Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: It was April twelfth, nineteen seventy one. A twenty seven
Speaker 2: year old woman named Pauline Stormant was walking down South
Speaker 2: Duncan Avenue in Fayetteville, Arkansas, just a few blocks from
Speaker 2: her apartment. She didn't know that someone was following her
Speaker 2: in the darkness. Pauline worked two part time jobs, one
Speaker 2: is a cashier at the Malco Theater and another as
Speaker 2: a secretary at the ROTC Center on the University of
Speaker 2: Arkansas campus. Pauline had recently started going back to school
Speaker 2: as a mature student. She enrolled as a sophomore at
Speaker 2: the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where she was a
Speaker 2: social welfare major. Pauline had a roommate, Alice pat Murphy.
Speaker 2: Pat later told the authorities that Pauline wasn't dating anyone. Actually,
Speaker 2: Pauline spent most of her free time hitting the books.
Speaker 2: She was very focused on schoolwork, which meant that she
Speaker 2: was often pulling late nights at the library. On that night,
Speaker 2: on April twelfth, Pauline did a shift at the ROTC.
Speaker 2: While she was there, she mentioned to a coworker that
Speaker 2: she might go to a gospel concert later, but she
Speaker 2: ended up going to the library to study.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: According to her roommate, Pauline's regular routine would have had
Speaker 2: her coming home at around ten thirty or eleven PM,
Speaker 2: but something made her lead the library a little earlier
Speaker 2: that night, around nine thirty pm. And then while she
Speaker 2: was walking, when she was just a few blocks from
Speaker 2: her apartment, someone came out of that darkness and attacked Pauline,
Speaker 2: stabbing her over and over eight times in all, in
Speaker 2: a frenzied attack that lasted several minutes. It was a
Speaker 2: hot night, a lot of people had their windows open,
Speaker 2: and at nine forty five pm when Pauline started screaming,
Speaker 2: a lot of people in the area heard her screaming,
Speaker 2: and there were several witnesses who saw a man come
Speaker 2: up behind her. But despite that, Pauline's killer is escaped
Speaker 2: into the night. And even though the police have questioned
Speaker 2: tons of people, lots of theories have been explored over
Speaker 2: the years, and there was one arrest, Pauline's killer has
Speaker 2: never been found. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five
Speaker 2: years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've
Speaker 2: learned there's no such thing as a small town where
Speaker 2: murder never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people
Speaker 2: all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
Speaker 2: murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
Speaker 2: you have a case you'd like me and my team
Speaker 2: to look into, you can reach out to us at
Speaker 2: our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
Speaker 2: four four six one four or five. That's six seven
Speaker 2: eight seven four four six ' one four five. This
Speaker 2: is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 1: Police got to the scene really quickly.
Speaker 2: They rushed Pauline to Washington Regional Hospital, but they couldn't
Speaker 2: do anything to save her, and she was pronounced dead
Speaker 2: just after eleven PM. So the assault had very quickly
Speaker 2: turned into a murder case. Pauline's body was sent for
Speaker 2: an autopsy. Forensic testing revealed that Pauline had died of
Speaker 2: the stab wounds. She had been stabbed in the arm,
Speaker 2: the chest, and the stomach. Investigators said the murder weapon
Speaker 2: was a knife like a butcher knife, around six to
Speaker 2: eight inches long, and they believed serrated on both sides.
Speaker 2: The police did not find the murder weapon at the scene,
Speaker 2: but several days later, the sheriff did find a butcher
Speaker 2: knife that was stabbed into the ground behind an apartment
Speaker 2: complex that was across the street from where Pauline lived.
Speaker 2: They sent that knife in for testing, but I haven't
Speaker 2: been able to figure out what, if anything, happened with
Speaker 2: that weapon. A lot of people doubted that that butcher
Speaker 2: knife had been the weapon in the first place, because
Speaker 2: it wasn't serrated. But as far as I know, and
Speaker 2: there is a lot of information missing in this case,
Speaker 2: there was nothing conclusive, ever proven one way.
Speaker 1: Or the other.
Speaker 2: Sadly, that knife, along with a ton of other evidence,
Speaker 2: has been lost.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that later. Side note.
Speaker 2: While I was working on Gail Vaut's case, which we
Speaker 2: covered a couple of weeks back, as part of that,
Speaker 2: we started looking around for other unsolved murders in the
Speaker 2: same area of Arkansas. Even though Pauline's murder happened nine
Speaker 2: years earlier than Gail's murder in nineteen eighty, I couldn't
Speaker 2: help but be struck by Pauline's case because, even though
Speaker 2: them was completely different for Pauline and Gail, Gail was
Speaker 2: shot in the head and appeared to have been sexually assaulted,
Speaker 2: while Pauline was stabbed in a semi public area both
Speaker 2: women were tall with shoulder linked brown hair, and both
Speaker 2: cases were unsolved.
Speaker 1: I want to be cleared.
Speaker 2: Nothing in the evidence I've seen indicates these cases are
Speaker 2: connected in any way. The mos were completely different. Gail
Speaker 2: was shot in the head and appeared to have been
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted. Pauline was stabbed in a semi public area.
Speaker 2: Amy reached out to a member of Pauline's family named
Speaker 2: Lance Gosnell. His great grandmother is Pauline's aunt, so he's
Speaker 2: her cousin and he's been hearing about Pauline's story about
Speaker 2: this famous unsolved murder in his family for a long time,
Speaker 2: since he was very young. A few years ago, he
Speaker 2: decided to try and find answers. He started writing about
Speaker 2: the case. The website is at who Murdered Pauline dot
Speaker 2: WordPress dot com, and he's compiled a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: evidence over the years that he's collected a lot of
Speaker 2: it through Foyer requests. Pauline Stormant was born on April third,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, in Ozark, Arkansas, and her family her
Speaker 2: mom and dad were still living in Ozark when she
Speaker 2: died from a young age. Her family described her as
Speaker 2: someone who was very serious, pretty quiet, and liked to study.
Speaker 2: She was not a drinker or a partier in high school,
Speaker 2: and it seemed to be pretty much the same story
Speaker 2: in college. After she graduated from high school, she attended
Speaker 2: Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. She finished her freshman year
Speaker 2: there and after that she left school and started doing
Speaker 2: some secretarial work. So one thing about Pauline's stormant her
Speaker 2: studies and her work life are pretty well documented. Her
Speaker 2: personal life is much more of a mystery.
Speaker 1: There are some years.
Speaker 2: Between when she was twenty one and twenty seven where
Speaker 2: we don't know a lot about her personal relationships. When
Speaker 2: she was twenty one years old, in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: Pauline got married to a man named Charles Joseph Pate.
Speaker 2: A lot of their relationship, as we said, is a mystery,
Speaker 2: but we do know that whatever happened between them apparently
Speaker 2: did not end very well. Charles and Pauline lived in
Speaker 2: Memphis for a while. While Pauline was in Memphis, she
Speaker 2: taught first aid for the Red Cross as well as
Speaker 2: doing some secretarial work. Again, a lot of the history
Speaker 2: about Pauline in this case was provided by her cousin Lance.
Speaker 3: One other thing that jumps out in my mind is
Speaker 3: the records show that she was married to a man
Speaker 3: named Charles Pate. The marriage didn't last long. I can't
Speaker 3: find a door forced certificate, but she had mentioned to
Speaker 3: a roommate who she had lived with when she was
Speaker 3: either in Memphis or Atlanta, that she was deathly afraid
Speaker 3: of her ex husband.
Speaker 2: So Pauline and Charles were estranged, but according to her
Speaker 2: family and to court records, they may not have beneficially divorced.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen seventy one, Pauline was at the University
Speaker 2: of Arkansas. She had put her studies on hold while
Speaker 2: she was married to Charles, but once Pauline got the
Speaker 2: chance to complete her education, she seemed to really throw
Speaker 2: herself into it. Information from a foyer request from an
Speaker 2: old police report shows that Pauline's former roommate, the one
Speaker 2: who Lance was referring to, who she had lived with
Speaker 2: in Memphis. That woman's name was Iris Fletcher. She was
Speaker 2: the one who talked about Pauline's fear of her ex husband.
Speaker 2: But apparently police ruled out Charles fairly early. I don't
Speaker 2: know why I have really tried to figure that out,
Speaker 2: but I don't have a lot of information about the
Speaker 2: investigation because a lot of the case file is gone
Speaker 2: over the years, a lot of the evidence and a
Speaker 2: lot of the pages have been lost. But apparently he
Speaker 2: attended the funeral, was cooperative with the police, and was
Speaker 2: cleared early. Pauline's college roommate passed the one who said
Speaker 2: that Pauline didn't date that much. Was asked by police
Speaker 2: if anything strange had happened on the day Pauline was murdered,
Speaker 2: and she said, yes, there was one.
Speaker 1: Thing that was out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2: She said that at around two pm that afternoon, apparently
Speaker 2: two men who were described as white men, young guys
Speaker 2: who Pauline and her roommate didn't know, invited Pauline and
Speaker 2: pat for drinks. The two women said no thanks and
Speaker 2: didn't take them up on their offer. Later, the two
Speaker 2: men reportedly went toward the residence of a guy named
Speaker 2: Gordon Cummings. Gordon Cummings with someone who we know Pauline
Speaker 2: had been introduced to. She knew him, but we don't
Speaker 2: know how well she knew him, and that will be
Speaker 2: the case with a lot of these relationships. Trying to
Speaker 2: figure out exactly how these people were related and connected
Speaker 2: each other is a huge part of this. We all
Speaker 2: know that sometimes in these cases, these tiny little details
Speaker 2: that we know are true and am using air quotes
Speaker 2: there turn out to be slightly wrong, and those slightly
Speaker 2: wrong details can multiply over the years and turn into
Speaker 2: a much larger distortion.
Speaker 1: We've seen this happen over and over with so many cases.
Speaker 2: Facts are wrong from the beginning, and they're repeated wrong
Speaker 2: over the years. At the same time, though, sometimes tiny
Speaker 2: details are left out and you never know which ones
Speaker 2: could lead to cracking the case. Jane Jones wrote a long,
Speaker 2: very in depth article about this case in Ay about
Speaker 2: U magazine back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: She pointed out that it was a full moon that night.
Speaker 2: This was something that had appeared in some early news reports,
Speaker 2: and that detail supposedly meant that Pauline could be seen
Speaker 2: by the witnesses that night. But actually, because I obsess
Speaker 2: over these things, I went back and found out actually
Speaker 2: the moon wasn't full that night.
Speaker 1: It was a waning gibbous moon.
Speaker 2: Not that that makes any difference in the context of
Speaker 2: the investigation at all, because actually a waning gibbus is
Speaker 2: almost a full moon. It's actually the part of the
Speaker 2: lunar phase right after the moon is full. It would
Speaker 2: be almost as light as a full moon out there,
Speaker 2: but probably a little bit less poetic in a newspaper article,
Speaker 2: And I'm bringing this up just to illustrate it's one
Speaker 2: tiny example of something we thought we knew wrong. Information
Speaker 2: gets repeated over the years, and sometimes it multiplies. So
Speaker 2: I'm really trying to go back and take a look
Speaker 2: at every single piece of information that we have and
Speaker 2: try to understand if we really know everything that we
Speaker 2: think we know. Police were trying to figure out what
Speaker 2: Pauline's plans had been that night, to see if, other
Speaker 2: than the two guys asking her in her roommate to
Speaker 2: have drinks, anything else oude of the ordinary had happened.
Speaker 2: Police talked to a woman named Terry Keating. Now Terry
Speaker 2: worked with Pauline at the ROTC office. She said she
Speaker 2: had seen Pauline at around seven thirty pm and that
Speaker 2: Pauline had mentioned something about a gospel concert hosted by
Speaker 2: a group called Black Americans for Democracy. This concert was
Speaker 2: going to be held at the Union Ballroom, a building
Speaker 2: that was basically very close right next door to the ROTC.
Speaker 1: Building. It started at eight pm.
Speaker 2: But whether Pauline attended that concert or not is still
Speaker 2: kind of a question mark because some reports say she
Speaker 2: was planning to go. Other media reports say she told
Speaker 2: someone she had a class or a conflict and she
Speaker 2: could not attend. Lance pointed out something interesting on his website.
Speaker 2: He said that we're talking about nineteen seventy one Arkansas,
Speaker 2: and he was speculating, but he said, could some racist
Speaker 2: person have taken offense at a white woman planning to
Speaker 2: go to this concert where there were going to be
Speaker 2: a lot of black singers?
Speaker 1: Total speculation, but given the political.
Speaker 2: Climate at the time, I do think it's something that
Speaker 2: police would have to consider. But there was no evidence
Speaker 2: that this was ever a factor. So whether or not
Speaker 2: Pauline made it to that concert. Eventually, after she worked
Speaker 2: her shift at the ROTC, she ended up at the library.
Speaker 2: She was seen by multiple witnesses there, but then she
Speaker 2: left suddenly. We don't know exactly what time, but by
Speaker 2: tracing her route, she must have headed outside at around
Speaker 2: nine point thirty.
Speaker 1: So why did she leave early?
Speaker 2: Was it a coincidence or did she see something or
Speaker 2: someone there that bothered her? After she left the library,
Speaker 2: Pauline's root would have taken her south along Duncan Avenue.
Speaker 1: She was walking pretty.
Speaker 2: Slowly and carefully because she had a big stack of
Speaker 2: books in her hands. So again I'm betting that she
Speaker 2: headed straight home because she was balancing lots of school books.
Speaker 2: She was at the intersection of Duncan Avenue and Treadwell
Speaker 2: Streets when her attacker struck. The vicious attack happened very quickly,
Speaker 2: and then her attacker left the scene on foot. Another
Speaker 2: thing that we know for sure in this case is
Speaker 2: the time of death. We know she was screaming at
Speaker 2: nine forty five pm because several people heard her at
Speaker 2: the same time. One of them was twenty four year
Speaker 2: old Jack Huff. He lived at the Summit Terraces apartments,
Speaker 2: which were nearby. He said when he heard that scream,
Speaker 2: he ran downstairs and he saw Pauline kind of staggering
Speaker 2: toward him and holding her stomach. He told the police
Speaker 2: that Pauline said someone hit her in the chest, and
Speaker 2: that she said someone was following her, someone who was
Speaker 2: wearing glasses. Another witness named Mike Adare, also lived nearby.
Speaker 2: He said he'd actually seen Pauline before the attack.
Speaker 1: Happened.
Speaker 2: He said he was driving home and at the corner
Speaker 2: of Duncan and Center, right where she got attacked, He
Speaker 2: said he saw her carrying some really heavy books and
Speaker 2: he saw a.
Speaker 1: Man following her.
Speaker 2: Two other men, Gary Gammel and Joe Clifton, were driving
Speaker 2: in separate cars north on South Duncan and they were
Speaker 2: approaching that same intersection. Joe also lived at the Summit
Speaker 2: Terrace apartment complex. He told investigators that he also saw
Speaker 2: man following Pauline. He said he noticed she was carrying
Speaker 2: some heavy books and he thought about asking her if
Speaker 2: she wanted a lift, but in the end he didn't.
Speaker 2: Then a few seconds later, he said he heard the scream.
Speaker 2: He heard her screaming, help me. So Joe and Gary
Speaker 2: are also there in their cars. They both rushed up
Speaker 2: to the scene. Gary said that from his point of view,
Speaker 2: he saw Pauline collapse to the ground. He said when
Speaker 2: he looked around, he saw her books and her personal
Speaker 2: belongings on the ground, but he didn't see anyone else.
Speaker 2: He said when he saw Pauline, she was holding her chest.
Speaker 2: He approached her and when he got closer he could
Speaker 2: see that she was lying half in the yard and
Speaker 2: half in the street. He said that her white skirt
Speaker 2: in one of her arms were completely soaked blood. Joe
Speaker 2: said that he asked Pauline if the man that was
Speaker 2: following her did this.
Speaker 1: She told him yes.
Speaker 2: He then started trying to help her, asking where her
Speaker 2: cuts were and which way the man went, but he
Speaker 2: said it. At this point, Pauline didn't know where the
Speaker 2: man went, and she was kind of slipping in and
Speaker 2: out of consciousness. She kept asking for her books. Detectives
Speaker 2: did find Pauline's black purse with her wallet and ID
Speaker 2: in it near her body. They took it in for testing,
Speaker 2: but only found one set of fingerprints, and it turned
Speaker 2: out that they were Pauline's, so police knew it was
Speaker 2: unlikely the killer's motive had been robbery. It didn't seem
Speaker 2: like they grabbed for her purse at all. They were
Speaker 2: trying to hurt her, not take her stuff. Police asked
Speaker 2: all four witnesses some detailed questions about the man that
Speaker 2: they said they saw following Pauline. Mike Adair said the
Speaker 2: man following Pauline was wearing a brown sport coat and
Speaker 2: had blonde or dirty blonde hair, around five ten to
Speaker 2: six feet tall and wearing glasses. So the police did
Speaker 2: a sketch according to these guys descriptions and in the
Speaker 2: end it's kind of random. But this sketch, a lot
Speaker 2: of people pointed out, kind of looked like the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 2: By the way, no, there was no evidence the Zodiac
Speaker 2: Killer was ever involved, So like the Zodiac Killer sketch,
Speaker 2: the sketch in Pauline's case was pretty generic. No one
Speaker 2: had actually seen this man's face, so it was a
Speaker 2: sketch of a guy with slicked back hair and glasses, again,
Speaker 2: a pretty common look on a college campus.
Speaker 1: This guy could have been anyone.
Speaker 2: When Mike was asked about the police sketch, he said, yes,
Speaker 2: it did look similar to the man he saw, but
Speaker 2: he pointed out that the hair of the guy he
Speaker 2: saw was messier, not slick back like on that sketch.
Speaker 2: There were two other potential witnesses, Robert Spray and John Hall.
Speaker 2: These guys lived nearby at twelve South Hill Street. They
Speaker 2: said they had seen a man who could have been
Speaker 2: involved in the crime because the guy kind of fit
Speaker 2: the description of the assailant. He had a sport code on.
Speaker 2: He was described as being medium height with a slight build.
Speaker 2: They said that this guy was kind of stumbling around
Speaker 2: like he was drunk, but they didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: to go on. They didn't have a description of the car,
Speaker 2: and in the end police never definitively found that person,
Speaker 2: so it seemed to be a dead end. So police
Speaker 2: had no idea what the motive had been, but they
Speaker 2: did have potentially four different people who said they definitively
Speaker 2: saw the killer, but their descriptions differed slightly, which of
Speaker 2: course is not uncommon in a case like this, but
Speaker 2: they did all agree on one thing. Pauline had been
Speaker 2: attacked by one person, one man, who stabbed her multiple times,
Speaker 2: and they said that man had been following her and
Speaker 2: was able to get very close to her before he pounced.
Speaker 2: Because of where Pauline's injuries were, the fact that she
Speaker 2: had stab wounds on the front of her body, police
Speaker 2: figured out she had turned around to face her attacker,
Speaker 2: so they wondered was it someone she knew, Was that
Speaker 2: how they were able to get that close, or were
Speaker 2: they just really fast and could they have snuck up
Speaker 2: on her that quickly. The police admitted they didn't know
Speaker 2: if this had been someone fixated on Pauline specifically, or
Speaker 2: someone targeting women totally randomly, or even possibly a case
Speaker 2: of mistaken identity. Because it was pretty dark it was night,
Speaker 2: none of the men who saw this stranger were that close,
Speaker 2: so even though there were multiple witnesses, not a single
Speaker 2: one got a good look at the killer's face. But
Speaker 2: police did know one thing that was such a vicious attack.
Speaker 2: The person who stabbed Pauline would have blood on their clothing,
Speaker 2: so police canvassed the area. They were looking for a
Speaker 2: suspect covered in blood, and it wasn't long before they
Speaker 2: found one. A few minutes after the stabbing, police were
Speaker 2: cruising the area when two officers saw two young men
Speaker 2: sitting on a bench. According to a very good article
Speaker 2: in Master Detective magazine from nineteen seventy four, they were
Speaker 2: around five blocks away from the crime scene when they
Speaker 2: saw these guys. One of them was so seventeen year
Speaker 2: old Wallace Peter Cunkle. So the police start talking to
Speaker 2: these guys and apparently they told the officers that they
Speaker 2: were just hanging around. They were supposed to have had
Speaker 2: dates with two girls, but they'd been stood up. But
Speaker 2: when police asked them for more details, the guys said
Speaker 2: they didn't even know these girls' names, which honestly seems
Speaker 2: a little bit strange to me that they wouldn't even
Speaker 2: have a first name. But apparently the police thought this
Speaker 2: story was believable. As the detective was talking to Peter Cunkle,
Speaker 2: he noticed some dark spots on his white shirt, jacket,
Speaker 2: and trousers. Later it was determined those were blood. When
Speaker 2: the officer asked Peter why he had blood on his clothes,
Speaker 2: Peter said he'd had a nosebleed recently. Now, to police,
Speaker 2: with everything going on, this seemed like a pretty big coincidence,
Speaker 2: so they took him in for questioning. They took his clothes,
Speaker 2: and they took samples of his blood. Now, obviously this
Speaker 2: was back in nineteen seventy one, so the testing they
Speaker 2: could do on blood was much more limited than it
Speaker 2: is now. They could basically tell you what type blood
Speaker 2: it was, and that's about it. Peter got a lawyer,
Speaker 2: and his lawyer said he refused to take a polygraph test. Now,
Speaker 2: by the way, I don't hold this against him at all,
Speaker 2: just my opinion, but I've said this before. I actually
Speaker 2: think this is a very smart move. Honestly, asking for
Speaker 2: an attorney, especially in a situation like this where you
Speaker 2: know the police are kind of on a fishing expedition,
Speaker 2: is something that I think everyone should do. Peter told police,
Speaker 2: and this is according to his police statement that was
Speaker 2: released via a Foyer request, that he and a friend
Speaker 2: were boiling water with speed that night.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about injectable speed before.
Speaker 2: That was a big thing in the seventies and eighties
Speaker 2: in Arkansas, and what they were using was a drug
Speaker 2: that was similar to finfinn. Now, if you were around
Speaker 2: in the eighties, you may remember that this was an
Speaker 2: ingredient in a diet drug before it got removed from
Speaker 2: the market by the FDA in the mid nineties because
Speaker 2: people who took it were experiencing heart damage. These pills
Speaker 2: were very strong, they were speed. What they would do
Speaker 2: is boil water, throw a lot of pills in there,
Speaker 2: and then inject this stuff into their veins. So Peter
Speaker 2: Kunkle said that's what they were doing that night. He
Speaker 2: said he started shooting up at around seven thirty pm.
Speaker 2: He took another shot at eight pm and then did
Speaker 2: a few other things. Stopped by a local store called
Speaker 2: the jet Set to get a sprite. Then between nine
Speaker 2: thirty and nine to forty five pm, so the crucial
Speaker 2: time when Pauline would have been walking from the library.
Speaker 2: He said a friend of his named Richard Finley, who
Speaker 2: had been hanging out with that night, asked Peter to
Speaker 2: take him home, So Peter said they borrowed one of
Speaker 2: their friend's motorcycles, and then he claims that he gave
Speaker 2: Richard a ride home and their route would have involved
Speaker 2: cutting right through Dixon Avenue, right through the crime scene.
Speaker 2: After dropping Richard home, Peter said that he went back
Speaker 2: to the Grayhouse.
Speaker 1: This was the place where he'd been staying, so Peter
Speaker 1: was in the area.
Speaker 2: According to the Arkansas Razorback newspaper, both Peter Kuncle and
Speaker 2: Pauline had Type A blood, but unfortunately, these small amounts
Speaker 2: of blood that drops on Peter's clothes, they didn't have
Speaker 2: enough to test it in the lab back then. So
Speaker 2: the bottom line was a lot of people have blood
Speaker 2: Type A and they had no physical evidence tying Peter
Speaker 2: to the crime scene. And Peter had a good attorney.
Speaker 2: His attorney was on point, and he cut a deal
Speaker 2: with the police. He said, Peter would agree to take
Speaker 2: a lot of detector test but only if the police
Speaker 2: would agree that if Peter passed that test, basically they
Speaker 2: would clear him.
Speaker 1: And apparently the police agreed to do that and Peter passed.
Speaker 2: So Peter Conkle was released from police custody and publicly
Speaker 2: cleared by law enforcement. The police chief, Hollis Spencer, said
Speaker 2: that police were quote satisfied that he had no part
Speaker 2: in the murder of Miss stormant end quote. Then Peter
Speaker 2: cuncle and his parents held a press conference and he
Speaker 2: was very emotional at this press conference. I remember he's
Speaker 2: only seventeen years old and he was crying. He told
Speaker 2: everybody he didn't blame the police, they were just doing
Speaker 2: their job. He said he always knew he would be
Speaker 2: cleared and he completely denied having anything to do with
Speaker 2: Pauline's murder. By the way, the charges against Peter were dropped,
Speaker 2: but they were what we call nelly prost meaning dismissed
Speaker 2: without prejudice, so if new evidence ever comes to light,
Speaker 2: he could technically have been retried. After Peter was released,
Speaker 2: police started looking for other people of interest. They did
Speaker 2: a lot of interviews, they reportedly gave a lot more
Speaker 2: a lie detector tests, and then just a month after
Speaker 2: Pauline was murdered, a second University of Arkansas co ed
Speaker 2: was stabbed. Her name was Andrea Jones and she lived
Speaker 2: about one point eight miles from where Pauline was attacked.
Speaker 2: Police arrested a man named Eddie Rush. He was twenty
Speaker 2: one years old and not a student at the University
Speaker 2: of Arkansas. Apparently Eddie Rush lied his way into andrew
Speaker 2: his apartment and attacked her. He stabbed her several times,
Speaker 2: but she survived. Eddie Rush was convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 2: twenty one years in prison for attempted murder.
Speaker 1: And we're bringing Eddie Rush.
Speaker 2: Up because his picture in the newspaper from back then
Speaker 2: looks very much like the sketch that was circulated of
Speaker 2: Pauline's attacker. He's got a short buzz cut, but he
Speaker 2: does have glasses, and he would seem to fit the
Speaker 2: general description. Eddie Rush passed away several years ago, and
Speaker 2: because in Pauline's case, there's no DNA attest, sadly there's
Speaker 2: no way to investigate him now. But after that, no
Speaker 2: one else was arrested or charged. Then, on May twenty second,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one, a man named Jack Butler walked into
Speaker 2: the Faateful Police Department. He said he had something to
Speaker 2: tell police. He claimed that he had murdered Pauline Storman.
Speaker 2: Jack Butler's story was that he was hanging around a
Speaker 2: swimming pool on the University of Arkansas campus. He said
Speaker 2: after that he went home and got a pocket knife
Speaker 2: and started strolling through Evergreen Cemetery. He said that he
Speaker 2: saw a woman and started following her and attacked her
Speaker 2: and stabbed her from behind. This is where the story
Speaker 2: gets a little strange, because apparently he thought the woman
Speaker 2: was his wife. He told police when he got home
Speaker 2: he was shocked because he thought his wife was dead
Speaker 2: and she was ready to have dinner. He said he
Speaker 2: only later realized that the woman he had supposedly stabbed
Speaker 2: was Pauline Stormant. But he said a lot of things
Speaker 2: that didn't seem to fit the evidence or actually make sense.
Speaker 2: Like he said he had stabbed Pauline three times, when
Speaker 2: we know she'd been stabbed a lot more than that.
Speaker 2: And he also said she was carrying a record player
Speaker 2: at the time. If you were anywhere near that scene,
Speaker 2: you know she had a big stack of books in
Speaker 2: her hands. Police apparently decided this confession was erroneous and
Speaker 2: Jack Butler was cut loose. Also, more time went by
Speaker 2: in the case seemed to go cold. I like to
Speaker 2: look at old cases so we can see the techniques
Speaker 2: that work. On April eighth, nineteen eighty one, ten years
Speaker 2: after Pauline's murder, in Texarkana, two siblings, fourteen year old
Speaker 2: Karen Alexander and thirteen year old Gordon Alexander, were fatally
Speaker 2: stabbed to death inside their home.
Speaker 1: For decades, this was a cold case.
Speaker 2: Police said Karen had been sexually assaulted shortly before the murder.
Speaker 2: The murder weapon was a butter knife, but police never
Speaker 2: made any arrests over the years. Like in Pauline's case,
Speaker 2: a lot of people said it could have been a
Speaker 2: serial killer, could have been Henry Lee Lucas. Apparently he
Speaker 2: claimed responsibility for those killings, but later, like so many
Speaker 2: of Henry Lee Lucas's other confessions, it was proven to
Speaker 2: be false. He was nowhere near Texarkana when these murders happened.
Speaker 2: It was a really tragic story because after the murders
Speaker 2: of her children, their mother took her own life after
Speaker 2: suffering from depression. And it wasn't until forty two years later,
Speaker 2: when a detective took up the case and resubmitted some
Speaker 2: forensic evidence into codis that they discovered the killer was
Speaker 2: there all along. It was the children's father, Weldon Alexander,
Speaker 2: who had supposedly had an airtight alibi working an overnight
Speaker 2: shift a copper Tyron rubber plant. Police believe he had
Speaker 2: been sexually assaulting his daughter Karen for months. They believed
Speaker 2: that on the morning when the children were killed, or
Speaker 2: possibly the night before, he attempted to rape Karen, she
Speaker 2: fought him off or her brother tried to intervene.
Speaker 1: They both ended up being brutally murdered.
Speaker 2: It is a sad and horrific case, but I'm bringing
Speaker 2: it up because sometimes all it takes is one fresh
Speaker 2: set of eyes who can look at the case file
Speaker 2: and break the case. The time of death being a
Speaker 2: little bit earlier or later than police think someone's alibi
Speaker 2: not checking out. Even the coldest cases can be solved now. Obviously,
Speaker 2: in that case, the Alexander murders, there was DNA that
Speaker 2: could be resubmitted, which I'm not sure is true for
Speaker 2: Pauline's case, But for all the families out there, you
Speaker 2: have a cold case that has been going on for
Speaker 2: years or decades, there's always hope. So back to Pauline's case.
Speaker 2: Pauline's family didn't give up, and eventually Lance started writing
Speaker 2: on his website and posting on sites like web slues.
Speaker 2: Lance said that at one point law enforcement actually put
Speaker 2: in an email quote at the moment, only a deathbed
Speaker 2: confession or a secret diary hidden away in an attict
Speaker 2: basement or bible will close this case.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 2: Given the fact that police say there's no DNA, and
Speaker 2: this is what we're left with, what's next for this case?
Speaker 2: If the four why a request information we have so
Speaker 2: far as correct, there's apparently no DNA to test, so
Speaker 2: authorities can't do, for example, familial DNA testing. Over the years,
Speaker 2: a lot of people have put a lot of different
Speaker 2: theories forward. Some people compared Pauline's case to Betsy Ardsma's
Speaker 2: murder because both of them were killed in college libraries.
Speaker 1: Police have said there's.
Speaker 2: No connection between those two cases. Some people suggested it
Speaker 2: could be the Zodiac or Ted Bundy a serial killer,
Speaker 2: but again, there was absolutely no evidence of this and
Speaker 2: this was not Ted Bundy's mo Honestly, there's no evidence
Speaker 2: that this was a serial killer at all. But as
Speaker 2: Lance said, so far, the evidence seems to point to
Speaker 2: a more personal murder, some kind of crime of passion.
Speaker 2: So if there's going to be a break in this case,
Speaker 2: it's almost certainly not going to be from retesting of DNA,
Speaker 2: because so much of it has been lost. It's going
Speaker 2: to be from someone who knows something. It's also interesting
Speaker 2: that so many people, all the witnesses, seem to agree
Speaker 2: on a couple of things, including the fact the person
Speaker 2: who stabbed Pauline approached on foot. None of them remember
Speaker 2: hearing a car afterwards. So this is a person who
Speaker 2: obviously felt confident enough that they could move quickly enough
Speaker 2: on that campus that they could get very close to
Speaker 2: her without her being alarmed and without anyone else noticing them.
Speaker 2: They believed that they fit in, and they probably did,
Speaker 2: because remember several people saw a man following Pauline and
Speaker 2: they didn't realize that was anything out of the ordinary
Speaker 2: until they heard the screams. This person's plan was to
Speaker 2: attack Pauline and to flee the scene, and that's what
Speaker 2: they did, and it worked, because up until now this
Speaker 2: person has gotten away with this murder. They walked up
Speaker 2: to a young woman in the prime of her life,
Speaker 2: murdered her and got away clean. Was it someone who
Speaker 2: knew Pauline who had some kind of a grudge or
Speaker 2: was it someone who maybe was obsessed with her, who
Speaker 2: wanted to know her and was frustrated because they couldn't
Speaker 2: make contact in the way they wanted. Remember, in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four Master Detective magazine, he had published that big
Speaker 2: article about the killing. In the nineteen eighties, the magazine
Speaker 2: got an anonymous letter. The letter was postmarked Capron, Virginia,
Speaker 2: and so that police had not caught the real killer.
Speaker 2: The letter said that Pauline's killer had targeted her because
Speaker 2: they believed she was someone else, that the whole thing
Speaker 2: had been a mistake. Investigators did take some fingerprints off
Speaker 2: that document, but tragically those prints, along with so much
Speaker 2: other evidence, suffered the same fate. They were lost by
Speaker 2: law enforcement. But the postmark is interesting for another reason.
Speaker 2: There's a correctional facility there called the Southampton Correctional Center.
Speaker 2: Lance points that out on his website. Now, there were
Speaker 2: some inmates there who did time who were supposedly friends
Speaker 2: of Peter Cunkle's and Joe Clifton, one of the witnesses
Speaker 2: was also there incarcerated for a period of time. This
Speaker 2: is very interesting to me because I wonder could that
Speaker 2: mean that the police were about Peter Cuncle, that maybe
Speaker 2: he targeted Pauline because he thought she was his day
Speaker 2: who stood him up? And what about Joe Clifton, Could
Speaker 2: he have been more than a witness. There are so
Speaker 2: many mysteries in this case. I have so many questions
Speaker 2: about the investigation, about these people's relationship to each other,
Speaker 2: whether all of them just happened to randomly be there,
Speaker 2: or whether there was more to these stories. And I
Speaker 2: also have questions about Pauline's ex husband. How conclusively he,
Speaker 2: or for that matter, any of these people were ruled out.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that any one of these people is
Speaker 1: responsible for her murder.
Speaker 2: Again, We're just trying to follow the threads to pick
Speaker 2: up on anything that might have been missed over the years.
Speaker 2: No one has ever been arrested or charged with this murder,
Speaker 2: so I'm doing what I usually do. We're reaching out
Speaker 2: to anyone who may have been in the area on
Speaker 2: that day, who may have seen anything, any detailed, no
Speaker 2: matter how small. We're breaking out a giant pot of
Speaker 2: CAF and were going through some case files with a
Speaker 2: lot of missing pages. According to his obituary, Charles Pate.
Speaker 2: After he divorced Pauline, served in Vietnam, got numerous commendations,
Speaker 2: and later got a job working for the Smithsonian Institute.
Speaker 2: He moved back to Arkansas and became a fishing guide.
Speaker 2: He passed away in twenty eighteen. Then there's Gordon Cummings,
Speaker 2: the guy Pauline knew, and the two friends who asked
Speaker 2: the girls if they wanted to have drinks that day?
Speaker 2: Who were those guys? Could they have had anything to
Speaker 2: do with this? Could they have seen something? Or could
Speaker 2: those two men have had anything to do with Peter
Speaker 2: Cunkle and his friend, the ones who said they had
Speaker 2: dates who stood them up. Yes, Peter was cleared by police,
Speaker 2: but as we know, he had a very good lawyer,
Speaker 2: and sometimes mistakes are made. Lance said that while he
Speaker 2: hopes to have answers one day in this case, he
Speaker 2: would also really love to have Pauline's memory honored somewhere
Speaker 2: in the University of Arkansas campus.
Speaker 4: My long term goal this project, in anything that comes
Speaker 4: out of it, I would be completely happy if somehow
Speaker 4: I could see some kind of plaque with her memory
Speaker 4: telling the story, erected somewhere.
Speaker 5: In the vicinity. That's my long term goal to see
Speaker 5: if that happen. I think that would be the best
Speaker 5: way to honor her memory, is to tell her story
Speaker 5: for all to see whenever they come across it. If
Speaker 5: the university would do it, I would love to have
Speaker 5: it right there at the top of South Duncan, at
Speaker 5: the edge of Dixon Street. This is what happened in
Speaker 5: one of our students.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping that someone out there remembers April twelfth, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one, at that intersection near the University of Arkansas.
Speaker 2: Someone who heard a scream or saw something heard someone
Speaker 2: who was there talking about what happened that night, someone
Speaker 2: who might have answers and who can help us go
Speaker 2: closer to finding out what happened to Pauline Stormant.
Speaker 1: I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 2: This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
Speaker 2: is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
Speaker 2: by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
Speaker 2: research assistance. Music contributed by Ben Sale Executive Producers of
Speaker 2: Virginia Prescott Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have
Speaker 2: a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
Speaker 2: you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Speaker 2: Murder Line.
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