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Season Six: Down By The Creek
256 Plays17 days ago
Today’s primary source can be found: https://www.wbtv.com/2025/02/26/murdered-north-carolina-couple-tied-up-blindfolded-strangled-1978-where-cold-case-stands/
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Sources:
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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.
Podcast and Case Introduction
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Personal Sidetracks and Recording Challenges
00:01:00
Speaker
I think in case people wonder what's going on, like sometimes you and I will spend two hours talking about our week and we kind of forget to record the episode.
00:01:12
Speaker
and And I've been trying to steer us back. Um, it's very difficult sometimes like, cause a lot of what we talk about couldn't be put on the air anyways, because it's ongoing things in our lives.
North Carolina Unsolved Case Overview
00:01:26
Speaker
And then i sit down and i was, I've been trying to find cases that aren't really covered so much. And I know you get obsessed with live trials.
00:01:39
Speaker
I personally have gotten to a point where I have so much going on that like I've been looking at older things because it's less technology. It's less clear what happened.
00:01:51
Speaker
And I ran across this old case. It's 46 years old to be specific. It's out of North Carolina. And something happened with this where it had caught my attention in mid 2024. I want to say it was like the 45th anniversary that somebody had put an article out.
00:02:15
Speaker
And now ah they're really digging into this case. um I just want to say, um I realize, I think some of our sources are out of North Carolina, but i believe it happened in South Carolina.
00:02:28
Speaker
and Oh, you know what? It's a North Carolina couple who was in South Carolina. You're correct. yeah But the question is kind of where did it like all happen?
00:02:39
Speaker
You're right. The bodies are found in Greenville County, South Carolina. And this is a 1978 case. it's It's from the summer of 1978. What caught my attention on this is this amazing piece by WBTV.
Media Coverage and Audience Involvement
00:02:56
Speaker
It's done by Kelsey Grader and John Carter, and they published this February 26, 2025. we're coming up on forty seven years i guess It's an unsolved murder.
00:03:08
Speaker
But the way they put this together, they put it together. There's a video I think you can watch. um There's a lot of information that they get out of this sergeant that is working on this double homicide.
00:03:23
Speaker
And i i decided I wanted to cover it for one reason only. They put so much information about this case out there. that I think this is a case where like audience members, like listeners, or i guess viewers, if you're watching the video, could solve it.
00:03:45
Speaker
Like they could come up with a theory that like points in the right direction, or maybe they know something about these people or they know something about the situation. So Kelsey Grader and John Carter write all of this up with this sergeant.
00:04:00
Speaker
And it is so fascinating to me how they did it. And this is, this is my thought on it. and And you then we'll kind of go into the case and you can tell me your thoughts on it if you want to.
00:04:13
Speaker
This is where true crime should go. Like, this is what it should be doing. Like, like this kind of coverage. It is so thorough. I don't, as I don't disagree with that. um I feel like this is definitely, this a case that it should have been solved.
00:04:32
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Obviously. And the fact that it wasn't, it's, I feel like that'll be really obvious as we go through. I think so too. So again, the source for this is WBTV, which is technically out of Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm going to, I'm going read from some of this and then we're going to talk about it as we go.
00:04:50
Speaker
From the headline, it's murdered North Carolina couple tied up, blindfolded, strangled in 1978, where the cold case stands.
Details of the Crime Scene
00:05:00
Speaker
And the sub headline is detective still working to solve 46 year old mystery.
00:05:06
Speaker
In July of 1978, the bodies of a man and woman are found in a creek in an area of Greenville County, South Carolina, known as the Dark Corner. David Clemeshaw, 28, and Donna McCracken had their hands tied behind their backs, they're blindfolded, and both of them have been strangled.
00:05:28
Speaker
No arrests have ever been made in connection with their deaths. Although there were very few clues to go on, a sergeant with the Greenville County Sheriff's Office is optimistic that this 46-year-old double murder case can still be solved.
00:05:45
Speaker
Sergeant Jason Cox has looked over the case dozens of times. He's part of the Greenville County Sheriff's Office cold case unit made up of investigators who are still looking for who killed the couple and why.
00:06:00
Speaker
Sergeant Cox says, each time we review the case, we get closer. And I'm going to pause and and talk about some of this. One of the things they do here is they really humanize this couple.
00:06:11
Speaker
There are tons of photos of them. um One of the first photos that they have in here is of David. And he's standing feeding like a bunch of ducks on a waterfront.
00:06:26
Speaker
He's standing by a car. It's very clearly like... ah from the dress and from the car and everything that you see, like a seventies picture, but it puts him front and center and they follow it up with a picture of Ms. McCracken where, you know, she's sitting on a couch ah with what appears to be like family members around her and they've cropped it in close on her.
00:06:52
Speaker
And they talk about these guys in a way that like really makes you feel like you know them. It says that the two of them had been dating and they were living together in Asheville, North Carolina.
00:07:04
Speaker
So David is from Massachusetts originally. He's a Navy veteran and they call him a mechanist here. um They say that he is ah divorced and he had a daughter.
00:07:17
Speaker
Now with Donna, she was a secretary at what was known as the Mountain Area Education Foundation. She had spent most of her life in North Carolina and had gone to high school in Swanoa.
00:07:33
Speaker
According to Jan Gray, who talks in this article and was a classmate with Donna at Owen High School, Donna was a sweetheart. She was in the accelerated classes, so she was really smart.
00:07:45
Speaker
She was kind of shy, but once you got to know her, she opened up and was hilarious. Jan Gray remembers the last time that she saw Donna. She said Donna had a new boyfriend, and although she was going to get to meet him for the first time, she was very excited about spending time with her.
00:08:03
Speaker
They talked, they laughed, they listened to music. Jan says she seemed very happy, and she was just gaga over him. But she also says she didn't like him.
00:08:14
Speaker
i don't know why I didn't like him, but it was just a red flag from the word go.
Victims' Background and Disappearance
00:08:20
Speaker
One part of the night that Jan remembers vividly the moment that Donna showed her a lot of drugs.
00:08:29
Speaker
She admits that they all smoked pot together at the house that night, but she says she wasn't prepared for what she saw as she was leaving. She said, let me show you what's in the freezer.
00:08:40
Speaker
And then she opened it up and said, and here's the LSD, here's the peyote, here's the yada, yada, yada. We got to the car and we thought she is in over her head.
00:08:53
Speaker
So it's the seventies. It's the summertime, but what she's describing a, it's a lot more drugs than I think the average person has their hands on. Wouldn't you say?
00:09:06
Speaker
Yes, I would say that. um I'm not entirely certain if that was immediately before July 7th. Do you have any idea? I don't know. And the reason that oh i I'm saying I don't know is because they say that the couple was going to get drugs on the way to a music festival they were headed to.
00:09:29
Speaker
Right. So, and this is according to a supplemental report that the the officer shares with, for this article with the writers. It says, according to a supplemental report put together by Sergeant Cox, Donna and David were last seen on July 7th, 1978. They had been planning to go to a festival in Cherokee County the following day, but on the way they plan to stop in Madison County to buy drugs.
00:09:55
Speaker
According to like what the police have provided here, Donna and David never make it to the festival. Donna's mom ends up reporting the couple missing after they don't show up.
00:10:09
Speaker
And Sergeant Cox says that he believes, this is his quote, somewhere between their house and Madison County, something happened. Four days after the couple was last seen on July the 1978,
00:10:23
Speaker
two farm workers find the bodies of Donna and David in a creek along a large bean field off of what's known as Barton Road in Tigerville, South Carolina.
00:10:35
Speaker
And this is part of that remote area that the authors talked about at the beginning called the Dark Corner. and Sergeant Cox says at the time, the Dark Corner is where You went when you wanted to get away with something. So it's kind of ah a no man's land. And I thought he meant like kind of a lover's lane, but I believe he means body disposal, illicit drug activity. Like this is kind of the place that you go is my interpretation. Now, did you get a different interpretation of that?
00:11:11
Speaker
No, I felt like i didn' I did not envision it to be a lover's lane. I was thinking like drugs or whatever. Yeah. so David is found face down in the middle of the creek.
00:11:26
Speaker
He doesn't have a shirt on. His pants were pulled down and described as being well below his waist and his underwear is like showing.
00:11:38
Speaker
Sergeant Cox says that Donna's body had been stuffed into a crevice that was along the bank of the creek. And she was bent at the waist in like a fetal position. So her torso is like coming close to her knees and her knees are bent.
