Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Pathman Chile for part two of
Speaker 1: our series about ten non mysterious cases involving identified people.
Speaker 1: If you didn't hear our episode last week, we decided
Speaker 1: to do an idea where we're going to be going
Speaker 1: over an old article I published for listeners dot com
Speaker 1: back in June of twenty thirteen, which was titled ten
Speaker 1: mysterious cases involving Unidentified people. Genetic genealogy and forensics have
Speaker 1: evolved so much that here we are about twelve and
Speaker 1: a half years later, and every single victim on this
Speaker 1: list that I wrote has since been identified. So in
Speaker 1: our last episode we talked about the cases entries number
Speaker 1: ten through eight on this list. So in part two,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the next couple entries, and
Speaker 1: our format is that I will read my original write up,
Speaker 1: Jules and Ashley will give their thoughts, and then I'll
Speaker 1: explain the circumstances of how each of these victims were identified.
Speaker 1: So the next one on our list is number seven
Speaker 1: is a decedent known only as Lyle Stevick. On September fourteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, a man appearing to be in
Speaker 1: his twenties checked into a motel in Gray's Harbor's, Washington.
Speaker 1: He registered under the name Lyle Stevick and listed an
Speaker 1: address from Meridian, Idaho. He only paid for one evening,
Speaker 1: but told the staff he was likely planning to stay
Speaker 1: a few extra days. On September seventeenth, his body was
Speaker 1: found in his room, hanging from a coat rack with
Speaker 1: a leather belt. It is estimated that he had completed
Speaker 1: suicide the day before. He left money on the nightstand
Speaker 1: alongside a note that said for the room. Upon further investigation,
Speaker 1: it was discovered that Lyle Stevick is the name of
Speaker 1: a character from a Joyce Carol Oates novel. You must
Speaker 1: remember this so that there's a good chance this man
Speaker 1: had registered under an alias. The Idaho address he wrote
Speaker 1: down actually belonged to a Best Western motel. The man
Speaker 1: carried no identification or luggage, and the only possessions left
Speaker 1: behind were a toothbrush and toothpaste. The only other clue
Speaker 1: was a discarded piece of paper in the room's wastebasket,
Speaker 1: which read suicide. All attempts to uncover anything about this
Speaker 1: man's background have proved unsuccessful.
Speaker 2: I got really into watching mystery YouTube stuff, maybe like
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and I remember coming across Lyle
Speaker 2: Stavick's case, and I think that he also was wearing
Speaker 2: clothes that were way too big for him, that it
Speaker 2: looked like he'd lost a decent amount of weight in
Speaker 2: the time I guess leading up to his death. And
Speaker 2: there was just something so sad and isolated about the
Speaker 2: fact that he decided to go into this hotel and
Speaker 2: made the choice to end his life. It makes you
Speaker 2: wonder what type of life did he have, what type
Speaker 2: of connections did he have, Who's out there that's missing
Speaker 2: him right now? He has to have a family. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that he had some friends, and that he's felt
Speaker 2: so alone and that he felt that he was in
Speaker 2: so much pain that that was his only choice. My
Speaker 2: heart just broke for his family. The fact that he's
Speaker 2: sitting somewhere either you know, he's been buried or he's
Speaker 2: sitting in a morgue somewhere, and the fact that he
Speaker 2: got his identity back. And I think that you'll tell
Speaker 2: us more details about that, but there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of mystery surrounding Lyle Steviit.
Speaker 3: What's interesting, too, is when you think about the character
Speaker 3: from Joyce Od's novel, that character was actually contemplating suicide.
Speaker 3: So when he checks into that hotel and he registers
Speaker 3: under that name, he already is aware that he's contemplating
Speaker 3: at least taking his own life. And what's really pitiful
Speaker 3: is he has enough moral wherewithal to leave money on
Speaker 3: the nightstand to pay for his room. So he feels
Speaker 3: a humanity towards others, like they're going to find me,
Speaker 3: but I don't want to, you know, financially burden them
Speaker 3: as well. So I'm going to pay for the room
Speaker 3: and then I'm going to take my own life. Like
Speaker 3: that gave me chills when I saw that that this
Speaker 3: is a man who's hurting so badly or feels so
Speaker 3: isolated that he's going to take his own life. But
Speaker 3: he still cared about the people that were going to
Speaker 3: have to find him, and so that, I don't know,
Speaker 3: that's something that really stuck out to me. He left
Speaker 3: money to pay for his room, knowing when he checked
Speaker 3: in he used an alias of a character who is
Speaker 3: debating taking their own life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are quite a few cases just like this
Speaker 1: about individuals who check into hotels or motels under false
Speaker 1: names and then decide to take their own life. You
Speaker 1: might recall that we once did a series on the
Speaker 1: Jennifer Fairgate case from Norway, which was featured on the
Speaker 1: Netflix reboot of Unst Mysteries, where she shot herself inside
Speaker 1: a very fancy hotel, and of course the name she used,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Fairgate, was likely a fake and she is still unidentified.
Speaker 1: There are always a lot of wild theories that's around
Speaker 1: cases like this about how the victim might be a
Speaker 1: spy or something like that. I know, for Lyle's case,
Speaker 1: because he checked in only three days after nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of speculation there might be a
Speaker 1: connection that maybe he lost a relative and one of
Speaker 1: the terrorist attacks. But the big turning point took place
Speaker 1: in May of twenty eighteen, and if you might recall,
Speaker 1: this was a short time after the Golden State killer
Speaker 1: was finally identified and arrested. And this was a big
Speaker 1: turning point in investigations for cold cases because they identified
Speaker 1: them using genetic genealogy, and I think they realized that
Speaker 1: we can use this at a lot of other unsolved
Speaker 1: cases and it pretty much opened the floodgates and a
Speaker 1: lot of these cases that were solved where unidentified decedents
Speaker 1: where they realized if you entered this DNA into some
Speaker 1: genealogical database, it might eventually to a biological relative. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened with Lyle Stevick. He was identified
Speaker 1: by the DNA dough project because his DNA was uploaded
Speaker 1: gen Match and was eventually linked to some individuals living
Speaker 1: in New Mexico and Idaho, and they finally found his
Speaker 1: genetic relatives and he was positively identified. It turned out
Speaker 1: that he originally hailed from Alameda County, California, and was
Speaker 1: twenty five years old at the time of his death.
Speaker 1: But this is pretty much the only information about him
Speaker 1: that they've released publicly. They have not even released his
Speaker 1: real name. When investigators tracked down his family, they claimed
Speaker 1: they had no idea that he had taken his own life.
Speaker 1: They just assumed that he decided to cut off all
Speaker 1: ties with them and go off to live his life somewhere.
Speaker 1: So they were taken by surprise when they learned that
Speaker 1: he was one of the more famous unidentified john does
Speaker 1: in the United States at that time. But in the
Speaker 1: interest of maintaining their privacy, Lyle's family have elected not
Speaker 1: to publicly reveal his real name or any other details
Speaker 1: about his background. If you search hard enough online, you
Speaker 1: can find his real name. But out of respect to
Speaker 1: his family, I'm not going to repeat it here, but
Speaker 1: this reaction pretty much brought out the worst in the
Speaker 1: true crime community because a lot of people were very
Speaker 1: angry that the family did this. They felt that they
Speaker 1: were entitled to know Lyles's real name and his identity,
Speaker 1: and they were leaving like disgusting comments saying, well, I
Speaker 1: donated to the DNA DO project, and if I had
Speaker 1: known that they were going to reveal his name or
Speaker 1: his background, I never would have done that. It's like
Speaker 1: there was such a feeling of entitlement and selfishness about it,
Speaker 1: and no respect for the victim's family, who got a
Speaker 1: major backlash over the whole thing. But I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not our it's not their lives, like, it's their family's decisions.
Speaker 1: So if they're not comfortable revealing Lyle's real name or
Speaker 1: anything about him, then that's their prerogative. But people really
Speaker 1: overreacted to that.
Speaker 3: I remember, I can't imagine feeling entitled to have access
Speaker 3: to a family's most intimate, most heartbreaking moment like We
Speaker 3: are very fortunate as true crime people of interest, right
Speaker 3: thing that that is of interest to us that families
Speaker 3: open their lives to us often, But in a moment
Speaker 3: where a family says, I'm so heartbroken. This is our
Speaker 3: private mourning, this is something we're dealing with. Please leave
Speaker 3: us alone to not say thank you. I wish you
Speaker 3: nothing but the best, and I have ultimate respect for that. Oh,
Speaker 3: thank you Robn for protecting his identity, because that's what
Speaker 3: the family has asked for. What was sad in this
Speaker 3: case is that you look back and there's reports that
Speaker 3: the family said, you know, he had voluntarily estranged from
Speaker 3: the family, or that there had been some distance between them,
Speaker 3: so they had assumed that he had chosen not to
Speaker 3: have contact, and that there wasn't a huge concern that
Speaker 3: he had taken his own life or that he would
Speaker 3: be missing, and that's why reports hadn't been made that
Speaker 3: there had something had happened. That's heartbreaking as well. To
Speaker 3: combine that with the fact that he then chose to
Speaker 3: take his own life likely had a lot to do
Speaker 3: with the fact that he was estranged from his family.
Speaker 3: So that's a grief that I can't even imagine. What
Speaker 3: that feels like that my child, my brother, whoever he
Speaker 3: is to that family, had a falling out, had chosen
Speaker 3: because of mental health or something else, to separate from us,
Speaker 3: and because we weren't there, he made this decision like
Speaker 3: what if I had been there or what if I
Speaker 3: had been able to repair that relationship. So there's so
Speaker 3: much added trauma and grief that comes in this case.
Speaker 3: It's absolutely heartbreaking for that family. It's not someone who
Speaker 3: chose to leave and then was able to have a
Speaker 3: healthy life that they chose. It's someone who left your
Speaker 3: family and then made a decision that they were so
Speaker 3: alone they couldn't go on.
Speaker 1: That's heavy.
Speaker 3: So I one thousand percent respect and honor the fact
Speaker 3: that they said, please let this be. We've been through
Speaker 3: it enough.
Speaker 2: It's been nearly a quarter century since Lyle Stavik's well,
Speaker 2: we don't know his actual name, but I'll just continue
Speaker 2: to call him Lyle Stebic because out of respect for
Speaker 2: the family, we don't want to reveal his identity. And
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one, mental health care and the
Speaker 2: conversations surrounding mental health weren't what they are today. So
Speaker 2: if Lyle was struggling, perhaps he was dealing with a
Speaker 2: mental health disorder or something that would be a catalyst
Speaker 2: for him estranging himself voluntarily from the family. We don't
Speaker 2: know what his internal struggles were, We don't know what
Speaker 2: his traumas were, we don't know what his triggers were.
Speaker 2: But obviously he was suffering immensely to take to make
Speaker 2: the decision to end his own life. But it makes
Speaker 2: me really sad to think that perhaps there could have
Speaker 2: been somewhere that he could have reached out to or
Speaker 2: somebody if the conversation was different around mental health. I
Speaker 2: think we can take it for granted today that we're
Speaker 2: very open as a society. We still have leaps and
Speaker 2: bounds to go. But if somebody is struggling with anxiety
Speaker 2: or depression, bipolar disorder, any of the cluster b disorders, schizophrenia,
Speaker 2: people feel okay to discuss it and to reveal that
Speaker 2: about themselves in many cases. But when this happened to Lyle,
Speaker 2: it was very much something that people suffered with in silence,
Speaker 2: and not everybody, but a lot of people did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like he Even though two thousand and one doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like such a long time ago, it kind of
Speaker 1: hits me, and it's like, ooh, it has been twenty
Speaker 1: four years, and you are right that mental health care,
Speaker 1: even though it was better than it would have been
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen seventies or so, was still had
Speaker 1: a long way to go. So we have no idea
Speaker 1: what Lyle was going through, what made him decide to
Speaker 1: do what he did, but it is kind of sad
Speaker 1: like he maybe could have reached out for help and
Speaker 1: maybe this could have been avoided, but we just don't
Speaker 1: know what was going on in his mind. And it
Speaker 1: is sad though that obviously if his family never reported
Speaker 1: in missing and were just assuming that he had cut
Speaker 1: himself off from them, that he probably did not have
Speaker 1: the greatest relationship with them. But I do respect that
Speaker 1: their privacy that they didn't want to reveal anything. They
Speaker 1: are not the only family of an identified John or
Speaker 1: Jane Doe who has chosen to maintain their privacy, because
Speaker 1: one pattern I have seen is that even if the
Speaker 1: family is very active and want to reveal everything about
Speaker 1: the victim's background, it's perhaps inevitable that they'll often face
Speaker 1: like criticism online from amateur slus who says, well, why
Speaker 1: didn't you report the missing and they're not seeing the
Speaker 1: context that if they went missing in like the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties, and they disappeared and were found dead in
Speaker 1: a state or a province where they were not born,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to get because of jurisdictional issues, to
Speaker 1: get a proper investigation launch. So in a lot of
Speaker 1: these cases, the victims' families were actively looking for them
Speaker 1: and trying to find out what happened, but because of
Speaker 1: jurisdictional issues and being unable to get law enforcement to
Speaker 1: do anything, they were pretty much like at a dead end,
Speaker 1: and that's why they didn't find out what happened to
Speaker 1: their relative until decades after they died.
Speaker 2: And I think it would be different if Lyle was murdered.
Speaker 2: The fact that he decided to complete suicide that feels
Speaker 2: like a deeply personal matter for a lot of families.
Speaker 2: So I can completely stand and empathize with their decision
Speaker 2: not to want to put their own details on blast,
Speaker 2: because they knew that if they did reveal his identity,
Speaker 2: that would then thereby reveal their identities, and so they
Speaker 2: would become this like topic of discussion and fodder in
Speaker 2: all these different true crime forums on podcasts, and people
Speaker 2: would be really interested in these details, and so when
Speaker 2: you're grieving, to want to maintain that privacy and to
Speaker 2: want to do it alone without the public scrutiny, I
Speaker 2: can completely understand that.
Speaker 1: So our next entry on the list is the Caledonia
Speaker 1: Jane Doe, and I'll read the write up right now.
Speaker 1: On the morning of November the ninth, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: a passing motorist discovered the body of a young woman
Speaker 1: in a cornfield near Caledonia, New York. She looked to
Speaker 1: be between thirteen and nineteen years old, and was killed
Speaker 1: by two gunshot wounds to the head. Authorities estimate that
Speaker 1: the murder weapon was a thirty eight caliber handgun. She
Speaker 1: was likely killed the night before, but unfortunately heavy rains
Speaker 1: that washed away potential forensic evidence. Her pockets have been
Speaker 1: turned inside out, indicating that the killer had possibly removed
Speaker 1: her identification. A waitress reported seeing the woman at a
Speaker 1: diner in Lymeman, New York, the night before, and numerous
Speaker 1: truckers claimed that they had seen her hitchhiking and attempting
Speaker 1: to catch rides. In two thousand and six, three microscopic
Speaker 1: pollen grains found inside her clothing ranalyzed, and it was
Speaker 1: determined that they could have only come from Florida, Arizona,
Speaker 1: or southern California, indicating that the girl had traveled a
Speaker 1: great distance before her death. But even though AUTHORISA followed
Speaker 1: up on over ten thousand leads, she has yet to
Speaker 1: be identified and remains buried under the name Jane Doe
Speaker 1: in Dansville, New York.
Speaker 3: Wow, this one, when you think about this is a child,
Speaker 3: someone who's thirteen to nineteen years old, with two gunshot wounds.
Speaker 3: That the head is so graphic and so brutal, and
Speaker 3: she's a hitchhiker, which in the seventies would make a
Speaker 3: lot of sense. But this is a child who's likely
Speaker 3: hitchhiked eight very long distance, which may not be as normal. Right,
Speaker 3: so hitching a ride into a fellow cities or hitching
Speaker 3: a ride maybe one hundred miles, so be it. But
Speaker 3: let's say she's thirteen. A thirteen year old to be
Speaker 3: hitchhiking across the states would be quite extreme, And so
Speaker 3: it's interesting to think about what happened, where was she going,
Speaker 3: and who did she run into that would go to
Speaker 3: a point where they're gonna go through her pockets and
Speaker 3: shoot her twice with a shotgun. It just seems incredibly
Speaker 3: like a significant moment. This is somebody they need to
Speaker 3: discard of who's such a young age and probably not
Speaker 3: very much of a thread.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's shocking her age to think that she was
Speaker 2: hitchhiking any great distance because thinking back to being that
Speaker 2: age and going anywhere without your parents. Sure like you might,
Speaker 2: you know, go and hang out with your friends and whatever.
Speaker 2: But the idea of packing up your stuff walking out
Speaker 2: that door, going into the a bit into the unknown.
Speaker 2: You are putting out your thumb and you don't know
Speaker 2: who is going to pick you up. It could be
Speaker 2: somebody dangerous, it could be somebody safe, but you are
Speaker 2: obviously running away from something. There had to have been
Speaker 2: something that was either scary or traumatizing, or a reason
Speaker 2: that she felt that it was a better option for
Speaker 2: her to leave home and to take a chance with
Speaker 2: strangers on the road and to sleep roth than it
Speaker 2: was to stay where.
Speaker 3: She was and cross country. So she's up in New
Speaker 3: York and this has to be the pollen found on
Speaker 3: her had to be from they said, Florida, Arizona or
Speaker 3: southern California. So there's not a single option there that
Speaker 3: says this was just one hundred miles or so she
Speaker 3: wanted to travel. She's going to make a cross country
Speaker 3: trip at this age and run into someone that dangerous
Speaker 3: in that trip. It's quite extreme.
Speaker 2: But couldn't she have picked up that pollen in the
Speaker 2: truck of one of the truckers.
Speaker 1: That is true. Yes, I find out she really was
Speaker 1: from Florida, so maybe that's where she originally got the POLLMN.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I always thought that a little bit that
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean she was from there, that maybe
Speaker 1: if the killer was a cross country trucker, that the
Speaker 1: polem could have originated from them. So, as we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about, this victim did not have the happiest
Speaker 1: home life, and she was hitchhiking across the country. This
Speaker 1: is not the only case of this ilk that I've
Speaker 1: seen where a victim was murdered while hitch hiking through
Speaker 1: number of different states while they were still a teenager,
Speaker 1: which seems pretty shocking today, but was not all that
Speaker 1: uncommon during the nineteen seventies. And this is a case
Speaker 1: that actually the identification of the victim pre dated genetic genealogy.
Speaker 1: It took place all the way back in January of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, only about a year and a half after
Speaker 1: I wrote the list first article, and of course before
Speaker 1: genetic genealogy. The best way you could identify these people
Speaker 1: is find a family member who looked like a potential
Speaker 1: candidate to be related to the victim, check their DNA,
Speaker 1: and hope that it to be a match. So it
Speaker 1: was finally announced in January of twenty fifteen that Caledonia
Speaker 1: Jane Doe had been identified as sixteen year old Tammy
Speaker 1: Joe Alexander, who did hail from Brooksville, Florida, and of course,
Speaker 1: none of her friends and family had heard from her
Speaker 1: since the spring of nineteen seventy nine and just assumed
Speaker 1: that she ran away months before the identification because no
Speaker 1: missing persons report had ever been filed, Tammy's half sister,
Speaker 1: Pamela Dyson, and one of her old high school friends
Speaker 1: decided to try to figure out what happened to Tammy
Speaker 1: and file a report for the first time with the
Speaker 1: local sheriff's office, and this soon captured the attention of
Speaker 1: a very prominent websleoth named Carl Koppleman, who was also
Speaker 1: a very talented forensic artist. Who has a history of
Speaker 1: using post mortem pictures to create digital illustrations for unidentified decedents.
Speaker 1: And if you look at a lot of the composite
Speaker 1: sketches for these victims online, which are very lifelike, there's
Speaker 1: a good chance that they were created by Carl Koppleman.
Speaker 1: He was looking through a recently foul missing person's report.
Speaker 1: He saw Tammy Joe Alexander's photograph and a light bulb
Speaker 1: went off over his head and he realized, Wow, this
Speaker 1: kind of bears a strong resemblance to the Caledonia Jane
Speaker 1: Doe because he had created a sketch for her years earlier.
Speaker 1: So he decided to contact law enforcement. They collected DNA
Speaker 1: from Tammy's half sister, Pamela, and lo and behold, it
Speaker 1: turned out to be a match, and the Caledonia Jane
Speaker 1: Doe was finally identified as Tammy Joe Alexander.
Speaker 2: You must have been so excited. This is the first
Speaker 2: one that you got to check off the list. You
Speaker 2: must have been elated.
Speaker 1: I was, yes. I think there was another one we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about later that also had an identification
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, But back then this sort of thing
Speaker 1: was more rare. It's not like today where genetic genealogy
Speaker 1: is identifying like several decedents per week.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting here is if you do look at
Speaker 3: the composite that they made of her, she has such
Speaker 3: a unique nose shape, and she has a really distinct
Speaker 3: smile as well, and so the way her teeth are
Speaker 3: structured and the way her nose turns up, it's it's
Speaker 3: very very distinct. And so then when you compare that
Speaker 3: to her picture, it's incredible that the actual person who
Speaker 3: had created the composite sketches just looking through this list
Speaker 3: of missing persons and says, wait a minute, I just
Speaker 3: designed a composite that looks very similar to this young lady.
Speaker 3: And so it's incredible when you compare the two, it's
Speaker 3: almost a spitting image of her actual picture.
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable, Like it looks like it seems so lifelike
Speaker 2: and everything like the amount of tooth show like you said,
Speaker 2: the jaw structure, the eyes even just like the amount
Speaker 2: of putting in the eyes and the placement of the eyebrows.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Before genetic genealogy, Carl Koppelman was the main reason
Speaker 1: a lot of these victims were identified because his sketches
Speaker 1: were so good. And this is not the only example.
Speaker 1: When you look at the photograph, when you look at
Speaker 1: the sketch and then a photograph of the victim and
Speaker 1: be struck by how somil they are to each other,
Speaker 1: and more often than not, it paved the way for
Speaker 1: them being identified. But not surprisingly, Tammy did not have
Speaker 1: the happiest home life growing up. She and Pamela grew
Speaker 1: up with a mother who was addicted to prescription medication
Speaker 1: and was described as being emotionally volatile and erupting into
Speaker 1: temper tantrums and also had suicidal thoughts quite often, and
Speaker 1: Pamela would later say, quote, I think she had issues
Speaker 1: back then that they didn't diagnose. So perhaps she was
Speaker 1: suffering from bipolar disorder or something and they just didn't
Speaker 1: know it at the time. So Pamela just assumed that
Speaker 1: Tammy had ran off and made a new life somewhere,
Speaker 1: and even though she hadn't heard of her, she was
Speaker 1: kind of holding out hope that maybe she found a
Speaker 1: husband and had children and started a family of her own.
Speaker 1: So she was quite distraught to learn that Tammy had
Speaker 1: been murdered in another state, likely well she was picked
Speaker 1: up hitchhiking. They decided to leave her buried in Dansville,
Speaker 1: New York. They pretty much said that this town, when
Speaker 1: they found her body, treated her so well, gave her
Speaker 1: the dignity of a funeral and a burial plot that
Speaker 1: they were going to leave her there rather than bring
Speaker 1: her body back to Florida. But they did hold a
Speaker 1: ceremony where they changed her headstone, where instead of being
Speaker 1: buried under Caledonia Jane Doe, they finally gave her a
Speaker 1: new headstone with the name Tammy Joe Alexander on it,
Speaker 1: and she is still buried there to this day. So obviously,
Speaker 1: the big unanswered question here is who murdered her. It
Speaker 1: turned out when she was last seen at a diner,
Speaker 1: the waitress said that she was with a white male
Speaker 1: who looked like he was between five foot eight and
Speaker 1: five foot nine. He wore black wire rimmed glasses and
Speaker 1: he was seen driving a tan station wagon, and police
Speaker 1: have labeled him as a person of interest and are
Speaker 1: continuing to seek his identity. As apparently Tammy and this
Speaker 1: man left, and it's possibly reasonable to assume that he
Speaker 1: could have murdered her at some point and then dumped
Speaker 1: her body into the cornfield. So this is still an
Speaker 1: open investigation. And they actually did a great thing in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. They released some audio clips of Tammy's voice
Speaker 1: because she had actually created some recordings while she was
Speaker 1: traveling the country on a cassette tape sent them to
Speaker 1: her former boyfriend and he still kept them in his
Speaker 1: possession all these years and provided them to the police.
Speaker 1: And they pretty much think, well, if we release audio
Speaker 1: her voice, maybe this will ring a bell with someone
Speaker 1: who who remembers her, and this will give us a
Speaker 1: promising lead. And it's also been reported that they did
Speaker 1: find traces of male DNA on Tammy's clothing, which has
Speaker 1: been entered in some national databases, but thus far they
Speaker 1: have yet to find a match. But hopefully this can
Speaker 1: be solved at some point in the future. So our
Speaker 1: next entry on the list is a victim known only
Speaker 1: as Princess Blue. So I'm going to read the entry
Speaker 1: right now. In Missouria County, Texas, on September tenth, nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: a motorists who pulled off the highway to relieve himself
Speaker 1: in a trash dumping area was shocked to discover a
Speaker 1: skull inside an old tire. The skeleton remains of a
Speaker 1: female believed to be between the ages of fifteen and
Speaker 1: twenty five, were then found on a pile of debris.
Speaker 1: Cause of death is unknown, but it is estimated that
Speaker 1: she died one to five years before being discovered. She
Speaker 1: was initially thought to be Hispanic, but later analysis has
Speaker 1: determined that she was probably white and descended from at
Speaker 1: least one black parent or a grandparent. Even though no
Speaker 1: clothing was found, the victim had six rings on her
Speaker 1: fingers and a bracelet. The most distinctive piece of jewelry
Speaker 1: was a silver colored nineteen seventy five class ring from
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee High School in Houston. The bluestone in
Speaker 1: the ring is what led to her being nicknamed Princess Blue.
Speaker 1: Given that the victim was too young to have graduated
Speaker 1: high school in nineteen seventy five, investigators were baffled about
Speaker 1: why she would have this ring and have tried to
Speaker 1: find out if anyone from that graduating class might have
Speaker 1: lost or given the ring away. Thus far, they have
Speaker 1: had no luck solving this mystery.
Speaker 2: It's such a bizarre component, thinking that there's no way
Speaker 2: that she could have graduated in nineteen seventy five, and
Speaker 2: you think that you've got this real tangible piece of evidence.
Speaker 2: When you know the high school, you think, okay, well
Speaker 2: somebody's going to know her. There's going to be something
Speaker 2: connected to that high school. But then to have it
Speaker 2: go nowhere and to not really know when she died,
Speaker 2: we've got like a one to five year period, which
Speaker 2: is interesting. And another thing that we've seen on multiple
Speaker 2: cases is how many times does a guide pull over
Speaker 2: to relieve himself and comes across a body. Like the
Speaker 2: most famous example I can think of is the ad
Speaker 2: no On sayad case or not, the murder of Amin Lee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was pretty much the same thing with
Speaker 1: the Sumter County dose case, which we talked about on
Speaker 1: our last episode, where a truck driver stopping to relieve
Speaker 1: himself stumbled upon their bodies.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine you're just thinking you're taking a break,
Speaker 3: fir a second, all of a sudden you're in the
Speaker 3: middle of discovery of a human body. And this one's
Speaker 3: so interesting because the skull is found inside a tire
Speaker 3: and then you have the body found in debris, so
Speaker 3: it makes it seem as though there was a purposeful dismemberment,
Speaker 3: although over time there could have been movement from animals
Speaker 3: or things like that. Here what's really interesting to me, though,
Speaker 3: is that ring. She's too young to be the person
Speaker 3: who actually graduated from nineteen seventy five from Robert E.
Speaker 3: Lee High School. But no one in the class of
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five has a missing family member, a missing friend,
Speaker 3: a missing cousin anything. There's nobody in that class. How
Speaker 3: big could it be, Like the biggest graduating class I've
Speaker 3: heard of is like, you know, four hundred and five
Speaker 3: hundred people or something like that. There's not a single
Speaker 3: one of the individuals who would have received that ring
Speaker 3: or the ring company itself. They could tell you, here's
Speaker 3: a list of people who ordered class rings with the
Speaker 3: bluestone in it.
Speaker 1: None of them.
Speaker 3: Could report, Hey, we have a family members who's missing,
Speaker 3: or I gave my ring to a friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we're going to talk about now that she's
Speaker 1: been identified. Of course, they found out that she never
Speaker 1: actually attended the school that the ring came from. They
Speaker 1: had their theory, but it's still one of the bigger
Speaker 1: mysteries in the case. So they finally made an identification
Speaker 1: in June of twenty twenty, when they used genetic genealogy
Speaker 1: to formally identify her as Julie Gwen Davis, who would
Speaker 1: have been twenty or twenty one years old at the
Speaker 1: time of her death. She had originally hailed from Orange, Texas,
Speaker 1: but had left her home to travel to New Orleans
Speaker 1: when she was eighteen years old, and her family had
Speaker 1: no idea what happened to her, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: they also could not file a missing person's report because
Speaker 1: they had no idea where she was at the time.
Speaker 1: She did seem to have any fixed address, so that's
Speaker 1: why she wasn't on file anywhere. And the identification was
Speaker 1: made possible when Julie's brothers started looking into her disappearance
Speaker 1: and decided to take the initiative to submit his own
Speaker 1: DNA to the Texas Rangers, and when they entered it
Speaker 1: into their database, it wound up matching Princess Blue and
Speaker 1: paved the way for Julie's identification. So Julie's exact cause
Speaker 1: of death has still never been determined, so we don't
Speaker 1: have any certainty about whether or not this was a homicide,
Speaker 1: but I have no idea why she would be found
Speaker 1: in that trash area if she wasn't murdered, and of
Speaker 1: course the idea that animals moved her skull after she decomposed,
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure they would have moved the skull
Speaker 1: inside attire. But then again, they've never said that she
Speaker 1: was beheaded either, so we still don't have an explanation
Speaker 1: for that. And of course, like I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: ring is still a big mystery because Julie never did
Speaker 1: attend Robert E. Lee High School. But the story goes
Speaker 1: is that she got married after she traveled to New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and according to Julie's sister, she did meet Julie's husband
Speaker 1: at one point and learned that he was from Houston,
Speaker 1: so perhaps he went to that school and gave the
Speaker 1: ring to her, But unfortunately, don't really have any other
Speaker 1: information about that, about the husband and if he went
Speaker 1: to that school, or if he's considered to be a
Speaker 1: person of interest or a suspect. Apparently he still has
Speaker 1: not been tracked down, and I'm not even sure if
Speaker 1: Julie's family knows his name because it's never been released publicly.
Speaker 1: So this investigation at the moment is still in a
Speaker 1: holding pattern. They are still not one hundred percent certain
Speaker 1: if Julie was murdered that I do think that there
Speaker 1: is a good chance that she was the victim of
Speaker 1: a homicide and that the responsible party dumped her in
Speaker 1: that area.
Speaker 2: Well, we know, statistically speaking, Ashley always tells us that
Speaker 2: when somebody is murdered, it's usually somebody who's close to them.
Speaker 2: So it could it be the husband, Yeah, it definitely
Speaker 2: could be. We don't have any information here, and it
Speaker 2: would be nice if we knew if there was a
Speaker 2: big age gap, because I don't know is there an
Speaker 2: age gap between them, is there not? We don't even
Speaker 2: know his name, Like, it just feels like we've got
Speaker 2: such a limited amount of information. But since he hasn't
Speaker 2: come forward and hasn't come to the family and said, oh,
Speaker 2: she's missing, she's been murdered, I'm so upset about this situation.
Speaker 2: That speaks to somebody who might have something to hide.
Speaker 3: For sure, if you're distressed that your loved one's missing,
Speaker 3: you would scream to anyone who would listen, right, like
Speaker 3: something's happened, help me. If I didn't mind that they
Speaker 3: went missing or are no longer here, I wouldn't reach
Speaker 3: out to anybody. So it's definitely confusing and frustrating here
Speaker 3: in this case, and there is so little to go on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean to give the husband the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt, Like if she moved to New Orleans and
Speaker 1: they got married, and then maybe their marriage came to
Speaker 1: an end. It could be a thing where he stayed
Speaker 1: in New Orleans and she decided to travel back to
Speaker 1: Texas and then got murdered by a complete unknown third party,
Speaker 1: And because he didn't care about her anymore, that's why
Speaker 1: he didn't decide to report her missing and was completely
Speaker 1: unaware that she was found murdered. But of course the
Speaker 1: detail about the ring, it makes you wonder if they
Speaker 1: weren't still together, why does she still have the ring
Speaker 1: in her possession, But then again, why wouldn't he take
Speaker 1: the ring back if he killed her and dumped her
Speaker 1: body there. There's just so many unanswered questions and hopefully
Speaker 1: the investigation will turn up some answers at some point
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 2: Just a quick question, what is this photo like? If
Speaker 2: somebody were to look up your list first article and
Speaker 2: under number five Princess Blue, is that the site where
Speaker 2: her body was discovered? Picture?
Speaker 1: Good question I'm loading it here and the photos aren't
Speaker 1: loading for me, but let me try. Here we go.
Speaker 2: It looks fairly picturesque. There's a pretty green tree for
Speaker 2: anybody who's listening and not looking at it, and looks
Speaker 2: like maybe some shrubbery below, but it doesn't really look
Speaker 2: like a garbage dump sight or anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know lisz fers sometimes would use stock photos
Speaker 1: if they couldn't find a good photo. I'm actually kind
Speaker 1: of surprised they didn't show like Princess Blues composite sketch.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know if this is a crime
Speaker 1: scene photo, but it does look like a crime scene photo,
Speaker 1: so maybe when they just did a Google search under
Speaker 1: Princess Blue, this is one of the first things that
Speaker 1: came up, and they just decided to use it as
Speaker 1: part of the article. So our last one we'll talk
Speaker 1: about on this episode is a victim known as the
Speaker 1: unidentified Grateful Dead Fan. On June the twenty sixth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, a man named Michael A. Eric Hager was
Speaker 1: killed when his van crashed in Greensville County, Virginia. A
Speaker 1: passenger was also killed in the accident, but Hager's family
Speaker 1: did not know him, so he had presumably been picked
Speaker 1: up well hitchhiking. The unidentified man was between sixteen and
Speaker 1: twenty one years old or a ti ed eyed concert
Speaker 1: t shirt advertising the Grateful Dead's thirtieth anniversary tour. He
Speaker 1: had no identification, but he did have a ticket stub
Speaker 1: from the Grateful Dead concert at RFK Stadium the night before.
Speaker 1: The ticket was traced to a Pennsylvania man who had
Speaker 1: scalped it at the concert, but he could not recall
Speaker 1: who he sold it to. One significant clue was a
Speaker 1: note found in the man's pocket which read quote to Jason, sorry,
Speaker 1: we had to go see you around Caroline OH and
Speaker 1: Caroline T. The note also contained a phone number with
Speaker 1: a nine to one four prefix, but no area code.
Speaker 1: Neither of these Carolines has ever been identified, and the
Speaker 1: phone number has not helped uncover the hitchhiker's identity. This
Speaker 1: note led to the man being nicknamed Jason Do, but
Speaker 1: since no one has ever come forward to claim his body,
Speaker 1: his real name remains a mystery.
Speaker 3: If you have a young individual who looks like they're
Speaker 3: this concert goer and their hitchhiking, I mean those Carolines,
Speaker 3: it almost seems like he could have been at a
Speaker 3: bar or at a party or something, and these are
Speaker 3: just two girls he runs into, and one of them
Speaker 3: sharing their phone number, like, sorry, we had to go.
Speaker 3: We ran out of that party really quick. But here's
Speaker 3: our number, you know, like they slipped it to him.
Speaker 3: It's really sad because it seems like this kid's in
Speaker 3: the middle of just a very standard teenage experience or
Speaker 3: young adult experience, where they're going to a concert, they're
Speaker 3: enjoying life, they're jumping in the car with somebody to
Speaker 3: get a ride, and then you have this crash that
Speaker 3: ends his life and this other young man's life, and
Speaker 3: yet we have no idea who this passenger is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can only imagine what Michael Eric Hager's
Speaker 1: family felt having to deal with the tragedy of losing
Speaker 1: him in a car accident and then finding out that
Speaker 1: he has this guy inside that they never heard of before.
Speaker 2: And to think that there's another family out there who's
Speaker 2: missing this guy. And he's another grateful dead fan. And
Speaker 2: it's interesting. There's who, said Payne Lindsay, who has the
Speaker 2: podcast Dead and Gone?
Speaker 1: No, it is up and vanished. I can't remember who
Speaker 1: does Dead and Gone?
Speaker 3: There is a whole Grateful Dead series, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called Dead and Gone. I think it's Neil Strauss,
Speaker 2: But yeah, that podcast I listened to the first season.
Speaker 2: It was really good. But it taught me, because I
Speaker 2: don't listen to The Grateful Dead, that these are fans
Speaker 2: that truly are really good people for the most part,
Speaker 2: and they really come together. They want to support the band,
Speaker 2: and they're there for each other in times when they need.
Speaker 2: So it was just really interesting thinking that there could
Speaker 2: be all these murders that were associated with The Grateful Dead,
Speaker 2: in this case an accident, and knowing that like this
Speaker 2: fan hasn't got their identity back, and like you said,
Speaker 2: for the family going, who is this person who's been
Speaker 2: found with our loved one's It's just a lot of
Speaker 2: mysteries here.
Speaker 1: So I first became familiar with it when it was
Speaker 1: featured on Unsolved Mysteries back in the nineties. It was
Speaker 1: not a full segment, it was just kind of a
Speaker 1: brief thirty second special alert where they said, this young
Speaker 1: man recently was killed in a car accident. We don't
Speaker 1: know his identity, so please come forward if you have
Speaker 1: any information. And I was always intrigued by the fact
Speaker 1: that on the Unsolved Mysteries message board there were like
Speaker 1: pages of threads devoted to discussing this case, which I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of remarkable considering that the segment was
Speaker 1: only thirty seconds long. But they found Jason Doe's story
Speaker 1: to be quite fascinating, wondering who was he and how
Speaker 1: did he wind up dead and these particular circumstances and
Speaker 1: why has no one claimed him because it's a very
Speaker 1: so many distinct details surrounding his death. Well, this is
Speaker 1: another identification that actually took place pre genetic genealogy down
Speaker 1: the old fashioned way by internet sleuthing, and it took
Speaker 1: place in January of twenty fifteen, right around the same
Speaker 1: time as Caledonia Jane Doe. So it was the first
Speaker 1: or second entry on my list, first article where the
Speaker 1: victim got identified. And this was pretty crazy because someone
Speaker 1: decided to share a forensic sketch of Grateful Doe on
Speaker 1: the image sharing website Immager, and one of the site's
Speaker 1: posters suddenly commented and said, Wow, this guy bores a
Speaker 1: striking resemblance to this grateful dead fan that I knew
Speaker 1: about twenty years ago named Jason. I hung out with
Speaker 1: this guy for several months, but I haven't heard of
Speaker 1: him in a while. And then this person decided to
Speaker 1: post a photograph of Jason, and everyone just gasp because
Speaker 1: this is probably the closest resemblance I've ever seen to
Speaker 1: a composite sketch of a unidentified decendent to a real
Speaker 1: person I'd ever seen, because it showed Jason with his
Speaker 1: long ponytail hair. He was wearing like a tiedyed T
Speaker 1: shirt in the photo, and everyone on the Unsolved Mysteries
Speaker 1: message board was going not saying, if this is not
Speaker 1: Jason Doe, then this has to be one hell of
Speaker 1: a coincidence. It must be one hell of a doppelganger.
Speaker 1: But they finally identified this man. His real name was
Speaker 1: Jason Callahan. He was nineteen years old at the time
Speaker 1: he went missing and hailed from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: and they finally got in contact with his mother, who
Speaker 1: confirmed that she had seen him in twenty years. Because
Speaker 1: her son had no fixed address and pretty much lived
Speaker 1: a nomadic lifestyle where he traveled around the country, so
Speaker 1: she never reported him missing didn't realize that he was dead,
Speaker 1: but sure enough, they collected DNA from her and matched
Speaker 1: it up to Grateful Doe, and it turned out that yes,
Speaker 1: there was a genetic match, so Jason Doe was finally
Speaker 1: identified as Jason Callahan, and his mother claimed that after
Speaker 1: not hearing from him for a while, I tried to
Speaker 1: file an official missing person's report, but I could not
Speaker 1: do so because of jurisdictional issues because I didn't know
Speaker 1: where he went missing from and he had no fixed address.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the big success stories from
Speaker 1: the internet because if this person had not seen the
Speaker 1: composite sketch and posted the photograph of Jason Callahan and
Speaker 1: said I recognized this guy, then who knows how much
Speaker 1: longer it would have been before he was identified.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely incredible that this mother got her son's identity
Speaker 3: captured from someone who was simply on the Internet looking
Speaker 3: at some random post, right, and they go, I know
Speaker 3: this kid, I know him. And for that poor mother,
Speaker 3: it's what we've discussed in several cases. He was hitchhiking
Speaker 3: around the country, going from concert to concert, and like
Speaker 3: I said, just being a typical young adult living life,
Speaker 3: and because of that transient lifestyle that's happening in that process,
Speaker 3: she didn't even know where to tell them to look.
Speaker 3: She didn't have anywhere to tell them, Hey, this is
Speaker 3: where he went missing from. And so what a heartbreaking
Speaker 3: reality for our mom who's desperate for answers. And thank
Speaker 3: god that this person on the internet was able to
Speaker 3: identify him and then ask, you know, like provide that
Speaker 3: lead that really led to his identification.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just crazy to me because they put up
Speaker 1: the composite sketch on national television and the Jason Doe's
Speaker 1: composite was all over the Internet for about twenty years
Speaker 1: before the right person saw it and recognized it. You
Speaker 1: automatically assumed that everyone out there is going to be
Speaker 1: an amateur sluice, such as ourself, where we'll be aware
Speaker 1: of all these cases. But no, apparently Jason's mother never
Speaker 1: saw the Unsolved Mystery segment or saw the composite sketch
Speaker 1: because she just never got the opportunity to put two
Speaker 1: and two together and recognize it as her son. So
Speaker 1: it just shows sometimes that these cases can be solved
Speaker 1: by pure chance and the right person seeing the right
Speaker 1: to getting the right piece of information at the right time.
Speaker 1: So that about brings an end to Part two of
Speaker 1: our series about ten non mysterious cases involving identified people.
Speaker 1: So join us next week for part three, we will
Speaker 1: finally discuss the remaining three entries on the list.
Speaker 2: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 1: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not fet on
Speaker 1: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
Speaker 1: and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
Speaker 1: ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
Speaker 1: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsaved Mysteries,
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode and incidentally, the very
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Speaker 1: Tier three.
Speaker 4: So I want to let you know a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Jewels and Nashty Patreons. So there's early ad
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Speaker 4: Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
Speaker 4: so they're not very many, but they're just too short
Speaker 4: to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
Speaker 4: so we hope you'll check out those will link them
Speaker 4: in the show notes.
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Speaker 2: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy