July 29, 2025 • 42 mins
In 1984, Terrance Arndt was an 18-year-old in Shasta County California. He and his girlfriend are sitting together in his vehicle when out of nowhere, a man with a gun shows up. Arndt tries to save his girlfriend and is shot in the process. The girlfriend is sexually assaulted and left for dead. She isn't dead. After the killer leaves, she bravely drives Arndt's car for help and the state highway patrol calls Shasta County Sheriff's department. Arndt is taken to an area hospital but dies from his injuries, his girlfriend, never named, survives. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case and the evidence left behind that allowed for science to catch up to the evidence collected. It took 40 years, but an arrest has been made.
Transcript Highlights
00:00.37 Introduction
01:41.48 Othram solves another cold case
02:45.31 Shasta County
05:11.66 Terrence Arndt killed, date raped
10:10.43 Small town athlete = star
14:42.98 Blood and DNA in 1984
20:08.18 Evidence that might be used later25:58.30 Tucson is a long way from Shasta County
29:56.59 Plug info into codis
35:19.30 Suspect shows up in court in a wheelchair and on oxygen
39:46.21 You can't outrun the numbers
42:09.96 Conclusion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality times, but Joseph's gotten more. There are certain places
in California that I just will not go any longer
for a number of reasons. It's one of these things where,
first off, I'm in fear of my life to go
back to certain locations within LA. It's not the same
(00:26):
as it was years and years ago. I don't even
like to go to the beach down there when I'm
in town and I have to go out there with
some frequency because I have to do television and that
sort of thing. Interestingly enough, many of my friends that
formerly worked in LA now have migrated to the South.
So I've got friends in Austin, and I've got friends
(00:48):
in Nashville and of course in Atlanta that were formerly
of LA. But there is one place in California I
would not hesitate to go back to, and it's right
up there near the California Oregon border. It is arguably,
whether you're in the mid part of the state or
(01:09):
over to the coast, it is arguably one of the
most beautiful locations in the United States. You know, people
throw around the term breathtaking. There are certain places there.
But today we're going to talk about the time that
horror visited this absolutely gorgeous landscape. A case from back
(01:33):
in nineteen eighty four, a cold case has now been
solved using cutting edge technology. For my friends at Athram,
I'm Joseph Scotten Morgan and this is body Bags. We
were at the base of Mount Shasta and for those
(01:55):
of you guys that have ever seen the Cascade Range,
it is it's just absolutely breathtaking. I mean, just something
that most people can't even fathom if you haven't been
there in person, you see pictures of it. He just
doesn't do it justice.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
A lot of people are going to recognize the name
Shasta County crime people who follow crime stories because of
the Sherry Peppini case came out of Shasta County. So
you're talking about northern California, and that's when I have
a story. That's the first thing I just try to
do is find something relatable and anyway, that's what I
(02:31):
was like, Okay, Sherry Peppinie, Shasta County got this in
nineteen eighty four in Shasta County there was a crime
that went cold even though they had plenty of evidence.
Even though they had plenty of evidence, they had DNA,
which I really need you to break down for me
(02:53):
because I'm looking over the story and obviously, you know
it went cold because we wouldn't be told talking about
the case from eighty four and at them right now
if it didn't. But here we have a young man
eighteen years old, his name is Terrence Aren't and he
has been murdered, he's been shot to death. And his date,
(03:15):
his girlfriend, who is unnamed, even all these years later,
she was eighteen at the time she was raped. And
you know, Joe, when we have stories over the last
twenty years, rape is rarely used as a term. They'll
say they being journalist sexually assaulted, so it's a sexual assault,
(03:36):
and I think that actually diminishes what took place because
a sexual assault can be, based on the interpretation of
the last several years, could be anything from Kuba Gooding
Junior pinching a woman's butte at karaoke bar in New
York up to a rape. There's a big difference. So
(03:58):
I wish there would be a better explanation of what
we're dealing with here, because a rape and a butt
pinch are two totally different things.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, yeah, this I think in my estimation, and this
is what makes this you know, people throw around, they'll
use a they'll use the term hero like a punchline. Now, yeah,
when people are not Maybe people are exceptional, but not
(04:27):
everybody can be a hero. Right again, it goes back
to the idea of intellectual laziness. Many times you talked
about heroes. We're talking about a woman, a young lady
eighteen years old, that apparently was witness to I can't
say that they were, you know, romantically involved necessarily. I'm
(04:52):
referring to the victim, mister Arnt. Can't say that they
were deeply in love or anything. But I do know
that they were sitting in a parked car, having conversation
in a parking lot where a basketball tournament was going on.
And Dave after after mister Arndt is executed, and after
(05:19):
this animal drug her out of the car or drug
her into the back seat of the car. They're still
kind of vague on these very you know, on a
lot of the details, and raped her. Now, this is
a rape. This is not a fondling. This is not
elude remark, this is not exposing. This is rape. It's
(05:41):
a violent event. You know what she did. She gets
into this vehicle and drives until she can get in
contact with the police. You talk about a hero. Oh
my Lord in Heavens, the resiliency of somebody that can
survive this. And even with all this, and this is
(06:02):
not one of these things where you know, she went
home and she's thinking, you know, well, you whiz, I
don't know if I ought to report it or whatever.
They had, They had information at that moment that led
to them thinking that this individual could be caught. And
(06:23):
I'm sure that you know, look, every I think every
investigator enters into into a case where they believe that
they have the ability to solve the case and put
the get the person off the streets. You'd be a
fool to be an investigator if you didn't think that.
It's you're wasting your time for them. I'm sure at
that moment in time, they thought, okay, we're going to
(06:45):
have ballistic evidence. Here. We've got what appears to be
an eyewitness who, by the way she rendered what are produced,
at the direction of a forensic artist, a very accurate,
spot on sketch of this individual. And still with all that, Dave,
they couldn't they couldn't, you know, link it to anybody.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You know, one thing about this entire story using the
term hero and what she did after what she had
already witnessed. But you know, when you've got this eighteen
year the couple is eighteen years old each and they're
you know, talking parking whatever. And according to the police,
(07:31):
Terence Aren't was killed because he was shielding his girlfriend.
That's how they described it was. I pulled it up
because I wanted to make sure of this, that he
was trying to protect her, and that's how he died,
heroically putting his body in front of hers. And that's
(07:57):
why when you mentioned that even after what she had witnessed,
after what had happened to her a violent rape, she
still was able to drive that vehicle to get help.
And her boyfriend did not die at the scene. He
died at the hospital. Now, I don't you know, that's
always a little bit of a stretch because of what
(08:17):
we're capable of doing in terms of calling somebody alive
or whatever. But he was shot multiple times protecting her,
saving her life, and she tried to save his, and
the fact that the case went cold had to have
just been mind numbing for her and her family.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
And her family, And I think, you know, the way
it has been described, at least in my reading, is
that this case in particular really scarred, really scarred that
community for a long time because it was so and
this is not you know, and forgive me, let me
clarify this. This is not actually in it's in Shasta County,
(08:57):
but it's actually in the town of Burnie, which is
over kind of south. I'm probably gonna get this wrong,
south east of Mount Shasta. Big counties they have out there,
but in that little town was this was something that
haunted these people. And you know, mister Aren't was actually
(09:21):
a star athlete in the local high school and had
gone on he had started college not too far away
with the intent of continuing an athletic career at that
point in time. And so these are kids that were
in a small town day. I mean, you know, small
(09:41):
towns or small towns. Man. You know, if you're local
athletic star in a town, the only particularly back then,
I remember when I was in high school in a
small town, the biggest thing to happen during the year
was Friday night football. Everybody went, even if you didn't
have an interest in football or basketball. And on where
(10:03):
you live, people are going to turn out for these games,
and so the high schoolers. If you're really good, you
become a star in that realm, in that realm, and
as it turns out, this athletic star sacrificed his life
so that his girlfriend could live to tell this tale.
(10:38):
Looking back through time, I remember those times of when
you're first intimately and I mean that in not necessarily
a sexual way. I mean that in sense of you're
making an emotional connection to somebody. You remember this, like,
(10:59):
you know, you in high school, maybe then a junior
high school, when you first have this awareness of the
opposite sex and there's some there's that attraction that you have.
You know, Magnet and steel Man, you know, and you
want to learn everything you can about them, You want
to talk to them, you want to be in their presence.
(11:21):
And I think back to times like that and I think,
you know, I would never, even in my wildest dreams,
considered that there would be a monster just outside of
of the you know, of the car. It actually makes
(11:44):
me think about it was one of the first victims
of What's a Guy in San Francisco, Dave that still reminiac.
You had the zodiac where the two lovers were you know,
in the car and they were parked and he, you know,
he walks up and guns them. One of the guys survived,
(12:06):
the guy survived, the gal died, a young lady died,
and just this kind of randomized violence like this just
out of nowhere, you know, and you you plump, you
try to plumb the depths of it, and you think,
you know, what, what would motivate somebody, what would be
the driver where you would take a weapon out a
(12:31):
firearm and attempt to execute them. And the only thing
about it is, you know, they used to use a
term back in the forties and the fifties called lust murder.
You don't hear that thrown around very much anymore. And
I guess because it's too judge of the perpetrator, you know,
(12:51):
to actually suggest that someone would be lustful and would
act out in that sense. But you know, it comes
down to that. So you're you're looking, I think, looking
for a predator. I would imagine back during that period
of time the first place, when they when the cops
came up with a big goose egg in this case,
(13:12):
they're probably thinking, we're going to check through all of
our files as best we can in this little hamlet,
and certainly extending out to the Greater Shasta County and
then northern California and so forth and so on. We're
going to look at somebody that fits them. Is there
anybody else out there that's drawing a weapon on somebody
(13:33):
and then it ends in a rape? Or is there
anybody else that has been killed with a firearm and
there was some kind of sexual component to it, because
other than that, they they really had nothing.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Dave, Yeah, and that's what on this particular story. To
actually leave a witness is odd because he already committed murder.
You've already got a dead guy, and yet he did
not kill the girl. But Joe in nineteen eighty four,
I'm going to guess that forensics forensic, I find the
(14:10):
right wording here. Forensic science has been a growing art
form over the last one hundred years. The things that
were right on the cutting edge, you know, in nineteen
twenty five, were built on, and what was cutting edge
in nineteen eighty four has been built on. But they
actually did collect a lot of evidence from the truck,
(14:32):
I mean, from the vehicle, from the victims, the victim's clothing,
and when I was reading the information from the police department.
I kept digging back over because they were talking about
DNA in nineteen eighty four. Now, was that something that
police were actually getting more than just blood typing and
(14:55):
things like that in eighty four.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
No, No, we weren't at the point where we would
do sequencing on a case like this to the extent
that it can be done today. As a matter of fact,
eighty four, if I remember correctly, eighty four is when,
and I might be off about my dates, I think
that's when Alec Jefferies one a number of awards as
(15:25):
a result of his work with genetic sequencing and particularly
how it applied to crime science. So we were just
in that kind of that kind of bursting period, you know.
And it's one of those moments, you know where I
think the door was cracked and you could see a
glow coming out through the crack of the door. You
(15:48):
really still didn't fully appreciate what was on the other
side of that door. To continue that analogy, you open
the door and it's like, you know, almost Scrooge mcday
in piles of gold as far as knowledge is concerned,
and what we could do and listen, what we will
do in the future. It's not at an end. This
(16:09):
is going to continue. And you know, look, I got
to go back to to the mettlements with authorm there.
This is what they're doing. You know, in cases like this,
they're revealing more and more as they continue to work
toward getting these cases as all. But that bit of
(16:30):
biological biological evidence that was collected back then proved too
because they treated it so gingerly. They knew that if
they could retain it and maybe technology would catch up
with it, they knew that they were going to hang
(16:51):
on to it forever and ever as bad I say
forever and ever that that sounds as though that you
know that this is something that will be maintainable all
these years later. But look, we're in twenty twenty five now,
this is all the way back in nineteen eighty four.
So whoever was the evidence custodian? Well, first off, there's
(17:14):
a whole line of people that you look at here.
You look at the ID text or the crime scene
texts that were at the scene, everything they collected there,
everything that was collected in the morgue, and then everything
that was collected subsequently off of a and this is important,
off of a surviving victim. Okay, just let that sink in,
(17:38):
because while while you're treating and this is one of
the toughest things that rape detectives, I think they prefer
to be called sexual assault detectives now, but back then,
rape detectives one of the most difficult things they had
to contend with. If you can imagine walking into this dynamic,
(17:59):
you've got traumatized young lady who requires medical assistance at
that moment, Tom and she's psychologically harmed and will never
be the same after this, and all the while they're
also thinking about the biological evidence. Dave. They collected her clothing.
(18:21):
Back then, they collected her clothing and retained it, and
that's a big piece to this, David.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
You know, you mentioned how her frame of mind, you know,
the psychological, the physical, all the things that were going
on with this young woman at eighteen years old, she's
just witnessed the murder of somebody she was drawing very
close to. But you mentioned a few minutes ago that
she was still able to give a very good description
of the perpetrator so that it could be drawn the
(18:49):
likeness of the persson who did this. So this woman,
this young woman really has some intestinal fortitude to be
able to go through everything she did and to still
be able to describe what happened and who did it.
But you've got the genetics I was looking up. You
mentioned Alec Jeffries. We've talked about him a couple of
(19:11):
different times and forensic our genetic fingerprinting and things like that,
DNA fingerprints. That's something he was working on in eighty
four and it was being written about in I guess
medical jo journals or police journals. So there was some
awareness that in the future there was going to be
an ability to track people by this genetic information that
(19:35):
they were collecting, but at the time it wasn't happening.
It was something in the future. And that's what I
think startles me in a good way that law enforcement
in a small town you called it a hamlet. I
love that term. In this small town in northern California,
and you think about it. Yet they were informed, they
didn't know what to do. They knew we've got to
(19:57):
get as much as we can work right now. Might
not help us today, but it might down the road.
We need this, and they did a great job of
collecting and preserving what they found.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, they did, and you know, it's it's amazing, isn't
it When you think about that they've got they literally
have somebody's genetic blueprint in their hand right there. That
is it's going to have utility. It's almost like they've
got a crystal ball and they're looking into the future.
We're going to preserve this until the point which, uh,
(20:33):
you know, we can utilize it. Yeah, it reminds me
of people that are You've heard these tales I think
Walt Disney is one of them about people being cryogenically
frozen until yeah, they can be brought back and what
a disease that they had, you know, can be cured
at that point in time, They're gonna be reanimated and
all that sort of thing that's rather fantastical. But when
(20:54):
you think about this, it's this is real. I mean,
this is something that is being lived out day after
day in forensic practice where you have these old time
or cops that were back there and they were thoughtful
enough to cover every one of their bases, where you know,
(21:15):
when it just comes down to retention of evidence. I
got to say something too about the sketch. I'd love
to kind of delve into this a little bit because look,
I mean, God bless them, the people, the sketch artists
from back then. They they did not have the same
(21:35):
tools at their disposal that we have now, you know,
and this is going to be this is an evolving
kind of practice that you have. And I've always been
fascinated by the idea of being able to take to
question somebody, to give them, you know, where you're going
to redraw their picture or draw a picture some semblance.
(21:57):
It's never an exact match, Dave. It's never an exact match,
but it's an approximation. It's the same way in forensic anthropology,
where if you have a skull and you try to
recreate or do a facial reconstruction on the skull, you'll see, like,
for instance, tissue depth markers that they put on skulls
(22:20):
all over the place, these little white pegs as they're
laying clay on, and all these sorts of things they
can do. All that's digitally now. But I never there
was never a moment in any of those facial reconstructions
where I said, oh my lord, that's a spot on match.
You know, it's merely I think a lot of people
think that it is because it is just as much
(22:43):
art as it is science. And listen, I got to
give a shout out in a shameless plug right now
to a buddy of mine who is out in California
and does he's been working for forty five years. He's
police officer or a former police officer, and his name
is Michael W. Streed. If any of you guys get
(23:04):
to check him out. He's got a website called Sketch
Coop dot com and he's utilized all over the world.
He does training all over the world now, and it's amazing.
You know what Michael can do. You know with his
magic board. You know that he utilizes in order to
breathe life into people. And so when you get you
(23:27):
have this image that is rendered by this nameless victim, Dave.
She's there kind of vibrating, you can imagine, in her
trauma and having born witness, and yet she still has
this ability to recall and give them enough data. It's
quite amazing. I'd heard of a forensic psychologist many years
(23:50):
ago talk about the thing that goes on in the
brain with layering, where when you an individual observes kind
of a traumatic event, they bear witness to it. It's
so traumatic that sometimes for your own protection, your brain
will kind of layer new data on top of it
(24:12):
and things are a bit more maybe more palatable or there.
They don't have the same sharpness that they that they
once did. I can't. I don't really understand that theory,
but that's what was presented to me. That's why I
keep going back to from Jump Street. They kind of
(24:32):
kick this thing off, where this is what we're going
to do. We're going to get her with a sketch artist,
and you know, and I can only imagine she was
probably and probably still to this day maybe remains resolute
in her need to bring this guy in and get
him off the streets, regardless of what his status in
(24:56):
life might be. And as we're going to find out,
that is exactly what happened, Dave. The burning deserts of Tucson,
(25:19):
Arizona are a long ways way from northern California at least. Uh.
You know, when you begin to think about the climate difference,
you're not gonna always need a sweatshirt and a sweater
evening in July down in Tucson. I've spent some time there. Uh,
You're just you're just trying to find shade man just
(25:40):
to survive. But you know this this case, uh, this
case uh involving the homicide of mister Arn't in this
this horrific rape. It it follows a trail along the way,
doesn't it that that leads police officers down to Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Well, j After for all these years and we've got
a case in nineteen eighty four in a small community
that is investigated heavily. I mean, it's not like this
was something they just kind of put in the back
said wow, we can't figure this out. They worked it
hard and came up with nothing, or at least nothing
in terms of what we know of, and so the
(26:21):
case goes cold and it takes years and years and
years before it comes back up. And you know what,
I really do believe that the cold case units we
have now in law enforcement had to have come from
the impact of television programs about cold case files, you know,
because they were showing these cases and unsolved mysteries and
(26:43):
things like that. And you've got these retired detectives getting
together with retired judges and retired lawyers and retired and
they're working on crimes that unsolved in their area. That's
still you know, And I think that's something that really
did develop into a point something very good, because now
we've got people every day that have gotten away with
(27:05):
a crime for decades that are now being brought to.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Justice. Yeah, and I think that in the future there's
going to be a really an interesting, an interesting set
of cases that will eventually be presented where the person
thought that they were going to live to ripe old
(27:32):
age and never be held to account. I know that
there's been other versions of it, but now with the
advent of forensic genetic genealogy, this adds a completely different
layer to just as you know, if you're a creative writer,
just to the narrative. Here, I'm of the opinion, and
(27:52):
maybe I'm wrong. I don't know if other people share this.
And I was thinking about this this week, particularly in
light of of the Coburger trial. I was actually thinking,
I believe that the days of the so called classic
(28:13):
serial killer or the sun is setting on them, because
there's so there's so many tools out there in order
to solve these cases that once were unsolvable. The one
element many times would say, for instance serial killers, is
that there is this desire to touch, to put their
(28:35):
hands on somebody in some ways sexually assault them. And
I don't know how how people are going to get
around that like they once could You think about serial
killings that happened back in the seventies and the andes,
and that's where yeah, with Bundy, and then you round
(28:57):
that back to where we are now with this technology.
I'm not going to say that you know that evil
is going to end as a result of this, will
always be evil, but it's it's really put criminals at
a disadvantage here now even more so than they were before.
And I think that's a that's a great thing. And
(29:19):
and it's born out here in this case, Dave that
after after all these years where you know, this this
poor victim, where they were able to uh collect her clothes,
I think, and as time went by, they were able
to develop a DNA profile on an individual and.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Plug Actually I was going to ask you about that
when did CODIS come into play, because they mentioned as
I was reading through the history here, it said that
they did plug it into CODIS. But cotis is only
people who have been entered into the system.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So we did that actually, and yeah, doesn't go back.
Does it go back that far? And so that's the
thing about it is they've been this is the miracle
of the future. I think. This is what I think
that every investigator that work cases prior to this era
of time they were hoping for, you know. And it
(30:20):
all starts with codis I think, and plugging it in.
And here's another thing, brother Dave, I wanted to throw
out to you. You know, how many times have we
watched a television show or seen something where some actor
will stand before camera and they'll say he's done it
before and he'll do it again. Well, they plugged the
(30:44):
DNA collected off of this clothing of this young woman.
They didn't get a hit. So what you've got is
this a one off event where you've got an individual
who shows up with two teenagers arked in a car
and decides to end one of their lives and then
(31:05):
violently rape the other one and they're just kind of
vanish in the dark, and he never re offends, or
maybe he's maybe he's offended again and no one called
it in. Maybe he's offended, and maybe he offended again
and killed the individual, because it's it's pretty obvious he's
(31:25):
willing to kill, and he disposed of the remains and
the person who's just vanished into time at this point
in time. But you know, people always put out that,
particularly those in the you know, psychology realm. They'll always say,
you know, they can't help themselves, they're going to re offend.
And I don't know if that I don't know if
(31:46):
that that thesis is fool proof. You know, I don't
know that you can say that that is the case
forever and ever. Amen. Maybe it was a one off event.
Maybe he just decided he was going to drift into
the midst of time and was going to hang this
on me. But you know, the policeer did, particularly along
with our friends down in Texas.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
But Joe, what if, okay, what if this guy, the
suspect here, maybe he had an infatuation with the girl
and maybe he asked her out, she turned him down,
and he became obsessed with her, and he finds her
with this other guy and they're parking, and he then
(32:30):
kills the guy, rapes the girl and leaves. And he's
not a criminal. It's not his wife's. His lifestyle is
not that of a criminal. He lost his cookies as
these Namby pambies that you and I hear on TV
all the time talking about No, he just lost it
for a few minutes. He was out of control. He
wasn't responsible for what happened during this window of opportunity
(32:52):
or whatever. And maybe that's what happened. And then he
crawled back under his rock and went back to his
world of an incel, right, and so anyway, don't know
if that's what happened, but I do know this genetic
genealogy is something that they're using so that if they've
got somebody's DNA, they so start tracking family trees forensic
(33:17):
genetic genealogy to the point where, just like with we
mentioned Sherry Peppini in Shasta County, California, they were able
to use this same type of treat of examination to
find a relative. They used it in Coburger. They found
that DNA on the sheath came from the father of
(33:37):
the person who did this. They're able to narrow it
down so dramatically that dude, they did it with this guy.
And so from northern California, in Shasta County, you're able
to go to Tucson, Arizona, forty years after the crime.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And there you go, yeah, and you you know, and
you nail it down that moment time. Listen, when the
police roll up, you have this image in your mind
of a guy, a gun toting rapist, because you have
evidence of that from past past actions, who has now
(34:20):
been confirmed as the individual that contributed to DNA at seen.
You're thinking you're going to walk into the house of
a monster. As it turns out, this guy, the accused
now that was living his life, unlike mister arn Right,
(34:42):
was living his life out in p Mac County, Arizona,
in Tucson. I'll go ahead, say his name, Roger Neil Schmidt. Well,
if he's a senior, that means he's reproduced, he's got
a kid out there somewhere, he's been able to live
his life. And when they roll up to his house, Dave,
this guy. This guy's in a wheelchair and on oxygen. Okay,
(35:08):
he would have been they say that he would have
been twenty three. I think at the time back in
eighty four, he's now sixty four, and I'm thinking, why
are you in a wheelchair and on oxygen at sixty four? Yeah,
you know, I mean, look, I mean, I'm not saying
that sixties, a New forty or anything. I'm just saying
(35:29):
that what's happened in your life to put you in
a wheelchair and on oxygen at this point in your life?
Why are you so debilitated now as you know this,
this I don't know this disease that you have infected
yourself with, this, this horrible thing. Had the chickens come
(35:51):
home to roost? You know, back in your past, were
you endo this young man's life and scarred this woman
for the remainder of her life. I'm not going to
say it's the most ideal situation, but I can tell
you this, he's not six feet under a headstone somewhere.
He's had a chance to live his life, and now
he's going to live his life after he gets extradited.
(36:13):
This just this arrest just has been affected and at
the time that we're laid in this down day, he's
going to spend the rest of his or at least
foreseeable future in Northern California. He's going back there and
he's going to be held to account for what he did.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Dave or allegedly you know, I don't know, Well, we'll
actually transpiring court that you mentioned as we're recording this.
He was just arrested less than a week ago. And
by the way, they don't they being law enforcement, they
don't get this track down to your great uncle and
(36:55):
then say, oh, it's justice Scott Morgan, go to his
house and arrest him. They investigate. Actually, that's just another
link in the chain and they have to now go
and just like with Coburger, and I keep rent mentioning
that because we've all covered we in the business have
covered that story now for a long time. And even
when they believed the DNA on that day the sheath
(37:17):
was from the father of the individual who committed the crime,
they still had to go to his house and camp out.
And they did the same thing here in Arizona. They
went to the guy's house and they worked with local
law enforcement until they could get something from him that
they could then test and match up to the DNA
that was recovered in nineteen eighty four. They got it,
(37:39):
and that's why we actually have the name of the
man now. It stands accused of a hated By the way,
the rape this poor woman said that he raped her
multiple times. So he didn't just kill the guy, rape
the girl and run in a matter of minutes. It
was some time. I don't know how long yet, we'll
(38:00):
find out more as this case proceived me.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Can I add something to that? They raped? He raped her? Allegedly,
this guy raped her in the presence of her dying boyfriend.
Let that sink in just for a second, to give
you an idea what kind of human you're dealing with here?
(38:23):
He raped her repeatedly while this guy's life is draining
out of him from multiple gunshot wounds. Just let that
sink in. How absent of mercy and compassion do you
have to be in order to perpetrate this kind of thing.
It absolutely blows my mind that he did not re offend.
(38:53):
Maybe he did, but he didn't show up. But after
all these years, they have caught him. And you know,
I got to say, Dave. Moving forward, we are going
to continue to watch this case. I'm hoping that she,
(39:13):
this victim, will have her day in court and be
able to affirmatively say in court that yes, that's the
man that did this to me. And we'll see what
the court's judgment is at the end of the day.
But I do know this, there has been a let's see,
(39:37):
how can we say this, there has been a warning
shot fired across the bow of every want to be
perpetrator out there that is going to assault somebody that's
going to murder, somebody that's going to rob them of
their life. There's been a warning shot fired, and that
warning shot is being fired authorm. It goes to the
(40:04):
numbers that you deal with when you're talking about science.
It goes to the idea that you can't outrun the
numbers no matter how hard you try it, no matter
if you move thousands and thousands of miles away, that
essence of you is still going to remain. And because
(40:25):
of authorm and at their website dnaslves dot com, they
breathe life into these cases and literally do reanimate these
individuals so that they can be called, called and held
to account for their crimes. If you have a desire
(40:48):
to contribute to authorm, you can visit their website again.
I'll mention that again it's d n A Solves s
O l v e S dot com. And the cool
thing about this, many of you you want to be
able to participate in the solving of crime. Now's your opportunity.
(41:13):
You can contribute any amount that you want. You go
to their website. You check out what cases are currently open.
Is there anything that catches your attention? Maybe it's something
that happened in your state, maybe even in your community
that for years and years people have been asking questions
about and still have received no answer. Your contribution to
(41:39):
these efforts can help with that. I suggest that you
log onto their website, pass through all of the cases
that are there, see if anything catches your attention, and
once they have arrived at that magic number that they
need to arrive at, a switch will be flipped and
the case will be going into their system and they'll
(42:02):
begin to work on it, and you never know, the
money that you send their way might really, really truly
bring answers that have not previously existed. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is body Backs
Quality times, but Joseph's gotten more. There are certain places
in California that I just will not go any longer
for a number of reasons. It's one of these things where,
first off, I'm in fear of my life to go
back to certain locations within LA. It's not the same
(00:26):
as it was years and years ago. I don't even
like to go to the beach down there when I'm
in town and I have to go out there with
some frequency because I have to do television and that
sort of thing. Interestingly enough, many of my friends that
formerly worked in LA now have migrated to the South.
So I've got friends in Austin, and I've got friends
(00:48):
in Nashville and of course in Atlanta that were formerly
of LA. But there is one place in California I
would not hesitate to go back to, and it's right
up there near the California Oregon border. It is arguably,
whether you're in the mid part of the state or
(01:09):
over to the coast, it is arguably one of the
most beautiful locations in the United States. You know, people
throw around the term breathtaking. There are certain places there.
But today we're going to talk about the time that
horror visited this absolutely gorgeous landscape. A case from back
(01:33):
in nineteen eighty four, a cold case has now been
solved using cutting edge technology. For my friends at Athram,
I'm Joseph Scotten Morgan and this is body Bags. We
were at the base of Mount Shasta and for those
(01:55):
of you guys that have ever seen the Cascade Range,
it is it's just absolutely breathtaking. I mean, just something
that most people can't even fathom if you haven't been
there in person, you see pictures of it. He just
doesn't do it justice.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
A lot of people are going to recognize the name
Shasta County crime people who follow crime stories because of
the Sherry Peppini case came out of Shasta County. So
you're talking about northern California, and that's when I have
a story. That's the first thing I just try to
do is find something relatable and anyway, that's what I
(02:31):
was like, Okay, Sherry Peppinie, Shasta County got this in
nineteen eighty four in Shasta County there was a crime
that went cold even though they had plenty of evidence.
Even though they had plenty of evidence, they had DNA,
which I really need you to break down for me
(02:53):
because I'm looking over the story and obviously, you know
it went cold because we wouldn't be told talking about
the case from eighty four and at them right now
if it didn't. But here we have a young man
eighteen years old, his name is Terrence Aren't and he
has been murdered, he's been shot to death. And his date,
(03:15):
his girlfriend, who is unnamed, even all these years later,
she was eighteen at the time she was raped. And
you know, Joe, when we have stories over the last
twenty years, rape is rarely used as a term. They'll
say they being journalist sexually assaulted, so it's a sexual assault,
(03:36):
and I think that actually diminishes what took place because
a sexual assault can be, based on the interpretation of
the last several years, could be anything from Kuba Gooding
Junior pinching a woman's butte at karaoke bar in New
York up to a rape. There's a big difference. So
(03:58):
I wish there would be a better explanation of what
we're dealing with here, because a rape and a butt
pinch are two totally different things.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, yeah, this I think in my estimation, and this
is what makes this you know, people throw around, they'll
use a they'll use the term hero like a punchline. Now, yeah,
when people are not Maybe people are exceptional, but not
(04:27):
everybody can be a hero. Right again, it goes back
to the idea of intellectual laziness. Many times you talked
about heroes. We're talking about a woman, a young lady
eighteen years old, that apparently was witness to I can't
say that they were, you know, romantically involved necessarily. I'm
(04:52):
referring to the victim, mister Arnt. Can't say that they
were deeply in love or anything. But I do know
that they were sitting in a parked car, having conversation
in a parking lot where a basketball tournament was going on.
And Dave after after mister Arndt is executed, and after
(05:19):
this animal drug her out of the car or drug
her into the back seat of the car. They're still
kind of vague on these very you know, on a
lot of the details, and raped her. Now, this is
a rape. This is not a fondling. This is not
elude remark, this is not exposing. This is rape. It's
(05:41):
a violent event. You know what she did. She gets
into this vehicle and drives until she can get in
contact with the police. You talk about a hero. Oh
my Lord in Heavens, the resiliency of somebody that can
survive this. And even with all this, and this is
(06:02):
not one of these things where you know, she went
home and she's thinking, you know, well, you whiz, I
don't know if I ought to report it or whatever.
They had, They had information at that moment that led
to them thinking that this individual could be caught. And
(06:23):
I'm sure that you know, look, every I think every
investigator enters into into a case where they believe that
they have the ability to solve the case and put
the get the person off the streets. You'd be a
fool to be an investigator if you didn't think that.
It's you're wasting your time for them. I'm sure at
that moment in time, they thought, okay, we're going to
(06:45):
have ballistic evidence. Here. We've got what appears to be
an eyewitness who, by the way she rendered what are produced,
at the direction of a forensic artist, a very accurate,
spot on sketch of this individual. And still with all that, Dave,
they couldn't they couldn't, you know, link it to anybody.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You know, one thing about this entire story using the
term hero and what she did after what she had
already witnessed. But you know, when you've got this eighteen
year the couple is eighteen years old each and they're
you know, talking parking whatever. And according to the police,
(07:31):
Terence Aren't was killed because he was shielding his girlfriend.
That's how they described it was. I pulled it up
because I wanted to make sure of this, that he
was trying to protect her, and that's how he died,
heroically putting his body in front of hers. And that's
(07:57):
why when you mentioned that even after what she had witnessed,
after what had happened to her a violent rape, she
still was able to drive that vehicle to get help.
And her boyfriend did not die at the scene. He
died at the hospital. Now, I don't you know, that's
always a little bit of a stretch because of what
(08:17):
we're capable of doing in terms of calling somebody alive
or whatever. But he was shot multiple times protecting her,
saving her life, and she tried to save his, and
the fact that the case went cold had to have
just been mind numbing for her and her family.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
And her family, And I think, you know, the way
it has been described, at least in my reading, is
that this case in particular really scarred, really scarred that
community for a long time because it was so and
this is not you know, and forgive me, let me
clarify this. This is not actually in it's in Shasta County,
(08:57):
but it's actually in the town of Burnie, which is
over kind of south. I'm probably gonna get this wrong,
south east of Mount Shasta. Big counties they have out there,
but in that little town was this was something that
haunted these people. And you know, mister Aren't was actually
(09:21):
a star athlete in the local high school and had
gone on he had started college not too far away
with the intent of continuing an athletic career at that
point in time. And so these are kids that were
in a small town day. I mean, you know, small
(09:41):
towns or small towns. Man. You know, if you're local
athletic star in a town, the only particularly back then,
I remember when I was in high school in a
small town, the biggest thing to happen during the year
was Friday night football. Everybody went, even if you didn't
have an interest in football or basketball. And on where
(10:03):
you live, people are going to turn out for these games,
and so the high schoolers. If you're really good, you
become a star in that realm, in that realm, and
as it turns out, this athletic star sacrificed his life
so that his girlfriend could live to tell this tale.
(10:38):
Looking back through time, I remember those times of when
you're first intimately and I mean that in not necessarily
a sexual way. I mean that in sense of you're
making an emotional connection to somebody. You remember this, like,
(10:59):
you know, you in high school, maybe then a junior
high school, when you first have this awareness of the
opposite sex and there's some there's that attraction that you have.
You know, Magnet and steel Man, you know, and you
want to learn everything you can about them, You want
to talk to them, you want to be in their presence.
(11:21):
And I think back to times like that and I think,
you know, I would never, even in my wildest dreams,
considered that there would be a monster just outside of
of the you know, of the car. It actually makes
(11:44):
me think about it was one of the first victims
of What's a Guy in San Francisco, Dave that still reminiac.
You had the zodiac where the two lovers were you know,
in the car and they were parked and he, you know,
he walks up and guns them. One of the guys survived,
(12:06):
the guy survived, the gal died, a young lady died,
and just this kind of randomized violence like this just
out of nowhere, you know, and you you plump, you
try to plumb the depths of it, and you think,
you know, what, what would motivate somebody, what would be
the driver where you would take a weapon out a
(12:31):
firearm and attempt to execute them. And the only thing
about it is, you know, they used to use a
term back in the forties and the fifties called lust murder.
You don't hear that thrown around very much anymore. And
I guess because it's too judge of the perpetrator, you know,
(12:51):
to actually suggest that someone would be lustful and would
act out in that sense. But you know, it comes
down to that. So you're you're looking, I think, looking
for a predator. I would imagine back during that period
of time the first place, when they when the cops
came up with a big goose egg in this case,
(13:12):
they're probably thinking, we're going to check through all of
our files as best we can in this little hamlet,
and certainly extending out to the Greater Shasta County and
then northern California and so forth and so on. We're
going to look at somebody that fits them. Is there
anybody else out there that's drawing a weapon on somebody
(13:33):
and then it ends in a rape? Or is there
anybody else that has been killed with a firearm and
there was some kind of sexual component to it, because
other than that, they they really had nothing.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Dave, Yeah, and that's what on this particular story. To
actually leave a witness is odd because he already committed murder.
You've already got a dead guy, and yet he did
not kill the girl. But Joe in nineteen eighty four,
I'm going to guess that forensics forensic, I find the
(14:10):
right wording here. Forensic science has been a growing art
form over the last one hundred years. The things that
were right on the cutting edge, you know, in nineteen
twenty five, were built on, and what was cutting edge
in nineteen eighty four has been built on. But they
actually did collect a lot of evidence from the truck,
(14:32):
I mean, from the vehicle, from the victims, the victim's clothing,
and when I was reading the information from the police department.
I kept digging back over because they were talking about
DNA in nineteen eighty four. Now, was that something that
police were actually getting more than just blood typing and
(14:55):
things like that in eighty four.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
No, No, we weren't at the point where we would
do sequencing on a case like this to the extent
that it can be done today. As a matter of fact,
eighty four, if I remember correctly, eighty four is when,
and I might be off about my dates, I think
that's when Alec Jefferies one a number of awards as
(15:25):
a result of his work with genetic sequencing and particularly
how it applied to crime science. So we were just
in that kind of that kind of bursting period, you know.
And it's one of those moments, you know where I
think the door was cracked and you could see a
glow coming out through the crack of the door. You
(15:48):
really still didn't fully appreciate what was on the other
side of that door. To continue that analogy, you open
the door and it's like, you know, almost Scrooge mcday
in piles of gold as far as knowledge is concerned,
and what we could do and listen, what we will
do in the future. It's not at an end. This
(16:09):
is going to continue. And you know, look, I got
to go back to to the mettlements with authorm there.
This is what they're doing. You know, in cases like this,
they're revealing more and more as they continue to work
toward getting these cases as all. But that bit of
(16:30):
biological biological evidence that was collected back then proved too
because they treated it so gingerly. They knew that if
they could retain it and maybe technology would catch up
with it, they knew that they were going to hang
(16:51):
on to it forever and ever as bad I say
forever and ever that that sounds as though that you
know that this is something that will be maintainable all
these years later. But look, we're in twenty twenty five now,
this is all the way back in nineteen eighty four.
So whoever was the evidence custodian? Well, first off, there's
(17:14):
a whole line of people that you look at here.
You look at the ID text or the crime scene
texts that were at the scene, everything they collected there,
everything that was collected in the morgue, and then everything
that was collected subsequently off of a and this is important,
off of a surviving victim. Okay, just let that sink in,
(17:38):
because while while you're treating and this is one of
the toughest things that rape detectives, I think they prefer
to be called sexual assault detectives now, but back then,
rape detectives one of the most difficult things they had
to contend with. If you can imagine walking into this dynamic,
(17:59):
you've got traumatized young lady who requires medical assistance at
that moment, Tom and she's psychologically harmed and will never
be the same after this, and all the while they're
also thinking about the biological evidence. Dave. They collected her clothing.
(18:21):
Back then, they collected her clothing and retained it, and
that's a big piece to this, David.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
You know, you mentioned how her frame of mind, you know,
the psychological, the physical, all the things that were going
on with this young woman at eighteen years old, she's
just witnessed the murder of somebody she was drawing very
close to. But you mentioned a few minutes ago that
she was still able to give a very good description
of the perpetrator so that it could be drawn the
(18:49):
likeness of the persson who did this. So this woman,
this young woman really has some intestinal fortitude to be
able to go through everything she did and to still
be able to describe what happened and who did it.
But you've got the genetics I was looking up. You
mentioned Alec Jeffries. We've talked about him a couple of
(19:11):
different times and forensic our genetic fingerprinting and things like that,
DNA fingerprints. That's something he was working on in eighty
four and it was being written about in I guess
medical jo journals or police journals. So there was some
awareness that in the future there was going to be
an ability to track people by this genetic information that
(19:35):
they were collecting, but at the time it wasn't happening.
It was something in the future. And that's what I
think startles me in a good way that law enforcement
in a small town you called it a hamlet. I
love that term. In this small town in northern California,
and you think about it. Yet they were informed, they
didn't know what to do. They knew we've got to
(19:57):
get as much as we can work right now. Might
not help us today, but it might down the road.
We need this, and they did a great job of
collecting and preserving what they found.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, they did, and you know, it's it's amazing, isn't
it When you think about that they've got they literally
have somebody's genetic blueprint in their hand right there. That
is it's going to have utility. It's almost like they've
got a crystal ball and they're looking into the future.
We're going to preserve this until the point which, uh,
(20:33):
you know, we can utilize it. Yeah, it reminds me
of people that are You've heard these tales I think
Walt Disney is one of them about people being cryogenically
frozen until yeah, they can be brought back and what
a disease that they had, you know, can be cured
at that point in time, They're gonna be reanimated and
all that sort of thing that's rather fantastical. But when
(20:54):
you think about this, it's this is real. I mean,
this is something that is being lived out day after
day in forensic practice where you have these old time
or cops that were back there and they were thoughtful
enough to cover every one of their bases, where you know,
(21:15):
when it just comes down to retention of evidence. I
got to say something too about the sketch. I'd love
to kind of delve into this a little bit because look,
I mean, God bless them, the people, the sketch artists
from back then. They they did not have the same
(21:35):
tools at their disposal that we have now, you know,
and this is going to be this is an evolving
kind of practice that you have. And I've always been
fascinated by the idea of being able to take to
question somebody, to give them, you know, where you're going
to redraw their picture or draw a picture some semblance.
(21:57):
It's never an exact match, Dave. It's never an exact match,
but it's an approximation. It's the same way in forensic anthropology,
where if you have a skull and you try to
recreate or do a facial reconstruction on the skull, you'll see, like,
for instance, tissue depth markers that they put on skulls
(22:20):
all over the place, these little white pegs as they're
laying clay on, and all these sorts of things they
can do. All that's digitally now. But I never there
was never a moment in any of those facial reconstructions
where I said, oh my lord, that's a spot on match.
You know, it's merely I think a lot of people
think that it is because it is just as much
(22:43):
art as it is science. And listen, I got to
give a shout out in a shameless plug right now
to a buddy of mine who is out in California
and does he's been working for forty five years. He's
police officer or a former police officer, and his name
is Michael W. Streed. If any of you guys get
(23:04):
to check him out. He's got a website called Sketch
Coop dot com and he's utilized all over the world.
He does training all over the world now, and it's amazing.
You know what Michael can do. You know with his
magic board. You know that he utilizes in order to
breathe life into people. And so when you get you
(23:27):
have this image that is rendered by this nameless victim, Dave.
She's there kind of vibrating, you can imagine, in her
trauma and having born witness, and yet she still has
this ability to recall and give them enough data. It's
quite amazing. I'd heard of a forensic psychologist many years
(23:50):
ago talk about the thing that goes on in the
brain with layering, where when you an individual observes kind
of a traumatic event, they bear witness to it. It's
so traumatic that sometimes for your own protection, your brain
will kind of layer new data on top of it
(24:12):
and things are a bit more maybe more palatable or there.
They don't have the same sharpness that they that they
once did. I can't. I don't really understand that theory,
but that's what was presented to me. That's why I
keep going back to from Jump Street. They kind of
(24:32):
kick this thing off, where this is what we're going
to do. We're going to get her with a sketch artist,
and you know, and I can only imagine she was
probably and probably still to this day maybe remains resolute
in her need to bring this guy in and get
him off the streets, regardless of what his status in
(24:56):
life might be. And as we're going to find out,
that is exactly what happened, Dave. The burning deserts of Tucson,
(25:19):
Arizona are a long ways way from northern California at least. Uh.
You know, when you begin to think about the climate difference,
you're not gonna always need a sweatshirt and a sweater
evening in July down in Tucson. I've spent some time there. Uh,
You're just you're just trying to find shade man just
(25:40):
to survive. But you know this this case, uh, this
case uh involving the homicide of mister Arn't in this
this horrific rape. It it follows a trail along the way,
doesn't it that that leads police officers down to Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Well, j After for all these years and we've got
a case in nineteen eighty four in a small community
that is investigated heavily. I mean, it's not like this
was something they just kind of put in the back
said wow, we can't figure this out. They worked it
hard and came up with nothing, or at least nothing
in terms of what we know of, and so the
(26:21):
case goes cold and it takes years and years and
years before it comes back up. And you know what,
I really do believe that the cold case units we
have now in law enforcement had to have come from
the impact of television programs about cold case files, you know,
because they were showing these cases and unsolved mysteries and
(26:43):
things like that. And you've got these retired detectives getting
together with retired judges and retired lawyers and retired and
they're working on crimes that unsolved in their area. That's
still you know, And I think that's something that really
did develop into a point something very good, because now
we've got people every day that have gotten away with
(27:05):
a crime for decades that are now being brought to.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Justice. Yeah, and I think that in the future there's
going to be a really an interesting, an interesting set
of cases that will eventually be presented where the person
thought that they were going to live to ripe old
(27:32):
age and never be held to account. I know that
there's been other versions of it, but now with the
advent of forensic genetic genealogy, this adds a completely different
layer to just as you know, if you're a creative writer,
just to the narrative. Here, I'm of the opinion, and
(27:52):
maybe I'm wrong. I don't know if other people share this.
And I was thinking about this this week, particularly in
light of of the Coburger trial. I was actually thinking,
I believe that the days of the so called classic
(28:13):
serial killer or the sun is setting on them, because
there's so there's so many tools out there in order
to solve these cases that once were unsolvable. The one
element many times would say, for instance serial killers, is
that there is this desire to touch, to put their
(28:35):
hands on somebody in some ways sexually assault them. And
I don't know how how people are going to get
around that like they once could You think about serial
killings that happened back in the seventies and the andes,
and that's where yeah, with Bundy, and then you round
(28:57):
that back to where we are now with this technology.
I'm not going to say that you know that evil
is going to end as a result of this, will
always be evil, but it's it's really put criminals at
a disadvantage here now even more so than they were before.
And I think that's a that's a great thing. And
(29:19):
and it's born out here in this case, Dave that
after after all these years where you know, this this
poor victim, where they were able to uh collect her clothes,
I think, and as time went by, they were able
to develop a DNA profile on an individual and.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Plug Actually I was going to ask you about that
when did CODIS come into play, because they mentioned as
I was reading through the history here, it said that
they did plug it into CODIS. But cotis is only
people who have been entered into the system.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So we did that actually, and yeah, doesn't go back.
Does it go back that far? And so that's the
thing about it is they've been this is the miracle
of the future. I think. This is what I think
that every investigator that work cases prior to this era
of time they were hoping for, you know. And it
(30:20):
all starts with codis I think, and plugging it in.
And here's another thing, brother Dave, I wanted to throw
out to you. You know, how many times have we
watched a television show or seen something where some actor
will stand before camera and they'll say he's done it
before and he'll do it again. Well, they plugged the
(30:44):
DNA collected off of this clothing of this young woman.
They didn't get a hit. So what you've got is
this a one off event where you've got an individual
who shows up with two teenagers arked in a car
and decides to end one of their lives and then
(31:05):
violently rape the other one and they're just kind of
vanish in the dark, and he never re offends, or
maybe he's maybe he's offended again and no one called
it in. Maybe he's offended, and maybe he offended again
and killed the individual, because it's it's pretty obvious he's
(31:25):
willing to kill, and he disposed of the remains and
the person who's just vanished into time at this point
in time. But you know, people always put out that,
particularly those in the you know, psychology realm. They'll always say,
you know, they can't help themselves, they're going to re offend.
And I don't know if that I don't know if
(31:46):
that that thesis is fool proof. You know, I don't
know that you can say that that is the case
forever and ever. Amen. Maybe it was a one off event.
Maybe he just decided he was going to drift into
the midst of time and was going to hang this
on me. But you know, the policeer did, particularly along
with our friends down in Texas.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
But Joe, what if, okay, what if this guy, the
suspect here, maybe he had an infatuation with the girl
and maybe he asked her out, she turned him down,
and he became obsessed with her, and he finds her
with this other guy and they're parking, and he then
(32:30):
kills the guy, rapes the girl and leaves. And he's
not a criminal. It's not his wife's. His lifestyle is
not that of a criminal. He lost his cookies as
these Namby pambies that you and I hear on TV
all the time talking about No, he just lost it
for a few minutes. He was out of control. He
wasn't responsible for what happened during this window of opportunity
(32:52):
or whatever. And maybe that's what happened. And then he
crawled back under his rock and went back to his
world of an incel, right, and so anyway, don't know
if that's what happened, but I do know this genetic
genealogy is something that they're using so that if they've
got somebody's DNA, they so start tracking family trees forensic
(33:17):
genetic genealogy to the point where, just like with we
mentioned Sherry Peppini in Shasta County, California, they were able
to use this same type of treat of examination to
find a relative. They used it in Coburger. They found
that DNA on the sheath came from the father of
(33:37):
the person who did this. They're able to narrow it
down so dramatically that dude, they did it with this guy.
And so from northern California, in Shasta County, you're able
to go to Tucson, Arizona, forty years after the crime.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And there you go, yeah, and you you know, and
you nail it down that moment time. Listen, when the
police roll up, you have this image in your mind
of a guy, a gun toting rapist, because you have
evidence of that from past past actions, who has now
(34:20):
been confirmed as the individual that contributed to DNA at seen.
You're thinking you're going to walk into the house of
a monster. As it turns out, this guy, the accused
now that was living his life, unlike mister arn Right,
(34:42):
was living his life out in p Mac County, Arizona,
in Tucson. I'll go ahead, say his name, Roger Neil Schmidt. Well,
if he's a senior, that means he's reproduced, he's got
a kid out there somewhere, he's been able to live
his life. And when they roll up to his house, Dave,
this guy. This guy's in a wheelchair and on oxygen. Okay,
(35:08):
he would have been they say that he would have
been twenty three. I think at the time back in
eighty four, he's now sixty four, and I'm thinking, why
are you in a wheelchair and on oxygen at sixty four? Yeah,
you know, I mean, look, I mean, I'm not saying
that sixties, a New forty or anything. I'm just saying
(35:29):
that what's happened in your life to put you in
a wheelchair and on oxygen at this point in your life?
Why are you so debilitated now as you know this,
this I don't know this disease that you have infected
yourself with, this, this horrible thing. Had the chickens come
(35:51):
home to roost? You know, back in your past, were
you endo this young man's life and scarred this woman
for the remainder of her life. I'm not going to
say it's the most ideal situation, but I can tell
you this, he's not six feet under a headstone somewhere.
He's had a chance to live his life, and now
he's going to live his life after he gets extradited.
(36:13):
This just this arrest just has been affected and at
the time that we're laid in this down day, he's
going to spend the rest of his or at least
foreseeable future in Northern California. He's going back there and
he's going to be held to account for what he did.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Dave or allegedly you know, I don't know, Well, we'll
actually transpiring court that you mentioned as we're recording this.
He was just arrested less than a week ago. And
by the way, they don't they being law enforcement, they
don't get this track down to your great uncle and
(36:55):
then say, oh, it's justice Scott Morgan, go to his
house and arrest him. They investigate. Actually, that's just another
link in the chain and they have to now go
and just like with Coburger, and I keep rent mentioning
that because we've all covered we in the business have
covered that story now for a long time. And even
when they believed the DNA on that day the sheath
(37:17):
was from the father of the individual who committed the crime,
they still had to go to his house and camp out.
And they did the same thing here in Arizona. They
went to the guy's house and they worked with local
law enforcement until they could get something from him that
they could then test and match up to the DNA
that was recovered in nineteen eighty four. They got it,
(37:39):
and that's why we actually have the name of the
man now. It stands accused of a hated By the way,
the rape this poor woman said that he raped her
multiple times. So he didn't just kill the guy, rape
the girl and run in a matter of minutes. It
was some time. I don't know how long yet, we'll
(38:00):
find out more as this case proceived me.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Can I add something to that? They raped? He raped her? Allegedly,
this guy raped her in the presence of her dying boyfriend.
Let that sink in just for a second, to give
you an idea what kind of human you're dealing with here?
(38:23):
He raped her repeatedly while this guy's life is draining
out of him from multiple gunshot wounds. Just let that
sink in. How absent of mercy and compassion do you
have to be in order to perpetrate this kind of thing.
It absolutely blows my mind that he did not re offend.
(38:53):
Maybe he did, but he didn't show up. But after
all these years, they have caught him. And you know,
I got to say, Dave. Moving forward, we are going
to continue to watch this case. I'm hoping that she,
(39:13):
this victim, will have her day in court and be
able to affirmatively say in court that yes, that's the
man that did this to me. And we'll see what
the court's judgment is at the end of the day.
But I do know this, there has been a let's see,
(39:37):
how can we say this, there has been a warning
shot fired across the bow of every want to be
perpetrator out there that is going to assault somebody that's
going to murder, somebody that's going to rob them of
their life. There's been a warning shot fired, and that
warning shot is being fired authorm. It goes to the
(40:04):
numbers that you deal with when you're talking about science.
It goes to the idea that you can't outrun the
numbers no matter how hard you try it, no matter
if you move thousands and thousands of miles away, that
essence of you is still going to remain. And because
(40:25):
of authorm and at their website dnaslves dot com, they
breathe life into these cases and literally do reanimate these
individuals so that they can be called, called and held
to account for their crimes. If you have a desire
(40:48):
to contribute to authorm, you can visit their website again.
I'll mention that again it's d n A Solves s
O l v e S dot com. And the cool
thing about this, many of you you want to be
able to participate in the solving of crime. Now's your opportunity.
(41:13):
You can contribute any amount that you want. You go
to their website. You check out what cases are currently open.
Is there anything that catches your attention? Maybe it's something
that happened in your state, maybe even in your community
that for years and years people have been asking questions
about and still have received no answer. Your contribution to
(41:39):
these efforts can help with that. I suggest that you
log onto their website, pass through all of the cases
that are there, see if anything catches your attention, and
once they have arrived at that magic number that they
need to arrive at, a switch will be flipped and
the case will be going into their system and they'll
(42:02):
begin to work on it, and you never know, the
money that you send their way might really, really truly
bring answers that have not previously existed. I'm Joseph Scott
Morgan and this is body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.