February 5, 2024 • 35 mins
Todd Matthews, an amateur sleuth from Tennessee, has an unusual talent: Wielding the power of the Internet to match Jane and John Does with missing people, and helping grieving families find answers. Todd spent decades thinking about one family who had the misfortune of having not just one missing boy, but two. Both had vanished; their bodies never found. Then in 2019, one of the boys called him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, I'm Keith. I'm a producer. As we were getting
ready to wrap the series, the nature of this project
changed suddenly. I won't tell you what happens now because
it happens much later on in the series, and I
want to be truthful to that. But I hope you'll
listen to the end. Okay, let's take the first stup.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
You know those John and Jane does that you hear
about in the news or in some mystery detective thriller
Bodies without names. Those are the people I'm interested in
figuring out who they are and bringing them home to
their families, even if it's sometimes years or decades later.
I've been on this flip side of crime fighting for
(00:41):
a long time now. I want to bring peace to
the families who bloss someone. Almost since the beginning, one
case has been on my mind. It's a long story.
It's about a family with the misfortune of not having
one missing person in it, but two. Two boys have vanished.
Their body's never found. Decades ago, this family's path was
(01:02):
blown off course by one man, a serial killer. He
set into motion a series of events that would leave
relatives in the dark. They didn't know who their people were,
whether they have been abandoned altogether, or whether they've been
spared some terrible fate. That's when I came into the picture.
I was a stranger, but very soon I wouldn't be.
(01:23):
And somehow, with my.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Help, these folks had basically.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Given up on getting answers.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Would find them. Let me start by.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Telling you how I got to where I am today.
People often wonder how I got into this line of work,
and I tell them it all started with a ghost story.
Well it is a ghost story, but it's also a
love story. It was October of nineteen eighty seven. I
(01:52):
was in my senior year of high school. It was
Halloween and everyone was telling spooky stories. I was in Livingston, Tennessee.
Actually still live It's a beautiful town right on the
foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Actually I should probably introduce myself.
My name is Todd Matthews. I'm fifty three years old.
I'm a husband, a father, and a grandfather. I have
(02:15):
a lot of years of investigating under my belt, and
I've also worked at the Department of Justice for more
than a decade. But back in nineteen eighty seven, I
wouldn't any of that. I was just sitting around fifth
period study hall when this pretty Barnette Laurie walked in.
She is a transfer student who just moved to town.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
He saw me first, and then we got to study
hall and he come up to me and he said,
can I sit down?
Speaker 5 (02:42):
And I'm like sure?
Speaker 4 (02:43):
And he sat down literally in the same seat that
I was in, even though there was open seats next
to me.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
He said, in my seat.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
She had those pretty dark brown eyes, pretty dark brown
hair that basically mirrored mine, almost like we were made
to match each other.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Neighbor telling ghost stories and they were like, does anybody
else have a ghost story?
Speaker 5 (03:03):
I'm like, well, yeah, I have one.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
She heard it from her dad, Wilbur Riddle, two decades ago,
the year Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And Robert F.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Kennedy Jr. Were assassinated. Wilbur was living near a town
called Georgetown, Kentucky, just outside of Lexington. Wilbur drilled holes
for whales, and one day it was walking up the
side of the road when he saw a tent wrapper.
It was gray green, and it looked like there was
something in it. He wasn't really sure, and he bumped
(03:35):
it with his foot and Wilbur could tell by the
way it was rolled down the hill, shifting around that
it had had something in it, maybe something bad. And
he walks down to the bottom of the hill and
he cuts into the back and the smell that comes
out is overwhelming, so he calls his sheriff the corner.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
They all show up.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Local officials confirmed what Wilbur already suspected. There was a
young woman wrapped in that camp, Miss tent Rapper. She'd
been murdered. Everybody wanted to find her killer, but first
dad to figure out who this woman was. That proved
much harder than you think. No one recognized her. She
(04:16):
was a real mystery. By the time I heard this story,
she was a cold case. She'd been dead for twenty
damn years. She's what you'd call it Jane Doe, dead
body without a non identity. But after Wilbur found her,
the newspaper started calling her tent Girl, named for the
canvas tent rapper she was found in. Imagine your life,
(04:38):
your identity boiled down to the stuff of urban legends,
being reduced to the place that your body was found.
Something about this story shook something inside of me.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Changed my life.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
First because that girl, Laurie, the newcomer with the dark
brown eyes. I married her not long after that. There's
another reason. For the next ten years, I wouldn't stop
thinking about Tent Girl. And that's not an exaggeration.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
I had no clue it was going to lead to this.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
I thought he would just forget it in a couple
of months, but no, he never forgot it.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
When we go visit Lori's family, we'd stop in Georgetown, Kentucky.
I'd stop and see the local newspaper office to see
if anything you have been written about the tent Girl.
It wasn't on the web back end because there wouldn't one.
Print copies is all we had. And then the Internet
came along, and I remember hearing it called the Information
super Highway.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
I thought, that's the road I need to be on.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I heard about ten Girl when I was seventeen, so
you could kind of say I grew up with her.
Technology advanced my wife and I grew into her marriage.
We had our first son, Dylan, and night after night,
I kept trying to put the pieces back together. At
the time, I worked on an assembly line putting together
air conditioning parts. I didn't know a lot about the
internet been in the early nineties.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Who didn't.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
But I built myself a website for Tent Girl, kind
of clunky in plane. I put every detail I could
find in there. I guess I just hoped someone was
missing this woman and then find my web page. It
was like going on a backward scavenger hunt. I had
the answer to someone's question what happened to my sister
daughter friend. I had to find the family member who
(06:20):
recognized Tent Girl as their own. But obsessing over a
dead woman didn't do me any favors.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
At home.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
We did have marriage issues because he didn't want to
do anything but work on the Tent Girl. If we
went on a vacation and involved the Tent Girl, it
was something to do with her. I no longer felt married.
I guess I feel like he was more married to
the tent Girl story than me. I kind of regretted
telling him about it, and I've told him.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That, you know, that was kind of hard to hear.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So I started helping him put my kid to bed,
go to bed with Laurie, then waking up in the
middle of the night to search the net.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Back then it was dial up internet.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
You know, you had had to find a way to
get yourself onto the web, and hoped to god somebody
didn't call you knock you back off of it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Good thing.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I was working mostly at night, not a lot of
people calling at three am. And then in nineteen ninety eight,
a miracle happened. I found a message in the bottle.
It was online posting from a woman named Rosemary. She
had a sister who had gone missing around the time
the tent Curly been found.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
I said, I have a missing sister. She is twenty
four years old. She's five foot two, brown hair, brown eyes,
medium petite build. Was last seen in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
She worked the carnival.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So by then a lot of people expecting me to
give up hope. You know who else is stubborn up
to keep searching on the internet long past the time
It makes a lick of sense. But that's why it
brought me to Rosemary.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
And it was just your luck that he went on
that website and found my post that night. It's just
pure luck.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
After I come across the missing person's posting that Rosemary.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Wrote, I got in touch with her.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's when everything really started falling into place.
