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[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you 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 ladies and gentlemen the team captain of team captain he is
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of course our captain well we had an incident this week I was booted off the team
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but it's good to be seen and it's good to see you I'll start another team and we'll take over this world
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[Music] tonight we are drinking Julius we needed a little sunshine captain and I couldn't
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my friend High Praise from a high guy [Music] all right Julius was brought to us by
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a five star review that's enough of the business Captain everybody gather around
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grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] Kentucky Friday May 17 1968 Wilbur
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riddle he's a water well driller found the dead body of a young woman while walking around at a job site just off of
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Interstate 25 near Georgetown Kentucky he immediately reported his findings to the local authorities what they found is
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startling someone had killed the young woman and wrapped her in some kind of canvas bag or tarp and tying up the
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bundle with rope inside the young woman was nude cause of death most likely asphyxiation with a murdered victim in a
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homicide investigation underway the most troubling part for the investigators they don't know who the woman is they
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have received many tips and leads and dozens of missing women reports yet the victim remains nameless newspapers
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dubbed her tent girl because of the material she was wrapped up in several had pointed out that it looked like the
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type of material one would use for a tent or a bag that would carry a tent well Wilbur riddle retired about 20
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years after finding the body and still 20 years later they had not identified the woman known as tent girl Wilbur
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liked the local sheriff and detectives that had worked so hard on the case still was not satisfied that she had
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never been identified refusing to let the case go cold in his life Wilbur told his children about him
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finding the girl and showed them the newspaper and magazine articles when they were old enough to hear of such a
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tale one day he told his son-in-law Todd Matthews Todd was fascinated by the case
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Todd started spending much of his time researching the tent girl case and Captain you know this feeling you know
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how how this works it turned into an obsession for him yeah digging you go down a rabbit hole and
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you can't get out my friend digging deeper and deeper he located and studied the FBI's lab report on the white towel
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found wrapped up with the body in the report it stated that the Tau could have been used as a baby's diaper
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this prompted Todd to believe that the tent girl was older than the investigators had thought and she could
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have been a mother he wrote to the authorities explaining his reasoning about the 10 girls age he
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also wrote to the counting coroner seeking to have the tent girls remains exhumed so that her pelvic area could be
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re-examined to see whether she had been a mother well the tough thing here is he's just a armchair detective yeah so
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he's not going to get anywhere I mean you can make all the requests you want they don't have to do anything yeah I
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mean these things cost money they take up time this is a very old investigation by this point it's at least 20 years old
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eventually he would make Todd Matthews would make the 200 mile trip from his home to see the tent girls grave site
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at around the same time uh he visited the Undertaker of the cemetery who had handled her burial and the local
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newspaper as well where he had learned that there had been no new developments in this case in the entire you know 20
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years ever since it went cold in the 90s Todd got a little help with his research with the you know now what
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we take for granted the internet right he began searching missing persons websites for Clues to tent girl's
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identity well yeah I mean there was no schools for a computer back then well can you imagine how much time this
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would take um you have all these especially back then in the in the 90s you got all these
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kind of random missing persons websites that are popping up right and you also have to in my opinion uh maybe not so
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much at the time or not so much for Todd but you also have to question some of the things that you're seeing on these
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sites um question how well they were cataloged appropriately with the correct information I still think you have to do
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that yeah and I think uh maybe it's a little easier for his situation because he's looking for some maybe some very
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specific things amongst a crowd of many well Todd eventually you know after searching all these sites you know he
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doesn't really get anywhere with this so he decides that he wanted to create a website devoted to the tent girl where
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people could learn about the case or for the many that still wanted to know who she was
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um and you know a lot of times people hear these cases and and this is the case even to this this day a lot of
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people remember a case from when they were a kid or from an area where they grew up maybe they move away they never
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know if the case was ever solved or what took place since the time that they were
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outliving life and so he thought you know what a great place for people to come in and check in
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on this case to see if it was ever solved uh or just check in to kind of relive what they already knew yeah or
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somebody could stumble upon the case and go wait a second I know that person or or see if any positive movement was made
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on this now very cold case well Todd got great he got really good traffic uh to this site and he got a lot
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of emails but none of these turned out to be the lead that he was looking for then late one night this is January of
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1998. Todd was scouring the web for Clues like he had done so many nights before on this night he was on another
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missing person's website he had poured over and tore through hundreds of descriptions of missing people that
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evening when one caught his attention and it was simply titled Lexington Kentucky
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1967 missing okay so not too far yeah so 1998 remember the tent girl was found in
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1968. so now 30 years later captain and we still don't know who tent girl is but on this
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website someone named Rosemary Westbrook had posted details of what they say is the following my sister Barbara has been
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missing from our family since the latter part of 1967. she has brown hair brown eyes and is around five feet two inches
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tall and was last seen in Lexington Kentucky or the Lexington Kentucky area okay if you have any information please
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contact me at the address posted so this post is for Barbara Ann Hackman slash Taylor or Dash Taylor I should say right
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she was born December 1943 last seen Sometime Late 1967. well Todd Matthews he contacted
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this Rosemary Westbrook who posted the missing person's description she can't post a picture
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um I don't think there was a picture on this website but I mean look I mean for listeners that don't know back in the
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day to put like a picture on the interwebs I mean that was kind of a tricky thing you could crash the whole
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internet right um well [Laughter] I'll tell you that because I studied computer right right for 14 years you
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know he had he had the colonel has jokes people he has dad jokes well so Todd Matthews contacted this Rosemary
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Westbrook she told him that uh that Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor was her sister and she was about 20 she was 24
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years old and the mother of a baby girl when she had vanished in December of 1967. well on his hunch was that this
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person was older than you know the tank girl was older than the police thought she was yeah I mean this that's not
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going to deter Todd Matthews where we saw back in 68 and 69 the detectives were turning leads away because of
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obvious factors so one wasn't the right height wasn't the right weight maybe not
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the right age right Todd doesn't care about age because as you pointed out he believes the victim to have been older
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than the the police suspect so this is a solid lead for Todd but again this this
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is a lead that police could have came across you know in 68 or 69 but so Todd has this leading he's going to hold on
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to it we have the sister saying that um her sister Barbara had been working at some type of Lexington Kentucky rest
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restaurant she was married to a guy named George Earl Taylor at that time now George was a carnival worker so he's
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a Carney you know as Mike Myers would say small hands smells like cabbage strange thing
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yeah what is in your beer you don't remember that part from uh what was that Austin Powers must be
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because you rated at a 4.5 it's Austin Powers he's afraid of Carnival of kearney's okay he says they have small
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hands and they like cabbage I love Carneys so all the carnies out there listening
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Captain's on your side me not a fan but here's here's the strange thing so I guess at the time you know back in in 67
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and 68 uh none of her family knew that that Barbara was in Kentucky at that time
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okay where's she originally from uh she was from Florida and you say well how does this happen uh
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apparently Barbara who actually went by the nickname Bobby to her family she was
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seen by her family down in Florida in December of 67 when she visited her family I'm not exactly sure of who in
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her family she visited with and and we'll get to that in a moment but according to her little sister Rosemary
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who spoke with Todd when she was last seen it was with George Earl Taylor her husband right and with her
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eight-month-old daughter and of course no one reported her as missing at that time either at some
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point another sister of Barbara's had later reported her missing in the State of
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Florida because this is where this was the last state that she was known to have lived in
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the family was told that Barbara and George were going to North Carolina to live not too far from Florida right
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going there to for a job I'm assuming going there yep to for a job and to create a whole life there you know live
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their days there raise their child there neither George nor Barbara ever mentioned anything about Kentucky to any
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of her family members um and the reason why I wanted to say I we would get into that in a moment
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regarding of I don't know who she was there to visit as far as her family goes she she came from a rather large family
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family Barbara's mom and father had six kids no I'm sorry they had seven children wow so they had seven children
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but but at some point there was a flood and there was a tragic um accident or or you know some tragedy
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that took place because of this flood her husband Barbara's father and Barbara's brother had passed away in
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this flood well unfortunately Barbara's mom with the remaining six kids she couldn't
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afford them she couldn't she couldn't take care of them after losing her husband right So eventually she had to
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give up her children you know the family I don't know if they were if they were placed separately but
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it sounds to me like the family did their best to try to stay close obviously we can understand the the
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obvious obstacle that that is going on here so I don't know how close the family remained at the point when she
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was last seen in 1967. well it's pretty interesting because you wonder why the change of plans or was the plan to go to
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North Carolina just a a front to begin with because one the only way you're going to be able to communicate really
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is a very expensive phone call uh expensive trip to go see them okay well we're gonna just tell the family
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that we're moving to North Carolina but that doesn't mean we have to move there well the tricky thing though too is I
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mean think about George's you know Barbara's husband's job so you know and I'm it's a little unclear if you know
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when we say he worked for carnivals well you know usually these things travel around and so he would be
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essentially you would think traveling around with these with this Carnival that he worked for now was this a uh you
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know the only job in his career that he ever had probably not um maybe he was looking to do something
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where he could just live in a city and work in that City and not have to travel around yeah we don't we don't know the
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reason for there to be this thought that we would go to North Carolina and then she seems to end up Barbara's sister
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seems to end up with some kind of evidence that at some point she was in Kentucky right we have let's go back to
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Barbara's husband George the he told Barbara's family that he didn't know where Barbara could be he simply told
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them that where is he telling them this from is he in Kentucky at this point I don't know when this conversation took
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place in full disclosure here all we know is that Barbara says that I'm sorry Rosemary says that she last Saw Barbara
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in December of 1967 that that's when her family last saw her in the State of Florida and Florida they're planning
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they tell them they're going to North Carolina somehow years later she ends up with information that her sister was in
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Lexington Kentucky at some point right so at some point she is becomes an armchair detective
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she's looking for her sister and she gets evidence that hey she ended up we don't know if she ended
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up with her husband in Kentucky but we know that she ended up in Kentucky right and we have the husband that speaks with
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Barbara's family at some point again we don't know when this conversation took place right I get the impression though
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that this conversation took place because of Barbara's family that somehow they reached out to this
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um reach out to George so he tells them that he didn't know where Barbara was and that she had run
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off with another man okay so now we talked yesterday about that strange you know these strange little stories that
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you come across when you start looking into these old crimes and these old cases we talked about the the poem and
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the uh on the yearbook in the yearbook yes that's a bit of a strange story here's one for you for today
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regarding this incident remember we said that Barbara's sister Rosemary had been
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looking for her for some time right she actually reported Barbara as missing to the
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Lexington Police Department this took place on October 31st of 1995. Hmm this is like 25 almost 30 years later she's
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calling this in pay attention to that date that I gave you too because the later they'll repeat it for us please it
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was October 31st 1995. okay the the the Lexington Police actually have no record
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of this phone call with rosemary reporting her sister is missing they have no missing persons report
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none that was taken on that day that she said that she called in none that was ever taken for this Barbara Hackman
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Taylor ever okay um well how does that make any sense because when when this person Rosemary
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Westbrook called in from another state all these years later to report her sister is being missing from 20
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20 some years ago on Halloween the Lexington Police thought that it was a prank so they never took the report when she
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called in that day why would they that's a dumb problem well it makes you gotcha it makes it
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makes you angry you know it makes you question them and and wonder why um yeah and I'm not trying to have their
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back here I'm just wondering how many weird phone calls they get on Halloween well I'm sure they get a bunch and I'm
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sure they're all hopped up on candy corn but come on take down the report I mean
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it's not like you know they came up and said hey we have a missing person from Lexington Kentucky what's their name see
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more butts got you no we're talking about just like a normal name well maybe whoever answered that phone that day in
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95 should be relocated from the police department to work for the carnival step right up yes so now Rosemary told
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Todd Matthews remember Todd he's the armchair detective she told Todd that she was only 10 years old when her
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sister Barbara had disappeared and she agreed with Todd that there were enough similarities between Barbara's
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case and the tent girl case to Warrant further investigation Todd tried to get the proper authorities
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involved but he but you know they have other cases okay so let's go back because I think you glazed over somebody
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so Barbara was missing basically since she was 10. no Rosemary is Barbara's little sister
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okay so when Rosemary was 10. Rosemary was a lot younger she was 14 years younger than her Barbara was 24 and
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rosemary was only 10 last time she saw her sister in 1967. that makes more sense sorry
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yeah he you know he's trying to get the the Kentucky Authority authorities involved in this case again of course
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they have newer cases they have fresher leads on these new cases uh initially they weren't going to be jumping through
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hoops to help out Todd so Todd Matthews he did the detective some detective work
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himself as much as he could and after he put together a proper presentation which
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after hearing would leave anyone with just a you know one thought it's time to exhume the body of the tent girl and
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conduct DNA tests right and they're going to test the DNA of uh tank girl with Barbara's sister correct it was it
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took a little over a month but in March of 1998 tent girl was exhumed and her remains were sent to a laboratory in
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Frankfurt Kentucky the first thing they were able to conclude was that the tent girl was between the ages of 20 and 30
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years old okay so you know you keep pointing out new technology and you're exactly right Captain with our
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technology now we're saying well we we had the the age wrong it wasn't she wasn't 16 to 19. We believe her now to
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be 20 to 30 years old so older than originally thought and good for Todd because he was right
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with his what he suspected and still possible that Rosemary is right that this could be her 24 year old sister
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after finding that out it was time to see if Rosemary was related to the tent girl so they collected DNA for
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comparison it was in April of 1998 they got the results back the test found that Rosemary's DNA genetically
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matched that of the tent girl yeah who therefore had to be Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor wow that's awesome yeah and once
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again and it's so crazy too that the the guy that found her his son-in-law goes on to identify her yeah I don't want to
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sound too hippie you know but it's almost like maybe her spirit was there helping guide them along or something
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well yeah and there's there's a lot of neat things here going on because you have Wilbur who refused to forget about
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this case you know he finds this girl he retires 20 years later he refuses to forget about oh I found this girl and
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they never they never named her right he'd let that bother him he let it bother him for 20 years to the point
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where once his kids were old enough he told them this is what happened this was this was a big part of my life this is a
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this is the weight that I've been walking around with on my shoulders for 20 years well and when the kids didn't
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listen and they didn't do anything about it he said he started talking to his son-in-law the person that had to listen
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you know he had to listen like oh yeah this is my father-in-law no but it's pretty remarkable now we have a name uh
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now we can start searching for motive and suspects let's get right back to the case of a body in Kentucky after this
00:24:36
quick beer break [Music] all right we're back what's that sound uh switching from beer
00:24:56
to birth it's my new Addiction all right get a hold of yourself I just love it well okay so Captain we have we have
00:25:08
finally 30 years later and finally we have the identity of the tent girl okay now the authorities well we got some
00:25:16
tough questions that need to be answered well we only really have one lead really
00:25:21
yes uh because this would be that of her husband you know maybe hopefully Char hopefully
00:25:28
they could ask him some questions straighten out this whole matter if need be maybe bring him up on some kind of
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charges but that would not be possible because George Earl Taylor died of cancer in
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October of 1987. so he passed away you know 12 years before they even figured out who the
00:25:53
tent girl was right so they can't ask him questions so all we can go off of is that he claims that she left him for
00:26:01
another man yeah and it seems to be the belief of Barbara's family and some of the the
00:26:09
authorities involved that Barbara's husband George Earl Taylor was most likely the person who had killed 22 24
00:26:18
year old Barbara Hackman Taylor back in 68. um if this is true he then wrapped up
00:26:24
her body in one of his canvas tarps or bags used for carrying his Carnival tents from town to town and dumped her
00:26:31
in an out of the way spot off of the interstate hoping that she would decompose as much as possible before
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anyone found her um I guess he did do a little bit of moving around from time to time so I
00:26:45
guess make it more difficult yeah I guess the thought is if they couldn't ID her that this would never catch up with
00:26:50
him um yeah and then then her daughter might not even know that her her mother is tent girl
00:26:59
yeah you know yeah and and the other thought too is like you said you know he simply tells her family Barbara's family
00:27:06
that she ran off with some other guy and he's got to believe that they would accept this Theory because heck she had
00:27:15
run off with him when they claimed to have been going to North Carolina right yeah and a couple weird things here I
00:27:22
mean if there was no sexual assault and it's not really really reported that there
00:27:27
was that would make sense you know her husband killing her yeah I mean here's the thing I think it's safe to say that
00:27:35
someone had killed her and I started off by saying that because there were you know there were no signs to the cause of
00:27:42
death so that makes you wonder immediately but this according to the autopsy report no signs of cause of
00:27:49
death but because she was just discarded uh it's obvious to me that someone had killed her and tried to cover this up it
00:27:57
could have been an accident uh it certainly could have been an accidental death um where whoever killed her didn't mean
00:28:04
to uh that some kind of fight broke out between the two of them we know that there's that discoloration that was on
00:28:11
the skull um right it's very possible because of the sign of the times and also they're
00:28:18
you know they're traveling around in a carnival show I mean how many drugs are going through those people's systems has
00:28:25
to be a lot right could be so it there's a good possibility like I said that maybe it was an OD I mean because we've
00:28:34
seen that like in the vanishing girls the girls in Chillicothe there was a couple times where
00:28:41
bodies were discarded but it was more likely that because because of the sign there was no sign of uh strangulation or
00:28:50
blunt force trauma or anything like that so you know the belief is that maybe that they were OD'd and that they were
00:28:56
dumped it could be possible here as well well let's keep in mind two things that
00:29:03
we know happened all right when it comes to the husband when it comes to George Earl Taylor first off
00:29:10
he never reported his wife missing to anyone anywhere at any time that we know of right he never called the police and
00:29:18
said my wife is missing now you it's easy to say well why would he if she did run off with some other man right you
00:29:26
know if I had a girlfriend she ran off with another man I wouldn't I wouldn't call and call him that she's missing
00:29:31
yeah she's missing well not if you're not missing and if you find her charge her with breaking my heart right so
00:29:39
anyway the I get that all right she's not reported missing because she ran off with some other man but here's the thing
00:29:47
at no point over the course of 20 some years before the guy died he never bothers to tell her family at any time
00:29:54
oh we did live in Kentucky for a little bit before she ran off with this guy you
00:30:01
know so yeah but who right but at that point if you just don't care like this lady left me you know I'm raising our
00:30:08
kid by ourselves by myself um it'd be interesting to locate the daughter and to find out what she knew
00:30:16
no but what I mean is we know that a conversation happened between somebody and Barbara's family and George Earl
00:30:23
Taylor because he tells that family member she ran off with another guy nowhere in that conversation does he
00:30:31
mention the the name of Kentucky to anybody and I think that enough I mean what if the story of them going to North
00:30:39
Carolina was actually true and then when they were doing their armchair detective they went okay well
00:30:45
we know that Barbara went to Kentucky at some point like I said before we don't know if she went to Kentucky with him or
00:30:52
without him right I no I can agree with that because I don't have 100 Proof in front of me
00:30:59
that that anyone can prove that the two of them went there together I believe that there are people that have
00:31:07
they have some inkling that that's what happened that there there may be something that ties the two of them
00:31:14
still together and being in the state of Kentucky early in 1968. which that that makes the that makes the
00:31:23
um the likelihood that somebody else was the Killer very small yeah but the eyewitness and we kind of talked about
00:31:32
this before but the the eyewitness that claims that he saw Barbara with some guy
00:31:37
and he was driving them and they argued and he dropped him off if he correctly identified the person as
00:31:45
Barbara then who's this other guy and maybe that you know leans to George's side of the story as well
00:31:54
right um so I mean it basically at this point in this much time um you're not going to getting answers I
00:32:02
mean barring barring some deathbed confession by somebody that um that comes forward you're you're not
00:32:10
going to get a solid answer as to who killed Barbara Hackman Taylor you you just won't my suspicion as far as those
00:32:19
as the motorist and those eyewitnesses go my suspicion is that they were that they saw somebody that night
00:32:28
whatever they said happened absolutely happened the problem I have with it is at the
00:32:35
time that they're calling in that tip they're going under the impression that the tent girl is 16 to 19 years of age
00:32:43
right where we later learned that she's 24. it just like so many people had called in before these two tipsters and
00:32:52
said you know what that's my daughter that's missing that's my niece that's my girlfriend whomever right I mean there
00:32:59
were dozens and dozens of these people calling in saying that that's my loved one
00:33:04
and none of those turned out to be correct so my thought is that those two tipsters were just wrong just like all
00:33:12
those other people that had called in before them and I think that had they known well they're not wrong they're
00:33:19
just wrong on the person that they saw right right you're thank you for clearing that up they're right in what
00:33:26
happened happened and what they're reporting is true they've just misidentified this person as being the
00:33:32
tent girl a lot more hitchhikers back then and here's my thing too I think that that
00:33:39
had they known in in 1968 that this woman was 23 or 24 25 if they had the age more correct on this then it
00:33:55
may have been it probably would have been solved a lot earlier I mean every record of her that was on
00:34:01
paper and on on you know databases and on websites and computers for all these years had her listed as 16 to 19. yeah I
00:34:12
wonder where the investigation would have went if they would have been able to identify her that quickly too because
00:34:18
then like we said we have a link back to George her husband and that also makes you wonder about some other things too
00:34:25
if they were off on the age which we've seen this in other cases before you know we talked about this a
00:34:31
lot when we were going through the Texas Killing Field because there were so many
00:34:36
girls and women being found that had decomposed that had laid there in the field for a while some that are still
00:34:44
unidentified to this day age can be a very tough thing to determine however I think that that also leads you to
00:34:53
believe that there were probably other misconceptions about what they had found about the remains that they had found
00:34:59
there's a possibility that the cause of death that they have listed is wrong as well right you know I and I
00:35:07
think I think that pointing out that her age is wrong probably points out that there are a few a few other things wrong
00:35:13
with that whole report I'm glad that they were able to identify her but it just raises more questions
00:35:20
well I I do want to point out that you know like we said Barbara's family and the local authorities went on record uh
00:35:28
publicly stating that they believe her husband to have been the one that killed her and dumped her body now that doesn't
00:35:35
prove anything but here's what that leads me to believe it leads me to believe that somehow how and somewhere
00:35:43
right you know they didn't just make the identification on tent girl and then go
00:35:48
oh her husband's dead oh well that's it we can't do anything with this they would have still spoke to people they
00:35:55
would have now they would have looked and said does this give us any leads is there anybody that we can go out to and
00:36:01
talk to now that we're armed with this information so they would have done that and then they may have been able to
00:36:08
determine if they could determine that the two of them were both present in the state of Kentucky in early 1968 right I
00:36:16
think that's where you just go okay in in the court of law could you get a conviction here no but in the garage it
00:36:25
looks like well from Nick it looks like yeah but he hands out convictions all the time that's right
00:36:32
um it looks to me like the the probability of George Earl Taylor having killed his wife is so much higher than
00:36:39
the possibility of it being a stranger and don't Google him because when you do you're going to get a different George
00:36:47
Earl Taylor and he actually murdered two of his wives well I think what what you
00:36:53
end up finding is just Earl Taylor right right I don't think you get a George Earl Taylor which we were not able to
00:37:00
confirm that it's the same person it actually is not this it can't be the same person no we know that the guy I
00:37:05
think was sentenced in like 19 but this guy was a wife killer right he killed like two wives so right when you look it
00:37:11
up you go oh well of course it was this guy yeah he just killed his first wife that nobody even knew about him but yeah
00:37:18
that's not the case so what happens with the other people in this case well let's
00:37:22
Okay so we have um we have Todd Matthews good for him cheers to you Todd yes cheers yes
00:37:30
because here's the thing after all of Todd Matthew's hard work and determination he believes too that
00:37:37
George Earl Taylor was the killer he believes that George Earl Taylor's tale that Barbara had left him for another
00:37:43
man was just simply a way to cover up and to hide his crime he does state that Barbara's death could indeed have been
00:37:50
an accident and that he you know the husband dumped the body but I'll tell you what Captain you want to talk about
00:37:56
web slew thing this here Tom Todd Matthews is the man I mean while we don't have a conviction he still solved
00:38:04
a 30 year mystery right so Wilbur's son-in-law uh Wilbur Riddle's son-in-law you know he put a name to the woman that
00:38:14
he had found 30 years before now Todd Matthew Matthews he says I kind of like this he says riddles riddle little had
00:38:21
been solved and Wilbur riddle paid tribute to his son-in-law saying that he Todd Matthews
00:38:28
has put in more than a thousand hours on this case there is no one in law enforcement there is no law enforcement
00:38:35
office that had worked harder on any case than he did on this one very good for him so giving him very high praise
00:38:43
the story of the tent Girl inspired the creation of the Kentucky State medical examiner's office back in 1968 and in
00:38:52
more recent years Todd Matthews he got involved with a project called Eden which I guess is just e-d-a-n which
00:38:58
stands for everyone deserves a name Todd has also done quite a bit of work for the doe Network which we have discussed
00:39:07
several times but for those of you who have not heard of the doe Network it is an International Volunteer group
00:39:13
attempting to organize many missing persons and identified cold cases but we still have a few more questions right
00:39:21
Captain because what became of this eight-month-old daughter that was last seen now I couldn't find any news
00:39:28
stories I was looking for news stories that would be like you know woman woman in this area finally finds
00:39:37
out who her mother really was right right uh I couldn't find any news stories like that if anybody is local to
00:39:44
this case and knows of those and wants to send them our way please do so at truecrime garage.com but what I did find
00:39:50
was I went and I looked at the current headstone for the tent girl which we now know as Barbara Hackman Taylor and and
00:40:00
on that headstone as loving mother grandmother and sister so I'm guessing that the the
00:40:09
eight-year-old daughter grew up to have a normal life as normal as you can without having your mother around and
00:40:16
went on you're right she ended up knowing who her mother was yeah and went on to have kids of her own so there's a
00:40:22
bit of a silver lining and and happy ending to that you also have to wonder well whatever happened with the Candace
00:40:29
Clothier case this was the case that we talked about was a possible connection that maybe these two murders were linked
00:40:37
the girl from Pennsylvania well if you believe that George Earl Taylor killed his wife
00:40:44
then you got to kind of jump to the conclusion that they weren't killed by the same person right right so you have
00:40:51
to wonder so now this case two basically took a lot of years to crack in fact it
00:40:58
took 42 years until there was a development in this case so yeah 42 years later authorities say that they
00:41:05
have cracked and closed the cold case they say the they say that Candace Clothier fell victim to drugged out
00:41:12
acquaintances who forcibly injected her with some sort of controlled substance when the injection killed her the
00:41:21
attackers stuffed clothier's body into a laundry bag tying it around her neck and
00:41:28
using her yellow turtleneck sweater to cover her head and then they tied her up and put her into what they're now
00:41:35
calling a laundry bag rather than just a canvas bag right they then left her body
00:41:40
in a secluded section of the Twisted Creek she lay partially submerged undetected for nearly five weeks until
00:41:48
fishermen found her this all came about from a tip this was in 2005 a woman called police she said she believed she
00:41:57
had owned the bag that Candace was found in this was a laundry bag authorities said that they believe three men were
00:42:07
involved in clothier's death and are now all dead themselves so for this police to the so because of this the police
00:42:16
refused to identify the men uh but also saying if any of those men had been alive when police received this
00:42:24
information even if they were clinging to life support in a nursing home we would be working to gather evidence with
00:42:31
which to achieve a murder conviction and like I said before that was my one of my
00:42:36
suspicions right when we started investigating the case with tank girl was overdose yeah so
00:42:44
so I I guess the way that this came about uh to to kind of put an end to the Candis Clothier case
00:42:51
was that they featured her Cold Case on the NBC 10 channel locally and after the newscast a viewer some a
00:43:02
woman that had seen the broadcast called police and reported that she believed that the sack that the fishermen found
00:43:08
her in was her laundry bag missing since she had gave it to her husband shortly after Clothier had disappeared and now
00:43:17
this is what they believe happened that Clothier left her home intending to visit her boyfriend instead
00:43:24
uncharacteristically she accepted a ride with someone that she somewhat knew who
00:43:30
was in a car with at least one other man at the time instead of taking her to her
00:43:36
boyfriend's the man took Clothier to a wooded area off of decanter Street in northeast of Philadelphia Philadelphia
00:43:44
sorry the men had a history of drug use and one of them was known to inject drugs and this is a strange thing
00:43:54
I I sometimes when they just put a sentence in a story you wish they would back it up with some kind of story or
00:44:00
evidence because this is a strange sentence to read one of the men was known to inject drugs
00:44:06
into animals and people without their consent a retired detective said they believe detectives believed the Clothier
00:44:15
died after she was involuntarily injected or given an unknown controlled substance the men then called a third
00:44:22
man to help them dump the corpse off of Chain Bridge which is on Route 232 and like we said the authorities would not
00:44:32
name the three individuals that they believed to have been responsible for Candace's death and dumping her there
00:44:39
now they did the same thing they did further investigation if there were people that were still around that they
00:44:45
could talk to with that new information they did and they had bits and pieces of
00:44:51
it enough to believe that they've they've been able to put together the three who committed this crime
00:44:57
the interesting thing though here Captain is while we don't have a convey conviction and while they won't name
00:45:02
these guys because they died they did go on to say that the trio that they blamed
00:45:07
for clothier's death they were among those that were interviewed decades ago when the case was still very active yeah
00:45:16
that's very interesting I'm glad for both of those cases that there is some closure for the family and for the
00:45:21
victims as well well and it's a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel kind of situation in both those cases
00:45:28
right and here's here's a little inspiration to this case should be inspiration to anybody that's out there
00:45:35
looking for a lost one you know we have we have Rosemary Westbrook who was able to finally locate her sister even it
00:45:45
being a sad truth a sad ending but it's probably what she or somewhat she had expected all this time but she's able to
00:45:54
get answers 30 years later and then you you also have the armchair detective who
00:45:59
gets obsessed completely obsessed with the case and he's one of the lucky ones that gets some resolve and some answer
00:46:07
to his his mystery that he was working on right so the moral of the story is if you're sitting there at work and you're
00:46:13
diving down rabbit holes and you think to yourself maybe I can solve it and then one day
00:46:19
you think to yourself why am I doing this keep going maybe you're the one that's going to crack a case it's the
00:46:25
old don't give up don't ever give up right Captain yeah or take a lot of naps do we have a recommended reading for
00:46:32
this week this week we are recommending Garden State Gangland the rise of the mob in New Jersey by Scott Detro the
00:46:39
mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self but in the New York and New Jersey metro area there are
00:46:46
still Wise Guys in wannabes working scams extorting businesses running gambling selling drugs and branching out
00:46:53
into white collar crimes and they are continuing a tradition that's over a hundred years old some of the most
00:47:00
powerful Mobsters on the national level were from New Jersey and they've spread their tentacles down to Florida across
00:47:07
the Atlantic and out to California and many of the stories that have never been told are in this book The Garden State
00:47:13
Gangland the rise of the mob in New Jersey and and you can find that title with the rest of our recommended titles
00:47:20
at truecrime garage.com click on the recommended page yeah we're not doing the Amazon Banner anymore they uh kicked
00:47:27
us out so so we'll just go to Amazon on your own time or go wherever you want um wherever books are sold all right
00:47:36
thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend you crazy people all right we'll see everybody back here in the
00:47:42
garage next week until then be good be kind and don't litter [Music] [Applause] thank you