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Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgareth.
00:02:37
And from Cast Media, this is The Opportunist. I'm Hannah Smith. Yay! Hi, Hannah. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.
00:02:48
Hi. Oh my gosh. I'm so thrilled. I was trying to remember today, I think that maybe my favorite
00:02:54
murder is the, if not the very first, one of the very first true crime podcasts I ever listened to.
00:03:00
So this is like such a dream come true. Thank you for having me. Wow. Thank you.
00:03:06
Absolutely. I've been listening to your podcast, you know, since I first found it,
00:03:11
the Sherry Shriner episodes. I could not believe what I was listening to, But all these stories about these kind of like, it's anything from a scam artist up to murderers.
00:03:23
And these people who essentially, you know, are, as you say, opportunists, but basically start that way.
00:03:30
And then it goes evil. I mean, how did you come up with that concept? Yeah, so I was really lucky.
00:03:37
Cast Media, the company I work for, had already had the concept when I came on board.
00:03:43
but they were looking for someone to sort of develop the show and make it. And they had the idea for the first season, Sherry Schreiner.
00:03:50
So that was really gold for me. Of course, like it's an incredible story. So getting to walk into that and then figure out how to tell the story was so fun.
00:03:58
And the opportunist concept, you know, we really like to look at the progression of a crime
00:04:04
and look at how, you know, I think that there's a lot of othering that happens in true crime.
00:04:11
It's easy to think, oh, someone that did this terrible thing is like different from me, almost like on a genetic level or something, you know?
00:04:18
And sometimes, of course, there's like mental health problems, but or like someone is a narcissist or something.
00:04:24
But I always really like to explore how we might be similar and how someone could start out as your neighbor or your pharmacist or, you know, your teacher or something.
00:04:34
And then through a series of decisions and life events could find themselves a cult leader or,
00:04:39
you know, scamming someone out of millions of dollars. And so we really are interested in like
00:04:45
tracking that progression. Yeah. Do you think doing this podcast has made you a more paranoid
00:04:50
person in your life? Like, do you look for little signals and signs when you meet people or in people
00:04:56
you already know? Because I feel like that's what would happen with me. I mean, I know my favorite
00:05:00
murder has made me super paranoid, but I could see the same thing happening with you.
00:05:04
Yeah. I think like aware, right? I feel really aware. And I've also now spoken with people and
00:05:13
interviewed people who are incarcerated and people who have done things that are really,
00:05:17
you know, sinister. And it's pretty shocking sometimes to talk to them and they're just
00:05:22
so nice and they seem like I would, it's like so hard for my brain to believe that they've done
00:05:27
these things. And so that has been a really interesting experience and making me just like,
00:05:32
okay, just need to be like aware and cautious. But at the same time, I don't know if you found
00:05:37
this as well. It's like, I think that there's so much humanity in true crime and just like the
00:05:43
resiliency of the human spirit. I've spoken with so many people that have been through horrific
00:05:48
things and they just amazing And so it also gives me a lot of hope Yes Oh I love that Well that the opportunist type of people aren every I mean like it obviously we all have the potential to get pushed over the edge in some way or to choose to go over the edge in some
00:06:06
way and go to the dark side. But that actually most people are good. Most people are trusting.
00:06:12
And most people say if they want to start following a person online who says that the way
00:06:17
that you solve your problems is by finding orgone and then getting rid of the bat. Like,
00:06:23
especially that story, there was an essence of we're trying to do good here. We're trying to
00:06:29
fight evil. It's the irony of like, this setup was we're the good ones and we're fighting
00:06:34
demons or devils or something like that. And then that being used against those people
00:06:39
who were so trusting. I mean, like that story, there's so many of your stories that are,
00:06:45
as you're listening, you're like, oh, that's interesting. And then you're like, wait,
00:06:48
what? What are we talking about now? Like the idea that people followed an online cult leader,
00:06:55
it wasn't some, it wasn't about her in-person magnetism. It all happened online. I mean,
00:07:01
mind-blowing. Yeah. I mean, I love cult stories. Those are my favorite ones to tell.
00:07:07
Really? And I love interviewing people who have been in cults and have come out of them.
00:07:12
I don't know. I think they're often misunderstood because we think like, well, I could never be in that situation, but I have interviewed like really intelligent people who
00:07:21
have found themselves in those situations where they've been trained and like slowly sort of
00:07:26
brainwashed to believe these things. Yeah, it's pretty wild. And there is always that promise of
00:07:32
goodness, right? It's like, if something's all bad, we would just be like, no, I'm not gonna
00:07:36
follow you and give you all my money. But yeah, it's often like under the guise of like,
00:07:42
were actually the heroes of the story, like with Sherry Shriner. A lot of people who were
00:07:48
sort of down on their luck and didn't fit into society or maybe were economically depressed
00:07:54
got sold this vision of like, actually you're a hero and not just of this world, but of like
00:07:59
the spiritual world. Yeah. Which is pretty enticing. Also the friendship element,
00:08:06
which I feel like in meeting some of those people that were in Sherry Shriner's cult,
00:08:10
it was community for them and they had real bonds and they felt, you know, those were real
00:08:15
relationships that they were having. So it all supported itself in that way of like, yes, this
00:08:19
is the like, quote unquote, high school clique that I want to be in. And plus I'm fighting demons
00:08:25
or whatever that idea was. It was so extreme and yet was kind of playing out in a very day-to-day
00:08:33
way. That's kind of what was bewildering to me about that. That and most of your stories,
00:08:38
There was also, and I won't be able to remember the woman's name, but the woman, I think I told
00:08:42
you about this one, Georgia, where she basically set up and hired actors to act like she was being
00:08:50
inducted into certain levels of Illinois government. Yeah. Candace Clark. Yeah. Amazing. Wow. Yeah.
00:08:58
It was wild. And it was so wild too, is that it worked for like a certain amount of time.
00:09:02
Yeah. Yeah. That's what's so fun to watch too. I mean, not fun, God. It's like so voyeuristic.
00:09:08
to watch these documentaries about cults and hear about how it started. And once you break that down,
00:09:15
yeah, you do understand a little bit better how some people could join something
00:09:21
that they don't think is a cult because it's not a cult yet. It starts out as, yeah, like a community and an idea
00:09:28
and then the indoctrination starts. And that's where we all think to ourselves, well, I would never, I could never,
00:09:35
but you're in there by then. You're in there and your needs are being met. Yeah.
00:09:39
Yeah. Also the Candace Clark story where she's basically telling people that she is like this, say a state representative.
00:09:46
I can't remember what the actual job was that she, but you would have to, as the person receiving that information, go, no, I think you set that up.
00:09:54
That was just a video shoot and you hired actors. Like the opposite is so beyond the realm of possibility that it's so much easier to just go, yes, you were elected to us as a state official.
00:10:05
And now I'm going to give you paperwork and whatever you need because that's who you are.
00:10:09
That's such a good point. I love that observation. I wish I had put that in the episode.
00:10:14
You can edit it back in. You're free. Anything that happens in this episode, you can take and put into the opportunities.
00:10:21
Okay, great. Yeah. Is there any dream opportunists that you want to cover someday?
00:10:25
Yeah, but you have at this point, you must have a really long list of ideas and people that you want to cover.
00:10:30
We have a running Google Sheet that we have. And there's a few stories that we are really excited about, but that either like the litigation is ongoing.
00:10:39
So we are waiting for that to resolve. Or it's like we couldn't get anyone to talk about it.
00:10:44
Either it's too old and there's no one really around anymore or just people won't talk.
00:10:49
And actually, that's a story that I have today for you is one that is kind of a dream opportunist story.
00:10:53
We kept coming back to the story multiple times because we love it. One of my producers found it.
00:10:59
And then separately, another producer later found it. And I was like, I know. So good, right?
00:11:03
We can't find anyone to talk about it. That's exciting. We'll talk about it. Yeah, we will.
00:11:08
Yeah. So, yeah. But I mean, you know, a lot of our cases that we cover are like not super high profile.
00:11:16
And I kind of like that because oftentimes when I reach out to people, they haven't talked about it a lot.
00:11:21
Yeah. And so they're really excited to be able to tell their story. Yeah. Were you always into like true crime or was that something that you were, you followed
00:11:31
for a long time? Yeah. I mean, I liked, you know, probably my favorite murder got me into true crime, honestly.
00:11:38
Sorry. Yeah. We're really sorry. I'm not. I'm grateful. So, but yeah, then I just, you know, I didn't know that necessarily know that I would work
00:11:50
in true crime. I got into podcasting as a producer and then writing I a writer and I got really obsessed with writing for the year And then you know I just got this job opportunity and I was like yeah well why not And I love true crime
00:12:05
So why not combine these passions? And I, it's such an amazing field to work in.
00:12:10
That's so awesome. What a cool, what a cool opportunity, right? It turns out you're the opportunity.
00:12:17
Yeah, it looks like that. I am. So I'm so excited to hear this story that multiple people have mentioned.
00:12:25
Should we jump in? Such a good sign. Yeah. Protect your pet with insurance from PetsBest.
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Data accurate as of 220-26. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.
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Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at mintmobile.com. Okay, this is like a multi-part story.
00:14:35
You're saying you want a sequel after this episode? Let's do a couple episodes. Yeah. So this is going to take about three hours.
00:14:43
Nice. Buckle up. I hope you haven't heard this one. I want to tell you the story of Sandra Anderson
00:14:49
and her dog Eagle. No. I don't know that. Not so far. Yeah. Okay. So Sandra Anderson lived in Michigan. She was born in 1960. At age 18, she started
00:15:02
training dogs. And then she got really interested in training dogs for search and rescue missions.
00:15:09
She started a dog training company called Canine Solutions, where she specifically trained dogs for search and rescue.
00:15:16
And then in 1990, Sandra, along with a group of dog trainers, got together with the idea that they could utilize their dog's unique talents
00:15:25
to help law enforcement units and communities to search for and rescue, you know, lost or missing people.
00:15:31
And they founded Great Lakes Search and Rescue Canine Unit of Michigan. That's so cool.
00:15:37
I would love to train Cookie to do that. I don't know why. I think that's the raddest career for a dog.
00:15:43
It's so cool, right? Yeah. Dog heroes. Yeah. You know, Sandra kind of rose to prominence
00:15:50
as being really good at training dogs at scent detection and specifically with human remains detection.
00:15:56
Then in 1994, she adopted Eagle, a Doberman Pinscher German short-haired pointer mix.
00:16:03
She started to train him. And in interviews, she said that like Eagle was this star dog, like particularly talented.
00:16:11
Like some dogs are apparently really good at being trained for like one type of search.
00:16:17
Like they could find human remains in like a wilderness brambly area or something.
00:16:22
And others may be like in a different scenario. But Eagle, according to Sandra, just was able to like pick up on all of it.
00:16:28
He could also was trained to look through rubble after a disaster. Wow. And so she said at one point that she only saw this level of skill in about one in 1,000 dogs.
00:16:40
So Eagle and her really partnered up and started getting called in to search and rescue,
00:16:45
like different kind of high profile things. They went to Panama and Bosnia at one point to search for graves of victims of political oppression and war crimes.
00:16:56
They were at the World Trade Center after 9-11. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. And also were asked to come search archaeological sites and historical sites,
00:17:08
such as a Nebraska Native American burial ground. And they went to Mackinac Island
00:17:12
to hunt for the remains of soldiers that apparently were killed there in 1812. Wow.
00:17:18
So kind of like stars, they became stars in certain circles. They gained a lot of media
00:17:24
attention. And in the year 2000, archaeology ran an article about Sandra Anderson and her dog,
00:17:30
Eagle. And I have to say, I read a lot of articles in preparation for this. This article
00:17:36
in archaeology.org is like my favorite one. It's written like a love poem to Eagle.
00:17:44
It's like kind of short, but beautiful. And is it okay if I just read you like the first part of it?
00:17:51
Yeah, absolutely. Written by Brenda Smiley So it starts nose skimming the moist earth eagle moves and ever narrowing swoops The ground is muddy in these days in Michigan erratic spring a near quagmire
00:18:06
But the sleek black dog is obsessed, his cheeks ballooning in and out like miniature bellows as he closes in on a hit.
00:18:14
Sander Anderson moves almost as one with the animal, directing the search with hand and voice commands.
00:18:20
It goes on from there, but I just... Wow. That is poetry for sure. That writer cares about her subject. She clearly was impressed by what she saw.
00:18:32
Yeah. Basically, I think that shows that there was a lot of love and respect for this profession.
00:18:39
And it's also all volunteer-based. So Sandra didn't charge for anything. She just would charge
00:18:44
for her travel costs. So all of this is volunteer. And she worked with a ton of law enforcement
00:18:49
agencies. But of course, true crime, there's going to be a turn for the worst. So I want to talk about
00:18:58
two cases that Sandra and Eagle were involved with and helped on because they're both important
00:19:06
for the story. And you may have heard of them. The first case is the case of Tracy Islam. Tracy
00:19:13
and Azazul were married. They lived in Plymouth, Michigan in 1999. They had two high school age
00:19:21
kids. And Tracy, she was planning to leave the marriage. So she left Michigan. She went to London.
00:19:29
And she let her husband know that, you know, she wanted to get a divorce and he did not.
00:19:35
So at Christmas in 1999, she came back to Michigan to visit her kids and she stayed at the house.
00:19:42
And then before Christmas on the 19th, she vanished. Her husband, Azazul, told the kids and the police that she told him she was leaving and that he didn't know where she was.
00:19:55
But there were a lot of signs that he was potentially responsible. First of all, Tracy had a boyfriend in London, and he called the Michigan police and notified them that she was missing.
00:20:08
he said that he had spoken with her on December 18th and she told him that she was afraid that
00:20:14
her husband was going to try to poison her. He was a biochemist, by the way. Oh, wow.
00:20:20
And then Tracy's sister also said that she had a conversation with her and that Tracy told her
00:20:26
the same thing, that he was really angry, he didn't want to get a divorce, and she was worried
00:20:30
that he was going to poison her. So then a few days later in Dearborn, about 20 miles away,
00:20:38
an employee at a restaurant went out to the dumpster and found body parts in a bag.
00:20:44
Oh, no. God. And then like a few weeks later, another town, there were more body parts found.
