Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Pathway Chili.
Speaker 2: I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm Ashley.
Speaker 3: Let's dive right into this week's case.
Speaker 2: April ninth, nineteen forty seven, Woodward, Oklahoma, four year old
Speaker 2: Joan gay Croft is taken to the local hospital after
Speaker 2: an F five tornado wipes out her hometown and kills
Speaker 2: over one hundred people, including her mother. While Joan Gay
Speaker 2: and her half sister are recovering from injuries in the basement,
Speaker 2: two men show up and take Gay away. They claim
Speaker 2: that they're taking Joan Gage to another hospital to see
Speaker 2: her family, but she's never seen again and these two
Speaker 2: men are never identified. Over the next several decades, there
Speaker 2: would be a number of promising leads, including an anonymous
Speaker 2: emailer claiming to be Joan Gay, but she's never found
Speaker 2: and the circumstances of her disappearance remain shrouded in mystery.
Speaker 1: After that, the path went Chiley. So today we're going
Speaker 1: to be traveling back over seventy eight years to cover
Speaker 1: a very unique unsolved mystery, the nineteen forty seven disappearance
Speaker 1: of four year old Joan gay Croft. Cases involving missing
Speaker 1: children can be incredibly difficult, to cover, but the circumstances
Speaker 1: of this one are just so bizarre, and it's unlike
Speaker 1: any other missing children's case you've ever seen. The whole
Speaker 1: story is technically a tragedy within a tragedy, as it
Speaker 1: involves one of the worst tornadoes in history, completely devastating
Speaker 1: a small town in Oklahoma and causing the deaths of
Speaker 1: over one hundred people, including the victim's mother. But the
Speaker 1: truly weird part is that Joan Gay went missing after
Speaker 1: the tornado concluded, as she was recovering from an injury
Speaker 1: in the basement of the town's hospital before two men
Speaker 1: came in and took her away, and they subsequently vanished
Speaker 1: within the chaos. What's interesting is that when they first arrived,
Speaker 1: the men specifically asked for Joan Gay, but they didn't
Speaker 1: show any interest in her half sister, who was recovering
Speaker 1: from injuries alongside her. If this was a planned abduction,
Speaker 1: it seems pretty brazen to do something like that in
Speaker 1: full view of several witnesses during the aftermath of an
Speaker 1: F five tornado. Over the past several decades, a number
Speaker 1: of different theories have been pushed forward in an attempt
Speaker 1: to explain this disappearance. Ever going to try and explore
Speaker 1: all of them on today's episode. As a disclaimer, I
Speaker 1: should also mention that, since this is an older case,
Speaker 1: we ran into the issue of different sources providing contradictory
Speaker 1: information about certain details. So if there are any instances
Speaker 1: when we're not sure which version is the correct one,
Speaker 1: we'll try to acknowledge it.
Speaker 3: Well, this is, like you said, double layered. We have
Speaker 3: a natural disaster that's causing grief and trauma already for
Speaker 3: this community, and then you have four year old little
Speaker 3: Joan Gay who's just up and taken away by people
Speaker 3: and never seen again. What I think about when I
Speaker 3: think about someone this young is my prayer is that
Speaker 3: someone wanted a child and took Joan and raised her
Speaker 3: in a family that presented in always healthy and happy
Speaker 3: and being four. It's possible Joan never even knew that
Speaker 3: she was not necessarily with family or me, raised by
Speaker 3: people who loved her. So, you know, that's in my
Speaker 3: naive head. That's my hope, is that this four year
Speaker 3: old is raised by people who do eventually love her
Speaker 3: and take care of her, and then she just says, hey,
Speaker 3: I you know, I know my family passed away in
Speaker 3: a tornado, and this is also my family, and this
Speaker 3: is how you know my life happened. But I'm really
Speaker 3: interested to hear, since it's such an old kid, what
Speaker 3: different types of explanations they might have.
Speaker 1: Well, it is definitely a possibility that she could have
Speaker 1: been raised by another family somewhere, because she would have
Speaker 1: no memory of her past life. And as we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about, there would be an anonymous email or
Speaker 1: who contacted someone decades after the fact claiming that she
Speaker 1: was Joan gay though they were never officially identified. But
Speaker 1: it's just you got to think of the mindset about
Speaker 1: who would decide to steal her and just think that, hey,
Speaker 1: we've just had one of the worst tornadoes our country
Speaker 1: has ever seen. Let's just decide to abduct a child
Speaker 1: and raise her as her own. So you're just wondering
Speaker 1: how did these circumstances unfold, and who made the decision
Speaker 1: to just take her away from her family.
Speaker 2: And how would they get her name? Like would they
Speaker 2: have been stalking her prior and thought like this is
Speaker 2: a great opportunity. It just seems odd if that is
Speaker 2: the motivation you're going to send these two men, Like
Speaker 2: it would have had to have been like an organization
Speaker 2: that was potentially helping these people who wanted to be parents,
Speaker 2: like facilitate it.
Speaker 1: That is possible. But it's just like this was such
Speaker 1: a disaster that what goes through your mind where you've
Speaker 1: been stalking Joan Gay for a while and you're going
Speaker 1: to think to yourself, well, her mother has been killed,
Speaker 1: her home has been destroyed, now's a good time to
Speaker 1: abduct her. But most people are just going to be thinking,
Speaker 1: I want to survive, I want to avoid all this
Speaker 1: chaos of this tragedy, rather than just deciding now I'm
Speaker 1: going to just swoop in and steal a child.
Speaker 2: And do you both think that like the likelihood of
Speaker 2: say somebody was opportunistic and there it was a trafficking situation.
Speaker 2: If you were able to take Joan Gay, wouldn't you
Speaker 2: then take her sister as well?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense that they just took one of
Speaker 3: them and they were down in a basement. I'm assuming
Speaker 3: the top floor level that's level to the ground. I'm
Speaker 3: assuming that that was depleted or you know, wiped away,
Speaker 3: and they're existing in this basement that survived underground.
