Truck Stop Murder, A Vanished Child, and the Miracle Staircase: Unsolved Mysteries.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody. I'm Sierra and I'm Ben, and welcome back
to another episode of The Unsolved Couple Were every week
and and I recapt one of your original gate way rugs,
Nature Crime Unsolved in Storms. How was your week?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Love? It was good? Okay, so I'm like even losing
track of what the week was. Yeah, it was a
little rough.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Well, we had a holiday weekend. You worked seven days,
some overtime. It kind of it's just one of those
time zones where it's our time Vartexas where you're like,
what day is it, where are we at, what's happening?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, it was a long week, that's all right.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, any fun stories to share with our friends?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
No, not that I can think of, not off the
top of my hand. Do you have any fun stories too?

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I got my hair colored. That's a fun story it is.
I went auburn and I've never done this color before,
and I've done wild things to my hair, but I've
never had this before. But what actually it ties back

(01:27):
to our podcast why I went this color? So a
few weeks ago I had to go get a new
driver's license for the real ID and I had a
little bit of a midlife panic crisis because I got
my photo back and what I saw staring back at

(01:49):
me did not fit what my perception of my reflection is.
And I was, really, I look like an alien in
my picture.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
They said they scrunched the photo.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
It's not it's it looks and I've asked multiple people now.
I pulled it out at the Maverick the other night
and I was like, does this and everyone keeps looking
at like, yeah, because I'll get to my hair color
change in a second. But I I do all of
our social media, and it's ninety percent me on camera.

(02:25):
And that's not because I am self absorbed. It is
because I have a husband who supports and loves me
doing this, but also is like draws a little bit
of a line that he'll do some things, some reels
and stuff with me and some stuff on our social
but it's just it's just not you don't enjoy it,
you don't like your image being out there. It's not
your thing, don't It's not my thing? Yeah, And I try.

(02:48):
I respect that and only ask Ben to do silly
things with me every once in a while. But I
will also really try. I don't use filters when I
do mine. I rarely have made upond when I'm doing
them because I just want I genuinely normally feel pretty
comfortable with my face, and so seeing that face look

(03:09):
back at me on my idea, I was like, do
I have some weird body dysmorphia? But in the opposite
direction where I think, Okay, I'm not that bad. But
then I saw this and was like, this doesn't like
I didn't like identify myself with that. It was a
weird thing. So I remember that episode with the Makeover

(03:33):
Digital Makeover Do you remember that? And I had this idea.
So I took a very close shot of my face
on my phone and put it into chat GPT and
asked chatpicht to give me like a hair makeover based

(03:56):
on my skin tone, my eye color and all of
this stuff. Da da da da da da. And it
came up with two options. One I've already had. It
was just like golden blonde and brown tones. Okay, I've
already been doing that. And the other one was auburn

(04:16):
with like red and coppers. And I was like, huh,
all right, chet TPT, I see you and I see
you Digital Makeover Unsolved Mysteries episode. So I booked an
appointment and went in saw my local stylist and was like, okay,
and I've been happy with it. It feels weird. I

(04:38):
told them my biggest concern was sometimes with red it
can go very goth girl or like.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
And I said, no one in the world who's met
or talked to see or whatever think that you are golf.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah, and no shade on goth people, but their vibe
is usually the opposite. Like when you watch Wednesday and
then her roommate the werewolf girl, I'm the werewolf girl.
That is true, and so I don't ever. I was like,
do I look like I could be trying to be
a golf girl, and very kindly said no. So that's

(05:16):
that's all I have to share.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
My hair is colored too, It's just life is colored it.
Life is colored a little bit more gray.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, I like the salt and pepper look.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
But are you going to tell people you put the
Halloween decorations up this last week? That was a big
thing we did begin September.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
The season you guys is here.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
We've already watched a scary movie.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
So yeah. We started watching the Final Destination series last
night and I forgot how slow nineties scary movies are. Yeah,
it takes a while sometimes to get into it. Ah,
I don't know, it's.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
It's just when you haven't watched a movie in twenty
something years.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, we went and saw Weapons. I thought it was amazing.
You liked it at first, and then the next day
been decided after marinating in it, he didn't care for it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
I am in that way with some movies. I will
watch a movie and I'm not quite sure, and like
it's days later, I decide I.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Thought it was or I really. I woke up the
next morning liking it even more. I will say, Ben,
I agree. There's a very graphic scene in it middle
of the movie between two husbands, and it was too much.
I had to close my eyes. I had to turn away.
But Ben booked us the D box seats. Sorry, this

(06:45):
is going a little long, but they've moved slightly, not aggressively.
It's like you're on a ride at Disneyland or something
and they vibrate just slightly, but they're all time to
do it at the exact moment of different things happening
on the screen, like if you're riding in a car
or whatever. Well, they timed them perfectly with the jump scares.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
It definitely makes it more scary to wat.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
I screamed so loud twice in the theater, and I
don't know if I'm the weird person. No one else
jumped or screamed.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
It was just I think there was. I think there was.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
So I turned it off because I was like, I can't.
I was sweating, like I can't, I can't live with
this kind of things happening to me. But it was
a very I thought it was a but I love
horror films and scream movies. That's not really Ben's genre.
So I really enjoyed. I thought it was amazing. Highly
recommend anyone goes and sees it if they get a chance.

(07:40):
If you can have a D box near you, It's
a different ride for sure. Okay, so we're recapping the
season three episode ten, correct, ye, and we have four stories?
Weich have two today?

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yep, four stories? I think, yeah. My last one is now.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
We should figure this out before you started. But do
you want how do you want to go? Meet you?

Speaker 2 (08:07):
You me, I don't know what you just said, but
whatever you said, my answer is yes, So.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
I'll start sure, Okay, okay, and real quick before we
dive in, don't forget to follow our show wherever you're listening. Subscribe,
and if you enjoy what we're doing, please take a
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(08:35):
all of the places in Spotify to recommend our podcasts
and to help us grow this show. It really genuinely
helps more than you know to help other people find
us and bringing in it then is going to just
keep allowing us to be able to bring you more
of unsolved mysteries. All right, so I'm going to tell
you the story about Dwyane Mick Corkandell. I really hope

(09:01):
that's how you pronounce his name.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
It was a it was a different name. I'd never
heard it before.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
I'd never heard any and I think it is right
cork in Dale. No, I think you're right, Okay, And
I tried like they didn't really say it a ton
on the episode. Yeah, So November twelfth, nineteen eighty eight,
at a highway rest ninety nineteen eighty eight, did I

(09:27):
say ninety eight?

Speaker 2 (09:28):
I don't know, that's what I heard. You could have
said eighty eight.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Sorry, all right. At a highway restop mile markers thirty
one on the Turner Turnpike in Chandler, Oklahoma, an anonymous
caller reported a body laying outside of a foam booth.
When Oklahoma Highway patrol arrives around eight pm, they discover

(09:54):
that a man has been murdered and there's coins scattered
all over the place. The man was Dwayne mccarkdale, a
twenty seven year old truck driver, father of two little,
c adorable twin girls, and they're from Kansas City, Kansas.
Did you know that Kansas City is in Missouri and Kansas.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, I've been to Kansas City, Missouri's said on the border.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Okay, so it's one city, but it's in two different states.
Or they both just nak Kansas City. I've only been
to the Kansas City, Missouri, but they're both one city.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Okay, If anyone's from that area, let us know, Okay.
His truck is parked nearby. He had been shot once
in the back at close rains range with a twelve
gage shotgun. The motive appears to be robbery. Dwayne's widow,
Joan later said that if had been an accident, she

(10:57):
could have handled it better, but for to lose him
over money and such a small amount because one I
guess kind of code of conduct, and it makes sense
around truck drivers is they don't actually carry a lot
of cash on them because it puts them at a

(11:18):
high risk for robbery. She feels that it's especially I
think they ended up ended up being like twenty three
dollars or something like that, that this man is murdered over.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, it's ridiculous, and yes, that's all.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Kansas City is one city appears.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
To be connected, but like the metropolitan most of the
city is on the Missouri side. It appears if I'm wrong, people,
if you're from there, let me know. But I said,
I've only I've only been. Just not a.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Super normal thing. Is it right where there's like a
whole state between dividing I guess a lot so well
to be such a big city.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
To have that happen, I mean there's a lot of
cities right at border state lines. Staff for the city
m goes over.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
The Yeah, okay, but.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
It always is because when you speak of Kansas City,
everyone thinks of Missouri because the technically where it is,
but it's always been weird.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Okay, So this is the Kansas City can is like
the smaller side of it looks like part of the Yeah, okay. So,
like most truck drivers, Dwayne relies heavily on his Cbe radio.
It connected him to others out on the road, but
in this case, investigators believe an innocent radio conversation may

(12:35):
have sealed his faith. Do you have a goof off
on a Cebe radio?

Speaker 2 (12:40):
A little bit?

Speaker 1 (12:41):
As it teenager? Yeaheah? Did you so? Like, did you
have a friend who had one or something?

Speaker 2 (12:47):
My grandpa used to really want in his so he
would pull a fifth wheel. Yeah, up, and they would
always park it on the side of the house and
stay there and wow it at all. He had a
CB radio.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
It was like just walkie talking in the world.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah. I thought it was awesome. As I got older,
he got rid of it. But yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
So when I was in high school, my friend Athena,
her dad had a Cebe radio in his truck and
he worked up all and down I five and so
whenever we were in his truck, we were basically prank
calling on the Cebee radio, which as an adult. I'm like,
that probably isn't the safest thing, but it was fun.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
We goes out a lot then.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah. So Dwayne leaves Detroit November tenth, calling parts for
an Oklahoma City GM plant. This is a normal run
for him. On the night of the twelve, he entered
the turnpike, drove straight to the rest of no detours.
And they know this because he had like time stamped

(13:55):
receipts from like the way in stations. Yeah, like a
toll booths and something like that. Yeah. Yeah, about five
forty five, he told another truck drivers that he would
communicate Kitty with over the CBE radio that he had
planned to stop at a rest area up ahead and
call his wife. Investigators believe someone may have been listening

(14:20):
and they could have followed him into the rest stops,
or perhaps we're already waiting and just listening to see
who was coming. As Dwayne steps out of his truck
to head to the phone booth, he pulls some change
out of his pocket to make a call. Some of
those coins are later found scattered on the ground. Then,
without warning, he's shot in the back with that shotgun.

(14:42):
Died instantly. They said he was dead before he hit
the ground.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
This is such a savage way to shoot. To shoot
someone with a shotgun in the back, in the back, yeah,
what a coward.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
And his wife even said like, not only did truck
drivers not carry a lot of cash nine times out
of ten, they don't want problems. So if someone comes
up to them and tries to rob them, they're just
going to turn the money over that they have, because
it's not that whatever they're carrying is not worth the drama.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, they already know. It's like, I don't carry a
lot for this whole reason. That way, if it happened
five bucks, yeah, five.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Dollars, Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it is very cold.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
This is a super sad.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
It is very sad. Yeah, the killer took Duayne's wallet
and keys. Maybe he had about twenty five bucks on him.
And again his wife says that she believes he would
have just handed over, but instead he's literally gunned down
in cold blood, like the definition of that. At first,

(15:50):
investigators had almost nothing to go on, but then call
started coming in from truck drivers across the country. Many
describe a brown Ford Pinto with Cbee radio that had
been harassing truck drivers around the time of the murder,
the driver loved to play a dangerous game of cat
and mouse, swerving in and out of traffic and cutting

(16:11):
off big rigs, and then would like almost engage on
a cebe radio in antagonizing them and then threatening people
that we've already killed one truck driver, will kill more
if you get in our way. Not long after, another
truck driver named Ed had a disturbing encounter. While parked
at a rest stop for lunch, a young woman approached

(16:33):
him very clearly strung out.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah, yeah, make it look like.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
She's having withdraws. She's all of the things that you imagine.
She also seems very desperate. According to Ed, she asked
for drugs, she asked for money, even at one point
climbing halfway into the cab through his window. Months later,
or no, not months later, moments later, if I could

(17:03):
read my notes here, a brown Pinto pulls up. She
jumps out of the truck or like out of the window,
off the side, and jumps into the car and speeds away.
The very next day, thirteen miles down the road, Duwayne
was killed. Ed realized how closely he'd come to possibly

(17:23):
being a victim of hisself. Because he didn't get out
of his vehicle. Dwayne's murder obviously devastates his family. His
twin daughters have now had to grow up not knowing
their father except through a few family photos. Jones said
that they'd look at other kids with their dad and
ask where their dad was.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Oh, it breaks my heart.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
I know. Today the case the remains unsolved. The company
Dwayne worked for has offered a ten thousand dollars reward,
but no arrest have been made. And that's kind of
where this leaves us. We get a description of the
brown Pinto and that's kind of where it goes.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Update.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Okay, this takes in a very weird turn. You guys, really, yes,
and look at the shop. No, it gets crazy. Okay,
it's still technically unsolved. Okay, But years later, investigators looked
into a woman whose name was only known as Mercedes.

(18:30):
She was murdered by her boyfriend James In James mcalfin
in nineteen ninety one. Before her death, she had allegedly
told many people that she was with James and they
used to like to lure truck drivers into traps where

(18:51):
they could rob them, and at least on one occasion
that they shot and killed one. Some believe that she
may have been referring to Dwayne in this because her boyfriend,
James drove a Pinto Brown Pinto. Witnesses described the witness

(19:17):
description that if they had a few of them from
truck drivers who had encountered this and the one who
had a really close encounter, the descriptions matched very well,
the time matches and even the location. But here's the rub.
At least until just recently, Mercedes was murdered by her boyfriend.

(19:39):
But up until like literally I think two or three
years ago, they could not identify this Woe because she
had no idea, no name, no information. They knew nothing
about her. So she was the Mercedes James or James
Doe for like the years. Interesting, so they have a

(20:03):
suspect she's dead. Her boyfriend was arrested and convicted. He
claimed that he couldn't give the police Mercedes real information
because then he would get in trouble for another crime
that he had committed or another murder he had committed,
so he refused to say anything.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
So he was convicted of the crime of killing this
Jane Doe. But they never identified the Jane Doe that
he killed, Yes, but they knew he killed her.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
He was convicted and then it was he refused that
was his girlfriend, yeah, and then he refused to say
it was okay. Only a few years ago they were
able to identify. They called her the El Dorado Jane Doe.

(20:54):
She was identified just recently thanks to like the genealogy
DNA exactly, but because they only released the first name, Kelly,
because she still has a handful I believe quite a
few family members and so they didn't want to. I

(21:20):
don't know if the family asked the last thing to
be redacted or X Y or Z. But it's likely
that this case will never be solved because unless they
can find something to prosecute James over Mercedes or Kelly
is no longer alive to testify. There's no evidence, there's
no fingerprints, there's no DNA nothing. There is just the

(21:43):
very odd similarities the location they're kind of criminal history,
and the car that they were driving that they think
that this is likely who it is. However, for some reason,
you have information or anything that can help. When the
murder of Dwayne mccorkdell. There is still an active tip line.

(22:05):
The phone number is one eight hundred five two two
eight oh one seven.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
There's James Stone jail for Actually.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Didn't look that up if he was still alive or not.
He was convicted of a life scent like he wasn't
getting out, so if he's still there, he's there.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, I mean unfortunately, Well, we don't know and you
kind of knew this. It's such a random The guy
has no ties to that place. It's in a rest stop, so.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
There's no witnesses, there's no video camera, there's nothing.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well it's a rest stop like thousands of people of
strangers are passing through there. There's there's no murder weapon.
It's a phone boost so there's no prints. I mean, yeah,
the police said they really didn't have to go off,
they didn't have anything to go off. And I don't
think that was a lack of trying. I just think

(23:01):
the whole situation, it seems.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Anyone involved in this case believes that Mercedes and James
were involved. Well that's kind of but because they can't
say that in a court.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Of law idea and innocent until proven guilt, yeah, then.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
They can't close the case. But as of now, that
is the common theory and belief is that they did.
They were heavily using drugs.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Just to feel so bad for the life. And those
two little girls, like their dad was murdered in cold.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Blood over twenty five bucks.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
And he was all he was trying to do is
stop and yeah call home.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, you know, because that's the only choice they had
back then, was to stop and pull over a payphone.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
So I've always thought a truck driver's shop would be
pretty awesome. Now you're out on the road, you get
to see so many different places drive through. There's this
country is beautiful, so you get to see so many different.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
There's a couple of Instagram accounts that I've seen and
followed that are like husband and wife that don't have
any kids or anything. They can do do it and
they've decided to do this as a career while they
save up money to buy a house or something. And
they like show the inside of their cab because the
back of their cab is like sleeping quarters. There's like

(24:24):
a microwave, there's like very your very basic things, right
because they have to shower and stuff at big gas.
The whole reason of a truck stuff is typically is
that there's showers and different things there, and I've always
I was like, what if you know, fun unique way
to decide. Hey, this, we both got our CDLs. We

(24:46):
can drive, so it allows us to drive further and
longer X Y or Z, and we're going to live
in the back of the truck and we're going to
save more money so we can buy a house someday.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
And you know, I've seen all their couples do it, like, yeah,
you're tired, I do it and I just go. They
get the dog, their cab whatever. Yeah, you know, But
I've always kind of thought, I've always been fascinated by
that industry. I think it's cool.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
We rely on it so America. Unit's even well.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
In that it is a very tight knit community. It
was funny. So we got a guy at our work.
He was an older gentleman and came and joined. But
he'd been a truck driver for years and he was
just such a fun, very talkative, very just very social guy,
which is a little different than most of us. But

(25:35):
I think it's because he drove trucks for a long time,
like ten.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Ten years, and I know that there's a very dark
ceed underbelly in that career. But I think for the
most part. If you were just doing this because of
something like that, it's probably a great career. Yeah, sad story.
I know the best for the family and those girls. Yeah,
I hope they're doing well. All right, what do you

(26:01):
have for us?

Speaker 2 (26:02):
All right? I got an interesting one too, But it's
the case the murder. Maybe we'll see. Excuse me, Norman,
Charles Ladner, and dude, I cannot say this in this
tiny town Pacoe picking you Mississippi. I am saying that's

(26:24):
so wrong, and I apologize so down in Mississippi, all right.
Norman was an eighteen year old senior and his family
owned a little general store and this dream come true,
right like little Jennerson they owned. They had one hundred

(26:49):
and twenty two acres on a family farm. And on
August twenty first, nineteen eighty one, Norman goes out to
go hunting on the fan only farm and they said, like,
on their one hundred and twenty two acres, a lot
of it is just actually fields, but sixty acres is woods, okay, And.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
That's where it's still a lot of woods.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
It is a lot of woods. Yeah, But they pretty
much say, like Norman knows these woods like the back
of my hand, the back of his hand, And I
would imagine that's.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
A kid's playground. That's a dream come true to sixty
acres of woods to run around and goof off and
build forts and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, and hunt.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
And he loved hunting. So he went out on that day,
August twenty first, to go hunting. He said he would
be back, and his dad is in. His mom and
dad are interviewed, and he said, like Norman was a
good kid, he was regimented, and he was always back
by seven between seven and seven thirty to help sweep

(27:59):
up the store, restock the shelves, help with the family store,
and then be home for the evening. So that night,
seven o'clock rolls around and Norman doesn't show up, so
of course they start getting worried and they go looking
for him. They get the dog, and they get some

(28:20):
other family members and they start searching for him. His
mom stays back by the store to make sure just
in case, so you know what, if he comes, he
shows up. He comes back, but unfortunately they find Norman.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
The dad finds the dad finds his son, and he said,
like he finds them, he's laying all contorted on the ground.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
He says he feels him, he's cold. That's pretty clear
he's been dead for a while. Yeah, So of course
they call the sheriffs. They tell us by ten PM
at least, that's what they say and Unsold Mysteries, so
they must have found him pretty quickly. So within several hours,
the sheriff is out there. That's the Pearl River County

(29:09):
Sheriff's Department. They're out there and they're going to start looking.
And we get interviewed by Sheriff Lawrence Lumpkin, and he says,
the first thing we do is assume foul play. We're
going to try to at least rule that out. So
they start doing their investigation. It appears he's laying there,

(29:32):
there's the rifle next to him, and.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
The rifle's broken into pieces, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Or was that so my research? Nothing was that?

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Just on Unsolved Mysteries, it.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Appeared so I a lot of stuff I looked at
like that was never raised or brought up. The rifle
was broken. They say that in that Unsolved Mysteries. The
actors are saying, oh, looks like it's been pieced back
to together or something.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
It was weird.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
It was weird, So I wasn't sure if that was
real facts or what just improv I don't know. I
wouldn't assumed so, but there wasn't You would think that
that would be.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
I know, but we've covered a lot of things in
Unsolved Mysteries that factually weren't really part of the case.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
That's what what I'm saying is, if the rifle was
broken and wouldn't fire, I would assume that that would
be the thing that the family would scream about, how
is this possible? And that didn't seem to be.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
One of the concerns that they they were trying to eat.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Okay, all right, so if possible, I don't know, but
at least again so as sorry, we're talking about this
in Unsolved Mysteries. When they're showing the reenactment, the gun
is the rifle is in almost two pieces, and they're
talking about something or how it was looks like it
was it's something.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, it's not a huge deal, but they do make
it a point that you see and hear that.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
So then that raises the question, how does someone get
killed by a gun that is broken?

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Right, but the family doesn't seem to bring that up,
and I read multiple articles and no one else seems
to hammer that point.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Okay, so interesting, I.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Don't know anyways, So obviously they look for, i mean,
any type of foul play. They're not seeing anything. So everyone,
even the family is assuming this is an accident, that's
terrible accident, that maybe he fell from a tree. He
was in a tree, he fell and the gun went off.

(31:47):
They don't know, there's some way that Norman was shot. Accents.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Well, that was even the belief of the sheriffs on scene, right, Yeah,
it was kind of everyone kind of had that consensus.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Sheriff saw them and they thought, okay, this was an accident.
So even they said that the corner, the medical examiner
is like, they appeers that way, right, But then it
goes the corner does all of his things and he
then several days later officially rules it a suicide. He

(32:20):
had a bullet wound and the right side of his temple,
so they think that he was standing, put the rifle
to his head, yeah, and shot himself. So that upset
the parents, even the mom's like, we all thought it

(32:42):
was an accident, a terrible accident. For them to now
say our son committed suicide. It just doesn't match. They
say he was a good, happy kid. There didn't seem
to be anything wrong. It just does not jive with
the sun.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
They know to yeah, and there's not always can't always
tell that there's no roadmap to taking your own life
and warning signs that there are sometimes, but there's not always. However,
it's something about it felt off to the parents.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah. Yeah, And the dad starts to ounce he's upset
because now they've ruled this suicide. They closed the case.
They're pretty much done with it. They washed their hands
of it. And he starts now asking questions, Okay, well
did you do all these other things? Did you fingerprint
the gun? It was never fingerprinted. They never found the bullet.

