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[Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thank you
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sign up on the mailing list at true Crim garage.com and that's enough of the business all right everybody gather
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around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] each year as we venture through life
00:04:14
there are markers along our journey holidays birthdays and anniversaries these can be caused for celebration gift
00:04:23
giving and reflection these markers along Life's Highway are not only something we
00:04:30
welcome but something we look forward to we all will celebrate a birthday in 2019 and I like so many of you out there
00:04:41
I will observe my own holidays and anniversaries throughout this year think about your life your loved ones and
00:04:50
celebrations you've had so far and the ones you are looking forward to now put yourself in the shoes of the love one or
00:05:00
family member of a victim of someone no longer with us of course these loved ones are
00:05:10
victims as well but these victims so very unfortunately are victimized repeatedly
00:05:18
over and over again each year they experience holidays birthdays and anniversaries but without their loved
00:05:28
one unlike the rest of us these are not dates or markers that they look forward to often choosing to spend this time
00:05:39
alone unable to celebrate the days that we are often the happiest are the times that they
00:05:47
struggle the most and then they get to do it all over again next year and the next year and
00:05:57
the year after that next week we will recognize an anniversary but not one that anyone will
00:06:05
be looking forward to next week marks the 10year anniversary of when Tony Lee sharpless
00:06:14
vanished 10 years have gone by and there's still no trace of her or is there this is true crime garage and this
00:06:23
is the case of Tony Lee sharpless [Music] [Music] Tony Lee sharpless was born on December
00:06:45
27th 1979 her father was killed in an accident when she was just 6 years old later Tony's mother remarried so Tony
00:06:55
and her sister candy were raised by her mother instead stepfather in West Brandy
00:07:01
Wine Township an area of about 4,500 people West Brandy Wine is about 60 Mi west of Philadelphia from what we
00:07:10
can tell the parents provided a loving and supportive home to the two girls but Tony would struggle getting involved in
00:07:18
her teen years with drugs and alcohol at 17 she was pregnant her mom says Tony was determined to keep the baby and to
00:07:28
get herself together and be a good mother Tony started working full-time leaving her daughter in the care of her
00:07:36
parents and she focused on being a good parent herself Tony wanted to provide a good life for her daughter and be a good
00:07:45
example but life as a young single mother was not easy and her mom says Tony had her first breakdown at either
00:07:55
age 19 or 20 Tony suddenly lapsed into several days of uncontrollable crying she was
00:08:02
hospitalized and examined but wasn't diagnosed with any condition at that time she went back to drinking and
00:08:10
occasionally taking drugs and even total her car now this was very traumatic and
00:08:17
it was something that she vowed never to repeat unfortunately there were two suicide attempts as well she and her
00:08:26
daughter moved to Florida briefly Tony and her daughter moved back in with Tony's mom and stepdad in Pennsylvania
00:08:35
after this short trip to Florida these Behavior Cycles continued until 2005 when Tony was diagnosed
00:08:43
bipolar and placed on prescription medication this was to allow her to stabilize to the point that she could be
00:08:51
able to enroll in a nursing program Tony's parents helped her as she worked on the weekends as a nurse Aid and
00:09:00
navigated nursing school everyone says Tony was managing well for most of this time she stayed stable throughout
00:09:09
nursing school and in 2007 started working at Lancaster General Hospital friends described Tony as a
00:09:17
brilliant woman who loved her job it seemed she had put her addiction issues behind her and her disease was under
00:09:26
control thanks to proper medication and things seem to be looking up for her yeah but at some point she's going to be
00:09:33
convicted of a DUI and in early 2009 she started behaving erratically her friend
00:09:39
Crystal Johns says that in early 2009 Tony was cycling between Mania and depression Tony entered a 3-week stint
00:09:49
in a psych rehab facility in April of 2009 according to her family it was here that Tony was issued a new prescription
00:09:57
for bipolar disorder order and treated for alcohol abuse and she came out of rehab A Renewed person she stabilized
00:10:06
and was able to return to work and resumed her routine as a Dependable mom to her now 12-year-old daughter right
00:10:14
but let's be clear there's no test that they can give somebody to be like oh you
00:10:19
took this test you are bipolar so most psychologists won't diagnose somebody with bipolar disease they they monitor
00:10:27
it for years actually so with therapy and trying different prescriptions and this is kind of what they're doing so
00:10:35
when they said that but some doctors will um diagnose right away and start prescribing right away MH well at this
00:10:45
point Tony was working as an infectious disease nurse typically working a 12-hour night shift then coming home in
00:10:52
the morning things went smoothly for about four months the one thing that seemed to have been very tough for Tony
00:11:00
to adjust to was her bipolar meds prohibited her from drinking just like a lot of other medications alcohol and her
00:11:10
medications they do not mix well together basically giving you undesirable side effects to things like
00:11:17
mood behavior and your health well some of the antis psychotics if you drink on them they actually could cause death so
00:11:24
we know that Tony had a problem with alcohol in the past but after this three laps Tony seems to have changed her
00:11:32
lifestyle to avoid drinking at least initially she wasn't going out she was staying focused on work and family now
00:11:42
Captain we need to talk about the events of August 22nd and 23rd 2019 uh August 22nd was a Saturday and
00:11:52
Tony finished a long shift at the hospital she was down because of a couple different reasons a patient pent
00:11:59
had committed suicide at the hospital by jumping out of the window just weeks earlier and a close friend of hers her
00:12:08
her brother had been killed in a car accident so she's got her own struggles but there's there's some other things
00:12:14
going on here to add to this add a a a a different layer to this now Saturday morning after getting off work Tony went
00:12:23
over to her sister candi's apartment remember they're very close these two sisters she hung out with candi's kids
00:12:30
and and helped candy clean her apartment then they picked up Tony's daughter and
00:12:35
they went to a mall a shopping mall for a day of shopping now the shopping group
00:12:40
was joined by Tony's old friend Crystal John's Tony bought some new clothes and and some new hair color and the two
00:12:48
friends caught up on life it's my understanding that these two are are old friends and they didn't have a
00:12:57
relationship for quite sometime and at some point this relationship is renewed now crystal said she was going
00:13:05
to go out that night to some clubs to meet up with some of her friends and she encouraged Tony to join her candy was
00:13:14
also included in this invitation but candy declined MH she said later that she was somewhat surprised that Tony
00:13:23
agreed to go out because this was going to be a partying situation but she guessed that Tony felt that you know
00:13:31
maybe she deserved some fun after not being out for several months now Tony dropped off her daughter with her
00:13:38
parents and said goodbye to the three of them this is around like 9:30 p.m. Tony's friend from nursing school GG
00:13:46
Hayes told us that she spoke with Tony that day and she believes Tony was clearly in or possibly entering a manic
00:13:57
stage which G had seen and witnessed before she says that in those stages Tony would do very impulsive things Gigi
00:14:07
cautioned her about going out with Crystal and says that she and Tony's mother Donna both were concerned now
00:14:16
Donna says that while Tony most of the time took her medications as required the day before she called and asked
00:14:24
Donna to call into the pharmacy for refills mhm apparently Tony would often fail to take medication when she decided
00:14:33
she was feeling good you know she would kind of we see this a lot where where people decide they don't need their
00:14:40
medication because of the way they feel um and this seems to be the case here as
00:14:46
well well I'm not a doctor I'm a captain and all medicines work differently but skipping one day of these medications
00:14:54
are not going to derail you completely we don't know this for certain certain but what we can say is
00:15:01
that Tony's Family seems to think that it's possible that Tony did not take her pills that day or maybe in the past day
00:15:11
or past few days leading up to this day again we don't know for certain and again we don't know how these
00:15:17
medications are going to react with her that's correct after saying goodbye Tony
00:15:23
went over to crystals where the two got glammed up to go out Tony wore black pants or tights and a turquoise top and
00:15:32
sandals now Crystal later said in an interview that she didn't know that Tony wasn't supposed to drink while on her
00:15:39
medication according to her she didn't even know that Tony was bipolar remember we said that the the relationship is uh
00:15:49
kind of a new spark to an old friendship right according to Tony's friend Gigi Crystal was not a great influence for
00:16:01
Tony that's that's G's opinion she had serious reservations about Tony's decision to go out with Crystal that
00:16:10
night now the two young women went off to two different clubs first they hit up Club Ice in King of Prussia which is in
00:16:19
lower Marian Township and then they drove to G Lounge in Philly yeah G Lounge right that's where I get my swe
00:16:29
on it was here that they met up with Matt Green MH who was hanging out with his brother his brother at the time
00:16:38
played for the 76ers a professional basketball team in the NBA his name is Willie Green it's not really clear what
00:16:46
exactly the relationship was between Crystal and Matt we know that they met up that night we know that Crystal told
00:16:54
Tony earlier that day hey I'm going out with friends meeting up with some friends while you come with
00:16:59
me what I've heard is that it that sometimes this relationship between Crystal and Matt may have just been a
00:17:07
casual hookup you know that they were had some type of relationship when he was around kind of thing right now the
00:17:14
girls from what we've been told received VIP treatment at G Lounge drinking champagne vodka doing shots sounds like
00:17:24
they're having a good time now Tony spent quite a bit of time on the Dance Floor One incident did happen here at
00:17:32
the club that upset Tony this is according to Crystal apparently two Hispanic men who were hitting on her
00:17:41
they were conversing in Spanish about Tony and one of them said that Tony looked like she was 35 years old now
00:17:49
remember Tony is only 29 at this time Tony actually spoke fluent Spanish and could understand everything that they
00:17:58
were saying and this really upset her now clubs in Philly sto serving alcohol at 2 a.m. and everybody has to be out of
00:18:08
the bars at 2:30 they are with a crew of about 6 or seven total and it sounds like they
00:18:17
wanted to keep partying so Willie Willie Green the basketball player invited everyone back to his Mansion this is in
00:18:24
Gladwin Pennsylvania this is about a 30 to 40-minute drive from where they are currently located yeah that's that's
00:18:33
never good hey we've been drinking and doing a bunch of drugs let's drive 30 40 minutes and I'm I'm not certain as to
00:18:41
what time they arrived at the first Club but one thing we do know is they stayed
00:18:45
at the second Club until closing time so we can assume that most of them are pretty Sauced up by this point what's
00:18:53
closing time there cuz closing time here is 2: a.m. but well serving stops at 2:
00:18:59
a.m. and everyone has to be out of the bar at 2:30 oh okay so they're same same as us Tony drove herself and Crystal in
00:19:06
her black four-door 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix GT uh which had tinted windows whether or not she should have
00:19:16
been driving is not clear this has never been made clear by anybody that night but Tony was operating on from what we
00:19:24
know 36 hours of no sleep medication which is either wearing off or no medication right bipolar disorder and
00:19:35
plenty of alcohol a crystal categorically denies that either she or Tony did any drugs that night so we'll
00:19:43
give Crystal a benefit of the doubt and say we won't include drugs in that in that statement now Tony was also very
00:19:51
bad with directions she was driving to an unfamiliar area she had a new phone that she had just got like a few days
00:20:01
before and she wasn't able to figure out the GPS on this new phone in fact they had a real tough go of it trying to get
00:20:09
to the G Lounge I guess they drove around a lot longer than than normal trying to find this place cuz they
00:20:17
didn't know where they going they went to H Lounge first that's right they had to circle back around up to the M Lounge
00:20:22
down to the Z back to the a found found themselves at the G ski the B yeah apparently when they were heading out to
00:20:29
Willie Green's house Crystal was the one who was able to figure out the GPS so they used GPS to get to his house now
00:20:39
glad wine is a very Upper Crust suburb of Philadelphia One news article says that it's one of the most expensive
00:20:47
towns in the United States the NBA player and party host Willie Green was making quite a bit of
00:20:56
money uh in in those days and his house that he lived in cost about $780,000 this was uh purchased in 2006 from my
00:21:08
understanding it's not totally clear how many people ended up at his house we have heard that it was Willie Matt their
00:21:17
Uncle another girl also named Crystal and according to Crystal John's this other Crystal wasn't too happy that she
00:21:26
and Tony were there and possibly one other person that I don't have a name for we also don't know
00:21:34
exactly what what happened there you know we do know that Tony texted her daughter at 2:57 a.m. this is while on
00:21:44
the on the Skool kill expressway I hope I said that right this is Interstate 76 and it was on the way to the house party
00:21:55
now Tony is responding to a text from her daughter the daughter's saying hey I can't sleep and Tony texts back saying
00:22:04
something like honey I'll be home soon get some sleep or I hope you can get to sleep see you soon love you something
00:22:11
like that right which is the typical parent [ __ ] text like hey we'll be back soon which really means just go to
00:22:17
sleep and I'll see you in the morning whatever the exact wording of this response was it sounded totally normal
00:22:26
although moving forward I want everybody to keep in mind there's no proof that it
00:22:31
was actually Tony that that sent that text well if she's driving she could have just had her friend send the text
00:22:38
her F friend figured out the GPS right mhm right but but again what I want to point out is I I don't mean just whose
00:22:47
fingers were on the phone I mean we there's a lot of questions about that night and you and that will become
00:22:54
very clear very soon but just to point out even though the text came from Tony's phone and it was to her daughter
00:23:02
in response to a text I don't want anybody to believe 100% that that Tony sent this text or was the one that chose
00:23:10
the words for the text now only Crystal Johns out of all the people that apparently were there or could have been
00:23:18
there that night only Crystal Johns has spoken publicly about that night she has
00:23:24
done interviews TV shows blogs and other forms of media about what she says exactly went down at Willie Green's home
00:23:35
now she was initially very eager to talk right you know right from the get yeah but to be clear crystal story of what
00:23:43
occurred that evening is the only narrative we have to go on while it appears that her story has changed in in
00:23:52
little ways somewhat in the especially in the early days the gist of what she said happened is this the crew at the
00:24:01
house was playing a drinking game that involves the card game Taboo at some point during the game Tony made again
00:24:10
she's she's worded this several different ways and I don't want to upset anybody here but from my understanding
00:24:17
she Tony made a joking comment that either was or could have been a racial slur now it's worth noting that both
00:24:26
Crystal and T Tony are white and Willie and Matt are black also Tony's daughter is mixed race and just pointing all that
00:24:37
out I wasn't at the party I don't know exactly what went down right when Willie expressed displeasure at Tony's word
00:24:47
choice yeah I guess Tony lost it according to Crystal she started pouring champagne on the floor and getting
00:24:56
belligerent now in another account crystal says she herself was in the pool and someone came out and found her and
00:25:05
said there was something going on or something wrong with her friend and she found Tony kicking Furniture cursing and
00:25:12
throwing things and acting extremely drunk paulling a Rick James yeah that [ __ ] y' couch this
00:25:24
Behavior was out of character for T said Crystal but others who knew Tony said that it was not totally out of character
00:25:34
if she was having an episode and crystal says that Willie asked the two of them to
00:25:42
leave and angry and crying Tony grabbed her keys and said that she was she was driving well in all fairness I mean you
00:25:51
go to a house party with Willie Green basketball player NBA right mhm and they You're Expecting the party and they pull
00:26:00
out taboo give me a break yeah yeah I I again I don't know what was going on but but when she says
00:26:09
that Pictionary no I want a party she's asked to leave and she you know she grabs her keys she
00:26:19
says she's driving I guess some of the guys in the group started laughing and told her you know hey by the way don't
00:26:26
hit any of our cars on the way out of the driveway as soon as she and Crystal got to Tony's Grand Prix Tony started
00:26:35
yelling at Crystal accusing her of laughing at her with the others you know hey you you you brought me here you
00:26:44
asked me to join Along on this party maybe maybe she screwed up maybe she didn't I don't know but whatever went
00:26:50
down according to Crystal Tony at this point not only feels like the people that stayed at the party are against her
00:26:57
but her friend or so-called friend crystal is now against her as well well this is a tough situation there's a lot
00:27:05
of people that are uh suffering with bipolar or mental illnesses that that um once they get their medication right
00:27:14
they might be advised from their psychologist that it yeah maybe some of the side effects aren't great but it's
00:27:21
okay if you you drink a little bit on your medication but like you said they switched her medication
00:27:28
so maybe she drank drank on her old medication and she kind of knew how to handle this but now she's having a
00:27:34
different effect um with the new medication my general understanding was I don't think she was supposed to be
00:27:41
drinking at all and then top that off with it looks like she had a bit of a roller coaster ride with the drinking
00:27:51
alone you know with with with having some times in her life where she was abusing alcohol
00:27:58
and and you know and I'm here's the thing in Tony's defense she obviously was somebody that
00:28:08
wanted to make the right decisions I think sometimes she struggled with that and we all do on some level right well
00:28:14
if you have a mental illness that's a you know that's an obstacle that that a lot of people can't get over yeah and
00:28:23
and I don't want to uh pretend like I'm I'm better than anybody I was actually thinking about this on my way here and
00:28:30
and and really doing some self-reflecting and thinking to myself you know I'm in my 30s now and I think I
00:28:38
could probably handle being told hey you can't drink I don't know if I would have
00:28:43
been able to roll with that very well in my 20s well and it's not like she's been
00:28:48
irresponsible with her whole life she's taking care of her kid uh she went to school she's a she's a hard worker
00:28:56
everybody should have the right to let their hair down a little [Music] bit this show is sponsored by better
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all lowercase shopify.com podcast free shopify.com podcast [Music] free all right we're back cheers
00:30:49
everybody cheers to you Captain where we left off Tony was asked to leave or told
00:30:56
to leave this party yeah so she decides she's going to drive and she's taking her friend Crystal who arrived with her
00:31:06
she's taking Crystal with her now once they're at Tony's car Tony starts yelling at Crystal and in fact crystal
00:31:13
says Tony got so mad and became so unreasonable that just within two blocks from Willie's house she pulled over and
00:31:23
yelled at Crystal telling her to get out of the car well crystal said later that she knew
00:31:30
Tony shouldn't have been driving crystal said she was so shocked and surprised by
00:31:35
Tony's behavior that she did exactly as she said she was told and she in fact got out of the car now this put Crystal
00:31:44
alone on the side of the road in a somewhat strange place around 4:45 a.m. she says that Tony sped off taking a
00:31:56
left turn turn toward Hollow Road heading back in the direction of the interstate heading back in the direction
00:32:03
in which they came right but we don't know if Tony knew where she was going after this takes place there are two
00:32:11
phone calls on the call logs to Tony's phone one at 4:47 a.m. and one at 4:53 a.m. so two phone calls 6 minutes
00:32:23
apart some reports state that these calls were at 453 a.m. and 459 a.m. but the key thing to mention here and to
00:32:33
keep in mind here is there's not a big discrepancy in these two times that were given from different reports and it's
00:32:41
very clear in all the reports that there were two calls that took place and they
00:32:45
occurred 6 minutes apart these match up with the panicked calls crystal said she
00:32:52
made to Tony in the minutes after Tony told her to get out of the car she said she was sure that Tony would
00:33:00
come back for her and she said that her calls the two calls went straight to Tony's
00:33:07
voicemail crystal says to her it was obvious that the phone was turned off that's her opinion we've seen reports
00:33:16
that Tony's phone last pinged a cell tower that serves near the area where the party was
00:33:23
located what's strange here to me is that Crystal story uh I don't know if it makes a
00:33:31
whole lot of sense to me mhm right so she told why is that well I'm going to get into that okay she told the TV show
00:33:39
ID disappeared that she was stranded there within walking distance from the party house right and that even men some
00:33:47
of the men at the party even yelled at her to come back but she refused because she said she was embarrassed about the
00:33:54
whole episode so instead she started walking alone in the direction of the interstate now this seems it just seems
00:34:02
to me very unlikely unless unless I do believe that that she's stating that she thought Tony would eventually turn
00:34:10
around right um but to take that a step further then you have to believe that she continued to walk and at some point
00:34:17
got to a point where she just felt like she was too far away to turn around again I I if she she said she was scared
00:34:24
she was alone she felt abandoned on the the road yet she's within just a couple blocks of of the party that she just
00:34:31
left now mind you according to Crystal story she's not the one that that did the party Foul that made made them have
00:34:40
to exit the party right right she says that that she's dropped off she starts walking refuses to turn around to the
00:34:49
party um here's the thing we we don't know how intoxicated Tony is at this point we don't know how
00:34:58
intoxicated Crystal was at this point so maybe crystal is just making a bad irrational illogical decision in other
00:35:07
accounts Crystal was already far enough away from the party that she didn't know
00:35:13
where to go she says in any event crystal says that she sat on a curb on the side of the road and started calling
00:35:21
family finally getting a hold of a 17-year-old nephew of hers who agreed to make the 40-minute drive to come and get
00:35:28
her now crystal says that she was scared and a little mad at Tony Little did she
00:35:36
know that this would be the last time anyone would see Tony the two calls to Tony's phone from
00:35:44
Crystal were the last activity ever recorded on Tony's cell phone Tony sharpless disappeared sometime around
00:35:52
5:00 a.m. on Sunday August 23rd 2009 at some point after she failed to reach Tony Crystal called Tony's sister candy
00:36:03
and left a voicemail for her explaining what had happened and saying that she would drop off Tony's things later that
00:36:11
day when candy got the voicemail from Crystal she called over to her mom's house and was immediately concerned when
00:36:19
she discovered that Tony did not come home that night Crystal and Tony's family started calling local police
00:36:25
stations to see if Tony could have been pulled over for a DUI and then they tried local hospitals as well to see if
00:36:33
she would ended up in a hospital neither was the case Crystal called the West Brandy Wine PD around 9:00 p.m. to
00:36:42
report Tony missing and Candy Tony's sister went in and filed a missing person's report Tony Lee sharpless
00:36:50
officially became a missing person at this time officer Russell Moore with the brand wine Police Department told ID
00:36:58
disappeared that he was immediately concerned about Tony after hearing of her unstable past and a night of
00:37:06
partying although her family insisted that she would never have hurt herself or take off leaving her
00:37:14
daughter they say that her daughter was her whole world and she never would have
00:37:19
left her now the family told officer Moore that Tony had plans on Monday to take her daughter to a state par Park in
00:37:27
the area with a lifelong friend and her kids this is to further bolster the the point that they would not be uh she
00:37:36
would not be taking off now officer Moore entered Tony's car into a missing vehicle database but like
00:37:46
Tony her Grand Prix seemed to have disappeared Into Thin Air while the police geared up to search for Tony her
00:37:54
family took matters into their own hands hands Crystal and some of Tony's other friends helped print off flyers
00:38:02
describing her including pictures of Tony and her car they had Tony listed as 5' 5 in tall
00:38:11
135 lbs auburn hair blue and gray eyes last scen wearing a turquoise top and black pants Tony's mother and stepfather
00:38:22
drove out to the neighborhood where the party was and scoped out this whole area
00:38:28
they drove the routes that Tony could have taken to get home and Crystal told them that Tony's car had been low on gas
00:38:36
maybe a quarter of a tank and that would possibly not have been enough to get her
00:38:42
home suggesting that Tony would likely have to be looking for a gas station at some point family and friends stopped at
00:38:50
local gas stations asking about sightings of Tony but came up empty-handed now I want to talk about
00:38:58
the geographical location of that party Willie Green's address was 1317 boar Drive in Gladwin to get here Tony and
00:39:09
Crystal took Interstate 76 and would have got off on the Hollow Road exit remember crystal said that when Tony
00:39:16
ditched her Tony took a left toward Hollow Road presumably looking for a way back onto the Interstate but at this
00:39:25
time it would have been dark all of the unlit small roads in that area probably look very much alike there are no
00:39:34
commercial areas or businesses and it's likely that Tony's perceptions were significantly
00:39:41
impaired so on Hollow Road there is no Entrance Ramp leading to the highway in the direction Tony should have gone
00:39:50
assuming she intended to go home she would have been looking for Interstate 76 West the access ramp accessible here
00:39:59
leads only in the direction of Philadelphia it's Interstate 76 East the opposite way from where Tony would have
00:40:08
logically wanted to go toward her home right but like they stated before she's pretty bad with directions and we don't
00:40:15
know if she knew how to use her GPS well and she didn't know this area right so very likely not knowing that if she does
00:40:24
in fact get it on that freeway it's going to send her in the wrong direction right so now one very simple possibility
00:40:32
here could be just some kind of tragic accident so let's say Tony didn't take the ramp that we just discussed because
00:40:42
it is going in the wrong direction so if she didn't take the ramp Hollow Road ends up just a few feet further on going
00:40:50
under the interstate crossing train tracks and then it dead ends into River Road which runs along along the skook
00:40:57
hill River a sharp 90° left turn onto River Road would have wound Tony along the river and led right to the Flat Rock
00:41:09
Park boat access ramp that could possibly be mistaken for a highway onramp mhm could Tony have driven her
00:41:17
car off the boat ramp and into the river now even if she didn't the row continues closely along the river for
00:41:26
quite some time at any point she could have veered off and then went into the water yeah or if she had turned right
00:41:33
onto River Road which really is just a dirt road in a the easterly direction from Hollow Road could she have
00:41:41
accidentally just have driven right into the river at that point as well so her family and friends drove all along this
00:41:49
stretch of River Road looking for things like tire marks or busted guard rails they didn't find anything now many of
00:41:58
the areas along the riverfront contain homes featuring manicured Lawns so it seems to me like it would have been
00:42:05
obvious if a car had you know mowed through these Lawns and went into to the river right and then we have Lieutenant
00:42:13
Frank Higgins of the lower Maran Township Police Department he said quote there are very few areas where you
00:42:21
cannot find a guard rail or somebody's front lawn end quote when Tony's Family expressed concern about the possibility
00:42:29
that Tony could have gone into this River at or near the boat ramp the lower Maran Police Department did not see
00:42:37
probable cause to search the river so remember Tony's friend Gigi she contacted Texas Equis search and anybody
00:42:49
that's listened to this show for any length of time they they come up like every three or four cases that we cover
00:42:56
this is a this is a top-of-the-line search company that was founded by a victim's father search and rescue team
00:43:04
yeah so Texas equa search was lined up by gii and this was all scheduled and arranged by gii to search the river this
00:43:14
search took place on September 11th a law enforcement dive team from Philadelphia was sent to supervise the
00:43:24
search and they actually limited the parameters of the search area to just a stretch of the river that they stated
00:43:33
was most likely where Tony could have gone in this area started at the Flat Rock boat ramp and proceeded up the
00:43:43
river away from Flat Rock Dam to the next boat ramp Where the River starts to curve to the left the river was about 25
00:43:54
ft deep at its deepest Points Texas Equis search sonar equipment scanned the bottom of the
00:44:01
river looking for anomalies that could be Tony's car and to the shock of pretty much everyone they found one very
00:44:11
quickly when news of this spread Tony's friends including Crystal and family gathered they're certain that Tony had
00:44:20
been found by this point now Texas Equis search sonar continued to scan the river
00:44:26
it found another anomaly on the riverbed below and then another and another divers confirmed that there was not one
00:44:35
car but multiple cars on the bottom of the school kill River off of that boat ramp wow 11 cars were down there 11 i'
00:44:46
I've seen used car lots with less cars yeah all right 11 cars were down there at the bottom of the river that's a lot
00:44:53
of cars man yeah the the river the divers found based on the license plates you know some of these cars still had
00:45:01
license plates on them and this was then confirmed when the crane came in and pulled cars out of the
00:45:09
river I mean I I don't want to get too far off the subject but do do you roughly know how long these cars were in
00:45:17
River for I I don't and it it will become you'll see why that's probably not important yeah I know it's I I think
00:45:25
it's not important but what I'm saying is like if these cars if it's a span of 20 years or 30 years well maybe 11 cars
00:45:34
isn't that much you know but uh it seems like there's a lot of accidents over there well actually what they learned is
00:45:42
they they believe this area was a Dumping Ground for stolen vehicles oh okay and so these all of these vehicles
00:45:51
could have been put there by the same person or the same group okay okay um yeah so these were all and that's easily
00:46:00
confirmed you know when they look up the VIN numbers and things like that they go
00:46:03
oh this this vehicle was reported stolen now Tony's Grand Prix remained missing even after they found all these other
00:46:10
cars unless the sophisticated sonar equipment missed something Tony was not in that part of the river she did not
00:46:19
enter that part of the river after this police were just at a loss saying quote we checked all the
00:46:26
bridges bank statements her telephone followed up on all the leads we could electronically and we just never came up
00:46:34
with anything this is a quote from Lieutenant Higgins and he went on to say it's still quite a mystery that her car
00:46:41
was never turned up people disappear with no Trace but the car usually turns up at some point well I know she wasn't
00:46:49
using her cell phone but I would assume at this point she had a charger and her car
00:46:56
for her phone and that we would get some kind of cell phone ping from her just moving areas you like
00:47:04
you said it's 30 some minutes away mhm so maybe you'd have to stop and get gas maybe nobody saw you to get gas maybe
00:47:10
you did that with cash and not a debit card but wouldn't at some point um you you would think one there's just not
00:47:19
going to be that many drivers on the road that that day so maybe one would get eyewitness that came forward or
00:47:26
again maybe we get that cell phone ping uh you know maybe not again not using the phone but you get it by switching
00:47:33
locations wouldn't you yeah and so what that means is that the phone is off or dead by that time right and we do have
00:47:43
Crystal John's statement where she said hey it seemed obvious to me that my two calls placed to her went straight to
00:47:50
voicemail because the phone was was off now I often wondered about this when when looking into this case one thing
00:47:57
that I was highly suspicious of because some of the reports the way that they report
00:48:02
it it makes it sound like magically Tony kicks crystal out of her car and then about the same time her
00:48:12
phone goes dead or is shut off we don't know that to be true so when when when I see these reports and
00:48:20
watch them on on YouTube or on TV and the way that they word it it makes it seem like that and I think to me that's
00:48:28
just that's wrong because look I have a lot of suspicions of the people that she was hanging out
00:48:34
with that night and Crystal story in particular and the the biggest part of the story that I didn't like was that
00:48:42
magically at the same time she's kicked out of the car and the phone goes dead or is shut off that just seemed like way
00:48:48
too much of a coincidence but when we really examine this thing and really take a deep dive and look at it
00:48:54
here we don't know what time if the phone did die if it lost power we don't know what time that it that it went down
00:49:02
right and anybody using G GPS knows that there's several things that you can do on your phone that will drain the
00:49:09
battery battery significantly faster and if you're not plugged into your your car
00:49:14
dash or or running off of some other power supply yeah the GPS could very likely drain her battery quite quickly
00:49:23
we know that she was up for quite some time who knows the last time that she charged her phone one and two if she
00:49:32
didn't know how to use the GPS how do we know she didn't leave it on after arriving at the party and it continued
00:49:37
to drain the battery while there so that's one thing I've always been very suspicious with in this case but I just
00:49:44
find it to be that it's it's not this magical coincidence so the other thing while
00:49:51
we're on the topic of the geographical location of that party I think it's also important to point out here for those
00:50:00
that are unfamiliar with this region the area of Pennsylvania where Tony disappeared from is close to several
00:50:07
large cities where it would be easy to disappear or encounter trouble so we have Camden New Jersey was
00:50:17
just a 20 minute drive east this is a notoriously dangerous city also North Philly
00:50:26
has some sketchy areas as well both of these Urban trouble zones are within a reasonably short drive from where Tony
00:50:34
was last seen well let's kind of go over this so she she's low on gas right quarter of a tank roughly according to
00:50:42
Tony she's or I'm sorry according to Crystal she's possibly impaired one she's impaired because she's tired she's
00:50:50
impaired because we know that she's at least had a couple drinks MH um we we don't know if she's on medication or not
00:50:58
but she could be impaired either way she's not good with directions phone might not be working
00:51:06
and if it is she seems to be might not know how to use the GPS right and in she's in an unfamiliar area right so
00:51:15
really the this is where this gets very problematic for this whole case and the the story of this
00:51:24
disappearance the possibilities here seem somewhat endless right when when you talk about these two let's call
00:51:31
them danger zones all right these this dangerous areas of that are short drives from where she was known to have been
00:51:40
according to Chrystal story and according to the cell phone ping that happened roughly in that area right she
00:51:48
could have ended up in these danger zones in any by any way I mean it could have been just as simple as she took a
00:51:56
wrong turn or was heading in the wrong direction on the interstate this could have put her in
00:52:03
the very very wrong side of town on the bad side of the tracks as they say and then the other side of the
00:52:13
tracks but yeah yeah so but it also could put you in an area again you're not familiar with um might not be the
00:52:21
safest of areas and you're low on gas if not running out of gas at that point so police determined that none of
00:52:33
Tony's credit or debit cards to this day they've still not been used so what does that tell us well we know
00:52:43
that she did not buy gas unless she paid cash that night further since none of her cards or bank accounts were accessed
00:52:53
it seems very unlikely that she she was the victim of a robbery gone bad right and she's not running away I
00:53:03
mean she had too much going on she's a mother she had a good relationship with her family she had a good job she she
00:53:12
was working um higher education to to further her career she's not running away from her life no she might have
00:53:21
been somebody that needed a temporary break a night out a night out we all do um she was working very hard and look
00:53:32
single mom yes Mom and stepdad are helping her out she's probably getting some help from her sister but she's
00:53:38
helping her sister as well we know that according to her sister she came over that day hung out with her sister's kids
00:53:44
helped her clean her apartment right as you said she's very close to her family and it seems like while we can't rule it
00:53:53
out 100% it seems an extremely low probability that she went out got blasted and just decided to take off
00:54:03
extremely low probability well very yeah and on on top of that we don't have any
00:54:09
record of her having cash and we know that she's low on gas and there's no you know activity on her debit
00:54:19
card I saw rumors that her car her her model of vehicle mhm uh Grand Prix GT was considered a desirable Target for
00:54:33
carjackers I look I could see that I'm not into boosting cars never have been um boost yeah is that like a term for
00:54:43
stealing boost okay yes um but shows you how hip I am what seems strange to me it's a seven-year-old
00:54:51
Pontiac no offense to the Pontiac owners out there but this is a seven-year-old Pontiac so I I just don't I don't get it
00:54:58
but again I don't I don't know maybe it's targeted for some other reason no I could see that um these these these cars
00:55:05
drove really well uh they had a pretty cool aesthetic to them so even though they'd be 7 years old the the aesthetic
00:55:13
to these cars um didn't date themselves mhm so I I could see why they said that cuz
00:55:21
this this was the type of car that kind of appealed to the the a younger crowd mhm so I think that's why they're saying
00:55:30
these are cars that people look to steal well and the other thing that's always confused me and I think that the media
00:55:38
flubs this up pretty good is there's a big difference between a stolen car and a car
00:55:45
jacking and so to say that it's a desirable Target for a car Jacker is one thing and but I know that when stealing
00:55:55
cars there are desirable targets for stolen cars because of the way that they are it's easy to break into them it's
00:56:04
easy to hotwire the vehicle something like that so I when I when I see these things and and I see that uh media
00:56:12
saying that uh news outlets saying that this is a desirable Target for carjackers I that's when I want to ask
00:56:19
the person telling me that information do you mean carjacking or do you mean stealing a car cuz those are two
00:56:25
completely completely different things so you mean jacking or do you mean stealing do you mean
00:56:33
jacking so here's the other thing this is is the big question and a lot of people ask this time and time again
00:56:41
regarding this case if in fact she ended up in a bad area of town or did she end up out in
00:56:49
the middle of nowhere stranded because she ran out of gas because her vehicle as reported by
00:56:56
Crystal was a quarter of a tank or less crystal says she would have been likely looking for a gas station because I
00:57:04
don't believe she had enough gas in the tank to make it home that night right but this should uh kind of limit our
00:57:11
radius of search and we should be able to at least find her car or find some evidence thank you of Tony thank you
00:57:20
because that's the thing that people point out a lot with this case they go well she could have run out of gas and
00:57:26
somebody evil some evil monster could have just happened upon her taken the opportunity to abduct
00:57:33
her you bring up the most obvious answer to why that's that seems also very unlikely here because if in fact her car
00:57:42
was incapacitated at all where is it where is it just like the officer says that that people disappear cars usually
00:57:52
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