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Emma Compton Lane first was missing. And then things got worse. Emma has a couple of sisters.
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Two that from my understanding don't get along very well. But yet they are fighting for Emma.
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Seeking justice for their sister. The past away too soon at the hands of a very bad man.
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A man that picks on and threatens women because he is weak, insecure, and cowardly.
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But because Emma's sisters, Winona and Shauna, don't speak they are fighting the same battle but
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separately. I don't know that True Crime Garage covering Emma's case will actually get justice for Emma.
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But I know our coverage today can't hurt her case. You see, Emma's case is very solvable.
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But because Emma lived in a tiny town her case lacks awareness. Well that ends today.
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Something else that I wish would end today is this bad blood between Emma's sisters.
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Now, I would think after losing your sister and one of your best friends you each would need a sister to help you
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with your hurt. To help you with your battle and your fight for justice for Emma.
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You need a sister and you both still have one. So pick up a phone and say something nice.
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No one has to say that they are sorry. Just say, "I miss Emma and I want to fight for our sister
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together because nothing else matters. Because as it stands now you've both lost two sisters
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and all you have gained is heartache and a Facebook page. The Justice for Emma Compton Lane
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Facebook page. But you both have the power to change that. The following is from that Facebook
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page. Justice for Emma Compton Lane which I encourage our listeners to go to. Show your support by visiting the page
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to let the sisters know that people care. Now, this is a post from one of Emma's
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sisters and it reads "Five years ago on Tuesday, June 20th we filed a missing person's report for
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Emma. We know now that she was murdered after midnight on the 18th. But I've wondered
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if we had filed on Monday, would Halifax County Sheriff's Department have taken us more seriously?
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Would they have worked Emma's case harder? Five long, sad years and we still are waiting for justice for Emma.
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We are still waiting for an arrest, a trial for the person who murdered her to be
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held accountable. No one except the person who killed her knew she was missing until that Monday
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the 19th. That person had the time to remove evidence and clean up the crime scene.
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I also believe that person had help covering the crime. Over this five years, we have been told
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by Halifax County Sheriff's Department and Commonwealth Attorney Martin her case is a priority.
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At first I believed them with their assurances. But after five years, I have to wonder
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just how truthful they've been. When something is a priority, things get done. Things happen.
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And results are seen. I pray that next year I will have a reason to believe that they really have been working
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Emma's case and that we will see justice for Emma before another year passes. Thank you to those who remember and love
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Emma. Thank you for your continued support. Still waiting for and seeking justice for Emma.
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I love and miss you every day, Emma Jean. This is True Crime Garage. Emma Jean Compton Lane loved
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hummingbirds, Christmas, and more importantly, helping other people. She was 52 years old when she went
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missing. Emma was married to a man named Russell Lane. Russell was a truck driver and may still
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be. Emma was a store owner. Cody is a small community. This is where they lived.
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It's a small community in Halifax County, Virginia. It's one of those small unincorporated towns, kind of a
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tiny dot on the map. Emma owned the Cody Store. Listen to this, captain. To give a better idea of
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what kind of store we are talking about, this is from one of the old signs on the
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Cody Store and it reads "Full service deli, open 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Pizza, grocery, beer, ice, dog
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food, hunting and fishing supplies, slab bacon, and fatback meat." Mhm. "Store hours 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday
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through Saturday, closed on Sunday, accepting all major credit cards." Sounds like my kind of store. Has about
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everything that one could think of. I I couldn't imagine needing anything else. And I know you were like me, captain,
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when given the option we prefer a mom-and-pop type operation and that's very much what this was. I'm
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assuming that there was a larger grocery store in this tiny town that people could go and spend their hard-earned
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money at, but a lot of people preferred to go to the Cody Store because of the friendly service. You know, you're
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getting the you're getting that kind of personal service when you walk in and somebody goes, "Hi, captain."
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or "Good to see you, colonel." "How about some slab Or fatback meat. And you go good to be seen. It's good to be seen.
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Yep, I like my grocery stores like I like my podcast, homegrown, independently owned, no network. The
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troubling thing about this case, well, there's many troubling things. But the first that stands out is that
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often on the materials that we see that talk about Emma going missing, they will
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say that she was last seen at the Cody Store, which is not really true but it goes along with the story or
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some people's narrative of this story. So, keep in mind, the store is very important to our timeline and it's also
00:10:06
very important to this case because I think that it also includes and gives us a good idea of Emma's personality. Can't
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you kind of picture her 52 years old, owner-operated store, very friendly person, always a smile on her face when
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you come in the door. But the store itself, remember we read the hours of operation
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there. They're closed on Sunday. The last that she is seen on some of these materials states that it was at the
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store on Saturday night. Right. However, we have some information of locals that
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say, "Yes, we saw as we drove by the store, we could still see her vehicle there." Remember, this is the kind of
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town, the small little town where everybody kind of knows everybody and everybody knows what kind of vehicle you
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drive. And of course, people that frequent the store are going to know Emma, they're going to know what kind of
00:11:00
vehicle that she drives. So, we have several people who are saying, "Yes, after the store closed on that Saturday,
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I saw her vehicle in the parking lot." Which is not uncommon, right? You have closing duties, you have to count the
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till, you have paperwork to do, everything that you have to do before you officially leave the business for that
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night. That's enough of the business. Now, the troubling thing to me is when I see these materials, my mind instantly
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makes the leap of, "Oh, no. I put myself Somebody must have went to the store, attempted a robbery or abducted her for
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any number of reasons." Right. And that's what went down and that's what we're looking for here.
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However, that's not the case. Mhm. Even though the materials read that way, she made it
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home that night. And so, she would have left the store at approximately 9:30, maybe 10:00 at the
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latest, but she closed the store, she closed the shop on that Saturday, she went home. The other problem for our
00:12:02
timeline though becomes the fact that the store is closed on Sunday. Now, this store was I was about to say that it's
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her life, but there was other things going on in her life. As we mentioned, she was married to Russell Lane.
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But also a very important thing that's going on at this time in a very stressful thing that's going on for Emma
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at this time is her mother was recently put in the hospital. And I believe it was only about two or three
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days before that Sunday on our timeline. Her mom's having some health problems, health issues, she's in the hospital.
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So, her sister, Winona, and Emma are taking turns visiting mom in the hospital, making sure that she's has
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somebody to talk with, somebody to visit with her, someone to help her pass the time while she hopefully heals or
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recovers from whatever issues that she's facing. The first red flag on our timeline goes up
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Sunday when Emma fails to go to the hospital to visit her mother. All and everyone has agreed, this
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completely out of character for Emma. If she says, "I'm visiting mom on Sunday at the hospital," she would be there
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visiting her mother. And we know that she was supposed to be there on Sunday because of a phone call and some
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conversation that took place the day before with her sister, Winona. Well, and we know that she doesn't work on
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Sundays, so she shouldn't have anything conflicting to stop her from going to see her
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mother. And I don't know if both were going every single day to visit mom or if they were rotating days going to
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visit mom, but we know that she was going to go on Sunday because the conversation with Winona went something
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like this. Emma is saying, "I can't make it there on Saturday to see mom. Don't worry, I will be there 100% on Sunday."
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Right. She doesn't show up on Sunday. Well, again, red flags go up. Mom is worried, sister is worried. They're
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trying to call Emma and this is late Sunday by the time they start calling her because the way that I think that
00:14:21
this works is it's not immediately known to all that Emma didn't show up there, right? It's it's a conversation that is
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had between her other sisters and mom. And mom's saying, "You know, Emma never showed up today. I didn't see her. I
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know you guys said she was coming or she said she was coming, but I never saw her
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today." And so, it's not until about Sunday night that the sisters are aware that
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Emma did not arrive that Sunday. So, on Monday, one of her sisters is Shauna and she lives in another
00:14:53
state. So, any communication that is going on, any interaction between Shauna, Winona
00:15:00
and their mother, the three that are all very concerned that Emma didn't show up at the
00:15:05
hospital, that conversations are happening over the phone. So, Shauna convinces the other sister,
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Winona, "You know what? Why don't you go by and check on Emma. I can't get a hold of her on the
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phone. She didn't go see mom. So, on Monday, her sister goes to her home and Russell, her husband, lets her in.
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And Winona looks at the property and looks inside the home and nothing seems really out of place.
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But therein lies the real problem. Right. She says that everything seems to be there
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except for Emma. Her car's there, her purse is there, her cell phone is there. Yeah, this doesn't really add up.
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is there. Everything that you would expect to see, but no Emma. This is when we start to get some kind
00:16:02
of weird story. Russell has some explanations as for where Emma is. And he says, "Oh, I think she ran off
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with somebody, with some other man." Well, if she did run off, she didn't take anything with her.
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It's not until Tuesday, the following day, that the family actually report her missing to the authorities. Well, the
00:16:29
authorities in this case are the Halifax County Sheriff's Office. One concern that the Sheriff's Office has is
00:16:39
they question why would Emma's family delay reporting her missing. Well, the family does have a good
00:16:46
explanation for this. They tell the sheriff, "Our mom is not in great shape, she's in
00:16:52
the hospital. We were worried that us reporting her missing and mom finding out about this,
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that it might be unnecessary stress for her at her time when she she cannot handle anything else." Right. And so,
00:17:08
they delayed this, but mind you, they only delayed it about a day. And I think that they were wanting
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or hoping, like does happen in so many other situations, that oh, Emma will come home or she'll pop up. No
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reason to scare mom while she's in the hospital. Well, that would make sense to me if the only
00:17:32
if people saw her on Saturday and she had nothing to do on Sunday and then boom, Monday she doesn't go to work, but
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because she had this obligation on Sunday that she missed and then she misses work on Monday,
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I'm calling Monday. I think I would, too. I can't fault, you know, I'm not going to look back and say, "Oh, you
00:17:51
should have done this, you should have done that." You know that these sisters are second-guessing everything that took
00:17:56
place within that first 24-48 hours. But yeah, you're right here, Captain. Cause for deep concern, right? Didn't
00:18:04
visit mom on Sunday, but let's let's compound that with the issue that she doesn't show up to her owner-operated
00:18:12
store on Monday. We went over the hours she should have been there prior to opening at 6:00 a.m. on Monday. Right.
00:18:19
And then by the time she's reported missing on Tuesday, she should have arrived at the store prior to 6:00 a.m.
00:18:26
to open the store on Tuesday. Those three things, none of that happened. And in the course of that 48 hours or so,
00:18:34
she's not responding to any calls or texts that's coming from anybody that knows her. So,
00:18:40
you got to be fearing the worst at this point. Well, do we have any details of what people were doing to find her?
00:18:49
Yes, there was an effort put together to try to locate Emma. The best description
00:18:56
I have reads as follows. The Cody community is abuzz with concern over popular store
00:19:02
owner Emma Compton Lane being missing for a number of days now. The owner of Cody store on Highway 40,
00:19:10
which is located on Stagecoach Road, was last seen Saturday around 7:00 p.m. Again, this is one of those things that
00:19:17
kind of troubles me and bothers me. The store is open till 9:00 p.m. There's no reason to believe that she
00:19:25
went missing at this 7:00 p.m. hour or anytime shortly afterwards. Right. Her car didn't drive itself home
00:19:33
from the store that night. Are you sure? I well, I can't be sure. I mean, maybe she had one
00:19:39
of those Knight Rider cars, but my guess, you know, I am a betting man, I would wager a $100 bill that it did not
00:19:45
drive itself home Mhm. on that night. And I also have some information in our timeline that
00:19:52
indicates that she made it home that night because she had interaction with other people after leaving the store
00:20:01
that night. But continuing on on this report, Sheriff Fred Clark said a Virginia State Police search team,
00:20:09
Virginia Department of Emergency Management search personnel, and a local search and rescue team and
00:20:15
EMS have been searching the perimeter of Lane's Cody residence. So again, they're starting their search at her
00:20:26
residence and fanning out from there. So they have something telling them, something indicating to them that the
00:20:34
residence is the place to start your search, not necessarily the store. A dive team checked two ponds near her
00:20:42
residence, but found nothing. During the search of her premises, a local search and rescue team member
00:20:51
suffered a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. Lane is described as a white female, 5
00:21:00
ft tall and approximately 135 lb. She has short brown hair, brown eyes, pierced ears and may wear glasses.
00:21:10
The sheriff asked if anyone has any information on the whereabouts of Emma Compton Lane to please contact the
00:21:16
Halifax County Sheriff's Office. Now, some of the later reports that I've read, Captain, was that unfortunately
00:21:24
this man who's trying to help out, who suffers the heart attack during the search effort,
00:21:31
that that may have triggered them calling off the search a little prematurely. Yeah.
00:21:41
Um obviously they didn't find Emma during the course of their search, but we should also note that there was
00:21:48
what appears to be, based off of this report, a good effort put forth to try to locate her and what would have been
00:21:57
a rather well-managed search, right? They they made the determination to start off
00:22:02
at her residence and work their way out from there. We know that they're searching
00:22:07
uh the some of the water in the area. They're not finding Emma. They're also not finding any clues as to where she
00:22:16
may be. Now at this time, you have several stories that are coming out from people that know Emma
00:22:24
The old rumor mill. or know her husband, Russell. And and keep in mind, I say that, but this is a small town. You can
00:22:32
make the assumption that whoever knows Russell knows Emma. The stories start to pop up that there's a couple different
00:22:39
theories here. One, that she left with some man that she was having an affair with and was in a hotel in Danville.
00:22:48
Well, that's pretty easy to figure out if that's true or not. You go to the hotel in Danville and if you don't find
00:22:53
them, you can figure one of two things. Either the two of them moved on to another
00:22:59
location or this is not a plausible theory. Yeah, you don't even have to go knocking door to door. You just stand
00:23:05
out front and start yelling, "Show yourself! Show yourself, you cowards!" There were
00:23:11
some other theories that are somewhat similar, Mhm. but one that she had gone to New York and one that she had gone to
00:23:20
the state of Florida. And and possibly for an affair she was having. Possibly. There was also a theory that
00:23:29
she was some type of drug dealer and that drugs were involved either in her disappearance or were the reason for her
00:23:36
to leave willingly. Was she selling drugs out of her store? No, she wasn't selling drugs at all.
00:23:44
Um It's interesting how sometimes these rumors come out of nothing. Well, and that's the other
00:23:51
thing, too. Keep in mind, the Danville story has her having an affair. Well, the overwhelming majority of
00:24:00
people spoken to and and asked these questions, they don't believe she's having an
00:24:07
affair. They've never seen anything any indication right that she's having an affair.
00:24:13
But it doesn't seem like a lot of times in these small towns when these crimes take place,
00:24:20
the rumor mill seems to ramp up a lot faster. Yeah, I think when you have these small towns, a
00:24:27
lot not only a lot faster, but I almost feel like some of the rumors are more of the wild variety. Yeah, they
00:24:34
become a little more redonkulous. But we've seen crimes and cases that we've looked at here in the garage where often
00:24:41
when a case first breaks, that there are some early rumors going on. And sometimes,
00:24:48
even if it takes years to solve them, you find out that one of these early rumors, well, it must have been based
00:24:55
off of a lot of truth or fact because in the end when they get the result, when they get justice for the victim, they
00:25:03
find that a lot of the information in one particular rumor turned out to be true.
00:25:10
Now here in this case, I think that all of these rumors are completely false. 100% false, but I also think
00:25:21
that these rumors are what will help you ultimately solve this case. Today's show is sponsored by Care/of.
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00:27:16
All right, we are back. Trying to sift through the rumors. Cheers, mates. Cheers, Captain. Now in
00:27:26
this case, we have a woman who is missing and as said, there are some rumors that are
00:27:32
being bandied about that maybe she has taken off and left on her own. Here's a follow-up report on
00:27:40
Emma's status of still missing. And this says that on Saturday, June 17th, Emma closed her store
00:27:50
as she did every Saturday and finished with closing duties and she left for the day. So now, keep in mind,
00:27:58
this report is coming out quite a bit later from the previous one. We've already noticed the shift in the
00:28:05
narrative, right? That they have figured out she finished her closing duties, she
00:28:09
left the store for the day. The store is always closed on Sunday, so Emma told her family she'd spend that
00:28:16
Sunday with her mom, Sylvia, in the hospital. Emma had admitted her mom just 2 days
00:28:23
earlier, but Emma never showed up to the hospital. The next morning, Monday, Sylvia, her mother, called her sister,
00:28:31
Shauna, to see where Emma was. Shauna lives in Mississippi, wasn't able to get a hold of Emma, either. So she sent
00:28:38
their other sister, Winona, to Emma's house since Winona lived nearby. Quote, "Everything was there.
00:28:48
Emma's credit card, clothes, car keys, cell phone, her dog, everything was in the basement except Emma."
00:28:57
Shauna said the family knew something was wrong. The next morning, Winona called the police. "When I first got the
00:29:03
call on Tuesday, June 20th, around 10:00 or 11:00 a.m., Investigator Burton of the Halifax County Sheriff's Office
00:29:12
said some of the family had been looking for her prior to the call. We keep going back and forth with why
00:29:18
they waited so long to call us. The family told police they waited until Tuesday to call because they didn't want
00:29:25
to panic their mom who was in the hospital at the time unless it was absolutely necessary.
00:29:31
And then we have the Sheriff's Office that goes on to say, "I got in contact with Emma's husband, Russell Lane, who
00:29:37
gave us permission to go into the house and look for whatever we needed." Investigator Burton said Emma's husband
00:29:44
has cooperated with police since the beginning of the investigation. So, a little bit more information coming out
00:29:53
later as to the timeline itself and pointing out that police were suspicious for the delay in reporting the family
00:30:01
member as missing. And now we have the statement from the detective saying, "Well, the husband said, 'Yeah, go ahead
00:30:07
and search the property, search my home. You can look for whatever you need to help your investigation.'" Which doesn't
00:30:15
always mean anything we've seen that in the past where the husband says, "Come on in.
00:30:22
Take a look around." And we know that son of a [ __ ] is guilty. So, but it does let us know where
00:30:29
they're at in the investigation. And then you have to, again, like you were saying,
00:30:35
start from the inner circle and start moving your way out. Well, there's a little bit of
00:30:40
information in there that I think we need to dissect and put it right under the microscope.
00:30:46
Let me grab my lab coat. Listen to this statement from the sister who searched the home or went to the home shortly
00:30:53
after Emma was missing. Everything was there. Emma's credit card, clothes, car keys, cell phone, her
00:30:59
dog. Everything was in the basement except Emma. Strange. Everything was in the basement except Emma.
00:31:08
So, I was curious about that statement. That to me makes me want to know, why would you expect to find Emma in the
00:31:17
basement? And I was able to track down a few people that are very close to this case
00:31:24
and they told me the following information. That her and Russell had not been getting along for quite some time.
00:31:32
In fact, there was reason to believe that Russell may have been aggressive or even violent toward his
00:31:41
wife in the past. Douche. Now, the information that I have here, Captain, is not exact. So,
00:31:48
we need to we need to point that out to be perfectly clear to everybody out there in listener land.
00:31:53
The information that I have found was saying that Emma was living in the basement of the
00:31:59
home. And Russell was living in the ground level or the upstairs of the home. And
00:32:05
this arrangement had been going on for quite some time. Some sources say as long as 3 years and
00:32:12
some say as little as 2 years. But, regardless of that information, whether it's 2 years
00:32:20
or 3 years, that's a long time for a husband and wife to be basically living almost like roommates, separate lives in
00:32:28
the same dwelling. Well, so then the rumors of her having possibly affair is not really out of the question.
00:32:37
Not out of the question, but let's examine this a little bit further. So, the the basement itself was actually
00:32:44
set up to be like a living quarters. Almost so that once she was home and once she's in the
00:32:51
basement, there's little if no need at all to go upstairs Right. to have any interaction with her
00:32:58
husband. Let's back up the bus a little bit more where, yeah, you can look at this and go, "Okay, well, maybe these
00:33:06
affair rumors have some truth to them." But, let's also examine the idea that there's information out there that her
00:33:16
husband has been violent towards her in the past. Now, where are these rumors of
00:33:22
being a drug dealer and the affair and all of that coming from? Well, she put out a mix tape and she did
00:33:31
she was rapping about her drug dealings. There is nothing that I have found to make me believe that either of these
00:33:40
rumors have any validity at all. They have any truth to them at all. So, the thing here is, we have to start
00:33:51
really wondering where these rumors are coming from. And based off of these rumors, think about the other thing
00:33:58
that's a big part of those stories, right? The story is that she left town with another man.
00:34:05
Or she left town because of some misdealings that she was doing. That's all going to become a very big problem
00:34:15
for everybody 5 months later. Yeah, so what you're saying is we have these rumors that she's a drug dealer and she
00:34:21
left town with a bunch of money or to go sell drugs somewhere else. Uh expand her
00:34:28
empire. was the cause of her leaving town. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that
00:34:31
she's dealing drugs. That's just one of of several rumors that were going on. One was that that she left town because
00:34:40
of drugs. Right. And then there's other rumors that she left town to go live with somebody or she left town
00:34:47
with somebody. Which if somebody else locally left town at the same time, wouldn't we know who
00:34:53
that person was? Or it could have been a man from out of town. Again, these these
00:34:57
are rumors. These aren't things that we have direct statements from these local people that are giving us detailed
00:35:04
statements, right? I'm sure they gave detailed statements to the authorities. But, we, the public, don't have access
00:35:12
to that information. Right. But, the problem becomes this whole idea of her leaving town is that her body is found
00:35:19
in the county. Yeah, so here's the report we have here, Captain. Authorities are awaiting the
00:35:25
identification of human remains found in a wooded Cody area. Keep in mind, Cody's
00:35:31
a pretty small town. Remains found in a wooded Cody area after a hunting party came across the
00:35:37
find Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017 around 1:30 p.m. Halifax County Sheriff Fred Clark said
00:35:47
foul play is expected in the death, but Clark declined to comment further, including whether there is any
00:35:54
indication of how long the body may have been left in the woods. The remains were
00:35:59
sent to the state medical examiner's office in Richmond to assist with the identification. On Wednesday, a member
00:36:07
of a hunting party came across the remains in a heavily wooded area approximately 700 yards from Sandy Ridge
00:36:16
Road at the 4000 block of the Northern Halifax County roadway. The location is a short distance
00:36:23
from the Cody store. The discovery comes as police continue to investigate the disappearance of 52-year-old Emma
00:36:32
Compton Lane of Cody, who has gone missing since mid-June. She was last seen at the Cody store
00:36:38
where she worked on the evening of June 17th. Since that time, police have conducted multiple searches for Lane,
00:36:45
including in the vicinity of her home nearby. The searches produced no evidence of her whereabouts. Other
00:36:52
missing person cases have gone unsolved in Halifax County and it goes on to reference some of these other cases.
00:37:01
Now, the thing here, Captain, it will take a little bit of time, but ultimately the
00:37:07
body that is recovered is identified as that of Emma Compton Lane. Right. The other items that they find and some of
00:37:16
the information that we learn here is that the ruling from the medical examiner is that
00:37:25
the cause of death is homicidal violence with traumatic neck injuries. There was also a
00:37:33
sleeping bag that was found. And the way that it's described to me, it sounds like she may have been inside of the
00:37:41
sleeping bag. There was also reports that someone had tried to burn the body or that there was indications that
00:37:48
someone had tried to burn the body. The reports also state that she was in a very shallow grave.
00:37:55
There's a whole bunch of things here that we need to kind of consider. Russell Lane
00:38:01
and Emma Compton Lane, husband and wife, living separately in the same home. They
00:38:06
owned some property throughout this Halifax County. The place, the wooded area of Cody,
00:38:15
Virginia, that her body is located is really like a stone's throw away from the property line of one of their other
00:38:25
properties. And that's suspicious. And I've also seen it reported that the property that she was located on. Now,
00:38:33
this is a an area where we're talking like farmland. There's not a bunch of people out there.
00:38:39
This is an area where you would put something that you hope and wish will never be found.
00:38:46
But, the property that she is found on, there are reports out there belong to one of
00:38:52
Emma's husband's friends. Now, again, it's a small town. This could be all coincidence. We're not talking about a
00:38:59
whole lot of people. We're talking about a lot of land and not a whole lot of people.
00:39:04
So, it could be complete coincidence, but it's still suspicious. Huge red flags.
00:39:10
Mhm. Well, on top of that on top of that, we have a lot of rumors happening, right?
00:39:17
And you'd think for 3 years if if it's true that their friends are saying, "Look, they just really were
00:39:25
kind of separated for 3 years." There's going to be a lot of rumors happening between their friends and in
00:39:32
the town. Does that make sense? There are some people in this story that have said they were unaware
00:39:40
that they were living separately in the same home. Right. Now, it sounds like the people closest
00:39:45
to them were well aware of this, like the family and friends, the direct friends that you're talking about.
00:39:52
Mhm. They were well aware. That's where this information comes from. But, it's it's all a very weird
00:39:58
situation because some of the reports are that Russell almost had Emma in a situation
00:40:06
where it appears like she works for him, like runs errands for him. She's not really allowed to go to many places on
00:40:14
her own. She's not allowed to have a lot of friends. She We know that she works a
00:40:19
lot of hours based off of the store hours that we covered at the top of the story.
00:40:26
But, this to me when you have a situation where she goes missing, why do they find all of her things
00:40:35
there? You know, people I do understand it. People do have affairs. People do have
00:40:41
misdealings. People do leave town on their own free will. Rarely do they do it without taking a
00:40:48
single thing with them. And so, of course, that's the cause for concern for the people that know her
00:40:54
best early on in the missing persons investigation. They all believe that something terrible
00:41:01
had happened right then and there. They None of them were convinced that she was missing. And then we learn 5
00:41:08
months later that she wasn't missing. Yeah. Somebody killed her and somebody placed
00:41:15
her body in this area, not terribly far from the Cody store. If Russ is being physically abusive, he's probably being
00:41:24
mentally abusive. And so, he's also seems to be controlling her, so he should know about if there's an
00:41:31
affair happening cuz he's controlling. Exactly. Now, in Russ's defense, I couldn't find any report
00:41:42
online or otherwise that states that there was any type of police report based off of that previous violence.
00:41:52
This all seems to come from people that knew the two of them best. The The it only takes one, right? So, it's like
00:42:01
she So, maybe she was beat up thousands of times and she never called the cops. Or once or twice. Right. But,
00:42:10
or or none. That doesn't rule him out. Bastards like that are very capable of If If she came home and said, "You know
00:42:20
what? I'm just so tired of all this stuff. My mother's sick. She might be dying. I need to do something with my
00:42:26
life. I need to change. I'm tired of this situation. I'm I'm living in a basement.
00:42:32
This is not This is not the life that I wanted." If she If they got in an argument and she said, "You know what?
00:42:37
I'm leaving." And he's this controlling, it just seems like there's a lot of signs pointing to
00:42:44
you know, the the typical the husband did it. Well, and we cannot say the name of the person, but
00:42:52
this is where it gets a little I feel like the picture gets a little clearer of what may have happened. Yeah.
00:43:00
There was a friend, a close friend of Emma's who was texting with her that night. After she got home, she's
00:43:07
in her basement watching TV and they are trading texts back and forth. There was a text from the friend
00:43:16
that came in at approximately 15 minutes after midnight that Emma never responded to.
00:43:24
That later, when her phone was looked at by family members, Emma had never opened up that text.
00:43:34
Now, that does not mean that 100% of what I'm about to say is accurate, but it makes me
00:43:42
It makes me think that very likely this is what happened. Okay, lay lay it down.
00:43:48
Well, they're trading texts back and forth. Mhm. Something happened before she opened and
00:43:53
responded to that 12:15 text. That's where the timeline I would be concerned with with what's
00:44:02
going on with Emma at that timeline. Yeah, very good point because she's talking with somebody back and
00:44:08
forth and she has this husband that is going, "Who are you talking to? Give me that phone. I want to see what's
00:44:15
happening." Her phone's found at her residence along with all of her other belongings. Mhm. And what I'm pointing
00:44:23
out is this is one of those things, one of the the rare occasions in these types
00:44:29
of cases where we may have the exact marker, the exact minute marker of when all things stopped for Emma. Right?
00:44:39
Because we know that she All of the activity she was supposed to be a part of on Sunday,
00:44:44
she did not She didn't go to the hospital. She was unheard of. She was unreachable. She didn't show up to work
00:44:50
on Monday. She doesn't show up to work on Tuesday. Well, you can backtrack that all the way to that 12:15, 15 minutes
00:44:57
after midnight text that does not get responded to. Well, look, her her And look, her family not reporting her
00:45:07
missing till Tuesday, okay, fine. But, if you care about your wife, even if you're
00:45:17
separated or you're kind of living this roommate lifestyle, you're calling the police right away.
00:45:25
She gets She got home from work. We know that much. She's missing the next morning. You're calling the police.
00:45:32
That didn't happen. That didn't happen. And so, it it seems like there's this text message conversation.
00:45:41
Maybe there's an argument happening at the same time. Like you said, it gives us almost to the
00:45:46
minute of when this conversation took place. And where was she? At her house. Where is her phone? At her
00:45:53
house. This reminds me This is very similar to me like the Chris Watts case where he had her phone and had all her
00:46:04
stuff. And And it's just like, "Oh, well, she must have just went missing." Don't know where she's at.
00:46:10
Well, and I don't want to question or call to fault the Halifax County Sheriff's Office.
00:46:19
But, isn't it one of these cases, Captain? We've seen bigger mysteries in other murder cases.
00:46:26
They probably bigger mysteries. You have to sit here and wonder, "Okay, guys, what's the
00:46:30
hang-up here? What What's the problem with the investigation?" Well, hold on. Here's
00:46:36
what we do know, right? We we can surmise this, right? We're not that dumb. I mean, we are two
00:46:42
dumb guys in a garage and we stand by that till the end of the time till the end of our days.
00:46:48
See? But, we're not that dumb. We know that law enforcement at least has a short
00:46:53
list of suspects, especially where the body was found, her items still being at home.
00:47:00
And I think there's a lot more motive, too, not just the separation, not just the rumors of possibly an affair,
00:47:07
but also financial. If we get a divorce and we have all these properties, we have to split this
00:47:15
up. This also could be something that's not planned. Good point. Let's pretend for a moment that these previous acts of
00:47:22
violence from her husband are in fact true. If they are true, this seems to me like somebody with a
00:47:30
temper, with somebody that can fly off the handle. This is a guy that's been married and
00:47:35
divorced before his relationship with Emma. What I'm getting to here, Captain, is
00:47:42
I wonder what the hang-up is in this investigation. Now, we do have the Sheriff's Office on record early in the
00:47:50
investigation, especially when she was still missing, saying, "You know, Russell's been cooperative."
00:47:57
And they even go as far to say that he's not a person of interest. Well, Wow. we know that he was a truck driver. Is
00:48:06
there a chance I would love to know this information. I don't believe that this is true at all,
00:48:12
but is there a chance that he was not home or they have reason to believe that he was not at the residence at any time
00:48:19
that night? Now, let's fast forward a little bit. Mhm. Keep in mind what the Sheriff's
00:48:25
Office was saying. He's cooperative. He's not a person of interest. Well, that does change.
00:48:30
That blows my mind. At some point, it's stated that Russell is no longer cooperating with the
00:48:36
investigation, that he lawyered up, which is his right, and I recommend everybody does have an attorney.
00:48:43
However, he stops communicating and stops cooperating with the investigation. There are some reports
00:48:50
out there that state that he failed a polygraph test, and that's when boom, communication and cooperation ended.
00:48:58
Yeah, shame shame know your name. I just I want to point out that those are reports. I've not seen
00:49:06
100% stone-cold evidence of the fact that he failed a polygraph test. Well, let's just assume I'm the
00:49:13
detective, right? Let's Hypothetically, I'm the detective. I go I'm giving statements. If I'm a
00:49:19
detective, I start talking like this, right? I I'm giving statements to to the public
00:49:26
and I'm saying, "This guy Russ, man, he's a he's a stand-up guy. It's It's her husband.
00:49:33
They own a bunch of property together. He's been cooperative. Seems to have an alibi of some kind.
00:49:40
He's not a person of interest at this time. No, he's not. He's been cooperative. You're going to say that
00:49:45
anyways, even if he's being a little bit of a scumbag cuz you kind of you you want him to soften up, right? You don't
00:49:52
want him to be guarded with everything he's saying. But also, when you talk about that she's found in a shallow
00:49:58
grave, there's a lot of individuals, a lot of victims that we've talked about where
00:50:04
they're just dumped on the road. This is somebody that put her in a area and tried to conceal her.
00:50:12
So, she wasn't found. Maybe I can get behind the idea that maybe this wasn't planned out.
00:50:20
But, the disposal of the body definitely was to some degree. And Oh, I think to a big-time degree. There
00:50:29
was evidence that someone had tried to burn the body. Right. a sleeping bag that was recovered
00:50:35
recovered from the scene. There was an attempt to bury the body. Yeah, that was was what I don't know if it was well
00:50:42
thought out or not, but somebody went to a great deal of effort to try to conceal
00:50:47
the body. And the other thing, too, there's no reason at all for anyone to believe that she was killed where she
00:50:54
was found. So, she was moved and transported as well. Now, here's here's the problem. This
00:51:01
this is where I'm going to go, okay, I understand that there are complications. Every murder
00:51:07
investigation is complicated for any number of different reasons. But, I'm sitting here 5 years after the fact,
00:51:17
4 and 1/2 years after her body's found, and I'm going, what is wrong with this case? What is wrong with your suspect?
00:51:24
What is wrong with the investigation? Why haven't we charged anybody in this case? And here's where my mind goes. And
00:51:33
these are things that I hope and pray that the sheriff's office has already done. The cell phone. We know that she
00:51:41
was actively using the cell phone. And I believe right up until the point where something happened to her, or she was
00:51:50
abducted or attacked and killed. Subpoena those cell phone records if you could. Could you find out where that
00:51:59
phone was located? We know it was later found at her home in the basement where anybody would expect to find it. Right.
00:52:08
Subpoena those phone records. Let's find out where that phone was during the course of that text activity.
00:52:14
Let's subpoena somebody else's cell phone records and see who was in that same area at the same time. We know that
00:52:21
she shared the home with another person. There's reason to believe his phone may
00:52:28
indicate that he was home at the same time that that text exchange ended. Here's some other things that I would be
00:52:35
doing. I think that in this case, in this murder investigation, that the sheriff's office actually has a
00:52:43
very powerful weapon in their arsenal. And that would be their missing persons investigation. I
00:52:54
would be using the information that they gained and learned during the course of
00:52:58
their missing persons investigation to drive and spearhead my murder investigation. And what I mean by that
00:53:07
is every person that told me that Emma left town, I want to know, why did you think that
00:53:16
she left town? Who told you that? Yeah. Is that something you came up with on your own?
00:53:23
Because we know that her body was found in town. So, she didn't leave town. We know that. So, why would anybody be
00:53:33
telling law enforcement that she did leave town? If you told me that, you're a suspect.
00:53:41
If you told me that, you better tell me who gave you that information, because then they are my
00:53:48
suspect. And the other thing that I think happened here, too, Captain, I think that there's plenty
00:53:55
of reason to believe that whoever transported the body had help. Yeah. I almost feel like the the finding
00:54:08
of the sleeping bag screams to me at least two people moving the body. Yeah, I know. I I was actually going to
00:54:16
bring that up as a question to you earlier was, doesn't it seem like because one thing was tried, then
00:54:25
another thing was tried, and and then the distance that she would have been found in this property
00:54:31
kind of leans more towards two people than one. So, I'm glad that you brought that up,
00:54:36
but I I know that they said he was being cooperative, and I and I and I know he um
00:54:44
I know that they said the husband was being cooperative, and and and maybe there was some alibi
00:54:51
that didn't check out. And that's why he lawyered up, and he stopped being cooperative.
00:54:57
But, once he lawyered up and and stopped being cooperative, it's one thing if you
00:55:01
want to lawyer up and have the questions go through your lawyer, and you answer what you can, and
00:55:07
and you protect your client. That's fine. But, my list of suspects would be a list of one.
00:55:15
My list of suspects would be rather short because I want to know, again, we're both sitting here believing that
00:55:22
two people at minimum transported the body. Or the and and that's more likely the person
00:55:28
that will come forward is look, I was told this story uh that she was cheating on him, or that she was
00:55:37
stealing money from him, or whatever, and it was an accidental death, and so I helped move the body.
00:55:44
But, that person is more likely to come forward. Come forward. We all sit here, too, believing that more than one person
00:55:51
likely told law enforcement that Emma had left the area of her own free will. Again, those are the tools that that the
00:56:00
the phone Mhm. activity, the phone activity of others inside that residence or on that property at that same time,
00:56:08
15 minutes after midnight on the night that she air quotes went missing. I'm looking at that. I'm looking at the
00:56:16
people that told me that she left town of her own free will. And I'm also looking for the point of origin of that
00:56:21
sleeping bag. Because guess what? If I can figure out and prove and have reason to believe
00:56:27
that person A owns that sleeping bag or owned that sleeping bag at one point, and he was
00:56:34
one of the people that told me that he was with a certain person on that night, and that is that person's alibi, well,
00:56:42
guess what? That alibi don't mean jack [ __ ] anymore, because we have your sleeping bag found at our crime scene.
00:56:51
Well, no, and I think one of the things that they could possibly do is, you know, obviously test
00:56:56
the sleeping bag for for DNA, but I would also test it for fibers, like carpet fibers, because that
00:57:06
that could have been a sleeping bag in her house that they used. Just like when Chris
00:57:13
Watts went to transport his wife, didn't he use the bed sheets? So, I I I just feel like it's so similar.
00:57:23
And we don't always agree, mainly because you're normally right, and I'm wrong. But, I think in this case, we at least
00:57:31
agree that the suspect list is very small. It's very small, and again, anyone that told law enforcement that
00:57:39
Emma left town for any number of reasons, they should be people that you really want to question, and you want to get to
00:57:47
the truth, because they obviously told you a lie at some point. And anybody willing to lie is somebody that is
00:57:56
either directly involved or is helping to cover up what actually happened. So, those nasty rumors about an affair, or
00:58:04
drug dealing, or being involved with drugs, boom, none of them are true. Somebody murdered this woman and didn't
00:58:12
take her body very far from where she was killed. Emma Compton Lane was last seen alive on
00:58:19
June 17, 2017 in Cody, Virginia. On November 22, 2017, her remains were found by a hunter in
00:58:29
the woods near her home on Sandy Ridge Road. She was buried in a shallow grave. The person responsible or persons
00:58:38
responsible for her murder have never been identified. If you have any information regarding the murder of Emma
00:58:45
Compton Lane, or recall seeing any suspicious vehicles along Sandy Ridge Road between June and November of 2017,
00:58:57
please contact the Halifax County Sheriff's Office at 434 476-3334. Thank you so much for joining us here in
00:59:24
the garage and letting us be a part of your week. We appreciate it. Make sure you go to truecrimegarage.com and sign
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00:59:38
kind, and don't litter.