00:00:06
hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is [Music] morbid this is morbid I hate carbonated
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water were you making fun of me no unintentional were you making fun of me I wasn't I
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just took a sip of this water that I just found in the fridge which was really bold of
00:00:39
me it was really old of Me no bold I thought he said old of me like old people just find I mean old
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people do just be finding things in the fridge so fair enough that's very agent of
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me very bold of me to just grab this water it is old as well but it's water so but anyway it's gross I don't like it
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and I don't know why no I do know why it's the carbonation it's definitely just that if
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you drink does water go bad no no okay so if you drink carbonated water I don't trust you Mike's dying you drink
00:01:20
Sparkling Water that's different that is that is spark no no it's sparkling carbonated water yeah different
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sparkling carbonated you just sparkling this is way more this is way more do you guys hear
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her take would you like a sip it's horrible I'm sorry I need to add my mic in I need to people to hear me I need to
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defend myself not only did she call me old last week on the rewatcher I did I didn't call you old I asked if you
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had ever taken a Scantron test there's a difference essentially said were you around when cars were invented
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you know what's actually crazy is you still haven't answered the question of were you around during Scantron tests of
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course they've been around since like the 70s I didn't know that I thought they were new because one no genuinely
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one day we were taking regular tests like Circle A B C or D like just on the paper and then all of a sudden in high
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school they were like we have to conserve paper so we got this smaller paper Pap for you and we're going to
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give you a test and this paper do not Circle the answers on the big packet only put them on the Scantron so I said
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oh these must be new and that's sparkling water and Scantron um well I can I can tell you an
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a thing about being old what's up I could tell you a thing or two I'll tell you about being old we were at um
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Storyland uh recently I was with my family certainly wasn't but uh the things you do when you when you get kids
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I know that's how the kids put it that's how they put it but we were there and there's this ride it's like this little
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it's like in a fire It's like got fire trucks outside of it it's like in a fire it's like in a it feels like it's in a
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fire to be quite honest it's in the middle of would I rather be in a fire maybe but it's I really don't like theme
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parks but so unhinged that was a joke everybody but look it up these fire trucks are like the old timey fire
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trucks outside of the ride and so one of my girls was like oh what are these and
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I was like oh this is what fire trucks used to look like and she goes mama is this what fire trucks look like when you
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were little was that the littlest and I said baby oh no these are like from 1910 wait now I to what they looked like
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and no it wasn't my it wasn't even my littlest that's that's the r middle or oldest uh oldest wow yeah I would put
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that on middlest or Littlest middlest or Littlest yeah ask me like old timey fire
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trucks damn hold on I'm looking up a picture like the ones you see in parades yeah like the ones you see in parades
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she said did they the mama did they look like this in the 80s yeah did they look
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like this when you were little I was like nope they sure I was like no they just looked like regular fir trucks when
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I was little I'm not that old well what's [ __ ] crazy is our kids are like wow you were born in the
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1900s yeah I don't have kids but my kids will say that somay I'm like our kids are all our kids are saying that people
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are like ash you don't have them well speaking of can't really segue that no it's not
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segue I tried I didn't that's why we drink say itoo it's not suable it's not suable um
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I have a more recent case it's not old it's not old there you go it is from the 1900s so sorry so I guess it is a little
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old it's a little bit old it's older than the 9s right yeah it's the '90s it's older than me a little bit but um
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it's a cold case and it's a very interesting case I don't oh no actually I'm sorry I don't have your username but
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I the the reason I found this is because I saw somebody on comments be like oh you should cover this oh hey hey
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somebody who said that I'm covering this thank you for saying that yeah thank you
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for saying that I should have written your name down but I am I don't know your username but you rule know who you
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are exactly yeah it's it's just me it's how I roll it's just me but as you could
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tell from the title we're going to be talking about The Disappearance of the Springfield 3 it is a very like chilling
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haunting case yeah I only know the the the gist of this case and it's always fascinated me yeah it is I I had heard
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the name before but I didn't know any details whatsoever and it's just creepy yeah so let's get into it on the
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afternoon of Saturday what I said let's do it sorry what I said it as you began I was like uh oh in my head I was like
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Oh no you're talking while she's talking talking and and she's going to say what
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what on the afternoon of Saturday June 6th 1992 friends and relatives of kaboo high school's graduating senior class
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gathered at I think it's the Hammond's Student Center for the graduation ceremony so everybody was getting
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together graduating you know yeah the vitamin C song was playing even though it hadn't happened yet is that the like
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as we grow as we go not as we grow old I think it's as we go on we remember that
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reminds me of the end of laga beach yes what what but that hadn't happened yet no anyway among the graduates were
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19-year-old Susie streer and her best friend 18-year-old Stacy mcau when the ceremony wrapped up later that afternoon
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they made a quick stop at home to change into some more casual clothes and then you remember you headed out to go to all
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the senior parties the graduating parties yeah why didn't I remember what that was called the senior parties the
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gradua senties so for Susie and Stacy the first stop that night was at the home of their
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friend and fellow graduate Janelle Kirby she lived in Battlefield Missouri just outside of Springfield so it was like a
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little bit further away but not crazy earlier that day they all made plans to meet up at Janelle Kirby's house that
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night and then they were going to walk to a party that was being held at the home of another student near by so they
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were really just going to be like making their rounds that night going to a couple different parties and then the
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plan was to drive to Branson and get a hotel room they were going to meet some more friends kind of hang out and then
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the next morning they were all going to be going to a water park together however just a few hours into
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the evening Janelle Kirby called her mom to say that they actually changed their
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minds and instead of getting a hotel room they were going to go to a few more parties and leave for Branson in the
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morning instead okay so after a little while all three girls moved from the party in Battlefield to another grad
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party back in Springfield around two in the morning after bouncing around between all the parties the three girls
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ended back up at Janelle Kirby's house so they were going to be staying at Janelle's for the night but when they
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got there they realized that her house was full of relatives who had come into town for the graduation and Susie and
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Stacy didn't want to impose on their friend's family it would have been like really tight quars anyway so they
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decided to go to su's house and Susie had just gotten a king side water bed delivered as a graduation gift from her
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mom and she was really really excited to show her friend dude water beds were the
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[ __ ] holy [ __ ] I will never forget yours as long as I live yes and everyone's
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parents had water beds I remember all my friends parents had like those Wy water
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beds that felt like you were like in the middle of the ocean remember you could like hear it like you would like flop on
00:08:54
your bed oh yeah it would literally was like like it why it was crazy why did we
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all think this was great and remember when your started leaking it was gone bad news bear is
00:09:04
when it starts leaking that's when you got to get out of you got to get out of Dodge at that point yeah it's like
00:09:09
Christen cavaler and luguna Beach your water bed is gonzo dunzo dunzo it's dunzo dunzo but yeah how freaking cool
00:09:18
is that that her mom got her a water a king-sized water bed for graduation the best so Susie was like I got to show
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this to Stacy so honestly this works out so a little after 2: a.m. Janelle Kirby
00:09:28
waved goodbye to were friends as they pulled out of the driveway and unfortunately that would be the last
00:09:33
time she would see Stacy or Susie again so let's talk a little bit about both girls Susie streer was born in March of
00:09:41
1973 she was a pretty typical teenager with a somewhat atypical history she was raised by a single mother who was
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working with a limited income the family had actually moved from Spring uh to Springfield from Seattle in 1980 and not
00:09:56
long after Susie's mother Cheryl ended up marrying her her stepfather Don levit their relationship lasted 9 years but
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they ended up getting divorced in 1989 and according to friends Susie quote seldom talked about her father or her
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stepfather who had left town after the couple divorced and hadn't been heard from since oh yeah interesting sounds
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like kind of a poo poo head yeah while her relationship with her stepfather doesn't really appear to have had any
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kind of big influence on her life her relationship with her mother was always strong and Cheryl her mom was a constant
00:10:28
source of support for Susie at the time of their disappearance Janelle Kirby's mother Cathy told reporters Susie's very
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protective of her mother and vice versa so like they really looked out for each other despite the support she had at
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home Susie did struggle pretty often at school she had a learning disorder that made her feel like she was something of
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an outsider and she also felt like she didn't really have a lot of friends oh I know bad which all of these women like
00:10:55
the two girls and the mom are gorgeous so the fact that she felt like an outsider I'm like no yeah uh-uh you're
00:11:01
smart and great and beautiful but family friend Janet Olivera said she was a very
00:11:06
sensitive girl she felt like she wasn't part of the In Crowd but what she did lack in quantity of friends was
00:11:12
definitely made up for in quality particularly her best friend Stacy McCall which I think is more important I
00:11:18
think so too I think you realize that the older you get you do yeah it's liter it's that's the thing it's the you do
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realize that probably a little too late in life more most the time yeah but it's
00:11:31
it is it's the quality you don't need a bunch no you need a handful as if you have isn't that like an old saying of
00:11:38
like if you can count your friends on one hand you're lucky yeah yeah yeah so we're [ __ ] lucky every you guys are
00:11:44
so lucky we have two friends in this room right now hell yeah thank you for being a friend yeah anyway I don't know
00:11:52
what's up anyway it's a Golden Girls theme song it's the carbonated sparkling water it is the old carbonated spar
00:11:59
sparkly water exactly but like Susie streer Stacy was a quintessential 1980s American Teenager
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she was obsessed with fashion she loved tanning she loved music Metallica was her favorite along with gu Brooks I just
00:12:15
went to the Metallica concert I thought that was a good way to slip that in yeah
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it was awesome and she was described by many people as bubbly and outgoing a yeah although they were a year apart in
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age Susie's learning disability had put her in the same grade as Stacy and they became fast friends at actually a young
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age they met like it seems like in grade school yeah throughout Elementary School
00:12:35
Stacy Susie and Janelle the one that they were hanging out with earlier they were inseparable and they spent almost
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every afternoon and every evening together but when Stacy was 11 years old her family moved out of state for a few
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years and when they returned they kind of had drifted apart a little bit actually they had only recently
00:12:52
reconnected and become close again in the months before graduation oh so during her senior year Susie was
00:12:59
actually living with her older brother Bart about halfway through the school year though they got into a quote
00:13:04
unquote heated argument and a few months before graduation she ended up moving back in with her mother Cheryl huh yeah
00:13:11
it I couldn't find like a lot about yeah it's probably hard to yeah but anyway she moved back in with Cheryl Cheryl L
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it was really happy to have Susie move back into the house they had always been super close like I said really
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protective of each other in the few years since she had gotten the divorce Cheryl had rented out a room to single
00:13:28
tenants in the house to subsidize her income she was a hair stylist but she wanted to bring in some more income yeah
00:13:34
so she was never really lonely cuz there was always somebody living at the house
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but those relationships obviously were nothing compared to the one that she had with her daughter of course so she they
00:13:43
really didn't have a lot but Cheryl worked really really hard for everything they did have and she was also always
00:13:49
happy to spend a little extra money on her daughter like the king-sized water bed she bought her yeah other than her
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daughter Cheryl had a few close friends but after her divorce 1989 she didn't date she really didn't socialize much
00:14:02
instead she was focusing on some home renovations around that time she had been slowly completing them around the
00:14:08
house in her free time friend Janet Olivera said she didn't know how to fix half the stuff but she taught herself
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damn Isn't that cool what a badass yeah handy woman literally that night after having dinner with Susie Cheryl cleaned
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up the dishes from dinner and having the house to herself she decided to finish hanging some wallpaper and varnishing a
00:14:26
chair damn which like that's if you you ever had to [ __ ] hang wallpaper oh I was just going to say that is no easy
00:14:33
feat that alone like to Varnish a what is varnishing varnish a chair it's like to put that
00:14:40
like um transparent like top coat on like varnish it makes it like that shiny so to do that on top of wallpaper yeah
00:14:49
badest be badest be bad as be good for her yeah so she was working on that that night a little after 11:00 p.m. she
00:14:56
called a friend and they talked about the projects that she was finishing and and then presumably she went to bed the
00:15:01
next morning Susie and Stacy like I said made plans with Janelle and several other friends to go to that water park
00:15:06
over in Branson and they were all going to meet at Janelle's house in the morning but when morning came Susie and
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Stacy just didn't show up Janelle said I started getting worried because Stacy she's so responsible and so is Susie so
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a few hours later when they still hadn't heard from their friends Janelle and her
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boyfriend Mike Henson decided to go to Cheryl streeter's house to make sure everything was okay the first thing that
00:15:29
Janelle noticed when they arrived at the house was that the glass globe on the porch light had been shattered and there
00:15:35
was glass scattered across the front porch the bulb itself it was intact but like the globe around it was completely
00:15:42
broken that's yeah that's creepy super creepy especially because the bulb was intact yeah I I really wonder if it was
00:15:49
like unscrewed a little bit though like um in the strangers yeah like if they smashed the globe to get to the thing
00:15:55
yeah that's all I could think of yeah or I don't know if it was just like smashed
00:15:59
in some kind of struggle yeah but anyway Janelle remembered that quote unquote as
00:16:03
a favor to Susie's mom her boyfriend Mike grabbed a broom and swept up the glass and dumped it in the garbage you
00:16:09
would not think anything of that no in hindsight investigators believe that the broken glass could have been an like
00:16:16
could have contained some kind of important clue but at the time Mike was just concerned that somebody might cut
00:16:21
their foot or get cut somehow so he threw it away but unfortunately he potentially did throw away valuable
00:16:28
evidence having any idea literally completely unknowing as far as Janelle could tell everybody's cars were still
00:16:34
parked in the driveway and when she peered into the living room window everything looked normal but she was
00:16:39
like what's going on like they were supposed to meet me did they over sleep so she tried the front door and she
00:16:44
found it unlocked and she cracked the front door and when she did Susie's dog Cinnamon started barking and appeared to
00:16:52
be in a pretty agitated state only calming down when Janelle opened the front door further and he recognized
00:16:58
Janelle like he knew who she was so he calmed down yeah Janelle said she started to yell to them calling out to
00:17:04
see if anybody was in the house but the house was completely still completely quiet she got no response o That's
00:17:12
chilling yeah so to Janelle who had been in the house countless times nothing seemed out of the ordinary other than
00:17:18
the fact that they didn't seem to be home but there were a couple things that didn't or that did catch her attention
00:17:24
su's bedding had been pulled back like somebody had slept in the bed all the cses of all three women were piled on
00:17:31
the steps leading to su's room huh and Susie and Cheryl's open cigarette packets were on the counter the two were
00:17:38
said to be pretty heavy smokers and they didn't go anywhere without their packs of cigarettes so this was already like
00:17:44
so that was weird definitely yeah so as they were walking out the phone ring the
00:17:49
home phone that was when people had the the landline the landline if you will and Janelle ran to answer it hoping that
00:17:54
it might be her friends but the voice on the other end of the line was a man or at least a male and Janelle would later
00:18:00
describe the caller as sounding like a teenager the caller immediately launched into just like a barrage of offensive
00:18:07
comments and sexual inuendos what the [ __ ] so she hung up and they left the house that is that series of events is
00:18:14
so creepy it's so creepy and they found out later that Cheryl and and Susie had been getting calls like that really yeah
00:18:22
like just yucky prank calls is what they thought they were and still like it's it's nobody's really sure if it connects
00:18:30
to the case or it was just like a separate like gross thing happen coincidence so finding nothing super
00:18:37
alarming at the house obviously it's alarming that they're not there but it doesn't look like there's a sign of
00:18:41
struggle beyond the glass Janelle and Mike decided to stop by their friend Shane's house hoping that the girls
00:18:47
maybe got confused about the plan where they were supposed to meet and were there but when they got there Shane said
00:18:52
he hadn't seen them he hadn't heard from them nothing so they were kind of frustrated and ended up going back to
00:18:57
the Streeter house and found it exactly as they left so they set out to look for
00:19:02
the girls around the neighborhood thinking maybe they walked somewhere to get lunch something like that at the
00:19:07
time remember these are like 18-year-old kids who just graduated high school it didn't occur to Janelle or Mike that
00:19:12
something could be super super wrong here no cuz especially at that point you're not you think you're invincible
00:19:18
and all your friends are too exactly nothing bad can happen and it's just like oh like something weird must be
00:19:22
going home but we'll figure it out yeah so around that time Janelle was walking through Cheryl streeter's empty house
00:19:28
stac 's mother Janice McCall was getting irritated that she heard had not heard from her daughter since the previous
00:19:34
night she called to say there had been a change of plans and she would be staying
00:19:37
at Janelle's house because at that point they were still going to be staying there okay so Janice called the Kirby
00:19:42
house and asked to speak to her daughter assuming that the girls maybe just got a
00:19:46
late start yeah but Janelle's sister explained that Stacy and Susie hadn't actually stayed there the night before
00:19:51
because the house was so crowded and as far as she knew they had actually gone back to Susie's house so Janice is
00:19:56
frustrated cuz she's like okay Stacy didn't call me tell me this yeah it'd be frustrated and I'm trying to track her
00:20:01
down so she called su's house and left a message on the answering machine instructing her daughter to call her
00:20:06
back as soon as she got the message a few hours passed and Janice McCall was finally able to get a hold of Janelle
00:20:12
Kirby who told her that they had gone by the house and they couldn't find Stacy or Susie or for that matter Cheryl
00:20:19
anywhere so Janice placed several more calls to the street our house just leaving increasingly frantic messages
00:20:25
like why aren you calling me back where are you to call me a short time later she got a call from the mother of one of
00:20:32
Stacy's other friends informing her that the girl's cars and purses were actually
00:20:36
still at the Streeter house so now convinced that her daughter was just being irresponsible and maybe like she
00:20:42
like slept in or you know yeah exactly blowing her off she called her other daughter and together they grabbed the
00:20:49
spare car key and drove over to the house the plan was for Stacy's sister to drive Stacy's car home and Janice would
00:20:57
grab her purse effectively leaving her daughter just like confused and Stranded Janice said I was going to let her look
00:21:03
for her car and clothes I thought that serves you right you didn't let me know anything and I won't let you know it was
00:21:10
the 90s exactly so she might have been angry with her daughter on the way there you
00:21:17
know when she left for the Streeter house but by the time she reached the house that anger turned back to worry oh
00:21:22
I'm sure in the several hours that had passed since Janelle had first checked on her friends The Streeter house had
00:21:27
filled up by this point with concerned friends and fam is all looking for signs of Susie Stacy or Cheryl as Janice went
00:21:35
through the house the same signs that seemed odd to Janelle were now concerning like she was like what the
00:21:41
[ __ ] cuz now it's turning into like more time has passed by other people are worried yep yeah and not only had they
00:21:48
left their cars and their purses behind but Stacy also left back uh left behind some of her clothing that she'd been
00:21:54
wearing the night before and her migraine medication which she always had with her honey you're not going anywhere
00:22:01
without that I thought of you if you have migraines I have exender Migraine with me literally 24/7 it was still in
00:22:08
her purse and Janice was like there's no way she would have gone somewhere without that and there's no way they
00:22:13
would have gone somewhere without their purses Susie and Cheryl wouldn't have gone without their cigarettes like
00:22:18
there's all these different signs now so Janice hit play on the answering machine
00:22:23
and waited through her own messages that she' left before she quote heard a man's
00:22:27
voice who was saying very unpl Pleasant things so this person who know I I'm assuming it was the same person that
00:22:33
Janelle had picked up the phone for this person called back and left a message I'm sorry I think there's something
00:22:39
there I think so despite the obvious red flags nobody's Minds had turned to outright
00:22:45
panic yet when one woman suggested that they make a pot of coffee to keep everybody going Janice thought I don't
00:22:51
want to do that what's Cheryl going to say when we're sitting in her kitchen drinking her coffee I don't blame her
00:22:56
never thinking that Cheryl might not be coming back oh so after calling all of her daughter's friends that she could
00:23:02
think of Janice finally called her husband Stu and she said there's something not right something is really
00:23:07
wrong and Stu agreed and suggested it was time to call the police and report the three women missing yeah Janice
00:23:14
still couldn't accept at that point that something bad was happening or might have happened to her daughter so she
00:23:19
didn't want to call 911 she felt like it was unnecessary she later said I was still waiting for them to come in well
00:23:24
and it's it's hard when you realize you have to call 911 and it's situation it's
00:23:29
scary it's not yeah it's very scary and you're always worried about overreacting
00:23:35
even though like we say it all the time overreact and underreact and but it's easier said than done totally it really
00:23:41
is every time I've ever had to call 911 it's been a very scary experience you have an internal battle with yourself
00:23:47
you're like am I over yet am I supposed to be doing this like yeah cuz it's meant for emergencies and you really
00:23:52
like you don't want to waste somebody's time no and resources of like you know and it in a situation like this
00:23:59
where you're battling back and forth of like is this really [ __ ] up or is this
00:24:04
not am I just going to call and say I don't know where they are and then they're going to come back from like a
00:24:08
day at the beach and we're going to be like sorry okay our bad yeah and you also don't want to admit to yourself
00:24:13
that it's an emergency definitely not so instead of calling 911 she called the police department's main line and she
00:24:18
asked the dispatcher to send an officer out to the house as soon as they could a
00:24:22
few minutes later luckily they they responded pretty quickly Springfield Police Officer Rick Bookout pulled into
00:24:27
the already CR a driveway at Cheryl streeter's house cuz now everybody's there a three-year veteran of the police
00:24:34
force Rick booko wasn't too alarmed when the call came in about the missing women
00:24:39
but despite the lack of evidence when investigators did arrive at the house they just felt like something was
00:24:45
different something was interesting yeah well there's so many people in there like tramping all over the place that's
00:24:51
the thing this if it was a crime scene like who really knows they there's no evidence now it's
00:24:57
been trampled it's like the um Jean B Ramsey kind of scene where everybody just walking around mhm exactly so book
00:25:06
out noticed that Susie and Stacy's cars were in the driveway and Cheryl's car was also there it was in the garage just
00:25:11
like Janice McCall had said as he walked through the house he noticed all the other Oddities that had been delayed to
00:25:16
the the dispatcher jewelry by the bathroom sink the unmade bed that looked like it had been slept in and so on
00:25:23
Springfield police captain Tony Glenn said the only thing unusual about this house was that three women were missing
00:25:28
from it you had this feeling as you looked around that something was missing that something had to be missing but
00:25:34
there wasn't just them so like tons of valuables still around the house like you know like jewelry and that kind of
00:25:40
thing cars purses I'm assuming wallets in the purses there people missing just people missing like they it was like
00:25:46
they up and vanished and it's like people that would have taken some of these things with them exactly so
00:25:51
Bookout got started by talking to Janice and Stu Mcall who explain or M excuse me
00:25:56
who explained that their daughter had gone out with friends the night before to celebrate graduation and hadn't come
00:26:01
back the next morning when they were all supposed to leave for the water park so
00:26:04
he he got that story and then he walked around the house with Janice at his side
00:26:08
this time so the scene seemed to be telling a story of a household that had started the routine of getting ready for
00:26:13
bed but was interrupted at some point jewelry and makeup were removed there was literally like dirty makeup wipes at
00:26:19
the scene clothes were changed TV was turned on and this is so [ __ ] creepy because it was the '90s and whatever
00:26:26
they were watching had played through by the the time everybody started like arriving at the house it was on that
00:26:31
snow do you remember how like when your movie was over it would go to the blue screen and then the
00:26:37
snow yeah yeah something about that I was like I hope you guys muted it oh mhm it was just like they had just vanished
00:26:47
like I said yeah but most concerning like we said was that they had all left their purses containing essential items
00:26:54
like identification medication all that kind of stuff behind and they hadn't just been left on a
00:27:00
chair or somewhere that you know you might throw your purse they were stacked like piled together on the stairs
00:27:06
leading to su's bedroom yeah that's weird yeah it seems weird to me too right yeah and Stacy's overnight bag was
00:27:12
on the stairs too officer Bookout casually suggested that you know what did they suggest in the 90s they
00:27:17
probably were just gone having fun oh yeah don't worry about it just forgot to call and forgot their purses and you
00:27:24
know forgot everything but Janice pointed to her daughter's clothes that were ped up by the bed and she said if
00:27:29
she is she's in her underwear like literally looked at the the cop and was like yeah no yeah do you
00:27:35
think my daughters out there in her skibbies I don't think so no so by the time Bookout had finished his
00:27:40
walkthrough of the house other officers arrived and started he started bringing them up to speed on what he knew it was
00:27:45
clearly a missing person's case but despite the lack of evidence or the presence of anything suspicious they
00:27:51
couldn't shake the feeling that these women hadn't gone missing voluntarily yeah there's something off here and this
00:27:57
suspicion was unintentionally conveyed to the families when Bookout asked Janice McCall whether they could get
00:28:03
dental records for her daughter or not oh she said I thought if they want dental records They want to identify my
00:28:09
daughter they thought my daughter could be dead oh that's awful I can't imagine what an awful feeling no finally after
00:28:15
they' cleared the house of friends and fames Bookout locked the doors and the windows and stuck a note on the door
00:28:20
asking that somebody call the police department when they returned to confirm their safety which is just so chilling
00:28:28
yeah I was going to say something about that just walking out it's just quiet in
00:28:33
that house leaving a note and just leaving a note like call us when you're back safe but like they never came back
00:28:40
despite their suspicions and their instincts even the police didn't want to admit that something terrible could have
00:28:45
happened in that house CU it's bizarre it's so it's a bizarre Scene It is so the next day news about The
00:28:51
Disappearance hit the local papers and the alarm over the three missing women began to spread friend and former
00:28:57
classmate ad Ru Rua I hope I'm saying that right told a reporter I'm scared to death about
00:29:02
what's going on the longer they're gone the more negative comes out I'm scared someone broke in and got them I just
00:29:07
hope to God nobody hurts them oh jeez yeah those who knew Cheryl were equally concerned by her sudden disappearance
00:29:14
Joe Tate who owned the salon where she worked told the Press I've already talked to two or three detectives today
00:29:19
I've told them this is not like her Cheryl is definitely not the type of person that would just leave she would
00:29:24
contact someone something is wrong that's the thing it's like these aren't people that are known to do this stuff
00:29:30
that they're like oh well you know let's all wait around a little bit because sometimes they do this sometimes they
00:29:35
disappear and we don't hear from them for a few days and they come back these people were like creatures of habit like
00:29:40
they they weren't going to just run off and it didn't make sense like why would Stacy the friend run away with suie and
00:29:48
su's mom like that doesn't make a lot of sense that's the honestly that's the part that really gets me is that there's
00:29:55
somebody not not part of the family here right yeah exactly but was in the house
00:30:00
and maybe was just in the house at the wrong time exactly which is also so sad to think about when you think about the
00:30:06
fact that they weren't even supposed to stay at sus that night yeah but then also you're like would something have
00:30:10
still happened to Cheryl like yeah would damn it could have been a very different
00:30:15
story yeah while friends and family of the missing women formed their own informal search parties the local police
00:30:20
started to go over what they had learned about the case already hoping that somebody knew something that might help
00:30:26
Captain Tony Glenn said while we haven't had any real breaks in the case that would lead us to have knowledge of their
00:30:31
current location we're actively pursuing and talking to individuals who were in contact with them Saturday night but
00:30:38
after 3 days had passed and there was still no sign of these missing women the FBI was called in to join the 30 member
00:30:45
team of investigators now working the case damn yeah it was [ __ ] was getting real yeah by then it seemed very much
00:30:53
possible that all these women had been kidnapped but even that didn't make a lot of sense because even if the
00:30:59
individual was armed it would still be pretty difficult for one person to kidnap three adult women without leaving
00:31:06
any kind of evidence of a Breakin or any kind of struggle at the scene yeah like
00:31:12
yes and no I guess yeah I said that and then the more I was thinking about it they were all petite women yeah and it's
00:31:19
like you brandish a couple of weapons and even just even just a gun you'll be surprised you know like it would scare
00:31:27
anybody I said that and I was like well maybe I don't know yeah it is hard to believe that nothing would have been
00:31:34
like knocked over like you know what I mean and the leaving like the purses on the stairs and like a line like when did
00:31:42
that happen if you're if it's one person trying to Corral three adult women yeah
00:31:49
he's not going to have time to do that no you know like it's there strange things yeah I don't it's just weird like
00:31:56
and why was that thing broken yeah why was the globe around the POR you mean to this person if this was somebody did
00:32:03
they mean to break the light too but they just smashed the globe and thought they broke the light maybe just loosened
00:32:10
it maybe or and this is like such a dark thought it's awful but I was thinking like was somebody carried out kicking oh
00:32:16
maybe like maybe they had a hand over their mouth so nobody heard them screaming were they kicking or like like
00:32:21
thrashing yeah maybe but then you would think that maybe there would be blood some hear something or blood or yeah
00:32:28
yeah I don't know it's it this case is like yeah it gets your brain going it really does but the other thing was
00:32:34
nobody could think of a single reason why anyone would kidnap any of these three women let alone all of them yeah
00:32:41
according to friends Susie and Stacy were generally happy pretty well-liked they didn't have any enemies the same
00:32:47
was true of Cheryl who was described as a quote reliable dependable worker but maybe it was a unless it's a stranger
00:32:54
which it could be mhm but I think at that I don't know why they weren't thinking of that at the time but it it
00:32:59
doesn't sound like they were yeah I think that was I think that was genuinely something that was not first
00:33:05
thought on everyone's mind for a long time yeah yeah yeah it's weird but when it came to suspects in investigators had
00:33:12
difficulty putting together a list of any real substance there was Susie's ex-boyfriend 17-year-old Mike Kovac who
00:33:18
she had a somewhat troubled and occasionally violent relationship with a couple years earlier uh kovak said quote
00:33:25
sure we hit each other before back when we were going out when I was just 15 [ __ ] that sounds pretty volatile at
00:33:32
15 you were hitting your girlfriend Jesus what but he said he had been on good terms with both girls since that
00:33:39
relationship ended and he did have an alibi for the night that they went missing and at the time of their
00:33:44
disappearance neither girl was dating anybody seriously nor did anyone believe Susie's fiercely protective mother would
00:33:51
have let anyone in the house after the girls had got home that night Janet Ola said if Susie got a phone call after
00:33:57
after 10:00 at night Cheryl didn't even allow her to answer it so I know she would never let her answer the door
00:34:02
after 10: especially at 2: a.m. yeah eventually investigators started administering polygraph tests to the men
00:34:10
in Susie Stacy and Charles's lives hoping that maybe one of them might produce a lead uh Bart streer Susie's
00:34:16
brother and Cheryl's son said I was upset with it mainly because it's my mother and my sister and I love them
00:34:22
more than anything in the world and while he might have been upset he did give into a polygraph examination cuz
00:34:27
cuz he was willing to do whatever it took to get his family and Stacy back yeah I mean he just said that you know I
00:34:32
love them more than anything in this world of course I'm going to do that he's like it's pretty shitty but sure
00:34:36
yeah he said I think what the police are trying to do is right I've spent as much
00:34:40
time as I can at the department the emotional thing is incredible wow in the end he passed his polygraph exam and so
00:34:47
did the other young men that investigators tested leaving them no closer to finding these three women wow
00:34:53
after a week investigators had made zero progress on the case and the families of
00:34:58
the missing women had started to accept that somebody might have taken their loved ones and most likely had friends
00:35:04
and family had spread out across the city to distribute more than 20,000 missing persons Flyers damn which are
00:35:11
still around in the area today wow which is again like I said chilling haunting truly it like gives you Goosebumps and
00:35:20
while friends and family were doing that Janice and stall had started going around to all the local hospital showing
00:35:26
pictures of their daughter to anyone who would listen Sergeant Mark Webb said in
00:35:30
the beginning I had every hope that we would solve this in a few days that we'd find them know what happened I thought
00:35:35
we get to the bottom of it but the problem was that investigators had virtually nothing to work with the crime
00:35:42
scene at Cheryl streeter's house assuming like I said it even was a crime scene showed no signs of a struggle or
00:35:48
Breakin nothing was missing or out of place and nothing had been left behind to indicate who took these women or
00:35:54
where they could have gone there was that broken glass discovered outside but like I said that had been thrown away so
00:36:02
evidence was also thrown away with it and the same was true of that obscene message that was left on the answering
00:36:08
machine back at that time it was standard for answering machines to automatically delete messages after 24
00:36:16
hours and that's exactly what happened with that one it was just gone and at that point in time there was no way get
00:36:23
getting it back yeah it was just gone now you just tap your [ __ ] iPhone to Del deleted messages it wasn't like that
00:36:29
so investigators turned to the media for help with segments about Susie Stacy and
00:36:33
Cheryl appearing on America's Most Wanted in 48 hours but none produced any viable leads oh man finally in mid June
00:36:42
Springfield police got a tip about a potential suspect and for the first time they had a lead to chase according to a
00:36:48
caller on the tip line on June 5th and 6th a local woman saw an unfamiliar man lingering around Cheryl streeter's house
00:36:56
captain Glenn told reporters the individual was totally out of place in the area he was a transient type with no
00:37:01
apparent reason for being there it's something we feel is significant that's creepy I know it is creepy so
00:37:07
investigators released a uh composite drawing of the suspect which depicted a middle-aged bearded man average height
00:37:13
in weight with dark shoulder length hair and a quote freckled tan complexion I feel like it's like very hard to picture
00:37:20
this man yeah I'm trying to picture this man I'm struggling same well the so-called transient man quickly shot to
00:37:26
the top of a a suspect list that still included Bart streer and Mark Kovac who but hope of finding that individual soon
00:37:34
faded because he wasn't seen in the area again and realistically who knows if he
00:37:39
ever existed in the first place as theories of the quote unquote transient abductor started to dry up detectives
00:37:45
shifted their focus to Cheryl streer hoping something or someone in her background might provide a lead deputy
00:37:52
chief waram told a reporter as the case entered its third week I think it's an abduction and I think the answer lies
00:37:58
somewhere in Cheryl levet's background sometimes she's referred to just um so nobody's confused sometimes she's
00:38:04
referred to a Cheryl streer and then other time Cheryl levit because she had been divorced from Don levit so people
00:38:10
called her by different last names yeah it's like both yeah but since they were divorced I most often refer to her as
00:38:16
Cheryl streer but anyway he added we have no information and I want to emphasize that I don't want the
00:38:22
relatives and Friends of Cheryl levit to feel like we think she's the cause of this or a bad person
00:38:28
but she may be a focus of the investigation and somebody in her background may have some reason to do
00:38:33
something like this whoa which is scary yeah Cheryl had been married twice first
00:38:38
to Bart and Susie's father Brent and then to Don levit like I said both relationships had ended in divorce and
00:38:45
as far as anybody knew she actually had no contact with either man since their relationships had ended hadn't seen from
00:38:52
or heard either heard from either since according to Bart streer Cheryl's second
00:38:57
husband Don levit had left her in 1989 and literally no one even knew where he went damn which is so creepy like what
00:39:05
the [ __ ] Bart said he pretty much left my mom in debt and took off nice guy yeah so Cheryl H hired a lawyer in 1990
00:39:12
because it seems like he left her in some kind of debt uh he had like a failed business but okay unfortunately
00:39:19
he was never found and nothing came of it damn otherwise Cheryl was said to live a relatively quiet and private life
00:39:27
her Janet Oliva said she was about as close to Mother Teresa as you could get whoever did this had to be somebody who
00:39:33
did not know her no one had any kind of Vendetta against her damn which is even [ __ ] scarier it is like somebody just
00:39:41
that you have no idea who they are stranger walks in your house in the middle of the night and abducts you and
00:39:45
your child and her friend yeah so after struggling to find leads in the case the detectives caught
00:39:52
another break on June 24th when a waitress at Georgia's steakhous which was one of Cheryl's restaurants reported
00:39:59
to investigators that she had seen the three missing women in the early morning hours of June 7th according to the
00:40:05
waitress Cheryl Susie and Stacy came into the diner sometime between 1: and 3:00 a.m. and she recalled Susie was
00:40:12
extremely giddy or maybe even drunk and that Cheryl was trying to quiet her down
00:40:17
around that time of night George's Steakhouse was known to be pretty typically busy with a quote unquote bar
00:40:22
crowd but the women recognized or the woman recognized Lev and streer because they were regular customers though they
00:40:28
hadn't been to the restaurant in a couple months one detective told reporters she seems like a credible
00:40:34
witness but other detectives and investigators were less convinced because a convenience store clerk in
00:40:41
Springfield had also reported to the police that Susie and Stacy came into his store that night a little before
00:40:47
2:15 a.m. and he said they seemed like they were in a hurry but if that was true it wouldn't have been possible for
00:40:54
the server to have seen them at the diner because would have put them in two places at the same time and the report
00:41:01
from the server conflicted with the previously established timeline that put their disappearance somewhere between
00:41:06
2:30 and 7:00 a.m. whoa so regardless of the conflicting reports the possibility
00:41:12
of a new sighting did reinvigorate the case and the reward fund that had been established days earlier jumped from
00:41:19
$3,000 to $40,000 whoa that's a leap an anonymous donor made a very large contribution I
00:41:26
guess so so now we're 3 weeks deep the detectives have made almost no progress on the case and at this point everyone
00:41:34
was starting to get desperate the supposed sighting reported by the woman at the steakhous pretty much went
00:41:39
nowhere and billboards and flyers yielded thousands of tips from the public but they did little to move the
00:41:45
investigation forward frustrating it is with options dwindling the family started turning to a local psychic
00:41:51
referred to in the Press simply as Ruth according to Ruth The Disappearance was a quote unquote Revenge venge abduction
00:41:58
that she referred to as quote Cheryl's problem possibly involvement in or knowledge of illegal activity H yeah in
00:42:06
her visions of the scene Ruth described quote two men in a Browner beige van one
00:42:11
man is medium tall has dark hair and a short ponytail and stows his sunglasses horizontally into his shirt the women
00:42:18
were quote abducted at gunpoint with a small black revolver at 3:40 a.m. and the transient reported uh reportedly
00:42:25
seen in the neighborhood is not in involved in the abduction so that's all quotes wow Janice McCall had received
00:42:31
hundreds of calls and letters from psychics all around the country offering her tips and each one was passed on to
00:42:38
the police but apparently Ruth's tips seemed to resonate with her more than the others did Janice said I wish one
00:42:45
could say I see her now and she's all right that's what I look for so they give me hope oh that's so sad and the
00:42:51
rest of the mall family agreed that Ruth actually did seem to have more insight than the others and they were quot
00:42:57
stunned by her accuracy in describing their own private lives that's interesting it is interesting you know
00:43:03
how I feel usually about psychic centering these kind of things yeah cuz it can be iffy but in when the I don't
00:43:09
know it's it's a hard one cuz like you want family members to have hope and when they seem it when it seems like
00:43:16
these people actually are like the real deal cuz I've seen certain things where it's like they know so much and they end
00:43:23
up helping the investig people like solved cases before so you hope it's one of those you know cuz you just don't
00:43:29
want them giving people hope and false hope at that just for it to be ripped out from under them exactly we've seen
00:43:34
that a lot yeah which is really shitty yeah that's just the human species being the human species truly people just
00:43:40
people and people going to people but regardless of how accurate she was about their family's private lives it should
00:43:46
be said that much of what Ruth told Janice McCall had actually already been reported on the papers that I mean again
00:43:53
she did know things about their personal lives that they were pretty like Amazed
00:43:57
by okay but the details regarding the crime had been reported on like her seeing a light colored van neighbors had
00:44:04
already reported that the other information she had was given to investigators who followed all of the
00:44:10
leads but eventually reported that quote none has proven helpful damn yeah so after 3 weeks now of no progress public
00:44:17
demand for Action had grown exponentially and was generally targeted at the chief of police Terry nles this
00:44:25
was not the first time that he had come under attack by the press and the public
00:44:28
for at that point for perceived failures because one year earlier investigators failed to solve a brutal rape case and
00:44:36
more recently the murder of an elderly woman had gone unsolved oh [ __ ] so they
00:44:41
in over their heads yeah Jinx in response he took a defensive position claiming lack of evidence and a
00:44:49
potentially tainted crime scene were responsible for the slow progress which I mean Fair very fair tons of people
00:44:55
traes through there very tainted he said we would have looked at the glass on the
00:44:59
front porch that could have told us some things he also pointed to the large number of people who had gathered in
00:45:04
Cheryl's house and handled personal items like the purses as additional issues in the case he said whether it's
00:45:12
a real hindrance or not it doesn't matter we're stuck with going in there after the fact and yes it sets you back
00:45:17
cuz you also think about the fact that like he's saying like you know if we had been able to look at that broken glass
00:45:21
it could have told us something it's like what really could it have told you I feel the same way glass specifically
00:45:28
it's like mentioned in and of course you have to mention it it's it's a thing that happens of course but it's in every
00:45:35
uh outlet that reports on this is like and who knows if valuable evidence was thrown away like there was nothing else
00:45:42
at the scene so I don't know like the the fact that that Globe was smashed to the light was smashed like for sure
00:45:49
mention that that's important that could point to some foul play here or something crazy going on for and it's
00:45:57
spooky no matter what yeah I just don't know how much it would the actual shards
00:46:02
of glass were going to tell you I completely agree cuz it's like if I mean if somebody punched the glass with a
00:46:08
glove hand or something it's not going to tell you if they hit it with something it's not shattered glass no
00:46:13
what is it going to tell you and I don't know if they're like making a big deal of it cuz he swept up the glass and who
00:46:18
knows like maybe there was like a foot putter in the dirt or like in the dust something like that like but maybe put
00:46:24
it that way instead of like he threw away the glass and there was valuable evidence in there possibly that broken
00:46:28
glass could have told us something it's like what though yeah can you tell me that even at that point I don't even
00:46:33
know if they could have tested the blood yeah it like 92 so yeah and he didn't see any blood so it's like yeah exactly
00:46:39
yeah anyway years later several investigators would actually speak out in the Press blaming the lack of
00:46:45
progress on nolles himself claiming that he micromanaged the detectives and constantly interfered with how they were
00:46:52
performing their jobs well that's not a good way to be no some even claimed that
00:46:55
he ruled out Suspects other on others on the team strongly believed had a motive
00:47:00
to abduct the women oh [ __ ] Green County prosecutor darl Moore told a reporter
00:47:05
this was clearly the most micromanaged case I've ever seen seasoned detectives were not allowed to use their expertise
00:47:10
and judgment in this investigation oh well that's bad he said this is the only case where that happened and I don't
00:47:17
understand that yeah that's not good yeah nolles himself rejected the idea that his Hands-On approach negatively
00:47:23
affected the case and claimed he hadn't heard any criticism on his perform back when it was happening and more recently
00:47:29
he said I don't recall that being an issue back then what anyone wants to say 10 years later I can't control that it's
00:47:35
certainly disappointing and it's frustrating at the time to be doing everything you possibly can yeah I think
00:47:40
I kind of see both sides here I was going to say you can see both sides for sure and I understand the uh the want to
00:47:48
micromanage but honestly but you got to sometimes you just got to let people do their jobs I think a lot of times people
00:47:56
who micro manage don't necessarily realize that they're micromanaging until it's brought to their attention and then
00:48:02
I'm sure it's a little bit of a point of embarrassment then you get defensive yeah you I was going to say you get
00:48:07
defensive Yeah but whether it was micromanagement or just a lack of evidence and leads or both I think it
00:48:14
was honestly an amalgamation of everything yeah after a month investigators found themselves at a
00:48:19
complete dead end with the investigation and it was starting to look like this case might go unsolved to make matters
00:48:25
worse and the time that passed since Cheryl Susie and Stacy disappeared several other cases had gone
00:48:31
underinvestigated or just uninvestigated due to a significant number of departmental resources being directed
00:48:37
toward this missing person's case oh no according to detective truly Applegate which like you literally had to be a
00:48:46
detective yeah truly Applegate like come on truly Applegate forever they said officers are quote not doing what we're
00:48:53
normally able to do because of the attention paid to The Streeter McCall case quote there are simply too many
00:48:58
felonies to follow and not enough officers to work them well [ __ ] that's a problem my friends like we said earlier
00:49:04
I think they were very much in over their heads I mean they called the FBI in but that's I know at least they did
00:49:10
that you know I just I think the lack of evidence and the fact that the crime scene quote like if it was or
00:49:18
wasn't it was completely contaminated like there was nothing they could have done yeah so in response the Springfield
00:49:24
police regrettably announced that they would be scaling back the number of investigators working on The
00:49:29
Disappearance so that they could free up some detectives to work on other crimes
00:49:33
although most of the community was understanding it was hard not to see the shift in priorities as a sign that the
00:49:39
case had begun to stall and was definitely in danger of getting cold oh as soon as you see that kind of thing
00:49:44
happen like when you see that they're shifting away from it yeah it's natural for from on the outside especially to be
00:49:51
like are they giving up on this they Shing it it's watching the air go out of a bu exactly exactly
00:49:57
by the onset of fall the investigation had pretty much come to a virtual standstill and though very much still
00:50:03
being said an active case many of the resources and hours dedicated to it had been redirected to more quote unquote
00:50:10
urgent matters in mid-september Bart streer actually quit his job and left Springfield for good he wasn't able to
00:50:16
live in the city because it had so many awful memories Janice Mall expressed similar frustration she said I'd hate to
00:50:23
think of doing this another 100 days but that is exactly what happened and then some and then some I can't imagine as
00:50:30
the days turned to months detectives continued to follow leads from the public including searching a farm in a
00:50:36
neighboring County where some evidence was collected but nothing that moved the case in any direction then in late 1995
00:50:44
detectives Revisited one of their earlier suspects Robert Craig Cox who had been arrested in Texas after robbing
00:50:51
a tanning salon and holding a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint oh [ __ ] you Robert oh just you [ __ ] wait on the
00:51:01
list a list of suspects assembled by law enforcement there was literally no better suspect than Robert Cox oh [ __ ]
00:51:08
remember the list of suspects is a little like shaky but it's not great yeah he's a good one on New Year's
00:51:14
weekend 1979 19-year-old Sharon zelers disappeared after finishing her shift at Walt Disney World in Florida oh goodness
00:51:22
a few days later her car was discovered abandoned in a nearby Orange Grove and the next day investigators found her
00:51:28
body in a nearby sewage station at the same time an ambulance was called to a motel adjacent to the sewage station for
00:51:38
Robert Cox who was on vacation in Orlando with his parents part of his tongue had been
00:51:45
bitten off and needed to be surgically repaired and he refused to say how it happened what the [ __ ] part of his
00:51:55
tongue had been bitten off and needed to be surgically repaired and he wouldn't tell anyone
00:52:04
why okay yep yeah that's probably fine totally many years later in 1986 Cox was arrested and pleaded guilty to
00:52:14
kidnapping an assault with a deadly weapon oh you don't say in an unrelated matter in California when he abducted a
00:52:21
young woman and put a knife to her throat I'm sorry have we seeing a pattern we sure are because that same
00:52:26
year he also attempted to abduct a female soldier who he was serving alongside in the Army Jesus he wanted to
00:52:32
take her to a remote location but she ended up escaping so it was while he was serving his sentence on the abduction in
00:52:39
California that authorities in Orlando found evidence that connected him to the ze's murder in Orlando and in 1988 he
00:52:47
was returned to Florida to stand trial where he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to
00:52:52
death whoa the conviction was appealed to to the state supreme court of Florida why uh the justices found that there was
00:53:01
insufficient evidence to justify his conviction which was ultimately reversed by the court and Cox returned to
00:53:07
California to serve out the rest of his sentence on the earlier charge holy [ __ ]
00:53:11
so he was cleared of the first degree murder but he still had to serve time for um you know abducting a young woman
00:53:17
yeah in 1992 he was paroled and left California to live with his parents where you might ask Springfield
00:53:24
Springfield a few weeks after Cheryl Stacy and Susie went missing Sharon Zeller's brother Steve read about the
00:53:31
case in the paper and actually called investigators in Springfield to tell them about Cox's criminal history oh
00:53:38
[ __ ] the zers family had been keeping tabs on him since his release and as soon as they heard the details of the
00:53:44
case they immediately felt he could be a suspect guys listen to them Steve Zeller
00:53:49
said they didn't even know he was serving parole there Jesus but they appreciated the tip and started looking
00:53:54
into Cox as a possible suspect after they got that tip they interviewed him who claimed that at the time of the
00:54:00
abduction he had been at home with his girlfriend and later that morning the two of them went to church together I
00:54:06
literally don't believe you you shouldn't yeah with other leads and suspects to chase down detectives
00:54:11
confirmed his Alibi with his mother and his girlfriend oh with his mom and girlfriend yeah you know the two closest
00:54:17
people very reliable yeah and they moved on to other priorities I'm also like this dangerous guy like yeah you're like
00:54:23
oh you probably were at church by and also his girlfriend she's probably not scared of him cool cool cool totally so
00:54:31
they moved on to other priorities however his Alibi notwithstanding Robert Cox had always been the best suspect on
00:54:37
the list and easily the most likely person to have committed the abduction Sergeant Dave Smith told a reporter in
00:54:44
1996 the year of my birth we didn't dig deep enough we didn't feel we needed to dig deeper uh do you regret that those
00:54:52
feelings changed later when Cox was convicted of an armed robbery in Texas and sentenced to life in prison Jesus in
00:54:59
the years since the abduction several key members of the investigation team had been replaced by new detectives and
00:55:05
they hoped now that he had nothing to lose Robert Cox might be willing to share whatever information he had on the
00:55:11
Springfield 3 abduction on January 19th 1996 two Springfield detectives went to Texas and spent 3 hours interviewing Cox
00:55:20
in prison but according to Captain Daryl Crick Cox's quote had nothing Earth shattering to say about the case but
00:55:27
investigators in Springfield still were not ready to cross him off their suspect
00:55:31
list a Texas law enforcement official said he knows they don't have anything new on him and he's remorseful for some
00:55:38
acts he's committed in the past so there was still a chance that he might divulge
00:55:41
some information now despite being remorseful about uh his past of heinous crimes
00:55:47
quote unquote yeah he seemed to Delight in the attention from these Missouri detectives yeah so I don't think he's
00:55:53
very remorseful no I don't think so either he maintained he had nothing to do with the missing women in Springfield
00:55:58
yet quote told police enough for them to think he knew something but not enough to incriminate himself guys yeah for
00:56:06
instance in one of the many interviews they conducted with him he told detectives that the three women were
00:56:12
dead and were quote buried near Springfield but when they asked follow-up questions he just smiled and
00:56:19
refused to say anything else oh come on he's either [ __ ] with you completely or he's your guy so there's in between
00:56:26
there's literally no in between there it's it's one of those two things their suspicions of his involvement grew
00:56:31
considerably when while giving testimony before a grand jury his former girlfriend admitted that she had lied to
00:56:38
the police when she gave him his Alibi for the morning of June 7th 1992 I'm sorry then what was he doing nobody
00:56:46
knows if somebody had to lie for him for that alibi ding ding ding ding ding ding
00:56:51
exactly to me that's like boom Oh 100% investig compers continue to remain interested in him as a suspect and they
00:56:59
checked the places he was known to have worked at the time but without any solid
00:57:03
evidence against him they couldn't move forward in any official capacity or even
00:57:07
name him publicly at the time the families of the victims on the other hand were pretty well convinced that Cox
00:57:13
was responsible for The Disappearance of their loved ones charl lit's Father Jim
00:57:17
Williams was certain that Cox was responsible for his daughter's disappearance but he died in
00:57:23
1997 having never seen the case solved oh that always kills me Cliff Williams Cheryl's uncle said he told me I'm sure
00:57:30
that's the guy I just don't know if they'll be able to prove it oh like how sad is that that breaks my heart for his
00:57:37
part Robert Cox has always maintained his innocence at least publicly in 1996 he wrote a letter to the Springfield
00:57:43
newsleader insisting he had nothing to do with the case and claimed that he too was a victim of the story shut up like
00:57:49
you're not a victim in any capacity he wrote I told them that I wanted closure too I'm tired of the harassment I've
00:57:55
received because of my Association to this case even in his letter he couldn't help but toy with the investigators
00:58:02
though he added then I told Sergeant ralth if I could tell him where the bodies were then he could come after me
00:58:07
with an indictment and seek the death penalty he went on to tell a reporter he could tell the Press where the bodies
00:58:14
were located but the journalist would give him up to the police and he'd get the death penalty so he wasn't willing
00:58:21
to so he's like I know where they're buried and I could tell you but but I'm not going to cuz I don't want to get the
00:58:27
death penalty but I'm such a victim of this and I'm sick of everybody harassing me yeah shut up and that's the thing
00:58:33
that does lead me to believe that he absolutely is the strongest suspect because uh I'm not so sure that his
00:58:40
Florida case there should have been overturned I'm not so sure either and he was able to win that because he was
00:58:46
trying to avoid the death penalty so he's afraid of dying of course which there you go that's what I think now
00:58:53
interviews and informal communication between Robert Cox investigators in Springfield and journalists continued
00:58:59
through the rest of the 1990s but nothing concrete ever came out of their correspondence come on he just wouldn't
00:59:04
give them anything in 2002 detectives in Springfield reached out to him again in
00:59:09
a letter requesting an interview but he denied so shitty this is so frustrating because I'm like I come on it gives you
00:59:17
a strong feeling I don't want to say he like 100% did it cuz there's definitely not enough evidence to be 100% he's a
00:59:23
strong suspect and I'm like if you know where the bodies are just say yeah just say it there's no evidence tying you to
00:59:30
them other than I mean other than the fact that you know where they're married but but you could just be like I don't
00:59:34
know how I knew that I just heard make knew I mean don't make anything up but but come on like you're not going to get
00:59:40
the death penalty for saying where the bodies are and you know that someone can crack him there's some investigator out
00:59:47
there there's some interrogator out there that could do it it's this is a guy from the '90s you can crack them
00:59:53
exactly and it's like you say a Cold Case is never C never cold like I really I really want this case to crack open o
01:00:03
me too I want it so bad so over the years the Springfield police have gotten still they still get countless tips from
01:00:09
the public about The Disappearance of the Springfield 3 as they're known but no trace of any of the three women has
01:00:15
ever been found and no one has come forward with new information about the case that's been helpful many family
01:00:21
members of the missing women remain in belief that Robert Cox had something to do with their disae interesting Cheryl's
01:00:27
sister Deborah said in 2022 he doesn't deny it it's just question mark after question mark That's infuriating yeah I
01:00:35
would lose my mind Cox meanwhile has been quiet on the subject of the Springfield 3 and continues to serve his
01:00:41
sentence in a Texas prison while the case may have gone cold decades ago their city has not forgotten about
01:00:47
Cheryl Susie or Stacy like I said earlier many of those original missing Flyers can still be seen in restaurants
01:00:54
and storefronts all around Springfield and others have been replaced with newer versions that show aged versions of the
01:01:00
women yeah and nearly every year A large group gets together and holds a visual to raise awareness and keep the women in
01:01:08
their Collective memories good for them now like we said as of today the case has been labeled a c a Cold Case by the
01:01:14
Springfield Police Department but the reward for information leading to an arrest and prosecution of the person
01:01:20
responsible has risen now to $42,000 anyone with information about the subh herence is encouraged to
01:01:27
contact the Springfield police at 417 8641 1810 or place an anonymous call to Crim
01:01:36
Stoppers at 417 869 8477 and tips and information can also be submitted online at p3tips.com and
01:01:47
that's capital P the number three tips.com wow but I just really want this case to be solved because you think of
01:01:56
their family and their friends just sitting around wondering what the [ __ ] and they don't have anywhere to
01:02:04
go to visit them like they have no closure on anything they have all they have is their own imagination to come up
01:02:10
with what could have happened here which is way worse like I'm sorry these these
01:02:14
women didn't disappear on their own no there's something happen way there's no way and I just want somebody to talk to
01:02:22
Robert Cox again I they need to send a spicy Detective that's exactly what they need to do and
01:02:28
they like I'm not saying like for him to elicit a confession out of like anything
01:02:33
wrong but like no just send somebody in there that like is intimidating that's that you you nailed it when you said
01:02:40
send a spicy detective spicy detective a spicy detective who plays by the godamn
01:02:46
rules but he skirts that line and is good at it that's what you need trick or S good cop bad cop that [ __ ] send
01:02:56
somebody in there that makes him think yeah keep talking man like I'm your homie I'm your friend exactly you got to
01:03:02
get some good cop play the game you need to get some you know you need to get some mind Hunter style teams in there
01:03:12
yes you got to get some uh tension forward in there yeah you just got to cuz realistically this case is like a
01:03:20
little over 30 years old it can be solved it can it can be solved we've seen [ __ ] solved old than Summerton man
01:03:28
was identified a couple years ago yeah like come on the boy in the Box was identified the lady in the dunes the
01:03:34
lady in the dunes like we it can happen it can happen and I just want these families and these friends of these
01:03:39
victims like these are three separate people who all had people that loved them you just want them to have some
01:03:45
kind of closure you really do and you feel like it's there it's somewhere it's somewhere oh it makes you so mad maybe
01:03:51
even as frustrating as it is maybe even a deathbed confession and just say where
01:03:55
the body are you know like so they can have somewhere to go visit their family exactly but yes that is the case of the
01:04:01
Springfield 3 if anybody listening knows anything saw anything they're still taking tips they're still taking tips
01:04:08
you know who to call you know where to submit them and in the meantime we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep
01:04:14
it weird but not so weird that you drink carbonated sparkling water because it is
01:04:18
old and disgusting and you will be old and disgusting if you do it that's how I feel
01:04:25
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