MURDERED: Wendy Jerome

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:29):
Now, High crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and
I'm Britt and the story I have for you today
is the shiny example of why you should never give
up hope and why you should never jump to conclusions, because,
in the span of multiple decades after a young girl's death,
a number of people come on police's radar who you

(00:50):
would think just have to be the guy, but it
turns out the guy was hiding right under their noses
all along. This is the story of Wendy Jerome. It's

(01:34):
about eight pm November twenty second, nineteen eighty four, when
thirty year old Marlene Jerome just like jolts away from
a post Thanksgiving dinner nap on the couch. She doesn't
know what it is that woke her, but immediately she
senses that something is wrong, and being a mother, her
mind immediately goes to her kids, specifically her fourteen year

(01:55):
old daughter Wendy, and so she kind of like pops
off the couch and starts looking all over the house
for her, like she just needs to lay eyes on
her and then everything will be okay. But Wendy isn't home.
Marlene's husband Wayne tells her that Wendy went to her
friend's house a couple of blocks away to deliver a
birthday card. And this is like her best friend that
she's going to see. Her name is Sue, but that

(02:16):
was over an hour ago, and she has now missed
her eight pm curfew and she's about to miss having
pumpkin pie, which is her favorite, and they all plan
to eat it together after Marlene's nap. Now, listen, she's
only missed curfew by a few minutes at this point,
but Marlene is just like getting progressively more worried, so
she calls Sue's house, though that doesn't exactly help settle

(02:38):
her fears because nobody answers over there, So then she
tries other friends who live nearby, but no one has
seen Wendy now. Despite her gut instinct, Marlene told our
reporter that she was clinging to the hope that maybe
Wendy had gone somewhere with Sue's family, and it's a
thought that she holds onto for hours as she tries

(02:59):
telling herself no to overreact. I mean, in nineteen eighty four,
it is wait it out or call the police, not
a whole lot in between. But that last shred of
hope that she had is torn to pieces at eleven
thirty PM when Marlene finally gets a hold of Sue's mom. Yes,
Wendy had come by, but way earlier, and no, she

(03:20):
hadn't been with them, like she left their house at
about seven point thirty, And Sue's mother must kind of
get a rush of the type of fear that has
been building in Marlene for hours because she knew something
that she didn't want to tell Marlene over the phone.
On her way home, she had driven by a bunch
of police and like commotion on the local school grounds.

(03:43):
So as she's like having this realization, all she can
bring herself to say to Marlene was you need to
hang up and call the police immediately, which Marlene does,
and she said police were at her door within minutes. Now,
she wanted to show the officer a picture of her
daughter that was missing, so he knew who to look for,
but she said that he couldn't even bring himself to

(04:04):
look at it. All he said was Wendy had an accident,
and even in that moment, her mom is looking for
all the explanations that aren't the worst one. She said
she remembered thinking, oh, like maybe she got hit by
a car or something. And you can almost pinpoint the
moment in her story when the real trauma happened and
Marlene's brain started trying to protect her from.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
It, because the actual words that.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Came out of the officer's mouth are fuzzy to her now,
but she says that she just remembers he said something
like she came across a bad person and somehow she
was told that Wendy was dead, and to hear Marlene
talk about it even forty years later, like it will
rip you apart. I mean, right after she said that,

(04:48):
her eyes just kind of drifted up and over, and
I could tell in that moment she was right back
in nineteen eighty four. She has probably spent so much
time in that memory, but before she let it consume her,
she physically, in our interview, had to like shake it
off and keep going. Now, Marlene wanted to go to
her baby. She wanted to be the one to identify her,
but the police wouldn't allow it, and she was furious.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
She said, she had this image of.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Wendy like naked, beaten, sprawled out in the snow, and
she couldn't stand the thought of all these men there
with her little girl, Like she was the mother who
brought her into this world. She was the one who
celebrated Wendy's birthday with her just a couple of weeks before,
and now she was just gone.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
And when she's imagining this, like, were they giving her
details about what had happened?

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Not really, I mean, and truthfully, they're still trying to
figure out what happened at school thirty three. But the
picture Marlene was developing in her head wasn't actually the
one police were dealing with. And don't get me wrong,
it was brutal. Wendy had been beaten so badly you
couldn't id her from her face. It was actually her
school ida in her pocket that helped them get there.

(05:52):
Two of her teeth were found on the ground next
to her, and the EMMY would later determine that she
died from blunt force's trauma to the head with multiple
skull fractures and cerebral contusions, and she also had numerous
cuts and contusions to her face, lots of defensive wounds
on both of her hands, and there was a laceration
to her neck that looked like it came from a knife.

(06:13):
Now it's not a deep, huge wound like I've seen
reported in this case, but a cut. Nonetheless, blood had
also pooled around her head. But the thing that I'll
say was really different from what Marlene was picturing is
she actually wasn't naked, though it was clear that she
had been at some point and then had redressed because
she was wearing unzipped jeans and a sweater, but her

(06:35):
bra and coat were found kind of strewn about. Though
someone must have been ashamed of what they'd done because
they used her T shirt and pink hoodie to cover
her face.

Speaker 4 (06:45):
And in all this could they tell if she had
redressed herself or if someone had like put her clothes
back on her as afterwards.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, So we spoke to Sergeant Gus Finosa of the
Rochester Major Crimes Unit, and he says that they believe
she was allowed to get dressed after being sexually assaulted.
And they're basing this off of the blood patterns that
they have and speaking of so, about forty five feet
from Wendy, there were some blood droplets. So the theory
is that Wendy might have been taken to this secluded

(07:13):
part of school thirty three, she was attacked at some
point she sat up in the spot where those blood
droplets were, and then the blood is like dripping from
her having been beaten, and then afterwards she started getting
redressed and then her attacker began beating her again. Possibly
they have a theory that maybe she even tried to
run away, and like was that the plan all along?

(07:35):
Did she say something that made him realize he would
get caught if he let her go, Like they don't
know that part yet.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
Well, and I mean I'm thinking, like was he lying
in wait for her? Did he take her there? Like
how did this all even happen?

