You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Over Murderer. I'm Bill Thomas and
Kristin Dilley is on a well deserved vacation, which means I'm flying this ship
solo and perhaps almost blind. I don't know, we'll find out. Join
us today is Wendy Reid, retired investigator who's very prominently featured in the new
Burden of Proof documentary on HBO, which discusses the Jennifer Pando's case. So
Wendy, Welcome to Mind over Murder. Thank you for having me. So
before we get into the Jennifer Pando's case, Wendy, tell us a little
bit about yourself, about where you grew up. You and I were discovering
that we're both I don't know if you like the word brat, but we're
both service brats. Tell us a little bit about your life, where you're
from, that sort of thing. Yeah, I grew up in a military
family. My dad was in the Coast Guard, so we actually grew up
in Yorktown, which is very close to Williamsburg. I lived there for most
of my childhood up until almost middle school. Moved to Boston. I lived
on Cape Cod and then Saint Louis and graduated high school and went to college,
and then I joined the Air Force. My dad wouldn't let me join
the Coastguard. He said everywhere he went to he was always put up in
Air Force billeting, and we lived on Air Force bases, and he said
they treat their people the best. My intention was to go in for four
years and use that to go to college, and that's what I did.
I lived in Montana and then I separated, got out and became a police
officer. So then how many years were you actually in the air force?
Was it just the four? Just the four? Yeah, I knew.
My mom said, I always said that I was going to be a police
officer when I grew up, and I knew going in, I wanted to
do it for four years, get the training and the education, and then
come back and be a police officer. Before we get into that, let
me jump back to something here. Your dad was assigned to Saint Louis.
What kind of coastguard do we have in Saint Louis. I thought that was
on the missus Hippie River. Yeah, they actually do a lot on the
Mississippi River. Yeah, and he was. He was at the headquarters there.
He was a master chief my whole life. He was a master chief.
He was never on a boat when I was alive. Oh, he
wasn't. Oh he did spend some time up at Sioux Saint Marie on a
boat when he first enlisted. But yeah, during my lifetime, he was
always at headquarters buildings, so he was directing people that were on boats.
But when you're the master chief, you're pretty high up, so you're one
of the people that's in charge. Correct. Yeah. Would you go to
his office and see what it was like when your father was at work or
were you exposed to that side of things? Oh? Absolutely. When we
lived in Boston, their office had like season tickets to the Bruins. Oh
nice, yeah, yeah, and they would like raffle the tickets off,
and when people could and go, they would give him to my dad.
So I would actually go up with him in the morning and spend the day,
and then we'd go to the game that night. Oh how fun?
Is this the old Boston Garden or am I dating myself now? It was
the old Garden? Yeah? Yeah, of course. My dad was a
naval officer and his final active duty slot was running the Armed Forces Police Department
out of the old Boston Navy Yard. Okay, and this was his career
was winding down and he was actually moving towards a career in academia. This
was during the time frame of the Boston Bruins, Bobby or that team was
red hot, and we moved back to Lowell, Massachusetts, up north of
Boston. If we were heading into high school, So the Bruins were a
really big deal back then. Every kid in New England had Bobby or flying
through the air vertically having just scored yet another goal for the Bruins. And
we would watch the Bruins on television, and we got a chance to go
to the old Boston Garden several times, and then of course later as I
got to be a teenager, that would be the place we'd go to see
concerts. I'm sure the New Boston Garden is great, but I still have
fond memories of We would take the train into North Station and then the arena
was upstairs, and you'd go up these long, winding ramps to see the
Bruins and the Celtics play there. Yeah, it was quite the experience,
that's for sure. And then you were saying that it was quite a contrast
for you then to go from relatively small high school on Cape Cod to a
big high school in Saint Louis. It was. Yeah. I have conversations
sometimes with people that they live in the same area of their whole entire life
and they don't know anything different, and I really sometimes I long for that
in that sense of home. But at the same time, moving as much
as we did, I was exposed to so much diversity in different people and
different cultures since I see it as a blessing now as an adult. I
hated it as a kid. Every time you made friends, you moved.
But now it's just I'm so thankful for the experiences that I was able to
have. Yeah, we really liked it. There were four kids in my
family, and yes, it is hard to say goodbye to your friends,
but we looked upon it as an adventure. My dad would come home every
two years back then, typically towards the end of the school year, and
we'd have a family meeting, and then he would tell us where we were
going to move. Yeah, and this is before the internet. We would
then go typically we still had a few weeks left in school, and of
course we would go to the library a lot. We'd go and read about
the new place we were going. I remember we look at pictures and get
out the encyclopedia and look at maps. My mom and dad would show us
where we were going to be living. It was an adventure. And then
the four of us as kids, three boys and one girl, my younger
sister Kathy, we'd pulled together and we'd be our own kind of gang.
But a lot of times when we were moving and I'm not sure if this
happened as much for you. We would be moving to places where there were
lots of other military kids, so they had a sense of the drill,
and they also knew that it was important to make friends and to make friends
quickly and to be welcoming of the new kids. Right in one or two
places, we moved to towns where there were not a lot of other military
kids, and it was really noticeable. We moved to Deptford, New Jersey,
because there was no housing available on the Philadelphia Naval Base, so we
were across the river in suburban New Jersey, and these kids mostly had all
grown up in that town, and they were incredibly unfriendly. They even called
my older brother, Richard, Hawaii because we had lived in Hawaii before then
just and they said where are you from? And he said Hawaii, which
was true. They actually didn't even call him by his name, Richard.
They called him Hawaii because they'd never met anybody. Now here's a guy with
red hair and fair skin and blue eyes. It wasn't like he was a
native of the Hawaiian Islands. The kids were super unfriendly, just not nice.
A few months later, housing became available on the Philadelphia Naval Base and
we moved again, and the kids there, who were all Navy and Marine
Corps kids, they were very welcoming. They knew what it was like to
be the new kid. That would happen every couple of years in most examples.
So now you're the kid unlike most of us, who knew what she
wanted to do. You wanted to be in law enforcement. How did you
get into law enforcement when you got out of the Air Force. I came
back to Virginia and I ended up applying at a small local sheriff's office,
and I actually worked in the jail there for a couple of years, and
then I taught the DARE program. I had gone to a school and met
a guy who worked with James City Police Department, and he just went on
and on about how great of a department it was and how I should go
over and work for them, and he sent me an application and I put
in and that was it. That's how I ended up with James City.
So what year is it that you're joining the James City, Virginia Police Department.
It was two thousand and two when I got hired. In July of
two thousand and two and now help us out for those of us that are
not from Virginia, which includes me. Kristin Dilley, my podcast partner,
would laugh. Why do we call this place James City County. It's such
an odd little name. I have no IDEA very odd night. Yeah,
but it is a county police department, correct for James City County, which
is not a city but a county. Correct. Okay, Yeah, it
pretty much surrounds the city of Williamsburg. Williamsburg is a super small city,
and then James City Canty surrounds Williamsburg. You would think I would know the
story of why it is sold out, but I do not. So does
Williamsburg, Virginia have its own police force? They do, Yeah, Williamsburg
Police Department. And so James City County is the surrounding area is around Williamsburg.
Correct? Is there cross jurisdiction or would you hand something off to Williamsburg
pet if it was within the city limits? Yeah, if it's within the
city, then the Williamsburg Police Department would handle it. Yeah. And I
mean it's a weird area because there's also York County, So you can walk
a half a mile and step foot in James City County, Williamsburg, and
York County. There are so many places where one side of the road is
York County and the others James City, and there's so much the intertwines.
Yeah, if it happens in the city of Williamsburg, then the Williamsburg Police
Department would handle it. The Jennifer Pandos case starts in February nineteen eighty seven,
with the disappearance of this fifteen year old girl from the King's Mill Resort
slash housing development. Tell us about your involvement with the case. So you're
at the James City County Police Department. How did you first hear about the
Pandos case and then how did you get involved officially? Yeah, there was
a bulletin board in our police department that important information would be posted on.
And one day I saw like a missing person's poster and it was for Jennifer
and I had her picture on there and that she had disappeared in eighty seven,
and I was just like, that's weird. I'd never heard of it.
I didn't know anything about it. It was just this poster on a
law and I had been slated to go to the Investigations division at that point.
So I talked with the major in charge of the investigations division and said,
hey, what's the deal with this case? And can I look at
it? And he's yeah, sure, he said, the case files missing,
so we don't really know a whole lot. In January of two thousand
and six is when I went to investigations, and it was shortly after that
I was officially assigned the case. Did you ask for the Pando's case as
a result of that interest? I did, Yeah, I asked to work
the case. It's two thousand and six. That case took place originally in
nineteen eighty seven. It's probably considered a cold case at this point. I
don't know if people used that expression, did they at the time. I
don't remember specifically if it was classified as a cold case. We didn't have
a cold case division at that point. I know it was being worked on
sporadically, but no, there was no cold case division. Later one was
developed and I was assigned to that, but at the time there was no
cold case division. But that was certainly what I would consider a cold case
for sure. Now, what other sorts of cases were you working when you
started in investigations. In two thousand and six, I was assigned to basically
violent crimes, murders, rape, robbery, things of that sort. Let's
talk about this missing case file. This figures prominently in the Burden of Proof
documentary that's just made its debut on HBO. What did people say about the
missing case file? First of all, can you give us a rough idea
how big would a case file be? For that case? You would expect
probably thirty pieces of paper fifty pieces of paper in it, depending on what
the initial response was from the police department when she went missing. You would
definitely expect there to be some substance to that case file. Would it be
in a file folder or a box or they call these things red wells that
are expandable? What would it physically look like? Just a Manila folder?
Our records division at that point, unfortunately, was not what I would call
secure. Anybody could walk in there. Ouch. Yeah. It was before
anything was electronic, So all there was the paper copies of a file.
The procedure to get a file was supposed to be you would go and request
the file and you would have to sign it out. There was only a
clipboard next to the door and you would get the file and then write your
name and the date and what file you have. But in order for that
to work, it's dependent on people actually doing what they're supposed to. Unfortunately,
with their not being any accountability to that, it went missing. Yeah,
and unlike cop shows that we watch on TV and enjoy, there isn't
somebody there at the door, if you will, checking to make sure that
people signed the files in and out. No, absolutely not. It was.
There was a desk there for the record's clerk, but there was only
one of them and she couldn't be there all the time, so it was
basically left up to the integrity of the person to do what they were supposed
to do. And it's sounds like I'm not trying to be two pointed here.
It sounds like things were sloppy back then. You said not secure.
Were people pretty investigators and others? Were they pretty informal about going in taking
a look at a file, bringing it back, but not necessarily doing the
whole clipboard thing. Absolutely, Yeah, it was very lax. It was
a small department at that point. There was less than a hundred officers for
the entire department. Yeah, and I think everybody was just complacent and oh,
that won't happen, or oh, I'll put it back when I'm done
with it, And unfortunately that didn't happen. And there were lots of theories
on what happened to the case file, some pretty outlandish, but yeah,
it was definitely a challenge not having that what's an outlandish theory about what might
have happened to the case file. One of the avenue that we did explore
we were told that Ron Pandos, Jennifer's father, played golf with the head
of security from Kingsmill. Kingsmill, where the Pandos has lived, has his
own security division. Now it's a police department, but at that point I
believe it was only security. But we were told that Ron gulfed with the
head of security there and it just so happened that his wife, when Jennifer
disappeared, was the head of the records division or the James City Police Department.
So one of the theories was through Ron's relationship with the head of security,
he had his wife take the file to help Ron and Margie, she
was the records clerk from then. She was interviewed and denied having any part
of that, but yeah, that was one of the one of the theories
of what happened to the case files seem plausible, but it is plausible.
Yeah, it could have happened, But I do not believe that's what happened
at all. No, although in the television series, I believe it's Cynthia
Hill, the director of the film, who was mostly off camera. But
someone asks you a question, and in my opinion, having watched plenty of
true crime, you appear embarrassed for the department. Oh absolutely, you indicate
as such. How did you feel when you found out that the file had
magically reappeared. It's mixed feelings. I still remember exactly where I was when
I got the phone call in what I was doing, and I was elatent
when I got the phone call saying the file had been found. I thought,
for sure that would open up a lot of things that we didn't know
and give us more opportunity for investigation. I was no longer assigned to the
case. I had been promoted and was a supervisor in the patrol division at
that point, so I wasn't working the case, but I was still I
was so excited. And then when that excitement died down. It was like,
what in the world happened? That's just crazy. Was there ever an
adequate explanation for where this case file went? How long a period of time
was the file in the Pandost case missing? Would you say, oh,
gosh, when I went to investigations in two thousand and six it was gone.
I don't know how long before that it had been gone, And I'd
say it was probably twenty sixteen when it was found. So we're talking about
a decade maybe, quote unquote missing. Yeah, what were the circumstances of
when the file was found? As you understand it. So, we had
been in we called the old police department in two thousand then six, very
small building, no control over who went into records who didn't. When I
was assigned the case and the case file was missing, I had met with
the head of the records division at the time. She searched the entire records
room. Basically they were paper boxes full of Minila folders with the case files
in it. She searched through every single box, every single file cabinet.
Couldn't find it. A few years later, we had a new police department
built and we're moving from the old police department to the new one. During
that time, she had told me they went through every single file. She
said they opened up the files and actually looked in them to make sure maybe
the Pandos case accidentally got stuffed inside and mislabeled. So they went through every
file, every box before they moved, and then when they were unpacking the
files in the new building they also went through them again and there was no
sign of the case file. So it had been searched for in the records
division three times, pretty thoroughly, and then in the new department. The
records division is accessed with a keycard, so there is a little more accountability
for it. And by that time we were mostly electronic. You could access
what you needed on the computer instead of having to get the actual hard copy
in the file. What I was told was one day someone in the records
division went and opened up one of the paper boxes and there it was just
sitting right flat on top, not as you would think if there's fifty files
in a paperbox, they're all vertical so you can read the tabs on the
files. But this was laid across the top, so pretty obvious. There
was no investigation as to what happened. There were theories of what happened.
My personal opinion is someone was complacent, they went and got the file to
actually do something with it, and probably stuck it into their desk or their
file cabinet. And there was a couple of people retiring around that time investigations,
and my opinion is that someone found it in their belongings and lacked the
integrity to stand up and say, hey, my bad, I have this
and just stuck it in there, knowing that someone would eventually run into it.
Not necessarily malevolent, just perhaps sloppy. And as you said, it
was very informal back in the day. Someone went and got a file and
they'd take it back to their desk and maybe they were working the case actively.
I was thinking the same thing, and yeah, you can go with
all the ron pandos playing golf with the head of security theories you want,
but I think most of the time it's sort of screw up if you will,
someone accidentally sticks the case file. And as you described it, it
wasn't that large. It wasn't like it was a banker's box full of files.
