AUDIO EXTRA: Unsolved Mysteries Part 1 & 2
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Hi, Crime Junkies, and happy Crime Junkie Thursday. I love this new little summer thing we have going. I hope you do, too. Well, today, let me give you the spiel just one more time. Mondays are Crime Junkie days, but for the rest of the summer, we wanted to celebrate five years of the Crime Junkie fan club by celebrating you, our fans. And to do that, we wanted to release some fan club vault episodes to you. We've been making bonus episodes almost as long as we've been making wide release episodes.

And every single month in the fan club, we do one full-length episode, one mini episode, and one piece of bonus content.

And you might ask, what does bonus content mean? Well, today, I'm going to show you. Now, I don't need to tell you that I'm obsessed with Unsolved Mysteries, right? Like, that's a universal thing built into the DNA of all crime junkies, I feel like. I love me some Robert Stack, and I love me the new Netflix reboot. So much so that back when the first season of the Netflix Unsolved Mysteries came out, Britt and I did a recap-type episode about the whole series, case by case.

And I thought, what better time to share this bonus content with you because, PSA, a new season of Unsolved Mysteries is coming out on Netflix at the end of this month. So this is your time to catch up. Listen to us chat about season one, and if you enjoy it, watch the new season of Unsolved Mysteries, join the fan club, and come listen to us talk about the new season.

If you sign up for the fan club directly through our website, you can use code FREESUMMER and new members get to join whatever tier you want for free for the rest of July and all of August. All right, so here you go. Here is your Unlocked Vault episode. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And...

Personally, I am incredibly offended that you are not also the host of Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix. You are right here. You don't have time, but you could make time. Listen, I can't tell you how many times I told Netflix, I have a trench coat. Like, if that's what you're waiting for. Exactly. And it's not like they found someone better. There was nothing.

No host. So that's actually part of what I want to talk about. We want to give you guys the unsolved mysteries recap crime junkie style. You're watching it. We're talking about it. You're talking about it. Let's all talk about it together.

So, Britt, what I'm thinking is I kind of want to just get your thoughts on the series as a whole first, and then we can kind of talk about each episode. So, to be fair, I was way more of America's Most Wanted person than an Unsolved Mysteries person. So I was going in a little bit maybe less biased than someone like a diehard like you. Okay. But the lack of a narrator was super jarring for me.

Okay, right? And, like, obviously, no one could ever hold up to the late, great Robert Stack. No, I mean, they tried to replace him. It did not work. So they had to bring him back. Right, but, like, there's still, like, no one kind of, like, telling the spooky story, which is half of the, like,

I hate to say fun, but like half of the allure maybe of the episode is someone kind of like leaving you on those like cliffhangers. And maybe it's also like a little bit of like millennial bias. I miss the commercial breaks where you're like, oh,

Oh, I didn't even think about that. And then like your local grocer is like, hey, we have bananas on sale this week. This year. I kind of miss like the nostalgia factor of having like a solid commercial break. I mean, even in like shows from, you know, a few years ago that are Netflix, they still have those kind of like commercial break moments. You just don't get the commercials. And this felt way more stylized towards Netflix, which obviously...

They produced it. I get that. But the nostalgic in me, like, I really wanted some of those, like, gaspy moments where I

before it started back up again. So I actually kind of agree with you. Like, I mean, I grew up on Unsolved Mysteries, so I have that, like, appreciation and miss the nostalgia of it. But I definitely was an America's Most Wanted girl. I've said it a thousand times. John Walsh was my boyfriend. We spent every Saturday night together. But I...

I don't know. Maybe this has always been big. I'm about to say something that might sound silly, but I feel like nostalgia is very in right now. And it might always be, but I'm just finally at an age where I have something to be nostalgic about. And I think...

Here's my quick hot take on Unsolved Mysteries. If you would have called it anything else. I would have loved it. I would have given it an 11 out of 10. It was wonderfully produced. The stories were super compelling. So well told. Loved the compassion for the victims and the families. And really, I mean, Unsolved Mysteries has always been about trying to solve cases. I think I read somewhere that of all the cases they've covered, they've actually helped solve like 260 of them. I love the mission of Unsolved Mysteries.

So 11 out of 10, if you would have called it just like Netflix's mysteries. However, what I was waiting for, what I was wanting was that kind of, you know, the same

Same thing, same appreciation, same storytelling. But that like cheeky, campy vibe that it had is what I miss so much. To your point, having that narrator to walk you through the story and tell you about the cases and having Robert Stack ask you, like, maybe you can solve a mystery. Well, and like and again, like coming back to what you said, like I appreciate hearing the stories of people involved or people close to the case or, you know,

the victim's family and friends, I appreciate them maybe having like a louder voice or a more prominent voice in the episode. That was amazing. And that was something that maybe we didn't get as much of in like the old school one. But it's a double-edged sword, right? Because... We don't get that because we have one case per episode, whereas part of what I missed about Unsolved Mysteries is they could take a case that no one else could cover because there wasn't an hour of content. So they would...

do like three cases per episode. And I think that's what made it so great. And I think that's why, you know, I mean, so many podcasts still use Unsolved Mysteries to even talk about the crime cases we're talking about now because Unsolved Mysteries for a lot of cases were the only ones talking about it.

Exactly. Because, again, they were like, OK, we just need to fill 10 minutes of content, not an entire like 40 minutes of content with each story. The episodes were almost told in like vignette style. So you have multiple stories within one, you know, 43 minute television episode. Was there a lot to go off of? No. But that's why Unsolved Mysteries could cover it, like you said. Yeah. So I'm a little bit.

Concerned isn't even the right word. I am... Well, maybe it is. I'm a little bit concerned that as we continue to go on, it's still going to just be these bigger cases. Now, granted, most of the ones from this first batch of episodes they put out were fairly unknown. So if they can keep that up, I think that's really awesome. Because again, that's like what I loved about it is you could tune into Unsolved Mysteries and hear a case that you had never heard about and it just like blew your mind. Right.

But these cases, I mean, true to that, they did blow my mind. So I think we should kind of run through the six episodes that they did. Maybe we'll call it Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries. And again, for the 11 out of 10, how much I loved it. I want to talk about the episodes and all the things that I loved about them and talk about theories. So, you know, we split up the episodes. I'm going to do one through three. You're going to do four through six. Let's dive in.

So like I said, part of what I want to do with our review is to give you a quick overview of the cases, let you know if there has been any updates, what the internet is going crazy over, because new theories have emerged in some of these stories already. But we are going to be skipping over episode one, both because we already did a full length episode on this case.

But also because certain parties that were mentioned during our episode on Ray Rivera sent us a letter through their lawyers threatening legal action because they believe that our episode suggested that they may have had something to do with Ray's death.

So, in an effort to stay safe and to be on the up and up, we aren't going to talk about this case until our lawyers have worked with theirs to sort this out. And I know that isn't a lot, but that is really all I can say about that. Okay. So, episode two. On to episode two.

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So in episode two, which was titled 13 Minutes, we learn about a woman named Patrice who went missing. And again, we've all seen it, but I'll just give you like a short recap and then we can kind of talk about the things that stood out to us. So Patrice drops her son off at school, goes to work. She works at a hair salon and literally in a 13 minute window, hence the name of the episode, she goes straight up missing. Which right off the bat, I don't know.

blew my mind. Yeah. I mean, we talk about this a lot. I feel like it's more common than we even believe. We're like these things happen in almost these unbelievable windows of time. Impossible. Yeah. Yeah. So when police get there, once they realize she's missing, something's amiss, they realize that money had been taken from the register, but not from her purse, which did have

cash in it. But the purse was actually rifled through. And this is something that I got stuck on for a long time. Like if you're there to steal the money, steal all the money. No? Right. Like...

it's a robbery for a reason. But is it? Like, that's the big thing is, is what was the motive for this crime? And that's something that to this day, I don't think the public really has an answer to. One of the things that I thought was super interesting is, you know, they make a big deal in the episode about where her car was parked. So normally she like backed in, she was right on the side of the building. But

the day that she goes missing, her car is like kind of in front of the building and

So the one thought I had is maybe they're rifling through her purse to get the keys. Again, I don't know if you're going to bother to take the register money. I don't know why you don't take the purse money, but maybe they were looking for the keys. Yeah. Or even like the purse in general, like credit cards, cash, whatever is in there. Like, why not just like throw it over your shoulder and take it along? Yeah. And that is to me like what makes this look like a staged robbery. Because again, I'll just take everything out of the cash register and all I need are the keys. Yeah.

And that's what this person leaves with. So she's missing. And do you want to talk about Rob? I mean, where to start, honestly? I mean, we should start by saying this dude probably should have passed on doing the documentary. Because even though police have openly said, like, he has an alibi, it seems to check out. So sketch. We're looking at other possibilities. Yeah, he looked so sketchy.

bad. And there were like a couple of quotes of his that I literally like had to rewind and write down because I was just so like taken aback by them. Like there's one time when, you know, they're talking about her being missing and people are like, you know, they didn't have a great relationship. Pistol is saying, Pistol is her son, Pistol saying, yeah, they fought all the time. But when Rob is asked about this by producers, he basically says like, there's no point in arguing. All that does is drive divisions in relationships. Like,

Like, oh, dude. Well, hey, have you like anyone who's ever been married ever? It's like, no, you just like sometimes you fight like and to me, that's the natural answer is like, yeah, we like fought about random stuff. And, you know, don't get me started about like loading the dishwasher. It's like you and Justin are still fighting about that. Yes.

We don't fight about it. We just cannot be in the kitchen when the other one is doing it. That's it. Because you've learned that if you do it together, it drives a division in your relationship. I mean, basically, that's probably like a point in like Rob's section, but like we fight about dumb things all the time. Yeah, but here's the thing is like,

when I asked you about you and Justin fighting, you had something immediately that came to your mind. One of the other things that stood out to me is when Pistol is also talking about how, you know, his mom was talking about divorce a couple of weeks before she went missing and these issues again. And again, it's posed to Rob, all of this. And he's like, I, this is new information. I never knew she was interested in divorce, which might be true. Like if someone is looking to leave someone, you don't necessarily like give them a heads up. I don't know. Right. But

One thing he said is, quote, sometimes there were issues, but I don't remember the issues. Oh, no, honey, I remember every issue. Yeah. And, you know, you remember everything always. But in any relationship, especially like when someone were to go missing, like I would just think back to every fight I had with Eric and be like that. It didn't matter. Like, why are we even wasting our time? To me, it seems like something you kind of fester on and you would at least remember. Again, we could not get over the dishwasher. No, I don't want to kill Justin over the dishwasher. But again,

My God, I know. But it was like a thing that's like been in our relationship for, you know, eight years or whatever. Yeah. And so this is something that starts to come out in the documentary is this division, this disgruntled relationship between Pistol and Rob. And I at first, you know, when you start, I'm thinking that Rob's going to like defend himself. And he just is straight up like basically, no, like I hated that kid. He was awful. He was terrible. Yeah.

Like, I mean, just says horrible things about him. I don't think he's going anywhere. I think he's I mean, the kid's mom is going missing. And this is the part that stuck out to me like crazy is within 24 hours after Patrice goes missing. He changes all of the locks in the home. And like, it kind of reminds me of like when kids go missing and like the parents never move away like that.

You always want to be that home base for the person that you love who went missing. You don't change your phone number. You don't change your cell phone number. You don't change your address. You stay in this home even though the area that you're in is only going to remind you of your loss. You never want to discount the idea that if they come back, I will still be exactly where they left me. And I'm sure if you were to...

like pose that to him, he would say, well, she could just knock on the door. Like I'd be right there, whatever, which I listen, you can, I'm just, I'm just trying to like play devil's advocate, but I under no circumstances understand that happening within 24 hours. Like you don't know where she is. Maybe she did just up and walk away. Maybe she left with a friend 24 hours and you're like changing the locks on your home. And incredibly too soon in my mind.

unprofessional opinion. Well, and it's a home that you share with her son, your stepson. And like the amount of like cruelty I feel like I could feel when Rob was talking about this and he was just like, listen, like, like good riddance, like someone else couldn't take care of him. Basically, like I didn't want to have to be looking over my shoulder and worrying about this kid, too. I had enough going on. Don't you think he had enough going on? His mom is missing. He never let him come in and get his stuff.

Like, again, I just was like, is this guy hearing himself? I don't know if he's a narcissist. I don't know what it is. But like he says the things out loud and clearly thinks that they're like super reasonable, whereas everyone else hears them and is like, what is wrong with this guy? Yeah. So she's missing for literally years. No one knows where she is. No one has contact with her. No one has contact with her. Rob and Pistol have like almost no contact with each other. Pistol goes to live with his biological dad. Yeah.

But eventually, after a few years, Patrice's remains are located in a wooded area not too far from where she was abducted.

It's kind of interesting. The woods that Patrice was found in, she was not the only person to be found in those woods. What? Yeah. So prior to her case, there was a case of a young boy. He was like 11. His name was Levi. And he was abducted like in 97 after like riding a bike from one friend's house to another, disappeared. And he ended up being found in those woods. And he was shot, I believe, to death. And then...

Patrice is 2004. And then in 2008, there is the case of this woman named Meredith Emerson. And she actually is someone they like briefly brought up in the episode because one of the suspects in Patrice's case is Gary Hilton.

And he is like for sure convicted of murdering Meredith who were found in the same wood. So I think that's one of the reasons they're like kind of connecting the cases. And if you guys want to hear an entire episode on Meredith and Gary Hilton, that's actually one of the first episodes we did in our new series Park Predator. So I highly recommend it. It might give you a little more insight into this guy who was a suspect and, you know, just kind of into the area at the time. Because it's hard to tell if any of these are connected, not knowing how Patrice died. But they're far enough away that...

I think it's unlikely this might be like the Leakin Park of this area. It just seems that, again, over the course of a few years, multiple bodies have popped up there.

Now, we don't know how she died. They're keeping that information like for law enforcement only. I assume to like rule out people who might confess or whatever. But they did make a huge point in the Unsolved Mysteries segment of noting that her ring wasn't found. Like this is the piece of evidence that they're looking for. It was found nowhere on campus.

the floor of the woods, which doesn't mean it wasn't there. It wasn't picked up. It wasn't taken away. It's still there. You know, who knows? Right. But now that the ring is gone, is robbery back on the table as a possible motive? I mean, but that's the only thing. I don't know. Yeah, neither do I. And again, was it like a personal thing that someone wanted to take it? Was it a money thing? Was it, again, to try and throw off the scent of something in a robbery?

It was weird. It's something that everyone is looking for, I assume, in pawn shops, in people's homes, whatever. But this is like the standout piece of evidence that Unsolved Mysteries released. But after we find out that Patrice is dead...

Again, we get some weird comments from Rob who basically just says, maybe they're not that weird, but he says, I have no comment for people who think I did it. So he doesn't really like defend himself. He's just, which I know you're tired of me defending Rob, but I kind of get at some point because it's like... I've said everything I can say. I'm not going to say anything else. Like, believe me or don't. Yeah. Like put up or shut up kind of thing. But...

Just as I'm about to defend Rob, it got weirder. His like last farewell. Do you want to talk like what was that? That's all I have to say, I think.

Yeah. So for anyone listening who hasn't seen it or maybe it was days ago, you can't remember. So Rob's last farewell is he asked the person who worked at the funeral home to take all of Patrice's bones and lay them out and like basically reassemble her so that he could come and say goodbye. And what he says is, quote, reassemble her, lay her out for me.

And when they do that, they like give him a moment alone and he picks up her skull and just like carries it around with him for a while is what he says. Like, which is what he says, which is like the honestly one of the wildest things of this episode, because he flat out.

says it oh is it the wildest thing because well first of all before I go to the next bananas thing he did is he had a line at the end of that where he says you know he kisses her goodbye he puts her skull back with her body and he says quote that's the last time I saw Patrice anywhere near intact end quote

I rewound this twice. What a weird thing to say. That's the last time I saw her intact. It really is. Like, what does it mean? Why is he saying it? Why is he saying it out loud to like on a mic? Like there are so many questions. Intact? When did you ever see her not intact? Like that's that's my question.

And again, we don't know how she died. I don't know if she was ever. The last time I saw her intact. Did I see her? Did you see her un-intact later? So he has her cremated. He gets her home. And then he says that he sleeps with her ashes like she was his baby.

teddy bear. It just makes my stomach turn a little bit. Again, I don't know what it's like to lose a spouse. I don't know the kind of grieving, but like you just walked around with her skull. Now you've got like a Build-A-Bear of ashes. That's a phrase. It's weird. Yeah. One that I never thought I'd have to say. There's just so many questions as to like his reasoning even for some of these things. Even, again, coming back to defend him, even if he had nothing to do with anything, he

this is all... Well, we said this all the time, right? I mean, police are saying he has an alibi. Like, we're really not looking at him anymore. I don't feel like I heard the words like we totally cleared him, but what they said was like it would be really improbable that he could do it. So, I mean, if we're going off what police say, I don't think he has anything to do with it. But this guy

It kind of shows you, it reinforces, like, how many episodes have we done on, like, bad husbands? And we've said before, being a bad husband, being, like, a kind of a gross guy does not make you a murderer. Well, and on top of that, like, you... Coming back to another thing that we say a lot, too, like, you never know...

how you're going to respond to the loss of someone close to you, if and when that happens. Yeah. And here was something I found interesting, though, because, again, he says he's sleeping with these ashes like a teddy bear. But when the producers ask to actually, like, see them...

A granted, it's been years. I'm sure he doesn't sleep with them anymore. But he like has to go to his hall closet and is like, oh, she should be in here. And it's like digging around. And like there's this box on the floor that looks all beaten up and tattered. And he even tries to point out like, oh, this is how beaten up it looks. And you can tell that whatever, whatever. It's old and it's been here for ages, whatever. Yeah. But he pulls out this box from within the box. It looks more like it was made out of plastic or water, something. It's black. Yeah.

So out of this cardboard box, he pulls out this other thing that looks completely pristine. And to get her ashes out, he actually like in front of camera has to like cut open that black box. Which is wild in the moment. Yeah, because I'm like, OK, so you've been you've had these for years and years and years. And not that you need to look at them. But for someone who carried around the skull and was sleeping with them, I find that very surprising. You would kind of expect it to be, you know, like.

On an urn, on a shelf, on a mantle, somewhere displayed. Not at the bottom of the closet floor. And that's what's so upsetting to me is because he clearly, you know, whatever he did with them before, however he treasured them before, now they're sitting on the floor in his hall closet. And Pistol has said, like, he won't

like share them with him he's never been able to see his mom's remains he's literally like getting joy out of keeping it from her son which he even kind of alludes to when he's like doing an interview and i yeah it's kind of like a spiteful thing for him it's so bizarre it is so bizarre but again police have said he has an alibi that seems almost irrefutable to break he had um

A receipt, right? Like a timestamp receipt from getting gas and then some kind of like automated thing at his work when he like comes in and out. Now, the thing I don't know that I tried to look up but couldn't find is, is he on camera? Were they able to verify that it was him who got these receipts and was driving the car that went through? I don't know the answers to that. But again, we all we can do is trust that police did.

did their due diligence when they investigated him. And we cannot legally say anything beyond that. Like we have to hope that they did a good job.

Now, one of the pieces of evidence, like something specific that I had looked for over and over is in the episode, they kept talking about Patrice's car, how it used to normally on any other day that she worked, it would be like backed in on the side of the building right by the side door. Right. So on the day she goes missing, it's like in front of the building. And there were witnesses that came forward that said they saw this like blackout.

blue sedan and they all think it's like a different type of sedan and maybe there were people maybe they weren't maybe it was a man maybe it was a woman whatever whoever it is they think this blue car could be the key you

Do you know how hard I tried to find out what kind of car Rob drove at the time Patrice went missing? I feel like that's why we're recording this episode today and not four days ago. Yeah, but I can't. I don't know. I mean, I honestly would like anyone in her life because one of the witnesses said no one said they saw a man matching Rob's description to be completely clear. They see like a

long-haired one person says it's a man one person says it's a woman but it actually matches patrice's description and then like an older woman which they gave no explanation for who that older woman could possibly be i mean again maybe this car isn't related at all but i can't think of a scenario in my mind blue car totally aside where the position of her car makes a ton of sense and

Unless they like whoever came had to have come on foot, used her car to take her away somewhere and then came back and just dropped the car off. But like, why even bother? In like a completely different area and setting. Well, yeah, I just don't I can't think of a scenario that that makes a lot of sense. Like, I think some people had brought up like, oh, maybe she was in a hurry or maybe she was coming back. And I'm like, I don't think there's a scenario where Patrice was driving. Do you?

No, I don't think so either. It just seems completely unlikely for that to be the scenario. But I mean, there's this is going to be a theme in like every single episode we cover. But like there's so many unanswered questions. Yeah. It's hard to say yes or no either way, you know? Yeah. So I don't know. Again, unsolved mysteries. We don't know why her car was parked there. We don't know who was in the blue car, if the blue car is relevant. We don't know.

We have no idea what happened to her in those 13 minutes and beyond that day. We have no suspects, no persons of interest, just a lot of unanswered questions. All righty.

Episode three. So when I started, I knew nothing about this case. Neither did I. And I did not see this coming. Based on the title of the episode, I literally was expecting like some kind of crazy, bloody massacre of an entire family. Yeah. And like, I don't do well with those sort of like spooky things. So I was like bracing myself hardcore. Yeah. So we like open in this cute little French town and.

By the way, mad hard to take notes when also reading subtitles. Yeah.

And again, I knew like nothing going in. And I'm like, again, this is like a whole family. And then I'm like, oh, my gosh, no, this is a straight up Robert Fisher situation. Except this dude couldn't even be bothered to spare the dogs. And before he like up and left. Yeah. So basically what we find out is the house just goes like quiet. Shutters are closed. The family gets all these weird letters from family.

from the parents who are like, hey, we're spies in the DEA, so we're not going to be here anymore. The kids' schools all get letters that are like, hey, we're in Australia. And they put a note on the door. It's like, hey, just don't deliver mail. We're not here right now, which buys so much time. And police are coming back day after day because there's this nosy neighbor, thank God for nosy neighbors, who's like, something's not right. Something's not right. Something's not right. So they finally discover that

the mom and her four kids and their two dogs buried underneath the house. And it's almost like a crawl space, kind of like underneath a porch or something is like the best way I can describe it. If you haven't seen it. Like for like Midwesterners, maybe like,

kind of like a Michigan basement, but even a little bit different because it's under a porch instead of the building. Yeah. Like, I mean, I would have to crawl on my hands and knees, I think, to like go under there. Like nobody, even if you were short, it's not like you can just stand up and walk and go in. But they find all five people and the dogs like wrapped in trash bags and buried in the ground. But as they're uncovering all of these bodies, guess whose body isn't there? Dad's. Dad's.

Yeah. And it becomes pretty clear pretty quick that he's on his own. And he had inherited this rifle from his father when his father passed away. And we kind of learned that his whole facade of like who he was, who he put off to everyone, who his kids thought they were, is all kind of a lie. Like he was almost in financial ruin and was going to be discovered, which is what we see so

So many times. So many times, like over and over again. And it's, I understand like situations are dire, but God, why kill your family because of it? I cannot get past it. And it's all like with these family annihilators, it's all like the psychology of it, right? Like it's, they, part of them thinks that they're saving their family this shoddy,

Yeah. Like, okay, I don't have to answer to my family because my family isn't here anymore. Right.

Right. One thing that I had a hard time picking up from the documentary is I really couldn't tell where his friends like stood on the matter because at the beginning of the episode, I feel like they spent a lot of time being like, I knew him. He couldn't have done this. He had a bad back. There's no physically there's no way he could have like gone under that what we're calling a Michigan basement and buried them. Like there's just no way. But then they kind of waffle a bit. Yeah. But like but yeah. And then towards the end of the episode, like you can tell it's a separate interview where

they're like this is I just can't believe it this is so hard to believe so they almost have come to the realization that listen this is real and it's hard to argue with the evidence because he is seen after his family dies and you know they finally realize what's going on he is seen on camera he's using his credit card he's buying dinner he's buying gas he's at a hotel they catch him on hotel footage like parking and then just kind of like walking off into the vast open and

But I have to think that that was so planned. I mean, in my opinion, it almost has to be. And I think we talked about this even in, you know, Robert Fisher. Like you said, a really good example is like, you don't just do this...

Without knowing your next like three steps. Yeah. And I you know they said it I think in the episode and I think it's something we've talked about too and we did a little research on family annihilators is that often family annihilators will take their own life as well. Or like in the case of Robert Fisher like he went on the run but he was like really trying to hide. It literally felt like he

This guy was leaving breadcrumbs almost like I want you to know where I'm going. But but he wasn't found. So it was it like was it specifically to lead them down the wrong path? Now, what I found interesting is I was reading in Newsweek. There was this question posed on Reddit about.

And it said, quote,

So this kind of poses the question of was there another person? Right. Like, was he acting alone? And like to answer this Reddit user's question, I just had to move my 34 pound daughter from the floor to her bed in a span of three feet at the age of 31. Very difficult. Well,

Well, yeah, I mean, and again, you have four almost adult-sized teenagers and some in their 20s. And you aren't, I mean, not that I'm spry by any mean, but you have a back injury, like

Yeah. And so to have it all done in one night seems a little bit improbable to do alone. But I also found in this same article. So, again, this is on Reddit. Take it with a grain of salt. Apparently, there are a few users that have been, quote, discussing alleged sightings of the deceased family members after the dates that they were believed to have been killed.

What? Yeah, so I'm going to continue to read. So, quote, one person who claims to have found a French blog posted by Xavier's family speculates up to nine people saw Ange, the wife, alive after the date police said that she was killed.

Some of these people state they spoke to her and she was normal. Some say a bit agitated. She was seen walking the dog after the 4th April and was also seen with Anne and Bertrand, the two youngest kids.

End quote. So, OK. Yeah. So I don't know what any of that means. And I can't verify a French blog. So, again, Reddit grain of salt. But was this some sort of like I don't even know what they're implying, some sort of like family suicide pact or like or maybe the mom helped them or him or whatever.

Again, I don't know what this means. It just is saying that maybe the timeline isn't what we thought it was. Maybe there is someone else, whether that's a family member, whether that's an outside person. Because one of the other things I can't get over is the fact that they said there was no...

no blood. How is every person killed execution style, but there is no blood? Yeah, it just seems not only unlikely, but impossible. In the same Newsweek article that I had, I found it super interesting because they had said that specifically the bullets were

were found inside their bodies, meaning that they didn't like leave, but there was an exit wound. So what that is suggesting is that the bullets would have had to like exit their skulls, but like hit something and bounce back in. So in this article, they theorized, well, what if they were killed in a bathtub? And that would explain like the no blood.

It would explain the exit wounds, but the bullets still being inside of them. But what it doesn't explain to me, and I guess we don't know the levels of sleeping pills in their system, but it doesn't explain like this isn't you didn't just kill like one person or even two like little kids. How do you get five adults in like, I guess one of them was gone. So four adults in a bathtub, presumably one at a time.

And not wake anyone up, not startle anyone. There's no, I just. Well, and again, like coming back to the fact that this is like a crawl space, Michigan basement situation, the bathtub would have at least been on the main floor above that. If not, you know, a second floor. I don't remember the outlay of the building, but like, again, like you said, one at a time in the bathtub, bang, take them down at least one flight of stairs in theory to this crawl space and,

And then do it all over again with no one stopping you. Well, even if you, like... Even if you made it, like... Again, there's a silencer, I guess. But even if you, like, killed him in the tub, cleaned up the blood, moved him out, moved the next person in the tub, like, it still...

I mean, you can do... And no blood trail. If you shoot them in the tub, yes, the majority of the blood is going to end up in the tub that you can rinse and clean out. But you have to move them then. But yeah, you'd almost have to wait for them to bleed out in there. Exactly. It doesn't make any sense. Unsolved mysteries. We don't know. There's been no sightings of him, no confirmed sightings. One of the things I thought was super interesting was the fact that he told his one son he could go back to university and then he called him back.

So I had gone to this like training with this guy named Richard Walter, who is like this world renowned crime assessment. Oh, my gosh, he is.

And I remember one thing specifically I learned from him about family annihilators. And he said that often what you'll see is a family annihilator, if they have a firstborn son, they have a very hard time committing the act. And they still will. But like often you'll see that the... Is it like more communication or more connection or more like information? Well, I'm saying like not even that. No, just like the carnage is totally toned down. So whereas they might totally like

bludgeon their wife or their daughters or even younger sons, like the amount of damage to the body, specifically to the face, you will see will be far, far less because they see that firstborn son as like an image of them. And so when I heard this whole thing, I kind of wondered if he sent Thomas like off to university because he like was trying to spare him. But then like after everything was done, he realized he couldn't.

Right. Or even it was just like the one that he was dreading the most or he like, you know, never wanted Thomas to wake up. He was kind of putting it off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so crazy. You know, he's still on like France's like most wanted men list. No one has seen him. No one knows where he could be. People have talked about Latin America. People have talked about Europe. Who only knows this guy could blend in anywhere. He could be anyone.

Okay, so episode four is the death of Alonzo Brooks. And basically on April 4th of 2004, Alonzo goes to this farm party with some friends about 50 miles away from his home in Garner, Kansas. And like as a farm kid, like I totally get exactly what kind of party this was. It was in this abandoned house in this tiny town called Laceen, Kansas. And he was one of the older guys there. He was like

23 and on top of that he was also the only person of color which will come up later and he went to this party with one of his friends that friend went to get some supplies got lost and basically was like you know I'm gonna go home just ride home with one of our other friends and whatever

But Alonzo never made it home after the party. And the next morning, his friends call his mom and say, hey, is Zoe there? Which Zoe is a nickname which just broke my heart because it's so cute. I know. Hey, is Zoe there? And his mom was like, well, he should be. She checks his room. He's not there. She checks the basement. He's not there. And then this huge network of friends who were at the party, who weren't at the party, just people who knew Alonzo calling each other being like, hey, where is he? Have you seen him? Have you heard from him? Anything? Anything.

And there's nothing. Even the people who were at the party after the friend who took Alonzo there, like they were like, well, we thought he left before us. We thought he was going to go home with someone else. Like no one actually knew like when or how Alonzo left this sort of barn party. And that's like the thing that stood out to me the most is I was like, clearly.

crime junkie life rule. There's a reason this is a rule. Like you come together, you leave together. Because I understand, like I, you know, I heard all of them say like, you know, I got stuck somewhere or I got lost or I was going to leave early and he said he had a ride and I get it. But once you get passed off so many times, like no one is looking out for anyone at that point. Right. And I think we talk about this a little bit in some other episodes, but, you know, that's kind of like, at least to me, like a girl code, like you do not let your friend walk home by yourself. You do not let your friend leave

walk to her car by yourself. And I feel like it's getting more prevalent now across the board between like genders and stuff. But like in 2004, like especially in Kansas, in the middle of the Midwest, like they're in the middle of nowhere and guys are tough guys. Like they don't need someone to make sure they're going to get home. That's the, you're saying that's the perception. That's the perception. Yeah. Like as someone who grew up in a similar area, like,

a little bit younger, but with the same sort of like attitude of people. Like I totally get that. Like, yeah, it would be very surprising if like one of the guys I grew up with would be like,

are you going to text me when you get home to another guy? Like that would never happen in this timeframe, in this area, in this mindset. So I don't want to fault his friends too much because I think that's just where they were in that moment. And based on this episode, they've, you know, drastically changed their mindset and their feelings on that sort of situation. So the

They all kind of band together, go back out to this house where they had this party, and they start looking for him. And they don't find him, but on the property where the party was, they found one of his boots. And within walking distance across the street, they found another boot that belonged to him, along with his hat. And at this point, Alonzo's mom is like up to 11. She calls law enforcement. She's like,

My son is missing. What next? Like, what can you do? What do we need to do? Et cetera. And they're like, oh, you need to wait like 48 hours. Like we've heard a million times. And she's like, I'm sorry. No, I know. I'm filing a missing persons report right now. So you're going to take it. And.

And I love that about her. She just fights from the very beginning. Yeah, she's sassy. I like her. Oh, she's like my favorite person, 100%. So law enforcement goes out. They search for him. They bring out tracking dogs and helicopters. And even really early on, the FBI gets involved. And there was even a dive team who went through a sort of creek that ran through the property and

They find nothing. And even a ton of people get interviewed, but no one knows anything. Like people from the party, they're all just like, I don't know. And law enforcement is basically like, well, he must have just gotten drunk and started walking home. But at this point, we know that Zoe doesn't have any shoes because we found his shoes on the properties.

And on top of that, he had recently messed up his ankle and had like a pretty significant limp. And Ashley, you know me, I mess up my ankles constantly. And I personally cannot imagine like walking any considerable length of like, I'm just going to go home.

50 miles away on my bum ankle without shoes no not happening no no like I can you've seen me I can barely make it through an airport sometimes so all that happened again like at the beginning of April it was like April 4th 2004 and this entire time his family is like you know can we help can we do anything and law enforcement is like no no we're fine like we're doing everything possible and

But finally, on May 1st, they're like, okay, fine. You guys can go out and search this property. But it's definitely more of like a, we've already looked. I don't know what you're going to find. Like, we've been there. We've been through everything. But did they, though? Well, and that's kind of the question. It's like, in...

In my opinion, in the documentary, they're like, yes, like, we pulled out all the stops to, like, make sure we checked everything. But the family was like, okay, but you didn't find him. But the thing is, like, his family finds him right off the bat and in the creek just, like, steps away from where the party was. And so there's this whole debate on, like, how...

how thorough was the law enforcement search? Like, yes, we know there were like dogs and helicopters and stuff. And even law enforcement was like, well, like maybe he like fell into the creek and floated away or floated back. I feel like I'm out of my element. Like clearly this is not my expertise. I don't, I've never conducted a search. I've never found anyone. Right. But I don't,

I understand the family's frustration because if I went there, like again, like you said, steps away from where this thing happened and I find my son and you said you looked here, I'm not any less angry, even if there is some explanation, which I do not understand, which I hope was explained to the family. But it sounds like maybe it wasn't because they're still upset.

I get why they're upset. 100%. And obviously an autopsy is performed and the ME can't really determine a clear cause of death. There's no, you know, penetrating injuries based on not only the body, but the

He was also completely closed. So, like, there's no, like, rips or tears indicating stabbing. Just so crazy. There's no bone fractures. There's no evidence of drowning. There's no water in his lungs or airways. There's no evidence of a gunshot wound. Like, obviously, strangulation is still a possibility. Well, yeah, but is his hyoid bone intact? Well, and that's the thing. Like, the ME said that there were no broken bones, so I would assume...

That that would be included in that. Yeah, but the decomposition of his body is severe enough...

to not really be able to determine if there was like, you know, like bruise marks on his neck or anything like that. That makes sense. But I mean, here's the thing. Like you said, supposedly law enforcement was crawling all over this place. And even the divers said like, if he was here, the water wasn't even that deep when we searched it. Like we would have found him there.

very, very quickly if he was here. And on top of that, his personal effects are completely intact. He had papers and paper dollars in his wallet. They weren't moldy. They didn't even look waterlogged.

And even the people who found him said that his body wasn't bloated like he had been in the water for almost 30 days at that point. So then we have to kind of assume that he was kept somewhere else, which would make sense. Like if law enforcement did the search, they said if someone knew, OK, they're going to be coming in and searching. So.

So let's make sure there's nothing for them to find. And what we've seen, I mean, this is not the first time I've seen this, where a body is found in an exact place someone has searched because the perpetrator knows like, hey, they kind of already like checked this area off the map. So if I put a body here, it's unlikely to be found. Or if it is found, it's probably going to be a long time. But they weren't counting on the family being so relentless. Right. And I brought up that he was one of the only people of color at the party because he's

there have been some rumors that maybe a white girl at the party had flirted with Alonzo and he flirted back. And some of the guys at the party, you know, didn't like that, took him out, jumped him and actually killed him. And a lot of members of the Brooks family believe that Alonzo was the victim of a hate crime. And even some of them have stated that while at the party, he had been, you know, called derogatory terms and, you know,

had even been told, quote, he wouldn't make it out alive, end quote. Which, again, maybe this was hard for people to believe a few years ago, but in the climate that we're living in now...

To me, this isn't hard to believe at all. I mean, exactly. Literally here in our own state in Bloomington. I don't know if you have read about this, Britt, but I have. I have. Yeah. There was a group of white guys who got into it with a person of color and they tried to lynch this person. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Like in 2020. So we can't act like this stuff doesn't happen. Like people don't get mad and stupid and racist and mean. And then it didn't happen 16 years ago. You know, if it's happening today, we have to believe and have to know that it was happening 16 years ago, 25 years ago, 40 years ago, 400 years ago. Mm hmm.

As of March 2019, his case was officially closed by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation with a statement that there was no evidence that Alonzo was a victim of a crime and there was no reason to continue the investigation. Which is bananas because like if you're saying he's not a victim of a crime, then you need to have like a logical explanation for how he died. Then tell me.

Tell me how he died. Tell me how he wound up there. If there was no foul play, it's not fair to just say, man, we don't think so. We're going to close it because we just have this like feeling. Right. And as far as I could see, his death certificate still says his cause and manner of death are both undetermined. So if they're undetermined, you can't rule anything out, you know, and

But the thing is, the FBI is currently offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved with Alonzo's death and have officially federally reopened it. Thank God. Yeah. So anyone with information is encouraged to call the FBI at 816-512-8200 or call

816-474-TIPS or to even submit online at fbi.tips.gov. And the family also has a Facebook group, Justice for Alonzo Brooks. And there's actually an independent filmmaker working with the family on a documentary just about Alonzo called The Mysterious Death of Alonzo Brooks. And I will link to both of those in our show notes.

Okay, Ashley, you gave me one of the UFO ones. And you know that is like not my jam. Yeah, I'm all about it though. Yeah. So I watched it. I watched it a couple times. It's interesting, but I'm just not... I'm just like such a skeptic about these things. Wait, you don't think it's real? I am very side-eye about it. I don't know. So...

This is going to be quick because, again, like, I'm not a huge fan or even, like, convinced about a lot of things when it comes to UFOs. I didn't realize you were not a believer. I mean, I will say, like, in the past couple of months, I have become more accepting of the theories. So this happened back on September 1st, 1969, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. And, like, not just in one area, like, across the entire county, but...

Multiple people had potential interactions with UFOs. The episode goes through a handful of people. By a handful, I mean a lot that I had to race to write down. Some of them are driving and there's a huge flash of light.

And then it's gone. One was like a kid who was at a neighbor's house and felt like he needed to go home. And he started running home. And the neighbor like observed him running in place and then disappearing. The kid remembers being on a ship with another person from the community. The other person remembers being on the ship but doesn't remember seeing this other kid. I just...

I don't know. What I thought was so interesting is of these accounts, it seems like a lot of them involved kids. Because if I'm remembering correctly, and granted, I didn't take notes because this was one of yours, but I watched it twice. If I'm remembering correctly, they mentioned something about kids, like multiple kids being on the ship. And I know that some adults had some kind of interactions or at least saw something. But it seemed like it was very... Whatever had happened was very focused on kids. And like...

If you could bend your mind for a minute and pretend you think aliens are real, like what is it about kids that they're like going for? It's just that they know something about our culture and like we wouldn't believe them. I mean, that's kind of like my only explanation is like. Or like maybe they know that their minds are more malleable at that age and like they that's what they want. That's like, yeah, maybe they're more receptive on top of the fact that like.

Like, if they were to experience this and tell someone, who would believe them? What are your thoughts on...

So, again, I want to believe it's real. I kind of believe it's real. What are your thoughts on it being the whole town in on a conspiracy theory? Because one of the things that to me is bananas is that, like, everyone in 69 just kind of assumed no one would believe them. So no one talked about it. The newspapers didn't even report on it. It's literally like it never happened. And then, like, could a small town get together and fake something like this? Well, here's the thing. It's actually been...

like acknowledged as a historical event in this city since. And one of the children, one of the boys who is said to have experienced this phenomenon, like even raised money with other people in the area to erect a monument to

commemorating the event. It's since been torn down and he's like petitioning the city to like re-erect it. But it's still technically on the books as like something that happened in this city as of right now. Now, whether or not the people who lived in this town and like I say city, when they talked about it, it reminded me of the town that I grew up in, which was

Like, everyone knew everybody. That's what I'm saying. It reminded me of, like, a little Stephen King town. Exactly. And, like, one person even said, like, if you usually got roast beef and got a chicken sandwich the next day, like, people would talk about it. Like, it was very, very small, and everyone was connected. I don't know.

I don't know. It's just such a... Again, like, I'm such a skeptic. I was probably not the right person to, like, recap this episode because I'm just, like, very, very... Oh, I'm so on board. Like, I either need a big conspiracy and this whole tiny town is in on it to, like, make their town some kind of, like, tourist stop or whatever. But honestly, what I really want to be real is I want this to be real. And I'm so down to believe...

They got abducted. I just I'm unwilling to believe that we are the only life form out there. We had earlier this year, we already talked about it. Like the government was like, hey, yeah, lots of UFOs we see all the time. I was going to say the only reason I'm giving this like 14 grains of salt instead of one is because of what like.

the Department of Defense put out with videos. I can't believe you trust them of all people. And like, they are the biggest liars. I know, but like this was a reenactment and that was supposed footage. Like I will give them like, and like maybe, maybe it was just a distraction from coronavirus. I don't know. But like someone higher up than a couple of people in Massachusetts said this happened. And like,

I don't know. It's just a little bit more confirmation that, like, it could be possible. I'm not saying it's real, because, again, huge skeptic over here, but it might not be fake. Aliens are totally real. We can move on to the next one. They're real. Okay, so the last episode that Netflix released is the disappearance of Lena Chapin. Pfft.

This one was crazy. Yeah. So it kind of starts out with, you know, her sister stopping by Lena and her boyfriend's house asking where Lena is. And her boyfriend's like, oh, like she ran off with someone else and they're in Florida now. And her sister's like, okay, but her son's here. That's weird. All of her stuff is here. All of her pictures, but she was like a huge like picture person. All of that's still here.

And she felt immediately not okay because not only was her son still left there, but her son was actually with their mother, Sandy. And at that point, like, everyone was sketchy of Sandy. And they were sketchy of Sandy because Lena was not the first person to just up and leave or disappear from Sandy's life. Sandy had a husband who disappeared when the girls were younger. And...

Gary was actually the brother of Sandy's second husband, Albert. Yeah, it was so funny at the beginning of the series when her daughter was explaining, you know, she liked to go for men. I can't remember what the first thing she said or or the ones that have brothers. And I was like, that's oddly specific. And then we

And then we learned why. And then she married a brother and then his brother. Yeah. I'm like, oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. And, you know, Albert was like this really laid back dad. So laid back, in fact, that he couldn't even put away his boob for the interview with Unsolved Mysteries. I'm sorry. I love Albert. I loved him, too. He seemed like the sweetest. The girls loved him. But like, he like reminded me of my papa. Like, I would be lying if I said to you that the entire time I was like, Albert, just butt in your shirt, butt in your shirt. Yeah.

So Sandy leaves Albert for his brother Gary and Gary is a different kind of stepdad. He's kind of more of a drill sergeant. He's more structured. He's he probably buttoned his shirt. I don't know. We don't know. Gary probably buttoned his shirt. But he like had the girls on like chore schedules and made sure that they were like, you know, kind of progressively like improving their life through like different experiences, if you will. Yeah.

And he would also be kind to them in the way that like, if you complete your chores, we can go get ice cream. Like there is like a reward for your hard work. And I appreciate that, honestly.

Seems pretty legit. But less than three years after Sandy married Gary, she starts having an affair with this other guy, Chris. He's younger than both Sandy and Gary. He's more well-off. And Gary's really hurt by this affair. And on top of that, he finds out that Sandy was actually passing bad checks under his name. Not cool. Not cool.

But then Gary goes missing. And he was reported on May 13th, 1999, that he had been missing for a couple of days. And, you know, law enforcement comes out, they check his place, and...

Sandy and Lena actually show up at that time and, you know, law enforcement is like, hey, this is what we're here for. And Lena was like, oh, yeah, like I should probably have reported him missing. They search the entire house, find zero evidence of Gary even having ever been there. Yeah, he's like been like wiped from his own property basically.

Yeah, like there's none of his stuff, none of his clothes, nothing. But there is a checkbook that belongs to this Chris guy. And he actually moved into the house like days later. And...

Law enforcement asked Sandy to take a polygraph and she was like, you know what? If you find a body, I'll take one. That was the thing that stood out to me the most. And like, of course... That means there's a body to find. Exactly. But of course, what we end up learning later in the series or in this episode is like she can only be that bold and brazen because she knows there will never be anything found. She knows exactly what is happening. Exactly. And, you know, the police interview the kids and...

Everyone is just kind of like, I don't know, except for Lena. She gets really defensive. And, you know, she even told her sisters, like,

not to talk about things, not to say anything. But one of her sisters, Brandy, remembers that when they got home from school that day that Gary first went missing, their mom was like, hey, you know, I think the cat had kittens out in the field. Why don't you go look for them? And they all go out. And she was finally like, I have chores to do. I have to get stuff for my chores. She goes in the house and she finds her mom like scrubbing what looks like diluted bleach off the floor.

And her mom's like, get out, get out, get out. And that's it. But Lena actually told Albert, three-button Albert, that her mom had killed Gary. She had used haystrings, which I would consider like a twine, to tie him up in the bedroom. And not only that, that together she and her mom had burned Gary's body. And...

She even says on the recording of the conversation, like, what was I supposed to do? And Albert was like, no, I get it. You were just a kid. I know freaking Albert. He's so sweet. You're taught at a young age to listen to your parents. And that's what you were doing. Like, it's not your fault. Albert has to realize what a scary person is.

that her mother is a hundred percent and who knows and i mean again as the series goes on we learned that this woman would honestly have no qualms with like taking out one of her kids if she felt like they were getting in the way so i mean i think it's again it's gary's brother brother who you know betrayed him slightly but like i love the compassion that he shows

for her in that moment when he's just like, listen, you had no choice. I understand. Right. And Lena was only 13 when Gary went missing. And immediately after, Sandy lawyers up and actually gets Lena to retract her statement. But she eventually tells her sister Brandy everything about how Sandy killed Gary. And Brandy even brought it up to Sandy and was like, hey, what's going on? And Sandy and Chris, her new husband,

you know, take Brandy out in the middle of the field and threaten her life because of, you know, what she quote unquote claims to know about this. For me, this was one of the most like gut-wrenching points in any of the episodes that I saw when Brandy is literally talking about how her mother, her own mother, who she earlier told stories about her putting her to bed every night and being there every day, is driving her out to a field

Where presumably her boyfriend is going to shoot her daughter. And when she talks about getting in the car and just like the only thing I could think to do is just to hold on to her because he can't kill us both. Because being close to her was the only thing that would save my life. And it wasn't immediate. She even says like, I clung to my mother for minutes before she said, don't shoot her. I have no idea how.

Like how Brandy went on, like, because again, they go home together and she knows from then on her mom is willing to kill her. Like, how do you not walk on eggshells? How do you live in that environment and grow up?

whatever normal is. I just wanted to like reach out and hug Brandy. I physically like cannot even comprehend what that has to do to a person. As if that wasn't like as jarring and as evident as we could find for the potential guilt of Sandy. Yeah.

At one point in time, another one of Lena's sisters, Robin, was posting missing persons flyers around town. Yes. And it was later found out that Sandy, their mother, was paying a younger sister like five dollars a poster to take them down. I couldn't. What kind of mother? What's so interesting is I I felt like I knew nothing about this case coming in.

but something about that resonated with me. So I don't know if I heard that in another story or if I had heard this story in passing at another time, but I think that is so bananas and so outlandish. Like,

Also, if she's missing and you did something, if you got rid of her in a way. Wouldn't you want to just keep the missing posters out there so people are looking for quote unquote her when you know where she is already? And even if she doesn't know where she is, like it also it's just a bad look all around. Like what is the missing persons posters have to do? The only way a missing person poster works is if the person is actually walking around and someone's going to spot them. If that's not the case with Lena. Why? What's the point of taking them down? Other than like other than like a power move. Right. Right.

So there was eventually a civil suit heard in the wrongful death of Gary against Sandy and Chris. But the taped confession that Lena gave wasn't admissible at all. And the sisters, as well as law enforcement, truly believed that Lena was aware of what happened to Gary and had maybe even helped Sandy. And Lena would not only put her mother in prison for the murder, but Sandy was also obsessed with Lena's family.

son, Coulter. And once Lena was missing, she petitioned the courts to grant custody of Coulter to herself because Lena had abandoned him. And the courts were like, well, you know, she's not here to defend herself, so sounds about right. Which is so bananas. I mean, it is. As someone who has worked in and around family law...

It's not crazy, but in this case, it seems completely outlandish. Sandy and Chris were found guilty of wrongful death in civil court and ordered to pay $7 million to Gary's daughters. But there have never been any charges in the disappearance of Lena. And...

Based on the documentary, Lena's sisters seem to be completely estranged from their mother and continue to seek answers and justice or anything on the disappearance of their sister. And they've even conducted searches on the property where Sandy and Chris lived when Lena went missing. But they've never found anything, even using like ground penetrating radar with zero luck.

Sandy and Chris have divorced back in 2014, and she's remarried now, but she still has custody of Coulter, Lena's son. And from what I could tell researching, there are no updates on Lena's disappearance or whereabouts. Yeah, this is one of those crazy cases that I think that I pray that Unsolved Mysteries brings a ton of attention to because I just can't believe...

That the case stands where it does. It's it seems like there's so much. It seems like it's so clear. It's one of those cases where like we have a recording of somebody who's saying exactly what happened. But like because of, you know, legal loopholes, we're not allowed to use it. It's just all so unfortunate. And I hope that this case really does get the attention it deserves, because I again, I don't think I had any clue about this case before Unsolved Mysteries. And hopefully this puts a little bit of pressure on.

to get things moving in the case again, because I mean, they ended on such a strong note. I feel like they really bookended this series with two cases that were just so unbelievable. And I'm really excited to see, you know, there were supposed to be 12 episodes. And what I heard is they broke it into two segments. So we should be getting episodes seven through 12 for,

someday TBD. And something that was at the end of every episode, which I'm sure you noticed, Ashley, was if anyone has any information on any of these cases, they usually post something specific to the case. But you can also go to unsolved.com and submit your information there. And hopefully we'll be back with more review stuff, if you guys like it, when the next episodes drop. And we'll see you then.

Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

Oh, you guys. Podcasters' worst nightmare. We just recorded one of our longest episodes ever. It's like two hours of our recap of the second half of Unsolved Mysteries, and I found out that my audio was totally wonky. I have no idea what happened. The ghosts, the tsunami ghosts that Britt talks about in this episode might have taken over my computer. But I'm going to tell you what happened.

I feel terrible. We're trying to make it the best we can. I was going to rerecord. I pulled the fan club and said, listen, do you guys want the content now as is? It is not up to my standards and I'm so sorry. Or do you want to wait a couple of weeks and we can rerecord? And the majority of you were so sweet, so kind and said, no, we don't want to make you do additional hours of work.

We just want the content. We just want to hear you and Brett. I love you guys for that. Thank you for being so supportive. We have tried to clean it up the best we can so it's still listenable. I promise I will like triple, double, quadruple check my audio in the future. Thank you for being understanding. This is just an extra. It's not your full-length episode that you guys pay for. So I hope you like the extra content. We're a little delayed in Unsolved Mysteries today.

But thank you for being gracious. Thank you for being kind and sticking with us and supporting us. And I will keep bringing you extra content and I will keep making sure that it's like actually recorded properly because that's my full-time job. Thank you guys.

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And this is super delayed, but we've been very busy. I mean, we were making new episodes for like every other week, right? Yes. Yeah. Constantly making new content. But that doesn't mean we don't want to give you what you asked for. Even though it came out a while ago, we're back with the second installment of Unsolved Mysteries. And honestly, I needed a minute to break these down.

Because the ones that I have, I don't know about, we always split them in half. The ones that I have, I swear, like Netflix didn't even cover half of like the actual stuff. Oh, wow. Yeah. So let's dive in and break down the last six episodes of the new installment of Unsolved Mysteries.

All right, Britt. So let's dive in. The first episode was about John Wheeler, who everyone called Jack. This dude was super smart. We're talking all of the Ivy League schools. He actually helped set up the Vietnam Memorial and he worked like...

really high up in government. Like for the Bush administration, dude was connected. And in 2010, when the story takes place, he was actually working in intelligence and national security for this like private firm, quote unquote, part-time. But anyone who knows a guy like that knows like there is no such thing as part-time. Right. Like you. Yeah. I'll never be part-time. So Christmas rolls around and it's a normal Christmas. Like

Everyone says he's happy. Like the family has a great time together. They all come together, even though he travels a lot for work. Now he was supposed to spend the few days after Christmas with his family. His wife said, this was our time to like,

really see each other. We catch up on all the movies we haven't watched all year. This was our time. But a couple of days after Christmas, he tells his wife, I have to go into work. Like something really important is what he said. It's all he would say to her. And he says that, you know, for a couple of days, he's going to actually stay in downtown like Washington, D.C.,

But the thing is, he doesn't quite do what he says he's going to do. And no one can really piece together why he makes the decisions he does or where exactly he goes after this. So on December 28th, he takes the Amtrak to Washington. Like the whole time he's like emailing from his phone, you know, the Netflix documentary, they're like, the guy was glued to it. Like it's so easy to track him. Like he's working the entire time and we can see that.

Right. And a lot of the emails he was sending was actually to his wife because they were fighting. This got left out of the Netflix documentary, but I don't think it's necessarily, you know, I don't think she did something to him, which might be why they left it out. But they were fighting about him, like, leaving their family time and going into work. Yeah, he, like, completely interrupted their, like, staycation. Right. So he's, like, emailing her to try and make up for all of this or whatever, try and make things better, smooth things over.

So we know he makes it to D.C., but the thing is, instead of staying downtown like he said he was going to, we know that by 730, he is actually in Delaware where they have a second home. So his wife's in New York. That's where they spent Christmas. He goes to D.C. for work, and then he goes back to Delaware at their second home. But his wife had no idea that that was the plan.

Now, the Washington Post says that he makes some calls to a cab company in Wilmington, which is like near the town where he lived. But like, there's not a lot of details around why he's in Wilmington when he goes to Wilmington.

If he ended up getting a cab, like this is the fuzzy pieces that are hard for me to put together. But what we do know is that 1130 p.m. that night, the house across the street from Jack's, this was like in construction, just being put up. Someone sets a smoke bomb off. If you read news articles, there's even talk of someone saying that potentially they were actually trying to set it on fire. But everything in Netflix and a couple of other places says at least it's like smoke bombs.

No one knows that night where Jack is, but he's not like reported missing. You know, his wife can't really get a hold of him, but nothing concerning at this point. But it's just interesting to make note that I think in the documentary, they make it seem like he was for sure at his Delaware home across the street from this. But we don't actually know that for sure. Mm hmm.

The next day, so this is the 29th, at 8.45 in the morning, he gets a cab to Wilmington, Delaware. And he asked the cabbie to stay at this place called Hotel DuPont or take him to Hotel DuPont. But he wasn't planning on staying there. It sounded kind of like maybe he was going to meet someone there, but no one really knows why. Again, this was another thing that was like left out of the documentary was this like early morning trip.

Now, at 930, we know he emails his work. And it's interesting because he doesn't have his phone at this point. If he took the cab to Wilmington, I don't know if he's making this email from Wilmington. Again, the Netflix documentary made it seem like he was doing it from his home.

But everything that I found, we don't actually know where he's sending these emails from. But the emails are to his private company that he works for saying that he had a home break in the night before, lost his cell phone, lost his security badge that like gets him in and out of work, lost his key fob and lost his briefcase.

But interestingly, what they do make note of in the documentary is that he doesn't tell police there's a break-in. He doesn't report anything missing and he doesn't even mention it to his wife. Which is super weird. Which is super weird. Now, something I found in my research is that apparently he also emailed his therapist saying that he felt, quote, dazed, boxed in a corner, end quote, after his fight with his wife.

Now, there are fewer emails this day, and that's because we find out later that he doesn't have his cell phone with him. The cell phone is actually found at the house where the smoke bombs went off. Now, again, they like...

aren't connecting all these pieces, like, at the time. But when people go to the house, like, make sure everything's clear, nothing's on fire, the house is okay, they find this cell phone sitting right outside. And we learn later that that's Jack's cell phone. So that's why he doesn't have it. So...

As you know, I have a million questions, but do we think that he was maybe lying about the break-in because he had lost his phone at some point? Maybe. So I think everyone wants to say yes. Like, he knew he left his phone if he was the one that did the smoke bombs, which even his wife, like a lot of people think that it was him. Yeah.

Once he realized he lost his phone, he was like staging this whole thing. The problem is if you watched the documentary, none of that stuff ends up getting found. It's not in his house. It's not in any of his houses. It's not in his car. So he said he'd lost his briefcase, purse.

Security badge, key fob, and phone. The phone is found across the street, but none of the other items are found at all. Yeah. And he has, again, a really high up job in security. And his firm works with the DOJ, National Defense. These are important things to have, not only on your person, but make sure they don't get into anybody else's hands. Yeah. Yeah.

So we don't know a lot about what else happens that day. Again, we don't have him with his phone to track him. But we do know that by 6 p.m., he walks into this local pharmacy by his home. Now, they don't say if he walks there, did he get a cab? I don't know that we actually know. But he walks in and talks to the pharmacist, who is like the guy who normally fills his prescription. So they're like acquaintances.

And he asks him, can you give me a ride to Wilmington? So he wants to go back to Wilmington where we didn't know in the documentary. But if you research outside of this, we know he was that morning. Now, the pharmacist is obviously like, I can't do like I'm in the middle of working literally at work. Yeah, right. But he offers to give him money for a cab. And he says, no, I don't need money. Like I have my own money. So then why ask the pharmacist for a ride? That's a great question.

Now, the documentary on Netflix says that he did find someone in the pharmacy to give him a ride. And they actually show some security footage of him like walking out with what looks like a younger man. I searched high and low. Of course you did. To figure out who he left it because I think that person holds so much of the answers, right? Because the thing about this case that everyone points out is even at the

pharmacy even though like you know he's missing his phone some weird stuff's going on when he's at the pharmacy he's walking normal the guy he talks to says he's talking normal he's coherent there's no like erratic behavior or anything that would cause anybody yeah any sort of concern yeah but then 40 minutes later after he's done with this ride with this stranger he shows up

in a parking garage on their surveillance footage, like completely disheveled. He's holding one of his shoes. He has no winter coat, which he didn't have before, but it's like freezing and snowing outside. And he's not wearing one of his shoes. Yeah, holding one of his shoes. And what I read is that one of the shoes is like broken. So what on earth happened in that 40 minutes? Between point A and point B, right? Yes. So.

So he's like going around in the parking garage looking for his car is what it is that he he needed to get. Right. And the people, the attendants are asking him, like, well, where's your parking ticket? Because he couldn't find his car. And that's when he tells the attendant, well, my briefcase was stolen. It's in there.

And what it turns out is his car isn't even in the parking garage at all. It's like in a completely different one. So he's just like mixed up. Yeah. But it's worth noting, though, because at first I heard that and I'm like, oh, this is like super bizarre. But everyone on the documentary, like everyone in his family said that it was actually super normal for this to happen. He was terrible with directions. Yeah.

And he was actually known for like going to work in his car and coming home in a cab because he forgot where he parked. So I feel like that's very me. So I'm like sympathizing. Yeah. So even though it's weird that, you know, the shoe steps going on and, you know, he doesn't have his coat. But the actual interaction and situation of like him being in like the completely different garage is not out of the realm of possibility. Yeah. I don't think that necessarily is a sign that he like had some kind of mental break.

But it is worth noting that something they talk about over and over in the documentary is that Jack was diagnosed as bipolar. He'd been on medication for a long time. Usually his wife said he was pretty good about taking his medication. When she saw him, she didn't feel like he was on, you know, the brink of anything, but

But it's worth noting, right? Because even though nothing happened in front of her, what everyone wonders is, did he have some kind of episode that...

to this strange behavior because from the parking garage, his behavior gets even weirder. Well, and you kind of wonder, like, I never ever want to blame a victim's family, obviously, but like, could the stress of like him having to go into work and upsetting his wife trigger something? No, and I don't think that's blaming them, but I think that's just how we all react to different stressors. Yeah, like he had that, like we know that he's coming off this really relaxing like holiday and then

this surprise work thing possibly happened, and he has to disrupt that, and it's a change of his routine, it's a change of his plans, he's upset his wife now. I mean, like you said, he even reached out to his therapist, so we know his emotions are in a heightened place, you know? Right, so I think it's totally possible that he was in some kind of state, but if it was as simple as that, this wouldn't be an Unsolved Mysteries episode. Right. So from the parking garage, he disappears for a little bit, and then he reappears again

in this building in downtown Wilmington, where he was trying to go. So he got there somehow. And on Netflix, they think that maybe they found a guy who gave him, or like a cab driver who gave him a ride. Like I think they said in the documentary, he like heard that someone else was going there and he like jumped in the car with them. Which when I first heard that, to me was like, again, thinking maybe he's like in some kind of episode. I was like, oh, maybe he just

heard someone was going anywhere and went there. And was like, I'm going to go. Yeah. No, but no. Yeah. Knowing he was there earlier in the day makes it seem even more deliberate. Like it wasn't just I'm going to get in a car and go anywhere that isn't here. He wanted to go there. Go back almost. Right. So he goes to this downtown building. And in the Netflix documentary, they tell you he kind of like roams around. He probably slept in there.

But there's more information in the Washington Post. Apparently, he's asking people how to get to Philly or ways he can get to Philly. He tries to speak to a managing partner at a law firm. But before they can actually, like, get him in with the guy, he just, like, leaves. And then he's requesting train fare from people. But we know he has money. Or at least had money because he told the pharmacist. Well, and here's the thing.

He ends up being found later with his money. So I know he still had his money. So he spends like literally overnight in this building, in like the basement tunnels of this building. At some point, he trades his suit jacket for a black hoodie. It looks like on camera. I don't know where he got it. Don't know where his suit jacket went. Don't know if that ever got answered.

And at some point the next day he leaves, we see him, quote, walking east toward historic Rodney Square, which as I kept researching, I found out it actually was like a really dangerous small city, like a dangerous area. So he's like walking in that direction.

And then we just never see him again. And the next thing we know, a day later, so this is like the 30th that he walks away. The 31st, he shows up in a landfill in the same clothes we last saw him on. The problem is...

He is like beaten up, like beaten to death. Not just like had a heart attack and died there, but though he did have a heart attack on his autopsy as well. But I think probably as a result of the beating that he took, he had like broken ribs. His face was destroyed completely.

The thing about this is, you know, when people first saw this, they're like, oh, this is some kind of mob hit. This is connected to his work or something like that. But they couldn't find any connections. Then they were like, oh, this is a mugging gone bad. He had an episode. He ended up somewhere bad. And someone took advantage of that. Problem is, this is where he said they find his money on him.

He was wearing a Rolex and his West Point class ring. Like there's no motive for a mobbing or robbing if he has all this stuff still on him. It does not make sense. And when they look at his body, they rule it a homicide by blunt force trauma.

And, of course, a lot of people are asking, well, if he's in the landfill, maybe he was in the truck from the dumpster and he could have gotten all these bruises that way. Which was my initial thought. Maybe it's just like he was in the dumpster and...

got put into a compactor or something and then went to the landfill. Like maybe these are posthumous, but ruling it as a homicide means that they aren't. Right. Everyone like concludes there is, I'm like, this is something that people argue about, right? Like I think we've seen that in cases before where you've got one side saying one thing, one side saying another multiple autopsies, everyone's on the same page. Everyone says there is no way he could have gotten his injuries from the

being either in the dumpster or in the truck or dropped in the landfill. He was dead and then dropped in the landfill. So who would have wanted to kill him? How does that line up with the psychotic episode he had? Or maybe he didn't have one at all. Well,

Why didn't they take the stuff that was on him? There's so many questions. And they actually tracked down the dumpster that he was, like, found it. I mean, it was a miracle how they did it. Like, they were swabbing all these dumpsters for DNA. They tracked the truck. And they found the one that he was in. And, you know, it sits super low. Like, he could have crawled in himself if he wanted to. But no one can figure out why he would have wanted to. So did someone put him in there? Right. And with his injuries, like, was he...

and someone thought that he was dead or close to death and dumped him there? Or like you said, did he crawl in there by himself? It's so... Strange. Yeah. Now, it gets stranger because...

When they find his body, police learn who he is. And of course, they call the police where he lives in Delaware to say, hey, you know, we have a homicide and they live in your town. And they say, super strange that you're calling us. We are going to that guy's house right now because someone reported a burglary. So...

Meanwhile, like in his home, now mind you, this is the home that's across the street from the one that got smoke bombed. The second home in Delaware. Yeah. So his neighbor had like come over and this is when, you know, Jack's like roaming around. So this is all happening kind of at the same time. Neighbor walks by and sees that his windows open and they're all like friendly. So he wants to like go in and let him know. Well, his back door is kind of like ajar. And when he walks into the kitchen, there's stuff everywhere. There's like

broken stuff in the sink. There's spices everywhere. There's comet all over the floor. His West Point sword. There's footprints all in the comet. And so this guy reports that something must be going on. Jack's not there. It looks like there's been some kind of disturbance. So they're investigating this. And then you have to kind of go back and wonder, so is what's going on in his house, was there a burglary?

Or did he have some kind of episode? Or was it him in the state of not control, you know? I think him having bipolar feels like the easy cop-out for this. You know, anything we can't explain, we just point to that. But it doesn't add up for me. Yeah, there's still a lot of things that just don't quite align with it enough for it to be like the end-all be-all.

Yeah. I mean, I think that he was definitely in that home on the 28th because...

because everyone, even his wife, believes that he's the one that set the smoke bombs off. He did not want those people building the house. They were in this big legal dispute. He had even purchased like black clothes and a ski mask like right before they found a receipt for it. So they think that it was planned. We know his phone is found outside of there. In the Netflix documentary, they suggest, you know, maybe he realized he dropped his phone and he had some kind of like freak out and that led to some kind of break.

But again, I think that the mental break is like an easy thing to fall back on because just the pattern of events after that doesn't make sense. So say he has a break. Tell me how he ends up murdered by a stranger who doesn't take anything. Is he hit by a car? And if he was like, how did he get into the dumpster again? Like,

Even that is... Oh, yeah. Someone would have had to put him in there. Or he wasn't dead yet and he crawled there to die or for safety. It's just... There's something missing. It's another question. Like, every time you come up with a solution, every time you think of like, oh, I bet it was something like this, five more questions pop up. Yeah, this is one of those cases where nothing fits 100%. I feel like...

we have a lot of unsolved cases that we talk about, but in most of them, I can say like this scenario, like everything fits. We can't prove it, but it makes sense. In this case, I can't think of a single scenario that explains everything that we have and that we've seen. I don't know how you solve a case like this with evidence that we have. And I also found out like, this is such an aside. I don't know how it fits in, but apparently in the weeks or so months or so before he ended up dead,

He was convinced that there was very serious political corruption in Delaware, and he was having his friend...

teach him how to do some hacking. And so there are rumors online, like, did that have something to do with what happened? Was this a hit? But if it was a hit, again, all of the roaming around doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like, especially in this case of all these episodes, in my opinion, it's like we have a puzzle in front of us, but the pieces are from different puzzles. Yeah, exactly. So like...

You could make three different puzzles with this, but you don't know which one you're working on. And so all the pieces are in play. So yeah, this one literally had me pulling out my hair. It's going to keep me up at night. Unsolved mysteries. So the next episode that was released was Death in Oslo. And this one doesn't have so many rabbit holes as the other one that got left out. Okay, but it's still fascinating. It's fascinating and there are definitely things that got left out. So...

Quick recap, 1995 in Oslo, this woman calls this super high-end motel and registers for a room under Jennifer and Louis Fairgate. So two people. She shows up. Some say she shows up alone. Some say she shows up with a man. But if there was a man with her,

There isn't like no one sees this guy again, like who knows where he went or if he ever really was there. I tend to believe he was if we have the name and someone saw him. But it's strange. Now, what's even stranger is riddle me this. How do you check into a super high end motel where they don't ask for ID and they don't ask for any form of payment, but they just give you a room?

room. Because that's what happened here. I literally cannot comprehend this because it makes zero sense to me, like in any capacity. Like, okay, maybe some shady place on the wrong side of town. Okay. But I feel like shady places are like want their money up front more than anyone. But like, okay, maybe skip the ID there, whatever. But like a high end place, you're spending a decent amount of cash on it. You're gonna want

Some collateral. You're going to want the person's name, at least a down payment, maybe not the full thing. Like, you know, like you check in, they're like, we're going to put a deposit on here just in case you break something or whatever, but nothing. Yeah, this isn't like 1924 where it's like a handshake and a man's word. Like, it's 1995. Right.

So whatever the reason, they don't take any form of payment. At some point, a couple of days later, they realize that they need to get payment. So they send a security officer up to the room, knocks on the door, and he hears this gunshot.

So he runs down to let other people know. They call police. They come up like 15 minutes later to look in and they see a woman on the bed in the dark. And when they go in, she has a gunshot wound to her head. Now, looking at it, it seems like a pretty straightforward case of suicide. But no, ma'am, here are all the fishy things.

So nowhere in the room, anywhere here, no ID, no purse, no toiletries, except I did find online that there was one bottle of men's cologne in the bathroom, but it had her prints on it. Which doesn't matter anyway. Like, that's confusing. It is. And it had her prints on it. So what do you do with that?

There are some clothes in there, but they're only like shirts and jackets. There basically is like nothing for the bottom half. No underwear, no pants, nothing. And any piece of clothing that was in there had no tags. Like they were like ripped out, right? They were like cut out. Yeah. Yeah. More than anything, when you really look closely at the body itself, that's where things start to get really strange because...

The way the gun was positioned, so if you're thinking about holding a gun, your pointer finger is usually like on the trigger, even if you were to hold it to yourself. But the way that she was holding it was her thumb on the trigger. And so basically all the experts were saying that with the recoil, it would have like,

flown out of her hand almost when the trigger was pulled. Yeah. So I'm actually like imagining this and with like my eyes closed and my hand up right now, like, like the recoil would almost cause you to throw the gun. Yeah. But it's found like sitting on her lap, like she's holding it the way that they think she potentially could have shot herself with the thumb still on the trigger on her stomach. And more than anything else, there's no blood on her hands.

There is blood spatter all over this room. There isn't a single bruise. There's no soot, not a speck of blood on the hand that she supposedly held the gun with. How does that happen? It can't. Yeah, it doesn't happen. The other thing that they made note of was that she had this briefcase. And the only thing in the briefcase were like all of these bullets.

So if you're coming to this place with the intention of taking your own life, you don't need a suitcase full of bullets to do that. Right. You pack one. Yeah. It doesn't make sense.

Now, I want to say they do everything they can to ID this woman, but I don't think that that's true. They do run her fingerprints even through Interpol, thinking maybe she's a spy because of the cutout tags or whatever. They try and track down her family by going to the address that she gave when she registered for the motel room, but of course, it doesn't even exist. But the thing that I don't know if they did was checking the GD security cameras, which they had at the time.

So, like, who was she with? Was there a Lewis? Was anyone else strange moving about? Well, and I assume they tracked down her name. Did it go anywhere? Oh, no, of course not. So it was a fake? Yeah, fake name. She even, like, spelled it differently when she would sign it. So I don't even know what to make of that, but that's super strange. So even if there was a Lewis, his name likely wasn't Lewis? No.

No way. And this is the other thing they didn't do, or at least there's no answers on the internet of what came of it. They didn't seem to get any kind of answer from the hotel of why they did not make her show ID or give any form of payment. I don't know how this is still a mystery this many years later. Like, who checked her in? Why didn't they take it? Can we just solve that little mystery? I guess my question is, like, was it that...

hotel's protocol to do this and they just didn't one time like which again like you said there's no answers this is unsolved mysteries we understand that but if it's not protocol it's not protocol okay whatever weird but whatever

It was protocol, though. Yeah, exactly. How is that not protocol? So anyone can just walk in and say, like, I'll take that room, pay you later. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, especially for, again, a high end place where you're wanting your guests to be comfortable and secure and confident in your ability to take care of them. Now, here's something that I found that was not in the documentary that I think is uber important.

So there is this guy. Obviously, they talked to apparently not the hotel people, but they talked to the people who were like on her floor at least. And there was this guy who was in the room right across from hers. And no one knows a lot about this guy. I haven't even been able to find his name online. But here's something. When police are interviewing him as they're talking to everyone on the floor, they're

He says that on the morning of the 3rd, when he's checking out, the attendant at the hotel tells him that there's been a death, that this woman has taken her own life or whatever. So that's how he tells police that he heard about it. Problem is, he checked out in the morning. She wasn't actually found dead.

until the evening. So how did they know, right? Well, it's how did they know, but who is the they? So did the hotel staff really tell him that? And then again, they didn't take the ID. They didn't take the money. That's looking really fishy. And someone at the hotel already knew a woman would be found dead. Or...

Did this man know that there was a woman? And as he's talking to police, he's just like, well, the last time I was at the hotel, this is what they told me. Yeah. Realizing it would kind of put him on one side or the other of things. Yeah. He's making up a story about this death that maybe he knows about for different reasons and saying that someone told him, but not knowing that his story doesn't add up.

Now, looking at what records I could find, his hotel room was right across from hers. Now, one thing they brought up in the documentary was that if there was someone else in her room,

they would have only had 15 minutes to get out of there before security came back up and went in. If his room was across the hall, say he was in her room, I think it'd be really easy to quickly get back there. And you can literally look through the people and see when someone's gone and just like right across. Yeah, I mean, you and I have had hotel rooms across the hall from each other. It's like 15 seconds tops. Right. And here's the thing. I lean a little more towards security.

This man knowing more rather than the hotel staff? Because there's one other thing. She ordered room service the day before she died. Oh, and it wasn't like touched, right? Well, no. So her stomach contents showed undigested food, which means that she had to have died shortly after eating this meal. Not a full day later. Yeah.

So here's the problem too. And maybe not, maybe I go back to thinking someone at the hotel is involved because how are we supposed to believe the security guard story? So if she orders the food the day before, if she dies the day before...

And this man somehow knows she died the day before. How was there a gunshot 15 minutes before she's found? Right. Now, there is something that could explain it. There was actually a second shot. Apparently, someone had shot, like, through the pillow, through the mattress, and, like, flipped the pillow over.

So whether she did that or someone else did that, it was done before she was shot. I mean, I guess if she had done that, it was done before she was shot. If it was someone else, maybe they shot her the day before. It could be whenever, right? Yeah. But then did they make the noise and do the shot so that people would find her because people weren't finding her fast enough? The guy had already checked out at that point. I literally am spinning in circles. Yeah.

Now, there were a couple of other things that were found in her room that can't be explained. There was a newspaper that was actually addressed to a different room, like not the guy across the hall, but one like way down the hall. Like she picked it up while she was walking by or something? Well, but not her because her fingerprints weren't on it. There was an unknown fingerprint on it that they still to this day have never been able to identify.

And there was also apparently an extra comforter in her room. Which I assume is not protocol for the hotel. No, but here's my question. This is where I'm like the most like basic things I feel I could have solved this case or at least like helped solve this case earlier. Here's a question. What room was missing a comforter? Yeah. Or like, was there any sort of request from that room number for an extra comforter?

because like, you know, like there's a pull out bed, you want an extra comforter, whatever. You would have to ask for that or extra towels or whatever. Yeah, it's just so messy. And again, all this stuff I found about the undigested food, I think that's what I spiraled on the most. And this guy that,

maybe knew about her murder beforehand. To me, everything points to her being murdered and being murdered a full day before she was found. What that means, I have no idea. They say that within the last couple of years that they're running this fingerprint through Interpol. But with all the advancements we have in DNA and genealogy, to me, that's the thing. Yeah, for sure. Let's figure out who she is already.

Okay, Ashley, this one, I honestly just can't understand the premise of how it starts. It's...

I can't. It's called, the episode is called Death Row Fugitive. So basically this guy, Lester Eubanks, he's 22 years old when he really, truly, viciously murders a 14-year-old girl. If you guys want to watch the episode, it's great, but the murder itself is described kind of in detail and I'm not going to go into it. Even the FBI agent who was reading the statement that Lester made when he confessed to the murder said, I can't finish this. I'm not doing this.

She was shot twice and didn't die right away. And he came back to finish it. It is just brutal and completely random as well. He basically just saw her walking down the street, going from one laundromat to another to get change. It's horrific.

Isn't that the most terrifying? It really is. Like she and her sister, their dryer broke. They go to this laundromat to finish it. It's right next door to their grandma's house. They ran out of change. She's like, well, I'll just go to the next laundromat over and get change. And in like the five minute walk from one laundromat to another,

This guy attacks her. She screams like he tries to sexually assault her. He was out on bail for a previous sexual assault charge. He had a prior before that one. She screams. He shoots her, gets ready to go dancing like a monster. And when he comes back out, he's like, oh, she's not dead yet. And again, like kills her with a brick. We're done talking about this.

It's horrific. Mary Ellen Diener deserved 1,000 times better and a very full life, and he took that from her. They kind of narrow it down to him. He gets called in. He is questioned. He confesses right away, like, oh, yeah, definitely I killed her. Thing is, I shot her. She didn't die, so I then went back and actually killed her.

And he goes to trial, gets sentenced to death. But here's the thing. In like the 20 years since the crime to like when things kind of start going unsolved mysteries, Ohio abolishes the death penalty. So his death sentence is now a life sentence. Okay.

Which is okay, sure. And I don't know if this is a thing. I've never heard of it before this episode. Ashley, correct me if you know better. Have you ever heard of like very violent criminals being allowed to go on furlough to go Christmas shopping?

No. Like, I've heard of day parole, but usually that's tied to some kind of, like, work release. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. When I saw that he was just, like, again, somebody who you thought was bad enough to sentence to death, even if we're going to take away the death penalty, I don't think that just taking away the death penalty means you get to go Christmas shopping at the mall. Yeah. And, like, obviously this is 73. It is a very, very different time. But not...

Not only was he allowed to go Christmas shopping, they weren't even like required to stay together. Like I've seen people who are incarcerated who are part of work release programs where they, you know, help tear down a festival or help clean up a park or whatever. And they're always with a group and identified as incarcerated people, whatever. They're like,

in plain clothes, unsupervised, shopping like it's you or me in 1973. I just... I can't. I don't understand it. I do not understand it. So again, they aren't required to stay in a group. They aren't required to have supervision this entire time. I feel like when I went to the mall with my mom, I had more supervision and requirements than this guy does. Some of my siblings were on leashes. And

And so he goes off to go shopping and they have an agreed upon place in time where they're all going to meet back together in a couple of hours and go back to prison. Sure. And that place is arrived at by everyone. That time is arrived at by everyone. Everyone

except for Lester Eubanks. He is just gone. And at this point, like, when I'm watching this, I was like, well, what do you mean he's gone? Like, did he leave a half an hour ago? Did he leave three hours ago? Because that's the window that we're kind of looking at. Like, you have no idea how far to the wind this guy could be at this point because you haven't been watching him since you dropped him off. Because you just let him go wherever he wanted without any... Like, I...

cannot understand how this happened. Neither can I. And I like, it just, again, the whole premise of the story just baffles me because I mean, he's in plain clothes. He's unsupervised in a public place. And on top of that, like after he goes missing, he goes on the run. He's not missing. He's on the run. They go back to like, oh, like I wonder who he was talking to like in the days and weeks leading up to this. His visitor roster in prison is massive.

Like family members, acquaintances. There's tons of people. So they're thinking, you know, did someone help him? Was there an assist? Was he already planning this with someone? But the list is so long, they can't even really pinpoint anyone. Also, like who has that many friends? I don't have that many friends. I have like seven and half of them are actually all of them are audio truck employees. Yeah.

Like, who's that cool? How can that many people be friends with such a monster? Yeah, I just, I, yeah.

So police think that, you know, someone on his visitor roster must have helped him because there's no way this guy could just like disappear from a mall. And I'm like, well, if you leave him alone for three hours, maybe. So there's a local warrant that goes out and the FBI also get involved and they issue a national warrant, which means that if he interacts with any law enforcement in any sort of routine stop, that it'll be flagged. Now, again, this is the 70s. So like it'll be flagged in like three days, in my opinion. Right. Yeah.

So that's it. 73, he's gone. No one hears from him. No one knows where he is. 20 years later, an officer in Ohio, which is where he was incarcerated and where the crime happened, he's a captain now, and he's like, I wonder if this guy was ever caught, and they just never told us. Because we had a local warrant out, but it's the FBI. They're hot shots, right? Maybe they just were like, Ohio doesn't need to know yet. And so he pulls it up, and the FBI warrant wasn't theirs.

It's been so long since I watched this one, I don't remember. Yeah. So when the FBI is interviewed in the documentary, they're like, the only thing we can chalk it up to is a clerical error. There's no reason for this to have ever happened. We don't know where the warrant went.

But the captain of Ohio is like, we don't know when this even happened. Yes, people were looking for him early on, but we don't know when they stopped because the warrant wasn't there. A clerical error. He could have been pulled over every other month in his car, for all we know. And it's never raised any red flags because the FBI warrant, the national warrant that goes to the entire United States. Oh my goodness. Was possibly not in effect. Like,

Yes, it could have been deleted a week before the captain went looking for it. Highly unlikely. It also could have been deleted a week after it was issued. We have no idea how long this warrant was completely inactive. So he like calls the FBI and he's like, this is an issue. Can you prove that this guy is anywhere else? And they're like, nope, he's nowhere.

So the FBI warrant gets reissued. And a year later, a woman comes forward and she's like, I was actually married to this guy's cousin. And this guy lived with us. Oh, my gosh. So she had married this guy's cousin. He had gotten killed. And she had started, like, corresponding with Lester Eubanks when he was in prison. Pen pal-ing, writing back and forth. They didn't really go into, like, what those conversations were.

But she had built this relationship with him. And he ended up, when he first escaped, going up to Michigan and hiding out for a while to see like, well, like it's a state over. Like if they're going to find me soon, they'll find me here. He works some odd jobs, paints houses, and gets up enough money to take a bus to California to meet up with this woman. And on his way, as they're crossing into California, the bus that he's on gets stopped.

by police officers and he's like this is it like they I remember this yeah they figured it out they know I'm here like the jig is up we're done

And the police officers go through the bus. They go through every seat. They come to him and they turn around and leave. The police officers were looking for illegal fruits and vegetables going into the state and not a convicted child murderer who was on the loose. Unreal. And so, like, he thought he was going to get caught. And then he lives in California with his woman for a few years and then kind of disappears again. Just again to the wind. Like, it's like he just...

In thin air, poof, gone. And at this point, like, the investigation is kind of ramping up. People are still looking for him, especially because God knows how long they haven't been looking for him. And they eventually get to round to his dad, who is like his only living relative left. And, you know, the FBI come by and his dad's like,

I'll tell you anything you want, but we aren't talking about Lester. Which is the only reason that the FBI are there. We're not here to, like, hang. Yeah, like, we aren't, like, watching a movie. We want to know where your fugitive son is. And the dad's like, you know what? I believe he started a new life and he's doing just fine.

And the FBI officers were like, and you know exactly where he is and you aren't going to tell us. Okay, cool. Perfect. Thanks. But a friend of the dad was like, well, I was over there a couple of days ago and he got a call and he said it was his son in Alabama. So now we're looking in Alabama, which is again, like across the country, like we're going back and forth at this point.

And they find that the number that had called from Alabama to the dad multiple times was from like a residential care facility for teens. And there was a man who had worked there that met the description of Lester. No. Well, yes. But by the time the FBI got to this residential facility, the janitor had quit. Of course. So that's kind of where the episode ends is like, we still don't know where this guy is.

There's a bunch of age progressed photos of him because no one has confirmed seeing him. There are no pictures after 1973 when he went missing on that Christmas shopping trip. But ABC has done a podcast on this, which full disclosure, I have not listened to, but I've read about it. And they've done a couple articles as well. It's called Have You Seen This Man?

And in the articles that I've read, evidently a potential biological son has come forward to provide DNA evidence. Oh. So he believes that his mom was sexually assaulted and raped by Lester Eubanks. Oh, so it's not like his mom was in a relationship with him.

with him no like oh my his mom was a victim of Lester and he believes that Lester was the assailant and that he is the product of that rape oh my so he has volunteered his DNA and I believe it's being analyzed but here's the thing that I'm I actually didn't know and maybe actually you did is

Did you know that the FBI's protocol is to exclude familial DNA to find suspects? Wait, what do you mean? So, like, what we see from Parabon and GEDmatch and stuff, the FBI doesn't use that unless it's provided by one of those companies. Wait, I'm so confused. So, like, they won't take his DNA and match it in the FBI system. The FBI won't take the son's DNA. Will not take the son's DNA to try to find Lester. Right.

So wait, what system is the FBI using? They have something of like their own? It kind of seems like that. I couldn't quite get like all the articles that I read were like, FBI declined interviews with their like genealogist specialist. And I'm like, well, of course they did. So it was always a little bit cagey when it came to describing it. But basically, like, you know what? My podcasting lives are coming full circle because this is actually in something that makes no sense is making sense to me.

I'm working on another mini series all about Austin Yoga Shop and like deep dive investigative series with two journalists. And one of the big questions we have is if anyone hasn't like seen the updates is they have DNA, right? That's like fifth man, quote unquote. Right. We covered it in a headlines episode. Yeah. So FBI says it hit on someone, but the FBI won't say who. And what we can't even get from the FBI is no one can give us a straight answer about

as to like, I'm not saying tell us who it is, but I'm saying like, can you explain to me what system you have and what you're working with on your end that even you aren't willing to give us? Or like, what database are you working with? Is it an internal one? Where are you gathering data from? And they're like super, they will not talk about it.

Where the heck are they getting this DNA from? That's kind of like what the articles were kind of saying. Like, we can't even get an answer. All we know is that based on the statement that they gave us after we requested to talk to a DNA specialist from the FBI and they declined, their statement is like, we don't use familial DNA. End story. Like, what? And like, on one hand, I'm like, OK, that's one thing. But also, we don't even know for sure that this guy is familial.

a match. Like, we don't even know if he is biological to Lester Eubanks. So even if he did submit his DNA and it was analyzed, it could also bring up

completely random people that are not Lester. Man, this DNA stuff is getting messy quick. Yeah. So he's just like still out there. How old would he be now? So Lester would actually be 76 by now. So the time for him to, you know, remain in prison if slash when he's ever caught is probably dwindling now.

And the fact that he's been free since 1973. He never had to really, like, serve time. Yeah, like he—the crime happened in 1965, and he was out by 73. He has suffered a portion, a fraction of what he should have for the horrendous things he did to Mary Ellen. Obviously, we have this other young man who believes that he is the product of a sexual assault in Lester's father's

But, I mean, they obviously have his DNA. Has he been connected to anything else anywhere else in the country ever? I mean, not that I can find. Again, he had two priors before murdering Mary Ellen. And he came clean to murdering Mary Ellen really quickly. So afterwards, as far as I know, he hasn't been connected to anything else. But also, like, this is a predator. This is someone who was acting viciously even before his murder conviction. Like, I refuse to believe that he...

He has been dormant since 1973. Okay, Ashley, I'm going to be really honest before starting this next story. This is like my least favorite kind of unsolved mystery. Well, I agree. I actually like this episode the least as well, but I will reward your least favorite story with, as soon as you're done, I will tell you my like,

any Unsolved Mysteries all-time favorite because the next one I have for you is insane. So let's power through. Okay, okay. So the reason that I don't like this is because I don't think it's a mystery. Like, this is very much where you and I differ. Like, I know Unsolved Mysteries is like our, like, Venn diagram overlap.

But I'm way more America's Most Wanted, like my last story. And you tend a little bit more supernatural. And this is like in between those two. Fair. So the whole story starts in like the northeast region of Japan in this little like port town. And on March 11th, 2011, there's this huge earthquake and

Like they're used to earthquakes. They have them like not frequently, but like there's been some big ones in the past. But this was the biggest. And when you live in a coast town on an island, you know that earthquakes usually mean tsunamis. So as soon as the earthquake happens, they're like, OK, let's evacuate everyone out of here. There will be a tsunami. We just don't know like when it's coming or how big it will be.

Turns out it is devastating. And Ashley, I know it's probably been a while since you watched this episode. Do you remember the footage? Barely. I mean, I just remember literally waves like taking over the entire, like just wiping it out in one swoop. It's almost impossible to even describe because there are like

There's buildings that are breaking down because of the earthquake. There's buildings that are on fire from the earthquake. And then there is a wave that's just enveloping the entire land. Buildings are being swept away while they're on fire, while they're like being destroyed. Like,

It's unreal. It's unreal. It looks like full-on end-time footage. Yeah, it's like if you were to spill a cup of water on your table, but in slow motion, except it's a city. I can't even describe it any other way, to be honest. And actually, the maximum height of the tsunami was over 130 feet, which is a lot. And then on top of that, one of the talking heads in the documentary is like, we couldn't figure out why nature was turning against us.

because it started snowing. Like, stop. Oh, I forgot that. So you have an earthquake, then you have this massive tsunami literally just gobbling up the entire city, and then it's snowing, like blizzard-level snows. Oh.

I literally, it's been a long time since our church days, but I think if that was happening, I'd be like, book of revelations. It's happening. Yeah, we're done. Like, okay, anytime Jesus on a white horse, he'll be here. I also, I laugh sometimes because I know that even though I'm not like deeply ingrained in the church anymore, that like it's ingrained in me because,

even though... Even if it happened again, you'd still think it? Well, okay, here's the funny thing. You have to tell me if you do this too, but like anytime I can't find anyone, there's always... Oh, the rapture happened. Yes, there's always this half second where like, oh crap. We got left behind. I got left behind.

Yeah. So this is, yeah, I would not handle this. Well, yeah. I mean, even watching the footage, like again, as much as this wasn't like my kind of unsolved mystery, this was a very devastating episode for me just because of like the sheer like magnitude of this tragedy. And like the even show towards the end of the documentary, like eight years after this happened, when this whole documentary was filmed, the area is almost uninhabited. It's taken almost a decade to even get to a point where this place can be lived in again. And again, like I,

I took a lot of notes on the devastation because it's massive. And some of the stories that were told are just devastating. Like one guy lost basically his entire family in one day and didn't even know it for weeks. Like,

The day after he found his one daughter in like a bamboo grove and his wife was found like a couple miles away. And he didn't even find his baby, his youngest daughter, until a couple weeks later going to the debris of his house. And like to lose everybody in your family in one day and not know it for weeks. I cannot imagine like...

processing that. Like, I can't... Like, how do you keep living not knowing? Which I guess we say a lot about missing persons cases in general, but like, after a travesty like this, like, they could be somewhere. They actually could very easily be in a shelter or being taken care of someone who found them. Or trapped somewhere. Or trapped somewhere. And like, okay, sorry, I have to move on. So all this devastation and there are...

thousands dead thousands like the confirmed dead as of the documentary was 15,854 with over 2,500 still missing and

And like, this is, this is not all of Japan. This is a region of Japan. Like this is not, this is not like we're not talking about a huge country that is losing the amount of people we're talking about a very small area of a country that's losing this much of their population. And because of that,

high amount, like the survivors couldn't even have like a traditional funeral or grieving process. And in Japan, it's very traditional to cremate the dead. And because of the devastation, the crematoriums literally weren't even up and running. So they built these mass burial sites and it's devastating to watch these people mourn

Yeah.

And after all of this, like three months later, this journalist starts hearing these weird reports out of this region that there are ghosts around. What? Yeah. So one of the first stories they tell is this guy who's, it's like while all this is happening, he's looking for his mom and he heard that she might be at the shelter where she was safe.

So he goes there, he's waiting to see if like they have her. He's talked to the attendants and they're like, we'll wait here. And while he's waiting, he sees this woman sitting in a chair across the room. And he's like, oh, I think, I think my mom has that shirt. And like he goes over and she turns around and it's his mom. And he's obviously incredibly relieved and pulls out his camera to take a picture of her to send to his family members so that they know that she's safe.

And he holds the camera up to his face, takes a picture. And when he takes the camera down, it's not his mom. Like no one's there or it's someone else? Completely different person. And in fact, at that time, when the tsunami hit, his mom was actually in a bus on the other side of town and had already died by the time he took this picture. Weird. And there's another story, which as the parent of a toddler, I find incredible.

incredibly creepy because it's kind of happened to me before, even though my toddler is still here. But there was a parent of a little boy who died and out of habit after the tsunami happened a couple of weeks or months later, she was getting dinner ready and called out for her son that dinner was ready, which is just devastating in and of itself. But when she did that, one of his toys that had a manual switch turned on. And

I don't like that. I've had motion sensing toys in my house and they're terrifying and now I don't buy them. But this was like a manual switch toy. And she had basically lost her entire will to live after she lost him in the tsunami. And this really encouraged her that like he was saying, I'm still here. I'm watching over you. I care about you. And it really like changed her perspective. And she like respected this toy then because her son's spirit was speaking through it.

And there's a priest in this that plays a really large part of the documentary named Taio Kaneda. And he's like a 26th generation monk, which is amazing. He's one of my favorite people in this entire documentary. And he actually goes out of his way to describe the way that Japanese people view life and death.

Okay.

And because of that, the idea of processing your grief or like moving on from your grief feels more like ignoring and forgetting the one you lost versus like addressing your own personal like emotions around it. So because of that, like they kind of see this huge uptick in ghost sightings. Like there's one lady who just sees ghosts like she's always been kind of surprised.

spiritually connected like that is the way she describes it. And she'll see ghosts and be like, hey, just so you know, you're dead. You have a place. It's not here. And then they go away.

And there's also this weird phenomenon of like taxi drivers. Do you remember this part at all? Not at all. Oh my gosh. This one is fascinating to me because of the compassion and the spook factor. So one, there's a bunch of stories of taxi drivers like pulling up and like picking up a person and they say, you know, go to this destination. And so they go to this destination and when they get there, the taxi driver turns around and the person is gone. Nice.

Not to take this back to the lady in Oslo, but this is why you get payment up front. I mean, true. And that's where I come in with the compassion. So the meters were running for this. So this is kind of why a lot of people in this documentary consider these like the most founded ideas of ghosts appearing because there's no reason for these taxi drivers to be taking these fares with no one in them. Right. And it's not like they're seeing a loved one or like manifesting it themselves. Right. Right.

Like they're just completely random people going to completely random destinations. And when they get to the destination, their passenger has vanished. And the compassion comes in is because like, well, like someone has to pay for these and the taxi drivers are paying for them themselves.

They're paying for the ghosts? Yeah. They consider it like a service, like an honor to create this sense of peace for the spirit by returning them to their homes, which like at this point I'm weeping in the documentary. So there's no reason for them to be lying about it because it's literally costing them money. I want to see a ghost so bad. I know you do. And like, I'm not, and this is probably why I didn't love this episode. I'm not a huge ghost person.

Like you don't believe they're real or you just don't want to see one? I don't want to see one. I'm TBD on if they're real. I think they are. Have I ever told you my ghost story? Um, no. Oh my God. So guys, this is the first time ever. So when I was 12 or 13, my uncle died and I was very, very close to him, very close to his kids and my aunt.

And he ran a restaurant in my hometown and he died actually in the restaurant from a spontaneous brain aneurysm when he was 40. Very, very unexpected. Very traumatic for my family. We eventually closed the restaurant a few like a year or two after he died and auctioned everything off. But we spent a lot of time there, like getting it ready to sell and selling stock and selling items or whatever.

And part of that was like, it was kind of like an old house. Like, Ashley, you know what I'm talking about. It was kind of like an old house style. So it had like a main floor with most of the dining room. There was some dining upstairs and some banquet halls upstairs. And one time me and my sister were working, we were like just dusting around, getting ready for a sale. And we heard like a whole bunch of knocks. We couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Stop.

And we're like, well, that's kind of weird. Like it's an old building, so whatever. And we just kept hearing them. And we were like, that's not really Knox. It's more, it's really more like footsteps. And so we kind of walked around the building and it was just her and I there. We walked around the building and we kind of figured out where in the upper level that it was. And because

because we were like baby Nancy Drews. I was like, okay, I'm going to go up the stairs in here. And Courtney, you go outside and go up the stairs. Like there was an off entrance to the upstairs on the outside. Find the grandfather clock. The answers are always in the grandfather clock. Exactly. So I was like, okay, you go upstairs from the outside and I'll go upstairs from the inside. And like, if there's someone here, I don't know what we're going to do, but we'll catch them. You're like 12 and eight and you're going to figure it out. 13 and 11. Thank you very much. Um,

But we're like, okay, like we'll just find whoever this is. And when we both got upstairs, we realized that when we had pinpointed where the steps were coming from, it was his office. He died in his office? He didn't die in his office, but he spent almost all the time there.

And like, it still smelled like him. Like it was, it was a very surreal, surreal experience. Right. There's Toad's Ghosts. So that's my ghost story. I didn't see one. I'm pretty sure I heard one. Toad's Ghosts. And I still didn't really love this episode. So going back to our priest, Reverend Kaneda, he also would do like

I hate to use the word exorcism because I don't use it in the documentary, but that's kind of how I viewed it. Basically, this woman comes to his house and she's like, I can feel people inside of me and I can't make it stop. They're dead, they're spirits, and I can't get them out. And so he performs this like very long, extensive prayer service with her and like basically coaxes these spirits out of her. And it happens over and over and over again. And there's this like

terrible story about she has a spirit of this little girl who was running with her little brother away from the waves and he says sis I can't keep going and she lets go of his hand stop and she also died but she feels unrest essentially her spirit is unrestful because she thinks she could have done more and

the priest's wife basically comes in and is like the mom and forgives her and the spirit leaves this woman. It's so wild. And a lot of people are like in the documentary and in articles around it is like, why here? Why? Like, there have been tragedies already

around the world, let alone like also in Japan. Why? Even like mass burials and stuff. So you can't even say it's the fact that they weren't put to rest the way that they traditionally are. Or would prefer to be. Right. And so a lot of people come back to the fact that this is a pretty rural region of Japan and their spirituality is also kind of tied to a sort of mysticism. So they're just like more open to that fact.

fact. And again, like the priest describes this as almost a veil. Like it can be so thin at times that if you believe you can see it. And there's even like an academic who's like, I don't believe in ghosts, so I'll never see one. I'm not their type, which is kind of like where I land. Yeah, sure. I think it's opposite though. Like I'm like trying so hard. I'm almost like too desperate for them. They're like, no. Yeah.

And, you know, something that the priest said I thought was really interesting was, you know, these ghosts aren't here to scare you. They are here because they worry about you or the people still left among the living and they long for that connection.

And all you have to do is just remind them that they're no longer here. This isn't their home, but they do have a place to go and to not worry about us because we're here in this realm doing fine. Go to your realm and find rest.

I will come back to, I don't know what the mystery in this episode is, other than, like, are ghosts real? Which is a pretty broad mystery. Yeah, I don't recall a ton of ghost stuff in the OG. Like, I get on board more with, like, the UFO rather than ghosts. And there was, like, a lot of that that I remember. I mean, even in the last installment, we had a UFO thing. Doesn't seem like a mystery. I think it's just saying, like, hey, there's stuff that we don't understand about passing on. Yeah. Next episode?

Okay. So... Okay, let's hear it. Lady in the Lake.

even before I did my online research, this was one that I watched a couple of times because I was so fascinated by it. You would. I know. Of the six, this is the one I was drawn to. This is like my, this is my kind of unsolved mystery. Yes. Let's be clear. Because here's the thing is, it is a mystery that is unsolved, but like, I think all the pieces are there and it's, it's one of those where I think it's like pretty obvious what happened. Mm-hmm.

All right. So Joanne Matouk Romaine, she's this mother of three adult children recently separated from her husband. And when her daughter's asked about, you know, the separation, she's just like, it wasn't a healthy marriage. My mom, my mom left. She wanted to be happy with the end. Everyone was better off. Yeah.

So one night in January 2010, this is in Michigan. Joanne's two daughters are at home. They actually live with their mom. And the police show up, like, at their door at, like, 9-something at night. One of the daughters says she looks down at her phone. It's 924. She's like, you look at your phone when the police show up. Like, that's just natural. Okay, so she's a crime junkie. Cool. Exactly. So they say, hey, we found your mom's car.

at the church abandoned and she's missing. Now, mind you, like mom had gone to church at like 7 p.m. So she hasn't been missing very long. So they're like on it. Yeah, just like a couple of hours. Yeah. And as soon as they hear that their mom's missing, well, they start calling her like over and over again, like any of us would do. Like this has to be a mistake. She has to be somewhere. She'll pick up the phone for me. So they both keep calling.

No answer, no answer, no answer. So they go out to the church. They're like, we want to see the car. This isn't making sense. Like, we're just going to go there. When they show up,

There's a full on police search. Like we're talking, it is take off with crime scene tape. There is a helicopter that's like looking in the water. There's Coast Guard, there's police. It's like scary level of missing at this point. Exactly. They are searching, searching, searching, searching, searching, and there's nothing. And what the police are telling them at the scene is like, listen, your mom took her own life.

Your mom was at church. She walked across the street to this body of water, walked into the water and drowned herself. And they have all of these search parties. They're like, you know, we're going to find her. They call in everyone, but no one is having luck.

When they look at, like, the evidence that's still there at the scene, what they see are, like, some weird scuffle or, like, not even scuffle, but, like, these shoe slide prints, like, towards the water, which is where they think that she went in. It's kind of like this steep embankment and she was wearing heels. And it's interesting to note that inside her car, they also find her purse. So she left it in there. And to them, that's even more of a sign of, like, she didn't need to take her purse with her. She was, yeah, she was walking away, right?

Yeah. But it's worth noting that the purse was brand new, at least according to her daughters, and a big chunk of it was like ripped on the side. And they said they had never seen it like that. So their assumption is that it had happened that day. So because they can't find her right away in the immediate vicinity, they start trying to track her last movements. And what they find out is that she filled up her gas tank right before going to this like short prayer service at her church. And then again, just like poof, she's gone.

Now, there are some other people that were at that service that night. I mean, it was like a handful of people, not a lot. But what they learn is that when this thing gets out, this one person comes out and they say that this alarm starts going off, this car alarm. And so they turn, they see a Lexus. That is the same car that Joanne would have drove. So we believe it's her car. The alarm is going off right when service gets out.

Well, then the last person to leave the church is this woman. And she said, like, it's dark. You know, it's winter. So it gets dark early. It's dark. She's like looking around full crime junkie, like be weird, be rude. Know your surroundings, stay alive. And she's like, she's like glancing across everywhere in the parking lot. She sees nothing. No cars. So no Lexus. No Lexus.

but Joanne's car is eventually found at the church parking lot. So whether it was Joanne, whether something else happened, at some point, the car was moved, at least based on witness statements. But that's not what the police are saying. They don't believe that happened. I think they say witnesses can be inconsistent. Maybe she just didn't see the car. Because in no part of the police's theory does Joanne leave and come back.

She leaves church and then just decides to take her own life. So wasn't the car like found in like a different parking place than when like initially was there or maybe like in the wrong direction? It's possible. I think that if I remember correctly, I think they were kind of insinuating that in the documentary. Like it was facing a weird direction, but I couldn't find enough evidence.

Like for my supplemental research to like really give me a good grasp. Like basically all I know is that I don't think it was there at some point. And then I think it was again. And if it's facing a different direction, I think that helps bolster that theory. Oh, for sure. The other thing that is worth noting is there are no prints on the car, which is strange, right? Like there should be super, super strange, like not even like anything.

Yeah. And they didn't do any testing for DNA. And I'm not 100% sure why. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe they just didn't. I mean, they were also chalking it up to her taking home life. True. So why would you even look for that if you had that resolution in your mind already? So in the days...

following her disappearance. They're still not finding her. Now they know in the documentary, and I think it is interesting, like she was wearing all black. The water was like icy and blue and white. So she would have stuck out, but they're not finding her. But even without finding her, they rule it a death. They rule it a suicide and they rule it a drowning, which is a little strange because there's no current in this water.

she would have had to walk out. I think they said it was like the length of two football fields. The water was so shallow to even get deep water. She'd be walking in water for the length of two football fields. Which is like dedication in Michigan in winter, let me tell you.

Yes. So does she have any history of depression? No, no history of depression. There are even letters that her family and attorneys have gotten from her doctors saying that she was happy. She didn't have any known mental illnesses. There were no indicators that she would attempt to take her own life. And she was never at any point, at least that they were aware of, suicidal.

But it is important to point out that in the days, weeks, maybe even months before her death, she was really paranoid.

paranoid. She thought she was being followed. She thought her phone was tapped. She even looked into getting private security. And, you know, a lot of people use that to try and say she was mentally ill and, you know, she was paranoid. But her daughters point out it's one thing to say that. But when you're afraid for your life and you think something's going to happen to you and then you go missing and something happens to you.

It's less likely that you're crazy and more likely that you're right. Yes. And more likely that you had a reason to be scared. OK, but like, I guess what was she paranoid about? Right. Right. So this comes up when her daughter, Michelle, is talking about how there's three people that she initially thought like could have had something to do with her mom's disappearance. Right.

She said the first was the ex-husband, right? They had just recently separated. I mean, that's the go-to, right? Yeah. It wasn't a good relationship, kind of contentious. Second was Joanne's brother. He actually used to be super wealthy. I mean, multi-millionaire, had successful businesses, was down on his luck, had maybe some gambling debts. And they're wondering if someone used Joanne to get back at him. But...

The first person on Michelle's list and the person she said, like, she was specifically afraid of this person. This is what all the paranoia was about, was her cousin. Now, this guy's name is Tim. Tim is a detective.

And apparently there was like this big feud going on with the family over this wine business that their parents had left them when they passed away. I mean, like lawyers were involved. Everyone was going after this big chunk of money. And

Michelle, Joanne's daughter, had overheard a conversation where her mom's like yelling on the phone with Tim. She can't hear the other end of it. She doesn't know exactly what they're fighting about. But her mom gets off the phone, looks terrified, and is like, if anything ever happens to me. Tim did it. Tim did it.

Now, of those three people, everyone's officially ruled out. Not only because they ruled it a suicide, but they find that either they had alibis or whatever. But especially Tim, he's cleared by police because at the time his police colleagues vouched for him and say that he was on duty. So fast forward 70 days after she goes missing, her body is found missing.

In Canada, no one has any idea how it got there. Now, there is a waterway to connect where Joanne supposedly went in and where she was found, but it doesn't make sense because, again, there were no currents. No one can figure out how she would have gotten all that way. And if she did...

Everyone expected her body to be in really bad condition. Like, her clothes were intact. Her shoes actually look like, I mean, it's like normal wear and tear. It doesn't make sense that those didn't get scuffed up. But she would have been in the water for over two months, right? Yes, exactly.

So I saw this one video on the Justice for Joanne Matuke Romaine Facebook page. And it was really interesting. They said that when Canadian authorities found her and they called the department where they knew she lived to like let them know like, hey, this matches your missing person. I guess the case had initially gotten transferred to like another department, but the one that they called didn't.

Like hurried up and went up to Canada, immediately told the police like there that, oh, this is a suicide. This woman was mentally ill. Like we got it from here, even though they didn't have the case. And why are you saying this woman was mentally ill? And we don't know that. Like, yes, you ruled it a suicide, but because we had nothing else. Right, right.

So they do end up doing an autopsy. They do officially rule it a suicide, but they rule it a suicide by dry drowning. Have you ever heard of that? I have only because I'm a mom and it can happen to little kids. I don't understand it. So they're basically saying that she drowned, but there's no water in her lungs. Mm hmm.

How? I still don't understand it, but it definitely still makes me nervous around pools and my kids. Like the way I understood it with kids is that they could swallow so much water that like later on they can then basically drown themselves. Yeah, but there would still be water there. Yeah, it's right. It's bizarre.

I don't understand it specifically in this case, especially. And when I think about that even more, it's when you drown, you know, a lot of people, I think, you know, when they're searching for her, they're like, oh, well, you know, you don't float right away. That's when like all the gases after you're dead for a while, like build up in your body, you actually sink right away. You sink if your lungs are filled with water. If her lungs are filled with air, I don't even think she would have sunk right away. Right. So if they were there with like, she gets out of church at 7.15pm.

they're notifying her daughters at like 9.24. Which means that they would have at least known for, what, like a half an hour minimum, if not longer? Yeah, I mean, she's not going to get to Canada in two hours. How did they not find her? Especially without a current. She's not going anywhere. Yes, exactly.

And there's just... Oh, my gosh. There's so much more that Netflix left out. Again, I got this from the Justice for Joanne Matuk Romaine Facebook page. Click on Detroit News did an incredible special and the Gross Point News. But before I jump in, the one thing I also wanted to point out that they did point out in the Netflix documentary is just the geography of this. So...

If you hear this and you're like, oh, she was parked at the church and walked across to this body of water. She had to walk across two busy lanes of traffic and a median and go down this like ice covered concrete, like slanted slab. Nothing about that to me makes sense either. Like if, right? Right.

Or am I just like reading too much into this? I haven't watched this episode recently, but didn't they even have someone like in heels try to make like this precarious walk down the embankment? In the summer. And she couldn't even walk. Like someone had to hold her hands and she almost broke her ankle like three times. Yeah. So doing it,

covered in ice. Like I do not have an embankment anywhere near my house. My sidewalk is still covered with ice and I can barely make it down there to like get the mail. Yeah. In like snow boots. Okay. So we can all agree. This is why I watched this episode twice. Like it doesn't make sense. Nothing is adding up. Something is going on here.

So then I start to Google. Okay, here we go. And through all of the sources I just mentioned, here's what I found out. So first of all, things didn't end like quite like her daughter said. It wasn't just like, oh, we're not happy time to move on. There are allegations that her husband had an affair with her best friend. What?

