Speaker 1: Human beings are not conditioned to react to a gruesome
Speaker 1: homicide scene. Those who come across bodies during the normal
Speaker 1: course of life display a wide range of emotion shock, disbelief, confusion, horror, fear,
Speaker 1: and of course guilt. When I began to focus my
Speaker 1: career on missing people long ago, what unnerved me most
Speaker 1: was that a loved one had vanished and family members
Speaker 1: were left to wonder, to wait, to suffer, not knowing
Speaker 1: what happened or where they were. You would think, as
Speaker 1: I used to, that the discovery of a body resolves
Speaker 1: a small part of the emotional puzzle surrounding a missing person.
Speaker 1: But that's not always the reality. So you come upon
Speaker 1: on the skull, you and your husband. Your husband sees
Speaker 1: the skull, you walk over to it. What is your
Speaker 1: first thought? What are you thinking?
Speaker 2: We didn't know really what to think.
Speaker 1: If you recall at the end of the previous episode,
Speaker 1: Randy and Linda Grohler happened upon the skull and remains
Speaker 1: of a young woman just up the road from their Anderson,
Speaker 1: Missouri home.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what it looked like if somebody had
Speaker 3: set a skull off in museum's jailp on the ground
Speaker 3: it was just as shiny as could be, just as
Speaker 3: bleached out as it all could be.
Speaker 1: And were there any clothes or were there any ligatures
Speaker 1: around the neck or head or body of the.
Speaker 3: Skull was detached from the body, and the rib cage
Speaker 3: was detached from the body.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The only clothes that was on the body that we
Speaker 3: found was where the pelvis and legs were in ten
Speaker 3: shoes it had. She had tennis shoes on. Heclass cable
Speaker 3: around her neck, but her hands we didn't move anything
Speaker 3: until after the corner got there. But the hands were
Speaker 3: tied to the rope looked like clothesline rope.
Speaker 1: And how did this make the both of you feel
Speaker 1: when you it settled into you that you had found
Speaker 1: a body.
Speaker 3: Well, it was disturbing to me, but you know I
Speaker 3: had been in the martuary business before, so I wasn't
Speaker 3: too upset. My wife, Linda, she got real upset about it.
Speaker 3: Matter of fact, she had she had to go to
Speaker 3: the doctor and get medication to help her sleep at night.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that, Linda, what was troubling you?
Speaker 2: They thought that she was dumped there and we couldn't
Speaker 2: help her.
Speaker 1: That here is somebody's daughter sister mother, and nobody knows
Speaker 1: she's there. She's missing.
Speaker 2: And the part that bothered me for years was, I
Speaker 2: somebody did reporter missing, You know, if you got a
Speaker 2: child and you.
Speaker 1: As I listened to the Rollers described their experience, the
Speaker 1: bindings they mentioned jumped out at me. Although it was
Speaker 1: a point of contention among law enforcement, one could argue
Speaker 1: that bindings could have been part of the Dana Stidham
Speaker 1: crime scene.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like a clothesline rope and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. It was different times.
Speaker 1: Finding the skull and remains of a young woman so
Speaker 1: close to their home had jogged the memory.
Speaker 5: For the Rollers.
Speaker 2: And then we got to think of this bones in
Speaker 2: our front, all right, This is the part that really
Speaker 2: bothers me. Our dog at Siberian Husky had brought part of.
Speaker 5: Her home with him.
Speaker 2: We thought it was dear bones. We didn't look at
Speaker 2: it closely, but I think it was what part of
Speaker 2: her vertebrate we're backbone rhythm, the bottom over?
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you remember?
Speaker 3: When the sheriff and the coroner were up there, the
Speaker 3: corner happened to be Gayl Duncan. At the time. I
Speaker 3: remember Gail telling me that This is not going to
Speaker 3: be a problem identifying the body because of the extensive
Speaker 3: dental work.
Speaker 1: That plausible offhand comment about Jane Doe's teeth and her
Speaker 1: eventual identity will turn out to be the understatement of
Speaker 1: this case and send law enforcement on a thirty year
Speaker 1: quest to identify her. Previously on Paper.
Speaker 6: Ghosts, he went down there and he took something from
Speaker 6: a little dead girl, and I didn't like it.
Speaker 7: It seems to check all the boxes for a sexual
Speaker 7: predator going into the store with a hood on their face,
Speaker 7: standing behind the women, sneaking up behind them in some
Speaker 7: cases groping them.
Speaker 2: But I went back there with him and we saw
Speaker 2: the skull, and then on further looking we can see
Speaker 2: the rest of the body.
Speaker 1: My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
Speaker 1: and author of more than forty true crime books. This
Speaker 1: is season four of Pay for Ghosts the Ozarks.
Speaker 8: This road here that we just turned off of would
Speaker 8: have been US seventy one Highway, So this road here
Speaker 8: would have been so much busier.
Speaker 2: Okay, have heard.
Speaker 1: Justice Oscar Tally Road in Anderson, Missouri was a bit
Speaker 1: confusing for this new englander trudging through the Ozarks in
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty three, searching for answers in two decades
Speaker 1: old cold cases. I met Detective Lorie Howard and her partner,
Speaker 1: Detective Ronda Wise, from the McDonald County Sheriff's Office out
Speaker 1: at the crime scene.
Speaker 5: Hi, how are you, Detective Lorie Howard? How's it going?
Speaker 4: You know I might not be the best person to ask.
Speaker 9: I have no idea.
Speaker 5: You've been busy, huh.
Speaker 4: I have been so busy, so busy.
Speaker 1: And the word Laurie Howard is one of the most
Speaker 1: dedicated investigators I have ever had the privilege of calling
Speaker 1: a friend. She's disciplined, resolute, and laser focused on making
Speaker 1: sure murder victims have a voice. Detective Howard picked up
Speaker 1: the Oscar Tally Road Jane Docase about fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's possibility it can be solved?
Speaker 9: I know it will.
Speaker 4: I'm not tooting my horn here, but I'm not out
Speaker 4: to give up on it, and I have reason to
Speaker 4: believe that it will be solved.
Speaker 1: Oscar Tally is what I would call a backcountry road.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of these throughout the Ozas, unpaved
Speaker 1: name streets surrounded by vast forests thickly settled on both sides.
Speaker 1: Lorie Howard and Ronda Wise work under current McDonald County,
Speaker 1: Missouri elected Sheriff Rob Evenson. The grit and persistence they
Speaker 1: display to work a case and stick with it despite
Speaker 1: barriers is a skill not all law enforcement possesses. As
Speaker 1: the years passed after Jane Doe was found, the course
Speaker 1: of events surrounding this case can only be described as bizarre.
Speaker 1: After I pulled up to where Jane Doe's remains were
Speaker 1: found by the grollers, Detective Howard jumped in my vehicle
Speaker 1: and put me right into the mindset of the killer.
Speaker 1: She is hunting, all right.
Speaker 4: So the working theory is more than likely they would have.
Speaker 9: Come from this direction, the direction that we came off
Speaker 9: of the main highway.
Speaker 10: Far off the main highway.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, the whole road looked essentially really really narrow.
Speaker 9: It's been widened since then. If you go with my theory,
Speaker 9: he would have come from that side and come out
Speaker 9: this way and gone out this way. Either way, whether
Speaker 9: you're a neighbor here or whether you're a neighbor here,
Speaker 9: this sits in an area that's echoe because there's a
Speaker 9: park with some water down here, so this truck would
Speaker 9: have been.
Speaker 4: Loud at the time.
Speaker 11: I mean, you hear birds, so a really loud, mufflered
Speaker 11: truck would be heard by all of these people.
Speaker 1: There's that mention of a truck again, which figures so
Speaker 1: prominently in Danis Stidham's case. As we chatted, a man
Speaker 1: came walking out of the woods toward us. Laurie knew
Speaker 1: exactly who he was, A guy whose name I have
Speaker 1: to bleep out, she shouted, calling him by his name,
Speaker 1: making his way to the vehicle he couldn't hear as
Speaker 1: we continued talking.
Speaker 9: So this guy hay stuff.
Speaker 11: People come out here and look, we've been out here
Speaker 11: a lot at times, and he's just not crazy about it.
Speaker 11: We have people that think he did it.
Speaker 1: There was a Mac truck without a trailer parked nearby.
Speaker 11: I'm not one of them, but you know, but there's
Speaker 11: people that can say that he's had something to do
Speaker 11: with it because he's a little hinky.
Speaker 10: He's a trucker. Truckers are the largest number of serial
Speaker 10: killers in the country.
Speaker 11: They are.
Speaker 4: But I'm not sold.
Speaker 1: The man was just a few yards from my vehicle.
Speaker 4: He's getting ready to probably show you there was an old,
Speaker 4: abandoned house, creepy as hell, and that's where they would play.
Speaker 4: But more importantly, what I'm going to show you is
Speaker 4: going to be this concrete pad which was in front
Speaker 4: of that garage, which is where she was like.
Speaker 1: He stood now at the window on Lori's side and
Speaker 1: demanded to know what we were doing.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm Detective Howard, so it's nice to meet you.
Speaker 12: I'm Matthew. Matthew okay, So I explained to him that we.
Speaker 1: Were just The guy was cautious and preoccupied with why
Speaker 1: we were out there, but he also mentioned he might
Speaker 1: have some information. He said he knew Randy and Linda
Speaker 1: Grohler very well, that couple up the road who found
Speaker 1: Jane Doe. We stepped out of the vehicle and stood
Speaker 1: together as Laurie and the guy started to discuss people
Speaker 1: in the area they both knew. I gave them the
Speaker 1: space to speak privately and pulled Detective Ronda Wise aside
Speaker 1: for a little chat. What's it about the cold case
Speaker 1: work that attracts you to it.
Speaker 7: I've been saying this a lot in the last couple
Speaker 7: of days.
Speaker 12: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 8: Who solves the cold case, as long as it gets
Speaker 8: solved so that that family can have that closure.
Speaker 12: Perfect.
Speaker 1: You know, as Ronda and I talked, Laurie walked over
Speaker 1: with a surprised look on her face. The curious dude
Speaker 1: she was speaking to apparently had something.
Speaker 10: Laurie, we good here.
Speaker 9: You think I want you to talk to this man?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 9: I had no idea that he had something to offer.
Speaker 9: But he was here the night that he heard this.
Speaker 9: He was down the road where the party was taking place.
Speaker 9: He can validate there was a party. He can validate
Speaker 9: that the kids said there was a scream. He can
Speaker 9: validate what happened to me.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ninety three, kids reported that they heard
Speaker 1: a female scream on Halloween night, and that's not exactly
Speaker 1: evidence of a murder, which was why law enforcement back
Speaker 1: then had not given much weight to the statements. But
Speaker 1: this new witness, who just appeared as I was at
Speaker 1: the Jane Doe crime scene with detectives Laurie Howard and
Speaker 1: Ronda Wise, seemed to corroborate the information. I walked over
Speaker 1: to the man and asked him to start at the.
Speaker 5: Beginning, and I won't use your name.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, So it's Halloween night and what happens.
Speaker 12: A bunch of us kids are just having a party
Speaker 12: at a house there, and one of the couples left
Speaker 12: and came started up the hill, heard a scream, came
Speaker 12: back down, told us a couple guys walked up here.
Speaker 12: We didn't hear nothing.
Speaker 1: After that, And did anybody hear a truck.
Speaker 12: Just to see what was going on?
Speaker 10: Okay? Okay?
Speaker 1: And nobody saw a vehicle leave anything like that.
Speaker 12: It had been several minutes, so the truck had probably
Speaker 12: had already been gone. They heard a scream and it
Speaker 12: freaked them out, and they went back down because it's
Speaker 12: dark up here.
Speaker 1: A ten year old boy who lived on Oscar Tally
Speaker 1: RoadHead reported coming across Jane Doe's body on November three,
Speaker 1: about a month before she was found, closer to that
Speaker 1: Halloween night date. He told his parents, but they rode
Speaker 1: it off as a Halloween prank. Then those three additional
Speaker 1: young witnesses, two boys and a girl at a Halloween
Speaker 1: party nearby, reported hearing a truck drive down Oscar Tally
Speaker 1: and stop before hearing a woman's scream and the truck
Speaker 1: then taking off in a hurry. For Laurie Howard, it
Speaker 1: all now made sense. So it was a terrifying scream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't some like they're playing volleyball or something.
Speaker 13: It was a it was a shriek.
Speaker 14: So that's the second person that has I didn't know existed,
Speaker 14: and we know that it was around Halloween, which we suppositioned,
Speaker 14: but he can tell us for sure that it was
Speaker 14: a Halloween party going on.
Speaker 1: According to the official report written on December second, nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: Jane Doe was found in high grass twenty feet off
Speaker 1: Oscar Tally Road near an old Rundown barn. Binder twine,
Speaker 1: electrical cord, nylon rope, and paracord were used to restrain her.
Speaker 1: She wore blue jeans and a denim jacket. She was
Speaker 1: thought to be between twenty and thirty years old. Her
Speaker 1: upper rib cage was found near the porch of the barn,
Speaker 1: dragged there, likely by wild animals. Those bindings were significant
Speaker 1: and appeared to be important to Jane Doe's killer, maybe
Speaker 1: even his signature. Here's former Sheriff Don Slessman, who investigated
Speaker 1: the case in the years after Jane Doe's body was discovered.
Speaker 15: See they had a towel wrapped around her head and
Speaker 15: they had attached that with electrical wire single strand electrical
Speaker 15: wire with the insulation on it. That don't make sense
Speaker 15: in poachords just a much crazy.
Speaker 1: And was she hogtie hands and.
Speaker 5: Feet, a towel around her head.
Speaker 15: Yeah, after a towel around.
Speaker 1: Her head, around her face as well, or just.
Speaker 15: Her head her face so she couldn't finally see.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: With the electrical cord, the bendable electrical cord with the.
Speaker 15: Copper in it, right, Yeah, the solid copper center and
Speaker 15: then it had the good black insulation you know, like
Speaker 15: you were a house with. But it looked like they
Speaker 15: just a grab player they could and tie her up
Speaker 15: with it. M four five different things. And the para
Speaker 15: cord you know back in those days paara cord is
Speaker 15: something not everybody.
Speaker 1: Had unless you were in the military.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 1: For investigators in the case, those very particular bindings at
Speaker 1: the gene Do crime scene brought to mind one particular
Speaker 1: serial killer of record, Dennis Rader, self proclaimed to bind, torture,
Speaker 1: kill his victims. You might also know him as B. T. K.
Speaker 1: In early twenty twenty three, detective Laurie Howard went out
Speaker 1: to speak with Rader the first of many visits specifically
Speaker 1: about Jane Doe. In fact, the night before I met
Speaker 1: with Ronda and Laurie at Jane Doe's crime scene, they
Speaker 1: brought btk's daughter, Kerry Rawson and interviewed him again. The
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office in Pahuska, Oklahoma had created a task force
Speaker 1: looking into the forty seven year old cold case murder
Speaker 1: of Cynthia don Kinney and additional cold cases, including Detective
Speaker 1: Howard's Jane Doe. The sheriff was kind of stuck on
Speaker 1: linking BTK Laurie's oscar tally Jane Doe. I sent some
Speaker 1: frustration from Laurie and Ronda not to mention disagreement with
Speaker 1: where Sheriff Eddie Verdon of Osage County was with BTK
Speaker 1: and Jane Doe. Ronda and Laurie saw no evidence connecting
Speaker 1: BTK directly to their Jane Doe, and the more they
Speaker 1: spoke to Rader about it, the more they felt Osage
Speaker 1: County was only interested in closing cases, not solving murders,
Speaker 1: and BTK seemed like as good a scapegoat as any. Still,
Speaker 1: it didn't mean that Detective Howard wasn't looking at Raider
Speaker 1: as a serious suspect in Jane Doe's case.
Speaker 8: Early on, I would have been remiss if I had
Speaker 8: not said I have to see Dennis Raider aka BTK
Speaker 8: because of the bindings. They're massive, it's overkill. It's obviously
Speaker 8: something that's important to the crime.
Speaker 10: How many different bindings are we talking about? How many
Speaker 10: different types of twine attire.
Speaker 8: Six and eight and essentially you're gonna have coax cable,
Speaker 8: You're gonna have parachute cord, nylon cord, which is like
Speaker 8: a camping type of cord, raided rope. We call this
Speaker 8: yellow cord that we're looking at here. That would be
Speaker 8: like a tree trimmer type of cord. You also have
Speaker 8: what we refer to as baling twine. It's a type
Speaker 8: of sisle twine that you might see in hay bails.
Speaker 10: All of that was used on her.
Speaker 8: All of it was used on both for our wrists
Speaker 8: and her feet and then tied together with a shoelace.
Speaker 10: Well, that's pretty significant. I think it is.
Speaker 16: Significant, and BTK thought it was significant. He's meticulous.
Speaker 10: That is not meticulous.
Speaker 16: That is not meticulous.
Speaker 10: That's very unorganized.
Speaker 8: This would be indicative of somebody who tighter left her,
Speaker 8: came back tighter, lefter came back.
Speaker 16: Possibly for quite.
Speaker 1: A while, I wondered what BTK thought about all this
Speaker 1: new attention directed at him.
Speaker 4: He was very anxious to see his name plastered all
Speaker 4: over the media again. He said, I don't have very
Speaker 4: much longer to live, and he said I can see
Speaker 4: the headlines now BTK gives last confession and all of
Speaker 4: this kind of thing.
Speaker 12: Wow.
Speaker 1: So what I heard was BTK could not yet be
Speaker 1: ruled out of Oscar Tally Jane Doe's murder.
Speaker 4: What I would say about that is, I do believe
Speaker 4: wholeheartedly that there are other victims in Kansas, and more
Speaker 4: than likely parts of Oklahoma, you know that are close
Speaker 4: to Kansas. But really that was his thomping grounds. I
Speaker 4: can put him in Missouri, I can put him in
Speaker 4: Southwest Missouri. But what I don't think he was ever
Speaker 4: alone there. I believe that every time he came to
Speaker 4: Southwest Missouri he was with his family and it was
Speaker 4: as a fishing trip.
Speaker 1: I had heard BTK was very ill, so I asked
Speaker 1: Laurie about it.
Speaker 4: I mean, he was animated and the person that I
Speaker 4: saw when they wheeled him in, because he's now in
Speaker 4: a wheelchair. He has scoliosis, he's doubled over, he doesn't
Speaker 4: walk well. Yes, cellulitis in both legs. He's got kind
Speaker 4: of an ashen appearance. And by his own account, he said,
Speaker 4: I probably won't live that much longer.
Speaker 1: The Oscar tally Jane doe murder felt somewhat disorganized, not
Speaker 1: to mention outside btk's comfort zone of a confined space
Speaker 1: such as a house. Plus, if we're comparing Jane Doe's
Speaker 1: murder with Dana Stidhams as potentially being linked, BTK could
Speaker 1: mostly be excluded from Dana's case based on how she
Speaker 1: went missing, the multiple sightings of her after, and where
Speaker 1: she was found. So what did BTK have to say
Speaker 1: about Jane Doe's case specifically?
Speaker 4: And so when I would put, you know, his work
Speaker 4: in front of him, I'll say it was a code,
Speaker 4: and I was asking him about his own code. He
Speaker 4: would become very animated and excited. He'd go, oh, look
Speaker 4: at that, that's mine, you know, And we'd go over
Speaker 4: what the code meant and what he wrote and how
Speaker 4: he wrote it, and you know, how the codes were
Speaker 4: written out. He was very forthcoming on all of his work.
Speaker 4: And then when we would, I would slide over some
Speaker 4: of his journal entries that had projects, his different projects
Speaker 4: and things.
Speaker 1: BTK was known to use the word project for his murders, and.
Speaker 4: I would say, you know, hey, what about this, and hey,
Speaker 4: tell me about it. He had no problems talking about
Speaker 4: the ten that he'd already killed, and even some of
Speaker 4: the journal entries that weren't that we know of, he
Speaker 4: would explain them. So every time I would put a
Speaker 4: piece of paper in front him, he was overjoyed that
Speaker 4: I had his work, and I had one project in
Speaker 4: particular that I had mentioned to him, and you know,
Speaker 4: he was just a totally different person, and he said,
Speaker 4: nobody's ever asked me about that, and he was very
Speaker 4: excited about it, which leads me to believe that's probably
Speaker 4: a potential victim.
Speaker 1: Laurie then showed BTK a photo of the bindings used
Speaker 1: on Jane Doe.
Speaker 4: No animation, nothing. He literally almost had a look of
Speaker 4: disgust on his face, and it was what he said
Speaker 4: was that's overkill. I don't know why anybody would do that.
Speaker 4: So it was almost like he had a lack of
Speaker 4: respect for the work that he was looking at.
Speaker 1: I cannot undersell the incredible amount of bindings found at
Speaker 1: this crime scene, but it's the parachord and ropes that
Speaker 1: most interested me at that time. Would have been very
Speaker 1: hard to find and purchase if you were not in
Speaker 1: the military. Jack Lenny, the new suspect and Dani's case
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the last episode, had done a long
Speaker 1: stint in the military. He also lived in between Bellavista, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and Anderson, Missouri, and was known to come up into
Speaker 1: Anderson at times, and he drove a truck with the
Speaker 1: discovery of Jane Doe not far from the Danastidham crime
Speaker 1: scene in Bella Vista. The BCSO took notice. By then,
Speaker 1: the BCSO had latched onto the guy I'm calling Jack Lenny.
Speaker 1: Here's Lieutenant Hunter Petray, who begins by explaining why the
Speaker 1: bcso's case against their chief suspect, Mike McMillan went stagnant
Speaker 1: and the focus turned to Lenny.
Speaker 13: Part of the problems physical evidence DNA witnesses. You know,
Speaker 13: you have to realize in law enforcement that sometimes you
Speaker 13: can arrest people and you think your case looks good,
Speaker 13: but you have to also think about the prosecutor's office.
Speaker 13: They have to be able to get a jury to
Speaker 13: convict somebody. So you don't just want to arrest somebody
Speaker 13: if you don't think the case is good and you
Speaker 13: don't think that the case is going to make it
Speaker 13: through prosecution. You know, from everything, there's just not enough
Speaker 13: at this point in time to.
Speaker 5: Make an arrest.
Speaker 13: And it's complicated because there are other people associated with
Speaker 13: this case that are good for it as well, like
Speaker 13: as far when I say good for it, I mean
Speaker 13: as far as their history and their sexually harassing people.
Speaker 1: And I bleeped it out, but Hunter portray mentioned Lenny
Speaker 1: by his real name and also made a valid point
Speaker 1: regarding Lenny's behaviors around women. Let's call them the suspects
Speaker 1: because I'm not going to name him. I'm gonna knock
Speaker 1: on his door Friday, but I'm not going to name
Speaker 1: him unless he talks to me. Okay, but jeez, that
Speaker 1: fucker looks like I mean.
Speaker 13: You know, we talked early on about a little bit
Speaker 13: of victimology, but you know, you also have to think
Speaker 13: about suspectology going back and looking at his history. He
Speaker 13: just made comments at Walmart at other places of.
Speaker 5: Employment to females.
Speaker 13: So I'm talking sexual advances and sexual harassment, and he
Speaker 13: would come into Phillips there more Dana worked and other
Speaker 13: females that work there and make those comments to them.
Speaker 1: This type of misogynistic criminal treatment of women was common
Speaker 1: and sadly normalized back in the eighties and nineties. Sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: cat calling, demoralizing and abusive as it was, was barely
Speaker 1: frowned upon back then. But what Hunter Portray tells me
Speaker 1: next Pruce, the sexual harassment Lenny had been allowed to
Speaker 1: get away with was next level.
Speaker 13: There was also a female in Bentonville and she was
Speaker 13: actually driving to work and he got in behind her
Speaker 13: and almost ran her off the road and followed her
Speaker 13: all the way up to the parking lot there at
Speaker 13: Phillips where she ran inside, and she pretty much penned
Speaker 13: it as that was.
Speaker 5: You know, he made comments when.
Speaker 13: He was interviewed as far as was it possible that
Speaker 13: he may have stopped Dana, Well, maybe you know she
Speaker 13: had a flat tire or something like that, which again circumstantial,
Speaker 13: but we know that Dana had a low tire. He
Speaker 13: also made comments of somebody had a seat belt or
Speaker 13: something that was hanging out the door or something. He
Speaker 13: would just stop people and not that he just would,
Speaker 13: but that he had in the past stopped.
Speaker 5: People for things.
Speaker 13: He's one of those guys that, you know, by his
Speaker 13: own admission, would could talk to anybody. He kind of
Speaker 13: played it off as far as comments that they were
Speaker 13: harmless that I just you know, I think he made
Speaker 13: one comment to a girl, had she ever been eight?
Speaker 13: Which has sexual you know in the windows there, but
Speaker 13: he referred to it as well. She just took it wrong.
Speaker 13: I was talking about her age, you know, comments like that.
Speaker 1: Another thing we weren't aware of or knew much about
Speaker 1: in the eighties was gaslighting. Didn't he show up at
Speaker 1: a store once in a ski mask?
Speaker 13: He showed up outside and made a comment, but he
Speaker 13: was wearing like a ski mask, and they asked him
Speaker 13: about that, and he says, yeah, you know, if it's
Speaker 13: cold outside and sometimes I wear a ski mask. But
Speaker 13: it's not like I was trying to rob anybody or
Speaker 13: anything like that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what he drove at the time. He
Speaker 1: drove a station wagon and a truck, right.
Speaker 13: A few different vehicles, you know, And he was kind
Speaker 13: of looked at initially because he worked.
Speaker 1: For the company Lieutenant Petray Mentions here conducted work all
Speaker 1: over Bella Vista and up toward the Missouri border where
Speaker 1: Jane Doe was discovered. Lenny, in his forties, then living alone,
Speaker 1: traveled all over those areas. And I should know this
Speaker 1: was at a time when Dana Stidham worked at Phillips.
Speaker 1: You see, Lenny knew her from going into that store
Speaker 1: for breakfast and lunch nearly every day.
Speaker 13: They did find some maps in his vehicle, but yeah,
Speaker 13: he would have known the area like good because they
Speaker 13: worked there.
Speaker 1: Those maps, I might add, were marked with a pen
Speaker 1: in areas where Dana was seen during the time she
Speaker 1: was missing.
Speaker 10: And he was an army guy too, right, the military.
Speaker 13: Yeah, And in fact, I think even when he was
Speaker 13: doing some stuff, he would still do some weekend stuff
Speaker 13: with the military.
Speaker 1: Sheriff Don told me the other day, he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: he went down went down to Panami. Yeah, track that
Speaker 1: Panama allegation included Lenny beating a sex worker. Do you
Speaker 1: think Dana's case is connected to those cases?
Speaker 5: Well, I can't rule it out.
Speaker 13: And here's why I say that is, so you have Dana.
Speaker 13: In summer of eighty nine, we had another case that
Speaker 13: we call a bone woman, which we've now identified. Oh,
Speaker 13: you have Yeah, that was in February of ninety. There
Speaker 13: was another individual first part of ninety that was just
Speaker 13: a couple of miles away from where Dana was found,
Speaker 13: off that same road. And then of course you had
Speaker 13: the one just across the line there in McDonald County.
Speaker 13: All of this stuff within a year, like four homicides
Speaker 13: within a one year period. Now, bone woman, we've been
Speaker 13: able to identify and we pretty much we've closed it out.
Speaker 13: We have a suspect, but the suspect's dead. We're pretty
Speaker 13: sure that he did it, so we've closed that case out.
Speaker 13: Don't think it's connected to the others. But when you
Speaker 13: get that many homicides in that short of a period,
Speaker 13: and also within that condensed area, you can't rule it out.
Speaker 1: I asked about any similarities the BCSO found in Dana's
Speaker 1: and Jane Doe's cases and if they considered the bindings
Speaker 1: important within that scope.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she was bound for certain.
Speaker 11: For sure.
Speaker 13: We can't say that Dana was. We've got some red twine,
Speaker 13: that's all we got. Possibly maybe, but you know, the
Speaker 13: crime lab, the Emmy's office couldn't get any connection that
Speaker 13: that stuff had.
Speaker 5: Been used as any type of ligature or anything, So
Speaker 5: maybe I don't know.
Speaker 13: You know, when you start talking about Dana's case and
Speaker 13: when you start looking at victimology, you know, Dana, you
Speaker 13: look at low, moderate, high risk. To me, when I
Speaker 13: look at this case and put everything together, Dana is
Speaker 13: or was high low to modern risk. And I say
Speaker 13: that just because of the lifestyle. But the lifestyle was
Speaker 13: that of a teenager that runs around. Yeah, they party
Speaker 13: at times, you know, they drink at times, But by
Speaker 13: no means was her risk what I would consider high risk.
Speaker 13: When you start talking about high risk, you start talking
Speaker 13: about prostitutes.
Speaker 5: So when you look at.
Speaker 13: Dana, I don't see that same similarity.
Speaker 1: Remember Brandon Howard, the journalist you've heard in previous episodes.
Speaker 1: He had gotten hold of some information about one of
Speaker 1: Lenny's ex wives and eventually wound up speaking to her.
Speaker 7: I remember her bringing up the fact they never found
Speaker 7: Dana's purse. That was brought up unprompted, which stood out
Speaker 7: to me because a year or so later she mentions
Speaker 7: that this suspect might have had female purses at his
Speaker 7: mother's house.
Speaker 1: His ex wife insinuated that he had a fetish for
Speaker 1: purses and he collected them. If you recall, although the
Speaker 1: contents of Dana's purse were found, her large, unique denim
Speaker 1: bag was not.
Speaker 7: She also mentions that they met hitchhiking in the early
Speaker 7: eighties and that they struck up a relationship. That's pretty
Speaker 7: much it that She tells Binton County, Well, not only
Speaker 7: did they meet hitchhiking, but he made sexual advances fairly
Speaker 7: quickly in the vehicle.
Speaker 1: Linny's ex wife went on to say she knows her
Speaker 1: ex husband killed Dana, but doesn't think there is any
Speaker 1: way for law enforcement to prove it. She mentioned finding
Speaker 1: blood in a station wagon they owned, and remembered him
Speaker 1: cleaning it and throwing his clothes away afterward. The way
Speaker 1: she put it, he covered his ass when it came
Speaker 1: to Dana. But get this, she was also there on
Speaker 1: the Lenny flunked a polygraph and when he came out
Speaker 1: of the room quote, he had a look on his
Speaker 1: face like he knew he was caught. The oscar Talie
Speaker 1: Jane Doe took on a different name not long after
Speaker 1: her remains were discovered. It was clear early on that
Speaker 1: identifying Jane Doe was going to take time and technology,
Speaker 1: if it was even possible. So clear in fact, a
Speaker 1: detective said in passing one day, only by the grace
Speaker 1: of God, will you identify her? From that moment on,
Speaker 1: she became Grace Doe, which is an important moment in
Speaker 1: this case. The name Jane Doe is such a common
Speaker 1: reference that it fails to conjure emotion or personalize in
Speaker 1: an unidentified murder victim. Jane Doe suggests a more societal
Speaker 1: need to help. But place another name in front of
Speaker 1: Doe and suddenly there's an emotional connection. Based on the
Speaker 1: state of decomposition, the only option to identify her was
Speaker 1: to send dental X rays in for comparison, considering there
Speaker 1: were several missing girls in the area fitting her general description,
Speaker 1: in particular twenty one year old Patricia Ann Smith from Glencoe, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: and thirty four year old Trevor Ann Castile from Springfield, Missouri.
Speaker 1: Within two weeks, both tests came back negative, no match.
Speaker 1: Not knowing the identity of Grace Doe made finding her
Speaker 1: killer that much more difficult, and, as Detective Lorie Howard explains,
Speaker 1: when she came aboard in two thousand and seven, she
Speaker 1: started literally from scratch without a body.
Speaker 8: Couldn't find her. I couldn't find the evidence. I couldn't
Speaker 8: find skeletal remains. I didn't have a report, so essentially
Speaker 8: I still just had a story. Years later, driving people
Speaker 8: absolutely crazy, I called the Emmy's office.
Speaker 16: I called Columbia. I made various trips to North Carolina.
Speaker 16: I went all over the place, and then one day.
Speaker 8: I got a phone call from the Emmy's office in Colombia.
Speaker 16: And she said, Okay, I found her.
Speaker 8: So I immediately made a trip back up to Columbia,
Speaker 8: Murray and I retreat her skeletal remains.
Speaker 1: The first goal was to get a facial reconstruction done
Speaker 1: so they had some idea of what she might have
Speaker 1: looked like. This would also allow the Sheriff's department to
Speaker 1: reach out publicly. While I was in Missouri, I met
Speaker 1: with Sheriff Rob Evenson from the McDonald County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 1: Grace Stowe's murder is Evenson's case.
Speaker 10: And when she's found, what happens. What was the most
Speaker 10: difficult thing about it?
Speaker 17: The most difficult thing about it, this goes on for
Speaker 17: nearly thirty years, was to get an identification of who
Speaker 17: the remains belonged or who.
Speaker 1: She was, So you have a young woman her exact
Speaker 1: age a guess found off the side of a secluded
Speaker 1: backcountry road with houses and farms spread sporadically all over
Speaker 1: the place. Nobody knows who she is. There are no
Speaker 1: missing person reports linked to her, and she had been
Speaker 1: out in the elements for about two.
Speaker 17: Months, and so she went nearly thirty years without having
Speaker 17: a name to go with those remains.
Speaker 10: So it's hard to work a case if you're in
Speaker 10: an investigator when you don't have an ID.
Speaker 17: And my previous employment identity detective for about nine years,
Speaker 17: so I've worked a fair number of homicides, and of
Speaker 17: course that is the first thing besides your immediate crime scene,
Speaker 17: that's the first thing that you need to do is
Speaker 17: get your victim identified. Your victimology usually leads you to
Speaker 17: your suspects and it leads you to the solution of
Speaker 17: the case.
Speaker 10: Okay, so her case goes cold because they can't identify her.
Speaker 10: So there's really nothing you can do, right, I mean,
Speaker 10: you can send DNA out, but at the time DNA
Speaker 10: is in its infancy.
Speaker 17: That's correct. Of course, technology has changed so much over
Speaker 17: the most recent few years, so new opportunities, new tools
Speaker 17: every year, things get better and better with DNA technology.
Speaker 17: Of course, Laurie worked on this in her off time,
Speaker 17: in her downtime when she wasn't working on something else,
Speaker 17: and just kept trying and kept trying, and kept try ryan,
Speaker 17: and eventually she was able to get with somebody with
Speaker 17: a laboratory that was able to extract that DNA.
Speaker 1: Extracting DNA from advanced decomposed remains is not as simple
Speaker 1: as taking a hair or tissue sample and sending it
Speaker 1: off to the lab for a profile. It's a complicated
Speaker 1: scientific process with many different variables involved, chief among them
Speaker 1: the funding to get the DNA to a place where
Speaker 1: it's scientifically possible to even create a profile. Here's Lorie
Speaker 1: Howard again.
Speaker 8: I needed to get DNA in the system, and that
Speaker 8: was actually harder than it sounds.
Speaker 16: What I had was a fingernail. I had some hair.
Speaker 8: So I was talking to North Texas Health and Human
Speaker 8: Sciences in Texas and I was pretty much begging them
Speaker 8: to take a fingernail and they said, you know, I
Speaker 8: don't think I don't think it's going to work. It
Speaker 8: doesn't mean our protocol speak. They're funded, and how they're
Speaker 8: funded sometimes requires them to have a particular way of
Speaker 8: receiving evidence. But they eventually said, okay, let's just see
Speaker 8: if we can get some mitochondrial DNA, and I sent
Speaker 8: them part of a fingernail. The mitochondrial DNA went into
Speaker 8: the system but wasn't very helpful.
Speaker 1: Of course, McDonald County's goal was to submit Gracetow's DNA
Speaker 1: to all the ancestry genealogical forensic databases, with the hope
Speaker 1: that someone with a connection to Grace was in one
Speaker 1: of those databases.
Speaker 8: I kept saying, can you please go back and look
Speaker 8: and see if you have a Janeo? And they just
Speaker 8: repeatedly said, no, I don't think we have anything that
Speaker 8: meets what you're giving us. It was a matter of
Speaker 8: figuring out what my best source of DNA might be,
Speaker 8: and ultimately I took her mandible and I sat one
Speaker 8: evening and extracted her teeth because I knew the molars
Speaker 8: would probably be my best source.
Speaker 10: Now she had really good teeth. She did, she did,
Speaker 10: and what did that tell you?
Speaker 8: I spoke to the forensick orthodonist and he basically said,
Speaker 8: this woman was well cared for. But that was kind
Speaker 8: of a dichotomy for people that aren't in the system
Speaker 8: are not reported as a missing person. So I had
Speaker 8: a hard time figuring out she was either loved and
Speaker 8: had a good life and was well taken care of,
Speaker 8: versus she's not in the system, nobody's recorded or missing.
Speaker 16: Is she a runaway? So it tells you a lot
Speaker 16: about the care generally speaking, but.
Speaker 8: In her case that that wasn't the case because she actually.
Speaker 16: Grew up in foster care.
Speaker 1: Another major hurdle, gray Stow had been bounced from home
Speaker 1: to home. None of these families would have a blood
Speaker 1: DNA connection to her. That other possibility of an expensive
Speaker 1: facial reconstruc dirouction gnawed at Lorie. She needed to know
Speaker 1: what this woman might have looked like, even more importantly,
Speaker 1: getting that image out onto social media and the Internet
Speaker 1: to see if anyone recognized her.
Speaker 8: So ultimately what happened is I I asked Victoria Livewood
Speaker 8: Forensic Reconstruction, it's out of Canada, to help me. And
Speaker 8: I was very upfront and said I can't pay you.
Speaker 8: I'm asking you for a lot and I really need it.
Speaker 8: And Victoria was gracious and the best person to work with,
Speaker 8: and she said I'll do it. But then the problem
Speaker 8: became you can't just ship a skeletal remains over the border.
Speaker 8: So I ran up against an I how am I
Speaker 8: going to do this? And so I called our local
Speaker 8: hospital in Neoshio, Missouri, and I spoke with some on
Speaker 8: the board and I said, I'm about to ask you
Speaker 8: something and I don't want you to tell me no.
Speaker 8: And he said, oh, dear, and he said okay. And
Speaker 8: I said, I really want to bring a skull and
Speaker 8: mandible into you of a deceased person, a homicide victim,
Speaker 8: and I'm asking you to take MRI an MRI photos
Speaker 8: you know of the skull and mandible and give me
Speaker 8: some images for free.
Speaker 16: And he said, oh, oh, okay, I see.
Speaker 8: And I said, please, I have no funds, I'm working
Speaker 8: with very limited funds, but I have.
Speaker 16: To do this.
Speaker 8: And so he said, if you will bring her in
Speaker 8: in the middle of the night, you know, midnight till
Speaker 8: one o'clock, in a box covered, I don't want any
Speaker 8: anybody to touch this, I don't want to know you're here.
Speaker 16: Essentially, just do what you have to do and I'll
Speaker 16: set it up.
Speaker 10: And he did.
Speaker 16: And so what I didn't know at the time was
Speaker 16: that's never been done before.
Speaker 1: They wound up using over three hundred images out of
Speaker 1: what were hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 8: And then I sent them, of course digitally to Canada,
Speaker 8: and she had never worked that way either, so it
Speaker 8: took a long time. She said, what do you think
Speaker 8: the color of the eyes, the hair. We went back
Speaker 8: and forth for a really long time. Clothing, and to
Speaker 8: Victoria's credit, she said, this was the eighties, tell me
Speaker 8: what this jean jacket looked like. She searched and found
Speaker 8: the identical clothing for the most part that she was wearing,
Speaker 8: and for I'm going to say probably two years. We
Speaker 8: went back and forth with this process, and true to form,
Speaker 8: one day I come in and I open up and
Speaker 8: I'm looking at my emails, and it says, Laurie met
Speaker 8: Grace and there she was, there, her Grace.
Speaker 10: And so what did she look like to you when
Speaker 10: you saw that? And then she who was she?
Speaker 16: She looked exactly like I thought she would look like.
Speaker 16: I didn't know her, but Yana knew her, and she
Speaker 16: looked exactly like what I thought she would look like.
Speaker 16: And I just knew this was really who she is.
Speaker 8: And I was so comfortable with it that I immediately
Speaker 8: start calling media and said, hey, I want her everywhere.
Speaker 1: The reconstruction by Victoria Linwood, which is available online with
Speaker 1: a quick Google search, depicts a woman with brown hair,
Speaker 1: brown eyes, and olive skin. She appears to be in
Speaker 1: her late twenties early thirties.
Speaker 10: Now when does she get identified?
Speaker 16: The answer to that is forensic genealogy.
Speaker 1: Submitting Grace's DNA into the forensic genealogy databases and thus
Speaker 1: paying for it fell on Sheriff Rob Evenson's office.
Speaker 17: Well, we have to give credit to Mike Hall. Mike
Speaker 17: was the former sheriff and he was sheriff until the
Speaker 17: end of twenty twenty. And while he was in office,
Speaker 17: he did keep Grace's case alive and he was able
Speaker 17: to get hooked up with a lab that where he
Speaker 17: was able to submit her DNA profile and this lab
Speaker 17: was able to do some of this forensic genealogy and
Speaker 17: came up with a possible familial match.
Speaker 1: The company involved, Oathram, was able to extract DNA from
Speaker 1: Grace Doe's remains and more significantly, create a profile that
Speaker 1: was September twenty twenty. By January twenty twenty one, Oathram
Speaker 1: called the McDonald County Sheriff's office. They had a match.
Speaker 1: Grace Doe is Shawna Garber, and yet identifying Shauna produced
Speaker 1: an entire new set of difficulties because though they had
Speaker 1: a name, when Shauna was in her early teens, she
Speaker 1: disappeared from any public record. She simply had no history.
Speaker 1: What's more, the life Shauna ran from and the one
Speaker 1: she ran toward turned out to complicate Detective Laurie Howard's
Speaker 1: murder investigation even further.
Speaker 6: I think it was KU Medcenter. At first she was
Speaker 6: in the hospital near to Pete. I think it was
Speaker 6: to Peka, and then she was transferred to the KU Medcenter.
Speaker 6: Was she sick, No, she was burned.
Speaker 1: How was she burned?
Speaker 6: Our mother Ford lighting fluid on her.
Speaker 5: And lit a match.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying Paper Ghosts, check out my other podcasts,
Speaker 1: Crossing the Line with m William Phelps and White Eagle
Speaker 1: wherever you get your favorite shows. Coming up next on
Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 4: Well, first, he chose his own moniker, Find them, torture them,
Speaker 4: kill them.
Speaker 7: Bet.
Speaker 6: She was removed from several foster homes because our mother
Speaker 6: would interfere, to the point she even threatened to kill
Speaker 6: one foster family's kids. Our mother was an evil, vindictive
Speaker 6: spawn Accoult.
Speaker 1: I just remember being in the basement of this individual's
Speaker 1: house and there had to been like over one hundred
Speaker 1: spools of different chords.
Speaker 5: It just was pretty ominous.
Speaker 1: Paper Ghost Season four is written and executive produced by
Speaker 1: me and William Phelps. Script consulting by Rose Baci, sound
Speaker 1: design by Matt Russell, executive production by Catherine Law, and
Speaker 1: audio editing and mixing by Brandon Dicker Takaboom Productions. The
Speaker 1: series theme and four four to two is written and
Speaker 1: performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Won.