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 Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
Park Predators
The Boat
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.
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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
The Afterlife (Part 1)
And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Afterlife (Part 1)
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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
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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?
Park Predators
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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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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.
Park Predators
The Accomplices
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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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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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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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 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 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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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The Trio
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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The Trio
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.
Park Predators
The Trio
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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The Trio
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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The Trio
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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The Trio
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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The Trio
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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The Trio
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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The Trio
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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The Trio
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.
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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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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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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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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 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 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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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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.