Her Last Customer: The Unsolved Murder of Gale Green

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
In nineteen eighty seven, the owner of a small lingerie
shop was closing up for the night, looking forward to
a busy evening of plans ahead, plans she would never
make it too. When her brother came by later, he
found her body.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Inside the store.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Investigators believe she was ambushed by someone pretending to be
a customer. Trapped inside of her own business, she fought
hard for her life and injured her attacker in the process. Now,
thirty eight years later, her murder remains unsolved, but with
the amount of physical evidence collected, this may be one

(00:49):
of the most solvable cases I've ever covered, a case
that could finally see justice with the right tip. Today,
I'll walk you through Gail's store and the hidden dangers
faced by retail workers like her. I'm your host, Megan,
and each week on a Simpler Time True Crime, I
cover older, unsolved cases and challenge the idea that a

(01:13):
simpler time means a safer time. This week, I'm bringing
to you the unsolved murder of Gail Green. There isn't

(01:41):
a whole lot of public information out there on Gail Green.
Her case hasn't been covered very much at all over
the years, and most of the information I have comes
from old newspaper reporting in the Juson area and their
interviews with her brother David. But as I was reading
about her, I noticed some reoccurring themes. She was incredibly

(02:05):
generous in giving a very hard worker an entrepreneur, and
she was always trying to coach other women and empower them.
Gil was a lead member of an organization called Resources
for Women, Inc. In late September of nineteen eighty seven,
just two weeks prior to her murder, Gil organized a

(02:27):
large event called the Women's Expo of eighty seven, a
huge event at a hotel that showcased southern Arizona women
owned businesses, which you see more of nowadays, and there's
a more of a societal push to support small businesses,
women owned businesses, minority owned businesses.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Et cetera.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
But I think this was pretty ahead of its time
in nineteen eighty seven. And lest you think that this
was just a bunch of vendor tables, I mean, don't
get me wrong, there were one hundred of those, but
it was so much more. It was a full day
event with breakout sessions, and there was topics covered such
as effective business writing, the rules around drug testing in
the workplace and dispelling those myths, personal money management, taming

(03:13):
the advertising beast, desktop publishing, and the day ended with
a lingerie fashion show from Temptations, the business that Gail owned.
Gail had a passion for business, and that's what she
poured her heart and soul into at forty years old.
She had run her own store for about a year.

(03:34):
Prior to that, she had a winding path that led
her there. Gail was born in New York and attended
high school there, where she was voted best dancer in
her class. She moved to Arizona in the late nineteen sixties.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Her brother, David, was three years.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Younger than her, and in nineteen seventy one, she convinced
him to move across the country with her. The two
were very close and they talked on the phone almost daily.
When she first moved there, she worked at a downtown
Tucson record shop. David described her as a free spirit
and she loved music and reading. Gail had entered into

(04:15):
direct sales with Avon and then began working at a
lingerie business for years. She found that she was really
good at sales and had the business acumen needed for success.
So she decided to branch out on her own, and
she began planning for that. Gail had been with her
husband for ten years. He's sometimes referred to as Terry

(04:38):
Tucker and sometimes referred to as Michael Tucker, but mostly Michael,
so I'm going to refer to him as that for
consistency purposes. The two had no children and they had
a solid marriage from what I could find.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Michael was also friends with her brother David.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
He helped Gail to fulfill her dream. They purchased a
home and converted it into a commercial property for her
to open her shop. I'll have a picture of it
on the flyer for her case. It's on our Instagram
at Simpler Time Crime Pod. Just as a point of clarification,
they didn't. It wasn't one of those setups where they

(05:17):
lived in the same place as where the business was.
They had a separate home. It's just that rather than
this being in a traditional commercial space, Satisfactions was located
in a home that had been converted into a commercial property.
As I said, the business was called Satisfactions and it
was a lingerie and novelty boutique. It was located on

