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00:01:41
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Nick, and
00:01:47
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00:01:53
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00:01:59
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tell them to send the garage some beers and we'll and we'll give them a little love in return. And Colonel, that's
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enough of the business. All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.
00:03:46
[Music] I can't tell you where I was, but I can remember being just sick. Just sick.
00:04:10
Anytime a child is involved, it's the worst. So, um, you know, you hold your kids tighter. you walk you look at
00:04:18
people differently for a long time, you know, untrusting and um it's just it was tough. I mean, you just feel
00:04:28
horrible for the family and the community. So, we knew she was uh based upon, you
00:04:35
know, when she was uh found where she was left um some she was held somewhere. There's no doubt about it.
00:04:43
So, I can't we just what she went through. If you let your mind go too far, open a rage, you know, it's hard to
00:04:51
contain. It was actually the weather, I think, that gave them the clearest idea because
00:05:00
she had snow and ice on her and it had snowed and, you know, we' had that winter weather
00:05:09
overnight and she had that that uh precipitation on her body. So, we know she was there at least before then.
00:05:19
But there was and I'm sure the temperature had a lot to do with it because it was winter, but there was no
00:05:25
decomposition per se. So she wasn't we they figured she wasn't out there very long because
00:05:33
like I said, she had that snow on there. So we know she was there before that, but again, no decomposition or anything.
00:05:39
So I don't know that they narrowed it down, but they figured she was somewhere for
00:05:44
several days. [Music] This week we go out to St. Louis County, Missouri for a true crime story that
00:06:02
starts off in the late fall of 1993. To hone in a little closer, we will be in St. An, Missouri. And our coverage of
00:06:12
this case, you're going to hear a lot of saints. St. Louis County, St. Charles County, city of St. Anne, and of course,
00:06:20
we have the city of St. Louis. So, my apologies in advance if the number of saints here makes this case more
00:06:27
confusing than it needs to be. The real pisser is all of the saints in the world
00:06:31
didn't stop the evil that invaded St. Anne in northwest St. Louis County in the late fall and early winter of 1993.
00:06:40
Let's start with the late fall and work our way through. So, we're going to talk
00:06:44
about November 18th, 1993. That is the day in question. This is one week before Thanksgiving, 1993. November 18th should
00:06:55
have been just another Thursday, just another ordinary day for the folks of St. Anne, Missouri. That day was a
00:07:02
school day, of course. And just like she had done so many times before, little 9-year-old Angie Houseman packed up her
00:07:09
backpack, walked out of her home on Wright Avenue. She walked about eight or so houses down to the bus stop where she
00:07:16
met up with some of her schoolmates. They boarded the bus and it was off to school for another day of learning and
00:07:22
hopefully a little fun as well. Angie was in the fourth grade at Butter Elementary School on Baltimore Avenue in
00:07:30
St. An. This is a quiet bluecollar suburb of St. Louis. Angie was a cheerful and kind-hearted kid. She was
00:07:40
regarded to be quite a gifted student, so very smart and she applied herselves and worked hard in the classroom. She
00:07:49
was outgoing and very quick to make people smile. To say she was outgoing, I think, is a bit of an understatement.
00:07:57
She would regularly approach people that she may not have known and speak with them and talk with them and engage them
00:08:04
in conversation. And I have seen several reports and many people say that if she
00:08:12
met you once or twice, she considered you to be a friend. She was just that kind of person inviting you into her
00:08:21
world. The school day on that Thursday came and went with all of the normal regularities, lunch, recess, and book
00:08:29
learning. And at the end of the school day, just a bit after 300 p.m., little 9-year-old Angie Houseman packed up her
00:08:35
blue and white book bag and joined a number of her schoolmates once again on the big yellow school bus. Destination,
00:08:44
Wright Avenue, back to her home. The bus pulled up to stop at Wright Avenue at the normal time. The bus stop located
00:08:54
just eight houses down from her home. Angie got off of the school bus just like she did each afternoon in her
00:09:01
neighborhood. She's not the only kid at this stop. Typically, two parents on the
00:09:07
street would watch as the kids walk to their houses on Wright Avenue. However, on this Thursday, those two parents were
00:09:15
both busy and no one was watching the children as they walked home. Now, a short time later, Angie's stepfather,
00:09:22
his name is Ron Bone, he returned from work. Typically, when Ron would arrive home on a school day, he would see
00:09:31
Angie's backpack placed in its usual afterchool resting place, between the back of the couch and the front door in
00:09:39
the living room of the home. They lived in a duplex. On this Thursday, when Ron came home, there was no backpack. And
00:09:49
quickly, he learned that there was no Angie as well. Angie had to walk eight houses to her home from that bus stop.
00:09:56
We have other school kids to tell us that yes, Angie rode the bus that afternoon and yes, she got off with the
00:10:05
other kids as usual. In fact, some of the kids remember seeing her get off of the bus and walking in the direction of
00:10:12
her home, but at some point she seemed to just simply vanish. Eyewitnesses at the bus stop confirmed that Angie had
00:10:19
gotten off the bus at the regular time. To be very specific, this bus stop was located at the corner of Wright Avenue
00:10:26
and St. Gregory Lane. Quote, she had four more houses to go to make it into the house and she never made it, said
00:10:34
Angie's stepdad, Ron. Sounds to me, Captain, like several of the other schoolmates must have seen her
00:10:42
walking for some time, passing a few houses before they went on their way or made their way into their own homes,
00:10:50
thus losing sight of the little girl. And what happened from that point is really up for debate and what is in
00:11:00
question here. So, we have eyewitnesses in this case, but limited details. Exactly. kids in the neighborhood did
00:11:07
not recall seeing where Angie went. And one thing they do recall when being asked that I mean she wasn't with
00:11:13
anybody at some point when she gets off of this bus. She is then at some point walking alone. So she is there one
00:11:21
minute and simply gone the next. There are different reports on what time she got off of the bus. And this case has no
00:11:29
shortage of internet coverage over the years. I think a lot of that was spawned from the very extensive coverage that
00:11:40
this received in the newspapers local and even in the region as far as Chicago this case was heavily reported on. So
00:11:52
over time I think maybe that exact time has been lost. We we'll get into that in
00:11:58
just a second here, Captain. The key thing here is that all reports state that it was only a short time between
00:12:03
the bus ride home and when Ron got home. This typically would be between 30 and 60 or so minutes. Uh
00:12:12
Ron's wife and Angie's mother, Diana, was home at this time as well. I asked the detectives who worked the case and
00:12:22
they said that the times that they had were pretty exact and they broke it down for me like this. The bus dropped her
00:12:30
off between 3:50 and 3:52 p.m. that afternoon. That's pretty precise there. Ron gets home on this day
00:12:42
around 5 or so. He works at Sears Auto, which was close to the home, so it's just a very short drive. when he gets
00:12:50
home, Diana and the toddler. So, Angie had a a a little brother and he was about two at
00:13:00
this time. Mom and her little brother are sleeping on the couch when Ron gets home. The backpack, as we said, was not
00:13:06
there. So, he wakes up Diana. They go out in the neighborhood and they are looking for little Angie. around 6:00
00:13:15
p.m. or maybe a few minutes after this. Again, according to detectives, this is when Diana and Ron flag down a Saint an
00:13:24
patrol officer. So, there's a officer just driving in the area making their rounds. They see the officer, flag him
00:13:33
down, and that is when a report is made saying, "Hey, our daughter is missing. She's 9 years old. This is what she
00:13:40
looks like. We can't find her." This is similar to we've seen this in some other
00:13:45
cases where parents are out looking for a child or children and happen to see a police officer and report it then and
00:13:55
there without having to make a call or go to the police department. I believe it was in the me West Memphis 3 case
00:14:01
when you had Mark Buyers and his family out looking for Christopher Buyers and they flagged down an officer. But I do
00:14:09
think that's important in this case and in other cases because that's a definitive
00:14:16
dot on the timeline where some other things could be speculation or you just have to take that person's word for it.
00:14:23
This is at least something that is probably documented in the police records. The detective stated that there
00:14:30
was no hesitation from police. They sprung into action immediately looking for the little girl. So, we do have to
00:14:39
point out here though, given this fairly exact timeline, very precise within 2 minutes, 3:50 to 3:52 that afternoon
00:14:49
when the bus dropped her off. Ron arrives home around 5. They're out looking for her shirt shortly after and
00:14:56
then reporting it to police around 6:00 or just after. The abductor had time to move. It was a small amount of time, but
00:15:04
the abductor had some time to move. Now, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported that one neighbor who usually stood
00:15:13
guard at her window to watch children get off of the bus did not do so that day. and another neighbor who also
00:15:23
watched the afternoon drop offs from her front porch. She just so happened to be
00:15:30
away taking care of her sick father that day. So, this is one of those weird scenarios and we come across this in so
00:15:38
many cases where things just line up to fail that day and and it's all happen stance. It's no one's fault. But on this
00:15:48
day, things that normally would happen did not occur. And so, nobody saw where this little girl went, what happened to
00:15:57
her. When Angie failed to return home after school, her mother and stepfather, as we said, became concerned. This is
00:16:05
part of the story and it and it forever will be. But like I had talked about when we were going through some of her
00:16:14
personality traits, her mother and stepfather were very upfront with this right away, saying that Angie was
00:16:21
outgoing and it was not uncommon for her to get engaged in conversation with other schoolmates when she's getting off
00:16:29
the bus, maybe even follow them to their home briefly, and then she would make her way back to her house. It was also
00:16:38
not uncommon for her to come home, drop the book bag, and then go back out into the neighborhood and look for somebody
00:16:43
to hang out with or talk to or play with. She was always looking to hang out with some people. But their general
00:16:51
stance on this captain was that she would rarely be gone for very long, right? And so this is why they sprung into
00:17:00
action very quickly. Part of it too is her age. And this is a heavily populated area. Now, St. An's from my
00:17:09
understanding is I don't know 3/4 mile, four/4 miles, but there's a lot of people that live here. St. Louis is a
00:17:17
very heavily populated area. And it is a very expansive area. And really what set this whole
00:17:25
thing off was the book bag. No book bag. So, mom and dad sprung into action. They
00:17:32
began to search the neighborhood. No sign of Angie. They're knocking on doors during this time before they flagged
00:17:38
down the police, asking the neighbors if they had seen her or maybe is she somewhere playing with your kid. This
00:17:44
turned up a whole lot of nothing. The parents quickly reported the child missing as we said and very quickly a
00:17:50
bolo goes out to all the patrol officers in the area to be on the lookout for a small Caucasian girl with dark hair
00:17:58
likely carrying a backpack. and the search for a little girl began that evening.
00:18:06
This is a heavily populated area. So, I'm guessing with the neighbors having young kids and and other school kids in
00:18:14
the area that a lot of individuals start searching for her and trying to help the
00:18:19
family out. Yeah, this as said is a bluecollar neighborhood. It's a lot of nice homes,
00:18:25
small homes, but it's a tight-knit community and a lot of people know one another. And as you heard, we have a
00:18:33
scenario where we have folks looking out for each other, right? Moms or dads watching as the bus pick up the children
00:18:40
or the buses dropping off the neighborhood kids at the end of the day. Now, when nighttime hits, that is when
00:18:47
things really start to get scary, especially for the family and the parents in particular. By the next
00:18:53
morning, you have a whole new set of concerns. Of course, I'm going to try to stick to looking at this from the
00:19:01
investigator side of things. The very first thing that you would be doing is to do a canvas of the area. Confirm that
00:19:10
she was in fact on the bus. Once you've confirmed this, now you're canvasing the
00:19:15
neighborhood, her street, the surrounding streets, the bus route. It's a a six or seven minute drive from
00:19:21
Butter Elementary to Angie's house. Of course, you're going to question the parents, the parents friends, and
00:19:27
extended family. For your neighborhood canvas, you are doing a knock and talk. You're
00:19:34
going to knock. Somebody opens up the door and you are going to engage them in conversation and you are going to peek
00:19:40
around them, see what you can see into their home. It would not be out of the realm of possibility that whatever
00:19:46
happened to her, she may still be close even if she was abducted. You're going to also want to be set up for a trap and
00:19:56
trace at some point. You have to set up for a trap and trace. We could get a ransom call. You are look in a lot of
00:20:03
these scenarios you as weird as it may sound you are hoping for some kind of ransom call if you cannot locate the
00:20:11
missing individual. And then ransom or no ransom state lines or no state lines, you are contacting the FBI and informing
00:20:20
them that you have a child, a missing child and and what you are seeing here is telling you that this child may have
00:20:28
been abducted and especially in this case, right? Because you have a great FBI field office right there in St.
00:20:37
Louis that covers St. Louis and five counties. And I don't know about 30 years ago, but today the FBI has three
00:20:46
resident agencies in that area as well. The other thing you have here, and this is true for a lot of other heavily
00:20:53
populated areas where you have expanding an expanding populace sprawling across several jurisdictions like what we have
00:21:02
here in St. Louis, the greater St. Louis area. They have a major case squad. This
00:21:08
will be investigators from multiple agencies. oftentimes working together side by side or at least with regular
00:21:14
open door communications with each department and agency. Of course, we don't want a kidnapping case anywhere
00:21:23
ever, but at least here you have resources at a very, very high level. It is only about a 15-minute drive or so
00:21:32
from the FBI field office out to the abduction site. So, the FBI joined the search for 9-year-old Angie Hman on that
00:21:43
Friday. So, just under 24 hours after Angie goes missing, we have the FBI involved. Now, speaking of FBI, because
00:21:53
their agents typically investigate far more abduction cases, especially abduction cases involving children, one
00:22:00
agent that worked a lot of these kinds of cases out in California is on record saying that often you are reminded the
00:22:07
very sad, very grim, and scary reminder of thirds when it comes to these types of cases. This agent said that a third
00:22:16
of the kids are located and returned home. A third of the kids are found dead and a third are never found at all.
00:22:24
Ever. And another agent who worked the very well-known infamous case in California is on record saying that he
00:22:31
out of all the child abduction cases that he worked, he only got two ransom calls. The rest, no ransom calls. And in
00:22:39
those cases, the child was no longer alive once found. And obviously this could be just happen stance that
00:22:47
somebody came across her, but you would you would think it's maybe more likely that they understood the schedule. And
00:22:56
so we were talking, I think last week about how these killers will go to a mall because their victim type is a
00:23:04
teenage girl. Well, if your victim type is a elementary school girl, you can follow the bus. Yeah. And that's the
00:23:14
another sad scary realization here that the short amount of time that would have
00:23:18
taken her to walk the eight maybe nine houses from that intersection, the corner bus
00:23:26
stop back to her home. It's such a short window of time that it would seem plausible that whoever took this kid may
00:23:35
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cheers to you Colonel. Cheers to you, Captain. Happy, happy, happy Fourth of July and Independence Day to all of our
00:28:40
great fellow Americans out there. Please celebrate responsibly, have a great time, grill out, crank up some music,
00:28:50
get together with friends and family, and just just have a great time. And and this year it's awesome that it falls on
00:28:57
a Friday. So everybody gets a hopefully you're getting a big long weekend to spend with your friends and family. The
00:29:05
victimology here and it gets a little trit and generic when we have such young victims
00:29:13
and like we do in this case. You know a lot of these children have very similar personalities or at least situations,
00:29:22
right? living situations. And here seems to be a very common situation. We have Angela Marie Angie Houseman who was born
00:29:32
February 18th, 1984. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri. As we had said, she is
00:29:37
a fourth grader who lived in St. Anne. She lived with her parents in a two-bedroom duplex on Wright Avenue. She
00:29:45
was a big sister to her little brother. He was about 2 years old when Angie went
00:29:51
missing. Her mother, Diana Houseman, married her stepfather, Ronald Bone, when Angie was just a toddler.
00:30:00
So, he had been in the picture. They had been living together for quite some time
00:30:04
leading up to this. Years later, years after she went missing, Ron described himself as a proud father.
00:30:12
Angie's biological father wasn't much in the picture. um he he is known he is somebody that police spoke with many
00:30:19
times but he wasn't somebody that was really playing much of a role at all in in her life. Now I'm not saying this
00:30:29
suggesting that there was a really good reason to but the parents were looked at
00:30:35
very strong in this case. The biological parents and Angie's stepfather were all
00:30:40
looked at very strong in this case. this was much much more it it's difficult to
00:30:46
say because I think that this case has so many complexities that I think the opinions and theories and
00:30:54
thoughts of detectives that worked this case over the many many years probably went in and out and changed their
00:31:01
thoughts on this case and who looked suspicious, who sounds suspicious and who they should be looking at. But I
00:31:10
think in large part, mostly here, Captain, that this was just a matter of due diligence and conducting a proper
00:31:17
and thorough investigation when it comes to the parents. Yeah, that'd be a tough situation, but
00:31:23
again, it's like, look at me, do the work that you need to do to rule me in or out so we can start looking in the
00:31:31
right direction. Yeah. And the stepfather, he complicates the case even further because he says
00:31:38
weird stuff throughout the course of this investigation. Some of his statements are are downright
00:31:45
incriminating, but from my understanding, there's a I hesitate to say this because I don't
00:31:53
know that it to be fact, but I I question if he has some disabilities and that maybe some of those statements come
00:32:02
from stem from that. I I don't want to linger on this too long because it's I've not
00:32:09
met the man. Where we go here now though, we got Thursday night is over. Friday comes and goes, then the weekend
00:32:16
passes, all with Angie still gone. Not good. No ransom call, no great leads early on. Police and
00:32:26
detectives are working around the clock. It's late in the year, the days are getting shorter, the nights are getting
00:32:32
longer, and it's getting colder outside as the calendar works itself closer and closer to the end of November. Now,
00:32:39
obviously at this point, they don't find her. But do they find any evidence of her? Do they find her book bag? Do they
00:32:47
find a notebook? Do they find anything? No. And usually in these cases, we have something like that, right? Where we
00:32:54
have a the start of a breadcrumb trail or somebody saw something or, oh, I think I heard something,
00:33:01
right? you know, or or even maybe blocks away or down the road somewhere. Somebody goes, "Yeah, I saw a guy in a
00:33:10
vehicle that I've never seen before and there was there was some kind of kid looked like there was a kid in the car."
00:33:14
We we don't have any of that here. It's It's crickets. It's nothing. Yeah. Or there's a some weirdo that was
00:33:21
walking down the street and he was fugly as hell. Might be somebody we want to look into. The city and the area was on
00:33:30
high alert. And people were afraid, openly afraid. Who would take a little girl and why?
00:33:38
And where the hell is she? A sicko. We're looking for a sicko. I mean, that's what we know. We're looking
00:33:44
for do we do a pervert roundup? The old famous pervert roundup. They did the old pervert roundup.
00:33:53
Old Mr. McSticky. 3 days after Angie vanished. We are now at November 21st on the timeline. I mentioned the major case
00:34:02
squad. Earlier, this is when they were brought in. So, you have the FBI there on day two and then by Monday, you have
00:34:13
the major case squad that is brought in. This was no doubt a massive search effort for this little kid. The local
00:34:21
media covered the case very well. Angie's face and last scene information were plastered everywhere.
00:34:29
Police received hundreds of tips from all over the St. Louis area to emphasize just how well the local law enforcement
00:34:38
fully understood the urgent nature of this case. This was only the second time in history that the major case squad
00:34:47
came in to work a case without a body. So this is all hands on deck situation. Now one thing that was reported and the
00:34:59
police learned about fairly early in their investigation here, Captain, there was an attempted abduction nearby that
00:35:08
was reported just a little more than a week before Angie's disappearance. Wow. But that girl was lucky. Somehow she
00:35:18
managed to get away from the creep. Now, here is what we know, right? This happened on November 8th in
00:35:25
Maryland Heights in the 2800 block of Smiley Road. So, this is about 4 miles from Angie's house, just a short
00:35:34
10-minute drive away. The perp was described as a white male, mid40s, approximately 200 lb, a mustache, and
00:35:44
glasses. He was driving a white car. A police sketch was produced of this perpetrator, of the person attempting
00:35:54
the abduction of this other little girl, and it was displayed on the evening and
00:36:00
nighttime news as well as in the paper. So, the sketch was in the paper multiple
00:36:05
times, but the sketch didn't really produce any leads that would direct police to a
00:36:12
suspect or more importantly to Angie. So, I'm looking at the sketch now. It's pretty detailed.
00:36:20
The guy has distinguishable hair, I would say. And uh looks like we got a double chin and a little little bit of a
00:36:30
chubby bohemoth. One week after Angie disappeared, it was Thanksgiving and at the Bone Houseman
00:36:38
family home, they had little if anything to be thankful for. The city was on high
00:36:43
alert and people were very much afraid. Who would take a little girl and why and
00:36:48
where the hell is she? Thanksgiving 1993 was celebrated on Thursday, November 25th. Angie vanished on her way home
00:36:58
from school exactly one week prior. On this Thanksgiving, people watched the 67th annual Macy's Day Parade featuring
00:37:07
the great Stevie Wonder, one of my favorites, and actor Kelsey Grammar. Folks tuned in to see the Dallas Cowboys
00:37:15
take on the Miami Dolphins at Texas Stadium in a game later called the Sleep Bowl or the Snow Bowl as temperatures in
00:37:24
Dallas never got above 35° in that game. Meanwhile, at a house in a neighboring county, a 13-year-old boy was visiting
00:37:35
friends on that Thanksgiving. there. The folks were sitting around watching the Thanksgiving Day football game during
00:37:43
which an enticing preview for the later newscast came on the TV screen. The news person
00:37:52
said something to the effect of, "Coming up tonight, the search for 9-year-old Angie Hman continues."
00:37:59
Mhm. So after this news breakak, the 13-year-old boy, the one visiting the home, he tells his friend in the
00:38:06
grown-ups in the room, I know where they will find her. They'll find her tied to
00:38:11
a tree in bush wildlife area. That's and then bizarre. Then the kid mentioned something about a
00:38:18
blue car. So he told the room that he saw it in a dream. No one really said much. The sad and scary subject was not
00:38:26
brought up again. The commercial break was over and the football game resumed. Late in the game, Dallas Cowboy
00:38:32
defensive player Leon Lit performed another in-game mistake by slipping in the snow to accidentally touch the
00:38:38
football after a blocked field goal attempt. This error gave the Dolphins the ball back deep in Cowboys territory.
00:38:47
Miami would go on to win 16 to 14. So, while America celebrated with food, family, friends, and football at Angie's
00:38:54
house, they cried, hugged one another, and tried to keep it together all while praying that the little girl would
00:39:00
somehow return home safe. But that was not to be. Well, let's go. Hold on. Let's go back
00:39:05
to this uh 13-year-old boy. This with a weird dream. I mean, if you're at Thanksgiving and and
00:39:12
this uh news report came on TV and your little nephew said something strange, don't you think you're going to do
00:39:20
something with that information? Or you just going to view it as well? I mean, we don't know the kids, so maybe it just
00:39:26
says weird stuff all the time. Yeah, I don't really know how to wrap my head around that situation.
00:39:35
Yeah, it's very bizarre. Two days later, on Saturday, November 27th, 1993, just nine days after she disappeared, a deer
00:39:46
hunter found something in a wooded area. This is in August a Bush Wildlife Area.
00:39:54
August Anheiser Bush Wildlife Area. I spoke with the officer that was first on the scene
00:40:04
and the wounds of what he experienced have not healed. Like I I'm saying that for him. This is not what he told me.
00:40:12
This is just the feeling that you got when you were speaking with him. Yeah. And I've spoke with a lot of law
00:40:18
enforcement personnel on many different matters. This one is one of the most difficult conversations I've ever had.
00:40:27
So maybe I was in my feelings a bit, but it would be it would be weird if he didn't feel I mean, this man is scarred
00:40:36
by what he witnessed that day. He's scarred by the whole investigation. That seems plain as day to me. I'll go
00:40:46
through some of what's been reported online and try to weave in his description of the area. So, while it's
00:40:54
reported that a a deer hunter was the the person that found this gruesome site in this wooded area,
00:41:02
the officer says, "I didn't know 100%, but I was pretty convinced immediately that it was Angie Houseman. I knew she
00:41:11
was missing. Everybody in the area knew she was missing. We didn't really have any other missing little kid cases at
00:41:19
the time and it was obvious that it was a child that they had found, not an adult. Now, it's a complicated crime
00:41:26
scene and you'll understand if you don't know this case, you'll understand very quickly why. So, the the deer hunter was
00:41:34
actually out with somebody else. It was two hunters, let's call them, but they weren't out hunting that day. They they
00:41:41
had drove up to the area and they were scouting. A lot of times hunters will go out and scout an area because if there's
00:41:47
no animal activity, if in fact they were hunting for deer, if there's no deer activity in the area, it's it's
00:41:54
pointless to go up and spend a whole day looking and waiting to to find and hunt
00:42:01
something. So, they're up there kind of scouting out this area. But, you know, if there's no deer in the area, it gives
00:42:08
you guys more time to talk about your feelings and hold hands. Well, they had they had checked in with a
00:42:15
conservation officer earlier. I don't know if there was a check-in process or if this was
00:42:21
more happen stance, but anyway, they had spoke with a conservation officer. His name escapes me at the moment. They come
00:42:28
across this horrific scene and they immediately contact the conservation officer and then we have a domino effect
00:42:37
of the conservation officer contacts the sheriff's department. Now, we need to note here that this is while it's still
00:42:45
relatively close to where Angie Houseman lived, it is in a neighboring county. So, now we are talking about St. Charles
00:42:56
County, Missouri. So this deputy, he was very nearby when So he gets the call just because he's in close proximity.
00:43:06
He arrives. He talks to the con conservation officer who tells them, "Hey, I went in there and looked and I
00:43:16
just to confirm that I was seeing what what they thought they had seen right before calling you. And I, you know, I'm
00:43:24
here to tell you that I'm pretty sure that that that what they were reporting is correct. So, very astutely, the
00:43:33
officer, the deputy says, "Show me exactly how you walked in. Let's go. Let's enter this area the way that you
00:43:40
entered, and let's exit the way that you exited." So, there had been some snowfall, some light snowfall, and the
00:43:49
deputy, he said that he could see the conservation officer's footprints in the snow. So, he he knew where where to go
00:43:59
in and how to leave. And he was already very mindful of the idea that there is going to be physical evidence here. we
00:44:07
do not want to disturb the scene or create any kind of chaos at the scene. And he described this area as a heavily
00:44:17
wooded area, but he said that even though the leaves had mostly fallen or all had fallen by this time of year,
00:44:27
that it would still be very difficult to see back in to this space. However, she
00:44:34
was found on the ground and he he he had said had she been standing up or maybe even sitting up
00:44:43
that he may have spotted her sooner on his own even without the report coming in because he often patrolled that area.
00:44:53
This was an area that people would go back and park. You might get teenagers that would go drink back there. their a
00:45:00
party spot. And th this seemed very strange, but but he said it so matterof factly that it doesn't seem strange at
00:45:06
all to the people that live there. He had said that he would go back and check cars in this area of this wildlife
00:45:14
preserve because it wasn't uncommon for someone to commit suicide in their car. Wow. back in this area or and I also
00:45:26
wonder with you know this is the early 90s but since then I also wonder if this is a may be an area where people
00:45:34
accidentally overdose as well. So anyway this this was an area where not too far from where she was
00:45:41
found they he would go back there and check vehicles and and snoop around and look around and he patrolled this area
00:45:50
regularly. He told me that she was found about 30 yards from the road. Again, heavily wooded area, difficult to see
00:46:00
back in there. I'll go off of what the internet and newspaper reports are and then if needed fill in some of the
00:46:09
additional information that we received from the detectives. So eventually, of course, they will identify the body that
00:46:18
was located as that of Angie Hman. She was found nude, and the short description is that she was tied to a
00:46:28
tree about 90 ft from the road. Her wrist had been handcuffed. She had duct tape covering most of her
00:46:38
face except for her nose. Under the duct tape, they found a cut piece of Barbie doll underwear, which was confirmed to
00:46:45
be hers. The rest of her clothing was found somewhat near the body in a Dollar General bag, you know, one of those
00:46:56
thin plastic bags that you get from the from the store when you pick up items. And the backpack was found as well. This
00:47:06
was actually located on the other side of the street. So, if you can kind of picture this, you go back into this
00:47:14
wooded area and on one side of the street, you're going to have where you would walk in and find the body about 90
00:47:23
ft from the road. And then on the other side of that road in a basically an adjacent location is where they find
00:47:33
what what would probably look like debris to just anybody that's passing by or like oh great somebody littered out
00:47:40
here in this wildlife area but it was actually evidence for their case because it was items belonging to the victim.
00:47:50
So, now we have a body. We have an absolutely horrific crime scene and a missing person's case that just turned
00:47:57
into a homicide case. A little more description here. Tied to the tree. So, she was tied to the tree with her own
00:48:05
jeans. These would have been jeans that she was wearing when she went missing. Whoever placed her there, we had
00:48:14
mentioned handcuffs. They had taken the legs of the jeans and tied it around a tree and then tied a knot to the
00:48:21
handcuffs and this is what secured her to that tree. Now, the detective speculated that
00:48:29
had she been in better shape when she was placed. So, one of the most This is one of the most difficult and horrific
00:48:38
cases that we've ever had to cover, right? Uh, I think just because the nature of how this poor little girl was
00:48:44
found. And so bear with me here as I struggle to to go down this road here one more time and hopefully for the last
00:48:53
for me anyway. The handcuffs were not like a police grade. These were like novelty handcuffs that you would
00:49:01
purchase at a store for I think most kids own a pair of these when they're younger. Well, I'm glad you
00:49:10
pointed that out because these are not like the the play handcuffs that are of, you know, for magic tricks or for uh the
00:49:19
even plastic ones that are just straight up toy handcuffs. These are a little more novelty maybe that that adults
00:49:27
would purchase for bedroom activities, I guess you would say. Joy toys. The jeans were tied around these
00:49:37
handcuffs or Her hands were cuffed behind her back. The detective speculated that had she
00:49:43
been she was alive when she was placed there. They're absolutely certain of that because there is physical evidence
00:49:51
telling them that at the scene. Right. Now, what he said to me, had she been in better health when she was placed there,
00:49:59
she might have been able to stand up. And if that were the case, like he said, he may have spotted her. somebody may
00:50:06
have spotted her prior to this. Now, just point out a couple things. I mean, one of the things that you said that you
00:50:12
can just visually see, you almost said it perfectly to put a picture in your mind is when the law law enforcement
00:50:19
officer is going out to the scene and he sees these footprints. So then obviously
00:50:24
it's like you got to make this mental note that if somebody's leaving footprints, there could be other
00:50:29
footprints. There could be other evidence at this scene. And also the placement of her, it's confusing because
00:50:38
on one level you go, well, was she placed out here to die or did the person that attacked her thought did he think
00:50:47
she was dead already and and just left her thinking that she was already dead? Because obviously if she's not dead,
00:50:55
that would give her some kind of a chance possibly. Uh but like you said, law enforcement officer saying that
00:51:02
she's so um in a bad situation, but the imagery kind of reminds you of the first case in True Detective season
00:51:14
1, just the placement of the body around the tree and the hands behind the back.
00:51:20
And then am I missing something? We have this 13-year-old that basically tells his
00:51:27
family that she's going to be found tied to a tree. Yeah, that is just I mean one of many
00:51:36
many very strange and complicated parts to this case and investigation. the So, one thing that I struggled with
00:51:46
early in this was the thought like you had said maybe and I think shame on me because I think I gave the the killer
00:51:55
far too much credit when I had pondered the idea of well maybe he or they thought she was dead
00:52:03
when they placed her there. But but they wouldn't they wouldn't tie the jeans to
00:52:07
the handcuffs like that. I think that that is more of an indicator that the person or persons knew that she was
00:52:15
still alive and they were just too big of [ __ ] cowards to do the job themselves and they left her out there
00:52:22
in and in in a very cruel one of the most cruel acts I've ever ever read about or talked about and the but then
00:52:34
you also wonder if there's something that happened when the individual was out there. This is
00:52:40
obviously not a heavily populated area, but if you look into the Deli case, you know, there's some evidence that if the
00:52:49
killer got disrupted that one of the victims, we believe wasn't fully dead by the time that the
00:52:56
the killer left. So, is it possible that there was supposed to be more that happened at this crime scene and didn't
00:53:04
because of some kind of disturbance to the killer? Yeah, I think that's always in consideration with in regard to the
00:53:12
Deli case. I think he simply just didn't know that she was still clinging to life
00:53:18
because it he made some efforts. He he did some things that are very common that other killers have done after
00:53:27
similar to when they're dumping a body right at at some place. So with as far as the duct tape goes, so the the duct
00:53:34
tape was covering the the internet reports say almost all of her face and head, but the detective told me that it
00:53:44
it other than her nostrils, those were the only that was the only part that was not covered by duct tape. Again, a
00:53:51
portion of the internet says a cut piece of her Barbie underwear was stuffed in her mouth underneath the duct tape, but
00:54:02
it was it was a torn piece. And then the the killer or the killers also um duct tape around the they duct taped around
00:54:13
the the handcuffs as well. And so I just see a lot of effort going into placing her there so she can't leave that. I
00:54:23
think they were well aware that she was still alive as the detective said in very bad condition.
00:54:30
But the other thing that and this is speculative because you know there's no all the reports that have made their way
00:54:38
to the newspapers and the internet over the years all say a very similar statement that she
00:54:45
likely expired within just a very short time period very you know just hours before she was found. And had the Yeah.
00:54:55
had the weather conditions been better or had she been clothed that she may have survived long enough to be
00:55:04
recovered and and taken to a hospital? I don't think that that's the case based off of the information that I received
00:55:13
that we received. It was. So remember she is finally located on a Saturday. On that Thanksgiving
00:55:24
there was freezing rain. So when she was found there was ice on her, freezing rain on her. And so that tells me that
00:55:35
she probably she was placed there before that freezing rain on Thanksgiving, which is a couple days before she was
00:55:43
located. And Jesus, I um she wasn't doing a whole lot of moving u after that freezing rain situation. So
00:55:55
the autopsy of course was conducted and the short of it was that they had confirmed that in the days that she had
00:56:04
been missing that she was held somewhere before she was placed there in the woods. She had been brutally sexually
00:56:12
assaulted, beaten, starved, and denied fluids. Uh some reports state that her hair had been cut and and maybe dyed to
00:56:21
some different color. Um, it seems I don't know about the the dying of the hair, but the the hair seems to be cut.
00:56:29
That seems to be a consistent statement through and through. Uh, her autopsy determined that Angie likely died of
00:56:36
exposure. Probably, again, the reports out there are just hours before her body was found. I think it was probably a day
00:56:44
or so. Uh, most reports state that the cause of death is hypothermia. It was very it was
00:56:50
getting very cold and she wasn't she wasn't clothed and and and she was in bad shape when she was placed there.
00:56:57
Whenever that was she was in bad shape when she was placed there. Yeah. It's it's almost hard to hear the
00:57:04
cause of death is hypothermia. No, the cause of death is that she was abducted and basically
00:57:10
she was abducted and tortured by a sick sadistic psychopath. That that's the cause of death. There was a deep cut on
00:57:20
one of her thighs and then the her wrist had several cuts on them as well. And one thing that I had speculated was
00:57:30
often times when you see cuts on wrist and you find a victim handcuffed. A lot of times those cuts on the wrist come
00:57:38
from the handcuffs, right? where they're struggling to get free or they're being
00:57:44
moved and controlled via the handcuffs and and it creates bruises or even cuts and injuries to the wrist. And so I had
00:57:54
said to the detective so that she clearly was handcuffed for quite some time and and they said yes that seems
00:58:01
very likely. However, they could not. They tried to reconstruct those injuries to the wrist using
00:58:09
handcuffs and they couldn't do it. So, they just bound somewhere else. Well, they Yeah, they they don't know
00:58:16
where those those cuts came from or how they were administered, but they feel confident that they didn't come from the
00:58:24
handcuffs, especially from the handcuffs with her trying to to break free. So, she had she had a lot of injur injuries.
00:58:31
She wasn't cared for. And that also I found that to be incredibly cruel, but also strange, right? There's a lot of
00:58:40
strange pieces to this case immediately when you look at the crime scene. One, handcuffs.
00:58:45
Yeah. Two of the detectives that we spoke to have had careers where they worked 30
00:58:50
years and covered many homicides, many death investigations. I said to both of them, I said, "How many of those death
00:58:59
investigations or homicides did you find a pair of handcuffs on the victim?" This
00:59:05
was the only one. Damn near 60 years of experience. This is the only one. Or like you said, the amount of duct
00:59:11
tape around the handcuffs and then the duct tape around the mouth. And then I think it's probably, and you know this
00:59:19
um better than I would, but you'd think on some level this individual, the the victim's going to be tied up to a tree
00:59:27
with a rope or something, not necessarily a item of their clothing. Yeah, that's the other thing, too.
00:59:34
There's very little items here that you would be finding. And I don't have a complete inventory because I know that
00:59:40
they collected dozens and dozens and dozens of items. I don't want to go down this road again because we've covered it
00:59:46
a lot of times here in the garage. If you're new to the garage, we got Oh, we got two or three old episodes you could
00:59:52
go back and listen to. We're new to the true crime space. Yeah, we're new to the garage.
00:59:57
They call us newbies. The the complications with an outdoor crime scene. We've talked about that,
01:00:02
but there's also an abundance of items that would need to be collected. Some of it's just straight up debris. Some of it
01:00:09
could be physical evidence here. Without having an inventory, I can see some things that very obviously seem to have
01:00:16
belonged to the killer or killers. The duct tape was not hers. The handcuffs were not Angie's. And the I would I
01:00:23
would guess that even the Dollar General bag where her clothing, some of her clothing was found was not hers as well.
01:00:32
So, as horrific as this crime scene is, you're looking at it going, "Okay, well,
01:00:38
I would expect to find some physical evidence that may lead me to the person or persons responsible." Duct tape is is
01:00:45
usually something that will lead you to a perpetrator. Um, and we can get into that, but for because there's many
01:00:55
reasons it's it's it's so the the effort that it takes to tear it, to place it on
01:01:00
someone, to use somebody to bind them with it, it it takes a lot of effort and a good amount of physicality.
01:01:08
And even if you use gloves, there's a possibility for DNA or touch DNA or even some kind of fabric transfer.
01:01:18
Yes. And they did have fibers that were found and hairs that were found that were physical evidence that they were
01:01:26
going to be using. And they did use quite a bit in this case. But the first piece of evidence that they thought may
01:01:33
have been promising was a fingerprint that was found on the adhesive side of one of the pieces of duct tape. In fact,
01:01:43
I think there's a chance that it may have been found on more than one piece of the duct tape because it was torn
01:01:49
several times. This wasn't one or two or three pieces of duct tape. This was many
01:01:54
tears uh of duct tape that was were placed. And look, they there were small bits of ice that formed all over her
01:02:04
body. I believe some of that was from the the the frozen rain. and she suffered a terrible death that
01:02:12
unfortunately did not come quick. The body was recovered in St. Charles County. [Music]
01:02:31
reading the case file and al also um we spend a lot of time at the scene just because it helps your mind or it helps
01:02:39
me think she just the way she was left it's like she was just she was just discarded
01:02:48
and her cause of death when they Dr. case perform that autopsy and what they found
01:02:55
was pretty horrific. Ed finding that first of all, he's probably the biggest bulldog for kids. Um I can
01:03:06
only imagine I mean I wasn't there with him then, but yeah, the right person was
01:03:10
the first person on scene because there was no stopping him and him and John worked this for plus 20 years, over 20
01:03:19
years. So, um the pictures and having seeing her there and then with pictures and then having been there
01:03:28
um it's just the one thing I couldn't wrap my mind around is again what kind of person does this? And it was just if I
01:03:39
had I'm glad I didn't see it in person. I've seen plenty. But um that had to be tough and I'm sure something that I
01:03:47
still think about it. So I imagine anybody involved the hunter, bless his heart, I can only imagine him seeing
01:03:55
something like that. Children were dying and and not just, you know, from a sickness or something
01:04:04
which would be bad enough. These were horrific deaths and it was terrifying. [Music]
01:04:21
Want to thank you so much for joining us here in the garage. So much more to get
01:04:25
to in this case. Stick around for part two. Until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.
01:04:32
[Music] [Applause] [Music]