Speaker 3 (07:48):
This is what's interesting.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
So the school isn't on the way to or from
Sue's house where we know she was going.

Speaker 5 (07:54):
I mean, did she go to this school.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
No, Her ten year old brother did, though, and it
was really close by to her house has everything, so
I mean, I know she was familiar with it. Most
likely the killer grabbed her or lured her from somewhere else,
but this whole area, again, everything is within close proximity.
I think wherever he took her from he had this
place in mind to bring her though, because this whole

(08:17):
area is pretty residential, like even where she was found
was close to a street. But the one particular spot
of the school where she was is kind of like
this alcove of an unlit courtyard that's protected by some
brick knee high walls and defense. So this plus the
darkness at night, can give it a sense of seclusion

(08:37):
despite like I said, I mean, it's only a couple
hundred feet from the street.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
Well, and knowing all that, I have to think it
was a little more premeditated than not. It's this guy
like took her to this place that was not well
lit behind a wall, like he knew that this place
was here, and he had a knife to cut her.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
I was gonna say, I mean, that's what he could
have threatened her with to get her sure that Alcove
area with him. But I mean, you'd have to think
that someone who was willing to do that would also
be willing to use it. Right. But speaking of the knife,
they don't find any kind of weapon at the scene,
or any clothing or personal effects from the attacker. There
were some cigarette butts and a lighter, according to The

(09:14):
Democrat and Chronicle, though they're not totally convinced these are
necessarily connected to their killer, because apparently this is an
area where people would regularly kind of just stand around
and smoke. But that is not to say he didn't
leave real clues behind, the biggest of which is his DNA,
which they end up retrieving from a sexual assault kit.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
But they had a couple of.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Things that were a little more tangible that they could
actually do something with in nineteen eighty four, right, so,
like they had some foreign hairs, including pubic hares, and
a physical trail of blood that showed them which direction
their killer took off in about three hundred feet from
where Wendy was laying blood. Droplets are found on the

(09:56):
sidewalk by the school on the side that runs along
a street called Rosewood Terrace, and then a few hundred
feet from that there was a single drop of blood
on the corner of Rosewood Terrace and Schaeffer.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
How do they know it's from whoever did this and
not from Wendy like trying to run away or something.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
I don't think they definitively know that it wasn't, But
it would mean that Wendy ran several hundred feet and
then would have been like dragged all the way back
to where her body was found, which doesn't seem likely
because there were there would be like more evidence more blood.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Right, we have a single drop on a corner.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I also feel like someone would have heard or seen
something where we don't get anything like that from witnesses.
And now listen, they end up typing the blood out
and it is the same blood type as Wendy's. So again, theoretically, yes,
maybe it could be hers. I think that seems like
the least likely. It could also be blood dripping from
a murder weapon like a knife, but Sergeant Bonosa doesn't

(10:51):
think that's likely. He always believed that their killer most
likely cut themselves during the attack.

Speaker 5 (10:57):
And has the same blood type as Wendy.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, that was the theory at the time, but again,
I mean, we also know the attack was very bloody,
so they do not know for sure. They just know
which way they believe this guy ran. But did he
get in a car and drive away did he walk
another one five twenty miles after leaving that final drop
at the corner of Rosewood Terrace and Schaeffer. They're not
gonna know until they find their guy. And when they

(11:22):
look for their guy, there are two people they already
have on their list before the scene is even cleared.

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Speaker 2 (11:52):
In Wendy's pocket, along with her school ID, detectives also
found a note that read I love Joey in like
bubble letters Now. Joey was the top of their list
to speak with, but first up was the twenty four
year old man who actually had found Wenny's body in
this alcove in the first place. This guy's name is Craig,
and he tells police that he had gone to a

(12:12):
nearby bar that night, but he didn't want to pay
the cover charge, so he left headed towards his friend's
house instead cutting through the school property to get there,
and he says, at first he just saw someone laying
down in the distance and thought it was somebody who's
probably passed out drunk, but when he got closer and
saw all of the blood, he freaked out, ran to
his friend's house, asked them to come back with him
and make sure what he was seeing was real, and

(12:34):
the two of them ended up going to a neighbor's
house and calling police together. Now it's pretty easy to
check this guy's story, the bar, the cover charge. They
even interview the friend that he was with.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
Well, and even despite all that, that would have meant
that Craig called the police on himself, which wouldn't have
made a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
True, right, police quickly realized that Craig's most likely not
their guy. Now they don't know who Joey even is yet,
but they figure Sue might and since Sue, who was
likely the last person to interact with Wendy before she
met her killer, they want to get in front of
her now. She tells police that Wendy Popeye a little
after seven pm. They chatted for a little bit about

(13:10):
sleepovers and birthday parties, like normal fourteen year old girl stuff,
and Wendy mentioned her that she didn't have to be
home until eight thirty. And though she didn't say that
she was gonna go anywhere specific before heading home, Sue
kind of wondered if Wendy could have decided to go
to their friend Amy's house. She was another girl who
lived in the neighborhood, and interestingly, the route to Amy's

(13:31):
house might have put her near the school, depending on
which street she would have taken.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
Well, and I'm also imagining their age, Like she's there
at seven, she doesn't have to be back till like thirty,
like when we were that age. Like that means we
were walking through the door at eight twenty nine. Yeahs
like thirty seconds to go, absolutely and like totally willing
to ask for more time next time.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, and listen, Sergeant Venosa and Marlene kind of agree
she was probably headed to Amy's house.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Or another friend's house, like she was probably gonna.

