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Springfield Three Anniversary Episode Collaboration with Sirens Podcast
5.5k Plays2 years ago
Oklahoma meets Kentucky to talk about a case from Missouri in this crossover episode with Sirens and Coffee & Cases. They dive into the cold disappearance of Suzie Streeter, Sherrill Levitt, and Stacy McCall, dubbed “The Springfield Three”, from Sherrill’s home in June of 1992. Today marks the 31st anniversary of their vanishing in the middle of the night with no signs of struggle, and no sign or reason to leave. We also discuss the case of Sharon Zellers from Florida in 1978 who had the same top suspect.
If you have information on this case, please contact Springfield Police or the FBI. You can leave an anon tip on the FBI website, linked in our sources.
Find Sirens at www.thesirenspodcast.com, www.facebook.com/thesirenspodcast,www.instagram.com/thesirenspodcast, or Twitter @sirens_podcast.
Find Coffee and Cases at https://www.facebook.com/coffeeandcasespodcast, www.instagram.com/coffeecasespodcast, https://zencastr.com/Coffee-and-Cases-Podcast.
You can find both streaming anywhere you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
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Collaboration with Sirens Podcast
00:01:08
Speaker
This week, Maggie and I worked hand in hand with Raven and Mandy from the Sirens podcast to bring you an anniversary episode covering the Springfield 3 case. Before we begin, we would like to introduce these two beautiful people to you. Here's a little promo for their pod.
00:01:29
Speaker
I'm Raven Rollins, and this is my Southern True Crime podcast, where I discuss cases from my former hometown. Ada, Oklahoma paints itself as an average community, but its history of murder and corruption runs deeper than any story has ever told. You'll hear plenty of special guests, including authors and experts in their fields, who visit with me on each episode, as well as other cases in the Southern states. With notorious and unknown cases alike, every victim sees the light on my show.
00:01:58
Speaker
This is Sirens, a true crime podcast.
Overview of Springfield 3 Case
00:02:03
Speaker
On the brink of a bright future, our victims today slip from the promising future with no clues to bring them home. On a night of celebrating, finishing a huge milestone in life, graduating high school, horror rocked this town when three ladies disappeared without a trace. Just hours before, promise hung in the air. Thick with the promise that two recent high school graduates would change the world, leave their mark on society.
00:02:26
Speaker
Little did their family and friends know that they, along with one of the mothers, would go missing and leave all those promises empty. This is the story of the Springfield Three.
00:03:09
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families.
00:03:28
Speaker
With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because, as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week. The Springfield 3 refers to an unsolved missing persons case that began on June 7, 1992.
00:03:53
Speaker
So today marks the 31st anniversary of when friends Susie Streeter and Stacy McCall and Susie's mother Cheryl Levitt went missing from Cheryl's home in Springfield, Missouri. And so this is what we will be discussing today.
Hosts' Background and Show Focus
00:04:08
Speaker
I'm Raven Rollins and I'm here with Professor Mandy McNeely and we have some special guests today.
00:04:14
Speaker
Coffee and Cases podcast with us. Hi, ladies. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. So I'm Allison Williams. I have been interested in true crime since I was a wee little girl. And I met with Maggie, who will introduce herself in just a moment. And we decided to really focus on unsolved true crime, highlighting lesser known cold cases.
00:04:45
Speaker
where we can interview the family and hopefully really make a difference in terms of families knowing that they have support of continuing to get stories out there. Yeah, that's, that's really our, our main focus. Absolutely. That's awesome. That's great. We do that too. Um, we, but we're also kind of anthology based, I guess. Uh, we do a different case every episode and
00:05:13
Speaker
A lot of times it's solved, but if we do a solved case, it's because we have something we want to talk about with that case. And we usually have experts on whether it's a detective, whether it is a prosecutor. Um, we talked about the McGirt case once with the, um, prosecutor from a nation tribal nation. And so we always have something we want to talk about specifically if we do a solved case like that. So we have, it's Alison and Maggie.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's coffee and cases. That's it. We can find you anywhere. Maggie's gonna do that herself. Maggie, you didn't introduce yourself. I am Maggie, so I'm the other half of coffee and cases. And Alison and I met because I moved to the classroom that was beside of her and she was kind of quiet and everybody was like, Alison is such a great teacher, but she just kind of does, you know, sticks to herself. She's always really busy. And I was like,
00:06:11
Speaker
I'm gonna make her my friend. And I did. She did. Can I ask you guys where you guys are located at? So we're in Kentucky. Somewhere in Kentucky. You can probably tell. Do you guys
00:06:23
Speaker
focus on just Kentucky cases or is it Southern cases or anything? We do anything and everything. Okay. I particularly love Canada. Yeah. We've done a lot of Canadian cases, but Maggie just covered a local case to us. Um,
Springfield's Crime Context
00:06:42
Speaker
and I'm working on a couple of those as well. So we do like when we can find local ones, but we cover them from
00:06:48
Speaker
anywhere. Awesome. So we cover ours. Our coverage area is the Southwest and the deep South. That's what we do. And we try to focus on our home, which is Oklahoma when we can, especially with cold cases. There's a lot going on here.
00:07:05
Speaker
I didn't know you guys were Southern sisters. I'm into it. Yeah, we are. I am Raven. I'm a private investigator. Uh, mainly these days I just use that for investigating the cases we work on, especially the cold cases. We do a lot of behind the scenes stuff. Um, and like our, even the ones that we've already done, we're still constantly working on behind the scenes. Um, and Mandy here is a professor.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yes. Do you want to tell, or do you want me to tell what you do? You can tell all about me. Victimology. She did the course writing for victimology and domestic violence. Psychology. You teach psychology and critical thinking, ethics. Yes. My new class is ethics in a human services field. Cool. That's nice. I'll start teaching that in a couple of weeks.
00:07:56
Speaker
So let's dive in. Okay. Okay. Let's do it. So we are going to talk about a case that is in Springfield, Missouri. Now I wanted to start out and talk a little bit about the community. I think it does make a difference. And I do think that it says a lot for this case, the community where the home was located. I think there's a lot,
00:08:27
Speaker
that kind of comes out of location for this. So Springfield, Missouri is, I don't know, not very far from Branson, Missouri. No, it's like 30 minutes. I think was the drive. Yeah. It is up in the Ozarks. Now people think that Ozarks is just Arkansas, but it is not. It is Missouri and Arkansas. It, it, it runs a pretty big expense, but Springfield has a higher crime right now. What did it have a high crime rate?
00:08:55
Speaker
back then or was it kind of average? Back then I would say it was about average. I don't remember. And we're talking 1992 and I lived, I lived near there in 1992. I lived in Kansas city area in 1992. You did? I did. I was there.
00:09:15
Speaker
And I remember all through high school that I didn't really hear any about. Of course I was in high school, you know, that was not my main focus. But you know, we heard about things happening and it was always in Kansas City, never Springfield. And since then Springfield,
00:09:31
Speaker
I love Springfield. There's so many great things in Springfield, but it has become one of the highest crime populations in the United States. Um, Springfield is up there with some of your major crime areas in the country. I don't know what kind of, I don't know where, where that switch was flipped really. But back in 1992, when I was in the area and there were times where we would go to Branson, you know, and so, uh,
00:09:59
Speaker
You know, we've driven through there many, many times. I've visited there. Now I've been there, like stayed there, you know, now, and I don't remember the crime rate ever being that high back then. I think it was a pretty relatively low crime rate. I think for violent crimes, probably petty crimes. Um, I think it was probably about normal average. So with that said,
00:10:23
Speaker
I wanted to explain that. So you kind of had, because I know people, Springfield has gotten a bad name. When you say Springfield Missouri, they're like, what? And so I wanted to bring that up because I wanted to kind of been there many times, stayed there, love it there. It's beautiful. So just wanted to add that in.
Victims' Profiles
00:10:41
Speaker
So this takes place and I know Raven had already has already said that takes place on June 7th, 1992. I want to go back a day because the day before you have friends, Suzanne Streeter and Stacy McCall graduating from high school.
00:10:59
Speaker
from Kickapoo high school. Yes. And people are like, what a great name. I know. Well, yeah, we have cookapoo here. Cookapoo. Yeah, we got a Kickapoo and Shawnee and Shawnee. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great name. And so people, this is where I get another question. I've had several people say they graduated on June 6th. Isn't that late? Not for that area. Oh really? Right.
00:11:22
Speaker
Schools in Missouri, Kansas, they all end usually in June. Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't know that. Um, they start later in the, in this fall, then we do here. So I remember starting every year at high school, we wouldn't start till after labor day.
00:11:39
Speaker
Oh, wow. It's different now. Now it is. But back then we started like the Tuesday or like the Tuesday or Wednesday after Labor Day. Wow. And then we would be out like the first week in June. So that is about normal for that time for a hot time to go to school. That's just the way they do it. I don't know. Weird.
00:11:59
Speaker
So go through June and Eastern Kentucky just because of the weather. Well, and I will say Missouri and Kansas, their severe weather time is June starts in June and it doesn't start in May. So there's their severe weather time. Doesn't really start until June. Oh, okay. Cool. So there's kind of the more, you know, back history on that.
00:12:22
Speaker
So now that we have the back history kind of on the community, I want to talk about the three people that this case is centered around.
00:12:30
Speaker
We have Cheryl Levitt, who was a white female. I want to describe them so you have a good idea. Yeah. Since they are still missing. Yes. These are still missing persons. They have never been found. Um, she would, she would be around 78 years old today. She was 47 when she disappeared on June 7th, 1992.
00:12:52
Speaker
Um, she was five feet tall. Exactly. Oh, tiny, tiny. I know. 110 pounds. She had so small. I know. I know this blonde hair and brown eyes. Her hair was short. Um, it was, it was a more of a bleached blonde hair. Okay. So, um, freckles on her neck and chest area. And her daughter lived with her and her name was Suzanne Streeter, or she, they called her Susie.
00:13:22
Speaker
Susie, Susa Q. She was a white female. She was 19 at the time. She would be around 50 years old now. This is how long this has been. I know. I feel like
00:13:37
Speaker
Like anytime we talk about something in the eighties or nineties, cause that's like our time. And then you're like, that was 50 years ago. I know. I know. It makes me feel so old. And so now I want to say that the FBI has her as five, two to five, five in height, but every other article or place that I've descriptor says she's five two. So I don't know why they have, I've never seen to five five except on that.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah. That FBI flyer we looked at. And that's the official FBI flyer. So I'm not really sure. But she was, she was tiny too. She was 102 pounds. My goodness. Little bitty blonde hair and brown eyes. She had shoulder length hair.
00:14:25
Speaker
She had a three and a half inch scar on the top of her right forearm and she also had a small, really small tumor over the left corner of her mouth. Susie has been described as very independent, tough, very fashionable. Her cousin, Sarah Beeson described her and she said she's very fashionable, always had the latest fashions, which back then would have been
00:14:51
Speaker
Gap, Gerbo, Banana Republic, you know, that was kind of, cause they're not much older than me at all. What year did you graduate? I graduated in 95. I'm 97. So I'm right there with you. And so they, they graduated in 92. So they were just, you know, three years older than me. So, and,
00:15:19
Speaker
Let's see what else about her. They said that she was very, you know, she had a lot of friends, just very outgoing, kind of just fun. Her friend that was with her on the night they disappeared. Her name was Stacy McCall.
00:15:35
Speaker
a white female, she was 18 at the time and she would be around 49 years old now. And she was five, three and 120 pounds. These girls, I know. They just make them small there. I know. There's no food in Springfield. Okay. So she had dark blonde. I would say,
00:16:02
Speaker
It's like my color block. It was darker, a lot darker than Susie's. They were both kind of that bleachy. It was fashionable back then to do the full bleach. I remember putting that sun in. It was all about sun in. So she had blue eyes. She had hair down to the middle of her back.
00:16:29
Speaker
She had freckles on her face and a dimple in the middle of her chin.
00:16:34
Speaker
She was described by Susie's aunt, Deborah, as just a sweetheart. They said she was just the sweetest girl. She was beautiful, talented, just a lovely person. And what I'm going to do, what I usually do for these episodes is I usually put a picture as our cover for the episode. So there'll be, I will send that to you guys as well and it'll have their picture on the cover. That's perfect.
00:17:02
Speaker
I did want to throw this in since I just described them since they are still technically
00:17:08
Speaker
missing. I want to just say, if you have any information, please contact Lieutenant Brian Welch of the Springfield, um, Missouri police department at 4 1 7 8 6 4 1 7 5 1. And you can also report, um, anything even anonymously to the FBI. I will have a link in our, um,
House and Crime Scene Details
00:17:31
Speaker
show notes. And there is a 40, $43,000 reward right now for information where they are.
00:17:38
Speaker
Wow. All right. So that's awesome. Yes. So can I share a story? I read it. I don't remember where I read it in a source about this case and it's about Stacy and I just found it so cute when I read it and I just think it reveals her personality. Oh yeah. They said that her mom had told a reporter this story that Stacy was trying to strengthen her vocabulary. And so
00:18:09
Speaker
I guess her vocabulary word for the day was chagrin.
00:18:13
Speaker
And so she went to like walk around the halls of her high school and she kept all day long. She was using this vocabulary word, but she was saying much to my chagrin. And so, you know, she's like saying much to my chagrin as she's walking around the halls. And that when she got home, her mom corrected her and that that's when Stacey realized she was like, oh, that's why everyone was looking at me funny all day long. She sounds like me.
00:18:43
Speaker
me. I just thought that was so cute. It is cute. That is cute. That helps tell, you know, give you an inside and to their personalities, which I think is pretty good. And I love that because especially when you have cases this old, when you can find that a little nugget like that, cause those are hard to find with, with hold cases. Well, and I think, I mean, love getting to know the victims. Well, yeah. And I think too, that people, they hear
00:19:08
Speaker
about the cases, they read about the cases, they see pictures, but you don't really connect. Because these were people, these very alive people. And they had personalities and different things, the goals, especially the two young girls, they had goals that they wanted to do for their life. I know that Susie wanted to be a cosmetologist like her mother. Cheryl was a cosmetologist and had
00:19:35
Speaker
did hair, cut hair, and she had a very, from what I read, a very lucrative business. Had a lot of customers that loved her.
00:19:45
Speaker
And so that's, you know, that tells you about them. Yeah. Yeah. They had favorites, favorite songs, favorite foods. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where Cheryl Levitt lived with her daughter, Suzanne or Susie, as she was called Streeter, they lived at 1717 East Del Mar street in Springfield, Missouri. We have been there. We made a special trip up to go see this home. Yeah. And so I've been there twice actually. And,
00:20:15
Speaker
I will tell you it's off a very, very busy street. It is. Yeah. And like, I mean, right off of like, if you were to imagine a small town main street, that's it's right off of that. Yes. And of course now it's an older area now then.
00:20:34
Speaker
I don't, it wouldn't have been so old, but the street itself is quiet once you go down it a little bit, but they were on the corner. They are on the corner. So they're very close. It's like intersections. And I did talk to some
00:20:50
Speaker
people that lived near there, some friends I have that I know that were around that, cause I was in Overland park, but they were around that area. And they said it was even busy back then. That hasn't changed. So. And I think that like really almost can change how you view a case because we went to
00:21:09
Speaker
a case location for the very first case we did. And the whole time that we're talking about it, I'm like, oh, this is like in the middle of nowhere. She's on a farm in the sticks. And then she was in a subdivision and I'm like, how did this happen in a subdivision? I know. Yeah. That's why we try to make it a point, especially with these unsolved ones to get there and see what we can see from where this happened, where it took place. We've done that on several occasions and it really does. It really can change your whole perspective. Yes.
00:21:42
Speaker
right on the corner almost of this busy street. And then if you go a little ways down, you get into these big, huge mansions. Yeah. It's very strange because this house itself was very small. It was a small house, but it was cute back then. Yeah, it still is a cute little house, but it's older, but it, you know, but when you see the pictures of when Cheryl got it, it was, she had it fixed up really cute. Um, I will say there is an alleyway or,
00:22:02
Speaker
So this house is kind of...
00:22:09
Speaker
Would you call it an alley? Yeah, I would call it an alley right next to the house. Um, so it's like between the house and the main street, there's like a weird alley that goes there. And then there's like a somewhat vacant lot right there on the corner. There used to be a house back there.
00:22:28
Speaker
back then. I don't know if anyone lived in it back then, but there used to be. Now I do know there is a house next to them. There's one house next to that house. Isn't there one or was there two? No, there's one. If you're facing the house, there's one on the left of it.
00:22:49
Speaker
And so that would be the home that would be closest to hear anything, to see anything. The rest of the houses I think are too far away. They're pretty far. The one that's right next to it is kind of right next to it. I would say within 20 feet of it.
00:23:06
Speaker
Oh, so very close. Yeah. Yeah. And I, do you remember what was across the street at the time? Because now there's like a big office building there. I think it was just a parking lot. Like that's what I had found in, in everything that I'd seen that it's just a parking lot. Yeah. There was nothing there. No building.
00:23:24
Speaker
Next to the house on, if you're looking at the house next to it on the right, which is on the corner of the busy street is a business. So there's no other house near them. So I just want to set the stage for that. Cause it really does make a difference. And I'm telling you this house is like from that main street, it's maybe 50, 60 feet maybe. And then there are businesses all up and down through there.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, and this would be something that would be really easy for someone to get in and get out. Yeah, because you got that main street and that main street literally goes off to a highway.
00:24:04
Speaker
And I'm going to tell you that if you go the opposite direction and you go near where the mansions are, the road gets very narrow. Did you notice that? It's like one way in and out. It's like a one way road. You would definitely not go that way to get away. No. That's why we think that this is someone who knew the area. They had to because we didn't know and we went the other way through the houses. And remember that street got to like one lane. Yes. And I was like, there's no way we could have gotten away real quick this way. No, I mean one lane, that's it.
00:24:34
Speaker
Okay, so we've kind of told you. We just think that that's kind of important to know. Yes. Um, to let people hear our perspective from seeing the home, um, updated today. Now there is, I will say there is someone who lives there. Yes. Uh, and we saw them very awkward about you. So, you know, don't rude, but maybe don't, you know, go there and just like walk up. Yeah. They did let us know that they were there. Yes, they did.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah, but not rude, but just, you know, let us know. Yeah. So with that being set, the stage being set, so you can kind of get an idea, you know, of the location, this happened. So let me, let me back up. Cheryl, who was the mother, she was home that night. Um, I don't know. She was home all night. I'm sure she went to the graduation. Then she came back from everything I've read.
00:25:33
Speaker
And I've read some reports that said she was even out in the garage. There was an unattached garage. It's still there. It has a car port over it where, now I will say this, where Susie parked her car normally. Normally the mom did not park her car back there, but that particular night, the mother's car was under the car port.
00:25:57
Speaker
And so I just wanted to say that because everything I've read said that mom's car was never parked under the carport. So that tells me right there that she didn't think that Susie was coming home. Susie and Stacy graduated that night from high school, from Kickapoo High School. They went to several graduation parties and they were supposed to spend the night at their friend's house.
00:26:23
Speaker
And when they got over there, their friend had a lot of family members in town for graduation. Her friend's name was Janelle Kirby, by the way. And so Janelle's parents said, you know, there's just, we're not gonna do this tonight. There's just a lot of people there. And so they're just like, okay, we'll go back, you know, we'll go somewhere else. So they decided to go to,
00:26:50
Speaker
Susie's house and spend the night now. I will say What I find so interesting about this is that that was not their plan, right? So if you think about that Let's just say if someone
00:27:05
Speaker
was watching that house that we just described, they would not have thought that they would have come there because they were not supposed to. So just remember that when we talk about that, they were not supposed to be there that night. So they decide to go back to Susie's house to get some sleep. They were supposed to get up the next morning and go into Branson to the water park with their friend Janelle and her boyfriend. So they were going to go back to Susie's house, get some sleep, get up, go do that.
00:27:33
Speaker
Well, plus Susie had just gotten a new king size water bed. And I mean, who doesn't want to sleep in a water bed? I know. I know. And they had just moved into this house. Yeah, they hadn't been there very long. And from everything I've read, Cheryl was really excited about this house. She was really excited about fixing it up. And so somewhere,
00:27:53
Speaker
When they got home between 2.15 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. is when all this took place, is when the disappearance took place. Did you happen to note when the last time Cheryl was heard from? Yes, she was heard from at 11.15 p.m. that night on the 6th.
00:28:14
Speaker
So they were out at the parties. She got on the phone with her friend and was talking about painting some furniture. Yeah. And that 11 15 armoire painting an armoire. Yes. And then she, I don't know if she went to bed. Now I will say her bed was pulled back like she had went to bed. Okay.
00:28:34
Speaker
Okay. But it's weird. I did. Okay. So there are pictures that you can look up online and look at this stuff. And the way that the bed was unmade is kind of sideways. Like, yeah, like I don't even know how to describe it. Like the covers were pulled down halfway.
00:28:52
Speaker
And it kind of looked like a triangle, but it was like a perfect triangle. It was not enough. It was no way I would ever pull my covers back. So like you see all these reports where it says the bed was unmade. So she obviously had slept in it. Well, okay. Number one, I never make my bed. No, no. Number two, if you saw the picture of how it was quote unquote unmade, like you'd be like, okay, that's a really weird way to get in and out of bed. Yeah. Thank you for adding that because that's why I said, you know, she's,
00:29:21
Speaker
mine went to bed. Like she maybe went to bed. I don't know. Yeah. We don't really know because from the pictures, it's just, it's real strange. It's really strange. I mean, you would have to like put yourself in the bed, fold it back perfectly and it's over you may have been OCD or something like that, but I'm just saying it's weird.
00:29:40
Speaker
But what makes me think she wasn't is that right? There were, okay. So there were some steps that led to Susie's room. And on those steps is where they leave their purses. So all of their purses were there scattered about. And if you were OCD, you would not do that. I'm just saying. I did see a picture of the purses. They were kind of just thrown in that area. And I don't know if
00:30:07
Speaker
the investigators took the wallets out. That's true. That could have happened and got thrown back. Yeah. I don't know if they moved them or something, but when I saw the picture, it was, they were just kind of strung about and then their wallets were taken out and thrown down there with them. So I don't know if that's how they found them or if they went through them for ID or whatever. I don't know.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, that is true. You don't really know what because, and there was like a million people in that house, which I'm sure we'll get to, but we don't know if they went through their purses. I know. So when the girls came home at around 2.15 AM, this is where the disappearance of the three ladies happened. I want to stop and give you a little bit of backstory.
00:30:51
Speaker
I wanted to get kind of out there so people would kind of know about it. And then I want to give you a little bit of the backstory on Cheryl. Okay. Cause that tells you a little bit about who could be involved, what could be going on. Okay. So
00:31:05
Speaker
Let me get to my, sorry, let me get to my spot. So Cheryl Levitt was originally from Bellevue, Washington. So she was not from Springfield. Wow. Okay. I didn't know that. She got married to her first husband, Brent, and a year later, she got married in 1964 and a year later she had Bart Streeter, who in 1965, she had him. And then in 1973, she had Susie Streeter. So they're kind of,
00:31:34
Speaker
So that would give you an idea too, because there is an older brother, but he's a lot older. Right. So her and her first husband, Brent, they lived in Washington, mind you divorced a couple years later and she married her second husband on in 1980. Okay. Dawn Levitt. So in
00:31:57
Speaker
In 1980, her sister, Deborah Cheryl, sister, Deborah moved from Washington to Springfield, Missouri. Okay. Her husband got transferred there for his work.
00:32:07
Speaker
Okay. Well, I guess, and from everything I've read, they were really close Cheryl and her sister, Deborah. So Cheryl wanted to be by her sister. So she and Dawn and the Bart and Susie moved to Springfield to be near her sister. I don't know the dynamics there. I don't know. Susie's parents were alive at the time and they lived in Washington. I do not know why she decided to go to Springfield, but she did.
00:32:34
Speaker
So the interesting thing is about how in 1983, so about three years later, Deborah and her husband moved back to Washington. Oh, okay. Cause he, he lost his job in 93. So like a year after the disappearance.
00:32:49
Speaker
No, 1983. So they were only in Springfield three years, her sister. But by this point, Cheryl was pretty established as right with her hair, stuff, her hair and cutting hair. And so she had a good business. And so she decided they decided to stay there and not go back to Washington, which is kind of sad because she had followed her sister and then her sister goes back. But that happens. So the chances you got to take, I know. So six years later,
00:33:19
Speaker
Dawn and Cheryl divorce, which is 1989. Okay. And so we're getting close to the disappearance now closer, 1989. Now this was in Springfield. So they were still in Springfield. Okay. Cheryl. Um, she decided at that time to get a house of her own. And that's where 17, 17 Del Mar street came out. Okay. Um, because she got divorced now,
00:33:44
Speaker
Think about Bart, he was grown by this point. He would have been grown. And from everything I've read, and I know you've read too, Raven, that he was very estranged from his mother. They had a very complicated relationship. I know at one time, Susie went and lived with him and then they got into an argument. I had heard that, and this was actually even mentioned in a statement from the Streeter family later that I'll mention later, later.
00:34:13
Speaker
But he did have a problem with alcohol abuse. And that I think is what put the strain on his relationship with his mother so much because obviously she wanted him to get help and get better. And he didn't want to, so. For a while. I think there was a little bit of volatility there on his part from what I've read. I know that he and Susie had gotten along and then they didn't get along. It was kind of back and forth.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, because did you just say she lived with him? Yeah, for, it wasn't very long, but she did live with him for a while because her and her mother were getting into it as well.
00:34:53
Speaker
but then she moved back in with her mom. Yeah. She moved back in with her mom and that's right around the time this happened. And I'm guessing that their dad was just like out of the picture. Well, their dad was in Washington, Washington. So I don't know. There's really not much about him, his involvement. Yeah. Okay. I don't really know. Um, but he was not in the area. Okay. Now her second husband, Dawn,
00:35:18
Speaker
I don't know if he was in the area at the moment, but you know, he moved to Springfield with them. So, okay. So let's go to, so let's move back to, um, June 6th. The girls went to the graduation. They went to parties. They decided to go to Susie's house to sleep and then get up and go to the water park in Branson. Um, the next morning,
00:35:42
Speaker
the, their friends, they could not get ahold of them. They didn't hear from them when it was time to leave. They weren't answering. So they decided to go over to the house and check. Right. And when they went over there, now this is where we go back to the cars because Cheryl's car was underneath the carport. Yeah. And if you look at the pictures, like there are
00:36:05
Speaker
like evidential pictures or whatever of how the cars were there in part. All of their cars are very similar. They're all like little red cars. Well, her mom's wasn't Cheryl's wasn't blue. But the two girls had cars that were like, they were both red. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. They're red. I think Susie had a Mustang. So there was a circle drive in front of the house. So the driveway under the carport right in front of the detached garage was Cheryl's car. And then in the circle drive was Susie's car, which is red.
00:36:35
Speaker
And Stacy pulled in right behind her. If everything you read, and one thing that I did want to mention is like, I know it's a little small detail, but it's always bugged me is that Susie's car was a little bit in the grass.
00:36:50
Speaker
And the reason this is important to me. Would make me think that they were not looking around them. They were just driving up. They probably, you know, had been, yeah. And so it makes you think one of two things. It was in haste or it was not watching at all. They just pulled up real quick and jumped out. So I don't know which one.
00:37:18
Speaker
It is man. I'm not going to lie to you. When I was 18, I did not pay attention very much. So I could have been parked anywhere. Especially if she normally parked under the carport and she really parked there. She could have just, you know, see, there you go.
00:37:35
Speaker
that's misjudged the curve of the drive. I think with me, my dad would have killed me if I would have parked in the grass. So it would have been one of those Mandy's rushing to get, but, but the thing about the cars too is that if you think about this, um, the cars were because of this circle drive, it goes right in front of the house. And so you would have to navigate to get three girls out of this house. You would have to navigate through those cars.
00:38:03
Speaker
but they were pretty close to each other. They parked pretty close. I mean, we're not talking about one of them's in the street and one of them's they're both behind each other. I've always wondered how could someone pull up with that busy street and no one see it. I'm sure people did see it. They just didn't pay attention because they didn't know what was going on. Yeah. And so just, just something to think about. Interesting. So I had to throw that little nugget in there about the car. Sorry.
00:38:31
Speaker
So it looks, so from all accounts, they went into the house because their purses were in the house on the stairs. We were talking about, you know, kind of being strung on the stairs that the little couple of stairs, not like a full staircase, just a couple of steps that led into Susie's room. There was a dog.
00:38:51
Speaker
a little dog and the dog was there that night. Can we talk about this for just a sec? This is my tangent. Yes. Okay. Because I spent 15 years as a dog groomer and trainer and everywhere that I've seen reports, it's like, oh, this dog was so agitated when they got in there. Right. I read that. Yeah. I read that too. Okay. But this is a Yorkie number one and Yorkies are just like that.
00:39:16
Speaker
I'm sorry, Yorkie owners, but they are like yippie and they are standoffish, especially if they don't know you. I mean, even if they do know you, sometimes they just get a mood, you know what I mean? So this is not uncommon for how a Yorkie would act. I'm just throwing that out there. Like I don't think it was agitated. Yeah, little cinnamon's just her disposition. Well, because I mean, Yorkies are yippie.
00:39:47
Speaker
And so anytime that you, most Yorkies, anytime someone comes into the home, they're going to, they do this little paw dance thing where they like move their little feet back and forth real quick and they do these little turns and they kind of yip a little bit and they growl and they do these little, like they're just so animated. They're such animated dogs and they might growl and yip and bark. And that is not like aggression or agitation. It's just how they are. Right.
00:40:12
Speaker
And I think they're temperamental too. My neighbor has a Yorkie and they went overnight. And so we went like every couple hours to let her out and like, she knows us, we'll run up to me and my husband and lick us. But she was so mad at them for leaving her overnight. When we were trying to let her out, I was like, come on, Elsa, let's go outside. And she was like, no, screw you had never met me. Yeah. Yorkies have attitudes.
00:40:38
Speaker
They're one of the hardest dogs to groom, not because they're like aggressive or mean, but because they move so much all the time.
00:40:47
Speaker
Like they just constant, like you would have to, you know, those little groomer nooses that you, okay, you would have to not put that on or put something around their entire body. Cause they would spend so much that it would, it would like, Oh no. Yeah. It was like spin around their neck and like it, it was just, yeah, I'm just saying that's just a Yorkie y'all. So there are many reports that,
00:41:11
Speaker
The dog was outside. The dog was inside. I know. Isn't that weird? I haven't seen anything definitive. I saw a report where someone had said that they had saw the dog outside during the night at one point and that it somehow miraculously got back in the house by the time that Janelle got there that next morning.
00:41:32
Speaker
I know. Was there a doggy door? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so either, but we don't know for sure. There could have been, and that could explain that, but I don't know. It's also possible that the girls let the dog out when they got home.
