You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilley and
I'm Bill Thomas. Today we're discussing the new HBO series Burden of Proof,
which dropped on June sixth, and we're very excited to be talking about this
case. So let's go ahead and dive right in. Bill, do you
remember how this case came onto our radar. It's interesting. The case,
which involves the disappearance of a fifteen year old girl Jennifer Pandos took place in
February nineteen eighty seven, just a few months after my sister Kathy Thomas and
her girlfriend Rebecca Doowski were murdered in Williamsburg. Really wasn't on our radar.
Yeah, I have the fuzziest of recollections that I had heard Jennifer Pando's name
before, but it was about it, and it's only a couple of weeks
ago. When listeners to Mind over Murder asked us, have we seen this
new HBO documentary Burden of Proof about the Jennifer Pandos case. You and I
both look babe each other and said, why the heck don't we know more
about this case? It was very odd because you would think that this is
something we would be hyper aware of, especially a karina as close as it
did to Kathy and Becky murders. The only way that I was in any
way familiar with it was when some of our listeners reached out and said,
Hey, you guys watching this. I had heard that there was an HBO
series about a case from this area. My dad sent me a little something,
But my dad doesn't typically write long, prolific messages to me. He
was like, you're watching this HBO thing and I said about what. He
goes, I don't know some case here in Williamsburg. I was like,
you're gonna have to narrow that down down. He's like, I don't know
some girl named Jennifer. And I was like, okay, this doesn't hell.
Thank you, Dad, But I just put it out of my mind.
And then when somebody wrote to us instead of you paying attention to the
Jennifer Pandos documentary that, I was like, oh, that's what my dad
was talking about. The mystery of your dad's clipped message becomes a little clearer.
It still baffled both of us. He said, wait a minute.
This is a few miles away from the Colonial Parkway where it appears that Kathy
and Becky and the other victims in the Colonial Parkway murders, least some of
them were killed. And it's only a few months after the first incident in
October nineteen eighty six Kathy and Becky's murder, and it's just a matter of
months then before September nineteen eighty seven, when Robin Edwards and David Nobbling are
murdered. So it's right in between two of the Colonial Parkway murders. As
near as we can figure, one of the reasons why we didn't know much
about the Jennifer Pando's case was because it was so low profile at the time
in February nineteen eighty seven. And as the show unfolds, it becomes clearer
that the case was always treated as a missing person's case and as a teenage
runaway. Jennifer's only fifteen years old at the time. Excuse me for making
you feel old for one second, but I would like to put in context
for our viewers that in nineteen eighty seven, I was six years old,
so I would have had no reason to reflect on that is anything other than
I was six. But I did wonder why, in all of the reporting
that we've read over the years, no one had ever mentioned, at least
not within the stuff that I read or the stuff that you've read. In
addition to Colonial Parkway murders happenings, there was also a teenager who witnessing.
I just assumed that we would have come across that at some point, but
we haven't, or at least I haven't. No, it feels a little
odd, it does, and given the fact that we've discussed, and you
and I have researched, along with the Colonial Parkway murders, families and others,
a significant amount on people involved in the Colonial Parkway murders, and then
as what you've christened the Colonial Parkway murders, adjacent cases, cases that are
just as serious, just as heartbreaking, but weren't considered part of the core
for double homicides and disappearances in what we call the Colonial Parkway murders, mostly
murders of individuals as opposed to couples, and a number of those cases,
some of which are right smack dab in middle of the series that make up
the Colonial Parkway murders, are also unsolved, and several of them are quite
possibly linked through the liberty security connection that we've discussed here on mind Over Murder.
Jennifer Pandos was never part of that mix. Oh m, it's so
odd, and especially once I processed what my dad was saying about, Hey
have you heard about this HBO series? It really did get me thinking,
if this case is serious enough for an HBO series, why the hell haven't
I heard about it before? And the only reason I can think of,
And I was discussing this with my roommate who does remember the case. She
said she felt like what was going on the Parkway kind of sucked all the
air out of the room. And I suppose that's one way of looking at
it. But really, at this point, it was just Kathy and Becky's
murder that had happened. It wasn't like the whole entire series of cases had
happened. So I'm not really sure what accounts for this other than the fact,
but I think a lot of people looked at it as a missing persons
case, teenager runaway, and we haven't heard a whole lot about it since
then. So this HBO series Burden of Proof focuses on the February nineteen eighty
seven disappearance of Jennifer pandos so walk us through what we know about what happened.
So, Jennifer Pando's fifteen year old girl. She went to my alma
mater, Lafayette High School, which at that point was one of only two
high schools in Williamsburg. There was Lafayette and there was Britain. There are
more now. So Jennifer was fifteen years old, went to Lafayette High School.
She had a boyfriend at the time, sounds like they were on again,
off again, and at that point of her disappearance, it sounded like
they were off again. It wasn't really made explicitly clear in the series,
but she did have a boyfriend at the time, Tony Tobler. She's just
this pretty standard fifteen year old girl. She had friends, she had school,
she babysat for somebody, and that person who baby set for would actually
come into play a little bit later as a suspect in her disappearance John An
Evening in February nineteen eighty seven, Jennifer was last seen talking on the phone
in her room, as teenagers are wont to do. Her father came in
to tell her to get off the phone. They had words of the heated
variety, and then that was the last time that anybody heard of Jennifer Pandos.
She was talking to her friend Corey. Dad said get off the phone.
She got off the phone, and the next morning, when Jennifer's mother,
Margie, came downstairs to Jen's room, she found the door locked.
She asked her husband Ron to break it down because she couldn't get a response
from Jennifer, and when she walked into the room, was absolutely immaculate,
nothing seemed to be missing. Bed was made, and on the bed was
a rather suspicious and odd I don't want to call it a ransom note because
it doesn't ask for money. How should we characterize this note? Bill?
It's a very strangely written note. It's very prominently featured in the series,
and actually, having reached out now to some of the family members and others
who are much more expert in the case, it's actually one of the most
essential pieces of evidence remaining in the Pendo's case. I'm running away note as
if written by a third party, by another person. The note is extremely
odd and goes into some length about Jennifer needs to get away and she needs
a break, and that she's going to be with an older man who represents
a father figure to her. The note is truly bizarre, and a significant
amount of analysis has gone into looking at the note, and there have been
a number of people whose names have been mentioned as possible authors of the note.
It does appear that someone has made an attempt to disguise their handwriting,
perhaps writing with their non dominant in hand. I'm right handed, therefore,
I don't even know if I could do it. No. I was looking
at that. I'm like, I couldn't write that with my left hand.
No way. I don't think I've ever tried to write anything more than a
character or two with my left hand. I'm not sure I could do it.
I know some people that can. It does seem to be this very
oddly written note on a piece of notebook paper, Yeah, ripped that one
journal torn from a notebook in red ink. If I'm not mistaken yet,
in it offers this very odd syntax, and then it feels like part of
it's written from the perspective of the person she's going to be running away with.
In the latter part of the note, it shifts back, almost as
if it's in Jennifer's voice, asking them to put the money they owe her
into her bank account, which they did not do, to not contact the
police. They did not contact the police, which is one of the first
of a number of odd decisions that the Pando's family made. Further that,
it reminds them to please cancel her doctor's appointment four yeah later on that following
week. So it's got this odd mix of responsible fifteen year old reminding them,
Oh, since I'm running away, please cancel my doctor's appointment, to
please put the money you won't me in my account and oh, by the
way, I'm running away with an older man. The whole thing is just
very weird, and the way it goes back and forth between appearing to have
been written by the companion but also by Jennifer herself. Yeah, it starts
in third person, and let me pull up the text of it here.
It starts with mister and missus pandos, your daughter's with me. She's fine,
she's having some problems and needs time away. And then it shifts to
I'm fine. I just need time to think. Both of you. Please
go to work tomorrow because I will try to call you. I won't call
you at home, only at one of y'all's work. Do you not call
the police? Say y'all? She says, y'alls. And by the way,
they did do that. They did go to work. Yeah, they
went to work. Do you not call the police? I can easily find
out if you do. I may never come back home. Don't tell my
friends about this, Just tell them that I'm sick. And that's not all
of the note, that's only a portion of it. The only thing that
I'm seeing and all this reporting is the portions of the note that I read.
That is not the entirety of the note. That is a portion of
it. But you'll notice it starts in third person and then switches to first
which is interesting. Yeah, as you had mentioned earlier, Bill, the
parents followed some of but not all, of the instructions listed in the note.
For example, they did go to work, they did not call the
police immediately, but they didn't put money in her account. And Stephen,
Jennifer's brother, actually made a point of actually asking his parents about that later
in the documentary why did you follow some of the instructions but not all of
the instructions? Like why did you wait to call the police? So there's
definitely some questions that come up the first time that you see the note,
and then the parents' response really is quite odd. Now, granted I don't
have kids, and because you're the parent of the two of us, you're
better equipped to answer the question of what you would do if you found such
a note from your child. I don't think you would delay calling the police,
am I right on that. There's so many things that mister and missus
Pandos did at the time of Jennifer's disappearance, which makes no sense, and
a good portion of the first couple of episodes of Burden Approved focus on Stephen
Pandos, Jennifer's brother, who's about three to four years older than she is.
He was a college dude at the time of her disappearance. He is
actually the protagonist of most of the story that unfolds over four episodes, and
a lot of the questions that are being asked are being put forward by Stephen.
He is incredibly frustrated and even suspicious. He believes that it's quite possible
that his father may have been involved in Jennifer's disappearance and that his mother may
have been involved in a cover up. He really bears down hard and understandably
on all the very odd decisions that they made at the time of her disappearance,
and even afterward he's constantly asking his mother, and then later he confronts
his father as well, why did you do these things? I had mentioned
to you over the weekend, Kristen, when we were discussing the series as
we both watched it. There are plenty of times when I look back on
my parents' reaction to my sister Cathy's murder, and I have said on Mind
over Murder and elsewhere that there are significant mistakes that my family, that Thomas
family made in the follow up to my sister's murder investigation, which obviously is
still unsuccessful to date, including how my father interacted with the FBI and other
issues. My point is not to throw my parents under the bus. They
did the best they could under incredibly difficult circumstances. But I think we failed
to be as aggressive as we needed to be with the FBI, and I
think we placed too much faith in law enforcement only until we moved forward to
two thousand and nine when I got much more involved in the case. And
I'm not one hundred percent certain every move I've made has been as smart as
it could have been, either, because there's been lots of moments of frustration.
Stephen Pandos finds himself reviewing these very profoundly odd decisions that his parents made,
information they shared with law enforcement, and then also key pieces of information
they did not share with law enforcement, and some of the things that unfold
over the four episodes. You end up shocked, like what they only brought
these things forward thirty something years later when the case is beyond cold, and
their daughter's been missing for three decades. Interesting because now that we know so
many profilers, police experts and psychologists and experts in this field. I try
to be very mindful about the fact that, as you have said as well,
not everybody reacts the same way to grief and to trauma and various other
things, and I try to keep that in mind when I'm evaluating the way
that other people respond to crimes. As much as I was sitting there telling
myself, Okay, you can't judge them for these decisions because you don't know
what you would do if you were in that same situation, and there's a
certain amount of leeway in that for me, Like I try very hard not
to be judgmental about things like that, but definitely, as you're seeing Stephen
Pandos on the screen interacting with his parents and trying to come to his own
sort of conclusions about why someone acted the way they did, I would find
myself going, Okay, I think that is really weird. I think it's
strange that they responded to some of the instructions in the note but not all
of them, and that one of the instructions they followed was, don't call
the police. It is really hard knowing everybody that we know who says don't
second guess people and the way that they respond, because not everybody responds in
the same way. I'm also sitting here watching this as a connoisseur of true
crime and going that was a stupid way to respond. It's an interesting push
pull to have in your head to respond as a viewer in one way,
but also to try to be understanding as a victim's advocate in another. I
don't feel like I was very successful when I was watching this series in being
as mindful of how the parents were responding as maybe I should have been agreed,
but I was struggling mightily. Actually found myself, I don't do this
all that often. Were you yelling at the TV at the DNA because I
couldn't believe the idea that you're not going to reach out to law enforcement.
Your fifteen year old daughter has disappeared, and there's a bizarre no way around
this bizarre note left. The way the note is structured, it appears to
have been written by two different people. You could make a case that either
your daughter is trying to mislead you, or someone else is trying to throw
you off the scent. Either way, it's not good. And the idea
that they didn't immediately pick up the phone and call law enforcement. In this
case, this would have been the James City County Police Department. The idea
that they wouldn't call them immediately is just mind blowing. And then we don't
want to reveal all the twists and turns that happen in burden approof because we
do urge you to watch it. If you don't have HBO, I'll say,
find a friend with HBO and say we need to have a watch party
here at your because this television series is very much worth watching. Stephen Pandos'
journey asking these questions and looking for answers and over the course of four episodes,
and it's actually amazingly shot over a seven year period. That was crazy
to me. This whole series started when Stephen Pandos reached out to a documentary
filmmaker, Cynthia Hill, who's the director of this series. He saw another
television series she'd done on domestic violence, which was quite good and then had
come out in twenty fourteen. He reached out to her in two fifteen,
and then they finally connected discussed the case, and so the first interviews.
The layout of the show follows roughly their interviews in chronological order, but the
interviews start in two sixteen. He's highly suspicious of his father. He believes
his father may be involved in his sister's disappearance, and he believes that the
mother knows more than she's sang. They are only two kids in that family,
so he's the only surviving offspring. He has dedicated himself to searching for
answers. You actually experience his own journey, and you see his thinking change
over the years. He starts off in one place and then ends up learning
a lot more about his sister's disappearance. There's a lot of frustrating moments for
Stephen Pandos, who struggles, I'm sure off camera, but on camera as
well with Cynthia Hill and her crew there recording his interactions with law enforcement,
current investigators, retired investigators, forensics people, the Commonwealth attorney. And there's
a lot of very interesting twists and turns in the case. But I think
the most compelling aspect of Burden of Proof is watching his thinking change as he
learns more about the circumstances of his younger sister's disappearance. By the time I
got to the end of the first episode, all I could think was,
oh my god, there are so many similarities between Bill and Stephen. Honest
to god. I reached the end of the first episode and I was like,
Wow, these guys have a lot to bond over. And actually,
what I mean You've said before it is the club that nobody wants to join.
And of course, like that is so true. Nobody would ever want
to join this club. But the two of you have so much in common
it's eerie. And actually, when I reached out to the filmmaker to see
if she wanted to appear on the podcast, the first thing she said was
Wow, Bill and Stephen have a lot in common. It was like,
yes, they do. They have a ton in common. You've got two
brothers who lost their sisters within months of each other. I feel awful for
Stephen because he doesn't have his sister's remains, he doesn't know where she is,
he doesn't know what happened to her. I feel just horrible for him
going through that. And both of you guys are going through this process of
navigating the criminal justice system. And the more that I was watching, the
more that I was like, he's going through the same thing Bill has been
through. Oh look at that. Oh look law enforcement stonewalling. That's familiar.
Oh look there's it's taking forever to get lab results. Boy, that's
familiar. It's I felt like I was sitting there ticking off boxes. Yeah,
going yep, watched Bill go through this, Yep, watch that too,
Yep, I've seen this as well. It's sad to note that's a
common denominator of your experiences, but also is it almost comforting a little bit
to know that you're not the only person who's gone through it to the level
that you have? Not exactly A yeah, I say, I don't think
comforting is a writ word. I watched the show with Pamela, my partner,
who is not a big true crime fan. She'll watch it occasionally,
she's not as dedicated to true crime and true crime media as I am.
I said several times, and so did she out loud as we watched the
series. That sounds familiar. Where have we heard that before? For there's
so much and there's the lost evidence, and then there's the misfiled evidence,
and what appears to be foot dragging by law enforcement, lack of information sharing,
a rotation of case agents through the process. Several different agents speak on
camera and actually are quite good. What happens in law enforcement is that people
move on, or they retire or whatever. So much of it sounded so
familiar, and Steven's frustrations are just so on display for you. His personal
journey is among the most interesting things that happen in the series. You're listening
to mind Over Murder, will be right back after this word from our sponsors.
We're back here at mind Over Murder. Something that we've never talked about
with the Colonial Parkway murders, and this occurs in the Burden of Proof documentary,
is that Stephen becomes aware of the fact that a grand jury proceeding has
taken place. Grand jury proceedings are a secret. He finds it incredibly frustrating,
as do I, that grand jury proceedings have taken place in our respective
cases, but no information is shared, so that until someone's actually charged in
a court of law, which is an open process, the grand jury step
is secret, and that means secret from family members as well. And Stephen
Pando says something to the filmmaker through gritted teeth. I think I wish someone
had told me that. Even when he says it, I realized he's not
just talking about law enforcement when he says that. It turns out that Cynthia
Hill and her team had become aware of this as filmmakers that obviously to tip
from a source, and they were able to track who some of the participants
were in this grand jury proceeding. Yes, and Stephen says, I wish
someone had told me that. Now I understand where he's coming from. And
at the same time, his criticism, if you will, isn't just a
law enforcement at that point, he actually seems to be criticizing the documentary film
crew because they haven't even shared the fact that they are aware of the fact
that a grand jury proceeding has taken place in relation to his sister's disappearance,
which means at that point they're at least exploring the idea of suspects being identified
and perhaps charged in the Jennifer Pando's disappearance. There's some very striking moments,
and watching his journey was very interesting for me on a personal level. But
I think anyone who has a heart is going to identify with all that this
man has gone through. And it's interesting too because the two of us,
as well as all the other family members in the Colonial Parkway case, we
also have gone through the process of having a documentary made about this case.
What was it? It was about three I want to say three months of
shooting, but it wasn't that like it was. I do remember we had
a very busy time when the filmmakers were here in Williamsburg. Because you and
I attended as much of the shooting as was allowable by our schedules. You
were there for more of it than I was, and it's an intense experience.
I cannot imagine what it is like to be shooting a documentary for seven
years, to have this be a part of your life, to have a
film crew following you as you were going through what is a very personal and
emotional time, as you are having to have some pretty uncomfortable conversations with your
parents and your significant others, and as you're trying to interview people and talk
about your beloved sister who is now gone and you have no idea about who
what actually happened to her. That's got to be very difficult and to have
a film crew watching your every move. That's got to be rough. We
didn't have that exact experience. We had times where we had to be at
a set. Okay, sit down on the chair, talk to us about
this. They're asking questions. We never had anything as candid as that boy.
I felt for him, though. That's got to be so tough to
be going through this really traumatic, awful experience and you're doing it on camera
for everyone to see. Yeah, and Stephen Pandos is also going through a
very unique experience in that a good portion of the first couple of episodes,
he strongly suspects his father is directly responsible for his sister's disappearance. He believes
his father, who is a man who has issues, is a Vietnam bat,
he has PTSD and was very abusive towards Stephen himself, who's, as
I mentioned, nearly four years older than his sister. A significant portion of
Stephen's efforts are trying to convince his mother to step forward and provide information which
he believes in his heart of hearts, that she has that she knows what
happened to Jennifer, that she helped cover it up, or at a minimum,
has much more knowledge of her disappearance than she's ever said. He is
pressuring her. And so those moments which occur in one on one scenes with
Stephen and his mother, Margie, as well as through police interrogation, those
on camera moments are just riveting because you keep thinking Margie's going to step forward
and admit that her abusive ex husband they are now divorced, is directly responsible
for their daughter's disappearance, and you keep thinking Stephen's going to convince her.
Lead investigator, Wendy Reid, who's now retired, is going to push the
mother to the point where she confesses, yes, I know what happened.
Yeah. And there are some very odd things that Stephen and Jennifer's mother says
that lead you to believe that she knows more than she's saying. And then
at the same time, their father, Ron is quoted and then later shows
up in the documentary, and some of the things he said sound like they're
right up to the edge of a confession. He's saying, theoretically, if
I killed my daughter, who says these kind of things, yeah, the
hypothetically I pushed her down, she hit her head and she died. I
was like what the who says that? Who says that? Who puts that
forward to their son? Hypothetically? I shoved her, I hit her,
she hit her head. She like, oh my god. I felt awful
for Stephen. And that really is just an emotion that I continue to feel
through the whole entire four episodes. What must it be like not only to
have lost your sister, but to think that your parents did it, or
that one parent did it and the others complicit in it. And he says
at one point to Cynthia Hill, he's in a car at some point or
another after talking to his mom, and she asked, how did you feel
about that? And he says, I feel like I don't have a family.
Yeah. That's God. That's got to be rough. That's got to
be wrenching. That's awful. He's lost his sister and he thinks his parents
had something to do with it. That's got to be just the worst feeling
in the world. I can't even begin to come to any sort of point
of comparison for that, what that must feel like. I spend a lot
of time watching this documentary and going, my god, I just feel so
awful for him, and I just hope that there is something over the next
couple of months or years that eventually gives him the answers that he is looking
for for Jennifer, and I wish that for everybody who currently has a missing
family member, because the not knowing, we know that it's the not knowing
that's the worst. One of the challenges I think with this case is that
there's so little information. One of the things you and I discussed off air
that I think is worth getting into, Kristen, is there's so little evidence
in this case. There is a short list of potential suspects beyond Ron Pandos
the father. One of the things that becomes key here is that at the
time of Jennifer's disappearance, the family was renting a very nice condo in a
complex called the Kingsmill Resorts in Williamsburg. I'd heard it referenced when we were
down there shooting the television series for the Lover's Lane Murders covering the Colonial Parkway
case. I didn't quite understand how their life in this gated community with god
words and a limited number of points of ingress and egress could be so significant,
and I actually thought they should have covered more of this in the documentary.
Talk to us a little bit about Kingsmill and why it would be difficult
to get in and out of there to do harm to Jennifer or to assist
Jennifer in running away. Kingsmill is and its referenced in the documentary. It
is the premier gated community in Williamsburg. And there are a couple of these
communities where you are only able to access the people who live in it by
going through regard gate. That Kingsmill is definitely the biggest of those and the
best established of those. Everybody's favorite hometown musician Bruce Hornsby, for example,
lives in Kingsmill. Would be Presidential assassin John Hinckley lived in Kingsmill with his
parents before the assassination and moved back in with them after the attempted assassination.
It is the home to the very wealthy in Williamsburg, and there are only
two ways is to get into Kingsmell. You access kings Mill through a guard
gate. There are two entrances. One is on Route one ninety nine and
one is on Route sixty near to Bush Gardens, which is our theme park
here in Williamsburg. Next to the Unhiser Bush Brewery. So to get into
kings Mill, and I know this because my family has friends in kings Mill,
so I spent a great deal of time in there over the years.
The way that you get into Kingsmell is you pull up to the guard gate
and they ask you where are you going? And you have to give a
specific not only name, but also the address. So I'm going to go
see Jennifer pandos in Archer's need, I believe is where they were. You
would have to give an address and they would call up to the house and
say thus and such as waiting for you at the gate. Are you expecting
them? Can we send them up? And you have to get confirmation from
inside the house, Yes, we are expecting that person. You can send
them in. At that point, the guard will this phone call that they
make. Is it on a conventional phone or is there some sort of intercom
set out or do they phone the person's unit and say, to the best
of my memory, it's just actual conventional landline phone. Got it. So
they call and they say, Kristin Dilley's here to see. The men has
to say yes, please send her on in. Yes, yes, exactly.
So you have to get confirmation from someone you know. I remember this,
Like I said, my parents had friends in said the Kingsmel community,
and so if we were going to go to see X person or by person,
we would go through the gate. The guard actually gives you it's a
paper pass and they write where you're going, and they write the date and
time, and you have to display the pass at all times in your car.
And if you don't have a pass, the people inside of Kingsmil,
meaning the guards, the Kingsmil police, essentially they will find you if you
don't have a pass in your car and they'll pull you over. What are
you doing here? That's true of whether or not you're going to visit a
friend, or whether you're going to the resort to play golf or to go
for a meal or a sail at the marina or whatever else. You always
have to have a pass whenever you go into Kingsmel by car. So it
is very secure. And there are only the two ways in the one ninety
nine guard gate and the Route sixty guard gate. There is no way to
there's no side roads, there's no way to like sneak in under the radar
that I'm aware of. I'm sure that there are people who live in the
resort who could say, oh, yeah, you could probably get in or
out this way, But to my knowledge, there is no other way to
get inner out of King's Mill beyond those two guard gates, and you have
to have a pass with you at all times. I don't want to go
too far down this rabbit hole. But good portion of King's Mill is along
the James River though, so you could come in by water. There are
people who have boats and there is a marina there. Yeah, I feel
like that is a rabbit hole, though I imagining a potential kidnapper on a
boat, I'm not seeing that as a great potential possibility for what happened to
Jennifer. But yes, so Kingsmill does back up to the James. The
resort is actually called Kingsmel on the James and for many years it was the
home of the PGA Tour, so it's well known in the area and you
can go in to play at the golf course to meet up. I had
a friend who just had her baby shower in the resort at kings Mill,
and so I was able to go in for the day. But same thing,
you have to go to the guard gate, say what you're there for,
They write you the pass, and then you go to where you're going.
Now. The reason I asked about the telephone was because the evening that
she disappeared, Jennifer, teenage girl age fifteen, was on the phone a
lot, to the point where her dad got on her case about it.
Yeah, this documentary does include some reenactments with actors performing the parts of Jennifer
and her parents and some other key players. It might be possible for Jennifer
to answer the phone the evening she disappeared and say yes, send them on
in. Yeah, I would say that's definitely possible. They had discussed the
possibility in the documentary of maybe somebody walked in to the house rather than bringing
a car. I suppose that's possible, But Kingsmill is it's very large,
expansive community. I don't see somebody parking their car outside of Kingsmill and then
walking through, sneaking into the woods by Jen's house so that they could sneak
into her bedroom and then have her walk out with them. Like, I
don't see that as a possibility, even though it was put out as hey,
maybe this is a thing that happened. I don't know. There's one
other possibility as well, which was discussed in the documentary, which is could
Jennifer have left her parents home and walked out of Archer's Meat the road where
her parents rented condo was located, and make her way to the edge of
the property and go out through one of the gates, although that's at least
a mile in and of itself, and that would be say, a twenty
minute walk. One of the striking things about Jennifer's disappearances she took virtually nothing
with her, not even a jacket as far as they can tell, given
the fact that it was February. I know it's not freezing cold in Williamsburg
in February, it's still chilly enough that you would absolutely want to take a
jacket with you, And she didn't seem to take much in terms of her
personal items. That struck everyone, investigators and family alike as odd. And
it's interesting. The opening shot of the documentary is of the actress playing Jennifer
on a little scooter scooting around King's Mill, and then we never hear about
that again. I wonder, if you're going to on away, why not
at least take your bike, take your scooter to wherever you're meeting this person.
If you are planning on running off with this older father figure as referenced
in the note, if he's not going to drive in to come get you,
why not at least take your scooter, your bike, you're whatever else?
Why make yourself walk a mile at least in the dark, in the
freezing cold temperatures of February without a coat. It doesn't make a ton of
sense to me that if someone is going to run off, even for just
a couple of days, why do you not take anything with you? And
how do you get to where you're going? Those first two episodes mostly focus
on these issues, discussions between Steven Pandos and the investigators and other experts whom
we referenced, as well as pushing his mother and ultimately his father for answers
and his sister's disappearance. What we find is we head into episode two is
there are twists and turns earns in the second half of the documentary. We
don't want to give all of those away, because it's certainly very interesting to
see those things unfold, But as we head into the second half of the
four episodes, our view of the case begins to change. Yeah, that's
definitely a more than fair assessment of the situation. I could not binge this.
I'm trying to be very mindful of how much crime I'm feeding myself during
the day, and so I watched the first two episodes and then I was
like, you know what, I can't do all for tonight. I just
can't. So I stopped after two, and then I returned two, episode
three, and four the next day about as early as I could just find
getting on the TV. I don't watch it. I don't want to be
like, it's six am and I'm watching crime. I didn't want to do
that, so I waited a decent hour. Nine am is a good time
to start watching crime. But definitely after the first two episodes, I was
left thinking one thing. And then we get to episodes three and four and
it's listens a whole other Oh my goodness. Funny. We ended up watching
one episode per night, but by the time we got to episode three,
we couldn't wait then to jump into episode four. Yeah, I was gonna
say, I don't know how you waited, And we may have to hold
some of our observations for our next episode as well. I think that's probably
a good idea. We would encourage you if you have not already watched Burden
of Proof on HBO or I guess they're just calling it Max now and not
HBO Max. If you haven't watched Burden of Proof on Max, please make
sure you do check that out so you can better appreciate our discussion here on
mind Over Murder. We will continue our discussion in our next episode. I
was 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
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Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder. M