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Season Five: Sick Killer's Brain Pt. 1, Keep 'em Alive
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In Today’s Episode, we talk about some true crime news and a series of serial killings that may indicate the work of several serial killers in the same geographical area outside the PNW.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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.
Seasonal Reflections and True Crime Introduction
00:01:01
Speaker
Okay, so it's that in-between time like between Halloween and Thanksgiving and that's always a weird time of year for me. It's like what do I do for these couple of weeks and Work and family time is not Like there's not a lot going on So I thought like what I would do today is there's a piece of true crime news I want to talk about because we talked about this several times already and then there's this series of serial killers, if that makes sense, like it's multiple serial killers. And I thought we would start that, like we would talk about it. I could give a really good overview of most of it in a couple of episodes, but like the truth is, it's a lot of still partly unsolved things.
Juliana Perez-Magales Case Overview
00:01:47
Speaker
But to start off today, I thought we would talk again about Juliana Perez-Magales.
00:01:53
Speaker
ah Did you see this news that came out? It was around Halloween, I think, that it popped up. the ah You mean like the progress? Yeah, yeah so this is the au pair that was in the double homicide in Virginia, up in Fairfax County, Virginia.
00:02:10
Speaker
Right, and that happened in February. that The crime happened February 24th, 2023. Correct, yeah. A woman named Christine Banfield was stabbed to death. She's 37-year-old. She's married to a guy named Brendan Banfield. And then there was this 39-year-old guy, Joseph Ryan. He was shot to death and and had the weird 911 call. We talked about this in, I think, all the staging in the world, maybe. Yes, that's the one.
00:02:37
Speaker
There's another episode where we like followed up on it because they did finally charge the husband. This is interesting. So the 24-year-old au pair, ah Juliana, she has now pled guilty. um You can pull this up from multiple sources, but People magazine summarized it kind of this way. A Brazilian au pair who was charged in connection with the deaths of her ex-lover's wife and another man has pleaded guilty to manslaughter to one of the slayings.
00:03:07
Speaker
The plea deal is between Fairfax County, Virginia prosecutors and the attorneys for Juliana Perez-Magales. It's the latest development in the bizarre double homicide case. So Steve Descano is fairwell Fairfax County's commonwealth's attorney. that's He's the district attorney there, basically.
Brendan Banfield's Involvement
00:03:27
Speaker
He said that this plea agreement, which was made on Tuesday, October 29th in the shooting of 39 year old Joseph Ryan,
00:03:35
Speaker
He believes it marks a significant step forward in the case, and it's an important development in the pursuit of justice for the victims and their families. Now, in September, Brendan Banfield, who is Christine Banfield's wife, but was also Juliana's lover or ex-lover, he was indicted by a Fairfax County grand jury on four counts of aggravated murder.
00:04:01
Speaker
and one count of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. And this is related to the deaths of Joseph Ryan and Christine. I'm not going to go back into all of the details of like the crime itself, but here's what they're saying. And this is according to a guy named Eric Clingan. He is the deputy Commonwealth's attorney. So he is like second in command in Fairfax County. At the plea hearing, he said,
00:04:29
Speaker
that Brendan had expressed a desire to be rid of his wife. ah We've heard that this might actually be coming from multiple affair partners, including Juliana. The month before the murders, Brendan allegedly creates a profile on this alternative lifestyle website called FETlife dot.com, F-E-T-L-I-F-E. And he starts communicating with Joseph Ryan, who is a mixed martial arts enthusiast who liked live action role playing. A lot of words there. Then he
00:05:08
Speaker
basically directs Juliana, the au pair, to start talking on the phone through a messaging application called Telegram with, so the
Staged Crime and Investigation
00:05:18
Speaker
two of them are talking. So Juliana is talking to Joseph Ryan, and this is like a way for him to confirm the plan, which is that these two are gonna meet up. And according to Clingan,
00:05:34
Speaker
Brendan Banfield then lures Joseph Ryan to the home, February 24th, 2023. The allegations that they make are that Joseph Ryan likely believed he was meeting Christine Banfield. Do you have a consensual sexual encounter that involved restraints being used on her and having her clothing being cut off with a knife that he brought and other violent or pseudo violent sexual role play?
00:06:03
Speaker
Banfield, the husband, had allegedly given Juliana a gun that he bought a month earlier and he told her that she needed to call Christine's phone when Joseph Ryan enters the home and then to call Brendan's phone saying there was a strange man at the house and that she was scared.
00:06:26
Speaker
So the call to Christine's phone went straight to voicemail because Brendan had turned her phone off and put it in the kitchen drawer when he was leaving home that morning. Brendan then gets Juliana's call while he's at a nearby McDonald's waiting so that he can return quickly and be the hero. And the prosecutors allege that he drives home, he shoots Ryan in the head and stabs his wife.
00:06:53
Speaker
Juliana saw Joseph Ryan moving and she shot him. This is played out in the 911 call the duo then Reports the offense as if Joseph Ryan who they've invited here Albeit in the guise of Christine Banfield they report him as an intruder and they say that he stabbed Christine Banfield so they go through this process of investigating this case.
Juliana's Cooperation and Brendan's Trial
00:07:23
Speaker
They've served warrants on the Banfield home in 2023, but months after the crime in October. And investigators find photos of Brendan and Juliana in quote, romantic and loving poses. And they notice in the bedroom that the au pairs underwear, like it's like she's moved into the master bedroom.
00:07:46
Speaker
They charged her first with second degree murder and use of the firearm. She's not been charged related to Christine's death. So keep that in mind. She's been in custody for two years and she has now given, according to prosecutors, a detailed account of the killings that corroborated the evidence that was discovered during the course of the investigation. So she's facing up to 10 years in prison for these charges.
00:08:12
Speaker
but She's going to be recommended to be released from custody with credit for time served as long as she continues to cooperate with authorities at the end of Brendan Banfield's trial. Her sentencing is currently scheduled for March 21, 2025. Brendan Banfield is scheduled to go on trial February 3. I just found this update to be really interesting.
00:08:38
Speaker
Right, so I think that recently we talked about ah the ah weird sort of, I don't want to say trend, but like on occasion, someone will kill somebody and there'll be this like brief moment where they're like, oh, a bear attacked, right? Right. So in this situation,
00:09:03
Speaker
i'm not sure I don't know if the gravity of this really hits everybody, but a man went online and catfished, pretending to be his wife, another man, and the prerogative of this whole endeavor was to set this stranger up to be the intruder that killed his wife after he murdered his wife and then murders him. I don't know that people can possibly grasp how complex and terrible a plan that is. Don't you think that Brendan Banfeld thought that he had come somehow, you know,
00:09:50
Speaker
He had come up with the perfect murders.
Digital Evidence and Crime Analysis
00:09:54
Speaker
I guess he does think that. I mean, so one of the interesting things about this is Brendan Banfield is a law enforcement officer. Obviously not a very good one, but I think he, I think he worked for the IRS. Right. But he's got a gun. right no no yeah is It is law enforcement, but I just, I'm not sure how much violent crime he had done.
00:10:17
Speaker
Well, i you know, it's an interesting crime and if they had got away with it... I would probably be even more interested in knowing how they did it, but I guess I'd never know about it. It's that kind of thing. I was going to say, um yeah, if they had gotten away with it, we wouldn't know about it. But also, if they got away with this, the investigators wouldn't have been doing their jobs, right? Digital evidence now is... I'm not saying that it's never um like misinterpreted or wrong, but
00:10:48
Speaker
From a point in time where we had experts interpreting what the data meant, and it was somewhat confusing in the judicial setting in court,
00:11:02
Speaker
um Basically, juries were relying on what they were being told by experts, and like nobody could really tell the difference because it was confusing, right? We've we've kind of, I think, surmounted, we've we've gotten past that sort of hurdle, and they can tell a lot of stuff. And it's presented in ways that juries can see with their own eyes, right? Right.
00:11:28
Speaker
with regard to, ah for one thing, people's location or at least the location of their phone, right? And um that is, ah to me, one of the the craziest things because not only have ah prosecutors and law enforcement started using it in crimes that happen, they are somehow mining the archives of previous crimes from long ago to get newfound information. It seems, right? Yes. And I find that fascinating because it was there all along. We just didn't know what to do with it.
00:12:09
Speaker
um And so I think that all the effort that went into this, and now we've got Juliana taking a plea deal and confessing, right? Confessing not only her own role, but also um Brendan Banfield's role, which he initially wasn't charged. It took a while, right?
00:12:32
Speaker
and then it was sort of our position that, you know, it seems really unlikely that this nanny took our ah pair, took it upon herself to kill this woman, right? And it's more than likely gonna involve the
Brendan Banfield's Mindset and Consequences
00:12:50
Speaker
husband. And of course it did, but it fell apart so quickly. So for all of that,
00:12:59
Speaker
They get absolutely nothing. He murdered his daughter's mother and a man who had nothing to do with anything. yep That is some cold-hearted action. It is, like and it's so interestingly planned. You don't get much more premeditation than luring someone you plan on making your, quote, killer intruder.
00:13:26
Speaker
I mean, he's the husband is even setting himself up to be the hero in this situation. How wild is that? it It's crazy.
00:13:37
Speaker
You did call it though. You said you thought the au pair would fold. Right. Because he, so he it wasn't like love. He was, he, he saw an opportunity and I, I cannot stand people like this. I can't stand people that think that instead of getting divorced, they should kill the, their child, other parent. Yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker
That is absolutely insane. And it it's if that crosses your mind, you need to get help, because I i just can't even fathom that situation. But it, to me, it demonstrates, for one, what the victim went through, right? Yes.
00:14:25
Speaker
Banfield was going through when she was alive, the receiving end of this, right? And so it makes it all the more sad because you know that like, wow, this guy is, he's got a deviant mind, right? Definitely. And if he had taken all that energy and effort and and focused on like trying to
00:14:51
Speaker
I don't know, fixes marriage, fixes life, not have these types of thoughts because I assume he thought it would be better for her to be dead so he didn't have to deal with it. And I guess financially speaking, it would work out better for him. It never works out.
00:15:06
Speaker
no No, whatever his plan was here, it backfired. And it's going to it's going to cost him life in prison, ultimately, more than likely. i don't I don't imagine this is a situation where they're overstating the evidence at this point because they've moved pretty slowly with his trial. If he goes to on trial,
00:15:26
Speaker
When planned, it'll be two years from the time of the murder. They've clearly had at least from what I could tell a year and change of active investigation. I noticed that they were still pulling jail calls right before they indicted him and the The jail calls at the time were between Brendan Banfield and Juliana. And she felt she started to feel the pressure of the situation. Basically, she felt like they were, quote, a couple only because. He didn't want her to essentially. Turn on him and she did that used her there. He did. He did. Yes. And this is I mean, it's a terrible setup. you know It's one of those things where
00:16:12
Speaker
if If you present it as like some kind of story that you want to put on TV in a fictional form, it seems too on the nose and too strange. You would have people saying it's not going to work. That doesn't work. It's not real. But this guy managed to pull it off and now he will spend the rest of his life in prison for not getting away with a terrible, terrible
New Case: The Great Basin Murders
00:16:38
Speaker
crime. I mean, he may plead out to this. I mean, it looks- He'll still spend the rest of his life. I mean, because there's two people that, that's the other thing. So Joseph Ryan is also a victim. He had nothing to do with any of this and he never knew what hit him. Yep. Yeah, I think that's- And that was really bad. Yeah.
00:16:58
Speaker
It's hard to express how terrible these two senseless deaths are for Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan, for the families that are left behind. It's absolutely horrible. And obviously they have an au pair, which means they have a child. And that alone, to me, it falls back to what you were saying. Like, how do you do this instead of just getting a divorce?
00:17:20
Speaker
And I don't have a lot more on this right now, but I'm i'm excited to see this go to trial and Vernon Manfield to get what's coming to him. Excited is probably like a ah ah ah wrong word to use in the circumstances, but like this guy, I think i think he legitimately thought he was going to get away with this.
00:17:37
Speaker
Well, and honestly, for a while there, it was looking I was disappointed in the fact that he hadn't been in charged. It took them a long time, I felt like, to charge him. But they I guess they were just you know making sure that that the ends justify the means and getting everything they needed in the meantime, which is fine. that I mean, they're the investigators. But I was just thinking to myself how ridiculous that would be for her to end up getting stuck with all of the culpability.
00:18:08
Speaker
Because in a horrifying situation where he wasn't brought to justice, like people like him that catch these awful plans, they don't change, right? No, they do not. We have a new case. Do you have anything more on the the Banfield murders right now? Nope, not right now. We have a new case that we're going to cover in a couple of episodes.
00:18:30
Speaker
This is one that's always fascinated me. Depending on where you read and what you read about this, there are lots of news articles on it. I think last count, there were eight serial killers involved in this story. I thought we would start today just kind of setting it up because the victims in this case have had their own interesting stories along the way. And sometimes they've made their way into our true crime news, but we've never just looked at ah how it's gone down from the perspective of like this whole situation. and The truth is, like this is ah one of those things where you and I look at it and we go, why are they lumping all this together?
00:19:13
Speaker
And then afterwards, when they start to split it back out, it makes a little more sense, but it's also still really terrible. So I think that the lump together, i I think that it has like a couple of good attributes, even though ultimately it doesn't help as much, but I do think it helps to sort of.
00:19:33
Speaker
you know, create sort of a mass attention, right? Yeah, you're right. Like it's sort of like, it's such a spectacle that like a lot of people end up reading about it that maybe wouldn't normally read about an individual case involved in it, but they read about the whole thing and maybe see something they recognize in there. Right. And this group of cases is is very circular in that, you know, I don't know that it's widely known as like ah the given name,
00:20:03
Speaker
But. it It does make its way all the way through, like you're saying. it They're lumped together, and then they slowly get torn back apart or individualized again, right? Yes. Our sources for this largely come from the Casper Star Tribune from a very long time ago.
Understanding the Great Basin Region
00:20:23
Speaker
The Salt Lake Tribune plays in here. We use newspapers dot.com for a lot of this. The Billings Gazette plays in. The Deseret News comes in here.
00:20:32
Speaker
ah i found myself reading The Pantograph, which I had never read before, The Daily Herald out of Nevada, um The Times News, several different AP articles related to kind of the individual cases. I think that's the bulk of it. There's some art that's been done based on these in the last couple of years. Wyoming Public Radio, I pulled previous sources that we had used. There's a very interesting article from the early 90s from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that plays in here.
00:21:05
Speaker
But kind of generally speaking, i you can go and there is now a well curated wiki on this. um Some of this information is found there pretty readily. Most of it comes from the sources that I just mentioned. This is a a series of murders that has a core nine victims. And they put that plus symbol on there when you read about it online. But the truth is,
00:21:30
Speaker
it's a bunch of different killers that at first it looks like it's the work of like one or two people. This happens for the purposes of the story that we're telling in Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho. And it takes place from 1983 to 1997. What we're going to be talking about for the next couple of episodes and the victims that we're talking about today, collectively, this is known as the Great Basin Murders.
00:22:00
Speaker
Now, the Great Basin Murders, there's a Great Basin Killer and a you know Great Basin Murderer. That's just what happens when the press talks about it. Realistically, this is an offshoot of a much bigger ah project where these task force have gotten together and looked at freeway or interstate killers.
00:22:23
Speaker
and Several of those people end up playing into this story. But the Great Basin murders, ah it's called the Great Basin murders because of the geographical area. And most of these victims were dumped near interstate highways that run across the Great Basin. The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous watersheds that basically have no outlets to the ocean in North America. I think the word for that is endorrhic.
00:22:54
Speaker
So it's a drainage basement that would retain water and there would be no outflow to other bodies of water.
Multiple Serial Killers Unveiled
00:23:01
Speaker
Now it spans most of Nevada, a lot of Utah, and then pieces of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California.
00:23:12
Speaker
It is noted for being a very dry or arid climate. And it has some of the most interesting topography in the United States. Basically has a low point at Badwater Basin in Death Valley. And the highest point is ah the summit of Mount Whitney.
00:23:34
Speaker
It's a very interesting area to to read about. It just happens to be in the context of something really terrible here. Now, most of these victims that are assaulted were either teenage or adult females.
00:23:50
Speaker
It's believed that they were sexually assaulted and then murdered by a strangulation, stabbing, or shooting. And then they would be abandoned either on hilltops in near interstates or in deserted like expanses of land that basically miles from nowhere is is the idea that comes to mind. But also some of the bodies are found in snowdrifts or in or near rivers. Some of the bodies were thought to have been post-mortem.
00:24:21
Speaker
This initially leads to speculation that all of these killings are the work of a single serial killer and the press nicknames that single serial killer the Great Basin Killer. I have found references to that as early as 1988 and in mainstream press as early as 1992. That idea over time has been abandoned. The reason it's been abandoned with the passage of time hindsight being 2020 It's been established by both local, state, and federal authorities that there were multiple unrelated serial killers operating in the area known as the Great Basin.
