00:00:40
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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with me as always is a man that would like to remind you all that while we are watching you, they are watching us. Here
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is the captain. It's good to be seen and it's good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks
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for telling a friend. This week we are very happy to be featuring Daycation by one of the very
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best in the beer making business, Highland Brewing in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. This is a hoppy floral
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sessions IPA that is up and down for anything. Daycation is light-bodied with stone fruit and citrus. Garage grade
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three and three quarter bottle caps out of five. And Captain, you know who wishes that they were skipping work on a
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beer drinking Daycation? Well, it's these fine folks right here. First up, a cheers to Carrie sending us some love
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Christina in Fort Smith, Arkansas. And last, but certainly not least, we have Lifer in Pasadena, California. Everyone
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we just mentioned, they helped us out with this week's beer fund and for that, we thank you. Yeah, b w e double r u n
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available wherever you get podcast. Make sure you subscribe to True Crime Garage
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and make sure you tell a friend. And Colonel, that is enough of the business. All right, everybody gather around, grab
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a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. Thursday, December 26th, the day after Christmas, 1985,
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Debra Ann Wolf is a 28-year-old nurse at the VA Hospital in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
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She worked the first shift as normal. During the shift, she had lunch with Roger Rushing, a co-worker.
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She called her mom, Jenny Edwards, around 3:30 asking for gift suggestions for her sister-in-law's birthday.
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It was in every way a routine day. Debbie clocked out at 4:00 p.m. and it is presumed that she went
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straight home, a 15- to 20-minute drive. The next day, Friday, December 27th, Debbie did not show up for her 8:00 a.m.
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shift at the hospital. This was not just unusual, it was totally out of character.
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Her supervisors at the hospital called her house and got no answer. Her mom, Jenny, called the hospital at
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midday and was told that Debbie never arrived at work. Jenny tried Debbie at her home,
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but she did not answer the phone. Jenny sent her husband, John Edwards, and their friend, Kevin Gordon,
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over to Debbie's house. When John and Kevin got to the house, Debbie's car was there with her
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Christmas presents still inside the vehicle. They found Debbie's dogs roaming outside.
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The kitchen door was locked, but the living room door was unlocked. Inside, the electric heater was on.
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Articles of clothing lie on the kitchen floor. It seemed that Debbie was nowhere on the
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property. John and Kevin assumed that Debbie had left with someone, possibly in a hurry,
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and would be back. They fed the dogs, turned down the heater, and left. The next day,
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John returned to the cabin again. He found the dog bowls empty and still no sign of Debbie.
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Everything was the way John had left it the day before. He walked the property, saw nothing
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unusual, and then left. But things were unusual because Debbie was close with her
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family, and yet no one knew where she was. To this day, so many questions remain
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unanswered. This is True Crime Garage and this is the mysterious case of Debbie Wolfe.
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Today, we are going back to just after Christmas 1985 near Fayetteville, a well-populated all-American city in the
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beautiful state of North Carolina. Debbie Wolfe lived alone with her two dogs, Mason and Morgan, in a small
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one-level home 100 yards off of MacArthur Road, just about 4 miles outside of Fayetteville. This is a
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rustic cabin surrounded by tall pine trees and no neighbors. At the time, Debbie was driving a 1975
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Pontiac that belonged to her mother. Debbie was at work on December 26th and then, life, as they say, it turns on a
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dime because 24 hours later, she does not show up for work and she cannot be located. Her stepfather and family
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friend go to check on her and finding one door to her cabin unlocked and the dogs roaming the property.
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Note that the dogs were outside dogs. They always stayed outside. They were roped to a stake during the day when
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Debbie was at work, and at night, they roamed freely. By Sunday, her family was starting to become
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seriously alarmed. John Edwards, Dave Thomason, and Kevin Gordon went to the cabin to take a more thorough look.
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Looking under the bed, Kevin located Debbie's purse. It was wedged into a corner of the waterbed. This being an
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odd place, in my opinion, to find one's purse. But nothing else seemed suspicious.
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There was no sign of any struggle or any type of confrontation. So again, they left the property.
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On Monday, Debbie once again did not show up to work. Jenny, her mother, decided it was time to call the
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authorities. This is the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. Captain Jack Watts, the Cumberland County Sheriff,
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responded to take a report and a photo of Debbie. But he didn't show the level of concern that
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Jenny felt was warranted. She gathered a group of friends and they met up at Debbie's cabin and decided they were
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going to walk the property looking for clues to where she possibly could be. They hiked through the woods that
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surrounded the small retention pond behind the house and found nothing. By 4:30 p.m., Jenny and John were back
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home at their house when Detective William Nichols showed up and said that they plan to search Debbie's cabin and
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property the following day. Well, it's nice of them to let them know, "Hey, we're going to search
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tomorrow." One thing I never understand in these cases here, Captain, and we've seen this
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time and time again where, especially when we talk about cases from the '70s and '80s, there seems to be a lack of
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concern when someone isn't where they are supposed to be, they're reported missing.
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I get that they are waiting for it to become an official missing person's case as
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many people often turn up within an hour or a couple hours later. Right. However,
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I've never understood why they can't just go, "Okay, we've taken your report. We'll swing by their property and take a
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look around." You know, maybe peek in a window or walk the property or try calling the house, anything. I mean,
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you're on duty at the time, you have to fill up your day and your hours with task. Why not just go and briefly look
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for the person? In the land that this cabin sits on, do you know how much property they actually
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own? I think it was a few acres, but for my understanding, Captain, the pond was
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quite small. I think what gets a little difficult to understand here, where her property and just how big her property
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actually was, is that there are no neighbors surrounding her. So, it's not easy for one to look at the property all
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these years later and determine just how big her property was. But also, the pictures and there's only a couple
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pictures of the property online. It looks like it's lined with woods, so that would be
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make it a little bit harder to decipher. That's correct. And they did This case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries back
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in the day. I believe it was season 3, one of the later episodes in that season.
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And so, the reenactments, I'm not certain, Captain, if they were filmed at the actual location or not, but I've
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seen that episode and it certainly just adds more to the mystery. Now, as planned, the next day, the sheriff's
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deputies did arrive to scout the house and the surrounding area. They conducted a search of the cabin and property
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looking for Debbie, any clues. In their opinion, nothing was amiss. There was no signs of a struggle or
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anything concerning to the officers. Bloodhounds were brought into the scene and they didn't find anything as well.
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Really? Deputies did not search the pond on the property. They told John, his her
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stepfather, that there was no indication that anything would be found in the water.
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Now, Jenny was so concerned about Debbie and at such a loss to explain her disappearance that she asked Kevin, this
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is a family friend, to help. And Kevin called his buddy, this is Sergeant Gordon Childress, who was an
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army paratrooper stationed at nearby Fort Bragg. Anybody that's listened to this show for a while remembers us
00:12:01
talking about Fort Bragg in the past. Childress was a scuba diver. And so, he agreed to assist in the search for
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Debbie by diving into this retention pond behind her home. So, he arrives at the cabin, this is
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12:30 p.m. on Wednesday. And after helping search the area, he gets on his scuba gear and he enters the
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water around 3:00 p.m. Now, by this time, Captain, she's been missing for, I believe it's 6 days if that math checks
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out. That's a long time for her to be missing. When he goes into the water, okay, first he says the water's cold,
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it's murky water, but he's only in there for a couple minutes and he pops back up
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and says he saw a body in the water. Right. But you like you said, it was a small pond. Correct. At 3:30 p.m. on
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January 1st, 1986, the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office was called in and the body was pulled
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from the shallow pond. The body in the pond was quickly determined to be that of Debbie Wolfe. She was found fully
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clothed. The Fayetteville Observer reported that she was wearing Nike white leather shoes, ankle socks, a
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and red knee socks, a black t-shirt, a brown checkered shirt, brown corduroy pants, blue underwear, and a new
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regulation army field jacket. The autopsy was performed by Dr. William Oliver and it determined that she had drowned
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in the pond. This was based on a small amount of water found in one of her bronchial
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tubes. According to the Sheriff's Office spokesperson, no marks or other signs of struggle or
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violence were found on Debbie's body. There was no foul play, the autopsy ruled.
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The Fayetteville Gazette reported that there were some bruising, but nothing to definitively prove she either had or had
00:14:08
not been assaulted. Right. And there was no evidence of sexual assault. A toxicology report found no
00:14:15
drugs or alcohol in Debbie's system. And although no one was sure when Debbie had died, the date of death was fixed at
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December 26th, 1985. Now, do we know how deep this pond gets? Yes, I've heard Jenny Edwards describe
00:14:34
the pond. She describes it as a small, but not too small pond. Her Her Her definition of this pond is a little
00:14:41
confusing. It's small, but not too small. It's not deep, but it's deep in spots.
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I have one report that states that the deepest spot is believed to be about 5 and 1/2 feet. So, it's possible we have
00:14:56
Debbie on her property by herself. It doesn't make a lot of sense why she'd go into the pond
00:15:02
with her clothes on and a jacket on and shoes on. In December. But it's possible that she
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went in for some reason and had an accident and she died in the pond, she drowned.
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One thing we're going to find in this case, Captain, is the lack of information. I'm saying lack of
00:15:21
information because I'm hoping that they did, they being the Sheriff's Department, did some more work on the
00:15:28
case than what is publicly available. Now, one thing we've seen in other cases involving water, one thing that they're
00:15:35
quick to do, and mind you, they did this in the West Memphis 3 investigation, which we saw how botched that thing was.
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But one thing that they did at least did in that investigation is you take the temperature of the water, okay? When you
00:15:50
find a body in or out of water, you're going to take the temperature of the body, but when you find a body in the
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water, you want to know the temperature of the water as well, because that will contribute to the to the state of the
00:16:03
body as you find it. I also want to point out something here as well, Captain, with the date of death. Uh-huh. We need
00:16:13
to be clear here. There was no determination absolutely when this young woman died.
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They put the date of death on the death certificate as December 26th. In most states,
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the ruling is that it can be up to the family. You can put the date of death when it's undetermined as when the
00:16:38
person went missing or when they were found. So, that, you know, often becomes up to the family. I don't know if they
00:16:45
were asked in this particular case, but that's the date that they gave gave it. Um
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This makes me think of the Delphi case, where if you look at the date of death, they
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give one day to one of the victims and the next day as the date to the other victim.
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And a lot of people point out that that means, "Oh, they know something. They know one girl was killed on this day and
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the other girl was killed on the following day." That's not true. It's just the date that was chosen by the
00:17:15
families. A 1988 article, we're going to jump ahead here a year or two and then jump
00:17:21
back. But a 1988 article in the Fayetteville Observer archives that has been largely ignored in this case,
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probably because it's behind a paywall and it doesn't come up in any internet searches, contains some what I believe
00:17:36
to be crucial information. And it says the death certificate filed on February 24th, 1986,
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list the cause of death as pending and the determination of the death as a murder, suicide, undetermined, or
00:17:55
natural causes also pending. A supplemental report list the cause of death as drowning.
00:18:02
Undetermined is typed in the blank where the medical examiner is required to state whether the death was due to
00:18:10
accident, suicide, or homicide. So, what do all those words mean? What that means is when they first did
00:18:18
the autopsy, it was pending. The determination of death was pending, whether it was a murder, suicide,
00:18:26
undetermined, or natural causes. It was later changed to say drowning. But the drowning was listed as undetermined,
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meaning she died by drowning, but could not determine if it was due to an accident, a suicide, or homicide.
00:18:43
Yeah, cuz we don't like you said, we have some bruising, but we don't have any puncture wounds. We don't have
00:18:48
clear-cut indication that she was strangled. Do we have a clear-cut distance between the the cabin and this
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pond? From my understanding, it's fairly close to the back of the cabin. Mhm. The thing here that I'm pointing
00:19:02
out with the death certificate, with the autopsy, is that there's no way, given what it states on the report, that the
00:19:10
Sheriff's Office can then say, "Well, we did what we could. There's no homicide to investigate here because it was ruled
00:19:18
an accident." It was It was ruled a drowning, but never determined why the drowning happened.
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That article goes on to say that Dr. William Oliver conducted an autopsy and after lengthy delay, mind you, the last
00:19:33
time this woman was seen was on the 26th of December, the death certificate was filed on February 24th,
00:19:41
almost two full months later. Doctor stated that the body had undergone changes characteristic of cold water
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drowning or immersion syndrome, in which death is believed to occur from cardiac
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arrest. He said he found no evidence of beating, stabbing, shooting, or strangulation on
00:20:03
the body. Now, this is interesting because this is something we've not discussed here in the garage before, but
00:20:08
from what I've been told, immersion syndrome is a phenomenon in which sudden cardiac arrest is brought on by
00:20:15
immersion into icy cold water. It is believed that sudden immersion in freezing water can, in some people,
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cause the body to go into shock and possibly even cardiac arrest resulting in death.
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Cumberland County Sheriff's detectives ruled Debbie's cause of death accidental by drowning. So, that was the
00:20:40
determination by the Sheriff's office. So, who was our victim? Well, Debbie Wolfe, she was born in June of 1957 in
00:20:50
Arkansas. She had three brothers, Pete, Joseph, and John. The family moved to North Carolina after
00:20:56
reportedly living in England for some time. Debbie's mom, Jenny, remarried John Edwards. And Jenny owned a local bar in
00:21:06
Fayetteville called The Pub. Debbie had been a nurse for about 2 years at the time of her death. She
00:21:13
loved her job and she was known to be dependable, responsible, and dedicated. She was also a jokester with a wicked
00:21:22
sense of humor. She sent her mom a male stripper for her 50th birthday and an inflatable novelty doll for Christmas
00:21:31
just the day before she was last seen. On the day after Christmas, she went to work at the hospital toting a giant
00:21:40
stuffed unicorn that she received as a gift. She was known as a happy person and had no known enemies.
00:21:48
Debbie also had a serious boyfriend. Now, one report we read said that they had recently decided to step up their
00:21:56
relationship. By all accounts, Debbie was a happy person in a good place in her life at
00:22:03
the time that she went missing and then later was found dead in the pond. So, are they saying that they're they're
00:22:08
more than boyfriend and girlfriend that that she might have been this individual's fiance?
00:22:14
I don't know if they were that far, but that's from what I found, it was getting
00:22:18
pretty serious. Mhm. Now, Debbie was found at the bottom of the pond behind her house. Captain, you asked just how
00:22:24
far it was. The pond, from my notes, was about 100 yd from her cabin. But, several publications, including the
00:22:33
Asheville Citizens Times, reported that Gordon Childress, who dove into the pond in his scuba gear
00:22:40
to find Debbie, said that he saw through the murky and brackish water what looked like a body,
00:22:48
fully clothed, protruding from a rusted metal barrel sitting at the bottom of the pond. So, he's the one that finds
00:22:58
Debbie initially in the pond. He says that when he found her, she is inside of this barrel.
00:23:06
And she's in there like headfirst. So, he could only see like a foot or maybe both feet sticking out of this barrel.
00:23:13
Right. He went into the pond and he said without touching anything or disturbing
00:23:20
anything. He finds the body, the Sheriff's office there, deputies arrive on the scene. They're going to put their
00:23:28
own divers into the pond to recover the body, but Childress is going to assist them in this process.
00:23:36
So, he, along with two officers, recovered the body and brought it back to the bank.
00:23:43
I'm guessing at this point rigor mortis has already set in on the body. Yes, that would be correct. Again, we
00:23:50
don't have a time or date of the actual death itself. Now, according to a Fayetteville
00:23:56
Observer's 1988 article, the one of the divers for the Sheriff's office, this is Don Smith,
00:24:04
and I'm going to do a direct quote here. Quote, told reporters he also had seen the barrel. And Smith was filmed by a
00:24:11
television cameraman as saying to Major Charles Smith of the barrel, "Major, I saw that sucker right out there."
00:24:20
He pointed to the spot where the body was found. End quote. And here's a report from the day after
00:24:25
the body was found that said, this was from the Wilson Daily Times, January 2nd.
00:24:32
Quote, Cumberland County authorities are waiting for autopsy results on 28-year-old Deborah Wolfe, whose body
00:24:40
was found in a barrel in a pond near her cabin on New Year's Day. A Sheriff's spokesman says,
00:24:49
"Miss Wolfe, a registered nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital, lived alone in a log cabin near the pond."
00:24:57
Harold Little, spokesman for the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department, said today, "Quote, I'm reasonably
00:25:04
positive it will be investigated as a murder, but we're awaiting the results of the autopsy." Little said, adding
00:25:12
there was no official indication of how she died. The woman's fully clothed body
00:25:18
was found in a submerged barrel, Little said. But, he wouldn't comment on reports that footprints had been found
00:25:26
leading into the water. Miss Wolfe's body was discovered by a friend who saw the footprints at the
00:25:33
pond, put on scuba gear, and found the barrel, according to a news report. But, Little said he had no comment on the
00:25:41
report. But, now that we have two officers saying that her body was found in this barrel in this pond be-
00:25:48
behind her house, any idea of an accidental death or suicide, not buying it no more. This barrel being
00:25:58
put into place in the crime scene, this is a direct indication of foul play. All right, we're back, friends. Cheers
00:26:45
to all of you. Cheers, Captain. The day after they removed Debbie's body, deputies returned to the cabin to
00:26:54
retrieve the barrel. In an effort to find the barrel, deputies drained the pond to a level of
00:27:00
2 to 3 ft. No barrel was found. Major Charles Smith, chief of detectives at the time, told the media that there
00:27:10
was no barrel in the pond. "Sheriff's divers never saw a barrel when they went in to retrieve the body," he said.
00:27:18
Well, this seems a little strange. There were at least two officers with the Sheriff's
00:27:25
office quoted talking about the barrel. The man who found the body before Sheriff's divers were brought in, Gordon
00:27:33
Childress, said, "Quote, there was no doubt in my mind, I am 100% positive that it was an old burn barrel or
00:27:41
something of that nature. You know, metal, rusted, 55-gallon type drum that the body was in. End quote." Jenny
00:27:50
Edwards says, "Quote, my diver said there was a barrel, the Sheriff's diver said there was a barrel. Not only that,
00:27:57
Debbie had a barrel in her yard. It disappeared. End quote." This is Jenny recalling that Debbie had a 55-gallon
00:28:04
drum type barrel on her property sitting right near the cabin. Well, this is going to start making you think if
00:28:11
you're the family, what the hell is wrong with the police officers? Why are they lying about this item?
00:28:21
So, Chief Sheriff's Detective Jack Watts says this. This is verbatim in the Unsolved Mysteries episode. Quote, in my
00:28:28
opinion and the opinions of some of the investigators, what appeared to be a barrel to some of the divers could have
00:28:35
been Debbie's jacket, which may have ballooned out as she was lying at that angle in the bottom of the pond. There
00:28:43
was never a barrel touched by any of the divers, according to their statements. Uh, most definitely by none of our
00:28:50
divers did we ever touch a barrel. End quote. Even though we have two statements about a barrel. Okay. Yeah,
00:28:58
so something doesn't add up here. He's pointing out that no one touched a barrel. And that would go along with all
00:29:04
of the statements and everything that was quoted before. No one has ever said that they touched a barrel, only people
00:29:10
saying that they saw a barrel. He's pointing out that it could have been an optical illusion.
00:29:17
Right. Now, Gordon Childress, the man who originally found the body, admitted that
00:29:21
his visibility was limited as the pond was quite dirty. But, he does say on record time and time again, "I
00:29:29
thought I saw a barrel." This was the theory that was adopted by the Sheriff's office investigators,
00:29:36
where they're saying, "Hey, the pond was dirty, so they concluded that the barrel was an optical illusion
00:29:43
caused by Debbie's large, unfastened jacket floating around her in a semi-circle in the dark murky waters of
00:29:53
that pond. Here's a couple things I wonder. Okay, one, if there was just a body in this pond,
00:29:59
wouldn't the body then at some point go to the surface because of the gases and stuff inside
00:30:06
the body? But, if you have this barrel, maybe the barrel would be helping to keep the body
00:30:12
down. She was wearing a good amount of clothing. I don't know if Here's some difficult things about this
00:30:20
case. Mhm. First, we don't know when she went into the water. Regardless of how she got
00:30:25
there, we don't know when she went in. Right. And I would imagine the bloating, the gases, that stuff, it takes a bit of
00:30:31
time. And of course, you're right. Most of the time a body will rise to the top.
00:30:36
I don't know if all of this clothing, the heavy clothing, if it absorbed the water, if it became heavy enough to
00:30:42
weigh her down. We don't have any statements, however, of anybody saying that she was, you know, tethered to
00:30:47
anything in the pond or in this barrel to keep her underwater, to keep her submerged. So, that part's all very
00:30:55
difficult. The other thing that's super difficult, and I you know, people might get crazy with me here, but
00:31:02
we're going to hover around this barrel a lot during this episode because to me,
00:31:07
this is the centerpiece of the case. Because no matter whether people saw a barrel or not, everyone agrees that when
00:31:14
the detectives The The detectives returned to the scene on Thursday, the day after, to retrieve a barrel. Right.
00:31:21
That's agreed upon. When they get there, there is no barrel to be found anywhere. That's also agreed
00:31:27
upon. Now, you wonder, is there somebody at the scene that's responsible for this murder that
00:31:33
believes that this barrel is a a vital piece of evidence and takes the barrel. Why they wouldn't take it the first day
00:31:41
doesn't make any sense to me. But then, to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt, we don't have a
00:31:49
great understanding of this pond, and we know that they're draining it 2 to 3 ft.
00:31:55
Is it possible that when they were searching for the barrel, they just weren't capable of finding it? Okay, so
00:32:00
you bring up several good points, and you brought this up before we went to the break.
00:32:05
Well, that's what I do on this show as I bring up these amazing points. Your point being before the break that
00:32:10
if there was a barrel, if she's found inside the barrel in the pond, it has to be murder or foul play.
00:32:19
She doesn't commit suicide, put herself into a barrel. She doesn't accidentally drown and magically end up inside of the
00:32:25
barrel. Well, even without the barrel, I think me and you would both lean to this
00:32:30
looks more like a homicide. If there were no barrel present, I could be easily convinced that this was an
00:32:38
accidental drowning. Mhm. Now, with the barrel present, I go back to what you said before the
00:32:45
break. It has to be some type of foul play. So, then the thought is, well, did someone come back and retrieve the
00:32:54
barrel? And that's exactly what her mother, Debbie, has insinuated over the years, that someone who murdered her
00:33:01
daughter came back to the property and removed the barrel so that it could not incriminate them. So that maybe it would
00:33:08
be determined to be an accidental death, and there would be no homicide investigation. Right.
00:33:15
Interestingly enough, though, you also point out something that just seems outwardly bizarre. Why wouldn't they
00:33:21
just take the barrel with them on the day that they recovered the body? The sheriff's office. Why not just take
00:33:28
it with you? Well, I can I can give them a little leeway here and say, all right,
00:33:32
well, maybe they didn't have proper equipment to drain the pond, and maybe they decided that the easiest way to
00:33:38
remove the barrel was to in fact drain the pond. However, you are responding to a call where someone is telling you,
00:33:47
we have located a body of a person We've located a body on the property of a person that was
00:33:53
previously reported as missing inside of a pond. You're not going to bring any kind of
00:33:59
any kind of equipment to drain the pond with you? Or at least call it in and say, "Hey, we're going out to the scene
00:34:05
to see if we find a body, could you get to work on bringing in this draining equipment?"
00:34:10
Well, they didn't take her serious when they said that she was missing. It So, that part seems like a big misstep by
00:34:17
the sheriff's department. Here's the other thing. Okay, maybe you decide that tomorrow we have to come back tomorrow
00:34:24
to drain the pond, retrieve the barrel. Put a freaking officer at the scene and guard the damn scene. Yeah, cuz well,
00:34:30
one, what do you a body in a car, and you couldn't determine if it was a homicide or an
00:34:35
accident or what have you, you would remove the vehicle that day with the body, or at the very least put an
00:34:44
officer at the scene so you could retrieve it later. None of this was done. Well, and John Douglas would tell
00:34:50
you, "Look, this is a remote scene. So, the fact that it's a remote scene, I'm I'm putting some officers around this
00:34:57
area to see if any body comes by to see if we found the body yet. Because like we know, killers will return to the
00:35:06
crime scene from time to time. When we're working on the show, we do this a lot where we go, 'Oh, well,
00:35:11
sometimes if if one of us is is not feeling up to the work that day, we'll go, 'Oh, well,
00:35:17
we'll just get that tomorrow.' And normally, the best work we do is when we just push through. No, no, let's not
00:35:22
wait till tomorrow. Let's get it done today. And that's what it seems like this law
00:35:28
enforcement did was like, 'Oh, well, they handled her missing person case so in such a lazy fashion. And then to come
00:35:37
back and go, 'Okay, well, now that we found her, but okay, well, we'll just clean up this area tomorrow.'
00:35:44
It makes zero sense to me. And if this pond is not that deep, why aren't you just removing this
00:35:53
barrel? And maybe it's 50 lb, but it's not it's not 500 lb. It Well, it seems obvious to
00:36:01
me that whatever the situation, they determined the easiest way to or the best way is what I think I should say.
00:36:08
The best way to remove the barrel would be to drain the pond. And again, that's fine. That's well and
00:36:15
good. Put an officer at the scene in a car and just sit by the pond for the night. It's very simple, easily done.
00:36:22
If If they also came back and said, "Look, we we're going to come back tomorrow to
00:36:25
drain the pond for two reasons. One, to get that barrel, but two, we're going to
00:36:30
see if we can find any other evidence within the pond." And that would make a lot more sense to me, but it doesn't
00:36:37
even seem like they were looking for other instruments that could have been used in the in the death of Debbie.
00:36:45
Per the investigation, investigators were not able to locate anyone who saw Debbie after she left work on the 26th.
00:36:52
So, this helped them to fix her date of death on that particular day since she failed to show up for work the next
00:36:59
morning. It's not at all clear whether they processed her car and her house for fingerprints. We don't know if they
00:37:06
checked into her phone records or interviewed her coworkers and friends. There's also no discussion of whether
00:37:13
there was any suspicion of her boyfriend or whether he was looked at at all. Either very little investigation was
00:37:20
actually done in Debbie Wolf's case or very little was made public about what was done. Right. And you would think
00:37:28
they would have maybe We have the family questioning law enforcement, so we would think that we
00:37:34
get some more information from her mother saying, "Okay, well, maybe they didn't publicize that they
00:37:41
they searched her house, but they did search her house." Well, it's going to be basically just a
00:37:46
straight-down-the-middle disagreement between the two sides, between Debbie's family and the sheriff's department.
00:37:52
Now, we mentioned earlier footprints or possible footprints. Gordon Childress said he saw two sets of footprints on
00:37:59
the bottom of the pond. He says they led to the direction of the body. Keep in mind, though, he's also said that the
00:38:06
pond was very dirty. It was It was very, you know, murky water, dirty water. He had a hard time seeing. Uh now, bear in
00:38:14
mind that this pond is about 5 and 1/2 ft deep at its deepest point. So, this is This is where you go, all right,
00:38:22
someone could walk into the pond and reach the spot where Debbie was found. So, she could have easily been placed
00:38:29
there. But if there were two sets of footprints on the bottom of the pond, you have to wonder, what does this mean?
00:38:35
Does this mean that there were two perpetrators placing her and the barrel in the pond?
00:38:42
Or was this one perpetrator placing these items in the pond, and then the second set is the footprints
00:38:49
back out of the pond? Right. But hold your questions because none of this is straightforward, and it's about
00:38:56
to get even more confusing. The sheriff's office spokesman, this is Harold Little, told the Asheville
00:39:02
Citizen Times that a sheriff's deputy at the scene asked Childress to show him the footprints, and Childress could not
00:39:10
find them. And Little went on to say that the bottom of the pond was not actually mud
00:39:15
or silt that would show footprints, but moss, on which footprints did not make an impression. So, footprints would not
00:39:23
be possible at the bottom of the pond. So, law enforcement 100% does not back up the existence of these footprints.
00:39:32
Now, Childress says Debbie was in the barrel. He's the first diver, the friend of the family.
00:39:39
Reports were that a barrel was seen by two divers, sheriffs divers. Then it's reported to the media by the
00:39:46
sheriff's office investigator that there was no barrel. Of course, the key question is what did the law enforcement
00:39:54
divers who went down and got Debbie out of the pond actually see? Because whether or not there was a
00:40:01
barrel really changes everything in this case. The Asheville Citizen Times reported,
00:40:09
"Quote, it was possible Debbie was playing with her dogs and accidentally fell into the
00:40:14
pond. She was wearing an army field jacket and it may have become waterlogged causing her to sink below
00:40:22
the surface. Investigators also say she may have been standing on ice when it gave way causing her to enter the water
00:40:30
or she may have fallen into the pond and panicked." Chief Detective Charles Smith
00:40:35
said, "We have no idea how she got into the water." Smith also stated that Debbie could have suffered some other
00:40:43
kind of accident. Once she was in the pond in the dark in the freezing water, she became disoriented and moved away
00:40:50
from rather than toward the pond's edge. So, the sheriff's office couldn't come up with a great reason that Debbie would
00:40:59
have entered the pond. But, once she was in there, they believed that she became frightened and
00:41:05
disoriented in the water and instead of moving toward the shallow edge, she went
00:41:09
out deeper where she became a victim of this immersion syndrome. So, there's still a lot of questions
00:41:16
in regards to this explanation, right? Yeah. The pond is only 5 and 1/2 ft deep. You could walk into it and out of
00:41:24
it. And a better description of the pond is as follows. The water at the edge of
00:41:28
the pond is only about an inch or 2 deep. The bottom gently slopes and the pond is only knee-deep 5 ft from
00:41:37
the edge. Debbie was found 30 ft from the bank. So, given the gentle grade, she would
00:41:44
have been able to stand up and walk out of the pond if she fell in. Unless this is a Ray Rivera situation where
00:41:51
God only knows how she fell and she magically fell into the center of the pond. Right.
00:41:58
Knee-deep at 5 ft in. Inches deep around the the very edge of the pond. So, if she fell in by
00:42:05
accident, I don't know. I It just makes very little sense to me how one could end up working their way deeper
00:42:14
rather than just standing up or even getting on your hands and knees and crawling out.
00:42:19
Yeah, it's it's such a bad explanation. That makes this also very difficult is the 26th of December, it was reported
00:42:29
that it was only 25° or so that day. So, frigid for North Carolina. This will also provide a possible
00:42:39
explanation. The sheriff's office maintained that it was possible that she was playing with her dogs, perhaps
00:42:44
running with them or she tried to help one of the dogs and stepped onto very thin ice. Maybe she thought it was
00:42:52
thicker ice and fell through and then drowned in the pond. Yeah, it's possible that you would let your dogs out and
00:43:00
maybe they get into a situation where you'd have to help them. So, I could see that being an accidental
00:43:06
death. But, again, the the size of the pond like you said it at some point you can
00:43:11
just stand up. Well, of course, the family contends that Debbie was murdered. They don't
00:43:18
agree with the sheriff's office. They challenge the autopsy findings. The family says it was murder and a
00:43:26
bumbling, inept, or maybe even corrupt investigation got it all wrong. Jenny Edwards was not happy with the sheriff's
00:43:34
office and she let them know it on the public front. The Fayetteville Observer said, "Quote, unanswered questions,
00:43:41
contradictions, and the victim's mother's adamant refusal to accept theories voiced by law enforcement
00:43:47
authorities have shrouded the death in mystery." Well, we bashed law enforcement enough, so let's give them a
00:43:54
little credit because even they knew they were outmanned, so they called in the SBI.
00:44:01
Yeah, I don't know if it's so much a question of being outmanned or just doing due diligence, a little checks and
00:44:07
balances. If you watch the Unsolved Mysteries episode, keep in mind, it's a great show, Captain loves it, Colonel
00:44:14
loves it, everyone loves it. It's a shame we're not hosting the show on Netflix. However,
00:44:19
it's a it's actually pathetic that we're not the the co-hosts. That's still one of the great unsolved
00:44:25
mysteries of our lifetimes. Maybe next season. However, keep in mind when you watch that show,
00:44:31
specifically the ones from the the '80s and '90s, you when you view a case for the most
00:44:38
part, you're getting the 9 or 10-minute version of the case. That's why you step
00:44:42
into the garage to get the rest of the story. Something that was not covered in the
00:44:47
Unsolved Mysteries episode was the sheriff calling in the SBI. So, on January 5th,
00:44:56
note that date, January 5th, it was reported that Cumberland County Sheriff Otis
00:45:02
Jones requested the help of the State Bureau of Investigation. Specifically, he requested that the SBI look into his
00:45:09
department's handling of the Debbie Wolfe investigation. This is extremely unconventional, especially given that
00:45:18
the investigation was only days old at this point. Sheriff spokesman Harold Little said the
00:45:24
department was bringing in the SBI assistance. The Fayetteville Observer reported that SBI agent Marshall Evans
00:45:33
was given the case review assignment. He talked to county detectives, family members, and others. He visited the
00:45:41
scene several times and although Evans wasn't able to determine exactly what happened to Debbie, he told the Observer
00:45:49
that he does not believe that the death was murder. Interesting find there by SBI, but
00:45:56
I go back to her personal life. Do we have any indication that there's violence in any relationship that she
00:46:02
had or or that or do we know of any questionable questionable suspect that lives in that area that would know that
00:46:14
she was out there living alone? So, that's an interesting point there, Captain. As far as her relationship goes
00:46:21
with her boyfriend, serious boyfriend, whatever label you want to put on it, there seems to be zero suspicion by the
00:46:28
family, friends, the sheriff's office, and the media regarding the boyfriend. There does seem to be a little suspicion
00:46:37
from family and possibly the media regarding one or two of her co-workers. And we'll get into that, but we all
00:46:45
before we get into that, I want to go through some more of the family's allegations, specifically Jenny's, her
00:46:51
mother's. So, these are the things that Jenny Edwards has alleged were hinky about her
00:46:58
daughter and the scene and the way the investigation was going down. You know, when they went through Debbie's home,
00:47:05
these were some things that they found that they thought pointed more towards foul play.
00:47:11
Now, this item was not in any of the original reports, but Jenny says that drag marks
00:47:18
were found down into the pond. These apparently were observed by Childress, the diver,
00:47:25
and reported by Jenny or reported to Jenny by Kevin Gordon. This is interesting to me. When we were
00:47:32
talking about the footprints earlier, I'm thinking, "Okay, if there's a barrel, these footprints, if they existed at
00:47:39
all, are only good in my mind if they are accompanied by drag marks." These alleged drag marks have become
00:47:47
part of the narrative of Debbie's case, but have never ever been mentioned by law enforcement or anyone other than
00:47:56
Debbie's family and friends. Jenny also points out that the driver's seat in Debbie's car was pushed all the
00:48:05
way back. Debbie was only 5 ft 3 in tall, so she would sit with the seat pulled forward to drive.
00:48:13
And her mother says that Debbie would never adjust the seat because it was sticky and it was hard to move.
00:48:21
She goes on to state that Debbie was found wearing clothes that she and her family did not recognize,
00:48:28
including a Pittsburgh Steelers shirt that her friends, her boyfriend, and family says they had never ever seen.
00:48:37
Jenny said that the clothes that that she was wearing were the wrong size for her daughter. The jacket she was wearing
00:48:45
was a men's size small field jacket and looked brand new, but had no tags on it.
00:48:52
This field jacket is a weird thing because Debbie's boyfriend, former Army Criminal Investigation Division agent
00:49:00
Steve McDonald, said he did not give this jacket to Debbie and he had never seen it before.
00:49:08
And he goes on to say that he is positive he would know if anyone else had given
00:49:13
the jacket to Debbie. So, no one knows where this jacket came from or why she would be wearing it or
00:49:21
need it at all as she had a field jacket of her brother's on the hook inside of her
00:49:28
cabin when her body was found. This is equal to the barrel to me where it points to homicide. Almost where if you
00:49:35
could go, "Okay, regardless if there a barrel or not, maybe I could get on board and believe that this jacket
00:49:41
ballooned out and caused some kind of optical illusion." Right. But then again, where the hell
00:49:46
did the jacket come from? Yeah. The and again, we don't know what the search of the house
00:49:56
presented. I I would think he even if the cops searched the house, but there was definitely a struggle, there's
00:50:02
evidence in there that the family would be able to come forward and say, "Look, there's a struggle inside the house."
00:50:09
I don't even know if that's the case. I you this this crime could have taken place somewhere else and this individual
00:50:17
could have known where she lived and just said, "Hey, I'm going to dump her in her own pond. That's where I'm
00:50:22
going to get rid of the body." Now, this next item are a pair of brown corduroy pants that Debbie was wearing.
00:50:30
Um again, the family says these pants were way too big. That they would have fit somebody
00:50:36
approximately 6-ft tall. They go on to say that she was wearing a bra that was way too large for her.
00:50:44
Uh both in cup size and around the the body. These next two items, I really think we can toss these out.
00:50:54
You know, um I'm throwing in my own little opinion as we go through some of these. One is is the pair of Nike tennis
00:51:00
shoes that Debbie was wearing. The family says these were too big. That they were at least a size, if not two
00:51:07
sizes too big. We do have the the sheriff's office investigator Jack Watts who is on camera, on record saying, "We
00:51:14
do know for a fact that the tennis shoes we had on were her tennis shoes." He says, "We have
00:51:22
photos of her with those tennis shoes on prior to her death." I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and
00:51:29
believe the officer Watts there. I don't believe he would go out of his way to be on
00:51:36
camera, on mic and say, "We have pictures of her wearing these shoes." The next item was It stated that Debbie
00:51:43
was clean. That there was no noticeable dirt on her sneakers or shoes or clothing.
00:51:49
Um and they question how could she have been in this dirty pond for 6 days without being dirty. That the divers
00:51:57
that found her were their their articles, their diving gear, everything was extremely dirty when they
00:52:03
recovered her and brought her to the edge. I don't know what the hell that's supposed to prove. That that whole
00:52:10
statement really confuses me because we know she was in the water. Right. The water was dirty or it wasn't dirty,
00:52:16
whatever. How How she was clean, I don't know. But we one, we know she was in the
00:52:21
water and two, we know she was in the water longer than the divers were. So, I I don't know what that is supposed to
00:52:28
to point out here. Yeah, and again, but like I said, if if you start thinking, you know, a little outside the box and
00:52:35
you go, "Well, what if Yeah, what if she went home with a one of her coworkers? The the
00:52:43
the murder, the attack happens there. Then she's in their house for who knows how long
00:52:52
and then they start searching for her, maybe they go out to the property, but maybe she's not in the pond at that
00:52:58
time. And she's not in that pond until the day that they they discover her. Well, it's it's possible. Another item
00:53:06
of concern is a what is called a summer weight uniform. So, remember she was a nurse, so these are scrubs. A summer
00:53:14
weight uniform was found lying on the kitchen floor inside the cabin. One, of course, an odd location to just
00:53:21
find, you know, pants and a shirt lying in the middle of the kitchen floor. But the family says that she would have
00:53:30
been wearing a long-sleeve shirt and not lightweight uh uniform in the winter months. And
00:53:39
this is kind of backed up by the coworker. Remember we mentioned she was having lunch with a Roger Rushing.
