Nothing Is What It Seems: The Unsolved Murder of Donna Emmel

If you look up this case online, you’ll see one version of events repeated over and over: A young girl leaves a hangout spot to walk home, takes a cut-through trail, and never makes it back. Her body is later found in a nearby ditch, and a witness claims they saw a man follow her into the woods. That’s the story I first read, and it’s the one most people believe. But in recent years, Donna’s cousins have worked to unravel the truth. And what they’ve uncovered shows that very little in this case is what it seems. They’ve tracked down old friends, spoken with locals and law enforcement, and carried out their own boots-on-the-ground investigation.

One name that comes up repeatedly is one you may recognize from the Netflix documentary “Making A Murderer.” It’s a violent rapist who Donna was acquainted with and lived in the area at the time she was killed. For this episode, I sat down with three of Donna’s cousins, who share what they’ve learned and separate out fact from fiction. This year marks 50 years since her murder. And her family is not giving up because they believe the answers are still out there and that they are hidden in this small town.

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Source Material:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakingaMurderer/comments/dc27pv/gregory_allen_his_rap_sheet_and_being_up_for/
https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/2016/02/19/rapist-linked-avery-case-get-parole-hearing/80612368/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakingaMurderer/comments/4hx2e8/the_1995_crime_for_which_gregory_allen_was/
https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/steven-avery/2016/03/14/rapist-avery-case-suspected-gb-attacks/81452156/
https://www.wral.com/story/two-ex-carteret-deputies-plead-guilty-in-embezzlement-case/8057748/
https://www.wnct.com/on-your-side/crime-tracker/cold-case-files/cold-case-files-newport-teen-found-dead-in-ditch-in-1975-murder/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/24895563/donna-marie-emmel
https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/steven-avery/2016/03/14/rapist-avery-case-suspected-gb-attacks/81452156/
https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/2016/02/19/rapist-linked-avery-case-get-parole-hearing/80612368/
https://medium.com/@jennbaxter_69070/north-carolina-cold-case-who-killed-donna-emmel-916bb8617958
https://www.newspapers.com/article/goldsboro-news-argus-girls-body-found-in/179211261/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sentinel-2500-reward/179211531/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-salisbury-post-seeking-killer/179211307/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-news-herald-embezzlement/179526301/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
If you look up this case online, you'll see one
version of events repeated over and over.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
A young girl.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Leaves a hangout spot to walk home, takes a cut
through trail, and never makes it back. Her body is
later found in a nearby ditch, and a witness claims
they saw a man follow her into the woods. That's
the story I first read, and it's the one that
most people believe. But in recent years, Donna's cousins have

(00:41):
worked to unravel the truth, and what they've uncovered shows
that very little in this case is what it seems.
They've tracked down old friends, spoken with townspeople in law enforcement,
and carried out their own boots on the ground investigation.
One name that comes up repeatedly is one you may
recognize from the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer. It's a

(01:07):
violent rapist who Donna was acquainted with and lived in
the area at the time she was killed. For this episode,
I sat down with three of Donna's cousins, who share
what they've learned and separate out fact from fiction. This
year marks fifty years since her murder, and her family
is not giving up because they believe the answers are

(01:28):
still out there, and that they're hidden in this small town.
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 simpler time means a safer time.
This week, I'm bringing to you the unsolved murder of
Donna Emmel. Before I get started today, I wanted to

(02:15):
tell you about the voices you're going to hear. In
helping me share Donna's case, I had the privilege of
talking with three of Donna's cousins. The first is Stephanie Bryant,
who has led the charge to push for answers in
Donna's case. She was also sitting with her mother, Beverly,
who is Donna's first cousin and was her best friend.

(02:36):
We were also joined by cousin Robert Lewis. Through family
genealogy work. Robert found out he was Stephanie's cousin a
few years back, and when they realized they both had
been looking for answers in their cousin Donna's case, they
joined forces in compared notes.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
But once I found out we were related, it kind
of little something in me. And then when I came
across some of Stephanie's post, and I listened to a podcast,
a previous podcast that Stephanie and Beverly were on, and
that just so I reached out. I reached out to
Stephanie one day and said, hey, you know, well they
were not we're actually cousins, and I would like to

(03:14):
get involved. And we just kind of hit the ground running.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
And what a duo they have been. I'm so thankful
that they agreed to join me and trusted me not
only in telling Donna's story, but also in communicating what
they're looking for from you as listeners to help with
Donna's case. So let's get to it. It was June sixteenth,
nineteen seventy five, and fifteen year old Donna Emmel was

(03:39):
at a local hangout spot. The place was called Grace's Grill,
and it was somewhere she often went since she moved
to the small town of Newport, North Carolina, months prior.
Donna had been born in the nearby city of Havelock,
North Carolina, and in the November prior, she had relocated
to the town of Newport with her mom, Emily and

(03:59):
hers Donna was born into a military family, and Havelock
is anchored by the Marine Corps air station at Cherry Point,
one of the largest Marine air stations in the world.
It's very much a military town, with families constantly coming
and going as service members are stationed and transferred. The

(04:19):
city grew up around the base, so the community is
built on supporting military life, with schools, housing and businesses
catering to that population. Donna did not have a close
relationship with her father, and in recent years her father
had left the family and moved away. Emily moved herself
and her four children to the nearby town of Newport,

(04:41):
which was closer to family, and they moved into a
house on believe it or not, Easy Street. Here's Robert
talking a bit about what Newport was like in nineteen
seventy five. Robert's audio breaks up a little here at
the beginning of this episode, but hang in there because
it gets better, and his perspective is important because he
actually grew up right in that neighborhood and was there

(05:03):
when all of this happened.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
In nineteen seventy five, Newport would have been still are
probably talking no more than twelve to residents. It was
run by a few individuals, some are still around, probably
in the nineties, some are de seeded. Some of the
town characters have streets named after him to this day.

(05:29):
Much much lower crime back then.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
Here's Stephanie that the way you see Newport now, like
if you were to look at a map, Newport was
a highway and it was woods. The stores that are
there now were not there then. So it was a
very isolated country, dark place around the area that Donna

(05:53):
would have been. I think there's a isn't there a
street light out there on Howard that wasn't there before
back then?

Speaker 5 (06:00):
Oh yeah, Howard's.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
There were no lights on Howard that I know of
back in seventy five.

Speaker 5 (06:05):
That. Of course, there's sidewalks and street lights and everything now.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Anything we forgot, Mom that you can remember about Newport
back then, no, I.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Call it a little hit town. You know, it was
nothing to it.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
In nineteen seventy five, Donna was the oldest at fifteen.
She had a brother, Michael, who was fourteen, another younger brother, David,
who was ten years old, and the baby of the family.
Carry of the cousins I interviewed, Beverly was the one
who knew Donna personally. They were like I described first

(06:39):
cousins who were also like best friends. Beverly told me
how Donna was somewhat of a tomboy who was kind
but could also hold her own.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
She was small, but she was feisty. You didn't know
it unless you really made her mad. You didn't see
that side over. She was a tomboy. To my knowledge.
She only ever owned one dress, and she was buried
in that dress. She liked to go to movies, she
liked to go to bowling alleys. She liked to will

(07:12):
stay home. Back in the day when I knew or
she was a homebody like me, didn't have boys around,
and she was a nice girl. She was very nice,
very very nice, very close to her mama.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Easy Street is located next to Highway seventy, separated by
just a patch of woods. Highway seventy is one of
the major east west roots in North Carolina, running from
the Tennessee border near Asheville all the way to the coast.
On the other side of Highway seventy is nine Foot Road.

(07:46):
This is where Gryce's grill was located and where we
pick back up on that evening of June sixteenth, nineteen
seventy five. I'm first going to tell you the narrative
that is out there, what you'll find if you read
the linked newspaper articles I share, or if you go
just google the case. According to source material and reporting,

(08:08):
in nineteen seventy five, Donna was hanging out at Gryce's
Grill with some friends. And this place had in arcade
and pool tables, so it was a popular hangout for
the younger crowd. That night, Donna had been hanging out
with some friends when her mother called somewhere between eight
and eight thirty pm and told her to come home.

(08:29):
Donna left and began her walk home. Now, if you
strictly took the marked roads, you could take nine foot
Road and crossover Highway seventy and then follow the road.
Nine foot Road turns into and turn into the neighborhood
Easy Street was on, but the fastest way was using
a shortcut through the woods, one that Donna used often

(08:51):
and so did all the other local kids.

Speaker 5 (08:53):
So she grew up on it's.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Called Easy Street. Well, that is a real place, eighty Street.
Her There was across the street was a row of
houses and there was a wooded area those houses and
the highway, the Highway seventy so she would have to
walk through a neighbor's yard to enter the woods, and

(09:15):
I would say from her front porch to the woods
was probably seventy five to eighty yards maybe, and then
the distance to get through the woods to the highway
may have been another seventy.

Speaker 5 (09:26):
Five or eighty cars.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
But it wouldn't have taken her very long to get
from her house across the highway to Grys's grill. I
would say five minutes popped even at a walk. When
I was growing up, Gryce's grill had moved. There was
a convenience store there, so my friends and I would
take the path to get across the highway to the

(09:48):
convenience About five minutes is about all it took. All
the neighborhood kids used that path.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
So allegedly Donna u that path. But that night Donna
didn't come home. This was out of character for Donna,
and Emily kept good visibility to her, so she immediately
reported her missing when she didn't come home. Local law
enforcement and neighborhood friends who were concerned all joined together
that very night to try to help find Donna. They

(10:20):
backtracked to Gryce's grill, and according to a newspaper article
at the time that really seemed to take off and
spread to other newspapers. Donna's brother was out that night
and saw a man following Donna into the woods. Police
scoured the woods with flashlights and walked the paths she
would take. They talked to friends, but ultimately they could

(10:41):
not find Donna that evening. Now reports differ on the
timeline the following day, but sometime on the seventeenth, between
four am, which is the approximate time the search was
called off and twelve noon, which is noted on the
autopsy report as the time she was found. A couple
of teens were in the woods when they heard a

(11:02):
young girl scream. I should know this detail is actually
not reported on in the local papers, but it's something
that the cousins have found out in their research and
seems to be told around the town.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
I think it was a teenage guy and his I
think I don't know if his girlfriend or why. But
they were in the woods that morning, smoking dope, as
teenagers do in June.

Speaker 5 (11:25):
I guess, in the woods.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
But they said they heard a little girl scream and
they ran to see what it was, and the girl
had found bodies so these two were actually the first,
you know, there weren't adults, but they were the first,
you know, to see don in the ditch.

Speaker 5 (11:43):
And they're the ones.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Who I think they told the little girl, you know,
they recognized who she was.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
The details of what happened next are a little fuzzy,
but somehow police were called and they reported to the scene.
They think that probably the little girl ran off to
get help and call nine one one, Fifteen year old
Donna Emmel was dead. Some source material describes her as
carefully placed in the ditch near her home, laid down,

(12:14):
almost like she was sleeping. As first responders came to
the area. Her brother Michael, who was fourteen at the time,
was inconsolable.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
But the police were already there when Michael seen. Because
Michael ran down in the ditch to grab her, and
the police told him the stop right there, that if
he touched her he would go to jail.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Donna was fully clothed, and the autopsy revealed she had
been strangled to death and had not been sexually assaulted.
The autopsy also revealed she didn't have any drugs or
alcohol in her system that night. A little bit later,
I'm going to get into the investigation more thoroughly, but
for a moment, I want to skip ahead. Stephanie grew

(12:56):
up watching the case haunt her mother, Beverly and her family.
She saw the longing they had for answers, while at
the same time being very closed off and oftentimes not
wanting to talk about the tragedy to the media or
amongst themselves. It was heartbreaking for Stephanie to see the
impact it had on her aunt, Emily, and Emily's other children,

(13:19):
and the ripple effect out Still, it was a rather
taboo topic. That was until Stephanie's grandmother picked up the
paper one morning and Stephanie had enough.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
Uh was it five five years ago? There was a
reporter that did an article in the newspaper that was horrendous,
and my grandmother went out on the porch to get
her coffee, and the front page of that newspaper had
a bloody handprint with Donna's picture on it. And in

(13:52):
that article it talked and kind of swayed to Emily
being the one that took Donna's life and she was
going to her grave with that, she had gone to
her grave with that. That that kicked me in gear.
That after that. I was like, no, that's we're We're
not doing this no more. If the family gets angry
at me, they'll just have to be angry at me.

