Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2: I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
Speaker 2: writing about true crime.
Speaker 3: And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
Speaker 3: worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2: Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
Speaker 2: compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3: And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
Speaker 3: new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2: Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
Speaker 2: cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3: Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1: This is Buried Bones.
Speaker 3: Hey, Kate, how's it going.
Speaker 1: It's going really well. I want to give some big
Speaker 1: props to one of our listeners. Well, I'll give props
Speaker 1: to all of our listeners, but one in particular. Oh,
Speaker 1: I feel like knows me so well. So she emailed
Speaker 1: me probably a couple of months ago and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I have something that I just want to send to you.
Speaker 1: I found it and I think you might like it.
Speaker 1: And since it's small, and I said, you know, I
Speaker 1: can take care of the postage or whatever. And she
Speaker 1: just was really sweet and she sent it to me,
Speaker 1: and since it's small, it was easy to get to me.
Speaker 1: So it is a book that I feel like comes
Speaker 1: close to the rareness of your what's the name of
Speaker 1: your medical book that you pulled out on the very
Speaker 1: first episode where you looked up Maybe it was chloroform.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what mercury.
Speaker 3: I think this is it here? Yeah, this is the
Speaker 3: Essentials of Forensic Medicine eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: And where did you get that? I can remember where
Speaker 1: you told me you got that from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, believe it or not. This was a hand me
Speaker 3: down from my dad. He kind of collected books, and
Speaker 3: I think he just was in a bookstore at some
Speaker 3: point in the past and bought it. And then when
Speaker 3: I saw it after getting into forensics, it was like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is a really I mean cool book where you
Speaker 3: have and I don't want to open up too much,
Speaker 3: but you have the hand drawn diagrams in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a really cool book.
Speaker 1: So this listener, her name's Jody, sent it to me,
Speaker 1: And this is a book that's called The People's Common
Speaker 1: Sense Medical Advisor. Right here it is and it's falling
Speaker 1: apart a little bit, which means you know, it's a
Speaker 1: great book. People have used it a lot, right, It's
Speaker 1: from nineteen oh nine, and she was really sweet, so,
Speaker 1: you know, sending me this, and she you know, inscribed
Speaker 1: it a happy sleuthing best regards Jody, which was really nice.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: But I you know, I was flipping through here, and
Speaker 1: like with your book, this has a lot of really
Speaker 1: interesting pictures. Anatomy of a joint, anatomy of a knee joint.
Speaker 1: You know, it gets really specific testimony from different patients.
Speaker 1: Because this book was written by a doctor who let
Speaker 1: me see if I can get to this the Invalids
Speaker 1: Hotel and Surgical Institute of Buffalo, New York, a remedial
Speaker 1: home established by R. V. Pierce and located in one
Speaker 1: of the healthiest cities in the United States. This was
Speaker 1: a book that was used by you know, I'm sure physicians,
Speaker 1: but also a book that people probably would have kept
Speaker 1: at home and used as a medical reference. You know,
Speaker 1: I remember having not these books obviously, but books like
Speaker 1: that at friends' houses in our house just sort of like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I have something hurting in my knee.
Speaker 1: Pre internet, which I was pre Internet. So were you
Speaker 1: where you think? Where am I going to get medical advice,
Speaker 1: and it was books like this where you pick up
Speaker 1: a book and it's not going to be perfect, but
Speaker 1: it shows you a diagram and it kind of do
Speaker 1: what web MD does for me now or my real doctor.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, on my other bookshelf, I have the
Speaker 3: her Commanual, you know, so get all the information on
Speaker 3: all these drugs. I mean it's thick. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: small book. You know, it's like maybe six by eight inches,
Speaker 3: but it's about three and a half to four inches thick.
Speaker 3: And so if there's any questions that I back in
Speaker 3: the day I had about any any drug substances, I'd
Speaker 3: go to the Mirk Manual.
Speaker 1: Well, this goes along with this. We had another listener
Speaker 1: email me. This was for a Wicked Words. So she
Speaker 1: emailed me and mentioned that there was a guest who
Speaker 1: said that leeches are no longer used in medicine because
Speaker 1: doctors found out they were harmful rather than helpful. So
Speaker 1: before you comment on this, let me tell you. She
Speaker 1: says her mom had leeches used after her surgery just
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. She said, had a lot
Speaker 1: of questions, I said, what's going on with the doctor
Speaker 1: and the doctor said that the leeches have an anticoagulant
Speaker 1: in their saliva and can be used to increase the
Speaker 1: blood flow around a surgical wound to promote the healing.
Speaker 1: The surgery was for the removal of a cancerous tumor
Speaker 1: in her breast. Because I said, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: to Paul about this, and I said, can I have
Speaker 1: more context? So that's what she said. That she said
Speaker 1: from when I understood the effects of the radiation made
Speaker 1: it difficult for the skin to heal itself, and that's
Speaker 1: how they used leeches. So what do you think.
Speaker 3: You know? I know, I've seen, you know that leeches
Speaker 3: had been used. I couldn't tell you why they had
Speaker 3: been used in the medical sense. What you just read
Speaker 3: that generally makes sense to me. I've also read and
Speaker 3: this is I don't know if you want to call
Speaker 3: it descriptive. I'll try not to be too descriptive, but
Speaker 3: in essence, when you have like necrotic tissue, you know
Speaker 3: where the tissue around a wound or something has died,
Speaker 3: that sterile megots can be used and they will go
Speaker 3: in and preferentially eat on the necrotic tissue. Now, having
Speaker 3: seen megots in real life on dead bodies. It's like, no,
Speaker 3: that's not going to be done to me.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I've never had to issue a trigger warning don't
Speaker 1: eat your food right now because we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about maggots feasting on dead flesh. But there you go. Wow.
Speaker 1: Well I was shocked by the leeches and it proves
Speaker 1: that sometimes there are things that carry over from hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago that still work today.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, no, for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Well, this story is sciency, and I think it's the
Speaker 1: kind of story that you like because we, you know,
Speaker 1: will be going down an interesting road that will feel
Speaker 1: familiar to you. So that's why I started with this
Speaker 1: sciency stuff, which is not always my thing. Even though
Speaker 1: I went to a science magnet school here in Austin,
Speaker 1: I still am the fuddled by science. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of prime you up for this. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and set the scene. Okay, I'm going
Speaker 1: to issue a trigger. We are going to talk about
Speaker 1: sexual assaults in this case, and it'll happen fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: Right at the beginning of the episode. We are in
Speaker 1: a very very modern time for us in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: I mean two years before I was born. I feel
Speaker 1: like it was just yesterday.
Speaker 3: You're a young one. What are you talking?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I'm happy to bring these sorts of
Speaker 1: stories because I think we were just recently in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds. So I do have some photographs for you.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 1: And this is in an area of Washington called Bathol.
Speaker 1: It's about twenty miles north of Seattle. So right now
Speaker 1: that area is pretty much suburbia, but back then it
Speaker 1: was pretty rural, lots of farms and wooded areas. It's
Speaker 1: five point forty five pm and a couple is driving
Speaker 1: along a secluded dirt road surrounded by woods, and it's
Speaker 1: about a half a mile away from major roadways. The
Speaker 1: couple is driving into the woods to go target shooting
Speaker 1: and they see a log that's blocking their path. The
Speaker 1: guy gets out of the car see what it is
Speaker 1: and then to move it. And when he does, he
Speaker 1: sees a young woman lying in the road. She's alive,
Speaker 1: but barely she's moving. She's groaning in pain. She appears
Speaker 1: to have a head injury, and she's dressed only in
Speaker 1: a braw and underwear. In her shoes and these are
Speaker 1: ankle boots. Which will become important later on. One is tied,
Speaker 1: one is untied, and the shirt that she had been
Speaker 1: wearing is found nearby. It's a kind of a gray
Speaker 1: blue color, and blue jeans are nearby, so they rush
Speaker 1: her to the hospital. She dies from her injury. This
Speaker 1: injury is a gunshot wound from a small caliber bullet
Speaker 1: right above her right ear. That's where we are so far.
Speaker 1: A young woman who turns out to be twenty found
Speaker 1: in the roadway in a wooded area, an isolated splot
Speaker 1: in Washington State, nineteen seventy two. Of course, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we're leading to this. Looks like this is
Speaker 1: a potential sexual assault.
Speaker 3: Also, yeah, is this an off roaw location or is
Speaker 3: this a paved road? You know this log that's laying
Speaker 3: across the road, So I'm kind of keying on that
Speaker 3: right now, as could the presence of that log, which
Speaker 3: sounds like it's a tree that's fallen. Does that give
Speaker 3: us some temporal aspect on when people had access to
Speaker 3: freely pass through that road versus not? So's That's one
Speaker 3: of the things that I'm kind of keying in on,
Speaker 3: just from understanding the crime scene a little bit better. Yeah,
Speaker 3: her location behind the log her state of dress, which
Speaker 3: is it's interesting where she's got her bra and underwear on,
Speaker 3: but also wearing her ankle boots. And with the ankle boots,
Speaker 3: you know, I wonder could her her genes have been
Speaker 3: taken off of her or could she have taken those
Speaker 3: genes off over the ankle boots. Probably not, does my guess,
Speaker 3: does she partially redress if there was sexual assault? And
Speaker 3: was she completely nude at the time of the sexual assault?
Speaker 3: That's another question, But does she partially redress, gets her
Speaker 3: underwear on, gets her bra on, and then recognizes that
Speaker 3: she barefoot out in the woods that's not going to work.
Speaker 3: And she's able to put her boots back on in
Speaker 3: order to try to move. And she's doing this with
Speaker 3: a gunshot to the head, you know, and the location
Speaker 3: of the gunshot, you know, behind the right ear or
Speaker 3: by the right ear, you know, that's a sounds like
Speaker 3: almost like an execution type of gunshot small caliber and
Speaker 3: small caliber can mean a lot. Is it a twenty two,
Speaker 3: is it a twenty five, Is it a thirty two?
Speaker 3: Is it a three eighty? And is there any information
Speaker 3: as to the distance of that gunshot wound? Is there
Speaker 3: any gunpowder around the entry wound? Is there stippling to
Speaker 3: any of the skin, if any of the exposed skin
Speaker 3: is there right now, the location of her shirt and
Speaker 3: blue jeans would suggest a location to where either the
Speaker 3: offender assaulted her and shot her, or that's where she
Speaker 3: was pushed out of a vehicle or taken out of
Speaker 3: a vehicle, but she was still alive to where she
Speaker 3: could move into the street. So, okay, I've got a
Speaker 3: pretty good sense of what's going on so far.
Speaker 1: Good Lucky for us, we do have an autopsy that
Speaker 1: gives us a lot more information. There are still clues
Speaker 1: that need to be gathered just from the scene, and
Speaker 1: of course we still haven't identified her yet, but we
Speaker 1: will right now. So she is found by this couple
Speaker 1: at five point forty five pm, about eleven o'clock. Some
Speaker 1: distressed parents call the police because their daughter Jody has
Speaker 1: not returned home. So this is about five hours later
Speaker 1: or so. Their names are Rosemary and John Loomis. Jody
Speaker 1: is twenty. She is our victim, Jody Loomis, and a
Speaker 1: detective comes to their house to tell them the news
Speaker 1: that they believe that this is Jody. She died shortly
Speaker 1: after arriving to the hospital and the Loomises go and
Speaker 1: they identify her, so it's positive that this is their daughter.
Speaker 1: So there's stuff about Jody that actually will be kind
Speaker 1: of important. And then of course there's the autopsy and
Speaker 1: things that they discover at the scene after the autopsy
Speaker 1: or maybe even during, and then there's the timeline of
Speaker 1: what her parents said happened. So there's a lot happening,
Speaker 1: a lot of information. What do you want to tackle first?
Speaker 3: Well, with the information, you know, this is unusual for
Speaker 3: you to be able to provide me with a lot
Speaker 3: of the information that I'm used to working with. Sure,
Speaker 3: I'm excited, So I'm going to, you know, start with
Speaker 3: my process. I want to know first, I start with
Speaker 3: an autopsy. I want to know what happened to the victim,
Speaker 3: what caused her death, and what other types of injuries
Speaker 3: are present, and will kind of intertwine that information with
Speaker 3: what I know about the crime scene, and then we
Speaker 3: can go from there.
Speaker 1: Okay, here we go. Autopsy is conducted. The next day,
Speaker 1: the medical examiner recovers fragments from here's the gun a
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber bullet, finding that she was killed by
Speaker 1: that gun, shot, wound. Tell me about a twenty two.
Speaker 1: As far as why would someone use that gun? Is
Speaker 1: it easy to conceal or is this for picking off
Speaker 1: animals or what?
Speaker 3: Well, there's so many reasons to choose a twenty two.
Speaker 3: You know, first, it could be just this is the
Speaker 3: gun that the offender had access to. There is no
Speaker 3: other reason outside I've got a gun, whether it be
Speaker 3: a legally purchased gun or something illegally obtained, that's just
Speaker 3: what the offender had. There may not have been a
Speaker 3: purposeful decision to use a twenty two. Now, a twenty
Speaker 3: two at close range absolutely can be fatal. I've had
Speaker 3: homicides with twenty two caliber guns, whether it be a gunshot,
Speaker 3: wounds to the head. I've had homicides where somebody's been
Speaker 3: shot in the torsa with a twenty two. There's textbook
Speaker 3: examples of twenty two's going into the femeral artery and
Speaker 3: then the bullet actually traversing, you know and causing an
Speaker 3: kind of like an embolism. So you know, it is
Speaker 3: a fatal weapon. However, it is also not a very
Speaker 3: powerful weapon. And right now I'm assuming it's a handgun,
Speaker 3: but you can have rifles that shoot twenty two, and
Speaker 3: typically those may be a little bit more powerful rounds.
Speaker 3: Why a twenty two may be chosen by the offender.
Speaker 3: They can be smaller weapons, particularly if they're designed to
Speaker 3: be very compact, they can be much smaller than let's say,
Speaker 3: your nine millimeter compact weapons that the twenty twos could
Speaker 3: potentially have less report. They're a little bit quieter, though
Speaker 3: it's still a loud sound when they are shot, you know,
Speaker 3: but you do see that you can silence a twenty
Speaker 3: two and it can make it fairly quiet, you know,
Speaker 3: but it's not like in the movies where it's like this,
Speaker 3: you know, whisper. You know, you're still have a you
Speaker 3: still have a noise that is discernible, but it does
Speaker 3: it's not going to be a very loud noise relative
Speaker 3: to you know, a larger caliber weapon or a more
Speaker 3: powerful weapon. And then you know, if you're really sophisticated,
Speaker 3: these twenty two bullets and it sounds like in this case,
Speaker 3: you know, they can become very mangled, and if it's
Speaker 3: got a coating on it, the markings that the barrel
Speaker 3: of that twenty two gun leave on the bullet itself
Speaker 3: can be very indistinct and make it hard, if not impossible,
Speaker 3: for firearms examiner to do a comparison to link that
Speaker 3: bullet back to a gun. One example I can give
Speaker 3: you is there's an old book out there. It's basically
Speaker 3: how to become a hit man, and it's part of
Speaker 3: this whole you know, anarchy cookbook, same publisher, you know,
Speaker 3: and in it they talk about using a twenty two.
Speaker 3: And there's a reason because of you know, the bullets.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not marking very well being able to
Speaker 3: silence them. They're cheap guns. I would say that I've
Speaker 3: never had a case in which I've had a you know,
Speaker 3: anything close to what I would say a professional hit
Speaker 3: man coming in and purposely using a twenty two. I've
Speaker 3: got one case in my career, and it was actually
Speaker 3: after I retired, in which I went, this is a
Speaker 3: professional hit Outside of that, you know, I think the
Speaker 3: twenty two being grabbed in this case, in all likelihood
Speaker 3: is probably because that's what the offender had access to,
Speaker 3: but maybe you'll tell me different.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, you know, this is a wooded area,
Speaker 1: heavily wooded area, a rural area, and there's probably hunting
Speaker 1: going on summertime. You know, it's early evening, so you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, a gunshot might not sound I'd and growing
Speaker 1: up on a farm, when I heard a gunshot, I
Speaker 1: did not immediately think murder. I thought somebody's out there
Speaker 1: hunting illegally or legally, depending on the time of year.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, you know in that particular environment, you know,
Speaker 3: a gunshot is not going to be as obvious and
Speaker 3: stand out, like if you're in a quiet neighborhood. But
Speaker 3: unless this person went out to shoot squirrels or rabbits,
Speaker 3: they're not choosing a twenty two to go hunting out there.
Speaker 3: If they're hunting deer or something, they've got a real
Speaker 3: hunting rifle with much larger caliber rounds.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk a little bit. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot left, honestly, Paul. Of the autopsy, I don't think
Speaker 1: they thought there was a lot more to say here.
Speaker 1: We know that the twenty two killed her. They said
Speaker 1: there is evidence of a sexual assault. They weren't specific
Speaker 1: about it, but you know, seventy two, I think they
Speaker 1: would have been able to identify it. Right. The medical
Speaker 1: examiner recovered some samples of dirt and leaf mold from
Speaker 1: her buttocks, which to them meant that she had been
Speaker 1: totally undressed at least, you know, there and laying on
Speaker 1: the ground. And that's pretty much it as far as
Speaker 1: the medical things go.
Speaker 3: So they see signs of sexual assault. I know I've
Speaker 3: gone on rants before because I hate it when they
Speaker 3: use the phrase no signs of sexual assault and then don't.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, you can have sexual assault and not
Speaker 3: see injuries, whether it be external injuries, whether it be
Speaker 3: internal injuries to the female anatomy. So in this particular case,
Speaker 3: what is evidence of sexual assault? And again I'm going
Speaker 3: to avoid getting graphic, but is did they observe some injuries?
Speaker 3: Then it's their duty to articulate what those injuries are.
Speaker 3: Are they observing fluid inside cavities? Did they you know,
Speaker 3: look at the microscope, did they identify sperm? You know,
Speaker 3: they need to articulate that autopsy or those samples are
Speaker 3: you know, from the fluids get sent to the lab
Speaker 3: and then the lab ends up identifying what those fluids are.
Speaker 1: They did do a rape kit, and they did keep
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence, which is going to be good
Speaker 1: for us later on, but they aren't specific about exactly
Speaker 1: what the signs are you're right, let's go to the scene.
Speaker 1: So they actually are looking for the gun or more bullets.
Speaker 1: They use metal detector. They can't find anything. They didn't
Speaker 1: find any other bullets or traces of the murder weapon,
Speaker 1: so they never find the gun. They find a dime
Speaker 1: near her body, and Jody's parents said she always carried
Speaker 1: a dime. Man, I haven't even thought about this for
Speaker 1: a long time, for the pay phone in case there
Speaker 1: was an emergency. Absolutely, yeah, So they found this. They
Speaker 1: found this dime. They find blood on the ground and leaves,
Speaker 1: you know, it's strewn about in the area. And there's
Speaker 1: a little clip that Jody used to clip her pants
Speaker 1: away from the bike chain. So okay, Jody, Let's get
Speaker 1: into a little bit more about Jody so that I
Speaker 1: can explain the bike. She was a nurse's aide, twenty
Speaker 1: years old, as I told you, She was living with
Speaker 1: her parents. She went to community college. She wanted to
Speaker 1: be a nurse. She was engaged, though there wasn't a
Speaker 1: date set. Ultimately, I'll just say that the police rule
Speaker 1: this guy out. The fiance. She was an avid equestrian,
Speaker 1: and so why don't you just pull up the photos
Speaker 1: that I sent you. I just wanted you to put
Speaker 1: a face to this story and you could kind of
Speaker 1: tell me what you see. Won't you just get onto
Speaker 1: the first page?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, it's a photo. This is Jody
Speaker 3: in her equestrian or a horse riding gear. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure exactly the proper term she's standing and holding onto. Basically,
Speaker 3: I'm assuming this is this is her horse that she
Speaker 3: would ride. It's just a typical picture of her and
Speaker 3: her horse. She's got the riding helmet on, she's got
Speaker 3: the jacket. This looks like she's getting ready to compete.
Speaker 3: You know. This is not out and taking the horse
Speaker 3: out into the woods. It looks like she's probably doing
Speaker 3: some sort of competition. You know, it's tough to get
Speaker 3: an idea of her stature standing next to a horse,
Speaker 3: but she looks like she's average height, you know, five
Speaker 3: four five six, average build. And this is only a
Speaker 3: photo showing her from the waist up, but that's probably
Speaker 3: as much as I can see. She has glasses on
Speaker 3: that are shaded. I don't know if those are sunglasses
Speaker 3: or if they're prescription glasses that are tinted. But outside
Speaker 3: of that, yeah, I think that's about the only thing
Speaker 3: I can pull out of this photo.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me tell you a little bit about the
Speaker 1: day that this happened. She loved to ride the horses,
Speaker 1: of course, and she had been riding her bike to
Speaker 1: a local stable to ride her horse when she was killed.
Speaker 1: So most of the time Jody would get a ride
Speaker 1: to the stable, but today she wanted to ride her bike,
Speaker 1: so she sets out a lot later than she intended
Speaker 1: to because she had been waiting to ask her younger
Speaker 1: sister if she could borrow her boots. Younger sister doesn't
Speaker 1: come home, and it's gonna get dark soon, so Jody
Speaker 1: just grabs the boots that we end up finding at
Speaker 1: the woods, and she hits the road around four o'clock,
Speaker 1: the last time that her parents see her as four pm.
Speaker 1: The couple discovers her an hour and forty five minutes later.
Speaker 1: So here's one of the keys. Jody's parents said. She
Speaker 1: took this more remote route to the stable because she
Speaker 1: wanted to stay off these major roads where there's a
Speaker 1: lot of traffic, so she didn't take her normal route.
Speaker 1: So I wanted you to take a look at the
Speaker 1: photo that I sent you. That is Jody on a bike.
Speaker 1: This is clearly not the road where she was found
Speaker 1: because it's not dirt or you know, it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like there are trees that are going to fall over
Speaker 1: or anything. I think this would have been a major
Speaker 1: problem if a tree had fallen over, because you can
Speaker 1: see a car in the distance.
Speaker 3: No, it's a two lane row. You can see it
Speaker 3: separated by a solid yellow line. And you know, it's
Speaker 3: got a very slight curve along this section. But there
Speaker 3: is a lot of visibility. I think, you know, I
Speaker 3: can see maybe out to a half a mile, you know,
Speaker 3: before the road curves out of sight. Both sides of
Speaker 3: the road appear to be you know, heavily forested, though
Speaker 3: the location where Jody is at with her bike in
Speaker 3: this photograph, it appears that it's mostly tall grasses and weeds.
Speaker 3: I can see mailboxes and driveways at several points along
Speaker 3: this road that indicate it's a you know, it's kind
Speaker 3: of got a residential aspect to it, but is rural.
Speaker 3: It looks like your typical rural road, very narrow for
Speaker 3: a bicyclist. There isn't a dedicated bike lane like you
Speaker 3: often see today. And you know, if this is a
Speaker 3: road that Jody took because it was less traveled. I
Speaker 3: can completely understand that. You know, when I would go
Speaker 3: biking out in California, I would do the same thing.
Speaker 3: You know, on these narrow roads that don't have a
Speaker 3: good shoulder, you know, on the big truck start passing
Speaker 3: you at high speeds, it can be quite scary. So
Speaker 3: this here, though, you know, if she's on this road
Speaker 3: or a similar road to get to the horse stables
Speaker 3: the day that she went missing, if it's not routine,
Speaker 3: that's kind of what I was initially wondering. If it
Speaker 3: was a routine practice of hers, then I could see
Speaker 3: where an offender could lie in wait. But if it's
Speaker 3: not routine, and we know nothing about who the offender is,
Speaker 3: whether it's an associate or a stranger. But let's say
Speaker 3: it's a stranger, then that would tend to suggest that
Speaker 3: she was a victim of opportunity if she had been
Speaker 3: abducted from the roadway. And of course the big question
Speaker 3: right now is well, where is her bicycle found?
Speaker 1: Well, I can tell you that. So when they are searching,
Speaker 1: they find the bicycle, white bicycle about one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty feet from where she was found. It looks like
Speaker 1: it had been thrown into a ravine. Useless to me.
Speaker 1: One hundred and eighty feet. I can never figure out
Speaker 1: what that means. Is that a long way away? It's
Speaker 1: hard for me to ever know. I can figure out.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. I told my students this the
Speaker 1: other day. I can figure out a quarter of a
Speaker 1: mile because I can huff and puff my way through
Speaker 1: a quarter of a mile on a track that I
Speaker 1: used to run. But that's it. I don't have any
Speaker 1: other context other than that.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I go back to playing football, you know.
Speaker 3: So as you know, a football field is one hundred
Speaker 3: yards or three hundred feet long, So half a football
Speaker 3: field is one hundred and fifty feet. Tack thirty feet
Speaker 3: on top of that, and you've got your one hundred
Speaker 3: eighty feet.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they've got the bicycle. And what they're now
Speaker 1: looking at is there is apparently a vehicle in the
Speaker 1: area that people had spotted. So now this is big news.
Speaker 1: Young woman who has been found dead on August twenty six,
Speaker 1: so this is three days after she is killed. Police
Speaker 1: say they're looking for a vehicle that witnesses on the
Speaker 1: vicinity of the dirt road. They don't release any details
Speaker 1: about the vehicle, but they're just you know, telling reporters
Speaker 1: that they're looking for a vehicle. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: what that the point of that is, because I know
Speaker 1: it's a little odd.
Speaker 3: It's a little nondescript.
Speaker 1: It is nondescript. So two days after that, on August
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, they say they're looking for two vehicles that
Speaker 1: were seen in the area where Jodie was found, but
Speaker 1: they don't give any you know, description of the vehicles. Finally,
Speaker 1: the next day, the police say they're looking for something
Speaker 1: specific in nineteen sixty six steel blue chevro Let station
Speaker 1: Wagon sixty six, so this is seventy two, so you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not an old car, steel blue Chevrolet
Speaker 1: station Wagon. So I think I put this point in
Speaker 1: because I wanted you to understand that I don't know
Speaker 1: who they've called in at this point as far as
Speaker 1: are there state police involved or is they're you know,
Speaker 1: a major city involved. Doesn't sound like it to me
Speaker 1: so far. It sounds like they're kind of already making
Speaker 1: mistakes here.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, and sort of the nondescript aspect of
Speaker 3: a vehicle, there may have been a reasoning behind it,
Speaker 3: and maybe not, but if they, if they had reasoning,
Speaker 3: my thought is is that they could say this particular location,
Speaker 3: this day, this time, we saw vehicles, and so now
Speaker 3: people are thinking, oh, I was at that location, Oh
Speaker 3: I remember seeing this type of vehicle, versus putting out
Speaker 3: there a description or even a make and model a vehicle.
Speaker 3: And now they have people calling in saying well, I
Speaker 3: was there and yeah, I saw that vehicle, and so
Speaker 3: in some ways it's enhancing the veracity of the description
Speaker 3: of the vehicle from the witnesses because they're not being
Speaker 3: fed the information up front. So that kind of makes
Speaker 3: sense to me in that context. And then to get
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty six steel blue Chevy station wagon, you know
Speaker 3: that's pretty specific and absent. You know, you don't have
Speaker 3: surveillance video he had owed pack in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: To get that specific, I start thinking, Okay, a witness
Speaker 3: came forward, and you have a witness who knows his
Speaker 3: or her cars and is going I was there and
Speaker 3: I saw this particular make and model vehicle.
Speaker 1: I think this investigation gets more and more confusing. Now
Speaker 1: we're getting to this muddled timeline. So tell me what
Speaker 1: you think about the timeline. So you remember her parents
Speaker 1: said she walked out the door at four o'clock. Her
Speaker 1: body was found at five forty five, So her bike
Speaker 1: ride from her house to the stable is about forty
Speaker 1: minutes total. Where Jody was found on Penncreek Road is
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes from her house, so halfway through going
Speaker 1: along the route that she took, she was seen by
Speaker 1: witnesses riding her bike at five o'clock, not far from
Speaker 1: where she was found at five forty five. But that
Speaker 1: was an hour after she left home. Now, I think
Speaker 1: one of the things you'll probably say is witnesses don't
Speaker 1: get their times right sometimes. So you know, if the
Speaker 1: spot where she was left is twenty minutes from her house,
Speaker 1: what happened to that whole hour? And let me give
Speaker 1: you one more piece of information. So of course police
Speaker 1: want to know she encounters somebody. The last person who
Speaker 1: they believe saw Jody alive, besides the killer, had been
Speaker 1: working at a farm stand. It was a girl they
Speaker 1: don't say old. She had been working at a farm
Speaker 1: stand along the route that Jody was riding. She said
Speaker 1: that she saw Jody approached the turn at the road
Speaker 1: the dirt road where she was found. She stopped, she
Speaker 1: looked into the woods. The girl interpreted the look on
Speaker 1: her face is kind of confused, but not alarmed. I
Speaker 1: don't know if the girl didn't see, whether she went
Speaker 1: into the woods or not. But this was a route
Speaker 1: that she would normally not take because remember, she usually
Speaker 1: got a right but she would have known, she would
Speaker 1: have known how to do. This wouldn't have been completely
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary. So that lost hour is what's
Speaker 1: I think confusing police at this point.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not sure there was a lost hour. So
Speaker 3: she leaves at four o'clock, she was seen riding her
Speaker 3: bike at five o'clock. Was that this girl who saw
Speaker 3: her kind of stop and look down the dirt road?
Speaker 1: No, several different witnesses, different witnesses, not far from where
Speaker 1: she was eventually found.
Speaker 3: If it's just a forty minute bike ride to the
Speaker 3: stables from her parents' house, you know, twenty minutes past
Speaker 3: the time that she should have gotten too the stables,
Speaker 3: she's still seen riding her bike along that road, you know,
Speaker 3: does she stop and talk to somebody? Is there a neighbor,
Speaker 3: you know, and so she's just chatting with somebody who
Speaker 3: happened to be passing her on the road, completely innocent
Speaker 3: type of just every day type of interaction that could
Speaker 3: have delayed her of getting to the stables. And as
Speaker 3: far as I know, and maybe you'd tell me otherwise,
Speaker 3: she doesn't have to be at the stables at a
Speaker 3: particular time. It's not like she's got a coke that's
Speaker 3: going to be waiting for her to give her less
Speaker 3: than at six o'clock or whatever. So you know, she's
Speaker 3: not necessarily going to abide by some In my mind,
Speaker 3: this is how I'm kind of thinking out loud. She's
Speaker 3: not going to think, oh, I have to get to
Speaker 3: the stables by a certain time. And so if she
Speaker 3: does stop to talk to a friend or a neighbor
Speaker 3: or whatever, you can see where you know she's not
Speaker 3: in a rush to get moving again. It's not her
Speaker 3: routine route to get to the horse stables. So I
Speaker 3: wouldn't be surprised given the nondescript nature of that landscape
Speaker 3: where maybe she's stopping and going is this the dirt
Speaker 3: road or is it the next one down? And that's
Speaker 3: what this girl saw her do. Just speculating in my mind. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but she's last seen riding at five o'clock by multiple witnesses,
Speaker 3: and then her body is found at five point forty five. Well,
Speaker 3: we don't know how long her body's been out there.
Speaker 3: Was it out there just for five minutes? Was it
Speaker 3: out there for forty minutes? You know? Was she literally
Speaker 3: abducted and killed, you know, five minutes after she was
Speaker 3: last seen riding her bike. Now her body is found
Speaker 3: only a twenty minute drive away from the parents' house
Speaker 3: where she's seen by these witnesses. Is she further away
Speaker 3: from the parents' house?
Speaker 1: On the map, it says going along the route not
Speaker 1: far from where she was found. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a she went somewhere and then backtracked. I think
Speaker 1: it was somewhere along this you know, zero to twenty
Speaker 1: minutes marker.
Speaker 3: And this is where i'd want to map these points out.
Speaker 3: But let's say she gets mostly to the stables and
Speaker 3: then she encounters the offender or offenders that abduct her.
Speaker 3: Do they take her back away? That actually gets her
Speaker 3: closer to her parents house, but they go into a
Speaker 3: more secluded area down this dirt road, you know. So
Speaker 3: that's kind of what I would be judging, is how
Speaker 3: far did she actually get on her bike, and the
Speaker 3: location of her bike is, you know, on this map,
Speaker 3: is significant, and then location of her body is significant.
Speaker 3: Why do the offenders take her to that particular location?
Speaker 1: Okay? And I had just thought maybe she popped her
Speaker 1: chain and it took forever for her to get it
Speaker 1: back on. I mean, who knows absolutely, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have a cell phone. She has no choice, she
Speaker 1: has to fix the bike or whatever. And so I
Speaker 1: could see that easily. I was walking by a little
Speaker 1: kid who had popped their chain and just looked completely
Speaker 1: like what do I do? What do I do? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, let's go get your parents and find out.
Speaker 1: I know how to put on a chain, you know.
Speaker 3: But also this can be answered. Did she have grease
Speaker 3: on her hands?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I'm not that I saw on the autopsy, but
Speaker 1: you're right, Okay, Okay. We've talked about the girl at
Speaker 1: the farm stand. We've talked about her fiance. Jim is
Speaker 1: totally cleared at this point. He is actually a janitor
Speaker 1: at the hospital where she had been taken, but he
Speaker 1: was at work at the time he was cleared, and
Speaker 1: like I said, we know he's he's cleared. Here police
Speaker 1: in September, so this is a month after she's found.
Speaker 1: They announced that they're now looking for two two suspects.
Speaker 1: They had something about two cars before, but they were
Speaker 1: not very specific except for the description of one car.
Speaker 1: They know their identities, they believe that both of them
Speaker 1: have left the state. They don't give any details about
Speaker 1: the two suspects, and they do say that the information
Speaker 1: about a vehicle led them to these suspects, but we
Speaker 1: don't know if this is the Chevrolet that they're talking about.
Speaker 1: My impression and you can tell me I'm wrong here
Speaker 1: was that the police were just trying to say freaking
Speaker 1: anything to say we're doing something, but they don't have
Speaker 1: enough confidence in anything to be able to give specific information.
Speaker 1: I mean, two suspects, we can't say who they are,
Speaker 1: but they're not in the state anymore, so nobody's in danger.
Speaker 1: Maybe two cars, but that's how we found them, but
Speaker 1: we can't tell you about the car. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: really not saying anything except we are still working on
Speaker 1: this case. But any think I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: No, there's no reason for them to be updating the
Speaker 3: public in terms of where they are at in their investigation.
Speaker 3: You know, part of it is is that, even though
Speaker 3: it's not the script, just the fact that they're saying
Speaker 3: based off of vehicle information and there's two suspects, the
Speaker 3: actual suspects may be going, oh, they're on to us now.
Speaker 3: It makes it that much harder for law enforcement to
Speaker 3: drill down. You don't want to be tipping your hand,
Speaker 3: you know, when you don't need to, you can just
Speaker 3: go to a press conference and give generic updates. We
Speaker 3: are continuing to take leads. We have some leads that
Speaker 3: we are following. We will keep you guys abreast to
Speaker 3: the point that we can without compromising the investigation.
Speaker 1: Well, none of this works because the case goes cold.
Speaker 1: There is nothing new for decades, but then there is
Speaker 1: something new over the years. There's a lot of speculation
Speaker 1: about Ted Bundy, who is from this area, and they
Speaker 1: wonder if this could have been one of his earliest killings.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, and this is where I need you to weigh,
Speaker 1: law enforcement says, we don't think so because the MO
Speaker 1: is so different from Bundy's typical m So what do
Speaker 1: you think about that?
Speaker 3: This is a common misperception about serial predators is that
Speaker 3: they're cookie cutter. Every single time they commit a crime
Speaker 3: they committed the same way. I've worked too many cases
Speaker 3: and seeing the variance firsthand of what the same offender does,
Speaker 3: whether it be victim type, whether it be how the
Speaker 3: victim is interacted with, you know, the initial interaction. Is
Speaker 3: it an abduction or is it like Ted Bundy, you know,
Speaker 3: sweet talking, you know a college co ed, you know,
Speaker 3: is it picking up a sex worker on the stroll.
Speaker 3: There are so many offenders that I've looked at where
Speaker 3: they the variance and what they do is stunning where
Speaker 3: you think it's different individuals committing the crimes. Now, there
Speaker 3: are behaviors that these serial predators tend to exhibit that
Speaker 3: will differentiate their crimes. And these are behaviors that are
Speaker 3: driven by the offenders inner fantasies. But the act of
Speaker 3: committing the crime, they're mo what it takes to commit
Speaker 3: the crime will vary based on the circumstances of the case.
Speaker 3: You can have a Ted Bundy do a very planned
Speaker 3: type of crime. You can have a Ted Bundy do
Speaker 3: a spontaneous victim of opportunity, you know. So the fact
Speaker 3: that Ted Bundy is in this area has to be
Speaker 3: at least acknowledged. However, just because he is in the area.
Speaker 3: This notorious and very prolific serial killer does not mean
Speaker 3: he's involved. But you cannot say, well, this mo is different,
Speaker 3: so it's not him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not followed up on at all, Bundy, regardless,
Speaker 1: this is a case that just goes cold, cold, cold. Now,
Speaker 1: there was some comfort with her parents in that knowing
Speaker 1: that they had gathered, you know, all of this. They
Speaker 1: had her underwear, they had vaginal swabs from the original
Speaker 1: rape kit, they had all of her clothes. So we
Speaker 1: are now going to flash forward into the nineties, twenty
Speaker 1: years later, and this is a little bit of an
Speaker 1: evolution of what happens with law enforcement in this area.
Speaker 1: At the time, the Sheriff's office in Snohomish County had
Speaker 1: the funding and the manpower to get a major crimes
Speaker 1: unit up and going. When they get this established in
Speaker 1: the nineties, they start pulling out cold cases. They get
Speaker 1: to Jody's case, which was a notorious case, and they
Speaker 1: realized there are no slides made from any of the
Speaker 1: potential DNA evidence. They cannot find her underwear anymore, they
Speaker 1: cannot find the vaginal swabs from the original rape kit anymore.
Speaker 1: The only thing they have her clothes at this point,
Speaker 1: So they send everything off. It goes to the Washington
Speaker 1: State Patrol crime Lab, but it's another decade before anything
Speaker 1: can be made of the little evidence that they were
Speaker 1: able to send off. I understand when things disappear, but
Speaker 1: my goodness, that's the most important stuff they had in
Speaker 1: this case, vaginal swabs in her underwear.
Speaker 3: I've been involved in multiple cases from this era where
Speaker 3: that type of critical evidence has either been lost or
Speaker 3: was purposely destroyed, where you know, pathologists literally once he identified,
Speaker 3: oh there's spermn off of the vaginal swab. Vaginal swab
Speaker 3: is thrown away because back in the nineteen seventies, that's
Speaker 3: all they could do is identify. Yeah, there's there's the
Speaker 3: existence of semen. Poor poor practice. Absolutely very frustrating when
Speaker 3: you go, I could have solve the case if that
Speaker 3: had just been kept. You know when they say that
Speaker 3: they couldn't find these items, and it's very possible those
Speaker 3: items are absolutely gone. But these items, over decades have
Speaker 3: a tendency to to find places where they hide themselves,
Speaker 3: so to speak. You know, we've had success and most
Speaker 3: notably a Golden State killer where an entire rape kit
Speaker 3: nobody knew about was actually within the corner's own storage
Speaker 3: because a pathologist out of practice back in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: collected two rape kits at autopsy. One he gave to
Speaker 3: law enforcement, the other he kept the corners. You know,
Speaker 3: So these vaginal swabs, you know, is there any paper
Speaker 3: trail going from the corner's office to the investigating agency.
Speaker 3: Is there any paper trail showing that these swabs were
Speaker 3: ever sent out to let's say, Washington State Patrol Crime Web,
Speaker 3: What does their paperwork say? My Sheriff's office. When we
Speaker 3: did a complete inventory of hundreds of thousands of items
Speaker 3: contained within this property warehouse, all of a sudden, evidence
Speaker 3: from many old cases was found. Some of it had
Speaker 3: just been put into a wrong box, you know. So
Speaker 3: this is where, you know, on a major case like this,
Speaker 3: when I talk to investigators and they say, well, property
Speaker 3: is saying they can't find the evidence, And then it's
Speaker 3: like you need to go back there and search with
Speaker 3: your property people, and you need to figure out, you know,
Speaker 3: is it just in a wrong box, Is it in
Speaker 3: a wrong paper bag that's in a wrong box. That
Speaker 3: stuff really happens. Then you have property people, over time,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, they just destroy homicide evidence and you
Speaker 3: just go, what, how does this happen? And it's just
Speaker 3: you got somebody who's processing hundreds, if not thousands of
Speaker 3: items a week for destruction purposes and doesn't catch oh,
Speaker 3: this actually is related to a homicide and just goes
Speaker 3: through the destruction process. What you hope is is that
Speaker 3: there's actually documentation showing Okay, well that item is gone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't need to search the property room
Speaker 3: now I know that I am gone because I've got
Speaker 3: a paper, I've got the destruction receipt.
Speaker 1: Well, this is quite a case. We get to two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and there's a renewed push to solve
Speaker 1: cases in this county. The investigators pull out the old
Speaker 1: evidence and have it analyzed for possible sources of DNA.
Speaker 1: They had sent this off to the crime lab. That
Speaker 1: was unclear you know, what they were going to be
Speaker 1: able to do at that point in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: The crime lab then looks for possible sources of DNA
Speaker 1: and they look at those boots that Jodie had borrowed
Speaker 1: and from her sister, and on one of the boots,
Speaker 1: a researcher at the State Patrol Crime lab finds as
Speaker 1: semen stain, so he's able to construct a partial DNA profile. Wow,
Speaker 1: so you know we're at a good point. They upload
Speaker 1: it to codis nothing and they start getting DNA samples
Speaker 1: from all the men who were named in the original
Speaker 1: case file. I'm presuming the ones that they were not
Speaker 1: telling us about. They get samples from the family members
Speaker 1: of the men nothing. So this case goes cold for
Speaker 1: another nine years.
Speaker 3: Ask a question, and you may not have the answer,
Speaker 3: is these were her sister's boots, right? How old was
Speaker 3: her sister? Older, sister, younger, sister younger, twelve, She's twelve
Speaker 3: at the time. And you know, because part of the
Speaker 3: process after you find that yes, semen on the sister's
Speaker 3: boots is interviewing the sister. Did you have any sexual
Speaker 3: relations with a boy, you know, prior to your sister
Speaker 3: borrowing your boots. Now, with the sister being twelve, that's
Speaker 3: very unlikely. You probably still need to conduct that type
Speaker 3: of interview, particularly in two thousand and eight, and you
Speaker 3: don't get a codis hit. Now, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: man hours, a lot of effort, you know, tracking down
Speaker 3: DNA samples from all these various suspects when if it
Speaker 3: turns out, well, no, that's just a consensual sample. You
Speaker 3: know that was deposited, you know, during some you know,
Speaker 3: fleeing that the sister had but the fact that she's twelve,
Speaker 3: it's unlikely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I actually had wondered how long a semen
Speaker 1: stain would be there on a boot in particular, you know,
Speaker 1: if it is let's say it is the sister, which
Speaker 1: is so unlikely, but it was she said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have a boyfriend, but you know, we haven't had six
Speaker 1: or six months or something, tromping through mud. It's Washington
Speaker 1: State water. This is a I can show you a
Speaker 1: picture of the boot sooner rather than later if you want.
Speaker 1: Would the semen stain from six months earlier maybe still
Speaker 1: be there or is it even less likely because of
Speaker 1: all of the environmental elements that the sister would have
Speaker 1: been in during this time.
Speaker 3: You just stated the variables. You know, stemen stains can
Speaker 3: can exist on clothing, can exist on let's say these
Speaker 3: types of boots for decades and still be viable. Using
Speaker 3: modern DNA technology or environmental insults could potentially damage that
Speaker 3: semen stain very rapidly. So it all depends but I'm
Speaker 3: excited at this point. In two thousand and eight, it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: they have biological evidence. You need to identify who this
Speaker 3: male is.
Speaker 1: It takes another nine years. So in twenty seventeen, the
Speaker 1: prosecutor in that county, who's a guy named Craig Matheson.
Speaker 1: So in twenty seventeen he finds out about genetic genealogy
Speaker 1: being used. Somehow, some way, he sends the sample to
Speaker 1: Parabon nanolapse. Have you dealt with Parabon before?
Speaker 3: Yes, I know Parabond.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so Parabon says they can use it to
Speaker 1: identify a pool of relatives. We know how this goes,
Speaker 1: and then they find family members that are related to
Speaker 1: the person whose DNA profile they have. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: a genealogist builds a family tree and identifies a group
Speaker 1: of seven siblings who were born in Edmunds, Washington. Six
Speaker 1: of the seven are men. One is a very likely
Speaker 1: match for the profile. Of those six brothers, some have died,
Speaker 1: but one of the men who are still living is
Speaker 1: a guy named Terence Miller, and he is the guy.
Speaker 1: This is seven years ago. He's in his mid seventies.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know about him? Or what more
Speaker 1: do you want? I mean, there's a little list of
Speaker 1: stuff about him.
Speaker 3: Mine most certainly can extrapolate exactly how they drill down
Speaker 3: onto Terrence Miller. And then ultimately they got a direct
Speaker 3: sample from him and did your classic core approved str
Speaker 3: analysis that's you know, all the law enforcement databases CODIS
Speaker 3: is built upon, and that direct comparison confirm that Terrence
Speaker 3: Miller is the seaman donor on Jody's boot sort of.
Speaker 1: So they decide to get the sample surreptitiously. So I
Speaker 1: know we've talked about that. I mean, you know what
Speaker 1: they end up doing is they have all this information
Speaker 1: about him. He does have a record that's connected to
Speaker 1: sex offenses, including in his own family. In August of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, they follow him to a casino where he
Speaker 1: drinks from a coffee cup. He throws it away and
Speaker 1: they say within thirty seconds they grabbed the coffee cup
Speaker 1: and they say to the crime lab and there's a match.
Speaker 1: Why would they have done this surreptitiously and not gone
Speaker 1: through the warrants and everything else.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is the classic way on how to approach
Speaker 3: an investigation. So with this type of suspect, and it
Speaker 3: takes time to do DNA, even when it's rushed, it
Speaker 3: can take a day or several days if they approach him.
Speaker 3: Let's say they go and get a search warrant, and
Speaker 3: now they approach him and compel him to provide a
Speaker 3: DNA sample unless they have lawful reason to detain them
Speaker 3: for some reasons. And there's some times there's some aspects
Speaker 3: that you can detain if he's got other crimes. In essence,
Speaker 3: he's out of custody. Is he a flight risk? Is
Speaker 3: he going to disappear on you? It can compromise the
Speaker 3: investigation while you're waiting for DNA analysis. Is he destroying
Speaker 3: physical evidence? Let's say the where he goes, Oh shit,
Speaker 3: I still have the murder weapon and that's gone. So
Speaker 3: you're better off in this type of situation of getting
Speaker 3: that surreptitious sample and sounds like it was a match.
Speaker 3: So Terence Miller, that's his semen on these boots. Now
Speaker 3: you get the search warp and that search warrant isn't
Speaker 3: just for his DNA. That search warrant is looking for
Speaker 3: all the various types of evidence possibly related to Jody's homicide.
Speaker 3: And now you can confront him and interview him, or
Speaker 3: doesn't have the time. He hasn't had the time to
Speaker 3: sit there and come up with a very sophisticated lie.
Speaker 3: You catch him cold. So this is usually how these
Speaker 3: types of cold cases in which genealogy has been done occur,
Speaker 3: and you never make an arrest on genealogy. Genealogy just
Speaker 3: points you and like in this instance, it pointed to
Speaker 3: a family that had six men, and now they have
Speaker 3: to evaluate those six men as to which one is
Speaker 3: possibly Jody's offender. But you don't make an arrest when
Speaker 3: you go, oh, well, Terrence looks like the likely one
Speaker 3: because of his criminal history. You always always always get
Speaker 3: that direct sample. You never arrest based off of genealogy.
Speaker 3: It is strictly an investigative tool, an investigative lead.
Speaker 1: Well talking about you know, ambushing him and getting him
Speaker 1: before he has a chance to do anything. After they
Speaker 1: get the results. Within a few days. In November of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, they have investigators in playing clothes. He's in
Speaker 1: a ceramic shop. He owns a ceramic shop. They show up,
Speaker 1: they see that he has printed out an article about
Speaker 1: another local arrest using familial DNA evidence, I mean, which
Speaker 1: is just if that's not a foreshadow, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And of course he's arrested, you know, this happens sort
Speaker 1: of quickly. But then there's also I still have to
Speaker 1: tell you about his rap sheet. Essentially, he has a
Speaker 1: history of sex offenses that makes law enforcement want to
Speaker 1: check him first when they get this list of brothers.
Speaker 1: So his DNA wasn't in any of the databases. Initially,
Speaker 1: in the sixties he was arrested for lewd conduct and
Speaker 1: for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. And in
Speaker 1: the seventies it looks like he had offended against a
Speaker 1: family member and was given the opportunity to go to counseling,
Speaker 1: so when he did that, the charges were dismissed. He
Speaker 1: had been married four times, not a crime, but one
Speaker 1: of them, which was his first marriage, was to a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old who was pregnant at the time when
Speaker 1: he killed Jodie. He had three kids from his previous marriages.
Speaker 1: He had a third wife, which ended in a divorce.
Speaker 1: When here's a key thing, you know, I had thought
Speaker 1: this is such a rural area, this must be a local.
Speaker 1: He lived five miles away from the spot where he
Speaker 1: murdered Jody and left her behind. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: about the trial. So he's arrested in the spring of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, he is charged in the case, goes to
Speaker 1: trial in the fall of twenty twenty gosh, not long ago.
Speaker 1: The initial bail was set at a million dollars, but
Speaker 1: his attorney negotiated this to be seven hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: and he's released on bond. People testify, but after closing arguments,
Speaker 1: he gets to go home one last time while the
Speaker 1: jury deliberates because he's out on bond, and he takes
Speaker 1: his own life.
Speaker 3: I could have predicted that.
Speaker 1: On November ninth, twenty twenty two, and then, of course
Speaker 1: the jury finds him guilty a few hours after that.
Speaker 3: Is there any information as to did he make any
Speaker 3: admissions when he was interviewed?
Speaker 1: No, I haven't seen anything about that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can do a quick check, but now, no admissions as
Speaker 1: far as I know, and where he got that money.
Speaker 1: So a bond is how much would that be? Is
Speaker 1: that ten percent? How much do you have to put off?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it's ten percent. I'm not real familiar
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: Seventy five thousand. I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's why is attorney negotiated specifically down to seven hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand, because he knew his client probably had
Speaker 3: sufficient funds in order to be able to do the bond.
Speaker 1: So all of this is no justice for Jodie. And
Speaker 1: in a way, yes, because you know, we find out
Speaker 1: who the offender is. I don't know if for fiance
Speaker 1: ever had a cloud of suspicion even though he had
Speaker 1: a really solid alibi. We've done those cases before, but
Speaker 1: this was not what the family wanted. Surely out of all.
Speaker 3: Of this, Yeah, they got an answer, and this is hard.
Speaker 3: I can't speak, you know, to how the family would
Speaker 3: feel about the circumstances of Terrence being let out and
Speaker 3: taking his own life while out of custody. I could
Speaker 3: assume they would be appalled at the fact that this
Speaker 3: guy that's being accused of murdering and sexually assaulting and
Speaker 3: murdering their twenty year old daughter is even being allowed
Speaker 3: to be out of custody while he's going through trial. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Terrence Miller's age probably was a actor that the judge
Speaker 3: considered he's unlikely to be a flight risk. I'm surprised
Speaker 3: for this type of crime that they reduced the amount
Speaker 3: down to something that he could afford to post. So
Speaker 3: I think the family rightfully would be very very upset
Speaker 3: about that now, whether or not. I mean, they may
Speaker 3: see him taking his own life as an easy way out.
Speaker 3: You know, they'd want him to have to go through
Speaker 3: the conviction, have to go through, you know, the impact statements,
Speaker 3: the family's confronting him about, you know, the loss of
Speaker 3: their loved one and what that has done to the family,
Speaker 3: and then knowing that he would be in prison for
Speaker 3: the rest of his life. You know, it is an
Speaker 3: unfortunate ending to this. But at the same time, law
Speaker 3: enforcement stayed on it, and you know, it was fortunate
Speaker 3: that there was biological evidence on the boot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are answers, I mean, thank goodness. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's unfortunate to me is certainly I
Speaker 1: wish that this had happened before the true when all started,
Speaker 1: her sister, who was twelve at the time, had to
Speaker 1: take the stand identify the boots that her sister had
Speaker 1: borrowed from her. This was I'm sure traumatizing for the
Speaker 1: family even decades later. But you know, at the same time,
Speaker 1: there you are, you do have some answers. You do
Speaker 1: have a face, You're not looking over your shoulder. I mean,
Speaker 1: what if you're suspecting your neighbor, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: that's probably where I would have headed, is maybe a
Speaker 1: family member or maybe a neighbor or something. And knowing
Speaker 1: that this guy is out there, I'm shocked that he
Speaker 1: wasn't in CODIS.
Speaker 3: But I guess not based off the criminal history that
Speaker 3: you provided. You have loud and Lusibus with a minor
Speaker 3: back in the nineteen sixties. Sounds like he got a
Speaker 3: slap on the wrist for what sounds like a sexual
Speaker 3: abuse of a family member, which I'm assuming is another child.
Speaker 3: That's a big, big mess up. And the justice system
Speaker 3: right there, how old those crimes are, you know, it
Speaker 3: really comes down to Washington's laws in terms of does
Speaker 3: he qualify for cases that are that far back in
Speaker 3: time to be sampled and put into CODIS. There's like
Speaker 3: in Calishfordia, there is changes over time to where at
Speaker 3: a certain point you could retroactive for these older cases.
Speaker 3: You could go back and now get samples from sex
Speaker 3: offenders that were convicted decades prior. But there's so many
Speaker 3: sex offenders that qualify to be sampled, and they've never
Speaker 3: been sampled, and they're just out in the public, and
Speaker 3: there's money is available for agencies to be able to,
Speaker 3: you know, dedicate resources to go out and track those
Speaker 3: guys down and get their samples, but some agencies will
Speaker 3: never follow through with it.
Speaker 1: Well, we don't often have these cold cases that we
Speaker 1: are able to follow up and say this is what
Speaker 1: actually happened. So I'm grateful for that. I know you
Speaker 1: like talking about genetic genealogy and DNA and all of
Speaker 1: the advances. That's you know, what you work on all
Speaker 1: the time. So this was a case that I'm glad
Speaker 1: had closure, But to me, in some ways an unsatisfying ending.
Speaker 1: What I'm hoping is is that, you know, next week
Speaker 1: we can have some cases where we see true to
Speaker 1: form justice. That's what I look for. I know I
Speaker 1: don't always give them to you, but I really try.
Speaker 1: We have a mixed bag when we were in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, in the early nineteen hundreds, you just never know.
Speaker 3: Sure, Well, every time I sit down to talk to you,
Speaker 3: I never know what you're going to give me.
Speaker 1: That's the goal. Okay, I will see you for a
Speaker 1: very different case next week.
Speaker 3: Sounds great. Take care, Kate, me too.
Speaker 2: This has been an exactly right production for our.
Speaker 3: Sources and show notes go to exactly Rightmedia dot com
Speaker 3: slash Buried Bones Sources.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi.
Speaker 3: Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1: Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 2: You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Speaker 2: Buried Bones Pod.
Speaker 3: Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Speaker 3: Age story of murder and the race to decode the
Speaker 3: criminal mind, is available now, and.
Speaker 2: Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold
Speaker 2: Cases is also available now.
Speaker 3: Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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