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Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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All right, everybody gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.
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Very fascinating case on our hands. Veronica is missing and pretty quickly we have a very
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suspicious suspect in her boyfriend, Jeff. Well, where we left off, Veronica Blumhorst has been missing for 14 years
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by this point. The Mendota Police Department gave Veronica's family access to her case file. And in that file, it
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contained a report that Veronica's boyfriend, Jeff, in an interview, made strange statements and threw out some
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concerning hypotheticals. Mhm. That basically added up to Veronica was hurt and killed and placed somewhere that no
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one would find her and there were reasons why Jeff could be responsible for this.
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Again, this is Jeff's statements after hours of being interviewed with no recording of any kind
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to back any of this up and all in a report written after the interview. And the case file report went on to
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state that according to people who knew Jeff, after Veronica vanished, that Jeff
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voiced two theories he liked to share about what had happened to Veronica. The first was that he thought maybe she
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went to track down her birth parents and they were not happy about this and they did something to her.
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The second theory was that perhaps an ex-boyfriend had hurt her because he was jealous and the ex decided if he
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couldn't have her, no one could. This is all a bit strange to me here, Captain, because
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let's let's pretend for a second that Jeff is perfectly innocent. Mhm. The theories
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don't seem to be they don't seem to carry water very well, do they? Like the first one of her tracking down her birth
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parents, again, I'm getting the impression time and time again with Veronica that she is an open book. Her
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family knew what she was up to, what she was into. Her co-workers were always told what her plans were. Yeah, and
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question, who took her to find her parents? She left her car. Like if her car was gone,
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maybe that's somewhat of a plausible theory, but you also leave at 1:00 a.m. in the morning
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to go find your birth parents just doesn't make a lot of sense. Right, poor timing. And to top that off,
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look, maybe she didn't want to hurt her parents her adopted parents' feelings for whatever reason. Mhm. But again,
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this is a unique situation where she has an older sister who's adopted as well. She could have bounced this idea off of
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her. Mhm. And they were close and I don't see why she wouldn't. And then to take it a step further, why would the
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parents decide to hurt her and do something terrible to her? Yeah, it makes no sense. Wouldn't you just say,
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"Go away. You know, we don't we don't have any life with you." Mhm. Um you know, that so that doesn't seem to carry
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much water. But then you do have the ex-boyfriend theory. Maybe that is something that
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that Jeff was was right about. Well, this Okay, so the story goes that she dated
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this police officer. He became chief. And they only went on a few dates. And he was kind of possessive and was also
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like saying, "Well, maybe you should wear this outfit or wear these types of clothes." So it it
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it ended as quickly as it began. Mhm. So and there's no evidence that after they
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broke up that this guy was in the picture anymore. Right. Right. So I do like the theory of maybe
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an ex or something of that nature. But again, then you have to wonder is this just Jeff coming up with alternative
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theories that do not involve him being the bad guy. Mhm. But he also came up with some theories
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that he is the bad guy. Well, maybe I thought she was pregnant. Maybe I pushed her. Maybe I hit her. Uh so much so that
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they looked at his family's property. Mhm. They did not find anything. Now, I believe that Jeff took a lie detector at
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some point. Yes, he did. So what we have here with the possibility of any of Veronica's exes,
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according to her family, she did not date anyone as seriously as she did Jeff. And remained friendly with most of the
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guys that she was no longer seeing. Mhm. Three guys, in fact, were interviewed. They all had alibis and two passed lie
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detector test, from what I could find. The investigators considered Jeff the target of their investigation.
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From what we have been able to gather, Jeff agreed to take a lie detector test. The results have not been released to
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the public, but Veronica's father said in an interview that Jeff failed miserably. Yeah.
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He did as well as O.J. did. Police conducted a search of Jeff's family's property. They followed him on
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a daily basis. Before too long, Jeff lawyered up and stopped cooperating with police.
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He has made only one public statement, which was, quote, I have been told not to say anything, end quote.
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In September of 1991, so more than a year after Veronica disappeared, Mhm. police dogs searched Lee County
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farmland that was owned by the Veverka family on Maytown Road with cadaver dogs, but again, found nothing. Yeah.
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Because Jeff stopped talking to police and nothing has been found that connects him to Veronica's disappearance,
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he has never been charged or even named as a suspect or a person of interest at the public level. Right, but he also
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hasn't been cleared. So, I think that's something. Now, a lot of people go, hey, big red flag,
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he failed this test. We don't know, obviously, if that's true. I think if there was information given
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to the father and he's saying that he failed, I believe that. Seems like the father's a stand-up guy.
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But the red flag for the family is that he lawyered up. Now, I'm actually going to go against
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the family on this one because we have an individual that had an accident, has issues with memory loss.
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He seems, obviously, a little unhinged by the whole situation to the point where he is
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actually making up scenarios that don't involve him, but making up scenarios that do involve him. At some point, you
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have to protect this individual if this is your family member. Well, right. And if the hours-long interview, again,
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I take a lot of what I've been told was said in that interview with a grain of salt.
