The Classified Ad: The Murder of Linda Sue Dearth

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
It was late January of nineteen seventy three. Across the country,
people were mourning the passing of former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
His funeral was set to be broadcast on national television,
and schools across the US closed for the day so
families could watch. In a quiet neighborhood near Dayton, Ohio,

(00:30):
that unexpected day off meant a teenage girl was home alone,
just for a short while. But during that small window
of time, someone entered the house and what happened next
would shatter the sense of safety in the community. She
was brutally assaulted and murdered. Just twelve days earlier, another
violent crime had taken place not far away, and fear

(00:54):
quickly spread around the community where these cases connected. Investigators
would eventually determine that they were but the person responsible
has never been identified. More than five decades have passed
and early DNA testing came up short, but there is
still physical evidence, and with that there's hope that with

(01:14):
today's technology, the case may finally find resolution. 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 Linda Sue Dearth.

(01:55):
I want to give a heads up before we begin
that this episode includes discussion of sexual abuse involving a
minor as well as the killings of young children. While
I usually avoid sharing graphic details unless absolutely necessary, in
today's cases, some of the crime scene information plays a
key role in understanding potential connections or distinctions between them.

(02:16):
Because of that, I go into a bit more detail
than usual, so please take care when listening and prioritize
your well being. Many years after that fateful day, Odean
Durth could still recall the details of that January morning.
Her thirteen year old daughter, Linda Sue, was excited to
be able to sleep in and be home from school.

(02:38):
She was wearing a long, floor length nightgown, and their
cat kept playfully chasing the bottom of the nightgown around,
pouncing at Linda's feet. Odean and her husband Dwayne had
three children. Their oldest son, Maurice, who went by Moe,
was studying at Ohio Wesleyan University, so their two younger children,
Robber age seventeen and Linda three we're still living in

(03:01):
the home. To describe Linda, I'll use a direct quote
from her parents, who shared this with the web page
for the organization called National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children.
It read quote, Linda was a wonderful daughter. We could
not have asked for anyone so kind, generous, fun loving,
and full of life. Linda loved animals in children. Linda

(03:25):
was active in her church group and also in school activities.
Linda had just mastered plainly clarinet and was to perform
the following day that she was murdered. Linda was also
into tap dancing and was into doing ceramics end quote.
In addition to that, Linda's favorite song was rain Drops
Keep Falling on My Head and you can't fool me.

(03:47):
I know you just stopped for a moment and hummed
that in your head. It's stuck in my head now.
But it's a catchy little tune, so I don't blame her.
She was also in Girl Scouts and she loved taking
on a teaching role. In fact, she used to teach
some of the younger kids in Sunday School. Linda was
a seventh grader at Northmont Junior High school, and as

(04:08):
I mentioned at the top of the episode, schools were
closed that day to observe the funeral of former President
Lyndon B. Johnson, but the Dearth parents still had to
go to work. Dwayne worked at K and F Metal
Finisher's Inc. And Odean worked in banking at the Brooksville
branch of Farmers Merchants Bank. D left Robert and Linda

(04:28):
home that morning. Linda was excited for her clarinet performance
the next day, and so she planned to practice for
a little while and otherwise just hang out around the
house and take advantage of some downtime. Robert left the
home that morning between nine thirty and nine forty five
am and said goodbye to his sister. He was running
over to his grandmother's house to prune her trees. Their

(04:50):
house sat on Diamond Mill Road in Brooksville, Ohio, just
northwest of Dayton. It's a small town and the Derth's
Brick ranch se beside one neighbor and otherwise was just
adjacent to farmland and I'll have a picture of it
on the Instagram at Simpler Time Crime Pod. When Robert
arrived to his grandmother's house, she said that the trees

(05:12):
didn't really need any pruning, so he left and decided
to visit a classmate for a while instead. Robert returned
home at around eleven thirty to eleven forty five am,
but he didn't immediately go in the house. He wanted
to work on his truck for a little while in
the garage, and so he just jumped right into doing that.
As he was finishing up, he got a weird feeling

(05:33):
in the pit of his stomach because he noticed the
door which led into the kitchen was open and it
shouldn't be. He walked into the house and called Linda's name.
I want to quickly preface here that based on estimated
time of death and when investigators believe the crime took place,
it's thought that Linda was already deceased at this point.

(05:54):
But according to news articles that I have linked in
the show notes, Robert insists he heard his sister make
some sort of noise when he called her name, and
he followed that noise into the living room, where he
stumbled into a disturbing scene. There on the couch was
his sister, Linda. She was sprawled out nude and her
face was black and blue. Robert recalled at the time

(06:17):
that he thought somebody had beaten her up. He ran
next door to the neighbor's house and phoned police as
well as his father at work. According to reporting in
the Dayton Daily News, Robert said to his father, get home, Dad,
something's happened to Linda. Caught off guard, he asked his
son what, and Robert just said, just get home. By

(06:39):
the time doing made at home, his house was flooded
with investigators and official personnel, and he found out the
heartbreaking news his daughter Linda had been pronounced dead and
was still inside the home. Upon hearing the news, Linda's grandmother,
Odeine's mother, actually passed out on their front lawn. Jim

(07:00):
Locke was a longtime police officer and firefighter, and he
was a first responder that day. He told the date
in Daily News that it was one of the most
disturbing crime scenes he'd ever walked into at the time,
and that it was just so tragic how young she
was and that something so violent could have happened. The
little cat that was pouncing around with Linda that morning

(07:20):
was not the only pet the family had. They also
had a protective and very vocal dalmatian dog that was
said to be a good watchdog. The dog was found
locked in the basement of the home, and according to
Odine Derth, the dog had been kicked and had a
footprint on its ribs. As a personal side note, when

(07:42):
I was growing up, my home was burglarized once. Luckily,
nobody was home that day, but my very protective dog was.
Our door was locked, and we had left the windows
ajar because it got very warm in our house and
we were looking to let the breeze through. Someone removed
the screens from the house and climbed in that way
and then left through the front door. Now, our dog,

(08:04):
she barked at everything, and we had to be careful
with her because she wasn't always the most predictable dog
around people she didn't know. But if someone were to
come into the house and she was barking and the
hair on her back was up, we would pat her
and say it's okay, Chelsea, and give her a little
milkbone as a treat, and she'd usually retreat and calm
down as soon as that happened and she saw that

(08:27):
we were okay with whoever this person was. The day
of our burglary, she was found locked in one of
our back bedrooms, and so we always felt the burglar
was someone she knew, or someone we knew enough that
they came with treats and said her name and got
her into that back bedroom. I don't know how the
Dearth's dog was specifically, but it makes me wonder if

(08:49):
the entry into the home with someone the dog knew.
And this is purely speculation, but maybe the dog came
at the person as he began attacking Linda. Dog people
certainly know that even calm dogs can get upset when
they see something happening to their owner. And actually wonder
if maybe the dog even bit the killer and that's
when the killer attacked and kicked and stepped down the

(09:10):
dog and got the dog into the basement. We of
course don't know, but that could be significant because was
there anybody around in the neighborhood, or anybody who was
questioned by the police who's back in those files, going
back through all the old police files, who was noted
to have a bandage anywhere on their arm, on their
legs somewhere in the days following, Just a thought the

(09:33):
bruising on Linda's face was not from a beating. It
was determined that Linda had been sexually assaulted and shot
twice in the head with a small caliber gun, likely
a twenty two caliber handgun. The sexual assault was kept
very quiet by police early on. They didn't release that
until later. But I figured I would just tell you

(09:54):
up front, no real purpose in bearing the lead on
this one, and the reasons for a police being cagybou
d details was way more than just protecting the investigation.
You see, I can't tell you the story of Linda
Sudurth's murder without telling you about another crime. And to
do that, I need to back up twelve days and
head fifteen miles away to the community of Northridge, where

(10:17):
a crime took place that would shake the community to
its core. On the morning of Saturday, January thirteenth, nineteen
seventy three, twenty six year old Gloria Buck kissed her

(10:39):
husband Jackobbye. He was leaving for the day to go
on a hunting trip with friends. After he left, Gloria
spent the morning with her two children, Tracy, who was
six and Scott, who was five. The Buck family lived
on Arthur Avenue, and just one block over was two
babysitters that the family used the Brown sisters. Patty was

(11:01):
seventeen and Jennifer was twelve. That morning, Jennifer had come
over and was playing in the front yard with Tracy
and Scott. Gloria had come outside and asked if Jennifer
was available to continue watching the children in the front
yard while she met with a potential buyer for a TV.
Gloria had a classified ad for her TV in the

(11:22):
publication the Trade in Post, but Jennifer told her she
was sorry she couldn't. She had to get back home
because she was going shopping with her father, so Jennifer
departed the Buck family home around eleven am. Gloria called
Patty Brown a little after eleven thirty am, and she
asked Patty if she was available to come over later

(11:43):
that afternoon and watch the children for a little while.
Patty told her she couldn't because she actually wasn't feeling
well that day. While they were still on the phone,
Patty heard Gloria call the kids inside from playing outside.
She didn't want them to be outside on supervise because
she knew she had company coming soon, and she wanted
them inside when the person came because this was going

(12:04):
to take her full attention. According to Patty Brown, a
short time later, Gloria said to her, I have to
let you go. Someone's at the door, and she had
let Patty know that she was expecting a man to
come over around noon that day and look at the
TV she was selling. So with that, they said their
goodbyes on the phone and hung up. Later that afternoon,

(12:25):
around three pm, Jennifer Brown had returned home from her
shopping trip and she wanted to show Gloria her new shoes,
so she happily skipped the one block over to the
Buck residence and knocked at the door. Nobody answered, but
she heard the TV on, so she figured they must
be home. Jennifer was there all the time and was

(12:45):
very comfortable, comfortable enough that she let herself in and
she walked through the main rooms and didn't see or
hear Gloria or the children. So she walked to the
first bedroom and there was nothing. She walked to the
second and there was also nothing. But when she reached
the final bedroom, she walked into a nightmare. All three

(13:08):
of them were lying there, motionless and covered in blood.
Jennifer ran out of the house as fast as she
could and sprinted straight to her sister back home and
basically said, oh, my god, the Bucks. They've been killed.
But Patty didn't believe her, so she ran over. Despite
Jennifer's please with her to not go in and see
what she saw. Patty didn't enter the house, but she

(13:33):
went to the window of the bedroom. Jennifer told her
that they were in and she saw the same terrible
scene as her sister, and she knew she had to
get help. The scene in the bucks modest home was horrifying.

(13:56):
Unlike the rural stretch of road Linda Derth lived on,
the Bucks home was in residential neighborhood with a lot
of houses nearby. The two children were stabbed to death
with deep wounds from a large knife. They were stabbed
in precise areas, with Tracy having both of her crowded
arteries severed in her neck, and the attack on missus

(14:17):
Buck was rage filled so content warning on what I'm
about to tell you. She fought so hard she had
defensive wounds all over her hands. She was found naked
with stab wounds all over her body, including her chest, neck, heart,
and lungs. Her skull was bashed in and she was

(14:38):
shot in the head with a twenty two caliber gun.
In fact, it was her family's own gun, and it
was missing from the home after the attack. Whoever had
done this had also brought their own knife, because none
from the family home were missing. Jack Buck returned home
that evening to flashing lights and police tape around his home.

(15:00):
His first thought was that his son was maybe hit
by a car while riding his bike, and so he
panicked and ran towards the house, but he was stopped
before he got there and put in the back of
a police car. They then broke the news to him
about his family. I can only imagine how he felt
at that moment. He normally would have been there that day,

(15:20):
but he had gone on the hunting trip, and then
he gets home and he has no idea what he's
walking into, and in an instant, his whole family, his
whole life, essentially was just taken from him. He described
his son as talkative and ornery, and his daughter is
the sweetest little girl you'd ever meet in your life,

(15:41):
and I loved them dearly, he told the paper. Despite
the brutality of this crime and the neighborhood panicking, police
were quick to downplay the risk to the community. Deputy
Inspector Harlan Andrew was in charge of the investigation, and
he told people to basically calm down. He said, quote

(16:01):
nothing in our investigation would indicate that there is a
maniac running amok in the community. Which I disagree with him,
because a mother and her two small children were just
brutally murdered in their own home in the middle of
the day. But okay, beyond that blase attitude was a
police department feeling immense public pressure to find out who

(16:24):
did this, and they were quickly able to rule out
Jack Buck as he had a strong alibi from hunting
with friends that day, and they spoke to all of
those friends who corroborated that. But rather than dig into
the trail of the classified ad, investigators would shock the
community when on Monday, January twenty second, they would arrest

(16:45):
seventeen year old babysitter Patty Brown, in charge her as
a juvenile delinquent responsible for all three murders. Apparently from
the get go, investigators just felt that she knew too much.
That was honestly most of what their initial interrogation was
based off of. Police had brought both Patty and Jennifer

(17:06):
Brown in for questioning since they were some of the
last people to see and speak to Gloria Buck that day,
even though they were miners. They were questioned alone for hours,
and they thought they were just acting as witnesses, but
the questioning just continued into an interrogation mode and they
realized they were being interviewed as suspects. They were grilled

(17:28):
and interrogated, and eventually twelve year old Jennifer allegedly told
police that her sister said she had killed the family
because Gloria owed her babysitting money, and with that statement,
Patty was arrested. Her family was shocked. They said they
were looking for legal representation and they absolutely knew that
their daughter had nothing to do with this crime. That

(17:52):
legal representation wouldn't come for a few more days, and
when it did, it was by way of the Public
Defender's office, specifically an attorney named Dodge. Patty Brown would
sit in jail for weeks as the case was further
investigated and as she awaited her trial in juvenile court,
and in the meantime, another crime would occur in nearby

(18:13):
Miami County. Twenty four year old Joy Simpson and her
two year old son Douglas were home alone on Thursday,
February eighth, nineteen seventy three. Her twins were off in
pre kindergarten that day. Joy lived on North Sayers Street,
which was very similar to the Dearth's home, a pretty
rural stretch of road, but North Sayers did have some

(18:35):
other homes on it all again. Cher a photo of
it on my Instagram. In what might be the most
heartbreaking detail out there, it was her young twins that
had arrived home off the school bus that afternoon that
found their mother and little brother deceased. They were found
together in one bedroom. Just as a heads up, this

(18:55):
next part gets a little graphic. Joy was partially nude
with her her hands tied behind her back, and she
had been brutally beaten to death. Her son Douglas was
fully clothed, but also had been beaten to death and
was lying next to her on the bed. The killer
had left the murder weapon behind, a bloodied claw hammer.

