Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Pathway Chili.
Speaker 2: I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
Speaker 3: And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
Speaker 2: October twenty fourth, nineteen fifty three, Lacrosse, Wisconsin. The father
Speaker 2: of fifteen year old Evelyn Hartley attempts to phone her
Speaker 2: while she's babysitting an infant child, but receives no answer.
Speaker 2: After traveling to the house, he discovers that Evelyn has disappeared,
Speaker 2: and the evidence suggests that she was the victim of
Speaker 2: a violent abduction by an intruder. Days later, blood stained clothing,
Speaker 2: including women's undergarments, a denim jacket, and a pair of
Speaker 2: tennis shoes are discovered miles away and believed to be
Speaker 2: connected to the case. Over the years, there would be
Speaker 2: a number of potential suspects and the discovery of a
Speaker 2: tape recorded confession to the crime, and the discovery of
Speaker 2: a tape recorded confession to the crime, but Evelyn Hartley
Speaker 2: is never found.
Speaker 1: After that, the path went chilly. So today we'll be
Speaker 1: covering a frightening missing person's case which took place over
Speaker 1: seventy years ago. The nineteen fifty three disappearance of Evelyn Hartley.
Speaker 1: I originally covered it on The Trail Went Cold in
Speaker 1: October of twenty eighteen as one of our Halloween themed episodes.
Speaker 1: As the circumstances of how Evelyn Hartley went missing are
Speaker 1: like something out of a horror movie. The idea of
Speaker 1: a teenage girl being terrorized while babysitting is a popular
Speaker 1: trope in a number of horror stories, including John Carpenter's
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight classic Halloween, where Jamie Lee Curtis's character
Speaker 1: is talked by the mass slasher Michael Myers during a
Speaker 1: babysitting job on Halloween night. Today's episode is almost like
Speaker 1: a real life version of this, as it involves a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old girl named Evelyn Hartley disappearing from the
Speaker 1: home of a family friend while she was looking after
Speaker 1: their infant daughter. There was a lot of evidence to
Speaker 1: indicate that Evelyn was the victim of a violent abduction
Speaker 1: by an intruder, and some bloodstained clothing, some of which
Speaker 1: was believed to belong to Evelyn, would later be found
Speaker 1: miles away from the residence. Over the years, there would
Speaker 1: be a number of interesting developments in this case, including
Speaker 1: the suspected involvement of one of the most infamous murderers
Speaker 1: of all time, ed Geen, who is the alleged real
Speaker 1: life inspiration for a number of hiconic horror movie villains.
Speaker 1: But when all is said and done, Evelyn is still
Speaker 1: a missing person and we don't know who is responsible
Speaker 1: for her disappearance.
Speaker 3: Here's what's wild about this is that Evelyn was at
Speaker 3: a friend's home babysitting their child. So it's almost as
Speaker 3: if that home was either a pre arranged target in
Speaker 3: Evelyn happened to be there, or it was a crime
Speaker 3: of opportunity where someone watched Evelyn or knew that Evelyn
Speaker 3: was going to this house, happened to see a young
Speaker 3: girl walk in and the parents leave, and then they
Speaker 3: acted on whatever they did to Evelyn. It's just wild
Speaker 3: because there's a million other places she could have been
Speaker 3: that night, and yet she's at a friend's home babysitting
Speaker 3: in this little child and never comes home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even after all these years, there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of ambiguity about whether Evelyn was specifically targeted or if
Speaker 1: someone just happened to see her babysitting alone or another
Speaker 1: babysitter usually did that job so at that house, So
Speaker 1: maybe she was targeted or something, and they have gone
Speaker 1: over a couple potential suspects over the years, but none
Speaker 1: of them seem to have a close personal connection to Evelyn,
Speaker 1: so we really don't know what the motive was for
Speaker 1: this crime and if she was just targeted at random.
Speaker 2: Our story begins in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 2: Our central figure is fifteen year old Evelyn Hartley, who
Speaker 2: lives with her parents, Richard and Ethel Hartley. Evelyn is
Speaker 2: one of four children in the family, though she lost
Speaker 2: a brother to polio years earlier. The Hartleys moved to
Speaker 2: Lacrosse from Charleston, Illinois in nineteen fifty and Richard works
Speaker 2: as a biology professor at Lacrosse State College. Evelyn is
Speaker 2: a junior at Central High School and is considered to
Speaker 2: be an excellent honor student with a straight A average.
Speaker 2: On the evening of Saturday, October twenty fourth, Evelyn was
Speaker 2: picked up at her home by Vigo Rasmussen, a coworker
Speaker 2: of her fathers who worked as a physics professor at
Speaker 2: Lacrosse State College. Vigo, his wife, and seven year old
Speaker 2: daughter were all planning to attend the college's homecoming football game,
Speaker 2: which was always a huge deal in the town, and
Speaker 2: they needed a babysitter to watch over their twenty month
Speaker 2: old infant daughter, Janice. They had a regular babysitter named
Speaker 2: Janis Cowley, which she would also be attending the game
Speaker 2: that night, so the Rasmussens asked Evelyn if she would
Speaker 2: take the job instead. Evelyn agreed, and this would be
Speaker 2: her first babysitting job in three months. After being picked
Speaker 2: up by Vigo at six thirty pm, Evelyn was taken
Speaker 2: to the Rasmusen home. The house was located in a
Speaker 2: new subdivision on Bachelor Drive and the Rasmusans had only
Speaker 2: lived there for three months. Evelyn lived about a mile
Speaker 2: and a half away and told her parents that she
Speaker 2: would phone them at eight thirty pm to check in.
Speaker 2: She was told to put Janis to bed at seven
Speaker 2: p m. And since the child was going to be
Speaker 2: sleeping most of the evening, Evelyn brought several school books
Speaker 2: along with her to spend time studying. The Rasmusans then
Speaker 2: left to attend the game while Evelyn remained alone with
Speaker 2: their daughter. However, eight thirty came and went, and the
Speaker 2: Hartleys did not receive their scheduled phone call from Evelyn.
Speaker 2: Richard Hartley tried calling the Rasmussen home multiple times but
Speaker 2: received no answer, and even tried calling neighbors of the
Speaker 2: Rasmusans to check if they had seen her. After not
Speaker 2: hearing from Evelyn, Richard decided to go check on his daughter.
