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foreign [Music] [Music] foreign foreign garage wherever you are whatever you are
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doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that
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loves the smell of diesel fuel in the morning ladies and gentlemen the captain what could I say I have expensive tastes
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it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling
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a friend [Music] this week we are featuring tropical beer hug by the lovely folks over at Goose
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Island beer company this big 9.9 Imperial IPA is super juicy and bursting with tropical flavors garage grade four
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out of five bottle caps just the thing for a summer swing in the hammock and here's some of our friends helping us
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out with the swing of things first up we have a cheers to Terry in Springfield Virginia and a big shout to Brendan and
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Brentwood Essex UK next we go up north Captain for a cheers to our friend Emily in Fort McMurray Canada a big we like
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not least we have Lindsay from Saint Charles Missouri everyone that we just mentioned well they went to our website
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Beer Run make sure you go to iTunes and give us a five star rating it helps the show immensely and Colonel that's enough
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of the business all right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
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[Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] miss me [Music] it's only about yourself
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[Music] foreign [Music] the date June 26 2003. the setting it's summertime at a state park
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designated campsites are full of campers enjoying some outdoor RNR the lush green scenery is matched by the
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peace and Tranquility of the environment for campers escaping their busy lives it
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is quiet and relaxing but then at the break of dawn the peace and Tranquility of the
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campground is shattered the body of a woman lies at the bottom of a rocky ravine
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some kind of monster tossed her there like trash her corpse rolling and rolling down the
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steep grade until it comes to a stop for all to see this was no accidental death
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not an overdose not a hit and run no this woman was the victim of a brutal homicide
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but how did she get there where she was found one minute her killer was pushing her
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down the slope the next he was gone in the night the only clue to his identity the big
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rig pulling away on the interstate above and as its lights disappeared Into the Night
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so did any clues as to who killed this young woman this is the unsolved homicide case of
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Kristen Alice Schmidt and the trucker murders warning there's a killer on the road
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and this is true crime garage [Music] newspapers from Legrand Oregon blaird that a body was found by a camper at
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hilguard Junction State Park this was on June 26 2003 the location this park is right
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next to Interstate 84 where it intersects with Highway 244 near the Grand Ronde River
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the area is about 250 miles east of Portland a major city and just eight miles west of a small town called
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Legrand which has a population today of about 12 500 people this is in Union County in the eastern
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part of the state the campground features 18 campsites restrooms and river access
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the female body was lying at the bottom of a Shale slope near the campground's common area
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she had frizzy red hair and was clothed in a brown wool sweater and black jeans the young woman was identified because
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found near the body was an olive colored backpack which contained an ID bearing her name
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the backpack was thrown down the embankment as well just like her body the victim's name was Kristen Alice
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Smith she was just 22 years old and autopsy revealed that she had been strangled Union County district attorney
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Martin brinbaum said that they were able to determine this because of the subcutaneous bleeding in her eyelids and
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cheeks brinbaum would only say that other parts of her body also bore scrapes scratches and bruising he would
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not initially comment if Kristen had been sexually assaulted but by Late July police acknowledged that she had been
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years later OSP detective Greg Rutherford told the LA Grand Observer she had been
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sexually assaulted and brutally beaten he also described her body as partially clothed now we know she was found in
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jeans and a sweater but what aren't the police saying what items of clothing were missing that led
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investigators to describe her as partially clothed we asked the OSP the Oregon State police and they declined to
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answer because of course Kristen's case is still considered an open and very active investigation district attorney
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brynbaum said that it appeared that Kristen was strangled elsewhere and dumped where she was eventually found
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brynbaum told the East Oregonian it does appear that the body was just dumped at
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Hilgard and that she wasn't killed there so who was this young woman and how did
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she end up at the bottom of a ravine off of an interstate in a place that many might call nowheresville Oregon Kristin
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Alice Schmidt was born in San Luis Obispo in 1980. so this is her hometown which would be about 190 miles Northwest
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of L.A and located on Highway 101 on the California coast its population is about
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44 thousand we really know next to nothing about Kristen she had been a student at SLO community school during
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the 1998-99 academic year then she began taking classes at another College in the
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fall of 1998 and and last attended during the Spring of 2002 during that semester it's unclear what she did in
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2002 and three but she had applied to take classes again at the community college in the fall of 2003.
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Kristen was reportedly a good student now the Legrand Observer newspaper had no luck connecting with her family and I
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could not find any interviews with them but that publication reports that her mom and grandma both lived in San Luis
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Obispo and Kristen had been staying at her mom's place before she left town on a trip to visit her long distance
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boyfriend of course her mom was heartbroken at the news of her daughter's death let's get
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into the investigation and try to put together some kind of timeline here for our victim the Oregon State Police took
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control of this investigation lead investigator Pat Montgomery headed up a team of nine investigators this from the
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OSP the Legrand police and the Union County Sheriff's Office all working in unison together on this investigation
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Montgomery was quoted in the local news as saying the investigation would be a long and slow process
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they were really going to need to try to figure out a key part of Christian's timeline that would require
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investigators to reconstruct Kristen's movements and figure out how she went from San Luis Obispo to a rocky Ravine
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in Central Oregon well this case is very difficult because we don't know much about her and then this boyfriend that
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she was seeing this long distance boyfriend which would be a lot harder to have a long distance relationship back
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then because you'd be writing to them and and long distance calls costs a lot of money back then depending on how far
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away they were and so we don't even know where this individual was located at yeah again it just goes back to stating
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that we don't know much about Kristen's personal life other than her stating two
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family that she was leaving to visit a long distance boyfriend so the police and the investigators from the state
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police as well as the Sheriff's Office what they discovered they they discovered and were able to put together
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that on June 16 2003 Kristen left home telling friends and family she was going to Colorado to
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visit her boyfriend we don't know whether she was traveling alone but it seems that she was it's also not clear
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what her exact travel plans were or if she was just going to kind of make them up as she went along hoping to find
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herself in Colorado but police discovered she had boarded an Amtrak train in San Luis Obispo and arrived in
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Portland Oregon on the same day okay this is about a 13 hour drive so it's a fairly long trip Kristen reportedly
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stayed with a friend in Portland for a few days now who this person is or was has never been released
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a week after Kristen's body was found investigators said that it was still unknown whether she was traveling alone
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they were working on establishing a timeline of Kristen's movements and when they did it would tell them quite a bit
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well they're going to get some information from some of the Campers at this park yeah so where her body is
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found these campers they tell investigators that they were awake and sometime around 3 A.M by noises it
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sounded like someone emptying garbage now it's not clear whether this was like metal trash can sounds or or Oscar the
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Grouch talking something being dumped or dumpsters being dumped kind of sounds they don't really go into any real
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description other than couple of campers say it sounded like someone was emptying garbage somewhere
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but that's an interesting and hopeful lead in their investigation now later we end up learning that Joan Doan that's
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her real name was sleeping at the campground with her husband Charles she says that she had to get up in the
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middle of the night to use the restroom this would be about 3 A.M and she says that she left their trailer around this
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time and in the dim light she says that she saw a big rig a semi truck pulled over on the side of the highway
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up above and something that looked like a large bag being thrown out of the truck and down into the ravine
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she said that she yelled in this direction but the truck drove off immediately Joan could not see much in
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the darkness and she assumed that someone was dumping garbage down the 50-foot embankment
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now just to be perfectly clear here Captain some of these articles say that this would have been about 3 15 am
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Jones says that she then went back to her campsite and tossed and turned and had trouble going back to sleep well the
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sun comes up and now she's saying around 6 a.m her Curiosity has gotten the best
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of her she wants to go out and see what caused that noise waking her up in the middle of the night be careful for what
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you wish she walked in the direction of the noise and found the woman's body so she's the first person to discover
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Kristen's body she ran back to her campsite and her husband called the police Joan would later describe the
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body she found as a young woman in her 20s who had clearly been terribly beat well think about the horror when she
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finds Kristen's body because they heard these noises at night if they would have went and investigated
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more they could have been face to face with the killer or killer there was a little question based on Joan's account
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that the driver of the 18-wheeler had been the person who dumped Kristen down the embankment from the interstate
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highway so if Joan hadn't witnessed this dumping the nature of Kristen's killer would be
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entirely theoretical right we would may have never come up with this possible lead but now investigators knew that
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they should be looking for a trucker and looking for a truck we've said this several times on this show vehicles are
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easier to find than people in most cases so I would start by looking for that truck the Ravine where Kristen was
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dumped was between the campground and the day use area it's unknown whether the trucker even knew that there was a
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campground down there in the dark it may have just looked like a wooded area with no houses or people
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around and could have seemed like the perfect place to anonymously dump a corpse and then get the hell out of
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Dodge yeah initially investigators were cryptic when speaking with the public saying that they were looking for a
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killer within a particular occupation that's the words they use particular occupation they clearly didn't want to
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show their hand in case the trucker was local or in case someone were to come forward and have that profession but
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unfortunately the pool of truckers using the nation's interstates on any given day numbers in the hundreds of thousands
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and investigators learned that any number of truckers could have had access to Kristen it becomes very difficult
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when you don't know where Kristen was heading to what was her destination between point a B and C there's so many
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possibilities of where maybe she would have been abducted we do learn a little bit more here though Captain so when
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Kristen left her friends in Portland she tells them that she was heading to Troutdale to look for a ride what's
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what's Troutdale OR what's in Troutdale this is part of the Portland Oregon metro area so it's about 15 miles
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outside of the city as I understand it the interesting thing here as it pertains to our case and our lead that
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we're currently working on is there is a huge truck stop in Troutdale that has parking for 250 18 wheelers
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this is a location where people can get food there's a barber shop a game room a
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pet area and so on so it's massive that's what she said initial reports said Kristen was last seen hitchhiking
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in Troutdale on the evening of the 25th Union County D.A burn bomb confirmed that the OSP they're looking for a
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suspect among truckers as they believed Kristen was picked up by a trucker in Troutdale
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years later it was confirmed by law enforcement that Kristen was actually at the truck stop in Troutdale so
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beforehand we are told that she was seen hitchhiking in the Troutdale area and then later as they release more
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information to the public we learned that it it was in fact at that very large truck stop I love those super
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truck stops they were always my favorite to stop when I was touring around playing with bands the confirmation we
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end up with your captain is that Kristen was actually at the truck stop in Troutdale
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trying to hitchhike a ride or looking for a ride out of there this would be on the night
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of June 25th so she had been seen there and heard and we'll get into that here in a minute
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this is the day before her body was found remember she was found on June 26th this is June 25th well and she
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wouldn't just be looking for a ride from a truck driver they also have you know gas pumps and stuff for regular Vehicles
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this is from investigator Greg Rutherford he says quote she was there trying to pick up a ride as a hitchhiker she
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wanted to go to Colorado to see her boyfriend it turned out that Kristen was known to hitchhike and did not appear to
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consider the risk that could be involved it's not a situation I would want to put
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myself in well an OSP pointed out saying that hitchhiking is not only dangerous but it's particularly dangerous when it
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involves truckers their words don't come at me uh truckers investigators told this to the newspaper
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saying that she was definitely a victim of her lifestyle saying if you are jumping in with
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truckers all the time it will eventually catch up with you especially if you are
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a young single girl and detective Randy Crutcher who also worked the case for OSP said she was the
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kind of person who wasn't afraid of hitchhiking that is what she did but Kristen wasn't just on the road or on
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the side of the road at the truck stopped sticking her thumb out unfortunately she did something even
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more dangerous she's sticking her toe out she put it out there to the whole Trucking community that she was trying
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to get to Colorado and was looking for a free ride so she's heard By Truckers on
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a CB radio that day asking for a ride from Troutdale to Colorado so it wasn't just bad luck for her that
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a bad guy came along and grabbed the opportunity to give her a ride secretly intending to assault her
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she made a public request over the CB which vastly expanded the pool of truckers learning about a young woman
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traveling alone willing to get into a truck for a ride so ultimately she broadcast her
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vulnerability to a wide audience in anyone with nefarious intentions who heard it and who was within a few hours
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drive could have zoomed over to Troutdale picked her up she didn't just fall into his lap
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unfortunately in this case our victim jumped into it [Music] [Music] all right we are back cheers everybody
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cheers to you captain Kristen's exact time of death has never been publicly revealed but here in the
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garage we like to figure these things out for ourselves so we can extrapolate that it was sometime between the
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sighting of her hitchhiking at the truck stop and then 3 A.M on the 26th so we're
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not dealing with a large window of time here remember we have Joan Doan who is committed to the statement of it was
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roughly 3 A.M maybe 3 15 a.m when I hear the noise and I see something being dumped down into the Ravine from this
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semi truck as far as the super convenience store truck stop right we don't have well we believe she got here
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at nine in the morning and she left by noon those are fictitious times right right yeah we don't have an exact time
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of when she was cited and I believe that police will have a pretty firm buttocks
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idea of what time that would have been because she would have been seen by multiple people and as we said heard by
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dozens over the CB radio well probably there would be some surveillance there as well but the difficulty like you said
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you're putting yourself at extreme risk of danger because you're broadcasting to
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CB radios hey I'm at this truck stop so even if it's way out of somebody else's way
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way out of a trucker's way they hear all this young 22 year old needs a ride I don't even have to be going to
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Colorado if I'm thinking nefarious thoughts or to Portland or anything if you can hear
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that invitation and you're a bad guy you're somebody that is into this sort of thing you can
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make your way to Troutdale and pick her up yeah especially all you really got to
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be concerned with is can I get there faster than the other bad guy now again I want to before we go too deep into
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this because we're going to get really deep into these different truckers and serial killers with inside that
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profession I want to be clear up front here we're not saying that truckers in general are bad in fact we have a lot of
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truckers that listen to the show and we're very happy and proud of that now but just with any profession there are a
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small percentage of the people that are bad with inside of that profession most truckers are great awesome nice
00:24:52
wonderful people but it's it just goes to show that it's really no different here Captain if she announces over CB
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radio for a ride or for a trucker to come pick her up you announce over that CB radio anybody
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that has a CB that can hear that would be a potential suspect that could have come and picked her up and if we lived
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in a world where everybody had Seabees in their cars then think of the hundreds and hundreds of people that may have
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heard her invitation for hey I'm seeking a ride I'm alone I need to make it out to Colorado I'm not trying to victim
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blame here I'm just pointing out the vulnerability that one may put themselves into and possibly suggest
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that spend a few bucks and get a bus ticket to where it is that you may need to go for a lot of these killers one of
00:25:45
the hardest parts is to actually abduct the person to get them into your vehicle
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so you can take them somewhere else Kristen's willing to do so so how will investigators go about finding truckers
00:25:58
who were on the road in this region where Kristen was picked up from and found the SLO Tribune put out an article
00:26:07
on September 9 2003 that stated quote to determine who was on the road when the murder occurred the investigator said
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they have been conducting interviews and checking weigh stations and truckers travel logs they concentrated on way
00:26:25
stations along I-84 but we have to say often when we drive by those weigh stations they are closed detective
00:26:34
Crutcher also said that admittedly some truckers run past away station skipping it so the truck would not be on record
00:26:44
but he said that those truckers are usually caught it's not clear whether there are cameras
00:26:50
recording the stations that would show if a truck blew past without stopping or what in 2003 who knows the likelihood or
00:27:00
the probability of that situation if he's saying that they are usually caught then there must be some way of checking
00:27:09
on this situation yeah the OSP reportedly looked into over 1 000 truckers in the Kristen Schmidt case
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these were rigs that had traveled the stretch of I-84 near where Kristen was believed to have been picked up
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anytime on both June 25th and 26th 2003. think about that 1 000 truckers and I know that that's a roundabout number but
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they're saying over 1 000 truckers that is an almost incomprehensible amount of work if any of them were determined to
00:27:46
be potential Persons of Interest for whatever reason the investigators would have to track them down and speak with
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them directly which would be very difficult to do because they're not confined to one area exactly now
00:28:01
detective Crutcher told the Observer that Kristen's case was the most extensive case he had ever worked on at
00:28:09
that time for the OSP in terms of manpower he felt demoralized that the case was not solved he says quote it is
00:28:18
frustrating when you put that much effort into it you expect it to pay off but the investigators acknowledged that
00:28:26
they were up against a brick wall interestingly enough though Captain remember the early statements from
00:28:33
investigators that said that they believed that this would be a long a lengthy investigation into figuring out who
00:28:41
killed her I'm guessing that based off of the siding of the big rig from our person down below
00:28:49
that they're going well this very likely could be a stranger on Stranger crime and we know that those those are the
00:28:56
most difficult to investigate with all these eyewitnesses at the truck stop nobody sees Kristen get into a vehicle
00:29:04
she's seen hitching a ride I think that we might have a solved case if we saw her getting into an actual
00:29:12
truck on that day really when you think about it though the sighting of that big
00:29:19
rig is huge for a number of reasons because if you have a stranger on Stranger homicide we know how difficult
00:29:26
those are to investigate how difficult it is to connect killer to victim or victim to killer
00:29:34
right but seeing that truck now eliminates a lot of people for you in your investigation it really brings the
00:29:44
number down the sheer number of people that you're going to have to look into at the initial stages of your
00:29:49
investigation yeah this is very difficult for law enforcement as you pointed out Captain it would be
00:29:55
incredibly wonderful for our investigation if somebody came forward that said they saw
00:30:02
her getting into a vehicle or knew more about the vehicle that she got into and from what we've seen and again osp's not
00:30:12
super willing to discuss a lot of the details of her case because it is not just open but I'm happy to report I can
00:30:20
I believe by their statements that this is a very active investigation they may even be closing in on the individual
00:30:28
responsible so based off of what we know it doesn't seem like any of those things happen
00:30:34
unless it did and we're just not being told so and like you said her family is devastated by the loss of their loved
00:30:43
one but they haven't really come out and did a lot of interviews but maybe they just feel like that wouldn't help much
00:30:50
of the situation I don't know that they have a lot of information to provide right because everybody seems to agree
00:30:58
investigators her family the newspapers and so on that she had hit the road and was out of state
00:31:04
when she was picked up by her killer the interesting thing to me though is what I
00:31:09
would really like to know from investigators and again they don't need to tell us anything but I would like to
00:31:16
know has any trucker come forward to say I was the one that allowed her to use my
00:31:20
CB because she's not walking up to that Troutdale truck stop with her own CB in hand and making these announcements out
00:31:28
to other truckers that's a excellent point according to the Legrand observer in October of 2003 news stations in St
00:31:38
Louis Obispo reported that Oregon State Police may be tracing a trucker's possible connection to the death now if
00:31:48
we're going to kind of parse out words here and try to figure out what this sentence means because it's a little
00:31:54
vague my question was does this mean that they were on to one specific trucker or using the word truckers in
00:32:03
generic terms we just don't know when you have a case like this where you're basically
00:32:09
in the dark right as far as the investigation goes you can only do so much with the the little information you
00:32:16
have you want to start looking at other cases that are similar to Kristen's case
00:32:21
and there is another case which a body was found in Oregon that mirrored Kristen's case eerily this is Leah
00:32:29
Elizabeth Schubert age 22 she's last seen at the gear Jammer truck stop in Idaho on June 9th 1987 she had been
00:32:40
driving through the area when she had car trouble later her nude body was found on June 13th when two motorists
00:32:48
stopped to take a pee in the woods on the side of Interstate 84. this is just 12 miles east of Legrand so
00:32:58
we're in the same general area here the victim that they found she lay at the bottom of an embankment right off of
00:33:07
the highway she too had been strangled this from the lawyersupdate.co.in which states quote the Oregon State
00:33:18
Police learned that Leah had left Twin Falls for Boise on June 9th 1987 to pick up her fiancee from the airport where he
00:33:29
was arriving after flying in from San Diego but on her way to Boise her car broke
00:33:35
down so she calls a friend from the gear Jammer truck stop near Mountain Home Idaho along Interstate 84. then she
00:33:45
disappears so nobody hears from her again and she was reported missing that same evening
00:33:52
there is a suspect however in this case this is from a an article from September
00:33:59
of 1987 it says quote the search for one of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives ended when authorities discovered the
00:34:08
accused killer was already in jail where he was serving time under an alias four
00:34:14
months after his arrest for car theft his real identity was finally discovered when his fingerprints were run against
00:34:21
the National Database The Suspect is Darren O'Neill back then he was 27 he's a native of Albuquerque New Mexico
00:34:30
facing a murder charge in the torture sling of a Washington woman and was wanted for questioning in five other
00:34:38
killings in the Pacific Northwest this according to FBI spokesman Cliff Anderson Well Neo was charged with first
00:34:47
degree murder in the 1987 case of Robin Smith he was also wanted for questioning
00:34:54
in The Disappearance of a 29 nine-year-old woman from Whatcom County Washington whose body has never been
00:35:02
found this according to the FBI he also is charged with car theft in The Disappearance of Wendy agahi 29 in
00:35:10
Washington she was last seen April 25th 1987 leaving Bellingham Washington this was a restaurant
00:35:19
where she spotted leaving with O'Neill who reportedly was using the Alias of Mike Johnson back then that's why
00:35:27
they're not able to connect the dots right away he's on their 10 most wanted list yet they find him already in jail
00:35:34
four months later O'Neill also is sought for questioning in the strangulation death of Leah Suber
00:35:42
22 of Twin Falls Idaho who we just discussed earlier there were some eyewitnesses who reported to have seen a
00:35:50
man fitting O'Neill's description near where Leah's car broke down and then he popped up in Spokane
00:35:59
Washington but he has never been charged with Leah's murder he remains in prison for
00:36:06
his other crimes and could not have been the trucker who killed Kristen in 2003 since he was in prison at the time so
00:36:16
let me just see if I'm picking up what you're putting down this guy is a real piece of [ __ ] yeah
00:36:23
we're not really certain how many murders he is responsible for but eerily similar to
00:36:30
Kristen's case and one worth looking at so since he was in prison we at the time
00:36:37
of Christian's murder we know that he didn't he's not responsible for that but what we're saying is that there's
00:36:43
individuals out there like this and they're not just committing one crime they're committing multiple murders this
00:36:50
truck driving serial killer you know it's not just a theory that that law enforcement has these are
00:36:58
actual individuals that's exactly right captain and we reference Leah's case saying it was eerily similar but
00:37:06
even though he suspected the man that we just mentioned O'Neal is suspected in that case Leah's case is unsolved eerily
00:37:14
similar to Kristen's it stands to reason that possibly the killers of one of those women are or one in or both of
00:37:22
those women are one in the same I hope everybody out there listening is familiar with the FBI's VI cap program
00:37:29
because we talked about it extensively in our recent coverage of the Sam little murders and we've talked about it
00:37:37
throughout the history of this show because it comes up so often but a little refresher here or if you've
00:37:45
not listened to the Sam little episodes The Vi cap program run by the FBI this is where state and local law enforcement
00:37:52
agencies upload specific information about certain kinds of cases in their jurisdiction to the federal database via
00:38:01
cap is a federal database these are typically homicides sexual assaults missing persons cases and John
00:38:09
and Jane Doe cases the database allows for searching in comparison of cases this facilitates the finding of similar
00:38:18
crimes both to help solve serial crimes committed by the same killer and to pinpoint serial offenders based on their
00:38:26
patterns and Mos the FBI's VI Camp website contains a page that says quote if there is such a thing as an
00:38:36
ideal profession for a serial killer it may well be as a long-haul truck driver they go on to say the pattern the
00:38:45
website says is unmistakable it attracted notice when in 2004 a senior crime analyst from the Oklahoma Bureau
00:38:54
of Investigation named Terry Turner detected a crime pattern the bodies of murdered women were being dumped along
00:39:03
the interstate 40 Corridor in Oklahoma Texas Arkansas and Mississippi Turner was investigating seven cases in
00:39:14
which truck stop sex workers had been bound raped killed and dumped along i-40. I know all these crimes are taking
00:39:21
place out west but when you look at the Long Island serial killer case people have
00:39:28
had theories that the killer could have been a truck driver that's exactly right
00:39:34
now this is from a newspaper called the Oklahoman and it says quote in a way the
00:39:40
FBI's National Highway serial killings initiative originated with an Oklahoma man who needed to take a restroom break
00:39:47
they go on to stay on September 18 2003 a Tulsa area pharmaceutical salesman was
00:39:55
driving east on Interstate 40 when his bladder began to get the best of him realizing he couldn't make it to the
00:40:02
next rest stop he exited at rural Tiger Mountain Road near Henrietta at the end of the ramp dirt roads LED off in three
00:40:11
directions the area was isolated and undeveloped High Grass Rose around out of ditches and something smelled
00:40:20
terrible at first the salesman didn't recognize the object that he spotted in the ditch
00:40:26
which was about 10 feet away later we're told quote she was buck naked and face down he said he says your mind tells you
00:40:36
it's a deer it's a goat it's anything but a human being my mind would not even allow me to entertain that as reality
00:40:43
until as I looked at her Limbs and followed her arm out to one of her hands I saw a
00:40:51
ring on her finger at that moment in that second it was undeniable and in my mind finally I accepted that this was a
00:41:01
human the salesman whose story was confirmed by law enforcement and who asked that his name not be published
00:41:09
well he found the body of 43 year old Sandra beard she was a truck stop sex worker with
00:41:16
ties to Oklahoma City our investigator Terry Turner a crime analyst with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
00:41:26
sent out a teletype to other agencies looking for similar types of crimes within three days this is when she
00:41:35
learned of two women who died similar deaths beard was the third sex worker to die in a space of just three months so
00:41:46
because of the time and the in the distance it's very possible it's committed by the same
00:41:54
person yes that's exactly right and the thing too it's not just you know time and distance but also the way that the
00:42:01
victims are found the similarities between the way that they suffered their their violent deaths
00:42:08
this is really truly the Genesis of the FBI's Highway serial killings initiative
00:42:16
which is all focused on the occupation of long-haul truck drivers and serial killers working within that profession
00:42:28
now back to the cases we were talking about those sex worker cases from truck stops
00:42:35
all in that three-month time span well by January 31st of 2004 four more women were killed so a task force was formed
00:42:46
to investigate the deaths and information about each case was then sent to the FBI's violent criminal
00:42:52
apprehension program or vicap as we've been calling it well we have to recognize Terry Turner for
00:43:00
putting this all together hard work and diligence pieced this together and uh I'll read a little something from the uh
00:43:09
about the Oklahoma cases this is from a 2022 magazine expose that says when Turner began her investigation in 2003
00:43:19
the murders were seen as one-offs for instance there was Vanilla a 47 year old sex worker known for her honeyed voice
00:43:29
from her advertisements that went out over the CB radio she was born Margaret Holmes Gardner she was a West Memphis
00:43:37
local in July 2003 a USPS letter carrier happened upon vanilla's body in shearerville Arkansas left under an
00:43:49
interstate freeway on-ramp she was discovered 15 miles from the West Memphis Flying J A month later the body
00:43:58
of 24 year old sex worker Jennifer Heyman of Oklahoma City turned up in the Tallahatchie River just past Oxford
00:44:07
Mississippi not long after that another woman with ties to Oklahoma City was found dead the
00:44:13
remains of 43 year old Sandra beard also a sex worker who frequented truck stops
00:44:19
was uncovered alongside I-40 on the Eastern end of Oklahoma each of the women's bodies showed
00:44:27
evidence that their limbs had been bound before they were killed part of the pattern spotted by Terry Turner over the
00:44:35
next four months four more women Vicki Anderson Sandra Richardson Patsy Leonard and Casey Joe Pipestem were found dead
00:44:46
from all the evidence Terry Turner reasoned that the suspect must be a long-haul truck driver she believed he
00:44:54
also wasn't the only truck driving serial killer operating on America's interstate highways and they're picking
00:45:01
victims that a lot of times their family members don't know their whereabouts so
00:45:06
it's hard to report them missing or to figure out who they're connected to or where they
00:45:13
came from yeah and being dumped so far away from where they're being picked up and something else that's key to this
00:45:18
modus operandi of this type of killer something you had suggested and hit on earlier these are victims that are
00:45:26
willing to get into the vehicle with the would-be killer they don't have to go too far to look for them or to grab them
00:45:33
off of the side of the road so going back to Chris's case though we we believe that she was badly beaten
00:45:41
she was bound so it's a very good chance that her her killer took her somewhere almost
00:45:51
to torture her and then and then dump her out in this in the woods possibly what I think happened here Captain is a
00:45:59
situation where the crime scene we're looking for is this guy's truck right I think whatever happened to her and again
00:46:06
we don't have a great description I I can't say 100 that she was tied up or bound all I can say is that she was
00:46:13
found partially clothed she was beaten she was strangled and she was dumped what he likely thought was out in the
00:46:22
middle of nowhere but it wrote unfortunately the the corpse when she or fortunately I guess
00:46:28
if you want to look at it from a glass half full perspective is fortunately this caused enough noise and her body
00:46:35
rolled far enough down this Ravine to be discovered a short time later which then
00:46:41
leads us to this breadcrumb trail of well maybe Kristen's killer is a truck driver and
00:46:49
we can start there by looking at truck drivers in the area the whole thing though is really
00:46:57
interesting to me because she's founded 2003 it's really in 2004 when this whole
00:47:04
long distance truck driver serial killer initiative gets put together so relatively quickly here and now we have
00:47:14
what's going to start to be detectives FBI and people coming together and putting together what will
00:47:22
be a list and a map of potential victims that fall within this category that we believe
00:47:30
the likely perpetrator to be a long-haul trucker in a weird way it's very much similar to
00:47:37
what was happening in the Sam little investigation where somebody spotted a pattern decided that it must be a part
00:47:46
of a much bigger picture now we need to reach out to everybody out there cast a wide net
00:47:54
and we need to start to be able to see some of those other pieces of that puzzle some other pieces of that bigger
00:48:01
picture I mean it's crazy to think that there's roughly what four million active drivers
00:48:10
out there active truck drivers and then they think that there could be 300 of them Plus
00:48:18
that are active serial killers well it's for all those reasons that I just stated
00:48:22
their Captain and the good work of Terry Turner along with a colleague from Texas
00:48:28
that notified vicap and vicap analysts took a look at all of these similar cases on a national level
00:48:36
and they realize that there were hundreds of these types of cases for that reason it was in 2004 that the FBI
00:48:45
launched the highway serial killer initiative a separate database separate from vicap to document hundreds of
00:48:54
bodies found in sexual assaults occurring on the sides of roadways near truck stops
00:49:01
and in or near motels along major Trucking routes all across the country and to attempt to track the movements of
00:49:10
possible suspects the FBI notes that the majority of the victims were women living high risk Lifestyles such as drug
00:49:19
addicted transients sex workers all who frequented truck stops or gas stations along major highways
00:49:28
the suspects were naturally truckers because of where the victims are being picked up Christine Palazzolo and FBI
00:49:35
crime analyst who worked on the highway serial killer initiative also was instrumental in identifying Samuel
00:49:43
little and his victims is quoted on the website as saying quote we had an inordinate number of victims and
00:49:52
offenders from this rather specific population pool obviously referring to sex workers and
00:49:59
truckers respectively Michael Harrigan who originally oversaw the highway serial killings initiative said in 2009
00:50:07
that the victims were generally drawn from a vulnerable population saying quote we don't want to scare the public
00:50:14
and make it seem like every time you stop for gas you should be looking over your shoulder many of these victims made
00:50:22
poor choices but that doesn't mean that they deserve to die end quote [Music] this way
00:50:36
so much more to get to and we'll get to that tomorrow same bat Time same bat Channel and until then be good be kind
00:50:44
and don't litter [Music] foreign