May 2, 2024 • 36 mins
It was April 12, 1971, a 27-year-old woman named Pauline Storment was walking down South Duncan Avenue in Fayetteville, Arkansas, just a few blocks from her apartment. She didn't know someone was following her in the darkness.
And then, while she was walking and just a few blocks from her apartment, her attacker came out of the darkness and attacked her, stabbing her eight times in a frenzied attack that lasted several minutes.
It was a hot night so at 9:45 pm when Pauline started screaming a lot of people in the area heard her, and there were several witnesses. But her killer escaped into the night - and despite the police questioning tons of people, lots of theories being explored over the years an arrest, Pauline’s killer has never been found.
If you have a case you’d like the Hell and Gone team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It was April twelfth, nineteen seventy one. A twenty seven
year old woman named Pauline Stormant was walking down South
Duncan Avenue in Fayetteville, Arkansas, just a few blocks from
her apartment. She didn't know that someone was following her
in the darkness. Pauline worked two part time jobs, one
is a cashier at the Malco Theater and another as
(00:33):
a secretary at the ROTC Center on the University of
Arkansas campus. Pauline had recently started going back to school
as a mature student. She enrolled as a sophomore at
the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where she was a
social welfare major. Pauline had a roommate, Alice pat Murphy.
Pat later told the authorities that Pauline wasn't dating anyone. Actually,
(00:57):
Pauline spent most of her free time hitting the books.
She was very focused on schoolwork, which meant that she
was often pulling late nights at the library. On that night,
on April twelfth, Pauline did a shift at the ROTC.
While she was there, she mentioned to a coworker that
she might go to a gospel concert later, but she
ended up going to the library to study.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
According to her roommate, Pauline's regular routine would have had
her coming home at around ten thirty or eleven PM,
but something made her lead the library a little earlier
that night, around nine thirty pm. And then while she
was walking, when she was just a few blocks from
her apartment, someone came out of that darkness and attacked Pauline,
(01:41):
stabbing her over and over eight times in all, in
a frenzied attack that lasted several minutes. It was a
hot night, a lot of people had their windows open,
and at nine forty five pm when Pauline started screaming,
a lot of people in the area heard her screaming,
and there were several witnesses who saw a man come
(02:01):
up behind her. But despite that, Pauline's killer is escaped
into the night. And even though the police have questioned
tons of people, lots of theories have been explored over
the years, and there was one arrest, Pauline's killer has
never been found. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five
(02:21):
years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've
learned there's no such thing as a small town where
murder never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people
all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
you have a case you'd like me and my team
to look into, you can reach out to us at
(02:43):
our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
four four six one four or five. That's six seven
eight seven four four six ' one four five. This
is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Police got to the scene really quickly.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
They rushed Pauline to Washington Regional Hospital, but they couldn't
do anything to save her, and she was pronounced dead
just after eleven PM. So the assault had very quickly
turned into a murder case. Pauline's body was sent for
an autopsy. Forensic testing revealed that Pauline had died of
the stab wounds. She had been stabbed in the arm,
(03:54):
the chest, and the stomach. Investigators said the murder weapon
was a knife like a butcher knife, around six to
eight inches long, and they believed serrated on both sides.
The police did not find the murder weapon at the scene,
but several days later, the sheriff did find a butcher
knife that was stabbed into the ground behind an apartment
(04:14):
complex that was across the street from where Pauline lived.
They sent that knife in for testing, but I haven't
been able to figure out what, if anything, happened with
that weapon. A lot of people doubted that that butcher
knife had been the weapon in the first place, because
it wasn't serrated. But as far as I know, and
there is a lot of information missing in this case,
there was nothing conclusive, ever proven one way.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Or the other.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Sadly, that knife, along with a ton of other evidence,
has been lost.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
We'll get to that later. Side note.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
While I was working on Gail Vaut's case, which we
covered a couple of weeks back, as part of that,
we started looking around for other unsolved murders in the
same area of Arkansas. Even though Pauline's murder happened nine
years earlier than Gail's murder in nineteen eighty, I couldn't
help but be struck by Pauline's case because, even though
(05:09):
them was completely different for Pauline and Gail, Gail was
shot in the head and appeared to have been sexually assaulted,
while Pauline was stabbed in a semi public area both
women were tall with shoulder linked brown hair, and both
cases were unsolved.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I want to be cleared.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Nothing in the evidence I've seen indicates these cases are
connected in any way. The mos were completely different. Gail
was shot in the head and appeared to have been
sexually assaulted. Pauline was stabbed in a semi public area.
Amy reached out to a member of Pauline's family named
Lance Gosnell. His great grandmother is Pauline's aunt, so he's
(05:48):
her cousin and he's been hearing about Pauline's story about
this famous unsolved murder in his family for a long time,
since he was very young. A few years ago, he
decided to try and find answers. He started writing about
the case. The website is at who Murdered Pauline dot
WordPress dot com, and he's compiled a tremendous amount of
(06:08):
evidence over the years that he's collected a lot of
it through Foyer requests. Pauline Stormant was born on April third,
nineteen forty four, in Ozark, Arkansas, and her family her
mom and dad were still living in Ozark when she
died from a young age. Her family described her as
someone who was very serious, pretty quiet, and liked to study.
(06:29):
She was not a drinker or a partier in high school,
and it seemed to be pretty much the same story
in college. After she graduated from high school, she attended
Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. She finished her freshman year
there and after that she left school and started doing
some secretarial work. So one thing about Pauline's stormant her
(06:50):
studies and her work life are pretty well documented. Her
personal life is much more of a mystery.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
There are some years.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Between when she was twenty one and twenty seven where
we don't know a lot about her personal relationships. When
she was twenty one years old, in nineteen sixty five,
Pauline got married to a man named Charles Joseph Pate.
A lot of their relationship, as we said, is a mystery,
but we do know that whatever happened between them apparently
did not end very well. Charles and Pauline lived in
(07:20):
Memphis for a while. While Pauline was in Memphis, she
taught first aid for the Red Cross as well as
doing some secretarial work. Again, a lot of the history
about Pauline in this case was provided by her cousin Lance.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
One other thing that jumps out in my mind is
the records show that she was married to a man
named Charles Pate. The marriage didn't last long. I can't
find a door forced certificate, but she had mentioned to
a roommate who she had lived with when she was
(07:52):
either in Memphis or Atlanta, that she was deathly afraid
of her ex husband.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So Pauline and Charles were estranged, but according to her
family and to court records, they may not have beneficially divorced.
So in nineteen seventy one, Pauline was at the University
of Arkansas. She had put her studies on hold while
she was married to Charles, but once Pauline got the
chance to complete her education, she seemed to really throw
(08:19):
herself into it. Information from a foyer request from an
old police report shows that Pauline's former roommate, the one
who Lance was referring to, who she had lived with
in Memphis. That woman's name was Iris Fletcher. She was
the one who talked about Pauline's fear of her ex husband.
But apparently police ruled out Charles fairly early. I don't
(08:43):
know why I have really tried to figure that out,
but I don't have a lot of information about the
investigation because a lot of the case file is gone
over the years, a lot of the evidence and a
lot of the pages have been lost. But apparently he
attended the funeral, was cooperative with the police, and was
cleared early. Pauline's college roommate passed the one who said
(09:06):
that Pauline didn't date that much. Was asked by police
if anything strange had happened on the day Pauline was murdered,
and she said, yes, there was one.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Thing that was out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
She said that at around two pm that afternoon, apparently
two men who were described as white men, young guys
who Pauline and her roommate didn't know, invited Pauline and
pat for drinks. The two women said no thanks and
didn't take them up on their offer. Later, the two
men reportedly went toward the residence of a guy named
(09:38):
Gordon Cummings. Gordon Cummings with someone who we know Pauline
had been introduced to. She knew him, but we don't
know how well she knew him, and that will be
the case with a lot of these relationships. Trying to
figure out exactly how these people were related and connected
each other is a huge part of this. We all
(09:59):
know that sometimes in these cases, these tiny little details
that we know are true and am using air quotes
there turn out to be slightly wrong, and those slightly
wrong details can multiply over the years and turn into
a much larger distortion.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
We've seen this happen over and over with so many cases.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Facts are wrong from the beginning, and they're repeated wrong
over the years. At the same time, though, sometimes tiny
details are left out and you never know which ones
could lead to cracking the case. Jane Jones wrote a long,
very in depth article about this case in Ay about
U magazine back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
She pointed out that it was a full moon that night.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
This was something that had appeared in some early news reports,
and that detail supposedly meant that Pauline could be seen
by the witnesses that night. But actually, because I obsess
over these things, I went back and found out actually
the moon wasn't full that night.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
It was a waning gibbous moon.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Not that that makes any difference in the context of
the investigation at all, because actually a waning gibbus is
almost a full moon. It's actually the part of the
lunar phase right after the moon is full. It would
be almost as light as a full moon out there,
but probably a little bit less poetic in a newspaper article,
And I'm bringing this up just to illustrate it's one
(11:18):
tiny example of something we thought we knew wrong. Information
gets repeated over the years, and sometimes it multiplies. So
I'm really trying to go back and take a look
at every single piece of information that we have and
try to understand if we really know everything that we
think we know. Police were trying to figure out what
(11:40):
Pauline's plans had been that night, to see if, other
than the two guys asking her in her roommate to
have drinks, anything else oude of the ordinary had happened.
Police talked to a woman named Terry Keating. Now Terry
worked with Pauline at the ROTC office. She said she
had seen Pauline at around seven thirty pm and that
Pauline had mentioned something about a gospel concert hosted by
(12:02):
a group called Black Americans for Democracy. This concert was
going to be held at the Union Ballroom, a building
that was basically very close right next door to the ROTC.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Building. It started at eight pm.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But whether Pauline attended that concert or not is still
kind of a question mark because some reports say she
was planning to go. Other media reports say she told
someone she had a class or a conflict and she
could not attend. Lance pointed out something interesting on his website.
He said that we're talking about nineteen seventy one Arkansas,
(12:36):
and he was speculating, but he said, could some racist
person have taken offense at a white woman planning to
go to this concert where there were going to be
a lot of black singers?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Total speculation, but given the political.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Climate at the time, I do think it's something that
police would have to consider. But there was no evidence
that this was ever a factor. So whether or not
Pauline made it to that concert. Eventually, after she worked
her shift at the ROTC, she ended up at the library.
She was seen by multiple witnesses there, but then she
(13:11):
left suddenly. We don't know exactly what time, but by
tracing her route, she must have headed outside at around
nine point thirty.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So why did she leave early?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Was it a coincidence or did she see something or
someone there that bothered her? After she left the library,
Pauline's root would have taken her south along Duncan Avenue.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
She was walking pretty.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Slowly and carefully because she had a big stack of
books in her hands. So again I'm betting that she
headed straight home because she was balancing lots of school books.
She was at the intersection of Duncan Avenue and Treadwell
Streets when her attacker struck. The vicious attack happened very quickly,
and then her attacker left the scene on foot. Another
(13:58):
thing that we know for sure in this case is
the time of death. We know she was screaming at
nine forty five pm because several people heard her at
the same time. One of them was twenty four year
old Jack Huff. He lived at the Summit Terraces apartments,
which were nearby. He said when he heard that scream,
he ran downstairs and he saw Pauline kind of staggering
(14:19):
toward him and holding her stomach. He told the police
that Pauline said someone hit her in the chest, and
that she said someone was following her, someone who was
wearing glasses. Another witness named Mike Adare, also lived nearby.
He said he'd actually seen Pauline before the attack.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Happened.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
He said he was driving home and at the corner
of Duncan and Center, right where she got attacked, He
said he saw her carrying some really heavy books and
he saw a.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Man following her.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Two other men, Gary Gammel and Joe Clifton, were driving
in separate cars north on South Duncan and they were
approaching that same intersection. Joe also lived at the Summit
Terrace apartment complex. He told investigators that he also saw
man following Pauline. He said he noticed she was carrying
some heavy books and he thought about asking her if
(15:12):
she wanted a lift, but in the end he didn't.
Then a few seconds later, he said he heard the scream.
He heard her screaming, help me. So Joe and Gary
are also there in their cars. They both rushed up
to the scene. Gary said that from his point of view,
he saw Pauline collapse to the ground. He said when
he looked around, he saw her books and her personal
(15:33):
belongings on the ground, but he didn't see anyone else.
He said when he saw Pauline, she was holding her chest.
He approached her and when he got closer he could
see that she was lying half in the yard and
half in the street. He said that her white skirt
in one of her arms were completely soaked blood. Joe
said that he asked Pauline if the man that was
(15:55):
following her did this.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
She told him yes.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
He then started trying to help her, asking where her
cuts were and which way the man went, but he
said it. At this point, Pauline didn't know where the
man went, and she was kind of slipping in and
out of consciousness. She kept asking for her books. Detectives
(16:20):
did find Pauline's black purse with her wallet and ID
in it near her body. They took it in for testing,
but only found one set of fingerprints, and it turned
out that they were Pauline's, so police knew it was
unlikely the killer's motive had been robbery. It didn't seem
like they grabbed for her purse at all. They were
trying to hurt her, not take her stuff. Police asked
(16:43):
all four witnesses some detailed questions about the man that
they said they saw following Pauline. Mike Adair said the
man following Pauline was wearing a brown sport coat and
had blonde or dirty blonde hair, around five ten to
six feet tall and wearing glasses. So the police did
a sketch according to these guys descriptions and in the
(17:03):
end it's kind of random. But this sketch, a lot
of people pointed out, kind of looked like the Zodiac Killer.
By the way, no, there was no evidence the Zodiac
Killer was ever involved, So like the Zodiac Killer sketch,
the sketch in Pauline's case was pretty generic. No one
had actually seen this man's face, so it was a
sketch of a guy with slicked back hair and glasses, again,
(17:27):
a pretty common look on a college campus.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
This guy could have been anyone.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
When Mike was asked about the police sketch, he said, yes,
it did look similar to the man he saw, but
he pointed out that the hair of the guy he
saw was messier, not slick back like on that sketch.
There were two other potential witnesses, Robert Spray and John Hall.
These guys lived nearby at twelve South Hill Street. They
(17:51):
said they had seen a man who could have been
involved in the crime because the guy kind of fit
the description of the assailant. He had a sport code on.
He was described as being medium height with a slight build.
They said that this guy was kind of stumbling around
like he was drunk, but they didn't have a lot
to go on. They didn't have a description of the car,
and in the end police never definitively found that person,
(18:13):
so it seemed to be a dead end. So police
had no idea what the motive had been, but they
did have potentially four different people who said they definitively
saw the killer, but their descriptions differed slightly, which of
course is not uncommon in a case like this, but
they did all agree on one thing. Pauline had been
attacked by one person, one man, who stabbed her multiple times,
(18:38):
and they said that man had been following her and
was able to get very close to her before he pounced.
Because of where Pauline's injuries were, the fact that she
had stab wounds on the front of her body, police
figured out she had turned around to face her attacker,
so they wondered was it someone she knew, Was that
how they were able to get that close, or were
(19:01):
they just really fast and could they have snuck up
on her that quickly. The police admitted they didn't know
if this had been someone fixated on Pauline specifically, or
someone targeting women totally randomly, or even possibly a case
of mistaken identity. Because it was pretty dark it was night,
none of the men who saw this stranger were that close,
(19:24):
so even though there were multiple witnesses, not a single
one got a good look at the killer's face. But
police did know one thing that was such a vicious attack.
The person who stabbed Pauline would have blood on their clothing,
so police canvassed the area. They were looking for a
suspect covered in blood, and it wasn't long before they
(19:46):
found one. A few minutes after the stabbing, police were
cruising the area when two officers saw two young men
sitting on a bench. According to a very good article
in Master Detective magazine from nineteen seventy four, they were
around five blocks away from the crime scene when they
saw these guys. One of them was so seventeen year
old Wallace Peter Cunkle. So the police start talking to
(20:09):
these guys and apparently they told the officers that they
were just hanging around. They were supposed to have had
dates with two girls, but they'd been stood up. But
when police asked them for more details, the guys said
they didn't even know these girls' names, which honestly seems
a little bit strange to me that they wouldn't even
have a first name. But apparently the police thought this
story was believable. As the detective was talking to Peter Cunkle,
(20:32):
he noticed some dark spots on his white shirt, jacket,
and trousers. Later it was determined those were blood. When
the officer asked Peter why he had blood on his clothes,
Peter said he'd had a nosebleed recently. Now, to police,
with everything going on, this seemed like a pretty big coincidence,
so they took him in for questioning. They took his clothes,
(20:54):
and they took samples of his blood. Now, obviously this
was back in nineteen seventy one, so the testing they
could do on blood was much more limited than it
is now. They could basically tell you what type blood
it was, and that's about it. Peter got a lawyer,
and his lawyer said he refused to take a polygraph test. Now,
(21:15):
by the way, I don't hold this against him at all,
just my opinion, but I've said this before. I actually
think this is a very smart move. Honestly, asking for
an attorney, especially in a situation like this where you
know the police are kind of on a fishing expedition,
is something that I think everyone should do. Peter told police,
and this is according to his police statement that was
(21:36):
released via a Foyer request, that he and a friend
were boiling water with speed that night.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So we've talked about injectable speed before.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That was a big thing in the seventies and eighties
in Arkansas, and what they were using was a drug
that was similar to finfinn. Now, if you were around
in the eighties, you may remember that this was an
ingredient in a diet drug before it got removed from
the market by the FDA in the mid nineties because
people who took it were experiencing heart damage. These pills
were very strong, they were speed. What they would do
(22:06):
is boil water, throw a lot of pills in there,
and then inject this stuff into their veins. So Peter
Kunkle said that's what they were doing that night. He
said he started shooting up at around seven thirty pm.
He took another shot at eight pm and then did
a few other things. Stopped by a local store called
the jet Set to get a sprite. Then between nine
thirty and nine to forty five pm, so the crucial
(22:28):
time when Pauline would have been walking from the library.
He said a friend of his named Richard Finley, who
had been hanging out with that night, asked Peter to
take him home, So Peter said they borrowed one of
their friend's motorcycles, and then he claims that he gave
Richard a ride home and their route would have involved
cutting right through Dixon Avenue, right through the crime scene.
(22:50):
After dropping Richard home, Peter said that he went back
to the Grayhouse.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This was the place where he'd been staying, so Peter
was in the area.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
According to the Arkansas Razorback newspaper, both Peter Kuncle and
Pauline had Type A blood, but unfortunately, these small amounts
of blood that drops on Peter's clothes, they didn't have
enough to test it in the lab back then. So
the bottom line was a lot of people have blood
Type A and they had no physical evidence tying Peter
(23:21):
to the crime scene. And Peter had a good attorney.
His attorney was on point, and he cut a deal
with the police. He said, Peter would agree to take
a lot of detector test but only if the police
would agree that if Peter passed that test, basically they
would clear him.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
And apparently the police agreed to do that and Peter passed.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So Peter Conkle was released from police custody and publicly
cleared by law enforcement. The police chief, Hollis Spencer, said
that police were quote satisfied that he had no part
in the murder of Miss stormant end quote. Then Peter
cuncle and his parents held a press conference and he
(24:02):
was very emotional at this press conference. I remember he's
only seventeen years old and he was crying. He told
everybody he didn't blame the police, they were just doing
their job. He said he always knew he would be
cleared and he completely denied having anything to do with
Pauline's murder. By the way, the charges against Peter were dropped,
but they were what we call nelly prost meaning dismissed
(24:22):
without prejudice, so if new evidence ever comes to light,
he could technically have been retried. After Peter was released,
police started looking for other people of interest. They did
a lot of interviews, they reportedly gave a lot more
a lie detector tests, and then just a month after
Pauline was murdered, a second University of Arkansas co ed
(24:46):
was stabbed. Her name was Andrea Jones and she lived
about one point eight miles from where Pauline was attacked.
Police arrested a man named Eddie Rush. He was twenty
one years old and not a student at the University
of Arkansas. Apparently Eddie Rush lied his way into andrew
his apartment and attacked her. He stabbed her several times,
(25:09):
but she survived. Eddie Rush was convicted and sentenced to
twenty one years in prison for attempted murder.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And we're bringing Eddie Rush.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Up because his picture in the newspaper from back then
looks very much like the sketch that was circulated of
Pauline's attacker. He's got a short buzz cut, but he
does have glasses, and he would seem to fit the
general description. Eddie Rush passed away several years ago, and
(25:40):
because in Pauline's case, there's no DNA attest, sadly there's
no way to investigate him now. But after that, no
one else was arrested or charged. Then, on May twenty second,
nineteen eighty one, a man named Jack Butler walked into
the Faateful Police Department. He said he had something to
tell police. He claimed that he had murdered Pauline Storman.
(26:11):
Jack Butler's story was that he was hanging around a
swimming pool on the University of Arkansas campus. He said
after that he went home and got a pocket knife
and started strolling through Evergreen Cemetery. He said that he
saw a woman and started following her and attacked her
and stabbed her from behind. This is where the story
gets a little strange, because apparently he thought the woman
(26:32):
was his wife. He told police when he got home
he was shocked because he thought his wife was dead
and she was ready to have dinner. He said he
only later realized that the woman he had supposedly stabbed
was Pauline Stormant. But he said a lot of things
that didn't seem to fit the evidence or actually make sense.
Like he said he had stabbed Pauline three times, when
(26:54):
we know she'd been stabbed a lot more than that.
And he also said she was carrying a record player
at the time. If you were anywhere near that scene,
you know she had a big stack of books in
her hands. Police apparently decided this confession was erroneous and
Jack Butler was cut loose. Also, more time went by
in the case seemed to go cold. I like to
(27:17):
look at old cases so we can see the techniques
that work. On April eighth, nineteen eighty one, ten years
after Pauline's murder, in Texarkana, two siblings, fourteen year old
Karen Alexander and thirteen year old Gordon Alexander, were fatally
stabbed to death inside their home.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
For decades, this was a cold case.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Police said Karen had been sexually assaulted shortly before the murder.
The murder weapon was a butter knife, but police never
made any arrests over the years. Like in Pauline's case,
a lot of people said it could have been a
serial killer, could have been Henry Lee Lucas. Apparently he
claimed responsibility for those killings, but later, like so many
(27:58):
of Henry Lee Lucas's other confessions, it was proven to
be false. He was nowhere near Texarkana when these murders happened.
It was a really tragic story because after the murders
of her children, their mother took her own life after
suffering from depression. And it wasn't until forty two years later,
when a detective took up the case and resubmitted some
(28:20):
forensic evidence into codis that they discovered the killer was
there all along. It was the children's father, Weldon Alexander,
who had supposedly had an airtight alibi working an overnight
shift a copper Tyron rubber plant. Police believe he had
been sexually assaulting his daughter Karen for months. They believed
that on the morning when the children were killed, or
(28:41):
possibly the night before, he attempted to rape Karen, she
fought him off or her brother tried to intervene.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
They both ended up being brutally murdered.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It is a sad and horrific case, but I'm bringing
it up because sometimes all it takes is one fresh
set of eyes who can look at the case file
and break the case. The time of death being a
little bit earlier or later than police think someone's alibi
not checking out. Even the coldest cases can be solved now. Obviously,
(29:12):
in that case, the Alexander murders, there was DNA that
could be resubmitted, which I'm not sure is true for
Pauline's case, But for all the families out there, you
have a cold case that has been going on for
years or decades, there's always hope. So back to Pauline's case.
(29:33):
Pauline's family didn't give up, and eventually Lance started writing
on his website and posting on sites like web slues.
Lance said that at one point law enforcement actually put
in an email quote at the moment, only a deathbed
confession or a secret diary hidden away in an attict
(29:54):
basement or bible will close this case.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Given the fact that police say there's no DNA, and
this is what we're left with, what's next for this case?
If the four why a request information we have so
far as correct, there's apparently no DNA to test, so
authorities can't do, for example, familial DNA testing. Over the years,
a lot of people have put a lot of different
theories forward. Some people compared Pauline's case to Betsy Ardsma's
(30:22):
murder because both of them were killed in college libraries.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Police have said there's.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
No connection between those two cases. Some people suggested it
could be the Zodiac or Ted Bundy a serial killer,
but again, there was absolutely no evidence of this and
this was not Ted Bundy's mo Honestly, there's no evidence
that this was a serial killer at all. But as
Lance said, so far, the evidence seems to point to
a more personal murder, some kind of crime of passion.
(30:49):
So if there's going to be a break in this case,
it's almost certainly not going to be from retesting of DNA,
because so much of it has been lost. It's going
to be from someone who knows something. It's also interesting
that so many people, all the witnesses, seem to agree
on a couple of things, including the fact the person
who stabbed Pauline approached on foot. None of them remember
(31:10):
hearing a car afterwards. So this is a person who
obviously felt confident enough that they could move quickly enough
on that campus that they could get very close to
her without her being alarmed and without anyone else noticing them.
They believed that they fit in, and they probably did,
because remember several people saw a man following Pauline and
they didn't realize that was anything out of the ordinary
(31:32):
until they heard the screams. This person's plan was to
attack Pauline and to flee the scene, and that's what
they did, and it worked, because up until now this
person has gotten away with this murder. They walked up
to a young woman in the prime of her life,
murdered her and got away clean. Was it someone who
knew Pauline who had some kind of a grudge or
(31:55):
was it someone who maybe was obsessed with her, who
wanted to know her and was frustrated because they couldn't
make contact in the way they wanted. Remember, in nineteen
seventy four Master Detective magazine, he had published that big
article about the killing. In the nineteen eighties, the magazine
got an anonymous letter. The letter was postmarked Capron, Virginia,
(32:18):
and so that police had not caught the real killer.
The letter said that Pauline's killer had targeted her because
they believed she was someone else, that the whole thing
had been a mistake. Investigators did take some fingerprints off
that document, but tragically those prints, along with so much
other evidence, suffered the same fate. They were lost by
law enforcement. But the postmark is interesting for another reason.
(32:41):
There's a correctional facility there called the Southampton Correctional Center.
Lance points that out on his website. Now, there were
some inmates there who did time who were supposedly friends
of Peter Cunkle's and Joe Clifton, one of the witnesses
was also there incarcerated for a period of time. This
is very interesting to me because I wonder could that
(33:03):
mean that the police were about Peter Cuncle, that maybe
he targeted Pauline because he thought she was his day
who stood him up? And what about Joe Clifton, Could
he have been more than a witness. There are so
many mysteries in this case. I have so many questions
about the investigation, about these people's relationship to each other,
(33:28):
whether all of them just happened to randomly be there,
or whether there was more to these stories. And I
also have questions about Pauline's ex husband. How conclusively he,
or for that matter, any of these people were ruled out.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I'm not saying that any one of these people is
responsible for her murder.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Again, We're just trying to follow the threads to pick
up on anything that might have been missed over the years.
No one has ever been arrested or charged with this murder,
so I'm doing what I usually do. We're reaching out
to anyone who may have been in the area on
that day, who may have seen anything, any detailed, no
matter how small. We're breaking out a giant pot of
(34:05):
CAF and were going through some case files with a
lot of missing pages. According to his obituary, Charles Pate.
After he divorced Pauline, served in Vietnam, got numerous commendations,
and later got a job working for the Smithsonian Institute.
He moved back to Arkansas and became a fishing guide.
He passed away in twenty eighteen. Then there's Gordon Cummings,
(34:28):
the guy Pauline knew, and the two friends who asked
the girls if they wanted to have drinks that day?
Who were those guys? Could they have had anything to
do with this? Could they have seen something? Or could
those two men have had anything to do with Peter
Cunkle and his friend, the ones who said they had
dates who stood them up. Yes, Peter was cleared by police,
(34:49):
but as we know, he had a very good lawyer,
and sometimes mistakes are made. Lance said that while he
hopes to have answers one day in this case, he
would also really love to have Pauline's memory honored somewhere
in the University of Arkansas campus.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
My long term goal this project, in anything that comes
out of it, I would be completely happy if somehow
I could see some kind of plaque with her memory
telling the story, erected somewhere.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
In the vicinity. That's my long term goal to see
if that happen. I think that would be the best
way to honor her memory, is to tell her story
for all to see whenever they come across it. If
the university would do it, I would love to have
it right there at the top of South Duncan, at
the edge of Dixon Street. This is what happened in
(35:44):
one of our students.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I'm hoping that someone out there remembers April twelfth, nineteen
seventy one, at that intersection near the University of Arkansas.
Someone who heard a scream or saw something heard someone
who was there talking about what happened that night, someone
who might have answers and who can help us go
closer to finding out what happened to Pauline Stormant.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
research assistance. Music contributed by Ben Sale Executive Producers of
Virginia Prescott Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have
(36:33):
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder Line.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
It's six seven eight seven four four six one four
or five. That's six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. School of Humans
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It was April twelfth, nineteen seventy one. A twenty seven
year old woman named Pauline Stormant was walking down South
Duncan Avenue in Fayetteville, Arkansas, just a few blocks from
her apartment. She didn't know that someone was following her
in the darkness. Pauline worked two part time jobs, one
is a cashier at the Malco Theater and another as
(00:33):
a secretary at the ROTC Center on the University of
Arkansas campus. Pauline had recently started going back to school
as a mature student. She enrolled as a sophomore at
the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where she was a
social welfare major. Pauline had a roommate, Alice pat Murphy.
Pat later told the authorities that Pauline wasn't dating anyone. Actually,
(00:57):
Pauline spent most of her free time hitting the books.
She was very focused on schoolwork, which meant that she
was often pulling late nights at the library. On that night,
on April twelfth, Pauline did a shift at the ROTC.
While she was there, she mentioned to a coworker that
she might go to a gospel concert later, but she
ended up going to the library to study.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
According to her roommate, Pauline's regular routine would have had
her coming home at around ten thirty or eleven PM,
but something made her lead the library a little earlier
that night, around nine thirty pm. And then while she
was walking, when she was just a few blocks from
her apartment, someone came out of that darkness and attacked Pauline,
(01:41):
stabbing her over and over eight times in all, in
a frenzied attack that lasted several minutes. It was a
hot night, a lot of people had their windows open,
and at nine forty five pm when Pauline started screaming,
a lot of people in the area heard her screaming,
and there were several witnesses who saw a man come
(02:01):
up behind her. But despite that, Pauline's killer is escaped
into the night. And even though the police have questioned
tons of people, lots of theories have been explored over
the years, and there was one arrest, Pauline's killer has
never been found. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five
(02:21):
years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've
learned there's no such thing as a small town where
murder never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people
all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
you have a case you'd like me and my team
to look into, you can reach out to us at
(02:43):
our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
four four six one four or five. That's six seven
eight seven four four six ' one four five. This
is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Police got to the scene really quickly.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
They rushed Pauline to Washington Regional Hospital, but they couldn't
do anything to save her, and she was pronounced dead
just after eleven PM. So the assault had very quickly
turned into a murder case. Pauline's body was sent for
an autopsy. Forensic testing revealed that Pauline had died of
the stab wounds. She had been stabbed in the arm,
(03:54):
the chest, and the stomach. Investigators said the murder weapon
was a knife like a butcher knife, around six to
eight inches long, and they believed serrated on both sides.
The police did not find the murder weapon at the scene,
but several days later, the sheriff did find a butcher
knife that was stabbed into the ground behind an apartment
(04:14):
complex that was across the street from where Pauline lived.
They sent that knife in for testing, but I haven't
been able to figure out what, if anything, happened with
that weapon. A lot of people doubted that that butcher
knife had been the weapon in the first place, because
it wasn't serrated. But as far as I know, and
there is a lot of information missing in this case,
there was nothing conclusive, ever proven one way.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Or the other.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Sadly, that knife, along with a ton of other evidence,
has been lost.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
We'll get to that later. Side note.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
While I was working on Gail Vaut's case, which we
covered a couple of weeks back, as part of that,
we started looking around for other unsolved murders in the
same area of Arkansas. Even though Pauline's murder happened nine
years earlier than Gail's murder in nineteen eighty, I couldn't
help but be struck by Pauline's case because, even though
(05:09):
them was completely different for Pauline and Gail, Gail was
shot in the head and appeared to have been sexually assaulted,
while Pauline was stabbed in a semi public area both
women were tall with shoulder linked brown hair, and both
cases were unsolved.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I want to be cleared.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Nothing in the evidence I've seen indicates these cases are
connected in any way. The mos were completely different. Gail
was shot in the head and appeared to have been
sexually assaulted. Pauline was stabbed in a semi public area.
Amy reached out to a member of Pauline's family named
Lance Gosnell. His great grandmother is Pauline's aunt, so he's
(05:48):
her cousin and he's been hearing about Pauline's story about
this famous unsolved murder in his family for a long time,
since he was very young. A few years ago, he
decided to try and find answers. He started writing about
the case. The website is at who Murdered Pauline dot
WordPress dot com, and he's compiled a tremendous amount of
(06:08):
evidence over the years that he's collected a lot of
it through Foyer requests. Pauline Stormant was born on April third,
nineteen forty four, in Ozark, Arkansas, and her family her
mom and dad were still living in Ozark when she
died from a young age. Her family described her as
someone who was very serious, pretty quiet, and liked to study.
(06:29):
She was not a drinker or a partier in high school,
and it seemed to be pretty much the same story
in college. After she graduated from high school, she attended
Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. She finished her freshman year
there and after that she left school and started doing
some secretarial work. So one thing about Pauline's stormant her
(06:50):
studies and her work life are pretty well documented. Her
personal life is much more of a mystery.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
There are some years.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Between when she was twenty one and twenty seven where
we don't know a lot about her personal relationships. When
she was twenty one years old, in nineteen sixty five,
Pauline got married to a man named Charles Joseph Pate.
A lot of their relationship, as we said, is a mystery,
but we do know that whatever happened between them apparently
did not end very well. Charles and Pauline lived in
(07:20):
Memphis for a while. While Pauline was in Memphis, she
taught first aid for the Red Cross as well as
doing some secretarial work. Again, a lot of the history
about Pauline in this case was provided by her cousin Lance.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
One other thing that jumps out in my mind is
the records show that she was married to a man
named Charles Pate. The marriage didn't last long. I can't
find a door forced certificate, but she had mentioned to
a roommate who she had lived with when she was
(07:52):
either in Memphis or Atlanta, that she was deathly afraid
of her ex husband.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So Pauline and Charles were estranged, but according to her
family and to court records, they may not have beneficially divorced.
So in nineteen seventy one, Pauline was at the University
of Arkansas. She had put her studies on hold while
she was married to Charles, but once Pauline got the
chance to complete her education, she seemed to really throw
(08:19):
herself into it. Information from a foyer request from an
old police report shows that Pauline's former roommate, the one
who Lance was referring to, who she had lived with
in Memphis. That woman's name was Iris Fletcher. She was
the one who talked about Pauline's fear of her ex husband.
But apparently police ruled out Charles fairly early. I don't
(08:43):
know why I have really tried to figure that out,
but I don't have a lot of information about the
investigation because a lot of the case file is gone
over the years, a lot of the evidence and a
lot of the pages have been lost. But apparently he
attended the funeral, was cooperative with the police, and was
cleared early. Pauline's college roommate passed the one who said
(09:06):
that Pauline didn't date that much. Was asked by police
if anything strange had happened on the day Pauline was murdered,
and she said, yes, there was one.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Thing that was out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
She said that at around two pm that afternoon, apparently
two men who were described as white men, young guys
who Pauline and her roommate didn't know, invited Pauline and
pat for drinks. The two women said no thanks and
didn't take them up on their offer. Later, the two
men reportedly went toward the residence of a guy named
(09:38):
Gordon Cummings. Gordon Cummings with someone who we know Pauline
had been introduced to. She knew him, but we don't
know how well she knew him, and that will be
the case with a lot of these relationships. Trying to
figure out exactly how these people were related and connected
each other is a huge part of this. We all
(09:59):
know that sometimes in these cases, these tiny little details
that we know are true and am using air quotes
there turn out to be slightly wrong, and those slightly
wrong details can multiply over the years and turn into
a much larger distortion.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
We've seen this happen over and over with so many cases.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Facts are wrong from the beginning, and they're repeated wrong
over the years. At the same time, though, sometimes tiny
details are left out and you never know which ones
could lead to cracking the case. Jane Jones wrote a long,
very in depth article about this case in Ay about
U magazine back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
She pointed out that it was a full moon that night.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
This was something that had appeared in some early news reports,
and that detail supposedly meant that Pauline could be seen
by the witnesses that night. But actually, because I obsess
over these things, I went back and found out actually
the moon wasn't full that night.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
It was a waning gibbous moon.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Not that that makes any difference in the context of
the investigation at all, because actually a waning gibbus is
almost a full moon. It's actually the part of the
lunar phase right after the moon is full. It would
be almost as light as a full moon out there,
but probably a little bit less poetic in a newspaper article,
And I'm bringing this up just to illustrate it's one
(11:18):
tiny example of something we thought we knew wrong. Information
gets repeated over the years, and sometimes it multiplies. So
I'm really trying to go back and take a look
at every single piece of information that we have and
try to understand if we really know everything that we
think we know. Police were trying to figure out what
(11:40):
Pauline's plans had been that night, to see if, other
than the two guys asking her in her roommate to
have drinks, anything else oude of the ordinary had happened.
Police talked to a woman named Terry Keating. Now Terry
worked with Pauline at the ROTC office. She said she
had seen Pauline at around seven thirty pm and that
Pauline had mentioned something about a gospel concert hosted by
(12:02):
a group called Black Americans for Democracy. This concert was
going to be held at the Union Ballroom, a building
that was basically very close right next door to the ROTC.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Building. It started at eight pm.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
But whether Pauline attended that concert or not is still
kind of a question mark because some reports say she
was planning to go. Other media reports say she told
someone she had a class or a conflict and she
could not attend. Lance pointed out something interesting on his website.
He said that we're talking about nineteen seventy one Arkansas,
(12:36):
and he was speculating, but he said, could some racist
person have taken offense at a white woman planning to
go to this concert where there were going to be
a lot of black singers?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Total speculation, but given the political.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Climate at the time, I do think it's something that
police would have to consider. But there was no evidence
that this was ever a factor. So whether or not
Pauline made it to that concert. Eventually, after she worked
her shift at the ROTC, she ended up at the library.
She was seen by multiple witnesses there, but then she
(13:11):
left suddenly. We don't know exactly what time, but by
tracing her route, she must have headed outside at around
nine point thirty.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
So why did she leave early?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Was it a coincidence or did she see something or
someone there that bothered her? After she left the library,
Pauline's root would have taken her south along Duncan Avenue.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
She was walking pretty.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Slowly and carefully because she had a big stack of
books in her hands. So again I'm betting that she
headed straight home because she was balancing lots of school books.
She was at the intersection of Duncan Avenue and Treadwell
Streets when her attacker struck. The vicious attack happened very quickly,
and then her attacker left the scene on foot. Another
(13:58):
thing that we know for sure in this case is
the time of death. We know she was screaming at
nine forty five pm because several people heard her at
the same time. One of them was twenty four year
old Jack Huff. He lived at the Summit Terraces apartments,
which were nearby. He said when he heard that scream,
he ran downstairs and he saw Pauline kind of staggering
(14:19):
toward him and holding her stomach. He told the police
that Pauline said someone hit her in the chest, and
that she said someone was following her, someone who was
wearing glasses. Another witness named Mike Adare, also lived nearby.
He said he'd actually seen Pauline before the attack.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Happened.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
He said he was driving home and at the corner
of Duncan and Center, right where she got attacked, He
said he saw her carrying some really heavy books and
he saw a.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Man following her.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Two other men, Gary Gammel and Joe Clifton, were driving
in separate cars north on South Duncan and they were
approaching that same intersection. Joe also lived at the Summit
Terrace apartment complex. He told investigators that he also saw
man following Pauline. He said he noticed she was carrying
some heavy books and he thought about asking her if
(15:12):
she wanted a lift, but in the end he didn't.
Then a few seconds later, he said he heard the scream.
He heard her screaming, help me. So Joe and Gary
are also there in their cars. They both rushed up
to the scene. Gary said that from his point of view,
he saw Pauline collapse to the ground. He said when
he looked around, he saw her books and her personal
(15:33):
belongings on the ground, but he didn't see anyone else.
He said when he saw Pauline, she was holding her chest.
He approached her and when he got closer he could
see that she was lying half in the yard and
half in the street. He said that her white skirt
in one of her arms were completely soaked blood. Joe
said that he asked Pauline if the man that was
(15:55):
following her did this.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
She told him yes.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
He then started trying to help her, asking where her
cuts were and which way the man went, but he
said it. At this point, Pauline didn't know where the
man went, and she was kind of slipping in and
out of consciousness. She kept asking for her books. Detectives
(16:20):
did find Pauline's black purse with her wallet and ID
in it near her body. They took it in for testing,
but only found one set of fingerprints, and it turned
out that they were Pauline's, so police knew it was
unlikely the killer's motive had been robbery. It didn't seem
like they grabbed for her purse at all. They were
trying to hurt her, not take her stuff. Police asked
(16:43):
all four witnesses some detailed questions about the man that
they said they saw following Pauline. Mike Adair said the
man following Pauline was wearing a brown sport coat and
had blonde or dirty blonde hair, around five ten to
six feet tall and wearing glasses. So the police did
a sketch according to these guys descriptions and in the
(17:03):
end it's kind of random. But this sketch, a lot
of people pointed out, kind of looked like the Zodiac Killer.
By the way, no, there was no evidence the Zodiac
Killer was ever involved, So like the Zodiac Killer sketch,
the sketch in Pauline's case was pretty generic. No one
had actually seen this man's face, so it was a
sketch of a guy with slicked back hair and glasses, again,
(17:27):
a pretty common look on a college campus.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
This guy could have been anyone.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
When Mike was asked about the police sketch, he said, yes,
it did look similar to the man he saw, but
he pointed out that the hair of the guy he
saw was messier, not slick back like on that sketch.
There were two other potential witnesses, Robert Spray and John Hall.
These guys lived nearby at twelve South Hill Street. They
(17:51):
said they had seen a man who could have been
involved in the crime because the guy kind of fit
the description of the assailant. He had a sport code on.
He was described as being medium height with a slight build.
They said that this guy was kind of stumbling around
like he was drunk, but they didn't have a lot
to go on. They didn't have a description of the car,
and in the end police never definitively found that person,
(18:13):
so it seemed to be a dead end. So police
had no idea what the motive had been, but they
did have potentially four different people who said they definitively
saw the killer, but their descriptions differed slightly, which of
course is not uncommon in a case like this, but
they did all agree on one thing. Pauline had been
attacked by one person, one man, who stabbed her multiple times,
(18:38):
and they said that man had been following her and
was able to get very close to her before he pounced.
Because of where Pauline's injuries were, the fact that she
had stab wounds on the front of her body, police
figured out she had turned around to face her attacker,
so they wondered was it someone she knew, Was that
how they were able to get that close, or were
(19:01):
they just really fast and could they have snuck up
on her that quickly. The police admitted they didn't know
if this had been someone fixated on Pauline specifically, or
someone targeting women totally randomly, or even possibly a case
of mistaken identity. Because it was pretty dark it was night,
none of the men who saw this stranger were that close,
(19:24):
so even though there were multiple witnesses, not a single
one got a good look at the killer's face. But
police did know one thing that was such a vicious attack.
The person who stabbed Pauline would have blood on their clothing,
so police canvassed the area. They were looking for a
suspect covered in blood, and it wasn't long before they
(19:46):
found one. A few minutes after the stabbing, police were
cruising the area when two officers saw two young men
sitting on a bench. According to a very good article
in Master Detective magazine from nineteen seventy four, they were
around five blocks away from the crime scene when they
saw these guys. One of them was so seventeen year
old Wallace Peter Cunkle. So the police start talking to
(20:09):
these guys and apparently they told the officers that they
were just hanging around. They were supposed to have had
dates with two girls, but they'd been stood up. But
when police asked them for more details, the guys said
they didn't even know these girls' names, which honestly seems
a little bit strange to me that they wouldn't even
have a first name. But apparently the police thought this
story was believable. As the detective was talking to Peter Cunkle,
(20:32):
he noticed some dark spots on his white shirt, jacket,
and trousers. Later it was determined those were blood. When
the officer asked Peter why he had blood on his clothes,
Peter said he'd had a nosebleed recently. Now, to police,
with everything going on, this seemed like a pretty big coincidence,
so they took him in for questioning. They took his clothes,
(20:54):
and they took samples of his blood. Now, obviously this
was back in nineteen seventy one, so the testing they
could do on blood was much more limited than it
is now. They could basically tell you what type blood
it was, and that's about it. Peter got a lawyer,
and his lawyer said he refused to take a polygraph test. Now,
(21:15):
by the way, I don't hold this against him at all,
just my opinion, but I've said this before. I actually
think this is a very smart move. Honestly, asking for
an attorney, especially in a situation like this where you
know the police are kind of on a fishing expedition,
is something that I think everyone should do. Peter told police,
and this is according to his police statement that was
(21:36):
released via a Foyer request, that he and a friend
were boiling water with speed that night.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So we've talked about injectable speed before.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
That was a big thing in the seventies and eighties
in Arkansas, and what they were using was a drug
that was similar to finfinn. Now, if you were around
in the eighties, you may remember that this was an
ingredient in a diet drug before it got removed from
the market by the FDA in the mid nineties because
people who took it were experiencing heart damage. These pills
were very strong, they were speed. What they would do
(22:06):
is boil water, throw a lot of pills in there,
and then inject this stuff into their veins. So Peter
Kunkle said that's what they were doing that night. He
said he started shooting up at around seven thirty pm.
He took another shot at eight pm and then did
a few other things. Stopped by a local store called
the jet Set to get a sprite. Then between nine
thirty and nine to forty five pm, so the crucial
(22:28):
time when Pauline would have been walking from the library.
He said a friend of his named Richard Finley, who
had been hanging out with that night, asked Peter to
take him home, So Peter said they borrowed one of
their friend's motorcycles, and then he claims that he gave
Richard a ride home and their route would have involved
cutting right through Dixon Avenue, right through the crime scene.
(22:50):
After dropping Richard home, Peter said that he went back
to the Grayhouse.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This was the place where he'd been staying, so Peter
was in the area.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
According to the Arkansas Razorback newspaper, both Peter Kuncle and
Pauline had Type A blood, but unfortunately, these small amounts
of blood that drops on Peter's clothes, they didn't have
enough to test it in the lab back then. So
the bottom line was a lot of people have blood
Type A and they had no physical evidence tying Peter
(23:21):
to the crime scene. And Peter had a good attorney.
His attorney was on point, and he cut a deal
with the police. He said, Peter would agree to take
a lot of detector test but only if the police
would agree that if Peter passed that test, basically they
would clear him.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
And apparently the police agreed to do that and Peter passed.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So Peter Conkle was released from police custody and publicly
cleared by law enforcement. The police chief, Hollis Spencer, said
that police were quote satisfied that he had no part
in the murder of Miss stormant end quote. Then Peter
cuncle and his parents held a press conference and he
(24:02):
was very emotional at this press conference. I remember he's
only seventeen years old and he was crying. He told
everybody he didn't blame the police, they were just doing
their job. He said he always knew he would be
cleared and he completely denied having anything to do with
Pauline's murder. By the way, the charges against Peter were dropped,
but they were what we call nelly prost meaning dismissed
(24:22):
without prejudice, so if new evidence ever comes to light,
he could technically have been retried. After Peter was released,
police started looking for other people of interest. They did
a lot of interviews, they reportedly gave a lot more
a lie detector tests, and then just a month after
Pauline was murdered, a second University of Arkansas co ed
(24:46):
was stabbed. Her name was Andrea Jones and she lived
about one point eight miles from where Pauline was attacked.
Police arrested a man named Eddie Rush. He was twenty
one years old and not a student at the University
of Arkansas. Apparently Eddie Rush lied his way into andrew
his apartment and attacked her. He stabbed her several times,
(25:09):
but she survived. Eddie Rush was convicted and sentenced to
twenty one years in prison for attempted murder.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And we're bringing Eddie Rush.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Up because his picture in the newspaper from back then
looks very much like the sketch that was circulated of
Pauline's attacker. He's got a short buzz cut, but he
does have glasses, and he would seem to fit the
general description. Eddie Rush passed away several years ago, and
(25:40):
because in Pauline's case, there's no DNA attest, sadly there's
no way to investigate him now. But after that, no
one else was arrested or charged. Then, on May twenty second,
nineteen eighty one, a man named Jack Butler walked into
the Faateful Police Department. He said he had something to
tell police. He claimed that he had murdered Pauline Storman.
(26:11):
Jack Butler's story was that he was hanging around a
swimming pool on the University of Arkansas campus. He said
after that he went home and got a pocket knife
and started strolling through Evergreen Cemetery. He said that he
saw a woman and started following her and attacked her
and stabbed her from behind. This is where the story
gets a little strange, because apparently he thought the woman
(26:32):
was his wife. He told police when he got home
he was shocked because he thought his wife was dead
and she was ready to have dinner. He said he
only later realized that the woman he had supposedly stabbed
was Pauline Stormant. But he said a lot of things
that didn't seem to fit the evidence or actually make sense.
Like he said he had stabbed Pauline three times, when
(26:54):
we know she'd been stabbed a lot more than that.
And he also said she was carrying a record player
at the time. If you were anywhere near that scene,
you know she had a big stack of books in
her hands. Police apparently decided this confession was erroneous and
Jack Butler was cut loose. Also, more time went by
in the case seemed to go cold. I like to
(27:17):
look at old cases so we can see the techniques
that work. On April eighth, nineteen eighty one, ten years
after Pauline's murder, in Texarkana, two siblings, fourteen year old
Karen Alexander and thirteen year old Gordon Alexander, were fatally
stabbed to death inside their home.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
For decades, this was a cold case.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Police said Karen had been sexually assaulted shortly before the murder.
The murder weapon was a butter knife, but police never
made any arrests over the years. Like in Pauline's case,
a lot of people said it could have been a
serial killer, could have been Henry Lee Lucas. Apparently he
claimed responsibility for those killings, but later, like so many
(27:58):
of Henry Lee Lucas's other confessions, it was proven to
be false. He was nowhere near Texarkana when these murders happened.
It was a really tragic story because after the murders
of her children, their mother took her own life after
suffering from depression. And it wasn't until forty two years later,
when a detective took up the case and resubmitted some
(28:20):
forensic evidence into codis that they discovered the killer was
there all along. It was the children's father, Weldon Alexander,
who had supposedly had an airtight alibi working an overnight
shift a copper Tyron rubber plant. Police believe he had
been sexually assaulting his daughter Karen for months. They believed
that on the morning when the children were killed, or
(28:41):
possibly the night before, he attempted to rape Karen, she
fought him off or her brother tried to intervene.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
They both ended up being brutally murdered.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It is a sad and horrific case, but I'm bringing
it up because sometimes all it takes is one fresh
set of eyes who can look at the case file
and break the case. The time of death being a
little bit earlier or later than police think someone's alibi
not checking out. Even the coldest cases can be solved now. Obviously,
(29:12):
in that case, the Alexander murders, there was DNA that
could be resubmitted, which I'm not sure is true for
Pauline's case, But for all the families out there, you
have a cold case that has been going on for
years or decades, there's always hope. So back to Pauline's case.
(29:33):
Pauline's family didn't give up, and eventually Lance started writing
on his website and posting on sites like web slues.
Lance said that at one point law enforcement actually put
in an email quote at the moment, only a deathbed
confession or a secret diary hidden away in an attict
(29:54):
basement or bible will close this case.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Given the fact that police say there's no DNA, and
this is what we're left with, what's next for this case?
If the four why a request information we have so
far as correct, there's apparently no DNA to test, so
authorities can't do, for example, familial DNA testing. Over the years,
a lot of people have put a lot of different
theories forward. Some people compared Pauline's case to Betsy Ardsma's
(30:22):
murder because both of them were killed in college libraries.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Police have said there's.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
No connection between those two cases. Some people suggested it
could be the Zodiac or Ted Bundy a serial killer,
but again, there was absolutely no evidence of this and
this was not Ted Bundy's mo Honestly, there's no evidence
that this was a serial killer at all. But as
Lance said, so far, the evidence seems to point to
a more personal murder, some kind of crime of passion.
(30:49):
So if there's going to be a break in this case,
it's almost certainly not going to be from retesting of DNA,
because so much of it has been lost. It's going
to be from someone who knows something. It's also interesting
that so many people, all the witnesses, seem to agree
on a couple of things, including the fact the person
who stabbed Pauline approached on foot. None of them remember
(31:10):
hearing a car afterwards. So this is a person who
obviously felt confident enough that they could move quickly enough
on that campus that they could get very close to
her without her being alarmed and without anyone else noticing them.
They believed that they fit in, and they probably did,
because remember several people saw a man following Pauline and
they didn't realize that was anything out of the ordinary
(31:32):
until they heard the screams. This person's plan was to
attack Pauline and to flee the scene, and that's what
they did, and it worked, because up until now this
person has gotten away with this murder. They walked up
to a young woman in the prime of her life,
murdered her and got away clean. Was it someone who
knew Pauline who had some kind of a grudge or
(31:55):
was it someone who maybe was obsessed with her, who
wanted to know her and was frustrated because they couldn't
make contact in the way they wanted. Remember, in nineteen
seventy four Master Detective magazine, he had published that big
article about the killing. In the nineteen eighties, the magazine
got an anonymous letter. The letter was postmarked Capron, Virginia,
(32:18):
and so that police had not caught the real killer.
The letter said that Pauline's killer had targeted her because
they believed she was someone else, that the whole thing
had been a mistake. Investigators did take some fingerprints off
that document, but tragically those prints, along with so much
other evidence, suffered the same fate. They were lost by
law enforcement. But the postmark is interesting for another reason.
(32:41):
There's a correctional facility there called the Southampton Correctional Center.
Lance points that out on his website. Now, there were
some inmates there who did time who were supposedly friends
of Peter Cunkle's and Joe Clifton, one of the witnesses
was also there incarcerated for a period of time. This
is very interesting to me because I wonder could that
(33:03):
mean that the police were about Peter Cuncle, that maybe
he targeted Pauline because he thought she was his day
who stood him up? And what about Joe Clifton, Could
he have been more than a witness. There are so
many mysteries in this case. I have so many questions
about the investigation, about these people's relationship to each other,
(33:28):
whether all of them just happened to randomly be there,
or whether there was more to these stories. And I
also have questions about Pauline's ex husband. How conclusively he,
or for that matter, any of these people were ruled out.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
I'm not saying that any one of these people is
responsible for her murder.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Again, We're just trying to follow the threads to pick
up on anything that might have been missed over the years.
No one has ever been arrested or charged with this murder,
so I'm doing what I usually do. We're reaching out
to anyone who may have been in the area on
that day, who may have seen anything, any detailed, no
matter how small. We're breaking out a giant pot of
(34:05):
CAF and were going through some case files with a
lot of missing pages. According to his obituary, Charles Pate.
After he divorced Pauline, served in Vietnam, got numerous commendations,
and later got a job working for the Smithsonian Institute.
He moved back to Arkansas and became a fishing guide.
He passed away in twenty eighteen. Then there's Gordon Cummings,
(34:28):
the guy Pauline knew, and the two friends who asked
the girls if they wanted to have drinks that day?
Who were those guys? Could they have had anything to
do with this? Could they have seen something? Or could
those two men have had anything to do with Peter
Cunkle and his friend, the ones who said they had
dates who stood them up. Yes, Peter was cleared by police,
(34:49):
but as we know, he had a very good lawyer,
and sometimes mistakes are made. Lance said that while he
hopes to have answers one day in this case, he
would also really love to have Pauline's memory honored somewhere
in the University of Arkansas campus.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
My long term goal this project, in anything that comes
out of it, I would be completely happy if somehow
I could see some kind of plaque with her memory
telling the story, erected somewhere.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
In the vicinity. That's my long term goal to see
if that happen. I think that would be the best
way to honor her memory, is to tell her story
for all to see whenever they come across it. If
the university would do it, I would love to have
it right there at the top of South Duncan, at
the edge of Dixon Street. This is what happened in
(35:44):
one of our students.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I'm hoping that someone out there remembers April twelfth, nineteen
seventy one, at that intersection near the University of Arkansas.
Someone who heard a scream or saw something heard someone
who was there talking about what happened that night, someone
who might have answers and who can help us go
closer to finding out what happened to Pauline Stormant.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
research assistance. Music contributed by Ben Sale Executive Producers of
Virginia Prescott Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have
(36:33):
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder Line.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
It's six seven eight seven four four six one four
or five. That's six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. School of Humans
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