Rachel Hurley // 401
45:36 Share

Thank you.

What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Big thank you to John, Paula, and Heather for recommending today's case. This one's out of Florida, and it is a mysterious case that needs our attention. So thank you, everybody, for tuning in today. Yes, we appreciate you guys being here, and please make sure that you share this episode today.

Absolutely. Before we dive in, I want to let you guys know about a bonus episode we just came out with. It is about the missing Poussin newlyweds. Heath, how spooky was that case? It's honestly just unbelievable. Like the facts and the details of this case are...

will leave you scratching your head. Yeah, it's one of those cases. Basically, it is about this newlywed couple in their 30s in South Korea. They were both seen going up the elevator to their apartment separately a few hours apart. They went missing and are never seen leaving the building. There's mysterious text messages, weird phone pings. The whole story is crazy. So if you want to listen to that and 108 other stories

♪♪

♪♪♪

When it comes to weight loss, no two people are the same. That's why Noom builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology. Take Brittany. After years of unsustainable diets, Noom helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off. I was definitely in a yo-yo cycle for years of just losing weight, gaining weight, and it was exhausting. And Stephanie. She's a former D1 athlete who knew she couldn't out-train her diet, and she lost 38 pounds.

My relationship to food before Noom was never consistent. And Evan, he can't stand salads, but he still lost 50 pounds with Noom. I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. Even through the pickiness, Noom taught me that building better habits builds a healthier lifestyle. I'm not doing this to get to a number. I'm doing this to feel better.

Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com. Real Noom users compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze, relax, and think about...

You really, really want it all to work out while you're away. Monday.com gives you and the team that peace of mind. When all work is on one platform and everyone's in sync, things just flow. Wherever you are, tap the banner to go to Monday.com. In May of 1990, a 14-year-old girl went missing while walking alone through a wooded area near the beach in Jupiter, Florida.

Just hours after her disappearance, her body was found in those very woods, murdered and assaulted. Just weeks after a Ouija board told her and her friends that she would be the first of them to die. This is the story of Rachel Hurley. ♪

Rachel Hurley was born on October 14th, 1975 to parents Andrea and Dan, joining an older sister named Erica.

The family resided in Englewood, New Jersey, which lies just across the Hudson River from the Bronx borough of New York City. Rachel grew up in a tight-knit loving family, which her older sister Erica described as straight out of an old family sitcom. She and Rachel, who was three years younger than her, were great friends growing up and loved playing Barbies and watching TV together, often acting out the scenarios that they would see on their favorite show, Little House on the Prairie.

One classmate from Rachel's early elementary school days described her as, quote, adorable, sweet, best dressed, smart as a whip.

After Rachel's second grade year, the family relocated south to the perpetual sunshine of Jupiter, Florida. So they left Jersey behind and they're headed to Florida. And there her dad, Dan, established himself as a beloved figure in the community almost immediately. He worked as an English teacher at Jupiter High School and also coached youth sports.

He was described as kind, funny, and uplifting, which were traits that Rachel definitely inherited. One of Rachel's best friends, Sherry Duff, recalls Rachel as charming and funny, but most of all, strong-willed, earning her the nickname Miss Sassy Pants among her peers. Sherry said fondly, quote, "'It was her way or no way, but then she'd smile and you couldn't help but love her. Everyone loved her.'"

Today's story takes place when Rachel was in eighth grade at Jupiter Middle School. So at that time, 14-year-old Rachel played for the school softball team in her spare time. She loved the movie Top Gun, often quoting it and acting out its scenes, and she even claimed that she wanted to grow up to be a fighter pilot. Her favorite song was Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N' Roses, which her friends and family remember her singing at the top of her lungs so many times.

And her spunky personality really showed on this one night she had with her friends that I think is a seriously and mysteriously foreshadowing evening. It absolutely is. So shortly before Rachel's death, she and a group of friends brought out a Ouija board for a slumber party. Now, Sherry remembers the girls asking the board, who will be the first one to die?

and the planchette on the board spelled out the name Rachel. Sherry recalls that in typical Rachel fashion, she yelled out, then do it, bitch, as the girls laughed and laughed. You know, they're 14 years old. But then the evening took an eerie turn. Rachel's best friend Sherry remembered, quote, when we asked for a sign, the house alarm went off and we lost it.

It was just weird. Not long after that, she was gone. Saturday, March 17th, 1990, which was St. Patrick's Day, was supposed to be a really fun spring day for Rachel and her friends. Well, it was almost spring because spring was just three days away. She and a friend named Erin Lodesen had spent the night at the home of another friend, Maddie Bear Weckaman, the night before.

So the group of girls had a pretty normal evening, you know, they watched a scary movie and then headed to the beach the next day to enjoy the warm weather. Rachel's mom Andrea planned to pick her daughter up at 3 p.m. in the parking lot of a park near the beach because Rachel had plans to sell tickets to this upcoming pancake breakfast fundraiser for her softball team.

But the girls hatched a plan that they hadn't told their parents about. A male friend of theirs from school had access to his family's whaling boat, and had asked the three girls if they wanted to take it out that afternoon. So worried that the girls would be told no when asked if they could go, Rachel, Aaron, and Maddie decided to get a ride to the beach and go out on the boat without telling their parents.

The day went smoothly until the group consisting of the girls and two male school friends arrived back at the Jupiter Beach Park Inlet to dock the boat. So it was around 2.45 p.m. that afternoon by this point, and Rachel was due to meet her mom at Carlin Park, which is located about a mile or 1.6 kilometers away at 3 p.m. So she had about 15 minutes from when the boat docked to get to Carlin.

The parking lot of Carlin Park. Yeah, so if anybody remembers how long it took them to run the mile in school, you know that she could make it in 15 minutes if she, you know, at least jogged there. She would have made it. How long did it take you to run the mile in school? Oh, I was like a 9, 10 minute mile person. You were? Yeah. I think my best was like 6 minutes and 45 seconds or something like that. Not me. Well, not wanting to be late, Rachel raced off the boat telling her friends goodbye and

and setting off on her own to make this mile-long walk to meet her mom. Erin and Maddie, who were due to be picked up from the same meeting spot at Carlin Park around 3:30 p.m., so 30 minutes after Rachel, urged her to wait so that they could make the walk together, and Rachel didn't have to go alone through the patch of woods. Erin recalls, quote, "I remember getting off the boat at the inlet and Rachel saying, 'I've got to go, I've got to go,' and I said, 'Just wait.'

My mom, she always put the fear of God in me. You always go with a friend. Never let a friend go by herself, and it was such a long walk. I knew that she shouldn't have gone by herself. I remember her hair flipping, and I said, "Rachel, just wait! Wait for us!" And Maddie said, "I have to go to the bathroom." And Rachel said, "I can't wait. My mom's waiting. I have to go." So she ran. She ran away. I'll never forget her hair flipping.

She had her pink brush in her hand and a white t-shirt on and a towel, and she just went running. So after Aaron and Maddie stopped at the bathroom, they took this same walk that Rachel had just minutes before. Thinking they would catch up to her along the way, Aaron asked Maddie, where's Rachel? I don't see her. Maybe she made it. But when they reached Carlin Park to be taken home by Aaron's mom, they were informed that Andrea had left without Rachel.

Andrea later said that she wondered if she had misremembered where she was supposed to pick up her daughter and assumed that it was likely that she had gotten a ride home with someone else. So after Rachel had failed to show up to Carlin Park, Andrea headed back to their home just assuming that Rachel would be waiting there. But when she arrived, Rachel was nowhere to be found.

So she returned to Carlin Park, asking everyone she ran into if they had seen her daughter. Meanwhile, Aaron and Maddie assumed that she had gotten home one way or another, and they were just a little bit more concerned about concealing the fact that they had been on the boat. Like, no part of them thought that something happened to Rachel. Yeah, I mean, why would you at this point? You're just, you're, you have the mind of a teenager. You're a 14-year-old girl's

And you're just really trying not to get in trouble by this boat ride thing. Yeah, and they had just gotten off the boat, so it's fresh in their minds. They're trying to lie to their moms, you know. And Aaron remembers, quote, We were so going to get caught.

But when Erin got home, her mom received a phone call from Andrea asking about the last time that Erin had seen Rachel. 20 minutes later, Andrea called back asking what Rachel had been wearing that day because she was already prepared to file a missing persons report with the Jupiter Police.

