Kaelyn Moore
Appearances
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So the attempted homicide of Officer McGowan did mark the end of the Visalia Ransacker, but that's only because he was about to move on to something else. In June of 1976, things in Visalia, California had been quiet for around six months with no sign of the Visalia ransacker. But 200 miles north, a new reign of terror was about to begin. At 4 a.m.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
on June 18th, 1976, a woman in Rancho Cordova ended up becoming the first victim of a criminal who would go on to be known as the East Area Rapist, or EAR. As these attacks continued, there was a clear modus operandi or MO that began to form. The attacks always occurred at night when victims were typically sleeping. He would come in and he would blindfold and gag the victims.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
He would enter a victim's bedroom, stand in the doorway with a gun, sometimes his pants were off, and he would shine a flashlight into the victim's eyes, which woke them up but also blinded them so they couldn't really see him. He would usually tie the victims up on their stomachs with their ankles and wrists bound behind their back.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And sometimes he bound his victims with shoelaces or other bindings that he would find in victims' closets.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yes, definitely. Just like the ransacker, EAR would enter through open windows, sliding glass doors, or he would pick a lock on a back entrance, like a backyard or a garage gate, and he would slide in that way. He also often ransacked the victims' homes, but it was in a different way from the Visalia ransacker because EAR was sexually assaulting these victims.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So he would tie them up, he would ransack the house, the victims would wait, bound and helpless, while EAR made loud noises in other parts of the house and then he would return. But he sometimes would spend a long time in the house and would make himself at home there. He would rattle pots and pans like he was cooking, he would eat the victims' food, he would drink their beer, and of course...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Now we know that that sounds just like the Visalia Ransacker.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. So at first, most of the rape victims were women who were at home alone. But he did also attack women who were home with their children. But following a March 20th, 1977 article which said, quote, he has never attacked while there was a man in the home, although occasionally there have been children. After that, EAR began attacking couples.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
It was like he was reading the news or watching the news reports and anything they told him he couldn't do, he was like, watch this. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So he would go into these houses where there were couples and he would have the woman tie up her male partner first. Then EAR would tie up the woman and he would rape her. Sometimes he would do this thing where he would balance teacups or plates on the male partner's back. So even if the male partner moved just slightly while the woman was being assaulted, EAR would know.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
He would hear it, which is what the ransacker was doing, balancing like cups and plates in front of the door.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. And so we know that he told this victim that he would kill someone if there was any press coverage of the attack. But then he ends up later telling her husband that he would kill if there wasn't any press coverage. And this was also kind of his M.O. like E.A.R. would often tell very contradictory and confusing things to the victim. So they didn't really know what to do after he left.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But in any case, officers did decide to publish this sketch.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
If I tell the cops, he'll kill again. If I don't tell the cops, he'll kill again. And so you're just paralyzed. You don't know what to do. Insane. And most of the EAR's crimes were in the Sacramento area between 1976 and 1978, but a few others were in Stockton, Modesto, and Davis. So he shifted to California's Bay Area around October of 1978, beginning with his attack on a couple in Concord.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
This was followed by attacks on other couples and solo women throughout the Bay Area. In total, he raped between 40 and 50 women. His victims ranged from 13-year-old girls to women in their 30s, possibly 40s, but most were women in their teens and 20s. And I remember reading too that his first, the first grouping of rapings that he did was primarily teenagers. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
A lot of them were around 15 years old.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Exactly. He would threaten the men with death or he would say that he would murder their kids or their wives if they moved. And he physically threatened the victims with various weapons like ice picks, guns, knives. So they really couldn't do anything when he was in the home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. It has that very, what the victims described as he would speak through gritted teeth often. And I feel like you can hear that in that recording.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Don't go anywhere, because we're about to unpack how the Golden State Killer's reign of terror unraveled, one unexpected clue at a time, and how a serial killer who hid in plain sight for so long was finally exposed.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
I'm gonna kill you.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
I'm gonna kill you.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And I had heard that too back in the day, you know, we take a lot of things for granted now because we don't have landlines, but people would call landlines to see if people were home all the time, like burglars and stuff, because if the phone kept ringing, you knew that no one was in the house to pick it up. So it's just yeah, it's just really scary.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
It's something we don't think about at all today. But the and the idea that like you'd pick up the phone and someone would just be breathing on the other end and then they would hang up like that also didn't freak people out as much, too, because there's a lot of like wrong number dialings.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And yeah, so I understand how some people like the alarm bells weren't going off when they were getting all of these phone calls necessarily.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. And these were these. I don't know if they were actually ever like definitely confirmed to be from him. But the making a movie of my life definitely plays into the fact that it was for notoriety or like he's paying attention to himself in the news like he wants to be on the news. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Well, at the time, too, they didn't know exactly what they were collecting it for. No. Right, because we didn't have the DNA that we have today. Technology wasn't there yet. Right, exactly. I mean... Not saying that they should have discarded the rape kits while he was still at large.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yes, which we obviously will get into later. It's great that they did that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yes. So on February 2nd, 1978, around 9 p.m., the EAR shot and killed a young married couple, Brian and Katie Maggiore. They were out walking their dog in Rancho Cordova. This is the neighborhood where EAR made many of his attacks. A few neighbors actually witnessed the Maggiore shooting from their windows or the street.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And he had this thought of, if this actually is the Golden State Killer, and I walk into his house right now as a cop and say, I'm looking for the Golden State Killer, this guy's going to kill me.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And one witness heard gunshots and a woman screaming and saw a man running away.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah, but despite those clues, in the weeks after the crime, officers did not link the suspect with the East Area Rapist. They were actually looking for two different suspects. one matching the description given above, and another who carried a pistol in a back pocket, early 20s, about 5'10", short mustache.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And authorities offered a $2,500 reward for information on the suspect, but once again, nothing came from it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Sort of. But I feel like with police sketches, a lot of times it's more of like the vibe of the person, right? Because each sketch artist is going to draw it a little differently. The way that the people are described by the witnesses is a little bit different. But I mean, both of them were looking at guys with sideswept blonde hair. Mm-hmm.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
kind of like a thinner like longer face chin high cheekbones I think they look like the same person just one has grew a mustache it's the mustache it's really the mustache but I mean how long does it take to grow a mustache depending yeah like it could have just been two weeks that he just didn't shave this is true
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But still, the majority murder was not conclusively linked to the East Area Rapist until much, much later. But we'll get into that in a bit. But this double homicide in February of 1978 was the East Area Rapist's last known crime in the Sacramento area.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
In October 1979, over 400 miles away from Rancho Cordova, a series of violent attacks began unfolding in the Central Coast and Orange County regions of Southern California, Santa Barbara, Goleta, Ventura, Dana Point, and Irvine. These crimes were all attributed to what became known as the original Night Stalker.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
As a side note, because I've gotten in trouble for this on social media before, this is not to be confused with Richard Ramirez, who was later known as the Night Stalker. But if you guys are interested in that case, let us know. Maybe that's another one that we cover for Clues.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
That one might keep me up even more than this one because that Night Stalker case is, I don't know how much of a deep dive you've done into it. It's the most appraised. thing I've ever seen in my life. But the MO of the original Night Stalkers crimes, attacking at night, binding victims, raping the women, ransacking the bedroom, and all of this also aligns with EAR's crimes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
I agree. This one is one of the scariest cases I've ever read about. I think the first time I really did a deep dive on it was reading I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Which to me is like on the Mount Rushmore of true crime classics. It's like right up next to In Cold Blood. But it's one of my favorite books. It's written so well.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
No, no, they weren't reporting to each other that the same kind of thing was happening in all of these different counties. So on October 1st, 1979, a couple was attacked in their home in Goleta, but they were able to escape. Actually, the perpetrator gave up and fled on a stolen bicycle.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
He was nearly caught by a neighbor who happened to be an off duty FBI agent, but hopped fences and ran through the neighborhood and got away. That's one thing that a lot of people actually report about this person is they were agile. They were pretty athletic to be just hopping over fences and running.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
On December 30th, 1979, Deborah Manning, who was 35, and Robert Offerman, who was 44, were killed inside of their condo in Goleta. They were both found nude and bound, and they had died from gunshot wounds. On March 16th, 1980, Lyman Smith, 43, and Charlene Smith, 34, were found murdered in their Ventura home. Charlene had been raped and both of them were found nude and bound.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
They had also been bludgeoned by a wooden log that had been taken from a firewood pile outside. And I remember reading about how at a lot of these places it looked like... Whoever was doing this had like grabbed something from outside, like maybe didn't come with all of the materials that they were going to need to do what they wanted to do.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But they were grabbing firewood from outside or like a lamp from inside. And that's what they were using to bludgeon these people. On August 21st, 1980, Keith and Patrice Harrington, who were both in their mid-20s, were killed in their home in Dana Point. That's in Orange County.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
They had been bludgeoned in the head with an unknown object, and they were actually both found in their bed by Keith's father. They were under a sheet with Patrice in a robe, and Keith was nude. They had markings from bindings on their wrists and Patrice's ankles, but the bindings had been removed. On February 6th, 1981, Manuela Batun, who's 28, was found dead in her bed by her mother.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
She had been bound, raped, and bludgeoned in the head while at home alone in Irvine. She was wearing a robe and was partly covered by a sleeping bag. Again, her bindings had also been removed. And I'd read in I'll Be Gone in the Dark, actually, that her husband was in the hospital at the time. And it was probably the perpetrator's intention to have him there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But he just happened to not be there that night. On July 27th, 1981, Sherry Domingo, 35, and her boyfriend Gregory Sanchez, 27, were killed in Goleta in a home where Sherry was house-sitting. They were found by real estate agents who came to show the house with clients.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Gregory was found nude, face down on the floor of the bedroom, with a non-fatal gunshot wound and two dozen blows to the head from an unknown object. His head was covered in clothing that had been taken from the closet. He had no binding marks. Sherry was found nude, face down in the bed, covered by the bedding.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
She had binding marks on her wrists and ankles, but the bindings, once again, had been removed. She also had died from multiple blunt force head injuries.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And it really does a good job of like getting into the nitty gritty of this case, which this is a huge case to cover. And I think, you know, we're going to really try to break it down for everyone today.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So no crimes were attributed to the original Night Stalker from July of 1981 until May 4th of 1986. And that's actually something that a lot of serial killers are known to do is have a cool down period.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Another close call. Absolutely. I know there's all sorts of reasons why they do it. Sometimes it's because they have young children at home and they're raising their families, which is...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
wild sometimes it's because they go to jail for something else sometimes maybe they got spooked at the crime scene but a lot of killers are known to have these cool down periods so on may 5th 1986 after this cool down period janelle cruz who was 18 was killed at a family's home in irvine while her mother was on vacation her body was also discovered by a realtor janelle was found lying face up in bed with a blanket over her head and she was nude from the waist down
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
She died from multiple blows to the face and head by an unknown blunt object.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So dozens of law enforcement professionals were working on solving these crimes for over four decades. And so much of what we're talking about actually comes from Paul Holes, who was a homicide detective and cold case investigator. And he gave a keynote address at the International Symposium on Human Identification, also known as ISHI. And it was a conference in 2019.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Paul Holes was an investigator and chief of forensics at Contra Costa County in the Bay Area. And he became interested in DNA testing in the 1990s. So in 1994, he discovered the East Area Rapist cold case, and he started to get to work on it. And he found that there were three rape kits or sexual assault kits left from EAR cases, and he got permission to use them for DNA testing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
In 1996, DNA testing from this semen in the sexual assault kits linked the homicides of Lyman and Charlene Smith with three other homicides in Southern California, Keith and Patrice Harrington, Manuela Wattoon, and Janelle Cruz. Remember, those happened like hundreds of miles away from each other, so they weren't even thinking that those were all related at the time.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
No, the dots are finally being connected. Exactly. In 1997, further DNA testing linked the semen evidence from Charlene Smith to three Contra Costa rapes from 1978 to 1989. Four years go by. DNA testing continues to improve. The technology gets better and better. And Paul Holes was still working on the Bay Area cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So I went to college right around the corner because I went to college in Orange County. And so he was operating in Irvine. And it's just it's so scary to kind of know the map that he was operating on.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So in January of 2001, the teams at Paul's Contra Costa Lab and Mary Hong's Orange County Crime Lab tested the DNA samples again. And this time they were looking for STR profiles. I'm not going to get into like the exact breakdown of what STR profiles are, but it's short tandem repeat for DNA. And it's the most common type of DNA profiling today for criminal cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
They knew that the man who committed the sexual assaults in Northern California was the same person that was committing these homicides in Orange County. A news article was published on April 4th, 2001, announcing that the East Area Rapist who terrorized Northern California was the same person as the original Night Stalker who raped and killed victims in Southern California.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And two days after this announcement hit the news, a former victim of the East Area Rapist received a phone call where an unnamed male voice said, quote, Remember when we played?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And who of everyone, of like regular civilians, who is keeping up with the DNA technology? Who knows every time that there's a new advancement used in DNA technology, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with Officer McGowan, who thought it was a cop. The whole time.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Someone who's paying attention. Or it would seem. So at this point, the investigator still had no idea who the criminal was, but just that his DNA matched both of the crime sprees.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So the DNA was sent to the Department of Justice's databank of felons, but no match was found. And after that, the case basically went cold again. But about 10 years later, a true crime writer named Michelle McNamara became obsessed with the case and she started blogging about it. And she gradually developed a relationship with the investigators on the case, including Paul Holes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
In 2011, DNA from the Sherry Dominguez and Gregory Sanchez murders were linked to the semen evidence from Charlene Smith. And in 2013, in an article from the Los Angeles Magazine, Michelle McNamara actually gave the guy the name of the Golden State Killer instead of what the police were calling him, which was EARONS, E-A-R-O-N-S, East Area Rapist, Original Night Stalker.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And it was really Michelle's hard work. You know, she was a civilian sleuth that brought this case into the public consciousness again. Just the rebranding. Everything she did was so genius. She was like a truly incredible investigator. And if you have the chance to read her book, I'll be gone in the dark. Absolutely do. It's like I said, one of the most beautiful pieces of writing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But on April 21st, 2016, she tragically died from an accidental overdose. On June 15th of 2016, the FBI announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual known as the East Area Rapist slash Golden State Killer.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And at some point in the 2010s, Paul Holes wanted to test the DNA again with new technology, but his samples from the Contra Costa County had all been used up by previous testing because you can't DNA test something forever. It gets slowly destroyed as you do. But he found that there was remaining DNA from the Smiths' homicide.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And that was just because the people who were working on that case in Ventura had made two sexual assault kits with the semen, and one was actually still stored away completely untouched for decades. And this became the big key to solving this case.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
In early 2018, genetic genealogist Barbara Rae Venter did another kind of testing on this DNA called SNP genotyping or single nucleotide polymorphisms. And that is what is used in genealogy databases. So she created an SNP profile of the killer based on the semen sample that was in Charlene Smith's kit.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And then she uploaded the STR profile, which is the DNA profile, to a public genealogy website called GEDmatch. And then she used her forensic genealogy skills to begin narrowing down the list of suspects. So using the SNP profile, Barbara and her team built out a detailed family tree and determined which relatives could be suspects based on age, description, and geographical location.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And the whole thing took about four months to do.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah, definitely. His crimes instilled fear in all who lived in the communities he attacked and traumatized victims' family members.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And there were 25 of them. So that means these investigators were going through around 25,000 people to find out the identity of this guy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Another great book that I'll recommend in this episode is Paul Holze's book. He wrote a book called Unmasked. He talks about solving cold cases and he talks a lot about solving the Golden State Killer case. But he talked about how you have this list of 25,000 people on all these family trees and you're just going through, okay, this guy was maybe 25 to 35 years old.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
In the 70s, how old would he be today? And you're looking at all of the white guys. You also don't really have height or weight. So you're just looking for the white guys that maybe had blonde hair and maybe were that age at the time. So you're getting a huge list of potential suspects.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And most of this is a direct quote here, but, quote, two main suspects were identified from this particular tree, a man named Joseph D'Angelo and his brother. A DNA sample was surreptitiously collected from the door handle of a car Joseph D'Angelo had been driving. A second sample was also recovered from a tissue taken from his curbside trash bin.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Both samples were consistent with the Orange and Ventura County suspect profiles. I'll also mention here that in February of 2018, Michelle McNamara's book on the Golden State Killer, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, was published.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
All right, let's dive in. So in May of 1973, the town of Visalia began experiencing an onslaught of burglaries. It's in the middle third of the state of California for those not familiar with the state. So the Visalia Ransacker was known for these strange and messy burglaries that seemed more about the thrill of breaking into the home and looking at people's personal items
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Wow. Yeah. Interesting.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
than wanting to steal things of monetary value. He would take these keepsakes, like family photos and personal belongings from the people, and that's why he got the name Ransacker, because he would open up drawers and ransack through the contents.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Wow. And he was placed under surveillance and DNA samples were surreptitiously gathered from him by investigators. Wow. And as a side note, at this point, Paul Holes had just retired from the force, but he remained involved behind the scenes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
There's actually a great little story that he gives in the book that he wrote about this, where it was the day he was retiring because he was like obsessed with this case. And the day he was retiring, he got the tip that it might be D'Angelo. And he looked at his case and he's like, oh, he's a former cop. It's probably not him, but maybe he's related to the guy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So maybe I should go talk to him and see if he has any relatives that fit this description because the DNA is so similar. And the day he was retiring, he drove up to D'Angelo's house and sat outside across the street from his driveway.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And he had this thought of, if this actually is the Golden State Killer, and I walk into his house right now as a cop and say, I'm looking for the Golden State Killer, this guy's going to kill me. And with that, he drove away. Oh, I just got the chills. Yeah, it's it's really spooky. I mean, wow. But yeah, he did have that moment where he was like, but it could be him.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And he thought he was going to go in and have a laugh with this retired cop of like, ha ha ha. Of course, it's not you. But like, do you know anyone? And then it just clicked for him. And so he he couldn't go in. It's a great book. Definitely read it. Wow.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So on April 18, 2018, an officer followed Joseph to a parking lot of a Hobby Lobby in Roseville, California, and he swabbed his car door handle. On April 20, the DNA results were finished, and they showed a partial match of 47% to the Charlene Smith semen sample. This is a very strong likelihood, but not 100%. And that's maybe because there were DNA from three individuals on that car door handle.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
He would also knock over furniture, he would spill drinks, and he would leave this general mess behind, making it very obvious that he had been in the home. So Visalia Ransacker would wait until residents were gone, then he would break in through an unlocked door or window or pry open an entrance like a sliding glass door.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
On April 23rd, officers took samples from Joseph's trash can, which was located in the street in front of the house in Citrus Heights. A piece of tissue that was taken from the trash provided enough DNA to definitively name Joseph D'Angelo as the person who raped Charlene Smith.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And that, you know, is just the domino that knocks over all the other dominoes because really it's the Charlene DNA that's connecting all these cases. Joseph was linked to the murder of Brian and Katie Maggiore, not through DNA though, but through geographic and circumstantial evidence, including things like the shoelace.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
The murder occurred in the neighborhood that the East Area Rapist prowled often, and the time of day was consistent with when his attacks occurred. His physical description matched witness accounts, and the EAR attacks stopped happening in that area following those murders. On April 24th, 2018, Joseph D'Angelo was arrested at his home in Citrus Heights on a quiet afternoon. He did not resist.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And once he was in an interrogation room, he admitted to the crimes. He said, I did all those things. I destroyed all their lives. He was connected with over 100 burglaries, around 50 rapes, and 13 murders. He pled guilty in June of 2020 to 13 counts of murder and admitted to dozens of rapes, though the statute of limitations on sexual assaults meant that he could not be prosecuted for them.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
He ultimately admitted to 161 crimes involving 48 people. His trial began in August of 2020. Three days were spent on victim statements from those who wished to speak and confront him. In some cases, relatives of victims spoke in court about the trauma he caused their families. There are so many quotes from victims and families in this testimony.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And on August 21st, 2020, he was given 26 life sentences without the possibility of parole. As of this recording, he is still alive and he remains in prison.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And once he was inside, he would often open up other windows to give himself multiple exit options in case he needed to flee, like if someone came home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Because, yeah, when he was rolled in a wheelchair into trial and he has this like, I'm a feeble old man. My gloves are coming off with this one right now, guys.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Frail. Frail. To be like, you can't have the mental image of me committing these crimes because I'm just a little old man. No. And then they cut to the footage of him in his freaking jail cell and he's doing jumping jacks.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. More manipulation on his end.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
he would sometimes stay in strangers homes for hours eating their food digging through their things he really just liked to be in the home for a while and he would also use objects inside the home for these makeshift warning systems like he would balance cups or cans against doors so that way someone starts opening the door and he doesn't hear the door open he's going to hear the can fall over and then he could flee through one of the windows he had opened
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But I think I like the shirt that she was wearing that says Thriver because in a way, it's beautiful to see that some of the victims didn't need the closure of an apology or maybe even knowing who he was. Like they were able to find some closure in their own lives, which I think is really powerful. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
People still have the ability to opt in to have their genealogy shared with police if that's what they want. I know that's something that like Ashley Flowers with Crime Junkie is a huge advocate for is having more people voluntarily submit their DNA to police. I'm looking at a site right now actually called Genealogy for Justice, where you can safely share your DNA with law enforcement.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And it's talking about sharing just like not necessarily your raw DNA data, but just the ability to place you on a family tree. So there's resources like that that people can look into if that's something they're interested in. But also, it's nice knowing that these...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
places did shut down taking just regular civilian DNA and sharing it with law enforcement because personally, I just think that's like way overstepping. But I know that there is a need to have this like big database so that we can catch people.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
You know, when I was rewatching the I'll Be Gone in the Dark docuseries, there's a lot of talk about how this type of crime was like ripe for the 70s. It was a time where the police precincts were not talking to each other. The technology was at a place where it wasn't catching people as quickly. We didn't have the DNA that we had today. There was a lot of stigma about sexual assaults. They were
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
basically prosecuted like regular burglaries. So you would get sometimes 90 days maximum for committing a sexual assault. So people didn't really feel like empowered to come forward and share their experience. So you had all of these
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
women that weren't talking to each other you had neighbors that weren't talking to each other you had police precincts that weren't talking to each other and because of that this person was able to take advantage of all of the not loopholes but just all of the empty space that wasn't being filled by people talking to each other and was just able to operate there and commit all these horrible crimes so you know they say that a crime like this couldn't be committed today
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But what's scary is, I don't know, there's a chance that it could be. I don't talk to my neighbors that much.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. So we know that the Visalia Ransacker would clean out a piggy bank, but he would leave large sums of money from the same house. And he wouldn't take a ton of jewelry.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. Someone who knows how to play on the terror of the situation and take advantage of that and really thrives on the terror is also just something that makes this case so scary.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So but you don't think that that person is a serial killer. Like that's the thing that's scary is the duality.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
He would often take like class rings, wedding rings, engraved bracelets and personalized lockets, things with personal value, which to me also is like a calculated thing, kind of working on the psyche of the person he was stealing from. Oftentimes he would take just single earrings. And this became one of his calling cards.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And his crimes weren't just brutal. They were calculated, methodical, and devastatingly personal, which we've gone over. But what ultimately brought him down wasn't a smoking gun or a dramatic arrest at the scene. It was the tireless work of investigators like Paul Holes genealogists, forensic scientists, and everyday people who were determined to seek justice for the victims and their families.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And for over 40 years, he hid behind masks, shadows, and fear. But in the end, his DNA gave him away. And now, he sits behind bars, stripped of power, remembered not as the phantom that he tried to be, but as a man who was finally unmasked by the very voices he tried to silence.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Okay, and we just took a quick break because I wanted to find this exact quote from I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara's book. But I wanted to end on this. So this comes from the epilogue of the book. She writes, one day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb. An engine cut out.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk, like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, 29 years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew in Sullivan, Wisconsin, like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, 30 years after he killed Lori Billingsley in Aloha, Oregon. The doorbell rings. No side gates are left open. You're long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper gulping breaths.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Clench your teeth. Inch timidly towards the insistent bell. This is how it ends for you. You'll be silent forever and I'll be gone in the dark. You threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light. She always knew that he'd get caught and he did.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
This was something where police showed up to a burglary and they saw that only one of the earrings had been taken. They knew it was this ransacker. He would also steal collectibles like coins, family photos, and he would take weapons too. Firearms, ammunition, knives, hammers, billy clubs. Very strange objects that he was stealing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And at CrimeHouse, we value your support. So share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review, and follow Clues to help others discover the show. And if you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. Like the robbery felt more psychological than monetary. Yeah. Which the police started taking note of. And in addition to being interested in women's jewelry, he was especially interested in bedrooms and clothes. Sometimes he would put on women's clothing from the house he was ransacking. There was also evidence that he would masturbate at some of these scenes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So it was clear to authorities that there was a sexual component to these crimes. This is really not a standard burglary. It was later discovered that the Visalia Ransacker was also a peeper and prowler because shoe prints would be found under windows as if he were watching or stalking certain women when they were home and then breaking in when they were gone.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Standing outside looking in the windows like getting a really good profile of the person that he's about to steal from. And a few other things were also really peculiar about what the ransacker was doing. So, for example, one of the things I read about was he would eat a lot of ice cream while he was in the houses.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And these aren't just ordinary cases. They're complex puzzles where forensic science, investigative techniques, and sheer grit collide in order to uncover the truth and deliver justice. I'm Kayla Moore, and I'll be piecing together the timelines and bringing the history to break down the hard facts of these cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