Speaker 5 (13:58):
Take her time.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yes, but in talking to her other friends, they know
that if that was her plan, she had to have
been intercepted before she ever made it anywhere else because
nobody reports seeing her. Her friends also tell police that
her death makes no sense, like she's just a typical
teenager who loves to babysit, listen to Journey, and dream

(14:19):
about owning a salon one day. No one has a
problem with her. She's not stirring up trouble. And by
the way, even Joey is kind of a nothing burger.
I mean, not him as like a person, but like
whatever they had, no one knows anything.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Salacious about Joey.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
But they do point detectives to the one that Wendy
would have been talking about in that note. It's a
fifteen year old who went to the same school as
she did, and he ends up telling police that yes,
they went on a couple of dates, like nothing serious,
and the last time he saw Wendy was when they
walked to the bus together on Wednesday before school let
out for Thanksgiving break. He says he spent Thanksgiving at home,

(14:56):
which his mother confirms, So they end up scratching Joey
off from the list two, meaning that their killer is
still out there and they have no idea who he
is and he could strike again, maybe even to the
same family. Because this is when harassing and threatening phone
calls start rolling in on the Jerome family house line.

(15:20):
On one call, someone said to Marlene, quote, I know
when your husband's gone, and you better keep an eye
on your son.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Now.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Police try putting a tap on the family's phone, thinking
that this could be their biggest and best lead, but
they are never able to pin this guy down. They
think basically he was moving from like phone booth to
phone booth to place these calls.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
And in any of these calls, is he asking for
something or saying why he did this or anything.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
No, I don't even think he says anything in the
calls taking responsibility for Wendy's murder. I mean, this might
be totally unrelated and just some sick person out there
coming after an already traumatized family. So even though no
one knows who's making these calls, this is still a
place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone has
a close pulse on what's happening.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
In the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
So it's no surprise that police are quick to make
a connection between Wendy's case and that of another call
that officers responded to on the night of the murder.
You see, there was this guy who we're gonna call
Dale at the request of Sergeant Venosa, and the night
of Thanksgiving, this twenty nine year old showed up to
the emergency room covered in blood and cuts.

Speaker 7 (16:33):
Now.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Dale's story to doctors and then to police when the
doctors called them in was that he was attacked by
a couple of guys while walking down the street. Except
when they tried to dig into the details of Dale's claim,
which should be pretty easy to verify based on where
and when he said it happened, they can't find anyone
who witnessed this attack. They can't find any sign that

(16:56):
it took place on the street he said it did,
and Dale also keeps changing his story, So the police
start getting suspicious, thinking that, Okay, maybe Dale isn't the
victim in this scenario, maybe he's our suspect. And while
he wasn't necessarily staying with her at the time, it
is very interesting when they learned that Dale's mother lived

(17:17):
on Rosewood Terrace, just a block from the school, same
street that the blood trails found him.

Speaker 5 (17:23):
Yeah, and I told.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
You this is a close knit community. And what's interesting
is Marlene told us that she knew this Dale guy
kind of like tangentially. So at some point police Cornerdale.
They tell him they know that he's full of it,
and he breaks. He finally admits he lied, but the
confession that comes out of his mouth is not at

(17:45):
all what they were expecting. Dale doesn't confess to Wendy's murder. Instead,
he said that his story can't be corroborated because there
were no other.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Men who jumped him.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
The injuries he had were self inflicted with a razor
blade so that he could get sympathy from his girlfriend.

Speaker 5 (18:05):
Hmm, can that be fact checked? Please?

Speaker 4 (18:09):
And also like, who is this poor girlfriend? Is she okay?
Please tell me she's not like with Dale, because.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
That's not okay, it's unhim. Yeah, ladies and gent Some
red flags are small and pink. Some are the size
of a house and the color of crimson. That one, Yes,
this is one of those. Someone does something like that,
you run because that is some master manipulation.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
Yeah, so okay, if this is all for her, Like
did the girlfriend end up finding out?

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Like I want to do an entire story on this,
because I don't know any follow up on this, Like
nobody seems to know, like what happens with these two afterwards.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
I have all the same questions.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
I assume she found out everything, because like I think
they would have talked to her when they were checking
this guy out.

Speaker 5 (18:54):
You think they would have talked to her. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
I don't know if she got looped in when all
was said and done, or if he just went home
and was like, oh, honey, they can't find the guys
who muged me and I was wrongly suspected of a murder.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
I know.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Like, so my biggest question is did they stay together?
And I don't know the answers.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
I mean, whenever you say stuff like that, I'm always like, well,
we're like, it's on an episode now, Like will she
hear it?

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Oh my god?

Speaker 2 (19:20):
If she does, absolutely she needs to call us. But
even though I think dale Is was a bad dude,
he is not Wendy's murderer. He is able to point
police to the razor blade that he used. Apparently he
ditched it on the street. They're actually able to locate it,
confirming this weird and wild story of his.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
I mean, I assume they're also not just like taking
that for what it is. Do they do a comparison
with some of the physical evidence.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yes, so yes, I check all the right. It's not
just the razor blade.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Like again, no DNA to work with yet, But they
do take hair samples and blood samples from Dale just
to make sure, and of everything they collected, there was
nothing to suggest that he was their guy, mostly because
Dale is a white guy, and the hairs that they
have from the crime scene suggests that the person who
attacked Wendy was black. But this gets police thinking it

(20:12):
wasn't just the hospital visit that placed Dale on their
suspect list.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
While they were deep.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Looking into him, they actually talked to a local eighteen
year old named Michael Ross, who told police that while
outside a bar a few days after the murder, he
heard and intoxicated Dale say that he was going to
get Wendy.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
Wait, timing wise, this is after she's already been murdered.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, that part didn't seem to trip them up much
early on, but like, it doesn't make sense, right, and
now that Dale is kind of a no goo. What
they're basically wondering is like, oh, could this Michael Ross
guy who is black and would theoretically be a better
match four Hairs found, could he maybe have made up
this whole story? And why make up a story unless

(20:56):
you yourself have something to hide.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
Right, and like insert yourself into the investigation that way.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
And I mean, on another note, Michael was known to
be a violent guy who carried a knife. So when
they go ask him where he was on the night
of the murder, he's like, oh, I was just homewatching TV. However,
he did admit that he saw Wendy at an outdoor
party near the school two days before her murder, so
he knew her, or at least knows of her from

(21:22):
the neighborhood, but he swears he didn't have anything to
do with her murder. Now, police start canvassing the neighborhood
asking around about Michael, and a pair of neighbors tell
police that Michael could get violent and often wanted to
fight Another neighbor, specifically this guy, Timothy, tells police that
Michael was sneaky and he was someone that couldn't be trusted.

(21:43):
Someone else talks about Michael chasing after a woman with
a club once, and yet another tells police that Michael
tried to burn down a house. They find another woman
who lives nearby who tells police that she and several
of her friends feared Michael. And by the way, Michael's
mother pokes holes in his alibi, saying that he went
out at seven pm on the night of the murder,

(22:05):
so he wasn't just at home watching TV. And once
they know the alibi is bs, investigators hall Michael back
in and surprise, surprise, he changes his story. He now
says that he went to a restaurant and a pool
hall known as the Greasy Spoon at around seven pm
before leaving to go home at about nine forty five.

(22:27):
And since they're thinking whatever happened to Wendy happened closer
to like seven point thirty in theory, this could clear
him right. But when police talk to the manager of
the Greasy Spoon and show him a picture of Michael,
he's like, Nope, dude, wasn't here. And what's so strange
is like they don't ever seem to get a real
story from Michael about where he was that night. Or

(22:48):
at least there isn't one that has survived old record keeping.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
But they did get.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Hair samples from him also, something that didn't survive record keeping,
So like did they compare those hair what were the results?
I don't know, But whatever they did or had wasn't
enough to prove anything, because while he remained a person
of interest, they didn't have enough to prove that he
was involved or to actually arrest him. So whether it

(23:16):
was Michael or someone else who committed this murder, police
were going to need more. They were going to need
a witness, a confession, a murder weapon. And over the
next few months they have moments where they think they're close.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
To one or more of those.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
A time where a knife was found in the middle
of the street a mile from the school, but it
ends up not being the knife. A time where a
man comes forward and says that he witnessed six black
men committing the murder. But the guy admits to being
under the influence the Knight that he saw it, and
he had just been arrested for possession of stolen property
when he offered up this information, So you could have
just been looking to get a break with some made

(23:51):
up stuff. Making a deal essentially that doesn't lead anywhere either,
and this Brett is kind of what police are dealing with.
One step forward, two steps back. Every tip leads to
more nothings, and even those phone calls that the family
were getting one day, those just stop and police never determine.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Who was making.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Them, so over the following months and years, it becomes
clear that the only way they're going to solve this
is through advancements in technology. Talk of DNA is just
a whisper in the mid eighties, and a whisper that
probably wasn't even making its way to this little corner
of America. So it's not until nineteen ninety nine that

(24:32):
police have the tools and the know how to really
make something happen.

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Speaker 2 (25:00):
Using swabs from Wendy's Sexual Assault Kit, lab techs are
able to pull a full male DNA profile one that
is good enough to enter into the earliest form of
the CODIS National Database, But unfortunately it wouldn't be that easy.
There were no matches, So whoever this is has never
been arrested after Wendy's murder in a state that collects DNA,

(25:23):
or at least they hadn't been swabbed and entered, right.
I mean, there were a lot of cracks in the
system early days, as we've talked about in plenty of
other episodes.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
This wasn't a total loss though. I Mean, this DNA.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Does help police rule out a few people that we've
talked about, like Dale and Michael, who by that point
is in prison for a sex crime, which.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
I'm sure just made them even more suspicious of him,
like oh when that happened.

Speaker 5 (25:48):
In the years?

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, yeah, And honestly, I mean, sometimes there are these
cases that remind you why you need a really strong
case before putting someone away from murder, because even when
it seems like all the signs are pointing to one person,
like you get a situation like this, Michael Ross is
a rapist, he's a bad guy, but he didn't do
anything to Wendy Jerome.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
And what about the guy who foundered. Did they ever
go back and check him, like, just to officially rule
him out for sure?

Speaker 3 (26:14):
They actually did so.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
The Democrat and Chronicle had reported that by this point
he'd actually passed away. It was like sometime in the
decade or so since Wendy's murder, but they had his
DNA on file after he took his own life because
they had to do an autopsy, so they took it
at that point. He ends up not being a match either,
So fifteen years since the murder, one DNA profile and

(26:36):
not a single suspect left on their list. Marlene explained
to us what an emotional toll Wendy's murder took on
their family over the years, and Wendy's brother, Bill still
had to go to school thirty three where Wendy was found.
Marlene and Wendy's father, Wayne, I mean, they really struggled
emotionally after her death. They got so bad that Wendy's

(26:57):
name wasn't even mentioned in the home. Event became so
much that Wayne and Marlene ended up divorcing and Marlene
moved out of state. She tried to start over. I mean,
it was like the only way she knew how to survive.
But that's not to say she was like putting her
old life behind her. She still wanted to fight for
her baby girl, but it was hard when police kept

(27:19):
her at arm's length. It's not like they had a
bad relationship, but they weren't giving her the kind of
case details that she wanted. And the more time that
went on, as she kind of gathered bits and pieces
from what newspaper outlets were reporting, and in the absence
of facts that she had like this already gruesome image
she had of her daughter laying beaten and naked in

(27:40):
the snow just kind of got worse and worse over time.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure she had like worst case
scenario images in her mind.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, I mean, she told us that she believed that
Wendy's throat had been slashed open from ear to ear
and listen. For many people, they might say that not
knowing is better, but for someone like Marlene, like when
you don't know, then everything under the sun is possible, right,
Like when you know the facts, you can at least
try to deal with like the one thing you can tackle,

(28:08):
right and not the millions of things that could be possible,
And like you almost go.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
What's worse, what's worse, what's worse?

Speaker 2 (28:14):
So again she's like always asking, and finally she gets
to this point where one day she's back home visiting
Rochester and she goes into the police station and she's like,
no excuses, it's been years. I want to see her file.
I want to see the photos. And the police actually
let her, like crime scene photos, autopsy photos, all of it.

(28:35):
They probably thought they were protecting her from the details
all those years, but this is what she needed. This
is what finally brought her even like a small sense
of peace, because it wasn't until now. In this moment,
while she's looking at the pictures, this is when she
learned that Wendy had been found clothes that night. This
is when she learned that the cut on her neck

(28:55):
wasn't ear to ear, it was much smaller than anything
she'd been picturing. But it was all also in this
moment that she learned that her daughter fought back, that
she might have had time to cry out for help.
And it makes you think back to when Marlene was
woken up on her couch that Thanksgiving Day, like, did
she somehow, on the most instinctual of levels, know that

(29:16):
her daughter was calling out for her, like this moment
in the police station, like it heals and then it
hurts all over again. But at least now Marlene feels
like she's in control, like she advocated for herself, and
I don't think she ever gave up hope. But in
almost every family I've ever spoken with who lives with
an unsolved case, they have moments where they try and

(29:38):
reckon with the unknown, right like they try to make
peace with what they can, come to terms with the
possibility that there might never be answers, because like how
else do you survive. You don't give up, but you
figure out how to keep going, fully aware that this
might be the only reality you will ever get to know,
because it's not like seeing the files sparked anything new

(29:58):
for her, and it didn't do anything for police. So
another call it Seventeen more years passes, putting this case
over the thirty year mark without any more significant breakthroughs.
But sometimes you just need the right person to latch
onto a case at the right time, And in twenty sixteen,

(30:21):
that right person was Sergeant Finosa. Bnosa told us that
when he finally got assigned to cold cases, he went
to the area known as the vault room where they
keep all their cold case files, and one of the
files he started to look through was Wendy's, and he
said the details gripped him immediately, so much so that
he didn't like take this file back to his desk.

(30:43):
He literally in the vault room just starts like pouring
through everything. He couldn't even bring himself to like look
away for a second. And it was the very next
day that he called Wendy's mom to tell her he
is now her new point person. I mean, he starts
reinterviewing people, relooking at old tips, and at the same
time he's sending off whatever he can to be tested,
like the swabs of blood from the drops found by

(31:05):
Rosewood terraces, but those turned out to be too deteriorated
to obtain usable DNA samples, so strike out there, And
knowing his suspect isn't in codis, he starts thinking, Okay,
maybe this guy is dead, and like that's why he
hasn't hit their radar all these years. So how do
you find a dead guy that you didn't even know
the name of in life? Well, Sergeant Venosa started planning

(31:28):
a way to compile a list of like age appropriate
black male homicide victims since nineteen eighty four. Like, maybe
he'll just work backwards. And by the way, now that
they have DNA and it's advanced so much like all
the testing, they are able to confirm what the hairs
were suggesting early on. Their perpetrator was a black male.
But according to Sergeant Venosa, before he can even get

(31:50):
this list going, something happens that changes the course of
the investigation and makes things a whole heck of a
lot easier on him. In seventeen, a new tool was
added to the Rochester PDS arsenal I.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
Think I know where this is going.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Well maybe maybe not. So New York State approves the
use of familial DNA testing, meaning they can use DNA
from a suspect to identify potential relatives in codis okay, right,
Like they might not be able to get a hit
on the suspect, but they can get a help get close, right,
But one step forward, two steps back, Like always, they

(32:27):
learned that they can't actually use the profile they already
have that's in codis so like again, so much has
developed changed over the years. They have to basically submit
a new profile like a better profile is what they need,
and when the state lab comes back after nine months,
it's bad news. The profile that they are able to

(32:49):
produce has fifteen alleles, and the rule was you needed sixteen.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
To do the search.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
So the profile way, the profile gets rejected. Luckily, Venosa
sees the writing on the wall.

Speaker 7 (33:02):
Right.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
He is advised by texts and scientists that the testing
is getting better and better every day, so he doesn't
have to go back to making his list of dead
men and checking it twice like some grim Santa Claus.
They say, listen, just give it a couple of years.
They still had more samples to work with, right, like
they hadn't like used up everything. Give it a couple
of years. This sample will give you answers. And sure

(33:26):
enough they were right. In April twenty nineteen, they send
a new sample off. This one takes even longer than
the first to come back, but in July of twenty twenty,
investigators are informed that yes, you have a good sample.
Yes we put it in codis and there aren't just one,
but two hits from men and codis who are related

(33:47):
to your unknown suspect. According to court documents, one of
the hits came back to a man named Arthur Williams,
who I repeat, is not the suspect. He was related
to their suspect, though they don't know how, so they
have to do some backtracking, and it's kind of wild,
a little convoluted. Why'll do my crime junkie best and

(34:08):
give you like the need to know cliff notes. So
when looking into Arthur, investigators discovered that at one point
he was pulled over for like a traffic stop, and
he gave police the name of a cousin instead of
his real name to try to avoid getting in trouble
because his own license was suspended. Like, he gets pulled over,
he shouldn't be driving, so he gives them the name
of one of his cousins. Police see stuff like this

(34:30):
all the time, Basically, like in an attempt to squirm
out of trouble, you use the name of a relative
or friend or someone close.

Speaker 5 (34:36):
Charge lands on them right, and.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
You pick someone that's close in age instead of yourn whatever.
So that's not what stands out to them. What stands
out is that the cousin's name that he gave, They
recognize that name, which we've been asked not to use.
So I'm just gonna refer to him as the cousin.
But Venosa had seen that name in the case file
that he has read backwards and forwards time time and

(35:00):
time again. Now the name isn't there a lot, mind you,
But back in November of nineteen eighty four, a tip
had come in that accused this cousin of bragging about
the murder. Now it's unclear if that was ever followed
up on at the time, but this obviously cannot be
a collations. So police look into this cousin and they