Speaker 6 (08:10):
I didn't know whether to cry or to just drop
down in disbelief. It was more like relief that, oh
my god, this is over.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
We had to do an exhumation at that point and
get more officials involved, but finally we were able to
tell the ten girls' family where she had been.
Speaker 6 (08:31):
It's the end of wondering all these years, well where
is she? It's all those thoughts running through your head,
and then you think, I know where she is now,
and I can let that rest. I don't have to
worry about that anymore. At long, last ten Girl was
giving back her name. She was Barbara and Hackman Taylor.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So after I saw this case, I really didn't know
what was next, but I found out real quick. I
got a ton of national attention that was new for me.
The tarp wrapped body of a nude female now called
the Tent Girl.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
She was known as Tent Girl until the late nineteen nineties,
when her true identity was discovered.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
A dark obsession helped this man's dreams helped identifying the
Tent Girl as.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Todd Matthews is with us all the way from Cook Phil.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
This was just a beginning.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Solving the Tent grow case would lead to figuring out
who a lot of John and Jane Does were Soon
I'd find a lot of other part times loves. We
could start solving cases together, cruising down the information super
Highway we now call the Internet. My work would end
up laying the foundation for a sea of change in
how this country identifies John and Jane Does. Many of
these cases were solved with the tools that I held
(09:48):
build that some remain cold cases. This one case got
stuck in my head, almost like it chose me.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
A serial killer cross paths.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
With two little boys from the same family, one missing
in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It was just a baby.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
The other boy was an elementary school kid with an
Aladdin backpack. He disappeared twenty years later in nineteen ninety four.
Both boys were never found. I heard about him in
the early two thousands. I wrote to the serial carelling myself,
asking what happened to the boys, But I didn't get
anything useful out of him, that is until twenty nineteen.
(10:31):
I got a break in the case that wrought my world.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
It's a story that started at.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
His work and ended up being one of the most
personal cases I ever had. The kind of story that
starts from something and then starts unwinding and unwinding, like
pulling a never ending piece of twine. And that is
why I have to tell him, because I'm haunted by
the alternative. My name is Todd Matthews, and this is
(10:56):
hello John Doe, a sleuth, a family, and a serial kill.
The story of a family torn apart by tragedy and
my quest to bring them back together.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Chapter one, The Missing Boys.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
In the late nineties, it was incredible to me that
missing people could fall through the cracks the way they would.
If you were from Miami and took a quick business
trip to Tulsa and told no one and happened to
die in a car accident in between, your body could
remain unidentified for years, even if your loving wife is
looking for you. Actually, you could come missing and die
(11:33):
in one county over and no one would know because
no one was sharing data, or because the killer might
take the victim's clothes or idea on purpose so they
wouldn't get caught.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Without a national database to.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Identify John Doe's lying in Moorgs, it was near impossible
to put a name to a body.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Man.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
If a thing like that did exist, Tinker would have
been identified a lot sooner. So I decided to just
make the damn thing. I volunteered myself and build a
national database and filled it with the profiles of people
who were nameless and deceased and others who had gone missing.
It wasn't just me, there were lots of us. The
idea was, as we like to say, give the nameless
(12:14):
back their names and return the missing to their families.
We called it the Dough Network. Remember this was something
I did on the side. I had to keep the
money coming in, so by day I was working in
a factory here in Tennessee, first on the assembly line
putting together air conditioner parts, then in quality control.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
But I want to idea you.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
My attention was fixed on the Dough Network, and once
we launched the thing, I had no idea how to
spent on its own. Almost instantly, the website attracted people
all over the world, other amateur sleuths. These were all
people looking to contribute and help families find their loved ones.
I wouldn't really call them volunteers. They were people just
like me. These weren't police officers. They were factory workers, housewives,
(12:59):
people who found little pieces up the puzzle in their
own local newspaper, and they wanted to contribute.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Even the cops were coming to us.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
They wanted to look through profiles of unidentified people to
help them solve their own missing person cases. And these
guys were impressed with their little network. It woke their
asses up. The website did and still does, look like
it was put together by a ragtag group of volunteers.
It's honestly pretty clinking. If you pull it up, you
can look.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Through a whole database of missing and dead people. I'll
pull one up right now.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
For a missing person, there's a physical description, day of birth, height, weight, etc.
Then there's circumstances of death and identifiers like if they
were wearing jewelry when they die. The idea is that
an unidentified body with jewelry would match a person who
went missing wearing the same jewelry. That just might be
a match. By two thousand and one, the do network
(13:50):
was pretty popular.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
People would call their.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Tip line, which was actually my home phone number, or
just send in information about a missing relative.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
We'd try to make.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Matches and then send the info go to local law enforcement.
We all had our reasons for getting in to the
dough network. For me, I really wanted answers, and I
felt like it was actually investigating. But some people were
less invested in answers and just morbidly fascinating with death.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Let's face it, people have.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Always been fascinated with death, but this was the early
two thousands. With the rise of cable TV and procedurals
like CSI and Law and Order, true crime quickly became
an obsession. I remember one of my medical examine her
friends once said, before the Dough Network, you couldn't give
away a dead body. Now they're fighting over them. I
guess Dough Network allowed volunteers to play detective, pretend they
(14:41):
were on CSI or something. But for me, this is
not a hobby. It's not a toy. People were looking
for loved ones. By this point in my life, I'd
lost people too. I could imagine the hell these families
were going through. Sometime around two thousand and seven, after
I'd been investigating for a few years, I got this
(15:02):
call while I was at the warehouse. I had to
step out on the loading dot to answer. It's from
this guide never talked to it before. His name was
John Paul Jones, and he said he worked with the
National Institute of Justice in Washington, d C. Now by
that time I'd been on national shows to talk about
my investigating, but this.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Was a whole new level.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
John Paul was inviting me to go to the National
Press Club. They were announcing the formation of the first
federally funded database for missing and unidentified people. I remember
being a little scared. This was a federal government, the
big leagues. My mama didn't actually want me to go.
She thought I was in trouble for something. But I
(15:45):
went anyway, with no disrespect to my mama. She was
dead wrong. I'd been invited to be part of the
working group to develop this federal database. I remembering at
the Press Club in DC for this new initiative. I
wasn't wearing a brand new suit. I'd gone to Goodwill
and bought a super probably ten or fifteen dollars, because
I didn't know if i'd ever need it again. I
(16:06):
showed up at the Press Club and it was covered
with DC policy people and reporters. I thought, what any
hell can I do for these people? I thought, just
don't embarrass yourself, Todd. They were developing something that would
end up being called nameous, the National Missing and Unidentified
Person system light down network, but the government would run
it on a massive, grant funded scale and the best
(16:28):
part of all, they wanted me to help build it.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
What the purpose of this database is is to literally
resolve unidentified persons cases against the missing person's data so
that ultimately, you know, these individuals can be identified a
return to family.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's Tony Falseti. He's a forensic anthropologist now with the
Chief Medical Seminar in Washington, DC. It's a serious job.
You have to go through security and be escorted up
to this. All was in this massive government building. But
he didn't take long for me to cut through all
of that and become Tony's friend.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
Todd was he efficient at our wedding in Knoxville, Tennessee.