Yeah. Justin and Eric would never. They better not. So, not that, again, that doesn't mean he did it, but it's just one of those things that got left out and casts a whole different shadow. It's like, oh, interesting tidbit that we didn't know before. Cool. And

And additionally, you know, when she got off the phone that one time after arguing with her cousin, she tells her daughter, if something happens to me, it was Tim. She doesn't just tell her daughter that. She told at least 11 people that before her death, that she was terrified of Tim. And if something happened to her, if she disappeared, look at Tim. 11 people. Are you kidding me? I mean,

It's one thing to be like, I'm going to tell, like, okay, my sister. The person who heard me yelling on the phone. My best friend. Maybe one other person who, like, lives out of state just so that they have some distance. But that's it. Mm-hmm. Eleven. Again, going back to, like, how many people we were even friends with. I don't even know eleven people. Yeah, and it's just scary that you can, like, what do you have to do? Like, film yourself saying it? You can tell eleven people and then something happens to you and everyone looks the other way. And to kind of, like, support this idea that it was scary.

you know, something happened to her at the hands of someone she knew, her daughter said that she didn't go anywhere alone. Like in those final weeks, she was so terrified for her life that the only place that she felt safe alone was at church. So it almost makes me think... Which if you were following her, you would know. Or if you knew her well enough, you would know.

Something else Unsolved Mysteries left out is that right after Joanne goes missing, this guy came forward. He was an eyewitness who says that he saw two men and a woman matching Joanne's description down by the water around the time that she goes missing. And like, literally, he's like, I got a good look at the guy. He like, one of the guys, at least, he like waved me on. And he later identifies one of the men as her husband.

her cousin Tim. What? Yes, but police are like, oh, that guy's just not credible. I don't have words. I'm sorry. Why? What? How? And there was also a man seen like running in the area at the time wearing a scarf. That scarf is found on the road. To me, seems like a big piece of evidence that should be tested. Yeah. Police just gave it to charity. Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah.

And this is the most concerning of freaking all. I would like back up. Do people,

Do police just like give evidence in general to Goodwill? To charity? I love thrifting. You know me. I live for Goodwill's Salvation Army situation. Was this in evidence at one point in time? I've never in all of my crime junkie years heard about someone. I've heard of destroying evidence. Or like pitching it, getting rid of it, contaminating it, whatever. I'm sorry. Yeah. Charity? Charity.

Oh, okay. So buckle up because it's about to get weirder. My thrift store days have changed, I'll tell you that. The most concerning thing in all of this is the timeline. So I want to walk you through it because I remember watching the documentary and I remember, you know, the daughters talk about coming to this crime scene. I'm like, oh my God, how terrible that must have been. How can you? Yeah, I can imagine. But it's not until you stop and think about it that you're like,

We're two hours out. Why is she considered missing? Yeah. And she wasn't reported missing. This has happened. I mean, how many cases have we done where no one can get anyone to pay attention? Literally, the if I go missing episode is about someone who went missing safely. And no one cared. And no one cared. And she was found eight days later. Eight days kind of on accident. So listen to this.

That night, we know she's at church at 8.58 p.m. So this is like a little while after she would have left, right? Mm-hmm. A police officer runs her tags. We don't know why. I assume it's because it's like this lone car sitting in a parking lot. You just want to make sure it's nothing nefarious. Right. And the officer runs the tags.

and marks down like no action necessary. So there's, you know, it's not a stolen car. There's no warrant. Someone just left it here. You know, we'll come back in a few days if it's still here, then we'll worry about it. Yeah. Like maybe someone met here and picked the other person up, whatever. Exactly. Then at 9.58, another officer comes by. He runs the plates and his story is that he sees some footprints that

Leading to the water, he's sure that whoever had this car must have taken their own life

And so he's the one that like sets in motion this missing person rescue mission. Okay, so Officer One, nothing weird. Officer Two, something's up here. Even though it's in a church parking lot where there was just a service and there's probably lots of footprints, right? Even if I don't know exactly what the parking lot looked like. I mean, in my mind, it could have even been shoveled. But going back to the geography of this,

Even if there were footprints, you're telling me you tracked footprints from the parking lot, crossed one lane of traffic, crossed a median, crossed another lane of traffic,

And by the way, they're not like in-depth footprints. It's like literally like a shuffly area down to the water. And you're like, oh, whoever had this car must have taken their own life. Definitely seems like a big conclusion to jump to. Okay. So here is another problem with this. Even if you want to say like, he's just the cop we all wish we had on our case. Like he's just paying so much attention. You know, I was so diligent, et cetera, et cetera. Mm-hmm.

858 is the no action, plate running. 958 is the she's missing, plate running. So between 858 and 958, we don't know that anything's wrong, right? But also things have wildly escalated. But riddle me this. Why do the police show up at Joanne's house at 924? I forgot about that timestamp! And tell her daughters that she's missing?

And you can say what the police are trying to say is that like, oh, we didn't go there till later. Okay. But we have the phone records from Joanne's phone that show calls from her daughters, 929, 929, 931, 934, 949. Immediately after the cops show up and they are going into like high alert panic mode. Mm-hmm.

So somehow they knew to tell her daughter she was missing. Oh, and this is the other thing her daughter said. Her daughter said the car was registered in her name, the daughter, Michelle. So she would have been considered, quote unquote, missing, not her mom. Yes, yes.

And the Coast Guard, the report that they gave the family's lawyers says that the Coast Guard was called in for a search at 953. This is five minutes before the second officer even runs the place. Oh, my God. Now, the Coast Guard thing is like all like typed up or whatever, like you would expect. I feel like the Coast Guard is like typing this up and like, here you go. Please get this off my plate. They, the police, have a handwritten report that's like, oh, no, we didn't call them till 1020. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

So here's the thing. All of this, basically what Joanne's family believes is that there is a cover-up. Tim worked for the police. They're alleging that he had something to do with it.

And the good old boys in blue helped him out. They hired a lawyer to make this case. And that's where all the deposition video that you see from the Netflix documentary comes from. And as you saw at the end, like, again, they left out so many of these, like, things that to me are jaw-dropping. Yeah. They left all of it out, but the case gets thrown out. And I don't understand how. Honestly, that's the unsolved mystery for me. It is.

You have one handwritten report that says you called it. Like, none of this adds up. And I can't even imagine what Joanne's family has to be feeling. Like, I would be screaming from the rooftops. I would, I want to pull all of my hair out. Just like the frustration, the tiny frustration I feel on their behalf.

I don't understand. I don't understand. Okay, well, I think you're about to burst a blood vessel. So maybe we should move on to the last episode of the season. Okay, last episode of the season is Stolen Kids. And it takes place in 1989 in Harlem in New York City.

And this little two-year-old named Christopher Dansby, he also goes by Juju, which I think is freaking adorable. He goes to the park with his mom and his grandma and his auntie. And they're just kind of like hanging out. It's a really regular occurrence. It's a park really, really close to the apartment that they live in. And he and his brother love playing there. His brother's a little bit older than him. And a really normal thing to do is like while they're all at the park, one of the grownups will go to the store, pick up some snacks.

and get ready to go back. And so that's what mom does. She goes to the corner store, picks up some things, and about a half an hour later, she comes back. And she's like, oh, like, I don't see Juju. And grandma's like, well, he was right here. Let's just look for him. I'm sure he's just on the playground. And so they look for him, and they can't find him. They start calling out, Juju, Juju, where are you?

He doesn't show up. Then they start, okay, Christopher, this is not a time for Juju. This is a Christopher time. He still doesn't show. And like they knew almost immediately after that, like,

Something was desperately wrong. He is a mama's boy glued to her side, doesn't even like when she does go to the store in situations like this. And so they call the cops like immediately and everyone comes out for this and they're canvassing the park and the playground. They like shut down blocks. They even bring like a dog out who gets a scent on Christopher really quickly and then follows it to a sidewalk where it stops.

stops immediately. Cops are canvassing the apartment towers around, but even one of the detectives that was on the case says right up front, like, this is a lot of homes, like, housing a lot of people in a very, very small space, essentially. Because, like, we're talking about, like, the Martin Luther King Jr. towers.

So there's just like apartments on apartments with hallways and rooms everywhere. So not only are you looking at a huge amount of people in a small section of the city, but

You're looking for a tiny child. Like, May is almost three and is kind of a giant, but she's like three feet tall and 36 pounds. Like, it's still not like a human, like a grown-up human-sized person you're looking for. You're still looking for like a little kid. And because the dog lost the scent and they couldn't find any information in any of the apartment buildings around...

they kind of assume that someone like just took Christopher and, you know, either hopped in a cab or had a car waiting to go. And there was even like a potential for it to be a custody issue because Christopher's mom had had some substance use issues. Dad wasn't in the picture, but dad, you know, cooperated with law enforcement right away, as did mom. And like everybody checked out and it was just like a complete dead end. This kid died.

from his neighborhood park, essentially. And that's kind of where it stood. And then three months later, another little kid, this one was a little over a year and a half years old, named Shane, goes to the same park on the same day of the week, which wasn't mentioned in the documentary, but I thought was really interesting. Both of them went to the park on a Thursday when this happened. And according to his mom, these two older kids, they were like six and 10, came over and were like, hey, can we play with Shane?

And the mom was like, well, I mean, he's a little kid if you really want to. And like, yeah, we really want to like we want to play with him. She's like, OK, sure, whatever. And as a mom, I'm like, yeah, please distract him so I don't have to. I get that.

And, you know, she's sitting there on the park bench, kind of just hanging out. A guy comes up, sits next to her. She's talking for a little bit. She looks away for a second and Shane is gone right away. Calls the cops. They search for him. Can't find him. And in this case, they even interviewed the kids who had played with Shane, their parents, and even the guy who was talking to Shane's mom. They interviewed everyone.

everybody that Shane's mom could remember and everybody checked out again just disappeared into thin air and this was such a big issue like two kids same park disappeared three months away from each other they even had like this van with like big like announcer horns on it that was like driving around the neighborhood saying like if you know anything about what happened to these two kids please let us know like we're looking for information from anybody which is what I imagine like

we would get alerts on our phone about now. But like the idea of a van driving around with like speakers doing this is truly, truly wild to me. Very strange. Yeah. Um,

But at one point in time, Shane's mom got a call that her son had been buried underneath this building. And, like, she called law enforcement right away. They took it so seriously that they even, like, tore down a building. Oh, my gosh. Looking for where Shane may have been buried, but he wasn't there. Like, it's literally these kids just, like, disappeared completely randomly with no one involved. Like, they're just, poof, gone. And...

there's kind of a working theory. I'm not sure how much I personally believe it. And maybe you can like provide some other perspectives, but the working theory is that it may have been like part of an illegal adoption sting, like ring. So like,

maybe individuals or like an individual providing children to adoptive parents who, you know, couldn't have biological kids and for some reason weren't approved or able to adopt traditionally. Um,

or through any other means. And so like an individual or themselves, like just grabbed these kids from the park one day. I think that, so I'll tell you just like my gut reaction was, I mean, it's very dark. And I think that part of that theory aligns with what I was thinking, but

But I think it's a trafficking thing. I personally like more predator versus adoption. Yeah. And I don't even know that it's just like one predator. I mean, the more that I've been learning, you know, researching some of the cases that we've done and I'm working on this specific project right now. That's I mean, it's dark, but it's like all about.

How prevalent it is for like stranger abductions to be tied to not just like a pedophile or a creep, but like these trafficking rings that are statewide, national, global, international.

I don't know why. Again, I don't know this case inside and out. I have nothing to do with it, but I just have this horrible feeling that if we're talking about someone snatching kids for something, I don't think it was adoption. So there is an example that they provided in defense of the illegal adoption ring situation, and that is Carlina White. So in 87, actually almost exactly two years before Shane was abducted or went missing at least,

Carlina White was only 19 days old. She had a fever, so her parents took her to the hospital. And while they were there, this woman who was dressed as a nurse was talking to them and comforting them and making them, you know, your baby's going to be okay, whatever. And then after a shift change, the nurse left.

And that's when Carlina was also discovered to be missing. And again, this is a 19-day-old baby just taken from the hospital. And the only reason we know this story and can connect it as like an adoption ring or abduction, I don't even know what to call it, to be honest.

It was 23 years later, a girl named Nettie Nance is pregnant and needs to file for health insurance and needs her birth certificate to do so. Her certified birth certificate. She asked her mom for it. You know, she gets it. She takes it in. And the people are like, this is a fake birth certificate.

birth certificate this is not real and that's where like again to going back to the thing that i was saying i feel like taking a baby that is like just born or it reminds me so much of the stories we hear about women who are attacked and their babies cut out of them because someone's like i want a baby of my own they want like the infant experience if you will yeah i don't know why though it's awful to me these stories are like oh sure while they're like around the same area like i'm

They could be connected, sure. But they feel so different to me. Yeah. And again, like this fake nurse basically forged a birth certificate, raised this child as her own.

And like eventually was caught 23 years later and arrested for this. And Carlina and her biological parents were reunited, which is amazing. But yeah, I just don't, it just seems unlikely for it to be super, super connected, even though it did happen in the same place to boys who had some similarities. They were both African-American. They were around the same age, like six months difference.

It just seems a little bit like I understand connecting them. Don't get me wrong, but it doesn't seem super connective to me at least. And I mean, at this point in time, no one has seen or heard from Christopher or Shane since like they would actually both be 33 at this point. Oh, wow. Yeah. And there was one article I read on PIX 11 that stated that possibly the same two kids that played with Shane that I mentioned earlier were

had asked to play with Christopher the same day he went missing, which I thought was interesting, but... This makes my theory even more. But again, like, at least in Shane's case, like, those kids and their parents were both interviewed and checked out. Yeah, that's true. We already see, like, later, even if they did play with them, like, this is a close-knit neighborhood in Harlem. Like,

all the kids are going to the same park. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for the same two kids to be playing. Like, I know at least some of my younger cousins love playing with Mae. Are they, like, 10 years apart? Yes, but they love the idea of, like, having a baby cousin. It kind of feels like that for me, like, with these two kids. It doesn't seem super, super weird to me. I don't know. I think I've been doing this job too long because, like, I can't help thinking, like, the worst. You know, back in the day, do we even have child sex trafficking? Like, the words for it or...

pedophile or whatever. I mean, we know now that a lot of the times it's like,

I mean, the stuff that's happening to them is often happening to them by someone they know. Could the police even at that time comprehend parents who are doing this and use their own children to lure them in? I know that's like literally like the darkest extreme I can go to, but I don't know. So on that note, the Charlie Project lists both of these cases, both Shane and Christopher's, as a non-parenting case.

parent or non-familial abduction. So they do not believe anybody in either of their families is involved with their disappearances. Right. I'm not saying their family. I'm saying the family of the kids they were playing with. And I agree, but I don't know. I just... So on this line, though, these two cases are actually often connected to the case of Andre Bryant. And he's actually one of the first pictures mentioned

at the end of this episode, because Netflix actually lists like a handful of other missing children at the end of this episode. And he's one of the first ones. And there's a lot of differences in here, which I think lean towards your theory more than Christopher and Shane's cases do. So Andre was actually only six weeks old when he went missing. And when he went missing, he had gone along or his, I guess he didn't go. His mom took him along. He was six weeks old.

His mom took him along on a shopping trip with some girls that she had supposedly known from middle school. They saw her walking around like, oh, look, we should all go shopping. We know you, whatever. And she agrees. Now, the next day, her body is found near a river, but no

No sign of Andre, no sign of a vehicle, no sign of these two friends. And Andre, who would now be 31, has never been seen since. That's so strange. And again, because that actually happens earlier in 89 than Christopher and Shane's cases do. But they're all in New York City. They're all young African-American children. Again, Andre is a newborn versus toddlers like Christopher and Shane.

But they often get linked together because of the similarities. And again, they just like vanish into thin air. And...

I feel like this is pretty much like all I have to say about this case because I don't know what happened. It's an unsolved mystery, obviously. But I think it's a good time to point out that if you, fan club members, have anything that you know about any of the cases we've talked about, you can go to unsolved.com and provide tips. And we'll do this again. No. Next time they drop more episodes. Yeah.

Don't forget, if you want more Crime Junkie episodes like this bonus content, new members can try the Fan Club app for free for the rest of July and all of August when you sign up through our website. Just head to the link in the show notes and make sure you hit the follow button here so you don't miss any bonus content that we put out. We'll be popping back in this feed next Thursday with another Vault episode. Bye, Crime Junkies. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?