Speaker 2: He arrived at the resmuse in residence at around nine
Speaker 2: to twenty and discovered the front door was locked. The
Speaker 2: lights inside of the house were still on, but even
Speaker 2: after Richard repeatedly knocked, rang the doorbell and shouted for Evelyn,
Speaker 2: no one answered. Since the living room window had no curtains,
Speaker 2: Richard decided to peek inside and was very concerned when
Speaker 2: he noticed that Evelyn's school books were scattered around the floor,
Speaker 2: along with one of her shoes at her eyeglasses, which
Speaker 2: were now broken.
Speaker 3: My god, I can't even imagine as a parent, when
Speaker 3: you're sitting there and you have an expectation that your
Speaker 3: little girl's only a mile and a half away. She's
Speaker 3: babysitting for family friends that you know, and there's a plan.
Speaker 3: She's going to put the baby down around eight point thirty.
Speaker 3: She's going to go ahead and check in with mom
Speaker 3: and dad. And it's just such a typical scenario. She's
Speaker 3: even brought her books so she can read and study.
Speaker 3: And Dad knows and has got something's wrong. My daughter
Speaker 3: would have called, she would have answered my calls, something
Speaker 3: would have occurred in the kind of her normal routine.
Speaker 3: And yet everything seems wrong in his gut, and he
Speaker 3: gets over there and sees truly a horror scene. His
Speaker 3: daughter's not there, she's not answering, and her books are
Speaker 3: scattered you said one shoes there, and her eyeglasses, which
Speaker 3: are broken, are there, So there's a clear sign that
Speaker 3: she didn't leave willingly, didn't walk outside. She's not down
Speaker 3: the street somewhere. Something happened to her. And then he's
Speaker 3: left standing in this in this house, wondering where's the
Speaker 3: child and where's my baby?
Speaker 1: And you also have to remember this is back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, and as far as I know, Lacrosse
Speaker 1: was not known for being a town with a lot
Speaker 1: of violent crime. So this sort of thing just didn't happen.
Speaker 1: It's not something that'd experienced. They always had this feeling
Speaker 1: this is a safe ay And if we leave, like
Speaker 1: our teenage daughter to baby sits someone alone, then nothing's
Speaker 1: going to happen to her. But then her father arrives
Speaker 1: and realizes that he has entered his worst nightmare. So
Speaker 1: Rachel desperately tried to enter the house, but found that
Speaker 1: most of the doors and windows were locked. However, when
Speaker 1: he went around back, he discovered the basement window was
Speaker 1: opened and that the screen had been removed and was
Speaker 1: now leaning up against the outside wall. Richard decided to
Speaker 1: enter the dark basement through the window and turned on
Speaker 1: the lights. A step ladder, which the ras Musans had
Speaker 1: been using to paint the basement, was next to the window,
Speaker 1: and Richard noticed that Evelyn's second shoe was at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the stairs. He went upstairs into the living
Speaker 1: room and noticed that the radio was still playing. In
Speaker 1: addition to Evelyn's items being scattered across the floor, the
Speaker 1: furniture had been disarranged, so all indications were that a
Speaker 1: violent struggle had taken place. Thankfully, baby Janis was discovered
Speaker 1: to be sleeping unharmed in her crib. The child was
Speaker 1: not covered by her blanket, even though the ras Musans
Speaker 1: had given Evelyn instructions to cover Janet at seven fifteen pm,
Speaker 1: so the scene to indicate that Evelyn went missing shortly
Speaker 1: after she put the child to bed at seven o'clock.
Speaker 1: Richard quickly went to a neighbor and asked him to
Speaker 1: phone the police. When they arrived, they found additional evidence
Speaker 1: that an intruder had entered the house in abducted Evelyn.
Speaker 1: Other windows were discovered to have pride marks from a
Speaker 1: screwdriver on them, so the intruder had likely tried to
Speaker 1: break in elsewhere before entering through the basement. A set
Speaker 1: of footprints made by a pair of sneakers were found
Speaker 1: in a flower bed near the basement window, and there
Speaker 1: were also dirty footprints in the living room rug. But
Speaker 1: most disturbingly, there were two pools of blood found outside
Speaker 1: the house. One of them was located in the Rasmussen's
Speaker 1: yard near the basement window, while the other was about
Speaker 1: one hundred feet away next to a neighbor's garage. If
Speaker 1: that wasn't enough, a bloody palm print was also on
Speaker 1: the garage's wall, and additional blood stains were discovered on
Speaker 1: the side of another neighbor's house. Testing would eventually show
Speaker 1: that all this blood was type A, which matched Evelyn's
Speaker 1: blood type. Red cloth fibers were also found in some
Speaker 1: of the blood, and Evelyn was wearing red pants at
Speaker 1: the time she disappeared. It was theorized at while being
Speaker 1: dragged through the yard by or Abdu, Evelyn had either
Speaker 1: rested or fallen on the ground to create the pools
Speaker 1: of blood. Tracking dogs would follow Evelyn sent through the
Speaker 1: backyard and pass some neighbours' homes to an adjacent street
Speaker 1: called Cooley Drive. The scent then abruptly came to an end,
Speaker 1: suggesting that Evelyn may have been placed inside a vehicle
Speaker 1: and driven away.
Speaker 3: So it seems like the whoever this intruder was apprehends
Speaker 3: her and restrains her and is forcing her out of
Speaker 3: this home, maybe through the basement where he came in.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't appear that there's been an injury necessarily
Speaker 3: that would cause her to bleed until she gets outside
Speaker 3: the house.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Yeah, they didn't really find any traces
Speaker 1: of blood indoors. It was only on the outside, so
Speaker 1: for all we know, maybe she cut herself on the
Speaker 1: window or something like that.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, either that, or right when
Speaker 3: she gets outside, she tries to flee him, or you know,
Speaker 3: causes a commotion and he hits her or you know,
Speaker 3: cuts her or something like that, and that's where the
Speaker 3: blood starts. But it's really bizarre because even like tracing
Speaker 3: her and tramping her back down through the basement and out,
Speaker 3: why not just leave through the back door or another
Speaker 3: place it would be easier to get her out of
Speaker 3: than in and out of a basement window or a
Speaker 3: basement out, you know, outage. It just seems very bizarre.
Speaker 3: And also as much as you know Type A did
Speaker 3: match Evelynce blood, it'd be interesting. It's possible the offender
Speaker 3: also was a Type A back in the fifties. How
Speaker 3: would they know how to distinguish if there were two
Speaker 3: you know sources at the time.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't if they were both Type A?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, correct. There was no DNA testing in
Speaker 1: the fifties, and I know that a lot of the
Speaker 1: evidence in this case has since been lost, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if they have any of this evidence still
Speaker 1: available to do DNA testing.
Speaker 2: Do we know the layout of the house, like if
Speaker 2: the perpetrator or perpetrators would have taken Evelyn out the
Speaker 2: front door or the back door, Like was this a
Speaker 2: well lit area where they really close to neighbors? Was
Speaker 2: it sort of like the best option was to go
Speaker 2: through the basement because maybe the path out was too
Speaker 2: a backyard and it was like the least obvious to neighbors.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm thinking that maybe they figured there's just
Speaker 1: too much open space near the front, like a lot
Speaker 1: of houses closed together. So if we try to take
Speaker 1: Evelyn out through the front, someone is going to see her,
Speaker 1: and if she screams, then it's gonna get a lot
Speaker 1: of attention. And like we mentioned earlier, like the front
Speaker 1: window of the living room did not even have any curtains,
Speaker 1: so for all we know, maybe a lot of the
Speaker 1: other houses had open windows where they could see out
Speaker 1: into the street. And so maybe the perpetrator or perpetrators
Speaker 1: thought that we have a better chance of getting away
Speaker 1: with this if we take Evelyn out through the back.
Speaker 2: It wasn't long before a number of eyewitnesses would report
Speaker 2: strange occurrences in the neighborhood that night. Neighbors are called
Speaker 2: hearing screams sometime between seven and seven fifteen pm, but
Speaker 2: assumed it was nothing more than children playing. Given the timeframe,
Speaker 2: it seemed likely that the screams were connected to Evelyn's disappearance.
Speaker 2: Another witness also remembered seeing a light colored tan sedan
Speaker 2: circling the neighborhood at least three times at around eight
Speaker 2: p m. But the most interesting eyewitness account came from
Speaker 2: a man named Ed Hoffer, and in order to protect
Speaker 2: his identity, the original newspaper articles about the case simply
Speaker 2: refer to him as mister X. At around seven fifteen,
Speaker 2: Hoffer was picking up his brother in law at his house,
Speaker 2: which was located one block from the Rasmusen residence. He
Speaker 2: claimed he saw two men and a girl staggering down
Speaker 2: the street in the distance, next to the same house
Speaker 2: where blood stains were later found. It was too dark
Speaker 2: to get a good look at them, and Hoffer just
Speaker 2: assumed that it was people who'd been drinking to celebrate
Speaker 2: the homecoming game. A few minutes later, Hoffer and his
Speaker 2: brother in law were driving away when they almost ran
Speaker 2: into a two toned green nineteen forty one or nineteen
Speaker 2: forty two Bewick, which was speeding westward. The car was
Speaker 2: being driven by a man, and Hoffer also saw a
Speaker 2: second man sitting in the back alongside a girl who
Speaker 2: had her head slumped forward. After learning about Evelyn's abduction,
Speaker 2: these incidents suddenly took on more significance for Hoffer, and
Speaker 2: he contacted the police. As far as anyone can tell,
Speaker 2: nothing appeared to have been stolen from the Rasmusen home,
Speaker 2: which seemed to go against the idea that she was
Speaker 2: abducted during an attempted burglary. Needless to say, Evelyn's disappearance
Speaker 2: would launch one of the largest missing person's investigations in
Speaker 2: the history of Wisconsin, as over two thousand people volunteered
Speaker 2: to participate in the search for her. Her disappearance terrified
Speaker 2: the community so much that a ten pm curfew was
Speaker 2: implemented for teenagers. Investigators launched a unique vehicle inspection program
Speaker 2: in order to search every car in the county. If
Speaker 2: a car was inspected and ruled out as having any
Speaker 2: connection to Evelyn's abduction, it would be given a sticker
Speaker 2: which read my car is okay. Gas station attendants were
Speaker 2: also told to be on the lookout for any car
Speaker 2: which had bloodstains and report them. Recently, Doug Graves were
Speaker 2: also checked to see if perhaps someone had placed Evelyn's
Speaker 2: body inside there. In the years following Evelyn's disappearance, investigators
Speaker 2: would question over thirty five hundred potential suspects, but failed
Speaker 2: to turn up any promising leads. One of the most
Speaker 2: unusual aspects of the investigation occurred in May of nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four, when the biggest massed liide detector tests in
Speaker 2: the history of criminal investigation took place. It was decided
Speaker 2: that all of the male students and faculty of each
Speaker 2: high school in the area, approximately one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty people in total, would be questioned about Evelyn's
Speaker 2: disappearance while taking a polygraph. About three hundred people were
Speaker 2: tested before the school board intervened in forced law enforcement
Speaker 2: to bring the whole thing to a halt.
Speaker 3: Wow, so they pulled out all the stops to try
Speaker 3: to help find Evelyn. What's horrifying is when you listen
Speaker 3: to quote mister X or mister Hoffer's explanation, that really
Speaker 3: fits what we were talking about with where she was
Speaker 3: probably injured and having to be helped to the car.
Speaker 3: To me, it sounds like she's forced out of the house.
Speaker 3: It is very probable that two people would make that
Speaker 3: a heck of a lot easier to get her to comply,
Speaker 3: But once she's out, something occurs where one of them
Speaker 3: stabs her, hits her to a point where now she's
Speaker 3: actually struggling to walk on her own. She might be
Speaker 3: weak or I'm not alert right because of a head
Speaker 3: injury or something like that. So when you see those
Speaker 3: two men and a girl staggering down the street in
Speaker 3: that same area where we believe they could have taken her,
Speaker 3: it's horrifying. Like I can't imagine being a witness that says, Okay,
Speaker 3: I saw this incident. It's homecoming, it's a drunk party,
Speaker 3: and then very shortly later you rewind that in your
Speaker 3: head and you say, oh, my gosh, I think I
Speaker 3: saw that poor girl in the car. And the way
Speaker 3: he described them in the car, one person driving and
Speaker 3: one next to her in the back seat, you would
Speaker 3: think if you apprehended somebody and there were two of you,
Speaker 3: you would definitely keep somebody with her in the back
Speaker 3: seat and not both of you in the front. So
Speaker 3: absolutely horrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that eyewitness account seemed to confirm what a
Speaker 1: lot of people speculated right away that multiple people were
Speaker 1: involved in Evelyn's abduction, because it would have been really
Speaker 1: difficult for just one person to bring her down into
Speaker 1: the basement and force her outside the window into the
Speaker 1: backyard without assistance. So that's why it's been theorized that
Speaker 1: maybe one person abducted her in the house while the
Speaker 1: second person stood as a lookout outside the window and
Speaker 1: helped drag her outside. On October the twenty seventh, three
Speaker 1: days after Evelyn went missing, a pair of women's underpants
Speaker 1: and a brazier, both staying with blood, were found two
Speaker 1: miles south of Lacrosse near the underpass of Highway fourteen.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, this particular area had been searched one day beforehand,
Speaker 1: but the undergarments were not there, leading the speculation that
Speaker 1: someone drove through the area and tossed them outside a
Speaker 1: moving vehicle. The undergarments appeared to be Evelyn's size, and
Speaker 1: the blood was type A. A blood stained pair of
Speaker 1: men's pants were also found four miles away along the
Speaker 1: same road, though it can never be established if they
Speaker 1: were connected to the case. On Halloween, a pair of
Speaker 1: size eleven good Rich brand tennis shoes were discovered alongside
Speaker 1: Highway fourteen near the village of Coon Valley, fourteen miles
Speaker 1: southeast of Lacrosse. About eight hundred feet away from the
Speaker 1: shoes was a size thirty six blue denim jacket, and
Speaker 1: both items had Type A bloodstains on them. Investigators felt
Speaker 1: there was a good chance the tennis shoes belonged to
Speaker 1: Evelyn's abductor, as their souls seemed to match the footprints
Speaker 1: found at the Rasmusen home. This prompted investigators to check
Speaker 1: with Goodrich to learn everything they could about this particular
Speaker 1: brand of shoes. The brand was called Hood Mogul and
Speaker 1: sold in Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois, though they
Speaker 1: had not been sold in Wisconsin for at least three years.
Speaker 1: The shoes had a distinctive circular wear pattern on the soles,
Speaker 1: which suggested that their owner may have frequently rode a
Speaker 1: whizzard motorbike. There was also a hair found inside one
Speaker 1: of the shoes which may have belonged to an African
Speaker 1: American male, though I'm not sure if they were able
Speaker 1: to conclusively establish that. It was also believed that the
Speaker 1: Denham jacket belonged to the person who kidnapped Evelyn, as
Speaker 1: were blood smears found at the rasmuse In residence which
Speaker 1: seemed to have been made with cloth with Denham characteristics.
Speaker 1: The jacket contained The jacket contained faded spots underneath both armpits,
Speaker 1: which appeared to have been caused by a safety harness
Speaker 1: commonly worn by people who worked as steeplejacks, which involved
Speaker 1: scaling high structures such as steeples and chimneys to repair them.
Speaker 1: Investigators were able to track down a local man who
Speaker 1: had manufactured safety harnesses for two steeplejacks the previous year,
Speaker 1: but all he remembered about them is that they were
Speaker 1: young and possibly from the area. It was believed that
Speaker 1: the jacket was too small to have been worn by
Speaker 1: someone who wore size eleven shoes, but this also lent
Speaker 1: credence to the idea that two perpetrators may have been
Speaker 1: involved in Evelyn's abduction. Investigators would bring the shoes and
Speaker 1: jacket to thirty one different communities and put them on
Speaker 1: display for thousands of people, but no one recognized them
Speaker 1: and it failed to generate any leads.
Speaker 3: What's interesting is it's almost as if someone was watching
Speaker 3: the either media coverage, police movements, things like that, and
Speaker 3: that's when they start dumping these items along Highway fourteen. Because,
Speaker 3: like you said, at one point there was a particular
Speaker 3: area that had been searched already and then these bloody
Speaker 3: items appear there, and it's as if they were in
Speaker 3: the car going down Highway fourteen and one at a
Speaker 3: time or two at a time, throwing items out in
Speaker 3: order to spread the evidence down on that road. Do
Speaker 3: we know when mister X described the two individuals that
Speaker 3: he saw with this young lady when Evelyn's being walked
Speaker 3: by them, is one of them described as an African
Speaker 3: American male.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really give any specific descriptions because I think
Speaker 1: it was too dark for him to get a good luck.
Speaker 1: But I don't see him specifically saying I saw two
Speaker 1: white males inside the car, so I guess it was
Speaker 1: just too dark for him to tell for certain.
Speaker 3: Interesting I also I find it very impressive how much
Speaker 3: effort is being put in by law enforcement from the
Speaker 3: get go, where there is really no stone unturned, and
Speaker 3: they're really trying to even take these clothing items around
Speaker 3: to different communities and say do you recognize these? Do
Speaker 3: you know anyone who wears these? And for this to
Speaker 3: be the fifties, what incredible science they're doing. They're finding
Speaker 3: those shoes and the manufacturers, the wear on the shoes.
Speaker 3: It's just it's quite remarkable.
Speaker 2: I think the fact that they looked into recently Dug
Speaker 2: Graves as well, and like even thought of that as
Speaker 2: being an option for a body disposal, I think is
Speaker 2: pretty remarkable for the time period.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like you can't definitely can't fault the original investigators,
Speaker 1: Like they went all out trying to find Evelyn and
Speaker 1: solve this case, and which the amount of forensic evidence
Speaker 1: they have. I'm sure that if this crime took place today,
Speaker 1: they would have been able to solve it relatively quickly
Speaker 1: with DNA testing whatnot. But they're doing the best they
Speaker 1: can with the forensics they had available back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: Are either of you familiar with the Caitlin Aikins case.
Speaker 1: No, I've heard it, but I can't remember the details.
Speaker 2: She went missing, and it's believed are alleged that her
Speaker 2: stepfather is the one who's responsible for her disappearance. He
Speaker 2: was supposed to have driven her to the airport, but
Speaker 2: the flight wasn't leaving for a while, so she wanted
Speaker 2: to go to a mall, according to him, and he
Speaker 2: said that he drove her there, but then later on,
Speaker 2: while searching for she obviously never made it to her destination.
