Welcome back to the Pathway, Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
I'm Ashley, and this is a special episode, but I'll let Robin tell
you why in just a moment. Let's dive right into this week's case.
August twelfth, nineteen ninety two, Panama City, Beach, Florida. After
leaving her home in Georgia on a vacation with her two children, thirty six
year old pan La June Ray arrives at a beachfront motel during the early morning
hours and parks in front of the office. Pamela's children are sleeping in the
back seat, but when they wake up a few hours later, they learn
that their mother is vanished, and a patrol officer reports having seen Pamela in
the company of an unidentified man shortly before she went missing. Years later,
a convicted murderer named Mark Reebe confesses to abducting and killing Pamela, but he
later recounts this confession and no trace of her is ever found. After that,
the path went chilly, So today we're going to be exploring a frightening
cold case involving a missing mother. The nineteen ninety two disappearance of Pamela June
Ray. Now, I covered this one on the Trail and Cold nearly three
years ago, and as you might know, I hold an ongoing contest where
each month I hold a live drawing in which I pick out the name of
a random winner who gets the opportunity to narrate the opening of an episode.
Well back in April of twenty twenty one, I wound up drawing the name
Ashley Wellman, and she wound up recording the opening narration Pamela June Ray's case.
So to put this into perspective at that time, well, you'd only
recently launched the Path Went Chilly, But I had no idea that Ashley had
originally entered the Trail Went Cold voiceover contest back in January of twenty eighteen,
back when she was just a casual fan of the show and we did not
know each other. So it was quite an astonishing coincidence when I picked out
her name, and the rest is history. Okay. I wish you guys
could see my face right now, because I have a very nerdy like fangirl
smile and giddiness to me. Yes, I beg of that. Still,
I remember sitting on the couch and opening up my email and being like,
hey, Ash, can you record this? You know you got picked for
this contest? Can you record this opening? And being so excited and so
honored to be able to do that for your podcast because I was a huge
fan before becoming a friend, and yeah, I'm wondering, have I gotten
better? I think so, Yes, you've improved. I'll definitely second that.
But what is kind of funny is that when you originally entered it,
you had an entirely different email, which I think has since gone defunct.
So it was a good thing we'd become friends because otherwise I wouldn't have known
how to contact you. It was one of my university emails and then found
you tracked me down and found me that's right. Yeah, well it was
an honor and I am excited to listen to the case that I got to
introduce a couple of years ago. When Jules was reading the intro, did
you recognize this case? No? And then I got this huge grin when
you started talking. I went, stop it stop, that's exciting. The
only thing that did trigger anything was Panama City because that's so close to where
I grew up in Pensacola, Florida. So then I was like, wait
a minute, A lot of crimes have happened there. So here we go
with Pamela June Ray. I love how when Ashley won the contest, so
many people accused you of fixing it. Exactly like I had a ball with
five hundred names of Ashley Willman in there and just happened to it out in
front of the camera, just to rig the whole thing. I mean,
you got to play favorites when you're one of your fans as your co host,
right, exactly right. He did not rig it up, just as
giddy, just as giddy, and just as excited and actually a little nervous
to record his intro. So it was quite a pleasure. It was a
serendipitous moment, and it's one of those things that brings us back to the
fact that before we were friends with Robin, both Ashley and I were fans
of the show. Right, so we've become friends over these years, but
before then, back in twenty eighteen, we were both just listening to the
trail and Cold, never thinking that we would be partnered with Robin on a
podcast. So one of the poor unfortunate souls that's listening right now might be
doing a podcast with one of us. So given the circumstances, I thought
it would be a good idea for all of us to revisit the Pamela June
Ray case. It involves a mother who decided to take her two children on
a vacation to Florida, but vanished from a motel parking lot shortly after she
arrived, presumably after being abducted by an unidentified male. The case was once
featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and in recent years has received coverage
on the British true crime series Serial Killers with Pierce Morgan, which featured an
interview with a convicted murderer named Mark Reebe, who once confessed to being responsible
for Pamela's disappearance. Even though Reebe has only officially been linked to one murder,
there has been speculation that he is a serial killer who may have been
responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen women, including Pamela. This
episode will also contain research from the website Lost and Found blogs dot com,
which is run by my friend and fellow Unsolved Mysteries van Heather Grautman, who
goes under the name Crystal Dawn and has published a pair of extensive articles about
this case. Even though there have been some compelling leads in the investigation,
Pamela is still a missing person, which is why we'll be exploring this story
together. Okay, so Robin, in this case, she's with her children
right when she pulls up to this hotel, and then the children are found
in the car later. Yet they literally slept through the whole thing. They
just woke up and their mother was missing, and they to this day they
have no idea what happened. Okay, I don't care what's going on.
It takes a heck of a lot for a mother to choose to leave her
children. I just it is devastating to think that those babies were in the
back of that car and she gets out for who knows what, and doesn't
return. That is the most heartbreaking part of all of this is those kids
had no idea. She likely had no idea she wasn't coming back to jump
right back in the car with them. And now we have no answers.
Those kids have no answers as to what happened to their mom. This case
is already going to be devastating to rehear and listen to the details of it.
Our story begins in nineteen ninety two, and our central figure is thirty
six year old Pamela June Ray, who lives in Phila Rica, Georgia,
with her husband, been Michael Ray, and their two children, twelve year
old Shane and five year old Brandy. Since school is going to be starting
soon, Pamela wants to take her kids on one last vacation to visit Panama
City Beach, Florida, but since Michael is busy working, he'll be unable
to come along with them. On August eleven, Pamela loaded her son and
daughter into her blue nineteen ninety one Plymouth Sun Dance and went to visit her
brother in the town of Luthersville. After visiting his house at around ten thirty
pm, Pamela began her two hundred and fifty mile drive to Panama City Beach
and would arrive during the early morning hours of August twelfth. The previous evening,
Pamela had phoned the manager of the Wilheight Motel on Front Beach Road to
inquire about making a reservation and was told that a room would be available at
nine or ten AM. When she arrived, Pamela parked her car in front
of the motel's office while Shane and Brandy remained sleeping in the back seat,
but shortly thereafter she would vanish without a trace. At around eight thirty am,
one of the motel's employees noticed that the two children were sleeping unattended inside
the Plymouth Sun Dance and became concerned enough to contact the Panama City Beach Police
Department. When police arrived at the scene, they discovered that the sundance was
locked, so they knocked on the window to wake up Shane and Brandy,
who told him that they had no idea where their mother was. It turned
out the paneless keys and her purse, which contained two hundred dollars in travelers
checks, were still inside the car, and since she was known for being
a very devoted mother who was protective of her children, it seemed very unlikely
that she left them alone of her own accord. A missing person's report would
be filed for Pamela, and after the rest of her family were informed about
what was happening, they traveled down to Panama City Beach to pick up the
children and participate in The search for her front beach road contained a number of
beachfront motels, including the will Height, but even though every single room was
checked, it failed to turn up any trace of Pamela. This is so
bizarre because she is doing exactly what she's told everyone she's going to do.
She sees her brother, She gets on this long overnight road trip. I've
done it as a mom. The kids are sleeping, it's quiet. Get
in the car. I can make it through the night and take a nap
when I get to the hotel, and she does. She gets there about
thirty minutes before the hotel employee says that her room's going to be ready,
right or yeah, about thirty minutes before nine o'clock, And she's likely waiting
for that permission to go check in and get the room key so she can
take the kids in, she can rest, clean up, and they can
start their little mini vacation. And her car's in the hotel parking lot right.
Yes. One thing I wanted to correct is that she didn't arrive at
eight thirty. That's when they noticed that the children were sleeping inside. So
she had probably arrived like a couple hours before, like the early morning hours
when when most people would have been sleeping, and that's probably the reason why
she disappeared, and no one really recorded seeing anything. Okay, Okay,
that makes even more sense. So she knows that she's too early to check
in, which means she probably was napping in the car and maybe had to
get out and go to the restroom or something that got her out of that
vehicle, or maybe someone even came and got her out of that vehicle.
But that makes even more sense, Robin, thank you for clarifying. So
she's there early and is waiting for that time where she's been given permission to
go in get the room key, and between the times she pulls up to
where she was supposed to be and the time that the kids are found at
eight thirty, someone or something happened that took her away from those babies.
So wow, And I think it's such an important distinction that eight thirty is
when the children were found, not when Pamela got there, because the difference
between eight thirty and when she potentially got there at maybe say around five am,
you would have the cover of darkness, and a lot of things can
happen under the cover of darkness that people would not even attempt to do if
it were light outside, because there's going to be all these different eyeballs on
them. But to think that somebody could have attempted something when her vehicle is
right there, the motel is right there, and there's so many potential people
who could see this person abduct Pamela or do something to Pamela, because we
know she would never leave of her own accord, because her babies are sleeping.
Like Ashley had said earlier, nothing is going to take her away from
those children. All she wants to do is just hunk her down for a
night with those kids and finally catch up on some sleep after this long drive.
Like it's just it's so shocking. I can't imagine what these people must
have felt when they came upon these like sleeping little babes in the car and
just where's their mother? So here a more details about the circumstances of how
Pamela went missing. Investigators would hear from multiple witnesses who were called seeing Pamela
sitting inside her plymous sun dance in front of the motel office around five am
on the morning of August twelfth. However, the most interesting sighting would be
from a patrol officer who was driving through the area at five twenty five and
thought he saw Pamela standing outside her vehicle with an unidentified white male. After
being placed under hypnosis, the officer recalled the white male as being around six
feet tall and one hundred and fifty pounds, with light hair and light eyes,
and wearing a shirt which had alternating dark and light colored horizontal stripes.
He saw Pamela lock her car and followed the man towards the parking lot next
to the motel's swimming pool area. A few minutes after the officer drove off,
some of the guests at the motel recalled hearing the sounds of a woman
screaming out for help, but since the rooms there did not have phones,
they were unable to call anyone for assistance. Unfortunately, the area would also
be hit with a heavy rainfall during his time period, which may have washed
away potential evidence prior to Pamela's arrival at the Prior to Pamela's arrival at the
motel, other witnesses had also recalled seeing a man urinating in public who matched
the description of the unidentified male. Okay, do we know if Pamela smoked
or anything like could she have been leaning up against the car when she arrived
and having a cigarette and someone walked up to talk to her, or maybe
she was trying to snag a cigarette from somebody walking by and that sparks a
conversation, or like, what do we know about why she might have been
outside the car. I'm just checking the Charlie Project profile page for it doesn't
say anything about cigarettes or her being a smoker, so I'm not entirely sure
about that. But one theory which has been pushed forward is that she might
have thought that this man was a motel manager or a motel employee who might
have been saying, Hey, your room's ready earlier than expected, you can
come in now, and was saying, like, accompany me to the office
or something. But of course he was just like a predator who took advantage
of the situation and then abducted her from the scene. It's like a bold
predator who would do that with two sleeping children in the car exactly. And
it's just pretty much like pure chance, because you're not going to be expecting
to be hanging outside a motel at five twenty five am and just see a
woman arriving without her husband, just being alone with two kids, and know
that, hey, I can abduct her. So it just seems like Pamela
was just in the wrong place, the wrong time and just found this very
bold predator who just happened to be hanging around the area during the early morning
hours. One month after Pamela went missing, police received a promising lead when
a twenty nine year old Panama City resident named Andrew Paul Henry was arrested for
kidnapping and rape. On March fourth, a male suspect abducted a woman outside
a convenience store in the town of Chipley, located over fifty miles away.
He proceeded to hit her on the head with a bottle and choke her into
unconsciousness, before taking her into a wooded area and raping her. Even though
the perpetrator threatened to kill the woman, she managed to convince him to let
her go, and she subsequently reported the crime to police. When Henry was
arrested six months later, the vic and picked him out of a photo lineup,
But the problem is that there were some inconsistencies between Henry and the original
description that she provided of her attacker. For instance, she mentioned him sporting
a tattoo in a spot where Henry did not have one, and described the
attacker as driving a different brand of car than the one Henry drove. As
a result of these inconsistencies, the kidnapping and rape charges against Henry were dropped.
Henry did seem to match the description of the man seen with Pamela,
and there were also reports that he'd been sitting in a folding chair outside the
Wilheighte Motel in the hours prior to Pamela's disappearance. This guy in the chair
was also described as wearing a striped shirt, the same type of shirt the
patrol officer had seen on the man with Pamela. Police used cadaver dogs to
search the wooded area where the first female victim's attack took place, but they
never found evidence linking Henry to Pamela's case, and he has since passed away.
So they were thinking that this is somebody who has his own mo in
safe space where he's going to take his victims, right, So that's why
they go back and they're looking at that place where the first female victims attack
took place, but they find nothing. It is very interesting that while he
matches the description of the man in Pamela's case, this first victim actually isn't
necessarily describing him to a tee. The tattoos particularly concerning, because that's something
that you can't eliminate quickly or easily. She describes a tattoo, which is
something that was burned into her mind, something she wanted to remember. And
then here is Henry and he doesn't have that tattoo. You could easily explain
the car away right, like how he borrowed somebody's car, or he even
stole a car when he abducted this other victim. But the tattoos concerning Now,
clearly Henry seems to have some problems. To what extent do you believe
he really was someone of interest in this case? Well, I even though
he was never charged with his rape, we're going to talk about how he
had other troubling stuff in his background at this time, so he definitely did
not seem like a good guy. And even though the attack the victim could
not do a positive ID, I think there's a good chance he did actually
raper and that maybe the inconsistencies with the tattoo in the car, maybe the
result of trauma of her being in like a terrible situation, so she's just
not remembering things as clearly as she could have. But I don't know if
there's anything that really ties him to Panama City Beach. Like. That's the
thing, is that even though he lived in the area where Pamela went missing,
he decided to drive over fifty miles away to abduct this woman in the
town of Chipley, which makes you think, well, if he's going to
commit crimes, maybe he prefers to commit them away from where he lives so
that it's more difficult to link him to them. So I don't know if
there's really a lot that links him to Pamela's case, but he definitely was
worth checking out because he does have a history of violence towards women. Yeah,
problematic behavior, but not necessarily fitting the description of what's happening here.
Can we clarify one thing if you know the answer, Robin, So the
guy sitting in the folding chair. Was he seen sitting in the folding chair
at like five am or is this after Pamela went missing? He was in
the folding chair just the hours prior to Pamela's disappearance, I mean, I
don't know if that means he was there at five am or if he had
just been seen like during the early morning hours before Pamela arrived, but he
apparently was not there after Pamela waent missing. Because the guy sitting in a
folding chair at eight thirty in the morning doesn't seem so weird, but being
out there at five am, just like chilling in a folding chair is a
little odd. Yeah, It's like, regardless of whether or not that guy
was Henry, I do think that the guy in the chair was probably Pamela's
a doctor. So after Pamela's father, Ralph Bennett, sent in a letter
to Unsolved Mysteries asking them to feature her story, they put together a special
alert segment about her disappearance, which aired in December of nineteen ninety two.
Well, the case would take us a prizing turn in nineteen ninety eight,
when a convicted murderer named Mark Reebe confessed to being responsible for the murders of
thirteen women, including Pamela. At the time, Reebe had recently started serving
a life sentence for another murder, which had also previously been featured on Unsolved
Mysteries. Several years ago, I released a minisode about the unsolved disappearance of
Deborah Po, a twenty six year old convenience store clerk who vanished while working
the graveyard shift at a Circle K in Orlando on February the fourth, nineteen
ninety and if you're one of our patrons, you might recall that we also
covered this one on an exclusive bonus minisode of The Path Went Chile. While
Deborah is still a missing person of this day, the Unsaw Mystery segment about
her case explored the possibility that her disappearance might have been connected to some other
cold cases from Florida involving female convenience store clerks. Six months earlier, on
August the sixth, nineteen eighty nine, twenty nine year old Donna Callahan,
who happened to be three months pregnant, vanished during in the middle of her
ship at a convenience store in Gulf Breeze. As the years went on,
words spread that a convicted inmate named William alex Wells, who was serving a
thirty year prison sentence for armed robbery, had confessed during a prison Bible study
session that he was responsible for killing Donna Callahan. After building up a case
against Wells, investigators eventually indicted him for Donna's murder, but in July of
nineteen ninety six, just as his trial was said to begin, Wells confessed
that both he and his half brother Mark Reebe were responsible for the crime.
According to Wells, as he was driving away from the convenience store following Donna's
abduction, Rhebe strangled her to death in the back seat before her body was
placed inside the trunk. They then proceeded a barrier in a wooded area of
Walton County, located just three hundred and fifty yards from their childhood home.
Wells passed a polygraph when he shared this story before leading investigators to Donna's remains,
and just under one year later, Rhebe would also be charged for his
role in the crime. In order to avoid the death penalty, both men
agreed to plead no contest to first scree murder, with Wells receiving two life
sentences without the possibility of parole, while Reebe received a sentence of twenty five
years to life in prison. Unbelievable. Gold Breeze is where I grew up.
I was five years old and I know of that case, So that
is insane. So Reebe is definitely tied to Donna's murder and disappearance, but
he's going to go on and claim these thirteen other victims, which is really
surprising because you have criminals who are going to come into prison and say they
didn't do anything, they're not guilty, and we also have the prisoners who
say, if I'm in here, I'm going to start to become as grandiose
as possible. And in my gut, I'm almost wondering, is Reebe going
to be one of those latter people who says, if I'm here, then
I'm going to be this grand killer and I'm going to go through like cold
case playing cards or newspaper articles and find women that I can claim I killed
as well. Yeah, we're going to talk about that in more detail as
we go along, but it's still up for debate if Reeby is one of
those guys who genuinely committed other crimes, or if he just wants to do
this to keep himself the center of attention because now he's locked up for the
rest of his life and has nothing else to lose. But one reason that
some people are skeptical that he may not want to commit to confessing to these
murders is that he may get the death penalty if he's convicted of one of
these other crimes, because Florida has the death penalty. So I think that's
what's held him back if he is guilty of offering corroborating evidence or leading the
authorities to these missing victims remains because it doesn't seem it doesn't seem like it
would be unlikely that he would have committed another murder because of the type of
murder that this was. That he strangled a woman. I mean, that
is a great predictor, just the strangling alone. When you see in domestic
violence situation that somebody will later murder their partner. But you've got somebody just
so easily murders a woman in the back seat in that way. It is
so upclose and personal and so intimate. To think that he never did before
and he never did again after that just seems unlikely to me. But I
think you're probably right, Robin. Why would you want to admit that you
did it in Florida and like really confess to it, put your name on
the dotted line when you could be executed because of it. And I mean,
I'm sure that there would be district attorneys who would say, okay,
well, if you decide to do that, so we close this case.
We'll take the death penalty off the table. But if you've got a district
attorney who's not willing to do that, then what would be his motivation to
confess and then potentially die. What I think is interesting, though, is
you see such a cowardly act in that, Like you have these guys who
come for the like, oh, I had stuff to do, I've killed
twenty five people, and then when like you're faced with consequences or having to
be accountable or help the family get justice, it's like, oh, I
I don't I'm not gonna do that. I'm you know, I'm scared at
this point. And then you still portray yourself as some big, bad killer.
It's like a serial killer like Dick measuring competition. You get these awful
dudes like the Henry Lee Lucases and stifle ouh, yeah, kill little of
these people, and it's like, dude, no one's impressed. Yeah,
I was just gonna mention Henry le Lucas that he confessed to any murder that
he that he could find. But once he actually got sense to death for
one of these and there was a chance he would be executed, that's when
he started recanting. And that's kind of the ironic thing with Henry Lee Lucas
is that the one crime he was sent to death for was the murder of
a woman named Deborah Jackson. But it turned out like he was in Florida,
like in an entirely different state. He was murdered in Texas at the
time that the crime was committed, and I think he realized, uh,
oh, they're actually gonna kill me for confessing to this one. I better
recant and stop doing this. Well, like we just mentioned, shortly after
he was sent to prison, Reevey started confessing to a number of other unsolved
cold cases from Florida, including the disappearance of Pamela June Ray. In nineteen
ninety two, Rhebe was married to his fourth wife and living in the town
of Shallamar. According to Reeb they both decided to go out partying at a
club in Panama City Beach, but after running out of money during the early
morning hours, they started driving around in the red Pontiac Firebird looking for someone
to rob while cruising down Front Beach Road, Rhebe saw Pamela's Plymouth sun Dance
parked at the Willheight Motel, and after noticing that it had out of state
tags, he told his wife to pull over. He then proceeded to abduct
Pamela at knife point, before placing her inside his firebird and fleeing the scene.
Rieby then claimed that he murdered Pamela, but he would provide two different
accounts of how he disposed of her body, at first claiming that he buried
her body in Walton County, until he revised his story and said he dumped
Pamela in the ocean. Rebe's story seemed to match the account of the patrol
officer who saw Pamela following another man, and Reeby also mentioned that she let
out a scream for help when he pulled a knife on her, which had
been reported by other guests at the motel. When asked to provide a detail
that only the perpetrator would have known, Reeve stated that Pamela had been carrying
a single key in her hand, a detail which seemed to be accurate,
as Pamela was seen locking her car door and the rest of her keys were
found inside the vehicle. However, Reebe would eventually recount his confession, not
only denying any involvement in Pamela's disappearance, but also to the other dozen murders
he admitted to. Yeah, this is definitely an attorney got in and said,
what are you doing. Shut your mouth, recant everything that you've ever
said to anybody, trying to get his client off of these other charges.
But what kind of person is this? Is this like a David Parker Ray
who the toy box killer, who cruises around with his wife and when they
need to or when the opportunity strikes, they abduct and kill women. Like
what is his wife doing when this is happening, Like, hey, honey,
pull over, we're gonna jump this woman over here. And she's like
cool and pulls over and helps him. Yeah. This is the thing about
the case that confuses me is that even though, like my friend Crystal Don,
has done extensive research, she's never been able to find any clarification on
how the authorities view Reebe's wife. I mean, I'm sure they've interviewed her,
but if they found any evidence that she was involved in any of his
crimes, They've never said so, so, I mean it could be true,
but since we know so little about Reebe's wife, he could completely be
making up this detail and she had no involvement. I'm gonna guess that Reebe
was not the best husband, though, because he had four wives exactly.
Yes, nobody stayed married to him for very long. Hey, King Henry
had six, so just let it. Let it be, okay. Oh,
and he was a great husband, I'm sure so. In spite of
Reebe's recantation, in April of two thousand, a search was conducted of the
Wood and Walton County where Donna Callahan's remains have been found, and some skeleton
remains would be discovered just one hundred yards away from the location where Donna had
been buried. They were sent to Canada for further DNA and forensic testing,
and it's unclear what happened next, as I've never been able to find any
more details about this. But here's the complication. The remains were discovered by
a Doberman pincher named Eagle, who had been trained by his notorious handler,
Sandra Anderson. Eagle supposedly had a talent for sniffing out human remains and Unsaw
Mysteries even produced a segment about his unique gift. But the problem is that
Anderson was a complete fraud who would steal human bones from a medical examiner's office
and plant them for her dog to quote unquote discover during police searches. Anderson
wound up receiving a twenty one month prison sends. And while it's never been
officially confirmed that she planted any remains during the search for Pamela, it would
not surprise me if this is the reason there has been no follow up news
on the remains from Walton County. This makes me so angry and devastated because
forensic science and the faults that come with that, both purposeful and then just
human error, have been a really big topic of research and you know,
media and things like that in the recent years. But these are pieces of
quote science that put people in prison. It took people and put them on
death row and had them executed. And to know that there are people like
Sandra Anderson who said, my fame, my notoriety, is more important than
a victim's family, getting the truth, getting the right person off the street,
putting someone in prison and taking their life away from them, or even
physically taking their life away from them with the executions. There are so many
people that have done this in our history of forensic science that you go,
it makes it hard to trust any of the human based sciences that we have.
And it's people like Sandra Anderson to think she got twenty one month and
that's it for stealing human remains, planting different things, becoming a fraud,
helping police possibly convict the wrong people. It's so much bigger than a year
and a half. Like that blows my mind. Oh yeah, Sandra Anderson,
this is not the only case I've covered on the Trail and Cold in
which she is screwed up the investigation by planting human remains. And there was
another case where she almost got a guilty murderer freed because she actually used her
dog and the dog legitimately found human remains of a woman that had been murdered
by her husband and he did do it. But because Sandra Anderson, like
had screwed up the investigation so badly, she almost got a new trial just
to say, well, if she planted remains in this case, then maybe
she planted remains in this case as well. So when people do this then
it puts their entire body of work into question and screws up so many investigations.
In recent years, there's been a renewed interest in this case thanks to
an unusual story which was shared by Mark Greeby's daughter, Jelena Hayes. Jelena
grew up in an abusive household, but she has since developed a close friendship
with Pamela's sister Ronda Bishop and wants to help her solve this case. When
Jelena was four years old, her father was being investigated for Donna Callahan's disappearance
and an excavation was being performed of her family's property to search for Donna's remains.
While this was going on, Jelena claimed that her father made an abrupt
decision to pack up all their belongings into a pair of Uhaul trucks in the
middle of the night and move the entire family away from their home. They
would travel all the way to Warrensburg, Illinois, and during the trip,
Jelena noticed that some garbage bins had been loaded into one of the trucks,
and her father told her not to go near them. After they arrived at
some property in Warrensburg which belonged to the sister of Reeby's wife. He instructed
Jelena and her siblings to dig up some large holes, which he said would
be used for a garden. The children did as they were instructed, but
afterwards Reebe removed some garbage bags from the aforementioned bins and buried them in the
holes. Jelena now fears that the begs may have contained some of the remains
of some of her father's victims, including Pamela. By the time Jelena shared
this story, the property had new owners, but they gave the Macon County
Sheriff's Office permission to perform a search of the property in July twenty nineteen.
However, after spending an entire day performing an excavation, they were unable to
find anything. Yikes. I feel really sad for Jelina. She's clearly someone
who grew up in a very volatile home, was very aware of her father's
violent temper and possible involvement in criminal behavior, and so that insecurity that instability
that she grew up with, she sees a family who's struggling and hurting,
and a father who's claimed that he actually had something to do with these other
disappearances are murders, and she's saying, how can I help? How can
I right the wrongs of my father? Imagine the weight and the heaviness that
would come from being the daughter of a killer and saying, Okay, I'm
not him right, having the strength to say that's not me. And if
I might know something, I'm gonna help. I'm gonna reach out and not
only try to help, but befriend people. And how strong is Pamela's sister
to say, heck, yeah, I'd love your help like I would love
to have you help me. That takes a lot of grace and understanding on
her part as well. So I'm in my head, I'm racking my brain
going, Okay, did they use ground penetrating technology? How did they search?
Did they just excavate by, you know, shovels and tractors or what
were they? What were they doing? Not that we have all that information,
but man, can you imagine what if that really was evidence from her
father's crimes. Yeah, were gonna talk more about this in our next episode.
But one of the few bright spots of this story is that it sounds
like Mark Reebe's family has developed a very close relationship with Pamela June Ray's family
and that they've become very close, and that even Mark Reebey's own family thinks
he's a douchebag. They think that if he did kill Kamela, that he
should come clean and admit it, because he sounds like someone who has treated
everyone he has known in his life very badly. I mean, we talked
about him being a bad husband, and this kind of proves that he was
a bad father as well, that he may have taken his children out and
helped him bury some bodies. So that is kind of heartwarming that Baby's family
has offered Pamela's family they're one hundred percent support to try to get this case
solved. Around the same time period, Jelena would also uncover a photograph of
her mother wearing a ring, which Ronda Bishop believes is the same ring Pamela
had been wearing at the time she went missing. Ever since Reebe confessed to
Pamela's murder, Ronda has written him five letters to ask if he killed her
sister, but while Reebe has always responded, he has never actually answered the
question. His letters are usually filled with ramblings, and he refused to meet
Ronda in person at the moment. Mark Raeby is still considered to be a
suspect in Pamela's disappearance, but no evidence is ever conclusively linked him to the
crime, and she continues to remain a missing person. So I guess you
could say the path went chilly, man. I know I just said this,
But the fact that Ronda and Jelina have that relationship, and that Ronda
is saying, I'll continue to fight for answers. I even have someone in
his own family who is beside me helping me try to get information. You
see these moments in court where a killer will get sentenced, and very recently,
I can't remember whichdays it was, but the daughter of the killer walks
out of court crying, and all she did was look at the other family
and say, I'm so sorry. And she's crying. She just lost her
dad, right because he's going to prison as a murderer. So the man
she up with she's lost. And I remember in this case that I watch
the mom turn away from her family, walks over to the daughter and embraces
her and says, I'm so sorry. We both lost here, Like I'm
so sorry and I love you. I don't blame you, and that grace
and support that those two families have from this freak decision somebody else makes Wow.
It is probably the only ray of humanity and hope you see when you're
looking at cases like this, when you truly see that kind of grace.
It's unbelievable to me. And the fact that Ronda is writing him and he
writes back but won't answer her questions is very manipulative and narcissistic of him.
He loves the attention, but he's refusing to give Ronda either I didn't do
it and I lied, I'm sorry that I misled you, or admit to
doing it and get justice for her. He won't do either. So it's
to me very disgusting and disgraceful. Yeah, because even if Reeby did do
this, he could just like it all by just saying no, I did
not kill your sister. But he just knows well, if I never provide
her with a concrete answer, she'll keep writing me and I can still be
the center of attention. So regardless of whether he's guilty or innocent, the
behavior is despicable. So I think this would be a good time to bring
it into Part one, but join us next week as we present part two
of our series about the disappearance of Pamela June Ray Robin, do you want
to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes,
The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer
these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out
stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon.
If you join our five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly
bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail
Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join
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episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in
this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary
track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download
a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor,
then be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you know
a little bit about the Jules and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free
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which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're
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So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the
show notes. So I want to thank you all for listening, and any
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until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and Chili pass
call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy