Dude

Police looked at a man with an alarming past and a close connection to Darrel Steinback as a person of interest in Kathy’s case. Does he know more than he’s told?

If you have any information on Kathy’s case, please contact Metro Nashville Police Department’s Cold Case Unit at 615-862-7329.

Flatrock was created in collaboration with Spreaker. Senior production provided by Kim Green. Executive producers are Olivia Lind and Greg Thornton. Co-produced by Dixie Bratton, Chris Chamberlain, Jamie R. Hollin, Cathy Lind, Betsy Phillips, Terry Quillen, and JJ Wright. Backed by Brandon Herrington. Music by Preston Garland ( prestongarlandmusic.com ) . Additional voices provided by A Concerned Citizen (host of Swindled), Vincent Strange, and Steven Pacheco.

Additional music in this episode:

artist: XTaKeRuX / album: Illusion / track: Dark Room / license: Attribution / source: FMA / http://freemusicarchive.org/music/XTaKeRuX/2019073141810785/Dark_Room_

artist: Chris Zabriskie / album: Thoughtless / track: There’s a Special Place for Some People / license: Attribution / source: FMA / http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/Thoughtless/Chris_Zabriskie_-_Thoughtless_-_03_-_Theres_a_Special_Place_for_Some_People

artist: Chris Zabriskie / album: Neptune Flux / track: To Hide Their Secrets / license: Attribution / source: FMA / http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/Music_from_Neptune_Flux/ChrisZabriskie-MusicfromNeptuneFlux-08

artist: Chris Zabriskie / album: Cylinders / track: Cylinder Seven / license: Attribution / source: FMA / http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/2014010103336111/Chris_Zabriskie_-_Cylinders_-_07_-_Cylinder_Seven

artist: Chris Zabriskie / album: Neptune Flux / track: We Were Never Meant to Live Here / license: Attribution / source: FMA / https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/Music_from_Neptune_Flux/

artist: Chris Zabriskie / album: Neptune Flux / track: Remember Trees? / license: Attribution / source: FMA / http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/Music_from_Neptune_Flux/ChrisZabriskie-MusicfromNeptuneFlux-07

artist: Chris Zabriskie / album: Neptune Flux / track: I Should Have Been More Human / license: Attribution / source: FMA / http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/Music_from_Neptune_Flux/ChrisZabriskie-MusicfromNeptuneFlux-09

Special thank you to Bea Jones, Lt. Patrick Taylor of the Metro Nashville Police Department, and Chief Mickey Miller of the Hendersonville Police Department.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Flat Rock contains disturbing subject matter whichmay not be suitable for all listeners.
Listener discretion is advised. Previously onFlat Rock, I told you about Norah's
boyfriend Darryl Steinback, a strange figurewho nobody seemed to trust around their kids,

(00:29):
and who, as one detective suspects, may have scared Cathy so much
that she called her dad to askhim for help. And in fact,
she had called her father that dayand tried to get him to come and
talk to her, says she hadsomething very important tell him. He'd tell
her he wasn't able to that day, but he'd say her at the weekend

(00:50):
or something like that. Of coursehe never got a chance to. From
Nashville, Tennessee, I'm Olivia Lyndeand in collaboration with Spreaker, this is
flat Rock. After the break,I'll discuss a close friend of Steinbach who
some people believe may have been involvedin Kathy's case. In this episode,

(01:27):
I'll be getting into some tricky territory. This installment is all about a man
whose voice you've heard. He's stillliving, hasn't been named in the media
in connection with Kathy, and askedme not to use his name, so
I've been calling him Tim. AsI mentioned in previous episodes, Tim was

(01:48):
a close friend of Darryl Steinbach.While I've chosen not to use his real
name, investigators told me he wasoften known by the nickname Dude. Tim
has a past of his own,and you may wonder why it's necessary for
me to get into it. Ifyou'll stick with me through that history,
it'll all make sense by the timeI'm done. In order to detail his

(02:12):
known history of brushes with the law, I'll start by going back to nineteen
sixty one. In nineteen sixty one, when he was twenty one, a
Baton Rouge, Louisiana newspaper reported thatTim and a friend were arrested on a
simple robbery charge. A twenty eightyear old man reported to police that Tim

(02:34):
and his friend threatened him with aknife and demanded a hand over a three
hundred dollar ring, his college classring, and his wallet. A friend
who was with the alleged victim alsocorroborated the report. However, in this
case, Tim didn't do anything wrongas far as I could learn. It
turned out that the man who reportedbeing a robbery victim filed a false report.

(02:59):
After getting ang agree with Tim's friend, the charges against him and his
friend were dropped and it appears hewas completely innocent. This, as far
as I was able to find,was his first fresh with the law.
No big deal, right. Unfortunately, there would be more trouble. The

(03:20):
same paper reported that in October ofnineteen sixty one, Tim was involved in
a bizarre robbery in Baton Rouge.Paul R. Lecky, the owner of
three Dairy Delight ice cream stands,was robbed of the day's proceeds from his
businesses, totaling somewhere between six hundreddollars and one thousand dollars. The story

(03:43):
is a bit odd. Lecky firstreported to authorities that he was confronted by
three African American men who took himin his car a few miles outside of
city limits and robbed him at aMississippi River levy. According to Lecky,
the three men took him in hiscar back to downtown Baton Rouge, where

(04:03):
they took off on foot. Here'swhere things get weird. Lecki was arrested
soon after for filing a false report. At some point, Leckie decided to
let deputies know what really happened,and like he's revised account of the crime,
He explained that he picked up awhite hitchhiker and when he got where

(04:26):
he was asked to go, theother two assailants, also white, were
waiting. The three made him driveto the levee, robbed him of the
two white money bags containing the day'searnings, and told him to tell police
he was robbed by three black men. The youngest of the three, a
nineteen year old, was arrested first. Next was Tim, who was arrested

(04:48):
in Beaumont, Texas and brought backto Louisiana. The third suspect surrendered in
late October nineteen sixty two, ayear after the robbery. Incidentally, the
last man taken into custody was thesame friend who had been arrested with Tim
on that first robbery charge that turnedout to be a hoax. For his

(05:10):
role in the robbery, Tim receiveda suspended sentence of three years and was
put on probation. In another strangeturn, Lecky would later be shot and
killed in nineteen sixty five as partof an attempted robbery behind one of his
dairy delight stands. His killers werearrested in nineteen sixty eight. Tim By,

(05:35):
then twenty three, ran a foulof the law again in March nineteen
sixty four, this time in Beaumont, Texas. According to the local paper,
he was accused of obstructing a payphonecoin returned slot with paper and returning
to the phone later in the dayto retrieve whatever change had gotten stuck.

(05:57):
The scam only netted him ninety fivesense. For this offense, Tim received
a ninety day jail sentence and wasordered to pay a fine of two hundred
dollars plus court costs. The mostbizarre incident in Tim's past came in late
September nineteen sixty five. Tim By, then a twenty four year old soldier

(06:19):
stationed at Fort Bliss, was arrestedwith two other soldiers on the charge of
malicious destruction of property valued an excessof fifty dollars. The three men were
alleged to have stoned to death ababy alligator in the city's San Jacinto Plaza
alligator pool. According to a localpaper, a witness told police he saw

(06:44):
Tim and at least one other soldierpull rocks from the fence that surrounded the
alligator pool and dropped them on theheads of Shama and Zol, both baby
alligators given to the city as agift. The witnesses also said the men
hit the gators on the head withrocks and through explosive devices made from flashlight

(07:04):
batteries and cherry bombs into the pool. The witness told police, I saw
the small alligator roll over on hisside and it looked like he was dead.
The witness picked him and another soldierout of the lineup and gave police
two other names of individuals who mayhave been involved. Chama, who was

(07:25):
six feet long, was found deadin the pool, and a crops he
found the fatal blow almost severed herspine. Jerry Toward, the zoo director,
told an El Paso newspaper the creaturewas found by a handler who had
gone to feed the alligators. Hereported back that one of them was acting

(07:45):
strangely, none of them would acceptfood. When we investigated, we found
the baby alligator was dead. Theolder alligator who lived in the pool house
blood oozing from the middle of hisback and appears to be in bad condition.
The other little alligators seems to beall right, but it is not
liveli or active. Humby the tenfoot long older alligator Tort mentioned was in

(08:07):
serious condition, but he recovered abouttwenty stones, some as big as eight
inches wide and sporting sharp points,were found at the bottom of the alligator
pool. In another odd turn,Zoll suffered two instances of abuse in one
day later that same week. First, he was found with a spike jabbed

(08:30):
in his eye, which surprisingly didn'tdo any damage, and later on in
the day, a drunk man jumpedinto the enclosure and started swinging him around
by the tail. Two months afterthe initial incident, Zol was found dead,
and it was suspected that his deathmight have been related to the stoning
incident. According to Tort, hecould have a broken or bruce spinal cord

(08:52):
as a result of the stoning inSeptember. These are wonderfully tenacious animals,
and it's possible it took this longfor the injuries to prove fatal. Alligators
don't die natural deaths until they areold, and Chamah was very young.
I wasn't able to learn how thisplayed out in the legal system. One
article said the men could face betweentwo and twenty years in prison for the

(09:16):
crime, but it appeared legal proceedingswere delayed several times. The last mention
of anything about prosecuting the crime wasan article from early December of nineteen sixty
five, which said the accused hadrequested a preliminary hearing, but it had
to be postponed. Two of thewitnesses, soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss,

(09:39):
couldn't be served with subpoenas because nobodycould find them. In nineteen sixty five,
there was a huge surge in deploymentsto Vietnam, so it's possible those
witnesses had shipped out to fight.The September nineteen sixty five incidents were the
last in a long line of abusesthe animals faced at the hands of the

(10:00):
public, and soon thereafter they weremoved to the zoo where they could be
protected. The last original San Jacintoalligator, as well as survivor of Tim's
alleged attack, Humpy, died inthe mid nineteen nineties at the age of
one hundred and nine. Tim's namewouldn't come up in the news again for

(10:22):
nearly five more years. By nineteensixty eight, he had moved to Tennessee
and befriended Darryl Steinbeck. I knowby Tim's own account that he was around
Norah and her children because of thatfriendship. You may recall from the last
episode that he told me how hewent out with Kathy's father, Bill the

(10:46):
night she disappeared, so they couldask people in neighborhood businesses if they'd seen
the girl. Tim was never mentionedby name in the media in connection to
Kathy's case, and as far asI know, he wasn't mentioned anonymously either.
But before I can talk anymore aboutwhere he fits in with Kathy's story,

(11:07):
let's finish with Tim's history. Asfar as arrests, I ran across
a single paragraph in the Tennesseean thatsaid Tim was indicted for first degree murder
in the shooting death of an eighteenyear old man in July of nineteen seventy.
The shooting, which occurred outside ofTim's apartment, took place on May
thirtieth, nineteen seventy, exactly sixmonths after Kathy's murder. I was shocked

(11:33):
that I couldn't find follow up inthe media or court records, so I
can only assume the charges were dropped. Tim was arrested a number of times
in Nashville after that. I don'thave many details on those arrests, but
all of the offenses were relatively minor. In nineteen seventy six, there was
an assault with a knife, disorderlyconduct in nineteen seventy seven, two shoplifting

(11:58):
arrests in nineteen eighty two, inanother in nineteen eighty three, warrants for
allowing a dog to run at largealso in nineteen eighty three, and then
an incident in nineteen ninety one thatI discussed in the previous episode. I
told you that in October nineteen ninetyone, Darrel Steinback was arrested for shoplifting
in a hardware store and wasn't particularlycooperative with the arresting officer. What I

(12:22):
didn't tell you was that Tim wasarrested with him because he was also observed
taking items from the store and hidingthem in his pocket. According to a
source who knew Steinback and Tim,the two men were reported to be involved
in shoplifting schemes for years. Youmay recall that in the previous episode,
b Jones alleged that the two menwould steal items from stores and return them

(12:46):
for cash. In some of theincidents, they would use others to return
the items to the stores. Hereshe is again describing how the grift worked.
Go away for in Tim, whatwould give if they would go into
these stories like sears, They hadthe expensive tools, the beat sheets.

(13:07):
They would go in and steal theseitems and have says Kelly returned them.
By Kelly returning them, he gota percentage of whatever he returned. And
that's how they got people in becausethey've done it in so many stories,
and you couldn't return things constantly,so we had to be so many different
people to be honest. They evenhad me doing it around Christmas song and

(13:31):
you know it was a scheme theydid. I know Gerald was arrested for
shoplifting once. I'm not sure aboutTim, but they were good at it.
The shoplifting stories don't suggest anything aboutTim's character except maybe poor judgment.
They certainly don't indicate a propensity forviolence. But I chose to share that
information here because I want listeners tohave the most complete picture of these men

(13:54):
that I can provide. That arrestwas the last I found for Tim,
though there was one more incident thatmight raise a few eyebrows. In the
spring of nineteen ninety six, Timwas involved with a group protesting the use
of Nashville's tax dollars to build astadium for the Houston Oilers, later to
become the Tennessee Titans. The Tennesseeanreported that during one of the stadium protests,

(14:18):
Tim got into a scuffle with astadium supporter when the debate got heated
between the supporter and the crowd.According to the paper, Tim grabbed the
supporter's wrist and shoved him. Policebroke it up, and no one was
arrested. As far as I know, he's led a quiet life since.

(14:46):
So what does all of this haveto do with Cathy? Hopefully nothing.
I'd like nothing more than to believethat I've gone into excessive detail about all
of these incidents, some of whichhappened more than a thousand miles from Kathy
and several years before her death.But there are a few strong reasons I
had to be open with you aboutTim's history. The first and most important

(15:11):
thing to me is that Tim waslooked at as a suspect in Kathy's murder.
I know this because I was toldas much by former Metro cold case
investigator Mickey Miller. Current investigators classifyTim as a person of interest in Kathy's
case. It's important to understand thedistinction between person of interest and suspect.

(15:35):
When investigators call a person a suspectin a crime, that individual is the
person they believe committed the act.Laypeople sometimes use person of interest and suspect
interchangeably, but this is inaccurate.A person of interest is someone authorities feel
might have information about the crime orcan give information that leads to a suspect.

(15:58):
However, a person of interest canpotentially become a suspect depending on the
trajectory of the investigation. That said, I was told by Lieutenant Patrick Taylor
that Metro Police no longer use theterm suspect, just person of interest.
So what I need to be clearon here is that Tim was called a
suspect in the case at one time. He has now called a person of

(16:22):
interest. Why was he looked at? The short answer is, I don't
know. It could be as simpleas the fact that he and Steinback were
such close friends at the time.I will tell you right now that I
have seen no evidence to suggest thatTim was involved in Cathy's murder. Because

(16:44):
police classified him as a suspect andlater as a person of interest, I
felt his arrest history was relevant,especially the accusations of violence against humans and
animals. Furthermore, Mickey Miller expressedto me that Steinback and Tim were not
necessarily on their best behavior when theyhung out together. You know, when

(17:06):
Darrell wasn't driving the can, heran together all the time. And we
were told that, you know,they were heavily in the US and drugs
together in that tide thing. Soagain, and you know, going back
and verifying all that, it'sxtremely difficult. As I mentioned in an earlier episode,
some investigators believed it would have takenmore than one assailant to subdue and

(17:30):
hurt Cathy based on the way shewas tied up. It's possible that,
believing Steinback was their best suspect,as police did from the nineteen eighties on,
they wanted to know if Tim couldhave helped him commit the crime,
or the very least have known somethingabout it. From all that I've been
able to learn, however, thereis no evidence to suggest his involvement,

(17:53):
and presumably Metro Police would be relentlesslypursuing him if such evidence exists. Current
cold case investigator Patrick Taylor didn't seemto have strong suspicions that Tim was involved
in the murder. I mean,he's mentioned in the case file. He's
probably the lesser of all the playersinvolved. His name does come up in

(18:15):
it as being a friend of Daryl's, and I think they run together and
we're over to house, But Idon't think he was around them nowhere near
as much as the other two individuals. Let's take a quick time out to
address the last thing he said there. Taylor's statement was unclear to the point

(18:37):
where I had to ask some followup questions about who the other two individuals
were. If you heard that theway I did, it sounded like he
meant two other associates of Steinbacks werelooked at. However, after I questioned
Taylor further, he clarified that hemeant Edward Warner Adcox, the pedophile we
covered in episode four, and Steinbackwere more concerned as persons of interest than

(19:00):
Tim. When I asked him ifhe ever thought he'd been considered a suspect
by investigators, he said he didn'tget that impression. Did you feel like
they were looking at you as asuspect? No, I didn't really know.
In fact, they told me theyweren't okay, all right, So
they didn't ask, just wanted toknow. They just wonder if I knew

(19:21):
anything. Okay. So no,they didn't try to polygraph you or anything
like that. No, no theydidn't. Mickey Miller remembered it a little
differently. He sort of put onthat the era that he was slick,
you know, he took everything witha little bit of arrogance. You know.
He was definitely somebody that I wasstrongly looking at as much as as

(19:47):
much as Darrel at the time.It's indisputable that Tim has a lengthy arrest
history, but I found no accusationsof sexual violence or crimes against children.
However, I can't get around thefact that some members of Cathy's families suspect
he might have been involved. Oneof those people was Cathy's brother, Kelly.

(20:07):
His widow b Jones explained to mewhat childhood incident made Kelly feel that
Tim could be involved in the crime. Well, shortly after Kelly was talking
to the detective, something happened.You know. Kelly, like I said,
with five, he couldn't remember verymuch. But what he did remember
was Tierre what's coming to be?Kelly up and with a Knight, and

(20:30):
when he pulled in, he flashedhis flights to tell Kelly he was there.
That trigger or something with Kelly towhere when he was little a Kathy's
death, he remember someone pulling ina drive and liked flashing like that.
That's all he remembered. I don'tknow that those flashing headlights are enough to
make a connection. Perhaps even morecompelling is a run in that Kelly had

(20:53):
an adulthood with him at a gasstation. Here's b and then later he
was at a gas station and Timcomes through and tells, Kelly, do
not talk to your detectives because Iheard you've been talking to him. Do
not say anything else to him.He said. The family had heard that
Tim might have been involved in thedeath of the eighteen year old man I

(21:15):
mentioned earlier, which frightened them,but they didn't know a lot of details.
Everybody was scared of Tim. WhatI was told he killed someone never
knew what, why, or who, So everybody was kind of scared of
Tim. And everybody just thought Darylwas creepy, and of course he was

(21:37):
friends with Tim, so everybody hadthat fear. Well, Kelly didn't have
that fear. He was all grownup now, so he continued to talk
to try to find who killed hissister. He was really getting involved at
that time, asking questions when Iknow what happened. I really feel like
it was darn and finally connection withKelly and Kelly finally getting this story.

(22:00):
Everybody treated Kelly like he was soyoung, he doesn't have a voice.
But once Kelly got involved and hewas old enough to understand really what happened,
and then he was able to sitdown with Donna and she was able
to fill him in on things,and then detectives are filling him in,
and then of course he knew morethan what he told obviously about what Darrell

(22:23):
had done to any child. SoI think he just came together for him.
He was strongly said Darrel did it, and he felt like Darrell in
Tim did it, and that wasKelly's opinion. He wanted answers. He
was going to be her voice.But of course, you know, he

(22:44):
died. I'm not left with anythingthat leads me to believe that Tim was
involved with Cathy's murder, But couldhe have been told about it after the
fact. His confrontation with Kelly atthe gas station was bizarre. Why wouldn't
Tim want Kelly to be helpful toinvestigators in any way he could? I

(23:12):
recognize that as far as a connectionto Kathy's death, much of this feels
like thin evidence because it's a lotof whispers, hearsay and suspicion. But
when you zoom out, it paintsa clearer picture about the long shadow this
case has cast over her family,residual fears, rumors, and dark suspicions

(23:34):
about people in her orbit, whichis terribly sad that so many people close
to this family were con men atbest and at worst predators. What's next
for Kathy's case? We'll talk aboutthat next week. Flat Rock was created

(24:00):
in collaboration with Spreeker Senior. Productionprovided by Kim Greene. Executive producers are
Olivia Lynde and Greg Thornton. Coproduced by Dixie Bratton, Chris Chamberlain,
Jamie R. Holland, Kathy Lynde, Betsy Phillips, Terry Quillan and J.
J. Wright. Backed by BrandonHarrington. Music by Preston Garland.

(24:25):
Additional voices provided by a Concerned citizenpost of Swindled, Vincent Strange and Stephen
Pacheco. Additional music provided by artistsX talkerroo X and Chris Zabriskie. More
information and links to their work isavailable on flat rockpod dot com and in
the show notes. Special thank youto be Jones, Lieutenant Patrick Taylor of

(24:51):
the Metro Nashville Police Department, andChief Mickey Miller of the Hendersonville Police Department.
If you have any information on atthese case, please contact Metro Nashville
Police Department's Cold Case Unit at sixone eight six two seven three two nine.

(25:11):
Hey, this is Stephen Pacheco,the host of Trace Evidence, a
weekly true crime podcast focused on unsolvedmurders and disappearances. Each week, I
explore a different unsolved case and takea deep dive into the victim, the
events leading up to the crime,every fact we know, every question we're

(25:32):
left with, and then a breakdownof the most popular theories revolving around that
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(25:57):
Spotify, and all of your favoritepodcatchers. Visit Trace dash Evidence dot
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unsolved case on the next episode ofTrace Evidence. So this person spend quite

(26:25):
a bit of time in the commissionof this monstrous act. Hi, y'all,
I'm Vincent, host of Gone ColdPodcast Texas True Crime. Each week
we take a thorough look at lesserknown unsolved cases throughout the Lone Star State.
Here victims stories as told by theirloved ones, and expert insight from

(26:45):
law enforcement and medical professionals. Youknow, using a hatchet. That's an
extremely violent and rageful type of act. The truth is out there somewhere and
you can help us find it.You know, before I die, I
want never get it. Please joinus as we examine forgotten Texas cases.
Subscribe and listen to Gone Cold PodcastTexas True Crime on your favorite podcatcher.

(27:11):
There are monsters of moments.