00:11:58
Speaker
But her her body is kind of bent in half. is That's the way they describe her. But she's fully clothed. And according to the notes that they make here, they say that both of the bodies appear to have been covered in water at some point.
00:12:16
Speaker
The investigators who work on this case initially, they were not able to identify the bodies because of the state of decomposition.
00:12:25
Speaker
David ends up being identified by a tattoo on his shoulder. And investigators are able to then walk it back and connect it to a missing persons case out of Asheville, North Carolina.
00:12:40
Speaker
The first autopsy lists their cause of death as undetermined for both parties. But a follow-up autopsy reveals that both of them were strangled to death.
00:12:56
Speaker
There's an article that was published in the Greenville News on July 15th of 1978. They quote it in here in the WBTV article as the coroner saying, the new autopsy finding means that the two could have been strangled either with a rope or some other ligature or someone's hands.
00:13:18
Speaker
ah Jan Gray, upon learning about this, she gives the quote to WBTV that strangulation seems so personal and vindictive and horrible. According to 1978 police report about the discovery of the bodies, Donna and David were blindfolded or pieces of a torn Western style shirt, and they had been tied up with twine.
00:13:41
Speaker
David's shirt is missing. And in the photograph that they give us of David at the top of the article, he's wearing a similar style shirt. So investigators believe that it could have been used to potentially blindfold the couple.
00:13:59
Speaker
Even though Donna is fully clothed when she's found, there was a note that her shirt was on inside out. Sergeant Cox says maybe something different happened to her.
00:14:14
Speaker
There was never a sexual assault kit done on either victim. The reason why they didn't do a sexual assault kit was because in the 70s, with the state of the decomposition of the bodies, they just wouldn't have been able to do it.
00:14:27
Speaker
This is according to Sergeant Cox.
00:14:31
Speaker
So of the things they do that's really cool here, um and this article will definitely be in the show notes, is Sergeant Cox has made all the documents available. So you can actually ah click through here and you can dig into the police reports and some of the case file.
00:14:52
Speaker
It's still not known why Donna and David were murdered. Sergeant Cox says it was noted in the original case file that their that their murders could have potentially been drug related.
00:15:04
Speaker
His quote here is, I don't think it was anything as far as drug trafficking or drug distribution. I think it may have been as simple as going to buy some marijuana because this is the 70s.
00:15:16
Speaker
Jan Gray, quoted again, says she believes the murders could have been drug related. She says she even asked Donna's sister about it. I wondered if the family knew anything about it at all. So I just said, do you think drugs were involved?
00:15:30
Speaker
And she says that Donna's sister said, yes, we do think drugs are involved. Sergeant Cox says, I think the possibility of them being victims was more of the opportunity for a robbery.
00:15:45
Speaker
He noted that David had withdrawn money from the bank right before this trip out to the festival. So it's going to be right before July 7th when the two of them disappear. He said they may have had plenty of cash on hand when they went missing.
00:16:00
Speaker
In the original police report, investigators note that Donna and David's pockets are empty. There's no purse, no wallet, no car keys. There's no house keys. There's nothing, like, even for their home in Asheville.
00:16:13
Speaker
um They don't find it they don't, they never find these items at the crime scene. They never find these items at their home um up in Asheville. When they go to the house and do a search, they take photos, um but they note that there's no evidence of any kind of struggle at the home.
00:16:34
Speaker
They did say that there was food still on the stove. There were dirty dishes that were out. And investigators at the time came to the conclusion that the couple potentially left their home in a hurry for an unknown reason, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
00:16:52
Speaker
Another interesting note here, and this is like one thing that always stands out to me every time I'm reading something, is they both had dogs. And the dogs were missing from their Asheville home.
00:17:05
Speaker
But they were later found on a back road in Madison County, North Carolina. So, i don't know if do you do that. I always wonder what happened to the dogs. Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
Well, i I do always notice, ah typically, if they were outside dogs, or especially if since they were going to be gone for a little bit, if they had left them outside, i think after a little while, dogs get impatient yeah and run off or whatever.
00:17:33
Speaker
Or if they had left them with someone, you know that could give more clues. Seems like you they would have figured that out, right? Pretty early, i think they they could have figured that out, yeah.
Suspects and Investigation Efforts
00:17:43
Speaker
Sergeant Cox says that the original lead investigator in the case was convinced that he knew who had killed the couple, but they never had the evidence to prove it.
00:17:54
Speaker
According to his quotes to WBTV, December 1978, a couple of people were heard bragging about murders at a party, and potentially these murders.
00:18:07
Speaker
The pair reportedly bragged about how they had hitchhiked and they were picked up by a man and woman who they had robbed and killed. The pair also reportedly told others that they had ditched the couple's car near a swimming hole near Ivy Creek in Madison County after it got stuck in the sand.
00:18:28
Speaker
And that's exactly where David's yellow 1996 Pontiac Catalina was found on July 13, 1978.
00:18:37
Speaker
So this is the car being found, I think is a huge deal. It's found two days after the bodies and it's not near the bodies. um They put a couple of photos in here.
00:18:47
Speaker
It's way more stuck than I thought it was going to be. Did you see how deep this thing is in the sand? Yes, was very stuck. According to Sergeant Cox, these two individuals could have just been bragging about something that they had read in the paper and and seemed like they were maybe trying to take credit for it and they had nothing to do with it.
00:19:06
Speaker
While those two people were in prison for another crime, um apparently the former investigator on this case questioned them about the murders, but they never admitted anything.
00:19:19
Speaker
Both of these men have since died, and that's the one thing they don't do here that bothers me a little bit, is they don't name the men. Sergeant Cox says just because they pass away doesn't mean that this case is closed. You still have to prove that they did it.
00:19:37
Speaker
According to him, they've investigated many other leads, many other theories, but nothing has panned out so far. There are different theories that you're going to come up with in these cases, but the one thing you have to make sure of is that the theory fits the evidence, and the evidence can't change.
00:19:53
Speaker
It can't be manipulated or changed at all. Your theory has to fit with what speaks and not the other way around. Cox says it's also still a mystery as to how and why the bodies of David and Donna ended up in Greenville County, South Carolina.
00:20:12
Speaker
According to his statements here, he says that he believed it was more of a disposal site. The location is pretty isolated away from where anybody just would have known about it unless they had intimate information.
00:20:25
Speaker
In the supplemental report by Sergeant Cox, it was noted that the twine used to help tie the blindfolds on McCracken and Clemshaw was similar to twine used in bean fields to tie together beanstalks.
00:20:42
Speaker
ah And according to all of this, they are looking for someone who had intimate knowledge of the area where David and Donna's bodies were found. He says, I'm still trying to find out as much information that I can because ah believe that individual is still alive.
00:20:59
Speaker
Evidence has been hard to come by, according to the investigators. Cox says it's likely that rain washed away possible clues where the bodies were found and there were never any plaster casts made for footprints.
00:21:13
Speaker
He said there was nothing that could help explain how McCracken and Clemshaw got to the creek. There were no drag marks on their shoes, no damage to any crops nearby, and no tire marks in the field.
00:21:27
Speaker
David's car, which was found in Madison County, North Carolina, had been ransacked by the time it was found. With any type of evidence, would it be the NAR fingerprints, one thing you have to look at is, is it supposed to be there?
00:21:40
Speaker
Does it have any business being in that spot? Cox says he hopes that additional testing, which he declined to identify what type of testing may be going on, may reveal something new.
00:21:51
Speaker
he says, my hope is with new advances in technology that we might still be able to re-examine their close. He also told WBTV that some items from the car had been sent off for some type of testing.
00:22:04
Speaker
He said, we may not be able to solve it right now, but it will get solved one day. We're not giving up. He says that anybody with information about this case would be asked to call Crime Stoppers of Greenville,
00:22:15
Speaker
And it gives the phone number is 864-232-7463. So Crime Stoppers of Greenville is 864-232-7463. And you also go on to Crime Stoppers of Greenville. If you put into Google, it'll take to website. and you can also ah go on to crime supperers of greenville ah if you put that into google it'll take you to a website that you can check out.
00:22:34
Speaker
ah There's a ton of photos in here to check out the different ah crime scenes, the dogs. They have multiple photos. And the most important part to me was they put the police reports in here.
00:22:46
Speaker
um They put both the the original incident report. I'm going to go over that though. And if any people want to read it, it's it's at the link that's going to be down below the show notes.
00:22:56
Speaker
um They also put the supplemental report, which has five pages in it. um I find police reports through time to be fascinating. it's It's amazing what they capture at ah different times, you know.
00:23:10
Speaker
So this one says, officers first directed to place off Barton Road near Tigerville to where two people have been found dead by field workers that were working for the complainant. So the complainant here is and nearby landowner.
00:23:26
Speaker
Officers observed ah bodies and asked for CID. They roped off the area and kept the same area clear. One subject appears to be a young white female, the other a young white male.
00:23:40
Speaker
Officer observed that both subjects' hands are tied behind bodies with what looks like ladies' pantyhose. Did you catch that? Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:52
Speaker
So they then go on to say below named officers ah from the police service bureau responded to area north of Tigerville where two bodies had been located by migrant farm workers.
00:24:04
Speaker
Bodies were located in a small stream running adjacent to a field that approximately 100 to 150 feet from the end of the dirt road leading to the field. What appeared to be a small path ah led from the field through about 15 feet of wooded area to the stream.
00:24:20
Speaker
Body number one is that of a Caucasian male observed lying on his left side with his head facing downstream with his body angled slightly toward the bank. The body was resting in approximately three to four inches of water.
00:24:34
Speaker
Both hands were noted to be tied at the wrist behind the back with what appeared to be strips of cloth, possibly a shirt. Okay, I'm going to start talking about this because what's different about those two things in the same report?
00:24:50
Speaker
The hose and then the shirt? Right. i think that um but the I think that the officers didn't get super close.
00:25:03
Speaker
So you think the initial report is just they're just trying to... They're saying that they're tied up and from where they're standing, it maybe it could have been hose. Under the circumstances of... like it Because this is what I imagine. I imagine that they you know they saw it and i the strips are probably dirty, right? Yeah.
00:25:27
Speaker
From being in the water too. Right. And so if they were consistently dirty without a closer look, especially if they were, I mean, they would have to be pretty thin strips. Otherwise, you know, they could take them right off.
00:25:40
Speaker
Pretty thin strips of a shirt, right? could absolutely look like hose to an officer who was observing the scene of two bodies. Right.
00:25:51
Speaker
Right. And I think he just said the first thing that came to mind possibly. yeah. And if you're particularly sensitive to how bodies are found, this is your warning because I'm going to talk about it.
00:26:07
Speaker
Um, He states that the victim is attired in blue denim trousers, no belt, jockey undershorts, dark socks, and low-cut sneaker-type shoes.
00:26:20
Speaker
Victim was not wearing a shirt, but rather a large piece of dark cloth was observed by his face and neck area. This was later determined to be the sleeve from a shirt, approximately 23 inches in length with four snap-type fasteners.
00:26:38
Speaker
It had been apparently utilized as a face mask in as much as it had been fastened to the facial area with a piece of string similar to kite flying string.
00:26:51
Speaker
The body was in a rather advanced deep of decomposition, heavily infested about the head with flies, fly larva, beetles, etc. The body had a heavy growth of red-brown hair, a mustache with a Yankee clipper captain-type beard.
00:27:08
Speaker
So they're describing something interesting here that is kind of left out of the other part. It's not just a quote blindfold. It almost sounds to me, and you could tell me if you think differently, like they were using his, a shirt sleeve as a hood.
00:27:28
Speaker
do you know what I mean? That's exactly what it sounds like to me. Like, like it's been pulled over and typically they're,
00:27:36
Speaker
I find that unusual. do you know why I find that unusual? ah Well, I don't know, but I felt like they needed more leverage. But go ahead.
00:27:47
Speaker
what What do you mean leverage? Because they ended up being strangled, right? Right. Oh. And so if you've got a hood, ah I'm sorry, if you've got a a sleeve,
00:28:02
Speaker
ah being used as a hood, or a I imagine it is around his face, the idea being whoever did this could be behind him holding it.
00:28:14
Speaker
You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And so that would be more leverage to strangle him. Yeah, I just don't picture the, i don't picture how the the twine or kite string, depending on which you or like what you believe is is accurate.
00:28:30
Speaker
I don't picture how that helps with the leverage in terms of, um, I almost think of a garrotte. you know what i mean? Like, or like, yeah, I don't think he was actually, I feel like the strangling, I don't feel like the strangling was necessarily done with the sleeve, but I think that, um, it it was almost like a reverse smothering,
00:28:54
Speaker
I kind of agree with that to a degree, but like, here's the thing about the interpreting as it a blindfold is what I found interesting. Why do you blindfold somebody you're going to kill?
00:29:07
Speaker
Because, um, you are but okay. Especially if it's his shirt, right? Right. the actual victim shirt. um This is a very, very... It could be a little bit planned, but even if it was planned, like I don't feel like the perpetrator or perpetrators had any idea who they were going to kill.
00:29:31
Speaker
and so they're just literally flying by the seat of their pants. So you think this is improv? To an extent, yeah, I do. because Especially since they used his shirt. I mean, if it was planned, they would have...
00:29:45
Speaker
the tools they needed without stripping the victim. Yeah. Yeah. That part, I don't, I kind of lend towards what you're thinking more than this is a face mask because I'm always confused when they start talking about blindfolds and and hoods over the head and they kill the people.
00:30:05
Speaker
Sometimes I think it's because like, I picture it being someone, you know, and you having difficulty doing whatever you're doing. And that that would be typical, but I think in this case, I don't think it really had anything to do with ah but blindfolding him so he couldn't see them. I think it had to do with them trying to get a handle on him, like to physically kill him.
00:30:28
Speaker
And obviously, if you've got something thrown over your face, and then if there's tension causing it to be very like smothering against your face, you are disoriented, right?
00:30:41
Speaker
i would tend to agree with yeah. Okay, and so that's how I feel like it was used. um I feel like it was used to just, I don't know if disarm him is the right word, but to gain an advantage as far as the perpetrators go.
00:31:00
Speaker
i how I imagine this scene to be going out, yeah to be happening is, like it went from a Cordial situation to a an adversary to a we're going to kill you situation like really fast.
00:31:19
Speaker
Well, they okay. So they go on to describe body to this body to was out of a Caucasian female observed to the immediate left of the path in a crevice in the stream bank.
00:31:31
Speaker
The body was in a semi-crouched position with both feet toward the stream, the head facing toward the bank, bent toward the chest, and more or less jammed into the crevice.
00:31:43
Speaker
This body was held in this position by several large roots that passed across the back of her thighs. Both wrists of this victim had been tied behind her back with similar appearing cloth strips and a similar face mask tied with similar string as that of body number one had been observed.
00:32:03
Speaker
The victim was attired in blue denim trousers, no belt, tan shoes, no socks, light colored, possibly white V-neck pulled ah pullover shirt that was noted to have been on inside out, pink panties and a bra.
00:32:20
Speaker
This victim had long, dark brown hair, and the only jewelry noted was a multicolored shell bracelet worn on her right wrist. Body appeared to be at about the same stage of decomposition as that of body one, with similar heavy infestation of insects and larvae.
00:32:37
Speaker
Accumulation of creek debris, twigs, leaves, etc., around the body indicated that the body had been there prior to the rather heavy rain, which had raised the creek level, to the body.
00:32:50
Speaker
Inquiry of local inhabitants determined the last rain was Saturday evening, July the 8th. So youve got some clues here giving you a little bit of a timeline.
00:33:04
Speaker
It says that no visible wounds, such as knife wounds or gunshots, were noted from a cursory examination of the bodies. However, in view of the fact neither victim's feet had been tied, it suggested that they could have been walked to the scene and possibly shot.
00:33:19
Speaker
Therefore, search of the immediate area for cartridge cases was made utilizing a metal detector with negative results. The area and the bodies were completely photographed. No effort was made to locate footprints for casting in view of the large number of persons at the scene.
00:33:35
Speaker
Both bodies were subsequently transported to the morgue of Greenville General Hospital, where additional examination was made in an effort at identification. Finger
Identification Challenges and Home Investigation
00:33:45
Speaker
impressions were obtained from body number two, which in this instance is going to be Donna.
00:33:50
Speaker
However, this was not possible with body number one due to the wrinkled condition of the hands caused by the creek water. The clothing was removed from both, and it was noted that body number one had Clem, C-L-E-M, tattooed to his left bicep at the shoulder.
00:34:09
Speaker
There were no visible wounds noted. Nothing was found in the pockets of either victim's clothing. ah dental Additional photographs were made of the teeth, ah body number two and they noted that the teeth were ah manufactured or false.
00:34:27
Speaker
ah They do a pretty good examination of some of the items of evidence here. So they were saying that they were looking for small bullet casings or whatever because they hadn't examined the bodies. they didn't There was no obvious gunshot wounds, but they just did that just in case because... Right.
00:34:45
Speaker
The officers on the scene or the investigators at the scene, they don't touch the body to see if there's gunshot wounds anywhere, right? Correct. Okay. A lot of times when you have ah gunshot wounds, if they're in a situation like this where the bodies have been exposed to water...
00:35:08
Speaker
It is more difficult to tell like where the the gunshot wounds are specifically. like they They don't look like they are presented in the movies unless it's a very large caliber weapon.
00:35:21
Speaker
um And it can just look like kind of a little dimple with ah that you have to kind of manipulate to see the actual, quote, gunshot wound.
00:35:31
Speaker
Exit wounds you could see more readily. Right, and especially in cases where there's water involved or whatever possibly have washed it away. But anyway, they weren't shot, so. Right.
00:35:43
Speaker
So the the items of evidence that they identify in this report, ah the first thing is they talk about the wrist bindings. Right. It says the wrist of both victims had been bound behind their back with portions of a man's shirt.
00:35:54
Speaker
The pieces were fitted together and it was determined the shirt had been torn apart with Donna having been bound with the right sleeve and a portion of the lower right back panel.
00:36:06
Speaker
David's wrist had been bound with the remainder of the shirt. The knots used to tie both were identified as common granny knots. So they're just hand over hand knots. They're not any... skill applied to that.
00:36:19
Speaker
ah The shirt was a size 15 to 15 and a half Bonhomme brand with the sleeve length approximately 31 inches. It contained a floral design, was westerned in style and fastened down the front and at both cuffs with shell covered metal snaps.
00:36:35
Speaker
It had two pockets which were empty and there were no laundry or other identifying marks found with this shirt. And they kind of like, they don't say it here, but the assumption that we get from the article and from some of the quotes from the investigators is that like, this is potentially David's shirt that's missing.
00:36:55
Speaker
I do find it interesting that they piece the shirt back together to see like what, like that, that's one of the reasons that I'm like talking through all of this. Cause they did go to that trouble, I guess would be the word, or they went through that process.
00:37:10
Speaker
Now, item number two is face masks. Both victims had cloth masks tied around their heads. The mask around David's head is the left sleeve of a Western-style heavy blue denim jacket having four white painted snaps in the cuff.
00:37:26
Speaker
The sleeve had been cut from the jacket and torn down the seam, and the cut area appeared to have been made with a knife. The mask around Donna's head was the right sleeve of a heavy blue denim jacket, similar to that from David.
00:37:42
Speaker
It had also been cut from the jacket ah with a knife. Both sleeves measured 23 inches from the shoulder seam to the cuff, indicating a sleeve length of 32 34 inches.
00:37:54
Speaker
Both sleeves appear to have been cut from a jacket that possess very little wear as indicated by the new appearance appearing condition of the white paint on the snaps, the color and condition of the fabric, and the color and condition of the sewing threads.
00:38:10
Speaker
Both sleeves may be fitted to the jacket they were cut from should it be recovered. So they have part of the jacket here. Right, and so that's a lot heavier material than i was thinking, but I still think it serves the same purpose.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, I'm picturing a jean jacket based on what they're saying. The above described masks have been tied to the victim's head with four-ply, three-twist cotton strings.
00:38:36
Speaker
The string from recovered from David is 52 inches long. The string recovered from Donna is 35 inches in length. The strings are suitable for comparison with any suspect strings that may be recovered.
00:38:51
Speaker
The shoes the victims were wearing were examined for drag marks, but none are located. Nothing unusual was noted about the clothing the victims were wearing. however However, the absence of any items in the pockets is unusual.
00:39:04
Speaker
Further, the fact that David was not wearing a shirt suggests the shirt used to bind the victims could have been his shirt. Now we're moving to the last page of the police report. And this is number six, Marne Street in Asheville, North Carolina.
00:39:19
Speaker
It says, at the request of Sheriff's Department, Officers McCombs and Stonewall processed the residence of the victim in Asheville, North Carolina. It is pointed out, however, that other officers and people had been in the residence prior.
00:39:31
Speaker
The photographs and observation observations made reflect the conditions of the house at approximately 4 o'clock p.m. on July 13th of 1978. Photographs were made of the exterior and interior the residence.
00:39:44
Speaker
Therefore, a verbal description will not be set out, only observation. The living room was rather tidy but had not been recently cleaned, which this condition existed with all of the interior.
00:39:56
Speaker
A red and gold cardboard box contained a small amount of marijuana. It was found under the sofa. um I think what they're describing there is a cigar box. The large ashtray on the coffee table contained True and Kent light cigarette butts.
00:40:11
Speaker
These are the same brands that they find ashtrays throughout the house. An open pack of Salem cigarettes was found on the stereo stand, which may or may not be of significance.
00:40:22
Speaker
They described that no furniture was overturned. The kitchen was small. There were two water glasses and a butter dish containing a quarter pound of butter, which had been melted.
00:40:33
Speaker
They were sitting on the table. There's a saucepan that had corn in it on the right front burner of the stove. There's a shallow frying pan containing remnants of liver and onions to the left of the saucepan. The sink was filled with dishwater and contained two dinner plates and other apparent dinner dishes.
00:40:49
Speaker
The dish rack to the left of the sink contained washed and dried dishes of various types, and the refrigerator contained various types of food, a partial bottle of Seagram 7 Crown Whiskey, two bottles of wine, three full glass containers,
00:41:02
Speaker
and one partial container of chocolate pudding. The trash can contained a meat container, which previously had held liver, and an an empty chocolate pudding carton. The general impression of the kitchen was that dinner had been finished and the occupants here were cleaning up when they were interrupted and left.
00:41:19
Speaker
No furniture was overturned. The bed in the master bedroom was not made. The closet contained clothing hung on hangers and soiled clothing in a box on the floor. Dresser drawers contained folded laundered clothing.
00:41:31
Speaker
The top right drawer of the dresser contained numerous glass bottles filled with marijuana seeds, roaches, and other smoking materials. If you're new to marijuana, you don't know what that means. Roaches are partially smoked joints.
00:41:45
Speaker
The other bedroom contained toys for a child in a toy box, although there was no indication ah child had been living in the home recently or in this room. There was no evidence that a struggle had taken place in the house, but the distinct impression was gained that the occupants had left in a hurry for some reason, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
00:42:05
Speaker
There was no denim jacket with sleeves missing. There was no string found. they Also missing from the home were house and car keys, a woman's handbag, and a man's billfold, which suggests the occupants left voluntarily.
00:42:18
Speaker
However, none of these items were found with the bodies. All correspondence notes, papers containing names, addresses, telephone numbers, photographs, etc. were recovered and turned over to Detective Blinken for a study and analysis to develop potential leads.
00:42:33
Speaker
So that's what we get for the police report here, what they kept. Right. And I feel like that got everything started off on the wrong foot. Yeah, I will say this. Okay, so i don't think I agree with their final assessment there.
00:42:52
Speaker
With their final what? I'm sorry. The final ah ah assessment there saying they left in a hurry. Right. I feel like they were just um young adults who ate dinner and didn't feel like cleaning up afterwards.
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And not only do I agree, i sit and review footage from all types of crime scenes.
00:43:16
Speaker
While most of my work is now with like felony crime scenes, I can tell you.
00:43:22
Speaker
both from a professional perspective and the fact that if you came into my house on any given day, like none of what they're saying there necessarily means what they seem to think it meant in 1978. I think these people, like if the okay if these were not victims of a crime,
00:43:43
Speaker
I would say they're lazy and they didn't put stuff away. And maybe they only did the dishes like once or twice a week, but I would not go to the extreme that this was any indication of them leaving in a hurry, not leaving in a hurry.
00:43:56
Speaker
And they leave out a big element of this is if I were to go missing and people could not find me, depending on if my wife were missing with me and who discovered I was missing, people would come into my house and rummage through shit to try and figure out where I went.
