Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
Speaker 1: represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.
Speaker 1: This series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised. Previously an algorithm, we dug into Darren
Speaker 1: Bond's past crimes, like how he terrorized his ex girlfriend
Speaker 1: in two thousand four the Girl Fire, Beat on Fire
Speaker 1: and go to Building of All It. After serving time
Speaker 1: and Gary, Von moved back to Austin where he's sexually
Speaker 1: assaulted and almost killed a young woman Papa. But prosecutors
Speaker 1: in Austin say they were unaware of Von's violent past
Speaker 1: and labeled him as a low risk offender. Von pled
Speaker 1: guilty and served five years in prison, and after his
Speaker 1: release he went straight back to Indiana. This episode what
Speaker 1: happened when women started disappearing in Gary? But I really
Speaker 1: thought we caught longs half ago the first personal right
Speaker 1: in here. I don't want to say how I am
Speaker 1: no now states where this is everything from my Heart
Speaker 1: Media and Tenderfoot TV. This is algorithm and I'm ben
Speaker 1: Keye Brick. After Vaughan was released from prison in Austin
Speaker 1: he needed somewhere to stay. Von ended up going straight
Speaker 1: back to Gary and moving in with his brother, Reginald Beard.
Speaker 1: It's unclear exactly when Von started killing after he returned
Speaker 1: to Indiana, but Von's confirmed murders, the ones where he
Speaker 1: took police to the bodies, those appeared to have started
Speaker 1: six months after Vaughan was released from prison, when on Januen,
Speaker 1: Tierra Batty disappeared. She was kind person. Either if she
Speaker 1: can't help a person right then and this she would
Speaker 1: find a way to make something that happens for you know.
Speaker 1: She was like putting a smile on a person's face.
Speaker 1: My name is Marvin Clinton and gl was fiance. And
Speaker 1: how did you guys first meet? I'm in her on
Speaker 1: a cold winter night in the winter of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. I was dripping down the street and it
Speaker 1: was snow on the ground, and I just seen the
Speaker 1: person walking that the election was stressed to be outside
Speaker 1: in the wintertime instead of having on the winter coach
Speaker 1: on like a thin jacket. So I pulled up and
Speaker 1: acts she needed ris somewhere and she said yeah, but
Speaker 1: I in mind. We shaid and talked for a minute,
Speaker 1: then we exchanged from my birth and then it took
Speaker 1: off from there. Marvin liked how kind Tier was and
Speaker 1: they had more in common, and then he would have
Speaker 1: guessed her thing was football. My thing was basketball. But
Speaker 1: it was fun, you know, because she talked the way
Speaker 1: to get me interested in it and last a verse
Speaker 1: with me. Susan kind of like you could teach her
Speaker 1: about basketball, and she would teach him about football exactly.
Speaker 1: Tira and Marvin continued to date over the next four years,
Speaker 1: and in January they had a son together, tray Von.
Speaker 1: You'll actually hear him some in the background of this
Speaker 1: phone call. Tira and Marvin lived separately, and their sons
Speaker 1: stayed with Marvin, but if Tira wasn't around, she would
Speaker 1: always call. She made it a habit to talk to
Speaker 1: him three times a day. She had talked to him
Speaker 1: before he go to school, she had talked to him
Speaker 1: when he come home from school, and then she had
Speaker 1: talked to him before I put him in a bid
Speaker 1: and that was assisted with her. She never was a
Speaker 1: minute earlier. She never was a minute make On January thirteentheen,
Speaker 1: Tira disappeared. She was only twenty eight years old. We
Speaker 1: got up that morning we went around. We did a
Speaker 1: lit shopping, and I think around noon we went in
Speaker 1: Peppy Tacos's, just like a little local Mexican place. Yeahs
Speaker 1: complaining heavy tacos with Margarita's. I had a burrito squeeze
Speaker 1: and she hid full tacos two crush intoksal and then
Speaker 1: we just hung out for the rest of the day,
Speaker 1: watch TV, and I left and went to my house.
Speaker 1: She told him she's gonna call me later and wait
Speaker 1: on a call. It never happened. This wasn't normal for Tierra.
Speaker 1: She never missed her checking calls with her son, no
Speaker 1: matter what was going on. She went calls. I went
Speaker 1: on and I wait the world. Maybe she looked up out.
Speaker 1: I thought she probably fell asleep or so and round
Speaker 1: good night. The one in the morning, I tried to
Speaker 1: give him her a call, but I couldn't get an answer.
Speaker 1: And then I know, I texted her a couple of times,
Speaker 1: still no answer. I didn't think too much of it,
Speaker 1: you know, but then the next morning she didn't call.
Speaker 1: Then she didn't call that afternoon after you bout in school,
Speaker 1: and then she didn't call that night. You know, were
Speaker 1: by a house. Let myself in she want nowhere in
Speaker 1: the house. The second day not here from a contacted
Speaker 1: police and they said, well, you have to wait StEB
Speaker 1: me two hours to report the person missing to Marvin
Speaker 1: waited another day and then went back to the police,
Speaker 1: but he still couldn't convince them that something was wrong.
Speaker 1: They what they were telling enough that she probably want
Speaker 1: to be bothered with nobody. But we knew it that
Speaker 1: wasn't the case. But you n the work off with
Speaker 1: it because she called every day at the same time
Speaker 1: on the die. So a week and a half went
Speaker 1: by still having heard from him, Seeing that nobody talked
Speaker 1: to us, she had called anybody phone. We kept pounding
Speaker 1: them about the miss a person thing, and about two
Speaker 1: weeks and two that's when they finally came out and
Speaker 1: did a report. Marvin had been calling to his cell
Speaker 1: phone over and over. He says, her phone would ring
Speaker 1: and then get a voicemail, and he left her message
Speaker 1: after message until the mailbox was full, and then he
Speaker 1: started noticing something unusual. Sometimes voicemail before and then sometimes
Speaker 1: it was like somebody was going in that empty in
Speaker 1: the voicemail to the point where you can leave messages.
Speaker 1: In January, Marvin Clinton's fiancee, Tierra Batty, disappeared. Marvin called
Speaker 1: her repeatedly and never got through, but he noticed something strange.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it would tell him the voicemail was full, but
Speaker 1: other times there would be room to leave a message.
Speaker 1: What did you think was going on with the voicemails?
Speaker 1: I'm thinking somebody had not a pass code, or maybe
Speaker 1: she had gave him her pass called because she would
Speaker 1: let people use her phone, or maybe she lost the phone,
Speaker 1: or somebody just stole the phone. Whatever was going on,
Speaker 1: Marvin realized that the phone was a clue. If Tira
Speaker 1: still had it, maybe they could use the phone to
Speaker 1: locate her, and if she didn't, whoever was using it
Speaker 1: would be able to tell him something about how they'd
Speaker 1: gotten the phone. Marvin went to the police and asked
Speaker 1: them to investigate it. They were like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we gotta get the warn we got this that it's
Speaker 1: gonna take time. So I said, okay, I'm gonna cut
Speaker 1: out the little man. So Marvin went to the Boost
Speaker 1: Mobile store, where he and Tira both had phone subscriptions.
Speaker 1: I knew the guy at the full store, he knew
Speaker 1: both of us, and he knew I would come in
Speaker 1: and pay both phone bills. So I talked to him
Speaker 1: I tone was going on. He gave me the print
Speaker 1: out of phone records. The phone records showed that Tira's
Speaker 1: phone was being used to make outgoing calls, but they
Speaker 1: weren't to any numbers that Marvin was familiar with. It
Speaker 1: was numbers with different area codes like Chicago, the suburbs
Speaker 1: of Chicago that was at least an hour hour and
Speaker 1: half away from where we were staying. So I said,
Speaker 1: well let me start. It's best gating myself. I started
Speaker 1: callings from the numbers, and a lot of numbers had
Speaker 1: became connected, but there was maybe five numbers that someone
Speaker 1: asked the phone and will always be a female that
Speaker 1: would ask them the phone. So I would say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm calling and see if you know this person. Then
Speaker 1: they'd be like, well, how did you give my number?
Speaker 1: I said, well, this person is missing and it showed
Speaker 1: that her phone called your number, so I want to
Speaker 1: know if you know her or have you seen her?
Speaker 1: And then when I tell them it's a female, they
Speaker 1: respond to me, is that out on associate with females?
Speaker 1: M hm? So I said, well, do you remember who
Speaker 1: would call you from this number? And I would give
Speaker 1: them the number. They all would say that it will
Speaker 1: be a guy call it m hmm. It became clear
Speaker 1: that some man was using tirast phone, but Marvin had
Speaker 1: no idea who it was. One of the women Marvin
Speaker 1: spoke to seemed sympathetic to a story and offered to
Speaker 1: help man her got more into talking about what was
Speaker 1: going on, and she told me. She said, well, I
Speaker 1: don't associate with women. And I say, so, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? So she asked me, what do you need
Speaker 1: me to spell it out for you. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I understand what you're talking about. Nowt for me that
Speaker 1: she was more of a working woman to prostitute. And
Speaker 1: we talked a couple of times, and then it got
Speaker 1: to the point where she actually tried to help me
Speaker 1: find out who had the phone. She said, well, I
Speaker 1: know I talked to the guy a couple of times
Speaker 1: from that number and he was trying to pick me up,
Speaker 1: you know, he was trying to go out on a
Speaker 1: date with me. And I said, well when I called,
Speaker 1: no one answer. So she said, okay, well let me
Speaker 1: see what I could do. So she told me she
Speaker 1: was going to call it not before me, and see
Speaker 1: if she could get anybody answer, So we were the
Speaker 1: sworman since he had been calling her that if she
Speaker 1: called the number back, you know, he would ask them
Speaker 1: because she has spoke to him on that nomber before.
Speaker 1: But then she finally called me back and said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not getting the answer. So that was the end
Speaker 1: of that. And so at that time, what were you thinking,
Speaker 1: like might have happened to her? I just knew something
Speaker 1: one right. I didn't have an idea what may have happened.
Speaker 1: I just knew something wasn't right. Marvin didn't know exactly
Speaker 1: what was going on, but he felt like he was
Speaker 1: onto something. So he went back to the police and
Speaker 1: told them that a man had been using Tira's phone
Speaker 1: to call prostitutes. I gave the detective a copy of
Speaker 1: the phone records. You seemed like he was interested in it,
Speaker 1: and he didn't tell me thanks. But from that point
Speaker 1: on what he did with the record, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: And do you remember around when that would have been.
Speaker 1: That would have been in mid February. Marvin says that
Speaker 1: after he'd given the Gary police hear his Foon records,
Speaker 1: he would regularly call to check in on their investigation.
Speaker 1: I was calling in maybe twice a week every week.
Speaker 1: If I would talk to him on Monday, I'll make
Speaker 1: my attentions to call him by Friday. Let's see what
Speaker 1: happened between Monday and Friday. Because it felt like nothing
Speaker 1: was being done. That's always we actively looking for. We're
Speaker 1: trying to gather what information we could gather, same old
Speaker 1: thing every week. And were you trying to like hold
Speaker 1: him accountable, like let him know, like, hey, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep on you until you do something. Well he
Speaker 1: kind of figured that out. He mentioned to me, you
Speaker 1: do call a lot, and I'm like, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: But my thing is I'm trying to get answers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're going to hear from me until we do
Speaker 1: get asses. Unsatisfied with the lack of progress that police
Speaker 1: seemed to be making, Marvin continued investigating Tira's disappearance on
Speaker 1: his own. I would go to different nightclubs, different bars
Speaker 1: and stuff. Actually, hey, have you seen this person in here?
Speaker 1: I will leave a picture with information on the back
Speaker 1: of it. If you see her, here's my phone novel
Speaker 1: or calmed now one one because she's been reported missing.
Speaker 1: And then around March, somewhere between March April. I started
Speaker 1: in romas a woman who went by the name China
Speaker 1: was saying that she knew where Tira was. China was
Speaker 1: going around telling people that she's in a band of
Speaker 1: building on the west side of the town, and then
Speaker 1: she was the scene. So did you hear it straight
Speaker 1: from China or someone told you that she had been
Speaker 1: going around saying that I heard it from different people
Speaker 1: that this was China was saying. So, I mean, if
Speaker 1: it would have just been one person, I could have
Speaker 1: just kind of brushed it on. But when you're here
Speaker 1: from multiple people, different people, you know, then it starts
Speaker 1: to sink again. In the spring of Marvin Clinton went
Speaker 1: to the detective working on terrabetes missing person case. So
Speaker 1: I told him, I said, this is what I'm hearing
Speaker 1: on the streets. So he actually went and picked China up.
Speaker 1: He picked up on another charge, and he helped her
Speaker 1: in jail for three or four days. And he said
Speaker 1: he's been with a couple of times trying to get
Speaker 1: information out on for but she would used talk to him.
Speaker 1: So that made me start thinking, what she a part
Speaker 1: of this? That she helped with this, you know, because
Speaker 1: a person only knows so much unless they there, and
Speaker 1: for her to say that she's dead on the west
Speaker 1: side of town, that's knowing an awful lot. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: your China's real name? No? And have you ever ever
Speaker 1: met her? I've seen her a couple time of physically
Speaker 1: met her. See you've never like asked her for more information.
Speaker 1: Are you curious about that? Like how she found that out?
Speaker 1: I've been I've been curious about that from day one
Speaker 1: when I first started hitting it, you know. But then
Speaker 1: the detective was telling me, you know, he said, well, hey,
Speaker 1: let me do my job. This is my job. You know,
Speaker 1: you gave me the information, Now let me do my job.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, fine, you know, do you
Speaker 1: know did the police look into that? Did anyone search
Speaker 1: for the body? Yeah? He said they did those some
Speaker 1: active searches and some buildings on the west side and
Speaker 1: the east side of the town. But the buildings that
Speaker 1: they searched, they all came up empty. But remember Gary's
Speaker 1: population had been shrinking for decades, so the city was
Speaker 1: riddled with abandoned buildings. They're about seven thousand. Marvin knew
Speaker 1: from talking to the police that there was no way
Speaker 1: that they've done Thorist search, so he and some of
Speaker 1: Tira's friends decided to start searching through abandoned buildings themselves.
Speaker 1: The first building I went in to it was black
Speaker 1: of singing from a horror movie gang side stuff on
Speaker 1: the wall and old ragged couch that was sitting in
Speaker 1: a little wrong that had with the bottles, beer camp
Speaker 1: not cart it baggies, um use needles and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And as I moved through the house, it was kind
Speaker 1: of scary because I didn't know what I would finding there.
Speaker 1: Were you worried about like running into someone, like someone
Speaker 1: who is like squatting or or something like that. No,
Speaker 1: not really, I was more worried about running into or
Speaker 1: being in there. That was the scariest part about it.
Speaker 1: You know. Then I stumbled in the house that I
Speaker 1: be had her in the house. Yeah, you're trying to
Speaker 1: find her, but at the same time, you almost don't
Speaker 1: want to find her exactly exactly, you know, because then
Speaker 1: you have that immature how you found her. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and you don't know what you would look like. When's
Speaker 1: the founder if if somebody you're recognize, somebody won't recognize.
Speaker 1: So in a way, I always said to myself, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't find because I want to be
Speaker 1: the one to find a person that way anyway, But
Speaker 1: I felt, you know, it was something I had to
Speaker 1: do because I felt that game police department one't doing enough.
Speaker 1: Marvin says that when he told police he was investigating
Speaker 1: abandoned buildings himself, they told him to stop. And I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, why you should want all the help
Speaker 1: you can't search you. And this explanation for me not
Speaker 1: doing it was because he said, I hate for you
Speaker 1: to be and when the houses, I know what you're
Speaker 1: not looking for. You know what you're not looking for.
Speaker 1: But just say another police drive up and see you
Speaker 1: coming out of his house, he gonna want to know
Speaker 1: what you're doing in there. So he said, I would
Speaker 1: hate to have to come and get you out of
Speaker 1: jail for being an these abandoned builders. And then he said, also,
Speaker 1: it's not really safe to do it because you don't
Speaker 1: know what the condition of the buildings before you go
Speaker 1: in now hm. So I kind of backed off of
Speaker 1: doing that, but I continue to go around with the
Speaker 1: pictures and things like that. You know, you wanted the more,
Speaker 1: but your hands really tied as far as what you
Speaker 1: can do. So the angle part come in because you
Speaker 1: felt like when none being done, you know, when none
Speaker 1: being done. And as the case went on, the more
Speaker 1: angry you got, because now it's turned from one month
Speaker 1: to months, six months and nothing that's being done. Do
Speaker 1: you remember where you were when you learned that Tira
Speaker 1: had died? Yeah? I would. Actually I was at home
Speaker 1: watching CNN and the story about Afric hardy Head came on,
Speaker 1: and they put up four of the seven names that
Speaker 1: they had identified. One person they had on there. They
Speaker 1: didn't have her name, but they heard what she was wearing,
Speaker 1: blue jeans, a blue hoodie under brownish colored coat, and
Speaker 1: right then I knew it well, because that's exactly what
Speaker 1: she had on left day. I seen her, and I
Speaker 1: picked up the phone and I called the Corners office
Speaker 1: and I said, I know who that person is. So
Speaker 1: I gave them the name of the dinners that I
Speaker 1: took it too, and they typed up a warning. They
Speaker 1: went to the dinnerst office and poor to Dentner records.
Speaker 1: The first couple of hours was really anxious because they
Speaker 1: they had called me right back. But you know, after
Speaker 1: three hours went by, I kind of relaxed because I like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it wasn't her. Somebody just said on the same
Speaker 1: clothes she had on. And then my phone from the
Speaker 1: corner office and he told me he just wanted to
Speaker 1: confront that the dental records matched up and it was her.
Speaker 1: Now the hard part about it where her body was found.
Speaker 1: It's only like about nine blocks from where I stayed,
Speaker 1: So she was basically around the corner from where I lived.
Speaker 1: And what strikes me about it. Once everything came to
Speaker 1: a head, I got curious about the information China was
Speaker 1: putting out there, because everything she was saying was correct
Speaker 1: except for one detail. She was to see she was
Speaker 1: something in banded building, But China was saying she was
Speaker 1: in a banded building on the west side of town,
Speaker 1: But she was actually in a banded building on the
Speaker 1: east side of town. And see that brings back the
Speaker 1: point I was making earlier. You know, how would China
Speaker 1: know she did she in the band and building, But
Speaker 1: there any difference is what side of town she was
Speaker 1: found on. Yeah, see, what what do you think it's
Speaker 1: going on there? Like do you think the body got
Speaker 1: moved or do you think she was the body didn't
Speaker 1: get moved, she was killed where she was found. Mhm.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a scenario where I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe trying to hurt it from somebody else, and then
Speaker 1: she was just freading, you know, with with her. A
Speaker 1: lot of things came to mind that could have been this,
Speaker 1: could have been that. How you know because she's been
Speaker 1: involved or did you know who did it? We don't know,
Speaker 1: and and still today we don't know because she stopped
Speaker 1: talking to the police. Now it's possible that she could
Speaker 1: have knew Damn Van herself because as things came out,
Speaker 1: China New Tierra and they hung out in the same
Speaker 1: area together and come and find out vand head frequency
Speaker 1: at area. He was the regular around that area. Because
Speaker 1: once this picture came out, a lot of people in
Speaker 1: that area came up and say, hey, they have seen
Speaker 1: him in that area before. I think I read somewhere
Speaker 1: that um one of the other victims, maybe Tracy Martin
Speaker 1: also New Tierra. Yeah, who's that kind of like that
Speaker 1: same group or that same area where China was or yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say areas same group. It wasn't just Martin was
Speaker 1: full out of sea. Well, they knew each other. This
Speaker 1: is another place I'd like to reach out to the listeners.
Speaker 1: If you knew China or Tierra or we're part of
Speaker 1: the same group, please do you reach out. I'd love
Speaker 1: to talk to you. Contact information is in the show
Speaker 1: notes and at the end of the episode. Gary is
Speaker 1: a pretty big place, right, So so that's kind of
Speaker 1: surprising that four of them would have known each other. No,
Speaker 1: it's not that big area together, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: they all heard their own different habits that they had,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't be strange for them to know each
Speaker 1: other because Gary is not that be What do you
Speaker 1: mean when you say they all had their habits. They
Speaker 1: all had their own problems that they was going through.
Speaker 1: They all had their different drug habits that they were
Speaker 1: trying to kick. Somen was able to kick it, song
Speaker 1: wasn't you know. So I just used the word habits,
Speaker 1: you know, because when some people get ideas of what
Speaker 1: other people do, a lot of people like the stereotypele
Speaker 1: I think they're a bad person. You know, they're not
Speaker 1: a bad person at all. You know, it's just someone
Speaker 1: was fighting their demons. Someone was able to kick us
Speaker 1: on what and van thing was because they had these habits,
Speaker 1: they wasn't worth living mm hmm. Because accring him. They
Speaker 1: didn't mean nothing to nobody becoming the things that they do,
Speaker 1: what the things that they did, you know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I hear that, and I think that's probably the
Speaker 1: twisted way that he tried to justify it to himself,
Speaker 1: you know, right, So you know, it was one girl.
Speaker 1: She stayed out north in the suburbs of Chicago. She
Speaker 1: was one of the very very first person that ever
Speaker 1: weighing into him. But she happened to get away from him.
Speaker 1: She talked to the detective, but because of her line
Speaker 1: of work, they didn't have time for her. Next time
Speaker 1: on algorithm usually, you know, he brought a cheep back
Speaker 1: to the house and they got he's asking about your car,
Speaker 1: who knows you're there? And he took your cell phone.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that these are all science like you
Speaker 1: were probably wind up dead. They say what they heard
Speaker 1: was somebody in this dress and they look and they
Speaker 1: seen the woman taed up in the backroom of the car.
Speaker 1: Of sexual assaults in particular, the departments are under resource,
Speaker 1: they're not followed up on, and this is what happens
Speaker 1: when you don't follow up on them. Sexual offenders continue
Speaker 1: to offend this episode was written and produced by me
Speaker 1: Ben Key Brick. Algorithm is executive produced by Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: Donald Albright, and Matt Frederick. Production assistance in mixing by
Speaker 1: Eric Quintana. The music is by Makeup and Vanity Set
Speaker 1: in Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins,
Speaker 1: Jamie Albright, Rema l k Ali, Trevor Young, and Josh
Speaker 1: Thane for their help and notes. Hey, thanks for continuing
Speaker 1: to listen to Algorithm. If you're enjoying the show, please
Speaker 1: do you leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: We've gotten some great messages from you guys already and
Speaker 1: we're going to do a Q and A episode soon.
Speaker 1: So if you have any questions you want me to address,
Speaker 1: or if there are parts of the story that I
Speaker 1: brushed over and you want more details, or especially if
Speaker 1: you have any tips, please reach out. You can call
Speaker 1: and leave a voicemail at eight five zero one three
Speaker 1: three zero nine. That's five zero one three zero nine,
Speaker 1: where you can reach out to me on Twitter. I'm
Speaker 1: at ben Underscore Key Brick. That's B E N Underscore
Speaker 1: KU E B R I C H and you can
Speaker 1: find all of that information in the show notes, thanks,