(05:40):
North Country Club Road, near East Glenn Street in midtown Tucson.
The place that was once the converted retail spot is
just an empty plot of land now. But in the
year Gale had to run it, she had built up
her reputation as a businesswoman. Not only did she sell
ideas out of her store, she did private parties in

(06:03):
people's homes. She had repeat clientele, and she catered to
upper class business professionals. While a lot of her focus
was towards women, it was not uncommon for her to
have men come in looking to buy that special something
for their wife or girlfriend. The sales in momentum allowed
for her to have five other sales associates she hired

(06:24):
to do community based sales while she typically held down
the brick and mortar location. And on the evening of Friday,
October ninth, Gail was working in the store alone. She
was planning to close the store around six pm. After
that she was going to meet her husband Michael, and
brother David for a drink before heading to a private

(06:46):
party to sell lingerie in a home at seven thirty.
David and Michael met up as planned, but Gail never showed.
They initially weren't very worried.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Gail was really.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Committed to customer service and if she was about to
close up and a customer walked in, she'd always wait
and assist them with whatever they needed. Because this was
the late eighties and there was no easy way to
reach her husband by phone, this type of delayed communication
was much more common than our current day constantly on call,

(07:18):
plugged in status. So the two men had their drinks,
assumed that Gail had run late and gone straight to
the private party that night, and they eventually went home
as well. Michael had another beer and watched some TV
at home before falling asleep on the couch. He woke
up in a daze in the early morning hours of

(07:40):
October tenth and was concerned to see that Gail hadn't
returned home yet. At this point, it was around twelve
thirty am. Michael's car was having trouble, so he called
his brother in law David and let him know that
Gail hadn't returned yet and he was worried. He asked
if his brother in law could stop into the shop
and see if she was there. For some reason, David

(08:03):
was very protective of his sister, so he answered yes
without hesitation, but he later told the papers he wasn't
exactly expecting to find much of anything when he got
to the store. But as he pulled in too the
lot outside things felt a little eerie and off. The
lights were still on in the shop. Why would Gail

(08:23):
still be there more than six hours after the shop
was supposed to have closed. David opened an unlocked door
and grew concerned right away. Part of the store was
in disarray, and then he discovered the unimaginable, the body
of his sister in the hallway leading to the back

(08:45):
of the store's back rooms. She had clearly been the
victim of a violent attack, and David called police and
Michael right away. Those closest to Gail were heartbroken and shocked.
They could think of anyone who would want to do
her harm. One customer told the Arizona Daily Star that

(09:06):
Gail was really sweet and she was just feeling numb
about all of it. Another woman named Cindy, who worked
at Satisfactions, told the Arizona Republic quote, this lady went
out of her way for everybody. She knew most of
her customers by first name. She had no enemies as
far as I knew none. She also added, quote, she

(09:29):
was real considerate. She kept a bucket of toys in
there so that when my kids came in they had
something to play with. Even though she didn't have any
kids of her own, she liked them. End quote. Her
brother David said that Gail poured everything her heart and
soul into this business and that it was a huge
part of her life. Donna Reid, the president of Resources

(09:53):
for Women, Inc. The networking business group that Gail was
a large part of, She spoke highly of Gil too,
she told the Tucson Citizen, quote, Gail was like a
flower opening. She was ready to grow and to learn
and to expand. She had such a wholesome, positive attitude
toward life. Her business was doing better than it had

(10:15):
from the beginning. She was working for her own professional,
spiritual and personal development and doing well at every level.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
End quote.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
But despite all of this, one other piece kept coming
up that Gail's husband, Michael, had worried about Gail working
alone there, and now that his fears had come true,
there would be a ripple effect in Gail's circle. I

(10:50):
want to take a quick moment to thank you for
tuning into.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
This week's episode.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
It's so appreciated seeing my weekly listeners tuning each week.
And it's been a while since I've done episode appreciation
line because I try to speed the intermissions up now
that I have some ads.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
But I want you all to know that I see you,
I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
I love having conversations about the cases and all of
your case suggestions you send to me. You've really helped
me look into cases that I had never heard of
and raise awareness for them. So please keep it up,
Please stay in touch, and please keep sharing this podcast
with a friend. And now back to the show. Cindy,

(11:36):
Gail's colleague told the papers that Gail's husband, Michael, was
always worried about her working in that location alone, and
it's understandable. The location of Satisfactions was in a small,
former single family home on a mostly residential street. It
was set back from the street and so for a
commercial space, it seemed a bit isolated. Michael was so

(12:01):
concerned that he purchased Gail a pistol to have on her.
It's unclear if she had it on her that day.
According to those who knew her best, she almost teased
about it and joked about doing karate lessons. Saying she
felt perfectly safe beyond the relatively isolated location, though was
also the products she was selling. Being laingerie shop, Gail

(12:24):
would share stories of creepy callers and shoppers who would
stop in and give her the creeps, though she felt
they were mostly harmless. Now members of her business collective
were shaken up, including her own employees. Donna Reid, president
of Resources for Women, said that Gil was quote a
very sensible, level headed woman, and that women were thinking,

(12:47):
if it could happen to her, what's to stop it
from happening to me. Two of her colleagues promptly unlisted
their phone numbers. Others in the group thought that the
killer might have their directory from the big event that
had recently been hosted, and that he might find them.
One member of the group said that they had re

(13:07):
evaluated the location for their new business in favor of
one more populated with other storefronts. Another single mother business
owner in the group was physically sick with anxiety over it.
One woman named Brenda, who was part of the collective,
said that women often made nighttime appointments at the convenience
of their customers, but they were determining if they should

(13:30):
keep doing this, or if they should have some sort
of backup plan of checking in on one another. They
emphasized that Gail was very street smart, so she must
have been completely.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Surprised by her attacker.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
With everyone on high alert, detectives got to work trying
to make sense of the crime scene and what happened
that evening and early on. Detectives were quiet about revealing
too much about the crime. They simply revealed that Gail
had been beaten to death and that they were canvassing
the area, looking to talk to colleagues of Gail and
looking for witnesses to come forward. And that's just what

(14:06):
they did.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
For weeks.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Investigators interviewed dozens of people, and in late December they
did their first major update in the case. Detective John
Kessler appealed to the public for information on a potential
suspect who had been seen in the Satisfactions lingerie shop
on the evening of the murder. The man was said
to possibly be named Chris. He was twenty to forty

(14:32):
years old, five foot eight, with dark hair and a
slim build. The man limped on his left side and
was said to have a Canadian accent. This man sold
computer paper to area businesses and drove a white or
beige van. Detective Kessler stated that investigators had revealed that
this lead came up in part not just because of

(14:54):
the eyewitness tip, but also by analyzing business records of
sales clients and vendors.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
A composite sketch.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Was drawn of this man and taken to the other
lingerie shops in the area, including one in Phoenix, and
store clerks there recognized the man as a frequent customer
as well as a vendor. Lastly, they said the person
may live in Puora, Arizona. After the temporary boost in
the case, it again went quiet for a bit. That

(15:23):
was until the summer of nineteen eighty eight, when an
arrest in a string of sexual assaults brought out a
new suspect. From March of nineteen eighty six to June
of nineteen eighty eight, the southern Arizona area was being

(15:47):
terrorized by a sexual predator dubbed the Leasing agent Rapist
or rental agent Rapist. He had gone on a crime
spree of thirteen sexual assaults in the Phoenix and Tucson areas.
His nickname stemmed from his approach to the crimes. He
would set up meetings with leasing agents to view apartments
or vacant office space areas. Once alone with them, he

(16:10):
would brandish a weapon, either a small caliber gun or
a knife. He would typically tie them up, sexually assault them,
and threaten to kill them. It took time for the
different jurisdictions in this general area to make the connection
that they had a serial predator on their hands, but
once they did, they developed a task force. The man