00:44:14
Speaker
Like, that's yeah that's true. Right. So we don't know what mom did or friends did to attempt to, like, find a clue. Well, sure. And I feel like um it was, you know, they very i feel like they use the corn on the stove or whatever. Right.
00:44:35
Speaker
Is that what they said? Corn and liver. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that was their last meal probably. Or, like, but the other side of this is, and I'm just throwing this out there because it's what I do.
00:44:46
Speaker
Maybe the people had their identification and went and lived in their house for a day and drank half a bottle of Seagram's and made liver and onions because it's the only thing in the fridge. Yeah, I don't think that at all. Well, they clearly drove around in their car.
00:45:00
Speaker
Right, but this is back in Asheville and the car was found in South Carolina. Stuck. Well, no, the car the car is found in North Carolina. Oh, it is? Yeah, like and the dogs are found in North Carolina. Hold on.
00:45:15
Speaker
but' That's one of the things that's so weird about this. well Let me make sure that I'm saying this correctly. So here's the supplemental report, and we'll get to the car in here. is that all right?
00:45:27
Speaker
Yeah. i read some okay leave Oh, yeah, you're right. It was found in Madison County near a swimming hole. Yeah, so the car, and I'm going to, I did this before we got on here, and i forgot to send this to you.
00:45:39
Speaker
Okay, so people know where this location is that we're talking about. The bodies are to the south.
00:45:47
Speaker
The car is to the north. From the house? Yeah. Huh. Yeah, so so so Madison County, North Carolina is north of Asheville.
00:46:00
Speaker
Tigerville, South Carolina is south of Asheville. But it's all basically one road. Like you could take 25 today, maybe 26. You could run up and down to get between these places.
00:46:12
Speaker
They have a supplemental report on here that I'm going to pull from for a second. This report is made later on, but it has all like the the details about these two. So David is born in 1949.
00:46:26
Speaker
So he would have been turning 30 in 1979, just to give you like an age range. This supplemental report that's put together has a date of October 2024.
00:46:40
Speaker
it's It basically says, was there any kind of show of force? It says no. I don't know if i agree with that. It says, do they have a terrorist affiliation? Not terror-related. Does it have a hate group affiliation? Not hate group-related.
00:46:52
Speaker
And then it gives us the particulars on Donna. um But they don't mention her age for some reason in here. Their drug use is unknown. Alcohol use is unknown.
00:47:05
Speaker
Were there any injuries? and states know there were no visible or non-visible injuries. And the narrative says in July of 2024, began reviewing this case as it is assigned to the Cold Case Unit.
00:47:17
Speaker
In summary, on July 11, 1978, the bodies of David Clemshaw and Donna McCracken were found along a creek bed from a nearby bean farm off Barton Road in Route 3 in the Tigerville area of Greenville County, also known as the Dark Corner.
00:47:33
Speaker
The original report states that the location is in the Traveler's Rest area, although it is possibly closer to Taylor's, yet still in the Tigerville dark corner. David's body was found in the creek with his arms bound behind his back at the risk of what appeared to be a section of a Western-style dress shirt.
00:47:47
Speaker
His denim jeans were pulled down just below his buttocks, although it's unclear if his pants were unbuttoned or unzipped. It is noticed that the right front pocket is turned inside out from the crime scene photos.
00:47:58
Speaker
Grimshaw was wearing white underwear, white sneakers, but had no shirt on. Original investigators assumed his own shirt was used to tie him and Donna McCracken out. Donna's body was found 15 feet away up the embankment of the creek and what the crime scene photos show is some type of hole with her body surrounded and covered with branches and foliage as if to quote cover her up.
00:48:20
Speaker
Her body was found curled at the waist in a submissive position with her hands bound behind her back with what appeared to be a western style dress shirt. Her body was fully clothed though shirt was found to be inside out.
00:48:33
Speaker
Both victims had shirt fragments bound to their faces masks with a type of twine that was reportedly used for tying beanstalks together. ah But to the state of decomposition of both the victims, no sexual assault kits were performed on either victim.
00:48:49
Speaker
Due to Donna McCracken's shirt being found inside out, it is the belief of this investigator that she might have been sexually assaulted. The same could be said for Clemshaw since his pants were pulled down, although his underwear was still in place.
00:49:02
Speaker
I think that happened from pulling him. um or potentially from the water moving around him. That's my thought too. There was no billfold or purse found with the bodies of the victims, no house or car keys either.
00:49:15
Speaker
Two days later on 7-13-1978, the victim, David Clemshaw's car, was found in Madison County near a swimming pond off of Big Ivy Road along the Big Ivy Creek.
00:49:27
Speaker
This investigator searched Google Maps for this location, had difficulty locating it, From the crime scene, photos taken of Clemgell's car appeared to be stuck in the sand. The victim's dogs were found in West Asheville nor near the Gorman Bridge Road, which is reported in the original case file to be a back road in Madison County.
00:49:47
Speaker
The victims were last seen Friday, July 7, 1978, between 4.30 and 5 p.m., between four thirty and five p m Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 9th, the victims were unaccounted for, but were supposed to be meeting their friends, and the names are blacked out here, at a music festival in Cherokee, North Carolina on that Saturday, but they never showed up.
00:50:07
Speaker
The victims, Clemshaw McCracken, both lived together at 6 Martin Road, Asheville, North Carolina. The house was searched by investigators with the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, as well as detectives from North Carolina.
00:50:19
Speaker
It was observed that the house had little mess with some dirty dishes in the sink and the victim, McCracken's rings near the sink, showing that she had been or was about to wash dishes. Also in the house were three types of cigarettes, can't ah Kent Light, True, and Salem. There were no billfold or purse for either victim in the house either.
00:50:38
Speaker
On July 9th, 2024, I reached out to the original investigator, Tommy Siegler. He advised me that he still kept in touch with Donna McCracken's younger sister and that she was the only living relative. Siegler also stated that ah she did not want any contact with this agency because she did not want to relive the trauma of losing her sister all over again.
00:50:57
Speaker
Siegler stated that... He was newly appointed to the homicide unit when this case was assigned to him and that for about six months he rented an apartment in Asheville while he worked this case. He stated that during the course of the investigation, it was learned that two local subjects of the Western North Carolina area were heard bragging about the murder and ditching the car near a swimming hole.
00:51:18
Speaker
Those two subjects are deceased and they are not identified here in a way that you can read it, but their names are there. They're just blacked out. From the original case file, I was able to find statements from a subject who was interviewed by Utah Probation and Parole, an agent named Linda Tansy.
00:51:37
Speaker
In that statement, they stated that several people were over at his house in December of 1978, and while getting high, several subjects, two of which were these, they decided to go and rob a local gas station, and upon returning to the house, ah they were counting out the money and bragging about how they hitchhiked to go look for some pot a few months back,
00:51:56
Speaker
and they were picked up by a man and woman driving down the road, and they had robbed and killed the couple and ditched their car in a swimming hole near Ivy Creek. One of the two mentioned that if he was driving the car, it would not have gotten stuck in the sand.
00:52:10
Speaker
When looking at the crime scene photos, it appears that the car is indeed stuck in the sand. Both of these gentlemen were interviewed while in prison for the robbery, but neither confessed to the murders in this case. ah Siegler stated to me he is convinced that the two of them were responsible for the murders of McCracken and Clemeshaw, but he could never prove it. In the case file, there were several articles about the murders.
00:52:29
Speaker
It is possible that they were simply bragging about the murders since it was very regularly reported by the media. It is unknown if the information about the car being stuck in the sand is mentioned in the news.
00:52:40
Speaker
And then he lists other potential suspects that are crossed out. But it states all three subjects are of American Indian descent and were known for so several serious felony crimes.
Serial Killer Connection Theory
00:52:51
Speaker
Other than they're mentioned in the case file, there's no evidence or leads that would suggest they had anything to do with the murders of David and Donna. from 1975, 1979 to 1987, there were several murders that occurred along the Western Carolina region that were committed by a serial killer.
00:53:10
Speaker
And I'm going to go ahead and tell you, they blacked that out here. was Hyatt, was it not? It is Hyatt. He was convicted of three murders. Four victims survived and escaped. The cases were worked by Buncombe County and the NCSBI.
00:53:25
Speaker
sbi He names the detectives here and says that Detective Benjamin from Buncombe County had since retired, but Timothy Shook was around and he was able to talk to him. That was a special agent from the SBI that had looked at that case.
00:53:39
Speaker
After reviewing notes for the case file that he sent me, it appears that the gentleman we were talking about is Harry Hyatt is not the suspect in this case. um And at some point, we're going to talk about him pretty soon.
00:53:51
Speaker
During the first week of August 2024, I had traveled to Buncombe County Sheriff's Office. I met with Detective Michelle Skeeters. Skeeters provided me with access to the records office at Buncombe County Courthouse. I was able to spend the afternoon scouring through old cases.
00:54:07
Speaker
from 1976 to 1979. And I came across the case file for the armed robbery that was committed by the other suspects the night they allegedly bragged about the murders of McCracken and Klimshaw.
00:54:19
Speaker
Skeeter provided me with a copy of the case file for my records. And following this, I went over to the Asheville Police Department and met with Detective Kevin Taylor and Sergeant Charles Wells. From there, I was provided their case file in the McCracken and Klimshaw case that their agency had assisted on back in 1978.
00:54:36
Speaker
I was able to take and make a few copies of photos and other documents and notes that I did not believe were in the original case file in Greenville County, South Carolina. After reviewing back of the case file my office, I observed several key points of interest that ah looked at the complainant as a potential suspect.
00:54:53
Speaker
This is going to be the person who's affiliated with the land at the time. From the original investigation, ah this investigator has learned that not only did they have prior knowledge of the incident location because he was the foreman of this plantation, but he stated that he provided the twine used to mine the victims.
00:55:11
Speaker
He stated that the twine was placed in the field about a month prior. This investigator also learned that he had been charged with assault with intent to rape in Hendersonville, North Carolina, but that case was dismissed.
00:55:22
Speaker
What he's referencing there is that February 28, 1978, attempted attempted rape Then on September 9th, 1979, just over two months after another incident, he was caught by U.S. Park Service Rangers and charged federally for kidnapping and assault of a couple along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
00:55:42
Speaker
I have reached out to both Henderson County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Park Service for assistance finding those old case files. Good luck with the Park Service. ah Lieutenant Brad Woodson advised their old records are no longer available and that the last last charge that he had was a 2007 case for a non-physical sexual assault.
00:56:02
Speaker
ah Special Agent Les Wachowski of the U.S. Park Service stated that he would get me the case file for the federal charges by mid-September. Also in the case file, another subject from Greenville County stated that a confession had been made to him for the killing of Donna and David.
00:56:19
Speaker
In the report, he later admits that he knew the victim, Donna, and that she was, quote, a hooker, meaning she was a prostitute. Interviews were conducted by the original investigators from Greenville County Sheriff's Office and from Asheville.
00:56:35
Speaker
There was no record or history of Donna McCracken ever having been a sex worker. ah polygraph was given by the FBI back in the early 80s with regards to this case, and he showed no signs of deception.
00:56:47
Speaker
On September 23, 2024, he notes, as of this date, I've made several attempts back to the U.S. Park Service as well as Henderson County Sheriff's Office with no response. On Friday, September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene struck the western North Carolina region, causing severe flooding throughout Asheville and around Buncombe and Henderson counties, as well as other surrounding regions to include the Blue Ridge Parkway.
00:57:12
Speaker
This investigation for now will wait before reaching back out to those agencies for assistance with this case. I've asked SLED's DNA Lab to review the property list for this case and give their suggestions on what evidence to submit for testing.
00:57:27
Speaker
As of now, this case is still active.
New Leads and Modern Technology
00:57:31
Speaker
So that's the supplemental report that goes with this. And honestly, i think this case could be solved. I think they have a couple of hard leads there.
00:57:41
Speaker
I could go on for hours about how fascinating I am by like the timeline that's lapsed here and and all the things that are being said. Do you think that, um okay, so if we go back to the uh back into i guess we don't have everything here because the um initial reporting officers that make the report in 78 the guy that he talked to later the investigator he's not listed on the report right so he had his own set of reports i assume he's
00:58:20
Speaker
He's the person who would have made notes based off that first report. So we have the supplementary case file, but we don't have the original case file. We only have the original incident report in body discovery.
00:58:33
Speaker
Right. And so it seems to me that once...
00:58:40
Speaker
I was trying to look at the timing, I think. Let's see. Is that just in the supplement? Yeah, it's not in the and initial, right? Right. So he recaps it, though, and it seems to me like at that point in time, that investigator, he was convinced that he had a case that um was solved with no evidence to adjudicate it.
00:59:04
Speaker
Yeah. and Okay, and he so he stopped working on it, right? Kind of, yeah. Okay, and so... It's my opinion only that in those types of situations, he says that he has no corroborating evidence to charge them.
00:59:24
Speaker
Why wouldn't he feel like the statements given by the, while he's subject to probation for some reason, the independent witness,
00:59:40
Speaker
Why would that not be considered evidence? It is to a degree evidence. It's not conclusive. in So here's why it's not. In that case, where you have the deceased individuals now that they never really get the confession from, they have the third-party statements.
00:59:56
Speaker
Those statements are good enough you
01:00:05
Speaker
investigate them further. But unfortunately, if you go to court with that, it would be hears hearsay because it's a third party recounting an event. And it it particularly...
01:00:17
Speaker
becomes problematic in a situation like this for the reason that the person filing the report of the bodies being discovered has enough of an interesting record that a good defense attorney would sit down and and point at him for reasonable doubt, having abducted and assaulted others.
01:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, i got I guess I got a little bit um turned around because of all the redactions. And that's, so that's the reason I wanted to bring this case up. Okay, what's missing from here, which I understand why he does it, because he's...
01:00:52
Speaker
Using his narrative to describe his theory and he's redacting people that could potentially be innocent the way you have to look at that is even though we know who Terry Hyatt is because you can look for the dates and times here and he's redacted him as being part of this The other people are more difficult to find and that's the ones that people should go hunting not like look A couple of these guys are deceased.
01:01:18
Speaker
It's not going to hurt if you go through newspapers.com and you figure out which store gets robbed win and start piecing this together and put it on a Reddit thread or a WebSleuth thread or whatever and start talking about about it and getting people to talk about it.
01:01:30
Speaker
Because, in my opinion... those names of the deceased persons could be public at this point. Because that's how, like putting a timeline together on those people, that's how you get more evidence if they're the ones who did it.
01:01:43
Speaker
And I believe that the complainant should be made public, the person who found the bodies, because that's how you get more evidence on potentially people who knew him.
01:01:55
Speaker
So was he actually the one that found the bodies, or was he the one who owned the land the but bodies were found on? so All right, the way it's explained from the paperwork we just pulled, he doesn't, I may have said landowner, but he's um he's the supervisor of a bunch of migrant workers at a bean farm next to where the bodies are found.
01:02:20
Speaker
So he has access to the land, access to the twine. The people who actually landowners,
01:02:28
Speaker
the bodies and call the police. I believe if I'm reading between the lines correctly, they don't originally want to be identified probably for different reasons than their criminals. More likely they might not be documented. They might not have thought they'd be taken seriously.
01:02:48
Speaker
So essentially their supervisor who is this guy who's attempted to, you know, abduct a couple and ah he has a couple of sexual assaults. and is Okay, so that is the same guy then? Yeah.
01:03:00
Speaker
Okay. Based on this, that's what I'm reading is is that it's the same guy. So he's listed as a complainant in the first report and then this guy circles back around to him because he has more of a history including an assault all the way in 2007.
01:03:15
Speaker
That guy should be public and like the information about those cases should be public because... like if you know the dates and times and and the mechanism of what he was doing and those other assaults, maybe you find other assaults and maybe you find other evidence that he did this.
01:03:30
Speaker
So my point is you can't really write off the two dudes that say that they were hitchhiking and Robin killed David and Donna and got their car stuck in the sand.
01:03:41
Speaker
But I didn't find a mention of the car being stuck in the sand anywhere outside of this article, but it could be there and I could be missing it. Right, but to me that's very credible because this is a third party saying that he heard them say it, and why would he know that otherwise?
01:03:59
Speaker
I agree with you. 100% agree with you. But I do understand why the investigator calls this like open and we need more evidence because he needs to know, am I looking at the complainant? Am I looking at that other couple?
01:04:11
Speaker
I would argue that like you also kind of need to know if they're connected in any way. like Do they know each other? is it you know like Is there something going on? Because if these people... like i like you get weird in terms of the geography of of these events. It's almost like separate things are happening.
01:04:32
Speaker
Like, did those guys ever work on this farm? um Because you're In Asheville, they leave and go to do something that results in their car ending up north of Asheville in Madison County, their dogs ending up west of Asheville. We don't know what happened there.
01:04:50
Speaker
And their bodies ending up far south of Asheville. Like, how does all that, like, jive together, even though these locations are only a couple hours apart total? ah Do you think they took their dogs with them?
01:05:02
Speaker
but I think they would have. If I were going to a music festival, I would have my dogs in the car. Yeah, so I think they took their dogs with them. I think they picked the guys up closer to home than further away from home. I feel like it was a cordial situation at first.
01:05:20
Speaker
Because otherwise, unless you can put the landowner up in North Carolina for some reason. Right, right. How does he end up there, right? But like the one thing, i like and this may be just me.
01:05:34
Speaker
like When I have my dogs in the car and I'm going somewhere to do a thing. It's a giant pain in the ass to put anybody in my car. Yeah, I agree with that. um But the 70s were a different time as far as that goes. And the car is much bigger than what I drive. Like, i you know, I drive big cars, but, like, there's not the space that it appears this car seems to have in it based on the pictures. But also, I can't tell if there's two dogs or three dogs in these pictures.
01:06:05
Speaker
um And I just, i I understand what the investigator's doing. I'm just applauding him for being this open and like putting this much information out there. I would have pushed it even further.
01:06:16
Speaker
Well, yeah. And I do think that the complainant that ah called about the bodies, I feel like his name should be public. um Maybe. And the Park Service people need to get off their shit because they do this with other cases.
01:06:30
Speaker
But right now, though, do agree there's no, I mean, it's possible that everything in this case is gone at this point, because especially since, like, all the hurricane stuff happened.
01:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they digitized some of work. I'm talking about, like, DNA evidence. Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. I don't know for sure, but um i do know that area was hit really hard, and so I don't know.
01:06:55
Speaker
But I can say, and I also don't know because they were, like, partially in water or whatever. ah hand ties, ah which I realize are David's shirt, they would be particularly...
01:07:11
Speaker
and susceptible to possibly having DNA still on them. Yeah. From the perpetrator. Right. There's some other, out like the car also, i mean, it was stuck in sand, not in water. i don't know where the car is, but it would definitely have DNA on it.
01:07:29
Speaker
Yeah. Because whoever got that, because you know that the Because their bodies were found in South Carolina and the car was found in North Carolina, like they didn't drive the car to get stuck in sand, right?
01:07:43
Speaker
Yeah. um But there would be DNA all over that car. I doubt it still exists.
01:07:52
Speaker
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. um I don't know if there were swabs done. I kind of doubt that too. It is just two dogs. Yeah. Is that what you see in the pictures? i couldn't tell if there's a third one and two of them are similar looking. ah So there's a picture with both of the dogs, right?
01:08:11
Speaker
Right. And then there's a picture of the other dog. I gotcha. But the other dog is in the background. It's just two. Okay. One's a golden retriever sort of looking.
01:08:26
Speaker
Is that right? Yeah, that's what it looked like to me. And then I thought the other dog was small, but now that I see him next to the golden retriever, he's not very small. But I don't think that, I think the dogs were left in the car.
01:08:38
Speaker
Like, I don't think the dogs knew anything was wrong. Gotcha. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Depending on what what all happened, it's...
01:08:51
Speaker
Because I do think dogs would react. um I have a dog that weighs about five pounds that would kill absolutely anybody that tried to hurt me. So it doesn't really matter how big the dog is but if they have no idea what's going on, you know, they're not really going to react. I can imagine they probably freaked out, which is why they let him go. But I feel like whoever did this had an idea of leaving um the
01:09:25
Speaker
letting the dogs out in North Carolina, closer to where they lived. Perhaps they had let the dogs out before they even went to South Carolina. Like, we really don't know. There's a lot of things, but the hitchhiking thing, it sort of adds up.
01:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, i I tend to agree. i If for no other reason, which and I may be doing the wrong reason, um if for no other reason, then you have to have, in my opinion, multiple people.
01:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think so too, especially since they weren't shot, right? Yeah. um i you know i don't I do feel like this encounter went bad really quick.
01:10:11
Speaker
And I do think that the fact that it doesn't give any sort of amount or anything, but when you've got people hitchhiking to go by pot, which is what they told the witness that came forward, when you've got people hitchhiking to go by pot, like...
01:10:32
Speaker
however much cash he had could have been like a very intriguing, like somebody that's not thinking clearly would have thought that killing a couple of people over cash was a good idea. right Yeah. um And that's really sad, honestly, but it seems like it's more a situation of, you know, whoever did this, whether it's anybody mentioned in any of these reports or not, they're terrible people. and you know, obviously very misguided.
01:11:05
Speaker
yeah And it's a sad situation all around. um i can't really figure out why her shirt was on backwards. um It does seem like maybe there was a lot happening there as far as like rummaging through their pockets and stuff. That's a really weird situation.
01:11:24
Speaker
It is. and like That's very cold-hearted. When I look at this situation overall, like, I... So, first of all, I'll just say, like, this area, in terms of, like, the courts and, like...
01:11:38
Speaker
how the criminal justice system works has a ton of activity, a ton, like, um, one of the things that you can do is see how many ADAs and public defenders are assigned to an area, if that makes sense.
01:11:51
Speaker
Um, and when you, when you do that, you kind of get a feeling for how busy the courts are there, meaning how many suspects would you have? How much crime happens?
01:12:02
Speaker
They have like, 15 ADAs and like 18 assistant public defenders in this area. So I'm saying that from the perspective of that court must stay full with serious charges for that many people to exist. Like if you go like to the middle of North Carolina, like Wake County area, you are seeing comparable numbers to that.
01:12:26
Speaker
When Wake County is like one of the biggest areas there. I think Mecklenburg might be like the biggest area, but I was looking at it from the perspective of like, what is your suspect pool like?
01:12:37
Speaker
um And i can't wrap my head around like all these different suspects being named here when, cause he does, he lists a bunch of people that are redacted and and basically says like, there's no indication,
01:12:52
Speaker
that like he thinks they're a part of it. He lists three folks who apparently, from what I understand what he's saying, most of their files were federal. They apparently live on the reservation. He refers to them as American Indians who have been in the court system a lot.
01:13:07
Speaker
um But I will say one thing about this case that really ah is probably the whole reason that I'm i'm looking at it is the parched people don't get back to him. Great. um I just realized something.
01:13:20
Speaker
ah The narrator states that I've asked SLED's DNA Lab to review the property list. Duh. It's all in South Carolina. Yeah, I know. That's awesome. I i realize this.
01:13:37
Speaker
Which I guess was part of the possibly less plan than it ends up being beneficial to the perpetrators. Obviously, we are this many years out with nothing, but it's a very confusing case.
01:13:53
Speaker
It is confusing, but like i I still think... I believe the evidence may like lend itself to like solve some of this. but Yeah, if it's there, they can absolutely... They will be able to... There are certain... Even if they can't get an exact and identification, i mean, some of the identifying characteristics will be found in the DNA, which could lead to other things, right?
01:14:17
Speaker
Like, if they are... If the DNA from the crime scene shows that they were... quote, American Indians, end quote. Right. Right? yeah You see what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. but But given a lot... Now, granted, hearsay is allowed in some situations. It would be more so allowed in a situation where...
01:14:38
Speaker
um the person that would be, and that would testify, which would be the perpetrators or be called to testify. They're not available any longer. I mean, you're, you're a hundred percent right, but also you have to consider the fact that like, if we really get down to knowing it's these two guys, the hearsay part of it's kind of irrelevant since they're dead because we're not actually going to court to try and like convict them. Yeah.
01:15:05
Speaker
Right, but okay but tell me this, though. So the the original investigator, he gets this information and they talk to him they say it's not them. But if they had charged them with the crime and got the guy on the stand to testify, he can say what he heard the defendant say. Yeah, they can they can do a number of things there terms of interaction.
01:15:27
Speaker
And in the event they didn't testify... the jury or the judge would be left with the impression that that's what they said. Yes.
01:15:38
Speaker
So I'm not really sure why they didn't move forward on this. I mean, good on the detective for wanting more. However, you know, that was 78. This 25. Yeah.
01:15:51
Speaker
See, I think part of this, and this is just me, because I i don't have a lot to to wrap this up cleanly. i was really using it as an example of like the U.S. parks being a pain in the butt and like how true crime, like the direction it should go.
01:16:06
Speaker
But the truth is that a lot of cases that you have helped me identify over the years through your terminology, adjudicated but not solved, ah solved but not adjudicated,
01:16:20
Speaker
right i think it I think it falls to the bottom of the pile if you work in a busy area like this. And those people are already doing prison time where they're not going to get out for a very, very long time.
01:16:36
Speaker
I think that have other things to do. have other things to do and And I'm not saying this is the way it should be, but I've seen how busy it can get in a much less congested area.
01:16:49
Speaker
And if you've got 20 looming serious assaults, sexual assaults and homicides, and this is number 20, and you think that those guys are are like 90% responsible for this.
Challenges in Cold Case Prioritization
01:17:06
Speaker
And you can't get it to charging, but you feel they're never getting out of prison, per se, or they're and not getting out for many, many years. Maybe you focus on the thing that is more looming, and this case gets further and further away from your your mind,
01:17:25
Speaker
Well, i I don't disagree. i just, I feel like this is a perfect example of a situation that was solved, but not adjudicated because there was no evidence, or at least they felt like there was no evidence. i I sort of disagree with that, but I'm also not the investigator or the prosecutor.
01:17:41
Speaker
And it is firmly in that pile until this investigator comes along and he files a supplemental report that's dated last year, basically, bringing everything back around together. And what will happen from here is they if SLED responds...
01:18:00
Speaker
um which I don't know how much he needs from Western North Carolina really at this point, but if SLED responds that, hey, we still got the car here or we've still got the hand ties here, ah the bind, I don't know what you would call it, the things that were binding their hands, right? Yeah.
01:18:17
Speaker
um If they've got evidence that can be DNA tested, I feel like that could ah that can move the case forward. And it could either, because one of two things will happen. It'll either confirm one of the different perpetrators is more likely the suspect than the others, and they can investigate it that way.
01:18:38
Speaker
Or it could lead them in a completely new and different direction, which would further the investigation that way, right? ye if it were to exclude people, right? I feel like um this convincing.
01:18:53
Speaker
Anytime you have a situation where the investigator that who is clearly diligently working on it and then they say, i know who did it, but I can't charge them because they don't have enough evidence and they drop it, most of the time it is the people that he says he feels like did it, but he doesn't have the evidence because otherwise he would cont continue working on it, right? That's what I think, yeah.
01:19:15
Speaker
And this this is a very sad case. Obviously, the sister that's mentioned, she doesn't even want to talk to investigators because she just gave up. Yeah. And it's been so long now that she doesn't want to relive the that terrible time in her life. And she's the only living relative, according to what the new investigator puts in the report.
01:19:36
Speaker
So there's nobody advocating, right? Yeah. Yeah. And not to mention, you're not going to get convictions anyway unless it happens to be a different perpetrator who's still alive.
01:19:48
Speaker
And some of these cases, like, it it's a little astounding to me. that this is where it ends up. He did have the good... he i feel like he's acting in good faith because he did put all this out there, even though some of it's redacted.
01:20:04
Speaker
But I'm interested to see. Hopefully, this is going to go a little somewhere, right? Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately, your your idea is probably like the correct path here. like it's like Really, if they've got this binding somewhere in Greenville and they get them over to SLED and SLED test them...
01:20:21
Speaker
they have a, they're not looking at a needle in a haystack. They're really trying to compare them to like, you know, a handful of people. It's like five people mentioned in here, uh, eight, if you count count some of the outliers that they're really just trying to compare them to whatever is on the binding. If there's some DNA on the bindings, then that, then the case is over.
01:20:42
Speaker
Um, but the alternative to that for me and the reason for being an advocate for the direction this goes, it's like, well, the this way, The sister doesn't have to be involved at all because she clearly is is probably still traumatized by all of this.
01:20:58
Speaker
But, you know, you could timeline these people. If you release the rest of these names and you put them together and, you know put Reddit and WebSleuths and Facebook and all that on them, then people can, like, even for deceased persons, they can go through and say, oh, I remember this crime that they did and that crime that they did. Or some prosecutor somewhere says, holy cow, I retired, but I remember...
01:21:20
Speaker
There are at least three of these crimes that were real similar to this that I didn't have enough to to get this person on. And it was in that area during that time. So there's this opportunity we have to, quote, solve crimes where, again, it's likely going to be the DNA that does it.
01:21:38
Speaker
But if the DNA is not there and there's nothing on the bindings, I don't see anything wrong with releasing the names from the perspective of, you know, go hunt, find, because that's what they kind of inadvertently did in the Asher degree case recently. And I'm not, everybody's talking about that on other podcasts. I'm not going to talk about that yet, but because I feel like something weird is happening there where like there's an accident that turns into a body concealment.
01:22:03
Speaker
um Ultimately, with cases like this, there's so many of them that all you have to do is really put one cold case investigator on the idea of, this is a pretty simple document, summarizing in this style supplemental report, which don't get me wrong, he did work here.
01:22:23
Speaker
There's a lot of work. Like he went places, talked to people, put pieces together. But ultimately these type of supplemental reports that sort of summarize what original investigators thought of these older cold cases, that could lead to a lot of a lot less unsolved murders.
01:22:43
Speaker
yeah Well, it's the only way that it's going to lead to a lot less unsolved murders because otherwise this just sits where it sat. Right, and and and so everybody else is talking about Karen Reed, and there's still podcasts talking about Delphi, and there's still all these different things going
Platform's Role in Highlighting Cases
01:23:03
Speaker
on. And I thought that one of the best ways for you and I to use this platform would be to amplify what these kids are doing over at WBTV um because of the way they put this together and what Sergeant Cox is trying to do.
01:23:16
Speaker
And I felt like that would be a more responsible use of our platform to talk about these cases. Yeah, I hope that we have a follow-up for it. It would be great. Yeah, that would be awesome if if SLED comes back and says, hey, we solved this one. you know they've They've done some interesting work, and the North Carolina SBI have done some interesting work in in older cases um and kind of more recent cold cases. i don't really like that That was the thing I was going to ask you today. Where is the line with the cold case? like What do you consider a cold case?
01:23:47
Speaker
This is 46 years old. It's definitely a cold case. and It doesn't have anything to do with time. um a cold case, like you could have a ah murder that happened today could be a cold case in very short order.
01:24:01
Speaker
a cold case is where it's not being actively investigated and it's not closed. And there's no real leads to follow. i think That's a cold case.
01:24:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the part. I think i think that the lack of leads... is And depending on her future depending on the situation, like what happened and who is investigating it, a case can go cold very, very quickly.
01:24:27
Speaker
um it it Unless they have something to work on or some sort of, um you you never should make up leads, right? But, you know, you there's some investigators who find more leads than others. I will put it that way.
01:24:44
Speaker
And ah ah case can go cold very quickly. There are all kinds of ah things that distinguish between a case that gets solved very quickly and a case that goes cold very quickly.
01:25:00
Speaker
it could be pressure. It could be ah circumstances. Obviously, newer cases, there's more evidence possibilities, right? Like video and obviously DNA on fresh evidence, right?
01:25:17
Speaker
um That kind of thing that kind of propels cases forward now that, I mean, honestly, it's, I feel like it's a lot easier and it's more of a thing where the wait time has more to do with how the technology, how long the technology takes to render the decision of the answer, right? yeah And that's a lot different than these this case, like, you know, from 1978. But if they have it still, it could be in line with newer cases as far as the DNA goes.
01:25:54
Speaker
yeah Well, so, you know, this this case comes out of me having gone down a rabbit hole with some of the last couple things I was doing, and next week is going to be another rabbit hole that I'm down, that this case sent me down. So, ah um will be unless you have anything else about this particular case, which I really hope they get DNA back on and get solved, um that's all I have. I don't really have anything else. I would say I do think a lot of cold cases, they are in that pile of cases that somebody the investigator got a good handle on what they thought happened and for one reason or another decided that they were never going to be able to go anywhere with it. And that's an interesting twist if you think about it.
01:26:38
Speaker
It is, right? Like it's technically an unsolved case, but somebody knows. Right. and But I would say that like most of the time, cold cases have...
01:26:50
Speaker
some version of that element to them. or they just have people that aren't great investigators. Either way, really.
01:26:59
Speaker
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01:27:13
Speaker
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01:27:44
Speaker
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01:28:05
Speaker
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01:28:23
Speaker
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