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E251: Dorothy Miller
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In Bethel, New York, from August 15th through the 18th, 1969, roughly half a million people had gathered to celebrate what was touted as “3 Days of Peace and Music” that we now refer to with a single word: Woodstock. But around a thousand mile away, in the staid community of Burlington, Iowa, life kept its slower pace, children played across the city’s 200 acres of manicured parks and residents sat on their front porches (just as I used to do with my grandma) and chatted with neighbors, talked about the weather, or just watched the sky fade to beautiful sunset hues. It was a town where the now seemingly lost art of leisure was still thriving.
Sadly, that peace would be short-lived, as the town was about to be rocked by a crime that would shake the community to its core and leave its residents (as well as law enforcement) in disbelief. This is the case of Dorothy Miller.
This case was a collaboration between Allison and Charlie from Crimelines. Be sure to check out the Crimelines podcast if you value both extensive, ethical, and empathetic coverage. Please check out the podcast website listed below for a timeline and images related to this episode as well as other cases:
https://www.basementfortproductions.com/crimelines-episodes/dorothymiller
If you are interested in bonus content for our show or in getting some Coffee and Cases swag, please consider joining Patreon. There are various levels to fit your needs, all of which can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/coffeeandcases
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Transcript
Woodstock vs. Burlington: A Tale of Two Worlds
00:00:00
Speaker
In Bethel, New York from August 15th through the 18th, roughly half a million people had gathered to celebrate what was touted as three days of peace and music that we now refer to with a single word, Woodstock.
00:00:15
Speaker
But around a thousand miles away, in the state community of Burlington, Iowa, life kept its slower pace. Children played across the city's 200 acres of manicured parks, and residents sat on their front porches, just as I used to do with my grandma, and chatted with neighbors, talked about the weather, or just watched the sky fade to beautiful sunset hues.
00:00:41
Speaker
It was a town where the now seemingly lost art of leisure was still thriving.
A Peace Shattered: The Dorothy Miller Case
00:00:47
Speaker
Sadly, that piece would be short lived as the town was about to be rocked by a crime that would shake the community to its core and leave its residents as well as law enforcement in disbelief. This is the case of Dorothy Miller.
Meet the Hosts: Coffee and Cases Podcast
00:01:37
Speaker
Welcome to coffee and cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Alison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families.
00:01:56
Speaker
With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
00:02:14
Speaker
I am so excited this week to share with you a case that I was lucky enough to work collaboratively on with Charlie from Crimelines. And what's more, I had the privilege to speak with Dorothy's grandson, Rob, as well as Rob's mother, Dorothy's daughter, Pat.
00:02:35
Speaker
for information on this case. And I think I can speak for Charlie here as well. I am so grateful for the two of them and for the insight that they were able to provide. Our listeners may not realize, but the act of speaking about a loved one's case is extremely difficult and can be emotionally traumatic.
00:02:56
Speaker
It's definitely not a task to be taken lightly. It's a sacrifice that we appreciate beyond measure. So thank you again, Rob and Pat, for sharing your memories and sharing your love of Dorothy with us.
Collaborations and Family Insights
00:03:11
Speaker
And I want to say that I am really excited to be able to record this with you because the we, you know, I don't know that it's appropriate to say that we share Rob, but we do share Rob as a listener. Yes. We did kind of a collab thing where we were both on doing separate stories. We didn't even talk to each other. They just got pieced together. And I can't remember if Rob found me or you from listening to it on the other one show. So it feels so fitting that we we honor that and talk about Dorothy. Agreed.
Dorothy Miller: A Burlington Native
00:03:43
Speaker
So we're going to start with Dorothy Miller, who was born Dorothy Hardin on January 10, 1921 in Iowa. Dorothy was the only child of her parents, Markey Henry and Mary Hazel. And in 1940, she married Fred Miller when they were pretty young, 19 and 20.
00:04:04
Speaker
They were young and in love, and they settled down in Burlington, Iowa, which had a population of about 25,000 to 30,000 people when they lived there.
Life in Burlington: A Connected Community
00:04:14
Speaker
And Burlington sits ah right on the Mississippi River on the Iowa side across the state line from Illinois.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's a place that's known for its parks and the scenic landscape that I think is known only to river towns. But because of that proximity to the river and thus commerce and trade, as well as its day as capital of the Wisconsin territory,
00:04:41
Speaker
Beginning in 1837, it served as the first capital of the Iowa territory, which I didn't know until Rob had told me that little historical tidbit. It's definitely a town with a history.
00:04:55
Speaker
I grew up in a town pretty similar to the size of Burlington, where it's not exactly a small town, but it still feels like a small town because you have multiple generations living in the same area. When I grew up in my hometown of Milford, Connecticut, my grandfather had previously owned the city taxi in the 40s and the 50s, and my grandmother worked for the Board of Education. So by the time I came along, everybody knew who my grandparents were.
00:05:25
Speaker
It wasn't a place where everyone necessarily knows everyone else, but everyone knows someone who does know someone else. That two degrees of separation. Yes, I grew up in a town very much like that. And I loved the story when I spoke with Rob of him playing as so many of us born in the, I guess before me, the sixties and then my generation in the seventies and even the eighties remember playing outside until the streetlights came on.
00:05:54
Speaker
And he told me of a time when he and a friend, they would have to get a parent's help to cross a busy street. But once they were over there, they would run and they would play all day in that free spirited way of children and then coming back to the busy road.
00:06:11
Speaker
they would yell and scream until they got the attention of one of their parents to kind of shuttle them back across. And it was a small enough town from the sense that I got from speaking with Rob that from one end to the other of the town, it was only about a 10 minute drive. So even families who lived on opposite ends were able to stay close, to get together for supper and to visit very often. It was definitely a town where It was safe to walk alone downtown, a place that, according to Pat, held Friday night dances for the young people, which sounds amazing. It was just the ideal place to raise a family.
00:06:52
Speaker
And that's what Dorothy and Fred thought because after they married, they settled down in this town and Dorothy got absorbed into the Big Miller family. She had been an only child, like I said, but Fred, he was one of 10 kids. So she loved just finally finding herself with this big family with all of these siblings.
00:07:15
Speaker
But they didn't only spend their time with family, though with 10 siblings. I mean, that could take up all of your time. but Yes, it could. They also loved to get together with their friends. They had a very tight circle of friends that Pat remembers, and they did a lot with them. And when they became parents themselves to their only child who you spoke to, Pat, Dorothy did something pretty unusual for this time period.
Dorothy Miller: A Pioneer in Real Estate
00:07:40
Speaker
She worked.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yes, I love that. And Pat told me that Dorothy was also friends with other career women as well. Rob echoed that saying, quote, she was a typical grandmother, but she was a working grandmother. She worked to provide for the family the same way her husband did, end quote.
00:08:02
Speaker
So Fred was working initially as a home builder, but later he became a truck driver and Dorothy had a job at a munitions plant. Then when Pat got older and was in school, she worked as a proofreader for the local newspaper and eventually she became a realtor.
00:08:21
Speaker
She was one of the only female realtors in the area in the 1960s. an article from the hawkeye published july twenty fifth two thousand and four by dorothy deouza gdis notes that then-retired policeman Jim Schreiner recalled Dorothy being, quote, the only female real estate agent in town, end quote. But Pat and Rob both told me that if there were another, there was definitely no more than two female realtors.
