Speaker 1: Welcome to this month's bonus Patreon minisote for the Path
Speaker 1: Went Chili. Today, it's just going to be Jewels and
Speaker 1: I doing the episode because at the time of this recording,
Speaker 1: Ashley is only a few weeks away from giving birth,
Speaker 1: so she's quite busy right now. So we're gonna follow
Speaker 1: the standard formula when it's just the two of us,
Speaker 1: where I share the details of a case with Jewels
Speaker 1: that she does not know, and she will give off
Speaker 1: her reactions. So I guess I'll start off by asking
Speaker 1: you right away, have you ever heard of the case
Speaker 1: of the unexplained disappearance and death of Tim Molnar.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of this case. I'm always really when
Speaker 2: we have a case where I'm not familiar with it
Speaker 2: in the least. And when you wrote me the message
Speaker 2: saying that's the case we're going to cover and there
Speaker 2: isn't all that much information, I purposefully don't google it
Speaker 2: because I don't want to know anything and I want
Speaker 2: to be completely surprised by everything that you tell me.
Speaker 1: That's excellent, Yeah, because this is a very weird case.
Speaker 1: I saw it on Unsolved Mysteries many years ago, but
Speaker 1: because the segment was only five minutes long, and there's
Speaker 1: such a limited amount of information, I thought it would
Speaker 1: be an appropriate topic for a minisode. I did talk
Speaker 1: about it on The Trail Went Cold several years ago,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't the subject of the main subject of
Speaker 1: the episode because of the lack of information there was.
Speaker 1: It was just I talked spent a few minutes talking
Speaker 1: about it in conjunction with another case. But I think
Speaker 1: now it's a good opportunity to discuss it as the
Speaker 1: main topic. And I'm sure you know that I have
Speaker 1: a particular fascination for cases where people go missing and
Speaker 1: are found dead under strange circumstances and a location they
Speaker 1: have no reason to be at. We've done a few
Speaker 1: episodes like the disappearance of Blas Adams, who disappeared from
Speaker 1: British Columbia and was found dead in Knoxville, Tennessee, and
Speaker 1: Judy Smith, who went missing on a business trip to
Speaker 1: Philadelphia and was found in the mountains of North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and the disappearance of David Lewis, who went missing from Amarillo,
Speaker 1: Texas and then was found on a freeway in Washington State.
Speaker 1: And the Tim Malnar case is going to be along
Speaker 1: those lines.
Speaker 2: Those are some of my favorite cases. Blair Adams is
Speaker 2: one of our early cases that we covered on The
Speaker 2: Path Went Chile, and it's been one that's fascinated me
Speaker 2: for so many years, and it's really sad with the
Speaker 2: mental health angle, but it's a very real scenario where
Speaker 2: he was murdered and we just don't have the answers
Speaker 2: as to what happened, and there's so many strange clues.
Speaker 2: Same with Judy Smith. That case is like a real
Speaker 2: life Gone Girl type of a scenario. And the other
Speaker 2: one from Amarillo.
Speaker 1: David Lewis, I think we did that one before, like
Speaker 1: he went missing from his home at Amarillo, and then
Speaker 1: about twenty four hours later he was found wandering on
Speaker 1: a freeway outside an airport in Yakima, Washington, and he
Speaker 1: was hit by a car. So it might not have
Speaker 1: been foul play, but the big mystery is how did
Speaker 1: he decide to travel from Texas to Washington in such
Speaker 1: a short amount of time. But this will be along
Speaker 1: the same lines where its essentially two mysteries rolled up
Speaker 1: in one like how did the person wind up at
Speaker 1: that location and how did they die? Was their foul
Speaker 1: play involved? So the tim Malnar case. He lived in
Speaker 1: Daytona Beach, Florida at the time he went missing in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. His parents were Michael and Helen Molnar.
Speaker 1: They were originally from Canada but then moved to California,
Speaker 1: and Tim was born in Los Angeles County. The family
Speaker 1: had a total of four children. Tim had a younger
Speaker 1: brother and a sister, and he also had tragically an
Speaker 1: infant brother who died at a very young age, so
Speaker 1: at this particular point, there were only three children in
Speaker 1: the Molnar family. They eventually moved from California to Daytona Beach, Florida.
Speaker 1: At this particular point, Tim was nineteen years old and
Speaker 1: he was an aeronautical mechanics student at embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
Speaker 1: And on the morning of January twenty fourth, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: Tim climbed into his nineteen sixty nine Dodge Dart to
Speaker 1: drive his fourteen year old brother Frank, to drop him
Speaker 1: off at school. And as far as I know, everything
Speaker 1: seemed completely normal. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: But Tim was planning to go to class that day
Speaker 1: at embry Riddle Aeronautical University and as far as anyone
Speaker 1: can tell. He didn't show up, and he never returned
Speaker 1: home that night, and his car was not found either.
Speaker 1: So and when he didn't turn up, his parents eventually
Speaker 1: called the police to report a missing.
Speaker 2: So he successfully dropped Frank off, and then after that happened,
Speaker 2: we just have no idea where he went, who he saw,
Speaker 2: and what became of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to talk about how they found his
Speaker 1: car at a later time, but we don't know like
Speaker 1: where he went and why he decided to take off.
Speaker 1: And another weird detail is that they discovered that Tim's
Speaker 1: ten speed bicycle was missing from the house, and as
Speaker 1: far as Frank could tell, the bike was not in
Speaker 1: the car when Tim dropped him off at school, So
Speaker 1: it seemed likely that for whatever reason, Tim decided to
Speaker 1: drive home pick up the bike, and then he went missing.
Speaker 1: And they would also discover that he withdrew all the
Speaker 1: money in his bank account except ten dollars. He left
Speaker 1: ten dollars behind, so there was a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: at first to suggest that he had decided to take
Speaker 1: off voluntarily.
Speaker 2: It almost looks like you're trying to stage a disappearance.
Speaker 2: If you go home, get your bike and you're bringing
Speaker 2: it with you, meaning that you likely want to dump
Speaker 2: your car at a certain location and then take off
Speaker 2: on your bike. That could be how it could be interpreted.
Speaker 2: And then if you're taking out all that money, maybe
Speaker 2: it's nineteen eighty four not being so sure about how
Speaker 2: bank records are going to be interpreted by investigators. Tim
Speaker 2: might not have known that this would be very obvious
Speaker 2: that he took out all of this money. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: forensic countermeasures weren't known in nineteen eighty four like they're
Speaker 2: known today. So it's an interesting first way to interpret
Speaker 2: the information.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Like a lot of people have found it weird
Speaker 1: that if you wanted to go off somewhere and start
Speaker 1: a new life, why did he not completely empty his
Speaker 1: bank account? Like why did he leave behind the ten dollars?
Speaker 1: It would be one thing if it was maybe like
Speaker 1: fifty cents, something you could withdraw, But the fact that
Speaker 1: it was a round number. People have taken it as
Speaker 1: a symbol that maybe he felt, if this doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: I'm going to return home, and if I do, at
Speaker 1: least I'll still have some money in my account waiting
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: Do you know if it's possible that he had to
Speaker 2: have like a minimum amount in there to keep the
Speaker 2: account active.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure, and I don't have that information
Speaker 1: about whether he took it from an ATM or had
Speaker 1: to go into the bank. I don't know if ATMs
Speaker 1: were prevalent in Daytona Beach back in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: but I haven't heard of anything about having him having
Speaker 1: any specific interactions at the bank to withdraw the money
Speaker 1: from any tellers. So I don't know if he was
Speaker 1: told you have to leave ten dollars in.
Speaker 2: There were ATMs even a thing in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: They might have been. I grew up in the eighties
Speaker 1: and I seem to remember them from the late eighties.
Speaker 2: I'm going to google this. Yeah, oh my god, it
Speaker 2: says June of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So, according to Wikipedia, a cash machine was
Speaker 2: put into use by Barclays Bank and Field North London
Speaker 2: in the United Kingdom on the twenty seventh of June
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, which is recognized as the world's first ATM.
Speaker 2: This machine was inaugurated by English actor Reg Varney. Whoever
Speaker 2: that is.
Speaker 1: Okay, I didn't know that I didn't know they were
Speaker 1: that old, but I couldn't say for certain if they
Speaker 1: were implemented in the United States by nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: and if they were, I can't say for certain if
Speaker 1: they were in Daytona Beach.
Speaker 2: They became common by the nineteen eighties. They were introduced
Speaker 2: in Canada in nineteen sixty nine, but the widespread use
Speaker 2: was in the nineteen eighties. So it's entirely possible that
Speaker 2: he used in ATM.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that because otherwise I think someone from the
Speaker 1: bank might have remembered him if he had to go
Speaker 1: in and do a manual withdrawal.
Speaker 2: So just one more thing regarding the ATM. Do you
Speaker 2: think that if he did use it, that it's possible
Speaker 2: that he left ten dollars in his account because you
Speaker 2: could only take out multiples of twenty.
Speaker 1: That is true. Yes, I never thought about that. That
Speaker 1: maybe they just told him you can't take out twenty
Speaker 1: and it was impossible to get it out in ten
Speaker 1: dollars bills, and that's the only reason it was left there.
Speaker 1: So three weeks later, Tim's parents received a credit card
Speaker 1: statement in the mail which showed that their card, which
Speaker 1: they had given to Tim was used to purchase gas
Speaker 1: at a service station in Lake City, Florida, on the
Speaker 1: same day ten disappeared, even though it was located one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles northwest from Daytona Beach. So Helen
Speaker 1: Malnar traveled all the way to the service station to
Speaker 1: speak with the attacks and showed him his photograph, and
Speaker 1: the attendant seemed to remember him because he recalled that
Speaker 1: Tim had been driving a nineteen sixty nine Dodge Dart,
Speaker 1: which was a classic so and when they showed a
Speaker 1: photograph of the car, he said, yet, that might have
Speaker 1: been the car I saw. So this added further evidence
Speaker 1: to the possibility that Tim, for whatever reason, decided to
Speaker 1: take off on his own.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he cleans out his bank account less ten dollars,
Speaker 2: and he has the credit card from his parents that
Speaker 2: he's using. So if we were going to operate originally
Speaker 2: under the presupposition that he's disappearing voluntarily, he takes out
Speaker 2: his money, he gets his bike, he has his car.
Speaker 2: If he wasn't wanting to be traced, one would think
Speaker 2: that at this point he would be paying for his
Speaker 2: gas with cash, not using the credit card his parents
Speaker 2: gave him. So this totally is contrary to the theory
Speaker 2: that he's disappearing of his own volition or free will.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's just has a set objective and he's he
Speaker 2: wasn't thinking like what if they trace this, because it
Speaker 2: was never his intention to be disappearing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also possible that he was planning to go
Speaker 1: elsewhere that day for some unscheduled road trip and was
Speaker 1: planning to go back, but then something went horribly wrong,
Speaker 1: and of course when the credit card arrived three weeks later,
Speaker 1: that's how they were able to tell that Tim used it.
Speaker 1: And another odd detail is that they discovered that none
Speaker 1: of his clothing or personal possessions appear to have been
Speaker 1: missing from the house. The only thing that was gone
Speaker 1: was the ten speed bicycle, So that once again goes
Speaker 1: against the idea that he was planning to disappear permanently,
Speaker 1: And like.
Speaker 2: What scenario can you think of that, say, he was
Speaker 2: going to meet somebody where It's clear, just based on
Speaker 2: what we know now, that he wasn't planning on leaving
Speaker 2: for any period of time. But what he was doing
Speaker 2: required that he had money, because he took that cash
Speaker 2: with him. So if he's going to meet somebody. Is
Speaker 2: it that he's going somewhere where you can only drive
Speaker 2: so far by car, so he needs to go the
Speaker 2: rest of the distance on a bike or why else
Speaker 2: do you think the bike would factor in?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know about that, as if possibly maybe
Speaker 1: he was going to a rural area or something like
Speaker 1: that that he knew that he couldn't drive on the
Speaker 1: road so he had to take the bike with him.
Speaker 1: But as we're going to talk about momentarily, the car
Speaker 1: is eventually found and that only adds more unanswered questions
Speaker 1: to the whole thing. So let me tell you about
Speaker 1: this part, because it gets even weirder. It was not
Speaker 1: until four months after Tim went missing when the Mallners
Speaker 1: received a letter in the mail from a towing company
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia, which stated that Tim's abandoned Dodge Dart
Speaker 1: had been found in a parking lot on January the thirtieth,
Speaker 1: six days hey after he originally went missing, and had
Speaker 1: been in an impound yard ever since. And of course
Speaker 1: this made things even weirder because Atlanta was four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty miles north of Daytona Beach. And then when
Speaker 1: his parents went to Atlanta to pick up the car.
Speaker 1: They discovered that his wallet was still inside, and even
Speaker 1: though all the money had been emptied out, Tim's identification,
Speaker 1: including his driver's license and his credit card, were still there.
Speaker 1: But to make things even weirder, his bicycle was not
Speaker 1: in the car, and some items that you or nearly
Speaker 1: kept in there, such as a tool set and a
Speaker 1: stereo system that he had received for Christmas and personally installed,
Speaker 1: were missing. So people have wondered were these robbed, were
Speaker 1: they stolen? Or did Tim take these out himself because
Speaker 1: he wanted to steal them? And they discovered that the
Speaker 1: vehicle was parked only a block away from a Greyhound
Speaker 1: bus station, so they wondered, maybe he parked the car
Speaker 1: here because he was planning to take a bus trip somewhere.
Speaker 1: But if that's the case, why did he take the
Speaker 1: bicycle out of the car? So this only brought up
Speaker 1: more questions than they answered.
Speaker 2: And we know that he didn't have like a backpack
Speaker 2: or a suitcase, so how is he going to transport
Speaker 2: these items? Say he did take he wanted to take
Speaker 2: the Greyhound bus. Okay, maybe if you're just taking your bike,
Speaker 2: but how are you going to carry a car, stereo?
Speaker 2: And all of these other things. If you don't have
Speaker 2: a bag in which to carry these items, and we
Speaker 2: can't assume. I don't think at this point in the
Speaker 2: story that he's the one that dumped the vehicle there.
Speaker 2: Obviously it's possible that somebody dumped it there and then
Speaker 2: they just took those items because they wanted to rob him.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's interesting that if that was
Speaker 2: the case, that they would leave the wallet. You said
Speaker 2: the identification was in there still right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though, the identification and the credit card was in there,
Speaker 1: but all the money was gone.
Speaker 2: That seems odd. If you were to rob him, wouldn't
Speaker 2: you not want the vehicle to be identified with like
Speaker 2: who owns it right away? It would give you a
Speaker 2: little bit more time if his identification wasn't in there,
Speaker 2: to just get rid of that so that you would
Speaker 2: kind of distance him from that vehicle, and then to
Speaker 2: leave the credit card there. If you robbed it, you'd
Speaker 2: think you'd at least try that credit card, so maybe
Speaker 2: you one could assume that it was indeed Tim who
Speaker 2: took it, because Tim knew wherever I'm going, I can't
Speaker 2: use this credit card. I don't know. It's just a
Speaker 2: big question mark. It's so strange because I just don't
Speaker 2: see how he could get from point A his car,
Speaker 2: with his bike, the car, stereo, all of these things
Speaker 2: to point B. Maybe a greyhound bus, maybe somewhere else.
Speaker 2: This is a really strange case.
Speaker 1: It certainly is. Yeah, and you're right, we can't be
Speaker 1: one hundred percent certain that Tim was the one who
Speaker 1: left the car there. As far as I know, there
Speaker 1: were no signs of any break in, so they don't
Speaker 1: believe someone broke in and stole the stereo. But if
Speaker 1: it was someone else who left the car there, maybe
Speaker 1: they personally took the items. And a theory which has
Speaker 1: been pushed forward that perhaps the reason that he took
Speaker 1: out the stereo and the tool set is that maybe
Speaker 1: he was planning to sell them or pawn them if
Speaker 1: he was planning to disappear and needed money for say
Speaker 1: bus fare, And it could also explain why the bicycle
Speaker 1: was missing. Maybe he decided to sell it off or
Speaker 1: pawn it himself. It's never been conclusively proven. They found
Speaker 1: no evidence that he ever attempted to sell these items
Speaker 1: anywhere in Atlanta, and it also brings up the question
Speaker 1: if you wanted to disappear permanently. Why did he not
Speaker 1: sell the car as well? Because he could probably make
Speaker 1: a lot of money from that too.
Speaker 2: And I think both things can be true. Tim could
Speaker 2: have left the car, and he could have taken the
Speaker 2: money out of the wallet and just left the wallet,
Speaker 2: and then somebody could have come upon the Dodge Dart
Speaker 2: and opportunistically been like, oh cool, there's a stereo, I'm
Speaker 2: going to take that. There's a bike, I'm going to
Speaker 2: take that. So if that was the case, we can't
Speaker 2: know what Tim took and what the person. If this
Speaker 2: scenario did indeed happen and there was like an opportunistic
Speaker 2: robber who came up after the fact, we can't know
Speaker 2: what each one.
Speaker 1: Took exactly, like we don't know who took the items
Speaker 1: out of the car or if Tim himself abandoned the car.
Speaker 1: And even though there are as signs of any break in,
Speaker 1: for all we know, maybe Tim just left it there unlocked,
Speaker 1: and that someone opportunistic could have gone there and stolen
Speaker 1: these items without having to break into it. So Tim's
Speaker 1: family said that they could not understand why he would
Speaker 1: have chosen to run away. We don't know all that
Speaker 1: much about his personality. They just said that he was
Speaker 1: kind of a quiet, reserved guy who'd never caused any trouble,
Speaker 1: So we don't have any information if he might have
Speaker 1: been suffering from many mental health issues or depression at
Speaker 1: that time. But the case pretty much faded from the
Speaker 1: spotlight for an entire decade. There were no leads that
Speaker 1: I know of, but in November of nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: UNSAW Mysteries decided to profile it on the show. But
Speaker 1: they had a very interesting angle to it because there
Speaker 1: were technically no signs of foul play or any evidence
Speaker 1: that Tim was in any danger, and the evidence made
Speaker 1: it look like he could have taken away voluntarily, so
Speaker 1: they decided to make a public announcement that only a
Speaker 1: few days after Tim went missing, a relative of his
Speaker 1: had passed away and made Tim the heir to an
Speaker 1: estate worth fifty thousand dollars. So they pretty much put
Speaker 1: all the emphasis on that, saying that Tim, if you're
Speaker 1: still alive and you're out there watching, please know that
Speaker 1: even if you don't want to contact your family, you
Speaker 1: still have fifty thousand dollars waiting for you, So if
Speaker 1: you come back and claim it, you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to stay with your family, but at least you can
Speaker 1: let them know you're alive or okay, and they thought
Speaker 1: that might be a motivation for him to come forward
Speaker 1: if he happened to be watching and Unsaw Mysteries actually
Speaker 1: did that a few years earlier on another missing person's case,
Speaker 1: where a man named Scott hill A gone missing, but
Speaker 1: it turned out that he likely took off voluntarily because
Speaker 1: he made a lot of bad financial decisions which left
Speaker 1: his family bankrupt, so he might have taken off because
Speaker 1: he was ashamed. But it turned out that his mother
Speaker 1: passed away and left him, made Scott the heir to
Speaker 1: his seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars estate, So they
Speaker 1: mentioned that on Unsolved Mysteries and lo and behold, they
Speaker 1: still they found Scott alive somewhere and he did come
Speaker 1: forward to claim the estate, but it was a very bittersweet,
Speaker 1: awkward reunion with his family because they're like, well, we're
Speaker 1: happy you're alive, but now we know you abandoned us
Speaker 1: and that the only reason you're coming back is because
Speaker 1: you want the money. So I think they were hoping
Speaker 1: maybe that the same thing would happen with Tim.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of like, I'm glad that you're alive,
Speaker 2: and we kind of hate you now because we've been
Speaker 2: worried about all the worst things that could have happened
Speaker 2: to you. And you left your family like up you know,
Speaker 2: whatever creek without a paddle, and then you return only
Speaker 2: when there's money involved, saying that you were putting people
Speaker 2: secondary to money, and so yeah, I can imagine that
Speaker 2: was bittersweet. But with Tim, I mean, fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: and he's not coming forward. It seems like if you
Speaker 2: were living under a different identity or that type of
Speaker 2: a scenario where you had to forge this whole new life,
Speaker 2: it would be difficult because I mean, unless you fake
Speaker 2: a social Security number. And I don't know how adept
Speaker 2: he was with these type of things. I'm sure he
Speaker 2: was fairly smart. Being like that type of mechanic is
Speaker 2: a really difficult type of career to embark upon. So
Speaker 2: I'm sure he was above average intelligence. So I just
Speaker 2: can't see any underlying motivation that would cause want him
Speaker 2: to leave this life that he had at this age,
Speaker 2: like he's just coming into adulthood. I just don't see
Speaker 2: what factors would motivate him to want to leave his
Speaker 2: life behind and not contact anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the Scott Hill case, it was obvious why
Speaker 1: he would have wanted to take off, because he made
Speaker 1: a bunch of bad financial decisions and he put his
Speaker 1: family in dire straits. But with Tim, he didn't seem
Speaker 1: to have anything bad going on for his life because
Speaker 1: he's taking a course in aeronautical engineering, so he's obviously
Speaker 1: a smart guy and he's got plans for the future.
