You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly and
I'm Bill Thomas. Today we're discussing the new HBO series Burden of Proof,
which dropped on June sixth, and we are 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 Dowski were murdered in Williamsburg. Really wasn't on our
radar. Yeah, I have the fuzziest of recollections that I had heard Jennifer
Pandos'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 looked at 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 kareem as close
as it did to Kathy and Beckys. 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, so this
doesn't He'll thank you, dad, But I just put it out of my
mind. And then when somebody wrote to us and said are you paying attention
to the Jennifer Pandos documentary that, I was like, Oh, that's what
my dad was talking about. Okay, the mystery of your dad's clipped message
becomes a little clearer. It still baffled both of us, but we 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 Beking's murder, and
it's just a matter of months then before September nineteen eighty seven, when Robin
Edwards and David Nbling 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 Pendos 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 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 went missing. 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 hmmm.
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 person's case, teenage run away, 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 Pando. So walk us through what we
know about what happened. So, Jennifer Pando's fifteen year old girl. She
went to Maya 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's she
babysat forwould actually come into play a little bit later as a suspect in her
disappearance. 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 and
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 and 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 but writing with their non domin a 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 out journal torn from a notebook in red ink. If I'm not mistaken,
yep, reridd ink. 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 Pendo's family
made. Further that, it reminds them to please cancel her doctor's appointment for
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 owe 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 you at home, only at one of y'all's work.
Do not call the police, you say y'all, She says y'all's. And
by the way, they did do that. They did go to work.
Yeah, they went to work. Do 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 parent's 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 Approve
focus on Stephen Pandos, Jennifer's brother, who's about three to four years older
than she is. He was a college student 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 Kathy'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
move 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 have 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 yeah 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 Steven 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 guest 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. I actually found myself,
I don't do this all that often. Were you yelling at the TV to
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 happened in Burden of
Proof because we do orge 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 house, because this television series is very much worth
watching. Stephen Pando's 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 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 twenty
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 twenty 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 the 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 Steven Pendos, 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. The
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 Steven.
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's
been through. Oh look at that. Oh look law enforcement stonewalling familiar.
Oh look there's it's taking forever to get lab results. Boy, that's familiar.
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 all. Yeah, I don't think comforting is a right 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? 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. We'll be
right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mindover 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 filmmaker that obviously was 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 of 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
Panda'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 to 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 VET, 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. 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 he who
says that it says that who puts that forward to their son? Hypothetically,
I shoved her her, she hit her head, she did like, Oh
my god. Awful for Steven. 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 other is 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 spent 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 Kings Mill 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 gard cards 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 kings Mill
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. King's Mill is and
it's reference to 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 reguardgate. That kings Mill is
definitely the biggest of those and the best established of those. Everybody's favorite hometown
musician Bruce Hornsby, for example, lives in kings Mill. Would be presidential
assassin John Hinckley lived in kings Mill with his parents before the assassination and move
back in with them after the attempted assassination. It is the home to the
very wealthy in Williamsburg. And there are only two ways to get into Kingsmel.
You access King's 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
Eneiserbusch Brewery. So to get into King's Mill. And I know this because
my family has friends in King's Mill, so I spent a great deal of
time in there over the years. The way that you get into King's Mill
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 Dilly's
here to see. The mends has to say yes, please send her on
in. Yes, yes, exactly. So you have to get confirmation from
someone. Got it and I remember this. Like I said, my parents
had friends inside 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 Kingsmeil, meaning the guards, the Kingsmeil Police,
essentially they will find you if you don't have a pass in your car and
they'll pull you over what you do in 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
Kingsmell 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 in or out of Kingsmill 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 okay,
good portion of kings 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 a though
I imagining a potential kidnapper on a boat, I'm not seeing that it is
a great potential possibility for what happened to Jennifer. Yes, so kings Mill
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 kingsmil is it's very large, expansive community. I don't see somebody
parking their car outside of Kingsmell 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 Archers Meet, 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 her jacket
as far as they can tell, given the fact that it was February.
I know it's not freezing cold in Williamsberg 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 plane 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 away when at 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 or
whatever else. Why make yourself walk a mile at least in the dark,
in the freezing cold temperatures of February without a coat. I just 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 in his sister's disappearance. What we find as we head
into episode two is there are twists and turns 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 this 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 to
episode three and four the next day about as early as I could, justifind
getting on the TV, don't watch it. I didn't want to be like,
it's six am and I'm watching crime. I didn't want to do that,
so I waited till 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 this is 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 wait it, 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 minded Murder. We will continue our discussion in our next episode.
That's going to do it for this episode of mind Over Murder. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder is
a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are Bill
Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme
music is by Kevin mcleoud. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl
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finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas five six.
Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder. It