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 Murderer. I'm Bill Thomas
and Kristin Dilley is on a well deserved vacation, which means I'm flying this
ship solo and perhaps almost blind. I don't know, we'll find out.
Join us today is Wendy Reid, retired investigator who's very prominently featured in the
new Burden of Proof documentary on HBO, which discusses the Jennifer Pendos case.
So Wendy, welcome, to mind over murder. Thank you for having me.
So, before we get into the Jennifer Pendos case, Wendy, tell
us a little bit about yourself, about where you grew up. You and
I were discovering that we're both I don't know if you like the word brat,
but we're both service brats. Tell us a little bit about your life,
where you're from, that sort of thing. Yeah, I grew up
in a military family. My dad was in the Coast Guard, so we
actually grew up in Yorktown, which is very close to Williamsburg. I lived
there for most of my childhood up until almost middle school. Moved to Boston.
I lived on kit Cood and then Saint Louis and graduated high school and
went to college, and then I joined the Air Force. My dad wouldn't
let me join the Coast Guard. He said everywhere he went to he was
always put up in Air Force billeting, and we lived on Air Force bases,
and he said they treat their people the best. My intention was to
go in for four years and used that to go to college, and that's
what I did. I lived in Montana and then I separated, got out
and became a police officer. So then how many years were you actually in
the Air Force? Was it just the four? Just the four? Yeah,
I knew, and my mom said, I always said that I was
going to be a police officer when I grew up, and I knew going
in, I wanted to do it for four years, get the training and
the education, and then come back and be a police officer. Before we
get into that, let me jump back to something here. Your dad was
assigned to Saint Louis. What kind of coast guard do we have in Saint
Louis. I thought that was on the Missus. Yeah, they actually do
a lot on the Mississippi River. Yeah, and he was at the headquarters
there. He was a master chief my whole life. He was a master
chief. He was never on a boat when I was alive. Oh,
he wasn't. Oh he did spend some time up at Sue Saint Marie on
a boat when he first enlisted. But yeah, during my lifetime, he
was always at headquarters buildings, so he was directing people that were on boats.
But when you're the master chief, you're pretty high up, so you're
one of the people that's in charge. Correct, Yeah, would you go
to his office and see what it was like when your father was at work
or were you exposed to that side of things. Oh? Absolutely. When
we lived in Boston, their office had like season tickets to the Bruins.
Oh nice, yeah, yeah, and they would like raffle the tickets off,
and when people could and go, they would give him to my dad.
So I would actually go up with them in the morning and spend the
day, and then we'd go to the game that night. Oh how fun?
Is this the old Boston Garden or am I dating myself now? It
was the old Garden? Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Of course,
my dad was a naval officer and his final active duty slot was running the
Armed Forces Police Department out of the old Boston Navy Yard. Okay, and
this was his career was winding down and he was actually moving towards a career
in academia. This was during the time frame of the Boston Bruins Bobby Or.
That team was red hot, and we moved back to Lowell, Massachusetts,
up north of Boston as we were heading into high school. So the
Bruins were a really big deal back then. Every kid in New England had
Bobby Or flying through the air vertically having just scored yet another All for the
Bruins, and we would watch the Bruins on television, and we got a
chance to go to the old Boston Garden several times, and then of course
later as I got to be a teenager, that would be the place we'd
go to see concerts. I'm sure the New Boston Garden is great, but
I still have fond memories of We would take the train into North Station and
then the arena was upstairs, and you go up these long winding ramps,
huh to see the Bruins and the Celtics play there. Yeah. It was
quite the experience, that's for sure. And then you were saying that it
was quite a contrast for you then, to go from a relatively small high
school on Cape Cod to a big high school in Saint Louis. It was.
Yeah. I have conversations sometimes with people that they live in the same
area of their whole entire life and they don't know anything different, and I
really sometimes I long for that in that sense of home. But at the
same time, moving as much as we did, I was exposed to so
much diversity in different people and different cultures, and I see it as a
blessing now as an adult. I hated it as a kid. Every time
you made friends, you moved, But now it's just I'm so thankful for
the experiences that I was able to have. Yeah, we really liked it.
There were four kids in my family, and yes, it is hard
to say goodbye to your friends, but we looked upon it as an adventure.
My dad would come home every two years back then, typically towards the
end of the school year, and we'd have a family meeting, and then
he would tell us where we were going to move. And this is before
the internet. We would then go typically we still had a few weeks left
in school, and of course we would go to the library a lot.
We'd go and read about the new place we were going. I remember we
look at pictures and get out the encyclopedia and look at maps. My mom
and dad would show us where we were going to be living. It was
an adventure. And then the four of us as kids, three boys and
one girl, my younger sister Kathy, we'd pulled together and we'd be our
own kind of gang. But a lot of times when we were moving,
and I'm not sure if this happened as much for you. We would be
moving to places where there were lots of other military kids, so they had
a sense of the drill, and they also knew that it was important to
make friends and to make friends quickly and to be welcoming of the new kids.
Right in one or two places, we moved to towns where there were
not a lot of other military kids, and it was really noticeable. We
moved to Deptford, New Jersey, because there was no housing available on the
Philadelphia Naval Base, so we were across the river in suburban New Jersey,
and these kids mostly had all grown up in that town, and they were
incredibly unfriendly. They even called my older brother, Richard, Hawaii because we
had lived in Hawaii before then, just and they said where are you from?
And he said Hawaii, which is true. They actually didn't even call
him by his name, Richard. They called him Hawaii because they'd never been
anybody. Now here's a guy with red hair and fair skin and blue eyes.
It wasn't like he was a native of the Hawaiian Islands. The kids
were super unfriendly, just not nice. A few months later, housing became
available on the Philadelphia Naval Base, and we moved again, and the kids
there, who were all Navy and Marine Corps kids, they were like very
welcoming. They knew what it was like to be the new kid. That
would happen every couple of years in most examples. So now you're the kid
unlike most of us, who knew what she wanted to do. You wanted
to be in law enforcement. How did you get into law enforcement when you
got out of the Air Force. I came back to Virginia and I ended
up applying at a small local sheriff's office and I actually worked in the jail
there for a couple of years, and then I taught the DARE program.
I had gone to a school and met a guy who worked with James City
Police Department, and he just went on and on about how great of a
department it was and how I should go over and work for them, and
he sent me an application and I put in and that was it. That's
how I ended up with James City. So what year is it that you're
joining the James City, Virginia Police Department. It was two thousand and two
when I got hired in July of two thousand and two. And now help
us out for those of us that are not from Virginia, which includes me.
Kristin Dilly, my podcast partner, would laugh. Why do we call
this place James City County. It's such an odd little name. I have
no idea. It's a very odd name. Yeah, but it is a
county police department, correct for James City County, which is not a city
but a county. Correct. Okay, Yeah, it pretty much surrounds the
city of Williamsburg. Williamsburg is a super small city, and then James City
County surrounds Williamsburg. You would think I would know the story of why it
is all that, but I do not. So does Williamsburg, Virginia have
its own police force? They do, Yeah, they Williamsburg Police Department.
And so James City County is the surrounding area is around Williamsburg. Correct?
Is there cross jurisdiction or would you hand something off to Williamsburg PD if it
was within the city limits. Yeah, if it's within the city, then
the Williamsburg Police Department would handle it. Yeah. And I mean it's a
weird area because there's also York County, So you can walk half a mile
and step foot in James City County, Williamsburg and York County. There are
so many places where one side of the road is York County and the other's
James City, and there's so much that intertwines. Yeah, if it happens
in the city of Williamsburg, then the Williamsburg Police Department would handle it.
Yeah. The Jennifer Pendos case starts in February nineteen eighty seven, with the
disappearance of this fifteen year old girl from the Kings Mill Resort slash housing development.
Tell us about your involvement with the case. So you're at the James
City County Police Department. How did you first hear about the Pandos case and
then how did you get involved officially? Yeah, there was a bulletin board
in our police department that important information would be posted on. And one day
I saw like a missing person's poster and it was for Jennifer and I had
her picture on there and that she had disappeared in eighty seven, and I
was just like, that's weird. I'd never heard of it. I didn't
know anything about it. It was just this poster on the law and I
had been slated to go to the Investigations Division at that point. So I
talked with the major in charge of the investigations division and said, Hey,
what's the deal with this case? And can I look at it? And
he's yeah, sure, and he said the case file's missing, so we
don't really know a whole lot. In January of two thousand and six is
when I went to investigations, and it was shortly after that I was officially
assigned the case. Did you ask for the Pando's case as a result of
that interest? I did, Yeah, I asked to work the case.
It's two thousand and six. That case took place originally in nineteen eighty seven.
It's probably considered a cold case at this point. I don't know if
people used that expression, did they at the time. I don't remember specifically
if it was classified as a cold case. We didn't have a cold case
division at that point. I know it was being worked on sporadically, but
no, there was no cold case division. Later one was developed and I
was assigned to that, but at the time there was no cold case division.
But that was certainly what I would consider a cold case for sure.
Now, what other sorts of cases were you working when you started in investigations.
In two thousand and six, I was assigned to basically violent crimes,
murders, ripe, robbery, things of that sort. Let's talk about this
missing case file. This figures prominently in the Burden of Proof documentary that's just
made its debut on HBO. Oh what did people say about the missing case
file? First of all, can you give us a rough idea? How
big would a case file be? For that case? You would expect probably
thirty pieces of paper fifty pieces of paper in it, depending on what the
initial response was from the police department when she went missing. You would definitely
expect there to be some substance to that case file. Would it be in
a file folder or a box or they called us things red wells that are
expandable. What would it physically look like? Just a Manila folder? Our
records division at that point, unfortunately, was not what I would call secure.
Anybody could walk in there. Ouch. Yeah. It was before anything
was electronic, So all there was the paper or copies of the file.
The procedure to get a file was supposed to be you would go and request
the file and you would have to sign it out. There was only a
clipboard next to the door and you would get the file and then write your
name and the date and what file you have. But in order for that
to work, it's dependent on people actually doing what they're supposed to. Unfortunately,
with there not being any accountability to that, it went missing. Yeah,
and unlike cop shows that we watch on TV and enjoy, there isn't
somebody there at the door, if you will, checking to make sure that
people signed the files in and out. No, absolutely not. It was.
There was a desk there for the record's clerk, but there was only
one of them and she couldn't be there all the time, so it was
basically left up to the integrity of the person to do what they were supposed
to do. And it's like, I'm not trying to be two pointed here,
it sounds like things work sloppy back then, you said not secure.
Were people pretty investigators and others? Were they pretty informal about going in taking
a look at a file, bringing it back, but not necessarily doing the
whole clipboard thing. Absolutely, Yeah, it was very lax. It was
a small department at that point. There was less than one hundred officers for
the entire department. Yeah, and I think everybody was just complacent and oh,
that won't happen, or oh, I'll put it back when I'm done
with it, And unfortunately that didn't happen. And there were lots of theories
on what happened to the case file, some pretty outlandish, but yeah,
it was definitely a challenge not having that what's an outlandish theory about what might
have happened to the case file. One of the avenue that we did explore,
we were told that Ron Pandos, Jennifer's father, played golf with the
head of security from Kingsmill. Kings Mill, where the Pandos has lived,
has his own security division. Now it's a police department, but at that
point I believe it was only security. But we were told that Ron golfed
with the head of security there and it just so happened that his wife,
when Jennifer disappeared, was the head of the record's division or the James City
Police Department. So one of the theories was through Ron's relationship with the head
of security, he had his wife take the file to help Ron and Margie,
she was the record's clerk from then. She was interviewed and denied having
any part of that, but yeah, that was one of the one of
the theories of what happened to the case file. Does that se implausible but
it is plausible. Yeah, it could have happened, But I do not
believe that's what happened at all now, although in the television series, I
believe it's Cynthia Hill, the director of the film, who was mostly off
camera. But someone asks you a question, and in my opinion, having
watched plenty of Truth Crime, you appear embarrassed for the department. Oh absolutely,
you indicate as such. How did you feel when you found out that
the file had magically reappeared. It's mixed feelings. I still remember exactly where
I was when I got the phone call and what I was doing, and
I was elated when I got the phone call saying the file had been found.
I thought, for sure that would open up a lot of things that
we didn't know and give us more opportunity for investigation. I was no longer
assigned to the case. I had been promoted and was a supervisor in the
patrol division at that point, so I wasn't working the case, but I
was still I was so excited. And then when that excitement died down.
It was like, what in the world happened? That's just crazy. Was
there ever an adequate explanation for where this case file went? How long a
period of time was the file in the Pendos case missing? Would you say,
oh, gosh, when I went to investigations in two thousand and six
it was gone. I don't know how long before that it had been gone,
And I'd say it was probably twenty sixteen when it was found. So
we're talking about a decade maybe this file was quote unquote missing. Yeah,
what were the circumstances of when the file was found? As you understand it.
So, we had been in the we called the old police department in
tw more than six, very small building, no control over who went into
records who didn't. When I was assigned the case and the case file was
missing, I had met with the head of the records division at the time.
She searched the entire records room. Basically they were paper boxes full of
minili folders with the case files in it. She searched through every single box,
every single file cabinet. Couldn't find it. A few years later,
we had a new police department built and were moving from the old police department
to the new one. During that time, she had told me they went
through every single file. She said they opened up the files and actually looked
in them to make sure maybe the panda's case accidentally got stuffed inside and mislabeled.
So they went through every file, every box before they moved, and
then when they were unpacking the files in the new building they also went through
them again and there was no sign of the case file. So it had
been searched for in the record's division three times, pretty thoroughly, and then
in the new department. The record's division is accessed with a key card,
so there is a little more accountability for it. And by that time we
were mostly electronic. You could access what you needed on the computer instead of
having to get the actual hard copy of the file. What I was told
was one day someone in the record's division went and opened up one of the
paper boxes and there it was just sitting right flat on top, not as
you would think if there's fifty files in a paper box, they're all vertical
so you can read the tabs on the files right, But this was laid
across the top, so pretty obvious. There was no investigation as to what
happened. There were theories of what happened. My personal opinion is someone was
complacent. They went and got the file to actually do something with it,
and probably stuck it in their desk or their file cabinet. And there was
a couple people retiring around that time investigations, and in my opinion is that
someone found it in their belongings and lacked the integrity to stand up and say,
hey, my bad, I have this and just stuck it in there,
knowing that someone would eventually run into it. Not necessarily malevolent, just
perhaps sloppy. And as you said, it was very informal back in the
day. Someone went and got a file and they'd take it back to their
desk, and maybe they were working the case actively. I was thinking the
same thing, and yeah, you can go with all the ron pandos playing
golf with the head of security theories you want, but I think most of
the time it's sort of screw up, if you will. Was someone accidentally
sticks the case file and as you described it, it wasn't that large.
It wasn't like it was a banker's box full of files. It was a
Manilla folder with documents in it. Which could have been misplaced. Yeah,
I definitely don't believe it was anything malicious, Like you said, I think
it was sloppy, unprofessional, just lax. Yeah, it's just it's so
embarrassing, it really is. You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be
right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at mindover Murder,
switching gears for a second. One of our takeaways Kristen and mine from
watching the documentary was that we felt that Ron and Margy Pendo's odd response.
I will call it what I believe it to be, and remember we lived
through this with my sister Kathy's murder. I felt like the Pandos's response,
as described in the television series and all the articles we read to Jennifer's disappearance
was extremely odd. Do you feel that their response to Jennifer's disappearance made them
look like suspects, particularly Ron the father from the beginning? Absolutely. When
I say from the beginning, I take that as when I got it,
So it's the beginning for me. Yeah, And I didn't know what their
responses and reactions were when it initially occurred in nineteen eighty seven, but yeah,
what I had to go off of was a lot of people's memories from
nineteen years before, and probably a lot of like the game of telephone.
I heard this and I heard that, and yeah, the things I was
hearing was definitely suspicious that they responded in the way they did or didn't respond,
Yeah, it was. It definitely made it seem suspicious. And I
think a lot of times we look at things from our own perspective and our
own experiences, and everybody's different and are going to have different reactions to things,
and I think sometimes we get stuck in the mindset of that's not what
I would have done, So that's weird. Yeah, but yeah, a
lot of things that they did it did seem suspicious and cast a lot of
doubt onto what their involvement was. One of the things that really shocked us
was as the series unfolds, and of course, the four part television series
is told roughly in chronological order, and it's amazing to see footage from investigations
and interviews all the way back to twenty sixteen, if my memory serves,
But as the story unfold, it appears that Margie Jennifer's mother actually has additional
valuable pieces of evidence in her possession that have never been turned over to law
enforcement. For example, if I understood the series correctly, they had the
original copy of the note correct that was left, so that meant that law
enforcement had a photocopy of it. Yeah. Honestly, I don't remember offhand
if there was a photo copy of the note in the original pace file that
ended up being located, but yeah, she definitely had the origin the original
note. Yeah. And then later on these letters to and from Jennifer,
their teenage daughter, are produced, and they are in a box that Margie
has been holding on to for more than thirty years. This struck me as
pro foundly odd, particularly since so much of the discussion of the case and
this note that was found at the time of Jennifer's disappearance that switches back and
forth between first and third person, so some of it sounds like it's written
by Jennifer, some of it sounds like it's written by someone else. Since
language and handwriting end up being so pivotal, I was baffled that Margie would
be sitting on letters to and from her daughter for over thirty years without ever
thinking I should show these to the investigators. How did you feel about that,
Yeah, it was frustrating. Marchie was never super forthcoming. She would
provide things if they were specifically asked for, but yeah, there was no
urgency on her part to be proactive in the investigation. When I originally started
talking to her and Stephen, I asked about physical abuse in the home and
abuse in the home and was told no, there was none, and I
can understand not wanting to admit that, but at the same time, in
order to effectively work a case, you have to have the truth. So
it was frustrating to find out later the extent of the abuse that was happening
in the home and find out a lot of things that would have been helpful
if I would have had them initially during the investigation. Did you feel that
Stephen was also not forthcoming. I he had said initially there wasn't any abuse
in the home, and I think that if you grow up in a certain
environment that that becomes your reality. And maybe at the time he didn't consider
that to be abuse. I don't know, or maybe it was just I
fully remember sitting in Margie's living room with her and Stephen, and I asked,
Stephen, what do you think happened to your sister, And he said,
she ran away? And I said, why do you think that?
And he said, I don't have any reason to believe otherwise. So I
think he was in the dark for all of those years, and I wouldn't
say that he wasn't forthcoming. I think probably initially he didn't maybe believe that
what he had gone through was abuse, because that was just his reality growing
up. One of the fascinating aspects of Burnaproof is watching Stephen's view of the
case change over the years. He seems much more willing now to admit that
his father was incredibly abusive physically and emotionally, but that maybe not where he
was as a younger man. At some point he said something about everything I
was led to believe in the first twenty two years of this case is wrong.
So that's a big revelation to see him go through and his viewpoint that
first of all, my sister ran away, and then later thinking for years
it would appear that his father is directly responsible for his sister's disappearance and likely
murder, and that his mother is involved in a cover up or is complicit
somehow, and then later you begin to see that He's come around, as
have others, to the view that wait a minute, those stories are all
wrong. She didn't run away. Perhaps Ron Pandos, the father is not
involved in her disappearance, unlikely homicide, which steers us to other suspects.
But watching that journey, and I'm sure there are hundreds of hours of footage
of Stephen and you and so many other people all taking this personal and investigative
journey. It's one of the most interesting aspects of the show. Do you
think it would have made a difference if law enforcement, for example, had
had the original note? Absolutely? Yeah, I worry though. I agree
with you, But I worry though that the original note would have been put
away accidentally, let's say in the legendary missing file folder for all of those
years, and there were no backups or duplicates of much of this material.
Is that a fair statement. Yes, Yeah, that's definitely a fair statement.
Our situations like that better now, Wendy than they were back then.
In terms of I WinCE when I hear about, oh, these documents are
missing, and I think to myself, there's no extra copy, there's no
electronic copy, there's no nothing. Yeah, it's definitely better now. I
know that, especially with the way that technology has advanced over the last fifteen
years or so. Now reports are all done on the computer and they're automatically
just uploaded and there's an electronic copy of it, where when Jennifer disappeared it
was just handwritten, and if something happened to the copy, you've got a
lot. So it's definitely I think much more of the secure situation now.
So here's a question for you, if you were to start working this case
today, where would you start. If I had all of the information,
I would probably start where I started before, with the parents, but there
was also information in that case that leads you to other places too that I
didn't have that information when I work it. Yeah, I would still definitely
look at the parents, because there's still been a lot of suspicious things that
have happened with the parents, with things that they have said and things that
have happened during the investigation. So yeah, I would still start with them,
but there were definitely more investigative avenues that would have been approached. Our
investigators in the Colonial Parkway murders have said to me over the years, Bill,
no one's really cleared in a homicide investigation, and that's I don't think
Jennifer's walking through the door tomorrow, so I believe this is a homicide.
So no one's really cleared until the murder is cleared. That is, we've
identified a suspect and brought him or hurt to trial. As I understand it,
people are on the likely list, that is, the short list of
people who are most likely suspects, and the less likely list. Ron Pandos,
Margie Pandos and other have been mentioned as potential suspects, and it makes
perfect sense. Do you feel like the Pendo's parents would be on that less
likely list? At this point when you talk to people that know the case,
it seems pretty split that some people, some investigators and some officers believe
yeah, the parents may have something to do with it, and others believe
no, it's the boyfriend. And I think there's evidence that points to all
of them less likely or more likely. It's hard to say, really.
If it were to go to court, say, if the boyfriend was charged,
I think it would be super hard to get a conviction because of just
the circumstantial evidence against the parents and the doubt that would raise, the same
as if Ron were to be charged and go to court, there's evidence and
circumstantial evidence events against the boyfriend that would lead to doubt. So it's a
hard question to answer as far as less likely suspects. I think with the
information now, it's just there's a likelihood that anybody could have done it.
Wow, So you find yourself in a very frustrating place even now in twenty
twenty three. Absolutely, yeah, I just there's clues pointing to different people,
and it's hard to really settle on a belief as to who did it.
It's referenced in this series that you were working on a book on the
Jennifer Pandos disappearance. Are you still working on a book? I am.
