Speaker 1: School of humans. This is like being a washer woman, right,
Speaker 1: not my first favorite thing to do a little bit
Speaker 1: of skill. You don't want to scratch anything. So how
Speaker 1: many strokes did the guy did? The guy? The hip
Speaker 1: the lady? With one or two? I hurt somebody pretty bad.
Speaker 1: You can't get swim with one of those legs like
Speaker 1: that I had. You could get a good swing with
Speaker 1: one of those legs, he said, that was an understatement.
Speaker 1: We know that it was a piano leg that is
Speaker 1: suspected to be the murder weapon. According to my source,
Speaker 1: that piano leg was never found. So we're in a
Speaker 1: piano repair shop looking to learn anything we can that
Speaker 1: might help solve the case that haunts us all. In
Speaker 1: September of two thousand and four, twenty two year old
Speaker 1: Rebecca Gould was brutally murdered in a remote area of
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Ozarks. Fourteen years later, her killer is still
Speaker 1: out there. I've come back to Mountain View with one
Speaker 1: mission to get justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend, and
Speaker 1: this is Helen Gone narrowing it down in my old age,
Speaker 1: the piano repair shop feels a little bit like a junkyard,
Speaker 1: but with fancy pianos. There's instruments everywhere. If we're gonna
Speaker 1: find out what kind of piano leg killed Rebecca Gold,
Speaker 1: this is the place. So I was wondering, if you know,
Speaker 1: we just could take a look at some of the
Speaker 1: you know, these piano legs here, just the different types
Speaker 1: or something. Turn on the line over there. Rick Cooley
Speaker 1: is the shop owner. He's been working with pianos for
Speaker 1: forty five years, so he knows what he's doing. But
Speaker 1: I think we're the first people to ask him so
Speaker 1: many questions about piano legs. They just don't come off normally.
Speaker 1: You know, they come off if you have to get
Speaker 1: them off, but they're not ready to come off in
Speaker 1: particularly ended up right. Nobody's going to certainly get the
Speaker 1: leg off of bed. There's no way to get it off.
Speaker 1: It screwed to the toe, yeah, so it has to
Speaker 1: be a free leg. But most of them just have
Speaker 1: a bolt down the middle and just screw in there.
Speaker 1: And the French leg that's the one on the left
Speaker 1: where it's more like curR it probably has a couple
Speaker 1: of screws. It'd be hard to screw that one on.
Speaker 1: It might something to do, but most of them just
Speaker 1: have like a bolt that's glued into the leg and
Speaker 1: just screws on. I can see because they kind of
Speaker 1: stick out. So if something were to like hit it
Speaker 1: on the bottom, it would probably that one's kind of
Speaker 1: least it screws on. But I'm not going to take
Speaker 1: it off unless you want to go back and a
Speaker 1: six pag of meer or something. Well, I guess it
Speaker 1: might get break one off, or sometimes they're falling off,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the screws stripped out or something. Does
Speaker 1: that happen a lot? Who does what my moves one
Speaker 1: and beats one up, and they lived in a trailer,
Speaker 1: it probably gets pretty beat up. No, I mean imagine this,
Speaker 1: because there's a time somebody's ranch as living room. It
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be bet up, but in a trailer it
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be. Console and a spinet has a free leg.
Speaker 1: Usually that's the consoles a little taller, that's the spin it.
Speaker 1: So that's the pianos don't have a free leg once
Speaker 1: they get to be bigger consoles and spin it's that's
Speaker 1: a smaller one. But that's the only two. I said
Speaker 1: that those kind of legs are common to spin its
Speaker 1: and consoles that are verticals. They're all verticals, you know,
Speaker 1: but all ones are big things like that. I see
Speaker 1: they have more of like a top to them, right,
Speaker 1: and they're more that's the old fashioned. Yeah. And how
Speaker 1: much did you you think that a leg like that
Speaker 1: weighs like two three pounds or gosh, like four pounds
Speaker 1: or something like it? Would it could be heavy? A
Speaker 1: baseball is ash, which is a harder word. Would the
Speaker 1: most piano wood would be. I'm sure a baseball that
Speaker 1: probably wait in a little bit longer base on it
Speaker 1: probablyways a little more than a piano or piano leg
Speaker 1: was gonna be met out of just something like birch
Speaker 1: or maple or something probably had listen, I'd let you
Speaker 1: have it, don't. I mean? Have you think somewhere after
Speaker 1: visiting the shop, I feel like we have a clear
Speaker 1: sense of the suspected murder weapon. The piano in Casey's
Speaker 1: house was either a console or spin at piano, the
Speaker 1: smaller kind that can fit up against a wall and
Speaker 1: would fit in a tiny trailer. The legs for these
Speaker 1: pianos are mostly straight and decorative, and in cheaper models
Speaker 1: they just have one screw that connects the leg. Basically
Speaker 1: the legs look like upside down baseball bats, thin and
Speaker 1: they weigh around three to four pounds, light enough to
Speaker 1: pick up and swing, heavy enough to kill someone. Right now,
Speaker 1: we're looking for Chris, a former drug dealer who's been
Speaker 1: in and out of jail his whole life. He's rumored
Speaker 1: to be the cops number one suspect in the murder.
Speaker 1: A police source told me that their working theory is
Speaker 1: that Chris was allegedly high on drugs and he did
Speaker 1: it because Rebecca rejected his sexual advances. I've met Chris before.
Speaker 1: I visited him in jail several years ago. He was
Speaker 1: very cooperative and kind to me back then, but everyone
Speaker 1: keeps warning me that he's a dangerous guy. Plus his
Speaker 1: background and the unpredictability of drugs in general make this
Speaker 1: a scary situation. Finding him won't be easy, but it's
Speaker 1: what we have to do next. While we search for him,
Speaker 1: we need to follow the evidence and see if it
Speaker 1: supports this theory. Since we aren't going to be getting
Speaker 1: the case file, we'll have to find it ourselves. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: we were able to get the autopsy report from Rebecca's dad, Larry,
Speaker 1: along with a lot of other independent medical analysis and
Speaker 1: research he's commissioned over the years. We meet up with
Speaker 1: George Jerry to discuss the autopsy. Because of his reporting
Speaker 1: about Rebecca, George has become close to Rebecca's dad, Larry,
Speaker 1: and he's turning out to be a valuable member of
Speaker 1: our investigative team as well. You realize that every day
Speaker 1: there's at least probably a person who walks through that
Speaker 1: door who has flat out killed somebody in cold blood.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows who they are, and they're smiling at you,
Speaker 1: talking you, acting like nothing happened. It's just really surreal
Speaker 1: that they're out and walking around. What's frustrating about this
Speaker 1: case is if we could just get some basic information,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like the police to verify the
Speaker 1: piano leg theory. I mean, you know, we know it's
Speaker 1: probably true. I mean they someone told doctor Gould, because
Speaker 1: if you look at the autopsy report, she died from
Speaker 1: one or two blows to the head. Doctor Gould told
Speaker 1: me it was from a piano leg. Somebody was really
Speaker 1: mad and they hit her with enough force to kill
Speaker 1: her in one or two blows, which even with a
Speaker 1: piano leg, it would take a lot of it would
Speaker 1: take a lot of power. To do it, even for
Speaker 1: a grown man, and you know, you can hit somebody
Speaker 1: in the head with something and not kill them, and
Speaker 1: so for to do it, it must have been very
Speaker 1: anger fueled. Her actual death report, I guess it actually
Speaker 1: says only one blow. Doctor Gould said there he thinks
Speaker 1: there's two because there was like a like a a
Speaker 1: rendering of her skull and there was like some damage
Speaker 1: to another part of it, and he thought it was
Speaker 1: another another hit. But you know, technically she was hitt
Speaker 1: one time and that's that was the death blow. That
Speaker 1: is what actually the autopsy reads. Is a cold document,
Speaker 1: but it still gives me chills. It's almost like I'm
Speaker 1: back in the morgue watching the details of Rebecca's murder
Speaker 1: get poked and prodded by the medical examiner. Weighed out
Speaker 1: with precision written out in terse prose, this twenty two
Speaker 1: year old white female, Rebecca Gould died of blunt force
Speaker 1: injuries of the head. According to investigation. She was last
Speaker 1: independently known alive on Monday, September twenty seventh. By the way,
Speaker 1: that's not right, it's the twentieth that's mistake. At the
Speaker 1: time of her disappearance, she was staying at a friend's
Speaker 1: residence near Melbourne, Arkansas. She was reported missing on September
Speaker 1: twenty first. On September twenty seventh, her body was discovered
Speaker 1: in a ravine along State Highway nine south of Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Death was officially pronounced at ten fifty four am. Identification
Speaker 1: of the decease was established through dental records. A relatively
Speaker 1: high degree of decomposition change was noted. In general, this
Speaker 1: was consistent with death having taken place at or around
Speaker 1: the time of her disappearance. It was further noted that
Speaker 1: the amount of decomposition involving the head was disproportionately advanced
Speaker 1: compared to most of the rest of the body. Overall,
Speaker 1: examination of the body did not reveal any evidence of
Speaker 1: penetrating trauma. There was no evidence of significant blood force
Speaker 1: injury involving the thorax. An assessment for the presence or
Speaker 1: absence of trauma related to sexual assault could not be
Speaker 1: performed due to the advanced degree of decomposition present. In
Speaker 1: light of the suspicious nature of her disappearance, findings at
Speaker 1: the scene, and the nature of her injuries, the manner
Speaker 1: of death is homicide. So yeah, it was a really,
Speaker 1: really really hard hit to the head. Geez, maybe twice.
Speaker 1: It looks like the one super hard hit to the
Speaker 1: temple was something like the piano leg because it cracked
Speaker 1: her skull. That was the one that cracked her skull.
Speaker 1: I noticed the name at the bottom of the autopsy,
Speaker 1: Frank Peretti. He's the medical examiner for the Arkansas State Police,
Speaker 1: and he's actually a bit of a controversial figure because
Speaker 1: he also oversaw the medical examination of the infamous West
Speaker 1: Memphis three case. Larry also paid to have an independent
Speaker 1: review done. It confirms a lot of the details of
Speaker 1: the autopsy, but also has some additional insights. Larry told
Speaker 1: us that Dennis said Rebecca had been sexually assaulted, but
Speaker 1: the autopsy specifically said that certain medical tests could not
Speaker 1: be performed due to the length of time that the
Speaker 1: body had been exposed to the elements. Also, Rebecca was
Speaker 1: wearing her underwear and T shirt that, according to Danielle,
Speaker 1: she often wore to bed. Would a rapist attack someone
Speaker 1: and then put their underwear back on, but not bother
Speaker 1: to redress them. According to friends and family, Rebecca was
Speaker 1: a spitfire who would not back down from a fight.
Speaker 1: In the autopsy, it looks like Rebecca did not have
Speaker 1: defensive wounds. The autopsy mentions that material was taken from
Speaker 1: under her fingernails. The evidence suggests that she was not
Speaker 1: afraid of her killer. The date on the autopsy is wrong,
Speaker 1: but that's most likely a typo. So we have a
Speaker 1: murder weapon and an autopsy report that says Rebecca died
Speaker 1: from one or two blows to the head. But to
Speaker 1: make sure we're leaving no stone unturned, we call a
Speaker 1: neurologist to get their take. Hey, yeah, that's me to
Speaker 1: the left, and we can do one of a couple
Speaker 1: of things. Let's see it. This should be good in here.
Speaker 1: Any blunt trauma in the head can be dangerous. Typically
Speaker 1: when we think about the sort of severe trauma to
Speaker 1: the head that's that ends people's lives, we're thinking about
Speaker 1: bad falls or car accidents or anything like that, and
Speaker 1: usually those types of things cause some injury to the
Speaker 1: whole brain at the same time, sort of diffuse injury
Speaker 1: to the brain from deceleration and rocking around in the skull. However,
Speaker 1: other blood force trauma can can certainly cause injury significant
Speaker 1: enough to cause death. Trauma with a piano leg or
Speaker 1: any sort of you know, blunt instrument could cause bleeding
Speaker 1: on the outside of the brain, either what's called an
Speaker 1: epidural hematoma or a subdural hematoma, and those can put
Speaker 1: pressure on the brain and certainly could could could cause
Speaker 1: death if not recognized in a short period of time.
Speaker 1: So certainly, if it caused that much soft tissue damage
Speaker 1: and caused a skull fracture or you know, a fracture
Speaker 1: of any of the facial bones or anatomy, that certainly
Speaker 1: could be enough to cause death. And are there certain
Speaker 1: parts of the head that that may be more susceptible
Speaker 1: than others, So like if she was maybe hit like
Speaker 1: on the top of the head as opposed to like
Speaker 1: down by the jaw. So in the temple region is
Speaker 1: one area that is susceptible. There's an artery there called
Speaker 1: the middleman ingeal artery that if ruptured, can cause severe
Speaker 1: bleeding on the outside of the brain. And so that
Speaker 1: is one area, especially in a younger person, where we're
Speaker 1: damage that caused a skull fracture could could lead to death.
Speaker 1: I mean that would be the quickest, easiest, like least
Speaker 1: amount of force the two areas. I mean, that would
Speaker 1: be one the other would be at the at the
Speaker 1: base of the at the base of the skull where
Speaker 1: you can do damage to breathing structures and the the
Speaker 1: and the cervical spinal cord and the arteries that the
Speaker 1: vertebral arteries that supply blood to the base of the brain.
Speaker 1: And so that's another area that if if damaged, could
Speaker 1: cause significant, you know, significant injury pretty quickly. So it
Speaker 1: sounds like there was internal bleeding, But what about all
Speaker 1: the blood at the crime scene. So usually when we
Speaker 1: see blood on the outside of the body, that would
Speaker 1: indicate that someone's bleed bleeding from an external source. And
Speaker 1: so there are a number of number of arteries in
Speaker 1: the face and neck area that that if someone was
Speaker 1: bleeding outwardly, they could lose a significant amount of blood.
Speaker 1: That brings up another possibility, which is that that that
Speaker 1: it wasn't the brain injury at all. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: if there was a significant amount of blood, someone could simply,
Speaker 1: you know, lose enough blood volume to not be able
Speaker 1: to circulate blood to their organs. Adam opens a nearby
Speaker 1: textbook and rifles to images of brain injury. Is consistent
Speaker 1: with Rebecca's. Yeah, so this is a skin of something
Speaker 1: called an epidural hematoma. And what I'm looking at here
Speaker 1: is this. You can see there's like a lend shaped
Speaker 1: area that's that's not you don't see it on this side,
Speaker 1: and so the sort of bulges out right there. And
Speaker 1: so what happens is that's that's a hemorrhage that occurs
Speaker 1: between the skull and one of the outer layers of
Speaker 1: the outer coverings of the brain called the dura. And
Speaker 1: that's one that's oftentimes if you have a fracture that
Speaker 1: goes through the middle ninjea artery which runs sort of
Speaker 1: in the temple, sort of in the temple region. That
Speaker 1: that's something that you could see. After talking with Adam,
Speaker 1: it's clear that it is possible to cause enough damage
Speaker 1: to kill someone with one blow, and surprisingly it may
Speaker 1: not have required a significant amount of force. But the
Speaker 1: thing that really bugs me about the autopsy is the
Speaker 1: decomposition of the body and how that relates to the
Speaker 1: timeline of death. We head out to the spot on
Speaker 1: Highway nine where Rebecca's body was found, hopefully that will
Speaker 1: give us some context. There's a bomb, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a skeleton. See look, and once you get over there,
Speaker 1: it gets really steep. So this area right here is
Speaker 1: a really hilly, remote area. It's near actually a scenic
Speaker 1: like beauty area overlook. It's near a lot of national
Speaker 1: forest land. You look down over like this, So from
Speaker 1: the road there's all this kind of brush and trees
Speaker 1: and yeah, and then you go past that and there's
Speaker 1: this huge rocky drop off and do you know, was
Speaker 1: it on this first drop off or was it on
Speaker 1: this much steeper lower I thought it was on the
Speaker 1: first drop off because a lot of people said you
Speaker 1: could see it from the road. But this would be
Speaker 1: a perfect dump area. Actually, I still think it would
Speaker 1: have been a much better plan actually to bury a
Speaker 1: body in the woods rather than just like because you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to get discovered if you throw it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it might take a while, but like
Speaker 1: it's going to get discovered. That's what I wonder too,
Speaker 1: if there was something that just like spooked them. They
Speaker 1: were just kind of waiting, hoping to find a better spot,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they were just like, we need to
Speaker 1: get rid of this now, pulled up on the side
Speaker 1: of the road, and then disposed of the body. I
Speaker 1: think so, I mean, I think there's a very I
Speaker 1: think there's a really good chance that it was not
Speaker 1: here for a week, that it was somewhere else. It's
Speaker 1: funny though, like when I first heard about this, like
Speaker 1: before I first came here, they did make it seem
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, it was, you know, visible from the road,
Speaker 1: and as you can see, like not necessarily there's a
Speaker 1: lot of really wild growth and trees, and you know,
Speaker 1: I can see where it would stay hidden. Rebecca's body
Speaker 1: was found close to the road, beside a scenic overlook.
Speaker 1: It's one of the only places on the curvy steep
Speaker 1: road with a shoulder where people can actually pull over
Speaker 1: to check out the views or to dump trash. I'm
Speaker 1: torn about that because I feel like, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I can totally see how a body could stay hidden
Speaker 1: down there for a week, you know, with my limited
Speaker 1: On the other hand, there were hundreds of people looking,
Speaker 1: and like you said, if it's an obvious garbage drop area,
Speaker 1: wouldn't this be like one of the very first places
Speaker 1: they searched. But some lingering questions remained for me. Was
Speaker 1: Rebecca dumped here immediately after she died, or was she
Speaker 1: kept somewhere else and then moved. I remember hearing from
Speaker 1: several first responders that they saw buzzards circling the site
Speaker 1: where Rebecca's body was found. Maybe that's a clue as
Speaker 1: a woman, Rebecca's body was actually dumped at the Highway
Speaker 1: nine site. So we contact Keith Bildstein, a conservation scientist
Speaker 1: who knows a ton about vultures. I have been into
Speaker 1: the northern part of Arkansas, but I have been into
Speaker 1: the southern part of Missouri, and that's gorgeous hill country.
Speaker 1: Two vultures that occur in that part of the country.
Speaker 1: One is a black vulture, which hunts entirely by sight
Speaker 1: and not by smell, and the other is the turkey vulture,
Speaker 1: which uses both old faction and vision to look carcass.
Speaker 1: Vultures can be pretty persnickety when a new kind of
Speaker 1: carcass occurs in a new area. If it's an If
Speaker 1: it's a typical kind of carcass like the deer, they
Speaker 1: might be more The vultures would be more likely to
Speaker 1: go to something that they're familiar with. It doesn't look
Speaker 1: out of place, that doesn't look strange, that looks more normal.
Speaker 1: If the carcass was unopened, the human carcass, it might
Speaker 1: take a little bit longer for the vultures to locate it.
Speaker 1: The question that you have to ask yourself is not
Speaker 1: the carcass you're thinking of, but how carcasses might have
Speaker 1: been around for the vultures to feed on, because they
Speaker 1: don't like really old meat unless there's no alternative. Over
Speaker 1: the last few days, as we've been investigating the facts
Speaker 1: of the autopsy report, I've been pulling out all the
Speaker 1: stops to try to find Chris. But in a town
Speaker 1: where everyone seems to be afraid of him, that's not
Speaker 1: always easy. I've made inroads with a local source who's
Speaker 1: scared of us even using their voice, and they've just
Speaker 1: given me a lead. During the weekends, Chris has been
Speaker 1: visiting his girlfriend, Cindy, but during the week he's a
Speaker 1: rehab facility in b Branch, Arkansas. And if that's where
Speaker 1: he is, then that's where we're headed. Heads south of
Speaker 1: Blachern Avenue, we're literally driving into the middle of meth
Speaker 1: Storm territory right now. We're driving straight through the heart
Speaker 1: of the part of Arkansas where the documentary meth Storm
Speaker 1: was filmed. This part of Arkansas has been decimated by
Speaker 1: poverty and myth. This is some creepy shit right here.
Speaker 1: Not Oh god, do you think somebody's list there left
Speaker 1: to see? This is? This is Midland, dude. I'm telling you, Wow,
Speaker 1: look at that. Look in there there's like a tree.
Speaker 1: It's like look to the right, look look this is
Speaker 1: this is a broken down nine miles turn left onto
Speaker 1: Highway sixty five. I know we're getting the hell out
Speaker 1: of here. The deeper we get, the scarier it gets,
Speaker 1: and the more I hope my grandmother's twenty year old
Speaker 1: durango does not break down. Okay, if he is at
Speaker 1: this rehab facility, I feel like we have a better chance.
Speaker 1: And wait, he might an area, he might not recognize me.
Speaker 1: But once I say, oh hey, I'm carelessis remember I
Speaker 1: came and saw you in jail, He'll know. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many people who visited right in jail? He'll know
Speaker 1: who I am. Once I say that I did read
Speaker 1: the contract with this one rehabits and b ranch, and
Speaker 1: it sort of said that they were expected to get
Speaker 1: jobs in the community and to you know, work, and
Speaker 1: it had it had this list of kind of like
Speaker 1: rules you fall, But it didn't sound like it was
Speaker 1: in pace, you know what I mean. It sounded more
Speaker 1: like maybe something that you could leave on the weekends. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that was my you answer my question then, like
Speaker 1: could we be at the right place? But he is
Speaker 1: at work, but at this point we don't really know.
Speaker 1: We're not sure of his exact address. We have this
Speaker 1: piece of information, so it's either we have really two
Speaker 1: options now because we don't know any of his friends.
Speaker 1: It's like either we try to go here and get
Speaker 1: him by himself and have a shot at that, or
Speaker 1: we have to try and get to him through Cindy.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's really hit or miss. So
Speaker 1: I think this is unfortunately, like this is probably the
Speaker 1: best option to try this because if it worked, it
Speaker 1: would be much better than having to try and figure
Speaker 1: out what day is going to be in Mountain View maybe,
Speaker 1: or try to get him through Cindy. Absolutely, this guy
Speaker 1: nobody seems to know where he is, even his people
Speaker 1: are supposed to be his friends. Right. I brought along
Speaker 1: a letter I wrote to Chris, so if we can't
Speaker 1: ambush him, we've still communicated with him and let him
Speaker 1: know we're not a threat. Like if we leave this
Speaker 1: letter for him, but we don't want to leave it.
Speaker 1: If this is the next coming up is up here? Shit, man,
Speaker 1: this is on your right. This place as scary as now. God,
Speaker 1: oh god, damn it, that's him. I'm gonna pull, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go. Beys fine, Hello, Hey, how's it going? The
Speaker 1: phone rings? It's my source. We're actually in b Branch
Speaker 1: right now. It's looking for Chris. Oh my god, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, are you Mountain View? He's back in Mountain View. No,
Speaker 1: like he's at Sindy's right now working on a truck.
Speaker 1: If he's outside right, Oh my god, this is killing me.
Speaker 1: How long do we How long do we rack to
Speaker 1: Mountain View? Two fifteen? I just really want to get him.
Speaker 1: We can. This might be our only shot. He says.
Speaker 1: He's sitting outside a house where Chris's car is right now.
Speaker 1: The GPS says, we're a half hour away. I can
Speaker 1: drive it him fifteen. We'll be right back. When people say, oh,
Speaker 1: find this person, it's not just like oh, you put it,
Speaker 1: put something in a database and it spits out an address.
Speaker 1: It's really hard. It involves and you don't have it
Speaker 1: confirmed until you physically are staking them out and seeing
Speaker 1: them at that place, and even then you know it
Speaker 1: could be different the next day, like and of course
Speaker 1: it's fucking so slow getting closer. We realize that this
Speaker 1: is about the spot where they lost Cindy on the
Speaker 1: stakeout how we passed it a million times. Then you know, nuts,
Speaker 1: I knew it. I knew she had to be right
Speaker 1: off of the road somehow, because there's no way. She's
Speaker 1: just weird. She just literally vanished. I got all the
Speaker 1: way back to like the one light in town, and
Speaker 1: I was like, shit, gone in a quarter mile. Your
Speaker 1: destination will be on the right. There's there. It is
Speaker 1: with their right. There's a white car. That's it. That's it.
Speaker 1: I'm superst that's a that's your destination. Unless that's it,
Speaker 1: because that also need it. That's him. That's him. The
Speaker 1: source has given us the road, but there's two houses
Speaker 1: it could be, and if we mess this up, we've
Speaker 1: just tipped the neighbors off that we're looking for him.
Speaker 1: We need to be one hundred percent sure before we
Speaker 1: pull into this driveway. It's the second one is the
Speaker 1: one with the people out fronts right in front of me.
Speaker 1: There's two guys out there. You ready, Yeah, take a
Speaker 1: deep breath, dude, get my ready. Yep. Chris. Hey, Chris
Speaker 1: is not that tall, but he's strong in stature. This
Speaker 1: is clearly a guy who has been through a lot
Speaker 1: in his life. His hands are coated in oil from
Speaker 1: working on his car. But the thing that strikes me
Speaker 1: most or his eyes. They're very light blue, almost glass like.
Speaker 1: He has a look of concern, like a friend asking
Speaker 1: for help. He looks surprised to see me, but he
Speaker 1: knew exactly who I was. He tells us he'll talk,
Speaker 1: but he invites us inside his house. My strategy when
Speaker 1: talking to anyone is to keep an open mind and
Speaker 1: not to judge. I think that they can sense that
Speaker 1: I'm straight with them, and that's why so many people
Speaker 1: are comfortable telling me their darkest secrets. It's clear that
Speaker 1: this case isn't just about the good guys and the
Speaker 1: bad guys. There's several shades of gray. Chris knows why
Speaker 1: I'm here and what I want to know. I've already
Speaker 1: asked him straight out if he killed Rebecca. Now that
Speaker 1: he's not being recorded by the cops, I want to
Speaker 1: know if he'll tell me why he doesn't trust them. Well, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, we've been working on this for a
Speaker 1: long time. And we've always been convined that the cops
Speaker 1: are just totally inconfident and they there's such a big
Speaker 1: word for me of confident or adopted him. And I
Speaker 1: think that since the beginning, I've never thought that you
Speaker 1: had even here with it, and Nick and I talked
Speaker 1: to lie never I thought you need to deal with it,
Speaker 1: and the police just seems super focused on that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just we're just really trying to find out. Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, there's all these weird rumors, like that weekend.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea like why they thought you
Speaker 1: were involved. Yeah, at the time, like my opinion at
Speaker 1: the time, like I was at a friend's house and
Speaker 1: he lived on a herple. Well, Rebecca had stopped by
Speaker 1: the that night. Well he had said something all the sidelines,
Speaker 1: like he was supposed to go fix your car the
Speaker 1: next morning. Well that's the morning she come up. She
Speaker 1: come up missing or whatever. And then like I told
Speaker 1: the copstead or whatever, and then it turned around, so
Speaker 1: they started trying to well, you know, her whereabouts or whatever.
Speaker 1: Real you know what I mean. I'm like, well, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Daniel and Nick, Rebecca, me all of us went to
Speaker 1: together and I was really really friends with him. I mean,
Speaker 1: so like I felt like and Tim Mary kind of
Speaker 1: adopted me cause I had a bad influence environment that
Speaker 1: I lived in when I was a kid. And that
Speaker 1: asked me, you know, and I said, yeah, Mom, like
Speaker 1: you know, re Becca stopped at Jeb's house and uh
Speaker 1: thatnot or whatever, and he's supposed to go fix your
Speaker 1: car the next morning, and jab come up out of
Speaker 1: town for like two or three days, was gone, he said,
Speaker 1: either some kind of appointment or something. But I felt
Speaker 1: like when he looked at me, he looked at me
Speaker 1: like just empty empty eyes, you know. And I mean,
Speaker 1: of course we was all under in front of drugs
Speaker 1: and stuff back then, like really heavy. But in my heart,
Speaker 1: my opinion, I always thoughted had he knew something more
Speaker 1: than what he was saying or he had done, And
Speaker 1: so I always he was supposed to go to fix
Speaker 1: your car nex state, you know, like did you fix
Speaker 1: your car? And he wouldn't answer me, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, and so I always thought that, you know,
Speaker 1: he either brought some people down from Habit that did it,
Speaker 1: or he knew more about it than what he explained.
Speaker 1: And I like the more I kind of you know,
Speaker 1: tried to help solve the case. The more he got
Speaker 1: pushed on me that I had done it after that
Speaker 1: case with the kind of learnt me the hard way
Speaker 1: is never to you know, I put myself in it
Speaker 1: as a suspect basically, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: the only reason I even carried because we Becca we
Speaker 1: always raised in school together and like Rebecca and Daniell
Speaker 1: would always say Nick Danielle's I mean Nick was dating
Speaker 1: Danielle right, so we was always were closed and even
Speaker 1: like Rebecca Danielle's played the gas station with Kevin, Mary
Speaker 1: owned it up there and like we was always were
Speaker 1: close together, you know, And so in my opinion, I
Speaker 1: was lostuff. Like the last person is seeing that person
Speaker 1: with JB in my heart. I know that for a fact.
Speaker 1: So why don't you go to him to ask him? Well,
Speaker 1: what night was this? It's been a long time ago.
Speaker 1: It was a that night Rebecca stopped by there and
Speaker 1: got some weeding or whatever from JB. And then JB said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll come over to pitt your car the next day
Speaker 1: over there. Well he come up missing two three days
Speaker 1: after that. Well, why don't you go ask him, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of pushing them, my thought. But I went to
Speaker 1: cop squad ask him, I mean, had you ever been
Speaker 1: to that house at that point in time? I didn't
Speaker 1: know that, and I had never been to that house before.
Speaker 1: So that's why I told end Simon. I said, there's
Speaker 1: no way, Henes, I mean, you can keep me in
Speaker 1: a lot of tips questions. I've never been over there, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know ever, and I didn't. I met Casey one
Speaker 1: time and he he was at the gas station and
Speaker 1: I knew that something about Sun. That's all I knowed
Speaker 1: about Casey at that point in John right, So I've
Speaker 1: never been over there. Did they ever ask where you
Speaker 1: were on Sunday and Monday? That not or whatever. I
Speaker 1: went to Tim Marria's house, and that next morning when
Speaker 1: I woke up, she asked me, she said, have you
Speaker 1: seen Rebecca right? And I said, well, you know I
Speaker 1: heard it she stopped by JB's house last night, and
Speaker 1: that's what threw the cops over on me. But I said,
Speaker 1: I'll go over there to JB's house today and ask,
Speaker 1: you know, JB's been gone, you know, all day and
Speaker 1: haven't seen him. And then I come back by there,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And still know JB and
Speaker 1: still know JB. And it was like two days JB
Speaker 1: was gone, but he had an alibi because he went
Speaker 1: to some appointments, so I don't know what. Maybe he
Speaker 1: did have it, you know, he I don't know that
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, I didn't with him or nothing, but
Speaker 1: that's all I knew about it. But I was like, man,
Speaker 1: you know in my heart, you know, and you said
Speaker 1: it out of your mouth that you was gonna go
Speaker 1: to figure cards, you know what I mean? And this
Speaker 1: time he felt like I was trying to pinge him
Speaker 1: for you know what I mean. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, in my heart, I think he has to
Speaker 1: do it, JAV. And I mean if I found out that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I you know, I'd hurt you, you know.
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know because I was like
Speaker 1: my sister, and I mean, nobody deserves something like that,
Speaker 1: you know. So you guys are close, I mean you
Speaker 1: and Rebecca, yeah, and Danielle, like we we went just
Speaker 1: like all the way from I think first grade all
Speaker 1: the way until like she passed away, like and we
Speaker 1: was all pretty close, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: you know how it is in school, you know, when
Speaker 1: we could pack ground and stuff like that. So they
Speaker 1: would also come to Tim and Mary's house a lot,
Speaker 1: and they'd also go to church with us. All tim
Speaker 1: America had adopted like all of us as a family,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, I was really close to all
Speaker 1: that whole family. Tim and Mary were Chris's adopted parents.
Speaker 1: They were also Danielle's ex husband Nick's biological parents, so
Speaker 1: there really was a close connection between Chris, Danielle and Rebecca.
Speaker 1: She was like a sister to him at one point
Speaker 1: in time. Like, I didn't have no place to stay
Speaker 1: when I first met Rebecca and Danielle and Joan, and
Speaker 1: they had a van sitting down in front yard, and
Speaker 1: like she would leave the van un locked and let
Speaker 1: me sleep in it because I had no place to sleep,
Speaker 1: somebody all opening the doors for me. It was just
Speaker 1: a van, but to me it was a home, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, And I'd always go there after school and stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm especially in ball games, and I sliped that van,
Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes she let become in the house
Speaker 1: take showers, and I kept my clothing that van and
Speaker 1: stuff for like years. She was a good person and
Speaker 1: she had a good heart, you know, and like I
Speaker 1: just didn't, and that's how I always kind of cooperated,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because like anything that I
Speaker 1: might held my mind, I wanted to let it out,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because I mean unforgiveness, you know,
Speaker 1: and like, uh, I didn't want to and guilt and
Speaker 1: shame you know about you know, if I would have actually,
Speaker 1: you know, done something, you know, if I'd known that
Speaker 1: was gonna happen and stuff like that. You know, it
Speaker 1: was way heavy on me for a long time. But
Speaker 1: I mean I finally just you know, took the Lord,
Speaker 1: like you know, please take his burden for me, you know,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, just let me be able to
Speaker 1: accept it what to happen, you know, just going with
Speaker 1: my life because you know, I'm getting older and I'll
Speaker 1: have family and kids and stuff. But like I'd always
Speaker 1: walk ready with dinners, Simon and anybody that always come
Speaker 1: and ask me, you know. But you know that's what
Speaker 1: I told you in Simon. I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you could do whatever to me, but I've never been
Speaker 1: over there, so you can't in the way you stick
Speaker 1: me for you, you you know what I mean. I was like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I tell you whatever I know, and the
Speaker 1: one told him more. I feel like I was a suspect,
Speaker 1: so I just he wanted to DNA sample and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I was like, look, dude, I'll give you an example,
Speaker 1: but I'm not giving it to you. I haven't got
Speaker 1: on a lot of texture tests one time, and like
Speaker 1: I flunked every question, and I felt like he was
Speaker 1: trying to manipulate me into saying something that I didn't,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, you know, I'm just done. This
Speaker 1: went on, you know, like I don't you know, I
Speaker 1: think I even fund my own name. I'm like, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, you know what I mean, Like I flunked
Speaker 1: every question, like I was just lying about everything, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I told you everything. So they
Speaker 1: don't even like me at all, period, you know. And
Speaker 1: I pray every day to actually catch the person did it,
Speaker 1: but my heart, I feel like there already another person
Speaker 1: did it, and they're never actually gonna you know, h
Speaker 1: see his eyes, he had tears in his eyes. This
Speaker 1: is the guy that everybody's been saying is like the
Speaker 1: you know, this evil whatever. His eyes were all tearing up.
Speaker 1: He was I thought I was gonna cry. I mean
Speaker 1: it honestly sounded like he genuinely wanted the thing solved,
Speaker 1: and like one letter was why the fuck would he
Speaker 1: talk to us. He took us in there and like
Speaker 1: answered questions and was like, you know what we've heard
Speaker 1: from everybody is that at the time he had he
Speaker 1: was you know, he even said, I said, well, what
Speaker 1: day was this? You can't quite you know, you can't
Speaker 1: quite remember the days. I just feel strongly, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's fudging a little. JB might even be fudging about
Speaker 1: how close. Although no, he said it was a couple
Speaker 1: of nights. It was that weekend. Chris and JB's stories
Speaker 1: fit together, do you know what I mean? They do?
Speaker 1: They fit perfect. And he even said, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought it was him, I said, And JB's like he
Speaker 1: thought it was me, And that's Pistoph wanted to kick
Speaker 1: his ass. We get back to the car and Taylor
Speaker 1: and I are still shaking. We either just met with
Speaker 1: a murderer or someone who has been wrongly accused of murder.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. After speaking with Chris, we head
Speaker 1: back to the house and meet George Jared to go
Speaker 1: over the murder board and unpack what Chris told us.
Speaker 1: So let's say this theory is correct, that Chris killed
Speaker 1: Rebecca while he was on some crazy drug rage and
Speaker 1: upset about Rebecca denying his sexual advances. Was there anything
Speaker 1: in the autopsy report to indicate that this could have
Speaker 1: been a meth murder? Doctor Gould, and I've actually gone
Speaker 1: back and forth on this particular detail. There is no
Speaker 1: indication she was sexually assaulted. Do you remember it's two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. It's you know, like DNA testing stuff
Speaker 1: like that. The techniques for collecting DNA not as advanced
Speaker 1: as they are obviously today. The decomposition factor, it was
Speaker 1: late September, and I can and I remember vividly it
Speaker 1: was very hot during that time period, so that the
Speaker 1: decomposition would have been more rapid. Now doctor Gold seems
Speaker 1: to think it's still a possibility that she may have
Speaker 1: been sexually assaulted, and ed she may have been. I mean,
Speaker 1: he obviously knows more about the human body than I do.
Speaker 1: But I just got you know, this is kind of
Speaker 1: the way I operate. Let's just operate from facts, and
Speaker 1: as of right now, there is no evidence of it,
Speaker 1: so I can't assume that it happened. And it also
Speaker 1: just I think for the simple fact that if you
Speaker 1: are on math, I mean it can make you. The
Speaker 1: crimes I've seen that have been committed while people on
Speaker 1: eth are just like something out of a horror movie.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes it to another level. The story
Speaker 1: you're about to hear is horrific. If you're easily disturbed,
Speaker 1: I recommend you skip ahead a minute and a half.
Speaker 1: I'm back in nineteen ninety eight. There was a family
Speaker 1: of foreign Dalton. A friend is having car trouble. The
Speaker 1: father gets up. He's a pretty good mechanic. He goes
Speaker 1: with his friend down to the river. Within a few minutes,
Speaker 1: he's shot in the head twice, thrown in the river.
Speaker 1: The killer comes back to the house. The little boy
Speaker 1: comes running up to the door. The killer has a
Speaker 1: tire tool in his hand. He crushes that kid's head
Speaker 1: like an eggshell. The mom comes running in to try
Speaker 1: to stop him, and he hits her twenty seven times
Speaker 1: with the tire tool. Twenty seven times. Then he goes
Speaker 1: into the room where the little girl's hiding under her bed.
Speaker 1: He drops the tire tool in her stuffed animals. He
Speaker 1: pulls her out from under the bed, wraps around a blanket,
Speaker 1: and throws her in the back of a car. As
Speaker 1: the killer is getting ready to leave, he notices something
Speaker 1: moving through the yard in the dark. It's the mom.
Speaker 1: She woke up and she climbed out the kitchen window
Speaker 1: and her parents lived next door. She was trying to
Speaker 1: get to their house and when she did, she got
Speaker 1: all the way to their front door on their porch.
Speaker 1: There's a bloody handprint on the door. Her killer came
Speaker 1: up behind her, slashed her throat from end to end.
Speaker 1: And the guy that did that, and I go through
Speaker 1: that whole theory high a meth. Yeah, it makes people insane.
Speaker 1: Her murder is not it's it shot. Any murder shocking,
Speaker 1: But it's not like the story I just told you
Speaker 1: about what happened to the Eliat family. That is grotesque.
Speaker 1: I mean, you hear a story like that and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, and you won't stop thinking about it.
Speaker 1: What happened to her is she got hitting ahead a
Speaker 1: couple of times and everybody was dumped on the side
Speaker 1: of the road. It's not it's not a profoundly heinous crime,
Speaker 1: I guess, is what I'm trying to She wasn't to
Speaker 1: as far as she wasn't brutally sexually assaulted. So to me,
Speaker 1: it's one of these crimes. Okay, it's not. There's not
Speaker 1: a lot of complicated moving parts here like that case.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: dead people and missing people, and this is a whole thing.
Speaker 1: So in her case, it's not like that. Right now,
Speaker 1: I believe Chris, which means we have to go back
Speaker 1: and get everyone's stories on our own, explore all the
Speaker 1: possible suspects until we find the theory that sticks and
Speaker 1: we can bring Rebecca's killer to justice. So you've talked
Speaker 1: to JB already, I mean, do you think he had
Speaker 1: anything to do with it? No, I've ruled him out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I again, I'm following the evidence. I really,
Speaker 1: in my mind, he's been ruled out because for several reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean, number one, he was in cab at that weekend.
Speaker 1: His story makes sense. And also I do give him
Speaker 1: credit for the fact that he voluntarily he didn't have
Speaker 1: to respond to any of the social media stuff. He
Speaker 1: was calling me and tracking me down and being very
Speaker 1: available to meet with me and trying to get me
Speaker 1: to meet with him, And that says a lot because
Speaker 1: I feel like, if he was involved, why the hell
Speaker 1: would he do that. That's what I expect for somebody
Speaker 1: who is more or less being accused. You know, if
Speaker 1: people are saying, hey, you know JB had something to
Speaker 1: do it, that's how I I mean, that's how I
Speaker 1: would act too. I'd be like, hey, let me tell
Speaker 1: you what went down for real. You want it out
Speaker 1: there that you didn't do that. And this murder just
Speaker 1: nothing indicates that it was drug related in the sense
Speaker 1: that it was about drugs. It was a crime of
Speaker 1: passion one way or the other. It was a crime
Speaker 1: of passion. I think that they genuinely thought that Chris
Speaker 1: might have had something to do with it, and also
Speaker 1: perhaps the thought was, well, he's a bad guy, he
Speaker 1: deals drugs, he's on drugs. It was just really easy
Speaker 1: to sort of slot him into that and say maybe
Speaker 1: he did it. And we really don't even know why
Speaker 1: he got accused of it. Well, I still don't understand why.
Speaker 1: I mean, and granted the police aren't sharing evidence, so
Speaker 1: there could be evidence we don't know about, but I mean,
Speaker 1: I really have no idea why he was named as
Speaker 1: a suspect. It's even possible that when the police were
Speaker 1: doing their initial interviews, they heard the same rumors. Well,
Speaker 1: we're all here in you know, but it really is
Speaker 1: It's terrible that their names are still getting texted. When
Speaker 1: I say, does anybody have any names, some of the
Speaker 1: same names get texted to me. If it's proven they
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. Think about that living
Speaker 1: in a community where everybody thinks you killed somebody or
Speaker 1: you had something to do with it, and your name
Speaker 1: was kind of getting brought up as being connected to
Speaker 1: this and you had nothing to do with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you did do drugs or something, that's a
Speaker 1: whole different thing than murdering someone. I feel like it
Speaker 1: would be a huge weight lifted off. This town shoulders
Speaker 1: to have this thing finally put to rest. So we
Speaker 1: have the murder weapon, a piano leg and we know
Speaker 1: it took just a single blow to the head to
Speaker 1: kill Rebecca. We've tracked down the prime suspects and don't
Speaker 1: think they did it. Now we just have to find
Speaker 1: out who did. I'm Catherine Townsend and this Helen Gone.
Speaker 1: Helen Gone is a joint production between How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: and School of Humans. It is written and recorded by
Speaker 1: me Catherine Townsend Taylor Church is our producer and story editor.
Speaker 1: Audio editing and designed by Jonathan Sleeve, mix engineer Glenn Mattulo,
Speaker 1: Audio mixing and love by Tunewelders. Executive producers Brandon Barr
Speaker 1: and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne
Speaker 1: and Chuck Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our field producer
Speaker 1: is James Morrison. Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Theme and
Speaker 1: original score by Ben Solee, available wherever you get your music.
Speaker 1: To dig into the investigation, please visit hellgoonpodcast dot com
Speaker 1: or follow us on social media. School of Humans