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Gina Hall's Disappearance & Murder
57 Plays3 days ago
The Summer of 1980 Gina Hall had just finished her freshman year of college & living with her sister in what should have been the prime of her life. Until one night of dancing, celebrating mid-term completion, ended with her disappearance. Her life was taken too quickly, snuffed out by the inability of someone to hear the word “no”.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Premise
00:00:05
Faith Pezzulo
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of Twisted Tales with Faith and Lisa and the rooster crowing in the background because we live in East Tennessee. So if you can hear that, you're welcome.
00:00:19
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, I know, right? but It's not like it's like, I don't know. It's not morning time. and They're only supposed to do that at morning. also i don't know Yeah, we're in the middle of the city and we've got 800 chickens surrounding us and a freaking cockerel crowing.
00:00:33
Faith Pezzulo
anyway do not live on a farm. No. No, we don't. So, anything new with you? ah Oh, you know, job's awesome. Yeah, well, at least you got one.
00:00:44
Faith Pezzulo
I, like, literally sit here and think to myself, how do these people function in real life? Like, Yeah. That was my, that was how I ended my day today. It was pretty, uh, it was intriguing.
00:00:56
Faith Pezzulo
I get that. watch too Anything new with you? I know you said I have a job. um'm I'm assuming things haven't been that great in the, Oh yeah. Your brother still hasn't done a job. He said he's an interview whore. Cause he literally has like interviews up the yin yang.
00:01:12
Faith Pezzulo
So yeah, it's fun times to be alive. ah you know, make sure it's perfect apparently yeah ah on I'll just get myself prepped.
Missed Episodes and Current Events
00:01:24
Faith Pezzulo
Anyways. So it's Faith's turn to talk tonight. It is my turn to talk tonight. And I just want to state for the record that we did not drop anything last week because, you know, Faith's allowed to have excuses, but not Lisa.
00:01:35
Faith Pezzulo
Okay, mine are real. When my grandfather has a stroke and is going into hospice, that's real. You lying. It's not real. We were. Okay, first of all,
00:01:48
Faith Pezzulo
80% of that was true. exactly and job Exactly. I will not justify the right. How you have a job with no peace. You can't. How do you have a job? Chris Delaney.
00:02:00
Faith Pezzulo
jump Girl. Go Google it. It's stuff. Anyway, I would say ah let's do like a brief update on world news of true crime. But there's too much coming out right now.
00:02:11
Faith Pezzulo
my So let's all just enjoy that. I'm saying, dude, I've gotten re-sucked back into a lot of things. Yep. Candace Owens is coming out with a huge thing she's doing on Harvey Weinstein. Yeah, saw that. And like, okay, I'm going to watch that because, you know.
00:02:28
Faith Pezzulo
I like Hannah's Owen sometimes. Yeah. I do like her. And then there's the ah mayor the American lawyer who was okay representing Osama bin Laden, but not okay of representing Diddy. That is something.
00:02:41
Faith Pezzulo
You know, when he keeps talking about... um
00:02:45
Faith Pezzulo
it was something about necromancy and this. Oh, yeah.
Questionable Legal Ethics
00:02:48
Faith Pezzulo
And somebody was finally like, it's called necrophilia, dumbass. Well, but I'm sitting here thinking like, okay, so if it's necromancy, we're trying to bring back people from the dead. Yeah.
00:02:57
Faith Pezzulo
As soon as I heard necromancy, was like, is it because you're putting the wrong and fast? Yeah.
00:03:05
Faith Pezzulo
literally i was like you're not using that word that i i don't think you know what that means you're trying to sound smart but it's not coming across that way nobody i sit there and i'll sit there i saw another tiktok about it and i'm wondering like okay that does kind of make a little bit of sense like if he's practicing like these rituals on dead bodies did he kill them first i don't know there's so much coming out it i'm gonna honest that is not the reason That is not the reason that this guy dropped him like a bad habit.
00:03:34
Faith Pezzulo
There's no way. No, no. He dropped him like a bad habit because of everything he's done. Even if it was necrophilia, there's no way that this guy who represented Osama bin Laden and some of the other nastiest individuals yeah in the face of the world was like, oh, that's too much for me.
00:03:54
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. and And he drew the line at necromancy or... having sex with dead bodies, which would be necrophilic. I'm sorry, no. That's not where he is. That's not the line. That's not the hill he's
The Epstein List: A Call for Transparency
00:04:05
Faith Pezzulo
dying on, buddy. No.
00:04:07
Faith Pezzulo
And I still, Trump has been elected. The new FBI guy's there. I want the Epstein list released. I will say that. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, it's kind of like same old, same old, but there's so much stuff coming out every day. but you know what, though? And I'm going to say, too, like just because they dropped the list doesn't mean that every single person on that fight log was a deviant.
00:04:26
Faith Pezzulo
No. But they need to be... Closely examined. Handled, yeah Very, very closely. Yeah. Same thing with anybody that ever attended a ditty party, whether you saw it.
00:04:39
Faith Pezzulo
Somebody said it. I don't know. i don't remember who it was. And they were like, you know, I find it amusing that all these celebrities who have been to these parties i always say, well, I left before the other party started.
00:04:51
Faith Pezzulo
Okay, but if you left before the other party started, how did know there was another maris other party? party? Anyways. I'm interested to see how everything plays out. I am too.
00:05:02
Faith Pezzulo
Bottom line, there's too much going on in the world of absolute crap to yeah discuss shortly. there's too much There's also the new Hulu documentary about that crazy mom.
00:05:13
Faith Pezzulo
The TikTok mom. She was on YouTube and stuff and like, where's... i can't Which one? I know, right? Because there was that one chick that used to, like, talk online all the time about how she disciplined her kids. and then And then she was, like... She was, like, locked everybody in a closet. Yeah, that's her. That's her. It's called, like, The Devil in the House or something. It's a three-part documentary that drops at the end of this month.
00:05:36
Faith Pezzulo
Because I know there was another woman that was doing TikTok videos with her daughter and then ended up killing her. There's so many. There was a young... No, this is the... This is a lady that had, like, yeah, like, a ton of kids. Yeah. So anyways, let's get on to our story. How about it? How
The Story of Gina Hall
00:05:52
Faith Pezzulo
about it?
00:05:52
Faith Pezzulo
All right. So the story I'm going to tell you tonight, Lisa, is um it began June 1980 at Radford University in Virginia.
00:06:05
Faith Pezzulo
um Delaina Hall was a graduate student at Radford, and she was sharing an apartment through the summer with her sister and best friend, 18-year-old Gina Hall. who had just finished her first semester at Radford in the nursing program.
00:06:20
Faith Pezzulo
She was a nursing student. Gina Hall was a beautiful girl, kind, soft-spoken, popular with her friend group. Everyone who knew her really did seem to love her.
00:06:31
Faith Pezzulo
She was athletic and absolutely loved dancing. And every weekend she went out with her sister and her friends and they went to clubs and they danced the night away.
00:06:43
Faith Pezzulo
um Saying that, she didn't drink, she didn't smoke, she didn't take drugs, she attended church pretty regularly, it was reported. um Just a good kid.
00:06:54
Faith Pezzulo
And her friends would say, like, about the drinking, like, she might have a drink every once in a while, which in 1980 in Virginia, legal age of drinking was 18, so she still... Within the bounds of the law, if you will. But she didn't, she even said she preferred the virgin drinks because, you know, they taste better.
00:07:11
Faith Pezzulo
Which somebody said, if you keep drinking after the one, they all taste good. But agreed. um It was a different podcast.
00:07:21
Faith Pezzulo
I don't remember which one. I've listened to a lot. All right. But um Gina was. I thought that was your your excuse for your Christmas party. No, that's ah my boss puts me through a lot in the year and I'm breaking the bank.
00:07:32
Faith Pezzulo
I'm breaking the bank. So she was a modest and very self-conscious girl in the way she dressed and in all her relationships with the opposite sex. She's already doing better than me.
00:07:44
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. Well, this and if it gag, if it you will feel some kinship to this. She this stemmed from a accident she had in childhood.
00:07:57
Faith Pezzulo
When she was two years old, her pajamas caught fire and she was extremely badly burned. okay yeah It resulted in several skin grafts at the Virginia hospital to her left side.
00:08:10
Faith Pezzulo
I'm sorry. It left her the right side of her body, arm, abdomen, upper right arm and thigh badly scarred third degree burns. And this is why she was so self-conscious.
00:08:21
Faith Pezzulo
hmm. um example, even when she'd go to the beach or a pool party, she was in a cover-up and had a towel wrapped around her until the time she got in the water. like She did not like people to see these scars. can relate. That's what I said. You can relate. you've got lisa had Lisa's got some scars from injury. hourss yeah yeah Unlike you, though, hers... Unlike you, turned out normal. No, hers was her mom, not her dad.
00:08:47
Faith Pezzulo
Watching her. That's where I was going with that. Always made great choices. Yeah. Always made great choices. Lisa pulled a pot of boiling water down on herself when she was a tot. She did.
00:09:02
Faith Pezzulo
Her dad was watching her. So that's that's where that's what we're referring to since you don't know all the backstory. But Gina does not have a relationship with her biological mother. Her mother was the one home during the the incident with the fire.
00:09:15
Faith Pezzulo
and um it was ah also a stove that caused her burns. But um the mom felt a lot of guilt over the situation and eventually just couldn't handle it and left the family.
00:09:26
Faith Pezzulo
The dad remarried very quickly thereafter and stepmom just slid right in The rest of the family is very close. Gina was especially close to her father and her sister.
00:09:40
Faith Pezzulo
And she was literally the type of kid that never gave her parents any trouble. um She would even like, if she was going out somewhere, she told everybody where she's going when she's back. She never made them guess. Like she was very conscientious, very good kid, very close to their family.
00:09:56
Faith Pezzulo
um She didn't date. She often just had friends that are boys and she'd hang out with them. She is about five foot tall. Similaries to you, just keep rolling through. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Right. like these similarities. Yeah. but She was about 107 pounds and she was so short that like when she borrowed her sister's car, her sister always got annoyed because Gina would pull that seat like all the the way up and she couldn't even get in the car without like fixing the seat first.
00:10:24
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. So overall, she was a tiny package of fun and everyone loved her. So back to that summer, Saturday, June 28th, Delaina and Gina had just finished midterms. They both had gotten an apartment together, like I said, and they were attending summer school.
00:10:43
Faith Pezzulo
And um they had just finished their midterms and were obviously very excited to be done and just wanted to celebrate. and So Gina obviously wants to celebrate by dancing because again, love dancing.
00:10:58
Faith Pezzulo
So she was looking forward to heading over to the Marriott and Blackburg's Virginia. It's about half an hour away from where they live. And it was a club that was inside a hotel and it was located in the city of Blackburg, which is where Virginia tech is. So there's tons of college kids and it's really just like the best place to be and go dancing. And Gina, was one of her favorite spots.
00:11:20
Faith Pezzulo
So Gina asked Delaina if she wanted to go celebrate and go out dancing. And Delaina, who's, again, she's a graduate student. Exams are probably a little bit harder than a freshman. And she just said she was too tired. She wants to have a quiet night at home and just relax.
00:11:36
Faith Pezzulo
And said, but you you take you take the car because they shared a car. So that night, Gina left at around 1030 wearing a white jacket and white high-waisted pants.
00:11:47
Faith Pezzulo
oh And those were over a purple bodysuit with matching shoes and her favorite gold anklet, which was had interlocking hearts on it. She always loved to wear this when she goes out.
00:11:59
Faith Pezzulo
And she's ready to go have a good time. Before she left, Delaina told her she looked amazing. Be careful. um This is one of the few times Gina left to go out dancing by herself.
00:12:09
Faith Pezzulo
Delaina almost always went with her. Are there a bunch of friends going? And so Delaina just kind of assumed you're meeting someone there. Like yeah she wasn't really sure, but that's kind of what she assumed.
00:12:21
Faith Pezzulo
After Gina left, Delaina had a quiet night at home like she wanted and kind of went to bed a little early. only to be woken up from a call about 1 a.m. m from Gina.
00:12:33
Faith Pezzulo
And she said that Gina told her she's at a lake house with a guy named Steve. And they talked for about two minutes, but she just said that Gina sounded off.
00:12:45
Faith Pezzulo
She was out of character. just sounded kind of nervous or anxious. Like it was just, it just wasn't the way her sister usually talked. But, The conversation's only about two minutes and it ends like it almost the way there's a book about this called Under the Trustle.
00:13:03
Faith Pezzulo
And it almost made it sound like it was like Gina hung yeah Like it was disconnected. But Delaina wasn't like Gina, while she sounded off and sounded like a little anxious or nervous.
00:13:17
Faith Pezzulo
It was one of those that Delaina thought they're at a lake, they're out swimming, she's nervous about being around that many people because of the scars. Like, she didn't sound... Well, even that. Like, she could have just been anxious the fact that, okay, she's an epic guy, he's super cool.
00:13:33
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. It wasn't something that made her, like, Gina didn't say help, like, she wasn't scared. it She just sounded a little bit off. Like, it wasn't a concerning call. So, um, Delaina honestly wasn't worried. She just kind of went back to sleep.
00:13:48
Faith Pezzulo
So, the next morning Sunday, when Delaina got up, she went directly to her sister's room because she wants to know how it went, what was going on, but as you can guess, Gina's not there.
00:14:00
Faith Pezzulo
and upon further instruction, Delaina sees that her car is not outside either. So this, Gina not being there, along with replaying the call from last night, starts to worry Delaina.
00:14:15
Faith Pezzulo
Of course. Because, again, Gina doesn't ever not tell people. like she's very There's no cell phones right here. And she's still called to say at 1 o'clock in morning to say, hey, I'm at the lake house with Steve.
00:14:28
Faith Pezzulo
So it's just out of character. Um, so Delaina's kind of freaking out a little bit. Not, I mean, just doesn't know. And about that time, one of Gina's friends, his, a guy named Greg. Now, some people, some, some of the stuff I read and looked at and listened to said, this is a long distance on and again, off again, boyfriend of Gina's. And some just said it was a really close friend.
00:14:49
Faith Pezzulo
So I don't really know what the actual relationship is, but he shows up to hang out with Gina either or. And um when he gets there, Delaina explains to him, like, this is what's going on.
00:15:01
Faith Pezzulo
Am I overreacting type of thing? like and And he he agrees something's, this is not, this is completely out of character. Something's wrong. right like we're not ayical We should be worried.
00:15:13
Faith Pezzulo
So at this point, knowing something wrong, Delaina calls for help. She puts the call out and several friends arrive and they spend the morning and afternoon searching and looking for Gina door to door driving around.
00:15:25
Faith Pezzulo
um But there's just no trace of her anywhere. And it's not like they think that she's been murdered. It's Virginia. There's back roads. There's squirrely roads. What if she did have a drink or two? Exactly.
00:15:37
Faith Pezzulo
So they don't know. They literally have nothing to go on. They just know something's happened for her just to be up and gone. yeah And so everybody's driving around. um And when there's no trace of her and we're hitting towards later that day, Delaina just becomes more and more worried because they're not finding anything, like nothing.
00:16:00
Faith Pezzulo
So finally, after a full day of searching and finding nothing, Delaina calls Radford police. excuse me, Sunday night to report Gina missing, but she's not able to file that report because it's been less than 24 hours.
00:16:14
Faith Pezzulo
And at this point, Delaina's like, screw that. So Radford police aren't going to help her. So she calls the Virginia state police, same thing, wants to report her sister's missing, but unfortunately gets the same result.
00:16:26
Faith Pezzulo
We cannot file a report yet. For Delaina, she doesn't feel like they're following procedure. She feels like she's not being taken seriously. Her sister's situation isn't being taken seriously. She's being brushed off.
00:16:40
Faith Pezzulo
And she's just not going to let it go. So the next day, Monday morning, Delaina and Gina's stepmom and dad, first thing, take the three-hour drive from their hometown to Radford.
00:16:53
Faith Pezzulo
And at this point, John, the dad, is able to file a missing police report, and Gina's officially listed as a missing person. So... They filed the port report, but again, Delaina feels like the police don't care, and they've brushed her off. And she's, this is her best friend and her sister, and she's going to do something.
00:17:14
Faith Pezzulo
So she decides she wants everyone to know her sister's missing and she wants to keep an eye out. So she calls the area's biggest radio station, K92 FM, and asks to talk to a manager or whatever and explains what's happened and the situation. And I just want you to tell everyone about my sister's description to see if they can, if anyone can help.
00:17:37
Faith Pezzulo
And the station says, they're really sorry for what you're going through. They understand, but unfortunately we can't help you. We get these kinds of requests all the time. And if we do it for you, we have to do it have to do it for everyone, which is understandable. But in Delaina's case, that's not understandable. And she's being brushed off again.
The Search for Gina: A Community Effort
00:17:54
Faith Pezzulo
So Delaina, who has no car, borrows a friend's car and takes the hour drive to Roanoke, Virginia, marches up to the same radio station, walks in and demands to speak to someone and makes the manager look her in the eyes as she's explaining the severity of the situation.
00:18:10
Faith Pezzulo
the police aren't helping, and that her 18-year-old sister is missing. And looking at this girl, the manager says, Okay. okay That's fine. we will We will broadcast a 30-minute PSA about your sister twice an hour with her description, asking for anyone to call. 30 minutes?
00:18:29
Faith Pezzulo
so Sorry, 30 seconds. Okay. 30 seconds. I was like, a face? I meant every 30 minutes. Okay. Twice an hour. So theyre gonna they're going to put a PSA out twice an hour for 30 seconds, giving a description of Gina and saying, anyone who knows anything about this girl, call the Radford police station.
00:18:46
Faith Pezzulo
So they've agreed. And this starts going out every every half an hour. They're saying missing, missing, missing. So while Delaina is obviously taking care of business in Roanoke, doing her part, the volunteer efforts are going strong back at Radford.
00:19:03
Faith Pezzulo
According to the local news station, multiple people, like more than average people, show up, including several people from their three-hour drive hometown city, all come up, and they're all there to search for Gina.
00:19:19
Faith Pezzulo
These people go door-to-door with flyers. They go door-to-door at Radford University. They're going in the commons. They're going on the ground. Then another group of them drives over to Blacksburg.
00:19:30
Faith Pezzulo
And goes to the nightclub and they're talking to anyone around the area of the nightclub. And another group goes to Virginia Tech campus with pictures and flyers and literally goes door to door and door and saying, did you see this girl on Saturday night? That's awesome.
00:19:43
Faith Pezzulo
Oh, ever I mean, it was like thats in yes within 24 to 48 hours before the police can even officially file a report. This family has hundreds of people out searching for any information um on their girl.
00:19:57
Faith Pezzulo
If that tells you what kind of girl, but that tells you what kind of family, what kind of girl this is. So they brought out a legit search team and had it organized quickly. And it's these people, Gina's friends, that find the first lead.
00:20:13
Faith Pezzulo
On Monday around lunchtime, two of Gina's friends, Craig and Robert, find Delaina's car parked along the side of the road near railroad tracks by New River. um Craig stays with the car while Robert rushes off to the police because again, 1980, cell phones. Gotcha.
00:20:31
Faith Pezzulo
Gotcha. So while waiting at the car, Craig obviously is not just, you know, there's no cell phone to look at TikTok. He's looking around the area. He's looking at the car and he notices several things right off.
00:20:42
Faith Pezzulo
The car's trash. There's empty plastic glasses everywhere. There's matches and there's just trash of a vehicle. The driver's window's down and open, like it's open, and the driver's side window.
00:20:55
Faith Pezzulo
door pull, which is what they keep calling it everywhere, everywhere I read, unless they call it the door pull. So I'm guessing it's like the outside latchy latch. Yeah. It's completely ripped off the car, which that's not like a you know, that's not a quick, oops, too hard. Like that's a purposeful, you're ripping.
00:21:12
Faith Pezzulo
I don't know. It happened on my Kia once where I just went to open the door and it ripped the door. With your He-Man strength? i had a friend with my i answer I had a friend that sat on my door once and she ripped the welded metal hinges right off.
00:21:25
Faith Pezzulo
That was not me. No, you're not you were not as rotund.
00:21:30
Faith Pezzulo
I know who you're talking about. I know. i know Anyway, um so the car's trashed. And also, Craig notices that the driver's side seat is pushed all the way to the back.
00:21:44
Faith Pezzulo
So she wasn't driving. So there's no
Evidence and Suspicions
00:21:46
Faith Pezzulo
way Gina could have driven it. Like, literally, she couldn't drive on that unless she was, like, crouching like a little gremlin. Right. Yeah, there's just no way. Right. So he's just kind of looking around, looking at all this. um And law enforcement arrives with Robert.
00:22:01
Faith Pezzulo
And they get to the scene. And they look. And they notice all that Craig's pointing out all this stuff. Because Delaina had said that she had washed and waxed the car before. Like, the night Gina took it was pristine. And now it's trashed.
00:22:14
Faith Pezzulo
um But again, it's unlocked underneath, like, a bridge by a railroad track. So, eh, you don't know who did that. And I'm sure, because I'm going be honest, like, but as a girl, When I'm out driving, I think to myself, I'm park under an underpass.
00:22:26
Faith Pezzulo
And then I'm and just going to go walk the railroad. In the dead of night. Yeah. No. Sorry, that was my sarcasm for the evening. Yeah. So, um police obviously are looking at it.
00:22:38
Faith Pezzulo
And when they get to the scene, unfortunately, they find... They go in the trunk, and this is where they realize Gina's in trouble. When they open the trunk, they find blood.
00:22:50
Faith Pezzulo
They find head hair and pubic hair all over the trunk of this car. And while there's no body, at this point, they know something horrible. is Yeah, this isn't going to be like a great happy ending. The girl's in trouble somewhere.
00:23:03
Faith Pezzulo
So the next day, the police get another break when a man named Stephen Epperly calls in, stating that he was with Gina the night she disappeared. Um, so I'm going to pause here and I'm going to kind of mix a lot of elements to give you the story.
00:23:20
Faith Pezzulo
Some of the things that like come out in trial, some of the things that come out investigation to try to give you like a clear view of what happened that night as clear as mud. If you get what I'm saying, I do. So I'm a pause there. So the police are going to talk to Epperly.
00:23:33
Faith Pezzulo
Stephen Epperly calls and wants to talk to them. So we're going to go back to the night she first went missing on Saturday. That night, Gina's getting ready to go party, to go dance. At the same time, 27-year-old Bill King and his best friend, 28-year-old Stephen Epperly, are getting ready to go out and have a night on the town.
00:23:56
Faith Pezzulo
Bill picks up Steve and he's called, his name is Steve. In some places they call him Steve, Steven. I don't know. Whatever. I go back and forth in my notes. Tomato, tomato. Yep, really. So he picks him up around 10 p.m. and they head out to Bill's mother and father's home, the Davis residence.
00:24:13
Faith Pezzulo
They live on Claytor Lake and they stop by because the Davises are on vacation and there's been a lot of vandalism in the area. So Bill is tasked to go make sure like the house is okay, check in, turn on lights, make it seem lived in, right?
00:24:28
Faith Pezzulo
They get there. Nothing's wrong. So the two friends head off to the Marriott where they arrive at about 11 p.m. Now, these two guys have been best friends like since their kids. Like they're that kind of friends.
00:24:38
Faith Pezzulo
Close, bosom brothers, whatever you want to call it. So they get to the Marriott and they are joined by three other friends, one of whom knows Gina.
00:24:50
Faith Pezzulo
Which is how they end up meeting Gina that night. Okay. Gina arrived at the Marriott about the same time as Bill and Stephen. And again, they have this common friend. So they end up getting introduced to each other. And Gina and Stephen just click like instantly. They go out and they dance like four or five times together throughout the night, having a good time. And um Stephen goes up to Bill, pulls him aside and says, hey, can I borrow your car and the key to the lake house?
00:25:16
Faith Pezzulo
So Gina and I go hang out, which Bill's fine with. Again, childhood friend. It's one of those where like you got it's like my parents old lake house. You didn't have to ask. You just go. Yeah.
00:25:27
Faith Pezzulo
My parents don't care. They're family. That's how these two work. And so Bill says, you here's the key. You can go, but you're not taking my car. Like I've got to get home type of deal. So Stephen tells Gina and she's like, it's OK, we can take my car.
00:25:40
Faith Pezzulo
I've got a car. We can go. Bill's going end up there later on tonight, whatever. So those two head off to the lake house. Later that night, a woman named Robin Robinson heads to the lake house with Bill, and they're going for a swim.
00:25:54
Faith Pezzulo
They get there around 4 a.m. They pull into the lake house, and they see the brown Chevy sitting out front, but the house is dark. There's no lights on. The brown Chevy is the... Is the car Gina's driving. Yes.
00:26:07
Faith Pezzulo
Sorry, I just wanted to make sure that I was... You're fine. I think was like a Monte Carlo or something, but I didn't feel like it was important enough to notate. No, not at Brown Chevy, that's where they are. So people go hang out. I mean, literally, it's like my parents' old house.
00:26:18
Faith Pezzulo
Everybody just shows up to hang out. You go down the lake, you don't even go into the house. Like, so the house is, they don't know what's going on though. And hoping not to interrupt anything, Bill enters in the top level of the house instead of like the bottom. Like it's literally set up like my parents' old house. Like it's all the windows and glass down at the bottom facing the lake.
00:26:36
Faith Pezzulo
And there's the front entrance. They go in the front entrance. And Bill goes to the kitchen, flips on the light, and Stephen calls up to him and says, Bill, is that you from the lower level? And Bill doesn't see Stephen, and he just yells down and says, yeah, um Robin and I are here. We're going to go swim.
00:26:54
Faith Pezzulo
you guys want to go? And Stephen says, no, we're we've we've got to leave in a minute, but... ah you're good to go. And Bill's like, really? I mean, you two can come swimming. Like it's not one of those swim sessions. Yeah. Yeah. Like just come on and hang out.
00:27:09
Faith Pezzulo
The bill says, Gina's really got to get back home. We can't. Sorry. Robin looked down the stairs when she came up and she saw Steven at the bottom of the steps.
00:27:21
Faith Pezzulo
He's wearing a pair of jeans, pants, shirtless, and he's got a towel kind of wiping his shoulders off in his hair. Like he just came out of the lake. But neither Robin nor but Bill see and or hear Gina.
00:27:35
Faith Pezzulo
They just see and hear Stephen. So they go down to the dock where Bill sits for about 20 minutes while Robin swims. And while down there, Stephen comes out of the bottom of the house and um the glass doors face in the lake and he flips the lights on and off like to get Bill's attention to look up yeah and calls out that he and Gina are off.
00:27:57
Faith Pezzulo
And they turn off all the lights and leave. And Bill and Gina don't hear anything like they never heard the car start. So it's not that weird that they didn't hear Gina like talking or giggling because they're down at the lake. So lights are off. They left.
00:28:12
Faith Pezzulo
These two are alone. Around five minutes later, Bill and Robin decide to go back up to the lake house. And they go through those same bottom glass doors.
00:28:23
Faith Pezzulo
Lights are all off. And right inside the door, Bill steps into the carpet. And there's this, like, big wet spot. Okay. But, again, if if Stephen and and Gina got in the lake or took a shower after some activities or something like that, they probably just left a wet towel or something, whatever.
00:28:41
Faith Pezzulo
Bill's not concerned about it. Bill's setting up a little... ah I love Shaq. Romance for him. He throws some cushions and blankets all on the floor to make a little, um, comfortable area for he and Robin to lay down on and chat, if you will.
00:28:55
Faith Pezzulo
And again, he notices his foot hitting something wet again on the floor. And at this point, he's annoyed like Stephen's a slob and he's to clean up better, but he's not going to stop what he's doing to turn on lights and investigate and clean. Like, he just, it's just one of those things in the back of your mind. Yeah.
00:29:12
Faith Pezzulo
So Saturday, June 29th, Bill's taking Robin home around 10 a.m. He drops Robin off and he picks up his four-year-old son who had been visiting his maternal grandmother. And they go back to the lake house for the little boy to swim.
00:29:27
Faith Pezzulo
Shortly after Bill and his son get in the lake and are playing, Steve arrives to the lake house alone in his car. And then two other friends show up to to hang out because, again, this is the hangout house.
00:29:38
Faith Pezzulo
So while Bill and his son are swimming, the other the other friends are playing horseshoes. And Steve, who, again, has free reign of this house, has grown up at this house, walks down and asks Bill, hey, is it OK if I go inside to get a drink?
00:29:55
Faith Pezzulo
And Bill's like, yeah, sure. okay Yeah. You probably, just go. Yeah. Don't ask. Like, just go. um and continues playing with his when Steven finally comes out of the house, Bill yells up, did you fall in a hole? Because he was in the house like an abnormally long amount of time to just grab a beer.
00:30:17
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. So he said, I couldn't find that bottle opener. It was missing. It was just one of those things that was like tossed off and nobody thought about.
00:30:26
Faith Pezzulo
So July 1st, Bill is driving around listening to the radio. and what do you think he hears? Missing description of old Gina. Yeah, PSA on the radio station announcing Gina's description, description of the car.
00:30:42
Faith Pezzulo
he knows both of those. So he drives over to where Stephen works and says, you need to call the police and tell them what happened. Like you were with her that night and hanging out because if they just find out you're going be suspect, like no questions asked.
00:30:57
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. Because the deal is Stephen's got a little bit of a history. Oh, course he does. He's an angry drunk. Oh, nice. Like, not just an angry drunk. Like, if he has a drink or two, he's finding someone to fight for no reason.
00:31:11
Faith Pezzulo
Snapping. He actually hasn't drank in months because he's so volatile. He's also had one or two pesky little accusations of rape when a girl didn't want to have sexual relationships with him.
00:31:26
Faith Pezzulo
Okay. Nothing that he was actually ever convicted of, but enough to where there's a police trail of this. yeah So if the police find out that they were hanging out, he's going to look bad.
00:31:38
Faith Pezzulo
Like, there's no question. You're going to be suspect number one. You should tell the police you're hanging out, you brought her home, whatever happened. So, Stephen asks him, how how do you how do you know she's missing? Like, who are you talking to? What do you know?
00:31:54
Faith Pezzulo
And Bill says, dude, it's all over the radio, like everywhere. And they're all talking about it over at the weightlifting club where both Stephen and Bill work together. And or work out together. Sorry.
00:32:06
Faith Pezzulo
And so Steve asks him, hey, you need to go back to the club and tell them to stop talking about this and just downplay this whole situation. Like, don't tell anybody I was with her Keep your mouth shut. Tell everybody to keep their mouth shut.
00:32:18
Faith Pezzulo
little suspicious. Yeah. You know. So that same day, Stephen has a conversation with another close friend of his name, William Cranwell.
00:32:29
Faith Pezzulo
And he asks William, hey, your brother's a lawyer, right? William's like, yeah. He says, you you think he would represent me? And William's like, no, bruh.
00:32:40
Faith Pezzulo
I don't think he would. I honestly don't. And he said, okay, well, the next time you talk to your brother, can you ask them if there's anything they can do to me if they can't find the body? What?
00:32:53
Faith Pezzulo
And William's like, huh. And they're walking to the car. And again, unprompted, Stephen's like, hey, can you ask your brother if they can do anything to me if they can't find that body?
00:33:04
Faith Pezzulo
What a dumbass. What body? Who's they? like you really have to love dumb criminals. You do, don't you? William... yeah was pretty sure that when he recalled this this conversation later that Stephen said a body or the body, but it was completely unprompted did by anything they were talking about. Like it was a random, like searching for information. he did a really bad job. Just out of the blue.
00:33:35
Faith Pezzulo
It's like, hey, what's your favorite omelet? By the way, um if they can't find a body, can I be charged? Right? or okay It's super like off-cullar off-cuff. And again, I'm giving you things that came out in trial and investigation. I'm trying to give you like a good streamlined picture. Well, right now, it is not clear as mud.
00:33:55
Faith Pezzulo
no trust is if If this turns into one of those faith moments where it's not this Steve guy, um go get I'm going to get a little... little hairy okay well you're already hairy you're italian
00:34:07
Faith Pezzulo
ah be coming from the girl who but sorry anyway so the the day after this on july 2nd bill um his his original friend yeah goes to the police station to have by the way bill you really keep good company right and do you not find it weird that both of his close friends are bill and william Yeah, that is kind of weird. William Bill?
00:34:30
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. but Yeah. I didn't think about it when I, like, all the research never thought about it until i just said it, and i was like, wait a minute. It's like the whole, like, reflect back to the Diddy thing. Like, okay, everybody knew this guy was a creep.
00:34:42
Faith Pezzulo
And now everybody's shocked that he did something wrong. Right. And then they're all like, oh, I mean, we were friends, but well we were all like great friends. I never saw it coming. I like it. I don't remember what stand-up guy it is, but it's like, everybody always says, like, I never saw it coming. I didn't think they're capable.
00:34:59
Faith Pezzulo
He's like,
00:35:01
Faith Pezzulo
Even my own mother would be like, yep, she had a temper. Tosh. Tosh is the one. Yeah. He's the one that talks about it in the stand-up. There's nobody that you can't see snapping for some reason or another. Like, everybody's got triggers. But I digress.
00:35:14
Faith Pezzulo
It was, what was it? It was like Anna Kendrick and the Pitch Perfect crew. Yeah. They were talking about how everybody had a serial killer trait. Yeah. Everybody does. Everybody does. Everybody does. yeah like yeah nahhuh The way she used to twiddle her fingers. Yeah, exactly. All right, good. um So you're fine. um So Bill goes to the police station to talk to them about the night. And he gives all these details that I've given you to the police about the lake house, about him never seeing or hearing him never seeing or hearing Gina. And that completely contradicts Stephen's story that he's told the police.
00:35:54
Faith Pezzulo
Because remember. Okay, game off.
00:35:57
Faith Pezzulo
Back up a little bit and say that again. Okay. Remember, before I started started giving the timeline, and I said the second quote-unquote bust in the case is when Stephen Epperly called the police to say he was with Gina the night. Right.
00:36:10
Faith Pezzulo
And then I started telling you everything that actually happened that night.
The Conviction Without a Body
00:36:13
Faith Pezzulo
So when Bill is brought in. Okay, thank He tells them everything that happened that night, the club, the house.
00:36:20
Faith Pezzulo
And he says, he tells them, I never saw or heard Gina. I just saw the car and saw and heard Steve. That is not what Steve told the police. Police said, you can ask Bill and his friend. They were talking to Gina that night at the lake house.
00:36:35
Faith Pezzulo
That was not true. Yeah. Okay. that So there you go. so ah For some reason, I thought that you were maybe misinterpreted the names, but it was me not following along well. You're good. Okay. So after he talks to the police, the police are like, we'd really like to see this lake house.
00:36:52
Faith Pezzulo
And Bill's like, absolutely. Come with me. and I've got nothing to hide. You don't need a warrant. Come on. Yeah. So they go back to the lake house and while they're there, Bill is walking in and he finds a broken gold little something on the floor. And when he picks it up, it's an ankle bracelet with two interlocking hearts.
00:37:12
Faith Pezzulo
Hey, Sergeant, look what I found right here. He doesn't hide it. He doesn't. Here you go. Look what I found. Um, And later, Delaina would say that was very similar, if not Gina's ankle bracelet that she always went out in.
00:37:28
Faith Pezzulo
right um And when they talked to Bill's mom and dad, Bill's mom said, that I don't, that's not mine and I've never seen it. So more than likely, this is Gina's.
00:37:40
Faith Pezzulo
um ah On July 5th, a few days after this, Bill has a discussion with Stevens. And he um he flat out asks him about the night Gina disappeared. And he said, like, they're talking about it. And Stephen asked Bill, he was like, you heard her that night, didn't you? you you You talked to Gina.
00:38:01
Faith Pezzulo
Like, remember? remember you talked to her you saw her yeah yeah and bill told him no i i never heard or saw gina and looks at steve his best friend since childhood and says did you kill her that night like flat out no bullshit did you kill her and steven told bill i don't know anything about it we just we'll just have to wait and see what happens wow so not a no i didn't kill her Not just, going to have to wait see, bro.
00:38:30
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, not a no, not a yes. Just a, we'll see what they come up with. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. but So. What a good guy. Bill also wants to know what happened between he and Gina that night the lake house. And Steve told him that there was a little fondling over the clothes that night, but that was it.
00:38:46
Faith Pezzulo
That he had gone Which probably what triggered him because yeah he was such a great guy anyway. yeah And she was like, I don't want to put out. ah And he's like, well, you're going to. Anyways. Okay. So he said he went swimming down the lake. Gina refused to join him.
00:39:00
Faith Pezzulo
ah Bill tells the police about Stephen's alcohol problem and getting angry, which again, they already know about. There's been police arrests. um And he said he didn't see Steve drink at the club, but there's there's there's alcohol at the lake house.
00:39:14
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. so i don't know what happened. Not even that, but it didn't he didn't need a beer to be an asshole. No. Clearly. Because, again, the two counts of rape that he's been accused of were both times that he kind of tricked a girl into being alone with him. Yeah.
00:39:28
Faith Pezzulo
And when they said no to his advances, he said, not going to work for me. Right. We're going to do this thing. Yeah. So when Radford police do an official investigation of the Davis Lake house, they found small amounts of blood everywhere.
00:39:45
Faith Pezzulo
um It was found like, and I'm not talking like a drop, like there's just tiny bits of blood everywhere. It's on the concrete driveway, the glass door facing the lake. So okay instead of saying like drops, are we talking like small splatters? It was described as minuscule amounts of blood. Minuscule.
00:40:01
Faith Pezzulo
Mm-hmm. Okay, so then not, like, we're we're talking less than a drop. Missed cleanup spots is what I honestly think. Like, a splatter that you missed a little tiny piece of. Yeah, okay. So, it's um it's on the glass door facing the lake. It's on a light switch in the bathroom of the den. It's on a leg of a chair.
00:40:20
Faith Pezzulo
It's on a pair of brown shoes. It's on a dustpan. And when they go in the kitchen, it's on the refrigerator door. And there's also a pair of golf cleats.
00:40:31
Faith Pezzulo
by the refrigerator door and they've got blood on it. The refrigerator door has been wiped clean. You can tell it's been wiped clean, but there is faint blood to be seen on the refrigerator door along with head hair and fibers and some pubic hairs.
00:40:48
Faith Pezzulo
And these things, the head hairs, pubic hairs, and blood are also found in the cleats of the golf shoes. um They also found a large blood stain around 18 inches in diameter on the living room carpet right inside the glass doors from the lake.
00:41:06
Faith Pezzulo
It been cleaned and bleached into a light pink color, but the it's been enough days to where those colors are, you can see. Yeah. And the police know what that is. Yeah. It's also about that spot where Bill had stepped the wet spot in his foot that night.
00:41:21
Faith Pezzulo
Oh. Yeah. So, these small blood stains were some. Can I just say. like
00:41:30
Faith Pezzulo
Guy comes into the lake house. go Yeah. Steps in blood. Yeah, well, bleached bleach cleaned up spot, but yeah. Wait, are we sure he bleach cleaned it? Yeah, they said you could tell bleach had been used.
00:41:42
Faith Pezzulo
Just because of the coloration. How do you not smell that, though? yeah Bleach. Stepped in bleach.
00:41:49
Faith Pezzulo
And... Okay, ah can't I can't wrap my head around this one, babe. So, well here if I use bleach yeah on anything, that's all I can smell.
00:42:02
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, period. I do agree with that. So he steps in this bleach and attracts it across.
00:42:12
Faith Pezzulo
i don't know if it's hardwood floor. It was carpeted, carpeted. Okay. But even still, There should have been footprints. Somewhere.
00:42:23
Faith Pezzulo
Of his wet foot, his bleach-soaked foot. True, but it wasn't pure bleach. It was just enough bleach to dilute the blood. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's like a water bleach solution.
00:42:33
Faith Pezzulo
All right, that makes sense. But we're still talking about that sense but we're talking about the 80s, so there's not all the tests and lab before you. I'm talking about Bill in general. Yeah. Like, why the hell does my whole house smell like bleach? But, you know, my mom, you don't know, mom could be a clean freak. It's not my house. I'm drunk. And he's already been in the house.
00:42:52
Faith Pezzulo
I got this pretty girl, but he it never went downstairs before. He remained upstairs because he didn't want... But you don't notice there's blood and hair on your refrigerator, even if it's cleaned up so That's what I'm saying, okay? Like, that's, not like, a little bit sus to me.
00:43:07
Faith Pezzulo
Because I'm sitting here thinking, okay, so you walked into a dark house. You never turn on the light. You have no idea what you just stepped in. Okay. Okay. I don't care how how
00:43:21
Faith Pezzulo
who how badly you want to do the horizontal pogo. That's exactly the term I had in my head. If I walk into my home and I step in anything, yeah that's why, especially because you said he watched her swim.
00:43:38
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. He's dry. Yeah. I want to know what the hell I just stepped in. Yeah. Agreed. Okay. So he never took, pulled out a light. Nope.
00:43:49
Faith Pezzulo
In any way, shape, facet, or form. Nope. And Robin backed that up. And that's totally fine. But yeah, it's weird. It's weird. ah Agreed. Agreed. I still feel like, all right, he set up his room of horny, if you will.
00:44:01
Faith Pezzulo
Mm-hmm. And he, what, used a flashlight? I don't know. I don't understand. Whole thing's a little weird there. I do agree with that. I'm sorry. It's just a little bit suspect.
00:44:11
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. Continue. So when we were talking about the size of the blood, this blood was so small, the police literally had to, like, search, search the house for all these spots they found. Okay.
00:44:22
Faith Pezzulo
Miss Davis, when when when Bill's parents come home from their nice vacation or relax, they walk into their house as an official crime scene. Yeah. Miss Davis tells them the house was spotless and cleaned right before they left. There's no reason there should be blood anywhere in the house. No one's cut anything. Like, that's not a thing.
00:44:41
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. So, again, i already said a lot of people had joined the search for Gina because all this is kind of going on simultaneously, both sides of it. um And there was a group of five friends from her hometown in Colburn who had already been out searching.
00:44:59
Faith Pezzulo
And they come across a blue towel in the heavy undergrowth about five feet from the railroad tracks. clo away that's the one he wiped himself with yeah And that towel has bloodstains on it and fibers that will be matched to the fibers of carpet at the Davis home.
00:45:18
Faith Pezzulo
So these friends these five friends find a um find the towel with bloodstains and has fibers that match the carpet fibers in the Davis living room. And Miss Davis states that that towel matches the one that's unused and missing from her home.
00:45:34
Faith Pezzulo
Because when it's davis when the Davises got home, Miss Davis does an inventory of her house. And she tells tells the police right away, I've got it. Because she it's party central. Yeah, she knows that there's a blue and white striped towel missing. There's a roll of tape paper towels missing, which how do you have counted down to the roll of paper towels? Yeah, that's interesting. But there's roll of paper towels missing. There's a can of bathroom cleaner with a green plastic lid, a large homemade quilt, and a couple other like miscellaneous. Like there's a shovel missing. There's just, you know, here's a list of things that are missing.
00:46:04
Faith Pezzulo
Miss Davis um eventually finds the green plastic cap for the bathroom cleaner by a trash can in, like, a furnished room, like an old room that's not used much. And it's out of place, not somewhere she'd have put it.
00:46:17
Faith Pezzulo
She wouldn't just leave it I've got a Jolly Rancher my mouth. Okay. I was wondering what the slur was about. Sorry. You're fine. And she would have never just put a cap, like, by a trash can. So she calls the police. Hey, I got something for you fingerprint.
00:46:30
Faith Pezzulo
um One of the police officers... who were out helping and aiding in the search, found a shoe that was identified as Gina's, the one she was wearing the day she disappeared, besides the river, close again to where the car was.
00:46:46
Faith Pezzulo
A group of local high school students that had joined the search from Christianburg found Mrs. Davis's missing blue and white striped towel in Radford. It was between a shopping plaza and the river And shortly after that, they found all the clothes Gina was wearing that night that she went missing tied into a damp bundle and stained with blood.
00:47:08
Faith Pezzulo
Because remember, she went out in a white jacket and white pants. Yep. So, that you're going to see the stains. sorry. That's got to be traumatizing for high schoolers. Yeah, but i mean. You're still young. But they're doing the thing. I know they volunteered, but.
00:47:22
Faith Pezzulo
If you're looking in the woods, you've got to know you're finding a body. Right? Well, they're walking around town. was between a shopping plaza. and they Oh, like okay. Okay. Yeah. So on July 3rd, a police officer found all of Gina's purse contents under a brush pile about 10 feet from the highway near the river, all bunched together. and Like, the purse was just dumped over.
00:47:42
Faith Pezzulo
But even everything's there. Even her checkbook. Like, nothing's missing. Okay. On July 1st, Sergeant Hall interviewed Stephen at the police station.
00:47:53
Faith Pezzulo
And he said Stephen told the officer that he had driven Gina from the Marriott to the lake house that the Davises owned in her car. Because he knew the way. It was dark. So he drove her a car.
00:48:06
Faith Pezzulo
And as soon as they got there, she calls her sister. which again, we know from Delaina. And he said he overheard Gina tell Delaina that she was at the lake with a man named Stephen and she wouldn't be out all night. She'd probably be home in the early morning hours.
00:48:20
Faith Pezzulo
okay Stephen said that they went to the dock where he went swimming. And although she didn't join him, she sat there and they kind of talked while he swam around. They went back up to the house where they talked for a while, made out a little bit.
00:48:34
Faith Pezzulo
At this point, Steven said Gina told him that she'd had a really bad experience with a man before, and she would have to get to know him really well before she would be comfortable being intimate, and that's why they left the Davis house, because they were done.
00:48:49
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, because you know he's such a good guy. Yeah. He said they left um they left and Gina was driving. He gave Gina directions to his house in Radford where she dropped him off.
00:49:01
Faith Pezzulo
And then he gave her directions to get back to Delaina's house. And he went inside and went to bed. Delaina says this is utter bullcrap because they live in Radford. Gina knows how to get around Radford. She'd have had no problem going from point A to point B. She would not have needed directions.
00:49:17
Faith Pezzulo
Right. But he could have been mansplaining Because, you know, men do that sometimes. I'm going to be honest with you at this point. Every arrow is facing the guy. Yep.
00:49:28
Faith Pezzulo
Isn't it? Isn't it? You're doing it to me again, aren't you Yes. You're a piece of shit. I'm not. Yeah, you are. You just admitted it. By July 7th, Stephen is, sorry, 2nd, not 7th.
00:49:40
Faith Pezzulo
2nd, Stephen is ah suspect number one for the police. Yeah, obviously. He's just like mildly. Right. He's feeble-minded at this point. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, but here's the deal.
00:49:53
Faith Pezzulo
There's nobody. Yep. And this is 1980s. They don't have anything to charge him with. Yep. So they continue their searches and Stephen's not tried. They've, they've talked to him a couple of times. They're keeping an eye on him. We've already discussed it. That if he, they, he asked his lawyer, I'm sorry. He asked his friend, friend whose dad's a lawyer.
00:50:16
Faith Pezzulo
If they don't find the body find the body. But again, all this, the police don't know these, these conversations yet. This is stuff that came out in trial. Oh, okay. So they're still looking for Gina's body.
00:50:27
Faith Pezzulo
Stephen moves away from Redford into another town close by in Virginia. yeah And then he moves to Ohio. hu he only lives i'm getting yeah He only lives in Ohio for a few weeks because all this happened in the end of June and July And in August, he's already back.
00:50:48
Faith Pezzulo
Well, I do find it kind of weird, though, that even in that time, if he was a suspect, they'd let only let him leave? Well, he that he's not he's a suspect, but he's not, like, out and out of suspect because they've got a hunch, but they can't prove it. like she's not even There's no body. She's not she's not officially dead.
00:51:05
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. so But in the very few weeks he lived in Ohio, minuscule, short weeks, a girl named Vicki went missing. And was killed.
00:51:17
Faith Pezzulo
So now is he on a spree? It's just a very, like, he was never charged with Vicki's murder. But it was very, like, if you line up the cases, pretty dang similar.
00:51:29
Faith Pezzulo
um In August 1980, they have officially said, you're it. Yeah.
00:51:40
Faith Pezzulo
Like you're arrested, get a lawyer. Because the deal is, Virginia is a commonwealth state. yeah So their rules are different. Their laws are a little different. It's just a little different. But what their equivalent of a DA, district attorney is, had only been assigned the district attorney for six months when all this got dumped on them.
00:52:01
Faith Pezzulo
So they have searched for over a month now, and there is nobody. What do you do? This guy, and I don't remember his name. I didn't write his name down, unfortunately.
00:52:12
Faith Pezzulo
He does research on all the murder cases in the United States. And to this point, there have only been four murder cases without a body in the whole United States.
00:52:24
Faith Pezzulo
And none of them got a conviction.
00:52:28
Faith Pezzulo
So he's only had this job for six months. If he brings this to trial and fumbles it, he's done. Yeah. So he really, I mean, he wavered on what to do, but eventually said, screw it, arrest him.
00:52:44
Faith Pezzulo
So they arrest him. And in August 1980, they offer a plea deal to Stephen Epperly and his lawyers and say, you tell us where the body is. You tell us what you did.
00:52:56
Faith Pezzulo
And we'll give you this sentence. If we take it to trial, you could get life. So this is a really good deal.
00:53:05
Faith Pezzulo
Stephen Eppelin and his lawyer talk and there's no body. So you're not going to get a death. You're not going get a guilty. You're not getting life. You're not going to be found guilty because there's you can't even prove there's a murder.
00:53:18
Faith Pezzulo
So they say, we're not going to take that. And September 9th, 1980, Stephen was officially, officially charged and the trial starts December, 1980.
00:53:29
Faith Pezzulo
So about six months later.
00:53:33
Faith Pezzulo
In the trial, there's no body, again, as I've said a hundred times. So the prosecution's job was to rely heavily on every speck of evidence they could find.
00:53:45
Faith Pezzulo
Right. Because they have to prove even without a body, there's no possible way Gina's alive. Mm-hmm. And they also have to prove that she was murdered. She didn't, not in natural, like she was murdered intentionally and her body can't be found because it was hidden and this man did it.
00:54:02
Faith Pezzulo
And you're just, so it's literally, you're going to lay out every little piece of evidence. The trial starts with a bang. First thing, Delaina, her sister's on the on the witness end talking about how many people love Gina, how many people showed up, what a great person Gina is.
00:54:16
Faith Pezzulo
And even says... There's no way she could have driven that car that night. The seat was too far back. She was not the last person that drove my car. There's no way.
00:54:27
Faith Pezzulo
We always fight because I always fussed at her for not putting the seat back. She's not going to park it under a bridge by the railroad tracks. And all sudden, oh, my sister hates it when it's up. Let me push it all the way back.
00:54:39
Faith Pezzulo
So they bring out all the evidence. they The blood stains taken from the Davis house um were identified to be blood type O. Every piece of blood they found was blood type O because there's no DNA matching back then. It's all blood typing.
00:54:56
Faith Pezzulo
The goth shoes had a pubic hair on it, and it did not belong to Stephen or any of the Davises. And while they don't have Gina to compare it to it's understood that it's Gina's. Like they, they talk about color and whatnot.
00:55:11
Faith Pezzulo
Um, and since they don't have anything to compare Gina's, they can't, they can't automatically prove it, but the blood smears on the refrigerator door and the hair found on the refrigerator door are identical to Gina's head hair, which I got from a brush. Um,
00:55:28
Faith Pezzulo
The mat in the back of the trunk of the Chevy contained type O blood stains as well. More hair that matched genus and more pubic hair. The blue towel that was found in the woods by some of the volunteers, also again, stained with type O blood, more head hair that matched genus, more pubic hair.
00:55:47
Faith Pezzulo
really am finding this like weird. Right? Because you say pubic hair a lot. Because they they keep finding it. Like, that's all. that They're literally any speck of evidence.
00:56:00
Faith Pezzulo
Like, why is there pubic hair on a bridge? Are there cleats? but That I can understand. If he turned violent. Yeah. And was just beating her. and But at that point. of out like you know this That point is just like transfer.
00:56:14
Faith Pezzulo
But they're trying to prove that the same type O blood. the same matching head hair to Gina and the same matching pubic hair that could only be Gina's because all this other stuff is Gina's it's on all these places everywhere.
00:56:29
Faith Pezzulo
Um, so they also, um, they show the jacket that she was wearing that night that had bloodstains on the breast and the shoulder blade area, which spread across the back. The pants had bloodstains.
00:56:43
Faith Pezzulo
Um, There's, again, the matching head hair. And there's other hair mixed in with this blood that matches Stephen's at this point. And if you haven't guessed it, Gina has type O blood.
00:56:56
Faith Pezzulo
No way. Right? Stephen has type a um one of the Thank you for that little cliff note version of it. The other thing that...
00:57:08
Faith Pezzulo
the prosecutor relied heavily heavily on was a special testimony and a special witness in this case. So pretty quick in the case, there is a retired Pennsylvania state trooper named John Preston who shows up to help on this missing person case.
00:57:27
Faith Pezzulo
He is an expert, a renowned expert on the training, handling, and reading of track dogs. And with him, he brings um to Gina's case his male German shepherd named Hassler II. I like it.
00:57:42
Faith Pezzulo
And he has been involved in over 100 criminal cases throughout the United States, and the dog has successfully followed the trails over 21 days old. You're serious.
00:57:53
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, I'm serious. These dogs are awesome. I'm sorry. I super got too late. I'm sorry. That's why I saved the dog part to the last so you can focus. Okay. Before. I'm sorry. So John and his dog arrived.
00:58:03
Faith Pezzulo
But I ah got sucked into like these TikTok best canine takedowns ever. Oh, yeah. yeah okay Did you see the poor puppy that got shot? Yeah.
00:58:14
Faith Pezzulo
died but no he didn't die this one he because they could they he once he got recent no he it is pretty recent but he got shot and they pursue they performed surgery on him and they had like a parade for him as he was coming home to rest and he's good now he's a good boy him's a good boy these dogs are amazing yeah i'll send that to you next time i come across them because i should go down a rabbit hole with those from time to time you should those dogs are freaking phenom so um I've lost my spot. Hold on. There go. sorry. It's my fault. You're You're fine. Squirrel.
00:58:46
Faith Pezzulo
So John and his dog arrive in Radford around midnight on July 10th. She went missing about two weeks before. yeah Neither are familiar with the area and they're not told we have a suspect.
00:58:59
Faith Pezzulo
And at this point, Stephen's not in custody or anything. So one of the Radford police took John and his dog to a to the place on Hazel Hollow Road, which was near where the Chevy had been found.
00:59:11
Faith Pezzulo
aye The dog was scented, is what they call it. They term it. But he was given a pair of Stephen's underwear and got the scent. And the dog immediately starts casting the area.
00:59:23
Faith Pezzulo
Really? Stephen's stuff? Yeah. Not hers? No. Steven's stuff. Okay. I don't know why. Yeah. Well, I mean, it makes sense, though, because if she's buried. Yep. I guess. They're going to lose the scent.
00:59:34
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. At some point. But if it's Steven, he's going to be freaking everywhere. they're going to follow Steven's scent to where she's buried. That's what I'm saying. maybe Yeah. Yeah. So um the dog immediately begins casting the area, and within 100 yards, he picks up a scent.
00:59:50
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. Okay, hold on. So, at the area where they ditched. They're close to the area where the Chevy was. Close to the area. They give the sniff routine. Okay, got it. Sorry. So, the dog, you're fine. The dog immediately picks up a scent.
01:00:05
Faith Pezzulo
He left the road and goes along a path that crosses New River into Radford. He crosses the railroad tracks. And the dog goes on this long, winding path. Okay.
01:00:17
Faith Pezzulo
through Radford that seems sporadic. Like he's going this way and that way, back and forth, going to places he's already been, like this winding way through this town. Yes, because he's probably and then he um like in Stephen world.
01:00:30
Faith Pezzulo
yeah he walks trying to figure out he walks with it Yeah, he walks into a neighborhood finally. He walks up to a porch and he stops and sits down. At this point, the officer there tells John, your dog is sitting at our prime suspect's front door. That is Stephen Epperly's house.
01:00:45
Faith Pezzulo
Are you kidding me? No. Tracked him all the way through town. Holy shit. So, but if you believe Stephen's the murderer, and if you think about it that night, Stephen was driving Gina's car, parks it at the river.
01:01:02
Faith Pezzulo
Under the train tracks, right? i was going to say, it yeah. Yeah, it's called New River, but he parks it by the train tracks. He doesn't have a way to get home but to walk from the car to his house. But throughout all these searches, they have found the purse contents over here, the blue towel over there, the clothes this way, the shoes that way.
01:01:21
Faith Pezzulo
And when you line up where all the things that were found, the dog hit almost every spot in that winding, weird back and forth. Dog followed it and then ended up at Stephen's front door.
01:01:34
Faith Pezzulo
So, um, on I think I remember this. Yeah. So on, Oh my God. Okay. On July 12th, when Steven was at the Radford police station and he's talking to the captain there, just about everything that's happening again, he's not arrested. He's just there going over everything.
01:01:51
Faith Pezzulo
John takes his dog Hassler and they go, they've not been inside. They go to the parking lot and I believe they go across the street to this high school. There's cars everywhere. And, um,
01:02:03
Faith Pezzulo
They give the dog the scent again, the underwear. And after the dog was scented, he makes a casting search through the parking lot, and he comes to a stop right at Stephen's driver's side door.
01:02:15
Faith Pezzulo
His car, he sits and plops there. After pausing there, he then tracks, continues to cast and tracks, goes into the police station, and comes and sits outside the door where Stephen is inside being interviewed.
01:02:29
Faith Pezzulo
So when police eventually arrest Stephen and are are going through, here's all the three times we gave him your scent. And here's what that dog did each three times.
01:02:41
Faith Pezzulo
It was said that Stephen put his head down on his arms and said, that's a good damn dog. Yeah. That's it. Yep. So this is all that they bring out all these, all the things with Hassler and the detective and all this blood evidence and everything out at trial.
01:02:58
Faith Pezzulo
Stephen's defense presents not a single witness at trial because his friends literally all bailed and testified for Gina and her family. Yeah. Even lifelong friend, Bill peace. Tell him the truth. Yeah.
01:03:09
Faith Pezzulo
Be done. So at the close of the trial, The jury was given instructions on what first-degree murders and second-degree murder is, the definitions, the stipulations. Neither the prosecution nor defense requested a definition of voluntary manslaughter.
01:03:26
Faith Pezzulo
And since Gina's body had not been found, the court told the jury that the prosecution needed to prove that Gina was, in fact, dead and her death was, in fact, a result of criminal violence. Like, that was their job to determine through all this evidence and all this information. Right.
01:03:42
Faith Pezzulo
investigators always theorized that Stephen killed Gina when she rejected his sexual advances that night. He probably was going to do his MO of rape and just went too far.
01:03:52
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. This was further supported by Stephen's long history of anger management history where he would just snap. um When the jury came back, um they said he is guilty.
01:04:12
Faith Pezzulo
So for the first time in Virginia state history, they got a guilty verdict with nobody. Yep. And he is sentenced to life in jail. He then goes on to exhaust all his appeals, both state and federally, and is denied, and he's still in prison.
01:04:27
Faith Pezzulo
Mm-hmm. And again, first time they ever convinced without a body. So he's gone. He's in jail. Should be the end of the story. Should be.
01:04:39
Faith Pezzulo
WDBJ in Virginia put out an article in July 2020.
New Evidence and Ongoing Persistence
01:04:44
Faith Pezzulo
This happened in 1980. Yep.
01:04:47
Faith Pezzulo
that some of Gina's DNA and remains have been found 40 years after her disappearance because her sister Delaina and a forensic anthropologist out of Knoxville, Tennessee made a discovery.
01:05:01
Faith Pezzulo
In 2016, Delaina got a report that a farmer's grandson had gone to the Radford police and said his family had a secret all the way back to the nineteen eighty s He said that his grandfather told the family, and it was family knowledge, that his grandfather witnessed two men dismembering a body in Meadow Creek, Virginia.
01:05:23
Faith Pezzulo
The men were driving a white van, and his grandfather knew in his bones it was Gina Hall. It was the night she went missing, but never told anybody because he didn't want to get dragged into it and he didn't see the men. It was too dark. So when this happened, it prompted Delaina to go on a search for her sister because now she this is a new place.
01:05:42
Faith Pezzulo
Meadow Creek, we have a location. So she's on her own, still freaking searching for her sister. And in 2019, she went to a vigil, as she does every year for her sister, Gina, and met Dr. Vass, who is, again, the forensic anthropologist from Knoxville, Tennessee. I cannot say his first name.
01:06:00
Faith Pezzulo
i so And honestly, I thought it was Dr. Bass who does the body farm, but not the same one. It's Vass, V-A-S-S. um And he had developed an instrument that could detect DNA that was found in ground samples.
01:06:14
Faith Pezzulo
Because we're in we're in normal, like we're in current day, you can test for this crap, right? Not only that, but they can measure things from yes the top of the ground to see if something's been disturbed 10,000 years before that. Right. It's buried there.
01:06:28
Faith Pezzulo
So after Delada and Dr. Vass got together, Gina's remains have been located in eight different areas throughout the New River Valley area of Virginia. um dna Her DNA has been found at the lake house at the top of Mount Draper, where the Davises used to live, along Meadow Creek. And one of the bones, one of her bones was found at a hunting ground that just so happened to be very frequented by Stevens.
01:06:56
Faith Pezzulo
All locations have not all been excavated to this day currently. They have excavated some of them, like the hunting spots, how they found her bone. But Delaina's not stopping. Like she's still actively searching for every bit of her sister she can find yeah to this day.
01:07:12
Faith Pezzulo
And even though i am going because if you are a true crime connoisseur, I will give a few caveats. I'm at the end of the story now. That was just to tidy up like they're still looking for. Stephen's in jail.
01:07:24
Faith Pezzulo
Guilty. So you don't have to worry about that. um Even though Delaina and Dr. Vast believe the remains they found the found, and the dna A lot of people doubt it because Dr. Vass's technology and the things he found, some people don't.
01:07:42
Faith Pezzulo
They believe it's, you know, snake oil. The other thing I will point out, just in case, was very sad about this, but the vert the Pennsylvania detective, the dog handler, um I forgot his name, John Preston,
01:08:00
Faith Pezzulo
He has helped hundreds of cases in his, after he retired, I mean, hundreds, like even into the case, he was part of Casey Anthony, like one of his dogs went there. Like he's, I mean, everywhere he is dead now, but he has been several of the people that he and his testimony and his dogs sent him.
01:08:24
Faith Pezzulo
They have been let off at this point with DNA evidence. Like there's a handful. So he has been completely discredited in the like, one judge even told him he was a fraud, like to his face.
01:08:38
Faith Pezzulo
Because i mean, and you know, some like this case, there's no DNA evidence. And this case was in the eighties. He was doing this in the eighties and scenting dogs and tracking.
01:08:49
Faith Pezzulo
And it's not foolproof. And some of these times they didn't they couldn't test the DNA evidence. All they could, they went on the dog and the dog, what the dog scented and what John testified.
01:09:02
Faith Pezzulo
And the people they convicted based off part of his testimony and the evidence ended up being innocent. DNA exonerated them years later. So I don't, I have a hard time saying like blanket.
01:09:15
Faith Pezzulo
He was a complete fraud. I do have a hard time saying that. Because the deal is, and I didn't research like greatly into it. I was honestly, a lot of the stories and stuff I read didn't have the dog's name. And I was just looking for the pupper's name.
01:09:31
Faith Pezzulo
That's what brought me down to this sad, sad, sad trail. And I'm not going to leave it out. But they say, like, if you Google John Preston, it says discredited fraud. Like, that's what comes up.
01:09:44
Faith Pezzulo
They don't, which I have a problem with. Because not like this case, the dog scented three times, went to Steven all three times. And Steven, you can't convince me he wasn't guilty. Yeah. And it's not like you can teach your dog how to lie. Yeah.
01:09:58
Faith Pezzulo
So did, did maybe the dog scent wrong on a couple cases? Yes. We can even have accidents in DNA in labs because of mix ups, but that doesn't mean DNA evidence is irrelevant.
01:10:10
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. It just means on a few cases, he scented the wrong thing and they didn't have the whole story. So, yeah.
Errors and Reputation in Forensic Science
01:10:17
Faith Pezzulo
Especially now. Yeah. how heavily they rely on dogs.
01:10:22
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. But I hate that. I hate that this guy was completely like discredit. Again, you Google him. It is fraud discredit. Like that's the first like whole page.
01:10:34
Faith Pezzulo
And then there's like one of his, his obituaries, one of them. And it kind of pissed me off because yeah, you're going to have things again, even DNA labs make mistakes. Well, yeah, but you're you're still looking at something that was in its infancy at that point.
01:10:49
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. You know what mean? You can't, yeah. so It's just like, okay, well, I hired in a medium. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I just, in I have a real hard time that they just, they like completely trashed this guy's whole life and his whole legacy because of a few times he was wrong. We still use DNA, even though they can make mistakes. So why are you still use dogs?
01:11:10
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. So why are you saying that this guy was a fraud and a liar because of like a handful out of the hundreds that are still Right. Well, we can get into that, but that's going to be a dark conversation. but I just didn't want to, if anyone looked into it, I didn't want them to be like, well, he's been discredited. Yeah, I get that.
01:11:29
Faith Pezzulo
But I still think John and Hassler were spot on on this one. And again, again. You are looking at something that was in its infancy. Yeah, in 1980. Somebody explored We didn't even have pagers. Look, because at that point, how how often were people using dogs for hunting?
01:11:46
Faith Pezzulo
Oh, yeah. And knowing that this dog is going to pick up the scent from forever away. Yeah. And figure out what you just killed and bring it back to you. yeah Yeah. I wanted to mention it in case anyone Googled it. But yeah. Like, logically, it was like, my God.
01:12:01
Faith Pezzulo
well, we can train a dog to pick up a, you know, and like dead deer. And he had, I didn't get deep into the research because he had Hassler one, Hassler two, and he had like two or three other dogs yeah yeah throughout his career.
01:12:12
Faith Pezzulo
I don't know if the dogs were all the same dogs that made the wrong call. I don't know any of that. I just did a brief. Honestly, I was trying to get a picture of the dog and the dog's name. That's all I wanted to post the story. yeah And then I saw this and I was like, oh no. That's not cool.
01:12:27
Faith Pezzulo
But, again, looking at it, what i didn't go deep, but it's only like four or five cases that got proven wrong with DNA. So, yeah. So, give me a freaking break, is all I'm saying. And you know what?
01:12:37
Faith Pezzulo
Just because you proved it wrong from DNA doesn't mean the dog's snipper was off. Yeah. That person could have still been there. ah Ding, ding, ding. Just saying. Didn't even think about that. Just saying.
Delaina's Relentless Pursuit of Truth
01:12:48
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. So, give give Hassler a break, and...
01:12:52
Faith Pezzulo
R.I.P. John Preston and his family. I'm sorry. But no, that's it. I'm done. Like, Delaina's still trying to find everything. She's still out there. I just think she's an amazing
Was There a Second Person Involved?
01:13:00
Faith Pezzulo
person. going tell you what. She is an amazing person. But I am so very much hung up on the fact that you said there were two.
01:13:06
Faith Pezzulo
Aren't you, though? Doesn't that bother you that that farmer saw it? Who was it? Yeah. I mean, not even that. Sorry. Ezra, sit. Her dog really wants to be on top of me and be wear me as a suit.
01:13:20
Faith Pezzulo
So here's my thing. Clearly, Stephen. Did it. Is a nut bag. Yeah. Yeah. From the word go. Mm-hmm. Okay. You've had, like, how many other people that have been in and out of this house?
01:13:36
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. Bill. Robin. william The random people that were playing horseshoe. Yeah. So, my question is, her more than likely, it was one of them.
01:13:50
Faith Pezzulo
but here's the deal. Here's the thing, because i've i've I've literally, I have listened to every podcast I can on this story because it bothered, that bothers me. The farmer saw two men dismembering.
01:14:03
Faith Pezzulo
Two men. And strewn throughout. so Everywhere. And he only he had, he left the lake house at like two o'clock in the morning. And not even like 12, 14 hours later, he's back at the lake house hanging out with people.
01:14:21
Faith Pezzulo
So he did a lot in that time. He had to clean up. He had to go strew everything about. He had to dismember. But who was it? Because Bill and Robin spent the night together. Bill dropped Robin off at like noon the next day and went directly and picked up his son. He had no time to help.
01:14:40
Faith Pezzulo
Like he's accounted for. Yeah. He wasn't having any of this Tom Fulry. not saying I'm just saying that there is clearly. But who? really A. Farmer was hammered and seen double. B. Could be. could be b There was somebody else that was involved in this.
01:14:56
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. And for some weird reason, Steve is protecting this person. But what? Steve? Only to maintain his own innocence. He has never to this day admitted guilt.
01:15:07
Faith Pezzulo
He's always said he was innocent. That's what I'm saying. So he's not going to admit to two people. He's not going to admit that he did it. He's not going to admit to anything. But you have a witness out there telling you that they saw two people dismembering a body. In a white van.
01:15:23
Faith Pezzulo
Okay. Always a white van. Always a white van. But here's my thing, too. Even back then, could you really pull up on something like that and be like,
01:15:39
Faith Pezzulo
Hey guys, guess what I saw? i saw these two guys dismembering the human body. And you never said anything to anybody? like come He told his friends, he told his family, but again, this is 1980 Virginia. You don't know what that, he could have been, he could have been getting into some tomfoolery that night.
01:15:59
Faith Pezzulo
I don't know why you wouldn't say anything, but i'm saying like people do that all the time. It's, you know, they don't want to get involved by standard effect, call nine yards. I get that. But what where's the two people coming from?
01:16:11
Faith Pezzulo
Like I said, you have two options. One, there was an actual second person or B dude was seeing double. I like the thing double because that's nice and tidy. But where's the white van coming from? Because that's not what Steve throws. but here's the thing, though, too.
01:16:25
Faith Pezzulo
Like, even if he was seeing double and there were two people dismembering the body. Then why didn't he see two vans? It wouldn't know who wouldn't have been one body.
01:16:36
Faith Pezzulo
It had been two. And he'd have seen two vans. So that discredits your very good theory that was going to make me sleep tonight. Yeah, I screwed myself on that one. Yeah. I'm just saying.
01:16:48
Faith Pezzulo
That's weird. I know. That bothers me. You just got
The Complexity of Guilt and Punishment
01:16:51
Faith Pezzulo
to... You gotta to be okay with the fact that Stephen's still in jail. Alright, so here's the thing. And her sister's a rock star. I'm go i'm gonna go there. I'm gonna go there. Just real quick.
01:16:59
Faith Pezzulo
Why do you do this to me? I have to. You don't. You choose. It's a choice. We know pretty much at this point Steve's guilty. We all agree. We all agree. Stephen's guilty. Across the board. No one has been like, maybe he didn't do it. No. Everybody's like guilty.
01:17:12
Faith Pezzulo
So, why?
01:17:17
Faith Pezzulo
Aside from the fact that we have to be honorable and respectful people... Yeah. Can we not just go Game of Thrones style, okay, and just, like, make him tell us?
01:17:33
Faith Pezzulo
I don't know. They don't allow waterboarding in the United States anymore. Oh, man. That's... Yeah, I know. i just... I would... Okay.
01:17:44
Faith Pezzulo
Here's my thing about, like, what is Capital punishment. Is that what it Yeah. So... It would suck so bad if you really didn't know anything and you were being tortured.
01:18:02
Faith Pezzulo
That would suck. Yeah, it would. So bad. why
01:18:09
Faith Pezzulo
You know, he knows something. No, but you know what I mean? Like, yeah oh, there is not a good, like. There's not a there's not a good line. Because in this one. It'll stay in the gray. Oh, yeah. yeah But in this one.
01:18:21
Faith Pezzulo
You know he did it. I know he did it. It's pretty, it's pretty pegged. It's pretty solid. Oh, yeah. At this point. Yeah, yeah. Homeboy's guilty.
01:18:33
Faith Pezzulo
100%. Right. 100%. And I know we have 100 million cases out there that are questionable. Right? They're iffy.
01:18:42
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, but this one, I kind of feel like, I don't know. How much could the human body really take? and Before he's like, all right, you're right. yeah Here's the body.
01:18:53
Faith Pezzulo
Here's where it all is. Because her sister's still looking. And I feel like, just put the poor girl out of her misery. and It sucks, too, because like some... No, let me say that. It's hard to move on when you lose someone.
01:19:08
Faith Pezzulo
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Emotional Toll and the Quest for Closure
01:19:10
Faith Pezzulo
But when you have to move on from something like that. And you have no closure. No. You have no idea what happened. Like, you might have a headstone, but that you know there's nothing there. Yeah.
01:19:21
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. Like, there's no definite. Pretty much.
01:19:25
Faith Pezzulo
And you've got eight locations of her. So you know it was a horrific, you know what i mean? Like, the whole thing's sad. I do think her sister's awesome. To drive to the radio station, to get the search party, to get, i mean.
01:19:39
Faith Pezzulo
But she's, I mean, she's kind of doing it the right way. Oh, 100%. 100%. And it's 40 years later and she's still trying to find. i mean, now we're even 45, almost ah a century.
01:19:53
Faith Pezzulo
i mean, half a century later and she's still trying to find her sister because she was a graduate student. Yeah. So she's, she's the little lady now. Yeah. And she still wants to know where her sister's body is.
01:20:06
Faith Pezzulo
And kudos to her. But then kind of at the same time, it's like... Sad. It's sad.
01:20:15
Faith Pezzulo
I don't know if I... I mean, I can make a statement and it's gonna make... Kind of sound a little bit like I'm a ah dick. We all know you are. But at some point, you gotta let go. Yeah.
01:20:26
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah.
01:20:29
Faith Pezzulo
Because if there is one thing that we have said over and over and over and over again, there is not one person that you can interview and ask them why they did what they did. Oh, they're never going to tell you.
01:20:41
Faith Pezzulo
And she doesn't. she Even if they do tell you. It's not going to help anything. real life. like And she honestly, like, she knows Steven did it. He's behind bars. She just wants her sister at rest.
01:20:54
Faith Pezzulo
Like, that's her sole motivation. Yeah, but her spirit already is. Yeah. ah Agreed. But ah hey, if if that's what keeps her up at night, you're not hurting anybody.
01:21:06
Faith Pezzulo
That's true. She also needs to be able to live her life. yeah Yeah. And I don't i didn't do a lot of ah didn't do a lot of research in Delaina's life afterwards. Right, like, not sitting here saying she's obsessing over it. No, no, no. That's not what I'm saying at all. and Yeah. I'm saying, like, oh, you live this and you go through this and you just need to give up. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're saying. That is not what I'm saying at all.
01:21:28
Faith Pezzulo
I get it. I'm just saying at some point there has to be some kind of relief for the family. Yeah. That goes through this. Mm-hmm. You know. Now you already know that she's gone, but you cannot put the pieces back together, is what I'm saying. Yeah.
01:21:41
Faith Pezzulo
You're never the same. No. Never. But that's my story.
01:21:48
Faith Pezzulo
And Steven was guilty, so ha ha. Yeah, I didn't know if you were going to do one of those this is stupid things where you get me all riled up and then I get super pissed. And then I'm like, dude, you're a whore.
01:21:59
Faith Pezzulo
yeah You do that anyway. yeah well I'll just tell you more about how much I love you after this. But anyways, that was good. i am I didn't like it, but I liked Hassler. The Puppers.
01:22:12
Faith Pezzulo
I'm not saying it was a good story. ah some yeah i mean, it was... like had all the When I say good, mean... Make good Lifetime movie. Okay. There are a lot of stories that we tell, and it's like, wow, that was the shittiest ending ever.
01:22:27
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, yeah. and There's no closure. This one, he's in jail, at least. Yeah, he's gone. Rotting away. could possibly be another guy out there, but we know.
01:22:39
Faith Pezzulo
At least the main culprit. Oh, yeah. 100%. Guns agree. yeah ah great Anyway, that's my tale. We'll just throw it out there. maybe Capital punishment might not be that bad.
01:22:53
Faith Pezzulo
like Even though she's already argued that it is that bad. Lisa. I'm just saying. There's no dealing with you. There's no pleasing me, no. Because I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, oh my God. If somebody ever charged me of something and I know I didn't do it.
01:23:06
Faith Pezzulo
And they start like ripping off my fingernails. I'd just be like, I did it! I did it! Stop that! It hurts! Owie! Anyways.
01:23:17
Faith Pezzulo
What do you want to know? I'll tell you. Just tell me what to say. I'll say it. Tell me what to say. I'll say it. Yeah, just don't don't touch me anymore.
01:23:25
Faith Pezzulo
Wow. So that's the other part about cattle punishments. They're just going to tell you what you want to hear so you'll quit hurting them.
01:23:32
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah, but it makes you feel a little better. It does. But what if they're innocent? They make me feel like shit. Yeah, clearly. I'm just saying, you know.
01:23:44
Faith Pezzulo
Some people deserve it. We'll say that. Yes. Steven deserved it. Yeah.
Conclusion: Farewell and Future Promises
01:23:50
Faith Pezzulo
Hondo. Hondo. Hondo. right. Well, guys. That's all we got.
01:23:55
Faith Pezzulo
Appreciate your likes. Appreciate your views. Appreciate your, uh, your Facebook, Facebook, um, interactions. That's the word I'm looking for. you yeah I got my way there.
01:24:08
Faith Pezzulo
I still can't figure out the whole messaging thing. No. Super late. It's just people that... And it's always people that want to, like, sell me stuff. Dude, we make no money off this. I can't spend more money. Yeah, we literally do it because we're late.
01:24:22
Faith Pezzulo
Yeah. We have no friends besides each other, and we feel like people want to hear us. And I'm going to be honest. Like, we're not really that great friends. Yeah. Yeah, that's true, too. We're related through marriage, so we try to put up with other. Well, we were our friends before you were married.
01:24:35
Faith Pezzulo
True. The only difference is I'm the better Pizzullo. i I would argue that I'm the better Pizzullo, but... Well, I mean, you're kind of married to that. Yeah, all right, But out of the out of the common, right, out of the blood... The natural.
01:24:50
Faith Pezzulo
The Yeah. Anyways. Original. Alright, well, we're just gonna keep talking. Have a good night, and we will hopefully post again next week. Peace be with you. Bye-bye.