(35:21):
discover that back in nineteen eighty four, he lived on
drum roll please, Rosewood Terrace, just five houses away from
the school and only three houses away from where that
last blood drop was found.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
Okay, just to confirm this cousin isn't the other relative
that pop up, right, like this one hits from Arthur,
and this cousin gets mentioned, and then this second.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Like I don't really even know a ton about the
second connection in Codus because everything kind of like spawns
from what they look at from Arthur. Right, So this
cousin was not in Codis, which means it is looking
more and more like it could actually be him. Because
I know our purp is an inkdis so this guy
never did anything that would have gotten his DNA put
in the database.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
But now they got to find.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
A way to get this guy's DNA, like surreptitiously. So
they put this guy under surveillance for a week. They
watch his house, they watch him get coffee from a
Speedway gas station every day. They follow him to his
security job at a.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
Hotel I'm sorry security job.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Eventually, Sartifanosa is able to snatch one of this guy's
coffee cups from the hotel Bobby trash can.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
It takes two days to directly.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
Compare and guess what, it's not him, how I know, Listen,
it is not the guy. But this is still helping
build a picture. Right, we know our killers related to Arthur.
We know Arthur has a cousin who lives near the
crime scene.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
Like this cousin didn't do it, but like that's we
have a family.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Right, We're in the same family. So all of this
is relevant. It's just like a bad game of hot
and cold, and right now they're warm. So what they
do is they go back to Arthur. They start looking
at Arthur to see if there are any other men
that he is related to that might fit. Now, they
discover that Arthur's father died back in nineteen sixty three,

(37:12):
and his obituary only listed his children as Arthur and
him having two sisters.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
But that's weird because.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
When investigators reviewed a log of who had been visiting
Arthur while he was in prison, they show someone who
comes to see him who lists themselves as Arthur's brother
and guess freaking what it is another name that Sergeant
Venosa recognizes from the case file.

Speaker 6 (37:38):
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Speaker 2 (38:00):
The name is Timothy Williams. This is Arthur's brother and
I don't know if Timothy sounds familiar, but way back
at the beginning of our story in nineteen eighty four,
when police were canvassing the neighborhood asking others about Michael Ross,
Timothy is the one who called Michael sneaky and someone

(38:20):
who couldn't be trusted.

Speaker 4 (38:22):
Oh, and is he actually Arthur's brother?

Speaker 7 (38:25):
He is?

Speaker 4 (38:25):
Yeah, then wait, why wasn't he listed in the obituary.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Oh, he wasn't in the obituary because Timothy's mother was
actually pregnant when his dad died, and he's like born
seven months afterwards.

Speaker 5 (38:37):
So he wasn't there to be listed.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Right now, when they start looking at Timothy's background, he
checks a lot of boxes. He would have been twenty
years old at the time of Wendy's murder, so like
old enough to have committed a crime like this. Guess
what he was living with that cousin on Rosewood Terrace,
just a few houses from the scene. So see, it's
like all connected. And he too hasn't done anything that

(38:59):
would gotten his DNA put in CODIS, so they can't
rule him in or out without a direct comparison sample.
And it is a long shot, but Venosa sees a
potential easy way to get one.

Speaker 5 (39:13):
I've heard that before.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
It never ends up being an easy.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Win rarely, but you gotta try right sometimes it pays off.
So when they were looking at Timothy and looking at
his background or whatever, Sergeant Venosa said that he had
some priors for things like possession resisting arrest, but there
was also a sexual assault report filed by an ex
girlfriend of his in nineteen ninety two. Now he's never
charged for this. It sounds like the X didn't want

(39:38):
to move forward, but at the time a sexual assault
kit was done. Now to your point about things ever
being easy, Venosa felt like the odds of finding this
assault kit after all of these years for a case
that didn't move forward were really really low, especially because
the evidence room had undergone multiple revamps over time and

(39:59):
things were purged whatever. But they are gonna look anyways.
They go down to the basement evidence storage room, and
we're not talking like just a room with neatly piled boxes.
Everything is in this place like it is a hoarder's garage,
full of stuff like bikes from the sixties, a bunch
of doors that were even in evidence like you name it.

Speaker 5 (40:17):
But get this.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
They find this sexual assault kit, and not just find
it break It is perfectly preserved and sealed.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
Which like, who were these people and why weren't they
running everything?

Speaker 5 (40:31):
I know this never happens.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
So on August eleventh, twenty twenty, this gets sent off
for testing for comparison. Fingers crossed investigators wait another two
days go by, which like, by the way, don't tell me,
DNA can't be done fast, Like we're turning things around
over here, and just like that, it's soft. Timothy's sperm
matches the DNA recovered from Wendy's underwear. They have their

(40:56):
guy after all of these years, but they need to
do more of like a direct one for one sample, right,
Like I mean, they don't want anyone arguing anything in course,
especially because like this came from like another case that.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Hadn't been tried exacted. It's like very likely him, but
without that ruling, right.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
No, they're like, let's get a sample from him right
now that we know his hit directly, right, Well, what
they have to do is they actually to tap the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement for help because in the
years since the murder, Timothy had moved down to Florida
and made this like low key, unassuming life for himself.
The now fifty six year old was married to a

(41:36):
woman named Barbara.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
They had a couple of kids.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
They're doing normal family stuff, like you know, he's a
he's a working dad. He's working, he's Mowen. He's taking
out the recycling. That is where FDL E pulled two
bottles from to directly compare. One of them does match
the sample taken from Wendy and there is zero doubt.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
Now, so okay, how did any of this happen? Like,
did Wendy know him? No?

Speaker 3 (42:04):
So this is what is so wild.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Once they had him in their sights, they even went
back and reinterviewed some of her old friends. They were
showing him old photos of Timothy, right, not even the
new ones like back in the day. No one is
pointing this guy out of a lineup, zero recollection of him.
So Sergeant Venosa believes that the only way this like
probably would have happened is that Wendy ran into Timothy

(42:26):
in front of the school somewhere around Rosewood Terrace and
this was just a random crime of opportunity. So on
September eighth, twenty twenty, Sergeant Venosa, along with two investigators
who had been helping with the case this guy named
John Brennan and Gary Galletta, they head down to Florida
to finally make this arrest. Gary Goletta had actually been

(42:48):
among the very first to respond to the scene back
in nineteen eighty four, and now here he was almost
thirty six years later taking part in the arrest of
Wendy's killer.

