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Season Six: Holiday Episode 25 (2025)
196 Plays22 days ago
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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.
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Holiday Movie Releases: Is 'Die Hard' a Christmas Film?
00:01:00
Speaker
In theory, if you and I have done our jobs correctly, then now it's Christmas Day. And I didn't have a specific Christmas Day hostage situation.
00:01:14
Speaker
But I noticed that there was a... Yeah, like Die Hard. Right. and when i saw that it was coming out i thought they were going to release it on chris christmas you doubt sometimes one big movie will come out around christmas time yeah like die hard right Yeah, some people go to the movies on Christmas Day. Yeah, so this one was originally slated, but it got bumped back to January 9th.
00:01:44
Speaker
But it's a cool story, and it has a couple of side stories that are interesting. interesting So I put it all together, and i wanted to talk about those side stories. They all kind of take place in Indiana, and...
00:01:57
Speaker
Pretty sure the like bulk of the action in the stories takes place in the 70s for at least two of them. The third one, he's an Indiana serial killer that like is he goes unrecognized for a lot of things, but he has some twists and turns his story. So that's what I put together for like the the final sort of hostage for the holidays series.
The Kiritsis Hostage Incident
00:02:20
Speaker
Have you ever heard of a man named Anthony George Kiritsis? Nope. And I don't know if I'm saying his name correctly, but there's a ah press conference I'm going to drop the link to, or or you can just go find it. It's about this case.
00:02:39
Speaker
Now, the case itself, like the story itself, is it's pretty short. What's interesting about it is sort of the effects that ends up happening. So... Anthony, or Tony, he's a resident of Indianapolis, Indiana. He was born August 13, 1932. By
00:03:03
Speaker
he has fallen behind on his mortgage payments So in early 1977, he is trying to communicate with his mortgage broker, a guy named Richard Hall, and he wants more time to pay on this property.
00:03:22
Speaker
Now, Tony becomes convinced that Richard Hall and Richard Hall's father are trying to foreclose this property because the property value has increased like exponentially.
00:03:39
Speaker
And for them to sell it, they're going to make a really high profit off of this property. ah property in Tony's mind. According to Richard Hall, he has threats that Tony has written to him.
00:03:54
Speaker
On Tuesday, February 8th, 1977, Tony goes to Richard Hall's office. He has wired the muzzle of a 12-gauge Winchester 1400 shotgun that has the barrel sawed off,
00:04:14
Speaker
to the back of Richard Hall's head. He has a wire running down it that connects to the trigger. The other end is connected to Hall's neck and they call this the dead man's line.
00:04:31
Speaker
So the idea of how this is all rigged, and by the way, this is a Pulitzer Prize winning photo that you can go find on the internet of how this is rigged to Richard Hall's head.
00:04:44
Speaker
The idea is if one of the policemen who get involved shoot Tony, the shotgun will go off in basically the same moment.
00:04:57
Speaker
And if Hall tries to escape anything else, same thing will happen. And basically this dead man's line will make sure that Richard Hall does not escape from Tony.
00:05:11
Speaker
So, Tony, after he's wired this all up, he calls the police from Richard Hall's office and he tells them, I have taken Richard Hall hostage.
00:05:23
Speaker
So most of this time is spent with Tony and Richard Hall in Tony's apartment, making frequent calls to an AM radio station to a guy named Fred Heckman.
00:05:39
Speaker
And Fred Heckman is broadcasting what Tony is saying. Now, this hostage situation is going to last for 63 hours. hours And finally, a lawyer says that Richard Hall signs a document stating that he has mistreated Tony and he is going to pay him $5 million. dollars The document also states that Tony will not be prosecuted or even arrested.
00:06:10
Speaker
and Tony makes a speech in front of live television cameras declaring himself, quote, a goddamned national hero." end quote The speech became so emotional that some of the people covering this, because it's all happening on live TV, they believe that the penultimate moment of the speech is going to be that he's going to shoot Richard Hall.
00:06:40
Speaker
So producers and journalists start pulling the live broadcast. According to the police chief at the time, in Indianapolis, guy named Bill Fisher.
00:06:52
Speaker
He said that they had a mitigation plan in place. And if he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, then it would launch this plan immediately.
00:07:05
Speaker
So the idea there was that Bill Fisher, who's standing in the middle of all this, he's going to put a gun behind Tony's ear and he's going to shoot him while another officer rushes in to jam the shotgun.
00:07:23
Speaker
And according to Bill Fisher in later interviews, he says he reached into his pocket three different times to pull that handkerchief out. But it didn't go badly, so he put it back each time.
00:07:36
Speaker
Now, as the last hour of this unfolds, Tony releases Richard Hall. But the first thing he does is he fires the shotgun into the air to prove that it had been loaded.
00:07:52
Speaker
and he's immediately arrested. So the aftermath of this is quite interesting, and that's really interesting. what people focus on, at least in in this day and age.
00:08:03
Speaker
Most people who knew Tony, they all had positive things to say about him. They were shocked by his action.
Changes in Insanity Defense Laws
00:08:08
Speaker
He was described to someone who was always positive, helpful, and kind, patient.
00:08:13
Speaker
He was a very strict law and order kind of guy, is one of the quotes about him. He's a very hard worker, very conscientious. He said several times that he never wanted anyone to get hurt, and he apologized for the way that he had treated Richard Hall.
00:08:28
Speaker
Now, He's obviously going to go on trial for this. And I say obviously because you can't hold someone on live television and in front of everybody threaten to kill them without there being some repercussions. Would you agree? Absolutely. Except with one caveat.
00:08:50
Speaker
What's the caveat there? I would say that in, I feel like you're going to be charged with this. Yeah. um I also feel like there's sort of built-in defense because this is not normal behavior. Yeah. And it's not normal behavior that is done in front of cameras. Okay. I would say that there is clearly a bit of, i don't know if it's like actually paranoia or just delusion or whatever. There's some of that kind of interwoven into this. Yeah. Because obviously we all know, i'm sure all of our listeners know and believe that like there is no financial situation where violence is ever going to be the answer.
00:09:37
Speaker
Right. Even attempted or perceived violence, right? This is just not the answer here. And obviously this was in the seventy s and even in the seventy s it Things were different, but it still wasn't the answer, Right. And so, interestingly enough, I realized that there was no way for him to get out of this, but I think there's sort of a built-in defense. And in defending someone who has done like such a heinous thing on live TV, essentially, in front of a live audience as well, I think there's a built-in sort of insanity defense. Yeah. Well, okay, you're you're not wrong.
00:10:15
Speaker
And what's interesting about it is that's exactly where this goes. But it has profound effects, which is the main reason I'm bringing it up today. i'm Not just because it happened and and it was interesting. In fact, it's it's quite short and to the point. Up until this point...
00:10:34
Speaker
Most states, including Indiana, they had a very interesting caveat in their insanity defenses. So up until around 1978, the burden for proving and insanity to the defense weirdly fell on the prosecution.
00:10:58
Speaker
Did you know that? I think I'm going to need some more information. okay So it used to be that a defense could basically say, our client is insane.
00:11:13
Speaker
And the prosecution's job was to build at least part, if not all of their case around the fact That this guy is totally sane. I see what you're saying. So that would be the point of contention. There's no argument with regard to the fact that it happened. Right. It's to the extent they're culpable.
00:11:38
Speaker
Right. Okay. Yes, I am aware of that. Yeah. So one of the people the gets involved here, who's famously the chief defense psychiatrist in this case, his name is Larry Davis. Now, Larry Davis, he was a practicing psychiatrist from 1971 to 2006. He was a board certified forensic psychiatrist and forensic examiner. He was a diplomat for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He was on the American Board of Forensic Medicine, and the American Board of Forensic Examiners. He served as a diplomat in those organizations. And he was part of the American Board of Clinical Sexology, which is an interesting organization unto itself. They deal with the study of human sexuality, interests, behaviors, functions. And a lot of times crime plays into that because, as you and I know, love or sex can be a huge motivating factor in crime.
00:12:34
Speaker
And Larry Davis has a huge, huge effect on the future of the insanity defense or NGRIs, not guilty by reason of insanity, in America.
00:12:48
Speaker
He's the chief defense psychiatrist here, and this is one of three watershed cases. The other one is John Hinckley Jr. We'll talk about him briefly in just a second.
00:13:01
Speaker
These cases diametrically shift the burden of proof from the prosecution. to the defense. So prior to 1978, if you said you were insane, it was the prosecutor's job to prove you weren't.
00:13:19
Speaker
After 1978, if a defendant claimed insanity or not guilty by reason of insanity, that burden was entirely dependent on the defense building a case to prove that for whatever reason, at least at the time of the offense or in general, that they were truly suffering from either an inability to tell right from wrong or a clinical definition of insanity.
00:13:50
Speaker
That's a huge deal. People do not understand how it has changed the criminal justice system. And Larry Davis is no longer with us. I'm just going to throw this out there. He had practiced for a very long time. he had a pilot's license.
00:14:03
Speaker
And in November of 2006, he died in a small single-engine aircraft crash. I find it interesting that he went out that way. He had originally practiced in the Air Force. He was the chief of psychiatry at Langley Air Force Base. He was vice president for the Air Force Society of Psychiatrists.
00:14:23
Speaker
At the time of his death, he had two daughters and two granddaughters, and he was he was married. He had a wife. I bring him up here because what happens to Tony affects a lot of cases. Specifically, it affects some some things that were ruled on in other Indiana cases, but ultimately he he goes to trial.
00:14:43
Speaker
And he is found, because of the psychiatrist testifying, including Larry Davis, to have been psychotic and in a paranoid, delusional state leading up to and during the hostage incident.
00:14:57
Speaker
So he is put into a mental institution rather than a prison. He's going to stay in that mental institution until January of 1988. The state... the state could not prove that he was still a danger to society in 1988, so he was released.
00:15:14
Speaker
ah He lived free until January 2005 when he died at his home of natural causes when he was 72 years old. It's interesting because it is stated lots of places, I'm assuming officially, once he was deemed not to be a danger to society, he was released, right?
00:15:35
Speaker
Now he didn't kill anybody. Right. I think that's important to point out. This was a hostage taking situation. However, I would argue that he was never a danger to society.
00:15:48
Speaker
He was a danger to whomever he had paranoid ideations that stem from real life events That had to do with things that really mattered to him, right?
00:16:03
Speaker
Right. He took the situation as like a personal attack. And to the extent, it it doesn't matter because violence is never the answer. But he...
00:16:15
Speaker
was backed into a corner, so to speak, and he was going to eliminate the problem. So I don't know how you make that determination, but he was never a danger to society. He was just a danger to whomever was going to try and do something that he took personally that he didn't like. I would agree with that. Now, there's another case that sort of ties in to helping Indiana change their law. And Indiana ultimately is going to pave the way for a lot of the states that still have insanity defenses to shift that burden off the prosecution over to the fence.
00:16:48
Speaker
But I wanted to include him here. Technically, this is not a hostage taking. It occurs in Indiana. It's in the seventy s But there is a like kidnapping that occurs along the way.
00:17:02
Speaker
Have you ever heard of a man named Jeffrey Lynn Hand? i What was the last name? Hand. H-A-N-D? No. i would remember that name, I think.
Crimes of Jeffrey Lynn Hand
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, most people have not heard of him. So he's born February 2nd, 1949, which is pretty important to all of this.
00:17:21
Speaker
He... In 1972, so he's going to be 21 turning 22, he is involved in some really interesting behavior that's not going to be discovered for decades.
00:17:39
Speaker
Now... so September 15, 1972, the bound and gagged body of a 19-year-old named Pamela Malam, she's an Indiana State University student, she is found in the trunk of her own car by her father.
00:17:53
Speaker
He went looking for her after Pamela failed to come home the night before. She had been strangled with a rope at another location, but she showed no signs of sexual assault, and when they find her in the trunk, she's fully clothed.
00:18:08
Speaker
They could not figure out a motive for her, but they put together an evidence package. But Pamela Malam's death goes unsolved for decades. I'm going to file that in the back of her mind for a second.
00:18:27
Speaker
The following year, on June 16th of 1973, turquoise Chevy is driving along Highway 41,
00:18:38
Speaker
And it stops to give an interracial couple named Jeffrey Thomas and his 22-year-old wife, Carol, they're both 22 years old, a ride back home to Evansville. They've been visiting a friend up in Chicago, Illinois.
00:18:55
Speaker
The driver of this Chevy says that he lives at a farmhouse nearby in Warrington, but he says he's going to give them a ride there. When they reach the road to Evansville, this driver suddenly says, oh, I've got stop by my aunt's house.
00:19:14
Speaker
I'm going to go there and get some gas money. That driver is Jeffrey Lynn Hand. So after they reach this farmhouse, Jeffrey pulls out a.38 caliber revolver, and he aims at it at the two of them, and he announces that this is going to be a holdup.
00:19:38
Speaker
Jeffrey Thomas and Carol Thomas, they think he's joking. To prove he is not joking, he fires a shot inside the car, goes through the roof.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah. um What the heck? It's not a great... it his car? Yeah, it's his car. Why would you shoot a hole through your car? He's not the brightest guy. Yeah, no kidding. And see, to me...
00:20:08
Speaker
They're already thinking it's a joke. Right. That would have made me think it was more of a joke. I mean, could how could you not laugh at that? it was it's it's only It's only going to get weirder.
00:20:19
Speaker
Yeah. So he forces Carol Thomas to tie up Jeffrey Thomas, her husband, trying to keep Jeffrey Hamm and Jeffrey Thomas separate with some nylon cord. And then he ties Carol's hands himself, and he puts them in an outbuilding on the property.
00:20:34
Speaker
He comes back twice to talk to them, but he holds them there for a period of time. So technically a hostage situation, but he's not in the room with them the whole time. He goes through all of their belongings and discovers that they only have $1.17.
00:20:50
Speaker
So this is not a great holdup, which I think you and I can agree. if you're picking somebody up on the side of the road that needs a ride to get from where they were to where they need to go,
00:21:04
Speaker
Sometimes there's a possibility they don't have the money that you think they would have. No, they have exactly how much money I would think they would have. Right. None. Right.
00:21:16
Speaker
So Jeffrey Han tells them he needs $500 because he's filing for bankruptcy and he needs to pay his attorney.
00:21:27
Speaker
He decides... so that the The first trip is about, you guys don't have any money. The second trip is... Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to hold one of you hostage, and I'm going to send the other of you out to go raise the $500, and we're going to call that the ransom to let you go.
00:21:50
Speaker
He leaves them there to talk about who's going to stay and who's going to go.
00:21:56
Speaker
They decide that Jeffrey Thomas... is more connected and it's more likely he will be able to raise the ransom to get Carol Thomas free.
00:22:08
Speaker
Right? Smart move on their part. So hold on. i just want to make sure I understand. She is kept hostage.
00:22:20
Speaker
She's going to be kept tied up by herself, by herself. But Jeffrey is going to go get the money to get her free. okay That's the plan. So while they're talking about it, they realize that if Carol is not able to escape, it's very likely that Jeffrey Hand will ultimately kill her.
00:22:42
Speaker
i I'm sorry, I don't mean to keep interrupting, but I just want to be clear. it Wouldn't the typical deranged situation occurring here be that you're holding the wife hostage? You allow the man to leave but knowing that he needs to come back because that's why you're holding his wife hostage. Yeah.
00:23:06
Speaker
I mean, that that is ultimately what is happening. The incentive to not just take off and never come back is that, like, I'm holding your wife hostage. Essentially, he did, like, the opposite of that. And I just want to make sure that, you know, I understand what's happening.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah. Like, okay. So I'm going to leave you by yourself and I'm going to take your husband to go get money. Right. Okay. So the two men get into Jeffrey's car that he shot a hole in the roof earlier and they drive off.
00:23:43
Speaker
Now, while they're gone raising this $500 ransom, Carol manages to get out of the nylon cord she's tied up with, but then she's locked inside this outbuilding on this farm.
00:23:57
Speaker
She has to bend the door. It's like a locked door. like ah I imagine it's aluminum, but it could be wood. But she has to bend it out in order to get her hand out and open the exterior latch, but she's able to do it.
00:24:11
Speaker
So she gets free. She runs to a nearby farmhouse, and the state police are alerted that she's there. So troopers come to pick her up.
00:24:23
Speaker
And then they decide, we'll just wait here if they're coming back with the money, right? And Jeffrey Hand eventually returns, and he is immediately arrested. He's taken to Princeton, Indiana, to the Gibson County Jail.
00:24:37
Speaker
He goes through interrogations. He talks to his father. And he confesses that when he left Carroll at the property,
00:24:48
Speaker
Guess what he did to Jeffrey Thomas? He murdered him. He did. He killed him. he had He had killed him, and he dumped his body along State Road 62. Now, Jeffrey Thomas' hands had been tied. he had been shot in the face with a.22 caliber rifle..22 caliber is coming up a lot in these old cold cases now.
00:25:09
Speaker
His throat had been slashed. He had eight separate stab wounds to his chest and abdomen. So... Once he leads them to the where the body is, or once he you know points them to Jeffrey Thomas' body, Jeffrey Han is charged first-degree murder.
00:25:26
Speaker
He also ends up charged with kidnapping for ransom. His bond is set at $100,000, which... in the 70s may as well have been $10 million dollars for a guy that needed $500 to declare bankruptcy. So this 1973. This is all happening.
00:25:43
Speaker
So the murder of Jeffrey Thomas. So Jeffrey Thomas is a black guy Carol Thomas is white. It creates a ah racial fervor in the air. I'm presuming that Jeffrey Hand is white?
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, go ahead. So people start throwing bricks and rocks at the areas near the crime scene where crowds have started to gather because this is that time period where you and I talk about this from the perspective of people turn things into a spectacle because they don't have the internet, they don't have a lot of television,
00:26:15
Speaker
They just go out and entertain themselves by looking at crime scenes. And sometimes people sell tickets to crime scenes where you can come in and see it all happening. One woman gets injured in the process of all this.
00:26:26
Speaker
Now, Jeffrey Thomas's brother, Willie, he kind of rises up to get everybody not to harm each other. And he becomes a little bit of a voice of a movement there to like, let all this go to trial.
00:26:39
Speaker
June 25th July, of 1973, so not very long after this all happens. Jeffrey Hand attempts to hang himself in his jail cell, but his cellmates do him a favor and they save his life.
00:26:53
Speaker
I think that the word save is used very loosely there. I think it's mostly ironic. But I was using it tongue-in-cheek, but yeah, they they keep him from dying. How's that? Well, yeah, I mean, saved is fine. It's just like...
00:27:10
Speaker
yeah Do you ever really save someone that's commit committing suicide? ah you You brought them back, so maybe things can get better. You prolong their life, I guess. But they held them down until the security guards get there. But we don't know we don't know if they would legitimately, you know, because all life is precious to somebody at some point, right? Right. And so were they saving him to preserve life? Were they saving him to make sure he faced justice? Who knows, right? That could have go either way. So because of this incident where he has to be
00:27:45
Speaker
saved or or not saved, depending on how you look at it, from the cellmates. ah The corrections officers start to pay more attention to him. He is remanded into a special cell that's basically got a 24-hour watch on it, and they bring in physicians and psychiatrists to look at him.
00:28:02
Speaker
They say examinations, but the truth is they're just trying to figure out what's going on with him long enough to give him a trial. It does delay his arraignment, He does not communicate with anybody while he's in the cell.
00:28:14
Speaker
The arraignment date is ultimately moved back to July 30th and after multiple other delays, including finally a change in venue over to Monroe County from Gibson County, which is going to put him in Bloomington, Indiana.
00:28:28
Speaker
His trial is set to go on on October 11th. It ends up lasting eight days. Now, this is a capital case for the murder of Jeffrey Thomas. Capital case means the prosecutors have sought out to certify and receive the death penalty for a guilty verdict on this first-degree murder charge and this kidnapping for ransom charge, which I think at the time in Indiana both would have been eligible for the death penalty, but I might be wrong by a couple of years on the kidnapping for ransom.
00:28:59
Speaker
Guess what happened to this trial in 1973? ah nineteen seventy three Well, I imagine that he was found to be insane. Yes, he clearly was. He gets an NGRI. So at the end of the trial, this eight-day trial in October, he is found not guilty by reason of insanity on the murder chart.
00:29:19
Speaker
Now, the trial for the kidnapping for ransom is going to now take place separately. It's going back to Gibson County. So a second trial... And I don't know if they didn't reach a verdict or if this was always separate and they just moved the murder trial.
00:29:35
Speaker
But there were a lot of rulings here that are difficult to understand what they're doing. It it boils down to this. So much publicity has happened locally and so many like little uprisings have happened around this where even the uprisings are keeping this in the press and such a short period of time has passed.
00:29:54
Speaker
Just as Harvey Garrett rules that they're going to move the kidnapping trial out of Gibson County and over to Sullivan County. So up until this point, Jeffrey Hand is transferred over to the Indiana Reformatory, which is now known as Pendleton Correctional Facility.
00:30:14
Speaker
It's a state prison. It's located in Falk Creek Township over in Madison County. It was established there in 1923. a fire damages the original property. It had been built to replace the Indiana State Reformatory after a fire severely damaged the original Indiana State Reformatory. The Pendleton facility today in 2025, it only houses maximum and minimum security housing for males over 22 old.
00:30:43
Speaker
They have 31 acres of maximum security. It's got a huge concrete wall. The average daily population as of 2022 was 1,650 inmates a day. The minimum security dormitory holds 200 prisoners on a daily basis. I think it's more of a processing facility.
00:31:01
Speaker
um They've had major incidents over the years. They had a riot in 1985. an inmate there named Lincoln Love, who has this long name that he referred to himself as Lakhmar Yazid Abdul Wadud, which I believe is maybe conversion to Islam.
00:31:17
Speaker
That sounds right. He was badly beaten by correctional officers after he refused to get out of his cell during a weapons check, which is known colloquially as a shakedown.
00:31:27
Speaker
ah just means they're going to take do a shiv or something. They use a large quantity a tear gas back then. They end up only offering eyewash to the officers during this incident.
00:31:40
Speaker
Inmates John Cole and Christopher Trotter, they go to the maximum restraint unit where this beating of Lincoln Love had taken place. They proceeded to the infirmary and they attacked officers in that area. They held staff hostage. They took over what was known as J. Sell House.
00:31:57
Speaker
By the time this was all over said and done, three employees had been held hostage for 17 hours and seven correctional officers had been stabbed. The testimony when this all comes to trial for the riot part ah is that Michael Richardson, who's one of the stabbed officers, under oath, he says that Love had been targeted or had been a convenient target for refusing to leave a cell during the search, even though he had no weapons.
00:32:26
Speaker
According to Michael Richardson, he claimed that love being targeted there was the result of racial tensions between the almost exclusively white correctional officer staff and the majority black population of the time.
00:32:39
Speaker
Michael Richardson claims there were multiple white supremacist groups operating among the guards, including a splinter group called the Sons of Light, which is affiliated back with the KKK. I bring all of this up to say racial tensions in 1985 are still high in Indiana, particularly in the Indiana Reformatory. So they're still going to be high.
00:33:00
Speaker
with Jeffrey Lynn Hand as he's carted off to the Indiana Reformatory. Now, the reason he's taken to the Indiana Reformatory is because he had been originally held in a prison facility in Terre Haute.
00:33:15
Speaker
And while he was there, he beat up an inmate. So it's going to be a while before the second case comes around. The arraignment is waived in June 1975 for the charge of kidnapping.
00:33:34
Speaker
For ransom. ransom. But somehow this reads, and I don't have these specific court documents, it reads like they're trying him again for the murder.
00:33:46
Speaker
I don't know how that goes down. yeah I think it's because they're so intertwined. because yeah I think it would be a double jeopardy violation, right?
00:33:58
Speaker
Well, he was on... You can't be tried twice for murder. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, which means that is the verdict. right The kidnapping could would apply to the wife, right? Yeah. And I feel like they hedged their bets based on the That's why they're splitting it, basically. Exactly. i feel like they knew that there was a possibility that this guy was crazy. I pulled this newspapers.com clip that it seems to basically confirm what you just said. This is from a long time ago. it's This is October 20th, 1973 from the Courier-Journal. So it's right at the end of his trial. And it says Bloomington, Indiana, man cleared reason of insanity.
00:34:42
Speaker
A Monroe County jury jury ruled that Jeffrey Lynn Hand was innocent by reason of insanity in the killing last June of Jeffrey Thomas, 22, of Evansville. This calls it a 10-day trial. It says Hand's 10-day trial here ended Thursday night when the jury returned to verdict after deliberating for two hours.
00:34:59
Speaker
The 24-year-old Gibson County man also faces kidnapping charges in Princeton stemming from the abduction of the dead man and his 23-year-old wife, which I didn't think about that before, but that's two counts of first-degree kidnapping. And it says Monroe Circuit Court Judge Nat.
00:35:16
Speaker
Hugh Hill, so N-A-T is the guy's first name, Hugh Hill, H-I-L-L, is to decide whether Hand will be sentenced to the Norman Bailey Memorial Hospital or face the first degree kidnapping charge. So I think like you said, they're hedging their bets, right? Isn't what it sounds like?
00:35:32
Speaker
Correct. If he had actually been sentenced to death, he probably wouldn't have even gone on trial for the next charge. Right. But that didn't happen, right? And I just want to point out that that article says he was found innocent.
00:35:46
Speaker
That he was found like when you're found not guilty by reason of insanity, you almost without question did whatever has been charged. Right. And the source is not culpable for it. Right. The source of those words over the years has become a great legal semantic debate where now the frisology they use today is not guilty by the reason of insanity.
00:36:09
Speaker
Right. But that's not innocence. Right. Right. they're They're misusing it here, but also, like, at the time, that was the frisology the semantics that they were using. does that make sense?
00:36:22
Speaker
Sure. and It's two completely different concepts, not to mention the fact we're talking about the context in legal settings, right? Right, right.
00:36:32
Speaker
Completely in legal settings. And so it's kind of a, I mean, I guess it's a play on words, but also it's just none of that is logical thinking. Right. Right. At all. Right. It's wrong. i mean, it's, it's, it's wrong to say it that way. That's, I just wanted to back up what you were saying with that clip and that's how they phrase But you're a hundred percent correct that like not guilty and innocent are two completely different things.
00:36:57
Speaker
Absolutely. And when a case has been made and a defendant is found not guilty by reason of insanity, if they hadn't have committed the act, it wouldn't be not guilty by reason of insanity.
00:37:12
Speaker
So it's like practically saying, yes, they did this. They're not culpable for it, but they did it. Yeah. So June 1975, they bring him in. they bring him in After two months, he goes on trial. He is again found not guilty by reason of insanity.
00:37:30
Speaker
So at this point in time, he gets committed to Norman Beatty Mental Hospital over in Westville, Indiana. This is a big deal for somebody to be found not guilty in both a murder and a kidnapping. A year later is where the real problem comes in.
00:37:47
Speaker
So June 24th, 1976, guess what happens?
00:37:52
Speaker
guess what happens In spite of his attorney's protest, he's released and returned to his family to go about his quiet life. Yeah, so he's going to live in Washington, Indiana.
00:38:05
Speaker
And here's a big sort of failure for, I'm not sure exactly why, but obviously not guilty by reason of insanity does not mean a one-year ticket to a mental facility.
00:38:21
Speaker
Typically. Well, it shouldn't ever. Right, right, right, right. Okay. When your own attorneys are protesting, you shouldn't be let go? You know, i have that in the back of my head at all times, and it would be a jagged pill to swallow.
00:38:39
Speaker
a double-edged sword. I don't know what the right... But the right whatever would be. But the attorney is saying, his own defense attorney is saying, no, he doesn't need to get out.
00:38:51
Speaker
Right? Yeah. And then, you know, all that goes along with that is they did their job as his defense attorney, but the system failed because he needed, he should have been in a mental facility more than likely for the rest of his life. Yeah. I've only personally run into that twice. Like I've had one guy that like should not be let out because he's not safe.
00:39:13
Speaker
He he's like he's a guy that like if he's let go because of like how strong his mental illness is, he is going to commit another murder. Well, right. And and ah there's a lot of factors that come into play. Right. Like especially the more out of nowhere the crime initially was, the more likely it could happen again sometime in the future. Right. Yeah. And.
00:39:37
Speaker
There's just a lot happening here. And most of it it in this situation where what he did had happened, he he should have never been released again because at any point in time he could do it again.
00:39:50
Speaker
Right. Yeah. He was, he was unhinged. I mean, I don't feel like there's any question about that. Whatever his mental, whatever the problem was, he, he he was a danger. he was a dangerous person. Yeah.
00:40:03
Speaker
Have you ever seen a picture of him by the way? think I did. He's very normal looking. Oh, they always are. Right. and yeah He's like, in he's like in incredibly normal looking. Uh, I remember seeing it.
00:40:18
Speaker
Yeah. I actually, on his find a grave, uh, there's picture of him with a dog with a shepherd. Is that the one? Yeah. The German shepherd. Yeah. He does look normal. Yep. So, you know, he goes to live this quiet life in June 1976.
00:40:34
Speaker
On January 24th of 1978, he decides to leave Washington, Indiana and go to Kokomo, Indiana. Specifically, he goes to the Markland Mall in Howard County.
00:40:47
Speaker
He abducts Susan Matlock at gunpoint, but fellow shoppers and store employees see him do this and they quickly notify police. And the police identify his vehicle and they give chase.
00:41:02
Speaker
Now, Jeffrey gets injured in the parking lot, and because of this injury, his hand is bleeding quite a bit. He ditches Susan Matlock and runs down an alley.
00:41:13
Speaker
He is chased by a deputy named Vernal Ball. And after he sees the deputy reach for his car radio, basically to you know say the jig is up and he's over here, Jeffrey draws a.32 caliber revolver,
00:41:32
Speaker
And he shoots at the deputy and he hits him twice. The deputy is able to get to cover. Two other officers arrive on the scene and they order Jeffrey Hand to give up.
00:41:43
Speaker
He refuses to do so. He runs toward a nearby railroad track in the bed. And basically, he's trying to disappear kind of like they do in the movies in ah in a train yard. But the deputies are forced to shoot at him. They shoot him three times.
00:42:01
Speaker
And those injuries prove fatal. And so Jeffrey Lin Hand bleeds to death after crawling out from underneath a freight car, basically. And that that's really going to be it for a minute about Jeffrey.
00:42:14
Speaker
so I said all that earlier, and then he ends up dying shortly after anyway, right? Right. But he did unsuccessfully make another criminal attempt, right? Right.
00:42:27
Speaker
And he would have been found crazy again. i mean, I'm sorry. He would have been found not guilty by reason of insanity again. Right. Right. So, May of 2019, the Terre Haute, Indiana Police Department, they announced that they were working on the case of Pamela Malam. Now, Pamela...
00:42:51
Speaker
is in September 1972, so before Jeffrey Wayne Thomas and his wife Carol were abducted, she's the Indiana State University student that's found in the trunk of her own car by her dad.
00:43:05
Speaker
She'd been strangled with a rope, but showed no signs of sexual assault and was fully clothed. The Parabon Labs, NanoLabs, they get involved, and GEDmatch gets involved.
00:43:18
Speaker
They manage to... get some DNA from the crime scene of Pamela Malam. And they're able to trace back his widow, Jeffrey Hand's widow, and they find his two sons.
00:43:37
Speaker
So they start building a family tree and it leads to Jeffrey Lynn Hand having been Pamela Malam's killer.
00:43:49
Speaker
So following this identification, they announced that they're going to start looking into cases in their jurisdictions around Indiana and possibly other states. The only other state I've seen mentioned was Wisconsin. I think it was kind of well known where Jeffrey Lynn Hand lived like over time. He's also born in 1949.
00:44:09
Speaker
the time he dies in 1978, he's just week gone. by the time he dies in nineteen seventy eight he's just like a week ish shy of his 29th birthday.
00:44:20
Speaker
So he's young. You know what i mean? yeah And he spent time places while he's being held, but they did say they were going to look for 1976 and 1978. And i haven't heard which murder it is, but I did hear that it was constant at a length that i can't get to as I'm sitting here.
00:44:44
Speaker
Okay. I, have read this is the Courier Press, by the way. i read this article. It says basically tells a story that we just told, but it looks like there's a Wisconsin murder that, for some reason, they feel like he's responsible with. So I'm wondering if it ah has a sketch or if there's some kind of DNA related to it. um He has kind of a really specific m MO if he is taking these people for their money or ransom.
00:45:17
Speaker
you had you read anything else about this? i know this is, I kind of sprung all of this on you. um I haven't read anything about this, but, uh, he had, he's a opportunist, right?
00:45:30
Speaker
Typically he's going to be like, I imagine, i don't know, but I imagine in Pamela's case, she may have given him a ride because she was in her car. yup And more than likely it probably was another kind of like unfounded robbery attempt and that we don't know what her means were, but she was a college kid. Right. Right.
00:45:58
Speaker
And he didn't steal the vehicle. right Right. He left it somewhere with her body in the trunk. Yeah. so and we don't know. we don't know what happened, but
00:46:12
Speaker
Just from the little bit of information we have and knowing what we know about him more than likely... it was an opportunity that he took, right? It wasn't anything beyond that. And i don't know about the unspecified murder in the state of Wisconsin. I think it's weird that they were focusing on the period between 76 and 78. Right.
00:46:38
Speaker
Because we just talked about how his abduction of Susan Matlock was not successful. Correct. And leading up to that, he had been through both of his trials and did whatever, you know, little bit of time to rehabilitate him he had done in the mental hospital. So it's really odd to me that they just looked at that time. i would say that between 1972 and 1973, when the Thomases were abducted and Jeffrey Wayne Thomas was murdered, I think that would be a better time ah because he successfully got away with Pamela Malam's murder, right?
00:47:25
Speaker
And that was, let's see, it was September 15th in 1972 before the Thomas's murder and kidnapping, June 16th of 1973. I would say that the time in between that and probably maybe even a little bit earlier would be better Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:46
Speaker
but whatever i mean they had a reason for for some reason have you seen it anything about the case i think it's unlikely he had a successful case between the time that his trials were all over and he was returned to his family and his death i don't think that he successfully did anything because otherwise why was he so off with susan matlock yeah You know, i I don't think he's goingnna be good for anything that's not kind of messy and probably has some obvious evidence that he did it. I don't like you i don't think he's getting away with a large quantity of of murder. So I'm going to have to see something specific to look at this and go, yeah, he did that other thing. You know what i mean? Well, sure. And it could be that Pamela Malam's case was just a fluke because with forensic DNA evidence, he would have been caught back then if it had existed, right? It's not like it came. The evidence that was there at the time of her murder was what was used ultimately to determine it was him, right? It was just the...
00:48:47
Speaker
the way in which examiners were able to apply it, right? Yeah. And and i find it interesting. I don't know. i don't think that he's going to have a ton of crimes that he got away with. I could be wrong. um i also find it really odd that he didn't attempt to sexually assault people.
00:49:10
Speaker
Pamela Malam. And that makes me think that more than likely, it really was a robbery motive. Because most of the time, random murders like this, and we actually don't even know if it was random, right? We don't know if he knew her or not. right We have no idea. We have no information on that right now.
00:49:30
Speaker
But a lot of times they're sexually motivated. And in the absence of signs of a sexual assault, you would almost always find another motive. Right. and because even with like serial killers, a lot of times are sexually motivated. They're sadists, right? And...
00:49:51
Speaker
that is a telltale sign, but they have no ah other like authentic motive. Right. Right. And so the fact that she wasn't, ah that Pamela wasn't sexually assaulted, it makes it seem like he probably, what it was a robbery.
00:50:08
Speaker
i think that when you get into the level of weirdness, health wise that you have here, i think you can potentially look at these cases and go, okay, like that's so weird. I don't know if the motive and in typical way is going to make sense.
00:50:29
Speaker
Well, if you think about it, so in to to what we know, to how it's put together here all these years later, like, let's say he did successfully rob Pamela of whatever. Right. I mean, it's still not going to be a lot. And he put her in the trunk of her car after he killed her. And then the next time, if robbery is the motive, right? If robbery is the motive. Yeah. He's like, how can I be even more successful? And then I don't know if the ransom thing was a ruse or not.
00:51:03
Speaker
I don't know if after he and Jeffrey Thomas left, he realized that, like, he should have stayed with the person that he left. I don't know, because he didn't get any money that we're aware of, and he essentially just killed him. He shot him right in the face. So is that really a robbery? well so, okay...
00:51:25
Speaker
but he never sought to to ransom Pamela Malam. Well, hold on. So, all right. I pulled this article in the course of, like, looking into this. I'm just going to throw this out there because I don't fully understand it. This is from KFGO.
00:51:40
Speaker
It's, like, sort of their version of podcasting where they do a Tales of True Crime that says Black Intentions, and they talk about this story we just talked about with Jeffrey Thomas and Carol Thomas. So...
00:51:54
Speaker
so this story has a little bit different take on all of this and kind of thumbing through it like while while we're talking and this has an audio story i may throw the link in here if people just want to go check it out um it tells like basically what we like just talked about they say some things here that i have not seen proven elsewhere so i'll just say it looks like they pulled some from ah
00:52:26
Speaker
The court documents and some of it may be exaggerated a little bit for effect. So they talk about him being shot and dying. And it says, you know, he meets his end where a man like him deserves to die on cold, frozen ground surrounded by police officers who took note of every detail and photographed his body where it lay.
00:52:42
Speaker
In the pocket of his heavy winter coat, they found a long piece of rope. In the car he left in the parking a lot of Block's department store, they found the tools of a killer. extra ammunition, stocking caps, masking tape, flashlights, leather gloves, and most damning, photos of recently engaged couples he had been clipping from the newspaper.
00:53:04
Speaker
In 1980, Deputy Ball, who ah was the one that Jeffrey shot, who apparently had lasting injuries from the altercation with Jeffrey Hand, he files a lawsuit against the state of Indiana and Indiana mental health officials alleging neglect of duty for Hand's release from custody in 1976 and for allowing Jeffrey Lynn Hand apparently to register weapons.
00:53:28
Speaker
So he sues for $120,000 in damages. And the person who is writing this doesn't know the outcome of that particular ah part of this. There's a guy named Troy Larson. He's ah writing this out of Fargo, North Dakota for the mighty 790 KFGO radio station. So, like, I say that because it's researched. I don't know if it's research for clicks or if, like, he's actually done that. But he doesn't have an outcome on the lawsuit there.
00:53:56
Speaker
He says at the time of his death he was a known killer of one. He killed Jeffrey Thomas. And that it was known that he attempted to kidnap two women. Carol Thomas, who I wouldn't say that's an attempted kidnapping. He had kidnapped her.
00:54:09
Speaker
um But he also let her go. Right. Well, He lets Carol Thomas go. i'm not sure he realized he let her go, though. Right. And then Susan Natlock, he that's he dies like attempting to kidnap her.
00:54:22
Speaker
So they point out that like it would take 50 years for another victim to reach out from beyond the grave and point the finger Jeffrey Lynn Hand. So this is the story they tell.
00:54:33
Speaker
It says, you turn the calendar back, pass this fatal gun fight with police in 1978, and keep going beyond the 1973 attack on the hitchhikers, beyond the nineteen seventy s three attack on the hitchhipers In September of 1972, Pam Malum disappeared on the campus of Indiana State University. It was a new school year, and students were reconnecting with old friends and making new ones as the leaves changed.
00:54:54
Speaker
So that's a good point. It is the start of the school year. She normally stayed at her parents' home, but on this particular night, she had planned to stay on campus and attend Rush Week events. So these are events and parties for Sigma Kappa, which is her sorority.
00:55:11
Speaker
According to a 2019 story from the Springfield New Sun, Pamela Milan was last seen when she went to move her car to a parking lot closer to her sorority's rooms. And I don't know, i don't you didn't live on campus.
00:55:24
Speaker
I did not, no. You were a commuter. I was. I lived on campus for a couple years, couple different colleges. I did this, like I remember doing this where I couldn't park until a certain time because of my permits.
00:55:38
Speaker
I don't think that's exactly the same thing. But so I used to do this thing where I would shuffle my cars around and I get what they're talking about here. It's not exactly the same thing, but it's it's pretty close.
00:55:50
Speaker
So she doesn't show up for dinner. She misses her shift at work the next morning. And apparently that's like a big deal. When family and friends don't hear from her, they start looking for her.
00:56:06
Speaker
And they find her car around 7 p.m. And again, this is all according to Troy Larson. It's a red 1964 Pontiac Tempest, which has a vanity plate that reads, Jesus.
00:56:17
Speaker
It's backed into a spot in a parking lot. It's not far from the Lincoln Quad. Okay. Okay. It is a red car with a vanity plate. And do you know what a red Tempest looks like? You ever look those up? I don't think so. What is it again? ah It's 1964 Pontiac Tempest. Okay, hold on. I'll look it up.
00:56:38
Speaker
I bring that up because it's not a missable car. Like, it's going to stand out. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it looks... Of course, I don't know how odd it it stood out in 1972, Right.
00:56:55
Speaker
But it would definitely stand out today. oh yeah. but well So it's got a vanity plate, and I say that because like vanity plates are easier to spot. It's sitting not far from the quad, which is where you know ah it's it's a hub of campus activity. Her glasses and her purse are in the backseat of the car.
00:57:13
Speaker
They call Sheila, who's... Pam Malam's sister to the scene. They call her dad and her dad has a spare set of keys at around 8.30 PM. So the car's found at seven around 8.30.
00:57:26
Speaker
They pop the trunk and in the trunk, who is calling them? Whoever finds the car. Like it's not, i see and' it's like family and friends are looking for her. Right. Okay. And so they just, it's not the police necessarily.
00:57:40
Speaker
Right. Okay. But what they find in the car is Pam's body. So she's been bound, and this is according to this article. She's been bound, she's been strangled with clothes lined, and she has a gag in her mouth.
00:57:56
Speaker
Debris on the body indicate that she had been dragged to a wooded area and sexually assaulted, then placed in the trunk of the car. So those initial things we get in 2019 don't give us this sexual assault.
00:58:10
Speaker
Right. but So that changes everything, right? I think it changes everything. So according to detectives at the time and according to this article, they noted and collected a number of pieces of evidence, which is how we get that DNA that matches back to Jeffrey Lynn Hand. And I'm bringing that up because we didn't have a motive for him.
00:58:28
Speaker
So the injuries appear to tell the story ah thing of a young woman who was fighting with someone. So they have duct tape, they have soil samples, they have her blouse.
00:58:40
Speaker
And this is where it gets weird for me. According to this, the DNA that they use to find him, I believe, comes off of bodily fluids on her blouse.
00:58:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think so too. Well, i'm I'm not entirely sure, but I assume like sweat. It could be. um Yeah, okay. 1972, prior to the era of forensic evidence, like they would be trying to track stuff back to store purchases. That's one of the big things. And then they go and they they're trying to track like eyewitness identifications from people in the store. We're ahead of like surveillance cameras and a lot of other stuff.
00:59:23
Speaker
So most of the things that were found in Pam Malam's car that night belonged to her. her The clothesline and the duct tape were parts of things that had been used to decorate for parties where they had put off. She she had them. Yeah. They were hers. Not necessarily. They weren't part of anybody's kill cat. Right. Right.
00:59:41
Speaker
So they have no witnesses. They have no descriptions of a suspect. Right. They never say why, but they end up investigating along the banks of the Wabash River. i think it has to do with the debris on her body. They investigate a nearby break-in.
00:59:57
Speaker
For seven weeks, everyone wondered who had perpetrated this on Pam Malam. And there were multiple young women at Indiana State on edge because a predator was still at work.
01:00:09
Speaker
A number of women had been abducted at night, according to this article, taken to a wooded area, sexually assaulted, and then released again on campus. In November of 1972, police arrest a man named Robert Wayne Austin, and they connect him to a series of sexual assaults that's occurring on Indiana State University's campus.
01:00:31
Speaker
The consensus was immediate. Everybody believes that just a couple months after this occurs in 1972, that they have found who killed Pam Malone.
01:00:44
Speaker
Now, he admits to the attacks that he's convicted of, but he tells the police he did not kill Pam Malone. So he goes to prison. He's sentenced to life.
01:00:56
Speaker
Everybody just thinks Robert Wayne Austin killed Pam Malone. We can't prove it specifically. He hasn't admitted it, but that's what happened.
01:01:09
Speaker
Right. And that's something that is considered soft, but not adjudicated. And we talk about that all the time. it was just wrong. Right. So Pam. That also means like not a whole lot is happening in the in-between. Right. That's what I was about to say. So Pam Malam's family, like they don't get justice, but it's, you know, soft, but not adjudicated. Right.
01:01:31
Speaker
In 2001, there's a line officer at the Terre Haute PD named Sean Keen, and he gets promoted to detective. He, along with other investigators, they decide they're going to take another look at Pam Malam's case, and they test this stain on her blouse.
01:01:49
Speaker
They want to see if there's DNA. They're able to develop a profile. The first thing they wanted to do was test it against Robert Wayne Austin's DNA.
01:02:00
Speaker
So they track him down. He had spent 20 years in prison on his life sentence, but then he was paroled. And he says, i will gladly provide you a DNA sample.
01:02:11
Speaker
And that shocks them. Also, I don't know how they didn't have his DNA on file from the other crimes, but I assume because they were solved, he admitted to the sexual assaults, maybe those evidence collection kits weren't kept.
01:02:23
Speaker
Probably timing-wise, it wouldn't have been a situation where his DNA had to go in yet. It definitely didn't have to be in CODIS because we're years ahead of CODIS. It's 1973 when he's convicted.
01:02:38
Speaker
So the DNA does not match who they think is Pam's killer. So Robert Wayne Austin, Pam's killer, two different people. So that's basically you' going to set the investigation, which is already really old. It's got to be 30 years old at this point. It's going to set it back, but they decide they're going to put the DNA profile into FBI's CODIS database, and then they don't get a match.
01:03:05
Speaker
One thing they're able to do is they're able to go back and look at other pieces of evidence. So they find a fingerprint on the lens of Pam's glasses,
01:03:18
Speaker
that they were not able to reveal back in 1972. They entered that into APHIS, which is, we talked about that you know this fall and into the holidays. That's the automated fingerprint identification system or index system, depending on who who's talking about it. They don't get a match there either.
01:03:38
Speaker
So when they began all of this, they had a suspect in Robert Wayne Austin, and I think a lot of people considered this case to be solved but not adjudicated. Now, they've ruled out their solved but not adjudicated suspect, and they have zero suspects.
The Role of DNA in Solving Cold Cases
01:03:52
Speaker
Now, Sean Keen, for his part, who, if I recall correctly, and I may be slightly off on that, I think he's the current chief of police in Terre Haute, Indiana.
01:04:04
Speaker
He never stopped working on this case. In 2017, he attempted to use the killer's DNA to develop a phenotype profile. These are the pictures that people do. Now, according to that phenotype profile, he should have been looking for a man with dark eyes and medium to dark skin. So that takes him way down the wrong path. Because for those of you who not seeing Jeffrey Lynn hand, he is a fair-skinned blonde guy.
01:04:33
Speaker
Right. The phenotyping, I don't think is... It's not as solid as we would like for it to be. Well, because the way that it's used, it's like educated guessing. Yes.
01:04:46
Speaker
Because the attributes of DNA are not... establish beyond all refute. Like, for example, the dark, uh, did you say dark eyes and dark hair? Dark eyes and dark skin.
01:05:04
Speaker
Dark skin. Okay. And so it's possible in that type of situation that however they did that, they didn't account for something that negated whatever caused it not to be the case. Does that make sense? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. but And because that's an ongoing thing and it's constantly being like re-evaluated over and over again to figure out what says what about whom. And so that's a situation where instead of looking at two profiles side by side, they're literally looking at somebody's profile and they're saying like, A equals light skin, B equals light eyes, like that kind of thing. And it just isn't refined enough to be completely reliable. Right. I have even, i
01:06:00
Speaker
In the research you and i do there was a case I wanted to cover that had one of those where I found a really good suspect. And it turned out not to be anything like the suspect at all. They finally arrested someone in that case a year or two ago. um It's not like a super old case, but it's something that like I had looked at covering it from the perspective of raising awareness through the podcast.
01:06:25
Speaker
And because of the phenotyping being off, like I had gotten to a guy and i you know I had this moment in time where he was here. and I'm so glad I didn't take that any further because it turns out it wasn't him at all.
01:06:38
Speaker
Right. And for the most part, 2008-ish is about, I mean, phenotyping was happening then for sure. Right. But long about, i would say like 15 or so was when like genetic genealogy for investigations really starts taking off. And it makes so much more sense to use that because it's not really necessarily that much more effort. Right. Right.
01:07:06
Speaker
But it's way, the results are way more reliable. Right. And so what ends up happening with this, you know, he has this odd phenotype. And then a few months later, a different lab, which we now know them as Parabon Nanolabs, they came up with a completely contradictory phenotyping profile.
01:07:28
Speaker
Right. So those are the folks who everybody like came to know really well. They caught, essentially, Joseph D'Angelo. And this contradicting profile from Parabon, it indicated that the killer was going to be fair-skinned.
01:07:46
Speaker
He was going to have green or blue eyes and blonde to light brown hair. That's a lot closer, but... Keene, Detective Keene, and then Chief Keene, he didn't know what to do with what was happening with these phenotyping profiles because he's got two... The only thing you can do is throw both of them out. Essentially, you have to.
01:08:08
Speaker
But he does what you were just saying. He decides that he's going to pursue forensic genealogy, what is now known as investigative genetic genealogy, in an attempt to try and identify some relatives of the killer.
01:08:21
Speaker
Now, they identify two suspects, One of them would have only been 13 years old in 1972, at the time that Pam Malam was murdered. Now, relatives of the other suspect, they provide DNA samples and assistance in building their family tree out.
01:08:41
Speaker
So in 2019, Chief Keene felt sure that he could name Pam Malam's killer. So that's to be Jeffrey Linhan. And Jeffrey Linhan's family, so his widow...
01:08:55
Speaker
his two sons, they go out of their way to be helpful, according to Detective Keene and then Chief Keene. He says that they provided their DNA, and that is an interesting mix because what you're doing there is you're bringing forward the son's DNA and using the widow's DNA to figure out what DNA would have been Jeffrey Lynn Hands out of that mix.
01:09:19
Speaker
Right, and ah so children have 50% Around 50% of each of their parents' DNA. Right. And they could actually do it now probably without the mom's DNA at all.
01:09:31
Speaker
They could probably do it just comparing the son to the profile that they had. Right. So they're going off of a profile that's been developed from evidence of the case. And so they'd be able to tell it 50% math. It does help to separate because if you can identify what belongs to the subject's mom, you're left with what would belong to the dad. Right. Right. But it's not even necessary really anymore to do that. But it's almost like a reverse paternity test.
01:10:02
Speaker
right right And so they're able to make that identification. And it was from a reliable source of DNA. That profile, while it hadn't been identified, it had been in, it was entered into CODIS, I believe in 08, right?
01:10:19
Speaker
That's the way I read this, yes. Okay, and it and there was no match. Like, it didn't match anything. And so, because of that, so my understanding is that that would have been the time, so from whenever it was entered done that it's an unknown profile that is associated with crime scene evidence in the murder case, right?
01:10:43
Speaker
Yes. It would have shown any match it had to any other case. evidentiary or suspect why is I believe that's my understanding.
01:10:55
Speaker
Am I wrong? No, that's like roughly what what I believe as well. Okay. And so that, that means, well, and so that's not to exclude the unknown profile from ever having done anything because keep in mind stuff is still being put in, but it had been sitting there and this is the identification of it much later. Right. I believe 19 is what you we were saying. Is that right? 19. Okay. Yeah. So This time frame here, i think you've got two interesting things happening. One is 1972 to today is a long time.
01:11:31
Speaker
We have seen in our lifetime, meaning you and I, like a lot of interesting developments in how they solve cases. But one of the things they can't really do or undo is how the 60s, 70s, evidence collection occurred.
01:11:50
Speaker
It's a thousand wonders. Yeah, it's wild that all of this has happened. I do want to point out the author here, Troy Larson, when he publishes this in, I think it's 2020 that this goes out, he points out that Chief Keene has an hour-long press conference about this. said it's very informative. It's worth reading. According to Pam's sister, Charlene, she says it's been, this is at the time of the press conference, she said it's been a long 46 years, 7 months, and 20 days. Many of us, as we got older, thought we would die before we ever learned who had killed our sister. We were happy to know hasn't been out there living a great life for 47 years.
01:12:31
Speaker
So, authorities have identified Jeffrey Linhan as Pam's killer. And people start wondering, is he responsible for other killings in the Midwest between his 1976 release from the Indiana State Hospital and his death in January of 1978?
01:12:49
Speaker
According to this article, as of the writing in 2020, Indiana State Police were investigating whether Jeffrey Linhan might have been responsible for the murder of ISU student and Harmeyer.
01:13:00
Speaker
She disappeared in September of 1977. Her car had been broken down and was thought to have overheated. So it's found on the side of the road with its hood up by her family who had gone out looking for her.
01:13:14
Speaker
There was no sign of her. But a Martinsville, Indiana area farmer found her decomposing body in his field in October 77. So a month later, it was not very far from where the car had been found.
01:13:26
Speaker
This is going to be about four months before Jeffrey Linhan gets into that shootout with the officers while he's trying to abduct Susan Matlock. They note in the article that, maybe it's a coincidence, but he's going to note it anyways, that Ann Harmeyer, Susan Matlock, and Pam Malam all drove Pontiacs.
01:13:50
Speaker
And the the author, to their credit, points out that we don't know very much about Jeffrey Hand or his life as a predator because of his death. he says He says sometimes we can point to a killer's traumatic childhood full of abuse, a fractured or nonexistent relationship with parents who don't know how to love, but with Jeffrey Hand we know very little. Their handset motivation with his attack on the Thomases, the photos of the recently engaged couples found in his car,
01:14:15
Speaker
which he references the Zodiac killer and sort of the wild stories that would be told. And maybe the bankruptcy story was a wild story. He says some things at the end I have not verified.
01:14:30
Speaker
He says, Jeffrey Hand was a disorganized killer. I agree with that. But then he says that Jeffrey Hand kept a toolkit in his car. His known attacks suggest victims were targets of opportunity. and Hand, who had worked as both a postman and a delivery driver to record stores, so driving around, he was traveling a lot, had many potential opportunities to kill. As of 2020, Jeffrey Hand is reportedly a suspect in a number of additional cases, including a murder case in Wisconsin. We now know for certain that Hannah was not just a killer, he was a serial killer, and you can bet as more testing is concluded, his body count will likely grow in the years to come. From what I've been able to tell, it hasn't.
01:15:15
Speaker
No, it hasn't. I feel like that's it's it's an assumption that's being made, and it relies heavily on what evidence is there from these cases that might possibly be linked to him, right? Right. The mileage is going to vary on that significantly.
01:15:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen multiple situations linked to him, like, tangentially that have no confirmation. It's very interesting when someone like this gets identified, and in hindsight, they fall into this strange sort of strange sort of rabbit hole, black hole, where you're You're not sure what was motivating them. And the reason I brought up this particular article is it wasn't to contradict you. It was to give you a little more information because I came into this thinking it was like robbery motivated maybe.
01:16:15
Speaker
Oh, I don't feel like I was contradicted at all. I just go off of what I know, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's why I brought this up. was going ask you, does it paint Carol Thomas' kidnapping in a different light? Like, really, the goal there was to kill the husband and assault the wife or keep the wife? It's possible.
01:16:35
Speaker
It's possible. ah it Wouldn't it have been a better option to just let the husband go get the ransom money and assault and kill the wife while he's gone?
01:16:49
Speaker
i with you. i This guy makes no sense to me. It's very weird. And it's very difficult for someone who can think logically and has critical thinking skills to put themselves in the position where you're trying to figure out why somebody who is insane is doing something. Right? Yeah.
01:17:10
Speaker
And so I don't really, you know, I don't really know. i do think that the, I think that there are a lot of cases that say there's no sexual assault and perhaps there really was one. Right. We just don't know the difference. We have to go off of what we're given though. Right. right I do think it, the way that I look at things, a single female who was abducted,
01:17:38
Speaker
close to her car or whatever, the way that Pamela's case played out, that's a completely different situation than the couple the next year. Right. Yes.
01:17:50
Speaker
And so I don't think we're going to be able to establish very much just looking at patterns, right? Because it he's all over the place. Yeah.
01:18:03
Speaker
But it's possible. I would say that every single youngish female that was, I would say, murdered, I don't think a lot of missing people are going to be attributed to him because he doesn't make much attempt to hide the body. Yeah. Because obviously, if he had wanted to hide Pamela, like he would have put her somewhere she wasn't associated with, like her car, right? Right. Right.
01:18:30
Speaker
Anyway, I don't know. He might have changed his mind. that He was not caught for that in his lifetime, right? Yeah. So I don't see any reason, like, at the outset of just situational. I mean, there could be stuff happening when it's occurring. But, like, just looking at that situation, he got away with that crime. Oh, yeah.
01:18:51
Speaker
And so I feel like he could have mimicked that quite a bit. Now, the couple, they didn't have a car. Right. Right. That was a whole different situation. And it just seems odd that I would have to say based on him killing Pamela the way he did. I mean, there was no ransom. He didn't steal her vehicle. It really switched gears. Right. Yeah. He leaves a female there while he takes her husband to kill. That is the weirdest thing ever to me. The two different things happening here is very strange. You know, and I pulled up and looked through, like people have theories on the internet about this case. I i personally think Jeffrey Linhan doesn't have a lot more bodies, but I do think, I think I'm with you on the murdered part. I don't know about the missing part one way or the other because... I found a number of women missing in particularly 1977 in Indiana within 30 miles of this guy, give or take, maybe 40 in a couple of instances. And I looked at that and I realized that several of them were 21, 22 years old.
01:19:58
Speaker
And I started thinking to myself, like, how would that work? You know, the other thing that happens here is and i have to look at it i don't have the timeline in front of me but for part of this time and some of these people there was a chance ted bundy was traveling through the area because of how things had gone for him i want to say maybe for ann's case that comes up but i don't he's already incarcerated by the time some of these other people go missing in 1977 and
01:20:36
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, you know, I look at this and i think it's interesting that people are like, well, where are the serial killers today?
01:20:48
Speaker
But we didn't catch all of the serial killers back then. and And I've watched them kind of rule out different serial killers for different killings.
01:20:59
Speaker
We still have this big swath of people in the middle of America that are ultimately like
01:21:07
Speaker
missing or murdered probably by a predator, a lot like a guy like Jeffrey Linhan. I don't want to say him. And I just, read it I don't think that we're, I don't think there's like endless serial killers out there. No, no. I mean, I, you know, I think it's changed today because of like all the reasons we're sort of talking about with this case and technology, like that stuff doesn't take 45 years anymore. Like it, you know, when it it happens quickly now.
01:21:34
Speaker
so i think Right, and so people get caught really quick, right? they do. And they don't have a chance to become a serial killer. Right. Like, there's a whole thing, right? And so even, i would say that, you know, he has one murder, one murder and one kidnapping, and then one attempted kidnapping.
01:21:54
Speaker
And that may very well be all he ever did. ah He wasn't great at getting away with stuff. After he initially got away with the, well, the first that we know of. Right. Right.
01:22:07
Speaker
And so, you know, he, that could have been a sign of deteriorating. Right. Yeah. Decompeting deteriorating. Yeah. Every single thing that like.
01:22:19
Speaker
happened with the Thomases, he was just walking right into what I think should have been jail, but whatever. I mean, he was, he was, there was nothing about what he was doing that was, I'm going to get away with this. Right. yeah And then taking somebody from a mall again, nothing about that, that would have indicated to anyone that he was trying to get away with something. Except for the fact that like when you're doing stuff like that, your intention is to get away with it. It's just he it didn't seem like he was taking steps to actually get away with it. yeah
01:22:51
Speaker
Yeah. i you know And I wonder, like yeah all of this plays into what we started out with, which is like that change in how insanity was
Psychology of Crime and Media Critique
01:23:01
Speaker
viewed. Yeah. um Yeah. And that part is also very interesting to me because I have to wonder to myself, you know, and like we've gone quite a ways from Tony, who I i genuinely believe Tony Karaitis was probably insane. And then getting to Jeffrey Lynn Hand, I don't know that I think Jeffrey Lynn Hand was insane. And I'm going to preface that by saying I think there's a difference
01:23:27
Speaker
in serious mental health problems, mental illness. And insanity. Well, and the two cases are like, they're pretty stark ah contrast to one another, right? Yes. Like, Tony didn't actually hurt anybody.
01:23:45
Speaker
He had a, what he thought was valid problem. a legitimate grievance is how he viewed that, I believe. And most people can identify with that type of thing.
01:23:57
Speaker
And the... rage one might feel towards a situation like that. Right. I wanted to add, is sort of just kind of summing up as we're winding this up, the, see, what was his name? John Blair, who was the photographer who won the Pulitzer Prize for the picture showing Tony with a sawed-off shotgun being held at Hall's neck. Yeah.
01:24:23
Speaker
John Blair was not surprised that it won it. He was, however, surprised that UPI, which I guess is who gives that award, right mistakenly credited another photographer for the image.
01:24:37
Speaker
oh And that was an error that still bothers Blair to this day, but they he was able to produce the negatives, and when they compared them, it was in fact a mistake, and John Blair did receive the Pulitzer in 1978. Huh.
01:24:53
Speaker
hu Isn't that interesting? His picture won the award, but it was credited to a different photographer. That is. Which is just kind of of those... This is like a technicality thing, right? But he had the negatives, so he was able to prove it. But he had a chip on it. Well, I don't know that he had a chip on his shoulder, but it bothers him even now that he didn't initially get the credit for it.
01:25:20
Speaker
the We have come so far full circle with this story. I mean, we're talking about a situation where a guy is like taking pictures. The media are taking pictures.
01:25:34
Speaker
of the dead man's wire yep or whatever it's called. it's It's bizarre, right? none of that should have happened. It's happening, right?
01:25:44
Speaker
But that's the other part. Again, i you know we started talking about this and I said, the fact that it happens in front of everybody like that should be like the very first blinking red flag that's like, there's a problem with this person and they're not thinking clearly.
01:26:01
Speaker
Yeah. I look at all these cases and, you know, they these are still tied to the hostage thing, by the way. Like that's how they come into our wheelhouse. Putting all of this stuff together and keeping it straight is like its own kind of interesting task. And I can only imagine how people like out in the world experiencing some of this in real time, particularly back in the seventy s Like, this all must have been so strange to see it unfolding. Can you imagine turning on a television, even today in 2025, and seeing a guy with a shotgun held to the back of someone's head? Well, not to mention, okay, so is the situation really dangerous if everybody's standing there taking pictures?
01:26:55
Speaker
ae That's a good point. That's a really interesting perspective on it. Well, I'm, well, i you know, I'm serious because like what, to me, that is an indication that even the people there didn't take it seriously. Right.
01:27:11
Speaker
And so what is really happening? Right. Because you don't just stand around and watch something like that occur unless you're not threatened by it.
01:27:23
Speaker
Right. It's bizarre. It is so bizarre. Right. Yeah, I don't know if we're more desensitized or more sensitive today, but we're definitely we're definitely living in a very different world. I was going to say that's the reason it won the Pulitzers, because like when does this kind of thing happen?
01:27:41
Speaker
like Usually if there's a true like hostage dangerous hostage-taking situation, like you're not going to chance it by going in there to take pictures. Right. Right.
01:27:54
Speaker
it It has its own nuances that make it almost absolutely ridiculous that it exists, like that the picture exists, that the situation existed. Like, what the heck? it it I would say that is 100% accurate information. And that you know that's one of the reasons I love digging back into these cases that are older. And like don't get me wrong, like there's a movie coming about Tony's ah situation. ive called i think it's called Dead Men Line or Dead Men Wire. It'll be out in
Exploring True Crime Content
01:28:23
Speaker
January. um like Some of this other stuff that we're talking about with Jeffrey Lynn Hand, that has come up in different podcasts and and different forms of media. I know that the Jeffrey Lynn Hand case, when I started researching it, sent me down another set of rabbit holes. so I found like other cases that like I wanted to talk to you about. and I don't know if we're going to do that before
01:28:48
Speaker
the new year, if it's something that we start off in the spring, i find it fascinating. The concept that in 2025 covering true crime, so much of this stuff can be the same. Does that make sense? Like people regurgitate, like I saw on Hulu the other day, like there's a documentary about Ellen Greenberg and I was like, Oh my gosh.
01:29:12
Speaker
And I know there's been there was movement in that case, but ultimately still suicide. You're right, yeah. Did we cover that?
01:29:22
Speaker
Not the most recent ruling. I mean i know we covered the case. i'm saying I thought we had talked about the outcome. We'll probably do a different time, not on the Christmas thing. No, i just you know I'm just saying like it's so interesting. There's all these unexplored cases.
01:29:40
Speaker
Well, yeah but you know, once something is mainstream it's very easy for all of the people who can't do research to cover it that's true and so in order to do anything else you've got to actually research stuff Yeah, I mean, we we try to vary. That's not what you're doing when you're producing mass content. That's true.
01:30:08
Speaker
you're And you're also looking for, like, the you know, i've I've seen some of the formulas for the television shows that, like, snapped. Like, i've I've seen what the requirements are in terms of available media and material. Sure. And then, like, all of that stuff is, it's almost like it's being put into a blender and poured into a formula. Like, like it has to be. Yeah.
01:30:29
Speaker
Yeah. It has to be these things or we can't stop them. But you can do that with virtually any case. It's just your ability to spot it without being told it. Yeah.
01:30:41
Speaker
And most of the time, like, everybody that is just kind of spouting stuff out off, even us sometimes, I would say, like, you're just... They're just following the narrative of what's been put out there, which is exactly opposite of what we try to do. We've tried to go, we try to cover things that aren't covered, things that have been covered incorrectly. We try to bring light to ah any sort of question that we think we've answered with regard to any case, really, whether it's popular or not popular, right? Yeah. Yeah.
01:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's that's the whole reason that we keep doing what we're doing. um it's When I have questions, i I'm going to go down the rabbit hole anyway, so why not?
01:31:31
Speaker
take some people along with me. Um, yeah and like you experienced this way more than the, the audience does. w I would say that like, we have had like ah a pretty good following, like a pretty good buildup to all of this, but there are so many things I send you throughout the week where like you and I get halfway down and like it just, for some reason, we no longer have questions.
01:31:55
Speaker
like yeah say Particularly with like ah the things that interest me in terms of like if there's a mass murder or if there's murder-suicide or if there's a family annihilation. So many of those cases, I think, will be sort of churned into media in the next five or ten years. But when you and I looked at it,
01:32:18
Speaker
We didn't have any questions, like, after the basic amount of research went into it, that was enough for us to go, what would we research further about this to clarify it? Right. And there's nothing there. And then ah a lot of things, especially, like, the deep leave, like, personal cases, I don't think a lot of those cases are ours to put out there as anything true crime, right?
01:32:46
Speaker
Right, especially – I think we've had a limit along the way where if there's like ah a suicide that wasn't really publicized and we and it wasn't talked about and ah and survivors were heavily affected by it,
01:32:59
Speaker
We've left a lot of those cases. Suicide is very rarely going to ever be true crime. Right. And I guess that takes us back to Ellen Greenberg for just a second, which I think we will eventually cover. I'm waiting on one more thing to happen in that case before we come around and cover it again.
01:33:17
Speaker
Because there's a a case in that area I've been looking at, and whenever I look at it, Ellen Greenberg pops up. Oh, I was going to say, i don't know that there is anything else to cover. I feel like that was hard enough the first time around. Yeah. And they keep going with it. And I feel terrible for everybody involved in that, but...
01:33:35
Speaker
I stand by like they should have filed wrongful death and aimed at pharmaceutical companies and counselors, in my opinion, because there were insurance policies backing those things. And the reason I say that for people that hear it and go, oh, no, it's a murder.
01:33:48
Speaker
It doesn't matter if if they would have filed a wrongful death investigation against the counselors and people say, oh, not the psychiatrist, not the therapist, not the people writing the scripts to her.
01:33:59
Speaker
The malpractice investigators in those cases, particularly if they were like, we think it's actually this drug that was given to her, which brings and like into the fold the pharmaceutical company that was making that drug, whether it's a generic or big name brand.
01:34:15
Speaker
The investigators that do those jobs, they would have told you if he was murdered or not.
01:34:23
Speaker
Well, yeah, they probably would have even made a case for murder. Yeah, yeah they would have yeah, they would have made the best possible case for homicide on behalf of Ellen Greenberg in those cases. And
Choosing True Crime Stories
01:34:36
Speaker
that's why I pointed out, and and I'll just, ah i'll I'm sorry, but don't want to interrupt you if you have a thought there.
01:34:42
Speaker
was just going say we're really off track. Yeah, we are really off track now. It is Christmas for people. i'll close it by saying the reason we don't know about like those types of cases, I just kind of strung together, is because they're not publicized and largely, as you mentioned, they're private because there's a very simple non-crime answer to those type things.
01:35:06
Speaker
Well, and it's not that they're... not a crime. Sometimes they are crimes. Right. But like, if you've got a situation where a family member kills themselves and their family, like that's not always going to be true crime. If there's some sort of interesting element to it. Yeah. Besides just domestic matters. Right. Yeah.
01:35:28
Speaker
Maybe, but like, I don't know. I'm pretty, I try to be
Conclusion and Holiday Wishes
01:35:32
Speaker
careful about, you know, about what we say and I could cover stuff now that I, in the future, I might think was a bad idea or not cover something that in the future I would be like, why didn't I cover that? Right. yeah I mean, it's really, it's just a judgment call and it's, it's completely subjective and you and I don't always meet eye to eye on that, but usually i respect it. If you say you're not going to do some, or you would prefer not to do something and you respect it when I do. Yep.
01:36:03
Speaker
Yeah, so at this point in time, I'm way off the hostage topic. But we have, i think, this is officially us wrapping up the hostage for the holidays.
01:36:14
Speaker
Yep. So I hope everybody has a good holiday season, and we'll talk to you soon.
Podcast Credits
01:36:22
Speaker
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01:36:34
Speaker
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01:38:38
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. 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.
01:38:56
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.