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podcast free all lowercase shopify.com podcast free shopify.com podcast [Music] [Music]
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free [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:01:46
listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that would like to point out that once again we skipped leg
00:01:53
day here is the captain been skipping leg day for 40 years it's good to be seen and good to see you you thanks for
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listening thanks for telling a [Music] friend this week we are very happy to be featuring Wishing Star cold IPA in a
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beautiful purple aqua and several other delightful shades of blue on this can this is another wonderful and delicious
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beer from the great Folks at Asheville's original Craft brewery you know I'm talking about one of our faves Highland
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Brewing company brewing great beers since 1994 this one Wishing Star is 6.8% ABV
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and garage grade 4 and a half bottle caps out of five and who helped us fill up the fridge for today's show let's
00:02:48
give some shout outs who do we have up first Captain we have a big we like your jib to Kristen enfinger from
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Thomasville Georgia and it cheers in a tip of the cap to Savannah Marion from Summersville South Carolina everyone we
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just mentioned went to True Crim garage.com and clicked on the Pint glass and for that we thank you yeah bwe Ru in
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beer run you get a beer you get a beer and you sir get a beer for everything true crime
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go to True Crim garage.com and sign up on the mailing list and if you're not following us on YouTube check us out on
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YouTube a lot of videos we're posting almost we're almost up to a th000 videos to
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follow us on YouTube and Colonel that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair
00:03:40
grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] [Applause] [Music] crime [Music] parts of the following are from The
00:04:14
Gazette at of Cedar Rapids an article by Val swin calling her murder a crazy Act
00:04:19
of wickedness the Reverend Bernard oper sought to comfort friends and relatives of Ronda kuden with a reminder she is in
00:04:27
a Heavenly mansion with Jesus Christ an overflow crowd of more than 500 mourners packed the Trinity Lutheran
00:04:35
Church for Canon's funeral her body was found in the back of the Williamstown store no motive had been established and
00:04:44
no arrest have been made things go Haywire in this world occasionally oper said as in ronda's
00:04:52
death someone allowed the power of evil to take over his life and snuff out Rhonda in Rhonda's case we can say what
00:05:02
does it mean there's got to be more than just the piece of iron wielded by a crazy
00:05:08
person in the middle of the night youth is more than just preparation for life he said it is life
00:05:17
itself you cannot use today to set the stage for tomorrow there may be no tomorrow this is true crime garage
00:05:29
[Music] [Applause] this week we go to a great place with a great name Chickasaw County in the
00:05:48
Hawkeye State Iowa Chickasaw County is in the almost very North Eastern part of the great state of Iowa about 12,000
00:05:58
people living in the the county so I'm picturing some wide openen spaces here the county is named after the Chickasaw
00:06:06
tribe and the county seat is New Hampton back in 1992 one person living in the county was 22-year-old Ronda Canon Ronda
00:06:18
was known to be a hard worker she was a creative person and an artist she came from a very big family Rhonda was one of
00:06:27
seven kids to parents married and Nells Canon that's six too many and we will see this was a very big family even
00:06:36
Beyond ronda's immediate family of nine people all of the seven kids have first names that start with the letter R so
00:06:45
today we are talking about Ronda and her brothers are Robert Roger Richard and Rodney and her sisters are Renee and
00:06:54
relle Ronda graduated from New Hampton High School in 198 where we pick up Rhonda's story she is
00:07:02
22 years old she's in a long-term relationship with her boyfriend Al it looks like they've been together for
00:07:10
about three years by this time and been living together for about two years just
00:07:15
to get this out of the way you say Chickasaw I say Chickasaw he how Ronda worked at the Philip 66 store this is an
00:07:26
open all day and all night 24-hour convenience store I'm guessing it would get a lot of traffic just given its
00:07:33
location it's just 6 miles south of new Hampton again that's the county seat everyone knows a key ingredient to a
00:07:44
successful business is the actual location and the potential traffic right right well this store is on US Highway
00:07:52
63 and just a quarter of a mile from the junction of Highways 63 18 and 346 so we're going to see a ton of
00:08:02
highway traffic people traveling across or through the state and especially semi-rs Ronda works the overnight shift
00:08:10
at the Philip 66 station I was an overnight worker for a couple years Captain many call it third shift we
00:08:17
called it third trick because often times these types of stores have close proximity to a highway or in this case
00:08:24
three highways that certainly increases the risk of a potential Rob y or holdup at this location now the overnight shift
00:08:33
when there are less employees and less customers coming in and out of the store this increases the possibility of the
00:08:40
store being targeted for such crimes as well more than one person in Rhonda's life encouraged her to switch to either
00:08:48
a different shift or to change jobs but Rhonda told everyone that she really liked working the overnight shift and
00:08:57
had done so for a period of time well anybody that has worked at a convenience store you you get regulars
00:09:04
and I will say from my experience working third shift it certainly has its pros and cons I guess one check mark in
00:09:11
the Pro column for Ronda would be that that is actually how she met her boyfriend she was working at the Philip
00:09:19
66 and at the time he was driving a truck for a cream company and so the two met there so this point of the story
00:09:26
takes us to the late summer of 199 this is Labor Day and I don't know if this has any bearing on our case but
00:09:35
Captain you know I'm always interested when a holiday is involved portions of the population operate on different
00:09:43
schedules on holidays and when we are talking a murder case as we often do here in the garage we are most certainly
00:09:52
going to discuss motive means and opportunity who has it and who doesn't is key so why while it may mean nothing
00:10:00
it also could mean everything so on this date Monday September 7 1992 Rhonda's overnight shift is the
00:10:10
9900 P p.m. to 5:00 a.m. time slot ronda's boss typically is the one to relieve her at the end of her shift when
00:10:18
he arrives he finds Rhonda dead in what is described as a back room her boss then sends in a call to emergency
00:10:28
service at 4:45 a.m. the general statements about this case are these in the early
00:10:37
morning hours of Monday September 7 1992 Ronda Annette kudon was murdered while working the 900 P.M to 5 a.m. shift at
00:10:46
the Phillips 66 convenience store in Chickasaw County the store was located 6 miles south of new Hampton on US Highway
00:10:54
63 and one4 mile north of the junction of the three highways the store was open 24 hours a day but
00:11:02
currently no longer exists so today due to road construction they have expanded the
00:11:09
lanes and the roads and the highways so where the gas station SL store once stood now is a road in place of that my
00:11:20
friend so it's determined right away that the probable cause of death was severe traumatic head injuries yeah this
00:11:28
would have been in severe traumatic head injuries from a beating with a blunt object now we talked about motive means
00:11:36
and opportunity already but we're going to try to sort through those things as we sift through the information that we
00:11:41
have in this case this case remains unsolved to this day we're talking over 30 years later and the family and law
00:11:52
enforcement and really the county it's a close-nit county in town of new Hampton
00:11:57
and Williamstown there's still looking for justice here in this case a lot of people have not forgotten about this
00:12:04
case 31 years later yeah it's interesting because this is a pretty popular case if you talk to people in
00:12:12
the area but just hasn't got the Coverage Nationwide law enforcement and there have been several different
00:12:18
agencies working this case over the years in fact the Iowa Department of Criminal investigations got involved
00:12:24
very early in the investigation I believe the Chickasaw County Sheriff's Department requested the assistance of
00:12:32
the FBI as well for them to get involved but I don't believe that they ever that
00:12:38
the FBI ever did any work on the case but regardless good by those at the sheriff's department to get or at least
00:12:46
request other agencies to get involved because this is a case that if you close your eyes you can picture it right it's
00:12:54
a case that takes place in the dark of night so I I think about this case as this brief quick isolated violent
00:13:04
incident going down in a matter of minutes well they always say that the 3:00 a.m. time slot is the witching hour
00:13:11
how long was the killer or killers in the store we are going to try to sort through that but it may have been only a
00:13:18
short period of time but you have this murder taking place in the stretch of land not a huge population this should
00:13:26
have just been another laid-back night at the gas station but because of the highways we could be talking about a
00:13:33
killer or killers that came from another town a city down the road on one of the
00:13:38
highways or another state and then the same is true for the Post defense movements of the perpetrator or
00:13:44
perpetrators relatively quickly this killer could be in another town in a city in another portion of Iowa or even
00:13:52
in another state right so goodby the men and women over at the Chickasaw Sheriff's Department to to request the
00:13:59
assistance of DCI and FBI who we have DCI who can cover you for Manpower expertise and resources throughout the
00:14:08
state of Iowa well and I've said it before and I'll say it again you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room
00:14:14
you just have to be the one that invited the smartest guy there just have to be one of the guys in the room that helped
00:14:20
get this thing done at the end of the day I would wager a Franklin that someone at the FBI would later regret
00:14:28
not getting involved especially with something that we covered last year remember we have the FBI's Highway
00:14:35
serial killings initiative and we're going to see a couple different things in this case potential serial killer
00:14:42
being involved or identified or unknown also potential trucker being responsible
00:14:49
for this death now why would that be something that the FBI would be interested in we just checked both of
00:14:57
those boxes for you but again you can imagine with a small town murder case like this early
00:15:04
rumors were that either a trucker was involved a serial killer was involved and I guess we should say serial killer
00:15:12
that may have been a trucker involved the other weird rumor that was circulating in town was that potentially
00:15:22
a sheriff's deputy may be responsible now what is difficult about this rumor C is as far as I could find searching high
00:15:31
and low no single sheriff's deputy was named in particular that was more of a blanket
00:15:40
theory in the case and we will see why given the location and some more information about our victim now before
00:15:48
we get too far into the weeds here we need to talk about a website that I know we have discussed before here in the
00:15:54
garage but that's because they do such gang busters work everyone should go read this website it's Iowa cold
00:16:02
cases.org they are the primary source for us today they cover a lot of Iowa cases that you have heard of maybe even
00:16:13
heard them here in the garage we have jod hen Tru Johnny gosh Tammy Joe awiki just to name a few so if you want to do
00:16:23
a deep dive on some fascinating unsolved cases I tell you many a night I have lost myself on that website spunking the
00:16:32
rabbit holes of Iowa cold cases let's get into more information about the crime scene and the injuries to the
00:16:39
victim yeah the crime scene information and the autopsy information is something that's going to
00:16:46
help us sort out some of the issues that this case itself presents the store information just general information
00:16:53
about the store is very confusing I think a little confusing anyway to out Outsiders but what we can tell you is we
00:17:01
have been saying Philip 66 and that is absolutely true this store was both a convenience store and as the old-timers
00:17:10
say a filling station they sold gas as well I think the gas station portion is key to this case and potentially key to
00:17:19
our perpetrator or perpetrators who are responsible sometimes especially back in
00:17:26
the day and in these more out in the country type areas you will see a gas station with a well-known commercial
00:17:33
brand of gas being sold you'll see the sign right this says Phillips 66 gas unleaded being sold for back then in
00:17:42
1992 I was we were both too young to be driving back then but I would guess UNL may have gone for what Captain 75 80
00:17:51
cents a gallon back then yeah I might have been too young to drive but I was driving jacking cars back then you have
00:17:59
the convenience store that is attached so here they don't share the same name you see the sign that's Philip 66
00:18:07
gas here the store itself was called the Williamstown store the locals called it
00:18:14
billstown the billstown store or for short billstown it's a small building this is
00:18:21
not one of those large pilot or Flying J gas stations and stores right this is a
00:18:28
small building judging by the pictures if they have a restroom at all or restrooms at all it's probably one of
00:18:36
those situations where you're going inside asking for the key and then you have to go back outside to a door on the
00:18:42
outside of the store the question on everybody's mine are you man enough to eat a hot dog from one of these stores
00:18:48
roller food as they call it I used to be a big roller food guy when I was like 18
00:18:54
19 years old but that's also the only thing I could afford so so your your intestines are probably glad you're past
00:19:02
those days so I can say in this situation for this question back when I was a boy I was much more of a man than
00:19:09
I am today the store sold I don't know about roller food here Captain but the store sold coffee snacks and I would
00:19:15
guess cigarettes and newspapers as well this is a small store but people would go in and frequent the store it appears
00:19:23
that they had three gas pumps out front now most of the reports we do not get a time of death
00:19:32
and yet very quickly in this investigation law enforcement is going to be asking the public for their help
00:19:40
the the simple information that we get is just that she was working the 9 p.m. to 500 a.m. shift and then found dead in
00:19:47
the morning the person that found her was the store's owner so he's a longtime owner slash
00:19:56
operator of the store his name is Ray robrock he said that he arrived at 4:45 a.m. that Monday morning and found
00:20:06
Rhonda lying fully clothed in a back room it sounds like there may have only been one back room to this small store
00:20:16
so Ray is going to find Ronda but unfortunately she is already dead she's been attacked she's dead upon his
00:20:23
arrival of course he phones it in immediately the county seat is nearby so the sheriff's department will arrive
00:20:30
rather quickly and to top that off not just proximity the deputies know the store they know the gas station very
00:20:39
well and they probably know Rhonda exactly they did know Ronda and and one of one of several statements they say
00:20:48
this case is extra difficult because we know the victim we personally knew the victim because many of them would stop
00:20:55
in for snacks or even to get gas gas while on shift while they're working their shifts fairly often and a lot of
00:21:03
these convenience stores they give free coffee to law enforcement the good ones do and everybody should continue to do
00:21:10
that because you know what it's does not hurt your business if cops are in there
00:21:16
it prevents crimes it prevents theft and things like that if they if the cops feel good about coming in and know that
00:21:24
they're going to be greeted with a smile a friendly welcome and a hot cup of coffee and that's what they got at
00:21:30
Rhonda's store when they would visit her in fact more than one deputy said that we would go in there to get gas or get a
00:21:38
snack and maybe we felt in some way that we were checking on her making sure she
00:21:42
was safe and the store was safe but there were other times that we would be driving by and slow down honk the horn
00:21:49
and she would pop up in the window or or step into the doorway and just wave you
00:21:54
this is the middle of the night you need to pass the time for both the sheriff's
00:21:59
deputies and the person working at this billstown store can we dive into more of
00:22:05
the information of where she's found in the store yeah that I think that's very interesting Captain I'm glad that you
00:22:12
brought that up the back room where Ronda was found it does not have a safe in it right so for
00:22:19
whatever the back room may play in this investigation it's not for the purpose of emptying out a safe yeah it makes you
00:22:27
wonder if she was attacked in the store and then dragged into the back room so maybe delaying somebody finding her or
00:22:37
was she attacked in the back room because as you know sometimes they have stock back there and so when it gets a
00:22:43
little slow part of your job is to restock some of the shelves and maybe responsibly so but I believe there could
00:22:51
be a whole bunch of hold back information in this case at times I find that I agree with it and other times I
00:23:00
don't agree with it and I think you take each piece of information on a case-by casee basis but if you're holding back a
00:23:06
whole bunch of information about the crime scene and the way that the victims found keep in mind this is a small town
00:23:13
right 12,000 people for the entire County we have the owner who found her I'm sure he shared with people what his
00:23:22
experience was and and and what he saw we have and possibly law enforcement as well correct we have deputies there who
00:23:31
would have seen things and so what I wonder about this case is when I'm trying to picture and work through how
00:23:38
the crime may have went down how the murder may have went down you're trying to figure out what you just said right
00:23:44
was she attacked in the front room and then dragged back there for some other purpose one one simple purpose could
00:23:50
have been either there would have been an attempted sexual assault after the attack and maybe the attacker heard
00:24:00
somebody come into the store and decided to take off right or got spooked somehow
00:24:05
got spooked right where did the attack take place unfortunately given the the injuries we know that there's going to
00:24:13
be a considerable amount of blood did they find that blood in the front portion of the store or only in the back
00:24:19
room of that store as you say captain was she dragged back there or if she's attacked back there it makes you Wonder
00:24:28
a couple of other things if there's no safe what why was she and the killer in that back room at the same time right
00:24:37
was it for the purpose of the killer to do something else to the victim or to conceal the body or is it just simply
00:24:44
that yes to conceal the body that the killer dragged the body into this back room to buy some time and conceal the
00:24:51
body or did the attack go down in that back room because this was somebody that she was comfortable enough with that
00:25:01
they happened to be in the back room together talking about something you know that on this third shift you have
00:25:08
people that would come in and talk with her and talk with the other employees is this somebody that was kind
00:25:14
of just following her around the store as she's carrying out her duties throughout the night and she felt
00:25:21
comfortable with this person following her around and for whatever reason the attack happened to occur
00:25:28
in this back room I think that you could put different potential suspects or possibly who did this into different
00:25:36
categories by knowing something simple as as simple as that about the crime scene
00:25:42
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shopify.com slmp podcast free [Music] all right we are back you filthy animals cheers to you Colonel cheers to
00:27:41
everybody in the back hey most importantly cheers to you Captain it is it's the captain's
00:27:47
birthday week all week here in the garage and we cannot wait until we can celebrate with all of you this Saturday
00:27:54
at Brew dog with beers in hand yeah and I'm just going to give you a warning I might get a little tipsy well if you
00:28:02
don't I'm leaving here's the thing Captain when we're looking at this case right now we
00:28:08
have to wonder often times the Killer is local often times the killer knows the victim
00:28:15
so now if this case in R Canon's case I think it' be different if it was at a house or apartment or something but this
00:28:24
is at uh philli station basically in a heavy traffic area where a lot of people are going to be either traveling these
00:28:34
roads especially like you said Labor Day or it's going to be a possibly a trucker
00:28:41
right and given the holiday that's why I wonder things about people's routines when you have something like a holiday
00:28:48
Labor Day traditionally a lot of jobs and occupations people don't go to their jobs on Labor Day so could you you while
00:28:58
you could be seeing an increase in traffic as far as people traveling great distances because of the holiday you
00:29:06
likely would see the reverse on the local level less traffic from the local so I wanted to kind of sort through this
00:29:14
part of it because you're spot on my friend about wondering if this could be somebody from far away if this killer
00:29:22
were local or someone that knew Rhonda what would they likely know about the situation this goes to our means and
00:29:31
opportunity portions of the investigation right so we know the stores open 24 hours a day locals will
00:29:39
know this we have a store owner Rey he's the owner/operator the store has the owner
00:29:48
who works there and four employees the shifts are covered by one single attendant at all times so other than
00:29:58
that 15minute window when a person is ending their shift and a new worker comes in to start their shift as far as
00:30:06
employees go there's only one in the store at a time and so locals and people that knew Ronda would know that yeah
00:30:14
locals would know that and they'd also know she's a young attractive female and she's working alone and then on the flip
00:30:22
side of things if it's a traveler then they're coming into an opportunity a young attractive female
00:30:32
working by herself right and if this were a robbery that went bad and for whatever reason ends up not appearing to
00:30:39
be as such you also know that you have employees working at the store where there's 1992 there's cash money in those
00:30:47
registers yep and there's one person in the store working at a time so and then to take that a step further a lot of
00:30:56
criminals are cowards and a lot of them will choose to attack or Rob a female or
00:31:02
an elderly person because it appears to be an easier Target a less threatening Target to the criminal well here's a
00:31:12
question that I have for you that I can't find the answer to I understand that there's no safe in
00:31:18
this back room but that doesn't mean that the protocol wasn't hey once your drawer gets filled up with a certain
00:31:26
amount of cash you bundle that cash and place it somewhere in the back room that's interesting and if that's the
00:31:33
case it's not mentioned in any of the the stories but that could be something that would be hold back information as
00:31:40
far as law enforcement's concerned now well but it also can be confusing information because if that store owner
00:31:47
didn't keep a very tight inventory there might not be any way of knowing whether
00:31:53
there was money that was taken from the crime CRI scene or not well and talking about a potential easy target again
00:32:01
going back to the idea that a criminal for whatever reason whatever crime that they are intending to commit may want to
00:32:10
Target a location or person that presents less of a threat or perceived less of a threat we said we have the
00:32:18
owner and we have four employees of those four employees working by themselves three of them are female
00:32:27
right so 24 hours a day 7 days a week five people that work there two of them are male and three of them are females
00:32:37
but anytime that we have a victim we have to look at the Inner Circle and the immediate Outer Circle and so you have
00:32:46
current employees of the station you have boyfriends of the current employees of the station you have friends is there
00:32:56
somebody that knew this and would that make sense of why the victim was found in the back room right and with this
00:33:03
case when we talk about truckers or potentially a traveling serial killer we also need to look at well what would the
00:33:11
locals know what would the people that knew Rhonda know even you know the locals that knew her didn't know her
00:33:17
what would they know about the situation and the situation would be this they know that a single person is working
00:33:23
there there's cash in the register there's Rhonda who worked the overnight shift
00:33:29
for a long time so many of the locals would likely know that she would be expected she works five days a week the
00:33:37
overnight shift yes there a certain reason why you keep saying the situation now one key element to the case though
00:33:45
is this it sounds to me that the store had a good deal of regulars and people that would drop in and not just buy
00:33:54
something or fill up the old gas tank but they would stick around for a bit talk shoot the breeze in fact there were
00:34:02
early morning Farmers that made Regular trips to the station routinely to start out their day I used to be one of the
00:34:12
regular third shift when our buddy JJ worked at I believe it was a Speedway and I would regularly just stop in grab
00:34:21
a coffee grab some smokes sit around and chat for a little bit and just kind of shoot the and kind of be a Compadre
00:34:31
and wasting a little time with our buddy JJ he had I know he had several regulars
00:34:37
that would drop in and hang out for 15 minutes or 20 minutes and these were people that he only knew from the gas
00:34:44
station right and then in this case there were persons that would drop in and visit and even bring things to
00:34:52
Rhonda or even give things to whoever was working I'm sure they all had their favorite employee or or their person
00:34:59
that they would see during their routine so it's been noted that people would bring in things like crops like corn
00:35:06
Peppers things from their Farms or their Gardens and give to the person working yeah wasn't there a bag of peppers found
00:35:14
in the store I know that on at least one occasion someone came in and gave peppers a bag of peppers to R I don't
00:35:22
know if it was on the same night that she was attacked right so the store even overnight shift it does not appear like
00:35:29
you're sitting there every night for very long periods of time with no one coming in now having said that we review
00:35:37
these cases many of them are unsolved murders many of them are from the 90s and I am always aggravated and frankly
00:35:45
appalled at the extreme lack of security yeah it's monkey yeah it's very upsetting to hear that you have a young
00:35:52
woman who is brutally attacked in a store where she's working alone and there's no security camera there's no
00:36:00
alarm system and as the employee stated with this case no weapon behind the counter to defend yourself with yeah
00:36:07
even if they're fake cameras they're at least a deterrent yeah smile you're on camera we've all seen that that poster
00:36:15
or that sign posted going into a gas station or once you're inside and I don't get it here's the thing you have
00:36:23
to wonder how many beautiful lives would have been saved across this great land over the years by Simply Having a camera
00:36:30
system in a place of business well that's one of the things that we know about a lot of serial killers they're
00:36:38
Travelers because they don't have a a close group of friends for the most part especially like on a long
00:36:47
weekend these guys would plan sometimes to travel and to hey let me get a couple
00:36:54
hundred miles from home and start looking for an opportunity and if you're a trucker you're going to be several
00:37:00
hundred miles from home potentially anyway and we talked about motive means and opportunity opportunity doesn't just
00:37:08
always mean the opportunity to commit the murder but also the opportunity to get
00:37:14
away with it so if this were in fact a crime of opportunity well then you have to
00:37:23
wonder would that opportunity go away for the perpetrator if there were a camera if he were to see
00:37:32
a camera or read a sign that says smile you're on camera and again you have to wonder how many lives would be saved by
00:37:40
that and you I would bet that it would be a lot of lives but of course there is no way of ever knowing now in the
00:37:48
defense of Ray robrock who and any small business owner in this particular area of Iowa and in fact
00:37:57
the entire County murder is not something that happens there with any regularity at all
00:38:04
so that was something that I was immediately interested in knowing when reviewing
00:38:11
this case what is the murder status in this area especially in the late 80s and the early 90s well cuz like you said
00:38:21
it's a very small population what under 12,000 under 12,000 today or right around 12,000 or so today so
00:38:29
less than yeah and does the investigating agency which the primary here would be the Chickasaw sheriff's
00:38:36
department does that agency have a cold case division so I jumped on their website it's Chickasaw count. iowa.gov
00:38:46
you click on departments then click on Sheriff and beautiful they have a tab not for cold cases but for unsolved
00:38:54
crimes so the Sheriff's Department gets High Praise from the garage from the extra Krispy colel here for reminding
00:39:02
the public about the unsolved crimes and this case is actually meant to basically
00:39:07
mean cold cases so you click on that right unsolved crimes meant to mean cold cases and guess what you get send you to
00:39:17
Don donkey porn you get homicide 1992 one case this case Rhonda's case you get one case so for the entire
00:39:28
County as far as murders go the last murder before Ronda was killed was 12 years prior
00:39:36
1975 and that in fact was a manslaughter charge when a man was run over by a truck but good for them because some of
00:39:43
these small departments would not promote that on their website they'd go this is a black eye on our department
00:39:52
that we haven't been able to solve this case in so many years we're just not going to promote that we haven't solved
00:39:58
this one but good for them to say hey this case we are going to see this to the end and and that's what I'm saying I
00:40:07
think in the year 2023 when this technology when computers and websites are are even old news and everybody's on
00:40:18
social media I I do not understand why when you have law enforcement agencies that do not have those unsolved cases
00:40:28
listed especially cold cases when it comes to homicide listed on their website or somewhere for the public to
00:40:35
have an awareness of something and back to back to the murder rate here in this County the last murder before Ronda was
00:40:46
killed 1975 then before that it was 8 years earlier in 1967 when a woman was shot by her husband so while we get
00:40:54
angry that there's no security set up here at the store murder just wasn't a thing that happened here yeah but maybe
00:41:02
that's okay at your residency but if you have if you have workers working by themselves and I understand it's if you
00:41:10
don't have a slew of customers every five seconds you can't afford to pay to have two
00:41:18
employees but if you're going to have one employee working by themselves get the surveillance because
00:41:25
if some does happen at least you can help in assisting that victim getting Justice
00:41:35
one employee Captain said that the store was really laid back the people that came in were really nice there was never
00:41:42
any thing that you were ever worried about and they said even if the workers were nervous about a suspicious customer
00:41:50
the company policy was pick up the phone the sh the sheriff's off the Sheriff's Department was only 6 miles away and the
00:42:00
boss who you could call at any hour lived just a quarter of a mile away right and then again as far as robbery
00:42:10
at first that was the speculation especially because the victim was found fully clothed it only took a day maybe
00:42:18
two before they ruled out robbery as a motive they wouldn't elaborate on the cause of death immediately or the weap
00:42:26
used until the autopsy was conducted however law enforcement was actively and openly searching the store
00:42:34
the property and surrounding area for the murder weapon they brought in the help of 50 rescue workers this included
00:42:43
firefighters and searched along the three highways nearby searching for possible evidence and the murder weapon
00:42:51
they covered a TW mile radius and were told to look for for quote a piece of iron but nothing turned up makes you
00:43:02
wonder if they brought in sent dogs as well on September 10th we would get some more information the autopsy had been
00:43:11
conducted and the public was informed that the autopsy concluded Rhonda died as the result of head injuries after
00:43:19
being beaten possibly with a heavy object also law enforcement states to the public a motive for murder has not been
00:43:28
determined the no arrests have been made and we're look no arrest have been made and we are
00:43:36
working on a sketch composite drawing of a truck driver that is not a suspect but
00:43:42
someone that the sheriff's department would like to talk to sounds like a suspect they go on to
00:43:48
say yeah rightfully so Captain this they go on to say this person is quote believed to be one of the last persons
00:43:57
to see Ronda alive and on September 10th while the sketch the composite sketch of
00:44:04
the person they wanted to talk to was not available yet at that time law enforcement did offer up a brief
00:44:10
description stating that the person that they are working up a sketch for is a truck driver or believed to be a truck
00:44:17
driver described as 35 to 45 years old heavy set with dark hair and a dark beard the vehicle that law enforcement
00:44:27
believe that this individual is connected to they described as a semi trctor pulling a silver or white
00:44:38
trailer now we said earlier that gasoline and the sale of gasoline may be one of the key ingredients in this
00:44:46
murder mystery I say that because it sounds like it was well known probably in this
00:44:54
local trucking Community or or even the extended Trucking Community you can take
00:45:00
that beyond the state even for that matter people that travel this stretch of land she's working the overnight shift
00:45:12
and this is the only stop the only overnight stop along Highway 63 where truck drivers could buy diesel gasoline
00:45:22
between waterl Iowa and Chester Minnesota that's a 114 mile stretch of land well then it makes me question also
00:45:34
a motive could be gas because like you said it's probably 75 cents but if it's a semi some of
00:45:43
those have and and I'm kind of speaking out of my ass here which I I guess do anyways but they normally have two tanks
00:45:55
you know in the tank can hold up to 150 gallons and if you have two tanks that's
00:46:00
300 gallons so that's possibly 300 in some dollars not to mention if you have these other vehicles maybe you're
00:46:08
filling up the vehicles that are on this tractor trailer so would that be enough of a
00:46:15
motive to go well I'm going to fill up this gas and as I'm filling up I'm watching the store I realize that
00:46:23
there's only one person in the store and that's why the person attacked Ronda well and in all fairness to you and
00:46:31
really in all fairness to anybody out there listening that have are trying to come up with their own motive we have
00:46:38
this case here where we're being told we don't know what the motive is by law enforcement by people that
00:46:44
were investigating this case and have done so for decades and like we talked about in our little rock
00:46:52
slasher case where law enforcement are saying the same thing we don't know what the
00:46:59
motive is here it's not easily identifiable to us even in law enforcement but what we do know what
00:47:08
what the science and psychology tells us about criminals and again I will I'll quote what we quoted in the Little Rock
00:47:17
slasher case in the decades since that time psychiatric professionals law enforcement officials and those working
00:47:24
in Behavioral Science Fields have learned that there is always an understandable motive for murder cops
00:47:33
and shrinks May disagree on what that motive is and why it evolves but there is always a motive
00:47:47
always want to thank you all for joining us here in the garage join us back tomorrow same bat Time same Channel
00:47:56
where we hope to have a big show announcement on tomorrow's episode so make sure you join us back here in the
00:48:02
garage and until then be good be kind and don't [Music] litter [Music] Shopify is the global Commerce platform
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