Speaker 1: Welcome back to The Path Went Chili for part two
Speaker 1: of our series about the unsolved disappearance of Marie Blee. Robin,
Speaker 1: do you want to catch everyone up on what we
Speaker 1: talked about in our previous episode.
Speaker 2: I sure will, but before I do that, I just
Speaker 2: want to give a shout out to a nice little
Speaker 2: website out there called feedspot dot com. They have recently
Speaker 2: put up a list titled the top twenty family friendly
Speaker 2: true crime podcast on the web, and they were nice
Speaker 2: enough to put The Path Went Chili on there, and
Speaker 2: they sent us all an email to let us know,
Speaker 2: so we greatly appreciate that. I think this might be
Speaker 2: the first time that The Path Went Chile made a
Speaker 2: list on the internet. So, and it's nice that they
Speaker 2: call us family friendly even though we're talking about gruesome
Speaker 2: subject matter. But we still greatly appreciate it. So be
Speaker 2: sure to check out their website feedspot dot com. So,
Speaker 2: getting back to the Marie Blee case, This took place
Speaker 2: in November of nineteen seventy nine in the town of Craig, Colorado.
Speaker 2: A fifteen year old Marie Blee went to a party
Speaker 2: and was accompanied by an eighteen year old friend from
Speaker 2: high school. Named Monty Doolin, even though they were not
Speaker 2: exactly a couple as far as I can tell. But
Speaker 2: Marie never came home, and when her parents tried to
Speaker 2: report her missing to the police, they just said that
Speaker 2: she probably just ran away and return home eventually. But
Speaker 2: then a few days later, Monty Doolan sent in a
Speaker 2: fake ransom demand for five thousand dollars for her return,
Speaker 2: and when he was caught, he eventually said, oh, I
Speaker 2: just did that to give the parents hope that she
Speaker 2: was still alive somewhere, but I don't actually know anything
Speaker 2: about her disappearance. And of course he got charged with
Speaker 2: a misdemeanor for the whole thing. And of course the
Speaker 2: police didn't really they do much of an investigation for years.
Speaker 2: They didn't really like to look at it seriously until
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine, twenty years after the fact. And by
Speaker 2: that point, when they tried reinterviewing a bunch of witnesses
Speaker 2: who were at the party, they all kept giving like
Speaker 2: conflicting stories about Marie's whereabouts because their memories were foggy,
Speaker 2: so it's tough to determine the exact last time she
Speaker 2: was confirmed to be alive, but multiple witnesses said that
Speaker 2: she was last seen in the company of three men,
Speaker 2: Monty Doolin and two friends of his name, max Abel
Speaker 2: Garcia and Steven Skufka, And of course they've all denied
Speaker 2: any involvement in her disappearance, but Monte Doulin and Steven
Speaker 2: Skoffka had a history of troubles with the law. I
Speaker 2: know that Monty was charged with attempting to sexually assault
Speaker 2: another young girl a couple months before Marie's disappearance, and
Speaker 2: Steven Skuffka got charged with a bunch of drug related
Speaker 2: crimes and was pretty much told when he went to
Speaker 2: prison that if you tell us what happened to Marie,
Speaker 2: we will reduce your sentence, but he refused to say anything,
Speaker 2: and he served his time and then died from a
Speaker 2: fall down on the stairs after his release from prison.
Speaker 2: So police have pretty much said that as long as
Speaker 2: it wasn't murder, then if there were any charges related
Speaker 2: to Maurice's disappearance, if her death was an accident or something,
Speaker 2: the statute of limitations has expired, so if you come forward,
Speaker 2: we will not press charges against you. But this has
Speaker 2: not led to a resolution. Everyone has continued to remain silent,
Speaker 2: and we have now almost reached the forty five year
Speaker 2: anniversary of Marie's disappearance, and sadly, she is still a
Speaker 2: missing person. So, as you probably know, I've covered a
Speaker 2: number of cold cases from the nineteen sixties, seventies and
Speaker 2: eighties involving missing teenagers, and whenever I researched them, it's
Speaker 2: usually inevitable that I'll let out a huge sigh once
Speaker 2: I learned that the police initially wrote off these victims
Speaker 2: as runaways. We mentioned this on a respective podcasts several times,
Speaker 2: but sadly, there was once a time when, unless direct
Speaker 2: evidence existed that foul play had taken place, law enforcements
Speaker 2: to fault attitude for a teenager or young person going
Speaker 2: missing was that they ran away, thank you. Only this
Speaker 2: attitude is not as prevalent today. But it's always heartbreaking
Speaker 2: to look up a missing person's case from three or
Speaker 2: four decades ago and realized that it could have been
Speaker 2: solved relatively quickly if law enforcement had been on the ball,
Speaker 2: and the Marie Blee case was a particularly egregious example
Speaker 2: of this. We have a fifteen year old girl who
Speaker 2: by all accounts was a model teenager, who was very
Speaker 2: close to her family, but when she didn't come home
Speaker 2: one night, the local police told her parents that she
Speaker 2: probably just ran off and would return home shortly. But
Speaker 2: of course that idea is completely shot down when the
Speaker 2: Blee family received a ransom call from Marie two days later.
Speaker 2: Even though the ransom demand turned out to be a hoax,
Speaker 2: the fact that it was perpetrated by one of the
Speaker 2: last people to see Marie alive should have been a
Speaker 2: major red flag for investigators, but sadly it sounds like
Speaker 2: they were much more concerned with red tape rather than
Speaker 2: red legs, as the jurisdictional issues really hampered the investigation,
Speaker 2: and it seems like no one wanted to take full
Speaker 2: responsibility for handling the case. To be fair, of different
Speaker 2: law enforcement agencies decided to form a jurisdictional task force
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine. They seemed to take the whole
Speaker 2: thing very seriously and were quite dedicated about finding out
Speaker 2: what happened to Marie. Given the circumstances, they probably did
Speaker 2: the best job they could. But the big problem, of course,
Speaker 2: was that twenty years had passed. This sounds like a
Speaker 2: case we're interviewing key witnesses and investigating key suspects as
Speaker 2: quickly as possible was crucial. It seems pretty obvious that
Speaker 2: something happened at the party Marie attended which led to
Speaker 2: her disappearance, but getting a couple dozen people to accurately
Speaker 2: recall their memories of this event two decades after the
Speaker 2: fact was a challenge, to say the least. If these
Speaker 2: witnesses have been interviewed while their memories were still fresh,
Speaker 2: there might have been a clearer pitchure of what took place.
Speaker 3: When you exactly when you look at this idea that
Speaker 3: at the time we know, the last person to really
Speaker 3: be seen with her, he had picked her up for
Speaker 3: a party, is the one who's making this ransom call.
Speaker 3: And it's pretty clear that Marie goes to a party
Speaker 3: where she's one of the younger attendees. There's well over
Speaker 3: I believe they said one hundred people coming and going
Speaker 3: from this trailer park area, and literally Marie's telling her friends,
Speaker 3: go leave me, I'm gonna hang out here. If it
Speaker 3: was my guess, she's a young girl with older people
Speaker 3: who are doing adult things like drinking, doing drugs, and
Speaker 3: she's feeling like she's validated important, she's getting attention from
Speaker 3: older people, and so I would not be shocked if
Speaker 3: one or all three of the suspects that have been
Speaker 3: discussed were present at the time Marie was injured and
Speaker 3: or killed and they all know exactly what happened but
Speaker 3: aren't speaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because all three of those guys who were a
Speaker 2: couple years older than her, like she was fifteen and
Speaker 2: they were around eighteen, nineteen years old, and she probably
Speaker 2: thought that was cool at the time. I'm with these
Speaker 2: older boys who were paying attention to me. But when
Speaker 2: you couple with the fact that she had never been
Speaker 2: at a party like this before and there was drug
Speaker 2: use and alcohol loose than a use, then you can
Speaker 2: see how things might have gotten horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: When I was going through our first episode, I was
Speaker 1: listening and Ashley said that Marie felt like similar to
Speaker 1: what she said today validated and that she probably felt special.
Speaker 1: And the way that she described it I think would
Speaker 1: speak to most women that have been teenagers at some point,
Speaker 1: Because when I listened to her say it when we
Speaker 1: recorded it, it was different. But when I listened to it
Speaker 1: after the fact, it really hit me in the gut
Speaker 1: because she so succinctly and so perfectly summed up what
Speaker 1: it felt like to be a teenage girl and to
Speaker 1: be hanging out with these older guys, and how validating
Speaker 1: it can seem. You do feel smart, you feel pretty,
Speaker 1: you feel special, and it's probably exactly how Marie was feeling,
Speaker 1: hanging out with these older guys, not knowing the danger
Speaker 1: that lurked. So let's start from the beginning and try
Speaker 1: to figure out a timeline. We know that Marie attended
Speaker 1: a day that night with Monty Doolan, who subsequently drove
Speaker 1: her to the party at the Shadow Mountain Village mobile
Speaker 1: home park. What's interesting is that even though Monty has
Speaker 1: been referred to as Marie's date in some accounts of
Speaker 1: the story, it's not exactly clear what kind of relationship
Speaker 1: they had. We do know that Monty was an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old high school graduate and that Marie was three
Speaker 1: years younger than him, though I don't get the impression
Speaker 1: they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. Would Their age difference
Speaker 1: becomes a much bigger red flag when you learn about
Speaker 1: some of the other crimes that Monty is alleged to
Speaker 1: have done. So Monty's story is that he last saw
Speaker 1: Marie at the party sometime between one point thirty and
Speaker 1: two am, after she told him she was planning to
Speaker 1: get a ride home with another guy whom she never identified.
Speaker 1: Even if by chance, Monty is telling the truth, it
Speaker 1: still doesn't reflect well on him since he was leaving
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old girl alone at a party which
Speaker 1: was mostly attended by older guys whom she did not know,
Speaker 1: and there were supposed ample amounts of drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 1: On the surface, it might also not reflect well on
Speaker 1: Marie's female friends that they left her at the party
Speaker 1: once they became uncomfortable, But in their defense, it sounds
Speaker 1: like they did everything they could to convince her to
Speaker 1: leave with them, but she just refused to go. Even
Speaker 1: though it sounds like Marie was a good kid who
Speaker 1: never caused her parents any trouble, even good kids will
Speaker 1: sometimes decide that they want to rebel every once in
Speaker 1: a while, so Marie may have decided that she wanted
Speaker 1: to kick back and have fun at what was likely
Speaker 1: her first grown up party.
Speaker 3: Jules, like you said, I think we've all been there,
Speaker 3: done that. I was a huge nerd and a great kid,
Speaker 3: and I remember my friends been like going to a
Speaker 3: place like a fraternity party or something like that, and
Speaker 3: I didn't know anybody except my girlfriends that I went with,
Speaker 3: and I remember distinctly saying, oh my gosh, so and
Speaker 3: so is giving me attention, like seriously, you've got to go,
Speaker 3: like let me be or they'll say, hey, Ash, we're leaving,
Speaker 3: and I'll be like, I know, I'll get a ride home.
Speaker 4: I'll get a ride home.
Speaker 3: Because we quote know all these people even though I
Speaker 3: don't know anybody, you know, they're all acquaintances somehow, and
Speaker 3: it's so naive and in many ways ignorant, but I
Speaker 3: simply just didn't know. At the time, I felt like
Speaker 3: I was a grown up, I'm smart and aware of
Speaker 3: my surroundings and made a really dumb decision and thank
Speaker 3: god nothing happened. But I wasn't the only one of
Speaker 3: my friends who did that. It was commonplace where we'd say,
Speaker 3: come on, we're leaving, and someone would have a reason
Speaker 3: why they didn't want to go with us. And so
Speaker 3: you can only do so much. And I do have
Speaker 3: an issue with the young man who drives her to
Speaker 3: the party though, and Manty's saying, hey, I was responsible
Speaker 3: enough to come pick her up.
Speaker 4: But then this fifteen year old little girl.
Speaker 3: I just have zero responsibility towards her later in the
Speaker 3: evening and supposedly leaves and doesn't know what happened to her.
Speaker 3: It just seems bizarre. But then he wants to implant
Speaker 3: himself in the investigation. I can't stand his character in
Speaker 3: this story. I would truly love to rewind time and
Speaker 3: have them hone in on him more and investigate this
Speaker 3: more at the time it occurred. Because so much time passed,
Speaker 3: it just it's very difficult to get people's recollection back and.
Speaker 4: People to come forward. It's just tough.
Speaker 2: The story goes at the host of the party, Michael O'Brien,
Speaker 2: was only planning to hold a small get together, but
Speaker 2: everything spiled out of control once word spread and dozens
Speaker 2: of other people decided to crash the event. O'Brien always
Speaker 2: insisted that he only provided beer to the guests and
Speaker 2: that he never saw any drugs, but other witnesses have
Speaker 2: claimed there was drug usage there. But when you consider
Speaker 2: that anywhere between fifty and one hundred people attended this party,
Speaker 2: many of whom are likely high or intoxicated, it's easy
Speaker 2: to see why investigators have had a difficult time constructing
Speaker 2: a concrete narrative for all the events. There really is
Speaker 2: no official last confirmed sighting of Marie that night. We've
Speaker 2: got sightings of her at a convenience store, but it's
Speaker 2: not clear if these sightings are accurate or at what
Speaker 2: point during the night they supposedly took place, And there's
Speaker 2: at least one siding of Marie at an entirely different
Speaker 2: party I know. One of the most prominent theories is
Speaker 2: that Marie succumbed to a drug overdose, but we can't
Speaker 2: even be certain if Marie took drugs that night. While
Speaker 2: she was allegedly seen doing drugs inside the bathroom of
Speaker 2: the mobile home, others insisted that she remained outside the
Speaker 2: entire time she was there, But overall, it seems like
Speaker 2: one consistent eyewitness account, which investigators seem to put a
Speaker 2: lot of stock into, is that Marie left the party
Speaker 2: with three men. This is a part of by the
Speaker 2: fact that three specific men have been publicly named as
Speaker 2: persons of interest.
Speaker 3: Again, there's no way to know that without having her body,
Speaker 3: without having concrete evidence of what occurred, Because Marie could
Speaker 3: have been fifteen and naive and silly and used drugs
Speaker 3: with these adults. Wanting to fit in. But she also
Speaker 3: could have gone and said like, I'm just going to
Speaker 3: be here. I'll have my faculties to me. I'm not
Speaker 3: doing any of this stuff, so I'm not quote doing
Speaker 3: anything bad, but I like the attention and I want
Speaker 3: to be here with these people. And so we just
Speaker 3: don't know if she did, you know, try drugs. But
Speaker 3: if she did, keep in mind, this would, to our
Speaker 3: best knowledge, be the first time she's done so. And
Speaker 3: so is it possible that people took advantage of that
Speaker 3: and knew, hey, that she's never done this almost a
Speaker 3: joke of how much they could give her, or she
Speaker 3: doesn't understand how much she's taken and she justs too much.
Speaker 3: So it is possible that she easily overdosed with it
Speaker 3: being her first time using. Also very possible she's sober
Speaker 3: and decides to leave with these three guys who quote
Speaker 3: care about her and they had other nefarious purposes in mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, given that she had a great reputation with her
Speaker 2: parents and never cause them any trouble, I am willing
Speaker 2: to wager that she had probably never done drugs before
Speaker 2: that particular night, and if she did, she could have
Speaker 2: had a bad reaction and wound up overdosing. But I
Speaker 2: think if that is what happened, that only a limited
Speaker 2: amount of people knew about it, because I think that
Speaker 2: if she had overdosed at the party in front of
Speaker 2: fifty to one hundred people, that someone would have talked
Speaker 2: by now.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the three individuals who have been named as persons
Speaker 1: of interest, which will come as absolutely no surprise to you, Ash,
Speaker 1: are Monte Dulan, Steven Skufka, and max Abel Garcia. So
Speaker 1: we know quite a bit about Doolan and Skufka's backgrounds,
Speaker 1: but not much is known about Garcia, aside from the
Speaker 1: fact that he eventually moved to Portland. It seems like
Speaker 1: investigators don't necessarily believe Garcia had direct involvement in what
Speaker 1: happened to Marie, but at the very least they suspect
Speaker 1: that he knows something but hasn't talked. What we do
Speaker 1: know is that both Doolan and Skufka had their fair
Speaker 1: share of run ins with the law, and Skiffka's criminal
Speaker 1: history is particularly extensive. What's particularly interesting is that Skufka
Speaker 1: was facing a twelve year prison sentence for various offenses
Speaker 1: and could have potentially shaved time off that sentence if
Speaker 1: he'd been willing to cooperate with investigators and reveal everything
Speaker 1: that he knew about Marie's disappearance, but Skufka didn't provide
Speaker 1: them with any information and took the full sentence. Now
Speaker 1: it's worth noting the police had stated that if Marie's
Speaker 1: death was the result of an accidental drug overdose and
Speaker 1: one or more individuals attempted to cover the whole thing
Speaker 1: up by disposing of her body, then they would not
Speaker 1: face prosecution for it, since over twenty years had passed
Speaker 1: and the statute of limitations on those particular crimes had expired.
Speaker 1: So if Skufka had admitted that Marie overdosed and he
Speaker 1: played a role in covering it up, he would not
Speaker 1: have received any additional jail time for his involvement, and
Speaker 1: he probably would have had his sentence for his other
Speaker 1: charges reduced. But since Gefka remained silent, that says to
Speaker 1: me that either a he legitimately didn't know anything, or
Speaker 1: b what he did know about Marie was so terrible
Speaker 1: that he felt like serving twelve years in prison was
Speaker 1: still a better option than coming clean. Of course, Skufka
Speaker 1: had died of an accidental fall down the stairs a
Speaker 1: few years after he was paroled, and his mother maintained
Speaker 1: that even though he was not a perfect individual, he
Speaker 1: was unfairly implicated in Marie's disappearance. She's always insisted that
Speaker 1: her son came straight home from the dance that night
Speaker 1: and never even attended the party. But of course it's
Speaker 1: not unprecedented that parents might be willing to lie for
Speaker 1: their children and give them a false alibi in order
Speaker 1: to prevent them from potentially going to jail. In Skiffka's defense,
Speaker 1: Michael O'Brien, the host of the party, also claimed that
Speaker 1: Skifka was never there. But could he really be one
Speaker 1: hundred percent certain? Remember, between fifteen and one hundred people
Speaker 1: were in attendance, most of whom were uninvited, So could
Speaker 1: O'Brien accurately recall who was or wasn't there. I know
Speaker 1: that Skiffka allegedly made some comments to incriminate himself in
Speaker 1: Marie's disappearance over the years, and other witnesses did recall
Speaker 1: seeing them together at the party, So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: Skefka would have been named as a person of interest
Speaker 1: by law enforcement unless they were absolutely certain that he
Speaker 1: was there. What is still not clear just how much
Speaker 1: culpabilities Skufka and max Abel Garcia might have had in
Speaker 1: regards to what happened to Marie.
Speaker 3: Okay, was he actually responsible for her death? Maybe not.
Speaker 3: He did have the party that night, and I don't
Speaker 3: necessarily think he can truly be relying on for who
Speaker 3: was at the party or not. Like you said, fifty
Speaker 3: to one hundred people when he was expecting a small gathering,
Speaker 3: There's no way he knows all of them. It's very
Speaker 3: possible that a friend shows up with three acquaintances that
Speaker 3: he has no idea their names or where they're from.
Speaker 3: And so I think the party gets so large and
Speaker 3: drugs and alcohol are present that there's just not an
Speaker 3: opportunity to say I'm one hundred percent sure he was
Speaker 3: not here, especially when you have other partygoers saying that
Speaker 3: Marie was there, He was there, right, All these different
Speaker 3: people were there. I just don't think that you can
Speaker 3: trust the mother's statement. And I just don't think Michael
Speaker 3: O'Brien can be confident of who was at his party.
Speaker 1: Think of those high school parties like I can remember back,
Speaker 1: and they're be parties where there would be a house,
Speaker 1: and then it would extend to like a bonfire, and
Speaker 1: it would be pitch dark outside, and there might be
Speaker 1: between fifty and one hundred people. And if you would
Speaker 1: have asked me the next day who was and wasn't there,
Speaker 1: could I accurately report most of the people probably, But
Speaker 1: all of them I don't think so. I think that
Speaker 1: when you involve drugs and alcohol when it's dark and
Speaker 1: when not all of the people can fit in the dwelling,
Speaker 1: and we know that they can't because it's a trailer.
Speaker 1: So I just think that O'Brien could have missed seeing
Speaker 1: Skuffkap because other witnesses reported seeing him at the party
Speaker 1: with Marie, and especially when it looks like we've got
Speaker 1: multiple people reporting that correct.
Speaker 2: Robin, Yes, definitely correct. A couple of people saw him
Speaker 2: there and talking about the issues with his alibi and
Speaker 2: how his mother said that he arrived home that night.
Speaker 2: We talked in our last episode that Skuffka said that
Speaker 2: he attended the dance with his sister, the same dance
Speaker 2: that Monty and Marie had gone to, and Skuffka said, well,
Speaker 2: it was boring, so we just decided to go home
Speaker 2: and we spent the rest of the night there. But
Speaker 2: we mentioned our last episode, that's kind of odd that
Speaker 2: he would go to a dance with his sister, because
Speaker 2: it's very uncommon for people who are teenagers in high
Speaker 2: school to attend social events like dance with their siblings.
Speaker 2: But his sister and his mother backed them up. But
Speaker 2: can we really one hundred percent rely on them.
Speaker 1: I would love some context as to why he went
Speaker 1: with his sister, Like did his sister not have any
Speaker 1: friends and the mom said, if you're going to go
Speaker 1: to the dance, you have to bring your sister. Or
Speaker 1: did he have no women or young women that were
Speaker 1: interested in him and so he decided to go with
Speaker 1: his sister. I just can't see an explanation. Just make
Speaker 1: it make sense.
Speaker 2: Now. Manty Doolan. On the other hand, where do we
Speaker 2: start with this guy? Regardless of whether he is innocent
Speaker 2: or guilty of what happened to Marie, he pretty much
Speaker 2: flushed any sympathy away when he phoned up Paul and
Speaker 2: moanably two days after their daughter went missing and made
Speaker 2: a five thousand dollars ransom demand. Now, sadly, this is
Speaker 2: not the only case I've seen which some cruel Hoaxter
Speaker 2: contacted the family of a missing person and provided them
Speaker 2: with a phony ransom demand. But these acts were usually
Speaker 2: done by strangers who just wanted to make a quick
Speaker 2: buck or a craving attention. But not only did Monty
Speaker 2: Doolan go out on a date with the victim on
Speaker 2: the night she went missing, but he took her to
Speaker 2: the party where she disappeared from and was one of
Speaker 2: the last known people to see her alive. Needless to say,
Speaker 2: it's pretty unsettling that he would decide to toy with
Speaker 2: Marie's family like that. When Monty was caught, his reasoning
Speaker 2: was that he fabricated the whole thing in order to
Speaker 2: give Marie's parents hope that she was still alive. But
Speaker 2: that defies all logic, and I'm sure it was incredibly
Speaker 2: stressful for Paul and Mona to believe their daughter had
Speaker 2: been kidnapped, forcing them to put together five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in a short amount of time. I do can see
Speaker 2: that Monty likely wasn't trying to extort the bleaze and
Speaker 2: had no intention of collecting the five thousand dollars, but
Speaker 2: I do suspect that he was making a deliberate attempt
Speaker 2: at misdirection and wanted to lead everyone down the wrong trail.
Speaker 2: Monty knew that the last place Marie had been seen
Speaker 2: alive was at the party, and if he made everyone
Speaker 2: believe that she was kidnapped for ransom, then he probably
Speaker 2: hoped investigators wouldn't put too much focus on what might
Speaker 2: have happened at the party. When you consider that the
Speaker 2: local police initially wrote off Marie as a runaway and
Speaker 2: had not even launched a proper missing person's investigation before
Speaker 2: Monty made his phony ransom call, then it seems like
Speaker 2: this was a desperation tactic on his part, and I
Speaker 2: don't believe he would have attempted something like that unless
Speaker 2: he had something he wanted to hide. But the big
Speaker 2: question is was Manty trying to hide the fact that
Speaker 2: Marie died of an accidental overdose or was it something
Speaker 2: a lot worse.
Speaker 3: Also, when you think about the idea that he says, hey,
Speaker 3: I was doing it to give them hope, you're at
Speaker 3: the jerk who took her to the party, so the
Speaker 3: parents already placed responsibility in you. Why you would then
Speaker 3: reinsert yourself into the situation. Wouldn't you want to kind
Speaker 3: of disappear and back away like you're known to have
Speaker 3: been with her that night.
Speaker 4: You're known to have been seen with her.
Speaker 3: And you were actually responsible for the young lady you
Speaker 3: went and picked up and delivered to this party.
Speaker 4: And so you would think he would be very.
Speaker 3: Self aware of Oh my goodness, that really makes me
Speaker 3: number one suspect.
Speaker 4: I'm going to try to.
Speaker 3: Just carefully back away. If he truly had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with it. Now, if he had something to hide,
Speaker 3: like you said, then trying to throw the police off
Speaker 3: of his scent and say, hey, there's this crazy person
Speaker 3: who wants money from the parents, that might make more sense.
Speaker 3: I don't see him just doing it on a whim,
Speaker 3: because if he has any sense at all, he knew
Speaker 3: I'm already.
Speaker 4: In the mix of suspects.
Speaker 3: I've got to keep quiet, keep my head down, and
Speaker 3: hope it passes because I didn't do anything. When you
Speaker 3: have a guilty conscience, I feel like you continue to
Speaker 3: try to cover for yourself and it makes it work.
Speaker 1: Sounds like an incredibly impulsive choice made by somebody who
Speaker 1: was hoping to benefit financially off of the c that
Speaker 1: he likely committed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, And I always wonder how this investigation would
Speaker 2: have gone if he had not made that ransom call,
Speaker 2: because the police weren't doing anything at first. They just
Speaker 2: said Marie was a runaway and probably wouldn't have looked
Speaker 2: into anything at all until this incident raised some red flags.
Speaker 2: And if they had just interviewed Moni and he says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was at the party and Marie was there, but
Speaker 2: I left and she said she was going to get
Speaker 2: a ride with someone else, and I don't know what
Speaker 2: happened to her afterwards. Perhaps they might have looked at
Speaker 2: him in an unflattering light because he left Marie there,
Speaker 2: but they wouldn't have thought of him as a suspect.
Speaker 2: But because he inserted himself into the investigation and toyed
Speaker 2: with the family, that made him pretty much the number
Speaker 2: one guy from the very outset and made everyone believe
Speaker 2: from that point on he must know something about Marie's disappearance,
Speaker 2: and he's trying to deflect.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Monty's connection to this case became a lot more troubling
Speaker 1: when he was charged with first degree kidnapping in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen for allegedly luring another teenage girl into his vehicle
Speaker 1: and sexually assaulting her in the year prior to Marie's disappearance. Yes,
Speaker 1: the charge against Monty was eventually dropped, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like this was due to a technicality, not because he
Speaker 1: was proven innocent. For all we know, the alleged sexual
Speaker 1: assault could have played out exactly as the victim described,
Speaker 1: but because the statute of limitations had expired, Monty could
Speaker 1: not actually be charged with sexual assault, and the best
Speaker 1: investigators could hope for was a charge of first degree kidnapping. However,
Speaker 1: if the victim did originally climb into Monty's vehicle of
Speaker 1: her own free will and he let her go after
Speaker 1: sexually assaulting her, then it would have been hard to
Speaker 1: prove if his crime met the legal definition of kidnapping.
Speaker 1: I think one of the main reasons that Colorado's fourteenth
Speaker 1: Judicial District attempted to indict Dulan on this charge after
Speaker 1: so many years is because they were hoping it might
Speaker 1: help pave the way for uncovering his potential involvement in
Speaker 1: Marie's disappearance. Since the Casey Gainston was dismissed, this never
Speaker 1: came to fruition. But if the allegations against Monty in
Speaker 1: the sexual assault case are true, then I can see
Speaker 1: a similar situation unfolding with Marie. Perhaps Monty tried to
Speaker 1: sexually assault her as well, but she fought back against
Speaker 1: him and things escalated to the point where Marie wound
Speaker 1: up being killed. We have learned that Monty served time
Speaker 1: in jail for a completely different sexual assault, but we've
Speaker 1: been unable to find any specific details about that particular case.
Speaker 1: But this pattern of behavior does lend a disturbing amount
Speaker 1: of credence to the idea that Monty could have killed
Speaker 1: Marie because she resisted his attempts to assault her. When
Speaker 1: you consider that Manti was eighteen and Marie was only fifteen,
Speaker 1: and they were attending a wild party with drugs, alcohol,
Speaker 1: and a lot of males who are older than her,
Speaker 1: then you can see how this would have been a
Speaker 1: recipe for disaster.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And you think about this idea of what if
Speaker 3: he wasn't actually attempting to kill her, but he's sexually
Speaker 3: assaulting her, and let's say, is strangling her because she's screaming,
Speaker 3: or covers her mouth because she screaming, and he accidentally
Speaker 3: suffocates her or hits her head against something because he's,
Speaker 3: you know, being rough and trying to take advantage of her.
Speaker 3: There's a million ways that a sexual assault could quickly
Speaker 3: turn into a murder that was not pre planned, and
Speaker 3: or there could be such a panic after the commission
Speaker 3: of a sexual assault, there could be a purposeful murder
Speaker 3: to cover it up. So there's multiple scenarios if he
Speaker 3: was going in, especially like with the wolf pack mentality,
Speaker 3: if all three men helped isolate Marie, there's a very
Speaker 3: strong possibility that she was hurt during an attempted sexual
Speaker 3: assault and then we have to kill her, or now
Speaker 3: we have to kill her so that she won't talk.
Speaker 3: A very very dangerous situation when you get to that
Speaker 3: point and you realize, Okay, she's going to ruin my life,
Speaker 3: or she's going to tell on me, or you know,
Speaker 3: people are gonna know what happened.
Speaker 4: A lot of times.
Speaker 3: People will panic and you have this, you know, either
Speaker 3: an incredibly brutal assault or a homicide. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a very probable impossible for what could have happened here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely would make sense, particularly when you look
Speaker 2: at his alleged previous assault, which took place about a
Speaker 2: year earlier. I mean, in that particular case, he did
Speaker 2: let his victim go even though she could have implicated him.
Speaker 2: But I get the impression that she decided to stay
Speaker 2: silent for many years and did not come forward until
Speaker 2: decades after the fact, and that's why they arrested him
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen. So he may have thought that the
Speaker 2: same thing would happen to Marie. But perhaps she said
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell on you, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: to the authorities, and that's when they decided that they
Speaker 2: had to kill her. I mean, it might not have
Speaker 2: been Monty's idea, but maybe one of his other two accomplices,
Speaker 2: Skufa or Garcia, if they were involved, decided that it's
Speaker 2: too much of a risk to let her go, and
Speaker 2: that's why she wound up dead. Now, personally, I have
Speaker 2: my doubts that Marie's actual death took place at the party,
Speaker 2: as there were between fifty to one hundred people in attendance,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that many people would have been
Speaker 2: able to remain silent for over forty five years. But
Speaker 2: I'm sure there might be quite a few people out
Speaker 2: of that party who know or at least heard about
Speaker 2: what happened to Marie, even if they did not personally
Speaker 2: witness it. Remember a few months after she went missing,
Speaker 2: the police received an anonymous phone call from a man
Speaker 2: who claimed that at least eleven people, including his own
Speaker 2: two children, knew the truth, but were too afraid to
Speaker 2: come forward. But once again, I have a feeling that
Speaker 2: only a small handful of individuals were actually present when
Speaker 2: something happened to Marie. While there were so many contradictory
Speaker 2: and jumbled statements from eye witnesses who were at the
Speaker 2: party that night, investigators do seem to believe that one
Speaker 2: of the most likely scenarios is that Marie left at
Speaker 2: some point alongside the three primary persons of interest Monte Doolin,
Speaker 2: Steven Skofka, and max Abel Garcia.
Speaker 4: I believe the.
Speaker 3: Most common situation that would have occurred here if all
Speaker 3: three men are involved, is that they see Marie as
Speaker 3: this vulnerable young girl, and they really do enact the
Speaker 3: quote wolf pack action plan, which is, hey see that
Speaker 3: girl over there, Wanner, y'all help me isolate her. So
Speaker 3: they go over, they buddy buddy with her, they kind
Speaker 3: of get her away from her friends, which we know
Speaker 3: they successfully did because she tells her friends leave, I
Speaker 3: have people I'm hanging out with I have a ride,
Speaker 3: just leave. So they isolate her away, They make her
Speaker 3: feel really special. They oftentimes, like you said, remove her
Speaker 3: from other people being there. So maybe they get her
Speaker 3: in a car, or they take her into the woods
Speaker 3: or something like that, and then one or all of
Speaker 3: them sexually assault her, and then it only takes one
Speaker 3: of those people to panic for there to.
Speaker 4: Be a murderer.
Speaker 1: Again, if Marie's death was the result of an accidental
Speaker 1: drug overdose, and the only thing those three men did
Speaker 1: wrong was justpose of her body, then they were in
Speaker 1: no danger of being prosecuted after a certain amount of
Speaker 1: years because of the statute of limitation. Of course, some
Speaker 1: people never want to admit that they were responsible for
Speaker 1: something like that, even if they know they're unlikely to
Speaker 1: receive any punishment. But I can't overlook the fact that
Speaker 1: Steven Skufka had the opportunity need to make a deal
Speaker 1: and shave time off a completely unrelated prison sentence in
Speaker 1: exchange for sharing everything he knew, yet he still declined.
Speaker 1: As you well know, there is no statute of limitations
Speaker 1: on murder. So if Marie was the victim of a homicide,
Speaker 1: then I can see why certain people have continued to
Speaker 1: remain silent after all these years and might still be
Speaker 1: afraid to come forward with information. My personal theory is
Speaker 1: that Monty Dulan was likely responsible for Marie's death, and
Speaker 1: that even if Stephen Skyfka and max Abo Garcia were
Speaker 1: not directly involved, they at least know what happened and
Speaker 1: assisted with the cover up. Since Skufka is now deceased,
Speaker 1: the one thing which could still potentially break this case
Speaker 1: wide open is if Garcia finally decides to talk and
Speaker 1: reveal what he knows. In retrospect, given what we now know,
Speaker 1: it seems like law enforcement could have potentially solved this
Speaker 1: case within a week of Marie's disappearance, after Doulan was
Speaker 1: arrested for his extortion attempt on the Blee family. If
Speaker 1: law enforcement had put more pressure on Dulan or some
Speaker 1: of the other people who attended the party, they might
Speaker 1: have been able to uncover the truth. But because of
Speaker 1: the different sheriff's offices seemed to be immersed in the
Speaker 1: jurisdictional red tape at the time, this opportunity slipped through
Speaker 1: their fingers.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's politics and a lack of motivation. Again, at
Speaker 3: the time, it was not uncommon for them to say,
Speaker 3: she's a young kid who went to a party and
Speaker 3: she didn't come home. That's clearly a girl who's being
Speaker 3: young and silly and is going to be back home soon.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: To their credit, that actually wasn't uncommon at the time.
Speaker 3: Right People would hitchhike, people would do all kinds of things.
Speaker 3: But Marie's family immediately said, something's wrong. She has never
Speaker 3: been that kind of kid. We need your help, and
Speaker 3: they just stuck to their you know, the traditional story
Speaker 3: instead of saying, you know what, let's give them a
Speaker 3: little bit of our resources and see what happened. Let's
Speaker 3: go talk to the people that were at that party
Speaker 3: and see did she leave with somebody.
Speaker 4: And had they done that?
Speaker 3: Like you said, Jules might have been very easily soft,
Speaker 3: But unfortunately, you get one shot and if you do
Speaker 3: not execute that opportunity, you lose your chance to really
Speaker 3: get the most valuable information. What is really interesting in
Speaker 3: this case is, like you said, there has been so
Speaker 3: much time that passed that many people could come forward
Speaker 3: and not get in trouble. But the moral weight and
Speaker 3: the way that I guarantee you they feel like they'd
Speaker 3: be publicly shamed for assisting in a cover up or
Speaker 3: hiding a body or those kinds of things would almost
Speaker 3: be as brutal is sitting through a murder trial, because
Speaker 3: I think even though legally it's not as severe, if
Speaker 3: you think about I helped bury a fifteen year old
Speaker 3: little girl, my goodness, right, this is how many years later?
Speaker 2: Forty five?
Speaker 4: Yeah, forty five.
Speaker 3: So these are individuals that might have been eighteen or
Speaker 3: nineteen and high at the time or whatever, and now
Speaker 3: they're in, you know, approaching sixty, their grandparents and all
Speaker 3: kinds of things. So it'd be pretty intense to come
Speaker 3: forward and say, oh, yeah, I actually helped bury her.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We talked about this in our last episode. The
Speaker 2: potential social stigma, and theoretically for someone like max Abel Garcia,
Speaker 2: like he may not have directly killed Marie, he may
Speaker 2: have just been present when her death took place and
Speaker 2: assisted with the cover up. But even though he's probably
Speaker 2: would not face any criminal chargers or spend any time
Speaker 2: in prison for his involvement, he would probably be shunned
Speaker 2: and like have serious damage done to his reputation because
Speaker 2: unlike Monty Doulin and Steven Scuffka, who have extensive criminal histories.
Speaker 2: I don't hear that about Garcia. All I know is
Speaker 2: that he moved out of state and has been living
Speaker 2: a normal life. And even though he's probably like in
Speaker 2: his sixties now, I could see him not wanting to
Speaker 2: uproot all that to finally come forward and to admit
Speaker 2: his complicity in the death of a girl that took
Speaker 2: place forty five years ago. Anyway, Paul and Mona Blee
Speaker 2: have worked NonStop at keeping their daughter's case in the
Speaker 2: spotlight and searching for answers these past four decades. But
Speaker 2: they're both now in their eighties, and I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how much time they have left to cover the truth.
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier that they are no longer interested in
Speaker 2: seeking justice and putting the responsible party behind bars. They
Speaker 2: just want to find out what happened to Marie and
Speaker 2: bring a remains home. Sadly, this is far from the
Speaker 2: only missing person's case in which I've heard of victim's
Speaker 2: family say something like this, as the uncertainty of not
Speaker 2: knowing what happened to your loved one is pure torture.
Speaker 2: We've just passed the forty five year anniversary of Maurice's
Speaker 2: disappearance and it still seems like there are people out
Speaker 2: there who probably have the answers, and all it would
Speaker 2: take to bring full closure to this case is for
Speaker 2: them to come forward. So if you have been to
Speaker 2: have any information about the unsolved disappearance of Marie Bleed,
Speaker 2: please call the Route County Sheriff's Office at nine seven
Speaker 2: zero eight seven nine one zero nine zero. That's nine
Speaker 2: seven zero eight seven nine one zero nine zero, Jules Ashley.
Speaker 2: Any final thoughts on this case.
Speaker 3: It's pretty much the same final thoughts for all of
Speaker 3: these where you sit back and you say, look at
Speaker 3: who the champions are.
Speaker 4: In this case, it's Paul and Mona Blee. They're in their.
Speaker 3: Eighties, like you said, and they've continued to carry the
Speaker 3: torch and advocate for their little girl.
Speaker 4: They knew Marie.
Speaker 3: Better than anyone else. She was fifteen, She did a
Speaker 3: lot of fifteen year olds. Do they go out to
Speaker 3: a party to be with quote friends. You trust that
Speaker 3: the people there with are going to help get them
Speaker 3: home safely, and Marie never came home. They knew the
Speaker 3: moment that happened that something was wrong, and they have
Speaker 3: spent forty five years continuing to advocate for just peace
Speaker 3: of mind and having her remains back in their care.
Speaker 4: That's pitiful.
Speaker 3: And add on top of it what they went through,
Speaker 3: not just with media coverage and things like that, but
Speaker 3: this ransom call that they get a few days into
Speaker 3: it and they desperately scramble to gather the five thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: only to find out it's a hoax by someone who
Speaker 3: calls himself one of her friends. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: trauma at it on top of already your daughter disappearing.
Speaker 3: For a parent to not know what happened, I would
Speaker 3: need to have her body back, and I would need
Speaker 3: answers because my imagination would get the best of me.
Speaker 3: So my prayer would be these parents get those answers
Speaker 3: before they pass away. And while they might not, I
Speaker 3: have no doubt they'll be reunited with her in heaven
Speaker 3: pretty soon.
Speaker 1: I truly hope that Abel Garcia decides to come forward
Speaker 1: sometime in the future to be able to give Paul
Speaker 1: and Mona those answers about where Marie is. And I
Speaker 1: just keep coming back to the fact that when given
Speaker 1: the opportunity to share the information about Marie's death, and
Speaker 1: you know, if it was an accident and they disposed
Speaker 1: of the body. They likely would have had to have
Speaker 1: let law enforcement to Marie's body. But there must have
Speaker 1: been something about her body or her bones that made
Speaker 1: Steven Skifka uncomfortable that may have pointed to murder and
Speaker 1: not an accidental death, and they keep going back to that.
Speaker 1: So I just don't think that it was an accident.
Speaker 1: I don't think that it was an overdose. I think
Speaker 1: that Ashley's explanation of this, like they basically whooked packed
Speaker 1: her and Monty Doolan sounds like he was the ringleader,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like Abel Garcia and Skiffka were responsible
Speaker 1: as well, because I'm just amazed at how Skiffka took
Speaker 1: that full sentence and didn't try to even lie and
Speaker 1: say some kind of explanation for what happened it wasn't true,
Speaker 1: just so he could get a lower sentence. He just
Speaker 1: clammed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree with you here that I do
Speaker 2: think that this was not an accident, and I think
Speaker 2: that the truth of what did happen to Marie is
Speaker 2: so horrible that it'll explain like why all the people
Speaker 2: who are involved have stayed silent all that time, even though,
Speaker 2: like you said, Steven Skiffka could have shaved time off
Speaker 2: his prison sentence, But as you know, there's no statute
Speaker 2: of limitations on murders, so I have a feeling that
Speaker 2: if he had come clean, he probably never would have
Speaker 2: gotten out of prison because what he did to Marie
Speaker 2: was so horrible. But yeah, this is just a tragic case.
Speaker 2: We've gone over how it could have been solved back
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine, if the police had been on
Speaker 2: the ball from the very beginning, if they had pushed
Speaker 2: Monty Dueling harder after he made the fake ransom call
Speaker 2: and interviewed all the witnesses who were at the party,
Speaker 2: whetherough memories were still fresh, and not waited twenty years
Speaker 2: to do something, we may have had someone crack or
Speaker 2: provide some piece of evidence or a key piece of
Speaker 2: information that led to the recovery of Marie's remains and
Speaker 2: the people who killed her being brought to justice. On
Speaker 2: our last episode, I shared a story that shortly after
Speaker 2: I released my Trail Went Cold episode about this case
Speaker 2: six years ago, I went to crime con and these
Speaker 2: people came up to my booth saying that they know
Speaker 2: Paul and Mona Blee personally and said, they were such
Speaker 2: nice people and have fought valiantly for so many years
Speaker 2: trying to find answers about what happened to their daughter.
Speaker 2: And there was even one incident where police were acting
Speaker 2: on a tip that Marie's remains were buried in this
Speaker 2: mine in this remote area, and they performed to search,
Speaker 2: they found nothing, And it cost Paul to break down
Speaker 2: and say, why isn't someone telling me what happened to
Speaker 2: my little girl? Because, like we said, they don't even
Speaker 2: care if the perpetrators go to prison after all this time,
Speaker 2: they just want to recover their daughter's remains and give
Speaker 2: her a proper burial. But because people have remained silent
Speaker 2: and the original investigation was batched so much, that hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the Bleaese are still here as far as
Speaker 2: I know. They have not passed away yet, but I
Speaker 2: do hope at some point before they leave, they can
Speaker 2: finally get answers about what happened to their daughter.
Speaker 5: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 2: Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
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Speaker 1: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy