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changer [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:43
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that knows that life's the same moving and stereo
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except for the shoes he is the captain and we'll all be okay as long as those shoes aren't velcro it's good to be seen
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and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling the [Music] friend this week we are very proud to be
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temperature is and parts Unown I have no idea good luck finding it on a map it's always 69 and that is
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enough for the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:28
crime a 17-year-old girl goes out with friends to a party on a Saturday night nearing
00:03:43
what was believed to be the end of her night she calls her parents this is just a brief and simple
00:03:51
call saying she plans to be home soon but something happened something went wrong because
00:04:00
she does not come home the next day in the morning hours her body is found on the side of a road
00:04:09
about 30 m away she was strangled for any town this would be a horrific crime that would strike fear
00:04:18
into the residents Hearts but for the akan Ohio region in 1987 this murder caused extreme Terror
00:04:28
panic and outrage there are three strongly supported theories in this unsolved murder case
00:04:36
each Theory presenting its own level of disgust and outrage but each also presenting a
00:04:42
different Terror and Threat Level the first theory is someone close to the victim
00:04:49
attacked and killed the girl the second is maybe someone she only thought she knew or someone on the
00:04:58
fringes of her Social Circles as responsible and thirdly and certainly the most terrorizing Theory she was the
00:05:08
victim of an undetected serial killer you see there is evidence to suggest that this murder was not a
00:05:18
one-off this murder could be just one in a string of murders of women in the area four women were found murdered in
00:05:29
Summit County in the final 18 weeks of 1987 all of those murders to this day are still
00:05:39
[Music] unsolved this is true crime garage and this is the case of Barbara blatnik in
00:05:47
the 1987 Summit County [Music] murders [Music] [Applause] our featured case takes place in
00:06:06
December of 1987 Barbara Anne blatnik was a fairly typical 17-year-old girl she lived in
00:06:14
Garfield Heights Ohio this is on band drive with her mom Teresa her dad John and her 19-year-old sister Donna Barby
00:06:24
as she was called had feathered 1980s style blonde hair and as described as cute and bubbly her father described her
00:06:32
as a free spirit Who Loved people maybe too much she loved heavy metal music makeup dancing babysitting and hanging
00:06:41
out with her friends of which she had a lot Barbie's sister Donna whom True Crime garage spoke with at length in our
00:06:50
research for the show describes her younger sister frankly as a girl who liked to party she was known to drink
00:06:57
dabble in drugs smoke and basic basically live the party lifestyle now we said she loved loud heavy metal music
00:07:05
Captain one thing we have in common with Barbie and anyone who listens to our other show off the Record knows this one
00:07:12
of her favorite bands was ACDC a Barbie had a pack of girlfriends that was very tight and they all hung
00:07:19
out with a bunch of neighborhood guys at a bike shop on Warner Road called motorcycle
00:07:25
Specialties where they would go to Party according to our sources the bike shop owner liked pretty girls around and
00:07:32
would Supply booze and pot now Barbie had a boyfriend his name was Jerry and the two were dating on and off for about
00:07:40
a year from what we understand this wasn't a relationship that was likely to go down the traditional route of dating
00:07:48
marriage and kids Donna says her sister liked boys and was known to date around never really being exclusive with
00:07:56
anyone Barbie had been in trouble a few times and transferred high schools in January leaving Garfield Heights High
00:08:04
School and switching to eie viw Catholic where she was a junior according to her
00:08:10
family although Barbie was a handful she had no enemies and on the contrary Barbie had lots of friends and was known
00:08:17
as a fun Scrappy badass girl anyway Barbie set out on the afternoon of December 19th which was a Saturday with
00:08:26
some friends to go to a party she dressed in jeans a sweater jewelry and she had her comb money and sigs in her
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back pocket as usual newspaper reports at the time state that she left her home either around 400 p.m. or 6:30 p.m.