00:08:52
Speaker
At the time, this was definitely seen as a man's job. But Dorothy had an advantage here in that her husband had been a builder, and she had picked up so much of that knowledge over the years, so she knew houses. She could answer pretty much any question her clients had.
00:09:12
Speaker
Pat remembers that her parents were both just hard workers, but it sounds like they also made that conscious choice to make time for each other, which is someone who's been married for a long time. We both work. We have kids. I know how important it is to make this time.
00:09:30
Speaker
And Dorothy and Fred had a pretty standard routine.
Dorothy and Fred: A Close Relationship
00:09:33
Speaker
They would eat together every night. And then on Friday nights, they would go out for a fish dinner. According to Rob, it sounds like Fred would come home. He would shower because, you know, he's a hard worker. He's a little bit sweaty likely. And then most often lie down for a nap until Dorothy got home and prepped dinner and she would then wake him. They would have that dinner together. And as you said, spend time together every night before bed.
00:10:00
Speaker
Pat remembered just a wonderful childhood and a relationship between her parents. She said that while her friends would talk about their parents arguing, she can't remember a single argument between her parents. They would discuss things and one would say, here's what I think, what do you think? It was clear to her and to everyone that they respected each other so much.
00:10:25
Speaker
And another thing that she made sure she made time for was when Pat became a mother to two little boys and she became grandma. Yes, Tony and Rob. Rob came two years later.
00:10:40
Speaker
Pat lived only two blocks or so away, so when Dorothy would be out running errands, she'd just swing by and pick up one of the kids to go with her, which gave Pat a much-needed break. And on Saturday nights, if Pat and her husband wanted to go out, Dorothy would not only babysit, but she would usually ask if the boys could just spend the night with her. She even had a little crib set up in her house. I mean, what a wonderful break is that.
00:11:09
Speaker
It's been a while since I've had a break like that. Right. I know. Rob remembered that she would make these little mini pies for the kids, not just her grandkids, but even their cousins from their other side of the family. She would make all these little pies for the kids to have their own. And it just seems like such a traditional grandma. Yes. I think Rob said the other kids even called her the other mama. That's so cute. I know.
00:11:37
Speaker
And I think these stories may have other people thinking of their own grandmothers, but you know I think it's notable here that she was a young grandma. She had her daughter on the younger side, and then Pat had her first baby on the younger side. So Dorothy was about my age in her 40s when she became a grandma. So she still had her own friends, she had her job, she had her own a life going on, but she always made time for those boys.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, this reminded me a lot of myself. I had my daughter at 30, but my husband, my daughter's stepdad, he's nine years older than I am, and he had his children young. So both of my stepchildren have two babies each. So I'm 45 and have four grandchildren, ages three, two, two, and one. ah That is hands full ages. but Yes, ah yes, I'm a busy lady.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, Dorothy was just this woman who did it all. Yeah, she was a pioneer in so many ways. Something I noticed when I listened to the interviews you did with Pat, Dorothy's daughter, and then Rob, who's Pat's son, they both spoke of their mothers in the same way. So Pat had this high praise for Dorothy and Rob, in turn, had that high praise for Pat.
00:12:57
Speaker
And in true crime, I feel like we're constantly talking about generational trauma. So what a wonderful moment we get to sit here for a second and point out the opposite. A strong, secured and wonderful woman raised another strong, secure and wonderful woman. And as a parent, I can't imagine a better success than having your adult children still think the world of you. I know it was the sweetest thing to hear them speak of each their mother in that way.
The Last Meeting: Dorothy and Robert Clark
00:13:28
Speaker
Unfortunately, this is bringing us to the true crime portion of the episode. And I know when you're structuring episodes, you probably have the same problem where we talk about this unique and amazing person who we need to honor, and then we have to make this hard, jarring transition to, okay, and here's the terrible thing that happened. Yeah. it's It's never an easy transition for us to write in. Never.
00:13:53
Speaker
So we'll just go ahead and get into it. And we're starting with the night of August 15th, 1969. This was a Friday night, so Fred and Dorothy did their usual fish dinner. And Dorothy had an appointment that evening to show a house.
00:14:09
Speaker
This man who called Dorothy about the house said his name was Robert Clark and his plan was to move his family to the area from Des Moines. He wanted to go see a house that was at 118 Grand Street in Burlington.
00:14:25
Speaker
This house has a 1,400 square foot house, and I was surprised to see on Zillow that it only has two beds and one bath. The floor plan here, i though, even though it struck me by surprise, it's not really as important to the context of this case as the location. It is on a short dead end street near the Mississippi River. So we need to know that this is a house that would not have very much traffic coming by it.
00:14:55
Speaker
Because Dorothy was out with Fred already, and because this was someone they didn't know, he went with her to this house showing. I don't think, though, necessarily based on the conversations that Rob had with me, that Dorothy nor Fred were generally worried about her safety as a female realtor, number one, because crime wasn't as widely publicized as it is now.
00:15:24
Speaker
So she had this sense of safety. And number two, because most of the people who would be shown properties in Burlington were those from the town, either moving to a larger or to a smaller house, or even individuals who had grown up in the town and were now buying their own homes. So normally Dorothy was showing homes to people whom she already knew.
00:15:51
Speaker
Right. And something that I think is also important to note about this is that in this time period, it was pretty normal for a realtor to pick up the clients and drive them from house to house, particularly if they were from out of town and didn't know their way around.
00:16:08
Speaker
So Fred and Dorothy actually picked Robert Clark up from in front of a pharmacy on Maple Street. It was right near the Maple Leaf Tavern, which is where Robert had been seen by locals, and he used the phone there.
00:16:24
Speaker
From this pickup, it was about a four minute drive to the house. Like Alison said, there's nothing too far apart in this town. And Fred decided to just go ahead and wait in the car while Dorothy showed Robert the house. Then afterwards, they went and they dropped him off at the same place they had picked him up. And by Fred's account, it was an uneventful evening and a very normal showing of a house. Fred said that Robert seemed like a normal clean cut kind of guy.
00:16:54
Speaker
Pat even used descriptors like well mannered and gentleman to explain her father's reactions to the man. He said he had a young family. He was moving to the area. But other than that, he didn't really say much about himself. And he was even vague about the job that he was supposedly moving to the area for.
00:17:17
Speaker
The next day, so we're on August 16th, Robert said that he wanted to go back and see the house the second time, this so he could take some photos to bring back to his wife. But Dorothy was completely booked up that day with showings. And one of those showings, which was noted, was for a piece of land. And this person was a no-show, which happens all the time, but in the context of what comes next, it does get noted often.
00:17:48
Speaker
This is definitely a detail I want to come back to later. So let's put a pin in this one. So since Dorothy couldn't show him the house then, they decided to go instead on Monday evening at seven thirty. He went ahead and left her a number to call and it was the number to the Maple Leaf Tavern. So on August 18th, 1969, Dorothy called the tavern as instructed to confirm the appointment and the people at the bar would later say a man fitting that description did take a call that night.
00:18:22
Speaker
They said it was about 7 or 7.30. They then said they saw Robert leave the bar and get something out of his black pickup. I don't think anyone saw what it was, but it seems possible it was a camera since that's why he said he wanted to go back out to the house. If he got into Dorothy's car without a camera, it may have raised alarm bells for her. Exactly. And on the way to the Grand Street home, according to Pat, one of Dorothy's friends actually saw Dorothy with this
00:18:55
Speaker
Robert Clark. Dorothy had pulled over and waved to her friend and then told her friend that they were off to view a house and away they went. Around eight that night, people on Grand Street were out on the porch and they saw Dorothy and a man pull up and go into the house. They never saw anyone leave, but they did notice at some point that Dorothy's car had to left the driveway.
00:19:22
Speaker
It seems possible that on this visit, the two entered the home through the back door based on a detail you'll you'll hear more about here in a moment. Maybe he suggested that they enter this way since they entered through the front on the first visit. It also makes sense that the neighbors here likely didn't pay much attention. This was an unoccupied house that I'm sure saw other prospective buyers. So this visit was probably one of several to the home.
00:19:54
Speaker
At about 8.30 that night, Fred, who was back at home, laid down in bed. It's very likely he just thought he'd rest for a bit before Dorothy got home for the
The Search Begins: Fred's Realization
00:20:05
Speaker
night. But like we've already said, he was a very hard worker. He got up early and he worked all day. So instead of napping until Dorothy came home,
00:20:15
Speaker
He ended up sleeping pretty hard until his usual waking time of 5 or 5.30. And that's when he realized that Dorothy had never made it home.
00:20:27
Speaker
So Fred, not knowing where Dorothy was, called Pat, his daughter, because he needed a ride. He drove a big truck and Dorothy had their get around town car. Since she wasn't home and he was worried enough to go look for her, he wanted Pat to come pick him up, which she did.
00:20:46
Speaker
The two decided to start looking for Dorothy, where they last knew she planned to pick up and drop off this Robert Clark, which was near the Maple Leaf Tavern and the pharmacy. And it was there that they found her car. They looked inside and saw that the keys were still in the ignition. There was a flash cube for a camera on the front seat, and Dorothy was nowhere to be found.
00:21:12
Speaker
I think we should add here as well that Dorothy's car had been left unlocked. Most reports on this case say that at this point they went to the police directly, but this is where Allison's interviews really enlightened us.
00:21:28
Speaker
Fred and Pat actually went to a local grocery store, which I think, Charlie, you're more familiar with. Yes, it's the Hy-Vee. I've never heard of this. It's very Midwest and it's it's very Iowa. Okay. So they went to the local Hy-Vee.
00:21:46
Speaker
And Pat's husband actually worked there at the time and he was aware that the butcher in the meat department was also on the police force. So Fred and Pat went to ask his advice on what they should do. This police officer told them step one is to not go out to the house that she was supposed to be showing the night before and instead go straight to the police.
00:22:13
Speaker
Thankfully they listened to his advice because this would have been a much more severe trauma for them had they gone out to the house. Absolutely. So they reported Dorothy missing and two of the police officers. ah Wendell Patton and Jean Luce.
00:22:30
Speaker
went first to the car and they found everything just as Fred and Pat did.
The Discovery: A Brutal Crime Scene
00:22:35
Speaker
And then they went out to the Grand Street house to investigate further. They walked around the outside and they found that the back door was not locked. So they let themselves in and they made their way through the first floor and then went upstairs to where the bedrooms were. There were no signs of a struggle throughout the house until they got to the closet of one of the bedrooms.
00:22:58
Speaker
And that's where they found the body of 48-year-old Dorothy Miller, face down in the closet. Her clothes had been messed with, her dress was pulled up with her pantyhose, her shoes, and her underwear removed. They did determine that she had been raped and then stabbed once in the neck and 21 times in the back.
00:23:23
Speaker
In addition to this, Dorothy had blunt force trauma to the head. Half of her face was bruised and her hands were tied in front of her. Based on what Allison has learned about Dorothy through these interviews, we know that she would have done everything and then some to get away from an attacker.
00:23:43
Speaker
There would have been significant defensive wounds, signs of a struggle, something if she could have fought back. So the family believes, and they're probably right, that she was unconscious for the majority of this attack due to that blow to her head. I'm definitely inclined to believe that as well. Rob also told me that his grandmother would have fought hard against her attacker had she been able and Dorothy's daughter Pat said her father had always told her that Dorothy would have literally jumped from the second story window before she would have let someone do that to her. So I definitely agree with that assumption that she was unconscious as well because none of the neighbors have reported hearing a scream or even hearing a struggle.
00:24:34
Speaker
And we have to think about August in Iowa in this time period. Most people would have had their windows open. Yeah, so we've got potentially windows open. We know we have neighbors sitting out on the front porch who see them go in. So I definitely feel like had there been had she been conscious that somebody would have been aware.
00:24:58
Speaker
So with the evidence at the scene, the police believed that she was raped outside of the closet and then dragged in there and stabbed.
Profiling Boldness and Guilt
00:25:09
Speaker
I actually find the location of the crime telling in a lot of ways because I know you mentioned it is at the end of a dead-end street, so there wouldn't have been a lot of traffic. But if you look at the layout of the house and where the bedroom was located, where they found Dorothy, It was in the front of the house facing the street, and there are windows here. It's a vacant house with no dressing in them, no curtains hanging. To me, that indicates that this perpetrator was brazen, not caring not caring or worrying about someone seeing in. And even the fact that we know he drove Dorothy's car back to town,
00:25:53
Speaker
and could have crossed paths with anyone who knew Dorothy and would have been alarmed at seeing a stranger driving his her car, it shows that brazenness again. He also seemed very confident that he wouldn't be recognized in town because he let Fred see him, all the people at the tavern, ah the neighbors, like you said, anyone who saw him driving Dorothy's car, he had absolutely no fear of being recognized.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think all of that speaks a lot about his psyche. They did find at the scene a brick on the first floor of the house. And what I've seen is it says it was possibly what was used to knock her unconscious. I think a random brick in a house where someone has been struck in the head is, you know, probably more than possibly what was used. I agree.
00:26:47
Speaker
And Robert Clark, by this point, whoever he was, was nowhere to be found. As I said, a lot of people saw him. He was not afraid of being recognized in this town, but this did give the opportunity to have a composite sketch done.
00:27:04
Speaker
They determined that the man was about five foot nine to five foot 11 and around 175 pounds. He had dark hair and a medium complexion and people found him to be clean cut and even good looking. He appeared to be young around 20 to 30 years old at the time. Based on the sketch, he had a bit of a long thin oval face, but otherwise there wasn't really any distinguishing feature. Really the most unique feature about him was his truck. He was driving a dull black colored cab over engine pickup truck.
00:27:49
Speaker
So for those who are not familiar with this, the cab over pickups have a flat or nearly flat front. They kind of had their heyday in the US in the 1960s, but we really have seen this style here in the US more common with vans rather than pickup trucks. Or in something like fire trucks where the front is flat.
00:28:14
Speaker
Exactly. So that still even within being more popular in the 1960s doesn't mean they were popular. So the investigators worked on this case with the information they had. They have the composite, the basic description, and the vehicle. And in the meantime, the family is left to pick up the pieces.
00:28:39
Speaker
Pat had to balance what to tell the kids and what not to tell them, though Rob remembers knowing that something was going on. He was five at the time and his brother was seven and one morning they got hustled off to a neighbor's house. So they were there playing in the basement when the phone rang and his older brother went and picked up the extension and overheard something being told to the neighbor.
00:29:09
Speaker
We knew immediately something was going on. And I had a really good friend that lived the street, one street over. Her house kind of caddycorder backed up to our house. And so we had a little trail between the two houses we would take. And I remember that all of a sudden we were in her basement, the playroom down there is my brother, me and her. And I remember the phone ringing.
00:29:36
Speaker
and back then you had the old corded phone, you could pick up the phone and the listen in on whoever was upstairs. And my brother, who was only seven, picked up the phone because we knew something was going on and something wasn't right. you know As kids, we just sensed it. you It was so unusual for us to be rushed over there and dropped off and they had to go somewhere. And so my brother picked up the phone and pushed down to listen. And then he said something to us. I don't know if we knew exactly what happened, but And he took it really hard because he was 70.
00:30:11
Speaker
It was very close to her. Yeah. So, um, but I don't know if that's what I knew new, but we do something was going on and we think we do something was going on with her. And then from there, um, I guess we were probably over the next day or two. Um, we were not allowed to go to the funeral. They didn't want us to experience that, which by the way, I think it's still the largest funeral on record for Burlington, Iowa with over 400 and some in attendance.
00:30:39
Speaker
Pat recalled being told that there was extra police presence at the funeral just in case this Robert Clark were to return. As Rob mentioned, Dorothy's funeral, which was held at a local chapel on Friday, August 22nd, 1969, was truly a testament to the grief that gripped the entire community of Burlington.
00:31:06
Speaker
over 400 people attended and this outpouring of support, it reflected the esteem in which Dorothy was held and it underscored the collective sense of loss that was felt by all of the people of Burlington.
00:31:24
Speaker
One thing that Rob's other grandmother did was save the newspaper articles from the time. So she did let him see them when he was ah he and his brother were teenagers so that they could learn what happened. Yes, when Rob was around 16, he remembers vividly his other grandmother climbing into a closet and pulling down an old greeting card sized box.
00:31:52
Speaker
in which she had kept all of those newspaper clippings that Charlie was just mentioning, that anything and everything that she had come across about Dorothy Miller's case, it was at this point that she felt Rob and his brother were old enough to handle all of the information. And he told me that he had always known his grandmother Dorothy had been murdered. That wasn't a detail that had been hidden from them. But he had not known the details about the sexual assault.
00:32:21
Speaker
They had also been told again for their protection that the crime had been committed by someone who either escaped from a mental institution or someone who had gone mad after committing the crime. That's what they were told as children. And it was only now as a teenager that Rob was reading that In actuality, the perpetrator, in stark contrast to what he was told it is as a child, was someone who seemed a very typical person, almost in every man. And I think that's one of the scary things we come across when we're covering true crime, is that too often, the person could really just be anyone. Mm-hmm. That's such a scary thought.
00:33:10
Speaker
I do think it was a good way to handle this for the kids to not give them too much information. Sometimes though we we go overboard and when we try to shield our kids, we don't tell them things even when they are old enough. And then it hangs over everything like a secret and they feel like they can't talk about it.
00:33:31
Speaker
And if they do find out what happens at some point, then they don't feel like they can go to their mom or their other grandma about it. So this was a really good way for his other grandmother to open the door without giving them information that they weren't ready for when they were five years old. So one of the scary things in this case is that there were not a lot of leads from the start.
Leads and Dead Ends: The Hawkeye Fair
00:33:56
Speaker
One that they did have was that the Hawkeye Fair was held every August and it brought a lot of people not known into the area, whether we're talking carnival workers or just people attending the fair from surrounding communities. So there was some suspicion that the man may have come to the area or become familiar with it because of that fair.
00:34:20
Speaker
This lead never really panned out, but it seemed like all they had because Fred would actually go to the fair for years to look for the guy. Because he was one of the only people who could identify him, the police actually warned him that if he was going to do this, he needed to carry a gun for his own safety.
00:34:42
Speaker
Even though this Robert Clark hadn't taken precautions to hide his face from anyone at the tavern either, it was likely really only Fred who would have paid closer attention and would really be able to ID him. Pat, who was left at the age of 27 to care for her two young children and now also her father, always felt that it was guilt her father felt from having fallen asleep that drove Fred year after year to the fair armed with that gun in a holster under his shirt on the lookout for the man who had taken his wife from him. Law enforcement, like you said, Charlie, they suggested that he carry a gun either because, as you mentioned, Robert Clark would see Fred as a threat in being able to recognize him or
00:35:37
Speaker
because as Rob suggested as a possibility, it it could have been the case that having seen both Dorothy and Fred together on Friday evening, this Robert Clark could have planned on taking both of their lives had they both shown up on that Monday evening.
00:35:56
Speaker
And that would put him in the realm of serial killers who would kill couples. So we're talking serial killers like the Golden State Killer, BTK, Israel Keys, like really, you know, some of the absolute worst and most sadistic killers out there. Mm hmm. Definitely. Yeah. different A different category, if that were the case.
00:36:21
Speaker
The lead with the fair is more coming from speculation and not evidence, no witness that we know of said, oh, I think I saw this guy at the fair. The truth was they really did not know where he came from.
00:36:37
Speaker
Robert Clark stayed in a rooming house while he was in town and he would have drinks and use the phone at the Maple Leaf Tavern. But again, 1969. We have no security cameras. We don't have credit card receipts. We don't have cell phone pings. We have none of the things we usually look for in a modern case to track who this guy really was.
00:36:59
Speaker
You're right, Charlie, because Burlington is so close to the state line, he may have had some familiarity with the area from passing through or none at all. This was clearly not a local or someone would have recognized him ah when he's out at the tavern, when he's out in town, or they would have recognized his truck. But I question whether he even lived close because coverage of Dorothy Miller's case was in the local media and obviously that would have crossed state lines. So had this Robert Clark actually lived anywhere close to bar Burlington, I would think the sketch would have tipped someone off.
00:37:46
Speaker
We know that law enforcement did a fairly extensive canvassing of both the neighborhood and of anyone who had been at the tavern or the pharmacy, anyone who had been in contact with Dorothy. They interviewed well over 200 local people and law enforcement coordinated efforts with the Iowa State Patrol the Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is now the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and later the FBI. They had a psychiatric social worker named Harold B. Lee who would give what we would now consider a bit of a profile of the killer. And he said he did believe that Robert Clark was a psychopath and a serial killer. He believed that Dorothy was not his first victim and would not be his last.
Suspects and Profiles: The Search for the Killer
00:38:39
Speaker
If you think about it, it's clear to see why. You have someone who has created this alternate identity, complete with a backstory. He sought out Dorothy as a female realtor, probably having seen her ad somewhere around town in the phone book, in the local paper. He was methodical enough to always have Dorothy call and pick him up at a local business. He had brought the murder weapons with him or had planned out what to use. Either he had seen the bricks in the backyard of this house on the first visit, could have placed one there, or perhaps even brought one with him, even in something like a camera bag.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, this man planned this entire ruse, and he may have even planned to kill Dorothy on Friday when he first saw the house, but Fred came with her, so either he stopped because he wasn't prepared to kill both of them, or he wasn't really sure what he was gonna do and lost control of the situation. On the other hand, he may have come up with that reason to go back and see the house,
00:39:51
Speaker
because the first walkthrough was an opportunity for him to case the place essentially, get additional information that helped him plan the crime, like the layout of the house, where to hide the body. And like you said, what kind of weapons, like a brick, would he have accessible to him?
