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He Was Here: 5,303 Days (Season Five) Limited Series
276 Plays2 months ago
In today’s episode, we continue the limited series “He Was Here” about an unsolved 2010 murder in Chicago.
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS by slip.fm. The song is “No Scars”.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-2015/chicago-crime-stats/
https://footprintsattheriversedge.blogspot.com
https://fstoppers.com/education/biggest-dangers-photographers-face-299728#comment-thread
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Updates on Jay Paul Hill's Case
00:00:49
Speaker
This is True Crime XS
00:01:00
Speaker
I know a couple of people are going to ask about this, so I'll give like some updates on what we're doing here. There's a couple of episodes left about J. Paul Hill, but in terms of the suspect, I reached out to him, he reached back out to me, I reached out to him again. There was some wires crossed in the messaging a little bit, and we're not releasing a lot about him in the series proper, but we are doing an episode on that. It'll be here.
00:01:28
Speaker
within the next couple of episodes so people can learn about him. As far as like what the next steps are, you know, Jay's mom, Jane, who you've all heard from at this point and and who we owe a great thanks to for being able to tell his story with her. She's done everything right. The actual next steps that would have to be taken here would be this suspect has to be charged with Jay's murder.
00:01:52
Speaker
And enough work was done that we believe that's a that the thing that's possible. If they charge him with this, I think he'll just admit to it all. Or we can just start sharing this story with everyone that he is in his media security facility with. And you know some of the other stories about him can come out and they can charge him with some of those things as well.
Ethics of True Crime and Strange Events
00:02:14
Speaker
you know it's It's complex to do a story like this in sort of real time while you're trying to get the story out and also to come to a conclusion that results in justice for Jay. And we may not see that immediately, but I think that we will see it down the line.
00:02:34
Speaker
I guess we've come to the part of this story that is sort of strange to me. Now, there's this movement in true crime where people want to talk a lot about how to be ethical. And there's a lot of different ways to look at that. But with Jay's story, we have some really strange things that have happened in terms of what content creators have done. And they're not just to Jay or about Jay. Specifically, there's a couple of things that have happened to his mom, Jane. Now, I wanted to focus in on probably the most notorious part of this story. And in order to do that, I need to give you a little bit of background. I'm pretty sure you've heard of the smiley face murder theory, right? ma
00:03:31
Speaker
Yes. Every few years, depending on where you live, a theory about a different serial killer that's mostly fiction will pop up.
Introduction to the Smiley Face Murder Theory
00:03:41
Speaker
I think most recently you and I were following some cases in Texas where people were convinced there was a serial killer when there wasn't.
00:03:50
Speaker
But a few years ago, I think it begins for our part of the story in 2017, a couple of people joined forces to make what is known as the smiley face murder theory, or the smiley face killer. I actually did quite a bit of research about ah this particular idea. At one point, that's sort of how I got to know that Jay Polhill's case ah was a case, and his mom actually sent me a link to something that happened that reminded me of that early on and in our talking. Now, if you go and and dig into the smiley face murder theory, I'm just going to tell you upfront, like most of these serial killer theories, it is absolute bunk.
00:04:39
Speaker
When I was speaking with at least two people about this related to Jay's case, we all had kind of the same ideas behind this, and that was, this was an idea created to sell some books. The way it comes about is two retired New York City police detectives, one named Kevin Gannon, the other named Anthony Duarte, and a criminal justice professor and supposedly a gang expert at St. Cloud State University named Dr. Lee Gilbertson. They put together a theory that there was a serial killer operating across the Midwestern American States from the late 1990s to the mid 2010s. And that theory alleges that between 45 and 55 young men who were found dead in bodies of water did not actually drown
00:05:32
Speaker
as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but they were the victims of either one or more serial killers.
Skepticism and Law Enforcement's Stance
00:05:40
Speaker
The term smiley face became connected to the alleged murders because it was made public that police had supposedly discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer or killers had dumped these bodies and at least a dozen of the cases.
00:06:00
Speaker
so Gannon writes a textbook case study on this subject and they title it case studies in drowning forensics. If you go find the Wiki on this, it says something like law enforcement experts are skeptical of this. I am telling you, don't be skeptical. Realize it's bullshit. It's complete BS. Where it comes into play here is that it does end up affecting the Paul Hill family.
00:06:32
Speaker
So let's talk about the Somali face killer murders for a second. As recently as 2017, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, they said they were examining evidence going back to the late 1990s to connect all these deaths together. And they said that it was college age males, there were at least 45 of them, potentially as many as 60 in 11 states.
00:06:56
Speaker
and that their bodies were found in bodies of water after leaving parties or bars where they had been drinking. So the men often fit a profile of being popular, athletic, and successful students. Most of them were young white men, and they were theorizing that they were all murdered. The term smiley face kind came about because of the graffiti that we just mentioned. And they claimed that they had found all types of ah different symbols associated with these deaths, but they weren't disseminating these other images because they didn't want to inspire copycat graffiti or alert the suspects that they were onto them. They've even packaged all this together and sent it up to the FBI. So let me just ask you, Meg,
00:07:49
Speaker
When you heard about this, it's an interesting idea, right? A little bit? I would have found it to be a very interesting idea at some point. But it doesn't, ah does it hold water for you? The whole smiling face? No, not at all. In fact, part of one of my issues with that whole situation is I constantly get it confused with the happy face killer.
00:08:14
Speaker
Right. and We've talked about that. That's Keith Jasperson, who's another serial killer that you can look into if you want to know more about that particular topic of happy face versus smiley face.
00:08:26
Speaker
Well, I guess that those words are synonymous in my brain. Yeah. Jasper Sen is in jail, right? And he's confessed and there was evidence and there's all kinds of stuff involved in that case. And so a lot of times when something would randomly come up, which I didn't see a whole lot of it, I would immediately associate it with The happy face killer and it went absolutely nowhere because it you know, they're not Anything alike. They have nothing to do with one another right? Yeah, and so a lot of that sort of disregard came from that for example bri Brandon Swanson is lumped in here Brian Shafer and to a degree Jay poll hill is linked into this idea now
00:09:15
Speaker
As far as the smiley face murder theory itself, a lot of work has been done to sort of just dissuade it. It is bunk. Like, is something happening that could affect a few people? Maybe, but it's not gonna be figured out from this. ah Pat Brown, who was a criminal profiler, shot down the whole idea, saying it doesn't fit what is known about serial killers. I don't know that I completely agree with the way that Pat Brown debunked it, but like I don't disagree with debunking it. It was sent up to Robert Mueller, and the FBI actually ended up issuing a statement on April 29th of 2008, and they said that they had reviewed the information about the victims that were provided by these two retired police detectives dubbing these incidents the smiley face murders. They had interviewed and another individual who who had provided information to the detectives,
00:10:10
Speaker
But to date, we have not developed any evidence just to support any links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or a group of serial killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings. The FBI will continue to work with the local police in the affected areas to provide any support as requested.
Backlash Against Ken Walks
00:10:37
Speaker
What was interesting about this isn't just that like this ludicrous theory to sell books gets quite a bit of attention for a while. It's that it spilled over into other creative worlds. One of the articles that Jane sent me was involving a TikToker. Did you know anything about this guy before we started like looking into Jay's case?
00:11:05
Speaker
I still don't know anything about him, really. ah She sent me an article, and I'm going to use it here. This is from NBC News. I've done a little bit more work on this, but like honestly, it's it's worth a mention, but I'm trying to focus mainly on Jay. So while I'm going to talk about what happened here,
00:11:24
Speaker
and and how it ah affects this case and other cases like it. ah Keep in mind that like my overall opinion on this is is that it's it's terrible. Families should never be going through this. And I know that multiple families, including ah the families of the Delphi victims, families of the Idaho University massacre victims, ah have gone through similar things, ah and countless other families who are hoping to either see their the cases of their loved ones murdered go through the judicial process or who are hoping to identify a killer. I think it's worse when you're hoping to identify who has killed your loved one, but I could be wrong and it could be worse when you actually have a criminal case that's affected
Ethical Implications of True Crime Content
00:12:11
Speaker
by all of this. Do you have an opinion on like which one
00:12:14
Speaker
is is more ah disturbing? I don't know. I i would say from my completely no experience with this position that it would be worse to be trying to find who did it, but then it's going to be equally equally worse in the interim between finding the person and the person being put on trial for it, right? Yeah. So I think they would be about equal. This guy takes it to the next level. In a May 2023 article, Adasia Tolentino wrote a TikTok quote investigator, end quote, faces fallout after claiming to crack a serial killer case.
00:13:02
Speaker
The subtitle is, Ken Walks, W-A-K-S, said he got lost in the sauce trying to connect numerous deaths across the country. Critics say it's a lesson on the ethics of true crime. And the article says, since early March, Ken Walks, a TikTok creator with one million followers, has been pursuing an, quote, investigation into a potential serial killer working in various cities in the US.
00:13:32
Speaker
ah This is according to the Chicago-based marketer who claimed that someone, or even a group of people, has been targeting men walking home from a bar or club at night and dumping them in rivers across the country. Walks himself soon became an object of scrutiny, with other TikTok users now referring to his case as a controversy.
00:13:54
Speaker
Like many true crime sensations, his series garnered a lot of support and millions of views, but many viewers started to get suspicious when in late April, Walks posted videos claiming that a private investigator had showed up to his house and recruited him into a team looking into the quote, smiley face killers.
00:14:15
Speaker
The Smiley Face Killer case is a true crime theory alleging one or more killers murdered and dumped dozens of men into rivers. The investigation on this case was spearheaded by former New York Police Department detective, Kevin Gannett. The stories just started to go so big that I had to pause, said Meredith Lynch, a pop culture TikToker with 227,000 followers talking about walks video.
00:14:40
Speaker
Lynch and others online began expressing public skepticism toward Walks after they noticed he mentioned Foresight, a social calendar startup where he worked as a chief marketing officer, in two videos about his amateur detective pursuits. Critics called his motivations into question, sparking a debate on creator ethics. Enthusiasts online have argued that true crime content can draw attention to unreported cases and help investigators. However, critics of so-called TikTok sleuthing have grown weary of the genre because they argue creators may inhibit investigations, exacerbate families' pain and capitalize on other people's trauma. Ken Walks told NBC News in an email statement that he started his series because he wanted to raise awareness about a potential public safety issue in Chicago.
00:15:33
Speaker
He said he was approached on two occasions by an individual trying to lure him into a car while he was walking home from a bar. NBC News reviewed the police report that Walks filed regarding the incidents. I quickly learned that this was happening to many others in the Chicago area and beyond. I began diligently collecting information and sharing it online, as well as with law enforcement, private investigators, and other authorities in an attempt to bring awareness to these crimes.
00:16:04
Speaker
NBC News reviewed emails sent by a spokesperson for Walks that appear to show communication between him and a private detective, as well as Kevin Gannon, discussing his research. Jordan Shearer, owner of RA Private Investigation and Security, confirmed in a phone interview that he connected with Walks to see if his research could be useful. He clarified that his team was not working in partnership with Walks, who was an unlicensed citizen.
00:16:32
Speaker
He and his team are offering us research and data points that may provide assistance that could be helpful in our investigation to these ongoing suspicious deaths. After seeing a now-deleted post from the CEO of Foresight, viewers began to wonder if VoxSeries was just a marketing ploy to direct traffic to his startup. The post praised Vox Organic integration of foresight into his recent viral content which included videos about his investigation on Saturday a foresight spokesperson said walks in foresight have made the amicable decision to part ways The statement came days after the spokesperson have said walks work and involvement in that case is entirely his own and our company is not involved in any capacity
00:17:20
Speaker
We have never actively monitored or dictated employees' personal social media accounts. And while we are initially excited by the potential increase in visibility and even celebrated on LinkedIn, we have since learned the fuller details of the situation and have ensured moving forward that employees understand the importance of maintaining a clear separation between our company and personal matters in any public forum.
00:17:47
Speaker
A foresight spokesperson put this out in an email statement last week. Justin Burnett, a TikToker with 15,000 followers, said that Walks made an example of himself, but believes the incident is something that people can learn from. This is a person who's influencing 1.1 million people and his followers. His reach is ginormous, said Justin. Walks' follower count has fallen back to a million amid the fallout from this investigation. Justin Burnett is a military police veteran with investigation experience. we He was initially optimistic about Walk's series on TikTok. However, after Walk's declared that he had, quote, cracked the case, Burnett felt like some of his claims weren't adding up and he warned against content creators gaining clout off of people's misfortunes. When you do things like this, you actively impede the logistics of police, he said.
00:18:42
Speaker
They're gonna get people who get hysterical, tip lines get flooded, and it's so hard to sift through that information. Burnett also said that videos like walks can be insensitive to grieving families who are still looking for answers about their deceased loved ones. Burnett said that creators need to ask themselves, is what I'm doing causing actual harm? Burnett, Lynch, and other critics have argued that walks videos are harmful to the families of the deceased men included in his investigation. Jane Polhill, whose son Jay died in 2010 in Chicago, attests to this. Since her son's body was found in the Kalamant River in Chicago 13 years ago, Polhill has been searching for answers about his death. She stumbled upon Whack's series while scrolling on TikTok one day, and she thought that Whack's could help her. My husband said, don't get your hopes up, according to Jane in a phone interview.
00:19:38
Speaker
You know, because when you get your hopes up, it just seems like in our experience, you're gonna be disappointed.
Impact on Jay's Family and Ethics
00:19:44
Speaker
Still, Paul Hill emailed wax information about her son, and she said that she noticed that he added Jay's name into his public database. However, she said her emails were left unanswered. Desperate for potential information about her son's death, she said she paid for a 15-minute Zoom meeting with wax, which was offered by a link in his bio for $30.
00:20:07
Speaker
When he didn't show, Paul Hill said she felt duped, angry, and embarrassed. A spokesperson for Ken said that he missed disappointment because of a defunct calendar and contacted the mother to apologize. The link to buy time on Whack's calendar appears to be taken down. He was absolutely willing and wanted to meet with her, said a representative. Paul Hill confirmed that She did receive an apology and a refund. However, she said she didn't believe that ken's Ken Wack's investigation was truthful or sincere. She added that she hopes that other parents don't try to get help from him. Paul Hill said she believes a more ethical way to approach true crime is to loop in the affected families from the start. I think communication between the creator and the families is a must because some families are gonna say yes and some families are gonna say no, and that should be respected.
00:21:02
Speaker
After receiving backlash online, Ken Wax made a TikTok on Thursday announcing that he would stop his investigation. And that's where I'm gonna um i'm going to end that there. I just wanted to talk about that for a second because it mentions Jane and it mentioned Jay's case. What do you think about that, Meg? Well, this isn't the first time ethics has come up with regard to the true crime genre that we operate in, right? It's a constant thought for us every time we take on anything. ah It's a consideration. Sometimes one or the other of us, you know, have ideas about things and the other ones as well, you know, we have to keep certain things in mind. One of the things that we constantly evaluate is the potential that
00:21:59
Speaker
we could be doing more harm than good in any situation. Yeah. And we look at it from the perspective of, are we giving someone a defense? Are we speculating in a way that's going to harm an innocent person? There's a number of ways we evaluate what we're doing. And even at the last minute, I will carefully cut things in an edit that I feel like aren't pretty clear. Right. And it is a fine line. I feel like,
00:22:27
Speaker
If you don't have a whole lot of experience, which again, I don't know much about that guy. You know, I didn't know anything about him beforehand. I don't know much more now. So I don't know how much experience he has. I feel like at this point with this show, we have quite a bit of experience doing this, whatever category this would fall under, right? Correct.
00:22:50
Speaker
And I think that without a significant amount of experience doing this, I feel like the reason i feel like having this experience, the amount of content we've done and the amount of time it has taken to do that amount of content,
00:23:09
Speaker
I think that we are so far beyond being like, oh, let's have a gimmick. And I think that if you don't have that type of experience or If you have a different type of motivation, of course you're going to want to gimmick because if you're living in or if you're working in a fictional what realm, right? That's exactly what you want to do. But true crime content creation, especially with unsolved current unsolved homicides,
00:23:47
Speaker
or probably to the same extent missing people. But I think the unsolved homicides, even more so, you have to be very careful.
Addressing Misinformation in True Crime
00:23:57
Speaker
It was being said in the article, you know there are cases where it could impede law enforcement. i I feel like depending on the specific law enforcement agency you're talking about and the specific case,
00:24:16
Speaker
Some agencies are better equipped to handle being overrun with tips than others are. i have felt I've seen it kind of play itself out.
00:24:28
Speaker
in both ways where you know they're like, we're completely overrun with tips to the point where like they've probably missed something to like begging for tips. Anybody who's seen anything, please let us know. and so it's just It's just a matter of course. Now, it's interesting because
00:24:50
Speaker
We cover a lot of content that I don't know how relevant it would be to bring a family member in. Our whole point in the show is to give the extra details you don't necessarily get in the narrative, right? um And I don't know that I would approach a family that wasn't actively seeking to be approached. Does that make sense?
00:25:17
Speaker
Yeah, so the majority ah the reason this all started is you and I would have questions. that seemed answerable from either public record or from a little bit of extra research. And when we would go and look at how the mainstream media or the Wikipedia page or or the Reddit post or the WebSloos post or TikTok was covering a particular case, it would be wrong.
00:25:48
Speaker
And we would look at it and it would it would be like this game of telephone. We could kind of see where the bad information came from and kind of how it got to be what it was. And we actually started out, we were just gonna do one story. And then once we did that story, we realized there were a lot more questions you could ask about a lot of the way that mainstream media covered cases. I would say,
00:26:18
Speaker
We have two purposes. One is if something is unsolved or someone like if their disappearance is, you know, still like if they haven't been found, we're very interested in those cases. Or if we feel like there's gaps in a serial killer's cases or There's something that's been blatantly wrong because sometimes we get into exoneration cases pretty heavy. We are trying to provide at least one different voice in the crowd that says, hey, maybe that's not just because it's been repeated 10 million times. Maybe that's not correct information based on like what was initially released and what seems to be what the investigation was leading to.
00:27:00
Speaker
I think that's that question like us asking those questions is really where most of this comes from. I even considered like using this case like as a pivot point on like put this out on TikTok because I think that's what this TikToker should have done. I think instead of an apology to Jane, I would have like Pivoted in a way that like I wasn't investigating quote the smiley face killer anymore. I would have started to Try to talk to family members at least see if any of these family members on this list of people wanted to talk and if they did I I would have put out a video about Jay to that million plus followers because that would help some cases. I don't know that it would help in Jay's case or not because all the information already seems to be there for the police, but there could have been something that came in. There's a reason early on that like cases getting publicized changes the outcome of of them. And I think here, like, that's what I personally would have done in terms of like how we do things, I would have wanted to put out a piece of content that's instead of an apology, it would have been like, look, look at this case. Okay, forget that stupid smiley face case. Let's do this one. And like, let's just talk about this one and get a million people to sign a petition for the police to reopen it. That's what I think would make more sense. Would you agree?
00:28:28
Speaker
I agree. um I feel like I know that a sticking point for me was in the enormous amount of true crime content that's available. When I would have a non-fact, a um I don't really know what to call misinformation. Misinformation would be repeated over and over and over again.
00:28:56
Speaker
And it wasn't something small that didn't matter. Right. Um, and it just really bothered me because it seems so easy to fix it. And it's not that I don't have appreciation for the narrative makers who, you know, you have to take these sometimes non-coherent, enormous amounts of information and put them in story form. Right. Yeah.
00:29:22
Speaker
and that's really hard to do and so i think that that is kind of essential and crucial to like what we turn around and do because without that initial, which sometimes we do put stuff into an initial storyline, right? But um without being able to kind of see how it's done and, you know, deciphering what's missing, we wouldn't know the difference, which I think that's part of it. Like a lot of cases as true crime became
00:29:55
Speaker
a an element of entertainment that people who are interested in cases partake in in their free time. It became apparent to me that a lot of times when a narrative is spun incorrectly it never gets
Highlighting Victims' Families
00:30:16
Speaker
corrected.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. You never know if like what's being relayed incorrectly is like the key to solving the whole case, right? if If just that one element was corrected. So I'm not really trying to like disparage the mainstream true crime content out there. I'm just saying that this is an additional element that I, you know, I think is relevant.
00:30:45
Speaker
Especially, because there's a lot of just repeated stuff, right? Yeah. I mean, almost verbatim, just repeated stuff. And if the very first person that says it is wrong, that means that that wrong statement is repeated verbatim into infinity. Well, you sort of stuck to this DNA phrasing where It was going to be like a snowflake and like we we're going to solve a few cases, not us personally, but like DNA as a whole was going to rise as kind of an industry. And then it was going to become a smoke snowball and then a blizzard. And then there was going to be this avalanche. And I think the misinformation in true crime is like a tsunami.
00:31:31
Speaker
And one of the things, I don't think it's an ethics problem because I don't think the people that are causing the problem would even understand like that it was an ethics issue. I kind of agree with that, but at the same time, I never presume that I am... I try my best to be above board, but I'm not beyond somebody coming to me and telling me why something that we were doing would be considered problematic.
00:32:00
Speaker
I would be open to any conversation where somebody wanted to tell me not to do a thing or like wanted me to revoke a statement or issue a correction, ah particularly like I would be open to that. I'm not saying I'm automatically going to do it, but ah my point was like when we're covering things and asking the questions that we cover and share with people like we do, I rarely take on a case for coverage that doesn't have like some source material I can get my hands on. And when it comes to something like the smiley face killer theory, first of all, I don't think
00:32:37
Speaker
that like the source material is real because I've looked at like i read their $200 book at the time or whatever. you know I wondered about it. i actually was At one point in time, I was writing an entire police procedural where I was modeling something they were talking about like to try and work it into a television show because I was like, this sounds so grandiose and so fictional.
00:33:00
Speaker
Like I understand why people like Ken wax or walks or whatever his name is do what they do. I get it. It doesn't make it right. The problem is not but an issue with entertainment versus
Jay Polhill's Story and Unresolved Case
00:33:11
Speaker
ethics. And I know like that's a weird thing to say from someone who like has a podcast. But first of all, I keep our podcast like it covers its expenses and that's it.
00:33:21
Speaker
like we don't you and i are like pulling a salary from this we are doing something grandiose with a bunch of advertising like i've i've tried here and there to do some advertising most of the advertising that you have heard was so that we could keep things as low cost as humanly possible for the two of us and we can continue to do it but.
00:33:39
Speaker
One of the problems that true crime creators don't even realize they have and this goes for Particularly all the ones right now ranting about like ethics and true crime and the dark side of true crime I understand that there are ethics problems. I understand that there are dark side problems, but Collectively, we have an object permanence problem. So object permanence is a concept. It's a very fundamental concept of developmental psychology and the idea is when you're very young or you're very like early in your mental ah capabilities and development, the idea is that whether you realize that an object is there or not, in this case, victims' families, whether or not you realize victims' families exist, they do. Even when it's out of your sight, out of your mind, out of your reach,
00:34:40
Speaker
Victims' families exist. You probably don't know it if you're just randomly covering true crime from, you know, whether whether it's good or bad or whatever, like from the source material that you're gathering. I knew of J. Paul Hill's case when all of this started. Like briefly, i it was a mention for me where I understood it. It resonated with me because I had a 20-year-old kid and Jay was 20 when this all happened.
00:35:08
Speaker
And because his family reached out to us, his family was a catalyst to move this forward and to tell his story from the perspective of changing the narrative and making people know that this is an unclosed homicide with a suspect, with a mound of investigative materials that came about in kind of complex ways. But When we're done and we wrap this up and we send it to an audience, even this episode right here as I'm talking, Jay Polhill's family and all the friends and all the people that have talked about him, they still exist and true crime creators have a ah problem understanding object permanence is real. I think that, and and it's not purposeful, I think in trying to
00:36:00
Speaker
make something, I don't wanna say entertainment, but you know what I mean when I say that. Like if you're trying to do something mainstream media, true crime related, that somebody's gonna watch on television, I think that it is almost a necessity to not think about that. Yeah, you have to bring it with a certain amount of sensationalism and to leave that part out. Exactly, and I think that that,
00:36:29
Speaker
is without question, I mean, it that is without question, it would lead to lots of ethical problems, right? yeah I mean, I struggle with this constantly. The way this is kind of gone for me in terms of of what we do here, I will continue to produce content as long as I have questions. This is an interesting story for me to put out the story of J. Paul Hill's murder.
00:36:58
Speaker
because the few things that I could find online about him were speculating about what kind of accident he'd had, whether he'd hurt himself. But, you know, as I've laid out here, it's ah a pretty damning case for homicide. And I am gonna, I'm gonna talk about the suspect in this case.
00:37:21
Speaker
I will say that like it's interesting to me that the family, which if you go back and listen to, I think it's the second episode, I believe that Jane says they were told not to talk to the media.
00:37:33
Speaker
And now, here we are, 14 years later, and this TikTok kid has sort of dragged him and all these other people. Now, Jane is not officially part of this long list of smiley face murders. Jane had questions about it, because she wanted to know if there was a way to raise the profile of Jane's case. That was my impression. Was that yours? Yes, that was my impression. I never knew if he was included in the ah narrative that was being spun in that series or not. And my understanding was that it was something about it caught her attention. I don't know what it was that maybe it happened. Some of them were in Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. It was Chicago based. So that's how it was sort of a ah locational algorithm that got them together.
Detailed Account of Jay Polhill's Case
00:38:23
Speaker
Right. And so I never knew. I didn't honestly, I i was so appalled by that situation. um I don't have a lot. Do you have a lot more on this guy and kind of the ethics versus object permanence here? Not really. i I would say that I have, I don't have the ability to to disregard the idea that there's victims, families out there, that there um was a victim, that there's a potential perpetrator out there. Like that type of thing never escapes me. We do something very different though than when you have a different objective, right? yeah um I would also say that I doubt very seriously that I would ever not cover a case
00:39:12
Speaker
that a victim's family ask us to cover. We're working on two or three different cases like that in the background right now. Jay's case was a little bigger because of some of the elements, and I wanted to cover it first. I felt like it was a good road to go down because what we discovered was so many cases, and I think this is mentioned in the essay as well, so many cases just weren't getting the coverage that they needed.
00:39:39
Speaker
but they had all these elements where like this case is pretty much wrapped up if they just take the last step. Right, and if for people that listen to our show on a regular basis and have for the past almost five years now, they will know that I have said there's a category of cases out there that I automatically put cases in and it's the solved but not adjudicated pile.
00:40:08
Speaker
ye This is a case that's solved but not adjudicated. Anderson's vulnerable young men, too. It is. You're absolutely right. And so naturally, over time, as we talk, these things come up, right? And i'm and and you know it's unfortunate, but it's also relevant that this is a perfect example of exactly what I'm talking about when I say things like that.
00:40:38
Speaker
Here's another thing, though. I don't really know if it's relevant or not, but part of the reason that i I was really irritated that that guy did that to Jane. I didn't know her at that point. I hadn't spoken with her at that point in time. um I think that I may have known about Jay's case in passing, and I presumed what was available out in mainstream media.
00:41:09
Speaker
And i this case has taught me that sometimes I'm moving too fast through stuff because I was not picking up at all what this case is really about. I don't think anybody can. I think this is what i think that the entire case is very surprising if you come from a place where you've read about J. Paul Hill's death.
00:41:35
Speaker
in what is available. I know in looking at the article, there was pretty much nothing that was going to stop me once um I saw that this guy on TikTok had had done this to Jane.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah, I felt the same way. I wanted to, cause we're talking about like sort of the coverage of this case. There was one article I pulled and I want to throw it in here. Um, this woman named Annie Sweeney wrote this for the Chicago Tribune. It gets published in August of 2011. So you're talking a year and a half after Jay's death. And the title of it is Jay Polehill's death is a mystery spanning 20 miles in 18 months.
00:42:21
Speaker
A year and a half ago, as the late season snow and ice still clung to the bank and stretches of the wintry gray Calumet River, a body bobbed to the surface near 126th Street, startling a worker collecting a water sample. Identifying him as J. Polhill, 20, a happy-go-lucky photography major at Columbia College of Chicago, proved to be a deceivingly easy start to the investigation. Hal Polhill, and this is her words,
00:42:51
Speaker
who drowned and sustained head injuries wound up in a remote industrial area some 20 miles from his downtown university dorm, has eluded Chicago police detectives in spite of an unusually lengthy and extensive investigation driven in part by a family who has refused to let the case slip away. I would go through a lifetime of pain if I just knew that in Jay's last moments, he wasn't scared.
00:43:19
Speaker
ah This is a quote from Jane Pollhill, Pollhill's mother. I would take it, Jay was a loved kid. He was a loved kid and I just wanted to have felt that love till his last breath. Pollhill was born and raised in Lena, about 130 miles northwest of Chicago, but a world away from the artsy community of Columbia. Friends say he talked fondly of his days in the small town where he bagged groceries and was close to his parents and older brother Billy.
00:43:49
Speaker
After graduating from the local high school where he wrestled and ran track, he came to Columbia and met other budding artists, dancers, fiction writers, and musicians, who recognized him as a lighthearted kid with a quick, sometimes surprising wit. Paul Hill blossomed at Columbia, his family said. Lena, a picturesque and quaint community where cornfields nudge against cemeteries filled with family plots, just wasn't wide enough for him.
00:44:18
Speaker
He was very witty, had a great sense of humor, his mother said, and he had an open mind and he accepted everybody.
Challenges in the Investigation
00:44:25
Speaker
By a sophomore year, Pole Hill had turned his attention to photography and took pictures of everything, according to friends and family. His framed photos hang on the wall of the Pole Hill home.
00:44:36
Speaker
In one shot a friend took of him, Polehill stands at the edge of a dune with his shirt off and his arms stretched wide as if to greet the world. In the last image of Polehill on his dorm security camera two days before he was found, he was captured walking out of the building on South State Street that Sunday with a camera strapped around his neck and his laptop in a bag. Neither has been found and his wallet is also missing.
00:45:05
Speaker
Although they cannot even be certain where Pole Hill went into the water, detectives believe that his love of photography had brought him to the Calamet River to take pictures of its weather-beaten bridges. But detectives are plagued by a nagging question. How would Pole Hill, who didn't have a car, have gotten to this desolate spot?
00:45:24
Speaker
He never told anyone about visiting the area. None of his friends who have cars said they gave him a ride there. His CTA card was last used on the Sunday at a subway station near his dorm, although he could have taken a metro train or pace bus and walked a short distance to get there. Where did he go? Said Pole Hill's friend, Taylor Shrife, 21. That's the thing that's bothering us. He got on the red line, but what on earth happened after that? The manner in which he died is also in dispute.
00:45:54
Speaker
According to the autopsy performed at the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, Paul Hill suffered serious head injuries before drowning. He had two identical wounds on his legs that appear consistent with being cut by a boat propeller after he died. In addition, Dr. Mitra Kallikar found no signs of drug or alcohol use or of a sexual assault, even though Paul Hill was clothed only in a t-shirt. But Kallikar did not rule on how Paul Hill died, homicide, suicide, or accidents.
00:46:23
Speaker
calling it undetermined. Without a clear direction from Kalakar, police had to consider all the possibilities. Detectives have not found anyone who believed Pole Hill would hurt himself. Those closest to Pole Hill said he had a deep appreciation for life, having struggled through multiple childhood surgeries because of a tumor in his sinus cavity. Police have considered the possibility that he fell from a bridge or lost his footing on the IC embankment while shooting photos, striking his head and drowning.
00:46:53
Speaker
In the weeks after Paul Hill's body was pulled from the river, the Chicago Marine Unit searched the water for clues and detectives checked the department database of pawn shop records to see if someone had sold his computer or cameras. They poured over his debit card records but found no activity.
00:47:12
Speaker
His phone, after a last text sent to his mother ah the day before he was found, was no help. They asked the Illinois International Port District for video footage from area bridges, but found none. They discovered that he had not activated the LoJack tracking device on his computer, yet another dead end. They conducted interviews, including of a man who talked to Pole Hill in the days before his death about hiring to take photos. But no one had any information about what had happened to Pole Hill.
00:47:41
Speaker
A painful truth was emerging for the family and leads on the case were dwindling. The Pole Hills, however, refused to give up. Three months after his death, they hired a private investigator. He had a pathologist review autopsy reports and photos. The investigative work cost the family thousands of dollars. The pathologist concluded that it appeared that Pole Hill had been beaten, noting injuries on both sides of his head.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yet there weren't significant injuries to other parts of his body, likely ruling out a fall, he found. Armed with that, the Pollhills pushed even harder, turning to a state representative to help them secure a meeting with Calicar, who agreed to put the case through a peer review process in her office. I want to find the person who did this to Jay, said Jane Pollhill, as she sat in her Lena home, next to her son, Billy. I want them to realize what they have done, what they have taken from us,
00:48:36
Speaker
In some ways, I think the three of us are closer, but it's destroyed us." In November, nine months after the initial ruling, Kalikar changed her finding to homicide, concluding that Polhill died of drowning and multiple injuries due to assault. It became a little more clear, particularly with my colleague's input, Kalikar said, if you think it's an accident, why aren't there other injuries?
00:48:59
Speaker
Jane Polhill next called Tom Byrne, the Chicago Police Department's chief of detectives, about assigning a cold case detective to the case. After consulting with the supervisor on the initial police investigation, Byrne agreed to put Bob Rodriguez, a cold case detective, onto the mystery.
00:49:17
Speaker
We wanted to get to the bottom of how he died," Burns said, knowing that the medical examiner had now ruled it as a homicide coupled with the family's wish for a fresh set of eyes. That's what led to the decision. Since March, Rodriguez has been re-interviewing anyone who might help firm up the timeline for Pole Hill and the last days before he was found in the river.
00:49:39
Speaker
On a recent morning, Rodriguez showed the isolated site to a Tribune reporter. The detective made his way down a short but steep slope shrouded in tree cover to reach the river's edge. The river was quiet but for a few small pleasure crafts. Massive bridges flew nearby. Detectives already knew that Pole Hill had last been seen on the dorm video footage two days before his body was discovered.
00:50:04
Speaker
He had also told his roommate mid-afternoon that Sunday in February 2010 that it was heading to a party on the north side. Paul Hill's girlfriend, Tiana Saccona, said that she had also exchanged texts with him late Sunday afternoon, making plans to meet at the Columbia dorms that night. But Saccona, a Columbia student, never heard from him and has no idea where it was that evening.
00:50:29
Speaker
So far, no one has come forward to say they saw or heard from him that Sunday evening, leaving a frustrating gap in the timeline. At 10 a.m. the next day, Pole Hill responded to a text sent by his mother on Sunday. Sorry, busy night, way behind, he wrote. Be in touch later, love you. About 24 hours later, Pole Hill's body was found in the river. Rodriguez has recently tracked down people who are at the party Pole Hill was supposedly heading to on Sunday, but they said he never showed up.
00:50:59
Speaker
Rodriguez is still chasing a tip that Pole Hill might have been at a different party that afternoon or early evening. Many of the Columbia students have scattered for the summer, some overseas, but Rodriguez has crisscrossed the city, finding those who are still around. He has pressed friends for any details that might explain how Pole Hill traveled 20 miles from his dorm.
00:51:21
Speaker
For now, Chicago police have not classified Paul Hill's death as a homicide, although Byrne insisted that the case has been investigated as thoroughly as a murder. We are going to do everything we can for the family to determine what happened, Byrne said. But at this point, nothing conclusive has emerged to tell them how he got into the water or how he suffered the trauma to his head.
Call for More Attention and Justice
00:51:46
Speaker
A witness, physical evidence, or a sign of some motive, such as his belongings turning up at a pawn shop, would be key breaks, sperm said. Anyone with information can call 312-746-9690 or leave a tip on the department's cold case website. Friends and family say they are grateful that police are still searching for a break in the case, but they know it would likely take someone stepping forward with information to get the answers they want.
00:52:16
Speaker
In the meantime, Jane Pole Hill tends every day to her son's grave in Lena. It's adorned with ornamental jaybirds in honor of his name. In addition, a favorite poemie pen is carved on his gravestone, and part of it is also tattooed on his mother's leg and his brother's back as permanent reminders.
00:52:35
Speaker
Sakona, his girlfriend, remains heartbroken, and also sadly admits that she has lost a little bit of hope that the answers will come. And though she wants them as much as anyone does, she has also found a surprising bit of comfort in the lingering mystery, saying it somehow fits Pollhill's personality. So as part of this, we did reach out to a lot of the folks mentioned here, including the author of this article, Annie Sweeney. I did end up talking to Bob Rodriguez.
00:53:06
Speaker
And I know this series feels like, you know, it's long, but that's cause it's complicated. Uh, Bob Rodriguez says he knows who killed J. Paul Hill. And I agree with him. We've been trying to figure out the best way that we can tell you about the man that you may have heard referenced in the last episode as Bill from Chinatown.
00:53:30
Speaker
And we decided that the best way to do that would be to give Bill his own episode. Next time on True Crime XS. There was stuff missing and there was stuff that I felt like was wrong. But it's interesting, like like knowing now what you know in 2024, what do you think of that article from 2011? I was gonna ask you when it was written. on August 2011, August 22nd, There was some pretty significant stuff that opened up sort of the other side of the case that follows sort of what we talk about all the time. The last person that was known to be seen with him. Right.
00:54:14
Speaker
Part of the problem is the nature of that connection. It's not quite random because there was a crossing of paths ahead of time. They met each other. They knew each other ahead of time, yeah. They met, they had a plan. Without that bit of information, you've got people trying to figure out what bridge he fell off of, right? I mean... Exactly. And you've got TikTokers talking about how he's part of the smiley face killings, when, in fact,
00:54:42
Speaker
He's part of a brutal homicide. And I would say it is an acquaintance homicide. I mean, I guess, yes, if you're going to meet up with someone to take pictures of them or whatever, that you're probably acquainted with them. We know he had met him earlier in Chinatown. Otherwise, we never get the post-it note. We never know who he is.
00:54:59
Speaker
Exactly. We have Jane Pollhill finding that post-it note. We have her being completely aware of the fact that Jay told her about the situation, met a guy, and he details, you know, how he met him, why he met him, what he's going to go do. And then the next thing they know is he's missing, and then his body is found.
00:55:27
Speaker
And so she, ah you know, within the first days, but I guess whenever she was cleaning out his dorm room, she literally found the information that solved the case. Now, just because the case is solved doesn't mean it's adjudicated. That's why I keep calling it unclosed because it got very close to being adjudicated.
00:55:52
Speaker
It should be adjudicated and that's very concerning because it is a case that is everything about it lines right up with what we talk about all the time. If you don't follow the entire case, this is the case that seems like it could possibly be, you know, like you said, an accident or suicide or like a random attack, right? know And none of that's true, none of it.
00:56:17
Speaker
So about halfway through the initial work on this case, Meg and I come across what appears to be sort of a family tree for the suspect. And one of those people in the tree is a Chicago police officer. At first we didn't think a lot about that, but then later on there's this story that sort of relayed to us where maybe the evidence in Jay's case had been lost.
00:56:48
Speaker
So that piqued our interest because we wanted to know if there's any tie between the fact that there is a Chicago police officer involved and as a family member of the suspect and then potentially like one or both of the shirts might have been considered missing. We we couldn't track down the exact origin of it because they hide behind this sort of banner that this is an open homicide investigation.
00:57:15
Speaker
If the suspect has police in the family, that would explain why this plea blows up. That would explain why they decide not to plea out to it because they're getting information that like is coming from inside the police department. That's interesting.
00:57:32
Speaker
um And that's the reason that the Chicago Police should open this back up and look at it, is if someone inside their department is feeding the suspect information or has potentially touched this evidence. That gives them all the reason in the world to not want to talk about it. One of the fascinating things about this case is it does have all the twists and turns just on the surface that it should have stayed in the media and it needs to be back in the media.
00:57:58
Speaker
And the reason for putting together so many episodes on this case is to show those twists and turns. When you go in and you pitch like true crime content for video. Today, it's very competitive, but you've got to have a story that has a lot of compelling links to it. I don't think I could make up a more compelling story here, like to lay all of this together. But I'll tell you this.
00:58:21
Speaker
If one of the investigators happens to be listening and they want to come on and talk, I want to talk to you guys. I've i've spoken with some of them by phone, I've spoken with some of them by text, but I would i would love to have one of you guys come on the air and share your side of this. But even if you don't come on here, this isn't big enough. to if If this isn't your thing, I totally get it. This is the case that you write a book about so that everybody says J. Paul Hill's name.
00:58:50
Speaker
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00:59:56
Speaker
True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.