Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. September fourteenth, nineteen sixty
five, Coral Gables, Florida. After leaving work, twenty two year old
Judith Hyams vanishes without a trace and her rental cars found abandoned in Atlanta.
It turns out that Judith was pregnant and had been seeking an illegal abortion,
but when the alleged doctor is arrested, he spail and disappears. Twenty four
years later, a police captain receives bizarre, anonymous phone calls stating that Judith
is still alive, prompting him to reopen the case. Investigators soon receive an
anonymous letter revealing that Judith died of complications from her abortion, but her body
is never found and the source of the strange phone calls remains unknown. After
that, the path went chilly, So today we are covering the nineteen sixty
five disappearance of Judith Hyams. This case was featured on a very memorable segment
on Unsolved Mysteries and if you asked a hardcore fan to rank the most quotable
lines in the show's history. I'm sure this one would rank right near the
very top. Judy Himes is alive and she lives in Omaha. This disappearance
is a pretty unique mystery, and that the solution seemed pretty straightforward at the
time it originally took place. The most likely explanation was that Judy had died
from complications during an illegal abortion and the responsible parties the whole thing up.
However, nearly a quarter century after the case faded into obscurity, it was
revived in the most unlikely fashion when the Coral Gables Police Department started receiving an
incredibly bizarre series of anonymous phone calls from multiple individuals, and yes, one
of them stated that Judy Himes was still alive and living in Omaha, Nebraska.
Quite frankly, the biggest mystery in this case might not be what happened
to Judy, but why her story was revived by these phone calls completely out
of the blue so many years later. But the one indisputable fact is that
Judy has still never been found. So this is definitely an unsolved mystery which
deserves further exploration. Oh my goodness, there is a lot to unpack just
in this first introduction. So we're talking about nineteen sixty five, where a
twenty two year old woman is pregnant, and so I'm assuming she's not married.
Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Okay, So she has
a lot coming at her. She's twenty two years old, which is I
was not ready to have children when I was twenty two, and I think
that's you know, some people are ready at nineteen, some people aren't ready
at forty, right, But at twenty two, Judith was pregnant and according
to the information so far, did not want to keep the pregnancy. This
is nineteen sixty five, and she's an unwed mother. So whether you agree
or not with abortion, the reality is just like drugs and guns, you
can make something illegal and people are still going to do it. And when
you make it illegal, people have to turn to very risky behaviors like same
with prostitution. Right when it's illegal and sex work is illegal, then they
can't be healthy and they can't be protected, and you can't monitor anything that's
coming and going. So same with abortion here. It's nineteen sixty five.
Unfortunately, we're not in too different of a state in two thousand and twenty
three. But poor Judath is making one of the most difficult decisions I think
a person can ever face, Do I keep this pregnancy or not. I
don't think many people take that lightly, and so whether you agree with it
or not, I'm so empathetic to Judith in this moment. She's in a
horrible position and trying to get help from people. If she did get help
from somebody and they were performing in a legal abortion, their only option if
she's sick or if she's hurt, is to get rid of the evidence that
she's sick or heart because they would be imprisoned, they would lose their family,
they would lose you know, someone could hurt them because they're performing a
legal abortion. So God, this is going to be a rough case.
I feel like all the way around. Definitely isn't. It goes in a
number of bizarre directions. And one thing I wanted to mention is that the
reason I picked this case is that you might recall that Ashley missed a couple
of episodes that Juel and I had to do together, and when Ashley finally
came back. Somebody wrote a comment on the episode of my Patreon page that
said Ashley Wellman is alive and she lives in Arkansas. So that was such
a perfect tribute that I'm like, I had to do the Judah High Judith
Him's case next. Oh my god, they miss me, they did.
Ye. People do miss you when you're gone. Of course, that is
super cool. I'll tell you, y'all have been fabulous. As you guys
know, I've been dealing with a lot of family health issues and difficulties there.
But my gosh, I miss you guys just as much when I'm not
around. So yes, Ashley woman is alive. She lives in Eureka Springs,
Arkansas. Our story begins in nineteen sixty five in Coral Gables, Florida,
which is located in Dade County, about seven miles southwest of downtown Miami.
Our central figure is twenty two year old Judith Carol Hyams, who goes
by the name Judy. Judy is the daughter of a wealthy developer and works
as a lab technician in the University of Miami Medical School at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Even though she had previously been married to an investment banker, Judy got
divorced from him in June of this year. And has recently begun dating a
local dentist named Lucian Gordon. On September fourteenth, Judy left work early and
told one of her friends that she was planning to go shopping to purchase an
expensive watch. The previous day, Judy had gone to Biscayne Federal Bank and
withdrew three hundred dollars, which she was presumably going to use for this purchase.
While a watch was delivered to Judy's home the following day, she was
not there to receive it, and when she failed to resurface, she was
subsequently reported missing. One week later, police learned that an abandoned Chevrolet Impalla
registered under Judy's name, had been found over six hundred and fifty miles north
in a residential neighborhood in Atlanta. Since Judith's own vehicle had recently been damaged
by Hurricane Betsy, this Impala had been functioning as her rental car. There
was a blood stain found on the back seat and over fifty latent fingerprints inside
the vehicle. But the problem was that since this was a rental which had
previously been used by multiple people, it was impossible to determine if any of
the prince had belonged to someone who may have had involvement in Judy's disappearance.
Theoretically, even the blood stain could have been left by someone who rented the
car before Judy did, and the stain was described as being small enough that
it could have been caused by something as minor as cutting one's finger. These
cars that are a mannon miles and miles away or you know, hundreds of
miles away are always so difficult to dissect. What does it mean? Right?
How did it get there? Because so many things could have happened.
Judy could have easily driven the car there perhaps at the time. I don't
know the details of it, but of states at the time, but perhaps
Florida did not have legal abortions and Georgia did, or you know, maybe
she was seeking help out of the state. Also, if she didn't drive
it, she could have been kidnapped, left the car whatever, and someone
else could have just found the car and driven it a way. There's actually
a lot of research that shows that people who are going to commit a crime,
they'll actually leave a car that they steal in a high risk area with
the hopes that somebody will go retrieve the car or start to destroy the car,
or someone could have purposely hurt Judy and said, I've got to get
this car as far away from Florida as I can possibly do without causing a
lot of attention to me. So it's difficult. Is this Judy's doing?
Is this someone else who hurt Judy and then dumped her car, or is
it something that's more innocent of, like not related to Judy's disappearance, but
the car was found and driven there by someone who's not related to her.
I'm always impressed by cases that are way in the past, before there was
all these different databases and the ability for states to communicate with each other through
those means, and then you have a situation where this car is in another
state, but yet somehow it gets traced back and they're notified that this is
indeed Judy's car. Because I think when you look kind of before the advent
of the Internet and all the different databases where different law enforcement agencies share information,
you have situations where you dump a body outside of state lines, or
you dump a vehicle, and things like that even county lines, and people
seem to have a difficult time. Tracy at back because these different sheriff's department
or police departments, different law enforcement agencies don't seem to communicate with each other
adequately. Yeah, that's why it is impressive that they were able to communicate
so well in nineteen sixty five, because my theory is that whoever drove it
there was probably hoping that it would never be found. They were hoping that
the Georgia authorities would find this car and never communicate with Florida, and that
people would be more baffled by Judy's disappearance, so that I think they were
just trying to throw off the investigation. But surprisingly they file the car relatively
quickly and were able to communicate it that have belonged to Judy. A local
resident had recalled seeing it unidentified man parking the impol in the neighborhood before he
removed a daffel bag from the trunk and walked away. The man was described
as being in his twenties with a sandy haired crew cut and a bad complexion.
The witness also claimed that she saw this man return to the scene a
few days later with a dark haired girl who resembled Judy, and they both
looked at the car before driving away in a view of special Well. This
man and woman were eventually tracked down, but it turned out the woman was
not Judy and it was not the same man who had a band in the
car. The couple had just heard a radio broadcast about the missing him Paula,
and when they saw it parked on the street, they decided to go
check the tag numbers well, attempting to trace the man who parked the vehicle,
investigators checked flight records and discovered that an individual only using the name Smith
had paid cash to purchase a plane ticket from Atlanta to Miami shortly after the
Impala was dropped off. However, they were unable to track him down and
the driver was never identified. What I mean. I know, we didn't
have a lot of record keeping at the time, and you could pay cash
for a plane ticket, but Smith, like he didn't need a first and
last name. Did you not have to show your idea when you checked in?
Oh, definitely not, because you'll remember the most famous example of this
is dB Cooper, which took place in nineteen seventy one. If he ever
showed an ID, he just gave a fake name, because back then you
could just board the plane by saying whatever you wanted and paying cash and knowing
would have to trace you. Unbelievable. Yeah, that's a fascinating case.
Investigators soon uncovered a potential explanation for why Judy went missing, as a receipt
for a pregnancy test was found among her personal effects. The test had taken
place at a medical lab on August thirty first, and she'd used the name
b Kenny. However, one of the lab technicians was able to confirm that
b Kenny was Judy because they'd gone to technicians school together, so she recognized
her. Four days after Judy disappeared, an attorney named Daniel Seppler approached the
state's Attorney's office claiming that two other attorneys had asked him for advice on behalf
of a potential client who might have been involved in procuring or aiding a criminal
abortion. Seppler said that this was connected to the missing girl and found out
the attorney had received phone calls from the office of a doctor named Gordon,
and the actual abortionist was someone with the name that was difficult to pronounce well.
Judith just happened to know two doctors with the last named Gordon. Doctor
Lucian Gordon, the dentist whom she had recently started dating, and doctor Herschel
Gordon, who was a friend of the Hiams family. The two men weren't
related, though Herschel was the one who had introduced Judith to Lucian. When
Judith took her pregnancy tests, the lab asked her for the name of a
doctor she could mail the results too, and she provided the address for Lucian's
office. Both of the Gordons were subpoena to appear at the State's Attorney's office,
but Herschel refused to answer any questions without the presence of an attorney.
He also wouldn't speak to Judy's family and eventually moved to California. However,
the family believe Judy would have trusted herschel Eneugh to go to him if she
needed a referral about an abortion. Well, Lucian was initially cooperative with investigators.
He kept postponing his appointments to speak with the State's Attorney's office and finally
started pleading the Fifth Amendment when he was asked questions under oath. This is
really tough because Lucian should have had a little bit more kind of compassionate empathy.
Judith goes missing. They were dating. I'm assuming he was a little
bit older. He's an established dentist and she is twenty two years old working
for the hospital. But it's possible that he was the one who got Judy
pregnant and likely knew that she was pregnant. And then here's Judy going,
okay, who do I know that I trust? And Herschel comes to mind,
right, I can reach out and talk to him. But both these
people seemed to just go, well, she's gone, I'm moving forward,
and I don't want to help at all. And it's sad because these are
people that you know, they trusted doctor Herschel, Gordon and then Lucian and
should have had some idea that, okay, I at least want to talk
to her family or like give my condolence as the family. He didn't seem
to care whatsoever, Like this was a relief that he was that she was
gone. I feel like ten out to ten. He is likely the father
of her onborn baby. She was indeed pregnant, because otherwise why would you
have the result mailed to his office? I agree, and it seems likely
that even though maybe they still cared about Judy and didn't want her to go
missing, that abortion was such a taboo subject that because they were complicit and
referred her to a doctor who could give her an abortion, that's why they're
being so secretive and can't talk about it because they know they'll probably get into
a lot of trouble. And part of it might be too, because what
kind of doctors doctor Herschel Gordon. Is he like a medical doctor? I
think so, yeah, yeah, I mean if he's the medical doctor,
and then we've brought doctor Lucy and Gordon he's a dentist. If that gets
out into the press, it was a time period in nineteen sixty five where
you might not want your name attached to a young woman who's gone missing and
a potential illegal abortion. It may be professionally impactful in a negative way.
Absolutely, he would lose his license, and I mean and Ann go to
prison. So it wouldn't just stop it like, Okay, you're gonna absolutely
lose your license. You could serve prison time, and my god, we
talked about this a lot that I might be empathetic to other people, but
when it comes to my family and losing my job, a lot. I
mean, I think people would be like, Nope, I gotta protect what
I have going. Anyways, you probably know abortion was still illegal back in
nineteen sixty five, and it was suspected that the abortionist that Daniel Seppler had
mentioned with a difficult to pronounce name was a Hungarian immigrant named George Hodju.
When Hadju was questioned, he admitted that he had met Judy on a previous
occasion years earlier, but denied having seen her on the day she went missing.
Well, needless to say, had You had quite a shady history.
The previous year. Had You had been charged with a conspiracy to commit abortion
following a sting operation in which an undercover female police officer arranged to have an
illegal abortion performed by him for five hundred dollars. Hadju would also be charged
with unlawful practice of medicine once it was discovered that he did not actually have
a medical license. Hadju claimed that he was licensed to practice medicine in his
native Hungary, though he admitted that he did not have a valid license in
the United States. The rumors surrounding Judy's disappearance actually played a role in prompting
Gay county law enforcement officials to put together what they described as a quote unquote
special abortion Squad, which would bring down a number of illegal abortion rings over
the next few years. In fact, in May nineteen sixty six, hawd
You, a twenty year old nurse named Donna Dowon and a third defendant,
forty two year old Jay Anderson Martin, would be arrested for their roles in
a completely unrelated abortion case. Absolutely wild. You know it would help with
the special abortion Squad and cutting down the number of illegal abortion rings. Me,
yes, okay, yeah, yeah, that's my special abortion squad advice.
Um here, I mean, this is so sad, And think about
it, guys, like, Okay, people always make the argument with abortion
and I don't want to. I don't really want to get there because I
know half the people don't agree. But um, you know, it's always
that thought of like, oh, this person recklessly got pregnant and they don't
want their pregnancy, which can happen, and that person has the right to
make that decision whatever. But so many things are classified as an abortion right,
Like all of my miscarriages are noted in my medical record as as as
abortions right and these this idea that if a baby's not alive inside, I
still have to get rid of it and I have to get help medically,
or I could get sick. And it says in there that they performed an
abortion. They did not. My baby was dead, do you know what
I mean. So it's so sad because all those things get swept into that
right and and people are clamoring to say, I'll go to someone who doesn't
have a license. I'll go to somebody who makes these promises and I'm in
their house or in their kitchen or something, and my god, it's it's
so dangerous. I mean, you think that herschel Gordon, like he was
a respected medical doctor and probably would have been capable of performing an abortion himself,
but he was probably not going to take that risk and like potentially screw
up his entire life. So the best thing he could say was, well,
I'm going to send you to this unlicensed Hungarian immigrant who doesn't have a
medical license, because if something goes wrong, he can take the fall.
But it just kind of shows like what you would have to do back then
if you were desperate. I love how had you was looked as being a
difficult to pronounce name. Yeah, it's like the easiest name to pronounce ever.
I mean, we're podcasters, we know all about difficult to pronounce names.
You are talking about Florida people. I'm from Florida, so I can
say that you're talking about as Florida kids. And then you cross over into
Georgia. So we do have trouble sometimes. Well. In September nineteen seven,
Lucy and Gordon finally agreed to come clean and share everything he knew about
her disappearance. Lucian admitted that he went with Judy to had You's apartment four
days before she vanished, and they made an arrangement for had You to perform
an abortion on her at his clinic for three hundred dollars. Lucian was not
present when Judy went to the appointment, as had You assured her that she
would not require assistance to drive home following the procedure. After Lucian shared this
story, had You was officially charged by the state's attorney's office for conspiring to
perform an abortion on Judith Hyams. Had You was released on bond, but
subsequently disappeared, and it was suspected that he fled the country. Without had
you, there wasn't really much else that could be done to find Judy,
so the investigation hit a complete standstill. There was some speculation that Judy might
have disappeared voluntarily because of the social stigma surrounding her alleged abortion, but her
friends and family did not find this plu possible since she had received a twenty
five thousand dollars settlement from her divorce and the money remained untouched in her bank
account. After being missing for seven years, Judy was declared legally dead in
nineteen seventy two and the twenty five thousand dollars was turned over to her family.
The case pretty much faded into obscurity, but would return to the spotlight
again after a very unlikely series of events. Okay, of all this,
do you want to know what makes me furious is the fact that, Yeah,
the fact of this man who she is having a relationship with. Right,
he's much older, he's much wiser, I'm sure than Judy is.
He says, you know, I'm going to help you arrange with this doctor
quote end quote. He knows that this guy is not licensed in the United
States. I'm going to help you get an abortion with this doctor, and
then because you can drive home after, I'm going to not show up and
support you, right, I'm the reason I guarantee you. He had to
say in this where he's like, listen, we can't have a baby.
We are not married. I'm not marrying you, right, something to the
extent of like we just can't. You're too young. I'm yeah, I'm
doing something different. So I'm sure he's supporting it. He is the one
arranging it with her, right, And then he says, oh, she
can drive home herself, Well, then I don't need to be there.
And the fact that it's the doctor who's doing it had you It's like most
respectful doctors but say no, you cannot let a woman drive home alone.
You have to show up and give her a ride. So the fact that
he thought this was okay is a major red flag. It shows he has
no care for her. It's just it's literally like, you'll do this because
that's what we need to do, and given the time frame and these kinds
of things, and that's basically what you're going to do. I'll arrange it
and best to luck getting home, honey. Supposedly you can drive by yourself,
so that is disgusting. It is interesting that he does start to come
forward and give information because again he's admitting that he had something to do with
the arrangement of an abortion, so I'm surprised. He also was not charged
with conspiracy to arrange an illegal abortion, so that was a risk. And
if that is a true story, it is good that he came bored.
But I'd love to know her family sitting there saying, Okay, she had
twenty five thousand dollars. Don't you think if her family was saying like,
oh yeah, you know, like we were really hard on her. The
social stigma at the time was really bad, and we played into that,
like we just you know, we felt the same way we were prominent.
She was too young, she wasn't married. Wouldn't that information have been shared
so that people could have a better story, Like if I was a mom
and my daughter went missing and I said, okay, I may have had
an influence in that, like please let me share this information with you guys
so I can find her. I feel like someone would have come forwards that
got her parents were awful to her, Her family was awful, the city
was awful to her. I don't think we had that, did we?
No, Like, I've never heard anything bad about her family. I think
they would have taken her back even if they found out she had gotten an
abortion. And she was legally declared dead in nineteen seventy two, which was
the year after row over weight, so that would have ended a lot of
the social stigma. So if she was still alive, I think she would
have eventually resurfaced. And you know it's gross is that she took out three
hundred dollars to pay this doctor. The doctor boyfriend didn't pay it for her,
like he didn't arrange it. She remember earlier in the story, you
told me she had taken out three hundred dollars around the time of that watch.
What guarantee you that was to pay this doctor? Oh? Definitely.
Which is confusing though because the watch a watch does get delivered, but it's
a little too coincidental. But that same amount of money is taken up from
the bank and it's like, dude, you're going to go help and help
her arrange it, but you're not even a gentleman enough in it's nineteen sixty
what is it nineteen sixty five? Yeah, that you're not going to go
and be like, hey, I'm not going to be physically present, but
at least the least I could do, that very bottom of the barrel least
is to financially take care of the procedure. But he couldn't even do that.
She not only has to go by herself, but he's not going to
pay for it. She has to pay for it for it from her own
and she's clearly not making as much as he is. He's established he's a
dentist. And I question if had you ever said to him, you don't
need to be president. She can drive back after or if he just basically
added that little bit because it made him look better, because I guarantee she
would have wanted him to be there, and he probably just wanted to distance
himself as much as he could from the procedure and from her at that moment.
He probably shamed her more than anybody else did. Honestly, back in
that time. That's his young girlfriend who I'm sure he was like, Oh,
she's this cute girl who works at the hospital. You know, I
don't I don't see that being necessarily who was going to be her next husband
or anything like that. So I guess why she took the three hundred dollars
out, though, guys, is because he probably knew she could drive herself
to the bank and back, and so he probably didn't need to help her
financially. It's just gross, though, because it really is dependent. I
think there's three levels. I don't know how they would have done abortions back
then, but I am aware that they will either put like not put you
under like you are absolutely aware and cognizant of everything that is happening physically,
emotionally, mentally. And then there's a second level where they'll give you some
kind of benzodiazepine, or the third where somebody can be put completely under.
And so the two latter options you are not okay to be driving yourself back
whatsoever. And I think after the physical and emotional trauma, no matter which
option you choose, you would always want to have somebody there for you to
support you physically and emotionally, because the idea of driving yourself anywhere after something
so traumatic is just I can't even fathom that a doctor would be like,
nah, she's cool, just leave her here, will do it, unless
he thought, Okay, well, if there is a problem, then it's
going to be a little bit easier for us to deal with whatever could happen.
He wanted to distance himself, that's all he was doing. Yeah,
she's a trap, like like an object to him. That's a problem at
this point. Go take care of that. That's what needs to be done.
I've already arranged it. And I hope you know, always being a
complete smartass about her being able to drive herself to and from the bank.
Yeah. So. In March of nineteen ninety, Captain Chuck Shearer of the
Coral Gables Police Department received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Steve
Brown, a radio talk show host in Omaha, Nebraska. Brown told Sheer
that he had recently received information about the unsolved disappearance of Judith Hyames from an
anonymous caller who phoned his show and told him that Judy was currently living in
Omaha. Of course, even though Shear worked for the Coral Gables PD,
Judy's disappearance took place many years before he joined the force, so he had
never heard of the case before. He told Brown that he would do some
research and get back to him. So Brown provided Sheer with two phone numbers
where he could reach him anyway. After looking into the case, Shear called
Brown back. But this is where things got really strange, because Brown literally
had no idea what was going on. Brown told Shear that he never phoned
him, never received any information from an anonymous caller, and knew nothing about
the Judith Times case. Furthermore, while the number where Sheer phone Brown was
his radio station, the second number the caller had provided was Brown's home number,
which was unlisted. Brown claimed that only fifty people even knew that number
and he could not imagine any of them being brazen enough to impersonate him while
phoning the police. And why would they pick him? Like? Why him?
Yeah, that is the biggest like WTF thing about this case is that
they chose a radio host from a different city, in a different state that
had no connection to Judith Hiames and decided to impersonate him to give a false
tip and a missing person's case. Like this is the thing that just boggles
my mind about this whole story. Well, two days later, things got
even weirder when Shearer received another call, this time from a woman who said,
quote, Judy Himes is alive and she lives in Oa. Shearer asked
the caller to identify herself, but she just kept repeating the same sentence before
she hung up. Now what significant here is that only two days before these
phone calls took place, Shearer had returned to Coral Gables from a trip to
Grand Island, Grand Island, Nebraska, where he delivered a narcotics lecture at
a police academy. Grand Island is located approximately one hundred and fifty miles west
of Omaha. But since he had not heard of the Judith Hiam's case at
that point, Sharer never mentioned it to anyone while he was in Nebraska,
and even though he'd given his business card to a few law enforcement figures during
his trip, Shira could not figure out why people from Omaha were suddenly phoning
him about an obscure, twenty four year old cold case. Well, Judy's
family was informed about this, they confirmed that they did not know anyone in
Nebraska. I still don't think that Judy's just kind of up and disappear like
it seems as if she has a good relationship with her family. I had
twenty five thousand dollars as a settlement from the divorce. This is nineteen sixty
five. She's twenty two. She has a successful career where she's working at
a hospital. She's at least putting herself back out there. It didn't end
very well, right, but she's putting herself back out there to say,
I'm twenty two, right, I'm successful, I can have another relationship.
And so even though it's nineteen sixty five and she has this pregnancy that she
doesn't want or she can't keep right, whatever the circumstances, she's twenty two.
I mean, the girl has her whole life ahead of her. I
don't see her picking up and leaving just a complete silence and never ever resuming
any part of her old life. Her old life was good. She had
this trauma, she had this really big problem, right, but her life
wasn't over at that point. So I don't think this was a voluntary like
I'm getting up and I'm going to another place. I don't think anyone made
her go to another place. So I don't know. I just I need
more information about this because it makes no sense to me. Well, the
odd phone calls compelled Sheer to reopen the case, and a story about it
ran in a local newspaper. It wasn't long before Sheer received another anonymous phone
call, this time from a man who claimed to be an informant for the
FBI, though he would not provide his name. He claimed that George Hadju
had returned to his native Hungary and was now living in Budapest. The caller
said he had recently spent several weeks with Hadju and even provided a phone number
for him. Well, unlike the previous two calls, some of the information
here actually checked out. Sheer contacted Interpol and they confirmed that the phone number
the caller provided did match up to someone named George Hadju, though they were
unable to locate him. So that's crazy. Now, what would that have
helped? Was he wanted? Like? Was he Were they going to extradite
him for being a conspirator to a legal abortion? Probably not, because he
had jumped bail twenty four years ago, and I think that whatever charges he
had, the statute of limitations probably would have expired. So he was a
known danger of being extradited and facing charges in the United States unless they could
prove he committed murder. But I'm sure they still wanted to question him at
this point because Judith Himes had never been found and maybe he could provide some
more insight on these very odd phone calls. Don't you both love how like
somebody gets rewarded for being able to get away with something when they cleverly evade
law enforcement and the statute of limitations runs out and it's like you're now being
rewarded for being able to evade law enforcement. It's super frustrating, absolutely crazy.
Oh yeah, especially for sexual assault and rate how they're statute of limitations.
If you just avoid it for long enough, you can get away with
it. Oh that's the worst. And the reality is that we know people
don't disclose for years and years and it doesn't matter. They just continue to
keep the statuted limitations the same, even with research saying you have to give
people time to get away from who's abusing them and to come to a place
where they can talk about the trauma, and doesn't seem to matter. And
I've also heard of places where they have statute of limitations on attempted murder,
which seems ridiculous because the only reason it wasn't murder is because they didn't finish
the job. So they're being rewarded for being incompetent in not actually killing their
victim or for having, you know, some kind of medical intervention earlier than
the perpetrator would have liked. And they shouldn't be rewarded for that. Attempted
murder is like the same thing as murderer. Yeah, the person didn't die,
but it's the same action taken. They shouldn't be rewarded for that,
and there shouldn't be a statute of limitations. It's crazy. Whatever the motives
for these phone calls were, they helped rejuvenate Judy's case and led to her
story being featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, which aired on January second,
nineteen ninety one. Four days after the broadcast, the Coral Gables PD
received an anonymous, typewritten letter which read, Judith Himes is not alive.
She came in for an abortion and was given an injection of anesthetic to which
she had an immediate allergic reaction. Everything that could be done was done,
However, the reaction was fatal. The body was disposed of in Biscay Bay.
For those that aren't aware, Biscayne Bay is the four hundred and twenty
eight square mile body of water located on the Atlantic coast of Miami Unsolved Mysteries
subsequently ran an update in which law enforcement urged the writer of the letter to
come forward and assured them that because the statute of limitations had expired, there
would be no criminal prosecution for any role they might have had in Judy's disappearance,
and that they would guarantee total confidentiality. The writer never did come forward,
but the police found the letter to be credible and pretty much close their
investigation. However, the case technically remains unsolved, as both the letter writer
and the people behind the anonymous phone calls have never been identified. George had
You was never found, and after nearly sixty years, Judith Hyams continues to
remain a missing person. So I guess you could say the path went chilly,
or did it. I mean, this lead is the one that to
me makes the most sense that she did go to this person who wasn't a
people doctor in the United States. Maybe he was truly a registered doctor in
his home country, which I hope he was. But there's a lot of
people who took advantage at the time of saying, oh, I'm a doctor,
right, I can do these things, and they didn't know what they
were doing. Or they weren't using techniques that they knew were safe. They
were using drugs that they obtained illegally and didn't really know what they were.
And so I could see very easily Judy going into this man's clinic, him
having no real understanding of what he was going to do or no way to
prepare for something going wrong, and Judy dying. And then everyone who's involved
has to help cover it up because again, like we saw in that one
case, later a twenty year old nurse and a doctor and everybody else's charged
with this huge crime at the time. I mean, you're going to be
in prison for that, And so I think they had to make her go
away, and it makes sense that you would dump her in this massive body
of water that's going to help you get away with it. Yeah, that
only makes sense. And I can definitely believe that the letter is credible.
But I guess the weird part is that, naturally, because it was featured
in onn SAW Mysteries, it was on national television, that someone who was
personally involved or knew the truth would maybe develop a conscience and send it an
anonymous letter. But of course, the big mystery in this case is why
they started bringing up the case again after all these weird anonymous phone calls to
Captain Shear because this was a obscure case that had been forgotten, and then
all of a sudden he's getting weird phone calls from Nebraska about it. Geez,
I wonder how many bodies have been dumped in this Game Bay in all
those years. Probably so many because of the crazy drug trade that was in
Miami. M definitely. And serial killers a lot of serial killers from Florida
as well, So it's reasonable to assume that if your body winds up there,
it'll probably never be found. Remember we used to always see Dexter,
and when Dexter was on he would go out in his boat into the water
out there off the coast. M definitely. And serial killers, a lot
of serial killers from Florida as well, So it's reasonable to assume that if
your body winds up there, it'll probably never be found. So the unsolved
mystery segment about this story is pretty much a case study and their ability to
make anything seems spooky people often rank the reenactment of the Judy Himes is alive
and she lives in Omaha. Phone call as one of the creepier moments on
the show, as it takes place inside a very dark room and they show
an overhead shot of an anonymous female caller, as well as a shot of
her mouth speaking into the receiver while ominous music plays in the background. The
creepiness is all the more remarkable when you consider that the whole situation may have
been nothing more than a simple prank call. Now, this is one of
those mysteries to which you could easily apply the phrase it's not the destination,
it's the journey. Even though the case is technically unsolved, I do believe
the solution to the mystery is a straightforward one. I think the anonymous letter
the Coral gave US Police Department received is probably legitimate, and that Judy likely
died due to complications rising from an illegal abortion and her body wound up in
Biscayne Bay. Once the evidence serviced following Judy's disappearance that she was pregnant and
planning an abortion, everyone figured this may have caused her death, but the
investigation just came to a dead halt once George hadju jumped bail and disappeared in
nineteen sixty seven. If the story had just ended. At that point,
this wouldn't be much of a mystery. But then the phone calls happened.
I know that most unsold missing persons cases get their fair share of prank calls
and false tips, but the fact that these took place twenty four years later,
after everyone had completely forgotten about this case is a true headscratcher. I
mean, let's just assume the calls were some sort of practical joke. If
you wanted to do something like that today, you could easily just go to
the Charlie Project website, bring up the profile page for some obscure missing person's
case, look up the contact info for the investigating law enforcement agency, and
then phone them up control them. But this was the pre Internet world of
nineteen nine, so it would take a lot of work for someone from Omaha,
Nebraska to dig up information about a twenty four year old missing person's case
from Coral Gables, Florida, which had not had any new developments in two
decades. If you go to newspapers dot com, you can find a number
of old articles about Judy's disappearance from the nineteen sixties, which were covered in
Florida based publications. But I don't see any indication that the story made national
news. And another strange detail is that there were separate phone calls from a
man and a woman, So if this was an elaborate hoax, at least
two people had to be involved. It. It seems like one of those
things that were Again it's like, why, what is a point here?
Unless it's someone like we've seen in other cases, that wants attention or someone
who wants to be part of the case, it would take a lot of
effort at the time to follow up and try to make these claims and reach
out to law enforcement. It doesn't seem like there's a point, Like what
was their goal with this? Yeah, I mean, I can understand wanting
to bring attention to an unsolvacing person's case, but this is just a very
obscure one that it had not received any coverage in several decades. And I
made image if newspapers dot com, But back then you would have to go
to the library and look at micro fechhe like very old school to find old
newspaper articles about older cases, and I have to wonder if someone went to
the trouble of doing that. So I think this would be a good point
to bring an end to part one, but join us next week as we
present part two of our series about the disappearance of Judith Hyams. Robin,
do you want to tell us a little bit about the trailment Cold Patreon?
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and
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warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy