April 11, 2024 • 35 mins
Valentine's Day is a beautiful holiday filled with flowers, hearts, chocolates, and gifts focusing around love and affection.
February 14th, 1985, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Douglas Pelzer arrived at the home of his Ex wife Cassandra Rundle with a record in hand intending to surprise her with a Valentine's Day gift. Unfortunately, Douglas was surprised with a gruesome scene. Cassandra and both her children Detriecht and Melanie Sturm had been murdered in their Colorado Springs home.
Stuff that joint and join us in this gruesome season finale.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Happy 420, I'm Kai and you are listening to Stone Cold Murder.
(00:08):
Just a PSA, if you have any information to help solve a crime, you can go to www.crimestoppers.com
to report any information anonymously.
Thanks for tuning in for Season 2, Episode 10, the murder of Cassandra Rundle, Dietrich,
and Melanie Sterna.
This podcast contains material that may not be suitable for all audiences.
(00:30):
Listener discretion is advised.
Today we have on the pod Zach and Perry.
Thank you guys for being on the pod today.
Thank you.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Alright, do you guys feel stoned enough to get this horrible case started?
Yeah, I'm ready, man.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, we've been smoking for a while.
(00:51):
So, let's get into it.
Our story starts out on February 14th, 1985 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
It was Valentine's Day and Douglas Peltzard had stopped by his ex-wife's house to drop
off a record that he got her as a Valentine's gift.
Douglas said that even though he and his wife had gotten a divorce, he continued to see
(01:16):
her and her kids.
He arrived at the yellow ranch style home where Cassandra, Dietrich, and Melanie lived.
And when he entered the home, he found the bodies of her and her two children, Dietrich
and Melanie.
So he ran to call the police at around 10.45 a.m.
And when police arrived on the scene, they found 37-year-old Cassandra, her 12-year-old
(01:42):
son Dietrich, and her 10-year-old daughter Melanie.
And they had not only been murdered, but they had suffered a horrific attack.
So that is not a good scene on Valentine's Day.
Well, any day, but especially on Valentine's Day.
All right.
So let's see how, how's it, what's his story?
What's he going to say?
Right?
Isn't it weird that he was like, oh, I'm just going to drop off a record at my ex-wife's
(02:05):
house?
Yeah, I'm just going to do something I usually never do.
And then, oh my gosh, wow, what a coincidence.
That's crazy.
People are everywhere.
Oh no.
I like that you brought up what I feel.
I can't wait to hear what his story is.
Right.
So Cassandra was found nude face down on the bed.
(02:27):
Okay.
She had been beaten somewhere between eight and ten times with a blunt instrument.
And Melanie's body was found face down on her bedroom floor, partially closed, in PJ's.
There were, there was overturned furniture in both bedrooms indicating to investigators
(02:49):
that she had fought off her attacker, or at least tried to.
Melanie had been beaten so bad that she had a fractured skull.
Both Cassandra and Melanie's hands and feet were tied up with electrical cords cut from
a table lamp and extension cords.
So it was like, they cut them and tied them up with whatever they could find.
(03:11):
And they also found that both Cassandra and Melanie had both been raped.
Alright.
I'm sorry.
What the fuck?
I'm sorry, Dad.
I was just like, this guy's like, it seems like things go horribly wrong.
Now he's just like cutting up lamps and shit to me.
He's like, I didn't think about rope at all.
I need to make rope immediately.
Yeah.
(03:32):
And he's just like, cut.
What the hell?
Is it in a frenzy?
Also, I'm sorry that I do this to you guys when you're stoned.
The worst kind of toppings to talk about while you're just so good.
So, Detrick was found unbound, face down on his bedroom floor, wearing what investigators
labeled as like street clothes.
(03:54):
So he was in pajamas.
They thought that he had maybe been outside or walked in on the killer during the attack.
A blood-stained hockey stick was found in Detrick's bedroom, making investigators believe
that he was likely the last one killed.
So that was probably the blunt force object that everybody had been dealing with.
(04:15):
Despite the whole family being severely beaten, the cause of death for all of the victims
was actually ruled as strangulation.
Jesus.
So, I'm not sure if that happened before or after he beat them, but either way, it's like
very personal.
Is there a difference between a normal hockey stick and like the one I would have used in
(04:36):
like street hockey in middle school?
So I feel like it would have been really hard to beat someone to death with one of those.
I don't know, they're like, it's kind of flimsy plastic.
It's like trying to kill someone with a broom handle.
You know what I mean?
They're a little more durable, but I think if you use a goldie stick, it might really
destroy you.
Oh yeah, those things are kind of nutty.
(04:57):
You would think it would break, maybe.
Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know, it wasn't easy for him to kill them, I don't think.
Yeah, absolutely not.
He started strangling people, holy crap.
That might be why they were able to fight back.
Right, and why it was so like messy in the house.
Yeah, probably.
But I thought that was wild, right?
(05:19):
What the heck?
None of them died because of the heat.
Was he a professional hockey player?
Yeah, right.
And knew how to use the weapon to his advantage.
Or did the kid play sports when he's just using things that were in the house to not
have a trace?
Yeah, exactly.
There were no signs of forced entry in the house.
(05:40):
I feel like that also points to either did the family knowing who this was or someone
knowing the layout of the house or someone being comfortable enough to get inside the
house somehow.
Yeah, probably like an outside key.
It's always one of those or someone, because I don't think that you let like, traveling
(06:01):
salespeople in your house anymore.
I think you just kind of like flip them out.
Well, my brother did it for a while.
Really?
He did the vacuum things.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know recently.
Within the last probably 10 years.
I was going to say within the last five years, I haven't seen any of them.
Yeah, you probably won't see them at all anymore, I would think.
(06:25):
But investigators found that each bed in the rooms had already been made, so it suggested
that the family had got up earlier that morning and started their day.
After looking over the crime scene, police talked to Douglas Petzler, who told the police
he had brought the record to his ex-wife for a Valentine's gift, you know, the whole thing.
And then he just made that recent discovery.
(06:47):
To an ex-wife for Valentine's Day.
You know, that's what he must have gotten.
Douglas told them that although he and his ex-wife had divorced, he continued to see
them frequently, including two days before their murder, when he took them to see the
movie Witness, and then the night before when he took Cassandra to dinner.
(07:11):
So they apparently are hanging out still.
After finding the bodies that morning, he immediately called police at around 10.45 a.m.
After being interviewed, Douglas was never considered a suspect because there was no
DNA or evidence to connect him to the murders.
Yeah, that's lame, because I guess his fingerprints would have been all over there, like what the heck.
(07:34):
It couldn't like find, it was like, well, it was a horrible intruder that caused this murder
for no apparent reason and then didn't rob them at all.
And then left everything fine, and then yeah, okay, that's fair.
