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Season Five: In The Trees Part Two
276 Plays1 month ago
In Today’s Episode, we talk about a the killings of multiple couples in Washington State.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
https://zencastr.com/?via=truecrimexs
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2015/chicago-crime-stats/
https://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com
https://fstoppers.com/education/biggest-dangers-photographers-face-299728#comment-thread
Recommended
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.
The Murder of Diana Robertson and Mike Remmer
00:00:56
Speaker
Where we left off after a ah lot of update in the last episode, we had a short portion of a story. And we were talking about the murder of Diana Robertson and Mike Remmern, where their child had been left at a local Kmart out in Washington state.
00:01:19
Speaker
And I had sort of promised like, this is going to go a lot of places and that's where we're just going to pick up. So we had this little girl saying that her mommy was in the trees. Her body is eventually found and then Mike's truck was found. Now, what's interesting about this is there's blood stains in the front passenger seat of Mike's truck. And Diana has a tube sock tied around her neck.
00:01:51
Speaker
it pretty much instantly starts to get connected to another crime. Where are we left off in time was technically Mike and Diana is around Christmas, 1985.
The Disappearance of Stephen Harkins and Ruth Cooper
00:02:07
Speaker
For this next part, we have to go back a little further in time to August 10th of 1985.
00:02:15
Speaker
And the couple that we're talking about here is Stephen Harkins and Ruth Cooper. ah you Do you remember this Unsolved Mysteries about them? I don't. I don't really remember it now. So I think there's a Wiki page that's been started. It's like a paragraph long about this, but there's definitely Unsolved Mysteries and there's a lot of newspapers dot.com stories about these cases.
00:02:37
Speaker
The gist of this is, 27-year-old Stephen Harkins and his 42-year-old girlfriend, Ruth Cooper, they were living on Eastside Tacoma in Washington. They were both students at a vocational school. They were studying to become machinists. And Stephen, at the time, he had been working as a truck driver. Now, Ruth was a single mom. She had five kids.
00:03:02
Speaker
And this couple had been dating for about three years. I think they'd been living together for the last two years. They love camping. According to Michael Harkins, who's Steven's brother, he described him as absolutely charismatic and unforgettable in not just his looks, but also his personality. On the evening of Saturday, August 10th, 1985, Steven and Ruth go to a friend's wedding reception in Tacoma.
00:03:29
Speaker
Afterwards, they leave and they go on a weekend camping trip at Tule Lake near the towns of Yellman, Roy in southern Pierce County, Washington. The plan was they were going to camp out Saturday night and Sunday night they were going to come home. On August 12th, Stephen and Ruth don't show up for work. This is a Monday. Their families report them missing.
00:03:53
Speaker
That same day, a man drives past a campsite at Tula Lake and he notices that the couple's Volkswagen station wagon is parked there. He didn't think much about it, except when he drives by it again on August the 14th, he notices that the car is still there parked in the same spot. So he decided to take a look at it. Inside the car, the man finds Stephen's body.
00:04:20
Speaker
He's lying on the front seat of the car. He's wrapped up in a sleeping bag and he had been shot in the forehead. It appeared that he had been killed while he was sleeping. The couple's pet dog was found shot to death about 800 yards away from the car. Now Ruth's shoes are found at the scene, but there's no other trace of her. So as far as the police are concerned when they find Steven's body, they believe that Ruth has been kidnapped.
00:04:51
Speaker
Her family searches the nearby woods. There's other search efforts for her, but no trace of her is found. Two months later, on October the 26th, this is still 1985, Ruth's skull is found by hunters walking along the dead end of 8th Avenue South near Hearts Lake. This is about a mile and a half from where Stephen's body had been found.
00:05:16
Speaker
Two days later on October the 28th, her body and her purse are found in heavy brush about 50 feet from her skull. She's been shot in the abdomen and around her neck, there's a tube sock tied. So a tube sock is just a white sock that stretches far up the leg. A lot of times they'll have slight strikes on them, like two or three strikes or one strike.
00:05:45
Speaker
Police believe that Steven and Ruth's murders may be connected to Diana and Mike. We have to fast forward now. we've We've already been through Diana and Mike's case. It's where we picked up. Now we're kind of back in October, 1985. Moving forward to when Diana's body is found puts us into February of 1986. So, Crystal had been correct. Her mother was in the trees.
00:06:14
Speaker
Diana's partially decomposed body was found in the snow February 18th, 1986, lying alongside of Mike's red 1982 Plymouth pickup truck. She was nude from the waist up. She had been stabbed 17 times. According to police, they believed that the sock was used to control her rather than to strangle her. So it had been put around her neck as something to grab a hold of.
00:06:42
Speaker
They also believe that she had been there since the time of her disappearance. They didn't find any trace of Mike and they end up being hindered by the the ongoing snow. So, so at this point we have at least three murders and Mike is still missing.
Speculations of a Serial Killer
00:07:04
Speaker
There are conflicting theories that are going to come out here. With this small an area, we have two women who have tube socks tied around their necks. Steven and Ruth are only 15 miles away from where Diana had been found. This is an area where Mike had frequently gone out and set his traps.
00:07:25
Speaker
According to a quote from Unsolved Mysteries, Detective David Nyser of the Lewis County Sheriff's Department, he went to Pierce County to look at the sock that was found around Ruth's neck. And he says when he looked at the sock, hair stood up on the back of his neck and he shivered a little. So he and the Pierce County evidence technician, they realized that these two socks were identical. A couple of theories start to emerge here. One is that an unknown serial killer had taken and killed both of these couples.
00:07:56
Speaker
Mike's body had just been hidden better in that theory. Secondly, it was posited that perhaps Mike himself was that serial killer. According to multiple people, Mike carried a .22 caliber handgun when he went to check his trap lines. The bullet that had killed Stephen was from a .22 caliber weapon.
00:08:22
Speaker
It emerges, and this is on newspapers dot.com. There's some interesting reading. It emerges a little later that Mike and Diana had a history of domestic violence. He had frequently beaten her. And at one point, he told Diana that he could kill her and get away with it. In the fall of 1985, he had been arrested for attacking her. And shortly thereafter, she had gotten a restraining order for him to stay away. But as Christmas got close,
00:08:51
Speaker
the couple gets back together. So there's circumstantial evidence that ultimately at this time, they could get a warrant against Mike for Diana's murder, but they have to do one thing first that they're not able to do. Find him. Well, they have to prove he's alive.
00:09:14
Speaker
because we have this other couple, both of the people are killed, a lot of similarities going on here. And according to the law enforcement that appear on Unsolved Mysteries, the court wanted them to prove that Mike was alive because if he's dead, it would mean an unidentified third party is going around killing people in the woods and they're charging the wrong person. If they can prove Mike is alive, he's a suspect and it changes everything.
00:09:41
Speaker
Now, multiple people have said that Mike is innocent. They noted that in his truck, his coat's there, even though it's freezing cold out. I mean, it's snowing. It was also said that Mike didn't have any money on him to use to escape or go anywhere. And it was said by one of the law enforcement officials that Mike might have been the one killed first in terms of the couple because he they didn't believe that he would have let what happened to Diana happen.
00:10:11
Speaker
You and I have talked about this a little bit over the years. What is your theory of how that kid ends up at Kmart? There's several things about all of these cases that are interesting. There are some similarities. They are not too far apart geographically, right? 15 miles is not far. Tubesuck.
00:10:34
Speaker
I mean, it could be a link if it was in the news earlier. I've always thought that I i don't think a random serial killer would have taken the time to drive 30 miles north with a two-year-old to drop them at Kmart. Right. That makes it lend more towards ah the dad doing it, right? I mean, that's what I think, yeah. That's my first thought.
00:10:59
Speaker
and so And then you know any sort of little domestic violence spat, and then when one of the um couple ends up murdered, it's always the go-to, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And most of the time, it's not wrong, right? I mean, it it there's a lot of contention between a couple, especially when you have records of stuff that come out. It's either really bad or it's non-existent, right?
00:11:29
Speaker
It always made more sense to me that the little girl was dropped off by her her dad. Now, I mean, I guess you could have a serial killer with a soft spot for a child. Just not able to bring himself to do it. he At least he didn't leave the child in the woods, I guess. At the very most, they would have left the child alive in the woods, right? Right.
00:11:58
Speaker
um And then I had thought, well, maybe they dropped her off on the way in, but, you know, she knew mommy was in the trees, right? Yeah. The killer could have left her there. In theory, I mean, she would have died from exposure, but because she, I don't think she would have been found fast enough. Her mom was in the trees, right? Oh, yeah. Her mom is definitely in the trees.
00:12:19
Speaker
Now, as far as them being similar though, you have a situation where, as of right now, you have a man wrapped in a sleeping bag who was shot in the cab of his truck in the forehead, ah presumably while he was sleeping. Then, a little while later, his companion who wasn't found in the truck She has found, her head is found first and then her body and purse are found a little bit later, right? Right. Guys, and then she had been shot as well. I believe twice is what they said. So you have a man being killed very quickly, probably not even knowing what hit him. I imagine he was laying there like he was asleep with a bullet in his forehead. Yeah, that's what I picture as well.
00:13:13
Speaker
Let's imagine what happens there. is Does ah his girlfriend, does Ruth get like freaked out and jump out of the truck and run away? It could be. it could't it could a She could be dragged off. she she could ah yeah She could be chased. There's a number of ways that she can end up with the distance between them.
00:13:34
Speaker
Right, right. and um or you know Because to me, that element of surprise is only going to work once. right if he takes it and i mean A would take the opportunity to take the biggest threat out with the element of surprise. So if they walk up,
00:13:56
Speaker
the couple is sleeping and, you know, he shoots him in the forehead. Of course, Ruth wakes up and then he takes her off for some reason. We we don't know why. Doesn't appear that anything was stolen. Like it doesn't have a whole lot of Hallmark ah murder, Meredith characteristics, right? Right. Doesn't appear to be a whole lot happening there. Okay. So then you have the neck, you have Diana,
00:14:25
Speaker
who is stabbed to death, right? Yep. um She has no top on, and there was no sign of a gunshot wound to her. but And then there's no trace of Mike except for his truck, and the little girl wasn't hurt right when she was found at Kmart, except the trauma of being abandoned, but she wasn't physically hurt.
00:14:53
Speaker
Correct. So to me, yes, there are quite a few similarities, but I could see it as somebody, like let's say it was Mike doing it, right? And he could be like, oh, I'm just going to put a sock around her neck like that other chick that was killed, right? Right. The thing about the sock around her neck was how could they tell it was around her neck? You talking about with the separation? Yeah.
00:15:21
Speaker
i I think they were indicating it was around what was would be left of her neck. OK. And so you know if that came up in the media about it, and if this truly was Mike you know killing his partner, he could do it to throw them off the trail. But we have um family members, his father, ah saying, well, he has no way to live, right? He can't just run off.
00:15:51
Speaker
It's, I mean, it's not unheard of, but most of the time, you know you don't give up your entire life to go on the run just to kill your partner who you have an issue with, right? Because he would be giving up everything, right? Correct. It's kind of a weird thing to do. And in that case, wouldn't he have just taken his daughter with him?
00:16:18
Speaker
ah That's a good question. you know they They say they've never come up with a solid motive for him to have killed her. They did say there was violence. Here's here's an interesting idea though. if he's not going to If he's not killed her and they're focused on like figuring out what happened to him, you've got another killer who might still be operating.
00:16:41
Speaker
right right yeah no you're right So for Mike's part, okay, whether he's alive or whatever, the police wanted to get their hands on him. There were multiple people who had thought that they had seen him.
Mike's Lifestyle and Possible Involvement
00:16:53
Speaker
He was definitely an outdoorsy guy. I mean, he's setting traps and checking his traps while they're going to look for a Christmas tree.
00:16:59
Speaker
And I hate to say this, but that's exactly what I expect from somebody who ends up being a serial killer, honestly. Kind of, in a way. It really is. Certain people can live off the land, certain people can't. In this instance, like he could be the serial killer. He had been working as a roofer. He was an accomplished guitar player. From what I can read on the internet, which is not a whole hell of a lot, even though he had been charged with domestic assault, they were still together.
00:17:24
Speaker
The employer that he had at the time was Seattle's Queen City sheet metal and roofing. They described Mike as being a typical roofer. He worked hard, he played hard, did a lot of things outdoors. This case takes a number of turns. Mike stays to the person of interest for a long time. He's considered a prime suspect in Diana's murder.
00:17:45
Speaker
because of the restraining order and the the charge. According to the local police, they claim that he's the only one they can find that seems to have a motive for her. Mike's family and friends, they believe he's innocent and that this could possibly be the work of a serial killer. Shortly after Steven and Ruth had left that wedding reception, so this is the night they're headed to the lake, the last night they're seen alive.
00:18:09
Speaker
A man had arrived looking for Steven, and he told guests that he wanted to settle a dispute over damage that had occurred to Steven's Harley Davidson. So Steven had a motorcycle. He had allegedly been feuding with a guy who had damaged his motorcycle.
00:18:28
Speaker
Nobody mentions this guy being an actual suspect, a person of interest. It's just brought up in one of the blurbs about Steven. So authorities also looked into the possibility that maybe all of these murders are connected somehow to the murders of 25 year old Edward Smith and his 26 year old fiance, Kimberly Levine.
Edward Smith and Kimberly Levine's Case
00:18:51
Speaker
So this is a couple that disappeared March 9th, 1985. So we have December.
00:18:58
Speaker
We have August, and now we're going back a few months to March while they were on a weekend getaway in Grant County, Washington. Have you ever heard of that one before? the just send like Just in the context yeah um of looking into these cases. Okay, so in that pair of murders,
00:19:19
Speaker
It has started to wrap itself up so we can talk about it a little bit. So what we have on them is Edward Smith and Kimberly Levine, they were both attending the University of Southeastern Massachusetts at Dartmouth. They fell in love, they graduated in 1984 and they moved to Washington. They had been working as accountants and they were planning to get married summer of 85. On March 9th, 1985, they're gonna get away.
00:19:47
Speaker
They decided to go to Grant County along I-90 and they were going to explore the area and they were just doing like a little tourist trip. We don't know exactly what happened during the trip, but what we know is that the next day, March 10th, 1985, Edward Smith's body was found in a gravel pit near the Wanapum Dam.
00:20:12
Speaker
His hands were tied behind his back, his throat had been cut, his wallet was missing, and Kimberly was gone. When they don't show up for work on Monday, March 11th, their employers report them missing. Everyone is trying to contact them this at this point. Nobody can get them. The police help put a missing persons report, but they don't know what happened to them. They end up finding the couple's car a couple weeks later, about 10 miles from from where Edward Smith's body had been discovered. So at this point, they want to find Kimberly.
00:20:42
Speaker
They weren't super optimistic that she was still alive. They had Edward's body, they had the vehicle. The only thing they had to go on here was that there was a fingerprint in the car that didn't match either Edward Smith or Kimberly Levine. Five months later, in August of 1985, Kimberly's remains were discovered about two miles away from where Edward had been found.
00:21:07
Speaker
that fingerprint comes back to help them a little bit. And in 1989, they finally matched the fingerprint from that car to a guy named Billy Ray Ballard Jr. So they've got this guy, Billy Ray Ballard. If you read anywhere about this story, and I think that's true on Unsolved Mysteries Wiki page, that's kind of like fan created.
00:21:33
Speaker
I think it's the case with the Wiki, if the if there is a ah Wiki in this. They find this fingerprint and they're looking into the possibility that Stephen and Ruth cross over with the Edward Smith and the Kimberly Levine case.
Fingerprints Link Billy Ray Ballard Jr. to Murders
00:21:51
Speaker
It's all 1985.
00:21:54
Speaker
The fingerprint turns out to be a guy that's reported initially as Billy Ray Ballard. His name is actually Bill Ray Ballard. We have Edward definitely having his throat slashed and his hands bound. There's no tube sock in this case. He's never officially connected to Steven or Ruth's murders. And when they catch up with him, he's doing time in a Wyoming prison.
00:22:16
Speaker
So I went back and dug through what has happened with him. Now he pleads guilty to Kimberly and Edward's case. Whether he did that or not, I couldn't really tell you because of the guilty plea. He is still on ah Wyoming time. Even though he pled guilty in Washington, he's still serving a Wyoming sentence. Oh, because that's when they where they found them. Right.
00:22:43
Speaker
So his sentence there was 10 to 20 years for kidnapping, facilitating a felony, but it has this like note at the end that the person was released unharmed. Now that's for Wyoming. And I'm going to say this, I don't know exactly what it means, but from what I can tell, according to their official website, for some reason, he's in Tuttweiler, Mississippi.
00:23:12
Speaker
at the Tallahassee County Correctional Facility. Make of that what you will. He has on that sentence, Bill Ray Ballard has a, and I i think it's the same guy, it's the same age, same everything, looks like it. He appears to be up for parole in May of 2029 and a full discharge of that sentence, January 12th, 2036. Whenever I see stuff like that, it makes me go, okay,
00:23:43
Speaker
What am I looking at? So I went back in time and I try to find like the first, like the origin of Bill Ray Ballard. I don't find a great origin, but I can tell you that he's been arrested in Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota. One of the interesting things that happens is ah according to the Billings Gazette in 1986,
00:24:13
Speaker
Bill Ray Ballard escaped. He's 33 at the time of this. He climbs over a 20-foot wall while he's at the Fremont County Jail. Depending on how you read, he's either at a psychiatric facility like within the jail or he's at a separate facility near the jail. But he climbs over a 20-foot wall, at least three prisoners saw him go. He's considered dangerous. They describe him there as five feet 10, 180 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes.
00:24:44
Speaker
They said that he was being held for authorities in Platt County on armed robbery, aggravated assault, and a sexual assault a series of charges. This is Friday, March 14th, 1986. They're describing it like it happened Thursday, March 13th, 1986.
00:25:11
Speaker
So the crimes that we were just talking about, Mineral Washington and the other crimes around it, they take place in 1985.
00:25:22
Speaker
ah The offense date here is listed as having him sentenced by June 10th, 1986. So depending on when he's arrested, he's only good for some of these crimes.
00:25:39
Speaker
But I did find, I found him interesting. There's, they talk about him a lot, even in the national media, um being arrested kind of all over the place. He pops up in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight states talk about him in different ah capacities. So he's somebody like at some point I want to go down that rabbit hole.
00:26:00
Speaker
and see like what he really did. Cause he does appear to be alive. He does appear to have pled guilty to two of these murders. They're not the murders we started with. Cause remember we're talking about Mike and Diana and then Steven and Ruth. And now we've got Kimberly and Edward. Those have a fingerprint that is in Edwards car. It ties to this guy, Bill Ray Ballard. Another person they bring up in the middle of all this was a serial killer that I've heard of in passing, but I wanted to talk about him today because, you know, we're doing Halloween stuff and I find these guys incredibly creepy. Had you ever heard of the serial killer?
00:26:40
Speaker
I've heard of him. i I don't know a ton about him, but I'm familiar with part of the story. Yeah. I did find a reference to him in this book that like my kid reads that I have on my, uh, it's, it's on my main shelf and it's innocuous looking.
Profile of Charles Sinclair, the Coin Shop Killer
00:26:55
Speaker
It's called the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. And I always forget that it's sitting there. So sometimes people looking at the bookshelf will be like, like I typically keep those type books elsewhere, but he's not talked about a lot. And he comes up here.
00:27:09
Speaker
I guess we'll go to him and then we'll talk about this solved case that brings up yet another serial killer, but this is Charles Thurman Sinclair. He is known as the coin shop killer, which is going to be evident here in a second. Like why he's known as that, but he's got kind of a weird story. So he is born and raised as the youngest of four kids in a, like a blue collar family down in New Mexico. His father dies when they're very young.
00:27:38
Speaker
His mom supports the family by operating a coin laundry and taking an ironing. So think a coin laundry at the time this would have happened. He's born in 1946. It's what we would call today just a laundromat. That's just a place where you can go and you walk in and there's a washer and dryer or a series of them. Throw a couple quarters in. Used to be that way. Now think you probably swipe your card.
00:28:07
Speaker
and you you do your laundry, you do your own folding, you transfer it from the washer to the dryer, the whole nine yards. In the 1970s, still in New Mexico, Charles Sinclair opened up CoinShop.
00:28:20
Speaker
He has this coin collection that he's just had because of the laundromat connections. And, you know, people pick up hobbies. I don't know if you have ever known somebody that collects coins or but or baseball cards or stamps or anything. Those hobbies become pretty serious for some people. um He does end up expanding his store. And the the reason that he expands it is because he starts selling weapons. He sells guns.
00:28:49
Speaker
In 1985, he's had this store for, it looks like about 10 years on paper, maybe a little longer. His shop burns down. Now, local investigators, they think it's arson. They never come to an exact cause of what happened and they never charge anyone. But him destroying or someone destroying this shop means that Charles Sinclair no longer has incomes. When you default on loans and mortgages, creditors come and they start looking for the collateral that you'd use in the first place. And part of his collateral was that he had put up his guns as like the guns he was selling as stock. And his gun collection was not in the shop at the time that it got destroyed.
00:29:46
Speaker
So he packs up his family and they leave New Mexico at this point. Now he has this interesting thing that starts happening that we can follow as of July, 1990. He starts robbing coin shop owners to take like the most valuable coin collections. His victims were then killed because he didn't want to leave a witness.
00:30:16
Speaker
There was no known motive, just that like he didn't want to ah leave a witness for his robberies. So the method of each robbery was about the same. He would come in, make himself known to the owners of a coin shop. He would talk to them frequently about coins. He would visit the shop multiple times in a week and then multiple times in a day. He was leading them on like he was going to be making some kind of purchase from their collection or to add to his collection.
00:30:44
Speaker
This constant interaction with the owners made him seem like somebody they could trust. made He sort of became a regular. He was actually learning their routines and their patterns and their security for each of these stores. He would then arrive to one of these stores close to closing time and with a small caliber weapon, he would shoot and kill the owners and then he would clean out the store of what he wanted.
00:31:13
Speaker
Most of these killings were with a gun and he would head shop them. On July 31st of 1990, he kills a coin shop owner named Charles Sparbo, who's 60 years old. And the woman who was working in the store that day, Catherine Newstrom, some accounts call her an assistant manager.
00:31:38
Speaker
And some accounts treat it more like Charles is the owner and kind of the expert and Catherine's actually the manager. He shoots them with a 22 caliber handgun. This is in Billings, Montana, by the way. He steals $54,000 worth of coins and gold at this robbery. He had been in town. He had learned the routines. He became like a regular. He had told the owners and other people that he was a farmer from a nearby town to Billings.
00:32:09
Speaker
Now, Jim Sparbo, he's Charles' son. He was suspicious of how frequently ah Charles Sinclair was showing up. He had paid attention to how Sinclair would like park away from the store. He had represented himself as a farmer. He did not dress like a farmer.
00:32:34
Speaker
And Jim had noted that his hands were smooth, like somebody that worked more like a banker's type job. He did not act in time to get back to the shop, even though he had the suspicion he hadn't really shared it as much, but he ends up finding his dad and the manager or Charles's assistant dead. Jim is able to provide information about the circumstances leading up to the murders,
00:33:01
Speaker
And information from that is used to to create a composite drawing. For several days, there was a ah polite Texan who wanted to invest in coins. And he was coming to a shop in Murray, Utah. This is in May of 1990. The shop is called Legacy Rare Coins. And this guy who says his name is Jim Stockton, he waits around until the owner of Legacy Rare Coins, Kelly Finnegan, had closed up the shop. And as Kelly Finnegan is putting the valuables in the safe for that night, Sinclair comes in. Kelly turns around towards Sinclair, and he gets a single shot to the forehead. Despite being shot in the forehead, Kelly Finnegan survives. This bullet manages to not seriously wound him. He even remains conscious throughout. While he's on the floor, he pretends that he's dead,
00:33:58
Speaker
And Sinclair robs the store of around $60,000 worth of merchandise. In his pocket, later on, is an antique pocket watch that he had stolen out of the shop safe. He gives his son a Rolex watch that Sinclair had stolen from the other owner of the shop. Now, there's a non coin shop murder in here. This is the murder of Robert and Dagmar Linton.
00:34:29
Speaker
They are a working-class couple. They're located down in San Joaquin County in California. They were on the verge of retirement and they would take trips up to Lake Comanche and to New Hogan Reservoir. In the summer of 1986, so we went back in time from this Utah robbery, Robert and Dagmar, they were heading north and west. They were hoping to see the World's Fair, which at the time would have been in Vancouver.
00:34:59
Speaker
So this is a road trip they're taking and they not um they're not they're not like in a hurry. They're seeing sites along the way, but they're also calling home and checking in. They get to Washington state and they stop calling home. So a campground staff member in Washington state finds their red and white trailer empty at a campground in ah that the staffers working at.
00:35:29
Speaker
Their pickup is found at the Seattle Tacoma airport. Now the pickup is mostly clean. There is some blood. There are three distinct types of this blood. One matches up with Robert, one matching Dagmar, and one of them is from an unknown person. Inside the trailer and inside the pickup, there was evidence of distress and there was evidence of a struggle. Now there's no remains.
00:35:57
Speaker
the But the family and authorities, based on the circumstances, they conclude that the Lintons had been murdered. They actually hold a memorial for them, October 19th, 1986. The investigator from the case is from an area called Brennan, Washington. His name is Pete Pacini. He starts tracking financial transactions on the Lintons credit cards.
00:36:22
Speaker
The lens credit cards have been stolen in all of this and they were being used. So Pete is able to trace the transactions as it's sort of, they wind through several States. In one instance, a large bearded white man with a bandaged right hand is seen using the credit cards to purchase a clarinet. When the credit cards use gets reported to the press, he stops using them.
00:36:52
Speaker
But at this point, Pete was interviewing multiple suspects, and this included a suspicious looking man in a pawn shop who has a bandage on his right hand. Family members get a little confused by all of this, and they're not sure what's ultimately happening here. This is a long investigation. But on August 16th, 1990, police officers in Alaska finally make an arrest, and that arrest is Charles Thurmond Sinclair.
00:37:20
Speaker
When they look at him at first, they're looking at him for connections to at least eight murders. So we're in Anchorage again. The police officer's radius is storage shed and they find maps. They find multiple machines and instruments used for creating false identifications. They also find claymore landmines, C4 explosives, and a huge, extremely expensive and valuable coin collection.
00:37:51
Speaker
Once they've arrested him, there's more and more evidence uncovered and he they start to realize that this man, Sinclair, is linked to the Linton's murders. Sinclair has the exact same scars on his right hand.
00:38:07
Speaker
that were, would it well he has scars on his right hand that would align with the bandages that Pete Pacini had remembered from people's description and from the fact that he had interviewed him under a different name because of his suspicious behavior in a coin shop earlier in 1990. They eventually find a clarinet in Charles Sinclair's home, which of all the things to like trace you to a murder, this clarinet is traced back to having been purchased by Robert and Dagmar Linton stolen credit cards. That's a lot, right? I mean, it's kind of undeniable. There are a lot of crimes that link back to Charles Sinclair. This is strictly based on who the victims were.
00:38:58
Speaker
most of them were coin or antiquities dealers, and the manner of death, which is almost exclusively gunshots to the head. So we get a little bit of a timeline here. David Sutton in Everett, Washington is found dead with a gunshot wound to the head, January 27th of 1980. Sutton's antique store was robbed of $80,000 in silver dollars.
00:39:24
Speaker
Thomas Rohr of Mishakwa, Indiana was killed during a robbery of a coin shop he managed on August 28th, 1985. That's going to be important. Reuben Lee Williams, this guy named Lucky, he's in Vacaville, California when he is killed with a gunshot wound to the head and his coin shop is robbed November 1st of 1986.
00:39:51
Speaker
Leo Cassette of Spokane, Washington, he's killed with a gunshot wound to the head and when his coin shop is robbed on July 14, 1987. LeRoy Hoffman of Kansas City, Missouri, he's killed and his coin shop is robbed of thousands of dollars worth of coins on March 12, 1988.
00:40:14
Speaker
Hoffman mentioned to his wife that there was a man that was a local farmer who was frequenting his store and had inquired about selling him, not buying, but selling him a large collection of coins. So, Pete Pacini has him for the Linton murders. We have multiple other murders that he thinks about. And at this point, he had even suspected that Charles Sinclair might be related to the November 24th, 1989 rape and murder of Amanda Static. However, DNA evidence in that crime, which may come up in a later series for us, it led to a conviction of a different person. So when he's arrested on August 16th, up in Kenny Lake, Alaska,
00:41:06
Speaker
These investigators have put together a ton of information on him. He ends up being held on a $500,000 bond in the Palmer, Alaska jail. Montana authorities, they start seeking extradition for him. They have charged Sinclair with the murders of Charles of Sparbo and Catherine Newstrom, and they have requested his extradition to stand trial.
00:41:29
Speaker
Utah authorities then hit him up with the Kelly Finnegan case. In that case, it's attempted homicide and aggravated robbery for the robbery that he had committed at Legacy Rare Coins. So that's August 16th, 1990. I don't know what they're doing in in Alaska with these guys, but he is found dead in his jail cell October 30th of 1990. So basically two months in a couple of weeks after his arrest. And none of these cases are technically closed in terms of adjudication. He comes up in this conversation about having killed these couples. He doesn't fit, and now we're gonna talk about him for a minute. Does he fit serial killer for you?
00:42:21
Speaker
Well, um, interestingly, so, uh, it didn't occur to me until we got to the very end. Um, I watched a documentary special, uh, from his, that interviewed his daughter and what happened from her point of view. Okay.
00:42:43
Speaker
And so he is a bit of a serial killer. I find it odd, like I wouldn't, I don't think that he raped anybody. um I find it odd that they have linked him to. Well, that's the one, that's the one investigator and that case is closed with a different person at this point. Well, I, so I thought there was another one, maybe not, but I do feel like the coin shop ah murders It's a weird kind of of serial killer. um It is specifically targeting money. The coins had value. It's a really weird case because um I'm not sure. ah I know that they found the credit cards of the Robert and Dagmar Lenton.
00:43:31
Speaker
yeah And that seemed to be kind of odd as far as his motive goes. But it could have been desperate times, right? Who knows? I'm not really sure what was going on there. But according to his daughter, one of the investigative networks did a special. And it was like Evil Lives Here or something to that effect, talking. And it was from the perspective of the family. and so At some point after he began his criminal enterprise, he had moved the family up to Nowhereville, Alaska. right and His daughter was young-ish at the time, probably like a young teenager. and They had no suspicions that he was a murderer.
00:44:20
Speaker
But he did travel for business. And it was her opinion that like, basically, it was his only way of making a living was robbing these stores. And I guess the people's credit cards, right? I believe it was her clarinet. And I say that because I'm not entirely sure.
00:44:45
Speaker
But that seems to ring a bell. like So he had bought her clarinet with ah the couple's credit card. and when she found you know Obviously, that would be hard to take. And when she was doing this show, she was a much older adult.
00:45:00
Speaker
right um but it It's a very like sad case all around because it was such a waste. It was a waste because he had this family that like loved him at home and he could have done something else, it seems like. But he's one of the killers that um because of the way he had set things up, either through diligent planning or happenstance, he was nomadic, right?
00:45:34
Speaker
Right. In that the killings, you know, they happened all over the place, basically. They just had specific links with the coin shops. Now, how common was it for coin shops to be robbed in the 80s? Well, I don't know. There's a lot. Pawn shops, coin shops, they've always been a favorite of robbers. It goes back a long, long way in time. It's just that they were going with this 22 caliber thing. That's the thing that makes them link it all together.
00:46:01
Speaker
right well and i i presume that you know they had reasons um and it's not like he's innocent right because you have um pretty good there's pretty good evidence that's b linking him to several at least yeah if not all of them at least um most of them and the coin shop goes a lot because he had like I almost want to say it was almost like vindictive or something. I'm not really sure what was happening there psychologically with you know the fact that he you know the his mom working at the coin laundry and then him having the coin shop and then him like whatever happened to his coin shop where it was no longer a thing and then robbing coin stores. I mean, there's a lot of psychological issues happening there, right?
00:46:57
Speaker
and my opinion. I mean there's just no way that it's not all connected. It seems like I believe if I remember correctly after the shot burnt down is when they moved and he was on the run from his creditors not wanting to give up the guns as that he had put up for collateral. The headshot was a weird thing to me too. I don't, I don't know. This would go against how I feel about serial killers. Well, you know, earlier this year we covered the I-70 shooter, the I-70 Killer, as opposed to the I-70 Strangler, where we had another series of of weird crimes like this. And this is, so this is happening before that would have occurred.
00:47:47
Speaker
But it's the same idea like it's sort of this weird low caliber execution that's happening. And I'm not saying he's not a serial killer like if you're following the strict definition because he certainly killed more than two people with a time and between each ah to cool off, right? Yeah, yeah. However,
00:48:08
Speaker
He has, from what I can tell, at least an exterior traditional motive, and that motive is essentially money, right? Yeah. Because he's robbing coin stores to get the coins and there they have value to him. Correct. Now, I do think there's more psychological undertones that aren't explored. Of course, he also dies shortly after he is finally connected.
00:48:36
Speaker
to the murders, right right? And so they don't get a lot of information out of him and it's not completely tied up with a bow because he does die from heart failure. Now, you know, well, what does that mean? It's possible that I have, I feel like serial killers sort of, once they've been caught,
00:49:06
Speaker
they deteriorate quickly sometimes, right? yeah And so from that element, I mean, maybe he was a serial killer. But it's strange for him to have such a clear motive unless he just didn't have it in him to kill them any other way. And we had known more about like the psychological undertones having to do with The targeted victims the coin shop owners and the couple perhaps I think that he I feel like he killed a couple out of necessity Based on what I was getting out of that like just to steal their their credit cards and their money or whatever And that's really sad, right? um but it it was a very um
00:49:52
Speaker
burdening story that ah His daughter told and I felt how burden she felt by it because basically the way that this show um Portrayed his story was Like to support his family this is what he did and so basically like, you know everything she did in life Had a bad influence on her father doing something terrible to other people Right And I felt like that was a really terrible thing for her to bear because none of it was her fault, right? She had no idea she was a kid, right? right And it was all just very, very sad and strange. And it made me wonder, like, are there still people out there like that?
00:50:44
Speaker
i Oh, man, that's a hard one. I mean, Define people out there like that. Well, just, I mean, cause this guy, he literally left his family going on a work trip. Right. And like he was not working at all. Like he was going to kill people to rob these coin shops. Okay. So let me phrase my question differently. Do you mean people that do that in 2024 or people that we have yet to discover have done that?
00:51:22
Speaker
Um, I would say, I would say people still doing it now, like in 2024, people who are like, I need to go be a serial killer to provide for my family. I don't think that they are. I think that type of serial killer has probably died out and become something else. And I think those people.
00:51:44
Speaker
I'm going to say this and regret these words because I noticed that they changed the violence statistics again. i I think those people get caught early. I know there's a lot of unsolved missing persons cases and unsolved murders and generally unsolved crimes, but I think some of those crimes fall to the wayside. Here's why I say it, the way I'm saying it. Pawn shops and coin shops and gun shops today, most shops today, most stores today.
00:52:12
Speaker
there I mean, my house has 30 video cameras. Those stores that have very valuable things in them that people would rob, banks today, like they everything is digitally covered. I think those people get caught after they've done it once or twice, and it's not known that they're this prolific. So I i think the prolific part falls off. I think there are people who still rob and kill for taking care of their family to a degree and get caught or change them and do something different. I think it would be complex to like put that in um and a category in 2024.
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. um it it is It is weird, because this is one of the cases that goes against my thoughts on serial killers, because he is without question a serial killer. I mean, it seems like they have adequately linked him through evidence that is sort of undeniable, even though they he didn't go on trial, right? Right. And I certainly, I believe, because if I remember correctly, like When investigators went to this Nowheresville, Alaska, where the family lived and they recovered evidence that linked him to these people, I mean, there was no other explanation for why that stuff was there, right? Yeah. And we're still seeing cases solved like that now where like there've been multiple cases in the last two years where somebody was a serial killer, was somebody was a so serial killer further back in time. And like we're seeing the evidence that links them
00:53:53
Speaker
And it's sort of shocking that they did it. Now, ah most of those tend to be like sort of lone wolf type people, but there are been a few that have families. Well, right. And typically, well, yeah, actually. Like even Smirk. He said he would have been a serial killer, but like he had a family.
00:54:13
Speaker
Which stopped him, right? And then he was caught, right? And then, you know, I don't know how much the ah onset of the true crime entertainment genre has detoured potential. ah Whoever has whatever it is in them to be a serial killer and made them think twice about doing something.
00:54:37
Speaker
But I would say that it would have a deterring effect or at least it should because um we saw with Israel keys his confidence and his ability to not get caught and ultimately that was unraveled ah whether it was Attic what whether it was actually Unraveled or just presented to be unraveled and that had to do with a thumbprint, right? But so he would have been acting in the late 90s, early 2000s, all the way till his death in 2012. That is 12 years ago now. right right and um I was watching something recently about ah the phenomenal DNA advancements that have been made. and
00:55:28
Speaker
um I was listening to, it was funny because I can't even remember what it was, but it was somebody from Othram Labs was on talking and they were talking about how they don't bother with any sort of phenotyping or any sort of anything. They just make the match and they were sort of explaining how It's nearly impossible or it's very rare that they can't make a match and the little tiny bit of.
00:56:04
Speaker
material that they can get off of stuff, even you know cases 40, 50 years back. right um so it's just It's grown exponentially in a very short period of time. Now, you know the cost has come down on it, but it's still a matter of like getting the right evidence to the right lab to do it. And, you know, well mining resources to have it happen. You're a hundred percent right. And there's another thing that's tied in here. If you go digging, we've talked about this case before, but I do want to kind of summarize it.
Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg's Case
00:56:45
Speaker
They dump in here that Steven and Ruth's case may be related to Jay Cook and Tonya van Kullenberg.
00:56:53
Speaker
Do you remember that case? Yes. The nutshell version of that is on the afternoon of November 18th of 1987, 20-year-old Jay Cook and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Tonya Vincolenberg, they take a ferry from Victoria, British Columbia over to Washington state. And this was a case where we were super interested in this because it's sort of inadvertently an international case.
00:57:22
Speaker
because they're they live one place in Canada and they disappear in the US. Right. So they're going to pick up furnace parts in Seattle for Jay's father, Gordon. He has a business and he needed the furnace parts. So this was going to be the first trip together. And in their mind, you know, I'm sure people remember being 18, 20 years old. This is a romantic weekend.
00:57:47
Speaker
They've been together for six months. They had been spending most of their free time together, visiting each other's homes. Jay's mom believed that Tanya was very special for him. And Tanya's father, he felt like they were a good match. So nobody had any apprehensions about the two of these people together. And their families are very comfortable with them spending all this time together and traveling together.
00:58:15
Speaker
So sometime during that romantic weekend, it takes a turn. So their trip begins in Victoria. They take a 4pm car ferry over to Port Angeles, Washington. Jay had borrowed his dad's van, which was a 1977 Ford Club Wagon. They get off the ferry at 5.30pm.
00:58:38
Speaker
They were seen twice heading down Highway 101. Once they were seen in the town of Hoodsport around 8 p.m. And then around 9 p.m. they're seen in the town of Aylin. It's believed that they were headed toward a second car ferry that would take them from Bremerton to Seattle. After arriving in Seattle, their plan had been to park over by the stadium and to sleep in the van. The next day they're supposed to come home.
00:59:07
Speaker
So 24 hours go by, they haven't returned, they haven't called to say what their plans are, and their families begin to worry. So Tanya's dad, he said that Tanya was just the type of person, if she was gonna be late, she'd let you know. When she didn't do that, her mom got nervous about it. And dad tried to like keep everything together and downplay it for mom.
00:59:35
Speaker
He was also, according to his account, which he has spoken about a couple of times, he was trying to reassure himself that this was all going to work out. November 20th comes and goes, so now we're moving into 48 hours. Tanya doesn't call home and everybody knows something's wrong. At this point in time, they attempt to, from Victoria, British Columbia, report Jay and Tanya missing.
01:00:01
Speaker
Now, they're not missing for long because on November 24th, Tanya's body is found in a ditch next to Parsons Creek Road, which is kind of between Alger and Burlington in ah Washington state. She had been raped and she had been shot in the back of the head with a .38 caliber gun.
01:00:24
Speaker
Police found plastic zip ties laying alongside the road. So it was believed that she had been zip tied inside the van. Jay's family had no idea what to make of the fact that they couldn't find him. And the police were communicating across the border and they decided that they were going to talk to the family. They were going to talk to the family and they told them,
01:00:51
Speaker
Jay may he is currently a person of interest and he may be the suspect in Tanya's murder. But nobody on Jay or Tanya's side, like the family's friends, think that anything is happening there. The next day, Jay's van is found near a bus station in Bellingham, Washington, which is about 14 miles away from the scene of Tanya's body being found.
01:01:17
Speaker
Inside it, they find a Bremerton Seattle ferry ticket and more zip ties. They also find a comforter that they were using to sleep in the van and has got blood stains on it, and Tanya's pants are inside the van. At this point, nobody knows for sure what's happening, but This turns the case away from Jay being a person of interest turning into a suspect and makes it more likely that he had been abducted alongside Tanya and now is probably the victim of foul play. So there's a tavern a couple blocks away from where the van is found and police get a tip that there are zip ties there. They also find the keys to Jay's van.
01:02:02
Speaker
They find Tanya's driver's license, her wallet, and they find a partially empty box of ammunition. They also find a pair of plastic surgical gloves. ah There's a detective that talks about this, I think it's in the Unsolved Mystery episode, but it might be in some other crime show that covers this. He talked about the fact that the gloves being left behind was a quote, sign to the police that if he's wearing If he's wearing these gloves, the likelihood of them finding fingerprints has gone down drastically. So this guy thinks that, you know, nothing he left behind would connect him to this crime. Jay's family is holding out hope and they knew that it wasn't likely, but they still kept that hope for a while. Now, you know, we're doing Halloween, we're doing Thanksgiving.
01:02:57
Speaker
It's a very sad Thanksgiving for Jay's family, Tonya's family too. Jay's body is found underneath the high bridge off of Crescent Lake road, which is near Monroe, Washington. This is about 50 miles south of Bellingham. He had, he was laying there having covered with a blue ah blanket. He had clearly been beaten with rocks and he had been strangled with a twine and around his neck were two red dog collars.
01:03:25
Speaker
His hands were still bound with zip ties. In his mouth, they found tissues and a full pack of cigarettes stuffed in there. One of the sergeants that's in charge of the detectives in this case at that point says that he thinks that was indicative that whoever had done this had probably done some time because it was something he recalled having seen ah inside of prison walls when people were either tortured by other inmates or killed by other inmates. So he links this to the idea that like maybe the killer has been in prison before. Police say at the time that it's most likely that sometime around 10, 20 p.m.,
01:04:15
Speaker
Jay and Tanya meet up with this killer in the course of this theory from Bremerton, Washington to Seattle, Washington. And nobody has an understanding of what the motive might be, but police feel that like he was he was setting out to do something, and it could have been that like it didn't matter who. So even though he doesn't know them, his plan, like he probably carried a kit with him, and this was gonna be he was going to assault whoever he found that fit what he was looking for that night.
01:04:47
Speaker
so Their theory was that they were actually going to do it to Tanya and Jay was just an obstacle. um It is believed that Jay was killed first. That's never confirmed ah in in term in the the media I've watched, but they say they believed it. The sergeant that was in charge of the detectives, he said that by all accounts these were young, friendly kids that were kind of naive, they were on their first trip together, and it potentially made them an easing mark if they were being stalked by a killer with experience.
01:05:22
Speaker
So the detectives at that point, they interviewed witnesses on the ferries lounge that they could find not very many of them. And they theorize that like, while they're, you know, they're out of their van moving around the ferry, that they end up coming in contact with the killer and you may have asked them for a ride. So by the time they exited the ferry, which would have been in downtown Seattle, the killer is probably with them.
01:05:51
Speaker
They also believe that the killer had probably committed similar crimes in the past and using gloves to not leave fingerprints behind indicates that he doesn't want to get caught, but also like he's probably going to continue to commit these crimes until he gets caught. He's labeled as a very dangerous individual. They did believe that the killer had made a mistake and they thought that he had taken Jay's ski jacket, which had red piping on the sleeves. It's a black ski jacket with red piping on the sleeves and Tonya's day bag.
01:06:23
Speaker
which they these are noticeable things, and they were hoping that they could find um someone who had seen a man with those two items. So, you know, this is the ah Christmas holidays that they're doing this investigation. They found but the Jay's body at Thanksgiving. Just after these murders at Christmas, Jay and Tanya's families each receive a greeting card. The greeting card describes some murders.
01:06:52
Speaker
And the person claims responsibility like saying basically the person who sent them is the person who killed them. He wrote that he hated Canadians and that the opportunity to kill these two Canadians was too good to pass up. He also threatened to kill again and he bragged that it was impossible for him to ever be caught. To date,
01:07:14
Speaker
As of the ah second update in the Unsolved Mysteries, they had received 19 of these cards mailed over three different holidays. ah The cards were postmarked from New York, Los Angeles, Seattle. The cards were all written by the same person, but sometimes they would be signed Tanya or Jay. The handwriting was distinctive. I think you can see it on the Unsolved Mysteries wiki.
01:07:37
Speaker
Um, they had weird phrases in them like hallelujah bloody jesus Greetings and salutations that would kind of repeat throughout. Uh, it's block handwriting It's it's it's pretty difficult to to discern anything related to that there To my understanding the cards aren't fully linked to the killer um, but It's been a while since I like read through all of the information on this because we covered this in the past in a different way.
01:08:08
Speaker
As for suspects, police believed that ah this killer on the the lounge boat is someone who came with a kill kit committing murders. So he's going to have zip ties, a gun, knives, gloves, other tools he's going to use when he meets them. That's an odd thing to carry around with you or to have in a vehicle that, are you going to drive this vehicle off the ferry? Like, how's it going to work if they meet him on the ferry lounge, essentially?
01:08:35
Speaker
Based on the way that Jay was killed and the evidence that was found with his body, we have the idea that the killer may have done some time in prison. His efforts to conceal his identity indicate to police that he's someone who reads about crime or is familiar with police procedures. They look into the possibility that the murders had been connected to all these other couples that we've been talking about, including Stephen Harkins and Ruth Cooper.
01:09:01
Speaker
so The case kind of just dies at that point. It airs October 25th, 1989 on Unsolved Mysteries, and it gets documented, I think, on Forensic Files and another show. I can't remember the other show off the top of my head, but I remember reading about it because of what I'm about to talk about. Genetic detective. It was much later, though. Oh, okay. I saw it, but i didn't but i I never remember the name of that show. Glad that you pointed that out.
01:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, and ah forensic files, it's it's actually forensic files too, so it's it's also much later. Oh, okay. that's That's why it escapes me. um so I wanted to point out really quick, um they did determine who had sent all their correspondence because the DNA didn't match the very relevant DNA sample left with the victims. ah They knew the person Wasn't they don't name the person. Oh, is this the older guy that they they said was yeah in a home or something? Yeah, he was in the what the comments that were said the guy's not named he was older he was Canadian and um The statute of limitations on what he could be charged with had already run out by the time they figured out who it was and he had severe mental problems and he was in his like 70s when they figured out who it was and Okay. So, but he had been, he had been doing it. He was younger, right? Like he was in his fifties when he did it. Yeah. Like, however, cause they didn't, okay. So it the information, I believe it was like 2010 is when they figured out who it was. yeah Okay. yeah I do remember this now, now that you're saying that it's coming back to me. They did not give his identity. All they said was they had known from the very beginning,
01:10:53
Speaker
That there was no way this was the killer because again the DNA on the letters didn't match but the sheriff said that like this person but had almost like an obsessed obsessive compulsive uh drive to write these letters gotcha and so they like It was a whole thing they said that when they talked to him like he didn't even try to deny it But they knew that he hadn't committed the murders then the statute had run out on harassment and He hadn't done it in a while right right and so um that is one thing so it's sort of Solved we just don't know who it was. It was somebody that wasn't relevant to the crime though. Got it. We have
01:11:34
Speaker
1990, what I have jotted down here is that police end up locating a camera lens that had belonged to Tanya's missing camera at a pawn shop in Portland, Oregon. But it had come from another pawn shop that didn't have records from the time. like so They could track it back so far, but it had been pawned multiple times. so by time they By the time they are looking for it, the records kind of fizzle out.
01:12:02
Speaker
So they weren't able to determine who originally brought it in because the records after a while indicated who had sold it, the timing didn't make sense.
01:12:16
Speaker
Right. And so that led them to all the different killers, the nature of the crime. They were asking everybody, right? Yeah. Not only that, they did a lot of DNA comparisons in this case over the years. I saw that Robert Yates was ruled out by DNA and Charles Sinclair that we were just talking about. He ends up being ruled out by DNA, but both of them had been active in Washington in the eighties. So in April, 2018,
01:12:42
Speaker
Snunomish County investigators, they pull up one of those Paraman DNA snapshots. So they have a killer, that they they have ah ah they have a of the killer that they made out of the dna out of the DNA evidence from the scene. Right, and so that was then, do we know when that was? forty eighteen That was the composite? OK. Yeah. So as a result of this, here's what they released. They think it's a guy that's a Caucasian male of European descent. They think he's got either hazel or green eyes, light skin. He could have freckles. And it's possible that he has some form of male pattern baldness. So they give us like multiple versions of what he might look like. They they give us age 25, age 45, age 65 from this parabond information.
01:13:34
Speaker
And finally, May 18th, 2018, they arrest 55-year-old William Earl Talbot II in Seattle after his DNA is matched to the semen that was found on Tanya's body and then separately on her pants. It was also found on one of the zip ties in the band in the van. They reveal at this time that they had found a palmret palm print on the back door of the van and it matches him.
01:14:04
Speaker
When the murders were committed, William Earl Talbot II would have been around 24 years old, and he was living with his parents about seven miles away from the spot where Jay's body was found. He had been convicted of a misdemeanor assault, so but the arrest is thanks to the genetic genealogy that is also done by Parabon Nanolabs. They upload the crime scene DNA profile to GEDmatch.
01:14:33
Speaker
they identify second cousins of the killer, and then they create a family tree. And that leads them to, it doesn't lead them directly to him, I guess his parents. Right, but that would lead them to him. And then they do that thing they do, they track him down and they surrepetitiously retrieve a sample of his DNA from a discarded cup.
01:14:59
Speaker
Right, and so, you know, once they put um the crime scene DNA profile and into GEDmatch, um that is the public database, which means his second cousin had, um I was trying to think, by 18, the Golden State Killer had been caught and Ancestry had updated its terms and conditions, so it was definitely there by choice, right? um His second cousin had... They could have opted out.
01:15:29
Speaker
Yeah, because that was a whole thing. But they consented to that. And um as they were obviously a second cousin you know on the family tree, I imagine they used geographical location to get to his parents, right? Right. Time and place-wise, everything, they would have been you know ah looking. Because ah second actually, a second cousin is a good hit on it because I know from my own investigation ah in DNA profile links, I hit a lot of like sixth cousins, right? And that's pretty far out there. steve
01:16:12
Speaker
um but anyway um so ah Do you remember this case happening? um In time? Yeah. i I think the first encounter I had with it would have been the unsolved mysteries case. I don't remember it happening. No. Do you?
01:16:30
Speaker
i don't I remember the DNA part happening. I got you i remember when um this case was solved, right? Because yeah it was a big deal. It was, you know, 30 years later, I believe. This was a a tragic case, right? As far as going to, you know, two young people kind of carefree, gallivanting, nothing, ah not a care in the world, dying and then it going unsolved for so long. Not to mention the
01:17:04
Speaker
uh, starting, you know, around 2010, uh, they started ruling or actually, I don't know when it started, but they had ruled out all these serial killers because of the direct DNA profile that they got. Right. yeah And so this is one of those cases that prompted me to be like, he had no idea this was coming now. I realized that I just sort of realized that he didn't write all the notes.
01:17:34
Speaker
But my thinking was, like, you know, because in the notes, the person is taunting saying you'll never catch me or whatever. Right. And so he didn't actually do that. But I was thinking to myself, like, this guy was very surprised not to mention, OK, so he's arrested for a crime that happened 30 years ago and he's only 55 years old.
01:18:01
Speaker
And that was surprising to me. Yeah, that shocked us ah on quite a few of these cases. We've been shocked at sort of the age of like Smirk was like that because he would have been very young um when he committed that crime. And now we're seeing like they've lived a whole life, but really they they're still kind of in their, I don't want to say they're prime, but they're like, they're just middle aged dudes who are getting caught.
01:18:28
Speaker
Right. And so so it was surprising to me, um, that at the time the murders were committed, you know, this dude was 24 years old, living with his parents. Yeah. Well, so he's charged in May of 2018, but he's only charged with Tanya's murder at first. Then in June of 2018, he ends up being charged with first degree murder in Jay's case.
01:18:53
Speaker
He comes into his preliminary hearings, he pleads not guilty. Investigators then put out a press release and they said, anyone who knew him between this time and this time, I think it was 86 and 88 or 85 and 88, we we want to want to talk to you. This next part kind of surprises me, but really doesn't. Several of his former friends get in touch with the police. So what surprises you that he had friends? Well,
01:19:20
Speaker
I mean, it doesn't surprise me that he had friends, but like I would hate it if my friends from like, I'm not the same age as this guy, but if my friends went from when I was 22, 23, 24 years old, like came forward to talk to the cops, I would be shocked that they remembered anything about me.
01:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, but if you had killed somebody. Right, right. That's the difference in us though. I feel like that would be, um, yeah, if I, which I don't think it would happen, but if like it came out that somebody I knew 30 years ago had killed somebody, I would be thinking really hard about it. Now it's unlikely I would remember anything, but in the event I did, of course I would come forward. And I do think that these people were close. Like I think one of them was like a roommate. Yeah. yeah so that would like's more ten coins right Well, so they're able to find out he worked as a delivery driver and they're they're able to confirm like the routes he would have been taking around the time of Jay and Tanya's deaths and their travel in general so they can kind of see where he would have crossed paths with them and like you said his is his room one of his roommates and
01:20:29
Speaker
which may have been the reason he moved back in with his parents. Uh, they tell police that they had seen Talbot with a blue blanket in his home or his car. It would have been similar to the one found on Jay's body. And this same guy notes that Talbot had a tumultuous relationship with his family. He had allegedly broken his sister's arm on occasion on one occasion. Um, he was involved in drugs and when he would drink his, the,
01:20:58
Speaker
personality changes that he had were steep. They also recalled that in fall of 1987, there had been a bronze van parked outside of his home. They recalled that Talbot had taken this roommate to the same general area at some point where he believed that he had been to the spot where Jay's body would be found later. And so it Does that make you think like the roommate suspected something? I to think like it probably wasn't a roommate for super long because like it sounds like the roommate seemed to think that Cabo was a little creepy.
01:21:37
Speaker
Well, okay, i I do find it really hard to believe that he recalled seeing a bronze van on a misty day. and is that what it Is that what the description was? A misty, like rainy? It was a misty day in fall of 1987, which would have been 31 years earlier. I find that strange. I would find that a little weird too.
01:22:03
Speaker
Um, there's no telling and I'm not saying anything about the roommates. Uh, I'm not saying anything about it except like, I believe that if you thought really hard, you could think of some stuff, but that's quite, of course, if he only lived with him for one fall, right? Yep.
01:22:23
Speaker
And he remembered that, you know, the bronze van was while they were living together and it was the fall time. I mean, I guess that could be a process of elimination as opposed to a memory. I had trouble following some of the roommates trial testimony to determine like when they had lived together because, so the trial is taking place in the 2019 or so. And yeah I was under the impression he had been living with his parents at the time of the crime, but then we got this roommate testimony. So,
01:22:55
Speaker
I'm not saying I didn't understand it. I'm saying that like some of it didn't match up exactly, but it was so overwhelming. I don't think it really mattered. what is said dna Well, I was going to say not to mention the fact that, you know, the DNA comes into play and really that's what start. That's the only thing connecting him to begin with, right? yeah um But it is the thing that connects him.
01:23:17
Speaker
Right. So June 2019, about a year after his arrest, um, he goes on trial for the murder. His defense tells a story and that story is that Talbot and Tanya had had sex, but that she and Jay were killed by someone else. And that makes sense because what other defense is there? Yeah, there wasn't much to it. The prosecution tore it apart. They pointed out a lot of different things that didn't make sense. Um,
01:23:45
Speaker
They brought out some interesting details. I'm not going to bring them all up here because they're personal to Tanya. But the idea was she was in a foreign country at a time. She probably wouldn't be having sex with her boyfriend. And like, like, why would this happen? Well, not to mention, I believe um that his DNA was found on a zip tie, which his DNA was all over the scene.
01:24:09
Speaker
Right. So that would be kind of contrary to consensual to a a consensual encounter, I think. um Not to mention she was traveling with her boyfriend, right? um So it's just weird, but that would be very unlucky. Right. And so he gets convicted June 28th, July 24th of 2019. He sent us a life in prison without the possibility of parole.
01:24:34
Speaker
Can we just take a second right here and like pluck this guy from obscurity for in 2018 to be put on trial June 2019 for the crime that occurred in 1987?
01:24:54
Speaker
Now he's sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and this had to have hit him like a ton of bricks, right? It did, but I'll tell you one thing that hit me like a ton of bricks. So he's 24 years old, right? huh This is some sophisticated shit as far as killing with the zip ties and the picking them up on the ferry and killing two people. It's like hard to wrap your head around that.
01:25:24
Speaker
I mean, sort of, but he seemed to be. I mean, ultimately, I'm not I'm not giving him like smarts for being like a great cover up of his crimes type guy because ultimately he's caught. But my point is like 24 years old, I could not imagine myself, me personally, having the forethought to like put together a kill kit to go commit a rape double murder.
01:25:53
Speaker
Right. And so I do feel like they're on it as far as trying to match the DNA because again, this was a big deal. This couple was killed and and the DNA of the perpetrator was front and center of the case as soon as DNA was available, right? Correct. And so I have never heard it matching any other case.
01:26:17
Speaker
I haven't heard of that yet. I have not looked at Talbot in a minute. He came up today because we were covering this other stuff. Great. And there's actually more to what happened to him. Yeah. So Talbot ends up in December, 2021. So a couple of years ago now, he actually has his murder conviction overturned by an appellate court in Washington. One of the jurors on the case stated during jury selection that she didn't know if she could be impartial because of domestic abuse in her family.
01:26:46
Speaker
the court stated that they were not a hundred percent sure that the juror was completely free of bias. And they decided that that affected the outcome and conviction in this case. Now, the state's attorneys, the the prosecutors, they're on this. They appeal this decision by the appellate court. And a year later, December, 2022, the state Supreme Court, they end up reinstating Talvish murder convictions, noting that his defense attorney should have dismissed
01:27:20
Speaker
this juror prior to the trial if the defense felt that they were biased. weve I've looked at this. I have some questions about it. It doesn't completely wrap up for me yet. It does look like they could pull a habeas with this and say they were out of preemptive challenges or something. And I've read through the documents trying to figure out if that could happen. I don't know the answer to that yet, but that's really the only thing I've looked at related to Talbot. I haven't looked to see if they're trying to track him down.
01:27:49
Speaker
Washington and Oregon out there, such a breeding ground for unsolved cases that like potentially he could be linked to something else. Unless it's one of those cases where, for instance, if Tonya's body is not found till much, much later, and that DNA is not there, he's never linked to it from that perspective. Or if the DNA from the crime team just wasn't kept for whatever reason. Right, right. Or if it was, yeah, if it if over time it was Because I don't know what they i don't know i do i don't know what like the statistics on it are, but I'm positive that not all cases have DNA like in CODIS waiting for a hit, right? Correct. um And you know I've talked about it before, how like extraordinary it is to have some of these law enforcement investigators, you know, keeping crime scene evidence that at the time they're putting it ah securely in the evidence container, they have no idea what's going to be used in the future to test it, right? yeah um And it it ends up in this case being, you know, it it's the only thing. Now, do you think it's possible that Talbot
01:29:03
Speaker
like had this desire in him, he completed the desire and then, because, ah because you know, this is a chance encounter, right? For the most part, ah he his delivery route, you know, what have could have possibly had them crossing paths, but for the most part, um it's possible he wanted to kill somebody and get it out of his system or whatever.
01:29:29
Speaker
i I think there's a number of ways that can go. like He could have kept doing it and we just don't know yet. It could be that like he wanted to get it out of his system. I've met those people. It can also be that that like they thought they wanted to do it and the fantasy was better than the reality, and then it ruins it for them.
01:29:45
Speaker
I hate to say it that way, but like that's the only thing I think up to describe. like I've seen killers that have like what I would call an urge or a need, and they just do it. And then I've seen killers that like once they do it, it like physically puts them over the edge internally. And then there's like kind of the middle ground folks. like They're not going to do it again because it was actually a giant pain in the ass. And I hate saying it that way, but like I believe that there are people who commit a heinous crime. And that heinous crime being committed scratches the edge that you're kind of alluding to, but also makes them realize that that's not really what they wanted to do in the first place. Well, I could see where people could um really kind of ruminate or really enjoy like getting away with something. Right. Like for a really long time. And then, which I don't know how much of it was him versus how much of it was, you know, the defense attorney, um,
01:30:44
Speaker
with regard to you know pleading that guilty and coming up with the only ruse that you really can use when a sexual assault of a victim yields a DNA profile, which would be that the sex was consensual and they just happened to be murdered by someone else. Yeah, they're really just putting on a vigorous defense like because they have to. I don't know that I've ever actually had a case that I investigated and came to that conclusion where like the DNA sample wasn't relevant to a murder. No, I will say that I'm always open-minded to that. It's just like there's certain hurls you have to jump over. and like well A lot of times they box the perpetrator into not knowing the victim, right? yeah And then you can't really go back and say you had consensual ah a consensual encounter with them when you've said you don't know them.
01:31:36
Speaker
yeah ah So we started all of this with a couple of couples like we've gone through like a quite a few couples that we've talked about and that was one of the things that kind of got us here. ah We didn't wrap up the first one though.
Discovery of Mike's Remains and Theories
01:31:48
Speaker
We talked about Mike and Diana. Mike's case does end up being wrapped up. It's years later, March 26th of 2011.
01:31:57
Speaker
A hiker discovers a partial human skull in the woods off of State Route in Lewis County, which is still near Mineral, Washington. It's about a mile away from where Diana's body has been found. So police search the scene. They find a lower jawbone with teeth, this partial human skull that was the initial discovery, a rubber boot, some partial clothing. And in April of 2011, the remains are identified as Mike Raymer.
01:32:26
Speaker
So no other traces of him have been found. His cause of death could not be determined. They believed that they were able to rule out fully a gunshot wound to the head. So, you know, take with that what you will. His gun reportedly was not found at the scene. But according to a hiker who found the skull, there was a large hole in the side of this partial skull.
01:32:50
Speaker
So what do they think caused that hole? Well, authority said that he might be a homicide victim. We don't have any more information than that except the description of the hole and the fact that he could have been a homicide victim. I don't i don't know. like I've seen things that people say are gunshot wounds that I don't believe are gunshot wounds sometimes. i you know i You get into statistics and probabilities there. Right. And I mean, that's fine. i So if he had killed Diana,
01:33:18
Speaker
and gone off and committed suicide, we would expect to find his gun unless the remains that were found much, much later um were what? Drug there by animals or something. right right right ah To everyone's knowledge, the gun has never been located. um
Investigation and Speculations on Serial Killer Links
01:33:39
Speaker
There is a large hole in his skull.
01:33:42
Speaker
I don't think that happens from animals. I was trying to think of like, I guess you could suffer like a wound to the head and then maybe like the fragments could be picked apart by animal activity, possibly. But it would have to be a pretty bad wound. ah Yeah, if you hit with a hammer or like some type like ah some type of like acts or that or something, but that's not characteristic of the other murders here. So that's why I haven't, you know. Sure. Right. The authorities did say it's possible that an unknown serial killer may have been responsible for a slew of these deaths. In this instance, kind of the four people that we start with, meaning Mike and Diana, and then Steven and Ruth.
01:34:27
Speaker
um I will say the Unsolved Mysteries Wiki wrap-up was pretty good. It said in November 2011, detectives submitted DNA and found at these crime scenes to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab for analysis. They also released a detailed description of the sock that had been found around Diana's neck.
01:34:46
Speaker
as you know the I don't know where the roof sock was found because she was decapitated. um But it was a white stretchy knee-high basketball sock about three feet in length with dark navy blue colored rings are around the top. ah They described it as dengue, meaning it had some dirt or tent to it. When it was found around her neck, it had been tied in multiple knots.
01:35:09
Speaker
Obviously, Jay and Tanya's case comes out of this mix because of William Talbot, but it's never said publicly, I don't think, if Talbot is even considered for Steven and Ruth or Mike and Diana.
01:35:27
Speaker
In 2020, and this is according to Unsolved Mysteries Wiki, Pat Beale, who's a Lewis County cold case detective, was interviewed for a podcast called Washed Away. He said the police still believe that Mike would be a suspect in Diana's murder, and that they were trying to get a DNA profile from Mike's remains to compare it to a DNA profile that had been found in the ligature that was used to tie Diana's hands.
01:35:52
Speaker
He also stated that there was testing being done on evidence from Steven and Ruth's crime scenes. He said he wasn't sure if the cases were connected, but he noted that the socks, while similar, were not from the same badge. He said that if the DNA does not match Mike, then they will start comparing it to any DNA that might have been found at other crime scenes. Right. And so that um never really, we did you know we're four years out from that and we haven't heard anything.
01:36:21
Speaker
And I looked, there's not a lot of current on this case. A couple of other podcasts have sort of covered it from the mystery perspective. I've started digging into this kind of large thing. I know that if people wanted another deep dive in that area,
01:36:35
Speaker
ah There's the Lewis Clark Valley murders. And I think the Snake River podcast covers that in detail. um It's been a minute since I've listened to it. I think those are all going to be the same series of crimes that they're not these that we just talked about, but another series of crimes and out in that area that are unsolved. And I feel like this series of crimes that we just talked about, um I do feel like some damage was done ah with the possible, you know,
01:37:07
Speaker
solving of them by trying so hard to link them together. Yeah, that's another thing. You and I spend a lot of time on linking things we don't think makes sense. I ultimately don't do a lot of that here, but I always have that in the back of my mind. Yeah, I didn't do a lot of it, but I do feel like um as time goes by, because where all of these happened ah close to 40 years ago. great Correct, correct. So as time goes by, like because it was like a bunch of couple killings, right? I mean, it was it's alarming what was occurring.
01:37:40
Speaker
but it It's group think mentality that it it really ends up being the end of it. But it's concerning to me that it's stated that um the cold case detective out of Lewis County, you know they have submitted DNA possibly from these cases. And
Theories on Mike and Diana's Deaths
01:38:03
Speaker
like you know if no hits are coming back, does that mean that there is like an unknown killer out there, right?
01:38:10
Speaker
And that's why this is our Halloween case. Well, but the other part of it is, okay, so in the event, logic tells me that Steven and Ruth were killed, unfortunately, by whomever he was having the disagreement with, right? It was a fit of rage. ah I think he had been in a wreck and his motorcycle had been damaged. Yeah.
01:38:35
Speaker
So logic tells me that more than likely that person needs to be looked at, right? yeah um Because of the kill shot to the forehead. um And then with Mike and Diana, um I really can't get over the baby daughter being dropped off at Kmart. I don't feel like any of the active serial killers would have done that. You feeling you think he,
01:39:04
Speaker
You think he um does the murder and then drops the kid off and comes back or he drops the kid off, takes mom out there to the trees, kills her. No, he would have to have um done it. out I don't think that that was his plan. um But the little girl tells her grandmother that mommy's in the trees. Yeah, that's what I mean. And so she had to have been out there. So it has to happen between her death and then his death. So he murdered her, drops the kid off, kills himself or... Yeah, I mean, something. I think that's what makes it so confusing, honestly. Well, right. I don't think that he meant... I think that things got out of hand. I don't know what happened. It's a case... So with Mike and Diana, um if I recall correctly, there were court records indicating that there was a... mess yeah
01:40:02
Speaker
a protection order in place that they had lifted themselves, right? Correct. Okay. What are the chances of somebody who is in that particular position where you have had a domestic violence protection order issued against someone and you get it lifted and then you die, you're murdered, and it's not the person ah subject to the order that did it?
01:40:32
Speaker
Right. We've talked about this before, right? it's It's very unlikely. I'm not saying it's impossible. I do find it odd that his gun wasn't found. I also believe that somebody walking in the woods could totally pick up a gun and put it somewhere even if they were just like, I don't want this to get in the wrong hands, right? Yeah.
01:40:55
Speaker
and then like never think about it again, or I don't know what the thought process would be, but I think there could be an explanation for why the gun wasn't found. However, I'm not sure why they... um they said that the gigantic hole, according to the hiker, in the skull wasn't a gunshot wound. So there's still a lot of confusion there, but the DNA would show conclusively, because if it was on the ligature used to tie Diana up, if Mike's DNA was on that, that would lend towards it being him, right? Yeah. Not to mention, like,
01:41:36
Speaker
This is really awful, but they should have, you know, they were very quick to say that, uh, crystal was not verbal enough to give an accurate account. right And that was probably true at the time. That doesn't mean she's completely forgotten. And as she developed, um, skills to express herself, she might've been accurate. I'm sure her grandmother probably asked her and she probably had a very,
01:42:04
Speaker
strong recollection of what occurred, right? Because she was able to tell them that mommy was in the trees, but it it was a weird, that's a weird case and it's a sad case, right? And it's- The one thing for me was I went through digging. So Ruth's body is found October 26, 1985. This happens with Mike and Diana, December 12th, 1985. I tried to find a news article between the two things. So basically Halloween to Thanksgiving. Right, about the sock. Where the sock is mentioned. If the tube socks mentioned, I could totally see him being involved from that perspective. If the tube sock is not mentioned, either Mike is involved in the prior murder,
01:43:04
Speaker
or not at all. Right, and so it could really go either way and it would be relevant because that would blow the lid off of my whole domestic violence theory. That would actually be a situation where she dropped the protective order against him and he did not kill her and she ended up dead. Yeah, it would be one of those rare occasions that like you have that confluence of events and it's it's weird. It's very weird.
01:43:34
Speaker
It is weird. um I don't know. i find I would find it odd. um So I really do firmly believe, and I don't understand why this wouldn't have been sorted before now. But shooting somebody between the eyes and the forehead while they're sleeping, that is like clearly somebody that's got a bone to pick with him, right? Yeah.
Discussion on Crime Patterns and Theories
01:44:04
Speaker
as somebody that's pissed off. That is not a serial killer type murder, unless, you know, the target was the woman, but she was shot too, right? ru ah Ruth was shot twice in the abdomen, but that's probably because she was trying to get away from the situation. i'm not it it They don't really get into all the details about it, but the quick shooting it wait It's just like in Charles Sinclair, where he was shooting the um the shop owners, right? Well, I think that's how he ends up in this mix, similar caliber. Probably, right. And then Mike had a .22 that he supposedly carried with him when he was checking the traps, right? Yeah.
01:44:49
Speaker
um It seems like, you know, that's convenient. um And then I had that whole thing about like how they know the sock was attached, right? It's possible, you know, that this guy had a beef and then maybe he the same guy had a beef with Mike.
01:45:09
Speaker
You know, we don't know who this is. No, we don't. And we, you and I have covered a lot of stuff taking place out there during this time period before this. I actually just had a little bit of deja vu and I was like, have I said this before? Uh, no, I don't think you have. I mean, we had this, we had other cases out there where we were, uh, we, some we've covered on the show, some we didn't, uh, specifically I'm thinking of a John Ackroyd.
01:45:38
Speaker
And he was a weird one. um That's technically Oregon, not Washington. And he stayed very close to home. I think there's the reason I even bring him up is because I think if you are dealing with a serial killer,
01:45:56
Speaker
I would want to look at the initial crime scenes and see if you don't have some kind of territorial issue, like some kind of super predator. Somebody like that is doing this based on whoever gets close to his territory, he feels like they're fair game. That's a very- Holy cow. Yeah, it's very rare. We've only seen like three of them, but they do exist. With which case are both of them? In this instance, it would kind of have to be a mineral Washington super predator.
01:46:24
Speaker
Because it was 15 miles apart, right? Yeah. Do you have any stats on anything else happening there? Or just from this? Because it was four people, I mean. Well, it's not that kind of... We're doing a two-parter for Halloween. No, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of unsolved murders in Lewis and Pierce County, Washington. I can send you a stack if you'd like to look through them. This was an interesting one from one perspective. One of my go-to sources, which I think you know this by now, is always NamUs.
01:46:53
Speaker
right So weirdly, um and I'll give you these numbers and then I'll kind of drift away from this for a minute. If you go and look at mineral Washington, there's no missing persons. But if you pull up Lewis and Pierce counties, there are 147 missing persons. And just depending on where you want to start with that, they go way back in time.
01:47:20
Speaker
Lewis and what? Pierce County. Because mineral spreads across Lewis and Pierce. There are a lot of missing persons. 154? Something like that. Yeah. So if you go hunting in there, you'll discover a lot of children are missing in that area. Lots of them, like a lot of teenagers go missing. So, you know, you want to hunt it out. 84 to 85, I think I found eight teenagers.
01:47:48
Speaker
but That might've been 83 to 86, but there's a lot of people in there. So you could definitely go down a rabbit hole and find some stuff that could potentially be connected. This couples thing, though, that's rare. We've talked about this at length over the years, and I just wanted to stack a bunch of couples cases for Halloween, because it's one of the scariest things. like I'll tell you what, I feel the safest when I'm out with my wife. When the two of us are together, I feel like, one, I always kind of feel safe.
01:48:17
Speaker
like I was going to say, you know what? I always will say, I am not worried. well you know but you But in situations where the potential... Dude, I have been to other countries and flown to other countries, la, la, la, down like the streets of Paris, not even the slightest bit concerned with my own safety. And of course, my husband has.
01:48:42
Speaker
And he's freaking out. But that's one of the reasons that you're not concerned for your own safety. guess I guess not. But it never even occurred to me that I should be concerned. And nothing ever happened to me. So I mean, I get it. These cases don't terrify you for Halloween. I need to come up with something better next year. Is that what you're saying? um I feel like these cases have very logical explanations. And the links between them pissed me off.
01:49:10
Speaker
because they keep them from being solved. um It is way more likely that Steven and Ruth ah were victims of somebody that was getting revenge.
01:49:28
Speaker
And ah Mike and Diana had a domestic issue. And I hate even saying that out loud. And I'm not trying, i'm not I don't know that that's the truth. I just know that like these cases come up this way. And to me, that's what probably happened right without further information. Why
Closing Notes and Call to Action
01:49:46
Speaker
haven't they been solved? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. Timing-wise and proximity-wise,
01:49:56
Speaker
You know, I say that with such, like, I'm so glib about it. Like, oh, these all should be solved. But then, like, what would I do with my life?
01:50:07
Speaker
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01:51:13
Speaker
Crime XS 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. Thank you for joining us.
01:51:33
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network. And I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great. And we we were able to join their Creator Network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. You know, I've considered A lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcast. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now. And I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.