You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together
with Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a
researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social
media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly
and I'm Bill Thomas. We're continuing our discussion today about the HBO Max series
Burden of Proof, which dropped on the sixth of June. We hope you've
had a chance to watch it by now, but if not, please pause
this recording go watch join us again in a little bit later. It's a
terrific series about the February nineteen eighty seven disappearance of Jennifer Pandos. This conversation
today will make a lot more sense if you listen to the first part of
this conversation in our last episode of Mind Over Murder. So we're shifting into
the back half of the four episodes in Burden of Proof, which are extremely
well done, but we also want to encourage you to jump into this conversation
if you like. Yeah, absolutely, of course. We love it when
you all engage with us on social media, and we do our best to
respond to everybody. So if you have thoughts, observations, raves, questions,
anything else with relation to Burden of Proof, please do put all of
that on our social media page. We're happy to engage with you and we
will address listener questions as needed or warranted. Not to give everything away,
because we're trying to respect the fact that Cynthia Hill and the team that put
this together as a four part series, they would like you to watch all
four episodes. Part of the thing that's key, I think to Burden of
Proof is that this is a series that was shot over a seven year period
from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty three. A good portion of what you're seeing
and this is probably from hundreds of hours of footage is Stephen Pandos, the
brother of Jennifer Pandos, and his personal journey moving from a situation where in
twenty sixteen and for several years forward he strongly suspects that his father, ro
On Pandos, and his mother Margie may be involved, the father specifically,
and then the mother perhaps involved in a potential cover up. And then,
of course, as Stephen learns more about his sister's disappearance and the circumstance says
around that time frame, from investigators, forensics experts, the Commonwealth attorney,
and others, he realizes his original view of the case is probably wrong,
and he even says the things he was led to believe for the first twenty
two years of his understanding of his sister's disappearance are completely wrong. Then the
conclusions that he at least is tentatively committed to in the first two episodes began
to shift in episodes three and four, and it was interesting to me too
when they shifted to talking to the investigators on the case. I don't think
we're spoiling too much here. If we do mention that there was a lost
case file, do you think that's okay. Can we mention the last case
file though I certainly have no problem with it, And of course, the
idea that there were misfiled papers. We haven't had that happen in the Colonial
Parkway murders, but we've had discarded evidence and missed opportunities. We've had leaks
of crime scene photos. So I groaned out loud when we first learned about
this. As you move forward, this missing case file becomes increasingly important because
there's so little for law enforcement to work with in this case. When one
of the current investigators reaches out to Stephen and says, hey, we found
the original case file. It was at the bottom of a box in one
of the filing rooms, they reveal once we had the original case file,
we realized that we needed to shift our investigation into an entirely different direction.
And that was a moment where I was like, Oh, my goodness,
do tell where are we looking now? And that is what you learn in
episodes three and four. This is where the investigation has shifted, and it
has shifted away from the parents. Bill, even after you learned along with
the rest of us, that hey, they're shifting the focus away from the
parents did you still feel suspicious of the parents at all, or did you
understand why they shifted? I think that Ron and Margie's very odd responses to
Jennifer's disappearance, I think actually unintentionally created suspicion. Just some of the things
they did were so profoundly odd. And even in episodes three and four,
when the investigation shifts from the parents to other potential and strongly suspicious suspects,
I wasn't dismissing the fact that Ron Pandos could have been involved in the disappearance
of his daughter, but they were definitely moving down the list. Of course,
I had some of the lessons learned from the Colonial Parkway murders in my
head, like one of our FBI investigators saying to me years ago, no
one's ever cleared in an unsolved homicide until the homicide itself is cleared. Until
you actually know what happened, you can't say, oh, no longer a
suspect in the Jennifer Pandos disappearance, for example, that was always in the
back of my mind. But it's shocking to find out that there are some
other people who really belong at the top of the list. And this is
not like the Colonial Parkway murders, where we have one hundred and fifty persons
of interest. Is a much smaller group of people. The players begin to
shift around, and you begin to realize we should be looking at people that
probably had a role here in her disappearance, and the parents are moving down
the list of likely suspects into perhaps not beyond suspicion, but definitely not the
most likely. One of my other crime minded friends who watched this documentary after
my recommendation, and he said, he said, do you want to know
when I figured out that mom and dad probably had nothing to do with it?
I said, no, when did you figure that out? And he
said, it came a little later in the documentary than it should have.
He said, but the minute that Mom allowed herself to be hypnotized, I
knew that they had nothing to do with it, because you can't hide anything
under hypnosis, he said. If she was going to allow herself to fall
under that sort of that sort of procedure, he said, I knew she
didn't have anything to do with it. And I thought that's very interesting.
Yeah, Yeah, he's such a smart dude that I was like, hey,
I wouldn't have thought of it that way, but now that he mentioned
it, I can see it someone had something to hide. You'd think that
they would not be willing to see that level of control never been hypnotized.
It's a very interesting field. Yeah, But as I understand it from what
I've read and heard, people under hypnosis will say things, admit things that
they wouldn't necessarily admit while fully conscious. I know one of the efforts in
the true crime space is trying to get people to remember more detail, but
that could be incriminating if you're trying to hide the fact that, let's say
you're involved in Jennifer's disappearance. I think the last thing someone would do would
be to say, oh, sure, go ahead hypnotize me. Yeah,
but someone had nothing to hide, they'd probably say, okay, sure if
it helps. And I really felt for all that. I think we can
all agree Ron and Margie's responses were definitely a little odd, ranging up the
scale, too bizarre, But I felt really awful every time that I watched
Margie have confrontations both with Stephen and with the investigators, because she so very
clearly is frustrated and hurt and angry and indignant that her son would believe that
she had anything to do with it, when she has staunchly continued to say
I had nothing to do with this. I would never And by the time
we get to the end of the series and we learn who they're focusing on
as opposed to the parents, I did feel bad, like part of me
felt bad for doubting her. I know that you're going on the journey the
filmmakers are taking you on, and so for the first two episodes they clearly
wanted you to look at mom and Dad with some suspicion. But I felt
bad by the time we reached the end of it that I had thought that
of Margie because she is just so clearly. I felt awful for her.
She has suffered not just of course, the loss of one child, but
it very clearly upset her relationship with Stephen, and she's had to deal with
essentially like losing both her kids. I really felt awful about that. And
I know I keep saying that this really is tugged at my heart strings in
a way that I did not expect, Like I didn't expect to be emotionally
invested in this. I am. I share your perspective, but let me
offer two quick thoughts. One is that I think one of the reasons why
we're so sympathetic to Margie Pandos the mother, is that she's clearly damaged her
ex husband, Ron Pandos, who has spent time in jail and been involved
in some pretty sketchy activities over the years. He's also been married two times
after their divorce, so he's on his third wife. He's not a very
nice man. He's cruel, and he's crude and he's hard edged. I
feel like his wife, his ex wife, is damaged. Goods because Stephen
made it very clear that his father was very abusive to him, particularly abusive,
mentally abusive, emotionally abusive, and that he felt very strongly. He
didn't say that his father beat his mother or anything like that, but he
did say that he was extremely emotionally abusive towards his mother on a lot of
levels. Margie's so damaged by her life experience an abusive ex husband. I
don't think there's much way around that. Losing a daughter at age fifteen,
and then this horrible strain between Stephen and his mother, and of course,
yes, I agree that Cynthia Hill and the filmmaking team are positioning things in
a certain way in episodes one and two. But remember Steven Pandos as the
brother. It's his journey. He really believes that his father is involved in
his sister's disappearance in nineteen eighty seven, and that he believes that essentially his
father's gotten away with murder and that his mother may have facilitated her daughter's disappearance,
and that is something that is unacceptable to Stephen emotionally. There are oftentimes
where I thought he seems very shut down, but his sense of righteousness and
fairness and what's right and what should be made right in his world just burns
throughout the four episodes. This guy really feels that his sister has been done
wrong and that he wants to do everything he can to make it right,
even if that means accusing his father, whom he's very estranged from, of
murder and his mother of facilitating a cover up, because he really believes it.
I mean, he clearly explored suing his parents in a civil suit,
taking legal action against them. He actually had his sister declared legally dead.
That's actually quite a bone of contention between himself and his parents. They're asking
him, basically, where do you get off having your sister declared legally dead
when her parents are still alive? But he said, yeah, I'm her
brother, and I believe that she is no longer with us, and so
I have had her declared dead. This clearly bothers his parents tremendously, and
his father, like I said, is not a nice guy. I really
disliked this guy intensely. Yeah. Yeah, and then there's some very strange
interview footage where his third wife, who clearly wasn't around back in nineteen eighty
seven, is acting as his spokesperson. Almost. Yeah, that was interesting
arguing points with Steven, and part of me just wanted to say, lady,
but out, this isn't your kid. You weren't married to my father
back then. It's unbelievable. There is so much now I realize, of
course, we're just going to do true Confessions with Bill Thomas for a couple
of minutes. Here do we have to why didn't I ask the question?
And then you decide if you want to answer it. The dynamics at play
between your parents and you are vastly different among those between Stephen and his parents.
But I'm curious when you were watching this, did you have moments We
know that there are moments in which you similarities between Jennifer's investigation in Kathy's.
Did you ever feel like there were moments of kinship between you and Steven where
you could see what was going on with him and go, yeah, I
got you, I get it, Yes, very much, and you and
I've talked about this before. I had a chance to meet John Walsh from
America's Most Wanted a number of years ago, and he was a super nice
man. I remember him saying to me, boy, the more I had
learned about Kathy's case, the Colonial Parkway murders, the more it reminds me
of Adams case, his son's case. And there were a lot of problems
in Adam's case, with missed opportunities and friction with the FBI and a lot
of stuff we've talked about here. And at the same time, I remember
mister Walsh used to use this expression about you've been asked to join this club
that no one wants to be asked to join. That is the families of
murder victims I have found over the years since we've been doing this podcast,
and of course since I've been much more heavily involved in the Colonial Parkway murders.
When I meet the loved one of a murder victim, I feel an
almost immediate affinity for them, and especially these days, when I meet the
siblings of murder victims, it's very easy to develop that kind of shorthand that
you would have with someone because you share something that's so incredibly unusual and there's
a bond there. Now. I'm not saying I'm going to be best friends
with everyone who's ever lost a brother or a sister to this kind of terrible
crime, but it's very easy, and particularly now watching Stephen's story unfold,
and this is really his story. It's all about Jennifer and his search for
answers. So much of it felt so familiar, And as I said,
even Pamela, my partner, was saying, wow, where have we heard
that before? Or that sounds familiar, or she said out loud, that's
exactly what happened to you. So much of his journey feels so similar.
Yeah, it's a pretty easy place to put yourself. It's just got to
be so tough to take what you yourself have been experiencing for quite a while
now thirty seven years and see it reflected Rada on TV and see another person
going along with it, experiencing the same thing. Did you gain any insights
about yourself and your own journey watching Steven go through his true confessions? Remember,
I guess I'd have to think about that one. I don't know that.
I don't know if I honestly have a great answer for that at this
moment. I'll have to think about that. It's a good question. I
don't have an answer at this moment. Well, we'll come back to it
again. One of the things that's very clear as we move into episodes three
and four is that this mysterious father figure who may be the man that Jennifer
Pando's babysat for Carrie Hendrix, carry Hendrix and her boyfriend on again off again
boyfriend, Tony Tobler, definitely deserve a significant look, and that all of
this talk about Jennifer's parents may actually have created a focus that's aimed in the
wrong direction. That Carrie Hendrix or Tony Tobler could easily be involved in Jennifer's
disappearance. And there's a third figure, a man named May who shows up
in episodes three and four, and mister May appears to have additional information which
might steer the investigation towards Carrie Hendrix or Tony Tobler and perhaps others. The
one thing that I noticed, and I'm not saying that this wasn't taken into
account by James City County. It's entirely possible that it was and they just
didn't share it with the filmmakers. But when you see something in a note
that references a father figure, you either look at the parents, which they
did the boyfriend, you look at other figures in their life. But they
seem to have missed one particular arena that they could have looked in where you
would definitely find a father figure for a fifteen year old girl, and that
is school. I'm wondering if they ever looked in the direction of any of
the teachers at Lafayette High School. And I'm not saying because I went to
Lafayette and I had most of the same teachers she did. I'm not saying
there's any teacher at Lafayette who is capable of that kind of violence. I
really don't think that there is, But I am curious if at any point
during the investigation. They looked at and it could be like a coach.
I don't know. They didn't talk about whether or not she did sports,
but they didn't talk about coaches or anything else like that. I'm just curious
if they went immediately to parents' boyfriend father figure but skipped school. As a
teacher, when I think of father figures and I think of teenagers, I
immediately go to school. So I'm curious if they ever went down that investigative
route. You're listening to Mindover Murder. We'll be right back after this word
from our sponsors. We're back here at Mindover Murder. In the latter part
of the investigation, as the year's unfold, the case is taken over by
a James City County Police detective named Jake Rice, whose specialty is forensics.
Although Jake Rice has now retired from the James City County Police Department, he's
still involved in the case and he has a very high level of trust with
Stephen. They appear to have a good relationship on and off camera, and
all these people are willing to appear on camera, which I was actually very
impressed by. Yeah, me too. We certainly didn't see that in the
Colonial Parkway murders, and now of the FBI or Virginia State Police investigators would
appear on camera. I found it interesting and to the credit of the James
City County Police Department and others that they were willing to appear on camera.
The first investigator, Wendy Reid, appears on camera and spoke at some length,
and then Jake Rice also spoke at some length on camera. Their backfill
on what happened in the investigation, including the moments that were less than stellars,
the misfiling of the case file for what appeared to be a period of
years, and then its rediscovery and being brought forward, which helped inform people
like Jake Rice on how to move the investigation forward. Again. Remember they
weren't there back in nineteen eighty seven. Yeah, some of these people,
including Jake Rice, had actually gone to school with m hmm some of the
people involved in this case, including Jennifer Pandos herself, so that they were
high school kids back then and of course now they're adults in mid career.
Their candor allowed us inside that investigation to a certain extent, and I found
that very helpful. I also immediately noticed, Hey, Wow, they have
law enforcement people willing to talk on camera, because we never ever had that.
If I'm remembering correctly, we had a former Virginia State Police investigator on
to talk about the case, but certainly we did not have anybody currently working
on Colonial Parkway, and I don't think we had any of the former castations
from the FBI, no, unfortunately. I was also very interested in the
fact that they included some I don't know that interrogation's the right word, I
guess interview footage from the Times that Investigator Reid was speaking to missus Pandos.
I was surprised but also pleased that they had footage of that that they were
willing to share. Yeah, they shared some of the footage from Margie's hypnosis
session. There was a lot more like archival here, we're putting you in
the investigation room footage involved in the documentary. I was very glad to see
it, because we certainly didn't have it with ours. I was very struck
by the fact that the decision by James City County Police to release that footage
probably much more clearly indicated that they did not suspect the mother of involvement.
The interrogation footage, and some of that got very heated and went after her,
trying to push her off her story. They offered her immunity in exchange
for information, and of course she turned them down because she says she doesn't
know anything about Jennifer's disappear. And the hypnosis footage, which we discussed earlier,
is very striking. What, of course, isn't made available to the
filmmakers are the interrogations or interviews that may have taken place of people that I
think are now regarded as much more likely suspects. Yes. Yeah, the
focus shifts in the third and fourth episodes to people that probably deserve a much
closer look in terms of do these people know anything about the disappearance of Jennifer
Pandos. My guess is there's very interesting footage of those interrogations and discussions unless
they've lawyered up and refused to move forward with any kind of discussion with law
enforcement. I am interested in the fact that there was no interview footage of
Ron Pandos of law enforcement talking to Ron Pandos. Certainly the filmmakers were able
to get him in his own house discussing things like that. Sometimes with the
third wife, sometimes without. But for all that we watched Margie go up
against investigators a number of different times, we never saw that with Ron,
and I would be very interested to know what he was like, how he
would have responded when put under pressure from investigators. I really would have liked
to see that. That's a fly on the wall moment for me, and
we never did get to see it. And certainly in the early going of
Burden of Proof, Ron Pandos appears to be, at least from the perspective
of his son Stephen, suspect number one. My guess is that there is
footage of Ron Pandos, who's a difficult, kind of prickly personality. He's
not a nice man. As I've said, he doesn't come across as particularly
caring individual. He's got a lot of rough edges and a lot of attitude.
At the same time, he's been accused of murder, not necessarily formally
as far as we know, but his I certainly believed for years, if
not decades, that he was responsible for the disappearance of his daughter, which
more than likely makes him a murderer, and he kept as we had mentioned
in our previous episode, he kept making these really odd statements. Hypothetically,
I hit her, she hit her head and it killed her. And he
at one point even said, oh, let's get a plane, I'll take
you to the body who says that exactly? Who says that, if you
had nothing to do with your daughter's death, why do you say that.
I was so floored by both of those statements, the hypothetical and maybe he's
just being a jerk. But then let's get on an airplane and I'll take
you. And then of course he backs up and recants and says, no,
he can't do that. And I'm not sure how he got himself to
that place. If he's really not involved, How in the world would you
say something like that. I know sometimes that in other investigations with serial killers
and others, we've seen people who will string law enforcement investigators along. Part
of what they're looking for is just a way to get out of that jail
cell, even if it's just for a day or two, to be put
on a plane and taken to another location and march around in the woods and
fail to identify the right location where someone's remains might be found. You can
make a case that prisoner who's probably bored out of their mind, is probably
looking at this as a short term vacation, get outside, see some beautiful
scenery and get marched around in the woods or something with a bunch of law
enforcement people, which I guess from their perspective be sitting in a jail cell.
Now that I'm thinking about it, this is literally just coming to me
as we're sitting here talking. We know that Margie Pandas was offered in immunity
deal, and it was immunity for everything up to homicide. They were like,
well, forgive anything up until the point that you say your kilter and
then it's off the table. Was Ron Pandos ever offered an immunity deal.
I never got that impression. I didn't think so, But I'm really curious.
It's like, why would you offer it to one parent and not the
other if you think that they're in cahoots. I believe that a lot of
situations in law enforcement, you're looking for the partner, the facilitator, the
second tier person, the one who's going to flip to flip exactly one,
the principle who's responsible for that particular crime. And since law enforcement often doesn't
have another way of breaking a case and identifying a responsible person, they will
say to the partner the second the weak link, the weak link, tell
us what happened, and we'll give you immunity, or we'll give you some
sort of deal. I don't think they would have ever done that with Ron
Pandos, because I believe that not just Steven Pandos his son, but law
enforcement suspected that the father was involved in this disappearance and likely homicide. Very
interesting dynamics at play here as the series moves toward its inevitable conclusion. And
we're not going to spoil this for anybody, although anybody who's been following the
press on this probably knows who the suspect is going to end up being.
But I'm very interested in how this is going to resolve itself. They had
mentioned at the very end that there is still lab work being done. There
is still some DNA testing that they're trying to do. I am very curious
to see if this case can be resolved. Jake Rice, the investigator,
had said he thinks it's a solvable case. It does sound like a solvable
case. I think they're really going to need to do some of the best
DNA testing that they possibly can to see if they can get something off of
the note after all this time. All that being said, this is a
case with significant challenges though. There's a limited amount of forensic evidence, and
it isn't like they have dozens and dozens of choices in terms of moving this
case forward. They've done handwriting analysis, they've done language analysis, they've done
DNA testing. I certainly sympathized with Steven Pando's making phone calls to jke Rice
asking for updates, asking if the test results had come back from the lab.
They were doing testing at what sounded like the FBI lab as well as
at private labs, And the weeks go by, and he keeps looking for
answers. Boy, that sounded so familiar. There's a limited amount of evidence
remaining. They're going to have to get really lucky, and they're going to
have to create some of their own luck in order to move this case forward.
No one's ever been formally charged in this case, even though it's very
evident that they have strong suspects. They have a much clearer idea of what
happened the night that Jennifer disappeared. There's no slam dunks here. They are
going to have to work very hard and they're going to have to be lucky
in order to move this case forward. Now, I would appeal to our
local audience listening here in the area, and that goes especially for anybody in
the Williamsburg James City County area. If you know anything with relation to the
Jennifer Pando's case or any of the people involved in this case, please do
not hesitate to reach out to the James City County Police and offer what you
know as part of this investigation. I think we would love to see Stephen
finally have the answers that he is looking for in this case. One of
the key areas that's mentioned in the documentary is that there is a suspicion that
construction materials could have been stolen from construction sites. So if you know anything
about that, this would have been in the nineteen eighty seven time frame.
This would have involved theft of large barrels and the theft of acid. And
I don't think I want to get any more graphic than that, but if
you know anyone, if you were a four person on a construction site in
the Williamsburg area in nineteen eighty seven, that suffered losses involving acid used for
cleaning brick. Obviously it can have nefarious uses as well, and the theft
of probably fifty five gallon drums which obviously would have been used to place the
acid in those drums. That would be something that the James City County Police
Department would be very interested in hearing about the same time. These suspects that
are mentioned in the latter part of the documentary, Carrie Hendricks, who was
the man who had used Jennifer as a babysitter. Her former boyfriend Tony Tobler
is also mentioned as a strong suspect, and Charlie May who's actually quite distinctive
he only has one arm. He shows up very prominently in the latter episodes
and provides additional detail about what he suspects may have happened. If more about
any of these individuals from that nineteen eighty seven timeframe, there's a possibility this
could be helpful to the James City County Police Department. Will include in the
show notes how to contact the investigators. We believe anyone around the world will
enjoy watching Burden of Proof, but we know we have a lot of listeners
in the Williamsburg and Virginia area. If you know anything about the disappearance of
Jennifer Pendos, now's the time to come forward. Absolutely. We hope you'll
join us again next week as we continue our exploration of the Burden of Proof,
HBO documentary and the disappearance of Jennifer Pandos. In our next episode,
we'll be featuring an in depth conversation with retired investigator Wendy Reid, who was
the lead in the Jennifer Pandos disappearance for several years. The following episode will
have an exclusive conversation with Stephen Pandos, brother of Jennifer, and filmmaker Cynthia
Hill, who directed and produced HBO's Burden of Proof. Please let us know
what you think on our social media feeds. You can find Mindover Murder on
Facebook, as well as our ongoing conversation regarding the Colonial Parkway murders. That
is going to do it for this episode of mind Over Murder. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder is
a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill
Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme
music is by Kevin mcleoud. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral
Space Media. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook, and
finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas. Five six.
Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.