June 4, 2025 • 57 mins
On today’s episode, Paul and Kate head to 1972 Washington where a couple finds a badly injured young woman. Taking in all the elements of the crime scene and ultimately the DNA aspects, will it all be enough to find the offender?
Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4buCoMc
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 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Hey, Kate, how's it going.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's going really well. I want to give some big
props to one of our listeners. Well, I'll give props
to all of our listeners, but one in particular. Oh,
I feel like knows me so well. So she emailed
me probably a couple of months ago and said, Hey,
I have something that I just want to send to you.
I found it and I think you might like it.
(01:26):
And since it's small, and I said, you know, I
can take care of the postage or whatever. And she
just was really sweet and she sent it to me,
and since it's small, it was easy to get to me.
So it is a book that I feel like comes
close to the rareness of your what's the name of
your medical book that you pulled out on the very
first episode where you looked up Maybe it was chloroform.
(01:48):
I can't remember what mercury.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
I think this is it here? Yeah, this is the
Essentials of Forensic Medicine eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
And where did you get that? I can remember where
you told me you got that from.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, believe it or not. This was a hand me
down from my dad. He kind of collected books, and
I think he just was in a bookstore at some
point in the past and bought it. And then when
I saw it after getting into forensics, it was like, oh,
this is a really I mean cool book where you
have and I don't want to open up too much,
but you have the hand drawn diagrams in it.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, so it's a really cool book.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So this listener, her name's Jody, sent it to me,
And this is a book that's called The People's Common
Sense Medical Advisor. Right here it is and it's falling
apart a little bit, which means you know, it's a
great book. People have used it a lot, right, It's
from nineteen oh nine, and she was really sweet, so,
you know, sending me this, and she you know, inscribed
(02:45):
it a happy sleuthing best regards Jody, which was really nice.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
But I you know, I was flipping through here, and
like with your book, this has a lot of really
interesting pictures. Anatomy of a joint, anatomy of a knee joint.
You know, it gets really specific testimony from different patients.
Because this book was written by a doctor who let
me see if I can get to this the Invalids
(03:11):
Hotel and Surgical Institute of Buffalo, New York, a remedial
home established by R. V. Pierce and located in one
of the healthiest cities in the United States. This was
a book that was used by you know, I'm sure physicians,
but also a book that people probably would have kept
at home and used as a medical reference. You know,
(03:32):
I remember having not these books obviously, but books like
that at friends' houses in our house just sort of like,
oh my gosh, I have something hurting in my knee.
Pre internet, which I was pre Internet. So were you
where you think? Where am I going to get medical advice,
and it was books like this where you pick up
a book and it's not going to be perfect, but
it shows you a diagram and it kind of do
(03:53):
what web MD does for me now or my real doctor.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah. In fact, on my other bookshelf, I have the
her Commanual, you know, so get all the information on
all these drugs. I mean it's thick. Yeah, it's a
small book. You know, it's like maybe six by eight inches,
but it's about three and a half to four inches thick.
And so if there's any questions that I back in
(04:17):
the day I had about any any drug substances, I'd
go to the Mirk Manual.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Well, this goes along with this. We had another listener
email me. This was for a Wicked Words. So she
emailed me and mentioned that there was a guest who
said that leeches are no longer used in medicine because
doctors found out they were harmful rather than helpful. So
before you comment on this, let me tell you. She
(04:42):
says her mom had leeches used after her surgery just
a couple of years ago. She said, had a lot
of questions, I said, what's going on with the doctor
and the doctor said that the leeches have an anticoagulant
in their saliva and can be used to increase the
blood flow around a surgical wound to promote the healing.
The surgery was for the removal of a cancerous tumor
(05:04):
in her breast. Because I said, I'm going to talk
to Paul about this, and I said, can I have
more context? So that's what she said. That she said
from when I understood the effects of the radiation made
it difficult for the skin to heal itself, and that's
how they used leeches. So what do you think.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
You know? I know, I've seen, you know that leeches
had been used. I couldn't tell you why they had
been used in the medical sense. What you just read
that generally makes sense to me. I've also read and
this is I don't know if you want to call
it descriptive. I'll try not to be too descriptive, but
in essence, when you have like necrotic tissue, you know
(05:44):
where the tissue around a wound or something has died,
that sterile megots can be used and they will go
in and preferentially eat on the necrotic tissue. Now, having
seen megots in real life on dead bodies. It's like, no,
that's not going to be done to me.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Amazing. I've never had to issue a trigger warning don't
eat your food right now because we're going to be
talking about maggots feasting on dead flesh. But there you go. Wow.
Well I was shocked by the leeches and it proves
that sometimes there are things that carry over from hundreds
of years ago that still work today.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
No, yeah, no, for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Well, this story is sciency, and I think it's the
kind of story that you like because we, you know,
will be going down an interesting road that will feel
familiar to you. So that's why I started with this
sciency stuff, which is not always my thing. Even though
I went to a science magnet school here in Austin,
I still am the fuddled by science. So I wanted
(06:52):
to kind of prime you up for this. Okay, Okay,
let's go ahead and set the scene. Okay, I'm going
to issue a trigger. We are going to talk about
sexual assaults in this case, and it'll happen fairly quickly.
Right at the beginning of the episode. We are in
a very very modern time for us in nineteen seventy two.
I mean two years before I was born. I feel
(07:14):
like it was just yesterday.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
You're a young one. What are you talking?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I mean, yeah, I'm happy to bring these sorts of
stories because I think we were just recently in the
mid eighteen hundreds. So I do have some photographs for you.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Great.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And this is in an area of Washington called Bathol.
It's about twenty miles north of Seattle. So right now
that area is pretty much suburbia, but back then it
was pretty rural, lots of farms and wooded areas. It's
five point forty five pm and a couple is driving
along a secluded dirt road surrounded by woods, and it's
(07:48):
about a half a mile away from major roadways. The
couple is driving into the woods to go target shooting
and they see a log that's blocking their path. The
guy gets out of the car see what it is
and then to move it. And when he does, he
sees a young woman lying in the road. She's alive,
but barely she's moving. She's groaning in pain. She appears
(08:12):
to have a head injury, and she's dressed only in
a braw and underwear. In her shoes and these are
ankle boots. Which will become important later on. One is tied,
one is untied, and the shirt that she had been
wearing is found nearby. It's a kind of a gray
blue color, and blue jeans are nearby, so they rush
(08:33):
her to the hospital. She dies from her injury. This
injury is a gunshot wound from a small caliber bullet
right above her right ear. That's where we are so far.
A young woman who turns out to be twenty found
in the roadway in a wooded area, an isolated splot
in Washington State, nineteen seventy two. Of course, I mean,
(08:54):
I think we're leading to this. Looks like this is
a potential sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Also, yeah, is this an off roaw location or is
this a paved road? You know this log that's laying
across the road, So I'm kind of keying on that
right now, as could the presence of that log, which
sounds like it's a tree that's fallen. Does that give
(09:17):
us some temporal aspect on when people had access to
freely pass through that road versus not? So's That's one
of the things that I'm kind of keying in on,
just from understanding the crime scene a little bit better. Yeah,
her location behind the log her state of dress, which
is it's interesting where she's got her bra and underwear on,
(09:40):
but also wearing her ankle boots. And with the ankle boots,
you know, I wonder could her her genes have been
taken off of her or could she have taken those
genes off over the ankle boots. Probably not, does my guess,
does she partially redress if there was sexual assault? And
was she completely nude at the time of the sexual assault?
(10:03):
That's another question, But does she partially redress, gets her
underwear on, gets her bra on, and then recognizes that
she barefoot out in the woods that's not going to work.
And she's able to put her boots back on in
order to try to move. And she's doing this with
a gunshot to the head, you know, and the location
(10:27):
of the gunshot, you know, behind the right ear or
by the right ear, you know, that's a sounds like
almost like an execution type of gunshot small caliber and
small caliber can mean a lot. Is it a twenty two,
is it a twenty five, Is it a thirty two?
Is it a three eighty? And is there any information
(10:49):
as to the distance of that gunshot wound? Is there
any gunpowder around the entry wound? Is there stippling to
any of the skin, if any of the exposed skin
is there right now, the location of her shirt and
blue jeans would suggest a location to where either the
(11:09):
offender assaulted her and shot her, or that's where she
was pushed out of a vehicle or taken out of
a vehicle, but she was still alive to where she
could move into the street. So, okay, I've got a
pretty good sense of what's going on so far.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Good Lucky for us, we do have an autopsy that
gives us a lot more information. There are still clues
that need to be gathered just from the scene, and
of course we still haven't identified her yet, but we
will right now. So she is found by this couple
at five point forty five pm, about eleven o'clock. Some
(11:45):
distressed parents call the police because their daughter Jody has
not returned home. So this is about five hours later
or so. Their names are Rosemary and John Loomis. Jody
is twenty. She is our victim, Jody Loomis, and a
detective comes to their house to tell them the news
(12:06):
that they believe that this is Jody. She died shortly
after arriving to the hospital and the Loomises go and
they identify her, so it's positive that this is their daughter.
So there's stuff about Jody that actually will be kind
of important. And then of course there's the autopsy and
things that they discover at the scene after the autopsy
(12:30):
or maybe even during, and then there's the timeline of
what her parents said happened. So there's a lot happening,
a lot of information. What do you want to tackle first?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Well, with the information, you know, this is unusual for
you to be able to provide me with a lot
of the information that I'm used to working with. Sure,
I'm excited, So I'm going to, you know, start with
my process. I want to know first, I start with
an autopsy. I want to know what happened to the victim,
what caused her death, and what other types of injuries
(12:58):
are present, and will kind of intertwine that information with
what I know about the crime scene, and then we
can go from there.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Okay, here we go. Autopsy is conducted. The next day,
the medical examiner recovers fragments from here's the gun a
twenty two caliber bullet, finding that she was killed by
that gun, shot, wound. Tell me about a twenty two.
As far as why would someone use that gun? Is
it easy to conceal or is this for picking off
animals or what?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Well, there's so many reasons to choose a twenty two.
You know, first, it could be just this is the
gun that the offender had access to. There is no
other reason outside I've got a gun, whether it be
a legally purchased gun or something illegally obtained, that's just
what the offender had. There may not have been a
(13:48):
purposeful decision to use a twenty two. Now, a twenty
two at close range absolutely can be fatal. I've had
homicides with twenty two caliber guns, whether it be a gunshot,
wounds to the head. I've had homicides where somebody's been
shot in the torsa with a twenty two. There's textbook
examples of twenty two's going into the femeral artery and
(14:11):
then the bullet actually traversing, you know and causing an
kind of like an embolism. So you know, it is
a fatal weapon. However, it is also not a very
powerful weapon. And right now I'm assuming it's a handgun,
but you can have rifles that shoot twenty two, and
typically those may be a little bit more powerful rounds.
(14:34):
Why a twenty two may be chosen by the offender.
