The Wayside Café
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Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Kate. Hi, how are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing? I'm doing really well. I was just reading an article about covering, as a reporter, contemporary crime, which is a topic you and I have talked about before. It makes me super nervous. What did my grandmother used to say? More nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Oh, jeez.

That's an expression. Remember, we're from Texas. So it makes me super nervous just to report on contemporary crime because I'm so concerned to make sure I get all of the facts right, that I don't re-traumatize victims. I really prefer to work with older cases where the families are really invested, but the wound is not quite as open as it is with these, you know, more contemporary crimes. And I know that you've had some experiences where

talking with the families of victims, I think that really resonated with you about more recent crimes, even aside from the Golden State Killer case. Well, yeah, you know, of course, throughout my career, I was working cases that were contemporary, you know, so there are living victims, loved ones, most notably Golden State Killer. I was dealing with

actual victims in addition to the loved ones of the homicide victims. And, you know, different people have different thoughts, you know, on how they want the media to cover their case. You know, some families really want the case pushed out. A

Because the more attention, you know, the greater likelihood that maybe it will get solved. Or it helps, you know, if they've lost a loved one to a crime, it helps keep their loved one's memory alive. There is that philosophy.

But then there are families that do not want to have their cases out there in the public, and they don't want the details out there. They don't want to hear some of the details that maybe they were unaware of. And that's what I've run into.

I had one very notable instance, and this is related to a victim of the Golden State Killer of Joseph D'Angelo, where on a TV show, I mentioned some reconstruction aspects in terms of what D'Angelo had done in this particular homicide case.

And this was something that the family really struggled with and it traumatized them. And the daughter of this victim confronted me. She was hurt. She was upset with me. She was hurt. And it was a learning experience for me, you know? And so this is where now that I'm in this public arena and talking about cases, I realize

struggle with. How detailed should I get, you know, sometimes? Because I may go into a realm which could be very, very hard for loved ones of the victims to hear, you know, what happened to their victim. And, you know, as a journalist and as an investigator, you and I are both used to putting up a little bit of a wall and receiving all of this evidence and all of this information that would be so upsetting to family members and to the lay public. But this is part of our job is to

look and analyze this information. So I imagine I've seen you at CrimeCon doing these really in-depth presentations. I imagine it is stressful after that experience to then decide what to include and what not to include in a room of 2,000 people, which is what I saw you in. Right. And it is a conscious decision in terms of what I do include. You know, of course, when I train law enforcement, I

I am very wide open about the details because that is how law enforcement needs to hear the case. That's how we improve to do the job right and to do the case right. But when talking to a mostly civilian population, it's now that fine balance of here's the case,

Here are the details of the case so the listeners can understand the case better, understand what the offender did, the psychology, the forensics. But it's really a struggle to go, well, when do I cross that line? And oftentimes, you know, I'm really coming up short when I start talking about the details of the actual violence.

on the victim. And that's where it's kept more generic. When I talk, you know, to the civilians, victim was strangled versus going into the detail about the wounding patterns and what I can discern from it. So it is, it's a tough thing. But, you know, for me, I obviously got a very different mindset than you because I'm used to working cases that

had just happened, right? And so my expectation is, is I am going to be having to deal with victims' families at some point in these cases. Well, this is a case, the one I'm bringing you today, this is an interesting case for me because this was a family who came to me and I get all sorts of inquiries from family members for tenfold more wicked. I don't get so many for buried bones just yet.

And this was a family who came to me and said, you know, I know you've got this show. I would really love to hear what Paul Holes has to say and what you have to say about this case. It's been in our family. We didn't know the victims, but there are people alive now who did know the victims. And there's a lot of controversy within this family about what happened. So I want to be clear going into this.

This is the long-tailed cat, me, saying this makes me nervous because the family really wants me to do this, but I had about seven interviews with them. Oh, wow. It was a lot of correspondence, a lot of talking. I wasn't able to talk to some family members I would have liked to have talked to, and the family has gathered their own information. But the two men who came to me with the story feel pretty unbiased. They feel like, we just want some answers. We don't have a dog in this hunt, really.

So let's go ahead and set the scene. This story comes to us from this family who all come from the Jorgensen family. Everybody's had their names changed since 1963. This is in Payette County, Idaho. Have you done much in Idaho? I think you've been everywhere, so I'm assuming you've been to Idaho also. Yeah.

No, believe it or not, I've never been to Idaho. It's on my bucket list for sure. But I've heard like you have, it's a beautiful area. And there's a lot of law enforcement out of the Bay Area that have retired and move up to select cities within Idaho. I do know that. So there's a good chance I'll probably visit somebody out there at some point.

So this is Payette County in Idaho. It's a southwestern part of the state, which is near the Oregon border. So it's about an hour's drive from Boise, very rural. And we're talking about end of January of 1963, January 23rd. So very, very cold there.

I don't think the cold weather is really going to affect this story. I know I often give you a weather warning when we have an outdoor scene and you need to really be aware of what the weather's like in this scene, but this is not so much. I just think it's interesting. So very, very, very frigid cold weather.

So Payette County, where this has happened, was very much the opposite of city life. Think rural countryside, very slow-moving, small village type. For me, it seems like a village. The whole county is just 12,000 people in 1963.

Absolutely beautiful farming, great fishing, low crime. The family said this was just the most idyllic place you could go to visit. And this is, of course, a place, I know this is a cliche, but it's where everybody knew their neighbors. Everyone was very aware of the drama and the rumors that were happening.

in this area, which typically does, of course, I'm assuming not help a murder investigation at all. I know you have a big city with lots of choices, but then when you have this small town, everybody starts to point fingers at each other, I imagine. Well, you get the rumor mill going and the rumors spread like wildfire. So now the whole town has heard something that may be factual about the case or may be completely wrong.

And that does complicate an investigation when you now are talking to witnesses and they've heard something off to the side. And now what they may have been a witness to or of has been tainted. And I think that we might have a little bit of a case of that here, but we'll just have to see as this unfolds.

This is probably not going to surprise you in a small county, but there is a sheriff and a deputy, and that is it. That is their whole department of law. There is a sheriff and a deputy, which have never really had to cover a case like what we're about to talk about. So going into it, I'll be interested to see how you think they did with working this case with as few resources as I imagine they had. Yeah.

Yeah, and do you know, is there a nearby city with a police department that maybe is a larger department than this sheriff's? It's about an hour from Boise. So I'm unclear on if they called in Boise. I think they must have. But I think that the sheriff really took the reins here. And I'll say that the deputy's daughter talked to the family, the sole deputy's daughter talked to the family and said that this sheriff was so well-liked that...

The deputy named one of his sons after the sheriff because he was just so impressed with this man, which, you know, I know it's your boss, but I think it says something in a small town. He was very well respected and I think became more respected after this case. So let me tell you about this. This is the center of the story. Your murder location is called, I think, one of the most creative names, the Wayside Cafe. So the Wayside Cafe is...

It is owned by a couple. It's this unassuming gas station and a diner. And I know it sounds large, but when I show it to you, it's very tiny. This is not a big scene we're talking about here. It's a white log exterior in the southern part of the county off of an old highway road, so Highway 30.

So people traveling throughout Idaho and into Oregon might have passed by, and they were popular locally, good diner, good food. It was run by a woman named Daisy Jorgensen since 1951. So she had been running this for 12 years.

And eventually she married, seven years later, a man named Niels Jorgensen in 1958. The two of them started running it together. And they had living quarters on the property. They had family living really nearby. And they had a family living really nearby.

Everything was centered on the Wayside Cafe, and that's why I've named this Wayside Cafe, because it really is the epicenter for this story. I'm going to be a little bit of a spoiler here and say these are two of our three victims. So Daisy is 64. She was born in Texas. And Niels is 79, and he was born in Denmark.

And he immigrated to the United States when he was eight years old. Both had had spouses previously who had died, and they both had kids from these spouses. So, you know, they married later in life.

One interesting note I did not know until I talked about the family, Niels was deaf. You could stand right behind him and he would never hear you. And that might also play into this story. Beloved family, everybody thought that they were fantastic. You know, they met because Niels was farming nearby. He went to the Wayside Cafe. He met Daisy. They just seemed to have a really lovely relationship.

Daisy had an adult son named Billy Bristow. Now, Billy is one of the issues that we have in this case. He was staying with them at the Wayside Cafe. He's 38 years old. He's a truck driver, a World War II vet, and he is trouble, lots and lots of trouble. And we'll get into that in a little bit, I think, once we kind of talk about what ends up happening in this case.

Billy had just come to visit. It was a temporary stay. He'd only been in the town for about two weeks. He was visiting his ex-wife and his children who lived very close by the cafe. This was the family I was referring to. But Billy's permanent home was in Nevada, in Winnemucca. Now, this is where the whole rumor mill starts. We are going to talk about the crime in a second. We have three victims here.

What we do know is that the family members who are alive who knew Billy say that the day of the murder, he was very, very agitated. Okay, so he is walking around, pacing around. He usually has a lot of bravado. He looks scared. He looks upset. Nobody knew what the issue was. There are a lot of rumors about Billy having a gambling problem, having problems with his ex-wife who lives right next door.

So now we're going to talk about the case. Here is what happens. At 6.30 in the morning on January 24th, 1963, a bakery delivery man named Wayne Gober pulled into the cafe to drop off a bread order, which he did often. Lights were on. He steps inside. He calls out for the Jorgensen's for Daisy and for Neal's. Nobody responds. He walks to the back. He sees two dead bodies, Neal's and

And Billy, I bet you thought Billy was going to be the perpetrator. Did you think that the son was going to be the perpetrator? Yeah, you know, I was starting to, you know, think about this going, okay, so the two dead bodies are obviously going to be Daisy and Eels. And Billy is AWOL. That was what I thought you were going to be saying. Billy was not AWOL. Billy was dead.

on the floor of the kitchen. And Niels and Billy were collapsed like they had been cornered there. And Billy's pocket knife was open on the floor beside him as if he saw something coming, flipped open the pocket knife. And he literally brought a knife to a gunfight because he and Niels were shot dead with a .32 caliber gun. Victim number three is Daisy Jorgensen, which you probably could have guessed.

So Daisy was found in the bedroom, which was off from the kitchen. And it appeared that she had been shot, perhaps coming out and hearing a ruckus, shot, and then she made it back into the bedroom. And so, you know, I brought this up with

the family and said, well, wow. So whoever shot this woman, she was alive long enough to crawl into the bedroom. That seems like significant. And they said, no, this is a very small space. The bedroom was literally two paces from the kitchen. So you have three people dead from gunshot wounds and

And thus begins the investigation. So here are the results of the autopsy. We've got these three people. Niels was shot twice. This is the older man who was deaf. He was shot twice, once in the forehead and once on the right side base of his neck.

Daisy had been shot three times, twice in her face and once in her right arm. She had injuries on her right hand and her wrist, but it wasn't clear whether these were defensive wounds or if she had had them before the attack, you know, working in the storage room. Then the last victim is Billy Bristow, the son.

He was shot twice to the right of his nose and to the left of his chest. There were slugs found in both Daisy and in Neal's, no slug found in Bristow. It seemed to me like

It's almost like somebody was spraying the room with bullets because it just doesn't seem very experienced to you, right? On the nose, right outside the nose? Oh, no. I'm hearing this very differently. Okay. I'm wondering, do you have any information as to the distance the pathologist thought these shots were fired from? Very close. This is a very small kitchen. Well, part of what I'm asking is, is that...

when a gun is discharged very close to a target you have this firearms discharge the gases as well as gunpowder that come out of the muzzle of the gun and if the gun is close enough

you will see these deposits around the entry wound on the victim. Now, I'm talking about, you know, this is 6 inches, 18 inches, 24 inches, depending on the gun and the ammunition, showing very close-range shots, which informs me in terms of how close the offender is at the time the shooting is occurring to each of the victims.

All of them have gunshots to the head. And if this is occurring at a distance, even though this is a small storefront, that starts to tell me, well, you may be dealing with somebody who is a pretty decent shot. Neal's was shot, you know, twice in the face, the head. Once in the forehead, yeah. If the shooter is 10 feet away...

and he's accomplishing that. And I'm using the term he, I don't know the gender of the offender right now, but I'm saying, okay, this, you know, sometimes you get lucky, but this is also showing at least a level of proficiency in using a firearm. Okay, so this is a little bit more detail that could be helpful.

They found three spent cartridges in the kitchen and three in the adjoining bedroom, which, as I said, was two steps maybe from the kitchen, as well as a bullet near Billy Bristow's body. All six shots had been fired, and all the bullets came from just one weapon, which...

which they believe came from the same .32 Colt automatic pistol, which was missing. The family said they did not have a gun at the residence, so it sounds like he brought a gun to, or he or she brought a gun to the scene. Yeah, so with the firearm missing, you know, that was going to be one of my questions is, you know, first we have to consider murder-suicide. Billy takes out Neal's mom and then kills himself, but if

the delivery man is the first person into that shop since the homicide occurred, then that would suggest that the offender took the gun with him. So now, yes, we have a triple homicide, a triple shooting. 32 caliber, is that a complicated gun? Would it be hard for me to use because I've used guns before and they have not been easy for me to use before? You know, the caliber of the weapon really isn't a determining factor as to whether the gun is a complicated gun to fire or not. 32,

32 caliber is a smaller caliber weapon. It's on the smaller side. In modern shootings, we rarely see these smaller calibers, though I will tell you I have responded out to homicides in which all calibers, all common handgun calibers have been used from a 22 all the way up through, you know, your 45 caliber.

And all those calibers are capable of killing. But the 32 is a smaller round. It's not as powerful as what you would get with your 38 or 9 millimeters or 10 millimeters or your higher caliber weapons. And this allows this gun, I think you said it was a

Colt. So, you know, this is a smaller handgun, a .32 Colt that probably holds at most maybe eight rounds is my guess, you know, and this is a gun that is easily put into a pocket and

Looking at a .32 Colt from, you know, the early 1900s, this was the type of way that this gun was carried. It was really sort of like a concealed carry weapon that people would just slip into a pocket and was easily drawn out of a pocket. It's something that if somebody knows how to shoot a semi-auto pistol, they would be able to shoot this gun.

We don't have many photos from this case, but let me show you a photo of the actual Wayside Cafe. So this is it. You can tell there's a car there where you can see that they're trying to give you some perspective. It's not very big. Here's another angle, if that helps at all. It almost has a log cabin type feel to it, right? Yeah. With multiple windows.

multiple doors. It is significant to the case that the delivery man, when he gets to this, the Wayside Cafe, is that he's able to walk right in. So it doesn't sound like this was locked as you would expect if

They had shut the store down, and the offender didn't take the time to lock up behind him after he shot the three victims. That's correct. So the timeline here is that the cafe closed, the whole place closed down at 11, and they are estimating that their deaths happened.

And between 9.30 and 11, this is when the last customer, legitimate customer, left the Wayside Cafe. So the coroner says, and I have a question about this, the coroner says that they believe Billy was killed instantly, but that Niels and Daisy likely survived even up to an hour. When you see that type of conclusion, died instantly, it depends on, you know, the anatomy that the bullet passed through.

