December 4, 2024 • 55 mins
In this week’s episode, the first part of a two-parter, Paul and Kate take us to late 1950s Los Angeles where a young model goes to a photo shoot and doesn't return. When a body is discovered, a manhunt for a possible serial killer begins.
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. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (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 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
True crimes, and I weigh in using modern forensic techniques
to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm doing really well. I feel like I have a
tiny bit of a hangover, even though I didn't drink yesterday.
It was my kid's birthday, my twins' birthday yesterday.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
A hangover just because of all the activity. I mean,
at first I thought, oh, good for you, Kate.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
It was all the sugar. So they insist on separate
cakes and all that, and I have to try both.
I mean, what are you gonna do? It would be
impolite to not do that, So I think I have
a little bit of a if you I know you
don't you're not a big sugar fan. Because of that,
I do feel hungover after sugar. I eat too much
sugar sometimes.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, you know, I pretty much cut out sweets with
one exception. But I haven't been eating sweets probably for
a decade. But every now and then I have to
have my scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
That's the exception. Okay. And you said you like ice cream.
We talked about We had the whole Halloween thing where
you said that you eat candy sometimes, but it's not
really your thing.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Right, No, not at all. I mean I do like it.
I just want to avoid the sugar. And in part
it is, you know, sort of like you're feeling bad
the next day. I get that.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, okay. One I wanted to ask, was you are
this big time forensic investigator you have worked with the police.
I want to know what can I expect for the
age of fifteen With my twins, they have just turned fifteen,
and they are they are getting their little provisional licenses
(02:20):
and like I already had taught them how to drive
on our family farm. They drove everywhere on the farm,
which was terrifying. For me, So what do I expect
at age I know you've had a couple of fifteen
year olds. What do I expect to have happened at
age fifteen? Or did you have perfect children?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Of course my kids are great up, but I've had
four go through that age. Oh my gosh, you know,
two boys and two girls. You know, And I think
this is everybody's experience, whether they remember back to age
fifteen or they are dealing with kids that are at
this age. Is this is now where you know, the
teenagers are getting their independence and you know, even though
(02:58):
they're still your kids, they start thinking independently. The concern is,
of course, what kind of online relationships are they're getting into.
They're going to keep certain things secret because they want
their independence. And you know, I think that you know
the best and I'm not necessarily the best person to
(03:19):
be making these statements, but you know, in terms of recommendations,
is you just have to keep open dialogue and keep
your kids knowledgeable about, you know, sort of the kind
of the bad things that are out there without scaring them.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, I think the without scaring them part is hard.
I have one kid who is super into horror films.
Does not like true crime, it scares her too much.
But she will watch literally anything so on my mom
So they watch stuff together all the time, every kind
of slasher anything, zombie anything. And then the other kid
just really started getting into true crime. We're looking at
(03:56):
all of the worst roommate ever, worst ex ever, Lacy Peterson.
I mean, everything that you can think of, she'll watch
or listen to. So, yeah, they're both sort of like
I feel like they're both kind of on edge, but
at the same time there maybe they're becoming a little
desensitized to that. And we do talk about online stuff
a lot, but they are, I will say, remarkably out
(04:18):
of their rooms for teenagers. They are always kind of
floating around me in our living room, which is nice,
but I know that still kids can be secretive, so
I just try to always keep an eye out.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, you know, and we really adopted the no electronic
devices in the bedrooms where they're isolated, you know, so
you know, they do have privacy when they're on their
electronic devices, but they also are aware that we at
any point could potentially, you know, check them out to
see what they're up to, you know, at that age,
you know, and then of course, I all my kids now,
(04:50):
I think my youngest she's turning seventeen this year, so
obviously now where my other kids are adults and they
do what they want and we just continue to advise them.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Did you ever use the tools at your disposal, i e.
Background checks or anything else on anybody who your kids
were hanging out with? For real? Honestly did you do that?
Because I would do it on everybody.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I can't recall anybody that my kids were interacting with,
both my older kids or younger kids, that gave me
great concern, good at all? You know what I did do?
Like when my oldest daughter, you know, she she got married,
you know, has her own kids. You know, she moved
to a new neighborhood. Of course I'm checking to see
(05:34):
who lives in that neighborhood, and you know, just advising her,
you know, be careful. Seems like a safe neighborhood. But
you know, in any neighborhood you potentially have people that
are registered sex offenders or have other criminal aspects to them.
But just because you can go online and see who's
(05:55):
living around, you don't forget that the people you don't
know about are probably the one have to be the
most concerned about, so you can't let your guard down.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Well, this has been a fantastic, light, fun little conversation
before we talk about Oh boy, what we're getting ready
to talk about. This is a two parter and you
are going to find out pretty quickly why. This is
a story that was recommended by actually several listeners. This
is set in LA, so this is sort of your
(06:24):
at least your state stomping grounds. And this is a
series of murders that I will tell you straight away
as a serial killer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Okay, you're what LA is known for. And you know,
even though I did my entire adult life and career
up in the Bay Area, you know, since I've retired,
I have spent a lot of time in LA for
the true crime side, you know, so I've gotten to
know LA much better than what I knew of it before.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Well, you're gonna really help me out with this story.
Let's go ahead and set the scene. Okay, nineteen fifty seven,
Los Angeles. I'm not sure we've done anything in LA.
Have we done a story in LA? I can't remember.
We're pretty deep into this show, So do you remember
in LA story? Not that I'm recalling Yeah, truly, La,
(07:10):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
We never did Black Dahlia, did we.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
No? I know people would love us to do it,
and we are probably going to do it in some
form or the other, but we have not done Black Dahlia, all.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Right, So no, I think this might be the first
one we've done.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, So nineteen fifty seven, Los Angeles, there is a
nineteen year old woman. Her name is Judy Ann Dull
and she's a model and she needs to make some
really fast money, which is a dangerous combination. I'm afraid.
She has a fourteen month old daughter, and she's in
the middle of a divorce and there is a big
(07:46):
custody dispute with the father, and so she needs money.
Nineteen boy, she needs money, and the quickest way for
her to get money as a doing some modeling. There's
a lot of demand for pin up style pictures, detective magazines,
and the covers of pulp novels. Now, you have kind
of made some comments about True Detective. I know there
(08:09):
is controversy around the True Detective magazine covers. Will you
give me any kind of background on that? Is it?
Because they're super sexy and exploitative, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh boy, where do I start?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh my gosh, keep it brief, But tell me what
why is it such a big deal?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah? Well, you know, I you know, I can remember
the true detective magazines or the various permutations. I mean,
there is a wide variety of different titled magazines, but
they all did the same thing. And yes they told stories,
true crime stories, and some of the articles are very
well written, but the type of imagery in these magazines
(08:48):
was very sillacious. There's a forensic psychiatrist who has an
article out and this is doctor Park deats and these
types of magazines. He related them as porn for the
sexual sadist because of the imagery. Because the imagery generally
is depicting women in very compromising positions, scantily clad with
(09:13):
you know, like an offender holding a knife to their
neck or a gun at them or chasing them down.
These women are often bound, and this is the type
of imagery that serial predators that are sexual sadists enjoy
because these women are obviously you could see the fear
depicted on their face being put into this imagery of
(09:38):
imminent violence. And so that's something I have seen over
and over again. I've got multiple examples that as serial
predators were identified, you know, back in the seventies, and
their residents were searched. Guess what was found true detective magazines.
That's where they're getting their fantasy material.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
You know. In our neighborhood in Austin. This was a
long time ago, and these residents have since moved. This
is probably five or six years ago. There were people
who lived on a major road in our neighborhood who
put up a depiction of what looked to me like
maybe like kind of a scene from Halloween or from
Friday the thirteenth, and it was a woman trying to
(10:19):
climb up a tree like a mannequin, definitely kind of
positioned as that sort of thing, and then someone chasing
after her. And you know, it was fake and it
was based on a movie, but it was disturbing kind
of the way that it was accurate in the way
that how terrified a woman looks right before she's being murdered.
And there was a lot of sort of protests and argument,
(10:41):
and finally I think they ended up taking it down.
But people were saying, I don't want to walk by
with my kid and see this kind of thing. It's
so violent looking and I don't think they meant anything
by it, but I totally get it when you see
some of those covers, and I just know you had
mentioned it before, so I wanted to clarify.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, you know, And it's just it is is a
particular type of imagery that does select type of offender
that not only do they get sexual gratification of looking
at that imagery, but it feeds their fantasy and it
can guide them on how they want to commit their crimes.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, Judy is someone who is a pin up model,
so she does that sort of thing. She is just
so you know, about five foot four, so probably not
a runway model, but she does do this photography one
hundred and ten pounds. So let's get back to the story.
She is in an apartment in West Hollywood and she's
with two other models. They're all young, eighteen to twenty two.
(11:42):
And Judy we don't know a lot about her as
far as her personality goes, but she's going through a
rough divorce and she needs money. So on Thursday, August first,
one of Judy's roommates has a gig she can make
this modeling gig, so she tells Judy, will you take
it for me? And Judy says yes, and a photographer
(12:03):
comes to the apartment to pick up Judy and he's
going to drive her to a photo studio for a shoot.
This would have been typical in nineteen fifty seven for
you know, the photographer to come and escort the person
to a studio. So I don't think anybody thought anything
of this. But when she doesn't come home that night,
her roommate Betty Carver, who's about eighteen, calls the photos
(12:26):
studio that the photographer left behind this phone number and
it's actually for a private residence and that people who
answer the phone have no idea what she's talking about.
So now she's worried.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Okay, so this wasn't the photographer's own residence. He gave
her a false address.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Correct, Yeah, a false phone number for this studio. So
Betty freaks out and she calls the police and says,
my roommate's missing. And it's great because for me, it's
good to hear this because she acts really quickly, and
you know, you and I talk about this sometimes, boy,
it takes forever for people to call the police. I've
actually been surprised in some of our cases that I
(13:04):
will say are quite old, where the parents kind of
just wait and wait, where the friends just wait and wait,
and it feels like it's much longer than twenty four hours.
And I don't think it's Naivety. I don't know if
it's the time period, but Betty jumps on it. She's
very concerned. So I had thought, I wonder if Betty
has encountered sleazy photographers as a model in the past
and was sort of always on guard.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, I would say that that's probably a good chance,
you know. But it's also you know, when we start
talking about reporting somebody missing, it's the circumstances, you know.
