Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the
social media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway
Murders Facebook page with my partner in crime, Bill Thomas.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mind Over Murderer. I'm Bill Thomas and Kristin
Dilley is on a well deserved vacation, which means I'm
flying this ship solo and perhaps almost blind. I don't know,
we'll find out. Join us today is Wendy Reid, retired
investigator who's very prominently featured in the new Burden of
Proof documentary on HBO, which discusses the Jennifer Pendos case.
So Wendy, welcome, to mind over murder.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: So, before we get into the Jennifer Pendos case, Wendy,
tell us a little bit about yourself, about where you
grew up. You and I were discovering that we're both
I don't know if you like the word brat, but
we're both service brats. Tell us a little bit about
your life, where you're from, that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I grew up in a military family. My dad
was in the Coast Guard, so we actually grew up
in Yorktown, which is very close to Williamsburg. I lived
there for most of my childhood up until almost middle school.
Moved to Boston. I lived on kit Cood and then
Saint Louis and graduated high school and went to college,
and then I joined the Air Force. My dad wouldn't
let me join the Coast Guard. He said everywhere he
went to he was always put up in Air Force billeting,
and we lived on Air Force bases, and he said
they treat their people the best. My intention was to
go in for four years and used that to go
to college, and that's what I did. I lived in
Montana and then I separated, got out and became a
police officer.
Speaker 2: So then how many years were you actually in the
Air Force? Was it just the four?
Speaker 4: Just the four? Yeah, I knew, and my mom said,
I always said that I was going to be a
police officer when I grew up, and I knew going in,
I wanted to do it for four years, get the
training and the education, and then come back and be
a police officer.
Speaker 2: Before we get into that, let me jump back to
something here. Your dad was assigned to Saint Louis. What
kind of coast guard do we have in Saint Louis.
I thought that was on the Missus.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they actually do a lot on the Mississippi River. Yeah,
and he was at the headquarters there. He was a
master chief my whole life. He was a master chief.
He was never on a boat when I was alive.
Speaker 2: Oh, he wasn't.
Speaker 4: Oh he did spend some time up at Sue Saint
Marie on a boat when he first enlisted. But yeah,
during my lifetime, he was always at headquarters buildings.
Speaker 2: So he was directing people that were on boats. But
when you're the master chief, you're pretty high up, so
you're one of the people that's in charge. Correct, Yeah,
would you go to his office and see what it
was like when your father was at work or were
you exposed to that side of things.
Speaker 4: Oh? Absolutely. When we lived in Boston, their office had
like season tickets to the Bruins.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And they would like raffle the tickets off, and when
people could and go, they would give him to my dad.
So I would actually go up with them in the
morning and spend the day, and then we'd go to
the game that night.
Speaker 2: Oh how fun? Is this the old Boston Garden or
am I dating myself now?
Speaker 4: It was the old Garden? Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Of course, my dad was a naval officer and his
final active duty slot was running the Armed Forces Police
Department out of the old Boston Navy Yard. Okay, and
this was his career was winding down and he was
actually moving towards a career in academia. This was during
the time frame of the Boston Bruins Bobby Or. That
team was red hot, and we moved back to Lowell, Massachusetts,
up north of Boston as we were heading into high school.
So the Bruins were a really big deal back then.
Every kid in New England had Bobby Or flying through
the air vertically having just scored yet another All for
the Bruins, and we would watch the Bruins on television,
and we got a chance to go to the old
Boston Garden several times, and then of course later as
I got to be a teenager, that would be the
place we'd go to see concerts. I'm sure the New
Boston Garden is great, but I still have fond memories
of We would take the train into North Station and
then the arena was upstairs, and you go up these
long winding ramps, huh to see the Bruins and the
Celtics play there.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It was quite the experience, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: And then you were saying that it was quite a
contrast for you then, to go from a relatively small
high school on Cape Cod to a big high school
in Saint Louis.
Speaker 4: It was. Yeah. I have conversations sometimes with people that
they live in the same area of their whole entire
life and they don't know anything different, and I really
sometimes I long for that in that sense of home.
