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foreign [Music] [Applause] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who rang in the New Year drinking whiskey and got
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way past Tipsy he is the captain it was a cocktail it was a mixture between whiskey and antifreeze it's good to be
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seen and it's good to see you I'm thankful I'm alive after last night thanks for listening and thanks for
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telling a friend [Music] drinking cast iron oatmeal Brown by the good good people over at Four Hands
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Brewing Company garage grade three and three quarter bottle caps out of five this is a monster of a brown ale there's
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lots of chocolate malt here pours dark mahogany and has a wonderful coffee Aroma cast iron oatmeal Brown was
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brought to us by these wonderful folks first up we have Adrian in Denton Texas and from New Orleans we have Alex and
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Colin or how it's properly pronounced nerlands and we have it cheers from Sandra down in Little Rock Arkansas and
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from the place that rocks Cleveland Ohio we have sweet and here's a shout out to
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and if you'd like to donate to the Beer fun you can do so at truecrime garage.com and just click on the Donate
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banner and we are very happy to be back Captain looking forward to a wonderful 2018 with each and every one of you here
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in the garage and that's enough for the business that's right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
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talk some true crime [Music] as kids Edward and I were pretty close he of course was the typical boy
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we grew up with my father so as you'd expect I stayed pretty close to him anything he did I did no matter what
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it was if he was 100 feet in a tree I was too he had no fear as a kid as we got older we kind of slowly
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started to drift apart and started our own paths in life I moved 200 miles away and he stayed
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close to our dad he and my dad were very close good friends it wasn't too long until he
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moved up here with me to start a new life our relationship pretty much started back
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to where we were as kids we stayed pretty close again always talk to each other and he often talked about
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his future for him he couldn't wait to start a family he respected women as their father taught us
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and as kids kids were drawn to him it's like no other he loved kids and kids would play
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with him all the time Edward would have been an amazing father had he had a chance
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the town that we moved to wasn't anything special it had two Sawmills a factory but no matter where Edward was he made
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friends all sorts of friends see Edward never judged anybody he liked People based on what he knew about him
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not what they look like or not what they had or where they lived Edward and I grew up for ourselves
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and learn to respect everybody Edward made all sorts of friends the good ones for him the ones that were good for him
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and the ones that were potentially bad for him one friend particularly was Deacon salt
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[Music] foreign [Music] back in December of 2016 a St Louis newscast was reminding everyone that the
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Crawford County Sheriff's department needs your help to locate a missing man Edward Hill House 28 years old had been
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missing from the Bourbon Missouri area since April 26 2016. the newscast stated that there are very
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little details regarding his disappearance but what is known is this Edward Hillhouse was last seen leaving
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his sister's Bourbon Missouri residents on April 26 2016. A lot of these places were new to me so for those of you
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wondering bourbon is a very very small town about 75 miles outside of St Louis Southwest of St Louis
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he had left her trailer and was walking he was seen walking down the driveway toward Highway N the letter N to meet
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with someone but the person he was to meet never picked him up so you would think that if
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this person never picked him up he would just walk back to his sister's trailer but that did not happen either he never
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returned to the trailer Kayla is Edward hillhouse's younger sister she described
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Edward as a bit of a Drifter saying he had worked odd jobs and he was trying to find his own way Kayla said she knew
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something was wrong early on because he was supposed to come back and see her apparently he had some things of his at
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her residence so he was going to see her to get his stuff he was moving to a new
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place he needed to take his things there she never heard from him Kayla said she
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knew something wasn't right because no matter what he would always get a hold of her good or bad he he wouldn't let
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her worry about him so Kayla reported her older brother as missing this next nugget has been
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reported in several reports about this case and I don't know where this information is coming from if this is
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something that his sister passed along to law enforcement but there is a thought that he may have met with two
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unnamed individuals just prior to his disappearance he has never been heard from since April
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2016. again very few details are available in this case the family has offered a fifteen hundred dollar reward
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for information leading to the location of Edward Hill House so before we go any further let's take a
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look at this at the details of this disappearance because sometimes they make these things pretty cryptic and I
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think that's what we have here because often you will see this when little is actually known about a disappearance
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but I think we can take some of this information that they gave us and sort of read between the lines here to try to
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fill in some of the blanks because there are two tidbits of information in there
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that are extremely important to the investigation into the whereabouts of Edward Hillhouse although they don't
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really Supply us with any information the first thing we need to talk about here Captain is the statement that
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Edward was last seen walking down the driveway toward Highway N to meet with someone but the person he was to meet
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never picked him up I think the the inference we can make here is that the police must know who this person is and
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probably have spoken to this person right even though they're not naming them in this uh quote unquote
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disappearance announcement that they're making trying to locate him so the name of this person is not
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withheld because they don't know who this person is they have probably spoken to them they must believe the story of
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this person yeah I was supposed to pick him up but we never met up for one reason or another also if this person
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hasn't already been cleared well then they are at at the very least cooperating with the police and police
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May believe this person has nothing to hide second the thing here about he may have Edward
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may have met with two unnamed individuals just prior to his disappearance this appears to be
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something completely different than what we just discussed this sounds like we have possibly two unnamed individuals
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that were either unknown to the Hill House family and police or or one or two individuals that are known but not
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cooperating with the investigation into this missing person's case so I know it's really kind of stating the obvious
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here but that's your lead after you've cleared up the first bit of the person picking him up and really it's just
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simply one of two things here either identifying who those two people are that he may have met with yeah or know
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who they are and they are not cooperating so it's time to turn up the heat on those fools right
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here is some information on Edward Hillhouse a little uh victim profile if you will at the time of his
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disappearance he was 28 years old height and weight he is six foot four to six foot five inches tall and about 160
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pounds he is a Caucasian male with brown hair and blue eyes some distinguishing marks Edward has the following tattoos a
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scroll on his chest he has a tattoo of his last name Hill house across his upper back and the number 13 and a half
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on the outside of his left calf he may have pierced ears and may have some facial hair Edward Hillhouse was born
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Friday February 12 1988 in Missouri to Timothy Hill House and Sherry Hill House Edward's parents would eventually
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separate his mother Sherry went on to marry Benny Compton of Forsyth Missouri Edward moved to Bourbon in 2011 to be
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closer to his sister Edward was very close with his sister Edward's sister Kayla Hillhouse was
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Edward's best friend and he was good friends with her fiance Chase Toliver prior to The Disappearance Edward Jr
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Hillhouse was described as a resident of Caseville Missouri might be Cassville Missouri I
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apologize which is a town of a little more than 3 200 people in Barry County Missouri which is in the southwestern
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portion of the state another very small town both of these extremely small towns
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yes everyone who had the privilege of meeting Edward will tell you the same thing that he was kind loving funny and
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would do anything for anyone he was known for his goofy smile bright blue eyes Edward had three true passions uh
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fishing Arrowhead hunting and working on cars he grew up fishing with his family
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on bull Shores Lake there wasn't a time that he didn't catch something so apparently he was very good at the
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fishing uh him his aunt and his father shared a love for arrowheads and all together
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they had a great collection as for cars apparently Edward could fix anything he loved a challenge when it came to
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working on somebody's vehicle so a very troubling disappearance here Captain we have a person that is well he has places
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that he's scheduled to be he doesn't see his sister uh the thing that I have a problem with here is we have someone
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that is described as being very close to his family especially his sister and he this guy's not heard from yeah he
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he's supposed to meet these people I don't know who these people are uh but he's supposed to meet these people and
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then he's not heard from again this is not I don't think we're describing a person
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here that is somebody that is walking away from from a life I don't think we're describing somebody here that
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would have found themselves in a bad situation and not reached out to one of his parents or to his or at the very
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least to his sister but as the newscast States there's very little details in this disappearance
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the other troubling thing here is that we have these three individuals possibly three individuals one that he was
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scheduled to meet maybe accept a ride from uh two that he may have spoken with or had been with before he disappeared
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that's even more troubling to me that we don't have it appears to me like the investigators
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may not have followed up on some of these leads that they've not spoken to these people there seems to be to me
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like there should be a longer timeline regarding his disappearance one with a such a small town you'd think everybody
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knows everybody so it's harder to keep a secret now Kayla would go on to marry her fiance and take the last name of
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Toliver this would all take place after her brother and best friend had disappeared the police in the
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investigation according to Kayla Toliver Edward's sister and best friends she had
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to stay on the case she was looking for her brother but she was also looking for
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answers Kayla put up and missing posters everywhere that she could she pleaded for help while the police she said did
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almost nothing in her opinion she felt like from very early on in the case that she had been ignored
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this is sad you know because okay look there are a lot of times when we you know we just have upset and frustrated
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loved ones of missing persons or of a victim and of course here's why it it is this may shock most of you
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um I I know that I found this and the captain has found this this was a surprise to me we have spoken to a lot
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of people that have been family members of victims or family members of people that have gone missing and the thing
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that I found very surprising when we first got into this when we first started speaking with these people is
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that in most cases not all the time but in most cases they don't seem to have any more knowledge about the
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investigation than than anybody reading the newspaper or watching the news would
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have which is almost a little shocking I guess uh it was to me in the beginning you would think that they would be have
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some form of knowledge that they would have been would have been asked certain questions or sat through certain
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interviews where they would have an idea of of the direction of the investigation
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yeah well so many cases these missing person cases you need to take Mara Murray for example
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she leaves or her College she's driving down the road her car wrecks disappeared Into Thin Air Brian Shaffer
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goes into a bar talks to some people never seen leaving the bar disappears now you take Edward Hillhouse supposed
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to meet with a friend possibly friends maybe he got in the car with the the two guys but not not the one guy just
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disappears how does this happen right this case though has a little spin on it uh though because the case spanned two
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jurisdictions we have uh Bourbon and we have the Crawford County so we have the bourbon police and we have the Crawford
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County Sheriff's Office and I usually don't care for that as I think it is important for one law enforcement agency
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to take ownership of a case uh things to me seem cleaner that way more organized
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that way when we have just one working on it yeah because if you have two you can point the finger you can pass the
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buck all day long you go well that's uh we're not handling that they are I'm pointing the fingers worse than smelling
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the finger uh I know that that I have the opinion of of a local case here in Columbus Ohio
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where I think this could have totally changed the outcome of an investigation and and I think that's why I feel so
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strongly about this we talked about uh the Tony Muncie murder that took place in the early 80s where we have someone
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that was last seen in Columbus where he lived and his body is found in Delaware County right and the problem that we had
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with that investigation is we have Delaware County who are kind of Keystone Cops coming into Columbus and trying to
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investigate this this murder case and really in my opinion that thing should have been handed over to Columbus from
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the get-go we may have had a solved case here we have a similar situation we got
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the Crawford County Sheriff's Office and the tiny little bourbon Police Department working the same working the
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same case yeah so there's somebody needs to step up and take a responsibility for
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this case well my guess here and I'm sure that uh you know our our listeners are certainly
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smarter than me I'm sure the garage listeners figured it out uh the the town of bourbon is in Crawford County duh
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right so that that's pretty easy but I'm guessing here in these smaller communities this is probably very
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typical uh for two people to be two agencies be working these cases I want to stress the
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word if here though if the powers that be have a good working relationship this could be a typical thing that works out
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well to solve these cases because you're going to have the Crawford County that will have access to
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State funds and resources that the little bourbon PD just won't have but they they need to work with local PD
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because of one resource that the sheriff's department may not have uh is a better understanding of the
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locals making up that small community well I've talked several detectives that work missing person cases I think one I
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think did something crazy like 4 000 or 6 000 missing person cases but the hardest thing is once the
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individual is of age and that there's no sign of a crime so those two things of age
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um and no sign of a crime it's hard for them to investigate it because there is the possibility that
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this person's stepped away and doesn't want to have contact with anybody and even though that the family is screaming
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no he would call me he would tell people there has been several cases several thousands of cases where people get up
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leave their current life and then they don't contact their family members right yeah I do you wish that they would
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handle that differently do you I'm sure there's there's a lot of victims families out there that are probably
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screaming it from the mountaintops that this is not how we should handle these things I I'm on the fence this is a
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weird topic because it's strange to me yes as adults we should have that right a person should
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have the right if they need to leave for some reason without communicating that to anybody right I think the thing too
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is so this detective that I talked to said this has happened several times and so what they normally do is it's not
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just you can't just go oh I saw this individual so now I can close this case you have to make contact within the
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individuals so once you make contact with the individual then you have to say hey look the people that filed the
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missing in person report would be your parents for example okay so you went missing your parents were looking for
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you ah I'm going to shut this case do you want me to reach out to your family do you want to or do you want me to
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and if they say I don't want you to that that is not the police officer's job that's not the detective's job so the
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job of the detective is to close the case right and I think it's not in their job description or it's frowned upon if
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the detective would say to the family yeah he went missing on his own and he doesn't want to speak with you right and
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we close the case right but normally what this detective said is oh I'd talk with the individual and he'd say hey
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tell him I'm fine I I'll make contact when I want to or whatever but the thing that I mean here too is that you know
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you talked about something that makes it tough for detectives if there's no signs
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of a crime that they don't they don't have to investigate it further right that they they may not they may not have
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to go and look into this thing any more than it's just a missing person potentially left on their own well and
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the thing too is one would argue you know overwork underpaid and I'm sure that's the case and especially smaller
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towns or the budget is smaller um maybe not so much in in bigger towns or richer towns
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but if you have all these cases on the desk and there is no leads at all you know you can't fault the law
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enforcement to go well let's give it some time let's see if something pops up right you know I mean like if a murder
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took place well now we need to solve this quickly but a missing person like like you said it could be
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well he just didn't go with this guy he went with another group of friends and and he just went a town over for a
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couple days so you know it's hard to fault law enforcement for that I I guess the question that I'm posing
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to myself here is this if if someone goes missing and we're looking for signs of of further criminal activity I guess
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what you're looking for is either was this person killed was this person abducted or did this person leave and
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flee the area because they themselves committed some crimes that they're running from
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what I'm getting at is when we say that they have the an adult has the right to walk away
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the question I have is in certain situations wouldn't you think that probable cause for a possible abduction
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or murder would be would be just the family saying he or she would have never left without communicating right yeah
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you know what I mean it seems like um yeah about how many thousands of cases messy person cases have the parents said
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that or a friend or a family or girlfriends that he would never just get up and leave and then they contact the
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person why did you leave I was just tired of life you know right I I actually hate my family right I hate my
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girlfriend and I moved down to Key West she smells funny well so I went to Key West
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and Key Largo uh Key West is just full of people that have run from other other towns hey Qs is a fun time I'm going to
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move there um I wish you would but the thing that I was talking about here where it's
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possible that it might be a good thing that you have two agencies working on this particular case is where we have
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the resources the the larger Sheriff's Department can get from the state funds and from resources that
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they have but then you have the small bourbon Police Department that knows that should know the locals better than
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the sheriff's department I'm guessing um and I want to use this as an example to to explain this because a lot of
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times people get confused about this they think that oh small time you know small towns can't solve crimes the way
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that the big city police department oh yeah those those local yokos they can't solve anything so a lot of us City
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Slickers have that thought and I want I don't have that thought I want to point this out to everybody because
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sometimes in a smaller Community the police department often in cases they they're solved at a higher rate or at
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least a suspect is honed in on a little faster in these smaller communities where you have a police department that
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understands the locals because often they know the people by name and address and more importantly they know these
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people's past yeah you know if I'm a local cop and say it's a Sunday morning an old Leroy's pickup truck got stolen
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that was parked on the side of the road last night and I know that living on the
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other side of town you know out of his parents houses seventeen-year-old Jerry who has a
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history of boosting cars and joy riding around on the weekends well dirty Jerry where do you think I'm going to go first
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without you know if there's no evidence pointing to somebody else I might end up
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on Jerry's doorstep knocking on the door asking about his whereabouts and and where he was and was he involved in
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stealing this car and why do you smell so bad Jerry so that's just I mean that's just an example how in some of
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these smaller communities smaller towns that that they can solve these things at
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a higher rate now I do know in this bourbon area we're talking about a very small town
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that has I mean nearly no homicides nearly no missing persons cases right and that to me is
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why it seems so frustrating I think is the right word frustrating the overwork underpaid
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Theory doesn't kind of apply to this area not not in the sense of Major Crimes we'll get right back to The
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Disappearance of Edward Hill house right after this quick beer break [Music] foreign
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[Music] [Music] ties cheers all right we're discussing the case of Edward Hill House he was
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missing but his sister Kayla stayed in near constant contact with the two departments investigating the case she
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was asking officers for updates wanting to know whether anything had progressed in the case again she felt ignored by
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both agencies in this case and I'm not sure that they were working very hard on this case is
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is what I'm guessing and here's why Kayla believes officers disregarded vital clues in her brother's case for
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example she told them early on of a person in town who seemed to have information that Edward was not just
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missing but he was in fact dead right Kayla told police about this person and let's say
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um you know the rumor or rumors around this person because here's the thing like you pointed out earlier
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I'm willing to bet that that the police probably heard some rumors about this case you know with it being a small town
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and I know rumors are rumors but let's face it really uh well let's face it rumors have solved
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cases they they have nabbed perps hundreds of thousands of times because of rumors yeah
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but Kayla says that they didn't the police didn't speak with the witness that she told them about yeah so this
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witness was hanging out at somebody's house and this person actually didn't speak to
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Kayla personally I don't believe I believe it was one of those uh in passing I'm going to tell a friend about
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what happened and he claims that he saw Edward Hill House dead on a couch at a person's home right
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yeah uh so police didn't speak with this witness law enforcement didn't follow up on this
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lead I I don't I don't understand I don't get it you know she she presented this to
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them in here's what here's what they said investigators basically said you know this is all hearsay
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um saying that there's nothing that they could do they couldn't they couldn't just you know round up people and make
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them talk to them right they couldn't just round them up and make these people give them answers no you can't but the
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thing is is you have somebody saying hey I saw a dead body at this guy's house so what you can do is get a
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search warrant and search that guy's property yeah and I know that you can't make
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people give you answers but at the very least you can speak with them I mean who's to say according to Kayla they
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didn't even speak to the witness that she had provided them and how can how can you tell a victim's loved one who
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who themselves is a victim right if there in fact was a crime that took place how how could you tell that person
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look we can't make people speak to us we can't make them tell us what they know uh when you didn't even bother to to to
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speak with them in the first place man we see law enforcement on the other side sometimes acting too Vigilant you know
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we're gonna bring this guy in and because he saw a a dead body on a couch we're gonna pin the murders on him you
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know but yeah you call the guy you try to find out if this story is true or not because how many times have you been at
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a party drinking and somebody tells you something crazy that you're like that is
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definitely not the truth so question these people get a search warrant well here's the other thing too
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aren't you kind of telling the perpetrator okay let's let's say that Edward was in fact killed and he was
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lying in someone's home and somebody did something with that body right because that's what she stating that this
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witness may know right so let's say that that actually took place now aren't you
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as law enforcement if you are not following up on leads aren't you kind of telling the criminal that we're not
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going to work this case very hard you really have nothing to be afraid of right we'll probably never catch you
00:31:36
because guess what kill again if you want yeah we show up at nine o'clock we clock in and at five you know some
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donuts drink a few coffees and clock out at five and smoke three parliaments take
00:31:46
a huge dump we'll see you tomorrow I hope there's a football game on tonight I mean that's really what you're telling
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this person that should be should be extremely afraid of the investigation afraid to the point where they might be
00:32:00
willing to come forward and confess say hey I know what happened to this guy that's missing right you know again you
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know you know I don't want to jump on law enforcement too much because well I think you can in this particular case
00:32:13
well right at this moment from what we know but we don't know what they're working on behind the scenes as well
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that's true that's true so we have Kayla who's going to have to do a little sleuthing of her own you know at her
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dinner table she's pouring over Clues she's looking through things apparently authorities had given her Edward's phone
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records um something that she was later told is out of the ordinary in a criminal
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investigation I would believe that to be very true but after sifting through go ahead I
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don't think it's out of the ordinary for the cops to get I mean he had a cell phone right
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that's what I'm assuming the records are from yeah yeah so they're taking these cell phone records and they're going to
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sift through them let's figure out who he called last right that's or maybe if there's a history of calls who was he
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talking to yes this is a small town but that doesn't mean everybody hangs out with each other so let's try to figure
00:33:06
out who is in Edwards Circle right because if there's something that happened that's nefarious then hey
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it's going to most likely be within this Inner Circle that's not that odd what's odd is when
00:33:20
they hand her the records right and they say uh yeah you might want to go through
00:33:25
these huh is it that's like what we need your help on this are you too busy eating Donuts
00:33:33
smoking your parliaments and taking a huge dump to look through these phone records
00:33:38
I mean and it doesn't take a you know Kayla looks at the information and what did she figure out real quickly
00:33:45
well the the last person that Edward was on the phone with was a man by the name
00:33:50
of Deacon zelch a man with whom Edward had been hanging out with apparently there were some kind of friends she
00:33:58
tells law enforcement to look at Deacon zelch but according to Kayla they never did anything with this information and I
00:34:06
get what you're saying here captain it's only odd that they provided the phone records to her what's even more
00:34:13
odd was that you would think it's all right you would think that the people that that he spoke to that day the last
00:34:21
day that we know him to have been around um and then maybe you're probably not seeing any more activity on his phone
00:34:29
after that and if that's the case don't you speak to all those people first and then hand over the records when you've
00:34:36
when you've exhausted all leads and said hey you're his sister you're his best friend
00:34:41
you know him better than anybody else right here's the records for the past month or two or three sift through these
00:34:47
and see if anything is odd if anything is strange anything sticks out to you because you would know better than us
00:34:53
because we've spoken to everybody that that he spoke to within the last three days or within the last week right and
00:35:00
again just to play Devil's Advocate I'm not jumping down law enforcement throat they could have been handing her a copy
00:35:08
and the guy could have had a bad day you know his hemorrhoids were flaring up and
00:35:14
he just said hey here's the phone records you need to go through these that that
00:35:21
might be all you know there's a lot of stuff that you know let's just not imply they're not just handing over the phone
00:35:28
records and just not having records I'm going to assume and if they if they did that well
00:35:34
then they're just pieces of [ __ ] but I let's just not assume that that's just what happened and again like I said
00:35:41
it could have just been what the officer was implying her he just had a bad day maybe they were going through the phone
00:35:47
records well because law enforcement didn't follow up with Deacon zelch themselves Kayla she decided to talk to
00:35:55
Deacon herself yeah uh she reached out to him I believe it was on maybe through Facebook messaging
00:36:02
um yeah a lot of times somebody will say text message or they'll say I emailed the person but it's really that you
00:36:10
messaged them through like a social media platform yeah and actually I've there's a there's a few reports about
00:36:16
this case yeah but the few that I've seen and read um each one States something different
00:36:22
that it was either text email or Facebook messaging so I'm a little unclear but regardless she reached out
00:36:29
to Deacon herself well let's explain why though because cops found a lot of marijuana plants on his
00:36:38
property yeah and actually I have the report right here in front of me if you give me
00:36:43
just a second marriage Awana 30 I believe it was 31 plants that they found on his property so yeah Deacon was
00:36:51
growing some marijuana and quite a bit of it um yeah and he got busted now we don't
00:36:56
know if he's going to be charged or not but what does deacon do he runs away leaves town and this is when Kayla
00:37:05
messages him well and he responds back to her message and he gives a lengthy rambling response
00:37:13
right to which Deacon wrote All I can say is some people live life Fuller as ghosts
00:37:22
his spirit and he's referring to Edward here his Spirit just as many of us needs
00:37:30
a break his spirit and a life Fuller as ghost Deacon is talking about Edward is from these words he's not missing
00:37:40
Edward is dead right yes and even to the point that that Deacon has knowledge that Edward is dead is what you can
00:37:48
gather from these messages yeah so here's what we have we have the rumor the rumor starts becoming right that
00:37:58
Edward went and hung out with somebody at some point he's gonna get a call we know from the phone records who calls
00:38:08
him deacon right think it Deacon's this guy shaved head weird beard Captain weird beard right he has a beard
00:38:18
but he has like some stuff well he's there's a few different pictures of him out there and the beard varies depending
00:38:27
on on the photo right but I'm talking about the weird beard yeah it's like it's like these long strands almost like
00:38:34
almost like he has pigtails coming off of his beard or something yeah ugly guy hideous
00:38:41
but that normally happens she got Edward the six foot four tall friend hanging out with Deacon the
00:38:49
ugly friend with the weird beard hit me he kind of looks like a thumb you know like a beat up thumb a bruised
00:38:55
thumb with a beard so he gets a call from deacon at some point then Deacon's gonna pick him up
00:39:05
what happened then what happened next there's no rumors about that but then this unknown source is going around town
00:39:12
saying I was at Deacon's house and I saw Edward on Deacon's couch dead yes and now Deacon is busted with his
00:39:24
marijuana he is now left the town and Kayla contacts him and he starts talking about
00:39:31
spirits and who knows what you know and no no we gotta put this in context a little bit because we could jump to the
00:39:41
conclusion of oh well he's talking uh you know his spirit and all this stuff Deacon was wanted to be known as kind of
00:39:50
a hippie so we got to put that in context well so some clarification this took place in August of 2016. this is when
00:40:01
the investigators found 33 marijuana plants on Deacon zelch's property they located them on the east side behind two
00:40:09
outbuildings that were located on the property yeah They confiscated one and placed it into evidence against deacon
00:40:17
zelch They confiscated all the remaining plants and destroyed them now what they did at the same time
00:40:24
though is they sent in a cadaver dog from a volunteer unit to search for any signs of a corpse but the cadaver dog
00:40:33
did not hit on anything right this is this is strange to me well at least at some point that you know law
00:40:40
enforcement is doing work yeah yeah in in this but but this is what the problem is here Captain is that we have
00:40:50
um we have a situation where we have the sister who has provided a witness or possible witnesses to law enforcement
00:40:58
and those people were not reached reached out to they were not spoken to and for whatever reason
00:41:07
they do decide to do the cadaver dog thing in August of 2016. but this is this is after some time here this is he
00:41:16
went missing in April of 2016. so quite some time has passed and then it's not doing any work yeah but then a few other
00:41:24
changes have occurred as well and in that uh in that time since Edward vanished without a trace the bourbon
00:41:33
police chief and the Crawford County Sheriff well they both retired mm-hmm so convenient so Kayla is hoping that
00:41:43
this Changing of the Guard will put some fresh eyes on this case the new police chief that came on board this is Paul
00:41:51
Satterfield previously a detective in the Crawford County Sheriff's Office he was already familiar with the case when
00:41:58
he took over right so Chief Satterfield felt the same as Kayla he too wanted to put fresh eyes on this case because
00:42:07
Satterfield felt that from early on in the initial investigation that Deacon zelch was a good suspect yeah that he
00:42:15
was somebody that they should be looking at and we have these rumors around town
00:42:18
why aren't they talking to him right in the new and the new Chief was also he wasn't satisfied with the low with how
00:42:25
little progress had taken place in Edward hillhouse's case so he hired a task force
00:42:33
he used the town of bourbon's public funds to hire this task force he broke away
00:42:39
from the rest of Crawford County and hired a vice unit from Franklin County that had no ties to the area
00:42:47
Franklin County is just North of uh of Crawford County by the way and when these new investigators came in they
00:42:54
started the investigation over from scratch a clean slate right and what what is one of the main reasons this is
00:43:03
happening it's because of Deacon's father yes yes it's because of deacons Deacon
00:43:10
zelch's father Vernon zelch uh he he had worked for the police department yeah and they're going to use this informant
00:43:21
they're going to use this witness that you had spoke about that that had said that they witnessed the body the
00:43:27
lifeless body of Edward Hillhouse lying on a couch in Deacon zelch's home they're going to use that information
00:43:34
the other the other information that they receive from this informant was that deaconzel should actually admitted
00:43:41
to them that he had killed Edward with a single shot to the head with a 22 caliber rifle right so Vernon zelch he
00:43:49
worked in law enforcement but now he does a lot of stuff with like radio and but he knows like everybody in this
00:43:56
small town I mean yeah he's he's uh what I would refer to as a personality you know what I mean he's a personality
00:44:03
amongst amongst Town amongst the the small town right but even though you're the personality around town or a
00:44:11
personality around town if there's rumors that your son murdered somebody you're going knocking on that door
00:44:20
and you're investigating but it seems like there was nothing happen until there was a Changing of the Guard
00:44:27
and I think that's the main reason why you know the new sheriff in town or the new Chief right said hey let's set up a
00:44:36
task force because I have reason to believe that Vernon is snooping around and and basically
00:44:44
um obstructing justice yeah and the problem you're gonna have here Captain is the the little bourbon
00:44:51
Police Department that's with inside of Crawford County uh that's that's policed
00:44:57
by the sheriff's department right all those guys are going to be buddies so it doesn't matter if you work for the
00:45:02
police department or if you work for the sheriff's department these guys know each other these guys hang out in the
00:45:07
same circles they're going to or they at least should have one another's backs right
00:45:14
but the thing is a certain degree well of course to a certain degree not to the point of crossing the line right but
00:45:20
this is crossing the line if you're not you're not interviewing people you're not falling if you're looking if you're
00:45:25
looking the other way because you know someone because you know the zelch family and you're you don't want to
00:45:31
offend anybody or you don't want to throw anybody under the bus then yes you're doing you're doing the wrong
00:45:37
thing you're you're not doing what you swore to do which is protect the people of your jurisdiction and that's why you
00:45:44
have Satterfield Chief Satterfield the new new Chief calling in this vice squad from Franklin County yeah they had
00:45:52
Satterfield they have no ties they may not even know anybody uh from Crawford County or from the bourbon Police
00:45:58
Department so they're going to go in there and be able to look at this thing and not have any worries about it not
00:46:04
have any preconceived notions about anybody right they're going to be able to actually go in there and do their
00:46:11
jobs do what these other officers and investigators should have done from the get-go they're going to go in there
00:46:18
the situation we have right is that they're going to go in there and they're going to do their due diligence
00:46:24
well and we have we were able to speak with Edward's sister Kayla and that's who you heard earlier in the show
00:46:32
discussing her relationship with her brother and what type of person he was and she also knew Deacon zelch the
00:46:42
person that she pointed out to investigators should be someone that they should talk to and we get to hear
00:46:48
Kayla describe Deacon zelch and describe the relationship that her brother had with him
00:46:56
Edward's relationship was D with Deacon was very vague to me um Deacon was known into the community
00:47:04
for not being very bright never actually worked couldn't keep a family he had multiple
00:47:11
kids but never took care of them or they'd have nothing to do with him as they got older
00:47:17
Deacon had a little respect around here for from people so when Edward started hanging out with him I warned them about
00:47:24
him that he was no good that he wasn't a good person I told him I don't want him
00:47:29
around my house or anywhere near us or my family so a good description of this Shady
00:47:37
character Deacon zelch who may be at the center of this missing person's case yeah we have a 28 year old young man
00:47:45
missing a family looking for him investigators early on don't seem to be working the case very hard
00:47:54
and then we have these rumors about town that seem to be pointing this case in the direction of we're no longer working
00:48:01
a missing person's case this could be a homicide investigation we have Kayla who's working hard on her own her family
00:48:09
working hard to point the investigators in that direction The Changing of the Guard the vice squad comes in and very
00:48:17
quickly we might see some movement on this and we also might see the hints of a possible police cover-up
00:48:30
foreign [Music] Captain I want to thank you and I want to thank everybody out there for kicking
00:48:46
off the new year with us here in the garage and we got plenty more to get to in this case and we look forward to
00:48:51
doing so on the next show we will see you back here in the garage until then be good be kind and don't litter
00:48:59
foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]