Speaker 1: Hey, this week's episode of Thinking Sideways is not brought
Speaker 1: to you by rage filled emails. No, Instead, it's brought
Speaker 1: to you by your local animals shelter. So you want
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Speaker 1: like animal shelter before you go to that pet store
Speaker 1: because there's so many cute, little fuzzy creators out there
Speaker 1: that are really want to find a good home. If
Speaker 1: you already have one but you just want to help out,
Speaker 1: there's other ways you can help out rather than donating,
Speaker 1: you can donate to your local animal rescue or dog shelter,
Speaker 1: cat shelter, whatever. And also if you don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of money, they always need volunteers, and you know
Speaker 1: it'll be a great experience you meet wonderful animals and
Speaker 1: people too. So yeah, we don't waste any time. Get
Speaker 1: down to your local shelter today and say hi to Fluffy,
Speaker 1: Fido and Godzilla for me. The ideas I don't know
Speaker 1: stories of things, we simply don't know the answer too.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: I am Steve, of course, joined by Devon. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I was trying to introduce you guys, but thanks for blowing.
Speaker 1: Next week we'll do it right. We will never do
Speaker 1: this right now. It really just kind of change up
Speaker 1: every week. But this week what is going to be true,
Speaker 1: as with every other week, is that we have a
Speaker 1: mystery to cover, maybe solved, maybe just get a little
Speaker 1: light on. I don't know, but we're going to get
Speaker 1: into it. I do want to tell everybody though, that
Speaker 1: this week's story it involves a lot of death, and
Speaker 1: it involves a lot of adult themes. So if you
Speaker 1: have little ears around, or if death and adult themes
Speaker 1: bother you, pause us when er skipping and save it
Speaker 1: for later. Whatever works for you. Really late down, then listen, yeah,
Speaker 1: by yourself while you're walking down the street. This week,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about the Daytona Beach serial killer
Speaker 1: who is believed to have killed somewhere between three to
Speaker 1: seven women between two thousand five and two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: It's a newer mystery. Yeah, he's probably listening right now.
Speaker 1: I hope not. It's you. According the Internet, Joe, it
Speaker 1: is you. I don't even know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what murder is the Daytona Beach
Speaker 1: serial killer. Some people say has killed three to seven women.
Speaker 1: Other places the low number is four. We'll get into
Speaker 1: that later on because that kind of depends on who
Speaker 1: gets attributed to it. But that's something we'll deal with later.
Speaker 1: I do also want to let everybody know that we
Speaker 1: were lucky enough to talk with reporter and author Christine
Speaker 1: Pelisak recently, and we're gonna he's sharing some of the
Speaker 1: audio from that conversation during the episode. The reason we
Speaker 1: had Christine and is she recently published her book titled
Speaker 1: The Grim Sleeper The Lost Women of South Central, which
Speaker 1: tells the story of serial killer Lonnie David Franklin Jr.
Speaker 1: Recently convicted. Yes, ye, yeah, yeah he was. He was.
Speaker 1: He killed Okay, his numbers are not exactly firm either,
Speaker 1: but it's between ten to over twenty five women between
Speaker 1: five and two thousand and seven. You get that guy
Speaker 1: some candy to ribe him and get him to fess up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they need to give him some kind of drug. I
Speaker 1: I don't think candy is the right thing. They're going
Speaker 1: to give him something eventually. But the Grim Sleeper case
Speaker 1: shares a lot of similarities with the Daytona Beach serial
Speaker 1: killer case, which is why we talked to Christine because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that are very similar, and
Speaker 1: so it seemed like a great opportunity to to get
Speaker 1: her insight on these kind of questions. Frankly, never know,
Speaker 1: I mean, Lonnie might have might have actually committed the
Speaker 1: murders in Daytona Beach. Who knows. Maybe I highly doubted,
Speaker 1: but it's possible. I guess not. And you know, also
Speaker 1: I could fly out of this room with only my
Speaker 1: imaginary wings. That is possible as well. No, but so
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the Daytona Beach Celia killer first. Correct. Primarily,
Speaker 1: all we're going to talk about is the Daytona Beach
Speaker 1: serial killer. Most of the stuff with a Grim Sleep
Speaker 1: will come up in the theory section, and we'll call
Speaker 1: out when we're looking. We're talking about similarities because they're
Speaker 1: they're pretty striking or pretty easy to spot. So here's
Speaker 1: our story. A Christmas Eve of two thousand five, Lacquetta
Speaker 1: Gunther left her house or her friend's house, I should say.
Speaker 1: Her friend's name is Stacy Dittmer. Then she wanted to
Speaker 1: go out and have a couple of drinks and celebrate
Speaker 1: at a bar that she normally frequented. The two ladies
Speaker 1: had her tradition of that night. They would stay up
Speaker 1: late and they would cook all of the food that
Speaker 1: they were going to serve uh the next day. It
Speaker 1: was kind of a holiday tradition. I think they've been
Speaker 1: doing it for at least four years in a row.
Speaker 1: They had done it so Stacy Dippner, she was a
Speaker 1: little upset that her friend was leaving, but said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're gonna go, she said, listen, I
Speaker 1: want to go and party. I'll be back in a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's no big deal. A little bit was
Speaker 1: turned out to be a long time. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: because her a few hours of going out turned into
Speaker 1: a long time and she never came back. She did
Speaker 1: wind up somewhere, though by no means did Miss Gunther
Speaker 1: look how to live, you know, a life of luxury.
Speaker 1: She was forty five. She was a day labor when
Speaker 1: she could get work, and you know, when things were tight,
Speaker 1: she would go to the local shelter to get meals.
Speaker 1: She also liked her drinks and was known when she
Speaker 1: had money to spend a lot of time at the bar,
Speaker 1: and when she was there sometimes, according to some of
Speaker 1: the reading, anyway, she was not afraid to ask people
Speaker 1: for money to have one more round. It's interesting she
Speaker 1: asked people for money, not drinks. I think part of
Speaker 1: that is the way the articles frame it. She very
Speaker 1: very well have said, listen, bid me one more. It
Speaker 1: probably was that, you know, I don't know why you
Speaker 1: would be like, hey man, can I have a twenty? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can have a drink? Like why wouldn't you just say, like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you throw us on your tab? But I also
Speaker 1: don't know that if it wasn't she was standing outside
Speaker 1: and let's say, having a cigarette, somebody walked by and
Speaker 1: she asked for a couple of bucks so she get
Speaker 1: one more drink. I mean, I don't know how this
Speaker 1: went down. I think it happened in the bar because
Speaker 1: otherwise they wouldn't have had this account Yeah. Maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. Yeah. I mean if they were
Speaker 1: like locals or you know, other regulars, they would be
Speaker 1: able to account for if it happened inside or outside.
Speaker 1: Probably they could all have been a standing outide. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, people just like stand outside and smoking groups,
Speaker 1: and sure one of the other things that I've read
Speaker 1: about Laketta is by the way, I hope I'm pronouncing
Speaker 1: her name. We just had an internal conversation about it.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure, but we're going to run with that.
Speaker 1: Didn't just say it and commit Yep, I've committed to it.
Speaker 1: I've said it a couple of times. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's not like what yeah, and it's at least you're
Speaker 1: not the captain who says Madeline McCain. But she, according
Speaker 1: to the reporting, she also she liked drugs and she
Speaker 1: was not averse to taking them. But I've only seen
Speaker 1: that in a couple of places, and it never was
Speaker 1: very specific. I mean, it's almost it's just as if
Speaker 1: it feels like to me, maybe they just threw that
Speaker 1: in because they could. So I can't say that that
Speaker 1: truly is what was going on. There are people out
Speaker 1: there who, you know, we'll just they're not druggy so much.
Speaker 1: They will do take the occasional line of coke if
Speaker 1: somebody's or somebody off enjoy or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's and that and that could be it. But like
Speaker 1: I said, she's she's a day labor. When she can
Speaker 1: get worked and have a whole lot of money, and
Speaker 1: when times are tight, she was known to pick up
Speaker 1: the occasional john to get a little bit of extra money.
Speaker 1: She wasn't a full time sex worker. It was the
Speaker 1: way I got it, or the impression I got, was
Speaker 1: that it was to make ends meet. On December, a
Speaker 1: body is found in an alley near a bar called
Speaker 1: Willie's Place, And remember that name because it comes up
Speaker 1: several times in this story. That's where she was known
Speaker 1: to hang out. And the body, of course, turned out
Speaker 1: to be hers. It was in the fetal position, some
Speaker 1: of her clothes had been removed. She had been shot
Speaker 1: in the back of the head. The gun had the
Speaker 1: bullet had done enough damage to her face that they
Speaker 1: had to identify her via her tattoos. They couldn't do
Speaker 1: a visual identification. The ballistics say that it was a
Speaker 1: forty caliber Smith and Wesson that she was shot with,
Speaker 1: which is not a small gun and a close range like.
Speaker 1: They also believe that the shooter used hollow points, so
Speaker 1: that would explain the damage to her face. So you
Speaker 1: can really tell that from just the bullet that you
Speaker 1: pull out of their head. You know, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was I don't know where the bullet was, Joe,
Speaker 1: I know that they were. I'm pretty sure this one.
Speaker 1: They recovered the bullet, but it just it was it
Speaker 1: was massive, the damage that it did to her. They
Speaker 1: did check her body, they did find DNA from another individual,
Speaker 1: ran it through the system, and they got no hits.
Speaker 1: They had no idea who this other person was, right,
Speaker 1: I believe it was saliva. Yes, I believe all of
Speaker 1: them were saliva, but they're all the same. I might
Speaker 1: be getting mixed up with a grim sleeper, So I'm
Speaker 1: not actually going to commit to that because I've been
Speaker 1: reading about so much of both lately. But the point
Speaker 1: is they didn't have anything, and they had no idea
Speaker 1: what happened to her on Christmas Eve of that year
Speaker 1: and her Hays just it kind of died on the
Speaker 1: vine right there, that's all they had. Less than a
Speaker 1: month later, so this would be the fourteenth of January
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, about five miles away from where
Speaker 1: Looketta was found, a construction worker at a site near
Speaker 1: lpg A Boulevard found a body in a ditch. Actually
Speaker 1: have a LA Boulevard they do, right near a golf course. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: remember we were in Daytona Beach, so they have the speedways,
Speaker 1: and they have golf courses, and this is near a
Speaker 1: golf course. So that's why it just seems like an
Speaker 1: inelegant name, I get it, But to the golfers, it's
Speaker 1: an awesome name. Off that. Yeah, So the construction worker,
Speaker 1: the body that this individual found it would turn out
Speaker 1: to be a woman whose name was Julie and Green.
Speaker 1: Julie was thirty four, and she was also a regular
Speaker 1: at Willie's place. As a matter of fact, I think
Speaker 1: they knew each other at least a little bit, at
Speaker 1: least in passing. Yeah, because I know that one of
Speaker 1: her friend watching it. We were talking to you were
Speaker 1: talking about a minute ago, Stacy Diptmer. Yeah. I put
Speaker 1: up a sense that kind of a poster saying like
Speaker 1: a little memorial thing saying, oh my God, we love you,
Speaker 1: we miss you, and everybody signed and Julie Julie Green
Speaker 1: signed that. Yeah, Yeah, she did sign it. So not
Speaker 1: like she knew her at least a little Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's hard to say what their relationship was, but
Speaker 1: what we know is that like Loquetta, Julie was also
Speaker 1: shot in the back of the head. Her body was
Speaker 1: also found partially nude. Her This is a weird thing
Speaker 1: to note, but her nudity varies from source to source,
Speaker 1: like some make it out like she just had her
Speaker 1: top missing, and others make it out as if she
Speaker 1: was basically naked butter socks kind of kind of that
Speaker 1: very instance. It's weird why the reporting seems so so
Speaker 1: to shift back and forth. But I noticed that whatever
Speaker 1: it's worth, it's like telephone, you know. And the only
Speaker 1: thing is, it's like again, the guys in the press
Speaker 1: are supposed to get it straight. You know, we we
Speaker 1: screw up to you, but at least we don't get paid.
Speaker 1: At least we've got that excuse. It's not our job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like Looquetta, DNA evidence was recovered from her body from
Speaker 1: another individual, and the police did determine that it was
Speaker 1: the same gun that was used to kill both women,
Speaker 1: and they would have had to have find found ballets then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be the only way. Yeah, yeah, good point. Yes,
Speaker 1: what we've talked about. Thank you. Yeah. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: they also found shell casing the scene, didn't they, or
Speaker 1: at least at least one of the scenes. At least
Speaker 1: one of the scenes had I think you're right, there
Speaker 1: was a shell casing. Um, I don't know, God, I
Speaker 1: can't remember which one the other weird Okay, so here's
Speaker 1: another weird bit of evidence. Is and this is only
Speaker 1: in a few places. I tracked this from the Wikipedia
Speaker 1: article to another news article and then I could never
Speaker 1: find in any of the other articles that I was reading.
Speaker 1: But supposedly near Julie Green's body was a tire track
Speaker 1: that belonged to a two thousand three Ford Tours or
Speaker 1: a Mercury Sable. That can be a challenge though in
Speaker 1: that she was where was she found? She was found
Speaker 1: in kind of a public space, right, No, No, so
Speaker 1: it's not it was it was kind of an access road.
Speaker 1: It was semi I means grass and bushes and she
Speaker 1: was in a ditch. Okay, so just kidding. I mean
Speaker 1: it could have been somebody pulled I think somebody pulled
Speaker 1: over on the shoulder and and then everything happened. But
Speaker 1: we only found out that one place, so who knows access.
Speaker 1: That implies somebody's getting access to it, so you know,
Speaker 1: I will be that the was unrelated. Kind of curious
Speaker 1: about how they identified the car, because I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could say, well, they only sell these tires
Speaker 1: with these cars. So she it's in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: If brand new vehicles tend to come with the same tire,
Speaker 1: so so of course Ford and Mercury at that time,
Speaker 1: we're the same manufacturer. Yeah, and that means that they
Speaker 1: know that and the tourists and the Sable are basically
Speaker 1: the same car with a different emblem on them. So right,
Speaker 1: so they can always say, well, by default, this tire
Speaker 1: always comes on the se model or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: So I think that's kind of how they figure it
Speaker 1: it out. So it doesn't really doesn't watch enough forensic files.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know, but I know I know what
Speaker 1: you're saying. But the thing about it is, of course,
Speaker 1: is there are such things used tires. I was going
Speaker 1: to say, but that doesn't mean that somebody didn't have
Speaker 1: that same kind of tire on an old t Bird,
Speaker 1: you know, and an eighties Stockbird or something. Yeah. A
Speaker 1: lot of people will buy a car and decide, oh,
Speaker 1: I want more bitch and wheels and tires on it,
Speaker 1: you know, and then they get rid of the old tires.
Speaker 1: But similarly, I think there are certain makes of tires
Speaker 1: that only fit on certain makes of cars. So it's
Speaker 1: possible that these were just unique in that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, you know, I have a Subaru and you
Speaker 1: have to have to get kind of specific tires for
Speaker 1: it because they just they don't make that. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't. I couldn't just like transfer over like you're
Speaker 1: the tires off of your car onto my car, because
Speaker 1: they wouldn't work. Probably not it's the depth of the
Speaker 1: wheel sometimes that can be anyways, it's but it's it's
Speaker 1: this is kind of a non issue or non point
Speaker 1: because I don't even know if it's really yeah, because
Speaker 1: I don't know where it actually came from. Julie did
Speaker 1: lead a tough life or a rough life as well
Speaker 1: as well. And I have seen that one her mud shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she looks like she looks pretty roughed over. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she's not quite like one of those really seriously deep
Speaker 1: into a methodics, but she looks like she's starting down
Speaker 1: that road. She's on like phase two of the phases.
Speaker 1: She's not not in the best best of standings at
Speaker 1: their appearances at that point. And she I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's a known fact she struggled with alcohol and drugs,
Speaker 1: and she was known to work Ridgewood av which is
Speaker 1: this major north south road right there in Daytona Beach,
Speaker 1: and Willie's Bar is just off of Ridgewood, So we're
Speaker 1: just going to bring that back in. But this road is,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a pretty major thoroughfare, but it's bars
Speaker 1: and motels, there's trailer parks on it. It's it's not
Speaker 1: prime real estate. It's it's a thoroughfare. But apparently she
Speaker 1: had been she had received multiple charges of prostitution, and
Speaker 1: she was known to be in that area. So the
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind is I'm going to use
Speaker 1: Willie's Bar as sorry Willie Willie's Place, Thank you Willie's
Speaker 1: Place as a bit of a reference point here, because
Speaker 1: Looketta was like several blocks away or and then we
Speaker 1: get Julie. She's five my ails to the west, almost
Speaker 1: directly west. So this is this is you're going to
Speaker 1: start to notice there's a very small area that this
Speaker 1: is going to happen. Was there a road that went
Speaker 1: almost directly west from the bar too, that you could
Speaker 1: just like get in a car on a road and
Speaker 1: drove it pretty much that way pretty easily, because there's
Speaker 1: I four um which you could you could have gone
Speaker 1: south on Richardson and then caught the I four and
Speaker 1: then jumped up very easily to where lpg A Boulevard was.
Speaker 1: We're going to go to the next victim. About a
Speaker 1: month later, this would be they of February two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, a third body is found. It's found in
Speaker 1: a wooded area near Mason Ave and North Williams Boulevard.
Speaker 1: And where is that in relationship our other corpses, That
Speaker 1: is from Julie. It's about a mile east, so almost
Speaker 1: on the same east west trajectory and just a couple
Speaker 1: of blocks north of that line. Pretty close, yeah, very close.
Speaker 1: She was found, Like I said, it's a semi wooded area.
Speaker 1: And it would turn out that the body was thirty
Speaker 1: five year old. I wanna pattern. She was similar to
Speaker 1: the other victims in many ways and different and a
Speaker 1: few others. The similarities for Starters were that she was
Speaker 1: also shot with a forty caliber gun, but she was
Speaker 1: not shot in the back of the head. Instead, she
Speaker 1: was shot in the face. Investigators believe that she understood
Speaker 1: what was about to happen and tried to fight back,
Speaker 1: because remember the first two women are shot in the
Speaker 1: back of the head, which means that the killer has
Speaker 1: to be behind them, if if not having them kneeling
Speaker 1: in front of him, for them to have fallen into
Speaker 1: that semi fetal position. Whereas miss Patten she shot in
Speaker 1: the face, she apparently tried to fight back and prevent
Speaker 1: her own death, you know, which if you figured out
Speaker 1: what else you gonna do but try and survive, it
Speaker 1: could have been that, or it could have been the
Speaker 1: other difference. But I want to is that she was
Speaker 1: black and the first two were white, and so you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the guy just you know, wanted to shoot the
Speaker 1: black woman in the face because he liked black people
Speaker 1: a little less, you know, and just wanted to be
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I know that's probably the
Speaker 1: horrible thing. Probably is just randomness, or she was fighting
Speaker 1: Like you said, I wanted, I really wanted to not
Speaker 1: be that kind of racist bs. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: that she was fighting back because well, she might have
Speaker 1: been fighting back, and it could have been that he
Speaker 1: just felt with the other too, I'm gonna be really
Speaker 1: sneaky about it. They'll never know it hit him. And
Speaker 1: then with the black girl, I'm just gonna say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what here's the end and give her a
Speaker 1: little a moment to think about it. Yeah, nothing short
Speaker 1: of I mean, honestly could be. He said, Okay, get
Speaker 1: on your knees and turn around, and you know we're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, give me a blow job or something, right,
Speaker 1: And they said, um, you know. The other two girls
Speaker 1: were like, okay, we'll just you know, wait here. And
Speaker 1: you know she maybe she was just more forward and
Speaker 1: was like all right, yeah, let's see it. He was
Speaker 1: liked dang it, all right, Well, but I agree, I'd
Speaker 1: rather I'd rather be not that scenario. But I mean,
Speaker 1: either way, unfortunately she was killed. This uh, this is
Speaker 1: where we're gonna get some into the similarities again between
Speaker 1: her and the others, though, is that they did recover
Speaker 1: DNA from her body. There is a lot of dispute.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I keep finding these cases that
Speaker 1: have so much dispute in them, but there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of dispute here on what she did for a living.
Speaker 1: Some sources say that she worked in an assisted living
Speaker 1: facility in the area and that's all she did for income.
Speaker 1: Other places say that she was known to be a
Speaker 1: sex worker. I've read a few statements even that they
Speaker 1: are even worse towards her, and they allude to the
Speaker 1: fact that maybe she had diminished in capacities in terms
Speaker 1: of her intelligence. Um, and I want to say that
Speaker 1: that is probably because of the photo that everybody sees
Speaker 1: of her. It's again not a flattering, freaking photo. But
Speaker 1: I have heard that her family was helping her out,
Speaker 1: So to be quite honest, I don't know where she
Speaker 1: falls and where the truth in that bit is. What
Speaker 1: I do know is that she must have been in
Speaker 1: that area for a good reason, because here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Her car was found parked behind a speech therapy center
Speaker 1: which was on Ridgewood and Cultural Avenue. So this is
Speaker 1: again within like five blocks of Willie's Place, which is
Speaker 1: again not a good neighborhood. And I can't find anything
Speaker 1: that would explain why she was in that area. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that she was doing anything bad, but there
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have been a whole lot of reason
Speaker 1: to draw her there. I haven't seen anything that said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: she was trying to get a job at the speech
Speaker 1: therapy center, or she was helping out. Nothing like that
Speaker 1: ever comes up, So I'm I'm at a bit of
Speaker 1: a loss. Uh, you know, it depends. I mean, she
Speaker 1: parked there after hours, that might have just been a
Speaker 1: good place to park, you know, as simply as simple
Speaker 1: as that. Maybe the street parking was not available, and yeah,
Speaker 1: the speech therapy center could just be a complete total
Speaker 1: red herring. Yeah, I don't know. But again I don't
Speaker 1: know why she was on Ridgewood. There are certain parts,
Speaker 1: you know, if she was going to a bar. There
Speaker 1: are certain parts of Portland where I'll park, you know,
Speaker 1: five or six blocks away from where I'm going, because
Speaker 1: I know if I leave anything in my car right
Speaker 1: in front of where I'm going, it's gonna the window
Speaker 1: is gonna get broken, you know, even if it's just
Speaker 1: a sweater versus like those five blocks away, I know
Speaker 1: it's not you know, so sometimes it's just things as
Speaker 1: simple as that. But I you know, I have my
Speaker 1: own opinion on why people say she's a sex worker,
Speaker 1: and I think it's dumb. But you know, that's just me.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to disagree with that. I just think
Speaker 1: it's it adds to the narrative of this story. If
Speaker 1: like all of them were, you know, of like selling
Speaker 1: their bodies for money, and he had like a total
Speaker 1: type and blah blah blah blah blah. It's way more
Speaker 1: convenient than to say, like, hey, he was just a
Speaker 1: monster who was kind of abducting whoever he possibly could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's my two cents. They're I'm not going to
Speaker 1: disagree with you. Good after one is killed, the shooting stopped,
Speaker 1: evidence was collected from all of the scenes. Was there sorry,
Speaker 1: did we say, was there DNA? Yes, yes I did,
Speaker 1: but yes there was DNA recovery. It's okay, No, No,
Speaker 1: you were, you were you kind of worked up there.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I'll let that go. I don't dare say anything. No,
Speaker 1: you're gonna say the shooting stopped. I was gonna say
Speaker 1: that the shooting stopped with that particular gun. Maybe we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't know that for sure, because the shooting stopped,
Speaker 1: and then nobody seems to be shot in the back
Speaker 1: of the head with forty caliber Smith and Wesson for
Speaker 1: about a year. Then, on the second of January two
Speaker 1: and eight, the body of thirty year old Stacy Gauge
Speaker 1: would be found. A local police officer pulled off the
Speaker 1: road near Hancock Boulevard and I four, which is one
Speaker 1: of the major freeways. Uh. He wanted to deal with
Speaker 1: some paperwork. He said that as soon as he parked
Speaker 1: and rolled down the window, he spelled something bad and
Speaker 1: that would end up being Stacy Gauge's body. She had
Speaker 1: been last seen by her family on December twelve, when
Speaker 1: she said she was going to go to the store
Speaker 1: to get some ice. Police don't know, No, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Now, remember this, this discovery is
Speaker 1: on the second of January, so she's been there for
Speaker 1: about three weeks. Presumably about three weeks. They think that
Speaker 1: she was there basically the whole time. It's because of
Speaker 1: the decomposition of the body that they believe that. But
Speaker 1: that decomposition also worked against him because a they couldn't
Speaker 1: pull any d n A off of the body. They
Speaker 1: also couldn't tell she had been shot in the back
Speaker 1: of the head as well like the other victim, and
Speaker 1: was in a semi fetal state. But they couldn't tell
Speaker 1: what caliber of gun had been used to kill her
Speaker 1: because they so they were not able to recover the bullet.
Speaker 1: Then it does not appear that there was a bullet. No,
Speaker 1: because they couldn't tell. I'm guessing they couldn't tell what
Speaker 1: kind of bullet because she decomposed and quite possibly wasn't
Speaker 1: killed in that spot. Or yeah, I mean either that
Speaker 1: or the bullet traveled. You know. Let's just say she's
Speaker 1: standing in front and guy shoots and bullet travels horizontally
Speaker 1: and they don't know which direction it went, or it
Speaker 1: rained a lot and washed it away. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have washed away, but I could see where
Speaker 1: if it you know, if it traveled horizontally before it
Speaker 1: it's trajectory drug it down. Yes, that's the problem with
Speaker 1: those little critters is they're not made a non ferrous metal,
Speaker 1: you know, the lead, so you can't just pull out
Speaker 1: a metal detector and find them. Yeah, this is why
Speaker 1: I suck as an investigator. Um, okay, no, But so
Speaker 1: they believe that, Like I said, they believed that she
Speaker 1: had been laying there the whole time. And I need
Speaker 1: to point out for anybody who's gonna do what Joe
Speaker 1: does it. Actually, I've been using Google Earth a lot
Speaker 1: lately because I love the satellite imagery to look at
Speaker 1: what things looked like at the time. If you're used
Speaker 1: if you know Daytona Beach, you're saying well, these places
Speaker 1: aren't very don't seem super secluded now, and they aren't now,
Speaker 1: But in two thousand five and two thousand and six
Speaker 1: there there was more vegetation, it was less built up
Speaker 1: in those areas, so it was a little more secluded,
Speaker 1: easier to hide what you were doing if you're a
Speaker 1: bad guy. So Stacy Gauge talking about yeah, about her
Speaker 1: background here a little bit. She had a cocaine habit.
Speaker 1: Her family said that outright, you know, took her to
Speaker 1: not the best places in the world and in her life. Um,
Speaker 1: she had been trying to clean up, but her family said,
Speaker 1: I think she had gone to a rehab center for
Speaker 1: a while and gotten out. But her family was pretty
Speaker 1: sure that at the time of her disappearance she was
Speaker 1: using again. She was, not, however, believed to have been
Speaker 1: a sex worker. Police would find the van that she
Speaker 1: was driving, which was her mom's van, parked in an
Speaker 1: apartment complex, almost a week after her body was found.
Speaker 1: And because of the residence of that particular apartment complex,
Speaker 1: I mean, they were young, they were rowdy, they liked
Speaker 1: a party, they like to do drugs. The cops speculate
Speaker 1: that she might have gone there to get a hook up. Now,
Speaker 1: if she was going to go there and use her
Speaker 1: body for currency, nobody knows, but that's what they think
Speaker 1: is the reason that the van was parked there. It's
Speaker 1: kind of weird that sat there for that long and
Speaker 1: nobody like because I know that generally speaking, most department buildings,
Speaker 1: the apartment the parking is not terribly great, and usually
Speaker 1: if somebody's just like left there storing their van there,
Speaker 1: nobody doesn't belong to anybody there. People usually have a
Speaker 1: toad that's kind of surprised, and everybody signore. It depends
Speaker 1: on the depends on the apartment complex kind of a yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's kind of more of a young partying demographic,
Speaker 1: you know, oftentimes you just kind of assumed like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got a new neighbor. Well maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: especially if it's like a slightly bigger complex. I've done
Speaker 1: that before the d g F. It's like, whatever, not
Speaker 1: my problem, I gotta go about my day. Um So,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to say exactly why she was there,
Speaker 1: but it's believed that she was there. Now I will
Speaker 1: point out when her body was found. If we remember
Speaker 1: I gave you that I drew that pattern out about
Speaker 1: a mile away from Julie Green's where Alanna Patton was found,
Speaker 1: and about two or three miles south of where a
Speaker 1: Wanna Patton was found. That's where Stacy Gauge's body is found.
Speaker 1: And picturing kind of an arrow shape, you know, the
Speaker 1: if you were to pictures, So if you know how
Speaker 1: you draw the number four, and that horizontal bar extends
Speaker 1: a little bit if you were laying on its side
Speaker 1: and then inverted, that's actually the shape that it makes
Speaker 1: when you draw from one to the next. That was
Speaker 1: probably really confused. Yeah, so that the killer is obviously
Speaker 1: sending us a message, but not an arrow. It's not
Speaker 1: an arrow, okay. So yeah, so basically a ford and
Speaker 1: that it's an inverted four is what I'm saying. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: actually it's, oh I guess it's it's an elongated the
Speaker 1: tails of the four are elongated. That's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say. Well, it's kind of like, let Devin draw it,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Steve's drawing it now. So that's not an inverted
Speaker 1: for that's just a force. It is a four. So
Speaker 1: interesting for four murders and and they're in the pattern
Speaker 1: of four. I wonder if our killer plotted this numerology, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably not craiology, yeah, symbology. Maybe Stacy Gage would be
Speaker 1: the last person killed in this string in this about
Speaker 1: year time frame that people attribute to what has now
Speaker 1: been dubbed the Daytona Beach serial killer. You will see,
Speaker 1: and this is why I said earlier, there's some conjecture
Speaker 1: on this. You will see more people said to have
Speaker 1: been killed by this person. I have some issues with that,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure because there's there's three of them
Speaker 1: that all talk about that. I don't really think you're connected.
Speaker 1: There's Reagan Kendall. Her body was found dismembered in two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten. I think I'm pretty sure it was
Speaker 1: in July she was found dismembered. Then Kelly Lanthern her
Speaker 1: body was also found that same month. Police haven't released that.
Speaker 1: So that's why people say, oh, she must have been
Speaker 1: killed with the forty caliber gun and they don't want
Speaker 1: anybody to know. But I don't know that that's actually
Speaker 1: the case. You'll also see a woman by the name
Speaker 1: of Faith Jenkins listed as possibly being connected to the killing.
Speaker 1: Her body was found in naked and in the fetal position,
Speaker 1: but she also was not shot. The corner report would
Speaker 1: say that she had she had experienced internal trauma, which
Speaker 1: to me means that she got the crap be out
Speaker 1: of her, which is very different than using a gun
Speaker 1: on somebody. So the connections, I don't see the connection
Speaker 1: to these these three like I do in the first four,
Speaker 1: and I'm not even sure about Stacy Gage. I mean,
Speaker 1: the first three very clearly linked by a weapon. After
Speaker 1: that Stacy was shot in the back of the head.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, shooting people in the back
Speaker 1: of the head is not unknown. Well, it could have
Speaker 1: been a could have been a copycat using any caliber
Speaker 1: of gun. It could have been a non copy in
Speaker 1: the back of well that's yeah, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Head with another gun and it's a similar caliber. They'd
Speaker 1: have no idea, you know what it was, because they
Speaker 1: didn't recover a bullet. So it's hard to say. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm willing to say that there are three confirmed deaths
Speaker 1: by this individual in that time frame. After that, I'm
Speaker 1: not okay, So we should probably get into theories. Theories.
Speaker 1: I like theories, but before that, let's take a quick break. Hey,
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Speaker 1: dirty and we're back. So I should actually probably clarify here. Um,
Speaker 1: this is one of those episodes where it's not so
Speaker 1: much theories as suspects because people think that they know
Speaker 1: who the Daytona Beach cereal killer is. Everybody knows who
Speaker 1: everybody is. It's always somebody knows somebody. So what we're
Speaker 1: gonna actually be talking about is the suspects section, and
Speaker 1: there's a feeling there's some good ones. I kind of like, um,
Speaker 1: who we got here? You like that one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly than the other ones. Yeah. Okay, Well, let's let's
Speaker 1: dive into this and we'll take them in the order
Speaker 1: that I've got him on here. How's that sound, Joe? Okay,
Speaker 1: So the first theory or suspect is a local, so
Speaker 1: saying that it's a local to the area, who lives
Speaker 1: in the area, who also happens to be related to
Speaker 1: a convicted felon. And this will make sense why that's
Speaker 1: described that way in just a second. Maybe maybe because
Speaker 1: one of the things that we do know is that
Speaker 1: DNA evidence was pulled from the first three bodies and
Speaker 1: there's no results of who that is. Whoever it is,
Speaker 1: is not in the system. However, there is another available
Speaker 1: to law enforcement, another searching method which is called familial DNA,
Speaker 1: and that's the method that was used to catch the
Speaker 1: grim sleeper, who we talked to Christine about yesterday, and
Speaker 1: it could possibly do a lot in helping to solve
Speaker 1: this case, which it did with with Lonnie and that's
Speaker 1: what brought him down. And it is admissible, and it
Speaker 1: is admissible. There's there's some issues with it, but we
Speaker 1: talked to Christine about familiar DNA along with the potential
Speaker 1: roadblocks of its use. Just a quick heads up, we
Speaker 1: did the interview over Skype, so as usual with Skype,
Speaker 1: the audio can be a little funky. Donkey did what
Speaker 1: we did could to clean it up, but let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and go to that audio. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: you know a lot like a c l U and
Speaker 1: you know, civil liberty the organizations and civil rights organizations,
Speaker 1: you know, they believe it's an invasion of privacy and
Speaker 1: they think that an unfairly targets minorities, you know, because
Speaker 1: there's more minorities like African American, Hispanics, et cetera in prison,
Speaker 1: So they're saying that in fairly targets that population. Like
Speaker 1: England did a study many years ago and they found
Speaker 1: that like if you're for the familiar DNA because as
Speaker 1: you know, like Lonnie, they had his DNA, but Lonnie
Speaker 1: had never gone to prison, so he had never been swabbed,
Speaker 1: so that's why they didn't know who he was. But
Speaker 1: they knew he was matched to the victims in the
Speaker 1: eighties and the victims in the tooth and the two
Speaker 1: thousand's because of they found saliva on many of the
Speaker 1: women's breasts and so they knew he was, you know,
Speaker 1: there was one killer, but because he wasn't in any
Speaker 1: felon data bank, they couldn't find him. So that's why
Speaker 1: they decided to use that familiar DNA. And it was
Speaker 1: the first time actually in California actually in the US,
Speaker 1: that they used familiar DNA testing to find a serial killer,
Speaker 1: and they checked it in two thousand eight. And how
Speaker 1: it goes with the familiar DNA, I mean, they had
Speaker 1: been UM England have been using it for many years.
Speaker 1: And basically they said that if you're a felon, there's
Speaker 1: at chance that you're going to have like a male
Speaker 1: relative like a cousin and uncle, a brother, a father
Speaker 1: who's a felon. So if you're not in the data bank,
Speaker 1: there's a chance that you're gonna have a relative who's
Speaker 1: in the data bank and so and so that's why
Speaker 1: they did it in two thousand and eight and it
Speaker 1: came back nothing, And then they did it two years
Speaker 1: later and the felon data bank had grown four hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: and so they did it again. And Lonnie's son Christopher
Speaker 1: had been charged with UM carrying a weapon and he
Speaker 1: pled guilty and as a result of his plea, he
Speaker 1: got swabbed and that was in two thousand nine, So
Speaker 1: he was in the system for she's just like close
Speaker 1: to a year, you know, before they did that second
Speaker 1: DNA swab and it came back as a match to him,
Speaker 1: but he was They knew it wasn't him because he
Speaker 1: would have been about two years old when the murder started,
Speaker 1: so they knew he right, so they knew he had
Speaker 1: to be you know, he They knew he was related
Speaker 1: to the killer, and so they actually looked for any
Speaker 1: relative and there was an uncle, well they thought there
Speaker 1: was an uncle and Rancho Cucamonga, but they ended up
Speaker 1: checking checking it out and finding that there was no relation.
Speaker 1: And then they found out that his father, Lonnie, lived
Speaker 1: like on eight one and Western, which was like at
Speaker 1: the epicenter of where all the murders took place. And
Speaker 1: so that's why they ended up you know, following you know, Lonnie,
Speaker 1: if something like this doesn't happen, then it's gonna be
Speaker 1: very tough to catch this guy. And we've we actually
Speaker 1: in that same conversation, we had talked about some other
Speaker 1: serial killer cases that were solved via DNA and what
Speaker 1: a stroke of luck it was that that particular person
Speaker 1: got caught through that method. To look at what happened
Speaker 1: with the Green River Killer, it was like twentysomething years
Speaker 1: before they finally caught him. Same with B. T K.
Speaker 1: I remember, yeah too. I was I was around for
Speaker 1: living in the area and a lot of people were
Speaker 1: very angry after all those years and they still hadn't
Speaker 1: caught the guy. And it's just like you said, though
Speaker 1: you're looking for a needle in a haystack, it's expecting
Speaker 1: a lot, really, and it's really lucky that guy's kid
Speaker 1: got busted the year before they were nabbed him. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think they ever if if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: that familial DNA and that his son, I said, I
Speaker 1: don't think they ever would have caught. I think it
Speaker 1: was just too difficult, you know, it was just it
Speaker 1: was just too hard. They were really they were really lucky.
Speaker 1: I think they were pretty shocked themselves. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean so after all that, I agree with Christine that
Speaker 1: we were indeed lucky that they got Lonnie Franklin Jr.
Speaker 1: The way that they did. Yeah. And uh and by
Speaker 1: the way, generally speaking, serial killers like this usually unless
Speaker 1: they really kind of are trying to get caught, they
Speaker 1: usually don't get caught. Yeah, it is a fact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that's part of their thing is they
Speaker 1: want to they want to have their fun, and their
Speaker 1: fun is not had behind bars. I don't know black
Speaker 1: people consider it fun, but okay, I don't know so
Speaker 1: we have talked about already the shape the path of
Speaker 1: the killings and the four and the fact that it's
Speaker 1: about five miles east to west or eight kilometers between
Speaker 1: the first two bodies, and it's about two and a
Speaker 1: half miles north to south or four kilometers between the
Speaker 1: second pair of bodies. Uh. And that's a that's a
Speaker 1: really small range. And that's why it makes me think
Speaker 1: that this particular person is a local and that they
Speaker 1: wanted to stay in an area that was familiar to him,
Speaker 1: which is again, this is something else that we talked
Speaker 1: with Christine about when it comes to the Grim Sleeper case,
Speaker 1: because Lonnie did the same thing. He stayed close to home.
Speaker 1: He hunted in his own backyard. And that's like most
Speaker 1: serial killers do that. I mean they had back in
Speaker 1: the eighties and South Los Angeles there was um, you know,
Speaker 1: six serial killers operating at the same time, and they
Speaker 1: were able to identify all of them actually, and all
Speaker 1: of them lived in South Los Angeles. I mean, Chester
Speaker 1: Turner was one of the serial killers, and he hunted
Speaker 1: like literally within two blocks of where his mud where
Speaker 1: he lived with his mother. You know, they like familiar territory,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't want to be surprised. They want
Speaker 1: to know Lonnie was a garbage man and he knew
Speaker 1: the alleyways like he knew the dumpsters of South Los
Speaker 1: Angeles because that's where he worked, right, So they want
Speaker 1: to have they want to feel comfortable. So that's why
Speaker 1: most serial killers actually operate, you know, in the same
Speaker 1: area where they dumped their bodies. I was always kind
Speaker 1: of wondering too, if if one of the reasons they
Speaker 1: do it is they're just trying to clean up the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying, I mean, I don't mean that, I
Speaker 1: don't mean that in a harsh judgmental way, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, seriously, is that possibly a motivator for some
Speaker 1: of these guys that they're they don't really approve that
Speaker 1: activity and they'd like to see it sort of discouraged. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that was the case for Lonnie. I
Speaker 1: mean he considered I mean, it's obvious he considered the
Speaker 1: women brash, right, and so he dumped their bodies and trapped,
Speaker 1: you know, so he considered them trash, you know. And
Speaker 1: his wife was there, yeah, and dumpsters, and his wife
Speaker 1: was very religious, so he maybe there was something for him.
Speaker 1: He you know, I think he had this like compulsion,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that he couldn't control himself. I mean,
Speaker 1: he had there was he was always after women, you know,
Speaker 1: he was like addicted to women. And I think that
Speaker 1: in his case, I think that, you know, he also
Speaker 1: had this deep seated hatred and you know where it
Speaker 1: came from. It's hard to say, because it seemed like
Speaker 1: he had a good relationship with his mother and his sister,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's hard to say exactly why how
Speaker 1: he ended up, you know, hating women so much. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's what he thought. I think
Speaker 1: he thought he was cleaning the streets. Yeah. So now
Speaker 1: let's go to our second possible suspect. So the first
Speaker 1: one is kind of a morphous it's the general description,
Speaker 1: I get it. The second person is an actual person,
Speaker 1: and that's a guy by the name of David Lindsay.
Speaker 1: In two thousand seven, David Lindsay was arrested for killing
Speaker 1: a seventy one year old man um Now. Mr Lindsay
Speaker 1: had also previously served out a sentence for killing his
Speaker 1: own wife, but he had been working as a volunteer
Speaker 1: in a homeless shelter in the area. Uh. And when
Speaker 1: he was tracked down for killing the seventy one year
Speaker 1: old man whose name was Austin Dale Runyon back in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, people started to ask, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: is the guy. The thing about Lindsay is that he
Speaker 1: had strangled this the old man and left him in
Speaker 1: the home, so that doesn't appear that a gun was used.
Speaker 1: But because he's close, people want to know was it him.
Speaker 1: They swabbed his DNA and for a while until the
Speaker 1: DNA came back every but he was like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we might have got him. And then that's one
Speaker 1: thing that that's always bothered me about cases like this,
Speaker 1: when people are like, well, this person killed another human,
Speaker 1: so he must be a serial killer, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: to tie, like, there's nothing to suggest that that person,
Speaker 1: who is admittedly a horrible human being, is the same
Speaker 1: kind of horrible human being, Like he strangled a seventy
Speaker 1: one year old man in his own home and then
Speaker 1: left him for debt. I mean left him, right. That's
Speaker 1: totally different than picking up women, young women and shooting
Speaker 1: them in the back of the head. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: You know? And he shot his own wife or killed
Speaker 1: his own wife, I should say, which again, she wasn't
Speaker 1: a young woman that he was tracking down for his
Speaker 1: own pleasure, I guess with technically, these weren't young women
Speaker 1: the victims, but they're you know women, Yeah, no, I know,
Speaker 1: I know where you're going anyway, So Lindsay was ruled
Speaker 1: out good, which takes us to our third suspect, which
Speaker 1: is Robert Rembert JR. Mr Rembert, was you like that name?
Speaker 1: R R j R r J was arrested back in
Speaker 1: and charged with killing four people in Cleveland, Ohio. One
Speaker 1: was a family member and the other was a family friend,
Speaker 1: and he killed those two people in the same night.
Speaker 1: He shot them both. The other two that he is
Speaker 1: charged with killing were women, and their bodies were found.
Speaker 1: Both had been raped, and both had been strangled, and
Speaker 1: both had DNA evidence on them that was recovered and
Speaker 1: that DNA would be matched back to Robert Rembert. Probably
Speaker 1: saliva in this case, I'm not I don't believe it was,
Speaker 1: but so, but I'm sure people, if if anybody knows
Speaker 1: who remembered in they were saying, why are you including
Speaker 1: a guy that's from Cleveland, Ohio? And a story that's
Speaker 1: in Daytona Beach, Florida. Isn't there a Dayton, Ohio? There
Speaker 1: you go, dayton That's that's totally the connection enough that
Speaker 1: I made yes, or it was the fact that Rembert
Speaker 1: was a long hall truck driver and so he would
Speaker 1: have run roots or he could have run roots down
Speaker 1: to Florida, which would have put him into the same
Speaker 1: area where these women were at. Again, the same problem
Speaker 1: with lindsay, though they have him, they have his DNA.
Speaker 1: They confirmed that it was the DNA found on the
Speaker 1: body of these two strangled and raped women. So it's
Speaker 1: a pretty easy slam dunk to say, does it match
Speaker 1: these other women, which apparently nothing is you know, nothing
Speaker 1: has come out about that. So I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: they checked that and said no, it's not him. Again,
Speaker 1: more than that, like it was over the course of
Speaker 1: what was they were one year apart these murders, the women, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they were they were many years apart. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: the actual victims of the serial killer that we are
Speaker 1: talking Daytona Beach serials. Yes, they were all within three months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems like a weird amount of time for a
Speaker 1: long haul truck driver. To like continue to be I
Speaker 1: don't know, took a Christmas vacation. Yeah, no, but I
Speaker 1: get it. And that's why I don't think that that's
Speaker 1: I don't think that's right. Yeah, and again I think
Speaker 1: the d n A doesn't support it, or they would
Speaker 1: have charged him with murder. Well, this is this is
Speaker 1: one of those dileos I think where the Yeah, these
Speaker 1: guys became suspects in the papers because well, the papers
Speaker 1: had to write about something. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: so the police said, yeah, we're checking this guy's DNA.
Speaker 1: It's probably a nothing burger, but you know, we're checking
Speaker 1: this DNA. So the next thing and well, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta as a story because you've got to fatten
Speaker 1: up the story because otherwise you're just repeating the story.
Speaker 1: You know, you got to add something to it. So
Speaker 1: there you go. But yeah, these guys had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it. I'm sure. Can I can I ask
Speaker 1: you a question, Joe, Yeah, where where do you order
Speaker 1: a nothing Burger? Usually like just go to any like
Speaker 1: major publication network. I've never heard of that one before.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a good phrase. I never heard of
Speaker 1: that one. Next up on our list is well, it's
Speaker 1: kind of not. It's another one that's not a very
Speaker 1: exact another one, well, it's yes, the unknown trucker, a
Speaker 1: k a. The I four killer, which in the news
Speaker 1: there is occasional murmurs of there being an I four killer,
Speaker 1: which again, it's a major freeway. And if you've ever
Speaker 1: listened to any of our other serial killer shows, you'll
Speaker 1: know that this is a very familiar theory, you know.
Speaker 1: There's it basically says that there's some killer roaming up
Speaker 1: and down a particular stretch or several stretches of freeway
Speaker 1: and you know, randomly picking out a girl that he
Speaker 1: takes a fancy too and doing over whatever he wants
Speaker 1: to do for himself, and then leaving her dead body behind.
Speaker 1: That's that's what this is. It's very common, but apparently
Speaker 1: very I'm sorry, it's a very common theory. Not it's
Speaker 1: a very common, proven thing that happens correct. Sure, it
Speaker 1: does happen correct probably, but we can't say definitively like
Speaker 1: it's very common. But this happens all the time. Serial
Speaker 1: killers out there, Yeah, every other truck driver. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: not so much, Devin, because accordingly the FBI hip been
Speaker 1: tracking murders all over the country, and they're actually looking
Speaker 1: into a whole bunch of them that are happening on
Speaker 1: the freeway system to determine if there's connections to them
Speaker 1: and how they're related to one another. So the FBI,
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, the FBI takes murder very seriously, but
Speaker 1: they've actually got a page that talks about the map
Speaker 1: and what they're trying to do to see if these
Speaker 1: things are all linked. Sounds like a really good application
Speaker 1: for a little bit of data mining probably, And you know,
Speaker 1: that would definitely be the way to do this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be hard to assemble all the day, but
Speaker 1: you know you can get all the all the manifests
Speaker 1: and schedules from all the long haul truck drivers, you know,
Speaker 1: all their routes and time states and everything. Put it
Speaker 1: all in there, and you know, along with all these
Speaker 1: different crimes and everything, and just grind Google death Map, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just grind away for a while and see, you know,
Speaker 1: whose routes match up to what's strings and murders, you know,
Speaker 1: And you know, it strikes me the FBI should hire Watson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean Watson the dog. Well I meant wrong, one. Well, okay, so,
Speaker 1: so I when I was on the FBI website and
Speaker 1: I was reading through it, there's a really good statement
Speaker 1: that talks about some of this and which one I
Speaker 1: want wanting you to read this because I'm blathering. Okay, Joe,
Speaker 1: can you read this statement from the FBI on what
Speaker 1: they believe? Okay, I was saying, well, FBI voice, here
Speaker 1: we go. The victims in these cases are primarily women
Speaker 1: who are living higher risks transient lifestyle. Can we have
Speaker 1: your regular voice? Okay, okay, let's try regular voice. The
Speaker 1: victims in these cases are primarily women who are living
Speaker 1: high risk transient lifestyles, often involving substance abuse and prostitution.
Speaker 1: They're frequently picked up at truck stops or service stations
Speaker 1: and sexually assaulted, murdered, and dumped along the highway. The
Speaker 1: suspects are predominantly long haul truck drivers, but the mobile
Speaker 1: nature of the offenders, the unsafe lifestyles of the victims,
Speaker 1: the significant distances and multiple jurisdictions involved, and the scarcity
Speaker 1: of witnesses or forensic evidence can make these cases tough
Speaker 1: to solve. Which is unquote, which is by the way,
Speaker 1: kind of an understatement tough to solve. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was going to say, that's a really nice recap of
Speaker 1: what we literally just said. Yeah's authoritative. Yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: I think I'm tired of the FBI stealing our stuff. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so the reason that I wanted to bring that up
Speaker 1: is and have that statement in there, is that you know,
Speaker 1: as you read about these possible connections, it's easy to say,
Speaker 1: well that that just seems too far fetched and it's
Speaker 1: too much. But the more you read the Internet, the
Speaker 1: more that it strips away your little security blanket and
Speaker 1: leaves behind some really terrible people for you to be,
Speaker 1: you know, stuck with. Let's be honest, it only really
Speaker 1: takes forty five minutes on the Internet on like a
Speaker 1: conspiracy site to suddenly be like, you're right, the world
Speaker 1: is flat and we are living on the surface of
Speaker 1: the sun. I mean, honestly, it's like you can you
Speaker 1: can convince yourself of almost anything. Well, but but what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about is actual people, because like, okay, the
Speaker 1: first three people that came up when I ran a
Speaker 1: Google search of something like killer traveling across the United States,
Speaker 1: I don't know what my search was, but I got
Speaker 1: John Paul Knowles, Glenn Edward Rogers, and Israel Keys. Three
Speaker 1: very despicable human beings. Yeah, they're not not far the
Speaker 1: only one. They're the first ones it came up. There
Speaker 1: were the first three people that showed up in my search.
Speaker 1: I didn't bother to catalog to search because it was
Speaker 1: too disturbing. Um. So when you hit on the freeway,
Speaker 1: just take your take a gat with you, yeah, or
Speaker 1: maybe just don't go hitchhiking on the freeway. So the
Speaker 1: last thing that I want to talk about when we
Speaker 1: come to this unknown trucker theory is one of the
Speaker 1: things that has always baffled me about these situations is
Speaker 1: that there's never that doesn't ever seem to be a witness.
Speaker 1: And so initially at one point they didn't know if
Speaker 1: it was a transient worker somebody like that in the
Speaker 1: Grim Sleeper case. I remember reading some little bits of that.
Speaker 1: But when we talked to Christine, we asked her specifically
Speaker 1: about why there was there didn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: anybody that was witnessing the crimes, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of them was I think the only reason, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it was that it was late at
Speaker 1: nine eight and there wasn't a lot of people out
Speaker 1: on the street. I think that's why. And I mean
Speaker 1: he and also too, I mean, he knew what he
Speaker 1: was doing, so you know, he's going to be stealthy, right,
Speaker 1: He's not going to do it when there's a hundred
Speaker 1: people around, you know, He's going to make sure it's
Speaker 1: late at night. And I mean when the police were
Speaker 1: following him around, you know, after they got the familiar
Speaker 1: DNA from the sun the match with the Sun, they
Speaker 1: followed him around and he left his home one night
Speaker 1: at like three o'clock in the morning, and he went
Speaker 1: to forty second and Western, which was like kind of
Speaker 1: a popular prostitution hanging out, and there was two girls
Speaker 1: standing on the street and it was really secluded. In
Speaker 1: the detectives there was this undercover cop following him, and
Speaker 1: he made a point to say to the detectives, He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that he's going to find out that I'm
Speaker 1: following him because there was like literally no one on
Speaker 1: the street. So he picks times when there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of people around, you know. That's why I think
Speaker 1: there's no witnesses, and then he brings them to alley
Speaker 1: ways and not a lot of people hanging out in
Speaker 1: the alleyways at four o'clock in the morning, okay, And
Speaker 1: another i'd sale so that there's another another reason probably
Speaker 1: is a nipped off somewhere to commit a sex act
Speaker 1: which requires a little bit of privacy a k a.
Speaker 1: The alley, the alley or behind the bushes or somewhere
Speaker 1: where you're not going to be seen by anybody, and
Speaker 1: you know, and and that's the best thing about it.
Speaker 1: There's probably another reason prostitutes our favorite targets because you
Speaker 1: talk to a regular a regular female, and you say, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, why don't we go off to this
Speaker 1: place where nobody can see us, just by ourselves, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's the alley way, would be cool, Yeah, whereas
Speaker 1: a prostitute is not going about not going to bat
Speaker 1: an eye and I lashed anything like that. Of course,
Speaker 1: you want to go somewherehere you're not going to be seen. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to disagree with you on that. It
Speaker 1: appears to be that's how that thing works. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have another one another suspect. We have actually one more suspect.
Speaker 1: This is what I found on my own. So I
Speaker 1: did I did a little bit of internet sleuthing, and
Speaker 1: I found a very young, upstanding citizen while casting about
Speaker 1: the Internet using such wonderful terms as shot, prostitute, Florida
Speaker 1: two thousand's and probably one or two other very lovely keywords.
Speaker 1: I bet you've got a ton of a ton of people, right,
Speaker 1: I actually did get a fair number, but one of
Speaker 1: them that came back as a guy by the name
Speaker 1: of Curtis L. Richardson. And Mr richardson Is has been
Speaker 1: in the custody of the Great State of Florida for
Speaker 1: a host of reasons, the current of which is second
Speaker 1: degree murder. Prior to that, he was under lock and
Speaker 1: key for a number of drug related charges, but the
Speaker 1: one that earned him his current stay was the shooting
Speaker 1: in the head of a prostitute in May of into
Speaker 1: dispute over drugs. Now, I looked through his records and
Speaker 1: I found some, I would say, some interesting connections between
Speaker 1: him and the Daytona Beach serial killer. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's him, but this is one of those guys
Speaker 1: where you go, holy crap, I wonder this kind of
Speaker 1: matches up because he was in jail from December four
Speaker 1: of two thousand four until October twenty three, two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, and then our first victim was killed on
Speaker 1: December two thousand five, so two months after he got out,
Speaker 1: he also went back into jail on August one of
Speaker 1: two thousand six, and he didn't get out of jail
Speaker 1: until February six, two thousand eight, which rules him out
Speaker 1: for Stacy Gauge. But as I said, I don't I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that I want to lump Stacy Gauge in
Speaker 1: with the first three killings. But it makes him available
Speaker 1: for being the bad guy because he did shoot a
Speaker 1: prostitute in the face. He has no qualms about shooting
Speaker 1: somebody in the phase when he doesn't get what he wants.
Speaker 1: I've got no proof his DNA has has probably been
Speaker 1: run through the system and he's probably been ruled out.
Speaker 1: But it's just this is this is one of those things.
Speaker 1: So listen. We do this internally. We do this all
Speaker 1: the time, where we look at a board and people
Speaker 1: start posting, People say, oh my god, what about this person?
Speaker 1: What about this person? And I found myself going through
Speaker 1: the correctional website doing that very same thing. The only
Speaker 1: thing that stopped me is that because he's in the
Speaker 1: floor system. I'm pretty sure they've already taken his DNA
Speaker 1: and he's already been ruled out. He's a despicable human being.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting the dates the crimes are very dissimilar, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he shot a prostitute in the head,
Speaker 1: in the face. Yeah, he shot a prostitute in the
Speaker 1: head or the face? How are you looking at it?
Speaker 1: But they're actually very dissimilar crimes. I mean, because this
Speaker 1: is obviously this is the kind of thing that you know,
Speaker 1: you really see what you know, dumb people with poor
Speaker 1: impulse control who get a little frustrated to get a
Speaker 1: little piste off, and they shoot somebody and they're under
Speaker 1: the influence already that whereas your average serial killer is
Speaker 1: not that sort of person. He's somebody who's warm with
Speaker 1: article and not as impulsive. Yeah, it's not going to
Speaker 1: impulsively shoot somebody in the head, I mean, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean that's why I think that the character of
Speaker 1: the crimes, even though physically the same thing, the character
Speaker 1: of the crimes is much different in my opinion, and
Speaker 1: I'm in agreement with you, Joe. That's why I said,
Speaker 1: I pointed this into an example because I found myself
Speaker 1: in that situation that we always talk about people falling
Speaker 1: into and pointing the blame. Well, no, and he is.
Speaker 1: And he's actually as good as suspect as some of
Speaker 1: the other ones that have been named. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: get me wrong. I'm not not totally slamming him for that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but he's in the slammer. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good point. He probably should be. Uh yeah, I have
Speaker 1: I have one other thing that I want. This was
Speaker 1: a real question for me when it came into this case. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of outside of our theory section,
Speaker 1: but if Stacy Gauge is truly in part of the group,
Speaker 1: how is it that somebody is able too, over the
Speaker 1: course of basically two months, going a killing spree and
Speaker 1: kill three women and then suddenly be able to stop
Speaker 1: for about a year and do it one more time
Speaker 1: and then not do it again at all. Like that's
Speaker 1: a giant question to me of how because it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense, you know what I'm saying, Like it seems
Speaker 1: like bang bang bang bang, pause, bang done. I would
Speaker 1: not take it as a given that he's done, and
Speaker 1: he might have been. He might still be killing people.
Speaker 1: He's just not using his forty caliber pistol and was
Speaker 1: in the back of the head. Yeah. And this this
Speaker 1: is another one of those points where the Daytona Beach
Speaker 1: serial killer is similar to Lonnie Franklin Jr. Be The
Speaker 1: Grim Sleeper, because, as you'll find out, as we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about and with Christine, he took a big break.
Speaker 1: He took a ten to thirteen year break depending on
Speaker 1: the victims. I'm not entirely convinced that he did, but
Speaker 1: it looks based on the victims that were found, he
Speaker 1: took a pretty big break. So I wanna we're stop here,
Speaker 1: and I want to go ahead and bring in the
Speaker 1: conversation with Christine and her take and what she shared
Speaker 1: with us about this. Detectives definitely don't think that he
Speaker 1: took a break. Um. They think that because two of
Speaker 1: the victims, Bernita Sparks and Genesia Peters, were found in
Speaker 1: dumpsters by you know, homeless people looking for like recyclables
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and so um, there was a
Speaker 1: good chance that they would have ended up in a landfill.
Speaker 1: So the detectives think that a lot of his victims
Speaker 1: ended up in landfills because they think like he's known
Speaker 1: to have killed fifteen women, but they think it's probably
Speaker 1: closer to thirty. And that's some of the women, you know,
Speaker 1: are in landfill, you know landfills right now. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, like I think that. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that there was a case in two thousand, so I
Speaker 1: mean his last known victim was in and then there
Speaker 1: was a case in two thousand. During the nineties, it
Speaker 1: was also a time when his kids would have been teenagers,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, who knows. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they were like, Dad, what are you doing leaving
Speaker 1: the house at three o'clock in the morning, Like where
Speaker 1: are you going? Like I don't, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if there was something going on in his family
Speaker 1: life that you know, stopped him from doing it, because
Speaker 1: you know, like with for example, like Gary Ridgeway, the
Speaker 1: Green River killer, I mean he would stop at times too,
Speaker 1: you know, when he was happy in his relationships. So
Speaker 1: I think sometimes he's like serial kill as they might
Speaker 1: stop if they're happy in their relationships. Like maybe you know,
Speaker 1: Lonnie was happy and you know with a girl he
Speaker 1: was dating. You know, who knows. But the cops don't
Speaker 1: don't actually think that he did but you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to tell, so I don't I'm not really sure. Overall,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is entirely disturbingly possible. Um and our
Speaker 1: killer is probably still in the area, and he probably
Speaker 1: did take a short break, or like you said, Joe,
Speaker 1: probably worse, he didn't stop and changed his Maybe he
Speaker 1: started watching Dexter because I've been out for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, was like, holy crap, I could just dump
Speaker 1: them out in the ocean. That's so much easier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I mean people did, and
Speaker 1: we've used the term before killers evolved. Maybe his m
Speaker 1: O evolved and he realized dumping them in public spaces
Speaker 1: was not a good way to go, or shooting them
Speaker 1: is not the way to go. I mean, because his
Speaker 1: DNA doesn't seem to have have been collected anywhere else that
Speaker 1: we know of. Well, I mean, he also could have moved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that thing that people do true sometimes that is why
Speaker 1: you haul exists good one. Or he could have started
Speaker 1: putting them in downstairs and they got hauled off to
Speaker 1: the landfill. As Christine mentioned about the Grim Sleeper's a
Speaker 1: lot of options that could have happened. Possibilities there so
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's pretty hard to say. I personally,
Speaker 1: I want to think that it's a local because that
Speaker 1: makes it, it makes sense why Willie's place was kind
Speaker 1: of the epicenter of everything Willie. He did it, groundskeeper Willie.
Speaker 1: It could have also been somebody in local law enforcement,
Speaker 1: because forty caliber is actually thing. Well, no, it's not
Speaker 1: my favorite thing, but it's actually hadn't brought that up
Speaker 1: in a long time. Yeah, forty forty s W is
Speaker 1: actually a popular round with law enforcement, so of course
Speaker 1: it's actually a popular round with civilians too. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I just actually wanted to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: make all our police listeners angry at me. Yeah, wait
Speaker 1: a while, since you've done it, spot on. Good job,
Speaker 1: but good job. Yeah, I know, Thanks Joe Devin. Any
Speaker 1: particular favorites or disfavorites or my favorite theory is that
Speaker 1: he's dead. I kind of like that one. I like
Speaker 1: that one of my favorite that that is a good theory.
Speaker 1: I know. Okay, let me think, let me think, let
Speaker 1: me think. Yeah, long haul truck driver. Yeah, probably a local, alright,
Speaker 1: local I think it was. Now, Probably it could have
Speaker 1: been a local who had a particularly grudge against these
Speaker 1: three women and we just haven't figured out the connection
Speaker 1: means somebody who just wanted to, like, you know, scare
Speaker 1: away the prostitutes. If indeed they were all drinking at
Speaker 1: the same place, they could have all offended the same
Speaker 1: person in some way. Sorry, I do have another theory.
Speaker 1: It's called the Joe spectrum. Uh so one of these
Speaker 1: women was the actual target and Arson was trying to
Speaker 1: cover up. Is murder the murder? I like that. That's
Speaker 1: a good theory. Yeah, okay, yeah, I like that. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: al right, everybody, Well we uh we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: that favorite part of the show that you have, which
Speaker 1: is all of the important details and little bits. This episode,
Speaker 1: along with all episodes and some of our research links,
Speaker 1: will be available on the website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: On there, you can also find links to merchandise and um,
Speaker 1: all of our basically every episode. That's what I was
Speaker 1: gonna say is that we have the episode list page.
Speaker 1: So we've been telling folks to go look at that
Speaker 1: if you've got to, if you want to see if
Speaker 1: we've done one before. That's a much easier way to
Speaker 1: search for them. We are on social media, so We're
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Thinking Sideways, we have a subreddit, and we
Speaker 1: are on Facebook, so the Facebook page and the Facebook
Speaker 1: groups to join the group, like the page. Lots of
Speaker 1: great conversations happening there. If you have, uh, you want
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Speaker 1: if you do that, and there's a whole bunch of
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Speaker 1: iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher, whatever avenue, whether it's
Speaker 1: download of streaming that you want to use, chances are
Speaker 1: good we're already there. If that service allows you to
Speaker 1: leave a rating, we'd appreciate that as well. And of course,
Speaker 1: if you've got any kind of questions or additional theories
Speaker 1: or comments anything like that, and you'd like to send
Speaker 1: those to us directly, you can email that to us
Speaker 1: at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. And that
Speaker 1: is all of that particular bits of housekeeping. So I
Speaker 1: think I need a really hot shower to scrub off
Speaker 1: after this, So let's can we just leave now? Yes? Please?
Speaker 1: I guess Chuppy came out on scathed this time. We'll
Speaker 1: hit him next week. Next week, we'll get that little bugger,
Speaker 1: all right. Sorry Choppy By everybody,