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You're listening to the Mind Over Murder
podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.

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I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now

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trying to use my experience as the
brother of a murder victim to help other

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victims of violent crime. I'm working
on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway

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murders, and I'm the co administrator
of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together

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with Kristin Dilley. My name is
Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a

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researcher, a teacher, and a
victim's advocate, as well as the social

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media manager and co administrator for the
Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner

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in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome
to mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley

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and I'm Bill Thomas. We're continuing
our discussion today about the HBO Max series

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Burden of Proof, which dropped on
the sixth of June. We hope you've

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had a chance to watch it by
now, but if not, please pause

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this recording go watch join us again
a little bit later. It's a terrific

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series about the February nineteen eighty seven
disappearance of Jennifer Pandos. This conversation today

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will make a lot more sense if
you listen to the first part of this

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conversation in our last episode of Mind
Over Murder. So we're shifting into the

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back half of the four episodes in
Burden of Proof, which are extremely well

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done, but we also want to
encourage you to jump into this conversation if

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you like. Yeah, absolutely,
of course. We love it when you

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all engage with us on social media, and we do our best to respond

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to everybody. So if you have
thoughts, observations, raves, questions,

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anything else with relation to Burden of
Proof, please do put all of that

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on our social media page. We're
happy to engage with you, and we

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will address listener questions as needed or
warranted. We're trying not to give everything

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away because we're trying to respect the
fact that Cynthia Hill and the team that

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put this together as a four part
series, they would like you to watch

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all four episodes. Part of the
thing that's key, I think to Burden

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of Proof is that this is a
series that was shot over a seven year

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period from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty
three. A good portion of what you're

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seeing, and this is probably from
hundreds of hours of footage. Is Steven

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Pandos, the brother of Jennifer Pandos, and his personal journey moving from a

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situation where in twenty sixteen and for
several years forward he strongly suspects that his

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father, Ron Pandos, and his
mother Margie may be involved, the father

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specifically, and then the mother perhaps
involved in a potential cover up. And

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then, of course, as Steven
learns more about his sister's disappearance and the

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circumstances around that time frame from investigators, forensics experts, the Commonwealth attorney,

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and others, he realizes his original
view of the case is probably wrong,

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and he even says the things he
was led to believe for the first twenty

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two years of his understanding of his
sister's disappearance are completely wrong. Then the

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conclusions that he at least is tentatively
committed to in the first two episodes began

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to shift in episodes three and four, and it was interesting to me too

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when they shifted to talking to the
investigators on the case. I don't think

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we're spoiling too much here if we'd
do. You mentioned that there was a

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lost case file is do you think
that it's okay? Can we mention the

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lost case file? I certainly have
no problem with it, And of course,

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the idea that there were misfiled papers. We haven't had that happen in

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the Colonial Parkway murders, but we've
had discarded evidence and missed opportunities. We've

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had leaks of crime scene photos.
So I groaned out loud when we first

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learned about this. As you move
forward, this missing case file becomes increasingly

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important because there's so little for law
enforcement to work with in this case.

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When one of the current investigators reaches
out to Stephen and says, hey,

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we found the original case file.
It was at the bottom of a box

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in one of the filing rooms,
they reveal once we had the original case

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file, we realized that we needed
to shift our investigation into an entirely different

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direction. And that was a moment
where I was like, Oh, my

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goodness, do tell where are we
looking now? And that is what you

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learn in episodes three and four.
This is where the investigation has shifted,

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and it has shifted away from the
parents Bill, even after you've learned along

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with the rest of us, that
hey, they're shifting the focus away from

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the parents. Did you still feel
suspicious of the parents at all or did

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you understand why they shifted. I
think that Ron and Margie's very odd responses

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to Jennifer's disappearance, I think actually
unintentionally created suspicion. Just some of the

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things they did were so profoundly odd, And even in episodes three and four,

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when the investigation shifts from the parents
to other potential and strongly suspicious suspects,

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I wasn't dismissing the fact that Ron
Pandost could have been involved in the

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disappearance of his daughter, but they
were definitely moving down the list. Of

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course, I had some of the
lessons learned from the Colonial Parkway murders in

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my head, like one of our
FBI investigators saying to me years ago,

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no one's ever cleared in an unsolved
homicide until the homicide itself is cleared.

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Until you actually know what happened,
you can't say, oh, no longer

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suspect in the Jennifer Pando's disappearance,
for example, that was always in the

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back of my mind. But it's
shocking to find out that there are some

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other people who really belong at the
top of the list, and this is

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not like the Colonial Parkway murders,
where we have one hundred and fifty persons

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of interest. Is a much smaller
group of people. The players begin to

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shift around, and you begin to
realize we should be looking at people that

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probably had a role here in her
disappearance, and the parents are moving down

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the list of likely suspects into perhaps
not beyond suspicion, but definitely not the

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most likely. One of my other
crime minded friends who watched this documentary after

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my recommendation, and he said,
he said, do you want to know

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when I figured out that mom and
dad probably had nothing to do with it?

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I said, no, when did
you figure that out? And he

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said, came a little later in
the documentary than it should have. He

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said, but the minute that mom
allowed herself to be hypnotized, I knew

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that they had nothing to do with
it, because you can't hide anything under

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hypnosis, he said. If she
was going to allow herself to fall under

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that sort of of that sort of
procedure, he said, I knew she

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didn't have anything to do with it. And I thought that's very interesting.

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Yeah, Yeah, he's such a
smart dude that I was like, Hey,

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I wouldn't have thought of it that
way, but now that he mentioned

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it, I can see it someone
had something to hide. You'd think that

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they would not be willing to see
that level of control never been hypnotized.

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It's a very interesting field. Yeah, but as I understand it from what

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I've read and heard, people under
hypnosis will say things, admit things that

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they wouldn't necessarily admit while fully conscious. I know one of the efforts in

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the true crime space is trying to
get people to remember more detail, but

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that could be incriminating if you're trying
to hide the fact that, let's say

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you're involved in Jennifer's disappearance. I
think the last thing someone would do would

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be to say, oh, sure, go ahead hypnotize me. Yeah,

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but someone needed nothing to hide,
they'd probably say, okay, sure,

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if it helps. And I really
felt for all that. I think we

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can all agree Ron and Margie's responses
were definitely a little odd, ranging up

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the scale to bizarre, but I
felt really awful every time that I watched

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Margie have confrontations both with Stephen and
with the investigators, because she's so very

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clearly is frustrated and hurt and angry
and indignant that her son would believe that

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she had anything to do with it, when she has staunchly continued to say

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I had nothing to do with this. I would never And by the time

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we get to the end of the
series and we learn who they're focusing on

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as opposed to the parents, I
did feel like, pardon me, felt

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bad for doubting her. I know
that you're going on the journey the filmmakers

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are taking you on, and so
for the first two episodes they clearly wanted

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you to look at mom and dad
with some suspicion. But I felt bad

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by the time we reached the end
of it that I had thought that of

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Margie, because she is just so
clearly. I felt awful for her.

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She has suffered not just of course, the loss of one child, but

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it very clearly upset her relationship with
Stephen, and she's had to deal with

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essentially like losing both her kids.
I really felt awful about that. And

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I know I keep saying that this
really tugged at my heart strings in a

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way that I did not expect,
Like I didn't expect to be emotionally invested

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in this. I am I share
your perspective, but let me offer two

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quick thoughts. One is that I
think one of the reasons why we're so

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sympathetic to Margie Pandos the mother,
is that she's clearly damaged her ex husband,

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Ron Pandos, who has spent time
in jail and been involved in some

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pretty sketchy activities over the years.
He's also been married two times after their

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divorce, so he's on his third
wife. He's not a very nice man.

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He's cruel, and he's crude and
he's hard edged. I feel like

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his wife, his ex wife,
is damaged. Goods because Stephen made it

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very clear that his father was very
abusive to himtically abusive, mentally abusive,

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emotionally abusive, and that he felt
very strongly. He didn't say that his

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father beat his mother or anything like
that, but he did say that he

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was extremely emotionally abusive towards his mother
on a lot of levels. Margie's so

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damaged by her life experience an abusive
ex husband. I don't think there's much

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way around that. Losing a daughter
at age fifteen and then this horrible strain

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between Stephen and his mother, and
of course, yes, I agree that

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Cynthia Hill and the filmmaking team are
positioning things in a certain way in episodes

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one and two. But remember Stephen
Pandos as the brother. It's his journey.

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He really believes that his father is
involved in his sister's disappearance in nineteen

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eighty seven, and that he believes
that essentially his father's gotten away with murder

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and that his mother may have facilitated
her daughter's disappearance, and that is something

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that is unacceptable to Stephen emotionally.
There are oftentimes where I thought he seems

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very shut down, but his sense
of righteousness and fairness and what's right and

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what should be made right in his
world just burns throughout the four episodes.

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This guy really feels that his sister
has been done wrong and that he wants

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to do everything he can to make
it right, even if that means accusing

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his father, whom he's very estranged
from, of murder and his mother of

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facilitating a cover up, because he
really believes that. I mean, he

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clearly explored suing his parents in a
civil suit, taking legal action against them.

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He actually had his sister declared legally
dead. That's actually quite a bone

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of contention between himself and his parents. They're asking him, basically, where

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do you get off having your sister
declared legally dead when her parents are still

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alive? But he said, yeah, I'm her brother, and I believe

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that she is no longer with us, and so I have had her declared

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dad. This clearly bothers his parents
tremendously, and his father, like I

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said, is not a nice guy. I really disliked this guy intensely.

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Yeah. Yeah. And then there's
some very strange interview footage where his third

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wife, who clearly wasn't around back
in nineteen eighty seven, Yeah, is

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acting as his spokesperson. Almost.
Yeah, that was interesting arguing points with

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Stephen, and part of me just
wanted to say, lady, but out,

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this isn't your kid. You weren't
married to my father back then.

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It's unbelievable. There is so much
now I realize, of course, we're

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just going to do True Confessions with
Bill Thomas for a couple of minutes.

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Here do we have to why didn't
I ask the question? And then you

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decide if you want to answer it. The dynamics at play between your parents

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and you are vastly different among those
between Stephen and his parents. But I'm

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curious when you were watching this,
did you have moments We know that there

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are moments in which you similarities between
Jennifer's investigation in Kathy's. Did you ever

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feel like there were moments of kinship
between you and Stephen where you could see

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what was going on with him and
go, yeah, I got you,

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I get it, Yes, very
much. And you and I've talked about

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this before. I had a chance
to meet John Walsh from America's Most Wanted

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a number of years ago, and
he was a super nice man. I

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remember him saying to me, boy, the more I had learned about Cathy's

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case, the Colonial Parkway murders,
the more it reminds me of Adam's case,

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his son's case. And there were
a lot of problems in Adam's case,

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missed opportunities in friction with the FBI, and a lot of stuff we've

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talked about here. And at the
same time, I remember mister Walsh used

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to use this expression about you've been
asked to join this club that no one

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wants to be asked to join.
That is the families of murder victims I

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have found over the years since we've
been doing podcast, and of course since

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I've been much more heavily involved in
the Colonial Parkway murders. When I meet

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the loved one of murder victim,
I feel an almost immediate affinity for them,

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and especially these days, when I
meet the siblings of murder victims.

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It's very easy to develop that kind
of shorthand that you would have with someone

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because you share something that's so incredibly
unusual and there's a bond there. Now.

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I'm not saying I'm going to be
best friends with everyone who's ever lost

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a brother or a sister to this
kind of terrible crime, but it's very

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easy, and particularly now watching Stephen's
story unfold, and this is really his

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story. It's all about Jennifer and
his search for answers. So much of

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it felt so familiar, And as
I said, even Pamela, my partner,

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was saying, Wow, where have
we heard that before? Or that

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sounds familiar, or she said out
loud, that's exactly what happened to you.

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So much of his journey feels so
similar. Yeah, it's a pretty

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easy place to put yourself. It's
just got to be so tough to take

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what you yourself have been experiencing for
quite a while now thirty seven years and

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see it reflected rate on TV and
see another person going along with it,

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experiencing the same thing. Did you
gain any insights about yourself and your own

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journey watching Stephen go through his true
confessions? Remember, I guess I'd have

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to think about that one. I
don't know that. I don't know if

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I honestly have a great answer for
that at this moment. I'll have to

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think about that. It's a good
question. I don't have an answer at

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this moment. Well, we'll come
back to it again. One of the

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things that's very clear as we move
into episodes three and four is that this

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mysterious father figure who may be the
man that Jennifer Pando's babysat four, Carrie

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Hendrix, Harry Hendrix, and her
boyfriend on again off again boyfriend Tony Tobler,

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definitely deserve a significant look and that
all of this talk about Jennifer's parents

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may actually have created a focus that's
aimed in the wrong direction. That Kerrie

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Hendrix or Tony Tobler could easily be
involved in Jennifer's disappearance. And there's a

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third figure, a man named May
who shows up in episodes three and four,

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and mister May appears to have additional
information which might steer the investigation towards

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Kerrie Hendrix or Tony Tobler and perhaps
others. The one thing that I noticed,

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and I'm not saying that this wasn't
taken into account by James City County.

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It's entirely possible that it was and
they just didn't share it with the

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filmmakers. But when you see something
in a note that references a father figure,

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you either look at the parents,
which they did the boyfriend, you

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look at other figures in their life. But they seem to have missed one

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particular arena that they could have looked
in where you would definitely find a father

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figure for a fifteen year old girl, and that is school. I'm wondering

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if they ever looked in the direction
of any of the teachers at Lafayette High

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School. And I'm not saying because
I went to Lafayette and I had most

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of the same teachers she did.
I'm not saying there's any teacher at Lafayette

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who is capable of that kind of
violence. I really don't think that there

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is, But I am curious if
at any point during the investigation, they

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looked at and it could be like
a coach. I don't know. They

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didn't talk about whether or not she
did sports. They didn't talk about coaches

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or anything else like that. I'm
just curious if they win immediately to parents'

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boyfriend father figure, but skipped school. As a teacher, when I think

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of father figures and I think of
teenagers, I immediately go to school.

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So I'm curious if they ever went
down that investigative route. You're listening to

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Mind Over Murder. We'll be right
back after this word from our sponsors.

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We're back here at Mind Over Murder. In the latter part of the investigation,

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as the years unfold, the case
is taken over by a James City

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County Police detective named Jake Rice,
whose specialty is forensics. Although Jake Rice

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has now retired from the James City
County Police Department, he's still involved in

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the case and he has a very
high level of trust with Stephen Pandos.

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They appear to have a good relationship
on and off camera, and all these

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people are willing to appear on camera, which I was actually very impressed by.

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Yeah, me too. We certainly
didn't see that in the Colonial Parkway

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murders, none of the FBI or
Virginia State Police investigators would appear on camera.

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I found it interesting and to the
credit of the James City County Police

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Department and others that they were willing
to appear on camera. The first investigator,

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Wendy Reid, appears on camera and
spoke at some length, and then

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Jake Rice also spoke at some length
on camera. Their backfill on what happened

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in the investigation, including the moments
that were less than stellar, the misfiling

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of the case file for what appeared
to be a period of years, and

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then its rediscovery and being brought forward, which helped inform people like Jake Rice

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on how to move the investigation for
it. Again, remember they weren't there

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back in nineteen eighty seven. Yeah, some of these people, including Jake

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Rice, had actually gone to school
with some of the people involved in this

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case, including Jennifer Pandos herself,
so that they were high school kids back

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then, and of course now they're
adults in mid career. Their candor allowed

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us inside that investigation to a certain
extent, and I found that very helpful.

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I also immediately noticed, hey,
wow, they have law enforcement people

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willing to talk on camera, because
we never ever had that. If I'm

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remembering correctly, we had a former
Virginia State Police investigator on to talk about

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the case, but certainly we did
not have anybody currently working on Colonial Parkway,

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and I don't think we had any
of the former case stations from the

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FBI, no, unfortunately. I
was also very interested in the fact that

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they included some I don't know that
interrogations the right word, I guess interview

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footage from the Times that investigator Read
was speaking to missus Pandos. I was

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surprised but also pleased that they had
footage of that that they were willing to

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share. Yeah, they shared some
of the footage from Margie's hypnosis session.

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There was a lot more like archival
here, we're putting you in the investigation

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room footage involved in the documentary.
I was very glad to see it,

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because we certainly didn't have it with
ours. I was very struck by the

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fact that the decision by James City
County Police to release that footage probably much

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more clearly indicated that they did not
suspect the mother of involvement. The interrogation

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footage, and some of that got
very heated, and oh my God went

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after her, trying to push her
off her story. They offered her immunity

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in exchange for information, and of
course she turned them down because she says

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she doesn't know anything about Jennifer's disappear
parents and the hypnosis footage, which we

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discussed earlier, is very striking.
What, of course, isn't made available

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to the filmmakers are the interrogations or
interviews that may have taken place of people

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that I think are now regarded as
much more likely suspects. Yeah, the

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focus shifts in the third and fourth
episodes to people that probably deserve a much

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closer look in terms of do these
people know anything about the disappearance of Jennifer

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Pandos. My guess is there's very
interesting footage of those interrogations and discussions unless

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they've lawyered up and refused to move
forward with any kind of discussion with law

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enforcement. I am interested in the
fact that there was no interview footage of

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Ron Pandos of law enforcement talking to
Ron Pandos. Certainly the filmmakers were able

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to get him in his own house
discussing things like that. Sometimes with the

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third wife, sometimes without. But
for all that we watched Margie go up

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against investigators a number of different times, we never saw that with Ron,

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and I would be very interested to
know what he was like, how he

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would have responded when put under pressure
from investigators. I really would have liked

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to see that. That's a fly
on the wall moment for me, and

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we never did get to see it. And certainly in the early going of

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Burden of Proof, Ron Pandos appears
to be, at least from the perspective

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of his son Stephen, suspect number
one. My guess is that there is

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footage of Ron Pandos, who's a
difficult, kind of prickly personality. He's

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not a nice man. As I've
said, he doesn't come across as a

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particularly caring individual. He's got a
lot of rough edges and a lot of

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attitude. At the same time,
he's been accused of murder, not necessarily

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formally as far as we know,
but his I certainly believed for years,

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if not decades, that he was
responsible for the disappearance of his daughter,

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which more than likely makes him a
murderer. And he kept, as we

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had mentioned in our previous episode,
he kept making these really odd statements.

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Hypothetically, I hit her, she
hit her head and it killed her.

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And he at one point even said, oh, let's get a plane,

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I'll take you to the body who
says that exactly? Who says that,

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if you had nothing to do with
your daughter's death, why do you say

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that. I was so floored by
both of those statements, the hypothetical and

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maybe he's just being a jerk.
But then let's get into an airplane and

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I'll take you. And then of
course he backs up and recants and says,

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no, he can't do that.
And I'm not sure how he got

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himself to that place. If he's
really not involved, How in the world

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would you say something like that.
I know sometimes that in other investigations with

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serial killers and others, we've seen
people who will string law enforcement investigators along.

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Part of what they're looking for is
just a way to get out of

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that jail cell, even if it's
just for a day or two, to

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be put on a plane and taken
to another location and march around in the

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woods and fail to identify the right
location where someone's remains might be found.

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You can make a case that prisoner
who's probably bored out of their mind,

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is probably looking at this as a
short term vacation. You get outside,

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see some beautiful scenery and get marched
around in the woods or something with a

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bunch of law enforcement people, which
I guess from their perspective beat sitting in

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a jail cell. Now that I'm
thinking about it, this is literally just

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coming to me as we're sitting here
talking. We know that Margie Pandas was

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offered an immunity deal, and it
was immunity for everything up to homicide.

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They were like, well, forgive
anything up until the point that you say

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your kilter it and then it's off
the table. Was Ron Pandos ever offered

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an immunity deal. I never got
that impression. I didn't think so.

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But I'm really curious. It's like, why would you offer it to one

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parent and not the other if you
think that they're in cahoots. I believe

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that a lot of situations in law
enforcement, you're looking for the partner,

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the facilitator of the second tier person, the one who's going to flip to

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flip exactly on the principle who's responsible
for that particular crime. And since law

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enforcement often doesn't have another way of
breaking a case and identifying a responsible person.

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They will say to the partner the
second the weak link, the weak

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link, tell us what happened,
and will give you immunity, or we'll

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give you some sort of deal.
I don't think they would have ever done

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that with Ron Pandos, because I
believe that not just Steven Pandos his son,

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but law enforcement suspected that the father
was involved in this disappearance and likely

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homicide. Very interesting dynamics at play
here as the series moves toward its inevitable

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conclusion. And we're not going to
spoil this for anybody, although anybody who's

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been following the press on this probably
knows who the suspect is going to end

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00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:23,440
up being. But I'm very interested
in how this is going to resolve itself.

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They had mentioned at the very end
that there is still lab work being

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done. There is still some DNA
testing that they're trying to do. I

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am very curious to see if this
case can be resolved. Jake Rice,

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the investigator, had said he thinks
it's a solvable case. It does sound

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like a solvable case. I think
they're really going to need to do some

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of the best DNA testing that they
possibly can to see if they can get

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something off of the note after all
this time. All that being said,

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this is a case with significant challenges
though. There's a limited amount of forensic

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evidence, and it isn't like they
have dozens and dozens of choices in terms

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of moving this case forward. They've
done handwriting analysis, they've done language analysis,

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they've done DNA testing. I certainly
sympathized with Stephen Pandos making phone calls

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to Jake Rice asking for updates,
asking if the test results had come back

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from the lab. They were doing
testing at what sounded like the FBI lab

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as well as at private labs,
And the weeks go by, and he

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keeps looking for answers. Boy,
that sounded so familiar. There's a limited

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amount of evidence remaining. They're going
to have to get really lucky, and

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they're going to have to create some
of their own luck in order to move

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this case forward. No one's ever
been formally charged in this case, even

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though it's very evident that they have
strong suspects. They have a much clearer

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idea of what happened the night that
Jennifer disappeared. There's no slam dunks here.

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They are going to have to work
very hard and they're going to have

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to be lucky in order to move
this case forward. Now, I would

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appeal to our local audience listening here
in the area that goes especially for anybody

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in the Williamsburg James City County area. If you know anything with relation to

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the Jennifer Pando's case or any of
the people involved in this case, please

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do not hesitate to reach out to
the James City County Police and offer what

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you know as part of this investigation. I think we would love to see

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Stephen finally have the answers that he
is looking for in this case. One

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of the key areas that's mentioned in
the documentary is that there is a suspicion

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that construction materials could have been stolen
from construction sites. So if you know

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anything about that, this would have
been in the nineteen eighty seven time frame.

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This would have involved theft of large
barrels and the theft of acid.

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And I don't think I want to
get any more graphic than that, but

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if you know anyone, if you
were a four person on a construction site

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in the Williamsburg area in nineteen eighty
seven that suffered losses involving acid used for

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cleaning brick. Obviously it can have
nefarious uses as well, and the theft

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of probably fifty five gallon drums which
obviously would have been used to place the

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acid in those drums. That would
be something that the James City County Police

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Department would be very interested in hearing
about. At the same time, these

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suspects that are mentioned in the latter
part of the documentary, Kerrie Hendrix,

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who was the man who had used
Jennifer as a babysitter. Her former boyfriend

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Tony Tobler is also mentioned as a
strong suspect, and Charlie May who's actually

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quite distinctive he only has one arm. He shows up very prominently in the

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latter episodes and provides additional detail about
what he suspects may have happened. If

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more about any of these individuals from
that nineteen eighty seven timeframe, there's a

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possibility this could be helpful to the
James City County Police Department. Will include

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in the show notes how to contact
the investigators. We believe anyone around the

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world will enjoy watching Burden of Proof, but we know we have a lot

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of listeners in the Williamsburg and Virginia
area. If you know anything about the

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disappearance of Jennifer Pandos, now is
the time to come forward. Absolutely.

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We hope you'll join us again next
week as we continue our exploration of the

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Burden of Proof, HBO documentary and
the disappearance of Jennifer Pandos. In our

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next episode, we'll be featuring an
in depth conversation with retired investigator Wendy Reid,

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who was the lead in the Jennifer
Pando's disappearance for several years. The

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00:33:15,559 --> 00:33:22,759
following episode will have an exclusive conversation
with Stephen Pandos, brother of Jennifer,

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and filmmaker Cynthia Hill, who directed
and produced HBO's Burden of Proof. Please

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00:33:29,079 --> 00:33:31,920
let us know what you think on
our social media feeds. You can find

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00:33:32,119 --> 00:33:37,920
Mindover Murder on Facebook, as well
as our ongoing conversation regarding the Colonial Parkway

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00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:43,079
murders. That is going to do
it for this episode of Mind Over Murder.

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Thank you so much for listening.
We'll see you next time. Mind

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Over Murder is a production of Absolute
Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive

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00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:07,239
producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.

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00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:13,320
Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is distributed in

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00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:17,320
partnership with Coral Space Media. You
can follow us on Facebook, Twitter,

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00:34:17,519 --> 00:34:22,840
or Instagram. You can also follow
our page on the Colonial Parkway Murders on

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00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:27,519
Facebook, and finally, you can
follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas.

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00:34:27,800 --> 00:35:05,079
Five six. Thank you for listening
to mind Over Murder my