00:53:45
He backed this up by saying that she was definitely wearing a long-sleeve shirt at work that day.
00:53:52
Whatever this uniform was that the family and Roger Rushing believes that she was wearing on the 26th
00:53:59
was never found at her cabin or in her home. Mhm. So, either they're wrong and she was in fact wearing the uniform
00:54:07
that was found on her kitchen floor or there's something terribly wrong with this whole crime scene.
00:54:14
One thing that I think is is maybe a big deal here, Captain. It is reported and this seems to be agreed upon by both
00:54:25
the family and the sheriff's office. So, let's examine this thing here. It's reported that beer cans littered the
00:54:32
yard of Debbie's yard. And the family says and points out that Debbie was neat, tidy, clean. She
00:54:40
wouldn't have littered in her yard. She She wants to live out in the beauty of nature.
00:54:45
So, she's not just going to willy-nilly throw beer cans out in the yard. She's not going to be a giant piece of
00:54:51
[ __ ] that litters. These were found around the area where her vehicle was parked. The other thing that the family
00:54:58
points out is, "Okay, if you want to believe that she threw them there, well, that's not the kind of beer that she
00:55:05
drank." So, they're they're kind of doubling down on this idea that she wouldn't have thrown these beer cans in
00:55:11
the yard. Well, now that you're not able to click the barrel, you have a bunch of
00:55:16
extra space in your evidence locker. Collect these cans so one day that we can test them. Well, the tox Remember
00:55:23
the toxicology screening on Debbie came back as clean. Yeah. So, she wasn't drinking or doing
00:55:30
any type of drugs leading up to her death. So, these beer cans are all another big
00:55:38
part of the mystery. Of course, her family says that this all adds up, plus the barrel, all adds up to pointing to
00:55:46
foul play and murder in this Well, in going through my research, you know, we we we share outlines and stuff
00:55:52
and and on your outline, you have the hat, which I did not find. Can you tell me about this hat?
00:55:59
Yeah, there was another potential clue found, according to the family. A friend of Debbie's, this is Fran Schoff,
00:56:07
who went to feed the dogs after Debbie died, after she was found. This person found a wool stocking cap
00:56:17
that everyone says belonged to Debbie and found this hat in the mud at the opposite end of the pond.
00:56:26
So, you have the cabin, you have uh a little bit of distance, then you have this pond. She's found
00:56:33
kind of in the middle of it. On the opposite side of the pond is where this hat was located. So,
00:56:42
I don't know what this could possibly point to. We don't know how or where she got into the water from,
00:56:49
but I think at least this begs the question, how thorough was the pond and the property searched if this hat was
00:56:58
still lying there more than a week after Debbie was located. So, I I mean, the hat could
00:57:04
go either way, right? She She possibly was wearing the hat, took it off, or it floated away.
00:57:12
Or it fell off when they were taking her body to the water. Exactly. But again, it also it to me it just brings up the
00:57:19
idea that it wasn't an extremely thorough search of the property or when things were found, they weren't noted or
00:57:27
taken in as evidence. Again, again, we don't know the exact size of the pond, but if you're able to
00:57:34
drain it a few feet, you think that we're at least have an officer walk around the pond to see if we find any
00:57:41
more evidence. It just seems like a very, like you said, lazy like you said, lazy
00:57:46
investigation, not a thorough investigation. And I almost think they only called in CBI
00:57:53
just to kind of save their hide. It's possible, but I'm still going to give them credit for doing so. I think that
00:57:59
Look, I I've reviewed a lot of people who have posted comments online on other people's message boards regarding this
00:58:06
case and a lot of people seem to believe that the This is Look, maybe in some cases I can
00:58:13
believe it, but I can't believe it here. And in most cases I don't believe it, Captain, this this following statement.
00:58:20
The sheriff's office know who did this and they're covering it up. Most of the time that is just freaking
00:58:26
false. It's not true at all. That These Collectively as a department, we're all going to put our asses on the line
00:58:33
because somebody we know killed somebody? Bogus. The other thing, too, is we have the
00:58:40
coroner's report. The autopsy states it was a drowning. Cause of drowning, undetermined.
00:58:46
So, the coroner's corrupt, too? Knows who did it and choosing to cover it up? They brought in
00:58:54
this other the state investigative bureau to double-check their work when they were covering up for a friend of
00:59:01
the department's? It just That doesn't make any sense. If you think that the sheriff's office got
00:59:07
it wrong, it's just because they got it wrong. Not because they are covering for
00:59:12
a buddy of the department. And again, one of the reasons why I think they could call in CBI is there's somebody
00:59:19
that they knew that used to work in the department. So, we're going to call this
00:59:23
guy in. He's going to act like he's double-checking us, but he's really going to be um
00:59:29
essentially our our our friendly alibi to say that well we didn't do anything wrong here even though they were just
00:59:39
lazy about the whole investigation. That's possible and and I don't I don't have any reason to firmly disagree with
00:59:48
that. I just think we have a situation where the sheriffs being incredibly responsible in saying
00:59:57
look this woman and her family are challenging our findings and our investigation.
01:00:04
Let's bring in a you know a state agency to at least take a look at this thing. And
01:00:13
if we're wrong maybe they can find something we didn't find. Or if we're right she's going to get the same answers that
01:00:21
we already gave her and hopefully that will give the family some kind of satisfaction some kind of closure. Look
01:00:30
there if the family's wrong, you know, we're beating up on the sheriff's office here
01:00:35
a lot but there's a chance the family could be wrong. If the family's wrong in the situation they're grieving people
01:00:41
that are trying to understand the bizarre mysterious death of a loved one. It's a very difficult thing to process.
01:00:50
On the episode of Unsolved Mysteries besides the barrel probably the biggest mystery in this
01:00:59
case would be the phone call or message that was found on Debbie's answering machine.
01:01:05
I love these. That's why one of the reasons why uh I miss answering machines. So Jenny
01:01:13
later told this story to the Fayetteville Examiner. It says when John and Kevin went over to Debbie's to look for her
01:01:21
they noticed that there was a message blinking on her machine. For those that have never experienced the wonder
01:01:28
of an answering machine that's how you knew you had a message when you came home the little light would be blinking
01:01:33
and you go oh boy somebody called me. And you'd hit the button and it would play the message.
01:01:38
Jenny says that quote what they heard was a stranger's voice on the tape. The two then really became concerned.
01:01:47
The message had been left earlier that day. The voice was a man calling from the Veterans Hospital.
01:01:54
This would be where Debbie worked to see how Debbie was doing. The man's message
01:01:59
indicated that Debbie had missed many days of work. This struck Jenny Edwards as odd because
01:02:05
she knew this was not true. At the time of the message that the message was left Debbie had only missed
01:02:13
she had not missed days of work only a few hours at best. All right, let's dissect this a little
01:02:19
bit here because one could the meaning of the message be misconstrued by these two individuals?
01:02:30
You've missed a lot of days. No, by the time we're listening to this message she's only missed one day. She didn't
01:02:37
show up today and she's only missed a couple of hours. Is it possible that the person calling
01:02:42
and leaving the message is referring to her work history? You've worked here for 2 years is what
01:02:48
our records indicate. Did she work there 2 years? Did she miss several days over
01:02:53
the course of those 2 years? In some work environments that's not acceptable. Right.
01:03:00
The other thing In the garage it's not acceptable. Right. The other thing that we need to keep in mind they they did a
01:03:07
great job on Unsolved Mysteries of re-enacting the message on the answering machine.
01:03:15
But that's not like an actual recording that they're playing. From my understanding the only two people who
01:03:23
have ever heard this message was those two men men on that day John and Kevin who went to look for Debbie.
01:03:30
They played the message erased the message. So I'm not saying that they didn't hear the
01:03:37
message. I'm not questioning that. I would I wouldn't go that far to to suggest that these people would make
01:03:44
this up. But what I do find odd is Jenny's statement to the newspaper is they became very concerned. Well
01:03:56
maybe they did but your other statement was they didn't find anything wrong with the
01:04:01
cabin. They assumed that Debbie had left possibly left with somebody in a hurry so they fed the dogs turned off the
01:04:08
heater and left the house. Right. So which was it? Were they concerned or was everything just normal? I think the
01:04:15
tough thing here is the location of the cabin. I mean there's not a lot of neighbors so we
01:04:20
don't have a lot of eyewitnesses that saw her coming into the property with somebody following her or maybe that she
01:04:28
was at the property with a different vehicle meaning that she was there with somebody else. But we have clear-cut
01:04:34
eyewitness accounts saying that she was at work and then we obviously have her punching out of work for that day. So
01:04:40
it's very difficult. It is very difficult. I can say this regarding the voicemail or the answering
01:04:49
machine message that it looks like law enforcement was able to determine who in fact left the
01:04:56
message and did question this individual. According to Jenny this individual did work
01:05:04
with Debbie. Uh the family believes that he was one of two men that were interested in
01:05:11
Debbie that was trying to pursue kind some kind of relationship with Debbie. Refused their advances as they This guy
01:05:19
was looked at Jenny says that he did not want to take a polygraph test. But the sheriff's office also say you
01:05:28
know we talked to everyone that the family asked us to interview. And we couldn't find anything in the
01:05:36
course of those interviews that would lead us to believe anything other than it was an accidental drowning. We
01:05:41
couldn't find anything at the scene that let us to believe anything other than an
01:05:46
accidental drowning. Yeah but they're stating that and also omitting any signs of footprints drag marks or a
01:05:56
barrel. If any of that existed again it's it's it's very confusing because you have one
01:06:04
group one camp saying we have these pieces of evidence and the other camp saying
01:06:09
none of that stuff ever existed. The tricky thing though is I go back to the beginning of this case.
01:06:17
You have two officers on record talking about a barrel. You have the department who decides
01:06:25
we're going to come back tomorrow and collect a barrel. There seemed to be at one point
01:06:31
regardless if there was a barrel or not a collective agreement by the sheriff's department that a barrel existed.
01:06:41
So that part is all very confusing to me. What Jenny Edwards believes and what her family believes is kind of a
01:06:50
theory as to what possibly happened is that somehow Debbie was taken from her property held
01:06:59
captive for hours probably days and killed in a manner that didn't leave much in the way of detection probably my
01:07:10
guess would be smothered and then placed into the barrel and dragged into the pond placed in the
01:07:16
pond. The sheriff's department removes the body and whoever put her there came back and
01:07:24
took the barrel away in the middle of the night. There are a lot of things that have to
01:07:30
line up for that to be possible. Is it impossible? No. Certainly not impossible. And again for
01:07:37
me Captain all I can do is label this a mysterious unexplained death because we don't have any definitive
01:07:47
answers or definitive proof or evidence for me to lean one way or the other. If there was a barrel there if she was
01:07:55
found in a barrel I'm saying murder. I'm saying foul play. I'll go one step step further. I'm with
01:08:02
you if there's a barrel definitely this is a homicide needs to be investigated as such but it's the clothing.
01:08:11
Get rid of that barrel fine. You can't get rid of the fact that she's found in clothes that are not recognizable to
01:08:17
anybody friends family or loved ones. And I think you're spot on there Captain and it's just like what we saw in that
01:08:25
Asia Degree case. If you cannot If you cannot find a reasonable explanation why she had a
01:08:33
photo of an unknown unidentified girl in her possession then you cannot explain why she
01:08:41
disappeared or why she left her home that night. This is the same thing. If there's a barrel that barrel must be
01:08:48
explained. There must be a reason why that barrel exist and how she ended up in it. The other thing you're right take
01:08:54
it a step further where did this clothing come from? She didn't just drive home on the 26th
01:09:00
and go out and buy a bunch of clothes that are way too big for her that she didn't need put them on and fall into
01:09:05
the middle of a pond and drown. So it's all very difficult. I think that I think that the family is right to keep
01:09:14
pursuing this. I think the sheriff's office was right to call in another agency a state agency
01:09:20
to take a look at it. It's just a shame that here we are all these years later with a very uncomfortable
01:09:27
uneasy feeling of we don't have any real answers. We don't have a great understanding for what happened to this
01:09:34
young woman with a promising future. I think as the Fayetteville Observer pointed out, I
01:09:41
think they nailed it when they said there are many questions in this case for which law enforcement officers admit
01:09:47
they do not have the answers. For everything true crime garage, check us out at truecrimegarage.com.
01:10:08
And you can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook at true crime garage. And make sure you join us back
01:10:15
here in the garage next week for a new off the record and a new case. Until then, be good, be kind, and don't
01:10:22
litter.