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Welcome to Mind Ever Murder. I'm
Kristin Dilley and I'm Bill Thomas. We're

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back for episode two about the Root
twenty nine stocker and mister Thomas, it's

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time for a quiz. Just like
that, you didn't give me the answer

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in advance. All right, what's
the quiz, mister Thomas? Where is

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Root twenty nine located? Route twenty
nine is located? It's stretching from Florida

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to Virginia. Based on your notes
that I had studied earlier and memorized very

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carefully, Am I correct to Maryland? But that's okay, okay, that's

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pretty close with that. I didn't
cheat. I didn't look at the notes,

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and now that I am looking at
the notes again, Route twenty nine

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stretches one thirty six miles from Florida
to Maryland. And why are we concerned

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about Route twenty nine today, mister
Thomas, Because we're trying to start on

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an upbeat note before we get back
into this serious business of discussing the Route

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twenty nine stalker case. As we
had discussed in last week's episode, we

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are now beginning to narrow the discussion
to the cases that we think probably do

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belong under this moniker of the Route
twenty nine Stalker. As we discussed last

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time, many cases over the years, some of which happily have been solved,

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were linked at least for a time, to the Route twenty nine Stalker

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cases, which unfortunately all remain unsolved
at this point. Perhaps Kate Miles' new

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book Trailed may lead law enforcement and
other concerned parties to take another look at

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some of these cases, which would
be a fantastic outcome. Now we begin

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to focus on the cases that we
think are core to what we call the

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Route twenty nine Stocker case. Those
are the cases of Alicia Schowaltz Reynolds,

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whom we briefly discussed last time,
Thelmas Kroggins, and Anne McDaniel. Main

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core of the twenty nine Stoker killings
took place in and around a town called

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Lignum, which the Daily News Leader
from Stanton, Virginia calls a rural crossroads

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of only six houses in a post
office. It also describes it as a

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hamlet, which I think we were
deciding that last time, is about the

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smallest that a town can get as
a hamlet. Yes, I think if

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you are too small to be a
village. Then I think you become a

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hamlet. I like the reporting from
the Daily News Leader in Stanton that also

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said this, all three cases apparently
involved a trusting woman and a mysterious killer.

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I think it's a pretty good way
to characterize it. So all of

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these took place in and around Lignum, which is a rural crossroads, only

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six houses in a post office.
It is about twenty miles west of Fredericksburg

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and it contains farmhouses, an abandoned
store, a post office which is actually

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a true room trailer, which is
all next to a hayfield. This is

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really just a blip on the radar. It's a bump on the map.

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And Anne McDaniels, Alicia Shoaute Reynolds, and Thelmas Croggin's were al found in

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that area, which is why several
investigators have posited that they are all the

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work of the same killer. Let's
jump into these three murders, all of

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which took place during nineteen ninety six. In March of nineteen ninety six,

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we have that murder of Alicia's Showalter
Reynolds, age twenty five. Alicia was

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from Baltimore or she was based in
Baltimore when she was going to Johns Hopkins

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for her master's work, and she
was driving on her way to Charlottesville to

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meet with her mother so that they
could go shopping for dresses for her brother's

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Unfortunately, she never made it to
the mall where her mother was eagerly waiting

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for her and staid. We have
those eyewitness reports that placed Alicia peering under

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the hood of her car, her
little white Mercury Tracer, and then climbing

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into a dark pickup truck with someone
who appeared to be helping her, although

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I very much doubt that's what he
was trying. Her car was found three

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miles outside of Culpeper. It had
that white napkin under the windshield, which

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signals car trouble. She was gone
without a trace until she was found two

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months later in May of that same
year, covered in brush off of a

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seldom used gravel trail about fifteen miles
from her car. One of the things

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I noticed in reviewing some of the
other reporting on her disappearance was beyond Alisia

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Showalter Reynolds being a no show to
meet her mother to go dress shopping,

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there were reports that her credit card
had been found dropped on the street in

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Culpeper, which obviously was a signal
that at minimum she had lost her credit

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card. And at the beginning of
the mystery of her disappearance, she's not

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there to meet her mother, her
credit card is found, and then she

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seems to disappear, only to be
found two months later. And in that

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intervening time is when women started coming
forward to police and said, oh,

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there was a guy who stopped me
on the road. He said my car

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was malfunctioning, but it wasn't.
There was nothing wrong. And of course

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when police looked at Ms. Reynold's
Mercury Tracer, there was nothing wrong with

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it. Everything was completely fine.
So she was apparently taken in by the

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ruse of this good Samarita who took
her and ultimately murdered her. Last year,

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there was coverage of the twenty fifth
anniversary of her disappearance and murder.

