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[Music] e welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:44
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who rang in the New Year drinking whiskey and got
00:01:51
way past Tipsy he is the captain it was a cocktail as a mixture between whiskey and antifreeze it's could to be seen and
00:02:00
it's good to see you I'm thankful I'm alive after last night thanks for listening and thanks for telling a
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00:03:07
Captain looking forward to a wonderful 2018 with each and every one of you here in the garage and that's enough for the
00:03:15
business that's right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:28
crime [Music] as kids Edward and I were pretty close he of course was a typical boy we grew
00:03:49
up with my father so as you'd expect I stayed pretty close to him anything he did and I did no
00:03:56
matter what it was if he was 100 ft in a tree I was too he had no fear as a kid as we got
00:04:06
older we kind of slowly started to drift apart and started our own paths in life I moved 200 miles away and he
00:04:15
stayed close to our dad he and my dad were very close good friends it wasn't too long until he moved up here with me
00:04:23
to start a new life our relationship pretty much started back to where we were as kids
00:04:31
we stayed pretty close again always talked to each other and he often talked about his
00:04:37
future for him he couldn't wait to start a family he respected women as our father taught us and his kids kids were
00:04:49
drawn to him like no other he loved kids and kids would play with him all the time Edward would have been an amazing
00:04:56
father had he had a chance the town that we moved to wasn't anything special it had two Sawmills a
00:05:07
factory but no matter where Edward was he made friends all sorts of friends see Edward never judged anybody
00:05:17
he liked People based on what he knew about them not what they looked like or not
00:05:22
what they had or where they lived Edward and I grew up poor ourselves and learn to respect
00:05:31
everybody Edward made all sorts of friends the good ones for him the ones that were good for him and the ones that
00:05:38
were potentially bad for him one friend in particularly was Deacon [Music] salch back in December of 2016 a St
00:06:01
Louis newscast was reminding everyone that the Crawford County Sheriff's department needs your help to locate a
00:06:08
missing man Edward Hillhouse 28 years old had been missing from the Bourbon Missouri area since April 26th
00:06:17
2016 the newscast stated that there are very little details regarding his disappearance but what is known is this
00:06:26
Edward Hillhouse was last seen leaving his sister's Bourbon Missouri residence on April 26
00:06:33
2016 a lot of these places were new to me so for those of you wondering bourbon is a very very small town about 75 miles
00:06:43
outside of St Louis uh Southwest of St Louis he had left her trailer and was walking he was seen walking down the
00:06:52
driveway toward Highway N the letter N to meet with someone but the person he was to meet never never picked him up so
00:07:01
you would think that if this person never picked him up he would just walk back to his sister's trailer but that
00:07:07
did not happen either he never returned to the trailer Kayla is Edward hillh House's younger sister she described
00:07:15
Edward as a bit of a Drifter saying he had worked odd jobs and he was trying to find his own way Kayla said she knew
00:07:23
something was wrong early on because he was supposed to come back and see her apparently he had some things of his at
00:07:31
her residence MH so he was going to see her to get his stuff he was moving to a new place he needed to take his things
00:07:38
there she never heard from him Kayla said she knew something wasn't right because no matter what he would always
00:07:45
get a hold of her good or bad he he wouldn't let her worry about him so Cayla reported her older brother as
00:07:53
missing this next nugget has been reported in several reports about this case and I don't know where this
00:08:00
information is coming from if this is something that his sister passed along to law enforcement but there is a
00:08:07
thought that he may have met with two unnamed individuals just prior to his disappearance he has never been heard
00:08:15
from since April 2016 again very few details are available in this case the family has
00:08:21
offered a $1,500 reward for information leading to the location of Edward Hill house so before before we go any further
00:08:30
let's take a look at this at the details of this disappearance because sometimes
00:08:35
they make these things pretty cryptic and I think that's what we have here because often you will see this when
00:08:42
little is actually known about a disappearance but I think we can take some of this information that they gave
00:08:48
us and sort of read between the lines here to try to fill in some of the blanks because there are two tidbits of
00:08:55
information in there that are extremely important to the the investigation into the whereabouts of Edward Hillhouse
00:09:02
although they don't really Supply us with any information the first thing we need to
00:09:08
talk about here Captain is the statement that Edward was last seen walking down the driveway toward Highway N to meet
00:09:15
