Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 2: Twenty five Frozen One Thought, Murder and Mayhem in the
Speaker 2: Midwest takes readers deep into the heart of unsolved mysteries
Speaker 2: and chilling crimes that have haunted communities across the Midwest,
Speaker 2: from small towns shattered by sudden disappearances to cities rock
Speaker 2: by violent acts. Each chapter brings a different story twenty
Speaker 2: five cases left frozen in time, still waiting for justice.
Speaker 2: The book explores murders that stun neighborhoods, kidnappings that tore
Speaker 2: families apart, and mysteries that investigators chased for years. In
Speaker 2: these pages, the quiet streets of Missouri, Illinois and beyond
Speaker 2: become the backdrop for secrets, heartbreak, and unanswered questions. But
Speaker 2: not every case remains locked in ice. One story breaks free,
Speaker 2: the Thowd case, where persistence and detail uncover the truth
Speaker 2: and shows that even the coldest mysteries can sometimes find
Speaker 2: resolution with a journalist's eye for fact and as storytellers
Speaker 2: gift for detail. Cypher's presents the lives lost, the families
Speaker 2: still searching for answers, and the investigators who refused to
Speaker 2: give up. Rather than sensationalizing tragedy, the book restores humanity
Speaker 2: to the victims while revealing the lasting impact of crime
Speaker 2: on entire communities. Twenty five Frozen One Thought is a
Speaker 2: testament to memory, resilience, and the hope that justice may
Speaker 2: yet be found, even decades later. The book that we're
Speaker 2: featuring this evening is twenty five Frozen One thowd Murder
Speaker 2: and Mayhem in the Midwest with my special guest, journalist
Speaker 2: and author Bob Ciphers. Welcome back to the program, and
Speaker 2: thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 3: Bob Ciphers, Thank you, Dan.
Speaker 2: Let's start with how you became involved in this book project,
Speaker 2: twenty five Frozen One Thought. What's the origin of this
Speaker 2: book project?
Speaker 3: Well, I work my whole life as a journalist radio, TV, newspapers,
Speaker 3: small market, middle market, large market. My last thirty five
Speaker 3: years were it cam OVTV to CBS affiliate in Saint Louis,
Speaker 3: and my last year there I spent working with police
Speaker 3: departments the FBI travel in the country chasing down the
Speaker 3: I seventy serial killer. They formed a task force. It
Speaker 3: was a case still unsolved, and when I retired, I
Speaker 3: wrote the book on that and I really figured that
Speaker 3: was done. It was my first really effort at a
Speaker 3: book of bet sorts. You know, I didn't know what
Speaker 3: the expectation was. I had no writing background or anything
Speaker 3: for writing a book. But the book did really well.
Speaker 3: And true crime is, as you well know, out there
Speaker 3: in the in the marketplace right now. And my publisher
Speaker 3: got back to me and said, you know, what else
Speaker 3: do you have? But it was like, well, what else
Speaker 3: do I have? I covered stories for thirty five years,
Speaker 3: and so I put together a list of a lot
Speaker 3: of stories I covered that were interesting cold cases talk about.
Speaker 3: But my mind kept going back to the one case
Speaker 3: that was not a cold case, but was thought that
Speaker 3: was a cold case that was solved. And so thus
Speaker 3: twenty five frozen one thought. If you like them cold
Speaker 3: or if you like them thought, I think the book has.
Speaker 2: Both yes and very remarkable stories we won't be able
Speaker 2: to cover and even discuss at any kind of length
Speaker 2: the twenty five frozen cold cases that you have featured
Speaker 2: in this book. But let's start with the very first
Speaker 2: one you called the Never Ending Story nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: and again the television station that you mentioned that you
Speaker 2: worked at, KMOVTV, Saint Louis and the case of Larry
Speaker 2: and Denise Wolfe. Tell us a little bit about this
Speaker 2: TV broadcast of their nuptials and what happened after.
Speaker 3: The television station was covering a different news story at
Speaker 3: City Hall, but while they were there, there was a
Speaker 3: wedding taken place, and it was like, hey, let's shoot
Speaker 3: a few pictures of the wedding. It might be a
Speaker 3: nice kicker or a way to end the newscast, you know,
Speaker 3: you give the viewers a half an hour of gory
Speaker 3: details and try to leave them with a smile on
Speaker 3: their face. And the wedding happened to be Larry wolf
Speaker 3: and his bride, Denise. They ran home and told everybody
Speaker 3: how they were going to be on TV, and that's
Speaker 3: how their TV world began. Well, of course, later it
Speaker 3: did not end quite as well, as Denise was murdered
Speaker 3: and Larry became a suspect, and the case never got
Speaker 3: solved because it had so many crazy twists and turns
Speaker 3: in between that it just the police department wound up
Speaker 3: just throwing their hands up in the air and saying,
Speaker 3: we have no chance here. This is so crazy, this
Speaker 3: is so goofy beyond the pale, and you've got a
Speaker 3: woman laying dead in her driveway and a husband standing
Speaker 3: right next door. Basically, but it never got.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go into this just a little bit because
Speaker 2: it's such a fascinating story. There was this as you
Speaker 2: write this, Dennis Rabbit, the south Side rapist, was on
Speaker 2: the loose in the area. And so you talk about
Speaker 2: Denise and Larry getting married, but this was the fourth
Speaker 2: marriage for Denise, and this marriage didn't work out either.
Speaker 2: But they had a sort of a strange relationship. They
Speaker 2: decided to separate. Larry bought a house nearby, about one
Speaker 2: hundred yards away, and so they had this sort of
Speaker 2: strange relationship where they weren't together, but they were often
Speaker 2: seen together and did things with their daughter, so they
Speaker 2: were seen together. They were known by the family at
Speaker 2: least that they had this amicable split and that they
Speaker 2: still remain friends. But because of this Dennis Rabbit, this
Speaker 2: notorious south Side rapist. It was on the loose. Denise
Speaker 2: was very careful and installed some measures with her garage
Speaker 2: so that she would go directly from the driveway into
Speaker 2: the garage and then I guess into the home because
Speaker 2: of the South Side rapist. So tell us what happens
Speaker 2: one morning despite these precautions.
Speaker 3: Well, she worked at a casino and worked the late
Speaker 3: night shift, and at that point in time it appears
Speaker 3: she may have had a relationship with a worker there.
Speaker 3: Larry may have been known of that. Larry, as you said,
Speaker 3: a strange relationship, living right a couple houses down the street.
Speaker 3: He bought from her, but he seemed to know everything
Speaker 3: she was doing, and at almost all times he was
Speaker 3: really watching over her, if you will. And she came
Speaker 3: home that night and at four point thirty in the
Speaker 3: morning from work, and as soon as she went through
Speaker 3: her front yard, within seconds the gun fire rang out.
Speaker 3: I think she was She arrived home a little bit
Speaker 3: around four thirty or so, and by four thirty five
Speaker 3: neighbors had already called the police. Houses riddled with bullets.
Speaker 3: The niece is lying face down on the sidewalk, and
Speaker 3: within minutes ems has arrived and the quiet block that
Speaker 3: was asleep a minute ago is now going crazy. Larry
Speaker 3: lived just literally like one hundred yards away. Police went
Speaker 3: to his house and he answered the door as he
Speaker 3: was asleep and boxer shorts. While the other neighbors all
Speaker 3: said they heard stuff, Larry said he didn't hear a thing.
Speaker 3: The niece died at the hospital within the hour, and
Speaker 3: by the time the sun rose, that whole neighborhood was
Speaker 3: just swamp with police officers going door to door.
Speaker 2: With the security system that I mentioned, police realized that
Speaker 2: she did not do what she had that security system for.
