Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
Speaker 1: of our series about the disappearance of Connie Smith. Robin,
Speaker 1: do you want to catch everyone up on what we
Speaker 1: talked about in our previous episode?
Speaker 2: Well, the victim of this Connie Smith, she went missing
Speaker 2: in Salisbury, Connecticut in July of nineteen fifty two. She
Speaker 2: was only ten years old and hailed from a very
Speaker 2: prominent family, as her paternal grandfather had once been the
Speaker 2: governor of Wyoming, and this was her first time at
Speaker 2: summer camp away from her family, because she mostly used
Speaker 2: to spend time on their family's ranch, and this was
Speaker 2: her first time hanging out with other kids. And while
Speaker 2: this has never been confirmed, there have been rumors that
Speaker 2: maybe she was bullied or tormented because she suffered a
Speaker 2: few injuries before she went missing, and while the cover
Speaker 2: stories that they were accidents, there's been speculation that she
Speaker 2: was not getting along well with the other kids at
Speaker 2: camp and maybe got so upset that she wanted to
Speaker 2: go home and contact her parents. Because the morning she
Speaker 2: went missing, while all the other campers were going to breakfast,
Speaker 2: Connie just decided to leave the campground and a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of witnesses saw her walking alone down a road
Speaker 2: towards the nearest town, but before she arrived there, she
Speaker 2: just vanished without a trace, and the most logical explanation
Speaker 2: is that she may have been picked up with someone
Speaker 2: who harmed her. But she has not been seen since,
Speaker 2: and while they have looked at a number of potential
Speaker 2: suspects over the years, they haven't found any evidence implicating anyone.
Speaker 2: Many years later, there would be a promising lead when
Speaker 2: the authorities got an anonymous letter that Connie was a
Speaker 2: unidentified child known only as Little Miss X, whose skeleton
Speaker 2: remains have been found in Arizona in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 2: They compared dental records at the time and were inclined
Speaker 2: to believe that it wasn't Connie, but there's been speculation
Speaker 2: that the dental testing back then was flawed, so they
Speaker 2: wanted to do DNA testing, But unfortunately, little Miss X
Speaker 2: is buried somewhere, and because records weren't kept, they don't
Speaker 2: know the exact spot she's buried at, so they've been
Speaker 2: unable to exhume her to do the DNA comparison. So unfortunately,
Speaker 2: after over seventy years, Connie is still a missing person
Speaker 2: that we don't know what happened to her. So this
Speaker 2: is one of those missing persons cases where the explanation
Speaker 2: for what actually happened in the victim seems fairly obvious.
Speaker 2: Since Connie was last seen attempting a hitchhike on Route
Speaker 2: forty four, it's likely that she was picked up by
Speaker 2: an unknown person who did her harm, and unfortunately, this
Speaker 2: happened to take place during a narrow window of time
Speaker 2: when no one else was around. If Connie was taken
Speaker 2: away in a vehicle, then she could have been murdered
Speaker 2: at an entirely different location outside the search area, which
Speaker 2: is why no one ever found her. But even so,
Speaker 2: there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the
Speaker 2: circumstances of why Connie wound up in this situation to
Speaker 2: begin with, and the case also has a number of
Speaker 2: interesting side stories which may or may not be connected.
Speaker 2: In missing children's cases, it's always frustrating when the victim
Speaker 2: is last seen at a location they had no reason
Speaker 2: to be at. One of the most famous examples of
Speaker 2: this is the disappearance of Asia Degree, which we briefly
Speaker 2: talked about on our last episode, as she inexplicably left
Speaker 2: her home in the middle of the night and was
Speaker 2: last seen walking down the road by motorists before she vanished.
Speaker 2: The circumstances here are a bit similar, except that it's
Speaker 2: not hard to dream up a logical reason for why
Speaker 2: Connie may have wanted to walk away from Camp Sloane.
Speaker 2: In the preceding twelve hours or so, she suffered a
Speaker 2: bruised tip, a bloody nose, and broken eyeglasses, and while
Speaker 2: the cover story is that these incidents were purely accidental,
Speaker 2: a number of people suspect that Connie was being violently
Speaker 2: bullied and just decided that enough was enough. It's really
Speaker 2: hard to get a handle on what exactly happened to
Speaker 2: Connie before she left the camp, as almost no details
Speaker 2: have ever been released publicly about the other girls she
Speaker 2: was sharing a tent with, and that's understandable since they
Speaker 2: were all miners and deserved to have their names kept private.
Speaker 2: But it's easy to come up with reasons why there
Speaker 2: might have been some friction, especially when you consider that
Speaker 2: this was the first time Connie had ever attended summer camp,
Speaker 2: and she had probably never spent this much time away
Speaker 2: from her family before. All of these other girls came
Speaker 2: from the big city, whereas Connie came from a wealthy,
Speaker 2: privileged family who lived on her large ranch, and she
Speaker 2: had a more tom boyish personality. You also have to
Speaker 2: factor in that Conyie was quite tall for her age
Speaker 2: and had developed earlier than normal at age ten, So
Speaker 2: you can see why she might have been an ideal
Speaker 2: target for a group of bullying mean girls.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I could absolutely see that.
Speaker 4: And I could see where as a young girl who's
Speaker 4: never been really a from your family and you're with
Speaker 4: kiddos that don't have a whole lot of similarities with you,
Speaker 4: feeling like the odd one out. You're more tomboyish, you
Speaker 4: come from a different ranching style, not the big city,
Speaker 4: And so I could see that kind of mean girl
Speaker 4: mentality where she might be the target of kid's abuse.
Speaker 4: I also could see where there's a chance that maybe
Speaker 4: there's a young counselor or something there who gets into
Speaker 4: an altercation with her. You know, they always have things
Speaker 4: like junior counselors and kids that are fifteen sixteen helping
Speaker 4: to lead a troop, and so who knows if there
Speaker 4: was an issue like that, or even worse, an adult
Speaker 4: who could have been targeting.
Speaker 3: Connie as well.
Speaker 4: But it's it's really interesting because if you remember us talking,
Speaker 4: she had had visit from family members and talked about
Speaker 4: actually wanting to stay longer.
Speaker 3: So what's really.
Speaker 4: Sad is it it sounds like this almost took a
Speaker 4: really sudden turn for her where I feel like, had
Speaker 4: she been a target, had she been bullied, especially physically hurt,
Speaker 4: when her family visited, I don't think she'd be asking
Speaker 4: to stay longer. I think she'd be like you to
Speaker 4: get me out of here. But she wanted to stay.
Speaker 2: More, yeah, exactly, which makes me wonder if something bad
Speaker 2: didn't happen until after her visit from her family. And
Speaker 2: it is kind of a shame that none of these
Speaker 2: other kids have spoken out publicly about their experiences with Connie.
Speaker 2: I mean, at the time, obviously, because they were miners,
Speaker 2: they wanted to keep their identity secret. But I've kind
Speaker 2: of hoped that as the years went on and they
Speaker 2: became adults, more of them would have opened up and
Speaker 2: confirmed that, yes, Connie was being treated badly or so
Speaker 2: and so did this to her. But surprisingly they'd been
Speaker 2: silent about it. So that's why I'm not willing to
Speaker 2: rule out the possibility that maybe she was being tormented
Speaker 2: by an adult, that maybe someone who worked for the
Speaker 2: camp may have been molesting her or something, and that's
Speaker 2: what caused her to run away. And because the predator
Speaker 2: was the only one who knew about this, that's why
Speaker 2: no one has ever found out about it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting how Connie gave her mother and grandmother the
Speaker 1: impression that she was having such a great time at camp.