That was just another one of his signature calling cards, be a bunch of ice cream taken from one of the cartons. Sometimes the items he took would be found discarded nearby, further proving that he wasn't in it for like the monetary reasons. And the Visalia Ransacker was believed to have burglarized over 100 homes over the course of three years.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Unfortunately, he escalated his crimes because in September of 1975, the Visalia Ransacker did commit homicide. So at some point in autumn of 1975, this ransacker began stalking 16-year-old Beth Snelling in Visalia. And on the night of September 11th, sometime around 2 a.m., he returned to her home and he snuck in and he was wearing a ski mask when he did so.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
It's likely that he entered through an open window because at the time the family's AC wasn't working. And so he entered Beth's room and he climbed on top of her. He covered her mouth with his hand and he told her that if she screamed, he would stab her. At another point, he told her that he had a gun and he said that he was going to take her with him.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And he started dragging Beth out of the house, getting her onto the backyard patio. But Beth's father, Claude, noticed the commotion and he went outside to his daughter's rescue. But the perpetrator ended up shooting him in the arm and chest. It turned out he did have a gun on him. And then he kicked Beth in the face and he fled.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Beth survived, but unfortunately, her father did die from his injuries as he was being transported to the hospital.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
claude snelling was only 45 years old he was a beloved husband and father of three he was a professor at his local college he had lived in visalia for 17 years and when this happened it absolutely shocked the community the community that already is talking about how there's this like very strange burglar hitting all of their homes and now he was trying to attack a teenage girl and he killed her father in the meantime
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. It's like doing drugs, right? You need more each time.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Each week on Clues, we'll explore how even the smallest pieces of evidence, like a microscopic fiber, a partial fingerprint, even a single strand of hair, could lead to groundbreaking discoveries and might even bring long-awaited justice. These clues shine a light on stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And I just want to say here, I'm actually surprised they didn't have more suspects, because if you look at the only clue that they really have that it was a white guy who was five foot nine and 180 pounds, that is so many people. It's a very broad description. They don't have hair color. They have no description of his face. They think that they have a description of his voice.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
But also I'll note here that was brought up during hypnosis, which is we don't do that anymore to victims because we know that a lot of the memories that are pulled out during hypnosis are false. It's completely guided by the person doing the hypnosis and they can have a lot of false memories. Yeah, that one really surprised me. Yeah. Yeah. They did that to a lot of the victims.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
They would have them undergo hypnosis. So two months later, on December 10th, 1975, an officer named William Bill McGowan was on a stakeout when he saw a man who matched the Visalia Ransacker suspect's description. but he was going into someone's backyard. So we have like this very vague description, but he at least is seeing him go into someone's backyard.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So Officer McGowan ends up chasing this man and he gets him and he confronts him. He fires two warning shots and he tells the guy to stop. The suspect screamed in a high-pitched voice, which was believed to be a fake scream. And then he pretends to surrender, pulls off his mask and raises his right hand in the air. But with his left hand, he ends up drawing his gun and shooting at Officer McGowan.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
He only hits Officer McGowan's flashlight. But glass from the flashlight hits Officer McGowan's eye. And he had to stop to deal with this injury, which he later recovered from. But as that's happening, the suspect runs away. And he doesn't really get a good look at this guy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
If I tell the cops, he'll kill again. If I don't tell the cops, he'll kill again. And so you're just paralyzed.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
Yeah. Yeah. So this stakeout location was actually chosen because there were shoe prints discovered outside of the house. So they called the police and McGowan was able to stake out at a house nearby. And despite the close encounter that he had with the Visalia ransacker, it did not lead to any arrest. The only clue was another physical description of the suspect from Officer McGowan.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
So join us as we uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Golden State Killer
And he would know. I mean, he's a cop. So he knows how they use their weapons, what they're trained to do.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And Cindy starts thinking, I have to find my daughter and my granddaughter ASAP. So the parents end up taking the car back home with them. George has to go to work. So Cindy is left down to track 22-year-old Casey. And eventually she calls someone who maybe might know where Casey is. And that's Amy Huizenga. Amy says that Casey is at her boyfriend Tony's apartment.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And Amy actually meets up with Cindy that afternoon, and the two go to Tony's together. Lo and behold, Casey is there. Only... Kaylee is not there with Casey. It is just Casey by herself with Tony. I'm not exactly sure what Casey says to her mother when she's asked about Kaylee in that moment, but I know that Cindy gets very upset and forces Casey to leave the apartment with her.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And Cindy later says, quote, I wouldn't let her grab anything but her shoes. And after that, Casey and Cindy drive around town trying to find Kaylee.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Yeah, absolutely. And this is when she finally does the thing that I've been wanting people to do this entire time, which is she calls 911 from her cell phone as they're in the car driving around. But what she says on this call is also a little bit strange. She doesn't mention that Kaylee is missing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Instead, she tells authorities that her daughter stole her car and she asks where she can bring Casey to have her arrested for grand theft of the car and money. And we're going to play a little clip here.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And she does this even though Cindy had actually given Casey permission to use the car. It seems she was just very upset that Casey had her car towed and impounded. And so after this, Cindy drives Casey back to their house on Hope Spring Drive. We know that George isn't home because he left for work, but Casey's brother Lee is home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And it's kind of known, even though the family dynamic is strange, it was known that Casey and Lee talked to each other a lot. They usually would tell each other about their lives and share secrets and stuff. And Lee and Cindy start interrogating Casey about where Kaylee is this whole time. Casey is insisting she's with the nanny. She's with Zenaida.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So Lee and Cindy start saying that they're going to go to Zenaida's apartment and pick Kaylee up that night. We need our granddaughter back. But Casey tells them that's actually not a good idea. And this is when the second 911 call happens, and this is at 8.40 p.m. On this call, Cindy says she needs, quote, someone to be arrested in my home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Today, we are talking about Kaylee Anthony, the little girl at the center of one of true crime's most haunting and heartbreaking mysteries. In 2008, Kaylee's mom, Casey Anthony, was on the cover of every tabloid after her two-year-old daughter's remains were found near her home in Orlando, Florida.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
She also mentioned something about a, quote, possible missing child, a three-year-old that's been missing for a month. Here's a clip of that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
After this call, the family continues to argue and sort out the details of what's going on. Cindy is getting increasingly frustrated because the police still haven't arrived. And it's at this point she overhears Casey telling Lee... that Kaylee's actually been gone for an entire month and that the nanny has stolen her.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So once again, Cindy calls 911 around 9.40 p.m., which is an hour after the 8.40 p.m. call where she said that there was possibly a missing child and no cops showed up. I want to play a little clip of that 911 call here. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So you can hear in this call, Cindy's very emotional, rightly so. She tells the 911 operator that her granddaughter has been missing for a month. She repeats Casey's claims about the nanny. She literally says, quote, This is when she finally says to police that the car smelled like human decomposition.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
But what's interesting is later on, she would actually confess that she only told the police about the human decomp smell because she thought it was the best way to get their attention, thinking maybe then they would actually show up to the house because they had not been showing up, even though they knew that maybe a child was missing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Even knowing this case, I get goosebumps when you say that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
She rattles those facts off so fast for a person that doesn't exist.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
When you're going through the forensic records of who was home at what time, June 15th does seem like the actual date, the last time anyone saw, or at least the last time that Cindy saw Kaylee. And it seems like Cindy's stories start changing a lot from this point. And that's something that I just want to make a note of here.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
But Cindy's not the only one who starts saying things that aren't necessarily true. Casey's story has a lot of holes in it. She continues by saying that that day she actually went to her job at Universal Studios Orlando, where she had been working for over four years. And when she left work at around 5 p.m., she was on her way to pick Kaylee up. But Kaylee wasn't there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And neither was Zenaida or Zenaida's two roommates. So Casey waited outside of the apartment. She even tried calling Zanny. And even though the babysitter's phone worked that morning when Casey dropped Kaylee off, that afternoon when Casey calls, it's no longer in service. The phone number has been disconnected, she tells police.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And about two hours later, Casey decided to go out and look for Zenaida and Kaylee herself, not contact authorities. So she first decides to go to some of Kaylee's favorite places, like a nearby park. And when she still couldn't find them, she goes back to her boyfriend Tony's apartment to figure out what to do next. And again, she does not call the police at this time.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
We have a big one that we're diving into today. But first, do you want to catch me up on what's been going on in your life?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And according to Tony, her boyfriend, she didn't even tell him what was going on. And she certainly did not alert her family.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And, of course, we know that all of that is a lie.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I read that she was even like waving to people walking in the hallway, just like waving. And they were like, uh, hi.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
They say, you know, if something happened, just tell us. It's okay. Why would you lie about where the woman lived if you are trying to find your daughter and you aren't lying about the fact that someone took her?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And this is when the police really start to look a little bit deeper into this case. And this was like the domino that knocked over all the other dominoes. Like once this first lie fell, they just realized all of the things that Casey had been lying about. And one of the things actually that they learned was a big lie in Casey's life was the identity of Kaylee's father.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
This is something that even Casey's closest friends haven't been able to get a straight answer out of her. Many of them have said they've been confused about various things that Casey told them over the years. But they know that Casey started dating a guy named Jesse Grund in the early stages of her pregnancy. That was around January of 2005.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
He initially took on the role of a father figure at the beginning of Kaylee's life because there were periods, even though the timeline didn't really add up, where he actually believed that he was Kaylee's dad. But eventually a DNA test was performed and he was not the father.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Casey reportedly told another friend that Kaylee's father was in the army and she later told that exact same friend that he had died in a car accident. There were actually a few times where Casey said that it was someone who had died in a car accident. I believe there were two people who had previously died. And when they looked into it more, those timelines didn't really add up either.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
She also said that one of these guys she had met while working at Universal Studios and that it was just a one night stand. We'll probably never know the truth of who Kaylee's father is because according to NBC, Kaylee's birth certificate never even listed a father. And while this isn't Super important to the case. A lot of people have children where they don't know who the father was.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
You know, that doesn't really change anything about the case. It's just interesting to note here that like this would have just been one more advocate for Kaylee as we went on. If Kaylee did have a father in the picture, someone else that could have been pushing the investigation to actually find her.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
She doesn't really have any. And knowing that Casey stories are very prone to changing, the police start really taking that into consideration. And that's why a few days after Kaylee's disappearance is reported on July 22nd, Casey Anthony is officially declared a person of interest in her case. And after a hearing, Casey's bail is set at five hundred thousand dollars.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
But not even a month later, on August 21st, Casey is released after her bail is paid by a bondsman with the help of her parents. Another situation where Casey's parents come to her rescue. She's brought back to their house. She has to wear a monitoring device. And then a month and a half after that, on October 14th,
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Casey is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, and four counts of providing false information to law enforcement. And that's because the investigators discovered a second clue in the case.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Wow. I'm sorry. That's really scary.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Yeah, he had seen the bones earlier and called and no one came to check it out.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I'm going to get into the autopsy a little bit. And I want to say here that there's a lot of details that we're going to spare everyone from because the autopsy itself is very upsetting. It is a child who died. But here's kind of what you need to know.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So from what the forensics investigators could tell, Kaylee's body had most likely been left out in the woods during what he says were the initial stages of decomposition. And based on the state of remains and the weather during the time of Kaylee's disappearance, Remember, it was summertime when she disappeared. They were still able to estimate that she had been dead for about six months.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And that makes sense because when Kaylee first went missing, it was the middle of June. The autopsy determined that the manner of death was homicide. Even though they could not determine the cause of death. And that's interesting that they were still able to do that. But even though they couldn't tell how she died, they knew it was homicide because of the manner in which she was found. Right.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Yeah. My grandma had this thing where she would just lose track of time where she would think she was getting in the car and then kind of come to a few hours later.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
She was found in a bag that had been duct taped and like thrown off the side of the road.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Yeah. It did not look like an accidental situation. Like someone had intentionally put her there. Clearly placed here. No trauma was evident and no drugs were detected after examining Kaylee's bones. Although a lot of people do bring up here that because it was such late stages of decomposition, it was hard to tell if there were any drugs in her system.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
There was something else of note in the way that the remains were found. And it's really important to bring up here. And that is that pieces of duct tape had been found on Kaylee's body. And I know you really looked into this more.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
It's very strange what happens when you get older. It's really scary.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Right. Absolutely. The counterpoint to that, though, that I had read is that it didn't because, again, late stage decomposition, it wasn't exactly clear where on the head the duct tape was. I know it says here the duct tape was placed prior to decomposition, keeping the mandible in place. So some people believed that it was just holding her jaw up.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Others believed that it had been placed on her nose and mouth previously. That's going to come up again later. And I also want to mention here that, remember I was talking about these gas cans that George had in his garage for when Casey ran out of gas? The duct tape that was found on Kaylee actually matched duct tape that was found on those gas cans in the Anthony home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Just another huge thing to bring up.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And it's probably worth noting here, too, that even though Roy was the one that found the remains, there was a huge search effort happening. Massive. I read people were driving hours into Orlando to help search for Kaylee. The whole public was so invested in this trial.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Right. And when her remains were eventually found. it just made the public that much more angry with Casey. And this is when the charges against Casey become very real because now we do have the body, which is what was missing initially in the charges. Yeah. Even though Kaylee's body had been found, there were still so many questions like, was the duct tape put there on purpose?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Everyone is so good in it. You have to watch it. I saw it last week and I need to go see it again. Definitely my favorite movie of the year so far.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Why was she found where she was found? There were so many questions and the public was hoping that all of this would get answered in a big trial that was going to happen for Casey. A huge trial. Huge trial.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And now these charges were no longer child neglect, manslaughter, lying to police. The prosecution wanted to make sure that if Casey was found guilty of this crime, she would pay for it with her life. So on April 13th, 2009, prosecutors announced that they would be seeking the death penalty. But as happens in these kinds of trials, it would take another two years before the trial actually began.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
It's really hard to get juries for death penalty trials. And by that point, Casey's initial bail had been totally revoked, which meant that she was going to spend a lot of time behind bars before her trial. And the trial finally came on May 24th, 2011, when both sides delivered their opening statements.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Yes, that's like the famous photo of her that got passed around was her in that hot body competition.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And just a reminder, too, it's the prosecution calling these witnesses. They are testifying against Casey.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Let's do it. So this one is a really big case. A lot of you know about this case. You might have preconceived notions. Morgan and I, when we were doing the research on this one, we really got lost in the research. And we were reading books and going through documentaries and just like listening to so many other podcasts about it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Yeah, this is a really important one to talk about. This is like a huge deal in the trial.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I think this is the first time that it was ever used as evidence in a trial, though. This is the first time it was used. Yeah, it was.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
There's also other reasons that chloroform would have been found in the trunk. For instance, a lot of cleaning supplies have chloroform. There were other things found in the trunk too, like gasoline. So it wasn't unrealistic to think that a cleaning supply had been used in the trunk. And so the defense used an expert that was basically saying it could have been the cleaning supplies.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And he stated that he could not conclusively, quote, determine that the presence of those compounds indicated that there had been human remains in the trunk of that car. Even though the defense did bring up their side on why the chloroform might just,
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And, you know, maybe Cindy didn't know how to use the Internet. But either way, I mean, I think of my mom using the Internet. And if she was trying to search for chloroform or for chlorophyll, it absolutely would have been chloroform that she was looking at.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
What I want to have happen before we start diving into the facts of this case is is leave a comment on what you think happened if you're familiar with this case and then i want to hear from people if their mind changed at all by the end of this because the more i learned about this case i think the more confused i got as to what could have happened so i'm just curious what everyone thinks
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
This expert said that they only noticed that there were a few bugs on some paper towels that were inside of Casey's trunk. And if there was a body in the trunk, they said they would have expected to see hundreds of dead flies, which wasn't the case. Because, again, remember, the trash was in the trunk. It's not unrealistic for there to have been flies there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I kind of want to break down the defense's case. This is where things start to get really, really complicated, especially when it comes to the entire Anthony family. So Casey's defense attorney, one of them is Jose Baez, and he has represented Aaron Hernandez, Harvey Weinstein.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
He's kind of known for taking on these high-profile cases of people who are generally hated by the public. And he says that Casey did not kill her daughter. Instead,
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
He insists that Kaylee's death was a wildly unfortunate accident, one that was mishandled, sure, but they say that Kaylee accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool on the morning of June 16th, and her body was hidden as a cover-up, with the help of Casey's father, George.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
There was some evidence that came forward that didn't really look great for George Anthony, like the fact that he was the last person besides Casey to see Kaylee alive, and that was on June 16th. Apparently, he was home with Casey on the day that Kaylee disappeared, but he claimed that he went to work. We know that he was at work at 3 or 4 p.m.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
because he called Casey from his job, and his office was about 9 to 10 minutes away. That's very important. I'm going to come back to that. When he came home that night, though, he said both Casey and Kaylee were gone. And now these things alone are not enough to point fingers at him. But there's something else to really look at here.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And a quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to see some photos that will help you visualize a couple of elements in this case. But if you're listening, don't worry. You can find the same photos on our social media at clues on Instagram. Also, a little housekeeping before we get into it. I wanted to add here before we get started. I know this is a highly covered case.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And that is the above ground swimming pool that the Anthony's had in their backyard. Apparently, and this is according to everyone, Kaylee loved this pool. Her family could not keep her out of it. And they knew that Kaylee could get out of the house through a sliding glass door by herself.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And the defense actually showed a picture to the jury of two-year-old Kaylee opening the sliding glass door to let herself out. They knew she was strong enough and tall enough to do that. So they suggested that she spent what was the last day of her life on June 15, splashing around with her grandma, Cindy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
But that evening, the defense suggested, Cindy forgot to pull up the ladder when they were done. And this is something that Cindy had admitted to having to do because Kaylee would get into the pool by herself. So they always had to remove the ladder to the pool. And they insist that Cindy forgot to pull up this ladder.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So the defense suggested that the following morning, Kaylee might have gone out to the pool while George and Casey were preoccupied inside, climbed the ladder, fell in and accidentally drowned. And they suggest that George helped Casey cover this up. And that's kind of a new thing that was introduced into the case at this point, right?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Even the general public hadn't really been thinking that maybe George was responsible for this as well. So they had to build this case against George. And that becomes a huge part of the defense's case. To support this, the defense starts pointing to George's personal history, his behavior both before and after Kaylee's disappearance. For instance...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Detectives learned that George apparently had a mistress who the defense claimed he met during the search for Kaylee. This mistress even testified that in private, George had told her Kaylee's death was in fact an accident that snowballed out of control. Though he was asked on the stand about this and George denied ever even having an affair with her. They knew that they had the affair.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So that was kind of like an unexpected thing for him to say. Yeah. But he said that he only visited her home once to console her because she had cancer. I mean, they had text messages between the two of them. Right. Right. George also during this trial starts lying about a lot of stuff that he doesn't have to lie about.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
On top of that, George was questioned during the trial about a past suicide attempt. And this also becomes a huge point in the defense case. So in January of 2009, about a month after Kaylee's body was found, George attempted to die by suicide with medication and alcohol.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
He, as this was happening, was texting a lot of people, kind of saying weird things, saying goodbye, stuff that made people really concerned. So they ended up calling the police and he was found in a motel along with a five-page suicide note before he had died. They were able to save him. I think they pumped his stomach and he was okay. I've read that note. I know you've read that note. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Personally, I think it's really hard to decipher what's going on in the note. You can tell he's getting a little loopier and loopier as it goes on. He had taken medication. But this is what the defense really points to. In the note, he does say, quote, I blame myself for her being gone. And of course, this can mean so many different things.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I know a lot of other places have covered this already. We're actually going to talk a little bit about how covered this was as it was happening in the media. But this case. is still a very important case to talk about, I believe, because a child did die and someone was responsible for that child's death. But no one ever served time for the death of Kaylee Anthony.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
This can mean I blame myself for Casey being this kind of mother. I blame myself for not searching harder, whatever. But he doesn't go on to explain that. But the defense goes on to say that he meant that he was partly responsible for Kaylee's death.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
It's hard to decipher any intention from it, which is why I personally haven't really used that as when I am trying to think about what happened. I haven't really taken the suicide note into much account. But the most questionable evidence that comes out against George was these abuse claims that are made against him in the courtroom. And again, this is also brand new information.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
This had not been discussed in the tabloids amongst the public. But according to Casey, George had sexually abused her from the ages of 8 years old to 12 years old. And the defense didn't just say that George abused her. They also suggested that her brother Lee did as well. They even go so far as to have Lee and George paternity tested to see if they're the father of Kaylee. And they're not.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
They're not. They're definitely not. But the defense really doubled down on these abuse allegations, saying that Casey's strange reaction to the death, meaning her not reporting her daughter missing for a month, was a trauma reaction to George's alleged sexual abuse from when she was a kid.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And later, Casey would go on to tell reporters that George abused Kaylee as well and that George killed Kaylee to cover up the alleged abuse.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Most people in America were very, very shocked when this verdict was read. No one was expecting it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And personally, I just think it's worth it to keep making a racket on this case until justice can be served. And with that, let's dive a little bit into who the Anthonys are. Absolutely. I will say, on the surface, the Anthonys seemed like this all-American family. There was the dad, George Anthony, who met his wife Cindy back in the late 70s in Ohio.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Everyone in the entire country and even today is very confused as to how this could have happened, how a jury of 12 peers all agreed that Casey was not guilty for anything. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And you would have thought that that would have actually helped her case. And so that's why I want to bring up this book, Acquittal, by Richard Gabriel. I have it here. I read this. He is a consultant for high profile cases. And he comes in and basically helps people build their case. So he came in and he helped the defense. Yes. Mm-hmm.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So they're having a really hard time building a jury because everyone automatically thinks that Casey's guilty. And also the death penalty is on the table. So this is like a huge deal. What Richard suggests they do is build like a mock jury of 12 people. They get 12 people together. They pull everyone. Every single person thinks that she did it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So they're like, okay, we're going to run through a fake trial and we just want to figure out where you guys start getting confused. And what he noticed, this is so interesting, is when they were talking about Casey being a bad mom, Casey partying, Casey not looking for her daughter for 31 days, everyone was like, she's guilty, she's guilty, she's guilty. Right.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
The second they started entering the evidence into the trial, people started getting confused. And there's a few things that they really got confused about. So one of the things was the chloroform test that was pulled. Because that was never done in a court before. That was like totally new science. And for this jury, they were like, wait. There's no DNA evidence that Casey did this.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
There's no DNA on the duct tape. There's no DNA really anywhere on the scene. But you want us to believe that you took an air sample from a car from six months after this happened and you were able to tell from that air sample. And even when you were describing the test, you were kind of getting confused. You're like, I don't. I said, watch a YouTube video, guys. Right.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
George was a police officer at the time, and he worked his way up to being a detective. And meanwhile, Cindy was a registered nurse. She worked at a local hospital. And they had a son, Lee, in 1982. Okay. And then they had a little girl who followed in 1986. Her name was Casey Anthony. She's going to be who we talk a lot about in this case.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I want to phone a scientist. Yeah. Where's my scientist friend? Well, imagine being on a jury and having that explained to you. All of the jurors are feeling the same way, too. They're like, I just don't know that I can trust the science. I don't understand how it works. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Well, here's the thing, too, is it was a death penalty case. So these jurors needed to be extra certain that they were sending the correct person to the electric chair or else they were not going to be able to sleep at night. So you have to really prove beyond a reasonable doubt. This is not just a murder charge. This is a death penalty case.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So after they have this mock trial and they introduce the evidence to people because it was Florida and all the information was out, people thought they were going to be coming into a trial that had new information because they had already read about all this in People magazine.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
They thought they were going to sit down on the jury and be told the smoking gun, like the big piece of information that hadn't been released to the public. And what they found was they were just given the same information they had read already in the tabloids. Very anticlimactic. So they were like, wait, I know all this information. I know that I don't really understand the science.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And now I'm just kind of confused. And so by the end of this mock trial, they pulled the jury and they found that only three people thought that she had done it. And after that, the defense was like, oh, yeah, we got this one in the bag. There were a couple pieces of evidence that showed up on the trial that should have been slam dunks but were totally botched.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And so you talked about the chloroform search. That was one that was hugely botched. So the prosecution said that chloroform had been searched 84 times on the computer in like a three-minute span. And the defense was like, absolutely not. No one searched chloroform 84 times in three minutes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And then Cindy came forward and said that she was the one that made the chloroform search, but they were able to prove that she was actually at work during the chloroform search. So it wasn't her. It was most likely Casey that did it. And this kind of brings me back to what I said at the beginning of this entire episode. episode, is that the Anthony's were very strange.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And a lot of people thought that they had very strange family dynamics. And by the end of the trial, the jury agreed. They saw Cindy lying on behalf of Casey. They saw George not lying on behalf of Casey, really trying to send her to the death penalty. And they just thought, you know what? This family is too weird. There's a lot of weird dynamics going on.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I could totally see this being an accident and them just all lying for each other.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
