Karina Holmer Pt. Two

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
of our series about the murder of Karina Holmer. Robin,
do you want to catch everyone up of what we
talked about in our previous episode?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Well, this particular crime took place in Boston in June
of nineteen ninety six. Karina Holmer was a twenty year
old from Sweden who decided that she wanted to live
in the United States for a while, working as an
o pair for a family living in the Boston suburb
of Dover who had two children. Their names were Frank
Rapp and Susan Nickter. She would live in a loft
on the weekend with the family during the week and

(01:01):
one Friday night, she decided to go out to a
club with some friends called the Zanzibar, but then she
just seemed to disappear. None of her friends actually saw
her leave, and about thirty six hours later they would
find the top half of her torso inside a trash
bag and a dumpster located a couple miles away, and
it turned out that she even sliced half right at
the wrist that whoever did it went right through their spine,

(01:23):
but the lower half of her body was never found,
and it turned out that her exact cause of death
was strangulation. Frustratingly, we had so many different conflicting eyewitness
accounts from the nightclub that no one could figure out
the circumstances of how and when Karina left. It did
sound like that she was heavily intoxicated, and the boyfriend
of one of her friends she went with said that

(01:44):
they saw her leaving in a Mitsubishi with two very
aggressive guys who told him to back off, but no
other witnesses could corroborate a story. There are other witnesses
who saw with a panhandler on the alley named Juan Polo,
who did have a history of being accused of being
involved in a gang rape and whose ex girlfriend was
murdered under strange circumstances, but they weren't able to find

(02:05):
any evidence against him. She had also been seen talking
with a man named Herb Witten, who would shoe up
outside these clubs with his large job, both stressed up
in Superman costumes, but they couldn't find any evidence against
him either, and a couple months after that he died
after slitting his own throat. Because he had a history
of depression, and mental health issues, and it's been suspected

(02:26):
that being a potential suspect in a murder might have
been his breaking point. They looked at a couple other suspects,
a death metal singer named John's Whiz, though there really
wasn't anything to connect him at all. All they found
were some human bones inside his residence, but and he
lived near the dumpster where Karina was found, but otherwise
there was nothing else on him. A couple months after

(02:47):
Karina was murdered, there was a real estate broker named
Gregory Hummel who picked up a woman from the same
sands of our nightclub, took her back to his apartment
and attempted to sexually assault her before she contacted the police.
But otherwise they found no evidence against him either, and
the case has pretty much been unsolved for nearly thirty years.
They've even looked at her family, Frank Rapp and Susan Nicker,

(03:09):
but there's no evidence against them either. So we've had
all these potential suspects but no evidence against any of them,
and the case continues to remain unsolved all these years later.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well about four and a half years ago. On episode
two twelve of the Trail went Cold. Robin covered another
cold case involving young female Swedish victims, and that was
the unsolved murders of Marie Lillienberg and Maria Vilen, who
were both killed while hitchhiking together through California in July
of nineteen eighty three. Like Karina, the two women left

(03:40):
their native Sweden in order to spend some time living
and working in the United States, but wound up being
murdered before they can return home. I see no reason
to believe that there are any connection between the two cases,
but these stories are truly nightmarish situations for the victims' families.
How can you keep up with the investigation and spread
awareness about the case when you live on an entirely

(04:03):
different continent located thousands of miles away. Karina hailed from
a small village with a population of less than one hundred,
and I'm not sure if her family has ever traveled
to the United States to meet with the investigators on
her case. They're pretty much in a position where they
can do nothing but wait, and they haven't received any
answers in nearly thirty years. I'm sure the situation is

(04:26):
particularly haunting because Karina had been planning to return to
Sweden earlier than usual because she was unhappy with her situation,
and sent that cryptic letter to one of her best
friends which she stated that quote, something terrible had happened,
but she would not provide any further details until she
arrived home. So of course you have to wonder if
this terrible thing she was referring to had any relation

(04:50):
to her murder. This is a case where a number
of individuals had been looked at as possible suspects, but
there's no real evidence pointing towards any of them, So,
for all we know, perhaps Koreenan was murdered by someone
who has yet to pop up on the radar. It
seems like there are an awful lot of weird coincidences
in this story which have led the investigation in unexpected directions.

(05:13):
For instance, you might be familiar with the story of
Rafi Kodikian and David Coughlin, two friends from Boston who
went on a hike in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National
Park in August of nineteen ninety nine. They wound up
getting lost, and by the time they were found Kodikian
had stabbed Coughlin to death in what he described as
a mercy killing, since his friend was badly dehydrated and

(05:36):
suffering so much. Nevertheless, Kodikian was still charged with second
degree murder and served sixteen months in prison. Well, believe
it or not, the reason this story got linked to
Karina's case is because Rafi Kodikian just happened to live
in the same apartment building next to the dumpster where
Karina's body was found. He was even briefly questioned by

(05:58):
police at the time, who were performing routine canvassing of
the building's residents. Of course, when Kudaiki Ain't got charged
with another murder three years later, investigators checked into any
possible link with Karina's case, but the whole thing turned
out to be nothing more than a coincidence.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
So interesting, I'd love to know more about that case
where he still got charged with second degree murder. I
wonder if you know, I don't know. I guess that
you said he should have been helping more with his friend,
who's I'm assuming dying in while they're not being found.
But regardless, it's so bizarre that he's actually near her

(06:36):
apartment right, he lives in that same apartment complex. Yet
I highly doubt there's any kind of crossover there. There
are two very different scenarios. The reality is is you
have a tragedy that happens to live near a tragedy,
and so I think that's the only thing that really
seems to tie those two together.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
So before we talk about possible suspects, we have to
look at the circumstances of how Karina went missing before
she was killed. We know that she was parting with
friends at the Zansobar nightclub and apparently became quite intoxicated
before she got separated from them, and her body was
subsequently found in a dumpster thirty six hours later. Since
the medical examiner believed that Karina was alive for at

(07:18):
least twenty four hours after she was last seen, this
might indicate that she was held in captivity for a
prolonged period of time, possibly even tortured before she was killed.
But if so, who was responsible and how did Karna
cross paths with the perpetrator? Well? One of the most
frustrating elements of this investigation is that we have a
number of conflicting stories about how Karina left the nightclub.