(14:13):
But we're gonna, we're not gonna style it no more.
And and really the family got behind me. They they
got behind me. It was no more, we're gonna stay quiet.
We went to the paper, we we asked for a
correction in that article, and then from there on it
was just we're gonna, We're gonna talk to people. I

(14:34):
went out and started talking to people from back in
her childhood. I would get different names, I would go
out and talk to them. Eventually got in touch with
the SBI, and it's just been going forward ever since.
I've just been pushing and pushing and pushing to get
her name out there, get her story out there, and
get people talking.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
I personally saw Stephanie's advocacy and it's what led me
to reach out to her and see if she'd be
interested in having me share Donna's story on the podcast.
I was so glad she agreed and recruited Robert and
Beverly to join us as well. So I sat down
with them and as I got into the events, of
that night. I relayed the story that I just mentioned

(15:16):
of Donna's last night to ensure what I had so
far was accurate. And to my.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
Surprise, that's not accurate.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
If your ears perked up, so did mine. And we'll
pick up there after this short break. So yes, my
ears perked up. And the cousins went on to tell
me how there is no clear establishment that Donna ever

(15:47):
picked up the phone that evening at Grace's grill, or
that she was immediately heading home at that time. And
that's just the beginning.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
And that first of all, between Robert and I talked
talking too many many many many people from that time.
One of the girls that she was there with that
night said that Donna had planned to go stay with
her boyfriend and so she had left to go home.

(16:17):
But there are other people that also say that she
received a phone call. There's other people that say that
she didn't receive a phone call. There's no way to
verify that she received phone call that night that she
needed to come home.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
So what about her younger brother who saw a man
following her into the woods?

Speaker 4 (16:37):
Is the brother that they talk about in the paper
was never allowed at Grys's. He was never he was
too young. That would have been David, and Donna would
not have left him there. And that's coming from family,
that's coming from friends, that's coming from people that hung
out at Gryce's. Every person that we spoke to has

(17:00):
said that David had never gone to Grys's. He wasn't
allowed to be there. He was too young. And the
character of Donna, she knew better, she would not have
left him behind.

Speaker 5 (17:09):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
Well, we did a little digging on that story because,
you know, we thought maybe it's a simple mistake because
of the age of the children, with Donna being the
oldest and then her younger brother, Michael was only a
year younger. So I think Donna would have been fifteen,
Michael would have been fourteen, David was ten. So we said, well,
maybe they was just a misunderstanding. Maybe Michael was at Gryce's,

(17:31):
which would make more sense that she would leave her
fourteen year old brother. But then once again from interviewing
law enforcement and people who were at Grice's at night,
that's just not the case. She was there with friends,
she was not there with either of her brothers. So
I said, we don't know where the story came from.
And that's kind of one of the misconceptions of rumors

(17:53):
we'd like to get rid of, because that was a
rumor I heard when I was growing up. So that's
what I believed, and I'm sure they're probably many people
still in the Newport Havelock, you know, that area, that
are still under that same belief.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Another thing I learned from them is that none of
that was ever actually in the police report. So the
only place this story of the phone call and the
brother seeing the man go into the woods, that was
only just reported in a local paper. But going back
to that original story that's been put out, the theory
was that someone followed Donna into the woods that night,

(18:28):
the murder took place in those woods, and that her
body was placed in that ditch. But the more Beverly,
Stephanie and Robert looked into this, the less this added up.
The woods were searched thoroughly that night, and there was
nothing there. Where Donna's body was found. Was a place
people would have looked, a place they know Donna's mother,

(18:49):
Emily did look. She simply wasn't there, which would mean
that she was murdered sometime after leaving Grace's grill. But
she was either held for a period of time or
her body was hidden until the search was called off
in those early morning hours, and then at that time
speculation would seem that her body was moved back to

(19:12):
where it would be found by searchers that next day,
as if she had been attacked on the wooded trail.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
See that every first responder I had talked to swears
up and down there was no body in the woods
that night. The body did not appear until the following morning,
after the search had kind of been called off. I
think the search was called off around four am is
kind of what I'm hearing from first responders. You know,
of course, their memories a little fifty years old, but

(19:40):
three four am is about what most of them are
telling me. And I believe the body was found. I mean,
Beverly my could tell better than on this one. Maybe
about six seven o'clock the next morning.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
Now, well, the autopsy report says nude, okay, so, and
there's still discrepancies for that. The family believes that it
was earlier, right, but the first responders and the autopsy
says that it was around noon.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
So somewhere between four am and noon she was put
over there. There's a body in the ditch, so we're
not sure if she ever even entered the woods that
night after she left Grys's.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
She did leave Gryce's. Everybody that we've spoken to or
I have spoken to, has confirmed that she did leave
and get across the highway. But because there was no
street lights there and the opening to the woods, it
would have been dark in that area. She could have
been taken before she even got in there. She could
have got right into the path and you know, brought

(20:40):
right back out. Any of those things can happen. But
she did make it.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Across the highway.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
From what I don't know, probably five to ten people
that I've spoke to have confirmed that they did see
her go across the highway. The girl that she was
with that night said that Donna left and went across
the highway and then she left in her car, and
she feels very guilty about that because she wished now

(21:07):
that she had just given Donna ride home. So we
do have that confirmation that she did walk across the
highway to the path, and I would like to add
to that too that Emily, her mama walked that ditch.
She walked that ditch Donna was not in that ditch.
She got out there and searched for her child. So

(21:30):
they waited until after the authorities left, and I guess
the area was clear before they you know, put her
in that ditch. But as Robert said, they searched the
entire woods. She was nowhere in those woods, so they
had her somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
So that brings to question where was she hidden and
who might have done this? Now, Stephanie was not shy.
She doesn't feel like the Newport Police Department has been
very helpful in solving Donna's case.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
But yeah, so Newport Police Department doesn't want anything to
do with any of it. So, and I don't care
if you put that in there. I've made it clear,
I think online.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
She even told me that once she got into Donna's
case again and was talking to people in the community,
she said she realized that a lot of people were
hesitant to go to law enforcement with the things that
they were telling her because they had already tried over
the years and that they would not get callbacks from
the police department, and so they were hesitant to try again.

