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[Music] [Music] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:45
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who is on a long journey to the middle here is the
00:01:53
captain it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for
00:01:57
telling a friend [Music] this week we are very happy to be featuring Lazy River pills by the good
00:02:08
folks over at New Trail Brewing Company this is a good one for both October Fest
00:02:13
and my favorite time of year September and what I am sure that we all hope for some lazy late summer days Lazy River
00:02:23
pills is a traditional German pilzer that is dry hopped with hand selected Citra hops from the Pacific Northwest
00:02:31
brewed in the great city of Williamsport PA the birthplace of Little League baseball and host city of the Little
00:02:38
League World Series garage grade four out of five bottle caps and Captain let's give some thanks and praise to our
00:02:45
friends for helping us fill up the old garage fridge for this week's shows yeah good we like your jib goes out to Sarah
00:02:52
from Bloomington Indiana and last but not least we have a shout out to scribe in Annapolis Maryland shout out to
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scribe band everybody we just mentioned went to True Crim garage.com clicked on the Pint glass and helped us out with
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garage.com and click on our patreon link and you can now follow follow us on patreon and that's enough of the
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business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:45
[Music] crime to you without you [Music] you a violent murder takes place in a large
00:04:18
home that sat empty and Silent the home is located at the very end of a quiet street a road that sees no through
00:04:31
traffic in fact the road here in this case officially titled Lane to give it that certain neighborhood charm dead
00:04:40
ends and then splits off into two long driveways at the end of Chelsea Lane if one were to go to the left they would
00:04:51
travel a driveway that extends approximately 500 ft and then you would be standing right in front of 21 149
00:05:00
Chelsea Lane if one were to go right instead of left well then you would travel a
00:05:08
driveway that extends approximately 200 or so feet up the driveway and now you are standing in front of
00:05:15
2147 Chelsea Lane inside of this single family four-bedroom home a successful woman and mother at the very top of her
00:05:26
game was murdered there as The Story Goes she was there on that rainy day to meet a prospective
00:05:36
client that opportunity sadly turned into the woman's tragic demise instead of Landing a buyer for
00:05:45
the home that sat quiet and empty the successful saleswoman met her death in the middle of a secluded
00:05:55
neighborhood in an area where at the time crime consisted of traffic violations and child
00:06:03
pranksters was the killer someone she knew or a complete stranger the killer remains unknown more
00:06:12
than 25 years later some of the very important details in this case remain a mystery as well
00:06:21
unknown to all of us all of these years later a realtor was found shot and strangled and through throughout most of
00:06:30
the investigation the authorities were almost as mysterious as the murder itself refusing to divulge the time of
00:06:38
death the caliber of gun used and the important details that their investigation would
00:06:45
uncover was it necessary to keep this information secret over 25 years later and where the
00:06:53
case sits today as firmly in the unsolved and open filing cabinet she was was killed on a rainy workday on that
00:07:02
Thursday afternoon by someone out there and for reasons that remain unknown as well it was not about looking at the
00:07:13
home it was not about contemplating one of life's biggest purchases it was what turned into
00:07:21
preventing a lovely lady from going home that day why what was the motive from everything that I can see this is a
00:07:32
cold case and as our longtime listeners know all too well cold cases present many investigative
00:07:40
challenges there is no perfect investigation regardless of the jurisdiction or the law enforcement
00:07:46
entity conducting the investigation but as we all know there is no perfect murder and this murder
00:07:57
certainly is not the exception to that rule during the course of a murder investigation means and opportunity are
00:08:05
often easily determined the motive for murder is more elusive means and opportunity are some
00:08:13
of the best dividing factors when separating the suspects from all other possibilities in this case I believe the
00:08:23
motive could separate the prime suspect from all others this is the still unsolved
00:08:30
homicide case of Charlotte Fano and this is true crime [Music] garage to you without
00:08:46
you [Music] you as the Morning Call newspaper put it it didn't matter that the house on Chelsea
00:09:04
Lane stands in the middle of a secluded neighborhood in a location where crime is akin to speeding citations and
00:09:12
vandalism rather than murder but 40-year-old Charlotte Fano was killed there anyway this is in the heler toown
00:09:21
lower Sak Township area of Pennsylvania so not terribly far from New Jersey and just east of Allentown and Bethlehem two
00:09:31
larger cities in Pennsylvania this is a murder that took place on Thursday September 11
00:09:40
1997 this is a cold case that is very solvable in my opinion and you know how much we love to be able to put those
00:09:49
words together in such close proximity Charlotte Fano was born Charlotte Christie Edinger in 1957 to
00:09:59
parents Donald and Anna May Edinger at the time of the murder in 1997 Charlotte was married and was the
00:10:07
mother of one her husband is Christian Fano and her daughter is chrisy Everett Fano her daughter chrisy is older she's
00:10:19
grown up she's a senior in college still living at home with Mom and her stepdad
00:10:25
who from my understanding raised her as his own in 1997 Charlotte was a very successful realtor in fact she had been
00:10:36
quite successful in this line of work pretty much from the time that she started in the business she worked for
00:10:42
wer realtors in Bethlehem for about 10 years and I do want to give a little bit of clarification here Captain wer is a a
00:10:52
larger company they have several offices in fact she worked at the Easton office
00:10:58
for many years before transferring to Bethlehem to that location where she had only been for about a year year and a
00:11:06
half prior to the murder so she worked for wer for about 10 years and then as said only about a year and a half at the
00:11:15
Bethlehem office she was a member of their million dooll sales Club a repeat member I think that's a an annual club
00:11:23
or annual award that they give out in 1990 Charlotte was named woman of the year
00:11:29
by the American businesswoman's Association Starburst chapter now an overview of the case is pretty much the
00:11:37
same as the information that was released in the early goings of this investigation early on the information
00:11:44
was coming out from primarily three sources the coroner a detective and a fellow
00:11:51
realtor so let's go through the overview and include all of the known early information and after that we will see
00:11:59
if we can add some additional details there are some very interesting theories here and while we don't have any
00:12:06
publicly named suspects I think we will be able to conjure up a few to discuss and see if the puzzle pieces fit early
00:12:14
on law enforcement was very tight lipped on what they were sharing with the public in this investigation it makes
00:12:22
you wonder what they were finding out and when they were finding it out because they would start to release some
00:12:28
other information as this investigation would drag on but let's go to the beginning okay so one of
00:12:34
the more well-known headlines here in this case is from a Saturday September 13th 1997 newspaper the morning call out
00:12:43
of Allentown Pennsylvania the headline reads Bethlehem realtor found slain in lower sck home for sale immediately on
00:12:53
mine starts to fill in the blanks this information is from the Northampton County Court Warner Zachary Lasik
00:13:01
telling us that the realtor Charlotte Fano age 40 who lived on Allen Street in Bethlehem Township died from a gunshot
00:13:10
wound to the head and strangulation he very quickly ruled the death a homicide however he would not
00:13:18
release the suspected time of death or the caliber of gun used in the murder Charlotte's body was found just after
00:13:25
710 a.m. on Friday February 12th the police also would not confirm nor comment if Charlotte went to the
00:13:35
property to meet a client or a prospective buyer later we would get some better clarification as to what
00:13:43
their investigative efforts would uncover but as anyone can understand in the early stages the detectives are
00:13:50
going to be looking to see if they can confirm who was the last person she was with why was she there and who was she
00:13:59
meeting with and here they don't want to show their hand right this is a Pennsylvania State Police Case by the
00:14:06
way a state police investigation they may not want the person to know that they are able to
00:14:13
identify or have a lead on who that person may be that she was going to meet so that's why you keep that
00:14:22
secret the manager of the wer office where Charlotte worked out of did talk to the newspaper as well so this is the
00:14:31
manager her name is Marcy Carter she fills in some more details from which we learned that Charlotte Fano was reported
00:14:39
missing right around midnight on Thursday remember the body was recovered the following morning Friday after 7
00:14:46
a.m. and the newspaper that is giving out the first details of the case is from that Saturday September 13th her
00:14:54
co-workers describe Charlotte as Plucky and aggressive the man manager of the wer office Marcy Carter says quote
00:15:02
everyone is so sad and that Charlotte was well-loved and the real estate firm is offering
00:15:08
$100,000 a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the person responsible for
00:15:16
Charlotte's death Marcy tells the newspaper that Charlotte's husband Christian was the one to report her
00:15:24
missing around midnight on Thursday the night before her body was found the home
00:15:30
where she was found was listed for sale and was vacant at the time now it said the police were not going to comment on
00:15:38
if Charlotte went to the home to show the place to a prospective buyer and Marcy very wisely did not want to jam up
00:15:46
their investigation so she didn't comment on that either however the newspaper reporters Kathleen Parish Denise Seaman
00:15:54
and Phil Bole were doing some dogged investigative work them themselves and discovered that the Lehigh Valley board
00:16:02
of realtors left voicemail messages for area members one to inform them of Charlotte's murder and two to warn them
00:16:13
warning them to be extra careful when showing properties so law enforcement is being very tight lipped to the public
00:16:20
but then we have these realators coming out saying hey hey we have to be careful
00:16:25
because we don't know if this is going to be a PE event if this is somebody targeting real estate agents so let's
00:16:34
let's dive into a couple events on the timeline yeah before we get into the crime scene details I think there are
00:16:41
some important times to highlight on this timeline remember around midnight on Thursday September 11 Christian Fano
00:16:51
reports his wife charlet missing to the authorities at 7:10 a.m. on Friday her body is found at the for sale residence
00:17:00
2147 Chelsea Lane there was a news conference with members of the State Police that same Friday night at this
00:17:09
conference the police stated that Charlotte was reported missing when she failed to return home from work they
00:17:16
also stated that that what they would refer to as an anonymous 911 call came in Friday morning directing police to
00:17:26
the 2147 Chelsea Lane property they go out there immediately after getting this 911 call in fact there's indicators that
00:17:35
the police were at the property in about 10 minutes time after receiving that call there they find Charlotte's vehicle
00:17:44
parked in the driveway the body is then discovered inside the home the body is then removed from the scene at 1130 a.m.
00:17:53
taken to Easton Hospital where the autopsy was conducted later we're going to learn that
00:18:00
Charlotte was shot twice and strangled and it was ligature strangulation meaning that she was
00:18:07
strangled with an object not someone's hands right at the time police would not say what room in the house that the body
00:18:15
was found and from my understanding Captain there's been some speculation thrown out there and there's been a
00:18:21
source at least one source says that she was found at the top of a stairs I was trying to figure out if this had a
00:18:28
basement or not because top of the stairs could mean second floor or ground level I want I want to be straight up
00:18:35
here that that's not information that we've been able to confirm and it's also information that I don't believe has
00:18:44
been publicly released by the police themselves and you said there's gunshot wounds and strangulation do we know if
00:18:52
she was strangled and and then shot or shot then strangled we don't but when we get to our speculation to our suspects
00:19:00
and to our theories portion I'm going to I'm going to have some comments on and thoughts on that those actions that that
00:19:09
we know did take place well we know you're never short of comments so police are saying that she shot twice manual
00:19:16
strangulation at the time again they won't say what room inside the home that the body was found they will not comment
00:19:22
on the condition of the body the caliber of gun that was used or what was used to
00:19:28
strangle her and would not comment on possible suspects they did say that police recovered some of charlot's
00:19:36
personal items at the residence and did not know if anything was missing at this
00:19:42
time they did say that they set up a command post at a nearby driveway they lined the streets of the neighborhood
00:19:49
with cop cars blocked off a two block area of the neighborhood searched the neighborhood especially all wooded areas
00:19:57
near the the home maintained that post until late in the afternoon and recovered no
00:20:05
weapon the state police captain Theodore kouth said police do not have a motive for the murder now this is this is all
00:20:16
very interesting here to me Captain because not only are they keeping it tight lipped but what we do know what we
00:20:22
can decipher from what they are saying is that they recovered no weapon so one we know that they were searching
00:20:33
the area they very likely were searching for the gun itself wondering if maybe somebody ditched the gun tossed the gun
00:20:40
on their way out of the neighborhood or if the killer lives in the neighborhood on a retreat back to their own residence
00:20:47
and there's two weapons that we're looking for law enforcement is looking for one a gun into some object that
00:20:54
would be used for this triangulation and we always talk talks so much here in the garage about
00:21:00
transfer Theory and transfer Theory to me it's not a theory it's a real thing and it's a very investig very great
00:21:06
investigative tool transfer theory is the simple thought that a killer likely leaves something at a crime scene
00:21:16
knowingly or unknowingly and the killer also will take something from the crime scene with
00:21:23
him or her knowingly or unknowingly this can be any form of physical evidence could be a weapon what have you what
00:21:32
what's really interesting to me here when we talk about this of course they're going to be searching the wooded
00:21:37
area for a gun of course they're going to be searching the neighborhood for the gun but as you bring up Captain Li ature
00:21:45
strangulation we know that she was strangled with an item a rope a cord a wire what have
00:21:51
you this makes me really wonder if that item came from inside the home or they had reason to believe that that item
00:22:00
would have come from inside of the home one obvious sign of that to police would
00:22:05
be if somebody used a phone wire or phone cord taken from one of the phones inside the murder house and out of the
00:22:13
two weapons being left to me I would think it's more likely that you'd leave the weapon that was used as a
00:22:21
strangulation device because that possibly wouldn't have as many ties back to that individual as
00:22:28
much like a firearm would yeah especially if that item came from inside the home again they could have recovered
00:22:36
that item from inside the home and just FL out lie to the newspapers I don't believe that to be the case here and we
00:22:45
can go through that more when we get to the suspects but again think about this scenario it's it's a vacant home it sat
00:22:53
vacant for some time and she is there and and I know that we're saying early on that police won't say the firm that
00:23:03
she worked for won't say that she was there to meet a potential client or if she was meeting somebody she knew or
00:23:10
didn't know that's all well and good but you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to
00:23:15
figure out that she's in the business of selling homes this home is for sale and
00:23:22
we know at least one other person was there with her because the killer was there with her
00:23:29
so it's not much of a leap early on and later we would in fact learn that that was the case that she was there under
00:23:38
the rules of showing the home to a prospective buyer a lot more details to get into after this quick beer
00:23:46
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00:26:27
up upwards cheers mates cheers to you Colonel I say upwards and onwards cheers to you Captain all right Captain here's
00:26:35
the thing one key player in this murder investigation of course is going to be the crime scene the murder house the the
00:26:43
home that was listed for sale and to me this is what is so intriguing about this
00:26:49
case this is one of those added elements that you don't get in other murder investigations right the the home does
00:26:56
not belong to to the person that was killed there and as far as we can see I don't think
00:27:04
there's any reason to believe that the home belonged to the person that owned it or the the killer owned the home it
00:27:11
that would seem like a pretty quick fix for law enforcement to solve this case and here we sit 25 more than 25 years
00:27:17
later with an unsolved case so let's go through that key item here that home and
00:27:24
what we do know about that home so this house was owned by Gary Peters and he is from my understanding
00:27:33
or was at the time a successful dentist that lived in a neighboring City or not too terribly far away from where this
00:27:41
home was M uh I don't know why they moved out of the home from everything I could see this is a was a beautiful home
00:27:48
but you know people people go through separations maybe he wanted to live closer to his practice uh there's any
00:27:56
number of reasons why this individ ual or his family would have moved out of the home but obviously if you're in law
00:28:02
enforcement you have to vet anybody that owns the home correct because one they they would have access to the home and
00:28:09
to the property right and so you're you're looking for a suspect here and you're also going to be going through
00:28:17
what you find on your victim in her car or inside that residence that she brought with her to help lead you to a
00:28:26
suspect and we'll get into some of that here in a minute we do know per police they did say we did recover some of her
00:28:34
belongings inside the residence and we did find her vehicle parked in the driveway out front of the home now one
00:28:42
thing we need to be very clear here on and we talked about this a little bit in the trailer today is this house is very
00:28:50
secluded we did talk about it being in a neighborhood but it's kind of On The Fringe of that neighborhood and
00:28:58
this would be an ideal place for many people to live because you at this location in
00:29:05
1997 and if you look up this on any map app you will still see this today this home in property offers the feel of like
00:29:17
country living secluded Retreat country type living but you would have all the amenities of living in a city you know
00:29:27
nearby all of your places to work it would be a short commute to schools or to to work but you would also feel like
00:29:34
you're kind of out in the middle of nowhere so the property's actually I I seen it listed multiple different
00:29:40
ways and that is because we talk about the house being vacant it had been listed from as far as
00:29:48
I could see starting in January of 1997 Charlotte Fano is killed in this home in September of
00:29:58
1997 and the home the listing would typically run in the Sunday newspaper and it would give a price and a
00:30:08
description and it had run fairly regularly during the months that it was for sale and some of the listings would say
00:30:19
over three acres well the the the closest I get could get to an exact specifications on the the dimensions of
00:30:28
this property several of the listings say 3.5 acre lot and several say 3.6 acre lot
00:30:35
so you can tell from that that you have this country feel living but with all the amenities of the city the other
00:30:44
thing too is the positioning of this property on the road itself as we talked about in the trailer you would have to
00:30:50
go one would have to go to the dead end of Chelsea lane and then from there it splits off into two driveways and both
00:30:59
of these driveways are not only lengthy but they're leading to large properties so the one of the best listings that I
00:31:08
could find it's a little short here but um it said that this home had a uh indoor Jacuzzi or hot tub several
00:31:18
fireplaces has a great view again over 3 Acres lot it was listed this is another
00:31:26
interesting little tidbit here Captain this home was listed with wer Realtors but it's not listed by Charlotte Fano
00:31:35
she's not the listing agent right in 1997 Sharon Adams is the listing agent uh who also works for wer realtorss yeah
00:31:45
so I don't know a ton about the real estate business or being a real estate agent but if you're the listing agent
00:31:52
you're responsible obviously for the contracts for staging the house if it's going to be staged for the photographs
00:31:59
that are taken it being listed and the details in which it's listed so as far as what Charlotte is doing is mainly
00:32:09
she's just going to be showing that to clients yeah so it's very common for to have two people both parties represented
00:32:17
the the seller is often represented by a real Tor unless it's a fsbo right for sale by owner or and you also have the
00:32:27
buyer who is typically represented by a real tour now if you are a first-time home buyer do not know much about the
00:32:33
housing market and you are looking for a home and you're thinking well I'll just
00:32:39
go It Alone no get a real tour because you as the buyer do not pay any commissions to the realtor the seller
00:32:48
always pays the commissions so you get free advice free advisory uh on your big decision on on
00:32:59
making one of the biggest purchases of your life so right but what's weird here and and I think a lot of people are
00:33:05
going to latch onto this rather quickly could we have a scenario where the listing agent gets
00:33:14
upset with Charlotte for showing her listed property right the the listing agent
00:33:22
would get 100% commission 100% of the Comm if the buyer is not represented by a real Tor MH so it does cut into their
00:33:33
money however they don't lose the commission they split the commission with the buying with the buyer realtor
00:33:42
so back in 1997 you know commissions have changed over the decades I don't know what they would have been in this
00:33:49
area in 1997 I'm guessing what was popular here in the late 90s was between like a 4 and 6% commission right so if
00:34:00
you're splitting that two ways it's it's two each 2 and A2 each three each somewhere in that neighborhood so this
00:34:10
property as said was listed for approximately 8 to n months before the murder takes place it was eventually
00:34:18
sold even after the murder I don't recall when but they did drop the price over the course of that time period that
00:34:26
it's sat and did not sell it was originally the first price that I could find listed here Captain was for
00:34:35
$279,000 and at the time of the murder it was listed at a selling price of $259,000 now why is that important
00:34:44
because again we are talking about people's livelihoods people that are in the business of working off of
00:34:50
commission and so it is important to know that this at the time in 1997 in this area this is considered to be a
00:34:58
higher end property to have as a listing also a higher end property to be showing to a potential buyer yeah I
00:35:06
understand that but it's not like you're cutting out their commission completely
00:35:10
so it just seems like a kind of a weak motive to be looking at the listing agent as a possible suspect and I think
00:35:19
that this case is rather complicated and I think that the part of the complications involved in this case is
00:35:27
again going back to the motive motive is elusive in many of these investigations in fact there's
00:35:35
often times where a case will go to trial and you will get a conviction and still nobody is certain of what the
00:35:42
exact motive was here in this case I really believe that if you could figure out the motive then you could separate
00:35:51
your Prime Suspect from all these other people that are just kind of jamming up your investigation right the the listing
00:35:58
agent is somebody you should look at why they would have reason to cut somebody out but like you said it's not a it's
00:36:07
not you don't have to make much of a leap to get to the listing agent and to start looking at that person yeah I
00:36:14
think it like I said it's a very weak motive and you have to look at the owner of the property because they have access
00:36:22
so the same goes for the listing agent because they have access to the property as well the other thing we should keep
00:36:29
in mind as well is that really truly because the property is listed with with her real estate firm anybody that works
00:36:38
for that real estate firm would have access to that home right into that property now we do know that you know
00:36:45
today often you will see the lock boxes on the the doors that that will you punch in a code and every realtor has a
00:36:54
a very specific unique code to get that key out and unlock the the home in this case from my understanding I don't know
00:37:03
if there was a lock box but what I do know is that at the real estate office where they worked there was a key there
00:37:13
and this is interesting so this is how we're going to we got to start filling in some of the blanks here because
00:37:18
there's some really interesting phone calls that take place and it would take a very long time for police to release
00:37:25
this information and in fact some of the information ends up coming out from her real estate
00:37:31
office so at the time there's approximately a little more than 50 people that work at this office it's
00:37:38
located about 5 and a half to 6 miles away from the listed property what they did back then and I'm sure this is
00:37:47
fairly common in different lines of work where you're primarily paid in commissions what they did was they would
00:37:55
have a rotation where you would get the you would be the person that would be assigned the cold calls right so what
00:38:04
this is is calls that would come in or people that would potential clients that would drop into the the building
00:38:11
unannounced with no appointment scheduled and from my understanding Captain they actually had two agents
00:38:18
that would do this task for a one for a one week period to many that have never worked in in a line of work where you're
00:38:26
paid solely on commission you would think oh well this is annoying busy work who would want to do that you'd want to
00:38:33
keep all of your appointments well I think that's why they would assign two agents so that if you did have some
00:38:39
appointments you could keep them and make arrangements with the other agent so that there was always somebody to
00:38:44
answer the phone and also somebody to greet any walk-ins that they may have and in fact if you work on commissions
00:38:51
you you want to catch this task periodically because this is an opportunity for you to get new
00:38:58
clients by them just calling in or just walking into the office so for my understanding Captain Charlotte and
00:39:06
another agent were put put on this task for that week now remember we know the murder takes place on a Thursday and the
00:39:16
body's found on a Friday it's been reported that the appointment if you want to let's call it an appointment but
00:39:24
it's kind of a happened it's kind of a last minute appointment right she catches this
00:39:29
appointment by answering the phone that week so she's answering the phone for the office that week a call comes in the
00:39:36
day before the murder and I hate I'm going to I'm going to be straight up with everybody right now because I think
00:39:44
there's some devil in the details here and the problem is the details are a little shaky right and part of that is
00:39:51
because police have not released information and still haven't all these years later the the details that are
00:39:57
shaky is that one it seems across the board everybody agrees that the call came in the day before that somebody
00:40:05
called and said hey I want to see this property I could be there tomorrow at 100 p.m. that's the way that it's
00:40:13
reported most of the time we're going to dive into that a little bit more but let's stick with that for now okay
00:40:19
Wednesday Charlotte receives a cold call she writes down this individual's name writes down the property and agrees
00:40:29
to meet them there at 1M on Thursday okay I I have a question yes sir so when she is getting this call is this coming
00:40:37
into her own private line or like a line that's dedicated towards her or is it just coming in to the real estate
00:40:47
company and she just happened to be the one that answered the phone all indicators are was that this was not a
00:40:54
call that where somebody asked for Charlotte Fano or that somebody was calling her direct line every every
00:41:02
Source says that she was working these cold calls along with another agent and that's how this appointment was set up
00:41:11
yeah because if you want to Target Charlotte right I'd go well what listings does Charlotte have I'll set up
00:41:21
appointment to see one of those houses so I can make sure I'm getting my target I think there's evidence to show that
00:41:31
that possibly the person didn't care who who showed up to show them the house right and here here's the other problem
00:41:37
with this information okay this I believe this information to be good information the problem is it's not
00:41:43
detailed enough again the devil is always in the details right the information is that she catches this
00:41:50
cold call that comes in and she agrees to meet an individual the following day at 1 p.m. out at this property and the
00:41:59
thing here though is when you start looking at source information the sources report this
00:42:07
differently several sources state that the caller a male caller called asking to see a secluded vacant property now we
00:42:18
don't know the details of that conversation and I don't believe for a second that that conversation was one or
00:42:24
two sentences long I think this was probably a lengthier conversation because a good salesperson and which
00:42:32
what do we know about Charlotte she was a great salesperson is going to try to get as
00:42:37
much information from the potential buyer their potential client as possible and so we don't know the details of that
00:42:45
conversation but again several sources are saying that the male caller asked to see a vacant secluded property okay so
00:42:56
tell me if I'm crazy doesn't seem to me that this killer is choosing his victim but he's choosing the location
00:43:07
the location seems to be more important well that could also go along with the other the other source information the
00:43:14
other source information is very different to me it says that the male caller was asking specifically about
00:43:21
this property right 2147 Lane but to me Captain those are two very different conversations right
00:43:31
if if somebody calls and says I want to look at 2147 Chelsea Lane that means they are aware of a
00:43:40
couple things they're aware of the property and they're aware that it's for sale and in this case we now know that
00:43:48
there's a murder there then they also knew that it was vacant now this doesn't mean that anybody has to have a great
00:43:55
knowledge of this real estate company their firm and their listings I mean they could
00:44:01
have just seen this property in the newspaper on a Sunday and decided to drive out there and go yeah that that
00:44:07
the paper says it's vacant and that looks pretty secluded right so it could be a complete stranger and you're right
00:44:14
it could be somebody that's not targeting Charlotte at all just targeting female realtor but the problem
00:44:21
here is again the other source information saying that the maale caller asked to see a vacant secluded property
00:44:30
which sounds very nefarious right it sounds like why wouldn't Charlotte pick up on oh this is probably not a great
00:44:39
appointment to take I have a male caller who wants to see a vacant secluded property it's the
00:44:46
conversation the the caller likely would never have called up and said yo I want
00:44:51
to see a vacant empty secluded property they probably had a convers ation where the the it's a ruse where the caller
00:44:59
says you know I'm looking for something that's kind of out of the way I don't like to be in a busy neighborhood um I
00:45:05
also want something that I can move into right away also means vacant right right
00:45:10
um so that that seems like a much less nefarious conversation again I don't have any I
00:45:18
don't fault any of the source material because a lot of it's coming from newspapers and and and very good
00:45:25
newspapers that that but it's reported two different ways and I think that to me anyway I think that that separates
00:45:32
some of the theories and some of the possibilities in the case if perpetrator was calling specifically about a
00:45:39
property and giving the address versus oh this is what I'm kind of looking for and she she would have pointed out she
00:45:48
would have known about this property it's listed with her firm right she may have suggested it so that's a little bit
00:45:57
tricky so we have that phone call that takes place everything says that that phone
00:46:02
call takes place on Wednesday we don't know what details police were able to decipher from the notes that she took
00:46:10
from that phone call other than they have said that they did have a name in her appointment
00:46:20
book and it sounds to me like they've confirmed that that is a ficti name now that's Wednesday so Thursday
00:46:31
she goes out and shows the property and again the appointment is for 100 p.m. this is information that has come from
00:46:37
the real estate firm and I believe later police have confirm this but I I want to
00:46:43
get into why I have a problem with the timeline too especially on this Thursday now some more details here captain that
00:46:50
are are very interesting Christian Fano and his wife Charlotte Fano obviously they live together but
00:47:01
remember the daughter lives there as well Christy lives there and from my understanding at this point starting in
00:47:08
August of that year her boyfriend lives with them Christie is a senior in college so she's
00:47:18
grown Christian Works a not so typical work schedule he works 10hour days around 600
00:47:27
or 7 p.m. on Thursday the day in question christe the daughter calls her stepfather Christian
00:47:35
at work and says you know it's 6:30 it's 7:00 p.m. mom's not home yet this is a little weird usually she's home by now
00:47:44
and from my understanding while this woman stayed very busy with her work and she was an extreme professional and
00:47:50
extremely good at her sales job she was also very much a creature of habit once her workday was done she was an at home
00:47:58
person she was a home buy yeah you can work hard and play hard and you can also not play hard and just sit at home yeah
00:48:06
the playing hard could be uh work hard relax hard that's right so Christian says to chrisy on the
00:48:14
phone you know I understand your concern but also keep in mind when when you work
00:48:19
in the sales business if you want to be really good at it your schedule is whatever your client schedule
00:48:27
is if a potential buyer can only go and look at a home at 700 p.m. on a Thursday
00:48:34
well if you want to be successful you better take that 7 p.m. appointment and Christian and Charlotte have been
00:48:41
together for well over a decade they I think they got married in in the early 80s like
00:48:47
8081 and so this is 1997 he says to Christy you know she's probably just out on a late appointment
00:48:55
appointment showing a house to potential buyer or maybe she's taking a listing I'm sure it's nothing and I'm sure
00:49:02
she'll be home soon okay so that phone call ends Christian gets home from work after a little after 11:30 this is why
00:49:10
the missing person's report comes in so late he gets home and his stepdaughter Chrissy's like she's still not here okay
00:49:17
now Christian's concerned so he calls into police just before midnight shortly after arriving home hey my wife is
00:49:24
missing and an interesting thing too about this line of work Realtors are not like
00:49:31
completely unknown in their towns right you you're used to sometimes you'll see their their
00:49:38
face and name on their listings on the signs in front of the properties and it's not uncommon too to see their names
00:49:45
and faces on billboards yeah or in the newspaper in the newspaper exactly yeah or on Ural cakes my favorite we have
00:49:53
this person who's now missing she's a Officially Missing reported missing so by her family I found this detail to be
00:50:00
very strange because you know that I love the anytime that there's a communication from a killer or Anonymous
00:50:07
person to the media or to law enforcement remember it's reported that an anonymous call comes in to 911 on
00:50:15
Friday morning that leads them to that property where they ultimately find her car and then her body that call actually
00:50:24
while it's listed as Anonymous in the newspapers I think they may have done this for safety concerns that 911 call
00:50:32
actually came from her husband so what he does Captain is very early Friday morning he starts calling her office and
00:50:40
other people that she worked with and he's like look she didn't come home last night I reported her
00:50:47
missing we think that this might be work related and whoever gets to the office rather early they're able to determine a
00:50:57
couple things one that the key for 2147 Chelsea Lane is still gone from their keyboard and two it was Charlotte Fano
00:51:09
that was scheduled to show that property I have a question do you know if there was other properties that were pulled to
00:51:16
show this individual or was it just this house because sometimes when you're looking for a house the real estate
00:51:24
agent will take you to m multiple properties from my understanding this was the only property that she was
00:51:30
showing to this caller mhm so police armed with this information they now drive out to that property and
00:51:37
immediately again they find her vehicle then they find her dead inside those all
00:51:42
those phone calls are very important it shows some movement and communication in an appointment set up
00:51:50
by the likely killer right the the person that called and set up the appointment doesn't 100% have to be the
00:51:57
killer but would seem to be the most likely of persons to be responsible for the
00:52:04
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