Identifying Susan Lund with Laurah Norton
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I hope you had a nice November and are having a lovely start to the holiday season. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder, She Told. Today, I have a special treat for you. My friend Laura Norton, who's the host of the Fall Line podcast, wrote a book called Lay Them to Rest that you've probably heard me talk about or seen me post about. I've read it. It's amazing. Laura is a wonderfully empathetic person and a skilled researcher whose passions line up with mine.

So I thought that you would love to hear about her work on cold cases and unidentified persons cases, and how she worked with a team of experts to identify a woman known only as Ina Jane Doe after 30 years. If you've read the book, this interview will be a great companion. And if you haven't, there's still a lot left in the book that we are not going to cover.

Oh, and make sure you're following Murder, She Told on Instagram and Facebook, and keep an eye out for a post coming later today for a chance to win a copy of Lay Them to Rest and a Murder, She Told merch bundle.

So, Murder, She Told listeners should be familiar with your podcast, The Fall Line, and with the new book, Lay Them to Rest, even if only through the many social media posts that I blasted them with. But I would love for you to introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about the work that you do, both on the show and off.

Absolutely. And I do want to say how grateful I am for that constant social media support. I think probably there is some percentage of book sales that have come directly from you. Can confirm. Yeah, can confirm. I think people have told you. So I am really appreciative of you and all of my friends who've been supportive.

My name is Laura Norton, and I've been involved in, I guess, what you might call the true crime space for about six and a half years now. But in my real life before that, I've been a writer and researcher for my entire adult career. I was an English professor for more than a decade at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. That's where you can hear my accent come out. And my area is creative writing, both fiction and creative nonfiction.

And I was always an avid researcher, someone interested in really digging into subjects that people maybe didn't know much about where information wasn't readily available. That was always kind of a passion of mine. And I moved into true crime when I became really passionate about a case that I know that my listeners are aware of. And I'm sure many of yours are, too. The case of the Millbrook twins. That's how the fall line began. And

The work I do now presently, while we certainly still do focus on all kinds of cases on the fall line, whether it's missing persons, cold homicide cases, my big focus is on cases of the unidentified.

So John Does and Jane Does. That's really my passion area. And it's my passion area because the Fall Lines Project has always been to really look at cases of people who have not gotten much media attention or who have not gotten sustained media attention. You know, maybe there was a little attention early on, but a case has gone cold five years, 10 years, 20 years, and their family members are really struggling.

In a Doe case, one of the biggest issues is that almost across the board, there just is no media attention. So my goal has been both on the show and off the show in my personal work with my colleagues who are scientists and my work with law enforcement to really focus on trying to get more attention on Doe cases.

And through that, I've actually begun to work with a number of people on trying to resolve DOH cases as well. So you mentioned that the Fall Line covers cases that have gotten very little media attention. What made you choose to cover those kinds of cases and DOH cases also? The point of the Fall Line has always been to help. That is the entire point of the project.

And we always thought that, okay, we have a couple of particular skills that are maybe not that helpful in our everyday lives to take out into the world and say, you know, hey, I got these skills, let me help you with your archival research. But they are things that are pretty applicable and helpful to people who are trying to get coverage for their loved ones' cases.

But when they reach out to maybe someone more mainstream in podcasting or a YouTuber, they were hearing that, you know, we'd love to cover this case, but there's nothing available. And that's where someone like me comes in. And I'm able to do primary research, field research because of my background.

And Brooke, who is my co-creator on the fall line, people don't hear her a lot because she works in the background, but her role is absolutely essential. She's a licensed professional counselor with extensive training in family therapy and grief and trauma. And she works with families and she does the family interviews.

And we felt like those skills were helpful skills to have. So when we began working, our goal was simply to not try and solve cases, you know, not try and be personalities in the space. And this is not to say that anyone else's approach is an issue, but just that we felt that our particular skill set could get information out about a case faster.

but also get people's stories out there, create a platform so that families could speak directly to audiences. And we knew that when audiences heard the stories of families who were looking for their loved ones, they would care. Because a lot of families told us, I don't think anyone cares. I don't think anyone wants to hear my story.

And we absolutely knew that wasn't true. It's just that people hadn't heard the stories. We started covering Doe cases in 2018 when I came across a couple of Doe cases here in Georgia and in Florida that had no media footprint whatsoever. And of course, there there's no family to interview.

There is a family out there, but they've been disconnected from the unidentified person. So I began to brainstorm ideas about how to give DOH cases more extensive coverage, looking into science, trying to understand the files, because it actually is, in my experience, easier to get a DOH file. But what you're left with oftentimes are an autopsy, maybe an anthropological report, a toxicology report. And so you have to look at that and say, how do I shape this into a narrative and it

create an emotional connection that the audience, you know, will feel? And how do I help them recognize that this is not just a set of remains, this is a person. And so that became part of the project too, that was so important to us.

Where do you even start with a case like Ina Jane Doe to try to find information that might be related outside of the direct coverage? So it's never one size fits all, right? And I don't always know what I'm going to do until I start doing it. It can depend so much on time and place, and it can depend on...

what was happening, who was in the area. I'll give you an example. So right now I'm working on a case of an unidentified decedent in Nashville whose remains are unfortunately no longer available. So there's no testing that can be done. His remains have been lost. So we're looking at so many things there. He had a significant and unusual piece of jewelry that he was wearing at the time. We have a rough idea of how old he was, but there's no anthropological report. There's no autopsy.

Right. So what do you do with that? Well, I mean, you go to the obvious things. You look at NamUs. You look at the Charlie Project. You do all the stuff that we know to do as researchers. But then you really have to stretch and expand a little bit. So you begin to look at other things that were happening in the area at the time.

Were there any major events that happened in town? Were there an influx of people from different areas that came through in that period of time when this person was discovered? Based on postmortem interval, we have a pretty good idea of when they may have died. Were there other similar incidents, if it was a homicide, that happened in the area or in a surrounding area? Are there cases that seem similar, you know, within a year or two in a surrounding area?

I am someone who has a strong belief that serial killers are absolutely the last place you go. People always want to start with a serial killer. Serial killers are the exception, not the rule. You always want to go with the probable, not the exceptional. But in some cases, if it was an area that was highly trafficked by a particular person or by a particular people, so, you know, if it's the Colonial Parkway in the right period of time, then that would be a reasonable thing to look at, for instance.

But that's where we begin to research. And we also look at old newspapers. So when you look at newspapers, of course, you look at, say, you know, you type in missing person, you look for clothing. But one thing people don't think about is people quite often would take out personal ads looking for missing people. And they wouldn't say like brother missing. They would say, Johnny, haven't heard from you. Please write home. So there's certain phrases you get used to looking for. And

you begin to look for those in the certain time period that you're, you know, searching for. And once you get further into looking into these cases, you'd be surprised how much you can actually find. Honestly, it sounds like a lot of the work that we're doing with the Reeves case, where we just have very little to go on and we just have to dig and dig and try to find every tiny, minute piece that could be helpful or even not just to know the awareness of what was going on.

Also, it just breaks my heart that his remains were lost. How often does that happen? I know that case files get lost and every cold case police department seems to have a basement flood at some point, but how do you lose someone's remains?

Very rarely is this due to some sort of like, you know, gross misbehavior on anyone's part. More likely it's due to records getting lost or misplaced. So certainly someone's remains are somewhere, but there's a piece of paper that's gone missing. There are many indigent burial grounds. People may also know them as pauper's graves.

where the records have been completely lost. This is a big issue in Nashville. There's one very large indigent burial ground where someone picked up the markers who was doing lawn work and moved them. And then someone else picked them up again and completely removed them.

So there are many does buried there, and we have no idea where they are in the burial ground. Dozens. And there are several cases there that I have talked about on the show where we have some strong leads on trying to identify those people, but there's no way to do DNA. And there's no way to do any kind of confirmation match because simply we have no idea where they're buried, so they can't be exhumed. So that would be one reason.

Another reason would be that perhaps someone was sent to a university for anthropological exam and the university might still be holding their remains for law enforcement. But that piece of paper telling law enforcement that the decedent is there is just not in the file.

So very, very, very rarely, I would say, is someone truly lost. It's just more a matter of trying to figure out where that paper trail got lost. Because as you mentioned, and I agree with you, I have yet to run into a department that did not have some sort of horrific flood, fire, a pipe burst, etc.

Something that happened that destroyed records pre-digitization. Here in Atlanta, when they moved buildings, they didn't have moving trucks. So they actually had to move the major files by car was what I was told by an old detective once. So just imagine all those boxes of files being moved by car 50 years ago. I would not be surprised for one piece of paper to go missing. Now, I can't 100% promise that story was true, but it was a colorful one that I was told. So I do like it.

My listeners are familiar with Patricia Newsom's case. And in that case, she was the East Haven Jane Doe. They couldn't locate her remains because she was in a part of the cemetery that hadn't been maintained for decades. So they had to go back and look at all of these records. And they ended up exhuming the wrong person because that's what they believed was Patricia. And unfortunately, in

Instead of the coffins being put like side by side in the markings that were on the map, they found out that there were coffins stacked on top of each other. So when you look at the headline, because it obviously made headlines, cops dig up wrong body evidence.

I feel like the average person would be like, oh, well, that's dumb. How could they do that? But then you see all of the work that went in to try to figure out these maps and all of these records that people living today don't really know because the people who kept them have passed. It makes sense why it was so difficult to find her. And that was such a challenge to overcome. Yeah.

There's a huge project in Detroit happening right now, Project United, where they are excavating, not fully exhuming, but excavating a giant indigent burial ground. I do keep saying indigent burial ground because it's where they are burying both unidentified and unclaimed bodies where there was no money for the funerals, where they are working to identify people right now. And it's just as you mentioned, where people are buried in all sorts of ways because it's, you know,

50 to 60 years of different burial methods from coffins to bags, you know, people buried in different directions. And they do have records, but they're having to try and match people up to the records and then work to identify people as well. And that kind of undertaking, because I'm sure people are thinking, well, go to the cemetery, do exhumations and identify these people. But that kind of undertaking is hundreds of thousands, if not a million dollars. It's incredibly expensive. So

Just that process, which is something I think we'd all like to see, can just be prohibitively expensive, unfortunately.

So what led you to write a book? I've been approached to write a book a few different times pre-podcasting, but I was really focused on short fiction at that time. But when I was in year three or four of podcasting, it's when we did our series on the victims of Samuel Little. That series apparently was impactful for a lot of people because a couple of different editors reached out and asked me to write a book on some of the work that we were doing. And

And my deal was that I didn't want to write about serial killers. I'm not interested in serial killers. I'm interested in victims and I'm interested in families and I'm interested in how crimes get solved and why they don't get solved. And that was, of course, kind of about two years into my work on Doe cases, too. So I said, OK, I want to write about forensic science and forensic scientists and I want to write about unidentified persons cases.

I found a home at Hachette and my agents at UTA were wonderful. And I was able to write exactly what I wanted to write. So that was really wonderful as well.

And it all ended up kind of coming together where I was working on several different cases with my friend and colleague, Dr. Amy Michael. She's an assistant professor of anthropology at University of New Hampshire. She's a biological anthropologist that specializes in forensic anthropology. But she and I are both really interested in certain kinds of cases, really similar cases that appear on the fall line, but especially cases from areas that are kind of resource poor, where we think that the cases probably haven't been looked at in a couple of decades.

So we had gathered together a little bit of money that we could put towards some casework. And we'd begun reaching out to a couple of different departments in different areas. She has a special interest in the Midwest because she's from Illinois. I, of course, am interested in Georgia. But there were just also some other cases that we'd both been following for a long time and we were interested in. And as I was beginning to write about the history of unidentified persons cases and the science and following them, I was looking at a couple of different cases online.

that I'd be really interested in following along. I could show you our Google Doc. It's huge of cases that we are working on, we want to work on,

Sounds like mine.

And the case of Ina Jane Doe, as she was known then, who was found murdered in Ina, Illinois in 1993, just kind of came to us from Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. The

The third investigator who'd been on the case was about to retire and he wanted to see the case solved. So he was really interested in anything we could come up with that might be a new fresh look at her case because he just felt that like something new needed to be done. So it just kind of fell into place to follow along right at the time I was really beginning the serious work on the book. And that case became the focus of the book.

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What I love about this book is how descriptive the writing is. It's kind of unlike anything that I've ever read. And I also love that there's this mix of a narrative through line that's kind of following your journey and your journey with all of the other experts, along with like seamless learning, right?

You know, I think that this is something that a lot of true crime readers and cold case enthusiasts will walk away from having learned stuff without it feeling like a stuffy nonfiction educational book.

That was certainly my hope because I wanted the reader to feel how I felt because I had to start reaching out to all of these experts. These are the people that I, you know, sneakily collected to be my friends when I started working on dough cases because, you know, shockingly, I majored in English.

Not a science-heavy subject. So when I started working on DOH cases and getting these stacks of files full of science, I desperately needed to understand what they meant so I could do the cases justice and get people to care and, you know, be helpful.

And as I began working with scientists who were kind and patient enough to explain to me not only what some of the terminology meant, but also explain to me how anthropology has changed over 30 years or explain to me odontology or how forensic art has changed. I've got to sit and watch that. It's so amazing.

I also began to find out that I could be helpful to them too, because the kind of research that we do, and I know that you research very similarly to me. I often think about a few of you, you, Josh Hallmark, a few other people are very academic. I don't know if you know that you are, but you are in the way that you research.

The kind of research we do is not the kind of research they do. So we can bring something to the work they do, too, whether it's the kind of field interviews we do, the way that we know how to dig into records that are outside of the purview of law enforcement. So we began to work together. And I wanted the reader to have that same experience because this book is not for academics. It's for the layperson because I am the layperson myself.

Even after all these years, I mean, I kind of consider myself to be in like fifth grade science, you know, compared to all my friends who are scientists. Same. Yeah. But I wanted my readers to learn what I learned because I kept sitting there going, wow, I wish I had known all of this when I started. I wish that when I saw that headline, just like you said about the burials, I wish I'd when I saw those headlines, I understood what they really meant and what the challenges there are.

and why things don't happen and what prevents them and why we can't just say run the DNA, you know, and so many other things. So I wanted that for readers. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really easy for people who constantly consume true crime and even like, you know, TV shows like CSI to see that stuff happens so quickly. And, you know, they can just plug into a computer and you get an instant DNA match and people are just like, why don't they have DNA for this dough? Yeah.

Well, because she was buried in 1975 and they didn't collect DNA back then. They have to exhume her to get that. And if they can't find her, they can't exhume her. So there's just this trickle effect of reasons why something hasn't been solved that I think a lot of people listening might not know about.

So I think that that does help fill in the gaps and also just educates people on all of the work and the hands that touch these cases and all of the work that goes into it behind the scenes that people don't see.

That's one thing that Dr. Anthony Redgrave, he is a doctor now. He just wasn't during the time of the book. So I do like to drop that in. I was just interviewing him a couple of days ago for the fall line. And he says that we really need to remember all of those hands that touch a case because we tend to concentrate on the closers who often now are, you know, forensic investigative genetic genealogists, you know, DNA labs. But he says, think about all of the hands that touch a cold case before it finally gets solved.

And so I think that really is a good point, because there are so many people that have to be involved dating back 10, 20, 30, 40 years before that science was available. The work they did contributed as well. So that's something I like to think about, too.

Can you tell me about the Ina Jane Doe case and like where it was when you and Amy first started working on it? Did you get a sense then that this could be solved through your work? I always think about cases as cases that are solvable, no matter what case it is, right? I think that's a necessary component to casework, especially in this case. I felt like there were so many particularities that what her case was really waiting for were just updates. She

She had really particular forensic art. She had a sketch and she had a forensic bust that had been circulating for over 30 years and no one had recognized her. So that let me know that if someone was going to recognize her, you know, they would have at this point. This was the kind of case that Amy is always looking for most.

which is a case that probably needs reanalysis. Amy's a big believer in skeletal reanalysis because forensic anthropology is not a static field. We learn new things about the human body all the time, about the skeletal system, and the field is not that old. So, you know, 1990 was...

a century ago in terms of anthropological development, right, in the field. So she wanted to do a new skeletal analysis. You know, forensic art has developed. Not to mention, of course, you know, the big elephant in the room, which is DNA. Not only do we have STR DNA, we have SNP DNA, which is what's used for forensic investigative genetic genealogy.

But honestly, I knew that there were a number of things that could solve her case. From, you know, new skeletal analysis, which could have even possibly helped match her to someone in the system, to dental comparisons that were updated because there could be new dental records in the system, to forensic art that was updated that, based on the new skeletal analysis, someone could recognize it, to, of course, what eventually ID'd her, which was DNA, and the forensic investigative genetic genealogy done by Redgrave Research. Um,

And they identified her in about six hours, all told, with the DNA profile done by Astraea Labs. I had a pretty good sense that she was going to be ID'd. And as soon as a good DNA profile came back, I knew she was going to be identified.

But I try to approach every case as if the person is going to be identified because that for me really colors how I view the person before they're identified. I like to imagine from the very beginning that at the end we may be looking that person's family members in the eye. And that really for me helps keep the focus on personhood there.

and on humanity the entire time because one thing that all of my friends who are forensic anthropologists do is they start from the very beginning. My friends all happen to be professors teaching their students about the humanity of the bones they're dealing with. They're not dealing with objects. They're dealing with subjects. They're dealing with people. They're dealing with the remains of human beings.

Thinking about a case being resolved makes you focus on the person that's at the other end of that case. When I was talking to Anthony Redgrave the other day, he talked about when you see the family tree unfold, it really drives home. That this is a person with 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 relatives right in front of you. Hundreds of years of connection. And every single one of those people has lived a life. And the person in front of you has lived a life. That, for me, is so impactful that...

I kind of have to start from the place of this case is going to be solved. But I think there were also all of those other factors just about who she was, the material that was available for testing in the case, and the fact that Jefferson County Sheriff's Office had done a very thorough job on her case. So all of those factors together for me just meant that this case was very likely to be solved.

I think that that's a really beautiful way to think about doe cases. Most people in their lives don't or won't ever handle human remains or real bones. That's not something that most people do or even think about. And I think that attaching this is not just a bone. This is not an object. This is part of a life. This is part of a human really changes it.

in just the way that you think about it. I got to experience a little bit of this in person when I visited Amy's lab at UNH, which was a very cool experience. But there's something that you wrote about that I was struck by, not that I expected anything less knowing you, but that there's just this level of gentle and loving care and the very respectful manner in which remains were both handled and also spoken about.

There's a couple of examples in the book, but there's one that really stuck out to me. And it's one that I've also seen in person. And it's where you talk about a human head that made its way into Amy's lab after many years of being on display in somebody's office or whatever. And it was labeled as an Amazon savage, which is a very problematic phrase in and of itself. But reading about how

For quite possibly the first time since this decedent became reduced to a spectacle, this person was being treated with respect and care by Amy and her team, and by the way that you wrote about him or her, was really moving. And I think that a lot of people would be surprised to hear or see about how anthropologists and other people who work with bones regularly and human remains do it in a very respectful manner.

Is this kind of a standard practice or is this just something in your experience of working with anthropologists? All the anthropologists I know, I've met through Amy. So that may be a sample that's a little skewed. You know what I mean? But everyone I know handles human remains with the utmost care and respect and teaches their students that because they're handling humans. That's that's the thing. Anthropologists study people.

They don't study objects.

One thing that most of the anthropologists who I interviewed for my book really stressed to me is that we don't want to forget that we study humans first. We don't study objects, you know, we don't want to study bones as something separate from humanity. And I think that's kind of the big focus point there is that bones are part of humanity. And so you cannot separate the bones from the human. They're not two separate things. Treating bones with respect is treating humanity with respect. So you can't separate those concepts.

How frequent do bones just like find their way to an anthropology lab from someone's office or someone's attic or something that someone bought on Facebook? Because when I went to the UNH lab, that was the topic of the day was a Facebook group where people were buying and selling bones, which is absolutely horrifying. And I didn't know that happened. Yeah.

I couldn't say precisely how often, but I will say that every single anthropologist I've talked to has a story. Whether it's someone and their family ended up with human remains from a small museum that closed, or they found something in the attic, or even people who had a Halloween decoration they thought was fake that turned out to be real. So of course, when someone shows up with something like that, they have to call the authorities.

But these are ongoing issues. You know, the number of human remains that are kind of floating around is surprising and disturbing. But I will say, while I don't know, every single person has a story. PenFed Free Checking offers zero fees and zero balance requirements for zero hassle. PenFed Access America Checking lets you earn money on your balance for dreams big and small. Choose the best account for you and start making the most of your money.

Learn more at PenFed.org. Federally insured by NCOA. To receive any advertised product, you must become a member of PenFed Credit Union. So once all of the major pieces were in place for Ina's case, it seems like everything came together pretty fast. Like I think you said earlier that once they had the family tree going, it took like six hours to identify her.

What was it like waking up and having this answer that you've been working on for months in a collaborative effort and seeing her name for the first time and her photo for the first time? This is like the day that I rue. I should have known better because those genealogists are so good. They work in a collaborative team. So it was Redgrave Research. So that's Lee Redgrave and Anthony Redgrave and also with the team leader, Victor Veltstra.

They had several student interns working as well, and they began working once the DNA was uploaded to GEDmatch, which is the public database that you are allowed to use for forensic cases. So once they began working, I know that they're fast, but I was like, OK, you know, like a day or two. And I am a mom and I'm pretty sure it was a school night.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to go to bed. I'll wake up really early and they're going to be pretty far along and I can jump in and start helping. Well, when I woke up, you know, bright and early, ready to help, I opened up their Discord group and I just saw a picture of this young, beautiful red haired woman staring back at me. And it was the senior yearbook photo of a woman named Susan Menard Lund. By the way, Ina Jane Doe had been estimated to be between 35 to 55 years old.

And most experts were thinking she was about 45, but it turned out that she was a 25-year-old mother who had been living in Tennessee when she disappeared.

So, you know, every emotion you can think of. I was shocked. I was elated that she'd been identified. Just looking at someone you've been waiting to see for over a year are a lot of emotions that are kind of hard to articulate, to be honest with you. And then I immediately jumped in on the research and began trying to find out what had happened to her. We began looking into her family members to see, you know, had they been looking for her, which of course they had. And

and just all those other questions that still needed to be answered. So what did you learn about Susan? You worked with her family and her friends. Who was she as a person? What are some of their best memories of her? Sue was just 25 years old, and she had three young children under the age of six, her youngest being just about 18 months old at the time of her disappearance. And

She was originally from Indiana, and she'd lived there for pretty much all of her life until her husband, who was in the military. And he'd been stationed in Germany until he'd recently come back, and he'd been moved to Fort Campbell. Now, Fort Campbell sits on, like, the Kentucky-Tennessee line, and so they'd moved down to Tennessee, where their housing was. But it really is on the line, so, you know, it's right there. So she was a recent transplant to Tennessee. She was from a pretty big family, so...

She was a little lonely in Tennessee after kind of leaving that area in Indiana with her big family. But she was also happy to be spending so much time with her children because when she was living in Indiana, she'd been living with her sister, Pam, who was also her best friend.

And they were both working, trading off on childcare because her husband was overseas and they were trying to make ends meet. When she got to Tennessee, she wasn't working because she was watching the kids. So for kind of the first time, she got to spend like all day with her kids and just kind of watch them grow up. And both her sisters remember her saying how wonderful that was because she got to watch all the tiny changes all day long.

that you miss out on when you're doing it halftime, you know, sharing childcare with your sister. Sue was married, you know, they were operating like single moms when her husband was overseas. So that was something that she was really enjoying that was really special to her in the time before her disappearance. She was a huge animal lover, like obsessive animal lover, rescue animal lover, and

Try to be nice to mean dogs behind a chain link fence, animal lover. That was the kind of person she was. She was really no nonsense, not an extrovert, not an introvert. She had her small group of friends. Her sister, Pam, would say that she would be kind and nice, but she'd also tell you what she thought about you if you went too far. Love that. Yeah, me too.

Um, so she was not having a super great time in Tennessee, but she was adjusting. Like she liked the more country style living that she had there. You know, there's lots of woods and things like that. What was hard was that they just moved into this military off base housing and they didn't have a phone or a car. So that was a little tough. Um, they were going to have a phone installed, but she wanted to do something. She had to walk. And you can imagine with three little kids, that was kind of hard.

And we also found out that she actually disappeared on December 24th, 1992. So Christmas Eve, when allegedly, and I say allegedly just because there's so many unknowns in this case, she'd gone out to pick up a last minute bit of groceries for Christmas Eve and just never came home. Yeah, that was something that I found a little bit surprising because the grocery store was a few miles away, correct? Yeah.

It sure was. Yeah, the grocery store was a few miles away. It was cold. Also, the grocery store was closed. There's no way that she would know that necessarily, except that back in the day, you know, I was alive in the 90s, although I was a kid. Stores did tend to close on Christmas Eve. They didn't stay open like they do now. It was more like public style. If any of y'all have Publix, I know you don't have it in New England. We do not. We have Hannaford. I don't know what that is. If they have good fried chicken, then I'm glad for them.

for you. They do not. Okay. We have that at Publix, but grocery stores did close for the holidays and you were kind of in trouble unless you had a Walmart, you know, to go to, um, if you needed something. So, you know, I've always been confused as to why she would have gone out, um,

You know, she'd even talked to one of her sisters and said she had everything. But, you know, I mean, people do change their minds. There's also the possibility there was a convenience store near their house. She could have decided to go there. The story is that she wanted to make a pie last minute. So, you know, there's just so many unknowns in this case. But one of the biggest unknowns is that she left on December 24th.

And her remains weren't discovered until January 27th. And this is Tennessee to Illinois. So that's quite a distance of time and place. And there's really no answers as to what happened in the interim, especially because she did not appear to have been dead for very long when her remains were discovered.

Yeah, I looked it up and it's about 180 miles distance and it's at least a three hour drive between Clarksville and Ina. If she was with somebody...

against her will or otherwise. Somebody had to really go out of the way. It's a haul. It's a pretty straight shot, but it's a haul. Yeah, for sure. It's something that I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that Susan's case was actually closed in 1993 because authorities said that she'd been found.

Obviously, this is very frustrating and hugely detrimental mistake because then, you know, Susan was no longer a missing person. So she couldn't be connected with a potential Jane Doe, which cases across state lines, especially back then, I'm sure were without the Internet are a lot harder to connect in the first place because people are mostly probably looking at cases around them. You know, like what missing persons cases could be connected to this Illinois case.

In your experience with working with other cases, like do major mistakes like this happen often or even cases where people aren't reported missing? I find that that happens more often than you would think. People are often not reported missing. I think that we have to assume that someone is not in a database rather than assuming that they are in a database.

I would say that off the jump. Don't assume that there is a missing persons report out there to match with a doe. Assume there's not because there's so many reasons why people aren't reported missing. This error in Sue's case, cases are closed for a lot of reasons, but this error is kind of unique in a lot of ways. What happened was that someone in Alabama contacted authorities there and claimed to be her. And for that reason, her case was closed.

There's a lot of mysteries there, and we don't know precisely why. One thing I did not get into in the book is that there's actually a military base in Alabama. Could it have been someone, you know, who had some connection to Fort Campbell, who then had gone down there? Maybe. I stayed away from theorizing in the book for obvious reasons, you know, because that's in print. People take it seriously. And if I say that someone could have been there, it becomes someone was there. Who knows?

But what we do know for sure is that a woman in Alabama called authorities and claimed to be Sue. And someone from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation went down to check into this. And they did decide for some reason that it was Sue. This was impossible because it was in July, August of 1993. She'd been dead for months. Her parents went down there and they either spoke to this woman on the phone or saw her. Unfortunately, Sue's sisters cannot recall which one it was.

But her parents said that's not our daughter. But unfortunately, they were not listened to and the case was closed. So that completely prevented the family from having any kind of action they could take in the case. They couldn't have her entered back into NamUs.

They couldn't have an active missing persons report. It really affected their ability to gain any traction. They did what every family I've ever heard of, and I'm sure you have too, did, which is reach out to all of the talk show hosts, John Walsh, and what they get told is where's the police report. So when we found them online, when we were looking to confirm Sue's identity, her sisters had been trading back and forth pictures of Jane Doe as recently as a few weeks before she was identified.

So they were still looking, but their hands were tied. It's just really sad that that happened in that case. And it's not something that Clarksville has addressed. And I don't think they will. It's a really big choice to close a case like that and to also not listen to the family. And it also really breaks my heart to know that they just were kind of off track.

in a lane of their own looking at these Jane Doe cases because they know that that wasn't her. They know that she's out there somewhere, whether she's dead or alive, and that they kind of took that burden on themselves. You know, of course, she was out there, and they just didn't know that at the time. But what's something that Sue's family want people to know about her?

I think that for Sue's sisters, the first thing they wanted people to know was, of course, that they'd always known that she'd never leave her children. That was something that her children had to deal with for 30 years. Her daughter, Crystal, who is one

One of the main advocates in her case now, her middle child, you know, grew up thinking that her mother had left her, being told by some people that her mother had voluntarily left her and chosen to go have another life without her, which is incredibly painful and traumatizing to a child. And Sue's side of the family knew that she would never do that and tried to impart that to her children. But, you know, it's hard.

When a child has a feeling that their mother may have abandoned them, you know, especially when they've been told that someone in Alabama is their mother when the case has been closed.

It was, of course, incredibly sad news to have, but also it was something that they'd always known. So having that confirmation was fulfilling in a way because they could finally say it. We knew that our sister never abandoned her children, that she loved her children, and now the world knows it too. So that was one of the first things they wanted people to know before anything else.

Reading that chapter definitely made me a little misty. I'm glad that the world knows. Something else that I really loved was the descriptions of the photos that the family shared with you. One of my personal favorite things is, you know, and I don't take this lightly, but seeing these candid photos from families that haven't been shared before. Because, you know, you see like one portrait or two portraits and you kind of have this idea of what people look like. And

And then you get these candid photos and it really just lights up the person behind the photo in just this little slice of life. And in my experience, when I've been given photos, they're often some of the only hard copies left. So you know how important these photos are. And they're also just sharing this very precious and private peek into their loved one's day-to-day life. So I really loved the descriptions of the photos that they shared with you and that you had that moment as well.

I'm glad you mentioned that because that was one of the things that I first appreciated about you so much. And I think that might be how we became friends, actually, was that I saw that, you know, and by the way, this is not a critique of anyone else and how they do things. But, you know, I was really struck by when you would go places, you took people's family photos with you in frames and displayed them. And I was just really touched by the empathy there.

that you showed, but also that you had this innate understanding of how important those photos were. Because people, when they have a missing or murdered loved one, have to hand those photos over to law enforcement so they can be used for flyers, especially these older cold cases before things were digitized. And almost every family I know has lost many of their photos doing that because they get put into files and they get, you know, lost and shuffled. And so that's something that you recognized as important. And, you know, that's one thing I think we bonded over. But...

I ended up seeing photos of Sue when I took her sisters out to dinner before the press conference. And they had been through a flood and a fire at their parents' house. And they still had managed to save these photos that showed damage. And

It was just incredibly affecting to be looking at these candid photos of their sister. And they were all from when she was younger. Young teen till her marriage. She got married when she was 18. And just seeing these photos and how hard they'd worked to save them was really one of the more emotionally affecting things that's happened to me in my life. So I was really honored that they brought those to share with me, especially before the press conference.

because we had all come to Illinois for the press conference. I was just there to hang out in the background and watch, you know, them announce everything. But her family was there going through a lot of different things. So I was really touched that they wanted to spend some time with me before the press conference. And we didn't do any formal interviews or anything like that. We were just hanging out and talking. And I was answering questions for them that they might have, but that they brought the pictures and they brought them to show to me was just really special. I am

I'm such a huge fan of candid photos, too, because you just see like a slice of someone's life in just like a moment. And I think it really sets in that this person was real. They had a full life. They had people who loved them. They had chores and they brushed their teeth in the morning and everything.

I love candid photos. It's probably one of my favorite things to work with. Yeah, it just gives you a fuller sense of life. I mean, I think we tend to think about people in the last moments of their life when really that is just a tiny bad situation.

slice of it and to fully understand them. I know that that's a big thing that you focus on too, to fully understand people. We need to see all the other moments. Yeah. Is there anything else about Susan's case that you want to add that I didn't touch on? Yeah. I do just want to mention that this is an active homicide investigation and that's big. We have flyers up. There's a flyer on my personal website, which is laurenorton.com, easy to remember.

There's also flyers that are penned on the fall lines, social media and pinned on my personal social media, which is lay them to rest. And there's a $10,000 reward in her case that does not expire. Um, it's been put up by myself and by Dr. Amy Michael in her case. Um,

leading to an arrest or conviction in her homicide. And we're really hoping that people will share this. We're really trying to get people who especially may have lived in Tennessee, who may have any information, who may have seen her on the night of her disappearance. We're trying to get that information out to them. So that's the thing that's most important to me is getting that reward information out there and sharing those flyers.

I'll also link all of this on the website as well and just have easy access in the show notes for people to find them and download them. And I'll share it on social media, too. So easy things that people can do to help a case. So what's next for you?

Well, wrapping up 22 dough cases on the fall line right now. And we're always working on one strange thing, my paranormal and unexplained podcast. That's my podcast that I blow off steam on and have a lot of fun on. They can't see me, but I'm wearing the merch right now. West Virginia is for cryptids.

Working slowly on a novel, which is for some reason still involving forensics. I can't get away from it. It's set in Appalachia with a supernatural edge to it. That's pretty much it. I'm probably forgetting something important. But, you know, podcasting, writing, and also working on Doe Cases with Dr. Amy Michael. You know, that's kind of what makes up my life now. Yeah.

Speaking of dough cases, there was a dough case that was mentioned in the book, The Christmas Dough. And it's interesting how fast things change because this book has been out for a month and already there's a major update in that case that just happened. This is one of the first dough cases we ever covered on The Fall Line. It's a case from 1988. And we covered this case in an episode with another case, the case of Dennis Dough, another child dough. And now both of those cases have been solved.

So Christmas Doe was a child, a very small child, who was found in 1988 in Ware County, Georgia. She's called Christmas Doe because she was found around Christmas. She's also wearing Christmas colors. She was found in a really disturbing way. She'd been encased in concrete and put inside of an old television cabinet and found out in the woods in rural Georgia. And

For years, there was very little information available on her case. I'm pretty sure we're the first people to have covered her case. Recently, they had been asking for coverage, and especially in the Albany, Georgia area, and come to find out that someone had called in with a tip late last year and connected Christmas Doe to Albany, Georgia, where she'd lived with her mother and her mother's boyfriend.

And her name is Kenyatta Odom. She was five years old. Her nickname was Kiki. And unfortunately, as is in the case of many children does, she was allegedly killed by her caregivers, which is something that we do see a lot with child does. But this is a case that I have followed and experienced.

hoped would be solved for the past four years. So to see it solved this week, a case 35 years old, I think just points to the fact that I keep pushing this importance of sharing dough cases across the board, not just on social media, but mailers, television, places where older people can see them too, is so vital because this case was not solved with DNA. It was solved with a tip.

The same thing with Dennis Doe and William Deshaun Harrison. His case was not solved with DNA. It was solved with a tip. So if there's one thing I can ask your audience to do, it's to share Doe cases. Share an article. Share a flyer. I'm spending half my day making flyers for Doe cases that don't have them. That can be the difference between a cold case and a resolution. That is such an important thing to say. Also to specify.

specify where some of this coverage is needed. Sometimes you need older people to see this, and older people aren't on TikTok. They're not on Snapchat. They're not looking at Instagram. They're watching television. They're reading newspapers. But honestly, anything helps. Just sharing a case. And I love that two of those cases were solved with tips, because you never know who is going to see something, and it's going to remind them about the information that they've kind of stored in the back of their brain that could solve a case.

Tips from older people who remembered a child going missing and thought the story that was given by the parents didn't quite match up in both cases. That's really, really, it's heartbreaking, but also really incredible that finally some sort of resolution is coming in this case and she can get justice. She deserves that.

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Okay, so now that we've kind of gone down like a sad track, this is kind of some questions that are a little bit on topic for the book, but we're just going to lighten it up a little bit because we're not going to end on like a sad note. Are you going to talk about what I did to you? Eventually. Okay, so this first question that I have for you, I'm curious to know if you know this. I just learned this piece of trivia and I'm

It is something that I have never thought about before, but I just went on a ghost tour in Bar Harbor last month, and they asked this question, and I'd never thought of it before. Do

Do you know the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard? I do. Of course you do. One's next to a church and one's not. Correct. A graveyard is church burials and cemeteries are not. What I immediately thought to myself was, though, the ones that are called memorial gardens. Because as soon as I learned that, I was like, but what about the memorial gardens? Like, are they the wild card? Yes. Do y'all have those up there? Yes. Yes.

Yes, I think. Are people buried there or is it just in like a monument type of thing? Down here, yeah. They're called like Memorial Garden, but it's a, you know, it's a cemetery. Oh, I don't think so. I was like, is that just an alternate name for cemetery? Because I haven't seen a graveyard called that because it's just always called like Mount whatever.

But yeah, I did oddly know that. And my nine-year-old and I were discussing it in the car the other day. That's great. As you do. I love it. I also kind of wanted to know what some of your favorite little tourist stops were on this grand journey. I am a sucker for retro neon road signs and hole-in-the-wall Americana. And I read that

you guys all had to stop at the world's largest yarn and random stuff like that. So what are your must-see roadside attractions? Full disclosure, I'm a stick in the mud. And I like to shop.

I like to shop for clothes, right? That's what I like to do. You can talk me into going to like, you know, if it's like a cryptid museum, I'll go there. Amy likes to do activities. We have this like major barter system of how many activities I'll do with her based on like

What I owe her? Has she done me enough favors? Okay, I'll go do two activities. The worst things she's made me do are look at the world's largest shoe. There was no point in doing that. Where is that located? Oh my gosh, where is that? It was possibly...

Seattle, but I cannot tell you 100%. I spend a lot of time disassociating when I'm looking at the world's largest things. This is some sort of anthropologist thing where they need to go look at every largest thing and everything on the side of the road.

She also wants to go look at buildings that will collapse on her. This is another major issue she has. She's like, oh, an abandoned building that's going to kill us. We should go inside of there. And I'm like, ma'am, we are not in our 20s anymore. Sounds like me in high school. Yeah, yeah, her too. But also now.

So any kind of like tiny roadside antique store that sells, you know, animal teeth, like we go there. Always down to go antiquing. But the worst part is, is that, you know, they're always labeled as being like some sort of paranormal creature tooth. But because she is a scientist, she just says boar dentistry.

Dear. And she just sits there and tells me which actual animal tooth it is because then I don't want to buy it because, you know, the magic's gone. The sheer number of strange stores that Amy will make you stop at begin to blend together because she's always saying that something is the largest or the best or the biggest. And then we go through the whole thing and all it is is like a tiny cut out of a dinosaur or something, you know, made of cardboard that's propped up in the back. And I swear never again.

And yet the next day, she signed me up for another activity. Okay, well, I look forward to our road trip. There is apparently a cryptozoology museum coming to Bangor. And...

On your way to Bangor, Maine, you can stop at the Desert of Maine because there's a desert in Maine. And I'm sure Amy would love that. I've actually never been. I'll go if I can go to the Cryptozoology Museum in Sephora. That's all I ask. Okay. There are both in Bangor. If I can shop.

Okay, so this is something that intrigued me from the book. Can you tell me about Goth Day at Disneyland? Because I'm just kind of interested in the idea of people tripping on acid while riding the teacups.

Well, okay, I don't think that's required. So I've only had this experience once, and this was a long time ago. But as a teen horror punk who was often confused with a goth, that was never my genre, except for a brief period till I found better music. I was taken there by my teen goth friends when I was visiting California. And I was like, why are we going to Disneyland? And they said it's goth day. And I was like, what?

Okay. And it was indeed goth day. And there were a lot of goths at Disneyland. And I just happened to be wandering by a ride. And I think it was the teacups. I mean, you know, I just said it was because I was pretty sure it was. And there were people who were just...

Absolutely, really tripping inside of the ride. And if you've never seen someone really high on acid, it's hard to describe to you how you can tell, but you can just tell. And it was just a place flooded with goss, and it was Disneyland. The happiest place on earth. This is something that happens yearly, or it did, and I assume maybe it still does. So it was something that was happening, and I was there.

I was confused. And that's my singular Disneyland experience also. That's the only time you've been to Disneyland. Yeah. So it was like just, you know, a bunch of people dressed like the crow.

At Disneyland, some of whom were very confused, chemically speaking, at Disneyland. So yeah, that was a time I had. Love that. I can't say that I've ever been to Disney World or Disneyland on Goth Day, but never say never. I don't know if they have it at Disney World. It seemed very California, I have to say. It does seem very California.

I want to switch gears to something totally unrelated. So this is going to be where the book talk and the true crime ends, because I want to mix it up a little bit and go out on a lighter, fun note. But I would love for you to stick around until the end, if you're still here through both of our colds. You know, I keep my personality out of this show. I don't think I've ever...

spoken this freely and not professionally before. Because it's just such a serious show overall. And the interviews that we do just require a level of seriousness and respect. It's not a personality show. But I like to have fun. I'm fun. So because you and I are friends,

I was like, you know what? Let's just have a little bit of fun at the end of the episode. Because I don't feel like my listeners ever really get to see my personality. That's not the very professional, serious, empathetic side. So...

Something that Laura and I connect on outside of this is reality TV. We sure do. Now, my younger self is rolling in her proverbial grave knowing that 2023 Kristen is enjoying trash TV. But I will tell her that there is reason for it. And, you know, having something so stupid to balance out all of the trauma that I hold space for on a very regular basis is needed. And now I only realize that.

It took a while to realize that I needed 90 Day Fiance in my life. I don't feel ashamed. I don't read my own book reviews because reviews are for readers. But my dad sure does read my reviews because I guess he's a dad. And he said, someone did say that you shouldn't be watching reality television. And I was like, bro, I literally have to watch reality television because I work in the darkest matter possible.

It's so sad and it's so dark. And I'm going to watch Love is Blind. Right. And I'm going to tell my friend Kristen to start watching 90 Day Fiancé. And I'm going to give her a syllabus. Yes. Of 90 Day Fiancé. One that actually did even cause, you know, some conflict with other people that watch 90 Day Fiancé. But she's going to follow mine. And she's going to start watching it. And she's going to get involved in this world. And then I'm going to have someone to talk to. Because the anthropologist got me watching it. Because they needed a break. Right.

And so now we're all watching it together. And Kristen has entered the dark world. I have. Not just of The Bachelor, which was her genre. Yes. But now 90 Day Fiance. And now she's learning so much. And it's a beautiful thing. My world has just been expanded. There's a lot more joy in my life.

that I didn't have before. Some disturbing questions also, but yeah, joy. I thought that maybe it would be fun to just ask you some questions and discuss the latest season of Love is Blind. We're not going to go too deep into it, just for a minute. This will also give a peek into the reality podcast that we haven't created yet.

Oh, yeah. That's yeah. FYI, we really want to have one. But we haven't figured out at what point we'll be that masochistic to make time for that. So right with with the time that we don't have. Okay, so what did you think about this season compared to other seasons? It's the worst season ever. Agreed. So bad.

You know, we were texting throughout the entire season as I tracked down each couple that they decided not to follow. It was just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. No one to root for. I didn't like anybody. What about you? I didn't like anybody either. I thought they all just were not rootable. I don't want to say they sucked.

Because it's just really hardcore to say that. I mean, they get edits. You know what I mean? They do. So they get edited into characters. But I didn't root for anyone. Like, I know that we're not always going to have Cam and Lauren or Tiffany and Brett. And I accept that. Right. But we at least need people to, you know, kind of root for or people who we really like and like.

There was just only two couples and people were splitting up and no one really there a lot of lack of personality and lots of American flags, a lot of American flags. And I feel like I would have liked Renee like I liked Renee in the aftermath or at least what I saw, which is just what she shared on social media. So I don't know if she would have turned into something more problematic seeing Renee.

her full storyline. But I did like what she was posting on social media. I thought she was fun. Do you ever think that we'll get to see her and Carter's

cut i mean she's been saying release the renee cut you know for weeks i i don't i even heard a rumor that they're not even going to do an after the altar this time because there's so little to after of the altar it would just be a show about milton and lydia if they're still together you know they say they are but he's living um in california for grad school so who knows

I mean, I also think that Renee is my favorite cast member, which is odd considering that she wasn't really on the show and they pretended that she wasn't there. Although, you know, for those of you who don't follow, she was. She went all the way to the altar and they had to cut around her. But, you know, it was just a really disappointing season, which is bad because season four was quite strong. It was probably the best season since season one. So then to roll into this one, I was like, why? Why are we doing this?

It's very sad. I was so excited. And we both really needed this, too. We were coming off a stressful time. Yeah. And then to come to this. So the next one better be better. Agreed. Do you think that Lydia and Uche...

knew that the other was going on the show. I know that there's a lot of speculation and controversy over this topic. What do you think the truth is? I think that at the very least, they both knew that the other was trying out because they both tried out. They weren't recruited like a few of the others were. I think they both knew that the other was trying out.

And I think that Uche knew more about what was going on in Lydia's life than he let on. And I think that Lydia knew what was going on in Uche's life. I think they both knew they'd tried out. And I think it's likely that they both knew, not just Lydia. I kind of feel like Uche was definitely downplaying their relationship on TV to try to make himself come out like the better person, which severely backfired. Yeah. There are Uche defenders out there.

Hoochay Defenders. You know, it was really funny reading some posts from people on Reddit. And yes, I did get that serious about it. From Houston who say that he is such a serial hinge guy that half of Houston has been on a first date with him and that he always takes people to the same place for the first date. So people will be there eating and see him there with his date and be like, I went here with him on this date.

So his kind of, you know, machinations are well known in Houston. So a lot of people were coming out to comment and be like, yeah, I could absolutely see him doing this or doing that. So.

I guess that only works when people don't know who you are. But now that you're on reality TV and random people can spot you, I bet that's got to be hard. But I don't feel bad. Oh, me neither. I mean, I've been married for a bazillion years, but even if I was single, I would absolutely never go on a show like that. Can you imagine? No, I couldn't. That's my worst nightmare. Getting attention consistently? No, thank you. But I do love that other people are doing it so I can watch it. I mean, I'm an actor and I don't think I could do...

Yeah, none of that sounds appealing to me at all. Oh, gosh. Can we have people come back or not? Okay.

Okay. So obviously I want Micah on the perfect match. I want Irina. I've heard Izzy is going to be on the perfect match. I do want Izzy on the perfect match. I don't want Paul. No offense, Paul, but I feel like Paul would be really boring. If there's anyone else in particular, let me think. What about you? I thought Renee would be fun because we didn't get to see her. But she's married. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. She'd be great. She would be, but she's married, so it doesn't work.

Taylor. She's nice. I don't know. She's nice. I know we want people who are going to make things dramatic. Yeah, I want people to do crazy stuff. You know, like she just seems like she would be polite. Not JP. That's really my only request. Well, he has a girlfriend who apparently puts up with his American flag couture and seems to have some of her own. So, I mean, there's always someone out there for somebody.

All right. So we're going to close this out with a fun game that may or may not ruin our friendship. This is payback for getting me hooked on 90 Day Fiancé. And it is the PG less violent version of a popular game I'm going to call Kiss, Marry, or Put on a Desert Island Alone. Fair. Fair. Okay. Because, you know, we're not going to promote violence. No. So we're just going to put them on their own island. Okay. Okay.

Okay. So, I'm sorry. It's going to be bad. Okay. All right. Sumit Jihoon or Brittany and Yazan's translator. Oh, okay. That one's easy. Okay. So, I'd marry Brittany and Yazan's translator. Wise choice. Because he is smart, educated, and concerned about the right things. And then...

I would kiss Jihoon because I find him to be handsome. And then I actually don't really think Submit's a horrible guy, but he has just severe parental issues that I can't work through at this point. So he's going to have to go to the desert island. You gave me an easy one because, you know, the translator guy is awesome in a lot of ways and also a fan favorite. So, you know, thank you. You did give me an out there. I appreciate it. I was really afraid you were going to say Gino.

Oh, that's coming. Oh, great. Okay. So the next category is Gino, Jasmine, or Christian, which is Cleo's partner from this most recent season. Okay, well...

Let's see here. I'm going to marry Jasmine. I'll never be bored. Right? I mean, as long as you're, like, making sure that her hair extensions are taken care of, that she's got, you know, whatever she needs for cosmetics, and I feel like you'll be okay. You just have to be rich. Yeah. I don't like Christian, but...

But if I kiss him, he'll go away afterwards, right? Probably. Yeah, okay, I'll kiss him once and he has to leave because he has a lot of unresolved issues. But he'll just go somewhere and be the life of the party, according to him. And that leaves the desert island for Gino because I don't think I could be here in a room with him.

For 10 seconds. I would become enraged. He has plenty of hats to keep him company on the desert island alone. Yeah, hats. He's gotten some new Bahama shirts. He has a lot going on. But yeah, I would definitely marry Jasmine. Baby girl Lisa. Oh, great. Kimbali or Soulja Boy. Okay, well, baby girl Lisa has to go to the island because she's racist. Yes. So she goes there. This one's hard.

I'm going to have to kiss Kimberly because I can't talk to her for any extended period of time. Okay. Cause it's going to really raise my blood pressure. And so then I'll marry soldier boy. Cause at least I think he's really funny.

Really, all he wants is to come to America to become the next greatest singer or rapper or whatever he's pursuing. So I feel like you give him that, it's going to be easy. I think he is masterful in many ways, honestly, as a human being. He's handsome. And like I said, I think he is funny. So, you know, like we could find work-life balance, I think would be okay. Yeah, I think that would work out great. Huh?

I'll let him know that you're available. Thank you for that. Yeah. I am already married. But yes, thank you. Well, he did want to marry like more than one person. So that's yeah, I'll let my husband know. Okay. All right. So the last one is Big Ed because I had to go there, which I already have a feeling where he's going to go. Jesse Darcy's Jesse. Good Lord.

Or Kentucky Paul who kept his mom's hair. You're just giving me a full slate of villains all at one time, huh? Yes. Okay. Yes.

So Big Ed has to go to the island because he is a true villain. I despise him. He's a bad person who does bad things. I mean, like when reality podcast won't discuss you like you have issues, right? I guess I have to kiss Paul. At least we know that he is wearing a lot of protective gear. That's true. He probably won't even notice. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, he can take his hairball. He can he also tends to run. So he might even run away before I even kiss him. It's a good point. I will marry Jesse because he won't even notice that we're married because he will be off doing Instagram shoots. He will be off traveling the world, living his luxury lifestyle.

having fake real estate companies, giving speeches to nursing homes full of people. So I feel like even if we were married, I would pretty much be a work widow and I could still have my own life. Yeah, you could just do whatever you want and you would just have to be married. Yeah, we'd have a fake marriage like you did with Unifer, you know, so he would have his own. I think that was a fake relationship. So I think we could just kind of continue that tradition. That sounds great. All right. That is all the questions that I have for you.

So on that note, just know that next time I'm going to be prepared for you. Okay. I purposefully left that one out because I was like, I kind of want that to be like a little surprise on the end. Yeah. You'll get yours. Love it. Can't wait.

Is there anything else that I missed that you want to add? No, no. But I just do want to thank you so much for you put so much effort into sharing my book with people. And also just, you know, I know that you know this, but I respect the work that you do so much on your show, but also off the show, too. I don't know how much people know about how much you work on cases off your show and everything that you do as a victim's advocate.

And also just the time you put into cases. So, you know, I'm just really glad to have you as a friend and a colleague. Thank you. Same. If you haven't grabbed your copy of Lay Them to Rest, I will link it in the show notes and on the blog. But I'm also doing a giveaway compliments of Laura. If you made it this far in the episode, I want to reward you. Thank you so much for listening until the end.

Email me at hello at MurderSheTold.com with the phrase West Virginia is for cryptids in the subject line and include your name and email in the body and you will get five bonus entries to win a signed copy of Lay Them to Rest and a Murder She Told merch bundle. For additional entries, keep an eye out on the Facebook and Instagram where I'll be posting instructions for the people who don't know

who didn't make it this far. But you did, so those five bonus entries are for you. You can find more of Laura's work on the Fall Line podcast, and if you're into cryptids and other strange stories and folklore, check out her other show, One Strange Thing. I'll see you next week for an investigative piece that we've been working on for months, and I cannot wait to share. As always, I'm Kristen Sevey. Thank you for listening.