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As of yet, twenty five years
on, her family still has no answers.

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I've had some lengthy conversations with the
show walters, Mister and Missus.

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They've had a number of disturbing things
to say about how the Virginia State Police

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have handled this investigation. I know
that I've spoken to Sadie show Walter on

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a number of occasions over the years, and they have been extremely critical of

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the way the Virginia State Police have
handled this investigation and shockingly how adversarial VSP

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detectives have made the relationship with this
show Walter family, particularly the parents.

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The Virginia State Police seem obsessed with
any public comment that Sadie and her husband

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Harley Showalter have made, particularly anything
that's critical of the pace of the investigation.

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As the brother of a murder victim, your frustration builds when there's no

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communication from your law enforcement investigators.
When you're hearing nothing and receiving no updates,

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and then anniversary dates are coming,
media requests are made, and you're

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being asked questions about what's the latest
in your daughter's disappearance and murder. It's

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very difficult not to tap into that
reservoir of hurt and struggle to maintain a

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positive attitude for these family members.
Sadie has told me some stories that just

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curled my hair about how rude and
antagonistic these investigators were, including senior people

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at the Virginia State Police attacking them. I think the way they've handled this

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case has been completely lacking, and
I think their relationship with the Showalter family

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has just been horrible, and I
will publicly call them out on this.

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I'll add that several years ago,
when we receive tips that tied into the

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Route twenty nine Stocker case, at
least potentially, I'd been approached by a

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woman who felt that her estranged husband
could be involved, and she provided highly

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credible information regarding her husband and the
behaviors that she had witnessed. He fit

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the physical description. There's a sketch
which is well known that's appeared in Virginia

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media for years of the man they
think could be responsible for the Route twenty

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nine Stocker case. And I will
say this guy looked remarkably like the sketch.

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And I have to tell you approached
the Virginia State Police in the most

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respectful manner possible with this information,
and it was a mighty struggle to get

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the investigators to return calls follow up. It got so frustrating that the original

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tipster, the woman that had approached
me with concerns about her estranged husband,

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and as I said, she provided
a tremendous out of detail, much of

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which lined up with what they said
they were looking for in the Route twenty

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nine Stocker case. I'm not saying
this man is responsible, but when she

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gave me as much detail as she
did, and I passed all of this

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on to the investigators, it was
so frustrating for them to just come up

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with every excuse under the sun.
Oh, I have to go next week

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for training. Oh, I don't
have time to follow up on this.

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Oh. She didn't return my calls. And then in the meantime, the

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woman that approached me because of our
visibility with the Colonial Parkway murders grew increasingly

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frustrated because she said, can't you
get someone from the Virginia State Police to

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contact me and come and see me
and I'll give them this information about my

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ex husband. I do not think
this woman was crazy. I do not

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think she was just trying to settle
a score with her estranged husband. She

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really was afraid of him, and
she was afraid he was involved. I'm

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not an expert on all things for
twenty nine Stocker, but he checked a

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lot of boxes in this case,
and even driving similar vehicles, and I

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remember actually challenging the investigators. He
was talking to me about the vehicles.

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And I said, that's not what
you guys said in nineteen ninety six.

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And he said, how do you
know, And I said, because I

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went back and read the newspaper articles
and at the time your predecessors, I

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know this particular investigator wasn't handling the
investigation all those years before. I get

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that. But I thought to myself, am I the only one that has

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any sense of history of this case? Because he said, oh, we're

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looking for this particular type of pickup
truck. And I said, wait a

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minute. Your predecessor said publicly with
photographs in such and such a newspaper in

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nineteen ninety six nineteen ninety seven,
that you're looking for the kind of pickup

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truck. You're describing to me a
dark blue Ford Ranger or Mazda pickup truck

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as well as a green Nissan pickup
truck with these very stinctive zigzag gold decorations

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on the side of the truck,
which were extremely distinctive. And he said,

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I don't know where you get that, And I said, from the

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newspaper. It just the amount of
foot dragging and excuses that I received to

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the point where this woman grew frustrated
with me because it didn't seem like I

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could get the Virginia State Police to
do their jobs. Quite frankly, it

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was very frustrating, and so I
feel like I got just a little taste

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of the kind of attitude that Sadie
and Harley Showalter had told me about.

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I don't know how murder victims' families
become the enemy in the minds of some

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people in law enforcement, but the
Virginia State Police has failed the Showalter family

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without question. Wow, just awful. Following that March nineteen ninety six murder

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and the discovery in May of Alicia's
body, you have the July nineteen ninety

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sixth murder of Thelma Skrogens. There
is not a lot of information about Thelma.

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Unfortunately, up until I started doing
my own deep dive on the case,

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I had never heard her name publicly
associated with the twenty nine Stocker case.

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So this was a bit of a
surprise to me. Thanks to some

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very astute researchers who had clipped some
articles from newspapers dot com about this murder,

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I was able to learn a little
bit about Thelma Scrogens said. Thelma

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Skrogen seventy four was found murdered in
her home in Lignum on July fourteenth,

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which happens to be my dad's birthday, after she failed to show up to

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church where she was the organist on
Sunday, friends, of course went to

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go look for her, and when
they arrived at her home the next morning

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after church, they found that she
had been shot to death, shot in

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the head. A friend who had
been talking to her on the phone the

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previous night reported that she had said
she needed to end the conversation because someone

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was knocking on her door and she
needed to answer it. And I can

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only assume that whoever was knocking on
her door is probably the person who killed

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her. It seems like the most
obvious thing to me. But unfortunately she

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was found shot in the head and
there have been no arrests in her case.

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Her home is actually directly across from
the post office, so if you

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can say that there is a center
of hamlet, center of life in Lignum,

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it would be right there at the
post office, and her house was

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immediately across from it. When I
read about Thelma Scroggin's murder in Lignum,

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it occurred to me that, yes, there's a significant age difference. Miss

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Scroggins was seventy four years old.
Lisa Showalter Reynolds is twenty five, so

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they seem outside the age range that
we often see in other serial killings.

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Two quick thoughts. One is that
our profiler friends have told us that you

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can't lock into these ideas that there
is a type necessarily with a serial killer.

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Sometimes serial killers will lash out for
other reasons. It may be a

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crime of opportunity, or when I
first heard of Thelma Skrogins, perhaps in

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this very small town where she lived
in she might have seen something. It

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took some time, for example,
for the killer of at Last Showalter Reynolds

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to figure out where Thelma Skroggins lived, and or some a conversation took place

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where Ms Scroggins indicated that she might
have information about the show Walter Reynolds murder,

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and that might be enough of a
triggering event to cause a kill to

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lash out at her and eliminate her
as a potential source of information. So

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she's a traditional crime victim. It
could be something completely random, or there

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may be a tie in into the
March nineteen ninety six murder of Alicia Showalter

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Reynolds very well could be again,
wouldn't have occurred to me. You're on

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it today, sir, But I
think that's because I am tired and ready

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for spring break. That's a separate
issue, Yes it is. And finally

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we get to this September nineteen ninety
six murder of Anne Carolyn McDaniel, who

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was twenty years old. Anne McDaniel
had been living in a group home for

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physically and developmentally disabled adults in the
President Madison in Orange, Virginia. And

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Orange is also pretty small town and
it is about twenty five miles from Lignum,

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and McDaniel said she was going out
to meet a mystery date that evening

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and ultimately disappeared without trace. Her
body was found four days later in Culpeper

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County, near Lignum and an even
smaller town called Mount Pony, and she

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was found by some men who were
out exercising their dogs in the woods.

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The cause of death on Anne McDaniel
was asphyxiation and her body was badly burned.

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In fact, it was only through
use of dental records that her body

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was able to be identified. Her
remains were actually found only five miles from

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the location where Alicia's Showalter Reynolds had
been found in May, so there is

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a very direct connection between Alicia and
McDaniel. A couple of observations on Anne

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Carolyne McDaniel. One of the things
that I was very struck by was that

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Anne McDaniel had some development issues.
Pretty convinced that Samantha Clark did as well.

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When I first was reading about Anne
McDaniel some years back, I thought

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to myself, I wonder if she
could have been a victim of Randy Taylor,

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who was sometimes looking for young women
that might not be able to have

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the sophistication to understand that his goals
were less than stellar. Yeah, it

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occurred to me that Anne McDaniel could
be a victim of someone like Randy Taylor.

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Now, certainly the proximity in terms
of where Anne McDaniel's remains were found

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and those of the least Showalter Reynolds
only five miles apart, and again these

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are in very small rural Virginia towns. There's certainly a potential relationship there.

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But the Randy Taylor possibility is one
that has stuck with me for all of

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these years. Understandably, I think
you're listening to mind Over Murder. Will

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be right back after this word from
our sponsors. We're back here at Mindover

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Murder. Are those three cases linked? I think it seems very likely that

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they are. And Bill, I
think you're on that same team with me.

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Correct I am? And certainly the
Alicia Showalter Reynolds's case ties into those,

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perhaps as many as twenty different female
motorists who mentioned that they were pulled

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over by this man who flagged them
down, usually driving a pickup truck and

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gesturing that there was something wrong with
their car. There is a woman who

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survived an assault from this man.
She said that she had been pulled over

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by this man and that she was
riding along in his pickup truck and he

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lunged at her with a screwdriver.
If I'm not mistaken, she managed to

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extricate herself from the vehicle. She
said that he referred to himself by the

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name of Larry Breeden. There d
n we think, and there was a

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great deal of research looking for Larry
Breeden or some similar name. But she

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gave law enforcement investigators a very good
physical description of the man and the pickup

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truck he was driving, and it's
her ability to escape this man's clutches that

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resulted in the sketch which has so
long been associated with this case. And

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of course we'll include the sketch in
our social media and in our podcast notes

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for those keeping track. We have
covered the cases of the women who have

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been murdered by serial killers, namely
Jesse Matthew, Randy Taylor and Mark Evanants.

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We've covered crimes that probably fall underneath
the Root twenty nine Stoker umbrella,

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and now we are going to cover
crimes that happened outside of the Route twenty

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nine geographic area, but are still
murders of women that have gone unsolved.

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So here we get with that final
category. And so the two cases that

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we want to talk about are the
case of Julie Williams and Laura Lolly Winans.

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Because we are going to have our
friend Kate Miles on the podcast in

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the not too terribly distant future,
we are going to save most of the

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content about Julie Williams and Lolly Winan's
for her. This is the case that

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she has been so heavily involved with
and she's done such an amazing job doing

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research for. But just to give
you a quick sketch of this information.

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The Julie Williams and Lolly Winan's case
is also known as the Shenandoah murders.

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There may be some links to the
Colonial Parkway murders as well. Bill,

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I'll let you get into that in
just one second. In May of nineteen

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ninety six, Julie Williams twenty four
and Laura Lolly Winans twenty six, we're

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camping in Shenandoah National Park. These
are women who were very familiar with the

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outdoors. They spent a lot of
time camping, a lot of times hiking.

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They were murdered inside the Shenandoah National
Park, near a place called Skyland,

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which, even though I have lived
here my entire life, I have

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never been to. There are some
pretty distinct similarities to their murder case and

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the case of Kathy Thomas and Rebeccadowski. Would you like to go into that,

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bell, Sure, We'll cover the
basics. Kathy Thomas and Rebekkadowski are

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an outdoorsy, athletic, lesbian couple
killed in a national park in October nineteen

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eighty six. In May nineteen ninety
six, a very similar couple, Julie

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Williams, and Lolly Winans are also
murdered in a national park. Now it's

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ten years later and about one hundred
and eighty miles distant. They're within the

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same state, Virginia, but they're
not exactly next door to each other.

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So it's three three and a half
hours, Kristin, would you say,

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yeah, just about Actually, maybe
a little less than that. I can

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probably get to Charlottesville in about two
and a half hours if I speed,

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which I never would no, never, now similarities. The FBI admitted publicly

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and repeatedly in nineteen ninety six that
they were exploring the similarities between Kathy Thomas

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and Rebecca Dowski's murder with the murders
of Julie Williams and Lolly Winans. There

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are a few other boxes we probably
need to check here. In addition to

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the lesbian outdoor couples killed in a
national park, they're both killed on three

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day weekends. Julian Lowy were killed
over Memorial Day weekend nineteen ninety six.

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Kathy and Becky were killed over Columbus
Day weekend nineteen eighty six. They are

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similar in that Julie and Lawley were
restrained with some sort of binding and their

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throats were slashed. There doesn't seem
to be any sexual robbery motive in either

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of the two lesbian couples. There
are these substantial similarities, and that's the

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expression the FBI used in nineteen ninety
six. Both sets of murders, Kathy

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Thomas and Rebeccadowski, Julie Williams and
Lolly Winans remain unsolved. They've both been

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investigated by the FBI because they happen
inside national parks by separate FBI offices,

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the Norfolk and Newport News office in
the Kathy and Becky example, the Richmond

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office in the Julie and Llly example. There has been a great deal of

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coordination between the two field offices,
as they're called at the Bureau. The

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idea that these two sets of women
and their murders could be related does not

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seem to be an idea that's in
favor at this point with the FBI,

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but it was certainly something that was
discussed. One of the areas that was

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explored, and I don't know that
it was fully resolved, at least to

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my family satisfaction. Is that there
are four National Park Service rangers who were

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working at the Colonial Parkway in nineteen
eighty six, who were assigned to the

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Shenandoah National Park in nineteen ninety six, some ten years later, including one

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ranger who was a person of interest
in the Colonial Parkway murders in nineteen eighty

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six, who somehow and somewhat bizarrely, I would add, was permitted to

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be one of the lead investigators in
the Julie Williams and Lollywinan's murder investigation,

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which I find completely unacceptable. How
a person of interest in a substantially similar

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case, I'm going to use the
FBI's wording here from nineteen eighty six,

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would be permitted to not just participate, but be a lead investigator in a

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substantially similar murder ten years later.
I question the judgment of the FBI and

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the Virginia State Police in this regard. I do too, I do two

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hundred percent. Now, we don't
want to steal Kate's thunder by giving any

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more information about this case, because
she is going to come and talk about

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her terrific book. I am of
course reading it right now, and she

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has a lot of great information that
I know she's going to want us to

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keep under our hat until she can
reveal it to you. And she's a

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terrific writer, and we cannot recommend
Trailed, her new book coming out May

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third enough. If the book is
out, you absolutely should pick up a

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copy. We're both really enjoying it. I think that our next true crime

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bookshelf should lead off with Trail for
sure, fair enough. It's wonderful.

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And so finally, the other case
of a murdered woman, and this is

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a woman who has not yet been
recovered, is the murder of Sage Smith.

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And Sage Smith did not take place
during the nineteen ninety six time frame.

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In fact, her murder happened presumably
in twenty twelve. Again, she

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has not been found, so we
do not know what precisely has happened to

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her. But Sage Smith is a
nineteen year old transgender woman from Charlottesville who

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was working at a hair salon and
was mispiring hairdresser. She was last seen

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in Charlottesville in November of twenty twelve, getting ready to go on a date

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with a man by the name of
Eric McFadden. Twenty nine years old.

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Sage Smith was last seen walking to
the Wild Wings Cafe, which is next

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to the Amtrak station in Charlottesville,
near the Downtown Mall. Incidentally, the

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Downtown Mall is the last place where
Hannah Graham was seen or would be seen.

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In twenty fourteen, Sage Smith was
walking to meet McFadden and ultimately did

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not arrive and has never been seen
since. Eric McFadden is the only person

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of interest in her disappearance. McFadden
never actually showed up for his meeting with

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Charlottesville police. He skipped town has
since disappeared, presumably off the face of

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the earth. No one has heard
from him. His family has not heard

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from him, nothing that the man
has utterly vanished. There is currently a

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twenty thousand dollars reward being offered for
information leading either to the recovery of Sage

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smith remains or leading to information that
will lead to the arrest of Eric McFadden,

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who is the only person of interest
in her disappearance. I am rock

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solid convinced that Eric McFadden is responsible
for the murder of Sage Smith. Now.

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They met through Craigslist Casual Encounters,
which is admittedly a place where sex

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workers often meet John's and I'm not
sure if McFadden knew that Sage Smith was

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transgender. I am highly confident that
a meeting did take place that evening.

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They texted on and off that evening. I think a meeting did take place.

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I think things went south for whatever
reason, perhaps McFadden discovering that Sage

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Smith was not exactly what he thought
he was getting into. I believe that

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Eric McFadden is still out there somewhere. I think he killed Sage Smith,

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disposed of her body, and bluetown. It's a shame that somehow McFadden has

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never turned up again. I think
an in depth search for Eric McFadden would

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probably find him out there somewhere,
living under a new name, having murdered

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Sage Smith, brutally disposed of her
body, and escaping justice. And I

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think this is such a tragedy.
I find the whole thing so disturbing.

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Reading the reporting about Sage Smith and
her sad disappearance and murder, I was

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really struck by the fact that her
murder ended up being overshadowed, really by

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the fact that Hannah Graham disappeared later
in November of twenty fourteen. I'm sorry

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September twenty fourteen, and in fact, Sage Smith's family has gone on the

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record as saying they feel a little
upset by the fact that when Sage Smith

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went missing, she received very little
coverage, whereas when Hannah Graham went missing,

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the whole entire world blew up.
And in fact, Sage's sister was

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quoted as saying that she was working
in a restaurant down on the downtown Mall

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area where Hannah Graham had disappeared,
and people were constantly coming in and asking,

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can we put up posters? Do
you guys have surveillance footage, do

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you have cameras? We've got to
find this girl. And she said it

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just felt like such a slap in
the face that her sister had received so

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little and Hannah Graham's coverage had received
so much, And I can see why

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they would be quite unhappy with that. And really I had to do a

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lot of digging on this case because
I don't remember it getting this kind of

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coverage ever. In fact, the
first I heard of it was when we

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were doing research for one of our
true crime Bookshelf episodes, and there was

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a whole long form piece of reporting
in a book that I had recommended about

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Sage Smith, and it was excellent
reporting. But I realized how have I

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never heard of this. It should
have been big Virginia news. It wasn't.

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I think the examples that you're highlighting
Kristin can be good examples of missing

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white woman syndrome. Yeah, Sage
Smith is African American transgender. That case

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and her disappearance got very little publicity, with all due respect to everyone involved.

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The Morgan Harrington and Hannah Graham cases
both got a tremendous this amount of

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publicity. In both examples, Morgan
and Hannah are very pretty young college students

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who went missing and whose bodies were
later found and of course ultimately tied into

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Jesse Matthew, who was a predator
focused on a particular type of attractive,

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blonde, hopefully impaired young woman,
and that's he would troll these downtown bars

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and places where he would find these
young college students who were out having a

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good time. Morgan attending a concert
with Metallica, Hannah out with friends that

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evening on a bit of a bar
hop, and he would look for these

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impaired young women. The families of
Morgan Harrington and Hannah Graham, whom we

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00:31:48,359 --> 00:31:53,400
have nothing but wonderful things to say
about, were able to use their communication

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skills to increase the visibility of their
originally missing daughter cases. Ultimately, of

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00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:07,079
course, they both proved to be
homicide cases that didn't happen with Sage Smith.

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And I think this is a Virginia
example of what we're seeing across the

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country, which is that people that
are from more marginalized communities, like Sage

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Smith, an African American transgender team, not getting the kind of publicity that

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00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:30,640
two young white college age women attending
prominent Virginia colleges received all right around the

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00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:36,559
same time exactly. And as you
were saying earlier talking about the show Alter

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family and the amount of I hesitate
to say abuse by law enforcement, that's

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00:32:40,319 --> 00:32:45,519
not quite right. It's pretty close. From what pretty it does sound pretty

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00:32:45,519 --> 00:32:50,559
close. Sage Smith's family has said
that they have received very little that is

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of help from the Charlottesville Police Department
about this. They have repeatedly requested that

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the FBI brought in, and they
have been told will bring the FBI in

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when it's time. When's it time. She's been missing since twenty twelve,

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when is it time? They have
described as having just a very hard time

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getting as you have always said,
time, attention and resources put into sat

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Smith's case, and that's a tragedy, especially given the fact that Eric McFadden

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has likely blown down and has moved
elsewhere in the country under a new name.

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This is a situation where the resources
of the FBI could actually be quite

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helpful. Her hearts go out to
the Smith family for the struggles that they

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are going through with law enforcement.
And it is so difficult in a country

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where we have two hundred thousand unsolved
cold case homicides across the country, It

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is so difficult to get that time, attention and resources that are required to

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move a cold case like this forward. It's now been what coming up on

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ten years since Sage Smith disappeared,
highly confident that Sage was murdered that night

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and that her body has been hidden
somewhere and McFadden is in the wind.

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I agreed we will continue to explore
the cases associated with the Route twenty nine

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Stoker Umbrella in upcoming episodes. We
are of course going to be joined by

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our friend Kate Miles to talk about
her book Trailed, which we are very

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00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:28,760
much looking forward to, and we
have several other episodes and guests up our

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00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:34,920
sleeve with relation to these series of
homicides. As always, we cannot thank

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00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:37,960
you enough for listening to mind of
or Murder. We'll see you next time.