(33:39):
They didn't even look for the bullet. They killed their son.
So how hey, he raises, Are you determined? Are you
can determine that he shot himself if you don't even
find the bullet that killed him and match it to
the gun.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, these are great questions, great questions.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Also, he had an inch and a half cut on
the top of his head, and they said there was
a route on the ground by where he was found,
and it had blood on it, So they think that
he hit his head on that route and cut its
head and so death's like, well, how do you cut

(34:17):
the top of your head if you shoot and fall? Like,
how does that happen? So all all balid questions. So
they start doing their own investigation. They're like, fine, you
guys don't want to do it. So they go out
to where their son was found. I can't even imagine.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Well I cannot but grief. I mean, there's also part
of me that's like, yeah, I would also need answers
if the Corners reports on me one thing. But they
have nothing other than just well it was in the
temple and that's commonly what happens. That's not going to
That does not count as an investigation. I would have
to be.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
Pro And if you're going to say he did this,
like at least, yeah, give me do something.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
How you figured that out?

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, So they start looking where their son was found
and they start sifting through the dark, and what do
they find. They find a bullet. Yeah, and it's intact,
and the dad says it's not it's too big to
have gone.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
This hunting rifle was just a tiny little rifle.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah, So he says, this is not the bullet, that
this bullet could not have been fired through this gun.
They take it and they say that it has blood
and hair on it. I take it to the sheriff's
office and they say, no, sorry, we can't touch that
because we don't know if that is the bullet, and
we don't now because we didn't find it.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
So I understand that. But also if you had done
any kind of investigation.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
And so now this raises the question because they found
it where their son was laying. How how is a
bullet on the ground where their son was found If
he shot himself standing up, it appears that he was
shot he was on the ground, So then that question
was he hit in the head, fell and then shot. Yeah,

(36:22):
all valid questions.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Show an investigation had been done.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Questions that should have been tried to be answered in
an investigation. So they did give the bullet to the
state's ballistics expert. He said he wasn't able to match
that bullet to Norman's gun. They weren't sure, and then
they gave it back to him and the family swears
that it was a different bullet. Give it back to him.

(36:50):
So all right, sorry, I'm looking through the notes.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
They also found that same day when they weren't looking
that radio.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
I was going to get to that. Yeah, not the
same day. It wasn't the day, Okay, So the parents went.
It was weeks later, went to the corner's office to
talk to the corner to kind of plead their case
that hey, our son did not commit suicide. And you guys,
you need to look at this because the sheriff and this.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
This actually really upse It upset me too.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
He says, Listen, the corner ruled a suicide and that's
what we base our investigation off. And I have a
massive problem with it. That makes no it doesn't make
sense because, yes, the corner is there to determine the
cause of death. I have a problem that the corner
just said.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Well, cause and manner are different.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
I understand, But how does a corner say it's a
suicide if you have no other evidence, but you haven't
matched a bullet, you haven't done anything just because someone
was shot in the head. The police's job is to
find out if there was possibly someone else to have
done that. Yeah, right, So, and I understand the corners

(38:05):
can rule stuff suicide and homicide.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
That's usually when there's a ton more of information available
to them.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Well, that's the things there needs to be. You need
to work together with all this stuff to put this
stuff together. Yeah, you know, so I just the sheriff
pretty much said, well, the corner said it, so we're good.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
They were so cavalier about it too.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
So anyways, as they're talking to the corner, the mom says,
someone approached her, a stranger and pulled her aside and said, hey, listen,
don't open up this case. Leave it alone. You have
a family. It's better for you and your family to
just let this be. Yeah. So she was upset about

(38:48):
that spooter, but she pretty much says, no, I don't care.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
I'm not gonna no.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah, I'm not gonna back.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
I'm not stopping.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah. And so the dad went back out into the
family farm. They searched and about they said it like
three hundred yards away from where their son was found.
They found a radio with like a string. They couldn't
they didn't know what it was. It was weird.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
It had something happened to the tree. It was weird.
It had like this weird extension thing on it. Yeah,
So they took.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
It to the police and the police said, we don't
think that's a clue of anything. I don't We don't
want anything to like.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Literally you're like, nope, don't want to see that.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
So a friend of them put in touch, put him
in touch with a retired DEA agent and he they
took it to him and he looks like he goes, oh,
that's a radio for like it's a low frequency radio
for small airplanes and people use that to like send
a signal for airplanes to drop the press. So it

(39:52):
is Mississippi. So yeah, I mean I was saying it's Mississippi,
meaning it's close to the in the ocean. I don't
want people to think I was saying it was SISSI.
That's just what they do in Mississippi. That's not was
not my point. I realized that after that came out
of my mouth. But so anyways, that's where some mysteries leaves. Yeah,

(40:16):
what happened. Family is adamant that he did not commit suicide.
They think there's a foul play.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
And the sheriff, yes, stumbled upon something and saw something
he wasn't supposed to.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
The dad says, you know, maybe his son saw something
he was supposed to do. Or even recognize people.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Really a small town realized.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
That people were using the family farm to drop drugs
in the area.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
And needed to prevent him from telling people about it.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah, so all right, are you ready for your update?

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Still unsolved technically according to the police, it's not.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah, so there's nothing to solve according.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
To the Yeah, there is a few things that they
didn't put in. Two unsold mysteries. Okay, there's a multiple
other true crime podcast things out there that I've talked
about this case. And I found this anything I found,

(41:21):
I tried to anything. I'm going to tell you. I
tried to make sure I at least found from two
different sources.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
So this one, I am uncertain. His wallet was missing,
either his wallet or money in his IDY found two
different sources. But there was things missing off of him.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Off his person person okay, one.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Hundred and forty dollars in his ID okay, possibly his
wallet one okay, And this I did find years later.
His ID was found in New York.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
How is that?

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Who idea? How it got?

Speaker 3 (41:54):
So?

Speaker 1 (41:55):
How does someone take their on life and then send
their idea off.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Don't or he lost his wallet and someone I don't know,
there's multiple there's multiple reasons that could come about, but
it doesn't look good. And the money being missing.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Is yeah, that doesn't look good.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
So someone took money from him and his parents found
him that night, so yeah, sound like he was laying
there for a lot of people to stumble. Yeah, and
it was on private.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Property property, so exactly.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
It raises a lot of questions. That's pretty much. There's
really been no other things. The sheriff I looked into him.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, Lumpkin.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
He was arrested years later helping like he was running
or a part of a massive like dog fighting ring,
which doesn't.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Seem far off from someone who might get kickbacks from
drug runners to look the other way.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
He's passed since then. But there was there's a lot
of speculation that the Dixie Mafia had a lot to
do with that. The Dixie Mafia was big, yeah, or
there was some presence of them there, and there was
rumor that just rumor. I'm just saying, there was rumor
that the sheriff might have had ties to the Dixie Mafia.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
I think, yeah, the way he was talking about it
on Unsolved Mysteries with almost this like annoyance that he's
been questioned about the death of a young boy inside
of his community. Seemed to me something was weird about it.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, uh yeah, I didn't. I didn't care for it.
It is very honestly. Anything after that, there's really nothing. Yeah,
there has been zero movement in this case. The dad unfortunately,
has passed away. I couldn't find anything that the mom
has passed away yet.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, unless someone comes forward and confesses or says I
was there, I saw this, or my dad told me
x y or z. Yeah, they're not.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Plus, no one's looking. Yeah, no one's digging except for
the family unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
It is too bad. Like watching this, clearly all the
police had to do was an investigation, and this is
one thing. It just bothers me something. Just do the steps,
do the right thing.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, but it's says sheriff is part of this organized crime.
Then nothing news ever. And this I could tell Ben. Actually,
this reminds me of the boys on the track. Yeah,
with the marijuana secarets like this so stupid to like
shame these kids that were murdered, very obvious, and then
to gaslight everyone in the community like that they're the problem.

(44:55):
This the arrogance of the sheriff reminded me exactly of
the same sort of mentality that people interviewed on that case.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
It just was frustrating to see like there was zero
clearly there was zero investigation, and if that was done
in a malice or just or just laziness, it's very frustrating.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
You take an oath to be in law enforcement. I
always wonder when we hear things like this because this
is it happens and X, Y or z. Every time
it does, it sucks, and it sucks for the people
that are out there trying to do their job and
fulfill their oath and to make their world a better,

(45:39):
safer place. You do not have to be in this job.
You don't have to do it. Like I don't understand it.
It just anyways.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah, So unfortunately unsolved probably is going to stay that way.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Forever.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Okay, Well, before I you another sad, terrible story, this
is a bummer of an episode. Today, we have some
new downloads, so welcome. Welcome to anyone new that's downloaded
us or anyone that's taken us along on road trips
with them wherever they are. We are glad to be
able to hang out with you. So oh and real quick,

(46:19):
I wanted to say, we did have a new area
enter the chat for our most like downloaded regions around
the world, and so I wanted to Singapore has entered
the chat for the first time. They're down closer to

(46:39):
the bottom of like the top ten, but I've never
seen them on here before. The UK is still number
two right now, but South Korea, who is usually at
number two, is neck and neck. So if you're in
South you're in South Korea. They're duking it out. Get
a few of your friends to download the podcast and
you can kick the UK and then.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
There's like ten South Korea, there's like eight and they're
just duking each other out.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah. Canada, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Singapore, France, and Australia are
all of our top places top countries around the world.
So if you would like to see your flag represented
in the Unsolved Mysteries Unsolved Couple Olympics, please the Olympics, now, yeah,

(47:27):
that's what it's that important. We'll send out gold medals
to the winner. Well, America's America, Yeah, I mean we
are based here. Yeah, okay, so h l oh, gosh,
conn what's jay in Spanish? Do you know what does
it sound like?

Speaker 2 (47:49):
J yeah, huh huh, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Ka j o n kajun, California. That is not right, Sorry, guys,
New York Calhoun, Calhoun, Khan, New Britain, Kentuck, Kentucky, No, Connecticut.
Good night, New Britain, Connecticut, Hong Kong. That's kind of

(48:17):
cooy Livermore, California, Weedsport, New York. That sounds like a
fun place.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Leesville, Louisiana, North Richland Hills, Texas, Queen Creek, Arizona, Carthage, Tennessee.
Gibson City, Illinois. Welcome, Welcome. So those are new places,
all right. I got a missing person's case for you.
Buckle up, everyone, get your cleanexes. This is going to

(48:47):
be a sad one. This is about Nileen Marshall June
twenty fifth. Have you you Probably not. For some people
out there, We'll say I had seen this photo before
of this missing girl because she was one of the
first kids ever featured on What Happened in the eighties

(49:10):
that they started putting kids' faces on a milk carton yep.
So I think she was like one of the first,
if not the first missing person's featured on milk cart
and they don't do that anymore. But here in America,
for I don't even know.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
That was social media. That's that was the way you
got information on us. And what is everyone buy?

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, everyone has milk in their fridge and I should
do it'd be fun to do some background on that.
I don't know how long that went on for because
it wasn't a thing by the time. I remember being
a kid.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
But can you imagine sitting there eating your breakfast, staring
at a child. That's yea.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
At first, You've got your Captain Crunch cereal box with
the puzzles and all the stuff, because everyone read the
cereal boxes, right, it was like one of the favorite
things to do. That's the Baculus cereal box exactly. And
then right next to it, the exact Ofice said feeling
is the picture of a kid your age missing and

(50:05):
you get to think about that for the rest of
the days you.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Leave the house, kids staring you in the face. Yeah,
it's terrible. I but here's the thing I actually.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Think it was. It was a genius idea.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
It was a great way to get information out across
the town.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
And I'm sure we could even do a podcast, probably
on the milk cart kids, because I guarantee a handful
of them have been solved. There's a million dollar idea
for anybody who wants to do it. Just give us
a shout out when your podcast blows up. All right.
June twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three, four year old Nileen
vanishes while on a family trip to the Elkhorn Mountains
in Montana. Her mother, Nancy, her stepfather who had adopted her,

(50:48):
kim Or, with several family families and friends, not family members,
but like a bunch of different families that were all
friends with each other. At a picnic spot in the
Helena Nash Forest around four pm, Nileen and some other
children were playing in a shallow creek. Witnesses later recall

(51:09):
seeing her and Okay, caveat pause. This once again, I
need to make this very clear to people we recap
the stories on Unsolved Mystery. I put a lot of
faith that Unsolved Mystery had most of their facts correct,
but we've learned that timelines have been off X, Y

(51:30):
or Z.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
It's not perfect.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
It's not perfect. And as much as I would love
to have a whole staffed fact check and do different things.
It's just me and Ben here, and so we do
some additional research, but again, like Ben s, unless we
can find multiple sources, we kind of just have to
give and we're giving you so well.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
And on top of it, we only can go off
by what was put out in them out there, and.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
That's half the prom is here in America, if a
case is still open, which if it's unsolved, the case
is typically still open, we have zero access to any
of the police reports and files. And if a case
is even closed but never went to trial, once again,
that's always not available. So always that's a caveat because

(52:21):
I'm going to tell you this right now. At the
beginning of this, we find that there will quote several
witnesses recall this girl speaking with a man in a
purple jogging suit. I cannot find that anywhere else except
for the unsolved mysteries. And then we're gonna find out
later that it was not a single adult that was

(52:41):
a witness because when they says there's witnesses that saw this,
you assume multiple people. Sounds like it was a couple
of children that sawve this, and not that children are incorrect,
but this could be a red herring and so I
don't want it to deter X. But at the beginning

(53:04):
of the episode on Unsolved Mysteries, this is how they started.
They show a girl playing at a creek by herself.
A man comes up in a purple jogging suit and
tries to get her to play the game called Follow
the Shadow. I'd never heard of this game before, so
I looked it up. It was a common game that
kids played at that time on the playground, and the

(53:24):
trick was is that you tried to stay in the
person's shadow in front of you, and if you stepped
out of the shadow, you lost. Ben would hate that
game because you if you're really close to them in
order to stay in their shadow, it's too much of
your mom bubble.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
Get out.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yeah. So for ten days the searchers comb through this
area and this is a remote little picnic spot. This
is she goes missing. Yes, oh yeah, this was the
last person, according to Nself Mysteries, the last person to
be seen with this girl as this mysterious man. The
last time the family saw her, she had asked permission

(54:04):
to go play in this creek. They were hunting frogs
with a bunch of and it was about from my understanding,
about one hundred crap, and I can't remember it was
one hundred feet or a hundred yards, which is a
big difference between But it was in the vicinity.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
It was close by, and you're in the woods.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Yeah, that's what I think. Guys, I was watching this.
I'm like, that's terrifying because how many times you're in
a national force in a picnic areat Yeah, my kids
at any age and can go play with the other
kids in a little shallow creek. So they searched the
area nothing. Her family is convinced that she had been abducted,

(54:40):
and they spread thousands of missing posting persons across the country. Then,
and this is where again this is I'm unsolved mystery.
We're going to follow the timeline from Unsolved Mysteries. In
nineteen eighty five, then National Center for Missing and Exploiting
Children start receiving anonomous calls and letters from a man

(55:01):
claiming to have this girl. Soon after, another group called
Children Find of America received a type written letter from
the same person, in of which he said he was
raising Nileen as his own, calling her by her middle
name Kay, and insisted that he loved her but also
hinted that there was some disturbing abuse happening within this relationship.

(55:27):
Relationships not the right word, dynamic kidnapping. Yeah. Over the
next six months, multiple letters and calls come through, most
of them traced back to Madison, Wisconsin area. He even
claimed to have traveled across the country, which lines up
with reported signings because once again we hear that and

(55:48):
this happens so often. Her face and flyers and information
is being spread throughout the United States, and there's tons
of people calling to say that they've seen this little girl.
So but again, when you can't rule anything out, you've
got then this letter coming in saying he's traveled all
over with her, you start to wonder does that add

(56:11):
to the story or does that take away from the case.
But he was never identified throughout the years, there are
other leads. In nineteen ninety one, this is this is
a weird thing, a man named Richard James Wilson comes
forward confessing to have killed the little girl, even taking

(56:33):
him to the spot where he said he buried her.
There's no evidence that that ever happened, or that he
was even in the area. He did have a history
of molestation of a child, there wasn't enough to even
hold him, so they had to let him go. And then,
in another weird twist of fate, in nineteen ninety five,

(56:57):
Nancy's mother is found dead and Mexico City in a
hotel room.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
I would like to say that again.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
It yeah, okay, So I'm giving you the timeline the
mother that was interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
This is all your Yes, this is all new stuff.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Yes, this case is crazy, you guys, And I'm trying
to tell it in like the shortest amount of time.
I could have done an entire episode on just this
case because there is a ton here. So Richard James confesses.
Turns out he also had a major history of some
major mental health issues. X Y or Z let him go. Then, Oh,

(57:45):
I guess, yeah, I guess I skipped my update, signed
didn't I sorry? Yeah, this is kind of the update
part of it. Nancy's mother was found dead in nineteen
ninety five in Mexico City inside of a hotel room.

(58:06):
Authorities there dubbed it a suicide. She was on hanging
with her arms tied behind her back and her body
was beaten, and her hotel door had been kicked in
and a handful of things were stolen, and.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
That was suicide. It's not the weirdest suicide.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Yeah, Unfortunately, the dad Kim tried really hard to get
things overturned. He actually got it overturned to her death
being quote undetermined from the authorities in Mexico City, but
then was told if he pursued it any further and

(58:47):
tried to get it overturned to murder, then they wouldn't
release her remains to come back to the United States
where she could be buried and kind of put to rest.
So he had a decision to make. He decided to
just let it lie there and bring her body home
and bury her. So now this man kim Is adopted

(59:10):
daughter goes missing, and now only several years later, even
after being interviewed on unsolved mysteries, is murdered in a
hotel room in Mexico. His wife. Yeah so, but there
is no evidence. I will say this to tie these

(59:31):
two cases together. It just seems like just a horrible,
horrible thing for one family to go through. Yep. Then
in nineteen eight, nineteen ninety, a woman comes forward calling
herself Helena, and she raised new hopes and wondered if
she might be Nileen. So she actually was called in

(59:55):
by a nurse who had seen the Unsolved Mysteries episode
and had a young girl with a much older man
come in pregnant, trying to give birth to wanting to
give birth there to a child. Her name was Helena.
The nurses all were peaked. There was red flags at
this appointment of some sort. The dynamic between the two

(01:00:16):
was very uncomfortable from my understanding, so they called They
were actually able to track the girl down. We don't
know if she was any sort of danger, but DNA
testing was actually able to be taken. The woman complied
to a DNA test and it turns out that it
was not a match. So like to this day, this

(01:00:46):
case remains unsolved. There are multiple podcasts about this if
one that was actually really well done and goes into
like a whole forty five minute timeline and X Y
or Z is once again the trail went cold. They
do a lot of cases from Unsolved Mysteries. At the
end of the day, this girl is four years old.

(01:01:07):
She went out to have a picnic with a group
of family friends.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
And just all missing and went.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Missing, and it wasn't until forty eight hours later that
two different kids who didn't spend time with each other,
these weren't people that were hanging out every single day,
each individually told their parents that they saw this man
in a purple jogging suit talking to the little girl

(01:01:41):
and that they'd heard him trying to explain the game
of Follow My Shadow to nilim. And then because the
presumed outcome for local police department at first was that

(01:02:04):
you wandered often.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
First if the family comes as a daughter's missing, she
was playing in the woods. The first thing you didn't
think is she's missing in the woods.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Yeah, And they did a ten day search because of that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
But they had like fifteen hour people. They had a
bunch of people looking.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
They had a ton of people looking. Yeah, and so
I think the family, even the family, yeah, yeah, the
fa I will say the family was highly involved in
this case as well. The mother was interviewed on Unsolved Mystery.
She was highly involved in trying to figure this out.
They didn't even suspect kidnapping until those two kids' parents

(01:02:40):
came forth and said, hey, my kid told me this
weird story. And then to have another child say that
is I mean, that adds weight to it, and then
several months later, those calls and those letters come in
to these organizations, adding more weight to the possibility that

(01:03:00):
she was taken. But there is no evidence that she
was taken, but they can't eliminate that because they've also
never recovered any remains in that area to determine that
she passed away there.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
It's tragically gut wrenching because they noticed immediately that she
was missing. The search took place immediately, and I don't
think anyone would have ever assumed because they said this
campground was pre real. It was not near like a
big interstate or something where people were kind of coming
and going. None of the adults saw anybody weird. But

(01:03:49):
I and this is just my speculation. I wonder, is
it possible that someone involved in this case? And I
don't think it would have been the parents, but I
know I want to say one of the answer, it's
some of the uncles were highly involved in also the
search for it. Is it possible remember the mall letters
that showed up from the missing Yeah, to help like

(01:04:11):
get more people to look at this case. I wonder
if those letters were done by someone hoping to draw
hoping to drive and draw more attention to it, which
it did. It worked.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Yeah, but we also know there sick people out there
that like to torment families for no reason.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
So I looked and looked and looked at These letters
have never been released to the public. The only thing
that we have is a very few clips of them,
according to what I could find. The Sheriff's department there
has come out and said, what is concerning about these
letters is that there are intimate details within the letters
that only people who were present at that day or

(01:04:55):
knew that girl very well, would have knowledge of.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
I mean that's why they've never released him is because.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Well I can understand they're probably not relating them because
it's an ongoing investigation. They're hoping that those letters, if
they've never been released, it will help being nail in
the coffin to the person they do catch, if they
ever do.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Yeah. Yeah, so this person mentioned that their parents and
maybe their siblings had passed away in a car accident.
They do really some personal information, but not enough to
nail them down. They've talked about international travel. Yeah, it's
it's a terrible story.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a missing little girl that
I can imagine as a parent, that's your worst nightmare.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Yeah, and Kim, the father he was the stepfather had
adopted her as his own, has stopped doing interviews. He
won't talk about it nothing. He's decided, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Where it's just to keep opening up that way.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Well, because he was a suspect at one point, I
think because they haven't been able to eliminate anything of
what happened. He's kind of always been on that list
right for a wrongfully so and if he had something
to do with it, he would stay quiet. But also
if he had nothing to do with it, and this

(01:06:25):
was just heartbreaking over and over and over again, and
you're being accused of something, I wouldn't want to speak
on it either. So anyways, if I will post pictures
to this day, her case remains unsolved. If she was alive,
she'd now be in her what late forties, mid forties.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
Yeah, And.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
You can call the Lewis and Clark County Shrif's office
in Montana at four h six four four seven eight
two three five. And if you are hiking in that
area or spending time in the area and you come
across any sort of clothing remains, shoes, scraps of fabric, anything,
Please make sure to flag it and then report it

(01:07:16):
to local law enforcements because they do know what she
was wearing, that data, color of the shirt, everything at
all like that. So either a tip or finding something
can help give this family the piece that they deserve.
But can you imagine if someone actually did kidnap this
girl and they raised her as their own and some weird, sadistic,

(01:07:38):
twisted pedophile way of crazy people. Oh, there are crazy
stories of like that. What's said is that we have
to say, oh, we have to consider this because that happens.
All right, Okay, I know, do you guys just just this?
I know, but so far we haven't had any good

(01:07:59):
news to share with you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
It's unsolved mysteries.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
And is like, this is why I hated this show
growing up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
We've all we've proven my point over and over again.
All right, Okay, Santa Fe New Mexico ever been No.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
But I had heard about this on a different documentary before,
and actually we were. I was watching this with my
daughter because she's now an Unsolved Mysteries fan. She watches
the episodes with me. She also had watched this on
another documentary and we talked. We looked up driving because
Santa Fe to Tucson. It's farther than I thought. But

(01:08:40):
Santafe looks really fun. I would like to go vacation there,
but it's like an eight hour drive. Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
That was the While West. It was a frontier town
back in the eighteen hundreds, eighteen fifty two. The sisters
of Loretto, they decide, listen, they're from Kentucky, and they said,
there are cowboys, there's swindlers, there's outlaws. They live out there.

(01:09:15):
You know what they need the Lord, the Lord. We
need to go out there. We need to preach Christianity.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Sisters. Aren't they Catholic?

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
I think so so Catholicism.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Yeah, preach the Good Lord, you know. So anyways, they
had out seven nuns head there to bring religion to them,
and only five of them end up making it. One
passes away on the trail.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
It's oh, that's terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
I know, I know, it's uh, well, it was treacherous.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
They couldn't just take the amtrak ah no no A.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
And one of them got really sick and had to return,
so only five ended up making it. So they get
there they established, they start preaching, and they what do
they do?

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
They build a church and a little schoolhouse.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
And they did. They built a schoolhouse to help teach
in a church. In April eighteen seventy eight, the chapel
is finished. It's called the Lady of Light Chapel, still
there today.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Took five years to build this, so it looks beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
A lot of work.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
M So, as the sisters are running this church, this chapel,
I apologize. I'm not Catholic, so they don't necessarily always
know the correct terminologies. So if I make a mistake,
I apologize.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
It's due to ignorance, not disrespect.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
We never disrespect any I know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
But that's fine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
So they say, the one of the problems they had
in this chapel his there was no state to the
choir loft. I thought this was actually interesting. So they
built these.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Choirs, they built the loft, and then somehow forgot, no.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Not forgot. The lady says, like this was pretty common
back then, that you would build these lofts and then
you just used a ladder or like a rope ladder
to get up there.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Imagine going up a rope ladder and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
They pretty much said, like that's why the sisters were like, listen,
we can't it's not going to work a ladder to
get there with their dresses and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
There were a lot of clothing, and I don't think
their perophial vision is super great because they where are
those headdresses that come to the sides.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
So this is a problem. So they need stairs to
go up there, but they can't just put one. They
I will say, it looks a little small.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
It's very small.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
They say to put stairs in they would have to
get rid of pews and sitting areas.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
So that's out of the questions, out of the question.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
So they start bringing in carpenters, Hey can you do this?
And I pretty much say no, it can't be done.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
So they needed a spiral staircase, which was not an
easy feet that was highly skilled craftsmanship.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
I don't know, it doesn't say that that's what they
were asking.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
Oh, that might have been from the other documentary, like
they needed there is a fit in a very small space. Yeah, So.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
They they do novena, no vena novena. Yeah. So they
do a novena to Saint Joseph, which is the patron
Saint of carpentry, and they explain and unsol mysteries a novena. Again,
I apologize, I say that wrong is nine days of

(01:12:43):
meditation and prayer. So that's a lot. That's a lot.
And so they do it for eight days and on
the ninth day a stranger appears. He rolls into town
with a donkey, no less, and he says, hey, I
need work. Is there any work around here? And I say, well, yeah,

(01:13:04):
what do you do? He goes, I'm a carpenter. Well
this is what we need. And so he gets to
work and he builds a spiral staircase.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
You guys, this staircase is stunning.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
It's gorgeous.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
It is not just a like standard gets you up
to the loft staircase. It is gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
So they say, like all he had was a hammer,
a saw, and a t square. It was literally the
only tools he had, and he worked on it. They say,
there's a lot of myths, or there's a lot of
stories that he either worked six months or possibly longer.
Around he worked on it, but he finished and he

(01:13:47):
pretty much He turns to him and he says, you
have your staircase. So and it's gorgeous because there's no
center support, so it's just this floating, stunning it does.
It's twenty two feet high, thirty three stairs and it
does two three sixty turns. So and of course they're

(01:14:10):
really excited because yeah, thirty three stairs, that is in
Christianity belief, how old the Savior?

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Yeah, from the Bible, that's what Yeah, crucified.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Yeah, so uh, that's it's a big deal to them, right, Yeah,
So they go to have a feast to celebrate that, Hey,
this man has done this wonderful work. They prayed for
this and they got what they needed and they look
for him.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
He doesn't show up to the feast.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
No, he just disappears. He disappears, and no one knows what.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
He left without what saying, No, they paid they yeah,
he said he needed work and they I'm assuming they
negotiated some kind of price or X, Y or z,
and he left without getting So they.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
The sisters believed that that was Saint Joseph himself come
and built them their staircase. To this day, it is
still there, and it became it has become a tour. Joseph,
you're gonna ask me a question, I'm not going to
be able to take any answer to it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
I can look it up because Jesus's dad was a
carpenter a and his name was Joseph. I wonder if
that's who Saint Joseph is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
I'm going to say you're probably on the right track
on that. That's probably an assumption. But anyway, so in
nineteen sixty five, a man by the name of Oscar Hadwiger.
He stops by. This has become a tourist attraction to
see this beautiful floating spiral staircase. And he is a
third generation master carpenter, and he's looking at the staircase

(01:15:56):
and he's fascinated by it. He's obsessed with it, and
he he says, listen, there's actually a story in my
family of my grandfather, Johann Hadwigger, who was a European carpenter,
and he came over and for two years he was

(01:16:16):
roaming around Colorado and New Mexico, and he told a
story of how he built the staircase. And the two
years that he was supposedly roaming around was during the
same time that this staircase was supposedly built. So Oscar
becomes pretty obsessed with it. They say like he ends
up like building scale models of this staircase. He's lighting,

(01:16:40):
He's sorry. He's writing letters to the sisters saying, hey, listen,
I think my grandfather is the one that built us.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
And plus these sisters hearts, they have one on.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
There, they have a historian and obviously sister today there
and she says, listen, you haven't shown us any evidence.
I don't believe you. I don't think so. I don't
think it was your grandfather, and I'm skeptical. She I
literally wrote that, I don't buy it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
That's it. I was like, whoa, we got a sassy
sister on our hands.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
I don't buy it. Yeahs what she says, you got
to show me some evidence, and he doesn't have. Unfortunately,
Oscar passed away in nineteen eighty, but he does say
that in nineteen seventy Oscar found in his sister's shed
an old toolbox that supposedly belonged to his grandfather, and

(01:17:44):
in it was this old worn drawing of a spiral staircase. Yeah,
with thirty three steps on it. Yeah, like a sketch.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
Yeah that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:59):
Unfortunately, those tools and sketch are no longer. No one
can find it. There's a photocopy of it. Take it
for what it is they show us. Yeah, so Oscar
believed that that was his grandfather. Sisters don't think it was.
They think it was the patron Saints in Joseph himself.

