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