Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Keith. I'm a producer. As we were getting
Speaker 1: ready to wrap the series, the nature of this project
Speaker 1: changed suddenly. I won't tell you what happens now because
Speaker 1: it happens much later on in the series, and I
Speaker 1: want to be truthful to that. But I hope you'll
Speaker 1: listen to the end. Okay, let's take the first stup.
Speaker 2: You know those John and Jane does that you hear
Speaker 2: about in the news or in some mystery detective thriller
Speaker 2: Bodies without names. Those are the people I'm interested in
Speaker 2: figuring out who they are and bringing them home to
Speaker 2: their families, even if it's sometimes years or decades later.
Speaker 2: I've been on this flip side of crime fighting for
Speaker 2: a long time now. I want to bring peace to
Speaker 2: the families who bloss someone. Almost since the beginning, one
Speaker 2: case has been on my mind. It's a long story.
Speaker 2: It's about a family with the misfortune of not having
Speaker 2: one missing person in it, but two. Two boys have vanished.
Speaker 2: Their body's never found. Decades ago, this family's path was
Speaker 2: blown off course by one man, a serial killer. He
Speaker 2: set into motion a series of events that would leave
Speaker 2: relatives in the dark. They didn't know who their people were,
Speaker 2: whether they have been abandoned altogether, or whether they've been
Speaker 2: spared some terrible fate. That's when I came into the picture.
Speaker 2: I was a stranger, but very soon I wouldn't be.
Speaker 2: And somehow, with my.
Speaker 3: Help, these folks had basically.
Speaker 2: Given up on getting answers.
Speaker 3: Would find them. Let me start by.
Speaker 2: Telling you how I got to where I am today.
Speaker 2: People often wonder how I got into this line of work,
Speaker 2: and I tell them it all started with a ghost story.
Speaker 2: Well it is a ghost story, but it's also a
Speaker 2: love story. It was October of nineteen eighty seven. I
Speaker 2: was in my senior year of high school. It was
Speaker 2: Halloween and everyone was telling spooky stories. I was in Livingston, Tennessee.
Speaker 2: Actually still live It's a beautiful town right on the
Speaker 2: foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Actually I should probably introduce myself.
Speaker 2: My name is Todd Matthews. I'm fifty three years old.
Speaker 2: I'm a husband, a father, and a grandfather. I have
Speaker 2: a lot of years of investigating under my belt, and
Speaker 2: I've also worked at the Department of Justice for more
Speaker 2: than a decade. But back in nineteen eighty seven, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't any of that. I was just sitting around fifth
Speaker 2: period study hall when this pretty Barnette Laurie walked in.
Speaker 2: She is a transfer student who just moved to town.
Speaker 4: He saw me first, and then we got to study
Speaker 4: hall and he come up to me and he said,
Speaker 4: can I sit down?
Speaker 5: And I'm like sure?
Speaker 4: And he sat down literally in the same seat that
Speaker 4: I was in, even though there was open seats next
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 5: He said, in my seat.
Speaker 2: She had those pretty dark brown eyes, pretty dark brown
Speaker 2: hair that basically mirrored mine, almost like we were made
Speaker 2: to match each other.
Speaker 4: Neighbor telling ghost stories and they were like, does anybody
Speaker 4: else have a ghost story?
Speaker 5: I'm like, well, yeah, I have one.
Speaker 2: She heard it from her dad, Wilbur Riddle, two decades ago,
Speaker 2: the year Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 3: And Robert F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy Jr. Were assassinated. Wilbur was living near a town
Speaker 2: called Georgetown, Kentucky, just outside of Lexington. Wilbur drilled holes
Speaker 2: for whales, and one day it was walking up the
Speaker 2: side of the road when he saw a tent wrapper.
Speaker 2: It was gray green, and it looked like there was
Speaker 2: something in it. He wasn't really sure, and he bumped
Speaker 2: it with his foot and Wilbur could tell by the
Speaker 2: way it was rolled down the hill, shifting around that
Speaker 2: it had had something in it, maybe something bad. And
Speaker 2: he walks down to the bottom of the hill and
Speaker 2: he cuts into the back and the smell that comes
Speaker 2: out is overwhelming, so he calls his sheriff the corner.
Speaker 3: They all show up.
Speaker 2: Local officials confirmed what Wilbur already suspected. There was a
Speaker 2: young woman wrapped in that camp, Miss tent Rapper. She'd
Speaker 2: been murdered. Everybody wanted to find her killer, but first
Speaker 2: dad to figure out who this woman was. That proved
Speaker 2: much harder than you think. No one recognized her. She
Speaker 2: was a real mystery. By the time I heard this story,
Speaker 2: she was a cold case. She'd been dead for twenty
Speaker 2: damn years. She's what you'd call it Jane Doe, dead
Speaker 2: body without a non identity. But after Wilbur found her,
Speaker 2: the newspaper started calling her tent Girl, named for the
Speaker 2: canvas tent rapper she was found in. Imagine your life,
Speaker 2: your identity boiled down to the stuff of urban legends,
Speaker 2: being reduced to the place that your body was found.
Speaker 2: Something about this story shook something inside of me.
Speaker 3: Changed my life.
Speaker 2: First because that girl, Laurie, the newcomer with the dark
Speaker 2: brown eyes. I married her not long after that. There's
Speaker 2: another reason. For the next ten years, I wouldn't stop
Speaker 2: thinking about Tent Girl. And that's not an exaggeration.
Speaker 5: I had no clue it was going to lead to this.
Speaker 4: I thought he would just forget it in a couple
Speaker 4: of months, but no, he never forgot it.
Speaker 2: When we go visit Lori's family, we'd stop in Georgetown, Kentucky.
Speaker 2: I'd stop and see the local newspaper office to see
Speaker 2: if anything you have been written about the tent Girl.
Speaker 2: It wasn't on the web back end because there wouldn't one.
Speaker 2: Print copies is all we had. And then the Internet
Speaker 2: came along, and I remember hearing it called the Information
Speaker 2: super Highway.
Speaker 3: I thought, that's the road I need to be on.
Speaker 2: I heard about ten Girl when I was seventeen, so
Speaker 2: you could kind of say I grew up with her.
Speaker 2: Technology advanced my wife and I grew into her marriage.
Speaker 2: We had our first son, Dylan, and night after night,
Speaker 2: I kept trying to put the pieces back together. At
Speaker 2: the time, I worked on an assembly line putting together
Speaker 2: air conditioning parts. I didn't know a lot about the
Speaker 2: internet been in the early nineties.
Speaker 3: Who didn't.
Speaker 2: But I built myself a website for Tent Girl, kind
Speaker 2: of clunky in plane. I put every detail I could
Speaker 2: find in there. I guess I just hoped someone was
Speaker 2: missing this woman and then find my web page. It
Speaker 2: was like going on a backward scavenger hunt. I had
Speaker 2: the answer to someone's question what happened to my sister
Speaker 2: daughter friend. I had to find the family member who
Speaker 2: recognized Tent Girl as their own. But obsessing over a
Speaker 2: dead woman didn't do me any favors.
Speaker 3: At home.
Speaker 4: We did have marriage issues because he didn't want to
Speaker 4: do anything but work on the Tent Girl. If we
Speaker 4: went on a vacation and involved the Tent Girl, it
Speaker 4: was something to do with her. I no longer felt married.
Speaker 4: I guess I feel like he was more married to
Speaker 4: the tent Girl story than me. I kind of regretted
Speaker 4: telling him about it, and I've told him.
Speaker 3: That, you know, that was kind of hard to hear.
Speaker 2: So I started helping him put my kid to bed,
Speaker 2: go to bed with Laurie, then waking up in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night to search the net.
Speaker 3: Back then it was dial up internet.
Speaker 2: You know, you had had to find a way to
Speaker 2: get yourself onto the web, and hoped to god somebody
Speaker 2: didn't call you knock you back off of it.
Speaker 3: Good thing.
Speaker 2: I was working mostly at night, not a lot of
Speaker 2: people calling at three am. And then in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: a miracle happened. I found a message in the bottle.
Speaker 2: It was online posting from a woman named Rosemary. She
Speaker 2: had a sister who had gone missing around the time
Speaker 2: the tent Curly been found.
Speaker 6: I said, I have a missing sister. She is twenty
Speaker 6: four years old. She's five foot two, brown hair, brown eyes,
Speaker 6: medium petite build. Was last seen in Lexington, Kentucky.
Speaker 3: She worked the carnival.
Speaker 2: So by then a lot of people expecting me to
Speaker 2: give up hope. You know who else is stubborn up
Speaker 2: to keep searching on the internet long past the time
Speaker 2: It makes a lick of sense. But that's why it
Speaker 2: brought me to Rosemary.
Speaker 6: And it was just your luck that he went on
Speaker 6: that website and found my post that night. It's just
Speaker 6: pure luck.
Speaker 2: After I come across the missing person's posting that Rosemary.
Speaker 3: Wrote, I got in touch with her.
Speaker 2: That's when everything really started falling into place.
Speaker 6: I didn't know whether to cry or to just drop
Speaker 6: down in disbelief. It was more like relief that, oh
Speaker 6: my god, this is over.
Speaker 2: We had to do an exhumation at that point and
Speaker 2: get more officials involved, but finally we were able to
Speaker 2: tell the ten girls' family where she had been.
Speaker 6: It's the end of wondering all these years, well where
Speaker 6: is she? It's all those thoughts running through your head,
Speaker 6: and then you think, I know where she is now,
Speaker 6: and I can let that rest. I don't have to
Speaker 6: worry about that anymore. At long, last ten Girl was
Speaker 6: giving back her name. She was Barbara and Hackman Taylor.
Speaker 2: So after I saw this case, I really didn't know
Speaker 2: what was next, but I found out real quick. I
Speaker 2: got a ton of national attention that was new for me.
Speaker 2: The tarp wrapped body of a nude female now called
Speaker 2: the Tent Girl.
Speaker 4: She was known as Tent Girl until the late nineteen nineties,
Speaker 4: when her true identity was discovered.
Speaker 3: A dark obsession helped this man's dreams helped identifying the
Speaker 3: Tent Girl as.
Speaker 2: Todd Matthews is with us all the way from Cook Phil.
Speaker 3: This was just a beginning.
Speaker 2: Solving the Tent grow case would lead to figuring out
Speaker 2: who a lot of John and Jane Does were Soon
Speaker 2: I'd find a lot of other part times loves. We
Speaker 2: could start solving cases together, cruising down the information super
Speaker 2: Highway we now call the Internet. My work would end
Speaker 2: up laying the foundation for a sea of change in
Speaker 2: how this country identifies John and Jane Does. Many of
Speaker 2: these cases were solved with the tools that I held
Speaker 2: build that some remain cold cases. This one case got
Speaker 2: stuck in my head, almost like it chose me.
Speaker 3: A serial killer cross paths.
Speaker 2: With two little boys from the same family, one missing
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3: It was just a baby.
Speaker 2: The other boy was an elementary school kid with an
Speaker 2: Aladdin backpack. He disappeared twenty years later in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: Both boys were never found. I heard about him in
Speaker 2: the early two thousands. I wrote to the serial carelling myself,
Speaker 2: asking what happened to the boys, But I didn't get
Speaker 2: anything useful out of him, that is until twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: I got a break in the case that wrought my world.
Speaker 3: It's a story that started at.
Speaker 2: His work and ended up being one of the most
Speaker 2: personal cases I ever had. The kind of story that
Speaker 2: starts from something and then starts unwinding and unwinding, like
Speaker 2: pulling a never ending piece of twine. And that is
Speaker 2: why I have to tell him, because I'm haunted by
Speaker 2: the alternative. My name is Todd Matthews, and this is
Speaker 2: hello John Doe, a sleuth, a family, and a serial kill.
Speaker 2: The story of a family torn apart by tragedy and
Speaker 2: my quest to bring them back together.
Speaker 3: Chapter one, The Missing Boys.
Speaker 2: In the late nineties, it was incredible to me that
Speaker 2: missing people could fall through the cracks the way they would.
Speaker 2: If you were from Miami and took a quick business
Speaker 2: trip to Tulsa and told no one and happened to
Speaker 2: die in a car accident in between, your body could
Speaker 2: remain unidentified for years, even if your loving wife is
Speaker 2: looking for you. Actually, you could come missing and die
Speaker 2: in one county over and no one would know because
Speaker 2: no one was sharing data, or because the killer might
Speaker 2: take the victim's clothes or idea on purpose so they
Speaker 2: wouldn't get caught.
Speaker 3: Without a national database to.
Speaker 2: Identify John Doe's lying in Moorgs, it was near impossible
Speaker 2: to put a name to a body.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: If a thing like that did exist, Tinker would have
Speaker 2: been identified a lot sooner. So I decided to just
Speaker 2: make the damn thing. I volunteered myself and build a
Speaker 2: national database and filled it with the profiles of people
Speaker 2: who were nameless and deceased and others who had gone missing.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just me, there were lots of us. The
Speaker 2: idea was, as we like to say, give the nameless
Speaker 2: back their names and return the missing to their families.
Speaker 2: We called it the Dough Network. Remember this was something
Speaker 2: I did on the side. I had to keep the
Speaker 2: money coming in, so by day I was working in
Speaker 2: a factory here in Tennessee, first on the assembly line
Speaker 2: putting together air conditioner parts, then in quality control.
Speaker 3: But I want to idea you.
Speaker 2: My attention was fixed on the Dough Network, and once
Speaker 2: we launched the thing, I had no idea how to
Speaker 2: spent on its own. Almost instantly, the website attracted people
Speaker 2: all over the world, other amateur sleuths. These were all
Speaker 2: people looking to contribute and help families find their loved ones.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't really call them volunteers. They were people just
Speaker 2: like me. These weren't police officers. They were factory workers, housewives,
Speaker 2: people who found little pieces up the puzzle in their
Speaker 2: own local newspaper, and they wanted to contribute.
Speaker 3: Even the cops were coming to us.
Speaker 2: They wanted to look through profiles of unidentified people to
Speaker 2: help them solve their own missing person cases. And these
Speaker 2: guys were impressed with their little network. It woke their
Speaker 2: asses up. The website did and still does, look like
Speaker 2: it was put together by a ragtag group of volunteers.
Speaker 2: It's honestly pretty clinking. If you pull it up, you
Speaker 2: can look.
Speaker 3: Through a whole database of missing and dead people. I'll
Speaker 3: pull one up right now.
Speaker 2: For a missing person, there's a physical description, day of birth, height, weight, etc.
Speaker 2: Then there's circumstances of death and identifiers like if they
Speaker 2: were wearing jewelry when they die. The idea is that
Speaker 2: an unidentified body with jewelry would match a person who
Speaker 2: went missing wearing the same jewelry. That just might be
Speaker 2: a match. By two thousand and one, the do network
Speaker 2: was pretty popular.
Speaker 3: People would call their.
Speaker 2: Tip line, which was actually my home phone number, or
Speaker 2: just send in information about a missing relative.
Speaker 3: We'd try to make.
Speaker 2: Matches and then send the info go to local law enforcement.
Speaker 2: We all had our reasons for getting in to the
Speaker 2: dough network. For me, I really wanted answers, and I
Speaker 2: felt like it was actually investigating. But some people were
Speaker 2: less invested in answers and just morbidly fascinating with death.
Speaker 3: Let's face it, people have.
Speaker 2: Always been fascinated with death, but this was the early
Speaker 2: two thousands. With the rise of cable TV and procedurals
Speaker 2: like CSI and Law and Order, true crime quickly became
Speaker 2: an obsession. I remember one of my medical examine her
Speaker 2: friends once said, before the Dough Network, you couldn't give
Speaker 2: away a dead body. Now they're fighting over them. I
Speaker 2: guess Dough Network allowed volunteers to play detective, pretend they
Speaker 2: were on CSI or something. But for me, this is
Speaker 2: not a hobby. It's not a toy. People were looking
Speaker 2: for loved ones. By this point in my life, I'd
Speaker 2: lost people too. I could imagine the hell these families
Speaker 2: were going through. Sometime around two thousand and seven, after
Speaker 2: I'd been investigating for a few years, I got this
Speaker 2: call while I was at the warehouse. I had to
Speaker 2: step out on the loading dot to answer. It's from
Speaker 2: this guide never talked to it before. His name was
Speaker 2: John Paul Jones, and he said he worked with the
Speaker 2: National Institute of Justice in Washington, d C. Now by
Speaker 2: that time I'd been on national shows to talk about
Speaker 2: my investigating, but this.
Speaker 3: Was a whole new level.
Speaker 2: John Paul was inviting me to go to the National
Speaker 2: Press Club. They were announcing the formation of the first
Speaker 2: federally funded database for missing and unidentified people. I remember
Speaker 2: being a little scared. This was a federal government, the
Speaker 2: big leagues. My mama didn't actually want me to go.
Speaker 2: She thought I was in trouble for something. But I
Speaker 2: went anyway, with no disrespect to my mama. She was
Speaker 2: dead wrong. I'd been invited to be part of the
Speaker 2: working group to develop this federal database. I remembering at
Speaker 2: the Press Club in DC for this new initiative. I
Speaker 2: wasn't wearing a brand new suit. I'd gone to Goodwill
Speaker 2: and bought a super probably ten or fifteen dollars, because
Speaker 2: I didn't know if i'd ever need it again. I
Speaker 2: showed up at the Press Club and it was covered
Speaker 2: with DC policy people and reporters. I thought, what any
Speaker 2: hell can I do for these people? I thought, just
Speaker 2: don't embarrass yourself, Todd. They were developing something that would
Speaker 2: end up being called nameous, the National Missing and Unidentified
Speaker 2: Person system light down network, but the government would run
Speaker 2: it on a massive, grant funded scale and the best
Speaker 2: part of all, they wanted me to help build it.
Speaker 7: What the purpose of this database is is to literally
Speaker 7: resolve unidentified persons cases against the missing person's data so
Speaker 7: that ultimately, you know, these individuals can be identified a
Speaker 7: return to family.
Speaker 2: That's Tony Falseti. He's a forensic anthropologist now with the
Speaker 2: Chief Medical Seminar in Washington, DC. It's a serious job.
Speaker 2: You have to go through security and be escorted up
Speaker 2: to this. All was in this massive government building. But
Speaker 2: he didn't take long for me to cut through all
Speaker 2: of that and become Tony's friend.
Speaker 8: Todd was he efficient at our wedding in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Speaker 8: He was very nervous. He was more nervous than we are.
Speaker 8: But he did a fantastic job.
Speaker 9: Yes, you know, he had to give himself ordained and
Speaker 9: we were his first wedding, and as I understand it,
Speaker 9: he's done several since.
Speaker 3: Yep, he's got that right.
Speaker 2: I introduced him and his wife, kait Yanna, a forensic artist,
Speaker 2: and they thought I was a right fit for the job. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: Tony basically spends his day looking at bones to learn
Speaker 2: more about the person they once belonged to.
Speaker 8: It's surprising how much you can tell from your bones.
Speaker 3: But he's lighthearted about the work too.
Speaker 2: His desk is filled with all these toy bone and
Speaker 2: skull knick knacks, and he has sports jerseys on the wall.
Speaker 2: Here's what he says makes a good forensic anthropologist.
Speaker 9: Tenacity patients, attention to detail, critical thinking, and maybe a
Speaker 9: little bit of awkwardness, introvertedness. You know, we enjoyed doing
Speaker 9: these kinds of things, mostly on our own.
Speaker 2: He was actually raised in Tennessee like me, but he
Speaker 2: didn't have the accent at all. I met him at
Speaker 2: the working group and we were all in Florida trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what name is needed to be liked
Speaker 2: him from the start, but I'm not sure he knew
Speaker 2: what to make of me.
Speaker 9: I really didn't know anything other than, you know, there
Speaker 9: was this new individual who had joined us, who, you know,
Speaker 9: we were told had experience, who was the first person
Speaker 9: to actually sort of use the Internet and publicly generated
Speaker 9: data or information to actually solve an unidentified person's case.
Speaker 2: And it's true, I really wasn't the bitter government type.
Speaker 2: Many times I have phone calls and I think people
Speaker 2: were quite disarmed because they weren't expecting a Southern voice.
Speaker 3: I didn't come for.
Speaker 2: Other guys come from you know, they went through police
Speaker 2: academy or whatever training. I floated into this career path
Speaker 2: a different way. This thing called name US again, the
Speaker 2: National Missing and Unidentified Person System. It's supposed to be
Speaker 2: a tool, a clearinghouse for all missing and unidentified bodies.
Speaker 2: If do network looks like a clunky, early two thousands website,
Speaker 2: names looks awfully sterling clinical. There's no doubt it's a
Speaker 2: government website.
Speaker 8: But do you think it was based on well, ultimately
Speaker 8: Todd's model.
Speaker 2: At the time, I was still working at the factory,
Speaker 2: so I basically used up my vacation time to help
Speaker 2: him out.
Speaker 3: It felt worth it.
Speaker 2: We all had same goal. We wanted to match two
Speaker 2: groups of people, missing people and John and Jane does
Speaker 2: people like the two boys I couldn't.
Speaker 3: Get out of my head.
Speaker 2: Around two thousand and nine, two years after that press
Speaker 2: club trip, I was able to quit my job at
Speaker 2: the factory and started working as a contractor for the
Speaker 2: Department of Justice. I had to scare police reports and
Speaker 2: autopsies for details to build out missing person's profiles. The
Speaker 2: work actually isn't all that complicating, but you got to
Speaker 2: be relentless about finding facts.
Speaker 3: What idea is basically.
Speaker 2: Entering data, putting in clues like a person's height, weight,
Speaker 2: circumstances of I'm going missing.
Speaker 3: I loved it. I was all in.
Speaker 2: One of my bosses, doctor Arthur Eisenberg, great guy. I
Speaker 2: once told him I wasn't sure I was the right
Speaker 2: man for this job. Said, you're giving me a job
Speaker 2: that people a PhDs have and I don't have their training.
Speaker 2: But he didn't care. He saw something in me. He said,
Speaker 2: go forth and heal the broken hearts.
Speaker 3: How's that?
Speaker 2: And he turned his little chair around and went back
Speaker 2: to work, And.
Speaker 3: So did I.
Speaker 2: When people die, use of the next to ken is notified.
Speaker 2: But what if there's no known next to ken? What
Speaker 2: if there's no one to identify the body and say, yep,
Speaker 2: that's my son in that case, in medical examiner's office
Speaker 2: will take down data points. Maybe they'll send their bones
Speaker 2: to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, or to Tony, a
Speaker 2: forensic anthropologist with all the bones in his office.
Speaker 9: What we do is we examine humans going remains for
Speaker 9: the purposes of identification, and in doing that, we developed
Speaker 9: the basic biological profile of that individual, which would be
Speaker 9: their age, sex, hopefully some information about their ancestry, whether
Speaker 9: it's Europe, Asia, Africa, and then how tall they were.
Speaker 2: Tony can even tell if someone has healed fractures or
Speaker 2: head cavities that they got filled.
Speaker 9: Our entire life, Everything that we encounter, whether their childhood
Speaker 9: diseases or illnesses or injuries, are written in our bones
Speaker 9: and they stay there now.
Speaker 2: At the same time, people go missing and there's date
Speaker 2: on that too. Let's say your sister goes missing, she's black,
Speaker 2: mid forties, had dental fillings on two molars, and a
Speaker 2: tattoo on the right shoulder of a butterfly. That all
Speaker 2: gets entered into name us and when there's enough overlap
Speaker 2: in information, there's a potential match and we look into
Speaker 2: it further. Mike Nancy's job at NamUs was basically to
Speaker 2: fill out the profile. He's a former homicide detective who
Speaker 2: gives like one hundred and ten percent.
Speaker 3: Cares about the work.
Speaker 2: He wants to see a family made wholes so they
Speaker 2: can stop spinning out of control.
Speaker 10: I kind of characterize it as the movie roundhog Day,
Speaker 10: when Bill Murray woke up every day at six o'clock
Speaker 10: to the same music. What's what families do? They wake
Speaker 10: up every morning to the same nightmare that they have
Speaker 10: of what can they do to find their loved one.
Speaker 2: We help answer those questions, but Names is not out
Speaker 2: on the street solving crimes. We're helping law enforcement do that,
Speaker 2: but we're also doing something cops often and don't have
Speaker 2: time to do, helping family who've lost loved ones. He'll
Speaker 2: I was the first regional systems administrator handling missing people
Speaker 2: and unknown people around the Southeast. There were thousands of
Speaker 2: open cases at any given time. Among those thousands was
Speaker 2: a case I'd come across in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: It eluded me. It was the one with the serial
Speaker 2: killer and the two boys. In the early two thousand,
Speaker 2: I'd read a book about a suspected cereal killer and
Speaker 2: the murder of this one young woman in Oklahoma. Now,
Speaker 2: this serial killer, a man named Franklin Floyd, wasn't famous
Speaker 2: on the level of say, Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy,
Speaker 2: but the impact he had on this one family was
Speaker 2: immeasurable and that's what I wanted to know more about.
Speaker 2: The book mentioned two of her relatives, two boys. They
Speaker 2: have both vanished, one in the seventies and one in
Speaker 2: the nineties. This boggled my mind. How could they have
Speaker 2: disappeared and no one was looking for him? What made
Speaker 2: these cases even more challenged and was neither body was
Speaker 2: ever found. So I entered what I knew about Michael
Speaker 2: Hughes the school age boy, into the databases. He was
Speaker 2: six years old, brown hair, brown eyes, scar on the forehead,
Speaker 2: two crooked bottom teeth. But the infant was a real
Speaker 2: mystery to me. All I had to start with was
Speaker 2: a name. Philip Stephen Brandenburg was so little to go
Speaker 2: on it was really hard to fill out his profile
Speaker 2: on the dough Network and especially name us I because
Speaker 2: infants don't have dental records or tattoos.
Speaker 3: Lots of babies start.
Speaker 2: At with a mop of blonde hair and a year
Speaker 2: later have a totally different color, or they started with
Speaker 2: curly hair and end up with it straight. The other
Speaker 2: challenge is if for some reason, your parents aren't looking
Speaker 2: for you. It's not like a coworker or landlord is either.
Speaker 2: For all intents and purposes, Philip Stephen Brandyburg never existed
Speaker 2: in the first place.
Speaker 3: I only knew about him because.
Speaker 2: He was mentioned in a book that I'd written in
Speaker 2: early two thousands about a serial killer. I had no
Speaker 2: paperwork to go off of, nothing official. I'd hope that
Speaker 2: be I would have tracked down those documents, But when
Speaker 2: it came to them with questions about the Brandenburgs, we
Speaker 2: were pretty shocked. Here's my buddy mite nance again.
Speaker 10: In the case of Philip Brandenburgh, the FBI agent could
Speaker 10: not validate or could not determine if Brandenburg was ever born,
Speaker 10: had ever existed.
Speaker 2: I was taken with the case, possibly the toughest I
Speaker 2: ever took on. I knew there was more to the story.
Speaker 2: I just had a feeling if I found out more
Speaker 2: information about Philip, it would leave me somewhere. I had
Speaker 2: to go. You'll learn this about me. It's kind of
Speaker 2: just the way I am. I feel things pretty strongly
Speaker 2: more than others. Maybe, like I said, the case chose me.
Speaker 2: At the time. I was still at the DOJ, so
Speaker 2: the happy I were compelled to talk to me. If
Speaker 2: I weren't, they might have said, none of your business.
Speaker 2: But asking them about Philip was an ass backwards way
Speaker 2: of finding out. They didn't have any paperwork on him period.
Speaker 2: But I thought he had to be born somewhere everybody is,
Speaker 2: and maybe this person existed somehow, some way, maybe someone
Speaker 2: out there was missing him and he deserved to be
Speaker 2: found dead or alive. The network is populated by public records,
Speaker 2: stuff like newspaper clippings, missing persons pages. We went in
Speaker 2: and added everything we could about Philip where we thought
Speaker 2: he was born, for he might have been last seen,
Speaker 2: and then Mike and I put this case into NamUs,
Speaker 2: Michael's regional specialist in charge of the case.
Speaker 10: So we had the missing person case and names as
Speaker 10: Philip Brandenburgh and so then it became my task to
Speaker 10: try to enhance that as much as possible.
Speaker 2: His job was to find more clues about this missing boy,
Speaker 2: like if you had any distinguishing marks or features, or
Speaker 2: where he was last seen. And then I had to wait.
Speaker 2: But I'm not a patient person. There's just some things
Speaker 2: I want to let go. That could be something people
Speaker 2: say as applaw.
Speaker 5: He is committed. He does not stop. If he gets
Speaker 5: his mind on a case, he finishes it through.
Speaker 2: I know what this all sounds like a little morbid,
Speaker 2: but it's not to me. I have something of a
Speaker 2: connection to dead people. They've been in my life for
Speaker 2: as long as I can remember. I was two years
Speaker 2: old when my mother had my sister. Her name was
Speaker 2: Sue Anne. She lived for just a bury, brief sparkle
Speaker 2: of life.
Speaker 8: That was it.
Speaker 2: Most days I can't talk about this, but one night
Speaker 2: I was able to just once. And that's a tape
Speaker 2: you're hearing right now. Mom still never got over my sister.
Speaker 2: It was always there. And she was pregnant again, this
Speaker 2: time with my brother Greg, and we waited for him.
Speaker 3: We even had a name if he.
Speaker 2: Was a boy or if he's a girl. So he
Speaker 2: was born and he was sick. He was very clear
Speaker 2: that there was visible birth effects. So they took him
Speaker 2: to Vanderbilt in an ambulance. So he was gone, and
Speaker 2: it was the second day that he passed away by hisself.
Speaker 3: And that's hard to think about.
Speaker 2: I was only nine years old but then and had
Speaker 2: lost two siblings. Our family was shell shocked. It was
Speaker 2: no period of time. And I remember the first time
Speaker 2: we went to his grave. I remember my mom, she
Speaker 2: of the red mud, and she caught it all over
Speaker 2: that put her in a car and it almost looked
Speaker 2: like blood on her hands. She just holding her hands
Speaker 2: and she just stunned, and she said, I can't leave
Speaker 2: him in this cold ground.
Speaker 3: But we had to. We had to.
Speaker 2: Most people aren't exposed to death until later in life.
Speaker 2: But me, I knew about death before I even set
Speaker 2: foot in kindergarten. No one tried to shelter me from
Speaker 2: the death of my siblings, even when I was a
Speaker 2: child myself. Our family actually owned the cemetery before even
Speaker 2: my mom and dad were alive. As a result, I
Speaker 2: never thought of death as taboo or creepy. These were
Speaker 2: my family members and they were present in my life
Speaker 2: the way that I knew my brother and sister. They
Speaker 2: were never really gone in a way, they were there.
Speaker 2: Their names were on the grave. You know.
Speaker 3: We took care of the cemetery.
Speaker 2: We would play while my mom and dad, my aunt
Speaker 2: and uncle, they would mow the cemetery. And as I
Speaker 2: got older, working with the tent Girl and other cases,
Speaker 2: I'm hearing all of these stories and they don't even
Speaker 2: know where they are. Missing can be worse than dead.
Speaker 2: And then having a tombstone with John or Jane Doe
Speaker 2: on it it just didn't compute. You know, I thought,
Speaker 2: at least I know where mine are, at least I
Speaker 2: know who they are.
Speaker 3: How could you not have a name on your tombstone?
Speaker 2: If I really think about it, I think I became
Speaker 2: so focused on these two children because of my own
Speaker 2: brother and sister. I had to give these two missing
Speaker 2: boys the dignity of a headstone. Anyone who knows me
Speaker 2: knows I'm a long way from perfect, and they might.
Speaker 3: Also say that I should have let this case go.
Speaker 2: But just like I did with the tent girl, I
Speaker 2: held on to hope.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like fishing.
Speaker 2: I put up my line and worm and waited for someone,
Speaker 2: and you feel it to bite. But I had to
Speaker 2: go about my life. My wife and I had our
Speaker 2: second son. There were other cases that needed my attention.
Speaker 2: Then one day I got a call from an unknown
Speaker 2: number in twenty nineteen, fifteen years after I started looking.
Speaker 3: I don't even know how I got your number.
Speaker 2: I was in my house in the kitchen doing something,
Speaker 2: probably pasting. I never really sat down. I didn't recognize
Speaker 2: the number. I thought it might have been a telemarketer
Speaker 2: or wrong number, but then I thought, you never know.
Speaker 2: I'll pick this one up, and I.
Speaker 11: Told him myselught our conversation, I was like, you don't
Speaker 11: believe this. I said, I don't blame you if you
Speaker 11: don't believe it, because this sounds crazy. And I started explaining.
Speaker 3: He took the time to listen.
Speaker 8: He picked up the phone.
Speaker 11: I mean, it was just one in a billion. I
Speaker 11: guess my name is Steve Patterson living in Chervynth, Carolina.
Speaker 11: I'm forty nine years old, and I searched my name
Speaker 11: and found the missing person's report.
Speaker 2: This guy, Steve Patterson, was calling to say that he
Speaker 2: thought he was Phillip Stephen brandon Burg, that maybe this
Speaker 2: was his real name that had been changed to me.
Speaker 2: It was just a baby, he'd later tell me. He
Speaker 2: was looking at the Dough Network, that clinky website I
Speaker 2: helped build. What he found was a missing person's page
Speaker 2: for a boy with the last named Brandenburgh. The details
Speaker 2: seemed familiar, first because the baby was born in April
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, just like Steve. Second because that name,
Speaker 2: Philip Stephen Brandenburg. He had seen it once written on
Speaker 2: a manila envelope in his parents house. And now he
Speaker 2: had called me because he was wondering if it might
Speaker 2: be his real name. Steve was looking for the authorities instead,
Speaker 2: he called me directly.
Speaker 11: It just opened a pluggate then, I mean, it just started.
Speaker 11: Everything started falling into place, and I'm not gonna go
Speaker 11: with computers. I don't know how in the world I
Speaker 11: found all this out.
Speaker 2: Steve and I started talking and talking and talking. This
Speaker 2: was the first time in a long career of working
Speaker 2: on John and Jane Doe cases that one of them
Speaker 2: me up on the phone. Was he the infant I
Speaker 2: was looking for? At the time, there was no way
Speaker 2: to know for sure. The time in lined up, he
Speaker 2: would have been an infant in nineteen seventy four. Now
Speaker 2: he's a grown man. But there was something about Steve's
Speaker 2: tone that shook me. He sounded so desperate to find
Speaker 2: out who his people were. I remember the way he
Speaker 2: said it, I don't know who I am. I don't
Speaker 2: think in that moment Steve knew how far I'd gone
Speaker 2: looking for him, or that in order to find him,
Speaker 2: I'd written to a convicted murderer so many years ago.
Speaker 2: If this man was who he said he was, it
Speaker 2: would have meant he had escaped the clutches of a
Speaker 2: serial killer while his siblings didn't. It would have been
Speaker 2: a miracle, but by now you know.
Speaker 3: Stranger things have happened.
Speaker 2: This season of Hello John Doe a fugitive on the
Speaker 2: run for thirty plus years.
Speaker 10: The actual folders for the case, I would say, would
Speaker 10: stack about six feet.
Speaker 2: High, mixedup identities and screwed up pseud anuns.
Speaker 6: It's one of the most unique cases I was ever
Speaker 6: involved with.
Speaker 2: And a family left behind trying to solve a lifetime
Speaker 2: of mysteries.
Speaker 12: Yes, they did take a DNAC and then I said,
Speaker 12: well did you find Steve?
Speaker 7: And they said, who's Steve?
Speaker 12: I said, Steve Swain little boy.
Speaker 2: Well, it was thunderstruck.
Speaker 9: It was something I never and no parent ever wants
Speaker 9: to hear their child go through.
Speaker 12: You know, instead of being part of the family, he
Speaker 12: was given away, when in all reality it saved his life.
Speaker 2: Hello John Doe is an original productions by Revelations Entertainment
Speaker 2: and association with First and Life's Productions from Revelations. Our
Speaker 2: executive producers are Morgan Freeman and James Younger from First
Speaker 2: to Last. Lindsay Moreno is the executive producer. Our producing
Speaker 2: partner is New on Home Media. It was written and
Speaker 2: produced by Katee Michigan. Our editor is Katherine Saint Louis.
Speaker 2: She is also nil on Home Media's executive editor. Our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Sharah Morris. Our development producer is Ian Lindsay.
Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Rufaro Faith Maserua. Sound design and
Speaker 2: mixing by Scott Summerville. Theme and original music composed by
Speaker 2: Jesse Pearlstein. Additional music came from Epidemic Sound and Blue
Speaker 2: Dot Sessions.
Speaker 3: Bendall Faulton is our fact checker.
Speaker 2: Our production manager is Samantha Allison from my Heart Media.
Speaker 2: Dylan Fagans our executive producer. Special thanks to Adelia Ruben
Speaker 2: at n on HUM and Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson
Speaker 2: at iHeartMedia. I'm Todd Matthews. You can learn more about
Speaker 2: name us at NamUs dot com. The number for the
Speaker 2: National Center for Missing Exploited Children's Call Center is one
Speaker 2: eight hundredth the loss that's one eight hundred eight four
Speaker 2: three five six seven eight. The National Sexual Assault Hotline
Speaker 2: from the Rate Abuse and Incest National Network is one
Speaker 2: eight hundred.
Speaker 3: Sixty five six six seven through. Okay, guys, this is
Speaker 3: the end of the show.
Speaker 2: If you didn't like it, don't do anything. But if
Speaker 2: you did like it, you make sure that you rate
Speaker 2: and review the show. It helps more people to find
Speaker 2: it and hear this wonderful story. Thanks again for listening.