Welcome back to the Path Went Chile. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
I'm Ashley. It's time to dive into this week's case. February tenth,
nineteen ninety Los Cruces, New Mexico, a pair of armed gunmen enter a
bowling alley called the Los Cruses Bowl and bring everyone into the manager's office.
After stealing money from the safe, the assailants fire several bullets into seven people
before fleeing the scene. Three of the victims, thirty three year old Idah
hole Gean, thirty four year old Stephanie Senak, and her twelve year old
daughter Melissa Repass, managed to survive, but the four others, thirteen year
old Amy Hauser, twenty six year old Stephen Turan, his six year old
stepdaughter Paula Holgeen, and his two year old daughter Valerie Tehran, are pronounced
dead. While the crime generates a lot of publicity, the two perpetrators are
never caught and their true motive for the murders remains up for debate. After
that, the Path went chilly, So today we're going to explore a pretty
infamous cold case, the Los Crusius Bowling Alley massacre. This is undoubtedly one
of the most harrowing and senseless crimes we've ever covered on this podcast, as
it took place at a bowling alley and a total of seven people, four
of them children, were shot by two men during a robbery. Four of
the victims were killed, and while three of them managed to pull through,
one of the survivors wound up dying of complications from her injuries nine years later.
This case was a pretty big deal when it happened, as I remember
seeing it covered on a number of true crime shows, including Unsolved Mysteries and
Americas Most Wanted, and the composite sketches of the two unidentified perpetrators were shown
everywhere. The story was also the subject of a documentary titled A Nightmare in
Los Crusis, which raised a lot of questions about the exact motive for this
crime. The total takeaway from the robbery was only a few thousand dollars,
but the gunman left some money behind and appeared to be searching for something else.
Given that they had no hesitation about firing bullets into every single person there,
including the children, you have to wonder if there's more to this story
besides a simple theft. After more than thirty years, investigators seemed no closer
to catching or identifying the perpetrators than they were back in nineteen ninety. So
I thought it would be a good idea for us to take a look at
this case. This one's really confusing because it does start like a typical robbery
where you have these gunmen going in, pushing people towards the safe, taking
money from the establishment where you would think there is a lot of cash transaction
at a bowling alley. But then when they turn the guns onto seven people
in the bowling alley, I'm assuming these are just guests. They're not employees
and their kids or anything like that. Right, Some of the this was
before the bowling alley opened, so some of them I'm employees, while others
are kids that were brought there by the employees. Oh that's so sad,
okay. See, So for me, once they start to open fire,
especially on the children, it's not like they're targeting an employee out of rage
or revenge or some disgruntled employee or anything like that. It seems as if
they just don't have a sense of care about human life. And so that's
where it really changes from a robbery where their behavior seems very lined out.
We're going to make sure we get people towards the safe, we're gonna get
the money, we're gonna leave. Maybe we would shoot an employee who's blocking
our way, But when they turn and they shoot these helpless children, it
just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, and this thing has haunted me for
so many years because I remember seeing it on TV on Unsolved Mysteries in America's
Most Wanted back in the day, and I just could not believe that these
two guys could do this to these children. It was like everyone's worst nightmare.
And we'll talk more about this, but the owner of the bowling alley
was not present that day, and there's always been speculation that perhaps these two
perpetrators might have had some sort of grudge against him. But after all these
years, they've just never been able to turn up any evidence to the motive,
even though they think it's something more than just a simple robbery. Well,
if it was revenge against the owner, you would think that they would
steal money, they might destroy property, they might do something to really cost
him significantly. If he had been there, they would kill him or her.
But they didn't. They didn't. They took some money and then they'd
turned the gun on these families. That just doesn't make any sense. They
didn't even just target the adults, which would have been more in line with
a robbery or anger towards the bowling alley. But this is a family that
they're killing, So it just does it changes the perspective so much. Is
it possible that there was a target in the bowling alley and this attempt,
this making it look like it could have been a robbery gone wrong where they
just annihilated all these people. It was kind of subterfuge and they just killed
all of these other people to disguise who their primary target. Was certainly possible
because one of these seven victims could have been the primary target. But I
know that investigators have looked extensively into the backgrounds of all these people, and
most of them were just hard working, blue collar people with families who didn't
really have any known enemies. So if one of them was targeted, they
have no idea why. Our story begins in nineteen ninety in Las Crusis,
New Mexico, a town which is located forty five miles north of the Mexican
border and had a population of around fifty seven thousand people at this time.
Our crime takes place at a local bowling alley known as the Los Cruses Bowl,
located at twelve oh one East Amador Avenue. The current owner is a
man named Ron Seenac who built it six years earlier, and his thirty four
year old daughter, Stephanie Seenak, is the daytime manager. On the morning
of Saturday, February tenth, the alley was not scheduled to open for business
until nine am, but a number of people were already there one hour beforehand,
including Stephanie Seenak, who was adding up the previous night's receipts in her
office. Stephanie was joined by her twelve year old daughter, Melissa Repass,
and Melissa's thirteen year old friend, Amy Hawser, who was planning to supervise
the alley's daycare that day. The alley's thirty three year old snack bar cook,
Idaho Geen, a mother of four who'd been employed there for six years,
was also working inside the kitchen. However, at around eight twenty am,
Melissa and Amy were about to get food from the vending machine when they
were surprised to discover two armed gunmen carrying twenty two Oliver pistols had come through
and unlocked the front doors. They would both later be described as Hispanic males,
one of whoms boarded a mustache and appeared to be in his late twenties
or early thirties and spoke perfect English with no detectable accent. The other man
looked like he was in his late forties or early fifties and spoke English with
a slight Spanish accent. While the older man led the two girls in Stephanie's
office, the younger man rounded up Ida from the kitchen and brought her into
the office as well. After the men ordered Stephanie to open up the safe,
the four victims were forced to lie down on the floor with their heads
down while the younger man proceeded to take the money out of the safe and
place it inside a briefcase. However, it wasn't long before everyone However,
it wasn't long before everyone was surprised by the unexpected appearance of three other people
inside the office. One of them was twenty six year old Stephen Turan,
who worked as the alley's mechanic, and he was accompanied by his two year
old daughter Valerie Tran and his six year old stepdaughter, Paula Holgeen. Paula
was not related to Idaho Geen, but her biological father just happened to be
Stephanie Senak's current boyfriend. Stephen had gotten married to Paula's mother, Audrey Turan,
on New Year's Eve in nineteen eighty six, before they eventually had their
own child, Valerie together. Stephen also worked as a commander in chief for
the Army National Guard and had recently graduated from New Mexico State University with a
Bachelor of Sciences and Criminal Justice. Weeks earlier, he gave his notice to
Los Cruse's Bowl and only had three days left to work there as he was
planning to take the entrance exam for the Los Cruse's Police Department the following month.
On this particular morning, Audrey was taking a class at Cosmatology school,
and since Stephen was unable to find a babysitter for Paula and Valerie, he
brought them to the Bowling Alley in order to leave them at the daycare.
When Stephen entered the building with the two girls, he immediately took them to
Stephanie's office, completely unaware that a crime was taking place. When he walked
inside, the gunmen immediately forced Stephen, Paula, and Valerie onto the floor
alongside everyone else. Once they finished what they were doing, the two men
proceeded to fire over twenty five bullets into the heads of all seven of the
victim's execution style. They then made an attempt to set fire to the office
by lighting up some papers on the desk before fleeing the scene. Oh my
gosh. First of all, when you look at the age of the perpetrators,
to me, they're older than I would have expected. I was thinking
these were late teens, twenties, and they were in this kind of panic,
and maybe they opened fire to get rid of any witnesses. But this
is so methodical that you already had four of the individuals lying on the ground
while they're going through the safe and they're getting money out and they're putting that
away. They're surprised by Stephen and these two itty bitty children, and they
have Stephen and the kids lay on the floor as well. So in that
moment, you know those seven victims are the adults at least, and the
older kids are thinking we're okay, we're doing what they said. We're down
on the floor, we can't see them. They're going to take their money,
and they're going to leave, and then they shoot at them in a
manner that says none of them are going to live. That's their ultimate goal.
They shot what you said twenty five times into the heads of these seven
individuals and kids and babies, and then they leave. But before they do
that, they try to set it on fire to destroy all evidence. That's
way more sinister and scary than what I thought when you first described it.
I thought they were running out and just turn around and open fire kind of
chaotically. But it was very planned. It was very strategic. Yeah,
it definitely seemed calculated, and I get the sense they were completely thrown off
when Steven and his two children just suddenly showed up in the office. I
mean, I think they were playing you to kill the four victims that were
already there anyway, But I think they were just You would think that most
people, if they were faced with like a six year old and a two
year old, they might think twice saying, okay, shooting these two little
children is just taking things too far. But it sounded like they did not
hesitate at all. They just decided, we're going to kill everyone in the
office. And you can tell that it was just a lot more than a
robbery because they wanted to make sure that everyone was dead even though they only
got a few thousand dollars, And they were also deciding to set fire to
the office, which is major overkill. So it definitely it does not seem
like these were two guys who came in there with no idea what they were
doing. It sounded like a very calculated plan, and as if maybe this
wasn't the first time that they had done something. Maybe not with the killings
and things like that, but it seems like they knew when we go in
there, we're going to get the money. We're going to make sure that
we get away without getting caught. And that's part of that older age I
think as well, where they say, we have so much at risk at
this point, we're getting this money and no one's going to be able to
say what we did. Did anybody describe these men as being under the influence
or did they seem like they were totally lucid? As far as I can
tell, there wasn't anything off about them. They just sounded very like professional
and calculated. None of the surviving witnesses said that they sounded like they were
on drugs or under the influence er alcohol or anything. So you get the
sense that they knew exactly what they were doing and were just very cold blooded
people. So it wasn't likely born out of desperation where somebody was, you
know, feeding their substance use disorder. This is very calculated and methodical.
Somebody was likely the target and the money was just like a byproduct of whatever
their objective was. I think so because as we're going to talk about,
some money was left behind, and I think if this was desperate people who
had substance abuse disorders, they would have taken all the money because they would
desperately need it. But they seemed to think it was like a second priority.
What's interesting is I wonder you know where that leftover money was, because
if these are people that had any inside knowledge of the Bowling Alley, they
would know what the income was for the previous day, or what kind of
cap, what kind of deposit strategies these people had, and so if they
had knowledge of where the money was, it's odd that they left it behind.
But if you know there's money in the safe, and then let's say
there's money in the cash registers and stuff like that, and they didn't check
that they had the ability to shoot these seven individuals and try to light the
office on fire. What would have stopped them from shooting these seven and taking
their time to go around the bowling Alley. They could have locked the front
doors and taken as much time as they wanted. I guess they also knew
when the Bowling Alley opened, though, and they knew they only had a
short way of a time before guests might start coming from the public. One
thing I would say is I think it isn't very likely that most of the
employees there knew how much money was being made and where the money was being
kept, just because way back I used to manage a restaurant. I used
to do night managing, and I remember unless you were a manager, you
didn't know the types of totals that the restaurant made that day, and you
also wouldn't know where the money was kept. So I'm just assuming the biggest
I'm shure on my part that the Bowling Alley was likely run in a similar
capacity you'd have the manager or the owner who would know where those cash deposits
were, and maybe their assistant or like a couple other people, but like
the people who were, you know, handing over the shoes or you know,
cleaning the balls, they might not have any knowledge. So you could
have a situation where somebody did have some inside knowledge, but they might not
have known where the money was. I do think that if any of the
employees did know, it would have been Stephanie Sinak because she was the daughter
of the owner and the daytime manager, so it's possible that she knew.
But from what I can tell is that some of this money left behind was
not hidden anywhere. It was out there in plain sight, and that for
whatever reason, whoever did this decided not to take it with them. Well.
Incredibly, even though she was shot five times, Melissa was still alive
as she had wrapped her arms around her head to protect herself, and one
of the bullets wound up smashing two of her fingers. Melissa managed to make
it to the office phone and call nine one one at eight twenty nine am.
It wasn't long before emergency services arrived to the scene put out the fire
in the office and provided a medical attention for the seven victims. Remarkably,
not only had Melissa survived her wounds, but her mother, Stephanie and Idaholgeen
were also still alive, so they were immediately rushed to the hospital and managed
to pull through. But tragically, Amy Hauser, Stephen Tehran, and Paula
Holgeen were all pronounced dead at the scene, and even though Valerie Tehran was
taken to the hospital, she died about forty five minutes later. When Audrey
Tran learned about what happened and rushed to the scene, she was informed that
her husband and both of her daughters had been shot. Think about that poor
family. That her husband was working so hard as a father and as a
husband to get his degree, which is really hard when you have your own
family, right, and you're not a traditional young student. He had graduated,
He had already put in his notice at the Bowling Alley three more days,
I believe you said, and he was going to leave so that he
could get ready to take the test and test for admission into the local police
department. This is a man who's working so desperately hard to provide a good
life for his kids and his wife. His wife's doing the exact same thing.
Remember, she was taking a test or working at the cosmetology school that
day, and she couldn't take the kids. She was trying to also better
her career. And Hubi says, that's okay, We've got the daycare at
the bowling Alley. I'll take the girls up there. They're used to all
those people, and so this is a normal day while they're gearing up for
an amazing future as a family. And she shows up. Right here comes
Audrey. She comes up and not only have they been hurt, but she
learns that her husband and both of their children and are deceased. I can't
even fathom what that would be like. You had so much promise, you
had so much hope. You've got these two innocent little babies and your husband,
and your whole life changes in that instant, everything's been taken away from
her. What makes it even worse is that there is actually live footage of
Audrey being informed about the murders of her husband and her daughters. That's shown
in the Nightmare in Los Cruse's documentary. So I've watched her break down the
footage of it, and it is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever
seen, to find out that you've had your entire family wiped out in the
course of one morning. Unfortunately, since the fire department were forced to dowse
the flames inside Stephanie's office when they first arrived at the scene, they may
have destroyed potential evidence. While the two gunmen did not wear gloves when they
committed the crime, the building was a public bowling alley which was frequented by
many people, so it was difficult to determine if any of the fingerprints found
at the scene belonged to the perpetrators. Oddly, even though they took between
four and five thousand dollars in cash from the safe, they still left an
undisclosed amount of money behind, and the surviving victims would later state that the
gunmen appeared to have been searching for something else inside the office cabinets before they
even opened the safe. Since there were survivors, they were able to provide
detailed descriptions of the attackers, but it turned out that there were other witnesses
who had seen them that morning, including Stephanie Senac's brother, Steve Senac.
Steve was on his way to school that morning, but stopped by the bowling
alley because he had left his backpack in the office the night before. When
he first entered the building, Steve was surprised that Stephanie had left the front
doors unlocked and mentioned this tour when he grabbed his backpack. When Steve left
at around eight fifteen am, he claimed he saw two Hispanic men walking from
the back of the building towards the front, and that the older man handed
his partner a small briefcase. It was apparent that these men committed the crime
only minutes after Steve drove away, and other witnesses report seeing two men matching
their description running across Amidor Avenue that morning. By two thirty pm, law
enforcement had set up roadblocks to check all motorists who were driving out of Los
Crucis. At one point, they pulled over a vehicle containing four individuals who
were carrying twelve hundred dollars in cash. Steve was brought to the scene and
asked to identify them, but said that none of these individuals were the men
he had seen outside Los Cruse's bull In spite of these roadblocks, police were
unable to find the two perpetrators, and composite sketches of them were eventually circulated
by the media. But it is so hard is exactly what you said when
you're inside that bowling alley. Yes, evidence was destroyed, but any other
evidence that would have been left around, any kind of forensic evidence, any
kind of fingerprints. There's hundreds upon hundreds of people who go through that bowling
alley every week, even with a dedicated team, I don't think bowling alleys
are always the cleanest right that you have that where you're going to be able
to have a fresh slate and start over. It would have so much material
there from everyday guests who are at the bowling alley, from the employees there,
it would have been nearly impossible to say, oh, these are a
unique set of fingerprints, this is a unique here. This is you know,
even a piece of clothing that could have been left because people leave their
things at the bowling alley. So you have that problem. But you also
have a very very generic description. A Hispanic man in his thirties or forties,
a Hispanic man in his twenties or thirties or thirties and forties, whatever,
that's it, with a mustache, so that's twenty five percent of the
Hispanic men they would have pulled over while they were looking for people, So
it really does leave them with a massive question mark. But the eeriness that
Steve was in the building with these men and that people saw them run across
the street. It's pitiful because everybody was so close to being able to either
provide an amazing description or actually help police apprehend them, and they just vanished.
And I don't mean to make light of the whole situation, but the
composite sketches of the two men have been available online for the past thirty years,
and whenever someone sees them they always joke about how the man and the
mustache is like a dead raer for Eddie Murphy. I mean, he looks
exactly like him, so you can tell how this is not helpful. He
just kind of looks like your generic dark skinned man with a mustache. Yeah,
exactly. When you hear you be on the lookout for a white man
in a white T shirt and blue jeans, you go, that helps none,
right there, just doesn't help us at all know who to look for.
The community was left absolutely devastated by the crime, and when the Tehran
family was laid to rest at their funeral a few days later, the bishop
presiding over the service stated quote, this was not an act of God.
It was an act of evil, evil men. End quote. The case
received nationwide attention, and it was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries,
which aret in April twenty fifth, just two and a half months after the
crime took place, and it wound up generating around three hundred phone calls from
viewers. America's Most Wanted also featured the story, and since it was never
solved, the show would continually produce new segments about the crime on multiple occasions
over the years. Even though Los Crucis Bull owner Ron Senak actually lived inside
his establishment, he'd been away on a weekend golfing trip to Tucson, Arizona,
on the day of the murders. In spite of the fact that his
own daughter was shot, Ron surprised everyone by reopening the bowling alley for business
only one week after the crime took place. He stated, quote, life
is for the living. Were determined not to allow this insane act of two
individuals to permanently alter the lifestyle of the community. End quote. However,
later that year, Ron would run into financial problems and Los Cruci's bull was
sold in a court ordered auction and renamed Sun Lanes. Ron would soon move
away from the area, claiming that the police had often treated him like a
suspect whenever they interrogated him. Indeed, rumors always circulated that Ron spent money
foolishly, was often out of town, and may have been involved in shady
business deals with shady characters. However, he was thoroughly investigated by law enforcement
who were unable to find any evidence that he had knowledge or involvement in the
crime or that he was engaged in illegal activity. As soon as you mentioned
that Ron had that he had financial problems, I initially thought, Okay,
is there a way that he could be involved with illegal activity? Could he
be making deals with people financially that weren't able to be fulfilled And in that
case, would somebody be out for revenge or for you to claim money or
to get something from his bowling alley. Now, if that was the case,
you would think that Ron was the first person who had come forward to
the police and say I'm not proud of this, but here's my concern.
I had this deal with this person. I had a drug deal going bad
with this person. I had sold false items to this person. I need
help. I think it's one of these people. And without him coming forward
with that kind of information, it does lead police saying we're going to try
to prove or disprove that maybe he has something to do with it, and
then that's a dead end for them as well. Yeah, I was thinking
that, like, maybe if Ron was involved in something illegal, he would
still keep his mouth shut for fear that even though people were shot and his
life might be in danger, he might figure that he was going to get
into a bunch of trouble if he came clean about everything. But I would
like to think that if he knew something, he would have said something because
his own daughter was shot and badly wounded. Yet he still maintained, like
over the course of the next thirty years that he had no idea who did
this, And like we just said, even though I personally had suspicions about
him when I first heard about Ron, when I watched The Nightmare and Los
Crusis documentary, law enforcement is pretty adamant they have not found anything in his
background to suggests that he was involved in anything illegal. Or that he might
have had knowledge about who actually committed this crime, though it is tempting to
think that given the circumstances, and although it's not a good look when multiple
people have been murdered inside your establishment and your daughter's been shot that you open
after a week, but it could have been due to financial desperation. If
he was really in dire straits financially, he may have been forced to open
up and to try to generate some kind of income. But as a result,
it made him look really suspicious, because it's like, you're sure moving
on quickly when the community is still mourning and you're saying life is for the
living, but people haven't fully grieved, and I'm sure some of the funerals
haven't even happened yet, so it seems a little bit quick. But if
your feet are being held to the fire, you've got bills to pay,
then maybe it kind of forced his hand into doing that. And I'll tell
you too, from a grief perspective, I think people handle things differently and
they want to cope with things differently. We just had a officer shooting in
my town and it resulted in the death of a man at a bar and
the next day the bar opened, and the community was kind of like,
wait, why is the bar opened because someone died there last night. And
they said, this is a place where people come to be happy and find
joy and peace, and so we're going to be open today for people who
knew him and provide this kind of place where they can come remember him and
be happy in a moment of grief. And so there was so much confusion,
and that was the talk of the town that day. But they were
very public about we will be open and here's why. I don't always understand
what people do. But there could have been something like that too, where
he said this is a place where community comes to be safe, and I'm
going to try to keep that where this was two evil men who came in
here. This is not what happens at a bowling alley. This is not
what happens when you come into our family establishment. So we're going to pretend
like this is a safe, happy place where people come to make memories and
not remember it as a place where people lost their lives. I'm probably more
inclined to think it a more financial move for him, but it's possible that
was also a motivation it's an important point. I think you can't put grief
in a box. And I think we so often want to say what should
be a typical response to grief, But it isn't this thing where you can
go, Okay, well, somebody isn't behaving in a way that I think
they should be behaving. And I think we've learned so much with even just
for example, with nine to one one calls. We see people, oh,
that person acted suspiciously on the call, and then we later find out
they were innocent, that they had nothing to do with it, And I
think it just shows that we really can't evaluate if somebody else is grieving properly.
And I do think your point about raw and possibly reopening the Bowling Alley
out of financial desperation does make a lot of sense, because even if he
was already experiencing financial problems, that he's already had four to five thousand dollars
stolen. I don't know how long it would take insurance to pay out if
you've had money stolen during a robbery, but he behaven thinking to himself,
if I keep this place closed for much longer, it's going to financially ruined
me. So even though it might not seem like the most sensitive thing to
do. I probably have to reopen and generate some income, so that could
have been his motivating factor for doing so, And for all we know,
later a month later or two months later, when he has to sell or
gets the Bowling Alley taken away from him, it could have been because he
doesn't he can't make his loan, or he can't do something like that because
it is a place where people were just killed. So there is a possibly
that even though they reopened, he wasn't bringing in money anyway. Suspicion would
also be directed towards Ron's youngest son, RJ Snak, who worked as a
bartender at Los Cruce's Bowl but was not present on the day of the crime.
There were rumors that RJ had a cocaine addiction and performed drug transactions at
the Bowling Alley, and the investigators would describe him as being very distant when
he was questioned, but they also failed to turn up any evidence to suggest
that RJ was linked to the murders, and he would dive an allege drug
overdose in May of nineteen ninety seven. As for Stephanie Senak, while she
survived the shooting, she was never the same and suffered from serious post traumatic
stress disorder. Stephanie rarely ever left her home, and on one occasion in
which she did venture out to attend a parade, she heard a noise which
sounded like a gunshot, causing her to freak out and start screaming. Stephanie
would pass away due to complications from her injuries in August of nineteen ninety nine.
What a sad tragedy for Ron's family too. Here you have. Not
only was his daughter's shot, she did survive, but later passes away about
nine years after the crime. His son also dies from an alleged drug overdose
two years before Stephanie's death. But if it was related to RJ's drug use,
it is possible that RJ has no knowledge or idea that it has something
to do with him, So he's acting aloof or distant because he's saying,
I have nothing to do with this, I didn't cause this. But those
people that came looking for RJ that day might have thought there were drug located
in that facility. They might have thought that there was something that RJ owed
them, and RJ might be oblivious to all of that. So it is
possible that they were out for revenge because of some drug deal gone wrong and
RJ just simply didn't know. But wouldn't you tell the person you're trying to
get revenge agains that you're responsible, so it then scares them into paying you
back whatever they owed you. I guess it would depend on the circumstances because
this was a pretty high profile of crime, So it's possible that the perpetrators
were feeling, well, we wanted to send a message to RJ, but
now we have all this attention and all these people trying to catch us,
So maybe we should just let it slide and stay underground, because if we
try to contact RJ again, that might lead to us being caught or they
say the message is loud and clear, I just destroyed your family, people
that y'all cared about, and your father's business, Like that's enough revenge for
us over a small drug debt or a lie you told us as your drug
dealers or things like that. And I think it's possible if he knew that
it was people associated with him due to a drug debt, that he might
just internalize that and he's not going to share that with anybody, because you
know the type of catastrophic damage these people can cause, So you'd be worried
about bodily harm that could come to you or anybody else in your family who's
left, because at that point, his dad's around and his sister has survived,
so he may just keep his mouth shut because he worries, well,
what else could they do if I decide to open my mouth and sing like
a canary. Another potential lead was provided by a woman named Irma Tirna,
who allegedly made a comment in a bar about how the day of the crime,
she'd encountered two men who matched the description of the shooters. These men
wound up staying at ti Arena's residence. At one point, one of them
heard police helicopters flying overhead and said, quote were under their noses and they
don't even know it end quote. Te Arena, who had her own history
of drug usage, seemed to believe that the two men had gone to Las
Cruse's bull because they believed a large stash of narcotics was there, but they
ultimately found nothing. Ti Arena was questioned by police and passed a polygraph,
but when she was later revisited by one of the detectives, she suddenly recounted
her story. Ti Arena wound up passing away of an accidental drug overdose in
May of two thousand and one, and her story was never substantiated. I
know that Irma has a drug issue, but this is one of the most
kind of spot on leads that we've heard so far. Right, everybody else
just described as kind of basic. Oh, there's these two Hispanic men.
Oh, I saw these two Hispanic running. This is someone who's saying,
these are other drug users dealers that came to my home. I heard the
commotion. I can link them to the commotion caused by the shooting. They're
talking about the crime, and they thought they were going to get to go
in there and recover narcotics and get money. That's what As soon as you
talked about RJ, the son of the own, having an issue with drugs,
I could easily see this being accurate. Yes, she recants, could
be because she's very scared or paranoid because of her drug use, or because
she truly does know the magnitude of the kind of people she hangs out with.
But unfortunately she passes away. So there's no way to even requestion her
about this or go back and say, Okay, yes, you took your
story back, but we have these innocent children who died. We need your
help, help us, and we'll protect you. That can't be done.
And the part about the story which is kind of weird is that I assume
that Tiarina never learned these men's names because she didn't share them with law enforcement.
So she makes it sound like she just has a chance encounter with these
men on the day of the murders and invited them back to her residence,
even though she didn't even know who they are, which seems kind of odd.
But I guess if she has addiction issues, or maybe they thought they
were going to have drugs together, maybe that's why she invited them back.
But that would be pretty terrifying though. If she didn't know who these guys
were and realizes after the fact that they were responsible for shooting all these people
at the Bowling Alley, it could just be a trap house or like a
kind of user den where people who use drugs in that area know that her
house is one of those places you can go, or she invites, like
you said, anybody who is in that world over because of her own addiction,
and doesn't I mean, do you really know all of the characters in
that scene. When you have an addiction that's so desperate, you'll feed it.
And a lot of people would go by their street names, they might
not go by their legal government name exactly. Yeah, So if she did
provide any names to law enforcement, it sounds like they've never released that to
the public. So in twenty ten, filmmaker Charlie Minn produced a feature length
documentary about the case, titled A Nightmare and Los Crusis, which was released
following the twentieth anniversary of the crime. It contained interviews with a number of
people associated with the case, including the two surviving victims, Melissa Repass and
Ida Holgeen. The year after the crime took place, Melissa was awarded the
g I. Joe Real American Hero Award for her courageous actions and received a
plaque medal, a box full of toys, and an all expenses paid trip
to Washington, d c. She would eventually get married and have two children.
Idah Holgeen spent three months in the hospital recovering from the shooting and had
to relearn simple tacts and had to relearn simple pass all over again. She
completely forgot how to cook and when she returned home, Ida did not even
recognize the place. Ida has been unable to work since the shooting and has
to take several different medications to deal with her constant headaches and PTSD. However,
Ida believes that she saw the two perpetrators at Las Cruce's Bowl on what
occasion prior to the shooting. She remembers that they never went bowling or used
any of the ali's services, and just sat at a table watching everybody.
Indeed, other witnesses have recalled seeing these two men at the alley at some
point that is so scary because their behavior is just that they're sitting there casing
the place. They're studying employee behavior, they're studying who's at the bowling alley.
They're strategizing where rooms are located and what they could get out of this
facility. And then they come back and they create this chaos and trauma,
and you take these lives of this family that has so much going for him.
It's it's horrifying. I love that Melissa gets this kind of second act
where she has the trauma that's never going to go away, but she's able
to say, look, I have a second chapter to live, right My
life didn't end that day, and so I'm going to live it with purpose.
And you see that with the way that she goes to Washington, see
gets this honor for being the person who is able to contact law enforcement and
get help for the survivors. And then she goes on and she gets married
and has two kids. Ida, your heart breaks for her because she didn't
have the same physical or mental health to be able to have a full second
chapter. She was disabled by her injuries, and her memory was foggy,
and she had to relearn how to do even the most basic task. What
an overwhelming challenge that she faced when she got home from the hospital. Yeah,
it's been very difficult for it. But I definitely commend her for appearing
on camera to be interviewed in the documentary because I know that for the first
couple of years after the crime, they kept the identities of the surviving victims
away from the public, and they were reluctant to do interviews, and if
they did, they would only do it in silhouette to conceal their identities.
But by this point twenty years had passed and Melissa and Ida finally felt courageous
enough to say, we're going to appear on camera and share our stories because
we want to spread awareness and increase the possibility of the perpetrators being caught.
Other interviewees in a Nightmare and Las Crusis included Tehran, who went on to
have two more children, as well as Amy Hauser's mother, stepfather, and
step siblings. In a twenty sixteen article about the case published in The Los
Cruses Son Stephen Taran's brother Andy Tehran stated quote, in this day and age,
things like this don't go unsolved. How did we not get these guys?
That's the question I asked myself every day. Numerous people saw these gunmen,
So someone out there knows something and they need to come forward. End
quote. In June of twenty eighteen, the former Los Cruse's Bowl, now
known as Sun Lane's finally closed down for good, with everyone still remembering the
tragedy which had taken place there. The Los Cruses Donna Anna County Crime Stoppers
would offer a twenty five thousand reward for information, but Charlie Minn would later
contribute some money to the fund, upping the total of the reward to thirty
two thousand. Men also frequently hold screenings of a Nightmare and Los Crusis throughout
New Mexico every year in hopes that the right person might watch it and provide
the necessary information to help bring the case to a resolution. But after more
than three decades, the two perpetrators have yet to be identified, and the
last crucious Bowling Alley massacre remains unsolved. It is one of those cases where
you think, look at the magnitude of how many people say they saw these
individuals at the Bowling Alley before the crime, at the Bowling Alley the day
of the crime, fleeing from the Bowling Alley after the crime, and how
long these two individuals have had to hold that secret, how the people around
them, the dynamics might have changed, how the relationship between the two perpetrators
might have changed, how one of them might have found Christ and needed to
free themselves of this burden. Right, like all of the things that could
have changed in the years and years since that crime, it's wild that no
one has come forward with information that no one's spoken. Right, they say,
never commit a crime with somebody else, because two people just can't keep
their mouth shut for years and years and years, and it sounds like here,
yes they have, and they haven't shared it with anyone else. That
seems wild to me. I think there is somebody somewhere that knows something.
But this is so heavy. There's so much collateral damage here, there's lives
that have been stolen, people could live in fear right. It would take
someone saying I will no longer have to deal with this perpetrator because let's say
they died or they're in prison for something else, and so there's no risks
to me anymore. Both of these men should be relatively older gentlemen now and
way less of a physical threat at this point. So I'm praying that the
passage of time in this case becomes a blessing to the case and is something
that a person feels the strength to be able to come forward and say,
I've been holding this for so long, I need to get it off my
chest, and they can help the police. We talked earlier about fingerprints being
left Bowling Alley and how it would be difficult to discern which prints belonged to
the perpetrators and which prints belonged to the employees. Or just random customers who
have been there. But the thing is is that they still have the prints
on file, so that they had any viable suspects to compare them to and
found out that their prints rea at the alley, that could be the type
of evidence to finally implicate them and file charges. But of course, the
big issue in this case is that we have never had any solid suspects,
so there's been no one to compare these fingerprints too. And like you said,
that's the main reason that we hope that someone has information that that can
point law enforcement towards some suspects in order to build a case against them.
Well, if I could compile a list of haunting, disturbing cases which I'm
shocked have still not been solved, this one would rank right near the top
of the list. Like I mentioned in the intro, I still have vivid
memories of watching this story get featured on episodes of Unsolved Metres and America's Most
Wanted when I was a lot younger, and I was really bothered by the
fact that these gunmen could shoot a bunch of children without hesitation. When it
comes to composite sketches of unidentified suspects, and cold cases. I'd say that
the drawings of the two perpetrators here are among the most memorable, and if
you showed them to your average true crime follower, they'd instantly recognize which case
are from. Yet here we are over thirty years later, and it seems
like investigators still don't have the faintest idea who the two guys from these sketches
are. While a number of cases we featured on this podcast are still unsolved
because the police botch things up, I really can't find any fault with how
law enforcement have handled this investigation. It sounds like they've done the absolute best
they can and whenever you see interviews with people who have worked on this case,
you can tell that they put their heart and soul into trying to catch
the killers, and it really bothers them that this is still unsolved. It
just seems that somehow the two monsters who did this managed to get lucky and
slipped through the cracks. Of course, there's been a lot of speculation over
the idea that this crime was a lot more than a simple robbery gone wrong.
There are many good reasons to believe that, which we'll get into in
our next episode, but I think the most chilling detail of this entire case
is how Valerie Uran was shot through the forehead. That means whoever did this
was looking directly at the face of a two year old girl when he decided
to pull the trigger, which is a special kind of evil. Even though
neither of these men were wearing masks. Is a two year old really going
to be able to provide much information to the police if you leave her alive
as a witness? What I was also thinking when you described her, and
you got to remember she's lying down on the ground next to her father.
Think about how small a two year old little baby is next to her father,
who's just praying to God in that moment, please let my kids live,
Please let my kids live. And this kiddo's scared to death, right
Their other little siblings sitting there, scared to death, and they're probably clinging
to their dad, and he has the ability to pull a trigger and shoot
this angel in the forehead. It's disgusting. I don't think the other child
would have been able to recognize them either. Like I said, it was
just so evil that they said, there's these seven people lying on the ground.
We will just continue to open fire into the heads of these individuals and
children and babies. These are two men who have no soul, so I
think this would be a good time to bring an in to part one.
But join us next week as we present part two of our series about the
Los Crusus Bowling Ali Max about the Los Crusus Bowling Alley massacre. Robin,
do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold?
Patreon? Uh? 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 any one
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
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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 in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three. So
I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeweles and Nashty Patreon,
so there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chilly. We've bought
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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
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