(19:16):
It was just a horrible case, and honestly, the reporting
on this case is so minimal. The first few months
after it happened, there was some reporting, especially about the
fear people were feeling in the neighborhood and also its
potential connections to the other area cases, but then it
really fell off the radar and I can't find anything

(19:36):
on it since the seventies. So if you're local to
the area and you know anything else about the outcome
of Joy and Douglas's case, please reach out to me.
I'd love to do some bonus material on their case
and help push the case forward in any way I can.
I'm going to try to follow up and get my
hands on some additional information as well, but I wasn't
able to in time for this recording. As far as

(19:59):
comparing this case to the other two cases, it's similar
to the murders of the Buck family because it was
a mother home with her small child. All three cases
occurred in the middle of the day, and all three
occurred in a relatively small geographic region. As far as differences,
the obvious one is that a hammer was used in

(20:19):
this crime. Missus Buck was beaten as well, but she
sustained stab wounds as well as gunshot wounds from a
gun that matched the gun missing from her home. Linda
Durth was the only one with a confirmed sexual assault,
at least that's been publicly shared and she had been
shot as well. The only one with a suspect was

(20:40):
the Buck family, as they had a teenage girl in
custody at this time, but that case would soon fall
apart with new evidence. Just wanted to say a quick
thank you for checking out my episode this week and

(21:01):
for adjusting to me having ADS now. My goal is
that some of this AD funding will help push forward
some of the projects and initiatives I'm hoping to do,
to expand upon this podcast and all the work I'm doing.
So thank you so much for your support, and keep
sharing the podcast with your friends. Now back to the show.

(21:28):
In early May of nineteen seventy three, Patty Brown had
already spent one hundred days in jail and was in
the thick of preparing for her juvenile court hearing when
a new piece of evidence changed everything. Ballistics reports confirmed
that the gun used in the commission of Linda Sudert's
murder was the same gun that killed Gloria Buck, and

(21:49):
it matched the gun that was missing from Gloria Buck's home.
Patty Brown was already in police custody two days before
Linda's murder. The Sheriff's Department was adamant that they still
felt that they had the right person and that Patty
Brown could have discarded the weapon, and that the same
weapon being used didn't mean anything about it being the
same perpetrator. But I personally think that sounds ridiculous. The

(22:13):
hearing for Patty Brown was closed to the public, but
the news traveled fast. On May seventh, nineteen seventy three,
all charges were dismissed with prejudice, meaning she could not
be tried for the charges again in the future. Patty
had turned eighteen years old while sitting in jail, and
the investigation had a profound impact on her. Not only

(22:33):
did she suffer the trauma of seeing the brutal crime
scene of her close friend and family who she babysat for,
she then went through sitting in jail for a crime
she didn't commit even though she was innocent. Neighbors acted
funny towards her in the future, and she just couldn't
resume a normal life. She ended up staying with relatives
in Florida. In this case, Patty was a secondary victim

(22:54):
of our official criminal justice system. But for those of
us in the true crime space, both content creators and
consumers I think it's important to remember the damages that
can be done when we name people and put them
on trial by the internet or court of public opinion.
So it's just a good reminder of that. So after
Patty's charges were dismissed, a very public feud ensued between

(23:16):
the sheriff and Patty's attorney, Richard Dodge, And probably because
of this, we got more information than we typically would
because each time one would hurl an accusation, the other
would respond with more information to clarify. You see, Richard
Dodge had identified who he thought was a viable suspect
for the murder of Linda Dearth and the murders of
the Buck family. That person was sitting in jail at

(23:38):
the time for misdemeanor charges related to making obscene phone calls.
As people who listen to true crime cases, you're probably
familiar with the fact that obscene phone calls can very
much be an indicator that someone is either going to
escalate in their behavior or it's part of their existing
predatory behavior and part of their full moment. In the

(24:00):
short time after the Buck Family murders, but before her arrest,
Patty Brown had been receiving disturbing phone calls. It's never
been reported what those phone calls entailed, or if it
was thought that this suspect who was in jail for
obscene phone calls, if those were the ones to her,
if those are connected at all, or if he was
making obscene phone calls to somewhere else. So we don't

(24:21):
know if they're one and the same, but it is
odd and certainly that's where my brain went. This man
has never been named, but according to Richard Dodge, he
was thirty four years old and worked at a service
station near the Buck family home. Richard Dodge turned evidence
over to law enforcement that belonged to the man he
and he said it was incriminating. It included a personal

(24:43):
essay from this man and magazines and books, as well
as personal notes that Dodge had written in conjunction with
his team. And here's where a lot of the feud began.
Montgomery County Sheriff Bernard Keeter accused Dodge and his team
of investigation of obtaining these things unethically, if not illegally.

