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subject to credit approval see store or ashley.com for details [Music] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage Wherever
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You Are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that only has
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two concerns eyeliner and cigarettes ladies and gentlemen here is the captain yes yes yes you can find me on top of
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the trailer playing Master of Puppets it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling
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a [Music] friend on today's show we will be sipping on this fabulous beer called
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Ruby from our friends at Fat Bottom Brewing Company this is an American Red Ale with plenty of robust flavor without
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being overbearing this beer is of course a beautiful ruby red color and a real crown pleaser garage grade four out of
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five bottle caps and here's some other crowd Pleasers that helped us out with this week's beer fund let's give a
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cheers to Laurel in Whitefish Montana and a big shout out to Quinton in durm North Carolina here's the cheers that
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goes out to Laura in Baltimore Maryland and a big we like your jib to Mara and Boise Idaho here's a cheers to Anna and
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Woodbridge Illinois and last but certainly not least ladies and gentlemen a cheers to Casey and darly Australia
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everyone we mentioned they went to True Crim garage.com and helped us out with this week's beer fund and for that we
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thank you yeah bwe R you and for everything true crime check out our website true crime
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of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:23
[Music] crime hear me calling your [Applause] name me I can't [Music] keep it must have been the Devil Himself
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that did it that would be the only explanation that would make any sense at all in the
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heinous and horrific crimes that we are going to tell you about today two girls enjoying a beautiful day
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out together on their own in a remote area they go missing from a public area accessible to
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all this is a park that includes trails and the girls were taken from here in broad daylight
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later they are found dead they are the victims of an abduction and homicide for someone to take and kill
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victims this young and for the offender to take the risk that they did and get away with
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it well then it must have been the Devil Himself when we try to size up this monster the first thing we all naturally
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question is has he killed before and we think well he must have he must have done this before to be capable
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of such cruelty to have such evil in his heart to commit these crimes if he is killed before and if he
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is responsible for this double homicide two young girls taken from a public place well then he will most certainly
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do this again how many nightmares will he create but this sounds all too eerily familiar
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unfortunately that is one of the parts of this nightmare that we know to be true this last February makes 5 years
00:05:52
unsolved since the murders of Libby German and Abigail Williams two young girls out hiking on a
00:05:59
beautiful day in a remote area they go missing from a public area accessible to all they were taken in broad daylight
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later found dead when we first covered the deli murders case in May of 2017 no one here in the garage believed
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that five more years would pass we would still be looking for the monster that committed those
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homicides must be the Devil Himself but now just a little over a week from celebrating the independence
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of our great country and as temperatures of the summer in the midwest slowly but
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steadily climb we are reminded of a double homicide another one the Killer is still
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unknown the case that when we first covered it back in 2020 I would have thought could have
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should have some Solution by now but very sadly I say tomorrow will make it 10 years now to the
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day 10 years since that horrible day when someone or someone took Elizabeth Collins and LC
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cook the two cousins were last seen riding their bikes together near Meers Lake just
00:07:25
afternoon in Evansdale Iowa later they were found dead it must have been the Devil
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Himself this is another look a new look at the still unsolved and unresolved cases of Elizabeth
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Collins and lar cook the Evansdale murders 10 years later and this is true crime
00:07:56
[Music] garage [Music] me Friday July 13th 2012 we have two little girls reported missing this is
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8-year-old Elizabeth Collins and her 10-year-old cousin LC cook the two disappeared while out riding
00:08:31
bikes together in Evansdale Iowa when they didn't return from the bike ride the Evansdale Police Department was
00:08:38
notified and the girls were reported missing lar Cook's grandmother says she last saw the girls around
00:08:46
12:15 in the afternoon on that Friday the 13th but we do end up with a few eyewitnesses who say they too saw the
00:08:55
girls out on their bike ride Evansdale is a small community under 5,000 residents back in 2012 and still less
00:09:04
than 5,000 people today Evansdale is located in the northeastern part of the state of Iowa Evansdale is in Blackhawk
00:09:13
County Iowa and while this is more of a small town it is very near waterl and Cedar Falls cities that combined have
00:09:23
over 100,000 people the girl's grandmother Wilma cook told the Press she last saw the girls riding their
00:09:32
bikes near downtown Evansdale about 12:15 p.m. July 13th the girls were also seen at about
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12:23 p.m. that same day this on Broan Boulevard in Evansdale and then spotted between 12:30
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and 1 p.m. on Gilbert drive not far from Myers Lake Myers Lake is a recreational
00:09:57
area and a popular fishing spot these are the last known sightings of the girls let's talk about the girls here
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for a minute so in the summer of 2012 88-year-old Elizabeth Collins lived with her parents and siblings in Evansdale
00:10:15
Iowa Evansdale is a blue collar town with many residents involved in agriculture production in some manner
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Elizabeth who attended Pointer Elementary was described by her mother as a bubbly little person who was always
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active and busy one of her best friends was her cousin L cook AG 10 who lived just minutes away in the next town over
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waterl LC went to Kingsley Elementary and she was also an active outgoing Girl Who Loved bowling cheerleading and
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gymnastics and playing outside lar and Elizabeth's mothers Misty cook and Heather Collins are
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sisters Heather was married to Elizabeth's father Drew Collins and the couple had four children Elizabeth being
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one of them they seem to be a very typical American family with hardworking religious parents raising a bunch of
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children Heather's mother Wilma came over for four or five hours most days to help out Heather's sister Misty was also
00:11:24
married she's married to a guy named Dan morsy now at the time time that the girls vanished Misty and Dan were
00:11:32
estranged and had been separated for years L lived with her grandmother Wilma cook who as we have already established
00:11:41
is Misty and Heather's mom l and her cousin Elizabeth played together nearly every day when Wilma went over to the
00:11:49
collinses to help out well let's get back to that Friday the 13th July 2012 here's how the events went down
00:11:58
according to multiple interviews with the family and articles about the family Wilma took L over to the Collins's house
00:12:07
around breakfast time now Drew Collins left the house in Evansdale early that morning to go to work at the tree
00:12:16
trimming company that he owns Heather Collins had an appointment and she wanted to run some other errands so her
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mom Wilma came over and brought LC with her as usual Wilma stayed home with the kids while
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Heather went out and L and Elizabeth set off around 11:30 for a bike ride this was something they routinely did and the
00:12:42
girls were expected to stay within a short distance of the house now Captain we covered this back in April of 2020 in
00:12:52
episodes 393 and 394 and one thing we talked about concerning this bike ride right and we already established that
00:13:00
it's a usual typical activity for the girls to enjoy together is there was no real clearly defining boundaries on
00:13:09
where they could not go with their bike ride but it was established that they were to stay close to the home and the
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grandmother stated that she could go outside call the girls names they would respond and they would return to the
00:13:27
house so while we don't have any clear defining boundaries here what we do have is a situation where she's saying stay
00:13:37
close enough that you can hear me and then if I need you to come back to the house you come back to the house but we
00:13:43
know how kids are they sometimes push boundaries they forget about boundaries or they think they see a window of
00:13:49
opportunity of oh they won't miss us for 15 minutes or 20 minutes let's go check
00:13:53
this spot out right so it's widely been reported that the grandmother saw the the two girls zipping by on their bikes
00:14:01
around 12:15 yeah and this is you hear these little parts of these stories and that's
00:14:08
what makes them even more sad and tragic when you're kind of picturing this you think to yourself this seems like a very
00:14:16
happy situation right right even though we have kind of a not ideal situation with lyric parents but she's a happy kid
00:14:25
living with Grandma and regularly goes over to her cousin's house and is watched by Grandma and gets to hang out
00:14:34
with her cousin who also happens to be one of her very best friends mhm so this is a very ideal situation for these kids
00:14:42
and a and a great way to be spending their summer months out of school well it reminds you of a scene from a movie
00:14:50
and I know the the movies are written about real life but just this moment where the grandmother's outside and the
00:14:58
sun is shining dining and her grandkids are playing on their bikes and she watches them ride by right before
00:15:05
tragedy hits yeah the good parts of it remind me of my childhood when the days of summer when you're this young they
00:15:13
just seemed endless like you're outside just playing forever but what we have here Captain is you're right we have
00:15:20
tragedy that is about to occur Panic is about to set in and this will start and it probably starts at a very small level
00:15:30
and then ramps up from there right but this is all going to commence when the girls do not come back from this bike
00:15:39
ride and when they don't return we have concern that's going to set in so what we do know is that we
00:15:47
have Grandma Wilma says she saw the girls she noted the time it was about 12:15 in the afternoon when she saw them
00:15:56
riding around on their bikes and we do know we don't have an exact time of when Heather returns to the
00:16:03
house but it's after the last time that Wilma sees the girls and both have stated it was shortly after that one
00:16:12
thing I find interesting here too is we have this very well-defined timeline that we're going to continue on
00:16:21
for this day this timeline so key and so very important to this case but when we
00:16:28
had have the statements of Grandma and mother stating it's about 12:15 when I last saw the girls Heather comes home
00:16:36
shortly after that this is a small town one thing that does not happen is when Heather's returning home she doesn't
00:16:43
cross paths with the girls she doesn't see her daughter and her niece at any time when she's returning to the house
00:16:50
well the next time they're spotted is between 12:30 and 1:00 and they're spotted on Gilbert Drive which is a mile
00:16:57
and a half to 2 miles away from their their mother's house yes so they could be in an opposite direction than what
00:17:04
Heather was traveling the key thing though here is that we know that Heather returns to the house before 1:00 so we
00:17:12
got a small window of time 121 15ish to about 1:00 and the reason that we know 1:00 is a Time marker is because Heather
00:17:20
says she gets home the girls aren't there she's immediately concerned but she's not in panic like thinking
00:17:27
anything terrible has happened both the girls Heather and Wilma all had stuff scheduled for later that day very
00:17:35
shortly after this time period in fact and so they were all going to kind of go their separate ways and do the things
00:17:41
that they needed to achieve that day things that the girls were actually looking forward to right so when they
00:17:48
didn't return of course Wilma and Heather started to get nervous now our 1:00 time marker comes in because what
00:17:57
we are told by by Wilma and Heather is that by 1:00 Heather sent out her older son Kelly to scout out the area to go
00:18:06
find the girls tell them to come home hey you were supposed to be home a while ago but he returns home reporting that
00:18:14
he could not find them he didn't see them could didn't find any sign of them at all at this point we have one of the
00:18:23
fathers is back at the house Drew he stopped at home this is something he would often do he owned the tree
00:18:29
trimming company he's in charge of his schedule often he would drop by for a quick lunch Heather told drew that she
00:18:36
was going to go out and look for the girls again you can tell by all of this and the way that it's playing out that
00:18:43
nobody is overly concerned at this point they're just kids that are probably not
00:18:49
where they should be or lost track of time and should have came home earlier but did not it happens a lot when you
00:18:55
have siblings hey your your little brother your little sister they're they're playing with their friend
00:19:01
somewhere I can't find them can you get on your bike and go look around because the girls are on the bike and now you
00:19:08
escalate it more to go okay well you keep looking you you ride your bike around keep looking I'm going to now
00:19:15
Drive the neighborhood to try to find them yeah and growing up unless we had something to do or had someplace to be
00:19:23
in the summer months my parents did not care where I was they did not care if I was outside all day long and I would
00:19:30
often be busy and the only indicators of time that I really had was there was somebody in the neighborhood that would
00:19:36
ring like a lunch Bell like a you know Dinner Bell lunch Bell for the kids to come running back and grab some lunch
00:19:43
and so I always knew that would be like around noon or oneish and then after that it was like you would start seeing
00:19:49
the parents come home between 5 6 630 and then Sundown those were like the three things that told me about what
00:19:56
time it was because I couldn't care any less what time it was as long as I was out having a good time well especially
00:20:03
they in a small town so you would you would definitely feel the traffic of people coming home and then you'd feel
00:20:10
the calmness of once everybody got home and then obviously the calmness of of night setting in so Kelly the older son
00:20:21
who's sent out by Heather and Wilma to go looking for the girls he comes back he goes out around 1:00 does not find
00:20:28
the girls now we have a situation where adults are going to start paying attention to time and we have Heather
00:20:36
who says she got into her car at 1220 and she herself started driving around canvasing the neighborhood going to
00:20:45
Elizabeth's school and the softball field but saw no sign of the girls so you can see what's happening here we're
00:20:52
starting to Fan out right go out a little bit further and further looking for the girls because we've covered some
00:21:01
ground already and nobody has seen them nobody's been able to locate them Misty remember she's lyrics mother says Wilma
00:21:11
called her at work around 2 p.m. to tell her that they could not find the girls so Misty called her ex Dan morsy they're
00:21:20
still technically married at this time but again they've not been together for quite some time from my understanding
00:21:26
Dan is living at his mother's home in waterl now we have three more people that will be joining the search rather
00:21:35
quickly so this is Dan who is the other father his son Dylan who was at home with Dan that day and his mother Vicki
00:21:46
so we got three people that show up now to assist in looking for the girls Misty
00:21:52
leaves work and went over to her sister's house just a short distance away I don't have a time marker for that
00:21:59
but we know that she receives the call around 2 p.m. and she lives very close to where her sister lives but this is
00:22:07
becoming a scary situation at this time Heather is still out driving around and she returns home around 220
00:22:16
unfortunately empty-handed and does not have any information either about where the girls are at this point the family
00:22:23
began driving all over Evansdale we got multiple family members multiple cars out driving around all over Evansdale
00:22:31
looking for both girls well Panic is also probably starting to set in what's weird and this will only be weird
00:22:38
because later we will have some information that will make this strange but they ended up at Meyers Lake this
00:22:46
was around 245 and in fact they're at Meers Lake they see other people there and they
00:22:52
start asking people whether they had seen two little girls on bikes now there is a man that they speak to and he says
00:22:59
he was walking on the trail and he said he did in fact see two little girls on bikes he said they were traveling west
00:23:06
on the bike trail but the time that he saw them was unclear he was a little uncertain of the time meanwhile Heather
00:23:16
made the decision to go to the Evansdale Police Department sometime between 2:30
00:23:22
and 3 p.m. and you know kudos to her because some people feel like oh these are just kids being kids we'll find them
00:23:29
we shouldn't bother the police with it no I think as soon as you start getting nervous as soon as you start Panic
00:23:35
setting in as the captain said that's when you you get somebody else involved I agree that's what they're there for
00:23:41
let them know we can't find our kids we're concerned can you help and like you said Heather is going to go to the
00:23:47
police to report the girl's missing she's at the police department around 2:30 to 300 p.m. most reports that we
00:23:55
have seen have the time of her iners visit to the Evansdale PD at 2:48 p.m. three Evansdale squad cars after
00:24:06
the after Heather's there she explains the situation three Evansdale squad cars were now scouring the area and checking
00:24:15
not just checking the area they go and check the home first and start Fanning out from there within half an hour we
00:24:23
have Blackhawk sheriff's deputies and Evansdale firefighters joining in on the effort on the search effort well I like
00:24:31
this a lot because like you said they go back and search the family home they're
00:24:36
not taking anybody's word for anything and that's not and as law enforcement that's what you're supposed to do hey
00:24:44
our our uh little girls are missing they were on their bikes okay well let's start in the house let's look make sure
00:24:52
nothing happened in the house and then we we go from there yeah and that seems silly some people were probably thinking
00:24:59
well they they wasted a little bit of time here and no that's that's common practice I cannot tell you I've I've had
00:25:07
10 to a dozen officers tell me that when we get a missing person's call if it's a
00:25:11
little kid 90% of the time believe it or not we find them inside the home they're
00:25:16
hiding somewhere in the home or everybody went out looking for little Johnny and while they were out looking
00:25:22
he came back home yeah he's just hanging out of his room well unfortunately that does not seem to be the situation
00:25:30
here and things are going to go from scary to incredibly scary within a matter of minutes because Elizabeth's
00:25:41
purse and both of the girls bicycles were found on a trail in the Southeast corner of Meyers Lake around 400 p.m.
00:25:50
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[Music] your me all right we are back cheers mates cheers mates tall cans in the air
00:28:34
cheers to you Captain mhm just before the break we said that the purse of one of the girls both of the bicycles
00:28:42
belonging to the girls were found on a trail in the Southeast corner of Meyers Lake around 400 p.m. that afternoon now
00:28:51
we already stated earlier that the family some of the family members went to that area area to
00:28:57
that Myers Lake location and were looking for the girls even before they were officially reported missing to law
00:29:05
enforcemen and this area is rather big so just because they were there before does not mean that the bikes weren't
00:29:13
already in that location you know the parents then report them missing the police start looking for the
00:29:21
girls they start by looking at the house and of course this is one of those situations that I wish I could tell you
00:29:27
that they found the girls at the house that day instead what we find are the bikes and the purse but no Elizabeth no
00:29:36
lyric to be found and unfortunately the finding of the bikes and the purse does not really give them any clues as to
00:29:44
where the girls could have been no other than the fact that they were out of their boundaries let's talk about what
00:29:51
we know about where the bikes were found so this Myers Lake covers 27 Acres with
00:29:59
water and is about 25 ft deep at its deepest parts the lake is a major recreational area for the people of
00:30:09
Evansdale it's stocked with fish has a boat ramp there's restrooms there a playground picnic areas with a grill all
00:30:17
things that you would expect to see at a large Park it's very scenic but it also
00:30:23
has a really nice paved bike path winding its way through 3/4 of a mile around the
00:30:33
lake according to a report in the Globe Gazette the girls bikes were found on the Evansdale nature trail right at the
00:30:43
Southeastern tip of the lake between two lines of chain link fence by the maintenance gate leading to
00:30:50
a rock Jetty and a water Outlet on the lake this gate was not locked photos show that this area of the paved
00:31:00
nature trail is straight and with the fence on both sides and the trees overhead it has almost like a tunnel
00:31:10
appearance right picture that you have fencing on both sides you have the trees overhead and underneath you have this
00:31:18
paved Scenic Trail Bike Trail right according to the girl's Aunt Tammy the bikes were found about 12T from the edge
00:31:26
of the water on the trail this will lead to the suspicions that the police have early on in the
00:31:36
investigation that being that the girls went into the lake and may have drowned or had some kind of accident in the lake
00:31:44
we can Circle back to that in a minute the investigators also found Elizabeth's purple purse and cell phone now we need
00:31:52
to note that this phone does not have any type of service from my understanding it was just used
00:32:00
for games it was used for her to play games now Captain when we covered this two years ago well more than two years
00:32:08
ago now you brought up some interesting questions about this phone and we wanted
00:32:13
to know if she could have been using this phone to communicate with anyone and I unfortunately do not have those
00:32:23
answers that Still Remains unclear to this day as we all know it doesn't require service if she's in an area that
00:32:31
she has Wi-Fi and if the phone has Wi-Fi capabilities right and she likely did have Wi-Fi capabilities to be playing
00:32:39
certain games on that phone doesn't doesn't require them to play all of them but certainly some of them yes but if
00:32:46
you have internet connection to play those games you have internet connection to possibly communicate with somebody
00:32:53
but to break down where they find the the bikes simply to me if if I'm in law enforcement or I'm part of the family
00:33:02
searching I'm seeing this scene of the bikes in the purse and going this is not good oh this I I'm leaning towards
00:33:10
something really bad happen at this point yeah if I see this scene I I agree with their concern of well maybe they
00:33:17
ended up in the lake you know they're 10 they're eight years old they're young that could be the situation the family's
00:33:23
quick to point out the law enforcement both of the girls knew how to swim the other thing that the family was
00:33:28
concerned about when the thought of drowning in the lake came up was the family was quick to point out look none
00:33:35
of their clothing none of their shoes are found we would expect our kids to take their shoes off at the very least
00:33:41
before going into the lake it was a very hot day that day I mean it was middle of
00:33:48
July so the lake makes some sense but I'm with you Captain if I see these bikes abandoned sitting
00:33:55
here when I was a kid I didn't go anywhere without if I left my bike unattended it
00:34:02
was in my friend's front yard or in somebody's garage it wasn't just leaving it in a public place where I couldn't
00:34:09
turn and look to see my bike at any time because I was you had a nice Mongoose bike I had a
00:34:15
dino we all had bikes that we didn't want somebody to come along and snatch well it's also your biggest possession
00:34:22
at the time yeah that's true that's true it was like my Corvette uh for my 10-year-old Corvette but but
00:34:30
for everybody for every kid that's like the biggest thing that you have the most
00:34:34
expensive and you're not going to just leave that so once you see these bikes laying on the side of the path you you
00:34:42
look around and you don't see any any signs of them anywhere this is bad and this is the
00:34:50
other thing that scares me too is the purse I think the purse might scare me more than finding the B bikes so the way
00:34:58
that this is described is that the purse was on the lake side of the fence about
00:35:02
10 ft to the east of where the bikes were found and about 2T from the fence officials
00:35:10
said now this location is interesting to me as cars can't get to this spot so what I mean by that is these
00:35:20
bikes are found in a location where someone couldn't just pull up and snatch and grab the girls you know snatch them
00:35:29
off of their bikes at this spot and drive off to me that's weird right and and I get maybe that's kind of why they
00:35:36
were honing in on the lake possibility early on there's a lot of accidents especially with children with water but
00:35:43
and it doesn't have to be that they went swimming it could just be simply that they're going to put their toes in the
00:35:49
water and then something bad happen right and we spent a lot of time talking about the searching of the lake in our
00:35:57
original coverage so if you want to check that out and some of the other details that we won't get into this time
00:36:04
around because we covered it so good before those are episodes 393 and 394 we're going to try awesome well but
00:36:14
this time what we will want to do is to dive into some things that weren't discussed that we didn't get to or
00:36:21
anything that has changed in our thoughts and feelings about this case since that time well that's one of the
00:36:28
things that I find very fascinating with these cases that aren't solved right away and we're coming up on 10 years but
00:36:36
these cases maybe they don't have answers but they continue to evolve right and when these girls are missing
00:36:44
and this case first broke we had some decent coverage of this missing person's case on the Nancy Grace show and I found
00:36:55
both of these accounts to to be very insightful regarding where the bikes were found and a description of how the
00:37:04
uh bikes were when when found and this comes from two reporters so the first reporter was a man named Jim Spelman and
00:37:13
Spelman said what I find so fascinating is the geography of where the bikes were
00:37:18
found because again it's this kind of deadend area and if there was an abduction that happened how would you
00:37:26
get two girls all of the way to the end of and he cuts off and then says it's a 10-minute walk from the end of this bike
00:37:36
path at the very least to the end of where you might be able to get to a car or something like that okay that's
00:37:44
awfully insightful think about the distance that that must be from where the location of the bikes were to where
00:37:50
you could possibly have any type of vehicle to put the girls into and drive off with them he's saying in his opinion
00:37:57
that at the very least he believes it to be about a 10-minute walk from where the
00:38:03
bikes were found to the end of the bike path where a car or a vehicle would be and I'm not trying to crap all over
00:38:09
their point because I do think it's important to point out but the girls could have already put down their bikes
00:38:15
and they could be walking around the water so at the time of abduction if they were abducted by that
00:38:23
area and put into a vehicle or coh you know cohorted into a vehicle or or threatened to get into the vehicle
00:38:33
they could have already been closer to to that side easier area to be abducted well yeah and I don't think that this
00:38:40
means I I just like hearing the details of getting a better description of where
00:38:46
these bikes were found by this Jim Spellman because I don't think that it indicates that they weren't abducted at
00:38:52
this location as you pointed out they could have been on foot they could have set their bike bikes down just to look
00:38:57
around Mill about what have you someone bad guy crosses their path decides to take them and walks them controls them
00:39:08
lures them coerces them to his vehicle which is 10 minutes away it is fascinating to me though that in the
00:39:15
course of that walk we don't have an eyewitness or an ear witness that says they saw something
00:39:24
strange they saw something troubling or heard anything of concern around that time right the thing again though to me
00:39:32
with the purse that scares me is the purse the way that it's described almost sounds like you have the bikes here and
00:39:40
I know the purse is only like 10 feet away but the way that that description reads to me Captain is that the purse is
00:39:47
on the other side of the fence well chill out you already get in a colonel fire pants and it that to me sounds
00:39:55
like oh snap either these kids like ho the fence and then something bad happened when they got over there she
00:40:02
immediately drops her purse that seems unlikely what seems more likely to me is if in fact the location of where the
00:40:08
bikes were found if that is in direct relation to the abduction site if they were abducted there this purse its
00:40:20
location it feels like to me like like a perpetrator grabbed it with and tossed it with the attention of of tossing it
00:40:27
as far as he could or or just tossing it out of the area to free up an additional
00:40:33
hand to control the girls it it it seems it seems all very weird it's a it's a very strange situation to kind of try to
00:40:42
dissect now another reporter his name is Jesse Gavin went on to discuss the likelihood of someone abducting the
00:40:49
girls from the highway side of the trail right you have these fences right that are on both sides of this bike trail on
00:40:59
one side of one fence is the lake on one side of the other fence is the highway so we already have this other reporter
00:41:09
who's talking a little bit about where the bikes are found but this reporter is talking in direct relation to the
00:41:15
highway side of the trail and they go on to say apparently there was a hole in the fence somewhere along this section
00:41:22
of the trail that was the result of a man losing control of his car on the highway and crashing through the fence
00:41:29
so this is not a complete fence at this point due to some damage from this single car accident the reporter said
00:41:36
quote well like Jim said it wouldn't be the most likely scenario obviously that is kind of an area that's closed off to
00:41:45
main roads since it's a bike trail obviously it's very close to an interstate but it would be kind of tough
00:41:53
to get to that Interstate the other thing you've got to keep in mind about that interstate is it's being worked on right
00:42:02
now there's a lot of construction activity going on right there so there's going to be backed up traffic traffic is
00:42:10
going to be slowed down so any kind of suspicious activity that happens in that area it's going to be seen by somebody
00:42:18
it's going to be seen by a lot of people people driving along the highway would surely have noticed a car stopped along
00:42:25
the roadside side and possibly two little girls entering or being placed in a vehicle after walking through a hole
00:42:33
in the fence he goes on to say and remind us all that after all it was broad daylight back to your point about
00:42:40
the the purse being 10 ft away to me okay if it's on the other side of the fence fine but just it being 10 ft away
00:42:50
it kind of shows that these bikes weren't placed down that the that the purse wasn't just placed down because if
00:42:57
if I'm riding a bike and I have a purse and I and I get off the bike and I don't
00:43:01
want to carry the purse around I'm just going to lay it right down beside the bike yeah and the thing here too that I
00:43:07
I want to kind of throw out there is just because the bikes are found there and the purse was found there and
00:43:17
ultimately we know that they are found dead unfortunately many miles away from this Myers Lake
00:43:23
location so an abduction is the only thing that makes sense but just because the bikes and the purse are
00:43:30
found in this location doesn't mean that that's exactly where or has to be where
00:43:35
the abduction took place no because let's say the abduction took place in in um close by
00:43:42
neighborhood the abduction happens gets the girls into the vehicle has their bikes with them in the vehicle goes down
00:43:50
to this park grabs both of their grabs both of their bicycles it's a 10-minute walk dumps them there to to throw people
00:43:59
off hey now look around this park like you said it was what do you say 20 some acres big mhm I mean that's a that's a
00:44:07
big area to start searching that that kind of throws people off the scent yeah the thing here too is you know if
00:44:15
somebody knows that area let's pretend for a moment that the abductor knows this area somewhat well they don't even
00:44:23
have to know it very well actually at all I I would think looking at the the the location and where this kind of
00:44:29
takes place but if you have the ability to do so it it would be difficult because if you just abducted two girls
00:44:37
now you have all these moving parts and pieces of trying to conceal the bikes at
00:44:41
the same time but if you had the ability to control them and conceal the bikes at
00:44:48
the same time it does make a lot of sense right maybe the girls were abducted close by the road or right at
00:44:54
the roadside before before even getting to that bike trail and that bike trail is right there and you go you know what
00:45:01
if Mom and Dad or anybody comes looking for these girls they're going to be out in a vehicle driving around looking for
00:45:07
the girls and if the bikes are found right here by the roadside they're going to be alerted to something bad
00:45:15
immediately at the very least I could take these bikes and tuck them away back in the middle of this Trail here where
00:45:22
they wouldn't be seen from the road and whoever's out looking for these girls will just keep driving yeah that's an
00:45:28
excellent point knowing that people will be searching from a car and what is going to be in their eyesight so we
00:45:35
spent all this time here Captain talking about what were the girls bikes doing by
00:45:41
Myers Lake anyway and we should be pointing out here as well that Myers Lake is not
00:45:48
extremely close to their home in fact it's it's beyond wherever that imaginary line was that the girls were allowed to
00:45:56
be riding their bikes and this is according to the family Myers Lake is 1 and2 miles away from the Collins's house
00:46:04
again the girls were not supposed to be riding there Misty cook said on Nancy Grace's show they are not allowed to
00:46:12
just ride freely for hours or until dark they do have a little bit of Freedom so
00:46:18
they're allowed to go you know maybe two or three blocks away and stay within those blocks an hour check back in is
00:46:27
kind of the standard that we hold with them and mostly they stick to it so it was surprising to see that they had come
00:46:36
this far if indeed they did ride this far she's obviously referring to the lake Misty also said in an interview
00:46:45
this with kwwl.com I'm surprised they rode their bikes this far but their kids and later
00:46:52
Heather and Drew Collins told the media that they did not believe the girls would have biked that far on their own
00:46:58
well this is leading to what you were saying before about maybe that the perpetrator then took their bikes and
00:47:04
and placed them in this area on purpose if and this you know these cases they're
00:47:11
not there's all kinds of horrible possibilities that we that we have to kind of talk about and and go over
00:47:20
here and so a lot of this is not comfortable to say a lot of this is not comfortable to hear but if you have a
00:47:28
situation where the girls are incapacitated a single offender would have the ability to move those bikes the
00:47:37
other thing too is if you had complete control of the victims you might have the possibility of having them move the
00:47:44
bikes for you at your direction right or if there's more than one offender one offender is staying with the girls
00:47:53
wherever that location be likely a vehicle while the other offender is moving these items that they don't want
00:48:02
to have any part of but not out of the realm of possibility that they rode their bikes this far because if this
00:48:09
eyewitness is correct they saw them a mile and a half to two miles away from their home on Gilbert
00:48:15
Drive correct and correct me if I'm wrong here Captain this reminds me a little bit of the West Memphis 3
00:48:22
case a lot didn't we have a situation there where the bikes were concealed yes and some theorize that the
00:48:31
bikes were concealed maybe even after the boys were already attacked to later kind of hinder
00:48:39
finding the victims at all because if you find the bikes in that location then one would start to go well maybe they
00:48:46
are here somewhere or were here in this location at some point yeah and in that case
00:48:51
there there was a pipeline and that pipeline really kind of signal to everybody that that's the back half of
00:48:58
the woods so I think having those bikes being seen at the pipeline it was like the the perpetrators are leaving the
00:49:05
crime scene they see the bikes and they go okay well we need to hide these because this is basically advertising
00:49:13
sign to go go back there and look but not just that just uh I mean different in some ways because in this case there
00:49:21
was no school today and and they're out right in their and and so the timeline I think is a
00:49:30
little more blurry because at least when you have a case where children get home
00:49:35
from school you have a definitive starting point I'm not saying that I don't believe anybody in their family
00:49:42
but you have to uh question question everything in this case well there we do have a
00:49:50
situation and you're right Captain the situation is this we have Grandma who is in charge of essentially five kids at
00:49:58
that time right and so yes I don't believe that these times are spot on I do believe that they're fairly accurate
00:50:07
and I say that based off of the fact that we have such a short window of time so even if the times are off they can't
00:50:15
be off by so much because we have a lot of activity happening really within the course of 4 and 1/2 hours because she
00:50:24
says that they left the house on their bikes around 11:30 and then she says that she believes she saw the two kids
00:50:31
still alive and well right around on their bikes at 12:15 we have those other possible sightings other uh sightings of
00:50:39
the girls on their bikes we have the bikes being found by family and law enforcement at 400 p.m. so that gives us
00:50:47
just that little window of 4 and 1/2 hours now after the bikes were found fortunately the family sitting there
00:50:54
watching as crime SC SC tape is being put in place the officers are closing off access to this Trail so they can
00:51:01
scour the area and look for more evidence or look for anything at all any clues that might tell them where the
00:51:08
girls could be right investigators spent several hours out of sight you know they're they're in on this Trail down on
00:51:16
the trail where the bikes were but the family members cannot see them again it's about a 10-minute walk from where
00:51:22
the bikes were to where uh the trail kind of end and pops out there while this is going on the family members held
00:51:29
a vigil outside of the taped off area if anything other than the bikes or lyrics purse were found and we know
00:51:41
the phone was found it has never been disclosed and just to be clear and and I I feel bad CU I'm jumping back in time
00:51:50
here a little bit but when you're talking about that the grandmother's time might not be completely accurate I
00:51:58
don't think in any way I don't get the sense that it's she's not accurate because she's lying or trying to cover
00:52:06
anything up I just think it's because she's simply in charge of multiple kids and there's a lot going on she's busy
00:52:14
yeah she's busy and the other thing we need to point out too those other eyewitnesses that said they saw the
00:52:19
girls on their bikes and a little further from the home at later times in 12:15 that kind of backs up Wilma's
00:52:29
story that that what she says did in fact happened and if in fact 12:15 was the last time that she saw them well
00:52:38
then Wilma couldn't have done anything to these girls she's not responsible for anything here because we have other
00:52:44
eyewitnesses that see them after the fact those other eyewitnesses tell me that nothing weird nothing strange went
00:52:52
on inside the home and later somebody's trying to conceal what happened by getting rid of the girls getting rid of
00:52:59
the bikes staging some kind of scenario to look like something else took place right now continuing on our timeline for
00:53:07
Friday the 13th by 4:40 p.m. we have emergency calls that are going out to the residents of Evansdale this is to
00:53:16
notify them of the missing girls right we have two girls that are missing we need help finding them if you see either
00:53:23
girl call us tell tell us let us know officers also began canvasing the lake neighborhoods and the media was notified
00:53:31
by 5:30 p.m. so a lot of things are taking place very rapidly here and I like to see all of this activity and all
00:53:40
this effort we have boats that were put into the water on Meers Lake that begin scanning the surface we have divers with
00:53:46
a local search and rescue organization that are called in to start searching the lake police and firefighters from
00:53:53
the bigger city of waterl next door they come by and they are now assisting the Blackhawk County sheriff's deputies as
00:54:04
well as the Evansdale police department and we also get the Iowa State Police that joined in on searching wooded areas
00:54:14
so there's a lot of wooded areas in this General location and many people stayed out
00:54:21
searching all night long they even brought in some L Richie they brought in a plane so they could do some searches
00:54:28
from from the air and now we have the national Center for missing exploited children that were notified of the
00:54:34
girl's disappearance by 8:00 p.m. by by the next morning we have a representative from the national Center
00:54:44
of missing and exploited children on the ground in Evansdale boots on the ground in
00:54:50
Evansdale assisting in the search for the girls hear me calling your [Applause] [Music]
00:55:07
name me I can't keep it thanks for joining us here in the garage we have so much more to get to
00:55:22
tomorrow so join us back here same bat time zat Channel that's right Captain such an intriguing case such a tragic
00:55:30
case join us back here in the garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't
00:55:35
[Music] [Applause] live is it possible to predict the unpredictable can 3D printed life-size
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