He was very nervous. He was more nervous than we are.
But he did a fantastic job.
Speaker 9 (17:16):
Yes, you know, he had to give himself ordained and
we were his first wedding, and as I understand it,
he's done several since.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yep, he's got that right.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
I introduced him and his wife, kait Yanna, a forensic artist,
and they thought I was a right fit for the job. Nowadays,
Tony basically spends his day looking at bones to learn
more about the person they once belonged to.
Speaker 8 (17:40):
It's surprising how much you can tell from your bones.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
But he's lighthearted about the work too.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
His desk is filled with all these toy bone and
skull knick knacks, and he has sports jerseys on the wall.
Here's what he says makes a good forensic anthropologist.
Speaker 9 (17:54):
Tenacity patients, attention to detail, critical thinking, and maybe a
little bit of awkwardness, introvertedness. You know, we enjoyed doing
these kinds of things, mostly on our own.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
He was actually raised in Tennessee like me, but he
didn't have the accent at all. I met him at
the working group and we were all in Florida trying
to figure out what name is needed to be liked
him from the start, but I'm not sure he knew
what to make of me.
Speaker 9 (18:22):
I really didn't know anything other than, you know, there
was this new individual who had joined us, who, you know,
we were told had experience, who was the first person
to actually sort of use the Internet and publicly generated
data or information to actually solve an unidentified person's case.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
And it's true, I really wasn't the bitter government type.
Many times I have phone calls and I think people
were quite disarmed because they weren't expecting a Southern voice.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I didn't come for.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Other guys come from you know, they went through police
academy or whatever training. I floated into this career path
a different way. This thing called name US again, the
National Missing and Unidentified Person System. It's supposed to be
a tool, a clearinghouse for all missing and unidentified bodies.
If do network looks like a clunky, early two thousands website,
(19:17):
names looks awfully sterling clinical. There's no doubt it's a
government website.
Speaker 8 (19:22):
But do you think it was based on well, ultimately
Todd's model.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
At the time, I was still working at the factory,
so I basically used up my vacation time to help
him out.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
It felt worth it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
We all had same goal. We wanted to match two
groups of people, missing people and John and Jane does
people like the two boys I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Get out of my head.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Around two thousand and nine, two years after that press
club trip, I was able to quit my job at
the factory and started working as a contractor for the
Department of Justice. I had to scare police reports and
autopsies for details to build out missing person's profiles. The
work actually isn't all that complicating, but you got to
be relentless about finding facts.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
What idea is basically.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Entering data, putting in clues like a person's height, weight,
circumstances of I'm going missing.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I loved it. I was all in.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
One of my bosses, doctor Arthur Eisenberg, great guy. I
once told him I wasn't sure I was the right
man for this job. Said, you're giving me a job
that people a PhDs have and I don't have their training.
But he didn't care. He saw something in me. He said,
go forth and heal the broken hearts.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
How's that?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
And he turned his little chair around and went back
to work, And.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
So did I.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
When people die, use of the next to ken is notified.
But what if there's no known next to ken? What
if there's no one to identify the body and say, yep,
that's my son in that case, in medical examiner's office
will take down data points. Maybe they'll send their bones
to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, or to Tony, a
forensic anthropologist with all the bones in his office.
Speaker 9 (20:58):
What we do is we examine humans going remains for
the purposes of identification, and in doing that, we developed
the basic biological profile of that individual, which would be
their age, sex, hopefully some information about their ancestry, whether
it's Europe, Asia, Africa, and then how tall they were.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Tony can even tell if someone has healed fractures or
head cavities that they got filled.
Speaker 9 (21:21):
Our entire life, Everything that we encounter, whether their childhood
diseases or illnesses or injuries, are written in our bones
and they stay there now.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
At the same time, people go missing and there's date
on that too. Let's say your sister goes missing, she's black,
mid forties, had dental fillings on two molars, and a
tattoo on the right shoulder of a butterfly. That all
gets entered into name us and when there's enough overlap
in information, there's a potential match and we look into
it further. Mike Nancy's job at NamUs was basically to
(21:54):
fill out the profile. He's a former homicide detective who
gives like one hundred and ten percent.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Cares about the work.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
He wants to see a family made wholes so they
can stop spinning out of control.
Speaker 10 (22:05):
I kind of characterize it as the movie roundhog Day,
when Bill Murray woke up every day at six o'clock
to the same music. What's what families do? They wake
up every morning to the same nightmare that they have
of what can they do to find their loved one.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
We help answer those questions, but Names is not out
on the street solving crimes. We're helping law enforcement do that,
but we're also doing something cops often and don't have
time to do, helping family who've lost loved ones. He'll
I was the first regional systems administrator handling missing people
and unknown people around the Southeast. There were thousands of
(22:42):
open cases at any given time. Among those thousands was
a case I'd come across in two thousand and four.
It eluded me. It was the one with the serial
killer and the two boys. In the early two thousand,
I'd read a book about a suspected cereal killer and
the murder of this one young woman in Oklahoma. Now,
(23:04):
this serial killer, a man named Franklin Floyd, wasn't famous
on the level of say, Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy,
but the impact he had on this one family was
immeasurable and that's what I wanted to know more about.
The book mentioned two of her relatives, two boys. They
have both vanished, one in the seventies and one in
the nineties. This boggled my mind. How could they have
(23:27):
disappeared and no one was looking for him? What made
these cases even more challenged and was neither body was
ever found. So I entered what I knew about Michael
Hughes the school age boy, into the databases. He was
six years old, brown hair, brown eyes, scar on the forehead,
two crooked bottom teeth. But the infant was a real
mystery to me. All I had to start with was
(23:49):
a name. Philip Stephen Brandenburg was so little to go
on it was really hard to fill out his profile
on the dough Network and especially name us I because
infants don't have dental records or tattoos.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Lots of babies start.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
At with a mop of blonde hair and a year
later have a totally different color, or they started with
curly hair and end up with it straight. The other
challenge is if for some reason, your parents aren't looking
for you. It's not like a coworker or landlord is either.
For all intents and purposes, Philip Stephen Brandyburg never existed
in the first place.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I only knew about him because.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
He was mentioned in a book that I'd written in
early two thousands about a serial killer. I had no
paperwork to go off of, nothing official. I'd hope that
be I would have tracked down those documents, But when
it came to them with questions about the Brandenburgs, we
were pretty shocked. Here's my buddy mite nance again.
Speaker 10 (24:50):
In the case of Philip Brandenburgh, the FBI agent could
not validate or could not determine if Brandenburg was ever born,
had ever existed.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I was taken with the case, possibly the toughest I
ever took on. I knew there was more to the story.
I just had a feeling if I found out more
information about Philip, it would leave me somewhere. I had
to go. You'll learn this about me. It's kind of
just the way I am. I feel things pretty strongly
more than others. Maybe, like I said, the case chose me.
(25:24):
At the time. I was still at the DOJ, so
the happy I were compelled to talk to me. If
I weren't, they might have said, none of your business.
But asking them about Philip was an ass backwards way
of finding out. They didn't have any paperwork on him period.
But I thought he had to be born somewhere everybody is,
and maybe this person existed somehow, some way, maybe someone
(25:48):
out there was missing him and he deserved to be
found dead or alive. The network is populated by public records,
stuff like newspaper clippings, missing persons pages. We went in
and added everything we could about Philip where we thought
he was born, for he might have been last seen,
and then Mike and I put this case into NamUs,
(26:09):
Michael's regional specialist in charge of the case.
Speaker 10 (26:12):
So we had the missing person case and names as
Philip Brandenburgh and so then it became my task to
try to enhance that as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
His job was to find more clues about this missing boy,
like if you had any distinguishing marks or features, or
where he was last seen. And then I had to wait.
But I'm not a patient person. There's just some things
I want to let go. That could be something people
say as applaw.
Speaker 5 (26:37):
He is committed. He does not stop. If he gets
his mind on a case, he finishes it through.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
I know what this all sounds like a little morbid,
but it's not to me. I have something of a
connection to dead people. They've been in my life for
as long as I can remember. I was two years
old when my mother had my sister. Her name was
Sue Anne. She lived for just a bury, brief sparkle
of life.
Speaker 8 (27:01):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Most days I can't talk about this, but one night
I was able to just once. And that's a tape
you're hearing right now. Mom still never got over my sister.
It was always there. And she was pregnant again, this
time with my brother Greg, and we waited for him.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
We even had a name if he.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Was a boy or if he's a girl. So he
was born and he was sick. He was very clear
that there was visible birth effects. So they took him
to Vanderbilt in an ambulance. So he was gone, and
it was the second day that he passed away by hisself.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
And that's hard to think about.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I was only nine years old but then and had
lost two siblings. Our family was shell shocked. It was
no period of time. And I remember the first time
we went to his grave. I remember my mom, she
of the red mud, and she caught it all over
(28:04):
that put her in a car and it almost looked
like blood on her hands. She just holding her hands
and she just stunned, and she said, I can't leave
him in this cold ground.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But we had to. We had to.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Most people aren't exposed to death until later in life.
But me, I knew about death before I even set
foot in kindergarten. No one tried to shelter me from
the death of my siblings, even when I was a
child myself. Our family actually owned the cemetery before even
my mom and dad were alive. As a result, I
never thought of death as taboo or creepy. These were
(28:38):
my family members and they were present in my life
the way that I knew my brother and sister. They
were never really gone in a way, they were there.
Their names were on the grave. You know.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
We took care of the cemetery.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
We would play while my mom and dad, my aunt
and uncle, they would mow the cemetery. And as I
got older, working with the tent Girl and other cases,
I'm hearing all of these stories and they don't even
know where they are. Missing can be worse than dead.
And then having a tombstone with John or Jane Doe
on it it just didn't compute. You know, I thought,
(29:13):
at least I know where mine are, at least I
know who they are.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
How could you not have a name on your tombstone?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
If I really think about it, I think I became
so focused on these two children because of my own
brother and sister. I had to give these two missing
boys the dignity of a headstone. Anyone who knows me
knows I'm a long way from perfect, and they might.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Also say that I should have let this case go.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
But just like I did with the tent girl, I
held on to hope.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It's kind of like fishing.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I put up my line and worm and waited for someone,
and you feel it to bite. But I had to
go about my life. My wife and I had our
second son. There were other cases that needed my attention.
Then one day I got a call from an unknown
number in twenty nineteen, fifteen years after I started looking.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I don't even know how I got your number.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I was in my house in the kitchen doing something,
probably pasting. I never really sat down. I didn't recognize
the number. I thought it might have been a telemarketer
or wrong number, but then I thought, you never know.
I'll pick this one up, and I.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
Told him myselught our conversation, I was like, you don't
believe this. I said, I don't blame you if you
don't believe it, because this sounds crazy. And I started explaining.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
He took the time to listen.
Speaker 8 (30:35):
He picked up the phone.
Speaker 11 (30:37):
I mean, it was just one in a billion. I
guess my name is Steve Patterson living in Chervynth, Carolina.
I'm forty nine years old, and I searched my name
and found the missing person's report.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
This guy, Steve Patterson, was calling to say that he
thought he was Phillip Stephen brandon Burg, that maybe this
was his real name that had been changed to me.
It was just a baby, he'd later tell me. He
was looking at the Dough Network, that clinky website I
helped build. What he found was a missing person's page
for a boy with the last named Brandenburgh. The details
seemed familiar, first because the baby was born in April
(31:19):
nineteen seventy four, just like Steve. Second because that name,
Philip Stephen Brandenburg. He had seen it once written on
a manila envelope in his parents house. And now he
had called me because he was wondering if it might
be his real name. Steve was looking for the authorities instead,
he called me directly.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
It just opened a pluggate then, I mean, it just started.
Everything started falling into place, and I'm not gonna go
with computers. I don't know how in the world I
found all this out.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Steve and I started talking and talking and talking. This
was the first time in a long career of working
on John and Jane Doe cases that one of them
me up on the phone. Was he the infant I
was looking for? At the time, there was no way
to know for sure. The time in lined up, he
would have been an infant in nineteen seventy four. Now
(32:10):
he's a grown man. But there was something about Steve's
tone that shook me. He sounded so desperate to find
out who his people were. I remember the way he
said it, I don't know who I am. I don't
think in that moment Steve knew how far I'd gone
looking for him, or that in order to find him,
I'd written to a convicted murderer so many years ago.
(32:34):
If this man was who he said he was, it
would have meant he had escaped the clutches of a
serial killer while his siblings didn't. It would have been
a miracle, but by now you know.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Stranger things have happened.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
This season of Hello John Doe a fugitive on the
run for thirty plus years.
Speaker 10 (32:55):
The actual folders for the case, I would say, would
stack about six feet.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
High, mixedup identities and screwed up pseud anuns.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
It's one of the most unique cases I was ever
involved with.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
And a family left behind trying to solve a lifetime
of mysteries.
Speaker 12 (33:13):
Yes, they did take a DNAC and then I said,
well did you find Steve?
Speaker 7 (33:18):
And they said, who's Steve?
Speaker 12 (33:21):
I said, Steve Swain little boy.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Well, it was thunderstruck.
Speaker 9 (33:25):
It was something I never and no parent ever wants
to hear their child go through.
Speaker 12 (33:30):
You know, instead of being part of the family, he
was given away, when in all reality it saved his life.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
and association with First and Life's Productions from Revelations. Our
executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger from First
to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
partner is New on Home Media. It was written and
produced by Katee Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
(34:04):
She is also nil on Home Media's executive editor. Our
executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Maserua. Sound design and
mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Dot Sessions.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Bendall Faulton is our fact checker.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Our production manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media.
Dylan Fagans our executive producer. Special thanks to Adelia Ruben
at n on HUM and Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson
at iHeartMedia. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn more about
name us at NamUs dot com. The number for the
National Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center is one
eight hundredth the loss that's one eight hundred eight four
(34:50):
three five six seven eight. The National Sexual Assault Hotline
from the Rate Abuse and Incest National Network is one
eight hundred.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Sixty five six six seven through. Okay, guys, this is
the end of the show.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if
you did like it, you make sure that you rate
and review the show. It helps more people to find
it and hear this wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.
Hey, I'm Keith. I'm a producer. As we were getting
ready to wrap the series, the nature of this project
changed suddenly. I won't tell you what happens now because
it happens much later on in the series, and I
want to be truthful to that. But I hope you'll
listen to the end. Okay, let's take the first stup.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
You know those John and Jane does that you hear
about in the news or in some mystery detective thriller
Bodies without names. Those are the people I'm interested in
figuring out who they are and bringing them home to
their families, even if it's sometimes years or decades later.
I've been on this flip side of crime fighting for
(00:41):
a long time now. I want to bring peace to
the families who bloss someone. Almost since the beginning, one
case has been on my mind. It's a long story.
It's about a family with the misfortune of not having
one missing person in it, but two. Two boys have vanished.
Their body's never found. Decades ago, this family's path was
(01:02):
blown off course by one man, a serial killer. He
set into motion a series of events that would leave
relatives in the dark. They didn't know who their people were,
whether they have been abandoned altogether, or whether they've been
spared some terrible fate. That's when I came into the picture.
I was a stranger, but very soon I wouldn't be.
(01:23):
And somehow, with my.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Help, these folks had basically.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Given up on getting answers.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Would find them. Let me start by.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Telling you how I got to where I am today.
People often wonder how I got into this line of work,
and I tell them it all started with a ghost story.
Well it is a ghost story, but it's also a
love story. It was October of nineteen eighty seven. I
(01:52):
was in my senior year of high school. It was
Halloween and everyone was telling spooky stories. I was in Livingston, Tennessee.
Actually still live It's a beautiful town right on the
foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Actually I should probably introduce myself.
My name is Todd Matthews. I'm fifty three years old.
I'm a husband, a father, and a grandfather. I have
(02:15):
a lot of years of investigating under my belt, and
I've also worked at the Department of Justice for more
than a decade. But back in nineteen eighty seven, I
wouldn't any of that. I was just sitting around fifth
period study hall when this pretty Barnette Laurie walked in.
She is a transfer student who just moved to town.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
He saw me first, and then we got to study
hall and he come up to me and he said,
can I sit down?
Speaker 5 (02:42):
And I'm like sure?
Speaker 4 (02:43):
And he sat down literally in the same seat that
I was in, even though there was open seats next
to me.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
He said, in my seat.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
She had those pretty dark brown eyes, pretty dark brown
hair that basically mirrored mine, almost like we were made
to match each other.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Neighbor telling ghost stories and they were like, does anybody
else have a ghost story?
Speaker 5 (03:03):
I'm like, well, yeah, I have one.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
She heard it from her dad, Wilbur Riddle, two decades ago,
the year Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And Robert F.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Kennedy Jr. Were assassinated. Wilbur was living near a town
called Georgetown, Kentucky, just outside of Lexington. Wilbur drilled holes
for whales, and one day it was walking up the
side of the road when he saw a tent wrapper.
It was gray green, and it looked like there was
something in it. He wasn't really sure, and he bumped
(03:35):
it with his foot and Wilbur could tell by the
way it was rolled down the hill, shifting around that
it had had something in it, maybe something bad. And
he walks down to the bottom of the hill and
he cuts into the back and the smell that comes
out is overwhelming, so he calls his sheriff the corner.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
They all show up.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Local officials confirmed what Wilbur already suspected. There was a
young woman wrapped in that camp, Miss tent Rapper. She'd
been murdered. Everybody wanted to find her killer, but first
dad to figure out who this woman was. That proved
much harder than you think. No one recognized her. She
(04:16):
was a real mystery. By the time I heard this story,
she was a cold case. She'd been dead for twenty
damn years. She's what you'd call it Jane Doe, dead
body without a non identity. But after Wilbur found her,
the newspaper started calling her tent Girl, named for the
canvas tent rapper she was found in. Imagine your life,
(04:38):
your identity boiled down to the stuff of urban legends,
being reduced to the place that your body was found.
Something about this story shook something inside of me.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Changed my life.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
First because that girl, Laurie, the newcomer with the dark
brown eyes. I married her not long after that. There's
another reason. For the next ten years, I wouldn't stop
thinking about Tent Girl. And that's not an exaggeration.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
I had no clue it was going to lead to this.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
I thought he would just forget it in a couple
of months, but no, he never forgot it.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
When we go visit Lori's family, we'd stop in Georgetown, Kentucky.
I'd stop and see the local newspaper office to see
if anything you have been written about the tent Girl.
It wasn't on the web back end because there wouldn't one.
Print copies is all we had. And then the Internet
came along, and I remember hearing it called the Information
super Highway.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
I thought, that's the road I need to be on.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I heard about ten Girl when I was seventeen, so
you could kind of say I grew up with her.
Technology advanced my wife and I grew into her marriage.
We had our first son, Dylan, and night after night,
I kept trying to put the pieces back together. At
the time, I worked on an assembly line putting together
air conditioning parts. I didn't know a lot about the
internet been in the early nineties.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Who didn't.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
But I built myself a website for Tent Girl, kind
of clunky in plane. I put every detail I could
find in there. I guess I just hoped someone was
missing this woman and then find my web page. It
was like going on a backward scavenger hunt. I had
the answer to someone's question what happened to my sister
daughter friend. I had to find the family member who
(06:20):
recognized Tent Girl as their own. But obsessing over a
dead woman didn't do me any favors.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
At home.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
We did have marriage issues because he didn't want to
do anything but work on the Tent Girl. If we
went on a vacation and involved the Tent Girl, it
was something to do with her. I no longer felt married.
I guess I feel like he was more married to
the tent Girl story than me. I kind of regretted
telling him about it, and I've told him.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That, you know, that was kind of hard to hear.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So I started helping him put my kid to bed,
go to bed with Laurie, then waking up in the
middle of the night to search the net.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Back then it was dial up internet.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
You know, you had had to find a way to
get yourself onto the web, and hoped to god somebody
didn't call you knock you back off of it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Good thing.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I was working mostly at night, not a lot of
people calling at three am. And then in nineteen ninety eight,
a miracle happened. I found a message in the bottle.
It was online posting from a woman named Rosemary. She
had a sister who had gone missing around the time
the tent Curly been found.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
I said, I have a missing sister. She is twenty
four years old. She's five foot two, brown hair, brown eyes,
medium petite build. Was last seen in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
She worked the carnival.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So by then a lot of people expecting me to
give up hope. You know who else is stubborn up
to keep searching on the internet long past the time
It makes a lick of sense. But that's why it
brought me to Rosemary.
Speaker 6 (07:51):
And it was just your luck that he went on
that website and found my post that night. It's just
pure luck.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
After I come across the missing person's posting that Rosemary.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Wrote, I got in touch with her.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's when everything really started falling into place.
Speaker 6 (08:10):
I didn't know whether to cry or to just drop
down in disbelief. It was more like relief that, oh
my god, this is over.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
We had to do an exhumation at that point and
get more officials involved, but finally we were able to
tell the ten girls' family where she had been.
Speaker 6 (08:31):
It's the end of wondering all these years, well where
is she? It's all those thoughts running through your head,
and then you think, I know where she is now,
and I can let that rest. I don't have to
worry about that anymore. At long, last ten Girl was
giving back her name. She was Barbara and Hackman Taylor.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
So after I saw this case, I really didn't know
what was next, but I found out real quick. I
got a ton of national attention that was new for me.
The tarp wrapped body of a nude female now called
the Tent Girl.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
She was known as Tent Girl until the late nineteen nineties,
when her true identity was discovered.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
A dark obsession helped this man's dreams helped identifying the
Tent Girl as.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Todd Matthews is with us all the way from Cook Phil.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
This was just a beginning.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Solving the Tent grow case would lead to figuring out
who a lot of John and Jane Does were Soon
I'd find a lot of other part times loves. We
could start solving cases together, cruising down the information super
Highway we now call the Internet. My work would end
up laying the foundation for a sea of change in
how this country identifies John and Jane Does. Many of
these cases were solved with the tools that I held
(09:48):
build that some remain cold cases. This one case got
stuck in my head, almost like it chose me.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
A serial killer cross paths.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
With two little boys from the same family, one missing
in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It was just a baby.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
The other boy was an elementary school kid with an
Aladdin backpack. He disappeared twenty years later in nineteen ninety four.
Both boys were never found. I heard about him in
the early two thousands. I wrote to the serial carelling myself,
asking what happened to the boys, But I didn't get
anything useful out of him, that is until twenty nineteen.
(10:31):
I got a break in the case that wrought my world.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
It's a story that started at.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
His work and ended up being one of the most
personal cases I ever had. The kind of story that
starts from something and then starts unwinding and unwinding, like
pulling a never ending piece of twine. And that is
why I have to tell him, because I'm haunted by
the alternative. My name is Todd Matthews, and this is
(10:56):
hello John Doe, a sleuth, a family, and a serial kill.
The story of a family torn apart by tragedy and
my quest to bring them back together.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Chapter one, The Missing Boys.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
In the late nineties, it was incredible to me that
missing people could fall through the cracks the way they would.
If you were from Miami and took a quick business
trip to Tulsa and told no one and happened to
die in a car accident in between, your body could
remain unidentified for years, even if your loving wife is
looking for you. Actually, you could come missing and die
(11:33):
in one county over and no one would know because
no one was sharing data, or because the killer might
take the victim's clothes or idea on purpose so they
wouldn't get caught.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Without a national database to.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Identify John Doe's lying in Moorgs, it was near impossible
to put a name to a body.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Man.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
If a thing like that did exist, Tinker would have
been identified a lot sooner. So I decided to just
make the damn thing. I volunteered myself and build a
national database and filled it with the profiles of people
who were nameless and deceased and others who had gone missing.
It wasn't just me, there were lots of us. The
idea was, as we like to say, give the nameless
(12:14):
back their names and return the missing to their families.
We called it the Dough Network. Remember this was something
I did on the side. I had to keep the
money coming in, so by day I was working in
a factory here in Tennessee, first on the assembly line
putting together air conditioner parts, then in quality control.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
But I want to idea you.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
My attention was fixed on the Dough Network, and once
we launched the thing, I had no idea how to
spent on its own. Almost instantly, the website attracted people
all over the world, other amateur sleuths. These were all
people looking to contribute and help families find their loved ones.
I wouldn't really call them volunteers. They were people just
like me. These weren't police officers. They were factory workers, housewives,
(12:59):
people who found little pieces up the puzzle in their
own local newspaper, and they wanted to contribute.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Even the cops were coming to us.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
They wanted to look through profiles of unidentified people to
help them solve their own missing person cases. And these
guys were impressed with their little network. It woke their
asses up. The website did and still does, look like
it was put together by a ragtag group of volunteers.
It's honestly pretty clinking. If you pull it up, you
can look.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Through a whole database of missing and dead people. I'll
pull one up right now.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
For a missing person, there's a physical description, day of birth, height, weight, etc.
Then there's circumstances of death and identifiers like if they
were wearing jewelry when they die. The idea is that
an unidentified body with jewelry would match a person who
went missing wearing the same jewelry. That just might be
a match. By two thousand and one, the do network
(13:50):
was pretty popular.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
People would call their.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Tip line, which was actually my home phone number, or
just send in information about a missing relative.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
We'd try to make.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Matches and then send the info go to local law enforcement.
We all had our reasons for getting in to the
dough network. For me, I really wanted answers, and I
felt like it was actually investigating. But some people were
less invested in answers and just morbidly fascinating with death.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Let's face it, people have.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Always been fascinated with death, but this was the early
two thousands. With the rise of cable TV and procedurals
like CSI and Law and Order, true crime quickly became
an obsession. I remember one of my medical examine her
friends once said, before the Dough Network, you couldn't give
away a dead body. Now they're fighting over them. I
guess Dough Network allowed volunteers to play detective, pretend they
(14:41):
were on CSI or something. But for me, this is
not a hobby. It's not a toy. People were looking
for loved ones. By this point in my life, I'd
lost people too. I could imagine the hell these families
were going through. Sometime around two thousand and seven, after
I'd been investigating for a few years, I got this
(15:02):
call while I was at the warehouse. I had to
step out on the loading dot to answer. It's from
this guide never talked to it before. His name was
John Paul Jones, and he said he worked with the
National Institute of Justice in Washington, d C. Now by
that time I'd been on national shows to talk about
my investigating, but this.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Was a whole new level.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
John Paul was inviting me to go to the National
Press Club. They were announcing the formation of the first
federally funded database for missing and unidentified people. I remember
being a little scared. This was a federal government, the
big leagues. My mama didn't actually want me to go.
She thought I was in trouble for something. But I
(15:45):
went anyway, with no disrespect to my mama. She was
dead wrong. I'd been invited to be part of the
working group to develop this federal database. I remembering at
the Press Club in DC for this new initiative. I
wasn't wearing a brand new suit. I'd gone to Goodwill
and bought a super probably ten or fifteen dollars, because
I didn't know if i'd ever need it again. I
(16:06):
showed up at the Press Club and it was covered
with DC policy people and reporters. I thought, what any
hell can I do for these people? I thought, just
don't embarrass yourself, Todd. They were developing something that would
end up being called nameous, the National Missing and Unidentified
Person system light down network, but the government would run
it on a massive, grant funded scale and the best
(16:28):
part of all, they wanted me to help build it.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
What the purpose of this database is is to literally
resolve unidentified persons cases against the missing person's data so
that ultimately, you know, these individuals can be identified a
return to family.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's Tony Falseti. He's a forensic anthropologist now with the
Chief Medical Seminar in Washington, DC. It's a serious job.
You have to go through security and be escorted up
to this. All was in this massive government building. But
he didn't take long for me to cut through all
of that and become Tony's friend.
Speaker 8 (17:06):
Todd was he efficient at our wedding in Knoxville, Tennessee.
He was very nervous. He was more nervous than we are.
But he did a fantastic job.
Speaker 9 (17:16):
Yes, you know, he had to give himself ordained and
we were his first wedding, and as I understand it,
he's done several since.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yep, he's got that right.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
I introduced him and his wife, kait Yanna, a forensic artist,
and they thought I was a right fit for the job. Nowadays,
Tony basically spends his day looking at bones to learn
more about the person they once belonged to.
Speaker 8 (17:40):
It's surprising how much you can tell from your bones.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
But he's lighthearted about the work too.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
His desk is filled with all these toy bone and
skull knick knacks, and he has sports jerseys on the wall.
Here's what he says makes a good forensic anthropologist.
Speaker 9 (17:54):
Tenacity patients, attention to detail, critical thinking, and maybe a
little bit of awkwardness, introvertedness. You know, we enjoyed doing
these kinds of things, mostly on our own.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
He was actually raised in Tennessee like me, but he
didn't have the accent at all. I met him at
the working group and we were all in Florida trying
to figure out what name is needed to be liked
him from the start, but I'm not sure he knew
what to make of me.
Speaker 9 (18:22):
I really didn't know anything other than, you know, there
was this new individual who had joined us, who, you know,
we were told had experience, who was the first person
to actually sort of use the Internet and publicly generated
data or information to actually solve an unidentified person's case.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
And it's true, I really wasn't the bitter government type.
Many times I have phone calls and I think people
were quite disarmed because they weren't expecting a Southern voice.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I didn't come for.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Other guys come from you know, they went through police
academy or whatever training. I floated into this career path
a different way. This thing called name US again, the
National Missing and Unidentified Person System. It's supposed to be
a tool, a clearinghouse for all missing and unidentified bodies.
If do network looks like a clunky, early two thousands website,
(19:17):
names looks awfully sterling clinical. There's no doubt it's a
government website.
Speaker 8 (19:22):
But do you think it was based on well, ultimately
Todd's model.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
At the time, I was still working at the factory,
so I basically used up my vacation time to help
him out.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
It felt worth it.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
We all had same goal. We wanted to match two
groups of people, missing people and John and Jane does
people like the two boys I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Get out of my head.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Around two thousand and nine, two years after that press
club trip, I was able to quit my job at
the factory and started working as a contractor for the
Department of Justice. I had to scare police reports and
autopsies for details to build out missing person's profiles. The
work actually isn't all that complicating, but you got to
be relentless about finding facts.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
What idea is basically.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Entering data, putting in clues like a person's height, weight,
circumstances of I'm going missing.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I loved it. I was all in.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
One of my bosses, doctor Arthur Eisenberg, great guy. I
once told him I wasn't sure I was the right
man for this job. Said, you're giving me a job
that people a PhDs have and I don't have their training.
But he didn't care. He saw something in me. He said,
go forth and heal the broken hearts.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
How's that?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
And he turned his little chair around and went back
to work, And.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
So did I.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
When people die, use of the next to ken is notified.
But what if there's no known next to ken? What
if there's no one to identify the body and say, yep,
that's my son in that case, in medical examiner's office
will take down data points. Maybe they'll send their bones
to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, or to Tony, a
forensic anthropologist with all the bones in his office.
Speaker 9 (20:58):
What we do is we examine humans going remains for
the purposes of identification, and in doing that, we developed
the basic biological profile of that individual, which would be
their age, sex, hopefully some information about their ancestry, whether
it's Europe, Asia, Africa, and then how tall they were.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Tony can even tell if someone has healed fractures or
head cavities that they got filled.
Speaker 9 (21:21):
Our entire life, Everything that we encounter, whether their childhood
diseases or illnesses or injuries, are written in our bones
and they stay there now.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
At the same time, people go missing and there's date
on that too. Let's say your sister goes missing, she's black,
mid forties, had dental fillings on two molars, and a
tattoo on the right shoulder of a butterfly. That all
gets entered into name us and when there's enough overlap
in information, there's a potential match and we look into
it further. Mike Nancy's job at NamUs was basically to
(21:54):
fill out the profile. He's a former homicide detective who
gives like one hundred and ten percent.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Cares about the work.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
He wants to see a family made wholes so they
can stop spinning out of control.
Speaker 10 (22:05):
I kind of characterize it as the movie roundhog Day,
when Bill Murray woke up every day at six o'clock
to the same music. What's what families do? They wake
up every morning to the same nightmare that they have
of what can they do to find their loved one.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
We help answer those questions, but Names is not out
on the street solving crimes. We're helping law enforcement do that,
but we're also doing something cops often and don't have
time to do, helping family who've lost loved ones. He'll
I was the first regional systems administrator handling missing people
and unknown people around the Southeast. There were thousands of
(22:42):
open cases at any given time. Among those thousands was
a case I'd come across in two thousand and four.
It eluded me. It was the one with the serial
killer and the two boys. In the early two thousand,
I'd read a book about a suspected cereal killer and
the murder of this one young woman in Oklahoma. Now,
(23:04):
this serial killer, a man named Franklin Floyd, wasn't famous
on the level of say, Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy,
but the impact he had on this one family was
immeasurable and that's what I wanted to know more about.
The book mentioned two of her relatives, two boys. They
have both vanished, one in the seventies and one in
the nineties. This boggled my mind. How could they have
(23:27):
disappeared and no one was looking for him? What made
these cases even more challenged and was neither body was
ever found. So I entered what I knew about Michael
Hughes the school age boy, into the databases. He was
six years old, brown hair, brown eyes, scar on the forehead,
two crooked bottom teeth. But the infant was a real
mystery to me. All I had to start with was
(23:49):
a name. Philip Stephen Brandenburg was so little to go
on it was really hard to fill out his profile
on the dough Network and especially name us I because
infants don't have dental records or tattoos.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Lots of babies start.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
At with a mop of blonde hair and a year
later have a totally different color, or they started with
curly hair and end up with it straight. The other
challenge is if for some reason, your parents aren't looking
for you. It's not like a coworker or landlord is either.
For all intents and purposes, Philip Stephen Brandyburg never existed
in the first place.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
I only knew about him because.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
He was mentioned in a book that I'd written in
early two thousands about a serial killer. I had no
paperwork to go off of, nothing official. I'd hope that
be I would have tracked down those documents, But when
it came to them with questions about the Brandenburgs, we
were pretty shocked. Here's my buddy mite nance again.
Speaker 10 (24:50):
In the case of Philip Brandenburgh, the FBI agent could
not validate or could not determine if Brandenburg was ever born,
had ever existed.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I was taken with the case, possibly the toughest I
ever took on. I knew there was more to the story.
I just had a feeling if I found out more
information about Philip, it would leave me somewhere. I had
to go. You'll learn this about me. It's kind of
just the way I am. I feel things pretty strongly
more than others. Maybe, like I said, the case chose me.
(25:24):
At the time. I was still at the DOJ, so
the happy I were compelled to talk to me. If
I weren't, they might have said, none of your business.
But asking them about Philip was an ass backwards way
of finding out. They didn't have any paperwork on him period.
But I thought he had to be born somewhere everybody is,
and maybe this person existed somehow, some way, maybe someone
(25:48):
out there was missing him and he deserved to be
found dead or alive. The network is populated by public records,
stuff like newspaper clippings, missing persons pages. We went in
and added everything we could about Philip where we thought
he was born, for he might have been last seen,
and then Mike and I put this case into NamUs,
(26:09):
Michael's regional specialist in charge of the case.
Speaker 10 (26:12):
So we had the missing person case and names as
Philip Brandenburgh and so then it became my task to
try to enhance that as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
His job was to find more clues about this missing boy,
like if you had any distinguishing marks or features, or
where he was last seen. And then I had to wait.
But I'm not a patient person. There's just some things
I want to let go. That could be something people
say as applaw.
Speaker 5 (26:37):
He is committed. He does not stop. If he gets
his mind on a case, he finishes it through.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
I know what this all sounds like a little morbid,
but it's not to me. I have something of a
connection to dead people. They've been in my life for
as long as I can remember. I was two years
old when my mother had my sister. Her name was
Sue Anne. She lived for just a bury, brief sparkle
of life.
Speaker 8 (27:01):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Most days I can't talk about this, but one night
I was able to just once. And that's a tape
you're hearing right now. Mom still never got over my sister.
It was always there. And she was pregnant again, this
time with my brother Greg, and we waited for him.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
We even had a name if he.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Was a boy or if he's a girl. So he
was born and he was sick. He was very clear
that there was visible birth effects. So they took him
to Vanderbilt in an ambulance. So he was gone, and
it was the second day that he passed away by hisself.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
And that's hard to think about.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I was only nine years old but then and had
lost two siblings. Our family was shell shocked. It was
no period of time. And I remember the first time
we went to his grave. I remember my mom, she
of the red mud, and she caught it all over
(28:04):
that put her in a car and it almost looked
like blood on her hands. She just holding her hands
and she just stunned, and she said, I can't leave
him in this cold ground.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But we had to. We had to.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Most people aren't exposed to death until later in life.
But me, I knew about death before I even set
foot in kindergarten. No one tried to shelter me from
the death of my siblings, even when I was a
child myself. Our family actually owned the cemetery before even
my mom and dad were alive. As a result, I
never thought of death as taboo or creepy. These were
(28:38):
my family members and they were present in my life
the way that I knew my brother and sister. They
were never really gone in a way, they were there.
Their names were on the grave. You know.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
We took care of the cemetery.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
We would play while my mom and dad, my aunt
and uncle, they would mow the cemetery. And as I
got older, working with the tent Girl and other cases,
I'm hearing all of these stories and they don't even
know where they are. Missing can be worse than dead.
And then having a tombstone with John or Jane Doe
on it it just didn't compute. You know, I thought,
(29:13):
at least I know where mine are, at least I
know who they are.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
How could you not have a name on your tombstone?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
If I really think about it, I think I became
so focused on these two children because of my own
brother and sister. I had to give these two missing
boys the dignity of a headstone. Anyone who knows me
knows I'm a long way from perfect, and they might.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Also say that I should have let this case go.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
But just like I did with the tent girl, I
held on to hope.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
It's kind of like fishing.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I put up my line and worm and waited for someone,
and you feel it to bite. But I had to
go about my life. My wife and I had our
second son. There were other cases that needed my attention.
Then one day I got a call from an unknown
number in twenty nineteen, fifteen years after I started looking.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I don't even know how I got your number.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I was in my house in the kitchen doing something,
probably pasting. I never really sat down. I didn't recognize
the number. I thought it might have been a telemarketer
or wrong number, but then I thought, you never know.
I'll pick this one up, and I.
Speaker 11 (30:24):
Told him myselught our conversation, I was like, you don't
believe this. I said, I don't blame you if you
don't believe it, because this sounds crazy. And I started explaining.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
He took the time to listen.
Speaker 8 (30:35):
He picked up the phone.
Speaker 11 (30:37):
I mean, it was just one in a billion. I
guess my name is Steve Patterson living in Chervynth, Carolina.
I'm forty nine years old, and I searched my name
and found the missing person's report.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
This guy, Steve Patterson, was calling to say that he
thought he was Phillip Stephen brandon Burg, that maybe this
was his real name that had been changed to me.
It was just a baby, he'd later tell me. He
was looking at the Dough Network, that clinky website I
helped build. What he found was a missing person's page
for a boy with the last named Brandenburgh. The details
seemed familiar, first because the baby was born in April
(31:19):
nineteen seventy four, just like Steve. Second because that name,
Philip Stephen Brandenburg. He had seen it once written on
a manila envelope in his parents house. And now he
had called me because he was wondering if it might
be his real name. Steve was looking for the authorities instead,
he called me directly.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
It just opened a pluggate then, I mean, it just started.
Everything started falling into place, and I'm not gonna go
with computers. I don't know how in the world I
found all this out.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Steve and I started talking and talking and talking. This
was the first time in a long career of working
on John and Jane Doe cases that one of them
me up on the phone. Was he the infant I
was looking for? At the time, there was no way
to know for sure. The time in lined up, he
would have been an infant in nineteen seventy four. Now
(32:10):
he's a grown man. But there was something about Steve's
tone that shook me. He sounded so desperate to find
out who his people were. I remember the way he
said it, I don't know who I am. I don't
think in that moment Steve knew how far I'd gone
looking for him, or that in order to find him,
I'd written to a convicted murderer so many years ago.
(32:34):
If this man was who he said he was, it
would have meant he had escaped the clutches of a
serial killer while his siblings didn't. It would have been
a miracle, but by now you know.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Stranger things have happened.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
This season of Hello John Doe a fugitive on the
run for thirty plus years.
Speaker 10 (32:55):
The actual folders for the case, I would say, would
stack about six feet.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
High, mixedup identities and screwed up pseud anuns.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
It's one of the most unique cases I was ever
involved with.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
And a family left behind trying to solve a lifetime
of mysteries.
Speaker 12 (33:13):
Yes, they did take a DNAC and then I said,
well did you find Steve?
Speaker 7 (33:18):
And they said, who's Steve?
Speaker 12 (33:21):
I said, Steve Swain little boy.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Well, it was thunderstruck.
Speaker 9 (33:25):
It was something I never and no parent ever wants
to hear their child go through.
Speaker 12 (33:30):
You know, instead of being part of the family, he
was given away, when in all reality it saved his life.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
and association with First and Life's Productions from Revelations. Our
executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger from First
to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
partner is New on Home Media. It was written and
produced by Katee Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
(34:04):
She is also nil on Home Media's executive editor. Our
executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Maserua. Sound design and
mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Dot Sessions.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Bendall Faulton is our fact checker.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Our production manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media.
Dylan Fagans our executive producer. Special thanks to Adelia Ruben
at n on HUM and Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson
at iHeartMedia. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn more about
name us at NamUs dot com. The number for the
National Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center is one
eight hundredth the loss that's one eight hundred eight four
(34:50):
three five six seven eight. The National Sexual Assault Hotline
from the Rate Abuse and Incest National Network is one
eight hundred.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Sixty five six six seven through. Okay, guys, this is
the end of the show.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if
you did like it, you make sure that you rate
and review the show. It helps more people to find
it and hear this wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.
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