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Season Five: Roundup
199 Plays8 days ago
Today’s episode features an update on several missing persons case, a decades old murder, and a recent double homicide.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:57
Speaker
I had mentioned before there's a lot of true crime news and I wanted to, before we get into our final series of the year and do our holiday stuff, I wanted to touch on some of those things and I don't know how many episodes this is, uh, but to give people an idea of what's happening in the fall here, we have at least one or two update style episodes today, depending on how long this one goes might be too. And then we're going to do,
00:01:24
Speaker
We have a we have a case we want to cover sort of that has some Supreme Court stuff going on with it that I found very interesting and I could not resist recording an episode on it and then you and I have done some work on I Want to say a serial killer, but that's the wrong way to describe the case. We're gonna cover there are I'll say it this way we picked a known case that's not well known that involves multiple serial killers and this sort of confluence of time where authorities didn't really know who did what for a minute. That's coming out and that'll be a multi-part series. I think it'll probably pop up ah between Halloween and and Thanksgiving kind of. And of course at the beginning of
00:02:13
Speaker
December we will have our holiday starts and it looks like we're on track to have a about 25 finished episodes that so basically from roughly December 1st or like the night before through Christmas there will be ah ah New home for the holidays series which in in that case we cover kind of the gamut in terms of like what crimes occurred but what we're really focused on are interesting cases of wrongful convictions and exonerations and some of them are brand new and some of them are thirty years old.
00:02:45
Speaker
But some of them are quite infuriating that's what will be running in the feed until then. But what I wanted to do today was I wanted to go back and cover some things that have happened on cases that we've talked about or mentioned in true crime news along the way. I'm still working there might be one additional episode.
00:03:07
Speaker
We got into this strange situation. We use Zincaster right now, Meg and I record on Zincaster, and we use Zincaster for our distribution. And they've changed their model some where we're part of their Creator Plus network, which means there's promotion and other things that are sort of provided to us in exchange for us having a Zincaster ad that runs with us and and and using their website and using their services. When they changed their model, we lost some episodes.
00:03:36
Speaker
ah To archive that I guess we I have to talk to them about that. We may have to actually buy them back or Change the way that we use in caster at least for a little while to to get those episodes back There's at least two or three in there that I think would be worth putting in the feed ah but again that may not happen until season six the way things are going right now because we've been pretty busy and It's a lot to put together the sources and to do the research on the holiday episodes and you and I, we start working on those and I present a list in the summer and then we narrow it down and we start recording it sometime in September and October and November is really for editing those and putting them all together. ah But we we we are coming back to several serial killers. I think we're going to have a Halloween episode this year. there's like
00:04:26
Speaker
There's a case that's been stuck in the back of my mind for a long time. I've looked at it. It might be two episodes for me to say everything I have to say about that. And the same thing with today. I think we have five updates that I want to talk about. ah One of them may actually be an extra episode. If that's the case and this one's really long, I will put that in the feed as well. We're not super active on our Patreon or or any of those things, but I've kind of shied away from like hiding things from the audience. I think subscriptions and Patreons are kind of the wrong way to go. We don't do a ton of advertising on the show. We just sort of cover our cost and and we kind of move on from it because you know it's a weird time for true crime podcast. It's a weird time for true crime in general. And that's sort of how we get to all these different
00:05:19
Speaker
updates that we have, I would say where I kind of want to start today is a strange one. We talked about this case off and on over the years. There have been some interesting updates. I sat in virtually on a press conference related to this case, but I think, did you see the press conference in this case or were you doing something else?
00:05:43
Speaker
I saw the link. I didn't have a chance to listen to it though. Okay. There's an update in the Morgan Nick case and the Morgan Nick case has always been very interesting for me. For those of you who may not know about Morgan Nick, I'll give like a glancing overview. There's a Wiki link out there somewhere that you can find with this, but Morgan Nick was born September 12th, 1988.
00:06:10
Speaker
What we know her for is on June 9th of 1995, when Morgan and her mother, ah depending on who you hear say this name, it's either Colleen or Colleen. ah They were at a little league baseball game in the town of Alma, Arkansas. And around 10.30 PM, Morgan had asked her mom if she could go and catch fireflies with some of the other kids that were at the game.
00:06:35
Speaker
Her mom was not super sold on on letting her go with her friends, but she decided to let her go. And sometime between 10.30 and 10.45 p.m., um they see her for the last time. Her friends reported that at 10.45 p.m., she was standing near her mom's car, Mystic's car, and they were emptying their shoes out because they'd gotten sand in their shoes.
00:07:01
Speaker
what we're told, you know, this is 29 years ago and these are little kids is that they saw Morgan talking to someone who looked a little creepy while she was knocking the sand out of her shoes and then put her shoes back on. So the game ends and the friends all gather back with their families and the The story is that the kids told Morgan's family that she was at the car, and when her mom went to look for her, Morgan wasn't there. That is the last time that Morgan Nick was seen or heard from, and when she's knocking the sand out of her shoes, she's never been heard from since then. Over the years, she has popped up on America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. I even saw them on a ah one of those home makeover shows where
00:07:55
Speaker
something had happened to their house and it had been damaged and there was a crew out there to to rebuild their home. In January of 2002, there were digs done in Booneville, Arkansas by the police where the police thought Morgan might've been buried there. In 2010, at the end of the years, right before Thanksgiving 2010, in Spiro, Oklahoma, the FBI got involved in a search to look for DNA evidence that might show if ah Morgan Nick had been at this house. And then in December of 2017, same house, investigators showed back up and they wanted to do a search. They had a search warrant with them. Now, cadaver dogs alerted investigators to a whole dug on the property that some people have described as a well. And the authorities at the time said that that might be the center of their investigation.
00:08:53
Speaker
This search goes on for about 24 hours and then it's called off on December 19th. Now, according to the FBI, the local police and Alma, the state police out there, new leads have come in in Morgan Nick's disappearance every year and they've been investigated. In November, 2021,
00:09:16
Speaker
We spoke briefly about an announcement they made where they had named a man named Billy Jack Lynx as a person of interest in the investigation into the disappearance of Morgan Nix. Now, Billy Jack Lynx had died in 2000. He was a very old man. um He drove a red pickup truck and there was a red pickup truck that had been seen at the site of Morgan Nix's disappearance.
00:09:41
Speaker
And there's been a documentary and I think a series has come out about Morgan Nick as well. Have you seen those recently? I watched the docu-series and I was trying to remember how far back that was. I remember that Uh, after watching it, I was disappointed, but I had, I was hopeful. And then it seemed like, uh, that panned out as far as this is just in like my own recollection, right? I didn't go back and watch it again or anything. Cause I was aware of.
00:10:15
Speaker
Sort of the entirety of what happened and you you know once I watch something and get the information I'm not interested in being let down again So I was totally waiting for something new but the docu-series did leave me with hope That it wasn't exhausted yet, which I think is exactly what has happened here, right?
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah. Ridley Scott produced a docu-series. It came out in February of 2023. If you can find it, it's probably on Hulu. it's ah It's a great watch. He recently did a thing on the Missy Witt case called At Witson. His production company is very active in these true crime, well-produced docu-series that are just a couple episodes long. They ran with the idea from the November 2021 announcement with the FBI, and they found that and they present this in the docuseries, that fibers found in the red pickup truck that Billy Jack Lynx had owned matched ah Morgan's shirt or were a close match to Morgan's shirt. Now this truck had been owned by multiple people since Billy Jack Lynx
00:11:19
Speaker
had sold it. And apparently this year, the Alma police, they came back and on so September 29th, they made this announcement and sent all of us a little press release saying they were going to have a news conference on on Morgan's case and that there was a significant development in the case. I ended up tuning into it, which I think it actually ended up happening on October the 1st, 2024. So it's been a couple of weeks, but They have a press conference and they say that the Alma Police Department wants to announce that there was DNA evidence found in the interior of this red truck that once belonged to Billy Jack Lynx, who had been named a couple years earlier as a suspect in this case. They found DNA linked to Morgan's family. So DNA from the Nick family matches care that's found in Billy Jack Lynx truck.
00:12:15
Speaker
And the Alma police chief is a guy named Jeff Pointer. He stated that the conclusions that were being made were that there was a strong indication Morgan had been in this truck. Now, you'll see this in the docu-series, or if you go and look up more information, there were multiple sightings of this truck around town in the hours of after when Morgan Nick goes missing.
00:12:43
Speaker
And some of the stuff there, kind of like you said, I have hope that some of the tips they've had are starting to line up and maybe they'll actually be able to recover more to Nick. I will say this, I dug kind of deep into this and Billy Jack Lynx does not match what I remember to be the composite sketch from the time, but he has a son.
00:13:10
Speaker
who closely matches. Now, the crime that he's an assault on and a woman more his age-ish, but he looks more like the person that I thought police were looking for back when Morgan Nick went missing. And I always say that because Billy Jack Lynx would have literally been in his 70s, and I could see a predator slowing down and going after children in their older years. He's been linked to other crimes. When he died, he was in prison. ah We've talked about him briefly on here, and I'm mentioning his son now because I couldn't help but notice the resemblance he had to the sketch of the person that I thought they were looking for.
00:13:56
Speaker
but Again, this type of update gives me a lot of hope that maybe they will solve the disappearance of Morgan Nick. Did you have a lot to add to this? it seemss like and i now i can't remember and you know once there's a press conference out it's hard to It's hard to go back and get the information that you had before, right? yeah i Because it gets basically, you know, it gets lost, right? Because it's overwhelmed with the new information. And I was trying to remember, how It's been, he was, he was pretty much the, um and I'm talking about Billy Jack Lynx, not his, what what's his son's name? Andrew Lynx. Andrew, okay. I'm talking about Billy Jack Lynx. He's been the only person ever named. Is that right? Yeah. The only serious suspect. Yeah. there I mean, there's, there's, so you you can see rumors online if you go hunting enough, but he's the one that, that was, but he was the one that was named by authorities.
00:14:58
Speaker
Right. And, you know, typically it's it's crazy sometimes when it goes like full circle and you still don't have um a situation where, you know, they still haven't found her if it was Billy Jack. I mean, he's long dead, right? Right. And so I can see where it might stall out a little bit, but like, you know, this little girl's body is somewhere. Yeah, it's sort of haunting, too, to think about that.
00:15:28
Speaker
Well, it is. And I do, I, I was surprised. I always thought Billy Jack Lynx was too old. and And did you say how old he would have been? I think he, if I read everything correctly, I think he would have been 70. Um, I pulled up his, at some point I pulled up his obituary and I went backwards. Uh, Billy Jack Lynx was born in 1924.
00:15:58
Speaker
So. And Morgan Nick was kidnapped in 1995. Yeah. So when he dies, on he dies August 5th, 2000. So he was 75 years old when he died. He was born October 22nd, 1924. And so his son would have been like more in his like, what, late twenties? When I pulled him up, i you know, I pulled up his ah offender profile. I think he's 54 now. So if you go back,
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, he's going to be 25 years old, 26 years old, thereabouts. and When she goes missing. And that was more akin to the composite. Yeah, the composite that you have, if you go out there and look at like the Morgan Nick Foundation, I think still has it out there. At one point I had i had pulled up his kind of criminal history. The thing they jump on for him is I read this recently on 5 News Online. ah There was an article put out by Kaylee McNaught sometime early ah October this year. It said, to look into the criminal history of Billy Jack Lynx, the main suspect in the Morgan Knick case.
00:17:08
Speaker
So the sun also has a criminal history, Andrew does, but this is what makes them steer that direction. And the byline is Crawford County, Arkansas. It says for nearly three decades, the tight knit Alma community has struggled with not knowing what happened to Morgan Nick, a six year old who disappeared from a ballpark in June of 1995. She's remained missing since then and her case remained cold, but it still has an active investigation. And then they talk about the press conference.
00:17:36
Speaker
But they say Billy Jack Links was born in 1924, raised in Crawford County. He later joined the army, served in World War II, and he made his way back to the River Valley area. In 1992, he was charged with sexual abuse before he was released. Three years later, court records show that Links attempted to abduct an 11-year-old girl in a sonic parking lot in Van Buren, Arkansas. That's eight miles away from the all ballpark where Morgan went missing from.
00:18:04
Speaker
He was charged at that time with sexual solicitation and he was sentenced to six years in prison. That abduction attempt was just a few weeks after Morgan had been reported missing. Another detail flagging investigators was the red truck that he owned. He owned a red 1986 Chevrolet pickup truck. It slightly matches the truck scene in a home video taken the night Morgan was reported missing and reviewed by police's evidence. That's in the docu-series as well. The hang-up was that Lynx didn't have a camper shell on his pickup when he was arrested in August of 1995.
00:18:39
Speaker
But according to court documents, a neighbor told police during the attempted abduction investigation that they think Lynx had had a camper shell on his pickup truck, but it had been gone for a couple of months by the time he's arrested in August for the attempted abduction. Well, I mean, that it's certainly I would certainly be incorrect in saying that I felt like he was too old, right? Because there's more to it that backs that up.
00:19:07
Speaker
He gets arrested in December of 1992. And at that point in time, it's reported that he had sexually abused and raped a young victim. It specifically says engaged in sexual intercourse or deviant sexual activity with ah ah another person who is less than 14 years of age. Now, just to be clear, this is before Morgan goes missing and it's an Arkansas state police investigation. So it is not related to the Alma police at all.
00:19:35
Speaker
He gets held on $10,000 bail, and he ends up pleading guilty to that charge in January of 1993, so about a month later, but he agreed to accept a new contest plea. No contest plea, for those of you who don't know, is when you accept punishment, you don't admit guilt or fault.
00:19:57
Speaker
and So how was he in jail? So he got a first he got a conviction for first degree sexual abuse. It was a classy felony at the time. Now, if you go look at Arkansas statutes, that doesn't exist anymore. But he doesn't get any time in jail. He gets sent to a counseling program in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the VA hospital.
00:20:16
Speaker
He had to pay a fine and he had to pay court costs. By the time you look at it all, it's about a thousand bucks. But just for context, the classy felony related to all of this is sexual indecency with a child now. And that carries a punishment of three to 10 years in prison. I'm only pointing this stuff out because it sort of assuaded me from the perspective of thinking he's too old for this. This article went on to say that in the original arrest affidavit filed in 1995, a detective with the Van Buren Police Department in the attempted abduction said that around 6.45 PM, an 11-year-old girl was walking in Van Buren with three of her brothers and another friend, a white male in a red pickup pulled up to them and began talking about sexual matters.
00:21:05
Speaker
This is what the state trooper writes in there. I mean the Van Buren police write in the report. He says the man began asking the girl while still in his truck, if she wanted to talk about money, she replied asking why money? And according but to police, he asked her to come closer and she did, but she asked her brothers and friend to get their bikes and come with her. The man then handed four $1 bills to the boys and told them to leave and the boys left.
00:21:34
Speaker
So while they're alone, this man and the 11 year old girl, he asked her to come home with him to perform sex acts and she told him she didn't do that. But he drops a cigarette on the ground and asked her to pick it up. She screams and she ran away from him and she told her brothers to call the police. So the man got in his truck. He tried to flee, but he strikes a wooden light pole beside the street and leaves red paint on the pole.
00:22:05
Speaker
In court documents, the man is described by these witnesses as a white male with a black and gray beard, sandy brown hair and saggy cheeks, wearing a red ball cap and a brown uniform shirt. A separate witness was able to get the red pickup truck's license plate number. They checked the license plate and the license plate goes back to Billy Jack Lynx.
00:22:31
Speaker
They go then and check his criminal history, and that's when they uncover the 1992 charge against this young girl. So that's how we get him here. Right, okay. And that was so that was known quickly. How far away was it?
00:22:49
Speaker
Eight miles. the The Sonic that they're all at where this is happening and the accident takes place is eight miles away from... How about her brothers took a dollar? I don't know what to say to that. No, they're kids. I mean, it doesn't matter. It was wrong. All of it was wrong. I would say that um it is... There's a possibility before the DNA matched that this could have been out of whole cloth, right?
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, DNA match. There's no question. um You know, I'm not sure why he maybe he aged a lot. I don't know why he doesn't quite match the composite but I've seen I remember the video it's it's really interesting because life was so different back then, right? It really was, yeah. You've got this like VHS that's like barely playing anymore and they're scoping out because basically it was somebody filming something and it's got the parking lot in the background, right? Yeah. That's how they were able to sort of decipher. I think that basically they were just going off of the children that were with Morgan, like what they had seen, right?
00:24:05
Speaker
And so, you know, it was they were literally just running back from where they were playing. They were probably hardly paying attention, not to mention they were kids. I mean, this was a typical thing in the 90s for kids to be running all over the place at ball fields. Right. Yeah. it It's such a tragic story. um She's such a sweet,
00:24:30
Speaker
cute six-year-old, right? Yeah, she's just a little kid, yeah. That, you know, it seems a lot different than, I mean, because, you know, he wasn't like talking to her like he was talking to the 11-year-old. There was always something a little bit off, but I fully believe if they found the DNA, you know, that case is, I mean, essentially wrapped up if they could find her.
00:25:00
Speaker
I do you feel like there is, well, maybe not, but there is somebody that he associated with that could give some insight that maybe if they could yeah know think about where would he have put her. Yeah, I don't know how that part's gonna go and I'm not gonna speculate much on it. I am gonna come back to Andrew Lynx for a second, because I had pulled an article, I think I sent you his offender profile where he's non-compliant.
00:25:26
Speaker
Did you see that? yeah And that that was a Missouri ah offender profile that I sent over from the state of Missouri. But I think ah Whitney Berms, B-E-R-M-E-S, wrote an article for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle back in ah May of 2012.
00:25:45
Speaker
And i it says, Boseman man sentenced to prison for rape. I think this is, it matches up with what i I thought that offender profile reference. And it just says, in what attorneys on both sides deemed a bizarre case, a Boseman man Wednesday was sentenced to a decade in prison for breaking into a woman's home and raping her last year.
00:26:05
Speaker
Andrew Leelink's 43, so he's 43 in 2012, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for felony charges of sexual intercourse without consent and robbery.
00:26:18
Speaker
When Lynx is released, he will have to register as a sex offender with a moderate risk of reoffending. Gallatin County Deputy Attorney Ashley Whipple said, this is probably one of the most bizarre cases I've worked in the last 15 years. According to charging documents, during the early morning of February 22nd, 2011, Lynx forcibly entered a woman's home, demanded money from her, and then sexually assaulted her. Lynx told the victim to be quiet or he would shoot her.
00:26:46
Speaker
The victim's roommate heard the victim yelling and crying, get off of me, along with a man's voice. And she called police and officers arrested links in the home.
00:26:57
Speaker
At Wednesday's sentencing, Link's victim asked Gallatin County District Court Judge John Brown to impose a strict sentence. My life has been changed, she said. I pity him for the fact that he takes no responsibility for his actions. The victim's roommate told the judge that because of the attack, she doesn't feel safe in her own home anymore. Every single night, this crosses my mind, she said, joking back tears. It's not fair.
00:27:20
Speaker
Lynx apologized to the two women and said he was more than willing to take responsibility for his crimes. He said, I'm sorry. Beyond words, I'm sorry. I hope both of you can move on and be okay. Whipple said the case is so strange because Lynx, up until this point, had no criminal history that would point to any crime of this type.
00:27:40
Speaker
Counselors cannot figure out why Andrew Lynx raped the woman. When entering the plea, Lynx said that he was intoxicated and does not remember committing the crime. He doesn't understand why he did what he did, and that makes him a loose cannon. Lynx attorney Peter Omen said that Lynx was remorseful. When Omen visited Lynx in jail shortly after his arrest, Omen said the first thing Lynx asked was if the two women were okay.
00:28:07
Speaker
That immediate kind of empathy is extremely rare, said Peter Roman. He is sincerely devastated by what he's done. Link's sister, Darlene Yosten, she traveled from Arkansas to speak on behalf of her brother. She told the judge that her family was very surprised to hear of Link's behavior. We're all just in shock, said Darlene.
00:28:28
Speaker
While Omen asked Brown to send its Lynx to five years in prison, he agreed with the state's recommendation of 10 years. Lynx's actions may have been out of character, but I don't know what triggered those actions. It's of great concern that nobody knows why this happened, said the judge. Lynx will receive credit for the 462 days he's already served in jail. And after his 10 year prison sentence, Lynx will serve 20 years of probation. Okay, so that's his kid.
00:28:57
Speaker
Right. But all that's garbage. I didn't know. I don't know why I did it. Oh, well, I mean, the family acting like they're surprised. Well, of course it's embarrassing and like.
00:29:11
Speaker
It's not enough to be immediately remorseful, okay? In a civilized society, you have to actually have enough like empathy for other people and self-awareness that you don't do things that you're going to be immediately remorseful for.
00:29:28
Speaker
yeah To me it is garbage because and and i do feel like that's a way for him to have not taken responsibility for it um oh absolutely because and you know him saying like oh i am taking responsibility for it will you did it because you could.
00:29:45
Speaker
Right. And because you you made poor decisions and you didn't have the self-control to not do it, right? That's why, you know, that's why it happened. So, you know, I don't know. ah It seems to me like even the judge is like indulging that situation or he's like pointing out how ridiculous it is. I can't really tell by the tone, but like, oh, it's, it's alarming that nobody knows why this happened. Right. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah.
00:30:12
Speaker
because like it's not alarming. Of course he knows why it happened. He did it because he could. He has to not do it in the future, right? I gotcha. Yeah, I follow what you're saying now. At first, i was I was like, what do you mean? But now, what you said makes perfect sense. Yes, this guy did it because he's you know got some serious problems with how he treats women and this type of assault. Right, because there was a policy situation happening to start with. Now, my initial thought on it was he was probably on drugs and then it escalated to the sexual assault, but I don't think he would have raped a man if that's who he ended up robbing. So you think it's a crime of opportunity where it really was the focus was money and then all of a sudden it escalates. Because he could. Yeah, that sounds that sounds plausible. I mean, I've heard of that happening. I think those cases, when yeah when that's where your opportunity goes,
00:31:08
Speaker
During ah some type of home invasion that was gonna be a robbery you take advantage of someone like that and do that kind of assault is terrible well, and you know, I I would say um There's a vast difference between property crimes and and violent crimes, right? yeah Yeah, however Like it Makes no difference as far as like, oh, well, I was just gonna rob the place, right? Whatever, you know? I mean, you're asking for escalation, in my opinion, when you start in down that road, right? As the perpetrator is what I'm saying. And so I i find it odd. um I feel like it would have been better for everybody to have been more direct in reprimanding him, as opposed to just sort of going along with
00:32:07
Speaker
100%. That guy needs a heavy dose of reality. And so the other thing that's sort of interesting, ah you said that was in 2012. 2011 is when it occurred. 2012 is when he ends up being, um are you thinking of DNA, by the way? I was actually thinking um because the DNA matches um the, it's genetically linked to the victim, right?
00:32:35
Speaker
Right and the truck belongs to the perpetrator, right? Correct um and so no what I was thinking was if that if Billy Jack Had been Had gotten like a real sentence for what he did in like 92 or 93. Yeah, he wouldn't have been out to take Morgan, right? I Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Because this guy, I mean, obviously he was dealing with an adult and he broken, he broke in he has sexually assaulted a woman and he got only 10 years for it, right? Correct. However, that's 10 years he's going to be in jail. And to me, like crimes against children, I don't, we don't, it's hard to sort of get a grasp on that because
00:33:24
Speaker
A lot of times juvenile victims, you don't get a lot of details, nor do I think people should just randomly get details of children being victimized. It's hard to sort of... scale it, you know, as far as like, I mean, if it happens, they should be punished severely, right? If there's questions, I can see why, like, other things occur. But it seems like he got nothing but to slap on the wrist, right? Like, oh, you need to go into a program that's not going to do anything. The way they kind of treat that 1992 case is like this is a 68 year old man who's
00:34:00
Speaker
ah ah was some sort of good person and now it's an anomaly. It's weird behavior, man. Well, and you said like maybe he slurred down and went after kids. I think that um going after children, ah especially a six-year-old, that's an opportunity or a type.
00:34:22
Speaker
yeah Yeah, there's a lot about the dynamics of like maybe how things were when his children were growing up that we don't have an opportunity to explore here. And I don't know what would turn him into that situation where we really clearly have him in 92 and 95 committing crimes against children miles away from where this disappearance of a cute little girl who went missing. you know So when we look at all this,
00:34:54
Speaker
ah It's sort of a disaster in the making. I just was pointing it out from the perspective of the hope that maybe this update is leading somewhere. I don't know exactly what they're looking for with these announcements, but I assume it's like witnesses.
00:35:11
Speaker
that may have seen where the body was put. Well, right. Uh, I feel like, well, plus they're trying to put closure on the case, right? I mean, that hundred percent yeah there's no reason why, uh, that DNA should be there. Right. It, unless he was involved. Um, there would have to be like some kind of strange, like, I don't see anything right now that makes it make sense. The other thing is,
00:35:38
Speaker
possibly I mean, I definitely don't believe that this guy just randomly became a pedophile in his 70s. Well, okay. I'll just say the thing and we'll decide if we're going to edit it out later. A lot of times when you abuse your children and their friends and then they grow up and have children,
00:36:03
Speaker
families split up over things like that where they don't talk for a long time. you run out of victims and you go looking elsewhere. So it's not that he randomly became a pedophile and I'm not accusing him of anything. I'm just saying there could be a pattern here where he simply no longer had children having children around him and he had to go look for children if he wanted to take advantage of them. But I have to say that the abduction ah attempt that's around the time of Morgan's disappearance is
00:36:38
Speaker
an interesting type of bold where you pull up alongside a child and you start talking about sex with them and then offer them money. And the dollar bills to the brothers to go away type thing. That's weird. All of it's weird. All of that is weird. All of it is weird. And like, if that were in a movie, we would be like, no, I think we got to cut that. It's not realistic. But then you have this account of it happening.
00:37:08
Speaker
Right, and it's so rare. So Morgan Nick's case, which I feel like it's been like fair, because even knowing like what happened shortly after Morgan Nick disappeared with what he ultimately went to jail for, even with that whole situation with the video, with the truck, with the possibility of the fibers mashing, now this DNA match,
00:37:33
Speaker
um he has He is not associated with Morgan Nick or her family in any way. Not according to everything I've read, no. It is a comfort complete random occurrence. Correct. And it is the rarest of the rare.
00:37:51
Speaker
with regard to... Now, i don't think I think he snatched Morgan. I think he grabbed her. I don't think he coaxed her into the car. um I think he was hanging out at the ball field for whatever reason. um And I think he saw the opportunity and he took it. And To me, um that's what that's one of the things that makes her case you know such a standout case. We're talking about we're going on 30 years. Yes, it's ah it'll be 30 years coming up. But yeah, 29 years and some change right now, yeah.
00:38:33
Speaker
Right. And, and she's, and, and she vanished, right? And they've never found anything of her. And that's odd. That's an odd situation that nothing has resurfaced. Um, so it is the rarest of the rare type of situation, unless there's something, you know, that everybody missed, but I don't think there is. No, I don't, I, I don't think so. You know, and and we talk just like for edification purposes,
00:39:01
Speaker
We talk about them searching these homes and stuff. Now, if you look at, I know I mentioned Oklahoma and that sounds like, you know, another place. If you're not from Oklahoma or not from Arkansas, these places sound so far away sometimes. But, you know, Spiro, Oklahoma, where they're searching this vacant home, is part of the Fort Smith, Arkansas, like metro area. Now, all the places that we're mentioning when we say Alma, Spiro, Booneville, these are all tiny places.
00:39:31
Speaker
They're like, like, I think Alma Arkansas as of this year probably has five or 6,000 people. Uh, if I remember correctly, Spiro, Oklahoma has a declining population and they may be down to like 1500 people. So these are areas where you have a limited number of people who could have seen something in terms of body disposal. And I think that's why the police are reaching out. We're talking about this case again, because that's the last piece of the puzzle in this case.
00:39:59
Speaker
is where is Morgan Nick? Right. And so with the limited number of people who possibly saw something and the declining population and the just sort of general area we're talking about here with, I mean, is it expansive land that- Yeah, there's a lot of land in some of these areas. That's the problem. like if you Like if you're in a house, like there's chances she could be found if she's buried in the basement or near a house. But if like, we're just talking about he went out and and dug a hole on an easement somewhere like a utility easement or something, you may never find her ah without somebody saying, I saw his truck parked here and I saw him walking back from there. That's what the cops are looking for is somebody who saw something the week after Morgan Nick went missing.
00:40:46
Speaker
right and Right, and putting something together, yeah. Yeah, so that's what they're doing with this case. I wanted to bring it up because it was an update and I feel like her case is important. I feel like ah all missing children's cases are important and you know this one just happens to have a little bit of traction where I could talk about it.
00:41:03
Speaker
Yeah, this is one of my, this is a case on my list. I feel like, uh, some of those cases are coming up these days. So, you know, if it's on a 30 year cycle, that would be about right. Well, speaking of, I have another update. You want to, you want to move on to another update? You have more about Morgan. Yeah. We talked briefly about this guy getting charged in Virginia, the capital region up there. I think we talked about him,
00:41:30
Speaker
last, about this time last year. Steven Smirk, remember him? Yes, because I said I made the comment about when he was born, they were like, look at his face.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, he he was yeah, he's got he's kind of a weird dude. So investigators caught up with him in September 2023 and they charged him with a 30 year old murder. This guy lived in Niskayuna and Patrick Time writes for that on October 8th, 2024 for the Times Union up there. He put together an article and it just says man pleads guilty in decades old Virginia cold case. So here's the just to the article and we'll talk about it in a little bit. A man who let a quiet life as a husband and father admits he stabbed a woman to death in a random but premeditated attack nearly 30 years ago in Virginia.
00:42:24
Speaker
Steven Smirk, 52, had been serving in the Army at a base in Arlington, Virginia, when in November of 1994, he left the barracks with the intention of killing someone. This is according to a narrative provided by Fairfax County Commonwealth's attorney's office. He broke into the home of 37-year-old Robin Lawrence in nearby West Springfield, Virginia,
00:42:45
Speaker
and stabbed her 49 times while she and her two-year-old daughter were alone in the house. Her body was found on November 20, 1994 after her husband, who had been out of the country at the time, asked friends to go and check on Robin after he had not heard from her in several days. Prosecutors said that Smirk disposed of the knife and a body of water on the night of the killing. At the time of her death,
00:43:10
Speaker
Robin Lawrence was is director of promotion and merchandising at Merchant's Tire and Auto Center in Manassas, Virginia. She was from Syracuse. She had graduated from Carnegie Mellon. ah Well, on ah Friday, yeah the first Friday in October of 2024, he pleaded guilty to the first degree murder in a Virginia courtroom.
00:43:31
Speaker
DNA evidence was recovered from the crime scene but did not match any genetic material and databases at the time. Police in Virginia were unable to solve the case for decades. Years later, police found a familial match with Smirk and began working with the DNA technology company in Northern Virginia that specializes in phenotyping and genetic genealogy analysis. ah Those are processes that predict the physical appearance and biological relationships.
00:43:58
Speaker
ah from unidentified DNA evidence. Right, and his um his composite from that is one that I remember seeing. Yep, and it looks like them. It does look like them, yeah. They it definitely, they don't use those quite as much because... it i They can be more general in nature.
00:44:18
Speaker
Well, because now in my mind, I don't really know if this is how it works, but it's just as easy to compare it to find the actual link to find the person as it is to make the phenotype composite. Yeah.
00:44:35
Speaker
and with regard to like the databases that we have. That is where we are now in time. yeah Exactly. and so That's why it kind of gets skipped over. right yeah but um they do you know i could i I feel like it's still used when all that other stuff comes up empty.
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah, they're trying to put a face out there in some um instances. It's interesting that you said it that way because they obtained photos of Smirk from 1988, 1998, and they compared them to the composite images that had been developed. ah Fairfax County police detectives, they then went to see him in September, 2023. They approached him as he was taking out the trash on South Country Club Drive, and he had been married with two teenage children. He'd been living in the area for at least two decades. They asked him for DNA, and he provided it, police said at the time. He later contacted the detectives and made a full confession at the local police station. And this is according to remarks made recently by Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis.
00:45:37
Speaker
um He had been working as a software developer, Smirk had. And at the hearing about this, ah Deputy Commonwealth Attorney Kelsey Gill read from a transcript of a video in which Smirk confessed to the killing. He said, I've not killed anyone else, but I could be a serial killer. If not for my wife and kids, I probably would be a serial killer.
00:45:59
Speaker
It was not immediately clear if smirk made the comments while speaking with police and Niska, you know, or during subsequent interviews, uh, he's going to be sentenced in February after ah a PSI or a pre sentencing investigation. And he faces up to 70 years in a Virginia prison. He is currently 52 years old. So he would have been 22 when he did this. Oh, wow. He was so he's only 52. Yep. He would have been 22 years old. So he was one of those guys that was like,
00:46:26
Speaker
waiting for it to happen and I was just looking at the parabond sketch and I have to say even the fener type composite is even smirking. So that one wrapped up we had mentioned his case so since it I may even mention it again in season six when it comes around for sentencing. Do you think that um he was waiting like that one that's gonna happen Is this one of the cases where like he had no idea he was leaving something behind but then after it happened he knew he had left something behind and so like when they showed up he was like oh yeah yeah he's one of those people that would it would have been like that yeah
00:47:09
Speaker
Cause it doesn't seem like, cause you know, they, well, actually I don't see the confession very often or I don't see the like, ah just sort of, ah what would you call it when somebody just gives in to the fact that like they've been caught and usually you see the denial. They sort of like. It's an acquiescence. Okay. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. And so you're just like, Oh yeah. Okay. So this really did a catch up with me. Cause I can imagine a situation where he might be questioning,
00:47:38
Speaker
Like, did I leave something? buts That's so interesting to me. Yeah, that this was an interesting update. um I put it in here. There's not much more to it right now. I am i am going to try and get a copy of his PSI. It's Virginia, so I should be able to get my hands on it now that he's pleaded guilty. I'm just curious. Do you remember, ah did we know he had confessed?
00:48:03
Speaker
Yeah, we did. um he's he he He had made some interesting statements in there about he cut her up pretty good. And um we knew that he had made a confession at some point. I think we recorded and mentioned that like he had made a confession. and But did he was she sexually assaulted?
00:48:22
Speaker
but She was one of those cases from the 90s where when I went to get information on her case, unrelated to this guy because I didn't know about him at all, I had just put it in as ah like a request for an unsolved murder case. hu And there was very little information available. And now when you go look for it,
00:48:44
Speaker
but You could go read on, I think newspapers dot.com had a little bit about her, but when you go read about it now, unfortunately the feed is clogged with information about this guy.
00:48:55
Speaker
Right, exactly, because ah right before we found out who it was, it would have been a completely different search result, right? Correct. I just remember the the smirk on his face, but it's it's it's definitely one of those interesting, he he's so much younger than I thought he he was. You mean like he looks older, is that what you mean? No, I mean the fact that he's 52 years old is weird.
00:49:22
Speaker
Yeah, it is weird. Um, she would have been older than him. He would have been like killing an older woman back then. Right. And I guess I just, I didn't, I mean, I'm not 52 years old, but it's way closer in age to me than I imagined. So that's my update there. I have one more update that I'm going to throw into this episode because we talked about this case a couple of times. Correct me if I'm,
00:49:46
Speaker
didn't release this, but I think I did. Otherwise, you may have some backwards stuff in the future here. um This is from October 3rd, 2024, and I know we initially talked about this case. This is the case of the au pair, also in Virginia, Fairfax. This has been released.
00:50:03
Speaker
There's a double murder that happened up there in February, 2023. And it was so confusing for you and I to look at it and figure out where authorities were going. And we now have a little more information on that. The double murder. It was um in all the staging in the world, I believe. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. So this is the double murder of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan. Joseph Ryan was potentially a stranger to Christine Banfield and the Banfield family.
00:50:33
Speaker
ah Christine Banfield was a ah married woman. Her husband was Brynden Banfield. ah They had a small child and they had an au pair named Juliana Perez-Malghese. And so the au pair was charged with secondary murder and the killing of Joseph Ryan. And the update in this case as of October 3rd or so is that Brendan Banfield has now been indicted. I pulled an interesting thing from CourtTV. I'm going to run a little bit of it by you. it It ran on the Associated Press as well. It just says, details in cases against Brendan Banfield and O'Pair revealed in court.
00:51:19
Speaker
An expert bloodstaying pattern and forensic analysts helped investigators pursue charges against a Virginia husband accused of killing his wife and another man at the married couple's Fairfax County home. ah This was said during a bond hearing for Brendan Banfield. Last month in September 2024, a grand jury indicted Brendan Banfield on charges of aggravated murder in the February 23 killings of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan.
00:51:48
Speaker
At the time of his arrest, which occurred more than a year after the incident, Fairfax County Commonwealth's attorney, Steve Descano, said new information found in the official's investigation was instrumental in securing today's indictment, but he declined to elaborate further. During the bond hearing, Deputy Commonwealth's attorney, Eric Clingan, said police had received in August two definitive reports from expert forensic investigators who spent more than a year reviewing evidence.
00:52:18
Speaker
ah He said the reports were foundational in supporting prosecutor's theory that Joseph Ryan and Christine Banfield's bodies were moved and had been repositioned after they were fatally wounded. According to Clingan, he said that Joseph Ryan's arms were moved and smeared with Christine Banfield's blood.
00:52:44
Speaker
John Carroll, who is Brendan Banfield's attorney, he argued in court that Klingens' narrative of what happened was not evidence of the husband killing his wife. He actually told the judge, it just doesn't add up. At the end of the hearing, Fairfax County Judge Penny Askerat denied Brendan Banfield's bail, requiring the defendant to remain in the county jail until his trial, which currently has a February date, but We know how that goes. It's probably not going to be in February, particularly if it's a complex case. And I'm pretty sure this will be declared a complex case based on some of the nonsense related to it. Do you think that you think that they'll stick it out? Well, especially the husband, you think that they'll they'll take it to trial? That girl's going to plea out.
00:53:36
Speaker
I mean, she confessed basically to the 911. She's supposed to, yeah, she did. She's supposed to go on trial in November. I mean, there's some slight possibilities. She didn't totally understand what was happening. I don't know that I believe that, but I could i could go with it if I saw the evidence. Right, but like, basically, I feel like ah the reality and the presented narrative, they ah excluded one another. Well, I took some notes from Court TV and from Vinnie Paulina, and I wanted to run them by you. Can I tell you some of these things? Sure. So they said that the blood spatter evidence was only one part of it, and they said authorities have said the killings were part of a larger scheme between the au pair and the husband.
00:54:23
Speaker
And they say the romantic relationship between the two of them started in August 2022. So that means they've got some evidence if they're putting a date on it. Six months before the killings, ah Juliana and Brendan Banfield had gone on a trip to New York together And they found photographic evidence of a romance, whatever that means. The prosecutor also said that other women had come forward to inform detectives that Brendan Banfield had been participating in multiple extramarital affairs during his marriage. According to the prosecutor, he said, multiple credible women confirmed this fact, including one in particular who told them during the course of his affair with course of their affair with the defendant a few years ago, he would constantly promise to leave his wife.
00:55:09
Speaker
But eventually he told her it would be so much easier for us if she was not around. And then of course you mentioned on the day of the killings, they have Juliana calling 911 two times within minutes. She did not first speak with first ah speak with first responders there. She hung up, but 10 minutes later she called a final time and reported it as an emergency. Brendan Banfield then spoken to the phone and said that he had shot a man who had stabbed his wife.
00:55:37
Speaker
Authorities arrive at the Banfield's home. They find that Joseph Ryan had been fatally shot. Christine Banfield was suffering from stab wounds. She was taken to the hospital where she later died. Klehan said following the killings, Juliana told authorities that she and Brendan left the house early that morning and they left Christine Banfield home alone. She said that she and Brendan returned later that morning after the au pair saw Joseph Ryan, who the allegation is he was trespassing.
00:56:06
Speaker
ah but they they had seen him enter the home. When Juliana and Brendan go inside, the two found Ryan holding a knife to Christine Banfield's throat. This is according to Juliana's statement, of course. She alleged that Joseph Ryan had stabbed Christine Banfield and that Brendan Banfield then shot Joseph Ryan. Juliana also told authorities that she shot Joseph Ryan once with a second firearm. The problem is she sort of gives away on the 911 call that she's been prompted to do so. During court hearings for Juliana, prosecutors questioned her account of events and they argued that Joseph Ryan was not a violent person. So according to the prosecutors,
00:56:49
Speaker
prosecutors in Brendan's case, Joseph Ryan came to the house after matching up with an online profile, portraying themselves as Christine Banfield on a website for people interested in sexual fetishes. Authorities then alleged that Joseph Ryan came to the home after messaging the profile's user on Telegram. So they they went to a second location, by the way.
00:57:12
Speaker
A second location is always a sign that there's some kind of staging or something is up. They move off of that website onto Telegram, which is an anonymous app, and they schedule a sexual rendezvous. Joseph Ryan had told us one of his friends that Christine's marriage was not entirely monogamous and added that Brendan Banfield, to his knowledge, meaning Joseph Ryan, was aware of this extramarital activity by his wife.
00:57:40
Speaker
In the 11 months between Juliana's arrest and Brendan's indictment, authorities have been monitoring their phone conversations out of the Fairfax County Jail. A few weeks ago, the prosecutor says that Juliana and Brendan Banfield had a brief phone call on which he said, I hope that you are not staying with me because you're afraid I'm going to turn on you. Who said that? Juliana said that to Brendan.
00:58:07
Speaker
Were they both in jail when that happened? No, he was not in jail yet. yeah yeah They're letting inmates talk to one another. No, he was out of jail, but that was another thing that sort of spurred on the whole idea that he was involved. Well, right. And she seems to be like sort of oblivious to those types of comments, right? ah They were her... the Because when we talked about this previously, it was that I think it was at the beginning of this year actually, but the whole narrative was different. The narrative was the au pair left with the child and once they got to a certain point, they had forgotten the lunches. yes And she turned around and went back and then she said that there was a car there, she didn't recognize, so she got the father.
00:58:52
Speaker
who's, you know, Brendan. And I remember saying like, so if there's a weird guy in the house, like, why on earth would your au pair and child be like right behind you, right? There's absolutely no reason for them to be going into the house. um Then I had speculated, I felt like they had probably killed the mom before.
00:59:16
Speaker
um Because this was basically like, this is Brendan Banfield thinking he's pulling something over on everybody, right? yeah And ah poor Joseph Ryan got stuck in the middle of a disaster.
00:59:34
Speaker
and all the women came forward because they're all like, yeah, that could have been me thinking about Juliana, right? Yeah. And I was very disheartened at when we covered it initially because I wasn't sure that they were going to be able to charge him.
00:59:56
Speaker
um So I'm very glad that they were able to put together the evidence to do so. I do think that um that I hope you're not staying with me because ah you don't want me to turn on you, ah comment. I think it was really valuable to his prosecution. I believe that um he's probably 95% responsible for this. The au pair is not going to have any reason to kill her.
01:00:24
Speaker
boss, boyfriends, wife, right? yeah It's not gonna have that deep and green thing. And then I have to say, why didn't they just get divorced? you know i We always ask that question. A lot of times my personal opinion on what's happening there is money. That's a big thing. Sometimes it's children.
01:00:49
Speaker
Right, because money's all good right now, right? Money's good at the moment, but the minute you get divorced... No, no. I mean, like, now that he's gone to jail for it. Oh, well, he thought he was gonna get away with it. But, you know, he... Look.
01:01:05
Speaker
In my opinion, I am not knocking a pear. Some of them are brilliant, brilliant people. um They're doing this for a myriad number of reasons. At one point, I think you have even been, ah you were a nanny many, many years ago when you were like 30 years ago, right? Yes, i i was an well I was a babysitter. Yeah, I was a nanny. So in my opinion, if you're going to commit this type of murder,
01:01:34
Speaker
I don't know that the young au pair is the one to help you carry this out. Right. But you're going to have a really hard time finding anybody to help you. Yeah. The minute they agree to help you, you should really be evaluating whether you should do this or not. And the answer is always no. But if you're going to move forward with this, know that like, this is how it ends.
01:02:00
Speaker
Well, and in my opinion, he was setting, he was setting Joseph Ryan up to take the fall for his wife's murder. And he was setting the au pair up to if the self-defense thing wasn't bought.
01:02:18
Speaker
and they both didn't get off scot-free, she was going to take the blame for it. And you know that's what I saw playing out. And I thought it was terribly unfair. But I also don't feel like there's... I don't feel like um Juliana is an innocent party in this. I just i felt like they should be blamed you know more equally for what transpired. Because it you know at that point in time, it was just her. She was the only one getting... um Because she talked to the police.
01:02:47
Speaker
And remember that was another point we made in the other episode was that this is a, this is an example of the difference. Cause he didn't talk to police. He immediately got an attorney, didn't talk to police. She had basically said what happened over the 911 call. And then she did talk to police, but in the 911 call, it was, I shot him again at the prompting of Brendan, uh, Banfield.
01:03:17
Speaker
he told me to go to the other room and get the other gun. It was like this whole thing. It was so weird. It was like somebody had written it out for her, but it wasn't a situation. It was like he was still moving. So I shot him again. Well, that's not self-defense, right? no no You don't finish him off unless he's a threat. Right. You have to, you shoot somebody because you're afraid they're going to kill you, not because they're still moving. yeah ah You don't give them a nice clean shot to finish them off.
01:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a trial, like particularly with the OPARIS trial, if she goes to trial, which is scheduled for November of 2024. If she goes to trial, I will be paying a lot of attention to this.
01:04:00
Speaker
I would be interested to see what all comes out because it is one of it's got all the like elements that make for a really good story. like If you don't take into consideration there's actually human beings involved. Yeah, in my opinion, all entertainment purposes aside, I can very clearly see the narrative of what happened here from the outside. I'm dying to know if there's something that contradicts what I think.
01:04:26
Speaker
And so for that reason and that reason alone, I want to see what these prosecutors in Fairfax, Virginia put together on this case, because I am I am highly interested in a trial like this happening, because in my opinion, if I were either one of these people in terms of Christine Banfield's husband, Brendan, or her nanny, ah Juliana with the long last name, I would not even consider putting my business out there for a trial if I had done this. I would be beelining my way to the nearest plea bargain that I could make work. I think that the i think for business that's going to be out there is going to be deep. You also then have to think about like, this is somebody who did this thinking like they were going to somehow get by with it. Because I don't think that, I mean, do you think if they knew they weren't going to get away with it, they would have done it?
01:05:26
Speaker
Maybe, I mean, I don't know, man. Like, I can't tell how, like, there's so much wrong thought here with all of this that, like, it, I can get into the heads of Disconnected serial killers easier than I can get into the head of people doing things like this where you're masquerading one life and plotting this out against the person that you live with and have children with and I pledge to spend your life with it is very confusing for me. I don't know I'm like you i I don't know what they're thinking but I have to believe that they thought at the time that like they were gonna get away with it, right? Like oh, they're gonna believe us when we say these ridiculous things, right or
01:06:07
Speaker
if they don't think they'll believe them, like maybe they'll be like, well, they can't prove otherwise, which I mean, in a very sinister mind, that could be the thinking. Okay, there's a whole lot of other ways though, to deal with a situation where you don't want to be married to your wife anymore. I understand it could be difficult in a variety of ways, including financial ways. But I have to believe, because I just, I don't believe that if they thought they were going to get caught and go to jail, that they would do it. Because like you're giving, what what's the point in even not having your wife any longer if you're just going to be in jail for the rest of your life? Yeah. And you took your child's parent away from them. You took a life. You took a life.
01:06:55
Speaker
That alone is enough for me not to understand you. You took a life for two lives in this instance. Not only did you like, like the the level of concoction that has to go into the scheme for Joseph Ryan to end up there is like special circumstances death penalty eligible in my head.
01:07:17
Speaker
Oh yeah, but I, I, I doubt it's going to go there, but no, I don't think it will, but I'm just saying it was planned out. Like, cause we had talked before, like we didn't even think, um, we didn't think mom, the victim had even was even involved in getting Joseph Ryan over there that morning. Like, so it was very concocted, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was like crazy.
01:07:41
Speaker
I don't have a lot more on this one. I am going to follow this. This will be a trial that if it happens where I can get my hands on all the hearings and stuff, I will be doing it. This is almost one I would consider going to visit in person, but like I have a feeling it's going to be long and I don't want to be in Virginia for months trying to figure this out. Uh, did you have much more on this one right now? No, I don't have anything else on it.
01:08:04
Speaker
I got a missing persons case and I don't know if you get these. i'm going to We're going to talk about it for a little bit um because I put it in ah the queue for us to add into this episode. I went down a rabbit hole and I don't know if you get this way with missing persons cases. I i saw this case pop up. It's over a year old at this point, which is one of the reasons I'm bringing it up to the girl in Florida.
01:08:29
Speaker
And I don't know what it it is about the case itself, but I looked at it and I remember thinking that will resolve itself shortly, like as soon as I heard about it. And then then I thought, why hasn't someone done something about this? It has gotten a little bit of attention on like Dateline and whatnot. This case is out of ah Florida, ah specifically out of Marion County.
01:08:55
Speaker
um She's been missing since March 2nd, 2023. She's considered endangered missing, which is, we don't know exactly what's happened, but I'm going to give you some of of what's out there. ah Charlie Project's got some stuff on her, so does NBC. There's a Reddit thread that was really interesting to me. Fox 35 out of Orlando carried a case on her. um I'm just going to talk about her for a few minutes because I i fell into a rabbit hole in this case. and I don't know.
01:09:24
Speaker
I don't know how to explain when that happens. I just want to like tell you this rabbit hole. And we get some interesting tidbits if you follow the rabbit hole a little bit. Her date of birth is ah September 18th, 1996. She would be 28 years old if she's still with us. She's been missing since she's 26 years old. She's five feet, one inches tall, 120 pounds. She's a white female. Last seen wearing a black sweater, a light colored tank top with sequins and either a black skirt or black pants, blonde hair, blue eyes. She has a tattoo on her right hip of ah a coco pelle.
01:10:01
Speaker
which is a fertility symbol, shown as a humped back flute player. If you have any information on this case, you should call the Marion County Sheriff's Office, 352732-9111.
01:10:16
Speaker
This is the case of Sarah Gail Ebersole. I may be saying her name wrong. I heard of Ebersole and Ebersole, but had you heard about this at all when I brought it up to you?
01:10:29
Speaker
No, I don't think I had. So, according to the Charlie Project, the details of her going missing are that Sarah is last seen in Redick, Florida, a little after 10 p.m. on March the 2nd, 2023. She had texted her sister a few hours earlier, and she was trying to get a ride, but her sister couldn't give her a ride.
01:10:51
Speaker
This is home from work. So at 10, 11 PM, Sarah texts her sister and says, quote, she's getting into a random truck with some cowboys and hoped, quote, they took her for a ride.
01:11:06
Speaker
So she's seen on a surveillance video at the Circle K store on North Highway 441 in Redick, Florida at the 17,900 block. It's a black pickup truck driven by two males. She never returns home. Authorities state that she's dropped off with James Robinson at his subdivided residence ah a little further down this road in Redick and that the two of them ah James Sarah spent some time socializing socializing with James Schaller and Tisisha McDermott, who lived on the other side of this like split residence. According to witnesses, Sarah left the house between 3 and 5 a.m. in a newer model blue Hyundai sedan, driven by Hispanic male in his mid-30s with long dark hair and a thin build.
01:12:03
Speaker
Although the witnesses said they thought the car might have been an Uber, police were able to determine that Sarah had not called for an Uber the night she disappeared. They stated she could have taken an off-the-books ride, however, or gotten a ride from a third party.
01:12:19
Speaker
A year later in March of 2024, investigators announced that a man named Tyrone Mormon was a person of interest in Sarah's case and that they had determined that she had left with Tyrone Mormon on the night she was last seen. According to Sarah's sister, Sarah didn't know Tyrone.
01:12:43
Speaker
Authorities got a search warrant for his phone, which Tyrone Morman had lied to the police and said he had broken his phone and he had been thrown away. But he finally turns it over for examination and he gets arrested in December, 2023 for giving law enforcement false information. I think it's an obstruction of justice charge, but neither here nor there. They put a picture of him on the Charlie Project profile and he looks like he could fit the description of what um the people who lived at the duplex said happened. He's thin and kind of long hair. He stated that out of town at the time, he could not have been involved in Sarah's disappearance. He had never met her, but multiple witnesses contradicted his claims. Information on his phone indicated that the two of them were together at a 24 hour convenience store in the Northwest part of Marion County during the early morning hours on March the 3rd.
01:13:43
Speaker
And then it wraps up saying Sarah is the youngest of seven children. She was primarily raised by a maternal uncle and aunt in Sarasota, Florida. At the time of her disappearance, she was divorced, lived with a roommate in the 9,200 block of Northwest 60th Avenue. And she worked as an exotic dancer. She left behind a daughter who mostly resided with the child's father. Since her disappearance, there's been no activity on her social media or financial accounts. She took nothing with her and her case remains unsolved.
01:14:14
Speaker
I'm gonna cut this one off here. Meghan and megan I had a further discussion, but then we had to go digging into this case, and we realized that we were watching something unfold that maybe we don't always get to see. So I'm not going to any further. Call the Marion County Sheriff's if you know anything about this case at this time. I hate to do that to people, but it just felt like I needed to to end this here, wrap up the episode with just me talking and saying, you know, Paul Marion County on that because the deeper we dig into that one, the stranger it gets. But thank you all for joining us and we'll see you next week.
01:14:54
Speaker
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01:16:00
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through Patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at TrueCrimeAccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:16:20
Speaker
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