Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: Stop it. It was stop it in a name or
a word.
Speaker 4: Stop it?
Speaker 5: And then I heard the and then the and that
went on for like maybe ten to fifteen seconds. It
was weird. It definitely caught my attention and after that
was silent.
Speaker 1: All right, bozos, I'm back. That's my new word. I'm
adopting it. This is episode three hundred and seven Jesus Christ,
How many amiss to be? Need of Sword and Scale
show that reveals that the worst monsters are real? Let's
jazzer size. It was just starting to get warm again
in Cedar Creek, Indiana, with the April weather bringing sunny days.
Spring was in full effect. Near Cedar Creek. Andy Hicks
and his wife Margaret were out hunting for scrap metal.
They like to look for a scrap metal to sell
to local recyclers for a few extra bucks. That day,
Andy and his wife were going to a spot they'd
been to before that only locals knew about. A narrow
dirt path led to a hidden dump site con sealed
by dense vegetation. Indy and his wife stopped the car,
got out and waded through the tall grass to the
dump site. The site was down a slight embankment, obscured
from the view of the road. Just like any other time.
They started sifting through the rubbish looking for the glint
of metal, but this time they would find so much more.
Speaker 6: We see. I found the jaw bone first, okay. I
found her jaw bone, picked it up, was looking at it,
realized what it was. I hung it in a little
tree right here next to where we found it. Okay.
And then when we went and called the police, they
transferred us to the DNR and d asked me, well,
what makes you for sure it's a human jew bone?
Mass said nobody else. You never kind of anile bond
there is. And this escape, just like mine, had got
all the vampede.
Speaker 1: A chill ran down Andy's back when he found a
human jawbone amongst the scattered trash. He was partially in disbelief,
but decided to hang it on the branch of a
tree to mark the location where he found it so
it could be spotted later. He called the police, but
they didn't seem to believe him. I mean, there's a
lot of gullible people out there listening to true crime podcasts,
so a lot of false reports come in all the time.
The dispatcher transferred Andy to the DNR or Department of
Natural Resources. They were basically game ardens, wilderness cops, not
criminal investigators.
Speaker 6: Well, he's going to take a picture of it, and
then that police down here, and my wife was tooken
around and was found this plastic bag spoke to a
stick and a toward open on the front, and the
reserves go on her hair.
Speaker 1: They wanted to take a picture of the job bone
and send it to the police so that they would
believe them that it wasn't just an animal bone, but
they stumbled upon something unmistakably human.
Speaker 6: The skull was in a grocery bag, brown plastic grocery bag.
Speaker 1: Andy, his wife and the police were now convinced they
had found human remains.
Speaker 6: To see where it was laying, I mean the way
it was, you know, it looked like somebody had just
put a bag over her head and got wrapped up
covered with trash.
Speaker 1: The remains were only bones, a little hare and tattered
clothing all but gone. It was obvious to Andy that
these bones had been placed.
Speaker 6: There there somebody placed here there about six feet from
the road and covered up with flush trash.
Speaker 1: The remains were only six feet from the road and
close to two houses, but the area was heavily wooded
and the site was down an embankment. There was no
way the remains could have been spotted unless you were
right on top of them. The state of the remains
suggested that the bones had been there for quite a
wik while, but they weren't buried. They were just kind
of covered in trash. Authorities would later wonder if the
remains were simply washed from one location to another by
the waters of a nearby creek, but Andy knew.
Speaker 6: Better it was deliberately done because that water, I mean,
you know it that water's been that high, but it's
been ten years since that water has been that high.
I mean that there's no way that water gets that high,
and it would have put her there.
Speaker 1: Andy was shocked by both what he found and the
amount of time it took police to arrive. Even with
the report of a human skull, it took authorities over
three hours to get there.
Speaker 6: When the coups got there, they just you know, their
day arm accounts everybody when they got there, they just
looked over the back. I showed him where it was
at and they said, yeah, it sure looks like it's
Then they called the corner a corner gunbounder and took
everything out.
Speaker 1: The remains were wrapped in black plastic sheeting except for
the head, which was in a grocery bag. The bones
showed signs of animal disturbance and were incomplete. Small bones
like fingers were likely carried off by animals. With the
remains verified as human, the Indiana State Police took over
the investigation. Troopers reviewed missing persons cases and found similarities
between the remains and a woman who went missing in Fairfield, Ohio,
nearly two years earlier, twenty one year old Caitlin Markham.
Caitlin had a distinctive crooked canine tooth and a molar
with a crown. The coroner would estimate the time of
death as the second or third week of August twenty eleven,
but could not determine the cause of death because of decomposition.
They did find three cuts on the left wristbone, indicating
a possible attempt at dismemberment. The discovery of Caitlin's remains
thirty six miles from her last known location across state
lines turned her missing person's case into a homicide investigation.
One year and eight months earlier, Caitlyn and her fiancee,
John Carter, were preparing for the next stage of their lives.
Caitlyn was on the verge of graduating from the Art
Institute of Cincinnati with a degree in graphic design, and
they were planning to move away from Fairfield to Colorado.
But on August twelfth, twenty eleven, in the midst of exams,
Caitlyn just needed to relax a bit. She and John
went to the Sacred Heart Festival, an annual festival held
by the Catholic Church nearby. For a moment they were carefree,
unaware of the tragedy that lay ahead.
Speaker 7: I remember that we went to the festival, and I
remember that we sat and ate, and I vaguely remember
going and sitting at the hill.
Speaker 1: Festivals were special places for Caitlin and John when they
started dating in high school. Going to the local fairs
and festivals was a regular date night. On this night,
John wanted to buy raffle tickets for a chance to
win ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 7: That was like one of the first places we really
started hanging out was at the fair.
Speaker 4: This is around the time that.
Speaker 7: We started hanging out, and you know, so we just
we always went there.
Speaker 1: Caitlyn and John enjoyed the sights and sounds of the festival.
They listened to some music and ate some horribly bad
for you fried food. I like me a nice roasted
corn on the cob. How about you? Not a big
elephant ear guy, but I do enjoy one on occasion.
But a storm was brewing on the horizon and they
walked back to Caitlyn's house well before the end of
the festival.
Speaker 8: At midnight.
Speaker 1: The following night, August thirteenth, Caitlyn was hard at work
on her final John invited a friend over, Lea von Bargain,
to discuss putting a trailer hitch on his car for
their upcoming move to Colorado.
Speaker 8: I mean, like, I used to be a mechanic. I
get people hitting me.
Speaker 1: Up with car questions all the time, and it was
actually about.
Speaker 9: Putting a hitch to his car, and you know, so,
like I ended up calling him like, wait, what.
Speaker 8: Are you trying to do? What are you towing?
Speaker 9: And he's like, well, I'm trying to get like a
U haul to attach to my car, because here's the
big news.
Speaker 8: We're thinking about moving to Colorado.
Speaker 1: Bradley had known Caitlin for years, but only knew John
through her. They had all been friends, hanging out occasionally,
but work in life had caused Bradley to lose touch,
so when John invited him over to catch up, Bradley
went right after work.
Speaker 10: We ended up talking more about them going to Colorado
than anything.