Speaker 2: She didn't drive directly into that drive way. She did
Speaker 2: something other that indicated something else, at least to the police.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it indicated that she had a conversation with somebody
Speaker 3: or something happened in that five minutes between four thirty
Speaker 3: and four thirty five four thirty six that paused her. Otherwise,
Speaker 3: she'd have pulled into that garage at four thirty four
Speaker 3: thirty one. So there had to be a second element
Speaker 3: in play, and obviously there was. She was shot, but
Speaker 3: she did not pull right in. She paused. What would
Speaker 3: she pause for? What would anybody pause for? In your
Speaker 3: driveway at four thirty in the morning. You're not going
Speaker 3: to pause for a complete stranger to have a conversation.
Speaker 3: She was either apprehended immediately or she paused because she
Speaker 3: knew somebody and that allowed her to believe she was
Speaker 3: able to have a safe conversation at that hour.
Speaker 2: Very interesting too, is that when the ambulance took his
Speaker 2: wife and he didn't know that condition, she was still alive.
Speaker 2: He did not go with her in that ambulance to
Speaker 2: the hospital.
Speaker 3: And he went back to bed.
Speaker 2: He said, Now you introduce a homicide detective which is
Speaker 2: featured or is often appears in these stories, and that's
Speaker 2: detective Chris Poppas he said that you quote him as
Speaker 2: saying that they had no idea. Police really had no
Speaker 2: idea really what happened until Laurie Lynn Cherko turned the
Speaker 2: case upside down. Can you explain what she had to
Speaker 2: say to police?
Speaker 3: Well, she became the eyewitness, but her story changed half
Speaker 3: a dozen times, and once the police started investigating, it
Speaker 3: was like, wait a minute, you sent us down this path,
Speaker 3: and now you've changed your mind. We're going down the
Speaker 3: second path, third path, fourth path. And she became the
Speaker 3: star attraction because every week it was a new story
Speaker 3: out of her mouth, and pretty soon Larry the Husband
Speaker 3: was no where to be in there, and then Larry
Speaker 3: the Husband is right there. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just police had a hard time taking her seriously. And
Speaker 3: then she started going on the radio stations on her
Speaker 3: own and talking about the case. She started feuding with attorneys.
Speaker 3: It became really but she may have been one of
Speaker 3: the most bizarre witnesses that police have ever encountered in
Speaker 3: any investigation that I ever dealt with. And it just
Speaker 3: got to the point as the police were ready to
Speaker 3: go and make charges on the case against Larry the Husband,
Speaker 3: that the defense attorney made it obvious. You put her
Speaker 3: on the we're gonna put around the witness stand. We're
Speaker 3: gonna say her story has changed to half a dozen times.
Speaker 3: What's the jury gonna believe? Is that a b CD
Speaker 3: e F And once police realized that she had no credibility,
Speaker 3: and yet she was the focal interest in the entire investigation,
Speaker 3: the case went south.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. If we go back, there was a witness
Speaker 2: that said that there was a gray van or similar
Speaker 2: color with the stripe on it seen leaving the scene,
Speaker 2: and also that there was reports of by a neighbor
Speaker 2: that he had heard shots at four thirty seven am.
Speaker 2: And so very interesting when again police look into Lynn
Speaker 2: Cherko's story that she happens to have a husband, that
Speaker 2: they have very similar living arrangements as Larry and Denise
Speaker 2: had in that they don't live together. But his name
Speaker 2: is Marcello Cherko, and he just happened to own a
Speaker 2: gray van with a stripe on it, and he also
Speaker 2: owned a high power rifle similar to the murder weapon
Speaker 2: police theorize was used.
Speaker 3: And keep in mind, Dan, these were elements or new
Speaker 3: twists in the tail that kept coming out over time. Oh,
Speaker 3: by the way, Cherko has a husband living in the
Speaker 3: same relationship as you mentioned. Oh by the way, remember
Speaker 3: the van I told you about. Guess what, my husband
Speaker 3: has that same band. But she's not telling police this.
Speaker 3: Originally this is month's end or her fifth story. It
Speaker 3: was new clues being dropped, almost like you know, Ansel
Speaker 3: and Gretel dropping little brugg crumbs along the path, and
Speaker 3: each breadcrumb she would drop seemed to become bigger than
Speaker 3: the last one, and it was like police saying, how
Speaker 3: can this come out? Now where's this bend? And it
Speaker 3: just it just became you know, do we go meet
Speaker 3: with her again for the eighth time, because who knows
Speaker 3: what the story is going to be then, and it
Speaker 3: just became a puzzle that the piece is just you
Speaker 3: could never fit together.
Speaker 2: And they got to the point where she agreed to
Speaker 2: write a formal statement and then at the last minute
Speaker 2: said she refused.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: Now, despite that, the police figure that they at least
Speaker 2: have enough to make an indictment. So what do the
Speaker 2: police do with that?
Speaker 3: Well, they're ready to go forward. I mean, Larry Wolf
Speaker 3: sat in jail for a year and a half. Even
Speaker 3: his attorney at Richard Sindel, he says, you know, he
Speaker 3: told me, Bob, I don't know if he's guilty or not.
Speaker 3: He's the only guy that had a motive, so I
Speaker 3: can understand why the police were looking at him. But
Speaker 3: you know, the state still has a burden of proof
Speaker 3: and they weren't going to do that with Cherko on
Speaker 3: the witness stand. So where would they go from there?
Speaker 3: In the meantime, you know, Larry Wolf since then has
Speaker 3: passed away and the police department has just basically closed
Speaker 3: the case because they issued warrants on him for the arrest.
Speaker 3: But once the case went sizzled and once he died,
Speaker 3: there was no second back. There was no second person
Speaker 3: with motive. There was no random person they thought was
Speaker 3: roaming the streets at four point thirty in the morning,
Speaker 3: hiding behind a bush, waiting to kill Denise. And so
Speaker 3: this case is really not closed. This case is frozen.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Let's move on to the next story. And you write,
Speaker 2: this is called where is Gina? And this is Fredericktown, Missouri.
Speaker 2: You say a population of three thousand in August fifth,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, and you introduce a lieutenant, Keith de Spain.
Speaker 2: So tell us about Gina don Brooks and when she
Speaker 2: said goodbye to her mother Cindy Box and told her
Speaker 2: she was going on a bike ride around ten thirty pm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was really heartbreaking. This story really happened. As
Speaker 3: soon as I arrived at camb Movie in Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: Little girl just disappears on a bike and she became
Speaker 3: perhaps in our area. There the original milk carton girl
Speaker 3: missing with no explanation. She's riding a bicycle after a
Speaker 3: baseball games at ten o'clock at night or so. And
Speaker 3: it's a small safe town in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3: It's not a crime infested area. And the next thing
Speaker 3: you know, her bike is in the middle of the
Speaker 3: street and she's gone and she's never been seen since.
Speaker 3: And for the parents, the heartbreak, the search, the years
Speaker 3: have gone by. For a Chief di Stain who worked
Speaker 3: the case, just gnaws at him every day. They have suspects,
Speaker 3: they have leads in pacted. Just in the last six months.
Speaker 3: They took a prisoner out of jail, handcuffed and went
Speaker 3: to a scene in rural Missouri where he may have
Speaker 3: told them to start digging, and they dug and they
Speaker 3: found nothing. Really really said, you know, you cover all
Speaker 3: these stories and these are heart They're all heartbreaking stories
Speaker 3: for me, But the ones that always stick with me
Speaker 3: are the ones with children and the devastating effect they
Speaker 3: have on the parents that are left behind, and in
Speaker 3: Gina's case, because of the elements of her being so
Speaker 3: young in a small safe town, and then suspects that
Speaker 3: they couldn't quite nail, and the story developing over time
Speaker 3: with new leads and good leads and hard leads and
Speaker 3: perhaps confessions and still not being able to get the closure.
Speaker 3: Just very frustrating.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to this horror you talk about that
Speaker 2: that she went on a bike ride and was a
Speaker 2: station wagon behind her. Notice the station wagon again, and
Speaker 2: station wagon sped away with Gina as inside. Obviously this
Speaker 2: is all assumed, and the bike was found lying on
Speaker 2: the street just five blocks from her home. Now two am,
Speaker 2: Cindy awoke and found her daughter not at home and
Speaker 2: panicked and so went to lieutenant to Spain, and he
Speaker 2: put two and two together because there was a report
Speaker 2: of a girl missing on a bicycle. So he becomes
Speaker 2: involved in this investigation.
Speaker 3: He knew right away, you know in a small town,
Speaker 3: that's not what you usually see. You got a missing girl,
Speaker 3: you got a bicycle on a street, you got a
Speaker 3: reports of a car street, you know, streaking away they went,
Speaker 3: They went out quickly. By daybreak that town was crawling
Speaker 3: with everybody. So Keith did a really good job of
Speaker 3: getting people in their city, county, state. I know, the
Speaker 3: Feds were there. They had hundreds of people that were
Speaker 3: searching various counties. I mean, they brought in horror on
Speaker 3: the ground. They had airplanes, they had helicopters. I remember
Speaker 3: being down there and seeing all the people and the
Speaker 3: yellow ribbons that were on all the trees. It was
Speaker 3: a The city was out looking for Gina. I mean,
Speaker 3: they they came out in mass house people, you know,
Speaker 3: everybody went out there to the streets looking for her.
Speaker 3: And there was nothing. There was just literally no clues
Speaker 3: for them. It was just a girl who disappeared off
Speaker 3: the face of the ears.
Speaker 2: You say, years went by without a solid lead, and
Speaker 2: then a letter from Connecticut having nothing to do with
Speaker 2: Gina changed the game completely. Laura Michelle Dinwittie had been
Speaker 2: ordered in Saint Louis in nineteen seventy five, you write,
Speaker 2: and the case went cold. Now near twenty years later,
Speaker 2: Saint Louis homicide commander David Heath found a letter from
Speaker 2: Laura's mom in Connecticut asking him to never forget her daughter.
Speaker 2: Laura case. Tell us how these two cases get connected
Speaker 2: by police?
Speaker 3: Yeah, really interesting and in fact, Laura Dinwittie's case is
Speaker 3: also one of the twenty five frozen cases. Later in
Speaker 3: the book. She was a social worker from Connecticut who
Speaker 3: was well off financially and came to Saint Louis to
Speaker 3: work with the Vista program just to basically one step
Speaker 3: above volunteer for hardly any money, and wound up getting
Speaker 3: murdered in Saint Louis. But her family writes the letter,
Speaker 3: and David Heath was the homicide commander at the time.
Speaker 3: The family kept writing the letter on Laura's behalf, you know,
Speaker 3: every year, and ten or so years later, twenty years later,
Speaker 3: the letter gets a response. He says, let's look at
Speaker 3: this case of Dinwittie. And as he's looking at the
Speaker 3: case for Dinwittie, he gives the letter over to Detective Pappus,
Speaker 3: who also worked a never ending story case, and as
Speaker 3: they're investigating Dinwittie, they see the suspect. There was a
Speaker 3: fourteen year old team named Danny Williams. He was later
Speaker 3: admitted being at the scene of the murder, although said
Speaker 3: he didn't do it well. Pappus is now investigating the
Speaker 3: letter in the Dimwitty case, looking into Williams' background, and
Speaker 3: then he sees that Williams has been sentenced for raping girls,
Speaker 3: sodomizing girls, little girls. He's a constant person that's been
Speaker 3: in jail, and so now he starts looking at him
Speaker 3: as a possible connection for Gina Dawn Brooks, and they
Speaker 3: start putting two and two together, and before they know it,
Speaker 3: Williams's brother had a close friend who lived in Fredericktown,
Speaker 3: right near Gina, and Williams was a frequent visitor to
Speaker 3: the area. So now they've gone from trying to help
Speaker 3: this dinwitty family from a twenty year old homicide in
Speaker 3: Connecticut to suddenly trying to track down a killer for
Speaker 3: a case happening right now with Gina don Brooks. They
Speaker 3: brought Willialliams in for a polygraph and he failed it
Speaker 3: and that's when he became suspect number one and still
Speaker 3: is in the GENA case.
Speaker 2: What of the cellmate that says he has some information?
Speaker 1: What of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? There were two other people that police alleged were
Speaker 3: involved with Williams with the Gina disappearance, Bryant Squires and
Speaker 3: Timothy Blue. They were both friends of his. They'd both
Speaker 3: be implicated in the police investigation, but as time came
Speaker 3: along Squires in Blue they wound up in the same
Speaker 3: prison with Williams for different crimes. And Ss was Williams's
Speaker 3: best friend. He was the person that tied Williams to
Speaker 3: Gina all along. And he was dying of cancer in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six, so this is what seven years after
Speaker 3: Gina has disappeared. But before he died, he made a
Speaker 3: deathbed confession to two different nurses implicating Williams in the case,
Speaker 3: and even it put himself in there. He says he
Speaker 3: was the driver of the station wagon that night that
Speaker 3: abducted Gina, and he said Williams held her by knife
Speaker 3: in the back seat and killed her. But he died.
Speaker 3: And in the case of lag you're now bringing nurses
Speaker 3: in to quote hearsay evidence. It's a question of whether
Speaker 3: or not how well that would hold up in a
Speaker 3: court case.
Speaker 2: You say that it was Papa's who walked into Williams
Speaker 2: prison cell and personally served him with the murder warrant,
Speaker 2: and he said he wasn't surprised.
Speaker 3: Oh I remember Chris told me. He said, Bob, he
Speaker 3: says to me, he goes, what took you so long
Speaker 3: to get here? And then when he Pappus is giving
Speaker 3: him all the information he's got on the case, Williams
Speaker 3: was like, wow, you did your work. How'd you get
Speaker 3: all this? But they charged him. They charged him in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three for murder. He pled not guilty.
Speaker 3: But then when the state realized they didn't have quite enough,
Speaker 3: you know, you've got no body and now squires who
Speaker 3: talk to the nurses is dead. They were not certain
Speaker 3: of their case and they dropped the charges because they
Speaker 3: feared if he got off innocent and something came up later,
Speaker 3: they couldn't charge him again for double jeopardy. So Williams
Speaker 3: was tucked in jail for a long long time, and
Speaker 3: it's like, let's let's let him sit there. If we
Speaker 3: get more evidence later on, we can go for murder.
Speaker 3: But for right now, he's sitting there and we're going
Speaker 3: to keep looking at this case. And they still are.
Speaker 2: You say that detectives are still looking at this case,
Speaker 2: but they also believe he could be connected to up
Speaker 2: to a dozen murders across the country.
Speaker 3: Well, when you've got a rap sheet starting as a
Speaker 3: thirteen or fourteen year old for attacking other young female girls,
Speaker 3: and it continues into your adulthood and it's a long list,
Speaker 3: the police are going to look at every single case
Speaker 3: out there and see was Williams in the area of
Speaker 3: these cases at this time? Did he have any connection
Speaker 3: to any of those victims. And so yeah, he's he's
Speaker 3: got the rap sheet, he's got the background, he's got
Speaker 3: Squire's pinpointing him. You know, he clearly is suspect number one,
Speaker 3: and that has never changed.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to
Speaker 2: hear these messages. Now you take us to Frozen three.
Speaker 2: And this is a story you title was it Rodney
Speaker 2: or Dale and the case of Audrey Cardinis. You say
Speaker 2: she got her diploma from Texas A and M in
Speaker 2: May nineteen eighty eight, now heading across the country to Belleville, Illinois,
Speaker 2: where she would spend the summer interning at the Belleville
Speaker 2: News Democrat, and a career in journalism was on the horizon.
Speaker 2: She arrived on June eighth, the Shadow journalists and she
Speaker 2: was excited, but she missed home. On June eighteenth, she
Speaker 2: called her mom, Billy, tell us about what this conversation
Speaker 2: was and this story.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the conversation was she missed home. You know,
Speaker 3: she grew up her whole life in Texas and now
Speaker 3: she's a young person to start in a business that's
Speaker 3: traveling across the country. It's the same thing I did
Speaker 3: a long, long time ago. You work and then you
Speaker 3: get a job offer somewhere and you pack your bags
Speaker 3: and you go. You have to you have to step
Speaker 3: up and get to bigger markets to make more money.
Speaker 3: And so for her first job, this was Belleville, which
Speaker 3: I'm sure was different from her, and she was homesick
Speaker 3: and her mother knew it. And ironically, because this happened
Speaker 3: in Belleville, that's where I wound up living. So this
Speaker 3: was right down the street she was. You know, her
Speaker 3: body was found at Belleville Least High School, where my
Speaker 3: kids and every other kid had to walk into class
Speaker 3: every day. And her body was found in the shrubbery
Speaker 3: by the steps leaving right up into the school. You know,
Speaker 3: it's been a haunting scene for all the years since.
Speaker 3: But I think, you know, she was excited about the
Speaker 3: work from what I could find out, But she was
Speaker 3: also homesick, and Belleville wasn't Texas.
Speaker 2: You write that she police tracked her down, tracked her movements.
Speaker 2: That she went to the bank at eight thirty am
Speaker 2: for some transaction and then she left from there. She
Speaker 2: was supposed to show up at work for ten am.
Speaker 2: When she didn't show up at work, the newspaper, I
Speaker 2: guess called and by two or three days they realized
Speaker 2: that there was something wrong, but they attributed to her
Speaker 2: maybe just going back to Texas again because that was
Speaker 2: where she was from, and maybe she was homesick.
Speaker 3: She was just interning, She was just starting out. She
Speaker 3: didn't know anybody in town. It wasn't like she'd made friends,
Speaker 3: and it's like they had plans or anything. The only time.
Speaker 3: The only people she knew remotely were the employees at work,
Speaker 3: but she only knew them at work, and probably not
Speaker 3: even yet on a daily on a first name basis,
Speaker 3: have only been there a couple of days, those veteran
Speaker 3: professional workers doing their nine to five every day. If
Speaker 3: the intern didn't show up that day, who probably notices?
Speaker 3: Probably nobody. So it took a few days before people
Speaker 3: to realize, you know, where was that girl was? Her
Speaker 3: name was Audrey? Is she coming in? It took a
Speaker 3: couple of days before they realized. I think that she
Speaker 3: was missing.
Speaker 2: Right away police found a suspect, Rodney Woidke, twenty five
Speaker 2: year old homeless drifter. He wandered inside the roped off
Speaker 2: crime scene, so he was asked to if they could
Speaker 2: search his backpack, and they found letters about sex fantasies
Speaker 2: and bystanders had said that they had seen Rodney in
Speaker 2: the area acting strangely. So they had this person and
Speaker 2: was questioned by police. What happens as a result of
Speaker 2: this questioning.
Speaker 3: He was just too easy of a suspect. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you're the homicide detectives, you've got a body laying
Speaker 3: in a creek bed, and all of a sudden, a
Speaker 3: man walks into the crime scene area, and you know,
Speaker 3: he can't explain what he's doing there. He's got some
Speaker 3: cuts on his face. He's carrying around though, like you said,
Speaker 3: the information about the sex fantasies. It was just like, boy,
Speaker 3: they've delivered our murder suspect right into our laps. He's
Speaker 3: a homeless drifter and evidence started piling up on him.
Speaker 3: It just it was almost too good to be true. Police,
Speaker 3: for like, you know, usually we have to go out
Speaker 3: and find the killers, and here he is just standing
Speaker 3: here waiting for us. He told them that he lived
Speaker 3: at the Salvation Army. Police went there and said they'd
Speaker 3: never heard of him. It's just everything started looking bad
Speaker 3: for him. Then he said he lived in the woods
Speaker 3: by the school right where the body was found. It
Speaker 3: was like too good to be true, and he started
Speaker 3: then he started confessing. He said he hid argue with
Speaker 3: a pipe, then he changed his mind. Then he said
Speaker 3: he left her when she was alive, and then he
Speaker 3: said he came back and hit her again three or
Speaker 3: four more times. There was no physical evidence to connecting,
Speaker 3: and some of his stuff because he appeared to be
Speaker 3: mentally challenged, did not match. But for police, they thought
Speaker 3: they had their killer. But they also realized he was
Speaker 3: a mental patient. Basically it gave them pause. But still
Speaker 3: it just seemed overwhelming that everything that he was there
Speaker 3: for pointed to him being her killer.
Speaker 2: Well, he was found guilty and sentenced to forty five years,
Speaker 2: So they thought they had their men, but then you
Speaker 2: take us too. In the days before Cardinas arrived in
Speaker 2: Belleville Dale, Anderson had called again the Belleville News Democrat
Speaker 2: with a juicy tip. He just filed charges against three
Speaker 2: of his supervisors at the Illinois Department of Public Aid,
Speaker 2: accusing them of theft and assault, and the paper ran
Speaker 2: with the story. On June twenty third, with Audrey Cardinas
Speaker 2: still listed as missing, Anderson called the paper again. This
Speaker 2: time he disguised his voice and said his supervisors had
Speaker 2: kidnapped Audrey Cardinas, and he provided the paper with the
Speaker 2: supervisor's home addresses. Tell us what happens as a result of.
Speaker 3: This, Well, I think in probably most towns, or most
Speaker 3: television or newspapers, there's somebody who calls quite a bit
Speaker 3: that has a crazy story. And that was Dale Anderson
Speaker 3: with the Belleville Paper. He'd called them numerous times before.
Speaker 3: He'd obviously been fired from these three workers with the
Speaker 3: Department of Aid. And he's calling the newspaper accusing him
Speaker 3: of theft first, then assault, and now basically calling saying theylled,
Speaker 3: they kidnapped and killed Audrey. It got more bizarre and
Speaker 3: bizarre and bizarre. When she died. There was a memorial service,
Speaker 3: and standing up there right by the police officers, was
Speaker 3: Dale Anderson. He'd been arrested for impersonating police officers. He'd
Speaker 3: been fired from that job earlier. And right before WYKEI
Speaker 3: was sent there was another murder that happened in town.
Speaker 3: There was a pregnant woman named Jolaine Landman. Her and
Speaker 3: her three year old son, Kenneth, were stabbed to death
Speaker 3: in their home. And that was happening right with the
Speaker 3: Cardenas story, So you had two big things happening at
Speaker 3: the same time. And then there's a handwritten note found
Speaker 3: at the scene that says both Layman and Cardenas were
Speaker 3: murdered by Dale Anderson's three supervisors, the same thing Anderson
Speaker 3: had said to the newspaper. And now you had a
Speaker 3: crazy story going on. This was almost going back to
Speaker 3: like the first story we talked about with the Cherco testimony.
Speaker 3: It's like, where does this stuff come from? Which story
Speaker 3: is true? But the newspaper and the media could not
Speaker 3: ignore it. You've got a second homicide scene in a
Speaker 3: small town with a note saying that the killer is
Speaker 3: the same person on both and it's these three people
Speaker 3: at the Apartment of Public Aid. I mean, what could
Speaker 3: really be more ridiculous. But now police knew they had
Speaker 3: to start going back and talking to Dale Anderson because
Speaker 3: he he'd made the phone calls, he made the accusations,
Speaker 3: and he obviously wrote the letter and left it at
Speaker 3: the house. And how's he getting into the house?
Speaker 2: He said. Police also find numerous briefcases filled with knives, rope,
Speaker 2: surgical gloves, and blunt instruments. Found multiple weapons and ammunition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he he was just a strange duck in that neighborhood.
Speaker 3: And when police finally went to his house and walked
Speaker 3: him out in handcuffs, the neighborhood people were out there
Speaker 3: watching and they all start clapping. It was like good riddance,
Speaker 3: you know. Like I said, every newspaper might get some calls,
Speaker 3: every neighborhood might have a guy. Dale Anderson was the
Speaker 3: guy in Belleville, but that doesn't that doesn't mean he
Speaker 3: killed anybody, But it doesn't mean he didn't know what
Speaker 3: was going on either. And as that story evolves, it
Speaker 3: takes even more twists in turns.
Speaker 2: Yes, he forces a fourteen year old to write him
Speaker 2: a letter saying he was there when Audrey was interviewed
Speaker 2: when he was interviewed by Audrey for the newspaper. And
Speaker 2: then of course that story falls apardon and the fourteen
Speaker 2: year old denies it. So there there's numerous stories that
Speaker 2: work out to be false via Dale Anderson coming from
Speaker 2: Dale Anderson.
Speaker 3: Well, then then when he is charged and he has
Speaker 3: to go to court, Unlike Whitekey, who wouldn't testify, boy Anderson,
Speaker 3: of course he couldn't wait to talk, and he says
Speaker 3: he met Audrey Cardenis twice before she disappeared, and then
Speaker 3: he says he also met Rodney Waitkey. And now the
Speaker 3: jury is like they've been in this court case now
Speaker 3: for a month. They didn't know what to do. I mean,
Speaker 3: what are we talking about here? Well, they found Anderson
Speaker 3: guilty eleven to one. They voted for a death penalty
Speaker 3: for him, but the single one means you're not going
Speaker 3: to get a death penalty. But then later on the
Speaker 3: appellate court gets involved. They see Anderson's found guilty, woide
Speaker 3: Key's found guilty. You got two people found guilty here
Speaker 3: for the same murder. Yes, so they throw off they
Speaker 3: throw out the white Key conviction. They get him a
Speaker 3: new trial. A mistrials declared they're going to try it
Speaker 3: again for a third time. Again. The state had no
Speaker 3: physical evidence with Woidkey, but now they also had new
Speaker 3: DNA evidence coming in that may have tied Witkey to
Speaker 3: Cardenas it was really a mess between two possible suspects.
Speaker 3: Thus the title was it Rotten near Dale.
Speaker 2: One more fascinating twist to make of this. You say
Speaker 2: that Audrey Cardenis never knew her real father, but her
Speaker 2: real father was found his name is Orge Jorgae Cardenas
Speaker 2: in Mexico. So tell us about this finding the ID
Speaker 2: of her father in Dale Anderson's safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, she finally tracked down her father, she had
Speaker 3: his ID card and her possessions. Well, she had the
Speaker 3: ID card at some point, but it winds up in
Speaker 3: Dale Anderson's safe. So Dale Anderson as Audrey Cardenis's father's
Speaker 3: ID at home and is safe. Who keeps such a thing?
Speaker 3: How would he have got it? You know, it just
Speaker 3: didn't make any sense. The father said he didn't even
Speaker 3: know it was missing. He barely remembered Audrey. He said
Speaker 3: he'd never met Dale Anderson, He'd never been to Belleville.
Speaker 3: How does he get in this safe? The Dale Anderson
Speaker 3: thing was just again, the guy was just hard to explain.
Speaker 3: But he was that guy that had his finger and
Speaker 3: everything going on in town. He had a bridge to
Speaker 3: burn with the three supervisors who fired him, and he
Speaker 3: somehow got his nose stuck right in the middle of
Speaker 3: the biggest homicide case the city had seen in years.
Speaker 3: And then he's arrested for his own homicide case days later.
Speaker 3: Hard to believe.
Speaker 2: Incredible. Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to
Speaker 2: hear these messages. Now, let's talk about the one case
Speaker 2: that doesn't end up cold, and that is one you
Speaker 2: title one thought, and this is Harold Meyer and the
Speaker 2: Nash Supermarkets in North Saint Louis. And there's a phone
Speaker 2: call to the police at eleven fifteen, and this is
Speaker 2: Harold Meyer inside National Supermarkets. Take us to that bank
Speaker 2: at eleven fifteen, and that phone call and Harold Meyer
Speaker 2: trying to get the attention of nine to one one
Speaker 2: operators while he's in that bank, tell us what's happening.
Speaker 3: Really an unbelievable, heartwarming, but devastating story, maybe the biggest
Speaker 3: news story Saint Louis had ever had up until that time.
Speaker 3: You know, now we see a mass shooting in the
Speaker 3: public and it's like we haven't had one for a week.
Speaker 3: But back in the eighties they weren't so common, and
Speaker 3: this one was the first really big one in Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: It was Labor Day weekend on a Friday night. The
Speaker 3: National Supermarket was closing at ten o'clock and seven managers
Speaker 3: stayed to help get the proceeds in for the day
Speaker 3: and get the store ready to clean up and open.
Speaker 3: Up the next morning. They'd stay for about an hour.
Speaker 3: Well in that time, between ten and eleven, as the
Speaker 3: store is supposedly locked and they're cleaning up, a couple
Speaker 3: of bad guys got in and they took the seven
Speaker 3: employees and lined them up on the floor, made them
Speaker 3: lay down, and then shot them all on the back
Speaker 3: of the head. And to make sure they got the
Speaker 3: job done, they came back and shot them all on
Speaker 3: the back of the head a second time. And then
Speaker 3: Harold Meyer, one of the seven, realized, remarkably he was
Speaker 3: still alive. He was still alive. Everybody around him is dead,
Speaker 3: and he is alive. He crawled to a telephone and
Speaker 3: he dialed nine to one one. He had to be
Speaker 3: quiet because he didn't know if the murderers were still
Speaker 3: in the store. He wasn't sure, so he's calling nine
Speaker 3: to one one. A woman answers the phone for the
Speaker 3: police department, and Harold says, She says, you know, what's
Speaker 3: your name? What's your emergency? He goes and he's whispering,
Speaker 3: my name's Harold Meyer. I'm calling from the National Grocery
Speaker 3: Supermarket on Natural Bridge. I've been shot multiple times. All
Speaker 3: of our other employees have been shot. I think people
Speaker 3: are dead. Please send help, And the woman on the
Speaker 3: other end of the nine one one says, I can't
Speaker 3: understand you. Can you speak louder? And Harold says, I
Speaker 3: can't speak louder. There might still be in the store.
Speaker 3: I've been shot. I can barely breathe. I'm dying. Everybody's
Speaker 3: been shot. They might be dead. Send help, please to
Speaker 3: the store on Natural Bridge Road, and the nine one
Speaker 3: one caller says, I'm sorry, sir, I can't understand you.
Speaker 3: I have other calls to take. Call back when you
Speaker 3: can speak louder, and the nine to one on one
Speaker 3: collar hung up. Harold Moore or Harold Meyer just you know,
Speaker 3: he could not believe it. He didn't know what to
Speaker 3: do next. He thinks he's dying. His friends are dead,
Speaker 3: He's not sure if the bad guys are in the store.
Speaker 3: He makes another call back again, and this time the
Speaker 3: nine to one one operator just hangs up on him. Well,
Speaker 3: he doesn't even talk to him, and now he doesn't
Speaker 3: know what to do, so he thinks he's he thinks
Speaker 3: he's dying. He calls his wife and he says, I've
Speaker 3: been shot. I might be okay, if not, I love you,
Speaker 3: can you try to call nine to one one and
Speaker 3: tell him to get an ambulance here as soon as possible.
Speaker 3: And she did, but even that didn't work because she
Speaker 3: calls nine to one one and she tells him to
Speaker 3: send the ambulance to the National Grocery store in Bridgeton,
Speaker 3: and they do, but there's two stores there, and they
Speaker 3: sent the ambulances to the wrong store, and when they
Speaker 3: got to the wrong store, they saw that it was
Speaker 3: closed and quiet for the night. So they figured, again,
Speaker 3: multiple calls about this, the store is closed. They just
Speaker 3: chalked it up to prank phone calls.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's very interesting just to go back a second,
Speaker 2: because again he feels like he's dying. You were able
Speaker 2: to speak to him, and he spoke of the shots
Speaker 2: that were fired into his friend's bodies, their heads right
Speaker 2: beside him, and he said, miraculously, he just slightly turned
Speaker 2: his head so that the bullet didn't hit his head
Speaker 2: but hit his hand. And he said, the thing that
Speaker 2: he knew instinctively to do the only thing to do
Speaker 2: was to play dead. And then he said he heard
Speaker 2: eight shots. So he said, oh, they've ran out of AMMO.
Speaker 2: So he looked. He was able to see. He saw
Speaker 2: the gunmen go into the security guard's pocket and get
Speaker 2: more bullets, reload and then come back to shoot him again,
Speaker 2: realizing he's going to get shot again, and is shot
Speaker 2: three more times and again remains conscious incredibly enough to
Speaker 2: make that phone call. So back to him dying in
Speaker 2: this National supermarket. Finally police do arrive while actually people
Speaker 2: that are still in the building alert people realize hear
Speaker 2: the shots, see the gunmen. There's three people that are
Speaker 2: in the building and night supervisor they're working overnight, and
Speaker 2: so that leads to the police finally being alerted to
Speaker 2: the real actual National Supermarket that's involved, and police arrive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you think about Harold, you know, surviving
Speaker 3: the first shot and then knowing there's a second one.
Speaker 3: As you mentioned Dan, what that must have been like
Speaker 3: for him. But as the police got there, you know,
Speaker 3: it was in finally got to the right store and
Speaker 3: they do see all the bodies and they bring in
Speaker 3: the homicide people who to this day they have told
Speaker 3: me it's the worst they've ever seen in Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: And an investigation that was gonna take a long time,
Speaker 3: and you had a person and Harold who was still alive.
Speaker 3: You had an eyewitness to the massacre, so there's your
Speaker 3: lead for the homicide case. But you know, just like
Speaker 3: you know, remember in the Dead End with Vicky Webb
Speaker 3: and the I seventy case, we're shooing into hiding, you know, Harold. Now,
Speaker 3: Harold now knows boy words out that there's somebody alive,
Speaker 3: and he's worried that. You know, he's not looking to
Speaker 3: be out front of the public either, because you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's like that scene in The Godfather when Michael's
Speaker 3: guarding the hospital. You know, the bad guys are going
Speaker 3: to come and get you at some point, and Harold
Speaker 3: was fearful that they maybe coming after him again.
Speaker 2: There was a person that was shot, Richard Forston, that
Speaker 2: had seen something just before these gunmen entered the supermarket,
Speaker 2: and that the David Spahn was escorting again in a very
Speaker 2: tragic story, this young person named Michael nickname Mickey, was
Speaker 2: allowed by Harold understandably to go to this party that
Speaker 2: he was invited to, so he left the building with
Speaker 2: David Spahn. David spawn was asked to escort him to
Speaker 2: his car and they were confronted outside by the gunman.
Speaker 2: Richard Forston saw those people from afar. It seemed like
Speaker 2: it looked like somebody pulled the gun from their back
Speaker 2: and approached David. So also the police had get to
Speaker 2: speak to Richard Forston as well as awaiting to get
Speaker 2: a really good description came from Harold Meyers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Richard Forston would later die of his injuries,
Speaker 3: not right away but down the line, but he was
Speaker 3: a second person who survived it miraculously. Shows you the
Speaker 3: skill of the shooters. Shooting guys point blank in the
Speaker 3: head twice, wasn't that great. But yeah, Mickey wanted to
Speaker 3: get off, and Spawn helped walk him out and Forest
Speaker 3: and watch that, and he saw, you know, he saw
Speaker 3: what he said was a man wearing a shirt approach
Speaker 3: Spawn and pulls the gun, talks Spawn into coming over.
Speaker 3: But Forston didn't think it was bad guys coming in.
Speaker 3: He thought it was one of the workers from the
Speaker 3: overnight cleaning crew that had to come in once they
Speaker 3: once the managers left, that needed to maybe needed Spawn
Speaker 3: for something to help him get in, or the needed
Speaker 3: something to help them clean up. So Forreston didn't think
Speaker 3: twice about it at that time.
Speaker 2: You right of the police car surrounding the store, hundreds
Speaker 2: of onlookers, and the media was there, of course, and
Speaker 2: so were you. And someone told you right there that
Speaker 2: they saw an arrival of someone and they said, oh,
Speaker 2: the case is about to be closed, and they said,
Speaker 2: why is that and you said, well, it's Joseph Burgoon.
Speaker 2: So you introduce again, Joseph Burgoon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was funny. That was actually at a different
Speaker 3: homicide scene the first time I'd met Joe. It was
Speaker 3: a nighttime winter, rainy, misty, freezing cold. I had an
Speaker 3: umbrella and we're out there for half an hour at
Speaker 3: a homicide scene, and it's like, man, hurry it up again.
Speaker 3: You know, nothing's going to happen till we get information.
Speaker 3: We're not going to get information till the homicide detective,
Speaker 3: the main guy, the commander, comes and looks it over,
Speaker 3: because only that person could talk to the media. And
Speaker 3: I'm with a veteran reporter from the newspaper, a much
Speaker 3: older guy, and then we see this old Plymouth car
Speaker 3: pull up, and the other reporter says to me, Okay,
Speaker 3: this case is about to be closed. And I knew
Speaker 3: nothing about the old car, and I said, why is that?
Speaker 3: And he said, Joe Bragoon is here, That's all they
Speaker 3: need on this one. And sure enough I look and
Speaker 3: getting out of that plymouth in the rain with his
Speaker 3: trench coat and his umbrella was Joe Burragoon. And that
Speaker 3: was the first time we met. Joe became was the
Speaker 3: lead homicide detective for the city of Saint Louis for
Speaker 3: forty years. Unbelievable. And when you consider Saint Louis has
Speaker 3: a couple one hundred homicides a year, you multiply that
Speaker 3: times forty. Boy, Dan, I'm bad at algebra, but I
Speaker 3: think it's like ten thousand or so homicides, and Joe
Speaker 3: Bragoon's got his finger on most of them. And this
Speaker 3: is the one he says was the worst he'd ever covered.
Speaker 3: This is the one he said he wanted to solve
Speaker 3: as much as any other. And the story here between
Speaker 3: him teaming up with Harold Meyer to solve this case
Speaker 3: is I just think it's fascinating for people who want
Speaker 3: to get the book and do nothing else but record
Speaker 3: to the end. I wouldn't have a problem with that.
Speaker 3: You're missing twenty five good cold cases. But this thought
Speaker 3: case is really just heartwarming, heartbreaking, but fascinating.
Speaker 2: You called Joe Borgoon or he has been called the
Speaker 2: Blue Knight and the godfather of homicide, and you say,
Speaker 2: as you're right, he's presided over thousands of homicide cases
Speaker 2: in the St. Louis area. Back to Burgoon, he speaks
Speaker 2: to Harold, as I mentioned, he gives him a full description,
Speaker 2: a very detailed description of the first gunman that he saw.
Speaker 2: He said he was a black male, mid twenties, under
Speaker 2: six foot, one hundred and seventy five pounds. But he said,
Speaker 2: I'd be able to recognize absolutely his voice. I'll never
Speaker 2: forget his voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know at that point in time, it
Speaker 3: all happens so quickly with Harold and they're on the
Speaker 3: floor and the suspect is a twenty year old black guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's difficult to narrow that down in a
Speaker 3: large city, and it's just such a generic description that
Speaker 3: was never going to fly. But then Harold had the caveat.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure about the face I'm laying down, but
Speaker 3: I'll never ever ever forget that voice. And when they
Speaker 3: had to bring in suspects for a police lineup and
Speaker 3: they would ask Carol to identify, he didn't want to
Speaker 3: make a mistake. He didn't want to charge somebody with
Speaker 3: murder and a possible death punt unless he was certain.
Speaker 3: And he would pause on those lineups and he would
Speaker 3: tell Joe, Joe, I'm not sure about the face. If
Speaker 3: I could hear them speak, if I could hear them speak,
Speaker 3: I'll find your guy.
Speaker 2: So they they have a police informant comes forward as
Speaker 2: nineteen year old Ricky Williams, and he names three people,
Speaker 2: including his brother and his cousin. But again just very
Speaker 2: much like all of these stories, or many of these stories,
Speaker 2: his story drastically changes, and there's four interviews. But they
Speaker 2: round up those suspects, and like you alluded to, they
Speaker 2: take these people to Harold to see if he can
Speaker 2: recognize any of them, and he says absolutely not.
Speaker 3: But the police were still going forward. They were under
Speaker 3: incredible intense media and public pressure to solve this case.
Speaker 3: The city seemed nothing like it. They were looking for suspects,
Speaker 3: and Ricky Williams was a police informant for them. They'd
Speaker 3: known him, they'd dealt with him, he'd helped them before.
Speaker 3: But now you're bringing him four guys. They're going forward.
Speaker 3: They're going to charge him with murder, and Joe Burgoon
Speaker 3: comes in to see Harold and shows him the pictures,
Speaker 3: and Harold's like, I don't know again if I could
Speaker 3: hear the voice, but he goes Joe, that does not
Speaker 3: look like them. That does not look like them at all.
Speaker 3: So Harold's balking. The state's Attorney's office is going for
Speaker 3: murder one on these four guys, which could be the
Speaker 3: death penalty, and the city is relieved to have suspects
Speaker 3: in a case. They're giving the police some credit for
Speaker 3: an investigation. It's taken months, but we've got the bad
Speaker 3: guys here and we're going forward for murder charges. And
Speaker 3: in the meantime, Harold Moore is telling Joe Bragoon, I
Speaker 3: don't think so, Joe, I don't think.
Speaker 2: So, And Bragoon wants to believe Harold Meyer, doesn't he.
Speaker 3: Yes. In fact, the story that the police were laying
Speaker 3: out as to what happened inside the store. Police were
Speaker 3: saying how they'd rushed in to kill the killers, and
Speaker 3: Burgoon says, Joe, that's not what happened. That's not the
Speaker 3: way it went down. So Bragoon's now going to the
Speaker 3: state's Attorney's office and his bosses, and he's telling them, hey,
Speaker 3: this is not what Harold said. Well, the police had
Speaker 3: their case and they didn't want it sidetracked, but Harold
Speaker 3: Myers stood strong. Harold Myers's belief was those were not
Speaker 3: the killers. Well, now police kept working at a little bit,
Speaker 3: and as you mentioned, Dan Ricky Williams's story kept changing,
Speaker 3: and now police started having cracks in their cases. And
Speaker 3: before you know it, they're going to have to drop
Speaker 3: the chargers against the four.
Speaker 2: You're right that everyone's disappointed. But then you write, then
Speaker 2: fate arrived November eighth in the neighboring Saint Louis County
Speaker 2: Police where they were conducting a traffic a routine traffic
Speaker 2: stop and in nearby Brentwood when a blue nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two Ford sped by at a high rate of speed.
Speaker 2: Police pulled this guy over, asked him for his registration,
Speaker 2: said it was in his car. They asked him to
Speaker 2: open up the trunk, and inside the trunk they found
Speaker 2: a gun. What's the significance of this gun, Well.
Speaker 3: They had to track it, and as they did track it,
Speaker 3: they found it was a spawn's gun. The security guard
Speaker 3: at the store, right, and it's like this gun was
Speaker 3: used to kill people. Remember, the second round of firing
Speaker 3: came from when they stole the security guard's gun when
Speaker 3: their own gun ran out of bullets. So the bad
Speaker 3: guys go into the store to shoot people, but don't
Speaker 3: bring enough guns and bullets. Dumb they stealed the security
Speaker 3: guard's gun after they've shot him and sprayed the people
Speaker 3: again with his bullets. But then the gun winds up
Speaker 3: in the trunk of someone's car. Are they the killer, well,
Speaker 3: they say they're not. Well where'd you get the gun?
Speaker 3: Because wherever you got the gun, maybe that's the killer.
Speaker 3: And of course it turns out now that everybody's got
Speaker 3: a cousin and everybody's got a friend, and the gun's
Speaker 3: been passed down five times. But eventually police are tracing
Speaker 3: this gun or at least getting names of some people
Speaker 3: in the process who handled this gun.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they come to a name. This Jimmy Kennedy
Speaker 2: gives them the name of Donnie Blankenship, so police investigate
Speaker 2: and question him. What do they find.
Speaker 3: Well, the incredible story here is again we talk about
Speaker 3: dumb criminals. They stole money from the store that night,
Speaker 3: although not that much dollsand is not an incredible amount.
Speaker 3: But they also took one other stupid thing, and again,
Speaker 3: this was Labor Day. They took a bus pass, one
Speaker 3: individual ticket, a bus pass for free bus rides for
Speaker 3: one week in September after Labor Day. A bus ticket
Speaker 3: that was good for one week in September after Labor Day.
Speaker 3: A bus ticket that might have cost five bucks.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Joe Burgoon knocking on every door of every suspect,
Speaker 3: getting search warrants wherever he can, gets a search warrant
Speaker 3: for Donnie Blankenship's home, and Burgoon goes there and knocks
Speaker 3: on the door, and Blankenship's mother is there, and he
Speaker 3: wants to see if Donnie's there, who he wasn't, but
Speaker 3: he wanted to get inside. He had a search warrant
Speaker 3: to get inside the house. And Burgoon goes inside the
Speaker 3: house and it's just normal things in there. There was
Speaker 3: nothing that would help the case. And then as Joe's
Speaker 3: getting ready to leave, he looks over and what does
Speaker 3: he see on Donnie Blankenship's little table in the corner.
Speaker 3: He sees a bus ticket. Wow, And Joe at first
Speaker 3: things well, that's odd, but Joe's not making the connection
Speaker 3: yet it's the missing bus ticket with the date on it.
Speaker 3: He just sees a bus ticket. He could have easily
Speaker 3: thought it was nothing and walked on by. But Joe
Speaker 3: Burgoon doesn't walk on by anything. He takes the bus ticket.
Speaker 3: He takes the serial number on the bus ticket. He
Speaker 3: calls into the homicide office. They begin tracing the bus
Speaker 3: ticket and sure enough, they get the number on the
Speaker 3: bus ticket. It was bus ticket number forty three hundred
Speaker 3: for the pass. That was the number forty three hundred
Speaker 3: that was stolen from the store. This is months after
Speaker 3: the homicide. Why is a worthless expired bus ticket sitting
Speaker 3: on the killer's desk in his house? Why is the
Speaker 3: gun from the dead security guard sitting in the trunk
Speaker 3: of a family member. Sometimes they say it's easy to
Speaker 3: get away with murder. You're going to make every mistake
Speaker 3: in the book. Joe Bragoon's going to track you down. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that stupid five dollars bus pass from the murder
Speaker 3: scene that had expired months ago is what's going to
Speaker 3: solve this case. That and as soon as Harold Meyer
Speaker 3: heard somebody talk and recognize the voice, this case was
Speaker 3: going to be thawed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When they went from the man hunt. Forty eight
Speaker 2: hours after that traffic stop, they found him and also
Speaker 2: along with his again, would you be eventual cohort Marvin Jennings.
Speaker 2: So they found Blankenship and Marvin Jennings together along with
Speaker 2: a couple of women when they did track him down.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the thought was that Jennings was the ringleader
Speaker 3: and that Blankenship was the second man and blending Jennings
Speaker 3: was the one doing the bossing, doing most of the shooting,
Speaker 3: although Blankenship joined in. Jennings would eventually get a death
Speaker 3: penalty and be executed. Blankenship would get a life in
Speaker 3: prison with the possibility of parole. But you stop and think, Dan,
Speaker 3: go back to the car that was stopped for speeding
Speaker 3: in the county, not even in the city, but in
Speaker 3: the neighboring area. What if the police didn't have a car,
Speaker 3: a police rodeblock car sitting up at that exact time,
Speaker 3: at that exact place. What if the car wasn't speeding
Speaker 3: at that exact time. What if? What if? What if
Speaker 3: the police officer was busy pulling over a different car earlier,
Speaker 3: or was on the phone and missed the cargoing by.
Speaker 3: It took that one moment of time for the county
Speaker 3: police to have the traffic stop that led to the gun,
Speaker 3: that led to the names of the family members, that
Speaker 3: led the blanket ship, that led to the bus ticket,
Speaker 3: that led to him connecting to Marvin Jennings, that led
Speaker 3: to Harold Meyer listening to the voice of Jennings. All
Speaker 3: those things happened because of that random traffic stop at
Speaker 3: that one place in time.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's incredible. In this case, thankfully, fate intervened and
Speaker 2: this fluke again, fate fluke occurred and these people were
Speaker 2: brought to justice, unlike the other twenty five cool cases
Speaker 2: that you call frozen. Before I let you go, what
Speaker 2: are some of the themes that you recognize and wrote
Speaker 2: about in these twenty five frozen cases. What is some
Speaker 2: of the similar themes running through or problems encountered by
Speaker 2: law enforcement that made these cases be frozen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was looking for cases that all had You know,
Speaker 3: you work at a major market TV station for thirty
Speaker 3: five years. You're going to cover a lot of bad crimes,
Speaker 3: and I've been on the scene for a lot of those.
Speaker 3: But you're looking for cases that really tug at your heart.
Speaker 3: Like I mentioned, Gina don Brooks being a child. There's
Speaker 3: another story in the book of Dalton Masarchik, a five
Speaker 3: year old little boy who was abducted off his bicycle
Speaker 3: in front of his front yard waiting for a church bus,
Speaker 3: never to be seen again, found murdered with a hammer.
Speaker 3: It just breaks your heart. So you're looking at the
Speaker 3: ones that are heartbreaking, or I'm also looking at cases
Speaker 3: that are a twist of fate. Like we talked here
Speaker 3: about the thought case. If the didn't stop that car
Speaker 3: that led to all these other avenues opening up, this
Speaker 3: doesn't happen. We've had cases of the twist of fate
Speaker 3: and those other twenty five stories where a woman's car
Speaker 3: breaks down on the highway and she's abducted. What if
Speaker 3: that car doesn't break down there. We've had twists of
Speaker 3: fate where you know, our realtor is asked to go
Speaker 3: show a house the next day, and while she's showing
Speaker 3: a house, she's murdered. What if it was a different
Speaker 3: realtor that might have showed up, or somebody else from
Speaker 3: the office instead of the young lady. I think the
Speaker 3: wrong place, wrong time, randomness of fate is what interests
Speaker 3: me of It's not just a killer looking to go
Speaker 3: kill a certain person on these evinch Key's eventually going
Speaker 3: to succeed. It's like, this could have been me, this
Speaker 3: could have been my wife, this could have been my child.
Speaker 3: The randomness of horrific news is out there, and in
Speaker 3: those twenty five cases, most of them are that type.
Speaker 3: Are just wow, this is not the normal. Well he
Speaker 3: killed her for the money, or he killed her for
Speaker 3: a marriage argument, or the bad guy came to robber. No,
Speaker 3: this was These are not those. These are stories of
Speaker 3: heartbreak and faith.
Speaker 2: There's also many cases that police had good suspects or
Speaker 2: what looked like good suspects when you or I would
Speaker 2: read the details from police reports, and yet no one
Speaker 2: had justice served in those cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, as you mentioned, and Gina don Brooks, we've
Speaker 3: got the suspect and the never ending story. Police had
Speaker 3: the suspect, and in Audri Cardenis they had two suspects. Sure,
Speaker 3: so you know. And Joe Bragoon, the godfather of homicide.
Speaker 3: You listen to him talk about these cases and his
Speaker 3: relentless pursuit of them, he will often tell you that
Speaker 3: it is not what it seems. And he will often
Speaker 3: say to you that you go down one road, but
Speaker 3: you've got to be prepared to make that U turn
Speaker 3: and go down that second road. And I think that's
Speaker 3: what we see in a lot of these cases, that
Speaker 3: what looks to be obvious originally is not the way
Speaker 3: it appears at the end.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on and talking about your new book twenty five Frozen
Speaker 2: One Thowd Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest. For those
Speaker 2: people that might want to find out more about this
Speaker 2: book and your other work, could you tell us about
Speaker 2: a website or any social media you do?
Speaker 3: Sure well on the social media, Dan, I'm pushing seventy
Speaker 3: years old. I'm just afraid that that world has passed
Speaker 3: me by. My daughter in law has put me on TikTok. Now,
Speaker 3: I have no idea what it is. I could not
Speaker 3: find it, but I guess somebody went to TikTok and
Speaker 3: searched my name. Maybe it's up there. But I'm just
Speaker 3: too old to start with the social media. I understand
Speaker 3: it affects the sales. I've explained and apologized that to
Speaker 3: my publisher. You know, when I first started looking to
Speaker 3: publish the I seventy serial Killer book and I sent
Speaker 3: information out the publishers. There'd be a form to fill out,
Speaker 3: and the first thing that would say is how old
Speaker 3: are you? Well, I'm pushing seventy. They're not that interested
Speaker 3: in the first time writer. You have no name recognition.
Speaker 3: But the second thing is tell us about your social
Speaker 3: media profile. Well, now I'm pushing seventy and I have none.
Speaker 3: So even getting my foot in the door was pretty much,
Speaker 3: very very difficult for me. Luckily, I got my foot
Speaker 3: in the door and the first book was a success,
Speaker 3: so you know, I'm hoping it builds from there. My
Speaker 3: goal really isn't selling books. I think that's great. The
Speaker 3: publisher wants to sell books. We can all make money.
Speaker 3: I can get my eighteen cents or whatever. I don't care.
Speaker 3: My real goal is like I'm a seventy case or
Speaker 3: I'm the twenty five frozen. Some day, somewhere, somehow, somebody
Speaker 3: reads this and it triggers a memory in their mind
Speaker 3: and they pick up the phone and make a phone
Speaker 3: call and one of these cases get solved. That would
Speaker 3: be the thrill of my life. If I had something
Speaker 3: to do with that, much more than selling any book.
Speaker 2: Well, it could happen it has happened before. I want
Speaker 2: to thank you so much, Bob Zeiphers for twenty five
Speaker 2: frozen one Thowd murder in Mayhem in the Midwest. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much for this interview, and you have a
Speaker 2: great evening and good night.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Dan