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Danny Hohenstein /// Part 1/// 286

March 12, 2019 / 52:43

This episode covers the case of missing child Daniel David Hohenstein, known as Danny, who disappeared on December 1, 1992, in Paradise Pines, California. The hosts, Nick and Captain, discuss the investigation into Danny's disappearance with retired FBI special agent Jeffrey Rynek, who worked on the case.

Danny was last seen playing with a dog near his home while his mother was inside preparing a meal. After he went missing, local law enforcement and the FBI became involved in the search, but no evidence was found. Rynek shares insights about the challenges faced during the investigation and the misconceptions surrounding missing children cases.

The episode highlights the complexities of Danny's home life, including his mother's struggles with alcoholism and neglect. Rynek discusses the importance of thorough documentation and the emotional toll of working on cold cases, especially when children are involved.

Throughout the conversation, Rynek reflects on the investigative techniques used, including polygraph tests and interviews with family and potential suspects. The episode emphasizes the need for compassion and understanding when dealing with families affected by such tragedies.

Listeners gain a deeper understanding of the case and the ongoing impact of missing children cases on families and communities.

TLDR

Retired FBI agent Jeffrey Rynek discusses the cold case of missing boy Danny Hohenstein, emphasizing investigation challenges and family dynamics.

Episode

52:43
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to true crab garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks for
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[Music] [Applause] in recent years over 450,000 children were reported missing in the United
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States each year children taken by strangers with slight acquaintances represent only one hundredth of one
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percent of all missing children far more common are children who have run away gotten lost or injured have been taken
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by a family member usually in a custody dispute where they simply aren't where they're expected to be because of a
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miscommunication but still a very small percent of children reported missing remain gone professionals who deal with
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missing children cases are primarily police officers and local detectives trained to locate young people and bring
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them back our case this week is that of Daniel David Howe enstein or Danny Danny
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was born October 3rd 1986 on December 1st 1992 Danny living with his mother in Paradise Pines
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California is reported missing Danny was just six years old his missing flyer describes Danny as Caucasian 3 foot 8
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inches tall 41 pounds with a slender bill he has blue eyes and light brown hair at the time of his disappearance
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Danny was sporting a buzz haircut Danny was last seen playing with the dog near his home in the afternoon hours of
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December 1st his mother Jackie was inside preparing a meal for the boy when she went to call
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him in he was nowhere to be found Jackie search for the boy but to no avail after the boy was only gone for a short
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period of time Jackie called the police and the search for Danny began but hours
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turned into days and then weeks and months and still no one knew where the little boy was the trail was going cold
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[Music] there was no evidence and little in the way of leads detectives burned Kelch
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worked the case as good as any seasoned detective could he meticulously logged and organized every bit of information
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collected from the search as well as things brought to light by interviews and tips coming into the department but
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this was truly a mystery and the FBI offered their assistance and the ongoing investigation in the public eye there
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are some common misconceptions about when the FBI can get involved in a missing child case either there has to
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be evidence that a victim was taken across state lines or that a ransom demand has been made listeners of this
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show know that that is not the case as the Bureau often offers their investigative resources and technical
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assets to work hand-in-hand with state and local law enforcement agencies on cases involving the mysterious
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disappearance of a child in 1993 FBI special agent Jeffrey reineck was paired with detective Kelch his role was to
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help investigate the disappearance recover the child and apprehend the person or persons responsible
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this is the case of the missing boy Danny Hohenstein [Music] over the years captain we have had
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several guests join us in the garage we have had podcasters prosecutors private investigators this week we have a very
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special guest retired special agent from the FBI Jeffrey rynek he has been involved in many cases of missing
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children and many cases of crimes committed against children and we asked him to join us in the garage this week
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to discuss the missing persons case of Danny Hohenstein who went missing in 1992 well Nick and Jeff before we dive
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into the case Jeff could you tell our listeners why you got involved in the FBI that's a great question and I think
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about it an awful lot I was born with physical birth defects that I had a club left foot and the doctors also
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determined that I had cerebral palsy and for my first nine years of life I was the kid that was picked on and beaten up
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separated from the other kids I couldn't walk right and so my life I wouldn't consider it to be a lot of fun at the
