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Season Five: In The Trees (Part One)
259 Plays25 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we talk about a couple of true crime updates and set the stage for Halloween.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Halloween Themes
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
True Crime vs Paranormal Stories
00:00:57
Speaker
So it's Halloween time. I know people do paranormal stuff and and whatnot for Halloween. I i think crime scares me more than paranormal stuff. I don't know about you. Oh, without question. I figured I would veer back that way. I'd started putting together a series for kind of the time between Halloween and the holiday season.
00:01:20
Speaker
And I realized like I'm starting to get so many pieces of true crime news. And I needed something that was kind of Halloween-ish. And I had a lot of notes on the case that we're going to cover today. But I thought I would do that and then kind of couple it with some true crime news. We did this a lot in season three, season four. And I kind of went back to that for a minute.
Old Case Updates and Challenges
00:01:45
Speaker
So we I think we talked about, I should agree, right?
00:01:50
Speaker
We talked about it. I don't know that it aired. I think it did air. All there was was some very subtle movement in the case, which was odd because it is a case from 2000, so it's 24 years old. But there was it was it was just some law enforcement activity with search warrants and such. Right. And then we were sort of debating like, well, is there really anything here for us to talk about yet, right?
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think it came up in the context of something else. I i knew we had recorded something on it. Like sometimes i don't like I don't put all the things together until too late. And I think I've mentioned recently, I'm trying to buy back some of our episodes to keep what we have going on. ah It's kind of a weird position to be in. i I bring that up. Like, did we talk about that? Because it is it's a really old case with a little bit of news.
Introduction to Jaleek Rainwalker Case
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird for you to say that and for me to realize I remember like when it happened. Yeah. I remember actually like hearing about it on like the six o'clock news in real time. i I remember that time as well. I actually remember hearing about it on the radio.
00:03:05
Speaker
I didn't hear it on the news. I heard about it. It was ah like a radio thing when she was missing. Yeah. I heard about basically it was just this ongoing, like, we're still looking for her for, you know, a couple of weeks after she is missing. And then about, uh, whenever they found her book back. But it to me, it's just weird that a really old case could be something I listened to in real time. Right. So here's another one for you. It's not quite as old as that.
00:03:32
Speaker
but almost, and it's from this time of year. This is from ah November 1st, 2007. He came up already. We've talked about him briefly. I've noticed that you and I, we put him on this list and we took him off the list. He was on the the VICAP search that Keys had done when he was searching for himself in the bank robberies on the FBI computer and hit the VICAP page. And like everybody thinks, oh, Keys is responsible for these 47 missing people, 44 of which the names have been released.
00:04:05
Speaker
That turned out not to be the case, because I was i was eventually able to duplicate that search and like see what he would have been seeing based on the time he would have been searching. But this is the case of Jaleek Rainwalker. Now, he's not the main case for today, but there's a little bit of of news in his case. And I thought what I'd do is just kind of give the bare bones of it, and then we'd talk about what the news seems to be. Today's information comes from ah News 10, The Charlie Project, New York State Police, The State Troopers in New York, ah New York State's Missing and Exploited Children Clearinghouse,
00:04:44
Speaker
WXXATV, Capital News 9, the Find your League Task Force, ah Schenectady, Daily Gazette, and then there's a couple of like miscellaneous things I pulled from a Facebook page that sort of seems to be Like it started out being about to leak and it has a lot of other cases on it. Now the post stars in here. And then I did read the the America's most wanted on this just to kind of remember a lot of components of this. The best right up for this, which is what I'm going to pull from just to tell the audience.
00:05:17
Speaker
is the Charlie Project write-up, because she seems to have pulled from those sources and more over there. Jalik went missing out of Greenwich, New York. He was classified as endangered missing. The date of last contact is either Halloween or the day after, depending on how you read the paperwork. ah He's a male. He's biracial, black and white. His date of birth was August 2nd, 1995, so he goes missing. He's 12 years old.
00:05:45
Speaker
If he were alive today, he'd be 29 years old. He was five feet, six inches tall. I've read that to say five, six to five, eight. He was around 105 pounds. He was last seen with a bright yellow fleece, pull over a gray shirt with a dragon on it, blue jeans, and a pair of black canvas high top sneakers. According to The Charlie Project, he had some emotional problems. Jaleek was suffering from violent outbursts and This is unsourced for me, but I see it repeated and I tracked it back to what I think might be a secondary source. Apparently he was exposed to alcohol and cocaine in utero. Right. He was with his foster family.
00:06:29
Speaker
but Yeah, we're getting there. That could be part of it, is what I'm saying. I see what you're saying. Yeah, that probably explains the little, the path that he's on here, ah because it is going to be a little strange to talk about. um He was diagnosed with ah allegedly reactive attachment disorder, also seen it mentioned as ah ODD, which is oppositional defiant disorder, similar, basically just means it's hard for him to trust authority and form relationships.
00:06:57
Speaker
ah Now, according to two sources, mainly the Charlie Project, he's got brown hair, green eyes, a slight speech impediment. which basically made him, print it it's a lisp is what they're describing. His R sound like a W. His the name is pronounced Jelique, but his nickname was Jay. And at the time of his disappearance, ah his hair had been styled with blonde highlights and he had about a two inch afro. He has multiple birthmarks on his body. I say all that to say, you know, this is a child. This is a missing 12 year old. That five, six range on him makes him sound a little tall for 12, not super tall, but like,
00:07:38
Speaker
That's going to play in in a minute. It's going to be kind of important. So according to Charlie Project and the Greenwich Village Police Department, they have very similar write-ups. They say that Jaleek was last seen in a home belonging to his adoptive father's parents, which would have been on Hill Street in Greenwich, New York. This is November 1st, 2007. His adoptive father had spent the night alone in the house with him. This is a guy named Steven Kerr.
00:08:05
Speaker
Jalik disappeared during the night and he has never been heard from again. According to Stephen Kerr, he says that he woke up in the morning around 7.30. He found a note that Jalik had left behind and it read, dear everybody, I'm sorry for everything. I won't be a bother anymore. Goodbye, Jalik. Stephen Kerr reported his son missing at 8.57.
00:08:28
Speaker
ah Jalika is not believed to have been carrying any kind of cash or credit cards with him when he went missing.
Jaleek's Family Dynamics and Challenges
00:08:36
Speaker
He had been living with, like you referenced, his adoptive parents, which is Stephen Kerr and a woman named Jocelyn McDonald, for five years by the time he goes missing. According to sources, he was born addicted to addict to the crack cocaine. He spent his early childhood in six different foster homes.
00:08:56
Speaker
Okay, so I think I merged several thoughts together there, and what I meant to say was he went through the foster system. and when you've mentioned that. Well, that's why I pause, but ultimately you're right. I mean, that's what's happened here. So I just wanted to clarify all of this. It was adopted, which I thought was the case because of some other stuff that comes up. But anyway, um a lot of times, ah baby testing positive for anything is like the very first route for a newborn to go into foster care, right?