We've had to start over a couple of times. Initially, what I wanted
to do was tell my story of my journey along working this case and what
I ended up learning about Jennifer. And then when the documentary came along,
they delved into that, and I found that what I revealed during interviews with
them, and a lot of that obviously wasn't aired, but I revealed a
lot of that during the interviews, and a book would be redundant, I
think, So we changed the approach to that to be. I'm not sure
if you're familiar with Patricia Cornwell or not, but she wrote a book called
All That Remains, Yeah, which is clearly based on the Colonial Parkway murders
exactly. Yeah, And while it is deemed as being fiction, it is
very much based on actual events. It has recently turned into that sort of
approach. Well, I wouldn't say it's in its infancy. Yeah, it's
I'm still working on it, and it's something that i'd like to get out
there eventually, but right now that's not writing a book is not a priority
in my life, I guess right now. But it is something that I
would like out there at some point. We've discussed All That Remains, and
I've never spoken directly to Patricia Cornwall, but it's very clear I'm considered the
greatest expert outside of law enforcement in the Colonial Parkway murders. And it's not
a role I sought, but it's just developed. But I remember being shocked
when I finally went out and bought a seventy five cent used copy of the
paperback of All That Remains and read the book. I was floored. It
is the Colonial Parkway murders, and in particular, one of the homicides is
in so much detail, I believe that it is quite possible that Patricia Cornwall
had a significant amount of non public information about that particular murder, which is
considered part of the series in the Colonial Parkwy murders. I know the case
backwards and forwards when you get into that level of detail, and I think
I've read every article, listened to every podcast, watched every interview, and
I'm hearing and seeing things that just still aren't part of the public discussion.
And I think to myself, that's interesting. If Patricia Cornwall wants to discuss
it with me, she's welcome to reach out. I am highly confident that
the case as described in all that remains. She may have switched the order
around, and the lesbian couple aren't the first ones killed, and it's not
one two, three four, but it's definitely the same case, and the
amount of detail is very striking. You might want to jump off then into
more of a fictional version of what might have happened in the Pando's disappearance.
Yeah, and I agree with you one hundred percent. You and I had
talked earlier about the fact that Jennifer lived very close to the Colonial Parkway.
Yes, and that was one of the investigative avenues I took pretty early in
the case, was did she find herself on the Parkway and become a victim
there? I was allowed through that investigation to see the case files through the
Colonial Parkway murders. And Yeah, I agree with you one hundred percent that
that book is very accurate with a lot of facts that aren't public knowledge,
or certainly weren't back then. In other words, we've done a ton of
press and media. We did a four part television series, The Lover's Land
Murders on Oxygen, and I've been very outspoken, as have other family members
about the details because we're trying to push the FBI in the Virginia State Police.
When the book came out, which I think is nineteen ninety two,
a lot of that information wasn't publicly available. Yeah, and I know that
she had reached out to people in law enforcement and talked about the case with
them and talked about just different aspects of law enforcement in the area and things
like that. How she got the information, who knows, But yeah,
it was very striking how accurate Some of it was, And really, Jennifer's
case is pretty much an open book at this point in the documentary, Stephen
going through all of these papers and things, and he was able to get
the case file from when I took over the case, as far as I
know, has not been able to foil the original case file that was lost,
but my understanding is that he does have a copy of it. It's
frustrating to some extent from an investigative standpoint that things like that do find their
way to people who are not investigating it. From a law enforcement standpoint,
and why people leak things, you never know what someone's motive is. Unfortunately,
sometimes information that you wouldn't want out in the public ends up being there.
Jennifer's case is pretty much an open book. I think the only way
for me to portray a story in a book form is to make it fiction
and take some liberties as to what happened, because in the end we have
no idea. Really, at this point, do you think Jennifer Pando's disappearance
can be solved? I think it absolutely. Whether or not it will is
another story. You and I talked earlier about politics in agencies and whether or
not this case from nineteen eighty seven is a priority for the James City County
Police Department. Right now, I can't say I don't know. I know
that there are things that can be done still from an investigative standpoint, that
aren't being done, haven't been done, and probably won't be. In a
perfect world, you'd have unlimited resources to be able to investigate things, and
unfortunately, in the real world, it's not like that. Wendy, thank
you so much for taking some time to talk with us. We really appreciate
it. We hope you'll consider coming back with us as things develop anytime.
Anytime that's going to do it for this episode of Mine Over Murder. As
always, thanks for listening. Kristin Dilly will be back next time, so
if you miss her as much as I do, she'll definitely be back when
she returns from her beachside vacation. Thanks again 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 Dilly. Our logo art
is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud. Mind Over
Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl 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 Mine Over Murder