Violence in the Valley - The Monster of Marietta

None

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
Now the Violence in the Valley podcastwith retired Parkersburg Chief of Police Bob Newell
and others, brought to you byInteresting Insurance three Generations of insurance Excellence.
Serial rapists, even those who murder, all have common traits in selecting their
victims. In an often cited studyby FBI profilers, serial rapists overwhelmingly select

(00:36):
their victims simply based on their availability. Such was true of one convicted murderer
and rapists from Washington County, Ohio. Washington County and its largest city of
Marietta had a disturbing rate of disappearancesof young women in the nineteen nineties.
At one time, there were fourcases involving young women who were still missing
or whose bodies had been found dumpedin rural areas in the southeastern Ohio county

(01:02):
with a population of only sixty thousandpeople. One case stood out in which
police were able to identify a suspectthat would lead to the discovery of several
unreported rapes or attempted rapes. OnApril twelfth, nineteen ninety two, Marietta
resident Patsy Sparks disappeared after she wasseen leaving the Wheel Club with Randy Slider.

(01:23):
The Wheel Club was a popular nightspot in Parkersburg, West Virginia,
across the Ohio River from Marietta.Patsy was only eighteen years old at the
time, but was an adult whosedisappearance wouldn't be noticed for a couple of
days. Her family eventually filed amissing persons report with the Parkersburg Police Department,
and the case was assigned to formerDetective Mark McCain. Fairly quickly,

(01:46):
it was developed that she probably leftthe bar with a gentleman by the name
of Randy Slider. We were ableto locate him, and I believe it
was Detective Kenny Miller, and Iinterviewed him the first time. Of course,

(02:07):
that that was that was a prettycursory interview to begin with. He
mentioned another individual that he saw outin the parking lot that that when he
when he was walking out to thecar with with Patsy, the plan was
he was going to give her aride to a bar and Marietta. He

(02:30):
stated that there was a gentleman standingby a camaro on back in the parking
lot that she recognized and went totalk to, and then she came up
and told him he's going to giveme a ride to Marietta, and he
left and went to another bar inMarietta. Investigators now had to find this

(02:52):
new mystery man, if he existed, and eliminate him as a suspect.
Slider gave a description of the manin his car, and after questioning friends
of Patsy's, there was in factanother person of interest located. According to
her friends, this man followed Patsyaround and showed up at nightclub she frequented
on a regular basis. He wasolder than Patsy at the time, if

(03:15):
I remember correctly, ten fifteen years. Talked to a lot of her friends
that knew him, and all ofthem had kind of a weird vibe from
him. He would show up placesthat she was and you know, encourage
her to go home, offered togive her a ride home, and a

(03:39):
lot of the people that we talkedto back then were kind of a mixed
bag of you know, he waswanting to be a father figure type to
her, protector of sorts, andalso somebody who probably had a romantic interest

(03:59):
in her, but it never wentanywhere. So we developed a lot of
information on him, brought him infor an interview and of course he was.
He was cooperative. Never to myknowledge, he never acknowledged being at

(04:21):
the wheel Club that night, butthere was there was just enough information coming
from him that we couldn't roll outthe fact that he may have been either
either at the wheel Club or orsomewhere later in Marietta. With two suspects
now, investigators decided to enlist thehelp of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit to

(04:46):
review the profiles of both men.Because we had two suspects and it was
getting difficult to track down information fromthere based on two completely separate suspects,
we took the case file down toQuantico. One of the thought processes was

(05:06):
that being in that position of feelinglike he was her savior and one person
looking out for our best interest,there was some concern that maybe that led
him to think the best thing hecould do for her is just eliminate her
from being involved in all this period. So that was kind of a concern

(05:29):
as well. Based on what wewere gathering from from investigating his background and
dealings with Patsy, and of courseeverything we had from Randy was from the
background and the interviews that we haddone with people that knew him, girls
that he had dated and had contactwith. He had a pretty violent and

(05:55):
abusive outlook towards women in general,and it was nothing out of the ordinary
to hear that he had been violentat some point with those women. The
man who appeared at nightclubs to checkup on Passy wasn't completely eliminated, but
Slider continued to be the most likelyknown suspect due to his multiple brushes with

(06:15):
law enforcement in Washington County. That'sone of those things where to have somebody
that from the behavior on analysis sideto look at that and kind of help
you eliminate in your own mind aparticular person that's suspect. You don't always

(06:36):
just write them off of suspect,but it gives you a different different view
of the case too. Another pieceof information a Rosen investigation complicating the ability
to focus in on the last personPatsy was seen with in Parkersburg, Detective
McCain interviewed a witness who claimed shehad seen Sparks alive and well in a

(06:58):
bar in Marietta later the same nightafter she would have left the Wheel Club.
If this information was correct, thenregardless of who gave her a ride,
she obviously arrived at her destination unharmed. We'd developed somebody that had actually
seen her in a bar in Mariettaafter she left the wheel club, so
we knew that while she may havedisappeared from the wheel club, we did

(07:24):
have a fairly good source telling usthat she had been seen at a bar
in Marietta, so we kind offigured that would be the jurisdiction on it.
But since the initial report was filedin West Virginia, McCain continued to
be part of the investigation. BecauseI had started the case in Parkersburg,

(07:45):
Sheriff Slicker had me come up andwork with John Winstanley, and we tracked
down a lot of the ex girlfriends. We made a couple of different attempts
at talking to Sabrina, who wasRandy's living girlfriend at the time. The
first time Kenny Miller and I metwith her was she was cooperative in a

(08:13):
closed off sort of way. Imean, she would she sat and talked
to us, But you know,we left there knowing that that there was
probably more that she knew that shewasn't telling us. You know, at
that time, she she refused toallow us to take her car to have

(08:35):
it inspected. She did relent Ibelieve it was a couple of weeks later,
and agreed to let us take thecar. But she also told us
later that she had gone and cleanedthe car out, and that was at
Randy's direction. I believe he wasin County jail at the time, and

(08:56):
she told him that we'd come byto to interview her and that we wanted
to take the car, and hesaid, get that car and get it
cleaned up. It was her actionsand her reactions to some of our questions
and some of our requests, orbecause the car was owned and registered in

(09:18):
her name. She admitted to usthat Randy had a bit of a angry,
abusive side, but also said thatshe could not see him ever being
involved in anything like that, andwhen asked about some of the prior accusations,
she said those were all lies.Two years later, the remains of

(09:39):
Patsy Sparks were discovered in adjoining NobleCounty My Dinner Hunters, on a farm
that Randy Slider had been to manytimes when he was younger. John Winstanley
and I had decided at some pointthrough that that Randy was the most viable
suspect, and if he had beeninvolved in Patsy's disappearance, that he likely

(10:03):
has put her someplace that he wasfamiliar with, and so just doing some
background on him and where he grewup in places he spent a lot of
time as an adult. We endedup going out on four wheelers in different

(10:26):
two or three different locations. Oneof those locations we were actually probably within
one hundred two hundred yards where Patsywas eventually found. During the same time
period, the Marietta City Police wereactively investigating the brutal murder of Ronda Manley,
who had been stabbed multiple times andwhose body was found in Mound Cemetery

(10:50):
a couple months after Patsy had gonemissing. Two years before these murders,
Delby resident Terry Roach disappeared and herremains were found in a rural area of
Worston County. She had been beatento death. Well it seemed to be
likely that all the murders were connected, there was no evidence linking them together.
Although all the different investigators were coveringthese possibilities, there was never anything

(11:16):
throughout the investigation that indicated that.But certainly every law enforcement officer that was
working on one of those cases.I mean, we all had the same
questions, you know. We lookedfor similarities in places that they were last

(11:43):
seen, friendships, relationships, Didthey know each other? Did did they
hang out same places, hang outwith the same friends, have the same
lifestyle that would have led them tothat kind of situation. So there was
there was an outlook of that possibility, but at least up until the time

(12:07):
that I left, there wasn't anythingthat connected any of them together. Eventually,
the Sparks investigation stalled due to lackof any new leaves, but several
years later a cold case unit wasformed by the Washington County Sheriffess Department with
the assistance from state officials. LieutenantJess Severs and former Wood County Deputy Bruce

(12:31):
Shook headed up the team. FormerDetective McCain was asked to share his recollection
of the investigation from years earlier.New evidence and witness testimony was uncovered that
would provide enough to indict Randy JoeSlider. Slider had served eight years in
prison after raping another young woman inWashington County after he had murdered Patsy Sparks.

(12:52):
He had previously been tried for fivecounts of rape and acquitted in nineteen
ninety by a jury and Marietta.One woman later said that if Slider had
not been acquitted, she would havenever been his victim years later, and
Patsy Sparks would still be alive.After his release from prison, he kidnapped
and assaulted two more women near Cincinnati, Ohio, and was sentence to a

(13:13):
long term in prison. He wasstill serving that sentence when he was indicted
for the murder of Patsy Sparks.He later played guilty and admitted to the
details of how he murdered Patsy.Part of Randy's plea agreement on that case
was that he had to he hadto proffer you know what happened that night.

(13:35):
He also admitted to other known sexualassaults, but not all of them.
Six other women from Washington County hadbeen subpoena to testify against Slider.
His assaults dated all the way backin the nineteen eighties, with his youngest
victim being fourteen years old. Withoutexception, Randy Jo Slider selected his victims
who were alone and isolated, fittingthe exact profile of cyril rapists and sociopaths.

(14:00):
Developed by behavioral scientists years earlier.Slider was sentenced to additional consecutive terms
in prison to begin after his currentsentence, making him eligible for release when
he is one hundred and two yearsold. I want to thank former Parkersburg
Police Detective Mark McCain for participating inthis podcast. The Violence in the Valley

(14:26):
podcast has been brought to you byInfrastate Insurance three Generations of Insurance Excellence.
For even more details, get acopy of the book at Amazon dot com s