Speaker 2: Ever went to the airport. No one's seen her since,
Speaker 2: but her suitcase was discovered along the road. The parents
Speaker 2: the stepfather and mother are divorced, but apparently they were
Speaker 2: still somewhat close. People had alleged that he likely had
Speaker 2: thrown that suitcase on that highway because that's where it
Speaker 2: was later found, between his home and where the mall
Speaker 2: is that he said that he took her so super sketchy.
Speaker 2: It's just one of those instances where investigators really did
Speaker 2: their due diligence and check the area and found some
Speaker 2: pretty compelling evidence.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you just don't get that one break that
Speaker 1: will allow you to solve the.
Speaker 2: Case exactly well. Within a few years, a very infamous
Speaker 2: suspect would pop up on the radar. Many of you
Speaker 2: are probably familiar with the name ed Gean. During the intro,
Speaker 2: we mentioned how this story seemed like something that you'd
Speaker 2: find in a horror film, and ed Gean has helped
Speaker 2: inspire some of the most famous horror movie villains of
Speaker 2: all time, including Norman Bates from Psycho, Leather Faced from
Speaker 2: The Texas Chain He Saw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill from
Speaker 2: the Silence of the Lambs. Gean lived on a farm
Speaker 2: near the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, and earned the
Speaker 2: nickname the Butcher a Plainfield. But even though he is
Speaker 2: often referred to as a serial killer, he technically only
Speaker 2: has two confirmed victims, a tavern owner named Mary Hogan
Speaker 2: and a hardware store employee named Bernice Warden. The main
Speaker 2: reason Geen attains so much notoriety is because he liked
Speaker 2: to dig up bodies from the cemetery, take them to
Speaker 2: his farmhouse, and fashion items from their bones and skin.
Speaker 2: Gean was arrested on November sixteenth, nineteen fifty seven, the
Speaker 2: same day he murdered Bernice Warden, as her mutilated body
Speaker 2: and the remains of several deceased individuals he dug up
Speaker 2: were found at his home. He wound up pleading not
Speaker 2: guilty by reason of insanity, and after he was deemed
Speaker 2: mentally incompetent to stand trial, Gan was sent to the
Speaker 2: Central State Hospital for the criminally Insane, and he remained
Speaker 2: incarcerated in mental health ISSAS facilities until his death in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four. Well it turned out that Keen was
Speaker 2: originally born in Lacrosse before his family moved to Plainfield
Speaker 2: during his childhood. Now many accounts of this case state
Speaker 2: that Gen was visiting relatives in Lacrosse on the night
Speaker 2: Evelyn was abducted, and that they lived only a few
Speaker 2: blocks away from the Rasmusen residence. This would definitely make
Speaker 2: Gean attempting suspect, but I'm not entirely sure how accurate
Speaker 2: this information is. During a lot of the original newspaper
Speaker 2: articles about the case, it states that when Geen was
Speaker 2: questioned about Evelyn's disappearance, he claimed that he never returned
Speaker 2: to Lacrosse since his family moved away from there when
Speaker 2: he was seven years old, and he also said that
Speaker 2: he would have been working on a neighbor's farm near
Speaker 2: Plainfield at the time Evelyn went missing. None of the
Speaker 2: remains found on Gen's farm belonged to Evelyn, and there
Speaker 2: was no evidence linking him to her abduction. After Gean
Speaker 2: passed two light detector tests, investigators ruled him out as
Speaker 2: a suspect.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting about him is he made no attempt
Speaker 3: to cover up what he was doing. He lived amongst
Speaker 3: the evidence of the crimes he committed, so I believe
Speaker 3: if he was responsible for Evelyn's they would have been
Speaker 3: able to find evidence of that and his home or
Speaker 3: at some point he would have been able to account
Speaker 3: for her. But it's very tempting, especially when you talk
Speaker 3: about the fact that he has relatives that live in
Speaker 3: Lacrosse and he might have been visiting, but obviously he
Speaker 3: got ruled out. But like I said, you would have
Speaker 3: likely have been able to find evidence of Evelyn at
Speaker 3: his home. He wasn't real shy about displaying and having
Speaker 3: those items out and about.
Speaker 2: The victimology is completely different with Evelyn and with ed
Speaker 2: Gen's victims.
Speaker 3: Very much so, yeah, very much so.
Speaker 1: He does not seem like someone would go to the
Speaker 1: trouble to dispose and get rid of a victim's body.
Speaker 1: And I think as the years have gone on, because
Speaker 1: ed Gan has attained so much notoriety, people have found
Speaker 1: this tentative Lacrosse connection between him and Evelyn's case and
Speaker 1: tried to link it together because he was questioned. But
Speaker 1: he really does not seem like a compelling suspect here.
Speaker 2: A killer as infamous as ed Geen. Just because a
Speaker 2: murder happens in the town that he was born and
Speaker 2: maybe he was visiting family doesn't mean that there can't
Speaker 2: be somebody else who isn't responsible, or that every murder
Speaker 2: that's ever attached to that town has to somehow be
Speaker 2: connected to him. But I think it's like a tempting
Speaker 2: thing to say, Oh well, especially in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: there isn't social media. Things don't spread on TikTok, on Facebook,
Speaker 2: on Instagram the way that they do today. That we're
Speaker 2: so familiar with so many cases, and that we know
Speaker 2: the names of so many killers in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: I think that he would have been one of the few. Like,
Speaker 2: I can't think of any others that would have been
Speaker 2: famous at the time, can either of you?
Speaker 3: No, not right, not in that area for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe some from the twenties and thirties, but
Speaker 1: no active serial killers in the nineteen fifties that would
Speaker 1: have been in the news a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he would have loomed pretty large. It would
Speaker 2: have been really tempting to connect him, no matter how
Speaker 2: tenuous it was.
Speaker 1: So over the course of the next several decades, there
Speaker 1: would be very little movement in Evelyn's case. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, a documentary was produced about her disappearance by
Speaker 1: Lacrosse's local television station, WKBTTV. It was titled The Evelyn
Speaker 1: Hartley Story and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Shortly after it aired, Steve Botham, the reporter who hosted
Speaker 1: the documentary, was contacted by two anonymous witnesses who had
Speaker 1: watched it and thought they recognized the bloodstained Denham jacket
Speaker 1: and tennis shoes which were found. The witnesses believed that
Speaker 1: it belonged to a local farmer, and apparently on the
Speaker 1: day of Evelyn's disappearance, he had been working in the
Speaker 1: fields and talking about going into town to find a woman.
Speaker 1: At the time, the farmer was wearing a denim jacket
Speaker 1: and tennis shoes, which he often wore, and driving a
Speaker 1: dark colored nineteen thirty eighth. He became agitated when the
Speaker 1: work went on longer than expected before he finally left
Speaker 1: at around six thirty pm. But after this, the witnesses
Speaker 1: claimed that they never saw him wear the jacket or
Speaker 1: the tennis shoes, or drive the Chevrolet again. By the
Speaker 1: time they came forward with this story, the farmer had
Speaker 1: been dead for over ten years. Steve Botham did make
Speaker 1: an attempt to track down the bloodstained denim jacket and
Speaker 1: tennis shoes, but none of the crime labs could find
Speaker 1: the items, so it appeared that the evidence had been lost.
Speaker 3: Oh goodness, and that's what these witnesses said, that they
Speaker 3: actually identified, right, they could identify that and could link it,
Speaker 3: they thought, to this case. And then you go to
Speaker 3: find them and they disappeared.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think they showed photographs of the items on
Speaker 1: the TV special and that's when they recognized him. And
Speaker 1: then they suddenly realized, oh, we don't actually have the
Speaker 1: items themselves. So and this was when DNA testing was
Speaker 1: finally coming into criminal cases. But of course they were
Speaker 1: unable to do the testing.
Speaker 2: Theation once again came to a dead halt. But another
Speaker 2: interesting development took place shortly after a fiftieth anniversary article
Speaker 2: about Evelyn's disappearance was published in October of two thousand
Speaker 2: and three. The article jogged the memory of a man
Speaker 2: named mel Williams, who remembered a tape recording he had
Speaker 2: made decades earlier. Once Williams discovered he still had this tape,
Speaker 2: he turned it over to the police and shared a
Speaker 2: strange story. In nineteen sixty eight, Williams went to a
Speaker 2: tavern in the village of Lafarge, Wisconsin, and brought a
Speaker 2: real to reel tape recorder to record the band who
Speaker 2: was playing there that night. He decided to record a
Speaker 2: conversation with a local character who frequented the tavern named
Speaker 2: Clyde Tywee Peterson, and it wasn't long before they were
Speaker 2: joined by another man named Whitey Barclay, who suddenly said, quote,
Speaker 2: tell them about that Heartley girl you kidnapped, Tywee. Incredibly,
Speaker 2: Peterson proceeded to share a story about how he traveled
Speaker 2: to Lacrosse with an accomplice and a mutual friend of theirs,
Speaker 2: where they abducted Evelyn Hartley. Now, the original article about
Speaker 2: this story published in the Matun Journal Gazette says that
Speaker 2: the accomplice's name was Jack Golfair with a P. But
Speaker 2: I think that was a misprint and his actual last
Speaker 2: name was Golfair with a TE. We'll go into this
Speaker 2: in more detail about this discrepancy in part two of
Speaker 2: our series. Anyway, Evelyn's abduction was apparently Golfair's idea, and
Speaker 2: he knew that she was babysitting at the Rasmusen residence
Speaker 2: that night. After kidnapping Evelyn, the group took her to
Speaker 2: a mutual friend's farm, where Golfer killed her before they
Speaker 2: buried her body somewhere. The conversation eventually reached the point
Speaker 2: where Petersen told Williams to stop the tape. Williams claimed
Speaker 2: he couldn't remember what happened next, but he did wind
Speaker 2: up taking the tape home and completely forgot about it
Speaker 2: until his wife read the fiftieth anniversary article and reminded
Speaker 2: him about it. At the time the recording was made
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight, Jack Golfair had already died by
Speaker 2: suicide by the time Williams came forward. Peterson and the
Speaker 2: other unnamed accomplice were also deceased, and Whitey Barclay was
Speaker 2: in his nineties and suffering from dementia, so he was
Speaker 2: unable to answer any questions before his death in two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: Okay, so question, how would if you just said the
Speaker 3: Hartley Girl, tell them about the Hartley Girl, and this
Speaker 3: man starts going into that they kidnapped this girl from
Speaker 3: Lacrosse and they knew that she was babysitting that night.
Speaker 3: If that's all on that tape, what would make anyone question,
Speaker 3: if anyone but these people, I mean, how would they
Speaker 3: know those details other than media coverage of the case.
Speaker 3: But still back at the time that this tape was made,
Speaker 3: it was the late sixties, right, so it's not like
Speaker 3: everybody has, you know, iPhones and social media and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. It's still pretty isolated where you get your
Speaker 3: news from. So there's a lot of details in that
Speaker 3: description that they gave.
Speaker 1: That is true. I mean, I know that Lafarge is
Speaker 1: probably not far from Lacrosse, so maybe people still remember
Speaker 1: the story fifteen years later. But you are right, Evelyn's
Speaker 1: case had been out of the spotlight for quite some
Speaker 1: time at that point, so for them to know so
Speaker 1: many details does suggest that they might have had inside knowledge.
Speaker 1: But as far as I can tell, like they listened
Speaker 1: to the recording of this tape, I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: they released any details that had never been released publicly
Speaker 1: to indicate that they had inside knowledge. I mean, for
Speaker 1: all we know, these guys could have just been bragging
Speaker 1: in a bar about how, oh yeah, we kidnapped that
Speaker 1: missing girl. Though I don't know why someone want to
Speaker 1: do that in a public bar if they had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. But you just never know. But
Speaker 1: it is kind of a shame that Williams just said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard this confession of these two people confessing to
Speaker 1: a murder, but then and I recorded it, but then
Speaker 1: I forgot about it for fifty years. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: does me. I know this recording does exist, but it
Speaker 1: does make you skeptical about whether these guys were telling
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if they shared any holdback information or
Speaker 2: if everything was just kind of generic and there wasn't
Speaker 2: a lot of murders in the area and this one
Speaker 2: was very infamous, so they just retain the information and
Speaker 2: maybe they told this to other people trying to take
Speaker 2: credit for it over the years, so it was just
Speaker 2: kind of regurgitating the same information and it's just like
Speaker 2: details on this one case that they remembered, because sometimes
Speaker 2: criminals like to take credit for something that they didn't commit.
Speaker 2: It does seem a weird flex to talk in a
Speaker 2: bar with somebody about how you abducted a girl. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not like you're like, oh, I rob this bank
Speaker 2: successfully and like look at me. I'm this you know,
Speaker 2: person who's like Robin Hood and I'm you know, taking
Speaker 2: from the rich and giving to the poor aka myself.
Speaker 2: But it's a little bit different when it's abducting a girl,
Speaker 2: And how are you taking the temperature of the room
Speaker 2: and seeing that like this would be received in a
Speaker 2: way that it was, because obviously these people gauged it properly,
Speaker 2: because he didn't share this information. He held this tape
Speaker 2: back and didn't go to the authorities. So I suppose
Speaker 2: they shared it with like the right type of individual,
Speaker 2: who likely was somebody else who's involved in some kind
Speaker 2: of criminality, because why else would you hold back information
Speaker 2: that could be pertinent to the abduction of Evelyn.
Speaker 3: Hartley, Like I went that night to record a band,
Speaker 3: I heard a murder confession and man forgot about that.
Speaker 1: Weird. Yeah, so bizarre. And also the fact that Peterson
Speaker 1: told Williams to stop recording. But I'm thinking if this
Speaker 1: was a legitimate confession, he probably would have fought harder
Speaker 1: to get that recording from him rather than let Williams
Speaker 1: take it home. So that's why I don't write off
Speaker 1: the possibility that they were just deciding to brag about
Speaker 1: it for their own personal amusement. The police said that
Speaker 1: they would look into these new allegations, possibly by exhumining
Speaker 1: the bodies of the suspects and extracting and comparing their
Speaker 1: DNA to the blood evidence found at the scene, but
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: this was ever done. While Peterson did reveal Evelyn's alleged
Speaker 1: burial location during the recording, this information has been withheld
Speaker 1: from the public. It was revealed that this location was
Speaker 1: in a Mississippi River floodplain, so unfortunately, if Evelyn's remains
Speaker 1: were there, they likely washed away many years ago. In
Speaker 1: spite of these new revelations, the investigation seems to have
Speaker 1: come to a standstill once again. Evelyn's disappearance had a
Speaker 1: profound effect on both the Hartley and Rasmusen families. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, after Richard Hartley retired from Lacrosse State College,
Speaker 1: the family moved to Oregon. Both of Evelyn's parents and
Speaker 1: her older brother Thomas, have since passed away, but her
Speaker 1: younger sister, Carol is still alive. In February of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, Janis Rasmussen, who was present and sleeping during
Speaker 1: Evelyn's abduction when she was twenty months old, agreed to
Speaker 1: give an interview for the Lacrosse Tribune. By this point,
Speaker 1: Janis was forty five years old and said that the
Speaker 1: incident made her parents become extra protective of her and
Speaker 1: her sister. The ras Musens immediately sold their house and
Speaker 1: moved into a new home, where bars were installed on
Speaker 1: the basement window. In twenty seventeen, the ras Musician's eldest daughter, Roslin,
Speaker 1: who attended the homecoming game with her parents that night,
Speaker 1: also did an interview for the Lacrosse Tribune. She and
Speaker 1: she concurred that the case made her father extra paranoid
Speaker 1: about his children's safety and that he was never quite
Speaker 1: the same. After more than seventy years, Evelyn Hartley's remains
Speaker 1: have never been found, and the identity of her abductor
Speaker 1: or abductor's remains unknown. So I guess you could say
Speaker 1: the path when Chili.
Speaker 3: Your heart just breaks for both parties. Here where the
Speaker 3: Rasmussens were off to celebrate a homecoming game, and they
Speaker 3: asked one of their family friend's daughters to come over
Speaker 3: and babysit, and literally what a mixed evening like Their
Speaker 3: daughter's safe in her crib, but this other child is
Speaker 3: missing and likely dead. And this is all on the
Speaker 3: night that was It's just supposed to be a celebration
Speaker 3: of the local sports team, and so I can't imagine
Speaker 3: not becoming incredibly hyper vigilant about everything. Someone came into
Speaker 3: your home where your baby was sleeping, and you had
Speaker 3: a young teen babysitting for you or young lady baby
Speaker 3: sitting for you, and that's supposed to be the safest
Speaker 3: place you could be, and yet someone invaded that space
Speaker 3: and put everyone in danger in that home and most
Speaker 3: likely killed one of the individuals who is there. So
Speaker 3: that hypervigilance I totally understand. I can't imagine that the
Speaker 3: kind of the guilt and the pain and the fear
Speaker 3: that would follow you the rest of your life for
Speaker 3: that evening and then her. When you look at the
Speaker 3: Hartley family, the first thing I'd want to do is
Speaker 3: get the heck out of there. I find it admirable
Speaker 3: Richard waited and retired from the college so that he
Speaker 3: could provide better for his family and then moved them
Speaker 3: to Oregon. It's so sad that they all passed away
Speaker 3: without knowing what happened to their baby. But man, both parties,
Speaker 3: it is absolutely heartbreaking that these two family friends had
Speaker 3: a simple evening planned and at the end of the
Speaker 3: night it was the biggest nightmare either one of them
Speaker 3: had ever imagined well.
Speaker 1: Whenever a horrific crime like this takes place, you'll often
Speaker 1: hear comments about how things were never quite the same
Speaker 1: in the community, and that definitely rings true here. Lacrosse,
Speaker 1: Wisconsint wasn't an overly small town, as it had a
Speaker 1: population of around forty seven thousand in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: but they had never seen anything like this before. The
Speaker 1: idea of a teenage girl being abducted from a home
Speaker 1: while she was babysitting was absolutely terrifying, and since Evelyn
Speaker 1: was never found and the perpetrator was never identified, Lacrosse
Speaker 1: lived in fear for a long time. There were stories
Speaker 1: about how men would stay home from work because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to leave their wives and children alone, and nobody,
Speaker 1: especially teenage girls, wanted to babysit after this. The situation
Speaker 1: Lulation was especially heartbreaking for Evelyn's parents, as Evelyn apparently
Speaker 1: wanted to back out of the babysitting job, but her mother, Ethel,
Speaker 1: told her that she had to do it because she
Speaker 1: made a commitment. In cases where children are murdered or
Speaker 1: grow missing, you'll sometimes hear the parents say that they
Speaker 1: were hit with an unexplained gut feeling that something was
Speaker 1: wrong right before it happened. At around seven pm, shortly
Speaker 1: after Evelyn left to go babysitting, Ethel said that she
Speaker 1: had one of those gut feelings and wanted to call
Speaker 1: the Rasmussen home, but her husband convinced her it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessary since Evelyn was planning to call at eight thirty,
Speaker 1: and of course, seven PM is the approximate time period
Speaker 1: when Evelyn was believed to have been abducted. When the
Speaker 1: Hartleys arrived at the Rasmusen home and saw the pools
Speaker 1: of blood outside, Ethel completely broke down and said she
Speaker 1: knew at that moment that her daughter was dead. And
Speaker 1: of course, even though her baby daughter was left unharmed,
Speaker 1: this incident had a profound effect on the Rasmussen family.
Speaker 1: Since the crime took place at their house, there was
Speaker 1: no way they could possibly continue living there after what happened,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like vegle ras Musin was overly paranoid
Speaker 1: and protective of his daughters for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: It's bad not that Evelyn vanished while babysitting, but the
Speaker 1: fact that there was blood evidence, her glasses were broken
Speaker 1: and her shoes were left behind, clearly indicated that she
Speaker 1: was the victim of a violent crime and the odds
Speaker 1: of her surviving it were not good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the problem. I think once there's an injury,
Speaker 3: and once there's kind of that risk, you see the
Speaker 3: crime escalate to a whole new level, like you'll see
Speaker 3: in a sexual assault, where a perpetrator believes that maybe
Speaker 3: I can get away with this, and the victim is
Speaker 3: not physically harmed beyond the assault. Right, there's no knife,
Speaker 3: there's no stabbings, there's no gunshots or anything like that.
Speaker 3: But I think once you cross that line and there's
Speaker 3: a physical assault, blood's present. I just think it changes
Speaker 3: the whole perception and the whole kind of idea of
Speaker 3: I can't get away with this. At this point, we've
Speaker 3: gone too far, We've hurt her too much, and so
Speaker 3: I don't believe that Evelyn would have survived this. And
Speaker 3: it's heartbreaking when you think about this, because I know
Speaker 3: what that mom's describing when she says, you have that
Speaker 3: gut feeling. I don't think it's just when it's a
Speaker 3: crime being committed against your child. I remember one night
Speaker 3: I had a just a really bad night. I was
Speaker 3: up all night.
Speaker 1: I was upset, I was crying.
Speaker 3: And my mom called me at like five point forty
Speaker 3: five the next morning and said, I'm so sorry if
Speaker 3: I woke you up, But all night I was up
Speaker 3: feeling like you were distraught and struggling, and I went, what, like,
Speaker 3: what in her gut? She just knew something was wrong.
Speaker 3: And I've had those feelings where I'll think of Reagan
Speaker 3: during the school day and I'm like, I've something's going on.
Speaker 3: I have this kind of just sick feeling, and then
Speaker 3: Reagan I'll get in the car crying and say that
Speaker 3: it was a really bad day or something like that.
Speaker 3: So I think there's that maternal instinct where you go
Speaker 3: something's off, and I don't know what it is, or
Speaker 3: if it's just kind of these feelings that you have.
Speaker 3: But when that Mama said, you know, hey, she wanted
Speaker 3: to not go tonight, but I made her go because
Speaker 3: she made a commitment. Absolutely, you said you're going to
Speaker 3: watch their baby, They're going to the game. You have
Speaker 3: to go. No one would have thought that that evening
Speaker 3: was going to end in any other way but her
Speaker 3: walking home with some extra spending money, and yet Mom
Speaker 3: starts to feel as the night goes on something's wrong,
Speaker 3: and sure enough, you see where Evelyn's not only taken
Speaker 3: from the house, but there's significant injury to her because
Speaker 3: of the pools of blood, the smears of blood in
Speaker 3: different places. It's leaving a lot of evidence behind, which
Speaker 3: indicates to me that higher level of injury, which then
Speaker 3: would escalate to me to a murder, even if it
Speaker 3: was just starting as a sexual assault or abduction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not the only case I've seen where
Speaker 1: a victim's family has said that they had this horrible
Speaker 1: gut feeling at the approximate, exact moment when their loved
Speaker 1: one was likely getting murdered or abducted. And usually, like
Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine percent of the time, when you
Speaker 1: have those horrible gut feelings, nothing bad does happen, or
Speaker 1: something minor happens. But this just happened to be one
Speaker 1: of the rare ones where she had that gut feeling
Speaker 1: at the exact moment when her daughter became the victim
Speaker 1: of a violent crime. And I'm sure a hauntedor for
Speaker 1: the rest of her life that she did pick up
Speaker 1: the phone and check on Evelyn, because who knows if
Speaker 1: things might have turned out differently if she had phoned
Speaker 1: while the intruder was in the house.
Speaker 2: And I feel even worse for her too, because Evelyn,
Speaker 2: you have to wonder did she have a gut feeling
Speaker 2: that something bad was going to happen. Is that why
Speaker 2: she wanted to back out of the babysitting job or
Speaker 2: was it just because she was a kid being a
Speaker 2: kid and maybe wanted to go to the homecoming game.
Speaker 2: But that's just another layer of what her poor mother
Speaker 2: had to deal with, is that her daughter didn't want
Speaker 2: to do this, but because she was trying to instill
Speaker 2: good values and responsibility, she insisted upon her following through.
Speaker 2: And so only did she not call at that time,
Speaker 2: but she also insisted upon the job in the first place.
Speaker 2: So my heart really breaks for this family.
Speaker 1: So I think this would be a good time to
Speaker 1: bring it into part one. But join us next week
Speaker 1: as we present part two of our series about the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Evelyn Hardley.
Speaker 4: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 1: Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
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Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
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Speaker 1: with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
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Speaker 1: the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer
Speaker 1: is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
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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
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Speaker 4: We'll link them in the show notes.
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Speaker 4: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy