March 27, 2024 • 47 mins
The second female victim, known only as “Grace Doe” for nearly 30 years, is identified as Shauna Garber. Phelps’s investigation turns toward a new suspect in the murder of Dana Stidham (and possibly Shauna), while uncovering a revealing, lost recording of a new suspect - unheard until now. Phelps teams up with the detectives investigating the Shauna Garber case, evaluating similarities between her and Dana Stidham’s death. All of it leads Phelps to the doorstep of a potential killer walking the streets a free man, confronting the man some think is a prolific serial killer who has eluded law enforcement for some 34 years.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
I figure out what we're gonna talk about here, it's
gonna take the interview. You've been County Sheriff's office times
approximately nineteen minutes till twelve. President Ernest interviews myself, Detective
Blankenship at the County Sheriff's office and Detective Arnorming with
the television branch of the Sheriff's office.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And we're talking to he's a white male.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
We served you what is called the prosecutor subpoena, and
at that time you had agreed to come to the
Sheriff's office and answer some questions and ask some if
you want to. During that time, you also give us
consent to search on your big Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You don't pick up a nunn? Is okay.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
During the summer of twenty twenty three, I spoke with
a source about a b CSO suspect and Danas Didam's murder.
The man I am calling Jack Lenny, who in my
mind was the only suspect anyone needed to focus on
and either eliminate or go after with everything I had.
My source mentioned a recorded interview with BCSO detectives conducted
(01:20):
with Lenny in the early nineteen nineties that I needed
to hear and.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Also your advised your rights. Did you understand your right? Yes?
Was there any questions that you want to ask us me?
Did you? Did you understand your rights?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
The more I had found out about Lenny, the more
he fit into being the prime suspect in danist Didam's murder,
and as I spoke to investigators who worked on SHAWNA.
Grayte Garber's murder, Lenny's name was very much at the
forefront of that investigation as well. And Jack Lenny, well,
(01:55):
he knew it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Did you understand your rights?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I'm well, I need the lawyer is now I wonder
what that stop?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Right?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Know?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And that's for the lawyer.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's something you'll have to consider. What I want to
go through is that you understood your rights? Why you're
saying that now?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yes? If you don't want to answer any questions, you don't,
that's totally. It's very baffled because other than know why
I'm here.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Proof, it's going to that oh see, okay, And if
anytime you want to stop this interview and do what
you think is right, like I said, you're not under
wrist but anytime you want to stop, just say stop.
You know, you're you're a free man, you're not under wrist,
and you can go and come as you please. You
want a glass of water, go get a coat, go
(02:46):
to lunch. Okay, operate with Yes, I don't know why
I'm here. Well, that's that's why we're going to get
into it as we go on. And look, Well, I
want to do is is ask you some background questions,
and I want to go back, you know, say, four
(03:09):
five years something like that, find out where all you've
lived and what all you've done, and to remember that
far back.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
The one consistent observation about this guy I had heard,
beyond him being a serial sexual harasser or even worse,
is that he's one cold son of a bitch who
knows how to play the system. Facts that became increasingly
more implicit throughout this old interview.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You got a company car back in or company trailer?
What was that? Hell, y'all? Pick up? What come? Was?
Speaker 4 (03:49):
All?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right? I think I remember it?
Speaker 5 (03:53):
You topper on it?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If that was hard to hear on this time warrant ape,
he says yes to the camper question. In fact, photos
I obtained of this vehicle matched the exact description of
the vehicle. Parked behind Dana's car on the morning after
she was reported missing.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Want's you tell me about the cars you've own him
since this Ranger you've got right now?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
How long he had it now? After? I told that, yeah,
not too much after.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's hard to understand his answer because he mumbles, is that.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Back in nineteen ninety when you wreck the torioder? How
very couldn't David? That sounds about right.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
All this discussion about his vehicles was small talk for
detectives who were just looking to gauge his level of
participation and transparency. They had already pulled the history from
the Motor Vehicle Department to see which makes and models
of vehicles he owned and when?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
How long do you have that one with Toyota?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I was thinking about, it's a lot of time would
you have before that one?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Soon? Truck?
Speaker 4 (05:18):
And uh so?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Science Cameron on cameras on the shell or.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
The amount of time he took to answer what are
essentially basic questions, spoke to how carefully he was thinking
about what to say. At one point, he mentions an
accident he was in back in the early eighties, which
he claimed had caused a traumatic brain injury. Danny Varner,
(05:47):
the detective you here most prominently in the recordings, pushed
him on it, but he refused to give any specifics.
They moved on to his employment history during the time
of Dana's abduction and murder. He not only worked within
a mile of where Dana's body was found, but witness
(06:08):
statements support how he had been sexually harassing women at
the nearby Ozark Beverage company, which, if you recall from
an earlier episode, was just up the road from the
Stidham crime scene.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yours nineties. Yes, y'all still married? Yes, bit separated? No,
still lived together.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Sometimes you can explain that to him, he said.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
They split their time between two different states, where he
lived in Arkansas and the state where she lived.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Get married previously to her first marriage? Right, I went
to her married beforeios.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
They pressed him for his wife's first name and address,
simple things. What does he do? He plays the stupid card,
of course, then recalled that she likely lived somewhere in
the Southwest. He had one daughter with her, he says,
but hadn't seen her in many, many years. Guess why
(07:17):
exactly he was getting weird with her too?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Does she give him around here an hour? No? Appreciate.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Then they casually snuck in additional questions about his vehicle
and a timeline associated with Dana's murder.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You lived over here at these harvests, Wright Camber.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
He nodded yes to the question. The point of this
short interview was to rattle Lenny and lock down a
few specifics. Beyond that, they wanted to get a feel
for his overall demeanor. See how cocky he was. In
other words, as an investigator conducted an initial interview like this,
(08:02):
you allow the suspect to think he is in control.
The BCSO walked away from that short interview with two
major tasks ahead to find and speak to Lenny's ex
wife and daughter and begin to draft, secure and execute
two search warrants, one for his house and of course
(08:26):
a second for his vehicles. Previously on paper ghosts.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
If you've got a child and you send him and
take care of the keys and all this, and send
him to school and everything, you.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Keep crack from your child. And the part that bothered
me for years was so if somebody didn't report or missing,
I want.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
You to talk to this man.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
I had no idea that he has something to offer,
but he was here the night that he heard this.
But I'm looking at my emails and it says Laurie
me Grace, and she was nice. I didn't know her
by Anna knew her, and she looked exactly like what
I thought she would look like. And I just knew
that this is funny.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Who she is?
Speaker 3 (09:14):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and author of more than forty true crime books. This
is season four of Paper Ghosts the Ozarks. It had
(09:37):
taken thirty years to identify Grace Dowe and learn her
name Shauna Garber, three decades. In that sense, technology had
caught up to Shawna's case, the same as it had
in so many cold cases we see today. But if
Detective Laurie Howard, Sheriff Rob Evenson, and Detective Ronda Wise
(10:02):
thought identifying Shawna was caused for celebration, the reality of
the road ahead became abundantly clear right away, because as
they began searching for information about her, it seemed as
if well SHAWNA. Garber had never existed to begin with.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Okay, so who is Shauna Garber?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
That's a good question, because she had a tough go
as a little girl. She her mother had some issues
and she was burned as a child to her mother's
or her mother willfully earned her. So she went into
foster care. But I think that she might have been
bounced around for a little bit and even in the
foster care system, and then of course eventually she aged out.
(10:50):
So she lost her relationships with her bio family and
also with her step family, and then she ultimately lost
the relationships with her foster family. And so she goes
out on the street.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
She does.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Yeah, and she's eighteen at that time. Yeah, she's on
her own now, I say, on her own. I think
she had a boyfriend at the time. I don't know
the nature of that relationship. I'm told it's difficult to
find any type of information on him at this point.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
How does she end up in McDonald County.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
I can surmise how that happened. I can't tell you factually.
But she was actually working in Joplin, Missouri, but she
was living in Coffeevill, Kansas, and she was making that
commute from Coffeevill, Kansas to Joplin, Missouri and back.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And what kind of job was it that she was working,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
I contacted Shawna's brother, Robert Ringwald, and started by asking
him where they grew up.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
We lived in several different places, that is mostly in
eastern Kansas between Tapeka and Iole, Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And what was the house like the family like at
the time as kids?
Speaker 7 (12:01):
At that time, it was our biological mother and my
older brother, myself and Shauna.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
What was Shauna like then?
Speaker 7 (12:11):
She was singing happy quite a bit.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
You know what did she like to do?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Play?
Speaker 7 (12:18):
I don't don't remember. You know, an awful lot. We
used to play in the yard together and stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So you and Shauna were taken away from your mom. Yes,
tell me a little bit about that. So how old
were you?
Speaker 5 (12:38):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Six?
Speaker 7 (12:40):
And she would have been four.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
This was about the same time as you heard in
the last episode that Shawna's mother horribly disfigured her own
little girl. It's hard to talk about this sort of abuse,
but it's what Shauna and her family went through. Her
mother poured lighter fluid on her, lit a match and
(13:03):
set the girl on fire. While she would never be
the same, she was removed from the situation. It was
also the moment in Shauna's life when she became part
of the revolving door of the foster care system. So
did you stay in contact with her?
Speaker 7 (13:21):
No, we weren't allowed to. I wasn't allowed to. She
was removed from several foster homes because our mother would
interfere with everything. I mean to the point she even
threatened to kill one foster family's kids.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
Yeah, she was evil.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
And so as time goes on, do you ever see
Shauna again?
Speaker 7 (13:48):
I saw our birthday after we were taken. We were
taken to a SRS office or something like that and
celebrate our birthdays. And then saw her one time after
that in court when they severed our mother's parental rights.
(14:11):
And I never saw her again.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
And how come they severed the parental rights.
Speaker 7 (14:17):
Because our mother was an evil, vindictive spawn of health.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
And then what did you hear about her as the
years go on?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Not very much.
Speaker 7 (14:29):
We were trying to keep everything about her a secret
from everybody so that our biological mother wouldn't find her.
Speaker 8 (14:40):
I see.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
And so time moves on. You grow into an adult,
and I guess you sent some letters to Shanna. Can
you tell me about that?
Speaker 7 (14:50):
Yeah? I wrote two letters and I gave them to
the social worker. One was for them to give to her.
Writ way couldn't get anything but my first name in
it and nothing other than that, you know, just tell
her that you know, I was out here and I was,
(15:12):
you know, looking forward to meeting her. And then the
second one was formed to give to her after she
turned eighteen and had my name, you know, my full name,
my contact information, you know, how she could get a
hold of me, you know, letting her know that if
she wanted to meet me, that I was here and
(15:33):
wanted to see her.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
And you were confident that the social worker would forward
those letters to Shawna. Right, so I was. And then
what happened?
Speaker 7 (15:45):
They were put in a drawer somewhere and left, never
given to her.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
It was as if a series of tragic events beginning
almost on the day she was born, culminated in Shawna's murder.
Imagine the frustration, horror, and emotional trauma Rob felt when
he discovered that those letters never made it to Shawna,
all because some incompetent, lazy social worker forgot or just
(16:13):
chose not to forward them. Which leads me to wonder
if Shauna had gotten those letters, if she had known
there was someone out there who cared for her, loved her,
and wanted a relationship with her. Would I be talking
about her now as a murder victim. I've heard it
(16:49):
said that tragedy and life are inseparable. I think maybe
inevitable is a better word. We can't avoid pain, yet
we do put policies and programs in place and the
hope that preventable tragedies stemming from the ugliest side of
our humanity are avoided. But even those policies and programs
(17:12):
can sometimes fail us. As I continued talking to Detective
Lorie Howard, the idea that Shanna Garber got swallowed up
by the system, the same system that contributed in some
ways to her death, hovered over our conversation, which makes
investigating her murder that much more difficult from both an
(17:37):
emotional and practical standpoint.
Speaker 6 (17:40):
It's hard to do victimology. It's hard to find people
who knew her right correct.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
And even more so if you are a child, which
I now have hindsight, but if you're a childhood's growing
up in the foster care system because she's not reported missing,
so you can't go through a database of missing people
in your area, or even missing people in a four
state area because she's not there now. Later I learned
(18:06):
that supposedly she had been reported missing by the boyfriend
in Joblin, Missouri, but there's no.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Record of it. I wondered if that elusive boyfriend had
ever been considered a suspect in her murder.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
I think you have to always you kind of work
from the victim out and the people that are closest
to them, And certainly the boyfriend is where a paramour
of any sort it would be where you would start.
But I don't know that that could really easily or
readily be developed because the boyfriend, again is we took off,
he took off, and he's not there, and we're not
(18:42):
sure where he is or even if he's alive.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
So as an unsolved murder, this is a very difficult case,
right it is.
Speaker 9 (18:50):
It's extremely difficult, but it's not impossible. None of them
were impossible. It was impossible, we'd probably stop trying. But
this can be solved, and it will be. It's just
a matter of keep plugging away.
Speaker 5 (19:03):
I mean, we started with nothing, and now we know
who she is, so that's probably ninety percent of it is.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Knowing who she is.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
We will continue to put things back to the lab
and retest and as new technology comes along.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
Now, was this case looked at as possibly tied to
data Stidham's case.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Absolutely, And the reason for that is because they are
similar in appearance, but they are also similar geographically, and
the timeline is really close. You're looking at that eighty
nine to ninety in years. So when you begin to
(19:47):
put people together, you look, okay, geographically, how do they look?
Are they similar in nature? Do they have anything in common?
And then your timeline and the way they're found and
the way they're fan Absolutely, now Dana, and again Dana
was tied, not not to this degree, but she was
certainly bound. She had the same colored hair, which is
(20:10):
kind of a dark auburn hair. There's a group of
women in this area that are that have been found
that are similar in their appearance.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
How do you even begin to solve a murder? Better yet, too,
if one is connected to the other when you know
so very little about your victim. This was a problem
for the McDonald County Sheriff's Office and its ability to
begin building a profile of Shawna's killer if they have
(20:43):
no idea about Shawna's movements near the time of her death,
it becomes almost impossible to nail down not only those
who might have known her, but the events leading up
to her death. Hair Sheriff Rob Evenson.
Speaker 10 (20:58):
Remember, you're going back to nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety
and there's not We have not been able to find
those electronic those records of that. So when after she
ages out of the foster system at age eighteen, there's
not a whole lot that we've been able to find.
(21:18):
She didn't have a lot of presence that left any
kind of tangible record that we've been able to find.
Like friends, correct, yes, friends, We were able to identify
a former boyfriend, but the best information we have is
that those two had broken up quite some time before
she would have ended up here in McDonald County.
Speaker 6 (21:39):
Was there any indication that she was into drugs or
that scene or anything like that.
Speaker 10 (21:43):
We believe so, But if you ask us how certain
we are, I couldn't tell you that we were one
hundred percent, But yes, the likelihood is there.
Speaker 6 (21:51):
Yet, did you begin to maybe think that her case
was connected to some of the other cases in the
area at all, because.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
There certainly was a lot of cases during that time.
Speaker 10 (22:03):
Yes, I mean, anytime you have an unsolved homiside, you
always look for other connections to other similar cases. So
of course that was one of the things. There were
so many leads that were run down and followed. So yes,
I mean, there are other unsolved cases in this area,
(22:23):
so that is something that we always would look into.
But I don't know that we had any direct evidence
that would connect her to anybody else or any other case.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I asked Detective Lorie Howard about a cause of death
if they were ever able to find out. The speculation
is strangulation based on all the bindings and cords and
ropes found. Now you may wonder how law enforcement could
possibly prove a skeletonized murder victim was strangled to death.
(22:55):
After all, a pathologist cannot inspect bruising around the neck area,
other soft tissue, or look for signs of particual hemorrhage,
burst blood vessels in the eyes. But there's a delicate
bone called the hyoid in our throats that, when compressed
during strangulation, usually snaps. So was Shawna's hyoid bone actually broken?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
No?
Speaker 5 (23:23):
The answer to that is no, we believe very strongly
that she was strangled, just because she was badly decomposed.
Her body was strewn across the lawn from animals and
the natural process of decomposition. But we believe that she
wasn't stabbed because normally and that type of thing, if
you hit a bone, you might have a chip, and
(23:45):
that wasn't necessarily there. The skeleton was intact, so you're
not looking at blunt force trauma. We didn't see anything
like that. Really, there was nothing to tell us that
there was any sort of trauma to person eletal remains.
So we believe she was more than likely strangled, and
I think that the bindings would support that.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
So the how she's found is very important.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Right, it is, absolutely It tells you a great deal.
Speaker 10 (24:12):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
The crime scene essentially is your first picture of what happened,
and so you can determine a lot obviously from that.
Was there, what first trauma, how was she left, was
she clothed, what clothing was missing? How long has she
been there? And because she was bound in the manner
(24:35):
that she was bound and how was she bound, she
was essentially what we call hoptide, which is your hands,
your wrists are bound behind your back and that then
is bound to your feet, and in her case it
was bound to a shoelace and only one shoelace, so
she had massive amounts of bindings.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
What about the towel wrapped around Shawna's head with kowak cable,
what did it mean?
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Normally that would tell you that he wants to cover
He either one didn't want to see the look on
his victim if she was alive at the time, and
or he wants to cover something up. And so it's
it's almost exactly what you would think it is. They
and I've heard this from more than one serial killer actually,
(25:24):
and I'm not suggesting that's the case with Shauna, but
we don't know, but they do tend to not want
to see the look on their victims those.
Speaker 10 (25:33):
Yeah, strangulation is very personal, it is.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
It is, indeed, if you're that close to someone, as
opposed to just saying having shot someone from a distance.
So it tells you a lot about the relationship. Generally powered,
it tells you a lot about power.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Still, three letters, yes, letters loomed large in my mind.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
B t K.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
At this stage my search for answers, I needed to
either include or exclude Dennis Raider from Shawna's murder. If
Jack Lenny was to be viewed as a potential suspect
in Dana's and Shawna's cases, bt K had to be
taken out of the equation. And there was only one
person I knew of who could speak as the authority
(26:21):
about Dennis Raider and his possible involvement in both cases.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Well, that was part of my I guess, my witch
Calt fantasy. These people were selected. A strangled missus o'toll,
then she went out or passed out. I thought she
was dead. She passed out. Then I strangled Josephine.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
She passed out or I thought she was dead, and
then I went over and put a bag on Junior's head.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
That, right there is who BTK is. The affect says
it all cold, stark, stoic, but very real. He is
talking there about murdering a family. But the takeaway from me,
I think, is that BTK is a serial killer, unafraid
(27:23):
to talk about who he has killed. In September twenty
twenty three, o Sage County, Oklahoma Sheriff Eddie Verdon announced
the formation of a BTK Task Force. This was in
relation to two specific victims. The sheriff was looking to
bring Dennis Rader into a grand jury on murder charges
(27:47):
for Cynthia Kinney, a nineteen seventy six unsolved Thomis Side,
and SHAWNA. Garber. The local Oklahoma district attorney, Mike Fisher,
felt differently. Fact the guy came out swinging, saying there
was not enough evidence to prove Verdin's theorem or press
(28:07):
charges against BTK. Verdon persisted, releasing a sketch Raider had
recently made of a woman bound hogtide and sitting on
a chair leaning up against a barn. Barnes played a
profound role in raiders murder fantasies. Some in law enforcement
believe the barn close to where Shauna Garber was found
(28:30):
had to be somehow connected to her murder. I reached
out to the one person who knows BTK, in my opinion,
better than anyone, but had also studied SHAWNA. Garber's case.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I'm doctor Catherine Ramsland. I'm a professor of forensic psychology,
and i am a writer. I've written about seventy plus books,
many of them on extreme offenders.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
In twenty sixteen, doctor Ramsland published the book Confessions of
a serial killer, the untold story of Dennis Rader, the
BTK killer. So how and when did you come across
Seanna Garber's case?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Maybe a couple of years ago someone had mentioned it
and talked about is there these were cold cases in
this area, like the whole state, and she was on
a list, and somebody mentioned maybe there was some kind
of association with Dennis Rader. So that of course got
(29:39):
me interested.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
That interest in what is a longer story of a
woman doctor Ramsland met and how her book was born
turned into prison visits, telephone calls and letters between her
and BTK. The book she produced with Rader is a
kind of BTK confession manifesto.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
It was a very intense journey, and I always wondered
if there might be are the victims. So when the
grays Doe case came up, I wanted to see if
there were any potential.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Links to the dismay of many involved. Raider was suddenly
thrust into the number one slot for Shawna's case. As
of late twenty twenty three, I had it on solid
law enforcement authority that Raider had no connection to Shawna's murder.
I also uncovered information about a suspect other than Jack
(30:34):
Lenny for Shawna's case, which I will delve into more
deeply in the next few episodes. Here's how doctor Ramslin
describes Raider's very distinctive m a invaluable insight into one
of the darkest minds of the past half century.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Well, first, he chose his own moniker behind them, torture them,
kill them BTK, So that signals right off the bat
he's after is he wants that binding thing that was
highly erotic to him. He's actually compelled serial killer. The
torture probably not so much, even though that would sort
(31:15):
of what he wanted to achieve was to terrorize Wichita,
his hometown. He murdered ten people between nineteen seventy four
and nineteen ninety one, always with some kind of bondage
aspect to it, because that would satisfy him. So if
there's mo to be had, it's really the idea that
(31:36):
he used some kind of bindings in each of his cases.
But he started by going into houses, picking out houses.
Usually they had a number three or some kind of
number that three would be divided into like a six
or nine, because three was a big deal to him.
(31:57):
It's a magical number.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
As doctor Ramsland points out, Raider was meticulous and methodical.
His murders very much fantasy driven, but also torture could
have been involved.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
So he'd check out houses. He'd enter a lot of
them where people weren't home, just to prove I guess
that he could. And he was a voyeur. He stalked people.
He found out about his victims typically, so usually had
plenty of time to check out how safe it was,
I mean, he was married, her job on the side,
(32:35):
I guess, and so it was he had to do
this when he had opportunities, so that if that's mo,
I mean, he went in. But then later he took
two of his victims out of the house, one of
which he posed in a church for pictures and various
items of lingerie he had stolen from other women, and
(32:59):
the other one he had meant to take to a barn,
an abandoned barn, which is instrumental in what we're talking about,
because that had always been a fantasy of his, is
to murder somebody in an old barn, And he had
already picked out some abandoned farmsteads around Wichita. But he
(33:20):
lost his way that night because it was snow, he
had boggy, so he dumped her under like a culvert
kind of bridge instead. But that and so that really
breaks his mo.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
If you noticed, the term mo or modus operandi is
not something doctor Ramsln sounds all that excited about linking
to BTK or any serial killer for that matter. And
I'd have to agree serial killers can and will change
their mo from murder to murder. I believe there is
(33:55):
no typical serial killer, as much as the public wants
to believe there is. Base done the very small sample
we see routinely on television.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
He didn't enter her home, but he entered her home
very differently than he had and this is number ten.
He entered her home very differently than he had any
of the others he broke in. He lifted a cinder
block and just through it through a sliding door, breaking
the glass, which he'd never done before. But he used
(34:26):
his typical ruse, I'm just here on a fugitive blah
blah blah, don't worry, because he always believed if you
put them at ease that they would survive. That would
make them obviously more vulnerable and easier to manage. And
then he put her in her car. He always had
this thing with the people's cars, and that's always part
(34:47):
of his MO as well. So it's hard to say MO.
He certainly didn't have the same MO, but he had
there were similarities from one thing to another, even when
the MOO changed.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
He didn't rape any of his victims, right, He did
not rape any of his victims. And what was his
thought process behind that? If the crimes were sexual to him?
What was going on with him?
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Well, you can have a sexual crime without necessarily having
any kind of sexual penetration. It can like, for example,
he hanged an eleven year old girl in the Otaro
case and masturbated onto her. Okay, so that's not rape physically,
but it's certainly, you know, a veryous sexual crime. He
(35:37):
masturbated in a couple of others using their lingerie. But
in many ways the binding was really about himself. He
would bind himself in a lot of auto erotic kinds
of incidents, So he'd take the items that he had
removed from the victims and fantasize about them while he
(35:58):
was having an auto erotic event.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
BTK dehumanized and degraded his victims. It was a very
important part of the psychology, however, twisted driving his murders.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
So for him it was really reliving it. He had
these motel parties where he take dolls and pictures and
drawings he had made of the victims to relive it.
And so he had this odd notion that if he
raped his victims it was somehow unfaithful to his wife. Wow,
(36:32):
and yeah, it's an odd kind of mindset that certain
things and he's not going to cross the line, but
other things more extreme he will. Like when he first
started working with me, one of the earliest things he
said was we're going to start playing chess by mail,
and he said, don't cheat. I thought, well, what what there?
(36:58):
You a serial killer moralized to me? Yes, but that's
you'll see that in a number of these killers, or
they have these these kind of odd compartments where they
certain things are okay and other things are not okay.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
And did he use the same type of bindings in
each of his murders.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
He liked to experiment sometimes because he was reading either
a novel about a serial killer or some true crime case,
and he sometimes would like to experiment. For example, getting
back to m he strangled each of the Otaro's, but
the next victim he stabbed, and he found that he
didn't like stabbing, so he then went back to strangulation.
(37:46):
And sometimes he'd use the cord, but he always bound them.
Sometimes he used that duct tape. He had some thick rope.
He had some like Venetian cord, a parachute cord, had
tape of all kinds, twine. He liked twine, So he
did have different kinds of bindings because ever since he
(38:08):
was a kid, he would collect all different kinds of
rope and string.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
And was he ever known to be trolling around like
Anderson or Pineville, Missouri the Ozarks at all during the
nineties early nineties.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
So for me, when I saw that this one case
was in the area of Missouri that was pretty close
to an area where Dennis grew up and would sometimes
take his kids spend summers, I thought, you know, that
made it a viable potential case.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
And if Sean of Garber was hitchhiking, which a lot
of law enforcement I've spoken to think she might have been,
would he be the type of serial killer to pick
her up.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
I've never heard Denis Raiders say he picked up a hitchhiker.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
I had sent doctor Ramslin photos of the actual bindings
used on Shauna and asked if those that Raider used
were similar the same photos. I should point out that
Detective Laurie Howard had shown Raider when she interviewed him,
and Raider was shocked by how messy and how many
of them there were.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
Some of the bindings on Shauna are very similar to
the ropes found and confiscated by police when Dennis was
arrested in two thousand and five. Even he has commented
to me, because he's now seen the photos too, He's commented, Wow,
those are like some of the ropes they use, but
not all of them. And I can't think of the
(39:45):
time he used coaxial cables.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Raider had by now also denied killing Shauna Garber. So,
Shauna Garber was found with a towel wrapped around her
face and the coaxle wrapped around that. You know, in
your professional opinion, what does that say about her killer?
Speaker 4 (40:07):
A lot of people like to think a covered base
means it was personal, they knew her. That's a formula.
I personally don't like formulas because they tend to give
us tunnel vision. This looked more like part of whatever
this person was doing to her, And especially with the
cable wrapped around it, that looks to me more like
(40:29):
a suffocation mechanism. If you put your hand of her
mouth with a towel, she can't bite.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
It sounds like he adapted to the situations he needed
he did.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yeah, but I think you can say that about any
serial killer because you're always going to have circumstances, the
variables are there. Their fantasy never actually matches right, it happens.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Thoughts in general about Shawna's case, I mean, what are
you thinking about that case?
Speaker 4 (40:58):
I think the Shawna one of the things that we
see on her is the multiple bindings on her legs.
That is interesting and that suggests captivity potentially that somebody
held her and bound her, because why would they why
(41:20):
would they take her to a Now I know there's
there's theories that there were screams heard on Halloween night
in that gentle area, But who is binding her all
that much there on the farm that night? That doesn't
make any sense to me. That's a lot of bindings,
which that suggests it's not about keeping her captive so
(41:44):
much as the binding itself. But that's that's not something
that Rader would do. He wouldn't overbind like even he's
said that with that, that's a lot of bindings, and
he would have bound her in other ways. A lot
of it was focused on the legs and ankles, So
(42:05):
that suggests somebody who perhaps overties things in other ways
or overdoes things in other ways. There's an obsessive quality
to it.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Shawna's murder, what little is known about it, was anything
but meticulous. I saw anger, haste, and retaliation in Shawna's murder.
Those are not the trademarks of BTK. He planned, he fantasized,
he took his time, he wanted his bindings to be
just so. When I mentioned BTK had been shown photos
(42:39):
of this crime scene, the distaste verging on disgust he
emanated was palpable. Furthermore, the signatures he left behind at
his crime scenes weren't found at Shawna's crime scene. Torture
was likely involved, but we'll cover that in an upcoming episode.
(43:00):
That's why I just don't buy BTK being behind Shawna's murder.
And when I put it to law enforcement, they echoed
my sentiments, specifically that Raider had no connection to Shawna's murder.
I was convinced, after looking at all of the available
evidence and conferring with law enforcement, that Dennis Btk Raider
(43:20):
should be moved far down on a list of potential
suspects in Shauna Garber's murder, if he even deserves a
place on the list at all. And Raider, remember, was
not even close to being on the radar in the
Danas Stidham homicide, which brings me back to Jack Lenny.
(43:44):
The goal with that first interview the BCSO conducted with
Lenny the tape you heard at the top of the episode,
was to stir him up a bit, let him know
they were focused on him, and see how he responded.
As it were, Lenny had told investors the Gators he
was out of town at a family reunion on July
twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine, the day Dana went missing.
(44:08):
That was a lie. He had clocked eighty seven hours
that week at a construction company he worked for in town,
a job, remember, which put him on the road, driving
around Bella Vista and bordering towns, including those close to
the Missouri state line. In fact, the more they found
(44:30):
out about Lenny, the more he fit into the profile
of Dana and Shawna's killer.
Speaker 8 (44:39):
And you know, from my perspective, there was some pretty
incriminating evidence in that basement of that house.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
The BCSO secured those search warrants for Jacquelinese home and
vehicles after they interviewed him a second time and after
finding a lot of blood and female hair in one
of his vehicles. As they entered the basement of his house,
what they found pointed in the direction of what I
(45:08):
could say is a serial killer.
Speaker 11 (45:12):
My recollection is that there was probably like seventeen different
types of twine that were used.
Speaker 8 (45:17):
To encase cocoon this young lady after she had been murdered.
I just remember being in the basement of this individual's
house and there had to been like over one hundred
spools of different chords. I mean, I don't know who
keeps cords.
Speaker 11 (45:37):
I don't keep cords, but it just was pretty ominous.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
With all of the new information I had developed on him,
including all of that blood found in his vehicle, I
decided it was time to confront Jack Lenny, to knock
on his door and see what this guy had to
say for himself. If you're enjoying Paper Ghosts. Check out
(46:06):
my other podcasts, Crossing the Line with m William Phelps
and White Eagle wherever you get your favorite shows coming
up next time Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 11 (46:18):
They were wanting to pin him down, very surprised that
he wanted to come in. You know, my initial reaction is,
you know this guy's coming in. Surely he's not the guy, right,
I mean, who does that? Something is going on with
this guy. I don't know what it is. I'm not
a doctor, I'm not a psychologist. I'm just trying to
get a read. But there was just something that was
(46:39):
clinically off.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
He probably destroyed her life.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
He just basically abused her emotionally, probably physically, and she
did kill herself shortly after.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
BCSO Detectives spoke with her.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
I think probably she was at a praising point.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Because you better listen, that's my goddamn life, you and
they'll never find you.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Paper Ghosts Season four is written and executive produced by
me and William Phelps. Script consulting by Rose Bachi, sound
design by Matt Russell, executive production by Catherine Law, and
audio editing and mixing by Brandon Dicker. The Takaboom Productions.
The series theme number four four to two is written
(47:25):
and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Moon.
I figure out what we're gonna talk about here, it's
gonna take the interview. You've been County Sheriff's office times
approximately nineteen minutes till twelve. President Ernest interviews myself, Detective
Blankenship at the County Sheriff's office and Detective Arnorming with
the television branch of the Sheriff's office.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And we're talking to he's a white male.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
We served you what is called the prosecutor subpoena, and
at that time you had agreed to come to the
Sheriff's office and answer some questions and ask some if
you want to. During that time, you also give us
consent to search on your big Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You don't pick up a nunn? Is okay.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
During the summer of twenty twenty three, I spoke with
a source about a b CSO suspect and Danas Didam's murder.
The man I am calling Jack Lenny, who in my
mind was the only suspect anyone needed to focus on
and either eliminate or go after with everything I had.
My source mentioned a recorded interview with BCSO detectives conducted
(01:20):
with Lenny in the early nineteen nineties that I needed
to hear and.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Also your advised your rights. Did you understand your right? Yes?
Was there any questions that you want to ask us me?
Did you? Did you understand your rights?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
The more I had found out about Lenny, the more
he fit into being the prime suspect in danist Didam's murder,
and as I spoke to investigators who worked on SHAWNA.
Grayte Garber's murder, Lenny's name was very much at the
forefront of that investigation as well. And Jack Lenny, well,
(01:55):
he knew it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Did you understand your rights?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
I'm well, I need the lawyer is now I wonder
what that stop?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Right?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Know?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And that's for the lawyer.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's something you'll have to consider. What I want to
go through is that you understood your rights? Why you're
saying that now?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yes? If you don't want to answer any questions, you don't,
that's totally. It's very baffled because other than know why
I'm here.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Proof, it's going to that oh see, okay, And if
anytime you want to stop this interview and do what
you think is right, like I said, you're not under
wrist but anytime you want to stop, just say stop.
You know, you're you're a free man, you're not under wrist,
and you can go and come as you please. You
want a glass of water, go get a coat, go
(02:46):
to lunch. Okay, operate with Yes, I don't know why
I'm here. Well, that's that's why we're going to get
into it as we go on. And look, Well, I
want to do is is ask you some background questions,
and I want to go back, you know, say, four
(03:09):
five years something like that, find out where all you've
lived and what all you've done, and to remember that
far back.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
The one consistent observation about this guy I had heard,
beyond him being a serial sexual harasser or even worse,
is that he's one cold son of a bitch who
knows how to play the system. Facts that became increasingly
more implicit throughout this old interview.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You got a company car back in or company trailer?
What was that? Hell, y'all? Pick up? What come? Was?
Speaker 4 (03:49):
All?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right? I think I remember it?
Speaker 5 (03:53):
You topper on it?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If that was hard to hear on this time warrant ape,
he says yes to the camper question. In fact, photos
I obtained of this vehicle matched the exact description of
the vehicle. Parked behind Dana's car on the morning after
she was reported missing.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Want's you tell me about the cars you've own him
since this Ranger you've got right now?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
How long he had it now? After? I told that, yeah,
not too much after.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's hard to understand his answer because he mumbles, is that.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Back in nineteen ninety when you wreck the torioder? How
very couldn't David? That sounds about right.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
All this discussion about his vehicles was small talk for
detectives who were just looking to gauge his level of
participation and transparency. They had already pulled the history from
the Motor Vehicle Department to see which makes and models
of vehicles he owned and when?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
How long do you have that one with Toyota?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
I was thinking about, it's a lot of time would
you have before that one?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Soon? Truck?
Speaker 4 (05:18):
And uh so?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Science Cameron on cameras on the shell or.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
The amount of time he took to answer what are
essentially basic questions, spoke to how carefully he was thinking
about what to say. At one point, he mentions an
accident he was in back in the early eighties, which
he claimed had caused a traumatic brain injury. Danny Varner,
(05:47):
the detective you here most prominently in the recordings, pushed
him on it, but he refused to give any specifics.
They moved on to his employment history during the time
of Dana's abduction and murder. He not only worked within
a mile of where Dana's body was found, but witness
(06:08):
statements support how he had been sexually harassing women at
the nearby Ozark Beverage company, which, if you recall from
an earlier episode, was just up the road from the
Stidham crime scene.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yours nineties. Yes, y'all still married? Yes, bit separated? No,
still lived together.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Sometimes you can explain that to him, he said.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
They split their time between two different states, where he
lived in Arkansas and the state where she lived.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Get married previously to her first marriage? Right, I went
to her married beforeios.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
They pressed him for his wife's first name and address,
simple things. What does he do? He plays the stupid card,
of course, then recalled that she likely lived somewhere in
the Southwest. He had one daughter with her, he says,
but hadn't seen her in many, many years. Guess why
(07:17):
exactly he was getting weird with her too?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Does she give him around here an hour? No? Appreciate.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Then they casually snuck in additional questions about his vehicle
and a timeline associated with Dana's murder.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You lived over here at these harvests, Wright Camber.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
He nodded yes to the question. The point of this
short interview was to rattle Lenny and lock down a
few specifics. Beyond that, they wanted to get a feel
for his overall demeanor. See how cocky he was. In
other words, as an investigator conducted an initial interview like this,
(08:02):
you allow the suspect to think he is in control.
The BCSO walked away from that short interview with two
major tasks ahead to find and speak to Lenny's ex
wife and daughter and begin to draft, secure and execute
two search warrants, one for his house and of course
(08:26):
a second for his vehicles. Previously on paper ghosts.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
If you've got a child and you send him and
take care of the keys and all this, and send
him to school and everything, you.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Keep crack from your child. And the part that bothered
me for years was so if somebody didn't report or missing,
I want.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
You to talk to this man.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
I had no idea that he has something to offer,
but he was here the night that he heard this.
But I'm looking at my emails and it says Laurie
me Grace, and she was nice. I didn't know her
by Anna knew her, and she looked exactly like what
I thought she would look like. And I just knew
that this is funny.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Who she is?
Speaker 3 (09:14):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and author of more than forty true crime books. This
is season four of Paper Ghosts the Ozarks. It had
(09:37):
taken thirty years to identify Grace Dowe and learn her
name Shauna Garber, three decades. In that sense, technology had
caught up to Shawna's case, the same as it had
in so many cold cases we see today. But if
Detective Laurie Howard, Sheriff Rob Evenson, and Detective Ronda Wise
(10:02):
thought identifying Shawna was caused for celebration, the reality of
the road ahead became abundantly clear right away, because as
they began searching for information about her, it seemed as
if well SHAWNA. Garber had never existed to begin with.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Okay, so who is Shauna Garber?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
That's a good question, because she had a tough go
as a little girl. She her mother had some issues
and she was burned as a child to her mother's
or her mother willfully earned her. So she went into
foster care. But I think that she might have been
bounced around for a little bit and even in the
foster care system, and then of course eventually she aged out.
(10:50):
So she lost her relationships with her bio family and
also with her step family, and then she ultimately lost
the relationships with her foster family. And so she goes
out on the street.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
She does.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Yeah, and she's eighteen at that time. Yeah, she's on
her own now, I say, on her own. I think
she had a boyfriend at the time. I don't know
the nature of that relationship. I'm told it's difficult to
find any type of information on him at this point.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
How does she end up in McDonald County.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
I can surmise how that happened. I can't tell you factually.
But she was actually working in Joplin, Missouri, but she
was living in Coffeevill, Kansas, and she was making that
commute from Coffeevill, Kansas to Joplin, Missouri and back.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And what kind of job was it that she was working,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
I contacted Shawna's brother, Robert Ringwald, and started by asking
him where they grew up.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
We lived in several different places, that is mostly in
eastern Kansas between Tapeka and Iole, Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And what was the house like the family like at
the time as kids?
Speaker 7 (12:01):
At that time, it was our biological mother and my
older brother, myself and Shauna.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
What was Shauna like then?
Speaker 7 (12:11):
She was singing happy quite a bit.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
You know what did she like to do?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Play?
Speaker 7 (12:18):
I don't don't remember. You know, an awful lot. We
used to play in the yard together and stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So you and Shauna were taken away from your mom. Yes,
tell me a little bit about that. So how old
were you?
Speaker 5 (12:38):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Six?
Speaker 7 (12:40):
And she would have been four.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
This was about the same time as you heard in
the last episode that Shawna's mother horribly disfigured her own
little girl. It's hard to talk about this sort of abuse,
but it's what Shauna and her family went through. Her
mother poured lighter fluid on her, lit a match and
(13:03):
set the girl on fire. While she would never be
the same, she was removed from the situation. It was
also the moment in Shauna's life when she became part
of the revolving door of the foster care system. So
did you stay in contact with her?
Speaker 7 (13:21):
No, we weren't allowed to. I wasn't allowed to. She
was removed from several foster homes because our mother would
interfere with everything. I mean to the point she even
threatened to kill one foster family's kids.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
Yeah, she was evil.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
And so as time goes on, do you ever see
Shauna again?
Speaker 7 (13:48):
I saw our birthday after we were taken. We were
taken to a SRS office or something like that and
celebrate our birthdays. And then saw her one time after
that in court when they severed our mother's parental rights.
(14:11):
And I never saw her again.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
And how come they severed the parental rights.
Speaker 7 (14:17):
Because our mother was an evil, vindictive spawn of health.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
And then what did you hear about her as the
years go on?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Not very much.
Speaker 7 (14:29):
We were trying to keep everything about her a secret
from everybody so that our biological mother wouldn't find her.
Speaker 8 (14:40):
I see.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
And so time moves on. You grow into an adult,
and I guess you sent some letters to Shanna. Can
you tell me about that?
Speaker 7 (14:50):
Yeah? I wrote two letters and I gave them to
the social worker. One was for them to give to her.
Writ way couldn't get anything but my first name in
it and nothing other than that, you know, just tell
her that you know, I was out here and I was,
(15:12):
you know, looking forward to meeting her. And then the
second one was formed to give to her after she
turned eighteen and had my name, you know, my full name,
my contact information, you know, how she could get a
hold of me, you know, letting her know that if
she wanted to meet me, that I was here and
(15:33):
wanted to see her.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
And you were confident that the social worker would forward
those letters to Shawna. Right, so I was. And then
what happened?
Speaker 7 (15:45):
They were put in a drawer somewhere and left, never
given to her.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
It was as if a series of tragic events beginning
almost on the day she was born, culminated in Shawna's murder.
Imagine the frustration, horror, and emotional trauma Rob felt when
he discovered that those letters never made it to Shawna,
all because some incompetent, lazy social worker forgot or just
(16:13):
chose not to forward them. Which leads me to wonder
if Shauna had gotten those letters, if she had known
there was someone out there who cared for her, loved her,
and wanted a relationship with her. Would I be talking
about her now as a murder victim. I've heard it
(16:49):
said that tragedy and life are inseparable. I think maybe
inevitable is a better word. We can't avoid pain, yet
we do put policies and programs in place and the
hope that preventable tragedies stemming from the ugliest side of
our humanity are avoided. But even those policies and programs
(17:12):
can sometimes fail us. As I continued talking to Detective
Lorie Howard, the idea that Shanna Garber got swallowed up
by the system, the same system that contributed in some
ways to her death, hovered over our conversation, which makes
investigating her murder that much more difficult from both an
(17:37):
emotional and practical standpoint.
Speaker 6 (17:40):
It's hard to do victimology. It's hard to find people
who knew her right correct.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
And even more so if you are a child, which
I now have hindsight, but if you're a childhood's growing
up in the foster care system because she's not reported missing,
so you can't go through a database of missing people
in your area, or even missing people in a four
state area because she's not there now. Later I learned
(18:06):
that supposedly she had been reported missing by the boyfriend
in Joblin, Missouri, but there's no.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Record of it. I wondered if that elusive boyfriend had
ever been considered a suspect in her murder.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
I think you have to always you kind of work
from the victim out and the people that are closest
to them, And certainly the boyfriend is where a paramour
of any sort it would be where you would start.
But I don't know that that could really easily or
readily be developed because the boyfriend, again is we took off,
he took off, and he's not there, and we're not
(18:42):
sure where he is or even if he's alive.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
So as an unsolved murder, this is a very difficult case,
right it is.
Speaker 9 (18:50):
It's extremely difficult, but it's not impossible. None of them
were impossible. It was impossible, we'd probably stop trying. But
this can be solved, and it will be. It's just
a matter of keep plugging away.
Speaker 5 (19:03):
I mean, we started with nothing, and now we know
who she is, so that's probably ninety percent of it is.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Knowing who she is.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
We will continue to put things back to the lab
and retest and as new technology comes along.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
Now, was this case looked at as possibly tied to
data Stidham's case.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Absolutely, And the reason for that is because they are
similar in appearance, but they are also similar geographically, and
the timeline is really close. You're looking at that eighty
nine to ninety in years. So when you begin to
(19:47):
put people together, you look, okay, geographically, how do they look?
Are they similar in nature? Do they have anything in common?
And then your timeline and the way they're found and
the way they're fan Absolutely, now Dana, and again Dana
was tied, not not to this degree, but she was
certainly bound. She had the same colored hair, which is
(20:10):
kind of a dark auburn hair. There's a group of
women in this area that are that have been found
that are similar in their appearance.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
How do you even begin to solve a murder? Better yet, too,
if one is connected to the other when you know
so very little about your victim. This was a problem
for the McDonald County Sheriff's Office and its ability to
begin building a profile of Shawna's killer if they have
(20:43):
no idea about Shawna's movements near the time of her death,
it becomes almost impossible to nail down not only those
who might have known her, but the events leading up
to her death. Hair Sheriff Rob Evenson.
Speaker 10 (20:58):
Remember, you're going back to nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety
and there's not We have not been able to find
those electronic those records of that. So when after she
ages out of the foster system at age eighteen, there's
not a whole lot that we've been able to find.
(21:18):
She didn't have a lot of presence that left any
kind of tangible record that we've been able to find.
Like friends, correct, yes, friends, We were able to identify
a former boyfriend, but the best information we have is
that those two had broken up quite some time before
she would have ended up here in McDonald County.
Speaker 6 (21:39):
Was there any indication that she was into drugs or
that scene or anything like that.
Speaker 10 (21:43):
We believe so, But if you ask us how certain
we are, I couldn't tell you that we were one
hundred percent, But yes, the likelihood is there.
Speaker 6 (21:51):
Yet, did you begin to maybe think that her case
was connected to some of the other cases in the
area at all, because.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
There certainly was a lot of cases during that time.
Speaker 10 (22:03):
Yes, I mean, anytime you have an unsolved homiside, you
always look for other connections to other similar cases. So
of course that was one of the things. There were
so many leads that were run down and followed. So yes,
I mean, there are other unsolved cases in this area,
(22:23):
so that is something that we always would look into.
But I don't know that we had any direct evidence
that would connect her to anybody else or any other case.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I asked Detective Lorie Howard about a cause of death
if they were ever able to find out. The speculation
is strangulation based on all the bindings and cords and
ropes found. Now you may wonder how law enforcement could
possibly prove a skeletonized murder victim was strangled to death.
(22:55):
After all, a pathologist cannot inspect bruising around the neck area,
other soft tissue, or look for signs of particual hemorrhage,
burst blood vessels in the eyes. But there's a delicate
bone called the hyoid in our throats that, when compressed
during strangulation, usually snaps. So was Shawna's hyoid bone actually broken?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
No?
Speaker 5 (23:23):
The answer to that is no, we believe very strongly
that she was strangled, just because she was badly decomposed.
Her body was strewn across the lawn from animals and
the natural process of decomposition. But we believe that she
wasn't stabbed because normally and that type of thing, if
you hit a bone, you might have a chip, and
(23:45):
that wasn't necessarily there. The skeleton was intact, so you're
not looking at blunt force trauma. We didn't see anything
like that. Really, there was nothing to tell us that
there was any sort of trauma to person eletal remains.
So we believe she was more than likely strangled, and
I think that the bindings would support that.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
So the how she's found is very important.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
Right, it is, absolutely It tells you a great deal.
Speaker 10 (24:12):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
The crime scene essentially is your first picture of what happened,
and so you can determine a lot obviously from that.
Was there, what first trauma, how was she left, was
she clothed, what clothing was missing? How long has she
been there? And because she was bound in the manner
(24:35):
that she was bound and how was she bound, she
was essentially what we call hoptide, which is your hands,
your wrists are bound behind your back and that then
is bound to your feet, and in her case it
was bound to a shoelace and only one shoelace, so
she had massive amounts of bindings.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
What about the towel wrapped around Shawna's head with kowak cable,
what did it mean?
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Normally that would tell you that he wants to cover
He either one didn't want to see the look on
his victim if she was alive at the time, and
or he wants to cover something up. And so it's
it's almost exactly what you would think it is. They
and I've heard this from more than one serial killer actually,
(25:24):
and I'm not suggesting that's the case with Shauna, but
we don't know, but they do tend to not want
to see the look on their victims those.
Speaker 10 (25:33):
Yeah, strangulation is very personal, it is.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
It is, indeed, if you're that close to someone, as
opposed to just saying having shot someone from a distance.
So it tells you a lot about the relationship. Generally powered,
it tells you a lot about power.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Still, three letters, yes, letters loomed large in my mind.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
B t K.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
At this stage my search for answers, I needed to
either include or exclude Dennis Raider from Shawna's murder. If
Jack Lenny was to be viewed as a potential suspect
in Dana's and Shawna's cases, bt K had to be
taken out of the equation. And there was only one
person I knew of who could speak as the authority
(26:21):
about Dennis Raider and his possible involvement in both cases.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Well, that was part of my I guess, my witch
Calt fantasy. These people were selected. A strangled missus o'toll,
then she went out or passed out. I thought she
was dead. She passed out. Then I strangled Josephine.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
She passed out or I thought she was dead, and
then I went over and put a bag on Junior's head.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
That, right there is who BTK is. The affect says
it all cold, stark, stoic, but very real. He is
talking there about murdering a family. But the takeaway from me,
I think, is that BTK is a serial killer, unafraid
(27:23):
to talk about who he has killed. In September twenty
twenty three, o Sage County, Oklahoma Sheriff Eddie Verdon announced
the formation of a BTK Task Force. This was in
relation to two specific victims. The sheriff was looking to
bring Dennis Rader into a grand jury on murder charges
(27:47):
for Cynthia Kinney, a nineteen seventy six unsolved Thomis Side,
and SHAWNA. Garber. The local Oklahoma district attorney, Mike Fisher,
felt differently. Fact the guy came out swinging, saying there
was not enough evidence to prove Verdin's theorem or press
(28:07):
charges against BTK. Verdon persisted, releasing a sketch Raider had
recently made of a woman bound hogtide and sitting on
a chair leaning up against a barn. Barnes played a
profound role in raiders murder fantasies. Some in law enforcement
believe the barn close to where Shauna Garber was found
(28:30):
had to be somehow connected to her murder. I reached
out to the one person who knows BTK, in my opinion,
better than anyone, but had also studied SHAWNA. Garber's case.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I'm doctor Catherine Ramsland. I'm a professor of forensic psychology,
and i am a writer. I've written about seventy plus books,
many of them on extreme offenders.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
In twenty sixteen, doctor Ramsland published the book Confessions of
a serial killer, the untold story of Dennis Rader, the
BTK killer. So how and when did you come across
Seanna Garber's case?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Maybe a couple of years ago someone had mentioned it
and talked about is there these were cold cases in
this area, like the whole state, and she was on
a list, and somebody mentioned maybe there was some kind
of association with Dennis Rader. So that of course got
(29:39):
me interested.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
That interest in what is a longer story of a
woman doctor Ramsland met and how her book was born
turned into prison visits, telephone calls and letters between her
and BTK. The book she produced with Rader is a
kind of BTK confession manifesto.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
It was a very intense journey, and I always wondered
if there might be are the victims. So when the
grays Doe case came up, I wanted to see if
there were any potential.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Links to the dismay of many involved. Raider was suddenly
thrust into the number one slot for Shawna's case. As
of late twenty twenty three, I had it on solid
law enforcement authority that Raider had no connection to Shawna's murder.
I also uncovered information about a suspect other than Jack
(30:34):
Lenny for Shawna's case, which I will delve into more
deeply in the next few episodes. Here's how doctor Ramslin
describes Raider's very distinctive m a invaluable insight into one
of the darkest minds of the past half century.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Well, first, he chose his own moniker behind them, torture them,
kill them BTK, So that signals right off the bat
he's after is he wants that binding thing that was
highly erotic to him. He's actually compelled serial killer. The
torture probably not so much, even though that would sort
(31:15):
of what he wanted to achieve was to terrorize Wichita,
his hometown. He murdered ten people between nineteen seventy four
and nineteen ninety one, always with some kind of bondage
aspect to it, because that would satisfy him. So if
there's mo to be had, it's really the idea that
(31:36):
he used some kind of bindings in each of his cases.
But he started by going into houses, picking out houses.
Usually they had a number three or some kind of
number that three would be divided into like a six
or nine, because three was a big deal to him.
(31:57):
It's a magical number.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
As doctor Ramsland points out, Raider was meticulous and methodical.
His murders very much fantasy driven, but also torture could
have been involved.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
So he'd check out houses. He'd enter a lot of
them where people weren't home, just to prove I guess
that he could. And he was a voyeur. He stalked people.
He found out about his victims typically, so usually had
plenty of time to check out how safe it was,
I mean, he was married, her job on the side,
(32:35):
I guess, and so it was he had to do
this when he had opportunities, so that if that's mo,
I mean, he went in. But then later he took
two of his victims out of the house, one of
which he posed in a church for pictures and various
items of lingerie he had stolen from other women, and
(32:59):
the other one he had meant to take to a barn,
an abandoned barn, which is instrumental in what we're talking about,
because that had always been a fantasy of his, is
to murder somebody in an old barn, And he had
already picked out some abandoned farmsteads around Wichita. But he
(33:20):
lost his way that night because it was snow, he
had boggy, so he dumped her under like a culvert
kind of bridge instead. But that and so that really
breaks his mo.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
If you noticed, the term mo or modus operandi is
not something doctor Ramsln sounds all that excited about linking
to BTK or any serial killer for that matter. And
I'd have to agree serial killers can and will change
their mo from murder to murder. I believe there is
(33:55):
no typical serial killer, as much as the public wants
to believe there is. Base done the very small sample
we see routinely on television.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
He didn't enter her home, but he entered her home
very differently than he had and this is number ten.
He entered her home very differently than he had any
of the others he broke in. He lifted a cinder
block and just through it through a sliding door, breaking
the glass, which he'd never done before. But he used
(34:26):
his typical ruse, I'm just here on a fugitive blah
blah blah, don't worry, because he always believed if you
put them at ease that they would survive. That would
make them obviously more vulnerable and easier to manage. And
then he put her in her car. He always had
this thing with the people's cars, and that's always part
(34:47):
of his MO as well. So it's hard to say MO.
He certainly didn't have the same MO, but he had
there were similarities from one thing to another, even when
the MOO changed.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
He didn't rape any of his victims, right, He did
not rape any of his victims. And what was his
thought process behind that? If the crimes were sexual to him?
What was going on with him?
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Well, you can have a sexual crime without necessarily having
any kind of sexual penetration. It can like, for example,
he hanged an eleven year old girl in the Otaro
case and masturbated onto her. Okay, so that's not rape physically,
but it's certainly, you know, a veryous sexual crime. He
(35:37):
masturbated in a couple of others using their lingerie. But
in many ways the binding was really about himself. He
would bind himself in a lot of auto erotic kinds
of incidents, So he'd take the items that he had
removed from the victims and fantasize about them while he
(35:58):
was having an auto erotic event.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
BTK dehumanized and degraded his victims. It was a very
important part of the psychology, however, twisted driving his murders.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
So for him it was really reliving it. He had
these motel parties where he take dolls and pictures and
drawings he had made of the victims to relive it.
And so he had this odd notion that if he
raped his victims it was somehow unfaithful to his wife. Wow,
(36:32):
and yeah, it's an odd kind of mindset that certain
things and he's not going to cross the line, but
other things more extreme he will. Like when he first
started working with me, one of the earliest things he
said was we're going to start playing chess by mail,
and he said, don't cheat. I thought, well, what what there?
(36:58):
You a serial killer moralized to me? Yes, but that's
you'll see that in a number of these killers, or
they have these these kind of odd compartments where they
certain things are okay and other things are not okay.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
And did he use the same type of bindings in
each of his murders.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
He liked to experiment sometimes because he was reading either
a novel about a serial killer or some true crime case,
and he sometimes would like to experiment. For example, getting
back to m he strangled each of the Otaro's, but
the next victim he stabbed, and he found that he
didn't like stabbing, so he then went back to strangulation.
(37:46):
And sometimes he'd use the cord, but he always bound them.
Sometimes he used that duct tape. He had some thick rope.
He had some like Venetian cord, a parachute cord, had
tape of all kinds, twine. He liked twine, So he
did have different kinds of bindings because ever since he
(38:08):
was a kid, he would collect all different kinds of
rope and string.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
And was he ever known to be trolling around like
Anderson or Pineville, Missouri the Ozarks at all during the
nineties early nineties.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
So for me, when I saw that this one case
was in the area of Missouri that was pretty close
to an area where Dennis grew up and would sometimes
take his kids spend summers, I thought, you know, that
made it a viable potential case.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
And if Sean of Garber was hitchhiking, which a lot
of law enforcement I've spoken to think she might have been,
would he be the type of serial killer to pick
her up.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
I've never heard Denis Raiders say he picked up a hitchhiker.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
I had sent doctor Ramslin photos of the actual bindings
used on Shauna and asked if those that Raider used
were similar the same photos. I should point out that
Detective Laurie Howard had shown Raider when she interviewed him,
and Raider was shocked by how messy and how many
of them there were.
Speaker 4 (39:22):
Some of the bindings on Shauna are very similar to
the ropes found and confiscated by police when Dennis was
arrested in two thousand and five. Even he has commented
to me, because he's now seen the photos too, He's commented, Wow,
those are like some of the ropes they use, but
not all of them. And I can't think of the
(39:45):
time he used coaxial cables.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Raider had by now also denied killing Shauna Garber. So,
Shauna Garber was found with a towel wrapped around her
face and the coaxle wrapped around that. You know, in
your professional opinion, what does that say about her killer?
Speaker 4 (40:07):
A lot of people like to think a covered base
means it was personal, they knew her. That's a formula.
I personally don't like formulas because they tend to give
us tunnel vision. This looked more like part of whatever
this person was doing to her, And especially with the
cable wrapped around it, that looks to me more like
(40:29):
a suffocation mechanism. If you put your hand of her
mouth with a towel, she can't bite.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
It sounds like he adapted to the situations he needed
he did.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
Yeah, but I think you can say that about any
serial killer because you're always going to have circumstances, the
variables are there. Their fantasy never actually matches right, it happens.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Thoughts in general about Shawna's case, I mean, what are
you thinking about that case?
Speaker 4 (40:58):
I think the Shawna one of the things that we
see on her is the multiple bindings on her legs.
That is interesting and that suggests captivity potentially that somebody
held her and bound her, because why would they why
(41:20):
would they take her to a Now I know there's
there's theories that there were screams heard on Halloween night
in that gentle area, But who is binding her all
that much there on the farm that night? That doesn't
make any sense to me. That's a lot of bindings,
which that suggests it's not about keeping her captive so
(41:44):
much as the binding itself. But that's that's not something
that Rader would do. He wouldn't overbind like even he's
said that with that, that's a lot of bindings, and
he would have bound her in other ways. A lot
of it was focused on the legs and ankles, So
(42:05):
that suggests somebody who perhaps overties things in other ways
or overdoes things in other ways. There's an obsessive quality
to it.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Shawna's murder, what little is known about it, was anything
but meticulous. I saw anger, haste, and retaliation in Shawna's murder.
Those are not the trademarks of BTK. He planned, he fantasized,
he took his time, he wanted his bindings to be
just so. When I mentioned BTK had been shown photos
(42:39):
of this crime scene, the distaste verging on disgust he
emanated was palpable. Furthermore, the signatures he left behind at
his crime scenes weren't found at Shawna's crime scene. Torture
was likely involved, but we'll cover that in an upcoming episode.
(43:00):
That's why I just don't buy BTK being behind Shawna's murder.
And when I put it to law enforcement, they echoed
my sentiments, specifically that Raider had no connection to Shawna's murder.
I was convinced, after looking at all of the available
evidence and conferring with law enforcement, that Dennis Btk Raider
(43:20):
should be moved far down on a list of potential
suspects in Shauna Garber's murder, if he even deserves a
place on the list at all. And Raider, remember, was
not even close to being on the radar in the
Danas Stidham homicide, which brings me back to Jack Lenny.
(43:44):
The goal with that first interview the BCSO conducted with
Lenny the tape you heard at the top of the episode,
was to stir him up a bit, let him know
they were focused on him, and see how he responded.
As it were, Lenny had told investors the Gators he
was out of town at a family reunion on July
twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine, the day Dana went missing.
(44:08):
That was a lie. He had clocked eighty seven hours
that week at a construction company he worked for in town,
a job, remember, which put him on the road, driving
around Bella Vista and bordering towns, including those close to
the Missouri state line. In fact, the more they found
(44:30):
out about Lenny, the more he fit into the profile
of Dana and Shawna's killer.
Speaker 8 (44:39):
And you know, from my perspective, there was some pretty
incriminating evidence in that basement of that house.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
The BCSO secured those search warrants for Jacquelinese home and
vehicles after they interviewed him a second time and after
finding a lot of blood and female hair in one
of his vehicles. As they entered the basement of his house,
what they found pointed in the direction of what I
(45:08):
could say is a serial killer.
Speaker 11 (45:12):
My recollection is that there was probably like seventeen different
types of twine that were used.
Speaker 8 (45:17):
To encase cocoon this young lady after she had been murdered.
I just remember being in the basement of this individual's
house and there had to been like over one hundred
spools of different chords. I mean, I don't know who
keeps cords.
Speaker 11 (45:37):
I don't keep cords, but it just was pretty ominous.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
With all of the new information I had developed on him,
including all of that blood found in his vehicle, I
decided it was time to confront Jack Lenny, to knock
on his door and see what this guy had to
say for himself. If you're enjoying Paper Ghosts. Check out
(46:06):
my other podcasts, Crossing the Line with m William Phelps
and White Eagle wherever you get your favorite shows coming
up next time Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 11 (46:18):
They were wanting to pin him down, very surprised that
he wanted to come in. You know, my initial reaction is,
you know this guy's coming in. Surely he's not the guy, right,
I mean, who does that? Something is going on with
this guy. I don't know what it is. I'm not
a doctor, I'm not a psychologist. I'm just trying to
get a read. But there was just something that was
(46:39):
clinically off.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
He probably destroyed her life.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
He just basically abused her emotionally, probably physically, and she
did kill herself shortly after.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
BCSO Detectives spoke with her.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
I think probably she was at a praising point.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Because you better listen, that's my goddamn life, you and
they'll never find you.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Paper Ghosts Season four is written and executive produced by
me and William Phelps. Script consulting by Rose Bachi, sound
design by Matt Russell, executive production by Catherine Law, and
audio editing and mixing by Brandon Dicker. The Takaboom Productions.
The series theme number four four to two is written
(47:25):
and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Moon.
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