Welcome back to part two of our coverage about the disappearance of Mary Jane Dan
Gilder. Yes, because what they said about Albert is he was just not
a guy who would adhere to any traditional structure, and like I said,
he would just kind of drift in and out of his family's lives. He
did have a history of trouble with the law, as he spent some time
in jail for larceny for doing stuff like stealing contributions from an Easter Seals container
at a tavern, and at one point apparently he stole his sister's table model
radio and I know that to Adam did like a search on newspapers dot com
to see if he could find anything about Albert, and it turned out that
he made the news in nineteen sixty one when he was arrested for stealing a
car and apparently bragged to the police that he had stolen over one hundred cars
through of the course of his life. According to his grandniece, Tina Barrett's,
no one really knows like when Albert was last seen. They apparently the
surviving relatives think that they last saw sometime in nineteen sixty three or nineteen sixty
four, but there was no record of his death anywhere, so it was
just one of those things where he just stopped making contact with everyone. But
they never reported and missing because they just thought that was typical behavior for Albert.
They just thought he was just off doing his own thing and were unaware
that he somehow wound up dead in a drainage ditch in Preble County, Ohio.
That's crazy. So do they have any idea what his cause of death
was? Do they think it was like an accidental in misadventure murder? We
don't know yet. I know that you were unable to determine the exact cause
of death back in nineteen sixty eight, so they're probably going to try to
do like a new investigation on his body to decide if he was the victim
of a homicide. I know that he originally lived in Hamilton and Hamilton,
Ohio, which is in Butler County, and his remains were found about twenty
five miles away, so we don't know what he was doing there when he
wound up dead. But apparently there were some rumors, a family rumor that
spread that Albert had been murdered rolled up in a piece of carpet and left
on someone's porch, And these are rumors that are being told by today's generation
that they've heard. I think they were shared by Albert's nieces, who are
the surviving daughters of Albert's brother, But they don't really have any context to
it because they heard these stories when they were little kids, and all the
people who would have shared these rumors about Albert being killed are now deceased,
so we don't know where they come from, what the context is to all
this. But apparently there might have been some people in the family who felt
that Albert was murdered, but they don't really have any art evidence. So
were they telling this story like somebody within the family murdered Albert or like an
acquaintance murdered him. Was there no details on who this person might have been
and how this family might have got this information? Not really no, Like
this is being provided by his nieces who would have been really, really young
when they heard them. And I'm guessing that whoever shared these stories did not
provide much context or and because so much time has passed, they may not
even remember the details all that well. But they just said, when we
grew up, we heard all these rumors about our uncle Albert and how he
died, but we don't have anything substantial. And of course their father,
Albert's brother George, has since passed away, so they can't question him to
find out where he might have heard this. I've got to wonder if it's
rooted in some type of truth, because how would they have that information.
There's a lot of specificity with he was murdered and wrapped up in a rug
and put on somebody's porch. Said, yeah, yeah, very specific,
Yeah, very weird. And another detail about Albert is that he was briefly
married in nineteen fifty nine, and he was and I think the marriage lasted
only fourteen months before the divorced. But Albert also had a daughter at one
point. I'm not sure if it was with the same woman he was married
to or if it was a completely different woman. But this daughter was put
up for adoption and Adam wound up tracking her down because of DNA testing and
stuff, and I think he reached out to her on Facebook or something and
then finally spoke to her, and she had no idea that she had a
father who had gone missing during the nineteen sixties and a half now been identified
as a Jane Doe slash John Doe. So needless to say, she was
quite shocked when she learned this news. I can't even imagine having somebody reach
out and now you're going down the rabbit hole trying to find all this information
out. And also you've got this whole other family that you maybe didn't have
access to prior. So I think it's both upset, but it's also going
to be really interesting, and you've got the potential to make a lot of
connections and feel a sense of closeness with people who share your DNA. Yeah,
that always happens. I've heard stories about people who have been adopted where
they've done DNA testing when they're adults to find out who their biological parent is.
And have you heard of William Bradford Bishop, Yes, the family Annihilator.
Well, a couple of years ago a woman did a DNA test and
found out he was her biological father because he had had an affair with her
mother while he was in college. And she had no idea that one of
the most famous wanted family annihilators of all time was her biological father. Oh
my god, that had to have been a very complex emotional reaction because you're
excited to find out who this person is and find out everything that you can
find out about them, and then to know that your father likely did this
and he's never been found. I would feel some type of way about that
exactly. Sometimes just say maybe I shouldn't have submitted the DNA, Maybe I
was better off not knowing. Yeah, yeah, I don't know how I
would reconcile that. I would feel like maybe I would want to put it
back in Pandora's box. So as if Albert's story isn't weird enough, it's
an even bigger rabbit hole now because it turned out that Albert had a sister
named Clara, who went missing sometime between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty two,
when she would have been in her early twenties, And of course there's no
record of her ever having been reported missing or any record of her death.
And we have a lot of like third hand information being shared by some people
who were children at the time. These are Albert's nieces. They said they
also heard weird stories about the aunt Clara, how apparently her mother had sold
her to a German Man when she was a teenager. And it does turn
out that she was married to a German Man named Chester Kaprowski, and they
had a pair of children and a pair of after Clara went missing. Not
long afterwards, Chester got remarried to another woman, so you can kind of
put two and two together. It's like, we don't have any specific details,
but since we have these stories that Chester was abusive, it's looking more
and more that he might have murdered Clara and gotten rid of her body and
then got remarried. But unfortunately Chester and both of Chester and Clara's two children
are now deceased, so no one can really ask them anything firsthand to find
out what happened. So once again we have nothing more than hearsay from people
who were just kids at the time, some juicy gossip going around in this
family. I know, this is a weird family. I mean, I
can't even imagine being like the child of one of these people and you're hearing
all this stuff. But then it's like multiple generations, so it's like a
generational game of telephone. You wonder how many of the details are actually accurate
exactly. Yeah, So it's kind of weird. You have two different siblings
in the family that just went missing at different times, and one of them
has found dead, and we have another one who was likely murdered during the
nineteen fifties. So I really want to learn more about this family because it
sounds like there was a very interesting family dynamic that we don't know about,
because it sounds like a lot of their siblings were kind of non plus by
the fact that their brother and sister just kind of disappeared and nobody bothered to
perform an investigation, and their mother sold her. Yeah you're a German Man,
like ooh, I know. So, I mean she was married to
a German Man, so I'm guessing that is what happened. But it's kind
of crazy that the family would just share that information with these little children and
stuff that, Hey, your grandmother likes to sell her own daughter, Like,
what's going on here? Yeah, maybe they didn't feel too warmly towards
her. I'm just going to take a shot in the dark if you're going
to sell your children, I mean, unless it was out of a sense
of desperation, and this is some weird Dowry situation. I don't know exactly
the way it worked out, but it doesn't sound like a very happy situation,
especially since he would likely be the prime suspect if she did go missing.
So just not a good situation all around, definitely, And it is
incredible to think that we would have never heard of Albert or Clara if they
had not launched this investigation into Mary Jane van Gilder's disappearance. So that's what's
great about this whole thing is that because they launched a completely unrelated missing person's
investigation and decided to exhum like a Jane Doe who turned out to be a
John Doe, we learned about two completely different missing persons who had been completely
lost to history. And that was the bright side here is that if it
wasn't for Adam Turner, we would never have heard the name Albert Alan Frost.
But at least now he's been got his legacy restored, and they were
able to dig up an old high school yearbook photograph of him and spread it
around in all the newspapers, and now everyone knows that Albert it was a
person and he deserved to be remembered, and his legacy has finally been restored,
And we don't know yet what's going to happen in the investigations. I'm
sure they're going to try to figure out what happened to Clara and try to
figure out if Albert was the victim of a homicide. But at the very
least we now have some sort of resolution in this case, and we know
that at least Albert's surviving loved ones know what happened to him. This case
is crazy just to think that the primary missing person starts out being Mary Jane,
and then we've got these tertiary missing people who just kind of pop up
out of nowhere, who are forgotten to the sands of time, and then
all of a sudden, it's like they're plucked from obscurity out of the ground.
Not Clara, but Albert, and everyone thinking that this is a woman
who's given birth and now he has his identity back and he's properly gendered,
and now his family know, well, not what happened to him, but
what became of him where he ended up. And then Clara's disappearance gets to
be discussed, because I think just the simple act of discussing missing people,
not having them be forgotten, I think is something that we should never really
take for granted, because to speak somebody's name is in remembrance of that person.
So even if we don't know what happened to Clara, the fact that
we're talking about her and the fact that we're remembering her in that way,
I think it's something exactly. It sounds like she led a sad life if
she was sold to an abusive man by her mother. But at least she
is being talked about for the first time in nearly seventy years. But Yeah,
Adam held a press conference in November of twenty twenty three, and I
still remember getting a message for him saying, do you remember when I was
exhuming a Jane Doe in the Mary Jane van Gilder case. Well, I've
got some big news about that. I can't tell you about it, but
I'm in a hole of press conference and he had actually invited me, And
if I didn't have another job, I might have made the drive to Shelby,
Ohio to be there. But it was kind of cool to be in
the loop. But after he told me about this, and he says,
I've got some other big news. I've solved the Mary Jane van Gilder case.
And I'm like what, And he says, you can't tell anybody because
I have to work out some details. But hopefully within the next few months
I will hold a press conference and share all the details about that. So
it was a pretty exciting time because I watched the live stream of the press
conference about the announcement about the identification of Albert, and near the end he
was saying, well, we still don't have answers about Mary Jane's case,
And I'm thinking to myself, Oh, yes, you do, and we're
going to find out soon. And thankfully, in February of twenty twenty four,
he finally went public for it and held a press conference in which he
revealed the truth about what happened to Mary Jane. Thank god for Adam Turner
and his perseverance, because to tackle a missing person's case like this, the
probability of getting a resolution and solving it is pretty low. But the fact
that he has is kind of noble pursuit where he really wants to give people
back their identities, and he's attracted to these cases where people have been lost
in the shuffle because police departments will pursue newer cases typically, and so people
that have been missing or murdered and nobody knows who they are. Well,
who's going to give them their name back? At least we know that Adam
Turner's on the case and he solved this one, so good for him.
It's great to hear that investigators are really doing great police work. Oh,
definitely. And the press conference where they announced the identification of albert Police Chief
Lance Combs went to the podium and he actually gave a message to the camera
saying, if you're a criminal, don't commit a crime in Shelby, Ohio,
because Adam Turner will find you. I love that. So it was
kind of crazy because they announced the identification of Mary Jane I think the same
week as my podcast eight year anniversary, so it was kind of a momentous
occasion. And on a side note, it was on the exact date of
my seven year anniversary in twenty twenty three when they salved another very old case
that I had covered on the podcast, and that was the abduction of Mary
Agnes Moroni, a two year old girl who was abducted from her family in
Chicago in nineteen thirty. That is still officially the oldest case on the Trailmen
Called, which went solved, but it was another one where they signed a
detective to the case a few years ago when it was a daunting task,
but he used DNA genetic genealogy and he found out that Mary Agnes Moroni was
actually a woman who died in two thousand and one while living under a different
identity. She was probably abducted, raised under a false identity, and lived
her entire life without knowing she was an abducted child and had like children and
grandchildren of her own before she passed away. And it's like, wow,
because of DNA they were able to solve a missing children's case that was nearly
a century old, Like do you think that in nineteen thirties case? I
mean, it's nice to that she lived a full life and that she wasn't
deceased or killed shortly thereafter after she was abducted. But it's really sad to
think that somebody took it upon themselves to steal a child, either because somebody
else wanted the child or they themselves wanted the child. I mean, we
don't know the full scenario, but to rob a family of their baby girl
is just really sad. Oh, definitely. And the circumstances of that is
that she was abducted by a woman pretending to be a social worker using a
fake name, and because pretty much everyone from her immediate family has passed away,
we don't know if this woman was the person who raised Mary Agnes under
her false identity, or if it was just someone in a black market adoption
who could have sold the child to a family who was completely oblivious that she
