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Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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with me as always is a man that knows that life's the same moving in stereo except for the shoes. He is the Captain.
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And we'll all be okay as long as those shoes aren't Velcro. It's good to be seen and it's good to see you. Thanks
00:01:00
for listening. Thanks for telling a friend. This week we are very proud to be featuring Focal Banger by The Alchemist.
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Garage Grade four out of five bottle caps. Focal Banger is an American India Pale Ale ABV 7%. At The Alchemist they
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delicious beer. Tall cans in the air, friends. And this tasty treat was brought to us by first up a big thank
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you to friend of the show Rob P out in Woodbury, Vermont. shout to Krista up in North Vancouver,
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British Columbia. And here's a cheers to Megan in Mills, Massachusetts. A big shout to Scotty G in Niagara
00:01:49
Falls. Next we have Francesca and her awesome mother Pam that is in the parts that are unknown. And last but not least
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we have Jordan W in Lawrence, Kansas. Everyone we just mentioned went to truecrimegarage.com
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and contributed to this week's beer fund, and for that we thank you. Do you know what the temperature is in parts
00:02:09
unknown? I have no idea. Good luck finding it on a map. It's always 69, and that is
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enough for the business. All right, everybody gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer, let's talk some
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true crime. A 17-year-old girl goes out with friends to a party on a Saturday night.
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Nearing what was believed to be the end of her night, she calls her parents. This is just a brief and simple call,
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saying she plans to be home soon, but something happened. Something went wrong because she does not come home.
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The next day, in the morning hours, her body is found on the side of a road, about 30 miles away.
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She was strangled. For any town, this would be a horrific crime that would strike fear into the
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residents' hearts. But for the Akron, Ohio region in 1987, this murder caused extreme terror,
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panic, and outrage. There are three strongly supported theories in this unsolved murder case.
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Each theory presenting its own level of disgust and outrage, but each also presenting a different
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terror and threat level. The first theory is someone close to the victim attacked
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and killed the girl. The second is maybe someone she only thought she knew. Or someone on the fringes of her social
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circles is responsible. And thirdly, and certainly the most terrorizing theory, she was the victim of an undetected
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serial killer. You see, there is evidence to suggest that this murder was not a one-off.
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This murder could be just one in a string of murders of women in the area. Four women
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were found murdered in Summit County in the final 18 weeks of 1987. All of those murders, to this day, are
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still unsolved. This is True Crime Garage, and this is the case of Barbara Blatnik and the 1987
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Summit County murders. Our featured case takes place in December of 1987. Barbara Ann Blatnik was a fairly typical
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17-year-old girl. She lived in Garfield Heights, Ohio. This is on Band Drive with her mom, Teresa, her dad, John, and
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her 19-year-old sister, Donna. Barbie, as she was called, had feathered 1980s style blond hair, and is described as
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cute and bubbly. Her father described her as a free spirit who loved people, maybe too much.
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She loved heavy metal music, makeup, dancing, babysitting, and hanging out with her friends, of which she had a
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lot. Barbie's sister Donna, whom True Crime Garage spoke with at length in our research for the show, describes her
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younger sister frankly as a girl who liked to party. She was known to drink, dabble in drugs, smoke, and basically
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live the party lifestyle. Now, we said she loved loud heavy metal music. Captain, one thing we have in common
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with Barbie, and anyone who listens to our other show Off the Record, knows this, one of her favorite bands was
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AC/DC. Uh Barbie had a pack of girlfriends that was very tight, and they all hung out
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with a bunch of neighborhood guys at a bike shop on Warner Road called Motorcycle Specialties,
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where they would go to party. According to our sources, the bike shop owner liked pretty girls around and would
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supply booze and pot. Now, Barbie had a boyfriend. His name was Jerry, and the two were dating on
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and off for about a year. From what we understand, this wasn't a relationship that was likely to go down the
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traditional route of dating, marriage, and kids. Donna says her sister liked boys and was
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known to date around, never really being exclusive with anyone. Barbie had been in trouble a few times
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and transferred high schools in January, leaving Garfield Heights High School and
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switching to Erieview Catholic, where she was a junior. According to her family, although Barbie was a handful,
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she had no enemies, and on the contrary, Barbie had lots of friends and was known
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as a fun, scrappy, badass girl. Anyway, Barbie set out on the afternoon of December 19th, which was a Saturday,
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with some friends to go to a party. She dressed in jeans, a sweater, jewelry, and she had her comb, money, and cigs in
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her back pocket as usual. Newspaper reports at the time state that she left her home either around 4:00
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p.m. or 6:30 p.m. Reports differ on this. Do we know why there's such a gap in time? We have one paper reporting
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4:00 p.m. and one reporting 6:30 p.m. We don't know why there's a discrepancy in that time frame.
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But what we do know is that she left with friends and they went to a party on Turney Road, which was about a mile and
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a half away from Barbie's home. It's unclear whether this party was at someone's home or somewhere else.
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We don't know who hosted this gathering. Well, and it's also hard sometimes to define what a actual {quote} {unquote}
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party is. Party could be eight people sitting around a house or 100 people. Or a couple of teenage kids
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in somebody's backyard or at a park. Right. Now, newspaper reports stated, and Donna confirmed this, that Barbie
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called home sometime after 10:30 p.m. This just to say that she would be home soon.
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Now, Barbie's sister, Donna, tells us that this was very unusual. Barbie did not usually check in. Typically, she
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would go out with friends and she would come home or she would crash at someone's house.
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It wasn't uncommon for her to stay out all night sleeping at a friend's. It was uncommon for her to call home.
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Remember, this is 1987. So, this would also require her to find a landline to make that call. Who took the call? Her
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parents answered that call. So, but can we definitively say that it's her? I mean
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because I know with my parents, if I would have called, especially like on a uh on a school night or the weekend
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night and said, "Hey, I'm going to" and it was a quick call, I might be able to confuse them by having a a friend call.
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I don't think anybody's disputing that it was Barbie on the phone. But despite that unusual call saying
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that she would be home, she didn't come home. Her parents went to bed and didn't
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worry. The next morning, they assumed that she was at a friend's. Barbie's mother and sister went out Christmas
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shopping. Little did Teresa and Donna know that while they were shopping, two cops showed up at their house. John
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Blatnik was asked to go to the morgue in Cuyahoga Falls. Barbie had been found dead.
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We have been able to shed a little more light on the events of the last night of
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Barbie's life. This, thanks to Donna and also from the Justice for Barbara Blatnik website, run by a local armchair
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detective who wants to help bring closure to the Blatnik family. Here's what we found. Barbie met up with
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her good friend Michelle that afternoon at a party at the bike shop on Warner Road. This is in addition to the party
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on Turney Road that Barbie told her parents she was going to, if in fact that was true. All right, so she meets
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up with her friend Michelle. Right. They're going to go to the bike shop. That's where they normally hang
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out, have these little parties, little gatherings. Yeah, so when Michelle meets up with Barbie, it sounds like one of
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them is already at the bike shop on Warner Road. All right. At this party. So, the first time that
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Michelle sees Barbie, according to Michelle, is at this bike shop where they were known to hang out and party.
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Okay, so then they're going to go to another party. No, that's why I think things are a
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little confusing here. So, we have the statement that Barbie tells her parents that she's going to a party on Turney
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Road, right? And then we have Michelle who's going to add some detail, fill in some blanks of the time that Barbie was
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gone that night. And she's saying that the first time that she sees Barbie is at this party at the bike shop on Warner
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Road. So, a different party. So, if in fact there was even a party on Turney Road
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that Barbie was going to go to. She could have actually gone to that party and then went to the bike shop
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afterwards. I think this is part of the reason why we have some different things
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within the timeline regarding when she left the house that day. Yeah, and I think it's it's tricky, too, because
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there are some people when you're friends with people when you're younger, they you know, you'd be hanging out at
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your buddy's house and they'd just be saying, "Oh, we're going to go to such and such house and we're going to go to
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somebody else's house." And it might be because they know that the parents know the parents better,
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but you never end up going there. Does Does that make sense? Well, the other thing, too, that we got to keep in
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mind is I don't know 100% when this uh Barbara Blatnik website was created by the local armchair detective,
00:12:22
Mhm. but Michelle is supplying the armchair detective with this statement of the timeline for that night of or
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what she knows of the timeline for that night. And this could be 20 years later. All
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right. So, we have a gathering at the bike shop. That's where Barbie runs into her friend, Michelle. Michelle was
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Barbie's friend who had just had a baby and the two actually hadn't seen each other in a while. Now, Michelle also had
00:12:50
another girlfriend with her and they did eventually meet up with at least one other girl. Their names are Linda and
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Sheila. The four of them partied at the bike shop along with a bunch of other local
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teens. This bike shop had a basement and the owner, Jeff, was known to provide booze and marijuana to
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to attract teens to hang out there during the winter months when they couldn't party outdoors.
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The girls partied there for a while and then they left in Michelle's car to go to a pub that served minors. This is on
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East 71st Street. Barbie and her friends were known to hang out at pubs like this, where
00:13:30
drinking rules weren't enforced and they were open late. Right. And some people are probably
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listening right now going, "What? Bike shop owners are supplying drugs for kids to hang out? Um bars serve underage
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people because that is cracked down on a lot more now. Back in the '80s, even in the '90s, there was
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plenty of bars that you could go to cuz they had no customers, so they're they were fine with serving underage people.
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Right. And they I really feel like it was in the early 2000s, at least in this area, which we are somewhat close to her
00:14:05
area, maybe hour and a half, 2-hour drive, let's say. Mhm. But in our area, it wasn't until the early 2000s where
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they really cracked down on that. Everybody either themselves or knows somebody that had a bar that
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they could go into and get a couple drinks. And be 18 years old, let's say, or 19 years old, right?
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This is where things get a little tricky because now we know that they're at the
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pub, okay? But at 10:30 when that call goes from Barbie to her parents, it's not known where that call was
00:14:41
placed. So, that gets to be a bit of a difficult thing. It could have been as something
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as simple as calling from a payphone at that pub. But we don't have anybody else to tell
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us that Barbie that they were present when she made that call. So, anyway, we have the girls, they sat
00:15:00
at a table in the pub chatting and drinking. They say that nothing seemed amiss. According to Michelle anyway,
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there was no one who seemed strange or threatening at the pub. All right. So, we know that this call happened around
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10:30, but based on Michelle's records, we don't know what time she left the bike shop, what time they got to the
00:15:21
pub, so we don't know if this call came from the bike shop or while they're at the pub or after the
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pub. It would seem that it Well, we do know what time they left the the pub. So, it would seem that this call would
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have had to have taken place, if we are going off of Michelle's events of that night, that the call would have had to
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have taken place at the either the pub or at the bike shop. Right. Because Michelle goes on to say
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that the girls, all of them including Barbie, stayed at the pub until closing time, which was 3:15 a.m.
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At that time, Michelle drove Barbie to the intersection of Warner Road and Grand Division Avenue. This is right
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near the bike shop. So, if you look at the area on a map, you can see that it's a residential neighborhood, but Warner
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Road has commercial businesses like convenience stores, automotive repair shops, and so on.
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Uh Barbie says that she was going to Jerry's house. Remember, Jerry is the boyfriend. Mhm.
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Or the guy that she was seeing at the time. Jerry, Jerry, Dingleberry. So, this is fairly close to the place where
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Michelle drops Barbie off. He lived with his older brother Bob and his parents in a house behind the AC
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Delco auto parts store, which was another place where the kids would meet up to party in the yard and
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the parking lot outside. This is mostly in the summertime when it was warmer outside. Right.
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Michelle and the other friend dropped Barbie off there and then drove off and never saw or heard from her again.
00:17:02
The next morning, Sunday, December 20th, around 10:20 a.m., Barbara's nude and bruised body was
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found in a wooded area just off O'Neil Road near the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
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This is about 30 miles away from where Barbara was last seen. Yeah, it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, if if I
00:17:25
remember correctly. Yeah, Cuyahoga Falls is a totally different area of Ohio and
00:17:30
is a suburb of Akron, whereas Barbara lived in Garfield Heights near Cleveland. Now, initial reports confused things
00:17:39
because they stated that Barbie was found on the grounds of the Blossom Music Center. This is an outdoor concert
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venue, the kind of place where like 15,000 people can watch a concert. Yeah. It's a pretty popular It's popular
00:17:53
in that area, anyway. I saw Radiohead there. Ooh, fantastic. Uh Barbie and her friends had been there
00:18:01
in the past to see concerts, but she was nowhere near it on the night in question.
00:18:07
It turns out that she wasn't found on the grounds of Blossom. Detectives corrected this on December
00:18:14
22nd. She was found near a wooded area on the side of a nearby access road that would not have been heavily
00:18:21
trafficked on a Sunday morning in December. We don't know whether Blossom would have
00:18:26
been open in December, although it seems unlikely unless they had some kind of Christmas
00:18:33
holiday show. Some of these places have holiday light displays and we do know that Blossom in modern times has a
00:18:40
Halloween fright fest in October. Yeah, but a lot of these concerts, like we had
00:18:45
Germain Amphitheater here, which is similar to Blossom, but a lot of those concerts, don't you
00:18:51
remember them like closing down around midnight? Like they weren't it wasn't like a bar show where you'd
00:18:58
stay there till 2:00 in the morning. I remember some of them closing at 11:00 p.m. Yeah.
00:19:03
because of noise ordinances. I'm assuming that it was not open that night and probably not open during the
00:19:10
cold weeks of early winter. We have little details of how and by whom Barbie was spotted.
00:19:19
Newspaper reports stated that it was an employee of KST Oil and Gas who spotted Barbie's body
00:19:28
as he drove along the road. The Akron Beacon Journal and other papers reported that she was found about 10 ft north of
00:19:36
O'Neil Road. O'Neil Road has a strange orientation in that it runs north and south, then
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curves sharply and runs east to west. Mhm. And then turns again into north and south.
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Barbara was found on the northern side of the east-west portion, which falls between two other more
00:20:00
unused roads. O'Neil Road runs parallel to another road that abuts the Cuyahoga Valley
00:20:08
National Recreation Area. As for the person who found her, it doesn't seem bizarre that
00:20:15
an oil and gas company worker would be out and about on that desolate stretch of road if he was on duty, perhaps even
00:20:23
working nearby. What's horrifying is that Barbie's sister Donna tells us that when this person found
00:20:34
Barbie, who had been dumped naked on the roadside like a piece of garbage, she was still alive.
00:20:41
Barely, but alive. And sadly, that was not the case for long. I couldn't even imagine being at
00:20:49
work and coming across somebody that is losing their life. Yeah, well, we do have some of this
00:20:59
autopsy information because it was released to the newspapers at the time. So, the
00:21:05
Summit County Coroner, this is William A. Cox, performed the autopsy promptly after she was found. A preliminary
00:21:14
report was released on Monday. The Beacon Journal quoted Cox's statement in some broadcast interviews,
00:21:21
and what he said was very interesting. He said that Barbie was killed in an unidentified place, and her body was
00:21:28
taken to where it was found just a couple of hours before it was discovered. So, now we have to question how could he
00:21:37
come to this conclusion? One thought I had is possibly since she was still breathing when found, he may
00:21:44
have been estimating that she would not have survived long outside in the cold after such a brutal
00:21:52
attack. Mhm. Or, we have this, too, this possibility. Someone, perhaps even the same oil and
00:21:59
gas worker, or someone else the police talked to, had drove by this area on O'Neil Road
00:22:06
just a couple of hours before, Right. and he or she was certain that Barbie was not there at that time. Well, and
00:22:13
like you said, this worker could have been working in the area, so he could have been paying attention.
00:22:19
And said, "Well, when I entered my route, I didn't see anybody there." Whatever the case may be, the coroner
00:22:27
will stick with this timeline and stick to that statement. As he stated, the coroner didn't believe that the O'Neil
00:22:34
Road site was the murder scene. Whether he could have concluded this because of lack of blood, signs of a struggle, drag
00:22:41
marks, or disturbed foliage, we don't know. And we have no idea if Barbie was carried or dragged to the dump site or
00:22:50
just dumped out of a vehicle. Now, Coroner Cox also stated that Barbie was intoxicated when she died. This does go
00:22:58
along with what we hear from Michelle, her friend. He did not indicate a time of death, but
00:23:05
we know that she was still alive when found at 10:20. As for when the attack occurred, we can
00:23:12
narrow that down ourselves. If we assume her friend Michelle is accurate about the timeline she
00:23:18
provided. Mhm. Then Barbie was still alive and well at around 3:30 a.m. when the girls
00:23:25
were dropped off near Jerry's house. And she was found at 10:20 a.m. So, sometime between the hours of 3:30 a.m.
00:23:33
and 10:20 a.m. someone raped and strangled Barbie. And they beat her so badly that her neck had to be covered by a
00:23:43
scarf at her funeral service to disguise the bruising. Barbara was found wearing only her
00:23:50
contact lenses and a class ring that displayed her school and her first name inside of it.
00:23:57
Her clothes and other jewelry that she was wearing that night have never been found. Now, this is a little-known fact
00:24:04
that was never released to the papers, but we learned this from Donna, from Barbie's sister.
00:24:12
It was the '80s, and Barbie was wearing at least four or five earrings, and wearing uh, you know, tons of stacked
00:24:21
bracelets, Mhm. at least two necklaces, and possibly other jewelry that night. Kind of like the Madonna style. Yeah, or
00:24:30
uh, Mr. T. Yeah. Uh, none of these were were found at the scene. The class ring,
00:24:37
we have to wonder, did the killer, if he took and removed all these other items,
00:24:44
why not take the class ring? It was it something as simple as he didn't see it, or was it too hard to get off? He
00:24:51
couldn't take it off of her finger? But you said that the earrings were in or they were taken?
00:24:56
No earrings. The only thing she had on her was her contact lenses and class ring.
00:25:02
Yeah, I I I would assume it was something just didn't see it or maybe he couldn't get
00:25:06
it off. Yeah, he would have had no way of knowing that her name was inside of this ring. Well,
00:25:14
which is actually That's if you're assuming that the person that attacked her didn't know who
00:25:18
she was. No, I mean the the her name was inside of the ring. So, you would have to
00:25:24
remove the ring to see her name Right, right. there. So, if the ring never came off, he would not have known that and we
00:25:32
can't we can't really go down the road too much of whether he wanted her to remain
00:25:38
unidentified for a period of time or if he cared at all. Uh but regarding this ring, I want to
00:25:44
point that out because this is actually how they were able to identify her. So, they have her school
00:25:52
class ring and then they have her name inside of it. That's what led them to realize that
00:25:58
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All right, we're back. Cheers, mates. Everybody keeps asking us where they can find old episodes, download the Stitcher
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app. They're free on the Stitcher app. Also, check out our show on Stitcher Premium called Off the Record. Let's get
00:30:35
into this investigation some more. So, Barbie's case was assigned to the Cuyahoga Falls PD. She was found in
00:30:43
Summit County, not her native Cuyahoga County. Keep in mind, Barbie had no ties to
00:30:50
Cuyahoga Falls that police could find, and no one could think of a reason why she would be in that area.
00:30:58
All anyone knew was that Barbie and her friends were very familiar with the Blossom Music Center.
00:31:05
So, Barbie's case was investigated based on the jurisdiction of the body, not the
00:31:10
jurisdiction where she had attended a party and been out and about just hours before her death.
00:31:18
This is standard procedure. But, if the murder took place in or near Garfield Heights by a person or persons who knew
00:31:26
her, perhaps this is why her case remains unsolved. And perhaps dumping her in Summit County
00:31:34
may have been quite deliberate. After the autopsy, Coroner Cox made some statements to the media that are
00:31:42
interesting. Barbie was strangled to death. We don't know whether manual or with an
00:31:47
implement. And she was raped. What's intriguing here, and these are some uncomfortable details to cover in
00:31:55
the case, but they're important to the case. So, bear with me here for a minute.
00:32:02
The main thing that's intriguing about what Cox went out of his way to clarify regarding Barbara being raped. He says,
00:32:11
quote, "by more than one person." End quote. This statement was made to the media on Tuesday, December 22nd. So,
00:32:18
only 2 days after Barbie was found dead. The question becomes, how could the coroner know this detail? This is 1987
00:32:28
and very, very early in the DNA testing era. And what is the likelihood that a small
00:32:36
town in Ohio had access to the highest level of DNA testing available at the time or could complete that testing
00:32:44
within just 48 hours. My guess is slim to none. One thing that is possible is that
00:32:53
perhaps the coroner found two different samples of semen on different parts of Barbie's body.
00:32:59
And he did blood type testing which showed two different types. What seems more likely is that Cox may
00:33:07
have just jumped to this conclusion based on what he determined in the autopsy. That Barbie had been raped
00:33:14
repeatedly. He said, "Quote, it was repetitious. I believe that we are dealing with more
00:33:20
than one person." Whether or not this is correct is really anyone's guess. In any
00:33:25
event, Coroner Cox said that Barbie was raped by more than one perpetrator. It's interesting to hear Cox describe
00:33:33
the state of DNA testing back in late 1987. The following appeared in a Beacon Journal article about Barbie's case on
00:33:41
December 23rd, 1987, where it says, "Quote, sperm taken from the girl's body has been sent to a New York firm for
00:33:50
analysis of genetic content because molecular genetic material DNA is different for everyone except identical
00:33:59
twins. A print of this material would be equivalent to a fingerprint for positive
00:34:06
identification," Cox said. The question is, "Is there enough to cultivate?" If anything ever came of this DNA
00:34:13
analysis, police have not revealed that. An article in the Beacon Journal in February of 1988 stated that although
00:34:20
Coroner Cox used the DNA test on Barbie, he said nothing had been produced to help identify a suspect. I want to
00:34:29
wonder, did they have enough to identify a suspect? Right, And that's the question that he
00:34:34
first posed when they were going to send it off for analysis. Mhm. Now, we don't know if that means they didn't
00:34:42
get a match to anyone or whether they weren't able to extract a profile at all, as you're saying. Mhm. For what
00:34:50
it's worth, we did ask the sergeant currently in charge of the Cuyahoga Falls detective unit whether there was
00:34:56
any testable DNA in Barbie's case, and he told us that, quote, "We've done everything we can do with regard to
00:35:04
DNA," end quote, and he would not comment on whether any samples remain intact for future testing.
00:35:11
Right. So, we can't assume either way, but if they have it, we've like we know now we're in the golden age,
00:35:18
and this could get solved. Donna, this her sister does not know whether any DNA from
00:35:23
Barbie's attacker remains, either. She does know, though, that her sister was a fighter
00:35:28
and would almost certainly have harvested perpetrator DNA under her fingernails as she fought for her life. I know that
00:35:37
they did a toxicology report, and they said that she had been drinking, but I wonder if they went any further, because
00:35:44
let's say there wasn't DNA underneath her fingernails. I mean, do we know that? No, we don't know that. That's just
00:35:51
speculation by her family. And with her sister saying, "Look, my sister was a fighter," this also makes
00:35:57
you wonder, was Barbie, you know, in a state where she could even fight back, or was she so heavily intoxicated or
00:36:06
or drugged by something where she couldn't fight back? Right. And really the the simplest thing
00:36:14
with all of these words that the coroner is saying, really all that's providing to us, the
00:36:20
general public, is that they have or had some form of DNA. They know that she was raped
00:36:29
and they've they believe that she was dumped there within just a couple of hours of being
00:36:34
found. So, another intriguing tidbit that the coroner mentioned to the media, this involved something found on
00:36:44
Barbie's body. So, the coroner found that she had something written on her hand, two lines
00:36:50
of text written in pen. So, during the autopsy, this is what Cox says, "We noticed that
00:36:58
there was some kind of writing in the palm of her left hand. Some of it was legible and some was not." He stated
00:37:05
that the first line contained numbers and the second line was words. Possibly, Cox guessed it was an address.
00:37:13
So, what did the authorities in Summit County do to try to interpret the writing?
00:37:21
Which the press immediately seized upon as a possible clue left by Barbie as to her killer's identity or identities.
00:37:31
Without her family's consent or even their knowledge, they amputated her left hand and sent it
00:37:39
to the FBI lab in Washington for analysis. Cox said that the lab had sophisticated
00:37:46
laser and infrared technologies that might enable them to decipher the wording on Barbie's palm.
00:37:54
And that he should have the results in a few weeks. And that's the last the public heard of this writing on her
00:38:01
palm. Whether or not it was an actual clue, well, we don't know. Well, it's weird be because okay, we do
00:38:09
know that she went to a bike shop that she went to often. Why would you write down that address?
00:38:16
Right. This other party that she told her parents about, if she left the address when she called,
00:38:25
I would then assume that that would be the address that you might find on her hand.
00:38:30
But, we can also assume that maybe she knew where that party was, too. And then she gets dropped off at her
00:38:36
boyfriend's house or her I mean, we're calling it her boyfriend, right? But she was kind of not one to have serious
00:38:45
relationships. Mhm. You would assume that she knew that address. Of course she does. Yeah. Right. So, why
00:38:53
would you write that down on your hand? So, if if it's not a phone number, which
00:38:57
that would make sense to me as well. You're out at some parties, you run into some
00:39:02
friends or old friends. Hey, here's my number. But but the coroner is saying, I think it's
00:39:08
a address. Numbers, words underneath. To me, you'd only write that down if you're going to a place that you didn't
00:39:15
know. Mhm. And so, it's like Is this a sign? Okay, we don't have any We don't have any information back.
00:39:25
They They sever her hand. They send it to the FBI. Why the family hasn't got some answers on this
00:39:33
is absolutely ridiculous. Well, even more so that they weren't asked for permission
00:39:41
to do so. Or or at least even told about it. Yes. Right. Right. I Maybe not asking for
00:39:47
permission. Um But saying, "Hey, this is what we're doing because this is how we think we
00:39:54
can solve this and this is what we discovered." That's appalling, really. Um that's like
00:40:02
you know, that's just very disrespectful to Barbie and her family. Well, they likely they likely didn't get
00:40:08
the information from it even during this testing that they were hoping to to get.
00:40:14
Right. But let's just Let's that Cox is correct, right? That it was some kind of address.
00:40:20
Then it almost implies that she knew she was going somewhere or possibly going to go somewhere after
00:40:28
she gets dropped off at her boyfriend's house. Mhm. Yeah. Or it I mean it could have been for any
00:40:34
type of future use. We don't know that it had to have been for that night. And when I first read this statement, my
00:40:41
mind jumped to a phone number. You know, I could see we've all done it, whether it be a piece
00:40:48
of paper or on your hand, where you write down someone's name and a phone number. But the way that he says it,
00:40:55
when he says that there were numbers on top and some type of words on the bottom, that to me, I'm I'm going with
00:41:04
Cox on this one because that's how I would typically write down an address, you know, the the the
00:41:10
numeric and then the street name. So, the other thing too is we've not actually seen this and not many people
00:41:19
have, apparently, the including the family. So, it's very likely that whether you're
00:41:24
able to make it out or not, what what was written, there's a chance that he could have
00:41:30
looked at this and said, "Well, there's only four or five numbers on top, not enough for an actual phone number."
00:41:38
Again, this type of laser technology back then, we have discussed this on some of the other cases that we
00:41:45
covered that were around this same time frame. It wasn't uncommon for them to bring in
00:41:51
these this laser technology from the FBI to try to find fingerprints on a body or on
00:41:58
certain items. So, this is really just to try to paint a a better picture and fill in
00:42:05
some of the blanks. Because if there weren't blanks, they wouldn't have had to send it off to be tested.
00:42:11
Well, this is also kind of the problem with having where she was found, not where we think
00:42:17
the actual crime took place, but where she was found, investigate this crime. Because again, maybe you
00:42:25
have some smeared letters or numbers or whatever, but maybe detectives within her home
00:42:33
town would know what those meant. You know I mean, like they have a better chance of
00:42:40
You know, it doesn't make any sense. I I mean, I know what you're getting at, but
00:42:44
I don't I don't know. I do think that there is confusion in this case because they did follow protocol and and
00:42:54
the investigative agency was where the body was found. Right, right. But I understand is protocol, but again, it's
00:43:00
to me the protocol should be not only are we going to have where she was found investigate, but
00:43:11
where she came from. We're going to have them involved. Because again, a name or a number might
00:43:17
ring a bell to a local detective where it might mean nothing to somebody from Cuyahoga Falls, you know. So, when we
00:43:25
covered the Tony Muncy case that took place in the '80s as well and in Ohio as well,
00:43:31
there was a bit of a struggle for jurisdiction regarding that case. I don't know that there was necessarily a
00:43:38
struggle for jurisdiction here, but just to give some people an example of such.
00:43:44
In Tony Muncy's case, he lived in Columbus, Ohio. He was found in Delaware County.
00:43:50
And found within What was it? 24 hours or so after he was last seen? Yeah, now a lot of people, just to clear this up,
00:43:57
a lot of people are going, "Tony Muncy? I don't know if I heard that episode." It's one of our uh bonus episodes. We
00:44:03
only have two. Uh Tony Muncy and the Brick of Family Murders. You can find those on iTunes or on our website. Yeah,
00:44:10
and during that time Columbus PD said, "We want to take this case on because we believe he was he was
00:44:18
killed likely in Columbus or by somebody that that was in Columbus." Okay? Right.
00:44:25
And Delaware County was like, "No, we're going to take it because we found the body in Delaware County." What what
00:44:32
transpired there, in my opinion, I don't mean to criticize, but the leads that Delaware County was following, they
00:44:38
weren't they weren't equipped to handle that type of case back then. They are nowadays, but not back then. I think it
00:44:47
would have been a different outcome had Columbus Police Department been the one to lead the investigation.
00:44:54
Or I mean, well, I shouldn't say lead because they weren't really allowed to be involved very much at all.
00:45:00
Right. So, what you're saying is not to offend, but hey, you guys are just little pieces of [ __ ]
00:45:05
Well, I don't know the way that it went down in Barbie's cli- in Barbie's case. I don't know that they were that there
00:45:11
was a struggle for jurisdiction. What I'm getting at here is But see, what I'm saying my the new protocol, not
00:45:19
to cut you off, sorry, but New protocol is everybody works together. That's the new protocol.
00:45:24
Right. I mean, they The somebody may still have the lead on a case, but often times we see Yeah, often at least here
00:45:32
in Ohio, what we've seen with our own eyes and a lot of times with the cases that we've covered elsewhere, what we
00:45:38
see is when we're reporting this stuff, it's like we mention two or three or four agencies when we're talking about
00:45:45
some of these cases. So, I don't know how much involvement Garfield Heights actually had in this
00:45:54
situation. Because we know that it was Summit County that had the case, and we know still to this day the The remains
00:46:00
unsolved, and Summit County still has the case. Where I will give criticism goes back to the removal of the hand.
00:46:10
Because this is the way that this whole thing went down. And it's a bit shameful to me.
00:46:16
The family discovered that Barbie's hand was severed and sent away, effectively mutilating the corpse, when
00:46:24
a reporter called the Blattneck home. And the person that answered the phone was 19-year-old Donna, her sister.
00:46:33
And she was simply asked by the reporter, "Why was your sister's hand Why had it been cut off?"
00:46:41
What I'm getting at is I'm not suggesting that they would have had to ask for permission, but I do think there
00:46:47
are better ways to handle this situation when you have loved ones that are mourning the loss of
00:46:53
their sister and their daughter. Where you don't have to show any of your cards, per se.