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But, if maybe the hours-long interview unnerved him so much that either he's guilty and
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he lawyered up or he's perfectly innocent and he's just feeling like, "I'm really uncomfortable. They're
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trying to put this thing on me. Mhm. I need to protect myself." And I do want to champion something you said uh just a
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minute ago in regards to the father's comments about Jeff and his lie detector and failing miserably.
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I I feel like you feel. Her father seems to be a stand-up guy, a very honest guy. He does not strike me
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as the type of person to say something just to say something. He doesn't strike me as the type of person to say
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something unless he believed it 100% to be true. And as you pointed out in yesterday's episode, he had friends, he
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knew some people at the police department. He was very likely behind closed doors told that information.
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And he's saying this years and years after the fact. He doesn't even strike me as the type of dude that is saying it
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just to throw Jeff under the bus. No. So, I absolutely believe that if Jeff, in fact, failed at that that information
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probably found its way to Veronica's father, Paul, and he's saying it decades later in an interview. Well, in a normal
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situation I'd say cuz I like lie detectors. I know we can't use them in court, but I
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like it. I think it gives us a a barometer. So, I don't think we've used the word
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deduce yet. Which I think we by law, because we're a true crime podcast, we have to use the word deduce.
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But what we can deduce from this also is or what you can deduce from it is what is his capability of passing the
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test anyways if he has short-term memory loss issues because of his accident. Yeah, and not only has he not been
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cleared, as you said, but it also appears that he became the focus of their investigation
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and remained the focus of their investigation for many, many years to come. Mhm.
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The case file also reflects a police theory of what they believe might have happened to Veronica
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in which it says that she got into a vehicle with someone she knew, person unnamed, some type of argument ensued
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and she got pushed from the vehicle suffering a fatal or near-fatal injury and then the driver
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of the car then hid her body in a panic. Mhm. It's weird that they come up with that
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theory not because it's unlikely, but because it also kind of echoes some of the things
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that Officer John P was saying he was able to pull from Jeff during his interview. Mhm.
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Naturally, police also looked at anyone who could have followed Veronica home from work that night to see whether
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someone else could have harmed her. I think we're going to get to the guy that I got a little gut feeling about.
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Female employees at the Supervalu told investigators that a guy who tended to loiter inside the store and flirt with
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female employees may have been in the Supervalu that evening during Veronica's shift.
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Sharon Vandiver, Veronica's friend, said this guy often came in between 9:00 and
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11:00 p.m. two to three times a week and he rarely bought anything other than something
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small and cheap like a pack of gum. Most of his time in the store was spent talking to female employees, this
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obviously including Veronica. Mhm. He creeped out the women who worked there. This guy also bragged to the female
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workers that he was an EMT or some type of security guard. Cops looked at this guy. I could not
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find his name, but obviously they know who he is. But he is said to have had an alibi for
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the evening of September 19th and 20th. Yeah, but here's what I don't like about
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this. This is also a guy that's rumored, I don't know if you found this, but he They're like, "Well, we don't know where
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he was at that night." But there was rumors by the the people that she worked with,
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Veronica's coworkers, that say that the guy came in the next night asking about her.
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And stating which movie she rented the night before. How How would he know that if he wasn't
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in there that the night before? Right. And or let's say maybe he was in there the night before. Mhm. But maybe
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his alibi His alibi only needs to be good from 1:07 a.m. and on. Mhm. So he could have been in the store
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before. Maybe they had that conversation. I'm with you. I don't think it's very likely that that
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conversation took place. I think it's suspicious that he would know that she rented a movie one and be
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so inclined to even say what the name of the movie was. Well, not only did he have a history of
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talking to, you know, people in the store, an extensive history of talking with Veronica. Mhm. And I think she had such
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a nice demeanor that she this individual probably didn't creep her out. She probably enjoyed a
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little bit of the attention or maybe just thought he was being friendly. The other thing that's tricky, too, is
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I've heard people say that he was going into the store two or three or more times a week up until the disappearance
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of Veronica and afterward he really backed down on the number of times that he was going into the store on a weekly
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basis. Right. Which would lead you to believe that the motivation for going into the store was Veronica. Mhm. Be it
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good or bad. Police also questioned an 18-year-old man who stopped at Super Value on
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September 19th just to pick up a few items. Veronica was his cashier. He checked out at 11:49 p.m.
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This guy told police that while in the store, he heard Super Value employee Jason Stepanich, also 18 years old,
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telling Veronica he'd be back to pick her up at the end of her shift. But both the customer
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This This is a confusing part in the story, so you need to follow along with me here, everyone out there
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in listener land. But both the customer and Jason denied that this ever happened.
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Mhm. Okay. Mhm. So, frankly speaking here, Veronica had her own car at work. We know that. Nobody's arguing
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that at all. Why would she need anyone to pick her up at all? It doesn't make any sense.
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The customer said in the Jim Haggerty series series that this is absolutely not true. He never told the police any
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of this. So, this is just some made-up report that they have. He says Mhm. He says, "I'm guessing they fabricated
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that into the report because I never said that. There was nobody else in the store besides two employees and me when
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I checked out. I don't even know who that is." Referring to Jason Stepanich that we mentioned earlier.
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Right. Jason, for his part, admitted talking to Veronica, but denies telling her he would return for her to pick her
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up. Mhm. Both of these men, you like the lie detector test, both of these men took
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polygraph test and were later cleared. Okay. Per the police report, it says, quote, "Jason stated that he did talk to
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her, but does not remember saying anything like that." Mhm. So, this doesn't really help clear anything up.
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These potential suspects did not go anywhere and failed to lead to any clues about what happened to Veronica. The
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problem I have with this statement is you have police saying in the case file this customer overheard another employee
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say to Veronica he would return later to pick her up. And then you have both of those
00:19:00
individuals going on the record and telling the media and the Blumhorst family that no
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neither one of I didn't say that I heard this employee say that he was going to pick her up. And the employee says, "I
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never told Veronica I was going to pick her up." Why is that in the police report? Why is that in the case file
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when both of these witnesses say this did not happen? I have a word for you. Can you say
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conspiracy? It makes me question the interview with Jeff even more. Is there somebody adding
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or manipulating things that go into the file Mhm. for their own benefit? Well, well, hold on.
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The reason why I I do not like how it went down with Jeff and how they you know, sat down piece after and said,
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"Yeah, let's write down those statements that he made." That doesn't work for me.
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But we also have people talking and saying that they they talked to Jeff and he was coming up with theories and
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even putting himself into those theories. So, it doesn't seem like they fabricated the whole idea. Well, we
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need to be clear here because that the people are saying the theories that he presented to them did not include Jeff
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as being having carried that out. Well, see, I I thought there was some people saying that he
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wasn't making full theories, but he was saying, "What if I got mad at her and pushed
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her? Or what if Those were the theories that he told to the police in that interview.
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So, those were never told to other people. Cuz I From what we just reviewed, it's it's he
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told police, according to the police file, again, according to the police file, he told
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Officer John P in that closed-door interview a hypothetical that he could have killed
00:21:06
Veronica in an argument and maybe it uh that she was pregnant or maybe she wasn't. Right. It was several different
00:21:13
versions of that same story. But the people in the case file that are cited as saying Jeff is spouting off
00:21:22
theories about what happened to Veronica, he's not including himself. Right. I I
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thought I heard from her family that he was maybe not given full theories, but it was maybe we
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got in an argument or maybe I did pick her up. I I thought that was said to the family, but I I could be mistaken on
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that. It's difficult because we later have the statements of another individual and I believe that they remained
00:21:51
nameless, but uh we'll we'll continue through that. Before we get into that, I just want to talk about the difficulty
00:22:00
of collecting DNA in a case like this. If you recall, Veronica was adopted by the Bloomhurst. She was not in contact
00:22:12
ever with her birth parents and neither were Paul and Betty, Veronica's adopted parents. In the interest of having
00:22:20
Veronica's DNA on hand in case a body was found and for evidentiary purposes, should there be a suspect, investigators
00:22:30
collected some of her personal items from her parents. As we shall see, that did not go as planned.
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And after time passed, the availability of Veronica's DNA was significantly decreased
00:22:46
as items that she definitely came in contact with were harder to come by. Attempts were made by authorities to
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unseal Veronica's adopted adoption papers, but the Catholic charity that handled the adoption refused. Okay, so
00:23:01
what does this mean? There's a couple different versions of the story whether the parents willingly
00:23:06
gave this stuff to police and investigators or if the police collected it, whatever. Nobody is arguing
00:23:14
that they had it, that the police had it. Forget about how it was obtained, but they all agree that police had items
00:23:21
that could have contained Veronica's DNA. Very likely could have contained her DNA. Yeah, one of the things that
00:23:28
the father did was he took their bed sheets, her bed sheets, and gave it to police. So, what we learn after all this
00:23:37
time is that those items have magically disappeared. Yeah, and this is where it gets a little
00:23:45
tricky for me is they claim, "Well, we moved buildings and that's how we probably lost it."
00:23:52
I think these are good cops years later trying to come up with a explanation of what the bad cops did.
00:24:01
Mhm. Because they would have been moved out of that one building, it would have all been sorted out by the
00:24:10
time she went missing. So, I think it's good cops looking back on going, "How how do we not have these
00:24:18
bed sheets in evidence?" Well, must have been when we're moving stuff from this building to
00:24:24
that building and things probably got lost. What that means at the end of the day is they do not have her DNA on file.
00:24:32
Mhm. So, if a body who is that has been hidden for 30 years is recovered or a body that was hidden for 5 years 25
00:24:42
years ago and and uncovered, if they cannot look at the remains and go, "Yep, that's Veronica." There is no
00:24:50
DNA to test to confirm if it is her or not. That's a very big problem for this investigation. Now,
00:25:01
let's go to the glass half full end of it and report this. It has been stated that Veronica had extensive dental work,
00:25:11
which could be used to identify her, but that means her skull has to be found. The records have been added to the
00:25:19
national database. So, we do have dental records for Veronica. Again, no DNA, which
00:25:28
really freaking stinks. All right, we're back. Cheers, you filthy animals. We've touched on the
00:26:07
frustrating lack of evidence in Veronica's case. No evidence to lead investigators directly to a suspect.
00:26:15
This case went cold and remained so for years and years, decades really. Mhm. Despite the lack of movement, Veronica's
00:26:23
brother Todd continued to campaign to find his sister. He created a website dedicated to her and started the
00:26:31
Facebook page that gathers information and has directly challenged the manner in which the investigation was
00:26:37
conducted. He also engineered searches of the nature preserve and other areas. Unfortunately, Todd died in 2013
00:26:48
from a rare genetic cancer. He died believing that the boyfriend, Jeff, killed his older sister
00:26:56
and never giving up his fight to find her. Todd's mission to find Veronica has been
00:27:01
taken up by family friend Doug Truckenbrod, who was designated the Bloomhurst family spokesperson. Here's
00:27:09
where the case gets interesting. Doug lived across the street from the Bloomhurst as a kid, and Doug is in some
00:27:15
ways also a potential witness. Per the Rockford Advocate, the day after Veronica went missing,
00:27:22
Doug recalled vividly something he had observed the day before. At around 11:45 p.m. on September 19th,
00:27:31
1990, Doug was on his way to his third-shift job at R&R Donnelley when he pulled into a gas station.
00:27:40
There he noticed an SUV with a camouflage paint job and a logo indicating it was a security vehicle for
00:27:48
Woodhaven Lakes, a camping resort which was about 12 miles away. At that moment, he didn't think much of
00:27:56
it. When Veronica vanished, Doug became fascinated with the case, as many did in
00:28:03
the small town. He says, quote, "I was talking to my mom about the boyfriend, and she mentioned
00:28:10
his dad that he was the head of security at Woodhaven." End quote. This is what Doug told Jim Haggerty.
00:28:18
Doug pointing out that the presence in town of the security vehicle on the very night Veronica was last seen
00:28:25
and the connection of the vehicle to remote property accessible by the VerVaeke family. Mhm.
00:28:33
Doug reported the sighting of the vehicle to the Mendota Police Department, this again investigator John
00:28:40
P. Doug Truckenbrod became one of the Mendotans who who the whispered theories that Jeff had
00:28:48
done something fatal to Veronica. The 2004 release of the police report highlighting Jeff's suspicious
00:28:55
statements solidified him as prime suspect number one in the eyes of many including Doug and Todd Bloomhurst,
00:29:05
who did not try to hide the fact that he suspected Jeff of killing his sister. But when Doug took up the mantle from
00:29:13
Todd in 2013 and began carrying out his promise to continue to pursue justice in Veronica's
00:29:20
case, he started to unveil some startling information. His public pleas for people to come
00:29:27
forward resulted in people starting to talk. And now, after 30 years, this case has
00:29:34
been substantially advanced over recent months by his efforts. Doug spent years digging into the case
00:29:43
and keeping his ear to the ground for rumors and information that could be helpful.
00:29:49
And someone who wished to remain anonymous came forward and told him some interesting information.
00:29:56
The local source had heard that, quote, Veronica was strangled, possibly shot, wrapped in a blue tarp, and dumped over
00:30:04
the west side of a metal bridge in Knox Road near Bartlett Woods. This area was near the part of the
00:30:13
nature preserve that had already been searched, but the source said the search area needed to be expanded. They didn't
00:30:21
search far enough. This bridge is about 3 mi from the Verbic property, and per the Jim Haggerty series,
00:30:31
early searches had focused on a small area northeast of Knox Road between Henkel Road and Big Bureau Creek, about
00:30:40
3 mi from the town of Sublette Illinois. The preserve had been searched in 2012 with cadaver dogs and searches organized
00:30:49
by Todd based on psychic evaluations of the case. Now, the source says police continued west.
00:31:00
If they would have continued west, they would have likely have found clues about
00:31:04
475 to 500 yards downstream near creek belly that's about 10 to 12 feet deep. Mhm. This is a tributary of the Illinois
00:31:15
River. I cannot say within feet but she's either in the belly of the creek before the 90° bend or around the
00:31:25
area of the hay bales next to it, possibly even under them, the source said. If they search in that area, they would
00:31:34
either find her remains in the water or some sign of her buried near there. The source also said he believed that a
00:31:41
gun was used to kill Veronica and this gun was disposed of in a creek in Mendota in 1992
00:31:50
by a woman who had received the gun from someone else. So, this does not sound like a murder
00:31:56
committed by a controlling boyfriend to me in a crime of passion who then panicked and hid her body. This
00:32:05
might sound like someone getting rid of Veronica in a methodical killing. Mhm. Someone who knew what he was doing and
00:32:13
who had knowledge of how to dispose of a body. This is where we have to look into
00:32:21
the idea of did the police bungle the investigation or is there a cover-up? Because this case is one of those in
00:32:31
which it is easy to see why people believe that there was some kind of police cover-up.
00:32:37
Either the Mendota Police Department, Mhm. a small-town force with zero experience investigating disappearances
00:32:45
and possible homicides, was borderline incompetent, or it was the typical story of a bad
00:32:52
seed cop who was, at least, to a certain extent, sheltered by some of his own. There is some evidence for
00:33:02
this latter theory. Right. It has more legs than you're giving it. When Veronica went missing,
00:33:08
the Mendota police collected some of her personal items, Mhm. as we said, a toothbrush,
00:33:14
hairbrush, and bedding from her room. Of course, potential sources of DNA, but no
00:33:20
one knows where any of these things are. So, is that somebody removed these items from police
00:33:27
evidence, or did they just screw it up? The other thing you have to think about,
00:33:33
too, is Veronica's car and garage, the area surrounding the garage. This was never processed when she went missing.