It was a Manila folder with documents in it, which could have been
misplaced. Yeah, I definitely don't believe it was anything malicious, Like you
said, I think it was sloppy, unprofessional, just lax. Yeah,
it's just it's so embarrassing, it really is. You're listening to Mind over
Murder. We'll be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back
here at Mind over Murder, switching gears for a second. One of our
takeaways Kristen and mine from watching the documentary was that we felt that Ron and
Margie Pando's odd response. I will call it what I believe it to be,
and remember we lived through this with my sister Cathy's murder. I felt
like the Pandos's response, as described in the television series and all the articles
we read to Jennifer's disappearance was extremely odd. Do you feel that their response
to Jennifer's disappearance made them look like suspects, particularly Ron the father from the
beginning? Absolutely? For when I say from the beginning, I take that
is when I got it, so at the beginning for me, yeah,
and I didn't know what their responses and reactions were when it initially occurred in
nineteen eighty seven, but yeah, that what I had to go off of
was a lot of people's memories from nineteen years before, and probably a lot
of like the game of telephone, I heard this and I heard that,
and yeah, the things I was hearing was definitely suspicious that they responded in
the way they did or didn't respond, Yeah, it was. It definitely
made it seem suspicious. And I think a lot of times we look at
things from our own perspective and our own experiences, and everybody's different and are
going to have different reactions to things, and I think sometimes we get stuck
in the mindset of that's not what I would have done, So that's weird.
Yeah, but yeah, a lot of things that they did it did
seem suspicious and cast a lot of doubt onto what their involvement was. One
of the things that really shocked us was as the series unfold, and of
course, the four part television series is told roughly in chronological order, and
it's amazing to see footage from investigations and interviews all the way back to twenty
sixteen, if my memory serves, But as the story unfold, it appears
that Margie Jennifer's mother actually has additional valuable pieces of evidence in her possession that
have never been turned over to law enforcement. For example, if I understood
the series correctly, they had the original copy of the note correct that was
left, so that meant that law enforcement had a photocopy of it. Yeah.
I honestly, I don't remember offhand if there was a photocopy of the
note in the original pace file that ended up being located, but yeah,
she definitely had the original the original note. Yeah. And then later on
these letters to and from Jennifer, their teenage daughter, are produced, and
they are in a box that Margie has been holding onto for more than thirty
years. This struck me as foundly odd, particularly since so much of the
discussion of the case and this note that was found at the time of Jennifer's
disappearance that switches back and forth between first and third person, so some of
it sounds like it's written by Jennifer, some of it sounds like it's written
by someone else. Since language and handwriting end up being so pivotal, I
was baffled that Margie would be sitting on letters to and from her daughter for
over thirty years without ever thinking I should show these to the investigators. How
did you feel about that. Yeah, it was frustrating. Margie was never
super forthcoming. She would provide things if they were specifically asked for, but
yeah, there was no urgency on her part to be proactive in the investigation.
When I originally started talking to her and Stephen, I asked about physical
abuse in the home and abuse in my home and was told no, there
was none, And I can understand not wanting to admit that, but at
the same time, in order to effectively work a case, you have to
have the truth. So it was frustrating to find out later the extent of
the abuse that was happening in the home and find out a lot of things
that would have been helpful if I would have had them initially during the investigation.
Did you feel that Stephen was also not forthcoming? He had said initially
there wasn't any abuse in the home, and I think that if you grow
up in a certain environment that that becomes your reality. And maybe at the
time he didn't consider that to be abuse. I don't know, or maybe
it was just I fully remember sitting in Margie's living room with her and Stephen,
and I asked, Stephen, what do you think happened to your sister,
and he said, she ran away. And I said, why do
you think that? And he said, I don't have any reason to believe
otherwise. So I think he was in the dark for all of those years,
and I wouldn't say that he wasn't forthcoming. I think probably initially he
didn't maybe believe that what he had gone through was abuse, because that was
just his reality growing up. One of the fascinating aspects of Burden of Proof
is watching Stephen's view of the case change over the years. He seems much
more willing now to admit that his father was incredibly abusive physically and emotionally,
but that maybe not where he was as a younger man. At some point
he said something about everything I was led to believe in the first twenty two
years of this case is wrong. So that's a big revelation to see him
go through and his viewpoint that first of all, my sister ran away,
and then later thinking for years it would appear that his father is directly responsible
for his sister's disappearance and likely murder, and that his mother is involved in
a cover up or is complicit somehow, and then later you begin to see
that he's come around, as have others to the view that wait a minute,
those stories are all wrong. She didn't run away. Perhaps Ron Pandos,
the father is not involved in her disappearance, unlikely homicide, which steers
us to other suspects. But watching that journey, and I'm sure there are
hundreds of hours of footage of Stephen and you and so many other people all
taking this personal and investigative journey, it's one of the most interesting aspects of
the show. Do you think it would have made a difference if law enforcement,
for example, had had the original note? Absolutely? Yeah, I
worry though. I agree with you, But I worry though that the original
note would have been put away accidentally, let's say, in the legendary missing
file folder for all of those years, and there were no backups or duplicates
of much of this material. Is that a fair statement. Yes, Yeah,
that's definitely a fair statement. Our situations like that better now, Wendy
than they were back then, in terms of I WinCE when I hear about,
oh, these documents are missing, and I think to myself, there's
no extra copy, there's no electronic copy, there's no nothing. Yeah,
it's definitely better now. I know that especially with the way that technology has
advanced over the last fifteen years or so. Now reports are all done on
the computer and they're automatically just uploaded, and there's an electronic copy of it,
where when Jennifer disappeared it was just handwritten and something happened to the copy.
You've got a luck. So it's definitely I think much more of the
secure situation now. So here's a question for you, if you were to
start working this case today, where would you start. If I had all
of the information, I would probably start where I started before, with the
parents, But there was also information in that case that leads you to other
places too that I didn't have that information when I work that. Yeah,
I would still definitely look at the parents because there's still been a lot of
suspicious things that have happened with the parents, with things that they have said
and things that have happened during the investigation. So yeah, I would still
start with them, but there were definitely more investigative avenues that would have been
approached. Our investigators in the Colonial Parkway murders have said to me over the
years, Bill, no one's really cleared in a homicide investigation, and that's
I don't think Jennifer's walking through the door tomorrow, So I believe this is
a homicide. So no one's really cleared until the murder is cleared. That
is, we've identified a suspect and brought him or her to trial. As
I understand it, people are on the likely list, that is, the
short list of people who are most likely suspects, and the less likely list.
Ron Pandos, Margie Pandos and others have been mentioned as potential suspects,
and it makes perfect sense. Do you feel like the Pando's parents would be
on that less likely list? At this point When you talk to people that
know the case, it seems pretty split that some people, some investigators and
some officers believe yeah, the parents may have something to do with it,
and others believe no, it was the boyfriend. And I think there's evidence
that points to all of them less likely or more likely. It's hard to
say, really. If it were to go to court, say, if
the boyfriend was charged, I think it would be super hard to get a
conviction because of just the circumstantial evidence against the parents and the doubt that would
raise the same as if Ron were to be charged and go to court.
There's evidence and circumstantial evidence against the boyfriend that would lead to doubt. So
it's a hard question to answer as far as less likely suspects. I think
with the information now, it's just there's a likelihood that anybody could have done
it. Wow, So you find yourself in a very frustrating place even now
in twenty twenty three. Absolutely, yeah, I just there's clues pointing to
different people and it's hard to really settle on a belief as to who did
it. It's referenced in this series that you were working on a book on
the Jennifer Pandos disappearance. Are you still working on a book? I am.
We've had to start over a couple of times. Initially, what I
wanted to do was tell my story of my journey along working this case and
what I ended up learning about Jennifer. And then when the documentary came along,
they delved into that, and I found that what I revealed during interviews
with them, and a lot of that obviously wasn't aired, but I revealed
a lot of that during the interviews and a book would be redundant, I
think. So he changed the approach to that to be I'm not sure if
you're familiar with Patricia Cornwell or not, but she wrote a book called All
That Remains, Yeah, which is clearly based on the Colonial Parkway murders exactly.
Yeah, And while it is deemed as being fiction, it is very
much based on actual events. It has recently turned into that sort of approach.
