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Cathy Nameth /// Part 1 /// 527

October 13, 2021 / 45:01

This episode covers the murder of Kathy Namath, a respected EMT, who was killed in a remote area of Wisconsin on October 12, 2002. Key topics include her distress call to her husband, the investigation into her murder, and potential motives involving a local political scandal.

Kathy Namath was found stabbed multiple times outside her parents' cabin at Loon Lake. She made a distress call via her EMT radio, mentioning a scruffy man in a raincoat before the call abruptly cut off. Her husband, David Namath, who was also a fire chief, rushed to the scene but arrived too late to save her.

The investigation revealed that Kathy had defensive wounds, indicating she fought back against her attacker. Law enforcement speculated that the murder was not random, as Kathy was targeted. However, there was confusion surrounding whether anyone knew she would be at the cabin that evening.

Three months after the murder, the case stalled despite evidence collected, including a knife found at the scene. Investigators also looked into a local political scandal involving embezzlement within the fire department, which could have provided a motive for Kathy's murder.

The episode highlights the complexities of the investigation and the unanswered questions surrounding Kathy's death, leaving listeners to ponder the true circumstances of this tragic case.

TLDR

Kathy Namath was murdered in Wisconsin after a distress call, leading to an investigation involving potential political motives.

Episode

45:01
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send them to us and that is enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a
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chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] this week's true crime story
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involves one of the more terrifying murder scenes that we have covered the female victim makes a distress call
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from a remote isolated wooded area where she is alone her husband is on the other end
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when the call is abruptly cut off the husband knows something terrible has happened
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he rushes to find her but it is too late by the time he gets to her she is in her death throws
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and the scene was bloody and chaotic someone had it in for this woman this was not a random crime
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but who knew where she would be that day in the wisconsin woods and who would target this middle-aged
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wife and mother she was an upstanding public servant with no known enemies this is true crime garage
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and this is the case of kathy namath [Music] [Music] it was october 12 2002 in rural lang
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laid county wisconsin we have 43 year old kathy namath who lived in elcho a tiny idyllic town of about 1200 or so
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residents in the northern part of wisconsin this is a saturday now on this saturday
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evening around 7 pm kathy got into her car and drove to loon lake which is located about 25 miles north of
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antigo the county seat and it's about a 13 minute drive from downtown elcho loon
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lake is in a very remote and unsettled area that is mostly used by hunters campers and summer cabin dwellers that's
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where kathy was headed she is going there because her parents have a cabin on the lake but she's not going there to
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meet her parents because kathy's parents had left the area for florida earlier that day they intended to stay in
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florida for several months of course to avoid the upcoming wisconsin winter they had closed up their cabin for the
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season so around 7pm kathy decided to head out to the lake house to clear out her parents freezer which had a big
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supply of frozen meat inside now unfortunately something terrible happened when she went up to her parents
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cabin she was murdered up there and because she went there alone we are not left with a whole lot of definitive
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information about how it all went down but we can take an old look and see approach here captain so this whole
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scene seems to me to be like right out of friday the 13th or some other horror movie featuring an isolated wooded cabin
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in the forest the rustic cabin was located on loon lake lane which winds its way through the dense woods around
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the lake turning into a dirt road houses there from my understanding appear to be
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very far or somewhat far apart and separated by large thickly wooded areas so no neighbors are right next door to
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one another it was a rainy evening and kathy drove up to the lake house by herself and parked her car outside of
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the cabin it was after 7 pm so in october you know anybody can check their phone that lives
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in the midwest it would be dark or nearly dark at this time looking at my phone right now
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captain it's october 12th 19 years later and we're set for a sunset at 6 58 pm right so it would be dark or nearly dark
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by the time she arrives according to later reports kathy did not make it inside the cabin
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the next thing that we know that happened was a radio transmission from her handheld emt radio okay so she goes
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and makes this trip by herself we know she arrives at the cabin she parks outside for whatever reason we have
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investigators later telling us that we do not believe that she ever made it into the cabin and before she can get
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into the cabin she's going to use her emt radio to make a call now kathy was a well-respected senior emt in el show and
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was also employed on the ambulance squad in town as well as the fire department she's quite busy with these two
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different jobs now because of her position she had a radio at her disposal and it sounds to me like she's carrying
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this thing most places if not everywhere that she goes on this day she's going to use it to call for help
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for herself or we can surmise that right here is the very brief transmission that went out from