Speaker 1: So that's the key difference between these two cases is
Speaker 1: that with Scott Hill's case, they knew why he would
Speaker 1: have taken off, but with Tim, his family was completely clueless.
Speaker 2: Do we know at all anything about his romantic life.
Speaker 1: We don't know anything. I have no idea if he
Speaker 1: ever had any girlfriends or boyfriends or any relationships at all.
Speaker 1: We just don't know anything about his personality other th
Speaker 1: that he was a quiet kid who didn't cause any trouble.
Speaker 2: It's so hard when we don't have that type of
Speaker 2: information because then we also likely don't have information on
Speaker 2: if he partied, if he had any kind of secret life,
Speaker 2: if there was something that he was ashamed of. There's
Speaker 2: just so many things where there's hidden variables. And it
Speaker 2: absolutely could be nothing. There might be nothing that he
Speaker 2: felt shame about. There might be no secret life, there
Speaker 2: might be no abuse of any substances. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, we just don't.
Speaker 1: Know exactly, just because we have no information about his background.
Speaker 1: But the Unsoawd Mystery segment would lead to one of
Speaker 1: the more shocking updates in the history of the show.
Speaker 1: They didn't get any leads after the first airing in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen ninety five, but they re ran the
Speaker 1: segment in January of nineteen ninety six, and that's when
Speaker 1: they got a call to the unsaw Mysteries telecenter from
Speaker 1: a guy named Stephen Call who had just watched the show.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the segment they had described
Speaker 1: the clothing that Tim was wearing when he was last
Speaker 1: and Stephen Call said, I found a dead body about
Speaker 1: ten years ago and I vividly remember it, and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure the victim was wearing the same clothes that
Speaker 1: you described that Tim was wearing. And it turned out
Speaker 1: that this story did check out, because it turned out
Speaker 1: that on March the twenty third, nineteen eighty six, an
Speaker 1: unidentified dead body for a young man was found frozen
Speaker 1: in a block of ice in a secluded pine plantation
Speaker 1: in Wakisha County, Wisconsin, and because he could not be identified,
Speaker 1: he had been kept there as a John Doe for
Speaker 1: about a decade. And here's the shocking part. Wakisha County,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin is twelve hundred miles away from Daytona Beach, and
Speaker 1: they did do DNA testing and it turned out that
Speaker 1: the victim was Tim Molnar.
Speaker 2: Wow, what the actual f I'm my mind is seriously
Speaker 2: blown because I thought, Okay, it's far enough where we've
Speaker 2: got the vehicle four hundred miles away, and now it Wisconsin, Like,
Speaker 2: how did he get it up there? Did he ride
Speaker 2: his bike there? How did he end up in this
Speaker 2: pine plantation? I have so many questions?
Speaker 1: Oh so do I, and unfortunately a lot of them
Speaker 1: were resolved. Some people have had some suspicion about Stephen Kohl,
Speaker 1: where they're thinking, how did you remember the clothing that
Speaker 1: a dead body was wearing like ten years earlier, But
Speaker 1: some people have said, well, if you experienced the trauma
Speaker 1: finding a dead body, you might remember all the details.
Speaker 1: And they never found any indication that he was a suspect,
Speaker 1: and he just said that when he was watching the
Speaker 1: Unsaw Mystery segment and they described the clothing, he just
Speaker 1: had immediate flashbacks and was like, the guy that they
Speaker 1: found was about the same age range. I think it's
Speaker 1: probably a long shot because this was Wisconsin, but I'll
Speaker 1: phone in the tip anyway. And I'm sure glad he
Speaker 1: did because it turned out his hunch was correct and
Speaker 1: it was Tim.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that he was finally discovered because that gives
Speaker 2: his family those answers. As difficult as it is to
Speaker 2: accept that he's just seized and they have no idea
Speaker 2: how he got there and why, it at least gives
Speaker 2: them the body. And I know that having your loved
Speaker 2: one brought home and having the ability to be able
Speaker 2: to go and visit them or you know, have whatever
Speaker 2: type of funeral you would have, I think gives parents
Speaker 2: some just some answers. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: question marks here, and I can't imagine what they're dealing
Speaker 2: with in the aftermath, because it's like, great, we know
Speaker 2: part of this, but it's an enduring mystery.
Speaker 1: Oh exactly, yeah, because that only brought up so many
Speaker 1: more unanswered questions inside their own mind. But there were
Speaker 1: so many details that left even more unanswered questions because
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety six, DNA testing was not as
Speaker 1: common as it is today, so they wanted to double
Speaker 1: check it first to see is there a good chance
Speaker 1: this might be Tim Before they took the DNA from
Speaker 1: his family members, and when the John Doe had been found,
Speaker 1: he was carrying a set of rusted keys on them
Speaker 1: that they still had his evidence, and they asked them, all, nars,
Speaker 1: have you changed your locks at all since Tim went
Speaker 1: missing in nineteen eighty four, and they said no. So
Speaker 1: they made a copy of their house key, sent it
Speaker 1: up to Wisconsin, and it turned out to be an
Speaker 1: exact match to the rusted key that the John Doe
Speaker 1: had been carrying, so that was their first hint that
Speaker 1: this might be Tim. And he had also been found
Speaker 1: carrying a rusted key for a Dodge Dart, which turned
Speaker 1: out to be a match for Tim's car, And that
Speaker 1: just makes things more confusing because if he wanted to
Speaker 1: take off voluntarily, why did he still carry around his
Speaker 1: car key and his house key, Like, if he's abandoning
Speaker 1: the car, he's not going to need the key, and
Speaker 1: if he has no intention of coming back, He's not
Speaker 1: going to need his house key either, So why would
Speaker 1: he leave his wallet behind in the car with his
Speaker 1: ID and credit card but still hold on to these
Speaker 1: keys and take them all the way to Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: Like what if he was meeting somebody and he didn't
Speaker 2: want them to see his vehicle or was that another location?
Speaker 2: So he've thought, Okay, well, I'll park my car here
Speaker 2: in Atlanta and we're going to meet at location you
Speaker 2: know X or whatever. And then he gets there, gets
Speaker 2: in the vehicle of the person, and then they're going
Speaker 2: to drive to location A say, for example. And that's
Speaker 2: what he's what's understood. But then something changes, something happens.
Speaker 2: Did they give cause of death when they found that
Speaker 2: he was frozen? Did they give any insight there?
Speaker 1: No, they were not able to determine the exact cause
Speaker 1: of death. Like I said, he was not found until
Speaker 1: March of nineteen eighty six, but he had originally gone
Speaker 1: missing in January of nineteen eighty four, and no one
Speaker 1: can be certain how long he had been dead at
Speaker 1: that point because he was heavily decomposed. We don't know
Speaker 1: if his body was there for two whole years before
Speaker 1: he was found. So that doesn't add much insight on
Speaker 1: how exactly he died, if it was foul play, or
Speaker 1: if he crossed paths with someone who killed him. And
Speaker 1: it's certainly possible that he could have like climbed on
Speaker 1: the Greyhound bus in Atlanta and traveled all the way
Speaker 1: to us, but we still have no idea.
Speaker 2: Why do we know that there was buses that went
Speaker 2: like directly to Wisconsin. I guess he could have taken
Speaker 2: the connecting buses along the way, doesn't matter if they
Speaker 2: had a direct line to Wisconsin from Atlanta. There's a
Speaker 2: myriad of ways he could have got there, taken a
Speaker 2: bus partway, hitchhike the rest.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we don't have that information because they didn't find
Speaker 1: the car in Atlanta until four months after he went missing.
Speaker 1: I don't think they checked bus records back then, but
Speaker 1: by nineteen ninety six, there's no way they're going to
Speaker 1: have records about which buses would have been leaving Atlanta
Speaker 1: at that particular day. But this area was pretty remote though,
Speaker 1: so say if he took a bus till Milwaukee or something,
Speaker 1: that doesn't explain how he wound up in this very
Speaker 1: remote area.
Speaker 2: It seems like he must have been meeting somebody, like,
Speaker 2: what else would he be doing If you were going
Speaker 2: to stage your own disappearance, why would you take all
Speaker 2: of your money out less than ten dollars? If you
Speaker 2: were planning on using your parents' credit card part way
Speaker 2: through to get gas, you'd think, well, if I'm planning
Speaker 2: to end my own life, why do I need more money?
Speaker 2: And like, why would you go so far away? People
Speaker 2: who end their own lives typically, obviously, I know you
Speaker 2: always give a really big example for somebody who ends
Speaker 2: their own life far away, and what casees that that
Speaker 2: you always use?
Speaker 1: The Gail Delano one. Yeah, he was going to bring
Speaker 1: it up momentarily, but people have looked at that possibility
Speaker 1: that because he left his wallet behind, he may have
Speaker 1: been planning suicide. And while it makes no logical sense
Speaker 1: for him to travel twelve hundred miles in order to
Speaker 1: do so, I always cite the Gail Delano case as
Speaker 1: an example of someone doing that because she went missing
Speaker 1: from the town of wo Of, like a small town
Speaker 1: in Maine, in nineteen eighty six, and after she was
Speaker 1: featured on Unsolved Mysteries, they had a medical examiner come
Speaker 1: forward and says, I recognize that woman as as a
Speaker 1: Jane Doe, who had checked into a hotel in Mobile, Alabama,
Speaker 1: which was nearly two thousand miles away, and they positively
Speaker 1: identified her because she had overdosed. So, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: she decided to travel all the way from Maine to Alabama,
Speaker 1: check into a hotel under a fake name, and overdose
Speaker 1: in order to take her own life. And well, it
Speaker 1: makes no logical sense. We do know that Gail Delano
Speaker 1: had a severe history of depression and may have just
Speaker 1: felt it's better off not to let my family know
Speaker 1: I completed suicide. So I'm just going to take off
Speaker 1: to this far away location and no one will find me.
Speaker 1: And because we couldn't determine Tim's cause of death, I
Speaker 1: guess we can't completely rule out that his death was
Speaker 1: a suicide either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is incredibly atypical, but obviously it does happen,
Speaker 2: so we can't rule that out. It just seems so
Speaker 2: odd that, like you're going to travel a distance, Why
Speaker 2: not Atlanta? That's pretty far away. Why continue on to Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: It feels like it would have just been far away
Speaker 2: where you are. Why exert that extra effort to go
Speaker 2: that extra distance. It's just confounding this whole case is
Speaker 2: I'm totally torn because we don't know what mental health issues,
Speaker 2: if any Tim was struggling with. I mean, mental health
Speaker 2: wasn't talked about the same way in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: So even if he was suffering, he may not have
Speaker 2: told anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking as well, is like I
Speaker 1: said that there's no information about his background, but if
Speaker 1: he was suffering from depression or anything like that, or anxiety,
Speaker 1: he may just not have told anyone and kept it
Speaker 1: bottle up inside and that they never sense that anything
Speaker 1: was wrong. So that's why it took them completely out
Speaker 1: of the blue when he decided to travel to another
Speaker 1: location in order to take his own life. I mean,
Speaker 1: with the Gail Delano case, we had a documented history
Speaker 1: of mental health issues, so no one was overly surprised
Speaker 1: that she elected suicide. But with Tim, we just don't know.
Speaker 1: And even if it was a suicide, of how did
Speaker 1: he do it? I mean, at least with the Gail Delano's,
Speaker 1: they know that she overdosed on pills. But because we
Speaker 1: couldn't determine Tim's cause of death, it's unclear if he
Speaker 1: could have had any p hills or anything in a
Speaker 1: system for suicide.
Speaker 2: Refreshed my memory. In the guil Delano case, did she
Speaker 2: have any connection to the area that she decided to
Speaker 2: complete suicide.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No, and they've never been able
Speaker 1: to determine if she flew down there or if she
Speaker 1: hitchhiked down there. I think she just settled on maybe
Speaker 1: just a faraway location where her family never would have
Speaker 1: found her. And as far as I know, Tim didn't
Speaker 1: have any connection to Wisconsin because he grew up in
Speaker 1: California before he moved to Florida. But he may have
Speaker 1: just selected it at random if it was suicide, thinking
Speaker 1: this is the farthest place away that my family will
Speaker 1: never find out what happened to me. And he probably
Speaker 1: never dreamed that I'm going to be featured on national
Speaker 1: television a decade later and the guy who found my
Speaker 1: body is going to phone in the tip. So yeah. Sadly,
Speaker 1: there weren't any further developments in the case even after
Speaker 1: it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, and his parents have
Speaker 1: both since passed away. I believe his brother, Frank and
Speaker 1: his sister are still al but I've never seen them
Speaker 1: speak publicly about the case, so I don't know about
Speaker 1: their thoughts and if they're still actively trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what happened to them. But the story is not
Speaker 1: over because the most recent leads I have found out
Speaker 1: are on Reddit, because there is this one person who
Speaker 1: has relatives who live in the area of Wisconsin where
Speaker 1: Tim was found, and over the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: they have made multiple posts on a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different subreddits saying that they have information about Tim's disappearance
Speaker 1: and they have a suspect that they want people to
Speaker 1: look into, and it's all over the place. It's been
Speaker 1: shared multiple times, and they have claimed that they have
Speaker 1: shared this information with the authorities but never heard back
Speaker 1: from them, And in a lot of subreddits, like the
Speaker 1: Unresolved Mystery subreddit, whenever this person has posted it, it's
Speaker 1: been taken down. And I think the main reason for
Speaker 1: that is that they specifically name a suspect that they
Speaker 1: believe might have killed Tim, which you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: do on most subreddits of so that's probably why it's
Speaker 1: been pulled. But if you search hard enough, you can
Speaker 1: still find it in places.
Speaker 2: That is really interesting. I wonder what this person was
Speaker 2: attached to, like, do you know if there's any other
Speaker 2: crimes and what specifically it was that made them believe
Speaker 2: that this person was responsible for Tim's death.
Speaker 1: Well, they write a full backstory on the Reddit post,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to share it now. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say the suspects name. I'll just say that his
Speaker 1: name is Richard. That's what I'll call him, and it's
Speaker 1: an unusual last name. So I did a Google search
Speaker 1: on it, and this poster said that this guy Richard
Speaker 1: went to prison eventually for sexually assaulting a child, and
Speaker 1: I looked up his name and he is on the
Speaker 1: sex offenders registry. So this does check out. So I
Speaker 1: do believe that this person is real and that there's
Speaker 1: maybe a possibility he did something to Tim, but because
Speaker 1: law enforcement has never said his name, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to share it. So the story goes is that the
Speaker 1: person who left this had an uncle who lived in
Speaker 1: a remote area of Wisconsin far from where Tim's body
Speaker 1: was found. And apparently Stephen Kull, the person that found
Speaker 1: Tim's body, lived directly across the street from this person's uncle,
Speaker 1: so that's already an interesting connection. And the story goes
Speaker 1: is that this guy, Richard, lived nearby and was considered
Speaker 1: to be a pretty weird dude who would stop by
Speaker 1: the uncle and aunt's property uninvited just to hang out
Speaker 1: and just give them a very creepy vibe. And the
Speaker 1: story goes is that he kind of had a survivalist mentality,
Speaker 1: like they don't even know if he had a job.
Speaker 1: He kind of lived in a cabin in the woods.
Speaker 1: It would often poach animals, and they think that that
Speaker 1: was his source of food, that he would just go
Speaker 1: hunting and kill animals rather than buying it. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that there were always rumors throughout the area
Speaker 1: that he had a shack and that if any drifters
Speaker 1: came by, any young drifters, mail drifters, he would let
Speaker 1: them stay there. And some people think that this is
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting coincidence that Tim would wind up
Speaker 1: dead in the same area where this guy lived, and
Speaker 1: that this guy had a shack where he would have
Speaker 1: young men stay, and then many years later he would
Speaker 1: go to prison for sexually assaulting a young boy.
Speaker 2: So this is interesting. So are they positing that Richard
Speaker 2: knew to Tim and lured him to Wisconsin, or that
Speaker 2: he just kind of opportunistically met Tim when he was
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin, which still begs the question why was he
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the interesting part is the poster says that
Speaker 1: Richard was a pilot who had his own small plane,
Speaker 1: and apparently in the winter he would fly down to
Speaker 1: Florida whenever he went on vacation. I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of a weird detail because he's supposedly a survivalist living
Speaker 1: off the land who kills animals, yet he's got his
Speaker 1: own plane that he uses to travel to a different state.
Speaker 1: And because Tim was going to school to be an
Speaker 1: aeronautical engineer, this sounds like the type of guy he
Speaker 1: could have befriended that Tim went missing in the winter.
Speaker 1: He went missing in January. So theoretically, if Richard flew
Speaker 1: down to Florida cross paths with Tim, he could have
Speaker 1: said something to them saying that, Hey, I know you're
Speaker 1: interested in aeronautical engineering. I'm a pilot. If you want
Speaker 1: to join me in Wisconsin or something, I can show
Speaker 1: you some things. I could teach you how to fly
Speaker 1: or something. And that could provide an explanation for how
Speaker 1: Tim was lured to Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: If only we had phone records or something to tie
Speaker 2: them together a way that they were corresponding. Did they
Speaker 2: write letters if they were indeed familiar with each other,
Speaker 2: Because for Tim to go there, it would have had
Speaker 2: to have been for if he was lured for a
Speaker 2: pretty profound reason, because obviously his career was important to
Speaker 2: him in what he was studying, and he had to
Speaker 2: miss school in order to take this trip.
Speaker 1: Right Oh yeah, Like he was supposed to go to
Speaker 1: class on the very same day he went missing, and
Speaker 1: it might seem out of character for him to just
Speaker 1: take off like that and not tell his parents about it.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure like if he told them that story,
Speaker 1: they say, you've got this strange guy from Wisconsin who
Speaker 1: wants to fly you back there, and stuff like, no,
Speaker 1: you're not doing this. How do you even know this guy?
Speaker 1: So he probably thought, well, they're going to disapprove, so
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go on my own anyway. And he
Speaker 1: was nineteen at the time, he technically was i legal adult,
Speaker 1: so he could have used that as an argument. But
Speaker 1: I think the big hole in the theory is that
Speaker 1: if Tim cross passed with Richard and Florida, why did
Speaker 1: his car wind up in Atlanta, because if he caught
Speaker 1: a plane flight with him, why would he drive the
Speaker 1: car like four hundred and fifty miles away to a
Speaker 1: different state.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense why you would abandon your car,
Speaker 2: and it also doesn't make sense why you would need
Speaker 2: a bike. I don't get the story with regards to that.
Speaker 2: The connection is enticing when you have the fact that
Speaker 2: he's a pilot, he's a creep, and he's on the
Speaker 2: sex offender registry. It's plausible that he could have somehow
Speaker 2: kept in contact with him, But I just can't understand
Speaker 2: what would be the impetus for him to so impulsively
Speaker 2: act and go, I'm going to drive to Atlanta, dump
Speaker 2: my car there, and then go to Wisconsin and meet him.
Speaker 2: Like you would have to miss a lot of school,
Speaker 2: And I don't know what the program was like, but
Speaker 2: I can imagine that if you were to miss multiple days,
Speaker 2: you're going to be very, very behind, and you would
Speaker 2: need some sort of letter to excuse your absence. You
Speaker 2: don't get to just miss a chunk of days when
Speaker 2: you're in any type of schooling. And if that was
Speaker 2: important to him, like like you said, he's nineteen, he's
Speaker 2: an adult, he could have justified it with that, But
Speaker 2: I also think he's nineteen. He's kind of a kid.
Speaker 2: He's going to be more impulsive, and his frontal lobe
Speaker 2: isn't developed yet, so the type of behavior that we
Speaker 2: are seeing here isn't necessarily adult behavior. If he just
Speaker 2: acted impulsively, I could see a nineteen year old doing that.
Speaker 2: But he seemed responsible from what we know, But we
Speaker 2: know very little.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the one thing we do know is
Speaker 1: that his parents said that he never caused any trouble,
Speaker 1: though I'll use the disclaimer that family is a missing
Speaker 1: and murdered victims try to paint their loved ones in
Speaker 1: the best possible light, So maybe if he did get
Speaker 1: into trouble in the past, they downplayed it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the thing about the bicycle is that theoretically, maybe
Speaker 1: if like Richard landed his plane in a remote area
Speaker 1: without any roads, like Tim could have used the bicycle
Speaker 1: to go there. But that doesn't explain like why he
Speaker 1: would take the stereo out of his car and the
Speaker 1: tools out of his car, or why he would even
Speaker 1: drive to Atlanta to begin with, or why he would
Speaker 1: even need to drive anywhere, Like all he could do
Speaker 1: is just go to an airfield or something and then
Speaker 1: hitch a ride on the plane. So the theory is intriguing,
Speaker 1: but there's still a number of holes in it and stuff.
Speaker 1: And like you said, if you really wanted a career
Speaker 1: in aeronautical engineering, it's not very wise to just miss
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of classes unexcused just to travel to
Speaker 1: another state. No matter if this guy is going to
Speaker 1: give you some pointers. I mean, you still need that degree,
Speaker 1: you still need that education if you're hoping to have
Speaker 1: a career in that field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I find it very odd, Like you said that
Speaker 2: he owns this plane, but he's like living off the land.
Speaker 2: Where does one get the money to fuel a plane
Speaker 2: which is very very expensive, And where did they procure
Speaker 2: this plane in this and with what money? It seems
Speaker 2: really odd.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'll add the disclaimer that I don't
Speaker 1: know how much this information is true. The only part
Speaker 1: of the story which has checked out is that Richard
Speaker 1: is on a sex offender list. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if this person who left this post like met Richard personally.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they're getting all this information like third
Speaker 1: hand from their uncle and aunt who lived in the
Speaker 1: areas are saying all these bad things about him. But
Speaker 1: it does see if the story is correct that the
Speaker 1: uncle and Richard and Stephen call all happened to live
Speaker 1: in the same area where Tim's body was found. That
Speaker 1: is a pretty intriguing coincidence. And they even theorized that
Speaker 1: maybe one of the reasons that Richard would just show
Speaker 1: up on the uncle's property uninvited is that maybe he
Speaker 1: was scouting looking for a good place to dump a
Speaker 1: dead body if he ever killed anyone. But because they
Speaker 1: could not determine Tim's exact cause of death, we still
Speaker 1: can't even be one hundred percent certain that he was
Speaker 1: murdered to begin with.
Speaker 2: Beginning it totally reminded me by listening to this girl
Speaker 2: talk on this podcast and she grew up with Ted
Speaker 2: Kaczinski being their neighbor. He sounded like the exact same thing,
Speaker 2: like he would like creep onto the property and just
Speaker 2: like pop by make everybody feel uncomfortable and just like
Speaker 2: super awkward. Sounds like the same type of a vibe.
Speaker 2: Although Ted Kaczinsky wasn't letting mail drifters stay with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I know that he liked to live a
Speaker 1: life of solitude. I mean, I guess it's possible that
Speaker 1: Tim could have traveled to Wisconsin on his own and
Speaker 1: then just by pure coincidence, cross paths with Richard, who
Speaker 1: lured him into a shack or something and murdered him
Speaker 1: and disposed of his body. But we just don't have
Speaker 1: any evidence pointing in that direction. Like, in order to
Speaker 1: pin this crime on Richard, we just need evidence of
Speaker 1: how Tim got from point A to point Z, and
Speaker 1: so there are just too many pieces of the puzzle
Speaker 1: missing in order to say with any certainty that Richard
Speaker 1: murdered Tim.
Speaker 2: We just don't have a definite connection there. We know that,
Speaker 2: like vaguely, according to the source on Reddit, that Richard
Speaker 2: had a plane and would fly down to Florida, so
Speaker 2: like maybe they met, but the connection seems pretty tenuous
Speaker 2: at best, and it seems like they may be extrapolating
Speaker 2: from the fact that they know that Richard's this creep
Speaker 2: who's on the sex offender registry and probably weirds everybody
Speaker 2: out of the area, that Tim's body was found close
Speaker 2: and Hall lives close by, and it's all just seems interconnected.
Speaker 2: So I can see how somebody could wholeheartedly believe that
Speaker 2: Richard was involved, even though there really is nothing to
Speaker 2: go off of here except some like vague things like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's a pilot and has a plane. Maybe they met
Speaker 2: in Florida exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, the person writing these posts does seem genuinely
Speaker 1: passionate about it, and I think they're doing it out
Speaker 1: of frustration because they tried to send it into the
Speaker 1: authorities many years ago and get the sense that no
Speaker 1: one is listening to them. So I do wish that
Speaker 1: the authorities would at least look into this at the
Speaker 1: very least, and if they, if Richard was not responsible,
Speaker 1: they could at least rule it out, because according to
Speaker 1: the Sex Offender Registry, he's no longer living in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: He's living in another state and is currently in his eighties.
Speaker 1: So if he was the killer at the time, is
Speaker 1: running out to try to pin the crime on him?
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing from the investigator's perspective is I don't
Speaker 2: know if his death was ruled undetermined, but if it's
Speaker 2: not ruled a homicide, allocating resources to look into it
Speaker 2: when there's really no case to close. If it's the
Speaker 2: kind of undetermined, I doubt they put any emphasis on
Speaker 2: needing to resolve that. It's sort of like a limbo
Speaker 2: designation when you say undetermined, because if it's not a homicide,
Speaker 2: how do you put homicide investigators on the case. How
Speaker 2: do you tell them to then go investigate this when
Speaker 2: you aren't clear what the cause of death is and
Speaker 2: if he was murdered, if it was suicide, if it
Speaker 2: was natural causes. It's I think it must have been difficult,
Speaker 2: but I'm with you. I think that they should have
Speaker 2: at least just had some But he looked into it
Speaker 2: just really quickly, just to see if there was any
Speaker 2: sort of connection there exactly.
Speaker 1: And then we've talked about this that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of unexplained death cases that are in limbo where
Speaker 1: even though it's considered to be undetermined and the case
Speaker 1: isn't technically closed, that only means that no one is
Speaker 1: going to actively investigate it unless someone puts a good
Speaker 1: lead or tip that way that they can look at.
Speaker 1: I mean, another alternate possibility is that Tim could have
Speaker 1: simply died of exposure. And I do find it interesting
Speaker 1: that he was found wearing the same clothes he had
Speaker 1: on on the day he disappeared, which seems to indicate
Speaker 1: that he died a short time after he originally went missing.
Speaker 1: And let's not forget that no other clothing was found
Speaker 1: missing from his house, so he didn't take it with him,
Speaker 1: So it could be a case where he decided he
Speaker 1: wanted to go off on a trip and decided to
Speaker 1: go from Florida to Wisconsin. But after spending all these
Speaker 1: years living in California and Florida in this sunny climate,
Speaker 1: he greatly underestimated how cold it would be in no
Speaker 1: Wisconsin in January, so he wandered out into the remote
Speaker 1: area and died of exposure, and then they found him
Speaker 1: a few years later.
Speaker 2: I guess it's also possible that he ran into somebody
Speaker 2: in Atlanta and they killed him there and then drove
Speaker 2: to Wisconsin to dispose of the body, thinking nobody would
Speaker 2: make the connection. We just have like a myriad of
Speaker 2: possibilities here.
Speaker 1: Exactly no evidence pointing towards any of them. But it
Speaker 1: is possible that someone could have dumped his body there
Speaker 1: just to throw the investigation off the track, because it
Speaker 1: technically worked because no one when they found this John
Speaker 1: Doe thought it was a missing young man from Florida,
Speaker 1: and it was only by pure luck of it being
Speaker 1: featured on Unsolved Mysteries and Stephen call Watching that they
Speaker 1: managed to conclusively identify him. But of course this oply
Speaker 1: opens up the dilemma that if it wasn't Richer, then
Speaker 1: what actually did happen to Tim? And this is one
Speaker 1: of those cases where no matter how hard I try,
Speaker 1: I cannot come up with an explanation that makes one
Speaker 1: hundred percent complete sense.
Speaker 2: I'm with you, I honestly have no idea, and I
Speaker 2: think it's just comes down to the fact that there's
Speaker 2: way too many missing variables here to be able to,
Speaker 2: like venture an educated guess on what happened, Like, we
Speaker 2: don't know if there was mental health issues, if he
Speaker 2: had any substance use disorder, if he had any situations,
Speaker 2: any traumas, relationships that were very difficult or complex, any
Speaker 2: shame attached to anything, if there was any underlying motivations
Speaker 2: that might have had him might have had Tim leave
Speaker 2: his life in order to either start a new one
Speaker 2: or to end it somewhere else, maybe because he didn't
Speaker 2: want his family to have the pain of knowing that
Speaker 2: he ended his own life. He wanted them to hold
Speaker 2: on to the hope that he could be out there,
Speaker 2: or if he planned to meet somebody and they harmed him,
Speaker 2: or if he just planned to go to a certain
Speaker 2: location and somebody opportunistically harmed him. There's just so many
Speaker 2: different scenarios and I can't stick to one. It just
Speaker 2: seems so strange. And even if he did go to
Speaker 2: Wisconsin it ended up there, I can't decide if it
Speaker 2: was suicide or just exposure and he missed Judge the weather.
Speaker 2: Like you said, I'm very confused by this case exactly.
Speaker 1: I wish we knew more about Tim's background because in
Speaker 1: the Blair Adams case, which we talked about, we knew
Speaker 1: he was clearly having mental health issues when he left
Speaker 1: British Columbia, and he was obviously paranoid and thought that
Speaker 1: someone was trying to kill him. And that may have
Speaker 1: only been in his own mind. He may have been
Speaker 1: hallucinating and fabricating all these ideas that his life was
Speaker 1: in danger. But the fact of the matter is is
Speaker 1: he did cross paths with someone in Knoxville who killed him,
Speaker 1: but it may have had nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: reason he left. But with Tim's case, we can't even
Speaker 1: speculate on that at all because we don't know what
Speaker 1: his behavior was like before he disappeared.
Speaker 2: All we can do is throw out theories, but like,
Speaker 2: there's really nothing to connect any of them to the case.
Speaker 2: We could just throw out what could have happened, but
Speaker 2: we can't even speculate on like, oh, I think that
Speaker 2: this is likely what happened. Nothing is given in this case,
Speaker 2: and it just comes down to how little we know
Speaker 2: about Tim and how little we know about his life.
Speaker 2: Like you said, if we knew more like we did
Speaker 2: with Blair, we had some deep insights due to his mother.
Speaker 2: We knew about him having issues with his sexuality and
Speaker 2: issues with mental health, and how these things could have
Speaker 2: played into his decision, whether he was having a manic
Speaker 2: episode when he decided to make that drive. It seems
Speaker 2: like these things factored it in a way that made
Speaker 2: it easier for us to understand the why, whereas in
Speaker 2: this case, the why is completely unclear exactly.
Speaker 1: It's two mysteries rolled into one. Why did him wind
Speaker 1: up in Wisconsin? Why did he leave Florida to begin with?
Speaker 1: And how did he wind up dead? And like I said,
Speaker 1: this is probably the cases that I'm one of the
Speaker 1: cases I'm most fascinated with that has a limited amount
Speaker 1: of information, which is why I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: it here, and totefully, one of these days maybe someone
Speaker 1: will follow up on this Reddit poster's tip and maybe
Speaker 1: figure out if Tim was the victim of foul play.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad you shared this with me because I
Speaker 2: never of this case before, and the details are mind boggling.
Speaker 2: I also don't understand the how he got from Atlanta
Speaker 2: to Wisconsin, like maybe he took a bus, but maybe
Speaker 2: he didn't. There's just no guarantees here. Everything is tenuous
Speaker 2: at best. We've got no firm connections. His parents are
Speaker 2: now deceased, so we basically have his siblings left alive,
Speaker 2: Frank and what was his sister's name, I'm Michelle, Michelle,
Speaker 2: But they aren't speaking publicly about the case, so there's
Speaker 2: just so little we know about Tim. I just want
Speaker 2: so badly to know more.
Speaker 1: Me too, and hopefully we'll get a resolution to this
Speaker 1: case someday. But I did like seeing the look on
Speaker 1: your face when I mentioned that Tim was found in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: because you were legitimately shocked by that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was very shocked, like I expected, like Atlanta,
Speaker 2: maybe it's going to be somewhere close by, maybe in Georgia,
Speaker 2: that his body would be found. I did not expect Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: That totally blew my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, So that's why wanted to discuss this one.
Speaker 1: So before we wrap things up any more thoughts on
Speaker 1: Tim Malnar's case.
Speaker 2: No, I think we covered it all, and I'm with you.
Speaker 2: I just truly hope that Frankie Michelle get a resolution
Speaker 2: to this case because I can't imagine what it would
Speaker 2: be like knowing that your parents died without finding out
Speaker 2: what happened to your brother, and to know that they
Speaker 2: had another sibling that died very young, died what was
Speaker 2: the scenario He was an infant.
Speaker 1: I don't know any details, but he died when he
Speaker 1: was a baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah. To lose two siblings, right, that's got to be
Speaker 2: a lot for both Frank and Michelle. So I truly
Speaker 2: hope that in their lifetime they get the answers that
Speaker 2: they so deserve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, So I really hope to find out
Speaker 1: the answers what happened somedays. So if anyone out there
Speaker 1: has information, please try to contact the authorities. And if
Speaker 1: anyone working in law enforcement is listening, Please try to
Speaker 1: check out this reddit poster's tip and see if there's
Speaker 1: a connection between Tim and Richard. So that about brings
Speaker 1: an end to this month's bonus Patreon minisode. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, and we'll be back again next
Speaker 1: month for another Bonus minnesot