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True Crime Bonus - The Disappearance of Christina White and the Lewis-Clark Valley Serial Killer, Part 2
6 Plays2 months ago
Christina White was missing for four years before the first big clues emerged into her disappearance that would raise questions about whether there was a serial killer operating in the Lewis-Clark Valley and beyond. In this episode, with Allison Dickson of Vintage Villains, we explore Christina's disappearance, a 1963 murder of an 8-year-old in Chicago, a mysterious attempted break-in at a mortuary holding the body of a 17-year-old girl in California, the murder of a 22-year-old University of Idaho student in Clarkston, Washington, the disappearances three people from the Lewiston Civic Theatre, the death ruled a 27-year-old suicide, the drowning of a 16-year-old girl in North Carolina and the man closely connected to them all.
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Transcript
Introduction of Christina White's Case
00:00:13
Speaker
This is the Silver Linings Handbook podcast. I'm Jason Blair. And this is Alison Dixon of the Vintage Villains podcast.
00:00:33
Speaker
This is the second in the series on the 1979 disappearance of Christina White, a 12-year-old girl who disappeared into Soughton, Washington, a small town on the Snake River in the Lewis Clark Valley near the Washington State and Idaho borders.
Search for Christina and Discovery of School Papers
00:00:51
Speaker
Christina was last seen at her friend Rose's house a few blocks away from her home.
00:00:57
Speaker
It was the day of the Soten fair and Christina's mother said she had gone to Rosa's house to help Rose prepare her horse for the fair. Rose lived in the house with her 10-year-old brother, Clint, his mother, Patricia Brennan, and her mother's boyfriend, Lance Voss. Clint reported seeing Christina that day and said that k Christina became sick and called her mom, Betty, a fact that Betty would later confirm to the police. Clint said he handed Christina a wet washcloth to help her cool down and that no one else was home.
00:01:36
Speaker
However, Lance would later tell investigators that he had handed Christina the washcloth and was the last one to see her. k Christina seemed to vanish without a trace until somewhere between a few days and a few weeks later, the reports conflict. Pristine's school papers of hers were found miles away at the Flynn farm where Rose kept her horse.
University of Idaho Student Disappearance
00:02:01
Speaker
Investigators and Christina's parents conducted ground and aerial searches and crossed the Pacific Northwest looking for clues from carnivals to cults. Nothing.
00:02:14
Speaker
That's until almost three years later, on June 26th, a 22-year-old University of Idaho student named Kristin Noelle David disappeared on a bike ride from Moscow, Idaho to Clarkston, Washington. Kristin's story is where we're gonna pick things back up, not long before this point where investigators begin to wonder whether they have a serial killer on their hands in the valley.
Lance Voss and Lewiston Civic Theater Connection
00:02:50
Speaker
Kristen was known to be thoughtful, free-spirited, interested in a wide variety of things and from art to politics. She had previously worked at a Circle Craig grocery store in Clarkston at the time when Lance Voss worked as a delivery driver for Frito-Lay companies.
00:03:07
Speaker
Voss also, as a part of that job, frequently took trips to Moscow, where David also worked at the Scorpion Bar, which David's sister said would later say Lance Voss also visited. There's another reported connection between Voss and David. Kristen was said to have worked sewing costumes at the Lewiston Civic Theater, where Voss performed as an actor and would later become and the janitor.
00:03:35
Speaker
Kristen headed south on Idaho 95, but never made it to Clarkston.
Discovery of Kristin David's Remains
00:03:42
Speaker
We're about to hit the Coburger map again in a second. and early Early in the investigation, multiple individuals traveling on high Highway 95, the one that Coburger took south, by the way, yeah on the day of David's disappearance, reported seeing a female cyclist matching her description, being approached by a man driving a brown van on the west side or southbound side of the highway just outside of GNE's Idaho, where Brian Coburger also took a left on the night of the murders in turn. So additional reports suggested that the same man they saw then also spoke with or approached different female cyclists or pedestrians along Highway 95 that same day.
00:04:31
Speaker
The location's about 17.4 miles north of Lewiston and about 15 miles south of where Kristin was in Moscow, Idaho. So on July 4th, 1981, so we're in late June when Kristin disappears. On July 4th, 1981, Kristin's dismembered remains in black plastic bags began to be so discovered by fishermen in and along the right bank of the Snake River. And so the Snake River heads east at that point, so the right bank is the northern part of it.
00:05:12
Speaker
um And among other places, just off the Red
Investigation and Lance Voss
00:05:15
Speaker
Wolf Crossing Bridge, which connects or which runs across Clarkson and toward Idaho, even though right where it crosses, it's still Clarkson technically. So some, but not all of her remains were recovered the next day in the river. Some of her body parts were wrapped.
00:05:35
Speaker
in various April 1981 editions of the Lewiston Mourning Tribune. So we're in July. Her body parts are found in plastic bags, but they're wrapped in the April and different editions of April 1981 copies of the Lewiston Morning Tribune. In total, five bags were found. The newspapers certainly pointed to somebody who was in or frequented or was near the Lewiston area sometime between April and July of that year.
00:06:11
Speaker
but Others would later report that a man was seen throwing trash bags off the north side of the bridge, which is located about one mile from the unusually circular domed house that Lance Vaunas owned, about a mile to the south.
