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