December 11, 2025 • 40 mins
In 1984 an 18-year-old former high school sports star is sitting in his car talking to an 18-year-old female when a maniac steps up to his car with a rifle. Terry Arndt tries to protect the girl he is with and attempts to shield her from the gunman, and dies protecting his friend. The killer then sexually assaults the girl and leaves her for dead. The monster leaves and the young woman drives Terry's car to try and get him help. The killer steals the life of one and changes the life of another and walks away, never to be seen again. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case that was so cold over 30 detectives tried to solve the mystery, that was finally cracked this year. DNA Solves is at it again!
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.08 Introduction-blooming
03:00.11 High School Athlete
05:06.26 Dies a hero
09:41.59 Shot fired through window, glass cubes
14:27.64 Killer thinks girl is dead, she is not
20:23.38 Biological evidence collected
24:56.34 Tech finally caught up with killer
29:28.70 Killer only killed once, did not offend again
35:02.17 Killer pleads guilty
40:28.25 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Body bus.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
But Joseph's gotten more.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I mean, if you guys remember out there those moments
in high school, reflecting back when you found maybe that's special,
someone that you connected with, You connected with them so
well that all you wanted to do was spend time
with them. It didn't really matter where you spent time
(00:29):
with them. It was just being with them and talking
and sometimes, of course, you know, teenage world talking at
least to other things. But that aside, it's still a
moment in time that you can never recapture, and there's
nothing like it in the world. For most of us
(00:52):
that experience that, it's kind of joyful. You get the
warm fuzzies when you think about it. But just think
for a moment. You're on a road, you're parked. You
and a young lady are sitting in your car, and
you're chatting, and you notice that there is a car
(01:16):
that is pulled up behind you, a car you've never
seen before. Dark you can see a figure behind the wheel,
and then suddenly a man approaches and the next thing
you know, the glass from your window is exploding, and
(01:38):
two rifle rounds lodge within your body, and your young
life begins to slip away and all you can think
about is a young lady in the seat next to you,
trying to protect her. But it suddenly becomes fully apparent
that you're not going to be able to. Today on Bodybacks,
(02:02):
I'm proud to say that we're going to talk about
a case that has been called for decades and finally,
because of our friends at author and laboratories, there is
now a resolution. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks.
(02:28):
David's case came across my desk and I had to
make comment about it today. I wanted all of our
friends to really really know about it because it's I'm
not saying that that death comes any more softly to
(02:48):
those that are of a more mature age. Death is
always hard, but there is just something about it when
you have people that are in the bloom of youth.
I think that just makes it all all the more horrific,
particularly with violent death. There's no way to anticipate it.
I mean, I think back even now to my kids,
(03:09):
I cannot even begin to fathom and the idea that
when you tell them as they're walking out the door
and I'll be safe, be safe, I want you to
come on back home and you're never going to see
them again.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But you hit me with something right before we started.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You mentioned a note in here, and it affects every
young man that if you ever played sports in high school,
you know there are levels of sports where in this
particular case, we have we've got a young guy here
who was He was a high school athlete of some merit.
(03:45):
People knew who he was. We're talking about. This is
Shasta County, California, right, I mean we're up in Cherry
Pepinie World. Yeah, and this is in nineteen nineteen eighty four,
by the way, it's a week before Christmas, nineteen eighty four,
and there's this high school athlete who has graduated and
(04:06):
he's now in college. But he's eighteen, and there's a
high school basketball tournament going on, isn't there? Isn't that
why they're outside?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Isn't that? Okay? So think about this.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
You know, you graduate from high school, you're the star.
You go off to college and so you're not the
athlete from high school anymore. You're coming back from college
and you're still a young guy. I'm just that's such
a cool time to be. You know, who is and
what he and he died heroically. I'm just going to
tell you that Terrence aren't. Terry aren't died heroically if
(04:42):
that's possible. I mean, I think we all hope that
in a situation where we are faced with a life
and death decision, that we will go above and beyond
to protect who we're with. Ye, I hope that's in
all character. And Terry, bless his heart, he died a hero.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, he did, and the way it has been described.
And keep in mind, Dave, it's nineteen eighty four, brother,
you know, you know, you think about how far away
we are from that world at this point in time.
And he he was in this car with lady friend.
(05:32):
And listen, I have to tell you. We know that
she's young. She's eighteen as well, but they have to
this date never released her name. And I'll get to
that in just a moment. But the I was going
to say intestinal fortitude here, but the idea of being heroic,
(05:52):
I don't know that it's necessarily a thing where you
have to build up your courage. This is kind of
a promal response and maybe just goes to what had
been ingrained in him since he was a little kid.
That he's there, and he's to protect this young lady
that he obviously cares about. I don't know about you.
(06:14):
I don't want to sit in the car with some
young lady that I wouldn't have that I didn't care about,
you know, And here he is, he's going to put
himself in the way she actually described it is he
apparently Dave turned like rotated his body in order to
shield her. And the understanding is is that you got
(06:38):
a guy that just walks up to this window and
he apparently is armed, not with a handgun, Dave, but
a long arm. And this is a guy that really
means business. You know, you show up and it's not
just the power of long arm, but it's the menacing
of this thing. It's one thing if you show up
with like maybe a pistol. And don't get me wrong,
(07:00):
they're terrifying to be around, but you know that somebody
means business when they are not afraid to walk around
with a shoulder fired firearm that anybody could recognize. That's
why they called pistols concealed weapons. You know, it's really
hard to conceal a rifle, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, which is why I'm glad you pointed it out,
because in this particular case, we've got the young eighteen
year old couple sitting outside in the carp talking in
air quotes and as I'm still amazed at what happened,
that the reason we know what happened is because of
(07:39):
Terrence aren't turning his body two shield the girl that
he's with from danger. Granted, he is shot and killed,
and this young woman, I don't know how she had
it in her what she had just experienced, Joe. She
just saw this friend cover her with his body to
(08:06):
try to save her, and he gets shot and killed,
and then she's left alone with this guy with the
long arm, the long gun. And I always think nowadays,
when we call it sexual assault, we're not being as
direct as what actually transpired. And I know that has
(08:28):
something to do with platforms and how they demonetize things
when you say certain things. But sexual assault is so
much worse than what it sounds.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yes, yeah, it is, and it comes along with there's
a variety of things that come along with it because well,
let's just take the word assault just by itself. You've
got a threatening element to it. You've also got the
physical element that is more than say.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
The act.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
If you will, there can be events where people are struck,
they're beaten. Always think about somebody with a long arm.
Maybe I've seen one too many, you know World War
II movies where people are assaulted with the butt of
a weapon, but you know, just that menacing thing that
comes along, or taking the muzzle of the weapon and
putting it, you know, against them, telling them, giving them directives,
(09:27):
giving them commands of what you will and will not do,
and you shall submit to what I tell you to do,
and listen. She had evidence at that moment in time
that this individual meant business, Dave, because it's not just
it's not just the fact that this young man sacrificed
(09:48):
his life for her, but the showering of the glass
as those projectiles pass through it, which by the way,
they turn into tiny little projectiles of their own. They
fragment you have and if it's fired through, if it's
fired through a side window, you'll get impact with these
(10:13):
bits of glass. The glass actually cubes. I don't know
if people know that, but the glass in the side windows,
a safety glass will cube and you'll get these little
right angle lacerations on your person. I've seen this happen.
It happens in car accidents. A lot gunfire can initiate
these things as well, because suddenly they take on their
own independent velocity that's generated as a result of the
(10:36):
kinetic energy of this round passing through the glass, shattering
it and driving it forward. So even if it doesn't
have a lot of energy, you're being showered in this.
And in addition to that, in addition of that, it's
also the sound, Dave. Can you imagine being locked into
the cabin of a motor vehicle and a rifle is fired,
(11:02):
is fired into this space. Do you realize how disorienting
that is? And all of that sound, the powder, the spark,
the flame, and you don't realize that that there's literally
flame coming out of the end of a muzzle. If
you slow down a firearm, and particularly at night, you
can really appreciate the cabin becomes illuminated all of a sudden.
(11:23):
So you've got all of this activity that goes to
this act, to this assault, if you will, And it's
this continued after that, because after this monster kills Terry,
he threatens this young woman and forces her forces her
(11:46):
to commit acts which well, let's just say it this
way should never happen in a civilized society. But Dave,
(12:10):
I'm gonna write a number to you, and now get
ready for this because I can. I anticipated you know.
For those you guys that don't know, Dave and I
are looking at each other right now and our monitors,
and this is how we have our conversations every day.
A matter of fact, we get distracted many times because
we just want to chat. We'll chat about anything, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
We live so close to one talk about this like
this is kind of like texting your wife in the
kicking from the living room saying.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Hey, I need some more mayonnaise on my sandwich. We're
that clothes. But we actually end up doing it this way.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
We ought to actually just go sit on each other's
porches and do this show. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
At any rate, what were you going to hit me with?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'm going to hit you with a number, all right,
three and four thirty four? Do you know what that
number is significant of in this case? M No, you're
ready for this. That's the number of detectives that have
worked on this case since it first happened. Wow thirty four, David, Wow,
(13:11):
thirty four. Can you imagine that, you know how many
hands that has passed through this case material has passed
through over the years.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
That's that is an agency committed to solving an unsolvable case.
And to be honest with you, Joe, I was shocked
that it went cold because you're talking about December eighteen,
nineteen eighty four. Granted that is a long time ago.
It is, but it's not from that time. It's not
like it was in the black and white television, Golden
era of TV. I mean, we were a pretty sophisticated
(13:41):
society in nineteen eighty four, and I don't anticipate a
case like this that happens in an area that has people. Again,
there was a basketball tournament going on, there was a
lot of people in the area. It wasn't isolated. There
are a lot of reasons to actually have this solved,
and I think that might have played into the reason
(14:03):
it did pass through thirty four different detectives giving it
their best shot, because this is a crime that should
never go unsolved. And I do think that it's important
to point out that while we talked about Terry, aren't
the high school star athlete who is now in college
and comes back and he's sitting in his car while
(14:25):
a basketball tournament's going on, talking to another eighteen year
older girl. And when this killing, the murder happens. But
after this monster has committed these heinous acts on this woman, Joe,
she thought she was dead, the suspect, the monster thought
(14:51):
she was dead. Nothing else for me to do except
slink off into the night with the rest of the monsters,
which is what he did.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
But guess what, you know, I understand, from a perspective
of privacy and propriety and everything, I really wish I
knew her name, just so that I could and could
see her and look her in her eye and just
tell her you talked about being her rower. Wow, Dave,
(15:22):
she got in this. She got behind the wheel of
Terry's vehicle with him in the vehicle, and drove drove
to get him to a hospital. Now she has already
been assaulted violently at this point in time, she drove
(15:45):
Terry to a hospital where they took him from the vehicle.
I'm assuming she probably drove up to the er ambulance ramp.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Actually, Joe, Yeah, yeah, it's she actually a did not
know how to drive the vehicle. That he had, and
she had to find a cop, She had to find somebody,
and that's what she found. She actually found an on
duty cop, holy smokes, and was able to reach them
(16:16):
and say, hey, this is what happened. Help me, And
that's how they got him. But that's the I think
that goes back to the heart and soul of why
the police were so committed, because they weren't there when
it happened. They were there in the minutes after, when
they saw the horror of what had happened to an
eighteen year old girl. And I think that's why, because
(16:39):
she found them and said, this just happened. The guy's
still in town. He's got to be around here.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
He's got to be around and there's not it. Look,
you know, I know that this is not necessarily I'm
not saying they got a pipe sunshine into this area. Yeah, However,
bend to Shasta County, California. Arguably, in my opinion, at
least by the way I measure things in California, it's
probably one of the more beautiful areas. It's way way, way, way,
(17:06):
way way up north. It's up toward Oregon. Beautiful Senor.
If you let me tell you something. If you have
never beheld Mount Shasta in person, it is something to see. Oh,
my lord, beautiful area up there. But she was able
to get him into the hands of somebody that could
render eight in. Unfortunately, Terry died. He died, but he
(17:30):
did not die in that vehicle. Now he may have
been on the verge of death, but she got him
to some location where they could put hands on him
and try to treat him. And of course he you know,
he gave up the ghost at that point in time.
But you know what, I'm fascinated by this dynamic of
having the police be involved in this. Now I can
(17:51):
tell you this, they would not have had a tremendous
amount of manpower back then. It would have been and
back in those days, this particular area of the state
I would say was at least a third less populated
than it currently is. I would imagine you didn't have
(18:14):
as many people fleeing to that area from you know,
the lower area of California, lower areas of California to
get up there and get away, and so they would
I would imagine that they were. They kind of had
a shortage. So even if you put out a bolo
on this case, it would be difficult. But first, the
(18:34):
first thing you have to do is if she's communicative
and you'd be surprised, well, you probably wouldn't be surprised day,
but there are so many of these assault victims that
when you go to speak to them, they're almost shocky.
When you talk to them, they can't, they cannot converse
with you. But you know, Dave, in this particular case,
(18:57):
she gave a descriptor of this perpetrator and they actually
rendered a sketch of this guy. And you know what,
that sketch, as it turns out years later, was pretty close,
pretty close in appearance to who this turns out to
(19:17):
be that actually perpetrated this crime. I know that I'm
giving a bit away here, but I think that it's
really important to understand what she accomplished here. The other
thing too, and this is kind of a real tragic
thing that has to occur, and it's it's horrible and painful,
and all those sorts of things with her, they would
(19:38):
have had to have done a rather detailed examination, if
you understand what I'm saying, There would have been relations yeah,
and so it's yeah, it kind of is. But here
she is you know, her face said, like flint, she's determined.
I think at this point in time that she she
wants this guy caught. All right, So in this examination
(20:03):
they did in fact collect biological evidence. But unfortunately, you know,
nineteen eighty four is actually the year that actually the
year that DNA was first utilized or it was proposed
(20:23):
that DNA could be utilized as a methodology of solving
criminal cases in England. That's how that's how far back
this goes. And the guy that actually did that, he
winds up winning I think he won a Nobel Prize
and so that, but that goes back so very far.
(20:45):
So you didn't have the utility at that point in time.
The best you could do is to do a kit
and take any kind of biological evidence that you might
have if the you're praying that the individual might be
a secretor where if you have seminal fluid, perhaps that
they've got red identifiable red blood cells, you know, in
(21:06):
either saliva or seamen that they've left behind, you can
get a blood type. Perhaps because at this point in time,
Cotis Cotis didn't exist. At this point in time, you know,
everybody talks about you know, Cotis's Codis that but even
back then Cotis was brother. It was not a thing.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Man, right, And that's where you know you're talking about
the population size. Okay, I looked it up because I
was I started getting really curious in Bernie, California where
this happened. In the county of Shasta. You know about
thirty one hundred people in Bernie. So I think that
is why. You know, again they made mention of the
(21:43):
man was unknown. The suspect is an unknown person because
in a town that small, well, most people that grow
up together, they go to school together, they know one another.
Or I have an idea, it's your cousin or so
and So's brother. You have an idea. But in this case,
as they ran down the list, even getting the description
from the victim, still didn't have an idea of who
(22:06):
it was at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, and that's that's quite terrifying. I can only imagine,
because you know, Bernie is not someplace I would think,
at least Dave, that you wind up by accident. You
have to intentionally be headed that way, you know, to
be domiciled there. You might work in, say the timber
industry or something like this. One of my most vivid
memories of being up in that county. It was actually
(22:30):
during the wintertime. I went into a restaurant in Mount Shasta,
and I may have related this story to you, And
I walked in and there was snowpack on the ground
all around this one restaurant. I've been driving down five
I think it was five from Oregon and walked into
the restaurant, and Dave, I walked in there and they
had these gigantic plates of pancakes that were massive, and
(22:55):
everybody dig this. Everybody that was in there was a lumberjack.
They all look like that, you know. They had the
suspenders on, the big heavy boots, the big beards, you know,
and and so that's the type of world that this
was back during that period of time. Do you actually
think do you actually think that cases like this happened
(23:18):
in that location on a regular basis. I can only
imagine it was like getting a hit, you know, hit
between the eyes with a two by four for the
residents up there. And what a horrible thing. This kid
Terry was known man, because when you're in a small town,
you know, it's the old Miranda Lambert song, you know.
I think that in a small town everybody knows your name.
(23:39):
You know, you're the cock of the walk. He's gone
off to college, he's playing ball. Now you can only
imagine how much this impacted that little community up there
that knew Terry and probably know this young lady. And
the biggest question is how do you find out who
this is? Well? Well, unfortunately for that little community, that
(24:04):
answer wouldn't come for another forty years. I'll make a
little comment about myself here. I've got serious trust issues, Dave.
(24:29):
And let me give you an example. When people show
up to court with a tank of oxygen and they're
in a wheelchair and they've been accused of a horrible crime.
I have questions. Now. I know some of you are
out there more than you're being mighty judge. Now I've
I've seen a thing or two, okay, and we'll get
(24:55):
to that in just a moment. But I just want
to frame this out from jump Street here that when
I see an individual present this way, I think that
it's an attempt on somebody's part to try to beg
for mercy in a case where they showed no mercy, Dave.
(25:20):
But you know I got to tell you through technology
finally caught up. Technology finally caught up with this huge
mystery out of Bernie that occurred all those years ago,
which for me is it's very very satisfying. I think,
like a lot of these cases that we cover nowadays,
there's a certain level of satisfaction where you just you
(25:41):
don't think that anything will ever come of it, and
it does because I got to tell you. You remember
I talked about the samples that were taken from this
young woman. Well, Dave, years later, you know, we talked
about the thirty four investigators involved in this case. Years later,
they did take those samples and put them into codis
(26:04):
and guess what, they didn't get a hit. Well, there
you go, they didn't get a hit at that point, Tom.
So at that point Tom technology still had not caught up.
But here we are today and we finally got answers.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
You know, you were talking about how you don't trust
people when they show up in court and oxygen mask
and all that. I was reminded of an episode I
was reading this great piece of work about the guy
that played Colonel Potter on Mash you know, replacement Harry Morgan.
Here Morgan is and he replaced McLean Stevenson when McLean
(26:37):
left to do movies and ended up doing Hello Larry
for three.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Episodes, and that was it, all right.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
So Potter comes in and all of a sudden, people
kind of forget who was there before Potter. Anyway, Harry
Morgan had been an actor in movies TV for years
even at that point. Well, he was in an episode
of the Partridge Family where the Partridge Family bus hit
his bumper on his car, and all of a sudden,
when you found ot they were musicians, all of a sudden,
(27:03):
he had a neck back problem and everything else. And
he shows up in court with the next thing on
and somebody drops a briefcase and book there he turns,
you know, and it's busted.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
In great episode.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah, so I think the same thing when I see
somebody in court that is really dogging it, you know,
especially if you're trying to you're accused of a heinous
crime that you've gotten away with for a long time.
In this particular case, buddy, we're talking about and from
nineteen eighty four until now, we've talked about how long
(27:32):
ago that was. Well, think about it for just a minute.
This crime took place in December nineteen eighty four, one
week before Christmas, and here we are weeks away from
Christmas twenty twenty five and finally because of because of
(27:54):
great police work not giving up. I'm going to give
them the credit because they could have walked away from
this and barried, just left it alone. Been easy to do,
but they didn't. And every time we do an episode
like this, I've told you about the math and the
just the genetic genealogy and all of the work that
(28:15):
goes in. We do an episode in forty minutes on
what happened, but it takes weeks, months and years from
the beginning of the process until they actually can identify somebody,
because you don't If it was easy, everybody would do
it and we wouldn't have these episodes. But it's not easy.
It takes time. Well, finally, in twenty twenty five this year,
(28:38):
the Shasta County Sheriff's Office actually submitted some forensic evidence
to AUTHORM in the Woodlands, Texas to determine if advanced
DNA testing could help them identify a suspect not giving up,
Joe not giving up, and what happened.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Well, what happened is is that they actually developed a
hit on a fellow who as it turns out, was
living down in Tucson, Arizona, and you know, the road
kind of led to him, and he's he's a guy
that that lived in that area. They began to dig
(29:22):
into his background and guess what, dave. He apparently had
no substantive priors at all. He was he was not
on anybody's radar. Yeah, yeah, wow. And so that that
in and of itself, you go back to cotis right,
because this kind of borrows a hole into the whole
(29:45):
the whole line of thinking about offenders like this. How
many times have you and I both heard somebody say
they will offend again? Yeah, okay, that this is not there?
You know how many how many cliche television shows have
you seen? This is in their first time start, you know, yeah,
yeah yeah, And I don't necessarily We've had a couple
(30:08):
of these other cases where the individual would offend one
time and then they just drop off the map. They
don't pop up anywhere else, they don't have any bad
acts after that, and then all of a sudden, this
guy pops up on the radar. We're talking well now,
when they put the bracelets on him, it's forty one
(30:29):
years down range. You think he thought that he got
away with it. Yeah, well, now you know, he's living
down in Tucson, Arizona. And as it turns out, Dave,
this guy during that period of time. Remember we talked
about how small Bernie was. Apparently back in nineteen eighty
four he was domiciled up there, he had actually lived
(30:52):
in that area. Oh come on, Yeah, they were able
to go back and do this investigation and look into
this guy and determined that that he had in fact
been up there during this period of time. But for
whatever reason, like you said, Dave, you never know where
these intersections are gonna, you know, you know, wind up
(31:14):
touching one another, these little timelines and whatnot. I really wonder,
you know, looking back or thinking back, I really wonder
how close they were at one point in time to
maybe putting their hand on this guy and he just
kind of slipped beneath the waves.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And they did make an arrest, not them, but back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yo, dig this man. This is the mind blowing part, Dave.
They actually hooked somebody up on this case and incarcerated
them for two years. Man, And it turns out they
had nothing to do with the case. That person actually
wound up. I don't know if it was a suit
(31:55):
or if they just thought we better make this thing
go away. That that individual was paid like approximately three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for two years of their life. Wow,
because that comes down to false imprisonment, man, and they
had nothing of substance to hang on that individual. Can
you imagine how deflating we talked about the thirty four investigators.
Imagine how deflating that would be. Because you've had this
(32:17):
case for so long, and all of a sudden, you
think you got somebody, You think this long road is
going to come to an end. You hook them up
on charges, they wind up getting incarcerated, and now it
turns out, no, this is not them, This is not
them at all, And you got to pay through the
nose for this. You know, as it turns out, they
(32:38):
do wind up being able to hook somebody up.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Man, you know, they're going to feel bad putting the
wrong guy in jail. I mean, that's at least I
hope you know they'd had some conscience about it. But
I have heard oftentimes that, well he got away with
you know, maybe he didn't do this one, but he
did something else going back, it's like the same thing
of nobody does a murder and nothing else. It doesn't
happen like that, except in this particular case, it looks
like that may have actually been the case. Now, he
(33:03):
was twenty three years old at the time the murder
took place, so he's five years older than his victims.
That's why they wouldn't know who he was. That's the
biggest difference. That that's true. Oh exactly. I mean, look,
I knew people that were older than me when I
was eighteen years old, but they were not people I
would have been hanging out with. And those people sure
(33:24):
surely would not have been hanging out with me, you know.
And so you think, well, it stands to reason that
the witness, who is this poor young woman who's been assaulted,
she's not going to know him, but she gives this descriptor,
this physical descriptor, which they're able to render, you know,
a likeness of Back then, as it turns out, you know,
(33:47):
the police are saying that it actually turned out that
it looked very very similar to this guy whose name
is actually Roger Neil Schmidt, and they've hooked him up. Uh, Dave,
I can I can happily say that, uh that he
rolled over on this and it admitted to it.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Uh. They still have sentencing. Uh that is actually going
to take place in just a couple of days from
now as we're laying this down, I think December sixteenth.
They're they're actually going to do the sentencing. And that
brings me back. You know, when the images of this
guy rolling in literally rolling into the courtroom and he's
(34:30):
got a nasal canula in you know that supplies the.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Os nasal canula.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
What is that ns it's the uh, it's the rubber
hose that you have to lap but you know, into
your nostrils. You have my permission. And he's and he's
up taking oxygen here, you know, and I'm sure he's
got labored breathing and all this sort of thing, you
know that. Oh yeah, and he's he's sitting there and
(34:58):
he's he's in the wheelchair. You know, please show mercy
to me.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Right now, he did, I want? Yeah, go ahead, you
plead guilty. Okay, he did. You mentioned he rolled over
on himself. He did take a plea, which.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Michie, what a nice man.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
That night they had him dead to right, he did it.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
He didn't pick off the phone and call the department
and say, hey, I've had something on my mind now
for forty years eating me up.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
My conscience has got me. He didn't do that.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
They already had him, They had the DNA, they did
all the you know, they've probably camped out, they probably
got stuff out of his trash. They were, they had
him hooked up when they when they talked to it.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Listen, I do know this. The police up in Shasta County,
they actually coordinated with Tucson City PD just say look,
this is what we're looking at. Man, we need your
help on this, because this guy's got to be hooked up, right,
He's got to be hooked up. So, you know, they
sat on his house for a while, you know, just
checking him out, seeing his comings and goings. And when
(35:51):
you have this definitive data that has been generated by
authorm and you can look at it and you see
these numbers, you know, I can only imagine for those
investigators that began working this case back in nineteen eighty four,
they would have been salivating over this kind of factual,
(36:13):
scientific data that they could look at and say, oh,
this is our man right here. They didn't have the ability.
And I would urge everybody here, all of our friends
out there that here us talking about these cases, do
not judge these investigators harshly from back in the day.
And I know that you guys probably understand this. But
(36:35):
you can only do what you can do, you know,
and many times you are in fact limited by the
technology that you have, just as you know, generations before
that generation in nineteen eighty four, you know, you go
back to the forties, they were very much limited on
the things that they could do, for instance. So every generation,
you know, moving forward is going to have more technology
(36:58):
that's going to assist them. But there is no better
example of this than what we see today from our
friends down in the Woodlands, Woodlands, Texas.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Yeah, and I cear you one thing, Joe, Yeah, sure
that you mentioned December sixteenth, You know that that's the
date for sentencing. Well, they've already negotiated it based on
the crime and when it occurred.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
It was the death penalty case.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
He could have faced the needle, but the negotiation, at
his age and everything else, they have agreed to a
life sentence without the possibility parole and waiving all rights
to appeal. So that's what they're going to sign off
on December sixteenth, on almost the forty first anniversary.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, that merged, you know, all these decades later. Oh,
by the way, I think that in nineteen eighty four,
still in California. My friends out there would need to
correct me about this, but I think in nineteen eighty
four in California it was still the gas chamber back then.
Oh wow, wow, signid gas man. You imagine. And so, yeah,
(38:00):
he dodged. He dodged this. But unlike Terry who did
not dodge those projectiles that burst that window and shattered
him in class and launched those projectiles into his body,
his body that he used to shield his young friend with.
(38:22):
Maybe there is justice in this old world. I don't know.
I don't know how we come to it. But at
least this guy's off the streets. Not that he could
necessarily harm anybody any longer, but it does send a
message out. Its ends the message out that for those
that are thinking about doing horrible things. Technologies on your
(38:43):
heels now, wherever you are. I hope that if you
have done something like this, that you're at home sweating
right now. You're thinking all the things I did in
secret in the dark, that terror that I subjected people
to do. There's a reckoning coming. There will be a
(39:03):
lot more reckonings coming relative to the scientific data that
has been collected. And a big thanks out to our
friends at authorm and listen, many of you guys say,
I want to participate, I want to try to help.
I want to be part of the solution to all
of these cases out there. Well, it requires funds and
(39:26):
authorm doesn't ask for a lot. Visit their website dnasolves
dot com. Check out the cases. You can actually reference
them geographically. If there's something in your particular area that
kind of drives you that you think that you would
like to put a few bucks behind, do it, man,
(39:47):
do it. I think that it is one of the
ultimate gifts that you could provide provide society with. I
think and specifically these families who have no answers whatsoever.
And it doesn't have to be a homicide. It can
just be an unidentified body that turned up you never know.
You might have known the person in your community that
went unidentified and suddenly they found a skeleton. You never know.
(40:10):
So that's dnasolvs dot com. That's our friends at Authorm
Laboratories in the Woodlands, Texas. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is bodybags
Body bus.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
But Joseph's gotten more.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I mean, if you guys remember out there those moments
in high school, reflecting back when you found maybe that's special,
someone that you connected with, You connected with them so
well that all you wanted to do was spend time
with them. It didn't really matter where you spent time
(00:29):
with them. It was just being with them and talking
and sometimes, of course, you know, teenage world talking at
least to other things. But that aside, it's still a
moment in time that you can never recapture, and there's
nothing like it in the world. For most of us
(00:52):
that experience that, it's kind of joyful. You get the
warm fuzzies when you think about it. But just think
for a moment. You're on a road, you're parked. You
and a young lady are sitting in your car, and
you're chatting, and you notice that there is a car
(01:16):
that is pulled up behind you, a car you've never
seen before. Dark you can see a figure behind the wheel,
and then suddenly a man approaches and the next thing
you know, the glass from your window is exploding, and
(01:38):
two rifle rounds lodge within your body, and your young
life begins to slip away and all you can think
about is a young lady in the seat next to you,
trying to protect her. But it suddenly becomes fully apparent
that you're not going to be able to. Today on Bodybacks,
(02:02):
I'm proud to say that we're going to talk about
a case that has been called for decades and finally,
because of our friends at author and laboratories, there is
now a resolution. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Bodybacks.
(02:28):
David's case came across my desk and I had to
make comment about it today. I wanted all of our
friends to really really know about it because it's I'm
not saying that that death comes any more softly to
(02:48):
those that are of a more mature age. Death is
always hard, but there is just something about it when
you have people that are in the bloom of youth.
I think that just makes it all all the more horrific,
particularly with violent death. There's no way to anticipate it.
I mean, I think back even now to my kids,
(03:09):
I cannot even begin to fathom and the idea that
when you tell them as they're walking out the door
and I'll be safe, be safe, I want you to
come on back home and you're never going to see
them again.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But you hit me with something right before we started.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You mentioned a note in here, and it affects every
young man that if you ever played sports in high school,
you know there are levels of sports where in this
particular case, we have we've got a young guy here
who was He was a high school athlete of some merit.
(03:45):
People knew who he was. We're talking about. This is
Shasta County, California, right, I mean we're up in Cherry
Pepinie World. Yeah, and this is in nineteen nineteen eighty four,
by the way, it's a week before Christmas, nineteen eighty four,
and there's this high school athlete who has graduated and
(04:06):
he's now in college. But he's eighteen, and there's a
high school basketball tournament going on, isn't there? Isn't that
why they're outside?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Isn't that? Okay? So think about this.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
You know, you graduate from high school, you're the star.
You go off to college and so you're not the
athlete from high school anymore. You're coming back from college
and you're still a young guy. I'm just that's such
a cool time to be. You know, who is and
what he and he died heroically. I'm just going to
tell you that Terrence aren't. Terry aren't died heroically if
(04:42):
that's possible. I mean, I think we all hope that
in a situation where we are faced with a life
and death decision, that we will go above and beyond
to protect who we're with. Ye, I hope that's in
all character. And Terry, bless his heart, he died a hero.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, he did, and the way it has been described.
And keep in mind, Dave, it's nineteen eighty four, brother,
you know, you know, you think about how far away
we are from that world at this point in time.
And he he was in this car with lady friend.
(05:32):
And listen, I have to tell you. We know that
she's young. She's eighteen as well, but they have to
this date never released her name. And I'll get to
that in just a moment. But the I was going
to say intestinal fortitude here, but the idea of being heroic,
(05:52):
I don't know that it's necessarily a thing where you
have to build up your courage. This is kind of
a promal response and maybe just goes to what had
been ingrained in him since he was a little kid.
That he's there, and he's to protect this young lady
that he obviously cares about. I don't know about you.
(06:14):
I don't want to sit in the car with some
young lady that I wouldn't have that I didn't care about,
you know, And here he is, he's going to put
himself in the way she actually described it is he
apparently Dave turned like rotated his body in order to
shield her. And the understanding is is that you got
(06:38):
a guy that just walks up to this window and
he apparently is armed, not with a handgun, Dave, but
a long arm. And this is a guy that really
means business. You know, you show up and it's not
just the power of long arm, but it's the menacing
of this thing. It's one thing if you show up
with like maybe a pistol. And don't get me wrong,
(07:00):
they're terrifying to be around, but you know that somebody
means business when they are not afraid to walk around
with a shoulder fired firearm that anybody could recognize. That's
why they called pistols concealed weapons. You know, it's really
hard to conceal a rifle, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, which is why I'm glad you pointed it out,
because in this particular case, we've got the young eighteen
year old couple sitting outside in the carp talking in
air quotes and as I'm still amazed at what happened,
that the reason we know what happened is because of
(07:39):
Terrence aren't turning his body two shield the girl that
he's with from danger. Granted, he is shot and killed,
and this young woman, I don't know how she had
it in her what she had just experienced, Joe. She
just saw this friend cover her with his body to
(08:06):
try to save her, and he gets shot and killed,
and then she's left alone with this guy with the
long arm, the long gun. And I always think nowadays,
when we call it sexual assault, we're not being as
direct as what actually transpired. And I know that has
(08:28):
something to do with platforms and how they demonetize things
when you say certain things. But sexual assault is so
much worse than what it sounds.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yes, yeah, it is, and it comes along with there's
a variety of things that come along with it because well,
let's just take the word assault just by itself. You've
got a threatening element to it. You've also got the
physical element that is more than say.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
The act.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
If you will, there can be events where people are struck,
they're beaten. Always think about somebody with a long arm.
Maybe I've seen one too many, you know World War
II movies where people are assaulted with the butt of
a weapon, but you know, just that menacing thing that
comes along, or taking the muzzle of the weapon and
putting it, you know, against them, telling them, giving them directives,
(09:27):
giving them commands of what you will and will not do,
and you shall submit to what I tell you to do,
and listen. She had evidence at that moment in time
that this individual meant business, Dave, because it's not just
it's not just the fact that this young man sacrificed
(09:48):
his life for her, but the showering of the glass
as those projectiles pass through it, which by the way,
they turn into tiny little projectiles of their own. They
fragment you have and if it's fired through, if it's
fired through a side window, you'll get impact with these
(10:13):
bits of glass. The glass actually cubes. I don't know
if people know that, but the glass in the side windows,
a safety glass will cube and you'll get these little
right angle lacerations on your person. I've seen this happen.
It happens in car accidents. A lot gunfire can initiate
these things as well, because suddenly they take on their
own independent velocity that's generated as a result of the
(10:36):
kinetic energy of this round passing through the glass, shattering
it and driving it forward. So even if it doesn't
have a lot of energy, you're being showered in this.
And in addition to that, in addition of that, it's
also the sound, Dave. Can you imagine being locked into
the cabin of a motor vehicle and a rifle is fired,
(11:02):
is fired into this space. Do you realize how disorienting
that is? And all of that sound, the powder, the spark,
the flame, and you don't realize that that there's literally
flame coming out of the end of a muzzle. If
you slow down a firearm, and particularly at night, you
can really appreciate the cabin becomes illuminated all of a sudden.
(11:23):
So you've got all of this activity that goes to
this act, to this assault, if you will, And it's
this continued after that, because after this monster kills Terry,
he threatens this young woman and forces her forces her
(11:46):
to commit acts which well, let's just say it this
way should never happen in a civilized society. But Dave,
(12:10):
I'm gonna write a number to you, and now get
ready for this because I can. I anticipated you know.
For those you guys that don't know, Dave and I
are looking at each other right now and our monitors,
and this is how we have our conversations every day.
A matter of fact, we get distracted many times because
we just want to chat. We'll chat about anything, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
We live so close to one talk about this like
this is kind of like texting your wife in the
kicking from the living room saying.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Hey, I need some more mayonnaise on my sandwich. We're
that clothes. But we actually end up doing it this way.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
We ought to actually just go sit on each other's
porches and do this show. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
At any rate, what were you going to hit me with?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'm going to hit you with a number, all right,
three and four thirty four? Do you know what that
number is significant of in this case? M No, you're
ready for this. That's the number of detectives that have
worked on this case since it first happened. Wow thirty four, David, Wow,
(13:11):
thirty four. Can you imagine that, you know how many
hands that has passed through this case material has passed
through over the years.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
That's that is an agency committed to solving an unsolvable case.
And to be honest with you, Joe, I was shocked
that it went cold because you're talking about December eighteen,
nineteen eighty four. Granted that is a long time ago.
It is, but it's not from that time. It's not
like it was in the black and white television, Golden
era of TV. I mean, we were a pretty sophisticated
(13:41):
society in nineteen eighty four, and I don't anticipate a
case like this that happens in an area that has people. Again,
there was a basketball tournament going on, there was a
lot of people in the area. It wasn't isolated. There
are a lot of reasons to actually have this solved,
and I think that might have played into the reason
(14:03):
it did pass through thirty four different detectives giving it
their best shot, because this is a crime that should
never go unsolved. And I do think that it's important
to point out that while we talked about Terry, aren't
the high school star athlete who is now in college
and comes back and he's sitting in his car while
(14:25):
a basketball tournament's going on, talking to another eighteen year
older girl. And when this killing, the murder happens. But
after this monster has committed these heinous acts on this woman, Joe,
she thought she was dead, the suspect, the monster thought
(14:51):
she was dead. Nothing else for me to do except
slink off into the night with the rest of the monsters,
which is what he did.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
But guess what, you know, I understand, from a perspective
of privacy and propriety and everything, I really wish I
knew her name, just so that I could and could
see her and look her in her eye and just
tell her you talked about being her rower. Wow, Dave,
(15:22):
she got in this. She got behind the wheel of
Terry's vehicle with him in the vehicle, and drove drove
to get him to a hospital. Now she has already
been assaulted violently at this point in time, she drove
(15:45):
Terry to a hospital where they took him from the vehicle.
I'm assuming she probably drove up to the er ambulance ramp.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Actually, Joe, Yeah, yeah, it's she actually a did not
know how to drive the vehicle. That he had, and
she had to find a cop, She had to find somebody,
and that's what she found. She actually found an on
duty cop, holy smokes, and was able to reach them
(16:16):
and say, hey, this is what happened. Help me, And
that's how they got him. But that's the I think
that goes back to the heart and soul of why
the police were so committed, because they weren't there when
it happened. They were there in the minutes after, when
they saw the horror of what had happened to an
eighteen year old girl. And I think that's why, because
(16:39):
she found them and said, this just happened. The guy's
still in town. He's got to be around here.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
He's got to be around and there's not it. Look,
you know, I know that this is not necessarily I'm
not saying they got a pipe sunshine into this area. Yeah, However,
bend to Shasta County, California. Arguably, in my opinion, at
least by the way I measure things in California, it's
probably one of the more beautiful areas. It's way way, way, way,
(17:06):
way way up north. It's up toward Oregon. Beautiful Senor.
If you let me tell you something. If you have
never beheld Mount Shasta in person, it is something to see. Oh,
my lord, beautiful area up there. But she was able
to get him into the hands of somebody that could
render eight in. Unfortunately, Terry died. He died, but he
(17:30):
did not die in that vehicle. Now he may have
been on the verge of death, but she got him
to some location where they could put hands on him
and try to treat him. And of course he you know,
he gave up the ghost at that point in time.
But you know what, I'm fascinated by this dynamic of
having the police be involved in this. Now I can
(17:51):
tell you this, they would not have had a tremendous
amount of manpower back then. It would have been and
back in those days, this particular area of the state
I would say was at least a third less populated
than it currently is. I would imagine you didn't have
(18:14):
as many people fleeing to that area from you know,
the lower area of California, lower areas of California to
get up there and get away, and so they would
I would imagine that they were. They kind of had
a shortage. So even if you put out a bolo
on this case, it would be difficult. But first, the
(18:34):
first thing you have to do is if she's communicative
and you'd be surprised, well, you probably wouldn't be surprised day,
but there are so many of these assault victims that
when you go to speak to them, they're almost shocky.
When you talk to them, they can't, they cannot converse
with you. But you know, Dave, in this particular case,
(18:57):
she gave a descriptor of this perpetrator and they actually
rendered a sketch of this guy. And you know what,
that sketch, as it turns out years later, was pretty close,
pretty close in appearance to who this turns out to
(19:17):
be that actually perpetrated this crime. I know that I'm
giving a bit away here, but I think that it's
really important to understand what she accomplished here. The other
thing too, and this is kind of a real tragic
thing that has to occur, and it's it's horrible and painful,
and all those sorts of things with her, they would
(19:38):
have had to have done a rather detailed examination, if
you understand what I'm saying, There would have been relations yeah,
and so it's yeah, it kind of is. But here
she is you know, her face said, like flint, she's determined.
I think at this point in time that she she
wants this guy caught. All right, So in this examination
(20:03):
they did in fact collect biological evidence. But unfortunately, you know,
nineteen eighty four is actually the year that actually the
year that DNA was first utilized or it was proposed
(20:23):
that DNA could be utilized as a methodology of solving
criminal cases in England. That's how that's how far back
this goes. And the guy that actually did that, he
winds up winning I think he won a Nobel Prize
and so that, but that goes back so very far.
(20:45):
So you didn't have the utility at that point in time.
The best you could do is to do a kit
and take any kind of biological evidence that you might
have if the you're praying that the individual might be
a secretor where if you have seminal fluid, perhaps that
they've got red identifiable red blood cells, you know, in
(21:06):
either saliva or seamen that they've left behind, you can
get a blood type. Perhaps because at this point in time,
Cotis Cotis didn't exist. At this point in time, you know,
everybody talks about you know, Cotis's Codis that but even
back then Cotis was brother. It was not a thing.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Man, right, And that's where you know you're talking about
the population size. Okay, I looked it up because I
was I started getting really curious in Bernie, California where
this happened. In the county of Shasta. You know about
thirty one hundred people in Bernie. So I think that
is why. You know, again they made mention of the
(21:43):
man was unknown. The suspect is an unknown person because
in a town that small, well, most people that grow
up together, they go to school together, they know one another.
Or I have an idea, it's your cousin or so
and So's brother. You have an idea. But in this case,
as they ran down the list, even getting the description
from the victim, still didn't have an idea of who
(22:06):
it was at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, and that's that's quite terrifying. I can only imagine,
because you know, Bernie is not someplace I would think,
at least Dave, that you wind up by accident. You
have to intentionally be headed that way, you know, to
be domiciled there. You might work in, say the timber
industry or something like this. One of my most vivid
memories of being up in that county. It was actually
(22:30):
during the wintertime. I went into a restaurant in Mount Shasta,
and I may have related this story to you, And
I walked in and there was snowpack on the ground
all around this one restaurant. I've been driving down five
I think it was five from Oregon and walked into
the restaurant, and Dave, I walked in there and they
had these gigantic plates of pancakes that were massive, and
(22:55):
everybody dig this. Everybody that was in there was a lumberjack.
They all look like that, you know. They had the
suspenders on, the big heavy boots, the big beards, you know,
and and so that's the type of world that this
was back during that period of time. Do you actually
think do you actually think that cases like this happened
(23:18):
in that location on a regular basis. I can only
imagine it was like getting a hit, you know, hit
between the eyes with a two by four for the
residents up there. And what a horrible thing. This kid
Terry was known man, because when you're in a small town,
you know, it's the old Miranda Lambert song, you know.
I think that in a small town everybody knows your name.
(23:39):
You know, you're the cock of the walk. He's gone
off to college, he's playing ball. Now you can only
imagine how much this impacted that little community up there
that knew Terry and probably know this young lady. And
the biggest question is how do you find out who
this is? Well? Well, unfortunately for that little community, that
(24:04):
answer wouldn't come for another forty years. I'll make a
little comment about myself here. I've got serious trust issues, Dave.
(24:29):
And let me give you an example. When people show
up to court with a tank of oxygen and they're
in a wheelchair and they've been accused of a horrible crime.
I have questions. Now. I know some of you are
out there more than you're being mighty judge. Now I've
I've seen a thing or two, okay, and we'll get
(24:55):
to that in just a moment. But I just want
to frame this out from jump Street here that when
I see an individual present this way, I think that
it's an attempt on somebody's part to try to beg
for mercy in a case where they showed no mercy, Dave.
(25:20):
But you know I got to tell you through technology
finally caught up. Technology finally caught up with this huge
mystery out of Bernie that occurred all those years ago,
which for me is it's very very satisfying. I think,
like a lot of these cases that we cover nowadays,
there's a certain level of satisfaction where you just you
(25:41):
don't think that anything will ever come of it, and
it does because I got to tell you. You remember
I talked about the samples that were taken from this
young woman. Well, Dave, years later, you know, we talked
about the thirty four investigators involved in this case. Years later,
they did take those samples and put them into codis
(26:04):
and guess what, they didn't get a hit. Well, there
you go, they didn't get a hit at that point, Tom.
So at that point Tom technology still had not caught up.
But here we are today and we finally got answers.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
You know, you were talking about how you don't trust
people when they show up in court and oxygen mask
and all that. I was reminded of an episode I
was reading this great piece of work about the guy
that played Colonel Potter on Mash you know, replacement Harry Morgan.
Here Morgan is and he replaced McLean Stevenson when McLean
(26:37):
left to do movies and ended up doing Hello Larry
for three.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Episodes, and that was it, all right.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
So Potter comes in and all of a sudden, people
kind of forget who was there before Potter. Anyway, Harry
Morgan had been an actor in movies TV for years
even at that point. Well, he was in an episode
of the Partridge Family where the Partridge Family bus hit
his bumper on his car, and all of a sudden,
when you found ot they were musicians, all of a sudden,
(27:03):
he had a neck back problem and everything else. And
he shows up in court with the next thing on
and somebody drops a briefcase and book there he turns,
you know, and it's busted.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
In great episode.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah, so I think the same thing when I see
somebody in court that is really dogging it, you know,
especially if you're trying to you're accused of a heinous
crime that you've gotten away with for a long time.
In this particular case, buddy, we're talking about and from
nineteen eighty four until now, we've talked about how long
(27:32):
ago that was. Well, think about it for just a minute.
This crime took place in December nineteen eighty four, one
week before Christmas, and here we are weeks away from
Christmas twenty twenty five and finally because of because of
(27:54):
great police work not giving up. I'm going to give
them the credit because they could have walked away from
this and barried, just left it alone. Been easy to do,
but they didn't. And every time we do an episode
like this, I've told you about the math and the
just the genetic genealogy and all of the work that
(28:15):
goes in. We do an episode in forty minutes on
what happened, but it takes weeks, months and years from
the beginning of the process until they actually can identify somebody,
because you don't If it was easy, everybody would do
it and we wouldn't have these episodes. But it's not easy.
It takes time. Well, finally, in twenty twenty five this year,
(28:38):
the Shasta County Sheriff's Office actually submitted some forensic evidence
to AUTHORM in the Woodlands, Texas to determine if advanced
DNA testing could help them identify a suspect not giving up,
Joe not giving up, and what happened.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Well, what happened is is that they actually developed a
hit on a fellow who as it turns out, was
living down in Tucson, Arizona, and you know, the road
kind of led to him, and he's he's a guy
that that lived in that area. They began to dig
(29:22):
into his background and guess what, dave. He apparently had
no substantive priors at all. He was he was not
on anybody's radar. Yeah, yeah, wow. And so that that
in and of itself, you go back to cotis right,
because this kind of borrows a hole into the whole
(29:45):
the whole line of thinking about offenders like this. How
many times have you and I both heard somebody say
they will offend again? Yeah, okay, that this is not there?
You know how many how many cliche television shows have
you seen? This is in their first time start, you know, yeah,
yeah yeah, And I don't necessarily We've had a couple
(30:08):
of these other cases where the individual would offend one
time and then they just drop off the map. They
don't pop up anywhere else, they don't have any bad
acts after that, and then all of a sudden, this
guy pops up on the radar. We're talking well now,
when they put the bracelets on him, it's forty one
(30:29):
years down range. You think he thought that he got
away with it. Yeah, well, now you know, he's living
down in Tucson, Arizona. And as it turns out, Dave,
this guy during that period of time. Remember we talked
about how small Bernie was. Apparently back in nineteen eighty
four he was domiciled up there, he had actually lived
(30:52):
in that area. Oh come on, Yeah, they were able
to go back and do this investigation and look into
this guy and determined that that he had in fact
been up there during this period of time. But for
whatever reason, like you said, Dave, you never know where
these intersections are gonna, you know, you know, wind up
(31:14):
touching one another, these little timelines and whatnot. I really wonder,
you know, looking back or thinking back, I really wonder
how close they were at one point in time to
maybe putting their hand on this guy and he just
kind of slipped beneath the waves.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And they did make an arrest, not them, but back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yo, dig this man. This is the mind blowing part, Dave.
They actually hooked somebody up on this case and incarcerated
them for two years. Man, And it turns out they
had nothing to do with the case. That person actually
wound up. I don't know if it was a suit
(31:55):
or if they just thought we better make this thing
go away. That that individual was paid like approximately three
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for two years of their life. Wow,
because that comes down to false imprisonment, man, and they
had nothing of substance to hang on that individual. Can
you imagine how deflating we talked about the thirty four investigators.
Imagine how deflating that would be. Because you've had this
(32:17):
case for so long, and all of a sudden, you
think you got somebody, You think this long road is
going to come to an end. You hook them up
on charges, they wind up getting incarcerated, and now it
turns out, no, this is not them, This is not
them at all, And you got to pay through the
nose for this. You know, as it turns out, they
(32:38):
do wind up being able to hook somebody up.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Man, you know, they're going to feel bad putting the
wrong guy in jail. I mean, that's at least I
hope you know they'd had some conscience about it. But
I have heard oftentimes that, well he got away with
you know, maybe he didn't do this one, but he
did something else going back, it's like the same thing
of nobody does a murder and nothing else. It doesn't
happen like that, except in this particular case, it looks
like that may have actually been the case. Now, he
(33:03):
was twenty three years old at the time the murder
took place, so he's five years older than his victims.
That's why they wouldn't know who he was. That's the
biggest difference. That that's true. Oh exactly. I mean, look,
I knew people that were older than me when I
was eighteen years old, but they were not people I
would have been hanging out with. And those people sure
(33:24):
surely would not have been hanging out with me, you know.
And so you think, well, it stands to reason that
the witness, who is this poor young woman who's been assaulted,
she's not going to know him, but she gives this descriptor,
this physical descriptor, which they're able to render, you know,
a likeness of Back then, as it turns out, you know,
(33:47):
the police are saying that it actually turned out that
it looked very very similar to this guy whose name
is actually Roger Neil Schmidt, and they've hooked him up. Uh, Dave,
I can I can happily say that, uh that he
rolled over on this and it admitted to it.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Uh. They still have sentencing. Uh that is actually going
to take place in just a couple of days from
now as we're laying this down, I think December sixteenth.
They're they're actually going to do the sentencing. And that
brings me back. You know, when the images of this
guy rolling in literally rolling into the courtroom and he's
(34:30):
got a nasal canula in you know that supplies the.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Os nasal canula.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
What is that ns it's the uh, it's the rubber
hose that you have to lap but you know, into
your nostrils. You have my permission. And he's and he's
up taking oxygen here, you know, and I'm sure he's
got labored breathing and all this sort of thing, you
know that. Oh yeah, and he's he's sitting there and
(34:58):
he's he's in the wheelchair. You know, please show mercy
to me.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Right now, he did, I want? Yeah, go ahead, you
plead guilty. Okay, he did. You mentioned he rolled over
on himself. He did take a plea, which.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Michie, what a nice man.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
That night they had him dead to right, he did it.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
He didn't pick off the phone and call the department
and say, hey, I've had something on my mind now
for forty years eating me up.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
My conscience has got me. He didn't do that.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
They already had him, They had the DNA, they did
all the you know, they've probably camped out, they probably
got stuff out of his trash. They were, they had
him hooked up when they when they talked to it.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Listen, I do know this. The police up in Shasta County,
they actually coordinated with Tucson City PD just say look,
this is what we're looking at. Man, we need your
help on this, because this guy's got to be hooked up, right,
He's got to be hooked up. So, you know, they
sat on his house for a while, you know, just
checking him out, seeing his comings and goings. And when
(35:51):
you have this definitive data that has been generated by
authorm and you can look at it and you see
these numbers, you know, I can only imagine for those
investigators that began working this case back in nineteen eighty four,
they would have been salivating over this kind of factual,
(36:13):
scientific data that they could look at and say, oh,
this is our man right here. They didn't have the ability.
And I would urge everybody here, all of our friends
out there that here us talking about these cases, do
not judge these investigators harshly from back in the day.
And I know that you guys probably understand this. But
(36:35):
you can only do what you can do, you know,
and many times you are in fact limited by the
technology that you have, just as you know, generations before
that generation in nineteen eighty four, you know, you go
back to the forties, they were very much limited on
the things that they could do, for instance. So every generation,
you know, moving forward is going to have more technology
(36:58):
that's going to assist them. But there is no better
example of this than what we see today from our
friends down in the Woodlands, Woodlands, Texas.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Yeah, and I cear you one thing, Joe, Yeah, sure
that you mentioned December sixteenth, You know that that's the
date for sentencing. Well, they've already negotiated it based on
the crime and when it occurred.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
It was the death penalty case.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
He could have faced the needle, but the negotiation, at
his age and everything else, they have agreed to a
life sentence without the possibility parole and waiving all rights
to appeal. So that's what they're going to sign off
on December sixteenth, on almost the forty first anniversary.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, that merged, you know, all these decades later. Oh,
by the way, I think that in nineteen eighty four,
still in California. My friends out there would need to
correct me about this, but I think in nineteen eighty
four in California it was still the gas chamber back then.
Oh wow, wow, signid gas man. You imagine. And so, yeah,
(38:00):
he dodged. He dodged this. But unlike Terry who did
not dodge those projectiles that burst that window and shattered
him in class and launched those projectiles into his body,
his body that he used to shield his young friend with.
(38:22):
Maybe there is justice in this old world. I don't know.
I don't know how we come to it. But at
least this guy's off the streets. Not that he could
necessarily harm anybody any longer, but it does send a
message out. Its ends the message out that for those
that are thinking about doing horrible things. Technologies on your
(38:43):
heels now, wherever you are. I hope that if you
have done something like this, that you're at home sweating
right now. You're thinking all the things I did in
secret in the dark, that terror that I subjected people
to do. There's a reckoning coming. There will be a
(39:03):
lot more reckonings coming relative to the scientific data that
has been collected. And a big thanks out to our
friends at authorm and listen, many of you guys say,
I want to participate, I want to try to help.
I want to be part of the solution to all
of these cases out there. Well, it requires funds and
(39:26):
authorm doesn't ask for a lot. Visit their website dnasolves
dot com. Check out the cases. You can actually reference
them geographically. If there's something in your particular area that
kind of drives you that you think that you would
like to put a few bucks behind, do it, man,
(39:47):
do it. I think that it is one of the
ultimate gifts that you could provide provide society with. I
think and specifically these families who have no answers whatsoever.
And it doesn't have to be a homicide. It can
just be an unidentified body that turned up you never know.
You might have known the person in your community that
went unidentified and suddenly they found a skeleton. You never know.
(40:10):
So that's dnasolvs dot com. That's our friends at Authorm
Laboratories in the Woodlands, Texas. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
this is bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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