(16:32):
was said to be well spoken, well kept, dressed professionally,
He drove a nice vehicle, and he asked a lot
of appropriate questions, and so these women were at ease.
One of my earlier episodes on this podcast, where I
discussed real estate agents, I talked about the Michelle Anglin
murder out of also Arizona, and one of the things

(16:53):
that tipped off another potential realtor victim on that same
day was that the man posing as a buyer, James
Van Adams, was asking questions not related to his sale.
Instead of info on the house, he was asking, are
these your typical hours? Do you work alone? I digressed
just a bit there to give a quick tip that

(17:15):
can be a potential red flag in these situations, though
again in the case I'm talking about today, the man
was asking the right questions. So back to this guy,
the leasing agent rapist. By early summer of nineteen eighty eight,
police from the Task Force had released a composite sketch
of the man and talked about some of the cars
he drove, and actually this man's neighbor called the tip

(17:37):
line and said, that looks a lot like my neighbor,
and the wife of the guy's best friend also said
to her husband, Honey, that looks a lot like Randy.
Police began closing in on him as a suspect. They
found handwriting samples of his from a car accident report
and compared it to some of the leasing agent logs

(17:59):
and felt it was a match. This gave them the
warrant for fingerprints, blood, saliva, hair, and pubic hair samples.
In July of nineteen eighty eight, Randy Wedding was apprehended.
He was a thirty three year old, married father of
three children and co owner of an architect business. His

(18:20):
best friend was interviewed for the paper and he was shocked.
The best friend and business partner said he was the
wild one and he would be one to go to
topless bars, and he said he wouldn't have even dreamed
of asking Randy. Randy was so in love and committed
to his wife that he would correct you if you
made crude jokes or were flirty with other women. He

(18:44):
was known as a devout member of a Methodist church.
This friend described him as level headed, the one who
would remain calm in tense situations, and that he was
a dedicated father. Ultimately, Randy Wedding pleaded guilty and did
not pursue a jury trial. He stated that he secretly
had an addiction to pornography and that he was spending

(19:07):
about three hundred dollars a month on it.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
He said something got.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Out of control and he just couldn't stop the sexual assaults.
He also warned that there were more people out there
like him with the same sickness in their heads.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
With his arrest, the.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Detectives investigating Gil Green's case wanted to give him a
hard look. They said it wasn't a home run, but
they'd be stupid not to look into it. And I
mentioned the leasing agent rapes, but there are a couple
of more cases that he's allegedly tied to, and they
break the pattern he had been following up to this point.

(19:43):
In September of eighty seven, just weeks before Gil's murder,
a maid was cleaning an apartment building when she was
attacked from behind and a man matching weddings description tried
pulling her clothes off. She fought back and he took
off running. That very so same evening, the same man
entered a store in the twenty nine hundred block of

(20:05):
East Grant Road and pointed a gun at the store clerk.
He forced her to undress, sexually assaulted her, and left.
This was less than a mile from where Gale Green
would be murdered just a couple of weeks later. Not
only that, the vehicles that Wedding drove resembled one seen
nearby the shop on the day of her murder, and

(20:27):
he looked similar to a composite sketch of a customer
seen in the store that day. At this point, in
July of eighty eight, police stated that they had four
suspects total, presumably the man they called Chris who delivered papers,
and Randy Wedding. They declined to name the other two suspects.

(20:49):
It was also at this point that they revealed that
they had the killer's fingerprints and that they would be
comparing them, but because this was pre aphis and cotis,
it would be a manual.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Process would take weeks.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
The next update from police would come in January of
nineteen eighty nine, and at this point, fifteen months after
the murder, they began to talk in a bit more
detail about the crime, hoping to get people to come forward.
One such detail was how they believed the crime had
progressed that evening. According to Tucson Police Detective Joseph Godoy,

(21:25):
Gail Green was getting ready to leave when a customer
came in right around closing time, somewhere around five point
forty five to six fifteen ish. A sales associate was
driving by that night and thought about stopping in, but
declined when she saw a vehicle, a tan colored van,
nearby the parking area next to the shop and driving away.

(21:46):
This associate thought that Gail might be busy finishing up
with a customer and she didn't want to disturb things.
Just for a quick point of clarification, because that gets
a little confusing sounding. Some of the source material says
that she just saw the vehicle driving away. Some of
it talks about her seeing like a man going in
and the vehicle parked there, So it's a little convoluted.

(22:06):
I can't tell if there was two separate witnesses that
saw two separate things, or if some of the source
material just kind of blends together. Detective Godoy said it
was obvious that a struggle had begun around Gail's desk
in the front showroom. He said that it continued into
what had once been a kitchen, and from there it

(22:28):
led to the rear part of the hallway. He said
that he believed that Gail Green was killed while resisting
a rape attempt, and that nothing, no merchandise, and no
money was missing from the store. So police now revealed
that this is a sexually motivated crime and that robbery
was not a motive. Furthermore, it was believed that when

(22:51):
the suspect came in, Gail had been ironing lingerie for
the show that evening. Next to the register were two
wrapped gift boxes, the receipt filled out. Police have never
revealed what was in the boxes, but they said they
believed that the assailant had told Gail that he wanted
to purchase those items for someone, and that she had
been gift wrapping them. It's then believed that the suspect

(23:13):
tried to sexually assault Gail, and she fought back. She
seemingly grabbed the iron she was using and hit the suspect,
likely in the header face. Police then surmised that the
suspect was able to wrestle the iron away from Gail
and beat.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Her to death with it.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Gail's blood was found on the iron, but so was
the suspects. Detectives said they had a fair amount of
physical evidence, both fingerprints and blood from the suspect, but
that at that time they needed to have a person
to compare it to. So I already know what you're thinking. Okay, Megan,

(23:50):
what about those four suspects, Well, let's start with Chris,
the one who Detective Godoy said was who he thought
was his best suspect in the case. He was the
paper salesman who was known to frequent satisfactions in other
lingerie stores. The sales associate who saw the van that
night had actually remembered a partial plate. After digging into

(24:13):
DMV databases and asking for public assistance and finding the man,
they did, but the detective told the Tucson citizen that
right away in his interview with Chris, he just knew
he wasn't their guy. Still, to be thorough, he compared
his blood type and fingerprints and it was not a match.

(24:34):
And as it turned out, Chris had been in Tucson
that day, but it had been the morning, not the evening.
While no articles explicitly rule out Randy wedding, it's assumed
that after they must have because they said they were
going to do those fingerprint comparisons, and here we are,
all these years later without a match, So it couldn't

(24:56):
have been him. And just to be clear, they ruled
Gil's husband out as well. Detectives had hit a wall.
They shared that they believed the injury the killer sustained
might have been significant, possibly needing stitches, so they released
the information, hoping that someone who may have treated him
would recognize it with stinks is that might have been

(25:18):
a better question to ask right off the bat. I
have a hard time imagining a hospital worker would remember
giving stitches. Over a year later, detectives characterized the crime
scene and killer as disorganized, theorizing that he didn't come
there to murder her, but to sexually assault her, and
when things got out of hand and she fought back.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
He lashed out in a rage.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Gil's husband became withdrawn and after her murder, he would
only talk to police about the case. As such, Gail's brother,
David became the champion of keeping her case alive. At
the three year mark, he was interviewed and he talked
about how frustrating it was not having answers, how he
thought about it every day and would for the rest
of his life, and how it had finally dawned on

