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GameChanger [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:43
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always he is the proud new owner of a pet poliwog he is the very
00:01:50
nurturing and caring Captain welcome to the upside down I mean welcome to Parts Unknown it's good to be seen and it's
00:01:58
good to see you [Music] this week we are drinking Julius by the fine people over at treehouse Brewing
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Company garage grade 4 and A2 bottle caps out of five bursting with American hops Julius is a bright and juicy beer
00:02:17
filled with flavors of mango peach passion fruit and citrus juices Adam Corolla loves the passion fruit and
00:02:24
Julius was brought to us by these Great Garage people first up we have a big shout out to Sarah and her husband two
00:02:31
wonderful Buckeyes living in Benton Kentucky from Indian Lake Ohio we have Mommy Dearest we also have summer in
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Houston Texas and also in Texas we have Megan in Plano and a big we like your jib to Rachel in Cleveland Ohio and last
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but not least we have a shout out to Hannah who says hello from Scotland she's in Midlothian so thank you very
00:02:53
much Hannah and thanks to everybody else for filling up the fridge for this week
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if you want to buy us around for next week's show go to True Crime garage.com and click on the Donate button and the
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parts unnown shirts will be shipped out this week so thank you for everybody that pre-ordered those much love to you
00:03:08
all right Captain that's enough of the business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:17
crime this is the case of a body in Kentucky [Music] [Music] oh [Music] May 17th
00:04:11
1968 near Georgetown Kentucky Wilber riddle arrived for work at a drill site as he waited for his boss he
00:04:22
wandered around Wilbur sees what he describes as a bundle it was something wrapped up in
00:04:29
a canvas tarp likee material and secured with rope Wilbur decided he would open it and
00:04:37
see what was inside he gets the Rope off and then he starts to pull open the tarp the bundle begins to take
00:04:51
shape and it's starting to look like a human body body Wilbur deciding he wants nothing
00:05:00
more to do with what he has found he jumps in his truck and he leaves he drives to the nearest telephone and
00:05:09
notifies the sheriff when the sheriff met Wilbur at the scene he quickly confirmed Wilbur
00:05:16
had in fact found the dead body of a young woman who was this woman how did she die where is she
00:05:26
from who killed her and who put her [Music] [Music] here our story starts on a Friday
00:05:51
Captain this is May 17th 1968 we have Wilbur riddle he's a water well driller try to say say that three
00:06:00
times fast he arrived for work at a drill site this is near Georgetown Kentucky just off of Interstate 25 so
00:06:08
when Wilbur arrives for work he finds a note from his boss asking him to wait until the boss returns before he starts
00:06:16
drilling for the day so Wilbur riddle he's there and now he's got nothing to do but wait and I love this name I love
00:06:24
the name Wilbur riddle it sounds like like a name out of some kind of children's novel or something mhm Wilbur
00:06:30
sees some telephone workers uh they are replacing the old style glass insulators
00:06:36
up on the telephone poles Wilbur knows someone that collects and sells these glass insulators these these things
00:06:44
these are all things that uh all of us have seen at some point you know some people have turned these things into
00:06:49
decorative fixtures in their homes bars and restaurants they're shaped like like
00:06:54
little bells like a little glass Bell uh some are decorative some are clear some
00:06:59
are colored glass most of the time people have turned these into like vases or lighting fixtures or other like Knick
00:07:05
knacky type things so he goes off for where the telephone workers have been discarding these and he starts to gather
00:07:13
them up now this is a dirt road off of the interstate there is a creek and hold on a second I think I've heard a country
00:07:21
song about this there's a creek and there's an embankment there as well Wilbur sees
00:07:28
something and he's got to go over and investigate mhm he sees a bundle what it's rolled up it's like an old green
00:07:36
tarp or an old uh green canvas type material which is wrapped up and it's secured with a rope and he says it it
00:07:45
appears to be about 5T long okay now let's put yourself in his shoes okay what are you thinking right
00:07:55
now when you see this bundle well here's Here's my thought you know he seems to be out there collecting
00:08:02
these glass insulators anyway right um you know there are some people that are pretty crafty and they you know
00:08:09
especially when he's showing up at all these job sites you know he probably drives around and works at these
00:08:14
different drill sites and he probably often comes across old discarded material which he may trade to people
00:08:22
right he may use for to you know to build his own things um so he's not he's just going into it thinking
00:08:30
what is this and maybe I could sell this I picture Wilbur showing up in a in a pickup truck and if he finds anything or
00:08:37
if there's any material left over from the work they're doing that he desires he might take it home with him so if I'm
00:08:43
Wilbur and if I'm that dude and and I'm I'm that day and age doing that kind of thing I'm going after this bundle okay
00:08:51
I'm going to open it up and see what what is inside the thing that would deter me a little bit is the length you
00:08:58
know he says it's about about 5T long um he said that it took a little doing but
00:09:03
he gets he starts pulling at the tarp um and he once he gets this thing open he said
00:09:11
he pulls it just slightly open and it's like someone smacking him in the face he
00:09:17
he jerks back there's a terrible odor that hits him now the tarp is still not completely unraveled at this point but
00:09:25
because he has unraveled a couple of its layers whatever is INS inside is starting to take shape and he says it
00:09:34
looks to Wilbur like there is a there might be a person in there right uh someone had rolled up like maybe someone
00:09:42
had rolled up a lifeless body in this tarp and then dumped it off of this dirt road so now Wilbur is obviously quite
00:09:50
taken aback uh and he's not so eager to unroll this bundle now right so he kind of pushes on it with his foot well this
00:10:00
caused the bundle to roll down the embankment down that like slight Hill there as it did it unraveled a bit more
00:10:08
and judging by the shape he was now convinced that it was in fact a dead body that's going rolling down the hill
00:10:17
mhm okay that I I mean I don't mean to be insensitive but it's like that would be my luck like oh no what what have I
00:10:27
found I think it might be a person and then all of a sudden they're going rolling down the hill this P this to me
00:10:34
is like a really bad episode of American Pickers yeah you know like I know that they're being invited into Barns and out
00:10:41
in fields and things but keep wondering when are they going to find something like this all wrapped up in a tarp maybe
00:10:47
they have well they just couldn't resell it right so it never made the show they
00:10:51
never made an offer on it well this this freaks Wilbur out rightfully so and he runs to his truck and he drives to the
00:10:58
nearest G gas station where he places a call to the county sheriff well and part
00:11:03
part of you would think that maybe I disrupted the scene a little bit you know cuz he accidentally hit the body
00:11:10
with his foot and it went rolling down the hill mhm well the sheriff and his men respond to the call uh they arrive
00:11:18
at the location given to them by Wilbur riddle as they approach Wilbur Flags them down and leads them to his
00:11:25
Discovery the coroner is called in the and then Cut the Rope securing the bundle and open up the tarp now I keep
00:11:34
saying tarp because at the time this is what most newspapers refer to this item as that that this body was wrapped up in
00:11:42
some type of tarp okay it's also been listed in more recent reports that this was a canvas-like material or possibly a
00:11:51
canvas bag but I'm going to go with what the original newspaper said and so you'll hear me say the word tarp over
00:11:58
and over again but inside they find the they find a nude body it's a badly decomposed body of a young woman her
00:12:07
right hand was clenched as if she tried to claw her way out of being wrapped up in this thing her eyes had rotted away
00:12:16
and her flesh was badly deteriorated you got to give people warnings taking a drink of my beer and
00:12:24
you just jump right into it the ambulance uh would would take the corpse to St Joseph's Hospital in Lexington
00:12:32
Kentucky where the coroner began the autopsy process what do we know from the scene from the scene um this is a bit of
00:12:42
a remote area let's say um like we said it's a dirt area there's a creek nearby it seems a little strange that maybe
00:12:49
somebody could have had the ability to dump her in the creek if they had wished but it sounds to me my first impression
00:12:56
Captain is that this is a spot where whoever placed this body there was expecting it to not be found for a good
00:13:04
deal of time okay it may have to be somebody that knew the area but I guess because the interstates right by maybe
00:13:11
not necessarily they could have got lucky you could have ventured off and and eventually found the spot right but
00:13:17
the the victim what do we know about the victim well let's let's get into um let's get into the autopsy because
00:13:24
that's what's going to tell us uh what what we will end up knowing about this victim okay so here's what we learned
00:13:30
from the autopsy the the victim was a white female uh the coroner believed her to be about 16 to 19 years of age she
00:13:40
stood 5' 1 in tall and she was about10 lb okay so pretty petite mhm somebody could easily carry that body by
00:13:51
themselves she had what's described as short reddish brown hair um but no identifying mark marks or scars on her
00:14:00
body there was a slight discoloration of her skull um but the autopsy showed no definite uh cause of death and there was
00:14:11
no trace of poison or toxic material in the girl's body they could also estimate
00:14:17
that uh approximately when she had died they believed that she had been dead for
00:14:23
at least 2 weeks and maybe as many as four or five weeks what's the deal with the discoloring of the skull I don't
00:14:30
know that I think assuming that maybe she was hit or something maybe struck on the skull and that that's why there
00:14:36
would be a discoloration well and that and you're right because that's eventually what authorities would tell
00:14:42
newspaper reporters saying that they thought that the girl was knocked unconscious by a Blow To The Head and
00:14:48
then tied up in this tarp uh in which she would have died a slow death by way of
00:14:55
asphixiation so now with her being dead with the estimate of her being being dead for 2 weeks to maybe as many as
00:15:00
four or 5 weeks this would put her death between the middle of April and up until
00:15:06
the first few days of May right if she had been dead for four or five weeks whoever placed her there like you said
00:15:13
could have gotten lucky if if in fact they were hoping that she wouldn't be found for a good
00:15:18
deal of time yeah if they didn't know the area you know yeah they got lucky because they found a spot that was so
00:15:25
remote that she wasn't found for weeks well and the obvious thing here is they don't know who this girl is you know
00:15:32
there's there's no there's nothing on her body to identify her she's nude there's basically they find nothing
00:15:39
inside the tarp with her except for uh what is described as a white piece of towel a small piece of towel um so no no
00:15:50
identification and there's no Towny girl missing no purse yeah and they don't have any local girl that's missing that
00:15:57
fits this descrip description mhm now as we said the body was was badly decomposed by this point uh too badly
00:16:04
decomposed to pull Prince from the fingertips wow but now this is kind of a genius idea I've I've actually not heard
00:16:11
of this but but having read through this case I'm wondering if this was something
00:16:15
that might be a little more common that we're just not aware of the genius idea here is that they removed one of the
00:16:23
girls fingers and they soaked it in some kind of chemical for about a week or so
00:16:30
and the idea here is that once it once it becomes saturated that they would be able to pull a print uh from the finger
00:16:38
okay uh which they end up doing but they have nothing on file to connect this with right right right so meanwhile
00:16:44
while this finger is soaking in this chemical for a week or so they they're going to focus on that green tarp and
00:16:51
the rope that was used to tie it up and that small piece of a white towel that was found inside the tarp all of these
00:16:58
items were examined and sent off to the FBI lab uh for further examination well it's 68 right so we don't have a lot of
00:17:08
communication between different law enforcements M it's really hard for them to put out you know one email and get a
00:17:16
bunch of missing girl pictures back yes yes and that's why some of these old cases are so fascinating because we get
00:17:24
to see the real tough uh detective work at hand uh and how things can go can go right
00:17:32
when people really try to really try to get together and work on something now the The Kentucky Post in time star uh
00:17:40
this is a newspaper because the the body of the girl was unclaimed and unidentified they nicknamed her the tent
00:17:48
girl because of the tarp yes it was like a tent likee material and I think that's
00:17:53
something cool by the newspapers there I don't I don't love the name but the cool
00:17:57
thing here is is the thought is that whatever that material was that she was wrapped up in might be your biggest lead
00:18:05
right at this point as to finding out who she was well and you wonder if there's any prints on that yeah because
00:18:12
this would be a material that you would assume would uh handle Prince well yeah so the investigators are obviously
00:18:18
dealing with all of the obvious questions who is she they've kind of come up with how she
00:18:24
died uh it seems to be a plausible explanation and so again that is that she was hid in the head she was knocked
00:18:31
unconscious then they wrapped her in the tarp alive mhm I say they but you know whoever it was wrapped her in the tarp
00:18:40
alive and then she died from affixation in the tarp which I mean what a horrible way to go which is either
00:18:47
planned or maybe the person didn't know that she hadn't died at that point yeah maybe they just assumed yeah MH so like
00:18:56
I said it looks like out of all those questions they've only really answered one we have a decent idea of how she
00:19:02
died uh so this is a homicide investigation because of they believe her to have been killed but but mainly
00:19:11
because of the way that she's found you know when you find somebody wrapped up in a tarp like that and dumped off in a
00:19:18
remote area it's pretty obvious that that somebody led to this girl's demise and this is a homicide investigation so
00:19:27
we need the first step the first puzzle to solve is obviously who is she um without this information we will likely
00:19:35
never know who killed her and placed her body there where Mr riddle had found it
00:19:40
so introducing Harold muser he's a 40-year-old policeman who is also a talented artist often called upon to
00:19:50
sketch unidentified murder victims and suspects as well the the Sheriff's Office asked Harold to get involved and
00:19:57
he did he spent several days viewing photos of the tent girl's remains and then he produced a sketch of her to be
00:20:06
used in hopes of learning her identity the sketch is of an attractive short-haired girl with an obvious flaw
00:20:14
between two of her Upper Front Teeth the sketch appeared in the Region's newspapers uh and people were responding
00:20:23
to the sketch within a day or two detectives were swamped by inquiry from people throughout the Midwest and the
00:20:30
South who thought they knew the tent girl so this drawing is going to establish some leads right and but the
00:20:37
the Curious Thing here is it's it's interesting that we have this Harold muser who has to spend several days
00:20:43
viewing photos of the girl's remains um to come up with this sketch that's just something that you know I know that he's
00:20:51
a seasoned police officer so he's probably seen his share of action and and things that he probably didn't want
00:20:59
to see um but to spend a few days looking at the remains to come up with this sketch is something I'm glad that I
00:21:07
will never be asked to do yeah I think some people they either have it in them or they don't M you know I mean there's
00:21:14
photographer friends of mine that I know that have got into wanting to take crime
00:21:20
scene photos okay and I couldn't do that right I mean if you have a fight ORF flight mentality so like when I watch a
00:21:28
gory movie like I love Texas Chainsaw Massacre the first one but I think that's more
00:21:34
psychological and then when they started remaking Texas Chainsaw massacure it becomes such a gory film that I have a
00:21:41
hard time watching it because my body naturally just turns away my head naturally turns away I don't even want
00:21:47
to see it well here's the other strange thing too you know within a day or two of this sketch coming out and hitting
00:21:53
the newspapers detectives are swamped by people coming forward saying that they think that they know this girl so this
00:21:58
sketch seemed to resemble everyone's missing daughter niece or someone that they knew now obvious discrepancies like
00:22:07
height weight age and dental structure would immediately rule out many of the leads that were coming in and was short
00:22:16
hair that popular in ' 68 I would guess that it would be um maybe amongst that group that age group 16 to 19 mhm so one
00:22:26
by one they are eliminating the possibilities they're eliminating promising you know the possibilities of
00:22:33
these leads due to like I said height weight or age discrepancy but a promising lead
00:22:39
surfaced on June 7th in 1969 when a lieutenant received a phone call from a detective in Maryland the
00:22:49
detective told the lieutenant I think I've got the name of your tent girl I've been searching for a missing 15-year-old
00:22:56
girl and there's a strong very strong resemblance between her and the sketch he said that the tent girl's name is
00:23:04
Debbie Crane and her mother nearly fainted when she saw the sketch of the tent girl Debbie crane is a 15-year-old
00:23:13
girl she is from Pasadena Maryland she's 5 foot tall last seen wearing a brown skirt and a gold colored blouse and a
00:23:23
light blue coat where did she go missing from she went missing near her home she
00:23:29
has um brown hair uh so we we're seeing some we're seeing some similarities here
00:23:37
right we have the height is correct the hair is is very close well the height is
00:23:42
close yeah within an inch so the detective is pointing out all of the details and um like we said they more or
00:23:49
less matched now Debbie Debbie crane was last seen on March 3rd of 1968 she was getting into a blue Chevrolet Corvair
00:24:00
with a 22 corv Corvair yes lesser stepbrother uh of the Corvette I don't know the cor was around for for a long
00:24:09
time I don't know where it falls into the uh to the mix there maybe it's more like a Monty Carlo kind of in that that
00:24:16
range there's a car guy right now just screaming you're idiots you guys are idiot you guys are in a garage and you
00:24:23
don't know anything about cars we claim to be in a garage and we also claim to be
00:24:29
idiots okay so she's last seen March 3rd uh getting into a blue Chev Chevrolet Corvair with a
00:24:37
21-year-old uh boy this is Floyd Colby and 17-year-old Carl Colby their brothers MH um both were regarded as
00:24:48
quote unquote undesirables uh this is Debb's this is Debbie's mother stating that the two
00:24:54
boys were undesirables um adding that she believed that her daughter as the two boys were
00:25:00
using some type of Narcotics and Carl the 17-year-old was Debb's boyfriend mhm it's believed by the families um by both
00:25:11
the Colby family and the crane family that the two brothers uh Floyd and Carl and Little Debbie were going to Kentucky
00:25:20
in fact an area that was just about an hour away from where the tent girl's body was found well this is all lining
00:25:28
up yes it is and we will get right back to this after this quick beer [Music] break this show is sponsored by better
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00:27:33
sharing the cases on social media means a lot yeah and here we are we're still trying to figure out the identity of the
00:27:40
tent girl who was found in miday of 1968 by this point in our story it's been a little over a few weeks and
00:27:48
they're still trying to figure out who she is but we have a solid lead now we got a good lead coming from a detective
00:27:54
in Maryland who says I've been looking for 15 y old girl Debbie crane since March 3rd of this year so if in fact
00:28:03
it's the same person well then that would put you know he's been looking for this girl for three months by this point
00:28:11
right so here's what they decide to do the detectives the local detectives investigating the tent girl case they
00:28:19
requested Debbie Crane's dental records now these records were obtained and they
00:28:24
were sent to them uh and they Pro Pro to be similar to that of the tent girl's teeth interesting the so the details in
00:28:33
this case they match but then again they don't match entirely so what is our next
00:28:38
step well we need they need to get the the parents Debbie Crane's parents to venture to Kentucky to try to make a
00:28:46
proper identification of this body to see if in fact it is Debbie crane but it's very badly decomposed so this is
00:28:55
going to be difficult definitely for sure well on June 13th Velma Crane and Debbie's Aunt they arrived in Georgetown
00:29:06
Kentucky they spent about 2 hours examining photos of the quote unquote tent girl but they were unable to make a
00:29:16
positive identification as you said this was going to be difficult they stated that the body is too badly decomposed
00:29:23
for Mrs crane to be sure that it is her daughter I wonder what her gut feeling was well it sounds to me like she was
00:29:32
leaning on the side of it was her daughter really um and here's the thing you got to put yourself in her shoes
00:29:39
it's been it's been 3 months yeah you know it's actually yeah it's been over three
00:29:45
months and you've not heard from your daughter and this girl looks like her the the the dental records are very
00:29:52
similar oh she got in a car with two gentlemen that were heading um I know if I should call him gentleman well one's
00:29:59
her one was thought to be her boyfriend and her boyfriend's older brother but they but they were undesirable right but
00:30:05
they suspected them going to Kentucky yeah you say there's a girl missing from Maryland I'd go well chances are this is
00:30:12
not her M but the fact that these suspects were possibly going to Kentucky then I go okay well now that's starting
00:30:19
to make more sense I feel for the parents that had to look at you know at Tank Girl and and not be able to
00:30:26
identify whether or not it was their child well yeah this whole trip out there this whole long drive out there
00:30:32
you're thinking well I don't want it to be her but at least we'll have some answers yeah you know at least we'll
00:30:39
know how to proceed and hopefully we can go there and check it off our list that
00:30:43
it is not her well and think about how many missing person cases that we've covered I mean law enforcement that
00:30:50
we're looking for Brian Schaefer for example still look for him when they're on vacation yeah uh so imagine what goes
00:30:57
through the parents Mind of a missing child that is never found how much torture that would be so
00:31:05
again it's like one of those things where you hope it's not them because you want to keep hope alive that they are
00:31:10
alive but at the same time then at least uh if they have passed on you know it and then you can let go of that to try
00:31:17
to move on in a positive direction in your life the Kentucky detectives now armed with this information about the
00:31:25
whole story about the kobby brothers and this de de crane right um since they're not able to get the positive
00:31:33
identification that they wanted they decide that they're going to send out a national alert a national alert was
00:31:40
issued for the Colby brothers and eventually a truck driver reported that two weeks before the tent girl's body
00:31:47
was found was discovered that he had seen two hitchhikers near where she was found really then there's another tip
00:31:56
that had came in um this is from a motorist who had told the sheriff that he picked up two hitchhikers in that
00:32:03
same vicinity one was a girl wearing a short dress and a gray sweater and the motorist said that he was sure that she
00:32:12
was the tent girl okay he told the sheriff she and the guy with her they kept arguing as we drove South I got
00:32:21
tired of listening to it so I stopped and I made them get out yeah well I mean it's his truck yeah
00:32:30
if you're going to hitch a ride but be polite yeah stop arguing pipe down but you know that's something that maybe uh
00:32:38
you know a late teenage couple you know 16 17 18 that wouldn't be able to control themselves from arguing yeah you
00:32:45
know because everything at that point in your life is such a big deal well he tells the sheriff that when he last saw
00:32:50
the two that they had crossed the interstate highway and they were trying to hitch a ride back North to the
00:32:58
Georgetown Kentucky area he said that the boy had long hippie style hair and the girl appeared to be
00:33:06
frightened then another tip came in this time it is a caller that would like to remain anonymous wait but hold on let's
00:33:15
go with this frighten thing for a second it's pretty unlikely that somebody would
00:33:20
capture somebody kidnap somebody and then hitchhike with them mhm so maybe she you know she obviously knew this
00:33:28
individual right and and she was maybe frightened because maybe he was violent towards her when other people weren't
00:33:34
around yeah maybe she was only frightened because they were arguing the way he makes it sound is she seemed
00:33:39
frightened as if like she was kidnapped or something yeah I I think that it's the short we're getting the short
00:33:46
version of the story uhuh um we're not getting the full details that that that took place between this caller between
00:33:53
the motorist and the sheriff's department and it's probably more detailed to the point where they're
00:33:58
saying you know yeah they were together you know this this young boy and this well this young man and this young woman
00:34:05
were together obviously they were arguing about something probably relationship type stuff right and maybe
00:34:12
she was like I said only frightened because they were arguing because they were not getting along now but tent girl
00:34:19
wasn't sexually assaulted right not that they could tell right so I mean that that becomes a mystery to me because you
00:34:27
got to tr try to figure out what the motive is and and once you take out you know sexual assault or or rape then I
00:34:35
mean this Narrows The Fill down quite a bit and sometimes sometimes with these cases when you're going through the
00:34:41
autopsy or when well I should shouldn't say going through the autopsy because what we are doing in this case sometimes
00:34:48
we have the autopsy other times we have what has been reported as the findings of the autopsy and that's what we're
00:34:56
doing in this case so when you have that a lot of times Captain you know when when they don't say when they don't
00:35:04
outwardly say she was sexually assaulted or she was not sexually assaulted right
00:35:09
then you're left with two assumptions either one it couldn't be determined because we spoke about the the
00:35:15
decomposition of the body or that it couldn't be ruled out you know so you know it might not be it just might not
00:35:23
be known because of the state that the body was found well that makes things pretty difficult
00:35:30
as far as the investigation goes so the interesting thing here though with these
00:35:34
two callers is these two tips kind of line up because you have in the exact same area you have one caller saying
00:35:43
well I saw two people a young man and a young woman they were hitchhiking they were looking for a ride in this area
00:35:50
then you have another motorist that comes along and says hey I picked up two hitchhikers and it was in this area
00:35:56
matching with the other caller stating that you know we drove South they're arguing the whole time I got sick of
00:36:01
hearing it I asked them to get out of the vehicle and then they cross the street and they're trying to hitchhike
00:36:07
another ride and he said it looked like they were trying to go back up north to the Georgetown area where her body was
00:36:13
eventually found right the tent girl's body was eventually found strange that they would hitchhike South and then
00:36:19
immediately try to go back up north but who knows what they were arguing about yeah I mean they could have been arguing
00:36:24
about where they're going to go or what they're going to do for whatever reason there's another tip that comes in uh and
00:36:30
like I said this time the caller would like to remain anonymous it's a male caller so would I with a rough and low
00:36:39
voice he says Debbie crane ain't the tent girl if you want to find her go to Bradford
00:36:47
Pennsylvania then the caller hung up the phone okay okay go back repeat that for
00:36:52
me again okay we have an anonymous caller calls in on the tip line right now mind you this is a call reacting to
00:37:00
the National alert that had been issued for the two Kobe Brothers right this caller Debbie crane this caller has a
00:37:07
rough low voice very obviously a male caller who wants to remain anonymous and he says Debbie crane ain't the tent girl
00:37:15
if you want to find her go to Bradford Pennsylvania and then the phone hung up all right Bradford we go here we go to
00:37:23
Bradford yeah now let's go it's the middle of June and the detectives went out to Pennsylvania looking for Debbie
00:37:30
crane uh Dead or Alive well they end up finding her this this is very strange Captain they find
00:37:38
Debbie crane uh she alive she is alive and well living with her boyfriend this is Carl Colby really who she was last
00:37:47
seen with she tells the detectives that they never even went to Kentucky that they had been in Pennsylvania the entire
00:37:55
time uh that they had went there because they knew that they had a place to stay
00:38:00
and possibly a place to live right uh they were planning to get married the young couple because they were both
00:38:07
still minors they were forced to go back to Maryland so good news for the crane family and everyone that was looking and
00:38:16
worried about 15-year-old Debbie crane but now the police from multiple jurisdictions across multiple states
00:38:23
have spent a lot of time effort and expense and still we have not identified the young woman's body that was found
00:38:30
over a month ago and I keep bringing it up this is 1968 so I think that's important because
00:38:37
when we hear about uh a girl and her boyfriend running off to possibly go get married when we think of that in today's
00:38:45
terms we go wow these these kids must been crazy right but it wasn't that uncommon I mean in ' 68 once you
00:38:54
graduated high school you're either going to college or you're getting you're going into a career and probably
00:39:00
a big percentage 70 80% of uh kids were becoming career men and starting a family by the age of you know
00:39:10
1920 yeah you're you're exactly right because we have young women getting pregnant around this you know around
00:39:16
that time in their life After High School um and it's also 68 you have that the bit of that hippie movement is
00:39:24
starting to take place where people some people are flocking out to California and I think you know not just me free
00:39:31
free love man free love man far out remember we we talked about that uh that scene from a movie when we pictured
00:39:40
these girls hitchhiking where it's the car pulls up and where are you going San Francisco far out man and then they just
00:39:48
they just get into some car willy-nilly and then they're never seen again yeah or it's like a bunch of people and they
00:39:53
have little guitars and they're like we're going to San Francisco go too you know like that was the thing well and
00:39:59
and not just me backing you up but the story itself the evidence in the story itself backs up everything that we're
00:40:07
saying here because within days of putting this girl's sketch in the newspaper they're getting swamped with
00:40:12
calls that they have to immediately say to the to the caller uh what she's 5 foot 6 well that's not our girl right
00:40:20
anyway how are we going to identify this victim how are we going to identify this
00:40:26
girl that they've dubbed the the tent girl so around the same time that they found Debbie crane alive the lab test
00:40:34
results from the FBI came back all three of the items that were sent the tarp the
00:40:40
rope and the towel well they were all figured to be all of a common make so massively
00:40:49
produced and distributed making it nearly impossible well let's just say impossible for the sources to be located
00:40:58
where these items had come from right right so we're running out of Leads Here Captain by now the detectives and the
00:41:04
sheriff's office they got to they got to be starting to feel pretty crappy here they're they're running into dead ends
00:41:12
and this case is starting to look like it may turn cold then a new lead comes in this time is this time it is from a
00:41:20
police chief in Pennsylvania and we got Pennsylvania here again in the story but
00:41:25
this is a very different kind of lead nothing like this in this investigation had been seen before the
00:41:32
police chief was not looking to locate a missing teenage girl okay no he had a dead body a he had a homicide case that
00:41:42
they were working on the issue is this the girl found dead in Pennsylvania the circumstances were strikingly similar to
00:41:50
that of the tent girl the victim's name is Candace Clothier a 16-year-old girl from Philadelphia Pennsylvania she
00:41:58
disappeared from her home around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday March 9th 1968 now she went by the nickname of
00:42:07
candy she was known to be a quiet attractive and respectable girl according to the local detectives now
00:42:16
candy was supposed to be walking from her home down to a stop to get on to one of those trolley she was going to take
00:42:24
the trolley to her boyfriend's house but she never arrived that night she was never seen at some point uh she is
00:42:32
reported missing that night Tony Monty thing yeah yeah so somehow a conversation happens between her parents
00:42:41
and her boyfriend and they decide to report her missing her father was a um well-respected fireman I think he might
00:42:48
have been a little higher up the ranks than what I just described him as but yeah he I mean he was in he worked for
00:42:55
the fire department and so we have a situation where we have many firemen and policemen we combing
00:43:03
the area that night and the following morning near her home looking for the missing girl unfortunately she wasn't
00:43:10
found until the early morning hours of April 13th 1968 so over a month later now three fishermen discovered her body
00:43:21
in a Creek in Bucks County Pennsylvania well and what's difficult here is that if she got on the trolley then the
00:43:28
possibilities for suspects are almost endless yeah you know yeah and the the body was tied up in a black canvas bag
00:43:37
that had washed up onto a small island okay the body itself it was nude except for a pair of panties she had been dead
00:43:46
for about 6 weeks uh but was quickly identified was there sexual assault that I don't know the thing here is Captain
00:43:55
she was quickly identified because of one thing we were lacking from the tent girl case there was a missing report
00:44:02
right she had been reported missing in the area they were actively looking for Candice Well by late June the
00:44:09
Philadelphia detectives had interviewed more than 1,000 1,000 persons and administered more than 80 polygraph
00:44:17
tests but they were unable to make an arrest and a strange thing that they came up with during this investigation
00:44:24
Captain it's a it's a little chilling here uh Candace had written a poem for the the
00:44:31
upcoming yearbook that was coming out at her high school she went to Abraham Lincoln High School okay uh she was
00:44:37
scheduled to graduate the following year 1969 but she had wrote a poem and it and
00:44:42
it goes like this if life were merely passing by I hold my breath and give a sigh but that's not the true story I
00:44:51
fear this life of mine goes on for years I'm tired of eating eating drinking and
00:44:57
sex I just can't wait for the world that's next if you're wondering where this next world is it's the place where
00:45:05
our God lives so a strange what yeah isn't that kind of make it kind of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand
00:45:13
up because first of all are they going to publish this it's strange that she has the word sex in there and she's
00:45:20
underage um and it well that's not strange but what's strange is that that they'd publish it it was in the yearbook
00:45:29
yeah was yeah but okay so that's you know because it's so long ago was it actually published in the yearbook or
00:45:36
did she write it in somebody's yearbook you know it could be oh I see what you're saying cuz if she just wrote
00:45:43
it in somebody's yearbook it's not that weird that she used the word sex I see what you're saying the the news article
00:45:48
that I read gave me the impression that it was something that was submitted and printed in all of the books not
00:45:55
something that she wrote but you could be right this could be something that she actually just wrote in somebody's uh
00:46:00
yearbook regardless though it sounds almost like a a good buy note yes yes it does but yeah just just one of those
00:46:08
weird things that you come up with when you know in these different cases well and the other thing too is since we
00:46:14
don't have the information of her autopsy it's like other than her being wrapped in this uh almost like a tarp
00:46:21
like material the same as tent girl that's like pretty much the only similarities
00:46:26
similar uh size of person and that's about it well let's get into that because the detectives they they started
00:46:32
comparing the two cases and they noted the following the autopsy findings were the same in both cases uh like you said
00:46:41
there was no identify there was no identifiable cause of death in either case both bodies showed a slight
00:46:48
discoloration of the skin covering the skull in about the same spot this is on the right hand side of the skull both
00:46:57
corpses were wrapped in a canvas type bag or tarp and then tied with rope from top to bottom right both bodies had also
00:47:06
been dumped off of main roads near creeks uh the the one body actually in uh water that had you know washed up
00:47:13
onto this little island yeah and both had remained undiscovered for several weeks the other thing too is the both of
00:47:22
the girls legs in both situations the legs were bent at the knee and kind of tucked up underneath of them uh if that
00:47:31
makes sense so you have two girls that are basically found with no obvious cause of death no cause of death that
00:47:38
could be found by the coroner they both they both appear to have been hit on the
00:47:42
head po yeah possibly and tent girl looks like that she was possibly alive still was there any evidence in in this
00:47:49
case that she was still alive when they wrapped her in the tarp they never said that they didn't say that they believed
00:47:56
her to have been left alive well she might have had more bruising on her skull than tent girl and the problem
00:48:03
that they're going to have with Candice's case um you know I think she was found it took longer to find her
00:48:11
okay so then with the toxicology reports there well that that was an issue with the Candace case um I think that she was
00:48:21
beyond that that they weren't able to recover anything as far as toxic ology went well I just also argue that there
00:48:29
was new drugs coming out and and I would argue that the testing back then wasn't
00:48:33
as good as it is now mhm so who knows what was in either one of their systems well of course their thought is going to
00:48:41
be if the cases were in fact connected then the strategy is that since we know that Candace Clothier is from
00:48:48
Pennsylvania well then maybe our unidentified victim is from Pennsylvania as well right so the Kentucky detect
00:48:55
Ives they sent copies of the sketch to the boys investigating the Clothier homicide in Pennsylvania there they
00:49:03
compared it to all of their outstanding missing girls and young women cases they
00:49:09
found no match there was there was nobody that resembled the tent girl that they had listed as missing in the
00:49:15
Pennsylvania area these two cases were both still being investigated to Great length both as connected cases and as
00:49:25
individual case well the 60s was such a crazy time I mean if somebody said to me
00:49:30
I could go visit a time period for a week I think the 60s would be a lot of fun uh crazy time with you know JFK
00:49:38
being assassinated you have Martin Luther King's assassination you have Robert Kennedy's assassination you have
00:49:44
a lot of um political talk going on you have a lot of people experimenting with different ways of living uh you know
00:49:52
like we talked about the free love movement and a lot of people just just packing up and moving somewhere else
00:49:58
trying something different I mean like Kid Rock I'm packing up my things and I'm going to head out west right
00:50:07
uh sorry for that I apologize how many people actually just packed their stuff up and left their families or you know
00:50:15
told them I'm heading out or didn't tell them they're heading out and how many people were not reported missing right
00:50:23
you're well you're asking how rare that is is if it would be a rare thing I don't think it was that rare I'm with
00:50:29
you I don't think it was that rare either I think that when you have a situation where people are choosing to
00:50:33
move and choosing to up and leave at that age right there's probably at least in The Young Person's mind there's good
00:50:41
reason to do so um to the point where they may not feel like they should reach out to Mom and Dad and say hey went to
00:50:49
Wyoming planning on living here forever yeah or I'm going to San Francisco cuz I want to try some drugs
00:50:55
mhm and some free love well the detectives are going to try some other avenues here they're not going to give
00:51:03
up on identifying their victim whether or not she is connected to the Pennsylvania girl so there's this old
00:51:10
magazine it's well it's old magazine now back then it was current um but it was called Master
00:51:17
detective so the detectives they decided to talk to this magazine and see if they
00:51:23
would cover the story Master Detective was very interested in covering the story uh they wanted the story of this
00:51:29
seemingly impossible to identify young female murder victim in their pages so this is a great chance for the
00:51:37
investigation because this could lead to a break in the case and maybe they could
00:51:42
identify the girl so Sheriff Vance he was in charge at the time he gave an interview to the magazine and said if we
00:51:50
could only identify the tent girl I'm sure we would find whoever caused her death any reader in any state who has
00:51:58
some idea of who she is please contact us right away it is quite possible that she was killed somewhere else and then
00:52:06
brought here we also have Lieutenant Roberts who was working the case as well he also added that he had hoped a master
00:52:15
detective reader would come forward to solve the mystery saying although we are handicapped by the lack of good physical
00:52:23
description of this girl we have one obvious feature that someone may recall that's the Decay between the girl's two
00:52:31
Upper Front Teeth it would have been apparent as a dark spot whenever she smiled anyone who knew her Might Recall
00:52:40
this he added that the print obtained from one of tent girl's fingers has routinely been compared with the prints
00:52:48
of other missing girls so stating that if we do come up with a possible identification right they would likely
00:52:56
be able to get the fingerprints from the missing girls effects personal effects so they can compare the prints they just
00:53:03
needed names of missing girls matching this description so they could look into these fingerprints well yeah they could
00:53:10
start eliminating them one by one mhm eventually the unidentified murder victim that we now know as tent girl
00:53:18
well she was eventually buried in a county-owned section of the Georgetown Cemetery in Kentucky
00:53:25
a bunch of the local people got together they collected money to purchase and place a tombstone at her grave that was
00:53:33
nice of him yes the the stone was complete with the sketch that was made of her preserving what she probably
00:53:42
looked like and followed by these words tent girl found May 17th 1968 on US Highway
00:53:52
25 died about April 26th to May 3rd 1968 age about 16 to 19 years height 5T 1 in weight 110 to 115 lb reddish brown
00:54:11
hair unidentified so it's almost like a missing person report right on that right on that headstone yep so right and
00:54:21
the difficult thing here is like I said before is with the lack of evidence because of the decomposition of the body
00:54:27
what is the motive here we don't know where she came from we don't know what the motive is there's so many uh gray
00:54:35
questions or gray areas yes yes there there's where once we look like we receiving we're receiving lots of good
00:54:43
leads those leads all seem to have dried up that with the exception of there might be a possible connection between
00:54:49
her and the victim from Pennsylvania yeah but again with both of those cases there's so much lack of evidence that
00:54:56
you don't even what's the motive what's the motive in that case right you know without there being like I said and I
00:55:02
hate to keep bring up but without their solid evidence that they were both um sexually
00:55:08
assaulted where's the motive here well in in the case of the tent girl I mean when you can't even identify her there's
00:55:16
no way you can come up with a motive because you you don't know if it was somebody that knew her if it was if it
00:55:22
was a stranger on Stranger attack and you're you're right with the with the lack of evidence that's found on the
00:55:28
body and at the crime scenes it's not really pointing you in any direction either well and maybe not in you know
00:55:35
1968 but as we're getting uh more advanced with our um technology but also more advanced with the way we process
00:55:44
these things and the psychology of fighting crime if if if tent girl was stabbed multiple times then that might
00:55:51
lead to the motive of you know at least it would be a passion right killing and what does that mean
00:55:58
and does that mean that it was probably somebody closer to her because normally in these cases especially when it's
00:56:05
young females it's the boyfriend or the husband right right that's the first people that we look at but well here's
00:56:11
the thing let okay let's let's investigate it like this we have one thing that we can go off of as far as
00:56:18
both victims having been found um that of candy in Pennsylvania and the tent girl in Kentucky
00:56:25
and this is kind of some loose science let's say this but a lot of investigators would agree with this
00:56:33
statement as well as a lot of killers would agree with this statement a lot of times it's believed that the harder it
00:56:40
is to find a body the more likely that the person was close to the victim um that knew the victim and we
00:56:51
can't say that that's the case all of the time it certainly is not the case all all of the time right but the
00:56:56
thought is this that you know in a lot of stranger on Stranger attacks where a serial killer may just pick somebody up
00:57:04
or abduct somebody a lot of times they'll just dump the body when they're done with it at the on the side of some
00:57:10
Road this this body the tent girl as well as candi's body in Pennsylvania somebody took the time to wrap up the
00:57:19
remains and drive them to remote locations and dump them in a place where they probably hoped that they would not
00:57:26
be found or at least not be found for a good deal of time yeah but they both locations were right off the highway you
00:57:33
know what I mean so it's like they're remote locations but pretty easy to get to um so is that just happen stance that
00:57:41
may be the case with tent girl but it would be less the case with candy in Pennsylvania um and as far as you know
00:57:48
here's the thing though but then we run into this obstacle too just because it took a good deal of time to find them
00:57:54
doesn't necessarily mean that they were there the entire time right I guess I'm just going under the assumption that
00:58:01
they were that whoever place these girls in these locations probably hope that they would never be found or wouldn't be
00:58:08
found for a good deal of time and they got their wish on some to some extent because if they were placed there
00:58:15
shortly after they were killed then it was weeks before these bodies were located right or like you said on the
00:58:22
other hand I mean they could have had um they could have kept their victim somewhere and then that was the final
00:58:29
resting spot mhm so they were only there for maybe just a little bit so and that's hard too with the reporting
00:58:36
because it seems like well if these uh victims were sitting in a place for weeks and weeks and weeks then that's
00:58:43
just totally remote mhm but if if they're found within a couple days of of them being dropped then how do we know
00:58:51
how remote this is well we we got a lot more to get to in this obviously Captain
00:58:56
we got to figure out one who was the body that was found in Kentucky on that day in' 68 and two is there a connection
00:59:04
to the other victim to Candice in Pennsylvania and we'll get to those on tomorrow's show all right thank you
00:59:10
everybody everybody have a great night we'll see you back here tomorrow and until then be good be kind and don't
00:59:16
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