00:09:28
Speaker
yeah to but Yeah, you quickly become a ward of the state and you go down the path of being and very involved in the courts with people watching over you. But it also can be a sign that there's going to be other problems in your life related to the adults that you start life with. Right. And i from the little bit that I've looked into it, which is not a lot, um it's unclear how much his ODD and anger issues and all the stuff that he was having happen to him. It's unclear whether it was um an exaggeration on his part in reacting to stuff or an exaggeration on the receiver's end when they're trying to explain it. My point being that
00:10:19
Speaker
We don't have a whole lot of independent information with regard to what the real problem here is. I know that I have, um i I looked into this case extensively at one point in time, and it hasn't been recently.
00:10:40
Speaker
but i you know I drew my own conclusions. But I did feel like it was possible that adults were putting a little too much emphasis on his terrible behavior. yeah And it didn't seem warranted based on some of the other things that were being put forward. And so I just wanted to add that.
00:11:01
Speaker
You're right. I mean, he's born addicted to crack cocaine. According to reports, that's what's out there. He spent early childhood in six different foster homes. That's always hard on a kid and no wonder, you know, reactive attachment disorder is formed. And my thought is if you know that, how, I mean, could he ever really be acting out? Follow you. I mean, it's, it's difficult.
00:11:27
Speaker
It's difficult to put all this together without like, honestly, I got to meet the kid like nine times out of 10. I can tell you a lot more about the situation once I meet the kid. Unfortunately, this is not a situation where you can meet the kid. Well, sure. But I mean, he has a happy smiling face and a lot of pictures, right? Yeah.
00:11:47
Speaker
Which seems to contrast with the idea that according to ah McDonald and Kerr, they stated that Jaleec had violent temper tantrums and his four siblings were afraid of them. Violent temper tantrums on a 12-year-old, i I don't have enough detail to tell you if the person is making the right call with that description or not, that can mean a lot of different things. It could mean he's punching holes in the walls. It could mean he's getting into fights. um There's a lot of things that go on there. And I've looked at cases, kids between the ages of 11 and 16, you frequently find that the words violent temper tantrums can mean a lot of different things. ah Apparently here it's enough that like they keep stating it. It is stated repeatedly. And it does come from multiple
00:12:34
Speaker
sources. So his former foster printer parents, so Jaleek's former foster parents, Jody and Larry Schoen, they had him for four years. And they stated he would have outbursts that could last up to an hour, which to some degree, backs up the statement of his adoptive parents. And what Jody and Larry said about Jaleek was that he was smart, very intelligent, but troubled.
00:13:04
Speaker
They had originally planned to adopt him, but when he was seven years old, Jalik attacked their daughter. And they had decided at that point in time, he could no longer stay in the home, which is about the worst thing that can happen to a kid bouncing through foster and and and the adoption cycle. Well, and it's interesting to me because while they were absolutely entitled to make that determination,
00:13:30
Speaker
being foster parents, their children were on different ground, like their biological child versus their foster child. They held different stakes for them. and that And while I'm not saying they shouldn't have done what they did, as far as saying, like, we're not going to adopt you any longer,
00:13:50
Speaker
his entire life would have reflected that difference. it you know i i don't I don't want to put anybody down because I feel like being a foster parent could be like a noble calling for some people. But you know a real parent, if those two kids were their biological children, there's no getting out of that. You have to deal with it.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yeah, i you know, I fall into kind of a strange category on this because I've never had an adopted child, never had a foster kid. I have had my own kid, and I have raised my kid with someone who is not their biological parent. So i've gotten the scene I've gotten to see over the years some interesting dynamics. 12-year-olds in this situation I feel like there was a lot of care that seemed to be happening around him. I'm not sure how authentic or genuine it was. There are people in the world not saying that about any of these people. I'm just saying there are people that kind of collect children. And i they start out as those people that are trying to do well. Go ahead. I can't figure out why people do that. Yeah. i've You know, I've come into it a couple of things this last year or so. I've come into a couple of cases and I'm
00:15:14
Speaker
listening and like the description early on, which when you hear that somebody has three biological children and four adopted children, one child for me was a lot at times. And then, you know, that child grows much out having to be sort of a social butterfly. So there was always like a pile of children around. But I cannot imagine being full time 24 seven responsible for three kids.
00:15:44
Speaker
let alone seven or eight? Well, right. And from my understanding, so I had initially thought, well, it's to get money for the kids, which might be the case for fosters. But once they adopt them, they don't get state support any longer. I don't think. It depends on the situation. There are some support systems for adopted children. I don't think that's the driving force there. Well, and so again, you know, I i couldn't i have never been, a it has come up so many times ah under a variety of circumstances from, you know, fosters getting
00:16:23
Speaker
ah financial aid to foster children from and then going back to biological parents trying to get their um biological child back to get like the you know food stamps. Welfare, whatever is available. Welfare benefits now um for another mouth to feed. because that Tax benefits even I've heard. so and so you know i've seen so i I think there are like financial implications but at the same time I feel like so in I say all that just to be so I'm trying to advocate here for Jaleek because I have no doubt he wasn't like a picture perfect child but to me
00:17:12
Speaker
especially with um the show ends. They sent a seven-year-old back who had gotten and into a fight ah with their daughter and they decided he could no longer live with them. And I don't know how old the little girl was and it really doesn't matter. And they it's actually better that they went ahead and did that.
Timeline and Investigation of Disappearance
00:17:32
Speaker
But my point being, if that was their biological child, I mean, would they put him in the system because he attacked their daughter?
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah, I, you know, I, again, the reason I was kind of spelling out my situation and experiences is because I have trouble identifying with some of what's going on here. So Jaleek leaves the showrooms who are going to adopt them. And like you said,
00:17:55
Speaker
He attacks their daughter. He's a seven-year-old. Some kind of assault occurs. I do not know what it is. I have looked for it. Haven't been able to find it. But basically, they decide he's got to leave. So he then goes to live with Stephen Kerr and Jocelyn McDonald, who we're previously talking about. Now, they have three biological sons, and they've adopted a daughter. So they've got four kids when Julie comes. At the time of Julie's disappearance, their children ranged in age from 8 to 14.
00:18:25
Speaker
So I found this interesting. They live in Washington County, New York, which is a rural area, and they live in the rural part of this rural area. Jaleel's adoptive family is described as leading and a non-traditional lifestyle kind of off the grid at the time of his disappearance. They had no running water. Their toilets were outhouses with latrines. The electricity came in from a generator that only ran a few hours a day. Everybody slept in a big, large open room.
00:18:54
Speaker
And the family stated they lived this way because it was better for the environment. Now, again, I've met people who've lived like this. I've never lived like that. A photo on the Charlie Project page, which is interesting, they still own this home that they lived in out in this A-frame home out in Washington.
00:19:12
Speaker
counting, but they've since moved. I think they moved about six months after his disappearance. They moved up to Vermont. According to adoptive parents, just clarifying because we've talked about so many different people here. The adoptive parents stated that he was both suicidal and homicidal at the time of his disappearance. He wasn't taking any drugs or receiving any therapy for whatever is going on with him.
00:19:39
Speaker
ah There is an account that Steve Kerr called a crisis hotline saying his son was unmanageable on October 23rd. This is the same year. So this is about a week before Jalik goes missing. Steve stated that Jalik had threatened a small child in his homeschool group and that Jocelyn was afraid of him and no longer wanted him at home. So he started asking questions about reversing the adoption.
00:20:08
Speaker
The crisis worker tells them it's not possible to reverse an adoption, and and they suggest what would be known as respite care instead. So at this point, Jaleec goes to the home of another pair of foster parents named Elaine and Tom Person. These are licensed foster parents, and what they have done ongoing is they have provided like a backstop for Jaleec to go someplace familiar to essentially get himself together. I don't know how 12-year-olds get themselves together this way, but that's what's being described here. Respite care would be for the caregiver. And you can't expect a 12-year-old to get their life together ever. No, it's real I was trying to say it in a way that didn't. it It's basically giving a break to the people who say that like they're having this breakdown. Now, the way it's described here is kind of
00:21:08
Speaker
multi-part, like the curves the Kerr family with Jocelyn and Steve, they're saying they went out of the situation where they've adopted this child that they've had for a while, and they're also not able to handle him. So it's like two different angles is is it's coming from here. So Elaine and Tom keep him until November 1st, and they give him back to Steve Kerr, who immediately was planning to send him to another care home the following day. And that's the day that Jolique is reported missing. Is it your impression that Kerr had this conversation in front of Jolique?
00:21:51
Speaker
Like, from a threatening perspective? No, from a, we want out of this adoption, what do we do to reverse our adoption? i don't I don't really get any impression of it. I get the impression that he's called a crisis hotline. um I don't know if Jaleek is sitting there or not. why what What impression did you get? That's the impression I got. um I got the impression, especially with ah the number of kids. that Now granted, I have other sources for this information that, like I said, I extensively looked into this case at some point. and So he does this in front of Jaleek? That's where you're getting up. I don't know, but that was the impression I got. And so my point is that Jaleek knows he is not wanted. to
00:22:36
Speaker
Right, i think I got the impression that we're either being led to believe that, or that's what really happened. so Right, and so something came up because I've seen the ah respite workers talk. okay Like Elaine and Tom? Yeah, the couple that had them. I've seen them talk because it was almost as if, like you were saying, and there was an impression being made, right? Right. Yeah. Like, maybe they had considered having left him there, right? There's people trying to get to exit ramps here, right? um In fact, his adopted mother had said, I don't want him in the house with me. And he has adopted, so that she took a ramp, right? She took the exit ramp and or she caused her husband and her adopted son, Jolique, to
00:23:33
Speaker
to take a detour, right? which So they end up in his parents' home. ah They end up in Kerr's parents' home, just the two of them. He's trying to figure out. because And so from here, we have this last confirmed sighting. However, I don't know how long the ah respite care was, but maybe a week or 10 days or something.
00:23:57
Speaker
Right. I think it was about seven days. I think it starts on the 23rd or 24th and then goes through the first based on the crisis call. And so, um, right. So the crisis call comes first. Then he, uh, Jaleek is with the person couple for a week and then Kerr picks him up on November 1st. But we do know for sure that unless it were to come up for some other reason, which it never has, the person saw him on November 1st.
00:24:26
Speaker
alive and well. So that's so basically he's Halloween happened, they drop him off the next day, and then following day he's gone. So the last time he's confirmed to be seen is when they drop him off. That is 100% accurate. An extensive search of the area is done for Jolie.
00:24:46
Speaker
Within a few days, police pretty much come out and say they think he met with foul play. They don't think it's possible that a 12-year-old has survived for any length of time, and they can't find anywhere that he would have been gone. But they sort of back out of this later and say they have not ruled out the possibility that he did just run away or that he harmed himself. He kind of gets stuck for a while. Now, Jocelyn McDonald, she takes a polygraph in this case. Steve Kerr does not.
00:25:17
Speaker
Both of the parents say they had nothing to do with Jalik disappearing. They believe that he simply ran away, but they have made some weird suggestions over the year where over the years where they have suggested he was living with a gang that he ran away to, or that he had found an African-American family and moved in.
00:25:38
Speaker
They seem to be insinuating that he considered himself rather than being biracial, black, and that he had wanted to live with other African Americans, which is an interesting approach. I don't know how much stock I put in it, how real it is. It's just something that gets mentioned in several different articles about this case. Now, according to the people that you saw talking, the persons, they said that the farewell note that Jalik had supposedly left when he went missing was not a goodbye note.
00:26:08
Speaker
But it was rather a note, and I don't know if you're if you're familiar with having to do this, um it was a note that his father had made him write for quote homework. And basically, Steve Kerr had allegedly told his son that he had to write a note apologizing to the people that he had harmed. Tom Person says he saw him writing it, but he didn't read it.
00:26:30
Speaker
But Elaine and Tom Person believe that that's the note that was found after Jaleek went missing November the 1st into the 2nd. There are multiple people in the foster home family that Jaleek has developed because once you've raise the kid for a period of time, I don't know that they ever actually leave. The whole idea was like, they're gone to hopefully be adopted or onto a new foster home, or they graduate out of the system, but people still care for them. And these folks have started a website publicizing Jolique's disappearance. According to Elaine Person, she believes that Steve Kerr harmed Jolique on the day that he went missing, and that ultimately Steve Kerr is behind the disappearance.
00:27:21
Speaker
So the police end up naming Steve Kerr as a person of interest in Jalik's disappearance, which is a step down from suspect. This means there's something they haven't gotten out of it. According to the police in Greenwich, they've stated that they have video surveillance footage of Steve Kerr driving around Greenwich after midnight on the night of Jalik's disappearance at a time that according to Kerr's timeline, he would have been asleep.
00:27:47
Speaker
Also, there were cell phone records that say that Steve Kerr took a different route to the house than he told police. So they would not have that information for some reason. They appealed for information on Steve Kerr's whereabouts November 1st and November 2nd to the public. They want to know what anybody had seen. And in February of 2008, police conduct a search warrant on Steve Kerr's father's home where this is where they determined that Jaleek had been dropped off and was staying when he disappeared.
00:28:17
Speaker
They seized the computer there to determine if this computer had been used to write the goodbye letter, but they don't get very far with this. So days after all of this, Jocelyn McDonald and Steve Kerr, they lawyer up. They file a lawsuit against the police department alleging they've been detained illegally and that the search of the Kerr home, Steve Kerr's dad's home was improper.
00:28:46
Speaker
Barbara really would have been Jaleek's adoptive maternal grandmother. So this is Jocelyn McDonald's mom. She had been active searching for him and she actually filed for custody of him after the disappearance.
Family Dynamics Post-Disappearance
00:29:03
Speaker
I think some of the thinking there was if we publicize this and he knows he has some place to go and he's really run away, maybe he'll come back.
00:29:12
Speaker
but also part of it is a legal maneuver to actually, you know, take custody of him. A little later on in July, 2008, she ends up being charged with breaking into Kerr and McDonald's home and she pled not guilty. Shortly after this burglary, police go into the home and they take a piece of clothing protesting. They stated that Barbara really had seen the clothing when she was inside of the home.
00:29:40
Speaker
In a later media interview, Barbara really says that this was the yellow fleece shirt that Jaleek was allegedly wearing when he went missing. In other interviews, really stated that her former son-in-law, Steve Kerr, had anger management issues. He had been going to counseling for them. And then McDonald had made him move out of the family home for periods, twice in 2007, brief periods of time, because of his behavior towards the children. Now, according to Barbara really, she had witnessed one incident where Steve Kerr became angry with Jaleek, dragged him outside and dunked him in a nearby creek. And she also says that Jocelyn McDonald made Steve Kerr write a letter of apology to Jaleek for this and made him do the child's chores for a month. So there were some weird things happening in this house. Can you imagine like the ticking underneath all of that?
00:30:37
Speaker
look Look, like I said, I don't understand people who, I don't know what the word would be. I'm gonna go back to what I said, collect children. yeah People who collect children,
00:30:51
Speaker
little that's not even including the off the grid part, which is another thing that like is hard for me to wrap my head around. I i don't have much in common with these people here. yeah um i The only thing I can say is,
00:31:06
Speaker
And maybe I'm wrong to have this impression, but it doesn't seem like it was a good fit for Jaleek to begin with, especially with this whole dragging him out and dunking him in the river thing. Other adults watching this happen. Right. Which is very strange. But then in the wife, I don't know if they were married, but um Jocelyn making him apologize, ah making a grown man apologize to a child, and do the child's chores. But the animosity that's being created there, I mean, it's it's asking for a problem, in my opinion.
00:31:46
Speaker
I would totally agree with that. I don't have a lot more on Julie's case. I have a press release that came and keep in mind what I just described in terms of like like the timing and the place. You're talking about Washington County, New York. The rural area extends. I don't know exactly where he lived in there.
Skeletal Remains Discovery
00:32:07
Speaker
like i've I've looked it up before in terms of trying to determine what I'm about to talk about. If you know better, you can chime in here.
00:32:17
Speaker
So there's a press release that comes out that just came out like this week. This is one of those cases I ruled completely out for Keys, by the way. Oh, yeah. But he was never involved. The the statistic and imp probability of all this is crazy.
00:32:30
Speaker
umm I'm going to pull up the News10 article because the press release is kind of dry and they did a little work on this. James de la Fuente out of News10, which is I think News10.com, I copied it and pasted it into my notes. But so this is a Troy New York ah story. And on October 22nd, 2024, they dropped this. Skeletal remains found in Troy, New York, remain renew hope in missing persons case from 2007.
00:32:58
Speaker
Byline is Troy. It says, skeletal remains were found near Burden Pond in Troy on Sunday night. As the police investigation ramps up, some have renewed hope that it may involve a 17-year rule-old missing persons case. The Troy Police Department started investigating Sunday evening after ah someone walking near the pond found skeletal remains.
00:33:21
Speaker
All day today authorities comb the woods for clues as well as sending officers on boats to investigate the pond. News 10 crews watch their work until they cleared the scene around six o'clock on Monday night. This is near an area once before search for Jaleek Rainwalker was last seen by his adoptive father, Steven Kerr. He told police Jaleek had run off from his family home on Hill Street in Greenwich where he lived with Kerr.
00:33:48
Speaker
and his wife, Jocelyn McDonald. That's not a hundred percent accurate, but I'm going to run with it for this. What I have come to understand is that there's their family home and there's Steve Kerr's dad's family home. I've seen two different addresses for it. Could it be the same place? Maybe, but just throwing that out there. The Cambridge Greenwich chief of police at the time, George Bell, said that Rain Walker's disappearance was concerning. Something's wrong here. The whole thing is weird.
00:34:17
Speaker
Now, according to the New York state police, they labeled this case as a likely homicide in 2012. Law enforcement said the father is a person of interest, but both parents have denied any involvement. And in light of the latest discovery, news tends reporter James De La Fuente, he drove out to Julique's adoptive parents last known address in Vermont to check in with the new information.
00:34:37
Speaker
ah According to the reporter, no one was home. ah They also reached out to their family attorney, a guy named Jeffrey McMorris, and he said they had no comment at this time. According to the Washington County District Attorney, Tony Jordan, so this is more from the area where they lived, he visited the search scene in Troy on Monday. His office has continued looking into any leads since Jelique first disappeared.
Challenges in Foster Care System
00:35:04
Speaker
He tells James de la Fuente, there's nothing to say or add until the forensic analysis is complete. According to Barbara Realy, she's also waiting for that analysis. Police called her to tell her that skeletal remains have been found in South Troy, near where they had searched two years ago. um He would have been found easily.
00:35:24
Speaker
if in fact he had been a runaway, but I believe there's foul play and it's been undetectable until hopefully now. These remains hopefully, I hate to say, hopefully this is my grandchild. District Attorney Jordan said the forensic aen analysis might be comp completed by the end of the week or next week. Well, I just wanted to throw out there, one of the things I saw in this case as the week has gone on, I don't know if you saw this too, is that the remains were of a non adult human, which I thought was very curious to say that I know like how they do that. I saw a listing that it had skull ribs and other long bones. And there'd definitely be a way to tell with a skull if it's an adult or not. I thought that was an interesting description.
00:36:13
Speaker
Originally, someone said mid to late teens, but I pointed out Jelig's height early on because five, six or so, depending on what they found and all the bones they have, i you know they're speculating it might be him. what's interesting It's interesting because teenagers disappearing, I know Jelig's technically 12, but he is of a teenage size.
00:36:38
Speaker
i you know if them disappearing in the remains being found when there's not a clear path to abduction is likely what you always go back to, which is, it's the last person to be seen with them and likely a caregiver. Yeah, definitely. um And I feel like there's been a lot of back and forths about, like his case is is fairly well known, um I think.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's covered at least reasonably. And I knew enough about it. Like I knew about it before we ever ended up talking about it. I knew his case a little bit. um And so there are quite a few missing children. um They haven't, I guess they want to make real sure. It seems like they have um there have been sets of remains found and speculated to be him that ended up not working out in the past. I don't remember how many times that's happened. I just know that you know it's come up that it might be him and then it's not him. if So a couple of things are happening here. um For one thing, like why did it take so long to find him? 17 years is a long time.
00:37:59
Speaker
My guess is rain. OK, and that could be the truth, right? The other thing that comes up is the rare situation we're sort of looking at, which is a child who is ah born basically in foster care had a couple, like.
00:38:18
Speaker
I had one attempted adoption that didn't work out. And then the last thing we kind of have happening here is his adopted father trying to figure out how to reverse the adoption. And a guy who is called out by his wife for punishing Jaleek and has him do chores and write the kid an apology letter. Meanwhile, as soon as he went missing, the adopted mom's mother, hit so Jaleek's adopted grandmother, maternal grandmother, said, hey, when he comes back, I'll take him, right? Okay, perfect solution, right?
00:39:05
Speaker
Except when you're in a situation where it hurts your like guy pride or whatever is the Now I don't know if it came up before he went missing. I don't know if the maternal grandmother had any idea about What was happening? And so I don't know if it was ever considered a viable option but it clearly was and It's a weird dynamic to have a waiting adult step in to take custody of like for all intents and purposes, at least a temporarily unwanted child, right? Right. We don't know all the circumstances. You know, if he was trying to like light his siblings on fire while they were sleeping, I mean, that could be some warranted animosity, right?
00:40:02
Speaker
Um, you could be dealing with a bigger problem. I'm not saying Jolique did that. I'm just saying we don't know what the conflict was and they haven't been very forthcoming, but I have a feeling, um, this is probably on the dad. I don't put a whole lot of stock into, uh, polygraphs, but the mom
Investigation Challenges and Family Influence
00:40:25
Speaker
took one and the adoptive father didn't, and then they lawyered up.
00:40:30
Speaker
That's a weird move for parents looking for their kid, not to mention moving away. Yeah. Okay. So I've always thought something went wrong, whether it was you know intentional, accidental, what do you you know to give the adopted father benefit of the doubt, you know so anything could have happened. right But after it was covered up, that's where everything goes wrong. right But there's no question in my mind. i mean If he ran away,
00:41:04
Speaker
I feel like he would have been found by now. I guess it is possible he ran away, but at the same time, I find that highly unlikely. It seems like he might have been able to go to his grandmothers in the event he had ran away.
00:41:19
Speaker
I tend to fall on the defense side of things with everything just from the perspective of looking at it. Originally, when I looked at this case, it really was because I was like, is it possible for this many statistical anomalies to occur to this child and then him to meet a serial killer? That's how I was coming out of it. i see The answer was no. So then we're kind of left with a couple of things here. The parents do something together. One of the parents does something to him or he runs away.
00:41:46
Speaker
but and either accidentally passes away or harms himself or makes a whole new life. So over time with the passage of time, you know, those things kind of start to rule themselves out just because they do. And when I look at this case, something tells me they're searching that area because of this one sentence I remember reading out of the post-star.
00:42:10
Speaker
And this is it going to be seven years ago now. So the case would have been 10 years old at the time. This case is 17 years old. And like I so i said earlier, like that's interesting to me. The line that I read that like stuck out to me basically said this. It said, and this is um Don Lehman. He wrote for the Post Star. This article's old.
00:42:32
Speaker
ah Police have labeled the boy's adoptive father, Stephen Kerr, as a person of interest in the in this case, saying he gave conflicting information about his actions the night before Jilly Greenwalker was reported missing. In particular, a van that was believed to have been his was seen on a business surveillance camera that night at a time when Stephen Kerr had said he was home. And cell phone triangulation information seemed to indicate his phone was not in Greenwich that night.
00:43:03
Speaker
Here's the thing. If you're innocent, then that should have been in your story. Do I think mom's involved? No, no, she like ponies up for the polygraph. So all those things that we were just talking about, like, there's a perfectly valid reason for his cell phone not to be in Greenwich and for him to be out driving around. And that's because- And we were looking for him. Correct. That's because he went looking for Jolique. But the thing is,
00:43:33
Speaker
if you're looking for your kid and you report them missing the next morning, like I'm trying to picture the circumstances where you don't want police involvement and that's why you didn't do it, but they immediately turn around and then sue the cops after the search warrant, like a couple months later. So that's not the situation. And it is not. And I would have to say that you're right in this, it would be part of a story, right? Because that,
00:44:03
Speaker
leaving that part out makes him instantly suspicious and and that if you are in the position where you have someone you love that's missing you want to be as transparent as possible and yes not even you know not keep anything back because you don't want them to get hung up on you knowing that you didn't, like, if you know you didn't do it, you don't want to give them any reason to not move forward in the investigation and start looking elsewhere, right? Yeah. Yeah. And this guy has, this guy has ruled out outsiders by doing that. Like, as far as from the perspective of an investigation, yeah, you got to, like, you got to dig into leads that come out. And like, is there a very tiny, slim, remote possibility that like something happened to this kid? Yes.
00:44:56
Speaker
but The more you look at Steven Kerr's story, the less and less that seems likely if you're looking at it from an investigative standpoint. Well, right. Because if if let's say he ran away and something happened to him that caused his demise, then why didn't Kerr tell the cops he was out driving around looking for him?
00:45:17
Speaker
Well, he's already said his story at that point. He sets his story as being he woke up and, you know, he's not there. and there's just no But you could say like, oh, I forgot. I completely forgot. I was out driving. Right. I mean, you could say that. Yeah. Early on, you could say that. Absolutely. I feel like that could be the major holdup. And, you know, I've tried to give this guy the benefit of the doubt over the years because of other circumstances. But unfortunately, it You know, I feel like when they said non-adult human remains, it was almost- It was a cue. Confirming that it was him. Yeah, it's like, it's you and I have started to recognize that in press releases over the years. There is like shorthand for a lot of things.
00:45:59
Speaker
Right and sometimes they do it on purpose and sometimes it's not on purpose But they'll probably make sure the DNA actually matches and I don't even know I mean they may have trouble getting a DNA sample and Well, if they've got a skull and they've got teeth then they likely have DNA unless something extreme here But I mean like a a Control sample. Oh, I see what you're saying because it's oh Hmm, that's even more interesting that you bring that up because he's been through foster care. Well, there's going to be a record there. They can track down his ancestral lineage to a degree because those people clearly have their fingerprints taken at some point. Can you believe here be 29 years old? No, I can't. And it's crazy to me that he I mean, here's where I land on this case. And then I have another update. And I'm i'm talking so long here. We'll get to the first part of our main case. um This may be a long episode. I apologize on that. So here's where I land here.
00:46:54
Speaker
This is either first-degree murder, like a planned murder, or one of those accidental murders where he didn't know how to act with this kid and whatever he did ended up causing Jaleek's death.
00:47:13
Speaker
So like that's where I'm landing right now. um I could totally be wrong, but if that cell phone information and that surveillance camera information is accurate, that's really our only two options here.
00:47:25
Speaker
Well, and see, in that situation, I mean, I don't know how far in advanced it was planned. I don't know if there were alternatives, you know, beyond the fact that, like, he could ultimately have just not picked the child up, which is what you would like to think that a ah father out of control would do, right? If you knew you were going to go pick up your child and kill them, why wouldn't you just leave them where they were?
00:47:51
Speaker
It's such a weird thing. I have a really hard time imagining a parent, an adopted parent, you know, planning to murder the child. That's crazy. Yeah. i it is it is one of It is disturbing in so many ways. i I don't have any more information on this case right now. But there has been a set of remains that um is coincidentally or not, ah it's been found this, I think it was last Sunday, ah they found them in the, after a tip was given, and it was in an area that was known to have been searched, that Jalique Rainwalker had been searched for in that area after he had gone missing.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yeah, and i don't so I can't confirm what I'm about to say, but I'm gonna say it anyways. I know they searched a couple of places. I remember looking at several places they searched in terms of time and place. And I remember that one of them was like a hydroelectric plant that was like closer to where they lived. I remember them searching in Vermont for this kid.
00:49:00
Speaker
because of the whole family situation, a fact that there's been a body found here, and I could be totally wrong. I think they're tracking the old cell phone data, and like that's why they end up searching this two years ago or three years ago, and tracking that old cell phone data, leading them to here, and then a body being found here. Could it be completely unrelated? Yes. Is it likely that's the case? I do not know.
00:49:30
Speaker
Well, if it's it's going to be another non-adult, right?
Discussion on Missing Persons Cases
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be another non-adult. And you know, those cases are weird, man, because like when children are missing like that and somebody links it, like it could be totally wrong. It could be wrong. But realistically,
00:49:48
Speaker
if you've got one missing kid that there's a problem with the parents and the other missing kid, you know, that's kind of accounted for and you've got other ideas. could Yeah, it could be somebody else. I just have a feeling. I don't know how to explain the feeling I get when I look at something. um And it could be wrong. I could be wrong. But it feels like this is probably the right place in time. Yeah. And so for me, I don't feel like it's him, but I also don't really want to think about it. So it's probably denial because I look for all kinds of excuses why it wasn't him.
00:50:19
Speaker
Unfortunately, it it could possibly be him. You know, ah something interesting to do when you're researching things like this is it's not going to be any kid that has gone missing and recently, right? Because it was a it was skeletal remains. And as you go back and you look, and if you're looking for, I don't know what non-adult would be, but i'd I'd say it's got to be right in the Between early teen range right because otherwise it would just look like an adult or a smaller child, right? And so if you go back and look through You you realize very quickly that you know, there's not a whole lot of possibilities Unless it's somebody who wasn't reported missing. Well, I I found one possibility from 1969 of a kid that went missing right down the street from there, but he was 22 years old
00:51:16
Speaker
so Like I said, that's not gonna be him.
Dale Williams' Case Summary
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah, and I found there there are there were four I think I found four missing males and one missing female ah I Think almost all of them are over 30 Well, right. So it's not gonna be any of them and if it's really a non-adult, right, right That's what has, that's the only further clue that's been given out, I think. So we'll see though. I mean, they'll confirm it at some point. I feel like um his grandmother will confirm it, if nothing else. Yeah, I think, I think they'll come out with whatever information is made available to them. And I don't think it'll be, I don't think it'll be something that drags on forever. But that's, that's my update there with Jalique.
00:52:04
Speaker
And I have to drop an update in here because that was right. We recorded this at a time where we were like prepping other stuff into the Halloween episodes. And then we got a notification as I was cutting this episode to put it out that indeed this was not to leak Rainwalker. So we'll try and follow up on on this particular case in the future. But yeah, it turned out not to be to leak.
00:52:29
Speaker
I miss some missing persons cases, just kind of like glancing late at the end of Jaleek. But I wanted to point out that this location, and and I pulled this up and I'm not 100% sure on like how I would like geographically classify it. It's very close to where Suzanne Lyle is missing, who was 19 years old when she went missing. sick So that would be interesting too, because she was also on the same Bicop page with Jaleek. Don't know If they're leaning male, anyway, sometimes you can't tell the skulls and and with the other bones that you find. If you don't find certain bones and and know right away, she technically laid pans, but you know, that would be interesting too. I had another one and ah we were talking about this and you said you may not remember this case. I have this 1999 case out of Colorado.
00:53:22
Speaker
And it's stuck in my head for a long time. I'm going to talk about it for a second because it's an old one. The the guy's truck is what's stuck in my head. He goes missing May 27, 1999, in a town called, I think it's Nukla, Colorado.
00:53:40
Speaker
um i The story I remember about him is from Unsolved Mysteries. He's a white guy. At the time he was missing, he's 42, 57, 170. He's supposedly wearing jeans and a dark blue t-shirt, and he was taking some medication. The medication medication medication had been left behind.
00:53:57
Speaker
At one point, his 1994 Ford pickup truck had gone missing, but he had green-brown hair, blue eyes, a receding hairline, and usually had a full beard. This is a guy named Dale Williams. So Dale Williams was last seen around noon in the 500 block of Main Street in Nukla, Colorado on May 27th, 1999. He stopped by a local office, and he mentioned that he was en route to assist a stranded motorist who would be about a mile east of his store. He owned this little store called Pro Body Shop and the truck had Pro Body Shop stenciled on the side of it. So he wasn't a mechanic. It was a little unusual for him to receive calls about car problems. So his friend that was present at the time he had answered the call, he stated to authorities that even though the person was unidentified, he believed it was a woman.
00:54:56
Speaker
And that Williams didn't seem like anything was even remotely wrong when he went to do this. His wife had called him just after 12. She was going to ask him what he was doing for lunch, but there wasn't an answer. So she assumed that he had stepped out for something work related and she wasn't really all that concerned, but he doesn't come home that night and he doesn't come home the following morning.
00:55:21
Speaker
she ends up pur reporting him missing. Charlie Project ends up adding a little bit to it, so does Montrose Daily Press, The Denver Post, and Unsolved Mysteries. What they add is that Williams had been driving this pickup truck I was talking about, and the truck ends up being discovered about a month and a half after he goes missing. It's out of town, and it's northwest of Nukla,
00:55:47
Speaker
And it's in an area where the San Miguel River and the Dolores River meet. It's submerged in roughly 10 feet of water. So according to William's wife, she saw photos of the truck afterwards and she noticed that the driver's side window was partially closed. And she said that was unusual. Her husband always drove with his window open. The condition of the vehicle was the ignition was activated so that The truck is in gear, not in park at the time of its discovery, like someone drove it in. And police confirmed they believe that someone deliberately drove this vehicle into the river. There is a witness who reports seeing an individual that matches Dale Williams sometime around 6 o'clock PM on May 27th at a market in Notarita, Colorado.
00:56:42
Speaker
There's a neighbor who says that they saw Williams' truck parked outside Pro Body Shop in the afternoon after he had gone out to assist whoever this motorist was. Now neither one of those are confirmed sightings. Dale Williams and his wife had assisted someone that they used to call a friend, ah their spouse, ah when they wanted to quietly relocate to another state in 1998. So this is May 99. So before that, the friend was allegedly incensed that Dale Williams would not tell them where this man's former wife had gone. So it was a domestic situation, right? I think so. There were torn photographs that featured
00:57:34
Speaker
Dale Williams and this man's family that were discovered outside of the pro body shop shortly after Dale goes missing. And there were 22 caliber bullets that were scattered around the scene. At a local video store that Dale Williams wife either owned or managed, she found her husband's 22 caliber revolver inside the nighttime drop box a few weeks later.
00:58:04
Speaker
So authorities believe that someone had broken into Pro Body Shop, stolen the gun, stolen these photos, and then dumped them back off at the video store. They questioned the couple's former friend, and at the time he denied his involvement in the burglaries. He explained his whereabouts and allegedly investigators dismissed the individual as a possible suspect.
00:58:28
Speaker
According to Charlie Project, which has not been updated yet, there have never been any arrests. This case remains unsolved, and Dale Williams has never been seen again. About 18 hours ago, I got a press release. Here's how it starts. It says, a dad's mysterious disappearance captivated a small Colorado town, and 25 years later, cops were announcing a major breakthrough.
00:58:51
Speaker
I got a press release on this. I pulled up the first article I could find that like had it in short form because I knew today might end up being kind of a long day. This is from The Independent. It's a short article. It just says, a Colorado man has been arrested on charges of murder in connection to a cold case that's gone unsolved for a quarter of a century.
00:59:12
Speaker
James Daniel Dan Bishop, now 68. It starts with first degree murder and the 1999 disappearance of Dale Williams. This is according to the CVI's announcement.
00:59:26
Speaker
Williams, 42, owned a body shop in Nuka, Colorado at the time of his disappearance, and he was last seen on May 27th when he got a call about helping a stranded motorist. Six weeks later, Williams' truck was found in a confluence of Dolores and San Miguel Rivers submerged. His body was never found. There was a .22 caliber rifle in the bed of the truck with a spent casing in the chamber.
00:59:51
Speaker
The rifle allegedly belonged to Dan Bishop, according to firearm purchase records. Sergeant Chuck Circe, who is an arresting officer and lead investigator here, he told the Telluride Daily Planet that Bishop had been questioned about the case in 1999 after he was captured on surveillance footage taking down missing persons posters from the post office in Nukla, but no arrests were made at the time.
01:00:15
Speaker
For years there were no leads and the case turned cold, but investigators did not give up. According to CRC who said that Montrose County Sheriff Gene Lillard kept his promise to Williams widow and two daughters to keep the case going.
01:00:29
Speaker
Chuck seriously said he was the driving force for our agency to remain involved, and Sheriff Willard really put an emphasis on making sure that we work on this case and try to find answers to the family. That allowed me the time and freedom to work on this case in depth alongside the CBI. In September, 2023, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, with help from the Montrose County Sheriff's Department, opened a new inquiry in the case and seriously worked alongside a CBI agent in charge, Brandon Ludwig,
01:00:56
Speaker
who he said gave the case fresh eyes and fresh perspective. Their investigation revealed that about a year before Williams disappeared, he and his wife Diana, so Diana Williams and Dale Williams, they had helped Bishop's wife leave him and resettle in Texas at an undisclosed location.
01:01:13
Speaker
Investigators say they believe that Bishop acted together with his cousin, who has since passed away, to murder Williams. They don't name the cousin here, but Sheriff Lillard says in the statement, there have been countless interviews and hundreds of hours of investigation poured into this case.
01:01:29
Speaker
It has taken an entire team of law enforcement, family, and concerned citizens to bring the case to where it is today. We are grateful for the in-depth investigation of the last 25 years by the agents of the CVI and investigators and deputies at the Montrose County Sheriff's Office. Dan Bishop was arrested at his home in Notarita on October 17th by the Sheriff's Office, the U.S. Marshal's Service, and the CVI. He is currently being held on a million dollars bail.
01:01:56
Speaker
I thought that was a fascinating update to that one that they they made an arrest there. It is. um Now it's interesting. So this is where I get some of my thinking from this type of case. Now I don't remember this case. I don't think, however, do you remember the case of Eugene Fish?
01:02:16
Speaker
Eugene Fish. Yes. Is he in Colorado too? He's in Colorado. He had a wife thing and a truck thing and a truck turning back up thing. And so initially I thought it was he like, was he an agent? Was he a federal agent or something? Something weird or no?
01:02:35
Speaker
and He might've been retired, but he was 54, I think. um I looked just a minute ago at it, but um he um his wife's name was Lynn. Oh, yeah, I just pulled it up. I remember this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's what I thought this case was.
01:02:53
Speaker
Oh. And so when I started reading, I was like, well, that's the Eugene Fish's case is the only case that I know that sounds like what I was hearing, right? Yeah. Okay, so I'm not sure. I may have had some i may have known a little bit about Dale Williams' case.
01:03:13
Speaker
beforehand. But from the very beginning, everybody knew who had done this, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. There was no question. There was an angry guy who took it out on, uh, he was mad cause a domestic situation caused his wife to leave and then Dale wouldn't tell him where she was. Yeah. And so all the different things that transpired, like it,
01:03:41
Speaker
the law enforcement gave up really quick, which is weird. And I'm not saying law enforcement should ever like construct evidence towards the case, but it seems like this what outcome was a given, right? Yeah. And it could have been solved a lot sooner. Now we don't know exactly why it was solved now. Right. But, you know,
01:04:07
Speaker
it's It's the gun man. The gun is what's making the difference here. So there's two guns here. So there's the gun that's dumped in the box at the video store, but there's a gun in the bed of the truck. When they pull the truck up and it's been submerged, it's got a rifle in there and it turns out they were able to trace it back to Bishop buying it. It's his gun that was in the bed of the truck. The other gun belonged to Dale Williams.
01:04:36
Speaker
Well, maybe, maybe it is, but... um yeah It's interesting how parallel these two are, though. ah Well, oh, you're talking about Eugene Fish? Yeah, just i just I was just reading his case since you brought it up. I had forgotten about this one. He was he was in the Air Force and then he was with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and and he was an investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
01:05:00
Speaker
Right. And so when you said something, when you sent me the release about the arrest and Dale Williams case, when I was reading it, I was thinking of Eugene Fish's case, but it's not his case. And, you know, I don't have every single, you know, the thousands of different people's name at the tip of my tongue, especially when their case is so similar, right? Yeah.
01:05:28
Speaker
But when i looked and i as soon as I looked, I realized it wasn't who I was thinking of. Now, I didn't know Eugene Fish's name off the top of my head. I had to put in some parameters, but I found it fairly quickly. And I was like, yeah, that's who I was thinking of.
Recent Developments in Dale Williams' Case
01:05:45
Speaker
and so I don't know if Eugene Fish just had precedent in my mind, but Dale Williams' case is now going to be solved, hopefully. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's solved and on its way to being adjudicated and closed out in court. Well, I guess we'll see how that goes. But we don't know where he's at, though. No, we haven't found him yet, but I'm guessing he dumped him in that spot in the water because it's hard to recover a body from there. Okay. That's my guess. I don't know that for sure, but I think...
01:06:15
Speaker
What were the charges? It's murder. You want to see if there's more? Is that what you're asking? No, I was just curious if they had charged. Because sometimes without a body, they won't charge murder just yet. But sometimes they do. It just depends. Well, I've been obsessed with that area of Colorado for a while, because we've looked at there's a couple of disappearances out there that are really strange. Eugene Fish is in that boat. There's the disappearance of, and I'm going to forget their names right this second, the little girl and her dad.
01:06:45
Speaker
and And the guy that works with them, the three of them go missing. Paul, and I don't remember their names right this second. I could look them up. but So this is a, he has a bond setting, a million dollars cash only. It's a big deal. The charges, first degree murder. So class one felony is all I see in here. Well, that's fine. I mean, I feel like maybe the way that Chuck was found,
01:07:10
Speaker
It was enough to be like, oh, like it's unlikely he survived this or whatever. I don't know. I don't have much more on that. And now we're kind of deep into this. But I want to spend at least a few minutes setting up the next case, because we're going to do a couple of sort of interesting murders back to back from now up until, I don't know, probably Thanksgiving time. There are some older cases I wanted to go look at. And sometimes I go digging. We've talked about this kind of
01:07:42
Speaker
From the perspective of the anomaly that is Washington and Oregon, where they have all these killers out there and a lot of serial killers, would have made fun of the whole civic Northwest a little bit for being like a breeding ground. There's a lot of very famous killers that come from those areas. We're going to start in an area called Mineral Washington. Had you ever looked at these cases before? The Mineral Washington murders?
01:08:09
Speaker
and I haven't done an in-depth investigation, but it's another situation where certain things, ah I remembered certain things, but I had to reread it. the Does that answer your question? yeah yeah Yeah. I bring all this up. I'm kind of doing this out of a order because I'm it It's interesting to me like how this gets reported on, but I'm gonna start with what is like the later part of this. ah We're gonna come back around to it in the next episode and talk about sort of the overarching part of this. This is a murder that takes place in December of 1985. So Mike Raymer is 36 years old. His girlfriend, Diana Robertson, she's 21 years old.
01:08:55
Speaker
And they have a kid named Crystal Robertson. She's two. I think she's actually Mike's kid. I don't know that for sure, but it seems to be that's how it's reported. So they leave their home in Tacoma and they head out to Pierce County. They are on a kind of traditional American thing. They're on a ah hunt to find themselves a Christmas tree.
01:09:20
Speaker
So Mike, he was an avid outdoor student and he set animal traps. So he was going to go look at the traps that he had in the area that they were headed to. Late in the evening at a Kmart's ah store that is 30 miles away from where they were headed in a town ah called Spanaway. Never heard of Spanaway? No.
01:09:47
Speaker
It does have a pretty big population now. It's like 40,000 people, I think, but it was a little. A couple of customers at this Kmart store, they find Crystal standing outside the store entrance. Child Services takes her and she's put into temporary foster care because they can't seem to identify this little girl. And two days later on a local news broadcast, her maternal grandmother, Diane Robertson's mom,
01:10:17
Speaker
recognizes her photo. When they ask her where her mom is, this little two-year-old girl tell tells her grandmother that mommy was in the trees. So according to investigators at the time, the two-year-old was not verbal enough to provide any coherent information. So they start searching the area both on foot and by air, looking for Mike's red 1982 Plymouth pickup truck.
01:10:47
Speaker
I guess trucks in the woods is our theme for this Halloween. They don't find it. They don't and don't find anything to do with it. And it takes them until about ah Valentine's Day of 1986. So this is a couple of months after they've disappeared. And on February 18th, the body of Diana is discovered half buried in the snow by a motorist near a logging road off of Washington State Road 7, just south of LB.
01:11:17
Speaker
In the following days, bloodhounds go looking through this area, but snow starts falling.
Introduction to Washington Murders
01:11:27
Speaker
They get about six inches of snowfall and it really wrecks the search. And then they end up finding Mike's red pickup truck near Diana's body. In the truck, police discovered a note on the dashboard that read, I love you, Diana.
01:11:48
Speaker
It had been written on a Manila envelope. According to Crystal's grandma, the handwriting was Mike's handwriting. There were blood stains found on the seat of the truck, and then they end up releasing the autopsy results. And the autopsy states that Diana Robertson had been stabbed 17 times, and she had been found with a tube sock tied around her neck.
01:12:19
Speaker
At the time, because Mike was still missing, investigators believed that he may have killed Diana and that he had abandoned his daughter at the Kmart store and fled. They were unable to determine a solid motive for Mike to have killed Diana, but they theorized that Mike might have been up to something much, much worse.
01:12:44
Speaker
So have you heard about this one at all? I have. The obvious thing that I remember is the two-year-old being found outside of the Kmart speculation on how that came to be. I'm sure you remember that too. Yeah. For the most part, ah yeah, I do remember it. um I had to look back into it though.
01:13:07
Speaker
I know that there's more to this story, but just sort of right off the top, the motive presented, or I guess it's not really a motive, but like the opportunity presented, it seems legit because it's sort of a lot to drive a two year old 30 miles north to drop them off. And it's not something serial killers are known for.
01:13:34
Speaker
I guess it's not completely impossible, but the fact of the matter is ah Statistically, when someone dies, it's their significant other who is most likely the one who did harm to them, right? yeah And so I don't feel like they were like so far off base, especially since I don't really know what the significance of the I love you Diana envelope is. They don't really elaborate as to whether there's anything in there. I have a feeling that
01:14:10
Speaker
if something happened to me and somebody was like searching my incredibly messy house, like they would find several things from my husband that had random things written on them, you know, that might not have anything to do with my death. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean by that? Like, so I don't know. Like, I don't know. I mean, if that was the only thing in the truck, right? I bring this up at the end of us talking about like a lot of,
01:14:40
Speaker
non-related stuff because we are going to spend a couple of days on this talking about this. ah This case spirals out and there are multiple interesting forks that it takes over the next 30 years. So starting in 85, it really gets weird ah in 2011, but I don't know that it's ever not weird. um I thought that that we would look at this from the perspective of all the like interconnected things that investigators went down, because this is a case that is covered on the old unsolved mysteries. And when they when they did that, I don't know why, but the investigators really talked about this case. I don't know if you remember that happening.
01:15:22
Speaker
But there are multiple ah people ah that are killed in this time frame. And there are multiple serial killers operating all in this one spot. And I've never seen it put together completely on the internet. So the stories that we're telling and we're pulling from are kind of all over the place. But it ranges from about 1984 to about 1987.
01:15:48
Speaker
And um I thought because of how I feel about Halloween, this would be one of the most terrifying cases I could put out there. And I'll say this, you've never heard of any of these serial killers. Like you've never heard of them. They don't like.
01:16:07
Speaker
There's an off chance you've maybe heard like the mention once or twice, but there's like four or five people in here piled into this that like I had, they were completely off my radar in terms of how they might all be interconnected. And this is the most couples I've ever seen murdered in an area in one period of time.
01:17:10
Speaker
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01:18:16
Speaker
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01:18:44
Speaker
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01:19:02
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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01:19:54
Speaker
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