The Woman in the Pines: The Unsettling Case of Judy Smith

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to Chillworthy.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
A podcast where two best friends discuss mysteries, murders, and
anything in between for your enjoyment.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
So if you're ready to hear some chilling and unsettling cases,
you're in the right place, happy listening. Hello, Hello, everyone,
Welcome to another episode I believe, episode four of Chillworthy
with Brent and Talia.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi, everybody, I'm show. Yeah, all right, held on, that's
gone great.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
I know you're doing very well today, So that's wonderful.
It's a beautiful day out.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
All the things I wanted to say. What a coincidence.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Sadly, I feel like we have lost a little member
of the fish family, little Bud.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Quite Bud from Allison Wonderland.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, for sure. Well we don't know for sure, but
it's looking more and more sure.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
No body, no crime.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
I don't think it was a crime. I just think
he we don't know that. But anyway, he was a
little baby platty, the only platty I had in my
tank from his parents' generation, who all sadly has had expired.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
And he was just so tough.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
He was so like a little grain of rice. He
was this little trooper. He was growing up, he was
getting bold. Maybe he got too bold, I don't know,
but he isn't there anymore. So now fascinating. And I
don't think I said this on the podcast, but the
most recent fish that I got, which are those twenty
four carrot gold white mountain minnows.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I think you talked about them.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
On on here though. Oh okay, well I got I
got six more.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
I literally cleaned pet Co out because they told me
they weren't getting anymore because they're on the danger.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
So now, in continuing with the alphabetical superstitions that we've
been doing for D today, we have D is for dog.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
One of my fives.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
So it says, there's an ancient Latin proverb that says,
love me, love my dog.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
I've heard that.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
You have so dogs. Back in Greece, they thought, like
in the times of ancient Greeks, they thought that they
were psychic. They were supposed to howl at approaching evil,
which means marmalade is how at evil three times a day.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
She is keeping you very safe.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
So they just so like, you know, the Greeks just
thought that like they had the power to see bad
things coming. Basically, there's a legend that suggests that howling
dogs were a sign that the god of the wind
had summoned death and that the spirits of the deceased

(03:29):
would be carried away because of the howling. So there's that.
It says, even today, many believe that a howling dog
means someone will die, or that the dog has seen
death and is howling at it. Lots of death around
these dogs. Yes, I thought this would be more of
an upbeat, jovial superstition.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Right, I never heard about that with the howling, that
that was connected my childhood dog. I remember only howled
when like the fire trucks in town would like do
their things fair enough. But otherwise she didn't howl, and
our dogs don't howl. Now you know why does some

(04:12):
dogs howl?

Speaker 1 (04:13):
I don't know, and some don't. So that's the dog. Yeah.
But because that was so short, I'm also gonna do drowning,
which is also super super short.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Sounds super super nice.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
So what it says, yeah, in terms of this superstition,
is that when you see someone drowning, you don't wait
for a third time because there might not be one.
So what it's saying is most people like most people
who are drowning, they rise because there's air remaining in

(04:52):
their lungs and other parts of the body, and that
creates them to be buoyant. So some people never rise
back to the surfaces. Some people never rise back to
the surface at all. Sometimes, if the person has some
control during the crisis, he or she may rise several
times before the air is expelled. In this case, three

(05:12):
is not a lucky number. So basically, I think the
superstition here is if somebody is drowning, they're not gonna
resurface for a third time if they're buman right. One, okay,
two moved, get off your feet. Three ain't happened in
is the superstition. Now I can't say how true that is,

(05:34):
because that's why these are superstitions.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
But you know, there's that wow speaking of water, that
just reminded me of the scene Jumuji was on this morning.
Oh yeah, God, I love that movie. It was very
nice to see it randomly on. I love when a
favorite movie kind of like how you describe your DVD collection,
how much you like that the joy.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Similarly, if you put the TV on and a movie
is on, that is one of your favorites. Yes, you
may own it, yes, whatever, But finding it spontaneously in
the wild like that, not looking for it makes me
especially hippy.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah I can see that.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah yeah, because.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
What if you say, do you know Sarah Whittle that.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Movie and you know, I should try to see if
I can like watch that soon somewhere, Like it's.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Like, I don't know if I have that one or
nice I think I do. F two, I think I do.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
It is a nice fall one though, really I suppose
it's winter when you think about like what people are wearing,
and like how they show the people in town, like
the homeless and they're around the garbage can. Oh yeah yeah,
but it always strikes me as a fall movie leaves
cold temperature or crisp temperatures, I guess because then if

(07:05):
you think about it, it shows the scene of Christmas
when the kids remember, like they're there with their parents.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, at the very end, what about.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
It, then we're Christmas.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
If you think that that makes that a Christmas movie
because of the thirty seconds at the end, you're nuts.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I am not suggesting. I'm saying it confirms it was fall,
Like I think that it was a fall movie. I guess,
because then it bleeds into five minutes of Christmas time.
Do you have any book readings to talk about?

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Nothing at all.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
I don't have anything that I finished. But you would
not be a fan of this book, but there are
so many things in it that you would like. Well,
I started forget Me Not. That's that one by Stacy
Willingham that I said. I had just finished another book
of hers, and it was a dud. I was like
really disappointed. Oh, Flicker in the Dark. So this is
her newest book. It's excellent, but I can't get into

(08:06):
it in like a speedy I'm just very slow going.
But this other one called The Cottage around the Corner
by D. L. SORIAH Soria. So it was recommended to
me and the person said, you know, this has like
themes of You've Got Mail, which is one of my favorite.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Movies, and it's about witches.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
So it's these two women, they're married, they have an
adult daughter. All three of them are witches, and they
have this cottage which is their little shop, and then
they talk about like terror readings. There's like a terror
reading in the beginning of the book, and it was
reminding me of one like you did that as an
episode and then like they talk about crystals, not as
much as I would like, but they talk about them,

(08:54):
witchcraft all it's it's very nice. And then it's just
such an inclusive book to like the different characters, very
like Gilmore, well not very Gilmore Girls, but like a
star's hollow sort of town vibe. And it's like end
of summer leading into early fall. So it's like a
feel goodish ree. There's like a bit of a mystery,

(09:15):
but it's very nice, just nice.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
I have been seeing all the pictures from the new
Practical Magic movie, which I'm excited about.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
So and where's that coming out? When's that?

Speaker 1 (09:30):
What's happened? I don't know when it's coming out.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Movie theater or like uh yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
No with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman going right to Netflix.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
No, so there. I don't know anything about this. So
they're in it again.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, but you've seen the original.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
But I don't remember a bunch I have to. I
was just gonna say, I really should watch that again,
but clearly because I don't remember how it was.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
It open to a sequel, like did it end?

Speaker 1 (09:58):
I mean, yeah, you did read that book? No?

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, me, neither. Yeah, huh. I wanted to watch Casper
the other day, but I felt like it too soon, too.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Soon, I saw it's coming back to theaters. That's what
we're doing now. We're just literally bringing back old movies
because we can't come up with anything good anymore. It's
so sad, so freaking sad.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
I vividly remember that as a child, I wanted to
see that movie so bad, and my grandmother like looked through.
That was when like movie listings were in the newspaper,
of course, and she was looking and like no one
was going to have it nearby, and then she found
this old theater.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
I want to say, why wasn't anybody having it nearby?

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Or maybe I don't remember. I don't It wasn't that
it was all full, like there was an issue where
like I was so upset nobody was showing it, which
makes no sense, but I remember.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
That interesting, okay, very nice.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
So I think we needed to go to this like
odd down nearby that was playing it, and I remember
the theater was super old. I felt like we were
in a basement. It was like it was spooky, but
it fit, and I was mesmerized that movie was exactly
if not better than I imagined it.

Speaker 4 (11:19):
I was obsessed with that movie.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Oh my god, I wanted to live in that house.
I wanted Casper to be my friend. I'm pretty sure
I had an imaginary Casper for a brief period.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
M hm.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Oh my god. I had a little ghost stuffed animal
that I looked up the other day on eBay and
I found it. It was from Hallmark. If you recall,
does Hallmark still exist?

Speaker 1 (11:39):
No? Right?

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, oh okay.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
I mean that house was pretty freaking impressive.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Oh my god. It was so like, even though it
was as spooky as it was, I felt like it
was so cozy. I love it.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, it was cozy. It had a cozy but scary,
but cozy.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Scary I think.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah. I mean like when he put her in the
closet like in the beginning, and like like that hallway
that was a spooky hallway to me, like they were
like underneath the carpet and they it was like rolling.
And then he hid in the bathroom and he looked
like the crypt keeper and yeah, all that stuff. And
then mel Gibson, Yeah, yes, I mean Casper's room was

(12:28):
beautiful and the opposite of creepy.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Those stained glass windows. I also liked the kitchen dining
room area when they would have breakfast. Yeah, I mean
that was gas brothers.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
No, they were bastards, but that that room was obscenely large.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah. So but anyway, Friendship Maine, I might watch that.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
I hope, I hope you do. All right, So when
you're going to move into the case, okay, okay, all right.
So it's my case today, and the case that we
are going to be doing is the unexplained disappearance and death,
sadly of Judy Smith. So here's a little a little intro.

(13:20):
So on September seventh, nineteen ninety seven, a father and son.
We're out exploring a national forest. Now I think it's
pronounced pishka. Do you know that? Or you're just shaking
your head as you guzzle whatever you're.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
My peppermint tea. I'm shaking my head like sounds about right,
but I've.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Well, pis gah gah, yeah, pishka.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Fine, Well that's what we're calling it. It's national forest.
Is it's in western North Carolina. So they came across
a very disturbing scene near the Stony Fork picnic area.
So Scattered around the woods were human bones and personal items,

(14:12):
and these were apparently unearthed from a very shallow grave.
Investigators soon determined that the remains belonged to a middle
aged woman who had likely been stabbed to death. They
say this because her bra showed cut marks and her
ribs had knife wounds on them. Dental records provided the

(14:35):
identity of her, and the identity was Judy Smith, who
was a fifty year old nurse from Massachusetts who had
vanished nearly five months earlier while visiting Philadelphia. The discovery
solved the mystery of where Judy ended up, but it
raised a bunch more questions, because how had a missing

(14:59):
woman from philidel journeyed six hundred miles to rural North Carolina,
Why was she found in hiking clothes that she hadn't
been wearing when she disappeared, and who was responsible for
her violent death, especially that this happened deep in the
Appalachian wilderness. So there we have the umbrella of what's

(15:20):
going on here. So let's give a little background on
Judy Smith. So Judy Smith, she was born Judith Eldred
and she was born in nineteen forty six. She was
a friendly person, a devoted mother of two adult children,

(15:41):
and she worked as a home healthcare nurse in the
Boston area. So by the mid nineteen eighties, Judy had
already been divorced twice. And in nineteen eighty five she
came in contact with Jeffrey Smith, who was a lawyer,

(16:02):
and Judy, I guess was caring for his father who
was not in the best of health and he just
had surgery. So that's how she came in contact with him.
So Jeffrey, you know, I guess, he was very taken
with Judy, and he, you know, she was so kind
to his father and stuff. So they kept in touch

(16:23):
and the two began dating, and they eventually married in
September of nineteen ninety six. So this was like a
very happy time. It was a happy marriage. Friends later
suggested that it did, though, have some strains. For their
first trip as a married couple, Judy decided to accompany

(16:44):
her husband on a business conference trips scheduled for April
of nineteen ninety seven in Philadelphia. They planned to attend
the three day conference and then spend a few days
visiting friends in New Jersey before returning home to Massachusetts.
So from what we know. Judy was looking forward to

(17:06):
sight seeing in historic Philadelphia. Have you ever seen the
Liberty Bell I have? I haven't. I don't care to.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
I wouldn't say you're missing much.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
I don't think I am not my thing man.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
No, no, so much for everyone.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
No, I would say not so. Anyway, she was looking
forward to sight seeing. Jeff was going to be at
his work meetings. So this is where this very bizarre
mystery starts. So now here we are April ninth, nineteen
ninety seven, Judy and Jeff. They fly separately from Boston

(17:45):
to Philadelphia. Because there was this weird kind of mishap.
As soon as I just said about the like mishap,
I remembered that man, what was that one?

Speaker 2 (17:56):
The case? That's exactly what I was thinking. Where he
ended up? What dead in the street? That one with
the wife in the football game, the daughter? That case?

Speaker 1 (18:05):
No Ah, I was like, cute, No, that Gary Sudbrink,
remember him that the aliens calling him is Gary Sudbrink. There,
Remember that.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
I forgot about that now I remember.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Remember that man came up to him in the airport
and it was asking him, like, where are you traveling to?
How long will you be gone? And he thought, well,
this is a little bizarre anyway, So anyway, uh, there
was an odd mishap at the airport, so Judy realized
that she had forgotten her photo ID and post nineteen

(18:41):
ninety six FAA rules required that you need that to
get on a plane. So she had said to Jeff,
you know, just go ahead without me, like I'm going
to go home. I'm going to get it. So I
guess he did. He didn't need to twist his arm.
I don't know anything, you know, maybe Jeff was a

(19:02):
lovely man in the wind in the air So later
that evening, Judy catches a flight, and you know, she
does get to Philadelphia. They stay at the Double Tree
Hotel and Judy brings him flowers to apologize for a

(19:25):
guess that she had forgotten her idea and that they
were delayed.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Interesting, it is different.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Would be sweet though maybe she was just being sweet.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
You know, maybe he was a flower fin and I.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Think that would be lovely. So now, this little incident,
while it wasn't the biggest deal, it did raise some
questions among investigators, like later on, because they were wondering
how somebody who traveled as much as she did, would

(19:59):
just kind of forget get her ID because from what
Jeff said, Jeff explained the new ID rule, you know,
like Jeff basically they were just wondering how you travel
all the time, how would you forget something that's important
for you to get on a plane. Jeff was then saying, well,
this literally just came about though, like this rule is

(20:20):
brand new. So he's giving her grace.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Well, and I'm thinking, like I get where they're coming from,
that something that you're used to always having. But I
feel like that's like when you forget your wallet or
your phone, Like it's not normal, but it happens, Like
it is generally, like you know, you at least remember
to automatically grab them when you leave, but like people

(20:45):
still forget. I mean, mistakes happen.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
They do. Yeah, so you know. But anyway, so now
it's the next morning. It's April tenth, so Judy and
Jeff they had breakfast together at hotel. Jeff then goes
off to his conference sessions and Judy sets out around
nine am for a day of sight seeing in Center City, Philadelphia.

(21:12):
So this was Judy's first visit to Philly and she
carried with her a red backpack, and I guess she
used this instead of a purse like on normal like
when she would travel, she would use her backpack instead
of a purse. So she had mentioned plans to visit

(21:34):
like some of the popular, you know, tourist spots, Independence Hall,
the Liberty Bell, and so the couple agreed that they
would meet back at the hotel around five or five
thirty and then they would go to dinner around six
because it was well dinner slash cocktail party because it
was connected to Jeff's like conference schedule. So that evening,

(21:58):
Jeff returns to their room and he is back by
five thirty, but Judy was not there, so he's thinking, like,
I don't know, do we get our signals crossed or
was there a miscommunication? So he goes downstairs to the
banquet room to look and see, like maybe she thought
we were going to meet at the cocktail party. But
Judy was not at the party either, So now he's

(22:19):
starting to get worried, and Jeff shuffles between the hotel
room and the lobby like multiple times, hoping that you know,
she's just going to turn up.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
She's just out getting him another.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Bouquet maybe right now at six thirty. So he's been
doing this for like an hour, and now he's like
getting very panicky. So he notifies the hotel concierge, and
he begins calling around to like different areas, like the
different Philly hospitals, because now he's scared, like what if
his wife got in an accident or something during you know,

(22:51):
during the day of being like out and about in
the city. But no trace of Judy shows up. So
Jeff takes matters into his own hands. He hired a
taxi and he retraces the route that Judy had planned
to use, because I guess she was going to follow
a very specific route and it was the route of
the purple plash tourist bus. I've never heard of it

(23:16):
purple and then it's spelled pH oh flash lash the
purple flash tourist bus p h l A s h. Yeah,
but well but I'm saying it's not it's not pronounced plash, uh,

(23:42):
Misterifer about the funeral, He follows the route. He's like
cruising around the streets in case she was wondering somewhere
along the way. So he also calls Judy's children back
in Boston to ask if had heard from her that day.
They said that they didn't. One of Jeff's daughters even

(24:05):
rushed to their Massachusetts home to check the answering machine
for messages from Judy, but there were none. Now, dare
I say this?

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Say it?

Speaker 1 (24:16):
He sounds like he's genuinely concerned, a lot more than
some of the stories you've told in the past.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I agree with that, Like people can be bothered to
be around the area where the person last was there.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Home, So I just, you know, I think that that's nice.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
So so now it's midnight, Oh and there is still
no word from Judy. Now just out of curiosity, would
you do anything different? Like what he's doing sounds reasonable
to me, and especially when we all know that God forbid,
you can't say a person's missing until it's been twenty

(24:54):
four hours. So like, would you be doing anything different
if you were looking for some.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
I was thinking that I would be inclined to go
back like home, but it's like, yeah, but she disappeared
there on this trip, So how would you go home?
I mean, aside from calling the police, But I think
I would probably be out there, Like I don't know
if they discussed exactly what she planned to do tourism wise,
but maybe go to those places and say like did

(25:22):
you see this woman, Like did she even make it
to them? Like did she go on the tours? Other
than that, I feel like you'd be walking aimlessly. But
I feel like I wouldn't be able to just stay there.
I would maybe I would, and I would say like
I would want to be here just in case she came,
but I feel like I would want to be out
there like doing something in my head that it was
that was at least helpful or useful, like in the searching.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Well, like I said, now it's midnight. So now Jeff
goes to the Philadelphia Police and he files a report.
Of course, initially authorities tell him, you gotta wait, it's
not been twenty four hours yet. So Jeff is very
frustrated hearing this. So I guess there was at this

(26:06):
conference that he was attending, he had some pretty influential
I don't know if they were friends, but they were
at least work colleagues, one of them being the then
Philadelphia mayor oh ed Rendell. So he kind of like

(26:29):
contacted him and was like, my wife is missing. Can
you help in any way or whatever. So he urges.
So he asked ed Rendell if he can urge the
police to case to case, the take to take the
case seriously like and not make him wait another seventeen
hours or whatever. So, thanks to the pressure of a

(26:53):
pretty important person in Philly, the detectives took a report
that night, and they started investigating Jewey's to appearance within
hours instead of days. So that's refreshing. Although they were
forced into it.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
I was gonna say, sad how it came to be,
but at least there was no pushback or like a
pissing match.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
I thought you were gonna say, or episcopale. All right.
So nevertheless, early on there was a little bit of
set skepticis. One detective speculated that Judy might have had
a midlife crisis.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
And decided to go on a business trip with her husband,
go say that she was going to go sightseeing and
then use that as for a great escape.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
No, well, listen, it's I almost want to say, it's
worse than that. He makes it sound even more trivial.
He says she might have had a midlife crisis and
she simply wondered off for attention. Now, if that's not
like chauvinistic.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
Anyway, others, you know, were wondering if if Jeff's story
was even truthful, which, of course, yes, that is an
so statistically, a spouse is often a suspect when a
woman goes missing, and police had to consider the possibility
that Judy never actually even came to Philadelphia at all.

(28:27):
So for a time, investigators in Philly focused heavily on Jeff,
even questioning I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I'm sorry, I that's all right. We do know though,
that she boarded the plane, or we do not know
if she boarded the plane.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Well, it looks like that the airline ticket does confirm
that Judy did take a later flight.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
That day, confirm purchase or confirm boarding and arrival.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
I think it says that she was like on the plane. Okay,
that's a little bit further down in my story. But yes,
so okay, like I said, they're really focusing heavily on Jeff.
They're questioning whether you know, Judy's trip to Philly was
just like a ruse, and this was an accusation that

(29:21):
deeply upset her family, like not just Jeff.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
So her family was like loyal to him. Like no
one thought Jeff was wonking No.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Not that I'm aware of. But Jeff, even though he
was pissed at this point, he cooperated fully with the
detectives and he even agreed to let detectives interview Judy's
adult daughter privately, like without him being there. Again, wonderful.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Well she was an adult though, you said adult.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, but I'm saying like he didn't even try to
object to them talking to her by him, so like
I'm thinking if he had something to hide, like oh,
we really didn't have a good marriage, he probably wouldn't
want them to talk to her alone. But like anyway,
So ultimately, though evidence did show that Judy truly I'm
sorry to bother marmalade with her with her big.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Sigh of disgust, What the hell was that saying?

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Now, she is very content. So ultimately, evidence did show
that Judy was actually in Philly, so aside from Jeff,
a hotel desk clerk remembered seeing her there at least once,
and another conference attendee recalled her arriving on April ninth.
In fact, they even remember her holding her red backpack.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Oh shit.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Oh so the Airline ticket records confirmed that Judy did
indeed take a later flight on April ninth, using her ID,
consistent with the way that Jeff told the story. Moreover,
Jeff's weight and health research says he was severely obeseh

(30:57):
made it physically implausible for him to secretly haul his
wife six hundred miles basically saying like that would be
very exhausting for him to get her to where she
ended up by himself.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
I mean, I would think if he wanted to kill her,
though Jeff's not carrying Judy on his back like he
would get her to bore. But woods, it's a people
to help pay them all.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
You're right, But that they were just saying he couldn't
have done it solo, is what is what they're trying
to say, because where she was found six hundred miles
away wasn't like on the side of the road. This
was deep yeah, okay, all right, okay, you're okay with
this now, Well, all right, they're just making that. They're

(31:56):
just making this thing because like I said, he would
have had to dump her on foot on the side
of a mountain. And they're just saying Jeff doesn't seem
the tight to be able to do this. Okay, all right,
got it? Okay, thank you investigators in North Carolina, right
when you know, flash forward, flash forwarding, fast forwarding.

Speaker 5 (32:20):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
They rule out Jeff as a suspect because his alibi
was at the conference and that was like confirmed, and
like I said, they just didn't believe he had the
gumption physically to do any of this. So I guess
that's one way to get out of it, is just
be overweight. It's a straightforward way to do it.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
So anyway, I've never heard of it either, but he
gets a pass because.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
I wonder if you know, like if I was like, Okay, Talia,
what we determined here is you're too overweight to have
done anything, So would you be relieved or would you
be like, well, let me, actually I beg to differ
about that.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
You know, I would you know, I'd get into enough.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Listen, if I want to kill somebody, I can do it. Yeah,
keep going.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
And tell me why you seem to be easily angered.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
You seem to be easily upset anyway, so let's see. Okay,
So still now we're back in Philly. The Philadelphia Police
did not formally clear him at that time, Jeff himself,
again being helpful, even offered to take a polygraph test
with the condition that the FBI administer it and join

(33:48):
the case if he passed. So he's even trying to
now bring the FBI, not just the Philadelphia police in
on this.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
I have to say, he doesn't give me bad vibe. No,
like I feel like he sees is genuine.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
I mean, he's going way out of his way to
include police and other law enforcement officials.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
And not avoid like scrutiny for himself.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
No, the opposite of what everybody does basically. So absolutely,
Now what's what's interesting here and doesn't surprise me? The
police refused to do this with the FBI, yep, because
they said the FBI had no jurisdiction.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
I was gonna say, I feel like that we've heard
about before with this pissing match.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, but I mean imagine that the guy's like, sure,
i'll do this for you, but now you actually have
to involve the FBI, who like hopefully has connections everywhere,
and they're like, no, that's all right anyway. So Jeff

(34:54):
is still under this intent scrutiny now from the Philadelphia police,
and you know they search more on him than they're
they like they are. They are focused more on him
than than trying to retrace where Judy went. So whatever, man.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Got a waste.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
All right, So now okay, actually let's stop here a second.
What are your thoughts currently?

Speaker 2 (35:23):
I am thinking the fact that she wasn't familiar with
the area. I feel like taurists stick out no matter
where you are. If someone was watching her, she was
kind of unsure of her surroundings. I mean, it could
have been somebody who was right at the hotel who
saw her arrive and then followed her out. I just

(35:45):
feel like it was someone who either came upon her
or like I said, the hotel Like, I don't think
this was like a premeditated someone she knew from home
followed her there to do this. I'm assuming it was
like a stream jurum that it was like what is
it right place, right time?

Speaker 1 (36:04):
I think it's wrong place or for.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Her it's wrong place, wrong now wrong whatever. I feel
like it was like a crime of circumstance.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
I see, I'm saying, all right, a crime of opportunity.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, what do you think? Well, you know what happened,
But I mean.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Sure, yeah, I'm sure it is easy for if somebody
probably sets out to say I want to take somebody.
I mean, in a big city like that, it's probably
a lot easier to blend in and get, you know,
find an opportunity, one assumes, because there's so many people around.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
I will say, though, what you're saying happens to her is.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Like, what will you say?

Speaker 2 (36:49):
I don't know what did I say?

Speaker 1 (36:53):
You said, now I will say, And I said, what
will you say? And you said, I no know what
did I say?

Speaker 2 (37:01):
What you're saying happens in terms of like how far
away she ends up? Yeah, who the hell had like
the time, energy and resources.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Who's got the time?

Speaker 2 (37:15):
I just feel like that's a little bit of like whoa,
they were committed? Did you have to go that far
with her? Like, I guess we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Well, I guess we will. But I also don't think
for a second that this girl was killed in Philly. No,
the opposite.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Oh you think she was alive, And.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, she was in different clothes. She was in she
was in hiking clothes six hundred miles away. Maybe she
was maybe maybe she was going to have a rendezvous
with someone.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
You know, my mouth escaping open for those of you
who are not here to see it.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
You think those of you she means everyone. You think
I thought you're gonna say you're here. You think I'm
just saying it's possible.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
She You're right, it is right.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
So let's jump back into this fine all right. In
the days and weeks immediately following Judy's disappearance, her family
and authorities they launched this widespread search. Jeff scaled back
his law practice, and he devoted himself to finding his wife.
So he mailed and faxed nine thousand missing persons flyers

(38:25):
up and down the East coast.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
To me, that's also a normal response. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Local Philadelphia news stations ran stories. Judy's children flew out
to help put up posters. They checked hospitals, They scoured
the streets on bicycles for any sign of her. So now,
numerous sightings were reported, but tracking them proved challenging and

(38:55):
usually misleading. Several people around Philly were called seeing a
woman resembling Judy, often described as disoriented or confused. Some
of these accounts are likely cases of mistaken identity. But
because I guess, it turned out that a homeless woman
in the Pen's landing area bore an uncanny resemblance to Judy.

(39:20):
So I guess that's who they were seeing. We can
only take that with a grain of salt. So, actually,
Judy's own son, his name was Craig, he actually encountered
this homeless woman during the search and very sadly thought
he actually found his mom.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Even her son thought it was her, Like, that's how untrue.

Speaker 5 (39:43):
Me.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Second, this resemblance was.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Though, yes, what was your desperation of, like finding your
loved one? Like, oh my god, here she is me.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Right awesome. So again, like we said, we don't even
know if anybody ever saw her after her disappearance in Philly,
but so a few leads stood out though as more credible.
So there was a taxi driver and a hotel employee
who reported that on April tenth, Judy did, oh, okay,

(40:17):
wait a second, I think I think I misunderstood something earlier.
She did go on the sightseeing bus. That's confirmed, yes,
well by these people. It said Judy did board the
flash sightseeing bus as planned and was dropped off near

(40:39):
the hotel in the afternoon. So I thought she was
just following the route on her own. But it looks
like she actually did get on the bus, so my mistake, and.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Like you just said, made it back to the hotel, Like,
did end up back there.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
In the afternoon. Yes, So another tip came from a
Greyhound bus terminal in the city as thought that they
saw Judy there on April tenth, though it's unclear if
she was catching a bus or just stopping in because
her family had speculated that she might that she just
might have simply had to use like the bathroom during

(41:15):
the bus tour.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
So now a little more interestingly, sightings began to surface
outside of Philadelphia, so in the days after she disappeared.
So at a mall in Deptford, New Jersey, which is
just across the river, a store clerk remembered an encounter
with a woman who could have been Judy. This woman

(41:38):
was shopping for women's clothing and mentioned buying a dress
for her daughter, joking that her daughter never liked the
clothes she picked and this was a strange detail that
Judy's daughter Amy later confirmed sounded exactly like what her
mom would say. The witness also noted that the woman

(41:58):
carried a distinctive rights sir ma'am, matching Judy's trademark item
so given like our girl. Given that Deptford Mall is
reachable by just a short bus ride from Philly, this
suggested that Judy might have left the city voluntarily on

(42:21):
April eleventh, the day after her disappearance, and crossed into
New Jersey. Now another account came from Easton, Pennsylvania. Now
this is about fifty five miles north of Philadelphia, where
someone thought they saw Judy. A few days later, a
private investigator hired by Jeff heard from a man, Now,

(42:43):
now we're back in Philly. So Easton somebody said they
saw her. Also, now we're back in Philly. Rittenhouse Square,
beautiful area. Oh yeah, quite lovely, who recalled seeing a
well dressed woman matching Judy's descriptions sitting outside a gourmet
grocery very early one morning, and she looked a little

(43:05):
bit out of place. By the time he read about
Judy in the newspaper, that mysterious woman was obviously gone.
These scattered clues painted an odd picture, though, because if Judy,
if this was Judy in New Jersey and then these
other towns, she seemed to just kind of be like
wandering around, but like why so One especially bizarre lead

(43:32):
involved a woman who stayed at the Society Hill Hotel
in Philadelphia from April thirteenth through fifteenth. The hotel staff,
so what they're saying, Okay, anyway, what they're saying is
there was a woman who stayed at this hotel from
August fifteenth, August thirteenth through fifteenth, but she used an

(43:52):
alias when she checked in.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Well, she either used her actual name or she's Judy
and she used analias, or we know definitively this was Judy.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
You know what I'm saying, Well, we don't know definitively
it was Judy, but the name she used was H.
Period a K. Period Rich Collins, Rich Collins. Yeah. So
the hotel staff, uh gave this woman. Gave this woman

(44:26):
the nickname Weirdo of the week Weirdo because of her
erratic behavior.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Which Judy was not known for.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Was she well, no, but once she disappeared and she's
popping up in eastern Pennsylvania Rittenhouse Square. Yeah. They said
she was speaking in Gibberish, exposing herself at an open
window and claiming that quote unquote, the Emperor would be

(44:59):
sending her money.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
But like this sounds like a mental health emergency. So
did anyone call the police to evaluate her? To, like,
I mean something is.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
If they're Coliner the weirdo of the week, I don't
think so.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Well, shame on them.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I'm not disagreeing with you.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Did Judy's family say she ever had any sort.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
What go ahead, what of.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Like history of unstable behavior?

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Not that I'm aware of, Okay, just asking, man, Okay.
So people were wondering could this have been Judy in
a distressed or altered state? However, most of Judy's family
doubted this was her because the behavior was too out
of character. It's possible this was another person entirely obviously,

(45:46):
given that many mentally ill individuals Wonder City hotels, which
is very sad. Ultimately, both police and Judy's family came
to believe the majority of the disoriented Judy sightings in
Philadelphia were basically cases of miss stake in identity. So
the weirdo of the week most likely wasn't Judy.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
I can't believe that nickname. That makes me sad.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Judy's daughter initially feared that her mother might be suffering
from amnesia while on the streets, and she was quoted
in saying, I thought that my mom didn't know who
she was and was lost in this city, Amy said
one of those agonizing early weeks. That's like what she
was quoted saying in one of those weeks. But despite
exhaustive efforts, none of these leads definitively answered the question

(46:34):
of where Judy went or what happened to her. So
unbeknounced to everyone. I love that word, unbeknounced.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
It's nice.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Judy had likely left Pennsylvania entirely within a day or
two of her disappearance. Maybe that's why she was passing
through Easton, you know, out of getting out of the state,
although that doesn't make sense because it's in the opposite direction.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
That's what I was thinking, like she was going whatever.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Well, no, no, no, well now wait a minute, said
I'm waiting.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
You said she she was going north though, so she was.
I thought she ended up. Oh she's from Boston.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Never right, But she was in the Carolinas.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
I forgot that.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
So okay. So there was a breakthrough in the case,
but it would not come until five months later from
a completely unexpected location far to the south. So now
here we are North Carolina. Random on a late summer afternoon.
It's September seventh, nineteen ninety seven. A man and his son.

(47:49):
As I said to you in the beginning, Oh, I
forgot about that. We're roaming a remote hillside in Pishka
National Forest near Asheville, North care Carolina. It was off
season for hunting, but the pair were out in the
woods when they noticed something very unusual on the forest floor.
Scattered over a one hundred yard area where human bones

(48:12):
clearly remains of a body that animals had disrupted. At
the center of all these bones was a shallow grave
covered by a covered by a thin layer of soil
and leaves, with part of a skeleton still inside of it.
Wrapped around these bones or a blue blanket as if

(48:34):
the person had been hastily buried in it. The father
and son alerted authorities and an investigation began at the scene,
because obviously they had no clue who this was. Forensic
examination determined that the remains were of a white female,
probably in her late forties to mid fifties, an immediate

(48:56):
match for Judy's general description.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
I was just going to say, remind me old Judy
was when this all happened in her fifties.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yeah, the skeleton showed signs of severe arthritis in the
left knee, interesting, and had extensive dental work that was done.
These distinctive clues were publicized, and before long they reached
a doctor in Franklin, North Carolina, which was about sixty
five miles away from where the body was found. He

(49:26):
remembered seeing a missing a missing person flyer for a
Boston woman with an arthreatic knee and lots of dental work.
He faxed a newspaper clipping about the discovered bones to
the Philadelphia police, noting that this was an interesting resemblance

(49:46):
to the Judy case that they were, you know, that
they had posted about. So they acted on the tip
and the detective contacted Jeff back in Boston to obtain
Judy's dental records. When those records were compared to the
recovered jaw and teeth, the identification was conclusive that the

(50:06):
remains were actually Judy Smith, which that is wild. Five
months of agonized uncertainty for Judy's family had now ended,
but it did end tragically. Obviously, Judy was no longer missing,
but she was murdered. The medical examiner's report shed some
light on the death. So, as I told you in

(50:28):
the beginning, puncture marks and cuts were found on Judy's
braw and on several bones, including that she had been
stabbed in the chest because her ribs were the ones
that were all cut up. So her death was officially
ruled a homicide by stabbing, likely occurring shortly after she

(50:50):
disappeared in April of nineteen ninety seven. The scene provided
some interesting evidence so clothing still clung to parts of
the skeleton, notably, Judy's leg bones were wearing jeans, thermal
long underwear, and hiking boots. These were, you know, outdoorsy clothes,
which were totally different from the casual city attire that

(51:12):
Judy had on when she was last seen in Philadelphia.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Not only that seasonally, if you think about it, when
this all happened, like when she was there touring the
city to colder nights out in the woods, Like it
wasn't just hiking clothes, like she was layered for the cold.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
You know, yeah, I do know what you're saying. April
can be chilly, though.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
I thought this all went down in September though or August, No.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
No, in April, April nineteen ninety seven was when she
was walking around the city.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
It was why did I think? What did I think?

Speaker 1 (51:48):
August September, Well, September is when they discovered her.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Oh the wood, make stop.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
That's all right, sorry, anything else you want to fight
with me about.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Me, I'm not fighting all right.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
So, in fact, her family did not recognize these clothes
at all, and they suggested it was suggesting that Judy
or somebody else acquired a new wardrobe for her during
her missing days. But I'm thinking, couldn't she have picked
it up at the mall? Absolutely, she's getting a dressed
right that. The man said, you know, like I buy
this stuff from my daughter. She doesn't like it whatever,

(52:27):
So you know, anyway, maybe that was purchased at the mall.
So near the body, investigators found some personal items. They
found a blue and black backpack containing winter clothing and
about eighty dollars in cash. They did not find a
red backpack. Just so you're just so you're aware. So

(52:48):
they found this blue and black backpack containing eighty dollars
in cash and a shirt buried nearby with another eighty
seven dollars in the pocket. Random it was one hundred
and sixty seven dollars that was around this area. But
what's interesting was one hundred and sixty seven dollars that

(53:09):
they found and two hundred dollars in cash is what
Jeff believed Judy had with her when she disappeared, so
take that as you will. Judy's wedding ring was still
on her hand and intact. Also found was a pair
of expensive sunglasses, which Judy's family said did not belong

(53:32):
to her. Now. Again, like I said, what was very
fascinating was that the red backpack was nowhere to be found,
nor was the outfit that she had on when she disappeared,
or any of her personal items that she had taken
on her trip to Philadelphia. So it appeared that whoever

(53:53):
had buried Judy took some of her belongings, or perhaps
Judy herself have left them somewhere else during the six
hundred mile trek from one place to another. So the
condition of the grave told investigators that Judy had likely
been killed on that remote mountain side and buried there.

(54:15):
The grave's location was nine miles from Ashville, near a
secluded picnic area. It's unlikely someone transported a body there
from far away, given the very rough terrain, certainly not
if they were obese. I added that in there, but
that's what the police said. So Buncobe County detectives theorized

(54:40):
that Judy was not killed elsewhere and dumped, but she
was probably alive when she arrived in the Asheville area
and was killed while they were in the woods. The
presence of all of her cash and jewelry on the
remains strongly indicated that this wasn't a robbery. Instead, the
evidence hinted at any more mysterious scenario, because again, Judy

(55:05):
had somehow traveled hundreds of miles on her own and
was living like a traveler or hiker in the Ashville
region for some time before being killed. When you were
scratching your neck, I thought you were like saying, come here,

(55:26):
not in the middle of.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
My stewory, I asked. Not that this really matters, I guess,
but I'm just curious, Like, did Judy's family make any
comments that she was what?

Speaker 1 (55:40):
What?

Speaker 2 (55:42):
That she was like an avid hiker at home? Like
was that an interest of hers a hubby?

Speaker 1 (55:47):
I don't think it was.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Why were you laughing?

Speaker 1 (55:53):
I don't remember? All right. So, once Judy's remains were identified.
Detectives from Philadelphia and North Carolina were faced with a
very weird timeline that they had to reconstruct. Because Judy

(56:13):
disappeared from a busy city on April tenth, her body
then found in a rugged forest in September. How did
she end up in North Carolina, a place that she
had no connections to and had never expressed any interest
in visiting. As investigators dug into this question, they found
that several witnesses in the Asheville area had reported seeing

(56:35):
a woman matching Judy's description back in April nineteen ninety seven,
shortly after her disappearance. These accounts, once considered like local tales,
took on new importance. Well, yeah, I would say so.
For instance, a clerk at an Asheville retail store vividly
remembered chatting with a friendly, middle aged woman in April

(56:57):
who said that her husband was an a turn me
from Boston. I have the chills. Surey attending a conference
in Philadelphia. Well that's pretty damn spot on.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
That very specifically convenient. Uh.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
The woman mentioned that while her husband was at the conference,
she herself had decided to come down to the Asheville
area for a bit all right, that's alrighty Rooney.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
That's I don't know what that is.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Because then it's pretty damn bizarre, is what that is.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
It is. But then also when this came out, did
the person who reported it know anything from like news stories?

Speaker 1 (57:43):
You know what I mean? It is a good question.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
I don't know. I just feel like that it was
enough information to be like, wow, that's got to be her.
That's insane to then like okay, and then what like
then what did she say?

Speaker 1 (57:54):
And like, I don't know, so she decided to come
down to the Asheville area for a bit. The clerk
noted that nothing about the woman seemed off. The clerk
is quoted in saying, she seemed very alert, she was
very pleasant. I didn't see anything that would indicate that
she wasn't right in any way. So now there's another

(58:17):
thing at the famous built More estate, which is a
tourist attraction. An employee also believed he saw Judy touring
the grounds in that same timeframe, and this is down
in Yeah. Even more intriguing were reports from the rural
area near where Judy's body was found. The owner of

(58:39):
a campground in that vicinity told police that around mid
April nineteen ninety seven, a woman driving a gray sedan
filled with boxes and bags pulled into the campground. She
inquired whether she could spend the night sleeping in her
car on the property. When the campground owner said that

(59:00):
she wasn't allowed, the woman drove off again. A local
deli owner in the area similarly reported that the woman
fitting that a woman fitting Judy's description, drove up in
a gray sedan and bought thirty dollars worth of sandwiches
and a toy truck from the store.

Speaker 4 (59:19):
What the heck?

Speaker 1 (59:23):
Very bizarre. Now if this was you, it would have been
thirty dollars worth of.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Cheese, absoulutely, no, no bread, and no toy truck. More
cheese I could have got from.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Mind, certainly not so why did she need so many
sandwiches or toy truck? Nobody knows.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
The toy truck is so disturbing to me. Not of
like her buying that for someone, but that like she's
not quite right and just made such an odd purchase.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Yeah. So, these witness sightings were considered cred credible by
the local county investigators, especially once Judy was confirmed to
have been in the area. They suggested that Judy was
seen alive in North Carolina between April tenth and the
date of her death, and that she was behaving calmly
and voluntarily traveling around the Asheville region, seemingly by herself.

(01:00:12):
I mean, if she's driving to campgrounds and trying to
sleep in her car, nobody's it's not like unless somebody's
hiding what in the back seat under the boxes with
a gun? Sounds like a pretty strange setup, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Yeah, And like, where did she get the car? Is
it a rental? What is happening? If I were her family,
this would haunt me obviously, would haunt me for the
rest of my life because she was killed. But like her,
the big mystery of how she ended up there and
why would just haunt me forever. You can't make any

(01:00:48):
sense of it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Yeah, so, one hotel clerk even claimed, bless you. One
hotel clerk even claimed that Judy stayed at their Ashville
hotel from April tenth to twelfth and appeared perfectly normal
during her stay, So she wasn't the weirdo of the week.

(01:01:12):
Not there, not there. If true, this overlaps with the
very time that she was being frantically sought out in Philadelphia. However,
that particular lead, which surfaced on a blog years later,
remains unverified. So what they do know, though, is that
none of Judy's credit cards, bank accounts, or phone cards

(01:01:34):
were ever used after she disappeared, and no plane or
train tickets were purchased in her name. So basically, Judy's
journey left virtually no paper trail at all. It's as
if she dropped off the grid after April tenth. She
likely traveled by cash, and perhaps by alternate means, like
a bus ticket bought like under the name of an

(01:01:55):
alias or something. Maybe she hitchhiked. I don't know. The
gray Sedan witnesses saw could have been a car that
she somehow acquired or borrowed, or it might have belonged
to the person who ultimately killed her. The lack of
financial or electronic traces deep into this mystery of how
Judy managed to cover these six hundred mild on her own.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
And like if she was doing it intentionally, so nobody
knew where she was going. But then with what he
the husband thought, he remembered her having cash wise, and
she didn't use her car to get more cash. Barely
used any.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Cash of what he thought she had.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
That's so weird to me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Well, I keep thinking about like this potential how I said,
like rendezvous or whatever, And I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
What if this potential person that let's just say she
had a love interest had a kid, and so she
went to get a bunch of like sandwiches, like Deli
meat blah blah blah, and a toy for the kid
because they were gonna go hiking or something.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
You think she had like a secret child.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
You mean, I'm not saying she it was her kid.
I'm saying, what if this person she might have And
again this is all whatever theoretical, but like person she
was interested in might have had a kid, and so
she was in this other state buying food for maybe
they were going away for a few days, going hiking

(01:03:23):
for a few days. Hey, maybe the little guy or
girl wants a toy truck. You know what I mean,
I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Yeah, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
So all these clues point to a scenario that is
as heartbreaking as it is confusing. Judy Smith, for reasons unknown,
apparently made her way down to the Appalachian Mountains of
North Carolina in the spring of nineteen ninety seven and
was living and was living or traveling there for at

(01:03:54):
least a short period. She was not being held captive
because she interacted normally with local and she was by herself.
She did not run out of money, because she still
had cash when she was found. Something happened during that
journey that led her to being stabbed and hastily buried
in a lonely forest. Investigators were now grappling with why

(01:04:16):
Judy went to Asheville and who she might have crossed
paths paths with there, which.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Is so like, you know, I'm an idiot for not.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
I don't you dare say that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
It's like in any of these stories, it has never
once dawned on me that someone could be in the
middle of having an affair, wanting to leave their spouse
or partner or whoever, and kind of not that she
can well she kind of did, Like if that's what
happened here, what a convenient sort of like I mean

(01:04:54):
bizarre to use his business trip and getting there to
sort of.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
A your way out and abandon your not just your
spouse but your family.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
That's what I keep thinking, exactly, and like, yes, they
were older, but still they think she's well, she is
dead now but like they thought, something horrible happened. Meanwhile
it did eventually, but like what the heck? And nowhere,
Like I said, in any of these missing person stories,
do I that has ever crossed my mind? Not to

(01:05:24):
say that that's always what's going.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
On when you're to broaden your horizons, right, right, so
you know from the outset of this, right. The case
of Judy Smith presented law enforcement with two very distinct mysteries, First,
her unexpected journey to North Carolina and second, the fact
that someone killed her. So over the years, several theories

(01:05:49):
have been explored to connect these dots, but none have
been consecuted. No, I'm sorry, but none have been conclusively proven.
One line of speculation is that Judy traveled south voluntarily,
perhaps to take a break from her life. Now crazily enough,
this is actually one of those times where they always

(01:06:09):
try to make it into this and this actually could
be one of those times. Start starting right, But anyway,
she travels south voluntarily, perhaps to take a break from
her life or to resolve some personal issues. Despite Judy's
family reporting no marital problems, one close friend Caroline Dickey

(01:06:31):
told I guess this was done on Unsolved Mysteries once
Oh Wow, told the Unsolved Mysteries people that at the
time this happened, Jeff and Judy's marriage was very tenuous, so.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
And no one else said anything.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
No, According to this friend, something might have triggered her
to want to have some time away from Jeff. It
is true that Judy and Jeff had only been married
eight months, so adjusting to a new marriage, especially if
it's your third marriage, could bring a little bit of stress. Okay,
that's fine, and you know, in reality, if it was tenuous,
that doesn't necessarily mean that Jeff did something like meaning

(01:07:10):
like he was so cooperative. It's like maybe she just
needed to get the hell out of there, not because
he tried to do something to her, but just like
she you know, it is weird, like, well, obviously, so
many of these things are weird, but it is strange
that you would fly to Philly to do this. But

(01:07:30):
then I'm also thinking, well, flying to Philly is like,
let's pretend for whatever reason, however, she ended up in
North Carolina she wanted to go there. Oh well, yeah,
well it does make sense though, why wouldn't you hop
on a plane with your husband to Philly because that's closer,

(01:07:54):
Sue Well is like six hours from Philly, So I
mean that's a nice little skip from start, right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
I was thinking, if she wanted to do this, why
not have him go himself? And she skipped him he's away.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
Right, which I yeah, makes more sense. But I'm saying,
I guess if you are trying to get to a destination,
you already know you want to be fly because because
also if you think about it, she's not going to
buy a plane ticket to get there on her own.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
Oh that's traceable exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
So it's like, this is a good excuse to like, hey,
I'll cut six hours off of my journey completely legitimately
and fly you know six hours, well fly what an
hour and a half or whatever instead of driving an
extra six hours.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
But now you're I think, gone to something, and that
makes me even more sad if like that's what was
going on here, and then look at how it freaking ended.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Like yeah, so tragic. So of course people don't know
did they have you know, was it really tenuous or
did they just have like a big argument in Philadelphia?
Of course, then I think back to Carrie having an
argument with that stupid Russian man oh in Paris. He
was horrible. I hated that man. I know you with

(01:09:13):
a passion.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Felt very strong.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
I hated that man.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
I assume he's your least favorite love interest then of hers,
not counting the.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Little bits and bobs, Yeah, yeah, I probably. I mean,
what's that motorcycle man I didn't like? Yeah, he's a
bastard too.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
He was probably my least favorite started Okay, he was quirky.
I liked that about him. I thought this is a
big change. Well, Aiden was quirky too, but I just
felt like it was a good change. And timing wise,
there was a I was going to say a shrimp,
and then I was going to say a snake. Uh,
And I was going to say a clam. A snail

(01:09:53):
was just falling. The sky is falling. But he so
quickly turned into an unstable weirdo.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
What about David Dukovney.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
He adorable. He was only in there for what he had.
He was a sex addict. He needed help. Wasn't that
in real life as well? Or am I just thinking
of real life?

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
I'm pretty sure he was a sex.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Adagt No on the show. No, I don't think. So
she went to go see him at a right, but
not because he was a sex addict.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
It so just David Ducovny's a sex addict.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Yes, I see, all right, we're gonna veer back here. Okay,
that's all right, So okay, So anyway, you know, so
she heads to Asheville. Maybe so Asheville is a known
tourist friendly area with a lot of beautiful mountains, so
maybe that attracted her and she thought like, oh I'm good,
I could clear my head there. So this theory says,
you know that Judy wasn't initially a victim of foul

(01:10:51):
playing in Philadelphia at all, but more like again, like
we said, this crazy thing where she chooses to disappear
herself for a short time, and I guess crazier things
have happened until she tragically encountered a killer in North Carolina.
So supporting this idea is Detective Sam Constance of the

(01:11:13):
Buncombe County, which is the North Carolina place, who concluded
after an investigation that Judy was not abducted on her
way to Asheville, and all signs suggest that she went
there by her own free will. And was moving around independently.
He also argued that Judy was probably killed right where
she was found, given the difficulty of transporting her body

(01:11:35):
up this remote slope. In his view, Judy perhaps met
her murderer while hiking in this forest, and a crime
of opportunity, as you said, happened rather than any premeditated
interstate abduction.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
I'm kind of off of that now though, with all
the affair talk we've been having, Like it's just me, yeah,
but I think you're onto something. Man. The money is
what I keep going back to, and how she was
potentially not killed for several days, didn't use her cards.
Where else would she have gotten money from by not

(01:12:12):
using all of her cash? Granted it was back then
like money went farther than but still, yeah, it makes
me think someone was like taking care of costs for her.
And now what you said about the truck, the little
truck food for multiple people based off like her sandwich bill.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Like, well, you know what's interesting about that when you
say it is if she was if if Jeff said
she had two hundred dollars when she disappeared, the guy
at the sandwich shop said she bought thirty dollars worth
of sandwiches and a toy truck and one hundred and
sixty eight dollars was found, which then.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Makes me think that whoever this person was, maybe like,
did she meet them in Philly hence where the car
came from. It was some it was this person's car.
She didn't have I mean, there was no credit card
for a rental place.

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
But I'm saying, like, that's what would have happened to
that that amount of money that's missing exactly, and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
That's what I'm saying, Well, no, that would have been
actually while she was there, so scratch that. I'm thinking
that that was purchased in Philly the same witches in
the truck, but that was down once she was in
where Asheville. Yeah, so yeah, but no, I agree, the
amount of money makes sense too, like the difference. So
I just feel now her, I think with how you're

(01:13:31):
describing this location and how it was difficult and she
what this guy is saying that she most likely where
she was found is where she was killed. It makes
me think it was like an opportunity, not for a
stranger potentially, but like more so for whoever this person
was that was like hey, let's go hiking. She's dressed
for it, like she wasn't right brought there. I don't know.

(01:13:54):
I mean, I just am imagining it to be like, hey,
let's go do this. This could be fun. Maybe that's
their interest, not hers, Like you said, she wasn't known
for being like a hiker, and then this was a
way to dispose of her in their eyes e R.
Which I mean, I assume you're gonna say, don't obviously
say yet if you plan to, but like that it

(01:14:14):
wasn't solved. And if that's the case, I don't know
this one has.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
In the beginning, I said, this is the disappearance and mystery.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
I thought you said disappearance and death. I didn't remember
you saying mystery, sir.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
I think it is he but okay, so.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
And a time sorry, that's all right, where when you
think of it too, with like potential car travel, whose
car is this, like you know, driving down there, it
was a time where surveillance was really a thing, you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Know, I know you love to say that the nineties,
I know all about it, doesn't like.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
At that time. So she kind of so she kind
of was able to like fly under the race.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Slither about yes, creep about Yes, Wow, ahead and I
go into her. That's okay, You're okay with it. I
am all right. We don't have very much to go,
and we do it. We just have a few more theories.
Another set of theories considered that Judy might have experienced
a medical crisis or a mental breakdown that led her

(01:15:32):
to just kind of get the hell out of Philly.
Her husband had initially wondered if Judy could have gotten
confused about their meeting time or location, which is why
he wasn't immediately panicked when she didn't show up. But
some have asked, could Judy have suffered a mild stroke
or other cognitive event while alone in Philadelphia, triggering like
a lot of disorientation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
But if she had a minor stroke, she gets herself
down to Ashville and is bopping around town, interacting your
man I wit shop owners and buyinger sandwiches. You know
what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
I do know what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
I don't. To me, that sounds like a desperate theory,
like that's.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Not likely, so you know, like you said. Later sightings
in Asheville, though, described Judy as behaving very normally and lucidly.
Uh So that argues against the fact that this could
have been like a theory that holds water if you
will wood or wait now, investigators also visited another angle,

(01:16:33):
and this is the angle of the serial killer.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
Goodness, gracious. One notorious name had come up, Gary Michael Hilton,
later nicknamed the National Forest serial Killer WHOA got the
chill chillworthy.

Speaker 5 (01:16:54):
He was.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
He was known for murdering several female hikers.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
No in for I hate these stories.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
In Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida in the mid two thousands.
One of Hilton's known victims was left in a forest
in North Carolina, not far from where Judy's remains were found.
So could Hilton have been active a decade earlier and
killed Judy Smith's Judy Smith? It is a very obviously

(01:17:26):
it's an unsettling thought. But authorities have found no evidence that,
you know, like that links him to this. But that's
obviously creepy about a man just roaming the forests looking
for female hikers.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
You know, no, thank you, that's Harry. You are a
hiker I like to identify as one.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Yes, a light hiker.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Yeah, and I find Yeah, you bet you're sure, don't
you know? It's certainly no like through hiking ever, you know,
anything crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Camping out there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
God, we were just talking about that last night. No,
you have or have never been camping. Let me take
that question back. You have or have never been.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
I'm talking tent camping in the wilderness.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Thank you. That's what I meant.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
I'm sure all the people listening or else saying thank you. No,
the closest I got was like at a campground, like
you know, like in a tent, but like like a
campground campground right where like things weren't going on. It
was just a place to go camping, so like it

(01:18:49):
was kind of a little more like rurally, you know.
But that's as far as it's gone. And I I
can't imagine a circle fumstance where I would be like, yeah,
let me get a put a tent on my back
and climb up a mountain.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
All of this so far, what you're saying sounds great
to me.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
Continue and then have me set up a little campsite
as the sun's going down.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
Fine, still fine.

Speaker 1 (01:19:22):
Yeah, and then it's nighttime in the middle of the farts.
I'm not even saying by myself right, just But what
creeps me out about that thought more than anything else,
is so not so much the animals.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Rightow, bears are not on your radar, but I mean whatever,
they're on mine.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
It's not so much the animals, but it's more like
what creeps me out about a tent is that it's
so visible to everyone else, but you can't see anyone else.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
First, so it's like, you go inside your tent, you
light it up with a lantern. You've now just created
a beacon for any weirdo.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
A lovely silhouette right who's just walking right walking around
in the middle of a place that they shouldn't be
walking around it at night. And now you just you know,
lit yourself up like a little car reflector to say,
come one, come all. I don't like that bullshit. I
know if I had.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
Like the the ability to maybe magically wave my hand
and have like a little tree house that I could
pull a letter up, that might be different.

Speaker 2 (01:20:31):
Yeah. So I am absolutely right there with you with
the human scare factor, yes, and bears. Bears to me
are like land sharks, but not that I think they
can feel my energy like a shark would. Yeah, I

(01:20:53):
I do not think a bear is there for it.
I don't think they give a shit about me. I
think a bear cares about my snacks and my head
and that's it. Like, that's it, And there's so much
to remember about bear?

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Is there?

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Does he care? There's too much to remember about bears
with like, Okay, here's a bear. Okay, what kind of
bear is it? Okay? Depending on the kind of bear
it is, you have to do two different things with
how you react to it. Like you're either talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
Black bear, you try to scare it. A grizzly bear,
you play dead. Simple, what did you say? A black
bear you try to intimidate it because they're more timid
and they scamper off unless they have babies, and then
that's scary. But if it's a grizzly or a brown bear,
that's when you play dead. I be like, nothing to

(01:21:44):
see here.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Well, also, I thought those were the ones then, whoever
you played dead for? I thought those are the ones
where you talk to like they're a child and you
do back away. Do you also know it? Says?

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:21:56):
Granted I am not a runner the best runner out there,
Like I'm talking Olympic freaking relay race runners. I don't
know what speed they run at either, but like I
read something where it's like, under no circumstance can you
ever outrun a bear?

Speaker 6 (01:22:12):
Of course not, but that's insane to me, Like they
are so big and wonky and big to to think
that they can run that fast.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Isn't that insane to you?

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
Wild?

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
It is? Speaking of that, I forgot to tell you,
and I can't believe I've forgotten this many times now,
this many.

Speaker 6 (01:22:35):
We came across a bear, I would have freaking called
you immediately.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
There are bears in my sister's backyard. You've said, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:22:44):
Go ahead, we've been watching. Sorry, sorry, we've been watching
alone again.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
I know I knew you wouldn't be about.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
That, but I'm really not bear. You have no decorum.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
I didn't mean to cough.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
Saying you were doing so good, but you're flinging that
mic around like it's a freaking like you're trying to
lasso with some kind of cattle out in the field.

Speaker 4 (01:23:14):
I just bears.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
Mean business, and same with sharks. But like I have
have said, I.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
Think give me a bear any day of the week.
Are you seriously wow, Okay, all right, we're really really
close to ending. I'm not worried about it, so that

(01:23:48):
makes one of us right. So basically the aftermath of
all of this right, because it was never solved. So
Judy's husband, Jeff, and her children had to come to
grips with this devastating end about how like she was found.
Her bones were found in the woods and in the

(01:24:09):
shallow grave and how or why no one knows. So
Judy's remains were cremated and they were brought home, but
the investigation into her homicide remained very much active. Authorities
from Philadelphia, Boston, and North Carolina all coordinated to piece

(01:24:30):
together Judy's final days. I find it odd that Philadelphia's
okay with working with Boston North Carolina but not the FBI,
but whatever whatever, who am I No arrests were ever made.
In nineteen ninety nine, the governor of North Carolina joined
with Jeff Smith to order a this is a very
odd number, seventeen thousand dollars reward. I know it was

(01:24:53):
the early well the very very late nineties, but what
an odd amounta arbitrary yeah, for information leading to the killer.
Hopefully someone would come forward with a crucial tip. Sadly,
that reward went unclaimed. Jeff also sadly passed away in
two thousand and five at the age of fifty nine.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
So young and so shortly after this.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
So he never knew what really happened to his wife
or why she died so far away from home. Over
the years, Judy's family's story has been featured on true
crime TV and media, including Chilworthy. A segment about her
case aired on Unsolved Mysteries Like I Told You in
two thousand and one, bringing national attention to this very

(01:25:39):
bizarre circumstance. No suspect has ever been publicly identified, so
investors' investigators in North Carolina continue to keep the case
on file. They are receptive to any new leads, but
they you know, I mean, at this point, what the
hell new leads are they going to get?

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
Well, is it then actually closed? It's not question.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
Mark, I don't think it is. Yeah, Judy's story, you know,
just basically has this plea for answers that it seems
nobody can ever give. Someone out there might know something,
but as of right now, they have not come forward.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
So what a nightmare, absolute nightmare on so many levels.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
So As of today, twenty twenty five, the investigation remains open.
Judy Smith's memory lives on through her family and the
many true crime enthusiasts who keep her case alive in
hopes that one day a clue will emerge to finally
solve the heartbreaking mystery of Judy Smith. And that is

(01:26:42):
all I have to say on the topic.

Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
Good job man, thank you. That one was very brutal.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
What are you think we've heard? Brutal, brutal and like
a just sad, We're.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
All sad, brutal in a way of just like everything
I already said, I won't go very mysterious, yes, yes,
and that she It is not Judy's fault, absolutely not.
I'm not trying to say that.

Speaker 4 (01:27:12):
It's extra sad if you will.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
To me that perhaps I will.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
If she was sort of up to something leading up
to her demise, essentially, it just makes it even more
nightmarish to me, like it could have possibly been avoided,
you know, if she did put herself sort of in
like odd situations, not her fault, but that like, if

(01:27:40):
there was scheming involved, you know what I.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Mean, I do, But once again we shan't know.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
Oh yeah, exactly I know ever ever, ever, but so
made Judy rest in peace.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
I was just about to say that, but thank you
all right, you can say it any time you want.
Thank you all right, everyone, Well, thank you so much
for tuning in to episode four of Chilworthy with Brett
and Talia, and you know, until we see you again,
stay safe and stay chill.

Speaker 5 (01:28:13):
Bye everybody, goodbye, you've just listened to Chilworthy.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
Thank you for joining us on this latest episode. While
we strive to keep our discussions engaging and lighthearted, we
also wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the real
lives and events that are at the heart of these stories.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
We try to approach each topic with a sense of
curiosity and respect fully, aware of the impact these events
have had on the individual and their loved ones. Our
goal is to honor their memories by keeping your stories
alive and shedding light on the mysteries that surround them.

Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate
and leave a review, and don't forget to join us
on the next episode of Chilworthy.

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