Welcome back to the Path went Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
I'm so sorry to all the listeners. I sound awful. I'm pretty sick,
but we're going to soldier through, so hopefully you all don't mind my
kind of mannish sounding voice for the next hour. Well, Jules, I
think you sound fantastic. It's me Ashley, and I am ready to record.
Well, the listeners missed you during our last two episodes since you were
on holidays that week. It was Thanksgiving, and as everyone is aware,
Jules and I are Canadians, so we celebrated it one month earlier and then
decided to do our last two episodes just with the two of us. So
how was your Thanksgiving? Ash It was awesome. Thank you guys for filling
in for me. I missed all of you as well. I was very
blessed to be able to go home to Florida and be with my mom,
dad, brother, and sister in law. Got to take two of the
girls with us, so I feel very grateful. God is good and I'm
back with my two friends recording a podcast tonight. So life is looking beautiful.
So now that I'm back in the action, let's dive right into this
week's case. April fifteenth, two thousand and four, Forsyth County, Georgia.
After finishing a phone call with a customer, thirty eight year old Patrese
Andres vanishes from the hair salon that she owns, and two eyewitnesses report having
seen her in the parking lot next to an unidentified individual in a blue vehicle.
Nearly eighteen months later, Patrese's remains are discovered in a wooded area located
six miles away. Police look into a number of potential suspects, including Patrese's
husband and the pair of convicted serial killers, one of whom confessed to the
murder, but there are still no answers about who actually killed her. After
that, the path went chilly. Today, we're going to be exploring a
case which was featured on the Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries, the two thousand
and four Murder of Patrese Andres. This particular story was featured on the first
Netflix season, which dropped three and a half years ago, and the episode
in question was titled Thirteen Minutes. It involves a wife and mother named Patrise
Andris, who vanished from the hair salon she owned during the middle of a
shift, and thirteen minutes is the window of time between when she was last
confirmed to be alive and when she seemed to go missing. There was ample
evidence to suggest that Patrese was the victim of an abduction, and she would
remain a missing person for nearly eighteen months, months before her remains were found.
Now I vividly remember though, when the Unsolved Mysteries episode originally dropped,
most of the attention was focused on Patrese's husband, Rob Andris, who managed
to rub everyone the wrong way with perhaps the most bizarre interview in the history
of the show. Pateresa's son from a previous marriage, as well as many
of her friends and family members, suspected Rob of being involved in her death,
but he seemed to have an alibi, and eyewitness accounts placed another person
who did not match Rob's description outside the salon during the time period Patrese went
missing. So is it possible that Rob's behavior has clouded people's perceptions and diverted
attention from the real perpetrator. I originally covered this on The Trail Went Cold.
Only a few months after the release of the Unsolved Mysteries episode, But
since there has been a recent development in this case, I thought now would
be a good time for us to revisit it. On the Pathway Chile.
Well, this one's going to be an interesting case to talk about. We
have the typical husband who's a suspect. That's always the case when we're talking
about a murder investigation. We go to the people closest to the victim,
and I find it very interesting that she's found so close to where she was
but eighteen months later. Was that area a place that was heavily wooded or
disguised or is it surprising it took eighteen months to discover her body. It
was a wooded area, like it was behind a certain location. But you
can understand why no one would have been looking in this area after she went
missing, because it was about six miles away. And since this was on
the Unsolved Mysteries Netflix reboot, I know that you did watch that, Ashley.
Do you remember this case at all? The episode about this one?
I don't. I don't. At first, I thought it was going to
be the girl who went for a walk and they didn't ever see her again.
But then you started talking about her husband and things of that I'm like,
Nope, not the same person. So I don't remember this one.
It may come back to you once we start talking about how weird the husband
is. Well, bring on weird husbands. Our story begins in Georgia in
two thousand and four. Her central figure is thirty eight year old Patrese Andres.
Patrese lives in Coming, a small town of around five thousand people located
in Forsyth County, alongside her fifty eight year old husband, Rob Andres.
The couple have been married for seven years at this point and also live with
Patrice's fifteen year old son from a previous relationship, Delvis Wade Black, who
goes by the nickname Pistol. Patrese was known for having a wild side during
her younger days and even worked as an exotic dancer for a time, but
the birth of Pistol seemed to change everything and she would turn out to be
a devoted mother who had a very close relationship with her son. She decided
to go to school to become a hair stylist, and it was while working
at a salon when she originally met Rob when he stopped in for a haircut.
However, Patrice always dreamed about opening up a salon of her own,
and she finally achieved her goal when both she and Rob purchased a building located
on Georgia State Route three sixty nine in the unincorporated community of matt The salon
would be named Tamber's Trim and Tan, as Tamber happened to be the surname
of Patrice's birth family. Patrese gradually built a solid clientele of regular customers who
appreciated her fun personality, positive attitude, and chatty nature. On the morning
of April fifteenth, Patrise dropped Pistol off at school before heading to the salon
to open it for business. At around noon, one of Patrese's customers showed
up at the salon for an appointment, but even though her Chevy Tahoe SUV
was still parked outside, there was no sign of Patrese. Her pursing keys
were left behind on her desk, her lunch was on the counter next to
the microwave, and the cash register was opened and completely empty. Patrese's wallet
had also been removed from her purse, but her credit cards were still in
there, as well as two hundred and seventy dollars in cash, which she
kept hidden inside a secret compartment. While there didn't appear to be any signs
of struggle or violence, the customer was still concerned enough to contact the forsythe
county shriff's office, and report Patrice missing. This is so bizarre because it's
signs that things were normal and signs that things weren't normal. So this poor
customer who's waiting's going, okay, I mean she got here today, her
car's here, her lunches on the counter next to the microwave, her keys
and purse are here. But wait a minute, the cash resster's wide open
and empty. That's odd. And we find out that her wallet's missing,
so it's almost as if someone was robbing the place and took them with her.
