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change. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]
00:02:25
>> In September of 1982, 12-year-old paperboy Johnny Gosch disappeared. Plucked off the street in the early
00:02:33
morning hours and in the early portion of his paper route. Paperboys were not safe in Des Moines,
00:02:39
Iowa, and months later, almost exactly 1 year later, another kid vanished from another street. This time, it was in a
00:02:48
suburb of Omaha, Nebraska. He was the next paperboy. 13-year-old Danny Joe Eberle vanished
00:02:56
from his paper route on a Sunday in September under very similar eerily similar circumstances.
00:03:06
He was carrying the Omaha World-Herald. For $0.65, you can read all the news that the
00:03:14
paperboy can deliver. Or for the price of a broken heart and an empty home, you can stand by the window watching the
00:03:22
street and wondering why your little paperboy never came home. This is True Crime Garage.
00:03:30
And this is our look at the missing paperboys, chapter two, Nebraska Nightmare. >> [music]
00:03:49
[music] [music] [music] >> We started off chapter one by talking about the case of Danny Joe Eberle.
00:04:10
[music] So, let's go back to the 18th of September, 1983. Bellevue, Nebraska, just south of Omaha,
00:04:19
Nebraska. >> [music] >> And that September day in 1983 was in fact a Sunday. When 13-year-old Danny
00:04:26
Joe Eberle got up early, he headed down to a nearby convenience store to pick up
00:04:31
his supply of Sunday newspapers to be delivered. He rolled the papers and he put the entire load in a delivery
00:04:40
bag and on his bicycle, he went off to get to his route to make the first delivery. What we would later learn,
00:04:49
Captain, is that this boy only made three stops on that delivery. When some people
00:04:55
on that route didn't receive their papers, they started calling Danny's parents' home. And after receiving more
00:05:03
than one call, his parents headed out to the route to look for Danny. Finding his
00:05:09
bike inside a gated yard. So, inside the gate of a fence of a home on his paper route. Now, they find his bicycle, they
00:05:20
find his newspaper delivery bag with a bunch of papers still stuffed inside. But Danny Joe was nowhere to be found.
00:05:30
His parents drove along the route, they drove beyond the route hoping to find their son, but they could not.
00:05:38
And they very quickly called the Bellevue Police Department and a search began for the boy right away. So, that
00:05:46
that's a little bit of a difference here between these two cases. But as said, things that were put into
00:05:52
place shortly after the time that somebody like Johnny Gosch went missing, and there were others, too,
00:05:59
unfortunately. That there were grieving parents who had been fighting to change the way that law
00:06:05
enforcement receive and react to a missing child call. Yeah, this is something that families are still
00:06:12
fighting for to this day. And we talked about as well those families meeting with people in power,
00:06:20
especially the at the time President Ronald Reagan, who changed the way that FBI, the FBI, the Federal Bureau of
00:06:29
Investigation would be involved in cases of missing kids, but also murder cases. And today, it's just commonplace.
00:06:38
But back then, it was very new, and it changed the way that the federal law enforcement officers were involved
00:06:46
in such cases. So, the Sheriff's Department is directly involved. This is the Sarpy Sheriff's Department in Sarpy
00:06:54
County, Nebraska. But of course, we have the Bellevue Police Department that is the initial phone call that was made by
00:07:02
the parents. And it was the Bellevue Police Chief, as I understand it, that said, "You know what? We got to contact
00:07:10
the local FBI field office here in Nebraska." Agents were immediately assigned to help with the search for the
00:07:19
little boy. And which would It would at some point shift from a search to an investigation
00:07:27
into the boy's disappearance. And a lot of that has to do with the circumstances of the boy's home life,
00:07:36
school life. They found no problems, no reasons for him to run away. And immediately, they started getting
00:07:42
suspicious that this could be, and hopefully not, that it wouldn't turn out to be something exactly like the Johnny
00:07:50
Gosch case. Now, keep in mind, this is almost exactly 1 year later. In fact, it's about 13 days beyond the 1-year
00:07:58
anniversary that Johnny Gosch went missing from Des Moines, Iowa. And they had no clue as to where
00:08:06
that little boy, where Johnny had gone. As we had stated, we have Special Agent in charge Herb
00:08:14
Hawkins gets the call. He's running, I believe, two states at this time. With And there's varying
00:08:21
various investigations going on with that branch of the FBI at the time. So, he's going to get his assistant,
00:08:29
Assistant Special Agent in Charge John Evans to be the lead on this. Which Evans was
00:08:37
heavily involved in organized crime and and other investigations typically conducted by the FBI. He wasn't so
00:08:48
experienced in murder cases. And that's why they wanted to bring in somebody like Peter Klismet Jr., who had Quantico
00:08:56
training. He had received the FBI profiler training courses. He was But he was still getting acclimated to that
00:09:05
type of investigative work. So, he's still wet behind the ears here, Captain, when he gets this call. And in fact, in
00:09:13
his book, he openly expresses saying like, "Look, I feel like I've had the right training, that I was trained by
00:09:19
some of the best, but I didn't feel like they're calling me an expert when I arrive on the scene." He goes, "I didn't
00:09:25
feel much like an expert arriving to the scene of a missing child case." He was very thankful that they also notified
00:09:34
Quantico, wanting to bring in one of the the the big guns, as we had said yesterday, one of the original mind
00:09:41
hunters, somebody that has done this before. But this was also going to be a bit of a transition period in Robert
00:09:49
Ressler's FBI career as well. Now, the short of it is sadly Danny Joe Eberle was found it was a short time
00:10:01
later just days later that he was located but he had obviously been murdered. So at the time of it's the
00:10:10
fall of 1983 Robert Ressler is at the Michigan State University. He's there to teach at an annual homicide seminar.
00:10:21
Keep in mind he's a graduate of Michigan State University. He says once he gets back to his hotel mind you it's 1983 so
00:10:28
he's not walking around with a cell phone. Once he gets back to his hotel the front desk hands him a message.
00:10:35
And he said as soon as I read it I didn't need any it didn't need any explaining. It just said call the office
00:10:42
immediately. Look that means something has happened. It's something urgent something ugly something that cannot
00:10:48
will not wait. He makes the call and that is when Robert Ressler was told about a young paperboy named Danny Joe
00:10:57
Eberle that had been abducted and later found murdered in Bellevue Nebraska near Omaha.
00:11:06
So they needed Ressler in Omaha to help identify the killer. He is going to be receiving
00:11:14
this call and then in route to Omaha shortly after they find the body. In fact by the time he gets there they
00:11:21
still have to wait for the autopsy results. Now long time listeners of this show
00:11:27
know what it means when these cases the an abducted child missing and then later
00:11:34
found murdered. Our listeners know what it means when these cases are not handled with speed
00:11:40
and coordination. There will be more victims. Ressler's initial reaction to being told as to what was going on there
00:11:49
in Bellevue Nebraska he says I couldn't help but think of the case that had already scarred the
00:11:56
country's conscience. He says almost precisely a year earlier in Des Moines Johnny Gosch had vanished
00:12:04
on a Sunday morning while delivering newspapers. He was never found. I meaning Ressler had spoken with Mr.
00:12:11
and Mrs. Gosch and I had heard the anger directly. The FBI had been slow to become involved.
00:12:19
Ressler says technically the Bureau could not they could point to jurisdiction being
00:12:26
an obstacle. He said with no clear evidence that the crime crossed state lines with
00:12:33
no ransom note there was no real federal hook there for them to become involved especially right away.
00:12:41
But he said look those type of technicalities do not comfort grieving parents. Absolutely not. So in this case
00:12:49
we have paperboy goes out is abducted. We find his bike. The Johnny Gosch case we find the wagon.
00:12:58
Mhm. But this case is different because we find a body. We don't find a body in the Johnny Gosch case. But in the Johnny
00:13:05
Gosch case we have a lot of eyewitnesses. Do we have any eyewitnesses in this case?
00:13:11
We do end up with some potential let's say potential witnesses. So we don't get any witnesses to the actual abduction
00:13:19
Right. >> but we get some witnesses that might be able to provide some insights that could
00:13:24
end up being a lead. Okay so it was two and a half days after what would later be known to everyone as an abduction
00:13:34
that Danny Joe Eberle's body was found. And Ressler's brought in at that time once the body is found. And it Ressler
00:13:42
says at this time you know we've talked about this plenty of times on the show that that at one point in the career his
00:13:48
career he and John Douglas are out busy doing what they called their road schools going
00:13:55
around and teaching different police departments and then assisting in cases if they happened to be there or
00:14:02
via phone when they would get back to Quantico and then receive calls from a detective or police chief that had
00:14:11
something very strange something very difficult to deal with they would become involved but they would do that remotely
00:14:18
from Quantico. Ressler says up until about this time period in his career so we're at 1983 he says much of his
00:14:27
work had been conducted through phones teletype paperwork and second hand descriptions. This call puts him in
00:14:36
Omaha Nebraska Bellevue Nebraska and this is a chance to be on the ground in the middle of an unfolding murder
00:14:44
investigation called in and what we will see is this will become more commonplace after
00:14:52
an investigation like this where you send an FBI or team of FBI agents to another
00:14:58
city to work a case. Right. He says this was stepping out of the classroom and onto the front line. So the Bellevue
00:15:08
police headquarters there had been a task force set up. It's already assembled by the time
00:15:15
Ressler gets there. He says the building had the charged atmosphere of true urgency. Phones are ringing voices are
00:15:23
constant people were moving quickly information arriving faster than it could be absorbed and sorted through. He
00:15:31
said Bellevue was the kind of suburb people imagined when they imagined stability. Modest incomes routines
00:15:38
neighbors who assumed their streets are safe and their children will come home. And of course this case a kid going
00:15:46
missing and then later found dead that normalcy was broken. Was forever broken. Crimes like this don't just take a life
00:15:55
they puncture a community and that community's belief that life is predictable. So let's go back just a
00:16:01
couple days here Captain as you were asking to the day the morning that Danny vanished.
00:16:08
Before dawn on that Sunday morning Danny Joe Eberle woke to start his route. He got dressed. Apparently everything
00:16:15
except his shoes which I found very odd because all reports stated it was quite cold
00:16:20
there that fall in 1983 but it's reported that he liked to go barefoot even when his parents told him not to.
00:16:29
Danny did what he always did he climbed onto his bicycle pedaled to the local convenience store picked up his stack of
00:16:34
newspapers started the folding process and then went out to deliver them along his
00:16:40
route. Danny was 13 years old blondish bright eyed about 5 ft 2 in tall about 100 lb.
00:16:49
He's the son of a post office employee. His older brother delivered papers as well
00:16:56
in that same neighborhood. And folks would say you know seeing the Eberle boys boys out very early in the
00:17:04
morning was usual. It it was part of daily life. At 7:00 a.m. Danny's route supervisor
00:17:12
began getting calls. Papers hadn't arrived. One missing paper might have been a delay he thought.
00:17:20
Several calls meant something else was going on. So the supervisor in this case we have the supervisor goes out to
00:17:27
check. He's looking for Danny or for dropped papers or something like I would guess
00:17:34
if you're mother father or route supervisor you're getting calls like this if you're going
00:17:40
out what would you think would probably happen? Kid got into some kind of bicycle
00:17:45
accident maybe he's laying there on the you know side of the road or sidewalk somewhere
00:17:53
next to somebody's driveway having wrecked his bike gone over front of the handlebars
00:17:59
what have you. That's what this supervisor is looking for. He doesn't find Danny so he calls the Eberle household.
00:18:08
They're already receiving calls too about missing papers or undelivered papers. And the Eberle family says
00:18:17
you know we've we've gotten calls too he's not home. Now very quickly what the parents and supervisor realize the first
00:18:25
three newspapers had in fact been delivered. So Danny did start his route as normal.
00:18:32
He had made it to three houses and then something happened after that third delivery and near what should have been
00:18:38
the fourth drop that's where they found Danny's bicycle propped up beside a fence. The remaining newspapers are
00:18:45
still inside the bag. No signs of a struggle at the scene though. No scattered papers or anything like that.
00:18:51
No obvious diser disturbance. In fact the bicycle looked like it was just propped up against the fence like like
00:18:59
neatly like the way that the owner the carer of the the person caring for the bike
00:19:04
would set it in that manner. Well and this is just not commonplace either. It's if you
00:19:10
have a paper route it's every day rain or shine sleet or snow you deliver the papers but I'd say
00:19:18
maybe once a year there's a situation that the papers might be late but you're not missing
00:19:27
uh No. And that the paper's late is almost always the the kids overslept or did the alarm didn't go off or in
00:19:36
some cases maybe the paper drop off the bundle didn't show up on time. Right. And what would happen as a paperboy is
00:19:45
if they dropped off the papers late you would contact your supervisor and they would tell you well deliver them if
00:19:52
you can, but don't make yourself late for school. So, if you can't deliver them in the
00:19:57
morning, well, then right after school, deliver them then. Mhm. Yeah, the police
00:20:02
were notified as we had said earlier very quickly and in turn they contacted the FBI's Omaha office.
00:20:09
And those early hour searches by just a few people, it it would grow very quickly to many people looking for
00:20:18
this little boy. And of course, they're looking for explanation as to why that they can't
00:20:25
find him that that do not require a predator to play out the equation, right? There
00:20:31
was some brief talk or speculation that maybe Danny might have taken off. That theory was
00:20:38
as I understand it quickly checked, quickly disproved, and they moved on from that. Yeah, cuz it just again,
00:20:45
doesn't make a lot of sense. Deliver a couple papers and then decide to run away. Ah, this is too much for me
00:20:51
today. A massive building-to-building search began. Doors were knocked, yards [snorts] are checked, streets are
00:20:59
combed. Investigators and volunteers, again, we get a lot of volunteers in this search as well. They're hunting for
00:21:06
anything, any trace of the little boy. They were looking for maybe somebody who had spotted someone talking to the boy.
00:21:12
Maybe it it had somebody seen a car stop and talk to the kid while he's on his bicycle. They
00:21:20
they they're not finding any of that. No leads really at all at this point and I'll circle back to what you had asked
00:21:30
in just a minute, but I want to get into this because as we had said, it was just
00:21:35
a couple days that same week Danny's body is found in high grass along a gravel road. This was just about 4 miles
00:21:44
from where his bicycle was located. Just a few miles from the Iowa state line. After arriving in Bellevue, Robert
00:21:54
Ressler wanted to see the location where Danny's body was found. And he said standing there, he's
00:22:00
standing there with Agent Klismet at his side and he says, we could see the gravel road. This would be the
00:22:08
obvious spot where a vehicle would stop. We could see how close the tall weeds were to the gravel road, how visible the
00:22:15
site still was from the road, the major road, if a passerby if a passerby looked
00:22:22
carefully. Now, Ressler noted that there was a nearby crossroads and one road led to a river and he said
00:22:32
that raised questions immediately for him. Right. He said, look, if somebody put a
00:22:38
body here, why not just go to the river where you would place the body in the water and it might
00:22:46
drift off or be better concealed at least. Well, and also destroy evidence. Mhm.
00:22:53
And we get this expert mind there that is already informing detectives, local detectives of what he's seeing and what
00:23:02
his experience is telling him about what they are finding. And he's telling the detectives right away, he's like, I
00:23:09
think that the the offender or offenders made that choice simply out of fear. You know, why why not put him in the
00:23:17
river? Uh he said, the person or persons dumping this body would have to be worried about
00:23:24
headlights from other vehicles. About being seen, about being caught in the act.
00:23:31
Lit up by headlights, exposed. So, he believed that the killer or killers were in a hurry to leave the body and get out
00:23:39
of this location unseen. The public was told Danny had been killed with a knife. That was
00:23:45
technically true, but it really didn't explain the severity of what they found or the
00:23:54
extent of what they found, which is not uncommon. They're not going to release all the details to the public.
00:24:01
But Danny in all reality, unfortunately, wasn't only killed, he was mutilated. He was found face down in the weeds. His
00:24:10
hands and feet were tied behind his body. So, behind his back with rope. His hands were taped as well and there
00:24:20
was tape covering his mouth. He had been stripped down to his undershorts. He had suffered multiple stab wounds to
00:24:31
the chest and back. His neck had been slashed. There was a wound on his shoulder that
00:24:39
looked as if a slice had been taken away. On his left some reports say calf, but other reports
00:24:48
say that it was up on the thigh area. There was some sort of crisscross pattern, almost like like picture like a
00:24:56
tic-tac-toe pattern uh that that investigators found to be odd and again, they wondered if this was
00:25:08
something that was done postmortem to cover up something else, to cover up some detail of the crime
00:25:15
or the attack and his face was battered. So, he had been punched or beaten prior to
00:25:23
being killed. Yeah, it was a brutal mutilation, but it also makes me wonder, too, because
00:25:33
yes, you said he was 5'2" 100 lb probably soaking wet. Vulnerable situation because they're out
00:25:43
on their own, but where are paper boys? They're in neighborhoods and normally neighborhoods have houses that are
00:25:51
closer together. So, there's more of a chance that somebody might see you. More of a chance that somebody might
00:25:59
hear the abduction. But even though, like I said, he's small. He's a young boy, a responsible boy
00:26:07
that's waking up every day to deliver papers. So, there's a possibility that he's
00:26:11
going to put up a fight. And then it makes you wonder like what Ressler was saying, well, why wouldn't
00:26:17
you just dump him in the river? Is that because of fear or is that because they didn't have a great concept of the
00:26:26
location? >> Well, and you asked about witnesses and while we don't have any witnesses to the
00:26:32
abduction or the placement of the body. What we do have is several witnesses who
00:26:42
have accounts that tell police about accounts experiences that they had that could be possibly connected to
00:26:52
this murder case. And the one witness' account that's going to stand out among the others is Danny's older brother. So,
00:27:00
Danny's older brother reported that on his own route prior to his brother going missing, he
00:27:06
believed that on more than one occasion, he had been tailed or followed by a young white male
00:27:13
in a tan car. Now, that's the best description he could provide, but what we do get is
00:27:20
other witnesses who come forward with even less details but some of them believing that either
00:27:28
they were being tailed by somebody similar, similar description or had seen a man
00:27:35
in a vehicle trailing teenage boys from time to time and some of them even describing it as
00:27:43
watching them pacing them. Yeah, then I'd also want to know if I'm law enforcement
00:27:49
has there been any suspicious activities in the weeks leading up to this abduction and murder?
00:27:56
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00:29:46
Captain. The best part about Peter Klismet's book, FBI diary profiles of evil, is
00:29:57
in a case like this. So, there there are many cases that are discussed in that book, but when we're talking about the
00:30:03
Danny Joe Eberle case, Klismet is talking about how he's pretty much receiving on the job
00:30:11
training with Robert Ressler, working hand-in-hand with Robert Ressler on this particular homicide case. And he's But,
00:30:19
he's also in a scenario where the local detectives are looking at him as being some kind of expert. And so, this task
00:30:26
force made up of these FBI agents and detectives are working together really with Robert Ressler, the mind hunter,
00:30:33
being the lead and teaching as he's investigating the case as well. After the body's found, we already discussed
00:30:42
the injuries, the mutilation to our victim here. The FBI, everybody involved have already been to the crime
00:30:53
scene. Now, they're back at the headquarters and they're looking at photographs that were taken from that
00:30:59
crime scene. Photographs of the victim and how he was found. Robert Ressler pointed at the
00:31:05
ropes on the boy's wrist and ankles saying, quote, "People with sadistic inclinations tend to want to completely
00:31:13
immobilize their victim. It gives them a feeling of control, power over their victim, and it lets him do exactly what
00:31:22
he wants without any resistance." End quote. Now, this might seem to our listeners who have been in the
00:31:28
garage looking at these cases for years now as an obvious statement. In 1983 to some of these detectives that are there
00:31:36
working this case, it's not such an obvious statement. It's actually an education. And he told these detectives,
00:31:42
he says, "Here's what I want you to do. I want I want to understand how this happened." He says, "And I definitely
00:31:49
know what happened, but I want to understand why and how this happened. And that was not such a
00:31:58
big portion of any murder investigation at this department at this time. They were always so worried about what
00:32:05
happened, right? He's letting them know, if you if you can concern yourself and figure out how it happened, why it
00:32:12
happened, that might tell you who did this. Right. So, he's putting emphasis on the
00:32:19
ideas of we know who it happened to and where the body of the boy was found. What we need to know is why all of these
00:32:27
things happened. So, he tells the agent, he tells the detectives, "All right, here is what I want you guys to do.
00:32:33
Every one of you has a good understanding of the case, but I want to know why did this guy do what he did?
00:32:40
Did he take a big risk when he grabbed the boy off the street? If he did, what does that tell you? Did he have to use
00:32:48
Did he have to use physical force on the boy or did he have a weapon with him? Right. Where he's able to Right.
00:32:55
>> Where he doesn't have to use the weapon, he's using the weapon as a threat. How
00:32:59
long did he keep the boy? >> Well, you know, I'm I'm going to the our go to our our standby, round up the perverts.
00:33:06
Yeah, and one detail that we did go through, he says to his team, "Look, apparently there wasn't any sex
00:33:13
involved. No rape involved, sexual assault involved. And but he believes, Ressler believes, "Look, that doesn't
00:33:21
mean that it's not sexual in nature, that the crime isn't sexually motivated." And he's asking these guys,
00:33:27
"Are we looking at a crime that was impulsive, spur of the moment, or did this guy do
00:33:31
some prior planning?" Yeah, like I said, what was happening in the weeks before the abduction, but it could be a little
00:33:38
bit of both. This individual is heading to work or heading home from work, Mhm. or heading home from the bar, sees this
00:33:45
paper boy, just notices, sees him multiple times, maybe follows him a little bit on one of the times,
00:33:53
and then starts getting these ideas. Or is this somebody that's from a whole different location and not local to the
00:34:00
crime? >> Well, and the light bulb is going off for these detectives that are essentially learning at the foot of
00:34:07
Robert Ressler. And he says to him, he goes, "You know, look, it Maybe he didn't tie the boy up
00:34:13
this way for complete control or domination. Maybe he did. But, if he didn't tie him up that way for complete
00:34:20
control and domination, then why did he do it? Why did he tie him up that way? He's He's essentially hog-tied. And
00:34:27
Peter Klismet says, "You know, that was a pivotal moment for his career and for him being a young FBI profiler
00:34:36
to think a little bit differently when you're looking at a crime scene, when you're looking at a victim." And
00:34:41
immediately he says to Ressler, he goes, "You know, maybe this maybe this killer
00:34:45
used that because it was something familiar to him. Maybe he grew up on a farm. Maybe he was used to doing this.
00:34:51
Maybe he had experience slaughtering animals." >> Well, we've talked about this before,
00:34:56
too. If you have certain bindings, does that make it easier to move the the body? Exactly. Exactly. There is a
00:35:06
reason why most of these things happen, why the killer or killers made certain choices.
00:35:14
There's not always an absolute reason. It's not always all well thought out, but most of the time there's a reason
00:35:21
why somebody chose something over other options. So, simply, why did the killer do what he did at any given point?
00:35:29
Ressler tells the guys, "That is If we can figure that out, that's going to give us some serious clues into the
00:35:34
motivation behind this guy, what motivated this guy, and who he is." Now, the medical
00:35:40
examiner's report suggested Danny might have been kept alive for as much as a day after his abduction and killed close
00:35:49
to the time when his body was eventually discovered. And as we said, there was no
00:35:54
sexual assault in the usual sense, um as it was put by the detectives on this case. I I want to circle back to the um
00:36:05
because I have the benefit We have the benefit of knowing some of the future events and results of this
00:36:12
investigation. I'm That whole statement of that Danny might have been kept alive for as much as a
00:36:20
day or killed very close to the time of when his body was discovered. The later report suggests something
00:36:29
completely different. And actually, it falls into the statistics, the unfortunate statistics that we know that
00:36:38
often times the a young victim, especially if it's a child abduction, when murdered, there
00:36:46
it's it's relatively quickly after the abduction. So, they they kind of go back and forth the when you examine this the
00:36:56
entirety of this investigation, they're really all over the the shop on their idea of, "Well, was he killed quickly?
00:37:04
Was he kept for a couple days? Was he killed right before he was found?" They kind of go all around
00:37:10
on that idea. And I don't think they ever really came up with a great understanding of that. Now,
00:37:17
>> Well, like you said though, this is extreme violence, and then you have to question, was this done
00:37:23
postmortem or not? And then I think that plays into the psychology, too. Was this
00:37:29
victim similar to the the killer? And was that the reason for the extreme violence or
00:37:39
was this Was this victim some kind of representation of something negative in this killer's
00:37:48
world, if that makes any sense? Well, and we don't get a great breakdown of what they determined to
00:37:58
be postmortem wounds. I I'm guessing that's a little bit to do with just the lack of technology. Yes, or if they do
00:38:07
know that, they've chosen not to release some or most of that information to to the public. Uh one One thing that kind
00:38:15
of cracked me up here when reviewing this case and going through all of Robert Ressler's information on this
00:38:22
case. Again, it's the time frame, right? 1983. And he says that when he's there collecting information at the crime
00:38:30
scene and about the victim and the wounds to the victim, he says he's putting all of that into VICAP
00:38:38
computer. We've talked about VICAP system on the show many times. But, he's saying because of technology at the time
00:38:45
and because of the limited resources at the time, he's not actually plugging it into the VICAP
00:38:51
computer. He goes, "I'm putting this information into the VICAP computer in my head." He said, "I'm comparing this
00:38:58
case and what I'm seeing here to all the other cases that I've worked, some that
00:39:04
have similarities and some that don't, and and trying to figure out what have I learned in those previous cases that I
00:39:11
can apply to this case." Because as said, he says this right away, and our listeners know this, you get a call like
00:39:19
this, you know that there's a very high chance that there's going to be a future
00:39:26
victim or future victims. So, you are working not just against the clock of a typical murder investigation, but you
00:39:35
are working against the clock of when if this guy does act again or these people
00:39:41
act again, when will that be? Right. And I got to beat that clock. Well, cuz what
00:39:45
we we've heard so often is when these people kill an individual, especially if it's the first time, they
00:39:55
kill the individual and they think that the cops are going to rain down on them right away. And then that doesn't
00:40:01
happen. And they go through this time period where they're a little scared that they might get caught and then that
00:40:07
wears off. And but that seems to wear off faster the more victims that the this killer has. Well, and the information
00:40:18
that we talked about with the other boys saying that they thought they had been followed or thought they may
00:40:25
have seen somebody following a boy, that information must have carried a lot of weight
00:40:33
with Agent Ressler because within just a day or about 36 hours of him arriving on the scene, he starts to
00:40:42
put together a preliminary profile of the likely offender or offenders. And that information is a is part of his
00:40:54
profile. So, his profile, his initial profile reads as such, saying, "I, Robert Ressler, believe the
00:41:04
killer is a young white male, likely in his late teens or early 20s. The body dump looked risky and imperfect,
00:41:13
suggesting inexperience." He says, "The offender likely had access to a vehicle and a license, but the
00:41:20
crime did not show the practiced competence associated with a seasoned offender. He says, "I think it's
00:41:29
possible the killer may have known Danny, but only casually. He may have known him enough to approach
00:41:36
him without triggering any type of alarm. And he could have talked him into a vehicle voluntarily.
00:41:44
Or he says a car or possibly a van. He also says, "At this stage, he could not rule
00:41:51
out multiple offenders or the possibility of more than one offender." He said, "If it is more than one, he
00:41:59
would believe that it would be all young males to be involved. No more than three total." He also said,
00:42:08
"In considering a sexual motive, he says, "Perhaps an attempted assault was met with resistance, but he did state
00:42:17
that the absence of defensive wounds complicated this picture or that that being
00:42:24
likely." He said that the body's disposal suggested panic. Remote, but not carefully concealed as if the
00:42:33
offender needed the body gone quickly rather than to be hidden well. He also states that the bindings mattered. The
00:42:41
ropes and tape indicated control, but the overall event suggested partial planning mixed with impro-
00:42:48
improvisation. Yeah. I I don't know how much they released on these bindings, but I'd want to know,
00:42:56
are they consistent with each other? >> He says that he he suspects that the offender
00:43:02
is local, likely single, not educated beyond high school, possibly in menial work or unemployed. The rope work
00:43:11
suggested someone used to tying and handling practical materials. So, tying knots
00:43:18
or experience with rope and maybe specifically this type of rope. Well, location matters and so thinking that
00:43:26
it's local, that makes sense to me because of the time period cuz this individual either had to
00:43:32
stay up and stay awake Yeah. for this time period or they had to wake up early. And like we said, if we believe
00:43:40
that these other paper boys were saying that, "Hey, I had a situation where I thought
00:43:45
somebody was following me." If we think those are connected, again, that's multiple times that the person is
00:43:51
either staying up or getting up early. And then it would also make you wonder what kind of shift,
00:44:00
if this person had a job, what kind of shift were they working? Were they a first shift employee? Were they a second
00:44:06
shift employee? Because then you could go, was the panic for the disposal of the body because
00:44:12
they're afraid they're going to get caught or is the panic because they have to get somewhere? And whether that Now,
00:44:18
Ressler said he believed that this person was probably single, but it's like did he have to get somewhere to go to
00:44:24
work or did he have to get somewhere to go back to to be with his family? Or it could be
00:44:30
a individual that's living, you know, like a late teen, early 20s guy living with his family and to go, "Well, if I'm
00:44:38
not back by the time everybody wakes up, they're going to be suspicious of what I'm doing." Well, and for
00:44:46
Look, I understand that it sometimes these likely offender profiles are not very satisfying
00:44:52
or in some cases >> not very detailed, but what I think is so fascinating about this particular
00:45:00
profile is as we said, by this point when he's delivering this profile, this this is him telling the detectives that
00:45:08
are going to be working this case. This is him telling the police chief, the sheriff, the people in power, not just
00:45:17
not some deputies, not some uh beat cops, not the newspaper, not the parents. And this is not some you're looking for
00:45:27
a single white male and he's a loner. Right. Uh that it's not that. This is This is pretty detailed information. In
00:45:35
fact, it's over a page long and he's delivering this within 36 to 48 hours at most
00:45:43
to after having arrived on the scene. I mean, the case is completely new to him until he steps
00:45:49
off that that airplane. Right, but sometimes you just have to jot down these notes and thoughts in the moment and you
00:45:57
can then go back and edit later. >> Well, true. I mean, the like John Douglas says that the a profile is
00:46:04
living, breathing. It can be altered and should be altered when new information or better information is found. But in
00:46:11
this case, as said, he's he's there a day and a half and delivering this information to
00:46:18
the people that will be working the case, the police and the sheriff's department. And And I'm not done with
00:46:23
the profile. He goes on to say that >> please. He says, "One detail remains central to the case. The boy stripped to
00:46:31
his undershorts without conventional sexual assault." He says, "In my experience, that combination often
00:46:37
pointed to a young male offender with little genuine sexual experience, someone driven toward domination,
00:46:44
humiliation, and fantasy rather than adult sexual completion." Right. >> He says, "The mutilation on the victim
00:46:52
suggests deviant fantasies that didn't erupt suddenly." He says, "The offender likely had chronic sexual problems, a
00:47:01
history of deviancy, a and might be an avid consumer of pornography. The offender might have experienced recent
00:47:10
stress such as a breakup, job loss, being dropped from school, family trouble, and might have been absent from
00:47:18
work for days before or after the crime." Right. The abduction's early hour suggests a person not accountable
00:47:25
to a spouse or attentive household. Th- That's a long way of saying this guy lives alone. And he goes on to say,
00:47:33
"Sometimes offenders act early after being awake all night drinking, building courage." He also talked about what he
00:47:41
referred to as something that every investigator learns the hard way. He says, "The abduction site is often not
00:47:49
the murder site and the murder site is often not where the body is found." He says, "The place where the body is
00:47:55
discovered becomes the crime scene because it yields the most evidence. But the mechanics of the abduction and
00:48:03
the killing remain hidden." He says, "In Danny's case, he believed that the victim was killed elsewhere and
00:48:11
dumped near the river." And he also warned the investigators about offender behavior that he said he had seen
00:48:18
before. He said the killer might insert himself into the investigation, hovering
00:48:23
around the dump area, going to the funeral, going to the gravesite, going to the neighborhood, seeking proximity
00:48:30
and information. Somebody that wants to be close to the investigation. Somebody that wants to know what the
00:48:34
investigators know or what they don't know. And he advised that the artist conceptions should not
00:48:42
be made public. So, this is This is interesting because in the Gosh case, we have
00:48:49
that composite sketch that they choose to hold back based off that they didn't know how accurate it would be, but they
00:48:57
eventually release it to the public. Right. >> Here, what Ressler's saying is what what
00:49:02
I think it means, I'm kind of reading between the lines here, Captain, is I think what he's saying is, you know,
00:49:07
those witness reports of of some guy, a young man in a vehicle following other kids? He's putting a lot of weight and
00:49:15
credibility into those statements. And so much so that they they put together a composite sketch or started to build one
00:49:25
at the very least. He's saying two things. Don't release my profile to the public and don't release a composite
00:49:33
sketch yet to the public. He said because the chance that the killer or killers would want to insert themselves
00:49:41
into the investigation, you need to give them time to come forward. That if you do this now, it could scare them off.
00:49:49
Yes, he's forewarned that he might be recognized. >> Well, and I know we bring up the Delphi case a
00:49:55
lot, but it's like if you hold certain things back, then even though this perpetrator killer might insert
00:50:03
themselves, they might insert themselves again because when you hold back, the more evidence that you hold back, the
00:50:11
bigger the question mark is to the killer of what do they know and what don't they know? Mhm. And then
00:50:17
what you were saying is like, well, he's not killed in the location that he was disposed of. So, but that
00:50:26
what makes me wonder then, well, is the crime scene inside of a vehicle, a car, van, creepy camper,
00:50:35
truck? >> Well, you mean the murder scene because what we what we're going to have here is
00:50:39
something we've talked about plenty of times, multiple crime scenes, right? The crime scene is going to be where the kid
00:50:45
was when he was abducted. >> Right. Whether whether that was violently or not violently, the vehicle
00:50:53
used to transport him from the abduction site, and if he was killed anywhere other than that vehicle, now we have an
00:51:00
additional crime scene, and whatever vehicle moved him from where he was killed to where he was found. So,
00:51:08
multiple crime scenes. And what I love about when you get a when Douglas and Winn Rassler are able to
00:51:18
provide law enforcement with such a detailed profile of the likely offender, that they don't just give them that Oh,
00:51:27
here's my profile. This is the guy that you're looking for. They usually give them some
00:51:33
strategy, some some things that they can use to either find the guy, locate the guy, figure out who it is,
00:51:41
>> or draw them out. Things that they could use with during the course of their investigation that would be to their
00:51:48
advantage later. So, like one item would be don't release the composite sketch, don't release my profile yet, give him a
00:51:56
chance to come forward and talk to you. Give him a chance to come forward and insert himself into the investigation.
00:52:04
Now, here, he also said So, in Bellevue, one of the big things that you have in Bellevue is an Air
00:52:11
Force base. Rassler told the task force two things. He goes, I think the rope is extremely important.
00:52:19
He goes, I don't know this, but I believe the rope to be unique, to be rare, and if it is, if you figure
00:52:26
out where that rope came from, you might be able to find your guy. He said at the very least, if you can find
00:52:32
more of that rope with somebody, then that's probably your guy. Right. And then two, he also told them that he
00:52:40
thought the Air Force base had very much to do with the offender. And he told them, he said, you need to
00:52:48
start going back through the records and find out who arrived here within the last 6 months. Who got transferred here?
00:52:58
Who started working there within the last 6 months? He he And he told them, he goes, I really think He goes, I don't
00:53:05
know what that number will be. That's for you guys to sort out. It could be a few people, could be a hundreds of
00:53:10
people. He goes, but I think you're going to find the guy in that list, on that list. Well, what would that base
00:53:17
have? It would have males in the age range that Rassler was looking for. So, you you go in there, you you line them
00:53:26
all up, you have them drop their pants, you look for a bruised banana, you look for all the perverts, and you
00:53:33
go, okay, let's let's question these guys. Yeah, I think one of the problems became here that that number of
00:53:40
transfers or airmen coming into that base was was a significant number within the
00:53:48
last 6 months. The other thing cuz what you what you would think to do and what wasn't done early on in the Long Island
00:53:56
investigation, the Long Island serial killer investigation that seemed to be the big break in the case that seemed to
00:54:02
be the moment too where everybody goes, Oh, really? That's what they did? That's
00:54:05
how they found the guy? Why didn't Why didn't they do that to start with? You know, in in that case, you had a couple
00:54:10
things to cross-reference. You knew a general area where he had gone to pick up one of the
00:54:16
victims, and that a male, a very large male, was described to police as being a John,
00:54:26
and that very large male drove a unique vehicle. Yeah. And really, the big break
00:54:31
in that case was after other investigators and better investigators took over that
00:54:37
case, they went back to that idea and said, you know what? Let's How about we just just to check a box, even if it's
00:54:43
not Let's run down this lead and see if it's something or nothing. Let's find a really big guy that owns a
00:54:50
unique truck. And they did, and it turns out that was their killer. Now, here, well, allegedly, we have to say, right?
00:54:58
He's not been convicted Well, I mean, it's look Well, they're suspecting that he's going
00:55:03
to plead guilty, so to seven of the murders. In this case, you have more than one
00:55:12
I would like to know if those if those kids, those teenagers were all describing and giving a very similar
00:55:21
description of the vehicle, of the young white male in the tan car tailing kids,
00:55:29
because if they're giving a very similar description and you're and you're hearing it time and time again, oh, it's
00:55:34
a four-door vehicle, it's a sedan, it's a you know, don't know what model it is,
00:55:39
but it might be this make or that make. You have, like you said, the age range of the majority of the folks at that Air
00:55:47
Force base are going to be in the age range of Rassler's likely offender. Now, you have
00:55:54
a tan vehicle. You could cross-reference that information and go, well, even though we've had hundreds, if not a
00:56:00
couple thousand people in and out in the last 6 months, uh how many of them had a vehicle that
00:56:06
matched that description or access to a vehicle that matched that description? Yeah, and I look, I think Rassler is a a
00:56:16
genius. I think John Douglas is a genius. Though the only thing here is when he talks about a transfer, I I understand
00:56:24
where he's coming from cuz he the idea is, well, if well, one, why were they transferred? Was it for some deviant
00:56:31
reason? So, uh you know, it wouldn't be the first time that the military's, you know,
00:56:38
swept under the rug a evil individual. A evil individual. But where I would kind of go against
00:56:46
this idea, and it might be somebody that's been there longer, is we don't know how
00:56:53
because he said inexperience. So, if there is inexperience, how long did the escalation take to
00:56:59
go from uh curious mind to killer. And what I mean by that is, okay, well, I went out
00:57:06
drinking, so now I I drive around a little bit. Oh, I spotted some paper boys out on their routes.
00:57:14
Then at some point, now I'm following them. Right? And and and what's the escalation? And then also, you know,
00:57:21
no-brainer, did any of these individuals feel threatened or did Was there any action other than being followed take
00:57:30
place? Yeah, I other than one s- one version of a story where the male may have got out of the vehicle, I don't
00:57:40
recall there being anything other than kids being suspicious of seeing a car. Because here's the deal. Look, you're on
00:57:47
a bike or you're walking, you're not traveling very fast. Cars are much faster than bicycles and and people
00:57:53
walking. Bipeds, as they call them. >> Yeah. Um Depends on who's riding the bike, though. I guess it
00:57:59
depends on the clunker, too, but the >> [laughter] >> it I think what would be obvious, these
00:58:04
are teenagers, these are these are kids that are not toddlers. It It I think it look can be fairly obvious when a car is
00:58:13
tailing someone on a bicycle, especially somebody walking. Right. Um you would have to be traveling at a very low rate
00:58:22
of speed. And then to circle back to what you had just mentioned about the deviant behavior. Okay, so that's part
00:58:30
of the profile that's interesting and where I think you have to read between the lines, and I don't think Rassler
00:58:35
made any of these detectives read between the lines because he's there to catch this guy and catch him with the
00:58:41
quickness. So, part of that profile says the mutilation suggested the deviant fantasies didn't erupt suddenly, meaning
00:58:50
they had been there for a long period of time. He said the offender likely had chronic sexual problems, a history of
00:58:57
deviancy, and might be an avid consumer of pornography, and then goes on to say the offender might have experienced
00:59:05
recent stress, breakups, job loss, and so on, family trouble. What he's saying is
00:59:12
even though his profile, he's telling you that this guy lives alone, he's not what you would be
00:59:20
looking for is somebody that at some point lived with this guy. Or if he is somebody that lives on the Air Force
00:59:27
base, he likely has a roommate, and this is behavior that would be recognized by
00:59:32
somebody that lived with this offender at one time. Yeah, which again, if you're on this base,
00:59:42
your superiors have the right to check your property. And if you have a roommate that won't stop molesting
00:59:51
himself, this might have been reported to the higher-ups. Yes, and we're looking for a knife that the killer may
00:59:58
have kept. We're also looking for additional rope that matches the bindings on our victim. The evidence
01:00:06
that was collected at the body discovery scene, of course, was sent off to the lab for
01:00:13
testing. The rope is going to be something that they will be testing. They the immediate
01:00:21
response and findings was that the rope that was analyzed did not match like known samples that they had on hand.
01:00:29
They couldn't So, they the scientific findings were lining up with Ressler's suspicions that the rope could be
01:00:37
unique, that it was possibly rare. And again, that's going to be key evidence in your investigation. We do
01:00:47
know that Danny's older brother and some of those other witnesses were hypnotized.
01:00:52
Uh a hypnosis team was brought in from Texas to hypnotize these witnesses uh to try to recover
01:01:01
additional details, but the report is little new information emerged from that technique.
01:01:09
And eventually, Robert Ressler returned to Quantico. And eventually, Agent Klismat returned to Iowa while the task
01:01:19
force continued their work looking for the killer of Danny Joe Eberle. But it was
01:01:28
in early December when Robert Ressler was in the state of Alabama. He was doing some teaching in Alabama. He
01:01:34
receives a second call related to this homicide. This time it is a call from the assistant agent in charge. We
01:01:46
mentioned his name prior, Captain. His name's John Evans. And John Evans is reporting to Robert
01:01:53
Ressler that another boy had been abducted again near Omaha, Nebraska. And the fear that Robert Ressler warned the
01:02:01
task force about that the killer of Danny Joe Eberle, that he will do it again, seemingly had now become fact.
01:02:18
>> [music] >> Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage for this series,
01:02:29
[music] Missing Paper Boys. Thanks for telling your mother. Thanks for telling your brother. And join us back here in
01:02:34
the garage for the conclusion of this series next week. >> And until [music] then, be good, be
01:02:39
kind, and don't >> [music] [music] [music] [music]