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[Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always well he's simply one of the best in the biz so I refer to him
00:01:52
as the Barry lur of podcasting he is the captain they called me lur the turd it's
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good to be seen in it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a
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[Music] friend today we are drinking war elephant by the fine people over at Rushing Duck Brewing Company garage
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is brought to you by this powerful crew first up we have Alex and we are going to say that Alex is in Parts Unknown
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time because cuz there's nothing like a little homicide story and the captain to
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get you through her day mhm or get her through her day call me girl call me and in the Bronx we got Michael big shout
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show go to True Crim garage.com and click on the Donate button and that's enough of the business gather around
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grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] we've done three episodes on this case
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and today makes four and sometimes captain that just works out for me it works out well for me well for my
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ostrich brain that I'm walking around with right mhm so sometimes in most of the case this is the case this is the
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scenario that we cover a new case each week so we have but five maybe seven days to research it all work through it
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record it it's like a damn tornado mhm well these four-part cases are a little different we get just about two weeks to
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kind of tear through them and maybe see what's going on a little clearer so when
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we are provided with that luxury I like to kind of take a look at it and form an
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opinion after I've digested as much information as I can uh rather so sometimes for me it's like comparing uh
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following a trail of breadcrumbs rather than reading a Choose Your Own Adventure
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book okay so here and and I like to do this when I think it applies and what I'm looking for is this I'm looking for
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something that seems to be the truth in regarding my opinion of what I think could have happened to Janette DePalma
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so going back to our our victim here and as we discussed our victim what kind of
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person is she was she a wild child or was she a good girl we heard everything all over the shop there right the
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witnesses as we said all over the shop when it came to her character in her personality yes a lot of speculation
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then when we get to where she was where she was last seen walking and and then some dispute about whether she was went
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to a house or not M so I want to get into some things that I found a little strange and and when it boils down to
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maybe what Janette was up to on that day on that on that day that she went missing so so what can we what can we
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learn by her behavior from what Witnesses has told us from from what people have told us she was planning to
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do that day the first thing we hear is that she was going to go to a friend's house but the way that it really boils
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down Captain is that it sounds to me like she was trying to get out of going to the friend's house she woke up that
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day she called her friend she was supposed to be there in the afternoon and she said you know what she told her
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friend I can't go to your home my mother will not let me I have some cleaning and
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some chores that I'm supposed to do so therefore I will not make it later her friend says well no we've
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set up these plans with these boys and I only set up these plans because you told
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me you were going to be here so you have to figure this out you have to be here she says okay I'll hitchhike a ride I'll
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hitch a ride and make it to your house I'm doing a little assuming here Captain but I'm assuming she was trying to ditch
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her friend because then she tells her mother that she is going to said friend's house right mother grants her
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permission all of a sudden and the mother she even offers her to give her a ride to that friend's
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house yeah and the Janette says no no it's it's a nice day I'm going to walk and I'm going to go to the train station
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then we see Janette asking her sister if she would like to walk with her stating
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to her sister that she was going off to see a boy and her sister recalls even the name Tommy but knows nothing else of
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this boy or this person named Tommy the sister says no and has plans of her own and won't be walking with Janette that
