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the story I have for you today has quite literally been years in the making what
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we found was a possible serial killer at work 10 eily similar cases that had never been connected separated by
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jurisdiction and bureaucracy our story starts with one case the case that piqued our interest years ago and that
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is the murder of ree po on September 2nd 1989 the non-emergency dispatch line at the Shaban County
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Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin started to ring the caller won't give his name but
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he says earlier that morning like sometime before Sunrise he and his wife were walking in Nicholls Creek which is
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this like public hunting ground and they stumbled upon a dead body so the dispatcher asked like are you sure it's
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a human body and the man says quote Oh yeah it's been decapitated and it's been there for a while apparently now he
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explains that he saw the body about 100 ft off a public access road and when the
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dispatcher offers to get a detective on the line the man's like no no no no like
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I just found it I wanted to report it like like I I don't want anything to do with this basically right so he hangs up
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without identifying himself and leaves before authorities actually get to the scene where they do find the body that
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he described and it is in a particularly gruesome state so this victim is severely decomposed like almost
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mummified and the victim's head and hands are missing and it appears as if the corpse had been scavenged by animals
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and insects like the insides are literally hollowed out and the skin is almost like leather and other than the
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body though there is nothing else at the scene and despite searching far and wide
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they don't find any other body parts they don't find any clothes no personal belongings which makes identification
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essentially impossible but based on the pelvic bone of this victim the EM determines that
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this was a female and a small scar on her abdomen plus surgical Clips near where the gallbladder would have been
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tells them that this Jano likely had a gallbladder surgery there aren't any obvious markings or wounds on the body
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so the cause of death is undetermined and strangely the manner of death is ruled undetermined too ma'am she was
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Decap at how is that undetermined in any way I well I list everyone agrees with you like now but back in the day I guess
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the me so this guy named Dr Jeffrey Jensen says that the head and hands being gone that could be due to like
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animal predation and they didn't take her feet animals just came and took the things
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that could identify her I know it sounds bananas when you say it out loud but everyone back then was like well that's
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what the me says like he's the professional except yes he was a professional but he was new at his
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profession at the time and we actually talked to this doctor for this episode we asked him to review his own old
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findings and he said that if he could do it all over again with like what he knows now his experience he would
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definitely list her death as a homicide rather than leaving that line blank he said that in '89 again he's brand new to
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the job and in talking to us he admitted that there's like just no possible way that her head and hands were actually
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removed by animals so anyways almost 2 months later the wakasa county sheriff's office which is just over an hour south
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of Shaban they get a surprise when a hunter walks into their office with a severed hand in a bag now this man
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Russell Martin says that he was out with his son and their dog like pheasant hunting on October 21st in this big open
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field which by the way is also a public hunting ground when all of a sudden his dog starts acting super strange like off
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in the distance like he's not right next to him he's just like rolling around on
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the ground it's like I have Chuck I know he's rolling in something dead always like it's terrible so he's not coming
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when he calls him he goes over there to see what his dog's doing and he gets the
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shock of his life he looks at what his dog is so worked up over and it is a human hand it looked like a left hand
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mostly skeletal with four fingers and no thumb but thumb or no thumb there is no
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doubt what Russell is looking at so he actually he doesn't call police like they did with the body he like picks up
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the hand and takes it to the Sheriff's Office in like this little plastic baggie that he had in a first aid kit
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and then the sheriff comes out to like where he found it they end up doing this big search of the area which turns up
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the other hand but nothing else so basically in Shaban there's a body with no head or hands and in wera there's
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hands with no body exactly so wakaa actually tried getting fingerprints off off the hand to try and identify them
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but I told you it's like mostly skeletal like it's not even really possible but then I'm not really totally sure like
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which department it was someone has this like light bulb moment and it's like oh
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wait a minute exactly what you said like I wonder if these hands belong to that body that has no hands right now they
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couldn't definitively connect anything yet but like you know come on probably though even if they could say that these
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hands belong to the body like you still can't say who this person is can we at least call it a homicide
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because animals didn't take the hands and drive them 80 M away of course we could if they were determined to be
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connected right but they can't for sure say that like this is where DNA would be
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super useful right about now but in 1989 in rural Wisconsin like forget about it
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it's not until like 6 months later in April of 1990 that efforts are finally made to see if detectives can finally
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match the wera county hands to the Shaban County body and more importantly try and identify who they belong to so
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lab tests are done out of state but those ultimately come back inconclusive okay this might be a dumb question but I
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assume they've gone through all of their like cataloged missing people right not
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dumb question no but yes they have so there's nothing in either of these counties that fits the little
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information they have but after these inconclusive lab results investigators decide to broaden their search and I
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mean considering how far apart these remains are like clearly someone is willing to travel to cover their tracks
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here so they start looking as far away as Milwaukee which is a pretty big city with a lot more missing person reports
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and one of them really stands out there is a 35-year-old woman who was reported missing in August of 1989 named ree poan
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not only does the timing fit since she went missing about a month before the body was found but there is a note in
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her missing person's report about a gallbladder surgery scar that really raises some eyebrows and it's that scar
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that helps detectives confirm less than a month later what they'd been waiting almost a year to find out their Jane Doe
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is without a doubt reys poan but now they have even more questions because the circumstances around Reese's
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disappearance are truly bizarre now the story of her disappearance begins on August 10th 1989 so reea dropped her
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8-year-old daughter Charlie off with her sister Flavia who was Charlie's Aunt and
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I actually got to meet Charlie and even all these years later she says that she can still remember her last moments with
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her mom vividly and there are just certain parts of this episode I'll tell you right up front that I I want you to
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hear something directly from the person who lived it and this is one of those so
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here's Charlie I do remember that day and it's always kind of just replays in my head
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she told me I had to go to my aunt's house um that she was going to watch me and so we rode our bikes down she didn't
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live far from us and then we got there and I was like well I don't want to stay here I want to go with you and she's
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like no you can't this time you have to stay here and then I remember watching her ride her bike away and I kind of
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like I was mad and then I turned around and and that was the last time I saw her
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every place all the time and you know now I look back and like you know it's it's just kind of weird cuz it's
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I'm watching her you know right away not knowing that's the last time I would see her um but it's really hard
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when you you look back and you know that was the last time I was going to see her
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did your mom tell you why you couldn't go with her that day she just said you couldn't I just couldn't go with her
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that day that she had I I she didn't say Reese's brother Billy also remembers seeing Reese that afternoon on her bike
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and this is likely right after she dropped Charlie off but he's not totally sure of the timing he said they spoke
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for a second and REE seemed like she was in good spirit she told him that she was
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on her way to her boyfriend's house we're going to call her boyfriend Chris so Chris told Billy that Reese had
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stopped by his place and he puts that at like 2:45 3 p.m. which would have been right before he left for work and then
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Chris says that reys headed out on her bike in the direction of nearby National Avenue to go bar hopping and this is
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where things start to get weird because there was this trail of sightings and encounters and even physical signs of
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ree poan in the following hours but sometime before midnight she seemingly vanished Into Thin
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Air so much all of Reese Pan's last movements center around this one strip of establishments on National Avenue the
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first sighting of her there is actually around round Nish at a bar called the Golden Spike Tavern and apparently while
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she's there Reese seems pretty drunk or like just out of it now where she was from the time she left Chris's place to
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the time she got to this bar and how she got so drunk or whatever it is she was that's unclear there are no confirmed
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sightings of her during that period but the bartender at this bar says that around 10 or 11:00 p.m. Reese ends up
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leaving with this older man named Harry to go like sleep it off at at his house oh I don't like that so that was my
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first reaction too but apparently like it's not as Sinister as it sounds the bartender says that Harry lives like
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right around the corner from the bar and he's known I guess to let barflies kind
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of crash at his place if they're too drunk to drive home or in Reese's case bike home so she says that Rees just
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like grabs her backpack and heads out with Harry on foot did she leave her bike behind it would seem so and
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actually a few days later when her brother Billy is trying to retrace her last steps like on his own he does find
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her yellow bike up right across the street from Golden Spike Tavern it's possible she was there like in between
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that time we only me sightings of her but anyway according to Harry when he and Rees go to his backyard gate reys
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kind of like stumbles and drops her backpack in his yard so Harry like bends over he picks it up to like hand it back
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to her but before he even can Reese darted back toward National Avenue so Harry started walking back toward the
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bar to return her back to her and she's like out of eyesight by this point and when Harry gets back to the bar he sees
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actually Reese's flip-flops like neatly placed together on the sidewalk outside so he Scoops her shoes up planning to
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return those as well but when he gets inside of the golden spike Tavern she's nowhere to be found so he just leaves
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the items with the bartender do we know if ree ever made it inside the bar that's unclear but around 11:35 p.m.
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Reese encounters a woman named Shirley who works at the American Indian Council on alcoholism which is just down the
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road Road from the bars on National Avenue and I guess Reese was known to attend this Council sometimes so she
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wasn't a stranger to Shirley but Shirley says basically she's working a late night session and was approaching the
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front doors to leave when she sees Rees coming inside and she said that Rees was
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incoherent when she tried to speak with her she seemed to be under the influence
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of something but she didn't know what jley thought maybe it was drugs only because she said she didn't smell
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alcohol on her and she said that ree's words were like slurred when she's trying to talk to her she just wasn't
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really making sense but she seemed super agitated and jle says that she tried to
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talk to reys but ree sort of just like pushed her away and from there reys walked off without explanation without
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shoes in the eastbound direction of National Avenue now what's interesting is Charlie told us that her mom did
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drink a lot but the only drug she ever experimented with was pot and not even that often but maybe that's something
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that you keep from your kids totally possible but I will say the investigator on this case today his name's Detective
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Nathan hatch he says that that seems to kind of be backed up by other family members like not just her eight-year-old
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kid apparently re she did like to drink beer but she like wasn't into especially
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hard drugs which makes me wonder if someone like drugged her at the bar it makes me wonder too I mean it would be
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great to have other accounts of her behavior or what she said when she sobered up but this encounter with
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Shirley at 11:35 p.m. is the last known time that reys poan is ever seen alive she never shows back up at her sister's
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house at the agreed upon time to get Charlie so Flavia ends up taking Charlie back to Reese's apartment herself and
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not finding Reese there she ends up leaving Charlie with the downstairs neighbor Carla and Reese basically lives
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in this duplex so she lives on top Carla lives on bottom and Carla watches Charlie like pretty regularly since
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Reese Works full-time so it wasn't all that odd when Charlie got dropped off but what was odd was when Rees didn't
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show up the rest of the night or the next day on the 11th or the 12th I mean normally her routine was to pop by every
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4 hours or so to make sure everything was good when Charlie was with Carla but two days went by without so much as a
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word and Carla didn't think to tell anyone I guess not and we actually did get to speak to Carla and she wasn't
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able to remember exactly what she was thinking at the time but apparently she I think just assumed reys would turn up
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eventually now it wasn't until the 12th that she finally started to get concerned because that's when Chris her
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boyfriend Reese's boyfriend came by looking for reys apparently he and REE were in this like bowling league
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together and she had been totally Mia to their bowling alley date so he figured that something might be wrong but it
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really wasn't until that moment that he and Carla both realized how wrong things
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were so they raised a flag for her brother Billy and he came over to stay with Charlie until Reese came back but
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when she still wasn't there on the 13th the next day like all bets are off that Sunday August 13th Billy reported Reese
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missing to the Milwaukee PD and an investigation began and really it's like investigation light I should say because
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police call the local hospitals they call the jails but of course they don't find Rees in any of those and 5 days
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later at the suggestion of Reese's mother Zayn they pulled Reese's bank records which showed some transactions
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on August 7th and 8th and nth but nothing on the 10th or after which is kind of just confirming what they
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already knew also leave it to the mom to suggest like very routine basic investigative room I know yeah so in all
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that time that reys has been missing in almost the year before she was connected
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to that body showing up in Shaban the poan family to your point was like pretty much their own investigators like
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they were having to unravel her disappearance themselves like her brother Bly was actually the one who
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went and canvased the National Avenue bars in the early days when police wouldn't and he is the one who found out
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that her backpack and shoes were left at the bar with the bartender at the golden
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spike Tavern did Milwaukee PD do anything to search for her I mean at a certain point they like follow Billy's
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lead and start canvasing the bars themselves but I think that their lack of action probably can be attributed to
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two things number one 1989 Milwaukee was Prime dber Time like he gets gets arrested in ' 91 and listen he's like
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not connected to ree's story uh like even though we're talking dismemberments but it's just proximity and like really
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close proximity so interesting as we're like in Milwaukee we were like going to all the places that that like things had
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happened like the scene the bar she was at and as we're driving the detectives like oh by the way that was Dahmer's
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house like it's literally six blocks east of where Reese's boyfriend Chris lived but again just a coincidence that
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we stumbled across and I don't think police at any point were ever trying to even connect Reese to the dmer stuff
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back then even before he was like found right dmer targeted men like exclusively
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exactly but still again this is like Milwaukee py was zeroed in on that investigation and maybe didn't have the
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bandwidth to dive into Reese's case as they should have but the second reason that Rees wasn't getting the full force
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of the MPD behind her was likely because of who she was reys was an indigenous woman and a single mother and she didn't
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just leave behind Charlie she had three other daughters too Barbara Regina and Michelle they were a little older than
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Charlie they lived with different relatives out of town I mean Michelle was 11 when Reese went missing like she
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was living with her grandma she hadn't seen her mom since she was very little so all of the sisters had vastly
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different relationships with reys but her going missing still deeply affected all of them and actually the summer that
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Reese vanished Barbara was actually considering moving to Milwaukee to live with her mom and Charlie so they had to
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have been like pretty close or kind of close even though the relationship was long distance but all that to say I do
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wonder if Reese's scattered family played into this assumption that the police maybe had or were making about
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her life or her lifestyle and then just add on top of that assumption just a general apathy toward indigenous people
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as an adult reys was a member of the bad River Le Point band of the Lake Superior
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tribe of chipa Indians and there is no arguing that indigenous people especially those who go missing or are
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murdered are treated vastly different than their white counterparts and I can say it but here is where I want you to
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hear it from someone who has lived it so this is Reese's daughter Michelle this happens to our people all
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the time and they have reports of these Caucasian women that go missing nobody Parts about us it's like we don't exist
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and there's so many of our women sorry they're they're gone nobody knows where they're at we've been dealing with
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this for God hundreds of years and it's this is like something that really just touches my
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soul cuz it's sad that it's it's hit my my family so ree's disappearance didn't get
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much attention and not just from the police the Press at the time wasn't really talking about this missing mother
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either and for Charlie it sort of seemed like nobody cared about her mom who just
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up and vanished was very confusing cuz I I remember when I went to my aunt's house and she was missing for a while I
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remember being very angry and saying I don't understand why they can't find her like she's probably just down at the bar
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by our house um um did anybody go there you know have they looked there have they you know why can't they find her I
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remember being very upset that I just couldn't understand why nobody could find her at this point
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Charlie was living with her aunt uncle and their five sons and that situation was starting to feel more permanent it
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was a completely different world there um I was used to just being my mom and I and that's it and then all of a sudden I
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have five boys it was very different from what I had known and um we lived in the country um I was used to the city um
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it was it was a pretty big shift and then obviously not having my mom um but it was but it was nice you know it was
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different having all those people you know with you but um but I know they cared about me and stuff so um so it was
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good did Charlie had been living with her aunt for almost two months when the call from the Shaban County Sheriff's
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Office came in they had found Reese's body and Charlie still remembers what that conversation was like with her aunt
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and uncle when they told her they had sat us all down and they had told us that you know my mom's remains were
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found um and you know that she had been murdered and remember just sitting there
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and not knowing what to do it was almost like I was frozen and then I remember my my aunt was like it's okay to
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cry and then I started crying and and then I didn't I didn't know I know I couldn't process
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everything is I I remember telling my aunt that um I remember I had to help her home from the
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bar one time and maybe she was sick and she's like no you know somebody killed her you know and I was like oh okay yes
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that's right you know so I remember just being like very confused um and not totally
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understanding but it was like I didn't I didn't know what to think I knew they had found her torso and then
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I knew her hands and her skull were missing but I didn't totally know like where you know they found what um they
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would share things with me but I don't remember like a lot of the details um my anest they told
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me they always try to be honest with me um so I don't know if maybe I block some of
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it out but I don't remember you know them really telling me you know her hands are found here or her spells found
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here and tors found here um any of those actual details of um you know or oopsy or anything like that Reese's skull
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would end up being found more than a year and a half after Reese went missing in the Vernon Marsh area and this is
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about a quarter of a mile from where her hands were found but finding her skull doesn't progress the investigation much
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it's not like it's in a new location that gives them Clues plus the skull didn't show any markings or signs of
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trauma that would indicate even how Reese died is it weird that they didn't find the skull before possibly but I
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mean detective hatch took me to that Marsh and we were talking about the possibility of animal activity there
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like I mean it is this big Wildlife Area so animals could have easily moved the hands or skull for that matter
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now Charlie couldn't understand how anyone could have wanted to do this to her mom no one in their family could not
00:24:06
even detective hatch could because everyone he spoke with during the investigation had just glowing things to
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say about reys her co-workers at the Bradley Center where she worked as an admin assistant loved her her friends
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loved her there wasn't an obvious suspect well that is until police learned about Reese's boyfriend Chris
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and there was something that right off the bat set up some pretty big red flags it was a few of Reese's siblings
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who first became suspicious of Chris like again very quickly and for two reasons mostly one he had been dating
00:24:45
another woman at the same time as reys and apparently he started dating this other woman in July and then continued
00:24:52
to see her through September while ree was missing and two apparently his story kept changing like originally he told
00:25:00
police that the last time he saw ree she was biking away from his apartment heading south after visiting him on the
00:25:06
day inqu question but later he told police that the last time he saw her was in his apartment and that he never saw
00:25:12
her biking after that which is like small inconsistencies but they stuck out nonetheless and he also didn't have an
00:25:19
alibi for the night that Reese disappeared Chris originally told Billy and detectives again Billy is Reese's
00:25:26
brother he said that he was at work while Reese was at the bars now I don't know if they checked with his work but
00:25:33
even if they did his shift was scheduled to end at 11:00 p.m. we know that Reese
00:25:38
was last seen at 11:35 so he would have been off work at the time that something
00:25:41
happened to her yeah it's not really an alibi right also it comes to light that Chris apparently sold one of his SUVs a
00:25:48
few weeks after ree's disappearance and they tried back in the day to track down
00:25:53
this car which was a 1972 red and white Toyota Land Cruiser but they're never able to locate it which leaves them with
00:26:01
a lot of questions about not only Chris but specifically his car I mean without a doubt reys would have had to have been
00:26:08
transported right in a vehicle from Milwaukee all the way to where she was found in Shabu again so like there's
00:26:13
there's no way around that they need a vehicle and I mean what are the odds that Reese's cheating boyfriend's car
00:26:19
conveniently gets sold it stands out right after she goes missing right so Chris also told detectives that he by
00:26:25
the way had hunted out in the Vernon Marsh before for which is where her hands and her head end up being found
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and we know perss tend to dispose of things or commit crimes in areas where they're comfortable they familiar with
00:26:38
but the thing is they couldn't really tie Chris to Shaban or the Nichols Creek area where Reese's body was and on top
00:26:47
of that is there like a motive did he have a history of like violence or violence with her so I mean he admitted
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to slapping Reese one time and Carla the downstairs neighbor said she heard them
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arguing sometimes but she said it was like normal relationship arguing and I don't know what that means to Carla but
00:27:06
I don't think it was anything super violent in her mind I think that everyone who's maybe side eyeing Chris
00:27:13
maybe believes that if he had something to do with it it might have been just to
00:27:17
get her out of the way so he could date that other woman but even if Chris wasn't violent if she didn't suffer
00:27:23
abuse at his hand the thing I'll say about reys is that she had no known what life with an abusive partner was like
00:27:31
enter suspect number two Larry Larry was Reese's most recent ex before Chris the
00:27:38
two had started dating after ree gave birth to Charlie and Charlie actually grew up thinking that Larry was her dad
00:27:44
but he wasn't her actual biological father still he lived with Reese and Charlie in the early 80s and he
00:27:51
definitely had a temper like he was not only violent but also known to stalk re and here is Detective Nathan hatch as we
00:28:01
took a look at Larry he um he he stood out to us because he was abusive uh towards Reese not only do did we find
00:28:11
medical records of abuse where where ree had went to the hospital in laer Falls for abuse she had like a broken rib or
00:28:22
contusion on her face or broken fingernail that kind of thing on three separate occasions she reported her
00:28:27
boyfriend at that time um had abused her um um but we also found out that he had
00:28:35
dated a girl in Illinois who he was um abusive towards as well I was scared for my mom yep um he was always very loving
00:28:44
towards me and I never had an issue with being afraid of him um but I was definitely afraid
00:28:54
of of when they would start fighting um and it was really hard cuz I I knew how to call the cops right
00:29:03
away um I knew that at a very young age of how to do that and it's not something
00:29:09
the kids should know but when detectives speak to Larry they find out that he was
00:29:13
living in Illinois in the summer of '89 and so at that point they're like oh he's out of town they pretty much just
00:29:20
write him off okay where in Illinois though cuz this midwesterner knows that it's just a hop scoop and a jump from
00:29:27
Chicago to Milwaukee and and it was Chicago land like you're right but at the time I guess The Alibi seemed good
00:29:33
enough Larry's girlfriend says she was with him so like they're done with Larry but our reporting team recently got a
00:29:40
hold of Larry and he told us that when Reese disappeared they had already been separated for like 2 years and after he
00:29:46
moved to Illinois he says they didn't visit each other or really stay in touch he didn't admit to any abuse but he did
00:29:53
say that drinking was a big problem in their relationship and Larry told us that when he lived in Illinois that
00:29:59
summer he didn't have a car which was like implying that he couldn't have easily gotten back to Milwaukee now he
00:30:06
didn't explicitly say that he didn't visit Milwaukee during his stint in Illinois but he did explicitly tell us
00:30:12
that he did not kill reys and I assume Chris was denying any involvement in Reese's murder too yes and we tried
00:30:20
repeatedly to get in touch with him as well but no luck there he what I know is he told police back in the day that he
00:30:27
didn't have anything to with it like barking up the wrong tree did anyone ever search Chris's apartment or or even
00:30:32
Reese's apartment for that matter no and no I I know they did search whatever vehicle that Chris still had but they
00:30:39
didn't find anything in that and I know that Reese's daughter Barbara actually moved into her mom's apartment after she
00:30:45
went missing and she told police that there was nothing out of place there which again just like seemed like enough
00:30:51
for them like okay thumbs up so by this point to try and generate some leads in the homicide inves ation detectives put
00:30:59
out the news of Reese's identification to the local media and over the next 6 months a handful of tips come in dozens
00:31:07
of callers are naming people in the area that they're suspicious of or saying that they might have seen Reese that
00:31:13
night is there anything legit well it seems like maybe some of the tips could have been but again I go back to like
00:31:22
what are the reasons this case didn't get worked were they overwhelmed did they not care whatever Plus add the fact
00:31:27
that like detective hatch told us that the area she was in that night that she went out in had this like criminal
00:31:32
element to it so people were calling in with like all these like names of sketchy people who might have been
00:31:36
around National Avenue and for for all the reasons listed above I think things just got
00:31:41
like lost in the shuffle or again just like not paid attention to ignored whatever and none of these tipers are
00:31:47
even naming the same people so like every single one is different and you can't like prioritize who like five
00:31:53
people are saying it's this person everyone's saying something different so they fielded the calls they run down a
00:31:58
few of them and remember running them down is no easy task since they were having to make this isn't Milwaukee
00:32:03
Milwaukee had the missing person's case Shaban has the homicide so to go like try and find these people to go to the
00:32:10
bars like they're making the hours long trip down to Milwaukee where she was last seen every time they want to run
00:32:16
something down they don't even have the internet back then you know what I mean right now the only super interesting tip
00:32:22
is from a man who in a very roundabout and confusing way calls in at like 2:30 in the morning one day and tells the
00:32:32
dispatcher that he knows who killed ree he says that he was with his friend that
00:32:37
night and they picked Reese up and when she didn't do what his friend wanted his
00:32:42
friend pulled a knife on her and wait so basically this is a confession kind kind
00:32:48
of like a hearsay confession so basically the caller tells the dispatcher that like gives the friend's
00:32:54
name everything gives an address which by the way the address is extremely close to National Avenue where ree was
00:33:01
last seen and the dispatcher keeps trying to like get more details about this like murderer friend and this is
00:33:08
the caller says it's so wild he says you're talking to him right now and so the dispatcher immediately like wait
00:33:15
yeah you're telling me you killed her and he's like no no no no my friend did and the dispatcher asks like why he's
00:33:21
providing this information and he's like I'm just feeling really guilty and then
00:33:26
he goes on to say that he doesn't want to face jail time but again he's like I know my friend killed Reese because they
00:33:33
were together at the bush bar that night and like that's where his friend picked
00:33:38
Reese up and then the caller says that about 3 weeks after all this his friend told him what he did to her so he's not
00:33:46
even like he was there so a detective follows up on this call he actually figures out the name of the caller and
00:33:54
that phone number that he gave actually belongs to the caller's mom but guess what that is the extent of the detective
00:34:02
work this call basically again call it lost in the shuffle of other tips or whatever they just stop investigating on
00:34:11
that and things go quiet so wait did they rule this guy out no like the lead just stops getting
00:34:20
worse they just stop working on it yeah okay but if things go quiet this feels like the kind of thing you'd like Circle
00:34:27
back on when you have absolutely nothing else right but they don't which is like a
00:34:33
clear mistake because in early 91 some more tips come in one of them is anonymous but says that Rees was seen at
00:34:42
the bush bar the night she went missing where the caller said she had been right
00:34:46
which is and it's along the same strip of bars as everything else and they say she was seen there sometime around 9 p.m
00:34:52
and that she left with a white man potentially the caller who pseudo confessed and implicated his friends and
00:34:59
I know he's a white guy so like it feels very freaking interesting all of a sudden but when they're getting this new
00:35:06
tip because that other lead got just dropped they're not putting two and two together well we know she's seen after
00:35:13
nine as well and then like she's alone when she's last seen right but that doesn't mean that she didn't like meet
00:35:20
back up with someone so like I get I get what you're saying like she's not with him the whole time but they could have
00:35:25
reconnected I think anyone in her orbit that night is worth identifying and getting more information from though
00:35:31
there is another tip that they get from a woman who says that she knows about a group of people who saw Reese the night
00:35:38
that she went missing just before midnight which is even more interesting yeah that feels more promising yes she
00:35:45
says that this group of people knew Reese and they saw her walking barefoot on National Avenue now East would be
00:35:53
away from the bars but because this tip was thirdhand information detectives were never able to confirm either the
00:36:00
bush bar thing or this new sighting of her being with this group so in 1991 that's when the case officially goes
00:36:09
cold and all investigative work stops and that's it for another decade at least in 2003 there's this like little
00:36:20
blip a strange twist in the case one that I think throws everyone for a major curse
00:36:28
ball so in 2003 Shaban County gets a weird call from another Police Department in the region and they're
00:36:36
like hey there's this guy here saying that he knows something about one of your murders and this man is none other than
00:36:48
the previously Anonymous caller who first discovered Reese's body in the woods all those years ago and I don't
00:36:56
know what it is about here and now but all of a sudden he's ready to talk so he tells police that he was in Nicholls
00:37:03
Creek with his girlfriend by the way not his wife they learn like he previously said he says they liked to go there to
00:37:10
hook up also he says he has this like lowkey like marijuana patch and he's got to like check on his crops so that could
00:37:17
explain why he didn't want to give the cops his name like back in the day but police find this man suspicious for a
00:37:24
few reasons one is because when he first called in he noted that the body belonged to a woman like he said that
00:37:33
specifically I've seen the photos I've seen the state of decomposition I don't know how you could
00:37:39
tell that well you even said that it was determined that it was a woman based on
00:37:44
like pelvic pelvic and then there's the fact that this guy was known by the way to hang out at the bars on National
00:37:53
Avenue back when Reese died and some of his acquaintances were this same people who may or may not have seen Reese like
00:38:00
that group of people again there's like rumors about who they were his acquaintance could have been that group
00:38:04
of people how did they all know each other well one of the men who may have seen Reese around midnight or in the
00:38:12
group or whatever was reportedly selling pills to the girlfriend of the guy who found Reese's body and remind her she's
00:38:19
with him when Reese is found that feels too intertwined to be a coincidence right you've got somebody who's like at
00:38:26
the place where she goes missing and somebody who not only do we know they're familiar with the place where she was
00:38:31
they're the people who freaking called it in and like found her but even though this is like a weird like tangled web
00:38:38
detectives like don't seem to be able to untangle it so just as soon as it seems
00:38:44
like this case is heating up again it goes back on the Shelf with more potential suspects added to the list I
00:38:53
almost feel like if that guy who found her wasn't a part of what happened to re and maybe he like heard about it and
00:39:00
went out there looking to see if the rumor he heard was true you know like looking into like how legit it was right
00:39:09
and like um he did have that little like grow operation like I mentioned and again like grow operations maybe too big
00:39:16
of a word it's like a patch of marijuana out there so I don't know like I can't shake the feeling that it feels more
00:39:21
connected to me I also like can't shake the feeling of like why come forward all
00:39:26
those years later cuzz it's not like he's saying he knows who did it saying he knows more but like finding this body
00:39:32
is like Weighing on him you know what I mean I don't know more than if I found a
00:39:36
body and I and and you know I call police and they found it whatever and I wanted to be anonymous I don't think I
00:39:40
would come forward years later and be like I was called it it but nothing new to say right oh and one of the other
00:39:45
things I forgot to mention the reason I find it so weird is that in this guy's original call to police when he wouldn't
00:39:51
give his name he also said that it was dark when he stumbled upon the body and again like I said like this
00:39:58
body isn't in a state that you could tell the gender even under fluorescent lights let alone in like a pitch black
00:40:05
field right so all of these tips are coming in but for Reese's daughter Charlie it felt like answers in her
00:40:13
mom's case were further away than ever my family was didn't really want to talk about it
00:40:21
that it hurt too much and I understood that so I just kind of let it I go and I kind of you know it so many
00:40:31
years had passed and they never found anybody so I just assume well you know that's kind of just the way it is and
00:40:40
that's just you know there's not not going to be anything that comes of this I don't think I was too
00:40:48
hopeful of that anything would come of it so I just didn't want to maybe bring myself through that
00:40:58
pain of of not finding answers because it had been so long and I felt like there was nobody investigating
00:41:10
There Was You know I just forgot like she was forgotten over the next couple of decades they actually reopen the case
00:41:18
a handful of times when various tips come in but every time after a few months the case just ends up back on the
00:41:24
shelf and this goes on pretty much until 2017 when detective hatch is assigned the case almost 30 years later but even
00:41:33
then detective hatch is still working other Active cases for the sheriff's department so he's only able to focus on
00:41:39
Reese's in between those assignments in that time though he is able to check off
00:41:44
important things like in 2018 he sends a bone from one of the hands to a lab in Texas to definitively connect that bone
00:41:51
Tes then in 2021 audio cheuck enters the chat so that's actually when I hired our
00:41:59
reporter Emily she was our first reporter on my other weekly show the deck and she was planning a reporting
00:42:05
trip to Shaban County Wisconsin to cover some Deck episodes when she came across
00:42:09
Reese's case so she asked the sheriff's office for an interview about her because she could only find like one or
00:42:16
two loan articles about this woman and she was the only case in the county not on the Wisconsin Cold Case card deck and
00:42:23
we just kind of became obsessed so hatch said was actually Emily coming along that really sparked him to go all in on
00:42:31
this case but hi like in case you haven't looked at the calendar yet it's 2025 we have been playing the long game
00:42:37
hatch had to do the unsexy part of investigating first like digitizing the case File but when he was ready to start
00:42:45
the investigative work there was one person at the top of his list that he wanted to look into first and that was
00:42:52
Larry the ex mhm I I thought he was ruled out for being being just across the border in Illinois during's
00:43:00
disappearance right like that's again as yeah exactly but here's the thing so what I preach about hatch is he's like I
00:43:08
want to do my due diligence like I'm going to get The Alibi for myself and he sees what we see like he can't tell if
00:43:14
him being in Illinois was a like meaningful and honestly was that even corroborated by anyone when we talk to
00:43:23
him he says well I couldn't have done it I was in Illinois I was in Chicago um so
00:43:27
I talked to his girlfriend and I was able to um find out from her that she remembers the F pan Family calling her
00:43:39
house looking to see if they could identify where reys was right and um he didn't know or said he didn't know and
00:43:47
she recalls well he couldn't have done it because he was home with me but that I reminded her that the homicide didn't
00:43:54
take place you know within minutes or hours of that phone call so I wondered where he was prior to that and she said
00:44:01
about 3 or 4 days leading up to that phone call he was gone for several weeks at at that time so to me that just his
00:44:10
Alibi poof you know went away well that changes things exactly because think about it Chicago isn't that far from
00:44:18
Milwaukee if Larry had access to a car he could have popped into town easily of course Larry said he didn't have a car
00:44:26
but detective hatch actually found a driving infraction for Larry in Illinois that summer which proves that at some
00:44:34
point he at least had access to a car even if he didn't own it like semantics Larry Jesus so even though it's possible
00:44:42
it doesn't prove anything and hatch doesn't want to get tunnel vision he also wants help so in 2022 he goes to a
00:44:51
mmiw webinar where he finds out about the Bureau of Indian Affairs which is a federal agency that in part Works to
00:44:58
address issues like violence missing persons and other serious crimes affecting tribal communities so he
00:45:04
reaches out to them to get more eyes on the case and they're actually able to assign a special agent to help with the
00:45:10
investigation this guy's name is Michael Potter and together hatch and Potter reinw multiple suspects including Chris
00:45:18
including the caller who initially discovered rees's body and some men who popped up in initial tips and they
00:45:25
conduct a number of Po gra exams with help from the FBI and of the seven people total that they triy to give
00:45:32
polygraphs to four of them refuse three accept of the three who accepted only one showed deception and I guess this
00:45:41
was one of the guys who reportedly saw reys around midnight the night she went missing but then after he then refuses
00:45:49
to answer any further questions and all these guys are still alive they are that
00:45:54
which is like the wild part we don't often see that in cold listen we actually tried we're not all
00:45:59
of them we tried toct all of them nobody had any interest in talking to us but anyways around this time detectives also
00:46:08
finally follow up on that suspicious confession phone call from 199 finally yeah the one where the caller told the
00:46:14
dispatcher that his friend killed Reese after picking her up at the bush bar so they went to this implicated friend's
00:46:22
house and B you won't believe this but he lives not six houses away away from where Reese was last seen so detective
00:46:30
hatch actually took Emily and me on a ride along I mentioned that before and I'm not kidding I could be standing at
00:46:37
where the bush bar and alcohol Alliance used to be alcohol Alliance is where she's last seen and I could throw a rock
00:46:43
and hit this guy's front door which to me like makes this like mysterious friend actually a little more a lot more
00:46:49
a lot more interesting so when detectives pay him a visit in 2023 he tells them that he's not interested in
00:46:55
being interviewed he does admit to knowing the confession caller though and the cops actually play the call for him
00:47:04
right on his sto but he wanted no part of any of it and they say he became combative so that was that do they go
00:47:12
back to the confession caller himself they do he tells detectives that it's not his voice on the old recording call
00:47:21
like he he said like he's like you got the wrong person even though like it was pretty clear who it was and then he
00:47:26
refuses to take a polygraph and when detective hatch hands him his business card like hey if you change your mind
00:47:32
like we would love to talk to you the guy he's like I'm going to rip this up when you leave so cool and it's worth
00:47:38
noting like where this guy lived back when Reese went missing it was just a half block North of National Avenue like
00:47:45
specifically the same cross streets where the bush bar was so even he's super close and again I have to ask how
00:47:51
could this all be a coincidence I know tangled web I told you basically there's like a lot of smoke here but they can't
00:47:58
find the fire so in 2023 detectives track down Larry again they tried to talk to him in person now obviously he's
00:48:07
not in Illinois anymore it turns out that in the early 90s Larry moved back to Wisconsin and had been living in
00:48:13
Black River Falls with a long-term partner now initially he agrees to come in take a polygraph but then he ends up
00:48:20
changing his mind no go but by this point some polygraphs given some interviews ripping up cars s hatch is
00:48:28
invested so in September 2023 he gets Crim Stoppers to put up 11 billboards with ree's picture and information and
00:48:36
he even gets some put up near Larry's house last we spoke to hatch he had interviewed about 45 more people in
00:48:44
connection with the case and while he was busy doing that Emily was doing some of her own work on this case but also on
00:48:52
the other cases because like hi again we have the deck we're trying to collect cases from all over for another weekly
00:48:58
show like you have to be juggling like 10 cases at a time and I'll never forget this moment we were in the office and
00:49:05
Emily comes in I'm like in the conference room and she's like hey I think Reese's case might be connected to
00:49:12
a bunch of others and I think there might be a serial killer in Wisconsin that nobody knows about except for me