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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On September 20th, 1986, Jane woke up to live her dreams. A botanist getting her master's degree, studying her fascination for the behavior of plants.
She carefully analyzed her favorite plant in one of Delaware's state parks, inspecting its movements, its decisions, its life. Not many in life get to pursue their passion. Jane was one of the lucky ones, immersed in her work, dreaming of future discoveries. A single shot ran across the quiet woods. With one shot, in one instant, all her dreams, gone.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 85, The Murder of Jane Marie Pritchard. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Now, let's jump right into this week's case. In 1986, a couple from New Jersey packed their bags and headed out for a vacation. The idea was to spend the week camping, hiking, and exploring. When deciding on a destination for their camping trip, the couple agreed on Delaware's Blackbird State Park.
Situated on the border of Newcastle and Kent counties, Blackbird State Park is a popular outdoor recreation and camping spot. The park offers its visitors many outdoor activities. You can hike, you can go horseback riding. Plus, the trail system at Blackbird State Park connects five primitive campsites and four picnic spots.
The couple decided that they would spend the week at one of the five campsites at the park. They made the drive from New Jersey and arrived at Blackbird on a Saturday afternoon. The weather was slightly cooler than they expected, but they were hopeful it would soon warm up. After the couple picked their camping spot and set up their tents and equipment, they decided to take a long walk together. They wanted to explore the area.
But within minutes, the couple's walk turned sideways. About 20 feet from the main hiking trail, the couple spotted what looked like a body. As they got closer, their worst nightmares were realized. They had just discovered the partially clothed body of a young female. She was dead.
The couple immediately ran back to their campsite where they flagged down a park ranger. They told the ranger that they just stumbled upon a dead body just off the main hiking trail. Within minutes, the Newcastle County Police Department arrived at the state park and the female body was removed from the area. Her body was sent to the coroner's office for identification. But before the medical examiner could positively identify the victim...
They learned that she sustained a gunshot wound to the back, a fatal gunshot wound from a shotgun. After DNA and dental records came back, the female victim was positively identified as 28-year-old Jane Marie Pritchard. The Pritchard family was your typical all-American family.
Audrey and Walter Pritchard got married and purchased a 38-acre farm out in the country of Barnesville, Maryland, the storybook place to raise a family. After getting married, Audrey and Walter welcomed four children together. First was a son named Keith. After Keith, the couple had another son, Greg.
Three years after their first son came their first daughter, Jane Marie. Then finally, the birth of the couple's fourth child and a second girl, Beth. As a kid, Jane was close to all three of her siblings, but she was especially close to her older brother, Keith. They just seemed to share a special and unique bond. The parents raised all Ford Pritchard kids on a 38-acre farm.
Growing up on a farm meant that Jane and her siblings were exposed to all the natural beauty that nature provides. From the animals, to the environment, to the plants and flowers, Jane didn't grow up with all the city noise and distractions. Jane developed a natural love for horses and nature. As soon as she got home from school, she would go out on the farm and ride her horses.
As a kid and later on into her teenage years, Jane was fiercely independent and adventurous. Traits she probably picked up while living on the farm. She just wasn't afraid to do something for the first time, and she wasn't scared to do things on her own.
Jane's family knew this about her. They weren't at all surprised when after college graduation, she drove her 1966 Datsun 2000 across the country all by herself. She made the road trip by herself, stopping at all major tourist spots along the way. It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, never once thinking that anything could go wrong.
As a young adult, Jane attended college where she graduated with a degree in botany, the scientific study of plants. From a young age, she was fascinated with everything about plants, their physiology, their structure, genetics, classification, you name it, she was interested. A passion that sprung from her time on her family's farm.
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in botany, Jane moved to Clarksburg, a town in the upper part of Montgomery County. She moved out to Clarksburg on her own because she recently was accepted into a master's degree program at the University of Maryland in their botany department. For her master's degree, Jane was studying the hog peanut. Grown on vines, this viney plant was the main focus of her research.
Jane was completely fascinated by the hog peanut. She would spend hours upon hours studying the movement and growth of the plant. She was so intrigued by the way the plant moves and positions itself in the same direction as the sun's movement.
On September 19, 1986, Jane drove her blue and white Chevy Blazer filled with her research equipment to a friend's home in Luz, about 150 miles away. The following morning on September 20, she woke up early at her friend's house and drove to Blackbird State Park, arriving a little after 7 a.m. in the morning. It was the opening day of the squirrel hunting season.
She parked her car along an access road south of Blackbird State Park Forest Road and set up her research equipment about 30 yards into the woods. This morning wasn't the first time Jane made the trip out to Blackbird State Park. Her study and research on the hog peanut had brought her out to the state park many times over the last three years of her research. On this particular day, on September 20th,
She was supposed to gather the last bit of data she needed to complete her thesis. Every time Jane went to the park, she recorded her observations and findings on the hog peanut minute by minute. But her recordings of data were abruptly cut short just before 10 a.m. A couple of hours later, the couple camping at Blackbird discovered her body.
Jane's cause of death was ruled as hemorrhage from a gunshot wound. At the spot where Jane's body was discovered, the police found little forensic evidence. And when I say little, I mean almost microscopic. The police were only able to recover a single strand of hair at the scene. That was it. Whoever shot and killed Jane didn't leave behind any clues.
Jane's murder baffled investigators. They couldn't understand who or why someone would want this 28-year-old woman dead. She had no enemies, everybody loved her, and who would target her out in Blackbird? The only thing investigators knew was that Jane's death was no accident. This incident was a case of cold-blooded murder.
When Jane was suspected of being gunned down, the police theorized about maybe 25 to possibly 50 hunters were in the area. Remember, it was the opening day of the squirrel hunting season that day, which meant that more hunters were in the state park than usual that morning. But the police still had no motive and no suspects.
On the Monday following Jane's murder, the police received a tip from one of the squirrel hunters in the state park that morning. The tipster told police that he saw Jane in the park working with her research equipment while he was hunting that morning. He said that she caught his attention because he had no idea what this woman was doing in the park that morning.
He told the police that he saw another hunter approach her and begin talking to her while he was watching Jane. The tipster provided the police with a description of the man. After the forensic sketch artist created the rendering, the New Castle County Police Department circulated the photo all across media and the local news and distributed flyers around the state park.
On the flyer, the police urged anyone to come forward if they saw a man matching this description in the park that day, the day that Jane was murdered. Over the next couple of days, the Newcastle police interviewed over 300 people. But the interviews failed to turn up any solid leads or suspects.
The police also had experts conduct a detailed analysis of the shotgun pellets that struck Jane to reveal a possible shotgun source. But, just like the interviews, the tests on the shotgun pellets couldn't determine where the gun that killed Jane may have come from.
The area around where Jane was conducting her research that day and was ultimately shot was roped off and searched for days. Investigators used metal detectors to try and locate any additional evidence, but the investigators found nothing. While the police continued to circulate the sketch of the man described by the squirrel hunter who called into the police, he was interviewed several more times.
During these interviews, the police started to notice that every time this squirrel hunter told the story about the morning Jane was killed, his story would slightly change each time. One time, he would say something about what he saw. The next time, he would leave that detail out. And even sometimes, he would say that that same detail never happened.
And this was something that the police caught on to and started to document the inconsistencies in this squirrel hunter story. He went from being a key eyewitness in the case to now being considered a possible suspect. The squirrel hunter, who the police now suspected may be the one responsible for Jane's murder, was a man in his late 20s. He lived in Newark and worked as a janitor at a pharmaceutical company in the area.
Based on the inconsistencies in the story that he provided to the police, in early October, just weeks after Jane's murder, he was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony. Even though there was no forensic and no physical evidence against him in the case, the Newcastle County Police Department felt like they had enough circumstantial evidence to make an arrest.
After his arrest, the hunter was held in jail without bail. Although the police felt like they had their suspect in Jane's murder, they wanted to confirm their findings using a brand new technique, DNA evidence testing. Now, before the mid-1980s, only one lab could test and process DNA evidence obtained from crime scenes.
But by the mid to late 1980s, DNA testing was becoming widely available to police departments and crime labs all across the country. Police departments were now able to test DNA evidence obtained at crime scenes locally. They no longer had to send their evidence out to this one single lab. Now, the only piece of forensic evidence that the police had in Jane's case was the single strand of hair found near her body in the state park.
So the police went to a judge to obtain a search warrant of the squirrel hunter's home, the one they had in jail for the murder. If they had the right person in jail, DNA from his home would match the DNA found on the single strand of hair, which would essentially prove that he was Jane's murderer. But, plot twist, they didn't match.
Two forensic experts in California concluded the hair strand wasn't from the squirrel hunter, which meant he wasn't their guy. So by 1987, the police and prosecutors had no choice but to drop all charges against the man, and he was released from jail after serving nearly six months behind bars. He was free to go, and Jane's killer remained a mystery.
The police were back to square one in the investigation. They had no leads. They had no solid suspects, which is a recipe for disaster in a murder investigation like this one. Because without any solid leads or potential suspects, you run the risk of the case turning cold. After months of investigating, all leads in the case either dried up or turned into a dead end.
Naturally, the police started to turn their attention to other newer cases that were popping up. The officers basically had to move on from Jane's case and started working on other investigations. And eventually, the police moved Jane's case to a cold case file. For years, Jane's murder remained cold.
Her family and friends were left wondering who could do something like this to her. They wondered if this was a random act of violence. Did a hunter in the state park happen to see Jane conducting her research and just decided to gun her down? Or was she killed by someone she knew? Did someone follow Jane to Blackbird that morning and use this opportunity to murder her?
None of these theories seem to make much sense. They knew her death wasn't an accident based on her injuries, but nobody could understand who or why someone would want her dead.
That was one of the most frustrating things about this case. Not only was it frustrating that Jane's case was cold, but it was frustrating that her murder seemed to be pointless. There was no motive. It became a story about a young 20-something-year-old female, a graduate student with her entire life ahead of her,
being gunned down in a state park for absolutely no reason at all. It became a case that not even forensic science could solve. Are you searching for a new psychological thriller book that you just can't put down? Introducing Crazy Is As Crazy Does, The Life of a Serial Killer by John H. Mudgett.
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Download and start reading your copy of Crazy Is As Crazy Does, The Life of a Serial Killer today on Amazon or on Kindle. That's Crazy Is As Crazy Does, The Life of a Serial Killer by John H. Mudgett. Jane's case remained cold for the next 29 years, almost three decades, until 2015.
In 2015, a new cold case team was assigned to Jane's file. The team was created after the October 2014 announcement by the Newcastle County Police Chief. He announced that his department was creating a cold case division to solve unsolved murders in the county.
They created this division to, quote, solidify our vigilance in identifying and arresting those who commit murder in New Castle County regardless of when the crime occurred, end quote. This initiative by the New Castle County Police Department meant that Jane's case would be one of those files to be reopened. The division started with one full-time detective and a handful of support staff.
When the county created this cold case unit, there were between 40 and 50 unsolved homicides in the county throughout the recent decades. These murders dated as far back as the 1970s. The idea was that the newer and more recent homicides would be assigned to a detective working on active cases and that the older and colder cases would be assigned to the cold case unit.
The unit was headed by a nine-year veteran detective, Detective Orzakowski. He became the perfect person to take this position because his experience working on major crimes like rapes, robberies, and home invasions. He was also the type of detective who liked a good challenge, the kind of challenge that solving cold cases would bring.
So this detective's support staff included Officer Davis, a retired officer who spent over 20 years on the force, also working on major crimes. Between Detective Orszakowski and Officer Davis, this was one strong cold case unit. Jane's file in Jane's case became one of the unit's first case to tackle.
Once they received the file, the first thing they knew that they needed to do was get their hands on the strand of hair found at the crime scene, the DNA.
Even though it had been nearly three decades, all of the evidence collected back in 1986 still had a lot of potential value to the investigation. You never know what investigators could have missed all those years earlier. And plus, by 2015, our advancements in DNA testing had come a long way from where it was and where it first started back in the 1980s.
So these two detectives knew that the key to solving this would likely be with that strand of hair and the DNA. The second thing they needed to do was let Jane's family know that their daughter's case was finally being reopened after all of these years. At first, the news almost seemed too good to be true.
Jane's older brother, Keith, thought that the police and the phone call might have just been a scam, that someone was on the other end of the phone just playing a terrible, terrible practical joke on the family because it seemed so unlikely that after 29 years and with no new leads and no new evidence that the police decided to reopen the investigation and find Jane's killer.
But after everything sunk in, Jane's brother and family were ecstatic that there was still a shot at solving this one, even after all these years. Since reopening the case, the two investigators have sent many pieces of evidence to crime labs all across the country for testing.
The hope is that new DNA testing can be done on the evidence, leading to additional clues that the police didn't discover back in 1986. Although it's not entirely clear exactly what pieces of evidence have been sent out for DNA testing, investigators are likely using newer techniques like touch DNA to identify possible clues in the case.
TouchDNA could reveal possible suspects by identifying someone who may have touched Jane's clothing or any of her research equipment that she had out with her that day. It's also possible that they are retesting the strand of hair found near Jane's body. The hair sample is likely being tested against samples collected and stored in DNA databases like genealogy websites.
so that when there's a hit in one of these websites, they'll be notified that the sample matches a known profile. Or if Jane's killer has had any subsequent interaction with law enforcement and he or she was required to provide a DNA sample, it could also be compared to the hair sample. Now, another item that could be retested would be the shotgun pellets found during Jane's autopsy.
Even though back in 1986, the analysis on the shotgun pellets didn't reveal any important clues about the murder weapon, retesting the pellets could help identify either a make or a model of a shotgun, which then could be compared to shotgun sales in the area. Sure, it's a long shot, but these are all steps in the right direction with a fresh set of eyes on the case.
Now, ever since the cold case unit reopened Jane's murder in 2015, the status of Jane's case has been mainly kept a secret. Not much is known about exactly what has been tested or what the items have been tested for.
The New Castle County Police Department maintains that the cold case unit continues to work on the case and that testing is still being done on every piece of evidence in the case. But since then, there haven't been any significant breaks in the case just yet. Over the years, people have speculated about what happened to Jane Pritchard and who killed her. Although the police quickly ruled out an accident,
Some people still speculate that her death was a tragic hunting accident. One theory out there is that a hunter in the state park that morning mistook Jane for an animal and hunted her down. Once the individual realized their massive mistake, they ran and never told anyone what happened.
The problem with this theory is that there wouldn't have been an animal out there big enough for someone to accidentally mistake Jane for a large animal. The only animal that hunters were permitted to hunt in the park were squirrels. So the likelihood of a hunter mistakenly believing Jane was a squirrel is zero. There is no likelihood of that happening.
Now, the second theory is that Jane was shot and killed by a hunter who was in the park. Even though one of the hunters, the guy in his late 20s, was ultimately ruled out through DNA testing, there were at least 30, 40, 50 other hunters in the state park that morning. And any one of them could be considered possible suspects.
During the days following Jane's murder, the police questioned about 300 people, but none of the interviews led them to any one of the hunters. Now, for those that believe in this hunter theory, you have to consider a possible motive. What would a squirrel hunter's motive be for shooting and killing Jane?
It would just be such a random act of extreme violence for someone to head out to the state park wanting to shoot and hunt squirrels for them to end up shooting and killing a human being.
But unfortunately, that is the very nature of a random act of extreme violence. It's entirely possible that some sick person, a sociopath who was in the park, had a shotgun. And when they saw Jane doing her research, they took advantage.
The suspect didn't intend to go to the state park that day and murder someone, but when the opportunity presented itself, they took it. A third theory is that someone else in the park that day is Jane's killer, not a squirrel hunter. Let's keep in mind that Blackbird State Park is a huge park. There's five campsites. There's many picnic areas.
There would have been a lot of other people inside Blackbird that day besides squirrel hunters, which of course opens up the net for a lot more potential suspects. It's entirely possible that someone else in the park, whether they were camping, maybe they were homeless, anyone else decided to harm Jane.
Maybe this was the first time this person was ever in Blackbird State Park and decided to commit this crime of opportunity. When it comes to a public state park, the list of potential suspects is almost endless. A fourth theory is that someone in Jane's life is her killer.
People who believe in this theory say that maybe someone followed her into Blackbird that morning, waited for an opportunity to harm her, and then killed her. Or this person knew Jane's schedule and knew that she was planning to do research there and showed up after she arrived.
We know that Jane was in Blackbird starting around 7 a.m. in the morning, and the last notes in her research book were recorded around 10 a.m. This leaves the window open for someone to catch up with Jane, find her at her research spot, and murder her. But, again, just like with all the previous theories, what is the motive?
Investigators couldn't find one single person in Jane's life who would want to harm her. No jealous ex-boyfriend, no scorned friends or co-workers. They couldn't find anyone who would have the motive or desire to do something like this. And when there's zero motive, it's nearly impossible for the investigators to pinpoint someone in her life who might be responsible.
Although the police reopened Jane's case in 2015, the identity of her killer remains a mystery. She was mysteriously gunned down while conducting botany experiments in Delaware's Blackbird State Park. Even though investigators quickly ruled out an accidental shooting, everyone is left puzzled about what happened to her and who was responsible.
At this point, Newcastle investigators are hopeful that her killer has said something to someone about what he did sometime over the years. Maybe he's told a friend, a spouse, someone he trusts. And the hope is that one day, someone will come forward and tell authorities what they know, whether that's an ex-spouse or an ex-friend.
After all these years, the killer is likely to have told at least one person what he did that day. The Newcastle County Cold Case Unit continues to work on Jane's case. The unit strongly believes that DNA can provide a much-needed break in the case and that it's only a matter of time before they get that break.
Anyone with information about the murder of Jane Marie Pritchard is asked to call detectives at 302-395-8110.
You can also send in your tips to nccpd.com or using the police department's app through its Facebook page or contact the Delaware Crime Stoppers Unit at 800-TIP-3333 or at tipsubmit.com.
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