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day from there Janette phones another friend looking for and this part is not clear but either looking for a ride from
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her friend or for her friend to accompany her on foot regardless she didn't seem to be looking
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to go alone to me wherever she was heading that day and the thing that I strongly question here is janette's
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intent what was she was she really planning to go to her friend's house she failed at the attempt to cancel those
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plans tells her sister that she's going somewhere else and then turns down a very convenient ride from her mother if
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you're in a hurry to get to your friend's house that day you take the ride from your mother right if you you
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might be going somewhere other than where you told your mother you don't take the ride you were going you turned
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down the ride I think we might be looking at a strong possibility that she either had
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other plans that day that we are unaware of or she wanted to go visit somebody else other than that friend
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maybe even a boy right if she did have plans to go out I I really wish someone could come forward or someone could
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piece together where and with whom those plans were to be yeah but you can speculate a little bit I mean based off
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what the sister said mhm she's going to go see this boy I would really like to know why that person never came forward
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to tell us that they had plans with Janette that day but yet she never arrived mhm because then you got you got
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to put a big circle around that person so I strongly think that one of two scenarios played out something like this
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she went somewhere and met someone and they spent some time together that day and she went off walking to God
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knows whose house but while walking she accepted a ride now here's my thought on this
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Captain whether she went searching for a ride or whether she accepted a ride in my opinion this would be from someone
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she knew or from someone that she may have wanted to know and I throw that in there uh for for a couple of reasons
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okay what one thing that we heard about Janette when we talked about her personality and her victimology let's
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say was there was a big question about hitchhiking there was half the half the people said she would never hitchhike we
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hear her tell her friend she was going to Hitch aide that day then we have the other people saying yeah it was pretty
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common you know we did it she did it everybody did it what I did hear time and time again the one thing that didn't
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seem to be as much confusion as whether she would hitch a ride or not most of the people that were saying that if she
00:11:05
were to Hitch hike Janette was not stupid that she was not going to take a ride from someone she didn't know okay
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but I threw in the possibility of someone she maybe wanted to know MH and what I mean by that is could an older
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boy have slowed down and offered the girl a ride and what I mean by this I don't mean like a 30-year-old old man
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comes along in his you know in his dad wagon and he's like hey you want to you want to ride you know Janette 16 years
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old mhm she might have accepted a ride from we know you had to be 17 and a half in those days to have your license what
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if she got in the car with somebody that was 18 or 19 20 21 even someone that looked to be in her age group someone
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that looked the role of somebody that might run in one of her circles or her friend circles the S there's a very
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suspicious story here to me and before I get into it I do want to do a a quick mention of something that I was thinking
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about on the way over here captain and I wanted to get your opinion on this and this will play a role in in the later
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part of my opinion of what might have happened to Janette DePalma one thing we didn't talk about
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yesterday it didn't hit me until this morning but when we talked about red the houseless man that lived in the woods MH
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one thing that that we didn't discuss was remember when they found janette's body in sept on September 19th 1972 they
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were looking through the woods they were combing that area they arrive at the cliff known as Devil's teeth and they
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find her body up there the strange thing to me is like I kind of almost picture this as like I'm watching like Law and
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Order or Criminal Minds or something like that you know where they find a body they're like oh we got this body
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and then you hear them start talk it could be a female she's been here a while and If This Were a TV show then
00:13:05
off in the distance somewhere you would hear another officer going Captain yes somebody's living over here
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we got somebody living in the area right I'm I'm wondering why you know there was
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so much suspicion about this red man about the the houseless guy why so much suspicion about a guy that they didn't
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seem to they didn't seem to come across his dwelling when they were out looking for her body right like wouldn't that be
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like the biggest of red flags to you if you happen to find a body in that area maybe that's why it wasn't he wasn't
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looked into that much maybe that's why yeah maybe that's why they spoke with him briefly and then cleared him and let
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him go but anyway that there's there's a weird story within this big story that I
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find very strange and that's the story of the 21-year-old dude that we talked about yesterday that goes by the name of
00:13:57
Terry rickle Terry rickle was the guy that alerted police in October about the man red that's living in the woods near
00:14:05
where the body was found right what I find suspicious about his story is is is it possible that he's he's giving the
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police some kind of false lead is is he going to the police department this would be about the same time that the
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stories from the newspaper regarding the murder and death of Janette DePalma start disappearing from the news
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newspaper mhm and we do know that on on some occasions somebody that either has information or somebody that's guilty of
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a horrible act will sometimes interject themselves into the investigation why CU they want to know
00:14:44
what's going on with the investigation what better way than to go down to the police department and give them some
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potentially false lead you could send them off your Trail and figure out what they're doing possibly at the same time
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I find his story a little suspicious and there's there's a portion of his story that we left out yesterday and it's this
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he seemed to one know that red lived in that area two he seemed to be able to point
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out to the police that he believed that that red had left that area sometime shortly after janette's body would have
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been placed there his his reasoning for knowing about red and for knowing about you know
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knowledge about the area and maybe even Red's timeline is this he states that some of his friends would on occasion
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spy on this red character and the reason why they would spy on him is because sometimes remember he was getting paid
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in cash and a lot of times he would come back to his little campsite let's call it and he would bury the cash or he
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would hide his money in different places and supposedly these you know I don't have the ages or the name names of these
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guys that he tells this story about to the police I'm assuming they're roughly his age so let's say men that they would
00:16:06
be over the age of 18 that these guys are watching this red guy hide his money and then when he's off when he goes off
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to work or when he's not in the area sometimes he would go grocery shopping they would come up and steal his money
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possibly a reason why he left the area yeah very good point if somebody keeps showing up while you're gone or in the
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middle of the night and stealing your money you might leave the area just for that purpose the thing I'm getting at is
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I don't know how much suspicion or how much shade to throw on this Terry rickle maybe there's none that needs to be
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thrown on him at all I'm just getting at that I find his story a little suspicious and I'm also wondering if the
00:16:45
police upon hearing his story and hearing the detectives hearing his story now we know we they followed the red
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angle and they started looking into that and they started looking for this man known only by the name of red
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I'm wondering if how much they checked into this Terry rickle guy or his friends and
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furthermore if Terry rickle knows so much about the area about that specific area where her body was found and her
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his friends are on occasions watching the area how come they didn't see anything suspicious how come they didn't
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have anything more suspicious to report about this I I find the the whole story either made up maybe it's just made up
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maybe may he had maybe he had some reason to not like this red guy or maybe he was just scared of this guy that
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lived in the woods and he kind of goes oh I read in the paper they found her body there I think that's where that guy
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lives maybe it's just something maybe it's something as Loose as that or yeah or a lot of people can't understand
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other people's lifestyle so they treat them like they're less than human mhm when it's just a different choice of
00:17:51
Lifestyle yeah or or maybe it's something more Sinister to inject yourself into the investigation
00:17:58
try to figure out what direction the investigation is taking and maybe even provide them with some kind of false
00:18:06
lead well and there's some speculation that she got in a car with somebody that maybe she knew right or or was an
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quaintance of and so is there any evidence that she knew this uh Terry rickle well there there was speculation
00:18:20
that she would only get into a car of somebody she knew and and I actually believe that I believe that she got into
00:18:28
a car whether she was offered a ride or was asking for a ride and I do believe it was probably somebody she knew um now
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there is no proof there's no evidence to suggest that she knew Terry rickle or did not know him we we we don't know
00:18:43
this um and the whole you just find his you know his story pretty fishy well I just really yeah I find his story
00:18:51
questionable um to the point where I just wanted to offer that up for food for thought you know as food for thought
00:18:57
I don't necess was he involved or was his friends involved it's possible but it it's probably not super likely when
00:19:05
you look at the whole spectrum of things right now the reason why I think that she
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knew she would only get in the car with somebody she knew or got into the car of
00:19:15
somebody she knew is this because of where her body was found she's found on top of this cliff and we have
00:19:24
investigators we have detectives and police officers that found her that day that were part of the search that said
00:19:30
that they had slipped several times when they tried to make it up to that Cliff that they had fallen that some of them
00:19:36
couldn't even make it to the top of that Cliff right and then when they removed her body from there the fire trck had to
00:19:43
come in and and park itself at the base of the of the cliff and shoot the ladder
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up to to use the ladder and form this this weird almost kind of conveyor belt of getting her out of there m they had
00:19:57
to put in a lot lots of man hours and time getting her out of there what you're getting at is that it would be
00:20:02
hard for somebody to carry her up there it's hard for somebody to kill her than carrier up there I almost think that she
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went up there with somebody either somebody she knew or somebody she trusted got out of hand she followed
00:20:15
somebody up there and for whatever reason I think that that person probably Strang strangled her and left her there
00:20:21
and I think the reason a big portion of the reason why this is not has not been solved is there's actually I I believe
00:20:29
many reasons why this has not been solved and the first one of those is I would state that they didn't investigate
00:20:35
her disappearance remember they it was reported as a run away and we don't know if it was the parents that reported it
00:20:43
that way or the police right because they've the parents changed their story on that as well and the police say that
00:20:49
it was the parents that called it in as a runaway however we see another case yes it's in another County but it's at
00:20:55
the same time period of a family calling in their daughter missing and the the police are the ones that said no she's a
00:21:01
runaway right this could have happened in janette's case and the problem with that is and we got into this it's a lot
00:21:08
Captain you and I agreed there's some similarities to this and to the the serial case that was covered in their
00:21:14
first season where you're you're asking Adon s's case yeah thank you you're asking teenagers to tell you their
00:21:21
whereabouts and what they were doing and who they were with 6 weeks ago they weren't really investigating Janette dma
00:21:28
case until after her body turned up 6 weeks and one day after she was missing yeah if they would have treated it like
00:21:34
a disappearance or an endangered disappeared case rather than a runaway they would have been speaking to her
00:21:40
friends the day after or two days after and they might be able to tell you where
00:21:45
they were what they were doing who they were with do you believe this uh crime is uh satanic or ult likee in in any
00:21:55
nature no I actually think that it's it probably just goes with the times um that it's you know the early 70s the
00:22:04
thing is with this whole satanic Panic one thing that people fail to recognize is a lot of this was brought about by
00:22:11
Charles Manson and his his crew yeah because when you hear this this horrible story of these horrible people that went
00:22:18
in to a home and it it's technically a home invasion they go into this home and they terrorize and kill these people out
00:22:26
in California painting Blood on the walls that was the biggest news of of it's some of the biggest news of last
00:22:35
century yeah and to hear that and that spreads across it goes it happened in California and it spreads across the
00:22:42
Bible Belt and the News there and all the way to the east coast and then you have parents and police everywhere where
00:22:49
they start to think if it happened out there this is the new wave of crime this is the new wave of criminal and all
00:22:56
these teenagers with their long hair and they're all hippies and they're smoking
00:22:59
drugs this is what we're going to see in the future and I think what a lot of times when you had either teenage
00:23:06
victims or teenage perpetrators of crimes of murders and such that all of a sudden Satan got involved all of a
00:23:14
sudden witchcraft got involved and it it happened for a lot in many cases in the
00:23:21
70s and many cases in the 80s and even up until the '90s it's it's just something I I just don't
00:23:27
see that being a piece of this case and I think a large part of that is we don't
00:23:32
know what happened to her and she's found at a location called The Devil's [Music]
00:23:46
teeth at Crystal Farms we're thankful for the farmers who work hard to put food on our tables and for the families
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who make crystal Farms a part of their holiday traditions we're thankful to be the shredded cheddar in your your
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[Music] GameChanger all right we're back cheers mates and we're very happy happy to be
00:25:58
with author Jesse Pollock he was one half of the author Duo that wrote the book death on the devil's teeth the
00:26:06
strange murder that shocked Suburban New Jersey so Jesse since the book has been
00:26:11
released for a couple years where are you guys at currently on this investigation well the interesting thing
00:26:17
with uh Mark and I is you know with the benefit of there being a magazine the letters have kind of never stopped
00:26:26
coming in uh the first letter they received about the case was in '97 or 98 and it's just been a stream of them
00:26:33
every year since then so even with the book coming out in 2015 and a lot of things being answered um with all of the
00:26:42
additional questions that the book has opened up we still have been getting all these letters um regarding suspects um
00:26:51
the occult connection possible related cases and you know sometimes they turn out to be nothing
00:26:58
but other times we found some very very interesting things talk about the letters Jesse what were some of the more
00:27:04
interesting items that came out that were presented to you through these letters one of the most interesting
00:27:09
things that we've heard from a reader so far um involves the supposed occult objects found around her body now like
00:27:18
you guys discussed in episodes one and two it's not really clear what was found around her but the general consensus is
00:27:26
there were sticks and Stone they may have been arranged they might not have been they may have just been a cross and
00:27:32
some Stones above her head they may have been a trapezoidal perimeter of logs which appeared that description appeared
00:27:39
in the newspapers so assuming that one that newspaper description was true the trapezoidal coffin shaped perimeter you
00:27:49
know we just thought okay it's supposed to look like a coffin and then we got an
00:27:53
email from a guy about a year after the book came out and he was saying oh I think you guys should know this the
00:28:00
trapezoid is the most satanic symbol in the Church of Satan and I was like I you
00:28:08
know I researched Lan Satanism and even Hollywood Satanism you know Satanism light whatever you want to call it all
00:28:15
kinds of Satanism while writing death on the devil's teeth with Mark and I never
00:28:20
saw the trapezoid come up but then I did some digging based on what this guy said
00:28:25
and sure enough they were interviewed that LE gave in the 80s and the 90s where he does say that you know the most
00:28:32
occult object you know shape whatever is the trapezoid you know if you look at the back of the dollar bill what do you
00:28:40
see a pyramid with the top cut off that's a trapezoid and basically if you go through the literature that L put out
00:28:48
it boils down to the shape of a trapazoid is used to open up a portal between the living and the dead which
00:28:56
you know if you believe these Sensational articles and headlines about janette's murder being a satanic
00:29:03
sacrifice it does make sense that she would be laid out in a alleged portal between the living and the dead so that
00:29:11
was one that kind of made the hairs on the back of my NE stand up because the whole time I was writing the book with
00:29:16
Mark it was oh it's just supposed to look like a coffin you know it it you know that's you know the the big thing
00:29:23
the big spooky thing oh it's coffin iconography but then to get an email from someone and have it pan out that
00:29:30
there is literature to back it up that no this shape is important in Lan Satanism and it's liter it's supposed to
00:29:40
literally open up a portal between the realm of the living and the dead I mean it's it's really chilling to think of
00:29:46
there's a lot of fishy rumors about janette's Case Files going missing can you talk a little bit about that yeah
00:29:52
that that was the biggest thing um in the whole lore of this case for years years it was the big shocking reveal you
00:30:00
know anytime mark would dig into the case back in the early 2000s before he and I teamed up he would always hit this
00:30:07
brick wall of oh no you know the Springfield police say the case File was destroyed when Hurricane Floyd rolled
00:30:14
through in 1999 and flooded a a great percentage of Union County so you know we figured okay well I guess the story
00:30:23
kind of ends there with the files you know it's it's not uncommon to hear something stupid like that files are
00:30:29
kept in a basement somewhere in in a area that's prone to flooding it's unfortunate um there were a lot of
00:30:37
accusations and letters that the magazine got that it was a police cover up but these things do happen so
00:30:45
whatever we sold you da and then halfway through writing the book somewhere around 2013
00:30:52
2014 we spoke with a retired guy from the Springfield Police Department who um later worked in the detective
00:31:00
Bureau and he told us straight up oh well when I got to the detective Bureau in the early to mid late uh early to mid
00:31:07
80s I asked for all of the cold cases so I could brush up and two were missing the uh Manoff murder another unsolved
00:31:17
murder in Springfield that was in I think 76 or 77 and the depa file he goes that file was missing as early as
00:31:27
1984 so no Hurricane Floyd did not destroy it so then we had this this kernel of Hope like okay maybe it's
00:31:37
misplaced or maybe there's a whole another story here that there was some sort of a cover up but either way you
00:31:44
know on the record you know anytime we would send a Freedom of Information Act request or an open public records act
00:31:50
request the the bottom line from Springfield was no it was destroyed in Floyd and even if it wasn't we wouldn't
00:31:58
let you see it it's an open case the big development that came this past year you know two years after the
00:32:06
book was released was I subscribed to a lot of newspaper archives online you know newspapers.com
00:32:13
newspaperarchive.com ancestry you know whatever and I get these email alerts sometimes saying hey you know um a whole
00:32:22
bunch of Articles have been added to the digital database about John list um come
00:32:27
check them out so I logged in and sure enough there were like 50 new John list articles saved them just for the you
00:32:34
know the sake of them being interesting and then I thought well hey when I checked this database a couple years ago
00:32:40
there was virtually nothing on Janette there was a little bit on Joan Kramer the other girl that was murdered the
00:32:46
same week the only a couple Towns over but virtually nothing on Janette so let me search her again and sure enough
00:32:55
there were a half dozen new artic articles that were added and there was stuff about red the guy in the woods we
00:33:01
found the correct spelling of his last name it's Kira not here so now we have that alley to go
00:33:09
down and it mentioned this uh this wanted poster for him that was drawn up and it said uh something like 7,000 of
00:33:18
them were distributed around Union County and that was a big big thing because okay if 7,000 of these were
00:33:27
distributed around Union County that means it's a public document it was already released to the public by the
00:33:32
police department which means the prosecutor's office or the Springfield Police Department or any other
00:33:39
investigative agency that handled the case could not hide behind oh no we're not releasing it to the public because
00:33:45
it's an open case they had already released it 40s something years ago so I filed a brand new request and within 3
00:33:52
weeks they found the original wanted flyer and mailed me a copy so it definitively proved that while yes maybe
00:34:03
the case File that Springfield had was destroyed sometime in the 80s or the 90s depending on who you want to believe a
00:34:10
copy still exists in the Union County prosecutor's office and we've seen some interesting twist and turns since then
00:34:19
but either way the bottom line is the files exist somewhere and now it's just a matter of they won't let the public or
00:34:28
or journalists or anyone else for that matter see them but there's also rumor that the Joan Kramer case files were
00:34:34
missing as well that was another strange development I sent the uh the open public records act request for them
00:34:41
probably in 2013 um and it's a different County that handled it um because she was F while
00:34:49
she was found in Union which is Union County jurisdiction um she disappeared from Essex County so they treated as a
00:34:57
kidnapping first because she was picked up while hitchhiking so Essex County prosecutor's office handles that case
00:35:05
when I sent them the open public records act request they kept sending me every two weeks these letters saying hey hold
00:35:13
on we're still trying to find the file you got to understand it's 40s something years ago we have a lot of different
00:35:20
storage facilities um hang in there though we're going to find it for you and I got three or four of those and
00:35:26
then finally probably like 5 months after I first you know sent the request in they came back and said listen we're
00:35:33
so sorry we checked every storage facility we have diligently we checked our microfilm archives we checked
00:35:41
everywhere we we don't know where the file is we're presuming it's lost or destroyed you know best of luck to you
00:35:50
so as far as original documentation or paperwork on the Kramer case there's nothing um all we had to go on while
00:35:59
chronicling it for the book was the interviews that we conducted with the people from the prosecutor's office from
00:36:05
back then um we interviewed her brother and sister um people that knew the prime
00:36:12
suspect in that case and the newspaper articles that was it so even if um say tomorrow someone walked into the uh the
00:36:23
police station in South Orange and said I killed Joan Kramer here's why here's how and here's something that proves
00:36:31
that I did it Beyond a reasonable doubt they would have a hell of a time Prosecuting it if at all because her her
00:36:38
files are missing from the prosecutor's office that's that's the investigating body that would uh that would handle it
00:36:45
should a arrest be made so I mean I guess that case is dead in the water over there as far as they're concerned
00:36:52
and do you have any updates on the Joan Kramer case as far as what you're working on well well the interesting
00:36:57
thing about that was you know when we first talked to the siblings they had mentioned oh well you know there was
00:37:04
there was this guy that was arrested for it a few years later did you guys know about that and we said no because we
00:37:11
were you know we were not going digital with this until later we were oldfashioned with getting the
00:37:17
information for this case you know I spent many hours long with Mark in various Public Library basements going
00:37:24
through microfilm reels and the uh the Kramer case much like the dma case just kind of Fizzles out at the end of 1972
00:37:35
on these reels so you know we figured okay well I guess they never found anything else but her family you know
00:37:42
Joan Kramer's family told us no there was a guy arrested for it three years later this guy named Otto Nelson he was
00:37:49
an accountant living in Maplewood uh which is the next town over from South Orange he used to live in South Orange
00:37:56
as as well and um they they eventually found an eyewitness that put him at the scene when Kramer uh got into a car
00:38:05
hitchhiking and they tried him for it and I said well what came of it and they said well the the prosecution didn't do
00:38:12
a very good job of of presenting the case and he went free the jury you know acquitted him and I said well whatever
00:38:19
happened to this guy and she said well a couple years later he held some doctor's
00:38:24
hostages at a VA hos hospital with a rifle and he was uh you know he was condemned to an asylum and that's where
00:38:33
he died he died in a mental institution so you know we started looking into this
00:38:38
guy you know the the Spectre of Otto Nelson and you know as far as we could find we could not find anything that put
00:38:50
him in Springfield the day that Janette dep Palma went missing you know only a week before Joan Kramer but we could not
00:38:57
find anything that didn't put him there because he worked for himself you know he was a certified public accountant he
00:39:04
ran his business out of his apartment so he was he could come and go as he pleased there were no there were no
00:39:10
employment records or anything like that to show that he could not have done it but
00:39:16
the interesting thing was um some when he went to trial a lot of his um his previous hospitalizations for his mental
00:39:27
illnesses came out in these articles like dates tangible dates like you know he was he was in this Hospital from then
00:39:34
till then and then again from then until then yada yada yada and when we put them
00:39:40
on the timeline we realized every time this guy was let out of a mental institution girls would turn up dead in
00:39:47
New Jersey strangled left face down in the woods and then the killings would stop as soon as he got committed again
00:39:56
so so he was a very very interesting suspect that we worked with for for years and we considered to be the number
00:40:04
one suspect for a time and then after the book came out I got a phone call from a
00:40:12
prosecutor who uh used to work in Essex County and he told me he goes hey I just
00:40:16
wanted to call you because I was picking up some summer reading for a little trip
00:40:21
I was going on and I'm in Barnes & Noble and I see your book and I go oh well that looks interesting and I'm flipping
00:40:26
through it I'm like oh wait I worked this case the the Kramer case and he goes Yeah you mentioned nilson Nelson is
00:40:33
a very interesting suspect but I don't think he killed Kramer and I'm like okay so there was another suspect and he goes
00:40:41
oh yeah there were a couple other and so he tells me all about this guy who had been arrested for picking up
00:40:49
girls uh hitchhiking and um you know screwing with their cars kind of like uh the
00:40:55
Zodiac did in the Kathleen John's case and picking them up and raping them one he was uh acquitted for at trial another
00:41:04
one he was convicted so we had this other suspect that we were looking at and then sure
00:41:10
enough when this this new newspaper article dump came on newspapers.com all these articles that were not available
00:41:18
to us when we were writing the book there's the guy and all of this stuff mentioned about him being a uh a suspect
00:41:26
in the Kramer case so now in the wake of the book uh initially being published Mark and I now have another suspect that
00:41:34
we're currently looking into to see if we can account for his whereabouts when Janette was killed and when these other
00:41:42
girls like the ones up in North Bergen if we can account for his whereabouts to see if he's a viable suspect in those
00:41:48
murders as well so I mean it's this definitely is not a situation where okay the book's out you know that's our take
00:41:56
on it we're done the case has never stopped moving and it's never stopped moving in incredibly interesting
00:42:04
directions that can be backed up with the testimony of retired detectives who worked the case or newspaper archives
00:42:12
that we did not have access to or Case Files that have suddenly been released to us it's it's been incredibly
00:42:18
interesting so at the end of the day do you believe janette's murder was satanic
00:42:24
in nature or cult murder and you know I've been wrestling with that question for five years now it it just honestly
00:42:32
it Teeter totters back and forth when we were you know hellbent on this being Nelson when all of the the cards seemed
00:42:41
to line up that he had not only killed John uh that he had not only killed Joan Kramer but he had also killed Janette
00:42:47
dep Palma we were like okay this is satanic Panic this is the New York daily news in the post trying to sell
00:42:55
Sensational headline based on some things that her Pastor Jim Tate had said in interviews you know that was kind of
00:43:02
it for a little while we're like okay it was it was it was an Undiscovered serial
00:43:07
killer and some you know goofy Sensational headlines but then we heard from one of janette's friends oh no
00:43:18
there was a guy that used to pick her up when she would go hitchhiking this guy Mike and um I knew him he was like a
00:43:26
year older than me and we went to the same high school and there was a little bit of romantic interest there and I had
00:43:34
him over my house one time for a date and he leaned in to kiss me and saw my crucifix and said no sorry I can't kiss
00:43:42
you while you're wearing that I'm a warlock and he went on about how he had all of these occult
00:43:49
beliefs and she was like I know for a fact that Janette had gotten into his car a few times times while
00:43:57
hitchhiking so I went back to Cindy janette's sister and I said hey did a guy used to you know uh you know an
00:44:06
older guy in high school guy with a a muscle car used to pick you and your sister up while you would hitchhike and
00:44:11
she goes yeah this guy named Mike so I'm like oh my God you know you know so this all lined up there you know
00:44:21
like okay well let me let me see where this guy lived and sure enough he lived two blocks only two blocks away from the
00:44:31
corner where janeta Palma was last seen alive the corner of Summit Road in High Point so I could place him at the last
00:44:40
spot she was ever seen alive you know she went to the blattis house she asked for a ride Donna's mother said no and so
00:44:48
was it conceivable then that she could have kept walking another two blocks and you know either saw Mike or knocked on
00:44:55
his door and said hey you know I really need a ride somewhere and then something
00:45:00
happened that resulted in her death absolutely there was there was that that we were going on for a while and then we
00:45:09
got the email about the trapezoid and then on top of that another strange thing happened um right
00:45:18
after the book was released uh Mark and I we went on a book tour uh in New Jersey and all of these Weir New Jersy
00:45:26
readers just kept coming to us and going when are you going to give us some more
00:45:29
True Crime I read the book in one sitting and you know there's so many other interesting cases have you heard
00:45:35
of this case in Franklin have you heard of this case in Trenton all this other stuff and so I said to mark I said you
00:45:41
know we've got like 40 issues to go through to to to peruse through where we've covered true crime here and there
00:45:49
why don't we put together all of the best cases in one special issue and he goes yeah yeah do it up so so he gave me
00:45:56
all of the uh the issues that I didn't have some of which were out of print and for two months I literally read every
00:46:03
issue of we're New Jersey cover to cover multiple times putting this thing together and in one of the issues I
00:46:10
found a photograph I it sent a chill up my spine because I'm looking at this picture and
00:46:17
the caption said you know stuff left by devil worshippers in this reservation in
00:46:22
North Jersey in the 1990s and was a trapezoidal perimeter of broken branches and logs and an
00:46:31
arrangement of stones in the middle and it looked exactly like the newspaper account of what Janette was found in so
00:46:42
you know yes nilson is still a suspect and it is always the possibility that this was a serial killer or you know
00:46:50
perhaps something H an accident happened at a party and some kids left her in the
00:46:55
woods never said anything about it um that's a theme that's explored in in my second book about the Ricky casso case
00:47:02
that's coming up um in the fall but there is also something now where we cannot disregard the satanic angle of
00:47:11
this because we have a suspect that knew her picked her up when she was hitchhiking dabbled in the occult and
00:47:20
lived two blocks away from where she was last seen the day she died we have um testimony from people familiar with
00:47:28
occultism that the trapezoid is a significant figure in L and Satanism and now we have photographic evidence from
00:47:36
the 1990s before we ever started looking at the dma case of a similar Arrangement
00:47:42
that was allegedly found around her body being found in another reservation up in
00:47:47
North Jersey so I mean truth is Stranger Than Fiction right I mean you can't discount it Jesse
00:47:55
I just wanted to take this time to thank you and your co-author Mark Moran for the wonderful book the death on the
00:48:02
devil's teeth all of your hard work in this investigation this is certainly um very well done well put together yeah
00:48:11
it's great to shine light on a Case well hey sure and you know thank you guys too
00:48:16
because I mean this is a little book it came out on a a little Indie press uh Arcadia history press and you know now
00:48:26
the word is getting out there to you know this this great loyal following you have so hopefully we'll get some more
00:48:34
tips coming in and you know it will really shine a light on a case that was largely forgotten and some people say
00:48:42
intentionally so so if you want to if if any of you listening want to follow where we're at with the case where we're
00:48:48
going with it um at we're New Jersey on multiple platforms uh we're New Jersey is on Facebook Instagram Twitter and if
00:48:56
you want to follow me I'm at jpic author j p o l l a c k author and I'm on Twitter and Instagram and uh I I'm
00:49:07
posting updates as they come in and if you want to pick up a copy of the book it's on Amazon Barnes & Noble it's on
00:49:14
the weird New Jersey website weird new jersey.com but yeah wherever books are sold it's death on the devil's teeth
00:49:20
well thank you again for spending some time with us in the garage yeah thank you so much Jesse oh no and thank you so
00:49:26
much for having me on and and picking this case to talk about it really means a [Music]
00:49:39
lot I want to thank everybody out there everybody in the True Crime garage Army for helping spread the word about the
00:49:46
show and more importantly spreading the word about each of these cases that we cover each week sharing them on social
00:49:53
media you know the more eyes and ears that these cases reach the better chance the better hope that we have of someday
00:50:02
providing a lead or solving one of these cases yeah and we've been contacted by a
00:50:06
lot of law enforcement and people that are working other cases that said hey because you covered this and because of
00:50:13
your audience and because of your amazing listeners we've actually got new leads to work on and you know what's
00:50:20
funny Captain is one of the things that we covered during this series The John Liss case yeah it was solved through
00:50:26
crowd sourcing yeah it was it was considered one of the worst crimes of of that decade and solved after 17 A2 years
00:50:35
through crowdsourcing so it is possible and we thank everybody for helping out the garage we thank you for listening
00:50:41
subscribing and telling a friend all right so it's time for me to tell them the big news um I I actually I don't
00:50:47
think we're allowed to talk about that yet okay well well sorry about that well thanks a lot Captain all right well
00:50:54
thanks for listening and we'll see you next week until next week be good be kind and don't
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