And oftentimes, and I think in some of these older cases,
you know, the societal culture within the time periods we've
talked about, Oh, you let your kids go out and
play and they come home at certain times, etc. And
(13:50):
so it takes a while for somebody recognize that, oh,
something is off, something's not right here. Betty knew that
Judy was going to go with a in essence, this photographer,
and that the general I would say, the business transaction
should have occurred that day, and Judy should have come home,
and when she doesn't come home, Betty's going, uh oh,
(14:11):
something's up.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And I was wondering why she didn't take somebody with her.
Taking a female friend or even a male friend will
not stop certain offenders, obviously, but it would have maybe
deterred him. I think this is the first time that
they had met this man, so I don't know. Again,
you know, we're definitely not thinking about blaming the victim.
It's just sort of I guess they felt like they
(14:33):
were comfortable enough where she could go by herself. Obviously,
this was a dicey situation.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I've just seen over and over from not as far
back in time as nineteen fifty seven, but from the
particularly the nineteen seventies, where individuals would just go and
meet potential employers, you know, by themselves, you know, including
I've got one one gal who went to meet serial
(15:01):
killer Roger Kibbi in his van in a parking lot,
and his excuse was, well, my office is being built,
you know, was at a shopping center that was under construction.
My office is being built here, you know, let's just
meet in my vehicle. It's almost that we were naive
about how predators operated and the victims just didn't recognize that.
(15:21):
Predators took advantage of this naivity, you know, and thought, well,
I'll be good. I'll just go meet with this guy.
He'll take me to a studio, take photos of me,
and then I get paid and I go back to
my apartment. I'm sure that's what Judy thought.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
You know. One of my girls we were talking about
a true crime story and one of my girls was
just floored that people used to hitchhike. She still can't
wrap her head around that. How would you ever get
into a stranger's car. I never did hitchhike, but it
was a very prevalent part of a culture, you know.
I mean, people felt comfortable with it, even though we
(15:55):
do know that throughout history people have been snatched off
the road through hitch hiking.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, you know, and this is part where your predators
go to where the praise at. Yeah, you know. So
you know, for predators. See, let's say it's not just women.
I mean men were hitch hiking. Men were being victimized
as well, but women were the primary targets, you know.
And then as time went on, people understood, oh, you know,
(16:22):
this is dangerous, it's so dangerous that now culturally, you
rarely see women hitchhiking. Today, you see men hitchhiking, but
you don't see women as as frequently as what was
happening back in the sixties and the nineteen seventies. And
it's because people started to recognize this is a bad scenario,
because the predators are now going, well, I'm just going
(16:43):
to go pick somebody who's going to voluntarily get in
my car. I don't have to get out and grab them.
You know, it makes it easy.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, Now I want to talk about witness descriptions. Okay,
because Betty, the roommate, tells the police when they respond,
it's the sheriff's deputy. When the sheriff's deputy response, she says, listen,
I got a great look at this guy, and I
can tell you exactly what he looks like. So she
says he is five foot nine, he has an olive complexion,
(17:09):
he wears horn rimmed glasses, and he weighs about one
hundred and fifty pounds. She says his name was Johnny Glenn.
That's what he said his name was. So, you know,
we don't know yet Johnny Glenn. You know, if he's involved,
or if this is just somebody who encounters a would
be victim and you know, somebody else meets with her
later on. But this description seems pretty specific. And I
(17:31):
know we've talked about kind of the inaccuracies of eyewitness
descriptions in the past. What do you think about Betty's
description five to nine all of complexion, glasses, one fifty,
one hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Well, you know, she's giving some pretty straightforward descriptors. It's
not vague, it's not oh, you know, five seven to
five eleven, one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds.
It seems like she's pretty solid in terms of this
is how big this guy is. He's got all of
complex at skin. She's recognizing or is able to recall
(18:01):
the type of glasses. I'm just kind of curious. It
was originally Betty that was supposed to meet with this photographers.
Do we know how she initially ran across him? Was
like an ad in the classifieds?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
You know, it was one of their roommates. So there
were three women living together, so it could have been
the third roommate and she wasn't there, But I'm not
sure if it was a classified situation or not. But
I do think we get a little bit more information
further down about you know, this photographer and kind of
where how he connects with victims.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, because obviously, you know, if he's given a false
phone number that goes to a residence, we don't know
the address of the studio where we took Judy. You know,
now investigatively, you're going to have to backtrack as to Okay,
how does you know the resident within this apartment come
across this photographer, How does that business transaction occur? And
(18:57):
what can be discerned from the information from that initial
transaction prior to Judy going with this photographer.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, Betty's instincts set off alarm bells with her with
Johnny Glenn, the photographer. She says, there's something off about
this guy. But you know, she said, see a Judy
and Judy left. She says that Johnny told Judy that
he wanted to shoot her for pin ups. But Betty
(19:24):
thought it was weird because he told Judy to bring
a selection of street clothes with her, which she did,
and Betty just thought that was really weird. Why would
she need street clothes as well as you know, something
that a pin up girl would wear, and then the
clothing that she was using. If it was just going
to be a shoot that was a couple of hours,
(19:45):
why would he say street clothes?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
You know that may, at least on the surface, may
be something where this photographer has got a model, And
it's just an absolute okay, if I'm going to have
this this woman posing for me, even though I have
maybe a customer that's going to be buying pin up
photos from me, I might as well take advantage of
this model and take other more standard photos for whatever
(20:12):
customer that photographer may have. It may be an innocent thing,
right now, I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Well, the timing of all of this is very strange
because Judy is actually due in court for this custody
hearing with the man that she's divorcing, and this fourteen
month old little girl, so she has been missing for
a few days. The Sheriff's department is investigating, but they
don't really have very much to go off of, right
there's no CCTV, there's no cell phones anything like that.
(20:41):
They're having a hard time tracing this guy. But the
newspapers pick up the story because she's a missing mom
who is a model, and they start digging in and
find out about this custody hearing, and the journalists start
to speculate that she is really just trying to skip
down and not go to this custody hearing for some reason.
(21:02):
This is totally baseless. You know, maybe they were accusing
her of maybe not having enough money and kind of
throwing up her hands and giving up, But her family
said absolutely in her roommate said she was planning to
be there, that she really wanted at least joint custody,
full custody of this little girl. A week later, after
she goes missing, is the hearing, and she is not
(21:23):
at the hearing, so the judge grants custody of the
little girl to the estranged husband, who is currently living
with his brother and his sister in law. The husband
perked my ears up a little bit before, I I mean,
I really try to kind of go into the story
thinking about who all the possible suspects could be, because
obviously this seems like Taylor made for an estranged husband
(21:47):
killing the wife so that he could get custody of
the little girl. But her ex husband is very worried.
He said, I don't think she would have skipped this.
I think something happened and that could have been all
for show. But man, the timing is really weird. If
the husband is not involved in her disappearance somehow.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Well, you know, at this point, we really don't know
what happened to Judy. We know she went to meet
up with this photographer. He picked her up, so at
least you know that there was that that connection had
been made. But after that point we don't know. Did
Judy finish the photography and did you know, did the
husband swing by? Was it pre arranged for her to
(22:26):
be picked up to take him back home, or you know,
do something else? Sounds like the state of the relationship
probably not. Did the husband follow the photographer out to
where Judy's at with bad intent? You know? And so
when Judy gets released, you know, he snatches her and
kills her. I mean, I think at this point it's
wide open. But obviously the investigatively, they have to possibly
(22:49):
figure out where the husband was, you know that day
that Judy went missing. Interview him, but you still have
to identify this photographer. This is the last person Judy
has seen with.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, tell me a little bit about you know, they say,
sort of the first forty eight hours. I would say,
would you think statistically that the longer this goes on,
the worse the news would be no matter what time
period we're talking about, right, I mean, is it really
like a kind of a rule that statistically things go
down really down fast after forty eight hours on being
(23:22):
able to locate somebody alive.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, it all is dependent upon the case and the
case circumstances. So when you start talking about cases that
you have a greater likelihood of them being solved within
the first forty eight hours. Oftentimes those are cases in
which there is a connection between the victim and the
offender and they are able to very rapidly do an
(23:47):
investigation and drill down onto somebody. As time goes on,
now the offender can separate themselves both temporarily as well
as distance wise geographic, from the crime itself and from
the connection to the victim, it does get harder, However,
(24:08):
I would not I know, you know, there's like the
TV show The First forty eight which I actually loved,
you know, it shows reality, right, but I would not
put any statistic on it. Obviously, there's criminologists that study
this type of thing, and they'll say, yeah, you know,
if you identify a suspect within the first forty eight
(24:28):
then you've got a much greater likelihood of solving the case.
But they're not teasing out the finer contextual details of
the each case separately because certain types of cases, the
solvability remains, but it takes longer for the investigation to
get to the point where now you can build probable
cause against the suspect. If that makes any type of sense,
(24:50):
you can't just say, oh, you know, if you don't
solve the case within the first forty eight hours, then
you have a ninety five percent less likelihood of being
able to solve the case. I just don't buy that.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Well, the trail goes cold for Judy, you know, just
weeks after she disappears. They're going to keep trying to
work the case, but they don't know where she is.
Her ex husband is worried. I was thinking about something
and I want to ask you about an emerging technology
because I was watching Gosh. I mean, I feel like
all I do is teach, write, do podcasts with you,
(25:22):
or consume true crime, and you know, deal with my kids.
And I was watching and then reading a case about
a technology they called an emerging technology that I thought
would have been interesting with this case where it's happening
in twenty twenty four, the geofencing stuff. Yeah, so I
had never heard of that. Will you explain it? So
(25:42):
it's like I'm thinking, whoever this photographer is shows up
at the door and then leaves, and police would be
able to try to figure out if he had a
cell phone today? Who has a cell phone in this
like block two block radius and start investigating those people.
Is that how geofencing kind of works?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It does, and that's so cool. I have to be
somewhat careful about what I say about geo fencing. You know.
This is something like when I was an FBI Task
Force officer. Of course, you know, the FEDS had technologies
that were being deployed in casework that were somewhat sensitive technologies,
(26:21):
and geofencing since that time has somewhat come into the
public domain and public has become more aware of it,
and it's become controversial because in essence, this is where
geo fencing you can put a let's say a boundary
over a geographic area and say I want to identify
(26:41):
all the smart devices that have location services turned on
within this area during this timeframe. This has been huge
at solving cases. However, let's say you were to draw
that boundary several city blocks downtown Manhattan. How many innocent
people are you scooping up within that geograph area during
(27:02):
that timeframe? And so many people look at this as
a as a Big Brother scenario. And now there's requirements
for search warrants making sure that you have a magistrate
that is overlooking you know what you are asking for
and saying Nope, that's overreaching, or will grant that. And
(27:23):
you know, Google has also come out saying that they're
going to get rid of the data, which just kills me,
you know, because this is such a valuable tool when
the case circumstances are appropriate for it to be used.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Wow. Well I was impressed because it felt like sort
of like the reverse of I don't know what to
how to even explain it, Like if you have a
suspect and you're able to figure out where their cell
phone is pinging, Now it's like the opposite. It's like, Okay,
well here's my victim, where my victim was dumped? Who
has been in this area? Is that kind of a
good example of how you would use it.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Well, let me let me give you a I'm gonna
call it a high pathetical scenario, but it's potentially a reality.
Is the Delphi case with the two young girls. They
definitely had a cell phone. They captured video of this
man walking across a railroad trestle coming at them. This
was in a relatively unpopulated area. They're at sort of
a park area that has very few people in there.
(28:20):
With something like a geo fence, you can say, give
me all the smart devices within this area, and you
could literally see the girl's smart device and the killer
smart device in essence pair up the killer approaching the girls,
and the girls were removed a distance from where that
railroad trestle was, and you could see the offender's smart
(28:41):
device also move with the girl's device. So it becomes
very compelling with the type of information as you tabulate
the information during the investigation. That is a scenario, and
again I'm just saying that's just a hypothetical scenario with Delphi,
but that is a scenario in which geo fencing is
(29:03):
an amazing technology and doesn't intrude upon you know this,
this idea that you're just you know, fishing and scooping
up a whole bunch of innocence people's locations.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
But you said location services has to be on for
this to work. Is that right.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I don't want to come off as an expert in
this technology, but it does in part utilize location services.
This is very different than cell phones ping and off
of cell towers. You know, you get much more granular
information from location services. If you've ever you know, used
Google Maps and it shows you exactly where you're at
(29:42):
on the freeway within a certain you know, margin of error, Well,
that's kind of the granular data you can get utilizing
a geofence.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Because I was thinking this is probably best used before
a murder happens, right, Like, if this is a crime
of passion murder and the killer is not expecting to
have to turn on location services, they're gonna be smart
enough to turn off the phone or take the SIM
card out and not bring the phone with them and
all of that. I think the case that I saw
(30:12):
it was who was hanging out with this guy at
the time, That was really what it was. I'm sure
before it entered anybody's mind to kill him. So does
that make sense to you that it's sort of like
a before the event happens, because when the event is
happening or after the murder is happening, I'm assuming the
killer is trying to get smart and start turning things off.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Oh that's just so variable, because.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
They're stupid sometimes, thank god, exactly. Well, I know this
was a long detour, but sometimes I'd like to I
would like to actually even more bring in some of
the new tools that I'm learning about and running past
you and anything that you have heard about, Like we
talked a little bit about AI. Because you now have
the inside lane here with Othrum, it's a reminder to
(30:56):
me of what a disadvantage the police are at in
nineteen fifty seven trying to find this woman, you.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Know, for sure, you know that's where you know. Of course,
over the course of my career with the types of cases,
I saw the progress of technology, you know, and what
we could do. You know, from let's say, starting out
in the mid nineties to when I retired in twenty
and eighteen, you know, the huge advances in technology, not
only just your typical forensic technology, but the high tech,
(31:26):
the pervasive cameras, the surveillance if you will that that
is out there. It is harder and harder for somebody
to move around and get away with committing a crime
without leaving some sort of evidence that law enforcement can
utilize in order to catch them. But in nineteen fifty seven,
(31:46):
they're so handicapped relative to today.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, well, let's get back to the case. In nineteen
fifty seven, Judy Doll is missing. We have no idea
who this photographer is. And we are now at the
end of December, so this is five months later. And boy,
I hate it when kids are the ones that make
these terrible discoveries. I feel like this is the twentieth
story of kids that I've told of kids stumbling onto
(32:11):
you know, really awful scenes from my book American Sherlock
Bessie Ferguson case you and I talked about. A little
kid was the one who found the scalp with the
ear attached that Oscar Heinrich had to use to try
to identify. It's just awful. But they're poking around and
doing stuff, you.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Know, that's just set. The kids are going out, they're
going to places where adults don't want to go. You know,
let's say, like down into the muddy marsh so they
can play and find the frogs or whatever they're they're
up to. And yeah, time and time again. Off, you
do have children discovering remains, just because they're the ones
that are out there doing their thing.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
The kids and the recycling the bottle, the bottle and
the canned collectors, right, you had said that too. Those
are also people who tend to run across bodies and
I said rowers on the on the legs and the rivers.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, yeah, the bottle collector. You know obviously that that
one is one that I've seen over and over again
from these older cases, just because you have people that
are scouring the creek beds looking for, you know, bottles
after a storm, after the water has rushed through old
bottles that had been discarded you know, way back in
the day. That have all said and appeared.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Well, unfortunately, these two little boys are I'm sure have
never forgotten this. They are ten and thirteen. They are
out hunting dove nests in the Hollywood Hills, pair of brothers.
They find bones, so this is five months later. They
find bones that look like a forearm, a wrist in
a hand. They take the bones to their neighbor, not
(33:41):
the parents. The neighbor. Maybe the parents weren't home, and
he's a doctor who thinks that they belonged to a
small adult, probably a woman. The police take the bones
to a different physician, not a corner. It sounds like
a medical examiner, a different doctor who says that he
thinks the bones have been exposed for less than five years.
(34:03):
He says, because there's still skin on the hand, is
that a good assessment? That's another little aside, is it?
What do you think about that skin on the hand?
Does that mean anything?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Well, if there is any tissue, then it is variable
in terms of how long the tissue is going to persist.
But if this is you know, let's say the lower
arm bones and the hand, and it's actually surface, you know,
you do have the environmental insults. You have decomposition. You
have environmental insults, whether it be you know, the sun
(34:34):
desiccating the tissue. You have rain moisture that's going to
allow you know, bacteria and other microorganisms to further degrade
this tissue. Of course, you have carnivorous animals and insects
that will go after it. If her arm this I'm
assuming this is Judy, her arm is exposed then and
(34:58):
on the surface have all this stuff going on. But
if it's during the warm, warmer months, it's possible she
mummified and then now you get almost like a raw
hide with the skin, and then that can persist for
a longer period of time. If she does mummify. For
the pathologist or this doctor to say, you know, within
five years, that's probably as good as you can say
(35:22):
with just that limited type of information that he's evaluating,
just because of the variability of how long it takes
for a body to fully skeletonize.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Well, I had wondered in nineteen fifty seven, how would
they identify her? Judy is one of several missing women
in LA and I thought, well, how would they even
do that in nineteen fifty seven. I mean, now what
it would be DNA? I'm assuming right.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, it can be DNA, But there's still the tried
and trude methods, you know, dental comparisons as well as
radiographic comparisons where let's say Judy had had a broken
leg during life and there are some X rays of
that and these remains have the same fracture. You know,
(36:09):
a radiologist or an anthropologist today could look at, you know,
the healing of the bone, the way the bone healed,
the various random features that develop within everybody's bones, and
go this this, let's say, femur of these remains matches
the femur of Judy while she was alive, after it
(36:30):
was taken, you know, when when she broke her legs,
as a hypothetical scenario, and there could be unusual things,
you know, tattoos. Yeah, you know, if you if you
have the remains with a very unusual tattoo and you
have photos of that tattoo on the victim during life,
that can also be used. So there's a variety of
other mechanisms that are still utilized today in addition to DNA.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
You know, I was reading a little bit about the
radiocarbon dating being used to test on the human bone,
whether it's ancient or modern, and I did not know
this that it's helpful, because in the fifties and the
sixties there was a massive spike in radiocarbon in the
atmosphere because of the nuclear testing, and that's been some
sort of a I don't know if it's like a
touchstone or what that is where it makes it much
(37:14):
more useful to be able to figure out, you know,
who the person is or someone's age. Does that sound
right to you?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah? You know, and radioisotope analysis is a fascinating forensic tool.
And whether it's you're dealing with the carbon aging, which
generally is are you dealing with ancient remains like indigenous remains,
or are you dealing with somebody who's modern. And of
(37:41):
course throughout geologic history, there's all these various alterations to
these radio isotopes in any particular environment that as we live,
we absorb the ratio of these different radioisotopes into our body.
And so expert when they do this radioisotope analysis will
(38:03):
look for those types of kind of those weird anomalous
aspects to help determine what they can What does this
mean in terms of the radioisotopic analysis, You know, part
of it is let's say, yeah, human remains that are
recovered in Florida, but they do radio isotopic analysis and
they note that, oh, hold on, you know, the radioisotopes
(38:25):
don't match what we expect for somebody who lived their
entire life in Florida. It's more consistent with somebody from
the Seattle area something like that, and so now investigators
can focus on missing persons out of Seattle to see
if any of them match up with this the set
of unidentified human remains found in Florida. It's something that
it's a really cool tool, but it really isn't utilized
(38:51):
that frequently.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Well, we cannot identify whether these bones belong to Judy
as of right now.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
So they only find the lower arm bones and handbones.
They don't find the rest of her remains at this time.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
That's right. Right now, they have just found a fore arm,
wrist in a hand with skin, a little bit skin
on the hand and that's it. So I'm assuming what
scavengers animals have taken care of the rest.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
You know potentially or the you know, the arm was
drug away by a you know, carnivorous animal of decent size,
like you know, a coyote in the Hollywood Hills, and
so the rest of this these remains could be a
distance away, possibly buried. There is the possibility of, let's say,
(39:40):
especially like somebody Judy size, where you could have certain
types of animals, notably like wild hog that will consume
bone and all and they eat carry on or you know,
dead remains, that's just you know. I have, you know,
one case, Zona Fairchild in which only her skull was found,
(40:00):
and that was in the Los Gatos Hills. She was
a young girl that was murdered, and I became very
very close with her mom. But part of my early
thrust into Sianna's case was to find the rest of her.
But then when I saw that, you know, you had
the wild boar you know in this area. It's like
if she was a surface deposit and her killer, Kurtistine
(40:21):
Anderson said, yes, she was a surface deposit. Chances are
she was consumed except for her skull.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Ah, well that's all I think we end up having
from whoever that victim is. But we're now looking at
let's see August so Soti murderers and Regina Firmark seven
months you heard me do math seven months later. So
this is, as I said before, a serial killer case.
And now we're on victim number two, who is Shirley Bridgeford.
(40:50):
She is going through a lonely hearts club and it's
a social club where it's not like a bunch of
people meet and they're mingling around. They actually set you
up with a date it's a blind date. So this
man she's never met shows up at her mom's house
it sounds like, and picks her up. They're going, you know,
out to dinner, and he introduces him himself as George
(41:12):
Williams and he says he lives in Pasadena, and then
Shirley never comes home.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Wow, you know, in some ways, it's sort of like
the dating apps today. Now, what I'm keying in on
is he's picking Shirley up at her house. You know,
does he come to the door, does the mom see him,
does mom see his car, do neighbors see him? You know,
(41:38):
at there's a level of risk that he's taking. If
this George Williams is Shirley's killer, you know, he's not
being very careful right as opposed to today oftentimes predators
are going to you know, I always say lore and
isolate and the more sophisticated, intelligent offenders are going to
(42:00):
think enough ahead of time to minimize you know, them
being identified and wouldn't be going to the victim's house
and being seen in her neighborhood with their own car
and their own you know, license plate, you know, on
So that's that's interesting that if this George Williams is
this killer that he has put a higher level of
(42:23):
risk with how he is physically connecting with Shirley.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
And I think, you know, Shirley's mother calls the police,
and the police respond and they start getting descriptions. And
what's fascinating about the descriptions are they're pretty different. So
we have to kind of do some comparisons. Number One,
compare the description of the man who picked up Judy
(42:48):
the photographer, because we know that this is a serial
killer case, and we know these cases are connected. I
spoiled all that earlier. Then we've got Shirley's mom and
sister are both and they meet George Williams. They give
a description, George Williams, Paul has gone on a date
before through this Lonely Hearts club, didn't kill the woman.
(43:11):
She gave a description. So these are varying descriptions, and
I have the sketches, and the sketches are you can
tell me what you think about that. So now I
kind of circle right back to the accuracy because you know,
I can I can give you the description of what
Shirley's mom and sisters say George Williams look like. So
(43:31):
let me tell you the description, so I'll remind you.
And this is the benefit of knowing that this is
indeed the same man. Let me remind you of the
description from Betty of the man who picked up her
friend Judy. So Betty says that the guy was five nine,
all of complexion, he had horned room glasses, and he
(43:52):
was about one hundred and fifty pounds. Yes, so Shirley's
mom says that this guy was between twenty five and
thirty five years old. He was six feet tall and
had brown hair and a mustache and blue eyes. She
said he wore glasses. So the Lonely Hearts Club says,
this guy actually was a lot shorter. He was between
(44:13):
five seven and five nine, clean shaven, but no glasses.
So we have three different descriptions for someone who we
eventually know is the same man.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
And none of this is concerning to me in terms
of the variants between these descriptions from these different witnesses.
You know, estimation of height, you know, that's sometimes is
dependent upon the witness's own stature and how close they
actually got to the person they are describing. And even
(44:44):
if they're close to somebody, you know, let's say you
take a five foot woman and asks them to estimate
the height of a man that's taller than them by
ten inches or more, you're going to see a pretty
wide variance. You know, they're looking up at this guy,
and it's you know, it just all depends on that
particular witness's own personal abilities, age range, you know, that's
(45:08):
that's not of concern, you know, in terms of you
know how he's obviously not an older guy, you know,
but twenty five to thirty five, maybe he's twenty two
to forty, you know, just but then things like clean
shaven versus mustache. I mean, he utilized Lonely Hearts Club
before to date this woman, and then time has passed,
(45:30):
you know, Facial hair can come and go, you know.
So you have that temporal aspect in which somebody's a
physical appearance is changing, as is you know, their complexion,
you know, winter versus summer, does this sky tan doesn't tan?
You know, fundamentally, sort of the three descriptions they all
fall within. I would say just a normal parameter that
(45:53):
one person could be described as by three different witnesses.
You don't have somebody saying this guy six foot ten
or he's four foot nine. He's just right in the
middle of the average Caucasian male here in the United States.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Let me show you the sketches real quick. So here
are the sketches, and someone does mention a mustache, but
I mean a mustache could easily be shaved off. Obviously.
He went on the date with the woman who he
didn't kill two weeks beforehand. So I don't know what
happened with that. I don't know if he intended to
kill her and decided he didn't want to or what.
(46:29):
But the woman said he was a perfect gentleman. And
here are the two sketches, which of course look incredibly similar.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, so, I you know, first thing I'm noticing is
that this was the sketches appeared in a local newspaper
March fifteenth, nineteen fifty eight. That's ten years before my
actual birth date. Ah right, the IDEs of March a
decade before. No, but I see these two sketches and
the sketch on the left. Actually, you know, I would
(46:59):
say I am surprised at how remarkably similar these two
sketches are. From it appears that this man has sort
of a narrow face with a you know, somewhat prominent nose,
high forehead, you know, the hairline, and both sketches is
roughly the same. Proportions of the height of the face
(47:22):
with the face, even the way that the ears protrude
are consistent. You know, there are some visual differences, but
at first glance, you know, structurally, morphologically, I guess would
be the term i'd use. These look very similar. The
sketch on the right shows the man with the glasses on.
(47:44):
But I guess I was expecting to see something that
was between these two sketches that would be completely different.
And I'm at least to my eyes, you know, and
everybody perceives things differently, but to my eyes, I'm going, wow,
you know, this could be the same person.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
And I had wondered, I we've never talked about sketch
artists before, but I had wondered, well, what if it's
the same sketch artist and he or she is hearing
these details again? And it's sort of sort of falling
into not a rut, but you know, they're kind of
they have like a playbook. But this to me does
not look like the same artist doing the one on
the left versus the one. It's a totally different aesthetic.
(48:22):
I think, you know, the one on the right doesn't
look very finished, and you could tell that it's just
to me, it looks like a different style. And if
that's the case, they are very similar and very accurate
as witnesses.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, you know, and sketch artists. You know, there's a
wide variety of skill sets, and some of the sketches
from the Golden State Killer series, you could see some
of them look like you know, kids drawing the sketches
with crayon basically versus you know, bona fide artists. But
it takes more than just being able to draw good
(48:55):
You have to be able to interpret somebody's description. And
this is such a hard thing to you know, sit
down and describe a face. You know, that is very
hard to do. And the best sketch artists are ones
that are able to really work with the witness and
refine their sketches until that witness is like, yes, that's
(49:17):
the person that I saw. But there is concern that
if you're utilizing the same sketch artists, let's say, in
a series sort of what you're talking about is that
are you going to have somebody who's biased from a
previous sketch and a previous witness going, oh, this sounds
like the same person and alters subconsciously their sketch. And
(49:37):
I agree with you. These two sketches look like two
different artists. And the fact that they overlap so much
in these gross features of this man's face, I think
gives greater veracity that this is really within the you know,
the spectrum, as close as it can be as to
what the actual person looks like.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
The city council is really ticked off, and there's a
councilman who wants to investigate the Lone Hearts Club because
they find out that the address that George Williams gave
in Pasadena is not an accurate address. They say he
does not live here. We have no idea who that is.
As I said, he went on a date a couple
of weeks beforehand, and the date said that everything went
(50:20):
really well and it was no big deal and he
was a total gentleman. You know. Now we've got these
two women who have gone missing. They are it seems
like very similar. There's similar the women are similar heights,
and they are similar weights. And I know that you
said that that is not a thing and that that
is a little bit more overblown than it should be.
(50:42):
Right that serial killers have a real specific type.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Killers may have an idealized victim in their fantasy. However,
in reality, in terms of getting access to victims, it's
very hard to just find one victim after another that
meets this idealized image, and so they often will take
whatever victim that they can get, you know, and that's
(51:06):
where you do see this huge variance in terms of
the physical characteristics of the victims or the age characteristics
of the victims, et cetera, from the same offender. Now,
it's interesting the utilization of this Lonely Hearts club because
he does go out on a prior.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Date and doesn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, I would venture this was a trial run. He
hadn't utilized the Lonely Hearts club before, so he had
to gain familiarity with the actual process of how he
would be able to, you know, utilize the club, see
if he could get away by anonymizing using a you know,
(51:45):
a fake name, fake address, and then how the connection
with the victim actually went and everything else. So I
think he's just he's gaining familiarity, and so he goes
through maybe this this first date that victim wasn't you know,
somebody that satisfied what his idealized, you know, victim for
(52:08):
his fantasy, what he required. Maybe there was you know,
circumstances that caused him to move off of actually victimizing her.
Maybe too many people saw them together, et cetera. And
he's going, oh, no, I'll get caught if I do
anything to this gal. But I think he's doing a
trial run. You know. It's I like in this, you
think about a predator who has never gone into a
(52:31):
stroll area to pick up a sex worker before. They're
not going to pick up a victim the first time
they do that. They have to kind of learn that
culture and see how to navigate that type of area.
And so they'll do trial runs and they interact with
lots of these women on the streets that they never
kill as they get comfortable. I think that that is
(52:53):
possibly what is going on with this offender with the
Lonely Hearts Club thing. He's doing a trial run, and
then two weeks later he picks Shirley up because now
he knows he can go ahead and get away with
how he set things up.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
Well, they find out that Shirley had told her mother
We're going to a dance. George Williams comes and picks
her up and they leave. She is missing. The police
check with the folks at the dance who were throwing
this dance. They never showed up. Nobody matched, which we
figured would happen. The trail unfortunately goes cold. They have
(53:29):
not identified Judy as the bones that were found by
the two little boys. They have not found Shirley's body,
and everything is cold until four months later, and then
we have another victim. This is almost exactly a year
to when Judy went missing, so this will be three
(53:49):
victims within one year, and we have officially a serial
killer on our hands. And the rest of the story
will have to wait until next week.
Speaker 2 (53:57):
No, I know, you know serial predators or Mike Wheelhouse.
I know I'm gobbling all of this up. So I'm
looking forward to hearing you know the rest of the story,
so to speak.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Okay, I will see you next week and hopefully, you know,
we can get some more answers because this is such
an incredible case.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
YEP, looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
This has been an exactly right production for our.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com slash
Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Research by Maren mcclashan, ali Elkin, Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
ary Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decote the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (55:02):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (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 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
True crimes, and I weigh in using modern forensic techniques
to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I'm doing really well. I feel like I have a
tiny bit of a hangover, even though I didn't drink yesterday.
It was my kid's birthday, my twins' birthday yesterday.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
A hangover just because of all the activity. I mean,
at first I thought, oh, good for you, Kate.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
It was all the sugar. So they insist on separate
cakes and all that, and I have to try both.
I mean, what are you gonna do? It would be
impolite to not do that, So I think I have
a little bit of a if you I know you
don't you're not a big sugar fan. Because of that,
I do feel hungover after sugar. I eat too much
sugar sometimes.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, you know, I pretty much cut out sweets with
one exception. But I haven't been eating sweets probably for
a decade. But every now and then I have to
have my scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
That's the exception. Okay. And you said you like ice cream.
We talked about We had the whole Halloween thing where
you said that you eat candy sometimes, but it's not
really your thing.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Right, No, not at all. I mean I do like it.
I just want to avoid the sugar. And in part
it is, you know, sort of like you're feeling bad
the next day. I get that.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, okay. One I wanted to ask, was you are
this big time forensic investigator you have worked with the police.
I want to know what can I expect for the
age of fifteen With my twins, they have just turned fifteen,
and they are they are getting their little provisional licenses
(02:20):
and like I already had taught them how to drive
on our family farm. They drove everywhere on the farm,
which was terrifying. For me, So what do I expect
at age I know you've had a couple of fifteen
year olds. What do I expect to have happened at
age fifteen? Or did you have perfect children?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Of course my kids are great up, but I've had
four go through that age. Oh my gosh, you know,
two boys and two girls. You know, And I think
this is everybody's experience, whether they remember back to age
fifteen or they are dealing with kids that are at
this age. Is this is now where you know, the
teenagers are getting their independence and you know, even though
(02:58):
they're still your kids, they start thinking independently. The concern is,
of course, what kind of online relationships are they're getting into.
They're going to keep certain things secret because they want
their independence. And you know, I think that you know
the best and I'm not necessarily the best person to
(03:19):
be making these statements, but you know, in terms of recommendations,
is you just have to keep open dialogue and keep
your kids knowledgeable about, you know, sort of the kind
of the bad things that are out there without scaring them.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, I think the without scaring them part is hard.
I have one kid who is super into horror films.
Does not like true crime, it scares her too much.
But she will watch literally anything so on my mom
So they watch stuff together all the time, every kind
of slasher anything, zombie anything. And then the other kid
just really started getting into true crime. We're looking at
(03:56):
all of the worst roommate ever, worst ex ever, Lacy Peterson.
I mean, everything that you can think of, she'll watch
or listen to. So, yeah, they're both sort of like
I feel like they're both kind of on edge, but
at the same time there maybe they're becoming a little
desensitized to that. And we do talk about online stuff
a lot, but they are, I will say, remarkably out
(04:18):
of their rooms for teenagers. They are always kind of
floating around me in our living room, which is nice,
but I know that still kids can be secretive, so
I just try to always keep an eye out.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, you know, and we really adopted the no electronic
devices in the bedrooms where they're isolated, you know, so
you know, they do have privacy when they're on their
electronic devices, but they also are aware that we at
any point could potentially, you know, check them out to
see what they're up to, you know, at that age,
you know, and then of course, I all my kids now,
(04:50):
I think my youngest she's turning seventeen this year, so
obviously now where my other kids are adults and they
do what they want and we just continue to advise them.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Did you ever use the tools at your disposal, i e.
Background checks or anything else on anybody who your kids
were hanging out with? For real? Honestly did you do that?
Because I would do it on everybody.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I can't recall anybody that my kids were interacting with,
both my older kids or younger kids, that gave me
great concern, good at all? You know what I did do?
Like when my oldest daughter, you know, she she got married,
you know, has her own kids. You know, she moved
to a new neighborhood. Of course I'm checking to see
(05:34):
who lives in that neighborhood, and you know, just advising her,
you know, be careful. Seems like a safe neighborhood. But
you know, in any neighborhood you potentially have people that
are registered sex offenders or have other criminal aspects to them.
But just because you can go online and see who's
(05:55):
living around, you don't forget that the people you don't
know about are probably the one have to be the
most concerned about, so you can't let your guard down.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Well, this has been a fantastic, light, fun little conversation
before we talk about Oh boy, what we're getting ready
to talk about. This is a two parter and you
are going to find out pretty quickly why. This is
a story that was recommended by actually several listeners. This
is set in LA, so this is sort of your
(06:24):
at least your state stomping grounds. And this is a
series of murders that I will tell you straight away
as a serial killer.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Okay, you're what LA is known for. And you know,
even though I did my entire adult life and career
up in the Bay Area, you know, since I've retired,
I have spent a lot of time in LA for
the true crime side, you know, so I've gotten to
know LA much better than what I knew of it before.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Well, you're gonna really help me out with this story.
Let's go ahead and set the scene. Okay, nineteen fifty seven,
Los Angeles. I'm not sure we've done anything in LA.
Have we done a story in LA? I can't remember.
We're pretty deep into this show, So do you remember
in LA story? Not that I'm recalling Yeah, truly, La,
(07:10):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
We never did Black Dahlia, did we.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
No? I know people would love us to do it,
and we are probably going to do it in some
form or the other, but we have not done Black Dahlia, all.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Right, So no, I think this might be the first
one we've done.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, So nineteen fifty seven, Los Angeles, there is a
nineteen year old woman. Her name is Judy Ann Dull
and she's a model and she needs to make some
really fast money, which is a dangerous combination. I'm afraid.
She has a fourteen month old daughter, and she's in
the middle of a divorce and there is a big
(07:46):
custody dispute with the father, and so she needs money.
Nineteen boy, she needs money, and the quickest way for
her to get money as a doing some modeling. There's
a lot of demand for pin up style pictures, detective magazines,
and the covers of pulp novels. Now, you have kind
of made some comments about True Detective. I know there
(08:09):
is controversy around the True Detective magazine covers. Will you
give me any kind of background on that? Is it?
Because they're super sexy and exploitative, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh boy, where do I start?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh my gosh, keep it brief, But tell me what
why is it such a big deal?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah? Well, you know, I you know, I can remember
the true detective magazines or the various permutations. I mean,
there is a wide variety of different titled magazines, but
they all did the same thing. And yes they told stories,
true crime stories, and some of the articles are very
well written, but the type of imagery in these magazines
(08:48):
was very sillacious. There's a forensic psychiatrist who has an
article out and this is doctor Park deats and these
types of magazines. He related them as porn for the
sexual sadist because of the imagery. Because the imagery generally
is depicting women in very compromising positions, scantily clad with
(09:13):
you know, like an offender holding a knife to their
neck or a gun at them or chasing them down.
These women are often bound, and this is the type
of imagery that serial predators that are sexual sadists enjoy
because these women are obviously you could see the fear
depicted on their face being put into this imagery of
(09:38):
imminent violence. And so that's something I have seen over
and over again. I've got multiple examples that as serial
predators were identified, you know, back in the seventies, and
their residents were searched. Guess what was found true detective magazines.
That's where they're getting their fantasy material.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
You know. In our neighborhood in Austin. This was a
long time ago, and these residents have since moved. This
is probably five or six years ago. There were people
who lived on a major road in our neighborhood who
put up a depiction of what looked to me like
maybe like kind of a scene from Halloween or from
Friday the thirteenth, and it was a woman trying to
(10:19):
climb up a tree like a mannequin, definitely kind of
positioned as that sort of thing, and then someone chasing
after her. And you know, it was fake and it
was based on a movie, but it was disturbing kind
of the way that it was accurate in the way
that how terrified a woman looks right before she's being murdered.
And there was a lot of sort of protests and argument,
(10:41):
and finally I think they ended up taking it down.
But people were saying, I don't want to walk by
with my kid and see this kind of thing. It's
so violent looking and I don't think they meant anything
by it, but I totally get it when you see
some of those covers, and I just know you had
mentioned it before, so I wanted to clarify.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, you know, And it's just it is is a
particular type of imagery that does select type of offender
that not only do they get sexual gratification of looking
at that imagery, but it feeds their fantasy and it
can guide them on how they want to commit their crimes.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Well, Judy is someone who is a pin up model,
so she does that sort of thing. She is just
so you know, about five foot four, so probably not
a runway model, but she does do this photography one
hundred and ten pounds. So let's get back to the story.
She is in an apartment in West Hollywood and she's
with two other models. They're all young, eighteen to twenty two.
(11:42):
And Judy we don't know a lot about her as
far as her personality goes, but she's going through a
rough divorce and she needs money. So on Thursday, August first,
one of Judy's roommates has a gig she can make
this modeling gig, so she tells Judy, will you take
it for me? And Judy says yes, and a photographer
(12:03):
comes to the apartment to pick up Judy and he's
going to drive her to a photo studio for a shoot.
This would have been typical in nineteen fifty seven for
you know, the photographer to come and escort the person
to a studio. So I don't think anybody thought anything
of this. But when she doesn't come home that night,
her roommate Betty Carver, who's about eighteen, calls the photos
(12:26):
studio that the photographer left behind this phone number and
it's actually for a private residence and that people who
answer the phone have no idea what she's talking about.
So now she's worried.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Okay, so this wasn't the photographer's own residence. He gave
her a false address.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Correct, Yeah, a false phone number for this studio. So
Betty freaks out and she calls the police and says,
my roommate's missing. And it's great because for me, it's
good to hear this because she acts really quickly, and
you know, you and I talk about this sometimes, boy,
it takes forever for people to call the police. I've
actually been surprised in some of our cases that I
(13:04):
will say are quite old, where the parents kind of
just wait and wait, where the friends just wait and wait,
and it feels like it's much longer than twenty four hours.
And I don't think it's Naivety. I don't know if
it's the time period, but Betty jumps on it. She's
very concerned. So I had thought, I wonder if Betty
has encountered sleazy photographers as a model in the past
and was sort of always on guard.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, I would say that that's probably a good chance,
you know. But it's also you know, when we start
talking about reporting somebody missing, it's the circumstances, you know.
And oftentimes, and I think in some of these older cases,
you know, the societal culture within the time periods we've
talked about, Oh, you let your kids go out and
play and they come home at certain times, etc. And
(13:50):
so it takes a while for somebody recognize that, oh,
something is off, something's not right here. Betty knew that
Judy was going to go with a in essence, this photographer,
and that the general I would say, the business transaction
should have occurred that day, and Judy should have come home,
and when she doesn't come home, Betty's going, uh oh,
(14:11):
something's up.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And I was wondering why she didn't take somebody with her.
Taking a female friend or even a male friend will
not stop certain offenders, obviously, but it would have maybe
deterred him. I think this is the first time that
they had met this man, so I don't know. Again,
you know, we're definitely not thinking about blaming the victim.
It's just sort of I guess they felt like they
(14:33):
were comfortable enough where she could go by herself. Obviously,
this was a dicey situation.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I've just seen over and over from not as far
back in time as nineteen fifty seven, but from the
particularly the nineteen seventies, where individuals would just go and
meet potential employers, you know, by themselves, you know, including
I've got one one gal who went to meet serial
(15:01):
killer Roger Kibbi in his van in a parking lot,
and his excuse was, well, my office is being built,
you know, was at a shopping center that was under construction.
My office is being built here, you know, let's just
meet in my vehicle. It's almost that we were naive
about how predators operated and the victims just didn't recognize that.
(15:21):
Predators took advantage of this naivity, you know, and thought, well,
I'll be good. I'll just go meet with this guy.
He'll take me to a studio, take photos of me,
and then I get paid and I go back to
my apartment. I'm sure that's what Judy thought.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
You know. One of my girls we were talking about
a true crime story and one of my girls was
just floored that people used to hitchhike. She still can't
wrap her head around that. How would you ever get
into a stranger's car. I never did hitchhike, but it
was a very prevalent part of a culture, you know.
I mean, people felt comfortable with it, even though we
(15:55):
do know that throughout history people have been snatched off
the road through hitch hiking.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, you know, and this is part where your predators
go to where the praise at. Yeah, you know. So
you know, for predators. See, let's say it's not just women.
I mean men were hitch hiking. Men were being victimized
as well, but women were the primary targets, you know.
And then as time went on, people understood, oh, you know,
(16:22):
this is dangerous, it's so dangerous that now culturally, you
rarely see women hitchhiking. Today, you see men hitchhiking, but
you don't see women as as frequently as what was
happening back in the sixties and the nineteen seventies. And
it's because people started to recognize this is a bad scenario,
because the predators are now going, well, I'm just going
(16:43):
to go pick somebody who's going to voluntarily get in
my car. I don't have to get out and grab them.
You know, it makes it easy.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, Now I want to talk about witness descriptions. Okay,
because Betty, the roommate, tells the police when they respond,
it's the sheriff's deputy. When the sheriff's deputy response, she says, listen,
I got a great look at this guy, and I
can tell you exactly what he looks like. So she
says he is five foot nine, he has an olive complexion,
(17:09):
he wears horn rimmed glasses, and he weighs about one
hundred and fifty pounds. She says his name was Johnny Glenn.
That's what he said his name was. So, you know,
we don't know yet Johnny Glenn. You know, if he's involved,
or if this is just somebody who encounters a would
be victim and you know, somebody else meets with her
later on. But this description seems pretty specific. And I
(17:31):
know we've talked about kind of the inaccuracies of eyewitness
descriptions in the past. What do you think about Betty's
description five to nine all of complexion, glasses, one fifty,
one hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Well, you know, she's giving some pretty straightforward descriptors. It's
not vague, it's not oh, you know, five seven to
five eleven, one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds.
It seems like she's pretty solid in terms of this
is how big this guy is. He's got all of
complex at skin. She's recognizing or is able to recall
(18:01):
the type of glasses. I'm just kind of curious. It
was originally Betty that was supposed to meet with this photographers.
Do we know how she initially ran across him? Was
like an ad in the classifieds?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
You know, it was one of their roommates. So there
were three women living together, so it could have been
the third roommate and she wasn't there, But I'm not
sure if it was a classified situation or not. But
I do think we get a little bit more information
further down about you know, this photographer and kind of
where how he connects with victims.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, because obviously, you know, if he's given a false
phone number that goes to a residence, we don't know
the address of the studio where we took Judy. You know,
now investigatively, you're going to have to backtrack as to Okay,
how does you know the resident within this apartment come
across this photographer, How does that business transaction occur? And
(18:57):
what can be discerned from the information from that initial
transaction prior to Judy going with this photographer.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Well, Betty's instincts set off alarm bells with her with
Johnny Glenn, the photographer. She says, there's something off about
this guy. But you know, she said, see a Judy
and Judy left. She says that Johnny told Judy that
he wanted to shoot her for pin ups. But Betty
(19:24):
thought it was weird because he told Judy to bring
a selection of street clothes with her, which she did,
and Betty just thought that was really weird. Why would
she need street clothes as well as you know, something
that a pin up girl would wear, and then the
clothing that she was using. If it was just going
to be a shoot that was a couple of hours,
(19:45):
why would he say street clothes?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
You know that may, at least on the surface, may
be something where this photographer has got a model, And
it's just an absolute okay, if I'm going to have
this this woman posing for me, even though I have
maybe a customer that's going to be buying pin up
photos from me, I might as well take advantage of
this model and take other more standard photos for whatever
(20:12):
customer that photographer may have. It may be an innocent thing,
right now, I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Well, the timing of all of this is very strange
because Judy is actually due in court for this custody
hearing with the man that she's divorcing, and this fourteen
month old little girl, so she has been missing for
a few days. The Sheriff's department is investigating, but they
don't really have very much to go off of, right
there's no CCTV, there's no cell phones anything like that.
(20:41):
They're having a hard time tracing this guy. But the
newspapers pick up the story because she's a missing mom
who is a model, and they start digging in and
find out about this custody hearing, and the journalists start
to speculate that she is really just trying to skip
down and not go to this custody hearing for some reason.
(21:02):
This is totally baseless. You know, maybe they were accusing
her of maybe not having enough money and kind of
throwing up her hands and giving up, But her family
said absolutely in her roommate said she was planning to
be there, that she really wanted at least joint custody,
full custody of this little girl. A week later, after
she goes missing, is the hearing, and she is not
(21:23):
at the hearing, so the judge grants custody of the
little girl to the estranged husband, who is currently living
with his brother and his sister in law. The husband
perked my ears up a little bit before, I I mean,
I really try to kind of go into the story
thinking about who all the possible suspects could be, because
obviously this seems like Taylor made for an estranged husband
(21:47):
killing the wife so that he could get custody of
the little girl. But her ex husband is very worried.
He said, I don't think she would have skipped this.
I think something happened and that could have been all
for show. But man, the timing is really weird. If
the husband is not involved in her disappearance somehow.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Well, you know, at this point, we really don't know
what happened to Judy. We know she went to meet
up with this photographer. He picked her up, so at
least you know that there was that that connection had
been made. But after that point we don't know. Did
Judy finish the photography and did you know, did the
husband swing by? Was it pre arranged for her to
(22:26):
be picked up to take him back home, or you know,
do something else? Sounds like the state of the relationship
probably not. Did the husband follow the photographer out to
where Judy's at with bad intent? You know? And so
when Judy gets released, you know, he snatches her and
kills her. I mean, I think at this point it's
wide open. But obviously the investigatively, they have to possibly
(22:49):
figure out where the husband was, you know that day
that Judy went missing. Interview him, but you still have
to identify this photographer. This is the last person Judy
has seen with.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, tell me a little bit about you know, they say,
sort of the first forty eight hours. I would say,
would you think statistically that the longer this goes on,
the worse the news would be no matter what time
period we're talking about, right, I mean, is it really
like a kind of a rule that statistically things go
down really down fast after forty eight hours on being
(23:22):
able to locate somebody alive.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, it all is dependent upon the case and the
case circumstances. So when you start talking about cases that
you have a greater likelihood of them being solved within
the first forty eight hours. Oftentimes those are cases in
which there is a connection between the victim and the
offender and they are able to very rapidly do an
(23:47):
investigation and drill down onto somebody. As time goes on,
now the offender can separate themselves both temporarily as well
as distance wise geographic, from the crime itself and from
the connection to the victim, it does get harder, However,
(24:08):
I would not I know, you know, there's like the
TV show The First forty eight which I actually loved,
you know, it shows reality, right, but I would not
put any statistic on it. Obviously, there's criminologists that study
this type of thing, and they'll say, yeah, you know,
if you identify a suspect within the first forty eight
(24:28):
then you've got a much greater likelihood of solving the case.
But they're not teasing out the finer contextual details of
the each case separately because certain types of cases, the
solvability remains, but it takes longer for the investigation to
get to the point where now you can build probable
cause against the suspect. If that makes any type of sense,
(24:50):
you can't just say, oh, you know, if you don't
solve the case within the first forty eight hours, then
you have a ninety five percent less likelihood of being
able to solve the case. I just don't buy that.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Well, the trail goes cold for Judy, you know, just
weeks after she disappears. They're going to keep trying to
work the case, but they don't know where she is.
Her ex husband is worried. I was thinking about something
and I want to ask you about an emerging technology
because I was watching Gosh. I mean, I feel like
all I do is teach, write, do podcasts with you,
(25:22):
or consume true crime, and you know, deal with my kids.
And I was watching and then reading a case about
a technology they called an emerging technology that I thought
would have been interesting with this case where it's happening
in twenty twenty four, the geofencing stuff. Yeah, so I
had never heard of that. Will you explain it? So
(25:42):
it's like I'm thinking, whoever this photographer is shows up
at the door and then leaves, and police would be
able to try to figure out if he had a
cell phone today? Who has a cell phone in this
like block two block radius and start investigating those people.
Is that how geofencing kind of works?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It does, and that's so cool. I have to be
somewhat careful about what I say about geo fencing. You know.
This is something like when I was an FBI Task
Force officer. Of course, you know, the FEDS had technologies
that were being deployed in casework that were somewhat sensitive technologies,
(26:21):
and geofencing since that time has somewhat come into the
public domain and public has become more aware of it,
and it's become controversial because in essence, this is where
geo fencing you can put a let's say a boundary
over a geographic area and say I want to identify
(26:41):
all the smart devices that have location services turned on
within this area during this timeframe. This has been huge
at solving cases. However, let's say you were to draw
that boundary several city blocks downtown Manhattan. How many innocent
people are you scooping up within that geograph area during
(27:02):
that timeframe? And so many people look at this as
a as a Big Brother scenario. And now there's requirements
for search warrants making sure that you have a magistrate
that is overlooking you know what you are asking for
and saying Nope, that's overreaching, or will grant that. And
(27:23):
you know, Google has also come out saying that they're
going to get rid of the data, which just kills me,
you know, because this is such a valuable tool when
the case circumstances are appropriate for it to be used.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Wow. Well I was impressed because it felt like sort
of like the reverse of I don't know what to
how to even explain it, Like if you have a
suspect and you're able to figure out where their cell
phone is pinging, Now it's like the opposite. It's like, Okay,
well here's my victim, where my victim was dumped? Who
has been in this area? Is that kind of a
good example of how you would use it.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Well, let me let me give you a I'm gonna
call it a high pathetical scenario, but it's potentially a reality.
Is the Delphi case with the two young girls. They
definitely had a cell phone. They captured video of this
man walking across a railroad trestle coming at them. This
was in a relatively unpopulated area. They're at sort of
a park area that has very few people in there.
(28:20):
With something like a geo fence, you can say, give
me all the smart devices within this area, and you
could literally see the girl's smart device and the killer
smart device in essence pair up the killer approaching the girls,
and the girls were removed a distance from where that
railroad trestle was, and you could see the offender's smart
(28:41):
device also move with the girl's device. So it becomes
very compelling with the type of information as you tabulate
the information during the investigation. That is a scenario, and
again I'm just saying that's just a hypothetical scenario with Delphi,
but that is a scenario in which geo fencing is
(29:03):
an amazing technology and doesn't intrude upon you know this,
this idea that you're just you know, fishing and scooping
up a whole bunch of innocence people's locations.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
But you said location services has to be on for
this to work. Is that right.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I don't want to come off as an expert in
this technology, but it does in part utilize location services.
This is very different than cell phones ping and off
of cell towers. You know, you get much more granular
information from location services. If you've ever you know, used
Google Maps and it shows you exactly where you're at
(29:42):
on the freeway within a certain you know, margin of error, Well,
that's kind of the granular data you can get utilizing
a geofence.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Because I was thinking this is probably best used before
a murder happens, right, Like, if this is a crime
of passion murder and the killer is not expecting to
have to turn on location services, they're gonna be smart
enough to turn off the phone or take the SIM
card out and not bring the phone with them and
all of that. I think the case that I saw
(30:12):
it was who was hanging out with this guy at
the time, That was really what it was. I'm sure
before it entered anybody's mind to kill him. So does
that make sense to you that it's sort of like
a before the event happens, because when the event is
happening or after the murder is happening, I'm assuming the
killer is trying to get smart and start turning things off.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Oh that's just so variable, because.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
They're stupid sometimes, thank god, exactly. Well, I know this
was a long detour, but sometimes I'd like to I
would like to actually even more bring in some of
the new tools that I'm learning about and running past
you and anything that you have heard about, Like we
talked a little bit about AI. Because you now have
the inside lane here with Othrum, it's a reminder to
(30:56):
me of what a disadvantage the police are at in
nineteen fifty seven trying to find this woman, you.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Know, for sure, you know that's where you know. Of course,
over the course of my career with the types of cases,
I saw the progress of technology, you know, and what
we could do. You know, from let's say, starting out
in the mid nineties to when I retired in twenty
and eighteen, you know, the huge advances in technology, not
only just your typical forensic technology, but the high tech,
(31:26):
the pervasive cameras, the surveillance if you will that that
is out there. It is harder and harder for somebody
to move around and get away with committing a crime
without leaving some sort of evidence that law enforcement can
utilize in order to catch them. But in nineteen fifty seven,
(31:46):
they're so handicapped relative to today.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah, well, let's get back to the case. In nineteen
fifty seven, Judy Doll is missing. We have no idea
who this photographer is. And we are now at the
end of December, so this is five months later. And boy,
I hate it when kids are the ones that make
these terrible discoveries. I feel like this is the twentieth
story of kids that I've told of kids stumbling onto
(32:11):
you know, really awful scenes from my book American Sherlock
Bessie Ferguson case you and I talked about. A little
kid was the one who found the scalp with the
ear attached that Oscar Heinrich had to use to try
to identify. It's just awful. But they're poking around and
doing stuff, you.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Know, that's just set. The kids are going out, they're
going to places where adults don't want to go. You know,
let's say, like down into the muddy marsh so they
can play and find the frogs or whatever they're they're
up to. And yeah, time and time again. Off, you
do have children discovering remains, just because they're the ones
that are out there doing their thing.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
The kids and the recycling the bottle, the bottle and
the canned collectors, right, you had said that too. Those
are also people who tend to run across bodies and
I said rowers on the on the legs and the rivers.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, yeah, the bottle collector. You know obviously that that
one is one that I've seen over and over again
from these older cases, just because you have people that
are scouring the creek beds looking for, you know, bottles
after a storm, after the water has rushed through old
bottles that had been discarded you know, way back in
the day. That have all said and appeared.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Well, unfortunately, these two little boys are I'm sure have
never forgotten this. They are ten and thirteen. They are
out hunting dove nests in the Hollywood Hills, pair of brothers.
They find bones, so this is five months later. They
find bones that look like a forearm, a wrist in
a hand. They take the bones to their neighbor, not
(33:41):
the parents. The neighbor. Maybe the parents weren't home, and
he's a doctor who thinks that they belonged to a
small adult, probably a woman. The police take the bones
to a different physician, not a corner. It sounds like
a medical examiner, a different doctor who says that he
thinks the bones have been exposed for less than five years.
(34:03):
He says, because there's still skin on the hand, is
that a good assessment? That's another little aside, is it?
What do you think about that skin on the hand?
Does that mean anything?
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Well, if there is any tissue, then it is variable
in terms of how long the tissue is going to persist.
But if this is you know, let's say the lower
arm bones and the hand, and it's actually surface, you know,
you do have the environmental insults. You have decomposition. You
have environmental insults, whether it be you know, the sun
(34:34):
desiccating the tissue. You have rain moisture that's going to
allow you know, bacteria and other microorganisms to further degrade
this tissue. Of course, you have carnivorous animals and insects
that will go after it. If her arm this I'm
assuming this is Judy, her arm is exposed then and
(34:58):
on the surface have all this stuff going on. But
if it's during the warm, warmer months, it's possible she
mummified and then now you get almost like a raw
hide with the skin, and then that can persist for
a longer period of time. If she does mummify. For
the pathologist or this doctor to say, you know, within
five years, that's probably as good as you can say
(35:22):
with just that limited type of information that he's evaluating,
just because of the variability of how long it takes
for a body to fully skeletonize.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Well, I had wondered in nineteen fifty seven, how would
they identify her? Judy is one of several missing women
in LA and I thought, well, how would they even
do that in nineteen fifty seven. I mean, now what
it would be DNA? I'm assuming right.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, it can be DNA, But there's still the tried
and trude methods, you know, dental comparisons as well as
radiographic comparisons where let's say Judy had had a broken
leg during life and there are some X rays of
that and these remains have the same fracture. You know,
(36:09):
a radiologist or an anthropologist today could look at, you know,
the healing of the bone, the way the bone healed,
the various random features that develop within everybody's bones, and
go this this, let's say, femur of these remains matches
the femur of Judy while she was alive, after it
(36:30):
was taken, you know, when when she broke her legs,
as a hypothetical scenario, and there could be unusual things,
you know, tattoos. Yeah, you know, if you if you
have the remains with a very unusual tattoo and you
have photos of that tattoo on the victim during life,
that can also be used. So there's a variety of
other mechanisms that are still utilized today in addition to DNA.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
You know, I was reading a little bit about the
radiocarbon dating being used to test on the human bone,
whether it's ancient or modern, and I did not know
this that it's helpful, because in the fifties and the
sixties there was a massive spike in radiocarbon in the
atmosphere because of the nuclear testing, and that's been some
sort of a I don't know if it's like a
touchstone or what that is where it makes it much
(37:14):
more useful to be able to figure out, you know,
who the person is or someone's age. Does that sound
right to you?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah? You know, and radioisotope analysis is a fascinating forensic tool.
And whether it's you're dealing with the carbon aging, which
generally is are you dealing with ancient remains like indigenous remains,
or are you dealing with somebody who's modern. And of
(37:41):
course throughout geologic history, there's all these various alterations to
these radio isotopes in any particular environment that as we live,
we absorb the ratio of these different radioisotopes into our body.
And so expert when they do this radioisotope analysis will
(38:03):
look for those types of kind of those weird anomalous
aspects to help determine what they can What does this
mean in terms of the radioisotopic analysis, You know, part
of it is let's say, yeah, human remains that are
recovered in Florida, but they do radio isotopic analysis and
they note that, oh, hold on, you know, the radioisotopes
(38:25):
don't match what we expect for somebody who lived their
entire life in Florida. It's more consistent with somebody from
the Seattle area something like that, and so now investigators
can focus on missing persons out of Seattle to see
if any of them match up with this the set
of unidentified human remains found in Florida. It's something that
it's a really cool tool, but it really isn't utilized
(38:51):
that frequently.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Well, we cannot identify whether these bones belong to Judy
as of right now.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
So they only find the lower arm bones and handbones.
They don't find the rest of her remains at this time.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
That's right. Right now, they have just found a fore arm,
wrist in a hand with skin, a little bit skin
on the hand and that's it. So I'm assuming what
scavengers animals have taken care of the rest.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
You know potentially or the you know, the arm was
drug away by a you know, carnivorous animal of decent size,
like you know, a coyote in the Hollywood Hills, and
so the rest of this these remains could be a
distance away, possibly buried. There is the possibility of, let's say,
(39:40):
especially like somebody Judy size, where you could have certain
types of animals, notably like wild hog that will consume
bone and all and they eat carry on or you know,
dead remains, that's just you know. I have, you know,
one case, Zona Fairchild in which only her skull was found,
(40:00):
and that was in the Los Gatos Hills. She was
a young girl that was murdered, and I became very
very close with her mom. But part of my early
thrust into Sianna's case was to find the rest of her.
But then when I saw that, you know, you had
the wild boar you know in this area. It's like
if she was a surface deposit and her killer, Kurtistine
(40:21):
Anderson said, yes, she was a surface deposit. Chances are
she was consumed except for her skull.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Ah, well that's all I think we end up having
from whoever that victim is. But we're now looking at
let's see August so Soti murderers and Regina Firmark seven
months you heard me do math seven months later. So
this is, as I said before, a serial killer case.
And now we're on victim number two, who is Shirley Bridgeford.
(40:50):
She is going through a lonely hearts club and it's
a social club where it's not like a bunch of
people meet and they're mingling around. They actually set you
up with a date it's a blind date. So this
man she's never met shows up at her mom's house
it sounds like, and picks her up. They're going, you know,
out to dinner, and he introduces him himself as George
(41:12):
Williams and he says he lives in Pasadena, and then
Shirley never comes home.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Wow, you know, in some ways, it's sort of like
the dating apps today. Now, what I'm keying in on
is he's picking Shirley up at her house. You know,
does he come to the door, does the mom see him,
does mom see his car, do neighbors see him? You know,
(41:38):
at there's a level of risk that he's taking. If
this George Williams is Shirley's killer, you know, he's not
being very careful right as opposed to today oftentimes predators
are going to you know, I always say lore and
isolate and the more sophisticated, intelligent offenders are going to
(42:00):
think enough ahead of time to minimize you know, them
being identified and wouldn't be going to the victim's house
and being seen in her neighborhood with their own car
and their own you know, license plate, you know, on
So that's that's interesting that if this George Williams is
this killer that he has put a higher level of
(42:23):
risk with how he is physically connecting with Shirley.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
And I think, you know, Shirley's mother calls the police,
and the police respond and they start getting descriptions. And
what's fascinating about the descriptions are they're pretty different. So
we have to kind of do some comparisons. Number One,
compare the description of the man who picked up Judy
(42:48):
the photographer, because we know that this is a serial
killer case, and we know these cases are connected. I
spoiled all that earlier. Then we've got Shirley's mom and
sister are both and they meet George Williams. They give
a description, George Williams, Paul has gone on a date
before through this Lonely Hearts club, didn't kill the woman.
(43:11):
She gave a description. So these are varying descriptions, and
I have the sketches, and the sketches are you can
tell me what you think about that. So now I
kind of circle right back to the accuracy because you know,
I can I can give you the description of what
Shirley's mom and sisters say George Williams look like. So
(43:31):
let me tell you the description, so I'll remind you.
And this is the benefit of knowing that this is
indeed the same man. Let me remind you of the
description from Betty of the man who picked up her
friend Judy. So Betty says that the guy was five nine,
all of complexion, he had horned room glasses, and he
(43:52):
was about one hundred and fifty pounds. Yes, so Shirley's
mom says that this guy was between twenty five and
thirty five years old. He was six feet tall and
had brown hair and a mustache and blue eyes. She
said he wore glasses. So the Lonely Hearts Club says,
this guy actually was a lot shorter. He was between
(44:13):
five seven and five nine, clean shaven, but no glasses.
So we have three different descriptions for someone who we
eventually know is the same man.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
And none of this is concerning to me in terms
of the variants between these descriptions from these different witnesses.
You know, estimation of height, you know, that's sometimes is
dependent upon the witness's own stature and how close they
actually got to the person they are describing. And even
(44:44):
if they're close to somebody, you know, let's say you
take a five foot woman and asks them to estimate
the height of a man that's taller than them by
ten inches or more, you're going to see a pretty
wide variance. You know, they're looking up at this guy,
and it's you know, it just all depends on that
particular witness's own personal abilities, age range, you know, that's
(45:08):
that's not of concern, you know, in terms of you
know how he's obviously not an older guy, you know,
but twenty five to thirty five, maybe he's twenty two
to forty, you know, just but then things like clean
shaven versus mustache. I mean, he utilized Lonely Hearts Club
before to date this woman, and then time has passed,
(45:30):
you know, Facial hair can come and go, you know.
So you have that temporal aspect in which somebody's a
physical appearance is changing, as is you know, their complexion,
you know, winter versus summer, does this sky tan doesn't tan?
You know, fundamentally, sort of the three descriptions they all
fall within. I would say just a normal parameter that
(45:53):
one person could be described as by three different witnesses.
You don't have somebody saying this guy six foot ten
or he's four foot nine. He's just right in the
middle of the average Caucasian male here in the United States.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Let me show you the sketches real quick. So here
are the sketches, and someone does mention a mustache, but
I mean a mustache could easily be shaved off. Obviously.
He went on the date with the woman who he
didn't kill two weeks beforehand. So I don't know what
happened with that. I don't know if he intended to
kill her and decided he didn't want to or what.
(46:29):
But the woman said he was a perfect gentleman. And
here are the two sketches, which of course look incredibly similar.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, so, I you know, first thing I'm noticing is
that this was the sketches appeared in a local newspaper
March fifteenth, nineteen fifty eight. That's ten years before my
actual birth date. Ah right, the IDEs of March a
decade before. No, but I see these two sketches and
the sketch on the left. Actually, you know, I would
(46:59):
say I am surprised at how remarkably similar these two
sketches are. From it appears that this man has sort
of a narrow face with a you know, somewhat prominent nose,
high forehead, you know, the hairline, and both sketches is
roughly the same. Proportions of the height of the face
(47:22):
with the face, even the way that the ears protrude
are consistent. You know, there are some visual differences, but
at first glance, you know, structurally, morphologically, I guess would
be the term i'd use. These look very similar. The
sketch on the right shows the man with the glasses on.
(47:44):
But I guess I was expecting to see something that
was between these two sketches that would be completely different.
And I'm at least to my eyes, you know, and
everybody perceives things differently, but to my eyes, I'm going, wow,
you know, this could be the same person.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
And I had wondered, I we've never talked about sketch
artists before, but I had wondered, well, what if it's
the same sketch artist and he or she is hearing
these details again? And it's sort of sort of falling
into not a rut, but you know, they're kind of
they have like a playbook. But this to me does
not look like the same artist doing the one on
the left versus the one. It's a totally different aesthetic.
(48:22):
I think, you know, the one on the right doesn't
look very finished, and you could tell that it's just
to me, it looks like a different style. And if
that's the case, they are very similar and very accurate
as witnesses.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, you know, and sketch artists. You know, there's a
wide variety of skill sets, and some of the sketches
from the Golden State Killer series, you could see some
of them look like you know, kids drawing the sketches
with crayon basically versus you know, bona fide artists. But
it takes more than just being able to draw good
(48:55):
You have to be able to interpret somebody's description. And
this is such a hard thing to you know, sit
down and describe a face. You know, that is very
hard to do. And the best sketch artists are ones
that are able to really work with the witness and
refine their sketches until that witness is like, yes, that's
(49:17):
the person that I saw. But there is concern that
if you're utilizing the same sketch artists, let's say, in
a series sort of what you're talking about is that
are you going to have somebody who's biased from a
previous sketch and a previous witness going, oh, this sounds
like the same person and alters subconsciously their sketch. And
(49:37):
I agree with you. These two sketches look like two
different artists. And the fact that they overlap so much
in these gross features of this man's face, I think
gives greater veracity that this is really within the you know,
the spectrum, as close as it can be as to
what the actual person looks like.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
The city council is really ticked off, and there's a
councilman who wants to investigate the Lone Hearts Club because
they find out that the address that George Williams gave
in Pasadena is not an accurate address. They say he
does not live here. We have no idea who that is.
As I said, he went on a date a couple
of weeks beforehand, and the date said that everything went
(50:20):
really well and it was no big deal and he
was a total gentleman. You know. Now we've got these
two women who have gone missing. They are it seems
like very similar. There's similar the women are similar heights,
and they are similar weights. And I know that you
said that that is not a thing and that that
is a little bit more overblown than it should be.
(50:42):
Right that serial killers have a real specific type.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Killers may have an idealized victim in their fantasy. However,
in reality, in terms of getting access to victims, it's
very hard to just find one victim after another that
meets this idealized image, and so they often will take
whatever victim that they can get, you know, and that's
(51:06):
where you do see this huge variance in terms of
the physical characteristics of the victims or the age characteristics
of the victims, et cetera, from the same offender. Now,
it's interesting the utilization of this Lonely Hearts club because
he does go out on a prior.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Date and doesn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, I would venture this was a trial run. He
hadn't utilized the Lonely Hearts club before, so he had
to gain familiarity with the actual process of how he
would be able to, you know, utilize the club, see
if he could get away by anonymizing using a you know,
(51:45):
a fake name, fake address, and then how the connection
with the victim actually went and everything else. So I
think he's just he's gaining familiarity, and so he goes
through maybe this this first date that victim wasn't you know,
somebody that satisfied what his idealized, you know, victim for
(52:08):
his fantasy, what he required. Maybe there was you know,
circumstances that caused him to move off of actually victimizing her.
Maybe too many people saw them together, et cetera. And
he's going, oh, no, I'll get caught if I do
anything to this gal. But I think he's doing a
trial run. You know. It's I like in this, you
think about a predator who has never gone into a
(52:31):
stroll area to pick up a sex worker before. They're
not going to pick up a victim the first time
they do that. They have to kind of learn that
culture and see how to navigate that type of area.
And so they'll do trial runs and they interact with
lots of these women on the streets that they never
kill as they get comfortable. I think that that is
(52:53):
possibly what is going on with this offender with the
Lonely Hearts Club thing. He's doing a trial run, and
then two weeks later he picks Shirley up because now
he knows he can go ahead and get away with
how he set things up.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
Well, they find out that Shirley had told her mother
We're going to a dance. George Williams comes and picks
her up and they leave. She is missing. The police
check with the folks at the dance who were throwing
this dance. They never showed up. Nobody matched, which we
figured would happen. The trail unfortunately goes cold. They have
(53:29):
not identified Judy as the bones that were found by
the two little boys. They have not found Shirley's body,
and everything is cold until four months later, and then
we have another victim. This is almost exactly a year
to when Judy went missing, so this will be three
(53:49):
victims within one year, and we have officially a serial
killer on our hands. And the rest of the story
will have to wait until next week.
Speaker 2 (53:57):
No, I know, you know serial predators or Mike Wheelhouse.
I know I'm gobbling all of this up. So I'm
looking forward to hearing you know the rest of the story,
so to speak.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Okay, I will see you next week and hopefully, you know,
we can get some more answers because this is such
an incredible case.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
YEP, looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (54:23):
This has been an exactly right production for our.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com slash
Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
Research by Maren mcclashan, ali Elkin, Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
ary Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decote the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (55:02):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com