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kathy's radio and it says this is 96 so that's her radio id number there's a man with a raincoat and he's
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scruffy looking and dot dot dot the transmission abruptly cut off so one more time captain that is this is
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96 there's a man with a raincoat and he's scruffy looking and the transmission cuts off all right a
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couple of things just to get one out of the way hello wisconsin if you look up loon lake and wisconsin
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it seems like there's multiple loon lakes we're talking about the one that is 44 acres
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it has a maximum depth of 13 feet according to articles about the case kathy's abbreviated radio transmission
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went out to multiple authorities this is one of those instances that someone radios to a specific channel that is
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monitored by others in the same department or division so her transmission was apparently heard by
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several people now one of these people captain will be kathy's husband david namath
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david namath was the fire chief in el cho so of course he had his radio on him as well
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and he heard his wife's message of seeing a scruffy man and then it cuts off and then several articles we found
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said that the transmission ended when the signal was lost so it's totally unclear to me whether
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this means that kathy was attacked at that moment or something caused her to drop her
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radio right or whether for some reason the signal failed halfway through whatever
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she was trying to communicate to everyone else and the transmission dropped either way
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this spells disaster for kathy remember she's alone out in this area now there may be other
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people at some of these cabins but if any of them are following her parents lead they're packing up and leaving for
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the winter at some point may have already done so regardless of who else is up there
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who owns these cabins there's a good deal of distance from cabin to cabin right and so again she
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might as well be all by herself according to sheriff stagger kathy's tone of voice showed she was in
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danger david tried to radio back to his wife asking what was going on and there's no
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response on kathy's end david accompanied by his son and kathy's son nick they jumped in the vehicle and drove to
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this cabin one of the things i think law enforcement is gonna have to deal with in this case is that some of these
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cabins probably are rental cabins or there's probably campgrounds close by where
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somebody could just camp out for the night when they arrive on the scene they see kathy lying on the ground and
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there's blood all over her she had been stabbed multiple times but she was still
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alive when they get there now david radioed for assistance telling the dispatcher
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that kathy had at least five stab wounds that he could see including one to her neck saying that she is breathing
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semi-conscious he told the dispatcher he said that he needed an ambulance right away now it's hard to imagine david and
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his son's anxiety and panic as they awaited the ambulance which had to come from at minimum
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13 minutes away if it was stationed in the closest town of elcho wsa news 7 reported some important
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information on the case the station reported that david along with their son nick found kathy
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barely alive just moments after the attack david said he asked kathy who the attacker was
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and she said she did not know him shortly after this she died the article went on to say while calling for help
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kathy described her attacker as being average height with a bushy beard wearing a raincoat we know this isn't
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entirely accurate as kathy's radio transmission did not contain all of that information but perhaps the part about
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the average height and the beard were descriptors that she was able to give to her husband it's a little unclear where
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this information and how this information came from kathy to whomever right right after she's attacked but
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several years later we have wsaw that reported that kathy was never asked about who had harmed her as she was near
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death when she was found so we really don't know what's true here from this statement we have the same
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news agency reporting two different things at different times in regards to the same situation right it seems like
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the only info we can really rely on as factual is what was in her original transmission
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or at least that's what i'm choosing to look at is what is factual in this case right with the transmission the radio
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transmission we have multiple ear witnesses correct and again that the guy whoever this guy was
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was scruffy and wearing a raincoat so the average height thing again was that something she told to her
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husband and he later relays it to others what it sounds like from this additional
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report the later report from wsaw is that doesn't it kind of imply that she does not tell that to the ambulance
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personnel or to emt well like you said when the husband comes upon her if that part of the story is true
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hey who did this i don't know but then the description happens and then everybody else gets there and and then
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at some point she wouldn't be talking at that point yeah right able to communicate anything about the attack or
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her attacker at that time and i think that that's what we have to go with here captain because what we do know is that
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once the ambulance arrived the emt that was the first responder on the scene tells the dispatcher at that time that
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the victim was still conscious but barely so again i think you're spot on there with
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if she told anybody anything it would have been her husband who we know arrived at least 13 minutes before
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an ambulance could be on the scene kathy made it to marshfield hospital after being airlifted to the hospital
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but died soon thereafter the lang laid sheriff's office led by sheriff dave steger
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along with the antigo police began a joint homicide investigation so obviously with the stab wounds and the
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radio transmission we know from jump street this is absolutely a homicide and we have two agencies looking into this
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case and investigating what went down there near the cabin at loon lake can we just take a second again to go over that
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description i know the description is in question whether he she told that to her
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husband or not but can you just go over that real quick one more time okay so the radio transmission was this is 96
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there's a man with a raincoat and he's scruffy looking and and then it cuts off and then what that first news article
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states is that david says he asked kathy who the attacker was and she said she did not
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know him right shortly after she died the article went on to say while calling for help kathy described
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her attacker as being average height with a bushy beard wearing a raincoat again i hate to keep kind of spinning
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our tires on this thing here but the way that the wording is in the the report just does not seem to be
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anything of accuracy at all because it states while calling for help this is what she said when we when we know in
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fact the radio transmission heard by multiple ear witnesses none of them say that she said
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he's of average height right and it seems like something bizarre to say in that situation right if you're radioing
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to begin with that you're you're afraid or something wrong is happening does anybody go out
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of their way to say he's of average height yeah i think it's vernacular that she would use in her job so that's why
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it's believable to me that she said it to somebody but also with eyewitnesses or ear witnesses people get things wrong
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so maybe three people heard it different and one of the three people or whoever heard her initial
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uh communication maybe one person heard that she actually said average height i could see that too i mean we have
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training that goes into these jobs these very important jobs and these are people
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that are thrown into situations that can be stressful chaotic maybe she just the training kicked in
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as you said and just goes right into terminology and things that she would describe the best that she can given the
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situation right now a little bit about kathy namath before we move too far into this investigation kathy was really
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a normal hard-working woman she was 43 years old at the time of her murder she was a wife and a mother she lived with
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her husband and son nick in elcho and was very involved with her job as a medical worker and emt
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after her death her co-worker jerry dobbs told wsaw7 news quote she loved her family she loved her
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children and her husband she was one of the most caring people i knew end quote her husband david told the station that
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her parents cabin was her favorite place on earth it was unthinkable that that was where she had been attacked and
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brutally slain says that we just couldn't believe it disbelief there were several people that
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were on the scene that day that had to go through a stress debriefing afterward because of the trauma and seeing what
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they experienced now on to the investigation and we have a quick statement from the langlade county
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district attorney who said this is early on in the investigation captain says we're not ruling anything
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out at this point i don't know that there's anything that suggests that the public
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has to be terrified of a random attack but at the same time it's certainly a good idea to be on the alert
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this ambiguous statement wasn't particularly helpful as members of the public were frightened
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and of course they should be right kathy namath was attacked and murdered in an isolated but commonly visited and very
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safe recreational spot and no one seemed to have any idea by whom or even why she was killed
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concerns about a deranged murderer lurking in the woods this is on people's minds
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and they're terrified right if you haven't already packed up your cabin and left for the winter
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now's a great time to get out of dodge well a lot of these lake communities there's not even much crime at all let
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alone a murder taking place correct and the weird radio transmission there's a man here he's scruffy looking wearing a
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raincoat now kathy was tough and she did not go down without a fight we couldn't get a copy of the autopsy
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report but sheriff stagger himself is on record commenting in regards to defensive wounds on her body
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saying it looked like the victim put up a fight there could be some scratches and bruises on the perpetrator this is
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what he told the media according to reports the autopsy concluded that no surprise kathy had died from multiple
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stab wounds but it got even stranger and this next portion of the story was not reported
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until well after the homicide which is bizarro to me but according to wsaw 7 news
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evidence at the scene shows kathy was chased through the property and she used whatever she could to fight off her
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killer but in the end multiple stab wounds were fatal [Music] [Music] [Music] hello wisconsin
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cheers everybody cheers to you captain cheers to all the people in the back and the people in the back will be they will
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want to hear about this so i guess there is a amy maholovic walk that is coming up wednesday october 27th
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and that will be on the unfortunate anniversary of the day that she was abducted from my understanding captain
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this starts at 5 p.m at the bay village middle school now we know that she went from the middle school down to the
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shopping plaza and left with her eventual killer from that shopping plaza the walk will be a
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short one it will be from the middle school and then to the plaza and then back where they will be placing a
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newly engraved stone at a memorial site so if anyone in the bay village area or surrounding areas please go out show
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your support for the maholovic family for amy and for the community in general and join the walk for amy if you want to
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double check on any of the details that i just tried to pass along here or want more information you can find that at
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walk4amy.org so what actually happened at the cabin it looks like police really are not
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quite sure what happened at the cabin that day they stated that all motives were on the table
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but they seemed to have at least partially ruled out a burglary as investigators did not believe that the
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cabin was burglarized it appears that kathy never even made it as far as getting into the cabin itself
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so to me captain when i see that information it makes me wonder if you're saying hey we don't think that burglary
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was the motive here and we don't think that kathy made it into the cabin there must be something indicating that
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neither the killer or kathy made it into the cabin and this could be was it was the cabin
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still locked was it found locked or was nothing disturbed or broken or out of place
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it could be any of these factors but what is also unclear is why authorities drew the conclusion
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that they overtly stated they did not believe that the attack was random that kathy was a target
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again bits of information coming out statements from the police but no real evidence or nothing to tell us how they
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came to these conclusions and nothing backing up those conclusions themselves now one article we were able to dig up
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contains some facts that might explain why investigators believe that kathy was specifically singled out for this
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violent murderous attack keep in mind we're talking about multiple stab wounds here people this is an up close and
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personal attack on kathy namath here's a piece from wsa w news 7 that ran october 15 2002 so
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just three days after the homicide it says investigators say a killer waited in the cold and the dark
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outside an empty cabin to murder kathy namath namath was attacked and stabbed outside her parents empty cabin around
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7pm on that saturday the cabin was closed for the season and namath wasn't expected
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that line has always confused me i've returned to that line from this news article
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many times and cannot figure out exactly what that is supposed to mean i'll repeat that line and continue on it says
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the cabin was closed for the season and nameth kathy wasn't expected yeah hold on a second so we have
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isn't that confusing we have law enforcement saying that we think she was targeted but if she wasn't expected to
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be at the cabin how would that person target her exactly unless they were following her there but at the same time
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says a killer waited in the cold in the dark outside the empty cabin right meaning
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that they didn't follow her there that they were there all along do you feel like this is kind of taking
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like some kind of it could just be bad reporting though right it could be bad reporting and it could be like throwing
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in some creativity like rather than just giving us the facts that there's some kind of storytelling
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angle to the story which i know that's what we do here in the garage but frankly i hate it when other
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people do it let us tell the stories i appreciate it when people stick to the facts man that's right okay
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so the article goes on to say that leads investigators to believe the killer wasn't someone who followed nameth in
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from town but rather someone who knew she was going out to the cabin that night it's such a contradictory
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statement right someone that knew she was going out to the cabin that night but nameth wasn't
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expected again it could just be bad reporting or bad wording as far as that goes this all begs the
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question whether someone had in fact drove to the cabin and waited for kathy's arrival if so
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did the killer park his vehicle somewhere hidden had he left tire tracks that police were
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able to find why were they so sure someone was waiting there for her and who knew
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that she was heading up to the cabin that evening right it doesn't seem to me like you're
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going to have a whole long list of people that would have known that she was going
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to the cabin now maybe when they say kathy namath wasn't expected means this isn't something that she planned
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out the day before or a week in advance or anything like that anything prior maybe it was more of
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oh mom and dad called me said they've left the cabin or were leaving the cabin i don't have anything to do this evening
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or i have some free time this evening tonight would be a convenient time for me to go but again it goes back to if
00:28:13
you are thinking that she's targeted and you said that statement to the public i can't believe that that list of people
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that would have known that she would be going to the cabin would be very long at
00:28:25
all so it could only have been someone she told of her plans again based off of the police theory
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because it does not sound from this report as though someone followed her rather someone anticipated her arrival
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and as we said it was someone she did not know that's her words she did not know her attacker or did not recognize
00:28:48
them based off of the excerpt from her radio transmission if she knew that it was
00:28:54
john or charlie or bill or bob wouldn't she say on the radio hey bill's up here right charlie's up here no she says
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there's a man up here wearing a raincoat and he's scruffy-looking but maybe what
00:29:09
they mean by all this is that a killer was in the area 44 acre lake that's not that big of a
00:29:18
lake right and if you look at loon lake lane the road that the cabin was off of right
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it's pretty much one way in and one way out unless you're gonna go off-roading it's one way in and one way out
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so even though there's people that are staying there or are packing up for the winner
00:29:40
so again she's not expected to be there but this killer is there maybe looking for a victim yeah and that
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makes you wonder if could there have been somebody else that has reason to be there like another cabin owner or
00:29:56
somebody that has reason to be there that says you know at 5 or 5 30 i saw a vehicle
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that i've never seen in this area before it was a man driving and he was kind of
00:30:06
scruffy looking but that's the best the best of the of my recollection of what i
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have and we do know right one fact we do know is when kathy approximately arrives at the cabin so if
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we have somebody telling police behind closed doors some kind of statement like this
00:30:27
that has not reached our ear balls yet then we can assume that that's what they're
00:30:33
building this theory off of that we have someone who reported a similar looking individual as vague as that description
00:30:40
is but arriving in the area well before we know kathy to have been there i mean they're not stating it's a
00:30:48
yellow raincoat but i wonder if it's something that's so blatantly obvious like you said
00:30:54
a neighbor sees somebody walking around their property and says why i saw a man in a raincoat the other thing too you
00:31:03
also have to wonder about if he is waiting there to ambush kathy when she arrives
00:31:11
how does one individual know which cabin belongs to kathy's parents yeah good point there's other cabins to choose
00:31:19
from there i'm imagining that they don't look too drastically different or at least the
00:31:25
plots of land would look too crazy different i mean we're talking about woods here
00:31:31
now this is where we're going to take a a sharp left here all right are you buckled in there captain
00:31:38
a few days after the murder police said they were looking for a man who was believed to have been the last person to
00:31:44
see kathy this was a guy who had seen kathy at the el cho laundry mat two friends of kathy's said that they
00:31:54
saw her at the laundromat that saturday afternoon and they also saw some guy there doing his laundry they described
00:32:03
this guy and his truck to police who were able to track him down it turned out that he was just a guy who was doing
00:32:12
his laundry at the laundromat that saturday apparently he says he does his laundry every saturday at that same
00:32:18
laundry mat and he happened to be there at the same time as cathy so it looks like police get this lead
00:32:24
from her friends they are able to track down this guy even though we don't have his name
00:32:30
and must have determined that he didn't have anything to do with her homicide probably didn't have
00:32:36
anything to do with really kathy at all that they just happened to be at the same laundry mat on the day that she is
00:32:42
later murdered well is it possible that she was doing laundry and was like yeah this guy's a little strange
00:32:48
mention that to her friends and then that's how they tracked him down or why they decided to track him
00:32:54
down or he may have come forward they say that they're looking for an individual we don't know who he is but
00:33:00
we do have the description of his vehicle so we're not talking about an area where there's a ton of people right
00:33:06
so they may have been able to just check some driver's licenses some vehicle registrations and
00:33:12
get a short list of individuals that owned a truck with that type of description
00:33:18
the investigation continued following the typical protocols police canvassed the area near the cabin and spoke to
00:33:24
residents to see if they had seen anything strange or had anything to report at all on october
00:33:31
17th so this is five days after the homicide sheriff steger told the wausau herald
00:33:40
that we've talked to probably everybody that lives in el cho by now so we have eliminated some possible
00:33:47
suspects and we're continuing to do that they trace kathy's last movements which
00:33:53
is what led them to the laundromat guy and they dug into kathy's life which revealed
00:33:59
something intriguing that we will get to in a minute now police hinted around a couple of times about having a few
00:34:08
suspects and you can see that based off of just that last statement that we relayed to you but it's not really clear
00:34:14
whether this is actually true or not right that we have a few suspects we're not
00:34:21
naming anybody we're not saying why these people would be suspects so it's not clear if that's actually true or
00:34:28
just how viable these suspects or likely these suspects would be but it sounds like
00:34:35
they feel confident that they've spoke to everybody and may even have cleared some people
00:34:40
at this point in the early stages of their investigation well i know that her husband
00:34:46
went up there with their son but where was his whereabouts before that when he actually heard her transmission
00:34:54
well and that's very interesting right because if you are look we there's no getting around it you got to
00:35:01
look at the husband you got to look at the boyfriend in all of these cases could it be something as simple as he
00:35:09
set her up that this could be some kind of hit that he purposely was putting himself in a
00:35:16
different location when this went down and how many times have we reviewed cases and the other
00:35:22
person you look at is who finds the body so kind of a double whammy here but whammy again how we go back to how many
00:35:31
people would have known that she would have been here if if in fact this is not a random murder
00:35:38
if in fact that there wasn't some maniac lurking in the woods with a knife and a
00:35:44
raincoat then how many people would have known that she was going there around 7pm on that
00:35:51
saturday in early october and and known that this was a good opportunity to do whatever it was they intended to do
00:35:59
right you would also have to know that that you're not going to have to be to to come across our parents or other
00:36:06
people and again how do you discern their cabin from everybody else's one you said too it
00:36:11
didn't take long for her husband to get there so i'm assuming the cabin's not that far
00:36:17
from her actual house my issue with that becomes if there is any infidelity in that relationship well
00:36:26
when the grandparents aren't there you have a pretty easy getaway you don't have to rent a room at a hotel or go to
00:36:34
that person's house we can just sneak off to the cabin it makes me wonder is that a possibility as well well i was
00:36:42
going to save this for later but because of of your your questions and comments i think it would be it would be
00:36:50
right to introduce and kind of examine this now before we move too far along another thing that's kind of unclear
00:36:58
here captain is really the timing of the whole day once we involve not just kathy of course but david her
00:37:08
husband and her son nick so it's unclear to me the timing on the distress call and the husband's
00:37:16
arrival because it's been reported multiple times but it's really all over the shop
00:37:22
it's all over the place one article says that david and nick arrived minutes after the attack
00:37:29
which you know we've talked about this on this show before you see you use the words
00:37:33
minutes or moments or soon after it doesn't really give an exact definitive time of the distance you know
00:37:43
the the lapse of time between one act and the other and so it gets a little hazy just using
00:37:51
those words in general but we have that one article that says david and nick arrived minutes after the
00:37:57
attack which makes no sense given how remote this area was and then several articles say that she radioed at 7 38 pm
00:38:07
one article says that david arrived at 7 44 pm one article says that david arrived 32 minutes after
00:38:15
kathy radioed so it seems to me that there had to be there has to be a lag of time between
00:38:22
her radio distress call right and the time that david arrived 7 38 seems to be the most reported time
00:38:30
of that distress call she arrives sometime after 7 pm at the cabin she's attacked or
00:38:38
is aware that she's in danger enough to make that distress call and then david and nick arrived to offer
00:38:46
help or to find their mother and wife maybe they arrived at 7 38 p.m and that's where we're getting we're getting
00:38:54
these times from but it is unclear i want to make sure that we are clear about how unclear it is on the exact
00:39:03
timing of a the distress call and b husband david's arrival to find his wife unfortunately
00:39:12
lying there covered in blood in the woods yeah clear that they're unclear now three months after
00:39:19
the murder the wausau daily herald reported that the case had stalled so we're roughly 90 days in and they're
00:39:29
kind of hinting at that this thing is starting to get chilly it's starting to get a little cold
00:39:35
this was kind of surprising because as it turns out there were some there was some physical evidence from the crime
00:39:41
scene as you recall kathy had defensive wounds that led investigators to believe that
00:39:47
she had scratched her assailant put up some kind of fight perhaps she even drew blood from the killer presumably lab
00:39:55
techs would have been able to obtain the perpetrator's dna from kathy and then we find out that they did have
00:40:03
the knife they had the knife that is responsible for her murder apparently a knife was found at the scene
00:40:10
investigators sent that knife and some unspecified items of clothing and blood samples to a state crime lab
00:40:19
for analysis and at this time even though we're hearing these rumors that the case is going cold
00:40:26
seems like there's a lot going on under the surface here they were waiting for results
00:40:33
uh in this case and this is now january of 2003 that they have this information they've
00:40:39
sent it off to the lab and we're waiting for the results but there was other big
00:40:43
news to hit the headlines in regards to kathy's murder one of the articles was titled elcho
00:40:51
abuzz over killing and of course they're talking about kathy's murder this was because there were reports that
00:40:57
investigators were looking into whether cathy's murder was related to a local political scandal
00:41:04
what happened was kathy and her husband david had been just two of several fire department employees i want to be clear
00:41:13
about that there were multiple people involved in this situation not just kathy and david
00:41:19
but these were fire department employees who served on the el cho fire department
00:41:24
executive board and along with three other employees the nameths shared control of a bank account
00:41:32
containing funds belonging to the el cho fire department so just five days just five days before
00:41:40
kathy was killed town leaders dissolved the fire department's executive board and you only do that when they're up to
00:41:48
no good right the board was responsible for appropriations among other things so they're in charge of these funds in
00:41:57
this bank account kathy david assistant fire chief bob jensen and two others were essentially
00:42:05
removed from a position of authority at the fire department and from having access to the department's bank account
00:42:14
this was as a result of assistant fire chief bob jensen bringing to the attention to the town board some months
00:42:23
earlier that money was disappearing from the account so someone was embezzling the fire
00:42:30
department's funds and had been for some time and in connection with all of this
00:42:38
david namath was suspended as fire chief suspended with pay on october 7th assistant chief jensen the whistleblower
00:42:48
was appointed interim chief and all the fire department records were seized as the investigation into the
00:42:55
embezzlement got underway well if she has connections to the account is it possible that
00:43:04
an individual realized that she might hold the answers somehow and that would jeopardize this person's career and and
00:43:14
maybe even freedom and that that would be a reason to get rid of kathy yes this is going to call all
00:43:22
kinds of things into question here in regards to her homicide and this whole embezzlement scandal
00:43:29
[Music] oh [Music] like always we want to hear your thoughts on the case so if you have some
00:44:06
thoughts and opinions please share those with us on our blog at truecrimegarage.com
00:44:12
and join us back here tomorrow in the garage until then be good be kind and don't litter
00:44:19
[Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 80
    Most heartbreaking
  • 75
    Most dramatic
  • 75
    Most intense
  • 70
    Most shocking

Episode Highlights

  • The Distress Call
    Kathy makes a chilling distress call before her murder, leaving her husband frantic.
    “There's a man with a raincoat and he's scruffy looking...”
    @ 08m 36s
    October 13, 2021
  • Investigation Underway
    The sheriff's office confirms a homicide investigation is underway following Kathy's death.
    “This is absolutely a homicide and we have two agencies looking into this case.”
    @ 15m 37s
    October 13, 2021
  • A Community in Shock
    Kathy's murder leaves a small town reeling, as they grapple with the loss.
    “It was unthinkable that was where she had been attacked.”
    @ 18m 49s
    October 13, 2021
  • Murder Investigation Confusion
    Investigators believe Kathy was targeted, yet she wasn't expected at the cabin that night.
    “It's such a contradictory statement right?”
    @ 26m 56s
    October 13, 2021
  • The Laundromat Lead
    Police tracked down a man seen with Kathy at the laundromat, but he was just doing laundry.
    “It looks like police get this lead from her friends.”
    @ 32m 24s
    October 13, 2021
  • Embezzlement Scandal
    Kathy's murder may be linked to a local political scandal involving embezzlement.
    “Is it possible that an individual realized she might hold the answers?”
    @ 43m 04s
    October 13, 2021

Episode Quotes

  • This is absolutely a homicide and we have two agencies looking into this case.
    Cathy Nameth /// Part 1 /// 527
  • Kathy loved her family, she was one of the most caring people I knew.
    Cathy Nameth /// Part 1 /// 527
  • It was unthinkable that was where she had been attacked.
    Cathy Nameth /// Part 1 /// 527
  • Let us tell the stories, I appreciate it when people stick to the facts.
    Cathy Nameth /// Part 1 /// 527
  • It's such a contradictory statement right?
    Cathy Nameth /// Part 1 /// 527
  • How does one individual know which cabin belongs to Kathy's parents?
    Cathy Nameth /// Part 1 /// 527

Key Moments

  • True Crime Begins00:40
  • Murder Scene Unfolds03:10
  • Kathy's Last Moments11:28
  • Investigation Launched15:23
  • Targeted Attack24:57
  • Laundromat Encounter31:50
  • Investigation Stalls39:23
  • Political Scandal40:51

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown