Speaker 1: School of Humans. We can also drive black car range
Speaker 1: if this one, it'll make it, make it. This is
Speaker 1: my grandma's car. Every time I drive up the steep
Speaker 1: and curvy Arkansas Road into the Ozark Mountains, I have
Speaker 1: two simultaneous thoughts. See look, look at these houses. You know,
Speaker 1: the woods are beautiful and they're also terrifying. Things are
Speaker 1: kind of falling apart. And also there's a lot of
Speaker 1: space between a lot of these vacant houses. I've been
Speaker 1: coming up here with my family since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and I have a lot of happy memories here. But
Speaker 1: let's face it, there's a reason why so many horror
Speaker 1: movies are setting cabins in the woods. Sometimes bad things
Speaker 1: happen when no one is around to hear you scream.
Speaker 1: We have no cell phone reception. Yeah, that's all. It
Speaker 1: was on this desolate stretch of Highway nine in the
Speaker 1: Ozarks between Mountain View and Melbourne that on September twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, searchers found the body of twenty
Speaker 1: two year old Rebecca Gould. Rebecca was beautiful, popular, and
Speaker 1: full of life, and her killing shooken area where the
Speaker 1: murder rate was pretty much zero It's been fourteen years
Speaker 1: and Rebecca's killer has never been found. The murder has
Speaker 1: become one of the most notorious cold cases in the region.
Speaker 1: But for me, this case is personal. I have a
Speaker 1: long history with this area. My dad and my little sister,
Speaker 1: Caroline still live in Mountain View. She went to high
Speaker 1: school with Rebecca's younger sister, Danielle, and they are still
Speaker 1: close friends. Even after I became a writer and private
Speaker 1: investigator and moved to New York City, Rebecca's murder continued
Speaker 1: to haunt me. Every time I went home to visit
Speaker 1: my family, I would hear more rumors about the case. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: a news station would do an update on the case,
Speaker 1: illustrated with Rebecca blonde, dazzling smile with her white fluffy
Speaker 1: dog in her lap. But over the years the leads
Speaker 1: were fewer and farther between. I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 1: If everyone in town thought they knew who killed Rebecca,
Speaker 1: why hadn't her case been solved. A few months ago,
Speaker 1: I came back to the Ozarks. I wanted to catch
Speaker 1: Rebecca's killer. I was supposed to stay for two weeks,
Speaker 1: but I never left, and at some point my investigation
Speaker 1: crossed over into an obsession. I'm not stopping until I
Speaker 1: get justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is
Speaker 1: Helen Gone. The last time Rebecca was seen alive was
Speaker 1: a week before her body was found on September twentieth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. It was a Monday morning, just
Speaker 1: after eight am. Rebecca had been staying at her boyfriend
Speaker 1: Casey's house for the weekend. Rebecca gave Casey a ride
Speaker 1: to work in her black nineteen ninety seven Chevy Cavalier.
Speaker 1: Casey was a cook at the Sonic in Melbourne. Rebecca
Speaker 1: had met him about a year earlier when she worked
Speaker 1: there as a car hop. But Rebecca's days of delivering
Speaker 1: burgers on roller skates were over. She had recently moved
Speaker 1: into an apartment in Fayetteville with her sister Danielle, and
Speaker 1: was starting college at Northwest Arkansas. After dropping Casey off,
Speaker 1: she stopped at the Possum Trot gas station in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: where she bought a breakfast, sandwich and coffee. Rebecca's plan
Speaker 1: had been to drive back to Casey's, pack her stuff
Speaker 1: and meet Danielle to drive back to school. When she
Speaker 1: didn't show up that afternoon, Danielle and the rest of
Speaker 1: her family became alarmed. The next day, police showed up
Speaker 1: at Casey's house. They found Rebecca's car parked outside. Inside,
Speaker 1: they found her cell phone, purse, all of her clothes,
Speaker 1: and her dog Lady. There was no sign of Rebecca,
Speaker 1: but there were ominous signs that something very bad had happened.
Speaker 1: There a blood soaked mattress that had been flipped over,
Speaker 1: her uneaten breakfast sandwich, a washing machine full of blood.
Speaker 1: Over the years, I've heard a lot of rumors. I
Speaker 1: heard there was a party over the weekend, a fight
Speaker 1: with a girl, a jealous lover. Someone even told me
Speaker 1: that Rebecca was kidnapped, chained up, and held hostage in
Speaker 1: a horse trailer. So our first job will be separating
Speaker 1: fact from fiction. Taylor and James, who are both working
Speaker 1: on the podcast, have come to Arkansas to help me.
Speaker 1: They started out working on sound and logistics, but quickly
Speaker 1: got sucked down the internet rabbit hole of topics, boards
Speaker 1: and web slues. I know this look. They've been sucked
Speaker 1: into the case too. Let's start with what we know
Speaker 1: based on newspaper reports and the murder board. Are brought
Speaker 1: with me from Manhattan, police released almost no details on
Speaker 1: this case, and what's out there publicly is hard to
Speaker 1: find a lot of it's not available online. So we
Speaker 1: head to the library to look up old editions of
Speaker 1: the newspaper on microfiche backpacks of persons? Do you need
Speaker 1: to be out here in lockers though? Okay? And there
Speaker 1: are four I don't know a lot of factable ones
Speaker 1: are online. You're just going to go ahead somewhere. What
Speaker 1: days that can you guys? Do? The day in September sixteenth?
Speaker 1: Or was it started with a one? Right? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: she went missing the next day, which would be there,
Speaker 1: so this may have been the first day that she
Speaker 1: was reported missing. Was on Tuesday? Yeah, although again we
Speaker 1: need to we got kind of confirm that because everyone
Speaker 1: tells me different day. Some people say Monday, some people
Speaker 1: say Tuesday. I'm sure the police would at least confirm that. Maybe,
Speaker 1: Oh there's search for one woman can das? Yeah? What
Speaker 1: day is that? Friday? That is Friday twenty fourth and
Speaker 1: you can see a picture of the missing poster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Rebecca Gould, blonde hair, brown eyes, one hundred and three pounds,
Speaker 1: So Friday the twenty fourth, it made the Baxter Bolton
Speaker 1: According to authorities, she had visited a friend of Guy
Speaker 1: on last weekend and failed to return to Fatball in
Speaker 1: her car with her purse, keys and money, and it
Speaker 1: was found at the friend's house. The friend is not
Speaker 1: considered a suspect of the disappearance, according to Arkansas State
Speaker 1: Police Lieutenant Bill Beach. Yeah, see, in the beginning, it
Speaker 1: was confusing because there was a report that she had
Speaker 1: been seen that afternoon it looks like, but that was
Speaker 1: later found to be not true. So it just kind
Speaker 1: of goes to show like when stories come out after
Speaker 1: the fact, there's often a lot of facts wrong. Official
Speaker 1: suspectfile play there. It is what day is that is
Speaker 1: that the weekend? Yeah, Saturday and Sundays at this for
Speaker 1: quite time, there are several people of interest, no particular suspect,
Speaker 1: So it says here I searched the area Monday morning
Speaker 1: and found the body thirty five feet down the embankment
Speaker 1: of the highway. I think that the George Derrick guy
Speaker 1: knows because he was one of the first people's see
Speaker 1: the body. Since we have no forensics and so few
Speaker 1: details have been revealed about this case, we have to
Speaker 1: focus on victimology. We have to enter the mind of
Speaker 1: the crime victim so that we can understand the relationship
Speaker 1: with her killer or killers. To understand her death, we
Speaker 1: have to go back to the last weekend of her life.
Speaker 1: So we had to talk to the person who knew
Speaker 1: her best, her sister, Danielle starting route to Mountain Home.
Speaker 1: So it was your sister that got you interested in
Speaker 1: this or put this case on your radar in the
Speaker 1: first place. Yeah, I mean I'd read about it, but Carolyn,
Speaker 1: because Carolyen was friends with Danielle, I would hear about
Speaker 1: it more. You know, like over the years, I would
Speaker 1: just kind of hear what was going on, and then
Speaker 1: it was unsolved, and then when I met Danielle, it
Speaker 1: just got really personal. Rebecca was only a year older
Speaker 1: than Danielle. They were best friends. When Danielle talks about
Speaker 1: the day her sister was murdered, it's obvious she's not
Speaker 1: just relaying information about that horrific day. She's reliving it.
Speaker 1: It's sensitive subject matter. She has to talk about her
Speaker 1: sister maybe being sexually assaulted and everything like that. This
Speaker 1: is as close as we're going to get to being
Speaker 1: inside Rebecca's head. In that final forty eight hours on
Speaker 1: the friday before Rebecca disappeared, she and Danielle drove from Fayetteville,
Speaker 1: where they had recently moved into an apartment together, back
Speaker 1: to Mountain View. Like a lot of us at that age,
Speaker 1: Rebecca's life was in transition. Danielle is visibly emotional as
Speaker 1: she remembers the last conversation that she ever had with
Speaker 1: her sister. She remembers that Rebecca was looking forward to
Speaker 1: starting college, into the future, she had her whole life
Speaker 1: ahead of her. When they got to town, the sister
Speaker 1: split up. Danielle stayed with her boyfriend Nick, while Rebecca
Speaker 1: headed out to spend the weekend with Casey. After Rebecca's murder,
Speaker 1: Danielle went on to Mary Nick. They had two daughters,
Speaker 1: but have since separated. She's been through some tough times
Speaker 1: and had health issues that have affected her memory. Despite
Speaker 1: how physically and mentally hard this is for her, she's
Speaker 1: determined to help find her sister's killer. Can you just
Speaker 1: sort of take me through what happened from the time
Speaker 1: that you guys got in the car to when you
Speaker 1: dropped her off and the last time you talked to her.
Speaker 1: We got in the car and we started to drive
Speaker 1: back home. We had a flat tire, like twenty miles
Speaker 1: thirty miles away. She changed it. She could change his higher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it surprised me. I can't remember if if I drove.
Speaker 1: I probably drove to Nick's house and she, Yeah, she
Speaker 1: probably dropped me off there, and she left to go
Speaker 1: to Casey's and we were going to meet back up
Speaker 1: Monday and go back to Fayebelle. Danielle remembers waiting for Rebecca,
Speaker 1: the sinking feeling in her stomach when her sister never
Speaker 1: showed up. Yeah, we were supposed to meet early that morning,
Speaker 1: and I knew, I think I just knew something was wrong,
Speaker 1: and we'd gotten phone calls, you know, she couldn't be
Speaker 1: found driving out there, Like I mean, I was just
Speaker 1: sick already just driving out there. She remembers driving up
Speaker 1: to Casey's house and seeing the flurry of police activity there.
Speaker 1: That was the moment when she figured out that her
Speaker 1: sister's crash pad was a crime scene. Did you talk
Speaker 1: to her that weekend at all? I don't think it did.
Speaker 1: But that was not unusual, right like for her to
Speaker 1: rise just had to start looking Over the next week,
Speaker 1: police launched a massive man hunt for Rebecca. Friends and
Speaker 1: family papered the town with wanted posters. Hundreds of volunteers
Speaker 1: scoured the woods. It seemed like the whole town was
Speaker 1: looking for Rebecca. Some of them screamed her name so
Speaker 1: that if she was hurt and bleeding in a sinkhole
Speaker 1: or a barn, she would hear them, And on September
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, the search ended. She didn't deserve what happened
Speaker 1: to her. If there was any other way to like
Speaker 1: help get this out there without having to ask you
Speaker 1: and prey through it, you know what, Like, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know she was a good person. I mean she loved,
Speaker 1: you know, and cared for a lot of people. And sorry,
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's fate, brain. I'm sorry, it's okay. I
Speaker 1: guess I know that you guys were best friends and
Speaker 1: really close, and I'm trying to understand what was going
Speaker 1: on in her life before she died. We had just
Speaker 1: moved to Fayetteville. We were living with Tiffany and my
Speaker 1: other sister, and we were in college. She was trying
Speaker 1: to make her lot better as far as getting into college,
Speaker 1: moving on to Fayetteville, and becoming somebody. Which relationship been
Speaker 1: like with the Isra County Police. I don't contact them.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't contact anybody other than you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I want it solved, but there's just no point. I mean,
Speaker 1: what would you like to see happen? Someone actually care
Speaker 1: and help us solve it and get the correct people
Speaker 1: that took her life. Is it okay with you? I mean,
Speaker 1: would you be okay with us calling your dad? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That's fun, Like, that's perfectly fun. Okay, And you can
Speaker 1: do anything you want to help, you know, get it solved,
Speaker 1: because it's not fair to no one to lose someone
Speaker 1: and then just to you know, not have any you know, closure.
Speaker 1: I was challenging to listen to. She holds it together
Speaker 1: incredibly well. You can feel it's just the pain in
Speaker 1: her eyes. M Rebecca's body was found down as steep
Speaker 1: Embankment off Highway nine, five miles south of Melbourne, near
Speaker 1: Devil's Knob Wildlife Management Area. Even though the body was
Speaker 1: near the road and just a few miles from the
Speaker 1: Izard County Sheriff's Department, her body was hidden by a
Speaker 1: thick wall of trees. It's a day that local journalist
Speaker 1: George Jared, who covered the case extensively, will never forget
Speaker 1: he saw Rebecca still wearing the black griefs and T
Speaker 1: shirt she wore to bed. George was a twenty four
Speaker 1: year old CUB reporter when Rebecca was killed, and hers
Speaker 1: was the first murder case he ever covered. It's really
Speaker 1: strange to say this, but I never knew her. But
Speaker 1: there's no she had as a profound impact on my
Speaker 1: career as anything. What happened was actually the newspaper work.
Speaker 1: It was a weekly newspaper. I would call all the
Speaker 1: police agencies in my coverage area. One of them was
Speaker 1: the Izzard County Sheriff's Department, so I called them. It
Speaker 1: was probably a Monday or Tuesday. She disappeared that Monday,
Speaker 1: September twentieth, two thousand and four, and so I called them.
Speaker 1: And I know I called him on Monday. I probably
Speaker 1: called them on Tuesday. But you know, when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with small agencies like that, they don't have murders, I
Speaker 1: mean not very rarely. So i'd call them. They didn't
Speaker 1: say anything, you know, it was, you know, well, nothing
Speaker 1: going on here. George is right. I've covered a lot
Speaker 1: of true crime cases, and I know that police often
Speaker 1: hold back information that only the killer would know from
Speaker 1: the public, but in this case, they won't even verify
Speaker 1: basic information. Sometime Tuesday, they went to Casey McCullough's house.
Speaker 1: The story is, you know, she went and dropped him
Speaker 1: off at work, and then she went to the Possum
Speaker 1: Trot convenience store, got a couple of things, and then
Speaker 1: left went back to his house, and then somewhere sometime
Speaker 1: during that morning she died. And so during this process
Speaker 1: I actually met Danielle and surely her mother and Larry.
Speaker 1: They were down at the sheriff's apartment when I went
Speaker 1: down there, and I started talking to them. Literally the
Speaker 1: next day, the Thursday, they were out around guy In
Speaker 1: near where Casey McCullough's house is, and they were looking,
Speaker 1: you know, searching, And I literally watched Larry taking posters
Speaker 1: of his daughter and taping them to you know what
Speaker 1: Those guide wires are arrows, I mean that go around
Speaker 1: like a curve. And he was he I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you can't do that. Number one and number two, nobody
Speaker 1: driving in eaty speed. We'd even be able to see
Speaker 1: or make out what it was. But when I saw
Speaker 1: him doing that, it just crushed me. And so so
Speaker 1: I was out there searching with them, you know, looking.
Speaker 1: The next Monday, I got to work really really early,
Speaker 1: like five o'clock in the morning. I just went in.
Speaker 1: I just had this feeling I need to go back
Speaker 1: to Melbourne, and so I drove down there, went to
Speaker 1: the courthouse. Now in the morning, a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: these elderly women would walk around the courthouse and they
Speaker 1: were talking. There were several of them down there, and
Speaker 1: so I parked my vehicle and I got out and
Speaker 1: I walked up to him. A couple leads I heard.
Speaker 1: I overheard a couple of ladies talking that there were
Speaker 1: searchers behind or out near this woman's property somewhere. So
Speaker 1: I said, could you tell me where you live? And
Speaker 1: she told me, and it was out It was down
Speaker 1: Arkansas nine, you know, connecting Mountain View with Melbourne, and
Speaker 1: so she said, oh, yeah, they're out there, and she
Speaker 1: had said something about a smell. I went out there,
Speaker 1: and you know, I saw a bunch of cars like
Speaker 1: lined up on the side of the road, and so
Speaker 1: I knew something was there. Well, I ran into a
Speaker 1: searcher that I had. He I'd met him through the searching,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd seen him, and I said Hey, I
Speaker 1: heard you guys are out here looking for Rebaca out here,
Speaker 1: and he was pointing, goes, she's right there, and i'sare
Speaker 1: I mean, she was right off the road. She looked
Speaker 1: like she was asleep. You know. One side of her
Speaker 1: face was you know, seemed okay, and then the other
Speaker 1: side was, you know, very badly damaged and decomposing. Was
Speaker 1: she whining down or sitting up or she was slumped.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like she was in some
Speaker 1: I want to say, like some There was like tree limbs.
Speaker 1: It was really grassy. It almost looked like maybe she
Speaker 1: had been where she had been tossed, like maybe she
Speaker 1: had landed on a branch or something. I mean, but
Speaker 1: when you see something like that for the first time
Speaker 1: ever in your life, you're almost like you're not there.
Speaker 1: At that moment, I was like just trying to get away,
Speaker 1: Like I literally started walking back away from it. And
Speaker 1: I had a camera with me, and I remember somebody
Speaker 1: asked me, They said, you're gonna take a picture of that,
Speaker 1: are you? And I said no, I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to forget about this. Probably spend the rest of
Speaker 1: my life trying to forget about this. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back a little just where she walked out. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: Rebecca's father, Larry Gold, is a prominent dentist in nearby
Speaker 1: Mountain Home. We meet with Larry in the back room
Speaker 1: of his dental office, a converted house right in the
Speaker 1: middle of towns. Taylor was so into the gate she
Speaker 1: drove from Atlanta. How long have you been here? So
Speaker 1: I've been here almost week on Saturday. As we talked
Speaker 1: to him, his dental hygienis work around us. He has
Speaker 1: the same tan skin and dazzling smile as his daughter's.
Speaker 1: Larry went to usc before marrying Rebecca's mom, Sharlot and
Speaker 1: moving here, and his accent is still more Southern California
Speaker 1: than northern Arkansas. People in this neck of the woods
Speaker 1: fall into one of two categories. You're either from around
Speaker 1: here or you're from off So even though Larry has
Speaker 1: lived in the area for over four decades, run a business,
Speaker 1: and raise a family, to many locals, he still falls
Speaker 1: into the latter category. Rebecca had a hard life. I
Speaker 1: attempted to get custody of Rebecca and her sisters and
Speaker 1: was pretty much raised by her mother in different areas
Speaker 1: of Arkansas. They eventually settled in the Mountain View area,
Speaker 1: and then as Rebecca grew a little bit older, I
Speaker 1: would have to say that my opinion of Rebecca began
Speaker 1: to really develop further. I had a little bit more
Speaker 1: time around her. I saw that she was beginning to
Speaker 1: turn her life around. But there was a lot of
Speaker 1: outside influences that were really pulling Rebecca in the right direction.
Speaker 1: And nothing could have made me happier than to see that.
Speaker 1: So I come back to the one memory in particular
Speaker 1: that it makes me cry. Excuse me. The last time
Speaker 1: that I saw her and I talked to her was
Speaker 1: probably every father's dream. She came to my home and
Speaker 1: she said, Dad, I want to talk to you, and
Speaker 1: so we went out on our back porch and we
Speaker 1: had some privacy, and she proceeded to tell me that
Speaker 1: she was wanting to fulfill some dreams of hers in college,
Speaker 1: and so she was heading heading towards getting into the
Speaker 1: University of Arkansas. M m hm. So she was at
Speaker 1: that point in my life in our relationship, I'm doing
Speaker 1: absolutely everything right. She had dreams, she had hopes, she
Speaker 1: had ambition. But the one thing is she said to
Speaker 1: me that will m h m hm. Always be remembered.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can get this advocate this out. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll take it. But hm, as I said,
Speaker 1: it was really every father's dream here hear from your child.
Speaker 1: But she said said to me that, Dad, I've watched
Speaker 1: you in law life and you've always done well, and
Speaker 1: I want to I would it be like you so
Speaker 1: m so those that's my last memory of our time together.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. So with that said, obviously I knew I
Speaker 1: knew nothing about what was going to happen next. And
Speaker 1: for some reason, I'm thinking it was only a few
Speaker 1: weeks before this happened. After that, it could have been
Speaker 1: a month, could have been a couple of months. But
Speaker 1: when it happened, that that disbelief. I don't know. You're
Speaker 1: you're you're in You're in a state of shock, and
Speaker 1: you've never been through something like this before, and you
Speaker 1: don't know the next step. So you obviously beg and
Speaker 1: to turn to law enforcement and people you trust to
Speaker 1: answer your questions and to kind of help point you
Speaker 1: in the right direction. In the years since Rebecca's murder,
Speaker 1: Larry has done his own investigation. He's written countless letters
Speaker 1: to the police and to the prosecutors. He's hired pi's
Speaker 1: and gone to the press. At some point, he even
Speaker 1: talked to a clairvoyant. At first, he was cooperative, patient,
Speaker 1: He was a law abiding citizen who raised his kids
Speaker 1: to respect God, the American flag, and the police. But
Speaker 1: after several years passed with no arrests, Larry grew frustrated.
Speaker 1: He felt like the police were stonewalling, and so he
Speaker 1: went to the media and he hasn't spoken to the
Speaker 1: Arkansas State Police since. The investigators in charge of the
Speaker 1: case believe that by going to the press, Larry hurt
Speaker 1: the investigation. If you ever murdered, it's unsolved. The longer
Speaker 1: you go, the harder it is to to come up
Speaker 1: with with the facts and to get any kind of
Speaker 1: a conviction. So there needs to be some parameters built
Speaker 1: into the law enforcement to where any at a certain
Speaker 1: given point. And I'll just use as a reference five years,
Speaker 1: say five years, you give law enforcement everything they can
Speaker 1: possibly do. At the end of five years, the family,
Speaker 1: as long as they're not considered to be a possible suspect,
Speaker 1: they should have the right to come in and maybe
Speaker 1: at that point not look at the file, but they
Speaker 1: certainly have a right to look at certain things and
Speaker 1: then to bring in qualified people representing them at some
Speaker 1: point in time. You need have you need to be
Speaker 1: able to access the entire file. It is a cold case.
Speaker 1: They want to let me have her any of her forensics.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't let me have any of her of the
Speaker 1: medical uh, the the anatomical findings cause well cause death.
Speaker 1: It was on a death certificate. But you know sometimes
Speaker 1: that gets put on a death certificate and that's an error,
Speaker 1: and you just want other people to be able to
Speaker 1: look at this. According to Rebecca's autopsy report, the cause
Speaker 1: of death was blunt force trauma to the head, probably
Speaker 1: with just one or two blows. Nobody's been able to
Speaker 1: confirm this for me yet, but I've heard over the
Speaker 1: years that the murder weapon may have been a piano
Speaker 1: leg Was this, as some people have speculated, a pre
Speaker 1: planned crime, or did her killer hit her as hard
Speaker 1: as they could and then panic when she started bleeding.
Speaker 1: By the time Rebecca's body was found, it had been
Speaker 1: out in the elements for a week. Her body was
Speaker 1: badly decomposed, which makes determining an exact time of death difficult,
Speaker 1: and the media report state that Rebecca dropped Casey off
Speaker 1: at work on Monday morning. There's another rumor going around
Speaker 1: that she was actually killed over the weekend. Rebecca's car
Speaker 1: had dark tinted windows. Is it possible that someone else
Speaker 1: was driving her car that morning? To understand Rebecca's death,
Speaker 1: we need to take the same ride she took on
Speaker 1: the last day she was alive. We head to the
Speaker 1: Possum Trot, the local gas station. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: Rebecca was a regular. These days, it's pretty deserted. It
Speaker 1: is super hot out there. Yeah, it feels like asana.
Speaker 1: I headed behind the counter. There's a black and white
Speaker 1: TV playing an old western and watching it and me
Speaker 1: is an old man, the cashier, so he knows who
Speaker 1: I am and talks to me about the case. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a when you were in here? Last time I
Speaker 1: was in here, I can't remember. I've been working on
Speaker 1: this Rebecca Gold cold case, so I've come by a
Speaker 1: few times before. How are you dealing with that? You know,
Speaker 1: we've actually made a lot of progress. We got a
Speaker 1: bunch of kIPS and I'm going pretty well. H thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know wish I better conditioning. I know, I wish
Speaker 1: my car had air conditioning m. Hello. Hi, my name
Speaker 1: is James Morrison, and I'm trying to get in touch
Speaker 1: with Steve Wortham Taylor and James on their reporter hats
Speaker 1: and try to find the last person to see Rebecca alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to convenue stories and stopped. Got the breakfast
Speaker 1: biscuit in that morning. Jessica, work on this one and
Speaker 1: team Conservative. I see, And is that a relation? Is
Speaker 1: that your daughter no belief? Were you involved in the
Speaker 1: search or anything? And why I talked to her mother
Speaker 1: a lot of times, her mother come back several times
Speaker 1: long thoughfully knew where she might be or something, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't. Well, they got to know who did it
Speaker 1: because it's been a too much hush. Yeah, you're talking
Speaker 1: about the police have to know who did it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a bad deal I made, Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: need told me it was a bad deal inside the
Speaker 1: trailer chasing and you know bleating, you know everywhere ill people.
Speaker 1: If you did meet gomagain or go mad, I'll meet
Speaker 1: you when you come out. Let's see if we can
Speaker 1: find his niece. Hi, my name is James Morrison and
Speaker 1: trying to get in touch with Jessica Shrabel Ah she here,
Speaker 1: she ad another location. I don't know how you would
Speaker 1: her phone number. Yeah, I'm Sorr. I was just talking
Speaker 1: with her uncle Steve. Yeah, and he'd given me this number.
Speaker 1: He must have given me the wrong one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know how you get a hold
Speaker 1: of Roald on her phone memory? All right, Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I found her by looking at Shrabel as a friend
Speaker 1: of Casey's, and then her sister. Oh, I clicked on
Speaker 1: her in the mountain and Jessica strable, but also oh
Speaker 1: and then also where she worked. I can give them
Speaker 1: a call. I hate to bother you at work. This
Speaker 1: is the only number that I had. I had just
Speaker 1: spoken to your uncle Steve, and he told me that
Speaker 1: I should talk to you, and I was wondering, you know,
Speaker 1: if there may be a better time to call you,
Speaker 1: if you would be interested in talking with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine. This is Jessica s Trabel. She was working
Speaker 1: as a cashier at the Possum Trot on the morning
Speaker 1: that Rebecca went missing. Really the last person to see
Speaker 1: her alive. I hardly ever worked on Monday and Men day.
Speaker 1: I was working on Monday. You don't remember something till
Speaker 1: you know something significant. Happens, and then you're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So Harry and Casey came in several several times, you know,
Speaker 1: and I remember kevichin, I'll be in a big day,
Speaker 1: and so that's what she positive. That's what she called
Speaker 1: that day. Do you remember if she bought a bread
Speaker 1: of the sandwich? Yeah? Yeah, that was like the kep
Speaker 1: chine on the breakfast sandwich, is what you know? Can
Speaker 1: you just talks about morn? Sure? Okay. So I was
Speaker 1: at work and paused and tried at the quick stop
Speaker 1: and she actually came in. I cannot remember what time
Speaker 1: it was, and I'm gonna say, like it wasn't busy,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna say probably after people had went to
Speaker 1: work eight thirty to ten o'clock that morning and came in.
Speaker 1: She was someone that like if I seen her, you know,
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, that's you know, Casey's friend or whatever.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so then like when she left, I walked
Speaker 1: outside behind her, bought a newspaper, picked up the newspaper
Speaker 1: and was kind of you know, like when you pick
Speaker 1: up something, you stop and you look. And she got
Speaker 1: in her car and she left, and I remember looking
Speaker 1: at her car and she was going like towards I say, home,
Speaker 1: guy rode you know, right out of there. And so
Speaker 1: then that's that's really the only thing I knew until
Speaker 1: probably Wednesday Thursday, when her mom came in and said,
Speaker 1: you know, mama was very friendic, which she gave me.
Speaker 1: She had like a big poster and she was like
Speaker 1: this like screaming when she came in. She was like,
Speaker 1: is anybody seeing her? And so I was like, oh, probably,
Speaker 1: you know, she was in here, my name moved in
Speaker 1: and that's it. And she just like like kind of
Speaker 1: like you know, like starts yelling at me like you've
Speaker 1: got to call the police. You've got to call the police.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you know, that would kind of like
Speaker 1: scare anybody. So it kind of like freaked me out.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I mean, I said, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know anything. I said. I just remember I
Speaker 1: said she was in here, and she's like, no, you've
Speaker 1: got a call. I think maybe I gave her my
Speaker 1: number or and then said you know, you can, somebody
Speaker 1: can call me if they need to or something like that.
Speaker 1: And then like probably two or three days later, then
Speaker 1: that's when I was contacted by I think that the
Speaker 1: Marky Mark colleens Worth. When I was talking to him,
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize, you know, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's missing, you know, she's spread away something like that.
Speaker 1: At some point he said something during our conversation and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, do you do you think she's dead?
Speaker 1: And he's like, it looks that way, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you know, like I didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: until that point I realize that it was like anything
Speaker 1: like that. You know, I just thought though she's missing
Speaker 1: or really worried about her, you know, but of course
Speaker 1: that the details had came out at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: and Inzard County, you don't think anything like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like the farthest thing that you would ever think is,
Speaker 1: you know, had happened to her after Rebecca left the
Speaker 1: Possum Trot, she would have turned right down the road
Speaker 1: toward Casey's house. And Guy on, so we do the
Speaker 1: same thing. We drive out to Casey's house. Of course
Speaker 1: it doesn't show up on a map or on GPS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll look at that. Okay, So guy in population eighty six, right,
Speaker 1: I mean this is Milla nowhere, Like, oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is way more remote than Mount View. Let's see what's hope.
Speaker 1: So that's it. This is where Rebecca stayed the last
Speaker 1: weekend of her life. We finally find it. It's a
Speaker 1: blue gray double wide trailer in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: at the end of a dirt road. Whatever bad thing
Speaker 1: happened to Rebecca get started here, she probably crawled into bed,
Speaker 1: maybe hoping to catch a few minutes of her favorite
Speaker 1: nine AM show, Live with Regis and Kathy, or maybe
Speaker 1: to take a quick nap before meeting her sister. This
Speaker 1: is the other view about this area that's weird is that,
Speaker 1: like you're back in the woods, right there's like literally
Speaker 1: so many little like rat trails and weird little rat
Speaker 1: runs and backways and you know, male out of here.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Let's start with the obvious true crime.
Speaker 1: Fans know the police usually look hard at the boyfriend,
Speaker 1: but Casey was publicly cleared very early in the investigation.
Speaker 1: According to the Arkansas State Police, he was at work
Speaker 1: all day on Monday and out that night with multiple witnesses.
Speaker 1: Since he thought Rebecca had left for school. He stayed
Speaker 1: overnight with a group of friends and did not return
Speaker 1: to the house. Until the police called him at work
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. Casey had an airtight alibi, So who else
Speaker 1: could have known that Rebecca would be out here in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere alone. Another thing that bugs me
Speaker 1: about this case is that Monday morning is a weird
Speaker 1: time for a murder. I've tried reaching out to the
Speaker 1: police before, but I've had very little luck. But now
Speaker 1: that we're here doing the podcast, I want to let
Speaker 1: law enforcement know that we're here to help and we'll
Speaker 1: share any information that we're given. Wait, so who is
Speaker 1: the lead investigator on the case. There was Mark and
Speaker 1: then Dennis. So Dennis is in charge of the investigation.
Speaker 1: Mark is the head of the Arkansas State Police Division,
Speaker 1: so he has to give permission for any you know,
Speaker 1: official interviews or anything like that. And I talked to
Speaker 1: Mark before. Mark was the original detective on the case.
Speaker 1: Mark is the one who told me a few years
Speaker 1: ago when I've talked first talked to him and ambushed
Speaker 1: him in his office like that. He thought that we
Speaker 1: were going to have to He thought there were have
Speaker 1: to think outside the box, you know, get some outside
Speaker 1: help on the case. Benett got assigned to Dennis because
Speaker 1: Mark got a promotion right, so he's like in charge
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. Rebecca's case involved law enforcement from
Speaker 1: several different jurisdictions. The Izard County Sheriff's Department responded to
Speaker 1: the initial crime scene, but the sheriff very quickly handed
Speaker 1: the case over to the Arkansas State Police. A few
Speaker 1: months later, the case was given to Dennis Simons of
Speaker 1: the Arkansas State Police. It's been Dennis's case ever since.
Speaker 1: His satellite office is a room at the back of
Speaker 1: the Stone County Sheriff's Department A few walks past the
Speaker 1: town square. I leave James and Taylor in the car
Speaker 1: and head in alone. I hope Catherine gets some good
Speaker 1: stuff from Dennis Simons and make it on his good
Speaker 1: side for sure. Yeah, because if he can help us out,
Speaker 1: then we can help him out. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: the same goals, so it seems like we would be
Speaker 1: advantageous for him to help us out. Yeah. No, because
Speaker 1: I think now it's just going to be playing the
Speaker 1: waiting game for a while. But I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: the longer we wait, the better. Yeah, exactly, because that
Speaker 1: means he's talking to her and hasn't say in the
Speaker 1: Dorner face. I'm pretty nervous going in to meet Dennis
Speaker 1: because I've heard that he's a former military drill sergeant
Speaker 1: who does things by the book. Normally, you'd wait to
Speaker 1: be called into an officer's office, but since there's no receptionist,
Speaker 1: I decide to take a shot. I summon every ounce
Speaker 1: of what I hope looks like sweet southern charm, walk
Speaker 1: straight in and sit down. Oh the shit is coming
Speaker 1: out Uh her face. Oh she's smiling. It looks like
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's hard to tell. Let's see what
Speaker 1: she says. So that's about twenty minutes. Actually, all right.
Speaker 1: So he's clearly very he's got you know, I could
Speaker 1: see the case files with recaus picture on him taking
Speaker 1: up several shelves up there in his office. He's clearly
Speaker 1: very passionate about the case. He really wants to solve it.
Speaker 1: But he's also like, look like I've got a couple
Speaker 1: years to retirement, Like I want to make it there.
Speaker 1: I'd love to prosecute this case before retirement. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to talk about this case. So he said,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of heartbreaking the case. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of missed opportunities, there's been, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of He's just said, it's been a lot of twist.
Speaker 1: He used the exact phrase. He said, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of twists and turns in this case. That it
Speaker 1: made it difficult. He said, what he needs now is
Speaker 1: something from the crime scene. One of them is the
Speaker 1: murder weapon. He confirmed that, but he said that's already
Speaker 1: been out in the media. He said he does not
Speaker 1: want to say what the other items are because he's like,
Speaker 1: I'll get fired. Did he say anything about Casey? I
Speaker 1: asked him about that, and he said he's absolutely certain
Speaker 1: that Casey was at work at the time. Oh. He
Speaker 1: also said that there have been a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have come in and given statements, but he said
Speaker 1: they're all like meth heads, druggies, unreliable witnesses, you know.
Speaker 1: He said, it's going to be a very hard case
Speaker 1: to prosecute based on what those people said. But I
Speaker 1: don't look is he right? I don't know? But is
Speaker 1: that is that it's very helpful to know that that
Speaker 1: is what the cops think. I've heard from multiple sources
Speaker 1: throughout the years that one police theory is that drugs
Speaker 1: may have been involved in Rebecca's murder, and two names
Speaker 1: keep getting mentioned as persons of interest with those theories.
Speaker 1: There's Chris, who has a criminal record and has been
Speaker 1: in and out of prison on drug charges, and his
Speaker 1: friend JB. Taylor. James and I go back to the
Speaker 1: murder board, looking at the web of facts we need
Speaker 1: to untangle to get to the truth. So what is
Speaker 1: like because it sounds like you have like a like
Speaker 1: a process that you go through or like a method like,
Speaker 1: so what is going to be like your approach to
Speaker 1: We look at the pictures of Chris and JB. I
Speaker 1: know these guys have been arrested a lot for drugs,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'd commit murder. You
Speaker 1: have to tell everyone, like in a sense, what they
Speaker 1: want to hear. For example, since the police won't share
Speaker 1: their evidence with us, we've got a long road ahead
Speaker 1: as we try to solve this case. But I also
Speaker 1: know that because we're not the police, we have a
Speaker 1: shot having someone talk to us that hasn't before, or
Speaker 1: finding something new that will break the case wide open.
Speaker 1: Someone in this town knows something, and I'm not leaving
Speaker 1: until we find out who killed Rebecca. Goal I think
Speaker 1: to be really good at this job. You have to
Speaker 1: be able to stand back and look at it like
Speaker 1: a chess game, otherwise you're not going to be any
Speaker 1: good at the job. See, you have to kind of
Speaker 1: go okay. Like Rebecca's family, they love her and obviously
Speaker 1: that's your priority and you want to help them. But
Speaker 1: if you get too emotionally involved and you're not doing
Speaker 1: your job properly. Right, think about the torture that Rebecca's
Speaker 1: family has gone through all these years, the torture of
Speaker 1: like knowing they live in the same town, knowing what
Speaker 1: kind of know what happened. Not really. The weird thing
Speaker 1: to me is that life went on for all these people,
Speaker 1: so you know, but they're still living with it, and
Speaker 1: you can like feel it because people still talk about
Speaker 1: it in the town all the time. It's a tough case.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I think we can do it,
Speaker 1: but I kind of think we can. I'm Katherine Townsend
Speaker 1: and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint
Speaker 1: production between How Stuff Works and School of Humans. It
Speaker 1: is written and recorded by me Catherine Townsend. Taylor Church
Speaker 1: is our producer and story editor. Audio editing and designed
Speaker 1: by Jonathan Sleeve. Mix engineer Glenn Mattulo audio Mixing and
Speaker 1: Love by Tunewelders. Executive producers Brandon Barr and Else Crowley
Speaker 1: for School of Humans and Conell Byrne and Chuck Bryant
Speaker 1: for How Stuff Works. Our field producer is James Morrison,
Speaker 1: Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Them and original score by
Speaker 1: Ben Solee available wherever you get your music. To dig
Speaker 1: into the investigation, please visit helegoonepodcast dot com or follow
Speaker 1: us on social media. School of Humans