Aaron's mom drove Aaron and Maddie back to Carlin Park so the girls could assist in the search and, you know, pass along the information that they had to investigators since, of course, they had just been with Rachel. And at 5 p.m., two hours after she had last been seen, 14-year-old Rachel Hurley was reported missing.

The girls called as many friends and peers as they could from a phone booth near the beach, just hoping that someone had seen or heard from her. But nobody had. And within hours, nearly a hundred officers concerned citizens and friends and family of Rachel's turned out to comb the beach, the park, and the wooded area between the two, looking for any sign of Rachel.

The realization that their friend may have been met with foul play dawned on them slowly, with Aaron saying sadly, quote,

Well, fearing what they would find, Rachel's friends were eventually asked to step aside and allow the adults to carry on with the investigation. But as night set in, a torrential downpour rolled through Jupiter, and still, boats set out, cruising the coastline and inlets of the beach where Rachel had spent the day, in case she had wound up in the water.

Helicopters scanned the area from above, and K-9 units were deployed with items of Rachel's, pacing up and down the beach just hoping for any trace of her. Then, at 8:15 PM, one group made a harrowing discovery.

Aaron continued, quote,

And sadly, she was only found about 300 yards from where her mom had been waiting for her that afternoon. So initially, Rachel didn't seem to have sustained any serious wounds, but it appeared that she had been strangled and then just left naked in the woods to be found. So everyone was just completely shocked and disturbed that this could have happened this way. And now they're just wondering who could have done this and why.

So police quickly began to run down the list of the last people to have seen Rachel that day, as well as those believed to have been in the area. Now that day had been super windy, and her friends believed that she cut inland through the dense brush of Carlin Park to avoid that sting of sand blowing up against the back of her bare legs.

And just looking at it on a map, it does seem like she could have taken the beach the whole way. But this seemed to be why she didn't and why she took, you know, a kind of covered path instead. Yeah, I mean, it definitely makes sense if you're cutting through and you don't want to you want to avoid, you know, the wind and the sand and all that. It makes sense. And that's why her friends didn't see her on that path.

So this particular area by this park was known to house many homeless people and transients, some of whom were engaged in criminal activity. And one local high school student who had been present on the beach at the time reported that he had seen a suspicious man emerge from the woods around the same time that Rachel is believed to have been killed.

The student described the man as tall and unkempt, about six feet two inches tall and weighing around 150 pounds. He had shoulder length, dirty blonde hair and was shirtless and clad in blue jeans. According to the sheriff's lieutenant who questioned this teenager, quote, he said the man was bleeding from what appeared to be scratch wounds on his chest and looked like he was in a hurry.

He said the guy was quite dirty and looked like he hadn't washed his hair in a long time. And there was a composite sketch done on this guy. It is a side profile. It's not super detailed. He has facial hair. He's got that kind of long, shaggy hairdo. And that's about all you can glean from it. It's not super detailed, but we will post it on our socials. It basically just looks like what any kind of beach bum would look like. Pretty much, yeah.

So police set to work fielding tips and leads, hundreds of which poured in in the aftermath of this harrowing discovery. The medical examiner performed Rachel's autopsy and the findings were published to the public on Tuesday, March 20th, 1990. So three days after her murder, the first day of spring. And to her family's horror, Rachel had been sexually assaulted before she was killed

And she had fought hard to fend off her attacker. This came as no surprise to all the people that knew and loved her, who actually told journalists covering her death that Rachel would never have gone down without a fight.

The reason that they knew that she had put up a fight is because Rachel's arms were lined with defensive wounds. And as suspected, her cause of death was asphyxiation. But police refused to announce whether she was smothered or strangled.

And this is what Detective William Springer had to say about that. Quote,

So in the 48 hours after the discovery of Rachel's body, nearly 100 officers combed 8 miles or 12 kilometers of coastline near where Rachel's body was found, questioning anyone that they came into contact with.

On Monday, they arrested a homeless man who had been skirting arrest for an open container violation because he matched the description of the mysterious person of interest at the beach after Rachel's murder. So he was brought into custody to be questioned in connection with the crime. But shortly after his detainment, they confirmed publicly that he was not the person that they were looking for.

And to the dismay of detectives, the encampments filled with possible persons of interest were cleared out within about 24 hours of Rachel's death. Because word had basically spread that arrests were being made, so all these people were just like, we're out of here.

Near where Rachel's body was found, there was a bloody and partially burned t-shirt recovered in a nearby heap of trash. And they initially thought that this could help find Rachel's killer, but the DNA was not found to be a match to Rachel.

And like I mentioned before, it had basically poured rain all night, which potentially changed the landscape of the crime scene. So within days, the frustrations from the public were growing, worried that police weren't going to be able to catch this guy.

On Wednesday, March 21st, 1990, Rachel's memorial service was held for hundreds of friends, family members, and classmates, both from Rachel's middle school, which was Jupiter Middle School, and also from her sister Erica's high school, Jupiter High.

The family's Reverend Ned Barnes eulogized her young life, telling the bereft crowd, quote, Reverend Barnes, who had been a family friend of the Hurleys for years, said of Rachel, quote,

and she was the surest second baseman in the country. In my 20 years in the ministry, I've never seen such an outpouring of love and affection. There were grandparents, surfers, and softball players. It was a wonderful tribute to Rachel, but I haven't met anyone not touched by this tragedy.

As amazing as her memorial was, it was there that someone stood out to investigators as possibly being behind Rachel's murder. ♪♪♪

If you guys are like me and Heath, one of your least favorite questions is, what are we going to have for dinner tonight? Hate that question. It is just a daily battle. So then we inevitably order takeout, but the problem with takeout is that it's rarely healthy. So how nice does it sound to enjoy a home-cooked meal without the stress of planning ahead, going to the store, and putting all the ingredients together, not to mention...

coming up with a creative idea of what you're going to eat. This is why Heath and I love Home Chef. Home Chef provides fresh ingredients and chef-designed recipes conveniently delivered to your doorstep to simplify your cooking experience. Something I love about Home Chef is that they offer 30 options a week and serve a variety of dietary needs.

which is good for vegetarians like me and beyond. And it's good for the whole family. For a limited time, Home Chef is offering Going West listeners 18 free meals plus free dessert for life. And of course, free shipping on your first box. Go to homechef.com slash going west. That's homechef.com slash going west for 18 free meals and free dessert for life. You heard that right. Homechef.com slash going west. Must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert.

So, as you guys know, we are kind of in the transition between summer and fall. And I'm sure a lot of you guys are getting ready for the fall season, trying to update your wardrobe. And luckily, Quince offers timeless and high-quality items that we adore, ensuring that our wardrobe stays fresh

And we don't blow our entire budget. Yeah, he's talking like cashmere sweaters from $50, pants for every occasion, washable silk tops, and so much more. I love how simple and elegant all their clothes are. It's so easy for anybody to wear and the quality is unmatched.

And something that is super important to me is that Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices, plus premium fabrics and finishes. They are truly the best. Make switching seasons a breeze with Quince's high-quality closet essentials. Go to quince.com slash going west for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's

Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash going west to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash going west.

Get started with Greenlight today and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash Spotify.

Hey, it's Kaylee Cuoco for Priceline. Ready to go to your happy place for a happy price? Well, why didn't you say so? Just download the Priceline app right now and save up to 60% on hotels. So whether it's Cousin Kevin's kazoo concert in Kansas City, go Kevin! Or Becky's bachelorette bash in Bermuda, you never have to miss a trip ever again. So download the Priceline app today. Your savings are waiting. ♪ Go to your happy place for a happy price ♪

Go to your happy price, Priceline.

One of the attendees at Rachel's memorial was a classmate of Erica's, her sister Erica, at Jupiter High School and supposedly a friend of Rachel's who happened to be on the beach that day. So this guy was her older sister's age. However, it's unknown why this 17-year-old high school student, Billy Fagan, was hanging around Rachel and her friends who were only 14 and still in middle school.

Now, in addition to attending her memorial, he was pictured in the local newspaper with friends walking the beach the day after her murder, searching for clues. And some started to speculate that he saw Rachel walking alone on the beach that day, hurrying to meet her mom and that he ran to her to walk with her, maybe making a pass at her and then killing her. Now, I know you're wondering why this random kid is being...

you know, thought of to do such a thing. You're going to see why in a second because there are big reasons to believe so. But something I find interesting is that Rachel's own mom believes strongly that her daughter's killer was not one of the many vagrants traveling through or residing on the beach, but someone who her daughter knew and trusted implicitly.

In her first interview since Rachel's death, Andrea stated, "...I feel that there have to be people out there who know and who are not choosing to speak to police. It was a crowded park loaded with people. I can't believe that nobody heard, saw, or knows something. I think she went through those woods with someone who offered to walk with her."

Now, Billy also fit the FBI profile unequivocally, a Caucasian teen male from a wealthy family.

But what really brought him under police suspicion was that he was being investigated for multiple charges similar to that of what happened to Rachel. Well, not the murder portion of what happened to her, but basically, Billy's reputation preceded him and he was known to prey on younger girls and make them feel uncomfortable. On May 1st of that year, less than two months after Rachel's death,

Billy was arrested for 31 charges of sexual aggression unrelated to Rachel's rape and murder. Jeez. 31. That's insane. He's 17 years old. What a piece of shit. Yeah, and the 31 felony charges spanned 14 cases of alleged sexual assault brought forward by 13 teenage girls,

and one boy. This guy's a monster. This kid is just an absolute monster. Yeah, and these are just the people that are coming forward. There could be others who are uncomfortable...

bring up their assaults, you know, but just the fact that he's only 17 and there are already 14 people coming out and saying that he assaulted them is wild. So on September 7th, 1990, six months after Rachel's murder, they were unfortunately reduced to five misdemeanors to which Billy pleaded no contest.

And this is so upsetting considering he did this to so many people. Like, do you really think he's just going to stop? Absolutely not. No, he's actually still a registered sex offender to this day, by the way. And another thing, the girls that he assaulted were all around Rachel's age, 14 or 15 years old. So that's very disturbing and leads us to believe he absolutely could be behind Rachel's assault and murder.

So as you can guess, all this news was explosive in this city of less than 30,000 people, which was thought to be a safe haven until Rachel's murder changed everything.

Rumors really started to swirl about Billy, especially because he was believed to be on the beach that day and was known to be a friend of Rachel's. So Billy Fagan was quickly connected to the crime and considered a person of interest, at least in the court of public opinion. In September of 1990, Billy granted an interview in which he proclaimed his innocence and

and said that he mourned Rachel's loss alongside everyone else and was brought to tears when he heard the news.

He added, quote, she was like a little sister probably to everyone on the beach. Of course he would say something like that. This guy pleaded no contest to all the other charges. Yeah, was every girl that you assaulted like a little sister to you? Yeah, well, let's talk about his alibi because he basically claimed that he had been surfing in Sebastian, Florida that day, which was over an hour up the coast from Jupiter.

Afterward, he returned to Jupiter, heading to a video store in Juneau Beach, which was only about eight minutes south of Carlin Park, and he was with two of his friends.

The group picked out two VHS tapes before allegedly returning to Billy's house to watch them. And although Billy's friends supported his alibi, claiming that they were at the video store at 2.35 p.m. before retreating to Billy's house, lingering questions about his whereabouts remain. And, I mean, that's an interesting time. You're eight minutes away from the beach and you were there, you were eight minutes away from the beach, sorry, at 2.35 p.m.,

And at 2.45 p.m. is when Rachel started her walk, her mile-long walk, you know? Yeah, very, very interesting and definitely suspicious. Super close time frame. Yeah, and he has never been formally tied to the murder, but police acknowledged that he was investigated, and the newspapers dubbed him a clear person of interest.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Richard Villa addressed these rumors by saying, quote,

I would certainly be very pleased to say without any doubt that we could eliminate anyone we want to talk with, so we don't have to waste more time with him. If it proves to be that we spent time going in the wrong direction, then it's time wasted. Billy Fagan is not the only suspect we have in this case, but we still would like to talk to him in a voluntary free environment.

The sexual charges brought against him were serious and very damning to say the least. And the family was forced to secure a lawyer. Billy and his family, however, continue to deny his involvement. Both in the sexual assault charges and the possibility of being linked to Rachel's assault and murder. Sorry, but how can you deny involvement in...

14, or including Rachel's, 15 cases of sexual assault. Yeah, it's just mind-blowing that they, I mean, that they're even still trying to support their son, who is clearly, like I said, a monster. Now, his father, Billy Fagan Sr., said, quote, "...even though Billy was never charged in a murder and all the felonies were dropped, it seems that my son has been convicted in the press and in the mind of the general public."

Some people look at you, you don't know what they're thinking, of course. They say something, but they know it didn't get out of hand. Most of them are just normal girls who became friends, then girlfriends. It's attitude, I guess. It's how you act. If you've got manners as a kid at 17, girls would rather go out with a guy who is well-mannered than someone who's a slob.

They publicly convicted a young man whose only sin was to be a sensitive, caring person. What the hell was that? Yeah, right. That whole statement didn't even make any sense, and you're basically blaming girls for his crimes. Yeah, he's blaming the victims, and it gets worse. Egregiously, Billy Fagan Sr. also described the girls accusing his son of misconduct

as quote "loose" and the ones most popular at doing these kinds of things. Fifteen of them? Well, the piece of shit doesn't fall far from the piece of shit tree here. So gross, wow. Well, neither he nor his son accepted any blame or fault for the situation in which they found themselves. Billy's DNA was tested against the DNA found on Rachel at the scene, but unfortunately it was not a match.

Now, according to one local publication, Billy Fagan Jr. blames every shortcoming in his life on the accusations leveled against him. He's continued to get himself into trouble and was later brought up on drug charges, being a felon in possession of a firearm, battery of a child, and false imprisonment of a child. Uh... Yeah, crazy, right? Well, while already on probation for prior charges,

He tied up a five-year-old child and assaulted an eight-year-old child. He's a sexual predator! He's the worst. So while the question of his involvement in Rachel's murder remains unknown,

His propensity to commit such an atrocity seems pretty obvious here. Incredibly so. Well, another man who has frequently been linked to Rachel's murder via press coverage is a man named Douglas J. Gross. That is a convenient name for this guy. Yeah, he is a convicted felon and was also supposedly a childhood acquaintance of Rachel's. And get this, it was actually his blood that

proven to be on the burned t-shirt in the pile of trash near her body.

But the male DNA found on Rachel's body did not match. But why was his blood on a burned t-shirt in that very area? Like, that's crazy. Yeah, that cannot be coincidence. That's too bizarre to be coincidence. Well, when he later entered prison for charges of armed burglary and resisting officers, he was investigated in connection with Rachel's murder.

And according to an inmate who came forward with information, Douglas and a friend named Frankie Washburn had acted in her murder together.

Both men were known to hang around Carlin Park at the time, and according to the inmate, Douglas had confessed the crime to him and implicated his friend Frankie. But unfortunately, they were never able to link either man to Rachel or her murder. But it is interesting to me that this inmate had, you know, not only mentioned that Douglas had done it, but also named one of his friends that was actually his friend. It kind of...

makes me believe it a little more, even though it still could have been a lie. Yeah, definitely. Because it's like, oh, well, this person does exist and they were known to hang out on that beach a lot. So yeah, it's just a little more specific than just saying, oh, Douglas, you know, because Douglas could have said just in normal conversation. Well, I don't know why he'd bring up Rachel's murder in a normal conversation. Anyway, it could be true. It could be a lie.

But many people have been public critics of the investigation, either stating that police were covering for one of their own or that they were bungling the case. Rachel's best friend Sherry claims that many tips that were mistakenly given to the Jupiter Police Department were not turned over to the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, who was handling the case.

Other critics doubt that the DNA collected is actually enough to warrant a guilty conviction or even a connection between the crime scene and the murder. And that is why we've been left without answers. You know, because if they were able to test Douglas and Billy's DNA, as well as other people that they're suspecting that they're not telling the public...

and it's not coming up as a match, it might not be because they didn't do it, but rather because they don't have enough DNA for a comparison.

Detective William Springer, who continued to investigate the murder even after he retired, said, quote,

That's the best I can tell you. I'm not going to rule somebody out just because their DNA does not match what we have. We don't solve a case in the office waiting for a DNA match. You have to go out and talk to people and see what they have to say. So that's reassuring, obviously, knowing that they're not ruling anybody out, but obviously they also can't necessarily spearhead one particular person if they don't have any DNA connection.

But ultimately, the DNA of 127 men has been tested in connection with Rachel's murder, and none of them have been found to be a match to the DNA found at the scene. Sadly, the case stalled within the year the murder was committed, and though Rachel's case was still printed in the newspaper on an annual basis, it was sadly never for updates, but only ever pleading for more information.

Rachel's father, Dan Hurley, passed away in 2019, leaving behind a legacy of love in Jupiter. After Rachel was killed, he retired from working in the English department at the local high school and actually began working as a guidance counselor, wanting nothing more than to help teenagers like his beloved daughter navigate their adolescent years.

After retiring, he coached youth sports, which we already knew. He also volunteered for the local hospital and he led tours at the Jupiter Lighthouse, which sounds really fun. Just like his daughter, he was an indelible figure in Jupiter. At one point, the reward fund for information leading to an arrest climbed to $100,000, but that has since been revoked.

It's currently sitting at $15,000 with another $1,000 being offered by Crimestoppers. The softball field at Carlin Park has since been dedicated to Rachel as has an oak tree planted at her middle school.

Rachel's friend Sherry Duff, who has taken on much of the advocacy work in the last two decades, has spoken with news outlets and granted interviews many times, just hoping to raise awareness about the case, to jog the memories of those who have forgotten, and inform those who never knew. Which is exactly what we're trying to do here today.

She said, quote, In an interview in 2014, Erin claimed that she wanted to eventually make a documentary and write a book about Rachel's murder in hopes of breathing life back into her.

She explained, quote,

Our best friend has been killed, and we don't know who the killer is. And it could be one of our friends. So it's like all of this is happening, and yes, we're scared to do anything, to go out, to be around a boy, to go out with an older guy, to get in someone's car. Something was taken from us. Many things were taken. Rachel's friends have always wanted justice for her. Like it's some kind of offering that we could give her.

It's something that would help us feel like we didn't stop. In 2017, just before Rachel's father passed away, Andrea Hurley granted a rare interview and appealed to the community saying, quote,

To her friends who all lost their innocence on that day 25 years ago. She was curious, optimistic, bossy, a leader, kind and thoughtful and just plain cool. Thank you to those friends who love her to this day, who try to make sense of this and tirelessly still try to help find the person who took her from us.

I ask that anyone who might have information, no matter how small it may seem, to call the Sheriff's Office and help us. Thank you. If you have any information about the murder of Rachel Hurley, please contact the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office at 561-227-6464. ♪

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys for tuning in to this episode. Please make sure that you share this episode because it is still unsolved and Rachel's family needs justice. It feels like this case is so solvable. The fact that there wasn't like a solid...

eyewitness account of somebody coming out of this area, even though it was such a crowded area. The fact that they have DNA, but there hasn't been a match, like it really feels like it can be solved. And I haven't really seen anybody talking about this case. So please make sure that you tell a friend and thank you so much for listening to Rachel's story.

Yeah, and I don't want to harp on this too much, but if you dig Going West, if you love Daphne and I, please leave us a nice review. It really helps out the show, and it would mean the world to us. Yes, it really would. And if you're looking for more episodes and you want to hear about the crazy story of the missing Pusan newlyweds that we talked about earlier in the beginning of this episode, as well as 108 other full-time,

Full-length ad-free bonus episodes that we will not talk about on Going West. Please go check out patreon.com slash goingwestpodcast or Apple subscriptions. I know Apple subscriptions actually has a seven-day free trial. So go listen to some for free and see if you like it. It's exactly like this show. I actually think we're a little more loose on this show.

on that version on the bonus episodes. I don't know why. Yeah, we call it Real Crime. And it's so easy to subscribe on Apple. All you got to do is press a button. Very true. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world trying to steal my line. Don't be a stranger. ♪♪♪

so

There's nothing worse than getting home from your trip only to find you missed a can't-miss travel experience. That's why you need Viator. Book guided tours, excursions, and more in one place to make your trip truly unregrettable. There are over 300,000 travel experiences to choose from, so you can find something for everyone. And Viator offers free cancellation and 24-7 customer service.

So you always have support around the clock. Download the Viator app now to use code Viator10 for 10% off your first booking in the app. Regret less. Do more with Viator.