October 10, 2024 • 46 mins
As the team deep-dives the Mark Oldbury & Jimmy Tidwell cases, Josh develops a timeline, and Kaz finds something important in Fort Worth, Texas.
Check out the line-up and buy tickets for the Berkshire Podcast Festival: www.berkshirepodcastfestival.com
Use promo code FALLINTOTHESOUND for 10% your Berkshire Podcast Festival tickets.
This episode was written, researched, edited, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
With additional research by: Jordan Taylor, Kaz, and Michelle Tooker.
And research assistance by: Kim K and Shana Wilensky.
This episode features:
Shana Wilensky, Jordan Taylor, and Michelle Tooker.
This is a Studio BOTH/AND production:
www.truecrimebullshit.com / bothand.fyi
For an ad-free experience: www.patreon.com/studiobothand
Music by: William Hellfire, Sero, Radical Face, Sergey Cheremisinov, Lee Rosevere, Fields of Ohio, and Wings for Louise.
Featured song: "My Hands on the Water" by: Amanda Bergman
Patreon producers: Amelia Hancock, Amy Basil, Annemarie Cash, Annette L, Asch Fish, Becky C, Benjamin Cioppa-Fong, Casey Jensen-Richardson, Christina Sisson, Dale Akstin, Drew Vipond, Heather Horton-Whedon, Jillian Natale, Kathleen Studer, Kendall C, Lana Halladay, Lauren F, Lynnlie Tuschoff, Manolis Boukolus, Nicole and Dennis Henry, Nicole Guzman, Pink, SC, Shelly Brewer, Sherri D, Trista, Tuesdi Woodworth, Zack Ignatowicz Warren, Beth McNally, John Comrie, Jordan M, Jordan Taylor, Michael Beers, Sara Cee, Shawna Hardin, Spooky Express, and Lydia Fiedler.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-bullsh--3588169/support.
Check out the line-up and buy tickets for the Berkshire Podcast Festival: www.berkshirepodcastfestival.com
Use promo code FALLINTOTHESOUND for 10% your Berkshire Podcast Festival tickets.
This episode was written, researched, edited, and produced by Josh Hallmark.
With additional research by: Jordan Taylor, Kaz, and Michelle Tooker.
And research assistance by: Kim K and Shana Wilensky.
This episode features:
Shana Wilensky, Jordan Taylor, and Michelle Tooker.
This is a Studio BOTH/AND production:
www.truecrimebullshit.com / bothand.fyi
For an ad-free experience: www.patreon.com/studiobothand
Music by: William Hellfire, Sero, Radical Face, Sergey Cheremisinov, Lee Rosevere, Fields of Ohio, and Wings for Louise.
Featured song: "My Hands on the Water" by: Amanda Bergman
Patreon producers: Amelia Hancock, Amy Basil, Annemarie Cash, Annette L, Asch Fish, Becky C, Benjamin Cioppa-Fong, Casey Jensen-Richardson, Christina Sisson, Dale Akstin, Drew Vipond, Heather Horton-Whedon, Jillian Natale, Kathleen Studer, Kendall C, Lana Halladay, Lauren F, Lynnlie Tuschoff, Manolis Boukolus, Nicole and Dennis Henry, Nicole Guzman, Pink, SC, Shelly Brewer, Sherri D, Trista, Tuesdi Woodworth, Zack Ignatowicz Warren, Beth McNally, John Comrie, Jordan M, Jordan Taylor, Michael Beers, Sara Cee, Shawna Hardin, Spooky Express, and Lydia Fiedler.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-bullsh--3588169/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is a studio both and production. And the more
we started to pour over all of these details, all
of this information new and old, much like our independent
research on Mark Oldberry, it all started to connect. And
(00:30):
that's when I left a YouTube after show to find
multiple frantic text messages and missed calls from Kaz. I
need you to look at something when you are done
with the live show. Seriously, you have to call me
(00:54):
after the live show. I may have found something. I
don't want to get my hopes, but I need your
input or I won't be able to sleep tonight. You
can record me so we have something to refer back to.
If this turns out to be something, call me. I
(01:14):
think I found him.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
This is true crime, bullshit. I'm your host, Josh Hallmark,
and this is a serialized story of Israel Keys. I
(01:40):
called Kaz on my drive home from the studio. The
tone of her voice was more serious than I'm used to.
She was thoughtful and deliberate and sounded uncharacteristically nervous. Ever
since the discovery of the Laplace cash and our receipt
(02:02):
of the Mark Oldberry files, the entire team had been
obsessively pouring back over the Texas timeline and both the
Tidwell and Old Berry cases. We were asking questions we'd
never asked before, seeing things we'd never seen before, and
starting to work out some of the aspects of this
period of Keyes's timeline that we couldn't previously make sense of.
(02:25):
And I could tell that it was starting to take
a toll on most of us, most of all Kaz.
When we first received the Old Berry files. Before I
shared them with the rest of the group, Kas and
I spent a day with them on our own, and
then we chatted and she said something to me she's
(02:46):
never said before in our seven years of friendship. Now,
what you have to understand is the joke amongst the
research team is that Kaz is the wet blanket.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
She can and will poke a hole in any She
can find the weak spots in any theory or argument.
She is the most judicious and cautious. She asks more
questions than she makes proclamations. With Kaz, rarely is anything
(03:17):
ever absolute. That's why it was so shocking when I
called her after our initial reads and she said to me, verbatim,
he did this. Keyes did this. I think it would
(03:38):
come as no surprise to you that we as a
team have a soft spot for missing people who ended
up in the margins, the people who tend to be
invisible because of the circumstances in their lives that made
them less editorial or easier to blame for what happened
to them. We've seen the way that a single shitty
word or phrase junkie, addict, prostitute can take over an
(04:02):
entire narrative, an entire investigation. In the few paragraphs you'll
find about Mark online, the only thing you'll generally read
about him is that he did bath salts. Maybe that
he liked fishing. I've read multiple articles about Mark's disappearance
and the ensuing investigation that only mention him once or twice.
(04:27):
He's a footnote in his own disappearance. But man, no
matter how long or short the article, they never failed
to miss the bath salts, which is not to say
they don't matter. I've both read and heard from people
close to the case that the bath salts became the narrative.
(04:49):
Mark used drugs. Mark went out to the swamp, took
bath salts, got high, took off all his clothes, and
was probably eaten by an alligator. It's easy it's neat,
it's efficient. We can move on, except that it's not neat,
(05:09):
because what did the alligator return Mark's close to the
scene ten days later? Did the alligator eat his tent?
It minimizes Mark down to a single thing as a
means to close his case as a cautionary tale. Don't
do bath salts or you'll be eaten by an alligator.
(05:34):
Not only is it lazy, but it's cruel. It's unkind,
it's shortsighted. And while the articles never fail to mention drugs,
they have all every single article I've read about Mark's disappearance,
(05:54):
they've all failed to mention that Mark was a father.
His son was only four or five when Mark disappeared,
and I can understand why they leave that out. It
might humanize him. Mark had a son and a loving,
albeit frustrated family. He loved to fish and hike. He
had an adventurous spirit. He was so much more than
(06:17):
just a guy who did bath salts and disappeared. In fact,
we don't even know that he had bath salts with
him when he went camping. We don't even know that
he planned on doing drugs that day. We just know
that he used to do bath salts, and possibly separately
and unrelated, disappeared. While Kaz was on our own journey
(06:46):
with these files. The rest of us were trying to
make sense of the timeline and the other variables and
coincidences that kept coming up. Maybe Mark was in the
Alito house because Key said he was very dodgy in
that interview, and they caught him in a lie, or
(07:07):
they didn't catch him, but he lies at one point
because he changes his story in very short order and
basically says, well, yeah, I was in that house, or
I knew that house was there like six days before
I burned it down. But six days before he burned
it down, he was in the Caribbean, So either he
went there before his cruise or immediately upon his return.
(07:31):
If he went there before, maybe that is the place
he took old Berry, which could also explain why immediately
after burning it down, old Berry's close show up again.
And you have to remember at that point, Heidi's still
living in suburban Dallas, so he would have to go
back to that area.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Point and I'm looking a map, it's only about five hours, yeah,
Provider to Alito, and which.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Is the distance from Hackensack to tupper Lake.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Yeah, I was just thinking, Deborah Feldman.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Though, when are you thinking this would have happened? Just
I'm thinking about the trip from Bider to Alito and
back in time for Christina if it happened at the beginning,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I think it's safe to say Mark was most likely
abducted on the third, if it was keys and if
Christina's story is true, which I definitely believe the latter,
and I'm pretty certain on the former.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, I mean Mark went out there what the first
of the second?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I forget he went out there. It's not entirely clear
because they it's all the timeline is all predicated on
he was. He had a two day hold, but they
don't say hours. So is that like a two business
day hold or is that a forty eight hour hold?
Because those are two entirely different things. Point and I'm
hoping that sister can shed some light on that. But
(09:04):
according to if we're to believe that a two day
hold means he was back free at three pm the
following day, which seems bananas to me, then the earliest
he could have disappeared is that night, but seems more
likely the next day.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It's perfectly believable that his uncle went to find him
and he just was out of earshot. It was probably dark,
So I'm willing to believe that that, you know, it
wasn't until a day or so later.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
But then the timeline is really tough because and again
we don't know for sure if Kim went to Lafayette,
because she never says she went to Lafayette. She said
she met him in New Orleans. So where is Sarah?
Is there enough time for him then to drive from
Vider five hours to Alito five hours? No, seven hours
(09:56):
back to Lafayette. You brought up something that like, I
hate even indulging in this, but it does seem to
be a pattern that Dean Coral.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yes, I was going there.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
Yeah, And so when I was looking to this Charlie
Stagg artist, I was trying to find more information about
the address, and one of the first things that came
up was that Dean Coral graduated from Bider High School.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Dean Girl is one of those serial killers that I
can't even read about.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Yeah, and he was also he targeted you know, uh,
men and boys, So that really did stand out to me.
I kept thinking, I hate to like you said, Josh,
I hate to go there, but this, all of these
cases are connected, and he, you know, had his little
fans like Bundy and homes.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
And stuff like that. You know, he was a fan
of them, so to speak.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
So that did come up because I had no idea
Dean Coral lived in that area at one point in time,
and I mean it's a small town, so it just
seemed weird.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
To me too.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
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(12:24):
to podcasts, Keys being interested in other serial killers comes
up just as frequently as his penchant for operating in
the same areas as these other serial killers. It's something
(12:45):
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, But as I
said in our meeting, it's not something I'm entirely prepared
to indulge. In, but rest assured it's something we've all
noticed quite a bit. For most of that call, Kaz
(13:05):
was quiet, and I knew why. I knew what was
on her mind. I knew what she had found, and
I was waiting for the right time to tell the
rest of the team. I wanted to make sure we
discussed and analyzed every thought and idea, every piece of
new information before everything changed. The Chrysler town and country
(13:30):
that Laplace guy saw Keys in. There was some question
as to whether that could have been Heidie's van, because
we know that she had a van at the time,
So we wanted to either rule that in or out,
because you know the implications if it's not Heidi's is
that Keys somehow got a second car on this trip,
(13:52):
whether it was by rental or carjacking or something else.
I spent half the day trying to identify whether what
kind of car heid he had at the time, which
involved me going through every member of the Church of
Wells facebook page, googling images of the wedding, going through
the Church of well site, and I could not find anything.
(14:15):
But I did find Heidi's address, looked it up on
Google Maps, and thank god, the Google Maps van had
been by in September of twenty twelve that year they
were busy, and sure enough, there is a big red
van parked in front of our house that's like old
(14:35):
and looks like, you know, I'm a impoverished, reliant upon
the church for my welfare religious van. It looks like
someone who doesn't have a lot of money's van. And
it is certainly not a Chrysler town and Country. It's
a Ford. So you know, we can't for certain rule
(14:59):
it out. But I would be hard pressed to believe
that Heidi owned two cars and that one was They
were both vans, and one was like new and nice,
and the other was this little beat So I think
we can rule out that the town and Country was Heidi's.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
I just thought of something when you were saying that, though,
would the Church of Wells have like lent parishioners or members,
and even like Israel, a van or a car.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I don't think so, because the Church of Wells did
not even have a structure until twenty thirteen. Oh okay,
and they were all living in double wides in the
same little neighborhood. I can send you the map. It's
actually kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
They have a name before they moved to Wells.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
That's a great question, like.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
What were they called before they moved to Wells? Because
they moved to Wells in months before Israel was arrested.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I actually think that somewhere. I've been going through all
the files just doing searches on keywords, and I think
it's somewhere. I think I saw some mention of it,
but I don't recall it. So yeah, so that begs
the question where did you get this car from? That
also tells us that, depending on which trip that encounter happened,
(16:25):
we can't trust the mileage of the rental car.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Good point. Could do you think there would be like
some sort of local police blodder we could look at
to see if anybody any cars like that were stolen?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I think so. You know. The tough thing is if
it's in New Orleans metro like it's yeah, yeah, maybe Lufkin,
maybe Viter. I want to I want to look into
Viter and see maybe Lafayette. But yeah, I mean those
are all rough, impoverished areas. Yes, your point, as you
(17:04):
probably recall the Laplace guy who we've been calling Frank,
aptly named after the groundhog who lives in my yard
and is always digging around in the ground. Frank said
Keys was driving a Chrysler Town and Country van when
he encountered him that day in the Spillway, which was
cause for pause because on his February trip, Keys was
(17:27):
driving a Kia Soul, and on his March trip, Keys
infamously drove a white Ford Focus. So where did this
van come from? We knew that Heidi Keys drove a
van at the time she and her daughter slept in
it at the Cleeburne Mall while they were trying to
pick up Keys after he got stuck in the mud
for three days, So we wondered if perhaps Keys was
(17:50):
driving Heidie's van that day, but clearly he was not,
which means two things. One, Keys, like Wick, he stole
or carjacked that van at some point on one of
those two trips to Texas, And two, until we know
during which trip Frank encountered Keys, the rental car mileage
(18:13):
cannot be relied upon. We can now only use time
available to Keys to craft the timeline and rule him
in or out, and as we well know, Keys was
quite good at maximizing his time. But as we continue
to debate these details the van Christina, when certain things
(18:36):
likely occurred, Kaz finally stepped in. I have a question,
take Christina out of the timeline. How does that change
the timeline for old Berry? How does that change the
timeline for Keys? Does it make it easier for us
(18:56):
to reconcile the timeline if you take Christina out of it?
Or does it make it harder for us to reconcile
the timeline. Human beings have faulty memory. When I spoke
with Christina two years ago, it had been more than
a decade since her encounter. She could be misremembering any
(19:19):
number of things, from the weather, to the day, to
even the appearance and behavior of the man she encountered.
So in a scenario where she was entirely wrong and
this man wasn't Keys, would that change anything? And the
answer is no. Keys was still in the area, his
(19:43):
time was still unaccounted for, He was staying in a
town that he had no business being in, and as
Toks reminded us, all Old Berry was on our radar
long before Christina came forward. Is a significant piece of
circumstantial evidence in a case with a long list of
(20:06):
circumstantial evidence, a list that was growing longer by the day.
So while we all truly believe she did in fact
encounter Keys in that cemetery, maybe we were being unnecessarily
pedantic about her timeline in relation to Marx. And maybe
(20:27):
if her memory is exactly right, and she encountered Keys
on the third and Mark was already missing when his
uncle arrived on the night of the second, well maybe
both of those things can be true at the same time.
Because there's a theory one brought to us from Joshua
from somewhere in the pines that made us wonder if
(20:49):
perhaps Mark wasn't in lieu of Christina. I knew where
Kaz was going with all of this, but while important,
maybe the timeline wasn't the most important component in linking
Keys to Mark, or even determining what happened to Mark.
(21:14):
And that's when I left a YouTube after show to
find multiple frantic text messages and missed calls from Kaz.
I need you to look at something when you are
done with the live show. Seriously, you have to call
me after the live show. I may have found something.
(21:35):
I don't want to get my hopes up, but I
need your input or I won't be able to sleep tonight.
You can record me so we have something to refer
back to. If this turns out to be something, call me.
I think I found him. I think I found Mark It.
(22:06):
So we Kas and I before we even shared the
files with you guys, were immediately struck by the obvious
reappearance of his clothes. And like I said last week,
even Kaz, who I've never heard say this, was like,
I believe this was Keys. So she started, you know,
(22:30):
doing her dough magic and started conducting searches on NamUs
for the unidentified persons between February two and September twenty
sixth of this year for counties that overlapped with locations
where Keys was confirmed to have been, starting with Laplace
(22:51):
Bonnie Carr and ending in Fort Worth, Texas. She consulted
maps of counties in both states, searched them one at
a time, did not specify by gender or sex, and
was focusing on potential matches that could be male like,
not doing searches based on that, but going through the
(23:11):
search results based on that. Most of the Louisiana parishes
in the area of New Orleans and Laplace had negative results.
In Texas, she searched the following counties with the same
parameters Jefferson County, which is where Beaumont, Texas is, Orange County,
which is where vider is, Angelina County, which is where
(23:32):
Lufkin is. And of those there were only it looks
like three unidentified person's remains. So then she went into
Terrant County, Texas, which is where Fort Worth is, and
that search returned thirteen results. Three were identified as female.
(23:52):
She set those aside, and as she opened up documents
accompanying the remaining ten, she didn't find any that true
fit our criteria. Some were found in homeless camps, neighbors
calling for a welfare check, et cetera, et cetera. And
then she focused on one which is on up sixteen
four zero three all put a link in the chat right.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Now, this looks a lot like him. Oh my gosh.
I opened it up. I was like, WHOA.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
Before you even said any of that, I was like,
oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
These remains, which was a skull, was discovered on February
thirteenth of twenty seventeen in a field that was being
cleared for construction in Terrean County, Texas. Workers found the
school while clearing the land in Fort Worth. The remains
were described as skeletonized cranium. NamUs had reported only two
comparisons of missing persons had been made and ruled out,
(24:58):
and then she looked at they did a facial recognition
and she believed that it very very strongly resembled Marvel Berry.
And then I started digging into when these remains were
found and we found the address, which I will also
pop in there. And what I would ask you to
do is when you look it up, look at the
(25:23):
Google Map's history, because there's images from around the time
that Keys was there, and you'll see the landscape looks
very different. They've built a whole subdivision there in the meantime.
But they were able to determine that the man was
between the age of thirty and fifty five, and the
remains had likely and maybe they didn't determine a date
(25:47):
of death or arrange, but Mark I think was thirty
two at the time, so he fits into that. It
looks a lot like him. And the area where this
was found is directly in between where Heidi lived and
Azel and Alito. If you look at the map, the
area looks almost exactly like the Bonnie carspillway.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
And it does say a date of death range between
two thousand and seven and twenty twelve.
Speaker 7 (26:15):
Oh wow, yeah, you're not kidding that.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
The map is a lot different now. Yeah, Like it's
just strange how close it looks good find?
Speaker 4 (26:25):
So what would be the next step?
Speaker 5 (26:26):
Would that beginning authorm involved or just going to the
case detective.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
By that point we were already two steps ahead. We
knew that they had DNA from the skull on file
because NamUs had already compared it to two other missing persons,
neither of whom were a match. And we were pretty
sure that there was probably DNA for Mark somewhere on file,
based on both his history and mentions in the Orange
County Sheriff's Office case files. So I reached out to
(26:59):
a friend who and forensic anthropology identification, and we chatted
possible avenues, which included working with NamUs and working with
Othrom And so we've started the ball rolling on getting
this John Doe compared to Mark Oldberry. In the meantime,
the location of this skull felt pretty significant in both
(27:23):
our overall investigation into Oldberry as a possible keys victim
and the likely timeline that I had crafted over the
last few weeks. The John Doe skull was recovered from
a wetland area north of the West Fork Trinity River,
(27:45):
northeast of Fort Worth, just fifteen miles from where Keys
was staying with Heidi in Grand Prairie, Texas. As far
as I can tell, the area is known as Trinity
Lakes and at that time was mostly a recreation area.
Since then its slowly being replaced by subdivision housing, but
(28:06):
in twenty twelve it was a large, heavily wooded flat
area dotted with lakes and ponds, nestled between two interstates,
and littered with fishing holes and boat ramps. Precinct Line Road,
The road closest to where the scholl was found runs
mostly through isolated floodplains and parkland, passing multiple utilities, buildings
(28:28):
and sheds before finally opening up to the new neighborhoods Now,
there's a lot we still don't know, like how the
skull separated from its body or got to where it
was recovered. The rest of the remains could be somewhere nearby,
the skull being moved by animals at some point, or
(28:51):
the skull could have been removed prior to its arrival
at Precinct Line Road. If we're looking at this through
the lens of Israel Keys, it's very possible it could
have floated from the bottom of one of the many
surrounding lakes and then been relocated by a scavenger. But
quite frankly, there are many avenues by which that skull
(29:13):
could have arrived to where it was found. What stands
out to me is the geography and how it fits
into our proposed time line and where we know Keys
was during that time period. On February thirteenth, at around
six a m. Keyes sneaks out of Heidie's house and
turns his phone off. He leaves the note saying he's
(29:33):
going to bury guns and fix his windshield. As we
discussed in the previous episode, I believe he immediately departed
Grand Prairie for Vider, Texas to retrieve Mark's remains, potentially
kept at the Charlie Stag House, not far from where
Mark disappeared. Keys then heads to the Clayborne Godly area
so he can bury either Mark or items used and
(29:56):
or taken during mark subduction. This would be a great
distance and several jurisdictions away from where he abducted Mark
if he abducted Mark. But while he's there, instead of
burying any of these items, his car gets stuck in
the mud. He texts Heidi because he knows he doesn't
have enough time to get his car out, bury Mark's remains,
(30:19):
and destroy evidence before his flight. The next day, the
text pings off a Clayborne tower, placing him there at
eight thirty pm, stuck in the mud. But then he's
found by the good Samaritan who helps Keys out of
the mud. Keys would tell the FBI that he didn't
like Texas because the people there were nosy, and the
Reddit guy's wife said that he's a good guy who's
(30:40):
always looking out to help people. And remember that Key
said he got stuck in the mud before he did
anything else in the area southwest of Dallas. So Keys
gets out of the mud and leaves the area after
having been seen. Based on his text to Heidi and
his statements to the FBI, this is probably around ten
thirty or eleven PM on February thirteenth. In the following
(31:04):
twenty four hours, Keyes has to find the Alito house,
which he said that he had seen and then been
to in the days prior to the arson. He checks
out Stephenville, possibly to bury a trophy cash and we
have a witness placing him there. And he goes to
glen Rose and this time he also misses his flight.
I believe that Mark is in the trunk of his
(31:26):
car this entire time. After glen Rose, Keyes returns to
Claiborne and finally responds to Heidi's text messages. At five
thirty pm on the fourteenth, He tells her for the
first time that he's stuck in the mud in Clayburne.
He'd previously only said that he was stuck in the mud.
Now he has an alibi and phone pings will back
(31:49):
up his claim that he's been there since the day before.
But unbeknownst to Keys, Heidi and her daughters drive to
Claiborne to look for him. They can't find him anywhere,
so they sleep in their van at the Clayburne Mall.
But like two ships passing in the night, as they
had to Clayburne, Keys heads to East Texas, an area
he knows his family is about to move to. In fact,
(32:12):
his sister and her fiance had moved there the day before.
He trolls around the area for another victim, and eventually
comes across Jimmy Tidwell, either via Craigslist, Tidwell had posted
his washing machine for sale not long before he vanished,
or at Walmart, a place Keys and Tidwell both frequented.
Keyes was known to patrol the Walmart and Walmart parking
(32:34):
lot late at night if he couldn't sleep, or Keys
encountered him along one of the many abandoned roads that
Tidwell would travel from work to home in the early
early hours of the morning, or Keys found Tidwell's isolated
homestead in the woods of Mount Enterprise from East Texas.
Keyes travels back west to the Alito House, presumably where
(32:56):
he rapes or kills Tidwell and or assaults Mark Oldberry's remains,
and like with the couriers, he runs out of time
and so he leaves the remains in the house, which
he knows is at least temporarily vacant. He returns to Clayborne,
turns on his phone, and realizes that Heidi has been
there the entire time. He meets her in the parking lot,
(33:19):
where she confirms that his car is covered in mud,
and she says that he's incredibly disheveled, He tells her
that his credit cards were frozen false and that he
hasn't slept or eaten for two days true. Together, they
caravan back to Grand Prairie, but he's left evidence behind
and so by morning he has to return to Aledo
(33:42):
to destroy it. He tells the FBI that he was
in the house in Aledo for a couple of hours
before burning it down, but he won't tell them what
he was doing there or why he burned it, only
saying it just needed to burn. Before setting the house
on fire, he removes the remains back into his trunk,
(34:03):
steals some jewelry, collects Tidwell's helmet, construction goggles, and, like
Samantha Kone, some of his hair, and then he sets
the house ablaze and watches it burn, making sure that
all the evidence is destroyed. Then he uses Tidwell's hair
and work gear to rob the Azel bank. The drive
(34:24):
from Azel back to Grand Prairie goes directly past Precinct
Line Road, where he buries the remains before heading back
to Heidie's house. Or He buries the remains the night
before the fire, before he calls Heidi late that evening
from the mall, but either way he still has to
return to Aledo to destroy any evidence. Per Heidi, on
(34:48):
the morning of the sixteenth, she bought Key's new airline
tickets to return to Alaska, and immediately after purchasing them,
Keyes left the house and didn't return until two or
three pm. The Azel bank robbery occurred at noon and lasted,
according to newly acquired documentation, just twenty five minutes, which
means that Keys had between ninety and two hundred minutes
(35:11):
to then drive forty five minutes from Azel to Grand
Prairie right past Precinct Line Road. Following day, on the seventeenth,
Keys and Sarah start heading to the Houston Airport for
their return flight. That night, at eleven thirty a m.
They stop at the Jacksonville Walmart so Keys can use
(35:31):
some of the robbery money to buy Walmart cards and
so he can buy the shovel, lube and air freshener.
Presumably the air freshener is for the car, which, if
all this is accurate, has had human remains in it
for multiple days. From there, Keyes stops in Wells. According
to his brother in law, who says that Keys and
(35:52):
Sarah stopped by for a while on their trip to
the airport. It's unclear if Keyes leaves Sarah there for
any period of time, but we know for a fact
that between Wells and the Houston Airport he buried two
separate caches, one near the airport and one east of Wells.
And it's also around this time that just two hours
(36:15):
away southeast of Wells and en route to the airport,
Mark's belongings suddenly reappear in a highly visible area near
where he disappeared. The hard hat, goggles, and hair that
(36:37):
Keys used in the azeal robbery were never found. Jimmy
Tidwells hard hat and goggles were never found, Mark Oldberry's
tent and any changes of clothes that he had were
never recovered. Upwards of eight thousand dollars from the bank
robbery was never recovered, and yet Keyes never buried the
(37:02):
guns that he told Heidi he was setting out to
bury on the thirteenth, despite going to at a minimum
two potential burial sites. So, as I asked before, what
was Keyes burying or trying to bury?
Speaker 8 (37:20):
Now?
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I can't state enough that this is all theoretical, But
when we look at the time Keyes had available and
the places that we know he was and the places
we know he had to go. It works, It works
pretty perfectly, and so it's my working theory until we
hear from the Stephenville Witness or the Godly Witness, or
(37:45):
get any more information on the Fort Worth John Doe.
It's a weird dichotomy to exist in to go over
this timeline over and over again, placing Jimmy and Mark
into it like some bad math equation, while also caring
(38:07):
as much as a stranger can about Jimmy and Mark,
to want more for both of them, while also wanting
to solve their cases. There's a level of detachment you
have to have in order to fully investigate this case.
You have to be able to accept certain notions and
focus more on the viability than the harsh details of
(38:30):
those notions that Keys potentially drove around for days with
a human being in his trunk, and not just any
human being, but Mark Oldberry, and that Mark Oldberry is
someone's brother, son, father, that when you're talking about these things,
(38:51):
these theories, these notions, this circumstantial evidence, you're talking about
someone someone The longer you're able to do it, the
longer you're able to detach the harder it is when
you finally come back for air, when you turn off
the computer, when you sit with it at night, mentally
(39:14):
fretting over and composing emails to his family, and then
when all of that is said and done, to remember
that your personal stakes in this are so low that
you care as much as you can about a stranger,
but that it's nothing compared to those who knew and
loved him, who knew and loved him best, who have
(39:38):
spent the last decade wondering what happened, hoping he's okay,
trying to accept that he's not. Until we get DNA results,
nothing is conclusive. In a world where police departments and
law enforcement agencies are overworked, underfunded, and not operated in
(40:00):
a way that prioritizes cases like Marx. NamUs is available
to the public to do this kind of work, and
we should use it, but use it responsibly, as well
as report our findings responsibly like Sydney cop did with
Christopher Ruffe. This is an accessible way for people to
(40:20):
get involved, but it has to be done in a
way that is respectful of the loved ones on either side,
because until and unless we can determine that this John
Doe is Mark Oldberry. Just as Mark is someone someone,
so is this John Doe. And in the meantime.
Speaker 8 (40:45):
We wait.
Speaker 7 (41:19):
Ah s off just for but that I need to
tell no that I had no common mind. I water,
I don't cool cold coast water.
Speaker 9 (41:43):
At it all the futures.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
All to like, that's not leaders.
Speaker 9 (41:54):
Lead and not the fanish.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
Oh, don't take your drive rather.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
A what a feature, hayes, I have to come.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
From her.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
Bans woded, do longest cook a toder be gid up gos,
readers read falls hard, do love reading, don't destructed, I'm.
Speaker 9 (42:40):
Needed you it up tonight and all it is s susifle, comforting,
wh respect, FROs kasuki, home up tonight All.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
This episode was written, researched, edited, and produced by by
Me Your Host Josh Hallmark, with additional research by Jordan Taylor,
Kaz and Michelle Tucker, and research assistants by Shana Walensky
and Kim Kay. This episode featured Shana Wlenski, Jordan Taylor,
and Michelle Tooker. Resources include the Dallas Morning News. The
episode was made possible by the following Patreon producers, Amelia Hancock,
(43:20):
Amy Basel, and Marie Cashannette el Ash Fish, Becky C,
Benjamin Choppathon Casey, Jensen, Richardson, Christina Sissoon, Dale Exton, Drew Vipond,
Heather Horton, Wheedon, Julian Natale, Kathleen Studter, Kendall C, Lona Holiday,
Lauren f Linley, tuscoff Manolas Bulachus, Nicole and Dennis Henry, Nicole, Gooseman,
Pink s, C. Shelley Brewer, Sherry D. Trista, Tuesday Woodworth,
(43:42):
zach Ignottowitz, Warren, Beth McNally, John Comrie, Jordan M, Jordan Taylor,
Michael Beer, Sarah C, Shawna Harden, Spooky Express, and Lydia Fiedler.
Thank you to Studio Both Anne's newest Patreon supporters, Summer Lee,
Don l, Heidi Lars, j Alexandra H, Danica M, Jillian H,
Jennifer S, Pamela B, Devin T, Lacy, f A j
(44:03):
C and p and Alyssa S. To support the investigation
and get AD free episodes, go to Patreon dot com
Slash Studio both And. This episode included music by William Hellfire,
Sarah Sarage, Cherimisanov, Radical Face, Lee Roosevir, Fields of Ohio
and Wings for Louise, with featured music by Amanda bergman.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
Ah some askin fun the word that time put me sir. Yes,
you'll have to fall from.
Speaker 8 (45:16):
Bias in the.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Waters things two, all of then your daughter.
Speaker 7 (45:25):
Sun and must things.
Speaker 9 (45:27):
Get Really.
Speaker 7 (45:30):
You're in forever Chicken, all my fever, freelys.
Speaker 8 (45:38):
Sever eaving.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
You.
Speaker 8 (45:41):
Don't it tonight?
Speaker 9 (45:43):
All it is sensible, comforting, swept superbot cross.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
It up.
Speaker 9 (45:54):
It is sense when comfort it's super French faces, six
schools coss, six small snot stop stop schoo
This is a studio both and production. And the more
we started to pour over all of these details, all
of this information new and old, much like our independent
research on Mark Oldberry, it all started to connect. And
(00:30):
that's when I left a YouTube after show to find
multiple frantic text messages and missed calls from Kaz. I
need you to look at something when you are done
with the live show. Seriously, you have to call me
(00:54):
after the live show. I may have found something. I
don't want to get my hopes, but I need your
input or I won't be able to sleep tonight. You
can record me so we have something to refer back to.
If this turns out to be something, call me. I
(01:14):
think I found him.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
This is true crime, bullshit. I'm your host, Josh Hallmark,
and this is a serialized story of Israel Keys. I
(01:40):
called Kaz on my drive home from the studio. The
tone of her voice was more serious than I'm used to.
She was thoughtful and deliberate and sounded uncharacteristically nervous. Ever
since the discovery of the Laplace cash and our receipt
(02:02):
of the Mark Oldberry files, the entire team had been
obsessively pouring back over the Texas timeline and both the
Tidwell and Old Berry cases. We were asking questions we'd
never asked before, seeing things we'd never seen before, and
starting to work out some of the aspects of this
period of Keyes's timeline that we couldn't previously make sense of.
(02:25):
And I could tell that it was starting to take
a toll on most of us, most of all Kaz.
When we first received the Old Berry files. Before I
shared them with the rest of the group, Kas and
I spent a day with them on our own, and
then we chatted and she said something to me she's
(02:46):
never said before in our seven years of friendship. Now,
what you have to understand is the joke amongst the
research team is that Kaz is the wet blanket.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
She can and will poke a hole in any She
can find the weak spots in any theory or argument.
She is the most judicious and cautious. She asks more
questions than she makes proclamations. With Kaz, rarely is anything
(03:17):
ever absolute. That's why it was so shocking when I
called her after our initial reads and she said to me, verbatim,
he did this. Keyes did this. I think it would
(03:38):
come as no surprise to you that we as a
team have a soft spot for missing people who ended
up in the margins, the people who tend to be
invisible because of the circumstances in their lives that made
them less editorial or easier to blame for what happened
to them. We've seen the way that a single shitty
word or phrase junkie, addict, prostitute can take over an
(04:02):
entire narrative, an entire investigation. In the few paragraphs you'll
find about Mark online, the only thing you'll generally read
about him is that he did bath salts. Maybe that
he liked fishing. I've read multiple articles about Mark's disappearance
and the ensuing investigation that only mention him once or twice.
(04:27):
He's a footnote in his own disappearance. But man, no
matter how long or short the article, they never failed
to miss the bath salts, which is not to say
they don't matter. I've both read and heard from people
close to the case that the bath salts became the narrative.
(04:49):
Mark used drugs. Mark went out to the swamp, took
bath salts, got high, took off all his clothes, and
was probably eaten by an alligator. It's easy it's neat,
it's efficient. We can move on, except that it's not neat,
(05:09):
because what did the alligator return Mark's close to the
scene ten days later? Did the alligator eat his tent?
It minimizes Mark down to a single thing as a
means to close his case as a cautionary tale. Don't
do bath salts or you'll be eaten by an alligator.
(05:34):
Not only is it lazy, but it's cruel. It's unkind,
it's shortsighted. And while the articles never fail to mention drugs,
they have all every single article I've read about Mark's disappearance,
(05:54):
they've all failed to mention that Mark was a father.
His son was only four or five when Mark disappeared,
and I can understand why they leave that out. It
might humanize him. Mark had a son and a loving,
albeit frustrated family. He loved to fish and hike. He
had an adventurous spirit. He was so much more than
(06:17):
just a guy who did bath salts and disappeared. In fact,
we don't even know that he had bath salts with
him when he went camping. We don't even know that
he planned on doing drugs that day. We just know
that he used to do bath salts, and possibly separately
and unrelated, disappeared. While Kaz was on our own journey
(06:46):
with these files. The rest of us were trying to
make sense of the timeline and the other variables and
coincidences that kept coming up. Maybe Mark was in the
Alito house because Key said he was very dodgy in
that interview, and they caught him in a lie, or
(07:07):
they didn't catch him, but he lies at one point
because he changes his story in very short order and
basically says, well, yeah, I was in that house, or
I knew that house was there like six days before
I burned it down. But six days before he burned
it down, he was in the Caribbean, So either he
went there before his cruise or immediately upon his return.
(07:31):
If he went there before, maybe that is the place
he took old Berry, which could also explain why immediately
after burning it down, old Berry's close show up again.
And you have to remember at that point, Heidi's still
living in suburban Dallas, so he would have to go
back to that area.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Point and I'm looking a map, it's only about five hours, yeah,
Provider to Alito, and which.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Is the distance from Hackensack to tupper Lake.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Yeah, I was just thinking, Deborah Feldman.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Though, when are you thinking this would have happened? Just
I'm thinking about the trip from Bider to Alito and
back in time for Christina if it happened at the beginning,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
So.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I think it's safe to say Mark was most likely
abducted on the third, if it was keys and if
Christina's story is true, which I definitely believe the latter,
and I'm pretty certain on the former.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, I mean Mark went out there what the first
of the second?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I forget he went out there. It's not entirely clear
because they it's all the timeline is all predicated on
he was. He had a two day hold, but they
don't say hours. So is that like a two business
day hold or is that a forty eight hour hold?
Because those are two entirely different things. Point and I'm
hoping that sister can shed some light on that. But
(09:04):
according to if we're to believe that a two day
hold means he was back free at three pm the
following day, which seems bananas to me, then the earliest
he could have disappeared is that night, but seems more
likely the next day.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It's perfectly believable that his uncle went to find him
and he just was out of earshot. It was probably dark,
So I'm willing to believe that that, you know, it
wasn't until a day or so later.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
But then the timeline is really tough because and again
we don't know for sure if Kim went to Lafayette,
because she never says she went to Lafayette. She said
she met him in New Orleans. So where is Sarah?
Is there enough time for him then to drive from
Vider five hours to Alito five hours? No, seven hours
(09:56):
back to Lafayette. You brought up something that like, I
hate even indulging in this, but it does seem to
be a pattern that Dean Coral.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yes, I was going there.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
Yeah, And so when I was looking to this Charlie
Stagg artist, I was trying to find more information about
the address, and one of the first things that came
up was that Dean Coral graduated from Bider High School.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Dean Girl is one of those serial killers that I
can't even read about.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
Yeah, and he was also he targeted you know, uh,
men and boys, So that really did stand out to me.
I kept thinking, I hate to like you said, Josh,
I hate to go there, but this, all of these
cases are connected, and he, you know, had his little
fans like Bundy and homes.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
And stuff like that. You know, he was a fan
of them, so to speak.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
So that did come up because I had no idea
Dean Coral lived in that area at one point in time,
and I mean it's a small town, so it just
seemed weird.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
To me too.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
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(12:24):
to podcasts, Keys being interested in other serial killers comes
up just as frequently as his penchant for operating in
the same areas as these other serial killers. It's something
(12:45):
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, But as I
said in our meeting, it's not something I'm entirely prepared
to indulge. In, but rest assured it's something we've all
noticed quite a bit. For most of that call, Kaz
(13:05):
was quiet, and I knew why. I knew what was
on her mind. I knew what she had found, and
I was waiting for the right time to tell the
rest of the team. I wanted to make sure we
discussed and analyzed every thought and idea, every piece of
new information before everything changed. The Chrysler town and country
(13:30):
that Laplace guy saw Keys in. There was some question
as to whether that could have been Heidie's van, because
we know that she had a van at the time,
So we wanted to either rule that in or out,
because you know the implications if it's not Heidi's is
that Keys somehow got a second car on this trip,
(13:52):
whether it was by rental or carjacking or something else.
I spent half the day trying to identify whether what
kind of car heid he had at the time, which
involved me going through every member of the Church of
Wells facebook page, googling images of the wedding, going through
the Church of well site, and I could not find anything.
(14:15):
But I did find Heidi's address, looked it up on
Google Maps, and thank god, the Google Maps van had
been by in September of twenty twelve that year they
were busy, and sure enough, there is a big red
van parked in front of our house that's like old
(14:35):
and looks like, you know, I'm a impoverished, reliant upon
the church for my welfare religious van. It looks like
someone who doesn't have a lot of money's van. And
it is certainly not a Chrysler town and Country. It's
a Ford. So you know, we can't for certain rule
(14:59):
it out. But I would be hard pressed to believe
that Heidi owned two cars and that one was They
were both vans, and one was like new and nice,
and the other was this little beat So I think
we can rule out that the town and Country was Heidi's.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
I just thought of something when you were saying that, though,
would the Church of Wells have like lent parishioners or members,
and even like Israel, a van or a car.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I don't think so, because the Church of Wells did
not even have a structure until twenty thirteen. Oh okay,
and they were all living in double wides in the
same little neighborhood. I can send you the map. It's
actually kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
They have a name before they moved to Wells.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
That's a great question, like.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
What were they called before they moved to Wells? Because
they moved to Wells in months before Israel was arrested.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
I actually think that somewhere. I've been going through all
the files just doing searches on keywords, and I think
it's somewhere. I think I saw some mention of it,
but I don't recall it. So yeah, so that begs
the question where did you get this car from? That
also tells us that, depending on which trip that encounter happened,
(16:25):
we can't trust the mileage of the rental car.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Good point. Could do you think there would be like
some sort of local police blodder we could look at
to see if anybody any cars like that were stolen?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I think so. You know. The tough thing is if
it's in New Orleans metro like it's yeah, yeah, maybe Lufkin,
maybe Viter. I want to I want to look into
Viter and see maybe Lafayette. But yeah, I mean those
are all rough, impoverished areas. Yes, your point, as you
(17:04):
probably recall the Laplace guy who we've been calling Frank,
aptly named after the groundhog who lives in my yard
and is always digging around in the ground. Frank said
Keys was driving a Chrysler Town and Country van when
he encountered him that day in the Spillway, which was
cause for pause because on his February trip, Keys was
(17:27):
driving a Kia Soul, and on his March trip, Keys
infamously drove a white Ford Focus. So where did this
van come from? We knew that Heidi Keys drove a
van at the time she and her daughter slept in
it at the Cleeburne Mall while they were trying to
pick up Keys after he got stuck in the mud
for three days, So we wondered if perhaps Keys was
(17:50):
driving Heidie's van that day, but clearly he was not,
which means two things. One, Keys, like Wick, he stole
or carjacked that van at some point on one of
those two trips to Texas, And two, until we know
during which trip Frank encountered Keys, the rental car mileage
(18:13):
cannot be relied upon. We can now only use time
available to Keys to craft the timeline and rule him
in or out, and as we well know, Keys was
quite good at maximizing his time. But as we continue
to debate these details the van Christina, when certain things
(18:36):
likely occurred, Kaz finally stepped in. I have a question,
take Christina out of the timeline. How does that change
the timeline for old Berry? How does that change the
timeline for Keys? Does it make it easier for us
(18:56):
to reconcile the timeline if you take Christina out of it?
Or does it make it harder for us to reconcile
the timeline. Human beings have faulty memory. When I spoke
with Christina two years ago, it had been more than
a decade since her encounter. She could be misremembering any
(19:19):
number of things, from the weather, to the day, to
even the appearance and behavior of the man she encountered.
So in a scenario where she was entirely wrong and
this man wasn't Keys, would that change anything? And the
answer is no. Keys was still in the area, his
(19:43):
time was still unaccounted for, He was staying in a
town that he had no business being in, and as
Toks reminded us, all Old Berry was on our radar
long before Christina came forward. Is a significant piece of
circumstantial evidence in a case with a long list of
(20:06):
circumstantial evidence, a list that was growing longer by the day.
So while we all truly believe she did in fact
encounter Keys in that cemetery, maybe we were being unnecessarily
pedantic about her timeline in relation to Marx. And maybe
(20:27):
if her memory is exactly right, and she encountered Keys
on the third and Mark was already missing when his
uncle arrived on the night of the second, well maybe
both of those things can be true at the same time.
Because there's a theory one brought to us from Joshua
from somewhere in the pines that made us wonder if
(20:49):
perhaps Mark wasn't in lieu of Christina. I knew where
Kaz was going with all of this, but while important,
maybe the timeline wasn't the most important component in linking
Keys to Mark, or even determining what happened to Mark.
(21:14):
And that's when I left a YouTube after show to
find multiple frantic text messages and missed calls from Kaz.
I need you to look at something when you are
done with the live show. Seriously, you have to call
me after the live show. I may have found something.
(21:35):
I don't want to get my hopes up, but I
need your input or I won't be able to sleep tonight.
You can record me so we have something to refer
back to. If this turns out to be something, call me.
I think I found him. I think I found Mark It.
(22:06):
So we Kas and I before we even shared the
files with you guys, were immediately struck by the obvious
reappearance of his clothes. And like I said last week,
even Kaz, who I've never heard say this, was like,
I believe this was Keys. So she started, you know,
(22:30):
doing her dough magic and started conducting searches on NamUs
for the unidentified persons between February two and September twenty
sixth of this year for counties that overlapped with locations
where Keys was confirmed to have been, starting with Laplace
(22:51):
Bonnie Carr and ending in Fort Worth, Texas. She consulted
maps of counties in both states, searched them one at
a time, did not specify by gender or sex, and
was focusing on potential matches that could be male like,
not doing searches based on that, but going through the
(23:11):
search results based on that. Most of the Louisiana parishes
in the area of New Orleans and Laplace had negative results.
In Texas, she searched the following counties with the same
parameters Jefferson County, which is where Beaumont, Texas is, Orange County,
which is where vider is, Angelina County, which is where
(23:32):
Lufkin is. And of those there were only it looks
like three unidentified person's remains. So then she went into
Terrant County, Texas, which is where Fort Worth is, and
that search returned thirteen results. Three were identified as female.
(23:52):
She set those aside, and as she opened up documents
accompanying the remaining ten, she didn't find any that true
fit our criteria. Some were found in homeless camps, neighbors
calling for a welfare check, et cetera, et cetera. And
then she focused on one which is on up sixteen
four zero three all put a link in the chat right.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Now, this looks a lot like him. Oh my gosh.
I opened it up. I was like, WHOA.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
Before you even said any of that, I was like,
oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
These remains, which was a skull, was discovered on February
thirteenth of twenty seventeen in a field that was being
cleared for construction in Terrean County, Texas. Workers found the
school while clearing the land in Fort Worth. The remains
were described as skeletonized cranium. NamUs had reported only two
comparisons of missing persons had been made and ruled out,
(24:58):
and then she looked at they did a facial recognition
and she believed that it very very strongly resembled Marvel Berry.
And then I started digging into when these remains were
found and we found the address, which I will also
pop in there. And what I would ask you to
do is when you look it up, look at the
(25:23):
Google Map's history, because there's images from around the time
that Keys was there, and you'll see the landscape looks
very different. They've built a whole subdivision there in the meantime.
But they were able to determine that the man was
between the age of thirty and fifty five, and the
remains had likely and maybe they didn't determine a date
(25:47):
of death or arrange, but Mark I think was thirty
two at the time, so he fits into that. It
looks a lot like him. And the area where this
was found is directly in between where Heidi lived and
Azel and Alito. If you look at the map, the
area looks almost exactly like the Bonnie carspillway.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
And it does say a date of death range between
two thousand and seven and twenty twelve.
Speaker 7 (26:15):
Oh wow, yeah, you're not kidding that.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
The map is a lot different now. Yeah, Like it's
just strange how close it looks good find?
Speaker 4 (26:25):
So what would be the next step?
Speaker 5 (26:26):
Would that beginning authorm involved or just going to the
case detective.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
By that point we were already two steps ahead. We
knew that they had DNA from the skull on file
because NamUs had already compared it to two other missing persons,
neither of whom were a match. And we were pretty
sure that there was probably DNA for Mark somewhere on file,
based on both his history and mentions in the Orange
County Sheriff's Office case files. So I reached out to
(26:59):
a friend who and forensic anthropology identification, and we chatted
possible avenues, which included working with NamUs and working with
Othrom And so we've started the ball rolling on getting
this John Doe compared to Mark Oldberry. In the meantime,
the location of this skull felt pretty significant in both
(27:23):
our overall investigation into Oldberry as a possible keys victim
and the likely timeline that I had crafted over the
last few weeks. The John Doe skull was recovered from
a wetland area north of the West Fork Trinity River,
(27:45):
northeast of Fort Worth, just fifteen miles from where Keys
was staying with Heidi in Grand Prairie, Texas. As far
as I can tell, the area is known as Trinity
Lakes and at that time was mostly a recreation area.
Since then its slowly being replaced by subdivision housing, but
(28:06):
in twenty twelve it was a large, heavily wooded flat
area dotted with lakes and ponds, nestled between two interstates,
and littered with fishing holes and boat ramps. Precinct Line Road,
The road closest to where the scholl was found runs
mostly through isolated floodplains and parkland, passing multiple utilities, buildings
(28:28):
and sheds before finally opening up to the new neighborhoods Now,
there's a lot we still don't know, like how the
skull separated from its body or got to where it
was recovered. The rest of the remains could be somewhere nearby,
the skull being moved by animals at some point, or
(28:51):
the skull could have been removed prior to its arrival
at Precinct Line Road. If we're looking at this through
the lens of Israel Keys, it's very possible it could
have floated from the bottom of one of the many
surrounding lakes and then been relocated by a scavenger. But
quite frankly, there are many avenues by which that skull
(29:13):
could have arrived to where it was found. What stands
out to me is the geography and how it fits
into our proposed time line and where we know Keys
was during that time period. On February thirteenth, at around
six a m. Keyes sneaks out of Heidie's house and
turns his phone off. He leaves the note saying he's
(29:33):
going to bury guns and fix his windshield. As we
discussed in the previous episode, I believe he immediately departed
Grand Prairie for Vider, Texas to retrieve Mark's remains, potentially
kept at the Charlie Stag House, not far from where
Mark disappeared. Keys then heads to the Clayborne Godly area
so he can bury either Mark or items used and
(29:56):
or taken during mark subduction. This would be a great
distance and several jurisdictions away from where he abducted Mark
if he abducted Mark. But while he's there, instead of
burying any of these items, his car gets stuck in
the mud. He texts Heidi because he knows he doesn't
have enough time to get his car out, bury Mark's remains,
(30:19):
and destroy evidence before his flight. The next day, the
text pings off a Clayborne tower, placing him there at
eight thirty pm, stuck in the mud. But then he's
found by the good Samaritan who helps Keys out of
the mud. Keys would tell the FBI that he didn't
like Texas because the people there were nosy, and the
Reddit guy's wife said that he's a good guy who's
(30:40):
always looking out to help people. And remember that Key
said he got stuck in the mud before he did
anything else in the area southwest of Dallas. So Keys
gets out of the mud and leaves the area after
having been seen. Based on his text to Heidi and
his statements to the FBI, this is probably around ten
thirty or eleven PM on February thirteenth. In the following
(31:04):
twenty four hours, Keyes has to find the Alito house,
which he said that he had seen and then been
to in the days prior to the arson. He checks
out Stephenville, possibly to bury a trophy cash and we
have a witness placing him there. And he goes to
glen Rose and this time he also misses his flight.
I believe that Mark is in the trunk of his
(31:26):
car this entire time. After glen Rose, Keyes returns to
Claiborne and finally responds to Heidi's text messages. At five
thirty pm on the fourteenth, He tells her for the
first time that he's stuck in the mud in Clayburne.
He'd previously only said that he was stuck in the mud.
Now he has an alibi and phone pings will back
(31:49):
up his claim that he's been there since the day before.
But unbeknownst to Keys, Heidi and her daughters drive to
Claiborne to look for him. They can't find him anywhere,
so they sleep in their van at the Clayburne Mall.
But like two ships passing in the night, as they
had to Clayburne, Keys heads to East Texas, an area
he knows his family is about to move to. In fact,
(32:12):
his sister and her fiance had moved there the day before.
He trolls around the area for another victim, and eventually
comes across Jimmy Tidwell, either via Craigslist, Tidwell had posted
his washing machine for sale not long before he vanished,
or at Walmart, a place Keys and Tidwell both frequented.
Keyes was known to patrol the Walmart and Walmart parking
(32:34):
lot late at night if he couldn't sleep, or Keys
encountered him along one of the many abandoned roads that
Tidwell would travel from work to home in the early
early hours of the morning, or Keys found Tidwell's isolated
homestead in the woods of Mount Enterprise from East Texas.
Keyes travels back west to the Alito House, presumably where
(32:56):
he rapes or kills Tidwell and or assaults Mark Oldberry's remains,
and like with the couriers, he runs out of time
and so he leaves the remains in the house, which
he knows is at least temporarily vacant. He returns to Clayborne,
turns on his phone, and realizes that Heidi has been
there the entire time. He meets her in the parking lot,
(33:19):
where she confirms that his car is covered in mud,
and she says that he's incredibly disheveled, He tells her
that his credit cards were frozen false and that he
hasn't slept or eaten for two days true. Together, they
caravan back to Grand Prairie, but he's left evidence behind
and so by morning he has to return to Aledo
(33:42):
to destroy it. He tells the FBI that he was
in the house in Aledo for a couple of hours
before burning it down, but he won't tell them what
he was doing there or why he burned it, only
saying it just needed to burn. Before setting the house
on fire, he removes the remains back into his trunk,
(34:03):
steals some jewelry, collects Tidwell's helmet, construction goggles, and, like
Samantha Kone, some of his hair, and then he sets
the house ablaze and watches it burn, making sure that
all the evidence is destroyed. Then he uses Tidwell's hair
and work gear to rob the Azel bank. The drive
(34:24):
from Azel back to Grand Prairie goes directly past Precinct
Line Road, where he buries the remains before heading back
to Heidie's house. Or He buries the remains the night
before the fire, before he calls Heidi late that evening
from the mall, but either way he still has to
return to Aledo to destroy any evidence. Per Heidi, on
(34:48):
the morning of the sixteenth, she bought Key's new airline
tickets to return to Alaska, and immediately after purchasing them,
Keyes left the house and didn't return until two or
three pm. The Azel bank robbery occurred at noon and lasted,
according to newly acquired documentation, just twenty five minutes, which
means that Keys had between ninety and two hundred minutes
(35:11):
to then drive forty five minutes from Azel to Grand
Prairie right past Precinct Line Road. Following day, on the seventeenth,
Keys and Sarah start heading to the Houston Airport for
their return flight. That night, at eleven thirty a m.
They stop at the Jacksonville Walmart so Keys can use
(35:31):
some of the robbery money to buy Walmart cards and
so he can buy the shovel, lube and air freshener.
Presumably the air freshener is for the car, which, if
all this is accurate, has had human remains in it
for multiple days. From there, Keyes stops in Wells. According
to his brother in law, who says that Keys and
(35:52):
Sarah stopped by for a while on their trip to
the airport. It's unclear if Keyes leaves Sarah there for
any period of time, but we know for a fact
that between Wells and the Houston Airport he buried two
separate caches, one near the airport and one east of Wells.
And it's also around this time that just two hours
(36:15):
away southeast of Wells and en route to the airport,
Mark's belongings suddenly reappear in a highly visible area near
where he disappeared. The hard hat, goggles, and hair that
(36:37):
Keys used in the azeal robbery were never found. Jimmy
Tidwells hard hat and goggles were never found, Mark Oldberry's
tent and any changes of clothes that he had were
never recovered. Upwards of eight thousand dollars from the bank
robbery was never recovered, and yet Keyes never buried the
(37:02):
guns that he told Heidi he was setting out to
bury on the thirteenth, despite going to at a minimum
two potential burial sites. So, as I asked before, what
was Keyes burying or trying to bury?
Speaker 8 (37:20):
Now?
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I can't state enough that this is all theoretical, But
when we look at the time Keyes had available and
the places that we know he was and the places
we know he had to go. It works, It works
pretty perfectly, and so it's my working theory until we
hear from the Stephenville Witness or the Godly Witness, or
(37:45):
get any more information on the Fort Worth John Doe.
It's a weird dichotomy to exist in to go over
this timeline over and over again, placing Jimmy and Mark
into it like some bad math equation, while also caring
(38:07):
as much as a stranger can about Jimmy and Mark,
to want more for both of them, while also wanting
to solve their cases. There's a level of detachment you
have to have in order to fully investigate this case.
You have to be able to accept certain notions and
focus more on the viability than the harsh details of
(38:30):
those notions that Keys potentially drove around for days with
a human being in his trunk, and not just any
human being, but Mark Oldberry, and that Mark Oldberry is
someone's brother, son, father, that when you're talking about these things,
(38:51):
these theories, these notions, this circumstantial evidence, you're talking about
someone someone The longer you're able to do it, the
longer you're able to detach the harder it is when
you finally come back for air, when you turn off
the computer, when you sit with it at night, mentally
(39:14):
fretting over and composing emails to his family, and then
when all of that is said and done, to remember
that your personal stakes in this are so low that
you care as much as you can about a stranger,
but that it's nothing compared to those who knew and
loved him, who knew and loved him best, who have
(39:38):
spent the last decade wondering what happened, hoping he's okay,
trying to accept that he's not. Until we get DNA results,
nothing is conclusive. In a world where police departments and
law enforcement agencies are overworked, underfunded, and not operated in
(40:00):
a way that prioritizes cases like Marx. NamUs is available
to the public to do this kind of work, and
we should use it, but use it responsibly, as well
as report our findings responsibly like Sydney cop did with
Christopher Ruffe. This is an accessible way for people to
(40:20):
get involved, but it has to be done in a
way that is respectful of the loved ones on either side,
because until and unless we can determine that this John
Doe is Mark Oldberry. Just as Mark is someone someone,
so is this John Doe. And in the meantime.
Speaker 8 (40:45):
We wait.
Speaker 7 (41:19):
Ah s off just for but that I need to
tell no that I had no common mind. I water,
I don't cool cold coast water.
Speaker 9 (41:43):
At it all the futures.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
All to like, that's not leaders.
Speaker 9 (41:54):
Lead and not the fanish.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
Oh, don't take your drive rather.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
A what a feature, hayes, I have to come.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
From her.
Speaker 7 (42:17):
Bans woded, do longest cook a toder be gid up gos,
readers read falls hard, do love reading, don't destructed, I'm.
Speaker 9 (42:40):
Needed you it up tonight and all it is s susifle, comforting,
wh respect, FROs kasuki, home up tonight All.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
This episode was written, researched, edited, and produced by by
Me Your Host Josh Hallmark, with additional research by Jordan Taylor,
Kaz and Michelle Tucker, and research assistants by Shana Walensky
and Kim Kay. This episode featured Shana Wlenski, Jordan Taylor,
and Michelle Tooker. Resources include the Dallas Morning News. The
episode was made possible by the following Patreon producers, Amelia Hancock,
(43:20):
Amy Basel, and Marie Cashannette el Ash Fish, Becky C,
Benjamin Choppathon Casey, Jensen, Richardson, Christina Sissoon, Dale Exton, Drew Vipond,
Heather Horton, Wheedon, Julian Natale, Kathleen Studter, Kendall C, Lona Holiday,
Lauren f Linley, tuscoff Manolas Bulachus, Nicole and Dennis Henry, Nicole, Gooseman,
Pink s, C. Shelley Brewer, Sherry D. Trista, Tuesday Woodworth,
(43:42):
zach Ignottowitz, Warren, Beth McNally, John Comrie, Jordan M, Jordan Taylor,
Michael Beer, Sarah C, Shawna Harden, Spooky Express, and Lydia Fiedler.
Thank you to Studio Both Anne's newest Patreon supporters, Summer Lee,
Don l, Heidi Lars, j Alexandra H, Danica M, Jillian H,
Jennifer S, Pamela B, Devin T, Lacy, f A j
(44:03):
C and p and Alyssa S. To support the investigation
and get AD free episodes, go to Patreon dot com
Slash Studio both And. This episode included music by William Hellfire,
Sarah Sarage, Cherimisanov, Radical Face, Lee Roosevir, Fields of Ohio
and Wings for Louise, with featured music by Amanda bergman.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
Ah some askin fun the word that time put me sir. Yes,
you'll have to fall from.
Speaker 8 (45:16):
Bias in the.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Waters things two, all of then your daughter.
Speaker 7 (45:25):
Sun and must things.
Speaker 9 (45:27):
Get Really.
Speaker 7 (45:30):
You're in forever Chicken, all my fever, freelys.
Speaker 8 (45:38):
Sever eaving.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
You.
Speaker 8 (45:41):
Don't it tonight?
Speaker 9 (45:43):
All it is sensible, comforting, swept superbot cross.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
It up.
Speaker 9 (45:54):
It is sense when comfort it's super French faces, six
schools coss, six small snot stop stop schoo
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