While I wouldn't say it's in its infancy, yeah, it's I'm still
working on it, and it's something that i'd like to get out there eventually,
but right now that's not Writing a book is not a priority in my
life, I guess right now, but it is something that I would like
out there at some point. We've discussed All That Remains, and I've never
spoken directly to Patricia Cornwall, but it's very clear. I'm considered the greatest
expert outside of law enforcement in the Colonial Parkway murders. And it's not a
role. I saw it, but it's just developed. But I remember being
shocked when I finally went out and bought a seventy five cent used copy of
the paperback of All That Remains and read the book. I was floored.
It is the Colonial Parkway murders, and in particular one of the homicides is
covered in so much detail. I believe that it is quite possible that Patricia
Cornwall had a significant amount of non public information about that particular murder, which
is considered part of the series in the Colonial Parkway Murders. I know the
case backwards and forwards when you get into that level of detail, and I
think I've read every article, listened to every podcast, watched every interview,
and I'm hearing and seeing things that just still aren't part of the public discussion.
And I think to myself, that's interesting. If Patricia Cornwall wants to
discuss it with me, she's welcome to reach out. I am highly confident
that the case as described in all that remains. She may have switched the
order around, and the lesbian couple aren't the first ones killed, and it's
not one, two, three, four, but it's definitely the same case,
and the amount of detail is very striking. You might want to jump
off then into more of a fictional version of what might have happened in the
Pando's disappearance. Yeah, and I agree with you one hundred percent. You
and I had talked earlier about the fact that Jennifer lived very close to the
Colonial Parkway. Yes, and that was one of the investigative avenues I took
pretty early in the case, was did she find herself on the parkway and
become a victim there? I was allowed through that investigation to see the case
files for the Colonial Parkway murders. And Yeah, I agree with you one
hundred percent that that book is very accurate with a lot of facts that aren't
public knowledge, or certainly weren't back then. In other words, we've done
a ton of press and media. We did a four part television series,
The Lover's Lane Murders on Oxygen, and I've been very outspoken as of other
family members about the details because we're trying to push the FBI in the Virginia
State Police. When the book came out, which I think is nineteen ninety
two, a lot of that information wasn't publicly available. Yeah, and I
know that she had reached out to people in law enforcement and talked about the
case with them and talked about just different aspects of law enforcement in the area
and things like that. How she got the information, who knows, But
yeah, it was very striking how accurate some of it was, and really
Jennifer's case is pretty much an open book at this point in the documentary,
Stephen going through all of these papers and things, and he was able to
get the case file from when I took over the case, as far as
I know, has not been able to foil the original case file that was
lost, but my understanding is that he does have a copy of it.
It's frustrating to some extent from an investigative standpoint that things like that do find
their way to people who are not investigating it from a law enforcement standpoint,
and why people leak things and never now what someone's motive is. Unfortunately,
sometimes information that you wouldn't want out in the public ends up being there.
Jennifer's case is pretty much an open book. I think the only way for
me to portray a story in a book form is to make it fiction and
take some liberties as to what happened, because in the end we have no
idea. Really at this point, do you think Jennifer Pando's disappearance can be
solved? I think it absolutely. Whether or not it will is another story.
You and I talked earlier about politics in agencies and whether or not this
case from nineteen eighty seven as a priority for the James City County Police Department.
Right now, I can't say I don't know. I know that there
are things that can be done still from an investigative standpoint, that aren't being
done, haven't been done, and probably won't be. In a perfect world,
you'd have unlimited resources to be able to investigate things, and unfortunately,
in the raal world, it's not like that. Wendy, thank you so
much for taking some time to talk with us. We really appreciate it.
We hope you'll consider coming back with us as things develop anytime. Anytime.
That's going to do it for this episode of Mine Over Murder. As always,
thanks for listening. Kristin Dilley will be back next time, so if
you miss her as much as I do, she'll definitely be back when she
returns from her beachside vacation. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next
time. Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions.
Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is
by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder
is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media. You can follow us on Facebook,
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Parkway murders on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter
at Bill Thomas. Five six. Thank you for listening to Mine Over Murder