What was the famous Nancy Grace quote from it? Oh, my gosh. Somewhere the devil dances in hell tonight. She said something like that and it became like the famous line of the trial.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
But in 1989, the couple moved from Ohio to Orlando, Florida. And while they were there, George worked a bunch of different security jobs to keep his family afloat at the time. And they bought this cute little house on Hope Spring Drive in this quiet middle class neighborhood in Orlando. And that's where the Anthony's would raise their family. And that's where this case takes place.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I think even today, if that many people watch CNN for one thing, that would be huge.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
That happens a lot in the documentary space, by the way. If you're watching a documentary and they're like, we didn't pay this person for the documentary. Yes, they didn't get a fee to be in the documentary, but they got a huge fee to license those photos.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I'm like, it seems like a slam dunk. And yet I think if I was sitting on that jury with the information that was presented to me, Knowing what I knew, I could see myself agreeing with them. But there was a huge, huge piece of evidence that was not admitted into the trial.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
This could have changed everything. It would have changed everything. Do you want to talk about it?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
If you were to tell a jury, hey, I know you don't understand the science that's going on. That's totally fine. You're just normal people. You're not scientists. But the last day that Kaylee was seen alive, her mother made a search on her computer for foolproof suffocation. And we know that there was duct tape, three pieces of duct tape, one on the nose, one on the mouth, one on both perhaps.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
That was found on her head. What do you think about that? I don't think any jury takes that and thinks that there's not some guilt.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
As I was reading more about the family, even though they looked kind of like this all-American family on the surface, just a lot of stories started coming up about how much they didn't get along. People sometimes described them as being sort of strange.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
What is the most shocking to me about this is Jose Baez later said that he knew about that search and he was waiting for the prosecution to bring it up. And he had a whole thing planned. He was going to go on this whole rant about George's suicide attempts and how George used the computer to Google or to search foolproof suffocation because he wanted to do that to himself.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And and they never brought it up. And he was like, that was the one thing that would have done us in. And they just never brought it up. Which is insane. You want to know why else I think that Google search is so important, which I don't hear this get talked about a lot. But there's there's a couple of timeline things that happened on June 16th, the last day Kaylee was seen alive.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So we know from digital forensics that that Google search for foolproof suffocation happened at 2.51 p.m. And we know that George was at work at 3.04 p.m.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Now, he said he left for work at 2.30 p.m., but it takes him about 9 to 10 minutes to get there, meaning there was a chance he left his home as late as 2.55 p.m., and that is four minutes after the Google search for foolproof suffocation happened. Which means, at least to me, there is a decent chance that he was home when Kaylee died and he knows exactly what happened.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
But all of this was not really revealed until after the trial. No. The jury didn't know about any of this. And who knows what the outcome would have been if it was mentioned. But truthfully, there's so many little details about this case, particularly in regards to Casey's story that just don't make sense.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
I read this story about how George used to have to keep gas cans in the house because Casey would drive the car so much and always refused to fill it up with gas. So she would just like run out of gas in the middle of the road and have to call George and he would have to come fill her car up with gas again. So odd.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Well, they also dressed her like a grieving mother. The defense put her in sweaters with her hair up. They played it up.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Now that we know a lot more about the case and the trial and what was botched, what was botched. So there's a couple of possibilities that come to my mind when I think about this. So there's the possibility that Kaylee did accidentally drown while Casey was home alone. I don't know how you explain foolproof suffocation searching that, but that's one possibility.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
There's also the possibility that Kaylee accidentally drowned while Casey was home with George and he was privy to it and he helped her get rid of the body. And then there are the possibilities that Casey intentionally killed Kaylee. Either George was there or wasn't there when that happened. We can talk a little bit more about Zanny the Nanny.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Some people say that Casey had been drugging Kaylee with Xanax regularly as a way to keep her calm, help her sleep. And maybe that was where Zanny the nanny came from, Zenaida, right? Maybe it was kind of a really sick inside joke. So, so fucked up. Even George, Casey's dad, would go public with the theory that Casey had sedated Kaylee with drugs so that she could go out and have fun.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
This was a huge thing, too. George was just, like, on all of the prison phone calls was saying things to Casey, like, I believe you. We'll figure this out. It'll be okay. And then was going straight to the media and straight to the police saying...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
No. Both Casey and George have come forward to say what they swear happened that day.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
It's like the disconnect. Yeah. Well, according to her. So this is what she said in that 2022 Peacock documentary, which she no matter how you feel about this case, Casey lies a lot in that documentary. Like we you can look at the facts of the case and know that she's just saying a lot of stuff that doesn't add up.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
In 2005, the family grew a little bit more because 19-year-old Casey gets pregnant with her own daughter. Morgan, do you want to talk a little bit more about Casey?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
But in that documentary, she comes forward and says that she woke up from sleeping, which we know that's not true. But she she woke up from taking a nap and saw her dad outside with Kaylee in his arms and she was wet. Maybe she had drowned, but she got the sense that George had killed her. And she didn't know if Kaylee was alive or not.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And so George took her and said, everything's going to be fine. And the last thing she remembered from the situation was George leaving with Kaylee, saying everything was going to be fine. And that's why Casey didn't feel empowered to go search, because she always thought that Kaylee would come back and her dad would make it all better, though she doesn't really know what that means. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So and then what you looked into a little bit more what George said happened.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Well, I will say one thing that threw me off, too. You know, there was security footage from police when they when Kaylee's body was found. They hid it from Casey. They didn't tell her right away. And the police immediately put a camera in a room and they played a news coverage of Kaylee's body being discovered because they wanted to catch her being cold and being unremorseful.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And instead what they got on camera, she was by herself. She had no reason to perform for anyone. She doubled over sobbing and police hid that footage from people as well because that was not the image of Casey that they wanted out.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And that one really threw me off too because I agree with you a lot of this she comes off so cold and calculated and unremorseful but watching that you do kind of catch a glimpse of humanity that I found really complicated.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Since her death, various states have enacted versions of Cayley's Law, which makes it a crime if a parent doesn't report their child missing or dead within 24 to 48 hours. Hugely beneficial to children. Case is the most important, and that is huge advocacy. It's so critical.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Florida also enacted a similar law in April of 2012, which made it a misdemeanor to knowingly give false information to mislead a police officer about a missing child. And if the missing child suffered great bodily harm or death, this crime becomes a felony.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
After her death, Cindy and George briefly ran a non-profit in Kaylee's memory called the Kaylee's Fund Foundation, but it was dissolved in May of 2012 after less than a year. And one note that we found was that Dr. Phil apparently gave $600,000 to it. In recent years, Kaylee has become estranged from her family, it seems.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Reportedly, her parents think that she's maybe struggling with mental health and her father wants no contact with her. I mean... She accused him of abuse and she says that he did it. So they just don't want to talk to each other.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Which is wild. And that's actually one of the most heart-wrenching details from the case that I read about. That even though Casey wasn't allowed to attend Kaylee's memorial, Cindy addressed Casey anyways, saying, quote, she's got your beauty and your compassion. She had your spirit and she will always love you. She knows that she was loved by her family and that's all that's important.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Which, I mean, if you really thought that your daughter did it, I don't think you would be saying that. So maybe she does think that what happened was right.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
It was a horrible tragedy, but a lot of good advocacy has come from this. Like Kaylee's life was definitely not in vain. She's even in death has been able to help so many children, which is just so beautiful. And I want to end on that button. I appreciate that. And that's it for today's episode of Clues. I'm curious to hear if you guys have as many questions as we do about this case.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
If your opinion has changed at all, please, like I said at the beginning, let us know in the comments.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
As always, we do want to hear from you. Your thoughts, your theories, your feedback. That is what makes this community so special.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
All right, we will be back next week as we dive into another case. And until then, keep searching, and we'll see you next time on Clues. Bye. Bye.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And after she gives birth to Kaylee, she actually keeps living with her parents, probably grateful for the extra help like you were talking about. They suggested that she keep the baby so they can all help. And she is a young single mom. She's working at Universal Studios supposedly as an event planner for them at the time. But in a lot of ways, Casey is still a kid herself.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
She never actually graduated from high school. She didn't have enough credits. She never really thought of going to college because that just kind of seemed out of the question for the time being. And plus, the more you read about Casey's backstory, it seemed like having fun was maybe a priority for her at this time in her life.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
There's a lot of stories about how much she did like to go out and did like to party. And there's a lot of mixed reports on this kind of behavior. So some people say that Casey would take Kaylee to the parties when she would go out and party. Others said that Casey was actually a really good mom and sometimes would stay in with Kaylee. Sometimes she would yell at her friends for drinking too much.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And these aren't just ordinary cases. They're complex puzzles where forensic science, investigative techniques, and sheer grit collide in order to uncover the truth and deliver justice. I'm Kayla Moore, and I'll be piecing together the timelines, bringing the history, and breaking down the hard facts of these cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
She was almost taking on like this motherly role within the friend group. Others told stories about how Casey would spend the night elsewhere and would bring Kaylee from time to time. Either way, Casey and Kaylee seem to be pretty inseparable around this time. And that includes when it comes to her boyfriend, Tony Lazaro. So in 2008, Casey was dating 21-year-old Anthony Lazaro, who goes by Tony.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
He was a student at Full Sail University. He was also a club promoter. When they started dating, it was very hot and heavy. It kind of came on really quickly. I know they suggested that they move in together really quickly. This is also according to Tony. He talks about this too.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
One thing he said too is that he spent most of his time skipping class to stay in bed with Casey all day during like the early weeks of their relationship. But it's worth noting here, Tony is not Kaylee's dad. No. In the summer of 2008, they had only started recently dating. By the time he met Casey, she already had Kaylee. And the fact of the matter is we don't really know who Kaylee's dad is.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Even to this day, we still don't know. And it's a pretty big part of the mystery, but we're going to talk a little bit more about that later. But what we do know about Kaylee is this. She was born on August 9th, 2005. Her grandparents, George and Cindy, said that she was a joyful and playful little girl. George even described her as, quote, a comedian to me.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Cindy's words are even more heartbreaking when you hear them now. She said, quote, But as much as this seemed like your average family with their ups and down, there was definitely some tension building in the Anthony home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Okay. I want to interject here for a second because we need to know the real reason that Casey decided to come home after being gone for an entire month. A month. Because it wasn't to tell her parents that Kaylee was missing. That doesn't seem like it was her intention. Let's take it back a little bit, though.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So earlier that afternoon on July 15th, 2008, George and Cindy get a call that one of their cars, a white Pontiac Sunfire, has been abandoned in a parking lot and has been moved to a tow yard. Usually, Casey drove it. This actually is the car that Casey would drive until it ran out of gas and then her dad would have to come fill her tank.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Each week on Clues, we'll explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, think microscopic fibers, partial fingerprints, even a small strand of hair, can lead to groundbreaking discoveries and might even bring long-awaited justice. These clues shine a light on stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Remember, at that point, they hadn't seen Casey for an entire month, but they get this phone call that the car has been abandoned. So they go and they pick up the car. They're kind of used to bailing Casey out of these situations. But once they open the doors, they notice that the car smells horrific. Not just bad, but actually multiple people claimed that it smelled like human decomposition.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So I actually do have a question about this and I want to hear your perspective on it because did you, when you were in school for OT, did you ever smell human decomposition? Like were you working on cadavers?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
True. No. OK, that's a good point. So you haven't smelled human decomposition.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
There's a very specific smell to rotting flesh. George was a cop his whole career. If he smells human decomposition and he knows that his granddaughter is missing. Why didn't he call 911 immediately? And he didn't. And so you mentioned that there was actually trash in the car, even though everyone's saying there's human decomposition smell, they pop open the trunk and there's trash.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Well, the Anthony's actually used to have to load their trash into the car in the trunk and then they would drive to a dumpster and drop it off. So it's not unrealistic to think that when Casey first took the car, she maybe threw the trash in the trunk because she was going to go drop it off somewhere and she forgot about it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
Even though they looked kind of like this all-American family on the surface, just a lot of stories started coming up about how much they didn't get along.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
And so while this car was impounded, the trash was actually in the trunk fermenting this whole time. And there's another person who is at the actual like tow area, the person who worked at the tow. And they interviewed him later. And he was like, oh, yeah, cars come in here all the time with dead bodies in them. Like I've smelled dead bodies in cars before. This smells like a dead body. But again.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
George comes to him, tells him that Casey and Kaylee are missing. He claims that it did smell like a dead body. That guy also doesn't call 911. So I'm just a little confused. I think it's worth noting here that even though at that time people thought it smelled like a dead body, no one called the police to report it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
So join us as we uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Caylee Anthony
The car smell is a huge question mark for me in this case. Yeah. And so up until this point, all Cindy and George thought was that Casey was off somewhere with Kaylee, right? She had said that they were going to a theme park. She said she had a work trip, whatever. Right. But now they find her car abandoned. It maybe smells like decomposition. Regardless, it smells very bad.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
He was found with nearly $15,000 in cash. He was found with a lot of Viagra on him. About 100 sleeping pills. He had camping and survival equipment, several changes of clothes, four cell phones, and two driver's licenses. Put all these items in a bag. It's a go bag. He had 10 hardcore porn channels installed on his TV. The type that you pay extra for. I have no words.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So join us as we uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Seeing an image of his almost fully formed son. Weird. Thinking about a vasectomy and calling his affair partner. Weird. Where what? The timelines.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And it's at this point, too, that his behavior becomes even more appalling and bizarre because around this time, too, the police are calling Scott with tips saying that, you know, someone 90 miles away said they thought they saw Lacey at a record store. You should call them and you should see what's going on.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And even his friends were calling him saying, like, I was listening to the radio this morning and someone on the radio said that they saw a pregnant woman who looked like Lacey around this area. You should call this police precinct and see if they got that tip, too. And every time he would get these phone calls, he would tell them, yeah, yeah, I'll check in on it. Or he'd say, I looked into it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
I called them. They said it was nothing. But at that point in the investigation, the police were tapping Scott's phone and they knew that he was not following up on any of these leads, even when he was telling people that he was looking into it. And to me. That's kind of because he knew that there was nothing that would come from any of those leads.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It's so bizarre. And I was also reading actually how before this whole thing really became like a big national case. Right when Lacey and Connor disappeared, Scott tried to sell his house. He wanted to sell the home. And when they asked, when can you move out? He was like, no, fully furnished. Like they can just have everything in the house.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So he clearly wanted to get out of the house really quickly. And people at that time, too, like his friends and family were saying, Scott, your wife is missing. Like, what if she comes back? What if she's being held hostage and she comes back or she hit her head and she's disoriented and she wanders back? The first place she's going to go is your home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And you want to sell the whole thing and move away.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah, wasn't it? Like, it was full of junk. I saw pictures of it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Wastebasket. Garbage can. Discarded it. You don't want that? I mean, interesting. It doesn't really sound like someone who thinks that their family's coming back. And I will say, I think maybe the weirdest one for me is that after Lacey went missing within two weeks about... One thing that Scott did was he had 10 hardcore porn channels installed on his TV, the type that you pay extra for.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And according to reports, they were added around January 8th of 2003. So not even a month later, he's having his cable package upgraded so that he can get those 10 channels. No, not even a month. Wait. It's like two weeks.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So you've probably heard of the Lacey Peterson case. It's one of the most infamous criminal trials in recent history. A pregnant Lacey vanished without a trace in 2002. But what you might not know is how a few key pieces of evidence shifted the investigation and ultimately led to a conviction, one that some people think they got wrong.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And it's all these things adding up together. If that were the only weird thing, you might be given a pass because of grief. But it's just when you add all these things up together, it starts looking like a really weird picture. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Definitely. And throughout this entire time, while his pregnant wife and unborn child are missing, he's still actively talking to Amber. And we know a lot about this because his phone was being tapped by police. And it's somewhere in here, too, that Amber actually becomes aware of Lacey's disappearance because a friend of hers tells her about it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And apparently Scott didn't mention that Lacey was missing until early January of 2003.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It's a weird thing to say when your wife isn't dead. Totally. And part of the reason, too, that Amber was having those conversations with Scott is because she was actively working with law enforcement. She was letting them tap her phone. She wanted to basically get a confession from Scott so she could help the police.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And later that month, Amber goes ahead and she gives a press conference where she shares details about her affair with Scott. And that just takes so much bravery because think about it. This has now become this big national circus. She has a small child at home. She's putting her whole reputation on the line.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Coming forward saying she had an affair with a married man all because she's putting Lacey's disappearance ahead of her reputation. And I just I think that's so brave of her to do. But she is clearly in this press conference very devastated by Lacey's disappearance. And she said that she just wanted to help the investigation any way she could. And
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Also around this time, Lacey's family gives a press conference, their own press conference, and that's where they publicly revoke their support of Scott. His behavior was too suspicious for them. Why wasn't he following up on leads? Why wasn't he helping the investigation? Why was his unborn son's room now a storage unit?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It just seemed too strange and they could no longer rule him out as a suspect.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
That's so devastating for a mom to have to ask her son-in-law that. So in late January, Scott decides that he wants to try to save his image. He knows that this is becoming a big spectacle. He knows everyone's turning against him. So he has the bright idea to do an interview with Diane Sawyer for Good Morning America. And I don't know if you've seen this interview. It is a unmitigated disaster.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
I've seen some of the clips, but why like why was it such a disaster? Like what? It's just so clear he's lying the whole time. Diane Sawyer is asking him these questions and he's saying things that directly conflict other with other things he said. And she calls him out on it, too. She's like.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Asking him about the affair and he says, you know, Lacey knew about my affair with Amber and she was actually okay with it. And Dianthor is like, your eight-month pregnant wife was fine with the fact that you were having an affair with another woman. That doesn't make any sense to me. And he's like, he said something stupid like, well, no one knows our relationship but us. And...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. Sir! Oh, was that supposed to be me? It's clearly you. Yeah. And after this, after that horrible interview, Amber completely cuts off contact with Scott. And then in mid-April of 2003, this is almost four months after Lacey went missing, the bodies of Lacey and her unborn son Connor were discovered washed ashore.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And that kind of leads us to our first clue, which Morgan, do you want to get into that?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Well, this is a little outside of your domain, because two hot takes is so different from this kind of show. We cover a lot of stuff like this on Hearts, Hearts, Pounding. This isn't your first rodeo. It's not my first rodeo, and I think... Yeah. But I think both of our audiences are probably very interested in true crime.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Puts him at the scene of the crime.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Wow. Well, on April 18th, just a few days after their bodies were discovered, Scott Peterson was arrested at Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla, California, where he was meeting his dad and brother. He had dyed his hair and his beard blonde. I don't know if you've seen photos of this. He did a bad job. It's not good, you guys. No, it's like bright orange.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It looks like he just did it in his bathroom at like two in the morning, like we all did in middle school. Yep. And so he tried to say that, you know, my hair is orange because I didn't want the press to recognize me. I want to be able to do things with my family and not show up on the tabloids. But there were some things found in his car that really don't make a lot of sense.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
He was found with nearly $15,000 in cash. He was found with... a lot of Viagra on him, about 100 sleeping pills. He had camping and survival equipment, several changes of clothes, four cell phones, and two driver's licenses, his brother's and his. And he claimed that his brother's license was being used to get a resident discount at the golf course.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
But it's not really clear how he tried to explain away the other items.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah, that's what everyone was trying to say, right? Because he's like an hour basically from Mexico. He had already been talking about leaving the country when he called the cable. Camping equipment. Camping equipment. A hundred sleeping pills.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yes. It's important to know a little bit more about this boat, actually. So Scott bought it on December 9th, 2002. About two weeks prior to Lacey's disappearance, and if you've been paying attention to the timeline here, December 9th is also when he told Amber Frye, his mistress, that he had a wife who had passed away previously. Just so we're all on the same page with that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Absolutely. And so, first of all, just thank you to everyone from our shows, Two Hot Takes and Hearts Rise Pounding, that is here listening to us right now. Everyone that came over from our shows to listen to this new one. Thank you so much for your support. It does not go unnoticed. We see you guys. We love you guys. Very, very appreciated.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
He also bought this boat in cash, which, when you also add in the fact that he was keeping it in a warehouse away from his family, no one knew about this boat. There was no paper trail leading him to this boat. Feels pretty secretive. According to Scott, on December 24th, the day Lacey went missing...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
That was the first time he had ever taken this boat out in general, even though he had bought it on December 9th. He had never taken it out before, but he thought that the day Lacey went missing also was like the perfect time to take it out. Christmas Eve. Why not? Yeah, right. Five hours round trip. Can't get over that. Scott himself even said that Lacey had never been on this boat before.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
But one of the biggest clues in this case was found on the boat.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And eventually the prosecution for this case argued that because Lacey's hair was found on the boat, it meant that she had been on the boat. If not when she was alive, then when she was dead. Because hair wasn't just found on clothing. It wasn't just found strewn about in the boat. Like maybe it had gotten on Scott's shirt and fell off, whatever. It was wrapped up in pliers.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Which is a very strange spot for the hair to be.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And again, too, it makes me think about how maybe there was a chance that he hugged her goodbye in the morning. Hair got on his shirt. It got onto the boat. But we're never going to know that because Scott washed his clothes the second he got home. So all of that evidence is gone now. But there's also another major clue in this case that's tied to this boat.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And I was actually thinking because a new show like this, ratings and reviews really help these shows grow. So if you're listening and you can comment wherever you're listening, leave a little THT or HSP in the comments so that we know where you're coming from.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Right. Just buying the cement or making an anchor is not really the thing that makes him look weird here. It's about what Scott did with that concrete or says he didn't do with the concrete that makes him look suspicious.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So it's not that they had seen the anchors is that they saw where they thought the anchors were made. Yeah. Assumed that there were four other anchors made.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It's a little difficult. Yeah, I know some people were describing it kind of like a Rorschach test. Which one is that? That's where you see the blots. And they're like, what do you see in this? It maybe describes your childhood or whatever. But so some people, when they see this photo, they see the indents. They see exactly where the anchors were.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And some people are like, what are you talking about? There's definitely not indentations for anchors there. I've seen it. I think it looks like there were anchors that were made there. But some people, especially people who think Scott's innocent, like really don't see those indentations.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Our little blended unit over here. Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to come up. Maybe you guys will come up with a title.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. So what are they? What's the reason they say he would have made these anchors?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Oh, because, yeah, obviously you would use rope when making anchors because you have to pull them back up. You don't just leave the anchors there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah, one eight-pound anchor isn't going to keep... I know his boat wasn't that big, but it's not going to keep the boat in place. But still, we do have the fact that the others were never found. Right, right. But maybe if he had five in total... Yeah. So there was actually something interesting I found about the anchors. And it comes from this guy named Jeffrey Bear.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So he helped lead more than 15 diving expeditions off the Berkeley Marina to search for Lacey. And one of the defense's points was that... These anchors were never found, so how do we even know they existed? Sure, there was concrete missing and the imprints in the dust, but still.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
We'll think of something. We'll definitely have something by the end. Okay.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So Jeffrey testifies during the trial and he says that there's thick mud, there's strong currents, there's dark waters and strong surges in the marina. And that can make it virtually impossible to find equipment like anchors, even when you know what you're looking for. So basically there's a ton of muck down there and Scott's anchors were small.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Some reports say that all together they were 30 pounds, each of these like little eight pound things. So to this diver, it made sense that the anchors were just never found. It's totally reasonable to say that they just got lost down there, but they still existed.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And to emphasize his point, he actually told a story on the stand about when his crew accidentally dropped their underwater sonar device in the water during the search for Lacey. And it took four different diving trips to find it, even though they knew exactly where they had dropped it and where it had landed. And that's crazy to me.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Right. So you're not just like disposing of them in the marina and then making more.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. Another thing that was brought up a lot during the trial is that Scott had owned boats his whole life. It wasn't weird for him to be out on the Berkeley Marina, they say, because he did love to go out on boats. We have all this recorded history of him loving going out on boats. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Even though, you know, his family didn't know about this specific boat, whatever, it was like common for him to own boats. But another interesting thing that the prosecution brought up during the trial was that Scott researched the tides in the San Francisco Bay the day before Lacey went missing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
They try to say that this was weird because Scott was probably looking for the perfect place to drop her, knowing that the tides would carry her out instead of washing her back ashore. But I will say it's not that strange to look up the tides before you go fishing, before you go out on your boat.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Also, there's like the argument to I read about this on Scott Peterson appeal.org, which is like the whole layout of the he is innocent case if people want to look that up. But they really say that, you know, on these websites he was on, it wasn't really the tides. There were websites for other things and the tides happen to be on the websites.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It's like when you go on a website and there's an ad for something else. You're not really searching for that thing. It just happens to be on that website. So there's the argument that he wasn't even really looking for the tides.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And you were saying, too, he also was looking up specific types of fish.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. Right. Which he would have known because he was researching. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. And I've been fishing twice in my life. And both times were like 10 hour endeavors. It's a really it's an activity you do for a really long period of time. But we have already talked about the fact that he was probably on the water for what, 30 minutes? Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Are you happy like in hindsight? Are you happy with the one that you got? I'm looking for a second dress. Yeah. Honestly, some of the prettiest dresses I've seen come from like Lulu's and like $60 dresses from online.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
I didn't read anything anywhere that he had caught a fish.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. Earlier, I briefly mentioned that the police were pretty much immediately suspicious of Scott after Lacey disappeared. And they ended up placing a GPS tracker on his car. And I know that this is something you've done a whole deep dive into.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Oh, wow. Weird. I didn't read about that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And he was only going for like 10 minutes at a time too, right?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Right. Yeah. I remember reading about how GPS wasn't even used on planes at the time. So they're like, if it's not safe enough for pilots, how do we know it's really tracking Scott appropriately? So they had to fight to get this admitted into evidence.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. And prosecutors really looked at this as evidence that Scott was returning to the marina to check on the bodies and make sure that they hadn't been found.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Packing up my house to move back to LA full time. Woohoo! everything's in boxes it will be my second cross-country move in in a year in 12 months 365 days two moves no thank you yeah it's a lot it's like right when we unpacked the last box in the house we packed it all back up and we're coming back but
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
from being close to the investigation i mean to me it doesn't really sound like he would be doing that last one because he was not interested in talking to the police that much and he did not really want to be part of the investigation no it kind of feels like someone who's panicked that their cover is about to be blown so he's maybe going back to check and make sure everything's okay that nothing's washing ashore that's what it feels like to me at least
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. You're in the wrong spot. Which then why is he going there so much?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. So Scott's trial began on June 1st, 2004. The trial lasted for over five months, and despite the defense claiming that the evidence was circumstantial, the jury still found Scott guilty on November 12th. He was charged with first-degree murder for Lacey and second-degree murder for Connor. On December 13th, 2004, almost two years after Lacey went missing, Scott was sentenced to death.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And in August of 2020, the California Supreme Court actually overturned the death sentence in Scott's case, but they upheld his conviction. I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole on this one because I actually didn't think California even had the death penalty in 2020. And it turns out it's a little complicated. So. There was a moratorium placed on executions in California in 2019.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Gavin Newsom did that. And the last person who was executed on death row was that occurred in 2006. So it's been a long time since California has executed someone. And you can still seek the death penalty here, but there's a moratorium on executions. Interesting. Which is, yeah, it's interesting.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So the key reason they actually overturned Scott's death penalty sentence was that they found that the judge had improperly dismissed potential jurors who opposed capital punishment as if they were trying to build a jury of people who were really pro death penalty. And maybe they had like a specific outcome in mind.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And in September of 2021, Scott was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yes. No, I'm glad you brought that up. So actually, when the L.A.I.P. took on this case, the Innocence Project basically tweeted saying, that is not us. We are not affiliated with this. Keep my name out your mouth. No, literally, they were like, we are not.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
taking on the case of scott peterson and that's because the la innocence project or laip is wholly independent from the innocence project and according to an article i found when i was researching this episode scott reached out to laip the summer of 2023 requesting that they reinvestigate his case The LAIP apparently thought he did have a very good case for his innocence.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
They filed motions in January of 2024 seeking DNA testing and post-conviction discovery for Scott Peterson.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah, so there's a few key pieces of evidence that LEIP is focusing on for this. The first one is eyewitnesses who may have seen Lacey walking her dog the day she disappeared, supposedly after Scott had already left for the day and went to the marina. They claim that the day Lacey went missing, Multiple people reported seeing her.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Two people claimed that they saw a pregnant woman that day around where Lacey and Scott lived. One witness said that the pregnant woman was with a dog and was arguing with a man. And another witness said that the pregnant woman was being shoved into a van.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Also, it's worth mentioning here that multiple people, some who knew Lacey, some who didn't, reported that they saw her outside walking her dog in the outfit that Scott said she was in when he left for the day. But I will say that that is not the outfit that her body was found in.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
The outfit that she was found in was confirmed to be the outfit she was in the day before, and that's because her sister, Amy, saw her in that outfit.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Absolutely. Maybe they were mistaken in what they thought they saw.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So the next thing that LAIP is looking into is the Medina family. And they lived right across the street from the Petersons. And they reported a burglary right around the time of Lacey's disappearance. The Medinas were out of town between December 24th and December 26th. And when they got home, they saw that they had been robbed. Now, police ended up finding the burglars who did it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And they said that they broke into the home on December 26th. Didn't make a ton of sense to the cops because on December 26th, there were vans and reporters and journalists and cops and everything outside of Lacey's home. So why would someone break into the house across the street if there's cops right there?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
yeah but it was everywhere and you know when they talked to the burglars they did say that they remembered seeing the whole like circus that was happening outside of lacy's home and thinking oh that's weird and then still robbing the house so it seems like it could have been that day still also i guess like there's something to be said about maybe like it's so crazy over here but
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
No, I said earlier, I watch videos on people who pickpocket other people. And there is something about like if you're a street robber, distraction is your best friend. Like if someone's looking over here, then you're robbing them over there. So there is something to be said about like, hey, all the cops in the area are looking over here.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
We're going to go commit a crime in one of the other houses because like no one's going to be thinking to check. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. So the next thing that LAIP is looking at is on Christmas Day of 2002, the day after Lacey went missing, there was a suspicious van fire less than a mile away from their home.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It's presumed that this van was ignited intentionally in order to cover up a crime. So inside the van, once they go over and they kind of inspect it, they notice that there's a mattress and it's covered in this dark crimson stuff, like this big, deep iron red stain. And when they test it, they find out that, yes, it is blood. It is blood. The police don't really look into it that much, though.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
It's not DNA tested and they don't know whose blood it is.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Right, right. And it does feel like a stretch when we kind of take into consideration everything else that was going on in this case. Yeah. I will say the last major piece of evidence here that we know LAIP is looking into is a piece of jewelry. I know you've looked into this a lot. I've looked into it a lot. There is a whole rabbit hole that we could do on this.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
There's a whole other episode, essentially. But basically, Lacey and her family members inherited jewelry from Lacey's grandmother in November of 2002. A month before she goes missing. And one LA Times article that I found talks about how a jewelry store owner testified saying that Lacey and Scott came into her store together to have that jewelry appraised.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Along with some other personal jewelry they had, like her wedding ring. The jewelry ended up coming out to over $100,000. Wow. And as a side note, a jeweler also testified that Lacey, quote, wore a diamond pendant and told her she never took it off even when she slept because she was so afraid of losing it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
But the same pendant was found sitting on a dresser in the Petersons' home after Lacey disappeared. So if she truly never did take this pendant off, then wouldn't it have been on her clothing when she died? And so Scott and Lacey actually pawned off some things on December 10th and December 14th.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Lacey's watch during the investigation was also found to be missing, and we know that she had tried to sell a watch on eBay while she was still alive. The item in question was a diamond-encrusted Crodon watch that Lacey had inherited from her grandmother's estate.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
An identical watch was brought to a pawn shop that was less than three miles from the Petersons' home, but the watch in question was pawned on December 31st. So the LAIP is arguing that whoever sold the watch must have been the true perpetrator of Lacey's murder. And again, there's a lot of information here. Maybe we'll do a deeper dive on Instagram or something.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
But the person who pawned that watch was not Scott. And LAIP is basically saying that they found a similar watch in a different shop nearby and they couldn't possibly know which one was Lacey's.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah, this is the one that he points to when he's saying he's innocent. Okay.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So basically in this video, the boat just sinks. And they're just trying to prove that you can't dump a body off this boat without the whole thing tipping over. Yes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah, Scott couldn't have done it because everything would have tipped over. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And let me guess, they said, no, we don't want to do that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And one thing that I was thinking of actually when you were talking about Scott's debt is if he was in so much debt, you know, it's weird that he bought the boat in cash. He was having his wife pawn her jewelry. She disappears. He wants to sell the house. Maybe that's to make good on some of the debt. He wants to sell the car. Maybe that's also because he needs to cover some of the debt.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
But he is choosing to spend money on things. He's not choosing to spend it on a watch. He's not choosing to spend it on a car. The thing that he spends his money on is the boat, which... is the tool he used to dispose of his wife, in theory. So it's just interesting that that's what his priority was. Yeah. If that's what he wanted to buy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah, we had talked about that, how when we were first getting into the research, both of us hit moments where we were like,
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
man maybe he didn't do it you know there's no forced entry there's no blood there's no murder weapon it's really hard to say exactly what happened there's no evidence on Lacey's body what happened to her so both of us did kind of hit these points where maybe there is a version of this story where he didn't do it but I think the further we got into the research the more we felt like he had definitely done it was there is there one piece of evidence for you that is undisputable you're like that's what I point to as proof that he did it
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
For me, I think it's turning Connor's room into a storage unit. Like, that just, to me, comes across as someone who not only knows that his family's not coming back, but doesn't want them to come back. Yeah. And I am curious for all of those who are listening and watching, if you can comment, let us know what it is for you.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Like, what's the one piece of evidence that you point to that you cannot explain away? Because I'm just always curious what it is for people. Either way, too, if you're... one of those people that doesn't, you don't think Scott did it. What is the one thing you point to where you're like, it couldn't have been him because of this. Like, I'm so curious.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And justice isn't always as clear cut as we would like it to be. But what remains undeniable is the profound loss felt by Lacey's family, her friends, and everyone who continues to seek and fight to uphold justice in her name.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And at Crime House, we value your support. So share your thoughts on social media. Remember to rate, review, and follow Clues so others can discover the show. And if you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Okay, Morgan. We'll be back next week with another episode of Clues.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. And before we dig into the timeline of this case, I just want to make a note that if you're watching on YouTube, you will see some photos pop up that'll help you visualize a few different elements of this case. And if you're listening, don't worry. We want you to feel included as well. You can find those same photos on our social media, which is at Clues Podcast on Instagram.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
But OK, so now we know a little bit more about who Lacey was. Let's talk about what was going on in her life in December of 2002. So on December 14th, Lacey and Scott were invited to a Christmas party. Lacey attended. Scott did not. Scott allegedly had told Lacey that he couldn't make it because he was on a business trip. On December 23rd, Lacey spent that day running errands.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
She and Scott went to a doctor's appointment. And she also visited her sister, Amy Rocha, so Scott could go get his haircut. And that evening, she called her mom, Sharon Rocha, to talk about their plans for the next day, which was Christmas Eve. And that's when Lacey confirmed that she would be having dinner with her. At some point on December 24th, 2002, Lacey disappeared.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And these aren't just ordinary cases. They're complex puzzles where forensic science, investigative techniques, and sheer grit collide to uncover the truth and deliver justice. I'm Kaelin Moore, and I'll be piecing together the timelines and bringing the history to break down the hard facts of these cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
According to Scott, this is how the day went down. He left the house at 930 a.m. And when he left, he said that Lacey was watching Martha Stewart, a special on TV. And he said that there was something about Lemon Meringue on the TV. He remembered like that specific detail about what she was watching. And initially, he said that he had gone and played golf that day when he left.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. So while even Scott's family thought that he was going and playing golf that day, it turned out that he had actually gone to take a boat out on the marina. And there's a few reasons why... This is suspicious to me off the bat. So Scott wasn't going to just take any boat out on the marina. He was going to take his boat out on the marina.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And according to Scott, his family, including Lacey, didn't even know that he had this boat. So it's safe to assume that none of them had ever been on this boat. Right. Right. And that's something that I want us to remember as we keep digging into this. So Scott left his home at 930, he said, and he went to his warehouse to pick up his boat and to check some emails.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
He left that warehouse at 11 a.m. and he headed to the marina. Now, we know that Scott purchased a boat launch ticket at Berkeley Marina at 1254 p.m. And we're not really sure how long he spent on the water. But later, he left a voicemail for Lacey. And that said, quote, Hey, beautiful. I just left you a message at home. It's 215. I'm leaving for Berkeley.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
I won't be able to get to Vela Farms to get the basket for Papa. I was hoping you would get this message and go out there. I'll see you in a bit, sweetie. Love you. Bye. End quote.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
So it could have been longer. And he pulled the ticket for parking at 1254. But it takes a minute to get into the water. It takes some time to do that. And then he called her at 215. So in theory, he pulled his boat out of the water. So it seems like he was in the water for, what, 30 to 45 minutes?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Right, adds to the time it takes. So he made a five hour round trip journey to be on the water for about 30 minutes. Yeah. On Christmas Eve. So we're not sure at exactly what time, but at some point in the morning, a neighbor found the Peterson's dog, Mackenzie, wandering around with its leash on. But there was no sign of Lacey anywhere. Then Scott gets back to his warehouse around 415.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
He drops off the boat there and he heads home. He gets home at around 4.45 p.m. and he notices that Lacey is not there. But her car is in the driveway. Her purse is hanging up. And upon arriving home, he immediately showers. He washes his clothes and he has some food. And then at 5.15 p.m., he calls his mother-in-law, Sharon, and he asks if Lacey's with her. But of course, Lacey isn't.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And from Sharon's account, actually, on that call, Scott said, quote, Lacey is missing. And that was enough for Lacey's stepfather to call the police just after 5.45 p.m.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Each week on Clues, we'll explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, like a microscopic fiber, a partial fingerprint, even a small strand of hair, can lead to groundbreaking discoveries and may even bring long-awaited justice. These clues shine a light on stories that have been waiting sometimes for decades to finally be heard.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Lacey's eight months, eight and a half months pregnant at that point. He gets home, her car's there, her purse is there, so she hasn't left the house. I don't leave the house without my purse.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And the first thing he does is washes his clothes. He doesn't even think to check on where she might be.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
Yeah. Very strange. And it was strange enough that when Lacey's friends and family hear about this, they start panicking immediately. She's pregnant. She could be hurt. She's missing. What if she fell somewhere? So many things are running through their minds. And Scott during this time seems unusually calm. He's described as being detached and nonchalant about it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
And also, as a quick note here, after Lacey was reported missing, the police start becoming a little suspicious of him because of this strange behavior. And so days go by and there's no sign of Lacey. On December 31st, they actually ended up having a candlelight vigil for her.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Laci Peterson
was calling Amber a lot, like while everyone was out there searching for Lacey. He even called her during that candlelight vigil that happened on December 31st. And I remember reading somewhere that he told her he was in Paris when she asked where he was, but he had just taken the call off to the side at the vigil, which...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MISSING: The Martin Family
Okay, before we jump in, Morgan, what's new? What's been going on?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Three and a half hours is such a long time. This was only supposed to be a 30-minute flight. A 30-minute flight. A 30-minute flight. Are the people on the plane panicking? Because I would be in full panic at that point. I would be terrified. I was a flight attendant. I literally used to be a flight attendant. Scared of turbulence. I don't know how the heck I did it. Explain that, you guys.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But it's scary when you circle or burn fuel or go back up. The scariest thing, actually... And I was always the least superior on the roster. So I was the one that had to go in the cockpit when the other pilot came out to pee because you always have to have two people up there. And the other pilot turns around and he's just talking to me and the plane's flying itself and we're bumping around.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But another thought here, me and my flight attendant experience, they're so lucky they had enough fuel to even circle for this long.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
No, weight and balance is such a big thing. I think nowadays they're very precise where they really take on only what they need.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah, I don't think we can say enough how great of a job this cabin crew and everyone did because, you guys, you wouldn't want me in this experience, I'll tell you that much. One of the passengers actually had no idea what was going on. They went back on board to get an item they had forgotten even. So, like, again, it speaks to how good this crew really was in this.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
whatever you had back then yeah I know phones they couldn't even imagine those wait can I grab my cell phone actually forgot my sleep mask in the seat pocket I mean there were hundreds of news people there even and it was actually them getting off and seeing all those people there yeah that's when they actually realized that their plane had been hijacked right
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And I know your mom is a flight attendant, so you're kind of familiar with the world as well. But I mean, you know how high stress the job can be. So for them to be so composed. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Oh, my God. I thought she was a flight attendant.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But I do like the fact that you brought up about Cooper asking about which type of plane he was on. And this does matter. You know, for the right person, this could have rang alarm bells. It didn't for whoever, you know, gave him his ticket. But because he was on a Boeing 727, this is how this whole heist was kind of possible.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
In 1971, a man in a suit boarded a flight, handed the stewardess a note, and by the end of the night, he vanished with $200,000 in cash. No body, no parachute, Absolutely no trace.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
This aircraft had a unique feature, an aft air stair, which is essentially a retractable staircase, and it's located in the rear of the plane. Cooper really, really cared about this aft air stair.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Asking for four parachutes. Pretty strategic for our guy Dan here. It is kind of giving insider info. It's giving he was very man with a plan. I picked this plane for this reason. Or he was a pilot himself.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And the risk of stalling in the air and having this not work out. And I know we're using a lot of airplane lingo here, flaps. You're like, what the hell are flaps? Well, your dad's a pilot, right? My dad's a pilot. And I think the average person now kind of has like looked out the window as you're landing and you see those little things off the wings that go up or down or move as you're flying.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. Those are flaps. And a typical wing flap angle these days is between 5 and 15 degrees for takeoff and between 25 and 40 degrees for landing. Landing's where you typically see them. They'll really change the angle to help slow the plane down. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they don't have to use the brakes as much. But back then, this wasn't necessarily a given.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So the fact that Cooper understood all of this and knew that it was even an option on this Boeing 727, it is kind of giving insider info. It's giving he was very man with a plan. I picked this plane for this reason. Yeah, I had a lot of knowledge.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
It's definitely giving inside job, especially given this fact. Right. Pilots talking to Boeing. They can't take off with the aft door down, which, OK, drag. This isn't a little plane carrying a banner. That makes sense. Yeah. But Cooper knew that it could be deployed in flight and he knew that the pilots would not be able to do anything about it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
See, at this time, there was no child lock or control in the cockpit that would prevent that aft staircase from deploying. So in flight, you could go to the back and just control it from back there. And the flight crew up in front would have no way of stopping them.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Hopefully he would have felt a stall coming on. But I don't know if you've seen videos, but it's kind of giving the same energy as Sky King. No, what's that? R.I.P. if you know, you know. Sky King is a guy who hijacked a plane in modern times and was doing barrel rolls and loops. Oh my gosh. He wasn't a trained pilot. Right.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I think so. Yeah, I think so. Hijacked a whole plane, a whole plane, like a big modern plane. So, I mean, it's it's again giving inside job. He was he was a ground crew. That's how he got access to that plane. Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. But back on track here, even though Cooper was happy with the money, there were a few issues.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
kind of hard to read with these bad boys on. But before we get into today's episode, anything new? What's going on in your world?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
OK, Caitlin, earlier you mentioned that part of Cooper's request was that the cash be delivered in a knapsack. but it was actually delivered in a canvas bag. And basically, that meant that he would need to make a handle for this bag, which he did using a knife, which he had on board with him the whole time, apparently.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Smoke. And he used lines from one of the parachute, which you're going to waste a good parachute, sir.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So wild. And based on the plane's coordinates and when they felt this jump, they did have a rough idea of where Cooper's drop zone was going to be. They figured it was over this area called the Dark Divide, which this area makes up 75,000 acres in western Washington. It's massive. The conversion, if we're going to put it in miles, is like 117 square miles. Huge. And there's no roads anywhere.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Like people are allowed to go in there, but not a lot do because there's no roads and it's not super well maintained. It's giving like remote wilderness. So the fact that he was comfortable jumping into this random spot seems crazy to me.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Also true. There's some dark coverage. But one thing that's really interesting about the parachutes that he chose, he picked one that wasn't as nice as options that he had. He actually cut up the nicest parachute. Interesting. I know. On top of that, it was also raining pretty heavily this night.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And with the plane going about 250 miles per hour, which is slow for a jet, it's still pretty fast when you're jumping out of a plane. So with the sky being cloudy and only a quarter moon in the sky, there wasn't a lot of light or anything to really go off of. And Cooper's wearing a suit and an overcoat with loafers.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Definitely not what you'd want to be wearing in the middle of a wilderness or jumping from 10,000 feet. It's cold. Your hands are going to be freezing. So to even pull that ripcord, brr. But despite all of this and these crazy conditions, he jumps and is somehow fine with it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Finally, some clues in this case. So FBI get on the plane and this is where they find our first real clue, Cooper's tie, which for some reason he unclips and tosses behind him into the plane before he's jumping. But even though this is a clue, it's not really a good one. The tie was from JCPenney's. It was pretty mass produced, you know, in some capacity.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And though there could have been some DNA on it, This was also, again, the early 1970s, and DNA testing wasn't even developed until the 80s. And they do find this little tie pin, too, which is what actually secured his tie to his shirt. But not much else comes out of this clue. But the FBI keeps it. Yeah, just in case in the future they can do something with it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
How does he grab literally the dummy chute out of all of them? Come on, guy. And the military parachute. He picked a chute that you just go where the wind takes you. There's no steering with that bad boy. No, you can't control it as well.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
No, and it's also pretty dark. Did they even have night vision back then?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I mean, this little ant fallen from a plane, basically.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I don't think they're going to see him regardless.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Which is interesting to me because let's say he landed safely, packed up his chute and then ran. Packing up a parachute is pretty hard to do, especially if you don't have familiarity with them and haven't been taught. According to one person I saw on Reddit, it actually can take like 40 minutes to properly pack a chute. Tears up your fingers, leaves you in a sweaty mess.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So if he did pack up this parachute and then take off into the night, he's got to be pretty skilled or again...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But fortunately, there are a few more clues that were left on the plane. And these are smaller clues, but I still think they're worth mentioning. As you mentioned earlier, Kaylin, he was chain-smoking up a storm. And our third clue is his Raleigh cigarette butts. He smoked at least eight during the duration of the flight, but somehow no fingerprints were discovered on these cigarette butts.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
There's a lot of conspiracy theory cases about some of these influencer cult houses, essentially, like the dance one. Like her family, there's a dancer and her family has come forward and been like, she won't talk to us. They married her off. She's dancing and TikTok famous, but she won't talk to us.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Not a single print. That is almost unbelievable to me. Because he wasn't wearing gloves. No. Did he burn his fingerprints off before? I mean... But then why was he so careful about the matchbacks? Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. There was also at least one strand of hair left on the back of his seat's headrest. Some sources say there were multiple left behind, though.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. And this is one of those, again, maybe clues because some sources say there were prints on the bourbon glass or his in-flight magazine. But others say that those weren't prints of Cooper. I saw in one source the FBI didn't even really catalog these glasses that well. They were mixed up. So they were unsure if the glass was definitively Cooper's or not. Right, right.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And there's one more clue that I think is kind of missed in this case. There's no handwriting sample. As you mentioned earlier, he asked for that note from the flight attendant back. And again, he used block letters on his ticket voucher for his flight. So we got nothing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
No. And, like, think about when you travel. Like, you'll look at kind of who's nearest you, but the rest of the people on a plane, you're just... No idea. No idea. They're unremarkable to your memory.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
No, it's like one of those things where it's like, Okay, you drive to a grocery store and you're on the way and you see a white dog and blah, blah, blah. What color was the man's hat? You're like, I was thinking about the white dog. I wasn't looking at his hat.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
There's a couple interesting stories.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Our modern day... Sam was sick as hell.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And this is another situation where everything happened really quickly and the airline crew did a good job thinking on their feet. Again, the passengers weren't panicking.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Which, OK, you're trying to get to Denver and then New York. You're going to stop in Grand Junction, Colorado. But then all of a sudden you're going back to California and going to San Francisco instead of L.A. How are they not panicking?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. I just read a book for the first time. I read the new Hunger Games book. Oh, what did you think? First time in ages that I've read. I know how to read. That sounded weird, guys.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Insane. They were able to get him. And you know how? From one source I saw, investigators were actually led to Richard McCoy after he was overheard bragging in a bar that he could do it better than D.B. Cooper. And well, I mean, he kind of did. He ended up getting more money. Let's talk a little bit about Richard Floyd McCoy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
According to one source, McCoy was a green beret in Vietnam, experienced with skydiving, bore some resemblance to Dan Cooper, and, not least of all, pulled off a virtually identical heist. McCoy was found five days after his heist and was sent to prison. However, he escaped by making a fake gun out of plaster and rode out of the prison on a garbage truck.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
He was killed shortly after in a shootout with police. However, he's considered likelier a copycat since he was 29 while Cooper was in his 40s. And because his family said he was at home with them in Utah for Thanksgiving in 1971.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But it was really good. Really good. It set up Haymitch's backstory in a really cool way. So that was really nice.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Like, how insane is that? And also, I mean, he got home for Thanksgiving in Utah? Yeah. We have planes, clearly. He could have still gotten there in time, yeah?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. And there's some more clues in the McCoy hijacking case, but we're not 100% sure if this guy is D.B. Cooper, so we're not going to get into all of them today. But essentially, McCoy did get caught. Long story short, he hitchhiked right after this incident, and he was wearing a jumpsuit and carrying a duffel bag. Not suspicious at all. Of course.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
It was actually reported that McCoy was on National Guard duty in the search for this hijacker. So he was essentially just chasing himself. Wow. But yeah, he was arrested two days after the hijacking and the FBI found a jumpsuit, a duffel bag filled with $499,970. Wow. What do you think he spent that $30 on? Only $30 was missing at that point.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I would have gone on a big shopping spree the next day.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
We did get some fingerprints from McCoy, but they don't match the ones left on the bourbon glass in the D.B. Cooper hijacking. But as we know, FBI didn't really catalog everything too well. A little bit of our botch for this case. And so they're not sure whose prints D.B. 's actually were even.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah, makes sense. It could have caught in the wind and fallen out as he was jumping. But luckily, in the 1980s, we do get a little bit of a lead. An eight-year-old named Brian Ingram was on a camping trip with his family. And while trying to make a fire pit along the Columbia River, he finds three stacks of rotting $20 bills. And when I say stacks, I mean stacks. It totaled $5,880, actually. Wow.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I don't think I've read it since high school, but I walked by a little bookstore and I'm like, okay, I need a book for my flight.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