(26:05):
him that this case may never be solved, but David
didn't give up. Nearly twenty more years would pass before
Gal's name would reappear in the news cycle.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Cold case detectives.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
In two thousand and nine were taking a fresh look.
The new detective on the case shared that they still
had great physical evidence and if they could just match
it to someone, they would have an amazing case.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Against the suspect.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
But the new detective revealed that they had run the
prints and blood samples through all the national databases and
had not gotten a hit. He said, quote, we are
contacting many people to determine whether they are owners of
the DNA. We are taking samples from those people and
in the process excluding some end quote, I found the

(26:53):
language excluding some interesting. While I doubt there's a matcher
we would know, I get the sense that maybe some
people have not been forthcoming with their DNA, but that's
just my guess. In that two thousand and nine article,
David Green said, quote, I think about it every day.
There is no explanation for it. It's just one of

(27:15):
those real hard things I've had to deal with in
my life. I would just say, if someone knows something,
they should report it to the police so they can
find this person and hold him responsible, make him pay.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Fifteen more years.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Would pass, and in October of twenty twenty four, there
was another push for closure in her case. A few
different new stations ran pieces on her case for visibility. Still,
with all the DNA evidence, they have not had any hits.
In an interview with the local Channel thirteen news station,

(27:51):
two of the cold case detectives talked vaguely about pursuing
new forensic options. And my hope is that there is
potential for this case to be solved with genetic genealogy,
given that there hasn't been a hit either. This person
was one of those one and done killers, or possibly
they died before ever having their DNA collected. But these

(28:14):
types of advanced DNA testing, it's expensive and there isn't
always a lot of places that do it, and offices
have limited resources to be able to pursue it. There
are nonprofits like Season of Justice that provide advanced DNA
testing for free as long as police departments initiate their
request and are willing to have the evidence sent to

(28:35):
a private lab, so to soom PEDI. If you're listening
to this episode, please consider doing this to help resolve
this case. And listeners, that's where you come in. Please
share this episode and Gail's story. It's been left out
of the media so much, and when there is increased
pressure from people to solve a case, sometimes that can
help bump a case up in line to get testing done. Obviously,

(28:58):
I want everybody cases solved in a perfect world, but
in the meantime, I'm really hoping that there is a
sliver of justice and answers out there waiting in Gail's case.
Before I wrap up this episode, I do just want
to draw attention to some of the very real lived
experiences of people who work retail in general, but particularly

(29:20):
in this industry, such as places like Victoria's Secret or
other lingerie adjacent stores. I'll link some different articles and
Reddit threads in the show notes, but it's surprisingly common.
A lot of times it's phone calls, but sometimes it's
people and regulars who show up in the store. It's
possible that Gail was murdered by someone who intended to

(29:41):
be a shopper that night but got opportunistic, or that
possibly it was one of the people she described to
her brother as quote unquote perverts who.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Came into the store.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Retail is not an area of expertise of mine, so
I thought another action item from my listeners would be,
if you're someone who has worked in retail, especially someplace
like this, comment on the episode, on Spotify or on
the Instagram post, share tips for fellow listeners to stay
safe in these situations, or what protocols your workplaces have

(30:13):
put in place. The safest thing would be for these
creepy men to just leave women alone, but in absence
of that, I'd love my listener community to care for
one another in this way and keep each other safe.
If you have any information on the murder of Gilgreen,
please contact the eighty eight Crime Tip Line five two

(30:33):
zero eight eight two seven four sixty three. There's also
a mobile app, it's called p three Tips, and there's
a website www dot eight eightcrime dot org. You can
remain anonymous, and at the time of this recording, there
is a twenty five hundred dollars reward for information. This
has been another episode of a Simpler Time True Crime.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
If you appreciate the work I'm doing, please leave a.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Five star review on your favorite listening platform. If you
wish to support the show monetarily, consider joining my Spreaker
Supporter Club. I have so many plans for it soon,
and I appreciate you all so much. Case suggestions can
be made to Simpler Timecrimepod at gmail dot com. And
as always, thank you so much for listening and join
me again next Monday.

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