00:33:41
Right. Was this on purpose? Or was it just, "Oh, she's missing. We think we'll find her. There's no need to search for
00:33:49
footprints or tire tracks or hair or any type of other evidence that could have been found at the time?"
00:33:57
But why a conspiracy? Why a conspiracy? Yeah. Why are they covering up? Well, I don't
00:34:03
know that I would go as far to say that the entire police department would be covering this up.
00:34:10
Right. And to me, you might only have to have one person covering their own tracks. So, not a
00:34:17
conspiracy at all, just really one person manipulating everything to remove themselves as a potential suspect.
00:34:26
Right. Despite the small-town nature of the police force and the inexperience of
00:34:31
its officers in handling these types of cases, the MPD repeatedly turned down request
00:34:39
from the Bloom Hurst family to call in investigative assistance from the Illinois State Police.
00:34:46
Was this because they were certain that Jeff was their man or because someone did not want an outside agency meddling
00:34:56
in the affairs of the Man Dota PD? And of course, we have already covered that the police
00:35:02
seem to have failed to record or properly transcribe Jeff's interview with all of his supposedly incriminating
00:35:10
statements. Again, this is either small-town incompetence or something much more sinister.
00:35:18
So now, 30 years later, Doug and others are calling into question the police placement of blame
00:35:26
on Jeff. Recordings and transcripts that do not exist, they all seem to point to Jeff being the
00:35:33
guy. That's the only red flag that goes up and circles itself around Jeff. And further, some of the things Jeff
00:35:41
said, supposedly said, made no sense. It really does not seem likely that he would have thought Veronica was pregnant
00:35:50
at all. He knew all about her mono and her upcoming doctor's appointment for that ailment.
00:35:57
Yeah. Veronica's family says they have proof that Veronica was not pregnant at the
00:36:03
time that she disappeared. The only thing I have a problem with that is again, we don't know his extent
00:36:09
of his condition of memory loss. So, is it possible that he did forget that she was sick?
00:36:18
We also don't know again, it's it's fool's gold, right? We we have nothing to back up these
00:36:25
supposed statements that he made to police. Other than the word of of one man who
00:36:31
should be in the circle of suspects in this case. So, here's the thing about you you talk
00:36:39
about his memory loss. He had a a motorcycle or dirt bike accident when he was like 14 or 15. So, this is something
00:36:47
he had suffered for years before Veronica and him were even an item. Mhm. One thing that's interesting now, it
00:36:55
emerged recently that on the day before Jeff was questioned by police on September 23rd, Jeff participated in the
00:37:04
Bloom Hurst family session with psychic Greta Alexander. She is the psychic that led them to
00:37:12
search the nature preserve. In the course of this search, Greta mentioned that Veronica was hurt by
00:37:19
someone in the course of an argument about her health or possibly a baby. She stated that Jeff's motivations were
00:37:29
suspect. Jeff heard all of this as he was present. And also privy to this psychic's
00:37:37
observations was John P. Who the very next day would question Jeff, supposedly enlisting comments
00:37:47
about how maybe he went crazy thinking about her being pregnant. Mhm. As we said, a cadaver dog search was
00:37:54
eventually conducted of property owned by Jeff's family a year after Veronica went missing. Nothing was found.
00:38:02
But but not the property his dad worked at. Correct. Of course, there are plenty of places to
00:38:09
dispose of a body in the area. And it's not clear whether Jeff really has an alibi for that night. You know,
00:38:17
was he at home watching a movie as he said? His mom said that he was home as well, but we know how those family
00:38:25
member alibis can be erroneous. Mhm. But on the other hand, there is nothing whatsoever tying Jeff
00:38:33
to Veronica's disappearance because it seems to me a little too good to be true that he just walked on into the police
00:38:40
department and basically offered up all of those semi-incriminating statements. Clearly, he did not offer up a full
00:38:48
confession because he was never charged, never arrested, never named publicly as
00:38:52
a person of interest. Well, didn't he also get rid of his car like pretty early?
00:38:58
I don't have any information about him getting rid of a vehicle. Well, so supposedly he gets rid of his vehicle.
00:39:05
He was looking for a new vehicle before she went missing. But so she goes missing, he gets rid of
00:39:11
it. And then he gets the same exact car as Veronica. And then he doesn't get a license plate for it
00:39:21
and she had something where it was like her initials, some lucky number, or her initials, and then like her birthday or
00:39:31
something. And he did the same thing. So, got the same exact car and did the the whole initial birthday
00:39:41
type thing on the back of his car as well. Mhm. And it's kind of a odd car. Her car wasn't like
00:39:48
It was a Chevy Corsica. Right, but it wasn't like a I don't think they were super popular. I
00:39:54
don't know much about the the vehicle. I always thought of Corsicas as a pretty common vehicle back in the early '90s.
00:40:02
The weird thing, too, is their initials are very similar, as well. Mhm. Now, Jeff
00:40:10
was Mendota PD's focused from from day one, day two, however you want to argue it. That's clear.
00:40:18
Doug Trank and Brad does not mince words about Jeff's supposed involvement. He says, quote, "I think he was manipulated
00:40:27
into saying what he did in the police report. And once he lawyered up, the person who killed Veronica was free to
00:40:35
fumble along and destroy any trails he himself left." Furthermore, not only might Jeff have
00:40:42
been railroaded, but there may have been someone else who was responsible for what happened to Veronica.
00:40:49
There was one more person reported to be in the Super Value store on the night that she vanished.
00:40:56
According to the Rockford Advocate series, a source has indicated that an unnamed man was in the Dempsey's Super
00:41:04
Value on Veronica's last night, there for about 30 minutes, but purchased nothing.
00:41:11
He left the store at 11:39 p.m. The presence of this man in the store did not appear in any of the police reports,
00:41:19
and he was never questioned. What does this have to do with Veronica and her still being missing 30 years
00:41:26
later? Family spokesperson Doug Trank and Brad says that his team of citizens, just
00:41:33
like himself, who have been sleuthing around Mendota, uncovered evidence that Veronica kept certain things about her
00:41:39
personal life private, and that they may have contributed to her disappearance. Mhm.
00:41:46
And Doug has a theory about who this man at the Super Value may have been. Apparently, there were reports from
00:41:55
several independent sources that Veronica was seeing another guy on the side, unbeknownst to her family, and
00:42:02
certainly unbeknownst to Jeff. And this man may have been a police officer. Per the Rockford Advocate,
00:42:09
quoting family spokesperson Doug Trank and Brad, quote, "We are looking into details about that
00:42:17
reported relationship. It may have been going on for some time before her disappearance. What we are
00:42:23
fairly certain of is that this man Veronica was seeing was married. He was someone who was familiar to her
00:42:32
and not someone she had recently met. Apparently, Veronica also knew this man's wife.
00:42:39
The rumors are that she had tried to end things with Jeff in order to be with this other man,
00:42:48
although these may have just been that, rumors." Right. Okay, so this could be far-fetched, right? The Bloomhorst
00:42:59
family does not seem to endorse this theory, even though the spokesperson seems to.
00:43:06
Mhm. According to Carolyn, Veronica's sister, who spoke publicly for the first time
00:43:12
earlier in 2020, Veronica was not a duplicitous person. She was not capable of hiding things
00:43:20
that were going on with her. Again, we talked about the possibility of Veronica being an open book. She says
00:43:28
that she was one of those people who wears her heart on her sleeve. Carolyn does not believe that Veronica would
00:43:33
have been cheating on Jeff with a married man. She and Jeff have been they were discussing marriage, as we
00:43:40
said, and she seemed to be happy with Jeff at the time. Right. Carolyn also says, "If she had been seeing someone
00:43:47
else on the side, she would not have been able to hide it for very long." Now, on the other hand, Carolyn did
00:43:54
reveal to Doug that things were not all as it seemed with Veronica and her relationship with
00:44:01
her family. She and her mother did clash, and she had a little bit of a wild streak. It is
00:44:08
not at all clear what Doug is referring to when he says Veronica was hiding things because those things have not
00:44:15
been made public. Right. But maybe there was a side of Veronica that her family didn't know about, including Carolyn,
00:44:22
her sister, who didn't live with the family at the time of the disappearance. One didn't live with her for quite a
00:44:28
while, so give a couple years and and she's a little and Veronica was getting a little older. Here's where
00:44:35
things go off the rails. The sources who were telling Doug that Veronica was seeing a married cop,
00:44:42
they even provided Doug with a name. The married boyfriend was a cop who lived right across the alley behind the Bloom
00:44:51
Hurst family. Mhm. This person would have had a full view of the Bloom Hurst garage and from his
00:44:59
property. This married cop was also seeing another neighbor on the street, which this woman
00:45:06
admitted to later. In other words, this 20-something cop was a womanizer. Carolyn later said that this cop would
00:45:15
stare at her and her sister as they went in and out of the yard and then it made them feel
00:45:21
very uncomfortable. Who is this guy? Don't squeeze your beer cans too tightly. Or your testicles. The married
00:45:28
cop who was alleged to have been in some kind of relationship with Veronica was John P.
00:45:34
Officer John P. The one who lived right behind her house and was the first on the scene that day
00:45:42
when Jeff reported her missing, the one who was in charge of the investigation into her disappearance, the one who
00:45:48
focused the blame on her boyfriend in his police report, the one who possibly deliberately messed up the examination
00:45:57
of her car and who may or may not have seen to it that her personal possessions with her DNA on them went missing from
00:46:06
the Mendota police station. Mhm. Yeah. Go ahead. Because the what I heard at first
00:46:13
I didn't actually hear about this idea that Veronica had a intimate relationship with the police
00:46:19
officer. The idea was that he would have been coming home, you know, he he was married. He he he
00:46:26
had his wife at home. He was coming home from the neighbor's house that he um was having an affair with and somehow
00:46:33
got caught by Veronica and you know, made her go missing so he didn't get busted. That was the first that I heard.
00:46:44
That's an interesting theory, too, because either way it's presenting a theory where the two
00:46:51
Officer John and Veronica had some other type of relationship that wasn't just we
00:46:57
we're neighbors. Right. That either Veronica had some dirt on him or she was involved with him. It Well, and
00:47:05
give a reason for them crossing paths that night. Right. Yeah, so I'd like to know what
00:47:13
his alibi was. So, it seems like something out of a movie, something fake, something unreal, but what makes
00:47:20
this crazy tale somewhat believable is that the sources who told Doug about the relationship between John, Officer John,
00:47:28
and Veronica. Whatever again, whatever the nature of that relationship was. Doug says that these were law
00:47:36
enforcement officers that told him this. Right. That there was some some kind of
00:47:41
relationship. These were guys in the area of law enforcement groups who knew John.
00:47:48
One of them also knew the police chief at the time, Ken Hahn, who apparently also suspected John.
00:47:55
This crazy story appears to have some legs to it. Some hairy legs. Some hairy disgusting spider legs.
00:48:03
Dirty legs. One way that this story would make sense without Veronica being someone completely
00:48:09
foreign to her family, someone who would would date a married police officer, betray her boyfriend and
00:48:16
and behave in ways that her family and friends found unbelievable is if John made up the whole thing.
00:48:24
Okay, this guy was a known womanizer and creep whose illicit relationships ended
00:48:31
up ending his marriage. Mhm. And remember Carolyn said he would watch girls from his own yard across the way
00:48:39
in a creepy fashion. So, what I'm getting at here, Captain, is it possible that maybe Officer John bragged to some
00:48:48
of his cop buddies about relationships with women that he was not in fact actually having? Yeah, or did he prey on
00:48:55
weaker individuals and possibly it wasn't as consensual as he made it out to be. And that's where you go with this
00:49:03
thing, right? What if in some weird way he's bragging to his cop buddies, "Hey, that 21-year-old good-looking girl over
00:49:11
there, me and her are a bit of a thing." But in reality, he's stalking her. Yeah,
00:49:16
or yeah, sexual fantasy. Or again, he he might have sexually assaulted her. Maybe he raped her.
00:49:26
And like we said, he he's somebody that's in the area that would have had knowledge of just
00:49:33
you know, not not that she's gullible, but it would be a individual, like I said, a
00:49:38
weaker individual that may you possibly could control. Yeah, and you don't even have to dub her
00:49:44
as gullible because for all we know, Veronica thought of Officer John as as most probably would,
00:49:52
as he's a police officer, he's a neighbor, maybe he's a nice neighbor, maybe he's nice police officer. When
00:49:58
your dad is a part of the first responder family, cops are part of that. They're all good guys. And this guy
00:50:06
might just be number one creepo. Could be a wolf in sheep's clothing, as they say.
00:50:13
So, what if he pulls up that night a little after 1:00 a.m. She's making her way from the garage up
00:50:22
to the house, as she did several times a week, which he could see that from his house, from his yard. Mhm.
00:50:30
He pulls up in a vehicle or asks her to come over to his his yard or garage. Because the way that if if you view
00:50:38
these on a map, the way that these two houses, they more so back up to one another, where it looks to me like the
00:50:45
backs of the houses face one another. So, the garages are closer to each other than the actual houses would be.
00:50:52
Could he have asked her to get in his car and help him with something? Or talked her into some kind of ride. And
00:50:59
then they're out somewhere, he tries to move on her, things go wrong, and he freaks out and does something bad. Mhm.
00:51:06
You can see the way that this would play out. The other thing, too, is if he was in
00:51:12
fact the one that was in the store, in the Super Value Store that night, that in there for a half an hour, and didn't
00:51:19
buy anything, then it looks even more sinister. It looks like he was setting this up, he was stalking her, or they
00:51:28
were in fact having some type of relationship. Was he just in there to to chat and interact with her? Right. And
00:51:35
let her know that he'd meet her at her car after she got off work or whatever. You mentioned earlier, and this is a bit
00:51:42
of an aside, another potential conflict of interest in the case. And you find this
00:51:49
typically in small towns. The current police chief, Greg Cullen, went on some dates with Veronica, but
00:51:56
this is going to be way back in the day. You know, this case is 30 years old. Well, I
00:52:03
wonder if he was the {quote} "unquote" possessive guy. He was. He was the one that Carolyn said
00:52:12
Veronica had told her that she was uncomfortable with Greg for whatever reason. He was either possessive or a
00:52:19
bit controlling. Ple- Please keep in mind, this man was not the police chief back then.
00:52:25
He was He was very low on the totem pole and um yes, he is he went on to be a chief of police,
00:52:36
but other than this little aside to it, it doesn't seem like there was much more
00:52:40
to the story other than they went on a couple of dates. Veronica, for whatever reason, didn't really like the guy and
00:52:46
she broke it off with him. Right. In December of 2019, Doug Truckenbrod announced that a civilian search was
00:52:54
planned for the spring of 2020 near Knox Road and Big Bureau Creek, about 8 mi north of Mendota.
00:53:03
The area is near the forest preserve that was searched previously. This is because the family stated in a
00:53:10
release that they had received information that Veronica was strangled, wrapped in a tarp, and dumped over a
00:53:17
Knox Road bridge into Big Bureau Creek near Sublette. This was the information from the source
00:53:25
that we discussed earlier. The land that was subject of the upcoming search was private, and the
00:53:32
owner, a local farmer, he granted permission. But this search has been put off indefinitely thanks to COVID.
00:53:41
Doug Truckenbrod stirred up enough movement flushing out sources who claimed to have material information
00:53:49
that the Cold Case Foundation with its seasoned investigators agreed to take on the case. Good for them and and good for
00:53:57
him. And based on all the suspicious findings and information, they have managed to
00:54:03
get the case in front of the FBI who is now actively working the case. Mhm. Got him. Well, good for us. We I helped
00:54:11
raise a little money for the Cold Case Foundation in July to help those guys out.
00:54:17
Good. So, this is an active FBI investigation now and we have seasoned investigators working this very cold
00:54:25
case. It's 30 years. And and by the way, I cheered you all and I'll cheer you again.
00:54:34
Cheers. So, you have to wonder is it possible that finally after 30 years, does Veronica's family
00:54:42
will they get some justice done? Hopefully, but it's it's sad that her brother didn't live to see
00:54:50
the work that he started be finished. John P. left the Mendota Police Department about 14 years ago. He's
00:54:59
currently retired possibly living in Florida. It sounds like the FBI may want to talk
00:55:07
with him. Veronica's family via Doug Trockenbrod still maintains the Facebook page called
00:55:14
Remember Veronica Jill Bloomhurst. Started by Todd, her brother, to memorialize his sister and document her
00:55:22
case, it is very active with updates on her case as well as links to Jim Haggerty's
00:55:29
series and posted regularly. One thing I like about this case is it I feel within the last 2 hours
00:55:41
that we have said the three most likely suspects in this case. Mhm. I think that
00:55:48
Jeff he's an interesting one. I think that former officer John P is very interesting as well. As well is the
00:55:58
creep guy that was going into the Super Value store two or three times a week to
00:56:02
just bother the female employees. And dress the women with his eyes. Yeah, I mean who's to say he didn't follow her
00:56:10
home or had not followed her home before. Mhm. And she having spoke with him many times just thought, "Oh, he's a
00:56:17
nuisance, but he's harmless." Right. And she went over to talk to him or got in the car for any number of reasons.
00:56:23
I think that what we have here Captain is a trail that doesn't lead specifically to any of
00:56:30
these three. Really all we have is the supposed incriminating statements that Jeff made to officer John P behind
00:56:39
closed doors. What we also have is the rumors that makes John P have some kind of different
00:56:47
relationship, be it either Veronica had dirt on him or they were involved somehow.
00:56:53
And then just the suspicions of the creepo workers of this creepo guy coming in a couple times a week. Oh, creepo.
00:57:01
It's really sad because until she is found there's nothing left to work on at the moment. So, I hope and pray that
00:57:10
this search gets underway and that they do find something to lead them to her. And possibly lead us to the actual
00:57:19
person that did this. One thing that I call into question here and would love to know
00:57:29
is the actual time of events and how they were supposed to go down once it was known that she was missing.
00:57:37
And what I mean by that is when was it discovered that Jeff and Veronica were going to have a lunch that
00:57:44
day? Was it just that day when he called and all of a sudden he discovers that she's missing? Oh by the way, we were
00:57:50
going to have lunch. Or did you know, did Jeff know about the what time the doctor's appointment would be?
00:57:59
And did he magically time up that call perfectly to her father shortly after the doctor's office called? Mhm.
00:58:07
And really and it's hard to say looking back 30 years ago what the actual events
00:58:13
were supposed to be in their order and the times that they were supposed to happen because I think that could shed a
00:58:19
little more light on what category to put Jeff in in this case. Again, thanks for listening. Thanks for
00:58:39
the support. If you're looking for our old episodes, we have over 400 episodes to check out and you can do so for free
00:58:46
on the Stitcher app. And if you're looking for even more, we have over 100 of our bonus show called Off the Record
00:58:54
and that's on Stitcher Premium. Do we have any recommended reading for this week? This week we are recommending Tam
00:59:00
O'Shanter The Pursuit of the Freeway Phantom Serial Killer by Blaine Pardoe and Victoria Hester. We have recommended
00:59:08
this awesome true crime writing duo before. These two great authors are putting out some really fascinating cold
00:59:15
case true crime stuff. So, you'll want to check out Tam O'Shanter and other great recommendations at our website
00:59:22
truecrimegarage.com and while you're there, one thing I've been doing at my house, Captain, I have the beer fridge.
00:59:30
I like to put a lot of stickers on my beer fridge. Pick you up some True Crime Garage stickers to decorate your beer
00:59:36
fridge. And go with the super pack. If you If you buy pack one and pack two, cost you a little more money, go with
00:59:42
the super pack, you get them all. Little discount there for you. And until next week, be good, be kind, and don't
00:59:50
litter.