When was that, was that 85? So like how good was DNA testing back then?
It's probably really bad, but I don't know.
I digress.
(07:56):
So Cassandra did have a boyfriend at the time, and he got worried that day and drove to her
home at about noon that Valentine's Day when Cassandra didn't show up for work.
So officers looked at Cassandra's ex-husband Douglas, as well as her first husband, who
lived in Ohio at the time, and police also searched Douglas's car and Cassandra's boyfriend's
(08:17):
at the time car to check for any DNA, any blood, anything that would connect them to a crime.
But they found nothing.
So none of these men were ever considered suspects after this.
Investigators did not find any foot, or they did find footprints in the mud near the front door,
(08:38):
and they took plaster casts of the footprints as evidence.
This was like the only evidence that they found at the crime scene, which is not a lot to go off of, just the footprint.
Perhaps if you had a suspect and you could compare the footprint to, that's great evidence,
but like just a footprint doesn't get you very far, unfortunately.
(09:01):
A neighbor told investigators at the time, she thought she saw Detrick outside in the
front yard of the house at like 7 a.m., and he went back in the house after like looking
down the street for a minute.
So that was the younger boy, which is weird.
I don't know like what he would be doing.
I don't know if she's suggesting that he did that while the attacker was inside, or if it was like after,
(09:27):
or what, or if they were expecting someone to come.
Was that the last person that died, you said?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting. So that suggested to them that he may have walked in on the crime.
Investigators found a few months before Cassandra's death, she had actually put out two ads in the Colorado Springs Suns,
(09:48):
looking for a man.
It was 1985 and you could do...
He saw her on Tinder.
And then you take out an ad in the newspaper and you're like, hey man.
So actually one of her posts received 54 responses, which is a lot of people I feel like heard one of those ads.
And the ad read, blonde, green eyes, 5 foot 2 inches, 95 pounds, seeking a rugged individualist.
(10:17):
I am a free spirit, independent, well educated, somewhat shy, sensitive, and enjoy life.
I am a one man woman looking for one good man.
Please send a photo and a short letter.
So that one got 54 responses.
And then she had taken out a second one a little bit later that said, warm, together, bright, beautiful, and modest lady,
(10:45):
seeking friendship with a gentleman of quality character, 30 to 40 years old.
So those were her ads that she took out.
So she was looking.
She was lonely looking for someone to spend time with.
Things like it was a popular ad that she took out.
People really enjoyed that, which is well written.
I won't deny that.
(11:06):
I would be like, oh, this lady seems fun.
Honestly, she seems fun to me.
I get it.
Is it the best option? Maybe not.
But it was 85, so...
Yeah, I kind of feel like that's what people did back then.
There's some other dating ones that people do that.
Right. So people were a little bit more willing to do things like that, I think, back then.
(11:32):
We won't hold it against her.
It kind of seems like Cassandra was lonely and she was desperately seeking attention or a little bit of a connection from someone.
She had two kids, right?
She had two kids, yeah.
Were they by the murder or someone else?
Were they what?
By the murder?
By the murder?
Or someone else?
I don't know.
(11:53):
Yeah, it was from her very first husband.
Yeah, for sure.
One of Cassandra's friends said she had gone on about 10 to 12 lunch dates with men who responded to her ads.
Colorado Springs Police would interview most of the men and believe that none of them were connected to the murders at all.
That weren't the personal ads.
(12:14):
How long did it take to rule out the men and...
It seems like it was within the last couple months that they did it.
So I don't know if they were able to interview all of them or what, but it seems like it was only a couple months span.
They were doing all of this.
It seems fairly quick. They always go after the exes.
(12:37):
Which is always a smart option to like...
Or family, immediate family, really.
Yeah. It's a good option to rule out right away.
According to an AP News article in 1985, Detective Sergeant Joe Kendra said,
Although none of the men are suspects in the brutal slaying of Cassandra, we will...
(13:00):
Or all will be questioned.
So they at least attempted to question all of them.
I mean, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Police at the time said, between the two different ads, Cassandra actually received 85 different responses from him.
So quite a few...
It's a lot for being just in like the yellow pages.
Right?
Like, I really did some... I did the damn thing.
(13:25):
I was like...
This was like back when you had missing kids on milk cartons and stuff.
Right.
Yeah. I guess people were devoted to reading the newsfeed at least.
I wonder how many people would take out ads back in the day.
I don't know what the average was.
I'm interested to like, is that a normal thing for a lot of adults or not?
(13:49):
Probably more because the paper was the main source of the news.
Yeah.
I'm actually curious about some other things.
Like, in her thing, she never mentioned that she had kids or advert.
So I don't know if that was like common to mention that you had kids.
Or it was like assumed.
Well, it might look bad to have a single mother versus like someone who's had kids when another marriage expired.
(14:12):
Yeah, that's true.
So I just wonder if she was like really desperate to find someone too.
And I wonder if it was common for the killer to go over to her house too.
Because he said that he did, but I don't know if it was common for him too.
So I'm super curious like what that whole thing was.
I'm gonna assume he just got really jealous and she maybe like shoved that in his face.
(14:34):
Like, look at all these letters I got.
There may be one over there and he saw like the 85 letters and was like, what the fuck?
All these have like cologne on them? What?
Like, did he make an ad interested in you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Six months after the last ad appeared in the paper, the single mother and her children were found murdered.
(14:55):
The potential suitors turned suspects were all investigated by police.
And Douglas Petzlar told Denver Post reporter at the time that he was,
that he actually warned his ex-wife that placing those ads was dangerous.
He said, I told her it was dangerous business running those ads, but she thought it was fine.
(15:19):
She was a shy person and thought it was a good way to be submitted.
Are you saying dangerous was it like, I'll kill you if you keep putting these ads out here?
Like that kind of dangerous?
I'm just asking, I don't know really.
The implications seem to say that it was dangerous to be putting yourself out there.
(15:41):
I mean, they said it was dangerous to go trick or treating too.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I got to put drugs in your candy.
So the police interviewed dozens of men and hundreds of items were collected from the home.
But they had no real leads and no clues at all as to who could have murdered the family.
(16:02):
The case went cold, but Douglas, Cassandra's ex-husband,
attempted to collect on a double insurance policy taken out by his former ex-wife.
But he withdrew his claim after the Rundles, her parents, went to court
and demanded that he did not receive the $28,000 insurance payment
(16:25):
because she had named him as the beneficiary when they were married,
but she forgot to take him off the policy after their divorce in 1983.
Why would you? You would expect to have a long life still at 30?
Yeah, at least a few years after, you know, whatever.
So he did try to collect that, which was interesting.
(16:47):
Cassandra Rundle's father, Richard Rundle, was a former prosecutor from West Virginia,
and he offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect in the case.
Richard ended up doing his own investigating and found a man he believed could be responsible
(17:08):
for his daughter and grandchildren's murder.
The man he identified was former Fort Carson soldier Philip Wilkinson,
who sits on North Carolina's death row right now because he confessed to a different murder
of a family of three in Fayetteville, North Carolina, under very eerily similar circumstances.
(17:31):
Six years after the Colorado Springs killing of Cassandra, Detrick, and Melanie,
in 1992, Philip was 24 years old.
He called into the police station in Fayetteville, North Carolina and said that his conscience was bothering him.
Philip described the crime in an even tone with no visible signs of remorse.
(17:56):
A Fayetteville police detective said that Philip saw 19-year-old Crystal Hudson asleep on the couch
of her family's apartment through like a sliding glass door, similar to this,
and she broke inside the home and began to touch her and told police that when she woke up,
he just began beating her repeatedly on the head with a bowling pin that he found in the yard.
(18:20):
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it was the 1985, right?
I mean, there are just bowling pins in the yard and stuff like that, right?
Just the bowling pins in the yard of shit.
The average lawn decoration.
Yeah. I think it was in Florida.
That's better than the, well, I don't know, better, but the pink little flamingos.
(18:46):
Yeah.
That is supposed to be for like swingers.
Dude, I don't get that though.
No pineapples?
Well, I had no intention of killing her, but then she woke up to me touching her.
And then, well, I just decided to use this object.
(19:09):
Where did you get it?
In the yard, but I didn't come in with any premeditation.
That's so funny.
Okay.
Yep.
So after he did that, he went into the next bedroom and he found 11-year-old Larry Hudson Jr.
and his mother, 38-year-old Judy Hudson, and he beat both of them to death.
Both Judy and her daughter Crystal were both sexually assaulted, like Cassandra's case.
(19:32):
In his confession, Phillip told police something else that caught their attention.
He said that he had begun peeking into people's window for years and that his habit actually began in Colorado Springs,
where he was stationed at Fort Carson in early 1985.
(19:53):
Clinky dinky.
Just a little clinky dinky.
Just a little bit.
So Richard Rundle, who was Cassandra's father, told Colorado Springs newspaper in 2005 that police failed to take the lead seriously.
That they believed that Phillip wasn't actually in Colorado at the time and that he was actually in South Korea at the time.
(20:15):
But military records obtained appear to prove that Richard Rundle was at least half right
and that Phillip wasn't out of the country at all.
And he had been assigned to Fort Carson in early February of 1985, just a few weeks before the murder of Cassandra and her family.
So, despite the similarities, it doesn't seem like Phillip was ever followed up on as a potential suspect.
(20:42):
It was wild.
It's crazy to me.
It was pretty wild.
Right?
Maybe some computer stuff.
I actually don't understand.
I wondered why they didn't do more work into this.
It feels...
Yeah, that's really weird.
Sometimes it's an ego thing.
I hate to say it that way, but...
Sometimes if it's not someone in that direct police department that did it, they're like,
(21:07):
we're not going to do it because we want to be the one, you know?
Yeah, I even know that some police departments that'll screw with other ones because they're like,
we want this information.
It's like, we'll give it to you if you give us this.
And I was like, well, I'm not going to do that.
It just turns into a stalemate.
Jesus, man.
But if you got someone's life here,
we're going to be that petty about it?
Yeah, but I want the news article that I solved this case.
(21:30):
Dude, that's making me...
They want the clout.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly that.
Detective Cruz Rogers, who since reopened the case, said,
generally with cold cases, some of our biggest challenges is time,
but that can also be one of our biggest benefits.
Like many things, technology has changed a lot over the last 35 years,
(21:51):
which is another advantage.
DNA is a huge piece of our investigation currently.
So when we reanalyze the case,
we will go through the evidence to see if something might be beneficial for DNA
or fingerprint testing that maybe wasn't back in the day.
The problem with the case is that there are multiple number of suspects.
Some of them are known and some of them are unknown.
(22:14):
It's kind of like the case.
But that's why it's an unself case today.
We have a pool of suspects, but we can't eliminate them all.
We don't even know who they are.
So...
Sorry, it just reminds me of those stupid basketball interviews
(22:37):
where they're like, why did the other team out rebound to your team
and you're just annoyed with the question?
So they give the answer of like,
well, a rebound is when you go up and grab the ball with two hands and come down
and they had more of those than we did, so they got rebounded.
You're just like re-explaining exactly what...
Just like play by play.
What...
(22:59):
It doesn't make sense.
Some of the suspects we have interviewed and some of them we do not know.
Cool.
We know what an investigation means.
It's basically just re-describing what we're expecting him already to do.
Right.
Well, it's just so they can report something even if they have nothing to report.
(23:22):
It's just looping people around back into getting ready to hear something more.
We're doing things.
Yay.
Public procrastination.
It's like political speech.
That's what it is basically.
That's bullshit.
It's preserving their clout.
They're trying to not look bad.
(23:43):
I think they're trying to get re-elected so they don't look like an asshole.
They don't look dumb so they...
I'm a good detective.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it sucks.
It really is.
But a grand jury was called to help investigate the crime
and decided if there was enough evidence to charge someone, they could,
(24:06):
but no charges were ever filed.
And Detective Reisler said that there is a person that he strongly suspects for the crime,
but there isn't quite enough evidence to convict him.
That suspect wasn't named.
He said, if I were the jury with the suspect in mind, I wouldn't convict him either.
I know more than the jury ever will know.
(24:28):
And I still wouldn't do it.
I still wouldn't have thought of the 70-some other guys that they were interviewing.
What if those dudes were crazy too?
I kind of wonder about that.
And they might be because...
Yeah, and then the ex-husband.
I feel like it would be super plausible, but then what if that guy's just an asshole
(24:53):
and he's trying to take money out because he's in a bad spot and stuff like that?
He's like, yeah, well, fuck it.
We broke up because I'm an asshole.
Of course I'm gonna... it's based on me to do it.
Yeah, of course.
What the fuck do you think I would do? It's free money.
You wouldn't trust me.
Yeah, you're saying that you wouldn't...
(25:15):
Oh, yeah, liar, whatever.
Yeah, totally.
There could be multiple shitheads in the story.
Dude, that's so interesting.
Some of them are, no? Some of them are, no?
Okay, so...
He hopes that the evidence that he collected, aided by advances in technology,
(25:37):
will someday lead to the killer.
The case haunts Detective Holliday, who is on a team of investigators,
that included Detective Smith.
We're both called in a few years after the killing to get the case like a fresh pair of eyes.
It wasn't just a homicide, Holliday said.
It was all kinds of heinous crimes that went into it.
(26:01):
Investigators said that they have not developed any substantial leads,
despite hundreds of interviews with witnesses, potential witnesses, and persons of interest.
This crime is emotionally crippled not only the family members of the beloved victim,
but the families of the neighborhood and our entire community.
(26:23):
She was a young lady looking for love, but instead she meant a brutal end.
Along with her young children, anyone with information is urged to contact
CSPD Cold Case Detectives at 719-444-7000.
Or you can also remain anonymous by submitting tips through Pikes Peak Area Crime Stoppers
(26:46):
and be eligible for a reward.
You can also contact them at 719-634-7867.
So, before we get into what you guys' theories are, I'm just going to go over...
...talk these and shnake these.
I'm just going to go over who Cassandra and her kids were,
(27:08):
and then we can get into what you guys think.
Born October 29, 1947, Cassandra, who was from Morgantown, West Virginia,
was a former Miss Morgantown.
She was into all the Padrant stuff, and she apparently won one.
She married her high school sweetheart, Stephen Sternum,
shortly after they graduated from high school in Everettville, West Virginia.
(27:33):
The couple moved to Colorado in 1972 and settled in Buffalo,
where Sternum became a personal director at CFI Steel Plant.
Cassandra attended the University of Southern Colorado
and graduated with a 3.67 grade average in 1977.
(27:55):
There she met Douglas Petzler, who was her career advisor at USC,
and she would eventually marry and divorce Douglas after her divorce from Stephen.
At the time of the murders, Cassandra was an executive assistant
at Gatesland Co-Colorado Spring Developers,
and lived in Colorado Springs with her two children.
(28:18):
Detrick was a seventh grader at Cheyenne Mountain Junior High School,
and his sister was a fifth grader at Canyon Elementary School.
Cassandra Rundle was enrolled in pre-law
and had a semester to go before attending law school.
She also worked for the Rape Coalition in Colorado Springs,
and her Aunt Nancy says she was a beautiful person inside and out.
(28:42):
Cassandra was described by her stepmother as a kind and caring woman
who loved poetry and loved her children.
Cassandra wrestled with the idea of death her whole life,
and she actually wrote a poem about it, which I'm going to read,
because I think it's cool.
Death began with broken dreams, or simply slipped behind you in the night.
(29:06):
Does it start with deflated hopes or lurk beneath the crevices on the floor?
Can you smell death, or does it burn your nostrils, or is it odorless as hate?
Can you taste death?
Does it sour like salt, or does it choke your throat, or is it as tasteless as fear?
(29:27):
Can you hear death, or does it sound like thunder, or is it a whisper, or is it as silent as love?
Do you feel like a sad little poem for what happens to her in the end?
I'm just like, fuck.
It gives you telltale hard vibes.
Yeah, for real.
So Cassandra wrote that poem years before her and her two children,
(29:52):
Patrick and Melanie, were killed in their home on February 14, 1985.
Julia Rundle said her kids were kind and smart,
and both had been enrolled in gifted programs at their school.
The night before, 10-year-old Melanie Studham was found murdered in her home.
She was surrounded by her classmates at Canyon Elementary School's dance.
(30:14):
The fifth grader danced in her pink plastic shoes and wore a black hat with multicolored lights on it.
She was living her life to the fullest, not knowing the horrors that would follow that night.
A beautiful family horrifically murdered before they could really live their lives,
and their murders are still unsolved to this day.
Still?
(30:36):
Still.
No!
That's the worst part about these things.
You've lost an indie.
All of the evidence they took, you would think that they could do some sort of testing with today's technology.
Right.
And recover something or figure something out.
What do they need to do, buy a machine? What the hell?
(30:58):
Get them a new machine ASAP.
Did they not take DNA? I thought that they did take DNA at the time.
They did. But I don't know what kind of DNA.
Yeah, true.
Or it might have been not the right DNA.
Or it might have just been blood splatter and not...
True, maybe.
They did kind of shoe print, but like...
Yeah.
Not much you can do about it.
(31:19):
It could have been the victim's blood.
Dude, that's so...
Dude, what the fuck?
I was fucking DNA when I saw that.
Because before DNA, I feel like killers were just like,
Yeah, DNA everywhere!
And now that they know about DNA, they try to be careful about it.
But I feel like...
That's the difference in a crime that happens in the 80s,
that was still just like a baby kind of...
(31:42):
Idea.
Imagine how many crimes where dudes jerk off on couches.
And now they don't do that anymore because DNA, so they can't.
A whole bunch of dudes got caught for...
You didn't just go to the movie theater and pull up P.V. Herman?
Yeah, he would like rob and then jerk off the couch.
And then he got busted 30 years later because DNA came out.
And then people hear about that and they're like,
(32:03):
Oh shit, I did that last week. I can't do that anymore.
But then he gets in trouble, but he only did it once,
so he doesn't get into a lot of trouble.
And now no one's doing that anymore.
Yeah. He's smart enough to do it.
This fucking sucks, bro.
I was so happy DNA was going to catch this person.
I still kind of feel like, well, I mean,
I guess it depends on what kind of relationship
(32:25):
the ex-wife and him would have had.
If it's anything like my dad, he would have never dropped anything off.
On Valentine's Day.
I wonder if he divorced her or she divorced him.
Because if you're being super petty,
if he just kept showing up every Valentine's Day,
like, Hey, remember all the fun we used to have when I wasn't hitting you?
(32:48):
I don't know. I don't like when she would blow up.
That's what I'm saying.
Well, and he was like, I feel like he was jealous at the very least.
Yeah.
Because he was like, I took her out for dinner and watched a movie recently.
And then I came to bring this record just so randomly.
Yeah, that's true.
It sounds like he's trying to make a cover story too much.
(33:09):
I told her it was dangerous to put those ads out there.
I told her it was so dangerous.
What about the military guy?
He's a good pick for it too, to be honest.
I'm tossed out between the two.
But then I'm like, if you're on death row for one,
wouldn't you just confess to the other ones and then try to like...
(33:30):
I don't think so.
I mean, I feel like he would. What the hell?
Because his conscience was already bothering him about the first one.
Yeah, so why wouldn't he?
Dude, that's so dumb.
Right?
I feel like someone's got to walk in there and be like,
hey man, you feeling any more guilty, dog?
Because he's been in the hospital years here.
You're not even here for life.
(33:52):
You do any shoplifting? You do any...
Yeah.
Wait, he's in there for life?
Yeah, on death row.
Okay, on death row.
Any final thoughts on this?
For my parents?
Who you know is bullshit. That's crazy, man.
That sucks.
On Valentine's Day.
On Valentine's Day?
(34:13):
That is not romantic.
It might have been romantic, depending on what the record was.
Yeah, it's like a heartache record.
Very light.
Dang. That sucks.
Did they ever connect the fact that it was, like, was the hockey stick the actual murder weapon?
(34:37):
Or was it another like, oh, I found another bowling pin?
Yeah, right. It's another bowling pin situation.
Was it another found in the yard situation?
No.
They never found the actual murder weapon, just the blood-carving hockey stick.
That's true.
Well, that was cool.
(34:59):
Yeah. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Yeah, of course.
I appreciate it.
Well, until next time, stay high, stay safe, and thank you for listening.
Happy 420, I'm Kai and you are listening to Stone Cold Murder.
(00:08):
Just a PSA, if you have any information to help solve a crime, you can go to www.crimestoppers.com
to report any information anonymously.
Thanks for tuning in for Season 2, Episode 10, the murder of Cassandra Rundle, Dietrich,
and Melanie Sterna.
This podcast contains material that may not be suitable for all audiences.
(00:30):
Listener discretion is advised.
Today we have on the pod Zach and Perry.
Thank you guys for being on the pod today.
Thank you.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Alright, do you guys feel stoned enough to get this horrible case started?
Yeah, I'm ready, man.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, we've been smoking for a while.
(00:51):
So, let's get into it.
Our story starts out on February 14th, 1985 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
It was Valentine's Day and Douglas Peltzard had stopped by his ex-wife's house to drop
off a record that he got her as a Valentine's gift.
Douglas said that even though he and his wife had gotten a divorce, he continued to see
(01:16):
her and her kids.
He arrived at the yellow ranch style home where Cassandra, Dietrich, and Melanie lived.
And when he entered the home, he found the bodies of her and her two children, Dietrich
and Melanie.
So he ran to call the police at around 10.45 a.m.
And when police arrived on the scene, they found 37-year-old Cassandra, her 12-year-old
(01:42):
son Dietrich, and her 10-year-old daughter Melanie.
And they had not only been murdered, but they had suffered a horrific attack.
So that is not a good scene on Valentine's Day.
Well, any day, but especially on Valentine's Day.
All right.
So let's see how, how's it, what's his story?
What's he going to say?
Right?
Isn't it weird that he was like, oh, I'm just going to drop off a record at my ex-wife's
(02:05):
house?
Yeah, I'm just going to do something I usually never do.
And then, oh my gosh, wow, what a coincidence.
That's crazy.
People are everywhere.
Oh no.
I like that you brought up what I feel.
I can't wait to hear what his story is.
Right.
So Cassandra was found nude face down on the bed.
(02:27):
Okay.
She had been beaten somewhere between eight and ten times with a blunt instrument.
And Melanie's body was found face down on her bedroom floor, partially closed, in PJ's.
There were, there was overturned furniture in both bedrooms indicating to investigators
(02:49):
that she had fought off her attacker, or at least tried to.
Melanie had been beaten so bad that she had a fractured skull.
Both Cassandra and Melanie's hands and feet were tied up with electrical cords cut from
a table lamp and extension cords.
So it was like, they cut them and tied them up with whatever they could find.
(03:11):
And they also found that both Cassandra and Melanie had both been raped.
Alright.
I'm sorry.
What the fuck?
I'm sorry, Dad.
I was just like, this guy's like, it seems like things go horribly wrong.
Now he's just like cutting up lamps and shit to me.
He's like, I didn't think about rope at all.
I need to make rope immediately.
Yeah.
(03:32):
And he's just like, cut.
What the hell?
Is it in a frenzy?
Also, I'm sorry that I do this to you guys when you're stoned.
The worst kind of toppings to talk about while you're just so good.
So, Detrick was found unbound, face down on his bedroom floor, wearing what investigators
labeled as like street clothes.
(03:54):
So he was in pajamas.
They thought that he had maybe been outside or walked in on the killer during the attack.
A blood-stained hockey stick was found in Detrick's bedroom, making investigators believe
that he was likely the last one killed.
So that was probably the blunt force object that everybody had been dealing with.
(04:15):
Despite the whole family being severely beaten, the cause of death for all of the victims
was actually ruled as strangulation.
Jesus.
So, I'm not sure if that happened before or after he beat them, but either way, it's like
very personal.
Is there a difference between a normal hockey stick and like the one I would have used in
(04:36):
like street hockey in middle school?
So I feel like it would have been really hard to beat someone to death with one of those.
I don't know, they're like, it's kind of flimsy plastic.
It's like trying to kill someone with a broom handle.
You know what I mean?
They're a little more durable, but I think if you use a goldie stick, it might really
destroy you.
Oh yeah, those things are kind of nutty.
(04:57):
You would think it would break, maybe.
Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know, it wasn't easy for him to kill them, I don't think.
Yeah, absolutely not.
He started strangling people, holy crap.
That might be why they were able to fight back.
Right, and why it was so like messy in the house.
Yeah, probably.
But I thought that was wild, right?
(05:19):
What the heck?
None of them died because of the heat.
Was he a professional hockey player?
Yeah, right.
And knew how to use the weapon to his advantage.
Or did the kid play sports when he's just using things that were in the house to not
have a trace?
Yeah, exactly.
There were no signs of forced entry in the house.
(05:40):
I feel like that also points to either did the family knowing who this was or someone
knowing the layout of the house or someone being comfortable enough to get inside the
house somehow.
Yeah, probably like an outside key.
It's always one of those or someone, because I don't think that you let like, traveling
(06:01):
salespeople in your house anymore.
I think you just kind of like flip them out.
Well, my brother did it for a while.
Really?
He did the vacuum things.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know recently.
Within the last probably 10 years.
I was going to say within the last five years, I haven't seen any of them.
Yeah, you probably won't see them at all anymore, I would think.
(06:25):
But investigators found that each bed in the rooms had already been made, so it suggested
that the family had got up earlier that morning and started their day.
After looking over the crime scene, police talked to Douglas Petzler, who told the police
he had brought the record to his ex-wife for a Valentine's gift, you know, the whole thing.
And then he just made that recent discovery.
(06:47):
To an ex-wife for Valentine's Day.
You know, that's what he must have gotten.
Douglas told them that although he and his ex-wife had divorced, he continued to see
them frequently, including two days before their murder, when he took them to see the
movie Witness, and then the night before when he took Cassandra to dinner.
(07:11):
So they apparently are hanging out still.
After finding the bodies that morning, he immediately called police at around 10.45 a.m.
After being interviewed, Douglas was never considered a suspect because there was no
DNA or evidence to connect him to the murders.
Yeah, that's lame, because I guess his fingerprints would have been all over there, like what the heck.
(07:34):
It couldn't like find, it was like, well, it was a horrible intruder that caused this murder
for no apparent reason and then didn't rob them at all.
And then left everything fine, and then yeah, okay, that's fair.
When was that, was that 85? So like how good was DNA testing back then?
It's probably really bad, but I don't know.
I digress.
(07:56):
So Cassandra did have a boyfriend at the time, and he got worried that day and drove to her
home at about noon that Valentine's Day when Cassandra didn't show up for work.
So officers looked at Cassandra's ex-husband Douglas, as well as her first husband, who
lived in Ohio at the time, and police also searched Douglas's car and Cassandra's boyfriend's
(08:17):
at the time car to check for any DNA, any blood, anything that would connect them to a crime.
But they found nothing.
So none of these men were ever considered suspects after this.
Investigators did not find any foot, or they did find footprints in the mud near the front door,
(08:38):
and they took plaster casts of the footprints as evidence.
This was like the only evidence that they found at the crime scene, which is not a lot to go off of, just the footprint.
Perhaps if you had a suspect and you could compare the footprint to, that's great evidence,
but like just a footprint doesn't get you very far, unfortunately.
(09:01):
A neighbor told investigators at the time, she thought she saw Detrick outside in the
front yard of the house at like 7 a.m., and he went back in the house after like looking
down the street for a minute.
So that was the younger boy, which is weird.
I don't know like what he would be doing.
I don't know if she's suggesting that he did that while the attacker was inside, or if it was like after,
(09:27):
or what, or if they were expecting someone to come.
Was that the last person that died, you said?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting. So that suggested to them that he may have walked in on the crime.
Investigators found a few months before Cassandra's death, she had actually put out two ads in the Colorado Springs Suns,
(09:48):
looking for a man.
It was 1985 and you could do...
He saw her on Tinder.
And then you take out an ad in the newspaper and you're like, hey man.
So actually one of her posts received 54 responses, which is a lot of people I feel like heard one of those ads.
And the ad read, blonde, green eyes, 5 foot 2 inches, 95 pounds, seeking a rugged individualist.
(10:17):
I am a free spirit, independent, well educated, somewhat shy, sensitive, and enjoy life.
I am a one man woman looking for one good man.
Please send a photo and a short letter.
So that one got 54 responses.
And then she had taken out a second one a little bit later that said, warm, together, bright, beautiful, and modest lady,
(10:45):
seeking friendship with a gentleman of quality character, 30 to 40 years old.
So those were her ads that she took out.
So she was looking.
She was lonely looking for someone to spend time with.
Things like it was a popular ad that she took out.
People really enjoyed that, which is well written.
I won't deny that.
(11:06):
I would be like, oh, this lady seems fun.
Honestly, she seems fun to me.
I get it.
Is it the best option? Maybe not.
But it was 85, so...
Yeah, I kind of feel like that's what people did back then.
There's some other dating ones that people do that.
Right. So people were a little bit more willing to do things like that, I think, back then.
(11:32):
We won't hold it against her.
It kind of seems like Cassandra was lonely and she was desperately seeking attention or a little bit of a connection from someone.
She had two kids, right?
She had two kids, yeah.
Were they by the murder or someone else?
Were they what?
By the murder?
By the murder?
Or someone else?
I don't know.
(11:53):
Yeah, it was from her very first husband.
Yeah, for sure.
One of Cassandra's friends said she had gone on about 10 to 12 lunch dates with men who responded to her ads.
Colorado Springs Police would interview most of the men and believe that none of them were connected to the murders at all.
That weren't the personal ads.
(12:14):
How long did it take to rule out the men and...
It seems like it was within the last couple months that they did it.
So I don't know if they were able to interview all of them or what, but it seems like it was only a couple months span.
They were doing all of this.
It seems fairly quick. They always go after the exes.
(12:37):
Which is always a smart option to like...
Or family, immediate family, really.
Yeah. It's a good option to rule out right away.
According to an AP News article in 1985, Detective Sergeant Joe Kendra said,
Although none of the men are suspects in the brutal slaying of Cassandra, we will...
(13:00):
Or all will be questioned.
So they at least attempted to question all of them.
I mean, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Police at the time said, between the two different ads, Cassandra actually received 85 different responses from him.
So quite a few...
It's a lot for being just in like the yellow pages.
Right?
Like, I really did some... I did the damn thing.
(13:25):
I was like...
This was like back when you had missing kids on milk cartons and stuff.
Right.
Yeah. I guess people were devoted to reading the newsfeed at least.
I wonder how many people would take out ads back in the day.
I don't know what the average was.
I'm interested to like, is that a normal thing for a lot of adults or not?
(13:49):
Probably more because the paper was the main source of the news.
Yeah.
I'm actually curious about some other things.
Like, in her thing, she never mentioned that she had kids or advert.
So I don't know if that was like common to mention that you had kids.
Or it was like assumed.
Well, it might look bad to have a single mother versus like someone who's had kids when another marriage expired.
(14:12):
Yeah, that's true.
So I just wonder if she was like really desperate to find someone too.
And I wonder if it was common for the killer to go over to her house too.
Because he said that he did, but I don't know if it was common for him too.
So I'm super curious like what that whole thing was.
I'm gonna assume he just got really jealous and she maybe like shoved that in his face.
(14:34):
Like, look at all these letters I got.
There may be one over there and he saw like the 85 letters and was like, what the fuck?
All these have like cologne on them? What?
Like, did he make an ad interested in you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Six months after the last ad appeared in the paper, the single mother and her children were found murdered.
(14:55):
The potential suitors turned suspects were all investigated by police.
And Douglas Petzlar told Denver Post reporter at the time that he was,
that he actually warned his ex-wife that placing those ads was dangerous.
He said, I told her it was dangerous business running those ads, but she thought it was fine.
(15:19):
She was a shy person and thought it was a good way to be submitted.
Are you saying dangerous was it like, I'll kill you if you keep putting these ads out here?
Like that kind of dangerous?
I'm just asking, I don't know really.
The implications seem to say that it was dangerous to be putting yourself out there.
(15:41):
I mean, they said it was dangerous to go trick or treating too.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I got to put drugs in your candy.
So the police interviewed dozens of men and hundreds of items were collected from the home.
But they had no real leads and no clues at all as to who could have murdered the family.
(16:02):
The case went cold, but Douglas, Cassandra's ex-husband,
attempted to collect on a double insurance policy taken out by his former ex-wife.
But he withdrew his claim after the Rundles, her parents, went to court
and demanded that he did not receive the $28,000 insurance payment
(16:25):
because she had named him as the beneficiary when they were married,
but she forgot to take him off the policy after their divorce in 1983.
Why would you? You would expect to have a long life still at 30?
Yeah, at least a few years after, you know, whatever.
So he did try to collect that, which was interesting.
(16:47):
Cassandra Rundle's father, Richard Rundle, was a former prosecutor from West Virginia,
and he offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect in the case.
Richard ended up doing his own investigating and found a man he believed could be responsible
(17:08):
for his daughter and grandchildren's murder.
The man he identified was former Fort Carson soldier Philip Wilkinson,
who sits on North Carolina's death row right now because he confessed to a different murder
of a family of three in Fayetteville, North Carolina, under very eerily similar circumstances.
(17:31):
Six years after the Colorado Springs killing of Cassandra, Detrick, and Melanie,
in 1992, Philip was 24 years old.
He called into the police station in Fayetteville, North Carolina and said that his conscience was bothering him.
Philip described the crime in an even tone with no visible signs of remorse.
(17:56):
A Fayetteville police detective said that Philip saw 19-year-old Crystal Hudson asleep on the couch
of her family's apartment through like a sliding glass door, similar to this,
and she broke inside the home and began to touch her and told police that when she woke up,
he just began beating her repeatedly on the head with a bowling pin that he found in the yard.
(18:20):
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it was the 1985, right?
I mean, there are just bowling pins in the yard and stuff like that, right?
Just the bowling pins in the yard of shit.
The average lawn decoration.
Yeah. I think it was in Florida.
That's better than the, well, I don't know, better, but the pink little flamingos.
(18:46):
Yeah.
That is supposed to be for like swingers.
Dude, I don't get that though.
No pineapples?
Well, I had no intention of killing her, but then she woke up to me touching her.
And then, well, I just decided to use this object.
(19:09):
Where did you get it?
In the yard, but I didn't come in with any premeditation.
That's so funny.
Okay.
Yep.
So after he did that, he went into the next bedroom and he found 11-year-old Larry Hudson Jr.
and his mother, 38-year-old Judy Hudson, and he beat both of them to death.
Both Judy and her daughter Crystal were both sexually assaulted, like Cassandra's case.
(19:32):
In his confession, Phillip told police something else that caught their attention.
He said that he had begun peeking into people's window for years and that his habit actually began in Colorado Springs,
where he was stationed at Fort Carson in early 1985.
(19:53):
Clinky dinky.
Just a little clinky dinky.
Just a little bit.
So Richard Rundle, who was Cassandra's father, told Colorado Springs newspaper in 2005 that police failed to take the lead seriously.
That they believed that Phillip wasn't actually in Colorado at the time and that he was actually in South Korea at the time.
(20:15):
But military records obtained appear to prove that Richard Rundle was at least half right
and that Phillip wasn't out of the country at all.
And he had been assigned to Fort Carson in early February of 1985, just a few weeks before the murder of Cassandra and her family.
So, despite the similarities, it doesn't seem like Phillip was ever followed up on as a potential suspect.
(20:42):
It was wild.
It's crazy to me.
It was pretty wild.
Right?
Maybe some computer stuff.
I actually don't understand.
I wondered why they didn't do more work into this.
It feels...
Yeah, that's really weird.
Sometimes it's an ego thing.
I hate to say it that way, but...
Sometimes if it's not someone in that direct police department that did it, they're like,
(21:07):
we're not going to do it because we want to be the one, you know?
Yeah, I even know that some police departments that'll screw with other ones because they're like,
we want this information.
It's like, we'll give it to you if you give us this.
And I was like, well, I'm not going to do that.
It just turns into a stalemate.
Jesus, man.
But if you got someone's life here,
we're going to be that petty about it?
Yeah, but I want the news article that I solved this case.
(21:30):
Dude, that's making me...
They want the clout.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly that.
Detective Cruz Rogers, who since reopened the case, said,
generally with cold cases, some of our biggest challenges is time,
but that can also be one of our biggest benefits.
Like many things, technology has changed a lot over the last 35 years,
(21:51):
which is another advantage.
DNA is a huge piece of our investigation currently.
So when we reanalyze the case,
we will go through the evidence to see if something might be beneficial for DNA
or fingerprint testing that maybe wasn't back in the day.
The problem with the case is that there are multiple number of suspects.
Some of them are known and some of them are unknown.
(22:14):
It's kind of like the case.
But that's why it's an unself case today.
We have a pool of suspects, but we can't eliminate them all.
We don't even know who they are.
So...
Sorry, it just reminds me of those stupid basketball interviews
(22:37):
where they're like, why did the other team out rebound to your team
and you're just annoyed with the question?
So they give the answer of like,
well, a rebound is when you go up and grab the ball with two hands and come down
and they had more of those than we did, so they got rebounded.
You're just like re-explaining exactly what...
Just like play by play.
What...
(22:59):
It doesn't make sense.
Some of the suspects we have interviewed and some of them we do not know.
Cool.
We know what an investigation means.
It's basically just re-describing what we're expecting him already to do.
Right.
Well, it's just so they can report something even if they have nothing to report.
(23:22):
It's just looping people around back into getting ready to hear something more.
We're doing things.
Yay.
Public procrastination.
It's like political speech.
That's what it is basically.
That's bullshit.
It's preserving their clout.
They're trying to not look bad.
(23:43):
I think they're trying to get re-elected so they don't look like an asshole.
They don't look dumb so they...
I'm a good detective.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, it sucks.
It really is.
But a grand jury was called to help investigate the crime
and decided if there was enough evidence to charge someone, they could,
(24:06):
but no charges were ever filed.
And Detective Reisler said that there is a person that he strongly suspects for the crime,
but there isn't quite enough evidence to convict him.
That suspect wasn't named.
He said, if I were the jury with the suspect in mind, I wouldn't convict him either.
I know more than the jury ever will know.
(24:28):
And I still wouldn't do it.
I still wouldn't have thought of the 70-some other guys that they were interviewing.
What if those dudes were crazy too?
I kind of wonder about that.
And they might be because...
Yeah, and then the ex-husband.
I feel like it would be super plausible, but then what if that guy's just an asshole
(24:53):
and he's trying to take money out because he's in a bad spot and stuff like that?
He's like, yeah, well, fuck it.
We broke up because I'm an asshole.
Of course I'm gonna... it's based on me to do it.
Yeah, of course.
What the fuck do you think I would do? It's free money.
You wouldn't trust me.
Yeah, you're saying that you wouldn't...
(25:15):
Oh, yeah, liar, whatever.
Yeah, totally.
There could be multiple shitheads in the story.
Dude, that's so interesting.
Some of them are, no? Some of them are, no?
Okay, so...
He hopes that the evidence that he collected, aided by advances in technology,
(25:37):
will someday lead to the killer.
The case haunts Detective Holliday, who is on a team of investigators,
that included Detective Smith.
We're both called in a few years after the killing to get the case like a fresh pair of eyes.
It wasn't just a homicide, Holliday said.
It was all kinds of heinous crimes that went into it.
(26:01):
Investigators said that they have not developed any substantial leads,
despite hundreds of interviews with witnesses, potential witnesses, and persons of interest.
This crime is emotionally crippled not only the family members of the beloved victim,
but the families of the neighborhood and our entire community.
(26:23):
She was a young lady looking for love, but instead she meant a brutal end.
Along with her young children, anyone with information is urged to contact
CSPD Cold Case Detectives at 719-444-7000.
Or you can also remain anonymous by submitting tips through Pikes Peak Area Crime Stoppers
(26:46):
and be eligible for a reward.
You can also contact them at 719-634-7867.
So, before we get into what you guys' theories are, I'm just going to go over...
...talk these and shnake these.
I'm just going to go over who Cassandra and her kids were,
(27:08):
and then we can get into what you guys think.
Born October 29, 1947, Cassandra, who was from Morgantown, West Virginia,
was a former Miss Morgantown.
She was into all the Padrant stuff, and she apparently won one.
She married her high school sweetheart, Stephen Sternum,
shortly after they graduated from high school in Everettville, West Virginia.
(27:33):
The couple moved to Colorado in 1972 and settled in Buffalo,
where Sternum became a personal director at CFI Steel Plant.
Cassandra attended the University of Southern Colorado
and graduated with a 3.67 grade average in 1977.
(27:55):
There she met Douglas Petzler, who was her career advisor at USC,
and she would eventually marry and divorce Douglas after her divorce from Stephen.
At the time of the murders, Cassandra was an executive assistant
at Gatesland Co-Colorado Spring Developers,
and lived in Colorado Springs with her two children.
(28:18):
Detrick was a seventh grader at Cheyenne Mountain Junior High School,
and his sister was a fifth grader at Canyon Elementary School.
Cassandra Rundle was enrolled in pre-law
and had a semester to go before attending law school.
She also worked for the Rape Coalition in Colorado Springs,
and her Aunt Nancy says she was a beautiful person inside and out.
(28:42):
Cassandra was described by her stepmother as a kind and caring woman
who loved poetry and loved her children.
Cassandra wrestled with the idea of death her whole life,
and she actually wrote a poem about it, which I'm going to read,
because I think it's cool.
Death began with broken dreams, or simply slipped behind you in the night.
(29:06):
Does it start with deflated hopes or lurk beneath the crevices on the floor?
Can you smell death, or does it burn your nostrils, or is it odorless as hate?
Can you taste death?
Does it sour like salt, or does it choke your throat, or is it as tasteless as fear?
(29:27):
Can you hear death, or does it sound like thunder, or is it a whisper, or is it as silent as love?
Do you feel like a sad little poem for what happens to her in the end?
I'm just like, fuck.
It gives you telltale hard vibes.
Yeah, for real.
So Cassandra wrote that poem years before her and her two children,
(29:52):
Patrick and Melanie, were killed in their home on February 14, 1985.
Julia Rundle said her kids were kind and smart,
and both had been enrolled in gifted programs at their school.
The night before, 10-year-old Melanie Studham was found murdered in her home.
She was surrounded by her classmates at Canyon Elementary School's dance.
(30:14):
The fifth grader danced in her pink plastic shoes and wore a black hat with multicolored lights on it.
She was living her life to the fullest, not knowing the horrors that would follow that night.
A beautiful family horrifically murdered before they could really live their lives,
and their murders are still unsolved to this day.
Still?
(30:36):
Still.
No!
That's the worst part about these things.
You've lost an indie.
All of the evidence they took, you would think that they could do some sort of testing with today's technology.
Right.
And recover something or figure something out.
What do they need to do, buy a machine? What the hell?
(30:58):
Get them a new machine ASAP.
Did they not take DNA? I thought that they did take DNA at the time.
They did. But I don't know what kind of DNA.
Yeah, true.
Or it might have been not the right DNA.
Or it might have just been blood splatter and not...
True, maybe.
They did kind of shoe print, but like...
Yeah.
Not much you can do about it.
(31:19):
It could have been the victim's blood.
Dude, that's so...
Dude, what the fuck?
I was fucking DNA when I saw that.
Because before DNA, I feel like killers were just like,
Yeah, DNA everywhere!
And now that they know about DNA, they try to be careful about it.
But I feel like...
That's the difference in a crime that happens in the 80s,
that was still just like a baby kind of...
(31:42):
Idea.
Imagine how many crimes where dudes jerk off on couches.
And now they don't do that anymore because DNA, so they can't.
A whole bunch of dudes got caught for...
You didn't just go to the movie theater and pull up P.V. Herman?
Yeah, he would like rob and then jerk off the couch.
And then he got busted 30 years later because DNA came out.
And then people hear about that and they're like,
(32:03):
Oh shit, I did that last week. I can't do that anymore.
But then he gets in trouble, but he only did it once,
so he doesn't get into a lot of trouble.
And now no one's doing that anymore.
Yeah. He's smart enough to do it.
This fucking sucks, bro.
I was so happy DNA was going to catch this person.
I still kind of feel like, well, I mean,
I guess it depends on what kind of relationship
(32:25):
the ex-wife and him would have had.
If it's anything like my dad, he would have never dropped anything off.
On Valentine's Day.
I wonder if he divorced her or she divorced him.
Because if you're being super petty,
if he just kept showing up every Valentine's Day,
like, Hey, remember all the fun we used to have when I wasn't hitting you?
(32:48):
I don't know. I don't like when she would blow up.
That's what I'm saying.
Well, and he was like, I feel like he was jealous at the very least.
Yeah.
Because he was like, I took her out for dinner and watched a movie recently.
And then I came to bring this record just so randomly.
Yeah, that's true.
It sounds like he's trying to make a cover story too much.
(33:09):
I told her it was dangerous to put those ads out there.
I told her it was so dangerous.
What about the military guy?
He's a good pick for it too, to be honest.
I'm tossed out between the two.
But then I'm like, if you're on death row for one,
wouldn't you just confess to the other ones and then try to like...
(33:30):
I don't think so.
I mean, I feel like he would. What the hell?
Because his conscience was already bothering him about the first one.
Yeah, so why wouldn't he?
Dude, that's so dumb.
Right?
I feel like someone's got to walk in there and be like,
hey man, you feeling any more guilty, dog?
Because he's been in the hospital years here.
You're not even here for life.
(33:52):
You do any shoplifting? You do any...
Yeah.
Wait, he's in there for life?
Yeah, on death row.
Okay, on death row.
Any final thoughts on this?
For my parents?
Who you know is bullshit. That's crazy, man.
That sucks.
On Valentine's Day.
On Valentine's Day?
(34:13):
That is not romantic.
It might have been romantic, depending on what the record was.
Yeah, it's like a heartache record.
Very light.
Dang. That sucks.
Did they ever connect the fact that it was, like, was the hockey stick the actual murder weapon?
(34:37):
Or was it another like, oh, I found another bowling pin?
Yeah, right. It's another bowling pin situation.
Was it another found in the yard situation?
No.
They never found the actual murder weapon, just the blood-carving hockey stick.
That's true.
Well, that was cool.
(34:59):
Yeah. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Yeah, of course.
I appreciate it.
Well, until next time, stay high, stay safe, and thank you for listening.
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