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah, and you actually brought up a point that I hadn't thought about. I was in my head thinking that both were possibilities with the reason that law enforcement told Fred to carry the gun. But I think you're right. I think it was because of the sphere that this Robert Clark would see Fred as the only one able to recognize him because had it been the other alternative that this Robert Clark may potentially have wanted to kill Fred as well, I feel like that would have happened on that Friday night. Had he planned on kill killing both of them, he would have come up with some reason why Fred needed to come into the house and then he would have taken both of their lives.
00:40:51
Speaker
And also we have to know that Dorothy had communications with him and we don't know what was said. He may have even asked, oh, are you and your husband going willing to come pick me up? And she, not thinking anything of it, said, oh, well, I'm actually going to be driving tonight because my husband's busy. You know, there could have been more conversation that cut Fred out of the equation that we don't know because it was between Robert Clark and Dorothy.
00:41:27
Speaker
I think about this quite often. It's wild how much information we share with others without even realizing that we're sharing it, especially if the person that you're talking to seems reputable or trustworthy. ah You mentioned you know maybe Dorothy said in passing that Fred would not be there on the second visit.
00:41:48
Speaker
I might be in a grocery store line and I'm tired from work and someone says, Oh, where do you work? And I tell them, or they can comment, you know, on the, on my groceries that are on the conveyor belt and say, Oh, you must like to cook for your family. Your family's lucky. And then you say off-handedly, Oh, it's just me. And now they know that you live alone.
00:42:14
Speaker
or you could be wearing a sweatshirt for a local school and they say, oh, are you a teacher? And you say, actually, yes, I am. And now they know that you're not home any day of the week, during the day. Yeah. And anyone who's met me at events knows I'm a talker. They know I'm a small talker and I get to know everybody in the room. And unfortunately, I can't remember most people's names, so I am not a threat to you. However, I probably give away way too much information. I definitely do.
00:42:42
Speaker
And something that um I thought about with this case was he may have, like we said, carried things in in his camera bag hidden. But another idea is that he accessed the house between Friday night when he first saw it and then when they went back on Monday. Possibly he managed to unlock a door on their way out so that he could get back in.
00:43:12
Speaker
This is the part that brings me back to that no-show appointment on Saturday. I wonder, as many people have, if that no-show is actually linked to Robert Clark. I say this because if Dorothy had a commitment at this rural property far away, that would at least ensure that she were not coming back to the Grand Street house during that time frame.
00:43:40
Speaker
which could have allowed him to return to the property to stage it by planting weapons. Or, as I mentioned earlier, he could have even had those weapons inside of his camera bag, like you just said, because Dorothy wouldn't have thought anything of this Robert Clark digging around in a camera bag just as she's opening the door.
00:44:05
Speaker
So that is the evidence that has largely been released to the public thus far. I'm sure they have hold back information still. And so we would really need to now get into the idea of suspects in the case, though calling them suspects may be overstating it because they're more suspects to the public than to law enforcement at this point.
00:44:32
Speaker
These are persons of interest who people have suspected over the years. I think it's also important to note here in terms of this.
00:44:44
Speaker
search for the perpetrator that the Burlington Hawkeye Gazette, the paper for which Dorothy worked as a proofreader, offered a $500 reward for information leading to a conviction. And that reward was matched with an additional $500 from the Burlington Board of Realtors. And Charlie, you and I both know that rewards actually do have some power and sway in terms of people coming forward with information.
00:45:15
Speaker
They definitely do, especially when we're talking about a killer who may have bragged about his crime, someone who knows what happened, but they're on the side of the killer, you know, they're a friend or a loved one. Sometimes these rewards can encourage them to not be quite so loyal. And a $1,000 reward in 1969, that's over $8,000 in today's money. So this was a significant reward. Absolutely.
00:45:45
Speaker
So as we're talking about the suspects, let's we should probably talk about this guy who is only really known as Arthur. I actually did not see him mentioned in any of the articles about Dorothy Miller's murder directly, but it came up in the case of 19-year-old Sheila Jean Collins. But to explain how this connects to Dorothy, we need to back up and talk about that case for a minute.
00:46:12
Speaker
Sheila was a student at Iowa State University. She put her name and her phone number on a ride board looking for someone to ride with to go to the Chicago area. She got a call from a guy who said he was going that way and he could actually bring her all the way to Evanston, which is where her family lived.
00:46:33
Speaker
But this guy said he's leaving pretty much right away. So Sheila just had to hurriedly pack her bags and meet the man at a corner near her dorm. And this happened on Friday, January 26th, 1968. She was seen around 8 30 that night getting into a small dark car that has been reported to possibly have been a dark blue Volkswagen.
00:46:57
Speaker
It was a five and a half hour drive from her campus in Ames, Iowa, up to Evanston. And her family stayed up late waiting on Sheila to arrive, but she never did. Two days later, on Sunday, January 28th, her body was found in a ditch about 15 miles east of Ames. So really not that far from where she was last seen. And she was found with a nylon rope around her neck.
00:47:27
Speaker
The man, Arthur, was a graduate student at ISU at the time and he became a person of interest in Sheila's disappearance for a few reasons, including that he would use that rideshare carpool board to get the phone numbers of women who he would then try to meet up with.
00:47:48
Speaker
He also drove a blue Volkswagen at the time, and when the police spoke to him a few months later, he had nylon rope in his trunk. They never found any solid evidence, but his name does come up in Dorothy's case in articles about Sheila, so kind of a roundabout way. And that's because there were some superficial similarities. There's nylon rope used in both cases.
00:48:15
Speaker
Arthur did use fake names when he would call women to get them to meet up with him. And at the time of Dorothy's murder, Arthur was living in Des Moines, and he had a wife and young child, which is what Robert Clark claimed about his life.
00:48:31
Speaker
So maybe Robert Clark had taken elements of his real life into this persona because it's easier to remember the truth than it is to remember a lie. And he then used that in his stories to Dorothy and Fred. He also, according to this article, I read vaguely matched the description of Robert Clark and the composite sketch.
00:48:56
Speaker
I think you've got a good point about the possibility of this perpetrator, if it were someone like Arthur, using some of those key details that are truth about their life. But then you have to kind of harness your eagerness too and say, well, you know, if I'm really trying to go into another town and commit a crime, do I want to give any true personal details?
00:49:24
Speaker
Right. And with Arthur, I think there's there's not a lot of evidence and there are a lot of people who live in Des Moines who have a wife and a young child, you know, so I don't know that that's necessarily enough for me to say this is the guy. Right. This guy did it. Yeah.
00:49:40
Speaker
So beyond Arthur, pretty much every other theory I have found, and I don't know if it's been the same for you, is, along with the psychiatrist's viewpoint of this, known serial killers. Yes, that is what I have found also.
00:49:59
Speaker
So the first one we have here is a man named Gary A. Robbins, who I think most people probably haven't heard of. He's not one of the names that people talk about a lot. This episode would be hours long if we got into each one of these guys' backgrounds. So just the parts that are really relevant to the connections possibly to Dorothy's case.
00:50:23
Speaker
This Gary A. Robbins was a salesman who traveled both for work and to play in bridge tournaments around the United States. And he would use these trips as a cover for raping women in those towns, and then he would be gone before anyone knew.
00:50:42
Speaker
He has been connected to both rapes and murders in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Maryland, Ohio, and West Virginia between 1970 and 1988. Most of those were rapes, the murders they believe happened in Steubenville, Ohio, Reed City, Michigan, and Bellaire, Maryland.
00:51:01
Speaker
This all ended in 1988 when a victim named Mary Ann avoided getting killed by him, but only barely. Gary Robbins showed up at her door after having stalked her and she opened the door to him and he asked her for directions. The next thing she knew, he pulled out a gun and was trying to get into her house.
00:51:24
Speaker
Though Marianne managed to push him out, shut and lock the door, he opened fire, hitting her in the cheek. She not only got a good look at him, but also his car as he fled and she called the police. So remember, she's been shot in the cheek and she's keeping it together to get these details. The police pulled him over within 30 minutes, thanks to what she had provided and being caught and cornered, he took his own life.
00:51:58
Speaker
In his car, they found a gun, duct tape, and nylon rope. But something else they found that I thought was interesting in this context was a camera. That is interesting.
00:52:11
Speaker
So what Robbins would do was he would tie up women and assault them over the course of hours prior to killing them. And while it's not likely based on when Dorothy's killer left with her car that he was with her for hours, if Robbins did this, this would have been one of his earliest attacks on his timeline. So maybe he hadn't built himself up to feeling confident with being able to spend a lot of time with his victims.
00:52:42
Speaker
Something else I think is interesting about Robbins in this context is that he was a real estate agent himself until he got his license revoked in the mid 1980s for stealing money from his clients. But as someone who eventually went into real estate, he may have known the process and would have known that Dorothy would likely have been alone, would have picked him up in her car and all of those details.
00:53:05
Speaker
That is really interesting. My devil's advocate mind is wondering if this were his first murder of Dorothy Miller, if he would have been as methodical. Right. I do not think that whoever killed Dorothy had never killed before, or they were someone who had never killed before, but had a very rich fantasy life because they planned every detail.
00:53:34
Speaker
I mean, I will have to defer to the expert here. Harold B. Lee said that he believes this is someone who killed before. So, you know, I lean towards that as well. Robert Hanson is another serial killer who has been potentially linked to Dorothy Miller's case.
00:53:51
Speaker
for two primary reasons. The first is that he has dark hair and could be said to resemble the sketch. And number two, because he was born in Estherville, Iowa, those familiar with Hanson likely know him by his moniker of the Butcher Baker.
00:54:12
Speaker
Robert Hanson, trained in the culinary arts, traveled across several states, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, working in bakeries before buying a home in Alaska with his wife Darla, who had just recently graduated from the University of Minnesota with her bachelor's degree in education.
00:54:32
Speaker
The butcher part of his nickname comes from his proclivity for hunting. He was extremely skilled, so much so that he won trophies for his hunting that placed him in world record books. He carried that hunting over, though, to the women he targeted. It reminds me so much of the short story, The Most Dangerous Game.
00:54:59
Speaker
Yes, 100 percent. Every element of that story, I think of when I hear about Robert Hanson because he hunted women in rural areas of Alaska. And these were women he had transported there, often via a plane that he had purchased. For this theory, I was actually able to speak with one of the premier scholars on Robert Hanson, author Leland Hale.
00:55:23
Speaker
He has researched and written extensively on Hanson. His book will be linked in the show notes. I thought if anybody could tell me about the possibility of Hanson as a theory, it would be him. And when I initially reached out to him, he wrote back, quote, I've long speculated that Hanson might have killed before, especially since he had a several year sojourn through the Midwest as a fill in bakery manager.
00:55:50
Speaker
dates and places to my mind are absolutely critical here." end quote But digging into the details, Hale actually found it highly unlikely that Hanson would have been in or around Burlington, Iowa in August of 1969.
00:56:08
Speaker
Hale found an article in the Estherville Daily News. This is a small town paper that reported on literally everything. Like, if you're having a chicken dinner, it will be reported in this local small town paper. And that article dated Saturday, April 12, 1969, stated that Hanson's wife,
00:56:32
Speaker
Darla, her relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Hendrickson, had hosted Easter dinner in Armstrong, Iowa on April 6th, and that joining them in the afternoon were Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hanson. And this town of Armstrong, it's in northern Iowa, about a 20-minute drive from Estherville. But Hale told me that it is possible that Robert Hanson and his wife Darla visited Robert's grandmother, Mrs. Marie Pederson on this trip. But it's important to note that both Estherville and Armstrong are about a five hour drive from Burlington. And given that Robert Hanson, again, known to murder women to hunt them, he had made this trip from Alaska to Iowa in early April.
00:57:25
Speaker
That trip would have entailed an Alaskan airline flight to Seattle, then a Northwest Orient Airlines flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul, then a three-hour drive to Armstrong from Minneapolis. Side note, much appreciation to Leland Hale for that research also.
00:57:45
Speaker
But going through all of that in April, it's not likely that he would have done all of that again just four months later in August.
00:57:56
Speaker
And also one thing that I'm thinking is if he came to visit his family, let's say he was in Iowa during that time, he would have disappeared for five days when he went to Burlington and spent that whole weekend there. It would have been really surprising that no one would have noticed that he disappeared like that. Absolutely. And additionally, Dorothy Miller doesn't fit the typical victim profile for Hanson.
00:58:23
Speaker
His known victims were in Alaska and Dorothy is in Iowa. Dorothy's case is 1969. Hanson's first known murder was 1972, though he did commit rape and attempted rape in the preceding years. Hanson also targeted women whom he saw as more vulnerable. He targeted dancers and sex workers, mainly. And Dorothy was a professional woman who was well known. She was well respected. And finally, safe for one victim of Hansen's, who was 41, Lisa Futtrell in 1980. His other victims
00:59:05
Speaker
their ages ranged from 17 to 28. He really targeted younger women. And the final point with Hanson, and i'm I'm bringing up all of the the reasons why it's unlikely that it's Hanson, because he is mentioned in Dorothy Miller's case quite often, is that Hansen had severe acne and he had a noticeable stutter that all of his victims who were able to escape had noted to law enforcement. That stutter is something that Fred or those in the Maple Leaf Tavern definitely would have recalled. So for those reasons, in addition to his m MO of flying victims to remote areas of burying their remains, it makes me doubt
00:59:56
Speaker
Hanson as a viable theory. Yeah, I really think the connection between Hanson and this case is that Iowa is the connection and that's the connection for a lot of people. So it is interesting that his name comes up so much in these cases where it's unlikely he was involved and I said we see that with quote-unquote big name serial killers where you know we're trying to get answers in these unsolved cases and these are the names we know so we turn to them to see if that's the answer and you know very often it's not.
01:00:33
Speaker
Yes. Now, the final theory that I want to discuss, it's another name that maybe some of our listeners will recognize. This one, I think, has some potential merit as a theory. The final serial killer theory that we'll discuss is Mike DeBardoleben. His first known sex-based offense were charges in 1966 of assault, kidnapping, and sodomy of a young girl. But those charges were dropped when co-defendants were found not guilty. But what brought him onto the police radar for murder was actually his counterfeiting crimes. While police were trying to catch the person they called the mall passer,
01:01:23
Speaker
Dabarda Laban was known to use counterfeit 20s in local malls across America. They were interested in catching him and finding his printing machine. They actually landed upon a storage unit. And when they arrested him, evidence in his home and where they found images and recordings of women in bondage, in compromising positions, they found audio recordings of women clearly being tortured.
01:01:53
Speaker
They found women's purses, they found jewelry, ID cards, bloodied clothing, multiple weapons, various license plates. They knew when they arrested what they thought was just your run-of-the-mill counterfeiter. This wasn't your normal counterfeiter. This was a monster.
01:02:14
Speaker
He was sitting on like a mountain of evidence. absolutely Absolutely. And what they discovered through the course of their investigation proved that gut reaction to be true. Again, I will pause here to give credit to my source. All of these, the information that I'm sharing came from the book Beyond Cruel by Steven Michaud, who is a leading researcher on Debarta Laban.
01:02:40
Speaker
So I'll share with you some of his crimes, and these are just a few that can be linked to details in Dorothy Miller's case. As early as 1956, DeBarda-Lavin's parents say he, quote, committed the first of what were to become routine physical assaults on his mother, whom he called Moe. Both his father and his mother would tell authorities they feared their son was capable of murdering them." end quote And I bring that up because this is very early on in his life. He's only 16.
01:03:19
Speaker
at this point. In 1964, DeBarda Laban's wife at the time named Faye, he actually married five separate times, said that DeBarda Laban spoke all the time of a desire to kill women. And she spoke of this belief that he was he thought himself to be omnipotent. He thought of himself as God.
01:03:46
Speaker
And while over the course of about 18 years it that it's likely that DeBarda Laban was active as a killer, that is their belief now, that he was active for around 18 years, there were many cases of kidnapping, of assault, and rape without murder in that time span as well. In nearly every case, both of rape and of murder, DeBarda Laban would take an alias and create a backstory. Most often in the cases of rape, he would pose as a police officer. But in total, Charlie, over the course of his lifetime, he took on 28 different aliases for his crimes.
01:04:33
Speaker
And one of the things I noticed with his alias is like, in one case, he was Peter Morgan, which really has that same feel as Robert Clark. You know, very common names, very simple names. And I think that is one of the things that I noticed when I looked at his aliases.
01:04:53
Speaker
Yes, I would agree with that. um and I'll mention a few more in a second. But Michaud was right. He said that Departo Laban routinely reinvented himself. And the this is just what we know of. He also, as you'll note when I share about the murders that he committed, he could and would travel extensively.
01:05:20
Speaker
to commit crimes. Just in terms of counterfeiting, his counterfeit money was recovered from cash registers in 38 states. So I think that shows you just how extensively he would travel.
01:05:35
Speaker
One of the things that has come up, my friend Josh Hallmark is the host of True Crime BS podcast where he covers Israel keys. And one of the things that has come up in that case a lot is that serial killers tend to kill in their backyard. But when you have a traveling serial killer like this guy, like Gary Robbins, their backyard gets very, very big.
01:06:01
Speaker
like the whole United States big. Despite changing aliases and changing locations, much of the murders, including a victim type, was consistent. Mike DeBarta Laban's victims were female real estate agents. DeBarta Laban's earliest suspected murder was Edna Terry McDonald in June of 1971 in Barrington, Rhode Island.
01:06:31
Speaker
Edna was a 52 year old realtor who went to an evening meeting with a man who identified himself as Peter Morgan, clearly an alias because they later found that this same man had called other agents in Rhode Island, I guess, fishing for the right female real estate agent.
01:06:52
Speaker
In those phone calls, he had identified himself as Charles Murray, as Peter Fuller, and as Peter Rogers, in addition to Peter Morgan. So that fits with what you were saying, Charlie, of kind of these Simple names. The man McDonald met to show a home was a clean shaven white male around five foot eight to five foot 10, weighing roughly 165 to 175 pounds with dark neatly combed hair who was well dressed. He told McDonald that he was needing to relocate to the area with his wife and kids.
01:07:35
Speaker
such a perfect match for for Robert Clark. I mean, this is almost identical in terms of the description. Edna was found dead the next day, hanging in the basement of the vacant house that was for sale. It did not appear in her case that she was raped, but she was strangled.
01:07:57
Speaker
The next murder we know of linked to Debarda Laban was in April of 1979 of a 31-year-old realtor in North Carolina named Elizabeth Mason. A man calling himself Al Wise or Al Weiss said he was relocating to the area from Arlington, Virginia with his wife and wanted to see some houses using a lock box in the back of one of the houses to get in.
01:08:27
Speaker
Mason remembered this man making a show of where he planned to put various pieces of furniture all before pulling a gun on her. She screamed and started acting erratically. She had read once that actions like that, acting erratically, had scared a woman's attacker away, so she tried it, and it did scare this man. The man began pistol whipping her, during which time the man hit the clip release on the gun, meaning that his attempts to shoot Mason failed.
01:09:07
Speaker
He then tied her up with adhesive tape and strangled her until she lost consciousness. When she came to, he was gone with her car and her underwear. Her pantyhose had been pulled down around her ankles. And it's that description of her clothing that reminds me of Dorothy Miller's case.
01:09:32
Speaker
A third murder occurred in April, 1982 in Bozier City, Louisiana. The victim was a 40-year-old realtor, Gene McFall. The man said his name was Dr. Zach, and he asked for a McFall by name, asking her to show him some homes because he wanted to relocate his family.
01:09:54
Speaker
Those who saw this man remember a man who stood roughly five foot 10 inches weighing between 150 and 160 pounds with a long thin face and no facial hair. She was found in a very similar manner as McDonald in terms of the ligature around her throat. McFall was found in an attic as opposed to the basement like McDonald, but McFall had been stabbed twice through the heart.
01:10:24
Speaker
McFaul's car had also been driven from the scene and was found unlocked. There wasn't sign of sexual assault and her clothing was still in place except for her purse, which was never recovered. So I feel like you can see from these cases combined with his cases of abduction and sexual assault, the potential connections to Dorothy Miller's case.
01:10:53
Speaker
We have Robert Clark, who's described as 5'9 to 5'11, good-looking, dark-haired, clean-cut man between 20 and 30 years old, having a medium complexion weighing around 175 pounds. Debarta Laban would have been 29 in 1969.
01:11:11
Speaker
so fits very comfortably in that 20 to 30 year old range. And the traits match his description in the other cases, including seeming polite and well-mannered and initial interactions and even being well-dressed.
01:11:28
Speaker
So here's a man he's known to use aliases. We have the common story of relocating with his wife or his wife and family. We see the focus on female real estate agents. He thought himself omnipotent, which fits that brazenness that I talked about with that front facing window.
01:11:47
Speaker
We see sadomasochistic behavior in nearly every one of the deburdalabian cases. His method of killing was strangulation or stabbing. His victims were bound, though in the cases that we know of, their hands were behind their backs and not in front, as Dorothy's were. His victims were asked to take him to vacant homes where their bodies were left, usually concealed in some way.