(07:41):
Some of them placed her walking away from the club
down the street, but the version that is quite different
from the others involves Karina climbing into a gray Mitsubishi
with two unidentified men who yelled profanities at the boyfriend
of one of Karina's friends. If this account is accurate,
then this suggests that multiple people were involved in the murder,
but I find it odd that there don't seem to

(08:01):
be any other witness who could corroborate this guy's story.
That's not to say that I completely discouted, as Karina
had apparently told one of her friends that she was
planning to go to an after hours party with an
older man, so for all we know, one of the
two individuals inside the car might have been him. Given
Karina as a depriated state, I can definitely see a
situation where a group of men drove her somewhere to

(08:23):
take advantage of her. But how do things escalate to
the point where these predators sliced her entire body in half.
I'm not sure if investigators placed much credence into the
witness's story because even though he supposedly came face to
face with two men who may have been complicit in
Karina's murder. The authorities had never released detailed descriptions or
composite sketches for these guys. But further complicates this situation

(08:47):
is that there were reported sightings of Karina at a
twenty four hour convenience store in the Back Bay neighborhood
between three thirty and four thirty am, which would have
been about an hour or two after she left the club. Yes,
eyewitness is a missing person's cases are often mistaken. But
since the store was located only a block from the
dumpster where Karina was found, I guess you can't discout

(09:08):
the idea that Karina walked to this neighborhood on her own.
But the issue is that the lot where Karina was
staying was located in the Fort Point neighborhood in the
complete opposite direction. So why would Karreina be frequenting a
store in this particular area.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
And I'm assuming we had no cameras right at that
convenience store.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
No, we didn't know, Okay.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
So that's difficult because we've all we've all know about
eyewitness identification and people thinking they saw someone, especially after
they become a.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
News newsworthy individual.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
But let's go back to these two guys that are
in the car. One this friend is describing these two
guys getting into a Minsubishi with her being aggressive with him.
Is it possible there's no composite release because he's honest
and he's like, look, I was so drunk. I don't
know what these guys look like. I was frustrated that
they were being jerks. I stumbled back into the bar.
But I'm very confident that there was two men in

(10:00):
a Mitsubishi, and that's about all I can remember. That's
a possible reason why you don't see composites. Also, it's
possible that these two guys really did take her back
and even together took advantage of her. But one left,
and if she was kept alive for another, you know,
several hours or a whole nother day, it's possible she

(10:20):
was only with one of those individuals in maybe the
apartment or home where she was taken. Let's say the
other person had to return home, had to go to work,
had to go back to their family. The actual killer
might have done it solo and simply taken advantage of
an intoxicated woman with his buddy. And then it turned
sinister after the friend left.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
That is possible. I mean, I would like to think
that the friend would come forward if he suspected, if
he found out that this woman was killed after he
was seen with a man he knew. But if it's
a case where he did something wrong, like took advantage
of Krena, then he would have his own reasons for
not wanting to come forward. And that's why I do
still think, like I said, that the scene of her
leading with these two guys and things going horribly wrong

(11:04):
does make sense. But it's just so frustrating to me
that there is just no one else who can say that, yeah,
I saw this Mitsubishi, and I saw these two guys
with Karina.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
So let's start going through our gallery of potential suspects.
It's been reported that Karina was dating a Boston police
officer at the time of her murder, but this person's
name has never been released publicly and we know nothing
about his background. All we know is that he had
an alibi and was never considered to be a suspect.
But of course, online discussions about this case have pushed

(11:36):
forward conspiracy theories about the reason the murder is still
unsolved is because a police cover up took place in
order to protect this man. Well, even though there was
definitely serious issues with corruption in the Boston Police Department
during the nineteen nineties, there is no evidence at all
to support the cover up theory, and I'd like to
think that most cops would draw the line at protecting

(11:58):
a fellow officer who dismembered his girlfriend by literally slicing
her body in half. With the limited information that we
have about this policeman, I really have no reason to
believe that he's the killer. And I feel the same
way about John z a Whiz, who's link to this
case is tenuous, to say the least. I'm not familiar
with Zowiz's work, but he is a prominent enough figure

(12:20):
on the industrial music scene that he has his own
Wikipedia page. The only reason he even appeared on the
radar is because he lived a few blocks away from
the location where Karina's body was found, and he had
enough weird memorabilia in his apartment and bizarre aspects of
his musical act that some people thought that he might
be capable of murder. But Zuwiz almost sounds like he

(12:42):
was a victim of Satanic panic to me. He claimed
that when police started interviewing him about the murders, they
asked him questions like do you worship the devil? Of course,
nothing was found to implicate Zowiz in the crime, but
even though his band's Sleep Chamber was reasonably popular at
the time, it sounds like the combination of Zuiz's heroin