(22:33):
But the exception to the rule was that of former
Newport Police chief Rough Tomlinson. He always hoped to solve
Donna's case and it bothered him that he couldn't. He
unfortunately passed away in twenty sixteen, so I can't ask
him any more questions. But the cousins have been able
to learn a lot about Rough's beliefs over the years

(22:54):
and what he thought about the case. And Rough Tomlinson
used to discuss how he believed this very theory that
Donna was killed in another location and moved.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
But when he would talk to us about the case,
he always told us that he believed that she was
murdered on nine Foot Road and brought back. And we
could never understand that until we started digging deeper and
Robert spoke to the people that were out there that
night searching for her, and then we come to realize, Okay,
now we know why he believed that, because she wasn't

(23:27):
in the woods.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
As a reminder, nine Foot Road was the street that
Grace's grill was located on, but right across from Grace's grill,
on that same road, there was another hangout, and this
one was known to have a bit of harder drugs
and a rougher crowd. Donna herself was not into hard drugs,
but her social circle could overlap into that territory.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
I don't know if it came up with the people
that Robert has talked to, but not one single person
has ever said that Donna would do anything other than marijuana.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
She didn't.

Speaker 4 (24:01):
She didn't that there were people that hung around the
same place as they hung out with, which was I
guess a place called the Pit, which was right across
from Gryce's go in the other direction that did shoot up.
There was a crowd there, you know, that did those
types of drugs, but Donna was never interested in that.
It's just something she wouldn't have done.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
All her friends, you know, the few that knew her
in the brief time she was there, and all the people,
all the young locals in and around that area that
hung out in those woods. To a man and a woman,
I've got a few females too, all said it was
just marijuana used among the teenagers. Now, obviously there was
harder drugs available, but that was mainly for the older crowd,

(24:44):
the military. But yes, there was some of that that
went over at the what we call the tar pits
is what Stephanie alluded to.

Speaker 5 (24:53):
Which was an.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Area just just on the west side of nine Foot Road,
which is where the younger kids hung out out and
would do drugs, harder drugs. It was kind of a
if I had to describe it, it was it's almost like
sand dunes, like a white sandy dunes.

Speaker 5 (25:12):
I believe maybe they had.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Actively excavated the site for sand, maybe for some of
the new neighborhoods, and it was kind of like a
sand quarry type of place, but there was some of
the holes were filled with water, which kind of made
it like a beach feel. So in the autopsy where
it says that she was found with sand on her,
that would be more consistent with that area than it

(25:36):
would be with the woods, which was basically just black dirt.
There was no sand in the path. So you know,
we may have very well been that she left Grice's
and wound up over at the sand pits, and you know,
may or may not have been where she was where
she was killed.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
So who was part of her social circle? Some articles
discussed Donna falling into a rougher crowd, and that was
the belief of her cousin Beverly in talking to the
family further, it seems like Donna was going through some
typical teenage life stages where she was trying to find
herself and carve out her identity, things only fueled by
moving to a new school while in high school and

(26:20):
the shifts within her family.

Speaker 4 (26:22):
Donna had three different lives, to be honest with you,
during that time she was trying to find herself, because
the more we look into it, she had her best
friends that lived in Havelock, and those friends did not
know about anything that she was doing in Newport. And
then when she was with my mom, you know, they

(26:42):
stayed at home. My mom had never gone to Gryce's,
so they stayed at home and just kind of, you know,
had that lifestyle. And then the group that my mom
was talking about is the group that went to Grace's
and you know, smoked weed and kind of a little
bit more of the rebellious crowd, you know, that was
out there living life, getting into things, but nobody knew,

(27:03):
Like she kept at private from all her other friends
because my mom didn't even know, you didn't even know
about her going to grice as Mow stuff. So she
just kind of lived three different lives, you know what
I mean. And she didn't share them.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
One person you've heard mentioned that we should talk more
about is her boyfriend at the time. Since Donna had
moved to Newport within the last year. The cousin's estimate
that Donna and her boyfriend were only dating for a
few months, but it was enough to leave an impression.
For privacy purposes, I'm going to call him Mark, and
I'll redact his name if it's mentioned during the audio clips.

(27:43):
Donna and Mark first seemed to hit it off, and
to the outside they seemed like a good couple, But
soon Donna began confiding in her best friend and cousin, Beverly,
about the relationship souring and how she was not only
unhappy with Mark, she was fearful of him.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
She was scared of him. Said he took her down
to the water and made her get on her hands
and knees and beg him not to make up a
breakup with her.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
And well, and I will say from my own talking
to someone that was in Gryce's they would say that
when he was with Donna, when he was around his friends,
that he was very mean to Donna, that he would
call her names in front of everyone. One of the
girls that she was close to said that Donna was
planning to break up with him.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Could Mark have lashed out at this sign of rejection.
Mark's behavior was odd in the days after Donna's death
and all the way through her funeral. Beverly remembers it
all too well. And not only was he acting odd,
he had scratches all over him.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
He was on coffee table in Aunt Emily's house the
next day after she died, and he was looking up
at her picture, which sat on the mantel, and he
kept going, I'm sorry, Donna, I'm sorry, Donna.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Beverly told me that because it was a hot tune day,
Mark was wearing short sleeves and that's where she witnessed
the scratches on his arm. And Mark's mother and family
were strangely inserting themselves into everything.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
And the other weird thing, too, is that his mother
was trying to plan Donna's funeral, Like they came over
to Aunt Emily's house and was trying to take over
her funeral. Aunt Emily saw a note in Donna's casket.

(29:37):
You know, it was just like they just tried to
like take over this whole thing pertaining to Donna. Like
why it's it's just a whole weird thing.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
And his daddy was in Donna's bedroom putting earrings in
things in her jewelry box.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
That he said he found in car. But then Robert,
when you talked to he didn't he say he wasn't
driving at that time.

Speaker 5 (30:03):
That's what he said.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yes, he was driving.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, allowed to unpack there. And that's not all. Soon
after Donna's murder, Mark was sent away.

Speaker 5 (30:13):
He had told you that he left town.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
What we also need to tell you is that he
was a rising senior in high school, so he was
actually sent out of town before his senior year of
high school, so he didn't even get to graduate with
his friends. So that's how nobody would want to leave
home before their senior year of high school.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
Well, he got sent to Florida first with his dad,
and then he finished I guess the senior year there
and then went into the military and ended up in Germany.
So there was no way they could question him, there
was no way they could get to him. It all happened,
you know, and he's been protected.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
This whole time.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
I mean, even in the paper it just says her
boyfriend from an affluent family.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Mark comes from a prominent family in Newport, and part
of how Robert described Newport is af you families running
the town. Could you make the argument that maybe his
family just thought he'd be too distracted by the case
and the small town gossip since he was the boyfriend
of the murder victim. Maybe it's still just something that

(31:14):
makes you have pause. Time has not softened Mark. He
refuses to speak with the cousins or get involved to
help in the search of his ex girlfriend's killer, and
according to Stephanie, he won't even pass out flyers. In
recent years. Robert noticed something when visiting the tomb of Donna,
something that was missed for decades by everyone else. At

(31:35):
the bottom corner, there was a small sketched in heart
with Mark's initials in it, which is just interesting And
if you're already a little suspicious of Mark, this isn't
going to help.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
He was an acquaintance, if not a friend, with Gregory
Allen during that time.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
If you consume a lot of true crime content, the
name might be jumping right out at you, or you
might recognize it but not be able to place it.
Where you might have heard it from is the Netflix
docuseries Making a Murderer Now that show has such a
true crime fan call, following that there are subreddits dedicated

(32:22):
to hashing out the case, and honestly shout out to
the reddit community because it linked me to a lot
of sources on Gregory Allen. The very abbreviated overview of
the Making a Murderer docuseries is that it focuses on
a man named Stephen Avery. He was convicted based on
victim identification in nineteen eighty five of a brutal rape

(32:44):
of a woman named Penny, who was raped and beaten
while jogging along a lake front beach in Wisconsin. Later,
DNA testing excluded Stephen Avery from committing this crime and
instead connected the case to none other than Gregory Allen,
a violent sexual predator who had been in jail since
nineteen ninety five for another rape and assault and was

(33:08):
serving a sixty year sentence. By the time DNA exonerated
Avery in two thousand and three, he had already served
eighteen years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
What's worse is that there was plenty of indication that
Gregory Allen should have been on the radar for this
crime because he was already under surveillance by law enforcement

(33:30):
at the time of Penny's attack, and this was because
of his escalating, disturbing behavior like exposing himself what today
we'd call stocking, but it wasn't labeled it that back then,
peeping tom behavior and attempts at breaking and entering. He
also had a ton of run ins with law enforcement
for other crimes. When I went through his arrest record

(33:51):
and attached corresponding reports just from Manituac County, Wisconsin, it
was one hundred and sixty one pages long. Avery landed
back in prison a few years later after he was
charged and convicted of another murder, and he remains there
to this day, with people all over the internet debating
his guilt or innocence, but focusing on Gregory Allen for

(34:14):
a moment, he is a really violent person. Gregory Allen
was in the military and that's why he lived in
the area at the time in nineteen seventy five, and yes,
he ran in the same social circle with Mark and others.
Over the years, the cousins have been able to piece
together that Mark and Gregory Allen were in the local

(34:36):
drug trade together and that the area had a deeper
drug problem than the local community probably realized when they
get nostalgic about their small town.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
I think most people in Newport that lived around there
in the eighties or nineties really knew how prevalent the
drug trade was in Newports. Everybody thought it was a small,
quiet town. So now you start digging a little deeper
and peeling back some layers and realized that there was
a cd undertone to the town.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
The drug issues still exist today, just like in most towns,
and within that lie's corruption. For example, in twenty ten,
there was a bombshell arrest of two Carterick County Sheriff's
deputies who pled it guilty to aiding and a betting embezzlement.
Carterick County Sheriff Ralph Thomas ordered his deputies to engage

(35:27):
in a scheme that allowed him to take money. Thousands
of dollars were withdrawn between ninety seven and two thousand
and six from official accounts maintained by the Sheriff's office.
According to reporting by WRL News, when drug detectives would
complain that they were receiving less than the full amount
requested for an undercover operation, one of the deputies who

(35:48):
took part in the scheme would say daddy had to
get his cut lough gross, I hate it. While that
is not connected directly to Donna's case, and of course
that was years later, it's just an example of how
messy things can get in a small town with drugs.
Gregory Allen was allegedly a low level dealer. In fact,

(36:09):
Gregory Allen would later get busted on drug charges not
long after Donna's murder and serve a little over a
year in prison for that. Beverly remembered a time when
Donna made a meal for Mark and Gregory Allen had
stopped by and he absolutely flipped out because she hadn't
made food for him. Even more disturbing, though, a couple

(36:29):
of nights before Donna's murder, Gregory Allen was allegedly at
Gryce's grill and was bothering Donna and her friend she
was there with.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
Gregory Allen was there at Gryce's and he kept from
her friend. He kept bothering them and they weren't comfortable
with it, so they had him kicked out and he
made a notion. He looked at Donna and made a
notion and went like this.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
The motion was one of cutting one's throat. So now
you have Gregory Allen, who we know from later crimes
that I'll get into more that he is a violent
sexual predator. He has this ego moment of being kicked
out of a hangout spot for being creepy, and now
he's visibly threatening Donna and her friend. But even table

(37:18):
that for a moment, because Donna was also in danger
for another reason. In interviewing locals and from Beverly's memory,
Donna knew a lot about this drug operation, including where
the drugs were kept.

Speaker 4 (37:33):
Well, and Donna knew where he kept it.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah, Donna did know where he kept it. Tell her
where he kept it in the woods where Donna was found.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, And if she was getting ready to break up
with Mark, Mark knew that she knew about this operation
and was a liability.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
And I'm funny that her boyfriend knows she knew, but
Gregory Allen knew that she knew.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
After Donna's body was found, Gregory Allen and continued his
odd behavior. He was already on police's radar just because
he was kind of a local menace. But what he
did next really brought him to the forefront of this crime.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
After Donna was found, he tried to come through the trail,
was stopped by law enforcement, so he walked all the
way around and tried to come up the other way
in front of her house to look at her in
the ditch, but he got stopped.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
He ended up.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
Being at her funeral, her viewing, standing outside her home,
looking directly at her window, just very obsessed in a
way of Donna and her death and surrounding all of that.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yeah, what the heck the hairs on the back of
my neck. Just keep standing up. And remember that girl
who Donna was with that night that Gregory Allen was
kicked out at the bar, and then.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
He would torment this other girl like she had a
restraint in order against him. He was found laying under
her bed.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Gregory Allen continued this behavior as he moved out of
state to Manitoac County, Wisconsin. I don't want to get
too far sidetracked with him and focus this whole episode
on him, but I do think it's important to talk
about how his crimes escalated and compare that to the
murder of Donna. After his stint in jail for drug charges,
he was arrested a number of times for things in

(39:25):
the eighties and early nineties, including burglary, multiple times of
driving without a license, writing bad checks, retail theft, you
name it. But what he was really known for was
his creepy and predatory sexual behavior. He would expose himself.
One of the times he approached a young teen waiting

(39:45):
for the school bus and he had his penis exposed.
He told her she could just touch it if she wanted,
and then told her that if she did, he would
stop coming around. Many, many, many times he was seen
p in windows. He would get caught in the act
by law enforcement at times, but he would still just
get a slap on the wrist. In nineteen eighty four,

(40:08):
he followed two teens on their bikes around a neighborhood
and they kept trying to ditch him and turn on
these different roads, and he would follow them, and they
ended up going back to their house and or at
least one of the girl's houses, and so he knew
where it was. In around one am, the teen noticed
the man peeking in the window. She ran to tell
her mother, and he then approached the window of her

(40:31):
mother and whispered high through the window and then attempted
to break in the back door, just awful. He had
another case where a woman kept reporting a prowler and
then he showed back up and tried to break in
her front door. Police were so concerned for her safety
that they ended up giving her this panic button because

(40:52):
they felt she was in so much danger. But still,
even with all of that, he kept evading consequences. According
to one source, in nineteen eighty three, he actually lunged
at a woman on the same beach he'd go on
to attack Penny in nineteen eighty five. He was just
engaging in this leude sexual behavior And when talking to
Donna's cousins, they told me that he liked to jog

(41:14):
on the beach right there in North Carolina when he
lived there, and they believe he's tied to a rape
case there as well, but he's never faced any consequences
for it. In fact, by the time he was tied
to Penny's case in two thousand and three, the statute
of limitations had run out for rape and so he
couldn't be charged with it. How gross is that. But

(41:37):
by that point his behavior had escalated and he had
been entering into women's homes and by nineteen ninety five,
he was finally caught and put away for a violent
rape and attack on a woman. He actually was arrested
for similar crimes in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but he's serving
concurrent sentences in Wisconsin, and while he's in jail for

(41:58):
a sixty year sentence, he's already come up for parole
and been denied, but still he's eligible for parole. At times,
he's a dangerous man. A lot of his repeated behavior
was to move pieces of furniture or outdoor things to
step on top of to better peek in windows, and
so people would wake up the next day and be like,

(42:20):
why is my picnic bench moved under this bedroom window.
He'd stock women for days or weeks or months, and
he would drop hints to tell the women that he'd
done so. It seems like he kind of got off
on the fact that he'd been watching these women and
they had no idea, and then the fear that would
come out of them when they found out. One time

(42:41):
he told a woman he had been watching her for years.
Another he described an outing she had gone on and
a car she left in only a week prior. One
time he stole a bra off a clothesline, and then
he called the woman and said, you're in trouble. I
took your bra off the clothesline. Go check. He ended
up calling back and said I've been watching you, so

(43:04):
just absolutely terrifying and nightmare fuel. I'm going to share
some photos of police documents on my Instagram at Simpler
Time Crime Pod, and one of them is where a
cellmate of Gregory Allen's came forward and said that Gregory
Allen confessed to a North Carolina murder in nineteen seventy five.
In the meantime, i'll summarize it a bit here, So

(43:28):
in the early eighties and around nineteen eighty three. It
was the end of nineteen eighty three. This person came
forward who was an inmate in the Manitowa County jail,
and he requested to talk to detectives and he said
that Gregory Allen admitted that he was involved in a
homicide somewhere in North Carolina in nineteen seventy five, that

(43:49):
Gregory Allen personally told him that he killed someone because
he figured the individual was either a narcotic officer or
drug informant. Interestingly enough, and I don't know any other
detail about this about who his girlfriend was at the time,
but in this report it does say that whoever Gregory
Allen's living girlfriend was at the time also had knowledge
of this murder. So detectives spent a fair amount of time.

(44:12):
Manitowac County reached down to state police in North Carolina,
and there was a fair bit of back and forth
to try to figure out where Gregory Allen had lived
prior and what they could be talking about, wit murder
they could be talking about, and eventually they land on
the probable one. About a week or two later, there
was another telephone communication, and that time someone from Carterick

(44:36):
County Sheriff's office spoke to Manitowac County up in Wisconsin.
And this person was a little off because they said, oh, yeah,
I remember there was a sixteen year old girl who
was strangled, and you'll remember that Donna was only fifteen,
but they said there was a sixteen year old girl
who was strangled. Gregory Allen was the main suspect, but
due to difficulties, we were never able to charge him.

(45:00):
Same pair of detectives had a conversation the very next
day again where at that time he said, nope, I
have all the actual details, now I was a little
bit off. This was a fifteen year old female, and
that it took place on June sixteenth, seventy five, and
that the female was found the following day on six seventeen.
The fifteen year old victim had been strangled to death

(45:21):
by an unknown assailant, and she was known to associate
with people who used drugs and was suspected that she
herself smoked marijuana. Gregory Allen was in the area where
the incident took place the night before the body was found,
and also returned to the same area the following day,
and so you know that coincides with what the cousins
were telling me that Gregory Allen showed back up and

(45:43):
tried to come to the crime scene the next day.
Donna's cousins learned from Rouff Tomlinson that he firmly believed
Gregory Allen was responsible for Donna's murder, though there's no
indication if he ever shared if he thought that Gregory
Allen worked a lot own or not. Rough Tomlinson allegedly

(46:04):
also obtained a confession from Gregory Allen, but it fell through.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
He had mentioned to me and my mom that he
had gotten a confession from Gregory Allen. He went out
there to have Gregory sign the papers to the confession
and Gregory refused to see him.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
He actually did confess the crime to a sellate in Wisconsin,
and this got back to the Newport Police department. And
we've talked about the Newport Police have done anything. I'd
like to say they really haven't done anything. Maybe since
ruff Thomlinson, who was the chief retired, because he was
he hounded the case and handed Gregory Allen. He was

(46:41):
the one who arrested Gregory Allen when he went to prison,
And I talked to his daughter and she tells me that,
you know, he was definitely afraid of airplanes. But when
Gregory Allen offered a confession to him, he actually got
on a plane with an SBI agent and they flew
to Wisconsin to the is and obviously when they got

(47:01):
to the prison, Gregor Allen wouldn't speak with him. So
I kind of want to get that out there that
he did. That was he kind of made it his
life's mission to try to solve her case before he
retired because it really nagged at him.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Manipulative cat and mouse behavior from a seasoned criminal, something
we've seen time and again. Now you'll recall Donna was
not sexually assaulted. So Stephanie has always been troubled by
how far Donna's crime has deviated from Allen's mo O.
But there are many directions you can go with that.

Speaker 4 (47:34):
I've said from the beginning that if Gregory Allen was
the one that murdered her, it doesn't fit his profile.
I've said that from the beginning because and I'm not
saying he didn't, I'm saying, you know, me and Robert
were talking and Robert said, well, you know, maybe he
was trying to rape her, and she's such a small girl,

(47:54):
you know that he accidentally strangled her. And I said,
that is a possibility, But I also so have to
think that he wasn't alone. That maybe whoever was in
this drug ring she saw something she shouldn't and it
was an order given.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Obviously, anybody I've mentioned in this episode is innocent until
proven guilty. But there are a lot of signs that
point in a certain direction. One direction Stephanie, Beverly and
Robert want them to point away from once in for
all is Donna's mother Emily. People in the town were
cruel to Emily after the murder, and at first she'd

(48:35):
power through it and she'd have some good days. But
slowly the family witnessed her fall into a deep depression
and a life of reclusive behavior.

Speaker 4 (48:45):
I want corrected that my aunt Emily did not murder
her child. That is a rumor that has been going on.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
And listen when.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
When when Donna was murdered, they didn't just take Donna's life.
They took Emily's life. They took her siblings life. Their
whole entire life was never the same. You know, my
at Emily. She went from going to Thanksgiving dinner and
smiling and being happy to being recluse into her home

(49:18):
where she wouldn't even open the door. She dealt with threats,
She dealt with people leaving notes on her clothesline, threatening
the family. They cut her brakes.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yes, you heard that right. I had to cut the
next piece of audio out because I audibly gasped when
they said that somebody in town cut Emily's brakes and
nobody ever investigated it.

Speaker 4 (49:42):
Aunt Emily died of depression. She was not herself before cancer.
If she died on her kitchen floor on a mattress.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Let that sink in. This woman was harassed so much
by the small town she lived in and had such
grief in the unsolved murder of her daughter that she
shut out everybody, including her own family. She struggled with
depression and mental illness and eventually developed cancer and died

(50:15):
alone sleeping on a mattress on her kitchen floor.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
She I mean she was a nurse, right, she was
an r N.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
No, she was an LPN or an.

Speaker 4 (50:25):
LPN, And so she still worked for because I remember
her when I was a young child, you know, coming
to Thanksgiving dinner and stuff like that. So she still
had good, good days during the holidays. But she just
slowly just withdrew herself. And then the last time we
saw her is when my mom's brother was in a

(50:46):
car accident and passed away, and they went and got
her and she came to the hospital with the family,
and that was the last time we saw her. Right,
she wouldn't answer the door, So she wouldn't answer the door.
We'd go to check on her and knock on the door,
and she wouldn't. She wouldn't come to the door after that,
And it.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Was just very very.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Donna's siblings were never the same either. While Stephanie wants
to emphasize that there is no indication that David was
at Grace's grill or saw anyone go into the woods
that night, she does want to emphasize that he didn't
know something that haunted him, because he lived his life terrified.

Speaker 4 (51:28):
I do want to clarify that something, something during that
time David did witness or he found out later or something,
because he was absolutely terrified up until his adult age
of something that happened that night. He just never disclosed
what that was. So there's something there, it's just not

(51:51):
what they put in the paper.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
And this came back up a little later in the interview.

Speaker 4 (51:55):
Her brother, her younger brother, the one that they say
watched or go into the woods, would sleep in his
bed with tools. He was terrified. He would sleep with
a crescent wrench with the lights on, terrified. And then
when he was an adult, I was a younger child,
but I was there and I remember it. He was
at our home and he had been drinking and my

(52:16):
mom was asking him about Donna, you know, she was
trying to have a conversation with him, and he looked
at my mom, and he said, I can't tell you anything.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
They will kill me.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
Stephanie went to try to find David when she started
looking back into Donna's case, and what she found out
was devastating. He had died just three months prior to
her digging back into the case. Donna's brother, Michael, died
of a heart attack in twenty twenty two, just a
week after the State Bureau of Investigation interviewed him again

(52:49):
in relation to his sister's case, and around that time
as well, Donna's little baby sister also died. Remember if
Donna were still alive today, she would only be in
her mid sixties. All of her siblings were younger than her,
and all of them have died. Part of this is

(53:12):
why Donna's cousins feel so much responsibility in stepping up
and keeping her case out there and pushing for resolution.
Stephanie keeps in regular contact with NCIS and the State
Bureau of Investigation. She does feel like they are working
hard behind the scenes on Donna's case, but they need

(53:33):
people to come forward. She found out they do have
DNA evidence that they're doing their best to work with.
Now fifty years later, and patience is the name of
the game in figuring out where the forensic evidence could lead.
Stephanie is hoping to raise some more funds to get
a billboard back up in the area and offer a

(53:54):
substantial reward for information. In summary, here are some other
items the Cousins really want to make sure listeners know
about her case. Number one, there has been a rumor
about Donna in drug use. In fact, you heard earlier
the cousins talking about how she just used marijuana, and

(54:15):
that stemmed for me asking about an autopsy report. There
was a mention of a needle mark in her arm,
and one particular episode of where this case was featured,
there was a podcaster featuring it and they focused a
lot on this. But Stephanie said she spoke to medical
professionals and showed them the autopsy report and this is

(54:36):
what she found out.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
And I went to a friend of mine that is
a nurse, and I said, can you please read this
in medical terms and explain to me what this is saying.
And what she said was is that it was superficial.
There was nothing, There was no mark in the vein.
It could have been from a doctor's appointment. She had
a day or two before, so it was healed all

(54:59):
except for that small mark, which would have left the
few little bruises or the blood spots or whatever there.
It didn't say bruises, but there was like blood spots
around it, which made it sound like it was it
had just happened. So but her toxicology report showed it

(55:19):
was clean. There was nothing in her system. So that's
kind of where I was going with it, like, stop,
just just stop with the idea that she was doing drugs,
that she did drugs that night and went out of
control and then you know, the person choked her and
whatever he kind of went with, and I was like,

(55:40):
there's no evidence of any of that. She could have
went to the doctor and we just were never able
to get those doctor's records. She could have maybe tried
to do something that night and decided nevermind, I don't
want to. Somebody could have been trying to shoot her
up and she fought him off and they were never
able to get it in her arm. There's so many
different scenarios there, but every single person I have talked to,

(56:02):
I don't know if it came up with the people
that Robert has talked to, but not one single person
has ever said that Donna would do anything of than marijuana.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
So while Stephanie appreciates people looking into the case and
offering up new angles, she really wants to put that
one to bed. Second, and very unrelated, they're also hoping
that someone might have a photo of Gregory Allen from
the nineteen seventy five timeframe. The earliest they could find
was in the eighties, about a decade after Donna's murder.