Speaker 1: It is possible that she was just putting on a
Speaker 1: happy face to worrying them, particularly since Connie was reportedly
Speaker 1: seen crying right after they left during their last visit.
Speaker 1: And of course, Alice Walsh, one of the last witnesses
Speaker 1: to see Connie on the morning she disappeared, would report
Speaker 1: that Connie appeared to have been crying when she gave
Speaker 1: her directions to Lakeville. If Connie's eyeglasses were broken intentionally
Speaker 1: by her tent mates, then I'm guessing this was her
Speaker 1: breaking point, since it sounds like she could barely see
Speaker 1: anything at all without them. Since the kids were discouraged
Speaker 1: from using the telephone at camp, it seems pretty believable
Speaker 1: that Connie was heading into Lakeville in order to find
Speaker 1: a payphone to call her mother and planned to ask
Speaker 1: her to come pick her up and take her home.
Speaker 1: But I also could not overlook the fact that Connie
Speaker 1: was only about a half mile outside of Lakeville when
Speaker 1: she was seen sticking out her thumb, and given that
Speaker 1: she had already walked nearly a mile and a half
Speaker 1: by this point, it's a bit odd that she would
Speaker 1: elect a hitchhike when she was such a short distance away. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: she knocked on Alice Walsh's front door to ask for
Speaker 1: directions to Lakeville, So if Connie was planning to call
Speaker 1: her mother, she could have conceivably asked whal she used
Speaker 1: her phone, rather than finding a payphone in town. This
Speaker 1: is what makes me wonder if perhaps Connie was hitchhiking
Speaker 1: in hopes that somebody would give her a ride to
Speaker 1: her grandmother's house in Greenwich, as it was located about
Speaker 1: eighty miles south and her mother was spending the summer there.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, Connie did leave all her
Speaker 1: extra clothing and belongings behind the camp, which seems to
Speaker 1: indicate that she was planning to return at some point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the part that's really sad, because you think
Speaker 4: about her trip to Alice Walsh's house. And so, like
Speaker 4: you said, why not just ask to use her home phone?
Speaker 3: Why would you continue to walk?
Speaker 4: You had the confidence to go and knock on Alice
Speaker 4: Walsh's front door, why not just say can you help me?
Speaker 3: Can you help me? Call my mom?
Speaker 4: I'm wondering, I'm wondering why why was she so set
Speaker 4: on this location that she needed to go to that
Speaker 4: was not convenient? It was not something we know her
Speaker 4: to be familiar with, and it was such a determined
Speaker 4: point it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's
Speaker 4: almost like, if it was not a modern case, I'd
Speaker 4: say it had someone connected with her own technology and
Speaker 4: said meet me there. But this is an older case
Speaker 4: that didn't happen in this one. So why why was
Speaker 4: it that she needed to get to Lakesville?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a big mystery. I mean, I have
Speaker 2: thought about the possibility that if she was being groomed
Speaker 2: by an adult, perhaps this person said leave the campgrounds
Speaker 2: and meet me in Lakeville. But they checked with all
Speaker 2: the witnesses there and no one recalled seeing her in
Speaker 2: the town that morning, So it does seem clear that
Speaker 2: something happened before she arrived. So you're thinking, if there
Speaker 2: was some predator who was grooming her, why would they
Speaker 2: pick her up before she even arrived in town unless
Speaker 2: they wanted to do something to her before she was
Speaker 2: seen by any more witnesses.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. If you're going to
Speaker 1: pick her up on the side of the road with
Speaker 1: the least amount of eyeballs on her, you've got less
Speaker 1: chance than any eye with seeing her once you go to town.
Speaker 1: I don't know how big the town was, but it
Speaker 1: sounds like you could then interact with a lot of
Speaker 1: these people. They could see your face, and then your
Speaker 1: chance of being identified as being the last person with
Speaker 1: her would kind of go up exponentially.
Speaker 2: Now I should mention that there's been speculation that Camp
Speaker 2: Sloane orchestrated some sort of cover up, especially since the
Speaker 2: camp director, Ernest Roberts, had a bit of a shady history.
Speaker 2: The camp was once implicated in a scandal when an
Speaker 2: eleven year old boy died there in nineteen forty after
Speaker 2: contracting septocemia. It turned out the camp's doctor at the
Speaker 2: time was not licensed to practice medicine, and since Roberts
Speaker 2: knew about this, he was arrested and received a fine
Speaker 2: in spite of this. Roberts was still working against the
Speaker 2: camp's director in nineteen fifty two and known for being
Speaker 2: very protective of his camp's image. Since Connie was first
Speaker 2: noticed to be missing at around eight forty five and
Speaker 2: Roberts did not notify the police for nearly three hours,
Speaker 2: I've seen presented is that Connie's bullying at the hands
Speaker 2: of her tent mates escalated so out of control that
Speaker 2: she wound up dead and everyone involved covered the whole
Speaker 2: thing up by hiding her body. But I don't find
Speaker 2: this likely at all. We have no fewer than nine
Speaker 2: eye witnesses placing Knnie outside Camp Sloan on Indian Mountain
Speaker 2: Road and Route forty four at the exact same time
Speaker 2: the other campers would have been at the mess hall
Speaker 2: having breakfast, so she clearly left of her own volition.
Speaker 2: While Connie's tentmates may have done something to compel her
Speaker 2: to walk away from the campground, they clearly had no
Speaker 2: involvement in her actual disappearance. Another theory I've seen pushed
Speaker 2: forward is that Connie was being molested by someone who
Speaker 2: worked at the camp, which is why she appeared to
Speaker 2: be so upset. That morning. Of course, that's certainly not impossible,
Speaker 2: but no evidence was ever found to support this theory.
Speaker 4: I've mentioned that already. I think it is a possibility.
Speaker 4: I think again, it could be an older camper. I
Speaker 4: think it could be an older youth helper because I
Speaker 4: remember I remember being fish teen in charge of kids
Speaker 4: at a summer camp, right, And it could be also.
Speaker 4: And remember she looks older than she is, So if
Speaker 4: a fifteen year old camp counselor thought she was thirteen,
Speaker 4: you know, is that is that something that could have
Speaker 4: been happening? And then you have the chance that maybe
Speaker 4: there's an adult employee at the camp.
Speaker 3: Now. To get away again, all you got to do is.
Speaker 4: Get off that campground and get to somebody, and she
Speaker 4: did that multiple times she was seen.
Speaker 3: But again, this is a ten year old.
Speaker 4: So I'm thinking, Okay, kiddo, get off the property, get
Speaker 4: to someone who's safe, who's not related to the camp,
Speaker 4: and ask for help. But at ten, does she have
Speaker 4: a safe person in Lakesville? Does she have a place
Speaker 4: they went on a field trip with camp, and she
Speaker 4: knows if I could just get back to that ice
Speaker 4: cream shop, if I could just get back to this place,
Speaker 4: I could call my mom. You know, I got to
Speaker 4: remind myself, this is a ten year old, so all
Speaker 4: of the times I go, why didn't you just tell
Speaker 4: someone or ask for help? We don't know what she
Speaker 4: was thinking in the of a child.
Speaker 1: I wish we knew more about the staff too. Like
Speaker 1: I can think back to I went to Bible camp
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid till from like I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe six until the age of ten, and
Speaker 1: the last year that I went there, so I would
Speaker 1: have been the same age. I remember being in love
Speaker 1: with this camp counselor all the girls were. He was
Speaker 1: about sixteen, and everybody called him mister Jeff. And so
Speaker 1: I could see a situation or a scenario where somebody
Speaker 1: who all these young girls think is super attractive, but
Speaker 1: their children and that older individual could potentially groom them.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a scenario like that. So I can totally
Speaker 1: see what you're saying, Ash, that makes complete sense. And
Speaker 1: I could see a scenario where something happened and she
Speaker 1: wasn't happy about it, and so she needed to get
Speaker 1: off the grounds of the camp in order to seek help.
Speaker 1: But she didn't feel safe calling from there, and she
Speaker 1: needed to get that physical distance in order to feel safe.
Speaker 2: That would make sense, Like it's never been specified if
Speaker 2: she had ever been to Lake Phill before. I know,
Speaker 2: ashe mentioned the possibility of a field trip, but I
Speaker 2: don't know if they ever did that. So since she
Speaker 2: had to stop past for directions, she probably was not
Speaker 2: familiar with the area and maybe didn't know anyone was there.
Speaker 2: But it could be, like you said, a thing where
Speaker 2: she was upset because this older tamp counselor she had
Speaker 2: a crush on was not interested in her. So she
Speaker 2: just decided she had to leave the campground and go anywhere,
Speaker 2: and it didn't really matter where.
Speaker 3: It was, yeah, or was he interested in her?
Speaker 4: And it went, it went, you know, quickly became a
Speaker 4: physical thing, and she became uncomfortable and said, what just happened?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: And again think about the time. This is back in
Speaker 4: the fifties, and so they're not going to be able
Speaker 4: to understand, no talk about any kind of inappropriate behavior
Speaker 4: because it was very hush hush, you didn't talk about it,
Speaker 4: and if you did talk about it, it was your fault.
Speaker 4: And so I could see here if she was like, oh,
Speaker 4: I love mister Jeff, he's so cute, and then mister
Speaker 4: Jeff says, ooh, I think you're cute too, Connie, And
Speaker 4: all of a sudden it goes from sweet to scary
Speaker 4: and then too dangerous and then to hurtful. I could
Speaker 4: see her really not knowing what else to do. I
Speaker 4: just have to get away. And so back then, remember
Speaker 4: she couldn't say, hey, this man just hurt me. This
Speaker 4: man made me feel uncomfortable. She would have never even
Speaker 4: heard what it means to be hurt by an adult. Right,
Speaker 4: all adults were trusted. You listen to your elders, You
Speaker 4: didn't talk back, you didn't talk bad about adults. So
Speaker 4: very very different times she was living in too.
Speaker 1: I totally get that. And I'm gonna share a story
Speaker 1: with you guys. That is like the creepiest story about
Speaker 1: my former neighbor who I was in love with. I
Speaker 1: was twelve years old, if he lived next door to
Speaker 1: my parents. He was in his last year of university,
Speaker 1: and I thought he was so smart and so hot.
Speaker 1: And I remember I would sit out in the summer
Speaker 1: and I would read books on the patio so that
Speaker 1: I could see him. He would lend me his books
Speaker 1: and we would talk about books because something we were
Speaker 1: both interested in. And then one day he invited me
Speaker 1: over to go like look at his library or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he was this I think he was twenty one
Speaker 1: at the time. I was twelve. He tried to hook
Speaker 1: up with me, and I remember just being like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm in love with him, but like, I'm
Speaker 1: not ready for this. What is happening. This is wrong,
Speaker 1: and I ran away and I never thought out on
Speaker 1: my patio again. But you can see how a scenario
Speaker 1: with somebody who's older, they can manipulate a situation and
Speaker 1: they could potentially have put Connie in a situation that
Speaker 1: she just wasn't ready for and that no child should
Speaker 1: have been put in in the first place.
Speaker 2: That's very creepy. Do you know whatever happened to that guy?
Speaker 2: Did he ever get in trouble with the law?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. But the funny thing is his
Speaker 1: mom used to be my second grade teacher, and she
Speaker 1: used to be the mayor of where I grew up.
Speaker 1: So I was one of those weird things where like
Speaker 1: I literally never told anybody, because I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever told anybody this story so weird that I just
Speaker 1: said it. This podcast yeah, it just it just triggered
Speaker 1: that memory for me. It wasn't like he was forceful
Speaker 1: or like whatever, But it's just the whole idea that
Speaker 1: a twenty one year old is going to try to
Speaker 1: make a move sexually on a child is just creepy
Speaker 1: enough as it is without any force being applied.
Speaker 4: I'm so thankful as a mother because Jewels, you're not alone.
Speaker 4: Thank you for sharing that. That's scary, but I mean,
Speaker 4: it happened, and so you're not alone. I mean I
Speaker 4: can think back to many inappropriate age gap relationships that
Speaker 4: I had. They didn't go anywhere, right, there was no
Speaker 4: physical movement, but there was definitely emotional grooming. And so
Speaker 4: I talk so openly with Reagan and my other baby.
Speaker 4: I talk so openly about hey, this is what is real, right,
Speaker 4: this is what is safe conversation with an adult. You
Speaker 4: are never to be viewed as super special where you
Speaker 4: need alone time with them, right, There's no reason that
Speaker 4: you need extra training with them alone, none of this.
Speaker 4: Because you know you're special, but no adult needs to
Speaker 4: single you out as so special that other students couldn't
Speaker 4: be around you, right, or other people couldn't be with you,
Speaker 4: or an older boy. As much as as cute as
Speaker 4: he is, there's no reason you need to be alone
Speaker 4: with him.
Speaker 3: And here's why.
Speaker 4: And it's sad we have to have those conversations. But again,
Speaker 4: in Connie's day, they weren't having those conversations.
Speaker 1: And I think it's so important that you're having those
Speaker 1: conversations with Reagan and that you're letting her know that
Speaker 1: that is not okay, because I could see a scenario
Speaker 1: where if that went down differently for me, and pressure
Speaker 1: was applied and force was used, that there would be
Speaker 1: that guilt and that shame and you wouldn't feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: It would be like I was in love with him.
Speaker 1: I did ABC and D, so maybe I was asking
Speaker 1: for it would have been the way that my twelve
Speaker 1: year old brain likely would have processed that. So I'm
Speaker 1: glad that nothing happened, but I'm so happy that today
Speaker 1: these conversations are being had with young girls and young women,
Speaker 1: that there are these people out here who will try
Speaker 1: to take advantage of you, and it can look like love,
Speaker 1: but it definitely isn't that. The fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is that the last confirmed sighting of Connie occurred on
Speaker 1: Route forty four, a half mile outside of Lakeville at
Speaker 1: eight forty five am. Even though the village was a
Speaker 1: pretty busy place at that time of the morning because
Speaker 1: a number of people were opening up their businesses, none
Speaker 1: of them remembered seeing Connie, so it's very likely that
Speaker 1: an unknown motorist picked up Connie before she made it
Speaker 1: to Lakeville. Another sad detail about this case is that
Speaker 1: many of the witnesses who saw or interacted with Connie
Speaker 1: after she left the camp that morning have expressed regret
Speaker 1: that they didn't do more to assist her. They pretty
Speaker 1: much all mistakenly assumed that Connie was a teenager and
Speaker 1: were genuinely surprised to learn that she was only ten
Speaker 1: years old. It probably should have been a major warning
Speaker 1: sign to see a ten year old hitchhiking, but from
Speaker 1: a brief glance at her, the witnesses probably thought she
Speaker 1: was old enough to fend for herself. You also have
Speaker 1: to remember that nineteen fift was simply a much different time,
Speaker 1: and a young girl being abducted or murdered while walking
Speaker 1: alone down a country road on a sunny morning was
Speaker 1: just not a thought which popped into most people's heads
Speaker 1: back then. Whatever happened, it sounds like there is no
Speaker 1: lack of effort to find Connie, and I imagine that
Speaker 1: if a disappearance like this took place today involving a
Speaker 1: girl from an affluent family whose grandfather was a former governor,
Speaker 1: it would be all over the media NonStop. Since Connie's
Speaker 1: parents were divorced during a time period, but that sort
Speaker 1: of thing was a lot more uncommon. There was some
Speaker 1: initial speculation that one parent may have kidnap Connie to
Speaker 1: keep her away from the other, but that theory doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense at all, since the Smith's divorce was pretty amicable,
Speaker 1: as both parents got to live on the same property
Speaker 1: and see Connie whenever they wanted. The ransom kidnapping theory
Speaker 1: also doesn't work, as it's very unlikely that anyone could
Speaker 1: have predicted Connie would leave the camp and be walking
Speaker 1: down the road alone on that particular morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4: At first, I had asked, is there any chance that
Speaker 4: someone knew she was the governor's daughter and that you know,
Speaker 4: her granddaughter, and that you know, maybe she was going
Speaker 4: to be at this camp. But again, how the heck
Speaker 4: would they even know she had left the camp? All
Speaker 4: of these things just don't line up, and so it's
Speaker 4: either one of two things. To me. Somebody had told
Speaker 4: her you need to meet me in Lakeville, and it's
Speaker 4: an adult or an older person grooming her. You meet
Speaker 4: me there, I'm going to take you away. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: rescue you from this right, making her some kind of promise.
Speaker 4: I'll help you get home to your family. Whatever it is,
Speaker 4: someone's told her to go, or she's just set off
Speaker 4: ready to go. She doesn't have anyone she's meeting. She
Speaker 4: just has a goal to get to Lakeville and then
Speaker 4: has some other plan and she's abducted by an opportunistic
Speaker 4: offender and predator. I think the second one I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm torn between those two. But go back to what
Speaker 4: you said just a second ago, when you said many
Speaker 4: of these people either expressed or surely fell.
Speaker 3: Like they had failed, Connie.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you, oh my lord, even with the information
Speaker 4: that I have today, there have been times as a woman,
Speaker 4: a mother, a sister, a daughter, that I've seen things
Speaker 4: and it's eaten me alive that i didn't say something.
Speaker 4: And then there's times that I've said something and I've
Speaker 4: looked like an absolute lunatic and so even today, having
Speaker 4: all this knowledge and being someone who's very aware of
Speaker 4: the realities of criminal behavior and victimization and things like that,
Speaker 4: I struggle to say, Hey, I'm going to do something
Speaker 4: more here, right, I'm going to make an assumption that
Speaker 4: something bad is going on here, and I'm going to
Speaker 4: say something.
Speaker 3: I've lost friends over it.
Speaker 4: I've separated, you know, Reagan from friends, and it's been heartbreaking.
Speaker 4: And sometimes I'm wrong and I feel like a fool.
Speaker 4: And then sometimes I don't say anything and I feel heartbroken.
Speaker 4: And so it's a hard thing now to navigate, but
Speaker 4: I do try to say things like I remember we
Speaker 4: had a little girl over and she was messaging this
Speaker 4: quote seventeen year old boy. She's like thirteen, And I
Speaker 4: called her mom and I said, we don't have a
Speaker 4: cell phone here. I don't mind that your baby has
Speaker 4: a cell phone to check in, but I wanted to
Speaker 4: know that she's supposedly messaging with an older boy. And
Speaker 4: I said, if it was me, I would want her
Speaker 4: cell phone and I would want to know who she
Speaker 4: was communicating with. Sure Enough, when that baby got home
Speaker 4: and mom got her phone, it was a twenty two
Speaker 4: year old boy who was grooming this thirteen year old child.
Speaker 4: And so you know, sometimes you say it you're right,
Speaker 4: sometimes you say it you're wrong, and sometimes you don't
Speaker 4: know how to say it. So back in the fifties,
Speaker 4: can you imagine you see this young kid crying walking
Speaker 4: down the road that you think is a teenager. We
Speaker 4: didn't talk about domestic violence, we didn't talk about sexual abuse,
Speaker 4: and we just didn't talk about trauma in general. So
Speaker 4: whatever was going on, I'm sure they said, like, that's
Speaker 4: their business, she'll figure it out and she's safe. So
Speaker 4: I mean, yes, would they feel guilt, but should they
Speaker 4: know it's it? They didn't know that something was going on,
Speaker 4: Nor did they know that they're likely was an opportunistic
Speaker 4: predator waiting around the corner.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely. Like this is not the first case
Speaker 2: I've seen involving missing children from like the nineteen forties
Speaker 2: or nineteen fifties where people just felt they should have
Speaker 2: done more where they saw a child in a situation
Speaker 2: that could have been potentially dangerous, but they just didn't
Speaker 2: think that way because it was a much more innocent time.
Speaker 2: I recently did a case about three boys who went
Speaker 2: missing from the nineteen fifties, and their parents were approached
Speaker 2: with the idea that they were allured by the child predator,
Speaker 2: and they flat out said, we had no idea that
Speaker 2: child predators or child molesters even existed back then, and
Speaker 2: the first time when they told us about it, because
Speaker 2: you just didn't learn about that stuff back in the fifties.
Speaker 2: And it's because of cases where children go missing and
Speaker 2: are harmed that they've now learned to be more cautious.
Speaker 2: This definitely seems like a crime up opportunity from a predator.
Speaker 2: So let's look at possible suspects. I guess the most
Speaker 2: prominent one is William Henry Redmond, whom we know already
Speaker 2: murdered one girl the year before Connie went missing, and
Speaker 2: allegedly confessed to killing at least three more girls which
Speaker 2: were never linked to them. Redman has been looked at
Speaker 2: as a possible suspect in numerous cold cases from the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties involving young girls, including the unsolved nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: one disappearance of ten year old Beverly Potts, who vanished
Speaker 2: while attending a summer festival at a park in Cleveland.
Speaker 2: Redmond did have a nomadic lifestyle as a carnival worker
Speaker 2: during this time period, a profession which allowed him to
Speaker 2: travel to different states and be in the company of
Speaker 2: numerous potential victims to prey on. However, it's worth noting
Speaker 2: that by the time Connie disappeared, Redmond was already a
Speaker 2: wanted fugitive for the murder of Jane Marie Althoff, and
Speaker 2: no one could find him until he was tracked down
Speaker 2: in Nebraska over three decades later, so they'd never been
Speaker 2: able to determine if Redmond could have been in Connecticut
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty two. The only reason Redmen even popped
Speaker 2: up on the radar as a potential suspect was because
Speaker 2: of a state trooper, Leo Turkhot, remembering an odd phone
Speaker 2: call he received from a man named William Dugan who
Speaker 2: said he was a former carnival worker who had information
Speaker 2: about Connie's disappearance. It's pretty amazing that Turcott was able
Speaker 2: to remember this phone call nearly thirty three years later,
Speaker 2: so kudos to him. But other than the former carnival
Speaker 2: worker connection, there really isn't much else to suggest that
Speaker 2: Redmond might have been the mysterious William Dugan. I would
Speaker 2: not be surprised at all if Redmond really was responsible
Speaker 2: for the mergers of three other girls. But there really
Speaker 2: isn't anything to conclusively prove or disprove that he cross
Speaker 2: paths with Connie, and the connection to him is tenuous
Speaker 2: at best. It is unfortunate that Redmond was already seriously
Speaker 2: ill by the time he was arrested, as this may
Speaker 2: have prevented information about additional crimes he committed from surfcing.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, is it possible that he was linked to this.
Speaker 4: It's possible, but I think it's a very very loose connection.
Speaker 4: It's just interesting, right, But what's really intriguing to me
Speaker 4: is that you'll hear these cases where Okay, we know
Speaker 4: that there was this known child sex predator writer, there's
Speaker 4: this known assailant that has this mo that travels from
Speaker 4: here to hear to hear. But what's the scarier reality
Speaker 4: is that there's probably ten men just like him in
Speaker 4: that town. So it's like, you know, are they abusing
Speaker 4: and then killing the kids?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: Are there people that are predating on our children in
Speaker 4: our communities?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: And so are there these people that we say, oh,
Speaker 4: was there any link to Connecticut? You know, how many
Speaker 4: people in Connecticut would have been prone to hurt somebody
Speaker 4: if given the opportunity. So, yes, it's possible, But my goodness,
Speaker 4: I bet there were thousands of very questionable men in
Speaker 4: that area, right in that state that they could have said, oh,
Speaker 4: we know this person's record, we know this person's record.
Speaker 4: And then I'm even more horrifying, what about the ones
Speaker 4: who have never been caught that are doing this to children?
Speaker 4: So Connie is, let's say taken and possibly killed, But
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean there weren't other children before that that
Speaker 4: were attacked and abused by this person and maybe not
Speaker 4: killed or raised such a media fuzz.
Speaker 1: It feels like Henry le Lucas, Like it isn't always
Speaker 1: Henry le.
Speaker 4: Lucas right right right where they're looking for someone who
Speaker 4: has this repetitive history.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we see that a lot in missing children's
Speaker 2: cases today, where investigators will check into the nose registered
Speaker 2: sex offenders living in the same area and then you
Speaker 2: find out, wow, that's a lot of sex offenders. I
Speaker 2: had no idea there were so many living together, that
Speaker 2: so many of them existed, And I can only imagine
Speaker 2: what it was like back then in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: where there was no sex offender registry. So you have
Speaker 2: a lot of people possibly living in this community who
Speaker 2: have harmed and abused children, but nobody knows about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I challenge everybody to go look up their address.
Speaker 3: It's horrifying. I'm like, oh.
Speaker 4: Wait, what a level three offender three doors down. That's adorable.
Speaker 4: You know, it's really really scary. And sometimes it's people
Speaker 4: you would not suspect. When we listen to the news
Speaker 4: and we're watching, you go oh wow, okay, And they're
Speaker 4: quite common and now today they're recognized. Back in the fifties,
Speaker 4: they didn't even recognize that. You wouldn't have gotten punished
Speaker 4: probably if you were caught hurting children. So children were
Speaker 4: part property and the myths and misconceptions around abuse of
Speaker 4: children was very disturbing back then. So, man, this is
Speaker 4: complicated now.
Speaker 1: One lead involving a potential suspect, which turned out to
Speaker 1: be a hoax, was the confession by Frederick Pope, who
Speaker 1: claimed that he ended accomplice Jack Walker, picked up Connie
Speaker 1: hitchhiking before Walker killed her, They buried her remains, and
Speaker 1: he killed Walker in retaliation. Well, I see no reason
Speaker 1: to believe this story is true, as the red flag
Speaker 1: was his claim that Connie wanted to ride back home
Speaker 1: to Wyoming. Given that Wyoming is nearly two thousand miles
Speaker 1: away from Connecticut, I find it a lot more likely
Speaker 1: that if Connie wanted to visit her parents, she would
Speaker 1: have asked for a ride to see her mother in
Speaker 1: Greenwich instead. It became a parent that Pope completely made
Speaker 1: the story up and that this Jack Walker never existed.
Speaker 1: But the only reason we've mentioned this again is because
Speaker 1: of the fact that Pope claimed that Connie's remains were
Speaker 1: buried in Arizona. Pope's confession took place in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 1: Little Miss X's remains were discovered in Arizona five years later,
Speaker 1: and the Connecticut State Police received an anonymous letter from
Speaker 1: Colorado claiming little Miss X was Connie in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: and as far as I know, the writer of the
Speaker 1: letter has never been identified. The Arizona connection is probably
Speaker 1: nothing more than a coincidence. And I know that Connie's
Speaker 1: case received a whole bunch of false tips, but this
Speaker 1: situation is pretty odd. A bunch of ten year anniversary
Speaker 1: articles were published about Connie's case during the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, so it's probably not surprising that the
Speaker 1: police got some new leads. But how did this letter
Speaker 1: writer know about little Miss X. These days, online sleus
Speaker 1: try to match up missing people and una identified decedents
Speaker 1: all the time by looking up their profile pages at
Speaker 1: websites like the Dough Network. But this was the pre
Speaker 1: internet world of nineteen sixty two, and Arizona and Connecticut
Speaker 1: are a great distance apart. So I wonder who might
Speaker 1: have had the knowledge about both of these cases, as
Speaker 1: I don't think little Miss X got nearly as much
Speaker 1: publicity as Connie's disappearance did. So now we have to
Speaker 1: talk more about little Miss X, which is quite an
Speaker 1: interesting unsolved mystery in its own right. For starters, I'm
Speaker 1: going to express my skepticism that little Miss X and
Speaker 1: CONNYE are one and the same. I know there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of debate about whether the methods used to
Speaker 1: rule Kanye out via dental records in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: were accurate, but even if you ignore all that, the
Speaker 1: facts just don't fit. Little Miss X was believed to
Speaker 1: have been dead approximately nine to eighteen months before her
Speaker 1: remains were found but kanye had been missing for over
Speaker 1: six years by that point. Unless someone abducted Kanyie and
Speaker 1: was holding her in captivity for a few years before
Speaker 1: she was killed, it doesn't make sense for the remains
Speaker 1: to be her, especially when you consider that Arizona is
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the country. But the big
Speaker 1: question is if little Miss X isn't Connie, then.
Speaker 3: Who is she?
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, So little Miss X has a family too,
Speaker 4: Little Miss X, no matter what kind of background she had,
Speaker 4: she's somebody's person. And so the fact that there was
Speaker 4: this little unidentified body there and then we're also still
Speaker 4: missing Connie is incredibly traumatic. I don't think that little
Speaker 4: Miss X and Connie are the same person. My what
Speaker 4: I would give if we could compare them now, because
Speaker 4: we do have relatives who have signed up to have
Speaker 4: DNA on file four Connie, and so if little Miss X,
Speaker 4: if we had any kind of remnants of that that
Speaker 4: little girl in her remains, then you'd be able to
Speaker 4: conclusively say, because when there's that question mark, it's a
Speaker 4: lead still. But in my mind, this is not the
Speaker 4: same person.
Speaker 2: Well, the most bizarre aspect of this case is that
Speaker 2: even though little Miss X's remains were unclothed when she
Speaker 2: was found. The clothing suddenly appeared when the scene was
Speaker 2: searched again a short time later. On the surface, it
Speaker 2: appears like the clothing was planted there, and even if
Speaker 2: you believe investigators simply missed it during the initial search,
Speaker 2: the clothes still appeared to be way too big for
Speaker 2: Little Miss X and probably did not belong to her.
Speaker 2: So now we have to sag into our third unsolved
Speaker 2: cold case on this series of episodes, and that's the
Speaker 2: disappearances of Michael Griffin and Donnis Pinky Redman. They went
Speaker 2: missing eight months before Little Miss X was found, and man,
Speaker 2: I really wish there was more information out there about
Speaker 2: this one. The only sources I could find were their
Speaker 2: profile page is at the Charlie Project and the Dough Network,
Speaker 2: which only have brief summaries and leave me with so
Speaker 2: many questions. There are good reasons to believe there might
Speaker 2: be a connection to the Little Miss X case. A
Speaker 2: nail file case with the initials p R, which possibly
Speaker 2: stood for Pinky Redmen, were found near the scene. The
Speaker 2: clothing Pinky was last seen wearing seems similar to the
Speaker 2: clothes that were there and Michael's abandoned car was discovered
Speaker 2: in the nearby town of Williams. Little Miss X's profile
Speaker 2: page of the Dough Network says that Pinky was excluded
Speaker 2: as being her, but it doesn't specify how they determined that,
Speaker 2: since they've been unable to find little Miss X's remains
Speaker 2: and extract DNA from her. But I think they probably
Speaker 2: came to that conclusion based on the fact that little
Speaker 2: Miss X had reddish brown hair and may have been Hispanic,
Speaker 2: whereas Pinky was pale skinned and had strawberry blonde hair. However,
Speaker 2: if the clothing and nail file case found near Little
Speaker 2: Miss X's murder scene did belong to Pinky, then I
Speaker 2: have to believe the cases are connected, because it would
Speaker 2: otherwise be a massive coincidence that evidence from two separate
Speaker 2: crimes would be disposed of in that same remote area.
Speaker 2: I suppose an alternate explanation is that whoever was responsible
Speaker 2: for Pinky's disappearance read about the discovery of Little Miss
Speaker 2: X in the papers and then decided to plant Pinky's
Speaker 2: items at the scene, hoping that investigators would automatically assume
Speaker 2: they belonged to little Miss X. It's possible that little
Speaker 2: Miss X, Pinky Redman, and Michael Griffin were all murdered
Speaker 2: by the same person, but since Michael was never found,
Speaker 2: for all we know, perhaps he could have killed the
Speaker 2: two females and went on the run. But without more
Speaker 2: information about Michael and Pinky's cases, I can't make any conclusions.
Speaker 2: This whole story involving Little Miss X, Pinky, and Michael
Speaker 2: is a pretty intriguing mystery within a mystery, but I
Speaker 2: ultimately feel it doesn't have any connection to Connie's disappearance.
Speaker 2: All that being said, it sounds like investigators from the
Speaker 2: Coconino County Sheriff's Office were making a concerted effort to
Speaker 2: try and find Little Miss X's burial spots and recover
Speaker 2: her remains, and I definitely hope they're successful and are
Speaker 2: able to extract some DNA. Even though I don't believe
Speaker 2: she is Connie, little Miss X is still a murdered child,
Speaker 2: was gone unclaim for nearly seventy years, and extracting your
Speaker 2: DNA will go a long way at helping her get
Speaker 2: her name back.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, absolutely, It's this sad reality that without being claimed,
Speaker 4: without having any kind of identity, she was put in
Speaker 4: this kind of community burial grave. And so to know
Speaker 4: where that exactly is, to know where her little remains
Speaker 4: exactly are and not mixed in with other peoples. It's
Speaker 4: really difficult for people to do. And so my prayer
Speaker 4: would be that they could find that and then they
Speaker 4: could say, hey, listen, we need to run this these
Speaker 4: remains through a DNA database and see what we can
Speaker 4: find and see. I don't think they're going to match
Speaker 4: Connie either, but I do wonder is there any way
Speaker 4: it could be linked back to Pinky? Is there any
Speaker 4: way we could have a connection or identify who this
Speaker 4: little girl is so that she's not in this mass
Speaker 4: burial grave, that she has her own little headstone, and
Speaker 4: that she has recognition because she had a life. And
Speaker 4: like I said, I don't care what kind of family
Speaker 4: life she had or what kind of child she had become,
Speaker 4: you know, if she had run away, if she had
Speaker 4: become a thrown away child, those kinds of things. It's
Speaker 4: still a human being who had a name, who had
Speaker 4: a story, who had a legacy right and so to
Speaker 4: have her name would be profound. But at this time
Speaker 4: it seems like a really complicated effort to get to that,
Speaker 4: And I'm wondering, with all the unsolved more recent cases,
Speaker 4: are there still people pushing for that those the case
Speaker 4: that had the p on it for maybe linking it
Speaker 4: to Pinky. It's really really interesting and when we talk
Speaker 4: about this is kind of a remote area, what's the
Speaker 4: chances that these multiple different murders are having things dumped
Speaker 4: in this site if it's the same person. There is
Speaker 4: a chance if there's one person who's disposing of all
Speaker 4: of these individuals and their things because it's a place
Speaker 4: they felt safe, it's a place that they're familiar with,
Speaker 4: and they know that it's remote. And so while it
Speaker 4: would be odd to go and dump something after another
Speaker 4: one of your victims, you know, body has been found,
Speaker 4: would be really really risky. But what if they weren't
Speaker 4: you know, what if they weren't worried about that. What
Speaker 4: if they're to a point where they have no emotional
Speaker 4: attachment to what they're doing and they said, who cares,
Speaker 4: that's my dumping side, I'm gonna go dump some more
Speaker 4: and kind of laugh in the face of police.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And that sort of thing does happen where
Speaker 2: sometimes killers are familiar with certain areas, so they decided
Speaker 2: to dump all the remains of their victims and all
Speaker 2: their evidence there, And it would not surprise me if
Speaker 2: maybe they killed Little Miss X and then later killed
Speaker 2: Pinky and Michael, that they decided to come back to
Speaker 2: this location and dump the evidence there. But if they
Speaker 2: can find little Miss X's remains, I don't think it's
Speaker 2: impossible she could be identified because a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago they actually managed to identify another deceased child who
Speaker 2: was discovered in Arizona all the way back in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty and went by the nickname little Miss Nobody, And
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two, they used DNA testing to identify
Speaker 2: or as a missing child named Sharon Lee Diegos. So
Speaker 2: I do truly believe that if they can find little
Speaker 2: Miss X's remains, then they might have the necessary DNA
Speaker 2: to give her name back as well.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to discussing Connie Sadly, Like we
Speaker 1: said before, I think the truth about what happened to
Speaker 1: her is very simple. She crossed paths with a motorist
Speaker 1: on Route forty four who picked her up before she
Speaker 1: made it to Lakeville and ultimately harmed her after they
Speaker 1: drove away from the scene. I've seen some people push
Speaker 1: forward the theory that Connie could have accidentally been hit
Speaker 1: by a car and whoever was responsible took her body
Speaker 1: away from the scene and disposed of it before they
Speaker 1: were discovered. But I have my doubts this would have
Speaker 1: occurred without leaving any evidence behind or anyone seeing anything.
Speaker 1: So I think Connie voluntarily climbed into a vehicle with
Speaker 1: someone who pulled over to give her a ride. In
Speaker 1: twenty ten, author Michael C. Dooling published a book titled
Speaker 1: Clueless in New England, which not only covered Connie's case,
Speaker 1: but the nineteen forty six disappearance of eighteen year old
Speaker 1: Paula Jeane Weldon from Bennington, Vermont, and the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six disappearance and death of twenty two year old Catherine
Speaker 1: Hall from Lebanon Springs, New York. Since all three victims
Speaker 1: disappeared while hitchhiking, Julie explores the possibility that they were
Speaker 1: all murdered by the same killer, though I personally have
Speaker 1: my doubts considering the geographical and time differences, but I
Speaker 1: would not be surprised at all if Connie was specifically
Speaker 1: targeted by a predator who was under the mistaken impression
Speaker 1: that she was a teenager. That she was a teenager.
Speaker 1: Given how extensively the area surrounding Camp's Loan was searched
Speaker 1: at the time, it would not surprise me at all
Speaker 1: if Connie's body was disposed of at a location which
Speaker 1: was a great distance away. Sadly, there is no hard
Speaker 1: evidence pointing towards a specific suspect, so the person responsible
Speaker 1: could have been passing through the area and was long
Speaker 1: gone by the time the search for Connie began.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, so one of two things could happen. This is
Speaker 4: someone who's local and is familiar with the fact that
Speaker 4: there's a summer camp there, and so they kind of
Speaker 4: troll that area waiting to see do any of the
Speaker 4: kids sneak off the property? Are there any kids that
Speaker 4: you know leave and they're walking. It's like someone who
Speaker 4: would be close to a school and watching for the
Speaker 4: kiddo who walks home by themselves, right, you know children
Speaker 4: are there, and you know that sometimes children leave the
Speaker 4: property because you drive by all the time, or you're
Speaker 4: scoping out that area waiting to see if there's a
Speaker 4: vulnerable child that leaves, and so it's very possible that's
Speaker 4: someone who's very familiar with the area. But again, it's
Speaker 4: all so very possible that it's a passerby on that
Speaker 4: busy route forty four who's they're driving. They see this kiddo,
Speaker 4: they thinks about thirteen, fourteen years old, she's all alone.
Speaker 4: In fact, if she looks distressed, even more vulnerable, and
Speaker 4: they pull over and they either physically apprehend her or
Speaker 4: they convince her that they'll help her get where she's going.
Speaker 4: Remember there's cases where a husband and wife are doing
Speaker 4: a crime together and they convince a child to get
Speaker 4: in because they're safe. There's times when you have, you know,
Speaker 4: a man who's not too much older and he's pulling over.
Speaker 4: There's someone who reminds her of her grandfather who pulls over.
Speaker 4: So as a ten year old, there's many, many circumstances
Speaker 4: that you could feel pretty safe, especially back in the fifties. Again,
Speaker 4: when we don't have social media telling you every ten
Speaker 4: minutes that another baby's been hurt, that you're safe, and
Speaker 4: that hey, I don't know where I'm going. I'm overwhelmed
Speaker 4: someone pulled over and said they would help me. I've
Speaker 4: asked so many people and I still don't know where
Speaker 4: I'm going, I'm going to get in this car, they
Speaker 4: seem safe, and or she's walking and she gets physically
Speaker 4: apprehended and simply can't defend herself.
Speaker 3: It's so sad.
Speaker 4: There's so many options that this case becomes one of
Speaker 4: those that's so open ended. It almost feels helpless in
Speaker 4: the time that's passed in the way that it could
Speaker 4: be someone close, it could be someone far away. It
Speaker 4: could be someone's first crime, it could be their ninth.
Speaker 4: You know, we just don't know. And so this is
Speaker 4: one of those cases where, my goodness, I wish that
Speaker 4: not as much time had passed so that we were
Speaker 4: maybe a to dig deeper and get some more information.
Speaker 2: Of course, the big mystery in this case will always
Speaker 2: be why Connie walked away from the camp to begin with,
Speaker 2: But it was probably just a combination of her being
Speaker 2: bullied or feeling homesick, and it was just a tragic
Speaker 2: coincidence that this ultimately led to her being in the
Speaker 2: wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong person.
Speaker 2: But the good news is that even though over seventy
Speaker 2: years have passed, law enforcement has not given up on
Speaker 2: trying to solve this case, as it still gets covered
Speaker 2: in the local media from time to time. So if
Speaker 2: by chance, you happen to have any information on the
Speaker 2: disappearance of Connie Smith, where you happen to know anything
Speaker 2: about the identity of little Miss X, or the unsolved
Speaker 2: disappearances of Donnis, Pinky Redman and Michael Griffin for that matter,
Speaker 2: please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any final thoughts
Speaker 2: in this case.
Speaker 4: I think the thing that hits hard about this case
Speaker 4: is it could be any of our children. This is
Speaker 4: a little girl who's going away to summer camp, and
Speaker 4: again it's the first summer that her routine is kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, not what it's been her whole life. This
Speaker 4: is his first summer. She's exploring this idea of being
Speaker 4: away at summer camp. And in fact, as a parent,
Speaker 4: you go to visit and you hear how exciting it is,
Speaker 4: how wonderful it is, and then she even wants to
Speaker 4: stay longer, Like I made the right decision sending my
Speaker 4: baby there. She's thriving, she's so happy, she's learning new things.
Speaker 4: This is good for her social and emotional growth. I'm
Speaker 4: so happy, and then the next thing, I know, my
Speaker 4: child's missing, and multiple people saw her. No one can
Speaker 4: tell me where she is, no one can tell me
Speaker 4: what happened. I can't imagine being the family surrounding this
Speaker 4: baby and going missing. She walked away from a camp
Speaker 4: at ten, thinking, Hey, I can get somewhere, I can
Speaker 4: get help for whatever I'm trying to do. She even
Speaker 4: had the guts to go and knock on someone's door
Speaker 4: and ask for help, show me how to get to
Speaker 4: this place. So she had a little plan in her
Speaker 4: ten year old mind, and no matter what she was
Speaker 4: running from, no matter who she needed, she had a plan.
Speaker 4: And somehow she was intercepted at that time. But my
Speaker 4: heart is broken for the family who said, we're going
Speaker 4: to give our baby a memory, We're going to give
Speaker 4: her an opportunity. We're going to really push her outside
Speaker 4: of her comfort zone and let her grow as a
Speaker 4: human being. I can't tell you how many times I
Speaker 4: do that and send my child off into the world,
Speaker 4: praying that she's safe and sound and so having so
Speaker 4: much fun. And I can't imagine getting a phone call
Speaker 4: or arriving and having someone say, we have no idea
Speaker 4: where she is. And that's exactly what happened here. Connie's
Speaker 4: never been found. So the really difficult thing here is
Speaker 4: that if she's not found right, yeah, deceased or alive,
Speaker 4: then what had been happening to her? How long was
Speaker 4: she kept alive? It creates such a tremendous grief journey
Speaker 4: that that family had to go on, and friends of
Speaker 4: Connie's family had to go on.
Speaker 3: Is she still alive? Is she being hurt? Is she scared?
Speaker 4: Is she calling for me? And I can't hear her?
Speaker 4: And by this point I would think that Connie is deceased,
Speaker 4: even of old age, even if she had been raised
Speaker 4: by somebody else. But it's pitiful to think that her
Speaker 4: family lived their lives wondering could she still be alive?
Speaker 4: What happened to her? And it's quote our fault because
Speaker 4: we sent our baby to this camp and trusted them
Speaker 4: to take care of her. It's no one's fault. They
Speaker 4: did what every parent does on a daily basis. They thought,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do something really exciting or cool or
Speaker 4: right for my child, and it just ended in an
Speaker 4: absolute tragedy.
Speaker 3: It's so so sad.
Speaker 1: It's literally one of those worst case scenarios that you
Speaker 1: hope never happens, but unfortunately, in this situation. It happened
Speaker 1: to Connie, and so her family is to deal with
Speaker 1: this trauma that just cycles around. They maybe get a tip,
Speaker 1: they get more information it's potentially connected to little Miss X,
Speaker 1: and then in the end they're left disappointed because they
Speaker 1: really get no new information. I really don't believe that
Speaker 1: she is little Miss X. I do think that it's
Speaker 1: interesting that the caller had that in about both cases,
Speaker 1: but I do tend to think that they are not
Speaker 1: one and the same, and that the forensic identologist or
Speaker 1: whomever examined her skull initially was correct. But it's so
Speaker 1: frustrating because you think, oh, my gosh, my child is
Speaker 1: going to the summer camp, What a wonderful experience they're
Speaker 1: going to have, And then when all these other parents
Speaker 1: get to go pick up their children, you're searching for
Speaker 1: your child who's missing, and you feel like they should
Speaker 1: have been protected by the camp, by the counselors, that
Speaker 1: somebody should have done more. But thinking about the time period,
Speaker 1: nobody thought that she would walk away from this camp
Speaker 1: and that some opportunistic offender would end up abducting her
Speaker 1: and like the ending her life. It's just such a
Speaker 1: sad case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, We talked in our last episode about Connie's family,
Speaker 2: how her mother died at a very young age, which
Speaker 2: they think was because of a broken heart, and her
Speaker 2: father lived to a very old age up to the
Speaker 2: age of ninety seven before he passed away, and her
Speaker 2: brother went on to have a successful political career, but
Speaker 2: just two years ago he and his wife were killed
Speaker 2: in a car accident when he was eighty four years old.
Speaker 2: So there's just been so much tragedy in the family,
Speaker 2: and it is a shame that they never found out
Speaker 2: what happened to Connie, because I know that her father
Speaker 2: and her brother just never stopped publicizing it for the
Speaker 2: rest of their lives. I think that if this case
Speaker 2: had happened today, we might get more insight in what
Speaker 2: happened to her, because even though what happened to her
Speaker 2: at camp may not have played any role in her disappearance,
Speaker 2: I happened to think that in today's days of social
Speaker 2: media and people talking, that if she was being bullied,
Speaker 2: or if she had been groomed or harassed by anyone
Speaker 2: at the camp, then it would have eventually come out.
Speaker 2: There would have been a lot of gossip, a rumors
Speaker 2: at the very least, and we might have gotten more
Speaker 2: insight into why Connie left the campground in the first place,
Speaker 2: which is still a mystery within a mystery that it's
Speaker 2: very possible she was being sexually harassed or targeted by someone,
Speaker 2: but she may have decided to leave and then cross
Speaker 2: paths with an entirely different predator who was the one
Speaker 2: who killed her. But it is frustrating because in missing
Speaker 2: persons cases, you're often going to find a lot of
Speaker 2: mistaken eyewitness sightings, but they're pretty credible. In this case,
Speaker 2: we have a number of witnesses who corroborate each other
Speaker 2: and provide a timeline of Connie's path when she walked
Speaker 2: away from the campground that morning, but before she reached
Speaker 2: the town of Lakeville, she just vanished without a trace.
Speaker 2: So it seems that it's just bad luck that she
Speaker 2: may have been picked up in a vehicle by the
Speaker 2: wrong person and no one saw or heard anything, and
Speaker 2: then they managed to get away with it. And I
Speaker 2: do agree that Connie is unlikely to be little Miss X,
Speaker 2: but I do hope that the efforts are still going
Speaker 2: underway to try to recover Little Miss X's remains, because
Speaker 2: she is someone's child who deserves to be identified and
Speaker 2: get her name back. So I am glad that there's
Speaker 2: these cases are in conjunction to each other, because if
Speaker 2: people never mentioned Connie's case, then little miss X may
Speaker 2: have been long forgotten about long long time ago. But
Speaker 2: who knows. Yeah, maybe one of these days they will
Speaker 2: find Connie's remains and we'll finally get some resolution on
Speaker 2: what actually happened to her.
Speaker 1: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 2: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 2: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 2: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 2: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 2: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
Speaker 2: tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 2: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 2: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
Speaker 2: and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
Speaker 2: ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
Speaker 2: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of unsolved mysteries,
Speaker 2: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 2: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 2: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 2: the back, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 2: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
Speaker 2: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 2: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
Speaker 2: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
Speaker 2: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Speaker 2: Tier three.
Speaker 5: So I want to let you know a little bit
Speaker 5: about the Jewels and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
Speaker 5: free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Speaker 5: Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
Speaker 5: they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
Speaker 5: turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those.
Speaker 1: So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
Speaker 1: them in the show notes.
Speaker 2: So I want to thank you all for listening, and
Speaker 2: any chance you have to share us on social media
Speaker 2: with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
Speaker 2: You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin So
Speaker 2: until next time, be sure to bundle up, because cold
Speaker 2: trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
Speaker 1: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Call, Doller's
Speaker 1: comedy