Welcome back to the path when Chili for part two of our series on the
unsolved disappearance of Marline and Childress, Robin, do you want to catch everyone
up on what we talked about in our previous episode. Yes. Marlena Childress
was four years old and living in Union City, Tennessee, with her mother,
Pam Bailey, and on April the sixteenth, nineteen eighty seven, according
to Pam, Marlina was playing alone outside when Pam suddenly heard a car speeding
away and when she went out, I had to check Marlene was gone and
assumed that she had been abducted. She eventually reported her missing. There was
a big search effort, but the case would take an interesting turn a couple
months later when a private investigator hired by Marlena's family named Stan Cabnus said that
Pam made a confession to killing Marlena and disposing of her body by dumping it
in a nearby river. Before this, Pam had to be hospitalized for exhaustion
and depression, and she claimed that she was on a lot of medication when
she made this confession and claimed it had been coerced and immediately recanted it.
But Stam Cabnus said that she was of sound mind, which she made this
confession and completely made it without provocation, and that he did not course her
in any way. Grand jury was thinking about whether to indict Pam with Marlene's
murder, but they could not find her body or any other corroborating evidence besides
Pam's confession, so they ultimately decided not to indict her. Over the years,
there would be a number of reported sightings of Marline, including one of
her in a hair salon and Memphis, which I'm going to talk about momentarily,
but after it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries in nineteen ninety, there would
not be any developments in the case for years, but in two twelve there
would be a shocking development when Pam decided to take her son, Casey,
who was only twelve years old at the time, drive into a cemetery and
then stab him, and even though Casey managed to get away and survive,
Pam went into prison and wound up serving a couple of years before she was
released. She did this near the anniversary of Marlane's disappearance, around the fifteen
year anniversary. This only made investigators further believe that Pam was responsible for Marlene's
disappearance, but they never found any evidence to an implicator, and they have
still not found Marlene's body, so she's remained a missing person after nearly thirty
six years. So at the end of our last episode, I said I
was going to break apart the eyewitness signing of marleda with two unidentified women,
which supposedly took place at Jean's Hair salon and Memphis on April the twenty second,
nineteen eighty seven, six days after Marline originally went missing. The sighting
was the focal point of the original Unsolved Mystery segment. I'd have to admit
that it always left me completely on the fence in regard to Pam's guilt or
innocence, But I still felt there was something off about how this lead was
presented on the show. For one thing, it wasn't made clear if the
two hairdressers who saw Marlena immediately reported their sighting to the police the way the
segment presented things. Marlene's maternal grandfather, Lwaide Strickland was investigating this lead single
handedly and only went to the police after he uncovered a promising suspect. The
whole thing seemed pretty odd because Lewaide was a guy who ran a shoe repair
business and was not a professional private investigator. But I could see why Lewaide
would want to take the reins because the last time he hired a private investigator,
the guy tape recorded Lewaide's daughter confessing to murder. Well. One key
part of this story, which seemed to be missing from the Unsolved Mystery segment,
is how the Way tracked down the waitress in Memphis whom he believed was
Marlene's abductor. The story goes that Lwaide brought the two hairdressers into a restaurant
and they identified her as the woman they saw in the salon, and they
also correctly identified the waitress's son as the boy they had seen there. Lawaide
also claimed that he found out this woman left town the morning after Marline's disappearance
and returned a few days later, which made her seem like a promising suspect.
That's all well and good, but it's still not clear to me how
the Way got from point A to point B what made him suspect this particular
waitress was the same woman from the hair salon. When you get ser the
fact that police questioned her and came to the conclusion that she probably wasn't involved
in Marlene's disappearance. I agree with you, Robin, something's a little bit
off here. I have a huge admiration for lawaide who says, listen,
my grand baby's missing. I need to figure out what happened. And he's
a family member who's going to great links to try to put the pieces together
when he and his family think the police have failed to really protect and work
this case the way that they should. The problem though, like you said,
we're not really sure how we get to this waitress, and laway performs
what they call a show up in law enforcement, where you basically have a
single individual who's been isolated as a potential suspect. You bring a witness to
that individual suspect and you say is this the correct person? When you do
that, psychologically the witness already thinks we'll shoot you, drug me all the
way here to I D somebody you feel convicted about, and there's already that
kind of idea in their head that this must be that person. The women's
story sounds very, very promising. There's that suspicious behavior of the little girl,
she's in the chair, she wants her mommy. They're telling her if
she'll comply that they'll give her a reward, and there's like this idea of
shushing her. So that makes a lot of sense and it's very very compelling.
But then when you follow through, like you said, getting them to
the waitress, getting them to identify her on, all of that starts to
kind of unravel and seem like, even if it was a possible lead,
how could you use that evidence based on the way he gathered it? Oh,
exactly, Like standard practice for identification is if you want someone to pick
out a suspect, you take them into a photo lineup when there were multiple
people and just hope that the witness will pick out the correct person. And
we talked about this on our last episode, but Lawaite also showed these two
women a photo lineup where he had a pictures of a bunch of young boys
and said, can you pick out the boy that you saw in the salon
next to the waitress and Marlena? And they apparently picked out the photo of
the waitress's son correctly. But the one question we had was where did he
get a photo of the waitress's son to begin with, and why was he
carrying around all these photos of different children? So he says that there's something
missing from this story. Well, I finally got my answer about this whole
situation when I went to newspapers dot com and uncovered articles from the April twenty
fifth, nineteen eighty seven editions of The Tennis Seeing and The Jackson's Son.
Both of these articles state that the two women and the girls seen at the
hair salon were actually tracked down and the girl was ruled out as being Marlena.
The story goes that the group was pulled over by the police in Mississippi,
who discovered that this girl's name was actually Marlene, not Marlena, meaning
that the hairdressers may have misheard the older woman when she referred to the girl
by name before they were even found. A key detail which convinced police that
this girl might not be Marlena was that Marlina had silver capps teeth when she
went missing. But no one recalls seeing capped teeth on the girl from the
salon, So it seems to me that the sighting of Marlena may have already
been investigated and debunked by police long before the Unsolved Mystery segment aired, But
Lauade Strickland was taking it upon himself to keep this lead alive. And I
think that's where these cold cases get really tricky, right, is that you
have any glimmer of hope when you're a family member waiting like what happened to
her? Is she alive? Where you know? Where is she? Who
took her? Who hurt her? And you get a lead like this or
information like this, right, And we're families get tips from all walks of
life, about all kinds of people, about all kinds of places, and
there's a real potential to go down a rabbit hole. Just like police get
tunnel vision. Family members are no different. Right when there's a compelling story
and there's a hope that maybe someone knows more than they can recall or that
they're telling us, there's that same tendency to get tunnel vision and to claim
and grip onto this story and not let it go. Yeah. I can
understand Lewaite's perspective because not only does he want to find his granddaughter, but
this is the point where his own daughter pan has been accused of potentially murdering
Marlena so he's really hoping to find evidence to prove that Marlena was still alive
and that his daughter couldn't have done it. And so I think that's why
he got tunnel vision here and said, oh, even though this lead in
Memphis was already investigated, they must have missed something. So I'm going to
take it upon myself to try to find out the truth and hopefully prove that
Marlena is still alive. But it did pan out, but it's just so
confusing, Like how the heck did he get from point A to point B?
It just none of it really makes sense when we think of like all
of these connections that have been made, but just the overall vagueness of it
all. And like, I understand that his underlying motivation is to find Marlena
and to prove that Pam is indeed innocent and that you know, she shouldn't
be blamed for this murder that she confessed to. I get that, but
it does feel like there's some reaching. But I can completely understand why one
would maybe make connections where there wouldn't be connections, or see something where there
isn't anything really to see, because you want to keep hope alive, and
you want to believe that Marlena is out there somewhere and that she's going to
come home to you, and also that your daughter is not capable of what
everybody is accusing her of and that she herself confessed to. But that's not
all. You can also find a very interest article from the September sixth,
nineteen ninety edition of The Paduca Sun, which was published the day after the
Unsolved Mystery segment aired. Believe it or Not, Pam Bailey herself was quoted
as saying that the whole section about the hair salons should have been omitted from
the segment because two detectives hired by the family had already checked it out.
Believe it or not, Pam Bailey herself was quoted as saying that the whole
section about the hair salon should have been omitted from the segment because two detectives
that were hired by the family had already checked it out and the girl wasn't
Marlena. So yes, even though this lead seemed to be the biggest piece
of evidence supporting her innocence, Pam did not believe it was credible and it
was quite a surprise to hear her say that not only had police ruled it
out, but two detectives hired by her own family had as well. Pam
also stated that the sighting of Marlena with the other children's family who traveled from
Alabama to Florida was a lot more credible. She felt that this lead would
all point police to her daughter, and Luade expressed his disappointment that this part
of the story wasn't mentioned on Unsolved Mysteries. But we'll talk more about the
second childer's family momentarily. Another thing which seemed off about the memphisiting is that
in those articles from nineteen eighty seven which Robin mentioned, there's no mention about
a young boy being in the hair salon, only two women with a girl.
It's possible they neglected to mention the boy since his presence wasn't really relevant
to the case, But it seems like the main reason Luade was convinced the
waitress was the woman from the salon is because the two hairdressers identified her son
as the boy that they saw. But even if they're correct, it doesn't
really matter, as a girl had already been ruled out as being Marlena.
It is really interesting that even Pam herself is like, listen, that is
not a tree to barkup. She's convicted that this is not accurate and it's
a story that could actually exonerate her, and she's saying, don't go down
that half. I actually think the Children's family was a fascinating story. That
they had this little girl, she's the only one that they're you know,
once they're found, that is missing from their family. Did we ever figure
out what happened to the little girl that people said they often saw, like
kept away from the public, and that was supposedly called Marlena. No,
they never did. And that's what's so frustrating about this other story about the
Children's family is that it seems that once they were found in Florida, it
just this whole part of the story just disappeared from the media and we didn't
even know what happened to them because there were allegations that the father was sexually
abusive and was going to be brought up on charges, but there was no
further reporting on that. And once you learn all this information, this other
angle seems a lot more compelling than the Memphis hair salon sighting. So I
am surprised that Unsolved Mysteries didn't mention it during their segment. It really does
seem like Lawaide Strickland was grasping at straws with the Memphis sighting. I'm not
saying that Lawide was trying to cover for his daughter or purposely said the investigation
in the wrong direction, but it would definitely be in his best interest to
pursue a lead which pointed to his granddaughter still being alive and his daughter not
being a murderer. I know the hairdressers claimed that they started receiving threatening,
anonymous phone calls from a woman shortly after the waitress was questioned, but I
don't think that's definitive proof that this waitress was involved in Marline's disappearance. Think
about it. If the waitress was completely innocent, she just got accused of
being involved in a child abduction. I'm not advocating for anonymous, threatening phone
calls, but if she figured out those hairdressers had pointed the finger at her,
I can see how she might have felt compelled to take out her anger
on them. Oh, I can absolutely see that too, And especially if
you feel like you were being harassed or that your child was involved in this
harassment, like remember her little boys involved too, And it may not have
been her. It could have easily been a friend, a co worker,
someone who was witnessing this and said, like enough enough, these people need
to back off and leave her alone. You know, we've talked about this
before or once you're named as a suspect when documentaries cover this, when Unsolved
Mysteries points things out and then they say, but the police later cleared this
individual. It's like, well, God, you just raped their name through
the mud for fifteen minutes. And I've been thinking it's Steve this whole time,
you know, and imports Steve sit in home going what I never had
anything to do with this. But media has a really powerful impact. When
gossip starts around town, there's a really really powerful impact on someone's life.