(01:18:21):
So there's your mystery, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:18:23):
Yeah, So any updates on that, No, I look.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
I did look. I read multiple articles. There's actually been
several other people. There's there was an article that says
that it talks about Headweger hand that. But there's also
speculation it was some europe some French European carpenter who
traveled and it could have been hand.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
And if there's any French European carpenters wandering around Arizona
that are looking for work and want to do it
out of the kindness of their heart, stop by our place.
I'll put you to work and then I'll write a
story about you being a mystical man that showed up.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
And so yeah, I mean, unfortunately, there's no way to know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
No, you're never going to this.

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Guy's grandfather did it. I thought it was funny. And
I'll just say this as a man of faith, Yeah,
you know, I do believe in miracles. Yeah, I do
believe that when you pray, God answers a lot of times,
though God does answer through other people.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
That's exactly what I was thinking. That both of these
things in a way could be spiritual. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
So here's the thing. I do believe that these sisters
prayed and that God did send them something, that God
did answer their prayers and give them away. And clearly
this man was extremely talented. So it reminds me of
the story that i'd heard before. And this is not
true story. It's just that it's a lesson. It's a
lesson story, right, Yeah, where there's a man he's drowned.

(01:19:57):
He's drowning. There's a flood of flood comes. He's sitting
on his roof and he's praying and he says, God
save me. And a dude rolls up in a kayak.
He says, hey, man, get in. He's like, no, no, no, no,
I pray. God's going to save me. Water keeps rising,

(01:20:17):
yeah rising. A man rolls up in a canoe and
he's like, hey man, get in. He's like no, no, no, no, no, no,
God's going to save me. Water gets higher. He's drowning.
A guy rolls up with a raft or like a boat,
a big boat, and says, hey, come on, he's got
a bunch of other people, he's got playing room.

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
Get in.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
He goes, no, no, no, no, God's going to save me.
He dies and he gets to heaven and he looks
at God and says, well, I pray for you to
save me. And God looks and he goes, dude, I
sent you a kayak, a canoe and a raft. How
many more things did I need to send you? And
that was This story kind of reminds.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Me that it's a lot of the times and whether
you are a person and of X or Y or
Z faith or you just believe in being a good
human being, I think nine point nine percent times out
of ten, they are our prayers, or our wants or

(01:21:16):
our desires are answered through other people being prompted, led guided.
However you want to look at it, to be that
bright light in your life, to be that raft, to
be that boat, and that counts as a miracle. It

(01:21:37):
doesn't always have to be that Saint Joseph showed up
and did it like this is still a miracle. This
is an amazing, beautiful story. And I understand because I
have a family that is Catholic and Catholicism, like we've
talked about, they like they get miracles sort of and

(01:22:00):
all of this different stuff. So these things to them
are very important that it wasn't just an act of
kindness prompted through God, that it was an actual angel
that came to them. And I don't want to take
that away from them, But you know, I tend to
be on the side of faith that we're all here

(01:22:21):
on this earth together. We are all brothers and sisters.
We are all of the human race, and we are
all meant to do good in each other's lives, and
that that's one of our purposes of being here. And
you know, not to get I guess two religious are philosophical,
but be kind, to do good things, offer up your talent, share,

(01:22:42):
put your light up on a hill so we can
see it, and you know, bless people's lives. And if
you can build a staircase and you can do it
for free to a church like that makes you an
amazing human being.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
Yeah, and the staircase is studying. I'll post a picture
of it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
There's nothing wrong with this story.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
There's a you know, I was just kind of surprised that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
It's and it was just that one one lady. And
here's the thing. But you know what, I'm fine with it.
Like if you want to just believe that God sent
an angel, and I don't know who am I to say? Yeah,
But also I guess I'm also in the camp that
I do believe that God can perform miracles, but sometimes
those miracles are performed through others. He prompts other people

(01:23:28):
and exactly what you already so I won't reiterate. And
this isn't a theological podcast, but it's a good story.
It's clearly you know it's a it is a gorgeous staircase.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
Yeah. So, and after the three terrible unsolved mysteries that
we had to tell you guys about, will end the
stories on that note. As far as go out, do
something kind, do an act a random act of kindness,
no matter how big or small. If you have the
ability to do a huge one, do it and make
someone day better, and you might be answering someone's prayer. Yeah.

(01:24:05):
I even wonder sometimes just I've been out in public
and had promptings to like, ask the person in the elevator,
what's your name? How are you doing, or smile at
someone and be you know, big or small. Sometimes even
small things could really set a different course for people. So, okay, guys,

(01:24:25):
Well that is our recap of seasoned three, episode ten.
If you don't want to stay for our question, feel
free to exit stage right. And for everyone else who
would like to stick around, Ben, if you could have
an unlimited supply of anything, what would it be?

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
An unlimited supply of anything? Wo No, tough question.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
Almost every money does money exactly? That was going to
be the first. I mean, yeah, I guess it counts,
but it's a boring answer.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
I You're like the person that gets three wishes from
Virginia is like, my first wish is unlimited wishes.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Probably unlimited anything. Probably ammunition.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
Is gonna before.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
I enjoy going shooting. Yeah, it's a great. It's me
and my son went yesterday. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Yeah. Yeah. The sport of it is really enjoyable to you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
Yeah, yeah, but you know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
Am is extensive, Yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
So Yeah, give me an unlimited amount of ammunition to
go shooting and I'm down.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
You're down.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
That's a great, that's a good day, all right? What
about you?

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
Well, The very first thing that I thought was botox,
but I could diet coke. But I was going to say,
and I was like, Okay, that seems a little like.
My second thought was if I could have unlimited Fountain
diet coke McDonald's mke Fountain McDonald's diet coke. If you
because no joke, I think a lot of us. It's like, man,

(01:26:23):
if you indulge too much on something, eventually you get
sick of it or you don't want it anymore. No guys,
for what almost twenty years now, I've probably consumed three
to eight diet cokes a day, and never once have

(01:26:43):
I been like, I'm sick of this, I don't want
I'm over it. I think other than early on in
both my pregnancies where I could not I could hardly
take anything in. There was a time there that soda
in general was really unappealing. It made me really nauseous.
But the moment I got recovered, I was like, give

(01:27:04):
me the diet coke of Pulleys. So yeah, if I
could have unlimited fountain diet McDonald's diet coke, that would
be game changer for me.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
So my other one be gasoline.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
You're so practical. And I'm my botox and diet coke
and you're gasoline.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Only because then you can go anywhere and everywhere you
want to go.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
It opens up enjoy a long drive. Yeah, I do
not mind road trips.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
I know, I'm well aware.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
So give me unlimited gasoline where we can just go.

Speaker 1 (01:27:38):
Yeah, unlimited hotel stays like three Hilton's wherever for your
whole life. That would be so sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
Give me, give me an eighteen wheeler.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
Let's let's go. All right, guys, we will see you
again here next week, where Ben and I will recap
another episode of Bye

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