So with Billy, if the coroner is, the pathologist is saying died instantly, that tells me that there's a chance that that bullet, because he got shot through the nose, right? To the right of the nose, I believe. To the right of his nose. Chances are that bullet probably traveled from the front to the back and went through the brainstem. And that's where you get that instantaneous death that the pathologist will put out there.

Now, the pathologist mentions copper sheath slugs with a central lead core. Is that significant at all or is that normal for the time period or is it normal now? That's normal. You know, the copper sheathing, that's what today we would just call, you know, it's a jacketed bullet. And the jacketing is on the outside of the lead core. So the lead gives the bullet the mass and

The jacketing is what the bullet interacts with inside the barrel of the gun. So that's where the forensic importance in terms of the marks that can be used to identify what gun fired the bullet is going to be on that outside jacketing.

But the jacketing also provides some ballistic characteristics as well as can be used depending on how it's formed to enhance the wounding characteristics. If this is a hollow point bullet and the tip is lead and then you've got the copper jacketing that's kind of sunk down, this allows when that bullet impacts the victim's body that the

bullet expands. It kind of mushrooms out. And what that does is it creates a larger wound, but it also slows the bullet down so you don't have so much risk of over-penetrating. So you're shooting somebody and if you have like a full metal jacket bullet,

where there's no hollow point, none of that soft lead exposed, that full metal jacketed bullet has a greater likelihood of passing through the target or the person you're trying to shoot and hit something in the backdrop, maybe another person that you weren't intending to shoot. So that's why law enforcement typically uses hollow point because it gives greater control over where the bullet's ultimately going to end up. Well, the family has a theory, at least about the order of things. I'll be interested to hear what you think.

What they surmise is that the killer came in and caught Niels and his stepson, Billy, off guard back in the kitchen. They're cornered. Billy has time to pull out this jackknife out of his pocket to try to defend himself.

And Billy and Niels are killed first. And then in the ruckus, just feet away from her bedroom, Daisy comes out, is potentially shot in the arm. She staggers back onto the bed, which is where she's found. No sign of sexual assault or anything like that. She staggers back onto the bed. She is then shot two more times in the face. And this is why they think she died last. And this is actually kind of strange, but it's important to know that she died last.

is what the coroner believes. So do you think that that sounds pretty valid, the order of how things went? Well, just based on victimology, if I'm an offender going into this location, who are the biggest threats? And it's the two men. And Billy's the biggest threat. Yeah. You know, so he's 38 years old. He's probably much more physically capable than Niels, who's 79. So

So the offender is going to be doing a risk assessment to himself going, okay, those are my threats. I need to take them out. Billy's pulling a knife. And probably coming at him at the same time. That's probably the closest contact the offender had to them. And I'm curious, of course, is Billy pulling a knife? Is there interaction, you know, between the offender and Billy? Because, you know, maybe Billy's the target and Billy recognizes who the offender is.

And that's why the knife is pulled. So could Billy have been the target and Niels and Daisy, they were witnesses that were eliminated based on victimology. That would be my first guess. But of course, I want to know, was anything stolen out of the cash register? Was there money taken? You know, is there a financial motive to this crime? And the homicide was really kind of secondary.

Nothing taken. Okay. But I do have some interesting pieces of information that gives me an opportunity to talk about the way I grew up in rural Texas. So, of course, this is a gas station and a cafe. The sheriff, when he responds to the scene and secures the scene, which it sounds like he did a good job, I'm not reading anything about forensics that was tainted. I'm not reading about people coming into the crime scene and corrupting it.

He and the deputy go and they check the pumps to see, did they have a customer who used their gas and registered something at the pump, but then there wasn't anything in the cash register. So they had a couple of charges that,

ended up on the gas pumps. They went to the register. The money corresponded, except for one charge, the very last one. Someone pumped $6 worth of gas, and when they looked in the cash register, no cash corresponded. Does that make sense to you? If they don't see anything else missing, you've got someone who it looks like as of right now as the investigator, looks like didn't pay. Yeah, so now imagine, let's say you have somebody who's

setting himself up to commit this homicide. You know, one of these victims is a target, or maybe all three victims were a target. So the ruse is to look like a customer. And then, you know, you pump gas, go into the store, everybody's guards are down, and then the gun is pulled. But I also wonder, do you have a customer that pumped gas when the offender, completely separate, walks in, and then all of a sudden shots ring out, and that customer's like, I'm out of here.

Yeah. You know, and that's a witness. You know, that's somebody that you'd want to track down because they possibly saw who the offender was, at least a description of a vehicle, a description of what the offender or how many offenders, you know, what the offender looked like, what they heard. Was there an argument? So there's that. So that's part of what the sheriff and his deputy need to tease out as to, okay, we

who and why is pumping gas for, what was it, $6? Yeah, $6, which was not inexpensive in 1963. So this is what's so interesting about being a small-town sheriff who understands the way the economy works in a little place like this. What he discovered was something that I had grown up with, which is, I'll just tell you the little backstory. So I grew up in a tiny, tiny town. My parents were divorced when I was 16.

And so I split my time between my dad's horse ranch and my mom's place in Austin. And at my dad's horse ranch, we were in a town of literally 100 people.

And there was a little general store where I would go and we would order hamburgers. It sounded actually very much like Wayside Cafe. It doubled as an upholstery shop also. You could get groceries. I never saw my father pay a dime to the people who own this grocery store because we would go, we would order food, we would take groceries, and they would just jot his name and the amount down in their ledger. And my dad would just pay with a check.

once a month. That's what happened here. Okay. The person who paid the $6 had paid in the ledger. This was a very common practice with their business and with a lot of small towns that people were so trusted, they just paid on credit essentially. And then they would just settle up once a month.

So that person who could have been a potential witness was dismissed at that point because they were now able to say nothing was missing. Daisy's purse wasn't missing. No jewelry was missing. Billy had money on him. None of that stuff was missing. So initially they're thinking, oh, there was a customer that didn't pay $6. But then they check the ledger and it's like, oh, this is what's going on. Yep. Got it. Okay. Okay.

So at this point, there doesn't appear to be any money missing, no stolen property from the premises. So this looks like the homicide was the intent. At least the intent was to confront the victims. And then it turned into a homicide. And the offender brought a gun to this location. So was homicide the original motive? Or did this escalate to homicide because maybe Billy's interactions? Billy resisted.

Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club.

There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

Hey, Paul. I had some downtime recently, and I finally got to hear you on Small Town Dicks. Oh. What a great show. I forgive you for cheating on me with another podcast. It took a moment, and then I realized how nice it was to hear you with the voice of Lisa Simpson. Tell me a little bit about the show and the audience in case anybody hasn't heard it yet. Small Town Dicks, I actually met them almost four years ago.

To be frank, I didn't know who Yardley Smith was, you know, but she is the voice of Lisa Simpson. I didn't know. She interviewed me on stage and then the two brothers who are law enforcement or former law enforcement now, Detective Danny, Detective Dave. So, you know, part of it is the law enforcement connection, shared experiences. We just generally just hit it off as people, right?

And I'd recorded with them several times over the years. And then they approached me to join the team, which of course I jumped at because it's just such a good fit. And this is a podcast in which we are either telling stories of the cases that we've personally been involved with,

more frequently interviewing investigators who have cases that we talk about. And typically, the cases are anonymized as to where they occurred, the victims, suspects, names are changed. But

But the circumstances of the case are being told. And, you know, they have their own experiences. You know, I never worked patrol. They worked patrol. They worked as detectives in different capacities. Dave was a child abuse investigator. Dan, you know, he worked narcs. He worked burglary.

You know, and of course, me and my background, which is predominantly homicide, CSI, forensics, the behavioral side. And so it's an interesting podcast for sure. You know, so yes, I have been cheating on you, Kate. I really, I was hoping that you would never notice that. With Lisa Simpson. Check out Paul on the latest season of Small Town Dicks wherever you listen to podcasts.

So the sheriff goes out and, of course, canvases and talks to everybody in this small area and finds out that there were customers in and out all night up until about 9.30 when the last customer left. So there was a man who came at 8.50. And remember, this is a shop that stays open until 11.00.

He comes at 8.50. He says business as usual. The ex-wife, who lives very, very close by, says that the cafe lights were on all night long, which wasn't particularly unusual. Sometimes they worked very, very late. They did the books. They opened up really early. I think the sheriff felt like this was somebody who obviously knew the hours of this cafe because for them to be able to go in while it was still open and feeling confident that no one else would come in and do this...

I just get confused about whether this was premeditated or not. It seems pretty risky to go into a business where people are showing up up to 30 minutes before you've killed someone, and they've obviously brought a gun. But is this an argument that was sparked and then, you know, all of this happened? So I still haven't sorted out whether this is premeditated or not, and maybe you don't have enough information yet to even speculate. Yeah.

That's where, you know, you can have a circumstance where, yes, the offender knows this cafe, understands the customer flow, and is confident going in that they could commit this homicide and leave without being seen. That would suggest that the offender has local knowledge or has taken the time to really kind of watch this business location, get a feel for what they can do to accomplish this crime in terms of timing. But it

maybe a situation to where the offender is in there. You mentioned Billy, possibly the family saying maybe he had like a gambling problem. Maybe you have somebody who's there to collect gambling debt. And when this kind of escalates, the offender is looking around going, okay, nobody's here. And I'm going to send a message, you know, to my other customers that you can't get away with not paying your debt. It takes out Billy.

It's so hard with the information provided to be able to say, is this premeditated or not? It's just fundamentally the offender brought a gun. If Billy was the intended target, the offender took the time to eliminate the other witnesses. So this could be professional in your eyes, even though they're sort of on the side of the nose and hit in the arm, this still seems like this could be a hired hit? Well, I wouldn't eliminate that. In terms of the gunshot patterns, during the

During a shooting, these are very dynamic. It's not like the shooter is just shooting at a static target. You know, when gunshots start to ring out, people move, you know, and for this offender to be able to hit all three victims, at least each of them once in the head, that's a lot of work.

That does suggest a level of firearms proficiency. So this may be, let's say, somebody who has been, you know, if this is an enforcer for this gambling aspect that Billy was involved with, then possibly this person is a very serious threat with the gun. Okay, so let's talk about potential other suspects.

So the first real lead they get is a delivery man who came to drop off a beer order the night of the murders. Yet again, people who knew them and knew anything about running a cafe knew that there were people coming all the time. This man came at night to drop off a beer order. And this is not a suspect because there were customers there at the time who saw him come in and then leave.

He says he took note of three people in the cafe that gave him this unsettling feeling that they were just sort of killing time and waiting for him to leave. And they made him a little bit nervous. And this reminded me a little bit of the yogurt shop murders, which are very famous, you know, here in Austin of the young girls who were murdered when I was in high school here.

And the latest lead had been that there were a couple of people in the yogurt shop sitting there at the time of the closing, which is when the murders happened with these young women or these girls. So it reminded me of that. Customers there waiting for things to close up, waiting for people to leave, and then striking. And this is what the sheriff is most interested in right now.

Well, first, yeah, you have to identify those customers. But then those customers, if they are there with the intent to commit a crime, they are exposing themselves to all these witnesses. You know, this is now suggesting to me, well, this isn't a very well thought out, planned case.

because now you have many witnesses that could possibly say they were in the cafe. That would almost suggest that maybe it wasn't premeditated. They were just waiting for a period of time in order to confront the victims, and then things escalated from there. And what's interesting about the wayside is there were people not just in and out of the cafe, but living nearby. Billy's ex-wife was right there with his kids. Yeah.

So this was, yes, a rural area in general, but where they were, there were people around. So you're talking about someone who killed three people and then exited, and nobody heard anything out of the ordinary in a space where, wouldn't you think a gun, a .32 caliber would have made, I know you told me this before, but what's the kind of, on a level of one to 10, this is certainly not a shotgun blast, how loud would this have been? Well...

Fire harms are loud. When you shoot a firearm, whether it be a 25 caliber, all the way up until your real powerful weapons like your 44, they're not quiet. And you have six shots that are fired out of this gun, right? But how many shootings? I'm thinking there's so many shootings that I've responded out to where many shots are fired.

and neighbors don't hear a thing or they misinterpret what they hear. - Right. - This is in like modern residential areas, you know, where you have the houses right next to each other, but sometimes, you know, doors are closed, windows are closed, et cetera. So it muffles the sound that the witnesses hear. Here with the Wayside Cafe and the picture that you showed me,

It looks like it's a relatively isolated building. And these gunshots are inside that, you know, so if the doors close, windows are closed, sounds on the outside will be muffled. And it's January, so everything would have been closed up because it's so cold.

That's a good point, for sure. And any of the nearby residences are also going to be closed up. Well, let's talk about these three mysterious people who seemed menacing to the beer delivery man. They approached the sheriff after they read about the story and said, you know, we're witnesses. We were there. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

What they were waiting on for so long was they had been coming through town and their tire blew. And they were waiting for the mechanic. And it was getting later and later and they were getting frustrated. They were waiting for the mechanic to fix their tire. And he backed up their story. He said, yeah, they were here and I sent them on their way. And that was that. So the sheriff cleared them. He was even able to, I believe, track down where their ultimate destination. So this was another dead end for the sheriff. Yeah.

So now we're back to... Square one. Yep. To somebody who knew their schedule, a pretty ballsy move going in and killing these three people. Sounds like Billy was the target, or at least he was the closest. He was the aggressor. It's the most accurate shot, it sounds like, to Billy. We'll talk about the investigation. This sheriff did his job very well, it sounds like, canvassed the whole area. He

He interviewed everybody within, it sounds like, a 30 to 50-mile radius, just doing the best he can to get this family some kind of closure. And, of course, the people in the area in this small town were scared that somebody was coming into these businesses. Nobody was sure whether this was connected directly to the family. I think the sheriff was feeling confident, though. It sounds like this was a little closer to home for him.

than we think. And this is where things get a little twisty with the family. Billy had not just one, but two ex-wives. And Billy had some big, it sounds like gambling problems stemming from Nevada. The family, despite the fact that this man was terribly murdered, has kind of uniformly said he was a terrible person. And they think that this was the motive for murder, that this was not a good person.

that potentially someone very close to him wanted to take out their anger on him. And the suspect comes up as potentially one of the two ex-wives or the people that they were involved with at the time. What do you think about that? Either as a woman being the perpetrator in this sense? Well, this is fundamental in terms of motive. You have relationships

that have gone sideways. I think you told me early on that earlier that day, wasn't he supposed to meet with one of his ex-wives and children? Yeah, the ex-wife lived right next door. So this is potentially someone who says she didn't hear anything and could have slipped out very easily if she were involved with this. Does the sheriff interview her about the interactions that she had with Billy earlier that day?

I believe he does. I mean, I think everybody has been interviewed. And this did not set alarm bells for the sheriff. I think that he just hit a dead end and people found it very hard to believe that a family member would do this. And so this is where things get even a little weirder and stickier. There are a couple of things, of course, I haven't told you. So this is a note from one of the men who talked to me. This is from someone who had talked to family members who were alive when this happened and were at the scene. They were living next door.

I talked to many people in and out of my family. Billy was called shiftless, shady, untrustworthy, and lazy. Every person believes in the end that Billy was the target at the end, and Niels and Daisy were collateral damage. I could not find one single person who spoke highly of Billy.

