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[Applause] [Music] Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, thanks
00:01:28
for listening. I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who is like the Michael Jordan of being a son of a
00:01:35
[ __ ] Here is the captain. Yeah, the roof is the ceiling. It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for
00:01:42
listening. Thanks for telling a [Music] friend. Today we got some more beer in the old garage fridge. We are drinking
00:01:51
Lawn Mower Yard Logger by Churchill Brewing Company. Lawn Mower Yard Logger is delightfully crisp and refreshing.
00:01:59
It's lightbodied, a little malty, and very crushable. Garage grade, three and a half bottle caps out of five. And
00:02:06
let's give some thanks and praise to our good garage friends. First up, a big shout out to Christy Ha in Vancouver,
00:02:14
Washington. And a big time we like your jib goes out to Justin from Castle Rock,
00:02:20
Colorado. Here's a cheers to April C in Ramsay, Minnesota. I purposely let you have this one because you came up with
00:02:28
this nickname. So, the shout out is to Jessica and Captain Big Dick, somebody we met at at a Crime Con. And they're
00:02:35
from Clayton, North Carolina. Jessica and Captain Big Dick from Clayton, North Carolina. And raise your glasses in the
00:02:41
air to Jessica and Captain Big Dick and Clayton, North Carolina. And last, but certainly not least, here's one close to
00:02:50
the garage. We got to cheers to Dominic in Columbus, Ohio. Everyone we just mentioned, they went to
00:02:55
truerimedg.com, clicked on the pint glass, helped us out with this week's beer run for the beer fund, and for that
00:03:02
we thank you. Yeah. BW are you in? Beer run. If you have a topic that you'd like
00:03:07
to hear on the show, whether it's the the big show like we call the big garage show like we call this show or off the
00:03:16
record, hit us up. Captain True Crime Garage. And that is enough of the business. All right, everybody. Gather
00:03:22
around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. Where we left off here, Captain, was the
00:03:45
police talking and speaking with Walter Zempic back in 1985, giving conflicting statements to different investigators,
00:03:54
conflicting statements about his whereabouts of the night in question to different law enforcement agencies.
00:04:01
However, what we do know is that police moved on from Walter Zmpic after he passed a lie detector test back in
00:04:11
1985. The exam, which was of course all centered around on questions if he had killed Lori, revealed no deception. So,
00:04:21
at some point they decided to move on from him and the case went cold until 2008. So, let's fast forward back to
00:04:28
2008. go back to the future here. The cold case investigators reviewed that case file and were struck by these
00:04:36
inconsistencies that they were seeing in Walter Zimpik's stories. They spoke with
00:04:41
his mom, Carol. Now, his mother, Carol, had been interviewed in 1985, but because Zimick had already passed that
00:04:49
lie detector test when she was spoken to, she was never really asked about her son's alibi in ' 85. She was only asked
00:04:58
about like his character. Now, in 2008, she tells the cold case investigators the following. That on the evening that
00:05:06
Laurianne Hill disappeared, Zmpic had left their home to go find her, stating that later that evening, Hill called the
00:05:14
house three times looking for Walter Zimp. The first call was early in the evening. We don't we're not getting
00:05:21
exact times on some of this, Captain, but keep in mind, she's being asked these questions 23 years after the fact.
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So during this first call, Carol answers the phone. She says that she was surprised. She thought that that her son
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was already with Lorie Hill. So she was surprised that Lori was calling and looking for her son. Then she says there
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was a second call. This took place several hours after the first call. And this is the one that it sounds like
00:05:51
investigators believe that this is the call that most likely came from Mr. G's Pizza. And this is because Carol, when
00:06:01
she's talking to the police, she says, "Look, I remember it being very noisy in the background. And I also remember Lori
00:06:09
being very angry when I told her, look, I already told you he's not home. So, he's still not home at this time,
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several hours after the first call. Well, this call could have came from the party as well. We don't know if she made
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a call from the party. That's a good point. And we also don't have timestamps for these calls. Exactly. So, she also
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remembered that Lori was again very angry during a third call, which she says she believes was 1 hour later.
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Approximately 1 hour later, she even swore at the mother, saying something nasty to the mother and then hung up on
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her. During the third call though, the mother Carol says that she couldn't hear noise in the background. There wasn't a
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bunch of noise in the background like she had heard on the second call. Carol further remembered that the phone rang
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two more times that night. The the first of those two was very late. Again, it was this time it was Hill's sister,
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Lorianne Hill's sister, Rachel, calling looking for her. Carol remembered that after that phone call, her son Walter
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Zmpic came home with his friend whose last name Carol remember being Lon L O N W A Y. We would later learn, so she
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doesn't know this in her statement uh at at this time when she's giving the statement in 2008. We would later learn
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that a a friend of Zmpix did exist with the last name of Lon and his name was Willie Lway. So
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Zmpic's mother, Carol, stated that Lon was a good friend of Zimpics and that he was around Zimpik's age. Carol noted
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that Zimpic was drunk when he came home. Later, the phone rang again. She says again, it was Lorianne Hill's sister
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reporting that Lori was missing. Zmpic then said that he was leaving to go to Lorie Hill's parents' home and he left
00:08:14
with Willie Lonway. Upon questioning by the investigators during this interview,
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Carol was consistent in her memory of the events of October 25th, 1985. It's interesting, too, here, Captain, that
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not only is she, you know, not only does she say she remembers it, but but she appears to remember that quite clearly,
00:08:35
being able to give some decent description to some of the the phone calls and the order of the events. Now,
00:08:44
regardless of how much weight and credibility we want to give to Walter Zmpik's mother's statement in 2008, we
00:08:54
need to note that that is completely inconsistent with what Walter Zmpic told investigators in 1985. Both stories,
00:09:02
right? Both stories that he gives. Now, in 2008, we have Walter Zmpic. He's living in Strawberry
00:09:10
Plains, Tennessee. Strawberry Plains Forever. Investigators traveled there to speak with him armed with a search
00:09:19
warrant for his DNA. In the interview, he admitted he had lied to both the Lucas County and Fulton County
00:09:27
authorities back in 1985, but he said he he couldn't remember why he lied to them, but he did deny being with Willie
00:09:36
Lway at all. Yeah. So, this is December 30th, 2008. And we do have the we have the
00:09:44
transcript from that. We'll we'll read through a brief portion of it here. This is the part of the 2008 interview where
00:09:55
the detectives are confronting him about his statements that he gave in 1985. So, the first question is, okay,
00:10:03
I'm going to ask you this again. Now, you gave two different statements to two different police officers and both of
00:10:10
them we know were lies because you weren't home that night. Your mom said you weren't home. Lori called your house
00:10:18
and if Lori called looking for you, that means you weren't home. Walter's answer,
00:10:24
right? Question. So, we are clear. The 29th, 2 days later, uh, and then on the 1st, 3 days later, you talked to police.
00:10:34
All of this is fresh in your mind. They're talking about all of this is fresh in your mind at the time. Right.
00:10:40
They say, "What did you do on that night?" And you said, "Well, I was home at 7:00 and I went to sleep at 11:00."
00:10:46
Which isn't true because your mom said you weren't home. Answer: Right. I wasn't home. Question. Then 4 days
00:10:53
later, you talk to different police. They say, "What did you do? I went to Southwick, meaning the mall that he had
00:11:00
mentioned. Hung out with this girl. I can't remember her last name. She was at my house from 10 till 2, which wasn't
00:11:07
true, right? She wasn't at your house from 10 to 2. Answer: no question. So that's twice. That's two stories that
00:11:15
weren't true that you'd given to police just after your girlfriend is found murdered. Answer. Uh-huh. And
00:11:24
affirmative is is the response given there. He's he's agreeing with what they're saying. Well, I can say if I'm
00:11:30
law enforcement, if I'm a detective and somebody is inconsistent and somebody's lying, that is a that's like giving a
00:11:39
dog a bone. And I would have a hard time letting go of that bone. Yes. And clearly in
00:11:46
2008, that's the investigator's feelings as well. I if it were me there interviewing him, I wouldn't show any
00:11:55
signs of this. I wouldn't react to it or I wouldn't say anything. But it would be
00:11:59
surprising to me for him to just so casually agree. Yeah, I was. Yeah, I did lie. Yeah, I did give two different
00:12:06
statements. Like he doesn't seem to try to talk his way out of that. It's kind of strange though that he doesn't
00:12:13
remember. He's basically telling law enforcement, "Yeah, I lied, but I don't remember the reason why." But you have
00:12:20
to remember he's he's a young adult at this time. So, is it just possible that he just got scared initially? Like, yes,
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she was my exgirlfriend. Yes, she was calling me. You know, we know what happened to her. We know that her body
00:12:37
was found. Is it is it a possibility that he's just scared that somehow they're they're going to try to pin this
00:12:43
on him? See, dude, I can totally agree with that because I mean, like you said, he's 18 at the time when he's first
00:12:49
questioning questioned. She's missing for a period of time and then she's found. If he had nothing to do with
00:12:57
this, no one could imagine their girlfriend, ex-girlfriend being found dead in a cornfield days after being
00:13:04
reported missing. And now we fast forward to 2008 when they're questioning him in December of
00:13:12
2008 and it's over 20 years later. And I think that I, you know, anybody that looks back, given a long enough
00:13:22
timeline, I think anybody that looks back to their teen years and and even when they're 18, as was Walter at the
00:13:30
time of this horrible event, I think it's almost all of us can say that thing that thing was really
00:13:39
dumb. Why did I do that? I don't even know why I would do that. Like, you know what I mean? like you you don't you
00:13:44
can't even reconcile with why you would have behaved a certain way or said something in in the moment back then. It
00:13:51
it's I think of times where I I lied to get out of being busted for something or
00:13:58
kind of squirmed or weasled my way out of or into something and I kind of look back and I
00:14:05
go, why wasn't I just honest in the moment? Like Yeah. or sometimes the lie that you come up with is worse than just
00:14:13
telling the truth uh gets you into more trouble. But what are your thoughts on the statements from his mother? Is there
00:14:20
anything that jumps out to you? Well, I wish that I wasn't armed with all the information that I that I am
00:14:30
fully aware of now, right? To give you what my reaction would be to that question without all the information.
00:14:38
she's going to change her statement at some point. And so, while it sounds to me I I think that if regardless of hers
00:14:47
changing her statement, what the other statement is, I actually think that there's probably a lot of truth in this
00:14:53
statement that she gives, she remembers it so clearly and so vividly to the point of saying, "Hey, on this one call,
00:15:01
I heard a whole bunch of noise in the background and on this other call I didn't hear any noise in the
00:15:05
background." Right? And those sometimes people stretch a story and say too many words because they're trying to make up
00:15:15
for something. They're trying to cover their tracks. They're trying to sell you a lie. And other times there are details
00:15:23
in a story or explanation that simply because they're they're true. They're they're factual information or at least
00:15:32
they believe them to be true. And so I think that there's probably a lot of truth in this statement. I wouldn't boil
00:15:39
it down to that she remembers correctly 23 years later exactly how many phone calls she received. We know that she's
00:15:47
unable to provide a time other than vaguely. This one was early in the evening. This one was a couple hours
00:15:52
later. She does recall speaking to the sister at some point that the sister calls because Lori's
00:15:59
missing. I think she's got the details right. the timing's a little off, but what's what's the most important part of
00:16:06
her story is Walter Zmpic is not home during the the times that he in both of his statements, even though they're
00:16:13
different, they both end up with him being home, right, at 10:00. And that is when everything is in question because
00:16:21
regardless if you believe the Bettingers sighting of the three kids in the middle
00:16:26
of the county road on their way home. We have confirmed sightings by several people that Lorie Hill was alive and
00:16:34
well using the phone at the pizza joint. Offered more than one ride by two different credible people. Eyewitness is
00:16:42
seeing her walking. It's that 1000 p.m. time marker and everything after that is
00:16:48
in question. And he in both of his versions of his alibis for that night, he puts himself at home at 10:00. His
00:16:56
mom asked in 2008, he's not home at 10:00 in her story. Yeah. But here's what sticks out to me. And I think one
00:17:06
of the things with, you know, a tragic event is sometimes you have to try to make sense of crazy. But as you know,
00:17:16
sometimes in these cases, there's logic to it. There's reason to some of this stuff. And so what sticks out to me if
00:17:27
I'm law enforcement that where I'm confused by is I have this individual that's lying to me. Okay?
00:17:34
inconsistencies, changing stories multiple times, and then in the future now he is now telling me, "Yes, I I did
00:17:42
lie. I don't know why I did." But what she says that sticks out to me contradicts the end result in the sense
00:17:51
of she says, "Well, I got these calls from his ex-girlfriend. He's 18. She's 14. They
00:17:59
like we said they they either dated for a few months or maybe was even a little bit longer but she's calling for help
00:18:06
essentially or calling that's what he believes and we have the call from the sister. So then what does he do? He goes
00:18:14
out now whether he's by himself or with a friend he is going out. sister. The sister is calling for help because
00:18:22
because she can't find her sister because Lory's missing. According to Carol's statements, Lori isn't calling looking
00:18:30
for a ride. She's simply calling looking for Walter Zmp. But what I think sticks
00:18:36
out to me, which would be confusing if I'm law enforcement, is he goes out, whether it's by himself or with a
00:18:42
friend, to go look for her. And so to me that is an act of kindness, of caring, of you know, did something happen? Did
00:18:53
she go, you know, did he know she was going to this party? Did, you know, did he hear about this altercation? But to
00:19:00
me, it's an act of kindness or caring that I'm I need to go find her if, you know, her sister said she's missing. I'm
00:19:08
well, I'll go look for her. I'll swing by her parents house or whatever. So to me, that's an act of caring as opposed
00:19:16
to what is the end result? We have a murdered 14-year-old in a corn field. So do you see that as conflicting? The act
00:19:26
of caring? No. No. I'm saying like if I'm law enforcement, I hear the statements from his mom, it doesn't seem
00:19:32
like there there's no confrontation between Lori and Walter that we know of. So, it's just it doesn't it doesn't seem
00:19:42
to make any sense of why would he want to find her and kill her, you know, and and then also he tells his mom, "Well,
00:19:50
I'm going to go look for her." So, I don't know. It just kind of contradicts the ending, right? But I mean, I get
00:19:58
that it could be viewed as an act of kindness, but I but I mean, if you give me the afternoon, I'll give you a
00:20:03
baker's dozen of people that killed somebody and then went out and joined a search party to look for them. I think
00:20:09
the the big part that stands out to me here is regardless of why he lied, you know, he's not he's not there at 10:00.
00:20:17
He's he's confirming that in 2008. And both of his stories in 1985 put him at home at 10:00 and then a staying there
00:20:27
for the entirety of the night after that 10:00 marker. His mom's story is not that. His mom's story is that he wasn't
00:20:35
home until it was notified that she was missing. Remember, Rachel doesn't go out
00:20:39
looking for her sister until what is close to 200 a.m. That's 4 hours after that 10:00 marker. And so what what
00:20:49
stands out to me, I find it incredibly weird that if he did go out and look for as his mom says, which I believe that he
00:20:57
did, that is not anything that suggests that he is guilty, right? like I don't understand why in 1985 he didn't tell
00:21:06
them that he went out looking for that for her at 2 o'clock in the morning. Further, I want to point this out. We do
00:21:13
know based off of the reports, off of the paperwork that Walter Zmpic in 2008 was
00:21:21
was interviewed on December 30th. What we don't know is when his mother Carol was interviewed in 2008,
00:21:30
right? Because I wonder, is there a chance that mom is interviewed prior to December 30th and she calls her son and
00:21:40
says, "Hey, you're never going to believe this. The sheriff's department showed up today and they were remember
00:21:45
your old girlfriend Laurianne Hill from when you were a kid. They were asking me
00:21:49
about her disappearance and about the night that she disappeared. I mean, it's like 20ome years later, right?" And son
00:21:55
is asking, "Mom, it's highly likely." Yeah. What What did Well, what did you tell him? And she tells them what what
00:22:01
tells him what she told them. And now he is armed with information. Oh, they're probably going to come and talk to me
00:22:08
because I remember telling them something different. And he he's got some time to sort out, well, do I try to
00:22:16
talk my way out of it or do I just admit, yeah, I told you guys a story. I fed you a story back then and I don't
00:22:22
remember why or I don't know why. Yeah, that's weird to me. That that sticks out
00:22:26
to me. Why? Why? Why couldn't you remember why you lied? What was it? Question number four that I went
00:22:32
through. They get him to confirm that, right? He says they say so twice. That's two stories that weren't true that you
00:22:39
gave to police after your girlfriend is found murdered. He answers, "Uh-huh." Which is is according to the paperwork
00:22:47
is an affirmative response. And then they go on to ask him, "So how can anybody not want an explanation for
00:22:55
that? So that's why we came to you to give you a chance to explain that to us. His answer is, "Look, I don't know what
00:23:01
to say to you." I mean, I don't question. And then the next morning, you told the Hill family that you got in a
00:23:08
bar fight that night. Answer: Uhhuh. Affirmative response. Question. And then your mother, he cuts them off. Answer. I
00:23:16
don't necessarily remember that either, but I mean then the interview's cutting him off, but your mother told he cuts
00:23:24
them off. Answer this was 20ome years ago. So part of his story to Lorian Hill's family is that he was
00:23:37
in a bar fight sometime that night, which that's seems to be news to everybody else as well, right? like
00:23:43
there they weren't armed with that information in 1985. That wasn't part of his story in 1985. So, as you hear, as
00:23:50
you know, from this this uh transcript that we went through, Walter Zmpic really had no explanation for the
00:23:57
inconsistencies. He didn't even really try to explain them. And then after this 2008 interview, he spoke with both his
00:24:06
mother and with Sandy. remember the the girl that he said uh he had brought home
00:24:12
that night. So when investigators then returned to talk to his mother, Carol, all of a sudden she's less certain about
00:24:18
her story according to the investigators and they say it was clear that she had spoken with Walter Zmpic
00:24:25
since she had been interviewed by the officers several day days before and that Zmpic told her that Sandy was in
00:24:32
his bedroom on the night that Lorie Hill had been killed. And she also affirmed that Willie Lonway was the boy who was
00:24:40
with Walter Zmpic that night. So now she remembers the first name. These detectives, they do track down this
00:24:47
Sandy girl. She had never been interviewed, but up to this point. She does tell investigators that she
00:24:54
remembers dating Walter Zmpic for maybe a month this back in 1985. They did meet
00:25:00
at the Southwick Mall in the fall of 1985, but she said she did not go back to his apartment on that first night
00:25:07
that they met, and she certainly never remembers sneaking in through a bedroom window. She recalled that their first
00:25:15
phone conversation was where he told her that his ex-girlfriend had been killed and he said it happened the night that
00:25:23
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00:32:03
Colonel. Cheers to you, Captain. So, these cold case investigators, they even tracked down some of the other names
00:32:11
that they were seeing in their old case file. Some of these people, their names were in the file, but they had never
00:32:16
been interviewed. And one of those persons was a lady named Linda Ferraso. She was a family friend of the of the
00:32:26
Hills. She recalled that on October 26th, so this is the day after Lori is missing. She her body's not been found
00:32:34
yet. She recalls that Walter Zmpic was helping her post flyers looking for the missing girl. And she said that she
00:32:44
noticed that he had scratches all over his arm. That she said it looked like he like run through a a rose
00:32:53
guard and she overheard him telling someone else that he had gotten into a bar fight the night before. After 8
00:33:01
months of investigation, in 2008, Walter Zmpic was arrested at his home. Fulton County
00:33:08
detectives announced the cold case arrest to the media and they blared it with headlines screaming about the Hill
00:33:16
case cold case kidnap, rape, and murder at long last being solved. Walter Zmpic was he waved extradition, was
00:33:25
transported to Ohio to face these charges. He plead not guilty on both counts and bond was set at $1 million.
00:33:32
So really, a lot of this is going to boil down to trying to reconstruct his actual whereabouts on the night of the
00:33:41
murder. And now we have to introduce his defense attorney. He had two defense attorneys. This is a fatherdaughter duo
00:33:49
here. Lawyers Greg and Amber Van Gunton. They filed a series of motions, 36 of them, including a motion
00:33:59
to dismiss the case because they argued that their client's defense was prejudiced by the passage of 24 years
00:34:06
since the murder because some of the witnesses had died, moved on, forgotten, or just plain vanished. They argued and
00:34:13
the physical evidence had either been used up or stored improperly because it was revealed that the physical evidence
00:34:23
was misplaced. So testing that could have the result in the exoneration of their
00:34:32
client Walter Zmpic would be impossible. Right? there's there's not this physical
00:34:37
evidence still existing today while we're waiting on a court date that that there's a chance this could exonerate
00:34:46
our client. So in short, what they're saying is the delay in bringing Walter Zmpic and the delay
00:34:54
in charging him with this for 20ome years was reasons for why he was he couldn't put up a great defense.
00:35:05
at the motion to dismiss the the hearing altogether. His mother, Carol, testified
00:35:12
that she received only one phone call the night that Lorie uh went missing. She said that she did
00:35:18
not recall Willie Lway being with her son Walter at all that night. This was totally different from what she said in
00:35:26
her interview in 2008. The prosecution filed 39 motions of its own, arguing that the delayed prosecution wasn't just
00:35:34
a matter of negligent failure to prosecute back in 1985, but that actual new evidence was discovered. And that
00:35:41
new evidence, of course, being all of these inconsistencies in Zimpic's statements and his mother with her
00:35:48
flip-flopping stories that she's now giving to police. Well, this family is known for flip-flopping on their
00:35:54
stories. They're a family of flippers and a family of floppers. Floppers. Yeah. You'd think they'd be able to test
00:36:01
something to either try to link him to the crime or, you know, possibly just go, "Well,
00:36:08
we we ran the test and we didn't find his DNA, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't the killer." Well, I mean, so
00:36:16
they had the tests back then. They had the results back then, but but of course what those results are they even
00:36:23
comparable to something that you would be able to come up with in 2009, right? And and then furthermore, the whatever
00:36:30
physical evidence once that once existed, nobody can get their hands on it anymore because it was misplaced or
00:36:37
destroyed or or what have you. So, you know, people that that don't do these things, that aren't involved in these
00:36:44
things, they don't have a great understanding of how important the chain of custody of physical evidence is in
00:36:53
all of these cases. And if you slip up, if there's one misstep on the chain of custody on someone lawfully and
00:37:02
correctly storing evidence, then it's all tainted, right? It's tainted whether it was tainted at all because you can
00:37:09
argue that it was tainted if it's unaccounted for for any time. Who's to say what the hell was going on with that
00:37:16
physical evidence? And so because they don't have it or it disappeared for a while, it's it's basically moot. It's
00:37:25
it's no good. It's good for nothing. There was some physical evidence that did suggest that maybe Walter Zimp
00:37:33
wasn't the killer. They they did have a Okay, so in 2009 with Walter Zmpic facing trial, defense attorney Amber Van
00:37:41
Gunton said in interviews with members of the media that there was no evidence against her client. In fact, the
00:37:47
evidence exonerated her client. She claimed she cited the lab report testing a pubic hair found on Lori that did
00:37:56
not match Walter Zmpic. She told NBC 24, quote, "I've never been more convinced in my 10 years of law practice that this
00:38:05
man is innocent. He should be released from jail based on the evidence that has finally come forth." End quote. In
00:38:12
another interview, she says, "This case is absolutely ridiculous. I don't understand why they are still pursuing
00:38:18
charges at this time." So, remember, they're trying to get this tossed out of court altogether. the
00:38:25
the at at the first go round it does get tossed. The the judge is like, "Yeah, there's not a whole lot going on here.
00:38:33
There's not a whole lot of evidence. Uh there's nothing really new. This is not a great idea to actually charge this guy
00:38:40
and take him to to trial." But that would ultimately get overturned by a higher court. And without going
00:38:50
through all of those court proceedings that took days and days to sort through, what we what we end up with is the the
00:38:58
case was going to go to trial in 2012. The state's first witness being Craig Rup, the guy that was, you know,
00:39:07
dating Lori at the time. Remember, he said he never saw her after she left the party that night. He told the jury that
00:39:14
he had heard that Lori had been concerned that she was pregnant. and he said that he met Walter Zmpic during the
00:39:22
search for Lori. Zmpic telling him that Lori had been about to dump him, dump Craig, and if she was pregnant that the
00:39:31
baby was his Walter Zmpix. But with this fight, cuz this fight that Walter says he got in this bar fight, do we have any
00:39:41
eyewitnesses to this fight? Well, I don't think that it's even a a a sticking matter because when he's
00:39:49
interviewed in 2008, he says he doesn't remember a bar fight, right? Um he may have told one or two people that back in
00:39:58
1985, but now he's he's admitting that his statements were inconsistent, that he lied to police twice in both of those
00:40:07
statements. And then when asked about the bar fight, he's saying, "Yeah, I don't I don't remember saying that." You
00:40:12
know, I don't remember that. Doesn't remember why he lied. Doesn't remember the bar fight statements. Very
00:40:18
fascinating. Now, during this trial, we also get uh some I I there, you know, in
00:40:26
these true crime stories, Captain, there are certain things that I'm a sucker for, and I don't know why this this part
00:40:32
of these stories always intrigues me. Maybe it's that that if I were ever to be on a jury, you know, I've been called
00:40:40
for jury duty at least once that I can recall, but uh I always think that it's neat when
00:40:47
they when they go out to a scene. So, the jury was driven to Swanson to to to view the spot where Lori was last seen
00:40:56
uh and then into that rural area where her body was eventually found. They heard the testimony obviously from the
00:41:04
men who found her body. They they heard testimony from first responders and the medical
00:41:10
examiner and they also heard testimony from Lor's friends and family about the circumstances of her disappearance and
00:41:18
death. But but okay, so what actual evidence do they have against Walter Zmpic at this trial? Right. Because
00:41:29
you're going to have physical evidence. Correct. Right. you. What we end up with
00:41:33
and and you're going to love this. Oh, this is going to get your goat, my friend. We have a jailhouse confession.
00:41:43
Three months. So, three months after he's arrested, there's this guy named Steve Moden that Well, but hold on that
00:41:50
when there's no physical evidence and there's no other really hardcore evidence, they always seem to get a
00:41:58
confession. Well, because jail houses are often filled with liars and cheats who probably are willing to make a deal
00:42:06
to benefit themselves, right? And throw anyone under the bus at any time. That's
00:42:12
why I always look at these as like a with a side side eye, right? And I would I would
00:42:19
um find these more credible if the person didn't ask for anything and didn't receive anything
00:42:28
because you sometimes you don't ask for anything but but the law the law enforcement agencies that you're helping
00:42:35
out with this confession will give you something even if you don't ask for it. So here's here's the thing that boggles
00:42:43
the brain, right? So, like if if I'm just some dude, which well well I actually you are. Yeah. Um but if if I'm
00:42:51
some dude, not in a jail house, not in a prison, Mr. Joe Citizen as I am, Mr. civilian and I call up the
00:43:00
police and I say, "Hey, this guy I know, he confessed to murdering uh somebody and or or hey, I know you're
00:43:09
investigating such and such and I this person admitted it to me, told me that he did
00:43:16
it." Typically, what is their protocol? They'll mike that guy up. They'll mic me
00:43:21
up and try to get that story out of him once again, or they'll tap my phone and try to get him to tell me the story once
00:43:27
again. Right? Why in the hell in all of these jail house confessions, there's only one that I can think of where they
00:43:34
actually miked up the inmate and in that scenario they only miked up the inmate because he was
00:43:40
placed there. He was under working undercover. Why not mike up this Steve Moden and see if he can get Walter Zmpic
00:43:50
to repeat what he once told him? They never seem to do that. They just like, "Oh, you know what? Wheel his ass into
00:43:55
the courtroom and have him testify and we'll see what the let the jury sort it out." So, he says that he tells police.
00:44:02
He tells he he mailed a letter to the prosecutor. Uh, his the prosecutor's name is Scott Hasselman.
00:44:10
He mails the prosecutor a letter saying that look, I'm I'm a bit of a legal resource to some of these other inmates,
00:44:18
uh, a lot of the other persons waiting trial or that they will seek me out for some legal advice. And I ended up
00:44:28
talking with Walter Zmpic while he was locked up before his trial. He admitted to me that he kicked and beat Lori to
00:44:34
death because he wanted because she wanted to break up with him and he he couldn't handle the rejection. And the
00:44:42
Steve Moden guy goes on to say that Walter Zmpic allegedly told him that he blacked out in a fog of rage while he
00:44:49
was beating her. and that Zmpic went on to tell him that he had several people helping him out by lying to cover up his
00:44:56
crime, including a friend whose house he had walked to after dumping Lor's body in some brush. So, you got this
00:45:07
confession, supposed confession. You have a couple people that do testify that he had scratches on
00:45:15
his person. You have the inconsistent statements and then the rest is all like take it for what you will, right? Like
00:45:25
was he jealous? How jealous was he? Was she rejecting him? Could he handle the rejection?
00:45:30
You there's really no physical evidence. In fact, the physical evidence you do have if if that has if that should even
00:45:39
play a role in it, I don't know. Right? because you're going to get the defense that rightfully so will continually
00:45:48
point out that Walter Zmpik's DNA was not a match to that hair that was found on Lori. So, the only physical evidence
00:45:58
is pointing away from the guy that's on trial. Well, and if you're his defense team, you want to hit that
00:46:05
home over and over. Hey, we got physical evidence that points to somebody else, not my client. Walter Zmpic did not
00:46:14
testify at this trial. As you just correctly said here, his attorneys had effectively emphasized that there was
00:46:21
zero physical evidence against their client. about 11 hours spread out over three days for the jury to conclude that
00:46:30
they could not agree whether Walter Zmpic the second had if he was guilty of murder and so the judge had to declare
00:46:40
this a mistrial in the case. The jury was sent home. However, Mr. Zmpic, Walter Zmpic still remained charged with
00:46:49
murder. He was free on bond but must continue to stay in the state of Ohio on electronic home monitoring. This
00:46:58
is this sucks. All right, look. I I know that there's a lot of people out there.
00:47:03
The room is probably divided right now. Shout out to the people in the back. The
00:47:07
room is probably divided on on who believes this guy might be guilty, who thinks that he he's getting railroaded
00:47:15
here, regardless of the situation. Look, if he's guilty, we really don't care. But we don't know that the the a big
00:47:24
part of this too for him, he's a business owner. He lives in a different state and he's had to remain in Ohio for
00:47:32
a very long time, years, but because this was a mistrial, not an acquitt, he was able to be
00:47:40
retrieded. Now, what takes place here behind the scenes, Captain, is the prosecuting
00:47:47
uh the prosecution, they are interviewing. This is like almost like a debriefing of the the jury, right?
00:47:54
They're they're interviewing the the jury, asking them, you know, what certain questions. And it was after
00:48:00
talking with the hung jury, they decided that they were not going to further the the case against him.
00:48:11
So they dismissed, the prosecution dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning it could
00:48:20
be refiled should additional evidence be found against Zmpic, but three years of
00:48:27
Walter Zmpik's life had been spent as an accused murderer. 18 months of that had
00:48:32
been spent in the state of Ohio. However, he was free to return to Tennessee at that time. and he says that
00:48:38
he due to the amount of time he lost his business because of the accusations against him and his time away from the
00:48:46
state of Tennessee. So, I'm guessing law enforcement at this point just thought,
00:48:50
okay, if we pursue, we don't have enough. It's been some time that has passed, but maybe if some more time
00:48:57
passed that we we'll be able to build a stronger case against him. Yeah, this is
00:49:01
one of those tough ones where you you can see maybe not just a a garage divided like I had mentioned, but maybe
00:49:09
a house divided amongst some of the law enforcement officers and even the prosecution of, you know, did is this a
00:49:16
situation where we have the guy, we know who did it, we just can't prove it in court, or is it a situation where maybe
00:49:23
they got the wrong guy? It it's the hair evidence for me that makes this all very
00:49:28
shaky, right? like if but what does that hair evidence mean? And and I and I hate
00:49:34
to be going down this road because I'm somebody that with the porch light project we
00:49:38
we DNA is the holy grail for us in in in our cases and it's and it often is telling us who is responsible for what
00:49:48
in this scenario is simply a hair found on her person. We know that her current boyfriend Craig Rup, he says they went
00:49:57
to this pond to spend some time together, his words. What What does that mean? Did they do everything except for
00:50:04
have sex that night? As he says, right? It appears that based off of the evidence that they collected in 1985
00:50:12
that she was either sexually assaulted or did have some kind of sexual had sex with somebody that evening. But what I'm
00:50:18
getting at is I do believe that there's a world where Craig Rup or somebody else
00:50:25
left that hair on her person and Walter Zmpic then later killed her. I believe that that's a possibility. I also
00:50:33
believe that there's a world where he's completely innocent and lied about where
00:50:38
he was that night because he was a dumb 18-year-old kid and and scared. What we do get is a lot of more drama in this
00:50:47
case. So nothing happens publicly after Zmpic walked on the case until let's go to
00:50:56
2014. We have Rachel Hill, Lory's older sister, and Walter Zmpik both appear on the Dr. Phil TV show. Now, a lot
00:51:06
happened. Uh I'll give you the old Colonel summary here. Of course, Rachel Hill was fully in full tilt on Zimpik's
00:51:16
guilt. Basically, it was evident that since the arrest of 2009, her rage against him had been festering inside of
00:51:24
her, and it was only heightened by them not being able to get a guilty conviction. Rachel told Dr. Phil that
00:51:31
when the relationship ran its course and Lorie moved on, Walt, she refers to him
00:51:37
as Walt, did not accept this. quote, "He was a stalker," she said. She said, "Walt gave Lori an ultimatum and then
00:51:46
she was killed." Rachel laid out the last hours of Lor's life for Dr. Phil about her going to the party, arguing
00:51:52
with her boyfriend, and being seen by neighbors, walking alone toward home. Then she went missing and Walt was a
00:51:59
crying mess, huddled in a fetal position and extreme an extreme reaction. Maybe like maybe he's overreacting on purpose.
00:52:08
Maybe he's he's he's putting on a show. Rachel told Dr. Phil that when Lori was found, the
00:52:15
damage to her sister's head and face was so bad that her father told the girl's mother that Lori had been shot. There
00:52:23
was a hole in the center of her forehead. Her right ear had been missing, been eaten by animals. The Hill
00:52:30
family never, she says the Hill family never suspected Walt back then. Rachel said that he was the best man at her
00:52:37
wedding. He spent time, he says he spent time at their house after Lori was killed, stored a car there for a period
00:52:44
of time. But she says that she began to suspect Walt in 1991. Uh that year, I guess Walt had
00:52:53
taken her uh Rachel's babysitter out on a date and Rachel walked into the room and found Walt attacking the teenage
00:53:02
girl, beating her and in her words saying trying to rape her. She says that she chased him off
00:53:08
with a shotgun and that's when the thought came to her. Well, maybe he had done the same thing to my sister. She
00:53:16
went on to tell Dr. Phil, that when police went to serve the warrant to on Walt for this incident, uh, so this
00:53:24
would be 1991, that he had photos of Lori on his walls and his bedside table. They found her
00:53:32
earring, Lor's earring that she had worn the night she was killed. It was all bent and
00:53:38
misshapen. Rachel said that it was misshaped because she had been hit while, you know, the earring was still
00:53:45
in her ear. She said that Walt told police that the family gave him this earring as some kind of momento of Lori.
00:53:53
She denies this when he says that. She told Dr. Phil that quote, "I am 100% positive that Walt is my sister's killer
00:54:01
beyond a shadow of doubt." And then she called Walter a psychopath. Earlier during the week of the Dr. Phil taping
00:54:13
for the show. Rachel admitted she had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital because she had threatened to
00:54:22
kill both Walter Zimpik and his attorney, Amber Van Gunton. I I mean, look, this is not a great way to handle
00:54:34
your problems. I can maybe reconci reconcile with the idea of going after Walter Zimpik, but I I don't
00:54:42
know that you need to threaten to kill the attorney as well, but clearly she's not in her right mind. The She did say
00:54:49
she was honest about being admitted to the psychiatric hospital. She did say the hospital they were keeping me safe
00:54:56
from hunting Amber and Walt down. Rachel said that she promised her father on his deathbed that she would kill the
00:55:05
man who killed Lori and she was determined to keep that promise. Yeah, but you have to figure out who it is
00:55:12
first. You have to figure out who it is first. And she did say that that, you know, when she was able
00:55:20
to clear her mind, clear her thoughts, she she changed her mind on wanting to carry out that promise to her father
00:55:28
because she was older. She had five granddaughters. She, you know, she had a family. She had many more reasons for
00:55:35
staying out of prison than just the one for getting even and getting that eye for an eye that her father wanted. But
00:55:43
this is I mean this is a strange and bizarre scenario, right? She's not seen the accused since the
00:55:51
trial that he that he walked away from. And now they were going to be face to face on set together. Well, this is a a
00:56:00
Dr. Phil special. This is what he does. This is what he does. Yeah. This is what
00:56:05
old Phil one day he's going to put us face to face and have it out. one last goaround. At some point, she's heard she
00:56:14
can be overheard asking Dr. Phil if his security guards were present because she
00:56:19
she wanted to make sure that if needed, they would be there to stop her from hurting Walter
00:56:25
Zimp. So, Zemp Zimp said in a pre-taped interview, you know, when they pre-taped
00:56:32
something and then later they air it on the show, he's saying in that pre-taped interview that Rachel was fixated on
00:56:39
him. He says, "I've always been in love with Lori." He maintained that he and Lori had started talking about getting
00:56:47
back together, and that night she was supposed to leave the boy that she was seeing at the time. He said, "In
00:56:54
essence, she was at the party. I was at the mall with some friends. That night, I got a call from the police around 1:30
00:57:01
a.m. asking if I had seen or heard from Lori. I said no. The next day I saw Rachel at her house and helped search
00:57:08
for Lori. He denied having any scratches on him of any sort. He said he was crushed when Lori was found dead. He he
00:57:18
did go on to tell the show, "Hey, look, I passed a polygraph exam back in 1985. Uh my DNA was tested against the DNA on
00:57:26
Lor's body. It didn't match." And while he's trying to defend himself and point out reasons why he might be innocent,
00:57:36
Rachel starts spouting off, you know, I hate you. I know you killed Lori. Rachel
00:57:42
said, "Man, this is disturbing." Rachel said that Lori when she was attacked that night and killed that Lori fought
00:57:51
so hard her knuckles were broken. Her argument was that the DNA was so disintegrated there was nothing left
00:57:59
that he could not have been cleared by DNA. He did this is this is odd because we we know he had a different stance on
00:58:07
this when interviewed in 2008. He on the show and maybe he was just trying to present himself in a certain light, a
00:58:15
bad light, but he did deny lying to the police. He said he did give two conflicting
00:58:22
stories about that night and one he just just left out the facts that he was with
00:58:27
a girl that night with the with the Sandy girl. Now, of course, Dr. Phil's not going to allow this to stand, right?
00:58:34
We we we know his his mojo. So now he's you can see him armed with the transcript from the interviews and
00:58:43
he's going to confront Walter saying like like look man in this interview you admit that you lied like so don't don't
00:58:51
sit here and tell us that you didn't lie to the police. You you admit it right here. We have your words. So Walter gets
00:58:58
all kind of shifty during this part. He's he's he's kind of denying it again. Yeah, but you can be a liar and not a
00:59:05
murderer. True. And and and in and in his defense, he has a different answer for it at this time. He's saying, "Look,
00:59:11
yes, I gave them two different stories. The only difference in my stories is that I left Sandy out. In the second
00:59:17
story in in the second story I gave them, I didn't leave Sandy out." And he he's saying now to Phil, Dr. Phil, I was
00:59:26
young. I was scared. I was nervous when I was talking to the police back in 1985. And of course, Phil's Dr. Phil's
00:59:33
going to point out, look, this this is this looks very suspicious. And and look, I can I don't like Walter in this
00:59:43
part, but I can agree with both Dr. Phil and Walter's statements when when he's confronted and and Dr. Phil pushes him
00:59:52
even further, challenges him even more. Why did you give at this point Dr. Phil is saying three different alibis? The
01:00:00
rebuttal here is that uh Walter saying, "I always said that I was at the mall." And he's and he goes on to say that the
01:00:08
the things the things that remain true to this day. I always said that I was at the mall. Number one, and number two, I
01:00:15
never saw I always said I never saw Lori on the night that she died. Walter's attorney, Amber, then points out on the
01:00:23
show to Dr. fulfilled that she speaks up and she raised a theory that has never been presented before in the case saying
01:00:31
that that it was a ritualistic killer. She said that two sticks were found on Lor's stomach in the form of an upside
01:00:38
down cross. I guess it's so out of left field here, Captain, that that during the course of the Dr. Phil episode,
01:00:44
that's not really further explored, right? There's similarities to this case and and the deli case and but when you
01:00:54
find a victim in in a wooded area or a field there are sometimes these killers decide to well maybe I can conceal the
01:01:05
body and after starting that process realize there's not enough material around them and they right or that a car
01:01:16
drives by and then they they take off. It's like the first time that somebody brought up to me with deli, they go, you
01:01:22
know, they found a found some sticks on the girls in the form of a cross or a form of something. And I said, yeah,
01:01:29
they were in the effing woods. It would be strange if they didn't find some sticks. Like uh I mean, come on here,
01:01:35
people. So, I'm not going to go through the the 1985 polygraph, but we do have the transcript of that. And and Dr. Phil
01:01:44
did as well. They brought on an expert, a polygraph expert, former FBI special agent who reviewed the
01:01:54
1985 test that Walter passed. And you know, he passed that test. The expert said, "This would be a very, very
01:02:05
difficult test for him to lie his way through and to pass. This would be a very it'd be very difficult to end up
01:02:13
with these results with the way that the test was administered with the questions
01:02:17
that were asked and for him to be deceptive but not give off the result that he was being deceptive. So
01:02:26
that I mean if you're scoring at home put one in favor of Walter here. But there was a second episode a second Dr.
01:02:34
Phil episode Dr. Phil made Rachel Hill promise to put some stock in the Polygraph results. In other words, he's
01:02:43
saying, "Hey, we're going to we're going to do another episode here, but I want you to try to keep more of an open
01:02:48
mind." And on this episode, it was very different. Uh Walter said to Rachel, "I feel sorry for you and I feel sorry for
01:02:57
your family." Rachel asked only one question. The the purpose of this second episode
01:03:04
here, Captain, was they were going to administer polygraph examinations of both Rachel and of Walter. This would be
01:03:13
Dr. Phil's team doing this. And that's why he's saying, look, you know, we know that we know that he passed the
01:03:21
polygraph in 1985. We're going to give him another one today. Hey, we're going to give you one as well, and we want you
01:03:27
to try to keep an open mind about the results that may come of this. So, what were the results? Well, this is
01:03:35
interesting because part of the the questions for Rachel centers around that babysitter incident, remember where she
01:03:43
says, "This is the light that went off after I saw him assaulting this teenage babysitter that I wondered, did he do
01:03:49
the same thing to my sister years ago?" Right? And the the examiner said that regarding that babysitter incident,
01:04:00
Rachel's statements and answers were truthful. The results were truthful. Now, the flip of that is in
01:04:08
regard to Walter Zimbeck killing Lori and all the questions that were involved for him
01:04:14
in this new updated polygraph gets the same result. He's he says he didn't kill her and he the
01:04:23
result is he's not being deceptive. Right. And in this moment and and I think look I mean sometimes it takes a
01:04:33
person to have walked in another person's shoes. And what I mean by that in this
01:04:38
this scenario is Rachel knew all along that this guy passed the 85 polygraph. But doesn't that polygraph mean a whole
01:04:48
lot more when you know something to be true and you have to sit down and give your own and then the results are in and
01:04:56
they're saying, "Yeah, cames came back that you were telling the truth about this incident that this guy didn't want
01:05:01
to admit to." In Zimpik's test, he's only asked about if he killed Lori. He's only asked if about questions pertaining
01:05:08
to the night that Lori disappeared and about uh Lor's homicide. It comes back non-deceptive. He says he didn't do it.
01:05:15
says he wasn't involved. Non-deceptive. So in this scenario, Captain Rachel seemed to immediately accept that the
01:05:21
polygraph results were in fact accurate. She began crying. She was almost hysterical. She pleaded with Walter
01:05:29
asking him questions as she's crying. Why all the lies? Why all the different stories? He said he didn't even remember
01:05:36
saying those things to police. He said he was a kid. She cried. He cried. Walter goes on to say on the show that
01:05:45
he loved Rachel's family, that he loved the Hill family, saying, "I would," quote, "I would do anything for Lori."
01:05:53
And then he approached Rachel and they hugged it out. And he says to her, "Let's go find the person who did this
01:06:00
together." Yeah. Rachel acknowledged that she has that that she has to forgive him and that she has accepted
01:06:10
that he didn't do it. But she said she hoped it was him because if it wasn't him who had killed her sister, then it
01:06:19
was a monster. And in and and back in ' 85 and in the moment that her poor sister knew that she was going to die.
01:06:27
And it doesn't end there because we fast forward two years later. The case was pretty much stone cold after the charges
01:06:35
against Walter Zimick were dropped. It was stone cold up until the Dr. Phil drama and then even after that stone
01:06:44
cold at least as the as far as the public knows. So years go by but in 2016 a man was arrested in Fulton County for
01:06:54
the murder of another young woman in a crime that seems eerily similar. And this arrest would revive Lorie Anne
01:07:05
Hills homicide case at least in the eyes of the public and especially in her family. The victim in that case was
01:07:11
Sierra Joan. The man, the local man arrested for her murder was James Dean Warley. And after Warley's arrest,
01:07:21
Rachel Hill spoke with NBC 24. She said that she believed when Zimbeck was arrested that he did in
01:07:31
fact kill Lori. But now after this new information, she believed that James Worley killed her sister Lori. Now, to
01:07:39
be perfectly clear here, Captain, this seems to be more of a gut feeling type of thing rather than Rachel having any
01:07:46
evidence of Warley's involvement or having killed her sister. This next part here is from NBC 24 says, quote, "Rachel
01:07:55
believes it was Warley who killed her sister after she saw him at his first arraignment in Fulton County."
01:08:03
She said, "The evil that oozed out of him and the bloodstained hands and the fact that he wrote with
01:08:12
his left hand is what convinced her." Rachel said she was told years ago that her sister's killer was left-handed.
01:08:21
Anyone who has any information about the murder of Laurianne Hill, please contact
01:08:26
the Toledo Police Department at 419-2453142. And if you have any information about James Dean Warley,
01:08:36
convicted murderer James Dean Warley, please call the Fulton County Sheriff's Office at
01:08:57
419335410. Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage each and every week. and thanks for sharing these
01:09:02
cases on social media. Colonel, do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners? Absolutely,
01:09:09
Captain. This week, this one was a uh one that I think is properly handpicked by yours truly
01:09:17
because we've been getting a few requests lately for Dayton, Ohio cases. Um, and so this is by a great historic
01:09:27
true crime expert that, you know, it's one thing to cover these stories that happened 10, 20 years ago. It's one
01:09:34
thing to cover these stories that are new, fresh in the news just a few months ago, like we like we did it a week or so
01:09:42
back. All of these cases are unique, but it's incredibly difficult to go way back
01:09:48
in time and find a good deal of information and historic facts to piece together a story about an old true crime
01:09:58
story. And and Sarah Kashall does it better than most. And we've recommended some of her books previously on True
01:10:06
Crime Garage, but this week we are recommending a it's called Murder in Victorian Dayton. The tragic story of
01:10:14
Bessie Little. The murder of Bessie Little and the trial of her murderer rocked Victorian Dayton. Believing
01:10:22
herself pregnant and desperate to save her reputation, young Bessie tried to force her boyfriend to marry her
01:10:28
quickly. Instead, he took her out for a buggy ride, shot her twice in the head, and dumped her body in the river. When
01:10:35
she was discovered, he tried to convince everyone that she had committed suicide.
01:10:40
We talked about a dramatic trial this week on True Crime Garage. We talked about the drama on Dr. Phil. There was a
01:10:48
dramatic trial in this case as well. So, go out and check out this great book, Murder and Victorian Dayton: The Tragic
01:10:56
Story of Bessie Little. You don't have to write that title down now because you can go to our website true
01:11:01
crimegar.com. Click on the recommendation tab and we have podcast, documentaries, and other books
01:11:10
recommendations there for you. And until next week, be good, be kind, and don't limit.
01:11:25
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