Speaker 1: It's because it was like overrunning the hospital. There were
Speaker 1: so many injuries that they just didn't have enough beds.
Speaker 1: They were all filled, so they had to decide we
Speaker 1: have to treat some of the people with the lesser
Speaker 1: injuries in the basement. So there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people down there at that time.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is the basement of the hospital. Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: So I was wondering how they were stalking their home.
Speaker 3: This is the hospital. So it's possible someone working in
Speaker 3: the hospital took the ability also to capitalize.
Speaker 1: On this as well. Yeah, and they just were brazen
Speaker 1: enough to do it in full view of several witnesses.
Speaker 2: You can imagine somebody in the hospital being like, okay,
Speaker 2: well there are spotter. So there's a bunch of children
Speaker 2: who are in here. They know there isn't the supervision
Speaker 2: of parents, and that the parents might be scattered elsewhere
Speaker 2: or injured, and so if there is an organization they
Speaker 2: could say, well, this girl fits the criteria. Our story
Speaker 2: begins in nineteen forty seven in Woodward, Oklahoma, a small
Speaker 2: town located in Woodward County, which had a population of
Speaker 2: just under five thousand, five hundred people at the time.
Speaker 2: Our central figure is four year old Joan Gaycroft, who
Speaker 2: lives with her parents Olin and Cledacroft, and to his
Speaker 2: seven year old half sister, Geraldine, who goes by the
Speaker 2: name Jerry. After they each got divorced from their previous spouses,
Speaker 2: Olin and Clita got married in nineteen forty two, and
Speaker 2: Jerry's Clida's daughter from her first marriage. Olin is a
Speaker 2: very successful sheep rancher, and while the Crofts are not
Speaker 2: overly wealthy, there considered to be one of the most
Speaker 2: prominent families in Woodward. On April ninth, the United States
Speaker 2: was on its third day of a national telephone operators strike,
Speaker 2: which would last a total of five weeks, and Cleeda
Speaker 2: herself worked as an operator. While the strike was taking place,
Speaker 2: only emergency operators would be allowed to operate the nation's switchboards,
Speaker 2: and just two of them were on duty and Woodward.
Speaker 2: This meant that the town was essentially cut off from
Speaker 2: communicating with the outside world, so unfortunately, they were oblivious
Speaker 2: to the fact that they were now directly in the
Speaker 2: path of an F five tornado. Earlier that day, a
Speaker 2: supercells thunder storm near Amarillo, Texas, spawned six separate tornadoes,
Speaker 2: the worst of which was an f five that measured
Speaker 2: almost two miles wide and wreaked havoc for nearly one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty miles across three different states. It would
Speaker 2: completely decimate a couple of small farming towns in Texas,
Speaker 2: including Glazier, where there were sixteen casualties, and Higgins, where
Speaker 2: a total of forty five people were killed. However, the
Speaker 2: tornado wound up doing the most damage in Oklahoma, and
Speaker 2: to this day is still considered to be the worst
Speaker 2: storm in history of the state. At around eight PM,
Speaker 2: the tornado destroyed the farming town of Gage, causing the
Speaker 2: deaths of eight people, and it was here when the
Speaker 2: emergency operators in Woodward were finally informed about the impending storm,
Speaker 2: but by this point it was too late to warn everybody.
Speaker 2: The town's residents would later describe the sky as becoming
Speaker 2: ominously dark before the tornado finally arrived at eight forty
Speaker 2: three pm. Even though it only took around five minutes
Speaker 2: to pass through, it traveled at wind speeds ranging from
Speaker 2: between two hundred and twenty five to four hundred and
Speaker 2: forty miles per hour, and a completely ravaged Woodward, flattening
Speaker 2: over a hundred city blocks. A number of homes and
Speaker 2: businesses were destroyed, and a local high school student wound
Speaker 2: up surviving the ordeal because he happened to be in
Speaker 2: his bathtub at the time. Even though the storm lifted
Speaker 2: his entire house into the air, the bathtub's plumbing kept
Speaker 2: it secured to the ground, so he was able to
Speaker 2: use it as cover. The winds were so strong that
Speaker 2: they even managed to lift up a twenty ton steel
Speaker 2: boiler tank from the town's power plant and propell it
Speaker 2: a full block and a half. Moments before he was killed,
Speaker 2: one of the plants workers, Irwin Walker, managed to throw
Speaker 2: the master switch and cut off the town's power, a
Speaker 2: heroic act which likely saved a number of lives. The
Speaker 2: winds completely ripped the bark off a number of trees,
Speaker 2: and hundreds of chickens had their feathers stripped away. In total,
Speaker 2: the storm class the deaths of one hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: one people, one hundred and seven of them from the
Speaker 2: Woodward area, and nearly one thousand people were injured. It
Speaker 2: ranked as the sixth deadliest tornado in the history of
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 3: This is wild. We're so privileged now to have the
Speaker 3: technology we have where you have the sirens, you have
Speaker 3: television alerts, you have phone alerts, you have all these things.
Speaker 3: But back in the forties, like you said, we're looking
Speaker 3: at these telephone operators being the ones who would be
Speaker 3: the individuals to relay these messages, and it just so
Speaker 3: happens that there's a strike going on, so there's not
Speaker 3: enough people there to communicate information. And so when you
Speaker 3: look at a small town of about five thousand people
Speaker 3: and one hundred and seven of them die in this storm,
Speaker 3: it's heartbreaking. And I can't even put into my mind
Speaker 3: what it would be like to be in two hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty five to four hundred and forty mile per
Speaker 3: hour winds. I'm used to hurricane weather, not tornado weather.
Speaker 3: Now I'm in Tornado Alley, but I grew up with hurricanes,
Speaker 3: and you don't see wins around. You don't see four
Speaker 3: hundred and forty miles per hour. I can't even think
Speaker 3: about that and conceptualize how devastating something like that could be,
Speaker 3: because when you're in the hundreds, you can have deaths
Speaker 3: and severe damage, much less four hundred degree you know,
Speaker 3: four hundred miles per hour winds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could probably do an individual podcast episode just
Speaker 1: on this one tornado, because it was such a huge disaster,
Speaker 1: and there are just so many little interesting stories within stories,
Speaker 1: like someone could do an episode on Irwin Walker, the
Speaker 1: heroic plant worker who turned off the power at the
Speaker 1: very last second, even though he technically sacrificed his own life.
Speaker 1: And of course talking about the context, how this is
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties and we didn't have the Internet
Speaker 1: or weather alert systems, and we had to rely on
Speaker 1: two telephone operators because there was a strike going on.
Speaker 1: So it is just a very crazy story. And the
Speaker 1: fact that Joan Gay would go missing under such strange
Speaker 1: circumstances after the tornado took place is just only one
Speaker 1: of many weird things that happened on this particular day. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: one of the tornado's fatalities was cleaed to Croft, who
Speaker 1: was instantly killed when the storm hit her family's home
Speaker 1: and caused the side of the house to fall on
Speaker 1: to her. She was twenty six years old at the
Speaker 1: time of her death. Ollencroft was left critically injured, while
Speaker 1: the two children suffered relatively minor injuries. Jerry suffered some bruises,
Speaker 1: while Joan Gay's left calf was pierced by a pencil
Speaker 1: size splinter of wood which went right through her leg.
Speaker 1: While their father received medical attention, the two children were
Speaker 1: taken to Woodward Memorial Hospital by a neighbor. By this point,
Speaker 1: the town is incomplete chaos because this was the lone
Speaker 1: hospital and it was only equipped with twenty eight beds.
Speaker 1: The bodies of a number of deceased victims were collected
Speaker 1: and placed on the hospital's lawn, and the nearby Baker
Speaker 1: Hotel would be converted into a makeshift hospital in order
Speaker 1: to treat those with less serious injuries. Costs were set
Speaker 1: up inside Woodward Memorial Hospital's basement to convert it into
Speaker 1: a rescue shelter, so after they arrived, Joan Gay and
Speaker 1: Jerry were taken down there to receive treatment for their injuries.
Speaker 1: The girl's paternal aunt, Ruth Croft, eventually showed up at
Speaker 1: the hospital with her own daughter. Ruth was married to
Speaker 1: Olan's brother Arthur, and was trying to locate the Croft family,
Speaker 1: as well as her own mother and brother. After she
Speaker 1: learned that Joan, Gay and Jerry were receiving treatment in
Speaker 1: the basement, Ruth went down to see the girls and
Speaker 1: assured them that their father was going to be all right,
Speaker 1: though she did not tell them their mother was dead
Speaker 1: because she feared the news would traumatize them. Ruth then
Speaker 1: went back outside and finally located her own brother and mother.
Speaker 1: Since her mother was injured and the Woodward hospital was overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: Ruth took her to another hospital in Moorlands, ten miles away.
Speaker 1: While she was there, she volunteered to help tend to
Speaker 1: the other injured victims, which would keep her occupied overnight.
Speaker 1: When the morning of April the twentieth hit, Ruth returned
Speaker 1: to Woodward Memorial Hospital, but when she went down in
Speaker 1: the basement, she was surprised to discover that Joan Gay
Speaker 1: was no longer there, and Jerry would provide a very
Speaker 1: troubling story about her disappearance.
Speaker 3: Remind me how old Jerry is.
Speaker 1: She's uh, seven years old.
Speaker 3: She's seven, Okay, so she's a little one too. What's
Speaker 3: interesting here is that, you know, everything seems to be
Speaker 3: utter chaos, but by the time that her aunt gets
Speaker 3: there and you have Ruth, she's making sure that okay,
Speaker 3: I'm accounting for different family members. I can only imagine
Speaker 3: the piece she feels when she sees the two children
Speaker 3: downstairs in the basement. She knows, Okay, Dad's being tended to.
Speaker 3: They've lost their mother, but I know where the girls are,
Speaker 3: and so the babies are safe. They're being tended to
Speaker 3: by other adults and people who are you volunteering.
Speaker 1: Just like she is.
Speaker 3: And so she goes off to do exactly what I
Speaker 3: guarantee a lot of people are doing, throwing their hat
Speaker 3: in the ring for whatever services they can provide to
Speaker 3: their little community. And when she comes back down to
Speaker 3: check on them again, only one of the children's there.
Speaker 3: And you're about to tell me what she hears, but
Speaker 3: we already know it's going to be a quite disturbing story.
Speaker 2: So, according to Jerry, sometime during the night, two men
Speaker 2: dressed in what she described as military type khaki clothing
Speaker 2: came down into the basement. Some sources state that they
Speaker 2: asked for the Croft children, while others say that they
Speaker 2: specifically asked for Joan Gay. When they found Joan Gay,
Speaker 2: the men proceeded to pick her up. She objected because
Speaker 2: she didn't want to leave her sister, but one of
Speaker 2: the men assured her that they would return for Jerry.
Speaker 2: Later on, when a nurse confronted the men they told
Speaker 2: her that they were taking Joan Gay to another hospital
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma City to see her family. The staff seemed
Speaker 2: to believe this explanation, so the two men were allowed
Speaker 2: to leave with Joan Gay. But this would turn out
Speaker 2: to be the last time she was ever seen. A
Speaker 2: number of calls were made to hospitals in Oklahoma City
Speaker 2: and the surrounding area, but there was no success at
Speaker 2: locating Joan Gay.
Speaker 3: Remember, right now we're in the middle of this horrific
Speaker 3: tragedy with the natural disaster, and I don't know how
Speaker 3: it worked in the forties, but I wonder if there
Speaker 3: were large numbers of police presence and military presence and
Speaker 3: sending things like the National Guard, those kinds of concepts
Speaker 3: to this little child to try to help in the
Speaker 3: midst of this tragedy. And then would those two men
Speaker 3: have presented to the nurses and even to the children
Speaker 3: as somewhat of authority like a khaki if you were
Speaker 3: dressed all in khaki. I wonder would they look military
Speaker 3: law enforcement, some kind of put together individual who seems
Speaker 3: to have some kind of authority with them.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm guessing that the nurses probably assumed that
Speaker 1: they were affiliated with military or they were rescue workers,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have any nefarious intentions when they decided
Speaker 1: to take Joan Gay out of the basement. And it
Speaker 1: seems rather plausible the fact that she was taking her
Speaker 1: to see her father in Oklahoma City at the hospital there,
Speaker 1: because Jerry was not her biological daughter, she was the
Speaker 1: daughter of the mother Kletas, So on the surface, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't seem implausible that they would only take one child
Speaker 1: that they're going to see, specifically Joan Gay's biological father.
Speaker 1: And of course, even though the nurses got suspicious, you
Speaker 1: can almost understand them buying this story because they've obviously
Speaker 1: got a lot of chaos to attend to a lot
Speaker 1: of patients, so they're thinking, Okay, this is all an authority.
Speaker 1: They're taking Joan Gay to another hospital, and we've got
Speaker 1: a million other things to do, so we'll take their
Speaker 1: story at face value. But surprisingly this was the last
Speaker 1: time anyone ever saw Joan Gay and the fact, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, there are differing accounts from differing sources about
Speaker 1: whether or not they asked for the Craft children or
Speaker 1: if they specifically ask for Joan Gay. But if the
Speaker 1: second scenario is the correct one, then they obviously only
Speaker 1: intended to get her and had no interest in Jerry.
Speaker 3: But how do they know all these things? How do
Speaker 3: they know the children are there? So the Craft children
Speaker 3: or Joan, right, someone had to know this family pretty intimately,
Speaker 3: because they shouldn't have been in a basement hospital a
Speaker 3: hospital basement, have been in their home, or they should
Speaker 3: have been with their dad, or they should have been
Speaker 3: with other family members. So someone had to have intimate
Speaker 3: knowledge of let's say they just asked for Joan, the
Speaker 3: fact that she is the only biological child to the dad.
Speaker 3: They had to know that these kids were now being
Speaker 3: tended to down in this basement. So it's really interesting
Speaker 3: because it seems like such intimate details. But it has
Speaker 3: to be someone who can get her far enough away
Speaker 3: from this small area, because if you just took her
Speaker 3: to let's say a house in the neighborhood and it's
Speaker 3: a family who knew the family really well, she'd be discovered.
Speaker 3: So it's someone who knows them, but has to also
Speaker 3: transport her far enough away to where she can't be located.
Speaker 2: But what if it's not someone who knows them, and
Speaker 2: the intimate knowledge just comes from a worker in the hospital,
Speaker 2: like somebody who's gone, Okay, well I've scanned and there's
Speaker 2: you know, these kids here, and so I'm going to
Speaker 2: give the information to my counterparts, and they're going to
Speaker 2: come in and pose as people who are going to
Speaker 2: be transporting Joan Gay or the Croft children, whatever they
Speaker 2: asked for to a different place. It could be that
Speaker 2: or somebody who was known to them on an intimate level,
Speaker 2: but it seems like all the houses in their area
Speaker 2: and the people that they knew were decimated or affected
Speaker 2: by this extreme weather event. They killed so many people,
Speaker 2: So it just is also perplexing the timing and everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you think if it was someone who lived
Speaker 1: in the area and suffered from the tragedy and lost
Speaker 1: their own house, they wouldn't be preoccupied with taking a child.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's compelling to think that these two
Speaker 1: men in the military clothing were from out of town.
Speaker 1: And I know that Jerry never said that she recognized them,
Speaker 1: even though Woodward was known as being one of those
Speaker 1: small towns where everyone knew everyone. But it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like the nurses recognized them either, so it almost seems
Speaker 1: like they just kind of came out of nowhere and
Speaker 1: then left town immediately after they got Joan Gay. So
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the tornado, it turned out there were
Speaker 1: three victims in Woodward who cannot be identified, and they
Speaker 1: all happened to be young girls. One of them was
Speaker 1: approximately twelve years old, the second was a small infant,
Speaker 1: but the third victim was a blonde girl who appeared
Speaker 1: to be around three to four years old and had
Speaker 1: a resemblance to Joan Gay. The town's mortician asked Ruth
Speaker 1: to come down to the funeral home to look at
Speaker 1: the deceased child and bring some of Joan Gay's clothing along.
Speaker 1: When Ruth saw the victim, she was one under percent
Speaker 1: certain it was not Joan Gay, and the mortician confirmed
Speaker 1: that Joan Gay's clothes were too big for Apparently, some
Speaker 1: local residents were able to identify the child as a
Speaker 1: girl who came from a broken home where her parents
Speaker 1: had separated and she was now being raised by her grandmother. However,
Speaker 1: the grandmother refused to make a positive identification or claim
Speaker 1: the body, so the girl would have to be buried
Speaker 1: as an unidentified Jane Doe. It was theorized that the
Speaker 1: parents of the twelve year old girl and the infant
Speaker 1: may have either been transients or so destitute that they
Speaker 1: could not afford to pay for the child's burial, so
Speaker 1: they never came forward to identify them. Hundreds of school
Speaker 1: teachers from Woodward and the surrounding area visited the morgue
Speaker 1: to look at the twelve year old and even brought
Speaker 1: their enrollment books along to jog their memories, but none
Speaker 1: of them seem to have any idea who the girl was.
Speaker 1: The three children were never identified, and they would be
Speaker 1: buried in Woodward's Elmwood Cemetery.
Speaker 3: Now that's absolutely tragic. Part of me thinks the poor
Speaker 3: grandmother grief is what drove her to say, like, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that that's my baby. But then you also
Speaker 3: have these other two little ones who maybe no one
Speaker 3: could even afford to come claim them, or like you said,
Speaker 3: maybe they're transient or maybe their addicts or something to
Speaker 3: that nature where they can't come get their children. But
Speaker 3: that's heartbreaking. You have three little jane Does who are
Speaker 3: going to be buried in the Woodward Elmwood Cemetery, and
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if their little plaques and grave markers are
Speaker 3: still there today.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm hoping. I haven't heard any stories about
Speaker 1: the making any effort to exhume their bodies for DNA
Speaker 1: testing to try to figure out who they were. And
Speaker 1: at the very least I wish they would do that
Speaker 1: to the three to four year old, just to be
Speaker 1: one hundred percent certain that she was not Joan Gay.
Speaker 1: But that just shows like a sign of the time
Speaker 1: where families are thinking, we're so destitute, We've now possibly
Speaker 1: lost our home, and because we can't afford the expenses
Speaker 1: to pay for these children's burials, we're just going to
Speaker 1: leave them unclaimed and let the state take care of them,
Speaker 1: because then they would have to give them a pauper's grave.
Speaker 1: Since no trace of Joan Gay could be found, many
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies were brought in to perform an official
Speaker 1: missing person's investigation. When her father, Olan finally recovered from
Speaker 1: his injuries, he went out of his way to generate
Speaker 1: publicity for Joan Gay, posting up missing persons flyers and
Speaker 1: doing interviews on local radio stations. Since Olin was one
Speaker 1: of the wealthier residents of Woodward, it was theorized that
Speaker 1: Joan Gay may have been the victim of a ransom
Speaker 1: kidnapping but no ransom demands were ever sent. Since the
Speaker 1: two men in the basement had asked for Joan Gay
Speaker 1: by names, explored the possibility that someone from Cleta side
Speaker 1: of the family might have taken her, but they were
Speaker 1: extensively questioned and there was nothing to indicate they were involved.
Speaker 1: Olin soon remarried and moved to San Antonio, Texas, where
Speaker 1: add two more children. He would reportedly spend the next
Speaker 1: several decades pursuing any lead he could find in an
Speaker 1: attempt to locate Joan Gay, before he passed away in
Speaker 1: October of nineteen eighty six at the age of eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Over the years, a number of adult women would come
Speaker 1: forward who believed they might be Joan Gay, but for
Speaker 1: one reason or another, they were always ruled out.
Speaker 3: Imagine losing your wife that day to an accident or too,
Speaker 3: I mean, to a natural disaster. So your wife dies,
Speaker 3: then you know your children are safe and they're being
Speaker 3: cared for. You're trying to heal from your injuries, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, your daughter is missing. And
Speaker 3: to make matters worse, there's some people who are telling
Speaker 3: you or talking to you about the fact that maybe
Speaker 3: it's your wife's family who actually took this child and
Speaker 3: is keeping her from you, So like a piece of
Speaker 3: your world has been taken by potentially people who should
Speaker 3: have loved and cared about you while you were a
Speaker 3: grieving spouse, and so that I can't even imagine what
Speaker 3: kind of layer of trauma that would add to him.
Speaker 3: And think about this, this man never gave up. He
Speaker 3: was eighty seven and still trying to find her before
Speaker 3: he passed away. That is miraculous, That's incredible. It speaks
Speaker 3: to the testament of how much he loved his daughter
Speaker 3: and was willing to put himself through these multiple times
Speaker 3: people are saying maybe I'm her and getting his hopes up,
Speaker 3: and then being let down and getting his hopes up.
Speaker 3: But he was willing to be that vulnerable to see
Speaker 3: if he could find her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I take some comfort in the fact
Speaker 1: that he was able to get remarried and start over
Speaker 1: and have additional children. I've never seen another example of
Speaker 1: this of someone suffering a tragedy like this, because you
Speaker 1: can find millions of examples of people who lose their
Speaker 1: home in an astral disaster and then lose their wife
Speaker 1: and possibly they're children, But I don't think you're going
Speaker 1: to find another example where they lose his wife in
Speaker 1: the disaster and then lose one of his children in
Speaker 1: the aftermath, where it's obviously weren't killed by the storm,
Speaker 1: they were abducted by someone, And you can only let
Speaker 1: your mind wander thinking was where they abducted by like
Speaker 1: a sexual predator. Was she taken for the purposes of
Speaker 1: a black market illegal adoption, or was it just a
Speaker 1: weird clerical error where someone legitimately took Joan Gay out
Speaker 1: of the basement because they wanted to take her to
Speaker 1: see me at the hospital in Oklahoma City. But maybe
Speaker 1: there was a mix up, maybe they took her to
Speaker 1: the wrong hospital or something, and because it was the
Speaker 1: nineteen forty she just got lost in the shuffle and
Speaker 1: wound up with another family. But it is pretty heartbreaking
Speaker 1: that he fought his entire life trying to find out
Speaker 1: what happened to her and he never got any answers.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned early on, Robin that this could be
Speaker 2: an entire podcast with all the different stories. I would
Speaker 2: be really interested to hear about all of the women
Speaker 2: that came forward later who believed that they were Joan
Speaker 2: Gay and what were the circumstances that led to them
Speaker 2: believing that they could have been abducted themselves and were
Speaker 2: raised by people who weren't their parents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, in a few moments, we're going to share
Speaker 1: this stories of one of these women where it turned
Speaker 1: out she wasn't Joan Gay, but it sounds like she
Speaker 1: has a very bizarre backstory in its own right. And
Speaker 1: I always wonder about that because we see these in
Speaker 1: a lot of these cases involving missing children, where adults
Speaker 1: come forward and say I might be them, and then
Speaker 1: you learn more about their backstories and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: they may not be them, but there is a good
Speaker 1: chance that maybe they were abducted by someone, and you
Speaker 1: almost want to start an individual podcast episode about their stories.
Speaker 2: So in September of nineteen ninety three, this case would
Speaker 2: be featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and the
Speaker 2: segment managed to generate over two hundred phone calls to
Speaker 2: the show's talacenter. The most promising call came from the
Speaker 2: daughter in law of a woman named Jeane Smith who
Speaker 2: lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Jean would have been around Joan
Speaker 2: Gay's age, but she said that she didn't seem to
Speaker 2: have any memories of her childhood before the age of six.
Speaker 2: Growing up, Jane was struck by the fact that she
Speaker 2: did not resemble anyone else in her family and began
Speaker 2: to question if the people who raised her were actually
Speaker 2: her biological parents. At one point, she took her birth
Speaker 2: certificate and the baby photos of herself to the Phoenix
Speaker 2: Police Department, and it was determined that the footprints on
Speaker 2: the birth certificate did not belong to Jane and the
Speaker 2: child in the photographs were not actually her. Jeane would
Speaker 2: be diagnosed with psychogenic amnesia and decided to undergo hypnosis
Speaker 2: with a psychoanalyst. She claimed that she started having flashbacks
Speaker 2: to people she did not recognize, screaming at locations she
Speaker 2: could not recall, so she started wondering if she was
Speaker 2: experiencing repressed memories of the Woodward tornado. It turned out
Speaker 2: that Gene had the same blood type as Joan Gay,
Speaker 2: as well as a scar on her left cap in
Speaker 2: the same approximate spot where Joan Gay had been pierced
Speaker 2: with a splinter of wood during the tornado. Olin Croft's sister, Nellie,
Speaker 2: and her family decided to travel the Phoenix and stay
Speaker 2: with Jean for two weeks, and they came away feeling
Speaker 2: one hundred percent convinced that she was Joan Gay. The
Speaker 2: producers of Unsolved Mysteries agreed to pay for DNA testing,
Speaker 2: but the results conclusively determined that Jean Smith was not
Speaker 2: Joan Gaycroft.
Speaker 3: Wow, like you said, Robin, sometimes you hear these stories
Speaker 3: and you go, well, something could have happened, something might
Speaker 3: have happened. And Joan is very similar to Jean's so
Speaker 3: changing her name slightly would have been a smart move
Speaker 3: as well, so that she wasn't completely overwhelmed with the changes.
Speaker 3: But here you have this woman who, to me, the
Speaker 3: most convincing thing would have been that scar and on
Speaker 3: her left calf where that pencil size piece of debris
Speaker 3: had gone through her leg, And this lady had the
Speaker 3: same kind of scar there, So that's very bizarre. Same
Speaker 3: blood type, similar name, similar age. But then even though
Speaker 3: everyone's convince it turns out definitely not her.
Speaker 1: Yes, I wish I'd learned more information about Jean Smith's background,
Speaker 1: and I kind of wished that she had used this
Speaker 1: outlet to think, Okay, I'm not Joan Gay, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to get my own story on unsolved mysteries, or
Speaker 1: I'm going to do in my own search to try
Speaker 1: to figure out my backstory, because I do think there
Speaker 1: is convincing evidence that the people who raised her were
Speaker 1: not actually your biological parents. So I would like to
Speaker 1: know how she wound up in that situation, But unfortunately
Speaker 1: it seems to be a mystery within a mystery. There
Speaker 1: would be another interesting development involving a columnist named Robert E. Lee,
Speaker 1: and no, not the same Robert E. Lee who fought
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy during the Civil War. This Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee was the former news editor for the Woodward County
Speaker 1: Journal and published several anniversary articles about Joan Gay's disappearance,
Speaker 1: and he even continued to write about her after moving
Speaker 1: to Oklahoma City to write for their newspaper, The Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: On April the twelfth, nineteen ninety nine, Lee received an
Speaker 1: email which stated, quote, I know that you have written
Speaker 1: many articles about the night eighteen forty seven Woodward Tornado
Speaker 1: and about the missing Joan gay Croft. How would you
Speaker 1: like to write an article about what really happened to
Speaker 1: Joan Gay and where she has been these past fifty
Speaker 1: four years. She has been and is living in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City on and off since nineteen fifty six under a
Speaker 1: different name, with the full knowledge of her father Orland Croft.
Speaker 1: She even graduated from an Oklahoma City high school under
Speaker 1: her different name. End quote. The writer then provided an
Speaker 1: email address to contact them and signed off with the
Speaker 1: name Miss Joan gay Croft. The writer then provided an
Speaker 1: email address to contact them and signed off with the
Speaker 1: name Miss Joan gay Croft. By the way, in case
Speaker 1: you're wondering, I did not mispronounce Ohlincroft's name as Orlandcroft.
Speaker 1: At that time, the Oklahoma did not have the technology
Speaker 1: to trace an email address, so Lee wrote back asking
Speaker 1: for more information, and received reply a few weeks later.
Speaker 1: This time, the emailer said, quote, I know this time
Speaker 1: of year there are many people who crawl out of
Speaker 1: the woodwork claiming to be the lost girl. But I
Speaker 1: was never physically lost. My immediate families knew where I was.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know who I was until just lately.
Speaker 1: I never faced the fact that Kleedacroft, my mother died
Speaker 1: upon me. I buried his information deep within my long
Speaker 1: term memory and refused to accept. If you want to
Speaker 1: know the rest, email me end quote. This person provided
Speaker 1: their email address, and then wrote quote, we will arrange
Speaker 1: to meet in person to discuss the details. I propose
Speaker 1: we meet at Penn Square and for the first meeting,
Speaker 1: I would like to meet in public, but not publicly
Speaker 1: and without photos. Please let me know a date and
Speaker 1: time convenient for you. I am on the Internet on
Speaker 1: most MWF between nine and ten thirty a m. As
Speaker 1: to compensation, I would prefer none. End quote. By the way,
Speaker 1: I am assuming that m WF was a reference to Mondays,
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Fridays, and she once again signed off the email.
Speaker 1: Joan Gaycroft Lee replied to express his interest in a
Speaker 1: public meeting and even mentioned that his own wife had
Speaker 1: also survived the Woodword tornado. But after this Lee never
Speaker 1: heard from the email or again, and after a point
Speaker 1: the address where the emails originated from stopped accepting messages.
Speaker 1: Joon gay surviving relatives have provided samples of their DNA,
Speaker 1: which has since been entered into a massive state database,
Speaker 1: and hopes that a match might turn up someday. As
Speaker 1: for Joan Gay's half sister, Jerry, she sadly passed away
Speaker 1: in January of twenty twenty one at the age of
Speaker 1: eighty one. If Joan Gay is still alive, she would
Speaker 1: currently be eighty two years old at the time of
Speaker 1: this recording, but there's still no answers about what actually
Speaker 1: happened to her. So I guess you could say the
Speaker 1: path went Chile.
Speaker 3: That is so crazy. You have this person who's reaching out,
Speaker 3: and I mean, it actually does make some sense where
Speaker 3: she says, hey, you know, I hadn't accepted that my
Speaker 3: mother had passed away. That's something that I'm just kind
Speaker 3: of learning and exploring right now. But I was with family,
Speaker 3: I was with people who loved me. I just didn't
Speaker 3: really know my own life identity and who I was.
Speaker 3: She does mis uh spell her father's name or who
Speaker 3: her you know she's alluding is her father's name. And
Speaker 3: it's interesting because it's these cryptic ideas that they never met,
Speaker 3: and so in my head, I'm like, I don't really
Speaker 3: think this is necessarily Joan. I think she'd be more
Speaker 3: adamant to try to get in touch with her father
Speaker 3: and surviving family. But it's also very odd. I wish
Speaker 3: they had at least met and they had been able
Speaker 3: to explore this further.
Speaker 1: And the part that doesn't ring true to me is
Speaker 1: the fact that she said I disappeared and started a
Speaker 1: new life under a new identity with the full knowledge
Speaker 1: of my father, And that just seems got a character
Speaker 1: from what we just talked about, Olin, how he spent
Speaker 1: all these years spreading awareness about Joan Gay's disappearance, appearing
Speaker 1: on radio shows, and that he never got any answers
Speaker 1: until he died in nineteen eighty six. So it seems
Speaker 1: at a character the idea that he knew where Joan
Speaker 1: Gay was all along, yet still spent all this time
Speaker 1: spreading awareness about her disappearance.
Speaker 2: It would be one thing to be performed for a
Speaker 2: short period of time, you know, for a month or
Speaker 2: even a year, but not for so many years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not all the way up until nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: when he died.
Speaker 3: No, she's eluding her father knew where she was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's the line that she used in the email.
Speaker 1: She had been living in Oklahoma City since nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: six under a different name, with the full knowledge of
Speaker 1: her father, Olin Croft.
Speaker 3: No, Nope, I didn't hear that.
Speaker 1: When you said that part.
Speaker 3: I thought she was alluding to other family members knew,
Speaker 3: which I was thinking maybe Mom's family. There's no way
Speaker 3: in heck, that poor man up until age eighty something
Speaker 3: was begging for people to help him and keeping her
Speaker 3: memory alive. There's just there's just no way he had
Speaker 3: another family. He had moved quote on to start a
Speaker 3: new chapter of his life, and so if he had
Speaker 3: knowledge and she wanted a different life and didn't want
Speaker 3: to be part of it, he wouldn't put his new
Speaker 3: family through the trauma of trying to help him with
Speaker 3: his trauma of losing his daughter. That just makes zero sense.
Speaker 3: It's cruel to his second chapter of his life. It's
Speaker 3: cruel to the people involved in that second chapter. And
Speaker 3: then remember he's balancing people trying to help him discover
Speaker 3: who his daughter is and going out and meeting these
Speaker 3: other people. Why would he give them false hope that
Speaker 3: maybe they found their family too. I just I don't
Speaker 3: buy that whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's definitely not uncommon for people to go
Speaker 1: missing after a large scale disasters such as tornadoes, but
Speaker 1: this case is pretty unique, and that the victim survived
Speaker 1: the disaster itself but went missing after an apparent abduction
Speaker 1: during the aftermath. This is a bit reminiscent of another
Speaker 1: infamous case I covered on the trail went cold several
Speaker 1: years ago about the disappearance of thirteen year old Lee Ochie,
Speaker 1: who went missing from Tupelo, Mississippi, during Hurricane Andrew in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, But the evidence indicated that she was
Speaker 1: a victim of foul play inside her own home, so
Speaker 1: the hurricane was just a backdrop for the story rather
Speaker 1: than a key component. But the big difference here is
Speaker 1: that Joan gay Craft went missing from a location never
Speaker 1: would have been at if a tornado had not taken place.
Speaker 1: I guess you could also compare this case to the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Snae of Philip, who went missing after she
Speaker 1: was last seen in Manhattan on September tenth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, And it's always been up for debate whether
Speaker 1: or not she was killed during the nine to eleven attacks,
Speaker 1: or if the disaster just functioned as a convenient cover
Speaker 1: for what really happened to her. Now, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about cases in which very young children go missing and
Speaker 1: there are no obvious signs of foul play, it's inevitable
Speaker 1: that you're going to have a number of adults come
Speaker 1: forward over the years who believe that they are the
Speaker 1: missing child. Interestingly, enough. A year before Joan Gay's case
Speaker 1: was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, they produced a lost Love
Speaker 1: segment about a badly beaten girl who was found in
Speaker 1: a field in Weed, California, in nineteen forty seven before
Speaker 1: she was taken to a hospital. Since she could not
Speaker 1: be identified at first, she became known as little Miss X,
Speaker 1: and since Joan gay Croft had gone missing only two
Speaker 1: months earlier, there was speculation that this girl might have
Speaker 1: been her, but she was soon identified as an Oregon
Speaker 1: girl named Mary Jane Medlind and it turned out that
Speaker 1: her mother's boyfriend had beaten her and abandoned her in
Speaker 1: the field. When Unsaw Mysteries produced their own segment about
Speaker 1: Joan Gay's case, the most promising lead came from Jeane Smith,
Speaker 1: who seemed like a very promising candidate to be Joan
Speaker 1: Gay until she was ruled out by DNA testing. It
Speaker 1: sounds like Jean Smith's case might be a compelling mystery
Speaker 1: within a mystery, since there seemed to be convincing evidence
Speaker 1: to suggest that the couple who raised her were not
Speaker 1: actually her birth parents. But regardless, she was definitely not
Speaker 1: Joan Gay. I also read some articles from nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: which stated that a woman from Canada had come forward
Speaker 1: and believed that she might be Joan Gay. She apparently
Speaker 1: claimed that her family once had personal belongings and photographs
Speaker 1: bearing the names of Joan Gay's parents, Olin and Cleedacroft.
Speaker 1: This made her suspect that not only had her so
Speaker 1: called family kidnapped her, but they also took the opportunity
Speaker 1: to loot the Crofts home following the tornado. However, I
Speaker 1: could not find any follow up to this story, so
Speaker 1: I can only assume that DNA testing conclusively proved that
Speaker 1: this woman was also not Joan Gay.
Speaker 3: That's wild. You know, we don't stop and think about
Speaker 3: these when you're fixated on the natural disasters themselves or
Speaker 3: these horrific, you know, terrorist events, things like nine to
Speaker 3: eleven tornadoes, a hurricane, and you have this magnificent loss
Speaker 3: structurally human lives. All of this, there's still the daily
Speaker 3: things that go on, like you talked about, there's still
Speaker 3: abuse happening, there's still murder, there's still violence in the home.
Speaker 3: There's still people that are out trying to capitalize on
Speaker 3: people's pain and the opportunistic ability to commit crime. When
Speaker 3: communities are in trauma. And so it's interesting because as
Speaker 3: you went through those cases, the individual who went missing
Speaker 3: and is nine to eleven just kind of a backdrop
Speaker 3: or is that the cause you have a little girl
Speaker 3: who has found beaten in the field and all this
Speaker 3: It just it makes you stop and think, you know,
Speaker 3: a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, it doesn't pause
Speaker 3: the realities of darkness that happened daily in people's lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, SNA's case is one of the ones that just
Speaker 2: really stuck with me for some reason. I can't remember
Speaker 2: if it was featured originally on Disappeared. I've listened to
Speaker 2: countless podcast episodes and I think like a long form
Speaker 2: one on her disappearance, and it's just such a confounding
Speaker 2: story with such complex family dynamics, and just in that
Speaker 2: interesting footage as well that goes along with it. Lee
Speaker 2: Ochie's case is another one that I've found really interesting
Speaker 2: for so many years, but there's just such a lack
Speaker 2: of answers. There's just so many questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the stay I felt one was featured on
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mysteries, and there's always been debate whether someone could
Speaker 1: have murdered her right before the nine to eleven attacks
Speaker 1: and just got incredibly lucky that one of the worst
Speaker 1: disasters of all time took place and totally diverted all
Speaker 1: of law enforce resources so they couldn't launch an investigation
Speaker 1: for quite some time. And we're wondering, is that the
Speaker 1: same thing happened to Joan gay Craft, Like, was she
Speaker 1: being scouted by some predator or someone who wanted to
Speaker 1: adopt her out and just figured, well, there's so much
Speaker 1: chaos going over here for this tornado, let's use this
Speaker 1: opportunity to abductor because everyone's going to be so preoccupied
Speaker 1: that we'll be able to get away before anyone catches us.
Speaker 1: So you wonder, like Ashley said, you just realized that
Speaker 1: just because these disasters happen does not mean that these
Speaker 1: other stories come to a halt. That opportunistic people who
Speaker 1: want to murder someone aren't just going to halt their
Speaker 1: activities just because a disaster has taken place. So I
Speaker 1: think that about brings an end to Part one. Join
Speaker 1: us next week as we present part two of our
Speaker 1: series about the disappearance of Joan gay Craft.
Speaker 4: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the trail went cold?
Speaker 1: Patreon yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for
Speaker 1: three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features
Speaker 1: like early ad free episodes, and I also send out
Speaker 1: stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs
Speaker 1: up with us on Patreon. If you join our five
Speaker 1: dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes
Speaker 1: in which I talk about cases which are not featured
Speaker 1: on the Trail went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive
Speaker 1: to Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier three,
Speaker 1: the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer
Speaker 1: is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Speaker 1: Tier three.
Speaker 5: So I want to let you know a little bit
Speaker 5: about the Jewels and as Patreon, so there's early ad
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Speaker 4: We've bought our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are.
Speaker 5: Always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but
Speaker 5: they're just too short to turn into a series, and
Speaker 5: we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check
Speaker 5: out those patreons.
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