I had a lady who lived on the property and knew all of them. She was gone when the murders occurred, but when we talked about what happened, she said it had to have been about Billy. She has no idea why anybody would kill a sweet old couple, but she said nobody felt sadness for him being killed. It seems like obviously he's the likely target. We don't know why, but I do have a theory once I hear what you're talking about.

Well, you know, victimology is huge. And so this is assessing the three victims. And most certainly with what you've told me, you know, Niels and Daisy, they do not appear that they would have any enemies that would come and commit to this level of violence, you know, take their lives.

Billy has all the red flags going off. So part of the early stages of this investigation, as information is being gathered, Billy starts to stand out as the reason for the homicide. And so now it's really kind of

especially with the limited resources of the sheriff's office. It's focusing the attention on Billy's social circles, Billy's last 72 hours. Oftentimes, people make the decision to kill within 72 hours of the homicide. So really, timelining Billy's days out, the three days prior, to see what's going on. But you cannot tunnel vision that Billy is the reason these homicides occurred.

there are other possibilities that seem less likely. One could be that you did have what was going to be a robbery. Robber goes in and is not anticipating Billy's there. And now he's got three victims. He shoots and runs off, has no relationship to the victims at all, was there for financial motive, but then it escalated to where he had to shoot and kill. And now you've got, in essence,

An unknown offender, a stranger to the victims who's in the wind. And especially in 1963, this is going to be a very, very difficult case to solve. So that would be a possibility that I always have to keep tucked into, like the opposite extreme. One extreme is Billy is the target and the answer is with Billy. The other extreme is this was a random crime and there's no connection to the location or the victims between the shooter and the victim.

If this is a random crime or a hit because Billy has crossed the wrong people in Nevada, why kill an elderly couple if they can't identify you? Why not kill the threat and then take off and run? Why kill this couple?

Well, you don't know they can't as a shooter. Now you have to be in the shooter's mindset is now you have three adults that are seeing you. Even if they don't know who you are, they have now collected data on you that can be passed on to authorities that could eventually cause the case to be solved and you being arrested. So this is where these offenders will just eliminate all witnesses when they get that opportunity because that way they don't have

Well, it's funny you had just mentioned a financial motive because this is the part of what I've been withholding from you because I do that every single time. Here we go. I'm going to get that printed on a T-shirt. Here we go.

So here is an interesting motive. Billy had a $50,000 life insurance policy, which in today money is about a half a million dollars. Billy has not been paying on this policy, but the second ex-wife who lives right next door has been paying it each and every month, the premiums on this policy. So who's the beneficiary? Well, here's the interesting thing.

It is Daisy, his mother. So both ex-wives were surprised that he had not named one of them as the beneficiary. He had the insurance policy, it sounds like, with the first ex-wife because he was a truck driver and then, you know, continued to pay when he married the second ex-wife.

And then he stopped paying, it sounds like when they divorced, and she picked up the payments. So you've got two ex-wives who say, wait, I'm the beneficiary of this huge policy, but this

This is what's so interesting to me. The way the policy was written and the way it was interpreted by the courts, because this turned into a court case, was that Billy was killed first before Daisy. So she was the living beneficiary when he died. And because she hadn't named either ex-wife as her beneficiary, it was tied up in courts on which ex-wife, if anybody, was going to get this money. Because...

Because the order of death became very important in this case, and that's why. Who was going to benefit from this? And you've got two women who believe they were going to benefit from his death. Yeah. However, when it comes to determining motive to commit the homicide...

How this insurance policy was actually written sounds like it was unknown to the people ahead of time. And so they're developing possibly a financial motive based on their belief. And this becomes very important. I mean, yeah, $50,000, I would not have expected Billy to have that level of a life insurance policy in 1963. Yep.

So it's a significant amount of money. And if either of the ex-wives felt that they would have been a beneficiary, and then people who are in those ex-wives' social circles, let's say they're, I don't know if either one of them had remarried or maybe a relationship with a significant other,

But that person also is thinking, well, if she gets the money, I have access to that money. You know, so that's where you really start digging in into both ex-wives to see, okay, who is capable of it? Of course, you have to figure out, we've used the term, I've used the term when I talk about this offender as he, right?

But no, you know, this is where one of these ex-wives could have been the one that walked into that cafe. They have to be investigated in terms of their timeline that day, their alibi at the time that they believe the shooting occurred, as well as who they are communicating with. Who are they in a relationship with? Who do they have access to that could potentially be capable of committing this crime?

My vote is for ex-wife number two, who lives right next door to the wayside inn, who obviously knows the couple very well. I'm sure they could identify the first ex-wife if they had survived, but certainly the second ex-wife. You know, obviously she knew their hours. Probably growing up in Idaho, she knew how to use a gun. I certainly would never say that one gender is more apt to be able to use a firearm correctly than the other, but I imagine she could use a gun.

And she was paying on the policy. I assume the first ex-wife just forgot about it and assumed that she was gonna be one of the ones who benefited. So let me tell you what happens. So the judge just says, forget it. I have no idea who gets this. He split it down the middle. So now you've got two women who have benefited from this man's death, who sounds like a terrible person. They had terrible divorces. They were both pissed off current men in their lives who didn't like Billy either. Mm-hmm.