So either this poor waitress or someone that knows her, I could see those
threatening phone calls coming very easily. Yeah, the waitress was never named publicly,
but I can still see gossip going around the community and people putting two
and two together because they're thinking about a waitress with the sun. So she
probably had like a lot of unjust attention on her that you didn't appreciate.
So when you look at the situation as a whole, I think the significance
of the hair salon sightings has been blown way out of proportion, and this
is probably just another tragic case of an eyewitness mistaking a girl they saw for
a missing child. In fact, it would not surprise me if this is
one of the reasons the Unsolved Mystery segment only aired on television once, as
it put heavy emphasis on a lead which had seemingly been ruled out by law
enforcement only days after it occurred. When you eliminate this sighting, then this
decreases the chances of Marlene's still being alive after April sixteenth, nineteen eighty seven,
and weakens the case for Pam's innocence. It's interesting how there are certain
aspects of this case which seemed to lean away from Pam being responsible, but
wind up coming apart if you look hard enough. For example, Pam's original
story is that she saw a red car speeding away from her house around the
time Marlena went missing, which is supposed to give off the impression that someone
abducted her. So on the surface, the most convincing detail of Pam's account
is that she described the vehicle as having license plates from McCracken County, Kentucky.
As you'll recall, Marlene's stepbrother Jerry, and other witnesses from a nearby
grocery store describe seeing a red car with McCracken County license plates and claim that
Marlena had been speaking with a man standing outside the vehicle. Based on this,
it's very easy to believe Pam's story and assume that this man set his
eyes on Marlena, followed her home once he noticed she was playing alone in
her front yard. He used this opportunity to abduct her and flee the area.
But the problem is the police were able to track down this man relatively
quickly and rule him out as a suspect. This details often overlooked in some
accounts of the case, but you can find confirmation in the April twenty second,
nineteen eighty seven edition of The Jackson Sun. I have a problem with
Pam's whole story about the car. To start with, if you guys were
called. We talked on the first episode about how you know Pam waited what
forty five minutes, an hour and fifteen minutes to actually call the police after
she quote witnessed a car grabbing her daughter and fleeing the scene. That's not
hey, my baby was playing in the front yard and she's not here.
I wonder if she went to a neighbor's. I wonder if she saw a
little friend down the street and ran down there. Let me call some people.
If you saw a car sneak by and you look out and you see
that your baby's no longer in the front yard, that is like immediate,
I gotta call the police, get them here. It almost seems like,
either intentionally or subconsciously, she's taking details she hears about this red car and
this guy that was suspicious earlier in the day and placing them in a story
now that makes our needs a villain, right, that needs a suspect,
and she puts those details there. I totally agree. It just seems really
convenient that other people saw this same vehicle, but yet the police ruled this
suspect out relatively early on in the investigation, and we talked about it,
I think at great length in episode one. The incongruity of it all,
where Pam's reaction wasn't in line with what she was telling us happened you know,
if she did indeed see this red car potentially abduct Marlena, then just
drolling around the neighborhood for forty five minutes is not in line with the emotional
impact that a situation like that would have on a mother. It just doesn't
make sense for anybody to behave like that when they believe abduction is why your
child is gone. You run to a neighbor, you call police, you
do something in that moment. You do not wait for forty five minutes while
looking around the block like I think you'd said, Ash. If Reagan had
wandered off an episode one, you might look, you know, for five
minutes around the area to see if she'd gone to a house or something.
But if you saw a car screech away, that would not be your response.
No, I mean for me, I could see where trauma causes odd
reactions, but not for I don't want to be wrong here. What was
it forty five minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes? It was forty five
minutes, I think, wasn't it a long time? Let me just double
check. So yeah, she said she heard the cart three thirty and finally
called the police at four or fifteen, So forty five minutes, okay,
So for ten minutes, could I be an utter shock and be like running
around the neighborhood screaming and reaching out to people. Yes, But forty five
minutes later, I feel like, one, the baby's been missing way too
long, and two, oh shit, I saw a car, Like I
gotta get back and call the police and tell them about these details. Now
that I'm kind of, you know, calming down or have talked to somebody
for a second, but like we talk about if our dog gets out of
the gate, or if Reagan goes around the corner in Walmart and didn't tell
me, my stomach just flips completely upside down. And I'm already in like
she's been kidnapped mode five seconds after I can't see her face, So I
can't imagine waiting forty five minutes to reach out and say something happened, especially
if I had seen a car drive by and get her like that is something
that you call immediately for. It feels like the time that she's using she's
like abricating some kind of story. This cover story about the red car,
so the screeching tires and all this is kind of what she came up with
during that time frame, and it was somehow in that moment of panic when
you know that you have to tell law enforcement. If we look at it
through the lens that Pam is guilty and she did indeed go and dispose of
Marlaida's body, but she's not initially planning on telling law enforcement this. So
she's got to construct this kind of alibi and this story as to what has
happened. And it feels like that's what she did. But I don't think
that she took into account the emotional complexity of what would exactly transpire in a
situation where you saw your child is gone and you heard screeching tires and you
saw a red car. I just I'm like gobsmacked by the fact that that's
what she's telling police she saw she heard and then what she's doing is just
not in line with it, and it just points to her guilt. To
me, per silly. Now, let me ask you guys this about Pam.
Let's say Pam wasn't the one who actually did something to Marlena. What
if she herself was involved in something that would get her in trouble and so
she has other children, could she have been involved with like I don't know,
I'm just going back and forth here. Could she have been involved with
drugs or sex work or anything like that where she could deal with shady characters,
maybe think she could solve this on her own, and then quickly realizes,
like crap, I need to call the police, even if I put
myself at risk. That is certainly a possibility. Like I mentioned in the
last episode that even though there's no evidence to corroborate this, there were always
rumors in the community that perhaps she had sold Marlena for drugs or something like
that, and that even though she did not actually kill her, she still
got rid of Marlena and they have been so overwhelmed with guilt about it months
later that she made a confession but then instead came up with a cover story
about having killed her and disposed of her body. So I don't rule out
the possibility that if she didn't actually murder her, that Pam could have done
something wrong which prevented her from telling the full truth about what actually happened.
I mean that wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility, because their understanding of
mental health at the time was less than it is now, and from a
diagnostic standpoint, Robin had said in episode one that I think it was just
depression that she'd been labeled as having, But it seems like her issues were
far deeper than that. So if she wasn't medicated for that depression, there's
a very strong likelihood that you know, I personally and a lot of other
people believe that addiction issues and substance use disorders are stemming from trauma. It's
a trauma problem and not a drug problem. And so if we're to look
back at, you know, the accusations that she made about pl Summers,
and if there was sexual abuse, she could be self medicating with drugs.
So I think that that is a very real possibility. Ash. So it
seems like this entire lead with the red car was nothing more than a red
herring. And there I didn't even notice that red car and red Harry.
And there are two possible explanations. A. If Pam is innocent, then
she really did see the red car pass by her house, but it either
wasn't this man's car or the driver did not actually a duck Marlena, or
B if Pam is guilty, then she could have seen this car when she
took Marlena and Jerry to the store earlier that same afternoon, and remember details
about it when she fabricated her cover story. Perhaps she felt more people would
believe it if other witnesses from the store could corroborate seeing the red car in
the area. I know that after Pam was arrested, Luide Strickland began pointing
the investigation towards an a ledge shining of a blue car in the neighborhood that
afternoon. Well, the authorities seemed convinced that it belonged to Jerry's mother,
Mona Watts, who was picking up her son at the time. Luide seemed
to think there was another blue car in the area at that time. Personally,
I think he was probably just grasping at straws again in order to direct
suspicion away from his daughter. Tender gree. I mean, I don't blame
Lawade. He has a twofold reason to be so invested here. Not only
is the grand baby missing, but now his daughter has falsely confessed or in
his mind, falsely confessed to her disappearance, and so he is trying to
get Marlena. But he's also trying to vindicate his daughter. So anything that
stands out and there's a clue, he's going to just hold onto it,
you know, with his dear life, so that he can try to get
the most precious things in his life safe and sound again. But to be
fair, there have been other leads in this case. The Unsolved Mystery segment
presented another eyewitness sighting from Amy Spoon, who claims she saw a girl resembling
Marlena inside a department store in nineteen eighty nine, But unlike the Hairslon sighting,
there were no significant details which pointed to the girl actually being Marlena.
So, for all we know, Amy Spoon could have simply seen another young
girl and read too much into the uncomfortable interact action between the girl and the
woman she was with. Since this particular girl wasn't tracked down and ruled out,
I can't stay with one hundred percent certainty that she wasn't Marlena, but
in all likelihood it was probably another mistake in sighting. However, perhaps the
most intriguing lead were the alleged sightings of Marlena living with the family of ten
children in Alabama before they suddenly took off and were found in Florida months later.
Like we mentioned earlier, Luide was disappointed that they didn't include this info
in the Unsolved Mystery segment. And even if Marlena wasn't connected to this family,
this still is a pretty bizarre side story. As you'll recall, the
family's last name also happened to be Childress. And while nine of the ten
children belonged to the parents, yet a young girl who went by the name
Kristel, who'd supposedly been given to them by her biological mother two years earlier.
Well, that part of the story certainly sounded sketchy as hell. And
even if Cristel was not Marlena, I wish we were able to learn more
follow up info to find out what happened to her. Correct, she's somebody
who was this kid whose mother gave her to this family, and now she's
not with the family, so what happened to her? What is crazy is
that Unsolved Mysteries actually did include the allude to the waitress story. Correct,
yep. But the police had already said that that wasn't true. So if
we have already ruled that information out, and yet we have not followed up
on another pretty convincing story. Why would you cover the one the police said
no to and yet the one where they're saying, we're not sure you decide
to leave that information out. What if that was the clue people needed to
hear in order to come forward and at least figure out who Crystal was,
if not linking it to Marlena. I don't know why you're so suspicious of
the father. I mean, he did produce a note which said I'm giving
her to all, So I don't know why we're taking that as definitive evidence
that they gave the girl to him. I'm so sorry. That's true.
That's so true. It's almost as good as the salad and letter. It's
true exactly. But here's where the confusion lies. It sounds like, even
though Crystal didn't look much like Marlena, the childresses were adamant that she was
the girl all these eyewitnesses had seen with them in Alabama. Even after the
family was found, their former neighbors were shown side by side photos of Crystal
and Marlena, and they apparently kept picking out Marlena as the girl they saw.
And while the neighbors said she went by Crystal, the social worker who
spoke to her, claimed that the girl told her that her name was Marlena.
Unlike the hairdressers who thought they saw Marlene at the salon in Memphis,
these witnesses described their girl as having silver cap teeth, just like Marlena did.
So does this mean Marlena could have been living with the family at some
point but was no longer with them when they were tracked down in Florida.
Well, the problem is that everyone remembered the Childresses having ten children in Alabama,
and they still had ten children months later, So during the time they
were on the run that they somehow managed to get to Marlena, pick up
a completely different girl and pass her off as Crystal. I don't know.
As weird as this whole situation is, isn't it just much easier to believe
that the witnesses memories were faulty and the girl known as Crystal was living with
the Childresses all along and Marlena was never there. This lead is certainly an
interesting one, but as far as I can tell, there's been virtually no
mention of any further development since the Childresses were found in nineteen eighty nine.
So I have a feeling that investigators found no evidence that Marlena was ever with
them, and the whole thing turned out to be a dead end. And
putting that aside, doesn't it seem like a massive coincidence that Marlena would be
abducted by a family who happened to have the exact same last name. Kidnapping
a girl who shares your surname does not sound like the most practical way to
stay out the radar? Or is it? Oh, because they have the
last people anyone would suspect, right, you know? And what would be
crazy is if you actually got access to her record and you raised her as
Merlina Childress under this other family. But they didn't. They changed her name
to crystall. I don't think she shared their last name. She was the
only one who wasn't related to them. But it's just so bizarre. I
need to know more. And unfortunately, like you said, nothing's been done
with the children's families. Yes, that might be our next text to do
it like a follow up episode on the children's family. So creepy that many
children and somebody just gives you a child. Clearly these people were of lower
socioeconomic status. They were living off the radar, and do pray, tell
why one would want to take on another mouth to feed the possibilities as to
why, and unless they were just like the most giving people ever, which
it doesn't sound like that was the case. Sounds like she was kept off
the radar and like not let outside as much as other kids. So what
were you doing with her? And why did you want someone's child that they
basically just gave you a note and we're like, hey, here you go.
I want more information, I want to know the answers, and I'm
just so unsettled by it. All mysteries within mysteries were so frustrating. Now
let's finally examine the possibility that Pam Bailey was responsible for her daughter's disappearance.
It must be said that other than her confession to stand Cabnets, there really
is no evidence that Pam killed Marlena, which is why the grand jury elected
not to indict her. They searched the Obayen River pretty thoroughly and never found
anything. So if Pam really did dispose of Marlene's body, I have to
wonder if she did so elsewhere well. Cabnets maintained that Pam's confession was genuine
and that she shared the entire story of her own free will. Pam had
been taking a lot of medication and was in a very bad emotional place at
the time, so it's not impossible that she could have been coerced or was
just not in her right mind. However, it must be reiterated that while
it's not uncommon for law enforcement to coerce a confession of an innocent person in
order to close the case, stan Cavnist was a private investigator hired by Pam's
own family, so it seems odd that he would try to force a confession
out of her unless he had good reason to believe that she was guilty.
I think here the grand jury had no choice but to drop these charges because
when you look at this case, it was in eighty nine, correct eighty
seven, So when you're looking at a law enforcement and legal actions at that
time, we really hadn't had cases where we tried murders without bodies like that
wasn't a common thing or things that were really accepted. You needed the body,
You information beyond just the confession. Right if you're a good court,
I've seen cases where all you have is a confession and you actually have information
that goes right in the face against whatever the person confessed to, and still
that individual will get convicted because they con to the crime. But here I
actually have a lot of value. That grand jury says there's just not enough,
right. I don't know what happened here, but we need more information.
I think that was a smart move. I do think Pam. Pam's
a tricky character for me. I think she has a lot of mental health
problems. Obviously, anybody would be struggling with their mental health after the disappearance
of their child. But I also wonder did she know something which created that
kind of internal demon and an upset right where if I were lying about the
disappearance of my daughter, if I knew any information and I was covering that,
maybe I didn't hurt her. But that kind of turmoil inside of me
and that guilt, I think it could cause me to do quite dramatic things,
right like confess or try to get this case closed so it could all
just go away, because it would be a big nightmare. It really makes
me wonder why she would be compelled to make this confession to stand Cabus.
She may have trusted him because she was working for the family and figured that
he wouldn't turn her in. But it also makes me wonder, why not
confess to someone closer to you, like your father lawaide? Though I guess
I can't discount the possibility that maybe over the years, she did say something
to Lawaide or someone in her own family, but they have just never said
so because they don't want to get her into trouble. Yeah, that's a
difficult position for Lawaide, right, He's trying so hard to find Marlena,
But I am sure that he doesn't want his daughter to go to jail even
if he does find out the hard truth. I mean, I think it's
different for every parent, but I can imagine a position where if you heard
your daughter say something like that, you might just kind of brush it off
because you don't want to believe it to be true. Right. I'm sure
if he took it to be genuine, then it would completely change the trajectory
of all of the things that he did thereafter. But I think that it's
pretty easy to dismiss things like that and say, Okay, well, she's
very emotionally or psychologically disturbed right now, So who knows what he was told
or what she had said to him, because it does seem interesting that she's
going to confess all of this to Cavness, Like what led up to this
confession? What information did he have and what type of conversations were had between
Pam and Cabnez before this happened. Yeah, I'm curious about the mindself,
because he's always maintained it came completely out of nowhere. But I do have
to wonder if there was some sort of beld up that got her to finally
say everything. It appears at least one aspect of Pam's confession turned out to
be untrue, and that's our claim that pl Summers acted as her accomplice and
helped her dispose of Marline's body. And of course, once she recanted her
confession, Pam changed her story and said that Summers actually abducted Marline on his
own because Pam resisted his sexual advances. Well, it sounds like investigators became
satisfied that Summers wasn't involved, either as the primary abductor or an accomplice.
But I have to wonder if there's some truth to Pam's allegations that Summer's sexually
abused her as a child. After all, Summers was a for fondling a
nine year old boy only a few months later, though I was unable to
find out if he was convicted of that crime. Summers was over forty years
older than Pam, so he certainly would have been in a position of power
when she was a child. It's also interesting that his abusive or allegedly took
place at the bridge on Campground Road, the same location where Pam claimed she
tossed Marlena's body into the river. Now, regardless of whether or not you
believe she killed Marlena, the fact that Pam later attempted to establish son casey
makes it clear that she is a disturbed person, and I have to wonder
if some of her issues may have stemmed from the trauma cause by childhood sexual
abuse at the hands of Summers. If Haam really did kill Marlena, then
perhaps falsely implicating her abuser in the crime was her way of getting revenge against
him. So it's possible that Pam's confession was a mixture of truce and untruce,
as she could have caused Marlena's death but fabricated some of the details she
shared. I think there's a lot of things going on here. I mean
it is it is so bizarre different behaviors, right, Like Summers is linked
to this crime only through Pam's words, but Summers also later does harm a
child, right, and possibly sexually abused Pam growing up. But it doesn't
really put Summers with Pam for the commission of the crime. It's just circumstantial,
very concerning behavior, right, very disturbing behavior that that sounds linked to
her disappearance but is not. Then you have Pam, like you said,
who later actually stabs her son and has this break and says like basically she
pulls a you know, Roxy Heart and not Roxy Heart the Chicago girl,
right, who says I didn't even know what I had done till I was
washing the blood off my hands. She says, she blacks out and doesn't
even remember stabbing her son. Could something have happened where she didn't remember what
she did to Marlena? Could she have done something in a mental health moment
of dis dress And then when she comes to, she does start to recall
some of these bits and pieces. She does start to remember her behavior,
and she does confess we don't know, right if she doesn't recall what happened
we don't know. So you have Summers previous behavior and future behavior, but
it doesn't put in hurting Merlina. You have PAMs later behavior with her son,
but again doesn't automatically link her to hurting her daughter. But it is
so strange if we're dealing with psychosis or like a fractured mental state where she's
dissociated in some capacity and she's got the inability to recall the linear path of
all of these events that transpired, and she's kind of picking and choosing.
It feels like I don't know if she went out of her way to try
to like make this trail to point towards Peo Summers, or if this was
subconscious way of kind of just like putting this story together and somehow in her
fractured mental state, she kind of compiled information altogether. Because the location that
she said that she disposed of Marlene's body with pl Summers also being the location
where he allegedly sexually abused her, I think it is really disturbing, and
I think it's telling that there's something deeper going on with Pam. But I
agree with what you said, Robin. I do believe that her confession is
a mix of truths and mistruths, and I don't necessarily know that Pam could
tell us which is which exactly. Like it's possible she could have legitimately blocked
out for the first few months, and then after she went to the hospital
and got some medication, certain segments just popped back into her head, like
maybe she had flashbacks to her childhood sexual abuse, and she also had flashbacks
to her killing Marlena, but was unable to determine which was which. So
we got this story that was kind of a mixture between all these memories.
She was suddenly having the motive for why Pam would have killed her daughter.
Has always been a big puzzler. Some people thought she seemed like a good
mother. Well. Others remembered seeing bruises on Marlena and started wondering if Pam
might have abused her. Even though I don't believe these allegations were ever proven.
The events may have gone down just like Pam said they did, where
she simply lost her temper, flapped Marlda and caused her to fall and hit
her head. What's interesting is that if you look through the hundreds of articles
which were published in the two months following Marlaya's disappearance, you won't see any
indication that law enforcement considered Pam to be a suspect, And I get the
impression that her confession seemed to come completely out of left field. When a
child goes missing under a parent's watch, they're always the first person that police
will investigate. But if they had any suspicions about Pam, they never said
so publicly. Even when the man with the red car was tracked down and
ruled out as a suspect, I see no indication that investigators started questioning the
credibility of Pam's story. So if Pam was gilt, it sounds like she
did a pretty convincing job at grueling people for a little while. You could
probably spend a great deal of time analyzing pam psychological makeup and trying to figure
out why she did what she did. But before we do that, we
also have to look at the timeline of that afternoon's events and figure out how
she could have done this. It's one of these things like when we do
look at it, could she have done it? Of course? I mean,
I think we all want to think a mother can't hurt her children,
but Unfortunately, histories told us yes they can. We know a lot about
depression, and you know women with their children, and so is Pam capable
of doing this? Yes, and her later behavior with her son, my
God, really emphasizes she's capable of it. The question is, though,
did she and if she did, why? I mean, when we're sitting
here talking about it, I just sit there, and there's so many reasons
why a mother could inflict harm or get rid of her child, right,
money, a mental health crisis, not wanting the responsibilities right like you,
Like we talked about trading her for something, trading her to protect herself,
or it could have been an accident like she said, where she accidentally hit
her and she fell and hit her head. But I also could see Pam
just needing this to all go away and convincing herself she did have something to
do with it. I don't think that's at all out of the question either.
So yeah, let's look at how and why this could happen. I
do find it interesting though, that when Ashley was learning about the case for
the first time, when you immediately heard her story about hearing a car speeding
away and her not calling the police for another forty five minutes, you instantly
became suspicious. Yet I'd never seen any of those suspicions shared by police or
the media in the first two months following Marley's disappearance. So I still have
to wonder did they secretly suspect Pam but did not want to say anything publicly,
or did she just do a very convincing job at fooling everyone. It
sounds like the last independent eyewitness who saw Marlena was the owner of the grocery
store she went to at around two pm. We know that Mona Watts stopped
by the Bailey residence to pick up Jerry at three o'clock, and well,
it's not entirely clear if Mona saw Marlena, Pam would not have been out
disposing of the child's body at this time. Pam called the police to report
Marlena missing at four to fifteen. So assuming that Marlina was not killed until
after Mona and Jerry left, this gives Pama window of just over an hour
to get rid of her body. It's certainly possible, but the timeline still
would be pretty tight. I guess this would lend credence to Pam's story about
tossing Marlena's body off a bridge into a river rather than taking the time to
bury her somewhere. If this is what happened, then Pam is just lucky
that Marlena's body never surfaced and no additional evidence was found to implicate her.
One overlooked aspect of this story is that Pam was also looking after her four
month old son, Damon at the time. Assuming that Pam den just leave
Damon alone at the house, she would have had to take her baby with
her while getting rid of Marlena's body, which is pretty messed up. If
Pam killed Marlena, then I am willing to believe that it wasn't premeditated murder
and may have been a heat of the moment thing like Pam described, where
she lost her temper, struck her daughter, and caused her to fall over
and hit her head. I mean, that's hardly a defensible situation, but
the district attorney did agree to reduce the charge against her from second degree murder
to voluntary to voluntary manslaughter. So if Marlena's body was found and Pam had
been convicted of killing her, she might have only served a few years.
And this whole case would be forgotten now if you think about that. Though
you guys were saying, no, she has this four month old. She
could have easily been struggling with postpartum depression with the four month old at home,
and I wouldn't put it past leaving a four month old to go get
rid of her body. Four month olds can't do much, so if the
baby was in a crib or a bassinet, they're not really crawling and rolling
over or anything at four months old. So I could see her leaving the
baby and going to get rid of the body. I also could see something
where she said, oh my god, there was an accident, and no
matter what happens, I can't leave this four month old without a mom,
So I have to cover this up, right, like it's more important to
preserve what's left here and cover it up like, Okay, we know the
Jehan ben Ay Ramsey case. We have no freaking clue what happened there.
But one of the theories was that the son hurt Jean Benet and the parents
covered up for him, and people went berserk like no parent would ever do
that, And as a mother, I sat back and went like that would
be the most horrific situation ever to say, well, she's gone, he's
not, so now I have to figure out do I cover for him and
help him get out of this situation? Well, why wouldn't you do that
for yourself? She's gone, my four month old is not. Now what
do I do? I have to cover and make sure that he has a
mom growing up right that I'm not in prison, So I could very well
see there have been an accident and her going to these extremes to say I
refused to go away for any time, much less, you know, for
a murder, but I'm not going away from my four month old son.
I think it's very possible she was struggling with postpartum depression or possibly postpartum psychosis.
If indeed she had this like extremely fractured mental state, and something that
could be a trigger to take depression to psychosis could be an accident where you
you know, smack your child and they hit their head and then Marlena needs
to be disposed of and then having to live with that type of a situation.
But I do think it's possible that she could have just taken Damon and
hid the body somewhere because initially she didn't plan on confessing. That was something
that she did later, and so maybe it's just like she wanted to confess,
but she didn't want to say where exactly the body was, or it
was like this combination if she maybe couldn't even remember at that point in time.
And there's just so many different possibilities, given the emotional complexity of the
situation and what seems like her deteriorating mental health, and like, as she
just said, just factoring in that she'd just become a mother again to a
four month old, like that creates such a cascade of things within the body.
Oh my gosh. Like my own mother had to be hospitalized for bipolar
disorder after she had me with because her hormones were all over the place and
she was in severe psychosis. So these things can and do happen. So
I just don't know if even at this point, Pam is going to be
a very reliable narrator of the events that transpired during this time period. Oh
exactly. And of course this was a nineteen eighty seven when people would not
have had as much knowledge of as she's like postpartum depression and these mental health
stuff, So people are who are analyzing this case back then, probably we're
not even thinking about this stuff. On the other hand, when Pam blindfolded
her son Casey, drove him to a cemetery, and stabbed him fifteen years
later, that was clearly a premeditated act. It doesn't look like there's ever
been a clearly established motive for why Pam did this, as she only claimed
that she blacked out and didn't even remember it. But if she was capable
of doing that to her own son, then she was definitely capable of doing
something to Marlena. Overall, if this story had ended with Marlena's disappearance and
the only evidence against Pam was her own confession, I'd be more inclined to
believe she might be innocent, But the stabbing incident does point to her most
likely being responsible for what happened to her daughter. Most of the promising leads
which pointed to a stranger abduction would end up leading to a dead end,
and well, I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility that Marlena was abducted by
someone who was never popped up on the radar. All roads just seemed to
lead back to her mother. Even if Pam did not actually kill Marlena.
I guess the alternate possibility is that she could have sold or given away her
daughter. But no conclusive evidence is ever surface to prove that Marlena is still
alive after all these years. It's such a sad case. We're talking about
a disappearance of a little girl who didn't get a chance to grow up at
least with her family right, and it leaves us with a question of what
happened to her? Where is she? And for me, the mom and
me says, if we don't know that she was killed, could she be
hurt by somebody, Could she be held by somebody? Could she be trafficked
by somebody? And in many ways, to me, that's more horrific and
terrifying than knowing her body was safe at home with me and that I had
a burial. In those kinds of things, So I'm like you, Jules,
I tend to err on like Pam had to have some knowledge of this.
Did she make a mistake and it was too much of a risk to
tell the truth. Did she need to cover for something, did she need
to cover for someone. Did she have an accident where she hurt the baby
or even worse, is this something where she had planned to get rid of
her and get rid of that burden in her wife. None of those situations
create a healthy or good outcome for Marlena, So it's just so tragic.
It's so sad. As far as we can tell, Pam Bailey is still
a free woman and has stayed off the radar these past several years, but
she definitely seems to be an enigma. Part of me just wants to accept
that she's simply a bad person who murdered one of her own children and attempted
to murder another one. But I do get the sense that she probably went
through some trauma on her own during her childhood. It may not have been
in full control of her mental faculties when she perpetuated these horrible acts. This
doesn't excuse Pam's action, of course, but trying to figure out is definitely
one of the most baffling aspects of this story. Since Pam already made one
confession about what she did to Marlena, I suppose the best chance we have
of this case being solved is for her to feel the need to confess again
someday, only this time she'll be able to lead the authorities to Marlena's remains
or provide some sort of conclusive evidence which proves she's telling the truth. Because
even after three decades of all these major twists and turns, there's a four
year old girl who is still missing, and even if she's no longer with
us, this case deserves full closure. So if you hapen to have any
information about the unsolved disappearance of Marlina Childress, please contact the Obayan County Sheriff's
Department at seven three one eight eight five five to eight three two at seven
three one, eight eight five five A three two Jules Ashley, any final
thoughts on this case. This is one of those cases where it doesn't feel
like there's going to be much progress in the case because, like you said,
it's going to require that the actual perpetrator, which in my gut I
think is probably Pam or someone that Pam knows it, is going to be
apprehended. Anne or Pam is going to have to, like you said,
tell a news story and a story that's the truth so that a lot of
things can happen so that this case can be closed, but more importantly that
people can have answers. There's no winners here. So if we prove Pam
did this right, you have collateral damage around her, her son, her
ex husband, her dad, these people who forever have been saying, please
tell me that's not the case, right, Like, I do not think
that's the case, And in many ways I'm actually going to prove it's something
different so that I can sleep at night and not think that someone I love
hurt our baby. Right And so oh, it's just one of those cases
where how do you win? I wish we could put our hands on Marlena
and know that she's safe. I want it to be one of those stories
that comes across Facebook and says, you know, thirty years later, Marlena
found going under this name and she's healthy and successful and all these things,
because Robin, you've had those stories before. But this one just seems very
bleak, very dark. I think that there is so much to be said
for Luide's strictly his love for his daughter and his love for Marlena, and
that he really tirelessly pursued a lot of leads. It's just unfortunate that these
leads that were ruled out early on seemed to be pushed really hard. They're
all really confusing, like the hairdresser, the waitress, and the one that
really does kind of stick with me is the crystal sighting. The fact that
she was described as looking similar and the silver capped teeth, the fact that
she that she was hidden inside more than the other children, and that she
told a social worker that her name was Marlena. It is really compelling,
even if it isn't indeed Marlena. Just who is this crystal girl and who
gave her to this family that were also called the childresses, which is so
weird. I think that given the situation with Pam, the way that she
acted in the aftermath of what she said was an abduction with this red car
screeching, it just isn't in alignment with how a person would typically act.
And yes, of course, trauma will make people act in very strange ways,
as we can see by nine one. One calls and we'll often listen
to them or you know, look at them through the lens of all we
know that they're guilty or not, and then we're like, well, of
course they were, look at the way they were acting. And so I
think in this situation, it's not necessarily that we're going okay, well,
Pam confess, therefore we're looking at it through the lens of she's guilty.
I think it's just just objectively weird, you know. I think, like
ash had said, you could be in this traumatic kind of state of shock
for five minutes, ten minutes, maybe even fifteen, but forty five minutes.
She doesn't claim she was in shock. She says she was looking around
the neighborhood, which just is not the appropriate response. And I think that
Ashley had on a really important point when she said that Pam became a mother
four months ago to Damon, and I think that there can be some really
really traumatic things that happened to the body in the aftermath of giving birth.
Your hormones are all over the place. Postpartum depression is a very real thing
for a lot of women. Postpartum psychosis is a lot more rare, but
it does indeed happen. But it could be responsible for Pam not remembering accurately
what exactly happened to Marlena, potentially remembering that she indeed was responsible, but
not really knowing where the body was, and somehow kind of intertwining these memories
of what happened with Marlene's body and how she disposed of it with this potential
sexual abuse trauma at the hands of pl Summers when she was a child,
which if that did indeed happen, and I think it is, there's a
very strong likelihood given the fact that she went and took her son to a
cemetery and she tried to murder him. Basically there was premeditation there. It
seems that there is definitely some trauma in Pam's past. But I think at
the end of the day, the person who is responsible for Marlena's disappearance and
the death of Marlena is Pam. Yes, I, like I mentioned in
my last episode, the first time that I became familiar with this case is
when I watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode when it aired in nineteen ninety and back
then I just assumed that the sightings of Marlena at the hair salon and Memphis
were legitimate, and that even though Pama confessed, I didn't believe she was
guilty because of the year were sightings of Marlena after she went missing, so
she has to be alive somewhere, right. But as the years went on,
I found out that Pam attempted to stab one of her other children many
years later, and of course the Memphis sighting was debunked, so I came
to conclude that Pam was likely responsible from our latest disappearance. And in most
cases, when you find out about a suspicious looking parent who may have been
responsible for the death of your child, you're automatically going to hate them.
But in Pam Bailey's case, I think it's a lot more complex because I
do kind of pity her, because I do think she was a troubled person
who probably endured a lot of trauma in her life, and that the sexual
abuse allegations against p L. Summers were most likely true, and that she
had a lot of mental health issues, and that even if she did harm
Marlena and get rid of her body, there is a possibility that she is
legitimately blocked it out and might not even know where her daughter's body is.
And I think it does say something that when she went to prison for attempting
to stab her son fifteen years later, her ex husband just flat out said
I would petition for her release. I don't think she should be locked up.
My son is not afraid of her. I don't think she's an evil
person. She just did something that she probably doesn't even remember. So it
just, like I said, Pam is quite an enigma. You wonder what
kind of person is she. She's someone who's been accused of possibly murdering one
of her own children and attempted to murder one of her other children, Yet
you don't know what the potential motive was, and you just wonder, like,
is she just a very troubled person who had no control of her faculties
when she did this. But even though I still feel some sympathy for I
do feel that she was responsible for what happened to Marlina, and I do
hope that if she does remember some day, if she still remembers what happened,
that she might be compelled to share the full truth one day and we
will finally find out what happened to Marlena. But until then, this is
just a very sad story with no winners, and it remains like a very
haunting unsolved mystery. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
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