Speaker 4 (42:57):
And that's like about a full circle as it truly.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
And Sergeant Venosa told us about like the night before
the arrests, like when the team is plotting this, planning this,
they were all sitting on this hotel balcony, smoking cigars,
drinking bourbon, and they were trying to plan, like we
need this is more than just going and putting handcuffs
on this guy. They had the opportunity to really like
paint him into a corner. And Sergeant Venosa and John

(43:21):
Brennan basically came up with this idea that the two
of them would approach his home while Gary hung back
in the car keeping a perimeter with the local police.
And the hope was to get Timothy caught in a lie.
They wanted him to say that he had never seen
Wendy before, which considering the DNA evidence they had, like
they would know that's not right, but they know that's
not true already, But like then you're like, Okay, there's

(43:43):
no excuse of like, oh, we could have had a
relationship or anything.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Which we know they didn't have. And listen, this.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Dude fell for hook Line and Sinker. So the next day,
September night, they show up at his door, and not
wanting to tip their hand, what they did is they're like, hey,
we're investigating this cold case, and we're looking at the
guy that you said was so sus all those years ago.
Remember Michael Ross, Like, let's talk about Michael.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
Yeah, let's talk about him and write your guard down right.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
So Timothy is like, no, I don't even know Michael,
and I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't
even live in Rochester in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 4 (44:17):
Four, which is like almost a bigger better lie than
what they were hoping to get in the first place.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
And it's just downhill from there for Timothy. Eventually he
acknowledges like, oh yes, I did in fact live in
Rochester at the time. Okay, he also admits, oh yes,
I had heard about Wendy's murder, but he still denies
knowing her. After they show him a photo and that
is all Sergeant Venosa and Code need, they place Timothy

(44:44):
under arrest and while he can protest all he wants,
which he does, they know that They've got their man.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
Whenever the suspect is someone like this, I always like
wonder what their families knew or thought, like, what does
this his wife think?

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Totally blindsided? Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
And tim Dorothy clammed up once he was arrested, But
Barbara was like a pretty open book with police. She
tells investigators they got married in nineteen ninety eight, this
is roughly like nine years after Wendy's murder. She had
no clue about any of this. The Timothy that they're
describing to her, she says, is not the man that
she knew all these years. She said he was never violent,

(45:19):
he was never physical with her. She's like incomplete shock,
and you know who else is shocked?

Speaker 3 (45:26):
Marlene.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Sergeant Venosa and his team still had to tell her
about the arrest. Now, the plan always was to do
this in person, so all the investigators go straight to
her house, like right from the airport, and it is
there on her porch, through tears, that Sergeant Venosa gives
her the news that I think she feared would never come.
And Marlene becomes so overwhelmed at one point that she

(45:49):
briefly collapses and her son Bill has to like catch.

Speaker 4 (45:52):
Her, which I don't always like know or even think
about what order all this happens. But she had no
clue this arrest was even coming.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
Oh, they no clue at all.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
She knew that they were like tracking down leads and
working like they had been for decades, right, but she
thought they were coming over because they did tell her
they were coming over. But she thought she was just
getting some kind of update, like there is no hint
to her of something bigger now, heartbreaking, Lee. The one
person who isn't with Marlene when Sergeant Venosa delivers the
news was Wendy's dad Wayne. He had died from cancer

(46:24):
back in twenty and eleven. All those years of guilt
that Wayne carried for allowing Wendy to go out that night,
Like you can only imagine what he would have thought
of this. And you know, Marlene and him actually had
gotten back together, by the way, so like those two
were able to work out, you know, their relationship and
everything in his final years. Now this feels like the

(46:45):
end from the outside. Bad guy arrested, family gets answers,
but it is so far from over. I think families
spent so much time thinking about knowing the who and
they think about the investigation leading up to that that
there isn't a ton of thought about what the the
day to day is like after that and all the
work that has to come after. I mean, true crime

(47:05):
shows are partly to blame, right like they got the
guy the end, there is a whole second wave of
trauma that families have to go through if a case
goes to trial, and unfortunately Wendy's family was not spared
of that.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
They had to do it twice.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
First in November of twenty twenty three, but then just
a little over a week in a mistrial was declared.
And we don't have a ton on this. The specific
details have never been made public, but essentially jury misconduct
was the cause, and Marlene told us that the judge
was furious and had instructed the jury members not to
discuss the case, and she thinks this mistrial had something

(47:43):
to do with them not following those instructions. But either way,
this was devastating. The family was so upset. There was
so much crying, and partly because according to Rochester, first,
at that point in the trial, crime scene photos autopsy
photos had already been shown and now the DA had
to break it to Wendy's family that they're going to
have to relive all of that again. So the second

(48:06):
trial kicked off in February twenty twenty four. Enter one
of the things that we probably don't think about, what
happens when your daughter's killer wants to take this stand
and lie about your kid. In this trial, Timothy does
exactly that. According to thirteen WHAMABC, he says that he
met Wendy outside a store in September nineteen eighty four,

(48:27):
and at some point they began a sexual relationship. Of course,
He's like, I had no idea she was fourteen. She
told me she was sixteen. He continued to claim that
on Thanksgiving, the day of the murder, Wendy stopped by
his place sometime after seven pm. They had sex without
a condom, and then she left, and he says he
has no idea what happened to her after that. That's
the last time he saw her. There is no evidence

(48:50):
of Wendy having any sexual relationship with anyone. By the way,
this was just Timothy's attempt to explain away how his
DNA ended up everywhere. Thankfully, the jury didn't buy it.
On March eighth of twenty twenty four, they found him
guilty of all three counts of second degree murder, and
it was the first conviction in New York State using
familial DNA. Marlene told us she was so elated hearing

(49:14):
the verdict that she had to restrain herself from like
jumping out of her seat, and so a month later,
Timothy was sentenced to twenty five years to life. Following
the conviction, Sergeant Venosa asked Marlene for permission to get
a tattoo with Wendy's initials, her date of birth, and
her date of death in honor of her, a request
that moved Marlene to tears. And but if things can't