Speaker 11: John made the comment about, like, you know, pushing his
comfort zone.
Speaker 8: He even said, like, well, how you guys gonna plan it?
Speaker 4: Do you have any place in mind?
Speaker 1: He's like, and his response was weird, joking and laughingly.
Speaker 4: He said, it's like I really like to just wing it.
Speaker 8: And I said this.
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, that's funny because that's how I
would probably handle this situation.
Speaker 8: No planning, just go for it.
Speaker 12: And he's like, but Caitlyn, on the other hand, likes
to have everything planned out.
Speaker 8: This is where it's going, this is where we'll be.
Speaker 1: The three talked for over an hour about life and
about moving to Colorado, but Bradley noticed Caitlyn was being
a little distant. She wasn't her bubbly usual self, you know.
John explained that she was working on a school project,
but it still seemed odd to Bradley. After a while,
he announced that he was leaving, and I'm like, I.
Speaker 5: Even have to say bye to Caitlyn's It's like almost
like she didn't even.
Speaker 7: Say bye to me, like I had to almost initiate
any interaction with her.
Speaker 1: By walked outside and got into his car, but couldn't
shake Caitlyn's odd behavior.
Speaker 9: What was going on that was just weird, That just
wasn't like her, just out of the norm.
Speaker 1: John stayed for another hour before getting bored and leaving
for a party. He said good night to Caitlyn and
turned to leave. On the way out, he offered to
take a bag of her old financial documents and destroy them.
She'd been keeping it next to the door to remind herself.
She thanked him and he left.
Speaker 13: She knew that I was going to go to Jake's
because I had talked to Joey a little bit beforehand,
I think, I think at some point and then I
had called Joey again and said, hey, what are you doing.
Speaker 4: He's like, I'm at Jake. So it's like, okay, I'll meet.
Speaker 1: You over there, John left Caitlin's town home and drove
to his friend's house, which was not far away. There,
he met several of his friends around a backyard fire.
They dumped the bag of documents in the fire and
texted Caitlin that the job was done. But after being
at the party for a while, well, John wasn't really
enjoying himself.
Speaker 7: And someone who's like, why aren't you talking as much
as you usually do?
Speaker 8: It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 13: I get I'm hungry, So I tried to get food
and then I stayed for a little longer after I ate,
and I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna go home.
Speaker 1: John went to his parents' house where he lived, grabbed
a bite to eat, and went to his room to
watch a couple of episodes of his favorite TV show,
White Collar. Never heard of that one sounds stupid. He
texted Caitlyn good morning at four am before he went
to sleep. The next day, he woke up around noon
and let his dog out and started getting ready for
a shift at Papa John's. He didn't even notice that
Caitlyn hadn't responded to his four am text until he
got to work. Then he texted her again, but still
didn't get a response.
Speaker 13: After like the second message, I started feeling like, oh no,
and then on top of the etc. And it's like
making me shake, and I'm like, oh god, you know,
and it just really freaked me out.
Speaker 1: John was immediately worried. He asked the shift supervisor to
let him check on her. John delivered a couple of
pizzas on the way, and when he got to her apartment,
he saw something that made his stomach sink. Her car
in the parking lot.
Speaker 13: If she's not responding, she's at work. And if she's
at work, then her car's not there. I walked in,
and you know, I just assumed she'd be upstairs. So
I walked in and I ran upstairs. And then as
soon as I realized she wasn't there, I was like,
maybe she's somewhere else in the house. So I'm just
screaming to find out if she's somewhere else.
Speaker 1: He checked every room. Caitlin was nowhere to be found.
Her dog, Murphy was locked in her bedroom, which was
odd because Caitlyn always put him in the downstairs bathroom
when she left.
Speaker 14: Your emergency.
Speaker 15: All right, my name is John Carter. I am calling
I know that you're not supposed to her missing first
before twenty four hours, but my fiance is missing. I
can't find her anywhere. I'm just I'm really nervous. Her
car is still there now, yeah, fourteen door Shire Drive
like he'd been trying to get a hold of her,
and I decided to go by her house to see
she was okay, and her car was still there. She
would be at work right now with her car, which
is why I'm like really freaking out where when she does?
Meant midnight last night when she was at her house,
she was going to bed. And I've been with her
for six years. She's not deceiving. You know, she doesn't.
Speaker 16: Okay, And you guys didn't have an argument or anything.
Speaker 15: Not at all. The only thing that's not there is
her cell phone, which is positive, but she's not answering it.
So and then say her heart Festival is going on
right up the street, and there's a lot of questionable
people there and it's just kind of I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: John Carter called nine one, his voice shaky and worried.
Caitlyn was missing, but everything else, her purse, wallet, her car, keys, laptop,
even her dog was still there. It was like she
had just disappeared without a trace, leaving her life hanging.
That nine one one call kicked off an investigation, but
it didn't lead to any answers. Days turned into weeks,
and weeks dragged on into months. Eventually the case went cold.
By the time Andy Hicks and his wife found a
skull on an Indiana dump site, Caitlyn had been missing
for almost two years, and even then the real story
was still buried. There wasn't until twelve years later that
investigators finally figured out what happened to Caitlin Marcom, twelve
long years before they caught up with the guy expected
had been hiding in plain sight all along. Almost two
years after she disappeared without a trace, Caitlin Markham's skeletonized
remains were found thirty six miles away across state lines
in Indiana. Her bones were found under some trash and
an illegal dump site in a rural part of the state.
The local authorities didn't seem to take it all too
seriously until the remains were identified as Caitlin's. Then the
Indiana State Police or isp I know a lot of
these places in Indiana have acronyms that are actually something
else for everyone else, like ISP DNR, but in this
case ISP means Indiana State Police, not Internet service provider.
The ISP took over and cooperated with the Fairfield PD.
While the case had seemingly stalled, the Fairfield PD had
never stopped investigating. Regardless, they hadn't really gotten anywhere. So
the ISP started at the very beginning and got to
know who Caitlin really was. Twenty one years before she
went missing, Caitlin's parents, David and Sherry, were desperately trying
to have a baby.
Speaker 8: Caitlin not biological correct an adoptor.
Speaker 9: Aptor or a private adoption. It was actually Sherry's cousin.
Speaker 8: Okay, so was the sound pre arranged before or yah?
Speaker 9: She got pregnant okay and was going to give the
child up for adoption.
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 4: She hit it from her.
Speaker 9: Parents and so it really happened pretty fast, right, We've
been trying to have kids with no luck, and then
when we found out that she was pregnant, she was
not going to terminate the baby. So I guess her
mom suggested that the Kaitlin's biological grandmother suggested.
Speaker 8: It working out pretty good? Worked out pretty good.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Caitlin's biological mother was Sherry's cousin, but she was
very young, too young to raise a baby, so Sherry
and David adopted Caitlin and finally had a child of
their own. The Markhams loved their new baby girl and
fostered all her interests, but the happiness the family shared.
Would she can spoil.
Speaker 8: What happened between you and Sherry?
Speaker 16: What would?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 7: Would you blame the the failure of the Mary John?
Speaker 8: Can I be blunt sure?
Speaker 9: She is a lazy piece of shit and we're all, Yeah,
she stopped doing everything. I mean just stayed in bed
and shop QVC. Really yeah, didn't do shit. So I
was doing everything. I was doing everything for the kids.
That Actually, Kaitlin was the one that prompted me to
move out. She one day when she was sixteen, she said,
why do you put up with this ship?
Speaker 17: Dad?
Speaker 9: It's because of you and the girls. She goes, I'm
going with you. So she moved out with me, and
about three months later Ali moved in with me. Ali
lived with me for the most for the most part, okay.
Speaker 1: At sixteen, she saw her parents' marriage fall apart. She
blamed her mother and grew closer to her father. During
these formative years, her unique personality started to show. She
became an outspoken, audacious teen with her own opinions in
her own style. That's when she met John Carter.
Speaker 17: Back then, they were two peas in a pod. They
were both very gothic, 're very hippie. They were very grungy,
and they're very loud and house spoken, and that's what
drew them together. When I met and I'm like, of course,
they're perfect for each other. They were best friends.
Speaker 1: Like Summer her age, she chose to express herself by
bucking social norms. She wore dark eyeliner like goth kids,
and layered mismatched clothing like grunge kids. She dyed her
hair all sorts of colors. When she met John, they
just clicked. They had that similar alternative bohemian thing going on,
and they'd been together ever since. They dated all through
high school and after graduation, Caitlin pursued a degree in
art and enrolled in the Art Institute of Ohio. Getting
a degree and pursuing a career in art was her
main focus, but somehow she juggled all that with two
part time jobs. She got one job at the campus bookstore,
where she earned the trust of her manager.
Speaker 8: Was excellent.
Speaker 4: I mean, she was just one of the best stum
works I've ever had. She would do anything for you.
Speaker 18: She could run that store by herself, and that's why
I loved having her there, because I could trust her
and that she would take care of any issues that
would come up, and she could open.
Speaker 4: The store and close the store.
Speaker 8: I had total trusting her.
Speaker 1: She got another job at David's Bridal, where she made
an impression on all of her coworkers.
Speaker 19: People ask me all the time, like, was Kaitlyn weird?
Speaker 4: You know, before Caitlyn was.
Speaker 5: A weird individual, as that's her personality. She was bubby,
she liked colored hair. She wore a yellow velvet soup
jacket with red pants. I mean, the girl she loved
her personality.
Speaker 20: Whiles I got to know her, I really wanted to
be her friend because she was at that time, like one.
Speaker 5: Of the coolest people I think I'd ever met.
Speaker 2: And she was just like effortlessly cool, and she was
like kind of artistic, and she was funny, and like
I wanted to be her friend.
Speaker 1: Caitlyn made friends with everyone everywhere she went at David's bridal.
Even the older women were impressed with her talent and ambition,
and she appreciated their experienced guidance.
Speaker 8: She was really.
Speaker 5: Focused on getting her art career.
Speaker 19: She wasn't sure she wanted to be a full time
artist versus teaching art, or what exactly she was going
to focus on in art, so we talked about that
a lot because she was excited about art was her focus,
for art was her whole life.
Speaker 1: She worked two part time jobs while going to school.
It was hard, but she did it and got an
associate's degree. By this time, her father had a new
girlfriend and was rarely at the condo that they shared.
Caitlin was starting to get a feeling for what it
was like to be on her own. Her talent and
drive landed her a prestigious internship at Art Beyond Boundaries,
an art gallery in Cincinnati, and on her twenty first birthday,
John proposed and she said yes. They started planning the
rest of their lives together. After graduation, they would move
to Colorado for a change of pace and a chance
to spread their wings and grow. But just weeks before
graduation and two days before her twenty second birthday, she vanished.
Her last known communication with John was at eleven thirty
six pm, shortly after midnight, her phone went dark. It
was as if she had just walked away from her life,
but that was so unlikely with everything she had to
look forward to just didn't make sense. Through the investigation,
a suspect came to light. Megan Gordon, a friend and
somewhat mentor of Caitlyn, shared some advice with her. They
were in school together, but Megan was older and had
more life experience, so Caitlin often confided in her.
Speaker 16: I had get some advice with her and John, but
there was a kid that she had an express to
me that had had some interest in her, and the
way that she had described it to me, it was
a sexual interest, and I I advised her to stay
far away from this kid. I told her, you know,
just you need to cut him off completely. Caught him
off completely. I was definitely concerned for her because his
interest in her was inappropriate and it was definitely she
felt uncomfortable. I remember her telling me she didn't know
what to do, so she felt uncomfortable, but she didn't
want hurt anybody's feelings.
Speaker 1: Caitlyn tried to tell him she wasn't interested, but not
wanting to hurt his feelings, she tried to let him
down gently. Unfortunately, this was the kind of guy that
didn't take the hint. The kid's name was Christopher Ball.
He immediately rose to the top of the suspect list
because well he was a registered sex offender. Because he
couldn't provide an exact alibi, they searched his electronics and
gave him a CVSA. I know that one was close too,
but that one stands for Computer Voice stress Analysis test.
A CVSA measures subtle changes in a person's voice to
detect deception. It's a by detector test. Chris Ball had
little to no contact with Caitlin since high school other
than a few Facebook interactions, and he passed the test.
Then another suspect emerged, a man who used to live
near Caitlin as recently as a month and a half
before her disappearance and was arrested for an unrelated sexual battery.
His proximity and criminal record made him suspicious, but his
phone records and work schedule didn't place him anywhere near
her that night. Of course, the Fairfield PD also looked
into Bradley Vaughan bargin because he was one of the
last people to see her, but his alibi checked out.
It looked into John Carter two, as he was actually
the last one to see her. By his own admission,
his alibi was pretty tight, but there were some brief
periods of time that no one could corroborate. Not to mention,
he had suspicious scratches on his neck that he blamed
on his electric razor, so they gave him a CVSA test. Also,
you know, for shits and giggles, we.
Speaker 10: Have something that's called a tendency. You have a tendency
to block on particular questions.
Speaker 8: Okay, this is scarious, fond, I'm sure, Well.
Speaker 10: This one is is today Monday? You said yes, but
you had a tendency to block on it. For me,
the reason that you would have a tendency to block
on that question is because you're nervous.
Speaker 4: It's as simple as that.
Speaker 10: We get into question number four, when it gets to
the pertinent questions about knowing the whereabouts, you have a
tendency to block on this one too. Okay, Now if
we go to chart number two, which chart two is
the only one we use, Okay, okay, I'll show you.
Speaker 8: What's your name?
Speaker 1: John?
Speaker 10: Yes, this color of the door brown? He said, no,
it actually gave me a truthful reading.
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 1: The way these tests work is they'll ask you a
series of questions and some of the questions are control questions.
They're obviously true, and others are purposely false. This sets
a baseline for what truth and lies look like per individual.
John was all over the place. He was showing signs
of deception on obviously true questions like is today Monday?
And he was reading true on obvious lies like is
the door brown?
Speaker 10: I get to the pertinent question again, do you have
any information pret pretending to the whereabouts?
Speaker 8: No? But I have a tendency here.
Speaker 10: Okay, did you cause a disappearance of Caitlin Markham? You
put no, and it showed a truthful response here. But
when we get to number seven, are we in the
city of Fairfield?
Speaker 4: You say yes?
Speaker 8: You block hard on this.
Speaker 10: I want you to know that these charts have determined
that their deception in your answers.
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 1: John was at a loss. He assured them that he
would do anything they wanted if it would lead to Caitlyn,
but he couldn't explain his failure on the test. He
maintained he was telling the truth.
Speaker 7: When you said disappearance, like it really freaks me out.
I just I'm just really scared. I'm genuinely scared.
Speaker 8: And what are you scared of right now?
Speaker 7: Not getting Caitlyn back?
Speaker 4: Okay, And I don't.
Speaker 21: I don't know why it's inconclusive, Okay, I'm more than
willing to do anything else proof that I'm not involved
in her disappearance and good.
Speaker 1: The police were at a loss also, they knew the
statistics something like thirty four percent of murdered women are
killed by an intimate partner. It ain't rocket science. John
was very cooperative, though, and they had no evidence directly
tying him to well anything. They actually didn't have any
physical evidence set all. While they were suspicious of John,
they couldn't prove he did anything, But they also couldn't
rule him out, so they just kept investigating. One real
lead came months later in twenty twelve, when allegations of
sexual harassment were made against David Clemens, Caitlin's boss at
the campus bookstore. One of his young female employees claimed
he made inappropriate comments to her, calling her high heeled
shoes fuck me, Boots. Can't say stuff like that at work, obviously,
you'll get me tooed immediately. Anyway, the claims went beyond that.
She also claimed that he pulled her onto his lap
and hugged her and asked her to bring alcohol to work,
and when she refused, he became angry. According to her, so.
Speaker 4: You know, why don't you know that you're on a
mester ave lead right now? Yes, okay, and I understand,
I know, and I know why that you're on aster
league with that. When you think about that, it's completely false. Okay,
what's the mo here? I mean, why do you think
she You know?
Speaker 8: I thought about it over and over.
Speaker 22: The only thing I can think of is when I
reprimanded her the last day she worked.
Speaker 1: David acted innocent, but they weren't there to talk about
the sexual allegations against him. They were there to talk
about Caitlyn. Among her things, detectives found a handwritten letter
from Caitlyn to someone named Dave.
Speaker 23: This was a letter that was a Calen's house.
Speaker 1: The letter reads, in part, Dear Dave, I don't really
know how to tell you this, but I'm selling myself
for Candy. I think I realized it when you smacked
my butt at the Elton John concert and I saw
you sit on your my Little Pony collection. I'm sure
you're middle class enough to understand that I get turned
on by garbage men. I'm returning your Hannah Montana underwear
to you, but I'll keep the results of that blood
sample as a memory. You make me sick. Caitlin Markham.
Maybe I'm not the investigator I think I am, But
I have no idea what any of that means.
Speaker 4: I have no idea what acting from.
Speaker 18: Well, we're just we're just curious. It's obviously dressed today,
Yeah there is. We're trying to figure that out ourselves.
I mean, that's obviously.
Speaker 4: That's definitely not me. That's completely baffling to me. Fee
less with it.
Speaker 1: It reads like mad lips. As odd as the letter was,
it wasn't enough to connect David to Caitlin's disappearance. They
asked Dave to take a CVSA test, in other words,
a light detector test, and he hesitantly agreed, only to
later change his mind. His alibi checked out, though he
was at dinner with his wife and his in laws,
so he was crossed off the list. During that time,
Caitlyn's family and communities searched high and low. Authorities used dogs, drones, helicopters,
and volunteers to scour the surrounding rivers, creeks, wooded areas,
and even sewers to find Caitlin, but there was no
sign of her. The investigation would go on for one
year and eight months with no substantial developments until her
remains were found at the dump site. When the ISP
or Indiana State Police, took over the investigation, they almost
immediately bungled the case. It took hours for them to
arrive at the dump site. First of all, they did
little to know forensics, instead opting to come back a
couple days later, and they didn't really do a very
good job. Days later, mourners visiting the site found more
of Caitlyn's remains. They discovered her complete hip bone. The
dump site itself held no real clues, and there was
certainly no DNA evidence on the sun bleached bones. One
potential clue was the dumpsite's location. John Carter's father owned
property in Indiana. It was fifty acres of woods with
a pond, a cave, and a waterfall from Fairfield. There
were only two routes to this property. Caitlin's remains were
found almost exactly midway on one of those routes. Suddenly,
the ISP's only focus became John Carter.
Speaker 24: I think that that you apparently had been questioned early
on by the police and at one point in time,
is my understanding that there was a reason to believe
that you were being dishonest about something, and he's not.
Speaker 8: I'm not. I'm not being evasive.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying something.
Speaker 7: I mean, I know that I've taken multiple light detector tests,
and i know that I've been accused of being dishonest,
and I know that somebody thinks that I have some
sort of something that I'm hiding, But I promise you
that I'm not.
Speaker 4: I'm not hiding anything.
Speaker 1: This interview took place in August twenty thirteen, four months
after Caitlin's remains were found. At this point, John had
been interviewed by the police at least four times, and
he had taken two CVSA tests and FBI administered old
school polygraph test. He failed them all.
Speaker 7: I'm going to be completely upfront with you.
Speaker 8: They're bullshit.
Speaker 7: And the reason why I believe that they're bullshit is
because they kept telling me that I was being dishonest,
and I sat there and told them the truth. This
is the truth, and that thing does not tell you
what the truth is.
Speaker 1: John did not want to take another live detector test,
but the ISP still had some questions. In his original interview,
John said he sent Caitlin a good morning text at
four am before he went to bed, but when they
checked the phone history, there was no record of this text.
Speaker 7: But I distinctly remember, at the very least typing this message,
and I'm pretty positive that I push send. I don't
know how that what that is all about.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't the only unusual thing about John's text messages.
He also selected deleted some text between him and Caitlin,
explaining that he'd done so by mistake. They didn't press
much harder because they wanted to focus on John's family property.
Speaker 7: I don't know how she got there, don't. I don't
speculate how she got there, because I don't. I try
not to think about that shit. I try not to
put those images.
Speaker 8: In my head.
Speaker 7: I have no idea what she went through, and I
don't want to imagine what she went through.
Speaker 8: Are you familiar with the area where they found her.
Speaker 7: My dad has property in Laurel, which you can take
because I know that it's on one twenty nine or
off one.
Speaker 8: Nine or one twenty one, one twenty one.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and my dad would go that way occasionally, but usually,
you know, because he lives in Ross, he takes a
totally different way.
Speaker 1: He said he rarely went to his father's property, and
when he did, he used landmarks to navigate. He was
familiar with the route, but claimed he isn't familiar enough
to pick out the spot where Caitlin's remains were found.
Because he refused to take another lie detector test, they
couldn't really be sure if he was telling the truth.
He was free to go, but John made a final
plea before he left.
Speaker 7: Look into the festival because to me, the fact that
it was so coincidental that this festival is going on
during this time, there's all these people walking around doing something,
it just to me seems very suspicious.
Speaker 1: Detectives would work quietly on this case for the next
six months before coming back to John. This time he
agreed to a polygraph.
Speaker 8: You didn't do well, tesh An, underdo you probably do that?
Speaker 4: I never do.
Speaker 7: It's just it's so frustrating because I'm sitting here telling
the truth and somebody's telling me that I'm a liar.
Speaker 8: This is hell.
Speaker 4: Because polygraph didn't clear me. So I'm gonna have to
keep coming back here. I'm gonna have to keep talking
to him all.
Speaker 11: The while not going to jail because there's not going
to be anything to send me there.
Speaker 1: Once again, John failed the light detector test, but he
was right. They did not have any evidence to arrest him,
so the case seemingly stalled. Then in twenty fifteen, David Markham,
fed up with the lack of progress, publicly asked the
Butler County Sheriff's Office to take over.
Speaker 8: Sheriff Jones will take this over.
Speaker 9: Will It's a step in the right direction, and there
has been very little movement. We need more help. We
need somebody who's going to take this more serious.
Speaker 1: Ten months after John's fourth failed light detector test, and
over four years after Caitlin went missing, the BCSO became
the third agency to take on the case. But would
fresh eyes make a difference in this four year old
cold case. Detectives hope so, and they came out swinging
for John. The first call he made after searching her
apartment was to her father, and the first words out
of his mouth were Caitlin's missing. They found it odd
that that was his immediate assumption.
Speaker 7: Of course, I'm concerned her dog shit all over her floor.
She would never let that happen. She would never not
answer my phone call. All of these things are insanely
out of.
Speaker 8: The ordinary for her.
Speaker 18: But it seemed like U I know experience that seems
like you almost know something catastrophic has happened here.
Speaker 8: Have you ever had a feeling? I have all kinds
of feeling exactly.
Speaker 1: They pushed John hard, confident that they would get him
to crack. They were the third agency to work on
this case, and they had something to prove to the
community and the Markhums.
Speaker 4: I know, you guys are having a lot of trouble understanding.
You know why I was worried.
Speaker 22: Help us explain this, Joe, explain to me why your
DNA is on the inside of a Kruger's bag that
was wrapped around her skeletal remains.
Speaker 4: I have no idea.
Speaker 25: And why your DNA was on a black piece of
plastic that her skeletal remains, I have no idea.
Speaker 4: That's not made up stuff that I didn't fucking do
that though, But I'm leaving. I'm getting a lawyer, thank you.
Speaker 1: John stormed out, but he came back and explained it away.
Of course, he did evidence in.
Speaker 4: A bag and on a piece of plastic.
Speaker 7: Whoever did this could have easily have grabbed a bag
that I had used, or a.
Speaker 13: Back that I had held, or have done anything, or
I would be being set up.
Speaker 4: But I did not do this.
Speaker 7: There are accounts of where I was that night, agrange
to my mother, agrange to my stepfather.
Speaker 4: Had according to my stepsister.
Speaker 1: They were so confident that he would confess if they
had strong enough evidence, so they made it up. There
were no DNA results. It was all just a ploy
because they just knew he would break at some point.
When John didn't confess, they started back at square one.
Over the next six years, they made a list of
twenty suspects and cleared them all. Then they started to
pour over previous interviews by other investigators and found something
that they had overlooked. Two kids came forward in twenty thirteen,
right after Caitlin's remains were found, with an interesting story.
Speaker 7: Me and Daron were sneaking out of his house and
two in clo because we heard of a party.
Speaker 1: Darren and Kyle were outside for five minutes when they
thought they were busted.
Speaker 8: Two cars pulled up. We thought they're police, so.
Speaker 1: We hid both teens doe for cover in a nearby bush.
Speaker 12: I had my head peeked around the left side of it,
expecting a Fairfield PD to come around, and the lights
turned off to where we saw the vehicle pull into
the driveway garage or goes up carpools and the other
carpools on the street right next to the driveway garage.
Speaker 8: Or goes down.
Speaker 1: They thought they were about to be busted. Instead, they
were left wondering what was even happening.
Speaker 8: Darren's dad's gonna wake up mad, blah blah blah.
Speaker 9: But no, it's two suspicious cars with their lights off,
looking like they're sneaking into their own house.
Speaker 1: Five to ten minutes later, the cars pulled up, still
with their headlights off, and left the way they came.
This was interesting because Darren lived across the street from
John Carter and saw his red Ford focus that night.
He also saw the driver of the blue car you.
Speaker 12: Know, long hair through his shoulders pulled away and then
just like an unmanicured you know, very messy hair and
then just unmanicured facial hair.
Speaker 1: Okay, that description rang a bell for investigators. One of
John's inner circle back in twenty eleven was a man
named John Palmerton who fit the description. It had been
eleven years since Caitlyn disappeared, but John Palmerton still had long,
unkempt hair and unmanicured facial hair.
Speaker 8: You work at Ricks that weekend, do you recall? Yeah?
Speaker 26: Yeah, I couldn't tell you Friday, but I'm not sure
what but Saturday night I did close?
Speaker 8: What times you actually leave Rix? Thatnot you remember? I
couldn't tell you an exact time.
Speaker 26: I know me and John Monkin at the first I
was close basically since we had nothing to do. We
got done close and went home, showered up, my back up,
and I'm back after Rix hanging out the bartenders and drink.
Speaker 27: Okay, he said, you said you've.
Speaker 8: Lived there with John, John Lumpkin.
Speaker 4: And l U N p K I N.
Speaker 1: After Jonathan gave his alibi to detectives, they told him
about the two cars witnessed that night at John Carter's house.
Speaker 27: And at that point in time, you were driving a
blue car.
Speaker 8: You're own a blue dark blue, yeah vehicle.
Speaker 27: Does that sound familiar to you?
Speaker 4: But that that happened, yeah.
Speaker 24: Happened.
Speaker 8: Out at the bar. I can tell you where it
was at.
Speaker 26: Sorry if those details that gave you a match me,
but it has nothing to do with me.
Speaker 4: And that's all I can tell you on that.
Speaker 1: He stared blankly at detectives but denied the man in
the blue car was him, And when they asked him
to take a polygraph test, he refused. He said they
weren't accurate. Detectives let him walk and set out to
disprove his alibi. They went to find John Lumpkin, the
man he said he took home that night.
Speaker 28: Like I told you before, sir, we also have the
other person, mister Ruffledge. And all I know is this,
if we work together, that's who would have took me home.
Speaker 4: Okay, I mean it's very highly unlikely. Okay, with.
Speaker 28: That person, very unlikely.
Speaker 1: John Lumpkin didn't waste any time. He flat out denied
ever being with Jonathan Palmerton that night. Just like that,
Palmerton's alibi fell apart, lying the police. That's a serious
offense on its own, but the real question wasn't why
he lied, it was who he was covering for. Detectives
started to think he was an accomplice, someone who helped
to get rid of Caitlyn's body and hide it. If
Jonathan had lied for twelve years, what else was he
keeping a secret. After years of investigation with no developments,
Caitlin's father, David, pleaded with the Sheriff's office to take
over the investigation. When they did another six years past,
but they never stopped working. The case finally took a
turn when they uncovered a previously misstatement for teenagers with
confirmed witness accounts. The police reinterviewed John Carter's close friend,
Jonathan Palmerton. He provided an alibi, but detectives disproved it. Finally,
after twelve years, they made the first arrest in the case.
They arrested Jonathan for perjury and brought him into uncover
what else he might be hiding.
Speaker 23: Caitlin went missing, she was murdered. That's the reality of it,
and there's a small group of people that could be
responsible for it. He's worked on this case, interviewed all
these people. He tried to give you the benefit of
the doubt and interview. They you said, go talk to
this guy, go cut to this person. He goes to
talk to him. It's just on that night in question,
he goes to talk to him.
Speaker 8: I don't remember anything doing that. I wouldn't have done
that with him.
Speaker 23: He can't find anybody to back you up. And we're
not talking about some like Pinanty Crame.
Speaker 8: We're talking about homici. We're talking about murder.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just John Lumpkin who said it never happened.
Other people at the bar that night said they never
saw him. Jonathan tried to explain, but the detective stopped
him in a firm voice. He leaned in closer and
told him that if he were covering for John Carter
to just come clean and he wouldn't face any charges.
Speaker 29: Yeah, but if I had anything, why would I lie
to save his? Ask is I don't give a shit
about him getting away with something or something compared to
me losing my fucking family.
Speaker 8: Then what happened that night.
Speaker 30: I don't know. That's the thing. I wasn't there. I
didn't help to spread of a body. If I had,
I would take nine minute plea in a fucking second.
I can guarantee you that.
Speaker 1: What Jonathan didn't know was a lot, but also that
search warrants were being served at the very moment they
slapped down something that they found at John's house, something
they thought offered a glimpse into the mind of a murderer.
Speaker 4: It was a.
Speaker 29: Poem, definitely conflicting, kind of some kind of personality disorder
kind of thing, like someone pushing and pulling with a
darker side of themselves, so to speak.
Speaker 1: The poem reads like someone arguing with themselves deep down,
I love her. You want to kill her, but I
love her. She must die. I can't kill her, Yes
you can, no, Yes, how do you talk me into
all these things? I'm just that good? But you're bad.
I know. How do I kill you? You can't? You're
right about what? Nothing. Just then the detective slammed a
photo on the table.
Speaker 8: Is that her fucking teeth? Yeah? Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Jonathan had a visceral reaction. He looked everywhere, but in
the direction of that picture.
Speaker 8: Deep down, I love her. You want to kill her,
but I love her.
Speaker 23: I mean, it's not it's not it's not song lyrics, John,
I mean, this is the way she ended up.
Speaker 1: His demeanor changed. He wasn't smugly answering questions anymore. Detectives
thought he was about to crack, so they laid it
on thicker.
Speaker 27: I will tell you this on June to twentia Crustion
July twentia, twenty eleven, John Carter's mother, Karen Caitlin, what's
a ge credit Union? Okay, yeah, I want to go
in to get a credit card. Because Karen knew that
they were going to do they were going to Colorado.
She was going to make sure, being Karen, that Caitlin
and John that end up out there. Fly asked broke.
She goes, and Karen said this, Well, if I co
signed for this credit card, you gotta take my son
with you. Okay, Karen laughed. The lady g credit Union laughed.
Guess who didn't laugh? Yeah, Kate, no expression. Let's go
to Let's go to Friday night at the festival. Michelle Feiss.
Speaker 8: She goes.
Speaker 27: They were arguing over the over them hem spending money,
being John Carter on money they didn't have, okay, Jeff
Rutlish and I quote it looked like.
Speaker 4: They would want to break up.
Speaker 23: One day later, she's murdered one day later.
Speaker 27: She's dead that very night, Brad van Bargain, he's sitting
with him. She's always friendly to Van Bargain. They didn't
talk Caitlyn. He said there was something wrong with Kaitlyn
that night. She was going places. Sheeff thinks she wanted
to go. Do not sit around and sit around and
smoke weed all damn day and wait for her boyfriend.
Speaker 8: They fucking get down the little ring pieces.
Speaker 23: So if you've been manipulated, if you've been asked to
do something, now's the time.
Speaker 7: As far as I knew, I thought everything was fine
between them.
Speaker 29: Oh that's why I never suspected he would fucking have
done this.
Speaker 1: He had an obvious physical reaction to seeing the photos
of Caitlin's remains, but all they did when they pressured
him was to convince him that John Carter did it.
He still maintained that he was not involved.
Speaker 26: All I can tell you is that that's where I was,
and I'm sorry apparently that they don't fucking around the men.
Speaker 4: As far as that goes.
Speaker 1: He finally offered to take a polygraph, but detectives didn't
need him to because with his story and pieces all
Rhodes led back to John Carter. It took over a
month after John Palmerton's arrest for the Sheriff's office to
finalize all their evidence. Before arresting John Carter, they hoped
to confront him with their circle substantial evidence.
Speaker 8: But David, you've been indicted and what murder?
Speaker 31: Okay? But what evidence first? And I think there's you're
you're thinking of. There's evidence that's got to be fingerprints.
I mean, I mean, there's there's things called circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 27: The whole story about the unknown suspector and the individual
who was ethic they uh at the festival, following you
and cat them to her house.
Speaker 8: No one's believing that, Okay. They didn't believe it when
when when you first come out.
Speaker 11: With Okay, but that was just like a thought. I mean,
like you asked me my theories, and I gave you
my thought.
Speaker 4: But I don't you.
Speaker 27: Told me no, no, no, no one asked you that question.
That's the question you gave to the nine one one
operator day one.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 8: Okay, So that I thought.
Speaker 11: I thought maybe that could be a possibility. But I'm
not saying that's my story. I don't know what the
fuck happened. I have no idea of what happened. Maybe
my stories are different sometimes here.
Speaker 27: At some times, John, but your story has evolved constantly
over the past almost twelve.
Speaker 5: Years, because it's been twelve fucking years.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but your story is not. This is never the
same story twice. That's the best part about all this.
It's never the same story twice.
Speaker 4: What are you talking about?
Speaker 11: Okay, that's not that's the unknown suspect following me thing.
Speaker 8: Okay, fine.
Speaker 11: What I have been telling you and what I've been
trying to say is I have no clue what happened
to her, what I what I did by I said, Okay,
then then we're done. I'm gonna need I'm gonna need
to get my lawyer.
Speaker 31: Yes, yes, because you'll be Please have a phone call,
yes when you get.
Speaker 32: To the Jay.
Speaker 1: John shut down the interview in six minutes. When word
of his arrests spread through the community, Caitlin's friends and
family felt like they always knew.
Speaker 9: This is where I'm not sure. Just in the last
week or so, I was sure if she really wanted
to do the trip. I know she didn't want to
do it with John.
Speaker 8: He was no help.
Speaker 4: She didn't want to babysit him.
Speaker 9: She had made those comments to other people almost sort
of like your marriage. Yeah, pretty much. He didn't do
a thing. I mean, he's a pizza delivery guy. He
wants to stay up till three or four in the morning,
to sleep till tuning afternoon and deliver pieces for four hours.
Speaker 4: And that's his ambition getting high.
Speaker 8: And she was done with that.
Speaker 33: Caitlyn was getting ready to graduate college.
Speaker 16: She was cleaning up.
Speaker 33: She was turning into a young woman and really mature
and making some really mature decisions for herself. I very
specifically remember a time when she talked to me about
her concern about being engaged to.
Speaker 4: John, that she seemed to me to be.
Speaker 34: Very uncomfortable, that it was going too fast and he
wanted more actually from her, and she wasn't comfortable with it.
And she at one point.
Speaker 33: In time communicated that she was not physically attracted to
him anymore because he had gained so much weight.
Speaker 5: And was not taking care of himself.
Speaker 35: She was physically disgusted by him, Like she told me,
she was grossed out because he would smell. It was
a sharp discomfort that she did not want to be
with him sexually, and we.
Speaker 2: Were talking again about her moved to Colorado, and I
said something to the effect of like, well, what about
your wedding fans? Are you going to get married to Colorado?
Speaker 15: Is that what you.
Speaker 5: Guys are planning?
Speaker 20: And she kind of waffled on a little kagy and
she said, I'm not sure if we're going to get married.
Speaker 5: I don't know if that's still.
Speaker 1: Going to happen. Caitlin was having serious second thoughts about
her future, especially with John, and she shared her feelings
with her friends. They all saw the writing on the wall.
Speaker 8: I think she was fed up with him.
Speaker 4: I think she was tired of you know.
Speaker 8: She's very get it off with him. She's going to
call it rutter by herself.
Speaker 34: But I always felt and knew she was going to
leave him.
Speaker 33: I saw her positioning herself to leave him.
Speaker 2: And I don't know how he did it, but I
think that he sensed the relationship was ending, and I
think that he not editorialized, but I think he was
a little coward bitch baby, and rather than like be abandoned,
I think he thought, well, I can just do this
and no one's going to suspect me.
Speaker 5: And all of us suspected him right away. All of us.
Speaker 8: Knew that he did it.
Speaker 1: John Carter was arrested and charged with unclassified murder and
murdered during the commission of an assault. Here's the theory
the prosecution put against his two murder charges. Caitlin had
been coming to a tough decision in the weeks, maybe months,
leading up to her murder. She was about to graduate
and start her career, a career that she'd worked on
so hard. John, on the other hand, was a lay
about sleepy all day, only to wake up and deliver
a few pizzas every night. Typical redditor, loser. He didn't
have a degree, didn't have a career, He lived with
his parents. He just didn't have any money or plans
or prospects. Didn't seem to care to either. So many
people like that around these days, entitled baby losers, expecting
someone else to pay for their life anyway. That night
at the festival, Caitlin was pissed he was wasting money
on raffle tickets, like poor dumb people do. They got
a no heated argument about something John said didn't happen.
At that moment, she made her decision.
Speaker 4: That was it. She was done.
Speaker 1: She wasn't going to let John dictate her life anymore.
She wasn't going to put up with his shit. She
didn't want to move to Colorado with him. The next night.
She was so preoccupied with this pending breakup that she
couldn't even enjoy hanging out with von Bargin. That's why
she was kind of rude to him when he came over.
After he left, she likely told John she wanted to
break up. That's when little bitch boy John likely snapped
and killed her, getting the scratches on his neck near
his rainbow tattoo in the process. They never came from
an electric razor. They certainly didn't come from working down
at the mill. Caitlyn's neighbor remembered being startled awake that night.
Speaker 5: It was most.
Speaker 3: Certainly stop it. It was stop it in a name
or a word. Stop it.
Speaker 5: And then I heard the that was it, and then
the and that went on for like maybe ten to
fifteen seconds. It was weird. It definitely caught my attention,
and after that was silent.
Speaker 1: Whether he meant to or not, it doesn't matter. He
decided to cover it up. He spent the next few
minutes faking the text conversation with Caitlin while trying to
come up with a plan in his big dumb head.
When he went to the party to establish his alibi,
people noticed how distant he was. You're not as good
of an actor as you think you are. It's a
lot harder than it looks. He absent mindedly stirred the
fire out back, while he was most likely burning some
sort of evidence. He left the party at around the
same time Jonathan Palmerton got off work at Rick's tavern.
When the two teens saw those cars, it was John
and Jonathan. John was gathering the black landscaping plastic to
wrap Caitlin's body in, and he was pressing play on
the next part of his alibi, the episodes of White
Collar on his computer. This White Collar show looks like
utter trash by the way it's on USA. Who watches
shows on USA? Probably the same people who buy lottery tickets,
come to think of it. But detectives found evidence of
him looking up the episode synopsis the next day, almost
like I had to memorize it. His computer activity was
the only thing that put him at home, and it
seemed to be fabricated phone records showed that not only
did Caitlin's phone go dark shortly after midnight, but so
did John's for hours. This is the timeframe he should
have been home, but detectives think he was wrapping her body,
putting a bag over her head, and transporting her to
that dump site on the way to his dad's property.
After that was done, he went home, cleaned up, and
deleted any incriminating text messages, but he forgot to send
that good morning text the next day. John may have
expected Caitlin's no call, no show at work to have
raised alarms, but when it didn't, he had to be
the one to report her missing to avoid more suspicion.
This was the crucial misstep in his plan. Assumption that
she was missing seemed extreme, and his theory about the
festival goers being responsible seemed like an obvious misdirect to police.
We've seen this kind of thing before, at least once
you know, it was something a guilty person would say.
So while it seemed like the police were doing nothing,
they were actually slowly building a case against John Carter.
Additional circumstantial evidence added up over time. John spoke at
a vigil for Caitlyn saying some peculiar things.
Speaker 22: There was a.
Speaker 20: Candlelit vigil after she went missing that was held around
her birthday.
Speaker 5: But I remember John saying.
Speaker 20: To us, Caitlyn would have wanted this, and Megan and
I after the fact that like that was a weird
thing for him to say, Like, she would have wanted this,
She would have wanted to like be here for her birthday.
She would have wanted to like celebrate her birthday with
all these people who like clearly give a shit.
Speaker 2: He's all over the news talking about it, talk about
her in.
Speaker 5: The bad sense, which was weird. And we all noticed.
Speaker 1: That suspect referring to a missing person in the past
tense is always a bad sign. It implies he knows
she's gone. Maybe that's why he never helped with any
of the searches. Then again, it was lazy.
Speaker 36: The very first search, and this left a very bad
taste in my mouth. Very first search I went out on,
he was there. He was very monotone, very noncommittal to
the search. And he came out to give us a
pep talk who was out there searching, and he said,
I'm sorry I can't participate, but I have a bad knee,
And I thought to myself, if that was somebody.
Speaker 5: I love, there's no way a knee would stop me
from being out there. I'd be out there with a
machete chopping down every branch.
Speaker 37: I'd be out there with something digging out underneath every bush.
But he was just very monotone, one note, sorry, I
can't help you I have about me.
Speaker 1: But he never missed an opportunity to play the grieving fiance.
Victimhood is a very useful commodity these days.
Speaker 14: Just like he'd be fine and then it's like the
cameras were on him or he.
Speaker 38: Had to speak publicly, all of a sudden, he'd be
balling his eyes out, when the whole time you've been
hanging out with him, or you've been around him, and
he's been acting like everything's completely fine.
Speaker 1: When he wasn't playing the grieving fiance, he was making
his way through all the other women in the extended
circle of friends, hitting on each one of them.
Speaker 14: I just found it strange that John had gone through
several females like in a short pound of time after
his girlfriend and fiance high school sweetheart had been missing,
and he went through me the Heather and then even
Caitlin's best friend Amber, and he.
Speaker 38: Had mentioned to all three of us he's always had
a crush.
Speaker 6: On us while he was with Caitlin and not just
stripped a chord with me.
Speaker 1: But the results of the search warrants really sealed the deal.
At John's mom's house, the authorities found black landscaping plastic
in the garden shed out back, an item bought in
book and most likely kept for years. But more damaging
than that, they found a lot of odd poems and
writings from John. The most damning, perhaps was a single
line scrawled in black sharpie on his closet door, isolate
your wrists with the key to your heart. To further
cement their theory that the soft spoken, effeminate John Carter
had a violent side, they included a recorded argument between
him and his ex. Get a load of this.
Speaker 8: He's stop talking to me, please.
Speaker 1: I have got to take my medicine.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a good thing you've calmed down now that
you push my buttons.
Speaker 30: No I haven't.
Speaker 22: I have five thousand things to do too, sweetheart.
Speaker 38: Welcome to my light.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you pushed a shipload of my buttons. Thank you.
Not my problem, not my problem.
Speaker 1: You want to sleep early.
Speaker 8: Then your pain isn't my problem?
Speaker 30: Wow? Wow, wow, isn't my problem.
Speaker 12: You need stop while your head, stop for your head
where you're you die?
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 8: I don't think about it.
Speaker 7: I don't give a ship about I want you to
stop acting like a fucking asshole on every fucking day everything.
Speaker 9: Take it out, pull them right out.
Speaker 1: And I told you I'm.
Speaker 7: Not you know, yes, stop to be a fucking asshole.
Speaker 8: No every fucking day. No, I'm not, Yes, you are.
Speaker 1: The perjury charges against Jonathan Palmerton would later be dropped
to make him available as a state's witness. Maybe it
was Jonathan as a witness or the mountain of circumstantial evidence,
but John would never make it to trial. Instead, he
would accept a plea deal like the pussy he was
in exchange for pleading guilty. He would only be charged
with involuntary manslaughter. In June of twenty twenty four, two
months shy of thirteen years since Caitlyn's disappearance, John Carter
pled guilty, admitting he accidentally caused her death during an assault.
Speaker 32: A little bit of relief, but boys, I was shaking,
I was so I was literally shaking sitting there.
Speaker 4: I was so mad.
Speaker 32: I wasn't shocked that there was a plea. I was
shocked at how little it carries. God forbid, he doesn't
get anything but three years. You know that's going to
really feel like a letdown. If he doesn't get time,
then I'm not going to feel like there's justice.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison.
You see the statute of limitations that run out on
the other charges like abuse of a corpse and disposal
of the body, or he would have had a longer sentence.
That statute is something David Markham hopes to work with
lawmakers to change. It was all over, but how do
you have closure with just a three year sentence?
Speaker 32: That is why there's no closure. I still do not
know the whole story, and not that I would have
believed him because he's live for thirteen years, but he's
offered no explanation, hasn't even tried to me. That just
shows this character. I do respect and understand the prosecutor's office.
It would have been a tough case, just a lot
of circumstantial evidence. Everybody wants to see some hardcore pictures
or hardcore evidence to be on reasonable doubt. So I
think this is going to be rough on John, and
I'm not concerned with that.
Speaker 1: In the days following, Caitlin's loved ones gathered one last time,
not for search, not for a plea for justice, but
to finally say goodbye. As they stood together, a prayer
was read, a prayer for peace for a soul taken
too soon.
Speaker 35: And Lord give us the perseverance to continue honoring Caitlyn
tomorrow and for as long as we live.
Speaker 1: And then something unexpected happened. A butterfly fluttered past the crowd,
landing gently on David's shoulder.
Speaker 32: And she liked butterflies. And I don't know, they just
there's been days that I've had bad days in the
early on times, and the butterfly would come and fly around,
man like, oh my bad.
Speaker 1: Twenty one year old Caitlin Markham was on the edge
of something new. It was the beginning of the rest
of her life. We've heard it so many times, these
young people taken by violence. She spent her whole life
pushing towards a future that she could shape for herself.
But sometimes moving forward means leaving things behind, and some
people can't stand being left behind. John Carter, the man
who had been at the center of the case from
the start, the man who cried on television, the man
who begged for help, the man who swore he had
nothing to do with her disappearance and her death, was guilty.
Guilty of a crime of desperation, of fear of losing
the one person who defined his whole life. We may
never know exactly what happened to Caitlin Markham that night,
but we have a pretty good imagination, and we've seen
this kind of character before. Also, we know that Caitlin
Markham wanted a future, and John made sure she never
got one. When the obligation of their relationship and John's
expectations started to weigh Caitlin down, she tried to break
herself free, but it came at a cost. The cost
was everything, including herself. John Carter was never free, not
after that night. His sense may have been three years,
but the real punishment that started long before his arrest.
The toughest prisons aren't made of bars. They're made of
choices that you can't take back, relationships you can't escape,
and the guilt that follows you wherever you go. That's
going to do it for in another sword and scale.
Thank you so much for joining us and for being
a plus member. There's been a little bit of I
don't know, talk about my apology a few episodes ago.
A lot of people online, especially on Facebook, love the
drama and they just can't wait to find out how
I got canceled in order to solicit such an apology. Well,
you're just a bunch of fucking idiots. You know that,
You're a bunch of bozos. Because the apology was sincere.
It was coming from me, and it was because I
felt bad about my pattern of thinking that I recognized
was devolving into something ugly. You see, people are individuals
and you should treat them that way all the time.
You don't put them into groups and label them and
you know, expect certain behaviors from them. Like some of
the racists in our comment section. Those people are cunts.
Think it through, asshole. What if you're that little boy,
fresh into the world with lots of expectations and hopes,
maybe not such a great environment, maybe not such a
great set of parents. Do you really want to instill
that hatred, that racism into that little boy? You really
want to make him into what you think he is. No,
it's stupid, it's ignorant. That goes for any group, whether
it's blacks or immigrants or whatever. Thinking that way is
a spiral into hate, into division, into just a pure
shitty garbage world. And we're already living in a pretty
garb brige world, so I don't want to add to it.
Treat individuals as individuals every day.
Speaker 4: That's that's it.
Speaker 1: That's all I meant. So debate that if you want,
but leave me the fuck out of it. I said
all I needed to say, And uh, that's that. Have
a good one and we'll see you here next week.
Stay safe. T