in court. The district attorney for Saratoga County told the press in a statement, quote, with the guilty plea today of Craig N. Ross Jr., the victim and their family were able to hear the defendant admit his guilt to these heinous and despicable acts, end quote.
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The DA emphasized that Craig would have to serve several decades behind bars before he can ever be considered for parole. He also had to register as a sex offender.
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I imagine since it was getting close to dinner time, the ones that wanted to go figured it was probably best to meet up with their families and find out what was for dinner or what else was happening that evening. Nine-year-old Charlotte had her own idea, though. She wanted to take just one more ride around Lu Bay. But the thing was, her family had a rule.
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Janae and Tricia discussed in their podcast some of the circumstances from the abduction that came out in court when staff from the district attorney's office painted a picture of how exactly Craig had lured Charlotte into trusting him.
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The woman said that he'd seen Charlotte riding bikes with her friends as a group on the evening of September 30th, and he went on the side of Lupe to essentially lay in wait for them. He parked his truck between two campsites that were occupied at the time, but no one was actually hanging out at.
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Then, when Charlotte came riding past by herself, he flagged her down and asked her to help him get something from the backseat of his truck. She initially told him no, that he was a grown-up and could do it himself. But Craig persisted and said his hands were too big, so he needed someone with smaller hands to get the item for him.
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That's when Charlotte, being the kind, caring child she is, decided to go over and help him. Tricia says that's when her daughter leaned into the truck and when her abductor pushed her inside and told her not to get up. He then drove right past the family's campsite, but they, of course, had no idea Charlotte was inside his vehicle.
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The women emphasized in their podcast that because of the suspect's behavior and travels on September 30th, it was clear he'd been on the prowl looking for a child to abduct that day. If it wasn't going to be Charlotte, they are certain it would have been another child who'd have gone missing that day. They don't believe his ransom demand was ever his main motivation for the crime.
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Their opinion is that it was an afterthought. After the sentencing, Trisha bravely shared a statement with the court that read in part, quote, "'I don't understand why people like you do the things that you do. You took something from my daughter that cannot be replaced, and I will never forgive you for that. You don't deserve forgiveness.'"
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Maybe that says something about the type of person I am, but I will deal with that when I'm no longer a part of this world." Maybe it makes you feel powerful to alter someone's life to change who they are mentally, emotionally, and physically. She went on to say, "'She's stronger than what you tried to do. She wanted to come today so she could see you be punished for what you did to her.
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Because you didn't change her. And though her trust is hurt right now, it will not be forever.'" even after what you did to her she was concerned for your cat and asked if you did this to her because someone did it to you when you were a kid that is the kind of person my daughter is she is everything that you are lacking she is everything good in this world and you are nothing
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She will make this world a better place and already has because she wasn't afraid to tell her story. And now you are no longer allowed to be a part of society. She put you here. I hope you understand that. She put you here because she was not afraid." End quote. Charlotte's family members continue to hail her as a hero, and I do too.
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You could only ride your bike if you had a buddy. But being a kid, Charlotte figured just this once probably wouldn't hurt. So she tore off on her bicycle to make that final lap. About 15 minutes later, her mother, Tricia, returned to the family's campsite after taking one of Charlotte's younger siblings to a bathroom facility nearby.
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What happened to her is unthinkable, and I hope that one day she'll be able to share her perspective of this experience publicly if that's the best healing journey for her. Her story is powerful and moving, and I know her Aunt Janae mentioned that in a blog post she wrote in April 2024 after Craig was sentenced.
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She typed, quote, She is the real hero, having not only kept herself alive during those harrowing hours, but also having the remarkable ability to put him away for life so he can never harm another child ever again. She did that. The petite little angel who barely scrapes five feet tall went up against a giant scary monster, the boogeyman in the flesh, and she won.
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No one can ever take that away from her. Not all heroes wear capes. Mine wears a Pokemon t-shirt." End quote.
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Janae and Tricia came out with the first episode of their podcast, Sisterhood of the Survivors, in May 2024, and say that they're working with state officials to get a piece of legislation called the Child Survivor Privacy Act passed that would ensure every minor survivor of sexual assault is assigned an advocate who will be by their side throughout the legal process.
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That inherently has to happen once an offender is arrested and goes to court. They've also been working closely with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to determine how Charlotte's story can be used to help other families who may find themselves in a similar situation in the future.
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I know sometimes covering cases on this show that are so recent can strike a nerve in the folks closest to the case because it's all still so fresh. But I made sure to email with Janae and Tricia before putting this episode out to get their blessing and input. I wanted to honor their wishes of not using Charlotte's photograph, her full name, or her family's surname.
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I hope that in some small way, by me telling this story the best way I know how, it helps to further the family's cause and is something they can share with others to get their mission out into the world. When Trisha gave her impact statement in court, she specifically asked members of the media to refer to her daughter not as a victim, but as a survivor. She requested the same thing of me.
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And that's exactly what Charlotte is, a courageous survivor, who her family says strives every day to make sure that this experience does not define her. If you'd like to hear more about Charlotte's story and what her family is doing to enact change, give Sisterhood of the Survivors podcast a listen. I'll link to it in the show notes and blog post for this episode.
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Park Predators will be off next week, but will return the following week with a brand new episode. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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And she did a quick head count of all the kids in their family and their friends' families. And that's when she noticed Charlotte wasn't among them. Now, this felt strange to Tricia. So naturally, she and the other people camping with them started to look around for Charlotte.
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Even folks who weren't camping in the family's friend group, but who were busy preparing their own dinners at nearby sites, stopped what they were doing and started walking around and yelling Charlotte's name. After a little while of doing this and getting no response, the group decided to widen their search.
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At about 6.45 p.m., some adults who'd been camping with Charlotte's family discovered her bike abandoned on Loop A, like literally around the corner from the campsite, almost as if she'd made it around most of the loop but, for whatever reason, had stopped short. The bike being there but Charlotte nowhere in sight wasn't a great sign.
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By that point, Trisha had already dialed 911 and reported her daughter missing. According to the available source material, it looks like the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office and New York State Police initially arrived on scene by 7 p.m., and then the FBI got involved not long after that.
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It happened in Moreau Lake State Park in New York, which is located about 45 minutes north of the city of Albany. Based on the pictures and information on its website, this recreational space is known for being easily accessible and family-friendly. You can hike, boat, and bike, among many other activities, including ice fishing in the wintertime.
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Trisha and her sister-in-law, Janae, who have a podcast called Sisterhood of the Survivors, describe this moment as chaotic and scary. The description the state police sent out about Charlotte said she was last seen wearing an orange tie-dyed Pokemon t-shirt, dark blue pants, black Crocs, and a gray bike helmet.
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Her general physical features were that she was white with blonde hair and had green eyes. She weighed 90 pounds and stood roughly four foot six inches tall. Though one missing child flyer I saw also described her as five foot one, so I'm not sure why there was this discrepancy.
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But either way, after law enforcement put that information out, they spared no time launching a full-scale search for Charlotte. They brought in aviation units, underwater rescue teams, bloodhounds, and drones. According to an article by the Atlanta Constitution, one concern was that perhaps Charlotte had just lost her way and somehow ended up in Moreau Lake, thus the need for dive teams.
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In response to the situation, New York's Governor Kathy Hochul held a press conference at the park and told media outlets that the investigation was also utilizing folks who knew how to analyze, quote, other forms of communications in the park at that time, end quote, which Rachel Sharp reported for The Independent was later clarified as being cell phone pings from people's personal devices that had come and gone from the area around the time Charlotte disappeared.
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The governor also said, quote, That is our prayer and our hope. End quote. Charlotte's family members took part in search efforts too.
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In their podcast, Trisha and Janae talk about how Charlotte's immediate family was asked by state police and the FBI to remain at their campsite just in case Charlotte came back, but also so that authorities could know where they were in the event they needed additional information during the search.
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The Times Union reported that relatives and friends of the family began posting missing person flyers in local businesses near the park. There were around 2,000 flyers made within the first day, thanks to help from the Times Union. One of Charlotte's uncles was a member of the Schenectady Fire Department, which was actually one of the agencies taking part in the search.
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So I can only imagine how tough that must have been for him, you know, to like do his job, but also he had that personal connection to the case, which probably made it all the more gut-wrenching. His wife, Janae, who I mentioned earlier does the Sisterhood of the Survivors podcast with Trisha, posted a message on TikTok that said, quote, She is just a sweet, adorable girl.
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There isn't any information we can tell at this time, but if you can keep sharing her photo and praying, really, that is really the best that our family can ask of anyone at this time. End quote. Around 9.35 a.m.
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the next day, Sunday, October 1st, authorities issued an Amber Alert for the missing girl and told reporters that they suspected Charlotte might have been abducted since they'd searched so thoroughly for her in the park Saturday evening and came up with nothing to indicate she was still there.
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There are also several campgrounds that are known for being quiet, peaceful, and secluded from the more active attractions in the park. There's a preserve called Big Bend Preserve, and it encompasses 860 acres next to the Hudson River. It's home to open forest and wetlands that has six miles of trails winding through it. Unfortunately, over time, the preserve has had invasive species permeated.
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Within a short amount of time, the story made international news and Charlotte's name and picture were everywhere. The sheer size of the search area authorities were dealing with, though, was overwhelming. Moreau Lake State Park is more than 7,000 acres, a lot of ground to cover.
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And the reality was, even with the more than 100 searchers and 75 law enforcement officers pitching in, they were not going to be able to traverse that much space quickly. I know from interviews I've done with FBI child abduction case agents that the window of time to find a missing kid alive is very small.
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After the first 24 hours, the likelihood that they will be found safe and sound goes down drastically. I remember one agent telling me that after 48 hours, missing children are usually found deceased. That's if they're found at all. To make matters even trickier, the specific campsite the family had been staying at on Lupe was reportedly the closest site to the entrance of the camp.
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So I think one possible concern might have been that whoever had taken her would have had an advantage because they would have gotten in and out of the area fairly quickly with an access point so close by. Coverage by the Atlanta Constitution said that there was an interstate just a few minutes away that didn't have toll cameras at the time.
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which I imagine could have been an ideal route for an abductor to take if they wanted to fly under the radar and knew the area. While search efforts were underway, the state park was closed to the public. None of the usual activities like hiking, camping, and boating were permitted until authorities gave the all clear that the recreational space could reopen.
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Law enforcement officers stopped visitors' cars and checked their back seats and trunks as they left the park, but didn't find any trace of Charlotte. Trisha was quoted by the Vancouver Sun saying that her daughter was a trusting child and a good kid. The family desperately wanted her to be returned.
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Her family described the fourth grader as a nice girl who was well-liked, smart, and often made sure to watch out for other kids. She had two other siblings and had recently been elected as the class officer for her school student council, and she liked exactly what you'd imagine a child her age would like. Pokemon, wildlife, cats, and singing.
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Not necessarily in that order, but I mean, come on, she's a kid. Is there a more wholesome collection of interests? Brendan Lyons and Patrick Tine reported for the Times Union that as Sunday night came to a close, Charlotte's classmates, friends, and family members attended a vigil on the Hudson River behind a local library.
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And that's really all they could do was wait, hope, and pray, because substantial updates had not come in. Behind the scenes, though, things were happening, and law enforcement's investigation was unfolding at warp speed.
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I think it's safe to say, based on reading the collective source material and listening to Tricia and Janae's podcast, that teams of investigators were working every possible lead and trying to learn as much as they could about Charlotte or her whereabouts. while simultaneously trying to track down people who'd been in the state park when she vanished.
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And thankfully, the big break investigators were hoping for came to them in the early morning hours of Monday, October 2nd, in the form of a note. According to reporting by ABC News, around 4.20 a.m. on Monday, October 2nd, so less than 48 hours into the investigation, a state police trooper who was standing guard at the family's home checked their mailbox and found a note inside.
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At the time, no one from the family was home because Tricia and the rest of Charlotte's family were still in the state park searching for her. The source material doesn't say exactly what was written on the note, but the gist of it was that someone who claimed to have Charlotte wanted a significant monetary ransom.
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The Independent claimed that sources close to the investigation said that the note may have been written in Charlotte's own handwriting. But that wasn't something I saw in many other articles, so I'm not 100% sure about that detail.
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What I do know is that Janae and Tricia said in their podcast that the note had zero instructions or demands on where to meet up with someone to provide the ransom, which was kind of odd. There's also a bit of inconsistent reporting on this next part.
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But Martha McCarty reported for The Independent that shortly before discovering the ransom demand, the trooper who'd found it and maybe a few others had been at another call in the area. So it seems like maybe no one from law enforcement was physically present at the family's home when whoever left the note came by and dropped it off.
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Another article by Emma James for the Daily Mail said the same thing, that a trooper who was tasked with standing guard had just missed whoever the mystery person was who left it.
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However, there were some articles that stated the opposite, that several troopers, or maybe just one trooper, was there the whole time and did actually see a suspicious person drive up in a vehicle and leave the note, which is what prompted them to check the mailbox in the first place.
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If that's the case, I don't know why the trooper didn't act right then and there and investigate the letter deliverer or try to pursue them.
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It was definitely a question reporters in 2023 asked, but there's indication in the news coverage that perhaps the trooper just thought the person in the car was a friend of the family leaving their condolences, because that had been happening throughout the evening. Anyway, what has been confirmed is that when investigators examined the note for fingerprints, they caught a lucky break.
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There was one, and right away they entered it into the state's database of known criminal offenders. A few hours later, around 2.30 p.m., a match was found. The print belonged to a 46-year-old man named Craig Nelson Ross Jr., who'd been arrested in 1999 for driving while intoxicated in the city of Saratoga Springs.
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The Atlanta Constitution's coverage stated that the reason his prints were already in the criminal database was because they'd been taken as a result of that DWI offense. Now that authorities had his name, they went to several addresses associated with him, but quickly dialed in on a property his mother Joan owned in Ballston Spa, New York.
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That location was about 20 miles north of Moreau Lake State Park, and like 12 minutes from where Charlotte lived with her family. When a state police special operations team and FBI SWAT unit arrived at the property around 6.30 p.m., Craig was there, but not inside the main residence. He was actually living in a dingy camper van parked in the backyard.
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Initially, he resisted the authorities, and there was a bit of a struggle, but eventually the officers took him into custody. The Independent reported that at that time, he was in his underwear. Law enforcement did a sweep of the property and quickly found Charlotte hidden inside a cabinet of Craig's camper. She was alive and appeared to be in good health.
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Authorities put her into an ambulance and sent her to Albany Medical Center Hospital for further evaluation. Craig was then arrested and charged with first-degree kidnapping. His mother's neighbors told the Associated Press that they were surprised to learn about what had happened.
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When everything was going down and police flooded their street, one woman said she thought a drug raid was the reason for so much law enforcement presence. Only later did she learn what the truth was. Another neighbor told the Daily Mail that no one had suspected Charlotte was on their street at all.
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They knew that a lot of people were looking for her from what they'd seen on the news, but they never imagined that she was right there next to them all along. At 6.32 p.m., law enforcement got to deliver what I imagine was the best news Charlotte's parents could ever hear. She was safe, alive, and would be coming home. Not too much later, the family had all reunited at the hospital.
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A GoFundMe page was created to help them recover from everything they'd gone through and adjust their daughter back into what her life had been like before this all happened. Her aunt Janae was a longtime journalist and writer who took it upon herself to articulate statements on behalf of Charlotte's family after everything was over.
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In the wake of Craig's arrest, she told reporters in a statement published by ABC News, quote, We are thrilled that she is home and we understand that the outcome is not what every family gets. A huge thank you to the FBI, the New York State Police, all of the agencies that were mobilized, all of the families, friends, and volunteers. End quote.
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In a press conference after the rescue, authorities revealed that they were trying to determine if Craig had known the family prior to taking Charlotte. You see, an address on the registration for his car came back to a residence that was less than two miles away from the family's home, which felt like either a super wild coincidence or maybe something else, an intentional connection.
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The only way to know for sure, though, was to ask Craig. The Associated Press and The Independent reported that he'd been arraigned overnight on Monday and booked into the Saratoga County Jail during the early morning hours of Tuesday, October 3rd. So investigators used that as the opportune time to sit him down for an interview.
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They needed to determine if he'd surveilled the family or targeted Charlotte specifically before deciding to go through with the abduction. Because he'd personally gone by and left the ransom note in her family's mailbox, that indicated to some degree that he at least knew or had looked up where they lived prior to Monday, October 2nd. But the authorities didn't get much clarity on this.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And despite the fact that the case I'm going to tell you about today is nearly 40 years old, it still needs to be solved. There is an unknown predator who has gotten away with a heinous crime and who needs to be brought to justice.
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And organization was critical in Margaret's homicide investigation because one of the main ways authorities tried to gather new leads early on was by stopping cars along the roadway that she had likely jogged on shortly after leaving her apartment.
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According to an article by Judy Nyman for the Toronto Star, on Wednesday night, September 2nd, almost a week after the crime, about 15 officers spent an entire hour stopping every vehicle or pedestrian on Warden Avenue and St. Clair Avenue East. The intersection of those two streets was one of three ways you could get into Warden Woods Park and was likely a route Margaret traversed.
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So investigators wanted to know if anyone who normally took that route through the area might have seen something that could be important to the investigation. It doesn't appear from the source material though that much came from that effort, other than detectives telling reporter Cal Miller that they'd been able to successfully narrow down what route Margaret took into the park.
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According to investigators, they determined she left her house on Santa Monica Boulevard sometime after 7 p.m., jogged for a few brief minutes on St. Clair Avenue East, passed the subway station entrance, and then entered Wardenwoods Park. That would have been at the corner of Warden Avenue and St. Clair Avenue East.
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If it's helpful to any of you, I've provided a map that the Toronto Star created delineating this route. It's on the blog post for this episode. About 12 days into the investigation, detectives conducted a reenactment of the crime with Crimestoppers and aired that segment on TV, hoping it would generate new leads.
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The one big detail I saw reported in that push for information was that the police publicly speculated that a man had attacked Margaret, which I think may have been everyone's assumption already by that point, but still, it was the first time I saw authorities come out and say that definitively. Unfortunately, though, more time went by and police were still no closer to identifying a suspect.
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Ian McLeod reported for the Ottawa Citizen that detectives assembled a dedicated task force to work the case and remained hopeful that additional forensic testing on items of evidence collected from Margaret's body and crime scene would provide them with better leads.
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Towards late November of 1987, investigators announced they'd worked with the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit to develop a profile of the killer. According to coverage by the Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen, authorities believe the guy was a young man in his mid-20s who was likely unemployed and knew the layout of Wardenwoods Park fairly well.
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They thought he could have possibly gotten hurt during his struggle with Margaret and most likely had an explosive temper or felt a lifelong sense of rejection from women. Investigators said his motive for the crime was most likely sexual in nature, and after committing the murder, he'd probably started acting differently, perhaps more upset.
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That change in behavior would have been something his family and friends would have noticed. The FBI's profile also indicated that if he was married or in a relationship, it was most likely volatile. About a month before that profile came out, police got what I imagine felt like their best lead yet, a possible suspect.
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Near the end of October 1987, so about two months after Margaret's murder, authorities announced they had a fairly specific suspect. They described him as a quote-unquote light-skinned black man with a thin mustache in his 20s to 30s, wearing a reddish-colored cap, who had been seen walking away from the park around 8 p.m. on the night of the crime.
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Whoever saw this guy worked with investigators to create a composite sketch of his likeness and attire. Once this sketch went out to the public, investigators were hopeful that folks would call in and lead them straight to the suspect. But that didn't happen. The case remained static, and Margaret's family was desperate for answers.
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On November 25th, Charlotte, her mother, read and recorded a letter she'd written, which ended up being more of a public plea for information to anyone who may have known her daughter's killer, like a mother, sibling, or girlfriend. It was broadcast across Canadian radio stations.
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And I would normally abbreviate a lengthy statement like this for the sake of time, but I feel it's important to provide the whole thing for you. Here's a voice actor to read it in its entirety.
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Around the same time Charlotte issued this statement, authorities announced they were going to ask the city's police commission to set a reward for information in Margaret's case far higher than the normal amount, which was $50,000, to instead $100,000. And the city agreed.
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Shortly after that announcement, investigators issued a warning to the public, but specifically to women, to be on guard because TPS was officially linking three sexual assault cases from earlier in 1987 to the same perpetrator. However, they did not believe that this man was Margaret's killer.
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The police cautioned female citizens to be careful while walking or traveling at night because at least three young women had been attacked by a man in his 20s near bus stations or roadways in the city. In one case, a survivor had been dragged between two homes and assaulted, while another had been dragged into a backyard and also sexually assaulted.
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These incidents, though horrific, were distinctly different from Margaret's case because in all of them, the women had survived and they described their attackers as white men. But if that wasn't frightening enough, by January 1988, yet another attack had taken place in Toronto, this time in the Scarborough neighborhood, which was the same geographic area where Margaret had lived.
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According to Gwen Jocko Thomas' reporting for the Toronto Star, a trio of men had broken into the victim's home, sexually assaulted her, tossed her place, and stolen some of her jewelry and cash. But again, it was the police's belief that this incident, as well as the other attacks, were not the work of Margaret's killer.
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Because of the sheer number of attacks going on, authorities were beginning to suspect that several men could be to blame for the slew of sexual assaults happening in the city. In fact, by March of 1988, investigators came right out and said that they were sure at least three different serial sexual predators were attacking women across neighborhoods in Toronto.
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Between 1986 and the end of 1987, the number of sexual assaults had skyrocketed to the point where people in the neighborhoods where they were occurring were growing increasingly concerned.
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In late August 1988, with some of those investigations going cold, as well as Margaret's murder remaining unsolved, organizers with Toronto's Rape Crisis Centre decided to hold their annual Take Back the Night march in Wardenwoods Park. It was the first time in the organization's history that the event was not held downtown.
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Around 10 a.m. on Friday, August 28, 1987, a woman named Marion Colburn, who was the manager of an older adult's home in downtown Toronto, noticed that an employee of hers named Margaret McWilliam had failed to show up for her scheduled shift as a receptionist. And it wasn't like Margaret was just a few minutes late.
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Choosing to have it at the place where Margaret had been killed was intentional. The group wanted to send a clear message that women should be able to go wherever they want, whenever they want, and not feel that their lives are in danger. Ivan and Charlotte McWilliam joined the march with nearly 400 women. Charlotte gave a brief speech that brought some participants to tears.
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But after that event, news coverage and interest in her daughter's case seemed to wane. Toronto police detectives didn't make much headway in their investigation throughout the 1990s, despite other high-profile homicides and sexual assaults getting solved.
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The McWilliams remained hopeful that answers would come, but year after year went by with no arrests, and despite authorities questioning some men who'd been caught for similar crimes, they couldn't link any of those individuals to Margaret's murder.
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In the fall of 1997, 10 years into the investigation, Margaret was one of 50 documented female murder victims in the Toronto metro area dating back to 1959, whose case was still unsolved.
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Her parents had a good relationship with law enforcement at that time and were resolved to find out who killed their daughter, but feeling like they had a purpose in what they were doing did not mean their pain or anger had subsided in the least. Ivan told Ottawa Citizen reporter Don Campbell, quote, Not a day goes by that I don't think about her and wonder what we might be doing.
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She's in our thoughts more now than ever. As you get older, you get the feeling something is missing in your life more and more. You think that this person would have filled that void. We enjoyed cycling together. We enjoyed hiking together. When it gets right down to it, I miss her as a friend. End quote.
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They were convinced that whoever killed Margaret had likely returned to a family of their own and lived among the citizens of Toronto. In 2010, more than 20 years after the crime, the McWilliams' hopes were teased once again when a man named Russell Williams was arrested in Toronto for several sexual assaults and murders.
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Coincidentally, Russell was about the same age as Margaret and had also spent time in Deep River as a child, the small town the McWilliams were from. And he'd graduated from the University of Scarborough in 1987. But despite those coincidences and the fact that he'd committed a series of similar crimes, he was never formally associated with Margaret's case or officially linked to her murder.
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Six years later, in April 2016, the police did a push for new information and released their own video message, which was broadcast on YouTube.
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In that publication, a detective sergeant who is in charge of Toronto Police Service's cold case unit named Stacey Gallant announced that thanks to advances in modern forensic technology, TPS had retrieved a strong male DNA profile from some of Margaret's case evidence, which an article for the Global News later reported came from skin cells left behind on her sweater.
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But even in 2016, there were no matches for that profile in Canada's DNA database, which had only come into existence in 2000. Detective Sergeant Gallant asked anyone who might have known the offender back in 1987 to come forward. All detectives needed was a name.
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Or if they're no longer alive, at least give one Canadian family the answer to a question they've spent so many decades asking. Who killed Margaret McWilliams? The crime took place in the summer of 1987 in Toronto's Warden Woods Park, an urban green space that's situated on the eastern side of the city.
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She was two hours late, which to Marion felt very out of character for the 21-year-old. Because this seemed like a red flag, Marion dialed Margaret's home phone number and spoke with a homeowner who rented a modest basement apartment to her in the Scarborough neighborhood of Toronto.
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They already had his DNA, so from there, the process to do a direct comparison and aim for potential prosecution was fairly straightforward. According to coverage by the Toronto Star, Gallant clarified that his agency did not think Margaret had been specifically targeted. He stated she more than likely was just a victim of a random attack.
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He said, quote, It was more along the lines of the offender happened to be in the park as well and saw this as an opportunity because there was no one else around or that the suspect acted on those urges that just happened at the time. End quote. As far as who the one-time person of interest was who'd been seen leaving the park around 8 p.m.
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on the night of the crime wearing that reddish-colored hat, Gallant still couldn't identify that man. As far as I can tell, to this day, no one knows who he is. That $100,000 reward for information that had once been offered had also expired by 2016. But Detective Sergeant Gallant wasn't giving up hope.
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He told the Toronto Star that unless the suspect had died or moved out of Canada in the years since the crime, he most likely was still living in a place that was familiar to him. For Gallant, it was almost inconceivable to think that the perpetrator had never committed another offense like what he did to Margaret.
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The only problem was he hadn't been caught, so his DNA could not be compared to the profile police had unless they could find out his name and get a direct source sample. Gallant told the newspaper in part, quote, How do you instantly stop and never do anything again after you've done something this bad and you get away with it? But maybe, maybe he's just lying low and waiting it out. End quote.
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It was a realistic observation, one that detectives who came after Gallant would continue to ponder. Toronto Police Services Detective Sergeant Steve Smith, who I've mentioned throughout this episode and who most recently was named the leader of the agency's cold case squad, stated in 2022 that over the years, his agency has done a lot of interviews with the media about Margaret's case.
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He clarified that in addition to the DNA profile the agency has that doesn't currently have a match in the national database, it also doesn't match any DNA samples that have been recovered from other crime scenes in country. So it's not someone whose DNA was submitted after the database was created in 2000, and it hasn't shown up as part of other crimes.
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When that landlord checked the door to Margaret's unit, they discovered her keys were still in the door's lock and assumed she'd left them there the night prior, likely after leaving for a jog. Uneasy about what could be going on with Margaret, her manager decided to call the Toronto Police Service, then called the Metro Police, and report her missing, and basically had them do a welfare check.
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Detective Sergeant Smith said that if authorities do ever get a hit for it, his agency's next step will be to chase down who that individual or individuals are and determine what exactly they were doing on August 27th, 1987. His assessment of Margaret's murderer is that they were strong enough to overpower her and force her off the trail into thick brush.
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They also showed a level of determination that seemed calculated and, of course, brutal. He speculated to the host of 24 Shades of Blue podcast that he isn't sure if what happened to Margaret initially began as a sexual assault, but then turned into a murder, or if robbery and sexual assault were always the killer or killer's motive.
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The fact that Margaret's Walkman or headphones were never found makes Detective Sergeant Smith and others wonder if maybe the killer took it to resell or perhaps as a trophy. He believes that the killer was likely a large person who'd spent a significant amount of time in Wardenwoods Park. One, living unhoused, or two, visiting on a daily basis to watch people who walked or ran the trail.
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Based on the latest news coverage I could find after 2023, it doesn't appear Toronto Police Service has said whether detectives are currently retesting old evidence again. Margaret's mother, Charlotte, told the host of 24 Shades of Blue that losing her daughter was like having her own life cut in half.
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She considered the murder a slash to her very existence, and even though she'd endured other losses during her lifetime, nothing compared to losing Margaret. She pleaded with anyone who might know who the perpetrator is to come forward. She believes Margaret's murderer could still be alive and likely still haunted by what he did back in August of 1987.
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Charlotte said that if there are any mothers, girlfriends, or significant others out there who think they might know the killer, to consider revealing what they know. Something I'm continually struck by whenever I'm covering stories like this is just the overwhelming number of cases there are of women being attacked while doing something as ordinary as running in a park.
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According to a 2021 survey by Runner's World, 60% of the 2,000 women who were surveyed said they'd experienced being harassed while running, and 25% reported they'd endured sexual harassment on a regular basis while running. A 2024 UK study found that more than two-thirds of women they surveyed reported some kind of abuse while running.
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And in general, females stated they were fearful of running specifically on forest trails. When I hear statistics like this, I am deeply saddened. As an outdoor recreationist myself and a sister to a CrossFit queen and runner, it's so alarming.
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If you're listening and want to access more resources about this trend that can offer information about staying safe, Canada Running Series is a great place to start, as well as Running World's Runners Alliance. You can find a link to those websites and a few others in the show notes.
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If you have any information about the unsolved murder of Margaret McWilliam, please contact Toronto Police Service's Homicide Division at 416-808-7400 or email them at homicide at torontopolice.on.ca. You can also anonymously contact Crime Stoppers at 416-222-8477. Links to those contacts will also be listed in the show notes and on the blog post for this episode.
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Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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In short order, officers started their investigation at Margaret's basement apartment, which was on a roadway in the eastern part of the city called Santa Monica Boulevard. No one answered when the officers knocked, which wasn't a good sign, so the next thing they did was conduct a full-scale search for her in the areas closest to her place, which included Warden Woods Park.
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And to give you just a little bit of geographical context real quick, the house that Margaret lived in the basement of was very close to the park, as well as that subway station that I mentioned earlier in the intro. So naturally, it made sense for authorities to search the green space as part of Margaret's missing person investigation.
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Throughout Thursday morning and afternoon, teams of officers scoured the area looking for any sign of her, but didn't have much luck. Then, around 5.30 p.m., things took a grim turn. According to coverage by the Toronto Star, investigators using tracking dogs discovered what they believed was Margaret's body in a remote section of thick forest about 100 feet away from the nearest road.
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A coroner quickly responded to the scene along with about 30 or so police officers who combed the area searching for clues and potential evidence. Discoveries at the scene and subsequent findings from Margaret's autopsy confirmed she'd been struck in the face, strangled with a piece of material from her jogging suit, and sexually assaulted.
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The television program To Catch a Killer reported that she was found face up wearing only her socks and her clothing and shoes had been neatly arranged in a pile near her body. According to Toronto Police Service's podcast, 24 Shades of Blue, it was clear to authorities from the get-go that Margaret had suffered a lot of violent trauma.
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A homicide detective named Steve Smith, who was interviewed for the podcast, said there were signs that she'd initially been assaulted closer to the trail and then dragged up the hill and into some bushes and trees, further away from where she could be seen.
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Items investigators did not find with her body was a Walkman cassette player or headphones, which was something witnesses who'd seen her running in the past knew she usually took with her while exercising. Another clue that stuck out to investigators was a distinct shoe print that was discovered in the dirt close to her body.
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According to what Detective Smith told 24 Shades of Blue podcast, the print belonged to an estimated size 12 shoe. So kind of large as far as shoe sizes go. It was collected and preserved because the fact that it was found at the crime scene inherently meant it was a valuable clue.
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That TV show I mentioned a second ago called To Catch a Killer reported something quite different, though, about this shoe print. That program said it wasn't left on the earth near Margaret. It was actually an impression on her body, meaning whoever left it behind had seemingly stepped on her or applied pressure to some part of her body with their foot in order to leave it behind.
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According to the city's website, the landscape includes a body of water known as Massey Creek and a winding trail that cuts through the park, providing visitors with a nature oasis in what is otherwise a massive metropolitan area. If any of you listening are city dwellers or from Toronto, then you probably can picture what I'm describing.
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Whatever the case was, though, the important takeaway is that back in 1987, the tread for the shoe was analyzed closely, and detectives compared it to shoe brands that had been sold in Canada that particular year. After their process of elimination was complete, they determined it belonged to an AAU high-top athletic shoe made in Korea, which had only been sold at Bata brand shoe stores.
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Between 300 to 500 pairs had been sold in 1987 across 18 different stores in the Toronto metro area. This shoe clue sort of took on a life of its own and became so important to investigators that they dubbed Margaret's case the Cinderella murder because they were spending so much time and energy trying to find an individual who wore a size 12 shoe like it.
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However, despite working directly with the retail stores, trying to narrow down who'd purchased the sneaker, police were unable to pinpoint who it belonged to.
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They got about a half dozen calls from the public about the shoe, but none of those leads panned out, which was frustrating because in addition to the shoe impression, police had also discovered several items in the woods and tree line near the crime scene that indicated someone had been living there for an extended period of time.
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None of the source material goes into specific detail about what those items were, but if I was gonna take a guess, I'd probably assume it was maybe trash or food wrappers or perhaps personal items that weren't your average pieces of litter.
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Unable to do much with that observation though until more information came in, police officers canvassed the neighborhood where Margaret lived, looking for anyone who might've seen or heard something that could aid the investigation. A relative of the owner of the home Margaret lived in told the Toronto Star, quote, She was a quiet, very friendly person who liked to stay fit.
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She was always jogging, although people in the neighborhood were always suggesting that she be careful in the woods. She was a sensible girl, but just got out a little later than was wise, end quote. According to that same article, other people who knew Margaret's usual routine also said that most nights she historically exercised sometime around or shortly after 7 o'clock.
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She usually went to Wardenwoods Park, and since the weather on August 27th was reportedly really nice, it made sense for her to stick to her normal routine and go running that evening. On top of that, she and her mother Charlotte were planning to travel to England for a walking tour in the near future. In an effort to prepare for that trip, Margaret had taken up jogging.
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She'd even told her mom that she enjoyed exercising in a green space close to where she lived. All of this information was good intel for police detectives working the case to know. It meant that whatever befell Margaret had likely occurred sometime shortly before or after 7 p.m. on Thursday the 27th.
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That fact in and of itself was kind of interesting because that time of day was also when a lot of other visitors with dogs or families would have been in the park. Warden Woods Park was a popular spot because it was right off of St. Clair Avenue East, a major street in the city. It had one main trail that was flanked by woods on each side and ran through the middle of the park.
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Warden Woods, like a lot of city green spaces, is a patch of thick forest right in the middle of intersecting neighborhoods and commercial roads. If you're in a car, you can get there very easily. If you're walking, biking, or even taking public transportation, you're also going to be able to find your way in and out without any problems.
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Beyond that was a business park and several apartment buildings. On the blog post for this episode, I've actually provided some scene photos and aerial maps of what it looked like in 1987, so take a look if you want to get a better lay of the land that I'm describing. From the start, it really wasn't a question for police what Margaret had been doing when she was attacked.
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Based on everything they'd gathered so far, it was clear she'd been jogging on the trail alone when the perpetrator or perpetrators struck. Toronto Police Service Detective Sergeant Steve Smith told the host of the 24 Shades of Blue podcast that investigators back in 1987 were able to determine other important details about Margaret's movements on the evening she was killed.
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He said that in the early afternoon, she'd left work at the older adult's home she worked at called Fellowship Towers and gone back to her apartment. Then around 6 p.m., she'd spoken to a few people either in person or over the phone. And after that, she'd gone on her run.
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The glaring question in everyone's mind, though, was whether a suspicious person had followed her there or perhaps been spotted in or around the park at the same time she was there. Because Margaret was a frequent visitor to Warden Woods, investigators needed to determine if maybe whoever had killed her had been watching her prior to the attack. Maybe even well before August 27th.
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You know, a stalker of sorts who'd laid in wait for the opportune time to strike. It wasn't the only theory the police were considering, but it certainly was one. Other avenues of investigation were whether Margaret's death was connected to a string of sexual assaults that had recently occurred in the same part of the city, one of which had actually happened about a month before her murder.
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Detectives also told the press that it was entirely possible Margaret's slaying was the act of a stranger, making her merely a victim of a random crime. Whatever the case was, though, there was no doubt her murder frightened women so much that they opted to avoid going into parks alone.
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One woman told Toronto Star reporter Dana Flavell, quote, I probably would have done it before that McWilliam girl was murdered, but now I might think twice about it, end quote. Other women told the newspaper that in their opinion, Wardenwoods Park seemed too closed in of a green space to want to run there alone at night.
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In that same article, a spokesperson for a group in the city that was encouraging women to become more involved in urban planning said that the designs of many of Toronto's parks were to blame for folks like women feeling as if they were more vulnerable to attacks. The Parks Department's goal had always been to have a lot of trees and foliage in the city's recreation spaces.
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But that also meant the layouts were the ideal places for suspicious or nefarious individuals to lurk in. One of the first tips about this very sort of thing that came to police was from a woman who lived on Margaret Street. According to coverage by the Toronto Star, this witness told police that around 6.45 p.m.
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on the evening of the crime, she'd observed a suspicious man in the area who she described as 5'7 tall with a medium build and had short brown hair. She stated that he'd behaved rather oddly, shaking his head from side to side, and at one point crossed the street in front of her, seemingly pausing to stare at her.
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I mean, there's even a subway station about five minutes away from the park's northern entrance. In August 1987, a young woman using the space to exercise found out in the worst way possible that someone inside with violent intentions was watching her. And planning a crime so horrific, it remains one of the most notorious cold cases in Toronto Police Service's history.
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It's unclear from the source material if this individual was ever found and questioned, but what I can tell you is that in the first day of the investigation, while police were doing their thing, Margaret's parents, Ivan and Charlotte McWilliam, were notified of their daughter's murder after traveling to Scarborough to aid in the initial search for her.
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Also around this time, they spoke to reporters with local newspapers. The McWilliams were from the Deep River community of Ontario, about five hours northeast of where Margaret lived in Scarborough. She'd only been away from home for about a year before her murder happened.
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In fact, according to an article by the Ottawa Citizen, which featured an interview with Margaret's dad, Ivan, she'd only been living in that basement apartment near Wardenwoods Park for about four months before she was killed.
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She'd moved from her hometown to the big city to pursue work and an education at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, which has since been renamed to Toronto Metropolitan University. She was scheduled to attend classes there in the fall and had a passion for culinary work and liked to cook and explore around the kitchen.
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Her end goal was to complete night classes at school and then eventually move back to the small town she was from to work with the elderly. About a week before her murder, her parents and 18-year-old younger brother, Mike, had spent some time together at their cottage in Berries Bay, Ontario.
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Charlotte told Toronto Police Service's podcast, 24 Shades of Blue, that her daughter had been born prematurely, and so as a result of that, she'd faced some health issues during her childhood. But despite those challenges, she'd grown up to be a reliable and hardworking person who'd excelled academically in high school.
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In 1987, referring to how the McWilliam family dealt with the loss, Margaret's dad Ivan told reporter David Gamble, quote, "'Margaret could not conceive of the kind of people who did to her what this man did. She was someone who was very, very special. This man has not only destroyed one person, but a whole family.'"
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If you had asked me a week ago about this as a hypothetical situation, I would have said I wanted to kill the man. For some reason, I just don't feel that way. I don't feel anything. End quote. In the wake of the tragedy, families and friends from the McWilliams tight-knit community in Deep River supported them as best as they could.
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Jim Wilkes reported for the Toronto Star that at one point, Charlotte had to be admitted to the hospital to help her deal with her daughter's murder. On Tuesday, September 1st, five days after the crime, the McWilliams laid Margaret to rest at a cemetery in Deep River.
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As a final nod to her caring spirit and passion for the elderly, Margaret's family asked people who wanted to contribute funds in her memory to donate money to Fellowship Towers, the older adult's home where she'd worked. Two days later, residents at Fellowship Towers held their own memorial service for her.
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Either simultaneously or prior to working as a receptionist there, Margaret had been the facility's dining room supervisor. Her manager told the Toronto Star, She cared. She was a very nice person who always did her best and was always enthusiastic." For a while after her death, flowers from Margaret's funeral were displayed in the lounge at Fellowship Towers.
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To keep the investigation from stalling out, the police set up a dedicated hotline for tips and began using a computer to log and cross-check information developed in the investigation. Now, I know to many of us listening in 2025, that might not seem like a big deal, but back in 1987, this was considered a big deal.
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The computer program was a tool that was very new age for detectives at the time, and it had proven successful in a serial sexual assault case the Toronto Police Service had solved prior to Margaret's murder. In that investigation, authorities were able to catch the perpetrator thanks to logging all of the information into the computer that they discovered in each of those cases.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today is a story some of you might be familiar with. It took place in Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya in 1988. According to a travel website from Asemara, the reserve borders Tanzania's Serengeti National Park and sits in the southwest part of Kenya.
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This conclusion, as you can imagine, did not sit well with John Ward, who'd been extremely outspoken about how ridiculous he thought that theory was. He traveled back to Kenya to launch his own inquiry into the matter and sought assistance from an independent pathologist and a professor from the UK.
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Originally, he'd planned to have Julie's remains cremated, but he canceled those plans when he realized that Kenyan officials were being really sketchy about the autopsy report. A few weeks later, the two men from the UK who John hired to review Julie's remains concluded that she'd died as a result of a homicide.
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In fact, one of them said it was crystal clear that she'd been decapitated and one of her knees had been severed in half prior to her body being burned. So with that information, John accused the Kenyan police force of refusing to treat his daughter's death as a murder because they cared more about the negative impacts it could have on the country's tourism industry than getting to the truth.
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The people take pride in their land and all of the things that make it attractive to international tourists. Visitors to the reserve can even visit the tribe's village and learn about their rich culture. The word Mara in the reserve's name is the tribe's word for spotted or spotted land and refers to the patches of acacia trees and shrubbery that are scattered throughout it.
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He told reporter Peter Godwin, quote, Kenya is a country which relies very heavily on tourism, and there may be a temptation to look the other way. If there is a man out there who killed my daughter, I want him, end quote. John's resolve was seemingly limitless, along with his ability to bankroll independent efforts to investigate what happened to Julie.
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He was a wealthy businessman and the managing director of a hotel group, so it's no surprise that from day one he was able to contract several private pilots and aircrafts to search for his daughter. No amount of money, though, could buy him patience when it came to dealing with the Kenyan government.
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He wrote in his book, The Animals Are Innocent, The Search for Julie's Killers, that the methods the country's police force employed were both unprofessional and outright bizarre. For example, about a month after finding Julie's remains in the reserve, two Kenyan police investigators showed up to John's hotel room in Nairobi and handed him a plastic grocery bag with a skull inside.
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They said it was Julie's and had been found during an additional search of the reserve. About six months after that, in early April 1989, the first Kenyan police officer who was in charge of the investigation filed a formal report in which he concluded Julie had died by suicide, full stop.
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A few months later, in August of that year, an official inquest into the matter took place in Kenya, and John was hopeful he and his family would get some clarity and be able to present their own findings. By that point, he'd traveled to and from Africa multiple times since September of 1988, and he'd spent countless hours gathering interviews and evidence as part of his own investigation.
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He and his lawyer planned to present what they'd found to the magistrate overseeing the inquest, or at a minimum, just publicly raise doubts about the police's version of events. Andrew Hogg reported for the Sunday Times that John himself wasn't allowed into the courtroom for most of the proceeding, only his lawyer was.
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And very little of what his investigation had uncovered could be presented outside of his own testimony when he eventually was called as a witness. However, I will say that John did use his time in the witness box to push back and question the validity of the police's investigation, as well as a lot of the inconsistencies in the entire case.
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Regarding his doggedness to see justice served for his daughter, John told reporter Andrew Hogg that his entire family was unified when it came to holding Kenyan investigators accountable. He said, quote, "'I'm just the sharp end. It's being done with the backing, encouragement, and insistence of my wife and two sons. They are not at home saying, crazy dad is off halfway around the world again.
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They are as determined as I am to catch the bastard that did this.'" From my point of view, it's probably 70% revenge and 30% a combination of factors, including my fear that if the murderer has done it once, he could do it again. It's not an obsession. It's more cold and calculating than that. It comes down to the fact that I don't like being buggered about." End quote.
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Another noteworthy witness who testified was Dr. Jason Cavitti, the chief pathologist who changed Julie's post-mortem report a few days after it was initially labeled a homicide.
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And similar to that aspect of the landscape was the patchwork investigation into the death of a young British wildlife photographer in September 1988. Information about what happened to Julie Ward while visiting Kenya seems to be dotted over the pages of time. Little lies and little truths just sprinkled between various sources.
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When he was called to testify about his actions, he stated he'd done what he'd done because he felt that his underling, Dr. Shaker, had used words and phrases in the initial autopsy report, which was written in English, that were not grammatically correct.
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Cavitti said that Dr. Shaker had made those mistakes because he didn't have a clear understanding of the English language because he happened to be Egyptian. Essentially, Cavitti's story was that he and Dr. Shaker together had altered the report to simply correct Dr. Shaker's misuse of grammar.
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The alterations including changing the descriptions of Julie's injuries from stating things like cleanly cut to cracked or torn and changed the word sharp to blunt.
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According to reporting by Aiden Hartley for The Times, the inquest also revealed that at one point, the clerk at Sand River Camp had been considered a suspect because he'd admitted after a few rounds of questioning to forging Julie's signature in the camp's register book about 30 minutes after she left the area.
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This clerk had several inconsistent statements throughout his testimony, but he vehemently denied killing Julie or participating with anyone else to cover up the crime. Another article by the Times reported that the Kenyan police constable, Jared Karari, who was stationed at Sand River Camp the day Julie was last seen, was also called to testify.
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He told the court that he'd seen Julie take down her and Glen Burns' two tents from about 100 yards away while he was sitting in his office. Shortly after that, he said she left the area around 2.30 p.m. John Ward's attorney, though, didn't believe him and pressed him hard on the witness stand.
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And I think the reason for that was because Gerald's testimony at the inquest sort of contradicted his prior statement to investigators that he'd personally helped Julie take down her tents. And because of this, John Ward's lawyer basically called him a liar. He was definitely convinced that Gerald and the clerk at the camp knew much more than they were saying.
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Several odd things about the evidence found where the Jeep was abandoned and where Julie's remains were discovered were also explored during the inquest. For example, John Ward's lawyer thought it was odd that Julie had apparently been wearing flip-flops when she died.
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Those shoes were recovered near her burned remains, and it was revealed in court that a pair of her gym shoes had been left behind in her abandoned Jeep. which didn't make sense to Ward's attorney because if she had really left her vehicle in search of help, then why didn't she wear more appropriate footwear to traverse the landscape?
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The lawyer also noted that where the Jeep was found, in a gully, was about 15 feet away from a dry, easily traversable patch of ground. So it didn't make sense to him why Julie had gotten bogged down in the first place. In his opinion, he felt all the evidence pointed to her Jeep having been purposely planted at the spot to make it appear as if she'd run off the road or gotten stuck.
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John raised similar issues during his testimony. He said that he'd spoken with a Swiss film crew who'd been staying on a hillside a few hundred meters away from where Julie's Jeep was found.
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But none of those folks remembered seeing her or her vehicle in the gully between September 6th and September 13th, which only further supported the notion that it had not been there the entire time Julie was missing.
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A local pilot later told investigators, though, that the film crew was actually staying further away from where the Jeep was left, and it was entirely possible that they had just not noticed it or been able to see it.
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It also came to light during the inquest proceeding that some members of the Maasai tribe had heard a woman's prolonged screams coming from the general area where Julie's remains were eventually found on September 13th, which raised a really big question. Did Julie die on that day or did she die on the day she was last seen, September 6th?
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If it was the former, September 13th, then where in the world had she been in the days between when she was last seen on the 6th and when her burned remains were located? Andrew Hogg reported for the Sunday Times that it became clear during the inquest someone had likely held Julie captive for several days and killed her shortly before her charred remains were found.
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That thought, as you can imagine, was a difficult reality for John Ward to process. The inquest lasted for almost three months and ended in late October 1989, with the magistrate in charge ultimately concluding that Julie had been murdered, period. He ordered that the Kenyan authorities investigate her case as a homicide moving forward.
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Some of the big things he expressed that didn't add up to him were where Julie's Jeep had been found, where the missing can of fuel had ended up, and the clearly intentional injuries to her body.
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He told the court that he believed the vehicle might have been planted by her killer or killers and that it was possible someone other than Julie had transported the can of reserve fuel from the Jeep to the burn site and then carried it away.
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Regarding the state of Julie's remains when they were found, he said, "...I can only come to the conclusion that those sharp cuts were man-made and not animal-made. I think the animals are innocent." The magistrate also said he knew the wards were going to continue to be highly suspicious of Simon Olimakalo, the game warden who'd found Julie's remains.
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But the magistrate emphasized that if Simon was somehow involved, it was unusual that he would have wanted to be the person who led people to the burn site. In my opinion, I think that's debatable. I mean, we know from looking at some true crime cases that involved parties can sometimes be right in the middle of an investigation, if not the person who relishes in finding remains or clues.
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Anyway, the magistrate officially labeling the case as a murder, though, wasn't total vindication for John Ward. The court had made it clear that even though murder was the most likely scenario, there had not been a coverup. Therefore, the magistrate wasn't going to refer the case to the attorney general's office for further investigation on the matter.
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John didn't feel confident that police in Kenya were really going to work Julie's case, though, so he continued to carry out his own investigation. He traveled back and forth from England and kept trying to track down all the people who'd been staying at Sand River Camp on the day she disappeared.
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Those efforts sent him and those who were helping him to Spain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and even the United States, trying to track down witnesses and conduct interviews. He posted a 10,000 pound reward for information that might lead to an arrest. That amount then would have had the buying power today of over 33,000 US dollars. So it was a lot of money in 1989.
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After the inquest, it appears things in the case, at least in Kenya, went quiet for a while. But back in Great Britain, John kept being vocal about getting justice for his daughter. He called on people involved in England's political scene who had power and influence.
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Around this time, the US issued an advisory classifying Kenya as an unsafe destination and reports of other international tourists being attacked and killed while visiting the country also began to surface.
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For example, in the summer of 1989, just a few weeks before the inquest into Julie's murder ended, a foreign conservationist and two Kenyan workers in a park were shot and killed by criminals from Somalia. Another group was also reported to have been attacked and murdered around that same time.
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But it was speculated that Kenyan officials didn't necessarily want word of those incidents to circulate in the press because the tourism industry was such an economic driver for the country. By January and February of 1990, John's personal efforts to keep the spotlight on his daughter's case paid off.
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Scotland Yard launched an official investigation into the murder and actually sent three inspectors to Kenya to poke around and gather police files. Within weeks of that happening, two gay wardens in their 20s who worked in the reserve during the time frame Julie was killed were arrested on suspicion of being connected to the crime.
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An article by Michael Horsnell stated that forensic tests were being done by British investigators at that time as part of the investigation into the men, but the article didn't specify what specific items of evidence were being tested. Later reporting by Sam Kiley mentioned that several Caucasian hares had been found in huts that the defendants and another ranger lived in at the reserve.
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An article by Richard Caseby said what had gotten the whole ball rolling and resulted in the game wardens being arrested in the first place was that someone had sent John Ward an anonymous letter in England claiming to know where some of Julie's personal belongings ended up in Kenya after her murder.
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I have to presume that tip pointed toward the two park rangers, or else investigators wouldn't have been so heavily focused on them. Anyway, Scotland Yard's theory at that point was entirely circumstantial, but it went like this. Julie willingly sought help from the two park rangers while they were patrolling on foot on September 6th, 1988.
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But then something went south, and she was held for a few days at their ranger outpost where they sexually assaulted her and killed her. To cover up their crime, the men dismembered her body and burned her remains in the savannah in a different location than where her Jeep was found.
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John Ward mostly agreed with this theory, but he was also convinced that Kenyan officials higher up in the government had played a role in the seemingly corrupt and questionable events that followed the murder. Kenya's attorney general took a look at Scotland Yard's theory and reviewed evidence that allegedly supported it.
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Something he noted as interesting was that a button-sized solar-powered battery that had been discovered at the ranger's outpost after the crime was the type of battery that Julie's missing Olympus camera would have taken. When it was found, it was resting on a coin in the sun. That position was one way to build up a charge, a fact that seemingly its owner would have known.
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And because Scotland Yard determined that none of the rangers owned an Olympus camera or knew how to charge a battery like that, it almost seemed as if Julie had left it at the outpost herself, perhaps with the intention of coming back to get it. However, there was other evidence that suggested the battery may have belonged to a wristwatch, which some of the rangers who lived at the outpost wore.
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So in the end, the battery being there wasn't necessarily a smoking gun clue. In February, 1991, Kenya's attorney general made his decision about how to move forward. And he ultimately charged both of the park rangers with Julie's murder. But roughly another year passed before their trial finally got underway in February, 1992.
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Sam Kiley reported for The Times that the two defendants hired the same defense attorney who wanted to focus just as much on the Kenyan government's cover-up of the crime as he did on the innocence of his clients.
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An interesting bit of information that wasn't directly related to the trial, but certainly couldn't be ignored, was that just a few months after Julie was killed, Kenya's sitting foreign minister had also died under suspicious circumstances. Apparently, that guy was found dead two kilometers from his house, shot in the head at an awkward angle, sporting a broken leg, and burned with accelerant.
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From reading the source material, it's pretty clear that his untimely death only increased some people's suspicion that the government was trying to cover up or silence people who may have known important information about what really happened to Julie. A lot of the defendant's trial went the same way as the inquest a few years earlier.
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Don Ward testified, and so did the original witnesses from Sand River Camp. One big difference, though, was that the judge overseeing the trial had everyone involved travel out to the reserve to tour the important locations of the crime. That experience was incredibly emotional for Jan Ward, Julie's mother, who traveled from England to attend the trial.
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She and John were allowed to grieve in private after the tour ended for the day and the defendants were escorted out of the area. Not long after that, the murder trial abruptly paused so that another case could go before the court. It was scheduled to resume at a later date, and I guess this is just something that happens within the Kenya court system.
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On Friday, September 9th, 1988, a man named Doug Morey was at his home in Nairobi, Kenya, when he noticed that Julie Ward, a 28-year-old woman he'd been renting a cottage to on his property, wasn't around. His next door neighbors, an older couple named Natasha and Paul Weld Dixon, had also observed the same thing. Julie was nowhere to be found.
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I'm not familiar with a situation like this happening, but regardless, John Ward was once again unhappy with the way Kenya's court system chose to operate. He told The Guardian, "...it is really quite disgraceful. This trial has assumed second-league importance." It's really quite pathetic. They've adjourned it for every reason under the sun, end quote.
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I have no idea what the other court case was that caused the trial to be delayed, but once things resumed a few weeks later, the verdict came in. And it was not what the wards expected. Sam Kiley reported for The Times that the assessors of the trial determined that both park rangers were not guilty of killing Julie. A few days later, the judge presiding over the proceedings agreed.
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Now, you might be asking, what is an assessor? Because I had the same question. And the best I could tell from reading the source material is they're kind of like jurors, but they don't have the same power that a jury here in the U.S. has.
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Basically, in Kenya, assessors in a murder case determined guilt or innocence and made their recommendation to the judge, but it was the judge who ultimately held the power to convict the accused. This is different than how the judicial system in the U.S. works, but that doesn't mean one way is wrong or right. It's just different.
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When it came down to it, the judge deciding the two game wardens' fates said he was just not convinced by Scotland Yard's findings or the circumstantial case that the prosecution had presented.
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He thought that in addition to the defendants, the clerk for Sand River Camp and the police constable who was on duty there in September 1988 should have been investigated more, as well as Simon Ole McCalla, the chief game warden who'd found Julie's remains. The Wards were understandably disappointed with the verdict and traveled back home to the UK with heavy hearts.
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John told the Times, quote, there was just reworking of the old lies. All I ever wanted to do was find out what happened, end quote. For a while, that seemed to be the end of the story. John somewhat backed off continuing to push for answers and the rest of Julie's family just sort of accepted that they may never know who killed her or what really happened.
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But then 10 months later, that all changed because Kenya's police department apparently cleaned house and a new team of investigators had decided to relaunch the investigation into Julie's murder. An investigation that led them straight back to a very familiar name. In July 1998, Kenyan police arrested and charged Simon Olimakola with Julie's murder.
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By that point, it had been almost 10 years since the crime happened, and Simon was working as the assistant director of the Kenya Wildlife Service. He was no longer the chief game warden of the reserve.
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Kenya's sitting attorney general at the time told the press that sufficient circumstantial evidence had come to light over the course of an 18-month-long investigation that allowed them to move forward with arresting Simon. Lucy Hannon reported for The Guardian that one tool investigators were exploring in their case against Simon was DNA.
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Kenyan authorities had agreed to send some of the hair evidence in the case to England for further forensic testing. If you remember from earlier, a few blonde hairs had been found in the Ranger outpost that Scotland Yard suspected Julie had been held at. But it doesn't seem like testing the hairs resulted in anything monumental or new coming to light.
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The Weld Dixons knew that was kind of odd because they'd made plans with Julie to have her over for dinner that night and then make sure she made it to the airport the following day to catch a flight home to England.
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Because when Simon went to trial in March of 1999, I couldn't find anywhere in the reporting that hair evidence was presented, as like a linchpin that connected him to Julie's abduction and murder. What prosecutors did argue was that Simon suppressed other evidence in the case and had done nothing to try and search for Julie when he first learned she was missing.
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The prosecution also accused him of being dishonest about several things, including his actions during the initial investigation. For example, back in 1989 during the formal inquest, Simon testified that he didn't know how to drive a vehicle.
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But when he was confronted with statements from some of his deputies who said they'd seen him drive many times, and John Ward's testimony that he'd personally driven him on more than one occasion in the reserve the day after Julie's remains were found, it became clear that Simon had lied about his driving abilities.
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His explanation for lying, though, wasn't so much that he didn't know how to drive, it was that he'd been doing so illegally and lied afterwards to avoid possible charges. His dishonesty about whether or not he could drive made him look really bad, especially to John Ward. John accused Simon straight up of having prior knowledge of where to go to find Dooley's remains.
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John claimed that reports had revealed that Simon joined the official search party only after Julie's Jeep was discovered, and he'd driven straight to the spot where her burned remains ended up, so that he would be the first person to make the discovery and radio the update to everyone else.
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Simon denied those allegations though and claimed that he and others had driven in several different directions around Julie's Jeep before taking the route that brought them to her charred remains.
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It's more than 370,000 acres in size and features some of the most unique wildlife in the world. Zebras, wildebeest, rhinos, lions, giraffes, elephants, and other species roam freely in this stretch of Africa's savanna. Which is why the area attracts so many people to go on safari there.
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He said the only thing that had caused him to go in the direction of where she was eventually discovered was because search teams had spotted a flock of vultures circling in the air over that area and his group had wanted to investigate it further.
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You see, Julie had been on a long trip to and in Africa, traveling to different areas to take photos of wildlife, but especially herds of wildebeests as they made their annual migration from Tanzania's Serengeti National Park into Kenya's Masai Mara Reserve. But Doug, Natasha, and Paul knew that Julie was supposed to be back in the city by September 9th.
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In the end, after 43 days of trial, the assessors and judge weighing Simon's guilt determined there wasn't enough evidence to convict him of murder, and he was acquitted. His adult daughter and several members of the Maasai tribe celebrated the news outside of the courthouse. John Ward was not happy though.
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He claimed that the assessors had been influenced and directly contacted by Simon throughout the trial, and that the proceedings had been fundamentally flawed due to corruption.
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Author Grace Masilla wrote in her book, A Death Retold in Truth and Rumor, that no one could deny the racial and cultural discourses swirling around Julie's case as it went through multiple criminal trials and continued to stay in the media limelight. Julie was a young white British woman who'd been brutally murdered in an area predominantly occupied by native Maasai tribe members.
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The fact that her father was a white British wealthy businessman who relentlessly questioned the guilt of Kenyan citizens and the Kenyan government made the issue that much touchier.
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When you take into consideration the bloody history between British colonizers and Kenyan native people dating back to the turn of the 20th century, you can see where it would have been possible for prejudices and deep-seated tensions to influence people's opinions about the case, potential perpetrators, and the government agencies that at times conducted parallel investigations.
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Simon Olemakola and the two game wardens who were also acquitted of Julie's murder were all reported to be members of the Maasai tribe. Now, I don't know if these men truly were guilty or not. I don't think anyone can know that except them. But it's clear from reading a lot of quotes from John Ward that at one point he was convinced they were responsible for what happened to his daughter.
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However, on the flip side, there were also many native Kenyans who felt like the accusations being made against the defendants by Julie's British family members and supporters were a result of blind prejudice.
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Kenyan author Grace Masilla discusses in her book that one of the big reasons Maasai tribe members weren't necessarily forthcoming with information to Scotland Yard investigators or John Ward was because culturally the tribe is a very close-knit group and their members always support their own. They've also historically been at odds with British influences and the norms of modern legal procedures.
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I think dynamics like this and other wild spinoff theories as to who might be responsible for Julie's death just made this case a lot more difficult to try and solve as the years dragged on. For example, one theory that cropped up speculated that Julie might not have been the innocent, wildlife-loving photographer she presented herself as.
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Some people believed she might have been a British spy who'd come across damning information about the activities of powerful Kenyan political figures in the reserve. It's unclear, though, if anyone with any authority ever really pursued that theory beyond just it was possible.
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And naturally, John Ward and the Scotland Yard denounced it as completely unfounded, which at this point in the story isn't a huge surprise to me. By 2004, a formal inquest in the UK had been held to help snuff out rumors like this, and that proceeding concluded with the same ruling. Julie was murdered, period.
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But another wild theory that surfaced as a result of that inquest had to do with Julie being struck by lightning. I know, we're back to that scenario again.
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They'd all been expecting her to arrive earlier in the week, but she hadn't. At one point, the Well Dixons even called several hospitals and police stations to see if maybe Julie had gotten into a car accident or something. But there were no reports that she had. Doug had also utilized some of his resources too.
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Articles by Michael Horsnell and Patrick Barkham reported that way back in the fall of 1988, John Ward and some of his supporters had been told by a former MI6 officer that British intelligence agents had covertly inquired about Julie's murder shortly after news of her death broke.
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One agent had allegedly determined that she'd gotten her Jeep stuck in the mud, walked to find help, become lost, and started a fire beneath a tree. She'd then climbed that tree to possibly be safe from threats on the ground, but then lightning struck her and it was so powerful it had severed her body, causing her to fall into the fire where animals later scavenged her remains.
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To say this theory feels like a stretch is an understatement, and it's worth noting it wasn't really something that the press reported on until many years after the crime. So of course, when reporters did find out about it, they couldn't help but go to press immediately.
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The British forensic pathologist who conducted Julie's second autopsy in England, though, was not convinced the whole lightning strike theory was credible, purely from a logical standpoint. He told the Daily Telegraph, quote, When you are struck by lightning, your body doesn't fall into pieces with your legs, arm, and head falling off. I hope we don't hear any more of this nonsense.
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It's monstrous rubbish. End quote. It was also in 2004 that several big lies from the past started to unravel. For example, Dr. Shaker, the first pathologist in Kenya whose autopsy report had been changed, admitted that he'd agreed to let his bosses amend his initial report to cover up evidence that pointed to murder.
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A few years later in 2009, nearly 21 years after Julie's death, the first Kenyan police investigator on Julie's case who'd concluded all the way back in April 1989 that she died by suicide, ended up telling John Ward face-to-face that he'd made his entire report up just to get his superiors, who'd wanted the police department's investigation to point away from foul play, off his back.
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This officer also admitted that his original investigation seemed to indicate that a well-known political figure in Kenya might have been involved in Julie's murder. However, when he told his supervisor about that hunch, his boss had told him to, quote, look elsewhere, end quote.
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Also in 2009, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism unit launched another probe into the case after a new witness came forward with information about where some of Julie's other remains were buried in the park.
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This witness claimed that several of Julie's body parts had been separated from the ones that were burned and put elsewhere in the reserve to intentionally throw off investigators suspicions back in 1988.
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The British detectives assigned to the case in 2009 told The Nation and the Sunday Telegraph that they'd identified DNA from evidence found at the murder scene and tied that DNA to a suspect, but didn't give any names. They spent almost two weeks interviewing witnesses in Kenya and collecting more DNA samples, but ultimately, momentum in the case slowed down and no arrests were made.
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By 2012, John Ward firmly believed that a prominent political player who he referred to as Mr. B was the mastermind behind Julie's murder. He wrote a lengthy article for the March, 2012 issue of Nairobi Law Monthly titled, Mr. B Killed Julie, in which he laid out his entire theory.
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He'd asked some pilot friends of his to keep an eye out for her and her used Suzuki Jeep whenever they flew over the 150 miles or so of Savannah between the reserve and the city of Nairobi. But after a few trips back and forth throughout that week, the pilots told Doug that they hadn't seen any sign of Julie or her vehicle. He then did the one thing that made the most logical sense in the moment.
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I wasn't able to get my hands on a copy of that piece for this episode, but Grace Masilla wrote about it in her book and explained that John was very convinced this well-known figure called the shots when it came to why Julie was killed and how her murder was covered up.
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John had previously told reporter Kate Alderson that at one point he'd interviewed the political figure's driver, who said he'd witnessed Julie's murder after she'd accidentally come across a group of gun and drug smugglers in the reserve and been killed because she'd seen something she shouldn't have.
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But John's accusations about this Mr. B didn't result in that guy getting charged with anything. It did prompt the man to issue a public denial to Kenyan newspapers, though, which I have to assume Mr. B did anonymously since I couldn't find his true identity reported anywhere.
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When John was previously interviewed by The Nation in 2011, he told reporters that he was absolutely convinced a conspiracy was to blame for why his daughter's murder had never been solved. He wrote in his book, The Animals Are Innocent, quote, you say to yourself, no matter what it is going to take, these people are not going to get away with it.
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But in the end, you are one individual against a state and it is not easy, end quote. In 2020, John was back in news headlines yet again, talking about Julie's case and still claiming that a political conspiracy was to blame. By this point, though, he had some compelling proof and new witnesses to back up his theory.
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In February of that year, Kenya's president, Daniel Moy, who'd been in power when Julie was killed, died. And John said the former president's death triggered many people in Kenya to finally come forward with important information, information they'd been too scared to share while President Moy was alive.
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John claimed that one witness had revealed to him that Daniel's son, Jonathan Moy, was in the reserve when Julie was killed, and that the former president himself had helped cover up his son's involvement in the crime.
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John alleged that this witness alleged that Jonathan and some of his friends had been drinking in the park on September 6th, 1988, and stumbled across Julie while she was on her way to Nairobi taking pictures of wildlife. They abducted her, sexually assaulted her, and took her to a farm that Jonathan owned in the reserve, and then later disposed of her body.
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Unfortunately, in May and June of 2023, within several weeks of one another, Jan and John Ward died at the age of 89, unable to prove their claims or present them to a governing body. Today, their sons, Tim and Bob Ward, continue to keep asking questions and putting pressure on law enforcement to explore the Moy family as possible suspects.
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Nick Craven reported for the Daily Mail that Julie's brothers are convinced that Jonathan Moy was involved in their sister's murder. But Jonathan died in 2019, so even if it could be proven he was involved, he can't be prosecuted. It's important to note, though, that prior to his death, Jonathan denied allegations that the Ward family made against him regarding Julie's death.
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The Sunday Times reported that after her murder, Julie's remains were buried in Kenya because it was a place she'd loved so much and had made happy memories in during the final months of her life. Her dad traveled all over the world chasing leads and information he felt could bring him answers. John passed in June of 2023, followed shortly thereafter by Julie's mother, Jan.
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And even though John may have died never having found the truth, it's widely believed that if it weren't for his unwavering devotion to finding justice for Julie, the case would never have gotten the international attention it did over the years. His sons, Tim and Bob, consider him a hero in their eyes.
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He checked inside the cottage he'd been renting to Julie, to, I imagine, figure out if maybe she had actually returned, but everyone just missed seeing her. But after scoping it out, it became clear that Julie had not come back to her cottage. Doug looked through her things and found the plane ticket with her name on it that was scheduled to depart for London the next day, Saturday, September 10th.
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And according to Francis Hardy's reporting for the Daily Mail, they've taken up the mantle of his efforts to continue pursuing justice for Julie. At the time of John's death, he had another book about the case still in the manuscript stage, and the brothers told the Daily Mail they still intend to publish it. There's also a proposed documentary and drama series in the works.
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I tried to reach out to Tim and Bob for this episode, but due to us being in different countries on different continents, I didn't hear back. So Bob, Tim, if you're listening, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach out directly to the show through the Park Predators Instagram, at Park Predators.
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From everything I've read about John Ward, he went farther than most people are able or willing to go to fight for their murdered child. But that work wasn't easy on him as a person. At one point, he told The Guardian's Helen Carter, quote, There is no sense of pleasure in finding out who murdered my daughter. It has been grisly, unpleasant, and nasty work.
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From day one, my sole objective has been to catch the bastard who has done this. I don't think about whether Julie would have been pleased with me or say it is for her memory. That's all Mickey Mouse stuff. End quote. In 1998, Julie's mom, Jan, wrote in a book titled Julie Ward Gentle Nature about how devastating the entire ordeal was on her family and how their pain never went away.
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She penned in part, quote, "'I don't think there will ever be an end "'because there is always an empty space. "'I think in the early days, the feeling is overwhelming. "'You've got to know why and how and who and where. "'And you think when you know all that, "'you will understand and accept it.'" but I will never in a million years understand how anybody could kill Julie.
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You do feel that somehow when you know everything, you will be able to accept it, but it's not true. It's just a stepping stone along the way." End quote. Park Predators is an audio Chuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck?
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Unsure of what else to do, the Weld Dixons and Doug just continued to wait. They were growing more and more worried, but I don't know, maybe they just hoped Julie would arrive with a good explanation as to why she was so overdue.
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The next day, September 10th, Julie's father, John Ward, called the Weld Dixons from England to check in and see how things were going, because Julie hadn't come home and he was getting nervous. But Natasha and Paul had to break the bad news that Julie hadn't returned to Nairobi, and they were worried she was missing. When John learned that information, it didn't sit well with him.
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He immediately made arrangements to fly to Kenya and figure out what was going on. That same day, September 10th, is when the majority of the source material states that Julie was officially reported missing to Kenyan authorities. John didn't arrive in the country himself, though, to sync up with the police until two days later on Monday, September 12th.
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As soon as he got on the ground, though, he immediately got to work and contracted four private planes and two helicopters to fly over the reserve and look for Julie. He also connected with Doug, Natasha, and Paul to gather information about who she'd been traveling with and where she went. He also coordinated local volunteers, game wardens, and police officers to aid him in his efforts.
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The key to efficiently covering so much ground in a short amount of time was learning as much as possible about Julie's last known movements. Julie was the eldest child in her family with two younger brothers, and from a young age, she really liked learning about animals thanks to her mother, Jan.
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Author Nick Buckley detailed in Julie Ward, Gentle Nature, that it was mother and daughter's shared love of wildlife that got Julie interested in wildlife photography. In 1986 and 1987, she visited Nairobi for extended stays and traveled on safari during those trips.
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She reportedly fell in love with Kenya to the point where she wanted to eventually move there and sell jewelry made by the members of the Maasai tribe. Her seven-month-long trip in 1988 had started in February and took her from Great Britain into Spain through the Mediterranean into several North African countries, Uganda, Tanzania, and eventually ended in Kenya in late June.
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The word Maasai in the reserve's name refers to the Maasai tribe that lived in the area long before British colonization started at the turn of the 20th century. The tribe was known for its semi-nomadic lifestyle, herding livestock, and bright red robes known as shuka that male warriors donned.
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For most of July, she'd camped on Natasha and Paul's property in Nairobi because they allowed people who were traveling internationally to pitch tents on their land. The more they'd gotten to know Julie during that summer, the more they all developed a close friendship over their collective love of dogs.
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In August, Julie had decided to shift her living arrangements slightly and started renting that cottage from Doug Morey, who, like I mentioned earlier, lived next door to the Weld Dixons. Around this time is when Julie purchased her Suzuki Jeep to get around while traveling.
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She also met up with three other tourists from Australia, two of whom she knew and another whom she'd just met for the first time. That new person was a guy named Glenn Burns, and according to Grace Masilla's book, A Death Retold in Truth and Rumor, He and Julie had traveled from Nairobi to the reserve together on Friday, September 2nd, to watch the wildebeest migration.
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Initially, the other two people who Julie knew better were supposed to go with her and Glenn, but at the last minute, they ended up bailing. According to Glenn, he and Julie drove in her Jeep to a campground in the reserve called Sand River Camp. They pitched two tents there and stayed the night.
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The next day, Saturday, September 3rd, they traveled through the reserve but had car troubles that forced them to cut their day short. They ended up having to get towed to a nearby lodge by a local tour guide who let them borrow a tent because they'd left theirs across the park at Sand River Camp.
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By Sunday morning, September 4th, Julie and Glenn had come up with a plan to get Julie's Jeep fixed so they could continue on with their travels. But the only problem was the car part they needed, a new fuel pump, had to be retrieved from Nairobi, which wasn't super close by. Like I mentioned earlier, the city was more than 150 miles away from the reserve.
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Glenn was scheduled to go to a conference at a museum in the city the following day anyway, so he told Julie he would hop on a charter plane to the city, link up with her friend Paul Weld Dixon, and see if Paul would be willing to buy a new fuel pump and fly it back to the reserve.
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That plan panned out because when Glenn returned to Nairobi by the end of the day on September 4th, Paul was more than happy to assist. The next day, Monday, September 5th, the new fuel pump was on its way to Julie.
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When it arrived, though, it was too late in the day for a mechanic to put it in her Jeep, so she opted to spend Monday night at the lodge that she and Glenn had been towed to and just figure things out the next day. According to people who saw her, she woke up on Tuesday, September 6th, and around midday drove to Sand River Camp to pick up her and Glenn's tents.
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She reportedly made plans to pit stop at a lake in the reserve to see the tour guide who'd helped tow them, and then was going to finish the drive back to Nairobi. The last people who saw her were a police constable working at Sand River Camp named Gerald Karari and the campground's clerk.
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Today, Maasai is spelled the way British settlers spelled it, with two A's instead of three, but the proper way of spelling it is actually M-A-A-S-A-I. Back in the day when soldiers from Great Britain forced many tribe members off their native land, bloodshed ensued. The hand weapons the Maasai warriors carried were outmatched by their invaders' firearms.
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The constable said he'd helped Julie take down the tents that she and Glenn had left behind a few days earlier. And the clerk remembered her paying him for the time the tents were there, even though they hadn't been occupied. Both men said that around 2.30 p.m., they saw her leave alone in her Jeep headed in the direction of Nairobi.
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However, I did read another source that reported it was two park rangers who saw her leave around 3 p.m. But I wonder if that reporting just assumed the constable and clerk were the rangers, not what their actual titles were. It's hard to tell.
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There's a lot of things like that in the source material about this case, where it's difficult to decipher if factually different information is being reported or if authors just misreported titles and small details.
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Anyway, by the time the search for her was fully underway on Tuesday, September 13th, her dad, John Ward, and a pilot he'd hired to take him over the reserve were flying over an area about six miles away from Sand River Camp when he spotted Julie's Suzuki Jeep mired in deep mud inside a gully. Once he got on the ground, he was joined by local police and park rangers.
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Together, the group examined the vehicle and found that it was locked. They smashed out one of the windows and discovered that some food and water were missing, along with a 20-liter plastic can of fuel that was supposed to have lasted up to five days.
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There were also several large scratches dug into the roof that spelled out the letters SOS, though some other sources reported that the letters were spelled out in mud on the roof. Around the Jeep were several spots where it appeared someone had tried to start a fire or had maybe gotten a few fires going, but none of them had ever grown very big.
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This evidence, combined with the missing can of fuel, was a clue to John Ward that his daughter may have attempted to get help by starting signal fires, but when no one came to assist her, she left the Jeep and walked to find help. Something that seemed odd to everyone, though, was that a pair of binoculars and two maps, one of which was of the game reserve, were still inside the Jeep.
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meaning Julie had not taken them with her. After assessing the abandoned vehicle, John and the rest of the search crew fanned out to continue looking for Julie.
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A few hours later, around 4 p.m., about five miles from where the Jeep was found, and roughly four miles before a known hunting camp, the chief game warden of the reserve, a guy named Simon Olimakala, and other searchers discovered what looked like burned human remains and personal belongings scattered beneath and around a tree.
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Some of the items included burnt camera film, coins, cutlery, pieces of glass, a saucepan, and a small cooking stove. When members of the search party and John Ward took a closer look at the charred scene, they were able to find a pair of flip-flops, remains of a handbag, a passport, credit cards, and a few body parts in the ashes that hadn't been destroyed by the fire.
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The human remains included a jawbone, a left leg, and a lock of hair. John personally collected the remains and ashes in a makeshift bag he'd fashioned from a helicopter seat cover and handed them over to a Kenyan police officer, who then gave them to a pathologist who worked for the police force named Dr. Adel Shaker.
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Shaker conducted a post-mortem exam in Nairobi shortly after the remains were discovered, but his findings weren't released to officials and John until a few days later on September 15th. In his report, he stated that Julie's remains appeared to have been cut with some sort of sharp instrument before being burned, which essentially pointed to one thing, murder.
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But Kenya's police force didn't accept that conclusion. Officials wanted to dismiss Julie's death as some sort of tragic accident. They were convinced that she'd been attacked by lions or wild animals, which were known to roam free in the reserve. The police force's theory essentially went like this.
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And in the early 1900s, some members of the tribe signed agreements with white settlers to hand over two-thirds of their most fertile land. They were then relocated to less desirable parts of Kenya and Tanzania to live. Despite this dark history, the tribe has still clung to its deeply rooted cultural traditions and practices.
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Julie had most likely been burning her bag under the tree to signal for help after abandoning her Jeep, and while doing so, she'd inhaled noxious fumes which caused her to pass out and fall into the fire she'd made. Then, wild hyenas or some other carnivores had eaten on her remains. It was either that scenario, or she'd died by suicide. Or, wait for it, she'd been struck by lightning.
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Yes, I'm not kidding. These were all scenarios that the police force felt were more likely than someone murdering her. But John Ward, Julie's dad, didn't believe any of the police's theories. He told reporter Michael Horsnell for The Times that his daughter had been to Kenya two times prior to this trip, and she knew what to be on the lookout for.
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There was no doubt in his mind that she'd been ambushed and killed somewhere between where she left her Jeep and the hunting lodge that was just a few miles away. Evidence he said supported that scenario was the fact that Julie's Olympus camera and two of her telephoto lenses were missing.
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I imagine his point in saying that was to introduce the possibility that maybe someone had robbed her of those expensive items and killed her to keep from getting caught. John told the Times, quote, "...stories that she was eaten by lions are totally untrue. Her body had been burned, and I believe she was murdered." I have no idea who might have done it.
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There are game poachers in the area, but a lot of other people go there as well." By September 18th, almost two weeks after Julie was last seen alive, John returned to the United Kingdom without his daughter, and without answers to the growing number of questions he had about what in the world had happened to her.
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The only upside to the situation was that the case had been officially deemed a homicide. But just a few days after that update, something truly wild happened.
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About a week after the Kenyan police force was told by their own resident pathologist that Julie was a homicide victim, the chief government pathologist, a guy named Dr. Jason Kaviti, who from reading the source material is described as having more authority than Dr. Shaker, changed Julie's post-mortem autopsy report to say that her manner of death was no longer murder, but instead an animal attack that perhaps occurred simultaneously with a lightning strike.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today doesn't technically take place within the bounds of a national or state park. But if you were to look at it from a bird's eye view, it's the closest thing to it. I'm talking about Bonner County, Idaho, which sits extremely close to the US-Canada border.
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When Brent's team members found him, he was lying face up in the snow, dead. His .223 Ruger rifle was sitting across the left side of his body, and holstered to his side was a Smith & Wesson revolver. He was still donning his camouflage snowsuit and bulletproof vest. He'd been shot in his thigh and back by a 12-gauge shotgun. A round had entered just beneath his bulletproof vest.
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Based on the severity of his injuries, it was assumed that he'd bled out within minutes of being shot. It wasn't immediately clear if he'd gotten the chance to fire his weapon at the suspects before he was gunned down though some source material later reported that he had actually been able to discharge at least two rounds before falling to the ground.
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Those shots though were not believed to have struck anyone. His team members then removed his body from the woods and transported him to a forensic pathologist in Spokane, Washington for a formal autopsy which was scheduled for the following day.
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Later that evening, investigators visited his wife Barbara, 17-year-old stepson Joseph, and 13-year-old stepdaughter Angela at the family's home in Sagal. They had to deliver the tragic news. Angela told producers for Oxygen that when her mother found out what happened, she literally crumbled to the floor with grief.
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Angela said that even though Brent, who she referred to by the nickname Jake, wasn't her biological father, she'd grown up with him most of her life and in so many ways he was a dad to her. She explained that losing him devastated everyone in her family.
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At the time of the crime, Barbara, who'd been married to Brent for nearly a decade, told the Times News that her husband genuinely loved being outside, and he'd always told her that if he were to die, he wanted it to happen in the woods. Additional news coverage states that Brent was the first U.S. Forest Service employee to be killed in the line of duty up until that point.
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So it was a really big deal. His manager and other co-workers with the Forest Service told the Times News and Shoshone News Press that Brent was liked and respected by all of his colleagues. He was also a dedicated family man who often spoke about his wife and stepchildren even in settings that were, for lack of better phrasing, mostly bro-fests.
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His brother-in-law told reporters that the whole reason Brent became a Forest Service officer was because he loved the outdoors so much and was dedicated to protecting it. In the shootout, James Pratt had been shot, too, in his left leg. So immediately following his capture, he was taken to Bonner General Hospital to undergo surgery and was expected to make a full recovery.
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Around 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 11th, 1989, a woman named Tammy Polonick was relaxing with her family inside her mother's house near the small town of Sagal, Idaho. In total, there were nine people in the home. Tammy, who was pregnant, her husband Mark, her brother, her brother's wife, and a few teenagers and kids.
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Because Brent had died as a result of the brothers' actions, both of them were charged with individual counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree burglary, aggravated assault, aggravated assault on a police officer, and robbery. After their arraignments, they were held without bail.
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Neither man agreed to speak with law enforcement after the incident, which was unfortunate because what everyone wanted to know was why. Why had they done this? Turns out the answer was fairly straightforward, but also kind of a wild tale. According to the available source material, the Pratt brothers were originally from Michigan and had experienced poverty.
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Their father and mother divorced when they were kids, and after that, the brothers moved frequently with their dad. Of the two of them, James was reportedly the more confident brother who was physically taller and I think just viewed as the leader of the pair. More than a decade before this crime, their dad had moved them to Idaho to mine gold and silver with the goal of getting rich.
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But that endeavor fizzled out with poor results after about five years. And when the brothers were in their late teens and early 20s, their father decided to leave Idaho entirely, but James and Joseph continued living there. They found work at a cedar mill, and Joseph even ended up getting married and starting a family of his own.
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By the time the year 1980 rolled around, though, both men had fallen on hard times financially. During that time, they struck up a friendship with a woman named Gloria White, who owned a large cabin in the Katka Mountain area of Idaho, which is about an hour and a half northeast of Sandpoint.
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Gloria had a tendency to befriend and shelter folks who had criminal pasts or who needed to catch a break in life. The Pratt brothers fit the latter description, so at one point they'd ask Gloria for a loan. But instead of providing them with cash, she introduced them to another guy who was staying at her house named Jim. Jim, as it turns out, though, was not that guy's real name.
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His true identity was Christopher Boyce, who was, wait for it, the son of an FBI agent who was a convicted spy on the run from federal authorities. I know, this part of the story is wild, like I said. In 1977, Christopher was convicted of espionage for selling satellite technology secrets from the CIA to the Soviet Union.
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For that crime, he was sentenced to 40 years in a California federal prison, but escaped about three years later in 1980. During his short time behind bars, though, Christopher had picked up a few tips from other inmates on how to successfully rob banks. So when he escaped, he went straight to committing that kind of crime.
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Along the way, he met and enlisted James and Joseph and one of their other brothers named Kendall Pratt to help him rob about six banks in Idaho, Washington, and Montana. According to news coverage and court documents, the Pratts usually acted as Christopher's getaway driver.
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By 1981, though, the men's arrangement had soured because James had started to suspect that Christopher wasn't giving him and his brothers their fair share of the spoils from the bank robbery jobs. So infighting within the group resulted in a fallout between the Pratts and Christopher, one that would eventually come back to bite Christopher big time.
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Because the house was large and had several stories, it was the perfect place for the group to vacation together while simultaneously acting as house sitters for Tammy's mother, Lee, who happened to be out of town in California.
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In the summer of 1981, fresh off the brother split with Christopher, James was reading some newspaper articles and learned that the US Marshals were offering a $15,000 reward for Christopher's capture. James and Joseph used that information to their advantage and became paid government informants, eventually leading investigators to Christopher.
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On August 21, 1981, he was apprehended in Washington state. In an exchange for their cooperation, the Pratts were given immunity from prosecution for the bank robberies. And at least one of them pocketed the reward money for helping the U.S. Marshals catch Christopher.
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An article by Dan Drury for the Bonner County Daily Bee also reported that in addition to raking in the reward money, the US Marshals also gave the Pratts other payments or subsidies that equated to about $10,000, which would have been more like $25,000 back in the early 1980s when you consider inflation.
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And if all of this is starting to sound like the plot of a Hollywood movie, that's because it is. According to Dan Drury's reporting for the Bonner County Daily Bee, there was a feature film about Christopher Boyce's life and eventual capture that was released in 1985 called The Falcon and the Snowman. It starred Sean Penn, Timothy Hutton, and Pat Hingle.
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An author named Robert Lindsay also wrote two books about the story titled The Falcon and the Snowman and The Flight of the Falcon, which were released in the late 70s and early 80s.
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In those novels, it's clarified that in addition to Christopher being held responsible for his crimes, Gloria White, the woman who'd housed him in the Prats, was also eventually prosecuted and sentenced to five years in prison. An article I found by the Associated Press explained that Christopher Boyce was released from prison early in March 2003. But back to the Pratts for a little bit.
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It's unclear from the source material what the brothers did with the reward money they received from ratting on Christopher or how long those funds lasted them. There's just not enough coverage out there about what they were up to between 1982 and 1989.
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As everyone was settling in for the evening, most of the kids stayed on the entry-level floor of the home, which had some bedrooms and I think the living room, while Tammy and the other adults hung out on the lower level. Sometime shortly after 6.30 p.m., though, she and her husband Mark heard a noticeable thud come from upstairs.
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But what I can tell you is that Tammy Palahniuk told producers for Oxygen's Killer Siblings episode that at some point Joseph had worked for her mother, Leigh. He wasn't exactly a full-time employee or anything, more like a handyman. But apparently during his time on Leigh's property, he'd come to suspect that she kept money in a safe at her house.
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In fact, Joseph later told reporter Kelly McBride that he suspected Lee kept money from her restaurant and nightclub businesses at her house, and he actually believes she still owed him like $500 or something in back wages.
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So that's why when he and James came back to Sandpoint on January 11th, 1989, after visiting with one of their brothers in Montana, he'd gotten the impulsive idea to rob Lee's house. So in hindsight, it made total sense why the brothers had been so insistent during the home invasion that there was a safe in the house.
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However, like I mentioned earlier, they didn't know what Tammy knew, which was that her mom no longer kept one in the home. So I think that indicates there had to have been at least a few months or possibly years between when Joseph had last been on Lee's property and when he and James committed the home invasion.
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Anyway, after the brothers' initial appearances in court, the Bonner County prosecutor announced that he intended to seek the death penalty against them for Brent's murder. It was also at this point in the investigation that the FBI and U.S. Marshals were contacted about the case since Brent was technically a federal employee.
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Though the source material doesn't explicitly state this, I also think another reason why these bigger agencies were requested to be involved was to help the Bonner County Sheriff's Department review their agency's actions and everything that had transpired during the manhunt.
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You see, in the aftermath of the chase, Brent's death, and the Pratt brothers' eventual arrests, Bonner County Sheriff admitted that the situation could have been handled better in terms of planning and execution.
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The Associated Press reported that the sheriff said the incident was all around a very difficult response to coordinate because of the terrain it took place in, but he agreed law enforcement's actions and tactics should be critiqued, at least as a learning moment.
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For example, the agency wanted to examine every aspect of Deputy Steve Barbieri's response since he was the only other law enforcement officer who'd physically been with Brent when the shootout happened. Through a series of experiments, the sheriff's office tried to figure out why Steve's handgun had allegedly jammed when he said he'd tried to fire it at the Pratts.
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Did the cold weather have something to do with it? Was it Steve panicking? Was the firearm just defective? The best conclusion the department could come to was that the gun had not malfunctioned due to the cold, but rather Steve, who was wearing very thick gloves during the shootout, had accidentally gripped the trigger guard of the handgun instead of actually pulling the trigger.
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There was also a question of how many shots had been fired between the Pratts and law enforcement. Some personnel who were stationed near the crime scene and were assisting Steve and Brent said they heard what they described as a volley of gunshots exchanged in the woods. Upwards of 20 rounds, actually.
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Now, that was an interesting detail because it indicated that the shootout had spanned for perhaps longer than initially estimated, or at least involved a lot more firepower than what struck Brent. One of Bonner County's sheriff's deputies later stated in court that it almost sounded like the first couple shots were slower than the latter ones.
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So they decided to check things out, and I imagine just make sure the kids were okay. But when Mark rounded the corner at the top of the staircase that led to the upper level, a man wearing all black confronted him and struck him in the head with the butt of a gun, then said, quote, hey dude, this is for real, end quote.
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However, towards the end, the blast got so fast, he didn't think whoever was firing was a member of law enforcement because it just didn't seem like the kind of firing cadence an officer or deputy would do.
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Reading between the lines, I think maybe firing in such quick succession like that could be considered or perceived as careless, which typically trained law enforcement officers try not to do in situations like this.
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Anyway, on January 17th, while the shootout was still in the beginning stage of being reviewed, Brent's friends and family, along with some 750 to 800 law enforcement officers, held a funeral and burial service for him in Sandpoint. They remembered him as a hero, a father, a hunter, a firefighter, a gardener, a baker, a dog lover, and a friend.
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The pastor who conducted the service read a statement about Brent that his co-workers drafted, which said, quote, Brent was a man who was so full of life that he seemed to be nearly bursting at the seams with it. You worked harder around him because you were dragged along in his wake and did not want to be left behind."
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Brent's mother also read a eulogy that explained how much he loved the outdoors, even as a child. She said that his whole life he'd had this unbreakable bond with Mother Nature and always reveled in the freedom of being outside amongst the trees, animals, and mountains.
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Brent's dad had this amazing summary of his late son when he described Brent as a quote, "'Beautiful flower, flowers bloom, then they wilt, and then they die.'"
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The day after the funeral, Sandpoint City Council members passed a resolution to formally memorialize Brent's sacrifice as a law enforcement officer and commend city police officers for their actions during the events that led up to his death. Around this time, though, some rumors began to surface that suggested perhaps Brent's death wasn't actually the direct result of Joseph and James' actions.
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Now, I know that may feel like kind of a whiplash moment for some of you, but it's a super interesting detail that I think is worth taking a closer look at. According to reporting by Pam Newbern, there had been some speculation following Brent's death that it might have been a member of law enforcement, possibly Steve Barbieri, who shot him.
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The sheriff of Bonner County at the time quickly tried to dispel those rumors, though, by telling reporters that such a scenario was impossible. According to the sheriff's comments on the matter, he said that the ammunition that was retrieved from Brent's body came from a double-aught buckshot round for a shotgun.
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But the ammo that law enforcement was using, specifically Steve Barbieri, was triple-aught buckshot, so a totally different diameter round. Now, Steve had also fired a 9mm handgun during the shootout, but that gun was not determined to have been what killed Brent, so all good there. The coroner of Bonner County confirmed the same thing.
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Right after hitting Mark, the masked man forced the adults upstairs and it became clear to everyone that there was another assailant in the house helping to corral the family members into the living room. The victims were all directed to lay down on their stomachs and then bound with duct tape to ensure they couldn't escape or fight back.
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He said that there was no way Steve or any of the other first responders on scene were responsible for Brent's death. In fact, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun that authorities had seized from the Pratt brothers was the only firearm in the mix that was reportedly loaded with double-aught buckshot.
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Also around this same time, the Pratt brothers' old friend turned enemy, Christopher Boyce, spoke to the press from prison via his lawyer and said that he was convinced Brent Jacobson would have lived if his former accomplices had not been given immunity for their testimony against him, which like, he's not wrong.
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It is a fact that if James and Joseph had been put in prison for their roles in the bank robberies that involved Christopher, they likely would have never crossed paths with Brent. Christopher issued this response about the situation via his lawyer, quote, End quote.
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Another defense lawyer who'd represented Gloria White, that woman who was convicted for aiding Christopher, told the spokesman review that during her trial, he tried to convince jurors that the Pratts couldn't be trusted and were what the lawyer described as vicious people who should have never been given immunity from prosecution back in the early 1980s.
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But we know that federal authorities didn't really take that sentiment to heart back in the day, which is why the Pratts were roaming free when they carried out their crime spree in 1989.
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Kelly McBride reported for the Spokesman Review that James and Joseph claimed that law enforcement officers who chased them after the home invasion in Sagal were well aware of their former association with Christopher Boyce.
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The duo claimed that police and the sheriff's deputies in the home invasion incident were motivated to catch them, dead or alive, simply because some members of Idaho law enforcement had held a grudge that both of them skirted punishment for their roles in the bank robbery cases. Joseph told McBride, quote, End quote.
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In that same jailhouse interview, James told the newspaper that neither he nor his brother expected a bunch of people to be at Lee Turner's house on January 12th, 1989, especially kids. He claimed that the moment they realized children were inside, they considered bailing on the robbery because they didn't want it to turn into a hostage situation.
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But one thing led to another and things just escalated from there. James also explained that it was never his or his brother's intention to injure or kill the first deputy who'd pursued them at the start of the car chase.
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While all of that was going on, the two suspects repeatedly threatened to kill the victims and demanded to know where the home safe was located. Tammy desperately tried to explain to the attackers that there was no safe in her mom's house, but the masked men didn't believe her.
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He said he'd tried to aim for the radiator of that deputy's car just to disable the vehicle so he'd stop pursuing them, but instead he'd shot higher than he intended to and the blast pierced through the deputy's windshield. He claimed that the entire time he and Joseph were on the run, they genuinely were afraid that if they stopped fleeing, members of law enforcement would kill them.
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There's an abundance of animals in this region, including birds of prey, pheasants, and swans. Some rather frightening species of wildlife that roam this terrain include coyotes, mountain lions, black bears, and even grizzly bears. But on a cold January day in 1989, it wasn't apex predators that residents were worried about.
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Eventually, after nearly a day of being pursued, they got so tired they had to stop to sleep. James said that's when Brent Jacobson and Steve Barbieri found them. James claimed it was one of the lawmen who'd shot first, not him or his brother. And it was a bullet from that first volley that had wounded him in the leg.
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As a reaction to that shot, he'd fired back, but he said he had no idea he'd actually fatally wounded Brent. James admitted that he'd been armed with the caliber shotgun that killed Brett, but it was never his intention to do so. Regarding the pair's time on the run in the unforgiving woods, James told the newspaper that the longer the manhunt dragged on, the more he thought about dying.
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In late January 1989, just a few weeks after the crime, a four-day preliminary hearing was held in Bonner County, and the case took an interesting turn when James's court-appointed public defender informed the presiding judge that he could no longer represent his client because James refused to let him be his lawyer.
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This situation didn't make the judge happy, and she actually ended up tossing the attorney in jail for contempt of court and ordering him to pay a $100 fine. Joseph also wasn't a big fan of his court-appointed attorney, Bruce Green, because apparently both of the Pratts wanted to wait until their family members in Colorado could arrange for them to hire private attorneys.
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So they'd asked the judge to postpone the preliminary hearing until that happened. But the judge was like, no way, and refused to grant that request. So the end result of the antics at the preliminary hearing was that James' defense attorney spent a little bit of time in jail and the hearing still happened.
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Some of the first witnesses to take the stand were the victims who'd survived the home invasion robbery. Some of their testimony was circumstantial, though, because apparently none of them, other than maybe that 19-year-old who the Pratts had taken as a hostage, actually got a good look at their faces because they'd been dressed in all black and wore face masks.
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Mark Palahniuk testified, though, that he sort of ruffled one of the brothers' face coverings during the scuffle, which resulted in him getting shot. And he swore that the guy who he tussled with was Joseph Pratt. But even as confident as Mark was about that detail, it still wasn't a 100% positive ID.
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She later told producers for Oxygen's episode of Killer Siblings titled Pratt that at one point in time, her mom had kept a safe on the premises because she'd operated a business and usually stored some funds at home, but that was no longer the case. So for several hours, the suspects just went round and round, making threats and demands and essentially terrorizing Tammy and her family.
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Also during the preliminary hearing, Steve Barbieri, Brent's companion in the woods during the shootout, testified that right before Brent was killed, he'd been walking in the snow about three to five feet behind the Forest Service officer when they emerged into a clearing.
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Steve said that out of the corner of his eye, he thought he noticed a person's silhouette about 10 to 15 feet away from him and Brent. And in that moment, Steve yelled for whoever it was to hold it right there, with Brent then issuing his own warning, sheriff's office, don't move.
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However, Steve claimed that as soon as they spoke, a muzzle flash burst in their direction, and that's seemingly when all hell broke loose. Steve testified that he'd unloaded all seven rounds that were in his shotgun, then ran about 60 yards away from the suspects to take cover before arming himself with his pistol and trying to return more fire, which he was unsuccessful in doing.
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When the defense cross-examined Steve, the young deputy denied that he or Brandt had shot their weapons first. In general, Steve described what happened as basically getting surprised by the defendants.
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In fact, at one point while he'd been retreating, he found a place to lay down and forced himself to stay very still because he didn't want the suspects to get a second chance at getting the jump on him. He testified that he genuinely believed Brent was going to be all right and make it out of the situation.
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He didn't realize until a while after he'd retreated that the 41-year-old had been fatally injured. Evidence the prosecution presented to the court included a videotape of the crime scene and Brent's body, as well as nearly 150 items of other evidence collected in the case. By the end of the preliminary hearing, the judge ordered that each of the Pratts would stand trial for their alleged crimes.
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And she even heaped on some additional charges. According to an article in the Coeur d'Alene Press, the brothers now faced first-degree burglary, 10 counts of aggravated assault, robbery, second-degree kidnapping, aggravated battery, aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and first-degree murder.
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bringing their charges to a grand total of 18 felonies each. So yeah, a lot, a lot. At their arraignment on February 7, 1989, James and Joseph both entered not guilty pleas, and their trial was scheduled for early May 1989. It was expected to last four weeks and cost Bonner County close to $250,000.
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A few weeks into things, though, the men's cases were severed, with James' trial scheduled for May and Joseph's pushed to June.
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Something else interesting was that James's court-appointed attorney, the same one who'd been jailed previously for contempt, got into another spat of sorts with the court when he filed a motion to have a new judge who'd been appointed to the case disqualified from overseeing the trial. One judge prior to that judge had already been disqualified per request from Joseph's attorney, Bruce Green.
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So to say things between the defense, the prosecution, and the court itself were growing tense is a bit of an understatement. But the defense's whole strategy in doing this was to keep the brothers' trials separate. The state wanted the cases consolidated, but the defendants didn't. The defense attorneys wanted James and Joseph to each have their own day in court with their own judge and jury.
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In another unprecedented twist, James and his attorney requested that he be allowed to visit the location in the woods where Brent Jacobson died because he wanted to be, quote, chained or otherwise secured to a tree or other appropriate fixed object within the shooting site, and all law enforcement officers at the shooting site shall withdraw beyond hearing distance from the location where defendant is so secured, in order that defendant may privately confer with his attorney and the attorney's assistance at said location.
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The intruders gathered a gun from the home and a small amount of cash, but they seemingly didn't want any jewelry or other valuables. Eventually, around 9.30 p.m., one of Tammy's nieces was able to crawl out of the living room undetected and dialed 911. The nearest law enforcement agency that first received that call was the city of Sandpoint Police Department.
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But even as wild as that request was, the judge and prosecution ended up agreeing to it. Also at that point, it was decided that the trials would be moved to Kootenai County, Idaho, because Bonner County had become too saturated with information about the case to produce an impartial jury.
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Between April and May 1989, several additional motions were filed and argued in court, which resulted in Joseph and James' cases being unsevered, meaning they would proceed to trial at the same time with the same jury and judge. And the attempted murder charge for the brothers' attack on Mark Palahniuk also got dismissed.
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By that point, I don't think the defense was as concerned about those issues as much anymore. Instead, James' attorney seemed to turn his attention to suppressing statements that he'd made in that jailhouse interview with spokesman review reporter Kelly McBride.
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James' attorney also asked the court not to show Brent's autopsy videotape or photos to jurors or display any of the bloodstained clothing he or Joseph had been wearing on the evening of the crime. But those requests were later denied. A detail I found kind of interesting while researching this case involved Max Singleton, the guy whose house the Pratts ultimately surrendered at.
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Turns out, Max had previously been arrested for what authorities described as a major cocaine and marijuana trafficking organization not long before this whole situation went down. He was actually on a house arrest when the Pratts showed up. Now, I think it's only natural to wonder why out of all the homes the Pratt brothers could have fled to, they ended up at Max's.
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Authorities told the press that they didn't think there was any connection between Max and the brothers, with one official saying that James and Joseph simply arrived at Max's house because they were looking for any place to flee to. Max confirmed this for reporter Pam Newburn when he told her that he didn't know either of the Pratt brothers prior to this incident.
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He explained that when they showed up at his doorstep late at night on January 12th, they asked if he would give them a ride out of the area, which he declined to do. After that, they wanted Max to let them inside so they could get warm, and he agreed to do that, but only if they left their guns outside on a windowsill, which they did.
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After that, Max said he spent about a half hour or so talking to the brothers and encouraging them to turn themselves in to investigators. Max was called to testify for the prosecution during the defendant's preliminary hearing, but it seems like he only agreed to do that in exchange for some potential leniency when it came to his pending federal drug case.
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But I'm not sure how great of a deal he got for his cooperation in the Pratt case because Thomas Skeen later reported for the Shoshone News Press that Max eventually pleaded guilty to being the head of a drug ring that operated in northern Idaho and was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison. Anyway, on May 19th, 1989, the Pratt's trial finally got underway.
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The defense attorneys argued kind of two things. One, that their clients were claiming self-defense in Brent's death. And two, it was important for jurors to realize that the shootout and home invasion were separate crimes.
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The crux of that defense strategy was to try and convince jurors that the end of the manhunt occurred almost an entire day after the home invasion, and their clients had perhaps not exercised the best judgment after being on the run for so long. The defense emphasized the notion that it was Brent or more likely Steve Barbieri who'd fired first, not James.
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Sandpoint seems to be the nearest larger city to where Tammy and her family were staying, which makes sense why the call was routed to them. And shortly after learning about the burglary in progress, Sandpoint PD looped in the Bonner County Sheriff's Office, who also sent deputies to the scene.
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But the prosecution disagreed with that version of events. The state insisted that it was James who'd fired first and that it was his 12-gauge shotgun that had accidentally caused the wound to his own leg, not an initial round fired by the lawman. Still, Joseph and James Pratt testified in their own defense on the stand that it was the other way around.
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The closest version of the truth about what really happened in the woods that evening came out when a criminologist called by the defense testified about how many total shots had been fired, and equally as important, whose firearms those projectiles had come from.
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This defense expert explained that at least 32 rounds had been discharged during the incident, which included at least 10 shots from Brent's gun, which was seemingly brand new information no one in the public had really known definitively prior to this.
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The criminologist's findings were a matter of contention, though, because the defense viewed his conclusions as proof that Deputy Steve Barbieri had been the initial shooter, but the state contended that was not what the expert's findings showed. When the case went to the jury on the evening of June 7th, they deliberated for about 17 hours before finding both brothers guilty.
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Pam Newbern reported that James was convicted of 15 felonies, including Brent's murder, and Joseph was found guilty of 16 felonies, which also included murder. Some of Brent's family members reacted to the news, how you might expect, satisfied.
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Barbara, Brent's widow, wrote a letter to the Bonner County Bee newspaper after the verdict was read, which stated that she was happy with the verdict and performance of the prosecutor. She expressed that in her opinion, her husband's killers had ample opportunities to stop their rampage before Brent was killed, but they didn't. She wrote, "'Every time they had a chance, they had an option.
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They always chose the brutal force option.'" Barbara went on to explain that she refused to let what happened destroy her life or make her crumble. The last time anyone had been executed in the state of Idaho was in 1957, decades before the Pratts were convicted. So the journey to send one or both of them to death row was anticipated to be a potentially long and drawn out one.
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The linchpin of why they qualified for such a harsh sentence had to do with the fact that Brent had technically been on duty as a peace officer when he was murdered. So that was considered an aggravating factor, which, if affirmed by the court, is what would trigger someone to be eligible for capital punishment.
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In late November 1989, less than a year after the crime, the judge who oversaw the trial sentenced Joseph to a minimum of 110 years, so life in prison. And James was sentenced to death, plus 85 years. Brent's wife told the press that she was good with the outcome of the sentencing, and several of the survivors of the home invasion shared the same sentiment.
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When units arrived, they could see that lights were on inside Tammy's mom's house and people were moving around. So a few members of law enforcement walked around the back of the structure to get a better look, but within minutes of doing that, they heard gunshots go off inside.
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Mark Palahniuk told reporter Mike McClain that he would be satisfied with the judge's decision so long as the Pratt brothers never got out of prison. Both men appealed their convictions and sentences in January 1990, with James specifically fighting to have his punishment commuted to life in prison. But by 1991, those efforts failed.
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James then asked for a new trial, but that request was also denied. He appealed again in 1993 and successfully got his death sentence vacated, which resulted in him being resentenced to life in prison. As you can imagine, that did not sit well with Brent Jacobson's loved ones, including his wife and adult siblings, who felt the court's decision was wrong.
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Joseph Pratt also applied for post-conviction relief in 2000 and again in 2009, but was denied both times. Fast forward a little more than a decade, though, to April 2021, and things had changed yet again, this time in a way few people saw coming. That year, Idaho's Commission of Parole and Pardons decided to grant the brothers early release. At the time, James was 61 years old and Joseph was 59.
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In total, they'd only served 32 years of their life sentences. Angela, Brent's stepdaughter, told producers for Oxygen that the brothers being allowed to leave prison early was incredibly unfair to her and her family. She said, quote, we have a permanent sentence of not having Jake in our lives forever, end quote.
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In the wake of Brent's murder, a scholarship was created at the University of Idaho in his name, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture posthumously honored him with a service award for his heroic actions. Additionally, he was bestowed a posthumous Medal of Honor award in 2011, and a mountain southeast of Sandpoint is named in his memory. The U.S.
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Forest Service also dedicated the Mineral Point Trail to him, and it's still around today. At his funeral back in 1989, Brent's mother shared a short poem from Theodora Kroeber that she believed appropriately embodied her son's legacy. It's a beautiful stitching of words that I want to leave you all with as I close out this episode. It reads, "'When I am dead, cry for me a little.
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What authorities didn't know was that those shots were a result of a tussle that had broken out between the masked men and Tammy's husband, Mark.
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Think of me sometimes, but not too much. It is not good for you to allow your thoughts to dwell too long on the dead.'" think of me now and again as i was in life at some moment which is pleasant to recall but not for long leave me in peace as i shall leave you too in peace while you live let your thoughts be with the living Park Predators is an Audiochuck production.
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You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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According to that episode of Killer Siblings I mentioned a minute ago, once it became clear that police and the sheriff's office were outside and closing in on the house, the suspects holding the family hostage had become very agitated and kind of started to panic. In fact, one of them decided to take Tammy's niece's 19-year-old boyfriend as a hostage and go outside.
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But Tammy's husband didn't want that to happen, so he jumped into action. He broke free from his bindings and charged one of the masked men. But unfortunately, his effort failed, and he wound up getting shot in the forehead and leg. By some miracle, though, he still was conscious and able to talk and move.
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Right after that, the two masked men bolted out of the house with their teenage hostage in tow. Meanwhile, back outside, members of law enforcement saw them emerge from the house and make their way onto a porch landing. Authorities ordered them to stop, but one of the men hollered that if officers didn't back off, he would kill the hostage.
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Not wanting things to escalate even more, the sheriff's office and police department pulled back their personnel and basically just had to watch as the robbers walked down an outside staircase and disappeared into a nearby tree line. Shortly after that, Tammy and her brother ran out of their mom's place and made their way to authorities.
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They explained that Mark had been shot and needed medical attention, but other than that, everyone else in the house was okay. After getting Mark medical care and determining that he was going to survive, authorities gathered statements from Tammy and the other survivors of the home. They also cleared the house to make sure no one else was still inside.
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Then they turned their attention to finding the suspects who'd taken off into the woods. But just as they were doing that, the young man who'd been taken hostage materialized from the tree line and sprinted across the home's lawn to join his girlfriend's family. He told authorities that the two men who'd taken him at gunpoint had decided at the last minute to let him go.
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It was two armed men, on the loose in the forest, who were responsible for an act of bloodshed that marked one of the most notorious crimes in northern Idaho's history. The devastating impact their actions had on families from this area is as real today as it was 36 years ago.
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He described how his captors had dragged him through the trees and across a nearby roadway called Lignite Road. Then they'd made a beeline to a gold-colored vehicle before one of them abruptly ordered the other to release him. After that, the teenager said the masked man got into their car and took off, headed south.
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Now, at that point, other members of law enforcement had become aware of the unfolding situation and were on alert. By sheer coincidence, a detective for Bonner County, who was just a few miles away from the crime scene, saw a gold Chevrolet Monte Carlo speed past him, headed in the opposite direction.
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This detective had heard the description of the alleged suspect's vehicle come over his radio and surmised that the drivers of the gold car that had just passed him were likely involved in the home invasion. so he whipped his cruiser around and started pursuing the Monte Carlo.
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He chased the vehicle north in the direction of the city of Sandpoint, and waiting to intercept the car there was a group of city police officers. But the driver of the Monte Carlo avoided that roadblock and took a hard left on a roadway called Lakeshore Drive, which happened to be slick and covered with snow at the time.
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Despite treacherous conditions for a car chase, the detective who was pursuing the gold car didn't fall back. Well, that is until someone sitting in the passenger seat of the Chevy leaned out and shot several times into the detective's windshield. That was the point when the detective figured enough was enough, and he pulled back.
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The gold car then sped out of sight, and thankfully the detective wasn't injured, but his front windshield was toast. From that point, it was up to his colleagues to find the gold car and its occupants. Around 10 p.m., even more officers and deputies got involved in the manhunt, and teams eventually found the suspect's vehicle wrecked into a snowbank.
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It was on the left-hand side of the roadway it was last seen on. No one was inside, but several rounds of ammunition, magazines, and firearms were in the trunk. The caliber of the abandoned ammo indicated that the suspects were armed with pistols and at least one shotgun. In the snow, trailing away from the car were shoe prints that led investigators over a snowbank and further into the woods.
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Before setting off to follow the prints, the sheriff's office looked up the Monte Carlo's license plate information and discovered that it was registered to a local resident named Joseph Pratt. Some deputies who worked for the sheriff's office at the time recognized Joseph's name because he'd been living in Sandpoint.
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They also knew he had a brother named James Pratt, who'd been seen around town from time to time. Joseph was 27 years old and James was 29. Armed with this information, investigators with the city and county agencies as well as the U.S. Forest Service and Idaho Department of Fish and Game followed the foot tracks that they believed the Pratt brothers had left in the snow.
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One set of tracks had been made by a boot, but the other appeared to have come from a running shoe, which investigators knew wasn't really appropriate footwear for walking in the snow. The manhunt stretched for one hour, to two, then three, and eventually more than four hours because the terrain that searchers were having to cover was fairly unforgiving.
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Authorities were reportedly wading through knee-deep and waist-deep snow, thick forest, and just all-around miserable conditions. Around 2 o'clock in the morning, which would have technically been Thursday, January 12th, more resources and personnel were brought in to assist in the search.
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Law enforcement was growing increasingly worried that the Pratts would go near several vacation cabins in the area while attempting to cross the nearby Pend Oreille River. Interestingly, during the search, the sheriff's office as an agency didn't have tracking dogs as a resource, so it was totally up to the men and women on foot to track the suspects' movements and direction.
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At one point, authorities saw where the two brothers had walked close to a few rental cottages, so to be sure they weren't hiding inside one of them, investigators went through each building individually. They quickly determined the Pratts weren't there and picked up their trail again, which led back into the woods.
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Around 2.24 a.m., the manhunt teams realized that the suspect's tracks had gone over a suspended railroad bridge that went across a small lake. But getting across this bridge wasn't going to be easy for searchers because the railroad ties were slippery and covered in ice, not to mention law enforcement were kind of sitting ducks while they attempted the feat.
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They had no idea if the Prats were hiding on the other side, waiting to pick them off one by one or what. It was a pretty frightening reality, but eventually the search teams did make it over safely and continued tracking their targets. About two hours later, around 4 a.m., the crews who'd been following the brothers' trail all night were worn out and needed a break.
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So the investigating agencies made the collective decision to pause the manhunt until fresh personnel arrived around 6 a.m. One of the first teams that launched the renewed search consisted of four men and included a 41-year-old Forest Service officer named Brent Jacobson, who sometimes went by the nickname Jake.
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Brent was a former Navy SEAL who had a thorough knowledge of the landscape in northern Idaho. He was from Provo, Utah, but had lived a good portion of his life in Twin Falls. As a young man, he became very familiar with creeks and canyons in that area. Around 1966, after finishing his time in the Navy, he worked for the US Forest Service as a part-time firefighter.
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When he went full-time for that agency in 1974, he was stationed in Kootenai County, Idaho, before eventually transferring to the Sandpoint Ranger District in 1985. Because of all of that experience, he was heralded as a very skilled hunter, outdoorsman, and tracker. At the time, he was employed as both a fire control officer and law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service.
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For a few hours, Brent and his team tracked the Pratt brothers through the snow and eventually came across a roadway. It was clear that the assailants had tried to throw law enforcement off the scent a few times by attempting to walk in one another's shoe tracks. But their efforts didn't deter Brent. He followed their trail for some 200 yards.
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By 5 o'clock, authorities had cornered the two suspects in a small stretch of woods near a street named Smith Creek Road. The spot was about eight miles west of the city of Sandpoint. The location was uniquely isolated, so there was nowhere for the Pratt brothers to run.
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Around 5.15 p.m., Brent and a 24-year-old Bonner County deputy accompanying him named Steve Barbieri walked towards the general area they believed the suspects were hiding, but were suddenly attacked with a volley of gunfire as they entered a heavily wooded ravine.
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The moment was chaotic and visibility was poor, not to mention there was little to no radio reception between officers because of how remote the terrain was. So it was hard to tell who was where or where the shots were even coming from.
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As soon as the gunfire stopped, though, another sheriff's deputy on Brent's team who was further back heard what he thought sounded like a person gasping for air or moaning. Basically, it's what he described as someone's dying breaths. Then Brent's partner, Steve Barbieri, emerged from the woods and told the rest of the team that Brent had been shot.
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Steve explained how he and Brent had unknowingly gotten fairly close to the Pratt brothers who were dressed in black and hiding below a pine tree. They'd ordered the suspects to show their hands, but the men didn't. Instead, the brothers blasted the officers and Brent had gone down almost immediately.
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Steve said he'd been able to fire off a few rounds from his shotgun at some point while diving for cover, and then switch to a handgun, but that gun had jammed, making it impossible for him to continue to return fire. He said that in the scurry, he and Brent had gotten separated, and eventually he had to retreat to avoid getting shot too.
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So by 5.20 p.m., it was clear to everyone involved in the manhunt that Brent was down somewhere in the forest and needed medical attention. But authorities had to use caution because it wasn't clear right away whether the two suspects were still in the area.
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Eventually, though, Brent's colleagues determined that the Prats had fled, and so they had to make the tough decision to try and find them before going to check on Brent. About 40 minutes after this, authorities got a call from a man named Max Singleton, who lived at a house near the shooting scene.
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And Max, who was home with his two sons at the time, told investigators that Joseph and James Pratt were at his place and wanted to surrender. Not long after that, a crisis response team arrived and by 6.50 p.m., the Pratts were taken into custody without further incident. Finally, everyone could breathe a sigh of relief because the nearly 22-hour manhunt was over.
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee, a swath of public land that I've mentioned once before on this show in an episode that was released a few weeks back titled The Accomplices.
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To this day, the crime remains a vivid memory for one detective who worked to solve it, and I was fortunate enough to get a chance to speak with him one-on-one. Some of the details he shared with me weren't in the news articles I dug up about this case. They're not in any of the public court files I requested either.
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It was actually Steven and his wife's trailer that Ronnie had picked Justin up from on Sunday night, June 24th. According to Ronnie, either that night or the next day, Monday the 25th, Stephen and his wife had gotten into some kind of disagreement. And shortly afterwards, Stephen's wife told him that one of their daughters had been sexually assaulted.
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And it wasn't long after that, that Stephen and Charles had come up with a plan to invite Justin to hang out with them. I asked Ronnie directly if Justin had ever faced allegations of sexual assault before his murder. And she told me, no, she had never heard of any.
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When authorities interviewed Stephen, they pressed him to tell them more about the murder weapon and what happened to Charles' truck. But he wouldn't go into detail about those two things. When investigators asked him where the gun had come from that was allegedly used to kill Justin, he also wasn't forthcoming.
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He told them that he didn't know anything about the weapon and he had no clue how it had gotten into Charles' truck on the day of the crime, which I imagine was probably hard for investigators to believe. So according to retired detective Doug Brannon, within a week or two after the investigation launched, the sheriff's office spent a lot of time and resources trying to find the firearm.
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And that's when something kind of amazing happened. Thanks to details Charles revealed in his confession, investigators were able to narrow down the general area of the Teleco River where he said Stephen had reportedly discarded pieces of the gun. When divers searched those locations, they found the magazine, but not the complete firearm itself.
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However, Doug Brannon told me during his interview that detectives did eventually end up recovering the frame of the gun, and with help from the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, identified its serial number.
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Doug said locating any part of the firearm was kind of a miracle because even though the Teleco River is generally shallow and you can even wade through it in some parts, there are also other areas that are very rugged, steep, and have whitewater whipping through them. Plus, there had reportedly been a big storm that moved through the National Forest after the crime.
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so essentially looking for pieces of a dissembled handgun in that kind of waterway with all the factors i just mentioned taken into consideration was truly like trying to find a needle in a haystack but when investigators eventually examined the magazine they discovered it was empty which probably indicated to them that either all of the bullets had been fired during the murder or a few of them had possibly fallen out of the magazine at the crime scene
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But they paint an important picture of just how ruthless a person can be, and how far they're willing to go to silence someone in an area teeming with life. This is Park Predators. Around 11 o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, June 26, 2012, a man named Doug, who was visiting Cherokee National Forest from Florida, was in a secluded area next to the Teleco River when he spotted something alarming.
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Which, to me, that last theory kind of makes the most sense, because we know that responding deputies found both shell casings and live rounds at the crime scene. But what's more interesting to me is that Doug Brannon mentioned during his interview the ATF was able to go a step further when it came to figuring out the origin of the murder weapon.
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He said that agents determined it had come from a bulk purchase of guns that were all the same type of firearm. That crop of guns had been acquired by individuals who just so happened to be part of what Doug described as a suspected biker gang.
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Apparently, all of these motorcycle club folks preferred to own the same type of handgun, so they'd purchased a bunch in bulk, and one of those guns had seemingly ended up in the hands of Steven Chrisman Jr.
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It seemed that this wasn't necessarily a huge surprise to law enforcement in 2012, though, because Doug Brannon indicated that it was believed that it was probably Steven who had been associated with the people in the motorcycle club who'd made the bulk gun purchase.
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I asked Ronnie, Justin's mom, about this detail, though, because at one point she was pretty close with Steven and his wife, who was actually her niece, but she didn't know anything about it. Who exactly the gun purchasers in the alleged motorcycle club were isn't something that's been publicly reported on, and it doesn't appear that a definitive tie between them and Steven was ever formally made.
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But I imagine this potential background knowledge about Stephen was just another thing in law enforcement's eyes that made him look bad. On Thursday, July 5th, a little over a week after the crime, both he and Charles appeared in court for a motions hearing. But what was expected to be a run-of-the-mill legal proceeding turned out to be anything but. It was full of proverbial fireworks.
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To kick things off at the motions hearing in early July, Charles' lawyer brought up a big issue that he said concerned him about the case. His client had been charged with first-degree murder, premeditated murder.
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However, when Charles had given his confession to the sheriff's office on the night of June 26th into the morning of the 27th, he'd verbalized that he didn't know Stephen was going to kill Justin.
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So essentially Charles denied having prior knowledge that a homicide was going to occur, which in his lawyer's eyes meant he should not have been charged with first degree premeditated murder, like at all. His defense attorney basically accused the cops of writing up really vague search warrants and probable cause affidavits that fell short of what the law required.
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He told the court, quote, the state wants to make this case as vague as possible to keep from being tied to specific facts. The law says the warrant must contain a statement that attests to my client acted with intent to assist or promote. And there's no statement in the affidavit that says this, end quote.
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Charles's defense attorney thought that because of law enforcement's inability to establish probable cause, the first degree murder charges should be squashed and Charles be released.
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So during the motions hearing, he aggressively argued this point, and I guess he was one heck of a litigator because the judge overseeing the case ended up agreeing with him that probable cause had not been established. The judge ruled that the initial arrest warrant that had been filed for Charles was insufficient, and he ordered a new one be drafted.
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In the meantime, Charles would stay put in jail, but technically the first-degree murder charge was dropped for the time being. During that same hearing, Stevens' defense attorney asked the court to significantly lower his bond from $350,000 to $150,000 because they believed the prior amount was too excessive. But the judge disagreed and ruled that Stevens' bond should be kept at $350,000.
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Because Stephen had fled from law enforcement when they first approached him at his dad's house in the early morning hours of June 27th, I think there was some reasonable concern that he might be a flight risk if he had made bond.
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According to reporting by the Monroe County Buzz, Stephen also had eight prior felony convictions in McMinn County for violent crimes like aggravated burglaries and other thefts and burglaries. So that criminal history in his background didn't do him any favors when it came to asking for leniency from the court.
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When the motions hearing concluded, Stephen was still facing first-degree murder charges, and Charles' charges were amended to first-degree murder with a more detailed warrant, accessory after the fact, and setting fire to personal property.
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That article by the Monroe County Buzz that I mentioned a minute ago reported that the updated warrant for Charles was more detailed about how he'd provided Stephen with transportation to the crime scene.
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helped get rid of the gun used in the murder, gotten someone else to give him and Stephen the accelerant used to torch his truck, and that he provided false or misleading information to investigators in an attempt to downplay his role in the whole thing.
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The detectives and prosecutors firmly believed that Charles was just as much a part of the crime as Stephen was, and didn't buy his defense attorney's argument that he had just been a witness or conspirator after the fact.
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On June 11th, a few days after the motions hearing, the judge presiding over the case held a preliminary hearing to determine whether or not the state had met its burden of proof to merit going to trial. Two investigators who'd responded to the crime scene or who were actively working the homicide investigation testified as witnesses.
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Prosecutors told the court that they firmly believed Stephen had pre-planned the crime and Charles had been a willing participant. But Stephen's defense attorney, as you can imagine, did not like that portrayal of his client. He argued that the state had not sufficiently established that Stephen premeditated the murder, and therefore the charges in case against him should be dropped.
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Charles's lawyer argued similar points and alleged that his client had only helped conceal the crime because he was afraid of Stephen. But the judge disagreed with both defendants' positions and ordered that a grand jury decide whether to formally indict them or not.
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On August 1st, the panel voted to indict both men for conspiracy to commit murder and arson, but only Stephen was formally indicted for first-degree murder. Charles got a modified version of that charge and was indicted for attempted first-degree murder. According to an article by the Monroe County Buzz, in September, they both made bond and were released from custody pending their eventual trial.
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A few months later, in mid-October, the trial was scheduled for April 2013, but it would never make it that far. In March 2013, nine months after the murder, a judge in Monroe County ordered that Stephen and Charles' cases be severed, which meant both men would get their own jury trials.
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It's not explicitly stated in the available source material, but I think this decision by the court caused things to get delayed or pushed further down the docket because there wasn't much movement in the case for more than a year after that. Then in late April, 2014, court records show that instead of going to trial, Charles decided to plead guilty to facilitation of second degree murder.
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As part of his plea deal, the state dismissed the arson and conspiracy to commit first degree murder charges against him, which reduced the amount of time he was facing in prison from life in prison without the possibility of parole to only eight years. The same day Charles took a plea deal, Stephen did too.
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He agreed to admit to second-degree murder charges, and in exchange, prosecutors dropped the conspiracy and arson counts. His potential sentence went from the possibility of life without parole or capital punishment to only 15 years max. Today, Charles is out of prison. According to the Tennessee Department of Correction website, he was released in 2019.
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Stephen remains behind bars, and as of this recording, is not scheduled to be released until March of 2026. Throughout my reporting, I kept asking myself so many questions about this case, most notably, why? The suggestion that Stephen was enacting some kind of retribution against Justin for things he'd allegedly done to Stephen's daughter is just a huge question mark in this case.
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If there really were such allegations, why did Stephen only decide to bring it up after he killed Justin? Was that even legit to begin with? I'm also sort of dumbfounded that the person who supplied Charles and Stephen with the accelerant they used to burn Charles's truck made it out of this whole thing unscathed with no criminal charges.
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I mean, in my opinion, this person definitely helped cover up the crime, whether knowingly or unknowingly. And it's wild to me that they were never publicly named by law enforcement or prosecuted for their role in the arson. Of course, I haven't seen law enforcement's full case file on this crime, so who knows?
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Maybe that person was looked at pretty hard, but in the end, there just wasn't enough there to really rope them into things. I don't know. It's frustrating. I also can't help but think about another fact in this case that's puzzling too. which is that Doug Brannon said the murder weapon was successfully traced back to members of a suspected biker gang.
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Like to me, if the gun was part of a group purchase made by an individual or individuals associated with that club, then why weren't any of those folks pressed for more information or charged? Then again, maybe they were. I don't have access to the entire case file, so that very well could have been something that authorities did, but just hasn't been documented publicly.
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I could honestly go round and round with questions like this, but ultimately the answers just aren't there. What I do know for sure is that the lives of these three men and their loved ones are forever changed. Justin's family has suffered a terrible loss. To this day, Ronnie is still mourning her son's death and misses him dearly.
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She initially didn't want to agree to the plea deals for Charles and Stephen, but in the end, went along with it because it was one of the only ways to guarantee they would spend some time in prison. She wishes she could have seen Justin grow up to be a man and have a family of his own. Steven Chrisman Jr.
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is a husband and father who has now spent more than a decade in prison, away from his family, because of a series of bad decisions. If there's anything we can take away from listening to this story, it's this. Sometimes murder is not complicated, but the circumstances that precede it, that contribute to it, can be.
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It's interesting because when I was first researching that case, I had no idea that this one even existed. But call it fate, call it coincidence, call it destiny, whatever, today's story did eventually ping on my radar, and I'm glad that it did. Because it's definitely one of those stories that just seems so appropriate to deep dive into on a show like this.
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The spoken and unspoken things amongst family members can become a catalyst for catastrophe. And whether that's what happened in this case or not, I think the only folks who know for sure are the two men who went into Cherokee National Forest as part of a trio, but exited as a duo. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production.
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You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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There, about 20 to 30 feet down an embankment next to a gravel road at a pull-off in the forest called River Road, was the body of a young man who appeared to be deceased. Laying on the ground right next to the roadway were several bullets and a pair of glasses. Naturally, Doug put two and two together and realized that something was seriously wrong.
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So he immediately left the area and reported what he'd found to a staff member at a nearby ranger station on River Road. Shortly after that, the Park Service radioed for the Monroe County Sheriff's Office to come to the scene and investigate.
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The first deputy who responded met up with Doug at the Ranger Station, and together they drove to the pull-off where he'd found those suspicious items and had seen the victim's body. An accompanying sergeant with the Sheriff's Office helped the deputy quickly locate several spent shell casings on the ground, some live bullets that had not been fired, and the pair of eyeglasses.
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When the first responding deputies realized they were dealing with something suspicious, they cordoned off the scene and called for detectives to get there as soon as possible. When the detectives arrived, they walked down the embankment to examine the victim's body and started to work the scene.
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They found the man face down about 20 or 30 yards from the river with blood on his clothes and what looked like gunshot wounds to his head and one in his hand.
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The investigators noticed that he was wet and appeared to have either fallen or been chased down the embankment because there was some blood spattered down the way to his body, as well as areas of disturbed ground and vegetation that indicated something had happened that resulted in him ending up down and away from the roadway.
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When detectives searched his clothing, they located an ID that indicated he was 18-year-old Justin Click from the nearby town of Sweetwater, Tennessee. For the next six hours or so, the sheriff's office processed the crime scene, took swabs of the blood spatter on the ground, and photographed the area.
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They gathered as much physical evidence as they could, which included bagging the four live rounds of ammunition and four spent casings that were left on the ground. Authorities determined those bullets belonged to a .380 caliber firearm. Along with the ammunition, they also found a discarded Red Bull can and some cigarette butts.
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While all that stuff was being collected, a special agent from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation arrived to help local law enforcement and get the evidence ready to send to the TBI's crime lab for analysis. Results from that testing would take some time to come in, though, so in the meantime, authorities turned their attention to learning more about their victim, Justin, and the way he died.
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The source material isn't clear on the exact date and time, but a deputy medical examiner for Knox and Anderson counties conducted his autopsy. I'd assume either that day or the next.
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I wasn't able to see the autopsy report for myself, but an article by the Monroe County Buzz stated that the pathologist determined Justin had sustained blunt force trauma to his torso and been shot multiple times in his left forearm, back, right arm, and chest. Another shot had been fired into his head at close range, and there was soot on his fingers.
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A retired Monroe County Sheriff's detective named Doug Brannon, not to be confused with the Doug who found Justin's body, told me during an interview I had with him that Justin's wounds indicated to him that he'd most likely been beaten and then shot at least once near the roadway, but then chased and subsequently shot a few more times while running down the embankment toward the river.
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Cherokee National Forest is a place that's special to a lot of people. Maybe because it's a recreation space they camped in a lot growing up, have a picnic at every year, or tackle whitewater every summer. But whatever people's reasons for exploring this 650,000-acre forest, it's definitely a place that has something for everyone.
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Doug said the gunshot wound to his head had gone through his fingers while they were interlaced, which to him indicated he was probably forced to kneel and plead for his life before being executed. While some investigators were working to understand the sequence of events at the crime scene, others got in contact with Justin's mother, Ronnie Sisk.
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What they didn't know is that Ronnie had been at her home in Madisonville, Tennessee, worried sick about her son for several hours, but she had no idea he'd been killed. I was actually able to interview Ronnie for this episode and she told me that the last time she saw Justin was on Sunday night, June 24th. She dropped him off at his stepdad Dean's house.
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At the time, Justin didn't have a driver's license because his eyesight was extremely poor and he was unable to pass a driving test. So Ronnie, Dean, or his friends would often give him rides to places. Growing up, Ronnie said her and Dean had divorced and Justin had lived with him because she'd gone in and out of being unhoused.
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The Trio
When she parted ways with her son on Sunday night, she said that he'd given her a hug and told her that he loved her. The next morning, Monday, June 25th, it's believed his stepdad took him to his job at a tubing insulation plant in Sweetwater.
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And later that evening, after he'd gotten off work and returned to Dean's house, his cousin by marriage, 31-year-old Stephen Chrisman Jr., and one of Stephen's friends, 51-year-old Charles Kyle, had picked him up to go hang out.
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Ronnie said that Dean told her that before Justin left with Stephen and Charles, he'd seemed excited because Stephen said the group would be hanging out, swimming, and having dinner near a body of water in the area. Initially, though, Dean had felt uneasy letting Justin go because he didn't know Charles Kyle very well, but eventually he relented because he did know Stephen.
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The Trio
The next morning, Tuesday the 26th, Ronnie received an unexpected call from Dean asking her if she knew where Justin was. She said that Dean told her that Justin had never come home after his outing with Stephen and Charles. So anxious to get some answers, Ronnie drove down the street from her house to a trailer that Steven and his wife and kids lived in.
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The Trio
When Steven spoke with her, she asked him where Justin was. According to Ronnie, Steven told her that Justin had come back to his trailer on Monday night to crash, but when everyone woke up on Tuesday morning, he was nowhere to be found and Steven's truck was gone, implying that Steven believed Justin had stolen the vehicle and taken off somewhere.
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The Trio
Believing what Steven had told her, Ronnie said she immediately wanted to go out and start looking for Justin, and Steven even pitched in to help. He gave her a cigarette and $20 for gas before she headed out the door. For the next few hours, she and some of Justin's family members drove around Sweetwater looking for him. They went to his job, places he usually hung out, everywhere.
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The Trio
But he wasn't at any of those places. The only other thing Ronnie could think to do was make a post on her Facebook page, encouraging people to keep an eye out for Justin and pray he would come home safely. Ronnie didn't file a missing persons report for him at that time, and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it's because she knew Justin was 18 and was probably hoping he'd just turn back up.
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The Trio
But regardless of how exactly all that played out, at some point in the day, while everyone was trying to find Justin, Ronnie got a call from a Sweetwater police detective who asked her to come down to the police station. She agreed because at that point in time, she just thought Justin was in trouble for stealing Stephen's truck.
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The Trio
One spot that attracts a lot of visitors who might be looking to get off the grid is the Teleco River area, which in certain parts is surrounded by thousands of acres of remote backcountry. According to the Tennessee River Valley's website, the river itself is heralded as a premier waterway to fish for trout.
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The Trio
But when she got in an office with investigators, she learned the horrible truth. Her son was dead. Right after she was notified, Dean, Justin's stepdad, came into the police station and learned the same news. Justin had graduated from Sweetwater High School the year before, and Ronnie told me he'd just gotten his first real job.
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He was expecting to earn his first paycheck the Friday after his murder, but never even got the chance to receive the money. She described him as a trusting person who was always smiling and would give anyone the clothes off his back if they needed them. She said he was very close with his cousins, aunts and uncles, and stepbrothers, and was active in what seemed to be two local churches.
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The Trio
According to Ronnie, Justin genuinely loved his cousin by marriage, Steven Chrisman Jr. Even though there was an age gap between the men, Justin had grown up spending time with Steven and even gone on some road trips with him. This familial connection between Justin and Steven, even though it was by marriage, was an interesting detail to investigators.
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The Trio
Speaking with him and Charles Kyle was high on law enforcement's priority list. According to court documents filed in the case, investigators ended up talking with Charles first. He was at home in Venore, Tennessee, which is a town that sits close to the Teleco River and is about a half-hour drive east of Sweetwater.
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The Trio
Around 9 o'clock on Tuesday night, authorities asked him general questions about the case. And after two or three hours of doing that, they requested that he come down to the sheriff's department for a more formal interview. Charles agreed and by midnight was in an interrogation room with detectives with cameras and recording devices turned on.
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The Trio
It wasn't too long into that conversation that he began to reveal a lot of important information. Most alarming of which was the fact that he claimed he had witnessed Justin's murder. According to what an investigator later recounted in court, Charles said he'd met up with Justin and Steven to go drinking, and together they'd driven around in the National Forest in his red Ford F-150 pickup truck.
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At some point, they'd pulled over in the gravel pull-off to, quote, take a leak, end quote. But then Charles said that things went south, and Steven shot Justin with a pistol. He said that during the shooting, the passenger side door of his truck had been shot through and blood had gotten on the inside.
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Shortly after the murder, Charles said he and Stephen drove to a nearby bridge, and Stephen tossed the magazine of the murder weapon out the passenger side of his truck. A little further down the road, Charles said he saw Stephen also throw the pistol itself over the cab of the truck and into the river on the opposite side of the road than he'd thrown the magazine.
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It flows for nearly 20 miles all the way from North Carolina to the Teleco Plains in Tennessee. Along its many tributaries, you'll find stocked and native species of trout. But in the summer of 2012, it wasn't an abundance of fish coming from the river that made local headlines. It was a murder. A horrific slaying right there on the banks that caused many people to take pause.
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Then, the pair got some flammable liquid from one of Charles' friends, drove the truck to a remote location, and burned it. Retired Monroe County Sheriff's detective Doug Brannon told me that the area where the men dumped the truck was actually owned by a business that might've been a timber company at the time. But it was a place that people would often go to just dump things.
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Doug said it was like 10 or 15 miles away from the National Forest into what he described as the community of the town. In Charles's confession, he said that after setting the vehicle on fire, he called a buddy of his to take him and Steven away from where they'd burned the truck. When investigators visited the spot where Charles said he and Stephen had ditched the truck, they found it right away.
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Apparently, the arson job that the men had tried to pull off had been unsuccessful. Basically, the way one investigator described it is the fire they'd set just sort of burned itself out and never actually damaged the truck. So it was reportedly in pretty good condition when the detectives got a hold of it.
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When they looked inside, they found a red-brown stain they suspected was blood and a bullet hole in the passenger side door. authorities towed the truck to the TBI crime lab in Nashville and processed it. After obtaining Charles' confession, investigators placed him under arrest for a first-degree murder and booked him in the county jail.
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The Trio
With so much circumstantial evidence piling up against Stephen, it was more important than ever for detectives to locate him. So around three or four o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, they stepped up their search and ended up finding him at his father's house in neighboring McMinn County, Tennessee. When the team of investigators arrived, Stephen saw them coming and ran away.
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But a few hours later, he eventually turned himself in and detectives arrested him for first-degree murder. Back at the sheriff's office, they read him his rights, then interviewed and confronted him with all of the damning information Charles had provided a few hours earlier.
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The Trio
Stephen agreed to talk with detectives, but his version of the story, particularly why he'd murdered Justin, was not something law enforcement expected to hear. According to what an investigator later recounted in court, Stephen claimed that he'd killed Justin because he, quote, had to take care of business, end quote. What exactly he meant by that is difficult to determine.
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It suggested that perhaps Stephen and Justin had beef with one another over something. But what exactly this conflict was, was something that investigators struggled to grasp. According to a transcript from a preliminary hearing where this allegation was first publicly addressed a few weeks after the crime, Stephen claimed that Justin had sexually assaulted his daughter prior to June 25th, 2012.
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However, no police report about that alleged crime was filed with the sheriff's office until after Justin's murder and Stephen's arrest. Retired Monroe County Sheriff's Detective Doug Brannon told me during his interview that this allegation against Justin was very muddied and difficult to navigate.
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He said it was a rumor that couldn't be substantiated, but it became clear it was a reasonable motive for the crime, at least from Steven's point of view. But Doug clarified that the sheriff's office was never able to find any evidence to support this claim, and detectives could never locate a formal report or any kind of documentation that corroborated a crime had occurred prior to June 25th.
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Doug also said investigators checked their own files for child abuse reports or complaints and inquired with Child Protective Services, but they never found any documentation other than the report that Stephen filed after Justin's murder.
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When I spoke to Justin's mom, Ronnie, about this allegation, she told me that after the crime, she learned a few more details, which she firmly believes are all false. According to her, the weekend before Justin was killed, he'd babysat Steven and his wife's two daughters, a job he'd done many times before for different people with kids of all ages.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today is a unique one. It involves a missing person who disappeared from the Appalachian Trail, one of the most well-known and well-hiked trails in the continental United States.
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The Vanisher
They told reporter Jessica Pace that Jerry was a woman who lived life to the fullest, cared about others, and was always positive. She had a lot of love to give and especially enjoyed spending time with her family, going camping, and quilting.
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The Vanisher
Her daughter, Carrie, said that the entire ordeal had been difficult to process because there just didn't seem to be a good explanation of what happened to her mother. She told Jessica Pace, quote, We would love some closure, for sure, but we have to rely on the family and our faith. It's strange. I keep calling it our new normal.
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No one can tell us what the next step is because no one we know has been through this. End quote. On October 12th, 2013, more than two months after she vanished, Jerry's friends and family held a memorial service for her at a Catholic church outside of Atlanta. It was where she and George had been living for more than 10 years prior to her setting off on her hike.
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The Vanisher
A small memorial was also placed at the Wyman Township Appalachian Trail crossing in Jerry's honor. In September, a smaller group of searchers set out to look for her along the routes that she would have taken, but again, they came up empty-handed.
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The Vanisher
The Maine Warden Service remained optimistic that the flyers that had been placed throughout the region with Jerry's description and information would catch the eye of hunters and hikers and hopefully generate new leads. However, it doesn't appear that was successful because searches were still happening nearly a year later in June 2014 with no new results.
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The Vanisher
In September 2014, a reward for information offered by Jerry's family was increased from $15,000 to $25,000. Interestingly, Dana Prochovnik and Hutch Brown wrote that the actual land Jerry was believed to have disappeared close to or possibly on is owned by the U.S. Navy. Soldiers used it for specialized survival training exercises and escape maneuver drills, essentially war games.
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The Vanisher
The property doesn't have fences or clearly marked boundaries on most maps, only a few signs that warn against trespassing. Hutch Brown speculated in his article that perhaps it was possible Jerry had wandered off the AT in the wrong spot, encountered some of the trainees on the Navy's property who'd been in the thick of extreme survival training, and something bad had happened to her.
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The Vanisher
Prior news coverage by the Bangor Daily News described the Navy's facility as a torture camp that had been around since 1961. Some participants told journalists over the years that they'd been subjected to starvation, beatings, humiliation, waterboarding, and other extreme tactics while completing the program.
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The Vanisher
Even Jerry's daughter, Carrie, told reporters that she couldn't help but wonder if something worse than just an accident befell her mother. She said, quote, If something had happened to her on the trail, she would have known to stay put and someone would have found her. Clearly, something other than that happened. End quote.
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The Vanisher
At a later point in the search, some members of survival teams that trained on the Navy's property went into the woods to look for Geri. But despite their enhanced training, they still weren't able to find her. And the Navy was more or less like, if she's lost, she's not lost on our land because otherwise we would have found her.
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The Vanisher
However, their tune would change more than two years after she disappeared, when a tree surveyor passing through that exact same tract of land made a disturbing discovery.
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The Vanisher
On Sunday, October 11th, 2015, two years, two months, and 20 days after Jerry Largay first disappeared, a surveyor for a private company was walking through the Navy's property just off the Appalachian Trail on his way to a job site near Rangeley, Maine, when all of a sudden, he stumbled across something unusual.
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The Vanisher
Deep in the middle of the woods, he saw what looked like a flattened tent just sitting by itself. And not too far away, there was a backpack and what he believed was a human skull. Unsure of what the heck he'd just come across, the worker called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to report what he'd found.
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The Vanisher
Eventually, NCIS looped in the Maine Warden Service, Maine State Police, and Maine Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Thanks to the surveyor providing officials with specific GPS coordinates, all of the involved agencies were able to send personnel directly to the remote scene.
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The Vanisher
When investigators arrived the next morning, they happened to have an Animal Planet film crew with them that had been working on a series called Northwood's Law. So the entire thing was captured on video. I know, talk about being in the right place at the right time as a journalist.
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The Vanisher
When officials looked around, they saw a sleeping bag sitting on the ground roughly 20 feet away from a tent and what looked like attempts to burn some nearby trees. Inside the bag, they found a human skull and various other bones. Inside the tent, they discovered more belongings and stains that the ME noted had likely come from a body decomposing there.
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The Vanisher
The tent itself had been ripped, which prompted investigators to conclude that animals had most likely gotten into it and dragged out the sleeping bag, which explained why it was located so far away from the tent.
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The Vanisher
In the backpack, they found a Samsung cell phone and other stuff like clothing, Jerry's Georgia driver's license, water bottles, duct tape, a Swiss Army knife, Ziploc bags, tent poles, a toothbrush, earplugs, a first aid kit, lighters, candles, athletic tape, batteries, a blue baseball hat, a whistle, and a flashlight.
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The Vanisher
I know that's a lot of stuff, but all of these were supplies that an experienced hiker would need to survive. A quick scan of the skeletal remains revealed that a few arm, hand, and knee bones were missing, but overall the remains were fairly intact. The ME concluded that the missing bones were likely the result of scavenging animal activity.
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The Vanisher
Law enforcement's overall consensus was that the remains and tent were most likely certainly connected to Jerry's disappearance from two years earlier, but to be absolutely sure, they needed to do a bit more investigating.
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The Vanisher
When they examined the sleeping bag and green backpack's contents more closely, they found a cell phone, a compass, and a notebook that's last entry date was dated August 18, 2013. There was some discrepancy about this date, though, because some sources stated the last entry was dated August 6, while others confirmed it was the 18th.
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The Vanisher
The warden's service wrote in their report that they weren't exactly sure if the dates that Jerry had written in her journal were 100% accurate, because she could have been delirious and off on her timing after being in the elements for so long. But regardless of when exactly she made her last entry, one sentence she wrote stated, quote, George, please read XOXO, end quote.
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The Vanisher
Additional review of the journal revealed several more entries which were lengthy letters addressed to Jerry's family members, and it was that specific language that suggested the remains were definitely her.
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The Vanisher
Around 7.15 in the morning on Monday, July 22nd, 2013, George Largay looked at his phone and saw that his wife, 66-year-old Geraldine Largay, had texted him to let him know that she was on the move and would see him soon. Geraldine, who mostly was known by her nickname, Jerry, was several months into a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail.
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The Vanisher
The next day, October 15th, a medical examiner from Augusta, Maine, traveled to the scene and then the Maine State Police Evidence Response Team removed the skeletal remains from the campsite and transported them back to the Emmy's office for further study.
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The Vanisher
Jerry's ID was officially confirmed through DNA testing the following morning, because that was really the only way to know for sure that the bones were hers. The ME noted that an official autopsy couldn't be conducted due to the fact that she was fully skeletonized by that point. So instead of typing up an autopsy report, the ME prepared what's known as a forensic anthropology report.
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The Vanisher
That document stated that Jerry's skeleton was nearly complete when it was found, with the exception of those few missing hand, arm, and knee bones. None of her remains showed any signs of trauma, and they were all consistent with having been exposed to the elements for more than two years.
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The Vanisher
The Emmy ruled her cause of death as inanition, which just essentially means starvation and lack of water due to prolonged exposure to the elements. On October 28th, nearly two weeks after the discovery, officials escorted George, his children, and his son-in-law to the spot in the woods where Jerry had been found.
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The Vanisher
They erected a small cross and left several mementos at the location to remember her. News reports state that Jerry's body was found less than two miles from the AT itself and only about a half hour away from a designated lodging site.
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The Vanisher
If she had just gone a little further south of where she pitched her tent, she would have been able to get correctly oriented with the trail and continue on with her journey. Investigators' final conclusion was that Jerry had gotten lost in the woods at some point on July 22nd. That conclusion was supported by information they learned from her friend and former hiking partner, Jane Lee.
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The Vanisher
According to Dana Prochovnik and Alan Juhasz's reporting, Jane said that in the weeks they'd been hiking together, she'd noticed that Jerry had the tendency to get turned around on the trail fairly easily.
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The Vanisher
There had even been a few instances where she said Jerry had gotten flustered or combative about which way to go, but Jane sort of acted as their collective compass and always got them back on track.
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The Vanisher
In the end, the Navy had to face the reality that Jerry's tent and remains had been on their land all along, and despite multiple searches, professional searchers looking, and their expert trackers, everyone had simply missed her. It was like people had searched all around her tent, but never close enough to spot her, which to me is just super tragic.
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The Vanisher
The warden service did clarify though, that because Jerry's remains were essentially sealed up in her sleeping bag and tent during those early days of searching, that might explain why scent dogs had been unable to catch the odor of decomposition.
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The Vanisher
In the forensic anthropology report, the ME noted that the tree canopy over top of where Jerry had set up her tent was very dense, and even if you'd been searching from an airplane, the visibility would have been limited. Additional reporting stated that because the woods were so thick, searchers also likely didn't hear Jerry blow her whistle, if in fact she attempted to do so.
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The Vanisher
Most unfortunate of all, though, was that Jerry owned a GPS device, but she'd left it at a motel during one of her previous stops with George before she disappeared. So it was just a perfect storm of events across the board that resulted in searchers coming so close to her but missing her.
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The Vanisher
Compounding the tragic bad luck Jerry encountered was the fact that text message data authorities pulled from her phone after the discovery revealed that on July 22nd at 11.01 a.m., she'd typed a message to George alerting him of her plight, but it never went through. The message reportedly said, quote, Somewhere north of Woods Road. XOX. End quote.
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The Vanisher
Along the way, she had been meeting her husband at various checkpoints to replenish her supplies. The plan was for them to meet up the next day, Tuesday, July 23rd, at a parking area adjacent to the trail near Wyman Township, Maine. That way, Jerry could offload the stuff she didn't want to keep carrying and pick up new food and gear for her hike.
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The Vanisher
It's believed that the entity Jerry was asking George to call was the Appalachian Mountain Club. According to the Warden Service's official report, Jerry attempted to send that text 10 additional times, with that last attempt happening at 12.25 p.m. on the 22nd. Unfortunately, because of the bad cell reception in the area, it just never went through.
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The Vanisher
The next day, July 23rd, at 4.18 p.m., she texted George again and wrote, quote, Lost since yesterday. Off trail three or four miles. Call police for what to do, please. XOX. End quote. Additional text tried to send again on July 27th and July 30th, but failed.
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The Vanisher
In fact, VisitMaine.com and AppalachianTrail.com state that the AT is the longest hiking-only footpath on the planet at nearly 2,200 miles. It crosses through 14 different states on the east coast of the U.S. and attracts roughly 3 million visitors every year. I've covered other cases on this show involving the AT, but none have the bizarre details that this one has.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
More message activity in her phone showed that on August 6th, two weeks to the day after vanishing, Jerry's phone had turned on and someone deleted two texts. What those deleted messages said, I don't know, but I find it kind of odd they were erased. The investigators did too, but in the end, they had no explanation as to why that had happened, just that it happened.
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The Vanisher
According to the Warden Services report, there were also no pictures or videos on Jerry's device that had timestamps from July 22nd through August 6th, or any time after the 6th. which again seems odd to me because we know that Jerry was hiking and seeing some cool things on July 22nd, at least before she reportedly got lost.
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The Vanisher
I mean, I guess she probably wouldn't have been taking pictures if she was trying to survive, but I don't know, it still seems odd to me that there wasn't any kind of visual content captured on the phone during the dates in question.
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The Vanisher
Anyway, when authorities read further through her notebook, they discovered that one of the last entries she'd written said, quote, When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Carrie. It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me, no matter how many years from now.
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The Vanisher
Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them. End quote. Authorities later confirmed that Jerry had made it to a stream just northeast of Poplar Ridge Shelter and most likely survived for a few days by drinking water and rationing her minimal food supply. But ultimately, she ran out of energy and died from starvation and exposure.
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The Vanisher
Prior to her death, they believed she'd strung pieces of a silver space blanket that she'd had in her backpack on some tree branches near where she pitched her tent in an attempt to get overflying planes to spot her. But unfortunately, we know that wasn't successful.
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The Vanisher
In the wake of losing his wife under such difficult circumstances, George told the press that something he thought about a lot was just how long Jerry had tried to survive on her own. He said, quote, End quote. Despite the tragic outcome, George heralded his wife's legacy as an inspiration to others.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Not long before embarking on her journey, Geri had retired from her job as a nurse and really gotten serious about trying to complete the AT just for fun.
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The Vanisher
He told Josh Brown with the Tennessean that Jerry would have wanted her story to make other people who were older in life and perhaps hesitant to take on a feat like hiking the Appalachian Trail to not be afraid to do it.
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The Vanisher
He also remarked to other journalists that the long letters Jerry had left behind in her tent were all written to her surviving family members and were full of lovely messages and thoughts.
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The Vanisher
George was proud of his wife for being so poignant in her last moments and spending what little time she had left thinking of him, their kids, their grandkids, and other people in her life that she knew were cheering her on. Despite the fact that the journey she'd spent so long dreaming about turned out to be the last one she'd ever take.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
A quick reminder, Park Predators is off next week, so there won't be a new episode. But don't worry, I'll be back the following week with a brand new case. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck?
Park Predators
The Vanisher
The endeavor was something she'd been wanting to do for a long time, but initially, George, her husband, had not been a huge fan of the idea because he was worried that a prior lower back injury she sustained would cause her problems on such an ambitious hike. But eventually he got on board because he knew his wife of more than 42 years wasn't going to let up.
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The Vanisher
She was the type of person who, when she got an idea to do something like traverse a 2,000-mile-plus trail, nothing was going to stop her. As sort of a compromise to ease his concerns, Jerry agreed to connect with George along her route so that he would know where she was and if she was all right, and also so she wouldn't have to carry so many supplies in her backpack while she traveled.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
The point was for him to periodically show up and give her what she needed to keep going for a day or so in order to prevent her from straining her back. On the morning of Sunday, July 21st, the day before he got his wife's text, George had hiked for a short time with Jerry on the AT near the town of Rangeley, Maine. Before parting ways, they'd come up with a plan.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Jerry was going to spend Sunday night at the Poplar Ridge Shelter on the trail, then hike all day Monday to another lean-to shelter near Spalding Mountain. She would stay the night there before eventually making it to the spot where George would be waiting on Tuesday, July 23rd. Their check-in was going to be at a parking lot near where the AT met a local road known as Route 27.
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The Vanisher
If Jerry got there sooner, great. If not, no big deal. They'd connect at the latest by Tuesday night. According to Google Maps, the hike from Poplar Ridge Shelter to the meetup spot should have taken the average person anywhere between seven to eight hours to complete. However, according to the source material, the terrain was difficult to traverse and Geri was known to travel at a very slow pace.
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The Vanisher
In fact, she sort of owned the reputation of being a much slower hiker than a lot of the other people traversing the AT. She'd even adopted the trail name Inchworm to reflect the fact that she wasn't in a rush to complete the track. All of this might explain why she'd baked into her plans to stay overnight at Spalding Mountain on Monday evening.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Anyway, from reading the source material, it doesn't appear that Jerry and George had agreed upon a specific time of day of when they were going to see one another. It seems like it was just one of those, I'll see you either Monday or at the latest Tuesday kind of things.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Plus, at that particular time, a huge rainstorm had rolled into the area, so George anticipated the poor weather would probably slow his wife down even more. However, by the morning of Tuesday the 23rd, Jerry had still not arrived or texted him, which to George felt off.
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The Vanisher
The last time he'd received a text from her was on Monday morning when she told him she was leaving the Poplar Ridge shelter just under 22 miles or so away from his location. A few more hours went by with still no sign of Jerry or communication from her. But George figured his wife was just having a harder time than expected hiking in the rain.
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The Vanisher
So according to Dana Prochovnik and Jessica Pace's reporting, he decided to spend Tuesday night in his SUV along Route 27 at their designated meetup spot. He hoped that he'd see his wife sometime that night or on the morning of Wednesday, July 24th. However, when sunrise came, Jerry was still a no-show.
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The Vanisher
And by 1 p.m., George became much more worried and reported her missing to the Carrabasset Valley Police Department. Right away, the Maine Warden Service got involved with the investigation, and then eventually the Maine State Police and other federal and state agencies.
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The Vanisher
Initially, authorities and search crews felt it was possible that Jerry was just an overdue hiker because of all the rainy weather that had rolled in during the time that she'd been hiking.
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The Vanisher
Reporting by Scott Thistle for The Sun Journal stated that the previous year, July 2011 to June 2012, the Maine Warden Service had been involved in numerous searches for missing hikers, and 95% of people who were reported missing were found within 12 hours. 98% were located within a day.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
The story takes place in the summer of 2013, when an avid hiker traversing the trail through Maine vanished without a trace. She was walking along the 282 miles of the AT that cut through Maine, which VisitMaine.com reports as one of the most challenging sections of the trail. And that's because a lot of the mileage hikers cover is in remote areas or mountainous terrain.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Searchers working Jerry's case started looking for her on the roughly 22-mile stretch of the AT that spanned between the Poplar Ridge Shelter, Spalding Mountain Lean-To Shelter, and where she was supposed to meet up with George near Route 27. The warden's service utilized geodata from Jerry's phone to pinpoint the best area to cover.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
But unfortunately, the location information wasn't accurate enough to zero in on latitude-longitude-specific coordinates. I have to assume that investigators figured since the Poplar Ridge shelter was the last place she'd successfully communicated with George, she had to be somewhere between there, the Spalding Mountain Lean-To shelter, and their pre-planned meet-up spot.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
But it's not like we're talking about a search area that is a nice, neat, straight line. There are literally acres and acres of rugged terrain that span for miles in each direction off of the trail. On top of that, there are smaller side trails that branch out in various different directions. In total, authorities started searching in about an 81-square-mile area.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
One volunteer searcher remarked about the sheer vastness of the operation, saying, quote, you step off the trail 20 or 50 feet and turn around. It's very difficult to see where the trail was. If you didn't know which way the trail was, you could easily walk in circles for hours, end quote.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
There are also logging roads, ditches, stream beds, and off-road vehicle trails that crews had to search to, just in case Jerry might have accidentally gone down one of those and gotten turned around.
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The Vanisher
A representative for the Maine Warden Service told reporters that things like trash, trekking poles, and other discarded items had been discovered within the designated search area, but they determined that none of that belonged to Jerry. The suggestion that she'd just gotten lost in the woods was a difficult one for people who knew her well to accept.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
She was no amateur when it came to exploring nature. Jerry might have been 66 years old, but she was physically fit and had no major health issues, except that previous back injury, which the source material states had mostly healed. She would regularly hike for hours near her and George's home, and she usually carried a guidebook with her to familiarize herself with the local flora and fauna.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
In general, she was known to be a prepared outdoor enthusiast, not some amateur. George told reporter Jessica Pace that his wife had prepared for her journey on the AT about a year and a half in advance, and she'd even taken a course at the Appalachian Trail Institute and read seven books about the trail prior to her trip.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
According to George, when he'd last met up with his wife the weekend before she vanished, she'd departed with a three-day supply of food, fire-starting materials, and other survival supplies. However, the AT was an entirely new beast for Jerry. So the most logical conclusion was that she'd just gotten overwhelmed or turned around due to being unfamiliar with the terrain.
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The Vanisher
That notion was supported by one of Jerry's friends named Jane Lee. Starting in late April, Jane had been hiking with Jerry for about the first two months of the trek.
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The Vanisher
They'd gotten on the AT together in the middle of the trail in West Virginia and intended to hike north to Mount Katahdin in Maine, but their plans abruptly changed in late June when Jane had to call it quits early due to a family emergency.
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The Vanisher
At the time, Jane didn't like the idea of leaving her friend to finish the hike alone, but ultimately the pair decided that it would probably be fine because Jerry was so determined and George was stopping to meet her about twice a week to give her more supplies. Throughout July, Jerry met several people during her travels, one of whom was a woman named Dorothy Rust.
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The Vanisher
Not long after Jerry was reported missing, Dorothy contacted authorities and told them that she'd been at the Poplar Ridge shelter on July 22nd when Jerry was departing, and she described her as being in a good mood. Dorothy had even snapped a photo of Jerry right before she took off because she thought that the red fleece Jerry had been wearing at the time would look good for a holiday card.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Only an unwise or inexperienced person would dare to walk the AT there without the right kind of gear, plans, and preparations. In this story, though, none of those things seem to be an issue, which is why at the outset of this case, so many questions cropped up about what exactly happened that fateful summer in Maine.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
Investigators asked Dorothy for a copy of that photo and she gave it to them. The picture was then printed on flyers and distributed throughout the area because authorities believed it was most likely the last image that had been taken of Jerry before she vanished. It was vitally important for the public to know what she looked like and what she'd last been seen wearing.
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The Vanisher
The description that went out about her said she was 5'5", 115 pounds, had brown hair and brown eyes, and was wearing tan pants, a blue hat, a black pullover shirt, the red fleece, and a black and green backpack. During those first few days of searching, roughly 130 people used horses, dogs, ATVs, bikes, whistles, and aircraft to look for the missing 66-year-old. But nothing surfaced.
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The Vanisher
A few days turned into a week, and then one week turned into two. But still, no sign of her was found. Like I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest challenges facing authorities was the terrain itself.
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The Vanisher
An article by the Daily Bulldog reported that the warden service wasn't able to use searchers who weren't associated with professional search and rescue organizations or who weren't formally trained on how to navigate remote landscapes. It was just too dangerous.
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The Vanisher
A lot of tips and leads came to investigators during that time, but a lot of them turned out to be kind of shaky leads or just outright bogus. For example, some rumors were that Jerry might have been attacked by a bear or accidentally fallen into the nearby river, which of course were not scenarios that authorities could easily prove in their investigation.
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The Vanisher
Other folks reported seeing a suspicious looking group of men on the trail that they were worried might have done something to Jerry. But again, that information was not something investigators could prove or disprove so early on in the investigation.
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The Vanisher
There was even a psychic who'd spoken with authorities claiming that Jerry had broken her ankle, as well as another person who reported seeing her like a thousand miles away from Maine. But again, these leads just weren't substantial enough to give investigators the break they needed. George told Tennessean reporter Josh Brown, quote, the uncertainty is the toughest part.
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The Vanisher
Until they find Jerry, there's always the unknown, and that's almost tougher than the known, end quote. Out of all the seemingly wild calls investigators got, though, one tip did stand out as potentially credible. It was a sighting on the AT of a woman who looks a lot like Jerry.
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The Vanisher
Authorities learned from several hikers that an older, quiet woman matching Jerry's description had been spotted hiking alone on the trail near the Spalding Mountain Lean-To shelter on the night of July 22, the same night Jerry was supposed to have stayed there. That woman then left the shelter and kept hiking.
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The Vanisher
So in light of this information, search crews turned their attention to scouring stretches of the trail around that area. But unfortunately, they weren't able to locate Jerry.
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The Vanisher
Then, not long after getting that tip, a woman in her 60s who shared similar features as Jerry contacted the authorities and let them know that she'd been the person who'd been seen at the Spalding Mountain lean-to on July 22. This woman is only referred to in the source material by the name Ivanich, or possibly Evenich.
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The Vanisher
But it became pretty clear that after she came forward and spoke with investigators, she and Jerry had just been caught up in a case of mistaken identity. Speaking with the doppelganger wasn't a total bust for the authorities, though, because investigators did learn that the woman had been at all the places Jerry had been during the days in question.
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The Vanisher
She said that on the morning of Monday, July 22, she'd left the Poplar Ridge shelter after spending the night. She departed about two hours after Jerry left, and when she started her hike to Spalding Mountain Lean-To, she hadn't passed Jerry while on the AT. That information caused investigators to suspect that Jerry might have never made it to Spalding Mountain.
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The Vanisher
Perhaps she'd gotten off the trail after leaving Poplar Ridge Shelter, and whatever befell her happened much sooner than they'd originally thought. Armed with this assumption, they specifically narrowed down their search radius to 4.2 square miles of the AT. However, despite their diligence, they still didn't find Jerry. The problem was investigators just had no idea where to specifically look.
Park Predators
The Vanisher
I mean, they narrowed down their search parameters somewhat to those specific grids. But like I mentioned earlier, it was challenging terrain to traverse, and the sense of urgency to clear every side trail and linear land feature day in and day out was at an all-time high. But certainly not an easy task.
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The Vanisher
In early August, after exhausting numerous avenues and resources, the search was drastically scaled back, and the lead lieutenant for the main warden service expressed to the media that he and Jerry's family had grave concerns at that point about her well-being. Still, no one was giving up hope that she might be found alive.
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The Vanisher
A spokesman for Jerry's family told the media that everyone was extremely grateful for all the work that was being put into trying to find her. He said, "...they have been doing this as though they were looking for their own spouse or their own mother or their own family, their own friend. It's been an unbelievable thing and there's just no way to express how much the family appreciates that."
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The Vanisher
After three weeks of making no progress, though, Jerry's family began to come to terms with the reality of the situation and started planning a memorial service for her. George, the couple's daughter Carrie, their son Ryan, and their grandkids had all resigned themselves to the fact that she might be dead, simply because of how much time had passed.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to share with you today is a true labyrinth of a crime story in that it includes two homicide victims and several sexual assault survivors, many of whom have a truly disturbing nexus.
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The Witnesses
After all of this stuff came to light, the Jacksonville Progress reported that at least three more officers from the city's police department were being federally investigated related to an incident that occurred in 2004. I don't know, though, if that's the same incident that that couple who sued Larry over the high school homecoming situation filed complaints about or not.
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The Witnesses
But regardless, when the FBI launched this probe into the other officers, none of the three were still working at JPD. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information about what the results of those investigations were into those other cops. But to keep moving, like I said earlier, Larry's trial for civil rights violations and lying to the FBI was supposed to get underway on July 10th, 2006.
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The Witnesses
But that date ended up getting delayed to November because he got an additional defense attorney and his legal team said they needed more time to prepare. So that meant for the time being, Larry was allowed to remain out on bond, but he did not behave.
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The Witnesses
According to court documents and reporting by the Tyler Morning Telegraph, in early August, Larry was arrested by Jacksonville Police Department for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and obstruction of justice. He was also charged federally with violating the conditions of his release.
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The Witnesses
The charges and arrest stemmed from him attacking, wait for it, one of the female witnesses who was scheduled to testify against him at his upcoming trial. Court records and news coverage detail that in the early morning hours of August 9th, 2006, Larry followed this witness who was walking by herself in Jacksonville and offered her a ride in his van.
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The Witnesses
When she got close enough and recognized him, she tried to get away, but he jumped out of the vehicle, grabbed her from behind, placed a belt around her neck, and dragged her back in the direction of his van.
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The Witnesses
On the way, though, as the victim was, I imagine, struggling for her life, the belt that was wrapped around her neck broke, and she was able to get away and run to a friend's house nearby and call the Jacksonville Police Department. Larry then sped off in his van.
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The Witnesses
As a result of his actions, the FBI put what's known as a federal detainer on Larry, which prevented him from being released from jail again, even if he was granted bond. If he was convicted of the aggravated assault charge, he faced two to 20 years behind bars. And if he was found guilty of the obstruction charge, he had the potential to go to prison for two to 10 more years.
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The Witnesses
So the good news being, he would get significantly more time than he could ever get if he was eventually convicted of the Class A misdemeanors at a sexual assault trial. On top of the criminal charges piling up, the victim Larry attacked with the bell also sued him, his former boss, Mark Johnson, and the city of Jacksonville in civil court.
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The Witnesses
The attorney who represented her was a guy named Curtis Stuckey, who coincidentally had also represented Larry L and that other couple who'd sued Larry for excessive force. Unfortunately, Curtis passed away in 2021, so I wasn't able to interview him for this episode. But I wish I could have, because everything I've read about him paints him as an amazing civil rights attorney.
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The Witnesses
But back to Larry for a bit. In mid-September 2006, a federal grand jury issued a third superseding indictment against him in the sexual assault case. This document slightly modified the charges the government intended to try him for. The indictment stated that between January and October 2005, he had sexually assaulted three women who were only identified by their initials.
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The Witnesses
One of them was the woman he tried to abduct with the belt. The superseding indictment still included that charge for lying to the FBI, but it also featured a new charge for attempting to tamper with a witness.
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The Witnesses
On September 28th, 2006, just a few weeks after that third indictment was issued, Larry and his defense team decided to take a plea deal for two counts of deprivation of rights under the color of law and one count of retaliating against a witness. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop one of the civil rights counts against him and that making a false statement to the FBI charge.
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The Witnesses
He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in federal prison and ordered to pay a fine. His family wasn't happy with that outcome, though. His mother told KLTV, "...how can anyone take the word of people on drugs, people on alcohol, and people living on the street? They take the word of street people over the word of a 10-year veteran police officer."
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The Witnesses
Larry's sister, Linda, told the same news outlet that the only reason Larry pleaded guilty to the crimes was so that he could get out of prison in time to have a life with his kids. not because he was remorseful or actually believed he was responsible for the crimes. The closure of the federal case against him, though, wasn't the end of Larry's legal troubles.
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The Witnesses
Cherokee County still had a criminal case against him for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for attacking that one female witness with the belt. But you're probably wondering at this point in the episode, what does all of this with Larry have to do with Terry and Shante's cases?
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The Witnesses
On Sunday, July 2nd, 2006, a woman named Margaret Anderson was talking on the phone with her 25-year-old granddaughter, Shante Coleman. The two were discussing the fact that the next day, July 3rd, was Shante's deceased mother's birthday, and she expressed to her grandmother that she wanted to go visit her mom's grave to leave some flowers and asked if Margaret would join her.
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The Witnesses
Well, according to KLTV, Terry was one of the original women scheduled to testify against Larry at his federal trial, and Shantae was believed to run in the same circles as many of his known victims. I know, I probably just gave some of you whiplash, so let me back up for just a second so nobody is lost.
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The Witnesses
When the original indictment against Larry first came down in February 2006, one of the victims he was accused of sexually assaulting was listed under the initials T.R. But when the second superseding indictment was filed a few months later, the portion of the indictment that had referred to the victim with the initials T.R. was gone.
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The Witnesses
It had been completely removed from the government's case against Larry. And that's because T.R. was Terry Reyes. Yes, our missing Terry Reyes, who disappeared in late May 2006, which just so happened to be the exact window of time that Larry Pugh was out on bond awaiting trial.
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The Witnesses
As a reminder, he was issued a bond right after his arrest in February 2006, but his trial wasn't scheduled to start until July. which meant he was out and about for several months just living his life. And who knows, maybe it's just a coincidence that Terry vanished during that exact same timeframe. But then again, maybe it's not.
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The Witnesses
Especially considering the fact that we know for sure Larry had retaliated against another one of his victims when he tried to abduct her seemingly right before she could take the stand against him. Now, turning your attention to Shante's case for a second, her grandmother said she'd last spoken with her on July 2nd, 2006, which was also during the window of time that Larry was out on bond.
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The Witnesses
So the natural question for both women's loved ones and maybe even law enforcement was, what were the odds that they would both vanish within months of one another, so close to one another, while Larry was waiting to go to trial? Could he have been involved in what happened to them?
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The Witnesses
Margaret Anderson Chante's grandmother told Jacksonville Progress reporter April Barb that she strongly suspected that was the case. She said, quote, word was put out in Jacksonville that if anybody testified on Larry Pugh, they'd be dead. Those girls on the streets, she was involved with them. One girl he tried to apprehend by putting a belt around her neck.
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The Witnesses
I don't know if she knows that girl, end quote. Margaret went on to clarify that in her opinion, it was very likely Shante could have known Larry or possibly come across him before she vanished. The assistant chief of police for Jacksonville PD at that time, a man named John Page, publicly dispelled that suggestion, though.
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The Witnesses
He said in that same article that Shante wasn't involved in Larry's federal case, which I assume meant she wasn't on the list of witnesses who were set to testify against him or had even been interviewed about him. Still, Margaret had her suspicions. In her interview with the newspaper, she expressed that she believed Shante was dead.
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The Witnesses
By January 2007, she'd been missing for more than six months, and Margaret told the Jacksonville Progress that in all that time, she hadn't heard a word from law enforcement. No one in Shante's family, including her two young sons, had heard from her either, including during the days and weeks around the holidays of 2006, which I'm sure felt like a bad sign to Shante's loved ones.
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The Witnesses
You see, Shante was a mother of two toddler-aged boys, and she'd been living a bit of a complicated life as of late.
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The Witnesses
Around this same time, Terry Reyes' family was also grappling with a lot of unanswered questions about her disappearance and wondered if perhaps Larry Pugh could potentially be involved in her case. Brenda Graham, Terry's mom, told reporter April Barb that they hoped someone would help them find some answers.
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The Witnesses
Like I mentioned earlier, when Terry vanished, she was scheduled to testify as a witness against Larry at his impending trial. Some reports even state that Terry had been to Larry's house on at least one occasion prior to his arrest, which both feel like legit reasons to at least look at him as a potential suspect.
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The Witnesses
But the newest Jacksonville police chief in January 2007, a man named Reese Daniel, told the media that as far as his department or the Athens Police Department was concerned, neither agency had found evidence definitively connecting Larry to Terry or Shante's missing person cases.
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The Witnesses
He told the Jacksonville Progress, quote, I know there is intense speculation about their whereabouts due to their affiliation with Larry Pugh, but we have absolutely nothing at this time to indicate he had anything to do with their disappearance. However, that connection certainly adds a note of urgency to the need for us to locate both women, end quote.
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The Witnesses
According to an article by April Barb for the Jacksonville Progress, Shante had struggled with drug use, and actually one of the last times that Margaret physically saw her, which was just a few months earlier in late May 2006, was at Shante's mother's funeral, and some of her family members didn't even recognize her. Her life in her mid-20s was a far cry from who she'd been in high school.
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The Witnesses
He asked that people refrain from spreading rumors about either woman's case because it could make other folks with potentially important information wary of coming forward. So for the time being, Shante remained listed as a missing person. And Terry, well, there's something I haven't told you yet. Something that the police in early 2007 didn't even know.
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The Witnesses
And that's that Terry Reyes had been found. On September 2nd, 2006, some hunters walking in a section of Angelina National Forest located near the city of Broadus, Texas, which is about an hour and a half southeast of Jacksonville and two hours southeast of Athens, discovered what looked like a human skull.
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The Witnesses
The group alerted the San Augustine County Sheriff's Office about what they'd found, and within a short amount of time, local law enforcement arrived on scene. With help from a Texas ranger, local investigators recovered more skeletal remains, which included a torso.
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The Witnesses
The remains were in such a deteriorated state, though, that there was no way for the sheriff's office to determine who the victim was, their age, ethnicity, or gender. There was also no clothing or personal belongings in the area that could give them an idea of who the deceased individual was.
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The Witnesses
Right away, investigators suspected that foul play might be involved, so they sent off the skull and other bones to the Texas Department of Public Safety to be analyzed. Staff with that agency used a clay reconstruction on the skull to create a likeness of the person it belonged to.
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The Witnesses
There's going to be a little bit of jumping around in the timeline in this episode, but hang in there because I promise it's not too hard to follow once you dive in and really start to piece the big picture together. It takes place in Angelina National Forest in East Texas, a roughly 153,000-acre space that's known for its rolling landscape and abundance of native pine trees.
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The Witnesses
That assessment of the remains indicated that the victim was most likely a woman between the ages of 25 and 35 at the time of her death and was anywhere from 5'5 to 6' tall. An examination of her remains also revealed that she died at least six months to possibly two years before she was found. Those parameters, though, were obviously ballpark figures because DPS staff didn't know for sure.
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The Witnesses
All they had to go off of was measuring the level of decay with her remains, and we're talking about being in the woods in East Texas during at least the summer months, so yeah, they were probably in rough shape.
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The Witnesses
Fast forward to June 2007, though, and thanks to additional investigative work, the previously unknown Jane Doe from the National Forest was officially identified as missing mother of three, Terry Reyes.
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The Witnesses
Lindsay Wilcox reported for KLTV7 that at that point, it had been widely reported that had Terry not vanished in May 2006, she would have testified against Larry Pugh and been a strong witness for the federal government.
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The Witnesses
Curtis Duckey, that civil rights attorney I mentioned earlier who'd represented several clients who sued Larry in civil court, told KLTV that he would have definitely called Terry as a witness in the civil cases if she hadn't gone missing before he got the opportunity to.
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The Witnesses
Once her missing persons case was officially closed and relabeled as a suspected homicide, law enforcement faced a new challenge. They had their victim ID'd and possibly knew how she was killed, though that detail has never been released to the public that I could find. But they still didn't have physical evidence connecting her death to the who. In other words, a suspect.
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The Witnesses
Meanwhile, at least seven women had filed a civil lawsuit against Larry Pugh, his former boss, Police Chief Mark Johnson, in the city of Jacksonville. They sought punitive damages for Larry sexually assaulting them, in some cases numerous times, in locations all across Cherokee County while he was performing his duties as a police officer.
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The Witnesses
Now, based on what I read in the source material, it looks like some of the women who were plaintiffs in this civil suit were also victims who had their initials listed in the charges filed against Larry in 2006. However, several of the women named in the filings were new names.
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The Witnesses
According to her obituary, she was the daughter of a reverend and had been in clubs like Delta Debutante, Top Teens of America, and sang in a youth choir. She graduated high school and was active in a local Baptist church too, but somewhere along the way, her friends and family said she just got mixed up with the wrong crowd.
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The Witnesses
So in total, between the federal criminal case and the federal civil lawsuits, eight different women had come forward claiming that Larry sexually assaulted them when he worked for Jacksonville PD. By spring 2007, though, the city itself and former Chief Johnson had been dropped from the suit.
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The Witnesses
And by August of 2008, seven of the eight plaintiffs had all agreed to settle out of court and drop their cases. According to court documents, the one lone plaintiff who sought a jury trial was that one witness who'd nearly been abducted with the belt and dragged into Larry's van. She was eventually awarded $300,000 with interest in damages.
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The Witnesses
An investigator for the Cherokee County District Attorney's Office testified in court for that case that it was clear after conducting between 25 and 30 interviews with witnesses that Larry had an established MO of preying on women who were living transient lifestyles or had a substance use disorder.
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The Witnesses
Many of them had pending charges or were on probation, which essentially made them vulnerable targets for a cop who was using his position of authority to sexually assault them.
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The Witnesses
Interestingly, Larry got into even more legal trouble during that civil case because he testified at a hearing that he denied being guilty of the federal crimes he'd already pled guilty to and said the only reason he'd accepted the plea bargain for assaulting that woman and another victim was because he thought it was what he should do for his family, which turns out is not something you can say when you agree to take full responsibility for a federal crime.
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The Witnesses
So what did prosecutors do? They charged him with another crime, making a false declaration before a federal court. Basically, the U.S. Attorney's Office was like, no, Larry, you can't backpedal on your federal guilty plea. That's not how this works. And so for that offense, he was eventually sentenced to an additional 18 months in prison on top of the 12 years he was already serving.
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The Witnesses
According to Kelly Young's reporting for the Jacksonville Progress, in August of 2007, he seemingly settled his legal battles in state court by taking another plea deal for the criminal case that was still pending against him in Cherokee County. That was the one for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and sexually assaulting an inmate while they were in custody.
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The Witnesses
His sentence for those crimes was also 12 years in state prison, but he'd served that sentence concurrently with his federal prison sentence, which meant he would eventually get out. While he was safely behind bars for the time being, though, Terry Reyes' suspected homicide case remained unsolved. But Shante's missing persons case got an update. However, not the kind anyone hoped for.
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The Witnesses
According to an article by Paul Bryant for the Daily Sentinel and reporting by KLTV, in March of 2014, a forestry worker surveying some private land that a timber company operated near Angelina National Forest stumbled across a human skull.
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The Witnesses
Still, the young mother had at least kept a line of communication open with relatives like Margaret. After chatting on the phone for a bit, the pair seemingly ended their conversation like normal. Which is why about a month later, on Friday, August 4th, Shantae's 26th birthday, Margaret fully expected to hear from her granddaughter again. But strangely, she didn't call.
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The Witnesses
The San Augustine County Sheriff's Office, FBI, and Texas Rangers investigated the discovery and quickly sent the bones to a forensic anthropologist at Sam Houston State University. From there, the remains were eventually shipped off to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification for DNA extraction.
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The Witnesses
When staff there developed a usable profile, they compared it to known profiles already in the combined DNA index system known as CODIS. On June 19th, 2014, three months after the remains were discovered, the sheriff's office learned that the skull belonged to Chante Coleman. The only problem was law enforcement couldn't determine how she died.
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The Witnesses
Quick side note, I couldn't find information about whether Shante was already in CODIS from a previous offense or criminal record she might have had, but if it was a direct one-to-one match, then I think that has to mean she was in the database or at least one of her deceased parents or possibly children's DNA had been uploaded.
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The Witnesses
Anyway, according to the Tyler Morning Telegraph, at the time of her disappearance, she'd been living in an ad hoc shelter for women in Jacksonville that was run by a man named Alvin Boykin. Alvin told the newspaper that the last time he saw Shante, she was walking away from his house and told him she would be leaving for a while.
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The Witnesses
Because she was one of many women who came and went from his home, Alvin didn't think much of it. But you know who else was a frequent guest at his place, who also mysteriously vanished in the spring of 2006? Terry Reyes. Which means it's likely, maybe even probable, that the women knew one another, and I have my suspicions that they could have discussed Larry Pugh.
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The Witnesses
But because they both disappeared within weeks of one another and wound up dead, dumped in similar terrain, we'll never know how much of a connection they shared or what they may have discussed. In the wake of Shantae finally being found, her older stepsister, Frances Hicks, told KLTV that it was almost a relief to know that she was no longer missing.
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The Witnesses
But at the same time, it was bittersweet to come to terms with the fact that she was dead. One of the last times Frances spoke with Shantae, they talked about how she had plans to get her life together and come visit with her two young sons. But she never got the chance to.
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The Witnesses
Frances told the news outlet that even though she wouldn't describe her relationship with Shante as super tight, that didn't mean she loved her any less. She remarked, quote, She was loved. She wasn't just some nobody that nobody thought of. She was loved. End quote.
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The Witnesses
Her grandmother, Margaret Anderson, told KLTV that she'd given up hope a few months after Shantae vanished that she was still alive, but finally having an answer to where she was all this time was, in itself, an answer to prayer. However, at the end of the day, it's still hurt to know that her beloved granddaughter was really gone.
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The Witnesses
She said, quote, Of course I don't know how she died, what she went through with this death. I don't know that, but I know now she is really gone and there is no coming back. End quote. According to her obituary, Shante's family held a memorial service for her on July 3rd, 2014, almost eight years to the day that Margaret last spoke with her on the phone.
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The Witnesses
A few months later, the chief deputy of the San Agustin Sheriff's Office told the press that his investigators were not ruling out Larry Pugh as a potential suspect in the case. They also reiterated that Terry Reyes' suspected murder was still under investigation in their jurisdiction. And just like with Shantae's case, Larry was on their radar as much as anyone else for those deaths.
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The Witnesses
Shantae also didn't come by Margaret's house to pick up a birthday gift, which to her felt really out of character. But I imagine because of the fact that Shantae was an adult and had a life of her own, Margaret probably thought it was reasonable to just let the weekend pass and hope to hear from her.
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The Witnesses
Unfortunately, though, both women's cases remain unsolved to this day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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The Witnesses
But when Monday, August 7th rolled around and she still hadn't heard from her granddaughter, that's when Margaret decided that something just wasn't right. And she reported Shantae missing to the Jacksonville Police Department in East Texas.
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The Witnesses
Unfortunately, though, it appears from the source material that law enforcement had a hard time pinpointing Shante's movements and location because of the transient lifestyle that she was living at the time.
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The Witnesses
According to that piece I mentioned a minute ago by the Jacksonville Progress, the police weren't sure if she was still in Jacksonville or had moved north to Longview, Texas, or just over the border into Louisiana.
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The Witnesses
When she disappeared, she was described as a black female with a scar on her right arm who was around 140 pounds, five feet, seven inches tall and missing her two front teeth, a fairly unique detail. She would also sometimes go by the nickname Tata. Police asked the public to contact them if anyone saw or heard from her.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
But the case seemingly went nowhere fast and it doesn't appear there was a great sense of urgency to move heaven and earth to find her. Which is kind of wild to me because she wasn't the only woman who'd mysteriously vanished from the Jacksonville area during the last three months of summer 2006.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
In late May, just a few months before Chante was reported missing, another local woman named Terry Reyes disappeared. Terry was a 37-year-old mother of three who, on May 26th, failed to attend her son's high school graduation in the nearby town of Athens, Texas, which is about 45 minutes northwest of Jacksonville.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Not long after missing that important milestone, people in Terry's life reported her missing to the Athens Police Department, which is a different law enforcement agency than the city of Jacksonville PD. But similar to Shante's situation, that department found it difficult to work Terry's missing persons case.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Because at the time of her disappearance, she was said to be using drugs and was living apart from her kids in a situation that some people might consider transient.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Her mother, a woman named Brenda Graham, told the Jacksonville Progress that just because Terry might not have been leading what the article describes as a quote-unquote virtuous life, that didn't mean her case should be viewed as any less important.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
She told the newspaper that it was frustrating because she would often hear phrases about Terry from police like, quote, well, considering her lifestyle, end quote.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
But Brenda knew her daughter was a good mom, and I think the implication there is that in her opinion, Terry would have never just severed communication with her three kids or her because it wasn't like Terry had hit what some folks might consider total rock bottom.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
The nearby Sam Rayburn Reservoir, which was built in the early 1960s, is one of many places you can picnic, fish, hike, and boat. With the proper license, hunters who visit the forest have captured everything from deer to duck to wild turkeys to squirrels.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Apparently, she'd only recently experienced a reoccurrence of substance use disorder, and despite being in the midst of that struggle, she'd made efforts to stay in touch with her family. According to most of the news coverage I read, the last time anyone saw Terry was on May 21, 2006, five days before the graduation ceremony she was expected to attend.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
The description that went out to the public about her was that she was white, weighed 130 to 135 pounds, had brown hair and brown eyes, and stood 5 feet 11 inches tall. She also had a birthmark on her stomach and a scar on her right leg. As weeks and then months passed, though, there seemed to be no updates in her case.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Her mom told the Jacksonville Progress, quote, I got no help from the Athens police, end quote. Based on everything I've read, it appears that both Terry and Shante's cases either stalled quickly or they were not necessarily prioritized to begin with by their respective law enforcement agencies.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
And perhaps one of the reasons for that is there was an equally alarming situation unfolding in the Jacksonville area between 2005 and 2006. A situation that had the entire Jacksonville City Police Department, and one officer in particular, in the crosshairs of the FBI.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
According to Casey Knopp's reporting for the Tyler Morning Telegraph, around September 2005, the city of Jacksonville's police chief, a man named Mark Johnson, began to hear chatter in his department that one of his officers, Larry Pugh, might be doing some questionable things while on duty. So Chief Johnson decided to tell the Cherokee County District Attorney's Office about the matter.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
And at some point shortly thereafter, those two offices decided that it would be in everyone's best interest to let the FBI launch an investigation into Larry's suspected bad behavior, which reportedly involved allegations of sexual misconduct. On October 21st, 2005, while the feds did their thing, Larry was suspended from Jacksonville PD with pay.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
A few days later, federal agents interviewed him about his alleged misconduct. I don't have the full transcript of that interview or know if that was the only time the FBI talked to him, but according to additional reporting by Casey Knopp, something Larry said during that chat with the feds was that he'd, quote, never had sex with anyone while on duty, end quote.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
A few months later, by February 7th, 2006, the FBI completed its probe. And the next day, February 8th, they ended up arresting and charging 33-year-old Larry with five counts of deprivation of rights under the color of law. What exactly does that mean, you ask?
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Over many decades, archaeologists have discovered evidence that humans have been coming and going from the forest for some 8,000 years, leaving traces of their activity behind. In the summer of 2006, that tradition continued, but in a most alarming way. Someone entered Angelina's boundary and left two particularly disturbing things behind. Bodies.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Well, in general, it means that the feds found evidence that between January 1st, 2005 and October 21st, 2005, Larry had used the power given to him by a governmental agency to commit a crime. And in this case, it was the alleged sexual assault of at least five women while on duty as a police officer.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Those offenses, by the way, were only considered Class A misdemeanors because the government did not allege that there was evidence of bodily harm. I know, that surprised me too, but that's just the way the law is written.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Anyway, the Jacksonville Progress reported that typically when the FBI conducts a color of law investigation, they're looking into whether someone with a position of authority did something like make a false arrest, fabricate evidence, fail to keep someone from harm, sexually assault someone, or use excessive force.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
According to the FBI's website, in a color of law case where sexual assault is alleged, agents usually discover that the accused used their position of authority to coerce another individual into sexual compliance. Basically, the victim is told that some official action will be taken against them if they don't agree to their assailant's demands.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
In Larry's case, one woman had stated that he'd pulled over to help her after she'd had some car trouble. He offered her a ride in his cruiser, but when she got in, he didn't take her home. Instead, he drove her to an abandoned trailer and sexually assaulted her. Another survivor claimed he'd come into a house she'd been in and told her she was under arrest.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
When Larry placed her in his patrol car, they didn't go to jail. Instead, he drove her to a cemetery and sexually assaulted her. Now, as soon as Larry's arrest paperwork went through and these allegations were public knowledge, the city of Jacksonville terminated him as an employee and stopped giving him pay.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
At his arraignment hearing the same day as his arrest, Larry entered a plea of not guilty and was later released on an unsecured $5,000 bond.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
He was given a court-appointed defense attorney, and according to April Barb's reporting for the Jacksonville Progress, if convicted, he faced up to one year in jail for each of the five deprivation of rights counts, as well as no more than a $100,000 fine for each count. The federal judge presiding over his case scheduled his trial date for July 10, 2006.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Larry, who was a husband and father of four kids no older than four, wasn't alone in his alleged bad behavior. He reportedly was one of several officers on the city's police force at the time who were alleged to have acted inappropriately while donning a uniform.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
According to an article by April Barb for the Jacksonville Progress, the department had undergone a review in August of 2005, where an outside expert determined that more and better leadership needed to be in place. For example, there had been alleged instances where certain officers who could have been fired under other circumstances were instead allowed to resign.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Evidence was also found that at least one officer had been involved with someone connected to what the article calls the drug community, and there were instances where that officer had asked another officer to cut his acquaintance a break when it came to criminal charges. Due to these problems, the police chief, Mark Johnson, was suspended with pay pending a review of the department.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
The city manager and the mayor both voiced concerns about his leadership, and even though they didn't outright bring up Larry's arrest, I have to imagine it was on their minds considering how much press the story was attracting.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Anyway, on April 4th, 2006, almost two months after his arrest, Larry's case took another interesting turn when a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment against him that differed slightly from the first one. After a hearing on this matter, grand jurors decided to only indict him for deprivation of rights under the color of law for three of the women, not the original five.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
This amended indictment also had an additional charge for making a false statement to the FBI. Turns out, the feds had determined that when Larry previously told them he'd never had sex with anyone while on duty, that was a lie. If he was found guilty of that additional count, he faced a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
But even after this new indictment came down, Larry was still allowed to stay out on bond pending his trial. It's clear from everything that was published about him up until that point that the allegations against him for sexual assault weren't his only misdeeds. He'd also been accused of other misconduct like assault, use of excessive force, and unlawful arrest.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
For example, in early April 2006, right before that second indictment was issued, a man from Cherokee County, Texas, who also happened to be named Larry, sued Larry Pugh for unlawful arrest and excessive use of force, stemming from an incident that had taken place back in early October 2005.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
According to court documents filed in that lawsuit, the plaintiff, who I'll refer to as Larry L., claimed that while Larry Pugh was employed as a Jacksonville police officer, he'd essentially chased him down in his car and attacked him.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Court filings explain that around 10 o'clock on the night of October 2nd, 2005, Larry L. said he was on his way to visit a friend in Jacksonville when Larry Pugh pulled up behind him at a high rate of speed. From what I gathered reading the court records, it doesn't seem like this situation was at all a legit traffic stop with lights and sirens.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
It appears it was more of a random road rage incident. But long story short, eventually the two Larrys got into it, and that's when Larry L said that Larry Pugh got out of his car, started screaming at him, sprayed him in the face with mace, and struck him repeatedly with a baton.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
By the time the dust settled, Larry L had been issued three traffic tickets and led away in handcuffs for resisting arrest. He got out of the detention center the next day, and a few months later in December 2005, all of the traffic citations and charges against him were dropped because the court couldn't corroborate Larry Pugh's version of the incident.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
Larry L. claimed in his lawsuit that he suffered multiple injuries and even temporary blindness as a result of the assault. His civil suit against Larry Pugh, though, was later settled out of court. But if that wasn't concerning enough, there was yet another documented incident of Larry crossing the line while employed as a law enforcement officer.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
A couple sued Larry and the police department, citing excessive use of force after they alleged he'd attacked them while on duty at a high school homecoming event in Jacksonville. According to an article by Casey Knopp for the Tyler Morning Telegraph, a man who'd attended that event said that city police officers had unlawfully detained his wife under suspicion of disorderly conduct.
Park Predators
The Witnesses
And when he asked officers what was happening, he was immediately attacked. Larry Pugh maced him and beat him to the point where he lost two teeth and cracked a third tooth. That man and his wife were eventually cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, and their civil suit against Larry and the police department was eventually settled out of court.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 4: The Bait
Hi everyone, I'm investigative journalist and park enthusiast Delia D'Ambra, and every week on my podcast, Park Predators, I take you into the heart of our world's most stunning locations to uncover what sinister crimes have unfolded in these serene settings.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 4: The Bait
From unsolved murders to chilling disappearances, each Tuesday we dive deep into the details of cases that will leave you knowing sometimes the most beautiful places hide the darkest secrets. Listen to Park Predators now wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
As they pulled towards the end of the one-block street, they spotted something eerie that honestly sounds like a scene from a horror movie. Four people standing at the edge of a cul-de-sac, all pointing in the same direction, at the body of a young woman lying motionless on the asphalt.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
But despite this, there's absolutely no way for us to know if either one of these guys, the relative who claimed he overheard someone admitting to the murder or the guy Danny met in prison, actually know anything about it. But Danny and Debra's daughter, Janetta, believes there could be something there.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Her dad doesn't remember the name of the guy he talked to in prison, and he doesn't know the name of the kid who was the alleged trigger man, who also got murdered. But he does have at least partial names for the people who supposedly set it up.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Jennifer also thinks the story the guy in prison told Danny is plausible based on what Danny has told her about Debra and her drug dealings over the years.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
It certainly wouldn't be the first time a drug deal gone bad turned into a murder, but there's really no way to verify any of this since we don't know who Milton or Polo are. So put all that information firmly in the rumor category.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Fuller hadn't heard those names either, so after our team spoke with Jennifer, Janetta, and the rest of the family, we made sure to put them back in touch with the Richland County Sheriff's Department so investigators could follow up on any new leads. And there is still hope for new leads.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
In 2022, Fuller was reviewing cold cases and realized there was evidence in Deborah's case that could be retested for familial DNA links to a suspect. He sent the male blood found at the scene for additional analysis, hoping new technology would provide a break.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Fuller said that DNA testing conducted on the men's underwear in 2010 was a bust, but the underwear wasn't submitted for new testing in 2022, along with the bloodstain from the pants. And Fuller said he's now checking to see if it can be retested to determine who was wearing it, Deborah or a suspect.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Janetta and her family are hoping that new forensic technology will provide a break in the case, or that new witnesses will come forward with information that leads to Deborah's killer. Janetta grew up living with her paternal great-grandmother and is now 36 and a mother herself. She's broken the cycle of poverty and addiction that had such a devastating impact on her mother's short life.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Her aunt Jennifer and grandmother Maddie are proud and think Debra would be too. But this one, oh yeah.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Janetta believes her mother wanted to do better by her children and might have had she had the chance.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Jennifer also believes that Deborah's spirit is restless and wants the case solved. She even believes Deborah played a role in our decision to cover the case for this podcast.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
That's Richland County Sheriff's Department cold case investigator Jeff Fuller. He said when the officers took a closer look, they saw the woman had an apparent gunshot wound to the head, a likely source for all that blood pooled under it. And there was so much blood. He said there was no doubt she'd been shot right there where she lay now.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
If you have information about the 1994 murder of Deborah Perry, please contact Crime Stoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC. The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode and another special surprise. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
The young woman was wearing a white crew neck sweatshirt with a black bra underneath, but she was nude from the waist down, except for the socks on her feet and a pair of blue and green flower printed pants clutched against her chest and draped over her torso.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
There was no size marked on the tag of the pants, but when police carefully removed them from her grasp, they found a pair of men's briefs, size 32-34 waist, that were inside. As far as what else they gathered from around the scene, it was kind of a mixed bag. Some items felt significant, but they also had to wade through a lot of trash that was scattered around the general area.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
For some context, the cul-de-sac itself was surrounded only by weeds and woods, and the area seemed to be a popular spot for the things people do in the dark.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Officers gathered more than a dozen items from the general vicinity, including beer cans, some discarded clothing, and a towel found along the edge of the woods. They didn't know if any of that would relate to their victim, but better safe than sorry. There were some other items closer to where she was found, though, that felt more promising.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Officers collected two nine millimeter shell casings, one from under her head and one by her feet. They also collected a condom and a condom wrapper and a pair of white high top sneakers that had been placed on the soles side by side near her feet. Officers also photographed some tire skid marks on the pavement at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, more than 50 feet from where she lay.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Well, this week, Ashley is passing the mic over to me to tell you about a cold case from the Carolinas that needs your attention. For 30 years, the unsolved murder of a young mother found shot to death on an isolated South Carolina cul-de-sac has haunted her family. They feared they'd carry the mystery of Deborah's death to their own graves.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
The only other physical evidence they got would come from her autopsy. According to that report, she appeared to have been pretty healthy before her death. The coroner found she'd actually been shot twice in the head. The first bullet entered her left cheek and exited just above her right ear. And the second entered the right side of her head near the top of her skull.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
That one was found lodged around her left cheekbone. The location and upward angle of the first gunshot wound told investigators she was likely in a car and possibly trying to get out when she was shot.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Now, a sexual assault exam didn't provide any forensic evidence, and her nails were too short to be tested. But after running her fingerprints, they finally got a name, Deborah Perry. She was 29 years old and had gotten into some legal trouble for forged checks a couple of years prior. That's why they had her prints.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Along with her name, they got an address where she'd last been living, seven miles from Chartel Circle. A few residents in the area reportedly saw her leaving home the night before, Saturday, October 22nd. She told at least one of them she was going to make a phone call, and this is 1994, so she was probably heading to use a payphone at a nearby corner store.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
But who she called, where she called from, how she got from there to Chartel Circle, and why she was there at all is a mystery. It's not an easy walk from that apartment to the cul-de-sac, and it isn't somewhere you just happen to come across, which would indicate she got there by car.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Fuller told us investigators learned she might have known people in the Chartel Circle area and been involved in sex work. And a toxicology report came back positive for cocaine in her system, so maybe she was there to purchase from someone or to meet a client and things got out of hand.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
There were too many questions and not enough answers, but investigators hoped her family might be able to give them more. Soon after Deborah was identified, Richland County investigators learned she had seven children, all of whom were in foster care, having been removed from her care sometime after her arrest for the forgery charge.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Our card this week is Deborah Perry, the King of Spades from South Carolina. Now, many of you may recognize my voice from other audio chuck shows like Counter Clock, season seven literally just kicked off last month, or Park Predators, our summer show, which is now a weekly show. I know last week you heard from Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
The father of her children, a guy named Danny Davis, was in prison on an accessory to robbery charge. So they contacted Danny's sister, Jennifer Davis, who would end up helping raise Debra's children along with her mom and her grandmother. Jennifer actually went down to the morgue to identify Debra.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Debra's hair was cut very short, and that wasn't the only physical change since Jennifer had last seen her several years earlier.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
That is, until our investigation raised new questions and sparked fresh hope. I'm Delia D'Ambra, and this is The Deck. At 11.20 a.m. on Sunday, October 23rd, 1994, two officers from the Richland County Sheriff's Department responded to a call about a possible homicide on quiet rural Chartel Circle.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
That was Jennifer. And after speaking with her and the family, investigators learned Deborah's struggles began early. She'd grown up in New York City, close to Jennifer and Danny's family. Jennifer told us she'd actually visited the Perry family apartment in the late 1970s or early 80s.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
By the time she was 10 or 11, Debra had fallen into the same habits as the rest of her family. And when she and Danny started dating when they were both young teens, he fell into those habits too.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
By 1984, Danny and Debra had three kids and were bouncing from shelter to shelter in New York. So Jennifer's mom sent them money to help them relocate to South Carolina, where she and Jennifer were living at the time. The family was hoping a new start would mean a fresh start for Danny and Debra, but it wasn't. The substance abuse continued.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Both had run-ins with the law, and Deborah had four more children before her life was cut short. She had visits with the children, Jennifer said, but no one in the family knew much about the details of her life in the final few years.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
With little information from family, investigators also struggled to find solid leads, and the few solid leads they did have, Detective Fuller couldn't tell us much about. For instance, according to the case file, on November 10th, they brought in a man for a polygraph.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
He'd been arrested by the Richland County Sheriff's Office in 1990, but the file doesn't say what the charge was, and Fuller didn't know either. We do know the results of that polygraph test showed deceptive intent. If investigators dug more into this guy, I can't say.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
There's nothing in the file about an alibi, and the absence of any other information about him from that point on makes it seem like investigators thought he was a dead end. They ended up determining that the two 9mm bullets used in the murder came from the same gun, a Luger. We know they tested them against two weapons that Detective Fuller says were used in another crime.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
It was just standard procedure to run the comparison, I guess. So they weren't necessarily surprised when neither was a match. And those shoes found near Deborah's body were assumed to be hers, but there's no record of any forensic testing on them. Forensic testing on the condom, the beer cans, and the other items they found towards the edge of the woods also led nowhere.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
And the flowered pants, those were still a big question mark. Based on our research, it seems pretty likely these pants, which didn't have a fly, are women's, but that doesn't fully explain the men's underwear inside of them. Sure, they could have been hers, but it was never determined. And investigators didn't do any initial testing on a spot of blood on the pants.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
In fact, they either didn't notice it or assumed all the blood came from Debra. Which I know feels a little infuriating, but this was the early 90s. The use of DNA testing in cases was a precious resource, not always utilized for pick your favorite reason. So it's not all that surprising that Deborah's case went cold.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Her kids grew up without their mom and believed they'd never get answers about what happened to her. But in 2009, they saw on the news that her case had been reopened and the Richland County Sheriff's Department was asking for tips.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
According to that story on News 19 in Columbia, police had spoken with a witness who claimed to have seen a man with a medium build walking on Chartel Circle the night of Deborah's murder. And get this, the witness said the man was wearing flowered pants. Deborah's daughter, Janetta Holmes, told us that detail made her stop in her tracks.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Not because she knew her mom had been found with flowered pants. In fact, she'd never heard that detail. It was because she knew a man who'd regularly worn flowered pants back when her mom was killed. It was someone her mom had been romantically involved with.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
We'll call this man Gerald, and Janetta's aunt Jennifer said he operated a club where Debra worked for a time when she and Danny were broken up and Danny was in prison. Gerald was married when he and Debra got involved, but he had a temper and may not have liked that Debra was also involved with other men. Jennifer believes that jealousy could have been a motive for the murder.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
It felt like a solid theory, and Janetta says a family member did go to police with it, but they never heard if investigators did anything with the tip. Well, we found out that they had done something. You see, by 2009, when they got this tip from family, they'd already had new forensic testing done on the crime scene evidence.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
They'd learned that spot of blood on the pants had actually come from a man, and they even had a partial DNA profile. So once they got the tip about Gerald, they went and got a DNA sample from him. But it was not a match.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Fuller didn't know if investigators had asked Gerald if the pants and underwear found with Deborah belonged to him, so we tried to reach Gerald for ourselves to see if Deborah could have borrowed his clothes on a previous visit. But as of this recording, we haven't been able to make contact with him.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
As for the witness who claimed to have seen a man walking in flowered pants on Chartel Circle the night of the crime, it's possible that person actually saw Debra. At 5 feet 2 inches and 130 pounds, she was definitely smaller than a man with a medium build, but since her hair was cut in a pixie cut, it's possible that the witness just mistook her for a guy from afar.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
The man in the flowered pants might be a dead end, but it wasn't the family's only theory. And some of the other theories they had, they'd never shared with police. But they did share them with us. Not long after Jennifer identified Deborah in the morgue and noticed her short hair, she'd heard a disturbing story that Deborah had been attacked by a group of girls who cut off her hair.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
But if Deborah had been involved in some ongoing feud, there was no record of it in the case file, and Jennifer didn't know the names of the alleged attackers. Jennifer also told us that soon after Deborah was murdered, a relative overheard a man discussing the crime and claiming he was present when it happened. But the relative was too scared to tell her who it was for fear that they'd be killed.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
And she said Danny had an encounter while he was locked up with someone who knew about Deborah's murder.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Danny's out of prison now and living in Burlington, Vermont, so our reporter Madison gave him a call, and he agreed to talk. He said that back around 1997, he was working in the woodshop in a prison in Greenville, South Carolina. A guy in the shop overheard Danny saying that the mother of his children had been murdered near Columbia. Here's Danny recalling hearing this.
The Deck
Deborah Perry (King of Spades, South Carolina)
Danny said when he showed the guy a picture of Debra, the guy said, I know her. He told Danny he'd been in a relationship with Debra while Danny was locked up and that they'd gone to New York together, and he thought Debra might have been running drugs.