They can be smaller weapons, particularly if they're designed to
be very compact, they can be much smaller than let's say,
your nine millimeter compact weapons that the twenty twos could
potentially have less report. They're a little bit quieter, though
(14:58):
it's still a loud sound when they are shot, you know,
but you do see that you can silence a twenty
two and it can make it fairly quiet, you know,
but it's not like in the movies where it's like this,
you know, whisper. You know, you're still have a you
still have a noise that is discernible, but it does
(15:19):
it's not going to be a very loud noise relative
to you know, a larger caliber weapon or a more
powerful weapon. And then you know, if you're really sophisticated,
these twenty two bullets and it sounds like in this case,
you know, they can become very mangled, and if it's
got a coating on it, the markings that the barrel
(15:42):
of that twenty two gun leave on the bullet itself
can be very indistinct and make it hard, if not impossible,
for firearms examiner to do a comparison to link that
bullet back to a gun. One example I can give
you is there's an old book out there. It's basically
how to become a hit man, and it's part of
(16:04):
this whole you know, anarchy cookbook, same publisher, you know,
and in it they talk about using a twenty two.
And there's a reason because of you know, the bullets.
You know, I'm not marking very well being able to
silence them. They're cheap guns. I would say that I've
never had a case in which I've had a you know,
(16:27):
anything close to what I would say a professional hit
man coming in and purposely using a twenty two. I've
got one case in my career, and it was actually
after I retired, in which I went, this is a
professional hit Outside of that, you know, I think the
twenty two being grabbed in this case, in all likelihood
(16:47):
is probably because that's what the offender had access to,
but maybe you'll tell me different.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Keep in mind, you know, this is a wooded area,
heavily wooded area, a rural area, and there's probably hunting
going on summertime. You know, it's early evening, so you know,
I mean, a gunshot might not sound I'd and growing
up on a farm, when I heard a gunshot, I
did not immediately think murder. I thought somebody's out there
hunting illegally or legally, depending on the time of year.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Oh sure, you know in that particular environment, you know,
a gunshot is not going to be as obvious and
stand out, like if you're in a quiet neighborhood. But
unless this person went out to shoot squirrels or rabbits,
they're not choosing a twenty two to go hunting out there.
If they're hunting deer or something, they've got a real
(17:40):
hunting rifle with much larger caliber rounds.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Okay, so let's talk a little bit. There's not a
lot left, honestly, Paul. Of the autopsy, I don't think
they thought there was a lot more to say here.
We know that the twenty two killed her. They said
there is evidence of a sexual assault. They weren't specific
about it, but you know, seventy two, I think they
would have been able to identify it. Right. The medical
examiner recovered some samples of dirt and leaf mold from
(18:07):
her buttocks, which to them meant that she had been
totally undressed at least, you know, there and laying on
the ground. And that's pretty much it as far as
the medical things go.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
So they see signs of sexual assault. I know I've
gone on rants before because I hate it when they
use the phrase no signs of sexual assault and then don't.
It's like, well, you can have sexual assault and not
see injuries, whether it be external injuries, whether it be
internal injuries to the female anatomy. So in this particular case,
(18:39):
what is evidence of sexual assault? And again I'm going
to avoid getting graphic, but is did they observe some injuries?
Then it's their duty to articulate what those injuries are.
Are they observing fluid inside cavities? Did they you know,
look at the microscope, did they identify sperm? You know,
they need to articulate that autopsy or those samples are
(19:03):
you know, from the fluids get sent to the lab
and then the lab ends up identifying what those fluids are.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
They did do a rape kit, and they did keep
a lot of evidence, which is going to be good
for us later on, but they aren't specific about exactly
what the signs are you're right, let's go to the scene.
So they actually are looking for the gun or more bullets.
They use metal detector. They can't find anything. They didn't
find any other bullets or traces of the murder weapon,
(19:31):
so they never find the gun. They find a dime
near her body, and Jody's parents said she always carried
a dime. Man, I haven't even thought about this for
a long time, for the pay phone in case there
was an emergency. Absolutely, yeah, So they found this. They
found this dime. They find blood on the ground and leaves,
you know, it's strewn about in the area. And there's
(19:52):
a little clip that Jody used to clip her pants
away from the bike chain. So okay, Jody, Let's get
into a little bit more about Jody so that I
can explain the bike. She was a nurse's aide, twenty
years old, as I told you, She was living with
her parents. She went to community college. She wanted to
be a nurse. She was engaged, though there wasn't a
(20:14):
date set. Ultimately, I'll just say that the police rule
this guy out. The fiance. She was an avid equestrian,
and so why don't you just pull up the photos
that I sent you. I just wanted you to put
a face to this story and you could kind of
tell me what you see. Won't you just get onto
(20:34):
the first page?
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, so you know, it's a photo. This is Jody
in her equestrian or a horse riding gear. I'm not
sure exactly the proper term she's standing and holding onto. Basically,
I'm assuming this is this is her horse that she
would ride. It's just a typical picture of her and
(20:56):
her horse. She's got the riding helmet on, she's got
the jacket. This looks like she's getting ready to compete.
You know. This is not out and taking the horse
out into the woods. It looks like she's probably doing
some sort of competition. You know, it's tough to get
an idea of her stature standing next to a horse,
(21:17):
but she looks like she's average height, you know, five
four five six, average build. And this is only a
photo showing her from the waist up, but that's probably
as much as I can see. She has glasses on
that are shaded. I don't know if those are sunglasses
(21:37):
or if they're prescription glasses that are tinted. But outside
of that, yeah, I think that's about the only thing
I can pull out of this photo.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Okay, let me tell you a little bit about the
day that this happened. She loved to ride the horses,
of course, and she had been riding her bike to
a local stable to ride her horse when she was killed.
So most of the time Jody would get a ride
to the stable, but today she wanted to ride her bike,
so she sets out a lot later than she intended
(22:06):
to because she had been waiting to ask her younger
sister if she could borrow her boots. Younger sister doesn't
come home, and it's gonna get dark soon, so Jody
just grabs the boots that we end up finding at
the woods, and she hits the road around four o'clock,
the last time that her parents see her as four pm.
The couple discovers her an hour and forty five minutes later.
(22:28):
So here's one of the keys. Jody's parents said. She
took this more remote route to the stable because she
wanted to stay off these major roads where there's a
lot of traffic, so she didn't take her normal route.
So I wanted you to take a look at the
photo that I sent you. That is Jody on a bike.
This is clearly not the road where she was found
because it's not dirt or you know, it doesn't look
(22:50):
like there are trees that are going to fall over
or anything. I think this would have been a major
problem if a tree had fallen over, because you can
see a car in the distance.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
No, it's a two lane row. You can see it
separated by a solid yellow line. And you know, it's
got a very slight curve along this section. But there
is a lot of visibility. I think, you know, I
can see maybe out to a half a mile, you know,
before the road curves out of sight. Both sides of
(23:20):
the road appear to be you know, heavily forested, though
the location where Jody is at with her bike in
this photograph, it appears that it's mostly tall grasses and weeds.
I can see mailboxes and driveways at several points along
(23:40):
this road that indicate it's a you know, it's kind
of got a residential aspect to it, but is rural.
It looks like your typical rural road, very narrow for
a bicyclist. There isn't a dedicated bike lane like you
often see today. And you know, if this is a
road that Jody took because it was less traveled. I
(24:02):
can completely understand that. You know, when I would go
biking out in California, I would do the same thing.
You know, on these narrow roads that don't have a
good shoulder, you know, on the big truck start passing
you at high speeds, it can be quite scary. So
this here, though, you know, if she's on this road
or a similar road to get to the horse stables
(24:25):
the day that she went missing, if it's not routine,
that's kind of what I was initially wondering. If it
was a routine practice of hers, then I could see
where an offender could lie in wait. But if it's
not routine, and we know nothing about who the offender is,
whether it's an associate or a stranger. But let's say
it's a stranger, then that would tend to suggest that
(24:49):
she was a victim of opportunity if she had been
abducted from the roadway. And of course the big question
right now is well, where is her bicycle found?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, I can tell you that. So when they are searching,
they find the bicycle, white bicycle about one hundred and
eighty feet from where she was found. It looks like
it had been thrown into a ravine. Useless to me.
One hundred and eighty feet. I can never figure out
what that means. Is that a long way away? It's
hard for me to ever know. I can figure out.
(25:23):
I'll tell you why. I told my students this the
other day. I can figure out a quarter of a
mile because I can huff and puff my way through
a quarter of a mile on a track that I
used to run. But that's it. I don't have any
other context other than that.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Well, you know, I go back to playing football, you know.
So as you know, a football field is one hundred
yards or three hundred feet long, So half a football
field is one hundred and fifty feet. Tack thirty feet
on top of that, and you've got your one hundred
eighty feet.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Okay, So they've got the bicycle. And what they're now
looking at is there is apparently a vehicle in the
area that people had spotted. So now this is big news.
Young woman who has been found dead on August twenty six,
so this is three days after she is killed. Police
say they're looking for a vehicle that witnesses on the
(26:08):
vicinity of the dirt road. They don't release any details
about the vehicle, but they're just you know, telling reporters
that they're looking for a vehicle. I'm not quite sure
what that the point of that is, because I know
it's a little odd.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
It's a little nondescript.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
It is nondescript. So two days after that, on August
twenty eighth, they say they're looking for two vehicles that
were seen in the area where Jodie was found, but
they don't give any you know, description of the vehicles. Finally,
the next day, the police say they're looking for something
specific in nineteen sixty six steel blue chevro Let station
(26:43):
Wagon sixty six, so this is seventy two, so you know,
I mean, it's not an old car, steel blue Chevrolet
station Wagon. So I think I put this point in
because I wanted you to understand that I don't know
who they've called in at this point as far as
are there state police involved or is they're you know,
a major city involved. Doesn't sound like it to me
so far. It sounds like they're kind of already making
(27:05):
mistakes here.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Well, you know, and sort of the nondescript aspect of
a vehicle, there may have been a reasoning behind it,
and maybe not, but if they, if they had reasoning,
my thought is is that they could say this particular location,
this day, this time, we saw vehicles, and so now
people are thinking, oh, I was at that location, Oh
(27:28):
I remember seeing this type of vehicle, versus putting out
there a description or even a make and model a vehicle.
And now they have people calling in saying well, I
was there and yeah, I saw that vehicle, and so
in some ways it's enhancing the veracity of the description
of the vehicle from the witnesses because they're not being
fed the information up front. So that kind of makes
(27:49):
sense to me in that context. And then to get
nineteen sixty six steel blue Chevy station wagon, you know
that's pretty specific and absent. You know, you don't have
surveillance video he had owed pack in nineteen seventy two.
To get that specific, I start thinking, Okay, a witness
(28:11):
came forward, and you have a witness who knows his
or her cars and is going I was there and
I saw this particular make and model vehicle.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I think this investigation gets more and more confusing. Now
we're getting to this muddled timeline. So tell me what
you think about the timeline. So you remember her parents
said she walked out the door at four o'clock. Her
body was found at five forty five, So her bike
ride from her house to the stable is about forty
(28:40):
minutes total. Where Jody was found on Penncreek Road is
about twenty minutes from her house, so halfway through going
along the route that she took, she was seen by
witnesses riding her bike at five o'clock, not far from
where she was found at five forty five. But that
was an hour after she left home. Now, I think
(29:02):
one of the things you'll probably say is witnesses don't
get their times right sometimes. So you know, if the
spot where she was left is twenty minutes from her house,
what happened to that whole hour? And let me give
you one more piece of information. So of course police
want to know she encounters somebody. The last person who
they believe saw Jody alive, besides the killer, had been
(29:26):
working at a farm stand. It was a girl they
don't say old. She had been working at a farm
stand along the route that Jody was riding. She said
that she saw Jody approached the turn at the road
the dirt road where she was found. She stopped, she
looked into the woods. The girl interpreted the look on
her face is kind of confused, but not alarmed. I
(29:47):
don't know if the girl didn't see, whether she went
into the woods or not. But this was a route
that she would normally not take because remember, she usually
got a right but she would have known, she would
have known how to do. This wouldn't have been completely
out of the ordinary. So that lost hour is what's
I think confusing police at this point.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Well, I'm not sure there was a lost hour. So
she leaves at four o'clock, she was seen riding her
bike at five o'clock. Was that this girl who saw
her kind of stop and look down the dirt road?
Speaker 1 (30:18):
No, several different witnesses, different witnesses, not far from where
she was eventually found.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
If it's just a forty minute bike ride to the
stables from her parents' house, you know, twenty minutes past
the time that she should have gotten too the stables,
she's still seen riding her bike along that road, you know,
does she stop and talk to somebody? Is there a neighbor,
you know, and so she's just chatting with somebody who
happened to be passing her on the road, completely innocent
(30:45):
type of just every day type of interaction that could
have delayed her of getting to the stables. And as
far as I know, and maybe you'd tell me otherwise,
she doesn't have to be at the stables at a
particular time. It's not like she's got a coke that's
going to be waiting for her to give her less
than at six o'clock or whatever. So you know, she's
(31:05):
not necessarily going to abide by some In my mind,
this is how I'm kind of thinking out loud. She's
not going to think, oh, I have to get to
the stables by a certain time. And so if she
does stop to talk to a friend or a neighbor
or whatever, you can see where you know she's not
in a rush to get moving again. It's not her
routine route to get to the horse stables. So I
(31:26):
wouldn't be surprised given the nondescript nature of that landscape
where maybe she's stopping and going is this the dirt
road or is it the next one down? And that's
what this girl saw her do. Just speculating in my mind. Yeah,
but she's last seen riding at five o'clock by multiple witnesses,
(31:47):
and then her body is found at five point forty five. Well,
we don't know how long her body's been out there.
Was it out there just for five minutes? Was it
out there for forty minutes? You know? Was she literally
abducted and killed, you know, five minutes after she was
last seen riding her bike. Now her body is found
only a twenty minute drive away from the parents' house
(32:08):
where she's seen by these witnesses. Is she further away
from the parents' house?
Speaker 1 (32:14):
On the map, it says going along the route not
far from where she was found. So I don't think
it's a she went somewhere and then backtracked. I think
it was somewhere along this you know, zero to twenty
minutes marker.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And this is where i'd want to map these points out.
But let's say she gets mostly to the stables and
then she encounters the offender or offenders that abduct her.
Do they take her back away? That actually gets her
closer to her parents house, but they go into a
more secluded area down this dirt road, you know. So
(32:51):
that's kind of what I would be judging, is how
far did she actually get on her bike, and the
location of her bike is, you know, on this map,
is significant, and then location of her body is significant.
Why do the offenders take her to that particular location?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Okay? And I had just thought maybe she popped her
chain and it took forever for her to get it
back on. I mean, who knows absolutely, you know, you
don't have a cell phone. She has no choice, she
has to fix the bike or whatever. And so I
could see that easily. I was walking by a little
kid who had popped their chain and just looked completely
like what do I do? What do I do? And
I said, well, let's go get your parents and find out.
(33:26):
I know how to put on a chain, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
But also this can be answered. Did she have grease
on her hands?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah? I'm not that I saw on the autopsy, but
you're right, Okay, Okay. We've talked about the girl at
the farm stand. We've talked about her fiance. Jim is
totally cleared at this point. He is actually a janitor
at the hospital where she had been taken, but he
was at work at the time he was cleared, and
like I said, we know he's he's cleared. Here police
(33:54):
in September, so this is a month after she's found.
They announced that they're now looking for two two suspects.
They had something about two cars before, but they were
not very specific except for the description of one car.
They know their identities, they believe that both of them
have left the state. They don't give any details about
the two suspects, and they do say that the information
(34:16):
about a vehicle led them to these suspects, but we
don't know if this is the Chevrolet that they're talking about.
My impression and you can tell me I'm wrong here
was that the police were just trying to say freaking
anything to say we're doing something, but they don't have
enough confidence in anything to be able to give specific information.
(34:36):
I mean, two suspects, we can't say who they are,
but they're not in the state anymore, so nobody's in danger.
Maybe two cars, but that's how we found them, but
we can't tell you about the car. I mean, they're
really not saying anything except we are still working on
this case. But any think I'm wrong.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
No, there's no reason for them to be updating the
public in terms of where they are at in their investigation.
You know, part of it is is that, even though
it's not the script, just the fact that they're saying
based off of vehicle information and there's two suspects, the
actual suspects may be going, oh, they're on to us now.
(35:11):
It makes it that much harder for law enforcement to
drill down. You don't want to be tipping your hand,
you know, when you don't need to, you can just
go to a press conference and give generic updates. We
are continuing to take leads. We have some leads that
we are following. We will keep you guys abreast to
the point that we can without compromising the investigation.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, none of this works because the case goes cold.
There is nothing new for decades, but then there is
something new over the years. There's a lot of speculation
about Ted Bundy, who is from this area, and they
wonder if this could have been one of his earliest killings.
But ultimately, and this is where I need you to weigh,
(35:55):
law enforcement says, we don't think so because the MO
is so different from Bundy's typical m So what do
you think about that?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
This is a common misperception about serial predators is that
they're cookie cutter. Every single time they commit a crime
they committed the same way. I've worked too many cases
and seeing the variance firsthand of what the same offender does,
(36:25):
whether it be victim type, whether it be how the
victim is interacted with, you know, the initial interaction. Is
it an abduction or is it like Ted Bundy, you know,
sweet talking, you know a college co ed, you know,
is it picking up a sex worker on the stroll.
There are so many offenders that I've looked at where
(36:48):
they the variance and what they do is stunning where
you think it's different individuals committing the crimes. Now, there
are behaviors that these serial predators tend to exhibit that
will differentiate their crimes. And these are behaviors that are
driven by the offenders inner fantasies. But the act of
(37:11):
committing the crime, they're mo what it takes to commit
the crime will vary based on the circumstances of the case.
You can have a Ted Bundy do a very planned
type of crime. You can have a Ted Bundy do
a spontaneous victim of opportunity, you know. So the fact
(37:31):
that Ted Bundy is in this area has to be
at least acknowledged. However, just because he is in the area.
This notorious and very prolific serial killer does not mean
he's involved. But you cannot say, well, this mo is different,
so it's not him.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, this is not followed up on at all, Bundy, regardless,
this is a case that just goes cold, cold, cold. Now,
there was some comfort with her parents in that knowing
that they had gathered, you know, all of this. They
had her underwear, they had vaginal swabs from the original
rape kit, they had all of her clothes. So we
(38:09):
are now going to flash forward into the nineties, twenty
years later, and this is a little bit of an
evolution of what happens with law enforcement in this area.
At the time, the Sheriff's office in Snohomish County had
the funding and the manpower to get a major crimes
unit up and going. When they get this established in
(38:30):
the nineties, they start pulling out cold cases. They get
to Jody's case, which was a notorious case, and they
realized there are no slides made from any of the
potential DNA evidence. They cannot find her underwear anymore, they
cannot find the vaginal swabs from the original rape kit anymore.
The only thing they have her clothes at this point,
(38:53):
So they send everything off. It goes to the Washington
State Patrol crime Lab, but it's another decade before anything
can be made of the little evidence that they were
able to send off. I understand when things disappear, but
my goodness, that's the most important stuff they had in
this case, vaginal swabs in her underwear.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
I've been involved in multiple cases from this era where
that type of critical evidence has either been lost or
was purposely destroyed, where you know, pathologists literally once he identified,
oh there's spermn off of the vaginal swab. Vaginal swab
is thrown away because back in the nineteen seventies, that's
(39:37):
all they could do is identify. Yeah, there's there's the
existence of semen. Poor poor practice. Absolutely very frustrating when
you go, I could have solve the case if that
had just been kept. You know when they say that
they couldn't find these items, and it's very possible those
items are absolutely gone. But these items, over decades have
(39:58):
a tendency to to find places where they hide themselves,
so to speak. You know, we've had success and most
notably a Golden State killer where an entire rape kit
nobody knew about was actually within the corner's own storage
because a pathologist out of practice back in nineteen eighty
(40:20):
collected two rape kits at autopsy. One he gave to
law enforcement, the other he kept the corners. You know,
So these vaginal swabs, you know, is there any paper
trail going from the corner's office to the investigating agency.
Is there any paper trail showing that these swabs were
ever sent out to let's say, Washington State Patrol Crime Web,
(40:40):
What does their paperwork say? My Sheriff's office. When we
did a complete inventory of hundreds of thousands of items
contained within this property warehouse, all of a sudden, evidence
from many old cases was found. Some of it had
just been put into a wrong box, you know. So
(41:02):
this is where, you know, on a major case like this,
when I talk to investigators and they say, well, property
is saying they can't find the evidence, And then it's
like you need to go back there and search with
your property people, and you need to figure out, you know,
is it just in a wrong box, Is it in
a wrong paper bag that's in a wrong box. That
(41:24):
stuff really happens. Then you have property people, over time,
for whatever reason, they just destroy homicide evidence and you
just go, what, how does this happen? And it's just
you got somebody who's processing hundreds, if not thousands of
items a week for destruction purposes and doesn't catch oh,
this actually is related to a homicide and just goes
(41:45):
through the destruction process. What you hope is is that
there's actually documentation showing Okay, well that item is gone. Yeah,
you know, I don't need to search the property room
now I know that I am gone because I've got
a paper, I've got the destruction receipt.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Well, this is quite a case. We get to two
thousand and eight and there's a renewed push to solve
cases in this county. The investigators pull out the old
evidence and have it analyzed for possible sources of DNA.
They had sent this off to the crime lab. That
was unclear you know, what they were going to be
able to do at that point in the early nineties.
(42:21):
The crime lab then looks for possible sources of DNA
and they look at those boots that Jodie had borrowed
and from her sister, and on one of the boots,
a researcher at the State Patrol Crime lab finds as
semen stain, so he's able to construct a partial DNA profile. Wow,
so you know we're at a good point. They upload
(42:42):
it to codis nothing and they start getting DNA samples
from all the men who were named in the original
case file. I'm presuming the ones that they were not
telling us about. They get samples from the family members
of the men nothing. So this case goes cold for
another nine years.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Ask a question, and you may not have the answer,
is these were her sister's boots, right? How old was
her sister? Older, sister, younger, sister younger, twelve, She's twelve
at the time. And you know, because part of the
process after you find that yes, semen on the sister's
boots is interviewing the sister. Did you have any sexual
(43:21):
relations with a boy, you know, prior to your sister
borrowing your boots. Now, with the sister being twelve, that's
very unlikely. You probably still need to conduct that type
of interview, particularly in two thousand and eight, and you
don't get a codis hit. Now, there's a lot of
man hours, a lot of effort, you know, tracking down
DNA samples from all these various suspects when if it
(43:44):
turns out, well, no, that's just a consensual sample. You
know that was deposited, you know, during some you know,
fleeing that the sister had but the fact that she's twelve,
it's unlikely.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, and I actually had wondered how long a semen
stain would be there on a boot in particular, you know,
if it is let's say it is the sister, which
is so unlikely, but it was she said, yeah, I
have a boyfriend, but you know, we haven't had six
or six months or something, tromping through mud. It's Washington
State water. This is a I can show you a
picture of the boot sooner rather than later if you want.
(44:18):
Would the semen stain from six months earlier maybe still
be there or is it even less likely because of
all of the environmental elements that the sister would have
been in during this time.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
You just stated the variables. You know, stemen stains can
can exist on clothing, can exist on let's say these
types of boots for decades and still be viable. Using
modern DNA technology or environmental insults could potentially damage that
semen stain very rapidly. So it all depends but I'm
(44:53):
excited at this point. In two thousand and eight, it's like, okay,
they have biological evidence. You need to identify who this
male is.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
It takes another nine years. So in twenty seventeen, the
prosecutor in that county, who's a guy named Craig Matheson.
So in twenty seventeen he finds out about genetic genealogy
being used. Somehow, some way, he sends the sample to
Parabon nanolapse. Have you dealt with Parabon before?
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yes, I know Parabond.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Well, okay, so Parabon says they can use it to
identify a pool of relatives. We know how this goes,
and then they find family members that are related to
the person whose DNA profile they have. In twenty eighteen,
a genealogist builds a family tree and identifies a group
of seven siblings who were born in Edmunds, Washington. Six
(45:45):
of the seven are men. One is a very likely
match for the profile. Of those six brothers, some have died,
but one of the men who are still living is
a guy named Terence Miller, and he is the guy.
This is seven years ago. He's in his mid seventies.
Do you want to know about him? Or what more
do you want? I mean, there's a little list of
(46:06):
stuff about him.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Mine most certainly can extrapolate exactly how they drill down
onto Terrence Miller. And then ultimately they got a direct
sample from him and did your classic core approved str
analysis that's you know, all the law enforcement databases CODIS
is built upon, and that direct comparison confirm that Terrence
(46:29):
Miller is the seaman donor on Jody's boot sort of.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
So they decide to get the sample surreptitiously. So I
know we've talked about that. I mean, you know what
they end up doing is they have all this information
about him. He does have a record that's connected to
sex offenses, including in his own family. In August of
twenty eighteen, they follow him to a casino where he
drinks from a coffee cup. He throws it away and
(46:57):
they say within thirty seconds they grabbed the coffee cup
and they say to the crime lab and there's a match.
Why would they have done this surreptitiously and not gone
through the warrants and everything else.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Oh, this is the classic way on how to approach
an investigation. So with this type of suspect, and it
takes time to do DNA, even when it's rushed, it
can take a day or several days if they approach him.
Let's say they go and get a search warrant, and
(47:33):
now they approach him and compel him to provide a
DNA sample unless they have lawful reason to detain them
for some reasons. And there's some times there's some aspects
that you can detain if he's got other crimes. In essence,
he's out of custody. Is he a flight risk? Is
he going to disappear on you? It can compromise the
(47:54):
investigation while you're waiting for DNA analysis. Is he destroying
physical evidence? Let's say the where he goes, Oh shit,
I still have the murder weapon and that's gone. So
you're better off in this type of situation of getting
that surreptitious sample and sounds like it was a match.
So Terence Miller, that's his semen on these boots. Now
(48:18):
you get the search warp and that search warrant isn't
just for his DNA. That search warrant is looking for
all the various types of evidence possibly related to Jody's homicide.
And now you can confront him and interview him, or
doesn't have the time. He hasn't had the time to
sit there and come up with a very sophisticated lie.
(48:40):
You catch him cold. So this is usually how these
types of cold cases in which genealogy has been done occur,
and you never make an arrest on genealogy. Genealogy just
points you and like in this instance, it pointed to
a family that had six men, and now they have
to evaluate those six men as to which one is
(49:02):
possibly Jody's offender. But you don't make an arrest when
you go, oh, well, Terrence looks like the likely one
because of his criminal history. You always always always get
that direct sample. You never arrest based off of genealogy.
It is strictly an investigative tool, an investigative lead.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
Well talking about you know, ambushing him and getting him
before he has a chance to do anything. After they
get the results. Within a few days. In November of
twenty eighteen, they have investigators in playing clothes. He's in
a ceramic shop. He owns a ceramic shop. They show up,
they see that he has printed out an article about
(49:40):
another local arrest using familial DNA evidence, I mean, which
is just if that's not a foreshadow, I don't know.
And of course he's arrested, you know, this happens sort
of quickly. But then there's also I still have to
tell you about his rap sheet. Essentially, he has a
history of sex offenses that makes law enforcement want to
(50:02):
check him first when they get this list of brothers.
So his DNA wasn't in any of the databases. Initially,
in the sixties he was arrested for lewd conduct and
for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. And in
the seventies it looks like he had offended against a
family member and was given the opportunity to go to counseling,
(50:23):
so when he did that, the charges were dismissed. He
had been married four times, not a crime, but one
of them, which was his first marriage, was to a
fourteen year old who was pregnant at the time when
he killed Jodie. He had three kids from his previous marriages.
He had a third wife, which ended in a divorce.
(50:44):
When here's a key thing, you know, I had thought
this is such a rural area, this must be a local.
He lived five miles away from the spot where he
murdered Jody and left her behind. Let me tell you
about the trial. So he's arrested in the spring of
twenty nineteen, he is charged in the case, goes to
trial in the fall of twenty twenty gosh, not long ago.
(51:05):
The initial bail was set at a million dollars, but
his attorney negotiated this to be seven hundred and fifty thousand,
and he's released on bond. People testify, but after closing arguments,
he gets to go home one last time while the
jury deliberates because he's out on bond, and he takes
his own life.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
I could have predicted that.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
On November ninth, twenty twenty two, and then, of course
the jury finds him guilty a few hours after that.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Is there any information as to did he make any
admissions when he was interviewed?
Speaker 1 (51:38):
No, I haven't seen anything about that. I mean, I
can do a quick check, but now, no admissions as
far as I know, and where he got that money.
So a bond is how much would that be? Is
that ten percent? How much do you have to put off?
Speaker 3 (51:51):
Yeah? I think it's ten percent. I'm not real familiar
with that.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Seventy five thousand. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
That's why is attorney negotiated specifically down to seven hundred
and fifty thousand, because he knew his client probably had
sufficient funds in order to be able to do the bond.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
So all of this is no justice for Jodie. And
in a way, yes, because you know, we find out
who the offender is. I don't know if for fiance
ever had a cloud of suspicion even though he had
a really solid alibi. We've done those cases before, but
this was not what the family wanted. Surely out of all.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
Of this, Yeah, they got an answer, and this is hard.
I can't speak, you know, to how the family would
feel about the circumstances of Terrence being let out and
taking his own life while out of custody. I could
assume they would be appalled at the fact that this
(52:45):
guy that's being accused of murdering and sexually assaulting and
murdering their twenty year old daughter is even being allowed
to be out of custody while he's going through trial. Yeah,
Terrence Miller's age probably was a actor that the judge
considered he's unlikely to be a flight risk. I'm surprised
for this type of crime that they reduced the amount
(53:09):
down to something that he could afford to post. So
I think the family rightfully would be very very upset
about that now, whether or not. I mean, they may
see him taking his own life as an easy way out.
You know, they'd want him to have to go through
the conviction, have to go through, you know, the impact statements,
the family's confronting him about, you know, the loss of
(53:30):
their loved one and what that has done to the family,
and then knowing that he would be in prison for
the rest of his life. You know, it is an
unfortunate ending to this. But at the same time, law
enforcement stayed on it, and you know, it was fortunate
that there was biological evidence on the boot.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah, and there are answers, I mean, thank goodness. One
of the things that's unfortunate to me is certainly I
wish that this had happened before the true when all started,
her sister, who was twelve at the time, had to
take the stand identify the boots that her sister had
borrowed from her. This was I'm sure traumatizing for the
family even decades later. But you know, at the same time,
(54:14):
there you are, you do have some answers. You do
have a face, You're not looking over your shoulder. I mean,
what if you're suspecting your neighbor, you know, I mean
that's probably where I would have headed, is maybe a
family member or maybe a neighbor or something. And knowing
that this guy is out there, I'm shocked that he
wasn't in CODIS.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
But I guess not based off the criminal history that
you provided. You have loud and Lusibus with a minor
back in the nineteen sixties. Sounds like he got a
slap on the wrist for what sounds like a sexual
abuse of a family member, which I'm assuming is another child.
That's a big, big mess up. And the justice system
right there, how old those crimes are, you know, it
(54:54):
really comes down to Washington's laws in terms of does
he qualify for cases that are that far back in
time to be sampled and put into CODIS. There's like
in Calishfordia, there is changes over time to where at
a certain point you could retroactive for these older cases.
(55:15):
You could go back and now get samples from sex
offenders that were convicted decades prior. But there's so many
sex offenders that qualify to be sampled, and they've never
been sampled, and they're just out in the public, and
there's money is available for agencies to be able to,
(55:37):
you know, dedicate resources to go out and track those
guys down and get their samples, but some agencies will
never follow through with it.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Well, we don't often have these cold cases that we
are able to follow up and say this is what
actually happened. So I'm grateful for that. I know you
like talking about genetic genealogy and DNA and all of
the advances. That's you know, what you work on all
the time. So this was a case that I'm glad
had closure, But to me, in some ways an unsatisfying ending.
(56:07):
What I'm hoping is is that, you know, next week
we can have some cases where we see true to
form justice. That's what I look for. I know I
don't always give them to you, but I really try.
We have a mixed bag when we were in the
eighteen hundreds, in the early nineteen hundreds, you just never know.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Sure, Well, every time I sit down to talk to you,
I never know what you're going to give me.
Speaker 1 (56:31):
That's the goal. Okay, I will see you for a
very different case next week.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Sounds great. Take care, Kate, me too.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
This has been an exactly right production for our.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
Sources and show notes go to exactly Rightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones Sources.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi.
Speaker 3 (56:54):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (57:06):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Hey, Kate, how's it going.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's going really well. I want to give some big
props to one of our listeners. Well, I'll give props
to all of our listeners, but one in particular. Oh,
I feel like knows me so well. So she emailed
me probably a couple of months ago and said, Hey,
I have something that I just want to send to you.
I found it and I think you might like it.
(01:26):
And since it's small, and I said, you know, I
can take care of the postage or whatever. And she
just was really sweet and she sent it to me,
and since it's small, it was easy to get to me.
So it is a book that I feel like comes
close to the rareness of your what's the name of
your medical book that you pulled out on the very
first episode where you looked up Maybe it was chloroform.
(01:48):
I can't remember what mercury.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
I think this is it here? Yeah, this is the
Essentials of Forensic Medicine eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
And where did you get that? I can remember where
you told me you got that from.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, believe it or not. This was a hand me
down from my dad. He kind of collected books, and
I think he just was in a bookstore at some
point in the past and bought it. And then when
I saw it after getting into forensics, it was like, oh,
this is a really I mean cool book where you
have and I don't want to open up too much,
but you have the hand drawn diagrams in it.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, so it's a really cool book.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
So this listener, her name's Jody, sent it to me,
And this is a book that's called The People's Common
Sense Medical Advisor. Right here it is and it's falling
apart a little bit, which means you know, it's a
great book. People have used it a lot, right, It's
from nineteen oh nine, and she was really sweet, so,
you know, sending me this, and she you know, inscribed
(02:45):
it a happy sleuthing best regards Jody, which was really nice.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
But I you know, I was flipping through here, and
like with your book, this has a lot of really
interesting pictures. Anatomy of a joint, anatomy of a knee joint.
You know, it gets really specific testimony from different patients.
Because this book was written by a doctor who let
me see if I can get to this the Invalids
(03:11):
Hotel and Surgical Institute of Buffalo, New York, a remedial
home established by R. V. Pierce and located in one
of the healthiest cities in the United States. This was
a book that was used by you know, I'm sure physicians,
but also a book that people probably would have kept
at home and used as a medical reference. You know,
(03:32):
I remember having not these books obviously, but books like
that at friends' houses in our house just sort of like,
oh my gosh, I have something hurting in my knee.
Pre internet, which I was pre Internet. So were you
where you think? Where am I going to get medical advice,
and it was books like this where you pick up
a book and it's not going to be perfect, but
it shows you a diagram and it kind of do
(03:53):
what web MD does for me now or my real doctor.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah. In fact, on my other bookshelf, I have the
her Commanual, you know, so get all the information on
all these drugs. I mean it's thick. Yeah, it's a
small book. You know, it's like maybe six by eight inches,
but it's about three and a half to four inches thick.
And so if there's any questions that I back in
(04:17):
the day I had about any any drug substances, I'd
go to the Mirk Manual.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Well, this goes along with this. We had another listener
email me. This was for a Wicked Words. So she
emailed me and mentioned that there was a guest who
said that leeches are no longer used in medicine because
doctors found out they were harmful rather than helpful. So
before you comment on this, let me tell you. She
(04:42):
says her mom had leeches used after her surgery just
a couple of years ago. She said, had a lot
of questions, I said, what's going on with the doctor
and the doctor said that the leeches have an anticoagulant
in their saliva and can be used to increase the
blood flow around a surgical wound to promote the healing.
The surgery was for the removal of a cancerous tumor
(05:04):
in her breast. Because I said, I'm going to talk
to Paul about this, and I said, can I have
more context? So that's what she said. That she said
from when I understood the effects of the radiation made
it difficult for the skin to heal itself, and that's
how they used leeches. So what do you think.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
You know? I know, I've seen, you know that leeches
had been used. I couldn't tell you why they had
been used in the medical sense. What you just read
that generally makes sense to me. I've also read and
this is I don't know if you want to call
it descriptive. I'll try not to be too descriptive, but
in essence, when you have like necrotic tissue, you know
(05:44):
where the tissue around a wound or something has died,
that sterile megots can be used and they will go
in and preferentially eat on the necrotic tissue. Now, having
seen megots in real life on dead bodies. It's like, no,
that's not going to be done to me.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Amazing. I've never had to issue a trigger warning don't
eat your food right now because we're going to be
talking about maggots feasting on dead flesh. But there you go. Wow.
Well I was shocked by the leeches and it proves
that sometimes there are things that carry over from hundreds
of years ago that still work today.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
No, yeah, no, for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Well, this story is sciency, and I think it's the
kind of story that you like because we, you know,
will be going down an interesting road that will feel
familiar to you. So that's why I started with this
sciency stuff, which is not always my thing. Even though
I went to a science magnet school here in Austin,
I still am the fuddled by science. So I wanted
(06:52):
to kind of prime you up for this. Okay, Okay,
let's go ahead and set the scene. Okay, I'm going
to issue a trigger. We are going to talk about
sexual assaults in this case, and it'll happen fairly quickly.
Right at the beginning of the episode. We are in
a very very modern time for us in nineteen seventy two.
I mean two years before I was born. I feel
(07:14):
like it was just yesterday.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
You're a young one. What are you talking?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I mean, yeah, I'm happy to bring these sorts of
stories because I think we were just recently in the
mid eighteen hundreds. So I do have some photographs for you.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Great.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And this is in an area of Washington called Bathol.
It's about twenty miles north of Seattle. So right now
that area is pretty much suburbia, but back then it
was pretty rural, lots of farms and wooded areas. It's
five point forty five pm and a couple is driving
along a secluded dirt road surrounded by woods, and it's
(07:48):
about a half a mile away from major roadways. The
couple is driving into the woods to go target shooting
and they see a log that's blocking their path. The
guy gets out of the car see what it is
and then to move it. And when he does, he
sees a young woman lying in the road. She's alive,
but barely she's moving. She's groaning in pain. She appears
(08:12):
to have a head injury, and she's dressed only in
a braw and underwear. In her shoes and these are
ankle boots. Which will become important later on. One is tied,
one is untied, and the shirt that she had been
wearing is found nearby. It's a kind of a gray
blue color, and blue jeans are nearby, so they rush
(08:33):
her to the hospital. She dies from her injury. This
injury is a gunshot wound from a small caliber bullet
right above her right ear. That's where we are so far.
A young woman who turns out to be twenty found
in the roadway in a wooded area, an isolated splot
in Washington State, nineteen seventy two. Of course, I mean,
(08:54):
I think we're leading to this. Looks like this is
a potential sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Also, yeah, is this an off roaw location or is
this a paved road? You know this log that's laying
across the road, So I'm kind of keying on that
right now, as could the presence of that log, which
sounds like it's a tree that's fallen. Does that give
(09:17):
us some temporal aspect on when people had access to
freely pass through that road versus not? So's That's one
of the things that I'm kind of keying in on,
just from understanding the crime scene a little bit better. Yeah,
her location behind the log her state of dress, which
is it's interesting where she's got her bra and underwear on,
(09:40):
but also wearing her ankle boots. And with the ankle boots,
you know, I wonder could her her genes have been
taken off of her or could she have taken those
genes off over the ankle boots. Probably not, does my guess,
does she partially redress if there was sexual assault? And
was she completely nude at the time of the sexual assault?
(10:03):
That's another question, But does she partially redress, gets her
underwear on, gets her bra on, and then recognizes that
she barefoot out in the woods that's not going to work.
And she's able to put her boots back on in
order to try to move. And she's doing this with
a gunshot to the head, you know, and the location
(10:27):
of the gunshot, you know, behind the right ear or
by the right ear, you know, that's a sounds like
almost like an execution type of gunshot small caliber and
small caliber can mean a lot. Is it a twenty two,
is it a twenty five, Is it a thirty two?
Is it a three eighty? And is there any information
(10:49):
as to the distance of that gunshot wound? Is there
any gunpowder around the entry wound? Is there stippling to
any of the skin, if any of the exposed skin
is there right now, the location of her shirt and
blue jeans would suggest a location to where either the
(11:09):
offender assaulted her and shot her, or that's where she
was pushed out of a vehicle or taken out of
a vehicle, but she was still alive to where she
could move into the street. So, okay, I've got a
pretty good sense of what's going on so far.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Good Lucky for us, we do have an autopsy that
gives us a lot more information. There are still clues
that need to be gathered just from the scene, and
of course we still haven't identified her yet, but we
will right now. So she is found by this couple
at five point forty five pm, about eleven o'clock. Some
(11:45):
distressed parents call the police because their daughter Jody has
not returned home. So this is about five hours later
or so. Their names are Rosemary and John Loomis. Jody
is twenty. She is our victim, Jody Loomis, and a
detective comes to their house to tell them the news
(12:06):
that they believe that this is Jody. She died shortly
after arriving to the hospital and the Loomises go and
they identify her, so it's positive that this is their daughter.
So there's stuff about Jody that actually will be kind
of important. And then of course there's the autopsy and
things that they discover at the scene after the autopsy
(12:30):
or maybe even during, and then there's the timeline of
what her parents said happened. So there's a lot happening,
a lot of information. What do you want to tackle first?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Well, with the information, you know, this is unusual for
you to be able to provide me with a lot
of the information that I'm used to working with. Sure,
I'm excited, So I'm going to, you know, start with
my process. I want to know first, I start with
an autopsy. I want to know what happened to the victim,
what caused her death, and what other types of injuries
(12:58):
are present, and will kind of intertwine that information with
what I know about the crime scene, and then we
can go from there.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Okay, here we go. Autopsy is conducted. The next day,
the medical examiner recovers fragments from here's the gun a
twenty two caliber bullet, finding that she was killed by
that gun, shot, wound. Tell me about a twenty two.
As far as why would someone use that gun? Is
it easy to conceal or is this for picking off
animals or what?
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Well, there's so many reasons to choose a twenty two.
You know, first, it could be just this is the
gun that the offender had access to. There is no
other reason outside I've got a gun, whether it be
a legally purchased gun or something illegally obtained, that's just
what the offender had. There may not have been a
(13:48):
purposeful decision to use a twenty two. Now, a twenty
two at close range absolutely can be fatal. I've had
homicides with twenty two caliber guns, whether it be a gunshot,
wounds to the head. I've had homicides where somebody's been
shot in the torsa with a twenty two. There's textbook
examples of twenty two's going into the femeral artery and
(14:11):
then the bullet actually traversing, you know and causing an
kind of like an embolism. So you know, it is
a fatal weapon. However, it is also not a very
powerful weapon. And right now I'm assuming it's a handgun,
but you can have rifles that shoot twenty two, and
typically those may be a little bit more powerful rounds.
(14:34):
Why a twenty two may be chosen by the offender.
They can be smaller weapons, particularly if they're designed to
be very compact, they can be much smaller than let's say,
your nine millimeter compact weapons that the twenty twos could
potentially have less report. They're a little bit quieter, though
(14:58):
it's still a loud sound when they are shot, you know,
but you do see that you can silence a twenty
two and it can make it fairly quiet, you know,
but it's not like in the movies where it's like this,
you know, whisper. You know, you're still have a you
still have a noise that is discernible, but it does
(15:19):
it's not going to be a very loud noise relative
to you know, a larger caliber weapon or a more
powerful weapon. And then you know, if you're really sophisticated,
these twenty two bullets and it sounds like in this case,
you know, they can become very mangled, and if it's
got a coating on it, the markings that the barrel
(15:42):
of that twenty two gun leave on the bullet itself
can be very indistinct and make it hard, if not impossible,
for firearms examiner to do a comparison to link that
bullet back to a gun. One example I can give
you is there's an old book out there. It's basically
how to become a hit man, and it's part of
(16:04):
this whole you know, anarchy cookbook, same publisher, you know,
and in it they talk about using a twenty two.
And there's a reason because of you know, the bullets.
You know, I'm not marking very well being able to
silence them. They're cheap guns. I would say that I've
never had a case in which I've had a you know,
(16:27):
anything close to what I would say a professional hit
man coming in and purposely using a twenty two. I've
got one case in my career, and it was actually
after I retired, in which I went, this is a
professional hit Outside of that, you know, I think the
twenty two being grabbed in this case, in all likelihood
(16:47):
is probably because that's what the offender had access to,
but maybe you'll tell me different.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Keep in mind, you know, this is a wooded area,
heavily wooded area, a rural area, and there's probably hunting
going on summertime. You know, it's early evening, so you know,
I mean, a gunshot might not sound I'd and growing
up on a farm, when I heard a gunshot, I
did not immediately think murder. I thought somebody's out there
hunting illegally or legally, depending on the time of year.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Oh sure, you know in that particular environment, you know,
a gunshot is not going to be as obvious and
stand out, like if you're in a quiet neighborhood. But
unless this person went out to shoot squirrels or rabbits,
they're not choosing a twenty two to go hunting out there.
If they're hunting deer or something, they've got a real
(17:40):
hunting rifle with much larger caliber rounds.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Okay, so let's talk a little bit. There's not a
lot left, honestly, Paul. Of the autopsy, I don't think
they thought there was a lot more to say here.
We know that the twenty two killed her. They said
there is evidence of a sexual assault. They weren't specific
about it, but you know, seventy two, I think they
would have been able to identify it. Right. The medical
examiner recovered some samples of dirt and leaf mold from
(18:07):
her buttocks, which to them meant that she had been
totally undressed at least, you know, there and laying on
the ground. And that's pretty much it as far as
the medical things go.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
So they see signs of sexual assault. I know I've
gone on rants before because I hate it when they
use the phrase no signs of sexual assault and then don't.
It's like, well, you can have sexual assault and not
see injuries, whether it be external injuries, whether it be
internal injuries to the female anatomy. So in this particular case,
(18:39):
what is evidence of sexual assault? And again I'm going
to avoid getting graphic, but is did they observe some injuries?
Then it's their duty to articulate what those injuries are.
Are they observing fluid inside cavities? Did they you know,
look at the microscope, did they identify sperm? You know,
they need to articulate that autopsy or those samples are
(19:03):
you know, from the fluids get sent to the lab
and then the lab ends up identifying what those fluids are.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
They did do a rape kit, and they did keep
a lot of evidence, which is going to be good
for us later on, but they aren't specific about exactly
what the signs are you're right, let's go to the scene.
So they actually are looking for the gun or more bullets.
They use metal detector. They can't find anything. They didn't
find any other bullets or traces of the murder weapon,
(19:31):
so they never find the gun. They find a dime
near her body, and Jody's parents said she always carried
a dime. Man, I haven't even thought about this for
a long time, for the pay phone in case there
was an emergency. Absolutely, yeah, So they found this. They
found this dime. They find blood on the ground and leaves,
you know, it's strewn about in the area. And there's
(19:52):
a little clip that Jody used to clip her pants
away from the bike chain. So okay, Jody, Let's get
into a little bit more about Jody so that I
can explain the bike. She was a nurse's aide, twenty
years old, as I told you, She was living with
her parents. She went to community college. She wanted to
be a nurse. She was engaged, though there wasn't a
(20:14):
date set. Ultimately, I'll just say that the police rule
this guy out. The fiance. She was an avid equestrian,
and so why don't you just pull up the photos
that I sent you. I just wanted you to put
a face to this story and you could kind of
tell me what you see. Won't you just get onto
(20:34):
the first page?
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, so you know, it's a photo. This is Jody
in her equestrian or a horse riding gear. I'm not
sure exactly the proper term she's standing and holding onto. Basically,
I'm assuming this is this is her horse that she
would ride. It's just a typical picture of her and
(20:56):
her horse. She's got the riding helmet on, she's got
the jacket. This looks like she's getting ready to compete.
You know. This is not out and taking the horse
out into the woods. It looks like she's probably doing
some sort of competition. You know, it's tough to get
an idea of her stature standing next to a horse,
(21:17):
but she looks like she's average height, you know, five
four five six, average build. And this is only a
photo showing her from the waist up, but that's probably
as much as I can see. She has glasses on
that are shaded. I don't know if those are sunglasses
(21:37):
or if they're prescription glasses that are tinted. But outside
of that, yeah, I think that's about the only thing
I can pull out of this photo.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Okay, let me tell you a little bit about the
day that this happened. She loved to ride the horses,
of course, and she had been riding her bike to
a local stable to ride her horse when she was killed.
So most of the time Jody would get a ride
to the stable, but today she wanted to ride her bike,
so she sets out a lot later than she intended
(22:06):
to because she had been waiting to ask her younger
sister if she could borrow her boots. Younger sister doesn't
come home, and it's gonna get dark soon, so Jody
just grabs the boots that we end up finding at
the woods, and she hits the road around four o'clock,
the last time that her parents see her as four pm.
The couple discovers her an hour and forty five minutes later.
(22:28):
So here's one of the keys. Jody's parents said. She
took this more remote route to the stable because she
wanted to stay off these major roads where there's a
lot of traffic, so she didn't take her normal route.
So I wanted you to take a look at the
photo that I sent you. That is Jody on a bike.
This is clearly not the road where she was found
because it's not dirt or you know, it doesn't look
(22:50):
like there are trees that are going to fall over
or anything. I think this would have been a major
problem if a tree had fallen over, because you can
see a car in the distance.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
No, it's a two lane row. You can see it
separated by a solid yellow line. And you know, it's
got a very slight curve along this section. But there
is a lot of visibility. I think, you know, I
can see maybe out to a half a mile, you know,
before the road curves out of sight. Both sides of
(23:20):
the road appear to be you know, heavily forested, though
the location where Jody is at with her bike in
this photograph, it appears that it's mostly tall grasses and weeds.
I can see mailboxes and driveways at several points along
(23:40):
this road that indicate it's a you know, it's kind
of got a residential aspect to it, but is rural.
It looks like your typical rural road, very narrow for
a bicyclist. There isn't a dedicated bike lane like you
often see today. And you know, if this is a
road that Jody took because it was less traveled. I
(24:02):
can completely understand that. You know, when I would go
biking out in California, I would do the same thing.
You know, on these narrow roads that don't have a
good shoulder, you know, on the big truck start passing
you at high speeds, it can be quite scary. So
this here, though, you know, if she's on this road
or a similar road to get to the horse stables
(24:25):
the day that she went missing, if it's not routine,
that's kind of what I was initially wondering. If it
was a routine practice of hers, then I could see
where an offender could lie in wait. But if it's
not routine, and we know nothing about who the offender is,
whether it's an associate or a stranger. But let's say
it's a stranger, then that would tend to suggest that
(24:49):
she was a victim of opportunity if she had been
abducted from the roadway. And of course the big question
right now is well, where is her bicycle found?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, I can tell you that. So when they are searching,
they find the bicycle, white bicycle about one hundred and
eighty feet from where she was found. It looks like
it had been thrown into a ravine. Useless to me.
One hundred and eighty feet. I can never figure out
what that means. Is that a long way away? It's
hard for me to ever know. I can figure out.
(25:23):
I'll tell you why. I told my students this the
other day. I can figure out a quarter of a
mile because I can huff and puff my way through
a quarter of a mile on a track that I
used to run. But that's it. I don't have any
other context other than that.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Well, you know, I go back to playing football, you know.
So as you know, a football field is one hundred
yards or three hundred feet long, So half a football
field is one hundred and fifty feet. Tack thirty feet
on top of that, and you've got your one hundred
eighty feet.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Okay, So they've got the bicycle. And what they're now
looking at is there is apparently a vehicle in the
area that people had spotted. So now this is big news.
Young woman who has been found dead on August twenty six,
so this is three days after she is killed. Police
say they're looking for a vehicle that witnesses on the
(26:08):
vicinity of the dirt road. They don't release any details
about the vehicle, but they're just you know, telling reporters
that they're looking for a vehicle. I'm not quite sure
what that the point of that is, because I know
it's a little odd.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
It's a little nondescript.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
It is nondescript. So two days after that, on August
twenty eighth, they say they're looking for two vehicles that
were seen in the area where Jodie was found, but
they don't give any you know, description of the vehicles. Finally,
the next day, the police say they're looking for something
specific in nineteen sixty six steel blue chevro Let station
(26:43):
Wagon sixty six, so this is seventy two, so you know,
I mean, it's not an old car, steel blue Chevrolet
station Wagon. So I think I put this point in
because I wanted you to understand that I don't know
who they've called in at this point as far as
are there state police involved or is they're you know,
a major city involved. Doesn't sound like it to me
so far. It sounds like they're kind of already making
(27:05):
mistakes here.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Well, you know, and sort of the nondescript aspect of
a vehicle, there may have been a reasoning behind it,
and maybe not, but if they, if they had reasoning,
my thought is is that they could say this particular location,
this day, this time, we saw vehicles, and so now
people are thinking, oh, I was at that location, Oh
(27:28):
I remember seeing this type of vehicle, versus putting out
there a description or even a make and model a vehicle.
And now they have people calling in saying well, I
was there and yeah, I saw that vehicle, and so
in some ways it's enhancing the veracity of the description
of the vehicle from the witnesses because they're not being
fed the information up front. So that kind of makes
(27:49):
sense to me in that context. And then to get
nineteen sixty six steel blue Chevy station wagon, you know
that's pretty specific and absent. You know, you don't have
surveillance video he had owed pack in nineteen seventy two.
To get that specific, I start thinking, Okay, a witness
(28:11):
came forward, and you have a witness who knows his
or her cars and is going I was there and
I saw this particular make and model vehicle.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I think this investigation gets more and more confusing. Now
we're getting to this muddled timeline. So tell me what
you think about the timeline. So you remember her parents
said she walked out the door at four o'clock. Her
body was found at five forty five, So her bike
ride from her house to the stable is about forty
(28:40):
minutes total. Where Jody was found on Penncreek Road is
about twenty minutes from her house, so halfway through going
along the route that she took, she was seen by
witnesses riding her bike at five o'clock, not far from
where she was found at five forty five. But that
was an hour after she left home. Now, I think
(29:02):
one of the things you'll probably say is witnesses don't
get their times right sometimes. So you know, if the
spot where she was left is twenty minutes from her house,
what happened to that whole hour? And let me give
you one more piece of information. So of course police
want to know she encounters somebody. The last person who
they believe saw Jody alive, besides the killer, had been
(29:26):
working at a farm stand. It was a girl they
don't say old. She had been working at a farm
stand along the route that Jody was riding. She said
that she saw Jody approached the turn at the road
the dirt road where she was found. She stopped, she
looked into the woods. The girl interpreted the look on
her face is kind of confused, but not alarmed. I
(29:47):
don't know if the girl didn't see, whether she went
into the woods or not. But this was a route
that she would normally not take because remember, she usually
got a right but she would have known, she would
have known how to do. This wouldn't have been completely
out of the ordinary. So that lost hour is what's
I think confusing police at this point.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Well, I'm not sure there was a lost hour. So
she leaves at four o'clock, she was seen riding her
bike at five o'clock. Was that this girl who saw
her kind of stop and look down the dirt road?
Speaker 1 (30:18):
No, several different witnesses, different witnesses, not far from where
she was eventually found.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
If it's just a forty minute bike ride to the
stables from her parents' house, you know, twenty minutes past
the time that she should have gotten too the stables,
she's still seen riding her bike along that road, you know,
does she stop and talk to somebody? Is there a neighbor,
you know, and so she's just chatting with somebody who
happened to be passing her on the road, completely innocent
(30:45):
type of just every day type of interaction that could
have delayed her of getting to the stables. And as
far as I know, and maybe you'd tell me otherwise,
she doesn't have to be at the stables at a
particular time. It's not like she's got a coke that's
going to be waiting for her to give her less
than at six o'clock or whatever. So you know, she's
(31:05):
not necessarily going to abide by some In my mind,
this is how I'm kind of thinking out loud. She's
not going to think, oh, I have to get to
the stables by a certain time. And so if she
does stop to talk to a friend or a neighbor
or whatever, you can see where you know she's not
in a rush to get moving again. It's not her
routine route to get to the horse stables. So I
(31:26):
wouldn't be surprised given the nondescript nature of that landscape
where maybe she's stopping and going is this the dirt
road or is it the next one down? And that's
what this girl saw her do. Just speculating in my mind. Yeah,
but she's last seen riding at five o'clock by multiple witnesses,
(31:47):
and then her body is found at five point forty five. Well,
we don't know how long her body's been out there.
Was it out there just for five minutes? Was it
out there for forty minutes? You know? Was she literally
abducted and killed, you know, five minutes after she was
last seen riding her bike. Now her body is found
only a twenty minute drive away from the parents' house
(32:08):
where she's seen by these witnesses. Is she further away
from the parents' house?
Speaker 1 (32:14):
On the map, it says going along the route not
far from where she was found. So I don't think
it's a she went somewhere and then backtracked. I think
it was somewhere along this you know, zero to twenty
minutes marker.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
And this is where i'd want to map these points out.
But let's say she gets mostly to the stables and
then she encounters the offender or offenders that abduct her.
Do they take her back away? That actually gets her
closer to her parents house, but they go into a
more secluded area down this dirt road, you know. So
(32:51):
that's kind of what I would be judging, is how
far did she actually get on her bike, and the
location of her bike is, you know, on this map,
is significant, and then location of her body is significant.
Why do the offenders take her to that particular location?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Okay? And I had just thought maybe she popped her
chain and it took forever for her to get it
back on. I mean, who knows absolutely, you know, you
don't have a cell phone. She has no choice, she
has to fix the bike or whatever. And so I
could see that easily. I was walking by a little
kid who had popped their chain and just looked completely
like what do I do? What do I do? And
I said, well, let's go get your parents and find out.
(33:26):
I know how to put on a chain, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
But also this can be answered. Did she have grease
on her hands?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah? I'm not that I saw on the autopsy, but
you're right, Okay, Okay. We've talked about the girl at
the farm stand. We've talked about her fiance. Jim is
totally cleared at this point. He is actually a janitor
at the hospital where she had been taken, but he
was at work at the time he was cleared, and
like I said, we know he's he's cleared. Here police
(33:54):
in September, so this is a month after she's found.
They announced that they're now looking for two two suspects.
They had something about two cars before, but they were
not very specific except for the description of one car.
They know their identities, they believe that both of them
have left the state. They don't give any details about
the two suspects, and they do say that the information
(34:16):
about a vehicle led them to these suspects, but we
don't know if this is the Chevrolet that they're talking about.
My impression and you can tell me I'm wrong here
was that the police were just trying to say freaking
anything to say we're doing something, but they don't have
enough confidence in anything to be able to give specific information.
(34:36):
I mean, two suspects, we can't say who they are,
but they're not in the state anymore, so nobody's in danger.
Maybe two cars, but that's how we found them, but
we can't tell you about the car. I mean, they're
really not saying anything except we are still working on
this case. But any think I'm wrong.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
No, there's no reason for them to be updating the
public in terms of where they are at in their investigation.
You know, part of it is is that, even though
it's not the script, just the fact that they're saying
based off of vehicle information and there's two suspects, the
actual suspects may be going, oh, they're on to us now.
(35:11):
It makes it that much harder for law enforcement to
drill down. You don't want to be tipping your hand,
you know, when you don't need to, you can just
go to a press conference and give generic updates. We
are continuing to take leads. We have some leads that
we are following. We will keep you guys abreast to
the point that we can without compromising the investigation.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, none of this works because the case goes cold.
There is nothing new for decades, but then there is
something new over the years. There's a lot of speculation
about Ted Bundy, who is from this area, and they
wonder if this could have been one of his earliest killings.
But ultimately, and this is where I need you to weigh,
(35:55):
law enforcement says, we don't think so because the MO
is so different from Bundy's typical m So what do
you think about that?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
This is a common misperception about serial predators is that
they're cookie cutter. Every single time they commit a crime
they committed the same way. I've worked too many cases
and seeing the variance firsthand of what the same offender does,
(36:25):
whether it be victim type, whether it be how the
victim is interacted with, you know, the initial interaction. Is
it an abduction or is it like Ted Bundy, you know,
sweet talking, you know a college co ed, you know,
is it picking up a sex worker on the stroll.
There are so many offenders that I've looked at where
(36:48):
they the variance and what they do is stunning where
you think it's different individuals committing the crimes. Now, there
are behaviors that these serial predators tend to exhibit that
will differentiate their crimes. And these are behaviors that are
driven by the offenders inner fantasies. But the act of
(37:11):
committing the crime, they're mo what it takes to commit
the crime will vary based on the circumstances of the case.
You can have a Ted Bundy do a very planned
type of crime. You can have a Ted Bundy do
a spontaneous victim of opportunity, you know. So the fact
(37:31):
that Ted Bundy is in this area has to be
at least acknowledged. However, just because he is in the area.
This notorious and very prolific serial killer does not mean
he's involved. But you cannot say, well, this mo is different,
so it's not him.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, this is not followed up on at all, Bundy, regardless,
this is a case that just goes cold, cold, cold. Now,
there was some comfort with her parents in that knowing
that they had gathered, you know, all of this. They
had her underwear, they had vaginal swabs from the original
rape kit, they had all of her clothes. So we
(38:09):
are now going to flash forward into the nineties, twenty
years later, and this is a little bit of an
evolution of what happens with law enforcement in this area.
At the time, the Sheriff's office in Snohomish County had
the funding and the manpower to get a major crimes
unit up and going. When they get this established in
(38:30):
the nineties, they start pulling out cold cases. They get
to Jody's case, which was a notorious case, and they
realized there are no slides made from any of the
potential DNA evidence. They cannot find her underwear anymore, they
cannot find the vaginal swabs from the original rape kit anymore.
The only thing they have her clothes at this point,
(38:53):
So they send everything off. It goes to the Washington
State Patrol crime Lab, but it's another decade before anything
can be made of the little evidence that they were
able to send off. I understand when things disappear, but
my goodness, that's the most important stuff they had in
this case, vaginal swabs in her underwear.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
I've been involved in multiple cases from this era where
that type of critical evidence has either been lost or
was purposely destroyed, where you know, pathologists literally once he identified,
oh there's spermn off of the vaginal swab. Vaginal swab
is thrown away because back in the nineteen seventies, that's
(39:37):
all they could do is identify. Yeah, there's there's the
existence of semen. Poor poor practice. Absolutely very frustrating when
you go, I could have solve the case if that
had just been kept. You know when they say that
they couldn't find these items, and it's very possible those
items are absolutely gone. But these items, over decades have
(39:58):
a tendency to to find places where they hide themselves,
so to speak. You know, we've had success and most
notably a Golden State killer where an entire rape kit
nobody knew about was actually within the corner's own storage
because a pathologist out of practice back in nineteen eighty
(40:20):
collected two rape kits at autopsy. One he gave to
law enforcement, the other he kept the corners. You know,
So these vaginal swabs, you know, is there any paper
trail going from the corner's office to the investigating agency.
Is there any paper trail showing that these swabs were
ever sent out to let's say, Washington State Patrol Crime Web,
(40:40):
What does their paperwork say? My Sheriff's office. When we
did a complete inventory of hundreds of thousands of items
contained within this property warehouse, all of a sudden, evidence
from many old cases was found. Some of it had
just been put into a wrong box, you know. So
(41:02):
this is where, you know, on a major case like this,
when I talk to investigators and they say, well, property
is saying they can't find the evidence, And then it's
like you need to go back there and search with
your property people, and you need to figure out, you know,
is it just in a wrong box, Is it in
a wrong paper bag that's in a wrong box. That
(41:24):
stuff really happens. Then you have property people, over time,
for whatever reason, they just destroy homicide evidence and you
just go, what, how does this happen? And it's just
you got somebody who's processing hundreds, if not thousands of
items a week for destruction purposes and doesn't catch oh,
this actually is related to a homicide and just goes
(41:45):
through the destruction process. What you hope is is that
there's actually documentation showing Okay, well that item is gone. Yeah,
you know, I don't need to search the property room
now I know that I am gone because I've got
a paper, I've got the destruction receipt.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Well, this is quite a case. We get to two
thousand and eight and there's a renewed push to solve
cases in this county. The investigators pull out the old
evidence and have it analyzed for possible sources of DNA.
They had sent this off to the crime lab. That
was unclear you know, what they were going to be
able to do at that point in the early nineties.
(42:21):
The crime lab then looks for possible sources of DNA
and they look at those boots that Jodie had borrowed
and from her sister, and on one of the boots,
a researcher at the State Patrol Crime lab finds as
semen stain, so he's able to construct a partial DNA profile. Wow,
so you know we're at a good point. They upload
(42:42):
it to codis nothing and they start getting DNA samples
from all the men who were named in the original
case file. I'm presuming the ones that they were not
telling us about. They get samples from the family members
of the men nothing. So this case goes cold for
another nine years.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Ask a question, and you may not have the answer,
is these were her sister's boots, right? How old was
her sister? Older, sister, younger, sister younger, twelve, She's twelve
at the time. And you know, because part of the
process after you find that yes, semen on the sister's
boots is interviewing the sister. Did you have any sexual
(43:21):
relations with a boy, you know, prior to your sister
borrowing your boots. Now, with the sister being twelve, that's
very unlikely. You probably still need to conduct that type
of interview, particularly in two thousand and eight, and you
don't get a codis hit. Now, there's a lot of
man hours, a lot of effort, you know, tracking down
DNA samples from all these various suspects when if it
(43:44):
turns out, well, no, that's just a consensual sample. You
know that was deposited, you know, during some you know,
fleeing that the sister had but the fact that she's twelve,
it's unlikely.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, and I actually had wondered how long a semen
stain would be there on a boot in particular, you know,
if it is let's say it is the sister, which
is so unlikely, but it was she said, yeah, I
have a boyfriend, but you know, we haven't had six
or six months or something, tromping through mud. It's Washington
State water. This is a I can show you a
picture of the boot sooner rather than later if you want.
(44:18):
Would the semen stain from six months earlier maybe still
be there or is it even less likely because of
all of the environmental elements that the sister would have
been in during this time.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
You just stated the variables. You know, stemen stains can
can exist on clothing, can exist on let's say these
types of boots for decades and still be viable. Using
modern DNA technology or environmental insults could potentially damage that
semen stain very rapidly. So it all depends but I'm
(44:53):
excited at this point. In two thousand and eight, it's like, okay,
they have biological evidence. You need to identify who this
male is.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
It takes another nine years. So in twenty seventeen, the
prosecutor in that county, who's a guy named Craig Matheson.
So in twenty seventeen he finds out about genetic genealogy
being used. Somehow, some way, he sends the sample to
Parabon nanolapse. Have you dealt with Parabon before?
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yes, I know Parabond.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Well, okay, so Parabon says they can use it to
identify a pool of relatives. We know how this goes,
and then they find family members that are related to
the person whose DNA profile they have. In twenty eighteen,
a genealogist builds a family tree and identifies a group
of seven siblings who were born in Edmunds, Washington. Six
(45:45):
of the seven are men. One is a very likely
match for the profile. Of those six brothers, some have died,
but one of the men who are still living is
a guy named Terence Miller, and he is the guy.
This is seven years ago. He's in his mid seventies.
Do you want to know about him? Or what more
do you want? I mean, there's a little list of
(46:06):
stuff about him.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Mine most certainly can extrapolate exactly how they drill down
onto Terrence Miller. And then ultimately they got a direct
sample from him and did your classic core approved str
analysis that's you know, all the law enforcement databases CODIS
is built upon, and that direct comparison confirm that Terrence
(46:29):
Miller is the seaman donor on Jody's boot sort of.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
So they decide to get the sample surreptitiously. So I
know we've talked about that. I mean, you know what
they end up doing is they have all this information
about him. He does have a record that's connected to
sex offenses, including in his own family. In August of
twenty eighteen, they follow him to a casino where he
drinks from a coffee cup. He throws it away and
(46:57):
they say within thirty seconds they grabbed the coffee cup
and they say to the crime lab and there's a match.
Why would they have done this surreptitiously and not gone
through the warrants and everything else.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Oh, this is the classic way on how to approach
an investigation. So with this type of suspect, and it
takes time to do DNA, even when it's rushed, it
can take a day or several days if they approach him.
Let's say they go and get a search warrant, and
(47:33):
now they approach him and compel him to provide a
DNA sample unless they have lawful reason to detain them
for some reasons. And there's some times there's some aspects
that you can detain if he's got other crimes. In essence,
he's out of custody. Is he a flight risk? Is
he going to disappear on you? It can compromise the
(47:54):
investigation while you're waiting for DNA analysis. Is he destroying
physical evidence? Let's say the where he goes, Oh shit,
I still have the murder weapon and that's gone. So
you're better off in this type of situation of getting
that surreptitious sample and sounds like it was a match.
So Terence Miller, that's his semen on these boots. Now
(48:18):
you get the search warp and that search warrant isn't
just for his DNA. That search warrant is looking for
all the various types of evidence possibly related to Jody's homicide.
And now you can confront him and interview him, or
doesn't have the time. He hasn't had the time to
sit there and come up with a very sophisticated lie.
(48:40):
You catch him cold. So this is usually how these
types of cold cases in which genealogy has been done occur,
and you never make an arrest on genealogy. Genealogy just
points you and like in this instance, it pointed to
a family that had six men, and now they have
to evaluate those six men as to which one is
(49:02):
possibly Jody's offender. But you don't make an arrest when
you go, oh, well, Terrence looks like the likely one
because of his criminal history. You always always always get
that direct sample. You never arrest based off of genealogy.
It is strictly an investigative tool, an investigative lead.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
Well talking about you know, ambushing him and getting him
before he has a chance to do anything. After they
get the results. Within a few days. In November of
twenty eighteen, they have investigators in playing clothes. He's in
a ceramic shop. He owns a ceramic shop. They show up,
they see that he has printed out an article about
(49:40):
another local arrest using familial DNA evidence, I mean, which
is just if that's not a foreshadow, I don't know.
And of course he's arrested, you know, this happens sort
of quickly. But then there's also I still have to
tell you about his rap sheet. Essentially, he has a
history of sex offenses that makes law enforcement want to
(50:02):
check him first when they get this list of brothers.
So his DNA wasn't in any of the databases. Initially,
in the sixties he was arrested for lewd conduct and
for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. And in
the seventies it looks like he had offended against a
family member and was given the opportunity to go to counseling,
(50:23):
so when he did that, the charges were dismissed. He
had been married four times, not a crime, but one
of them, which was his first marriage, was to a
fourteen year old who was pregnant at the time when
he killed Jodie. He had three kids from his previous marriages.
He had a third wife, which ended in a divorce.
(50:44):
When here's a key thing, you know, I had thought
this is such a rural area, this must be a local.
He lived five miles away from the spot where he
murdered Jody and left her behind. Let me tell you
about the trial. So he's arrested in the spring of
twenty nineteen, he is charged in the case, goes to
trial in the fall of twenty twenty gosh, not long ago.
(51:05):
The initial bail was set at a million dollars, but
his attorney negotiated this to be seven hundred and fifty thousand,
and he's released on bond. People testify, but after closing arguments,
he gets to go home one last time while the
jury deliberates because he's out on bond, and he takes
his own life.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
I could have predicted that.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
On November ninth, twenty twenty two, and then, of course
the jury finds him guilty a few hours after that.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Is there any information as to did he make any
admissions when he was interviewed?
Speaker 1 (51:38):
No, I haven't seen anything about that. I mean, I
can do a quick check, but now, no admissions as
far as I know, and where he got that money.
So a bond is how much would that be? Is
that ten percent? How much do you have to put off?
Speaker 3 (51:51):
Yeah? I think it's ten percent. I'm not real familiar
with that.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Seventy five thousand. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
That's why is attorney negotiated specifically down to seven hundred
and fifty thousand, because he knew his client probably had
sufficient funds in order to be able to do the bond.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
So all of this is no justice for Jodie. And
in a way, yes, because you know, we find out
who the offender is. I don't know if for fiance
ever had a cloud of suspicion even though he had
a really solid alibi. We've done those cases before, but
this was not what the family wanted. Surely out of all.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
Of this, Yeah, they got an answer, and this is hard.
I can't speak, you know, to how the family would
feel about the circumstances of Terrence being let out and
taking his own life while out of custody. I could
assume they would be appalled at the fact that this
(52:45):
guy that's being accused of murdering and sexually assaulting and
murdering their twenty year old daughter is even being allowed
to be out of custody while he's going through trial. Yeah,
Terrence Miller's age probably was a actor that the judge
considered he's unlikely to be a flight risk. I'm surprised
for this type of crime that they reduced the amount
(53:09):
down to something that he could afford to post. So
I think the family rightfully would be very very upset
about that now, whether or not. I mean, they may
see him taking his own life as an easy way out.
You know, they'd want him to have to go through
the conviction, have to go through, you know, the impact statements,
the family's confronting him about, you know, the loss of
(53:30):
their loved one and what that has done to the family,
and then knowing that he would be in prison for
the rest of his life. You know, it is an
unfortunate ending to this. But at the same time, law
enforcement stayed on it, and you know, it was fortunate
that there was biological evidence on the boot.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah, and there are answers, I mean, thank goodness. One
of the things that's unfortunate to me is certainly I
wish that this had happened before the true when all started,
her sister, who was twelve at the time, had to
take the stand identify the boots that her sister had
borrowed from her. This was I'm sure traumatizing for the
family even decades later. But you know, at the same time,
(54:14):
there you are, you do have some answers. You do
have a face, You're not looking over your shoulder. I mean,
what if you're suspecting your neighbor, you know, I mean
that's probably where I would have headed, is maybe a
family member or maybe a neighbor or something. And knowing
that this guy is out there, I'm shocked that he
wasn't in CODIS.
Speaker 3 (54:32):
But I guess not based off the criminal history that
you provided. You have loud and Lusibus with a minor
back in the nineteen sixties. Sounds like he got a
slap on the wrist for what sounds like a sexual
abuse of a family member, which I'm assuming is another child.
That's a big, big mess up. And the justice system
right there, how old those crimes are, you know, it
(54:54):
really comes down to Washington's laws in terms of does
he qualify for cases that are that far back in
time to be sampled and put into CODIS. There's like
in Calishfordia, there is changes over time to where at
a certain point you could retroactive for these older cases.
(55:15):
You could go back and now get samples from sex
offenders that were convicted decades prior. But there's so many
sex offenders that qualify to be sampled, and they've never
been sampled, and they're just out in the public, and
there's money is available for agencies to be able to,
(55:37):
you know, dedicate resources to go out and track those
guys down and get their samples, but some agencies will
never follow through with it.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Well, we don't often have these cold cases that we
are able to follow up and say this is what
actually happened. So I'm grateful for that. I know you
like talking about genetic genealogy and DNA and all of
the advances. That's you know, what you work on all
the time. So this was a case that I'm glad
had closure, But to me, in some ways an unsatisfying ending.
(56:07):
What I'm hoping is is that, you know, next week
we can have some cases where we see true to
form justice. That's what I look for. I know I
don't always give them to you, but I really try.
We have a mixed bag when we were in the
eighteen hundreds, in the early nineteen hundreds, you just never know.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Sure, Well, every time I sit down to talk to you,
I never know what you're going to give me.
Speaker 1 (56:31):
That's the goal. Okay, I will see you for a
very different case next week.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Sounds great. Take care, Kate, me too.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
This has been an exactly right production for our.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
Sources and show notes go to exactly Rightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones Sources.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi.
Speaker 3 (56:54):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (57:06):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 2 (57:10):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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.