00:00:07
[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:00:43
listening i'm your host nick and with me as always ladies and gentlemen it's a guy that has zero regrettable tattoos
00:00:50
here is the cap not true i have a moose mowing grass on me ass it's good to be seen and good to see you
00:00:57
thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend this week we are featuring 35k stout
00:01:08
beer by the good folks over against the grain brewery 35k stout beer features dark roasted malt and bittersweet coffee
00:01:16
flavor and aroma that burst from this black milk stout and they tame the full body bitter flavor with the sweet
00:01:22
addition of milk sugar this is a perfect november beer garage grade four out of five bottle caps and here's some cheers
00:01:31
and praise to our good friends that helped us out this week first up cheers to kayla in williston south carolina and
00:01:38
a big shout out to joy in farmington minnesota next up a double cheers to jan and jana in seattle washington and a big
00:01:46
shout out to caroline in arlington virginia next up a big shout out and cheers to the hags this is rachel brandy
00:01:54
and in memory of sherlin who i'm sure is more than just miss so cheers to the hags of anchorage everyone we mentioned
00:02:01
today contributed to the true crime garage beer fund by clicking on the old beer fun tip jar on our home page so
00:02:09
cheers to you all yeah bwru and beer run and if you need more true crime garage for your ear balls
00:02:18
check out our show off of the record on stitcher premium and that's enough of the business all
00:02:24
right everybody gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime
00:02:34
[Music] [Music] so [Music] a 31-year-old murder case is getting fresh attention tonight kentucky state
00:03:08
police call it the case of the man with no hands now this is a rendering of what
00:03:12
the man might look like now detectives are turning to dna experts in hopes that it will unearth some new leads walter
00:03:19
smith randolph is here after talking to investigators walter what did they say well paul and kyle technology has
00:03:25
changed immensely since this man was found dead in a barn back in 1989 investigators hope running his dna
00:03:31
through genetic systems will give them the answers they've been searching for 31 years have come and gone with no
00:03:38
answers kentucky state police want to know who this man is he was found dead with his hands cut off in a tobacco barn
00:03:45
near dry ridge this is what police told us back in 2017 when the body was exhumed he deserved to go back home
00:03:53
his family deserved to know where he was i mean he was buried in grant county in
00:03:58
a popper's grave with no no headstone back in 2017 dna was taken and entered into a federal database but since then
00:04:06
genealogy sites like 23andme and ancestry have emerged that's why ksp is taking a closer look technology has come
00:04:14
so far um and it's it it makes our job a little bit easier and you know bottom of the line is is we want to
00:04:23
solve these cases and we want to bring justice where justice is served the dna doe project will now build a
00:04:30
family tree in hopes of tracking down relatives of the john doe it is a very uh peculiar and just an odd case um you
00:04:38
know just the whole circumstance surrounding it and it's why it's been so difficult for us to
00:04:43
to be able to make headway police have previously thought this case may be connected to the mob besides this
00:04:50
digitally enhanced picture police don't have much to go on since the hands were removed that's why they're hoping new
00:04:56
dna technology will be the break they need in this case it seems like as we get technological advances some of these
00:05:02
old cases we may in fact solve more of these [Music] on sunday afternoon april 9
00:05:24
1989 around 2 45 in the afternoon farmer c.w adams known as billy walked into his
00:05:32
large barn adams was a tobacco farmer in dry ridge kentucky in rural grant county his farm
00:05:39
was located on route 22. this is the main road through dry ridge called main street which runs north to south
00:05:48
through the town of williamstown to dry ridge about four miles apart and in dry ridge it turns west and heads out of
00:05:56
town into very rural pasture and farmland an overhead view using google maps shows nothing but fields and
00:06:04
farmland for miles and miles on either side of this part of route 22. this even today captain in 2021
00:06:14
it was out there that farmer adams barn sat on the roadside in 1989. neither dry
00:06:20
ridge nor williamstown is exactly cosmopolitan dry ridge is a rural town with the
00:06:27
population in 2010 of just 2100 people located in grant county ironically although it's named dry ridge
00:06:36
the area is known for its mineral water wells which allegedly have healing powers
00:06:43
williamstown is a bit larger with the population of nearly 4 000 in 2010 it serves as the county seat but we are
00:06:51
still talking about tiny towns that are off of the beaten path however the williamstown dry ridge
00:06:59
downtown areas are right off of a major interstate this is interstate 75 one of the longest highways in the united
00:07:08
states from this area captain this general area that we're talking about you could be in
00:07:14
cincinnati in approximately 40 minutes so here we have farmer adams who utilizes this barn for his tobacco
00:07:23
harvest it's quite a large barn the kind made out of old gray barn wood boards unfortunately we do not know exactly
00:07:32
what happened when he walked into this barn at 2 45 pm on april 9th and it's never been
00:07:39
discussed at all how he found what he found we also don't know when was the last
00:07:45
time that he was inside of this barn and that is a question for obvious reasons that has significant
00:07:53
implications given what adams was about to find now in the barn adams found a stack of items
00:08:00
these would be typical items he expected to find inside of this barn in a pile but he did not expect to find
00:08:08
them in this pile and it was extremely puzzling to him so he starts removing these items from this
00:08:16
pile pulling items from the pile returning them to their intended locations and then he stopped because
00:08:24
under this pile was the body of a large man the large man was naked with no clothing
00:08:31
nearby and adams could tell that there was no rush to call the paramedics one look at
00:08:37
him told him that this man was beyond help he was dead and had been dead for quite
00:08:44
some time the call to the kentucky state police came in at 2 50 p.m and officers arrived
00:08:52
on the scene at 3 15 that afternoon well like you said this is roughly 40 45 minutes away from cincinnati there's so
00:08:59
many rural areas around these parts it'd be a perfect place to dump a victim yes
00:09:06
you're exactly right captain and for me that's what makes it even more confusing
00:09:10
as to why the barn was utilized in the first place but the people out there that are familiar
00:09:16
with this story now this is one of our lesser known stories that we're covering this week but there will be people in
00:09:21
the greater cincinnati area and in the state of kentucky that have probably heard of this case before again it's
00:09:29
30 years old we are trying to identify this homicide victim and the kentucky state police have done a good
00:09:37
job of keeping this case in the news throughout the years it's never really made national news though so a lot of
00:09:44
people will be hearing this for the first time but those of you familiar with this case you're probably sitting
00:09:50
at home or in your car or in your garage going wait a second i thought that this
00:09:54
guy when they found him in that tobacco barn that he was hanging inside the barn
00:10:00
and there are several news articles that say that that in fact was what was going
00:10:04
on but guess what it's simply not true the hanging part of this story is all a fallacy it never happened at all here is
00:10:13
what we know to be true the kentucky state police the agency in charge of this case has released very
00:10:21
little information about the whole situation they are honing in on this case and have been for
00:10:28
the last couple of years because new technology is making it a situation where they think they can identify this
00:10:34
guy sooner rather than later so this is very much an active case for the kentucky state police and kudos to them
00:10:42
for keeping it not just active in the news and media but also active on their desk right and
00:10:49
an active investigation as far as they're concerned yeah they are fully charged and fully invested in
00:10:58
identifying this homicide victim you can tell by the title of this case that it doesn't need any more hype but you see
00:11:06
that from time to time and different cases where the legend of the case becomes a little more
00:11:14
grandiose yes and this will be a case where we will learn some more information throughout the
00:11:20
years today there's still not a lot known about this case and early on that was certainly the case because the early
00:11:28
articles and statements about the man found in the barn all say consistently at first that it was not apparent what
00:11:35
had killed this man later they would tell us what in fact killed the man that they found in the barn now
00:11:42
early on though captain this is because the body itself was very badly decomposed his face was described as not
00:11:50
recognizable due to the level of breakdown of the facial tissues he was estimated to have been dead for at least
00:11:58
a week probably two but the medical examiner was able to determine that the cause of death was
00:12:05
two gunshot wounds to the back of the head his hands had been cut off the wounds to
00:12:12
the lower arms at the wrist level indicated to the experienced medical examiner that the man's hands had been
00:12:19
deliberately severed and the hands weren't anywhere to be found in fact to this very day they have never been
00:12:26
located the kentucky state police has never revealed any information about the investigation that took place at the
00:12:34
location where the man was found meaning they've investigated the barn the barn owner the property owners
00:12:41
but we don't know what that all entailed and what their findings were in regard to the barn the
00:12:50
barn owner and such we do know that they executed a thorough search of the barn and the surrounding areas as one would
00:12:57
expect in fact we were able to get our hands on the incident report that indicates that the barn was cleared
00:13:04
after seven hours or so hate to be captain obvious but they took the victim's hands
00:13:10
so it'd be harder to identify the victim yes and as we said captain no clothing was found the man in the barn was naked
00:13:17
no clothes no jewelry nothing the man's missing hands were nowhere to be seen well obviously the hands would have
00:13:25
fingerprints and so you could look into a database of those take the jewelry those would be
00:13:32
identifiers take the clothes that would be another identifier shoes even would be a identifier and we've seen in some
00:13:40
cases too where people remove cut skin to remove tattoos which would be identifiers as well according to the
00:13:48
kentucky state police and these are their words that echo what you just said here captain quote someone had
00:13:55
physically removed them from his arms talking about the hands continuing on they say fingerprints were a large part
00:14:02
of technology in that time we still utilize it today but they they were very limited the implication
00:14:09
was that whoever had cut off the man's hands did so in order to keep his identity a secret and so far here we sit
00:14:18
all these years later and it has worked well when you read the description of this man one thing that jumps out is
00:14:25
he's six five that means he's very tall so when i heard that it's very surprising that he has not
00:14:35
been identified i agree captain and that sets off some red flags for me because here we are more than 30 years later the
00:14:44
man with no hands no identifying personal possessions or marks and with no recognizable facial features
00:14:54
were sitting here going who the man in the barn was remains a mystery and all investigators had to go on to identify
00:15:01
him was that limited physical description of his remains which is as follows age they put his age approximately in
00:15:11
his 30s generally believed to be somewhere in the range of 25 to 35 years of age he's described as a white male
00:15:21
height six foot five inches tall and they even break that down saying 77 inches i've seen some descriptions
00:15:29
captain that have the victim listed at six four but most generally say six five two
00:15:36
hundred and twenty pounds and as you said that's a key factor in this case here just let that
00:15:43
sink in for a bit this guy was six foot five inches that is an exceptionally large human being a missing person's
00:15:53
report of a missing man of that size would be fairly easy to connect to a victim right
00:16:00
but we can tell you that although this physical description of the grant county john doe as some have called him
00:16:08
has been entered into namus and the dna doe project databases and his case information is listed in vicap and ncic
00:16:19
he has never been identified and it is believed by the investigators and i share that
00:16:25
opinion as well that there is no missing persons report that was ever filed on him
00:16:31
and if there was it's never been able to be a report that the kentucky state police have been able to get their hands
00:16:38
on or their eyeballs on because six foot five there's not a ton of people that meet that requirement couple things
00:16:46
one this individual could have no family members maybe was only child maybe his parents
00:16:53
died younger or possibly he's from a very small town from a lot further away than around let's say the kentucky slash
00:17:04
cincinnati area and so if he went missing in like washington state or something in a very
00:17:10
small town maybe they're not connecting the dots that their son that maybe that their son ended up in a
00:17:18
barn in kentucky let's see what else we know about this guy from a physical standpoint uh his
00:17:24
head still had plenty of hair on it enough to tell investigators that he wore it short and tight basically his
00:17:31
hair was in a crew cut with short well-maintained sideburns as for eye color that is listed in every
00:17:39
source that i've been able to see states unknown this seems likely because after death circulation of oxygen to the
00:17:47
eyes and frankly everywhere else ceases so the pupils dilate and the cornea becomes opaque
00:17:54
the eyes obtain a distinct blue white haze over their surface which can obscure the true eye color
00:18:03
of the deceased and individual in any event grant county john doe his eyes are of unknown color so that
00:18:11
does not help to identify him well this report says he's 6'5 white man around 220 pounds
00:18:20
with brown hair and brown eyes there is an fbi vicap alert poster relating to the grant county john doe which contains
00:18:28
more information about his appearance besides the estimated height and weight and brown hair the poster notes that the
00:18:36
grant county john doe also has a previously healed broken nose and if you go to fbi.gov click on the
00:18:45
vicap tab there you'll be able to find a list of unidentified remains that they have listed on the fbi website
00:18:56
the victim also had something that i'm not going to try to pronounce here not in the garage i'm never going to try
00:19:05
to pronounce it go for it i'm going to spell it out it's p l a g i o c e p h a l y so this is also known as flat
00:19:16
head syndrome per the stanford health website this is not something that is genetic
00:19:24
but can be caused by a few different things one is a muscle tightness on one side of the neck so when the person is a
00:19:33
baby they prefer holding the head to one side or in one position while lying down which then results in
00:19:43
that side of the head flattening over time it could be a result of prematurity you
00:19:49
know we have skull bones that are softer than full term babies and they tend to move their heads less
00:19:56
often again the head would flatten while lying in the same position for long amounts of time
00:20:02
it also could be a result of in utero crowding this can occur when there are twins
00:20:09
or multiples or if the mother has large fibroids or an abnormally shaped uterus so
00:20:18
it's not super likely captain but given that information there's a possibility that our john doe
00:20:26
may have a twin out there or had a twin at one time yeah you can actually get a plastic surgery
00:20:32
for this condition this is also when you hear about doctors wanting to put a baby into a helmet
00:20:39
that's normally because this condition is getting worse and they can correct it by having the child wear a helmet for a
00:20:46
certain period of time now there's two kind of versions of this one where the back of the head is flat
00:20:54
and where the head is misshaped it seems like his version is the one where your head would
00:21:00
be flat on an area but not on the back of the head so causing his call to be like misshaped but we're not doctors
00:21:07
we're just two dumb guys that sniff gasoline in the garage so of course we have no idea which of these factors are
00:21:15
the case here for our man with no hands but the key thing is to know that this would
00:21:22
be an identifier for somebody out there his skull was flattened enough to be noted on the physical description of him
00:21:30
utilized by law enforcement and missing persons organizations the kentucky state
00:21:35
police have said quote he had a particularly shaped head a flat head the back of his head was flat that's
00:21:44
specific if someone is trying to identify him end quote again i can't get over the fact that nobody's identified
00:21:51
this individual when he's six foot five inches tall you have to wonder captain if the person or person's which i think
00:21:59
is probably more likely persons responsible for leaving him in this barn if they knew
00:22:07
that he would in fact be identified by fingerprints not everybody out there walking around
00:22:13
on this planet or in this country or even the state of kentucky have been fingerprinted you're right you have to
00:22:20
have those fingerprints on file somewhere to have something to match them to now you wonder would these would the
00:22:27
perpetrators here know or have suspicion to believe that he would be would have been
00:22:34
fingerprinted at some point either because he was arrested or locked up or there are many jobs that require
00:22:42
you to go and get fingerprinted or a thorough background check to be able to work
00:22:49
in that position or work with that company i can't find it in the reports i've looked at
00:22:55
but was there a toxicology report done my guess is yes um but we don't have that information
00:23:02
they're keeping that information to themselves well hang on just a minute here captain because we
00:23:08
have something else that could help with possibly identifying this individual so
00:23:14
we have what they state this is the final piece i would say of the physical description of our john
00:23:21
doe it said he had distinctive dental work so according to the fbi it was expensive and extensive
00:23:31
specifically when our victim was alive he had a quote perfect smile the dental work included a 10 unit porcelain fixed
00:23:43
porcelain to metal bridge with missing teeth replaced with porcelain pontics i believe is how you
00:23:50
say that this is a word that i had not heard before but thanks to an internet search
00:23:57
i know that pontic is an artificial tooth attached to a fixed dental prosthesis basically it's a fake tooth
00:24:05
that looks real and looks really good and it's permanently attached there is something else that we know and
00:24:14
you were dancing on this captain is that we know how he died as we said that the
00:24:21
shots that killed this individual were two to the back of the head and one thing that they have released is
00:24:28
that it came from a 22 caliber weapon so to recap real quick we have a john doe that was found naked in a barn
00:24:37
on kentucky route 22 outside of dry ridge kentucky john doe was found shot in the back of the head capped twice
00:24:45
execution style with a 22 his hands were cut off to evade identification he was hidden under a bunch of
00:24:53
barn items or things that would be stored in this barn he had a broken nose and his teeth had been replaced at some
00:25:02
point with pricey fakes he had a crew cut and he was a very large man six foot five inches tall 220 pounds
00:25:12
approximately [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're back cheers mates cheers captain
00:25:48
it makes you wonder when the when the dental surgery was done because maybe again like i said this guy
00:25:57
has family members maybe they passed on maybe he had some dental issues and then had them
00:26:05
recently taken care of and and so he would have been the one responsible for this if it was done when he was a little
00:26:11
bit younger that makes you wonder if somebody cared so much about him to make sure that he had a perfect smile
00:26:18
you would think somebody'd be coming out of the woodwork saying that's my son or
00:26:22
that's my brother or whoever it is that's where we come in and we try to help the kentucky state
00:26:28
police because like i said i couldn't find a situation where this is nationally known
00:26:34
news or information yeah it's on fbi.gov it's on some other websites and if you go search around the internet you're
00:26:41
going to find information on this case or little news clips but this is not something that i think
00:26:48
everybody was aware of and when you have a situation where this guy very likely is not from anywhere near
00:26:56
the immediate area if the right information doesn't hit the right person's ear balls or eyeballs
00:27:02
then we have a situation where they can't go well that was my son or that was my brother or whomever now
00:27:09
the other thing too that's difficult is we circle back to a missing person's report right why don't we have a missing
00:27:16
person's report of somebody that's this height and this weight again it's it's not normal for people to be this large
00:27:24
and my mind starts to go to the idea of well maybe this guy didn't originate from this country
00:27:31
and is there a chance that he wasn't here very long before whatever happened to him happened right
00:27:37
right this homicide for whatever reason went down is there a chance that he wasn't here
00:27:43
very long and mom and dad brother and sister or any of his close relatives are just
00:27:48
simply not in this country to to say that he's missing maybe they've told whomever someplace else
00:27:55
we've not heard from him we've not heard from our son or our brother or our cousin in all these years
00:28:00
and so i'm sure they're worried about what has happened to him and that's why the kentucky state police
00:28:07
want so badly to identify him for a multitude of reasons one to tell his family hey we found we got bad news but
00:28:17
we found your loved one furthermore we want to seek some justice for this guy we have no idea who the
00:28:23
suspects can be when we don't even know who the victim is now one piece of information
00:28:29
that has been disclosed that i find to be very interesting is that the kentucky state police has stated publicly that
00:28:36
the man found in the barn was killed elsewhere we don't know because they've not given us the details of such how
00:28:43
they determined this but we can deduce it they were probably able to determine that he
00:28:48
was not shot in the barn because there was no gunshot spatter there was no shells there was no
00:28:55
residue or large amounts of blood found in the barn itself right so that seems pretty
00:29:03
pretty simple but presumably if none of this is found it's telling investigators that the
00:29:10
murder and mutilation did not go down in the barn and again this is interesting because remember he's a large man
00:29:18
if he was already dead when he was placed in this tobacco barn as opposed to being forced to walk into
00:29:24
the barn and then being shot then it would almost certainly have required two people to transport him in a vehicle and
00:29:31
then move the body into the barn right it's my opinion i think it's safe to say that this
00:29:37
was likely a two-man job if not more i don't see how look captain you are a specimen you are
00:29:45
a physical specimen adonis and i do not see how one person even of your strength
00:29:51
could have possibly moved a 220 pound dead weight well you have to lift with your legs that distance to the barn well
00:29:59
when they mention that it could possibly be mob related i i'd also throw out the
00:30:04
idea of maybe a cartel or something because now go with me on this theory it might be a little far-fetched but if you
00:30:13
look at the distance between williamstown and portsmouth ohio portsmouth ohio for
00:30:19
a long time has been a kind of a hub to have opioids and and other drugs and they channel from portsmouth to
00:30:30
cincinnati to columbus for example and so if you were heading from portsmouth to cincinnati and something
00:30:38
happened once you shoot off one of those main roads you would find williamstown it's
00:30:44
interesting to me that they mentioned [Music] mafia or mentioned the mob do you think that's just because of the
00:30:53
severed hands i think that the severed hand certainly has something to do with it but i think that there's probably a
00:30:59
lot of factors and i'm with you i don't i think that they're using the the term mob related and again i want i want to
00:31:06
be clear to everybody out there in listener land they're saying possibly they're not locked in or married to this
00:31:12
idea that it has to be mob related but i feel like mob is a bit of a blanketed statement that could mean
00:31:19
any cartel any kind of organization working on the down low organize crime it could be related to that why again
00:31:27
you got to go back to the fact that this guy does not appear to have been reported missing
00:31:33
at any time it looks like whoever is responsible for this they either a knew what they were doing or b did a
00:31:42
really good job doing it for the first time well this is definitely one of the cases that we've covered
00:31:48
and maybe top of the list where when i see the picture that they've done of this victim
00:31:55
how lifelike it is i believe if we can get enough listeners to share this story and to share his picture
00:32:06
all over the internet somebody will come forward and identify this man after 30 years of not being identified well and
00:32:14
that's why i wanted to feature this case and feature it for the kentucky state police because again they are
00:32:22
very much invested in finding out who this individual was and i think that captain maybe we can push this story a
00:32:29
little further than what they've been able to do in their years of hard work and effort but
00:32:35
i think maybe we might have the ability to reach some more people at a greater distance that
00:32:41
they've been able to reach i will be taking his image and putting it on our instagram twitter facebook
00:32:49
at true crime garage it will also be front and center on our website at truecrimegarage.com
00:32:56
now it's never been published what the exact address or location of the barn was all
00:33:03
the reports simply say that it's located about seven and a half miles west of dry ridge
00:33:10
kentucky and the police report that we were able to get our hands on which it's a very
00:33:15
limited report it's a single page says that the victim was found inside a tobacco barn on
00:33:21
skillcroft sheet metal incorporated farm property located on kentucky route 22 seven and a half miles west of
00:33:31
dry ridge now we were able to do a little further digging and confirm the exact location
00:33:38
of the barn so it's located at 8100 taft highway if you follow route 22 on the map west from dry ridge you can see the
00:33:50
rural nature of the location of this large outbuilding it seems unlikely even almost impossible that
00:33:58
someone from out of town would stumble on this location and select this one barn in the middle
00:34:06
of nowhere at random as a reporter on local 12 tv news station pointed out whoever killed this
00:34:15
john doe went to a lot of trouble to hide his dead body he wasn't killed at the barn so someone likely drove
00:34:22
interstate 75 south or interstate 75 north took the dry ridge exit and drove seven miles out of town to pick out the
00:34:32
barn i directed horror films i would use tobacco barns and all my movies i think
00:34:40
they're absolutely creepy looking they almost look like there's uh like bats like big human-sized bats or
00:34:48
like the moth man is like hanging upside down if you don't know what a tobacco barn
00:34:56
looks like the first time you see one in person it can shake you up like what is that
00:35:03
and then once they explain it to you obviously it makes a lot more sense but it really looks like almost these giant
00:35:10
bats are hanging from the ceiling yeah tobacco leaves are large and nobody really likes bats
00:35:18
but you do not want to encounter a large group of really big ones right or mothman right
00:35:26
and so yeah i've never been personally been inside of a real-life tobacco barn but i've seen them on tv and seen the
00:35:33
tobacco leaves hanging from the rafters and i get a good idea of what you're talking about here captain yeah the
00:35:41
first time i came across when i was going onto my buddy's farm land and i parked the car and it was
00:35:48
it just became dark and all you could see is these things in the barn kind of swaying back and forth
00:35:56
and from a distance i was like are those bats or birds or or maybe even like deer carcasses just hanging like i
00:36:05
i couldn't tell what they were uh from that distance and like i said in the dark here's the thing for me and
00:36:11
while we're on the subject of the barn tv images of this barn show that it is a very large outbuilding it's very close
00:36:19
to the road in fact i would say almost right next to the road yeah it's not far the
00:36:25
road is a small two-lane roadway winding through the countryside in pasture land
00:36:31
if someone was looking for a structure to place the body in well then this barn would kind of just
00:36:38
jump out at you gotcha because it's very visible but to me that begs the question why inside
00:36:47
of the barn and why this barn there are plenty there's plenty of land around there hundreds of thousands of acres
00:36:55
where a body might never be found and look take this an extra step here clearly when they're removing the hands they
00:37:04
don't want their victim to be identified why because identification of this victim probably leads the authorities
00:37:12
directly to the killer or killers would be my guess and i'm guessing captain that kentucky state police that's why
00:37:19
they're holding back so much information in this case because they know that or believe that
00:37:24
to be true as well so why if you're so concerned about this man the victim being identified
00:37:34
why place him in a barn and then pile up a bunch of barn [ __ ] on top of this guy
00:37:39
why wouldn't you take him out in the middle of nowhere and bury him you know what i mean it seems to me like that
00:37:45
would be more likely or do we have a situation where there is reason that he was in that barn
00:37:53
that it has something to do with with persons close to the perpetrator or the perpetrators themselves again we know
00:38:00
that the owner barn owner property owner everybody was looked at and investigated
00:38:05
but we don't know what the finding or the results of that investigation was well a couple things here were they
00:38:12
trying to frame somebody or cast suspicion on somebody else i get what you know i'm picking up what you're
00:38:19
putting down but we're also again there's they're saying 220. he might have been a little heavier but
00:38:25
he's a big boy like you said it's close to the road if you have two individuals we can put him in this barn
00:38:32
try to conceal him that's going to give us a little extra time taking his clothes severing the hands this is going
00:38:40
to give us even more time but how far would they be able to carry this individual
00:38:47
from their car to this land i mean because if you just bury him in the middle of a field the
00:38:53
farmer is going to see that he's going to say well what the hell happened here so maybe they thought by
00:38:59
putting him in the barn that's close to the road we can conceal him because a lot of times when we we have
00:39:06
these victims that can be identified very quickly they're discarded on the side of the road like trash and
00:39:13
in an open field for somebody to come along and identify that it's even a body quickly well and i'm putting down what
00:39:20
you're picking up here captain so after the autopsy was done on our john doe he was buried in an unmarked grave in dry
00:39:29
ridge where he was say buried for the next 28 years now in 2017 there was a renewed push to identify him a sketch of
00:39:40
his face was done by a forensic artist now this is not the sketch that you're going to see when you come to
00:39:45
truecrimegarage.com because there's been advancements on the sketch the original sketch was prepared in 2009 and
00:39:55
this showed what his face was estimated to have looked like before it was decomposed now that black and white
00:40:03
image showed a man with a smile very straight white teeth prominent cheekbones and a crew cut it's a
00:40:08
distinctive face in that sketch but it's a drawing it's so it doesn't really look like anyone
00:40:15
real to me it was in 2016 that a computer-aided image the one that you will see when you go to
00:40:21
truecrimegarage.com was prepared and this was based on bone structure of our john doe so this is a
00:40:29
digitally enhanced image that looks much more like a black and white photograph right it shows a more menacing looking
00:40:39
man some have said with a very square jaw a broad face and broken nose notably reports accompanying the release
00:40:48
of this sketch included that the john doe had brown eyes like you pointed out there captain and that was the first to
00:40:56
my knowledge that they were indicating what they believed the eye color of this man was so obviously when they find a
00:41:05
man with no hands i mean that perks the ears up right [Music] what about more of this urban legend of
00:41:14
of him being him hanging from the barn yeah that was kind of the story in the beginning and
00:41:20
it seems like that story has survived a little bit over the decades that have passed that when his body was located he
00:41:27
was found hanging inside the barn which we pointed out at the top of the show is
00:41:32
just frankly not true and we know this based off of again kentucky state police they're holding a lot of information
00:41:40
close to the vest here and kudos to them because i think they're going to identify this guy
00:41:45
sooner rather than later so i don't blame them for doing so and they were very helpful when we reached
00:41:50
out to them they basically said look we can answer a couple questions but we can't
00:41:55
go into great detail on some of the things that we know they did confirm however that he was not
00:42:01
hanging in the barn they did confirm that the one report that we found that said he was
00:42:06
inside the barn found underneath a pile of barn type items right that that is in
00:42:12
fact true that and i don't know what these items were there's no description ever given i don't know if these are
00:42:18
seed sacks or hay bales or or or what have you or farming tools could be any number of things including
00:42:26
lots of nut sacs but they were able to confirm that for us so thank you to the kentucky state police now well hold on a
00:42:34
second because this individual was shot twice in the head yes so if he was hanging
00:42:40
to me you're trying to make a statement right but he he wasn't he simply wasn't right
00:42:46
he was which makes sense because you would not take that individual's you would not sever his hands if you're
00:42:54
trying to make a statement because you'd want people to know that you did this to this
00:43:01
individual to me that that would make the most sense if if this individual was shot and
00:43:07
then they went through the trouble to hang him from the rap rafters in a tobacco barn
00:43:13
it's to make a statement and so the fact that they try to cover up this individual to me it's again just another
00:43:20
step to cover up his identity and like you said that's probably going to lead them to
00:43:26
his killer his identity is probably going to lead him to somebody that is going to stick out
00:43:32
like a sore thumb it's even i mean the the placement of the body makes zero sense to me
00:43:38
not that see it doesn't doesn't make zero sense to me not that it shouldn't not that it should make any sense to me
00:43:44
but the thing is like why place him in the barn if you do why go to the extra effort of
00:43:49
piling all these items on top of him it's not like whoever's go entering the barn isn't
00:43:54
just going to clear all those items and find him now as back to your original question well hold on the other thing
00:44:02
about the tobacco barn is there's a definite smell from tobacco so maybe maybe they thought if we put
00:44:09
him in this barn and we put some stuff over him look we all know buddies that have like big barns
00:44:17
and they know every item in that barn and where it was moved in the last time it was moved so i think maybe they
00:44:24
thought okay the tobacco smell will help cover up the decaying body we we put some stuff onto him to
00:44:33
conceal him and maybe it's months before he's found because i mean you did say his face was badly decomposed
00:44:41
so that makes me wonder what was he killed somewhere else and left somewhere else for a while and then they
00:44:47
moved the body or was the decomposition done with inside that tobacco barn that's a
00:44:54
great question and that's why at the top of the show i brought up the fact of we
00:44:57
don't know the last time that this c.w adams went into the barn that would be really interesting to know number one
00:45:06
and again it would be interesting to know people were probably scratching their heads going why does the colonel
00:45:11
care so much it would be interesting to know what items were piled on top of this john doe because again i would
00:45:18
think it would be it would just be even more obvious to the individual entering the barn that hey there's something
00:45:25
there these items have been moved where you could again we're kind of speculating and spinning
00:45:31
our tires here i just wonder if you could have delayed the discovery of john doe even further by just placing him in
00:45:38
a dark corner somewhere in this barn but as you pointed out so astutely there we
00:45:44
don't know it could be the fact that this guy was placed in there relatively quickly after
00:45:50
he was killed and just not discovered for weeks or months and that the decaying process
00:45:57
took place inside the barn but back to your your original question here captain is
00:46:04
where i think that the folklore the local legend of the man in the barn being found hanging
00:46:13
in the barn i think it came from the original coroner who referenced john doe as possibly being
00:46:22
hung because we have his comments that are to me reason to believe that the whole
00:46:29
myth of the uh right man hanging came from him so my best guess here again we don't have the autopsy to
00:46:38
confirm this it's not available anywhere but my best guess here is that there's a
00:46:44
chance that they may have found some kind of ligature mark or maybe even some kind of ligature still on john doe's
00:46:51
neck there the original corner earlier said quote they hung him which we know based
00:46:58
off of the information from the police is not true so you wonder then was there an attempt
00:47:05
to strangle this man before he was eventually shot yeah or he could have got into a altercation with the
00:47:11
individual he's choking the individual he's being choked by the murderer the guy pulls out
00:47:18
a gun puts two in his head and goes well his hands were around my throat i need to sever his hands
00:47:25
so they take the whatever dna off but back to like you said when would this farmer be in the barn last this is why i
00:47:34
think it's not a bad dumping part drying tobacco is kind of a curing process which can take between
00:47:42
three and eight weeks to properly prepare tobacco for use so if you know that and maybe you know
00:47:50
more about what tobacco looks like when it's freshly hung that you would know hey if i put this
00:47:57
individual here they might not come out and check on this tobacco for eight weeks
00:48:03
that gives you quite a bit of head start exactly i'm just of the belief and i'm i could
00:48:09
be very wrong here i think if this guy was local if our john doe was local even remotely local yeah i agree that they
00:48:18
would have they would have been able to connect him to some kind of missing person or
00:48:24
or otherwise we do have to point out some of the more recent movement on this case
00:48:30
and this comes back from uh 2007 when they decided to exhume the body of our john doe and what they did here
00:48:41
captain was they severed his arms above the elbows and then sent the detached limbs to
00:48:50
the fbi's laboratory this is to serve a two-fold purpose one there are hopes that the fbi
00:48:59
can determine what type of implement was used to cut off his hands by examining the limbs for
00:49:07
tool marks and so on the other is for the purpose of dna extraction the arms sent to the fbi would contain dna
00:49:16
rich material that will provide a genetic profile of this victim and once the dna profile of the
00:49:24
john doe is isolated from his arm tissue it's then entered into codis a database
00:49:31
of criminal offenders and missing persons that did not exist in 1989 when his body was located they might be able
00:49:39
to pull dna that's not his of off his limbs and so far they've done their best but to this date
00:49:49
no hits have been obtained now the uh next step in this case was for the state police to
00:49:59
arrange for john doe's dna profile to be provided to the dna doe project to commence the forensic genealogy
00:50:07
process so if we can't find a match directly to him in any of the databases using his
00:50:15
dna which we now have did not have in 1989 they're hoping that now well maybe we can
00:50:23
find a relative or a twin of this individual or a family tree of our john doe and find out
00:50:31
through contacting them and other scientific measures to figure out who this guy was again
00:50:37
i'm of the belief that once they identify our john doe it's going to lead you to probably a very short list
00:50:45
of suspects have you ever heard of the grateful dough the grateful dough pretty interesting story
00:50:52
the grateful dough the reason why he was called grateful dough was he was found wearing a
00:50:59
grateful dead t-shirt the man was killed in a car accident on june 26 1995 in greensville county
00:51:08
virginia now his body remained nameless until december 9th 2015 and eventually his mom came forward
00:51:18
because and and this is all stemmed from computer generated images of jason and so once they were able to put those
00:51:29
out on facebook his mother was able to come forward and say that was my son he actually went
00:51:35
missing he went missing because he went to follow the grateful dead and then was
00:51:41
killed in this car accident and then his body remained nameless like i said but it was all solved through social media
00:51:47
so as much as they're trying to do very good work on this case i think the best chance we have look i really believe
00:51:56
that the true crime community can get behind this case share his image share his image on facebook instagram
00:52:05
twitter tick tock let's get this guy identified let's send this guy home yes crowdsourcing can be a
00:52:12
powerful and important tool in these types of investigations and so can the science as well
00:52:19
and i'm glad to report to everyone that in june of 2021 the dna doe project posted in regard to
00:52:29
this very case that the they have funded the case they were fundraising to raise funds
00:52:38
to be able to do some of the work on this case their goal was three thousand dollars
00:52:43
major funding for this case was provided by patty sullivan and they were able to reach that goal so
00:52:51
a big thank you to patty sullivan and all of the other donors that contributed to the dna doe project for
00:52:59
not just the grant county john doe case but all of the others so what does this mean it means
00:53:06
that they have secured sufficient funding to pay for the forensic genealogy process
00:53:11
in the grant county john doe case so now while they run their investigation and their forensic genealogy process
00:53:24
we can crowdsource his image source his information which that stuff is still information
00:53:31
that's needed anyway even if you even if we're able to link him to a family tree
00:53:36
or figure out who this guy was we need to know as much about him as possible again i think it's going to lead to a
00:53:46
short list of suspects once he is in fact positively identified one thing i want to point out though captain when
00:53:54
we're talking about crowdsourcing and one thing that you hit on right from jump street here is again the
00:54:01
height of this individual is very important that separates him from a lot of other
00:54:07
potential unidentified individuals or even missing persons that there were reports filed
00:54:14
for so the vicap according to the fbi he's listed at six foot five inches tall just to give everybody a bit of
00:54:25
reference in the power of that little piece of information i went on to the charlie project's
00:54:33
website to look at known individuals that have been reported missing and with the simple search of typing in
00:54:40
john doe's height the return was zero that there were zero missing males according to the charlie project that
00:54:49
are listed at six foot five inches tall now if we take that down right let's say
00:54:55
that maybe he's listed at six foot four whoever reported him missing thinks that he's six foot
00:55:02
four inches tall there's 110 males that are missing that are six foot four inches tall some of them the majority of
00:55:09
them in fact the overwhelming majority of them have been reported missing after this guy's body was found in that barn
00:55:16
so it cannot be them well it could be them because somebody goes missing and you're reported missing afterwards and
00:55:22
then if you take that number and go up to six foot six inches tall there are just 14
00:55:28
males that are listed on the charlie projects website so again that's a powerful piece of information in this
00:55:36
case a powerful piece of information in this case will be what they believe he looked
00:55:41
like his likeness that we now have that computer image of and it's very detailed in my opinion the
00:55:48
captain's gonna put it on the website and you'll be able to check that out at truecrimegarage.com now the question is
00:55:57
could be why bother with this at all right there's a lot of work going on in this
00:56:02
30 year old case there are plenty of recent homicides that are unsolved why push this to
00:56:09
solve this one from 1989. now some members of law enforcement involved in this case have commented directly on
00:56:16
that per fox 19 news quote there's some family somewhere they're wondering where
00:56:23
their uncle their son their brother where they're at and they deserve to have that peace of mind this is a quote
00:56:30
from the kentucky state police and it goes on to say we are very hopeful that we are going to get a match
00:56:38
we don't have any family to contact it's really sad the family they never had that peace of mind there's someone
00:56:46
out there who's missing a son or an uncle or a dad and as you pointed out captain the kentucky state police share
00:56:54
and echo your words exactly they say he deserves to go back home his family deserves to know where he is he was
00:57:01
buried in a pauper's grave with no headstone yeah so it's a pretty simple call to action if you can share this
00:57:08
image with friends and family if you can share it on social media i think we might be able to make a
00:57:14
difference in this case and i want to take this just a step further right because of course it's not just for
00:57:21
humane or sentimental reasons that we want to identify the grant county john doe
00:57:29
we true crime garage want to identify him and remind everybody out there that this guy was murdered
00:57:37
someone murdered him and that murderer has gotten away with it for decades now that we have the ability to use
00:57:46
modern science to provide answers no matter how old the crime is it's a worthwhile undertaking to try to
00:57:53
bring closure to families and justice to the victims no matter how old their cases may be
00:58:00
well i think we both agree with him being such a large individual there's probably more than one individual
00:58:06
responsible so it's two or more bags of [ __ ] that need to be held responsible for this heinous crime so
00:58:16
please take a minute to go to our website true crime garage dot com look at this individual to see if you
00:58:23
can help if anybody out there listening has any information on this case or the identity of this individual at all
00:58:30
please contact the kentucky state police at 859 eight one two one two or fbi vicap at
00:58:40
eight hundred six three four four zero nine seven [Music] thank you guys so much for joining us
00:58:59
here in the garage if you'd like to have an evening with me the captain you can do so in champaign illinois on december
00:59:07
11th the show starts at 6 30 and we'll be doing a meet and greet afterwards at 8 o'clock it's at the blind pig company
00:59:15
and that's in champaign illinois get the tickets at captainfathans.com colonel do we have any recommended
00:59:22
reading this week this week we got a little recommended listening check out the beyond bizarre true crime podcast
00:59:29
this is a weekly podcast with a different guest host or host each week coming from the world of true
00:59:36
crime podcasts and the guests select the case and tell you about this truly bizarre case in their own style and
00:59:45
newsflash here the old captain and colonel well we hosted last week so make sure you check out the beyond bizarre
00:59:52
true crime podcast wherever you get your podcast and join us back here in the garage next week until then be good be
01:00:00
kind and don't let it [Applause] [Music] you