with someone but the person he was to meet never picked him up I think the the inference we can make here is that the
00:09:23
police must know who this person is and probably have spoken to this person right even though they're not naming
00:09:31
them in this uh quote unquote disappearance announcement that they're making trying to locate him so the name
00:09:38
of this person is not withheld because they don't know who this person is they have probably spoken to them they must
00:09:46
believe the story of this person yeah I was supposed to pick him up but we never
00:09:52
met up for one reason or another mhm also if this person hasn't already been cleared well then they are at at the
00:09:59
very least cooperating with the police and police May believe this person has nothing to hide second the thing here
00:10:09
about he may have Edward may have met with two unnamed individuals just prior to his disappearance this appears to be
00:10:17
something completely different than what we just discussed this sounds like we have possibly two unnamed individuals
00:10:24
that were either unknown to the Hill House family and police or or one or two individuals that are known
00:10:32
but not cooperating with the investigation into this missing person's case mhm so I know it's really kind of
00:10:39
stating the obvious here but that's your lead after you've cleared up the first bit of the person picking him up and
00:10:46
really it's just simply one of two things here either identifying who those two people are that he may have met with
00:10:54
yeah or know who they are and they are not cooperating so so it's time to turn up the heat on those fools right here is
00:11:03
some information on Edward Hill housee a little uh victim profile if you will at
00:11:09
the time of his disappearance he was 28 years old height and weight he is 6'4 to
00:11:15
6'5 in tall and about 160 lb he is a Caucasian male with brown hair and blue eyes some distinguishing marks Edward
00:11:25
has the following tattoos a scroll on his chest he has a tattoo of his last name Hill housee across his upper back
00:11:33
and the number 13 and a half on the outside of his left calf he may have pierced ears and may have some facial
00:11:42
hair Edward Hillhouse was born Friday February 12th 1988 in Missouri to Timothy Hillhouse
00:11:49
and Sherry Hillhouse Edward's parents would eventually separate his mother Sherry went on to marry Benny Compton of
00:11:57
for Sith Missouri Edward moved to Bourbon in 2011 to be closer to his sister mhm Edward was very
00:12:05
close with his sister Edward's sister Kayla Hillhouse was Edward's best friend and he was good friends with her fiance
00:12:12
Chase Tolliver prior to The Disappearance Edward Jr Hillhouse was described as a resident of Caseville
00:12:20
Missouri might be cville Missouri I apologize which is a town of a little more than 3,200 people in Barry County
00:12:29
which is in the southwestern portion of the state another very small town both of these extremely small towns yes uh
00:12:37
everyone who had the privilege of meeting Edward will tell you the same thing that he was kind loving funny and
00:12:44
would do anything for anyone he was known for his goofy smile bright blue eyes Edward had three true passions uh
00:12:52
fishing Arrowhead hunting and working on cars uh he grew up fishing with his family on bull Shores Lake there wasn't
00:13:01
a time that he didn't catch something so apparently he was very good at the fishing uh him his aunt and his father
00:13:09
shared a love for arrowheads and altogether they had a great collection as for cars apparently Edward could fix
00:13:17
anything he loved a challenge when it came to working on somebody's vehicle so a very troubling disappearance here
00:13:24
Captain we have a person that is well he has places that he to be he doesn't see
00:13:31
his sister uh the thing that I have a problem with here is we have someone that is described as being very close to
00:13:38
his family especially his sister and he this guy's not heard from yeah he he's supposed to meet these people I don't
00:13:47
know who these people are uh but he's supposed to meet these people and then he's not heard from again this is not I
00:13:54
don't think we're describing a person here that is somebody that is walking away
00:13:59
from from a life I don't think we're describing somebody here that would have found themselves in a bad situation and
00:14:05
not reached out to one of his parents or to or at the very least to his sister MH
00:14:10
but the as the newscast States there's very little details in this disappearance the other troubling thing
00:14:17
here is that we have these three individuals possibly three individuals one that he was scheduled to meet maybe
00:14:23
accept a ride from mhm uh two that he may have spoken with or had been with before he
00:14:30
disappeared that's even more troubling to me that we don't have it appears to me like the investigators may not have
00:14:37
followed up on some of these leads that they've not spoken to these people there
00:14:41
seems to be to me like there should be a longer timeline regarding his disappearance well and with a such a
00:14:49
small town You' think everybody knows everybody so it's harder to keep a secret now Kayla would go on to marry
00:14:55
her fiance and take the last name of toer this would all take place after her brother and best friend had disappeared
00:15:04
the police in the investigation according to Kayla toer Edward's sister and best friends she had
00:15:10
to stay on the case she was looking for her brother but she was also looking for
00:15:15
answers Kayla put up a missing posters everywhere that she could she pleaded for help while the police she said did
00:15:23
almost nothing in her opinion she felt like from very early on in the case that she had been ignored uh this is sad you
00:15:32
know because okay look there are a lot of times when we you know we just have upset and frustrated loved ones of
00:15:40
missing persons or of a victim and of course here's why it's it it is this may shock most of you um I I
00:15:51
know that I found this and the captain has found this this was a surprise to me we have spoken to a lot of people people
00:15:59
that have been family members of victims or family members of people that have gone missing M and the thing that I
00:16:06
found very surprising when we first got into this and we first started speaking with these people is that in most cases
00:16:14
not all the time but in most cases they don't seem to have any more knowledge about the investigation than than
00:16:21
anybody reading the newspaper or watching the news would haveh which is almost a little shocking I guess uh it
00:16:28
was to me in the beginning you would think that they would be have some form of knowledge that they would would have
00:16:34
been asked certain questions or sat through certain interviews where they would have an idea of of the direction
00:16:40
of the investigation yeah well so many cases these missing person cases you take Mara Murray for example she leaves
00:16:49
her her College she's driving down the road her car wrecks disappeared Into Thin Air Brian schaer goes into a bar
00:16:57
talks to some people people never seen leaveing the bar disappears now you take Edward Hill House supposed to meet with
00:17:04
a friend possibly friends maybe he got in the car with the the two guys but not not the one guy just disappears mhm how
00:17:13
does this happen right this case though has a little spin on it uh though because the case spanned two
00:17:21
jurisdictions we have uh Bourbon and we have the Crawford County so we have the bourbon police and we have the Crawford
00:17:29
County Sheriff's Office and I usually don't care for that as I think it is important for one law enforcement agency
00:17:37
to take ownership of a case uh things to me seem cleaner that way more organized
00:17:43
that way when we have just one working on it yeah cuz if you have two you can point the finger you can pass the buck
00:17:50
all day long you can go well that's uh we we're not handling that they are and pointing the finger is worse than
00:17:56
smelling the finger uh I know that that I have the opinion of of a local case here in Columbus Ohio
00:18:06
where I think this could have totally changed the outcome of an investigation and and I think that's why I feel so
00:18:13
strongly about this we talked about uh the Tony Muny murder that took place in the early 80s where we have someone that
00:18:21
was last seen in Columbus where he lived and his body is found in Delaware County
00:18:28
right right and the problem that we had with that investigation is we have Delaware County who are kind of Keystone
00:18:34
Cops coming into Columbus and trying to investigate this this murder case and really in my opinion that thing should
00:18:42
have been handed over to Columbus from the get-go we may have had a solved case here we have a similar situation we got
00:18:49
the Crawford County Sheriff's Office and the tiny little bourbon Police Department working the same working the
00:18:56
same case yeah so there somebody needs step up and take a responsibility for this case well my guess here and I I'm
00:19:04
sure that U you know our our listeners are certainly smarter than me um I'm sure the garage listeners figured it out
00:19:11
uh the the town of bourbon is in Crawford County duh right so that that's pretty easy but I'm guessing here in
00:19:18
these smaller communities this is probably very typical uh for two people to be two
00:19:25
agencies be working these cases mhm I want to stress the word if here though if the powers that be have a good
00:19:34
working relationship this could be a typical thing that works out well to solve these cases because you're going
00:19:41
to have the Crawford County that will have access to State funds and resources that the little bourbon PD just won't
00:19:50
have but they they they need to work with local PD because of one resource that the sheriff's department may not
00:19:57
have uh is a better understanding of the locals making up that small community well I've talked to several detectives
00:20:05
that work missing person cases I think one I think did something crazy like 4,000 or 6,000 missing person
00:20:14
cases but the hardest thing is once the individual is of age and then there's no
00:20:20
sign of a crime so those two things of age um and no sign of a crime it's hard for them to investigate it because there
00:20:30
is the possibility that this person stepped away and doesn't want to have contact with anybody and even though
00:20:37
that the family is screaming no he would call me he would tell people M there has
00:20:41
been several cases several thousands of cases where people get up leave their current life and then they don't contact
00:20:50
their family members right I do do you wish that they would handle that differently do you I'm I'm
00:20:57
sure there's there's a lot of victims families out there that probably screaming it from the mountain tops that
00:21:03
this is not how we should handle these things I I'm on the fence this is a weird topic because it's strange to me
00:21:10
yes as adults we should have that right a person should have the right if they need to leave for some reason without
00:21:18
communicating that to anybody right I think the thing too is so this detective that I talked to said this has happened
00:21:25
several times and so what they normally do is it's not just you can't just go oh
00:21:30
I saw this individual so now I can close this case you have to make contact with
00:21:36
individual so once you make contact with the individual then you have to say hey
00:21:40
look the people that filed the missing room person report would be your parents for example okay so you went missing
00:21:48
your parents are looking for you uh I'm going to shut this case do you want me to reach out to your family do you want
00:21:56
to or do you want me to to and if they say I don't want you to that that is not the police officer's
00:22:05
job that's not the detective's job so the job of the detective is to close the case right and I think it's not in their
00:22:14
job description or it's frowned upon if the detective would say to the family yeah he went missing on his own and he
00:22:22
doesn't want to speak with you right and we Clos the case right but normally what
00:22:26
this detective said is oh I'd talk with the individual and he'd say hey tell him
00:22:32
I'm fine I I'll make contact when I want to or whatever but the thing that I mean
00:22:37
here too is that you know you talked about something it makes it tough for detectives if there's no signs of a
00:22:44
crime that they don't they don't have to investigate it further right that they they may not they may not have to go and
00:22:52
look into this thing anymore than it's just a missing person potentially left on their own well and the thing to is
00:22:58
one would argue you know overwork underpaid and I'm sure that's the case in especially smaller towns where the
00:23:06
budget is smaller um maybe not so much in in bigger towns or richer towns but if you have all these cases on
00:23:15
the desk and there is no leads at all you know you can't fault the law enforcement to go well let's give it
00:23:23
some time let's see if something pops up right you know what I mean like if a murder took place well now we need
00:23:31
to solve this quickly but a missing person like like you said it could be well he just didn't go with this guy he
00:23:37
went with another group of friends and and he just went a town over for a couple days so you know it's hard to
00:23:44
fault law enforcement for that I I guess the question that I'm posing to myself here is this if if someone goes missing
00:23:52
and we're looking for signs of a of further criminal activity I guess what you're looking for is either was this
00:23:58
person killed was this person abducted or did this person leave and flee the area because they themselves committed
00:24:06
some crimes that they're running from mhm what I'm getting at is when we say that they have the an adult has the
00:24:14
right to walk away the question I have is in certain situations wouldn't you think that probable cause for a possible
00:24:22
abduction or murder would be would be just the family saying he or she would have never left without communicating
00:24:30
right yeah you know what I mean it it seems like um yeah but how many thousands of cases Missy person cases
00:24:37
have the parents said that or a friend or a family or girlfriend said he would never just get up and leave and then
00:24:44
they contact the person why did you leave I was just tired of life you know right I I actually hate my family right
00:24:50
I hate my girlfriend and I moved down to Key West she smells funny well so I went
00:24:56
to Key West and kargo uh Key West is just full of people that have run from other other towns and cities hey Key
00:25:04
West is a a fun time I'm going to move there um I wish you would but the thing that I was talking about here where it's
00:25:11
possible that it might be a good thing that you have two agencies working on this particular case I is where we have
00:25:19
the resources the that the larger Sheriff's Department can get from the state funds and from resources that they
00:25:27
have but then you have the small bourbon Police Department that knows that should
00:25:32
know the locals better than the sheriff's department I'm guessing um and I want to use this as an example to to
00:25:39
explain this because a lot of times people get confused about this they think that oh small time you know small
00:25:46
towns can't solve crimes the way that the big city police departments yeah those those local yoos they can't solve
00:25:54
anything so a lot of us City Slickers have that thought and I I don't have that thought I want
00:26:00
to point this out to everybody because sometimes in a smaller Community the police department often in cases
00:26:08
they they're solved at a higher rate or at least a suspect is honed in on a little faster in these smaller
00:26:15
communities where you have a police department that understands the locals because often they know the people by
00:26:21
name and address and more importantly they know these people's past yeah you know if I'm a local cop and say it's a
00:26:30
Sunday morning an old Leroy's pickup truck got stolen that was parked on the side of
00:26:36
the road last night and I know that living on the other side of town you know out of his parents house is
00:26:43
17-year-old Jerry who has a history of boosting cars en joy riding around on the weekends well dirty Jerry where do
00:26:49
you think I'm going to go first without you know if there's no evidence pointing
00:26:53
to somebody else I might end up on Jerry's doorstep knocking on the door asking about his whereabouts and and
00:27:00
where he was and was he involved in stealing this car and why do you smell so bad Jerry so that's just I mean
00:27:07
that's just an example how in some of these smaller communities smaller towns that that they can solve these things at
00:27:14
a higher rate now I do know in this bourbon area we're talking about a very small town that has I
00:27:22
mean nearly no homicides nearly no missing persons cases right and that to me is why it seems so frustrating I
00:27:32
think is the right word frustrating the overwork underpaid Theory doesn't kind of apply to this area not not in the
00:27:39
sense of Major Crimes we'll get right back to The Disappearance of Edward Hill house right after this quick beer
00:27:46
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[Music] all right cheers me mes cheers all right we're discussing the case of Edward
00:30:14
Hillhouse he was missing but his sister Kayla stayed in near constant contact with the two departments investigating
00:30:23
the case M she was asking officers for updates wanting to know whether anything had progressed in the case again she
00:30:31
felt ignored by both agencies in this case and I'm not sure that they were working very hard on this case is is
00:30:41
what I'm guessing and here's why Kayla believes officers disregarded vital clues in her brother's case for example
00:30:49
she told them early on of a person in town who seemed to have information that Edward was not just missing but he was
00:30:58
in fact dead right Kayla told police about this person and let's say um you know the rumor or rumors around this
00:31:07
person because here's the thing like you pointed out earlier I'm willing to bet that that the
00:31:16
police probably heard some rumors about this case M you know with it being a small town and I know rumors are rumors
00:31:24
but let's face it really uh let's face it rumors have solved cases they they have nabbed perss hundreds of
00:31:34
thousands of times because of rumors yeah but Kayla says that they didn't the police didn't speak with the witness
00:31:42
that she told them about yeah so this witness was hanging out at somebody's house and this person actually didn't
00:31:51
speak to Kayla personally I don't believe I believe it was one of those uh in passing I'm going to tell a friend
00:31:58
about what happened mhm and he claims that he saw Edward Hillhouse dead on a couch at a person's
00:32:07
home right yeah uh so police didn't speak with this witness law enforcement didn't
00:32:14
follow up on this lead MH I I I don't I don't understand I don't get it you know
00:32:20
she she presented this to them in here's what here's what they said investigators B basically said you know
00:32:28
this is all heay um saying that there's nothing that they could do they couldn't they
00:32:34
couldn't just you know round up people and make them talk to them right they couldn't just round them up and make
00:32:40
these people give them answers no you can't but the thing is is you have somebody saying hey I saw a dead body at
00:32:47
this guy's house so what you can do is get a search warrant and search that guy's property yeah and I know that you
00:32:53
can't make people give you answers but at the very least you can speak with them I mean who's to say according to
00:33:00
Kayla they didn't even speak to the witness that she had provided them and how can how can you tell a victim's
00:33:07
loved one who who themselves is a victim right if there in fact was a crime that
00:33:12
took place H how could you tell that person look we can't make people speak to us we can't make make them tell us
00:33:21
what they know uh when you didn't even bother to to to speak with them in the first place right and we see law
00:33:27
enforcement on the other side sometimes acting too Vigilant you know we're going
00:33:32
to bring this guy in and because he saw a a dead body on a couch we're going to pin the murders on him you know but you
00:33:41
you you call the guy you you try to find out if this story is true or not because
00:33:46
how many times have you been at a party drinking and somebody tells you something crazy that you're like that is
00:33:51
definitely not the truth so question these people get a search warrant well here's the other thing too aren't you
00:33:59
kind of telling the perpetrator okay let's let's say that Edward was in fact killed and he was
00:34:07
lying in someone's home and somebody did something with that body right because that's what she stating that this
00:34:13
witness may know right so let's say that that actually took place now aren't you
00:34:19
as law enforcement if you are not following up on leads aren't you kind of telling the criminal that h we're not
00:34:27
going to work this case very hard you really have nothing to be afraid of right we'll probably never catch you
00:34:32
because guess what kill again if you want yeah we show up at 9:00 we clock in and at 5: you know Donuts drink a few
00:34:38
coffees and clock out at 5: and smoke three parliaments take a huge dump we'll see you tomorrow I hope there's a
00:34:44
football game on tonight mhm I mean that's really what you're telling this person that should be should be
00:34:51
extremely afraid of the investigation afraid to the point where they might be willing to come forward and confess say
00:34:58
hey I know what happened to this guy that's missing right again you know you know I don't want to jump on law
00:35:05
enforcement too much because there well I think he can in this particular case well right at this moment from what we
00:35:11
know but we don't know what they're working on behind the scenes as well that's true that's true so we have Kayla
00:35:17
who's going to have to do a little sleuthing of her own you know at her dinner table she's pouring over Clues
00:35:23
she's looking through things apparently authorities had given her Edwards phone records um something that she was later
00:35:31
told is out of the ordinary in a criminal investigation I would believe that to be very true but after sifting
00:35:38
through goad I don't think it's out of the ordinary for the cops to get I mean he had cell phone right that's what I'm
00:35:45
assuming the records are from yeah yeah so they're taking these cell phone records and they're going to sift
00:35:50
through them let's figure out who he called last right that's or maybe if there's a history of calls who was he
00:35:56
talking to into yes this is a small town but that doesn't mean everybody hangs out with each other so let's try to
00:36:02
figure out who is in Edward's Circle right because if there's something that happened and it's nefarious then hey
00:36:09
it's going to most likely be within this Inner Circle that's not that odd what's
00:36:15
odd is when they hand her the records right and they say uh yeah you might want to go through these
00:36:23
huh is that's like what we need your help on this are you too busy eating Donuts smoking your parliaments and
00:36:30
taking a huge dump to look through these phone records I mean and it doesn't take
00:36:34
a you know Kayla looks at the information and what does she figure out real quickly well the the last person that
00:36:43
Edward was on the phone with was a man by the name of Deacon zelch a man with whom Edward had been hanging out with
00:36:51
apparently they were some kind of friends she tells law enforcement to look at deacon elch uh but according to
00:36:58
Kayla they never did anything with this information and I get what you're saying
00:37:02
here Captain it's only odd that they provided the phone records to her what's even
00:37:09
more odd was that you would think it's all right you would think that the people that that he spoke to that day
00:37:16
the last day that we know him to have been around um and then maybe you're probably
00:37:22
not seeing any more activity on his phone after that and if that's the case don't you speak to all those people
00:37:29
first and then hand over the records when you've when you've exhausted all leads and said hey you're his sister
00:37:36
you're his best friend you know him better than anybody else here's the records for the past month or two or
00:37:41
three sift through these and see if anything is odd if anything is strange anything sticks out to you because you
00:37:48
would know better than us because we've spoken to everybody that that he spoke to within the last 3 days or within the
00:37:54
last week right and again just to play Devil's Advocate not jumping down law enforcement's throat
00:38:01
they could have been handing her a copy and the guy could have had a bad day you know his hemorrhoids were
00:38:08
flaring up and he just said hey here's the phone records you need to go through these mhm
00:38:16
that that might be all you know there's a lot of stuff that you know let's just not imply they're not just handing over
00:38:23
the phone records and just not having records I'm going to assume and if they if they did that well then
00:38:30
they're just pieces of [ __ ] but I let's just not assume that that's just what happened and again like I said it could
00:38:37
have just been what the officer was implying or he just had a bad day maybe they were going through the phone
00:38:43
records well because law enforcement didn't follow up with Deacon zelch themselves Kayla she decided to talk to
00:38:51
Deacon herself yeah uh she reached out to him I believe it was on maybe through Facebook
00:38:57
messaging um and yeah a lot of times somebody will say text message or they'll say I emailed the person but
00:39:04
it's really that you message them through like a social media platform yeah and and actually I've there's a
00:39:10
there's few reports about this case yeah but the few that I've seen and read um each one States something different that
00:39:18
it was either text email or Facebook messaging so I'm a little unclear but regardless she reached out to Deacon
00:39:25
herself well let's explain why though because cops found a lot of marijuana plants on his property yeah and actually
00:39:36
I have the report right here in front of me if you give me just a second marijana
00:39:40
30 I believe it was 31 plants that they found on his property they so yeah Deacon was growing some Mar Joana quite
00:39:48
a bit of it um yeah and he got busted now we don't know if he's going to be charged or not but what does de do he
00:39:56
runs away leaves town and this is when Kayla messages him well and he responds back to her message and he gives a
00:40:07
lengthy rambling response right uh to which Deacon wrote All I can say is some people live life Fuller as
00:40:17
ghost his spirit and he's referring to Edward here his Spirit just as many of us needs a break his spirit and a life
00:40:28
Fuller as ghost Deacon is talking about Edward is from these words he's not missing Edward is dead right as and even
00:40:39
to the point that the Deacon has knowledge that Edward is dead is what you can gather from these messages yeah
00:40:46
so here's what we have we have the rumor the rumor starts becoming right that Edward went and hung out with somebody
00:40:57
MH at some point he's going to get a call mhm we know from the phone records who calls him Deacon right de Deacon's
00:41:07
this guy shaved head weird beard Captain weird beard right he has a beard but he has like some stuff well
00:41:17
he's there's a few different pictures of him out there and the beard varies depending on on the photo right but I'm
00:41:24
talking about the weird beard yeah it's like it's like these long strands almost
00:41:29
like almost like he has pigtails coming off of his beard or something yeah ugly guy hideous and but that normally
00:41:38
happens you got Edward the 6 foot four tall friend hanging out with Deacon the ugly friend with a weird beard he kind
00:41:47
of looks like a thumb you know like a beat up thumb a bruise thumb with a beard so he gets a call from deacon at some
00:41:56
point then Deacon's going to pick him up what happened then what happened next there's no rumors about that M but then
00:42:06
this unknown source is going around town saying I was at Deacon's house and I saw
00:42:13
Edward on Deacon's couch dead yes and now Deacon is busted with his marijuana he has now left the town and Kayla
00:42:24
contacts him and he starts talking about spirits and who knows what you know and
00:42:32
now now we got to put this in context a little bit cuz we could jump to the conclusion of oh well he's talking all
00:42:39
you know his spirit and all this stuff Deacon was wanted to be known as kind of a
00:42:46
hippie so we got to put that in context well so some clarification this took place in August of 2016
00:42:56
this is when the investigators found 33 marijuana plants on Deacon zel's property they located them on the east
00:43:04
side behind two out buildings that were located on the property yeah They confiscated one and placed it into
00:43:11
evidence against Deacon zelch They confiscated all the remaining plants and destroyed
00:43:17
them now what they did at the same time though is they sent in a cadaver dog from a volunteer unit to search for any
00:43:25
sign of a corpse uh but theab dog did not hit on anything right this is this is strange to me well at least at some
00:43:35
point that you know law enforcement is doing work yeah yeah and and this but but this
00:43:41
is what the problem is here Captain is that we have um we have a situation where we have the sister who is provided
00:43:50
a witness or possible witnesses to law enforcement and those people were not reaching
00:43:56
reached out to they were not spoken to mhm and for whatever reason they do decide to do the cadaver dog thing in
00:44:05
August of 2016 but this is this is after some time here this is he went missing in April of
00:44:14
2016 so quite some time has passed and not doing any work yeah but then a few other changes have occurred as well and
00:44:22
in that uh in that time since Edward vanished Without a Trace mhm the bourbon police chief and the Crawford County
00:44:31
Sheriff well they both retired mhm so convenient so Kayla is hoping that this Changing of the Guard will put some
00:44:42
fresh eyes on this case the new police chief that came on board this is Paul saterfield previously a detective in the
00:44:50
Crawford County Sheriff's Office he was already familiar with the case when he took over right so chief sanderfield
00:44:56
felt the same as Kayla he too wanted to put fresh eyes on this case because sanderfield felt that from early on in
00:45:06
the initial investigation that Deacon zelch was a good suspect yeah that he was somebody that they should be looking
00:45:12
at and we have these rumors around town why aren't they talking to him right and
00:45:16
the new and the new Chief was also he wasn't satisfied with the low with how little progress had taken place in
00:45:23
Edward Hill House's case so he hired a task force mhm he used the town of bourbon's public funds to hire this task
00:45:34
force he broke away from the rest of Crawford County and hired a vice unit from Franklin County that had no ties to
00:45:41
the area Franklin County is just North of uh of Crawford County by the way and when these new investigators came in
00:45:50
they started the investigation over from scratch a clean slate right and but but
00:45:56
what is one of the main reasons this is happening it's because of Deacon's father Yes yes it's because of Deacon
00:46:05
Deacon zel's father Vernon zelch uh he he had worked for the police department yeah and they're going to use this
00:46:16
informant uh they're going to use this witness that you had spoke about that that had said that they witnessed the
00:46:22
body the lifeless body of Edward Hillhouse lying on a c couch in Deacon Z's home they're going to use that
00:46:29
information the other the other information that they received from this informant was that Deacon zelch had
00:46:35
actually admitted to them that he had killed Edward with a single shot to the head with a 22 caliber rifle right so
00:46:43
Vernon zelch he worked in law enforcement but now he does a lot of stuff with like radio and but he knows
00:46:51
like everybody in this small town yeah he's he's uh what I would refer to as a personality you know what I mean he's a
00:46:58
personality amongst amongst town and amongst the the small town right but even though you're the personality
00:47:05
around town or a personality around town if there's rumors that your son murdered
00:47:13
somebody you're going knocking on that door and you're investigating but it seems like there was nothing happened
00:47:21
until there was a Changing of the Guard and I think that's the main reason why you know the new sheriff in town or the
00:47:29
new Chief right said hey let's set up a task force because I have reason to believe that Vernon is snooping around
00:47:37
and and basically um obstructing justice yeah and the problem you're going to have here Captain is the the
00:47:46
little bourbon Police Department that's with inside of Crawford County uh that's
00:47:51
that's policed by the sheriff's department right all those guys are going to be bu budies so it doesn't
00:47:56
matter if you work for the police department or if you work for the sheriff's department these guys know
00:48:01
each other these guys hang out in the same circles they're going to or they at least should have one another's backs
00:48:09
right but the thing is to a certain degree well of course to a certain degree not to the point of crossing the
00:48:14
line right but this is crossing the line if you're not you're not interviewing people you're not falling if you're
00:48:20
looking if you're looking the other way because you know someone that because you know the zel family and you're you
00:48:26
don't want to offend anybody or you don't want to throw anybody under the bus then yes you're doing you're doing
00:48:32
the wrong thing you're you're not doing what you swore to do which is protect the people of your jurisdiction and
00:48:39
that's why you have saterfield Chief saterfield the new new Chief calling in this vice squad from Franklin County
00:48:46
yeah I saterfield they have no ties they they may not even know anybody uh from Crawford County or from the bourbon
00:48:54
Police Department so they're going to go in there and be able to look at this thing and not have any worries about it
00:49:00
not have any preconceived notions about anybody right they're going to be able and actually go in there and do their
00:49:07
jobs do what these other officers and investigators should have done from the get-go they're going to go in there the
00:49:14
situation we have right is that they're going to go in there and they're going to do their due diligence well and we
00:49:21
have we were able to speak with Edward's sister Kayla and that's who you heard earlier in the show discussing her
00:49:28
relationship with her brother and what type of person he was and she also knew Deacon zelch the person that she pointed
00:49:39
out to investigators should be someone that they should talk to and we get to hear Kayla describe Deacon zelch and
00:49:47
describe the relationship that her brother had with him Edward's relationship with with
00:49:54
Deacon was very vague to me um Deacon was known into the community for not being very
00:50:02
bright never actually worked couldn't keep a family he had multiple kids but never took care of them or they'd have
00:50:10
nothing to do with him as they got older uh Degan had a little respect around here from from people so when Edward
00:50:17
started hanging out with him I warned him about him that he was no good that he wasn't a good person I told him I
00:50:24
don't want him around my house or anywhere near us or my family so a good description of this
00:50:32
Shady character Deacon zelch who may be at the center of this missing person's case yeah we have a 28-year-old young
00:50:41
man missing a family looking for him investigators early on don't seem to be working the case very
00:50:49
hard and then we have these rumors about town that seem to be pointing this case
00:50:55
in the direction of we're no longer working a missing person's case this could be a homicide investigation we
00:51:02
have Kayla who's working hard on her own her family working hard to point the investigators in that direction The
00:51:09
Changing of the Guard the vice squad comes in and very quickly we might see some movement on this and we also might
00:51:17
see the hints of a possible police cover up [Music] all right Captain I want to thank you
00:51:38
and I want to thank everybody out there for kicking off the new year with us here in the garage and we got plenty
00:51:44
more to get to in this case we look forward to doing so on the next show we will see you back here in the garage
00:51:51
until then be good be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] [Music] whether you're making the same breakfast
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