(56:34):
And here's why that's so important to them.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Well, if we're talking to national audience, I've talked to
a lot of people that recognize pictures, but they don't
necessarily recognize names. I'll ask me, you know, did you
know this person? Well I'm not sure. Then I'll show
them a picture. Oh yeah, I remember him. We do
not have a picture of Gregory Allen from nineteen seventy five.
We've reached out to the DA try to find some

(56:58):
mug shots and so far nothing. So somebody somewhere has
to have a picture because we would like to be
able to ask people around Newport you know, you may
not remember the name Gregory Allen, but do you remember
this picture and they may say, oh, hey, he used
to hang around Gryce. Sorry that kind of so that
that would maybe for a national reach. It'd be nice

(57:20):
if somebody somewhere, or even an Internet sleuth that's maybe
better than I am, could find a.

Speaker 4 (57:26):
Volitary photo or something.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
So Internet sleuths of the world and making a murderer fans,
here's your chance. If you find this picture, this elusive
picture that they are trying to find, please DM me
or send it to my email Simpler Time Crimepod at
gmail dot com, and I'll make sure this gets to Robert.
The third thing is if you are the little girl

(57:50):
who found Donna that day, the day of her murder,
and you were the one that found her in the ditch,
if you're willing to talk, please get in touch. The
cousins would really like to speak with you too. They
believe you'd be in your late fifties now at the
time of this recording in twenty twenty five. Lastly, this
is a worldwide podcast because this was a military town,

(58:13):
many people have relocated. Donna's family hopes that the exposure
this gets might jog people's memories who have since moved
away from the area. So share, share Share.

Speaker 4 (58:25):
I would just say, you know, obviously people share, share
everything they come up with, whether it's you know, your podcast,
another podcast, anything that we you know, have her flyer
that has the SBI n cis, I've got her on TikTok, Instagram,

(58:47):
like all the social media, Twitter, I've got her everywhere.
So if you come across her fly er, please share
it with a link to your podcast, you know what.
Whatever they can do to just because when you look
at the scheme of things, it's been fifty years. Somebody
could be living in Utah, you know, they moved out

(59:08):
of here and they have information, and unless it's reaching them,
they're not going to think about it, or they're not
going to know where to go. They're not going to
know that. We're still working this case. So we want
to get it nationwide. If it's not already, we want
it nationwide. We want everybody to know Donna's name, know
who Donna was, and push forward to help us get

(59:28):
people to talk. There's got to be somebody out there
because at the end of the day, we've come to
the conclusion that the person that took her life may
not even be alive. We want to see justice. We
want to see that person go to prison and get
due time before their life ends. But if that doesn't happen,
at least we have closure. We know what happened, we

(59:49):
know who took her life, and that's just what we
want at the end of the day, right we want closure.

Speaker 5 (59:57):
What we also have.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
And you know, some of the people I've been able
to track down, the classmates, you know, I've tracked them
down to New Jersey, Virginia, you know pretty much all over.
Is that a lot of her friends and people who
lived in that area in nineteen seventy five were military families,
children of military families that have that do not live

(01:00:20):
in Newport anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:00:21):
They have moved on.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
And so there may be people who were around in
nineteen seventy five of Newport that now live all across
the country because of their military background. So this these
national podcasts may have reached those people that wouldn't see
it in a local newspaper or a Facebook page or
something something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
I asked all three of them what they would say
to someone who knows something but has been too scared
to come forward.

Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
I for me, personally, I would say that the SBI
and the NCIS, you can go to them anonymous and
your name is not on any files, nobody has to
know that you went to them. They can meet you
in a place that is not even in the area
that you're comfortable with. But at this point, a lot

(01:01:16):
of the people are elderly, you know, they're they're elderly.
That was about around that time. I don't think the
fear should be as big as it was back then,
you know, because a lot of those people are no
longer here, and the ones that are, I mean, what.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Are they really going to do?

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
I would just I would just like to encourage people
to just take advantage of that and and talk to
the SBI, and just do it anonymously and meet them
in a location that you're comfortable with, even if it's
a hour away, two hours away.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
They're willing to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Stephanie and I have kind of put ourselves out there
publicly as pursuing the case and calling people out. And
I'll set in stepfather's living room and had a conversation
with him about this case and told him my theories,
and he gave me his theories. But what I would
like to say is to my knowledge, I mean, I

(01:02:10):
speak for me. I've had no threats made against me
for my involvement.

Speaker 5 (01:02:15):
In the case. I don't know that Stephanie has had any.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
Personal threats, So if the powers that be aren't threatening
us that, I don't see why they would threaten anybody
who would come forward with information that would help solve
the case.

Speaker 5 (01:02:30):
So don't be a coward.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Robert's sentiment resonated with Beverly as well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Don't be a coward. If you ever spend a minute
of a day of her lifetime with her and she'd
been anything to you, speak up because she deserves it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
I want to thank Stephanie, Beverly and Robert for helping
me put together this episode. I truly could not have
told Donna's story without you. If you have any information
on the murder of Donna na Emil in nineteen seventy five,
please contact the State Bureau of Investigation at nine one
nine sixty six two forty five hundred. You can also

(01:03:10):
contact crime Stoppers anonymously at seven two six info and
I'll share the NCIS poster on our Instagram. This has
been another episode of a simpler time true crime. If
you appreciate the work I'm doing, please leave a five
star review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Word

(01:03:32):
of mouth helps this podcast grow and reach more people.
Case suggestions can be sent to Simpler timecrimepod at gmail
dot com, and as always, thank you so much for
listening and tune in next Monday for another episode.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
School School