(13:02):
addiction in him being looked at as a potential suspect
and a murder caused a major downward spiral for the band,
and they wound up going on hiatus for several years.
Zuiz was able to overcome his addiction issues and is
still alive today, and you can actually find an interview
with him on YouTube from two thousand and nine where
he talks about his connection to this crime. Oddly enough,

(13:25):
Zuiz states during the interview that Karina's boss was the
one who actually murdered her. But this is not accurate
at all, since no one has ever been charged with
the crime and there's no more evidence against Frank Rap
than any of the other potential suspects.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Was he still an addict when he made that recording,
because it's not like he said, you know, in my
personal opinion, this is why I think I was suspected,
and then this is who I believe would have had
a bigger reason to do it or you know, but
it sounds like he was almost off the cuff, like
I know exactly who did it. It's Frank rap and
almost that he's, you know, someone with a mental health
issue or a substance abuse issue at the time, and

(14:02):
then now is sober.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
I think he was clean by two thousand and nine
when he did that interview. I remember seeing it, so
he was going through a lot of disorders back in
the nineties, but I think he was fine by the
time he did the interview. And it sounds like he
never specifically said Frank Rapp's name. He just says, oh, yeah,
I was implicated in a murderer, but it turned out
the woman's boss was the one who killed her. So
I'm guessing maybe he's just misremembering or something he or

(14:24):
got it crossed up with another case. But obviously we
don't know who actually murdered her.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
It's a pretty bold thing to say, like that could
be considered libelous because it's pretty easy to look up
who her boss was at that time.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, and or like Robin said, yeah, and
or like Robin said, it could also be the way
he said it. I mean, if reading it's hard, you know,
but if he did it more like Robin said, like, oh, yeah,
you know I was suspected this is the guy who
actually got arrested for doing it. Maybe he really thought that, yeah,
in his memory he remembered someone being charged with the crime.
But when you go back to to the boyfriend, I

(14:59):
can't imagine. And yes there's corruption, Yes, maybe someone's assaulted
and you hide it. Yes, maybe you know you have
some really corrupt officers who would hide a murder. But
by the time your partner in crime, who's supposed to
be having your back, right, your police officer partner is
cutting women in half and brutally, you know, committing a

(15:21):
crime of this nature, doesn't it make you scared to
serve next to him, Like if he can do that
to her, what could he do to us?

Speaker 4 (15:28):
Because this is a whole nother level.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
So I'm with you guys, where I think there would
have been a line drawn there. I don't know that
I would have covered up for something this horrific, even
if I was part of a dysfunctional department. And so
I think the boyfriend's got to be let off the hook,
And I agree there's more of that satanic panic with
Zo Whiz.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
I don't believe that he.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Had anything to do with it, just a suspicious person
because he was quote different and dark and disturbed at
the time. He was sick and so once he's sober,
I think maybe he's misremembering it.

Speaker 4 (15:59):
It sounds like the way and said it, he.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
Almost thought he remembered the case being cleared with the
boss at the helm of it.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
That's what I'm thinking as well. Though I've always wondered
if he's ever going to get a cease and desister
order from Frank Rapp to pull down that YouTube video.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, I'd love to watch it and see the tone
because if he accuses him, I would Jules, you might
be facing a lawsuit.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
And Ashally, maybe you can speak to this because you
understand a lot more about police departments and like institutions
in general. But I know within corrupt police institutions and
just within police departments as a whole, there tends to
be a bit of a domestic violence blind spot. And
I know they've done a lot of departments have done

(16:42):
a lot of work to bring themselves forward so that
you don't have police responding to calls where there's domestic
violence which includes a cop and then them not taking
a report or not reporting it. But I would think
in this case, if one of their fellow officers girlfriends
was murdered, that they would draw the line with not

(17:04):
only just a not only a murder, but a murder
in which her body was bisected and half of it
was never found. I would think most people at that
point would throw up their hands and go, Okay, you
know there is a brotherhood here, but like this is
where it stops.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, I absolutely think so. I think when you think
about someone who literally becomes like a brother or sister
because they are putting themselves at risk every day with you,
and because people do create an air where it's normal
to be almost corrupt. If your department is right, young
rookies come in, they aren't corrupt, the people training them

(17:42):
might be, and therefore corruption becomes not abnormal, and it's
not even it's like an abusive home right where you
go like, oh the abuse is so normal, Like okay,
we're all kind of part of it, and we're all living.

Speaker 4 (17:53):
In this dysfunction.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
And so some of it isn't even conscious that the
dysfunction that occurs in some kinds of police departments and institutions.
But you also do have that issue with domestic violence, right.
There's high rates of divorce and abuse and things like
that in high stress careers, and law.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
Enforcement is one of them.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
And so I think if you had a dysfunctional group
of officers. Let's say a boyfriend girlfriend fuss all the time.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
We already know they.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Have issues, and let's say she dies and the buddies like, hey, listen, man,
you know we got a fight. She died, I could
see corruption occurring there because they're all like, oh, man,
been there, done that, been in awful fights with my wife,
things like that.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
Not okay, really sick.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
However, again, when you look at this crime, it is
not just an accident that occurred and nine when one
was called, or you know they're covering.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Oh, this is a suicide in set of a murder.
It's none of that kind of corruption.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
This is a body is found almost discarded like an
animal would be cut in and half of her body
is missing, and it's so precise, it's so thought out.
I would never want to serve next to a person.

Speaker 4 (19:08):
Like that, especially with a weapon.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
So I can't imagine another officer saying I get it, man,
I understand, I'm going to cover for you. I think
they'd be scared to work alongside him.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
At least one officer would have cracked if that were
the case, if they suspected him of doing it.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. There would have been ia all
over that. At least one person would have come forward
and like, look, I can't even stand for that, right.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
So I guess now would be a good time to
discuss Frank and his wife, Susan Niictor, who employed Karina
as an o pair at the time, And even though
they never been named as suspects or persons of interest,
you'll still find people direct suspicion towards them during online
discussions about this case. Obviously, one of the biggest unanswered
questions is the cryptic letter Karina sent to her friend
in Sweden, in which she wrote quote something terrible has happened.

(19:55):
And other letters to her family, Karina had expressed unhappiness
with her own pairent job, mostly because of the workload
it required, and seemed anxious to return home earlier than planned.
But this particular letter suggested that something much darker was
taking place. While Frank and Susan always maintained that they
didn't notice anything to suggest Karina was unhappy, some online

(20:16):
slusive speculated that the terrible thing Karna referred to might
have been Frank taking advantage of her. In fact, one
prominent theory the reason Karina's body was sliced in half
was to cover up the fact that she was pregnant.
This wouldn't necessarily mean that Frank was the culprit, as
a completely different person could have gotten Karina pregnant. If so,
this would mean the crime was much more personal, rather

(20:38):
than Karina being murdered by a random stranger she encountered
on the night she went out party. However, I can't
say I've ever put much stock into this theory, because
even if a fetus had been removed from Karina's womb,
I'd like to think that there still would have been
medical evidence to indicate if she had been pregnant at
some point. After all, even though Karina had been sliced
in half at the waist on the lower half of

(20:59):
her boy, he was missing her torso was still intact.
But getting back to Frank, rapp I guess one of
the main reasons people have speculated that something may have
been going on with him and Karina is because he
allowed her to spend weekends staying at his photography studio,
which doubled as aloft, So theoretically, if they were having
an affair, this would be an ideal place for them

(21:20):
to carry it out, away from Frank's wife and children.
It's also worth mentioning that Karina was technically in the
country illegally while she was working as an all pair,
as the family had hired her through a rather shady
Swedish agency which placed o pairs in the US without
securing them a proper work visa. So if anything inappropriate
was going on well Karina was employed in that household,

(21:42):
she wouldn't have much leverage to complain to the authorities
without fear of being deported. It's also worth mentioning that
there were past issues in Frank and Susan's marriage, as
back in January of nineteen ninety one, Frank was actually
charged with assault and battery against his wife, which prompted
her to request a temporary restraining order against him. But
a few months later Susan asked that the charges be

(22:04):
dropped against Frank, as she claimed his actions were the
result of issues with alcoholism and he was now undergoing treatment.
She would later say that the incident was the best
thing that could have happened to save their marriage, and
to Frank's credit, I get the impression that he did
genuinely turn things around. I see no indication that there
were any more serious issues with the marriage, and if
you search online, you'll see that Frank and Susan are

(22:27):
still together to this day.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Well, okay, let's go back to that a little bit.
When you see that Frank is arrested for assault on
his wife and there's assault and battery charges there, and
then later she drops the charges. This is a very
common occurrence, right. You have a husband and wife who
are fighting, and she's scared enough to press charges, and

(22:50):
then she wants the charges dropped because Frank's a good
man who happens to get abusive at certain points, and
there's that psych of violence that occurs where she sees
her husband as a dual kind of person, right, the
abuser and the man who's a good father and husband
and hard worker and things like that. And so when

(23:12):
you think about that, cycle right where she's walking on eggshells.
There's an eruption, there's abuse. That's when she needs the police,
That's when she calls. But then Frank's going to present
as the other side where he says, I, you know,
I never meant to do that. I'm so sorry, and
then she welcomes him back in. That's the father of
her kids, that's her stability, that's her life. And so

(23:34):
is Frank a good man?

Speaker 4 (23:35):
I don't know that. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
Goodman make mistakes and good men have trauma and issues
as well. But if Frank was a systematic abuser of
his wife, she would defend him even if she knew
something was going on, because.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
She's doing it here.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
If Frank is not a good man, then you might
see that he could have been doing something like have
an affair right, be an abuser consistently. But again, that
doesn't make him a murderer, and that doesn't make him
a murderer who's going to cut his victim in half
with precision. It's possible, but they don't equate, right, And

(24:13):
I think it's important to say that you can have
someone who makes really poor decisions or someone who's fueled
with a mental health issue or trauma and acts out.

Speaker 4 (24:21):
In a dangerous way, But it doesn't make them a killer.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
So motive, yes, especially if he's having an affair, especially
if things are going wrong, especially if he's worried about
getting caught up in some legal issues because of having
this illegal individual at his home who knows but doesn't equate.
Definitely a problem with the way Susan and him have
their marriage, but that doesn't make him a killer.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Even if they were having an affair. He had an alibi,
and like, what are the chances that he would be
able to somehow shirk that alibi and then find another
location in order to do this to her body. I
don't believe the pregnancy thing either, because if you were
going to bisect a body to pregnancy, I don't think
that you would necessarily you would know, you there would

(25:05):
be some clues left. I would think because her upper
body was found, which would included her torso, So I
would think that you would like trisect the body, right,
maybe take off the upper body and then take off
the torso, which would be the part that would be
the most sensitive, and get.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
Rid of it.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
But it just seems so odd that we don't know
anything about Like we know that there was other O pairs,
but we haven't heard from any of these other O
pairs the way that Frank and Susan treated them, have we, Robin.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
We haven't. No, Like, no real diurtists come out about them,
other than Frank's domestic abuse charge from the early nineties.
But like I said, after he went into rehab and
they got back together, it seems like they have lived
a model lifestyle for the past thirty years.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
It's interesting how during the early stages of the investigation,
Frank and Susan told the media that they've been cleared
to suspects, but law enforcement never officially confirmed or denied this,
so I'm not sure if they were completely ruled out.
This doesn't necessarily mean that police believed the couple was involved,
as no source close to the investigation told the Boston Globe.

(26:19):
Oh as one source close to the investigation told the
Boston Globe quote, no one's a suspect, but everyone's a suspect,
which implies that they were not eliminating any possibilities. As
far as Frank and Susan's alibi during that time period
that Karina was killed, they always maintained that on the
evening of Friday, June twenty first, they took their kids

(26:40):
to McDonald's and a drive in movie. This wouldn't necessarily
rule them out, since Karina went missing sometime between two
and three am on the morning of June twenty second,
and her body was not found until the afternoon of
June twenty third, But it sounds like Frank's parents were
visiting for the weekend and could pretty much account for
the couple's whereabouts. I mean, technically, I guess Frank could

(27:02):
have snuck out and killed Karina while the rest of
the family were sleeping, But how would he have known
where to find her? How could he predict Karina would
be leaving the Zanzibar night club at that particular time.
If Frank was able to kill Karina at the loft,
then that would make sense since he had access to it,
but there's no indication that Karina ever made it back
there after she left the club. Police even performed a

(27:24):
search of the loft with a trained dog, but found
no evidence to suggest a crime had taken place there,
which you would expect if it involved a victim being
dismembered and sliced in half. I guess one troubling issue
which put Frank and Susan in a suspicious light was
the fire that took place in the dumpster near their
condo on the night after Karina's body was found. And

(27:44):
there's also the coincidental timing of Frank securing a permit
at a nearby transfer and recycling station on the night
before Karina was found, though Susan told the press that
this was only done for the purpose of disposing of
recycled newspapers since their Konda Minium complex did not have
recycling facilities. Since none of the burn materials were covered

(28:05):
from the dumpster had any connection to Karina's case, it's
certainly possible that the whole incident was nothing more than
an odd coincidence. And really, if Frank or Susan wanted
to burn incriminating evidence, I'd like to think that they
would be smart enough not to do so in a
dumpster located so close to their residence. During a twenty
nineteen news report on the Boston radio station WGBH, Frank

(28:30):
and Susan commented on how frustrating it is when you
type the name Frank Rapp into Google these days, many
of the top matches mentioned him being a potential murder
suspect rather than a successful photographer. Indeed, it is hard
to imagine Frank committing such a brutal and horrific crime
and then being able to live a normal life with
his family for the next three decades. If the couple

(28:51):
are completely innocent of any involvement in Karina's murder, then
you definitely have to feel sympathy for Frank and Susan
as in addition to the ensuing suspicion directed towards them.
I'm sure that this must have been a very traumatic
event to experience.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
And think about the kids that she was brought here
to take care of. It had to be traumatic for
them as well. And Frank's a photographer. Does a photographer
know how to perfectly cut an individual in half and
leave no damage to the rest of her body? Think
about this, when when they discovered her torso the upper

(29:27):
half of her body, what kinds of injuries were to
the rest of her body?

Speaker 2 (29:32):
She had been strangled, but I don't think they found
any other noticeable injuries to her at all.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Okay, so there's no stab wounds or things like that,
And It's interesting because had she gotten in a lover's
coral or been in a fight with someone, I feel
like that would have been evident that you would have
seen much more of let's say, like she got stabbed
or she had been assaulted physically over and over again

(29:57):
prior to being strangled. Would have been the kind of
the end of that fight. And it doesn't seem like
her body showed signs of that. It's like someone who
knew exactly what they were doing. They had done it before,
they got excited about watching her, you know, to pass
away in the way that they strangled her, and then
perfectly we're able to not only cut her but also

(30:19):
then discard of the lower half without getting caught. I
think this is someone who knows what they're doing because
they've done it many times before, and it's not improbable
that they did it after as well.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Did they do a talk screen?

Speaker 2 (30:31):
No, they If they did, they've never mentioned it publicly
because I didn't find that information. I mean, we know
that she was drinking that night, but I haven't heard
anything to check if these to see if she took
any drugs.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Because what if he gave her a paralytic or something
because that would explain why there would be no defensive wounds,
because if she was restrained, we would likely see marks
from that.

Speaker 4 (30:51):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yes, and they said there were rope marks around her
neck to indicate she'd been strangled, but no other marks
or bruises or defense of wounds. So now we'll move
on to discuss three other individuals who have been looked
at as potential suspects because they have connections to the
Zansabar nightclub, as two of these individuals were seen interacting
with Karina after she exited the club on the night

(31:14):
she disappeared. The first one was one Polo, an unhoused
panhandler who was seen singing and dancing with Karrena and
an Alley while she was intoxicated, and it certainly wasn't
unreasonable to suspect him since he had a criminal history
and at least one rape accusation. It's been reported that
Polo was questioned in relation to the murder of a
former girlfriend named Evelyn Alvarez, which took place one year earlier. Unfortunately,

(31:38):
other than one article published in the Boston Globe in
April of nineteen ninety five, I cannot find any additional
information about this crime, so I have no idea if
it's still unsolved. But one interesting detail in that case
is that Evelyn hailed from the city of Chelsea, located
directly across the Mystic River from Boston, so investigators wondered
if she was murdered in the Boston area before the

(32:00):
killer drove to Lakeville to dispose of her body. Regardless,
no evidence was found to suggest that Karina and Evelyn's
murders might be connected. And while it does not sound
like Polo was officially ruled out as a suspecting Karina's case,
the fact that he was unhoused and did not appear
to have access to a vehicle would seem to point
to him not being the killer. If Polo murdered Karina,

(32:21):
where would he have dismembered her? And without a vehicle,
how could he transport both halves for her body and
dispose of them?

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Absolutely, that's exactly what I thought, right. If he's unhoused,
he has nowhere to take her. There's a belief that
she was kept alive after she left that bar for
about twenty four hours, and so she had to go somewhere.
We actually have her running back in the bar and
telling her friends, I'm going somewhere with this older man.
So we know that she had plans to leave, but

(32:50):
they needed transportation to do so, right or they needed
at least a place to go, and so I just
don't see Polo having those options.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
For her now herb Witten our second potential suspect who
spoke to Karina outside Zanzibar. He did have access to
a vehicle, but the fact that he was pulled over
and given a ticket for speeding later that morning does
seem to give him an alibi. I can see why
people might be suspicious of Witten since he lived over

(33:19):
twenty miles away in Andover and would drive to downtown
Boston with his dog and hang out outside bars and
nightclubs in order to talk to women, and since he
went to the trouble of dressing himself in his one
hundred and twenty pound dog in Superman shirts, I could
see women being inclined to go over and chat with them.
Even though there was surveillance footage of Karina chatting with Witten,

(33:40):
this might not have any significance, as it sounds like
Witten was doing this sort of thing long before this
encounter with Karina. I see no indication that Witten was
accused of being malicious or creepy towards other women while
hanging out around Boylston Place, and it might just be
an unfortunate coincidence that he was seen chatting with a
young woman shortly before she was murdered. Now, some would

(34:03):
argue that the speeding ticket does not completely exonerate Witten,
since he possibly could have had Karina's body inside his
trunk while this was taking place, and thus the Eaters
have never publicly released the exact time that Witton was
pulled over that morning or confirmed that his vehicle was searched.
But I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't, since this
sounded like nothing more than a routine traffic stop.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah, I don't think that Witton could could possibly be
the person here. I think, like we talked about earlier
in the first episode, is that he creates this kind
of illusion of someone who's almost humorous and laughable, someone
who's quirky because of the costumes, and would be somebody
that I would want to strike up a conversation with.

(34:46):
But when you look at the idea that he gets
pulled over later that night, that clearly he's struggling already.
I don't see this as somebody who's going to have
the wherewithal to them to be charming to the extent
that he could lure someone away from the bar with him.
I think he would send off red flags that hey,
I'm maybe not a bad guy, maybe I'm not a
dangerous guy, but I'm lonely. I want attention from people.

(35:11):
I'm desperate to talk to people, and I don't think
that's somebody that Karina, even intoxicated, wants to go with.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
I know that it definitely raised some eyebrows when Wynten
decided to take his own life in January of nineteen
ninety seven, particularly since he did so by slitting his
own throat, which seems like a pretty extreme method for suicide.
So did wit and kill himself out of guilt for
what he did to Karna, or did he just crack
from the strain of being a potential suspect and a
homicide Well, after reading about Wynd's history of struggles with

(35:40):
depression and mental illness, I am inclined to believe it
was the latter. It's worth noting that even though police
announced that they were looking for a man with a
large sheep dog who had been speaking with Karina outside
the club, and the media lad reported that this man
had died by suicide. Wynn's name was never released publicly
until weeks after his death. Winn's attorney also prevented him

(36:01):
from being formally questioned by police, as he felt that
Wittin could not mentally handle an interrogation. But even though
Witten was never named as a suspect or person of interest,
it sounds like just being associated with this crime in
any fashion took a hole on his fragile mental health,
and he may have been the breaking point which drove
him to suicide. And you also have to couple this

(36:22):
in with the fact that Wynn's own father had recently
passed away, and it sounds like you took it pretty hard.
It was not until the lead detective on the case,
Thomas O'Leary, was asked about Witten in the June twenty third,
nineteen ninety eight edition of The Boston Herald, when he
publicly stated quote, he didn't do it. Indeed, one reason
why it's hard to imagine Witten being the killer is

(36:43):
because he had a history of erratic behavior. But Karina's
murder was meticulous organized crime, and it's hard to imagine
Witten Orjan Polo for that matter, being able to commit
a murder like this without leaving any evidence behind.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
That's very true. I think that when you have this
idea where even the lead detective right comes out and says, hey,
Winton told me that he didn't do it right, it's
hard to think about this idea that he's a ratic,
and this crime clearly is not. There's not a piece
of evidence that shows that somebody haphazardly did this crime out.

Speaker 4 (37:16):
Of a mental health episode.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
It was planned, and so I just do not think
that either Witten or Polo have that ability to commit
the crime. I just I don't see it. I see
those two men. I see it this mysterious older man man.
I see that being a much more plausible explanation, and
or don't forget there is the stranger element as well.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
I agree, I just don't see Polo or Witten as
very good suspects. Pollo doesn't have a place which he
would be able to do this act, and he doesn't
have a vehicle to transport him to a place even
if he did have it, And then Witten. It just
sounds like it's really sad. It sounds like a sad
situation of a man who was struggling with mental health issues.

(38:03):
And I don't find it personally suspicious that he decided
to end his own life. It is really horrific to
think what he went through in the moment's leading up
to that, and the method that he chose is just
it's awful, and I really feel for him and his family,
and I hope that that dog found a good home
after so Our final potential suspect is Gregory Hummel, who

(38:26):
was not seen with Karina at Zanzibar at the time
she was killed, but made the news six months later
when he picked up another young woman from the same
nightclub and proceeded to take her back to his apartment
and attempted to rape her. She managed to grab Humble's
mobile phone and lock herself in the bathroom to call
for help. But if this hadn't happened, could she have
potentially suffered the same fate as Karina. Well, Humble did

(38:50):
have a history of allegations of violence against women, There's
still a big difference between beating and sexually assaulting them
and murder and dismemberment. We were unable to find much
follow up information on the investigation into Hummel, only that
he spent a year in jail for his attack on
the other woman. And incidentally, if you search through the
Boston Globes archives, you'll find Hummell's name listed multiple times

(39:13):
in their real estate transaction section for selling houses during
the mid two thousands. So it does not sound like
his jailston curtails his real estate career. But even though
Hummel violently attacked a woman that he picked up his zanzibar,
I'm not sure if he could be placed at that
same club on the night that Karina was there. So,
for all we know, perhaps investigators were able to establish

(39:35):
that he had an alibi and ruled him out.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yes, absolutely, When you look at this idea that he
attacked another woman from the same bar that our victim
went missing from, that doesn't equate to the level of
crime that happened against Karina, right, That is a totally
different element and realm of violence. And so when you
look at this, I think that he could have had
an issue with women, but I don't again see a

(40:00):
profession that indicates knowledge of being able to bilaterally cut
her right and to dispose of a body that way,
it just doesn't scream to me the same level of criminality.
So assaulting somebody horrific, But when you look at cutting
a body in half, discarding her, and strangling her to death,

(40:21):
those are not that. That's not at the same level
that this real estate agent is showing in his other
types of crimes.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
And what do you guys think of the timing too? So, say,
just for example, that a man was to do this
to Karina, and we could hypothesize that there was some
kind of paralytic use because there was a lack of
defensive injuries, and aside from the rope burn around her neck,
there was no restraint marks. She didn't have any other

(40:50):
abrasions contusions, So it's very possible that she could have
been given some kind of drugs so that she remained calm,
so that this person could potentially sexually assault her or
do what they were going to do to her without
her fighting back. But then in this case we see
a really sloppy assault where he's incredibly violent and didn't

(41:10):
go to any steps to use any type of drugs
to subdue his victim. I just don't see the offender
connection here. It just seems like two completely different crimes.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Yeah, I totally agree, and I think that if Hummel
had this incident happened with a woman that he picked
up at an entirely different nightclub, they wouldn't even be
attempting to connect him to this case at all. It's
only because of the coincidental timing. But I do agree that
it seems like Karina's offender would be the type of
person that if he wanted to sexually assault a woman,
he would give her some sort of drug, whereas Humble

(41:44):
was just more violent and aggressive, and that's why this
woman managed to save herself. However, the one thing which
might point away from Humble, Polo Witten, Frank Rap, or
any of the other known potential suspects is the partial
fingerprint which was found on the trash bag can take
Karina's body. While this has never been publicly confirmed, I'd
like to think that investigators at least attempted to compare

(42:06):
the print to the fingerprints of all these other individuals
I just mentioned and found none of them to be
a match. So this is why I'm inclined to believe
that the perpetrator might be someone who has never been
investigated or shown up on the police's radar. It might
be hard to imagine someone going to the trouble of
slicing a woman's body in half and then never committing
another crime like that again. But after nearly eight years,

(42:29):
we've still never determined who is responsible for the Black
Dolly murder. So, for all you know, Elizabeth Schwortz killer
may have gone back to living a normal life and
didn't commit any more murders. The whole crime is such
an anomaly because we don't know of any similar murders
which took place in the Boston area during that time period.
So did that killer move elsewhere or change the remo,

(42:49):
or did they just simply never kill again. We have
to harken back to Karina's cryptic letter about something terrible
having happened, because while this might be nothing more than
a red herring, it could also hold the key to
the mystery. But until then we can only speculate, and
since this is a cold case which may not be
solved through D and April filing, it might require the
right person coming forward with information. So if you happen

(43:13):
to know anything about the unsolved murder of Krena Holmer,
please contact the Boston Police Department Unsolved Homicide Unit at
six one seven three four three four four seven zero.
That's six one seven three four three four four seven zero.
Or if you want to send any tips anonymously, please
call the Crime Stoppers tip line at one eight hundred

(43:33):
four nine four tips. That's one eight hundred four nine
four eight four seven seven Jules Ashley, any final thoughts
in this case?

Speaker 3 (43:42):
You know, for me, the hardest part about this one
is that her family was not here. They were not
able to really get a glimpse of her life here.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
In the United States.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
They weren't able to understand the people she was hanging
out with. And then they have no idea how the
investigation's going, right, Who's this family she was with, Who's
the people she was hanging around, what happened to her?
When they're processing the scene and when they're handling her
body and all of these things, that's just they're so
removed from it that has to definitely emphasize the grief

(44:12):
and complicate the grief. You know, I wonder if they
have guilt of saying, listen, we let her go try
this new adventure, when really they should be so proud
of encouraging her to go pursue a dream in America,
have a new life.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
It's just exciting.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
And yet I guarantee you there's so much hurt and
pain of saying, like, we sent her there, we let
her go. It's like a parent sending their kid to college, right,
and something happens, and so my heart really goes out
to them of saying, look, not only did you lose
your daughter, but you lost her in a foreign place
where you didn't have access to It has to be
incredibly devastating. It would be amazing to know what happened here,

(44:51):
not just for the family, but because my god, if
this person has done this before, they do it to Karina,
who's to say that they didn't do it after And
there's other victims as well. This is a very dangerous
person and they need to be caught.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
You're so right, ash, and I think that in a
situation where the family is in Sweden, like my heart
goes out to them because I cannot imagine how awful
it must feel to potentially have a language barrier. You're
dealing with another country and you've got questions about the investigation,
but the communication wouldn't flow easily, and you just don't

(45:27):
know if investigators are doing what they need to do
to solve Karina's murder. And that is compounded I think
by the fact that we know that she wrote that letter,
and that letter indicated that something really terrible had happened,
so she wanted to return home early. So for her family,
knowing that she already had active plans to come home

(45:47):
and then this happened, it's just so heartbreaking, Like she
was just out there living her life, meeting other Swedish
opairs and having a good time, which is what a
girl her age should have been doing. This shouldn't have
happened to her, but unfortunately it did. And I think
that the most likely theory in my head is probably
the two guys in the Mitsubishi. It's possible that there

(46:09):
could have been two offenders. I think you're more disarmed
and you're more inclined to get into a vehicle with
more than one person. If it's just one person, you think, okay,
well they could do harm to me. But if there's
two people, you're like, well it has to be safe.
There's more than one person, and like there's safety in numbers,
So I think that she could have very easily voluntarily

(46:29):
got into that vehicle. But I don't think that any
of the suspects in this case really check out. I
think it's possible that Frank could have done something to
Karina allegedly that could have been that terrible thing, but
like as she said earlier in the episode, that wouldn't
necessarily make him a murderer. It looks like he had

(46:50):
a pretty strong alibi, with his family visiting, going to
that drive in, and going to dinner. So I don't
think that he killed Karina because and had mentioned the
like how would he have known that she was there
and like contacted her, and all of these sorts of
details that just don't seem to add up. The police
obviously didn't want to clear anybody. It didn't seem to

(47:12):
publicly name anyone as being cleared or eliminated as a
suspect or a person of interest, so I don't think
we can necessarily read anything into that. It my heart breaks.
This is a really gruesome case, and it makes me
think that this can have been this offender's first kill.
So it's likely that maybe they're in jail for another offense,

(47:34):
or they've gotten away with it and they've just switched up.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Their mo Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Karina's family, because
this is one case where you have not seen the
victim's family in the spotlight too much doing interviews. But
that just isn't their fault, because they are from a
small town in Sweden, and they, for all we know,
just cannot afford to keep going back and forth between
there and the United States to keep tabs on the
investigation and spread awareness about the case and do stuff

(48:01):
like hand out flyers. So they've pretty much been able
to unable to do anything but just sit back and
wait and hope that the police find the killer. And
I know when they sent to Karina on there, I'm
sure they never imagined that she would become a victim
just like Elizabeth Short the Black Dahlia, and that the
crime would remain unsolved for nearly thirty years. And I

(48:21):
do agree that we've had all these suspects, I don't
think any of them are particularly compelling. I do think
it's possible that Frank Rapp may have done something inappropriate
with Karna and may know more than he's leting on
and that this could be the source of Karna's letter.
But it's also possible that all this stuff is just
a red herring and she just cross passed with the
wrong person at the nightclub that night, someone she had

(48:44):
never encountered before in her life, and unfortunately she wound
up leaving with them and was murdered in such a
brutal fashion. Do agree that if you were to pick
anyone those two men in the Mitsubi, she do seem
like the most promising suspects. But of course the big
issue is that we just cannot firm they existed. We
only have one eyewitness who recalled seeing them, so there

(49:04):
really isn't a lot to work with. But I am
intrigued by the theory that was pushed forward that these
men may not have been just serial killers. They may
have just gone too far with Korena and decided that
the best way to get rid of the physical evidence
and to get rid of DNA would be to cut
her body in half and get rid of the lower
torso so that it is never found. And that this

(49:27):
wasn't done just because they get off on killing. They
just did it to cover themselves. And then just went
on living their normal lives. Again, we just don't know,
but it's just hard to imagine that someone who would
be capable of something like this could just not commit
any more crimes. So yeah, even though we don't have
any DNA to work with or physical evidence, I do
hope someday they have a major break in this case

(49:48):
and we can find out who actually did it.

Speaker 5 (49:52):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these stand and bonus features
like early ad free episodes, and I also send out
stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs
up with us on Patreon. If you join our five
dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes
in which I talk about cases which are not featured

(50:18):
on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive
to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three,
the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer
is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsoalved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or

(50:38):
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join

(50:59):
tear three.

Speaker 5 (51:00):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jules and Ashley patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those.
So we hope you'll check out those patreons.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
We'll link them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at
gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at
the Pathwin So until next time, be sure to bundle up,
because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers comedy

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Karina Holmer Pt. Two

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

Karina Holmer Pt. Two

Stuff You Should Know