So you now have a financial motive as well as this guy was a jerk, and it's a very convoluted mess. To me, you've got someone in the family who certainly is probably the prime suspect at this point, but we don't know who. Well, the second ex-wife, if she's continuing to make payments on this life insurance policy...

She is under the belief that she is a beneficiary and probably the sole beneficiary of the $50,000. So financial motive is huge there. Did the sheriff search her place? Was she known to have owned a .32 caliber Colt pistol? You know, there's so much questions I have about this ex-wife. You know, how thoroughly was she investigated to determine her involvement in the homicide case?

It sounds like enough to say we don't have enough evidence to charge anybody with anything, and the judge did not deny the insurance company of having to pay this out. One strange footnote here that I didn't get into very much with the family, but the second ex-wife ends up marrying Billy's brother. Okay. Later on.

This is another development. I think you've got a very unlikable, very at-risk victim. Then you've got his parents, his stepfather and his mother who were collateral damage. And you've got several people very close in his life who benefit financially and also don't like him. So this is all very sensitive, though, with the family.

Sure. And from my perspective, I do think the second ex-wife and her associates are likely going to be the prime suspects in the homicide. But I would not...

eliminate other possibilities until the case is proven. Yeah. Because it doesn't sound like the sheriff got very far in terms of actually making a case. So this technically is still an unsolved triple homicide, prime suspect, second ex-wife, but I'm assuming she remarried the brother, she lived a happy life thereafter with the money and has subsequently passed away. Yep. Yep.

And that's why I'm not naming her because her grandchildren, I believe, are still around. And everybody has mixed feelings. I don't think anybody truly knows, but you're right. With a cold case like this, speculating is really hard. The only thing you and I can do is look at the evidence and say—

where would we have headed? And I certainly would have spent as much time as possible on the people who benefited the most, which turned out to be these two women in his life who were also likely the most hurt by Billy. Again, you know, we don't always deal with victims like Niels and like Daisy who just sound salt of the earth, wonderful people.

who certainly didn't deserve to die in this way. Nobody deserves to die, certainly, of murder, but Billy certainly doesn't sound like somebody who was valued during life and even after life. Even today, you know, this is where the family, you know, my questions about

The second ex-wife is, well, did she maintain a diary? Did she write letters? Was there a deathbed confession? You know, she continued to live and maybe the guilt got to her. She doesn't sound like she is a hardcore criminal, hardcore killer. So maybe Billy being killed, she doesn't bat an eye at because this was just a bad relationship. But she also took out Daisy and Niels, whether she's the shooter or had somebody do it.

That's going to eat at her until the day, you know, she died. That's where I would be starting to focus is, okay, what exists today, either in a written form or, you know, verbal communications from her that would help cement in my mind that she was responsible for this triple homicide.

Yeah, we certainly don't want to convict someone we don't even know, you know, all of the evidence. But this is, again, Paul, why homicides that are what I consider contemporary, which is 1963 is contemporary for me, homicides that are more recent, you know, make me so nervous because of the family, and I want to make sure that we get everything right. And it's really hard to make guesses about things, you know,

when you don't have 100% of the information. But I think that we certainly know what road we would go down if we were back in 1963 trying to gather evidence.

But I continue to say, if there are people who have these sorts of stories in their families, particularly if they have a lot of forensics happening and Paul likes lots of twists and turns in the stories, definitely, you know, reach out and let us know because I think that there's a very rich environment for people being able to do research on their own families. And some of the people that I've talked with, some of our listeners really have done a tremendous amount of research. So I love that kind of support.

Yeah. And I think to prove this case is to find the gun. Was this a gun? A smart killer would totally get rid of the gun. Yep. But sometimes people hold on to the gun and maybe that gun has been passed down through the family and they don't realize it's a murder weapon. Okay. Or it's, you know, been secreted. It's in a safety deposit box.

hidden that way or buried in the backyard, you know, that would, I think, short of that written confession, finding that gun would be where, okay, now we know what happened. Okay, well, I'm going to go now check my backyard for hidden guns.

I didn't see any past crimes happen. I'm always looking around. My family thinks I'm crazy because I'm always thinking, I wonder if anything weird has ever happened at our house, in our location. You never know. You never know. I mean, your house used to be a morgue, right? Isn't that what you told me? No, this is my... I mean, my house in Austin feels like a morgue sometimes. I keep it very cold, so... Okay. Okay.

Okay, so next week, we're going to have another fantastic case that I can't wait to unravel with you. And just to let you know, Paul, I don't know if you know this, but the new trailer for season seven of Tenfold More Wicked just dropped, and I'm so excited. Oh, that's very cool. I've been waiting forever. There's so many big gaps happening.

you know, in between the last season and the beginning of the next season. And I love Tenfold More Wicked. And I know some people have been asking me about it. So this upcoming season, season seven, is about a family annihilator, which is something I've never covered before in Austin, Texas in the 1800s. And I'm 99.9% sure no one's ever heard this story before. Those are my favorite kinds of stories. So I can't wait to tell you more about it in a couple of weeks, Paul. Looking forward to it. Okay, I'll see you next week.

Sounds good. This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our art

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.