(25:03):
According to him, they tricked this landlady, who was also
this man's aunt, into thinking they represented him, and she
allowed them entrance where they took items without knowledge. Dodge
and his team denied this and said they were very
transparent about who they were and if they had obtained
these things illegally, they said, why would we have turned
them over to the Sheriff's department and told on ourselves.

(25:27):
The Sheriff's department did verify that they questioned this man
early on but found him to not be involved. Dodge
basically said, that's because you had tunnel vision on my client.
Dodge went on to say that the Sheriff's Department had
completely botched the investigation, and he called for the resignations
of Chief of Detectives Harlan Andrew and other members of

(25:48):
his staff. He also accused Prosecutor lee Fulk of acting
without integrity in the case. He even went as far
as saying that there was a political cover up and
agenda involved. Prosecutor leef Fulk responded by saying, to the
date and Daily News quote, Dick Dodge is a very
emotional person and this is an example of his emotions

(26:10):
running over. We feel that no one on our staff
messed up in any way in this case. I was
in on the evaluation and we decided to proceed in
the case because we felt there was sufficient evidence to
do so. We had this statement from the witness, and
the statements which Patty Brown herself made which pointed to
her complicity, we thought end quote. He went on to

(26:32):
say that once the secondary witness recanted in her testimony,
they felt they no longer had a case against Patty Brown.
That witness was Patty Brown's younger sister, Jennifer, and more
and more would come out about how both sisters were interrogated.
Without spending too much time on it, would I'll say
is that Patty was questioned so long she broke out
in hives and was sobbing. And I do just want

(26:54):
to note that she actually had to undergo some competency
evaluations during the time between her arrest and her hearing,
because she had been attending what we would call special
ed classes nowadays, and so they were not even sure
if she really had the capacity to have represented herself
in that interrogation without support. Patty's younger sister, Jennifer, allegedly

(27:20):
started her menstrual cycle while she was being interrogated, and
it was reported that she was unable to go home
and change out of her soiled clothes. They made her
stay there. This is something that the Sheriff's department denied,
but that's something that Jennifer did say happened. Jennifer went
on to say that much of her statement was forced
or written out for her, and she was just asked
to confirm again she was twelve at the time, But

(27:42):
there was a lot of back and forth on that.
In the midst of all of this, Dodge revealed something
else his team had discovered that connected Linda Dirt's case
to the Buck family murders. Both families had classified ads
for items for sale in that same publication. The Diarths
were selling a car and the Buck family, as you recall,

(28:04):
were selling that TV. We also do know that there
was a sign on the Dirth's property for the car
being for sale and the car was sitting out front.
If the statements made by the Brown sisters are true,
Gloria Buck was meeting a potential buyer for her TV
that day. Could the perpetrator have used the sale of
the car as a way to get Linda Durth to

(28:25):
open the door for him. Linda Sue's case faded away
from public view, as did the Buck case. Though investigators
insisted that they continued to get tips and that they've
always continued to investigate both cases. After the murder of
his whole family, Jack Buck, a welder, couldn't stand to
stay there. He ended up moving away and renting out

(28:46):
the home, and in the fall of seventy three, something
bizarre happened. The family who had moved in had never
gone into the attic, and it sounded like investigators never
did either. According to reporting in The Day and Daily News,
an eight inch butcher knife was found hidden in the
attic when someone finally went up there. The attic was

(29:07):
one of those where you access it by pull down steps,
and they had gone up there and found the butcher
knife hidden between two stacks of storm windows. This part
is honestly so bizarre to me. I was spinning on this,
and I can't imagine why the killer would make a
point to go up in this attic and place the
knife there. It's just very odd behavior. This detail reminded

(29:32):
me a lot about a serial killer I've discussed in
a couple of recent episodes, that of James Mike de Bartoleabin.
He was a prolific counterfeitter who was investigated by the
Secret Service, and once they busted him for his counterfeiting operation,
they went through all of his stuff and they found
disturbing sexual things, including a bunch of tape recordings of

(29:55):
torturing women. He was extensively investigat and it was definitely
found to be a prolific sexual predator and killer, and
law enforcement believes that he's involved in way more than
they've ever been able to connect him to. And he
was operating all over the country. He was active during

(30:16):
this time. But the only thing is, and I'll get
into this a little more a while later, I'm going
to talk DNA. They have Mike delbart Labin's DNA, so
I feel like if it was him, we'd know, but
I can't say for certain, So put a pin in
the DNA talk for a moment, because I'll get back
to them. The cases stalled for years. In nineteen eighty seven,
investigators shared that they were looking for a criminal profile

(30:38):
in these cases, and by nineteen eighty eight they had
obtained one, but they didn't share what that profile was.
The only information adjacent to this that was released was
that they thought the killer may have had a military
background and medical background. They don't say why they think that,
but investigators early on in both cases just kept talking
about how they felt like whoever did this knew what

(31:01):
they were doing, and that these were such blitz attacks
where the murder was the ultimate goal and carried out efficiently,
kind of almost like a hit. The next information in
the case wouldn't come out until nineteen ninety nine, when
the newest investigators on the cases decided to explore DNA advancements.

(31:30):
In May of nineteen ninety nine, The Date and Daily
News published an update on the cases of Linda Suderth
and the Buck family murders. In the late nineties and
early two thousands, the public was really just learning about DNA,
what that meant and how it could solve cases, and
the technology for law enforcement was ever evolving all the time.
It still is, and at that time it was becoming

(31:52):
a game changer for cold cases. Now it's still nowhere
near what it is today, but it was promising. Detective
Time would not discuss what evidence they had, but did
say that he turned several pieces of evidence over to
be tested, and that there was evidence from both crime scenes.
He told the paper quote, this case would be solved
today that's what makes it so disheartening. Detective Peede hoped

(32:16):
that even though the crimes happened twenty six years earlier,
that he still had a shot now. Even though he
wouldn't reveal the evidence, we do have some idea of
what was found at the Buck crime scene, thanks to
the feud between Montgomery County Sheriff and Attorney Richard Dodge
from back in seventy three. Dodge told the Journal Herald
that a man's handkerchief was found at the Buck bedroom.

(32:39):
He said Jack Buck said it didn't belong to him,
and that an analysis of the secretions on it showed
that they were from a person with type bee blood,
different from either the Bucks or miss Brown. Other mentions
of physical evidence in the buckcase include the holster of
the missing gun. The holster was found left on the bed,

(32:59):
and it's unclear or if they were able to obtain
fingerprints from it. It's also unclear what DNA was found
at Linda Sue Durth's crime scene. I wonder if there's
a photograph of the footprint on the dog. We know
there was a sexual assault, but it's never been mentioned
if they recovered physical evidence of the attacker. By December
of nineteen ninety nine, they confirmed that in the evidence

(33:22):
submitted to the crime lab, technicians were able to extract DNA.
In nineteen ninety nine, Detective Pede said he was looking
at four suspects and hoping to eliminate suspects based on
comparative testing. He said that of the four suspects, three
knew at least one of the two families. I had
to read that like three times to understand what they

(33:43):
were saying. We don't know what they were able to
do with the DNA they were able to extract, but
we just know that so far they haven't been able
to tie the DNA to a potential suspect. In twenty fourteen,
Mister and Missus Darth gave an interview that I'll link
in the show notes classified ads for both the Dearth's
vehicle and the Bucks TV. The actual ads were shown

(34:05):
in that TV episode, and one thing is that the
address wasn't listed for the vehicle, just a phone number
that you could call and the Dearth's last name. So
they thought maybe this person called the house, obtained the address,
pretended they were interested in the car, and Linda had
to say something like, oh, actually, they're not home right now.
I'm just it's just me home, and that the predator

(34:27):
took advantage of the fact that she was home alone.
And that's personally what mister Dirth believed, at least that's
what he indicated in that interview and another interview with
the paper. For Missus Dearth, she said in a separate
news article that she always believed it was someone known
to their family, and I should clarify she had a
specific person in mind, she just doesn't name them, and
she thinks that either this person had been involved in

(34:50):
a sexual act relating to Linda, or that Linda found
out about sexual abuse and that this person silenced her.
Police are aware of the person Missus Dearth suspected, but
they haven't commented on who this is and if they've
been able to eliminate them. I've talked so much in

(35:15):
this episode about the overlapping cases, and because there is
very limited information out there in Linda's case, I know
it probably seems like I haven't spent enough time on
her specifically in this episode, So I want to just
wrap up this episode with some thoughts on her family's
unique journey navigating their grief because her parents were young

(35:35):
when this happened, but they had to carry this life
sentence of losing their daughter and not knowing who did
this or why. Just a few months after Linda's murder,
the Dearths adopted a seven year old girl named Ronda.
Ronda is actually the biological sister of businessman Michael Hayley,
who is the husband of politician Nikki Hayley. They loved

(35:59):
Ronda dearly and she helped them begin to heal. But,
like you so often hear about in these cases, the
challenges that come with staying married after a tragedy like
this proved to be too much. In the late seventies,
the dearths divorced. They actually both remarried other people. Odean
stayed in the family home. She said it made her
feel closer to Linda living there, and then, in a

(36:22):
weird twist of fate and tragedy, both of the spouses
of the dearths passed away in the eighties. Unexpectedly, Duwayne
and Odean actually reconnected in the nineteen eighty seven wedding
of Ronda. They were both hesitant to see each other
for the first time in almost a decade, but they
ended up talking for six hours. In the time following,

(36:44):
they realized that they still deeply loved each other and
that they didn't want the tragedy of what happened to
their daughter to get in between what they had together,
and so they got remarried. With this renewed commitment to
work through their grief and continue to pursue answers. In
linda case, they desperately both wanted to find out what

(37:04):
happened and get that closure before they died, but tragedy
would hit their family once again when Ronda died unexpectedly
of COVID in twenty twenty. Odean passed away the following
year at the age of eighty five, and Dwayne died
back in February of twenty twenty four at the age
of eighty eight, both of them dying without ever knowing

(37:25):
who murdered Linda and why. Jack Buck remarried and had
step children in his new relationship, but he never went
on to have any more children of his own, and
he died in two thousand and eight at just sixty
six years old. The mystery of who killed Linda, Sue
and the Buck family in the winter of seventy three
still lingers. Was it someone posing as a potential buyer

(37:49):
for their classified ads? Was it the person who made
the obscene phone calls? Was it the person Odean suspected
that was connected to their family, someone Linda would have known.
While we know DNA evidence was not successful in earlier years,
it's unclear what testing has been done recently and if
they have any DNA that could push the case forward.

(38:11):
But in the absence of success with physical evidence, investigators
are hoping that people who may know something will now
come forward with all the time that has passed and
give surviving family members the answers that they so desperately need.
If that person is you, you can submit a tip
online with the Ohio Attorney General, which I'll share in

(38:32):
the show notes. 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 on your favorite listening
platform and tell a friend. Case Suggestions can be made
to Simpler Timecrimepod at gmail dot com. I have a

(38:53):
TikTok and Facebook page, but I'm most active on Instagram,
which you can find me at at Simpler Time Crimepod.
Thank you so much for listening and join me again
next Monday for another new case.

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