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[Music] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:14
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who is on a long journey to the middle here is the
00:01:22
captain it's good to be seing and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend
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[Music] this week we are very happy to be featuring Lazy River pills by the good
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in the great city of Williamsport PA the birthplace of Little League baseball and
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host city of the Little League World Series garage grade four out of five bottle caps and Captain let's give some
00:02:14
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enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:15
[Music] crime you [Music] [Music] a violent murder takes place in a large home that sat empty and
00:03:52
Silent the home is located at the very end of a quiet street a road that sees no thre through
00:04:01
traffic in fact the road here in this case officially titled Lane to give it that certain neighborhood charm dead
00:04:10
ends and then splits off into two long driveways at the end of Chelsea Lane if one were to go to the left they would
00:04:21
travel a driveway that extends approximately 500 ft and then you would be standing right in front of 21 49
00:04:30
Chelsea Lane if one were to go right instead of left well then you would travel a
00:04:37
driveway that extends approximately 200 or so feet up the driveway and now you are standing in front of
00:04:45
2147 Chelsea Lane inside of this single family four-bedroom home a successful woman and mother at the very top of her
00:04:56
game was murdered there as The Story Goes she was there on that rainy day to meet a prospective
00:05:06
client that opportunity sadly turned into the woman's tragic demise instead of Landing a buyer for
00:05:15
the home that sat quiet and empty the successful saleswoman met her death in the middle of a secluded
00:05:24
neighborhood in an area where at the time crime consisted of traffic violations and child
00:05:33
pranksters was the killer someone she knew or a complete stranger the killer remains unknown more
00:05:42
than 25 years later some of the very important details in this case remaining mystery as well
00:05:51
unknown to all of us all of these years later a realtor was found shot and strangled and throughout most most of
00:05:59
the investigation the authorities were almost as mysterious as the murder itself refusing to divulge the time of
00:06:08
death the caliber of gun used and the important details that their investigation would
00:06:15
uncover was it necessary to keep this information secret over 25 years later and where the
00:06:23
case sits today is firmly in the unsolved and open filing cabinet she was killed on a rainy workday on that
00:06:31
Thursday afternoon by someone out there and for reasons that remain unknown as well it was not about looking at the
00:06:42
home it was not about contemplating one of life's biggest purchases it was what turned into
00:06:50
preventing a lovely lady from going home that day why what was the motive from everything that I can see this is a
00:07:02
cold case and as our longtime listeners know all too well cold cases present many investigative
00:07:09
challenges there is no perfect investigation regardless of the jurisdiction or the law enforcement
00:07:16
entity conducting the investigation but as we all know there is no perfect murder and this murder
00:07:27
certainly is not the exception to that rule during the course of a murder investigation means and opportunity are
00:07:35
often easily determined the motive for murder is more elusive means and opportunity are some
00:07:43
of the best dividing factors when separating the suspects from all other possibilities in this case I believe the
00:07:52
motive could separate the prime suspect from all others this is the still un solved
00:07:59
homicide case of Charlotte Fano and this is true crime [Music] garage you you [Music]
00:08:27
[Music] as the Morning Call newspaper put it it didn't matter that the house on Chelsea
00:08:34
Lane stands in the middle of a secluded neighborhood in a location where crime is akin to speeding citations and
00:08:42
vandalism rather than murder but 40-year-old Charlotte Fano was killed there anyway this is in the heler toown
00:08:50
lower Sak Township area of Pennsylvania so not terribly far from New Jersey and just east of Allen town and Bethlehem
00:09:00
two larger cities in Pennsylvania this is a murder that took place on Thursday September 11
00:09:10
1997 this is a cold case that is very solvable in my opinion and you know how much we love to be able to put those
00:09:19
words together in such close proximity Charlotte Fano was born Charlotte Christie Edinger in 1957 to
00:09:28
parents Donald and Anna May Edinger at the time of the murder in 1997 Charlotte was married and was the
00:09:37
mother of one her husband is Christian Fano and her daughter is chrisy Everett fana her daughter Christie is older
00:09:48
she's grown up she's a senior in college still living at home with Mom and her stepdad who from my understanding raised
00:09:57
her as his own and 1997 Charlotte was a very successful realtor in fact she had been quite successful in this line of
00:10:07
work pretty much from the time that she started in the business she worked for wer realtors in Bethlehem for about 10
00:10:16
years and I do want to give a little bit of clarification here Captain wer is a a
00:10:21
larger company they have several offices in fact she worked at the Easton office
00:10:27
for many years before transferring to Bethlehem to that location where she had only been for about a year year and a
00:10:35
half prior to the murder so she worked for wer for about 10 years and then as said only about a year and a half at the
00:10:44
Bethlehem office she was a member of their million-dollar sales Club a repeat member I think that's a an annual club
00:10:53
or annual award that they give out in 1990 Charlotte was named woman of the year by the American businesswoman's
00:11:01
Association Starburst chapter now an overview of the case is pretty much the same as the information that was
00:11:09
released in the early goings of this investigation early on the information was coming out from primarily three
00:11:16
sources the coroner a detective and a fellow realtor so let's go through the overview
00:11:24
and include all of the known early information and after that we will see if we can add some additional details
00:11:31
there are some very interesting theories here and while we don't have any publicly named suspects I think we will
00:11:39
be able to conjure up a few to discuss and see if the puzzle pieces fit early on law enforcement was very tight lipped
00:11:47
on what they were sharing with the public in this investigation it makes you wonder what they were finding out
00:11:54
and when they were finding it out because they would start to release some other information as this investigation
00:12:00
would drag on but let's go to the beginning okay so one of the more well-known headlines here in this case
00:12:07
is from a Saturday September 13th 1997 newspaper the morning call out of Allentown Pennsylvania the headline
00:12:16
reads Bethlehem realtor found slain in lower s home for sale immediately one's mind starts to fill in the blanks this
00:12:25
information is from the Northampton County corner Zachary Lasik telling us that the realtor Charlotte Fano age 40
00:12:35
who lived on Allen Street in Bethlehem Township died from a gunshot wound to the head and
00:12:43
strangulation he very quickly ruled the death a homicide however he would not release the suspected time of death or
00:12:50
the caliber of gun used in the murder Charlotte's body was found just after 710 a.m. on Friday February 12th the
00:13:00
police also would not confirm nor comment if Charlotte went to the property to meet a client or a
00:13:07
perspective buyer later we would get some better clarification as to what their investigative efforts would
00:13:14
uncover but as anyone can understand in the early stages the detectives are going to be looking to see if they can
00:13:22
confirm who was the last person she was with why was she there and who was she meeting with and here they don't want to
00:13:31
show their hand right this is a Pennsylvania State Police Case by the way a state police
00:13:37
investigation they may not want the person to know that they are able to identify or have a lead on who that
00:13:46
person may be that she was going to meet so that's why you keep that secret the manager of the wer office
00:13:55
where Charlotte worked out of did talk to the newspaper as as well so this is the manager her name is Marcy Carter she
00:14:03
fills in some more details from which we learned that Charlotte Fano was reported
00:14:09
missing right around midnight on Thursday remember the body was recovered the following morning Friday after 7
00:14:16
a.m. and the newspaper that is giving out the first details of the case is from that Saturday September 13th her
00:14:24
co-workers describe Charlotte as Plucky and aggressive the manager of the w office Marcy Carter says quote everyone
00:14:32
is so sad and that Charlotte was well-loved and the real estate firm is offering
00:14:38
$100,000 a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the person responsible for
00:14:46
Charlotte's death Marcy tells the newspaper that Charlotte's husband Christian was the one to report her
00:14:53
missing around midnight on Thursday the night before her body was found the home where she was found was listed
00:15:01
for sale and was vacant at the time now it said the police were not going to comment on if Charlotte went to the home
00:15:09
to show the place to a prospective buyer and Marcy very wisely did not want to jam up their
00:15:16
investigation so she didn't comment on that either however the newspaper reporters Kathleen Parish Denise Seaman
00:15:24
and Phil Bole were doing some dogged investigative work themselves and discovered that the Lehigh Valley Board
00:15:32
of realtorss left voicemail messages for area members one to inform them of Charlotte's murder and two to warn them
00:15:42
warning them to be extra careful when showing properties so law enforcement is being very tight lipped to the public
00:15:49
but then we have these realators coming out saying hey hey we have to be careful
00:15:54
because we don't know if this is going to be a repeat of event if this is somebody targeting real estate agents so
00:16:04
let's let's dive into a couple events on the timeline yeah before we get into the
00:16:09
crime scene details I think there are some important times to highlight on this timeline remember around midnight
00:16:16
on Thursday September 11 Christian Fano reports his wife Charlotte missing to the authorities at 7:10 a.m. on Friday
00:16:26
her body is found at the for sale res residence 2147 Chelsea Lane there was a news conference with members of the
00:16:35
State Police that same Friday night at this conference the police stated that Charlotte was reported missing when she
00:16:43
failed to return home from work they also stated that that what they would refer to as an anonymous 911 call came
00:16:53
in Friday morning directing police to the 2147 Chelsea Lane PR property they go out there immediately after getting
00:17:02
this 911 call in fact there's indicators that the police were at the property in
00:17:07
about 10 minutes time after receiving that call there they find Charlotte's vehicle parked in the driveway the body
00:17:16
is then discovered inside the home the body is then removed from the scene at 11:30 a.m. taken to Easton Hospital
00:17:25
where the autopsy was conducted later we're going to learn that Charlotte was shot twice and strangled
00:17:33
and it was ligature strangulation meaning that she was strangled with an object not someone's
00:17:39
hands right at the time police would not say what room in the house that the body
00:17:45
was found and from my understanding Captain there's been some speculation thrown out there and there's been a
00:17:51
source at least one source says that she was found at the top of a stairs I was trying to figure out if this home had a
00:17:58
base or not because top of the stairs could mean second floor or ground level I want I want to be straight up here
00:18:06
that that's not information that we've been able to confirm and it's also information that I don't believe has
00:18:14
been publicly released by the police themselves and you said there's gunshot wounds and strangulation do we know if
00:18:22
she was strangled and and then shot or shot then strangled we don't but when we get to our speculation to our suspects
00:18:30
and to our theories portion I'm going to I'm going to have some comments on and thoughts on that those actions that that
00:18:38
we know did take place well we know you're never short of comments so police are saying that she's shot twice manual
00:18:45
strangulation at the time again they won't say what room inside the home that the body was found they will not comment
00:18:52
on the condition of the body the caliber of gun that was used or what was used to
00:18:58
strangle her and would not comment on possible suspects they did say that police recovered some of Charlotte's
00:19:06
personal items at the residence and did not know if anything was missing at this
00:19:12
time they did say that they set up a command post at a nearby driveway they lined the streets of the neighborhood
00:19:19
with cop cars blocked off a two block area of the neighborhood searched the neighborhood especially all wooded areas
00:19:27
near the home maintained that post until late in the afternoon and recovered no weapon the state police captain Theodore
00:19:38
kouth said police do not have a motive for the murder now this is this is all very interesting here to me Captain
00:19:48
because not only are they keeping it tight lipped but what we do know what we can decipher from what they are saying
00:19:55
is that they recovered no weapon so one we know that they were searching the area they very likely were searching
00:20:05
for the gun itself wondering if maybe somebody ditched the gun tossed the gun on their way out of the neighborhood or
00:20:12
if the killer lives in the neighborhood on a retreat back to their own residence
00:20:16
and there's two weapons that we're looking for law enforcement is looking for one a gun and two some object that
00:20:24
would be used for this triangulation and we always talk so much here in the garage about transfer Theory
00:20:31
and transfer Theory to me it's not a theory it's a real thing and it's a very investig very great investigative tool
00:20:37
transfer theory is the simple thought that a killer likely leaves something at a crime scene knowingly or
00:20:47
unknowingly and the killer also will take something from the crime scene with him or her knowingly or unknowingly this
00:20:56
can be any form of physical evidence could be a weapon what have you what what's really interesting to me here
00:21:04
when we talk about this of course they're going to be searching the wooded area for a gun of course they're going
00:21:09
to be searching the neighborhood for the gun but as you bring up Captain Li ature
00:21:15
strangulation we know that she was strangled with an item a rope a cord a wire what have you this makes me really
00:21:23
wonder if that item came from inside the home or they had reason to believe that
00:21:30
that item would have come from inside of the home one obvious sign of that to police would be if somebody used a phone
00:21:37
wire or phone cord taken from one of the phones inside the murder house and out of the two weapons being left to me I
00:21:45
would think it's more likely that you'd leave the weapon that was used as a strangulation device because that
00:21:53
possibly wouldn't have as many ties back to that individual as much like a firearm would yeah especially if that
00:22:02
item came from inside the home again they could have recovered that item from inside the home and just flat out lie to
00:22:10
the newspapers I don't believe that to be the case here and we can go through that more when we get to the suspects
00:22:17
but again think about this scenario it's it's a vacant home it sat vacant for some time and she is there and I know
00:22:28
that that we're saying early on that police won't say the firm that she worked for won't say that she was there
00:22:35
to meet a potential client or if she was meeting somebody she knew or didn't know
00:22:41
that's all well and good but you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that she's in the business of selling
00:22:48
homes this home is for sale and we know at least one other person was there with
00:22:55
her because the killer was there with her so it's not much of a leap early on and later we would in fact learn that
00:23:04
that was the case that she was there under the ruls of showing the home to a prospective buyer a lot more details to
00:23:13
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upwards cheers mates cheers to you Colonel I say upwards and onwards cheers to you Captain all right Captain here's
00:29:06
the thing one key player in this murder investigation of course is going to be the crime scene the murder house the the
00:29:13
home that was listed for sale and to me this is what is so intriguing about this
00:29:19
case this is one of those added elements that you don't get in other murder investigations right the the home does
00:29:27
not belong to the person that was killed there and as far as we can see I don't think
00:29:35
there's any reason to believe that the home belonged to the person that owned it or the the killer owned the home and
00:29:42
that would seem like a pretty quick fix for law enforcement to solve this case and here we sit 25 more than 25 years
00:29:48
later with an unsolved case so let's go through that key item here that home and
00:29:54
what we do know about that home so this house was owned by Gary Peters and he is from my understanding
00:30:04
or was at the time a successful dentist that lived in a neighboring City or not too terribly far away from where this
00:30:12
home was MH uh I don't know why they moved out of the home from everything I could see this is a was a beautiful home
00:30:19
but you know people people go through separations maybe he wanted to live closer to his practice uh there's any
00:30:26
number of reasons why this IND individual or his family would have moved out of the home but obviously if
00:30:32
you're in law enforcement you have to vet anybody that owns the home correct because one they they would have access
00:30:39
to the home and to the property right and so you're you're looking for a suspect here and you're also going to be
00:30:47
going through what you find on your victim in her car or inside that residence that she brought with her to
00:30:56
help lead you to a suspect and we'll get into some of that here in a minute we do know per police they did
00:31:02
say we did recover some of her belongings inside the residence and we did find her vehicle parked in the
00:31:09
driveway out front of the home now one thing we need to be very clear here on and we talked about this a little bit in
00:31:17
the trailer today is this house is very secluded we did talk about it being in a
00:31:23
neighborhood but it's kind of On The Fringe of that neighborhood and this would be an ideal place for many
00:31:30
people to live because you at this location in 1997 and if you look up this on any map
00:31:40
app you will still see this today this home in property offers the feel of like country living secluded Retreat country
00:31:51
type living but you would have all the amenities of living in a city you know you're nearby all of your places to work
00:32:00
it would be a short commute to schools or to to work but you would also feel like you're kind of out in the middle of
00:32:06
nowhere so the property's actually I I seen it listed multiple different ways and that is because we talk about
00:32:14
the house being vacant it had been listed from as far as I could see starting in January of
00:32:23
1997 Charlotte Fano is killed in this home in September of 1997 and the home the listing would
00:32:34
typically run in the Sunday newspaper and it would give a price and a description and it had run fairly
00:32:41
regularly during the months that it was for sale and some of the listings would say
00:32:49
over three acres well the the the closest I get could get to an exact specifications on the the the dimensions
00:32:58
of this property several of the listings say 3.5 acre lot and several say 3.6 acre lot
00:33:06
so you can tell from that that you have this country feel living but with all the amenities of the city the other
00:33:14
thing too is the positioning of this property on the road itself as we talked about in the trailer you would have to
00:33:21
go one would have to go to the dead end of Chelsea lane and then from there it splits off into two driveways and both
00:33:29
of these driveways are not only lengthy but they're leading to large properties so the one of the best listings that I
00:33:38
could find it's it's a little short here but um it said that this home had a uh indoor Jacuzzi or hot tub several
00:33:49
fireplaces has a great view again over 3 Acres lot it was listed this is another
00:33:56
interesting little tip bit here Captain this home was listed with wer Realtors but it's not listed by Charlotte Fano
00:34:06
she's not the listing agent right in 1997 Sharon Adams is the listing agent uh who also works for wer realtorss yeah
00:34:16
so I don't know a ton about the real estate business or being a real estate agent but if you're the listing agent
00:34:22
you're responsible obviously for the contracts for staging the house if it's going to going to be staged for the
00:34:29
photographs that are taken it being listed and the details in which it's listed so as far as what Charlotte is
00:34:38
doing is mainly she's just going to be showing that to clients yeah so it's very common for to have two people both
00:34:46
parties represented the the seller is often represented by a real tour unless it's a fsbo right for sale by owner or
00:34:56
and you also have the buyer who is typically represented by a real tour now if you are a first-time home buyer do
00:35:03
not know much about the housing market and you are looking for a home and you're thinking well I'll just go It
00:35:10
Alone no get a real tour because you as the buyer do not pay any commissions to the realtor the seller always pays the
00:35:20
commissions so you get free advice free advisory uh on your big decision on on making one of the biggest purchases of
00:35:31
your life so right but what's weird here and and I think a lot of people are going to latch onto this rather quickly
00:35:38
could we have a scenario where the listing agent gets upset with Charlotte for showing her
00:35:49
listed property right the the listing agent would get 100% commission 100% of the
00:35:57
commiss commission if the buyer is not represented by a realtor mhm so it does cut into their money however they don't
00:36:06
lose the commission they split the commission with the buying with the buyer realtor so back in 1997 you know
00:36:15
commissions have changed over the decades I don't know what they would have been in this area in 1997 I'm
00:36:23
guessing what was popular here in the late 90s was between like a 4 and 6% commission right so if you're splitting
00:36:32
that two ways it's it's two each 2 and A2 each three each somewhere in that neighborhood so this property as said
00:36:42
was listed for approximately 8 to n months before the murder takes place it was eventually sold even after the
00:36:50
murder I don't recall when but they did drop the price over the course of that time period that it's sat and did not
00:36:59
sell it was originally the first price that I could find listed here Captain was for
00:37:06
$279,000 and at the time of the murder it was listed at a selling price of $259,000 now why is that important
00:37:14
because again we are talking about people's livelihoods people that are in the business of working off of
00:37:20
commission and so it is important to know that this at the time in 1997 in this area this is considered to be a
00:37:29
higher end property to have as a listing also a higher end property to be showing to a potential buyer yeah I
00:37:37
understand that but it's not like you're cutting out their commission completely
00:37:40
so it just seems like a kind of a weak motive to be looking at the listing agent as a possible suspect and I think
00:37:50
that this case is rather complicated and I think that the part of the complications involved in this case is
00:37:58
again going back to the motive motive is elusive in many of these investigations in fact there's
00:38:06
often times where a case will go to trial and you will get a conviction and still nobody is certain of what the
00:38:12
exact motive was here in this case I really believe that if you could figure out the motive then you could separate
00:38:22
your Prime Suspect from all these other people that are just kind of jamming up your investigation right the the listing
00:38:28
agent is somebody you should look at why they would have reason to cut somebody out but like you said it's not a it's
00:38:38
not you don't have to make much of a leap to get to the listing agent and to start looking at that person yeah I
00:38:44
think it like I said it's a very weak motive and you have to look at the owner of the property because they have access
00:38:53
so the same goes for the listing agent because they have access to the property as well the other thing we should keep
00:39:00
in mind as well is that really truly because the property is listed with with her real estate firm anybody that works
00:39:09
for that real estate firm would have access to that home right and to that property now we do know that you know
00:39:16
today often you will see the lock boxes on the the doors that will you punch in a code and every realtor has a a very
00:39:25
specific unique code to get that key out and unlock the the home in this case from my understanding I don't know if
00:39:33
there was a lock box but what I do know is that at the real estate office where they worked there was a key there and
00:39:44
this is interesting so this is how we're going to we got to start filling in some
00:39:47
of the blanks here because there's some really interesting phone calls that take
00:39:52
place and it would take a very long time for police to release this information and in fact some of the information ends
00:39:59
up coming out from her real estate office so at the time there's approximately a little more than 50
00:40:06
people that work at this office it's located about 5 and 1 half to 6 miles away from the listed property what they
00:40:15
did back then and I'm sure this is fairly common in different lines of work where you're
00:40:22
primarily paid in commissions what they did was they would have a ation where you would get the you would
00:40:31
be the person that would be assigned the cold calls right so what this is is calls that would come in or people that
00:40:38
would potential clients that would drop into the the building unannounced with no appointment
00:40:44
scheduled and from my understanding Captain they actually had two agents that would do this task for a one for a
00:40:52
one week period to many that have never worked in in a line of work where you're
00:40:57
paid solely on commission you would think oh well this is annoying busy work who would want to do that you'd want to
00:41:03
keep all of your appointments well I think that's why they would assign two agents so that if you did have some
00:41:09
appointments you could keep them and make arrangements with the other agent so that there was always somebody to
00:41:14
answer the phone and also somebody to greet any walk-ins that they may have and in fact if you work on commissions
00:41:22
you you want to catch this task periodically because this is an opportunity for you to get new
00:41:29
clients by them just calling in or just walking into the office so from my understanding Captain Charlotte and
00:41:37
another agent were put put on this task for that week now remember we know the murder takes place on a Thursday and the
00:41:46
body's found on a Friday it's been reported that the appointment if you want to let's call it an appointment but
00:41:55
it's kind of a happened it's kind of a last minute appointment right she catches this
00:42:00
appointment by answering the phone that week so she's answering the phone for the office that week a call comes in the
00:42:07
day before the murder and I hate I'm going to I'm going to go be straight up with everybody right now because I think
00:42:14
there's some devil in the details here and the problem is the details are a little shaky right and part of that is
00:42:22
because police have not released information and still haven't all these years later the the details that are
00:42:28
shaky is that one it seems across the board everybody agrees that the call came in the day before that somebody
00:42:36
called and said hey I want to see this property I could be there tomorrow at 100 p.m. that's the way that it's
00:42:44
reported most of the time we're going to dive into that a little bit more but let's stick with that for now okay
00:42:50
Wednesday Charlotte receives a cold call she writes down this individual's name writes down the property and agrees
00:42:59
to meet them there at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday okay I I have a question yes sir so when she is getting this call is
00:43:07
this coming into her own private line or like a line that's dedicated towards her
00:43:15
or is it just coming in to the real estate company and she just happened to be the one that answered the phone all
00:43:22
indicators are was that this was not a call that where somebody asked for Charlotte Fano or that somebody was
00:43:29
calling her direct line every every Source says that she was working these cold calls along with another agent and
00:43:39
that's how this appointment was set up yeah because if you want to Target Charlotte right I'd go well what
00:43:48
listings does Charlotte have I'll set up appointment to see one of those houses so I can make sure I'm getting my target
00:43:59
I think there's evidence to show that that possibly the person didn't care who who showed up to show them the house
00:44:06
right and here here's the other problem with this information okay this I believe this information to be good
00:44:12
information the problem is it's not detailed enough again the devil is always in the details right the
00:44:18
information is that she catches this cold call that comes in and she agrees to meet an individual the following day
00:44:26
at one p.m. out at this property and the thing here though is when you start looking at source
00:44:34
information the sources report this differently several sources state that the caller a male caller called asking
00:44:44
to see a secluded vacant property now we don't know the details of that conversation and I don't believe for a
00:44:53
second that that conversation was one or two sentences long I I think this was probably a lengthier conversation
00:45:01
because a good salesperson and which what do we know about Charlotte she was a great
00:45:05
salesperson is going to try to get as much information from the potential buyer their potential client as possible
00:45:14
and so we don't know the details of that conversation but again several sources are saying that the male caller asked to
00:45:21
see a vacant secluded property okay so tell me if I'm crazy doesn't seem to me that this
00:45:31
killer is choosing his victim but he's choosing the location the location seems to be more important
00:45:40
well that could also go along with the other the other source information the other source information is very
00:45:47
different to me it says that the male caller was asking specifically about this property right
00:45:55
2147 Chelsea Lane but to me Captain those are two very different conversations right if if somebody calls
00:46:04
and says I want to look at 2147 Chelsea Lane that means they are aware of a couple things they're aware of the
00:46:13
property and they're aware that it's for sale and in this case we now know that there's a murder there then they also
00:46:21
knew that it was vacant now this doesn't mean that anybody has to have a great knowledge of this real estate company
00:46:30
their firm and their listings I mean they could have just seen this property in the newspaper on a Sunday and decided
00:46:35
to drive out there and go yeah that that the paper says it's vacant and that looks pretty secluded right so it could
00:46:43
be a complete stranger and you're right it could be somebody that's not targeting Charlotte at all just
00:46:48
targeting female realtor but the problem here is again the other source information saying that the maale caller
00:46:57
asked to see a vacant secluded property which sounds very nefarious right it sounds like why wouldn't Charlotte pick
00:47:06
up on oh this is probably not a great appointment to take I have a male caller who wants to see a vacant secluded
00:47:14
property it's the conversation the the caller likely would never have called up and said yo I want
00:47:21
to see a vacant empty secluded property they probably had a conversation where the the it's a ruse where the caller
00:47:29
says you know I'm looking for something that's kind of out of the way I don't like to be in a busy neighborhood um I
00:47:35
also want something that I can move into right away also means vacant right right
00:47:41
um so that that seems like a much less nefarious conversation again I don't have any I
00:47:48
don't fault any of this Source material because a lot of it's coming from newspapers and and and very good
00:47:55
newspapers at that but it's reported two different ways and I think that to me anyway I think that that separates some
00:48:03
of the theories and some of the possibilities in the case if perpetrator was calling specifically about a
00:48:10
property and giving the address versus oh this is what I'm kind of looking for and she she would have pointed out she
00:48:19
would have known about this property it's listed with her firm right she may have suggested it so that's a little bit
00:48:27
tricky so we have that phone call that takes place everything says that that phone
00:48:33
call takes place on Wednesday we don't know what details police were able to decipher from the notes that she took
00:48:41
from that phone call other than they have said that they did have a name in her appointment
00:48:50
book and it sounds to me like they've confirmed that that is a fictitious name now that's Wednesday so Thursday
00:49:01
she goes out and shows the property and again the appointment is for 100 p.m. this is information that has come from
00:49:08
the real estate firm and I believe later police have confirm this but I I want to
00:49:14
get into why I have a problem with the timeline too especially on this Thursday now some more details here captain that
00:49:21
are are very interesting Christian Fano and his wife Charlotte Fano obviously they live together but
00:49:32
remember the daughter lives there as well Christy lives there and from my understanding at this point starting in
00:49:39
August of that year her boyfriend lives with them chrisy is a senior in college so she's
00:49:48
grown Christian Works a not so typical work schedule he works 10hour days around 6 or 7 p.m. on
00:50:00
Thursday the day in question Christy the daughter calls her stepfather Christian
00:50:05
at work and says you know it's 6:30 it's 7:00 p.m. mom's not home yet this is a little weird usually she's home by now
00:50:14
and from my understanding while this woman stayed very busy with her work and she was an extreme professional and
00:50:20
extremely good at her sales job she was also very much a creature of habit once her work was done she was an at home
00:50:29
person she was a home buy yeah you can work hard and play hard and you can also not play hard and just sit at home yeah
00:50:36
the playing hard could be uh work hard relax hard that's right so Christian says to chrisy on the
00:50:45
phone you know I understand your concern but also keep in mind when when you work
00:50:50
in the sales business if you want to be really good at it your schedule is whatever your client schedule
00:50:57
is if a potential buyer can only go and look at a home at 700 p.m. on a Thursday
00:51:05
well if you want to be successful you better take that 7 P.M appointment and Christian and Charlotte have been
00:51:12
together for well over a decade they I think they got married in in the early 80s like
00:51:18
8081 and so this is 1997 he says to Christy you know she's probably just out on a late appointment
00:51:27
showing a house to potential buyer or maybe she's taking a listing I'm sure it's nothing and I'm sure she'll be home
00:51:33
soon okay so that phone call ends Christian gets home from work after a little after 11:30 this is why the
00:51:41
missing persons report comes in so late he gets home and his stepdaughter Chrissy's like she's still not here okay
00:51:48
now Christian's concerned so he calls into police just before midnight shortly after arriving home hey my wife is
00:51:55
missing and an interesting thing too about this line of work Realtors are not like
00:52:02
completely unknown in their towns right you you're used to sometimes you'll see their their
00:52:09
face and name on their listings on the signs in front of the properties and it's not uncommon too to see their names
00:52:16
and faces on billboards yeah or in the newspaper in the newspaper exactly yeah or on urinal cakes my favorite we have
00:52:24
this person who's now missing she's officially missing reported missing so by her family I found this detail to be
00:52:31
very strange because you know that I love the anytime that there's a communication from a killer or Anonymous
00:52:38
person to the media or to law enforcement remember it's reported that an anonymous call comes in to 911 on
00:52:46
Friday morning that leads them to that property where they ultimately find her car and then her body that call actually
00:52:55
while it's listed as Anonymous in the newspapers I think they may have done this for safety concerns that 911 call
00:53:03
actually came from her husband so what he does Captain is very early Friday morning he starts calling her office and
00:53:11
other people that she worked with and he's like look she didn't come home last night I reported her
00:53:17
missing we think that this might be work related and whoever gets to the office rather early they able to determine a
00:53:27
couple things one that the key for 2147 Chelsea Lane is still gone from their keyboard and two it was Charlotte Fano
00:53:40
that was scheduled to show that property I have a question do you know if there was other properties that were pulled to
00:53:47
show this individual or was it just this house because sometimes when you're looking for a house the real estate
00:53:54
agent will take you to multiple properties from my understanding this was the only property that she was
00:54:00
showing to this caller mhm so police armed with this information they now drive out to that property and
00:54:07
immediately again they find her vehicle then they find her dead inside those all
00:54:12
those phone calls are very important it shows some movement and communication and an appointment set up
00:54:21
by the likely killer right the the person that called and set up the appointment does doesn't 100% have to be
00:54:27
the killer but would seem to be the most likely of persons to be responsible for
00:54:33
the [Music] [Music] mder want to thank each and every one of you for joining us here in the garage
00:54:51
and until tomorrow be good be kind and don't litter [Music]