00:08:42
reports differ on this do we know why there's such a gap in time we have one paper reporting 400 p.m. and one
00:08:51
reporting 6:30 p.m. we don't know why there's a discrepancy in that time frame but what we do know is that she left
00:08:58
with friends and they went to a party on turny road which was about a mile and a
00:09:04
half away from Barbie's home it's unclear whether this party was at someone's home or somewhere else we
00:09:10
don't know who hosted this Gathering well it's also hard sometimes to Define what an actual quote unquote party is
00:09:19
party could be eight people sitting around the house or 100 people or a couple of teenage kids in somebody's
00:09:26
backyard or at a park right now newspaper reports stated and Donna confirmed this that Barbie called home
00:09:33
sometime after 10:30 p.m. this just to say that she would be home soon now Barbie's sister Donna tells us that this
00:09:41
was very unusual Barbie did not usually check in typically she would go out with
00:09:47
friends and she would come home or she would crash at someone's house it wasn't uncommon for her to stay
00:09:55
out all night sleeping at a friends it was was uncommon for her to call home remember this is 1987 so this would also
00:10:05
require her to find a landline to make that call who took the call her parents answered that call so but can we
00:10:13
definitively say that it's her I mean because I know with my parents if I would have called especially like on a
00:10:21
on a school night or the weekend night and said hey I'm going to and it was a quick call I might be able to confuse
00:10:28
them by having of a friend call I don't think anybody's disputing that it was Barbie on the phone but despite that
00:10:35
unusual call saying that she would be home she didn't come home her parents went to bed and didn't worry the next
00:10:42
morning they assumed that she was out of friends Barbie's mother and sister went
00:10:46
out Christmas shopping little did Teresa and Donna know that while they were shopping two cops showed up at their
00:10:53
house John blatnik was asked to go to the morg in kyoga Falls Barbie have been found dead we have been able to shed a
00:11:02
little more light on the events of the last night of Barbie's life this thanks to Donna and also from the justice for
00:11:08
Barbara blatnik website run by a local armchair detective who wants to help bring closure to the blatnik family
00:11:16
here's what we found Barbie met up with her good friend Michelle that afternoon at a party at the bike shop on Warner
00:11:23
Road this is an addition to the party on turny road that Barbie told her parents
00:11:29
she was going to if in fact that was true all right so she meets up with her friend Michelle right they're going to
00:11:36
go to the bike shop that's where they normally hang out have these little parties little Gatherings yeah so when
00:11:42
Michelle meets up with Barbie it sounds like one of them is already at the bike shop on Warner Road all right at this
00:11:50
party so the first time that Michelle sees Barbie according to Michelle is at this bike shop where they were known to
00:11:57
hang out and party okay okay so then they're going to go to another party no that's why I think things are a little
00:12:03
confusing here so we have the statement that Barbie tells her parents that she's
00:12:08
going to a party on turny road right right and then we have Michelle who's going to add some detail fill in some
00:12:14
blanks of the time that Barbie was gone that night and she's saying that the first time that she sees Barbie is at
00:12:22
this party at the bike shop on Warner Road so a different party so if in fact there was even a part on tney road that
00:12:30
Barbie was going to go to she could have actually gone to that party and then went to the bike shop afterwards I think
00:12:36
this is part of the reason why we have some different things within the timeline regarding when she left the
00:12:43
house that day yeah and I think it's It's Tricky too because there are some people when you're friends with people
00:12:50
when you're younger that you know you'd be hanging out at your buddy's house and
00:12:54
they'd just be saying oh we're going to go to such and such house and we're going to go to somebody else's house and
00:13:00
it might because they know the the parents know the parents better but you never end up going there does does that
00:13:07
make sense well the other thing too that we got to keep in mind is I don't know 100% when this uh Barbara blatnik
00:13:16
website was created by the local armchair detective but Michelle is supplying the armchair detective with
00:13:25
this statement of the timeline for that night of or what she knows of the timeline for that night and this could
00:13:33
be 20 years later all right so we have a gathering at the bike shop that's where
00:13:39
Barbie runs into her friend Michelle Michelle was Barbie's friend who had just had a baby and the two actually
00:13:44
hadn't seen each other in a while now Michelle also had another girlfriend with her and they did eventually meet up
00:13:51
with at least one other girl their names are Linda and Sheila the four of them partied at the bike shop along with with
00:13:58
a bunch of other local teens this bike shop had a basement and the owner Jeff was known to provide booze and marijuana
00:14:06
to to attract teens to hang out there during the winter months when they couldn't party
00:14:12
Outdoors the girls partied there for a while and then they left in Michelle's car to go to a pub that served miners
00:14:20
this is on East 71st Street Barbie and her friends were known to hang out at pubs like this where drinking rules
00:14:29
weren't enforced and they were open late right and some people are probably listening right now going what bike shop
00:14:36
owners are supplying drugs for kids to hang out um bars serve underage people because that is cracked down on a lot
00:14:45
more now back in the 80s even in the '90s there was plenty of bars that you could go to cuz they had no customers so
00:14:52
they're they were fine with serving underage people right and they I really feel like it was in the the early 2000s
00:14:59
at least in this area which we are somewhat close to her area maybe hour and a half two hour drive let's say MH
00:15:07
but in our area it wasn't until the early 2000s where they really cracked down on that everybody either themselves
00:15:16
or know somebody that had a bar that they could go into and get a couple drinks and be 18 years old let's say or
00:15:24
19 years old right this is where things get a little tricky because now we know that they're at the pub okay but at
00:15:32
10:30 when that call goes from Barbie to her parents it's not known where that call was placed so that gets to be a bit
00:15:43
of a difficult thing it could have been as something as simple as calling from a
00:15:47
pay phone at that Pub but we don't have anybody else to tell us that Barbie that
00:15:53
they were present when she made that call so anyway we have the girls they sat at a table in the pub chatting and
00:16:01
drinking they say that nothing seemed a Miss according to Michelle anyway there was no one who seems strange or
00:16:08
threatening at the pub all right so we know that this call happened around 10:30 but based on Michelle's records we
00:16:16
don't know what time she left the bike shop what time they got to the pub so we don't know if this call came from the
00:16:22
bike shop or while they're at the pub or after the pub it would seem that it well
00:16:28
we do know what time they left the the pub so it would seem that this call would have had to have taken place if we
00:16:35
are going off a Michelle's events of that night that the call would have had to taken place at the either the pub or
00:16:43
at the bike shop right because Michelle goes on to say that the girls all of them including Barbie stayed at the pub
00:16:49
until closing time which was 3:15 a.m. at that time Michelle drove Barbie to the intersection of Warner Road and
00:16:57
Grand division at Avenue this is right near the bike shop so if you look at the area on a map you can see that it's a
00:17:06
residential neighborhood but Warner Road has commercial businesses like convenience stores automotive repair
00:17:12
shops and so on Barbie says that she was going to Jerry's house remember Jerry is
00:17:20
the boyfriend MH or the guy that she was seeing at the time Jerry Jerry dingleberry so this is fairly close to
00:17:28
the place where Michelle drops Barbie off he lived with his older brother Bob and his parents in a house behind the AC
00:17:37
Delco Auto Parts store which was another place where the kids would meet up to party in the yard in the parking lot
00:17:45
outside this mostly in the summertime when it was warmer outside right Michelle and the other friend dropped
00:17:53
Barbie off there and then drove off and never saw or heard from her again the next morning Sunday December 20th around
00:18:03
10:20 a.m. Barbara's nude and bruised body was found in a wooded area just off O'Neal Road near the Blossom Music
00:18:12
Center in kyoga Falls Ohio this is about 30 miles away from where Barbara was last seen yeah it's kind of out in the
00:18:21
middle of nowhere if if I remember correctly yeah kyoga Falls is a totally different area of Ohio and is a suburb
00:18:29
of akan whereas Barbara lived in Garfield Heights near Cleveland now initial reports confused things because
00:18:38
they stated that Barbie was found on the grounds of the Blossom Music Center this
00:18:43
is an outdoor concert venue the kind of place where like 15,000 people can watch
00:18:47
a concert yeah it's a pretty popular it's popular in that area anyway I saw a radio head there oh fantastic uh Barbie
00:18:57
and her friends had been there in the past to see concerts but she was nowhere near it on the night in question it
00:19:05
turns out that she wasn't found on the grounds of Blossom detectives corrected this on December 22nd she was found near
00:19:14
a wooded area on the side of a nearby access road that would not have been heavily trafficked on a Sunday morning
00:19:21
in December we don't know whether Blossom would have been open in December although it seems unlike
00:19:29
unless they had some kind of Christmas holiday show some of these places have holiday light displays and we do know
00:19:36
that blossom in modern times has a Halloween Fright Fest in October yeah but a lot of these concerts like we had
00:19:43
Germaine Ampitheater here which is similar to Blossom but a lot of those concerts don't you remember them like
00:19:50
closing down around midnight like there weren't it wasn't like a bar show where you'd stay there till 2:00 in the
00:19:57
morning remember some of them closing at 11:00 p.m. because of noise ordinances I'm assuming that it was not open that
00:20:06
night and probably not open during the cold weeks of early winter we have little details of how and
00:20:15
by whom Barbie was spotted newspaper reports stated that it was an employee of kst oil and gas who spotted Barbie's
00:20:25
body as he drove along the road The akan Beacon Journal and other papers reported
00:20:31
that she was found about 10 ft north of O'Neal Road O'Neal Road has a strange orientation in that it runs north and
00:20:40
south then curves sharply and runs east to west M and then turns again into North and South Barbara was found on the
00:20:51
Northern side of the East West portion which Falls between two other more unused
00:21:00
roads O'Neal Road runs parallel to another road that abuts the kyoga Valley National Recreation Area as for the
00:21:09
person who found her it doesn't seem bizarre that an oil and gas company worker would be out and about on that
00:21:17
desolate stretch of road right if he was on duty perhaps even working nearby what's
00:21:26
horrifying is that barb 's sister Donna tells us that when this person found Barbie who had been dumped naked on the
00:21:35
roadside like a piece of garbage she was still alive barely but alive and sadly that
00:21:43
was not the case for long you couldn't even imagine being at work and coming across somebody that is losing their
00:21:53
life yeah well we do have some of this autopsy information because it was released to the
00:22:02
newspapers at the time so the Summit County coroner this is William A Cox performed the autopsy promptly after she
00:22:10
was found a preliminary report was released on Monday the Beacon Journal quoted Cox's statement in some broadcast
00:22:18
interviews and what he said was very interesting he said that Barbie was killed in an unidentified place and her
00:22:25
body was taken to where it was found just a couple of hours before it was discovered so now we have to question
00:22:34
how could he come to this conclusion one thought I had is possibly since she was still breathing when found
00:22:42
he may have been estimating that she would not have survived long outside in the cold after such a brutal attack or
00:22:52
we have this too this possibility someone perhaps even the same oil and gas worker or someone else the police
00:22:59
talked to had drove by this area on O'Neal Road just a couple of hours before right and he or she was certain
00:23:08
that Barbie was not there at that time well like you said this worker could have been working in the area so he
00:23:15
could have been paying attention and said well when I entered my route I didn't see anybody there whatever the
00:23:22
case may be the coroner will stick with this timeline and stick to that statement as he stated the coroner
00:23:30
didn't believe that the O'Neal Road Site was the murder scene whether he could have concluded this because of lack of
00:23:37
blood signs of a struggle drag marks or disturbed foliage we don't know and we have no idea if Barbie was carried or
00:23:46
dragged to the dump site or just dumped out of a vehicle now coroner Cox also stated that Barbie was intoxicated when
00:23:55
she died this does go along with what we hear from Michelle her friend he did not
00:24:01
indicate a time of death but we know that she was still alive when found at 10:20 as for when the attack occurred we
00:24:09
can narrow that down ourselves if we assume her friend Michelle is accurate about the timeline
00:24:16
she provided then Barbie was still alive and well at around 3:30 a.m. when the girls were dropped off near Jerry's
00:24:25
house and she was found at 10 20 a.m. so sometime between the hours of 3:30 a.m.
00:24:31
and 10:20 a.m. someone raped and strangled Barbie and they beat her so badly that her neck had to be covered by
00:24:41
a scarf at her funeral service to disguised the bruising Barbara was found wearing only
00:24:48
her contact lenses and a class ring that displayed her school and her first name
00:24:54
inside of it her clothes and other jewelry that she was wearing that night have never been found now this is a
00:25:01
little known fact that was never released to the papers but we learned this from Donna from Barbie's sister it
00:25:10
was the 80s and Barbie was wearing at least four or five earrings and wearing uh you know tons of
00:25:19
stacked bracelets M at least two necklaces and possibly other jewelry that night kind of like the Madonna
00:25:26
style yeah or uh Mr T yeah uh none of these were were found at the scene the class
00:25:34
ring we have to wonder did the killer if he took and removed all these other items why not take the class ring was it
00:25:44
something as simple as he didn't see it or was it too hard to get off he couldn't take it off of her finger but
00:25:51
you said the the earrings were in or they were taken no earrings the only thing she had on her was her contact
00:25:57
lenses and class ring yeah I I would assume it was something just didn't see it or maybe he couldn't get it off yeah
00:26:06
and he would have had no way of knowing that her name was inside of this ring well which is actually that's if you're
00:26:13
assuming that the person that attacked her didn't know who she was no I mean the the her name was inside of the ring
00:26:21
so you would have to remove the ring to see her name right right there so if the
00:26:26
ring never came off he would not have known that and we can't we can't really go down the road too much of whether he
00:26:34
wanted her to remain unidentified for a period of time or if he cared at all uh but regarding this ring I want to point
00:26:43
that out because this is actually how they were able to identify her so they have her school class ring and then they
00:26:52
have her name inside of it that's what led them to realize that we have Barbara blatnik that we found on the side of the
00:27:00
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Angie that all right we're back cheers mates everybody keeps asking us where they can find all the episodes download
00:29:11
the Stitcher app they're free on the Stitcher app also check out our show on Stitcher premium called off the Record
00:29:18
let's get into this investigation some more so Barbie's case was assigned to the kyoga falls PD she was found in
00:29:27
Summit County not her native kyoga County keep in mind Barbie had no ties to kyoga Falls that police could find
00:29:37
and no one could think of a reason why she would be in that area all anyone knew was that Barbie and her friends
00:29:44
were very familiar with the Blossom Music Center so Barbie's case was investigated based on the jurisdiction
00:29:52
of the body not the jurisdiction where she had attended a party and been out and about just hours before her
00:30:01
death this is standard procedure but if the murder took place in or near Garfield Heights by a person or persons
00:30:09
who knew her perhaps this is why her case remains unsolved and perhaps dumping her in Summit County may have
00:30:18
been quite deliberate after the autopsy Corner Cox made some statements to the media that
00:30:25
are interesting Barbie was strangled to death we don't know whether manual or with an Implement and she was raped
00:30:34
what's intriguing here and these are some uncomfortable details to cover in the case but they're important to the
00:30:42
case so bear with me here for a minute the main thing that's intriguing about what Cox went out of his way to
00:30:50
clarify regarding Barbara being raped he says quote by more than one person end quote this statement was made to the
00:30:59
media on Tuesday December 22nd so only 2 days after Barbie was found dead the question becomes how could the coroner
00:31:08
know this detail this is 1987 and very very early in the DNA testing era and what is the likelihood that a
00:31:19
small town in Ohio had access to the highest level of DNA testing available at the time or could complete that
00:31:27
testing within just 48 Hours my guess is slim to none one thing that is possible
00:31:36
is that perhaps the coroner found two different samples of seen on different parts of Barbie's body and he did blood
00:31:44
type testing which showed two different types what seems more likely is that Cox
00:31:50
may have just jumped to this conclusion based on what he determined in the autopsy that Barbie had been raped
00:31:57
repeatedly he said quote it was repetitious I believe that we are dealing with more than one person
00:32:05
whether or not this is correct is really anyone's guess in any event coroner Cox
00:32:10
said that Barbie was raped by more than one perpetrator it's interesting to hear
00:32:15
Cox describe the state of DNA testing back in late 1987 the following appeared in a Beacon Journal article about
00:32:24
Barbie's case on December 23rd 1987 where it says quote sperm taken from the girl's body has been sent to a New York
00:32:33
firm for analysis of genetic content because molecular genetic material DNA is different for everyone except
00:32:42
identical twins a print of this material would be equivalent to a fingerprint for
00:32:49
positive identification cocked the question is is there enough to cultivate if anything ever came of this DNA
00:32:57
analysis police have not revealed that an article in the Beacon Journal in February of 1988 stated that although
00:33:04
coroner Cox used the DNA test on Barbie he said nothing had been produced to help identify a suspect why you wonder
00:33:13
did they have enough to identify a suspect right and that's the question that he first posed when they were going
00:33:19
to send it off for analysis now we don't know if that means they didn't get a match to anyone or whether they weren't
00:33:28
able to extract a profile at all as you're saying MH for what it's worth we did ask the sergeant currently in charge
00:33:36
of the kyoga falls detective unit whether there was any testable DNA in Barbie's case and he told us that quote
00:33:44
we've done everything we can do with regard to DNA and quote and he would not comment on whether any samples remain
00:33:52
intact for future testing right so we can't assume either way but if they have it we've like we know now we're in the
00:34:00
Golden Age and this could get solved Donna this her sister does not know whether any DNA from Barbie's attacker
00:34:08
remains either she does know though that her sister was a fighter and would almost certainly have harvested
00:34:14
perpetrator DNA under her fingernails as she fought for her life I know that they
00:34:20
did a toxicology report and they said that she had been drinking but I wonder if they went any further because let's
00:34:28
say there wasn't DNA underneath her fingernails I mean do we know that no we don't know that that's just speculation
00:34:35
by her family and with her sister saying look my sister was a fighter this also makes you wonder was Barbie you know in
00:34:44
a state where she could even fight back or was she so heavily intoxicated or or drugged by something where she couldn't
00:34:52
fight back right and really the the simplest thing with all of these words that the
00:34:59
corner is saying really all that's providing to us the general public is that they have or had some form of DNA
00:35:10
they know that she was raped and they've they believe that she was dumped there within just a couple of hours of being
00:35:19
found so another intriguing tidbit that the coroner mentioned to the media this involved some something found on
00:35:28
Barbie's body so the coroner found that she had something written on her hand two lines of text written in
00:35:36
pen so during the autopsy this is what Cox says we notice that there was some kind of writing in the palm of her left
00:35:44
hand some of it was legible and some was not he stated that the first line contained numbers and the second line
00:35:52
was words possibly Cox guessed it was an address so what did the authorities in Summit County do to try to interpret the
00:36:03
writing which the Press immediately seized upon as a possible clue left by Barbie as to her Killer's Identity or
00:36:12
identities MH without her family's consent or even their knowledge the amputated her left hand
00:36:22
and sent it to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis Cox said that the lab had sophisticated
00:36:30
laser and infrared technologies that might enable them to decipher the wording on Barbie's palm and that he
00:36:38
should have the results in a few weeks and that's the last the public heard of this writing on her Palm whether or not
00:36:46
it was an actual clue well we don't know well it's weird be because okay we do know that she went to a bike shop
00:36:56
that she went to often why would you write down that address right this other party that she
00:37:02
told her parents about if she left a address when she called I would then assume that that
00:37:10
would be the address that you might find on her hand but we could also assume that maybe
00:37:15
she knew where that party was too mhm and then she gets dropped off at her boyfriend's house or her I mean we're
00:37:23
calling it her boyfriend right but she was kind of not one to have serious relationships
00:37:30
mhm you would assume that she knew the address of course she does yeah right so why would you write that down on your
00:37:37
hand so if if it's not a phone number which that would make sense to me as well you're out at some parties you run
00:37:44
into some friends or Old Friends hey here's my number but but the corner is saying I think it's an address numbers
00:37:54
words underneath to me you'd only write that down if you're going to a place that you
00:37:59
didn't know mhm and so it's like is this a sign okay we don't have any we don't have any information back
00:38:09
they they sever her hand they send it to the FBI why the family hasn't got some answers on this is absolutely
00:38:19
ridiculous well even more so that they weren't asked for permission to do so or or at least even told about it yes right
00:38:29
right I maybe not asking for permission um but saying hey this is what we're doing because this is how we think we
00:38:37
can solve this and this is what we discovered that's appalling really um that's like you know that's just very
00:38:47
disrespectful to Barbie and her family well they likely they likely didn't get the information from it even during this
00:38:54
testing that they were hoping to to get right but let's just assume that Cox is correct right that it was some
00:39:02
kind of address then it almost implies that she knew she was going somewhere or possibly going to go somewhere after she
00:39:11
gets dropped off at her boyfriend's house mhm yeah or I mean it could have been for any type of future use we don't
00:39:19
know that it had to have been for that night and when I first read this statement my mind jumped to
00:39:26
a phone number you know I could see we've all done it whether it be a piece of paper or on your hand where you
00:39:34
write down someone's name and a phone number but the way that he says it when he says that there were numbers on top
00:39:42
and some type of words on the bottom that to me I'm I'm going with Coxs on this one because that's how I would
00:39:50
typically write down an address you know the the the numeric and then the street
00:39:57
name so the other thing too is we've not actually seen this and not many people have apparently the including the family
00:40:06
so it's very likely that whether you're able to make it out or not what what was
00:40:11
written there's a chance that he could have looked at this and said well there's only four or five numbers on top
00:40:19
not enough for an actual phone number again this type of laser technology back then we have
00:40:26
discussed this on some of the other cases that we covered that were around the same time frame it wasn't uncommon
00:40:33
for them to bring in these this Laser Technology from the FBI to try to find fingerprints on a body or on certain
00:40:42
items so this is really just to try to paint a a better picture and fill in some of the blanks because if there
00:40:51
weren't blanks they wouldn't have had to send it off to be tested well this is also kind of the problem with
00:40:57
having where she was found not where we think the actual crime took place but where she was found
00:41:04
investigate this crime because again maybe you have some smeared letters or numbers or whatever but maybe detectives
00:41:15
within her home town would know what those meant you know what I mean like they have a better chance of you know
00:41:24
does that make any sense I I mean I know what you're getting at but I don't I don't know I do think that there is
00:41:30
confusion in this case because they did follow protocol and and the investigative agency was where the
00:41:40
body was found right right but I understand this protocol but again it's to me the protocol should be not only are
00:41:49
we going to have where she was found investigate but where she came from we're going to have
00:41:57
them involved because again a name or a number might ring a bell to a local detective where it might mean nothing to
00:42:05
somebody from Kai hoga Falls you know so when we covered the Tony Muny case that
00:42:11
took place in the 80s as well and in Ohio as well there was a bit of a struggle for jurisdiction regarding that
00:42:19
case I don't know that there was necessarily a struggle for jurisdiction here but just to give some people an
00:42:25
example of such in Tony mun's case he lived in Columbus Ohio he was found in Delaware
00:42:32
County and found within what was it 24 hours or so after he was last seen yeah now a lot of people just to clear this
00:42:41
up a lot of people are going Tony Muny I don't know if I heard that episode is one of our uh bonus episodes we only
00:42:47
have two uh Tony Muny and the brick of family murders you can find those on iTunes or on our website yeah and during
00:42:55
that time Columbus PD said we want to take this case on because we believe he was he was
00:43:02
killed likely in Columbus or by somebody that that was in Columbus okay right and Delaware County
00:43:10
was like no we're going to take it because we found the body in Delaware County what what transpired there in my
00:43:17
opinion I don't mean to criticize but the leads that Delaware County was following they weren't they weren't
00:43:23
equipped to handle that type of case back then they are nowadays but not back then I think it would have been a
00:43:31
different outcome had Columbus Police Department been the one to lead the investigation or I mean well I shouldn't
00:43:39
say lead because they weren't really allowed to be involved very much at all right so what you're saying is not to
00:43:45
offend but hey you guys are just little pieces of [ __ ] well I don't know the way
00:43:50
that it went down in Barbie's CL in Barbie's case I don't know that they were that there was a struggle for
00:43:57
jurisdiction what I'm getting at here is but see what I'm saying my the new protocol not to cut you off sorry but
00:44:04
new protocol is everybody works together that's the new protocol right I mean the
00:44:09
somebody may still have the lead on a case but often times we see yeah of at least here in Ohio what we've seen with
00:44:17
our own eyes and a lot of times with the cases that we've covered elsewhere what
00:44:22
we see is when we're reporting this stuff it's like we mentioned two or three or four agencies when we're
00:44:28
talking about some of these cases so I don't know how much involvement Garfield Heights actually
00:44:37
had in this situation because we know that it was Summit County that had the case and we know still to this day the
00:44:43
case remains unsolved and Summit County still has the case where I will give criticism goes back to the removal of
00:44:52
the hand because this is the way that this whole thing thing went down and it's a
00:44:57
bit shameful to me the family discovered that Barbie's hand was severed and sent away
00:45:04
effectively mutilating the corpse when a reporter called the blat neck home and the person that answered the phone was
00:45:14
19-year-old Donna her sister and she was simply asked by the reporter why was your sister's hand why had it been cut
00:45:23
off what I'm getting at is I'm not suggesting that they would have had to ask for permission but I do think there
00:45:30
are better ways to handle this situation when you have loved ones that are mourning the
00:45:36
loss of their sister and their daughter where you don't have to show any of your cards per se you could
00:45:45
simply say look this is one thing that we think will be extremely helpful to the investigation of the murder of your
00:45:53
daughter the hand contains we believe that it could contain some evidence that could lead us to the perpetrator right
00:46:02
and in order for us to do the best job we can as investigators we're going to actually turn over this to the FBI right
00:46:11
you don't have to tell them what you found you don't have to and in doing so we have to remove her hand right and you
00:46:17
know because it'd be a very difficult thing for a parent because part of you would
00:46:23
just be going can't they just come here yeah can't they just come here do we have
00:46:29
to you know put her through more than she's already been through right and and I understand that she passed away at
00:46:37
this point but that's what it feel like that you're putting her through more torture than is necessary
00:46:45
so what is known about the investigation is uh besides what we've already talked
00:46:51
about B by Tuesday December 23rd kyoga Falls Police had interviewed 15 or 20 people in connection with Barbie's death
00:47:01
including a number of her friends but they said publicly that they had come up with nothing concrete and had no
00:47:11
definite suspects in mind what if any police uncovered in their investigation remains a mystery even to this day when
00:47:20
we inquired of the kyoga falls Sergeant about certain aspects of the C such as whether police ever found her clothes or
00:47:28
jewelry or whether they could tell us what the message was on her hand we received basically a no comment which is
00:47:36
which is fine that's good I hope what that means fine well it's fine that's good and I say that
00:47:43
because I hope that this is a case that they're revisiting from time to time and
00:47:47
they don't want to show any of those cards that we just talked about right but you could say something like that
00:47:53
and we're currently working on this uh we don't want to compromise what we have um but the fact that there's out there's
00:48:01
people out there like you said armchair detectives you got people in our family that are still pushing this forward now
00:48:07
we're trying to push this forward sometimes these cops need to get off uh stop sitting on their hands and put out
00:48:15
more information even if cuz that's going to be my argument constantly you see it
00:48:22
like with the Amy Mahal case coming out with new evidence and having press conferences 20 years after the
00:48:29
fact you know some of that stuff just doesn't make any sense and if they have DNA they need to be testing it well
00:48:37
according to Barbie's family the clothes in the jewelry were never found and the
00:48:44
police captain at the time back in 1988 told the Beacon Journal that quote we have probably interviewed over 200
00:48:52
people about Barbie's last hours her whereabouts and the timeline 10 years later reflecting on the unsolved case in
00:49:00
1997 the lead kyoga Falls detective on the case Larry Wagner theorized that it hadn't been solved because the crime was
00:49:09
probably committed 30 mil away in Garfield Heights and police didn't have an easy time tracking down Witnesses
00:49:17
Wagner said quote she was a fairly popular young lady so she had a lot of friends and a lot of people we had to
00:49:24
look into I'll bet we interviewed at least 100 people but he said they had very few solid leads to go on even
00:49:33
chalking her murder up to a possible transient and that's about it for public knowledge of the official
00:49:43
investigation now thanks to the Facebook page and Barbie's sister Donna again we
00:49:50
have a little more insight into some of the players whom police might have spoke
00:49:54
to or looked at in this case according to Michelle Barbie did not hook up with Jerry her boyfriend that night at least
00:50:03
initially right we know that Jerry wasn't around she asked to be dropped off on Warner Road and that she was
00:50:10
going to head to his house nearby by local reports Jerry wasn't home he was out with his friends that
00:50:19
night we have no idea whether Barbie knocked on the door or just went away when no one answered right what the
00:50:26
situation could have been or here's a possibility or if Bob Jerry's brother or anyone else answered the door if Barbie
00:50:38
did approach the door and knock right well because we have to put it out there that it's a possibility that she tells
00:50:44
her friends hey drop me off by my boyfriend's house and that could have been a meeting spot for her to meet
00:50:53
somebody else so we don't even know if she made it to her boyfriend's house right exactly I mean there could be any
00:51:00
number of reasons for her to change her mind and go elsewhere right we do know that Jerry was looked at Hard by police
00:51:08
but it's unknown whether they ever tested his DNA so he's not home that we know of and well we we know according to
00:51:18
statements that he was out with friends that night right so he has an alibi he's
00:51:22
not at home and he has an alibi it seems like was looked at pretty good by police
00:51:28
but it is unknown whether they ever tested his DNA mhm we have been told that several of the guys in the
00:51:35
neighborhood eager to exclude themselves from the suspect pool agreed to be tested but we don't know for certain if
00:51:44
Jerry was one of them according to Donna there were a few who refused but police
00:51:51
seem to have satisfied themselves that Jerry was not involved we're basing this off of the fact that he was never named
00:51:58
a suspect or arrested uh he has since passed away so you got all these local Creos think about the shitty things that
00:52:07
you had to do with your life where you somebody comes up missing somebody's uh dead body is found and you're very eager
00:52:18
to get yourself excluded from the investigation well I don't know that that necessarily means that they're
00:52:24
creeps or that they've done anything wrong not all of them but I'm saying out one of them in that group is super duper
00:52:31
creepo right and so he's going please test me cuz I've made a lot of bad decisions and I don't want people to
00:52:38
think that I did this I I don't know I'm just saying there there's at least one and I'm just
00:52:44
saying that guy made a lot of bad decisions it's a possibility but when they're talking to these
00:52:50
individuals look if they believe that they have a blood typee or or anything regarding DNA right or that type of
00:52:59
evidence that can either clear somebody or connect them they're not going to make their jobs any harder than it has
00:53:06
to be they're going to ask you where you were that night do you know Barbara blatnik uh how long have you known her
00:53:12
do you know any of her friends okay who of them do you know would you be willing
00:53:15
to submit your DNA or your blood type or any of that evidence to us and we can either include you or exclude you but
00:53:24
I'm saying there might be some somebody in the audience going with their hand raised please test me hey we're not even
00:53:30
talking to you no I know you're not talking to me but please test me I want to be excluded from this investigation I
00:53:37
think what's more interesting is the um Alibi that some of these teenagers and young adults may or may not have had for
00:53:48
that night MH we have a lot of kids and young adults that are look I'm not going to
00:53:55
accuse them of of anything that we don't already know these are people that are drinking underage smoking some pot
00:54:04
hanging out partying not a big deal right that's pretty that's a fairly common activities for people of that age
00:54:12
right so no big deal there no harm no foul however I think where a lot of the the
00:54:20
trouble that this investigation has got into is going off of the word of these young adults and teenagers that are
00:54:32
breaking some very small rules and laws right I wonder how well we can trust the
00:54:39
aliis and statements provided to detectives regarding what was going on that night with whom and where right so
00:54:48
hypothetically speaking you got a group of teenagers that were hanging out at the Captain's Pub and the captain's Pub
00:54:54
was serving in miners alcohol that night my ties and margaritas yeah loads of my
00:55:02
ties and and we got a special drink called the douche canoe it's very long and it's filled with booze and it's kind
00:55:08
of like a fish bowl but anyways there's a so here's what I'm hearing you say it's a teen a teenage
00:55:16
group might tell the cops we were at Tommy's house or we were just driving around and not to give the location of
00:55:27
the place that they might have been drinking or partying at mhm and so that makes did they do anything wrong no are
00:55:34
they involved in the crime no but it's making a lot of these stories unclear yes and and I base that off of this so
00:55:45
let's I'm going to create four different compartments real quick here regarding these teens and young adults and
00:55:52
especially the young adults that are still living at home with Mom and Dad okay so we have the a group that may not
00:55:59
give a [ __ ] about anything and they're just willing to tell the cops whatever because they don't care they don't fear
00:56:05
the cops they don't fear their parents they don't fear the law then we have another group who might be terrified of
00:56:15
getting in trouble with the law may not understand the law and think oh I sold some pot to these people right I'm going
00:56:21
to go away forever okay and then you have another grp group group C that might just be
00:56:26
terrified of mom and dad I don't want to get in trouble with Mom and Dad or I don't want to disappoint my parents
00:56:32
right then we got Group D who is going to go you know what maybe I'm a little afraid of the law maybe I'm a little
00:56:40
afraid of disappointing my parents but in the sake of doing what's right I'm going
00:56:49
to accept what I've done and I'm going to tell the truth to the police anyway right but what I'm getting at is you
00:56:56
still have two groups within that that large pool of people we know that she was a popular kid she had a lot of
00:57:02
friends nobody there's nobody out there saying differently so you have a large group of people all of them young adults
00:57:10
and teenagers and you have if we're going to break that up into just four different groups we got two of those
00:57:16
four groups that probably would bend the truth well right or leave out details or
00:57:21
you know the other group is the people that don't want to get that establishment that they're at in trouble
00:57:27
right so so no and then on top of that no it also can affect your personal life going forward right and your activities
00:57:36
maybe you love going to the bike shop in December and January and getting all boozed up with your buddies but guess
00:57:42
what after I tell the truth about what I was doing that night when barbar went missing and then was found dead MH guess
00:57:48
what I can no longer say hey Mom Dad I'm going off to the bike shop see you in a
00:57:53
few hours that ain't going to fly anymore well yeah and all those rats that ratted out the captain's Pub No
00:58:00
douche canoe for you no douche canoe for you well in episode two of this case Captain I really want to take a deep
00:58:06
dive into what are some other possibilities for that night for Barbara's last night and I also want to
00:58:14
explore if her murder could be connected to other murders in the [Music] area a lot more to dive into if you have
00:58:33
thoughts on this go to True Crime garage.com and leave your comments on the blog yep join us back here for part
00:58:42
two until then be good be kind and don't litter [Music] you can start your day off right when
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