00:41:48
Speaker
to go to the bathroom. Just like forgot about it and then got tired and got in the bed. I don't know, man. I don't, I don't know if the dog thing is, is just, there's no concrete answer for cinnamon. Sorry. So on this, in their purses, I want to say this by the stair on the little couple steps that I keep saying stairs, but it's really just like, it's like two steps, like a step down into the next room. So there were,
00:42:18
Speaker
wallets, there were keys, there were cigarettes, there were, um, I think, I think I read that Stacy had medicine. I read that too. Yeah. Um, there were clothes, um, not by the purses, but there were clothes that had been laid out in the, in Susie's room that they had changed for bed. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and,
00:42:44
Speaker
Before you go on, I do want to state that there were no signs of struggle in this home. No, no signs at all. Like everything was still kind of where it was supposed to be. There was like nothing broken or like, you know, Do you want my disclaimer? Except for the light outside. That was my disclaimer. Are you ready for that? So the light outside had been broken. The porch light. Now,
00:43:08
Speaker
I'm going to, here we go with me. So the, the bulb had the, um, the bulb was there. The globe, the glow, the glow. Now when we looked at the house, it's very close to the front door. Yes. Yeah. Extremely close.
Porch Light Theory
00:43:23
Speaker
So, but it's kind of high.
00:43:25
Speaker
Didn't you think it was higher? I thought it was kind of high. It had kind of a higher ceiling. It did. I feel like you would need a ladder to get up there. Or be tall. Or be like six foot four. But with that said, because it looked like it was like an eight or nine foot.
00:43:41
Speaker
ceiling. I mean, yeah, it was pretty tall. The front porch. Yeah. Well, the, the owner who walked outside was pretty tall. Yes. A little lanky and walked outside and what it was, it was still pretty tall. Pretty tall. That's why I was, you know, cause of the owner. So hi, owner. Hi, owner. We're so sorry. Sorry about it. Thank you for letting us stocking your space. Um, so I have read,
00:44:10
Speaker
and seen and done with my studies for my students, that there is a thing that people will knock out the lights or the globes around it where there's glass on the ground to specify a holding put. As like a signal. As a signal to where they know we're going to go back. Okay. So they do that on purpose. To like mark the house? To mark the house. Okay.
00:44:37
Speaker
And now I don't know if that's what happened here, but when I first heard it, that is exactly where my mind went. Was this a hold? Was this somewhere? So the perpetrator had been by there and knew to go back. I don't know. I don't know when that happened. I don't know if it happened sometime earlier or I don't know. Because we know that that happens even now that happens with like cars and parking lots. There's a bunch of things that people like trafficking and stuff do.
00:45:04
Speaker
to mark your car, to tell other people, hey, this one, take this one. And that's what they used to do with homes. I don't know that they so much do that anymore with homes because it's much easier to do it in parking lots with cars. But they did then. You have to remember, 1992. There were no, there were cameras around every single corner of your home or cell phones or cell phones. I will say in 1992, I had a friend named Nick Kynick.
00:45:34
Speaker
Um, he had a cell phone and well, this has probably been 93. He had a cell phone, one of those big, it was a big bag phone. Oh my God. And he would, he would take it out and put it in his back pocket and it would like be huge and bulge. Oh my God. And it was huge. And he thought he was really cool. So that's what we're talking about when we
00:45:57
Speaker
He didn't call anyone on it because it cost like a hundred dollars a second, but not really, but it costs a lot of money. So those were the kind of cell phones there were. There was no social media, there were word processors. I mean, there were computers, but most people didn't have a lot of those. So if there were some sort of network.
00:46:19
Speaker
happening here, they would have to be very close knit in network. So I don't think that wouldn't be the case where it's somebody that would, you know, there's no cyber stalking, anything like this going on. So you'd have to actually like organically see someone out and about and like follow them home. Yes. And so that gets kind of with
00:46:41
Speaker
the, the next part. So not knowing if someone followed the girl's home, if someone had, if Cheryl had been outside, I'd read where she had been outside working on a, you know, some armoire or something and that someone could have driven by there. We don't really know. But what we do know is that when the friends couldn't get ahold of them and they went to the house the next morning,
00:47:06
Speaker
I think they called several times. They went to the house several times. So during all of this, Stacy, the friends, parents were getting concerned, right? And couldn't get ahold of their daughter. Could didn't know where she was, which her mother's name is Janice, Janice. Yes.
00:47:24
Speaker
Well, they went to the home. They did. Oh yes. Yeah. They did go to the home first. Yeah. And they, um, they're the one, uh, Janice is actually the one who found Stacy's clothes that was like neatly stacked from what she had worn the night before. It's like in this nice, neat little pile. And she was like, she knew that that was the only clothing that she had with her. And then if she were out somewhere, she would just be in her t-shirt and underwear.
00:47:53
Speaker
The first phone call was when Janelle Kirby was there. She answered a quote strange and disturbing call from an unidentified male who made quote sexual innuendos. I've never seen anywhere what was actually said during that, but she apparently hung up on this person. She received another call right after that that was like sexual in nature. Again, hung up again, didn't answer anything else.
00:48:19
Speaker
So then later when McCall's mother Janice got there, she also, she checked the, you remember those old school messaging machines? Hit the, hit the play button. So she saw that like there was a message waiting and she played it.
00:48:40
Speaker
It was apparently a male making sexual innuendos and she somehow accidentally deleted it. Now we need to say how they got into the house.
00:48:50
Speaker
They just walked in. Yeah. So I wanted to make sure we said that. How did they get in the house? The door was unlocked. Yeah. So we did want to make sure. So you, there's several people going in and out of this house, checking the phone. Now I do want to say, didn't I want to say, I read somewhere that Cheryl had complained that there had been obscene phone calls going on before that.
00:49:12
Speaker
I did see that, but without her to corroborate her saying that initially, you just wouldn't know. But there is some reports that that was not the first time. Well, I also had heard that just reports in the area.
00:49:29
Speaker
that people were getting strange phone calls. And that could be completely unrelated. Back in that day, there was no caller ID either. And so you just answered the phone is who you got. And your number was in the phone book.
00:49:46
Speaker
Yeah. Now I don't know if her name, number, and your address was in the phone book. So it makes me wonder if her address would have been in the phone number book yet because she'd just moved there. I don't know. That's a good question. Someone find us a phone book from Springfield in 1992. I'm sure we could go to the Springfield, um, might be in a historical society and go to the community.
00:50:10
Speaker
Well, from there is where Janice called the police. Yes. I actually think she called the police on that home phone on the girl's home phone. Yes. And then, you know, the police came. So Deborah, who is Cheryl's sister, they caught word of this, of this going on. Um, I want to say someone called them, someone called Deborah and told her that, Oh, the sister. Yes. That they couldn't, they couldn't find them. So Cheryl's father,
00:50:40
Speaker
he was still alive and he got really worried and flew out to Springfield, Missouri. And this isn't something that is known a lot that Cheryl's, Cheryl's dad came out there. Now he ended up passing away in 1997 and her mom passed away 13 years later. So they're not alive. And they would be pretty old if they were alive now. Yeah. But her, you know,
00:51:04
Speaker
her sister said that there were posters and billboards were put up everywhere. I mean, they did, they really looked for the, I mean, there was a lot of publicity. In fact, I remember, and I've told you, I've told Raven this since the beginning, I followed this case back when it happened.
00:51:20
Speaker
because we heard about it in Kansas City. Like it was all over the news. And so I remember watching it take place and watching the, you know, them searching for the girls take place. And I don't remember much else than that, but I remember following it since that point.
00:51:39
Speaker
Well, in the way of evidence, so there wasn't very much collected because when, so Janelle was there, Janelle's boyfriend was there. Janice was there, Janice's husband was there. And then a lot of other people were called and a lot of other people showed up before even the police got there. And so a lot of people were walking through the house messing with stuff. And so they're contaminated. Yes, it really was contaminated by a lot of people.
00:52:07
Speaker
Now I'm not like trying to like blame them or whatever. Cause they were just trying to find their loved ones. But because of that, it's just kind of like the Jean Benet case. It's like, let's just let a million people walk through here. So not a lot was collected. I do want to say one thing about the cigarettes that was left behind. So it was said that Cheryl was a chain smoker. Apparently Susie smoked. Yes. Apparently Susie also smoked and
00:52:34
Speaker
was as frequent. I don't know about Stacy, but from someone who smoked pretty heavily for 17 years before finally quitting, and it was the hardest thing ever, they would not have left those cigarettes behind. They just wouldn't have, like period. Like I'm telling you, if they were like me with the chain smoking when I was smoking, it was like, whatever you're doing, you have a cigarette hanging off your lip.
00:53:03
Speaker
Like you just, that's just how you do it. Well, and people said there's been a lot of speculation that they just got up and ran off in the night. And I'm like in their underwear, man, I'm telling you, even if I was in my underwear, I'm putting a cigarette in my mouth and they're coming with me. It just doesn't make sense. She just got this new home. Yeah. She was excited about fixing it up. The girls just graduated. They were going to Branson the next morning. You're just going to get up and run off into the night to me. That doesn't make sense. Well, I'm single bit.
00:53:33
Speaker
I think a lot of the thought at the time was that they had just gone somewhere and they were going to be coming back. I know I read one article that was in the Springfield News Leader and it talked about how even after Janelle's mom had called the officer to come and they had filed
00:53:55
Speaker
missing persons report that even the officer had just taped a little on the door that said something on the back of it. Like when you get in, call this number and cancel the missing persons report. I saw that too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very strange because like you said, like they left everything behind the cigarettes, but
00:54:16
Speaker
Their purses, their money, their keys, their cars, and their clothes. I will say the money was still in their wallet. There was no money taken. Yes, and the thing that I find that's the strangest here is that there is no signs of struggle.
00:54:34
Speaker
So somehow you got three girls out of this house without a struggle, except for the light. That's it. Except for the light. So unless it was one guy with a really big gun, I just don't see one person being able to do that. And then he'd been thinking about motive. I mean, it wasn't just money in the wallets. There was a significant amount of money. Yeah.
00:54:58
Speaker
that were just, it was just left. Well, because Cheryl mostly dealt in cash in her business because of people paying cash for their hair. Right. And so it, it's also strange that you have three purses sitting right there and you're not going to take anything out of them. Well, that just right there shows you it was not, it was not motivated by any sort of robbery. No, no. Right. And the dog was not hurt. Now,
00:55:24
Speaker
Did the dog go and hide when someone was in there? I mean, where'd the dog come in? Was the dog outside? Where'd the dog come in? The dog probably hid or it's very easy to like shut them into another room or something. But the dog would have been barking loudly. Yes, but even a loud bark for a Yorkie is not very loud. I mean, I don't think that the neighbors would have heard.
00:55:49
Speaker
a Yorkie barking because I have a Shih Tzu and nobody can hear him barking. The neighbor who
00:55:57
Speaker
is deceased, said that night, they saw a green, I think it was green, olive green. Moss green is what I've seen. I said, all of you said moss. Moss olive. And I will say this was one of those, this isn't a brand new van. This is like a 1970 van, 60 van it looked like. I call them creeper vans.
00:56:23
Speaker
The neighbors said they saw that van pulled up in at the neighbors at Susie's house, Susie and Cheryl's house. And they said at one point they heard a man tell them to, what did I think they told them to? Yeah, to don't do anything stupid. Okay. There's the exact words. I was looking for the exact words. Right. Yeah. And they said that they saw Susie driving the van. Right. Which is strange. Strange. I know.
00:56:52
Speaker
But I guess, I guess if you are just one person and you're trying to hold three people hostage with just one firearm, maybe you would have someone, one of them drive. But why wouldn't you just drive somewhere else? I don't know. I mean, you're, you're taking the chance that that person who's driving isn't gonna drive straight to the police department or drive off a cliff or from reports. Now I cannot,
00:57:17
Speaker
corroborate this in any way, shape, or form, but that Susie had probably been drinking that night. Well, yeah, that's what I read too. So then why have her drive this way? I don't know. That's a fantastic question. They had been to those graduation parties and yeah, it was said that they were drinking. I had never heard that anyone had witnessed them being drunk or like too drunk to drive, but it would explain why her car's kind of in the grass. Well,
00:57:45
Speaker
but yes, but that would also kind of tell me that whoever took them wasn't actually following them, didn't know where they had been. Well, and that's a good point because, and that's you, you just hit it right on the head because that's one reason I wanted to mention that because
00:58:00
Speaker
If it would send them to so many of those parties, they would have known. And they had followed them from a party or something like that. And why wouldn't you grab them somewhere in between? In between. Why would you wait till they went to the safety of their home? Not knowing who's in there. So that right there tells me they knew who was in the home. Like that they probably targeted Cheryl. Cheryl. Right. And there's been so many... And Cheryl did look young.
00:58:25
Speaker
And she was very small, so she could have been, she could have pulled off the 18, 19 year old look. And we don't know with that busy street who, and there's been, there was reports of that green van being in the area before that night. Yes, I had seen that too. So they could have been casing.
00:58:42
Speaker
saw her outside working on some furniture or something. And that light could have been marking. So they knew which house it was. I mean, you just don't know. I mean, I, we don't know what happened with Cheryl after she got off the phone with her friend, you know, when she talked to her friend 11, 15.
00:59:02
Speaker
I do want to bring up one thing. You might have it, um, in your notes somewhere, um, that there was a witness who said to say this, who said that they saw the girls at a diner at around 2 AM that night. Yes.
00:59:18
Speaker
I think it was Georgia steak house. I think it is closed down. It is no longer. It is no longer open. Um, but the person who said this, I believe was, um, either a waitress or a bus or a buster or something at this restaurant.
00:59:35
Speaker
and did not, it was just like a second glance kind of thing was like these three girls said that they had saw them with three men and that they got up and walked outside of the restaurant with these three men, saw them talking to the three men outside and then that's all they witnessed. But there's nothing to corroborate. There's nothing to corroborate. It was just that one person that said that. So we don't know if this was actually the same people or not. We don't know. And I'm fairly certain that tip came in.
01:00:05
Speaker
weeks after way later. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, if this were a restaurant that the three of them normally frequented
01:00:14
Speaker
It could just be a mistaken memory. You know what I mean? Like, Oh, I did see them, but the dates could have been off or whatever. And supposedly they did go in there quite a bit. Yeah. And which is how this person knew who they were. And I'm going to say that that was probably the only thing open. Yes. And I do agree though. I do think that it was a mistaken, not a mistaken identity, but a mistaken date memory. Yeah. Well, and this person, and I know,
01:00:44
Speaker
for a fact the busboy was their age.
01:00:47
Speaker
He was not, he was not older. So he's probably, you know, he could be way off on his day. It's just from being that age. Especially if you work so many days in a row, you start to like blur it all together. There's not much open during that time. I mean, now in a big city, you go to Chicago. But in Springfield, Missouri, probably. No, you're not. It'd be like the equivalent of the Denny's. Yes. I think that's pretty much kind of what it was.
01:01:16
Speaker
was the Denny's. And so I've even said, I've even read something where that green van raced by a gentleman that was in the car and almost hit him that night. Really? Did he see anyone in it? Like other than like was Susie driving it or whatever? No, it was, he said it was a man driving it. Oh really? Yeah. But he almost hit him. Wow. That is something you would remember.
01:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. So I don't know. They said almost hitting like running, I think going really fast, like running a light or something strange, like earlier during the day, like daylight or no at night nighttime. Wow. Okay. So, you know, there's just so much, you're so many things. And when, when cases like this come out, you bring people just come out of the woodwork and some of them,
01:02:13
Speaker
have legitimate information and then a lot of them are doing it for, you know, to have the, just to be part of something. And so you have to weed through that. And that's going to be hard from a police standpoint to weed through all of that. Especially when you really have nothing to go on in the first place.
01:02:30
Speaker
Janelle showed up at the house at 9 a.m. So it really could have been from anywhere from two to nine. They said it was 7.30 a.m. I don't know where they get that. Maybe Janelle's tried to start calling them before she showed up and so maybe that's
Suspects Exploration
01:02:44
Speaker
why. Yeah, that's probably what it is. Cheryl's son Bart was estranged. We're fixing to bring another aspect into the case in just a second. But we're bringing aspect of Susie.
01:02:56
Speaker
and her dating life. We're gonna bring that in. From what I know, Stacy did not really have anything like that. There wasn't really anyone to bring in the case for Stacy that I've read. The FBI came in to the case. I do wanna say that. The FBI came in, even the Missouri State Highway Patrol, because they were looking for the green van.
01:03:22
Speaker
Uh, and then numerous law enforcement agencies, um, you know, I'm sure it's the equivalent to OSBI, Missouri state. Um, and then they also had, I'm sure the sheriff's office, there were so many people looking for this green van because that was really their biggest, biggest lead, biggest lead to go off. So we're going to, so now that
01:03:46
Speaker
Stacy's parents have called the police have shown up. They've, there's been tons of people going into the house. There's, you know, and this is where we are right now. So let's look at some of the suspects and who could have been around the area that night. Right. Okay. So first of all, this happened, they were found missing June 7th, 1992.
01:04:09
Speaker
All these people were called in, but it literally went cold after that. And then we jumped to December 31st, 1992, which is when it was featured on America's Most Wanted.
01:04:22
Speaker
So they had set up, of course, they have their own hotline, like the tip line, and a man called in to America's most wanted hotline with information about their disappearance. And the call was somehow disconnected when the switchboard operator attempted to link that person with the correct investigators. And they could never get that person back. That man had stated to this dispatcher,
01:04:50
Speaker
that he had quote prime knowledge of the abductions and was disconnected and never figured out who he was, never reconnected with him.
01:05:01
Speaker
That's that. That could have been one of their biggest leads and done. And again, the timing of that, the tracing wasn't like it is now. It would take a long time to trace the call. So that was pretty much it. Then there was another tip. This is where it gets a little weird.
01:05:24
Speaker
So there was another tip that came in, uh, and this was pretty, pretty far after the fact, uh, there was a tip that the woman, the women's bodies were buried in the foundations of the South parking garage at Cox hospital. And we went there. We did because we wanted to see the layout of where the
01:05:49
Speaker
This portion of the parking garage would have been and like how far away it was from the home, which was pretty far away. I think we drove what seven or eight miles. Yeah. And you have to go through the, the neighborhood where it's one way to get there. Yes. And you have to, to get to this specific parking garage, you have to drive past the main hospital.
01:06:12
Speaker
You'd have to know where you're going. And plus BT dubs, this parking garage wasn't even built yet. It wasn't actually completed until a year after the girls had gone missing. So they're saying that
01:06:30
Speaker
They were buried there when construction wasn't even taking place yet. I know. And they did have someone go out with, they did. I'm going to tell you about that. Sorry. Okay. So in 2007, there was a crime reporter named Kathy Baird who invited a man named Rick Norland, who was a mechanical engineer to scan a corner of this parking garage with ground penetrating radar.
01:06:53
Speaker
he found three anomalies, which were, quote, roughly the same size as a human body, that he said were consistent with, quote, grave site locations. So two of these anomalies were parallel to each other and the other was perpendicular. That's pretty much all that came out of that because the Springfield Police Department had a spokesperson, her name was Lisa Cox, and that she said that
01:07:23
Speaker
The person who reported the tip provided no evidence or logical reasoning behind this theory at the time or since then. She also said the parking garage began construction, obviously September 1993, over a year after the disappearances.
01:07:38
Speaker
She said, quote, digging up the area and subsequently reconstructing this structure would be extremely costly. And without any reasonable belief that the bodies could be located here, it is illogical to do so. And for those reasons, SPD does not intend to. Investigators have determined this lead to not be credible, end quote.
01:07:59
Speaker
And here's the thing about that. Okay. So we wanted to know where this tip came from. And we actually got some insight from our friend, Robin Warder at the trail went cold. We had just recorded the Aileen Conway case with him. And we were talking about this case. Cause this case is one that he covered as well on his show. So we were talking to him about that. Cause we were like, we're about to cover this case.
01:08:25
Speaker
And he said, did you know where this tip came from? And I said, please enlighten me. Cause we had not done any, any like research, research into it. We had only visited the site to this point. And he was like, Oh yeah. So that actually came from a psychic medium. Yeah. I'm not
01:08:53
Speaker
who called in a tip. Now, I'm not saying nothing about psychic mediums. I'm just saying that that is uncorroborated. Like it's not creditable enough to go dig up this big old parking lot. No, and I will tell you it is big and there is a lot of cement. A lot of cement.
01:09:16
Speaker
When I looked at it, I thought there is no way they could tear that down and find anything. So I wanted to find just some sort of statement because I love Robin and I trust him, but I wanted to corroborate him. And so I actually found a statement from a person named, uh, Dorell Moore, who is the former assistant at the Greene County prosecutor's office who said the tip came from someone who either quote,
01:09:42
Speaker
claimed to be a psychic or claimed to have a dream or vision about the case. Yeah. There were no other reasons for anyone to assume this was a burial site for the girls. And so in my opinion, not good enough to dig up the parking garage. And I know on some disappearance cases, you know, when they've exhausted all resources, they'll bring in psychic mediums. Right.
01:10:06
Speaker
And I completely, I mean, when you're at that point, yes, do it. I mean, you're, you're grasping at straw. So do it, but you can't base your whole thing around someone saying that they're in a, in the cement in this huge parking garage. Now, if it were
01:10:22
Speaker
For instance, they were next to this parking garage, and it's real easy to dig there. You don't have to go through SEMA or anything, then fine, great, yeah, let's do it. But man. But you even got someone to come out with ground penetrating radar, and all you found were, quote, anomalies, which could be anything, could be rocks. And it is right in front of the hospital. Someone would see it. It's a hospital where people come in and out at all times of the day. The hospital was there, it was, I think,
01:10:50
Speaker
From what I remember, that side of it was the emergency entrance. So there are people there all the time. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have ambulances coming through there. You're going to have like, that was the merge. So there's just, it's just not from seeing it and how far away it was and how do you get there? And it was not viable. And that is literally the only lead to where their bodies could possibly be at in this entire case. I know. You know, I've had my,
01:11:19
Speaker
I know. I know. I know. Okay. So, so we're going to move on to some suspects. Um, I have some suspects and then I'm going to let these beautiful ladies tell us about the main suspect and a little bit about that guy's background. So let's start with a man named Gerald Carnahan.
01:11:41
Speaker
whom his family owned Springfield aluminum or did at the time, which was an aluminum foundry in the area. And he had a long history of preying on local women there. In 2010, he was finally convicted of a 1985 murder and rape of a woman named Jackie Johns. Johns murder went unpunished for 25 years because of lack of evidence tying this to Carnahan.
01:12:10
Speaker
And the piece of evidence that finally got him was just this tiny minuscule sample of DNA, which in 2010 was miles ahead of what it was in 1985.
01:12:22
Speaker
And so there could be this wonder of basically anyone who was convicted or arrested in the area for something similar, rape, murder, kidnapping was looked at. And so they kind of thought, well, he got away with this for 25 years. We need to probably look into him a little better. And so we do know at the very least that
01:12:48
Speaker
The rape and murder of Johns was not an isolated incident. He was convicted in 93 shortly following the disappearance of the Springfield three for an attempted kidnapping of a young woman. So he did look like a good suspect at the time.
01:13:05
Speaker
Prior to this conviction, he pled guilty to burglary, stealing, and arson in a separate incident. He was in the area and very active at the time that the Springfield Three went missing. However, beyond this, there is literally no evidence.
01:13:20
Speaker
linking him to the girls in any way to knowing them to anything like that. So, and, and also if you look at now, granted there was one kidnapping incident, but if you look at his history, you also see that he liked to steal and nothing was taken from the house. And that to me, that's a big, cause I think he would have taken the opportunity. Right. So he was kind of dismissed eventually. Yeah.
01:13:47
Speaker
Um, then there is Dustin Rechla. So Dustin Rechla was actually Susie's ex. This is where Susie's comes in. Yeah. He ran around with a guy, two guys, one named Michael Clay and the other Joseph Rydell.
01:14:04
Speaker
Um, Dustin was a known drug user with a criminal history. He, Clay and Rydale were all convicted of grave robbing more formally. Well, which sounds crazy. Back then it was actually called
01:14:20
Speaker
felony institutional vandalism, which is okay. You take jewelry off of. Yes. Yeah, basically. Uh, and gold teeth. Yeah. And stuff. Yes. Yeah. Because so that incident actually occurred in February, um, February 21st of 1992. So, you know, three or four months before, uh, the disappearances.
01:14:45
Speaker
And Rydell was even found to have sold gold fillings from an unearthed skull at a local pawn shop. Yes. And there's something that makes that really interesting because she was, you're going to probably fix them to say that. Am I fixing to test you? They were going to testify. Yes. So Recla also had connections to this motorcycle club called the Galloping Goose Motorcycle Club, which I never heard of that when I lived.
01:15:14
Speaker
and Kansas City never heard of that. So I don't know. Apparently a group with a known history of violence. And then, um, then of course, Cheryl Levitt and Susie Streeter were both asked to testify against these three.
01:15:31
Speaker
in court regarding the potential use of Cheryl's car in some sort of robbery. So the young men later claimed that her car was not used. Susie Streeter also gave a statement to police regarding what she knew about it, but they were actually about to, hadn't yet, but about to go and testify. They just appeared before they testified. The thing that, so Recla and Clay eventually
01:16:00
Speaker
cooperated with the police during this investigation. The end of this whole big ordeal, they all eventually just received probation.
01:16:13
Speaker
So I really don't feel like probation is a big enough motivator to make three humans disappear off the face of the planet. And they probably, in having an attorney, they probably kind of knew what they were facing. So it's not like they just were completely shocked that they got probation.
01:16:32
Speaker
Yeah. So, and if they're known for grave robbing, so they're stealing jewelry and gold coin. Again, yes, stealing. They definitely would have taken money from you. Oh, yes. Yeah. They would have taken money. Exactly. Or gone through jewelry boxes. Exactly. And I think it would have been sloppy. Yeah. Because they're younger. Oh, yeah. You know, and
01:16:53
Speaker
Susie knew him. She would have tried to, I think to fight him back. It would have been really sloppy. Yeah. And messy. And you would have seen signs of a struggle. I think so too. So after that, we have the infamous Larry Hall, who has been claimed as a suspect in this case. Now, if you don't know who Larry Hall is, there is a show on Apple. It is called Blackbird. This show is about Larry Hall.
01:17:23
Speaker
Uh, Larry Hall is a self-proclaimed serial killer because he confessed to a crap ton of murders and then took it all back. I will say here's my psychology kicking in.
01:17:40
Speaker
As a serial killer, that is a normal thing that they do. They like to draw you in and then spit you out. That's how they keep control. But here's the reason why he was a suspect, because he and his twin brother, Gary, especially him, would drive around the country, the entire country,
01:18:07
Speaker
and go to these civil war reenactments. And so they think that he could have been in the area at the time. And he had a big Moss Green ban. And he is actually tied to two murders
01:18:27
Speaker
where he had made a confession and then he recanted, but that confession contained things in it that no one else could have known but the murderer, including stacking the girl's clothes neatly and nicely next to a tree.
01:18:43
Speaker
So they looked at that and thought van stacked clothes. Let's look into him further. Uh, he was actually only convicted of two. And so, but he is spending, I believe life in prison right now.
01:18:57
Speaker
Uh, that kind of went nowhere, but here we are because he's, he's, I'm going to tell you what I did to all these people.
Larry Hall's Methods and Evidence
01:19:08
Speaker
And then so that way you won't quite ever know what I've done. Well, he, he did break into women's houses. Um, he was known to at least one of the girls
01:19:20
Speaker
he had a habit of luring them to the van, which is something that I think is, I mean, maybe he could have lured them to the van, but he would lure them to the van, but then he would chloroform them with his own concoction and do stuff and then murder them. He knew how to make his own chloroform. And this hasn't been, I haven't said this yet, but there was a screen at the house, at Cheryl's house, that was off.
01:19:49
Speaker
the front door, oh, off a window? There was a screen that was off the window. Interesting. So that could be another way that you could get three women into a van is by chloroforming them. And this dude was big. He was a very large man. He was very tall. You could drive that van down that alley. Yeah, you could park in the alley on the side of the house. His van was a Dodge van. Now I have heard that
01:20:18
Speaker
the one that the neighbor saw was a Chevy, but I don't know. But I mean, did the neighbor really know? I don't know. You know, if I was seeing something, I wouldn't go, Oh, that is a dodge. I mean, I would know. Uh, I will say just throw this out there. If you do want to know a little bit more about Larry Hall, that, that show Blackbird is very, very good. And it's very accurate to, um, what happened in real life. So you should go watch it. It's on Apple.
Tommy Lynn Sells' Connection
01:20:42
Speaker
Okay, so the next one is Tommy Lynn Sells. Literally the only thing that we have on Tommy. Listen to me. Oh my goodness. Here we go. We do have an episode about Tommy Lynn Sells out right now, so you can definitely go back and listen to all of his nonsense if you want to. He was a serial killer at the time. He has 13 confirmed kills.
01:21:06
Speaker
In 2003, just a little recap, he was accused in Greene County of the 1997 murder of a 13 year old girl named Stephanie in Springfield, Missouri. So he liked to roam mountainous regions like the Ozarks and anywhere there were caves or mines. He was known to be in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri. And we know that he was in pitcher, Oklahoma. We know for a fact he was in pitcher. We know for a fact he was in Springfield.
01:21:36
Speaker
And we ran across this, didn't we? I think I was reading something and I was like, Tommy Lynn Sells, was he in that area? He was questioned about it. I do think that he confessed to it at one point, but then he recanted. He confessed to everything, I think. Yes, and he's another.
01:21:53
Speaker
But he just confessed to everything and then he just wanted to get out of prison. They would just take him out and be like, oh, where's the body you said? And then they would just wander around for like five hours. We do know a little bit more about him and his, his background as far as his Oklahoma dealings. Yeah. We talked about him with, um, Dardine family murder. Well, that was in Illinois. He's pet.
01:22:17
Speaker
a potential suspect in that case. But it was an entire family. I mean, husband, wife, young toddler, and the wife was pregnant. She had been beaten so severely that she gave birth and then the newborn was murdered. We talked about that
01:22:34
Speaker
He was eventually executed for, um, for the murder of that girl. He traveled a lot. He did. He traveled all over the place. He did all over. And so, but his home bases were like pitcher, Oklahoma and Springfield, Missouri. He had a couple home bases. And for like anything that ever happened in those places, everybody's like, well, immediately we should look at family on Springfield. Didn't he? He has family in Springfield. So that never,
01:23:04
Speaker
Nothing ever came of that either. Um, obviously he was executed. We can't ask him now. So, uh, then they actually did
Bart Streeter Investigation
01:23:14
Speaker
look at Bart Streeter for a minute, for a minute, because he was estranged from his mother and they had a, you know, some spatula. Yes. Yes. Um, they looked into him and apparently his alibi was that he had drank that night. He was an alcoholic at the time.
01:23:33
Speaker
He drank that night and he had passed out at home. That was his alibi. I think it would have been a lot sloppier with him too, because again, they knew him. They would have fought back. Susie would have fought her brother. Okay, let's go. I feel like if you're going to make up an alibi, you wouldn't make up one where you're by yourself. Yeah.
01:23:55
Speaker
If you jump into Bart's future in 2000, he was investigated in relation to a kidnapping in Las Vegas. He was also obviously had some issues with public in talks and disorderly conduct. He also had an attempted false imprisonment charge.
01:24:21
Speaker
I don't know though if this is going to sound weird of me, but I don't know if this is, it was a legitimate because it was like not, not on his record or whatever. Um, or if it was just because he was suspected in a kidnapping of his sister and, and murder of his sister. You know what I mean? Like, Oh, well he's probably, so let's just go ahead and get him for this. There was a statement, um, about Bart made by the Streeter family.
01:24:52
Speaker
It's quite long, so I'm just going to surmise it real quick. They basically say that he did have some issues in the public's perception because of his alcoholism. They did go over this one interaction that was brought to light where people were saying that this was an underage person, that he was trying to abduct or something from a bar.
01:25:17
Speaker
They go and say that this was not an underage person. It was an adult. Obviously it was in bars. They had to be at least 21 to get in there. Um, that when he got up and left on his own accord, didn't mess with this person. And then they go on to say that, um, they say, quote, is unsure how the story got so corrupted. When I was told to the media and police,
01:25:41
Speaker
or why the media ignored the obvious video evidence in its reporting. The impact of this misreporting is felt by the Streeter family and extended family members as we continue to mourn for our family.
01:25:52
Speaker
and hope for answers. We are still experiencing pain. Our family members are still missing along with Stacy McCall. We still want and need answers. Please remember them and help in any way you can in finding them by reporting any information that may be helpful to the Springfield Police Department. Bart Streeter, as always, continues to be contactable to the Springfield Police Department, the Streeter family, end quote. So they obviously don't think that
01:26:19
Speaker
he had anything to do with it. I don't either. And that maybe he was targeted because of his issues with alcoholism. My psychology experience and expertise says no. Yeah. Yeah. Um, my last suspect, and then we're going to get onto the big one.
Steve Garrison's Tip
01:26:38
Speaker
is a man named Steve Garrison. He is currently serving a 40 year prison sentence for rape, sodomization and terrorization of a female college student in Springfield in 1993. And I think he was like the second, I think the second looked at from the main suspect. Yes.
01:26:59
Speaker
And this is why, because he back then provided police with information that may have been, may have been legitimate or may have been a sick attempt to gain attention or to get time off of his prison sentence or something by feeding phony information. He actually claimed that during a drunken party, a friend of his confessed to killing,
01:27:20
Speaker
the Springfield Three and told him where he'd buried the bodies and stashed some of the evidence. The name of this friend has literally never been released to the public, so no idea who he's talking about here. As a result of Garrison's revelations, police obtained three search warrants for two sites in Webster County.
01:27:40
Speaker
which is slightly east of Springfield. One of these sites had been previously searched by police in 1990 before the Springfield Three ever went missing for unrelated things. That was actually in relation to another multiple missing persons case, but they thought that that was a drug deal gone wrong.
01:28:01
Speaker
So Garrison also added that they would find this moss green van that the women had been abducted in, in 12 miles south of this site. However, the reason that police gave weight to his story was that he seemed to know details about the case that had not been released to the public. Apparently police were so entranced by Garrison's story
01:28:22
Speaker
that they had a gag order issued surrounding their searches. So that means that we don't know what they found, if they found anything, what they were looking for. We don't know. What we do know is that no one has ever recovered any bodies. No one ever found the van. Um, they almost certainly did not find that van because if they did, we wouldn't know that by now. Sure. Yeah.
01:28:46
Speaker
If they found anything at all related to the case is a matter of debate. Garrison did not receive any sort of perks that I know of. He didn't get any sort of reduced prison sentence or anything like
Robert Craig Cox as Prime Suspect
01:29:00
Speaker
that. So I doubt he had anything helpful to add to the case. And that's where his involvement ends.
01:29:08
Speaker
So then in 1997, a man named Robert Craig Cox was looked at for this investigation and I'm going to let coffee and cases tell us about this man. Okay, so I feel like
01:29:25
Speaker
In order to understand why Cox was considered a prime suspect in the Springfield three case. It's very important to understand his connection with previous crimes and one of the first goes back to the murder of Sharon sellers in Florida.
01:29:44
Speaker
13 and a half years before the Springfield three case. Right. So back, yes, we're going way back. Uh, 19 year old sellers worked at Disney world and was last seen on her way home from work around 10 PM on December 30th, 1978, but she never made it back to her pine Hills home. Instead, her body was found six days later.
01:30:14
Speaker
She had been beaten to death. She was hit in the head at least 14 times from the reports I saw. And so brutally that her skull had been dented. She had died of blunt force trauma. And worse yet is that her body had then been stuffed into a manhole near a gas station on Sand Lake road. That is horrible.
01:30:44
Speaker
Yes. And law enforcement soon after they discovered her body also found her car that had been left just abandoned in an orange Grove.
01:30:55
Speaker
and they found blood inside of it. Robert Craig Cox was also 19 at the time, so the same age as Zeller's, and had been in Florida on vacation with his family, staying at a days in hotel that was only a hundred yards away from where Zeller's body had been found.
01:31:17
Speaker
On the night that Zeller's disappeared, Robert Craig Cox actually came back to the hotel, this days in hotel where his family was, with blood on him.
01:31:29
Speaker
and an inch of his tongue bitten off. So she tells his parents there. Yeah. He's like, obviously they see the blood. He said, Oh, I bit my tongue. And they said, well, you've got to go to the hospital. He said to them that I know that he had bitten it off.
01:31:54
Speaker
like himself accidentally during a fight that had taken place outside of this local roller skating rink. But according to local sheriff's deputies, no such fight ever happened. And furthermore,
01:32:10
Speaker
After he finally does go to the hospital because he's bleeding so profusely, a surgical tech and a doctor at the hospital where Cox was taken, they actually said, you know what, your story doesn't make any sense because if you bit it off, then the bite marks would have been in a different direction than they were with the end it was taken off. And so they basically were implying somebody else bit it off. And so, of course, then they're thinking,
01:32:39
Speaker
you know, in trying to connect him with the Zeller's murder, you know, could it have been somebody like Sharon Zeller's who had bitten it off if she were struggling, you know, for her life.
01:32:52
Speaker
And what's crazy is at the same time, so remember he's 19, he was an army ranger stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. And he, in the military really shined. He had an impeccable military record. He was named like soldier of the year shortly after the Zeller's crime occurred.
01:33:11
Speaker
He's really good at being in the military. Cox was finally convicted of that crime about 10 years later in 1988 and sentenced to death because of the violence of the crime. She's beaten to death and because of further crimes committed in between Zeller's murder and the trial.
01:33:33
Speaker
And obviously Zeller's parents are very relieved that this guy is going to be put behind bars for killing their daughter. But that relief didn't last very long because his conviction strangely was overturned due to a lack of evidence.
01:33:47
Speaker
in like 89 or 90. When it went to the Florida Supreme Court, they argued that little evidence was there that could link Cox to Zeller's murder, which included the tongue bite, the fact that he was staying at the hotel that was so close to where the body was discovered. There was an imprint of a military boot, just like the one Cox was wearing that night that was found in Zeller's car, blood in Zeller's car, matched Cox's blood type. There were three chest hairs.
01:34:14
Speaker
there that were indistinguishable from Cox. And all of this was determined to be circumstantial. And so that conviction didn't hold up.
01:34:24
Speaker
and her parents were devastated. Oh, that's horrible. That's all. Yeah. Can you imagine thinking, yeah, my child's killer. Okay. They've been sentenced to death. And then all of a sudden they're like, you know what? We don't have enough evidence. And I think it's crazy. It's circumstantial evidence. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I'm not a professional at that, but that doesn't seem very circumstantial to me. They said it was the same blood type. Yeah. So it was a little bit more vague, I guess, but you know, Maggie mentioned,
01:34:54
Speaker
I know other crimes in the interim between Zeller's murder and the trial. Another crime that he had committed and he was actually convicted of was kidnapping two women at Knife Point in California, where he was stationed at Fort Ord. The kidnapping occurred in 1985. So we went from the seventies with Zeller's murder. Now we've got this kidnapping in 1985.
01:35:25
Speaker
and Cox actually served time in prison for that crime. Um, it was after his release that he went to his boyhood home of Springfield, Missouri for his time. Yes. And all of that was before. So he was in Springfield in 1992. Um, and he was there for quite a while before he moved to Texas. And we do know that once he moved to Texas when he was 35 in 1994, so two years,
01:35:55
Speaker
after the Springfield Three, or yeah, two years. He was arrested for armed robbery in Decatur, Texas at a hair salon. So we've got a hair salon connection there. Yeah. He held a 12 year old girl at gunpoint. And so, I mean, we know he has this history of kidnapping of female victims.
01:36:17
Speaker
potential threat with a weapon. And I think that's why a lot of, yes, a lot of people feel like he's responsible in the Springfield three case. And it was actually the Zeller family who put Robert Craig Cox on law enforcement's radar because after
01:36:40
Speaker
Cox's conviction was overturned. The Zeller family, you know, they've lost their daughter. They're convinced this is the guy. So they started keeping tabs on him and everywhere where he was moving. Yeah. So when they heard about the Springfield three, you know, knowing Cox to be in Springfield, that's when they immediately call law enforcement and
01:37:04
Speaker
You know, when police began digging, they not only found that Cox was in Springfield, but that he actually lived nearby and he had even worked at one point. I'm not for sure how long or when, but at Stacy's, with Stacy's father at the same car lot, though it's unclear if they knew each other. Yeah. So.
01:37:27
Speaker
Wow. You know, now we're thinking, okay, he's murdered before he's kidnapped before there's a link to a hair salon. He's used a weapon, right. Um, against these female victims, he's in Springfield and there's a potential connection to Stacy's father. And so, you know, had he seen Stacy and Susie,
01:37:49
Speaker
you know, had he targeted them, you know, all those questions start boiling up. Only caveat with him would be that if he was gonna say he was going after Stacy, the girl's not supposed to be there that night. Unless he just assumed they were. Yeah, unless someone just assumed they were. You might could have assumed or he could have followed them that night. Well, maybe he was near the home, waiting and watching. Yeah.
01:38:18
Speaker
It's possible. It could have been. And we do have also with him another kind of shifting alibi. Okay. Also. So initially when he was questioned, he told police that he was at church with his girlfriend on the morning of July 7th. Yeah. Wow. And actually when, when his girlfriend was questioned, she corroborated his alibi initially.
01:38:47
Speaker
Yeah, but years later when she was requested, she actually recanted her statement and just said that Cox had threatened her and basically insisted that she say, yeah, we were together. Of course we were together at church that day.
01:39:02
Speaker
If he didn't have anything to do with it, that'd be a weird thing. Well, but this is the thing. They disappeared from two 15 a.m. to early morning. They wouldn't have been a church to that church. I know. A church at two o'clock in the morning. An additional detail to me that made Cox look guilty was due to an interview with a reporter. Cox told a KY3 investigative reporter, Dennis Graves, who visited Cox in a Texas prison after that knife point robbery that
01:39:31
Speaker
He knew that the Springfield three were deceased. So when he meets with this reporter, he's like, yeah, I know that those three ladies are dead.
01:39:40
Speaker
And he said, quote, I know they are dead. I'll say that. And I know that end quote, but he would never say how he knew it just that he did know it. Well, you know, one thing I was thinking about and Allison and I talked about this is that maybe they used some type of chloroform to get them out. Some people think that the, another potential link to the Springfield three,
01:40:06
Speaker
It was that Cox was this underground utilities worker and that he used that like, Hey, it's a gas man checking for a leak. You guys need to leave to be sure. No, I actually did. Um, when I had looked up Cox previously, um, I did see several occasions where he had used that ruse to get into one of his homes. And that might explain why the dog was outside.
01:40:34
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. And I mean, you wouldn't think twice about it. If somebody knocked on your door and they're in uniform and they say, you've got a gas leak, it's extremely dangerous. You need to get out. I mean, I would get out. Even at 2 AM. Yeah. That's what I'm about to say. Even at any time. Yeah. I would be like, yeah, get your stuff. We've got to go just come in your pajamas. Yeah.
01:40:54
Speaker
That's a really great point. Yeah. And not even give them time to put that makes the most sense. Yeah. Yeah. I think that right there, just that knowing that he had a history of doing that and it could have been done that night makes him my number one suspect. How do you get them all three of them into the car? That's where I'm just like true.
01:41:14
Speaker
Well, he, if they were in their underwear, he could have said, girls don't worry about it. Jump in the, jump in the van. Nobody will see it in there. I'll go in and I'll put on a gas mask. I'll go get you some clothes or something. I don't see the mom doing it.
01:41:29
Speaker
I mean, you never know because from things I've read about her, they said she was really careful about things.
Emergency Reactions and Theories
01:41:35
Speaker
One thing that I do know from my experience as a 911 dispatcher and my husband's experience as a paramedic is that you think that you're going to act a certain way in an emergency. And most of the time you do not act that way.
01:41:52
Speaker
you could be the most prepared person and be the one who's freaking out the most when something actually happens. So you just don't know what her response could have been. That's true. But then I think about like me, if I was 18 and I was in my t-shirt and my panties and it was like two 30 in the morning and I'd be like, Oh, 100% because nobody's looking at me and my panties. Like I'm going to go sit in this man's car. Yeah. When, especially if there's a busy roadway right near it and
01:42:20
Speaker
It makes me wonder if they had locked the cars. Like, do we know if the cars were locked? I don't know. Because if he rushed them out the door, now granted they could say, oh, we'll go sit in my car, our own cars. But if their cars were locked up and he's rushed them out the door, he could say, oh, just go jump in my van. It's no big deal.
01:42:42
Speaker
And you know, he could have, you know, we're talking about the mom not wanting to get in and it could have been the girls get in and the door shut and he's like, well, I have them, you're getting in my van now. And then she complies because the girls are there. And that could, that could have happened if the girls got in first and he was like, well, they're already in there, so you're going to get in or I'm going to take them.
01:43:03
Speaker
So, right. Yeah. And me as a mama, I don't know. I know you're a mama. I would have been like, they're not going anywhere without me. Period. Why wouldn't you jump out that once you're going to try to get out? And of course they could have tried to get out. Who knows? Who knows? Right. Right. He could have put the child locks on. I mean, who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I think my problem with Cox and I have to bring this up is that, you know, you guys were talking about serial killers and, um,
01:43:32
Speaker
serial offenders, often exaggerating or claiming things that are not true. And Cox did that also. I mean, he was known to exaggerate for attention. He actually told reporters and law enforcement officers that he would tell the truth about the Springfield Three when his mother passed away, but he's never given any concrete evidence that would
01:44:03
Speaker
tie him explicitly to the crime. Law enforcement searched sewers because of obviously his history with the Zeller's case. They found nothing. And so
01:44:14
Speaker
He also would have known about the Ozarks though and all of the mines and all of the caves because he grew up there in Springfield. Yeah. And that's gonna, that's, that's always been my bet. Just the same with Tommy. Like people from that area, they know the caves, they know the cave system. They know of places that like your normal person wouldn't know about.
01:44:40
Speaker
They're in. Okay. So also, I don't know why this just made me remember when we went into that bookstore there while we were there and we were getting that book, which no one should read, by the way, great bookstore, the great bookstore. But we got, we found a book in there about the Springfield three. We thought that it was about the Springfield. It was good too. It was good. However, it, they took
01:45:03
Speaker
facts from the case and then made up an investigation to go along with it that they did on their own during 2020 during COVID where they claimed to have gone and investigated this case. And if that's not the case, they did not do that. They didn't, they didn't even talk to anybody from the case, none of that. So we read this whole
01:45:24
Speaker
stinking book. I know. And I was all into it. And then I called, I called Raven and I was, I was like, guess what? There was this, there was this, you know, I'm not going to give away, but there was this private investigator. She's like, no, I said, okay. I just watched a interview with those two guys, which it's a father and a son in the book, their brothers. Um, but I was like, I just watched an interview with them and they said, none of that is true. So
01:45:50
Speaker
Like literally none of it. The only thing that was true was when they were describing the case and what actually happened just like we did. And then they just made a bunch of stuff up. That's the book we were, we were getting in that little bookstore. And then this woman who was checking out next to us said that she was around at that time. And she said the aluminum plant. Yes. She said, check, check the aluminum plant.
01:46:13
Speaker
there's also this huge like mine pit and we drove by it on the way there. It goes down like hundreds of feet where they have like dug out, dug holes. There's all these pits and mines and all sorts of stuff just right there on the outskirts. And she said that that had been there during that time. And she said she thought it
01:46:35
Speaker
Who did she say she thought it was? I don't remember. I can't remember who she said, but she said specifically the aluminum plant. Yeah. The aluminum plant, it was Gerald Carnahan. Carnahan. That's who she said. That's who she said. She said she knew that guy. Yeah, she knew him.
01:46:50
Speaker
Yeah. So you've seen people that live there that have all these theories. And these are people that are from there. It's so funny. Cause we, we, we stood there and talked about that for like a good 20 minutes. I love just talking. Well, she just started talking to me and I'm like, okay, keep going. Cause you know, tell me your theories. Cause these are locals and you're like, you're, you know, I'm eating this up. I'm like, yeah, tell me. I don't know if I'm
01:47:16
Speaker
convinced on any particular theory over the other
Green Van Lead and Local Theories
01:47:21
Speaker
ones. That's what I was about to say too. I will say, I do think that whomever it was,
01:47:29
Speaker
the green van is definitely part of it because I feel like law enforcement wouldn't spend, they wouldn't spend so many resources to find money. Yeah, if that were not somehow verified as a legitimate connection to the case.
01:47:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I do also believe that they released a sketch. They did. They actually released, no, it wasn't a sketch. It was a photo. They went out and found a, basically a duplicate of that van that they were looking for and released that photo to the public. So they really did think that that had something to do with it. And then Steve Garrison gave the tip that was related to a green van.
01:48:15
Speaker
So he obviously has some sort of insider knowledge about a green van. I mean, to me, all of these guys sound similar because all of them are roamers. They all roam across committing these crimes. I mean, I don't know. My thing is where are they getting all the same information to tell the police that people wouldn't know if they don't know each other? I don't know.
01:48:36
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like there's something missing. I think that about wraps it up. I mean, obviously this is still unsolved. Obviously these girls are still missing. There has been no one to even say
01:48:52
Speaker
close to where their bodies are located. And again, I do want to bring up the point that this is the Ozarks and there are caves and cave systems and mine, mine systems, lakes, all sorts of stuff out there where bodies could maybe not be found for ever and ever. So if you know, if you're a local and you know that sort of information, there's a good chance that, I mean,
01:49:17
Speaker
even like with the Freeman Bible case, we were talking about like you could go and put the bodies in one of these mine shafts or caves and just simply collapse it and no one would ever know. And then the water underneath would probably flow it down. So they would be far away from where you've dumped them. So who knows? I don't know why my gut leads me away from cocks. And I don't know why.
01:49:46
Speaker
If I had to pick one, I lean toward
01:49:52
Speaker
Steve Garrison. Yeah. And I also don't fully believe the, um, trafficking theory that this was a trafficking thing now, because if you are any sort of criminal at the time, you're going to know how to leave those signs and you might be deterring, you know, it might be a red hair. So I just don't know.
Complexity of the Case
01:50:15
Speaker
I just don't know. I don't think the trafficking comes into it at all.
01:50:18
Speaker
I just don't, I literally don't have a theory because every single thing we talk about, I'm like, Oh yeah, that sounds good. And then I'm like, but, and then we go to the next one. I'm like, Oh yeah. And then I'm like, but let me tell you mine. Yeah. You're probably going to cut this out. Am I going to, why would I cut it out? It's Jeremy Jones.
01:50:38
Speaker
Your thing with everyone ever is Jeremy Jones. Jeremy Jones, we also talked about Jeremy Jones. He was a lot like Tommy Lynn Sells in this area and around those areas as well. We don't know he wasn't there during that time. We don't. And Jeremy Jones did know the cave system and the mine system very well.
01:50:55
Speaker
Um, he also liked to boast about things that he did and did not do. So, I mean, who knows? And he knew Tommy Lynn cells. He knew Missouri. So it's possible they could have went through there together. It's possible. Yeah. In the Ozarks. Who knows? Who knows?
01:51:12
Speaker
Well, I want to say a thank you to coffee and cases for diving into this with us. We actually didn't think, I thought this was going to be a quick one and here we are two hours in. But once you get into it, you unravel it, there's actually quite a lot to this case. Yeah, there is a lot.
01:51:34
Speaker
Yeah. So thank you guys so much for being with us. We appreciate it. Um, you can find coffee and cases wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us sirens wherever you get your podcasts.
Call for Information and Closing
01:51:49
Speaker
Again, if anyone out there has any information in this case,
01:51:53
Speaker
If you've heard your dad or grandpa or somebody talking about it that you think they have pertinent information, um, you can always call obviously the Springfield police department. Um, you can send in your anonymous tips on the FBI tip line. Again, I will put that in the show notes. And other than that, it's just a mystery.
01:52:16
Speaker
The mind is a marvelous thing. It gives us the power to hear, to speak, and to listen. But the mind is ruthless. It replays moments we want to forget, memories that rip open our wounds, and thoughts that tear us from sleep. I know Janice must want to switch off her mind at times. The Springfield Three were taken right in the height of their lives. College, careers, families, all of that left behind. Their attackers left their family to wander and think about every possible scenario.
01:52:43
Speaker
every single thing they might have done differently and every word they left and said. Dealing with the what if is hard and Janice has wandered long enough. She deserves to let her mind rest. Anyone with information to the disappearance of Sherri, Stacey, and Susie is requested to contact the Springfield Police Department or Crime Stoppers.
01:53:02
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
01:53:31
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.