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same time my parents were taking me to all these doctors and I originally thought they
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were doing this because they wanted me to be right and I think they did but I've learned in later life in a big part
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because of my relationship with my wife Lori that I think my parents are somewhat embarrassed or offset because I
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looked so different I had a clubfoot I walked funny and I think it troubled them as much as it was an inconvenience
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to me at nine years of age I had experimental surgery that worked and caused me to work walk fairly normally
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and as I continued growing and developing after that surgery I was able to run and do things and I was able to
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do a lot of I was able to do everything normally I thought it was something that
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was behind the leftover effect on me was that I was very angry because my first 10 years of
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being beaten up and picked on and so I was so much foul told somewhat violent it didn't take much to get me to go over
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the edge I went through life my parents expecting me to go to college and we decided that I would go to law school I
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went to Cheltenham high school graduated then I went to Albright College in Redding Pennsylvania graduated there and
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then realized that I didn't have enough money to go to law school so I ended up I just you know I was floating around I
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always wanted to be an FBI agent because my dad had been an undertaker and during one of the funerals there was
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this high-ranking organized crime guy and I was fascinated by these guys that were walking around taking license
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plates and all that and at that early age my dream was to be an FBI agent which I never really thought was
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possible for me after I was kind of without direction after I graduated college I needed to find something so I
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started applying to all these law enforcement jobs including DEA Secret Service and then I applied to the FBI
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and they responded to me and made me aware of a position where I would be what's called the clerk I went down for
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my interview and they said that if I did three years as a clerk then I'd be eligible to apply for agents class and
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for me that was totally unexpected and that gave me direction so I went to work for the FBI as a clerk I had an
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advantage because I had a college degree and you had to have a college degree to
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be an FBI agent so I went to work doing menial things I used to make the clerk badges and then I did soap screaming in
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the exhibit section of the FBI had six months after I got there the FBI stopped that program with the clerk
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and did not grandfather anybody and I was once again in a dead-end position so your chances of getting into the FBI
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were made possible through this program they cancelled the program now what are you gonna do I decided I went back to
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school at night full time to gain the equivalent of an accounting degree because that would enable me to apply to
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the FBI as an agent as an accountant and for the next 52 weeks that's what I did
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I also had started running because it made me feel like I could run normally I enjoyed it I could think and it made me
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feel good so I kept running and so I had this life of working as a clerk at the FBI and running every night and going
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through to get my under graduate equivalent degree of accounting and I completed it and sure enough I was able
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to get into the FBI my new agents class was June 26th of 1978 and that's how I started that's pretty cool not quitting
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the Clerc thing so you're still working for the FBI but you're running every night you're going to school you're
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gonna find a way to make this dream a reality and at some point Jeff you get involved
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in a unit that specializes investigating crimes involving children can you take us through that process sure Nick the
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the work I did with crimes against children didn't start until I had about 15 years in or 12 years my first office
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was Chicago and in Chicago I worked violent crime and accounting and I was put on a what they call it
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title 3 which is telephone surveillance on a case everybody has seen the movie Casino and I was one of the FBI agents
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listening to the earphones on that on the telephone surveillance with new agents
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we were pretty much worthless so they would assign his stuff like that and that would help us get acclimated to the
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job a short time after my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer in Philadelphia and I chose to go back to
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the New York office to be with him during his final years of life and that's where I met my wife Laurie we
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ended up starting our own family and I know this sounds like a long lead-in but I think you'll understand in a short
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while Laurie and I we started having a family and our first son Joe was born and when he was three and a half years
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old we had our second son Jordan for the week before Jordan was born Joe looked like he was having a really bad cold and
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when we took Jordan for his well-baby visit we asked the doctor to look at Joe and Laurie and I'll never forget that
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the doctor came in with this ashen sullen look on his face and he told us that Joe had a plus for protein spill in
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his urine and that that was very serious and he made it clear to us that this was
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going to be a very difficult thing for us the next few years we spent dealing with Joe who was diagnosed with
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pediatric nephrotic syndrome and this is where this is kind of the formative time
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for both Lori and I because dealing with our son and the prospect that he might not survive and the hardship of dealing
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with the symptoms Lori had more emotional strength than I did she dealt with a lot better than I did shortly
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after we arrived in Sacramento there was an abduction of a 7 month old baby named
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Frankie Proctor and I was assigned to it and it was like an out-of-body experience for him it was nothing like I
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had ever experienced before in the terms of the drive the passion and then I got
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I worked with a detective at Sacramento Police Department and Greg Stewart whoo great detective and and I was able
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to partner up with him and so I learned a lot from working with him and I also experienced something was very unique in
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that I didn't want to go home I just kept going and four days later Greg and I and a few tactical guys broke into an
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apartment and we rescued little Frankie Proctor the FBI being the bureaucracy it
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is like every other bureaucracy they started assigning me all of these cases and that's how my work in the crimes
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against children began Jeff don't worry about the long answers we hear we appreciate the details we're just lucky
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that you're talking to the two slobs in the crowd well let's dive into this week's case because at some point you
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were asked to take a look into a missing persons case and this is six year old Daniel David Hohenstein better known as
00:17:00
Danny and by the time you got involved this was considered a cold case yeah no this is thank you for asking that during
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this time it was in the early 1990s the FBI had a new director his name was Louis Freeh Louis Freeh was very strong
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in his belief that the resources of the FBI could help in investigating missing and abducted children and as a result of
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that every field office in the FBI was ordered to go through their closed cases and any closed case that had a child
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that was not recovered we were supposed to review it and look to see if there was anything that we could use to try
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and and bring it back to try and find the child that's a pretty awesome initiative by the FBI I reviewed the
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case on Danny Hornstein who had disappeared in November the end of November of nineteen I think it was 1991
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or two I you know it's been so long now my notes say that Danny disappeared December 1st 1992
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okay December 1st that that's right and I looked at that case now that now we're
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in the end of of 1993 you were a year later and in my review of the case Danny had disappeared there was no sign of him
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anywhere it was if he simply vaporized and ceased to exist and and this really bothered me because that doesn't happen
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and as I read the file I saw that the Butte County Sheriff had a very very good search-and-rescue
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team and the detective that was working at his name was Vern couch and I could tell that Vern had a problem with Danny
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disappearing as well the search-and-rescue folks and the managers believed that Danny had
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wandered into a very rugged Canyon near his home and he met his end either being
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lost in the canyon or being attacked by a predatory animal in the woods as I looked through search-and-rescue reports
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there was no evidence of him any evidence of him at all ever being into the canyon there was nothing and it was
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just too much for me that a child could disappear in a period of 20 minutes and not exist and I could tell that the
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detective Vern felt that way my supervisor was a guy named Don Pierce and Don just an amazing person he had
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this talent where he could recognize what people were good at everybody on our squad was engaged things they were
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excelling at and that's because Don could recognize these things he was really was intuitive I told Don I didn't
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think that just bothered me that Danny had disappeared and nothing existed so he arranged for Vern couch and Vern
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supervisor to come down and Verne supervisors name was Perry Rena foo later became the Butte County
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Sheriff they came down to the FBI office and we sat there reviewing the case I said at the risk of looking like an
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idiot I said you know something's wrong because a boy like this doesn't just disappear to the point where search and
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rescue can't find any evidence of him ever existing and Vern agreed with me and that's the way he had felt so Don
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Pierce my supervisor and Perry Ren affirmed supervisor gave us permission to reopen this case and start looking at
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it and that became this unbelievable marathon for Vern and I looking to find out what happened to Danny in a way when
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you review these files and you're thinking about these things you're almost transported back in time
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and you realize that the better the investigators documented what they had done the further back you can go and
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with the intensity of actually feeling like you're there that was a real lesson to me and my paperwork was usually not
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very good but because of that and from learning from Vern I started trying to do much paper in my own paperwork
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because I knew that it could mean the difference between having hope or losing hope in a case like this Jeff tell us a
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little bit about Danny's home life Danny lived in a small town named Miguel iya makalya is a very rural area
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it's just east a north of a town called Paradise your listeners might be interested to know that paradise and
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Miguel you were two towns that were completely burned to the ground in the camp fire from last summer and so
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nothing exists there anymore but Danny grew up in migaila or he lived in Madera mughelli he didn't live there he didn't
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grow up there his mom was an alcoholic and so her life circulated around alcohol and because of that she wasn't
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the most responsible parent she could have been and Danny was frequently reported to be in the neighborhood
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unsupervised there was one incident that really got to me emotionally where a neighbor who was interviewed described
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that on a cold snowy morning Danny was at her door by her kitchen asking to be let in and he was in his pajamas he
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didn't have any outer garments on and she described how she brought him in and fed him breakfast and there were other
00:23:22
incidences that were like that there was teachers in his kindergarten class reported that Danny would fall asleep
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early in the day and they determined that his mom was feeding him ice cream and he didn't have a very nutritional
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diet his teeth were deteriorated because again his diet was so bad so Danny was a
00:23:50
child who was neglected that's pretty sad one of the reasons that Bernie and I would one of the things that aided us
00:24:00
was because you know here Danny goes missing and because he's neglected in the first place
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no one really or they easily give up looking for him and so that that was eating at us and one of the things that
00:24:14
I'm really proud of that was happening during this time is it Vern and I were developing a very close friendship with
00:24:22
each other and Vern was a guy who didn't really have great feelings about the FBI
00:24:26
so this partner ship who were developing was a lot of fun and it really took advantage of me in terms of I was a
00:24:34
street guy and he I didn't know anything about the country so he he was on these
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crazy stories that I would believe that were not true just uh get me can you describe the man that they partnered you
00:24:46
with for this case detective Vern couch Vern was about six foot five he was if you think of John Wayne in one
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of his westerns that's Verne Kelch he was massive he was his hands dwarf my hands he had a
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deep voice and he was a no-nonsense guy quite frankly when I started working whether Mazal intimidated because I
00:25:19
wouldn't want to be on his bad side and as we got to be better friends it just till I felt a lot safer people
00:25:28
people have the misconception that police or sheriffs in rural areas aren't that good Verne had kept this
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unbelievable documentation of the case he had volumes of loose-leaf binders that were organized in all different
00:25:49
ways and you could give him a date and time and he'd be able to look back in his records and find out what happened
00:25:58
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cheers to you captain special agent rynek could you take us through the known events of the day of
00:31:01
December 1st 1992 yeah the day Danny goes missing yes and I'd like to tell you that this is when you talk about
00:31:10
working cold cases the events and the day that your victim is last seen they become imprinted in your mind and in
00:31:23
your heart and your soul because it's the starting point of where you begin and they end and you try very hard to
00:31:33
cause one to overlap with the other so you get some type of idea of what could have happened
00:31:41
and so in Danny's case that day was a cold rainy chilly day there was a house being built near where Danny lived and
00:31:55
because he was always out and about he would always hang over watching the house be built there was a dog in the
00:32:04
neighborhood that was always a Danny sighed and the dog's owner was in jail so the dog like Danny had no place to go
00:32:13
so the two of them found each other and hung out together and Danny hung around there for the day and about three
00:32:23
o'clock or so the workmen were getting ready to go home and the supervisor told Danny to go home and and he actually
00:32:35
told them you know you got to get a coat on a jacket so Danny went home and got a
00:32:42
coat his mother remembered him coming in and getting his jacket I'm running out again and the supervisor said that Danny
00:32:51
came back with his coat on and then these guys were packing up getting ready to go
00:32:57
a short time later Danny's mom went looking for him and couldn't find him and so this is what we know about
00:33:05
Danny's last day he was hanging out in the area where the house was being built he had a dog at his side he interacted
00:33:14
with the Carpenters that were building the house and so this is where you start and what happens is you not only try and
00:33:24
get an idea of the logistics and the goings and comings but you also get an idea of what Danny was like because
00:33:32
these guys are telling you what their impression is at the same time you're getting impressions of these guys and
00:33:38
that slowly gives you the ability to start building this mental picture of what that day was like now Danny's mom
00:33:47
was as we in alcoholic and there were many times reported when she would be asleep during
00:33:55
the day probably recovering from the previous night on one occasion before this she had actually misplaced Danny
00:34:03
she had left Danny with a friend and forgotten who she left him with and couldn't find him so of course she met
00:34:12
with a lot of negative criticism because you know she wasn't really being mindful
00:34:21
of her child but it was also important to consider that if she could have lost her child for three days that time how
00:34:29
do we know she didn't do something this time how do we know she wasn't pulling out of the garage and maybe hit him
00:34:36
while he was standing behind all these factors come into play as possibilities but in what really got
00:34:44
to Vernon I was that here you have the mom who had lost him for three days and she never called police and now Danny
00:34:52
was missing for 50 minutes and she called police so the question becomes why she's so diligent this time and this
00:35:01
is an example of where you start you have to find a reason there's something going on there and because her son was
00:35:10
missing she became very helpful and tried very hard to the best of her ability to help us find her son and what
00:35:19
we learned is that on that day Danny was supposed to go over that evening to be with his father and his
00:35:27
mother was going to have the evening to herself to go out and do what she did mindful of this she when she couldn't
00:35:38
find Danny she was concerned not because she couldn't find Danny but because she
00:35:45
was going to go out and she knew she couldn't go out and tell she had Danny accounted for over at his dad's and the
00:35:51
way the logistics worked out that day is that she was going to feed Danny before
00:35:56
she took him over to his dad so she cooked him a pot of macaroni cheese so she remembered Danny coming in
00:36:05
to get his jacket as she was starting the pot of macaroni cheese and then when she finished cooking it that's when she
00:36:13
started looking for him a time of approximately 20 minutes and couldn't find him so whatever happened to Danny
00:36:19
happened in that 20 minutes then she started looking for him and she spent another half hour looking for him and
00:36:27
then she called the police she called the Butte County Sheriff's Department and Verne responded with the department
00:36:34
and they began what they do so well which is search and rescue and looking for Danny and this is where we get to
00:36:41
the point where there's never any trace of him including his clothing his shoes his possessions anything that's ever
00:36:49
seen from him again the dog is located in the neighborhood running around by itself but Danny is going and this is
00:36:59
what we had to work with right so we don't have any evidence suggesting where Danny went but do we have any other kind
00:37:08
of evidence another thing that we had is we talked about how Danny was neglected
00:37:15
because of his condition of his hygiene Danny had contracted a infestation of what they call scabies which I think are
00:37:26
like they're like it's scabies or like these bugs that make you wish are like bedbugs if you will and because of the
00:37:37
scabies Danny's mom had to do a complete cleaning of the house doing all the laundry that was located in the house
00:37:46
and she also had to have Danny's head shaved because the scabies would I guess lived in the hair I don't know that much
00:37:54
about it but I remember the scabies was a big issue and when we were looking for
00:37:58
Danny his hair was a crew-cut and there were some strange tips that were coming into
00:38:03
the police department regarding the disappearance of this small boy do you recall any of those burn Bernie and I we
00:38:12
decided that we would the interview was mom very thoroughly we would interview his sister Shannon and
00:38:20
his brother Brandon and we would slowly take everything we could extract from them and we would verify and run out
00:38:31
each specific thing and when it came to Danny's mom the crowd she hung with wasn't the best and so we started
00:38:42
looking through her friends and one guy in particular we determined from Jackie's friends that this guy was very
00:38:54
sexually active and also very sexually aggressive and while there was nothing to indicate he preferred children we
00:39:03
were going to give him a good you know look and we eventually found him he was down in the LA area and we arranged for
00:39:14
a polygraph operator from the Los Angeles division and verne supervisor Perry and mind Don arranged for Vern and
00:39:25
I to get the funding so he could go to LA and have him how this guy polygraphed this is where as new investigators you
00:39:37
start learning the ups and downs of working these cold cases and Vern and I got ourselves worked up thinking this
00:39:45
guy could be a good contender and so we had a lot of expectations and hopes when
00:39:50
we drove down to LA and the pellagra fur we had was guy named jack to mark a really really good guy who got some in
00:39:58
his own right was was well known and thought of and we got the guy and had him do a polygraph with Jack we told you
00:40:09
act that we thought he would be a good contender because of his behavior incidents that had been described that
00:40:16
associated with them was inappropriate sexual you know forwarding with women things like that and Vern and I what
00:40:25
happens with the polygraph is it takes several hours and Vern and I in a lobby area while Jack had taken
00:40:34
this suspect into one of the motel rooms were and and polygraphed and Vern and I
00:40:41
are sitting out there and shortly after a few hours the guy comes out and he looks sullen and his eyes are on the
00:40:53
ground and he is really shaken up so of course Vern and I get really excited thinking oh you know this could
00:41:00
be it and Jack came out a short time after him and we said you know like how'd it go when he goes it's not him so
00:41:08
we've got ourselves so wound up thinking it would be him it it took some time for
00:41:14
it to settle in that it wasn't him but Jack said even though the guy passed his polygraph he thought he would
00:41:21
interrogate him anyway and the result was this guy coming out of the room the way he was jacket really going after him
00:41:30
and I gotta tell you it makes me proud to be an FBI agent to know that you know the guys you work with her are so good
00:41:38
and so dedicated and passionate that just because we were talking about the word bouts of a missing six-year-old boy
00:41:46
now Jack was not going to let this go until he himself was content so when he let the guy out he was pretty convinced
00:41:55
the guy had nothing to do with it so Bernie and I thanked him but we had to get done because the guy who literally
00:42:01
walked out and kept walking and we were losing them and we wanted to just touch base with him and we found him a couple
00:42:11
miles away from the hotel and we offered him a ride home and he was crying and refused our ride home because he was so
00:42:22
upset and shaken up by the interrogation and it's an example of how you can get your hopes up as an investigator and
00:42:32
then come crashing down when it's not what you think and as you work these cases Nick what happens is you put so
00:42:40
much of yourself into each lead and things start working up that when the lead falls through it not only comes
00:42:50
as a shock and disappointment but it kind of saps your energy for a day or two we talked a little bit about Jackie
00:42:58
Danny's mother and her lifestyle in Danny's home life when you start looking into this cold case there was reason to
00:43:06
have suspicions regarding Jackie yes this is really a special time for me before I had even met Jackie from
00:43:18
reading the files and realizing the life that Danny had I was already angry at her
00:43:25
bear in mind Nick that I had myself a six-year-old boy same age as Danny who was going through the after-effects of a
00:43:38
disease that threatened his life has almost took him from us Laurie you know had handled it with more emotional
00:43:45
strength that I did and so here's a mom I'm talking to that's got a boy who's healthy and she neglects him so before I
00:43:53
even met Jackie I was prejudicial towards her I was angry so I I went with Vern and we went to Jackie's house and
00:44:03
the door opened and Jackie came out and she and Vern gave this huge hug and I felt myself get a little upset with
00:44:13
Vernon I'm like why are you hugging this woman after what she's done and she was
00:44:18
also considered by many to be a suspect it was believed that because of her inebriated state she may have done
00:44:27
something to Danny accidentally and and caused him to to die or whatever and then gotten rid of him so there was a
00:44:35
lot of suspicion and I didn't see any reason that she should not be considered in that light but Vern did not think she
00:44:45
had anything to do with it and I learned a huge lesson from Vern that day I learned that when you treat people with
00:44:54
respect and you don't judge them they become a lot more truthful honest and reflective trying to help you
00:45:06
figure out what's going on because as we sat there that day it was clear to me that Jackie knew that she was part of
00:45:15
the problem that she knew she had failed Danny's welfare she knew that this probably might not have happened if she
00:45:26
had been a more hands-on mother and it was very hard to maintain that level of anger that I felt before I met her
00:45:33
seeing her this way and I also saw that the burn was just so amazing with her that I believe strongly that Jackie not
00:45:45
only had not been in involved but was being treated with such a Cavalier like oh she did it and he's going and we're
00:45:58
never going to find him and from being was wearing that there I was like we need to we need to go through Jackie and
00:46:06
either find out if she did this or or stop prioritizing her and so we arranged for Jackie to come down to the FBI
00:46:15
office in Sacramento and she was polygraphed in Sacramento and it was a female fully prefer who I worked with
00:46:24
was really good I really liked her and she came out of the polygraph and said that Jackie had passed her polygraph
00:46:33
that one of the problems with the previous polygraphs is that polygraphs were done in such a way as to cause her
00:46:41
to become emotional and that threw off the results and and this might be a good time for your listeners to understand
00:46:49
how a polygraph works because a polygraph measures physical function there's it measures your pulse it
00:46:57
measures your blood pressure it measures your heartbeat and it also measures the
00:47:03
conductivity of your skin so if you start sweating for instance that conductivity goes up
00:47:10
and all these things together are then go through an algorithm and give the pellagra for an idea of the whether the
00:47:19
person is speaking truthfully or not but consider this Nik I have never met a victim parent whose child is gone
00:47:29
missing that passed the polygraph they all fail because they all feel responsible for the disappearance they
00:47:38
all feel that they let their child down and so they all feel like they're the reason the Charles missing and so the
00:47:47
polygraph indicates to them you know shows them as as failing when in reality they're blaming themselves so you always
00:47:56
have to take into consideration the total environment all all of the facets of what you're dealing with I hate to
00:48:06
say it but I did see in one instance a father pass a polygraph and what I realized in time about that father was
00:48:18
that he really didn't care about his child being missing so all of the emotional aspects that would have caused
00:48:24
the polygraph to show its its results weren't there because he really didn't care a person who doesn't have emotion
00:48:33
he's more likely or he or she is more likely to pass a polygraph because the polygraph is based on our ability to
00:48:41
feel and have emotion and react and the and of course the philosophy is that if you tell a lie if you mislead that's
00:48:51
that you're going to react to that you're gonna you know you're doing something wrong and your body reacts
00:48:56
physically to what your mind is doing mentally right and during this interviewing process and and sifting
00:49:03
through this information there are other leads that are coming in yeah I believe
00:49:08
there was one if I recall correctly they involved a victim of molestation they indicated that possibly their father
00:49:17
could have been involved in the disappearance of Danny yes it's amazing you know I remember writing
00:49:25
about it now in the book when you're looking for a missing child the natural belief is that whoever took the child or
00:49:36
killed the child was doing more than just taking the child that there was a sexual motive
00:49:42
we got a tip in from a guy who believed that his father could be a suspect and I
00:49:51
don't remember exactly now but I remember that he was able to give us enough supporting information that we
00:49:59
were able to put this guy in close proximity to Danny and possibly he could you know maybe he needed to be looked at
00:50:10
further he turned out to have an alibi that that didn't you know that caused him to be cleared but the thing I
00:50:21
remember the most about that lead which really stays with me even now is that this man described to me that as a boy
00:50:33
he would try and stay up all night long and sit in the hallway to keep his father from going in and assaulting his
00:50:45
sister and he felt responsible that he couldn't do that it left a seed in me of the realization
00:50:57
of how hard this is for the family members not only the victims families and that when something happens to
00:51:09
another person many times victims of similar crimes and victims families of similar crimes will reappear Ian's say
00:51:20
did and it will it will reaffirm and I've always taken that with me since [Music]
00:51:39
for all of our old episodes download the stitcher app they're free exclusively on
00:51:45
this to trap also check out our bonus show our weekly show off the record on stitcher premium this week we're talking
00:51:53
about the documentary the HBO documentary of Adnan Syed all right we will see everybody back here in the
00:52:00
garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't live [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 60
    Most heartbreaking

Episode Highlights

  • FBI's Involvement in Missing Children Cases
    The FBI often collaborates with local law enforcement on missing child cases.
    “The resources of the FBI could help in investigating missing and abducted children.”
    @ 17m 22s
    March 12, 2019
  • The Disappearance of Danny Hohenstein
    Danny was reported missing at just six years old, sparking a long investigation.
    “A boy like this doesn't just disappear.”
    @ 20m 41s
    March 12, 2019
  • The Role of Detective Vern Couch
    Detective Vern Couch was instrumental in the investigation of Danny's case.
    “He had volumes of loose-leaf binders that were organized in all different ways.”
    @ 25m 42s
    March 12, 2019
  • Brooklyn Sheets Review
    These sheets offer luxury without the markup, available in over 25 colors and patterns.
    “I love my Brooklyn sheets!”
    @ 26m 55s
    March 12, 2019
  • The Day Danny Went Missing
    A detailed account of the events leading up to Danny's disappearance on December 1, 1992.
    “It's the starting point of where you begin and they end.”
    @ 31m 18s
    March 12, 2019
  • The Emotional Toll of Investigations
    Investigators often feel a deep emotional impact when leads fall through.
    “It not only comes as a shock but saps your energy for a day or two.”
    @ 42m 50s
    March 12, 2019
  • Adnan Syed Documentary Discussion
    This week we're diving into the HBO documentary about Adnan Syed.
    @ 51m 50s
    March 12, 2019

Episode Quotes

  • This was truly a mystery.
    Danny Hohenstein /// Part 1/// 286
  • A boy like this doesn't just disappear.
    Danny Hohenstein /// Part 1/// 286
  • These sheets don't just feel great, they look great too!
    Danny Hohenstein /// Part 1/// 286
  • Brooklyn sheets are the best, most comfortable sheets I've ever slept on!
    Danny Hohenstein /// Part 1/// 286
  • You have to find a reason; there's something going on there.
    Danny Hohenstein /// Part 1/// 286
  • I've always taken that with me since.
    Danny Hohenstein /// Part 1/// 286

Key Moments

  • Welcome to True Crime Garage00:40
  • Missing Children Statistics02:55
  • Detective Vern Couch24:49
  • Comfort and Style26:51
  • Investigation Insights39:40
  • Emotional Challenges42:58
  • Victims' Stories51:09
  • Garage Tomorrow52:00

Words per Minute Over Time

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