00:00:41
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thank you for listening. I'm your host Nick
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and with me as always is a man who is every bit as good as advertised, and that's pretty, pretty good. He is the
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captain. I might be as good as the side effects that are advertised. He might cause diarrhea. Thank you,
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alcohol content of a Sessions beer, and Speed Wobbles does that perfectly with an ABV of 4.6%.
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Garage grade four and a quarter bottle caps out of five, and this week our fridge is full thanks to these drinking
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buddies right here. First up, a cheers and a big say hello to your mother for me to my good, good friend Brad in Grove
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truecrimegarage.com and that's 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. Each year, as we venture through life,
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there are markers along our journey. Holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. These can be cause for celebration, gift
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giving, and reflection. These markers along life's highway are not only something we welcome, but
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something we look forward to. We all will celebrate a birthday in 2019. And I, like so many of you out there,
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I will observe my own holidays and anniversaries throughout this year. Think about your life,
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your loved ones, and celebrations you've had so far, and the ones you are looking forward to.
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Now, put yourself in the shoes of the loved one or family member of a victim of someone no longer with us.
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Of course, these loved ones are victims as well. But these victims, so very unfortunately, are victimized repeatedly
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over and over again. Each year, they experience holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries,
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but without their loved one. Unlike the rest of us, these are not dates or markers
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that they look forward to, often choosing to spend this time alone, unable to celebrate.
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The days that we are often the happiest are the times that they struggle the most.
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And then, they get to do it all over again next year, and the next year, and the year after that.
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Next week, we will recognize an anniversary, but not one that anyone will be looking
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forward to. Next week marks the 10-year anniversary of when Tony Lee Sharpless vanished.
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10 years have gone by, and there's still no trace of her. Or is there? This is True Crime Garage,
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and this is the case of Tony Lee Sharpless. Tony Lee Sharpless was born on December
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27th, 1979. Her father was killed in an accident when she was just six years old. Later
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Tony's mother remarried, so Tony and her sister Candy were raised by her mother and stepfather in West Brandywine
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Township, an area of about 4,500 people. West Brandywine is about 60 miles west of Philadelphia. From what we can tell,
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the parents provided a loving and supportive home to the two girls. But Tony would struggle getting involved
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in her teen years with drugs and alcohol. At 17, she was pregnant. Her mom says Tony was determined to keep the baby and
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to get herself together and be a good mother. Tony started working full-time leaving her daughter in the care of her
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parents and she focused on being a good parent herself. Tony wanted to provide a good life for
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her daughter and be a good example, but life as a young single mother was not easy and her mom says Tony had her first
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breakdown at either age 19 or 20. Tony suddenly lapsed into several days of uncontrollable crying. She was
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hospitalized and examined but wasn't diagnosed with any condition at that time. She went back to drinking and
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occasionally taking drugs and even totaled her car. Now this was very traumatic and it was
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something that she vowed never to repeat. Unfortunately, there were two suicide attempts as well.
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She and her daughter moved to Florida briefly. Tony and her daughter moved back in with
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Tony's mom and stepdad in Pennsylvania after this short trip to Florida. These behavior cycles continued until
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2005 when Tony was diagnosed bipolar and placed on prescription medication. This
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was to allow her to stabilize to the point that she could be able to enroll in a
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nursing program. Toni's parents helped her as she worked on the weekends as a nurse's aide and
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navigated nursing school. Everyone says Toni was managing well for most of this time.
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She stayed stable throughout nursing school and in 2007 started working at Lancaster General Hospital.
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Friends describe Toni as a brilliant woman who loved her job. It seems she had put her addiction
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issues behind her and her disease was under control thanks to proper medication and things seemed to be
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looking up for her. Yeah, but at some point she's going to be convicted of a DUI. And in early 2009 she started
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behaving erratically. Her friend Crystal Johns says that in early 2009 Toni was cycling between mania and depression.
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Toni entered a 3-week stint in a psych rehab facility in April of 2009. According to her family, it was here
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that Toni was issued a new prescription for bipolar disorder and treated for alcohol abuse
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and she came out of rehab a renewed person. She stabilized and was able to return to work and resumed her routine
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as a dependable mom to her now 12-year-old daughter. Right, but let's be clear. There's no test that they can
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give somebody to be like, "Oh, you took this test, you are bipolar." So, most psychologists won't diagnose somebody
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with bipolar disease. They they monitor it for years, actually. So, with therapy
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and trying different prescriptions, and this is kind of what they're doing. So, when they said that but some doctors
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will um diagnose right away and start prescribing right away. Mhm. Well, at this point Tony was working as
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an infectious disease nurse, typically working a 12-hour night shift then coming home in the morning.
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Things went smoothly for about 4 months. The one thing that seemed to have been very tough for Tony to adjust to was her
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bipolar meds prohibited her from drinking. Just like a lot of other medications,
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alcohol and her medications, they do not mix well together, basically giving you undesirable side effects to
00:10:13
things like mood, behavior, and your health. Well, some of the anti-psychotics, if you drink on them,
00:10:19
they actually could cause death. So, we know that Tony had a problem with alcohol in the past, but after this
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relapse, Tony seems to have changed her lifestyle to avoid drinking, at least initially. She wasn't going
00:10:34
out, she was staying focused on work and family. Now, Captain, we need to talk about the
00:10:41
events of August 22nd and 23rd, 2019. Uh August 22nd was a Saturday, and Tony finished a long shift at the hospital.
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She was down because of a couple different reasons. A patient had committed suicide
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at the hospital by jumping out of the window just weeks earlier, and a close friend of hers
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her her brother had been killed in a car accident. So, she's got her own struggles, but there's there's some
00:11:11
other things going on here to add to this, add a a different layer to this. Now, Saturday morning after getting off
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work, Tony went over to her sister Candy's apartment. Remember, they're very close, these two sisters.
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She hung out with Candy's kids and and helped Candy clean her apartment. Then they picked up Tony's daughter, and they
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went to a mall, a shopping mall for a day of shopping. Now, the shopping group was joined by Tony's old friend Crystal
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Johns. Tony bought some new clothes and and some new hair color and the two friends caught up on life. It's my
00:11:47
understanding that these two are are old friends and they didn't have a relationship for quite
00:11:56
some time. And at some point this relationship is renewed. Now, Crystal said she was going to go
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out that night to some clubs to meet up with some of her friends. And she encouraged Tony to join her.
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Candy was also included in this invitation, but Candy declined. Mhm. She said later that she was somewhat
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surprised that Tony agreed to go out because this was going to be a partying situation.
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But she guessed that Tony felt that you know, maybe she deserved some fun after not being out for several months.
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Now, Tony dropped off her daughter with her parents and said goodbye to the three of them. This is around like 9:30
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p.m. Tony's friend from nursing school, GG Hayes, told us that she spoke with Tony
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that day. And she believes Tony was clearly in or possibly entering a manic stage which GG
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had seen and witnessed before. She says that in those stages Tony would do very impulsive things.
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GG cautioned her about going out with Crystal and says that she and Tony's mother, Donna, both were
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concerned. Now, Donna says that while Tony most of the time took her medications as
00:13:17
required, the day before she called and asked Donna to call into the pharmacy for refills. Mhm. Apparently, Tony would
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often fail to take medication when she decided she was feeling good. You know, she would kind of We see this a lot
00:13:34
where where people decide they don't need their medication because of the way they feel.
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Um, and this seems to be the case here as well. Well, I'm not a doctor. I'm a captain.
00:13:46
And all medicines work differently, but skipping one day of these medications are not going to derail you completely.
00:13:54
We don't know this for certain, but what we can say is that Tony's family seems to think that it's possible that Tony
00:14:03
did not take her pills that day or maybe in the past day or past few days leading
00:14:10
up to this day. Again, we don't know for certain. And again, we don't know how these
00:14:15
medications are going to react with her. That's correct. After saying goodbye, Tony went over to Crystal's, where the
00:14:22
two got glammed up to go out. Tony wore black pants or tights and a turquoise top and sandals.
00:14:30
Uh, Crystal later said in an interview that she didn't know that Tony wasn't supposed to drink while on her
00:14:36
medication. According to her, she didn't even know that Tony was bipolar. Remember, we said that the the
00:14:43
relationship is uh, kind of a new spark to an old friendship, right? According to Tony's friend GG, Crystal
00:14:55
was not a great influence for Tony. That's that's GG's opinion. She had serious reservations about Tony's
00:15:04
decision to go out with Crystal that night. Uh, the two young women went off to two
00:15:11
different clubs. First, they hit up Club Ice in King of Prussia, which is in Lower Merion Township, and then they
00:15:19
drove to G Lounge in Philly. Yeah, G Lounge. Right. It's where I get my swerve on.
00:15:27
It was here that they met up with Matt Green Mhm. who was hanging out with his brother. His brother at the time played
00:15:35
for the 76ers, a professional basketball team in the NBA. His name is Willie Green.
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It's not really clear what exactly the relationship was between Crystal and Matt. We know that they met up that
00:15:49
night. We know that Crystal told Tony earlier that day, "Hey, I'm going out with friends, meeting up with some
00:15:55
friends. Why don't you come with me?" What I've heard is that it that sometimes this relationship between Crystal and
00:16:03
Matt may have just been a casual hookup. You know, that they were had some type of relationship when he was around kind
00:16:09
of thing. Right. Now, the girls, from what we've been told, received VIP treatment at G Lounge, drinking
00:16:17
champagne, vodka, doing shots. Sounds like they're having a good time. Now, Tony spent quite a bit of time on
00:16:25
the dance floor. One incident did happen here at the club that upset Tony. This is according to
00:16:33
Crystal. Apparently, two Hispanic men who were hitting on her, they were conversing in
00:16:39
Spanish about Tony. And one of them said that Tony looked like she was 35 years old. Now,
00:16:46
remember, Tony is only 29 at this time. Tony actually spoke fluent Spanish and could understand everything that they
00:16:55
were saying. And this really upset her. Now, clubs in Philly stop serving alcohol at 2:00 a.m. And everybody has
00:17:05
to be out of the bars at 2:30. They are with a crew of about six or seven total.
00:17:13
And it sounds like they wanted to keep partying. So, Willie, Willie Green, the basketball
00:17:18
player, invited everyone back to his mansion. This is in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania.
00:17:24
This is about a 30-40 minute drive from where they're currently located. Yeah, that's that's never good. Hey,
00:17:31
we've been drinking and doing a bunch of drugs. Let's drive 30-40 minutes. And I'm I'm not certain as to what time
00:17:38
they arrived at the first club, but one thing we do know is they stayed at the second club until closing time. So,
00:17:46
we can assume that most of them are pretty sauced up by this point. What what's closing time there? Cuz
00:17:51
closing time here is 2:00 a.m., but Well, serving stops at 2:00 a.m. and everyone has to be out of the bar at
00:17:58
2:30. Okay, so the same same as us. Tony drove herself and Crystal in her black four-door 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix GT, uh
00:18:09
which had tinted windows. Whether or not she should have been driving is not clear. This has never
00:18:16
been made clear by anybody that night, but Tony was operating on, from what we know, 36 hours of no sleep,
00:18:24
medication, which is either wearing off or no medication, Right. bipolar disorder, and plenty of
00:18:32
alcohol. Uh Crystal categorically denies that either she or Tony did any drugs that
00:18:39
night. So, we'll give Crystal the benefit of the doubt and say we won't include drugs in that in that statement.
00:18:46
Now, Tony was also very bad with directions. She was driving to an unfamiliar area.
00:18:54
She had a new phone that she had just got like a few days before, and she wasn't able to figure out the
00:19:00
GPS on this new phone. In fact, they had a real tough go of it trying to get to the G Lounge. I guess they drove around
00:19:09
a lot longer than than normal trying to find this place cuz they didn't know where they were
00:19:14
going. they went to H lounge first and had to circle back around. Up to the M lounge, down to the Z, back
00:19:20
to the A, found found themselves at the G. Skipped the B, yeah. Apparently when they were heading out to
00:19:27
Willie Green's house, Crystal was the one who was able to figure out the GPS. So they used GPS to get to his house.
00:19:36
Now Gladwyne is a very upper-crust suburb of Philadelphia. One news article says that it's one of the most expensive
00:19:44
towns in the United States. The NBA player and party host Willie Green was making quite a bit of money
00:19:54
uh in those days. And his house that he lived in cost about $780,000. This was uh
00:20:03
purchased in 2006 from my understanding. It's not totally clear how many people ended up at his house.
00:20:11
We have heard that it was Willie, Matt, their uncle, another girl also named Crystal,
00:20:19
and according to Crystal Johns, this other Crystal wasn't too happy that she and Tony were there.
00:20:26
And possibly one other person that I don't have a name for. We also don't know exactly what what
00:20:33
happened there. You know, we do know that Tony texted her daughter at 2:57 a.m. This is while on the
00:20:42
on the School Kill Expressway. I hope I said that right. This is Interstate 76 and it was on the way to
00:20:51
the house party. Now Tony is responding to a text from her daughter. The daughter's saying,
00:20:58
"Hey, I can't sleep." And Tony texts back saying something like, "Honey, I'll be home soon. Get some sleep." or "I
00:21:05
hope you can get to sleep. See you soon. Love you. Something like that. Right, which is the typical parent
00:21:10
[ __ ] text like, "Hey, we'll be back soon." Which really means, "Just go to sleep and I'll see you in the morning."
00:21:16
Whatever the exact wording of this response was, it sounded totally normal. Although
00:21:25
moving forward, I want everybody to keep in mind there's no proof that it was actually Tony that that sent that text.
00:21:32
Well, if she's driving, she could have just had her friend send the text. Her friend figured out the GPS, right? Mhm.
00:21:39
Right. But it But again, what I want to point out is I I don't mean just whose fingers were on the
00:21:45
phone. I mean we There's a lot of questions about that night. And you And that will become very
00:21:51
clear very soon. But just to point out, even though the text came from Tony's phone and it was to her daughter in
00:21:59
response to a text I don't want anybody to believe 100% that that Tony sent this text or was the
00:22:07
one that chose the words for the text. Now, only Crystal Johns, out of all the people that apparently were there or
00:22:14
could have been there that night, only Crystal Johns has spoken publicly about that night. She has done
00:22:22
interviews, TV shows, blogs, and other forms of media about what she says exactly went down at Willie Green's
00:22:31
home. Now, she was initially very eager to talk. Right, you know, right from the get.
00:22:38
Yeah. But to be clear, Crystal's story of what occurred that evening is the only narrative we have to go on.
00:22:45
While it appears that her story has changed in in in little ways, somewhat in the
00:22:51
especially in the early days the gist of what she said happened is this. The crew at the house was playing a
00:22:59
drinking game that involves the card game Taboo. At some point during the game, Tony made
00:23:07
Again, she's she's worded this several different ways and I don't want to upset anybody here. But from my understanding,
00:23:14
she Tony made a joking comment that either was or could have been a racial slur.
00:23:21
Now, it's worth noting that both Crystal and Tony are white and Willie and Matt are black.
00:23:30
Also, Tony's daughter is mixed-race. I'm just pointing all that out. I wasn't at the party. I don't know exactly what
00:23:37
went down. Right. When Willie expressed displeasure at Tony's word choice, yeah.
00:23:46
I guess Tony lost it, according to Crystal. She started pouring champagne on the
00:23:51
floor and getting belligerent. Now, in another account, Crystal says she herself was in the pool and someone came
00:24:01
out and found her and said there was something going on or something wrong with her friend.
00:24:07
And she found Tony kicking furniture, cursing, and throwing things and acting extremely drunk. Pulling a
00:24:14
Rick James. Yeah, that [ __ ] your couch. This behavior was out of character for Tony, said
00:24:25
Crystal. But others who knew Tony said that it was not totally out of character if she was having an episode.
00:24:35
And Crystal says that Willie asked the two of them to leave. Mhm. And angry and crying, Tony grabbed her keys and said
00:24:44
that she was she was driving. Well, in all fairness, I mean, you go to a house party with Willie Green,
00:24:51
basketball player, NBA, right? Mhm. And they you're expecting a party and they pull out Taboo?
00:25:00
Give me a break. Yeah. Yeah, I Again, I don't know what was going on, but but when she says that
00:25:07
she's No, I want to party. She's asked to leave, and she know, she grabs her keys.
00:25:16
She says she's driving. I guess some of the guys in the group started laughing and told her, you know, "Hey, by the
00:25:23
way, don't hit any of our cars on the way out of the driveway." As soon as she and Crystal got to
00:25:30
Tony's Grand Prix, Tony started yelling at Crystal. Accusing her of laughing at her with the others. You know, the
00:25:40
"Hey, you you you brought me here. You asked me to join along on this party." Maybe maybe she screwed up. Maybe she
00:25:45
didn't. I don't know, but whatever went down, according to Crystal, Tony at this
00:25:50
point not only feels like the people that stayed at the party are against her, but her friend or so-called friend
00:25:57
Crystal is now against her, as well. Well, this is a tough situation. There's a lot of people that are
00:26:04
uh suffering with bipolar or mental illnesses that that um once they get their medication right,
00:26:12
they might be advised from their psychologist that it Yeah, maybe some of the side effects aren't great, but it's
00:26:18
okay if you you drink a little bit on your medication, but like you said, they switched her medication. So, maybe she
00:26:26
drank drank on her old medication, and she kind of knew how to handle this, but now she's having
00:26:31
a different effect Mhm. um with the new medication. My general understanding was
00:26:37
I don't think she was supposed to be drinking at all. And then top that off with
00:26:43
it looks like she had a bit of a roller coaster ride with drinking alone. You know, with Right. with having some times
00:26:52
in her life where she was abusing alcohol. And and and you know what and I'm here's the thing.
00:27:00
In Tony's defense, she obviously was somebody that wanted to make the right decisions. I think
00:27:07
sometimes she struggled with that. And we all do on some level, right? you have a mental illness, that's a
00:27:15
you know, that's an obstacle that that a lot of people can't get over. Yeah. And
00:27:20
and and I don't want to pretend like I'm I'm better than anybody. I was actually thinking about
00:27:26
this on my way here and and and really doing some self-reflecting and thinking to myself, you know, I'm in
00:27:33
my 30s now and I think I could probably handle being told, "Hey, you can't drink." I don't know if I would have
00:27:40
been able to roll with that very well in my 20s. Well, and it's not like she's been
00:27:45
irresponsible with her whole life. She's taking care of her kid. Uh she went to school. She's a She's a hard worker.
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today. All right, we're back. Cheers, everybody. Cheers to you, Captain. Where we left off,
00:32:59
Tony was asked to leave or told to leave this party. Yeah. So, she decides she's
00:33:05
going to drive and she's taking her friend Crystal, who arrived with her. She's taking Crystal with her. Now, once
00:33:13
they're at Tony's car, Tony starts yelling at Crystal and in fact Crystal says Tony got so mad and
00:33:21
became so unreasonable that just within two blocks from Willie's house, she pulled over and yelled at Crystal
00:33:30
telling her to get out of the car. Well, Crystal said later that she knew Tony shouldn't have been driving.
00:33:38
Crystal said she was so shocked and surprised by Tony's behavior that she did exactly as she said she was told.
00:33:46
She in fact got out of the car. Now, this put Crystal alone on the side of the road in a somewhat strange place
00:33:55
around 4:45 a.m. She says that Tony sped off taking a left turn toward Hollow Road heading
00:34:04
back in the direction of the interstate. Heading back in the direction in which they came. Right, but we don't know if
00:34:11
Tony knew where she was going. After this takes place, there are two phone calls on the call
00:34:18
logs to Tony's phone. One at 4:47 a.m. and one at 4:53 a.m. So, two phone calls 6 minutes apart.
00:34:29
Some reports state that these calls were at 4:53 a.m. and 4:59 a.m. But the key thing to mention here and to keep in
00:34:38
mind here is there's not a big discrepancy in these two times that were given from different
00:34:45
reports. And it's very clear in all the reports that there were two calls that took place and they occurred 6 minutes
00:34:52
apart. These match up with the panicked calls Crystal said she made to Tony in the minutes after Tony told her to get
00:35:01
out of the car. She said she was sure that Tony would come back for her. And she said that her
00:35:08
calls, the two calls, went straight to Tony's voicemail. Crystal says to her it was obvious that
00:35:17
the phone was turned off. That's her opinion. We've seen reports that Tony's phone
00:35:23
last pinged a cell tower that serves near the area where the party was located. What's strange here to me is that
00:35:33
Crystal's story Uh I don't know if it makes a whole lot of sense to me. Mhm. Right? So, she told
00:35:40
is that? Well, I'm going to get into that. Okay. She told the TV show ID disappeared that
00:35:45
she was stranded there within walking distance from the party house. Right. And that even men some of the men at the
00:35:53
party even yelled at her to come back. But she refused because she said she was embarrassed about the whole episode. So,
00:36:00
instead she started walking alone in the direction of the interstate. Now, this seems
00:36:06
it just seems to me very unlikely unless unless I do believe that that she's stating that she thought
00:36:14
Tony would eventually turn around. Right. Um but to take that a step further, then you have to believe that
00:36:20
she continued to walk and at some point got to a point where she just felt like she was too far away to turn around.
00:36:27
Again, I I if she's she said she was scared, she was alone, she felt abandoned on the
00:36:32
side of the road, yet she's within just a couple blocks of of the party that she
00:36:36
just left. Now, mind you, according to Crystal's story, she's not the one that that did the
00:36:42
party foul that made made them have to exit the party, right? Right. She says that that she's dropped off,
00:36:50
she starts walking, refuses to turn around to the party. Um here's the thing. We we don't know how intoxicated Tony is
00:37:02
at this point. We don't know how intoxicated Crystal was at this point. So, maybe Crystal's just making a bad,
00:37:08
irrational, illogical decision. In other accounts, Crystal was already far enough away from
00:37:16
the party that she didn't know where to go, she says. In any event, Crystal says that she sat
00:37:23
on a curb on the side of the road and started calling family, finally getting a hold of a 17-year-old nephew of hers
00:37:30
who agreed to make the 40-minute drive to come and get her. Now, Crystal says that she was scared
00:37:37
and a little mad at Tony. Little did she know that this would be the last time anyone would see Tony.
00:37:47
The two calls to Tony's phone from Crystal were the last activity ever recorded on Tony's cell phone.
00:37:54
Tony Sharpless disappeared sometime around 5:00 a.m. on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009.
00:38:03
At some point after she failed to reach Tony, Crystal called Tony's sister, Candy, and left a voicemail for her,
00:38:10
explaining what had happened, and saying that she would drop off Tony's things later that day.
00:38:17
When Candy got the voicemail from Crystal, she called over to her mom's house and was immediately concerned when
00:38:24
she discovered that Tony did not come home that night. Crystal and Tony's family started calling the local police
00:38:31
stations to see if Tony could have been pulled over for a DUI. And then they tried local hospitals as
00:38:38
well to see if she would ended up in a hospital. Neither was the case. Crystal called the
00:38:44
West Brandywine PD around 9:00 p.m. to report Tony missing. And Candy, Tony's sister, went in and filed a missing
00:38:52
person's report. Tony Lee Sharpless officially became a missing person at this time.
00:39:00
Officer Russell Moore with the Brandywine Police Department told ID Disappeared that he was immediately
00:39:06
concerned about Tony after hearing of her unstable past and a night of partying.
00:39:12
Although her family insisted that she would never have hurt herself or take off leaving her daughter.
00:39:20
They say that that her daughter was her whole world and she never would have left her.
00:39:26
Now, the family told Officer Moore that Tony had plans on Monday to take her daughter to a state park in the area
00:39:33
with a lifelong friend and her kids. This is to further bolster the the point that they would not be
00:39:41
uh she would not be taking off. Now, Officer Moore entered Tony's car into a missing vehicle database, but like Tony,
00:39:52
her Grand Prix seemed to have disappeared into thin air. While the police geared up to search for
00:39:58
Tony, her family took matters into their own hands. Crystal and some of Tony's other friends
00:40:05
helped print off flyers describing her including pictures of Tony and her car. They had Tony listed as 5 ft 5 in tall,
00:40:17
135 lb, auburn hair, blue and gray eyes. Last seen wearing a turquoise top and black pants.
00:40:26
Tony's mother and stepfather drove out to the neighborhood where the party was and scoped out this whole area.
00:40:33
They drove the routes that Tony could have taken to get home. And Crystal told them that Tony's car had been low on
00:40:41
gas, maybe a quarter of a tank, and that would possibly not have been enough to get her home.
00:40:48
Suggesting that Tony would likely have to be looking for a gas station at some point.
00:40:54
Family and friends stopped at local gas stations asking about sightings of Tony,
00:40:59
but came up empty-handed. Now, I want to talk about the geographical location of that party.
00:41:06
Willie Green's address was 1317 Bobarn Drive in Gladwyne. To get here, Tony and Crystal took Interstate 76 and
00:41:16
would have got off on the Hollow Road exit. Remember Crystal said that when Tony ditched her, Tony took a left
00:41:24
toward Hollow Road, presumably looking for a way back onto the Interstate. But at this time, it would have been
00:41:31
dark. All of the unlit small roads in that area probably look very much alike. There are no commercial areas or
00:41:41
businesses. And it's likely that Tony's perceptions were significantly impaired.
00:41:47
So, on Hollow Road, there is no entrance ramp leading to the highway in the direction Tony should have gone,
00:41:55
assuming she intended to go home. She would have been looking for Interstate 76 West. The access ramp
00:42:03
accessible here leads only in the direction of Philadelphia. It's Interstate 76 East, the opposite way
00:42:12
from where Toni would have logically wanted to go, toward her home. Right, but like they stated before, she's
00:42:19
pretty bad with directions, and we don't know if she knew how to use her GPS. Well, and she didn't know this area.
00:42:25
Right. So, very likely not knowing that if she does in fact get it on that freeway, it's going to send her in the
00:42:33
wrong direction. Right. So, now one very simple possibility here could be just some kind of tragic accident.
00:42:43
So, let's say Toni didn't take the ramp that we just discussed, because it is going in the wrong
00:42:48
direction. So, if she didn't take the ramp, Hollow Road ends up just a few feet further on going under the
00:42:56
interstate, crossing train tracks, and then it dead ends into River Road, which runs along the Schuylkill
00:43:03
River. A sharp 90° left turn onto River Road would have wound Toni along the river
00:43:12
and led right to the Flat Rock Park boat access ramp that could possibly be mistaken for a
00:43:19
highway on-ramp. Mhm. Could Toni have driven her car off the boat ramp and into the river?
00:43:26
Now, even if she didn't, the road continues closely along the river for quite some time. At any point, she could
00:43:33
have veered off and then went into the water. Yeah. Or if she had turned right onto River
00:43:40
Road, which really is just a dirt road in a the easterly direction from Hollow Road,
00:43:46
could she have accidentally just have driven right into the river at that point as well? So, her family and
00:43:53
friends drove all along this stretch of River Road looking for things like tire marks or busted guardrails.
00:44:01
They didn't find anything. Now, many of the areas along the riverfront contain homes featuring
00:44:07
manicured lawns. So, it seems to me like it would have been obvious if a car had,
00:44:13
you know, mowed through these lawns and went into to the river. Right. And then we have Lieutenant Frank Higgins of the
00:44:20
Lower Merion Township Police Department. He said, quote, "There are very few areas where you cannot find a guardrail
00:44:28
or somebody's front lawn." End quote. When Tony's family expressed concern about the possibility that Tony could
00:44:35
have gone into this river at or near the boat ramp, the Lower Merion Police Department did
00:44:42
not see probable cause to search the river. So, remember Tony's friend GG. She contacted Texas EquuSearch. And
00:44:54
anybody that's listened to this show for any length of time, they they come up like every three or four
00:45:00
cases that we cover. This is a This is a a top-of-the-line search company that was founded by a victim's father.
00:45:10
Yeah, so Texas EquuSearch was lined up by GG. And this was all scheduled and arranged by GG to search
00:45:18
the river. This search took place on September 11th. A law enforcement dive team from
00:45:25
Philadelphia was sent to supervise the search, and they actually limited the parameters of
00:45:34
the search area to just a stretch of the river that they stated was most likely where Tony could
00:45:41
have gone in. This area started at the Flat Rock boat ramp and proceeded up the river away
00:45:49
from Flat Rock Dam to the next boat ramp where the river starts to curve to the left.
00:45:57
The river was about 25 ft deep at its deepest points. Texas Aqua Search sonar equipment
00:46:05
scanned the bottom of the river looking for anomalies that could be Tony's car. And to the shock of pretty much
00:46:13
everyone, they found one very quickly. When news of this spread, Tony's friends, including Crystal and family,
00:46:22
gathered They're certain that Tony had been found by this point. Now, Texas Aqua Search sonar continued
00:46:30
to scan the river. It found another anomaly on the river bed below. And then another, and
00:46:37
another. Divers confirmed that there was not one car, but multiple cars on the bottom of
00:46:43
the Schuylkill River off of that boat ramp. Wow. 11 cars were down there. 11? I've I've seen used car lots with
00:46:53
less cars. Yeah. All right. 11 cars were down there at the bottom of the river. That's a lot of
00:46:59
cars, man. Yeah. The The river The divers found, based on the license plates, you know,
00:47:05
some of these cars still had license plates on them. Uh-huh. And this was then confirmed when the
00:47:10
crane came in and pulled cars out of the river. I mean, I I don't want to get too far
00:47:18
off the subject, but do you do you roughly know how long these cars were in the river for?
00:47:24
I I don't, and it it will become You'll see why that's probably not important. Yeah, I know it's I I think it's
00:47:31
non-important, but what I'm saying is like if these cars if it's a span of 20 years
00:47:37
or 30 years, well, maybe 11 cars isn't that much, you know, but uh it seems like there's a lot of accidents
00:47:44
over there. Well, actually, what they learned is they they believe this area was a dumping ground for stolen
00:47:50
vehicles. Okay. And so, the these all of these vehicles could have been put there
00:47:57
by the same person or the same group, okay? Um yeah, so these were all and that's
00:48:05
easily confirmed, you know, when they look up the VIN numbers and things like that. They go, "Oh, this this vehicle
00:48:09
was reported stolen." Now, Tony's Grand Prix remained missing even after they found all these other
00:48:15
cars. Unless the sophisticated sonar equipment missed something, Tony was not in that part of the river.
00:48:23
She did not enter that part of the river. After this, police were just at a loss
00:48:30
saying, quote, "We checked all the bridges, bank statements, her telephone, followed up on all the leads we could
00:48:36
electronically, and we just never came up with anything." This is a quote from Lieutenant Higgins. And he went on to
00:48:44
say, "It's still quite a mystery that her car was never turned up. People disappear with no trace, but the car
00:48:51
usually turns up at some point." Well, I know she wasn't using her cell phone, but I would assume at this point she had
00:48:59
a charger in her car for her phone and that we would get some kind of cell phone ping
00:49:07
from her just moving areas. You know, like you said, it's 30-some minutes away. Mhm. So, maybe you'd have to stop
00:49:13
and get gas. Maybe nobody saw you get gas. Maybe you did that with cash and not a debit card. But, wouldn't at some
00:49:19
point um you you would think one there's just not going to be that many drivers on the road that that day. So,
00:49:28
maybe one would get an eyewitness that came forward or again, maybe we'd get that cell phone ping. Uh
00:49:34
you know, maybe not again, not using the phone, but you'd get it by switching locations, wouldn't you?
00:49:40
Yeah, and so what that means is that the phone is off or dead by that time. Right. And we do have Crystal John's
00:49:49
statement where she said, "Hey, it seemed obvious to me that my two calls placed to her went straight to voicemail
00:49:56
because the phone was was off." Mhm. Now, I often wondered about this when when looking into this case, one thing
00:50:03
that I was highly suspicious of because some of the reports, the way that they report it,
00:50:09
it makes it sound like magically Tony kicks Crystal out of her car and then about the same time her phone goes
00:50:19
dead or shut off. We don't know that to be true. So, when when when I see these reports and watch
00:50:26
them on on YouTube or on TV and the way that they word it, it makes it seem like
00:50:32
that. And I think to me that's just that's wrong because look, I have a lot of suspicions of the
00:50:38
people that she was hanging out with that night. And Crystal's story in particular. And the the biggest part of
00:50:44
the story that I didn't like was that magically at the same time she's kicked out of the car and the phone goes dead
00:50:51
or is shut off. That just seemed like way too much of a coincidence. But when we really examine this thing and really
00:50:57
take a deep dive and look at it here, we don't know what time, if the phone did die, if it lost power, we don't know
00:51:05
what time that it that it went down. Right. And anybody using G- GPS knows that there's several things that you can
00:51:13
do on your phone that will drain the battery battery significantly faster. And if you're not plugged into your your
00:51:19
car dash or or running off of some other power supply, Yeah. the GPS could very likely drain
00:51:27
her battery quite quickly. We know that she was up for quite some time. Who knows the last time that she charged
00:51:35
her phone, one. And two, if she didn't know how to use the GPS, how do we know she didn't leave it on after arriving at
00:51:42
the party and it continued to drain the battery while there? So, that's one thing I've always been
00:51:47
very suspicious with in this case, but I just find it to be that it it's not this magical
00:51:54
coincidence. So, the other thing, while we're on the topic of the geographical location of
00:52:00
that party, I think it's also important to point out here for those that are unfamiliar with
00:52:06
this region, the area of Pennsylvania where Tony disappeared from is close to several large cities where
00:52:14
it would be easy to disappear or encounter trouble. Mhm. So, we have Camden, New Jersey, was
00:52:22
just a 20-minute drive east. This is a notoriously dangerous city. Also, North Philly has some sketchy
00:52:32
areas as well. Both of these urban trouble zones are within a reasonably short drive from where Tony was last
00:52:40
seen. Well, let's kind of go over this. So, she she's low on gas, right? Quarter of a
00:52:46
tank, roughly. According to Tony. She's sorry, according to Crystal. She's possibly impaired. One, she's impaired
00:52:53
cuz she's tired. She's impaired because we know that she's at least had a couple drinks. Mhm.
00:52:59
Um we we don't know if she's on medication or not, but she could be impaired either way. Mhm. She's not good
00:53:06
with directions. Mhm. Phone might not be working. And if it is, she seems to be know how to use the GPS. Right. And in a
00:53:17
she's in a unfamiliar area, right? So, really the this is where this gets very problematic
00:53:25
for this whole case and the the story of this disappearance. The possibilities here
00:53:33
seem somewhat endless, right? Yeah. When when you talk about these two, let's call them danger zones, all right? These
00:53:38
this dangerous areas of that are short drives from where she was known to have been according to Crystal's story and
00:53:47
according to the cell phone ping that happened roughly in that area. Right. She could have ended up in these danger
00:53:56
zones in any by any way. I mean, it could have been just as simple as she took a wrong turn
00:54:03
or was heading in the wrong direction on the Interstate. This could have put her in the very very
00:54:10
wrong side of town. On the bad side of the tracks as they say. And then the other side of the tracks. But yeah,
00:54:19
yeah, so but it also could put you in an area again you're not familiar with. Um might not be the safest of areas
00:54:28
and you're low on gas. If not running out of gas at that point. So, police determined that none of
00:54:38
Tony's credit or debit cards to this day they've still not been used. So, what does that tell us? Well, we know
00:54:48
that she did not buy gas unless she paid cash that night. Further, since none of her cards or bank
00:54:56
accounts were accessed, it seems very unlikely that she was the victim of a robbery gone bad.
00:55:05
Right. And she's not running away. I mean, she had too much going on. She's a mother, she had a good relationship with
00:55:13
her family. She had a good job, she she was working uh higher education to to further her
00:55:22
career. She's not running away from her life. No, she might have been somebody that
00:55:27
needed a temporary break. A night out. out. We all do. Um she was working very hard and look,
00:55:37
single mom, yes, mom and stepdad are helping her out. She's probably getting some help from her sister, but she's
00:55:44
helping her sister as well. We know that according to her sister, she came over that day, hung out with her sister's
00:55:49
kids, helped her clean her apartment. Right. As you said, she's very close to her family and it seems like while we
00:55:58
can't rule it out 100% it seems an extremely low probability that she went out, got blasted and just
00:56:07
decided to take off. Extremely low probability. Well, very Yeah, and on on top of that, we don't
00:56:14
have any record of her having cash, and we know that she's low on gas, and there's no, you know,
00:56:21
activity on her debit card. I saw rumors that her car, her her model of vehicle, Mhm. uh Grand
00:56:33
Prix GT was considered a desirable target for carjackers. I look I could see that. I'm not into boosting
00:56:42
cars, never have been. Um Boosting? Yeah. Is that like a term for stealing? Boosting? Yes. Um but
00:56:52
Shows you how hip I am. What seems strange to me, it's a 7-year-old Pontiac. Uh-huh.
00:56:57
No offense to the Pontiac owners out there, but this is a 7-year-old Pontiac. So, I I
00:57:02
just don't I don't get it, but again, I don't I don't know. Maybe it's targeted for some other reason.
00:57:07
I could see that. Um these these these cars drove really well. Uh they had a pretty cool aesthetic to
00:57:15
them. So, even though they'd be 7 years old, that the aesthetic to these cars um
00:57:21
didn't date themselves. Mhm. So, I I could see why they said that, cuz this the this was the type of car that it kind of
00:57:30
appealed to the the a younger crowd. Mhm. So, I think that's why they're saying these are cars that
00:57:37
people look to steal. Well, and the other thing that's always confused me, and I think that the media
00:57:43
flubs this up pretty good, is there's a big difference between a stolen car and a carjacking.
00:57:51
And so, to say that it's a desirable target for a car jacker is one thing, and but I know that when
00:57:59
stealing cars, there are desirable targets for stolen cars because of the way that they are
00:58:08
it's easy to break into them, it's easy to hot-wire the vehicle, something like that. So, I when I when I see these
00:58:15
things and I and I see that media saying that news outlets saying that this is a
00:58:21
desirable target for car jackers, I that's when I want to ask the person telling me that information, Maybe. do
00:58:27
you mean carjacking or do you mean stealing a car? Cuz those are two completely completely different things.
00:58:33
So, jacking or do you mean stealing? Do you mean jacking? So, here's the other thing. This is is
00:58:42
the big question, and a lot of people ask this time and time again regarding this case.
00:58:49
If in fact she ended up in a bad area town, or did she end up out in the middle of nowhere
00:58:56
a stranded because she ran out of gas? Because her vehicle, as reported by Crystal, was a quarter of a tank or
00:59:04
less. Crystal says she would have been likely looking for a gas station because I don't believe she had enough gas in
00:59:11
the tank to make it home that night. Right, but this should kind of limit our radius of search,
00:59:18
and we should be able to at least find her car, or find some evidence Thank you.
00:59:23
of Tony. Thank you, because that's the thing that people point out a lot with this case. They go, "Well, she could
00:59:30
have run out of gas and somebody evil, some evil monster could have just happened upon her, taken the opportunity
00:59:37
to abduct her." Mhm. You bring up the most obvious answer to why that's that seems also
00:59:44
very unlikely here. Because if in fact her car was incapacitated at all, where is it?
00:59:51
Where is it? Just like the officer says that the people disappear. Cars usually turn up eventually. Right.
01:00:08
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01:01:32
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