Janelle Johnson's Unsolved Murder
00:25:02
Speaker
And as that area grew, we were able to see that a majority of these killings with the onset of DNA evidence are committed by different perpetrators. So some of these murders that we're gonna talk about are solved and some of them aren't.
00:25:22
Speaker
But the place that we're gonna start is with the initial victims. so So these are the nine that are considered to be the quote, great base on murders. According to investigators on February 17th, 1983, a 23 year old woman named Janelle Johnson was hitchhiking from Denver, Colorado to Riverton, Wyoming.
00:25:48
Speaker
She was last seen at a truck stop in Sinclair, Wyoming at approximately nine o'clock PM. On March 1st of 1983, so about two weeks later, she was found raped and murdered in Fremont County, Wyoming. After murdering her, her killer buried her body in a very shallow grave, but he picked a bad location and run off water from storm drains pretty quickly eroded part of the gravesite. When examining her body, the authorities were able to determine that there were seminal fluid that they believed belonged to the perpetrator. There was also bite marks on one of her shoulders, and they made an impression of that at the time. Even though we have this, the killer is unfortunately still unidentified.
00:26:42
Speaker
samples of their killer's bodily fluids became unusable for testing after the refrigerator where they were being stored broke down. Now, I found on Reddit a really cool write-up. The user's name is Tara Calico's bike and they pulled together most of the information that I just mentioned and a little bit more.
00:27:03
Speaker
According to their write-up, they set out on February 16th of 1983, which was Janelle's 23rd birthday. She left Riverton around 5 or 6 p.m. and she was making her way back to Denver in order to interview with the Vinoy Talent Center. She was looking to get a modeling job.
00:27:23
Speaker
So she had made a phone call to her roommate on the 17th and this was to inform them that she had made it to Colorado. She had successfully completed her interview and she leaves the Denver area around 5.30 PM, makes her way back to Riverton. So in terms of driving, that's about a five hour ride. In theory, Janelle should have arrived home safely around 10.30 PM.
00:27:51
Speaker
9 p.m. when she's at the Sinclair, Wyoming truck stop. That's the last time she's seen and she never makes it home. Five days pass before anyone has any sign or word from Janelle, family and friends are worried about her. So on the 22nd of February, a missing persons report ends up being filed with the Riverton, Wisconsin Police Department. On March 1st, her body is discovered off of Muscat Creek Road.
00:28:21
Speaker
This isn't an area known as Shoshone. She had been buried, but they had quite a bit of weather that was contributing to the storm drains basically overflowing and it eroded part of the grave away so her body could be seen. There was an autopsy that was done there. We already talked about that a little bit. They don't have an effective way to use the DNA. And I assume once that refrigerator breaks down, they probably got rid of it.
00:28:52
Speaker
What did you think about this one? um I think that there's some good ah possible culprits i and i I don't know exactly who I would say, but so we've got you know a young pretty girl who's hitchhiking and she disappears after she's they she's known to be one place and she is headed back to another place, right? yeahtra So clearly she had been picked up, right?
00:29:18
Speaker
um it i I found some information. I was trying to see what this stands for. I'm not exactly sure. ah It's the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children. They have a little blurb about her um unsolved case.
00:29:39
Speaker
and It indicates that um she was found at the site of Muscrat Road near Shoshone, Wyoming by county work by county workers who were removing i like blocks of ice. And the road was rarely traveled except for oil-filled workers and county workers.
00:30:02
Speaker
And then it it kind of summarizes the rest of um what you said. And it adds that she appeared to have been dead for three days. did Interesting. So when they find her on March 1st, she hasn't been dead the whole time? i don't I don't know. That's what it says here. Now, again, this is ah you know somebody putting together information and sort of a database. I am not of the opinion that A lot of killers, even if they're not serial killers, even if they're just like a ah one hit predatory killer, I don't know that they keep their victim alive. Yeah, that's something we go back and forth on. Now, if it was never the prerogative to kill her,
00:30:54
Speaker
Of course, she had places to be, right? yeah She wasn't going to be with somebody like for an extended period of time. She was trying to get a ride, right? and so i'm not i don't feel like Predators and killers keep their victim alive because it's against human nature to to ah Hold somebody captive feed them and you know do whatever you're gonna do to them with your sick killer brain and form that like sick twisted bond and Then kill them like it's not that's not typically what happens because it's it's overwhelming for somebody that's already pretty messed up mentally, right? Right. And so typically, I would say there's a period of time it's not going to be, what, 13 days or something like that?
00:31:50
Speaker
Because she was last seen the 17th, and so I don't know if it was a leap year, but like it would be 12 days until February 29th, and this is March 1st, she's found. So that's about 13 days. I don't think somebody held her for 10 days. It's possible, but it just seems but but I also think that the reason I bring all that up is like that's a direct shot of who you would want to consider. like Who is the person doing it? If they held her for that long,
00:32:20
Speaker
they might not have been um planning to kill her. yeah There have been some very strange warped cases that at least present themselves as these weird like sex slave type cases where that's the prerogative that granted seventies and eighties, right?
Lisa Marie Kimmel's Case and Breakthrough
00:32:45
Speaker
I mean, a long time ago, but you know, it could be something like that.
00:32:50
Speaker
um I feel like her case is one of the reasons ah Janelle Johnson is representative of why hitchhiking was outlawed and my entire life I've heard how dangerous it is.
00:33:07
Speaker
Well, so it doesn't get, it doesn't get ah less interesting with a second victim. Do you want me to move on to her? Okay. And we're trying to put these in context. So this next case is considered to be the second victim, but there is some, there's a passage of time here. It's interesting for a number of reasons. It is a case that like we've mentioned in passing before, but this is the little miss murder.
00:33:37
Speaker
it is included in the Great Basin killings. So this is the name given to the murder case of Lisa Marie Kimmel. She's a young woman who disappears in 1988, and she's traveling again, Denver, Colorado, over to her family's home in Billings, Montana. Her case is called the Little Mismurder because her vehicle, which is a Honda CRX, this little small car at the time,
00:34:04
Speaker
It had the distinctive personalized license plate reading L I L M I S S so little miss. This was a fact that was seized on by the press and the law enforcement pushed it because they felt like that personalized license plate might lead to her being recovered.
00:34:25
Speaker
So let's talk about Lisa Marie Kimmel for just a second. She was born July 18th, 1969 in Tennessee. She was the oldest of three daughters, and she ends up being raised mostly in Billings, Montana. She graduates there from high school in 1987, and she had a job ah managing an Arby's restaurant over in Aurora, Colorado near Denver. Her mom, Sheila, was a regional manager of the restaurant chain.
00:34:55
Speaker
And the two of them would commute between Billings and Denver every week. During the week, Lisa and her mom were living in an apartment complex in Denver, but they each had their own separate apartment. and They would return regularly to Billings where dad, who's named Ronald, and the other Kimmel children, so Lisa's younger sisters, lived.
00:35:20
Speaker
On March 25th of 1988, Lisa leaves from Denver heading to her parents' home in Billings. Her mom, Sheila, had departed from Denver but took a flight the day before because she had a ski trip that she was scheduled to go on. While she's en route to Billings, Lisa had planned to stop in Cody, Wyoming, and she was going to pick up her boyfriend, who was named Ed. According to the Wyoming Highway Patrol,
00:35:48
Speaker
Lisa gets stopped for speeding at 9.06 p.m. in Douglas, Wyoming, which is just outside of Casper. So she's attempting to pay her ticket there, and she's followed to an ATM by the officer, but she can't use her debit card in the machine there. So the officer and Lisa make a deal that she's gonna mail a check to the police department to pay the fine once she gets back to her parents' home and billing. So is that normal?
00:36:17
Speaker
Not super normal, but sometimes with out of towners that can be a thing where they jail you. It depends on like, like we're dealing with the 80s traffic laws. It depends on how fast he was going and if it was like a reckless or something. Right. And so I, um, immediately my ears perk up when I hear like a police officer is demanding you pay them money. but Yeah.
00:36:44
Speaker
Right? Because that's all kinds of bad stuff there. I believe there's a recording of this interaction. um I don't know that she was speeding. I think her tag was expired. We could have been that too. Yeah. Okay. But I think there's a recording because she's ah clueless on the record as far as like why she's being stopped or whatever. And, you know, obviously this does not put the patrol officer in a great light.
00:37:10
Speaker
No, it would not. A little bit later, she disappears, right? Yeah, there you know there have been suspicious interactions like that over the years that like the police do turn out to be involved. So there's a reason to you know dig into that.