00:20:51
And investigators were able to match the body parts because they had gray paint residue
00:20:57
found on the same gray paint residue found on the bodies. And they didn't have a search warrant, but they went to Azizel's house and he let them
00:21:07
come in. They were able to get a toothbrush from Tracy. And through that, they were able to confirm
00:21:13
that that was her body. But they went into the basement and the basement floor had been like
00:21:18
erratically painted. It looked like it had just been painted very erratically. There was still
00:21:22
like a paint can around. For some reason, this still wasn't enough for them to get an arrest,
00:21:28
you know, warrant. So they decided they needed to bring in a cadaver dog. And so they called up
00:21:35
Sandra and Eagle. And again, Azizel just let them, they didn't have a search warrant, but he let them
00:21:40
come in. And according to investigators, they said that Eagle bolted downstairs to the basement and
00:21:46
started barking and signaled that there was blood at different points in the basement floor and in
00:21:54
the paint can. And also found part of a hand saw that had blood on it. So this was enough for them
00:22:04
to arrest Azazul. And in December of 2002, he was found guilty of first degree premeditated murder
00:22:11
and sentenced to life in prison. And Sandra Anderson actually testified at the trial and
00:22:18
was part of, you know, Eagle pointing to the blood that was part of the evidence.
00:22:22
The strange part about this is that that hand saw, the blood on the hand saw did not match
00:22:29
Tracy's blood. It wasn't her blood. So the blood on the basement floor and in the pink can, yes.
00:22:37
Handsaw, no. Didn't match anyone in there, you know, in the police files, but they just,
00:22:42
I guess, were like, well, we got him on this. He'll spend the rest of his life in prison. They
00:22:46
weren't sure if he had maybe killed someone else. So this case really skyrocketed Sandra and Eagle
00:22:53
to fame. They were like considered heroes. Like most of the articles up to a certain point mentioned
00:22:58
this that Eagle helped them catch this guy and be able to put him behind bars, right?
00:23:04
Yeah. About a year later, Sandra and Eagle are called on to another case. It's a missing person's case.
00:23:11
And this is an old case. It was from 1980, but investigators had gotten a new lead and they
00:23:17
wanted help searching Huron National Forest. So they called her up. And just a little bit of
00:23:24
background on this case, Charita Thomas went missing August 3rd, 1980 in Ausable Township,
00:23:32
Michigan. She was 20 years old at the time. She had gone out with her friend Patricia,
00:23:37
and then she left the bar early and never made it home. And they had found her car abandoned,
00:23:43
and it seemed like it had stalled out. And someone had reported seeing her at 11 to 15
00:23:48
p.m. that night getting into a blue pickup truck driven by a bearded Caucasian male. And then she
00:23:54
disappeared. And, you know, at first they thought that she'd been killed by this. There was a
00:24:00
supposedly all the article said was violent federal fugitive who was apparently in the area
00:24:05
at the time. So police thought maybe that was the person. And then a few years later,
00:24:10
that was proven that that couldn't have been. He had an alibi for that time. So then investigators around end of 2001 had focused in on a new suspect and they got a tip
00:24:23
that her remains might be in Huron National Forest. And so they called up Sandra and Eagle.
00:24:30
They came to the area. You know, this was like a 20-year-old case and some of these investigators have been working on it since then
00:24:37
and trying to solve it and had already searched a lot of the area. But when Sandra and Eagle showed up,
00:24:43
it was sort of shocking because almost immediately, Eagle started finding things.
00:24:51
You know, he like immediately ran to an area and found a bone fragment. And some of these investigators, they were just so thrilled.
00:25:02
They thought this was like a huge break in the case that maybe finally, you know, the family could have some closure.
00:25:08
It was a multiple day search. Eagle and Sandra found, I can't remember exactly how many, but multiple bones.
00:25:15
And the assumption at that time was these are, this is the remains of Sherita Thomas.
00:25:19
Well, they brought them in and got them tested. They weren't. They were actually bones of three different people.
00:25:27
What? Yeah. And authorities were like, what is going on? They started to wonder if they had stumbled on to the dumping ground of like a serial
00:25:36
killer or something. But they still thought, okay, well, this is still a good place to search.
00:25:42
So they resumed the search after the winter in April of 2002. Again, brought in Sandra and Eagle.
00:25:48
But then like some investigators started to have questions about Sandra because something happened where one of them searched a riverbed and they had searched it really thoroughly and then kind of moved into a next area.
00:26:01
Right after that, Sandra and Eagle moved to the riverbed and immediately Sandra called out that Eagle had found a bone.
00:26:09
And the investigator was just like, how could I have missed that? I was just there.
00:26:13
and one officer, Mark David, he just started to think that something else was going on.
00:26:20
So one day on the search, he was just keeping a close eye on Sandra and he noticed at one point that she bent down
00:26:27
and started to mess with her pant leg and seemed to pull something out of her boot.
00:26:33
No. And place it on the ground and then immediately notified everyone that like she had found some remains.
00:26:41
Oh, no. I mean, we knew this was going to happen, obviously. And yet to be doing something like that in the middle of like,
00:26:51
in the middle of an investigation that important. Yeah. Yeah. I'm stating the blatantly obvious, but it's still just like,
00:26:58
I'm cringing so hard right now. Yeah. Yeah, me too. So it turns out a couple of different people on the search had started to suspect her
00:27:06
and they were able to search her vehicle that day. And they found a bag of bones in her car.
00:27:13
And then that night, the FBI executed a search warrant on her home and turned up even more bones.
00:27:21
And kind of just haphazardly, like, around her house. Some of them, like, under clothes.
00:27:28
Wow. Yeah. So she was indicted on a 10-count indictment, charged with five counts of falsifying and concealing facts,
00:27:37
three counts of obstruction of justice, and two counts of lying to law enforcement authorities,
00:27:42
and arrested in April of 2002. And, you know, authorities said that she had planted human remains
00:27:49
and fiber evidence at the National Park in Michigan during the search for Sherita Thomas.
00:27:55
And that she had been involved with 15 different law enforcement agencies over time
00:28:00
and worked on over 200 cases. That then they had to go back and review them and make sure that the evidence that they had was correct.
00:28:08
and it was revealed that she had planted evidence at crime scene covered with her own body fluids,
00:28:15
coins, gauze, other items, including that handsaw that was in the basement. No. That was her blood.
00:28:25
What? Where did she get the bones? Whose bones were those? Okay. What is she doing?
00:28:34
Yeah, also, what is she doing? What is she doing? Second question. So I think that this is kind of where the opportunist angle comes in with where did she get the bones?
00:28:43
Sometimes it was like body parts. Okay, I'll tell you in one second, but I just have to tell you one more thing.
00:28:47
Okay. There was another instance that they looked at, which she was called to help search for a missing man after an auto accident in Ohio.
00:28:57
And she claimed to have found a severed toe, but that's it. She didn't find, you know, any of the other body.
00:29:04
Well, later, the body was found and the man had all 10 toes. What the fuck? So she had got, they're not 100% sure where she got that toe, but it seems like she got it from
00:29:16
the Shreveport, Louisiana Fire Department. Someone had given it to her. And here's the thing.
00:29:22
What? When you are training dogs to search for human remains, you need human remains to train them.
00:29:32
Right. Yeah. And so she had access to human remains and bones and things like that.
00:29:38
And when you donate your body to science, there's a lot of different ways that it can be donated.
00:29:43
And one of them, you can donate it to help train search and rescue dogs. Wow. So that's how she had all this access to these body parts.
00:29:53
Okay. I just so glad that she also has all 10 toes because I thought we were going into an area where like suddenly because I was like wait what has happened And then you like oh yeah because that actually something people do for people who are doing this exact work And it like
00:30:08
it's horrifying. And it's also like, I don't know. I think we all love dogs, or at least I
00:30:15
personally love dogs so much and feel like dog people are so like kind of earnest and you know
00:30:20
to me and like sincere every time you see people like that in like a true crime, you know, TV show
00:30:27
or something, you're never thinking about that person could possibly be part of the problem.
00:30:33
That's just, it's like the cavalry has come. Hooray, it's a search and rescue dog. Like,
00:30:39
wow, what a turn. Well, I thought it was going to be that she, like the dog wasn't really real
00:30:46
and she had been accidentally leading it. Not that she was planting shit on her own.
00:30:54
Like that to me is like, she was purposely planting stuff. And it's like, why? You have to know you're gonna get caught, right?
00:31:03
Or am I just like paranoid? Hannah might know why. Yes, let's, okay, let's get back in.
00:31:10
I don't know. I mean, my guess is that she did it for the fame because I do think that Eagle was good at his job.
00:31:19
And, you know, also none of this was Eagle's fault. He was an innocent in this. But yeah, I think that she had some initial success with him
00:31:28
and people were like showering her with praise. Yeah. And then she just wanted more and more and more of that.
00:31:35
And even the best search and rescue dogs, it's not a hundred percent, you know, they might,
00:31:41
I think there was a statistics that they usually are successful 55 to 85% of the time,
00:31:47
which is still really good. But, you know, I think that she just wanted to get a find every time.
00:31:53
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she just got so into the like- The high five of it all. Yeah. The thrill and the high fiving and the, yeah.
00:32:01
And this is the best dog. It has to be the best dog. It can't just be like a really good search and rescue dog.
00:32:08
Oh my gosh, I can't imagine. Yeah, it has to be the best dog. Yeah. I mean, at one point she was just like indicating
00:32:16
that maybe he had some kind of special, like out of this world talent, you know?
00:32:20
I think that's one of the things that really attracted me to this story is that a lot of times the stories that I tell,
00:32:26
it's like, what's the motivation? Money. Like the money is just like always the motivation
00:32:31
for a lot of like fraud and scam, scammer stories, right? I just like, I'm amazed that she didn't even get
00:32:37
like hardly any money. Like she just got her travel costs. covered. And yet she couldn't stop doing it. And what an adventurous life too. She probably
00:32:47
kind of got swept up in that. I feel like, you know, how exciting to get called onto these like
00:32:53
historic sites where really important things were happening. I mean, it just seems to me like she
00:33:00
squandered this incredible opportunity to live this life that she then had. She just got greedy
00:33:07
with it. I read a book that's kind of old about a woman who did search and rescue with her dog.
00:33:13
And part, and I'm sorry, because I'll have to look it up. But part of the story she told was
00:33:18
how law enforcement sometimes resented the search and rescue dog people, because it's like somebody
00:33:24
coming in and going, you can't do it, we'll do it. And so I wonder if that, and that's just that
00:33:30
woman's experience, you know, when she first started, because it seemed like they were
00:33:34
some of the first that started doing it and working with law enforcement. And they would
00:33:38
be resentful or that she'd be like, I think you need to check up there for like a missing body.
00:33:43
Like you need to go up, not down. And they'd be like, you don't know what you're talking about.
00:33:46
And then she'd be right. And they'd be mad. So I wonder if she was trying to win over,
00:33:51
like maybe part of it could have been trying to win over the people she was now working with.
00:33:55
Like I wanted to be part of the fraternity of law enforcement of like, if I go in and I succeed,
00:34:01
you'll respect me. Or if I go in and we're like immediately superstars, you will have to respect
00:34:07
me. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so interesting. I also wonder if that played into
00:34:13
how, you know, the suspicion of this last group of law enforcement officers having a suspicion
00:34:21
about her, if there is that contentious relationship sometimes, maybe not always, but yeah.
00:34:28
Well, it also sounds like she was having the dog walk in and immediately find something,
00:34:33
which is like as a, you know, lifelong liar. It's like, you want to play that a little more realistically.
00:34:39
How about, you know, let 45 minutes go by before, you know, you find something. Like that is, it was like pushing, what is that called?
00:34:48
Like believability of the whole situation. Like you're not going to walk in and immediately solve the problem.
00:34:55
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like maybe at first she was doing that, right? Like she'd be like,
00:34:59
oh, here's one fragment of a bone. And then she just loved that reaction of people being like,
00:35:05
oh, wow. And so then at the end, she's just like finding six, seven, eight immediately.
00:35:11
And it's just... Three people at one site and not one of them is the person they're searching for. That is like,
00:35:18
yeah, you're going to cause a ruckus. Of course you are. They're going to think it's a burial site
00:35:23
And now, or a dumping site first, now you're kind of fucked. She kind of screwed herself over.
00:35:30
Well, she pleaded guilty and she admitted to planting bones, carpet fibers, the toe,
00:35:37
bloody saw. And she was sentenced to 21 months in prison and had to pay $14,582 in restitution to a
00:35:45
variety of different law enforcement agencies. and then was on probation for three years,
00:35:51
in which time she had to report any search missions that she participated in to her probation officer She could still do it She could still do it Oh no This is kind of a light sentence it feels like for this
00:36:05
And I would think all the cases had to be overturned that she ever participated in.
00:36:12
No? Well, all of them had to be revisited. Okay. So with the case of Tracy and so with Azazul Islam,
00:36:22
At first, he was granted another trial because of this, because of Sandra Anderson tampering with a crime scene and planting evidence.
00:36:30
But then actually that was reversed because they basically claimed that even though Sandra Anderson testified at the trial, she never testified about the bloody saw because they decided it was irrelevant.
00:36:45
It wasn't Tracy's blood. Right. And they were able to connect the blood to Tracy.
00:36:52
There was also a lot of other evidence to support the fact that he had done this.
00:36:57
He rented a van. He asked a neighbor to help him lift a heavy bag at one point into his van.
00:37:04
And they tracked the mileage of the car rental and it matched up. He said he was going to the airport to pick someone up.
00:37:09
It was like too many miles. He had clearly driven out, dumped body parts. There was a lot of other things pointing to it.
00:37:15
and the blood evidence. So they ended up overturning it and he didn't get out and he didn't get another trial.
00:37:23
And also they made this distinction that since she didn't work for the police department,
00:37:30
like since she was a private company that was a volunteer, that somehow they were able
00:37:36
to make a distinction that it was fine. And I don't think that anyone was convicted solely
00:37:41
because of something that she planted. Okay. There was other evidence. There was other evidence.
00:37:46
And then sometimes Eagle would find, you know, real evidence. Oh, okay. So Eagle was legit.
00:37:53
She wasn't, it wasn't all her just planting stuff. Yeah. That's my, that was my worry is that poor Eagle is just like, I'm just a dog.
00:38:00
I don't even, well, I want to be like watching TV at home. No, he's actually, okay.
00:38:06
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Default terms at mintmobile.com. As far as I was able to find, nothing was overturned.
00:40:14
Although there are some questions like she went to Wisconsin and claimed that she found
00:40:21
all these burial sites of like ancient Native Americans and groups had marked them and it
00:40:27
was a big deal. But the thing about that is that most of those sites, you can't dig into them because there's
00:40:33
all of these like land rights restrictions. So there's actually no way to know if that's true.
00:40:38
She just, you know, so a lot of that has come into question. And at one point at the time, Wisconsin State archaeologist Robert Birmingham was said to say that her claims were ludicrous based on research that he had done.
00:40:53
And he said that that many graves would have made it the biggest Native American cemetery in the upper Midwest.
00:40:58
And it just didn't track with like historical records or anything. So that's probably fraudulent.
00:41:04
So there's some things like that with archaeological sites that are hard to disprove, but that she got all wrapped up in and probably was just making up.
00:41:14
Wow. Yeah. Like she found the thing that couldn't be investigated. Right. I mean, that's the problem is like, if she started this whole business with like good intentions and real care in her heart for helping people and solving these problems, then the flip of making it so that she always won or Eagle always, you know, got a gold star, basically then just erases all the good that you were doing before.
00:41:43
Like there's no kind of big picture thinking it feels like with a lot of these people.
00:41:48
They just start going down this really dark path and it's like that there's just kind of no way back.
00:41:54
Yeah And it like at some point how do you back out of it It like you have to commit to it at some point right And then it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger
00:42:05
Then you have bones laying around your house. Yeah. And a toe, an errant toe. Oh, carrying a toe around.
00:42:14
Yeah. Then you're the person who carried a toe in a plastic baggie, let's say, and planted it at a scene. That's what you're known for. Even if you keep doing good,
00:42:22
It doesn't matter. Right. There's no coming back. Or there's the attempt. But like, that is such a, it's almost like not understanding the sensitivity and importance
00:42:33
of the job itself. Right. Like kind of really losing the sense of the point of what you're doing.
00:42:39
Right. Yeah. And I think about the people that donated their body to science, you know, and then their
00:42:45
body parts are being used in this scam. That's terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So then one more wrap up. I just wanted to kind of wrap you up on
00:42:55
what happened with the Sharita Thomas case, which the case where Sandra and Eagle,
00:43:02
Sandra, got caught planting bones. So obviously she wasn't used anymore in that case.
00:43:08
You know, that's actually still an unsolved case. In 2004, investigators arrested someone,
00:43:15
Jimmy Allen Nelson in Houston, Texas, and they believe that it was a hate crime.
00:43:19
Sharita was a young black woman and he was a known racist and he had connections with Sharita's friend who she was out with that night and had said to her, given her a hard time for being friends with Sharita.
00:43:32
And he had a blue truck and he had tried to obstruct the investigation through lying.
00:43:37
But he was so I don't know what's going on with it. He was arrested in 2005. But then a few months later, the murder charges were dismissed.
00:43:45
And then again, he was convicted of murdering Sharita in 2009. and put in prison, supposedly for life.
00:43:53
But then in 2014, that was overturned, requested by the prosecutor who stated that new evidence had been discovered
00:44:00
but wouldn't say what it was. That evidence is sealed from the public. And they did say it pointed to someone else,
00:44:07
but no arrest has ever been made. No charges have been brought and it's still unsolved.
00:44:12
So, yeah. Yeah, that's the other piece of this is the delay, the waste of like law enforcement time that they don't have that much of any way.
00:44:29
That's the frustration and difficulty of missing persons cases, especially people of color,
00:44:34
where things aren't prioritized. It's rationalized. It's put at the bottom of the list.
00:44:42
So then they finally get people to be paying attention to this cold case. And because someone is so egomaniacal that they have to be the best fill in the blank,
00:44:54
it just kind of like derails all of that energy and effort. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:45:02
That's really screwed up. Wow. Yeah. Was Eagle taken out of the home and rehomed with someone who knows what they're doing?
00:45:12
Eagle passed in 2004, right when all this was happening. I think of natural causes.
00:45:18
As far as I can tell, Eagles seem to have a good life. So that's a bright shining star in the story.
00:45:24
And Sandra Anderson was released from prison in April 21st of 2006. And do we know if she still works in the field?
00:45:32
I actually couldn't really find anything. A lot of the websites have been taken down.
00:45:36
She had stated in her sentencing hearing that she wanted to still be active in the community
00:45:41
and that she would do things like bring dogs to nursing homes and things like that.
00:45:45
I don't know that any law enforcement agencies are going to work with her again,
00:45:49
but hopefully she's still doing some kind of good work with some dogs. Yeah, because maybe like bringing dogs to nursing homes.
00:45:57
I mean, if you've ever like the TikTok videos are, they're all over the place of like that kind of thing of little kids
00:46:04
or dogs coming into hospitals and making little kids so much happier. So like, hopefully, maybe the silver lining of that story is she starts doing work like that and realizing there is also a kind of fame and quote unquote glory by doing good just in those small ways.
00:46:23
That the small ways are also big and it doesn't have to be that kind of like I'm making newspaper headlines.
00:46:29
It's like I'm doing good for the people who need this kind of support. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so.
00:46:35
We're going to hope for that. Yeah, that's what we're going to hope for. Yeah. Wow.
00:46:40
Well, that was a fucking great story. I'm glad you were able to save it for us. I feel.
00:46:45
Yes, that was amazing. Perfect for this, my favorite murder audience. Just like, it's so fucked up to.
00:46:55
Karen's so mad. I can't get over it. It's just like, oh, help is coming. Okay. Things that we're going to figure this out.
00:47:02
We're all going to work together. Are you mad that she used dogs for evil and not good?
00:47:06
Yes. Well, but also it's kind of like, it's almost that thing. And it's what I love about Hannah's podcast,
00:47:13
where it's kind of like, in the beginning you see when the story first starts getting told,
00:47:19
you know, like, I feel like the most recent one I listened to was the guy that said he discovered gold.
00:47:24
And so he was getting everybody in his community, like, this is your chance. I'm going to go diving
00:47:29
and we're going to find this shipwreck. And everybody, if you give me $10,000, you're going to get it 1.5 million
00:47:35
or whatever those might not be the accurate numbers, but it was basically this investment
00:47:39
promise. And he gets all these people who literally give him their life savings because
00:47:45
they know him and they believe in this project. And of course, everybody is like these days,
00:47:52
everybody is like, well, if you can take my 10,000 and turn it into 1 million, and I know you and look you in the eye, then God bless.
00:48:00
What if you miss that opportunity and it's real? Like what if everyone else gets fucking rich off of it
00:48:04
and all your friends are doing it too and they're not stupid people. So you're just like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna believe this.
00:48:10
It's the idea of having kind of like, I know a guy, I have an inside guy that's going to get me to the front of the line in some way.
00:48:18
And the hope of it, and also just like treasure, of course, where it's like, ooh, you know,
00:48:23
I get some gold doubloons of my own. The beginning of those stories always have this like potential
00:48:29
and there's like a good and a kind of, hey, if we all get together and do this and you just give me 10 grand,
00:48:35
you know, I'm going to do this for you. We'll all benefit. Yeah. And people believing in that isn't a bad thing,
00:48:41
like believing in other people or wanting to invest or help or whatever. But then it's like,
00:48:47
then suddenly the money's gone, the person's gone and everyone's going, but they went to my church.
00:48:51
I thought I could have sworn that meant something good. BTK killer went to church too.
00:48:56
You can't trust him. Yeah. And that was like such an interesting one because the ship was so deep in the ocean that it was so hard to get to.
00:49:07
So I talked with Greg Brooks. That's the guy from the shipwreck guy. And still to this day, he won't admit that it was a scam.
00:49:16
And he's like, someday I'm going to get down there and I'm going to get that treasure.
00:49:20
And there's just like so much evidence to the point so that it's not there. But he's, I don't know.
00:49:26
I was like that was one of those moments talking to him where I was like my understanding of people is so is being messed with right now because he so convincing He was so convincing And I was like what is happening Did you give him your money Hannah And I was like will you take
00:49:45
Please. I want treasure. Please, treasure. You have a new podcast coming out, right?
00:49:51
Cast is expanding our true crime podcasts. And one of the really fun things about working at
00:49:58
is that we are very collaborative in like the narrative podcast space. So we all get to like kind of work
00:50:04
and give feedback on each other's shows. And I was fortunate to give a lot of feedback
00:50:08
and consult on it. And I'm really excited about it. It's actually, y'all have covered this case before.
00:50:14
It's kind of a famous one. The Dutch friends, Lisanne Froon and Chris Kramers, who went missing in Panama.
00:50:21
So Cass worked with two journalists, Jeremy Kreit. He was the one that broke this story
00:50:27
to the English speaking world original. And he kind of came to the conclusion, if you recall, that like they died of natural causes in the jungle.
00:50:36
But then he got a tip more recently that someone told him like he had been lied to and that there was actually something more sinister going on.
00:50:47
Because there were a lot of weird clues to it that pointed to otherwise. Yeah. And so he went back to Panama with a journalist,
00:50:57
Mariana Atencio, who hosts the podcast. And they retraced the steps. They like go on the path.
00:51:02
They take, remember all those like weird photos? Yes, totally. They try to find the location of those photos.
00:51:08
And it been really like interesting to work on So that called Lost in Panama And all of the episodes of season one are out now but we been really excited to be able to bring that story to life
00:51:19
and tell that story, so. Oh, wow. I can't wait to listen to that. It's such a fascinating case, Lost in Panama.
00:51:26
Lost in Panama. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today.
00:51:32
We had so much fun covering that crazy case with you. Yeah, what a treat. Thank you so much, Karen and Georgia.
00:51:39
This is truly such a treat for me. I'm like so thrilled to meet you and be on the show.
00:51:43
I can't thank you enough. Absolutely. We're real fans. If you have any more cases no one else wants to talk about,
00:51:49
but all your, you and all your producers think are amazing, please let us know. We'd love to do this with you again.
00:51:54
It was, I mean, that really was, that was a great story. Yes. Yeah. You're great at what you do.
00:52:00
You are. So thanks for being here. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yay. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
00:52:09
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.
00:52:18
Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered by Stephen Ray Morris
00:52:22
and mixed by Ryo Baum. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays
00:52:29
to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
00:52:37
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