But then there's no sign of a struggle or any kind of disorder going
on. So it's these mixed messages. But imagine in broad daylight, wondering,
Wait a minute, we know Patrise got here, we know that she's
settled in for the day, and then all of a sudden, she just
vanishes. Yeah, this is not the only case that I've covered on the
Trail and Cold in which something bad has happened. To an innocent victim while
they were working inside a salon. Up Usually it's women working by themselves.
I note that I did one earlier this year called the Florence Salon murderers,
where an employee and two customers were all shot to death inside a remote salon
next to a highway. And you can understand the vulnerability there if you're working
alone. That if someone was just passing through and decided to go in there
to commit a murder or an abduction, they might be able to pull it
off before anyone noticed they were missing. So later that afternoon, Pistol was
summoned to the office at a school and asked if he could get in touch
with his mother. Pistol proceeded to call Patrise's cell phone three times, but
the cause all went straight to voicemail, and she never attempted to call him
back. Throughout the day. Some of Patrese's older friends tried her cell phone
and only got her voicemail. At the time, Rob was working a ship
as a maintenance supervisor in Conyer's, a suburb of Atlanta, and he would
be informed about Patrese's disappearance sometime between two and three pm. The police were
able to use Patrese's appointment book to put together a timeline the morning she went
missing, and it showed that she had a mostly non stop stream of customers
after she opened for business. The last known customer to have gotten a haircut
from Patrese left the salon at eleven twenty seven am, as phone records established
that he received a call on his cell while he was leaving. The last
confirmed interaction with Patrese was from another customer who phoned the salon to reschedule an
appointment. She said that Patrise was unusually short with her during their conversation,
and phone records would confirm that the call ended at eleven thirty seven. The
next call to the salon came in at eleven fifty, but there was no
answer, so it seemed likely that something happened to Patrice during that thirteen minute
window. So she gets a call from the salon, or she gets a
call at the salon from a customer, and she seems unusually short. Remember
she's loved for her energetic, happy attitude. We all have our days where
we're not in those moods, even if we are a super positive person.
But it almost view knowing the circumstances after this missing timeframe, that possibly someone
was there that was frustrating her or making her feel uncomfortable, and she's trying
to get off the phone to handle this person because they're irritating her. I
wonder if that was the case, or if she was struggling with something that
maybe wasn't a person in the salon, but was aware of something foreshadowing this
event. The other question I have for you, Robin, when we look
at her husband and he's working at the time. Was he working from the
morning when she drops her son off and you know, we know she has
a customer until eleven twenty seven. Are his whereabouts accounted from that time to
this two to three pm when he's notified of her disappearance. Uh? I
think so we'll go into more details about it, but there they've always been
kind of vague, the police, because they said, we haven't completely ruled
him out as a suspect, but an alibi. He does seem to have
a solid alibi. So I guess it's the thing where they're like, well,
if you look at the timeline, it is possible he could have been
there or during that window of time, but we just don't think it's likely,
because otherwise he would have had to get to work at a certain time
and he would have needed a certain amount of time to get there. So
that's why they're thinking that maybe he didn't actually do this, but they are
also have looked at the possibility of a murder for hire as well. One
of the most troubling details was the positioning of Patrese's Chevy Tahoe suv, as
it was parked near the front door, facing in a westward direction, even
though Patrese ordinarily back to suv into a spot next to the side of the
building. In the earliest stages of the investigation, the media coverage was dominated
by accounts of an eyewitness sighting from a motorist who claimed she saw Patrese's SUV
parked next to a white cargo van before an unidentified man in his late thirties
or early forties walked around the van and entered through the driver's side. But
it would later turn out that this witness completely fabricated her story and she would
be charged with making a false statement to police. However, there were two
other eyeweasness accounts from passing motorists that investigators found to be a lot more credible.
They both were counted driving by the salon at approximately eleven forty five am
and seeing Patrese standing outside next to a parked vehicle and an unidentified individual.
Since these two witnesses were completely independent of each other and gave such similar stories,
their accounts were deemed to be believable. But oddly, they also both
gave contradictory details. They each described seeing Patrice's SUV parked near the front door
next to a blue vehicle, but the first witness described it as being a
nineteen ninety two Chevy Lumina with a Georgia Wildlife tag, while the second witness
thought it was a Ford Tourists or Malibu. The first witness also claimed that
Patrese was interacting with an older woman and they appeared to have their hands on
each other, but the second witness described seeing Patrice with a man who had
shoulder length pair. Well, we all know about eyewitness identification, and right
here you where it's so problematic where multiple witnesses have very different stories going on.
It is possible that you know this older lady was the man with the
medium link pair or shoulder linked pair. It's also possible that man with a
shoulder link pair wasn't always an older woman and the person didn't see it correctly.
It's also possible that it wasn't Patrise. So very frustrating when we look
at Okay, there's people coming forward trying to be helpful. Some people are
coming forward not being helpful because they're making false statements to the police. But
that really complicates the investigation. The cars that were described to the police by
these eyewitnesses do either happen to belong to the husband, they don't. I
don't know what what car the husband was driving at that time, but I
figured that if he was driving either a Chevy Lumina or a Ford Taurus or
Malibu, that they probably would have the police probably would have said so.
And Rob was also bald, and both the witnesses described seeing someone with longer
shoulder length pairs, So unless he was wearing a wig to disguise himself,
that probably wasn't him that was seeing with Patrise. But I do agree with
your assessment that it's likely that they both saw the same person. Both of
these witnesses and one of them mistakenly thought that a man was a woman or
vice versa. So do you both think that this individual may have threatened Patrese
and got her to go back into the salon and give the money from the
register, and that's when the person called, and she was uncharacteristically short,
like do you think it's possible they were brandishing a weapon or something like that,
and that was why she sounded different on the phone, like she was
under some sort of dress. I should mention that the call occurred at eleven
thirty seven, whereas these eyewitness sightings took place at approximately eleven forty five.
So I don't think that she answered the phone after these sightings. But it
is possible that this person was already in the salon with Patrese when the first
phone call happened, and then this was the end result that a couple minutes
later they went outside and then got into a confrontation. But do you both
think that these eyewitnesses could be off like eleven thirty seven versus eleven forty five.
I mean, if you're approximating time, it could be possible that the
events may be transpired in reverse. No, I think they could. I
think they definitely could, And I mean the reality is that these aren't consistent
statements, So something's off and I don't see a huge difference of unless I
me major was going on where eleven thirty seven and eleven forty five time for
me is so relative when you're talking about eyewitnesses and what they saw, because
it's like it was before noon. I mean, I don't really know much
more accurate than that. And if I'm passing by the person with the medium
linked hair and the older lady, those could easily be misconstrued into different things,
right, Like you can make assumptions of the body frame was more of
a man, or that was more of a feminine body, and then looking
back, you go, well, maybe I don't know. You know,
we know there's tons of problems with an eyewitness and the last customer who was
in the salon left at eleven twenty seven. That was verified by phone records,
and of course you have a ten minute window between this last customer leaving
and the last phone call from the customer, so of course anything could have
happened. And I think there's a good chance that Patrice's killer or abductor showed
up during that ten minute window, and that's why she sounded so agitated on
the phone anyway, A massive search effort was launched for Patrese, which would
also involve the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. It failed to turn up any trace
of her, and due to Patrese's close relationship with her son, no one
believed that she took off voluntarily. However, her husband, Rob would immediately
raise some red flags when he changed the locks on the residence the day after
Patrese went missing. Pistol was out of the house at that time, and
when he returned home, Rob refused to answer the door and would not let
him inside to get any of his clothing or personal possessions. Even though Pistol's
relationship with Rob had been good for about a year after he married Patrise,
things fell apart between them. Pistol felt that his stepfather always displayed a negative
attitude towards him well, Rob believed that Patrice did not discipline her son enough.
Rob would later say that his decision to change the locks was a precautionary
measure since his wife had just gone missing, and while he did personally like
Pistol, he thought his stepson would be safer if he stayed somewhere else.
Pistol was forced to go live with other family members, and he eventually moved
in with his biological father. Okay, I'm a stepparent. These relationships are
really difficult, especially at the beginning. Right that you have two people who
fall in love and their kids are part of that package that you marry into.
But the kids are not always open to relationships right away. The step
parents might struggle with accepting and relating to the step children. So the fact
that Rob and Pistol kind of do go head to head does not surprise me.
The fact that Rob watches Patrese's parenting skills and Patrese watches Rob's behavior and
they get frustrated with one another doesn't surprise me because I can tell you from
experience. Rebel and I raise our children in different ways. Our homes are
different, and even though it's out of love and for the betterment of our
family and our home, we definitely close the door sometimes and go I do
not agree with what just happened. I do not like that behavior. That
was disrespectful. Right they should have done X, Y, and Z.
And we're not always on the same page. We get on the same page,
but that frustrations there, So that is not completely abnormal. I do
find it interesting that Rob changes the locks because Patrice has access to the home
with the keys that are there. And if she's just missing and we don't
know necessarily that something violent has happened to her. What if she had a
mental health crisis and she just needs back into the house right she It almost
blocks her from coming home. That idea that families all not move because the
person's missing or that they're you know, they want the person to know where
to come if they need ref or change their mind or whatever's going on.
It is also complex that poor Pistol is kind of uprooted automatically. He doesn't
get along great with Rob. So from the outside looking in, it's one
of two things. You say, Pistol needs stability to be in the home
that he's used to and Rob just happens to be the only parent there,
so be it. But if they don't get along very well, could you
also see potential for Rob's argument that it's better for Pistol to be with family
and not just his stepdad who he doesn't get along with. Yeah, I
also think that if Patrese does come home, that she's going to be pretty
mad that in this moment of extreme stress. You're literally locking her son out
of the home at the first chance that you get, and then you didn't
even make arrangements for him to go elsewhere. He's got to figure that out
himself. Okay that part, yes, that part, yes, Yeah,
it looks like he knows that she isn't coming home by his actions, and
ashly, I had assume that if your husband went missing, that you would
not change the locks and refuse your step daughters from coming into the house and
not even letting them collect their personal possessions like that is the part that is
just playing weird. Absolutely absolutely, I'm simply saying the action on the surface
is kind of like mare. Now when you dig deeper like that, when
you say you're not allowed here, well, that's their home. That's where
their mother should be coming home to, right, That's where Pistol's mom should
be coming home to. So if you're emotionally sound, you say, he
needs this space as much as anybody else because his mom's missing and hopefully she's
coming home to this space. But you're right, Rob's saying he did it
for protection doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I would have never changed
the locks, because again, Patrese needed access to that home just as much
as Pistol did. Because as of now we assume she's just not here.
Could she have left voluntarily, sure, Could she have been kidnapped, sure?
But what if she gets away and she gets to come home now she's
also walked out of the house. That part makes no sense. And poor
Pistol doesn't have any underwear or a toothbrush. It's just those like basic items
that make you feel like a human in those moments that you can find some
comfort in. Maybe it's putting on your pajamas, maybe it's crawling into bed,
brushing your teeth, doing these routine activities. And Rob is taking this
away from him and just turning him away. It just is boggling my mind
that he thought this was an appropriate action to take, Like it just seems
so callous. Yeah, and it's not like this is three years later either.
You know this, it's too soon to be talking about Pistol. You
need to go with someone who is your blood relative, do you know what
I mean? Like Mom's clearly not coming home, that was not where they
were, and that's not how he handled it. Yeah, Like I could
see this argument if it was like a few months down the road and she
hadn't come home and the two of them were butting heads, then there's a
question of are they going to find her? Will she be coming home.
Maybe there is a better situation for Pistol, but you don't turn him away
and not allow him any access to his belongings in the wake of his mother's
disappearance. It's just it's so hurtful to do that to her son. Pistol
and many of Patrice's other friends and family members had their suspicions about Rob and
believed he was jealous, controlling, and possessive of Patrise. According to Pistol,
the couple were frequently fighting, and a few weeks before she went missing,
his mother told him that she was thinking about divorce. However, Rob
maintained that Patrise never spoke about divorce with him and things were fine with their
relationship. Interestingly enough, before leaving her house on the morning of her disappearance,
Patrice left a note on Rob's car which read quote the best is yet
to come, though it's never been made clear what this message meant. Rob
was interviewed and thoroughly investigated by the authorities and he seemed to have an alibi.
During the period Patrese went missing. Rob claimed that he spent most of
the morning at home before he drove to the town of Woodstock, which is
about a forty five minute drive in Patresea's salon, and even produced a time
stamped receipt which showed that he got gas there. Rob then headed to his
workplace in Converse, and a turnstile logged in the time that he arrived there.
According to investigators, while the timeline of Rob's whereaboats did not completely eliminate
him as a suspect, it made it less likely that he could have been
personally responsible for Patrice's disappearance. I would hate to be the person that're like,
hey, your alibi doesn't really exclude you as a suspect, but you
know, makes it a little less possible. That doesn't seem very encouraging whatsoever.
Rob has this idea that he's driven to these other places. The time
stamp helps a little bit, but it also could be if we truly lean
the direction that Rob is guilty, it could be his way of trying to
create that set alibi that ends up not being air tight. If you flash
back a little bit to where Pistol is talking about Rob and Patrese fighting a
lot. Remember, they're disagreeing about the way she's raising her own son.
I'll tell you there's nothing that upsets a mama bear or a Papa bear more
than when you come at my kiddo or the way I'm parenting. Right.
We know that it doesn't have to be your spouse, but people don't handle
that well. We know they're also working a business together. That's very stressful
and difficult when you are trying to start your own business. You know,
they purchase this new salon. All of that is heavily stressful. But then
if they are in a relationship where they want a future together, that note
something like the best is yet to come. Something like that can happen right
after an argument, right when you get with your spouse and you say,
I'm sorry, I exploded, I took it too wrong, I was overly
sensitive, right, and then the next morning you go time to start again.
Right, That's just how marriages work. Now, I don't like the
idea that he says they're constantly fighting. Fights happen, frustrations happen, blow
ups happen. We're human and two families trying to merge their lives. But
I don't find the note crazy. If she wanted a relationship with him,
no matter how a baud it was. You'll see men and women fight in
even unhealthy relationships to say let's try again, let's do it again. The
best is yet to come. So I don't think that can give us a
pro oricon. I think the marriage could have been rocky and she's writing that
to try to encourage it to get healthier, and I think it could be
fine in a normal marriage where people fuss and she writes the best is yet
to come. Yeah, I really wish that we had more information about what
that could have meant, because, like you said, it could be interpreted
either way. It could be her saying that our relationship is going to get
better the best is yet to come, or it's her way of saying,
I'm going to divorce you soon, so the best is yet to come for
me because I'm going to be free of you. And if Rob interpreted that
way, then maybe he decided to visit Petri sit the salon and that's when
he lost his temper and killed her or something. But we just don't know.
It could be nothing more than a coincidence that she left that note right
before she just happened to go missing. And keep in mind, she could
think the relationship's fine and he doesn't, so she could write that note and
truly think everything's okay. And maybe she didn't provoke him. If he's the
one who did it, maybe he had ulterior motives that wasn't just anger and
resentment in that moment, but maybe he interpreted it like maybe she meant it
like you said ash in a way like literally, the best is yet to
come, like things are going to get better, and he interpreted it like
a taunt, like the best is yet to come and I'm going to leave
you type of a thing. Well, the investigation would lead in another direction
in March of two thousand and five, when a suspect named Jeremy Jones confessed
to Patrese's murder. At the time, Jones was in custody for two other
murders, as he had originally been arrested for the brutal rape and murder of
forty five year old Lisa Nichols, which took place in Turnerville, Alabama,
on September eighteenth, two thousand and four. Jones had shot the victim before
sitting her on fire in her bathroom, and it wasn't long before Jones was
also charged with the murder of sixteen year old Amanda Greenwell, who had been
Jones's neighbor at a mobile home park near the town of Douglasville, Georgia.
Amanda originally went missing in March of two thousand and four before her decomposed body
was found in a wooded area the following month, and it turned out she
was stabbed and strangled to death. Douglasville was located over sixty miles from Patrese's
salon, and Jones would tell investigators that he was responsible for her abduction and
murder. Jones claimed that he had gotten lost while driving that morning because he
was high on meth amphetamine and he just happened to come across Tambur's trim and
tan When he noticed that Patrese was alone there, he went inside and asked
her if she would give his car jump. Patrece agreed to do so and
moved her SUV out of her usual parking spot, but Jones responded by pulling
out a knife and forcing Patrese into his car. After driving over sixty miles
into Douglas County. Jones proceeded to rape and murder Patrese before taking her body
to the Riverside Parkway Bridge above Sweetwater Creek and dumping her into the water at
the outset. Investigators found Jones's confession to be credible because he drew an accurate
diagram of the salon and the position in which Patrese's suv was parked. However,
an extensive search of Sweetwater Creek failed to turn up any trace of Patrese.
After being convicted of Lisa Nichols's murder at trial, Jones was officially sent
to death on November twenty ninth, two thousand and five, but just over
one week later, there would be a major development in Patrise's case. Well,
this confession is terrifying because you have the murder of a forty five year
old woman as well, and then you have this idea that he comes up
with the with the whole story. I was high, I got lost,
I pulled over at Tamber's trim in hand. Do you think that, if
this is not a truthful confession, that he just learned all this in a
newspaper like it seems like he actually knew a lot about the car being part
in a certain direction, the name of the salon, that she was there
alone. How would he know of that? Well, I looked through the
newspaper archives when I was researching my original episode, and they do share a
lot of these details, like about the way that Patrese's SUV was parked in
a certain spot. So theoretically he could have read newspaper articles and formulated a
fake confession. Because, as we're going to talk about momentarily, the spot
where Patrese's remains would be found were not in a creek above a bridge,
so we can tell that he was at least lying about that part. So
that's why a lot of people would question whether the details he provided about the
salon, which were accurate, were only details that he got from reading media
accounts. On December sixth, some workers doing construction at the Lebanon Baptist Church
in Dawson County, Georgia went into a wooded area behind the church and discovered
a human skull. When police were notified, they performed a more extensive search
of the woods and soon came across more skeletal remains. It wasn't long before
dental records positively identified the skull as belonging to Patrice Andres. The location was
approximately six miles away from Patercea's salon, and she was officially missing for six
hundred days before the discovery, but her official cause of death has never been
made public. When she vanished, Patrice had been wearing her wedding ring,
which consisted of two bands soldered together with a Marquis diamond in the center and
had the inscription Patrese and Rob Forever. However, this ring was not found
with her remains and is still never turned up. Well, it wasn't long
before Jeremy Jones completely recounted its confession about murdering Patrise, claiming that he made
up the whole story in order to get better food and extra privileges in jail.
That doesn't sound abnormal. We know that a lot of people who are
already in trouble want to be more infamous, They want to get more privileges,
they want to get a bigger reputation, So making that false claim that
he murdered Patrice doesn't surprise me. It's kind of crazy if the details weren't
in the newspaper. But Robin confirmed that they were. So now I'm going,
okay, not surprising that you have someone falsely confessed to get perks in
prison. He even says he did. But what is interesting is this idea
that her skeletal remains are found and the cause of death has not been shared.
If we didn't know that it was let's say, a self inflicted gunshot,
when where the skull was damaged in a way that's consistent with a suicide,
or we didn't know that there's several stab markings through the rib cages and
you have, you know, nicks and things like that on her bones.
If it's just a skeletal remain set, why wouldn't they share you know that
there's no cause of death, they able to be determined things like that.
It's almost as if there had to be some kind of injury that did allude
to a particular cause of death that they're not sharing. Yeah, I have
a feeling that they couldn't determine her cause of death. They just would have
said so. But I have a feeling that they're just not releasing it just
to avoid false confessions. Because, as you've seen with Jeremy Jones, he
specifically said that he stabbed and strangled Patrice. But now we know that his
confession was likely false. So this is a way if anyone else confesses,
to see if they can provide the accurate cause of death, and if they
don't, then that means that they're lying. Years later, investigators would turn
their attention towards another convicted murderer named Gary Michael Hilton, who was originally arrested
in January of two thousand and eight for the murder of twenty four year old
Meredith Emerson on New Year's Day. Meredith went missing after she left her home
in Beauford, Georgia, to go hiking on a trail on Blood Mountain.
At some point, she crossed paths with Hilton, who proceeded to abduct Meredith
and hold her captive for three days before bludgeting her to death with a carjack
candle and decapitating her. After Hilton was arrested, he made an arrangement with
the authorities to plead guilty to Merediths murder and lead them to her remains in
exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. It turned out that meredith
remains were in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area around ten to fifteen miles away
from the location where Patrese's remains were found, so Hilton was looked at as
a potential suspect in a case. Records showed that Hilton had been stopped for
a traffic violation in Forsyth County during the approximate time period when Patrese was abducted,
and he did not seem to have an alibi on that particular date.
Hilton also liked conning people out of money, both in person and over the
phone, and during one interview with police, he said that his favorite type
of location to do this was at hair salon's well. Hilton has since been
linked to three additional murders, officially making him a full fledged serial killer.
Investigators have never found any evidence linking him to Patrese's death. Very bizarre though,
that he targets people at hair salons, right, That's incredibly unique that
we see, you know, a killer who will go or sex workers or
somebody who will target runaway girls. But to say, oh, I actually
hunt at hair salons for people who are alone that I can hurt seems really
really specific. And I guess the one thing that kind of goes against him
is that Hilton liked to steal like bank cards and money from people. And
I know that Patrese they left some money in a secret compartment in her purse,
and well, it's possible that Hilton could have missed that and gone away.
It just seems unusual that he would kill someone and not steal everything they
have, because that was usually his mo. Following the discovery of her remains,
Patrese would be cremated and her ashes given to Rob. Pateres's story was
featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries reboot, which launched on Netflix on July
first, twenty twenty, and featured a particularly creepy interview with Rob, which
we'll be discussing momentarily. Pistol was also interviewed on the episode and claimed that
after all these years, never allowed him access to Patrisea's ashes or any of
his mother's personal possessions or photographs. However, shortly before we recorded this episode,
the Unsolved Mysteries social media pages announced that Rob Andras had passed away on
October eight, twenty twenty three, twenty twenty three, at the age of
seventy seven. As a result, Patresea's ashes were finally returned to her family.
This gesture did offer Patreesa's loved ones some comfort, but there is still
no conclusive answers about who actually killed her, and her murder continues to remain
unsolved. So I guess she could say the path went chili. Okay,
there's no way that I can defend more OB's actions anymore. The first part,
I know, I was really trying to think of how do you look
at blended families, and how do you look at trauma and grief and fear
and all of that. But even after the year's pass, Rob denies poor
Pistol access to even his mother's body, even access to what they do have
back of her. We know she's deceased, You now know that her son's
grieving the death of his mother, and you say, nope, you can't
even have access to a photograph of her. You can't have access to personal
possessions, and you can't have any access to her ashes. If it was
just a no to the ashes, you could say, maybe that's for religious
purposes of not dividing her body. But there's no reason you would not make
copies, you would not work to create a slide show or something for a
baby whose mother is dead. I don't care if the baby's fifty five years
old. I want a picture of my mother. That's my mom, I'm
her baby, and things like that, Like you didn't need all of her
possessions, You didn't need to keep all the photographs exclusively for yourself. That's
pretty callous. Yeah, it definitely seems pretty spiteful. And even if rob
did not actually kill Patrice, these actions make him look really bad. It
seems vindictive. It seems like you're actually trying to inflict harm on the family
because his actions don't really lead us to believe that he needs to have all
of these things because he loves her. I mean, if he really and
truly loved her in a selfless way, he wouldn't have locked out her son,
like within twenty four hours of Patre's going missing and not allowed him access
to anything. And then in when it's confirmed that Patrice is dead, not
allowing him access to her body that is a huge thing. And then just
to hoard her belongings photographs in her ashes. It's it honestly feels like psychopathic,
like he's actually trying to hurt these people, and he's somehow taking some
kind of joy in it. It's one of those things. It's like Rob
seems to Let's say he really did love Patrese. Pistol was a part of
resentment for him, right that, like Patrese's time was often probably spent with
pistol, or for pistol, or taking care of pistol. And this is
her lover and husband who says I should be your first priority. It's possible
that that's the immature mentality he had where he wasn't really ready to take on
a mom and a son and he wanted to be her partner, but didn't
want to be a father and a husband at the same time. And that
didn't go away when Patrice went and disappeared, and it was later discovered,
right, Pistol was always that reminder of what blocked him from getting what he
really wanted. Well, brace yourself, ashed, because I'm going to share
more information to make you hate Rob even more. Okay, bringing on,
I'm not liking him already, so let's do this so anyway, as I'm
sure you're all aware, one of the most popular tropes in the true crime
genre is the husband did it and well during his appearance and Unsolved Mysteries.
A number of people believe that Rob Andrews was such a poster child for this
trope that it almost crossed the line into self parody. I've already shared a
number of details which do not paint Rob in a flattering light, but some
of the things he said during his Unsolved Mysteries interview were quite jaw dropping.
In case you've never seen the episode, Rob emotionally recalled how after Patresea's remains
were delivered to the funeral home, he asked the staff to reassemble her and
lay the bones out for him. Rob Ben said that he proceeded to pick
up Patresea's skull and carry it around for a while before he kissed her goodbye.
If that wasn't enough, after Rob admitted right on camera that when he
received Patresea's ashes, he slept and snuggled with them because she was quote unquote
like my teddy bear. The episode then shows them going into his closet and
pulling out a cardboard box containing the ashes and displaying them to the camera crew.
Yeah, thank god, Patresa's ashes are out of this guy's hands and
were recently returned to her family. I love how important she is to him
that he needs to carry her skull around and kiss it like a Hamlet play,
you know, and he also needs to sleep with them. But then
they're just relished to a cardboard box up in the closet or wherever he was
keeping them. If he really loved her one to honor her that much and
missed her that much, wouldn't you have her somewhere in the house or when
you have done a ceremony to dispose of her ashes? Like too much information?
But I still have buddies earned and it's displayed on our bookshelf because it's
important to Reagan and I until she's old enough to fully understand what it's like
to spread his ashes with me. So even though I'm remarried, even though
I've moved forward with my life, I'll never move on from being his wife
as well. So we do have his ashes, but he sure is heck
not in a box up in my closet or under the bed or something.
He's in a respectful place for him. So even her being up in the
box kind of contradicts what he's saying here. He knew the film crew was
coming get her out for the day. Maybe I have two of my dogs
in urns their ashes, and they're both displayed so that I can see them,
so that I feel like they're present. And those are dogs. She
is a human. You're going to put her in a box in a closet
when you put her out on a mantle something so you feel like she is
ever present on Like, I don't know, it just seems again his action
seemed callous. It's like it didn't even register to him. Hey, the
film crew's coming and maybe they're going to feel some type of way about me
having her remains in a box. But it just didn't even occur to him,
like, yeah, fake it till you make it, Like put her
make a little display for when the film crew is coming over. You'd think
that that kind of thought would go through your head. Not much self awareness
of this guy, because surely you knew that this is going to be on
Netflix. You were going to be seen by millions of people, and they
are not going to like you for this. They're going to think you were
a creep. And if your film getting her ashes out of a cardboard box
in the closet, they're not going to think you're sincere about how much you
loved her well. After the Unsolved Mysteries episode came out, it wasn't long
before Rob became the subject of a number of memes online and became the true
crime community's favorite whipping post since Carol Baskin from The Tiger King. Well,
the unfortunate side effect is that all this focus on Rob's weirdness seemed to distract
from the actual victim in this case, patrese Yes, and may have clouded
people's judgment. Of course, the original version of Unsolved Mysteries featured interviews with
a number of men who were suspected of being involved in the murder or disappearance
of their spouse, and they often did a less than convincing job of appearing
on camera to proclaim their innocence. Of course, one of the most infamous
examples of this is our favorite true crime whipping post, Jewel Kaylor, who
was suspected of being responsible for the disappearance of his wife, Dottie Kaylor and
openly said during his interview that, even though Dottie was still missing, things
are really pretty good. Robin. Do you want to just say that part?
Things are really pretty good? I love you, Robin. That's the
best but I think even Jewel would have drawn the line at admitting that he
kissed his wife's skull and cuddled up in bed with her ashes. Rob also
displayed questionable behavior outside his Unsolved Mysteries interview, particularly when it came to the
terrible treatment of his steps on pistol. If Rob was put on trial for
the crime of being a massive douchebag, then yes, we would probably have
to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But is he actually guilty of
the murder of his wife? Yeah, that's the thing where I need to
hear more evidence about what he was doing that day, what we know,
what injuries were to the skeletal remains. It's so interesting because you want to
assume someone who has no affect, someone who is disrespectful to the family,
someone who is insensitive and rude and traumatizing to a child, that all of
those things would make him someone capable of committing murder. But does it make
him the murderer. Not necessarily so, Robin. Do we have things that
the police have said we think that this actually does allude to him. So
far, all I've heard is we can't rule him out, but we also
can't narrow in on him being the perpetrator. Yeah, I'm going to talk
about that momentarily. But that's the thing is that as far as actual evidence
of Rob being at the scene or doing anything, they haven't really found anything.
And you can think that a lot of his actions are suspicious, but
in terms of actual evidence proving that he did it, there's virtually nothing.
And that's what's so problematic about this case is that his creepy behavior may be
like clouding people's perceptions and automatically making them think he's guilty when there is a
possibility he's not. Well. To make a comparison, we've previously discussed the
disappearance of Dottie Kaylor, and even though we have virtually no doubt that Jewel
Kaylor killed her, it's not because he acted like a jerk during a TV
interview. It's because there were so many holes and discrepancies in the story Jewel
provided to belie that once you look at all the evidence as a whole,
the only logical conclusion you can reach is that he did it. But Rob
Endris appears to have a fairly solid alibi, and multiple eyewitnesses placed Patrese with
other individuals who did not match Rob's to description right before she went missing,
So the solution of this case is definitely not cut and dry. In the
years following Patrese's disappearance, her case received a lot of press in the local
media, particularly the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and it's quite interesting to dig through
the newspaper archives and look at the original coverage, as it does not give
off any impression that Rob was considered to be a potential suspect. I did
find one article which hinted that potential friction between Rob and Pistol, as Patrese's
sister stated that she would always go on vacation or visit family with either her
husband or her son, but never both of them together. But at no
point does anyone flat out point the finger at Rob, as during his newspaper
interviews, he just comes across as your typical grieving husband. Rob also seemed
to be proactive during the search for Patrese, as he offered a reward for
information and was organizing fundraisers to spread the word about her case. He even
went so far as to travel to Alabama to attend Jeremy Jones's trial for the
murder of Lese Nichols and the October twenty seventh, two thousand and five edition
of the Montgomery Advertiser shows a photo of Rob holding up Pateresa's picture on the
front page under the headline husband Hope's conviction will end mystery. So it lends
the question to say, is there just something wrong with him, like does
he have a mental health disorder of his own? Does he have some kind
of intellectual disability, or does he is there something that's off an emotional dysregulation
about him where it just makes him a non likable human, that he makes
poor decisions when it comes to caring about other people around him, and that
he's selfish, that he's not really sound in the way he connects to the
people around him. Because if he did do these other things, like we
do see perpetrators show up for searches, granted we do see people offer rewards,
but there seems to be a lot that people are saying he did play
the part of a grieving husband, and he did go to extreme extents,
including attending another murder trial to beg for answers. It does show a different
side of him that maybe we're not seeing the whole picture when we look at
the way he treats the people around him versus what his actual reaction was to
the death. He also could have murdered her. I'm not he didn't.
I'm just saying it complicates the situation. When you step back as an investigator,
as an onlooker, as a friend, and you're saying, what's happening
in this scenario, it's almost like you get two people that you're watching in
this process. I get what you're saying. If he's somebody that says on
the spectrum and he isn't very good at reading other people's emotions or perceptions,
that could be why he behaved in the way that he did with like just
for example, the ashes and locking pistol out, because he didn't necessarily connect
how others would perceive him because of those decisions. And yeah, I mean,
we're obviously not going to arm to her diagnose him here, given you
what we have, But it is possible that he's suffering from mental health condition
or personality disorder because his behavior does seem very strange. And is it strange
because he independent of this is strange, or is he just behaving in a
way that's really weird In the situation because he's trying to cover his tracks,
right, or is he just behaving weird? Because he's behaving weird, you
know, like you said, Jules, it's possible. It's any of those
things. And I mean you sit back and you go, who's silly enough
to not take her ashes out of the box for the film crew? Like,
who's silly enough to go? I know, I'm one of the suspects
who hasn't been rolled out. They're going to come interview me, and I'm
going to just wait till they get here to go dig through and look for
her ashes. That's something to me that says something's not right. Either he's
a little slow or maybe he does have some condition or diagnosis that makes it
where he just doesn't understand the way his behavior looks. Believe it or not.
One person who is publicly defended is Terry dun Muhr, one of the
original co creators of Unsolved Mysteries. Following the episode's release, Muhrr did a
number of interviews in which she discussed this case and expressed her surprise and disappointment
with the reaction to Rob on social media. According to Mrrr, Rob has
since gotten remarried, and she believes that he was honest with them during his
interview and did legitimately love Patrese. Now, I don't want to make it
sound like I'm defending Rob as a person, because some of his actions,
such as locking Pistol out of the house the day after his mother went missing
and denying him access to her ashes, aren't truly indefensible. You won't find
too many featured on unsolved mysteries who are more sympathetic than Pistol, who is
clearly still devastated about the loss of his mother. I also don't have a
hard time believing the allegations that Rob was a narcissist who was jealous and controlling
of Patrese. If Rob was guilty of murder, you might assume there isn't
much else that can be done to solve this case since he recently passed away.
However, in our next episode, we're going to discuss the possibility that
this crime was a murder for hire, meaning that even if Rob got away
with it, there might still be a killer out there just waiting to be
caught. That is so very true with Rob's timeline. We know that a
quote isn't impossible for him to have committed the crime, but definitely complicates it
because he was at a place getting gassed, it was almost an hour away.
We know that he did clock in at work as well, so it
does complicate the idea of trying to pen the murder directly to Rob at Rob's
hands. But does that mean that he didn't give someone information that she might
be alone during this time, that the money is here, that this is
how you access the cash register drawer. That's not an impossible scenario. So
I think this would be a good time to bring an end to part one.
But join us next week as we present part two of our series about
the murder of Patrese Andrius Robin. Do you want to tell us a little
bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has
been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you
cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon if you join our five
dollars tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk
about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so
they're exclusive to Patreon and if you join our highest tier, Tier three,
the ten dollar Tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary
track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, where you can download an audio file
and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and
play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide
trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the
very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this
case. So if you want to download a commentary track which I make more
smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor than be sure to join Tier three. So
I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeweles and ashy patreons.
So there's early ad free episodes of the Path Went Chili. We've got
our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not
very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series, and
we're really enjoying doing those. So we hope you'll check out those patreons.
We'll link them in the show notes. So I want to Thank you all
for listening, and any chance you have to share us on social media with
a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated. You can email us
at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at
the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
trails and chili pass call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the
podcast Cold Callers comedy