(49:36):
get any more emotional, it was so sweet. Sergeant Venosa
also gave Marlene the handcuffs that he used to take
Timothy Williams into custody. He even had them engraved for her.
And we've got pictures of all of this stuff that
we're going to post in the blog. But I think
this shows not only Sergeant Venosa's dedication to this case,
but how much of a bond can form between investigators

(49:58):
and victims' families when it it is done right. Yes,
right is not easy, but it goes a long way.
Sergeant Venosa had begun to think of Wendy as a
little sister, I mean, even though they had never met,
And he said that solving Wendy's case was one of
the most satisfying points.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Of his career.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
That's all so incredible.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
I know, we don't get it a lot. We get
a lot of stories about like rifts between I mean again,
it's so easy for that relationship to go so sideways,
and like, it's really wonderful to see a family feel
like they got the support that they needed, the work
that they needed.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
For the investigator to like identify and connect to a
case like that deeply. And through all this, Timothy did
he ever take accountability or explain himself in any way,
like even after the conviction.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
No.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
And this is interesting because, according to Sergeant Venosa, in
the years since Wendy's murder, Timothy has become born again,
Yet apparently he didn't feel close enough to God to
unburden himself of his ultimate sin, or at the very
least even apologize for it. But apology or not, Marlene
now has the closure she sought. Her years since have

(51:04):
been about keeping Wendy's memory alive. She said that she
feels as long as people are talking about Wendy like
we're doing right now, it means that Wendy is still
alive in some way and that she hasn't been forgotten.
When our reporter asked Marlene what she wanted people to
remember most about her daughter, she said this.

Speaker 7 (51:23):
She dreams she had her life all planned out and
she was working even in grammar school, towards getting where
she wanted to be when she grew up. She was
a good friend, a proaly good friend. Still I'm told
she's a beautiful soul, beautiful soul and no loving daughter,
loving sister. She's missed every day.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Wendy's story is a perfect example of how justice can
prevail no matter how long it takes, and hopefully it
will serve as an inspiration for all those families out
there still waiting for their own justice. There is still
hope and their time will come. You can find all

(52:15):
the source material for this episode on our website, Crime
Junkie podcast dot com, and.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
You can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode,
but we're bringing you a little bit of the good
has brought something or we're gonna do it early this month,
Let's do it. This segment of the Good is brought

(52:52):
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(53:38):
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Speaker 4 (53:56):
Okay, this one I'm so excited to tell you because
I also I'm going to show you something and we'll
have it like online and everything, but there's visuals boohoo.
So this is from Zuzanna, Hi, Ashley and Bred. Have
you ever wondered what true crime and oil paint have
in common and whether art could actually help find missing persons?
I'm guessing probably not, but regardless, I'm here to answer

(54:17):
those questions. My name is Suzanna and I'm a crime
junkie from Poland.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Ah my Polish crime junkie.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
I graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts
in Krakov, and as you can imagine, painting involves a
lot of long, quiet hours, perfect for listening to podcasts
Crime Junkie. For instance, back in twenty nineteen, listening to
one of your episodes, a question popped into my head.
Is there a way I could get involved in missing
person cases myself?

Speaker 3 (54:44):
The answers yes, always, the answers yes.

Speaker 5 (54:45):
This is so good.

Speaker 4 (54:46):
These kinds of cases are something very personal to me.
Years ago, a close family member, my brother, went missing.
It was only for a dozen or so hours, but
those hours were filled with fear and helplessness. I'll never
forget that experience, combined with the stories I heard on
your podcast led to an idea, what if a painted
portrait of a missing person could reach people in a

(55:06):
different deeper way than a poster ever could. I reached
out to the Attaka Foundation, Poland's largest NGO focused on
missing persons, and proposed a collaboration. That's how this project
was born. The goal was to highlight four real cases
of missing people in Poland, not just by retelling their stories,
but by capturing them in paint in the last places

(55:27):
they were seen. Oh wow, I visited those places myself
to better understand the people behind the names. The result
is a series of paintings that aims not only to
give visibility to the missing and their families, but also
to spark reflection on what disappearance really means, the emptiness,
the uncertainty, the unanswered questions. I don't know if these
paintings will help solve any of these cases, but I

(55:49):
do believe the stories matter. Raising awareness matters, and anyone
can do that, even a painter from Poland.

Speaker 5 (55:57):
If you're curious to see these paintings, yes you're curious, Immed, Yes, sorry.

Speaker 4 (56:02):
If you're curious to see the paintings, I've attached some
documentation of the project. And you can also find more
on my instagram, which she links to.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
And we will too because I know everyone else to
go to see this.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
And if you ever feel like crossing the ocean, an
exhibition will be on display in Cracko from August fourteenth
to thirtieth.

Speaker 5 (56:20):
You are more than just invited.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
And if you're ever interested in covering another case from Poland,
I volunteer to be your personal crime junkie helping. However,
I can thank you for everything you do. You're a
crime junkie from Poland. Susanna, and you brought. I brought
some of the tempertures that she painted. They are I
thought they were photographs. Oh my god, they are incredible.
And I spent so much time on the exhibition's website

(56:46):
her instagram. It is fascinating. She is an incredibly talented artist.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
And I just love that she listened to our episodes
said what we hope all of our listeners say, like,
what can I do to make a difference of these cases?

Speaker 5 (56:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:58):
I like to remind people it's like very it feels
very professional and put together these days, but before crime
junkie like this, this is what I was like I
was a crime Junkie who was like, I want to
use whatever it does I can do to help.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
And I would say, like even in your corporate job,
you said, these are the skills I have. Yeah, this
is how I can help. Like, what can I do
to help your organization? This is Anna said, these are
the skills I have. Yeah, I'm an artist. What can
I do to help your organization? And it's happening.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Yeah, you guys, we don't have to all help them
the same way. It doesn't have to fit into this box.
And like, what is it that you're great at? What
is it that you're passionate about? Because that passion will translate.
This is incredible. I hope everyone listening we'll find their
way to get involved. This is beautiful. All right, We'll
link to it so you guys can see. So crime
Junkie is an audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

Speaker 6 (57:50):
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