had been abducted. So we'll probably never know the full truth about what happened
here, but at least we have a resolution in this case, and Mary
Agnes's descendants know what happened to her. So I mentioned earlier that the key
to finding out what happened to Mary Jane happened to be her civilian personnel file
from her time in the military at the Shelby Army Air Force Depot. And
it was actually a civilian sleuth, as Adam classified it, who provided the
clue which led to this case being solved. And when Adam gave his press
conference, he wanted to give full credit to this person, but they preferred
to remain anonymous, and this person privately emailed me, so I know who
they are, but I just find that incredible that they helped solve a cold
case that was over seventy five years old. But they don't want anyone to
know who they are. It sounds like they're a very modest person who just
doesn't want the credit. Well, shout out to that super sleuth whoever they
are. Yeah, exactly, they did an amazing thing. But what was
great is that when Adam obtained the military personnel file, he decided to post
it publicly and he thought, well, I'll just give the general public a
chance to read it, because maybe they'll uncover a key piece of information that
I missed that I did not see the significance of, and it will help
pay the way for this case being solved. And that's exactly what happened,
because this anonymous luth looked at her personnel file and saw the name Percy Lee
Sebron, who had actually been Mary Jane's predecessor. He had been the previous
high lift fork operator before she got the job, and apparently helped trainer to
get the new position. And we're thinking about that, this is nineteen forty
five. It seems kind of unusual that a man would be willing to give
up a position like that to a woman, So maybe we should look into
this name, see if we can find anything. Well. Adam then looked
at Percy Lee Severn's name at findegrave dot Com and he found out that he
had died in Kansas City in April of nineteen sixty nine at the age of
forty nine. And it turned out he had been run over by a train,
which is an awful way to go. But what Adam found particularly interesting
is that, I'm sure you know that find a Grave each page has links
to relatives of each deceased person, and he found a page for Per' wife
named Mary j. Sebron. Then he goes to her page and he sees
her birth date November the nineteenth, nineteen eleven, and he realizes that's Mary
Jane Van Gilder's birth date. So you can kind of see where this is
about to go. Wow, Okay, so this has really taking a different
turn. Yeah, And what was crazy is that Adam had already gone to
find Grave like he had pretty much put together this huge list of names of
people who had graves where their birth date was November the nineteenth, nineteen eleven,
and he said, I'm just gonna kind of, if I have time,
gradually check through these one by one to find out like if any of
them look like they might have a connection to Mary Jane van Gilder, And
he did have Mary Sebron's name on his list, but he just hadn't gotten
to it yet. But this lead with Percy Sebron allowed him to fast track
it, so he looked at the grave site. He found out that Mary
Sebron died in Arkansas on May the thirty first, nineteen ninety at the age
of seventy nine, and that Mary and Percy were both buried at the New
Forest Cemetery in Louisiana, which happened to be Percy's home state. And what
was even more interesting is that there was a fine a grave profile page for
Percy and Mary's children, and her first child, named Percy Sebrand Junior,
was born in Louisiana on December the ninth, nineteen forty five. And you
kind of realize, if you remember Mary's Mary Jane's personnel file where she decided
to quit in March of nineteen forty five for added household duties, and you
kind of do the math and you realize Percy Junior was born about nine months
after she quit. And then they realized that she also was asking, like
her daughter Anime, for the war bonds back because she might have wanted money.
And she also happened to ask James for a divorce in February of nineteen
forty five. So on the surface, it's kind of looking like perhaps Mary
Jane started a relationship with Percy Sebryn became regnant and that's why she quit her
job and left the area. Well, this is all making sense now,
all of it, except for the fact that she dropped off the face of
the earth and stopped talking to her children. Yes, that is the big
mystery here that we will probably never know the answer to. But Adam had
a good punch now, But he just needed evidence, And of course it
turned out that both of Percy and Mary's children had passed away, but Percy
Junior had four children of his own, So Adam decided to contact one of
his daughters on Facebook, who was able to provide some backstory about being raised
by Percy Jr. And her grandparents, and of course she had fond memories
of her grandmother Mary's. They said that they spent the most of their lives
living in Arkansas, and she described Mary Jane as a very amazing grandmother,
very loving, but she was also apparently very secretive about her life, and
apparently her past was just one of those topics that the family never discussed.
And when Mary Shane was dying of cancer in nineteen ninety, she apparently told
one of her granddaughters quote that there was something she couldn't tell her and that
she could never find out. Wow, So it's got to be that she
had this whole other life before. And I could see maybe at the time,
to keep in contact with your children and to like acknowledge that you have
this whole other life might be something where people would impart judgment upon you.
So her motivations might have been different than like motivations that people would have today.
So I definitely don't want to think I don't want anyone to think that
I'm coming from a place of judging her when I say that, like why
did she go this log without talking to her children? Because I think that
the motivation could be manyfold here. It's difficult to leave a relationship that was
contentious, she didn't have custody, and then to start a new life.
It's sort of like, Okay, well, these are our children. Maybe
he doesn't want anything to do with me having other children. We don't know
the dynamic of the relationship and how he felt, and if he even knew
that she had other children. We don't know. Yeah, we don't know.
Like because Percy Senior has passed away, we will probably never find out
if he knew that she had a different husband and a different bunch of different
children in another state. Probably knew she could have lived in Ohio her entire
life. He may not have known she was even from West Virginia. But
I know that Adam finally obtained some photographs of Mary from her younger Mary Sebryn,
from her younger years and before she passed away. And I remember watching
the live stream of the press conference while this was going on. Thankfully it
was a Monday when I was working from home, so I didn't have to
worry about stuff on my other job. But I'm watching this and he puts
up he's doing a PowerPoint presentation and he does a side by side comparison with
a photograph of Mary Jane and Mary Sebrin when she's in her seventies, like
in the nineteen eighties, where she looks really old, and I'm looking at
that I'm like, I got chills. I was like, that is definitely
the same person, Mary, Mary Jane Van Guilder and Mary Jane Sebrn have
to be one and the same. And sure enough, Adam soon announced that
he was able to take DNA from one of Mary Jane Sebrn's granddaughters, made
a comparison with DNA from some of Mary Jane Van gilder surviving relatives, and
this proved beyond a shadow of the doubt that Mary Jane Sebron was Mary Jane
Van Guilder. Wow, Like, what a crazy ride that is. I
mean, Adam Turner must have been beyond thrilled to be able to let all
of these family members know. And also these are family members that don't know
that they brought other relatives out there to be able to let them know.
Hey, like, if you want to be in contact with these people who
you know are your cousins or distant you know, second cousins, whatever they
are, you have the ability to do so. And I think making those
connections and being able to commiserate over the shared story and the interesting family history
is really cool. Yeah, we us sound like the Sebron family and the
Van Gilder family have formed a close relationship because obviously they were both shell shocked,
and because, like the Seburns have said that the grandmother, we knew
she was a very loving person, Like we had no idea that she had
this past life. So when you learn this information that she abandoned her original
family, you're just taken by complete surprise, just thinking that she does not
seem like someone who would have been capable about that. And Mary Jane's granddaughter,
Mindy Wilson, who started this thing in the first place, who contacted
all these podcasts and YouTube shows in order to get exposure for her grandmother's case.
She did a very tearful speech at the press conference saying that we have
a lot of mixed emotions because we're very glad to have answers, but at
the same time, we kind of have to live with the knowledge that she
decided to walk away from her family and break off all contact with us for
the last forty five years of her life, which is just a very weird
feeling. And she still does have surviving children, some of them have passed
away. I know that she had a daughter named Martha who died in February
or sorry. I think it was just a few weeks before the press conference,
though Adam was able to tell her privately that they had found her mother.
But I know that it just must be a weird feeling knowing that this
woman that you thought had loved you just decided to take off and cut off
all contact with you and start a new life. I can't imagine how deep
those wounds would go and how it would feel to find out that information.
I think, like you said, it's incredibly complex. Now, some Misty
or Mindy a Mindy. Actually she had two granddaughters, Mindy and Misty,
but Mindy was the one who spoke at the press conference. Okay, okay,
okay. I was like, maybe I've been getting it wrong with the
Misty earlier, but this makes sense. There's a Mindy and a Misty.
Yeah. I can't imagine how they would feel. I personally would have a
hard time with that, knowing that there's this family member, just because you
don't have the answers to why. But I am sure given the time period,
you can understand why somebody might make those choices, particularly a woman.
So I'm sure that they are operating from a place of empathy and trying to
understand, but also trying to navigate their own feelings of a maybe not abandonment
of them specifically, but by association right their parents. So it's hard.
It's yeah, I'm sure it had to be so emotional for them exactly,
But I think you're right there that you just have to look at the time
period, because I'm sure I'm guessing Mary Jane did love her children, but
she was probably figuring I'm a woman and my husband's a man, and even
though he has alcohol problems and he's abusive, if we go to court over
this, I think there's a good chance he's going to get custody of the
children no matter what. So she might have felt I'm pretty much in a
losing battle. If I fight for custody, I'm not going to win.
But here, I've got a new life in Ohio. I found a man
that I love and I'm going to have his child, so it's probably better
that I just take off and start over. But I guess people are wondering,
like, why in the forty five years she just didn't attempt to reach
out to her children at all, at least to let them know she was
alive and say say that while I can't come and have contact with you,
but I want you to at least know that I'm not dead. But it
just must have been a hard thing, a bunch of conflicting feelings where she
felt that there'll be a bunch of shame on me if I come forward maybe
and just reveal that I ran off. It's literally what I was going to
say. The amount of shame attached to abandoning your children, to not reaching
out, I think would increase exponentially with every year that passed. I'm sure
that she felt that very heavily and it weighed upon her. So to not
reach out after so many years doesn't surprise me. Because the more years that
go by, the worse you're going to feel about the decisions that you've made,
and it's going to be difficult to hear the negative ramifications and the way
you've adversely affected people emotionally from your choices. It can be a big burden,
and it can be why a lot of people don't reach out to family
after a lot of time has passed and they haven't been in contact. So
I can kind of understand where she's coming from there, But being the family
who isn't getting that reassurance that she's alive. It had to have felt awful.
Oh I can imagine. Yeah, just very mixed feelings. But I
mean, it was a much easier to do this sort of thing back in
the nineteen forties, but this thing still happens today. I'm sure we've discussed
this case, the disappearance of Robert Hoagland. Oh yeah, yeah, And
he's one who went missing in twenty thirteen and then in late twenty twenty he
was found to be living under a new identity in a different state before he
died of natural causes. And you're thinking to yourself that it would be impossible
to disappear and start a new life under a new identity in this day and
age where everything's digital. But he somehow found a roommate to shack up with,
so he didn't have to have any credit or any electronic ID. He
pretty much spent his entire life like making cash from his job and paying his
share of the rent in cash, so he was able to survive for nine
years living under a false identity. And as you can imagine, his family
had mixed feelings like, Okay, we're glad to find out what happened to
him, But why did he just decide to take off and cut off all
contact with us. To not have those answers would be really difficult because it's
this big question mark, and then you start questioning, how did this person
feel about me? Did they truly love me? Did our relationship ever mean
anything? Because for them not to give you that reassurance and to just like
them, like to just reach out and say I'm okay. You could write
a letter from anywhere and just you know, postmarket from a place you're not
from and just literally write I'm okay and just let them know. But to
not do that, I I for family members, it has to be so
hard. Well, with Robert Hogland, I guess an issue with that is
that they wasted a lot of time and resources with the police investigation. But
at least for Mary Jane's case, we know that didn't happen because there was
no investigation when she originally disappeared. There was nothing they could really do,
and there are still a lot of un answered questions about how she pulled this
off. Because I know that when Adam acquired her personnel file, it listed
her social Security number and he was willing to post it publicly. He said
that there has not been any activity on her number since nineteen forty five,
but we want to get it out there just in case it generates any leads.
But he found out that when she became Mary Sebrin, she somehow generated
an all new Social Security number for herself, which she lived under for the
rest of her life. So we're probably never going to find out how she
managed to obtain a new one like that. I don't think you well,
nowadays, you can't just go out and get a new Social Security number,
like what you get is what you get. But I guess back then it
was easy to get like false identity documents or to change things like that.
It's not nearly the process that it is these days. Well, we see
in cases like Joseph Newton Chandler the Third where people will obtain like birth certificates
and so security numbers of children who died like many years ago, and nobody
checks that, so they're able to get away with it indefinitely until they pass
away. But like you said, we still don't know the answers of how
much her husband, Percy knew about her past, if she ever talked about
it. But I guess the good news is that it sounds like both families
are beginning to come to terms with it, and Mindy has said that she
has already made the trip to a Louisiana in order to lay flowers on her
grandmother's grave. I don't know if they'll make any attempt to move her body
back to West Virginia or anything to be with her family, and they might
feel that she's at peace being buried alongside her husband. But I guess the
fact that she was willing to visit the grave in the first place probably shows
that she's dealing with it, all right. I mean that's a hard one,
right, Like do you really want to move the body of somebody who
chose to have that be their resting place. Probably not, but to have
the ability to be able to go there and maybe sort out some complex feelings
that they have and to say some things that maybe they want to say,
because, like you said, for the family, like for Misty, for
Mindy, for all of them, and had to have been so difficult and
just so many mixed emotions. It would feel like a gut punch just to
know that our grandmother was out there, and like we never got to know
her, but that was her choice, you know, Yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, at least she was happy, because at least it
doesn't sound like her existence with James, her marriage was that happy. But
from what her grandchildren from the Sebran family have said, she did leave a
happy life until she died and seemed to be in a loving marriage with loving
children and grandchildren. So at least it was better for her. So,
like I mentioned, I also got a shout out at the press conference.
I know that Adam Turner wanted to list all the podcasts and YouTube shows who
had covered the case. She gave a shout out to also Mike Morfford's podcast
Missing Persons, which covered it, and the podcast Unfound Any great YouTube series
called Mysterious West Virginia. Have you ever heard of that one? Yes?
Do you remember Kayleia Leise who used to be on YouTube back in the day,
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, she recommended I think Mysterious West Virginia when
she stopped doing the YouTube series and I watched them. It's actually really good,
it is. Yeah. I love the host Sean McCracken. He kind
of has a Robert Stack look where he's wearing the trench coat and stuff when
he's doing the host segments. But he did a lot of legwork on this
because he found a lot of the old documentation about where Mary Jane lived during
the nineteen forties in Shelby, Ohio. Like, he searched through the records
and found a lot of interesting information, and I'm not sure this case would
have been solved without him. And he was even the one who broadcast the
live stream of the press conference, so I was able to watch it,
so it was pretty cool. But that just just goes to show the power
of true crime media where if you're independent, like the Trail Went Cold and
Mysterious West Virginia, you can cover whatever cases you want. So I'm sure
that a lot of like true crime TV shows, if you recommended doing a
missing person's case from like nineteen forty five, you'd have a lot of middlemen
and executives saying, oh, we don't want to do that. That's a
case that's so old, it's a waste of time. But being an independent
creator, you can show whatever you want. And it's just such a cool
feeling when you can actually see it reach your resolution. It seems like it's
happened a lot lately. We've seen a lot of cases closed I think with
DNA, Like, what was it used to do all those lists versus articles?
Yes, and like so many of them have come to a resolution now,
which is so crazy. There's one list I did in twenty thirteen.
Here are ten unidentified decedents, and nine of the ten victims on that list
have since been identified these past ten years, which is incredible through DNA testing.
I don't know, that's bananas, Like, just how far we've come
with technology being able to give these people back their identities. I love that
definitely. So yeah, this is definitely like one of the most amazing things
I've experienced during my eight year run as a True Grime podcast to kind of
witness such an old case get solved that I covered, which in case that
nobody knew about it all until twenty eighteen, but now it's all over the
internet and we've not only found out what happened to Mary Jane, but we
provided closure to another family, that of Albert Alan Frost and restored his identity.
And I'm thinking, even though it's going to be a daunting task to
try to figure out if Albert was murdered, or try to figure out what
happened to his sister Clara. But if anyone can solve those cases, it's
Adam Turner because he takes it as a challenge and will not let the age
or lack of evidence determ. He really is the unsung hero here. I'm
just so impressed the veracity of his investigation and his ability to be humble at
the same time and to release certain things and be like, Okay, well
I couldn't get anything out of this, but I'm going to let the public
take a crack at it and see if they come up with anything. I
think it takes a truly great investigator to say, okay, like I can't
do all of the things, but where I may lack, somebody else may
have a strength and they're going to see something that I didn't see. So
let's just do this collectively. And I think with the case this old,
it's only going to help you. So Adam Turner, you're a hero theod
way to go exactly if you're listening, Thanks a lot, Adam here.
Yeah, and one more thing I wanted to mention is that there is also
still yet another mystery within a mystery which is still unsolved because apparently Mary Jane
had a sister named Rose, who also went missing sometime during the nineteen forties.
But there's even less evidence to work with. All we really know is
that she lived in Fairmount, West Virginia and had been married to a man
named Harold Leeson. But at some point during the forties, Rose apparently left
home, and no one knows what happens to her. And here is the
one where all we really have to work with is a bunch of uncorroborated rumors
and hearsay. But it's been reported that sometime during the nineteen sixties, one
of Rose's sons received a letter from some sort of medical facility in New York
which stated that Rose was currently residing there because she was sick, and he
apparently told one of Mary Jane's children about this, But no one knows where
the original letter is and the son is now deceased, so we have nothing
more than like third hand information. And there's no official record of Rose being
reported missing, and all her children are deceased as well, so that's pretty
much all the information we have. But I'm thinking that if anyone can find
out what happened to Rose, it's Adam Turner. Wow, this is such
an interesting case with all these different siblings like Clara and Albert and Albert and
then here we've got Mary Jane and Rose. Like all these families that have
had to deal with multiple people within that family unit going missing. I can't
even imagine. And to have two of them in the same case kind of
interconnected in a weird way, is really blowing my mind. Yeah, I
mean probably know, oh, Rose's situation may be the same where she just
decided to break off all contact with her family and just went off somewhere and
got married to another man and started a new family. And it's also possible
she got sick and was put into some sort of facility, but we just
don't know. But hopefully now that Mary Jane's case has solved, maybe someone
will try to figure out what happened to Rose and give another resolution to this
family. So yeah, that about wraps it up. Like I said,
people should listen to. This case is kind of like a test how you
should never worry about not covering a case because you feel it's too old,
because you just never know who might be listening and who might have the right
information to help bring this case to a resolution. So just a phenomenal experience,
and I'm glad I got to share all the information about it with you.
Well, thank you so much for telling me about this, because I
heard just like small details on Crime Weekly, which is Derek and Stephanie's podcast,
and then when you brought up Preble County, I was like, ooh,
maybe this is the same case. And then when you went into the
details and you're like, oh, it's a twofur with the body and all
that, I'm like, oh, gotta be connected. And then when you
said, oh, criminal coffee finance this, I was like, yes,
this is the same case. So thank you so much for telling me about
this. I'm so glad that Albert's family was able to find a resolution and
that Mary Jane's family was as well. Yes, my pleasure. And it
was great to see your live reaction because when I was watching the conference and
heard about Mary Jane Sebrin having the same birth date and all that stuff,
and I had the same reaction on your face that I saw with you,
where you were just putting all the pieces together in your head and you're like,
oh my god, this is the same person. Yes, I mean
I'm so glad that she lived a long life and that it seemed like she
was really happy. It's really complex for her family that didn't know where she
was, that she cut off contact with What's a much better ending than a
lot of the cases that we cover in which somebody was murdered and that's why
they were in touch. So at least she had that. We know that
she lived a long life, and there's something peaceful about that, rather than
the open ended question that we often deal with with who murdered this person?
Now we've got their identity, but who murdered them? But that just isn't
the case here, So that is truly a happy ending. It is definitely
a bittersweet ending, but still a happy ending. So I guess I'll save
this left to say. Is I guess you could say the path did not
go Chilli Robin? Do you want to tell us a little bit about the
Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for
three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free
episodes, and I also send out stickers and signed thank you cards to anyone
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Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases
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So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeweles and Nashty
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cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from
the podcast Cold Callers Comedy