01:12:16
Speaker
basement or attic Dorothy's found in a closet. And he often took a personal item as a token of the crime. And Rob mentioned to me that he doesn't recall ever seeing if his grandmother's purse were recovered anywhere.
01:12:35
Speaker
I think that with this case, it's just one thing after another is ah similar. There's more similar than different between these cases and Dorothy's. It really feels like this would be a very solid lead. Of all of these serial killers that you and I have looked at for this case, I do think that de Bartolaben fits more elements than the others.
01:13:02
Speaker
He was also known to take pictures with a camera and flash equipment of his victims, and he took what Michaud called a quote, painstakingly patient and methodical approach to murder, end quote. So very much like that methodical nature that was noted by Lee of the perpetrator in Dorothy's case, there's also potentially a precipitating event in DeBarda Laban's life in that his wife Fay divorced him in August 1969.
01:13:42
Speaker
And obviously knowledge of whether de Bartolaben could have been in Burlington between the 15th and 18th of August. is crucial in identifying him as a potential perpetrator. Thankfully, should the Burlington police contact federal law enforcement, I do think that that link wouldn't be as difficult as it would seem because, Charlie, when agents finally arrested de Bartolaben, they collected 144 boxes of potential evidence, but they didn't just collect it. They categorized it all. so
01:14:20
Speaker
female clothing altogether, jewelry, newspaper clippings, etc. They photographed it and then they digitized the information. In that book by Michaud, he said, quote, if a police department in Texas, for example, wished to know where he might have been on September 23rd, 1981,
01:14:42
Speaker
Greg Mertz could look at a computer run and answer the inquiring agency, Albany, New York. On rapid print number 02003, he'd find a bill dated on that day made out to J.R. Jones from Albany Auto Repair. The computer also would indicate that on rapid print 1103639, there was a September 23rd, 1981 receipt from the Skyway Motel made out to Jones, end quote.
01:15:12
Speaker
If you're curious about July 10th of 1982, they would say, sorry, that one's blank. So I would love to know if Debarta Laban could be eliminated as a suspect or proven to be close to the Burlington area based on that evidence that the feds have. Because I really think, as I just said, of all the theories that we've discussed, he is the most likely in my mind.
01:15:42
Speaker
I'll put it up on my website and I'm sure we'll put it on social media. But if you look at the composite sketch from Dorothy Miller's case and then you compare it to his actual mugshot and pictures, I think you'll see why he I mean, I know the composite is of a vague kind of looking guy, but, you know, he's got heavy eyebrows.
01:16:05
Speaker
He's got the black hair with the same hairline, the same kind of wider nose. I think it's a possibility. I think it should be looked into. One of the things I think would help link him or any other suspect is evidence. So let's talk about where we are now.
An Active Case: Ongoing Investigation
01:16:24
Speaker
In recent years, Dorothy Miller's case, even though it's not really gotten the media attention that it had initially gotten, it has continued to get attention from law enforcement. In 2009, Iowa's Division of Criminal Investigation formed a cold case unit, and Dorothy Miller's case was one of the ones they identified as a case they would like to solve as we have this DNA technology advancing to where we can test older and smaller samples. This unit did dissolve in 2011, but DCI and local law enforcement in Burlington are continuing to look at the case.
01:17:10
Speaker
Reporter Andy Hoffman with the Burlington Hawkeye interviewed the commander of Burlington's Criminal Investigation Division, Lieutenant Jeff Kline, in 2015. And Kline stated, quote, everyone in the department still knows about it. We send every officer to a two week homicide school when they become a detective.
01:17:31
Speaker
When they return from the school, we hand them the Dorothy Miller file and ask them to review it to see if we have missed anything." End quote. Luckily, in this case, there is still some evidence. According to Pat, law enforcement has been able to retrieve fingerprints from Dorothy's car. And Rob spoke with the special agent in charge of the case who told him that one positive in this is that he's never seen a case of this age that has this much evidence preserved. And not just preserved, but well preserved.
01:18:08
Speaker
We're talking fibers and a DNA sample that was collected from the crime scene. In an editorial for the Burlington Hawkeye dated August 27th, 1969, Harold de Lee, the profiler kind of guy we talked about earlier said, quote, the enormity of the case is matched only by the cunning of the killer. He is obviously a very sick man, but also a very methodical, clever, persistent one. He left virtually no clues.
01:18:40
Speaker
but he did leave enough so that he will be found, but only by work as clever and methodical and painstaking, time-consuming as his own." End quote. It's the hope that time and continued focus on this case will bring answers that Lee felt were possible and that Dorothy's family, who still mourn her to this day, Gray, these answers are out there.
A Family's Burden: Coping with Loss
01:19:10
Speaker
Fred Miller passed in 2002, having never remarried. You see, he carried Dorothy with him in his heart. Here is what Pat said of her father. He never really said it, but he did blame himself for a long time because he had slept. Their pattern at night a lot of times was what they would do is um she would be fit she would get supper almost ready and a lot of times he'd go back and clean up while she was fixing supper and then ah he'd come out and they'd eat and then they'd have their evening. Well that particular night, issue if she was showing a house, which she was, that's what she was doing and apparently it was around supper time and then it ended up being after supper but he he went ahead and cleaned up and he just laid down across the bed and then he fell asleep.
01:20:07
Speaker
You know, you're talking about someone that worked 10 hours a day basically. You know, get up five o'clock because he wanted to be the first one in line when he was trucking at that time and he could get one more load that day working if he was the first one in line. And then he may be the last one to come home. I don't know. I don't know how that worked.
01:20:30
Speaker
But the thing that I guess my dad just was never the same. I don't know. That's been the hardest thing probably for me because I just know he just never forgave himself. And and i I even told him one time I said it's not your fault. right you know, and I always wanted him to look, he had a good marriage, he had someone that thought the world of him, but, it you know, and afterwards, I was kind of glad when I seen him go out a little bit. yeah It was hard for me to see him with someone else because they right and so forth. But I always, they were always nice people. ah But he just, and he just couldn't remarry. here There was just something there.
01:21:18
Speaker
It just was not Dorothy. Luckily, it was those memories of Dorothy, the loving wife of Fred, the mother who taught Pat to cook and what it meant to care for her family, the grandmother loved and respected by all who knew her. Those are the memories that endured her impact, her character, her heart. Those are her legacy.
01:21:44
Speaker
If you or anyone you know has information concerning Dorothy Miller's case, you are asked to call the Burlington Police Department at 319-753-8375.
01:21:58
Speaker
And we will end with Dorothy's grandson, Rob. i've been very fortunate that i've had great upbringing and a great life, a great career. But there's always been a hole. There's always been something missing. And that was taken from me. I wonder what my life would have been like, had she been in it my entire life, yeah or for a longer period of time. I wonder that all the time. you know What would have been different? How would things have turned out? We'll never know. I mean, obviously. But you know if we get the story out there, if it can get the attention that it deserves if somebody can
01:22:36
Speaker
You never know who knows something or somebody might link it to the right person. You know, maybe there's, you know, maybe somebody's heard of something and they may link it to that individual. You know, it could be my grandfather drove that truck and then, you know, he did this, this, and this was probably you. yeah I mean, you just don't know.
01:23:00
Speaker
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01:23:30
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.