00:06:29
Speaker
You don't say. No. And and, you know, so it's about half a mile from k Christina's reported destination, also ah the Dome House. And so one interesting thing that was police hold back evidence for a long period of time, but eventually some of the autopsy details slipped out, was in Kristen's
Kristin David's Autopsy Details
00:06:54
Speaker
skull, according to a report autopsy report in August of that year were metallic fragments that indicated that she had been shot in the head. And in a letter to the County coroner, a pathologist wrote that he thought she had died of a single gunshot wound to the head that was delivered from the front at a downward angle, shattering her facial bones. There were no defensive wounds on her hands and the only injuries appeared to be two bruises on her upper left buttocks.
00:07:26
Speaker
The pathologist reported that they found little blood in their body and almost no internal organs and that Christen was dismembered quite skillfully at the joints with only a couple of areas where they saw bone damage. The sperm was not detected in the vaginal washing and swabs.
00:07:46
Speaker
Toxicology reports were inconclusive, but they did find she had a little alcohol in her blood. And I personally discovered one truly interesting fact in the autopsy report for Kristen. The pathologists say he was convinced that she was shot with a bullet that was two millimeters in diameter. nine millieter yeah Not millimeters, two millimeters
Killer's Psychological Profile
00:08:10
Speaker
in diameter. And that would be like an exceedingly rare caliber weapon.
00:08:15
Speaker
you know and You know, a bullet is described based on its diameter, the circular width at its widest point. And then there is a two millimeter, and I'm going to pronounce this wrong, but it's i I'll go phonetically, but Colibri was the smallest commercially available centerfire cartridge. And it was patented in 1910, introduced in 1914 by an Austrian watchmaker, and designed to accompany the Colibri semi-automatic pistol or single-shot gun. So it has a gun with only one bullet in it, and it was marketed as a self-defense weapon.
00:08:57
Speaker
Colibri comes from the German word for hummingbird. The round was totally not well accepted. The gun's small size made sort of like handling and loading individual cartridges really difficult. So the gun, by the time we're at ah Chris and David's murder, is more of a collector's item with only about a thousand ever produced. So that's that's a heck of a clue.
00:09:24
Speaker
So, you know, as would become a bit of a theme in these cases, Kristen's case was tossed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, including multiple counties in the FBI. The psychological profile of the killer was developed that suggested that it was more likely than not to be a white male in his 20s or early 30s who would have marks or bruises from the attack, drove a brown van, and potentially add souvenirs to the murder.
00:09:50
Speaker
um Just like Christina, Kristin's 10-speed bike was nowhere to be found, although they did find the
Voss's Interest in Bikes and Disappearance Patterns
00:09:58
Speaker
handlebars eventually. Her clothing identification and shoes were never found. So what we're going to find is it's very similar to the Diane Taylor story, but we'll get to that soon enough. Some of Kristin's jewelry was recovered.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, i I find it so interesting about the bicycles. um The Snake River Killer podcast points out ah that Voss had a thing for bikes and motorcycles. He he was a bit of a also a gearhead. And yeah as we'll find as we go through this case and it starts to become a little more apparent that he seems motivated by the idea of trophies and and and stuff it's almost like a you know signature and so it's interesting that ah but these bicycles just don't. Turn up and it is interesting now that there's only the handlebars that were recovered. For me it's been as we walk through these cases we're gonna find out a lot of ideas disappear.
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, and ah remember, too. um ah Oh, geez, I had a thought in my head that just a vanished. That happens. ah But um there were ah I saw this in one of the documentaries. I know we didn't make mention of it here in the outline, and I think it's because it ultimately was irrelevant because the documentary Cold Valley brings it up. I'll mention it here.
Van Sightings and Forensic Hypnosis
00:11:21
Speaker
There what wasn't there a witness that claimed to have seen somebody that had been like ah like a woman and a man on the side of the road and like somebody had been hit by the bicycle and there was somebody, but or I'm sorry, ah somebody had been hit on the side of the road that had a bicycle and they saw somebody with the van. and But that person was under forensic hypnosis when they delivered that statement.
00:11:42
Speaker
Well, right but there there are several people who saw a man in a van approaching an assortment of people there. Gotcha. But the reason why that one sticks out is the idea that the handlebars could have been damaged in it. So that's why they point to that one, that it could be separated. But I tend to I tend to not put a lot of weight on that because someone dismembered her skillfully. Yes. They can cut apart a bike.
00:12:11
Speaker
Absolutely. um And I mean, and automatically, I'm thinking when they say skillful dismemberment, at just that's somebody who's very practiced at it. yeah It's not their first rodeo. Right. It simply means you're not hitting bones along the way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like a good butcher, you know. Yep.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yep. And so one of the real problems, I think, in her case is that, you know, you you're on the edge of the Idaho border, you're on the edge of the Washington border. You you have like four counties that are coming together in that area. And I think that and then she's from Moscow.
00:12:53
Speaker
ah disappears in another county in between or is last seen. You've got a Native American reservation right beside there. And Oregon is not too far on 129, the route on the edge of the rebels crossing bridge. So you've got a lot of different things. But one of the things that sort of sticks out to me about this is this ad that Voss placed in the newspaper. Oh,
Steven Parcel's Disappearance
00:13:20
Speaker
geez. A very curious ad about a German shepherd being found on an address in Snake River Avenue. And it was about one year after Blahn Blue-Eyed, German David's body was found. Right. Wasn't it? German ancestry. This is part of the pattern. By the way, we're establishing a pattern here by mentioning these classified ads. He liked to do that ah sort of thing.
00:13:49
Speaker
So the next sort of step in this is on the evening of September 4th, 1982, so a year after Kristen David disappears, 35-year-old Steven Parcel, a janitor at the Lewis and Civic Theater, began working at 6.30 p.m. His girlfriend Carol picked him up around 9 p.m. for them to go to a party.
00:14:09
Speaker
Around midnight, Carol later reported that she dropped Steven off so he could go do some laundry at the theater and he could practice his clarinet. He didn't have a laundry machine.
00:14:20
Speaker
and um So Steven was last seen by a police officer who happened to be in the area that night entering the theater from a side door on 8th Street, which I have a picture of here. It's so the top ah right side that's off of 6th Avenue. That's the into the side of the Lewiston Civic Theater, which the front door is the bottom side, and the back will become relevant momentarily.
Christy Nelson and Brandy Miller's Disappearance
00:14:56
Speaker
So the police officer sees Stephen the Inner um ah on the same evening at about 9.15 p.m., so before the midnight drop-off.
00:15:07
Speaker
At about 915, two stepsisters began to make their way to a local Safeway grocery store. Christina or Christy Nelson, who was 21, and Brandy Miller, who was 18, were last seen leaving Nelson's apartment to go to the store.
00:15:26
Speaker
they had ah started at Brandy's apartment, or Brandy had started at her apartment before they went to Nelson's nearby apartment, and they left a note for Christy's boyfriend saying where they were going. So both of the stepsisters knew Stephen Parasol, who at this time would still be at the party and not have returned to the theater, and all of their apartments are really, really close to each other and close to the theater.
00:15:53
Speaker
So Gloria Kroberts, Christy's cousin, says that her family member said that Christy and Brandy saw Stephen as a big brother. Christy had previously worked as a janitor at the theater. Stephen was currently doing it when she quit. Stephen replaced her. So that night, Christy and Brandy never returned home, nor did Stephen.
00:16:18
Speaker
So his clothes were never found, the ones that he went to do laundry. His clarinet was found in the main theater, but the case was never found. This is so weird. Yeah. Yeah. So I think an important thing to think about is the timeline here. At 9.15, the girls leave to go to a Safeway, which is like, eh, less than a 10 minute walk away.
00:16:45
Speaker
they don't they don't They don't return, but then at midnight, Steven goes to the theater and he doesn't return either. um And so at first law enforcement wondered whether Steven may have been somehow responsible for the disappearances, having three people in the town really close to each other disappear at the same time is a bit odd. But some clues came together over the years, including the fact that Steven hadn't been heard from, he hadn't tapped into any of his resources, he left his car at a friend's house, he didn't pick up his final paycheck. All these things sort of suggest that Steven is dead.
00:17:22
Speaker
I'm an eventually on march nineteen and here's a key part of nineteen eighty four and a tragic part.
Bodies Found and Theater Connection
00:17:30
Speaker
The remains of christy nelson and brandy miller were found by a fourteen year old boy.
00:17:35
Speaker
who was chasing his hat, it had blown off of his head, in a rural year area about 35 miles east of Lewiston, near Kendrick, Idaho. And the investigators were unable to determine the cause of death for Christie.
00:17:51
Speaker
um But they were able to determine that Miller had been murdered. ah She had been strangled. And ah investigators initially suspected Steven, but later stated that all three had probably been in the theater that night at the time that they disappeared. And with a clue,
00:18:12
Speaker
that really pulled it together, which I'll go ahead and say now, is that cords were found wrapped around Christy and Brandy's body. They had been restrained by cords, and those cords came from the theater. So now that we know they were in the theater, they went to Safeway, somehow they made it to the theater,
00:18:33
Speaker
And if we if you believe that Stephen Parris all had nothing to do with it, the picture that starts to emerge in your head is that the girls leave with no intention of going to the theater, somehow end up at the theater that night. and yeah But they have walked past the theater on the way to the store? You could, i't just but probably not. It would have been a little bit out of the way, enough out of the way.
00:19:01
Speaker
But what you would have, well, we'll get to what you would have walked by, but probably not directly by the theater. There are two ways they could have gone. come but But this would have, the way that the other way that didn't pass the theater would involve much less climbing uphill.
Theater as Investigation Focal Point
00:19:19
Speaker
so okay so And they were known to go through this park that would have gotten them there. But one of the really interesting things to me about the timeline is that if they leave at 9.15 for roughly a 15-minute walk to a Safeway, and somehow they end up at the theater, right? The theater that Steven left at 6 p.m. to go to a party with his girlfriend. So Steven's not at the theater. Let's say they dis they go to Safeway, take some 15 minutes to get down there. They spend 15 minutes in Safeway, 15 minutes
00:19:56
Speaker
they're you know You're somewhere in between 10 and 11 p.m., and Steven is definitely not back yet at the point where they disappear. Now, they could have been hanging out, they could have been doing whatever, but that window, he's not there. But at some point, they end up in the theater, and then unexpectedly, at midnight, Steven shows up.
00:20:17
Speaker
And that part of the timeline, if you believe that Steven wasn't involved and he was also killed, suggests that he walked in on them while they were being abducted.
00:20:28
Speaker
um You know, Chrissy and Brandy were not dismembered like Chris and David. The police ah now believe that the killer kidnapped Brandy and Chrissy, either directly kidnapped them or convinced them to go to the theater for some reason, somewhere between Safeway and the theater.
00:20:50
Speaker
And so a way to describe it is the theater is on a big hill in Lewiston and you go down the road on that hill and you've got a corner with something called the Red Baron pizzeria. And if you take a right right before you'd run right into the Safeway. And and and so, you know,
00:21:12
Speaker
Some of their closing clothing was missing. Once again, identification was missing. Christy's coat and jewelry, including an opal ring, were found on the scene. so So again, jewelry is still there. Identification is missing. Some clothing is missing. Two coin purses were found, but not their main wallets or purses.
00:21:38
Speaker
um So underwear and shoes of both women were missing. so there And that could have been predation. um Having been to this hill, what it really felt like in looking at the map of the old road is that someone drove their car to the guardrail, tossed the bodies off the side, and it has a very, very high sloped angle.
00:22:04
Speaker
So where it goes, you cannot get to that space easily. So someone really just toss the bodies over the over the side there. um Gloria and I went out there with her dog, Cash, and you know, ah it you can't climb up from the bottom of that hill to where the tree is ah without serious help. So, you know,
00:22:29
Speaker
it It was, a with all the trees and the hill, it was an excellent place to, to um at least in my mind, to to toss a about it. So back on the night of September 14th, 1982, we know some of Lance Voss's timeline because ah three days after the disappearances, he walked into a local police officer or office and volunteered a statement.
00:22:59
Speaker
which is so... Interesting. Well, he kind of needed to, in a way, because, ah yeah, well and we'll explain that in a second.
Voss's Questionable Alibi
00:23:07
Speaker
um So Voss told the police that he had been watching the movie The Fog at the Red Baron Pizza Parlor, which was down the hill from the theater and right across from the Safeway grocery store, as Jason explained a moment ago. ah He told police that the movie ended at 11 p.m., although local TV guides said it ended at midnight. Can I pause here for a sec? Yeah.
00:23:30
Speaker
So just to say, we have Nelson and Miller go missing somewhere after 9.15 p.m. We have Voss saying that he watched a movie at the pizzeria that's between Nelson's apartment and the Safeway. Yeah. And that it ended at 11 p.m., even though the local TV guides say that it ended at midnight.
00:23:54
Speaker
which I think is a bit of a like red herring rabbit hole that people go down to because if he's saying the movie ended at 11 p.m. and he stopped watching it. Yeah.
00:24:05
Speaker
That still puts him in the jackpot time between where the girls go missing and Steven walks into the theater. What 11PM really does for him is he's not near the time if the girls left at 9.15 when they would have gone missing.
00:24:29
Speaker
Right. So, you know, we don't know whether he watched the movies. We don't have witnesses to say that he said stayed through the um TV guide. But what we do know is that if you believe he watched the movie until 11 p.m., there's a very low likelihood he would have run into Christy and Brandy. Yeah. Yeah. I i agree with you. And ah that fudging of the time just kind of Seems convenient. I mean, he was there. He was at the building right between it. ah You can just almost imagine if he was sort of hanging out around there and maybe outside. Do we know if he smoked or anything like that? Maybe he's outside having a cigarette. The girls are walking by. I mean, and remember also part of what he says next is that he at 11 p.m., he leaves and he goes to the um he goes to the
00:25:26
Speaker
ah back to the theater and he falls asleep. He says that he's working on the rafters and he hurt his back. He was in pain and he fell asleep on the couch. So the beauty of that is the beauty of 11 p.m. is it's not near where Kristy and Brandy would have disappeared on a short trip to Safeway and it also puts him asleep when Steven Parasol works. 11 p.m. is just perfect and a lot of people have spent a lot of time in this case focusing on the movie really ending at midnight.
00:26:05
Speaker
But I tend to think like it's a bit like Israel keys. You can sit around and you can wonder whether Israel keys tell you choose about this or that. Like stop. Just stop. yeah Just assume assume it's a lie. and and right And what does the lie serve? The lie 11 p.m. is perfect. It is the perfect time to not run into either of these parties and in no time to end up asleep.
00:26:31
Speaker
and He had a time over three days to figure that out before he goes in to give his statements. He was getting that timeline for himself worked out. um and and in and As we'll see here, because it just gets even it gets even kind of dumber as
Voss's Suspicious Behavior
00:26:45
Speaker
we go along from him. But anyway, he said he returned to the theater after the movie and moved his car from the front of the theater to the back. and on If you're on YouTube right now, you can see pictures of where he parked his car behind the building.
00:26:58
Speaker
um and There's a small loading dock back there that led to a room where costumes were kept and he intended to get some tools out of there. ah Voss said he was planning to work on some rigging and ah he had twisted and strained his back during that process. ah He mentioned physical injuries, cuts and bruises from the accident. so Apparently, he was kind of ah beat up a little bit by whatever happened according to him anyway.
00:27:24
Speaker
ah When asked, Voss said he did not notice Steven come into the theater at midnight. If the movie had ended when the TV Guide said it did, it would make sense that Voss would not hear Steven return, but it would ah but not if it ended at 11 PM.
00:27:40
Speaker
At some point, Voss said he heard the phone ringing, but did not pick it up. He told police that he decided to lie down and fell asleep until 5 a.m. and woke up in the green room of the theater and noticed nothing unusual. Voss said he left for home, but realized that his wife Patricia had to go to work soon, and he did not want to wake her, so he went back to the theater. This is all very strange, because you have to wonder, what is Patricia thinking at this point? Has he ever been home all night, you know?
00:28:09
Speaker
If you were to believe that, what happened that night is three people disappeared. Voss went back to the theater.
00:28:22
Speaker
injured himself, I mean, his timing was perfect, injured himself, wait, hold on, moved his car, moved his car from the front of the theater to the back of the theater, where which is that picture on the left where you can see those so back doors that lead to the bottom. Where there is a loading dock. Yes, yes. And so, and and for reasons unknown, moves his car to the back of the theater.
00:28:49
Speaker
and ah And someone gets into the theater and kidnaps Stephen Paracel. You also have to believe that someone also either stole those cords from the theater and used them somewhere else to tie up the girls or had the girls in there and came in and broken and tied them up.
00:29:15
Speaker
So, you gotta believe a lot of wild things to think that Voss noticed nothing. Do you think his claimed injuries happened during the commission of the murders? Could've been.
Voss Evades Identification as Suspect
00:29:28
Speaker
I mean, I just feel like he threw his back out. He had some cuts and bruises on him. I mean... That's exactly what I was thinking. It could be a great excuse for that. You got to believe a lot of strange things for that to happen. And, yeah you know, one of the other things, you know, Voss at the time had a relatively small car, which points away from him taking three bodies away and dumping them.
00:29:50
Speaker
But that part of the story always has bothered me and about him saying that he did hear that he said he heard a phone ring, but he didn't pick it up, slept till five a.m., woke up in the groom room of the theater, noticed nothing unusual. But then he goes home, he says, at five a.m., and then he returns.
00:30:13
Speaker
and yeah it And it really makes me wonder that if I had a small car with a not enough room for three bodies, maybe what really happened is far before 5am I drove and I dumped either one or two of the bodies. And then I returned and at 5am I went by my house or something along those lines.
00:30:37
Speaker
um Or I went back to the theater. I need an explanation returning to the theater where I pick up the last body and then dump it. And one great thing Brandon points out in the podcast that I think is just really in the sacred podcast.
00:30:51
Speaker
You know, at that time, or I don't know if Brandon points this out in the podcast, I think he does, or it was either on the podcast or in his blog. It's not like today where you can take your credit card and go to a gas station and get gas in the middle of the night. So also another thing is that 35 mile trip to Kendrick and 35 miles back,
00:31:14
Speaker
um Whoever it was may have needed to get gas before yeah for completing all of their work. It is mind blowing to me that he was not investigated further.
00:31:30
Speaker
With this, given where he was in the circumstances, how was he not zeroed in on? And i this just blows my mind. ah I mean, that the the circumstances here are just overwhelming to me. Like, this is the guy they should be zeroing in on here. Instead, people were treating Steven Pearsall, who was by all accounts a very gentle and kind and, you know, very good person did not have the temperament ah that anybody would ever just suspect. I mean, he just, he, people just couldn't believe that they would even think him a suspect in this thing. Um, that's now what meets even a suspect was in in retrospect, Steven, you know,
00:32:17
Speaker
When they visited his apartment, they said that there were some what the quote unquote deviant things there. um so deviant things Not sure what they mean by that. I've never gotten the details on that. But what people have told me who are close to the case is Steven was probably asexual.
00:32:35
Speaker
yeah And so that his lack of sort of like sexual interest in people and possibly lack of having sex with his girlfriend made people think that he was some kind of sexual deviant, the investigators at the time. And so that's what put a focus on him. In our lens of better understanding people now, I don't think we would have had that same immediate focus on him.
00:32:58
Speaker
That's a good point. um So strange things continue to occur
Voss as Person of Interest
00:33:03
Speaker
here. Within the next year, they found a men's watch dangling from the rafters above the theater room. But Steven's family was unable to confirm whether it was his.
00:33:14
Speaker
Around the same time, Christie's wallet was found beneath a Frito-Lay vending machine and an academic building at Lewis Clark College and a building where Steven Purcell had attended classes. Here we go again. i'm I know we're thinking about Steven Purcell attending classes there, but I'm just thinking Frito-Lay.
00:33:31
Speaker
um Although, Stake River Podcast was like having trouble verifying a lot of those employment records, but again, at this time in the 70s, paper records, yada, yada. I used to work for Frito-Lay. It's actually pretty high-tech now. But her but anyway, three days after Christy and Brandy were found, ah Voss was brought back in for an interview around the night about the night that they had disappeared. Over the coming weeks, he was interviewed several times, but he refused to take a polygraph.
00:33:59
Speaker
At this point, the police informed him that he is now being interviewed as a suspect. So he was being looked at closely now at this point. They just weren't able to pin it on him. In May, Chief Fredrickson confirmed there was a suspect in the disappearances and deaths at the theater and says that he is being looked at ah for homicide in another jurisdiction.
00:34:22
Speaker
Voss continued, however, to live a relatively normal life. He continued to volunteer at the theater and work a wide variety of jobs, none of which he seemed to be able to easily hold down.
Cryptic Classified Ads
00:34:33
Speaker
ah He was a former member of the United States Navy, um and he has a pretty lackluster record. Let's just get that out of the way. um So it kind of fits a pattern that Voss just sort of is this sort of jack-of-all-trades master of none, doesn't really want to focus or kind of pin down on any one thing.
00:34:52
Speaker
but He was elected as a trustee around this time for the local veterans of foreign wars organization, um which is just funny because the man was very nearly dishonorably discharged. It's kind of amazing he wasn't, but anyway, we'll talk more about his Navy life later. ah He becomes a little more active in politics as well, frequently writing letters and continuing to publish weird little classified ads.
00:35:14
Speaker
So on white's Christina White's birthday, Voss published an ad in the Lewiston Morning Herald that said, quote, lost. March 3rd in the Esoten area. Brown Husky. Phone number 758-9422. And then another phone number, 2434284.
00:35:35
Speaker
And then comma, Eve's and Weekend. So he provided two phone numbers, another missing dog. It would have been Christina White's 20th birthday. Can I pause for a second? yeah yeah Who has evening and weekend phone numbers? We know that the first phone number is his home phone number. Can't figure out who the second number is, but like without having a weekend phone, what who has evening and weekends? But go on, go on. Right, exactly. It would have been Christina White's 20th birthday. In addition, the letters for k Christina can be found consecutively in the ad, the letters for the name Christina.
00:36:17
Speaker
It is a nine-letter name with its letters consecutive in an ad that only has 11 words. The syntax in the ad is so strange, especially for the way classified ads were written. ah And i I also found this very interesting because i I did have a job writing classified ads back in the day and they do follow a particular format. So I wondered like how it got passed.
00:36:40
Speaker
that the editorial. um Well, I could tell you on my end that if somebody fights you to death on a classified ad, you're going to get it in whatever way they want. You're just going to recommend you're going to tell them like you're wasting your money or.
00:36:55
Speaker
I actually do remember having a few of those conversations. Good point. Um, the, uh, but there aren't many Brown Huskies, anybody who's ever seen a dog, they're kind of usually gray, black and white, you know, a little model. I don't, maybe you'll have one with spots of Brown, but that's not typical. Uh, the first number can't be linked to Voss, but the second phone number can be.
00:37:17
Speaker
Furthermore, if you unscramble the numbers after removing Christina, you can come up with seven years now. Boss's first and last name can also be found in the ad, but not consecutively. It was seven years from Christina White's death or disappearance.
00:37:36
Speaker
What a coincidence. It is wild. um And you can see a lot of these ads too. you know and I mean, also if you want to see a huge treasure trove of pictures, and I'll have a link to this too, go to the Snake River Podcast dot.com site. Shran and them have put on a ah great um bunch of pictures and evidence there. so and Um, but yeah, this, the classified ads just really, again, I, ah we've talked about this off offline, you know, about like how, you know, this is a taunt, this, this evoke yeah like zodiac and, you know, btk and and sort of like, there's, there's an alternative version of this, right? Which is this.
Voss's Pattern of Involvement in Murders
00:38:17
Speaker
that one, Lance Voss committed these crimes and is sticking it in everyone's face through classified ads. Or the other version of it is Lance Voss did not commit these crimes and is still sticking it in everybody's faces. So it could be both, but he's messing up with people. yeah But then I keep thinking about how many people I was in my life, I was the last person to talk to them before they disappeared.
00:38:46
Speaker
And yeah, it's all about zero. And same yeah ah um and and I'm older than Vos was at that time. So and I think I hung out probably as a kid with a lot of drug dealers and a lot of, you know, criminals. So you would think I would be. But yeah, no, no.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah, and this keeps happening to him. I was watching ah earlier a ah YouTube video um from the that chapter channel on this. He did a a brief little video on it and he said this guy is like the Forrest Gump of murder. yeah That he's just always there at the at the moment that something like this happens and it's just But this particular case for me just feels like, yeah, he was a strong suspect and yet he just managed to slip out of their hands um because he wouldn't take the polygraph. And then he shut down and refused to answer questions. And I guess they just didn't feel they had enough to hold him on. I don't know. And he was slick. Like he was being investigated in the Spokane ah serial killings. And, you know, he agreed to give his DNA.
00:39:56
Speaker
in that case, but it could only be used on those cases. None of the other cases. Interesting. It takes us to July 27, 1987. Yes, yes. ah We have another tragedy in this time ah from 24-year-old Claudette Volliva. Volliva? Viola, it's spelled wrong in there. Okay, gotcha. um A registered nurse and a girlfriend.
00:40:23
Speaker
of Lance Voss, who was still married to Patricia, by the way. ah She was found dead in her apartment. ah Her death was ruled suicide by overdose, according to a copy of the medical examiner's report. She met Voss at the Lewiston Civic Theater during a production of Footlight Frenzy. Voss arranged her funeral services, and she was buried in the local Normal Hill Cemetery. cemetery So yet another Dead body showing up around this guy. So I'm going to dive a little bit into Lance's background. So ah these are not the first time Lance Voss has been in the close proximity to or a suspect in murder investigation.
Voss's Past and Chicago Case
00:41:08
Speaker
um Lance was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1947.
00:41:15
Speaker
um The family, after his father Frank died, they moved to lin an apartment on Linder Avenue in Chicago. It's about 12 miles west of the Loop downtown. In 1962, he started attending Austin High School in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. And he was involved in like music, enjoyed spending time in the library, two things that really stayed consistent over his life.
00:41:42
Speaker
Voss was also involved at the local YMCA in the Austin district where he worked as a counselor. So he's about 15 at this time. And this would be the first time that we know of that he was caught up in a murder investigation. On August 1, eight-year-old Diane Taylor had been attending a day camp at the YMCA and asked Lance to unwrap a lollipop for her according to two witnesses to the incident.
00:42:09
Speaker
He refused and the witnesses said Diane kicked him in the shin. Diane was last seen around 2.10 PM in an alley behind the YMCA building just after the shin kicking incident. Diane's mother returned home around 6.30 PM. Diane was not home. She reported her around 9 PM, 9.30 PM to the Chicago Police Department.
00:42:32
Speaker
Two days later, Diane's naked body was founded in an alley on Lockwood Avenue um in Austin Heights. So there were houses on both sides of the alley. um These are really long, wide alleys that ran between the houses. And she was found in the grass behind a fence to one of the yards. She had been stabbed, had head trauma, was sexually assaulted. Stab wound to the heart was believed to be the fatal blow.
00:43:01
Speaker
Some investigators believe that an axe and a knife had been used. Her blouse had been shoved down her throat. This location happens to be between the house where Lance grew up and where he worked as a counselor. The blue shorts Diane was believed to have been wearing were missing as well as her blue wallet and her YMCA ID.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yet another missing ID. I know, I know. I have a feeling this case is going to be solved by somebody finding a box of IDs. So the alley had been searched before, so detectives believed that the location she was found in was a disposal site and that it had been dumped on the previous day.
00:43:44
Speaker
So Voss lived ah about you know three quarters of a mile north and to the west of the dump site, virtually between the YMCA building um and his home is the site. So in a newspaper clipping,
00:44:00
Speaker
And I'll show you guys the newspaper clipping. Oh, this is interesting. Yeah. yeah So there it is. yeah Here's the coverage of Diane. And in this newspaper clipping, classmates and others from the time have identified that person at the far right as being Lance Voss.
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah, his elbow sticking out there. Yep. This picture was believed to be taken less than 30 minutes after the body was found. Mm hmm. And he was there um checking it out. yeah Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So.
00:44:38
Speaker
You know, Voss was among 700 young men who were interviewed as suspects in the disappearance and murder of Diane by 1963.
Navy Background and Cryptology
00:44:46
Speaker
So the Chicago Police Department would later say that he was among three who were serious suspects. In 64, before graduating, Voss stopped attending Austin High School in 65. So he never graduated from I.S. Yeah, he he flunked out and I was thinking of what podcast points out, right? No, I don't think we're i don't think we're entirely sure. okay I actually think that no no one's been able to get the education records. And now that's actually the really bizarre thing about it. Why would you leave before your senior year? Right.
00:45:22
Speaker
oh So why did he abruptly leave in the school year afterwards? I think that is, people people would love to get those education records. So in 65, before he was old enough to enlist in the Navy, he enlisted in the Navy. He focused on cryptology and signals. So signals intelligence, that's intercepting electronic messages. ah Cryptology is code making and code breaking.
00:45:48
Speaker
um his interest in code making code breaking kind of becomes relevant as people start to look into these classified ads and other puzzles that seem to be buried in some of his writing so in sixty eight he's discharged i starts going to school at a community college in california in the almida area.
00:46:10
Speaker
And on June 4th, 1972, a security guard in Santa Cruz, California was approached by a young couple who had told them that they had found a body at a beach.
00:46:23
Speaker
17-year-old Antoinette Anino was believed to have died at midnight, according to the coroner. She had come out to the boardwalk that night with her boyfriend and his girlfriend. The two couples split, and Anino spoke ah with her boyfriend at a wharf. They had an argument, and they split up. She didn't show up. The group searched for her.
Funeral Home Break-in
00:46:45
Speaker
um The coroner believed she had washed up, accidental drowning, and ruled of the suicide.
00:46:52
Speaker
The next night, Voss was arrested for attempting to break into the funeral home where Enino's body was located. The police report said that Voss was seen trying to enter the rear of the Willow Glen Chapel where Antoinette was the only body present. The officer saw Voss walking from the back of the building with a flashlight in his coat pocket, a 12-inch knife on his hip, and a camera.
00:47:23
Speaker
The officer found that at the back of the pa chapel from where Voss was coming from, a screen had been removed from a window. So Voss told the police that he was going into the chapel to visit his girlfriend who had died one more time. And like I said, the only body in the chapel was that teenage girl, Antoinette Amina. um He was charged with burglary, pled to trespass,
00:47:51
Speaker
you know, gave a false address to them. And, you know, I think this Might be, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so unbelievably strange. This might be a good place for us to stop for the night and pick up, um pick up with the rest of it. Oh, I agree. But yeah I do want to share one thing as a bit of a preview for what's to come. Yeah.
00:48:24
Speaker
You know, this is one of my finds after I came back from Idaho. I haven't done a lot, but I found this classified ad that Voss posted. And in it, it says, and you can see how odd it is, personal interpersonal counseling. And that's what caught my attention. I found it by phone number.
00:48:45
Speaker
But what really, really caught my attention is why would you use personal and interpersonal when describing counseling? It could be personal counseling, interpersonal counseling, whatever it is, but like, why both? And i Mr. Dave Van Der Dusseze.
00:49:04
Speaker
yeah offers personal counseling. We're saying personal again. You're paying by the word. It's classified the ad. Why are you repeating personal? Why are you even saying personal? Why are you saying interpersonal?
00:49:16
Speaker
Yeah. Counseling. Spelled wrong. Spelled wrong with two L's, right? For people of all ages with an accent on Christian living emphasis. Why not quite say of all ages or why not say offers Christian counseling for people of all ages, period. Yeah. Accent on Christian living emphasis. And emphasis, right? Like no need. Okay. Individuals or groups. All right. Cool.
00:49:46
Speaker
Got all that. And two phone numbers again. Yeah, two phone numbers again.
Ads with Hidden Messages
00:49:51
Speaker
It was all very weird. And so I called Gloria Crobo Burtz and she was like.
00:49:59
Speaker
Oh yeah, no, he's got a friend. His friend is named Vander Does. And Allison, you'll get this. I went and I looked in the classifieds from the days before and the days after and found a version of this classified ad where Dave's name is spelled correctly. Vander Space Does. Counseling is spelled correctly.
00:50:24
Speaker
Oh. So someone called in and got the ad changed. So it was incorrect and it ran for eight days after that. He ran this. Ready for it? Yeah. Oh my God. So if you, without, without stepping over one letter, without using one letter twice,
00:50:52
Speaker
You've got the names of Steve Parasol. You've got the full name of Christina White and Blue. Steve Parasol and Lovell. You have the last name Miller and Purple.
00:51:05
Speaker
You've got Nelson highlighted in pink and you've got David highlighted in orange. The names of all of his victims are encoded. Well, I mean, like I'm not convicting him quite yet. ah It's really and you you did some math on this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was very interesting. So little mathematician friend of mine said that if you were to take All, all, what was it? If you were to take all, you could you could look at it two different ways. You could take all 27 letters and just randomly select them. What would the odds of all of those names being in there? And it's like more than one in a hundred billion.
00:52:01
Speaker
It's randomly selected. However, if you weigh letters for their frequency and how they're used in the English language, you're talking, um, one in 900 billion chances. Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:20
Speaker
And this is yet again, and he placed this ad right after the the murder um or after Antoinette. um No, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. No, no, no, I'm missing the timeline. When was this ad? um After the Lewiston Civic Theater. Okay, okay. Oh my goodness. So I just wanted to give people that preview for next time because Lance is really an interesting guy, so.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah, and you know he like you said, he studied ah cryptology. He studied code breaking. He loves this these kind of puzzle-y things. He's also ah ah a drama man, a theater man. ah He likes a ah rousing story. He likes to play the bad guy in stories. um you know There's so much to this this guy's personality and so much to what he has done or what he's been linked to. it yes i you like I fell over when I saw this. like Without using any two letters twice in a 25-word ad, you can find Steve Parasol, Miller, Nelson, David, and Christina White.
00:53:28
Speaker
but yeah The last names of the three victims whose bodies were found and the full names of the two that are missing. What are the odds of that in a misspelled ad with words it
Voss's Taunting Behavior
00:53:44
Speaker
doesn't need? it He calls in to have the ad spelling changed so he can fit this code in there. Right. Right. And while and so remember, the first day the ad runs,
00:53:57
Speaker
Vander does is spelled as one word. Counseling is spelled correctly, and then it has the two L's. So the other thing that's really interesting for me is so you've got eight day days of the ad running. And but what do you have seven of?
00:54:19
Speaker
for the ad that are in. Steve, Parasol, Miller, Nelson, David, Christine. so yeah yeah seven Seven, eight, oh my gosh.
00:54:33
Speaker
So anyway, I found it very, very fascinating. And Kathy has done amazing research on it. She's the one, there's another ad that she found that's amazing um that probably relates to Christina White. But anyway, we will be back. And, you know. We have much more to discuss.
Podcast Wrap-up and Upcoming Events
00:54:55
Speaker
I want to let you know about a true crime podcasting meetup that we're going to be holding at the Hotel Ivy in downtown Minneapolis on Saturday, December 7th, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We'll be doing a live show with some great true crime podcasts, have guests from the forensic science firm Othrom and the Gabby Petito Foundation, advocates, and some fun events. We're also going to do a live investigation into an actual case.
00:55:23
Speaker
If you're interested, you can go to our Facebook page to find the event sign up or to www.silverliningshandbook dot.com to sign up there. There's no cost and we hope to see you. Thanks for joining us for this second episode on the disappearance of Christina White and the Lewis Clark Valley Serial Killer.
00:55:47
Speaker
Next week, we'll be back on Tuesday with one of our regular episodes and interview, and we'll be back on Friday with the third episode in this series. In the meantime, if you'd like to join us for more discussions with me and other listeners, we can be found on most social media platforms, including a listener run Facebook group called the Silver Linings Fireside Chat. For deeper conversations with our guests and live conversations like this one with other listeners, you can also join us on our Patreon at www.patreon dot.com forward slash the Silver Linings