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Season Five: Does a Bear Bear in the Woods?
269 Plays1 month ago
In Today’s Episode, we talk about some true crime news and some convincing evidence of a suspected serial killer’s crimes.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Holiday Episode Plans and Bear Attack Curiosity
00:00:58
Speaker
So it's that time of year you and I like get to prepping holiday episodes and we kind of have a new series coming up. um We have at least one interview that I think is going to release between now and the holiday episodes too. and But there was a couple of like news items I couldn't ignore.
00:01:24
Speaker
And I don't know if we told anyone this, but you and I have this thing about bears and bear attacks. I think that we've said like little snippets here and there repeatedly. Yeah, especially when we come across like a camper or hiker that like we sort of go, that's a bear or like a big cat or something. Right.
00:01:44
Speaker
and And there's always that wonder, right? Like when when somebody, when something happens to somebody like when they're camping, there's always like, could it be a bear, right? There is. ah we It's rare that a missing person camping coincides with an animal attack, but like when we see it, we do end up sort of having to cover
Misleading Animal Attacks and Real Causes
00:02:08
Speaker
it. Even if it just comes up a little bit. We have to we have to talk about it a little bit because in doing that, you get to see how much it's probably not a bear.
00:02:18
Speaker
Right. And that that's a really good point because animal attacks on humans, like they're either obvious when they happen, which is still rare, but for a human to disappear and be reported as a missing person and and it not to be fairly obvious that an animal has gotten them is extremely rare. Right. It's going to be like the very, well, almost the very last thing on the list.
00:02:48
Speaker
Right. I think you and I have debated whether or not serial killer comes first, right? like Like which thing is more likely to have gotten you? Well, I would say that for sure. And the reason I say that is I would say for sure a bear will leave something.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's okay. And because of that, because they're not trying to hide, I mean, they do cash their kills or whatever. But for the purposes of like getting away with murder, a bear's not trying to hide a body. And so something will be left behind, right? Right.
Animal Attacks vs. Serial Killers
00:03:24
Speaker
Serial killer is going to be actively trying to get away with it. And so because there's that distinction there,
00:03:35
Speaker
A lot of, I mean, bear attacks, cat attacks, any sort of wild animal attacks, they are very rare. And they are very obvious typically when they happen. right And it's sort of refreshing to find that out, right? But when when stuff happens sometimes, people try and set these poor animals up.
00:03:58
Speaker
Right? Kind of. and Okay, so I was gonna start with a different thing, but i actually I think the bears go first and then we'll get to the other thing.
Montana Murder Case Initially Blamed on Bear
00:04:08
Speaker
So this is a weird time because we have two things that have happened sort of back to back. And the first one happens on October 12th out in Montana.
00:04:21
Speaker
First, like, news release I got doesn't have a lot of information. It just says that a body was found on October the 12th and that the person who discovered his body suggested they thought there might have been a bear involved. Now, it it gets reported this way, and over the next couple of days, by October the 18th, the press releases start to look a little different. The Gallatin County Sheriff's Office, they released a press release And they say there's no signs that a bear had been present upon inspection of the crime scene. Instead, Dustin Mitchell Jersome, he's got a K at the beginning of his name and then J-E-R-S-E-M, who was 35 years old and from Belgrade, Montana, ah he had been found dead along what's known as Moose Creek Road. This is north of Big Sky, Montana.
00:05:18
Speaker
His body was inside a tent and a passerby found it, but during this press conference that like is a follow-up to that brief release, Sheriff Dan Springer from Gallatin County, he says that an autopsy's been performed and the autopsy revealed he had multiple chop wounds, including to his skull.
00:05:43
Speaker
Now, at the time I got that press release, there was no suspect named. The police weren't talking about a suspect. The release says that the evidence gathered through the autopsy had made this a homicide investigation and that the incident was a vicious attack and that detectives were working hard to develop and track down leads. And at that point in time, local investigators had put their emails out there, their phone number. They were looking for game and trail cameras that might've been in the area that might've caught something on
Suspect's Arrest and Criminal Background
00:06:12
Speaker
video.
00:06:12
Speaker
That's where we start. As time goes by, we get to Halloween and another press release comes out, which I'm just going to go ahead and note that Devin Markham and Katie Smith from Fox 59 covered this really well, a little better than the press release. If you want to find that, that's going to be at fox59.com. They put out an article and the headline is DNA on beer can leads to suspect in Montana campsite killing.
00:06:42
Speaker
Police had gotten a beer can from the scene of the crime, and they had been able to use it to get DNA for a suspect. They go and pick up this suspect. His name is Darren Christopher Abbey. He's slightly older than Dustin. He's in his early 40s. He's from Basin, Montana. And from what the investigators are saying, this is some kind of random chance encounter between the two of these guys.
00:07:12
Speaker
They said that two things happened. One, he beat and killed ah Dustin Jerusalem. But then he also returned to the scene the next day and he had removed evidence. So this is where I picked it up at first. They were looking for items that had been removed from the campsite. Did you see this?
00:07:33
Speaker
Well, no, I didn't see that. I only saw the charge. Okay. So there were they had identified wounds as having been made from a screwdriver and an axe. And it looked like, I think I read they were looking for a gun.
00:07:50
Speaker
Because he would have had one, maybe? Well, I think the guy had a gun. Oh, here it is. It was a separate press release. They actually put out a picture of a Yeti cooler. They put out a picture of a S-Tween camping axe.
00:08:06
Speaker
ah They also put out ah that there's a Ruger Blackhawk 44 Magnum revolver missing. They said it had a blued four and five eighth inch barrel and wooden grips. They believed that a Remington 1187 12-gauge shotgun with a wooden stock had been taken from the scene. So it wasn't just like one or two items. They were looking for multiple things that had disappeared from this campsite.
00:08:33
Speaker
Well, they find the guy in the Montana killing and arrest him. They arrest Darren Christopher Abbey. And that was based on somebody paying attention and taking a sample of ah DNA from a beer can, right? Right, right. As it turns out, Darren Christopher Abbey, he was in the system. ah He had actually quite an extensive criminal record.
00:09:02
Speaker
ah He has numerous charges and convictions, including battery on a police officer, probation violations, burglary, multiple DUIs, aggravated assault on a police officer, malicious harassment. and like in His crimes took place in Nevada, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Montana.
00:09:25
Speaker
and he had done time in the Idaho State Penitentiary. I noticed that he had a lot of white power tattoos. Did you see that? Yeah, I did. From what I saw, he is he has been arrested and he's in jail ah with $1.5 million dollar bail, right? I don't think he's going to make that bail. ah Yeah, i well, yeah, I think that's why it's so high. Initially, um he indicated he had planned to camp where the victim had set up where Dustin had set up camp and that so this is territorial then and so he said and it was really interesting Darren said that after
00:10:12
Speaker
Dustin had welcomed him to the campsite and offered him a beer that he struck him with a piece of wood, stabbed him in the neck with a screwdriver, and then hit him with an axe. That's supposedly part of his confession. And so it was dumb. It was a dumb enraged moment because this guy was on his territory. Yeah. So the way that I saw this, this is the how it was run down for me. So Dustin, he had come up to Moose Creek around October the 10th and the deal with him was he set up then he was going to camp until Friday and he was going to pick up his girlfriend Friday evening and they were going to spend the weekend together out there.
00:11:00
Speaker
So even though they say passerby in some of this, what I now read in the court documents is that when he never showed up, she drove to the campsite because she knew where he was going to be, and she found his body.
00:11:15
Speaker
Now, same thing that you said, there's no real motivation for this. So this guy might be some kind of interesting predator. Now, Dustin could not be further than the opposite of having some deep criminal record. It says that he was an avid hunter, a fisherman, he leaves behind a young daughter.
00:11:32
Speaker
And he was a member of the big sky youth empowerment project as a volunteer and that's a huge deal i don't know if anybody ah tried to volunteer and or gone to the background checks in certain areas like it's getting more and more difficult to become a volunteer.
00:11:46
Speaker
According to his obituary, his home resembled more like an elementary school classroom because he hung up everything that these kids made and that his daughter made.
Confession and Investigation Details
00:11:56
Speaker
ah He would send pictures of their work, like of the what the kids were making, like they had just painted painted the Mona Lisa, according to the obituary.
00:12:04
Speaker
This case was bizarre to me, like, primarily because the guy, like, suddenly confesses. And we don't have the lingering, this was a bear attack for very long. Right, no, I was almost immediate that they were like, nope, this is not a bear attack. It obviously a stabbing with a screwdriver and a neck and an ax and to the head. That looks very different, right? And it seems like Darren was picked up on an unrelated probation violation in Butte. And while he was in custody for that, of course, you know they had a match to his DNA. And he confessed.
00:12:54
Speaker
he immediately made a case for self-defense. What? So interesting that people do that. Well, and I was going to say, one of the very key things to remember, because this kind of bothers me, I wonder if how I would act in a case where I needed to actually defend myself, because I would be thinking about all the consequences, right? yeah Okay, and so I think one of the biggest things to keep in mind is like the aftermath, because in the event you have to use self defense to defend yourself, you need to immediately notify the authorities. I would tend to agree there, yeah.
00:13:45
Speaker
Okay. The faster, the better, right? I mean, honestly, it's going to be a pain, but like any time you have legitimately, you know,
00:13:56
Speaker
you self-defense and someone has gotten hurt or died, just call the cops. And obviously none of that happened here, right? And so that's, it starts falling apart immediately because he, and and you know, you said he might be a predator. He may be, he has a a record, right? yeah But I'm thinking he's more just an asshole. Well, in 2011, Darren, he pleads guilty to malicious harassment over in Bayview.
00:14:25
Speaker
So it's a different area, but still. This will give you a little insight into him. He had been charged with a hate crime and he when he pleats his malicious harassment. It was after an incident, July 3rd, 2011. He tells a black man in a bar that black people don't belong in Bayview.
00:14:43
Speaker
and that he better leave before something happened. So the man leaves the bar because he doesn't want to give him a fight, but Darren Abbey follows him outside and hurls racist slurs at him, calling him names. He threatens to stab him. So the man turns around and he punches Darren Abbey in the face. He knocks Darren Abbey out with a single hit.
00:15:05
Speaker
Now afterwards, Darren Abbey tries to tell the officers that he had been clearly hit with a brick, but multiple witnesses at the scene confirmed that. there was There was a self-defense in that case, and it was that the man turned around and punched him a single time in the face. He suffered multiple fractures to his face. That's according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center because they were sort of poking at him. Now, he's he in that court, he describes himself as a skinhead. He ends up being sentenced to five years in prison for that as a hate hate crime. He gets out with ah parole after three years.
00:15:42
Speaker
so Do you know if that was what he was on probation for? um pearl He is still, he, he still appears to be on parole. it's it There's a, there's a pattern, right? This guy, I know his type. Yeah, me too. He, he baits people. He says an asshole thing and tries to bully them. And this is him getting old.
00:16:10
Speaker
and some people realizing that they're just not gonna take this crazy dudes shit and Then turn it on and I think that Dustin He was nice. Yep, and I think that made it even worse for this particular person and this particular personality because there is nothing like a like unjustifiably flying off the handle at someone and for them to be very kind in return. Yeah. He offered the dude a beer and that's like the ultimate sign. Like I do that. That's the thing that you do when like you're just trying to make some peace and and have a moment. You offer somebody a beer.
00:16:56
Speaker
Right, he's he was just de-escalating the situation, right? Absolutely. And it infuriated him. And so that's an interesting type, right? that's And I have a feeling most of the time the type of people who get infuriated ah when someone, when the adversary is trying to de-escalate is probably going to be an asshole. I wouldn't put it past like a predator to be that way. It's just a lot of times predators are way less confrontational in anything except the crimes they commit. Like, so I don't know if it started out as being like he went there and went there to tell Dustin, hey, you're in my campsite, get out of here. Right.
00:17:42
Speaker
And that's my guess, but I imagine just, you know, the whole nice, nice guy thing didn't, he was just like, I'm not buying this. And it just infuriated him and it escalated and he killed him. And so. Those are the worst kinds of murders by the way. It is the worst. It was for absolutely nothing. And he never saw that coming. I don't think, do you think? No, no, no, no, no. And it,
00:18:10
Speaker
Accomplished absolutely nothing, except it will put this guy away, right? What do you think about the fact? Now, we don't know all the details. I'm putting all this together. But what do you think about the fact that they were able to get DNA off a beer can that they then were able to get a match and arrest the guy? Because to me, this is one of those murders that could have gone forever unsolved.
00:18:36
Speaker
It could have. So this guy's in the system. ah When I pulled him up, and I don't have everything in front of me, I'm just, I've scrolled through it. He had multiple long sentences. And by long, I mean, like, sometimes as many as 60 months, which would be about five years, he would get paroled in the middle of it for DUI. So my guess is this is not the first time that they've um taking his DNA off a beer can. He's also a real little guy. In my personal opinion, he's 5'8", about 150 pounds. like he It's got a crazy beard. Every picture I've seen of him, he's dressed in camouflage. so He looks like a bully. i mean The swastikas and stuff, like that to me, it just kind of screams
00:19:27
Speaker
I'm a bully. Yeah, he has like he has like full body tattoos. Like he he's got multiple Scandinavian letters. ah He had sleeves with Nordic symbols on his right arm on his left arm. He had the warbird family crest and a Nordic Viking symbol on his abdomen. He had the iron cross with a swastika on his right forearm. He had the swastika and he had the SS lightning bolt. So this guy it thinks he's something that he's not, you know what I mean? Like he's just an ignorant jerk. Right. And so for anybody that doesn't know, um part of the public record of your intake when you were arrested involves listing and a lot of times photographing any tattoo you have.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah, and so yeah, and I can tell you for sure, it shows up, some of the records that I use, it shows up as photographs. And it's used to identify people sometimes, because sometimes surveillance doesn't have a face, it has something else, right? Yeah, they'll have a tattoo.
00:20:34
Speaker
Right, exactly. And I find that interesting. So they're looking for, they use it for a wide variety of things, gang affiliations, and then identification purposes, right? No, it's not 100% because you'd still have to match it up, right? Correct.
00:20:52
Speaker
But, and it's not like tattoos are as individual as DNA for sure, right? Yeah, the biggest thing they use it for in the criminal justice system would be classifications. Like, one of the things about going into jails and prisons is they do try to keep to a degree, the opposing factions apart, meaning if you're in a if you're in a local area that has a lot of gang activity, they're not gonna put a bunch of opposing gang members in the same pod, in the same jail. Right, because they don't, and they're probably not gonna put you with the same gang members either. Correct, they're not gonna let you collude, but they're also good night their their goal is not to let you kill each other.
00:21:35
Speaker
Right, because that makes their job easier. I just always found that fascinating. And so at some point, for some reason, I was like, why do we know what everybody's tattoos are? And that's the reason. That is the reason that we know it. um I don't know much more about this one right now. The guy's got a record a mile long. I i ran the public facing side of his record.
00:21:57
Speaker
I thought about like poking around elsewhere, but like I don't really want to until it goes to trial. He starts with deliberate um homicide. He did end up getting a bond. I think they held him for like the first few days without a bond, and then they set one for him that's really high. You said it was 1.5 million? 1.5, yeah. and He's been charged with deliberate one count of deliberate homicide and two counts of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.
00:22:22
Speaker
and it's Okay, so he it doesn't seem like he was the one who started the whole bear attack thing. Well, no. It was somebody calling who who found, it ah his girlfriend is what I believe he said, calling because there there was an attacked person, right? That's correct. I presume she did not look real hard because it was probably very alarming to her. And you know that's what and and honestly, it's not wrong except like was the tent zipped up because the bears don't zip up tents.
00:22:59
Speaker
I'm just saying. Yeah, I think she was just trying to get some attention on it and probably in a little bit of shock. You know, they do start out protecting our identity, and then we find out sort of as court goes on that it was her that found them.
Tennessee Case and Identity Theft Plot
00:23:13
Speaker
But weirdly, in October 2024, and I did not have this on my bingo card, even though we started on the 12th, and then this guy gets arrested, now he's going to wait and have a trial or plea out or whatever he's going to do. He has a hearing first, but yeah. So we have another potential bear attack, and this is a setup in the same month a week later. Okay, so honestly, if I'm being 100% honest, I thought these two cases were the same thing, and I was very confused. I was sending you these all through October, and I finally realized that you weren't getting what I was putting down because I wasn't specifying. I was not. You thought that I was just sending another article about one more step in.
00:23:59
Speaker
something that happened, like they had divulged more information, because there wasn't really a lot to begin with. And I was like, huh, I didn't think that um that was in Tennessee, right? Like, I was so confused. and And it took a little bit, because we don't have these types of news cases very often that are so bizarre, right? but Definitely not too like this that are so bizarre and also involve what is initially classified as possible bear attacks. This one is wilder than that one, as terrible as the first one was, and it takes place technically in Polk County, Tennessee. So just before 11.35 PM on October the 18th, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee, they get a call that's been transferred to them from Polk County.
00:24:56
Speaker
In the call, someone who is allegedly a hiker in distress named Brandon Andrande, A-N-D-R-A-D-E, he is told dispatchers that he was running from a bear and he fell off a cliff, that he's partially in the water and that he is seriously injured.
00:25:22
Speaker
So the authorities in Tennessee are able to pinpoint the man's location somewhere in the area of the Charles Hall Bridge, which is on the Charajola Skyway in Telco Plains. This is about 80 to 85 miles northwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Emergency personnel and search and rescue crews are launched out there and they go looking for the sky. And they find a dead man there.
00:25:49
Speaker
who has an ID on him with the name Brandon Andrande. So they then bring that body into Knox County Regional Forensics Center. So for those of you who don't know, and I'll take a, I promise this won't be a super long sidebar, but I do want to talk about it. You know that I'm into ah Patricia Cornwell books, right?
00:26:13
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So one of her early books talks about what's known as the body farm. Are you familiar with the body farm? I am. All right. So the body farm is in Tennessee. It's actually the University of Tennessee's anthropological research facility. If you drive up to it, you will know that you're at UT and you will see a sign that says the forensic anthropology facility.
00:26:41
Speaker
The idea for this was conceived in 1971 by an anthropologist named William Bass. Now, over the next year and a half, he establishes the very first facility in the United States that sole dedication and mission statement is to study the decomposition of human remains. It's a couple of miles outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. um It is part of ah a much larger anthropology center that was established over the next 15 years or so. But the body form itself consists of about two and a half acre forested wooded plot. It's surrounded by a razor wire fence. And if you happen to find yourself on there, ah in this day and age, there are about 250 exposed bodies. The bodies are exposed in a number of ways for the scientific study of
00:27:40
Speaker
ah how they decompose in various conditions so that insight can be given to coroners and homicide investigators and death investigators all around the United States. It's got a bunch of really interesting stories attached to it. um It's much different than what is seen in some of the CSI like television shows. The process there is very controlled. It's very slow moving, but it's also amazing that this exists at all. And it exists pretty close to where this is all happening. The detectives review the scene and they then learn that the dead man is not Brandon Andrande.
00:28:27
Speaker
The ID that they had found had been stolen and it's been used on multiple occasions. It's actually a man named Stephen Douglas Lloyd, who's been found here. He's 34 years old and he lived in Knoxville, Tennessee. So once they discover that it's Lloyd, they start trying to figure out how to track down this ID.
00:28:55
Speaker
Now, they learned that there is a man that's been using the Brandon Andrande ID and his name is Nicholas Wayne Hamlet. Now, Hamlet is wanted out of Alabama on a parole violation.
00:29:12
Speaker
So authorities determined that Hamlet was the one that called in using a fake name, calling ah the 911 dispatch. So they believe that he had fled before his identity would be able to be identified. I think they actually track him to a different location in all of this. I'm not 100% sure that that is true. um At some point before his death, according to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office press release, they believe that Hamlet had encountered ah Mr. Lloyd and befriended him, and that they had gone into the woods
00:29:54
Speaker
ah supposedly because they thought Hamlet was going to steal his i identity and basically assume his life. How weird is that? Okay. So what do you think happened that went wrong that he ended up calling 911 instead? Um,
00:30:13
Speaker
I think he had to get rid of the Brandon Andrade identity somehow. I think he was hoping he would get maybe a leg up. Oh wait, I get it. Okay, I just got it. like so he So the dead person would be Brandon Andrade and he would take over Stephen Douglas Lloyd like nothing happened. Correct. Okay.
00:30:35
Speaker
I think that's what he was doing. I'm not a higher percentage. I can't figure it out because it's so confusing. i so it was known i believe that he like Brandon was a an alias, right? Correct. okay And so for whatever reason, it was known he had been using that ID. It just seems really strange that he like went ahead and gave it up. but i guess without he He wanted the declaration that Brandon Andrade was dead and they he wanted the presumption made that because he had been using the name and the real Brandon Andrade wouldn't have been dead, that it was him, right? Correct. So what I've read about him, and this is according to the Elmore County, Alabama press release, because ah depending on when we release this, I believe that Nicholas Wayne hamil Hamlet had still not been found.
00:31:30
Speaker
I don't think he's been found. OK, so according to Sheriff Bill Franklin out of Alabama, he says that Nicholas Wayne Hamlet pleaded guilty to attempted murder and assault back in 2011. He got an active time sentence for this and he was on parole but violated from his parole, meaning he was going back to prison for something at the time that he kills Stephen Lloyd.
00:32:00
Speaker
According to Franklin's press release, he says that on June 30th, 2009, a police officer responded to a call where one man said that another man had been trying to overpower him. When police arrived to the location on Pecucan Grove Road, they found there an open grave that had been dug and investigators found two knives about a bat ah shovel and bleach. So according to ah this release, that victim said that Nicholas Hamlet had called him and asked him to come fix some sort of valve. When the victim arrived, Hamlet had attempted to overpower him and held him at gunpoint, leading him into the woods. Once they got into the woods, the victim overpowered Nicholas Hamlet and turned the gun on him and made him stay there until the police arrived.
00:32:58
Speaker
Hamlet ends up getting sentenced to 20 years in prison. So this happens in 2009. He's sentenced in 2011. He gets 20 years in prison, but he gets out on parole in July of 2016.
00:33:12
Speaker
Alabama and I would say at this point, federal, I think the Marshalls had a release on him as well. ah South Carolina, Tennessee, they all have ah put out wanted bulletins on Nicholas Wayne Hamlet. They describe him again, he's another little guy, five feet seven, weighing between 140 and 170 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes.
00:33:39
Speaker
so He had been spotted in the town of Chapin, South Carolina. He has not been apprehended as of this recording, but he's been spotted by members of the US Marshal Service Task Force. They said that he was they were looking for him in Tennessee, Montana, Alaska, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida, but they had tracked him.
00:34:02
Speaker
ah To the outskirts of Chapin, South Carolina and they had found him camping in the woods outside of town But he fled on foot once they got there. They have been searching for him all night um And according to everything I've looked at even though they established a perimeter there. They did not capture him there So that's interesting to me. It's another very strange case. ah He has a criminal history, according to the Marshall's release, of stealing other people's identity and living under those identities after he had attacked and or killed them. And um they believe he's been living for the at least the last six years under an assumed identity that may or may not be ah Brandon Adirande. So that's our that's our second
00:34:51
Speaker
bear case. And he really did try to convince people that a bear had killed this guy. Right. And so he was known like to him. This wasn't a chance encounter. They believed that he had known him for at least some time, but maybe not under his real name.
00:35:10
Speaker
Right. And so they look very similar. So this was a lot more sinister, I think, than this was like a, this was crazy. This was a very planned out and um orchestrated. And I presume it was just because he didn't want to go back to jail. Right. Of course. I had, um, I, I looked through their Brandon and Rhonda and Nicholas Hamlet looks similar. Did you find a picture of Steven Douglas Lloyd? I didn't see his picture yet. Oh yeah. Here.
00:35:40
Speaker
Oh, the again, looks like an older version of them. Yeah. Right? Yep. Wild. That is absolutely wild. And there's sort of a byline. It says the family was shocked to learn that their beloved son's life had been taken by someone that Steven trusted.
00:35:55
Speaker
Okay. Well, that is crazy to me that this has happened the way that it has. I mean, I you know i don't see these type cases a lot. ah Most of what I end up seeing, i I understand right away what it is, if that makes sense. um It's very rare. that's why i'm I think that's why I'm so into missing persons and serial killers because there's sort of a mystery to it all.
00:36:19
Speaker
This was a little too... so this so Okay, let's put ourselves in um Hamlet's place for a second and say, all right, he he is he has killed Steven, right? yeah know And he he needs to make it good. And so he calls 911 and says, I'm being chased by a bear and then pre brazil and then proceeds to whatever he did to orchestrate them finding the body, right? Okay. I'm just curious. i I'm pretty sure people don't call 911 when they're being chased by a bear and have fallen off a cliff, ah typically. That's a weird thing to be able to do. It would typically end up being somebody else that knew what was going on. So it might have actually been better if he had said, hey, I saw somebody being chased by a bear and fell off a cliff, right?
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah. And so there was like, it's a, it's a bold move. However, it's not very smart. And it's amazing to me the stories that like the orchestration involved in this, it was never gonna work, I don't think.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, i had well, I had trouble like untangling it because of the element of the false identities, which I think he must be good at. They keep calling him, um and some of the different stuff, they're like, he's a master manipulator and he's ah he's a brilliant con man and all this. And like that may be true to some degree, but I personally, I think he's kind of an idiot to keep doing this.
00:38:03
Speaker
Oh, right. And so just because he he's only doing it for long enough to like get away with it, right? Nobody's nobody is buying it. And so I don't think I i think he's just a bad guy. Honestly, he's just a bad guy who doesn't want to um be accountable for what he did. And for whatever reason, um he keeps on, but it it hasn't worked, right? I think it's absolutely ridiculous that he killed this young man. Yeah, yeah he he looks like an older version of this young man. And I've read i've read several things basically saying that Stephen Douglas Lloyd had
00:38:43
Speaker
ah some interesting times in life. He had been ah in foster care. I think I read that he had some level of react reactive attachment disorder. I believe that was in the CBS News article. that's a That's a serious condition where some people don't develop the bonds early on with their caregivers.
00:39:01
Speaker
And when that happens, like they don't establish healthy attachments or healthy boundaries, so they can go one way or the other. And and from what I understand, he would leave, ah go away from his family and friends, but he would still keep in contact with them, even though he had some some mental health challenges. And somehow, he came in contact with Brandon Adrandes.
00:39:24
Speaker
actual person, Nicholas Wayne Hamlet, and that's what ends up leading him.
Rare Nature of Real Bear Attacks
00:39:32
Speaker
He's basically in a very similar situation to what Nicholas s Wayne Hamlet was doing prison time for to begin with, where he tried to take someone else's identity. It's fascinating to me, but it is it's terrifying and it's very sad at the same time. Yes, I agree completely. but um It, once again, was not anything to do with bears, even though initially both of them were presented just briefly, right? And I don't necessarily... I feel like that's what I would think first, too, if I saw somebody that had been
00:40:07
Speaker
hurt and there's blood, like obvious blood, I would think, oh, it's a bear attack, right? It's a very specific situation. If you ever look into something like that, it's fascinating that you see that not only like do are they sure it was a bear attack, like they find the bear, they check the bear for DNA of the victim.
00:40:27
Speaker
yeah They check the victim for DNA of the bear and then they euthanize the bear. It's like a big deal, right? But it's also very like they make very certain of what occurred. That's now. I mean, obviously, there's been stuff in the past where they didn't have this technology. So it's not going to work, right?
00:40:48
Speaker
no No, you're not gonna be able to get away with something like that. um I don't have a lot more on the bear cases right now, but I am i am super interested in these two idiots. I don't have a better word for them. Oh, and so Nicholas Wayne Hamlet has to be caught, right? Right. I have a feeling that Darren will plead out, right? Because I mean, he's already confessed, so.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah. We'll see what happens with him. He basically has already set him, he has already, in my opinion, set himself up to plead out. Yeah. So sort of shifting gears to like articles, there was an amazing article that came out this week.
Wisconsin Cold Case and Christopher Revick
00:41:36
Speaker
This is out of WSAW TV. So that's going to be, I think they're the CBS affiliate and they're probably channel seven from way back when up in Wisconsin.
00:41:49
Speaker
They put out an article on November the 8th or November the 7th. Cassandra Cepeda, Sean White, and Tom Zyrowski all wrote on this. And it actually is a case that they feature on the Forgotten Wisconsin Cold Cases podcast.
00:42:07
Speaker
But it had so much information in it about this guy that I wanted to talk about it here because I've never seen law enforcement dump quite this much information and you'll kind of see why here in a second. But if you want to go read the article, it's just forgotten Wisconsin cold cases colon who killed Deidre harm and I think you can listen to the podcast episode now, and I think you can watch a video on it on YouTube. I'm just gonna recap the article, because it was so interesting to me. um Did you get a chance to read this? I did, yep, it is really interesting. So this is out of Wisconsin, Rapids, Wisconsin. It just says, if you're from Wisconsin, then you know going out to the bars to socialize is totally normal, especially if you're in your 20s.
00:42:56
Speaker
If you live in a small town like Wisconsin Rapids, it's also not an unheard of to go out by yourself knowing you'll probably run into someone you know. That's likely what 21-year-old Deidre Harm thought when she hired a babysitter on June 10th of 2006. What she didn't know, though, is that she'd never get the chance to see her baby girl ever again. Now, 18 years later, investigators say they're ready to close the case, but no one is in custody.
00:43:27
Speaker
Before you read any further, know that this is going to be a little different. That's because we're going to do something we typically don't. We are sharing with you upfront who investigators believe killed Deidre Harm. His name is Christopher Revick. Now, had you ever heard of this guy? No, I hadn't. I had followed a little bit of Deidre's case. I knew that like his name had come up, but I knew none of this that they put in here.
00:43:55
Speaker
um Wood County Sheriff Sean Becker says, we're still looking for some information. There's no doubt in my mind who I believe did this. It's Chris Ravick. Nothing is going to change my mind to say that he didn't. Christopher was a Wisconsin Rapids native who was living in Douglas County, Missouri in 2009 when he was accused of murder in a different case. So putting all of this together,
00:44:22
Speaker
ah the The sheriff is sure that like Chris Ravik has killed Deidre Harm, but he was never on their radar before he had been arrested down in Missouri. In fact, no one had ever been charged with Deidre's murder, but these interviews seem to point to, I would say coupled with circumstantial evidence, the fact that like the the sheriff, the facts that sort of make the sheriff be so sure of it responsible. And I was going to ask you what you thought of that. Um, but because it obviously, if there are not facts that back it up, then you're looking at a, at television, right? Yeah. Like, look, ah they talk about interviewing his family, his wife, his girlfriend, and they talk about having quite a bit of circumstantial evidence here.
00:45:18
Speaker
They give News Channel 7 to do this podcast episode access to see all of the things from their perspective, because they don't want them to publish it haphazardly. In some ways, cases like this can go one of two ways for me. um One, they could kind of be Henry Lee Lucas-ish, and like they're just dumping it on someone that's committed other crimes, and it because it seems to fit in some way that they can get it off of their plate. I don't know if that's the case here or not,
00:45:48
Speaker
The other way can kind of be the polar opposite of that, where they hone in on this one person. And to us, it kind of looks like tunnel vision at first, but the truth is they narrowed down this list they had to start with, where they had, you know, hunters from the area and people that were acquainted with her and family and friends and exes, and they made this big pile of names.
00:46:11
Speaker
And they whittled away the names, and whittled away the names, and whittled away the names. And they really honestly had a stone cold who'd done it. When they do that, I have a little bit more respect for them finding a suspect who seems to fit. But I look at this, and these are your words, ah personally, I feel like this is soft, but not able to be adjudicated.
00:46:38
Speaker
um The sheriff seems to think that he, in fact, he says, I think that some people still question that he's not responsible for this, but I think it's fair to give more information out to say, this is why we think that he is.
00:46:52
Speaker
Right, and so going into this, I feel like at least there is substantiation, right? It's not, it's not a blanket statement. And so to me, so I was a little skeptical at first, but then I felt like it was warranted what he said. I mean, obviously you can think whatever you want and the sheriff can too, right? But if you don't have a lot to back it up, that's where we get into trouble, especially in the circumstances of this case in particular, because of, of the reasons why this is what it is, right? And we're not going to get any further. But the sheriff, I feel like, at least articulates adequately why he feels that way. He does. And so the article moves on to say, back in 2009, on the morning of July 30th, so this is three years after Deidre disappears.
00:47:45
Speaker
The Wisconsin Rapids Police Department gets an anonymous call about Deidre's case, which they then share with the county sheriff. And Sheriff Becker says that it's a Crimestoppers tip that comes in, and it states that Chris Rebick, who is living in Ava, Missouri, which is pretty close to Branson, Missouri, had been arrested for a homicide down in that area. So it had been three years since Deidre's remains were found by hunters outside of town, about five miles outside of Wisconsin Rapids.
00:48:15
Speaker
The case was active, but they basically state in this podcast and in the coverage, they hadn't had ah a lead. They felt like it was real solid in a long time. So their interest then grows because they receive an email from the Douglas County Sheriff's Department. And it says that 36 year old Christopher Revick, their suspect in their murder case could potentially be connected to Deidre Harms death.
00:48:44
Speaker
At the time of his arrest, Christopher was an EMT for Taney County, Missouri. He had a daughter and a stepdaughter from a previous marriage. He was married to a woman named Johanna Rabbit, and she also worked is and ah at the same department. It said Chris landed on investigators' radar after being at the same bar as a 36-year-old woman named Renee Williams. She had disappeared in 2007.
00:49:11
Speaker
According to the Douglas County Sheriff's Department, there was physical evidence near Renee's car and inside Christopher's truck that connected him to her death. Joanna, the wife in this situation, she writes a 26 page handwritten letter. She said she had been under immense pressure and fear of Christopher Revick. And during this time, she had helped load Renee's body into their truck days after her death.
00:49:38
Speaker
According to Chris Rebek, he said he accidentally strangled her and then eventually got rid of her body. The Douglas County Sheriff says this is only scratching the surface of the Renee Williams case. The podcasters even say that you're probably going to have a lot of questions.
00:49:55
Speaker
But the idea is that it became possible that Renee was not going to be Chris Ravick's only victim. In fact, according to Douglas County, they believe that Christopher may have been responsible for at least four deaths across several states. While they're collecting evidence in Renee's death, deputies in Missouri, they say they came across some important information. And they said to the sheriff, you know what?
00:50:22
Speaker
They were up in Wisconsin Rapids the weekend that Dejohar went missing. They, in this instance, it's Chris and his wife, Johanna. They pulled the Taney County Emergency Services work schedules, and it shows that Chris had been taking a vacation that started June 6, 2006, and it ended on June 12. On a separate form for June 13th and 14th, Chris had written, we will still be in Wisconsin with family. So Deidre's last seen Saturday, June 10th smack dab in the middle of that vacation request. Interviews with his family place him in Wisconsin rapids that day. Joanna and Chris and Chris's two kids had made the trip up because Chris's little sister was graduating high school and the family was having
00:51:19
Speaker
a celebration, a party. They end up wanting to put all of this together and Wood County wants to follow up on it, but they don't get the chance to interview Chris. July 26th of 2009, the day after he's arrested for second degree murder, but four days before this email goes from Douglas County to Wood County, Chris kills himself in jail.
Rebeck's Complicated Investigation
00:51:44
Speaker
So according to Lieutenant Investigator Scott Goldberg, he says, I think some of the reasons that he did it, it's probably because he knew like he could see the writing on the wall. He had hit rock bottom at that point, but not just for the one homicide, but probably for Deidre's case and maybe for more. I hear this and a lot of times investigators will stop here. You know what I mean? They'll kind of stop looking. These guys don't do that.
00:52:12
Speaker
Wood County, they start sending investigators out to talk to the different family members. They send several Wood County deputies 10 hours south to Missouri to talk to Joanna. And they essentially start laying the groundwork with that visit to give us what we have here.
00:52:37
Speaker
So June 10th, 2006, Deidre Harm goes out for a night out. She's got a babysitter. She leaves her apartment. She walks to some nearby bars and she just never comes home. The next day, a friend of hers and her father had reported her missing to the Wisconsin Rapids Police Department. It's not clear how many bars she went to, but they know she had been at at least two. One was called Four Stools and the other was called The Finish Line.
00:53:03
Speaker
The bartender at the finish line says that he saw Deidre Lee and that there was a man who was not far behind her. For months, family and friends were interviewed when this happened because they were trying to figure out who the man was and what could have happened to her. It's a very Dexter like situation here. When they are digging into this, they're looking into our romantic relationships. They're looking to any,
00:53:31
Speaker
criminal associates she might have if she's got any kind of criminal history. They're looking to see if she uses any kind of drugs and like how that would go. And they do point out, Sheriff Becker points out in all of this, that he had established suspects because of that, persons of interest in suspects.
00:53:48
Speaker
There was someone that Deidre had bought drugs to. They don't specify what type of drugs. They point out they're not trying to victim blame. But he basically states that they put it out there because this type of information coming in, in a homicide investigation or any other type of like investigation where they're really going at it hard, they're wanting every little piece of information they can get. And they will follow up on it just kind of like I described when you were asking me how I felt about this, they're following up on it until that person or the information doesn't fit what happened anymore. So they're trying to look for situations where someone could end up at a point of risk.
00:54:34
Speaker
they're not Like if you're if you're buying drugs in the mid 2000s, it's a little riskier even if it's just weed than it would be today. So she falls into a higher risk category and they have to look at that. They have to establish a person of interest or ah a suspect of who might've been giving her drugs and could that be who the guy was that has been seen following her out of this bar?
00:55:02
Speaker
And to me it makes it seem like, um, I'm not saying it was a stretch because it is a logical line. It's just a lot of times there'd be a whole lot of people in between like her inner circle and the guy that sometimes got her pot. Right. But there should have been more, usually those leads don't fizzle out quick. If they fizzle out quick, there's nothing to them. Right. So the,
00:55:28
Speaker
The lieutenant and the sheriff here, they go on to say that it's important for the public to know that they've gone through all these reports. They've gone through all of these, like from what I understand, hundreds of witness interviews and field contact reports and possible suspects. They both said, to a degree, they couldn't even give ah a good number of how many people they had talked to, but they had talked to many, many people that had been eliminated because they could easily figure out where they were and what they were doing at the time they were looking at. and There were a lot of people, they just couldn't find any connection to the bars or to Deidre. The evidence that they followed is what leads them here to saying, we think it's Chris Rebek. Now, online people are already saying, Chris Rebek couldn't have done this, but the reason they're giving these interviews and sharing this information with WSAW7 is because they want to kind of put an end to that.
00:56:27
Speaker
Well, let me ask you this. Do you have any, I don't think it's mentioned here, but do you have any inclination as to why the initial arresting law enforcement agency was like, hey, this guy might be involved in your unsolved homicide. ah Wait, is she just, miss no, she was found, unsolved homicide.
00:56:50
Speaker
Yeah, so the reason I think they think she's involved in the unsolved homicide is my guess is once they dig deep on the Renee Williams case and arrest him for the second degree murder, um there's evidence probably in his vehicle tying him to Deidre's murder. I don't know if it's notes or a trophy or what. um Well, and he and I was thinking perhaps he like gave some hints. Could be that too, yeah.
00:57:21
Speaker
Like it could be one of those situations where they were starting to talk to him and he was pointing out there were more. Like I've seen that kind of thought, it's kind of rare, but it does happen. um it It could be done for a number of reasons.
00:57:39
Speaker
The way Deidre's case worked, her face was everywhere in the news. ah Five months after she goes missing in 2009, on November the 20th, A couple of hunters came across human remains on a privately owned wooded area near what was known as the Wood County Rifle Range. This was in Seneca. It's about five miles from where she went missing. So they do tons of testing. Now, the forensic testing and dental records, they determine that the remains belong to Deidre.
00:58:17
Speaker
But none of her clothing is there. The only personal items that are recovered from this area were two rings. The remains had been out in the elements for quite a long time at this point, so they weren't sure how she had died. investigat Investigators had even considered that maybe she had walked out there on her own because of where her body was found.
00:58:39
Speaker
she's without clothes, it tends to lend towards at least needing to be investigated as if the manner of death was going to be homicide. Because of the location of the remains, that's when Wood County takes over from Wisconsin Rapids.
00:58:54
Speaker
If you go looking for this area, it's really easy to to see this location on Google Maps. They also have a couple of maps up on WSAW with this article, Forgotten Wisconsin Cold Cases. It seems like it could be a random place, but investigators said that it's actually a popular high crime area.
00:59:14
Speaker
So the new seven team goes out there and they take a look at it. Looking around, there's tons of trash here, um everything from tires and mattresses, appliances. There was also really clear evidence that at least teenagers were still going out there to party and drink even now.
00:59:33
Speaker
um The area is referred to as, quote, Blueberry as a meeting place. According to Lieutenant Goldberg, he said, ah there's a high-low road out there where kids will party and then they will go mudding with four-wheel drive vehicles and goof around.
00:59:50
Speaker
ah He said they have had issues, they've been called out there a countless number of times over the years to either break up parties or to deal with assault cases. It's also a spot that according to Chris's brother, Chris was very familiar with because Chris, when he was a teenager, used to go out there to party with his friends.
Suspicious Behavior and Evidence Tampering
01:00:08
Speaker
If you look at pictures of the area, there's a lot of dirt road, and the dirt road ends at a locked metal metal gate that says you know no trespassing, but that people just walk around it. Now, a truck won't go by it, but four-wheelers would. The sheriff's department believes that Chris Revitt used his four-wheeler, which his brother Jason now owns, and that's how he was able to ah maneuver past the gate. So according to them, they measured the height of the handlebars on the forelid on the four wheeler, and they confirmed that if you lifted the gate a few inches, like up and out of the way, the four wheeler would fit through. Now multiple witness statements, including this long letter from his wife and her statements, he had driven up to Wisconsin with his four wheeler in the back of his truck in the bed.
01:01:00
Speaker
People saw it downtown the night of Deidre's disappearance. And if you've got a four-wheeler sitting in the bed of your truck, it stands out. He also looks really similar to the sketch that multiple witnesses and the bartender sort of led to as the man who had like wandered out and who seemed to be following Deidre. There's a couple of issues with the sketch.
01:01:29
Speaker
The first is the mystery man with Deidre, the knight she disappeared, had a tribal tattoo on his left arm. Based on pictures they were able to put together of Christopher, it does not appear that he has tattoos on his arms. But his high school friend, Brent, who was with Christopher at the bar the night Deidre disappeared, does.
01:01:51
Speaker
So according to Jason, the brother, he says that Chris had plans to meet up with Brent that night and police have confirmed that Brent and his girlfriend had met up with Christopher and that they had all gone out several places drinking.
01:02:06
Speaker
We don't have an idea of what he looked like back then. The news team couldn't confirm it exactly. ah Police did try and put together photographs of it. But it's possible that the witness had seen the two of them together and that they could have gotten Christopher and Brent sort of confused. According to reports, Brent had a tattoo on his right arm, which would have matched. So how reliable is this tip? We don't really know. But police interview him.
01:02:35
Speaker
And they looked at him pretty closely before they finally eliminated him, eliminated Brent as a suspect. Well, was he able to confirm that they were at the bar? Yeah, he was able to confirm that they were there. The confirmation that and he was in the bar, if Christopher was in the bar where it was thought that Deidre was last seen, I mean,
01:02:58
Speaker
That's huge. Right. So they end up getting a phone call in 2009 after he kills himself from Jason. Jason calls the Wood County Sheriff's Department and he says, I want to meet with either you or one of your investigators. So in August of 2009, he sits down with a lawyer and he just starts talking. And they said they didn't have to ask a ton of questions. So he basically was able to walk them through the fact that Chris would have looked different the next day.
01:03:27
Speaker
And according to the sheriff, being able to get this kind of information after like years was surreal. He says, when you know you're starting to get the information coming in on him and it's possible he's responsible for Deidre's death, we're like, okay, well, what is this going to bring to us? So Jason described Chris as being the type of person who just had a few friends who spent a lot of his time reading.
01:03:51
Speaker
He said he had started the change in high school, and he felt like he wasn't well-liked. Jason said when it came to alcohol, but Jason told investigators that Chris would become confrontational physically and verbally, and he would get into fights when he was drinking. He described their relationship as being pretty distant, particularly after Chris moved away to Missouri. On June 10th of 2006, about 20 to 25 family members had gathered in Wisconsin Rapids to celebrate the youngest sister graduating. Overall, the day seemed to go well. Witnesses say that Chris was seen drinking beer all day, but he didn't seem to be out of control. After the party, the family all cleaned up. Some of the men, including Christopher, went to a local bar. They stayed there till 7 30 or so. Afterwards, Jason says that he went to his mom's house and he took a nap. He woke up around 9 PM to a now intoxicated Chris,
01:04:49
Speaker
asking him to go downtown with him. Jason didn't want to go. He wasn't a big drinker. This is according to the sheriff and he didn't feel like he really wanted to be a part of whatever Chris was getting into, but he ends up folding. So Joanna, she stays with the kids and they had downtown. Now using Jason Brent, several bartenders and one of the DJs from one of the bars, they put together,
01:05:18
Speaker
some kind of a timeline. It's not great. ah The biggest problem here was time has passed and in the first place, everybody was drinking. So Jason agrees to go out with Chris around 9.30 PM. They start at the finish line bar. Chris has ah chris leaves several times to go and find Brent. He eventually meets up with Brent at Four Stools. So Brent and Jason they described going to three to five bars with Chris separately over three hours. Essentially, Chris is out bar hopping, but he is bar hopping between his brother Jason at one set of bars and Brent, who is bar hopping himself. Right. And so i I presume that that's brought up because like Jason can't account for him the whole time. And he knows that like Brent is drinking somewhere else and
01:06:11
Speaker
like he disappears and shows back up or whatever, right? Yeah. Well, part of it was like they're trying to figure out how Chris isn't really considered more of a suspect back then. They're looking at it years apart.
01:06:26
Speaker
So. He just wasn't, i don they're trying to see if he could possibly be the guy that followed around, right? Correct. So the way that they're like running that down is they know that they have bars in common between them because multiple people are accounting for this now saying we were at this bar and this bar and Deidre was known to have been at least two of those bars. So it's possible they had run into each other multiple times. But Jason and Brent did not remember seeing Deidre.
01:06:56
Speaker
But a bartender from the finish line does. She was the one who was responsible for the majority of the initial sketch that police put out back in 2006. And after Chris killed himself, she looked at it again. So according to Sheriff Becker, she had moved away down to Texas. He gives her a call and he says, hey, we want to send you a picture of a person and we'll send it by email.
01:07:21
Speaker
And he said, once he sent it to her, she calls back immediately and says, that's the guy. Well, the picture was of Chris. So Brent tells them that he last saw Chris around 11 PM. Jason says that Chris drove them home around midnight or maybe 12 30. After getting back to their mom's house, Chris said he was going out again. Jason said no. And then they get into an argument, but Chris leaves.
01:07:48
Speaker
At this point in time, Jason's nightmare is a different direction. And he talks to Chris's wife, Joanna, about his behavior, particularly the drinking. And then everybody goes to bed. So what happened in the hours that followed, we're not 100% sure. But both Jason and Joanna say that Chris came back around 5 in the morning. So Joanna's on the floor, because ah this is not her home. She is next to their girls.
01:08:18
Speaker
And they get wakened up by Chris's mom making breakfast. And then Chris comes in and he's dirty, like really dirty, covered in mud. The family asked him why he's covered in mud. Chris tells them his car got stuck in the mud.
01:08:36
Speaker
So he had his truck, he took it out to Blueberry, that place we were talking about, and he got stuck in the mud. It took him all morning to clean it off. So he was driving around trying to find some place to clean up his truck. So why would Chris be out at Blueberry, this place that teenagers go? Well, we don't really know that.
01:08:56
Speaker
It's nowhere close to their mom's house. It's at least five miles away from the bars downtown. But for some reason, Chris went out to this area that he had known to ah been a visitor to when he was a teenager. So he comes home, he goes to the bathroom, he showers, then he's washing his clothes. And his wife thinks, that's odd, he never washes his own clothes. She was the one who always washed the clothes. That's one of the things that got to her.
01:09:25
Speaker
But that's not all that was like cleaned up. After they pointed out that there was still some mud on the back of his truck, Chris goes to wash it again. So then Chris insisted they go four wheeling hours before they had planned to. When he gets into his brother's truck, Jason notices that the inside was absolutely spotless. But the night before it had been full of rags and trash and food wrappers. This following morning, it's been completely cleaned out.
01:09:56
Speaker
They observed that he cleaned out the ah ah garbage and Jason remembers that even the dashboard had been armourelled and the ashtray had been
Rebeck's Altered Appearance and Family Photos
01:10:09
Speaker
cleaned. And then all of the seats were dry, except for the drivers. The driver's seat was still wet. They go out to this ATV park, they're riding around, but Chris gets sick and he decides that he needs to go home, that he's hungover. Later on that day,
01:10:26
Speaker
His wife, Joanna, gives him a haircut. And someone literally takes pictures of him getting this haircut. We've got the pictures of him getting the haircut. The next pictures that we have that they give us are of him and his sister putting on her cap and gown. They're taking pictures like essentially graduation photos. Right, but did you catch what happened? It's really interesting. It takes him again. Right, after his wife cuts his hair,
01:10:56
Speaker
He gets everybody to put all their stuff back on, having the pictures taken again. And what he said was that the pictures were accidentally deleted off of the camera. And so his sister puts on her cap and gown. His kids put on the exact same clothes they had on at the graduation. And they all take the pictures again. OK, so that sucks, right? I mean, very, very. Yeah, yeah.
01:11:25
Speaker
Very much suspect. That alone is enough for me to think he did it. and Then that altogether with everything else is a lot. Yeah. so The haircut's a big deal. The investigators believed that he changed his appearance so he wouldn't look the same if anyone had noticed him going out the night that Deidre went missing. She was ultimately found in Blueberry, right? She's found very close to Blueberry, yes.
01:11:53
Speaker
He doesn't really seem to try and hide that from anybody. No, he flat out had admitted. That's one of the reasons that we get closer to him being the, a believable suspect here. What else is important that day, according to the detectives and the sheriff is later in the day, they unexpectedly leave to go back to Missouri cause Chris is sick. Now this is important because Chris's mom was upset. They were leaving early because of his behavior.
01:12:23
Speaker
Joanna basically said, we're leaving. A phone data request was put in, but it had been years. The only activity that he had, the 10th and 11th on his phone, was a call to his voicemail. Central Tower data does place him in this area of Wisconsin the weekend that Deidre went missing. But Deidre didn't have a cell phone and she would borrow from other people. When the sheriff's department brings all this to Joanna and presents all of their information to her, she agrees that there's too many red flags, too many coincidences, and she even says she feels responsible. She doesn't exactly elaborate on what she feels responsible for,
01:13:10
Speaker
She goes on to describe Chris's personality as being Jacqueline Hyde-like, especially when he had been drinking. In terms of like a smoking gun that just says he confessed or they found this specific piece of evidence, they haven't released one or they don't have one.
Debating Case Closure Without Adjudication
01:13:28
Speaker
But when it comes to circumstantial evidence, it's here.
01:13:33
Speaker
What the sheriff or Sheriff Becker, so there's two sheriffs here, but Sheriff Becker is the Wood County Sheriff. He says that he thinks that people should agree that Chris is responsible. How are they so responsible? Why isn't he charged? And the answer is because he's dead. So that leaves two options. They can leave the case open as a cold case or they can close it out.
01:13:57
Speaker
According to the sheriff and the lieutenant talking to the new team here, they said that decision goes to Wood County District Attorney, Craig Lambert. In an email from the DA, he says, I reviewed the case file and I've discussed my view of the evidence with the sheriff's department. I've left it up to the sheriff to decide whether to keep the investigation open. And then going back to the sheriff, he was surprised that the decision was going to be left up to him.
01:14:26
Speaker
The detective that was involved, he said that the DA's response was disappointing, and he felt like they had collected enough evidence to justify a, essentially, as you call it, an unadjudicated solved ruling. They can stop looking. I wonder why the sheriff doesn't feel confident enough to make that statement like he does he just not feel it says please uh yeah he feels like it's actually up to the da like they're leaning towards it being close that's one of the reasons they're putting this out now and that's one of the reasons they were so open with these people
01:15:07
Speaker
we ah um We've heard it said, and I can't really think of an example, you might know of one right off hand, but we have heard um different law enforcement representatives, I don't know if it's the DA or the Sheriff or who it is, but they make the statement to the effect of if so and so we're alive today, we would be charging them with whatever for this victim.
01:15:36
Speaker
Yeah. And I feel like that would be sort of something to consider. Is it if you were alive, is this enough evidence? I think so. i I know this is enough evidence to get him brought in to talk to the investigators. And this is one of those cases that I just don't think the DNA exists. And that's what you hear. A lot of times there's DNA from a scene. There's some more concrete link. There's ah there's a lot of times when digital evidence, I remember particularly, um I was thinking of Brittany Drexel the other day because with the Brittany Drexel case, ah it came back around and they were charging the girlfriend. Did you see all this was going on?
01:16:20
Speaker
I believe I did. And so the reason they did that was because the phones were operating in tandem. So she was lying basically. And so was she really with him? Yeah, yeah, she was with him the whole time. um I believe that's what they're they're getting out there. I haven't read the full side of that yet. I just saw that it's come back up where they're, I think they're charging her with some level of obstruction and that's why they're bringing it all back around. um it's It's something to do with like her early statements and maybe her later cooperation, not exactly lining up. um But my point is,
01:16:59
Speaker
They're able to do that with older cases. I don't know about 2006. And if she doesn't have a cell phone, I don't know that it helps. So if they had DNA, I think it would be a case they closed. If they had matching cell phone data, it would be a case they closed. I know that's not the only time they say things like that. And I know some cases that stay open. like i I've come across a number of cases this year where like there are potential serial killers. I would say that to some degree,
01:17:28
Speaker
This guy kind of qualifies now that they're saying they believe it's i it's either four or five victims. I didn't exactly understand the release. It's either four victims and Deidre Harm, four victims and Renee, or four victims including them. Does that make sense? It does. um How old was he?
01:17:51
Speaker
He, at the time of his death, I think he was in his... I kept trying to see um how old he was and this is sort of a, this isn't exactly like a news article that gives the information like that. No, it's more about these interviews where the they're giving away so much information. That's unusual. um That's one of the reasons, you know, it makes it to us today, and we're sharing it with people. He was 36 years old in August 2009. He would have been 33 or so in OC. Okay, it's interesting that I always wonder about the suicides, right? Wonder if they did it or if they didn't do it. Well, I would say that somebody that commits suicide the day after they're taken into custody probably did it. A lot of times, yeah. And so, but
01:18:48
Speaker
It tends to have more weight to it than just whatever it is they're in jail for, right whatever they're being held for at that moment.
01:18:59
Speaker
it
01:19:01
Speaker
you know they do They go through a lot of trouble, or they're supposed to. I don't really know how much is enforced to make it impossible for inmates to commit suicide. They really do. and i've been So I've been following the Delphi trial, and that was a big point of contention.
01:19:19
Speaker
in Delphi. Suicide? They were worried that he was going to harm himself and kill himself or the be or he would be killed by other inmates. Right, and while you know a lot of times it can be sort of disregarded by people in general, because it's like, say what, you know a murderer killed himself, except when they take behind all the details and secrets of potentially closing other cases, right? yeah That makes it really difficult. And once they're in custody, they really should be brought to justice. you know
01:19:55
Speaker
ah to not you know have the easy way out, so to speak. right I think the sheriff's right. I think the sheriff could actually probably even go ahead and make a statement ah because as a law and enforcement enforcement officer, i I presume it's the same in Wisconsin.
01:20:16
Speaker
where he could say if he was alive today, there's enough probable cause to charge him and take him before a jury. That's that's a way of saying you're not, you're you're basically done investigating because you would charge this person, but it's not presuming anything, right? right And so to me, I think that could be a really good solution here. um I do think that it's highly unlikely it wasn't him.
01:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, i I am dying to get into him further just from the perspective of like, what else did this guy do? Because he does strike me probably as a serial killer. If he did these two and he suspected of two more, I'm really interested. They don't say who it is, right? ah not at Not at this moment.
01:21:15
Speaker
I haven't found it yet. It may exist on the internet if people go digging. um At some point, I'll try and put that together. Yeah, that's interesting. he He would be, especially since his family's talking, that makes me think that something, they may not have known the extent of it, but like they were suspicious, right? Yeah, I mean, he sounds like from these interviews, hes ah it sounds familiar, doesn't it? You go for a family event, you get stuck in the mud. I'm just saying, like we've heard this before, not just with keys. We've heard this before with a couple of different killers.
01:21:51
Speaker
But one of the things though that I find to be sort of unbelievable, but we don't really, we just have people's accounts of this. So it may not have happened exactly this way. It just seems really weird when you've been gone and you don't really have to say where you've been, that you would specifically say, I was you know at Blueberry or in Blueberry or however they said it, when like her body ends up being found there, right? Correct. That's kind of weird, but it may not have happened exactly like that.
01:22:26
Speaker
Right. He could have just indicated he had been out partying and they could have assumed it. But like, I don't know that people pile on the dead as much as you might think, but his brother coming around, so he dies. And then pretty quickly thereafter, his brother spins back around and basically says, you know, I want to talk to the investigators in your harm case. And he gives a lot of information. Like the whole Let's all get redress for pictures. That is weird. That is a weird thing. It might make you remember the rest of what that dude did that day too. Well, and then Deidre was on the news as a missing person, right? Yep. Yeah. yeah her Her name and face were plastered from when the time she goes missing to the time her body is found. She's plastered everywhere in that town and county.
01:23:21
Speaker
Right, and I imagine that's exactly why he got sick. Yeah. And it seems to me like it would take a little bit because I know, personally, if i for the for one thing, when I see somebody who's missing, it takes a day or two for me to take an interest in it because typically you don't ever hear about it again.
01:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, like there's even been cases I've, like even in the last 10 days, I've covered at least four cases that I was like, all right, that's a maybe. And like kind of put it in my notes and started taking links down to read later. And then I circle back around to it to kind of do a check in Friday night when I'm off of work and chilling and they're all found.
01:24:07
Speaker
Exactly. And so it takes a little bit and I know for certain that even if somebody went missing in like the little town I live in, I would not immediately start suspecting anybody I know, right? It just so happens that it could have been put together later, especially under the circumstances that he was in jail for murder.
01:24:36
Speaker
He committed suicide and he's having all these, and and her body has been found in blueberry, right? Correct. Now that's not something you could necessarily confront your brother with, um especially, he I don't even think he would have had ah the chance, because I don't know that it occurred to him until he was arrested, right? Right.
01:24:57
Speaker
But somebody did a lot of thinking really fast and a lot of things came together, right? And I do think his wife knew quite a bit, ah not that she was involved, she was probably really scared of him. Well, she flat out said that like she had helped with the other body.
01:25:13
Speaker
Well, right. And she had two girls. are I think so. I think one was his stepdaughter, but her daughter. Right. Well, and i'm not sure a child yeah I'm not sure exactly how that worked because when I read the obituary, it looked like that stepdaughter had a different mom, but he was responsible for them. It's a very strange situation on that too.
01:25:37
Speaker
OK, well, either way, they had small children in the picture. Right. And I don't know how much that would have weighed on his wife's participation. She was not charged with anything, I don't think. And it looks like she like was very forthcoming with the police once he was finally caught. Right. Right. Yeah, she writes this 26 page handwritten letter.
01:26:03
Speaker
So I'm guessing they got quite a few details out of that. That's insane. Yeah. She's alive, right? I think so. Were you thinking of like confession style or something? Well, I just have a 26 page handwritten letter. Like why wouldn't you just go talk to them? I did not find an obituary for her. I'll say it that way.
01:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think she's alive. I think that um maybe she just was trying to get all the details together. I can imagine that if she didn't know anything was happening and then she's helping him load a body, it would be very traumatizing. Very, very traumatizing. And it would be so traumatizing that It could lead you to sort of step outside of your body for a little while because it, it would make you, you have to come to, to a reckoning with your life at that point. Right. Cause this was her husband and it, I can see where, I mean, she just broke in half. That's how i I feel like it would happen because you're not going to support it. She had no choice. That's how they present it anyway. And.
01:27:15
Speaker
Luckily, I don't know what you do after your husband's like, you gotta help me load this body so I can get rid of it. That's a weird predicament. I don't think a lot of people find themselves in that situation. Yeah. And, you know, do you, of course, like the answer is you go to law enforcement, right? But I can see where that could be problematic. I think that his, but I think the sheriff's reasoning for why he feels like the case is, um should be clear. I think it's sound. I think it's very sound reasoning. um We get sort of this, I mean, it's a little bit deeper than a skim, right?
01:28:09
Speaker
but we don't get all the details here. No, of course not. They're gonna hold back whatever's in that letter. and I've heard that searches have gone on here related to this. I don't know how extensive they've been. I thought about this being a case. He's one that like right now we're covering it because they're talking about it in a way that like this one murder feels like pretty strong. um He might be like someone that would be interesting to,
01:28:37
Speaker
do a FOIA on and see what you can get out of it. I could see where he would be hesitant to, I could see where the sheriff might be hesitant on speaking out of turn, but to me, like it it seems to line up pretty well. And it also seems like probably there's some deeper information and they could, and there's a variety of reasons you wouldn't want to drag somebody into something, right? yeah if It becomes this balance because you you know you don't want to have somebody be known as a murderer if they you know they commit suicide to get away from it. right They don't have to face the music. and
01:29:22
Speaker
But they also leave with that hanging over them, right? Because it was their choice. And he didn't have the opportunity to be charged with anything else, even though it seems pretty obvious he probably committed some other crimes because he could. it It's looking like.
Public Statement on Unsolved Cases
01:29:39
Speaker
I don't know. It's very strange, the audacity involved, in my opinion, with this particular with his what it seems like I'm imagining he was doing, right? Yeah. And if at all possible, I hope that they'll consider at least, because if they can't make that statement, I would say there's no reason in saying this is solved but not adjudicated. And otherwise, I think the statement would sort of lift a burden. Yeah, I think you should i think you should make the
Investigating Renee Williams and Deja Harms
01:30:17
Speaker
statement. And like, look,
01:30:19
Speaker
You can probably find these cases because what I think you're going to find here is single women alone in a bar and they vanish. You could probably look at Renee Williams case and Deja Harms case and have a pretty good idea of why the sheriff thinks it's him.
01:30:37
Speaker
And then you could probably find two other cases just looking at sort of where Chris lived in Wisconsin and Missouri and whatever states were along there. You're looking for women that would have disappeared in that time period.
Suspect's Background and Possible Connections
01:30:49
Speaker
um I know he was in Missouri as of mid-2000.
01:30:54
Speaker
and that he worked he was you know there till 2003 or 2004 working as a volunteer firefighter and then he was in his home district working as an EMT for the emergency services over in Taney County for six years. I'm pretty sure you could find like who he was alleged to have harmed. He would be an interesting case to see Like if you found another one and you could find this much information, you know what I mean? Like you could find he did something weird. He was on vacation with his family and lined up timing wise. Maybe one of them you find cell phone data.
Hypothetical Evidence Connections
01:31:33
Speaker
And then if you see that he's definitely like aligning with somebody's cell phone, or even if you find some DNA out of like pure luck, um you could then go back
01:31:45
Speaker
like on an unsolved murder or missing persons case where you end up finding the remains, you could then go back and go, all right, we're closing the book on this because this guy did this four times, five times, three times, whatever he did. And they all look the same. And he's in the vicinity. He lines up on this one with a cell phone. The bodies are found five miles. That's not a town in each case or whatever. And like this one is like his hometown.
01:32:12
Speaker
You know, I did read where there was another serial killer operating out there. I'm not gonna get into that in this episode, but it was one of those things where, like, I wondered, like, who could they be betting on
Is the Case Closed with Current Evidence?
01:32:25
Speaker
this guy? After reading this, though, and, like, bringing this to the attention of you, and now we obviously recorded this to put it out there, I think this guy, I think, is a serial killer.
01:32:36
Speaker
And I think that that sheriff, in my opinion, with this much information, could firmly close this file. Right. Well, I agree. Yeah. I don't know that they could close the file on him. the No, on Deidre. Correct. Yeah. No, I agree with that. I don't have a lot more on him right now. I just thought this was fascinating. And I thought it was a good segue into, you know, a couple more killers that we're going to cover and then the holiday season.
Podcast Contributors and Call for Reviews
01:33:04
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime
01:34:10
Speaker
True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg.
Meet the Creators and Explore More
01:34:14
Speaker
It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:34:30
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network. And I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great. And we we were able to join their Creator Network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. You know, I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcasts. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now. And I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.