00:47:01
You could simply say, "Look, this is one thing that we think will be extremely helpful to the investigation
00:47:08
of the murder of your daughter. The hand contains We believe that it could contain some evidence that could
00:47:15
lead us to the perpetrator." Right. And in order for us to do the best job we can as investigators, we're going to
00:47:22
actually turn over this to the FBI. Right. You don't have to tell them what you found. You don't have
00:47:29
to doing so, we have to remove her hand. Right. And you know, because it'd be a very difficult thing for a
00:47:39
parent, cuz part of you would just be going, "Can't they just come here? Yeah. Can't they just come here? Do we
00:47:44
have to you know, put her through more than she's already been through?" Right. And and I understand that she's passed
00:47:53
away at this point, but that's what it feel like that you're putting her through.
00:47:59
More torture than is necessary. So, what is known about the investigation is besides what we've already talked about.
00:48:09
By Tuesday, December 23rd, Cuyahoga Falls police had interviewed 15 or 20 people in connection with Barbie's
00:48:17
death, including a number of her friends. But, they said publicly that they had come up with nothing concrete
00:48:26
and had no definite suspects in mind. What if any police uncovered in their investigation remains a mystery even to
00:48:35
this day. When we inquired of the Cuyahoga Falls sergeant about certain aspects of the
00:48:41
case such as whether police ever found her clothes or jewelry or whether they could tell us what the message was on
00:48:48
her hand, we received basically a no comment, which is which is fine. That's good.
00:48:56
I hope what that means Well, it's fine. That's good. And I say that because I hope that this is a case
00:49:01
that they're revisiting from time to time and they don't want to show any of those cards that we just talked about.
00:49:07
Right, but you could say something like that. Yeah, we're currently working on this.
00:49:11
Uh we don't want to compromise what we have. Um but the fact that there's out there's people
00:49:18
out there like you said armchair detectives, you got people in our family that are still pushing this forward.
00:49:24
Now, we're trying to push this forward. Sometimes these cops need to get off. Uh stop sitting on their hands and put
00:49:31
out more information. Uh even if cuz that's going to be my argument constantly. You see it like
00:49:39
with the Amy Mihaljevic case, coming out with new evidence and having press conferences 20 years after the fact.
00:49:47
You know, some of that stuff just doesn't make any sense. And And they have DNA, they need to be testing it.
00:49:53
Well, according to Barbie's family, the clothes and the jewelry were never found.
00:49:59
And the police captain at the time back in 1988 told the Beacon Journal that quote, "We have probably interviewed
00:50:07
over 200 people about Barbie's last hours, her whereabouts, and the timeline." 10 years later, reflecting on
00:50:15
the unsolved case in 1997, the lead Cuyahoga Falls detective on the case, Larry Wagner, theorized that it hadn't
00:50:23
been solved because the crime was probably committed 30 miles away in Garfield Heights.
00:50:29
And police didn't have an easy time tracking down witnesses. Wagner said quote, "She was a fairly
00:50:35
popular young lady, so she had a lot of friends and a lot of people we had to look into. I'll bet we interviewed at
00:50:43
least 100 people. But he said they had very few solid leads to go on, even chalking her murder up to a possible
00:50:51
transient." And that's about it for public knowledge of the official investigation.
00:51:00
Now, thanks to the Facebook page and Barbie's sister Donna, again, we have a little more insight
00:51:08
into some of the players whom police might have spoke to or looked at in this case.
00:51:14
According to Michelle, Barbie did not hook up with Jerry, her boyfriend, that night, at least
00:51:19
initially, right? We know that. Jerry wasn't around. She asked to be dropped off
00:51:25
on Warner Road and that she was going to head to his house nearby. By local reports, Jerry wasn't home. He
00:51:34
was out with his friends that night. We have no idea whether Barbie knocked on the door or just went away when no one
00:51:41
answered. Right. What the situation could have been. Or here's a possibility. Or if Bob, Jerry's brother or anyone
00:51:51
else answered the door if Barbie did approach the door and knock. Right. Well, cuz we have to put it out there
00:51:59
that it's a possibility that she tells her friends hey, drop me off by my boyfriend's house.
00:52:06
And that could have been a meeting spot for her to meet somebody else. So, we don't even know if she made it to
00:52:13
her boyfriend's house. Right, exactly. I mean, there could be any number of reasons for her to change her mind and
00:52:19
go elsewhere. Right. We do know that Jerry was looked at hard by police, but it's unknown whether they ever tested
00:52:28
his DNA. So, he's not home that we know of. And Well, we we know according to statements that he was out with friends
00:52:36
that night. Right, so he has an alibi. He's not at home and he has an alibi. It seems like Jerry was looked at pretty
00:52:43
good by police, but it is unknown whether they ever tested his DNA. Mhm. We have been told that several of the
00:52:51
guys in the neighborhood eager to exclude themselves from the suspect pool agreed to be tested. But we don't know
00:53:00
for certain if Jerry was one of them. According to Donna, there were a few who refused. But police seem to have
00:53:08
satisfied themselves that Jerry was not involved. We're basing this off of the fact that he was never named a suspect
00:53:15
or arrested. Uh he has since passed away. Yeah, so you got all these local creepos. Think about the shitty things
00:53:24
that you had to do with your life where you somebody comes up missing, somebody's
00:53:30
dead body is found and you're very eager to get yourself excluded from the investigation. Well, I
00:53:38
don't know that that necessarily means that they're creeps or that they've done anything wrong.
00:53:42
Not all of them, but I'm saying out of one of them in that group is super duper creepo, right? And so he's going,
00:53:50
"Please test me cuz I've made a lot of bad decisions and I don't want people to think that I did this."
00:53:57
Well, I I don't know but I'm just saying there there's at least one and I'm just
00:54:01
saying that guy made a lot of bad decisions. It's a possibility, but when they're talking to these individuals
00:54:08
look, if they believe that they have a blood type or or anything regarding DNA or that type of evidence that can
00:54:17
either clear somebody or connect them they're not going to make their jobs any harder than it has to be. They're going
00:54:23
to ask you where you were that night. Do you know Barbara Blatnik? How long have
00:54:28
you known her? Do you know any of her friends? Okay, who of them do you know? Would you be willing to submit your DNA
00:54:34
or your blood type or any of that evidence to us and we can either include you or exclude you?
00:54:40
But I'm saying there might be somebody in the audience going with their hand raised, "Please test me." Hey, we're not
00:54:46
even talking to you. No, I know you're not talking to me, but please test me. I want to be excluded from this
00:54:52
investigation. I think what's more interesting is the alibis that some of these teenagers and young adults may or may
00:55:02
not have had for that night. Mhm. We have a lot of kids and young adults that are
00:55:10
Look, I'm not going to accuse them of of anything that we don't already know. These are people that are drinking
00:55:18
underage smoking some pot, hanging out, partying. Not a big deal, right? That's pretty
00:55:24
That's a fairly common activities for people of that age. So, no big deal there. No harm, no foul.
00:55:32
However I think where a lot of the the trouble that this investigation has got into
00:55:41
is going off of the word of these young adults and teenagers that are breaking some very small rules and laws. Right.
00:55:53
I wonder how well we can trust the alibis and statements provided to detectives regarding what was going on
00:56:02
that night, with whom and where. Right. So, hypothetically speaking, you got a group of teenagers that were hanging out
00:56:08
at the Captain's Pub. And the Captain's Pub was serving minors alcohol that night.
00:56:14
Mai Tais and margaritas. Mhm. Yeah. Loads of Mai Tais and and we got a special drink called the douche
00:56:21
canoe. It's very long and it's filled with booze and it's kind of like a fishbowl. But anyways,
00:56:27
there's a So, here's what I'm hearing you say. It's a teen a teenage group might tell the
00:56:34
cops, "We were at Tommy's house." Or we were just driving around. And not to give the location of the place that
00:56:44
they might have been drinking or partying at. Mhm. And so, that makes Did they do anything wrong? No. Are they
00:56:51
involved in the crime? No. But, it's making a lot of these stories unclear. Yes. And
00:56:59
and I base that off of this. So, let's I'm going to create four different compartments real quick here regarding
00:57:06
these teens and young adults. And especially the young adults that are still living at home with mom and dad.
00:57:12
Okay. So, we have the A group that may not give a [ __ ] about anything and they're just willing to tell the cops
00:57:19
whatever because they don't care. They don't fear the cops, they don't fear their parents, they don't fear the law.
00:57:25
Then we have another group who might be terrified of getting in trouble with the
00:57:32
law, may not understand the law and think, "Oh, I sold some pot to these people. I'm going to go away forever."
00:57:39
Okay? And then you have another group, group C, that might just be terrified of mom and dad. I don't want to get in
00:57:45
trouble with mom and dad, or I don't want to disappoint my parents. Right. Then we got group D,
00:57:52
who is going to go, "You know what? Maybe I'm a little afraid of the law. Maybe I'm a little afraid of
00:57:57
disappointing my parents, but in the sake of doing what's right, I'm going to accept what I've done, and I'm going to
00:58:08
tell the truth to the police anyway." Right. But what I'm getting at is you still
00:58:12
have two groups within that that large pool of people. We know that she was a popular kid. She had a lot of friends.
00:58:19
Nobody There's nobody out there saying differently. So you have a large group of people, all
00:58:25
of them young adults and teenagers, and you have if we're going to break that up
00:58:29
into just four different groups, we got two of those four groups that probably would bend the truth. Well, right.
00:58:36
Or leave out details, or, you know, The other group is the people that don't want to get the establishment that
00:58:42
they're at in trouble. Right. So you So no And then on top of that, no it also can affect your personal life going
00:58:50
forward. Right. And your activities. Maybe you love going to the bike shop in December and
00:58:55
January and getting all boozed up with your buddies. But guess what? After I tell the truth about what I was doing
00:59:01
that night when Barbara went missing and then was found dead, Mhm. guess what? I can no longer say, "Hey,
00:59:06
Mom, Dad, I'm going off to the bike shop. See you in a few hours." That ain't going to fly anymore. Well, yeah.
00:59:11
And all those rats that ratted out the Captain's Pub, no douche canoe for you. No douche canoe
00:59:18
for you. Well, in episode two of this case, Captain, I really want to take a deep dive into what are some other
00:59:25
possibilities for that night, for Barbara's last night. And I also want to explore if her murder could be connected
00:59:34
to other murders in the area. A lot more to dive into. If you have thoughts on this, go to
00:59:51
truecrimegarage.com and leave your comments on the blog. Yep, join us back here for part two.
00:59:59
Until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.