00:37:24
Speaker
Well, right, because if if he was the last person who saw her, it's suspect, right? well It turns out that that's not really the case, right? Right. They definitely investigate that angle because they come up with another sighting of her. and Right. And so they confirmed that, you know, that wasn't the last sighting of her. I just was wondering, I i don't know how um how common it would have been for an officer to demand a ticket to be paid on the spot. I thought it was weird. I have heard the audio. It didn't seem as weird listening to the interaction. right um So whatever. But I was just curious if you had any idea. No, I didn't have any idea on that. I did see, okay, so this is the last confirmed sighting. And by confirmed sighting, she has to show the officer her ID.
00:38:13
Speaker
But then there is an unconfirmed sighting of her at 10 p.m. that night inside a Casper, Wyoming grocery store that times up perfectly with her having been stopped in Douglas and then made her way to to Casper. So investigators looked at the officer to try and figure out if he had anything to do with it. And they ultimately conclude that he doesn't.
00:38:35
Speaker
So the following day, March 26, Lisa doesn't arrive. Her boyfriend, Ed, he actually calls the Kimmel home in Billings, Montana, and he says, hey, Lisa never stopped to pick me up. And they file a missing persons report that day. Eight days after her disappearance, so April the second,
00:39:00
Speaker
Lisa's body is found floating in the North Platte River near Casper, Wyoming by a local fisherman. then Keep in mind, like what I'm giving you is like what's been reported. According to sources, an autopsy determined that she had been bound, beaten, and raped for at least six days. Evidence showed that she was then taken to what's known as the Old Government Bridge, where she was head on the head with a blunt object stabbed at least six times in the chest and abdomen, and then thrown into the river. The autopsy showed that the head wound was so serious, it would have killed her in a matter of minutes, even if she had not been stabbed. There's a lot to unpack there. And like, I see these sources that just kind of glance over that part. Being held for six days is a very rare thing.
00:39:59
Speaker
It really is. And so I wonder if that's what links. So my initial thought was, why is Janelle Johnson and Lisa Marie Kemmel, why are they linked? And obviously, it's geographic location, right? Yeah. it's And the the travel path of Denver to Colorado through the Great Basin, that's what does it. Right. And so ah obviously,
00:40:27
Speaker
With Janelle Johnson, she's hitchhiking. Lisa Marie Kimmel is missing with her car, and then she's found, and her car isn't found. right right um and so That's very different. right That's a very different situation because ah hitchhikers are going to be vulnerable And it leads us, I don't, it leads us to wonder, okay, so how did this girl in her own vehicle who had thwarted, you know, a stop by police earlier, like how does it come to be that she is, you know, assaulted and thrown off a bridge and her car disappears for a certain amount of time, right? Yeah. Do you want to, do you want to talk about how her case wraps up or do you want to talk about the other victims here?
00:41:18
Speaker
um I was just making a comparison. We can do whatever you want. Her case is one of the most interesting cases to me. It shows up on Unsolved Mysteries. It's been on cold case files multiple times. Everybody has focused on this car, right? Yes. The car yeah yeah the the car is one of those things that like eventually it should be recovered in some way. It is a small car.
00:41:46
Speaker
I've spoken at length about ah people missing in automobiles, right? yeah And part of my thinking with regard to that stems from this case.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yeah, this is, okay, in the early onset of DNA evidence being used for cold cases, in fact, in the summer of 2002, investigators who were digging into this case, they come across the the rape kit from Lisa Kimmel's case. They develop a DNA profile from evidence in this kit. They send it through CODIS, and they get a match.
00:42:32
Speaker
Their match is with a 57-year-old man out of Moneta, Wyoming named Dale Wayne Eaton. He's talked about a lot, but I don't think people truly understand what kind of guy he is. At the time that he gets this match, he's in Littleton, Colorado, serving time in Inglewood Federal Prison for an unrelated weapons charge.
00:42:56
Speaker
His DNA had been placed in the CODIS database in 1997 after he was arrested on a separate charge. He had stopped to offer assistance to a family whose car had broken down, and then he kidnapped the family at gunpoint. After he gets arrested for this kidnapping, he escapes.
00:43:16
Speaker
But he's recaptured in Shishone National Forest. At that time, he possessed a weapon which elevated his crime, being in a national forest, to a federal level. So he's got two parts of the nexus there. One, firearms charges can frequently elevate you to a federal level. Being on national parkland or forest land can elevate you to a federal level.
00:43:42
Speaker
He then is incarcerated in federal in federal prison. He is required to submit a DNA sample at the time of that sentence. When investigators get to digging into Dale Wing Newton, one of his next door neighbors report to investigators that on his property in Minetta, Wyoming, which is about 75 miles away from Casper, they had seen him digging a very large hole.
00:44:10
Speaker
So in the summer of 2002, the site is identified and investigators excavate this site. Guess what's in the hole? The
Dale Wayne Eaton's Conviction and Aftermath
00:44:20
Speaker
car. The car. Lisa Kimwel's Honda CRX, still bearing her license plate, little miss, is in a hole on Dale Wayne Eden's property.
00:44:34
Speaker
I remember when that happened. It's wild. That is like one of the strangest things I've ever heard of. And when it happened, I was like, he buried the whole car. I mean, it's a small car, but still. Right. And so, okay, 2002, it was big news, right? um It was a big deal. And, um, I, you know, obviously that was a a while ago and I was, it wasn't like I had all the,
00:45:00
Speaker
you know I hadn't done all the research I've done at this point, and life was a lot different back then. right This would have been on like world news tonight. right yeahp um There may be a little bit on the internet, but so that car had to go somewhere. right no and That had been one of the biggest mysteries, and it was different because her body was found.
00:45:26
Speaker
yeah it's interesting to me that there was a separation. He took the time to bury the car. And I wondered why he didn't bury her with the car. That's ah that's a good question. My my guess is, hmm, I actually don't have a guess to that. Well, if you think about it, if he had buried her with the car, he probably never would have been caught.
00:45:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's no DNA profile at that point. Right, except he would go on to commit more crimes. It's interesting to me, though, I would like to know what the thinking was. It makes me think that he wasn't necessarily going to kill her, but then after he killed her, he realized he needed to get rid of her car.
00:46:21
Speaker
But you know I don't want to give potential predator, serial killers, any like ideas. But if he had buried her in the car, it never he never would have been connected by DNA. And the neighbor never would have said, hey, he was digging a big hole. Because we're talking about 14 years later, and it just so happened the neighbor recalled, right? Yeah.
00:46:48
Speaker
Now, I mean, I guess if he had, um perhaps if he had been, if he had done the family um kidnapping and was in prison, perhaps they would have talked and found it anyway.
00:47:07
Speaker
Maybe, yeah. But I don't know, but there was a connection between her and him through the DNA profile. But to me, it so something had to have happened there that broke that situation up. I think it's because like he killed her and then he was like, oh yeah, I've got this car. I need to do something with it. um But I don't know. Well, they find the car. He's subsequently charged with eight crimes in connection to Lisa Kemmel's case.
00:47:35
Speaker
He gets a first degree premeditated murder charge, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, first degree sexual assault, and second degree sexual assault. This is one of those cases that has a jailhouse snitch whose story actually makes a lot of sense. A guy named joseph franci da Joseph Francis Dax, he ends up testifying that Delwene Eaton had confessed to him. According to this story, whether you believe it or not, it's up to you,
00:48:05
Speaker
Lisa Kimmel had offered to give Dale Wheaton Eaton a ride and Dale Wheaton Eaton accepted, but he made sexual advances during the ride and Lisa did not like that. She pulled over and she asked him to get out of her car. Somehow her saying get out of the car then escalated to kidnapping, rape, and murder.
00:48:29
Speaker
and apparently for multiple days. That could be the difference between the burial of a car and her being dumped in the river, the fact that like he held on to her for multiple days. um So ultimately, he's found guilty. March 20, 2004, he's sentenced to death. He appeals his conviction and then loses. He was scheduled to be put to death in February 2010. He sought and received a stay of execution in December 2009.
00:48:58
Speaker
That stay of execution was overturned in 2014. The state was originally planning to seek a reinstatement of his death sentence. They end up dropping the request in September, 2021. And prior to all of this happening, when he gets removed from death row,
00:49:18
Speaker
Dale Wayne Eden was the only inmate on Wyoming's death row.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:49:24
Speaker
Now he loses his property to the Kimmel family during a wrongful death lawsuit. And on July 18th, 2005, which would have been Lisa Kimmel's 36th birthday, the buildings on the property were burned to the ground. So we'll pick up next time with the next series of crimes that are related to the Great Basin murders.
00:50:01
Speaker
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00:51:07
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.
00:51:27
Speaker
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