That's a good find for an eight-year-old. I know.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
No, it wasn't in the best condition. And so his family contacted the police and then the FBI. And when his father read one of the serial numbers to the FBI over the phone, it turned out to be a part of the ransom money given to D.B. Cooper. Remember how the bank had those little serial numbers all recorded? They were thinking ahead. They sure were.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole here on this one. After years of analysis, investigators like really haven't conclusively been able to determine how the money got there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah, some people speculate that the river was dredged. So essentially you like drag...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
soil sediment from the middle up on the shoreline to make it deeper oh yeah but then other sources say well the dredging actually didn't occur close to where the money was found it stopped 150 feet short of that so the only way it could have gone there was db burying it oh interesting yeah then why bury your money db Keep it under your mattress like a normal person. And only that amount of it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I finished it within 24 hours. Nice.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Which some Reddit sleuths speculate he did just to throw off investigators. And maybe there's more out there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But should we get into today's case? Let's do it. So we are opening up the case file for the infamous D.B. Cooper. And just a quick reminder, there's going to be some pictures for those watching on YouTube. It'll help visualize all the elements of this case. But if you're listening, you are not going to be left out. The same photos are on our social media at Clues Podcast on Instagram.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And don't worry, guys, the pilot of that ditch jet did survive. But what's interesting is the weather during that that ditch was similar weather conditions to what DB encountered. So it could point to the fact that Cooper did survive.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah, they were actually getting a lot of people outed by their families. There's another suspect in this case that I saw come up, which is Kenneth Christensen. He was a former paratrooper and, get this, a former Northwest Orient Airlines flight attendant.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So he was a prominent suspect in this. And because of his paratrooping experience and working for the airline and potentially a deathbed confession to his brother, he was considered in this. There was actually a point before he was a flight attendant that he was actually a mechanic for the airline.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So it would be someone that would have that inside information on the planes, how they work and that aft staircase. But He was eventually ruled out.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So a little bit of background about this case. First, it took place in 1971. So this was at the start of the air travel boom and very pre-9-11. There was no airport security. You could walk up to a gate, kiss your loved one goodbye. full access basically.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
There was a picture of Kenneth that was actually shown to one of the flight attendants, and they did say he was the closest resemblance. Okay. So there's that. I trust it. But again, FBI, you know, they ruled him out. But they did still have the tie in their possession. So they started looking into that a bit more with the modern technology we have.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
According to a recent article from earlier this year, March 2025, amateur sleuths have sued the government for access to the DNA and particles left on the tie, to no avail. There's other sources that say back in 2017, the FBI did actually cooperate with some of these sleuths and amateur scientists, gave them the tie, they sent it to a lab, and it found traces of metals on
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
which made them think that Cooper possibly could have worked as an engineer at a plant that supplied metal to the aerospace industry. But the majority of the particles found on the tie had elemental compositions that were actually linked back to book matches. And we know that DB liked a cigarette. I mean, he smoked at least eight of them on this plane.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And while most metals would have been seen as too common or just a contaminant, maybe, there were titanium particles found. And because they weren't alloyed, which is basically combined with other metals and materials, it narrowed down to where these particles could have come from. So it seems like they're at least gleaming a bit of new information with modern technology.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. I mean, the cigarette butts, I believe, are now thrown out. They don't have those anymore.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Just like discarded. Yeah. Not as not as tidy of keeping evidence. No, not in this case. But let's talk about where we stand on this case today. What's the aftermath looking like? Well, in 2020, a pair of siblings come forward to claim that they found a parachute used in the hijacking. It was in their mom's shed. Their dad was actually DB Cooper. You want to know their father's name?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Richard McCoy. The name should sound familiar because Richard was the guy who hijacked the other plane, the supposed copycat. Yeah. And his kids said that he identified himself as Dan Cooper when he boarded a Northwest Orient airplanes jetliner from Portland to Seattle in November 1971.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
The tail end of like walking my dad to his plane and flying. Yep. People didn't even have to buy their plane tickets ahead of time. Imagine that. You could just literally walk into the airport, pay with cash, board a plane. No identification verification. Wow.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Well, unfortunately, if the FBI is trying to do that, they're going to have a pretty hard time considering a lot of the evidence that could have DNA is gone. And the people of Reddit are pretty mad about this. But I've also seen some people question if it's true. Like maybe the FBI is lying or maybe there's a chance the hair is just misplaced and it'll turn up.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
You know, those archives could be pretty vast and poorly cataloged. But... I don't know. In January 2024, some sleuths did say that they found trace DNA samples on that clip-on tie, but we'll have to see if that amounts to anything. I did find this really cool sleuthing website with some good tack-on points and details during the research for this episode.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
The original hope in analyzing the tie was actually to see if there was any pollen on it. Yeah, pollen always comes back to the bees. They essentially thought that they could determine what part of the country the hijacker came from if this pollen type was so rare and specific to a certain bee colony. Totally, I could see that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
The money that the eight-year-old boy found had rubber bands on it, and so those were analyzed to help figure out how long the money had been there and maybe disprove some of the theories that it just floated there or, you know, things like that. There's also some really cool flight maps and a photo gallery.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And one interesting thing I found, none of the money besides what was found buried in the sand was ever found in circulation. So if DB did survive...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah, I don't know how they determine if it's re-in circulation or not.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
You would think. I mean, he was trying to get to Mexico. They accept U.S. dollars down there sometimes. So maybe he just spent...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I don't know. I don't think it was McCoy. No. I think McCoy was a copycat for me. I feel like McCoy seems like such a guy. He would have admitted it and been like, I did a better job the second time, didn't I? Like, I feel like he would have been more that versus overheard saying, I could do it better than DB did. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But how would they not find anything? This is where I need our team of scientists to come in. Yeah. This is kind of a sad thought in this, but like, okay, plane up there, 10,000 feet, person jumps, they travel a certain speed, they hit the ground. Would there be a big crater or would it just... Would he splat?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Hands were too cold. He didn't dress appropriately.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. The fact that McCoy made it out.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. I think there's a solid chance DB made it out and rode into the sunset and took that money somewhere else that didn't get put back in circulation. Do you think anyone out there knows who it is and just isn't saying? No one can keep a secret.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
It's so crazy to think about because that's not a modern day fear. Like my biggest fear flying is turbulence.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. My dad, I honestly could see my dad being the type to pull this off, but he was born in 57. Age doesn't fit.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
But I definitely want to hear everyone's theories on this.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I mean, this is an important case. It is the case that is referred to as the only unsolved hijacking case in the history of commercial aviation.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah, five stars only if you're doing it on the review. Yeah, please. But all right, Caitlin, it's time to close the case file on Mr. D.B. Cooper.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
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Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
We'll be back next week with another new case on Clues.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Really big airplane fears. I also, when I fall asleep on planes, I have nightmares on the plane that the plane is going to go down. Me too. I wake up with the plane crashing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's horrible. I just flew last weekend. Wing snapped straight down. Wow. Not a good dream. It's brutal. Let's talk about this hijacking and not as much about my nightmares.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So on Wednesday, November 24th, 1971, which is the day before Thanksgiving, and even back then, it was one of the busiest travel days of the year. At around 2.25 p.m., a man approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines at the Portland Airport. International Airport. When he filled out the ticket voucher, he signed the name Dan Cooper in block letters. Why block letters?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Can't get a handwriting sample off it. He appeared to be in his mid-40s. He was wearing a business suit with a white shirt and a skinny black clip-on tie from JCPenney's, which was said to be fastened in place with an imitation pearl tie pin. The suit was dark burgundy brown, and he had on a pair of dark loafers.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
hello welcome to clues where we sneak past the crime scene tape and explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases and these aren't just ordinary cases they're complex puzzles where forensic science investigative techniques and sheer grit collide in order to uncover the truth and deliver justice i'm kayla moore and i'll be piecing together the timelines and bringing the history to break down the hard facts of these cases
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
He also had an overcoat on and carried a bag that was described as looking like a briefcase of sorts. He was said to have an olive complexion and fancy Marcel waves in his hair. I read a quote that said, other than the fact he was wearing horn-rimmed sunglasses aboard the flight, there was nothing remarkable about this man. So I'm guessing no one was able to gather what color his eyes were.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. I mean, I'm asking myself nowadays, is that a certain type of plane? And I'm honestly picking my flights based on it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Tell me this case took place in the 70s without telling me it took place in the 70s. Different time. Smoking on airplanes?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. I just went to the TWA hotel that's at JFK now. It used to be like an old terminal.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And you can actually see all these uniforms and like learn the history of like being a stewardess and all this stuff.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And they had age caps on flight attendants. Like up until the late 60s, early 70s, the age cap was like 35. They wanted them young and hot. And then I think it was like 71 when they finally started letting men be flight attendants. Before that, it was just women. Just women.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So they would do weight checks and appearance check-ins and like they really wanted a type. And like height was a thing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
There was a lot. Unmarried. They wanted them attractive and setting them up for being attractive.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
and I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'll be diving into the theories and pulling out the threads that just don't add up. Each week on Clues, we'll explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, like a microscopic fiber, partial fingerprint, or even a single strand of hair, could lead to groundbreaking discoveries. and may even bring long-awaited justice.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I do have to say, asking for four parachutes, pretty strategic for our guy Dan here. Because if he had asked for just one, they could have given him a dummy parachute. He could have instantly plummeted to his death. But by asking for multiple parachutes, it kind of made people think he was going to take hostages.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And obviously, they weren't going to let innocent people get caught in the crosshairs here. So they made sure they were giving him the real deal.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
So this would have been a clue, but nope, gone.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
And this is kind of a mini clue here because that detail did have investigators speculating that Cooper was familiar with the area.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
I mean, it's very blase cool guy. Yeah. Suave, as some might say.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Again, taking back so much potential evidence, which to have that foresight in the 70s, like DNA wasn't a thing yet.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah. And oddly, they didn't have an issue with it. They were totally fine. No, no fear. Clearly, clearly not scared flyers like us. And it seems like since the pilot and the flight attendants were doing such a good job kind of maintaining this, no one was freaking out. They didn't think much of it even.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
These clues shine a light on stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard. So join us as we uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Yeah, there's a quote from one of our sources for this episode, an article called How the Hunt for D.B. Cooper Worked by Josh Clark. A little later in the article, he goes on to say, quote, They kept money pre-assembled in stacks of varying amounts to make it look like the money had been hastily gathered. In reality, each bill's serial number had been recorded and stored on microfilm.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
INFAMOUS: D.B. Cooper
Banks do this in case of armed robberies, but in this case, it worked just as well for skyjacking. Really smart on their end.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Yeah. And it was also around this time that it came to light that, again, earlier in this episode, I was saying that Marianne wasn't really feeling well towards the end of her career when she was thinking about retiring. Well, she actually went to the doctor in mid-December and she brought up the fact that she thought she might have been being poisoned. Wow.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Just days before Christmas. Mary Ann Clibbery was found brutally murdered inside her shop in a quiet Illinois town. It was a horrific scene and nothing about it made sense.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And not only how she said that to the doctor, but she also said that to her boyfriend, Gene, saying that one time she found pink stuff in the coffee that George had made for her. So Marianne actually wanted to have her coffee mug analyzed before her death, and she even told Jean that if anything happened to her, she wanted to have that looked into. She knew. She knew.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Marion's boyfriend Gene also reported that she confronted George about some of the missing money and George admitted to stealing $7,000. And she made plans to confront him about the rest of it on December 21st. So let's go back to Tuesday, December 21st. In the afternoon or early evening after the other employees had gone, Mary Ann confronted George about his embezzlement.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
The prosecution theorized that Mary Ann gave George two options. He could either pay the money back or she was going to turn him into the police.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
sometime that night that's when marianne was attacked and killed in the office and on december 22nd when george hansen was asked for his alibi he said that he got drinks with his wife and then he picked up his granddaughter from driving school and went with her to a tanning salon so that alibi was only partly true he did go to a tanning salon but it turns out he went after he committed the murder
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Set up the alibi. Yeah, absolutely. Really tried to think it through a little bit.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So around 6 p.m. on December 23rd, police followed George from his home to Crocs Pub, and they arrested him while he was sitting alone playing video poker. Loves Park detective Lori DePauw, who placed him under arrest, said he didn't say a thing. He stood up. We took him outside. He showed no emotion.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And another source reported when the defendant was placed under arrest, he told the officer that he took the hammer, gloves, sweater and threw them over the bridge in Roscoe.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And when George's SUV was searched, police found a large fishing lure and rope, kind of like he was going to go try and fish the bag off the ice and try to actually put it in the river, which was probably his original intention. But despite this, George claims he didn't murder Marianne.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Okay, Morgan, before we jump into this episode, what's been going on in your life?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Two days after Marianne Clibbery's funeral, on December 30th, a judge denies George Hansen bail after a hearing. In the petition written by the Winnebago County Deputy State's Attorney, the main evidence is that Mary Ann confronted George about stealing from the company, and he admitted it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Mary Ann said that she thought he was trying to poison her, and George admitted to police that he got rid of the weapon, purse, sweater, and gloves over the Roscoe Row Bridge. The Deputy State's Attorney also wrote that three key witnesses in the case, Mary Ann's boyfriend and two Al Zulo employees, feared for their safety. She called George's killing of Mary Ann an act of desperation.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
She also said, quote, This is a man who was interested in murdering her to eliminate her as a potential witness against him. He has information on all of the witnesses from the business. It would be a concern that he would become desperate again. And on January 28th, George pleads acquiescence. Not guilty to the murder of Marianne Clivery. Of course.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
The prosecution gave the following allegations against George. George killed Marianne because she was a potential witness against him if he were to ever be charged with embezzling money from their business. Marianne told her boyfriend that she confronted George about stealing, and he admitted to her that he did steal $7,000.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And then I thought, they're going to think I did it. That's quite the little hole. Poisoners often are repeat offenders.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Marianne went to her doctor days before her death, worried that George was trying to poison her. A plastic bag was found atop the frozen rock river containing a bloody hammer, Marianne's purse, a sweater, and a pair of gloves. The gloves and sweater have been identified by Al Zulo employees as being worn by George.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
After his arrest, George admitted to police that he took the hammer, the gloves, the sweater, and he threw them over the Roscoe Row Bridge. On January 29th, George describes his alibi in court. And a lot of the information that I'm about to share comes from the Rockford Register Star.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Yeah. Yeah, we're hanging out this weekend. We're going to a true crime podcast live show together. I know. Maybe getting some inspiration for our own. I've never seen a true crime podcast live. Oh, I have. I've been to a few. I'm really excited. No, me too. Me too. It's really fun to follow a case in real time, like with the people as they're telling it. But you've done a lot of touring yourself.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So George Hansen said on the night of December 21st, he stopped by the office to get his gloves and he saw that Mary Ann was dead on the floor. Hansen told the jury, quote, My first thought was, who would do something like this? And then I thought, they're going to think I did it. I thought, I've got to get my stuff out of here, he said.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
It was reported that he spoke calmly and succinctly throughout this entire testimony. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hansen also said that he went back to the Roscoe Row Bridge a couple of times to look for the bag, and if he found it, he would have, quote, tried to get rid of it again.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
The prosecutor argued that George wasn't that scared and confused man he claimed to be, but a calculating deceiver who murdered Clibbery with his hammer and then tried to cover up the crime. In her cross-examination, she asked him why he didn't call for help when he first found Marianne's body and why he didn't just call the police anonymously if that's what he was worried about.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Yeah, I'm curious. And she asks why, when he knew the dead body was at the office, did he let employee Randy Baxter discover it? That's quite the little hole. Right. She asked why he took the purse, which had no blood on it, along with the bloody hammer and sweater. Was it to make it look like Marianne had been robbed?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
To each question, Hansen replied that he was scared, worried, or that the thought didn't enter his mind. He maintained that an intruder must have broken into the business, killed Clibbery, and fled prior to Hansen discovering the body the night of December 21st. You took the evidence because it linked you to the crime, the deputy state attorney said. No, Hansen replied.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
I took it because the evidence is all mine.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And it wasn't me. So then on Monday, September 19th, the murder trial starts with a jury selection. The trial starts the following week.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
The prosecution said they believed George Hansen killed Marianne Clibbery with a hammer and then disposed of the murder weapon of her belongings and his bloodstained sweater and gloves and threw it off the Roscoe Road bridge with the intention of it sinking into the Rock River.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And while the defense didn't contest that Hansen tossed the bag, they said it was because he discovered Marianne's body and he was scared.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
You've done a lot of live shows. I did a few. You've done maybe the most live shows of any podcast I've ever heard of doing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So less than a year after the brutal murder of Mary Ann Clibbery, George Hansen is found guilty of the murder. The jury deliberated for less than three hours. Pretty quick. And George was brought to Winnebago County Jail on no bond. And then on October 13th of 2005, George Hansen is sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
But you were doing more research on this case, too, and you came across something else that George got tied up in that I thought was really interesting. This blew my mind.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Yeah, financially, he was just kind of doing everyone dirty. And then when things went bad, he just figured he could kill the people. You know, it's interesting. I've done a lot of poisoner cases on my show. And... Like, poison is one of the things. Like, poison is really scary. It's really hard to detect. And poisoners often are repeat offenders. They're often people who...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
poison someone once and get a total God complex over it and feel like they can just keep poisoning because a lot of times it's not detected when people go to the hospital. You have to know what to look for when you're detecting. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So I thought it was interesting that he was trying to poison her with the Ambien because he totally fits the profile of like every poisoner I've read about for the most part.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Or that she would be so out of it. Yeah. She didn't know. Or that she would die. Right. Accidental overdose. Yeah, exactly. What's interesting about Poison 2 is men... are the biggest perpetrators of poisonings. Men poison people more than women poison people, but poison is much more common amongst women who do murder, if that makes sense.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So it is a woman's weapon of choice for the most part, but ultimately- Less force. It's less force, right? You don't have to take down the person you're trying to kill. It's stealthy. Stealthier, but ultimately men do poison more than women do. Because men just commit more murder than women. Yeah, you coming at me with the little stats today. Yeah, it's really interesting.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
It's really scary too because a lot of times you don't know that you're being poisoned. And poisoners are really good at manipulating people so they can make you feel like you're crazy for feeling sick. If you're starting to think like, am I being poisoned? no, you just have been sick lately. Like you just allergies are really bad right now. Like, I don't know.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
They just come up with all these excuses.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
To think that it's not actually poison.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Or do you align with the fact that George just said he didn't do it? He just took all the stuff from the scene because it was his. I don't think that's true. I think it makes total sense that they caught him so fast. They caught him the next day.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Yeah, because the crowd's always different. You're getting different reactions. I love that. That's really fun. Super excited for this weekend. But shall we get into this case today? Yeah, let's dig into this one. So we are opening the case file for the murder of Mary Ann Clibbery.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Marianne Cleary was deeply loved and she showed up for the people around her. That's how her friends, family and community members remember her. That's how we'll remember her, too. And I also think it was just awesome that she saw something was going on at work. It was wrong, even though she had been partners with this guy for so long. She was still no nonsense.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
She knew what was right and she was going to follow through with that 100 percent. And I just I think that's awesome.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
At Crime House, we value your support. Share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review, and follow Clues, which helps others discover the show. And if you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Okay, we'll be back next week with another new case on Clues. Bye, guys. Bye.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004, Mary Ann was found dead in Loves Park, Illinois, a suburb of Rockford, at Al Zulo Remodeling Specialists.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So before we really jump into this case, just a quick reminder. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see some photos that are going to help you visualize a couple different elements in this case. But if you're just listening, you can find the same photos on our social media. And that's at Clues Podcast on Instagram.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So in late November or early December of 2004, Marianne Clibbery decided that she was almost ready to retire. She was experiencing some health issues. Some people said like sleepiness and sickness at work. This was usually after drinking or eating. And we also know, though, that Marianne like absolutely loved this company she worked at.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
She would send out Christmas cards to a lot of the suppliers who worked with Al Zulo's every holiday season. She like went above and beyond with everything. But then on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004, at 730 in the morning, Marianne Clibbery's body was found by Marianne's business partner, George Hansen, and another Al Zulo's employee named Randy Baxter.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
She was laying in the back hallway of the showroom, and she had been beaten with at least three severe blows to the back of her head. The office was completely sprayed in her blood, and her purse was taken and some of the drawers around her were rummaged through. But nothing else of value was really taken from the crime scene.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And these aren't just ordinary cases. They're complex puzzles where forensic science, investigative techniques and sheer grit collide in order to uncover the truth and deliver justice. I'm Kayla Moore, and I'll be piecing together the timelines and bringing the history to break down the facts of these cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So presumably George and Randy called the police right away because a few minutes before 8 a.m., George calls Marianne's boyfriend, Gene, and he tells him that Marianne is dead and there's blood everywhere and that the cops had arrived. An autopsy would go on to determine that Marianne did die from the head injuries as a result of a beating or a bludgeoning.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And the coroner estimated that her body was actually dead in the office overnight. And unsure if this was really a robbery, like you were saying, authorities wondered if an Al Zulo employee or customer could have committed the crime. And it seems like whoever did this would have been somewhat familiar with the office.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Right, and want to interact with law enforcement and be a part of the investigation. Yes. Be helpful. Right.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Each week on Clues, we'll explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, like a microscopic fiber, a partial fingerprint, or even a single strand of hair, could lead to groundbreaking discoveries. and might even bring long awaited justice. These clues shine a light on the stories that have been waiting sometimes for decades to finally be heard.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Yeah, so it made sense that all of their DNA was on it. It's not really something that really tipped the police off as to what happened. Exactly.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Yeah, so of course there's no fingerprints that were found on the actual murder weapon, which would have been the thing that basically told police who did it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
The idea of committing a crime using your car when you have vanity plates. Vanity plates. It's audacious. Come on, George. So based on all of this evidence, the police started to suspect George. And it gets worse when Marianne's boyfriend, Gene, comes forward with some more information.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
He admits that Mary Ann had confessed to him before she died that George was involved in the disappearance of money from the company and that she actually feared for her safety.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
So join us as we uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And none of that necessarily points to why George would have wanted Marianne Clibbery dead. But remember how earlier I did say something about Marianne had recently sent out Christmas cards to a lot of the suppliers that worked with Al Zulo? Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
Well, according to Marianne's boyfriend, Gene Sundin, a couple of those suppliers actually sent the cards back to Mary and they included angry notes with them. And these notes all said that they hadn't been paid. And when Marian gets those notes back, she's completely surprised. Blindsided. Absolutely blindsided because she's the CFO of the company. So she does what any CFO would do.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
MURDERED: Mary Ann Clibbery
And she starts looking through the company's internal records because what do you mean none of these suppliers have been paid? And the records show that the payments had been made. But she got enough like independent letters back to her that clearly they hadn't. So something was still very much not adding up.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It's like a target. It's like when you're aiming on a gun. That's exactly what it looks like. That crosshair.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Well, here's the thing. We talked about this with Golden State Killer, too. Like, the serial killers are paying attention. Yes. They're reading the news. They're reading, like, what the cops are saying. And they are responding to those threats and those insults. Like, it's not really someone you want to taunt.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Today, we're talking about one of the most mysterious killers in history, the Zodiac Killer. In the late 60s and early 70s, he terrified people all over the San Francisco Bay Area with a string of brutal murders. He struck without warning, he taunted the police with cryptic letters, strange symbols, and chilling promises, and then he vanished. Was the Zodiac a criminal mastermind?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
That is just so wild to me. Like that part of the story always gets me that it was not the government that was able to crack this. It was no military that could crack this. It was a history teacher and his wife.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
How did the government not try to hire her after that is what I'm wondering.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah, there's two things that are interesting about this cipher. Also, the first thing being that like when the cops asked the couple how they solved it, they were like, oh, each symbol corresponds to a letter, which doesn't feel that hard. But I don't understand how NSA was not able to crack that. But anyway. Outside of that.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So there's this indecipherable gibberish at the bottom, but everything else spells out something. There's like this line and they don't know if you rearrange the letters, if it'll spell something out. But they kind of start getting a sense that it might be his name or like a clue as to who this person is.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So they kind of keep it in their back pocket, but they're not able to make sense of this gibberish.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
The clock is ticking at this point.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
They're just telling him to use USPS.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Or was he just a deluded narcissist hiding behind ciphers and shadows? Spoiler, I think it was the latter.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah, this did not slow him down at all. If anything, I feel like the fact that it took so long to decipher the cipher kind of like juiced him up and made him feel like he was invincible. Because on September 27th, 1969, Cecilia Ann Shepard and her friend Brian Hartnell were hanging out at Lake Berryessa. It's this really beautiful spot in Napa Valley. It's 35 miles north of Vallejo.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And the two of them had recently finished their second year of university at Pacific Union College. But Cecilia decided to transfer somewhere else, so they were having basically a final goodbye. Brian suggested that they go have a picnic at Lake Berryessa. They get there around 4 p.m. They find this really perfect spot. It's like on this little peninsula that juts out into the water.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Water's all around them. And it's really quiet, but it's also close to their car. Like, they're not very far from the road. They hang out there for a couple hours. They don't really see anyone else. It's kind of just them. But then as they're talking, Cecilia notices someone in the distance, a guy. He's heavyset. He's stocky. She can tell he has brown hair.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And she ends up saying something to Brian about it because it kind of freaks her out. But Brian is looking at her. The guy is behind him. He just brushes her off. I mean, a lot of people come to this area. It's gorgeous. But then she's watching the guy because she's nervous and he dips behind a tree. And she tells Brian that she's like, well, he just went and he's hiding behind a tree now.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And Brian's like, no, that confirmed what I thought. It's probably someone looking for a bathroom. There's no bathrooms here. He's probably just taking a leak behind the tree. And then all of a sudden, Cecilia's eyes go really wide and she starts full on panicking because when the man steps out from behind the tree, as he's approaching them, he takes a hood and covers his face.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It's this black executioner style hood. And it sort of has this bib on the bottom of it that has a symbol and it's a circle with crosshairs through it. Also, Cecilia shouts, he's got a gun. The man approaches the couple and he tells Brian and Cecilia that he's a criminal on the run and he needs to use their car to get to Mexico.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
They start cooperating, hoping that he's just going to take their money and their keys and then totally be on his way. And Brian at this time is actually really chatty with the man. He's trying to stay calm. He's also trying to see if he can help the man in any way. He tells the man that he has no money, but he's actually a pre-law student. So maybe there's something he can do.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
If you're a criminal on the run, maybe there's something I can do for you. I can help you get to Mexico. He also asks this masked figure if there's bullets in his gun because he had heard that most criminals don't actually load their weapons. And he was curious. And the man opens the gun and shows that like it is fully loaded. He's not messing around. Wow. And at this point,
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
The stranger tells the couple that he's going to tie them up and they let him because really what else can they do at this point? Brian had heard that when you're being robbed, you shouldn't resist or things could get a lot worse. And he doesn't want himself or Cecilia to get hurt. And Brian even said that at that point.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
The thing he was the most scared of in that moment was the fact that if they got tied up, they might be left there overnight and it would be pretty cold. But then, when they're not expecting it at all, the man pulls out a knife after they've been tied up and are left on the ground, and he starts stabbing the couple repeatedly. And then he heads back towards the cars and he drives away.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But after this happens, Brian and Cecilia are still alive. They did not die from their wounds immediately. And luckily... Kind of by chance, this man is fishing out on the lake and he hears them moaning in agony. Brian was actually strong enough to get up and stand on the shore to like call out to see if there's any boats. This man sees him and he actually goes away in his boat.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
He keeps going past Brian. So Brian thinks like, oh, my God, we're cooked. Like there's that's all I have strength for really. Turns out the guy was going to get a phone so that he could call 911. Not that long later, a park ranger comes and is able to help them. Thank God.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And I'm not sure if any of you have seen the movie Zodiac by David Fincher, but Brian would later on in an interview say that the scene in the movie of the stabbing is exactly how it happened. He said that he couldn't script it better himself. Like that movie does not exaggerate any parts of the murders.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So if you are interested in seeing exactly how it went down, you can watch that scene in the movie because it's like pretty much an identical recreation of it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I mean, the first time I watched it, I had to turn it off. That is one of the most stressful scenes in a movie I've ever watched. I cannot imagine living through that and then also rewatching the movie, which is what he did.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It's the middle of the day. You would never expect it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Eerie. Yeah, it's wild. And as first responders get to the scene and they start helping Brian and Cecilia, the Napa police actually get a phone call from the Zodiac Killer. He says that he wants to report a murder. No, he says, a double murder. And he gives Brian and Cecilia's location, plus the model of their car, so there's no doubt that this is legit.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Once again, he's giving the police details that only the killer would know. It is definitely him. But after he admits to the attack... He just goes quiet. And the cop that's listening to the phone call can actually hear that the phone was dropped and whoever was on the phone just walked away.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And it gives them this idea that maybe they can trace this phone call because somewhere in Napa, there's got to be a payphone telephone that is off the hook. So a journalist who actually was listening to the police scanner heard that on the scanner and is like, I'm out. I can try to go find this phone. And he just starts driving around looking at all of the pay phones. Oh, my God.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And he finally finds one. And he's walking up to it shouting, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Because the police were still on the phone. And that's how they figured out which pay phone the Zodiac was calling from. I didn't hear that. Wow. Yeah. But again, they get there and he's long gone. It helped them identify. Again, he was at a payphone really close by, but he's totally gone. Wow.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah, because I would think, OK, a palm print on a payphone. I mean, 100 people probably used it a day. All the time. So how would we know if it's really his? Still wet. It was wet. Interesting.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
All the little botched bits.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So it was all the dates of the murders that had happened. All the dates. And then his symbol. That's so horrifying.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah. These are mine. These are mine. These are mine. Laying claim over them. And so I want to point out another element that kind of is making this guy so mysterious at this point. So we've kind of talked about this before with Golden State Killer, but serial killers tend to have a consistent killing method. Strangulation, shooting, poisoning.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
What did you know about this case before diving into today? So this is one that I've always been interested in. I hadn't done a deep dive like we did to prepare for this episode. But growing up, I mean, Zodiac was one of my favorite movies. So I had just really known about the case through that film. I don't know.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Coming into your house and eating your food and killing the couple in a bed, which is kind of what the Golden State Killer was doing. But the Zodiac is killing people now in different ways. David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen. It was a rifle. Darlene Farrin, Mike Mageau. It was a point blank pistol with different ammo. He knew that the ammos were different. And now he had stabbed people.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
That's interesting that they're able to do it that way because they can, yeah, see how heavy the person was to imprint that deep into the dirt. Science. Wow. Science.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So before we dive into the next part of the story, I want to point out. An element that is making the Zodiac Killer really mysterious to police. It's something that's like making it increasingly difficult to solve this case. And that's the fact that typically serial killers will have a consistent killing method. We talked about this with Golden State Killer.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
You knew when it was a Golden State crime. He was very similar in the way that he was addressing all these crime scenes. Yeah, that M.O. Yeah, sometimes it's strangulation, shooting, poisoning. But in each instance, Zodiac is doing these murders in different ways. So the first one, David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, that person, the Zodiac used a rifle. The attack on Darlene and Mike...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It was point blank pistol shots. And then it was a stabbing with Cecilia and Brian. He stabbed the people on the beach. But one thing that is similar about all of these cases is that they're couples. The police at least have that to go off of. Like maybe he does have an M.O. Maybe that's part of his psyche, right?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Like he doesn't like couples or something about people in love that really offends him. But the next time he commits a crime, he doesn't go for a couple. On the night of October 11th, 1969, a guy named Paul Stein was driving a cab around San Francisco. He's a 29-year-old student working towards his Ph.D. at San Francisco State.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So he spends his nights and weekends driving a cab, just trying to make a little extra money. And that evening, Paul's in the city's theater district, and he's just picking up people as they get out of shows. But at 9.40 p.m., he gets a call from dispatch. Someone else needs a ride. And on his way to the pickup spot, he gets stuck in a little bit of traffic.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And while his cab is stopped, there's actually a man that approaches him and asks for a lift. Paul figures might as well, especially this is probably just going to be a quick ride. I can get it. Maybe go grab the other person. But the man has Paul stop on a quiet street before they reach his destination between a couple of trees.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And then the man pulls out a gun and without any warning, he shoots Paul in the head and kills him instantly. But as this is happening, there's actually a group of teenagers in the house across the street and they happen to be peering out of the window at this exact moment and they watch all of this happen. They call the police.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
They describe the suspect over the phone as a large white male wearing a dark jacket. something gets crossed along the way. There's a wire that gets crossed at some point. And when the officer taking the report puts out the call, he actually tells them to look out for a black man. Within two minutes, a pair of officers arrive on the scene. Mark it, it's botched.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And wait till you hear this, because within two minutes, these officers arrive in the area. Two officers get to the scene. They see a husky white male walking away from them. Kind Kind of in like a dark area because where the murder took place, there's actually streetlights everywhere.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But walking away from the crime scene, they see in the shadows, there's this husky white guy and they actually stop him and they talk to him. They want to know if this guy's seen anything suspicious. They have no idea that they are almost certainly face to face with the Zodiac Killer. Also, at this point, this is a huge story in California. I mean, think about it.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Like, the ciphers had been in the papers. People are starting to lock their doors at night. People are terrified of the Zodiac. These cops probably came into contact with him and let him go. By the time the correct description goes out, that it was a husky white guy, it's not a black guy that they're looking for, that man is gone without a trace. They have no idea which direction he went.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So shortly after that happens, San Francisco homicide detective Dave Tosky and his partner Bill Armstrong, they arrive on the scene. And they assume immediately that this is probably a cab robbery gone wrong. I mean, everything about the crime scene kind of points to that. And as they look at the crime scene, they see that the victim's wallet and keys are missing.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
beyond ready to get into this because i am just we've got our botched board here and i am ready to make some tally marks and get into the details of this totally i think this is a case where everyone has heard of the zodiac killer i would say he's probably like a household name but getting deep into the research for this episode there are so many misconceptions about this case
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But when forensic experts from the crime lab get there a few minutes later... they actually find some very strange things about the scene that suggest otherwise.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
No, no. Like trying to find fingerprints that match and going through thousands of...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah, I'd always seen that it was a palm print and that the Zodiac said either on the phone or in a letter that he always wore gloves or like a finger cover. Yeah, finger cap.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I mean, reddish blonde is not so far from light brown.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So that's what he was doing in the front seat over the victim.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And there's so many conspiracies that I didn't realize. I took the movie as like, oh, this is how the case happened. It gets some incredible details accurate. And then there's a lot that's inaccurate about that movie as well. So there's just so much that I learned. I'm excited to kind of break that down for everyone listening. We're going to get deep into...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And he keeps changing his M.O. Unpredictable. So who's to say that he won't go after children?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So thankfully, the Zodiac doesn't follow through on that threat. But a couple weeks later, on November 10th, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle receives two more letters from him. And there are some interesting developments. The first letter is accompanied by a brand new cipher. This one has 340 characters and it becomes known as the 340 cipher.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It is a lot harder to solve to the point where no one can crack it. It's absolutely not getting solved. And it's not like the last time where two people reading the newspaper, two hobbyist ciphercrackers figure it out. This one actually took 51 years to solve, and it was only recently cracked in 2020. And it took a computer program to do it. It was these like...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
amateur code breakers again, but they were plugging it into the computer, this like computer program to solve it. It was these people named David Orenchak, who is a software developer in Virginia, Jarl van Eck, who's a Belgian computer programmer, and Sam Blake, who's an Australian mathematician.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Even when this is solved, it really doesn't offer much useful information that would have helped the investigation. It's just another, like, taunting letter. I just want to say, too, I want to make a note here on the cipher. When they solved the cipher... They realized that it was not hard to solve because this guy was a genius mastermind.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
No, he did the cipher wrong and he spelled a lot of words incorrectly. So even as they were trying to make the cipher work, they were like, well, paradise is spelled wrong. So like he would spell things like P-A-R-A-D-I-C-E. And he also just like wouldn't follow that. He would start a pattern and he didn't finish the pattern. He would like change it. So.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Some people are like, oh, my God, it took 51 years to solve a cipher. Yeah. If anyone just like invents a random cipher, it's going to take forever to crack. So just wanted to make a note of that. It has nothing to do with his like genius. No, it's just the fact that it's nonsensical. Yes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But it's actually the second letter that he sends that gets a lot of people talking because in that the Zodiac claimed that he had killed seven people so far. However. Police only knew of five confirmed victims. Remember, it was David and Betty Lou, Darlene and Cecilia, and Paul Stein. It's possible that the Zodiac was counting Brian and Mike. Remember the two guys that survived the attacks?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
some of the misconceptions about the case. I'm ready. Should we dive in? Yeah, let's dive in with our, what are we saying, Clusers? Our Cluminati?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Maybe he didn't know their status at that point, so he was counting them as seven. But the police... start to worry that maybe there's actually more people out there. And so they start looking into this unsolved case from August of 1969 when these two teenage girls were stabbed to death. That would mean the Zodiac Killer murdered in July, August, September, and October of that year.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
However, they are able to quickly rule out that it was not him that did that crime. The case would go on to be solved a couple of years later. Also, He he liked to claim his kills like he liked to tell the police exactly which ones were his. So because he hadn't done that, maybe they also started thinking he wasn't responsible for that one.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Ultimately, the consensus at the time seems to be that the Zodiac started taking credit for more kills to make himself seem more intimidating. I could see it. And there's also something else to these letters that we haven't really talked about yet. And that's that the Zodiac says he's not going to take credit for any more murders.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
He says that he's going to make them seem like robberies gone wrong, accidents, basically random killings like he did with Paul Stein. Crimes that nobody would know if it were him if he didn't admit to doing so. Maybe he was a little bit worried that he was getting close to being caught. I mean...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
The Zodiac admits in one letter that he spoke face to face with two police officers after killing Paul Stein. But there's definitely reason to still be worried about him because the Zodiac claims in those letters as well that he's now built a massive bomb. He even describes for police how he made it. Obviously, the police have to take that threat seriously as well.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But for the next month and a half, he's pretty quiet. He's not contacting police the amount that he was before. It's possible that the Zodiac was true to his word and any other crimes he committed, he disguised so that the police wouldn't know it was him. So they looked totally random. But police eventually do get another letter and that hints at something else.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And they start to think that maybe he was looking for a way out. The Zodiac wrote this letter on December 20th, 1970, the one year anniversary of when he murdered David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. And instead of sending it to a newspaper, he mails it to a lawyer named Melvin Belly. The way the story goes is Melvin received a call one day.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
He was actually out on vacation, but his housekeeper picked up and it was the Zodiac Killer talking about how it was his birthday and he had to kill again because it was his birthday. And this call came in like December or January. But that call was if you watch the Zodiac movie, too, like there's a lot of emphasis that's placed on that call happening, that it must have been the Zodiac.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And we must know his birthday now because that's when he called and he said it was his birthday. That call was traced to a mental institution. That call was not from the Zodiac. Wow. Yeah. So you can disregard that when it comes to like, oh, do we have his birthday? But Melvin does get a letter from the Zodiac. And this letter is strange because it has a little bit of a different tone.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Melvin actually was pretty vocal about wanting to represent him if he ever turned himself in. And so when he gets this letter, the Zodiac is not bragging about murders like he was doing in every other letter. He's actually asking for Melvin's help. He says that he's struggling to keep his compulsions in check and he's afraid that he's going to lose control. And Melvin is willing to engage in this.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So he reaches out to the Zodiac through the press, basically telling him like, hey, name the time and the place and I'll be there. But the Zodiac doesn't take Melvin up on this. Instead, he goes quiet again. And then three months later, he resurfaces. And again, it's kind of in this different way.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
On March 22nd, 1970, he reportedly kidnaps a 22-year-old woman named Kathleen Johns and her 10-month-old daughter. Kathleen, who was seven months pregnant at the time, was making a 500-mile road trip to a Bay Area city called Petaluma. And she's going there to visit her sick mother.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Around midnight, Kathleen was driving down a quiet two lane highway when a driver kind of pulls up behind her and starts flashing his lights at her. He pulls up in his light colored sedan next to her and yells that her right rear wheel is wobbling. Kathleen has young kids in the car. She's pregnant. So she's like, oh, OK, like, let me pull over.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
The man parks behind her and he offers to help fix her tire. She's kind of weirded out, but also like that's a very nice thing to do. So she's like, thank you. Let's him do it. Kathleen gets back in her car and she pulls off of the side of the road back onto the freeway. And as she does so, her car starts immediately wobbling. And next thing she knows, the entire wheel pops off of the car.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So clearly this man was not trying to fix the car. He was probably unscrewing the wheel from the vehicle. Yeah, he created the problem entirely. And Kathleen doesn't necessarily think that this is suspicious, though. They both pull over again and he's like, oh, looks like it was worse than I thought it was. Let me take you to a gas station up the road. And so she agrees.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
She also has no other option. What is she going to do? It's a middle of the night. She's just on this like empty road. And she's got a little one and seven months pregnant. Yeah. So she takes her daughter out of the car. She ends up climbing into his passenger seat and she just puts her baby on her lap and they're driving. They're like, not really chit chatting. He's got this weird aura about him.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And Kathleen watches through her window as they drive straight past a gas station. He doesn't even attempt to stop. For the next several hours, this man just drives them around aimlessly. He doesn't really say much to her other than how he's going to kill her and her daughter. At one point, the abductor goes a wrong way onto a highway ramp.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And that's when Kathleen really sees an opportunity to try and escape. He ends up stopping the car so that he can back up and get onto the freeway again. And she jumps out with her daughter. She ends up hiding in a nearby vineyard. She says that the guy climbs out of the car and starts looking for her with a big flashlight.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But he eventually runs away when a passing truck stops and is trying to figure out what's going on. The trucker then helps Kathleen flag down a female motorist because she tells him she's not getting back in the car with a man. She just is like so freaked out at this point. And this woman that they flagged down ends up taking Kathleen to a police station in a small town called Patterson.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
she starts telling the police officer on duty what happened and she sees a wanted poster on the wall and she starts screaming that's him that's him the officer turns around trying to figure out who she's talking about and it's a drawing of the zodiac killer because remember it's a huge story like every police station had a picture of him in the in their office yeah it's plastered
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
All right. And before we do, just a quick reminder for anyone who's watching this episode on YouTube, you're going to see some photos that will help you visualize a couple different elements of the case. But if you're listening, don't worry, you're going to be able to see those same elements on our social media. That's at Clues Podcast on Instagram. And just follow us there anyways.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
everywhere placard everywhere and she sees it and she's like that's the guy officers rush out to where she says she left her car it's somewhere along highway 132 about an hour and a half away they're trying to see if there's any other evidence in the area and get this they find her car burnt to a crisp Someone had like covered it in gasoline and set it on fire.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
They start wondering if the Zodiac went back to the car to get rid of it and make sure that there was no trace of evidence. Because, I mean, remember, there was a palm print found on Paul Stein's car. Yeah. Maybe he was paranoid that he left a fingerprint behind and he was like, let me just torch the whole thing. Not taking any chances anymore. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah, we're always in the comments. We're chit-chatting about stuff. We're chatty. We're responding back to you guys. Let's start by setting the scene a little bit. So it's the winter of 1968 up north in Vallejo, California. Doesn't really snow, but it gets really cold there still. It's a city in the Bay Area, about an hour's drive north of California. And it's a really quiet community.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But we know he was taking credit for a lot of stuff that he maybe didn't do.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Right, because normally he has all this information that only the killer would know. But in this one, he doesn't really offer any of that information that only he would know.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I read that he called him a latent homosexual because he talked to a criminologist that said the way the Zodiac held the knife at the Lake Berryessa stabbing was indicative he was struggling with his manhood. OK. And Paul Avery, who was kind of known of like wanting to sell newspapers, just kind of writing the most salacious story so he could sell newspapers, was like print it, send it out.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And then also after this happened, when the Zodiac wrote a letter basically threatening Paul Avery, reporters around San Francisco started wearing pins that said, I am not Paul Avery in case they were out and the Zodiac saw them so that he would know. And Paul Avery started wearing those buttons as well.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I know. Yeah, you can't taunt these people.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It's a great place for people looking to raise families. It's a safe environment. I think in the 1960s, there was something like one homicide every seven years, like a really safe place to the point where people would look at you weird if you said you locked your doors at night. Like you don't need to. But on December 20th, everyone in the areas and holiday spirit.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So the victim that reporter Paul Avery is looking into was named Sherry Jo Bates. She was an 18-year-old Riverside City College student who had been killed in 1966. She was popular. She was really pretty. She had these striking blue eyes and blonde hair. And her dream was to be an airline stewardess, which we talked about back in the day.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
You had to be very beautiful and very single to be a stewardess. On the afternoon of October 30th, 1966, Sherry goes to the library to study. She gets there around 6 p.m., but she never makes it home that night. And the next morning, she's actually found dead in an alleyway near the library, less than 100 feet from her car. She had been viciously beaten and then stabbed to death.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But Sherry fought back, which gave investigators this crucial evidence to examine because they discovered skin and hair were underneath her fingernails. And forensics revealed that to belong to a brown-haired white man. There were also footprints in the area. They were between the sizes of 8 and 10, and they were from a military-grade shoe.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Nobody in the area saw this crime happen firsthand, but a few witnesses believed they heard a woman scream sometime between 1015 and 1030 the night before. But even though the police talked to 75 people in the area within 24 hours of Sherry's murder, they just cannot find a good suspect.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
However, a month after Sherry's murder, the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper and the police department get something Really interesting. A letter. And here's some excerpts from that letter. He says, She was young and beautiful, but now she's battered and dead. She is not the first. She will not be the last. I am not sick. I am insane. But that will not stop the game.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And one thing that's interesting here is he refers to it as the game. And in the first cipher, he referred to humans as the most dangerous animal. That's actually a reference to the most dangerous game, the book. And that kind of became a clue to that whoever was doing this was referencing that specific piece of literature. He sends a letter and he also refers to it as a game.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And that really gets police starting to think that maybe this is related to the Zodiac. It's eerily similar. Yeah. Paul Avery looks into this and he decides it sounds a heck of a lot like the Zodiac Killer. So on November 15th, 1970, Avery, in true Avery fashion, he writes a big story about it. Again, he... was kind of known to, like, want to sell newspapers.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So basically every update that was coming in about the Zodiac he was writing a big paper on, but he really believed that he had found a connection. He doesn't really contact the police about this, though, which is interesting. He just goes straight into writing the story. He was doing his own investigative work. It...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
in some ways kind of botches the investigation because you can mark this as another tally because it's there's just not a lot of cross-referencing going on and that's always been a problem in this case right is like reporters and police and different precincts not talking to each other that and you are giving away your cards yeah you have this info you might have this connection you might have this evidence that could lead you to someone and you're telling him wide out in the open
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And there's a Christmas concert that night. There's a 17-year-old boy named David Faraday, and he's really excited for it because he's going to ask his crush, 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen, out on a date. And David is a great kid. I mean, he's literally a Boy Scout.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And this is someone who loves to take credit for murders. So he writes this paper and there's no reaction from the Zodiac Killer, at least not immediately. But five months later, on March 13th, 1971, he sends a letter to the L.A. Times. In this letter, he takes credit for what he calls his, quote, Riverside activity.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But similar to the case of Kathleen getting into the car with him, he doesn't have any information that was not published in the newspapers. He doesn't have anything that only the killer would know. And so it's still kind of up in the air as to if that was one that he actually committed or if it's just one that he wanted to take credit for to kind of add to his this like demented ego he had.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So in July of 1971... It's not that the case is going cold, but there's just like not any leads to follow on who this guy could be. But this guy named Don Cheney actually contacts the police in Torrance, California, which is just south of L.A. And he wants to talk to them about the Zodiac Killer. So the police go and they meet him in person and he tells them he's pretty sure he knows who it is.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And that's how we finally get a name in this investigation. He says the man's name. is Arthur Lee Allen.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And so Betty's parents are totally comfortable letting her go to this event with him as long, this is what they say, she just has to be back home by 11 p.m. Totally normal curfew. Yeah, reasonable. So David has really big plans for this date. He's going to give Betty his class ring. Back in the 60s, that was a huge deal. It basically says, I want to go steady with you.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So the cops start thinking that Don is on to something. And detectives down in Southern California pass the word on to Dave Toski and Bill Armstrong, the San Francisco homicide detectives who've been investigating Zodiac since the Paul Stein murder. They agree that Arthur Lee Allen is definitely worth looking into. Turns out he's working as a chemist at an oil refinery in the Bay Area.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Didn't end up being a private investigator. So they get in touch with an officer in the Vallejo Police Department named Jack Mullinax, and he's been working on the Zodiac case, too. Mullinax decides to look Arthur up. Turns out he matches the Zodiac's physical descriptions as well. But he's a bit taller. He's around six foot rather than five eight.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But remember, that's how tall Cecilia Shepard estimated him to be. He's also around 230 to 240 pounds, which is slightly heavier than people estimated him to be. But he's a white male with light brown hair and brown eyes. He's 37 years old. Most people estimated that the Zodiac was around 40. He's definitely close enough to warrant a further investigation.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So on August 4th, 1971, Toski, Armstrong, and Mullinax decide to drop in on Arthur at work. And as soon as they're face to face with Arthur, the detectives are shocked because he looks exactly like how they imagined Zodiac would look. And they get to talking. Arthur ends up telling them that he's already been questioned as a potential suspect in the Zodiac cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And it was after the attack on Cecilia Shepard and Brian Hartnell at Lake Berryessa on September 27th, 1969. At that time, he kind of slipped through the cracks because it seemed like he had a pretty solid alibi. He said that he liked to go skin diving. Basically, it's scuba diving without an air tank.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
That's the cutest thing I've ever heard. I know. But it turns out that the Christmas concert was just a cover for this date. The two of them had totally different plans. They were going to go do something a little bit steamier. And instead of going to the concert, David actually drives them to this popular lover's lane in the area where they can get a little bit of privacy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And he was at a place called Salt Point State Park that day, which is 90 miles from Lake Berryessa. So he's like, that couldn't have been me. I was too far away. Plus, he said that he had talked to his neighbor when he got home, which was around 4 p.m. before the murder had taken place. However... Even before the police ask, Arthur says, well, that neighbor's dead, so you can't talk to them.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
They died actually get this a week after the murder took place. Of course they did. And there's no way at this point to verify that alibi. Also, like I mentioned, he's kind of like giving up all this information without the police really asking him. So there's...
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
kind of sitting in silence, and Arthur goes, oh, also, I had some bloody knives on me in the car that day, and they were from a chicken that I had killed. No.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
You can mark it as botched.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Well, get this, because Arthur also admits to being in Riverside in 1966, which is when Sherry Jo Bates was killed. And as they're interviewing him, they notice that he's also wearing that Zodiac brand watch that Don Cheney mentioned. A watch that is... kind of famously used for skin diving.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Like when I went on the Zodiac website to look at their watches, they literally have a watch called the Skin Diver. And this is all very suspicious, but it's not enough to make an arrest. It might just be a ton of coincidences. But now they're able to look into him a little bit more, that they're revisiting him as a suspect.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So over the next year, they decide they're going to still follow a couple other leads. Like there's just not really enough on Arthur to arrest him, even though they do want to follow that lead a little bit further. They end up looking into 100 other suspects. And even though all of these other people's names come up, like really no one is has enough going for them that like it's definitely them.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And then in September of 1972, which is over a year after they talked to Arthur at the refinery, his name comes back up because, get this, his own brother, Ron, asks the investigators to look into him some more. And that's kind of all the prodding that the police need. Like, at this point, you have so many people who are close to this person calling and being like, you have to look into them more.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Like, this is getting too weird. Close friend and now brother. And now brother. Brother. So on September 14th, they finally get a warrant to search Arthur's trailer where he's currently living in Santa Rosa. When the police arrive, the property manager actually says that they just missed him. But still, they're able to get into the trailer and they look around.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And they find a lot of disturbing stuff in this trailer. There's dissected squirrels and other dead animals in the freezer, which actually he was going to school for biology at the time. And he did have permission from the state to dissect animals. And so they found that permission. I didn't realize you... Need permission?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And we know that that's where they chose to go because there's a sighting of the couple there. Sometime between 10.15 and 10.30 p.m., another car drives by and they see David inside the station wagon with Betty.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It's actually a good thing that you need permission to dissect animals, actually.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah. Also in this trailer, there's a collection of sadomasochistic pornography. But this is still not enough clues that incriminate him, basically. And it's frustrating for the investigators. After about 45 minutes of searching, they still don't really have enough to get him on anything. Arthur comes home. They take his fingerprints.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
They have him do a handwriting sample, too, because they have all of these letters that the Zodiac wrote. So they have all these handwriting samples that they can compare to. But it's not a match. Like nothing he gives them is a match with anything collected from the crime scenes or the letters. So they leave without making an arrest.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Also, after he gave the handwriting sample, the police checked in with either his brother or friend. I can't remember who. And they were like, yeah, sorry. We looked into him. The handwriting didn't match. And they go, well, you know, he's ambidextrous, right? Exactly.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And then around 11 p.m., kind of the time that they're supposed to be home anyways, another driver drives by and they see that Betty's inside the car leaning her head against David's shoulder. Seems like it's going well, the date. But then about 10 minutes later, another woman drives past the car. And there's not many cars in the area. It's getting late. She's probably going home at that point.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
They did. And it also didn't match.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah. One thing to mention too is he was fired from multiple jobs for being inappropriate with young girls. Yeah. And maybe because it was the 70s. I really don't know. But the times he was fired from jobs, they never filed police reports. They quietly fired him. They thought he just had a problem. And no one thought to contact the police to let them know, like, this man is a threat.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I will say here, the police have basically said all of the suspects they had are bad. But Arthur Lee Allen is the least bad of all the suspects, which is why that's the one that we chose to cover today. There's other suspects we could get into, but the more research I did, there's just not really enough that connects anyone to these crimes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
You know, there's a theory. Someone said that this is on a Generation Y podcast where they interviewed someone who said for some of the murders that the Zodiac claimed to have done, police were actually looking into other suspects. But once they heard that the Zodiac Killer, you know, the letters were coming in and the ciphers, they stopped pursuing the suspects that they thought.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And they just started trying to link it to the Zodiac because it was a huge story. And remember, they're trying to sell papers. It's really becoming this big sensationalized thing in a way that it didn't need to become. And that's just some people think it was like making police want it to be the Zodiac or something.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So there's one theory I read that he maybe only did one or two of the crimes and then just took credit for a bunch of the other ones, because at the end of the day, he took credit for 37 murders.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
A bunch of the kids also had curfews, so they're gone. But this woman drives by and she sees David's station wagon is still there, except this time her headlights come around the corner, shine on the car, and there's two bodies on the ground. And there's blood everywhere. So she doesn't even stop. She floors it and she gets back into town and she flags down a patrol car around 11, 19 p.m.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And we have maybe five that he really did.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
He was so I don't want to say needy, but he contacted the papers and the reporters so much to the point where they had to stop publishing the letters because it was just becoming too much. And there are still two ciphers out there that have not been decoded. Hey, so one of you in the Cluminati know what it takes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And these aren't just ordinary cases. They're complex puzzles where forensic science, investigative techniques, and sheer grit collide in order to uncover the truth and deliver justice. I'm Kaylin Moore, and I'll be digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files released for these cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah, literally. Cluminati, feed that into chat GPT and tell me if you get a hit. Because there has to be some way to solve this at this point. There's too much AI out there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Okay. Please. After all this time, decades have gone by, it's still unsolved. We're not really any closer to solving this than we had been at the time that these murders were happening. Except... In 2002, there was this new piece of evidence that offered a real chance to ID the Zodiac. And that kind of brings us to the last clue, if you want to get into that. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Negative. So it's been pointed out that the DNA sample wasn't really a complete profile. You know, a bunch of people had touched that letter. Maybe it came from someone else. Yeah. They weren't even 100% sure that it was the
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Zodiac's DNA but even with that Arthur Lee Allen was ruled out as a suspect the police never came close to anyone else Arthur was really the only person ever publicly named as a suspect in the Zodiac killings Over the years, they looked into 2,500 people. They were even considering like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, the Unabomber.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Like they were just trying to link it to anyone or just see if any of these people could be suspects. There was also a lot of average people they were looking into as well, people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. of other murders, people who bore a resemblance to the description of the Zodiac Killer. Again, overweight white guy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Like there's so many people that just like fall into that category. And none of those went anywhere. There was no one that even came close that had any connections to any of these crimes.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Well, it really seems like the subreddit is kind of in the boat that I'm in, which is kind of the boat that that guy that runs the Zodiac website that like collects all the information, like everything is there. Like he also feels this way, too, which is there like there's really no suspects.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
If you feel like you know who did this, even if you think it's Arthur Lee Allen, you're probably wrong that he's just not a good of enough suspect. Yeah. And that's what I believe. Yeah. I don't necessarily think it was him.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah unfortunately it doesn't really look like the Zodiac actually revealed his identity from the ciphers. People have tried to look for hidden messages in them. They haven't really found anything. Like I said, there are two that are unsolved until the Cluminati gets on that. But like his name could be in either of those. We just don't know at this point.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So it's pretty fast that she's able to find a cop. Officers get to the scene immediately. And by the time they get there, the scene is horrible. There's two teenagers on the ground soaked in blood. David has blood all over his head. Betty's back is soaked. She's wearing this blue dress. There's just blood everywhere on it. She's also what they can tell is she's 28 feet away from him.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
The letters gave some insight into his personality, but there's not really enough information in them to narrow in on any suspects. And when it came to Arthur Lee Allen, there also wasn't a match for handwriting. But there is something that I wanted to bring up here because even though I don't think it was Arthur Lee Allen, this is one piece of evidence that I cannot explain away.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Try to explain this. I'm going to try to. But I'm going to fail. So remember, we were talking about that indecipherable gibberish at the end of one of the letters. It was just a bunch of a string of at the end of one of the ciphers. It was a string of letters that did not make any sense.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Well, someone eventually was doing what's it called when you write out the letters and you try to find different words like you try to make a sentence out of the jumbled letters. Oh, my gosh. They do it on Survivor all the time. I don't know what it's called. What they found was when you rearranged the letters from that indecipherable gibberish, it spelled out Robert Emmett, the hippie.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Now, no one named Robert Emmett was ever considered a suspect, but they did find someone named Robert Emmett that Arthur Lee Allen knew. And it was his rival in high school. And he was part of the counterculture movement. He was a hippie. And that is the one piece that I can't explain away. Is that something that he cheekily wrote in to be like, oh, it's my rival.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Like, you should look at this guy as a way to plant it or to torment that person. I just don't. Put it on him.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah. Didn't someone also say like maybe a paramedic like touched it when he leaned over to get into the cab? Like there's maybe other people that could have touched that day. But I know that they were fingerprinting when the letters would come in. They would fingerprint all of the detectives and all the journalists to make sure that they were ruled out. Yeah.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So maybe they also did that with the paramedics. I'm not sure.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And then there's clue number four, which is the DNA sample, which is really the thing that would get him if we are able to. Like this is the one that would really prove it. Yeah. I mean.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I know. It was a partial sample, one that rules out Arthur Lee Allen. But I don't know. There's just so much that goes into the sample. Was it really the Zodiacs? Can they do enough with it if it was a partial sample from 50 years ago? But maybe it's going to be like the Golden State killer where it's just someone that uploads their DNA and
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And they're able to build that family tree and figure it out. As we know, though, the laws are changing, so... Yes. We will see. Although the investigation isn't active currently, the Zodiac Killer case is still open in several jurisdictions across the Bay Area. And as we've mentioned, there are a ton of online communities that are still diving into this evidence.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
meaning at some point she probably tried to run and get away or maybe crawl to get to safety. But it seemed like with whatever happened, she wasn't dead right away. They can also see that in the station wagon back window, there's all these like spider web cracks. Whatever happened also hit the station wagon. David dies minutes after he reaches the hospital, but Betty is declared dead at the scene.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So while there isn't an official Zodiac Killer tip line, if you do have information, if you... Feel like someone in your family was up to no good. A deathbed confession. A deathbed confession. If you overhear something, if you're a nurse and someone says something weird on their deathbed, you can actually call the Vallejo Police Department's anonymous tip line at 800-488-9383.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And you can submit information. There's countless message boards that also are taking information.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Throughout the years, the Zodiac is often referred to as a super genius. I just don't think that's the case. Was he a chess master who created a brilliant cipher that took 51 years to solve? Or did he make the cipher wrong and spell a bunch of basic words incorrectly? Was he always one step ahead of the police?
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Or did he benefit from the fact that police were making a bunch of rookie mistakes, like our botched board says? and also didn't have access to modern technology like DNA. Sure, he outsmarted the cops, but the bar was pretty low back then. The Zodiac Killer did all of this for attention and fame.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
He did this so that we would remember him on podcasts years later as being the scariest serial killer of all time. And I have no interest in perpetuating that version of him.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I would argue that the Zodiac Killer was not an apex predator, but instead a cowardly narcissist, and had cops and reporters not allowed him to turn the investigation into a theater performance, he would probably have been remembered, like Paul Avery said, for being a clumsy criminal and a liar.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And if you have any questions, I'm not Kaylin Moore. And that's it for this episode of Clues. We hope you enjoyed unraveling this case with us. And as always, we want to hear from you. Once you crack that cipher, please message us on Instagram. Your thoughts, your theories, your feedback, all of that is what makes this community so special.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
We'll be back next week with another case to unravel. Until then, I'm not Paul Avery. She's not Paul Avery. Stay curious, keep searching, and we will see you next time on Clues. Bye. Bye.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Eventually, officers learn kind of what they guessed when they got to the scene, but the two were killed by gunshot wounds. The question is, though, who fired the gun? I want you to get into this because there's a little bit more at the crime scene that's going to help them kind of figure out the answers to that question.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yes, it's the 4th of July, 1969. There's this young woman in Vallejo. Her name's Darlene Farron, and she's getting ready to enjoy the holiday. She's 22 years old. She's married. She has this little baby girl at home. Darlene and her husband, Dean, are actually planning to celebrate the 4th with a few friends after his restaurant shift ends around midnight.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But Dean asks her to pick up some fireworks before. And she says, sure, back in the day when you could buy fireworks in California. But Darlene has plans that evening. So she doesn't actually leave to go get the fireworks until about 1130 p.m. She's kind of cutting it close to when his restaurant shift is going to end. And she asks the babysitter, hey, just stay a little bit longer.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
I'm going to be out. I just have to run this quick errand and then I'll be right back. At least that's what she says she's going to go do. She's actually going to go pick up a guy named Mike Majoe. Mike's 19 and he and Darlene are very good friends. A lot of people actually think that they're more than just good friends. And Darlene and Mike, they're not going to go pick up fireworks that night.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Instead, they end up going to the parking lot of the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, another Lovers Lane type area only two miles from where David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were killed. The couple sitting alone in the area. It's dark. There's no one else around. And all of a sudden, another car pulls up into the lot. And it's a big lot. A lot of kids come here to, you know, it's a lover's lane.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But this car pulls up right next to them. And that's kind of lover's lane faux pas. You give each other space when you're there.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So it is so weird when this car pulls up right next to them. And like the two of them start wondering, is this a peeping Tom? Is this a cop? They actually sit there for a few minutes, not really knowing what to do. Like, should they confront this person? Because what if it is a cop? Could they get in trouble? I mean, it's. she's married. So she really doesn't want anyone to find out about this.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Yeah. Is it her husband? There's all these questions being asked.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Each week on Clues, we'll explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, like microscopic fibers, a partial fingerprint, even a single strand of hair, could lead to groundbreaking discoveries. And... may even bring long-awaited justice. These clues shine a light on the stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Panicked. Right. They can't see anything. And so after a couple of minutes, the other driver does speed off and they both kind of exhale like that was a close call. But maybe that person got confused or they thought they were somewhere else and they just drove off. They kind of get back to talking, whatever.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And five minutes later, the car turns back around and comes back and it does the same thing again. It parks really close to Darlene's car. But this time the driver gets out and he shines this big, heavy flashlight at them. And that's when Mike is like, OK, this is definitely a cop like jig is up. So he starts going for his I.D. thinking, let me at least get my I.D. out for this guy.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
But the next thing he knows, the stranger has a gun pointed at him and just starts shooting directly into Darlene's car. Both of them are hit. Mike is hit basically from the head down, just like five bullets into like head, arm, leg, all the way down. And one of the bullets actually goes through his jaw, hits Darlene and kills her.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Darlene is not moving when Mike looks over at her and Mike is barely hanging on to dear life. And he ends up being able to crawl back into the passenger seat. He opens the door and just spills out onto the pavement. lying there in total agony. And thankfully, a group of teenagers pull into the lot just a few minutes later and they offer to go help.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
It's the same thing where it was just like this short period of time where there was no one else in the parking lot. And immediately after that, this group of teenagers comes through. It was like whoever did this knew they must have been watching because it was just this short window. And tragically, Darlene does not survive this attack. But unlike Betty and David, there is a survivor in the story.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
Mike. He's able to get out of the car, get help just in time to survive, and he was able to get a pretty good look at the person who approached the car. And when he's strong enough to talk to the police, he's able to give them a bunch of details about that night. Which... Leads us to a clue.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
And I remember reading like a really spooky detail about that call because it was the secretary at the police that answered the phone. And she said when he said goodbye, it was more like goodbye, like he sang it to her, which was just so specific and weird. And it like even to this day. Eerie.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
SERIAL KILLER: The Zodiac Killer
So join us as we uncover breakthroughs, heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
Introducing Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore!
And I'll be piecing together the timelines, analyzing the forensic science and tracking the hard evidence that changed everything.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
Introducing Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore!
Hi there, I'm Morgan Absher. And I'm Kayla Moore. Between Morgan's show, Two Hot Takes, and my show, Heart Starts Pounding, we've spent years dissecting the internet's craziest stories and the world's most chilling true crime cases.
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
Introducing Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore!
And some clues are obvious, but some are hidden in plain sight. And sometimes they lead to places and convictions that no one ever expected. So if you're like us and can't stop combing through case files and crime documentaries,
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
Introducing Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore!
this is the show for you tune in every week for clues where even the littlest details matter and sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction make sure to tune into clues every week and discover the details with us wherever you get your podcasts if you want to take a peek into our case files make sure you're following us on socials at crime house and at clues podcast on instagram
Serialously with Annie Elise
270: Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
And now we're teaming up on Clues, a crime house original show powered by Pave Studios. Every Wednesday on Clues, we'll break down the small but crucial details that cracked open some of the most infamous cases. I'll be your internet sleuth pulling out the threads that don't add up or maybe do and digging into the unanswered questions that still linger.
Serialously with Annie Elise
270: Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
We're talking about the hair fiber that sealed a conviction, a footprint that blew open an alibi, and the case that took decades to solve until somebody finally connected the dots.
Serialously with Annie Elise
270: Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
Today we are opening up the case file for the murder of Lacey Peterson. I want to get into a few more of these clues, but can you give us a little bit more background on Scott's boat first?
Serialously with Annie Elise
270: Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
Which brings us to our second clue, which is two dark strands of hair that were found in a pair of pliers on Scott's boat. Initially, it was reported that only one strand of hair was found. But months later, it came out that there was actually a second strand of hair that was found in the evidence envelope.
Serialously with Annie Elise
270: Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
I mean, it would seemingly have to be kind of intentional for it to get caught. I shed everywhere. Like if you went and looked in my car right now, there'd be blonde hairs everywhere. But it was the fact that they were wrapped up in those pliers. And it's not odd for someone to have pliers on a boat, especially when fishing.
Serialously with Annie Elise
270: Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
You know, you could use them to take a fish off of your hook or cut a line that got tangled or whatever. It's not that. It's the fact that by his own admission, Scott said Lacey had never been on the boat. Right.
Serialously with Annie Elise
270: Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
Make sure to tune in to Clues every week and discover the details with us wherever you get your podcasts.
The Prosecutors
Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
Today, we are opening up the case file for the murder of Lacey Peterson. I want to get into a few more of these clues. But can you give us a little bit more background on Scott's boat first?
The Prosecutors
Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
Which brings us to our second clue, which is two dark strands of hair that were found in a pair of pliers on Scott's boat. Initially, it was reported that only one strand of hair was found. But months later, it came out that there was actually a second strand of hair that was found in the evidence envelope.
The Prosecutors
Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
I mean, it would seemingly have to be kind of intentional for it to get caught. I shed everywhere. If you went and looked in my car right now, there'd be blonde hairs everywhere. But it was the fact that they were wrapped up in those pliers. And it's not odd for someone to have pliers on a boat, especially when fishing.
The Prosecutors
Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
You could use them to take a fish off of your hook or cut a line that got tangled or whatever. It's not that. It's the fact that by his own admission, Scott said Lacey had never been on the boat. Right.
The Prosecutors
Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
Make sure to tune into Clues every week and discover the details with us wherever you get your podcasts.
The Prosecutors
Introducing: Clues with Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore
And now we're teaming up on Clues, a crime house original show powered by PAVE Studios. Every Wednesday on Clues, we'll break down the small but crucial details that cracked open some of the most infamous cases. I'll be your internet sleuth, pulling out the threads that don't add up or maybe do, and digging into the unanswered questions that still linger.
Two Hot Takes
Let Me "Clue" You In :)
Hello, friends. I am so excited to introduce you to Miss Caitlin Moore over here.
Two Hot Takes
Let Me "Clue" You In :)
I'm so excited for this show. We took on a pretty big case to start, the case of Lacey Peterson.
Two Hot Takes
Let Me "Clue" You In :)
And we get into some crazy ones. We just got done recording episode four. So get ready, buckle up. We're going to really break down all the clues in some of the most intriguing, notorious cases. But we've got some clips for you. So here we go. Dive in.
Two Hot Takes
Let Me "Clue" You In :)
Our new podcast, Clues, drops today. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Today, very first episode. Very first episode.
Two Hot Takes
Let Me "Clue" You In :)
Thank you guys so much for listening to catch the rest of the episode.
Two Hot Takes
Let Me "Clue" You In :)
and so much more search for clues wherever you get your podcasts and just check out the show description the link for the show the episode it'll all be in there all of our social pages because we got a lot of pictures we have a lot of pictures that people need to look at absolutely get the full picture of the case yeah receipts proof timelines everything everything you're not going to want to miss it head on over check it out open these cases with us bye thanks guys
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Like how long would he have continued lying? I think that so people who say, well, you didn't ask. I think it's like an internal thing of like, well, if they don't ask, I'm not lying. So I'm not doing anything bad so I can continue doing this. And like, that's not true. But that's how they reason it in their head. So I think he really was like, well, I'll just go until she asks.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But obviously he already lied about it. So even when she asked, he's going to lie about it. But yeah, so just forever. As long as she doesn't know forever. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's bad. That one. It's bad. Makes my heart race.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Because the mom is laughing all the way to the bank. Like this is I have such a sweet setup because my.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. I'm really glad that that's coming through because we work so hard on the episodes. We do so much research for the episodes.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And we're just like the way that we build the episodes out to want to convey the information in a respectful way. But like also all the information to build out the whole case. Like I'm just I'm really glad that's coming through. And the reviews have been like great.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I feel like, no, these situations are so nuanced. I mean, we've dealt with a couple of these in my family. I think a lot of people have, especially with like the DNA companies coming out. Like we've learned a lot about my family, but it's very nuanced. Like I guess coming from, this is so funny.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I literally was on ancestry.com the other day, like researching this part of my family that I just discovered. Oh my gosh. And having the questions of like, When is it appropriate to say something? You never know when you reach out to someone if you are going to shatter their entire world. Yeah. Of like everything they thought they knew about their family. Not everyone knows as much as you do.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And so so the dad reached out to the kids. Right. And this I think the kids found him.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But like, it's it's just so tough. And it's so appropriate for people to be mad in this situation. Yeah, I don't think the dad is an asshole. I also don't think the kids are assholes. No. I don't know if they have this like long history of loving someone who they thought was their father.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And now they have this like I understand that the dad is upset and that's why he's taking to the Internet to be like, am I the bad person here? But it's just it's so complicated and people's feelings regarding this are so complicated. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
There's things that you don't even realize when it comes to these situations of, like, medical history where you're like, okay, well, this whole other person maybe – You know, when I like this thing I discovered about myself, it's genetic and that actually came from my father. And now I'm learning who my dad is. And like, there's just there's so much you don't even realize that goes into it.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So there's I just I really I feel so much for everyone in this situation.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
There's a lot of horror stories like that.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
That's what it sounds like. The parents are not always open to taking in the new children. Did I tell you about the episodes that I just did on Hearts, Hearts, Pounding about Georgia Tann?
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So in the 1940s, there was this woman in Tennessee, like 20s to the 40s. It was a 20 year span that she did this. She was a social worker who...
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
She would go in when the mom, like it was always like poor single moms, like mom just gave birth, is on a ton of meds. This woman would come in and be like, hi, I'm a social worker. I'm running a new program where if you like sign this paperwork, I'll take care of your baby for a little while. You get back on your feet and then I'll bring your baby back to you.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And the mom would sign the paperwork totally out of it and she would vanish with the children. Gone. And a lot of the kids started finding each other when they were doing the DNA tests. Wow. Because they were, like, just getting all these matches back. Like, you have these siblings. And all of them, it was too late to meet the parents, basically.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. What were our favorites that we saw so far? I liked Cluminati.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And so it's one of those situations, because we're talking about deathbed confessions, where it's almost better. It's so – there's so much pain. But I do believe it's better to come out as early as it can so you can sort it out. And if you are able to have a relationship, that's so beautiful. Because a lot of times, it's just way too late. And someone's dead when you figure it out or –
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Someone is close to death and they don't want to change their entire life and everything they've ever known to like take in this new child. And yeah. And so I I know it's like painful and sad for this family, but I am glad for this dad that that's how it happened. I agree.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, I wonder what it was that changed in her. If she had some sort of like wake up call or I don't know. Yeah, some people just wake up one day and they're like, you know what? I'm going to tell the truth.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I'm just like this whole situation. Like, yeah, I mean, we could touch on that. It's not my place to judge, I guess. But like that also is just blows my mind, too, that she had a kid and came back and then had another kid. Hiding a whole kid. I mean, yeah. I wonder what year it was, though. They're adult kids. Like, yeah, used to. I mean, even now you can like hide kids and stuff.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
There was one that was like Clubidubidoo. People are really creative. I couldn't have come up with any of those.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
They all sound grounded and normal. So hopefully they even whatever the mom, but like save a little bit of an outlier there.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But yeah, hopefully they can figure that one out. I think I have hope. I'm so curious if your listeners, I'm sure there's going to be comments about this, but this affects so many people. Like so many people just learn stuff about their families and like who their parents really were or whatever. Like they have siblings they didn't know about.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So I am so curious if people like have this kind of situation in their family. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
See, that one you could have taken to the grave. If I was a kid, I'd be like, I didn't need to know that.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You know, isn't it New Jersey where you can marry your siblings and your parents? Oh, no. You might want to fact check me on that. But I did read a long form article about a daughter that married her dad in New Jersey. And it was if I could unread anything, I think it would be that.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Why'd you do that to us? I know. I'm so sorry. If I have to bear witness to that, then someone else does too.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I don't even... I don't know. Like... I don't think your instinct is wrong. If your toothbrush is being moved around, something is moving your toothbrush. Yeah, you don't have a ghost. You don't have a ghost. This is not an episode of Heart Size Founding. You don't have a ghost. No, there's no ghost. But if you think you're with someone who needs to get back at you...
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You have like you have to get out. But that is so scary when people feel the need to get back at people. Really? Like it's no.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Like you're going to get sick. You're going to get really sick from that, too.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
It escalates from like poop on the toothbrush, which that is already a 10. So like to escalate beyond that is just like really, really gross stuff. And I think you're right. The like bleach in the water, just really dangerous, disgusting stuff.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
That's the thing, too, that's really scary is, like, I understand if you're in the heat of an argument and someone's, like, getting mad in the moment. But to then leave a situation, remain mad, go through all the steps of doing this horrible thing behind someone's back and never once stop yourself. That, to me, feels like a really dangerous person.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Well, and it's happening often enough that she's really noticing it.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
He's getting something out of it.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
about a camera like for me that was my first thought I would have to put up a camera if I were in that situation I could see myself being like I am not the kind of girl that has to put a camera in her bathroom to make sure someone's not sticking my toothbrush in the toilet like I but I don't know maybe I want to know yeah so the thing is for me like this is over
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But it's a camera in the bathroom. So also, if you're giving that to the police, then are they going to be like, well, why are you filming inside of your.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
At least get the. But at what point – I just feel like people's intuition is really strong. I feel like – Oh, she's right. No, and I think she's right. So I almost feel like she doesn't have to do that. She doesn't sound like she has any history of like paranoid delusions, right? She's not like, oh, this and then also the government's after me.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
It's like I just feel like this person is doing this to me. I feel like she doesn't even need proof. I feel like if your gut is strong enough to feel, you're going to live the rest of your life being like – Did I put this here? Did he move it? Like, should I get into bed? Did he put something in my sheets? Like, you know, like you just have to leave at that point.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
No, your peace of mind is forever gone. Yeah. The deathbed confession I was telling you about where this woman was like, I think my son may have done it. She didn't have definitive proof in that moment. But the fact that a mother would assume her own son was capable of that. was enough for people to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to investigate this more. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So, like, and to me, I think that speaks volumes. Like, if you love someone so much and even you could visualize that person doing that to another person, to you, like, that's a really bad sign.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
The worst modern day tragedy in Australia is horrible. And unfortunately, yeah, the mom just is like, no, my son said he wasn't there. So it couldn't have been him. People are crazy. Because they just, yeah, they really believe the best in people. Like, they see past so much stuff.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So if someone even beyond that is able to say, like, I think this person is capable of this, like, that's usually a really bad sign. Oh, my gosh.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Look at you. Well, that's funny, too, that they're like, no, actually, this other stuff that's not even as bad as the toothbrush is like more than enough reason to break up. Like, you don't have to install cameras. Like, you have so much reason already.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
We're also like, I mean, this girl is being called crazy. So you start to doubt yourself. Yeah. And you're like, oh, my God, I think I need actual proof. Yeah. And so you get to the point where you put cameras in, but you don't need that much proof.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
feelings i guess i could tell he thought me realizing was genuinely funny i wonder if she wants to have children or like ever pictured children being in the future of their relationship because what are you going to do when a toddler who is like pure chaos does not operate on any sort of like ethical scale does something that doesn't need to be retaliated against like are you gonna
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Do you need to retaliate against children because they do something that upsets you? There are people out there and that's the energy he's giving. That's this guy.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Or like your dog poops in the house. What are you going to do? Like, oh, God, no, no. Someone who feels the need to retaliate is, yeah, the biggest red flag to me.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
got it let's go baby yep you have like a segment or you do a recurring thing where you do deathbed confessions yeah that's one of the we've done a couple episodes that are all based on people's deathbed confessions what's the craziest one you've gotten I was actually thinking about this earlier so it's such a variety like one that I was rereading was this woman on her deathbed and like her last breath said that she didn't care about owls and her family for like 50 years had been buying her owl figurines
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I just made the story so much worse.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Oh, wow. That's hard. It must have been hard leaving also the kid.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And also saying like you needed to like communicate better with me, like just putting the whole onus on her.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But that. OK, another like picturing that story all the way through. Can you imagine that? Justin being on his deathbed and then the thing he says to you is, I've been sticking your toothbrush in the toilet for 40 years. I would be scared of what I would do. Yeah. I would be.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
because they thought they'd come over and see that she had all this owl stuff and they're like oh she must love owls I'll get her little owl napkins I'll get her a little owl whatever and then on her deathbed she was like yeah I never cared about the owls like that was just something you guys assumed and just kept buying but I never wanted to I didn't want to be rude I didn't want to say anything a way to go out I know
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
it's a work environment friends family relationship like your body can make itself sick from stress from being on edge like you can literally be sick we were i was just talking about this with my husband because i had acid reflux for like a whole year oh my god and he was like i just don't know what's wrong with your stomach i'm like i don't either i'm like listen out every doctor i went to they're like are you stressed i'm like no it's not that it's something else
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And then finally, I like, I mean, we moved to Texas. I was like a little bit away from everything. I just kind of like decompressed a little bit. And I very actively worked on like relaxing and meditating and stuff. Okay. Acid reflux went away. I'm not saying if you have acid reflux that you should just relax and it'll go away. But like that. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I think I was making myself sick with how like just stressed out I was. And I think a lot of it I was doing to myself to just like making myself more stressed, which I love to do. But why do we do that to ourselves? I don't know. Like for no reason. I tend to think of the worst case scenario all the time with everything. Like, but what if this goes badly?
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And that just, yes, it makes you ill over time. Yeah. Our bodies are so wild. So wild.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm buckled up.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So that one, the family was like, oh, my gosh. But on the most recent episode, we just covered one that came out of Illinois. This woman, she's dying. She calls her daughter over and she goes, do you remember 50 years ago when a little girl disappeared from our community? I think it was my son that took her, your brother.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I would say take it seriously, even if it's not ever going to come to fruition. Like, just the fact that she said that is indicative of, like, some sort of serious thing happening to her, you know? Ooh, I feel like you don't need to— You gotta run. Yeah, you also maybe shouldn't ask Reddit, right?
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. Yeah. I actually could see a lot of people being in a situation like this where maybe they had a friend who went through some like really scary mental health things. Yeah. That like at a certain point, because I've dealt with this before in high school where I had a friend's mental health get to a place where I could no longer be of any assistance. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You can't even really be like a listening ear because you're so out of control and you're scared that anything you say is going to be the thing that tips them off. Yeah. And I feel like she's smart to know that like that is the point in which you separate.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And the night that it happened, the police came to our house and I lied on his behalf because I didn't know where he was. Oh, my God. Full blown chills. No. And it was the oldest cold case in Illinois to be reopened. And like the story is wild, too, because they go after this guy. They have all this evidence like it's there's a lot of twists and turns in that one.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I would be curious if she's tried to separate in the past, like during maybe one of the... cancer proclamations or you know and like what that was like like maybe that is a reason why she's afraid because if you're asking how do I do it safely there's I imagine there's part of her that's like my friend is capable of having some sort of meltdown or like emergency or
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
if I try to leave so I want to make sure that that doesn't happen or else I would just say you could probably just like you were saying slow fade but yeah it makes me think that like she's really scared that the friend will have some sort of big episode if she just like cuts her off completely all at once and that could be very triggering like for someone that has mental health issues like that
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Best way to respond that helps them the most and also protects everyone in the situation. I know. Like saying I'm going to like hurt someone else or myself. That is even for professionals like a huge like you. That's like where they draw the line. Right.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Of like, OK, well, we have to 5150 or, you know, so I think even as a friend, like it's absolutely appropriate to be like this is the final straw. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. Just tell me what other people say. I feel like I have no.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So that's in the most recent Deathbed Confessions episode. People should definitely listen to it. It's it's a trip after we're done.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
The whole time I was doing the research, I was like, like goosebumps.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, that really sums it up perfectly, I think. Right there, baby.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. Getting the documentation, right, in case something happens and...
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You have to show it to the police.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
They put like fingerprints and stuff in it. Oh, my God. DNA. I don't know. Hair clippings. Probably. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Wow. That one's a heavy. That one's really heavy. It's a heavy.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I feel like this story is the couple from the first story if they had actually gotten married. Oh, my God.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Her fiance, husband and like his special little relationship with his mommy. That's like the thing on TikTok right now, right? Have you seen all those videos that are like, get ready with me to take my son to prom and it's the mom. She's putting on like a prom dress that she got at Dillard's and like full, full beat, full hair. What?
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Like showing the camera and then I don't think she's going to prom with the son, but she's like getting ready to take pictures with him and his date. It's very strange. I'm so confused. There was also that one that was like destined to be your mom or no, like born to be your wife, forced to be your mom or something like that.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And they're taking like the photos of like her son in his football uniform.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, I think that was the quote that they said with it. I might be getting like a who is it? Madison Humphrey who like recreates all of them. I love her. She might have added that, but like I'm pretty sure it was in the original too.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, saying that to, like, his romantic partner is just so out of pocket. It's just so strange to even conflate those two things. Like the weird competition between, I guess, moms and wives, which like I haven't dealt with any of that. So like I feel very fortunate. But I know a lot of people do deal with that. A lot of like moms are like, I was the first woman in his life.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
It's always a bad sign. But I think it's also indicative, too, of like. You this was the issue in the first story, too, of like usually those in this situation, boys, it's like really anyone who is shown preferential treatment by a parent, like they're kind of baby their whole life. And then they take that parent side in arguments like with their spouse.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Like they're not standing up for their spouse in arguments or they're not they're going straight to mom when they have an issue or they're like texting mom about the fights they're having with their wives or like. Yeah, it's just there's so much in those situations.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And I think there's a case for both. Like some things you want to know as soon as possible because there's a lot of people that it affects. And other things you're like, I'm so glad I didn't know that about you while you were alive because it would have changed everything.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
White, white, white. No. Someone told me early on, like before my wedding, they were like, you know, when you get married, you realize throughout the process all of the people who wish it was them getting married that day instead.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And that also applies to like bridesmaids or even like groomsmen or, you know, like there's always people who are like, I wish this was my wedding and like kind of commandeer stuff in weird ways. Yeah.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
It was yellow, but in the pictures it does look white. I think sometimes like my mom on my wedding just wanted to look beautiful. Like she had her beautiful dress. She wanted her makeup to look beautiful. You know, sometimes it's not like I want to look like the bride.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So maybe your mom just wants to like feel good and have like a special seat.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So I'm like, do you think you're going to... If someone shows up to your wedding wearing white that's not your mom who you already pre-approved, are you throwing them out?
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You know, I did see that on your Instagram story and I did think the birds were having sex, but I wasn't going to say anything. No. Because I was like, it's not my place. It doesn't look like that in person. I looked closer. I'm going to give you one. And it does not look like that at all.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But when you're scrolling through 100 miles an hour on Instagram reels, you're like, those birds are having sex.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Oh, my gosh. Was it enough for you to be like, I can't use these stamps? Are you still going to use them?
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I didn't even register that. The brother's right there. So the brother's been waiting for someone to tell her off, right?
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I wonder when they're planning on getting married. I know. Like when the wedding is because you might have to move fast.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You've already gone. I know someone who canceled a wedding. I want to say that. Oh, man, it was I think the day after the bridal or the bachelorette party. So coming down to the wire.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And I think they were able to get some of the money back. But you lose a lot of money on weddings.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. You can always just have the people still come, I guess.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Wow. That's beautiful. I don't know if I'd be able to keep it together enough to do that. But maybe you're just like so you're just running on adrenaline.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You're like, I'm just going to crash out on the dance floor.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I told you, it's still around. North Carolina.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Oh my gosh, where to even start? I think you start trying to build a case so this guy can go to jail for this. You need to get him put away. You have to look up the laws in your state for recording conversations so you know if it's legal. Step on. If you record him saying these things, can that be used in a court of law? I'm pretty sure every state, like, stealthing someone is illegal.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
We're rolling. We're finally doing it. This is insane. I know, because we've talked about doing this for a while. I think we've like tried to get it sorted for like two months now. Yeah, so actually not that long. Two months is like kind of nothing.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, that's sexual assault. Yeah. No, this is like... So, like, there's so many... things here where it's just like... Oh, I just want to like scream into a pillow. Like, this is so fucked. It's just so beyond. Like, you have to say something. You cannot let this be a deathbed confession. No.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
That's so scary to have never have had slept with someone before. And now all of a sudden you're pregnant. Like the absolute... And you didn't even know if you wanted kids. Well, that, I mean, is a whole other... That's like so devastating for her. But to just go from this one thing of like, okay, I'm kind of being coaxed into doing this in the first place. And now like...
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Because, like, being pregnant is also, like, an invasive thing, too, right? You're getting poked and prodded all the time. You've got a little alien in you. Yeah, literally. So it's just that's so much for that girl. And she deserves to know the full situation that she is now involved in.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Well, I'm like, so this guy was friends with him. I refuse to believe this is the first time he's ever done something so drastic in his life. Like... Why are you friends with this person? He's crazy. I don't I'm it's beyond me. I don't understand. That's really upsetting. I think you just have to start building a case so you could like so she can like take this guy to court.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. That is crazy behavior. I feel like I know so many, not so many people, but I do know a few people who have like one incredibly problematic person in their friend group. And you're like, why are you friends with this person? And they're like, they're just like that. Like they've been like that since college. And it's so baffling to me how that is just like that just happens.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But for some reason, people just don't feel the need to speak up like, hey, maybe you don't harass this person into going out with you.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Why are you friends with this person? I mean, not that he's really friends with him, but like, that's what I'm talking about. Like that person just being around in the friend group and saying things like, no, like you want a woman that can't think for herself. Like. Get that person out of the friend group. That's scary.
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217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I don't like it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like this person, too. It's like he knows that she is a fully autonomous individual. Yeah. And he wants to take that from her because he knows, given the opportunity, she wouldn't go for it. So he like ripped that away from her.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And deserves to be in prison.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. In North Carolina. Yeah. That's what we'll call it.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
That hurts, but it teaches you a lesson. Yeah, the horses don't go back to the spot. But yeah, that's just, it's so upsetting. I mean, obviously like real action needs to be taken. This isn't something that you like settle in your friend group.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Or your wife who's her friend.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
They have that like repertoire already. Like, I feel like she would maybe be better equipped to like speak the language of the friend and like deliver the news and everything. But I also understand people being like, don't make this your wife's problem.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
If he was like, I heard this and she's like, I wanted to be there for you while he told you this.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But that doesn't matter. No, it is 10 times worse. It's just she doesn't have the information. Like it already is that bad. It's just that one person doesn't know how bad it is. And that is not fair. I hate that argument of like, oh, but when I tell them that's when it becomes bad.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Wasn't that just something that happened with one of the Love is Blind contestants where they were like touching someone who was asleep and but they were also in a this is like to fact check this. But basically they were saying like, well, if someone's asleep, they don't know. And it's not mentally upsetting to them. And it's like, well, should they know that that happened to them?
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And that was like a big thing with like, I think even the Duggar family, when the sisters were being abused, they were like, well, some of them were asleep. Like, do we tell them what happened?
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
And it's even tougher if someone's a minor when it happened, which in that case, a lot of them were young girls, too. I was insane. Yeah, it was horrifying. Just absolutely horrifying. So bad. I think it's best for people to... No. So they can like live their lives accordingly and like have relationships with people accordingly rather than like not knowing someone abused them.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Now I'm out on everyone in this story. The way they talk about her is infuriating. Like, she's this, oh, oh, no. Like, as long as she's not getting hit, that's the best possible situation she could be in because her... The worst case scenario is her being a waitress. Get real. A single mother. Get real. Fuck you, dude. No, like, no. What a... Yeah, the way they...
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
view the women involved in this story is just horrendous.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
That's really upsetting that he's the only one that knows this information because he is so ill equipped to handle it appropriately.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Listen, I know this situation sucks. He's so unserious. It sucks. It's like a huge bummer that like... A very serious crime took place. Psycho.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You're a psychopath too. Yeah, that's really bad. I feel horrible for her.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I mean, the wife could also be horrible. We really don't know, so...
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. This one I really want an update on. Need it. I'm going to worry about this girl tonight.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
You have to tell her very soon. No. But, like, yeah, also the rationale, like, because people use this with, like, everything, like, so many different things. They're like, but if I tell them, they'll be mad. It's like, but that's why you have to tell them. Yeah. You can't just not tell someone something because they might be mad at you or might be weirded out. Oh, my God.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Also, don't you want to find a lovely partner who's going to accept that lifestyle, too? That wants to be nude, too. And then you don't have to worry about it. So, I mean, maybe she's cool with it. I'm sure she's not cool with it.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I mean, she says it in like what she's writing. I assume it's a woman. But yeah, like it's not about the money. It's about the secrecy. I feel like there's a couple of red flags. The first one being the fact that you're just not being transparent about it. You're married. You're married. Also, like I'm married.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Bring back Salem. I just can't even imagine. I mean, everyone is so different. Some people just truly live by different... Have you ever gone to someone's house and been shocked at the way they lived? Or... Like I remember even being little going to someone's house for like a sleepover and just seeing like how differently their family react. It was nothing ever crazy.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But like, yeah, seeing how different people live their lives is always just so interesting to me. And I realize there's not one way to do everything. I mean, obviously being a nudist is like in such a far direction, but it is just so interesting that everyone is so different and just like can do whatever they want.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I remember there was this one. It was my sibling's friend who like we would go over sometimes and there would just be dog poop everywhere. Yeah. And when you're really little, like, and we didn't have pets growing up, but I knew that, like, dogs just shouldn't be pooping everywhere. But I didn't think it was as big of a deal as, like, my parents. Was it in their house?
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
It was. So, like, the ground outside was all white because it would be so old that it had turned white. So their whole front yard was, like, white with this dog poop. And, like, the backyard was a mess. I remember their house, the inside smelling really bad, but I don't remember seeing any dog poop in there. But my parents were immediately, like... something's wrong.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Like there's maybe like a mental health issue with one of the parents and we just don't feel comfortable sending you over to their house anymore.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
It's so interesting. I was just listening to a podcast where they're talking about how like parents today are
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
on average parent their children for five hours a day and in the 70s it was two hours a day wow because kids are at home a lot more they're not running around the neighborhood like going all over the town they're not sleepovers like you actually are spending a lot more time with your parents and that's not necessarily good either maybe for like child development but It is interesting.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
It's a lot better than like a horrible thing happening to them at someone else's house. So like it's interesting watching my friends now that have kids like start to reckon with that of like, yeah, do I trust some random kid's parents to like watch over my kid for a weekend? I don't know.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I wouldn't mind like if we were living in a place that was owned by my mother-in-law, like I wouldn't mind if that's where the money was going. I wouldn't expect to have a free place to live ever. So I don't think that's not like a deal breaker. He didn't really have to even lie about that. No. Which is strange that he still chose to. And I think that...
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
How you broke the news to a partner. That. Also, I will say it sounds like the family is respectful. Very respectful. Wear clothes like they get a heads up and they're like, of course, we would never force our lifestyle on someone else. Yeah.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
The longer I think about it, the more weirded out I am getting. But I think I started out being like, I have an open mind. And the more I think about it, I'm like, maybe I'm not that open.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Well, you have to say something.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, absolutely. You picked this one. I did pick this one. I was curious how it was going to shake out. And you know what? I don't regret it. No, it is.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah. So interesting. Because do you remember being 18? Like I was still so like the world was so unknown to me when I was 18. I remember going to college and like my shit got rocked because I was just like, yeah, I just I'm from a small town. I hadn't really experienced much. What like what rocked you? Just like the debauchery, I think, of like, oh, people do have free will.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I think I put like boundaries on myself and like I was really hard on myself and had to get good grades and had to be home at a certain time. And I never lied to my parents. And then you get to college and they're like, oh, my gosh, people can just do whatever they want. Or some people have like so much more experience with alcohol.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Like I think if I went over to someone's house and like one of their parents was just naked and being like acting like nothing was wrong, I would have like had an aneurysm.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Is like the big red flag is like you are lying about things you don't need to lie about. And I think that just like that transcends into a lot of other areas of relationships.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So you're really like, oh, I know what kids can get up to. I have no sleepovers.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
She knew you could not pull one over her.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But do you think if you went to like your partner's house and their parent was naked on the couch acting like nothing was wrong, you probably also would have freaked out.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I know. She's only 18. 18 is young. You do need a heads up. He has to say something.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
She swings by because she's in the neighborhood and she's like, I brought you spaghetti. And then she sees something she doesn't want to see.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, that can be like traumatizing.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I never want to walk in on anyone naked, like accidentally. It's just like it's so shocking when it happens. And it's just like, yeah, it's just such a bad situation.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
We've gotten way too lax with the dressing room curtains.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I was at the AMC the other day and like the whole way down, you just see everyone in the stalls. Like the gaps are so wide now.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Leave a little mystery in life. I feel like I have no idea what is going on. But yeah, I feel like I have noticed that where there's just like a little bit less privacy. So strange.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Are people in the comments being like judgmental of his family?
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, maybe learn something new.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Maybe it's way more common than we think. Yeah. I guess I've never heard of anyone I know being one or them knowing someone who is, but Maybe, yeah, maybe it is more common.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Feels niche. There's like 360 million people in America, so 30,000 is like nothing. But I bet people don't self-report. Yeah. Yeah. No, people probably don't admit to that.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
So you're just collecting my money from me every month.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
People can listen to Heart Starts Pounding wherever they get their podcasts. We're on YouTube. We are on Spotify, Apple, everywhere you get your podcasts. And then I'm on all socials at Heart Starts Pounding.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, we put a lot of work into these episodes.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
$700 is incredible for rent.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
pretty much anywhere in the country right now so like I would not be mad about having to pay $700 so you could tell me that money's going anywhere as long as you're like being honest about it and I'm not really going to be upset but it's a lying and for me it's the your husband having a little secret with his mother that he's not telling you about oh I don't like that that I don't like no I feel like on other stories you've read on this show too it's like
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
My husband was lying or my boyfriend was lying to me or my wife, whoever, was lying to me because, like, they were colluding with one of their parents. Oh, yeah. And I just, I feel like that is always such a bad, it's bad news whenever that's happening.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
To not know where that went and... And maybe they're just like holding on to the money. You don't know what they're doing with the money. I don't know.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yeah, I think I missed that when you first read it, that he said out loud it was a family friend. Like, that is a lie. Uh-huh. Like, why do you have to say that?
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Right. Or like ask for an explanation on every little thing that you're doing. Because you can't do that when you're with someone.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
No chance. Yeah, she's not asking him for money.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Yes, I would believe that she was the only one paying anything. I'd burn that place down. I know. Well, oh, my God. That is a relationship ending type of conflict to have.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
People talk about that now. Financial infidelity.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
debt that he's not honest about I feel like there's so many other areas of finances that people can just lie and he's clearly like very comfortable lying about it so I would be skeptical of his financial situation I guess I would too and just like it's it's just so unfair it's like the injustice of it all that really pisses me off with this one yeah No update from OP. I hope we get one. I know.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
I want an update on that because I want to know if she did confront him, how she had that conversation, because that's probably really important for people to know is like, how do you talk to a partner who has like, I don't know if it's considered financial abuse or financial cheating, whatever. Like, how do you talk to someone?
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Because that's like this nuanced thing that I think is coming up more and more in relationships.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
Or maybe she's not seeing the bigger picture of like, oh, this could be this could mean bigger, worse things for our relationship. Or this is something that he like is maybe indicative of like down the line when we have kids or a house or like some other big financial thing as a couple. He also is maybe going to lie about that or not be honest or financially cheat, whatever.
Two Hot Takes
217: Luckily NOT a Deathbed Confession.. Ft. Kaelyn Moore
But like, yeah, maybe she doesn't see how serious it is. But like, that's bad.