But at the same time, moving as much as we did,
I was exposed to so much diversity in different people
and different cultures, and I see it as a blessing
now as an adult. I hated it as a kid.
Every time you made friends, you moved, But now it's
just I'm so thankful for the experiences that I was
able to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really liked it. There were four kids in
my family, and yes, it is hard to say goodbye
to your friends, but we looked upon it as an adventure.
My dad would come home every two years back then,
typically towards the end of the school year, and we'd
have a family meeting, and then he would tell us
where we were going to move. And this is before
the internet. We would then go typically we still had
a few weeks left in school, and of course we
would go to the library a lot. We'd go and
read about the new place we were going. I remember
we look at pictures and get out the encyclopedia and
look at maps. My mom and dad would show us
where we were going to be living. It was an adventure.
And then the four of us as kids, three boys
and one girl, my younger sister Kathy, we'd pulled together
and we'd be our own kind of gang. But a
lot of times when we were moving, and I'm not
sure if this happened as much for you. We would
be moving to places where there were lots of other
military kids, so they had a sense of the drill,
and they also knew that it was important to make
friends and to make friends quickly and to be welcoming
of the new kids. Right in one or two places,
we moved to towns where there were not a lot
of other military kids, and it was really noticeable. We
moved to Deptford, New Jersey, because there was no housing
available on the Philadelphia Naval Base, so we were across
the river in suburban New Jersey, and these kids mostly
had all grown up in that town, and they were
incredibly unfriendly. They even called my older brother, Richard, Hawaii
because we had lived in Hawaii before then, just and
they said where are you from? And he said Hawaii,
which is true. They actually didn't even call him by
his name, Richard. They called him Hawaii because they'd never
been anybody. Now here's a guy with red hair and
fair skin and blue eyes. It wasn't like he was
a native of the Hawaiian Islands. The kids were super unfriendly,
just not nice. A few months later, housing became available
on the Philadelphia Naval Base, and we moved again, and
the kids there, who were all Navy and Marine Corps kids,
they were like very welcoming. They knew what it was
like to be the new kid. That would happen every
couple of years in most examples. So now you're the
kid unlike most of us, who knew what she wanted
to do. You wanted to be in law enforcement. How
did you get into law enforcement when you got out
of the Air Force.
Speaker 4: I came back to Virginia and I ended up applying
at a small local sheriff's office and I actually worked
in the jail there for a couple of years, and
then I taught the DARE program. I had gone to
a school and met a guy who worked with James
City Police Department, and he just went on and on
about how great of a department it was and how
I should go over and work for them, and he
sent me an application and I put in and that
was it. That's how I ended up with James City.
Speaker 2: So what year is it that you're joining the James City,
Virginia Police Department.
Speaker 4: It was two thousand and two when I got hired
in July of two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: And now help us out for those of us that
are not from Virginia, which includes me. Kristin Dilly, my
podcast partner, would laugh. Why do we call this place
James City County. It's such an odd little name.
Speaker 4: I have no idea. It's a very odd name. Yeah,
but it.
Speaker 2: Is a county police department, correct for James City County,
which is not a city but a county.
Speaker 4: Correct. Okay, Yeah, it pretty much surrounds the city of Williamsburg.
Williamsburg is a super small city, and then James City
County surrounds Williamsburg. You would think I would know the
story of why it is all that, but I do not.
Speaker 2: So does Williamsburg, Virginia have its own police force?
Speaker 4: They do, Yeah, they Williamsburg Police Department.
Speaker 2: And so James City County is the surrounding area is
around Williamsburg.
Speaker 4: Correct?
Speaker 2: Is there cross jurisdiction or would you hand something off
to Williamsburg PD if it was within the city limits.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if it's within the city, then the Williamsburg Police
Department would handle it. Yeah. And I mean it's a
weird area because there's also York County, So you can
walk half a mile and step foot in James City County,
Williamsburg and York County. There are so many places where
one side of the road is York County and the
other's James City, and there's so much that intertwines. Yeah,
if it happens in the city of Williamsburg, then the
Williamsburg Police Department would handle it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Jennifer Pendos case starts in February nineteen eighty seven,
with the disappearance of this fifteen year old girl from
the Kings Mill Resort slash housing development. Tell us about
your involvement with the case. So you're at the James
City County Police Department. How did you first hear about
the Pandos case and then how did you get involved officially?
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a bulletin board in our police department
that important information would be posted on. And one day
I saw like a missing person's poster and it was
for Jennifer and I had her picture on there and
that she had disappeared in eighty seven, and I was
just like, that's weird. I'd never heard of it. I
didn't know anything about it. It was just this poster
on the law and I had been slated to go
to the Investigations Division at that point. So I talked
with the major in charge of the investigations division and said, Hey,
what's the deal with this case? And can I look
at it? And he's yeah, sure, and he said the
case file's missing, so we don't really know a whole lot.
In January of two thousand and six is when I
went to investigations, and it was shortly after that I
was officially assigned the case.
Speaker 2: Did you ask for the Pando's case as a result
of that interest?
Speaker 4: I did, Yeah, I asked to work the case.
Speaker 2: It's two thousand and six. That case took place originally
in nineteen eighty seven. It's probably considered a cold case
at this point. I don't know if people used that expression,
did they at the time.
Speaker 4: I don't remember specifically if it was classified as a
cold case. We didn't have a cold case division at
that point. I know it was being worked on sporadically,
but no, there was no cold case division. Later one
was developed and I was assigned to that, but at
the time there was no cold case division. But that
was certainly what I would consider a cold case for sure.
Speaker 2: Now, what other sorts of cases were you working when
you started in investigations. In two thousand and.
Speaker 4: Six, I was assigned to basically violent crimes, murders, ripe, robbery,
things of that sort.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this missing case file. This figures prominently
in the Burden of Proof documentary that's just made its
debut on HBO. Oh what did people say about the
missing case file? First of all, can you give us
a rough idea? How big would a case file be?
Speaker 4: For that case? You would expect probably thirty pieces of
paper fifty pieces of paper in it, depending on what
the initial response was from the police department when she
went missing. You would definitely expect there to be some
substance to that case file.
Speaker 2: Would it be in a file folder or a box
or they called us things red wells that are expandable.
What would it physically look like?
Speaker 4: Just a Manila folder? Our records division at that point, unfortunately,
was not what I would call secure. Anybody could walk
in there.
Speaker 2: Ouch.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It was before anything was electronic, So all there
was the paper or copies of the file. The procedure
to get a file was supposed to be you would
go and request the file and you would have to
sign it out. There was only a clipboard next to
the door and you would get the file and then
write your name and the date and what file you have.
But in order for that to work, it's dependent on
people actually doing what they're supposed to. Unfortunately, with there
not being any accountability to that, it went missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and unlike cop shows that we watch on TV
and enjoy, there isn't somebody there at the door, if
you will, checking to make sure that people signed the
files in and out.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely not. It was. There was a desk there
for the record's clerk, but there was only one of
them and she couldn't be there all the time, so
it was basically left up to the integrity of the
person to do what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 2: And it's like, I'm not trying to be two pointed here,
it sounds like things work sloppy back then, you said
not secure. Were people pretty investigators and others? Were they
pretty informal about going in taking a look at a file,
bringing it back, but not necessarily doing the whole clipboard thing.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, it was very lax. It was a small
department at that point. There was less than one hundred
officers for the entire department. Yeah, and I think everybody
was just complacent and oh, that won't happen, or oh,
I'll put it back when I'm done with it, And
unfortunately that didn't happen. And there were lots of theories
on what happened to the case file, some pretty outlandish,
but yeah, it was definitely a challenge not.
Speaker 2: Having that what's an outlandish theory about what might have
happened to the case file.
Speaker 4: One of the avenue that we did explore, we were
told that Ron Pandos, Jennifer's father, played golf with the
head of security from Kingsmill. Kings Mill, where the Pandos
has lived, has his own security division. Now it's a
police department, but at that point I believe it was
only security. But we were told that Ron golfed with
the head of security there and it just so happened
that his wife, when Jennifer disappeared, was the head of
the record's division or the James City Police Department. So
one of the theories was through Ron's relationship with the
head of security, he had his wife take the file
to help Ron and Margie, she was the record's clerk
from then. She was interviewed and denied having any part
of that, but yeah, that was one of the one
of the theories of what happened to the case file.
Speaker 2: Does that se implausible but.
Speaker 4: It is plausible. Yeah, it could have happened, But I
do not believe that's what happened.
Speaker 2: At all now, although in the television series, I believe
it's Cynthia Hill, the director of the film, who was
mostly off camera. But someone asks you a question, and
in my opinion, having watched plenty of Truth Crime, you
appear embarrassed for the department. Oh absolutely, you indicate as such.
How did you feel when you found out that the
file had magically reappeared.
Speaker 4: It's mixed feelings. I still remember exactly where I was
when I got the phone call and what I was doing,
and I was elated when I got the phone call
saying the file had been found. I thought, for sure
that would open up a lot of things that we
didn't know and give us more opportunity for investigation. I
was no longer assigned to the case. I had been
promoted and was a supervisor in the patrol division at
that point, so I wasn't working the case, but I
was still I was so excited. And then when that
excitement died down. It was like, what in the world happened?
That's just crazy.
Speaker 2: Was there ever an adequate explanation for where this case
file went? How long a period of time was the
file in the Pendos case missing? Would you say, oh.
Speaker 4: Gosh, when I went to investigations in two thousand and
six it was gone. I don't know how long before
that it had been gone, And I'd say it was
probably twenty sixteen when it was found.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about a decade maybe this file was
quote unquote missing. Yeah, what were the circumstances of when
the file was found? As you understand it.
Speaker 4: So, we had been in the we called the old
police department in tw more than six, very small building,
no control over who went into records who didn't. When
I was assigned the case and the case file was missing,
I had met with the head of the records division
at the time. She searched the entire records room. Basically
they were paper boxes full of minili folders with the
case files in it. She searched through every single box,
every single file cabinet. Couldn't find it. A few years later,
we had a new police department built and were moving
from the old police department to the new one. During
that time, she had told me they went through every
single file. She said they opened up the files and
actually looked in them to make sure maybe the panda's
case accidentally got stuffed inside and mislabeled. So they went
through every file, every box before they moved, and then
when they were unpacking the files in the new building
they also went through them again and there was no
sign of the case file. So it had been searched
for in the record's division three times, pretty thoroughly, and
then in the new department. The record's division is accessed
with a key card, so there is a little more
accountability for it. And by that time we were mostly electronic.
You could access what you needed on the computer instead
of having to get the actual hard copy of the file.
What I was told was one day someone in the
record's division went and opened up one of the paper
boxes and there it was just sitting right flat on top,
not as you would think if there's fifty files in
a paper box, they're all vertical so you can read
the tabs on the files right, But this was laid
across the top, so pretty obvious. There was no investigation
as to what happened. There were theories of what happened.
My personal opinion is someone was complacent. They went and
got the file to actually do something with it, and
probably stuck it in their desk or their file cabinet.
And there was a couple people retiring around that time investigations,
and in my opinion is that someone found it in
their belongings and lacked the integrity to stand up and say, hey,
my bad, I have this and just stuck it in there,
knowing that someone would eventually run into it.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily malevolent, just perhaps sloppy. And as you said,
it was very informal back in the day. Someone went
and got a file and they'd take it back to
their desk, and maybe they were working the case actively.
I was thinking the same thing, and yeah, you can
go with all the ron pandos playing golf with the
head of security theories you want, but I think most
of the time it's sort of screw up, if you will.
Was someone accidentally sticks the case file and as you
described it, it wasn't that large. It wasn't like it
was a banker's box full of files. It was a
Manilla folder with documents in it. Which could have been misplaced.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely don't believe it was anything malicious, Like
you said, I think it was sloppy, unprofessional, just lax. Yeah,
it's just it's so embarrassing, it really is.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at
mindover Murder, switching gears for a second. One of our
takeaways Kristen and mine from watching the documentary was that
we felt that Ron and Margy Pendo's odd response. I
will call it what I believe it to be, and
remember we lived through this with my sister Kathy's murder.
I felt like the Pandos's response, as described in the
television series and all the articles we read to Jennifer's
disappearance was extremely odd. Do you feel that their response
to Jennifer's disappearance made them look like suspects, particularly Ron
the father from the beginning?
Speaker 4: Absolutely. When I say from the beginning, I take that
as when I got it, So it's the beginning for me. Yeah,
And I didn't know what their responses and reactions were
when it initially occurred in nineteen eighty seven, but yeah,
what I had to go off of was a lot
of people's memories from nineteen years before, and probably a
lot of like the game of telephone. I heard this
and I heard that, and yeah, the things I was
hearing was definitely suspicious that they responded in the way
they did or didn't respond, Yeah, it was. It definitely
made it seem suspicious. And I think a lot of
times we look at things from our own perspective and
our own experiences, and everybody's different and are going to
have different reactions to things, and I think sometimes we
get stuck in the mindset of that's not what I
would have done, So that's weird. Yeah, but yeah, a
lot of things that they did it did seem suspicious
and cast a lot of doubt onto what their involvement was.
Speaker 2: One of the things that really shocked us was as
the series unfolds, and of course, the four part television
series is told roughly in chronological order, and it's amazing
to see footage from investigations and interviews all the way
back to twenty sixteen, if my memory serves, But as
the story unfold, it appears that Margie Jennifer's mother actually
has additional valuable pieces of evidence in her possession that
have never been turned over to law enforcement. For example,
if I understood the series correctly, they had the original
copy of the note correct that was left, so that
meant that law enforcement had a photocopy of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Honestly, I don't remember offhand if there was a
photo copy of the note in the original pace file
that ended up being located, but yeah, she definitely had
the origin the original note. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then later on these letters to and from Jennifer,
their teenage daughter, are produced, and they are in a
box that Margie has been holding on to for more
than thirty years. This struck me as pro foundly odd,
particularly since so much of the discussion of the case
and this note that was found at the time of
Jennifer's disappearance that switches back and forth between first and
third person, so some of it sounds like it's written
by Jennifer, some of it sounds like it's written by
someone else. Since language and handwriting end up being so pivotal,
I was baffled that Margie would be sitting on letters
to and from her daughter for over thirty years without
ever thinking I should show these to the investigators. How
did you feel.
Speaker 4: About that, Yeah, it was frustrating. Marchie was never super forthcoming.
She would provide things if they were specifically asked for,
but yeah, there was no urgency on her part to
be proactive in the investigation. When I originally started talking
to her and Stephen, I asked about physical abuse in
the home and abuse in the home and was told no,
there was none, and I can understand not wanting to
admit that, but at the same time, in order to
effectively work a case, you have to have the truth.
So it was frustrating to find out later the extent
of the abuse that was happening in the home and
find out a lot of things that would have been
helpful if I would have had them initially during the investigation.
Speaker 2: Did you feel that Stephen was also not forthcoming.
Speaker 4: I he had said initially there wasn't any abuse in
the home, and I think that if you grow up
in a certain environment that that becomes your reality. And
maybe at the time he didn't consider that to be abuse.
I don't know, or maybe it was just I fully
remember sitting in Margie's living room with her and Stephen,
and I asked, Stephen, what do you think happened to
your sister, And he said, she ran away? And I said,
why do you think that? And he said, I don't
have any reason to believe otherwise. So I think he
was in the dark for all of those years, and
I wouldn't say that he wasn't forthcoming. I think probably
initially he didn't maybe believe that what he had gone
through was abuse, because that was just his reality growing up.
Speaker 2: One of the fascinating aspects of Burnaproof is watching Stephen's
view of the case change over the years. He seems
much more willing now to admit that his father was
incredibly abusive physically and emotionally, but that maybe not where
he was as a younger man. At some point he
said something about everything I was led to believe in
the first twenty two years of this case is wrong.
So that's a big revelation to see him go through
and his viewpoint that first of all, my sister ran away,
and then later thinking for years it would appear that
his father is directly responsible for his sister's disappearance and
likely murder, and that his mother is involved in a
cover up or is complicit somehow, and then later you
begin to see that He's come around, as have others,
to the view that wait a minute, those stories are
all wrong. She didn't run away. Perhaps Ron Pandos, the
father is not involved in her disappearance, unlikely homicide, which
steers us to other suspects. But watching that journey, and
I'm sure there are hundreds of hours of footage of
Stephen and you and so many other people all taking
this personal and investigative journey. It's one of the most
interesting aspects of the show. Do you think it would
have made a difference if law enforcement, for example, had
had the original note?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I worry though. I agree with you, But I
worry though that the original note would have been put
away accidentally, let's say in the legendary missing file folder
for all of those years, and there were no backups
or duplicates of much of this material. Is that a
fair statement.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, that's definitely a fair statement.
Speaker 2: Our situations like that better now, Wendy than they were
back then. In terms of I WinCE when I hear about, oh,
these documents are missing, and I think to myself, there's
no extra copy, there's no electronic copy, there's no nothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's definitely better now. I know that, especially with
the way that technology has advanced over the last fifteen
years or so. Now reports are all done on the
computer and they're automatically just uploaded and there's an electronic
copy of it, where when Jennifer disappeared it was just handwritten,
and if something happened to the copy, you've got a lot.
So it's definitely I think much more of the secure
situation now.
Speaker 2: So here's a question for you, if you were to
start working this case today, where would you start.
Speaker 4: If I had all of the information, I would probably
start where I started before, with the parents, but there
was also information in that case that leads you to
other places too that I didn't have that information when
I work it. Yeah, I would still definitely look at
the parents, because there's still been a lot of suspicious
things that have happened with the parents, with things that
they have said and things that have happened during the investigation.
So yeah, I would still start with them, but there
were definitely more investigative avenues that would have been approached.
Speaker 2: Our investigators in the Colonial Parkway murders have said to
me over the years, Bill, no one's really cleared in
a homicide investigation, and that's I don't think Jennifer's walking
through the door tomorrow, so I believe this is a homicide.
So no one's really cleared until the murder is cleared.
That is, we've identified a suspect and brought him or
hurt to trial. As I understand it, people are on
the likely list, that is, the short list of people
who are most likely suspects, and the less likely list.
Ron Pandos, Margie Pandos and other have been mentioned as
potential suspects, and it makes perfect sense. Do you feel
like the Pendo's parents would be on that less likely list?
Speaker 4: At this point when you talk to people that know
the case, it seems pretty split that some people, some
investigators and some officers believe yeah, the parents may have
something to do with it, and others believe no, it's
the boyfriend. And I think there's evidence that points to
all of them less likely or more likely. It's hard
to say, really. If it were to go to court, say,
if the boyfriend was charged, I think it would be
super hard to get a conviction because of just the
circumstantial evidence against the parents and the doubt that would raise,
the same as if Ron were to be charged and
go to court, there's evidence and circumstantial evidence events against
the boyfriend that would lead to doubt. So it's a
hard question to answer as far as less likely suspects.
I think with the information now, it's just there's a
likelihood that anybody could have done it.
Speaker 2: Wow, So you find yourself in a very frustrating place
even now in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yeah, I just there's clues pointing to different people,
and it's hard to really settle on a belief as
to who did it.
Speaker 2: It's referenced in this series that you were working on
a book on the Jennifer Pandos disappearance. Are you still
working on a book?
Speaker 4: I am. We've had to start over a couple of times. Initially,
what I wanted to do was tell my story of
my journey along working this case and what I ended
up learning about Jennifer. And then when the documentary came along,
they delved into that, and I found that what I
revealed during interviews with them, and a lot of that
obviously wasn't aired, but I revealed a lot of that
during the interviews, and a book would be redundant, I think,
So we changed the approach to that to be. I'm
not sure if you're familiar with Patricia Cornwell or not,
but she wrote a book called All That Remains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is clearly based on the Colonial Parkway murders exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And while it is deemed as being fiction, it
is very much based on actual events. It has recently
turned into that sort of approach. Well, I wouldn't say
it's in its infancy. Yeah, it's I'm still working on it,
and it's something that i'd like to get out there eventually,
but right now that's not writing a book is not
a priority in my life, I guess right now. But
it is something that I would like out there at
some point.
Speaker 2: We've discussed All That Remains, and I've never spoken directly
to Patricia Cornwall, but it's very clear I'm considered the
greatest expert outside of law enforcement in the Colonial Parkway murders.
And it's not a role I sought, but it's just developed.
But I remember being shocked when I finally went out
and bought a seventy five cent used copy of the
paperback of All That Remains and read the book. I
was floored. It is the Colonial Parkway murders, and in particular,
one of the homicides is in so much detail, I
believe that it is quite possible that Patricia Cornwall had
a significant amount of non public information about that particular murder,
which is considered part of the series in the Colonial
Parkwy murders. I know the case backwards and forwards when
you get into that level of detail, and I think
I've read every article, listened to every podcast, watched every interview,
and I'm hearing and seeing things that just still aren't
part of the public discussion. And I think to myself,
that's interesting. If Patricia Cornwall wants to discuss it with me,
she's welcome to reach out. I am highly confident that
the case as described in all that remains. She may
have switched the order around, and the lesbian couple aren't
the first ones killed, and it's not one two, three four,
but it's definitely the same case, and the amount of
detail is very striking. You might want to jump off
then into more of a fictional version of what might
have happened in the Pando's disappearance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I agree with you one hundred percent. You
and I had talked earlier about the fact that Jennifer
lived very close to the Colonial Parkway.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that was one.
Speaker 4: Of the investigative avenues I took pretty early in the case,
was did she find herself on the Parkway and become
a victim there? I was allowed through that investigation to
see the case files through the Colonial Parkway murders. And Yeah,
I agree with you one hundred percent that that book
is very accurate with a lot of facts that aren't
public knowledge.
Speaker 2: Or certainly weren't back then. In other words, we've done
a ton of press and media. We did a four
part television series, The Lover's Land Murders on Oxygen, and
I've been very outspoken, as have other family members about
the details because we're trying to push the FBI in
the Virginia State Police. When the book came out, which
I think is nineteen ninety two, a lot of that
information wasn't publicly available.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I know that she had reached out to
people in law enforcement and talked about the case with
them and talked about just different aspects of law enforcement
in the area and things like that. How she got
the information, who knows, But yeah, it was very striking
how accurate Some of it was, And really, Jennifer's case
is pretty much an open book at this point in
the documentary, Stephen going through all of these papers and things,
and he was able to get the case file from
when I took over the case, as far as I know,
has not been able to foil the original case file
that was lost, but my understanding is that he does
have a copy of it. It's frustrating to some extent
from an investigative standpoint that things like that do find
their way to people who are not investigating it. From
a law enforcement standpoint, and why people leak things, you
never know what someone's motive is. Unfortunately, sometimes information that
you wouldn't want out in the public ends up being there.
Jennifer's case is pretty much an open book. I think
the only way for me to portray a story in
a book form is to make it fiction and take
some liberties as to what happened, because in the end
we have no idea. Really, at this point, do.
Speaker 2: You think Jennifer Pando's disappearance can be solved?
Speaker 4: I think it absolutely. Whether or not it will is
another story. You and I talked earlier about politics in
agencies and whether or not this case from nineteen eighty
seven is a priority for the James City County Police Department.
Right now, I can't say I don't know. I know
that there are things that can be done still from
an investigative standpoint, that aren't being done, haven't been done,
and probably won't be. In a perfect world, you'd have
unlimited resources to be able to investigate things, and unfortunately,
in the real world, it's not like that.
Speaker 2: Wendy, thank you so much for taking some time to
talk with us. We really appreciate it. We hope you'll
consider coming back with us as things develop anytime. Anytime
that's going to do it for this episode of Mine
Over Murder. As always, thanks for listening. Kristin Dilly will
be back next time, so if you miss her as
much as I do, she'll definitely be back when she
returns from her beachside vacation. Thanks again for listening. We'll
see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas. Five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mine Over Murder