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Kurt Sova · Justice For

• justice for: On October 28th, of 1981, three young boys were exploring an area behind a warehouse in Newburgh Heights, Ohio, a small community just outside of Cleveland. It was a Wednesday afternoon, four days before Halloween. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, I don't know why my math in my head was wrong. And the boys made their way into a ravine near Harvard Avenue. It was the kind of place where neighborhood kids might wander around, explore the wooded area and rocky terrain. away from the neighborhood streets. I mean it was the eighties. I mean I was doing that in the nineties. Exactly same. But what these three boys stumbled upon that afternoon was something no child should ever have to see. A body? Lying near the bottom of the ravine, partially in a shallow puddle of water, was the body of a young man. He was lying on his back, his arms stretched outwards from his sides, his head was turned slightly, and one leg was positioned across the other. He was wearing jeans and a bright yellow shirt, but had no shoes on his feet. One one of his tennis shoes was discovered wedged among some rocks nearby, and the other was nowhere to be found. And although the position of the body was unusual, there was something else about the scene that investigators would find even more troubling. There was no obvious signs of a violent attack. no sek significant wounds that immediately explained how this young man had died, no apparent evidence that he had been beaten or suffered some catastrophic injury. Aside from a few minor scratches and bruises, there was little to indicate what happened to him. The police were called to the ravine, and within hours, the young man was identified as seventeen year old Kurt Eugene Sova. Kurt lived nearby with his family who reported him missing after he failed to return home the previous Friday, which was October twenty third. For five days, his family had been searching for him, desperately trying to figure out where he had gone and why hadn't he come home. So now, just a short distance from where he had been last seen, their worst fears had become a reality. But finding Kurt's body would only be the beginning of a mystery that would leave investigators and his family searching for answers for decades. Welcome back to another episode of Justice Four. We are your host. I'm Jackie. And I'm Sam. that was a long intro. Yeah. But like and I think that this now has the record for the most information either one of us has ever given at the beginning of an episode. I did give a lot of information, but like I ain't even skimming the surface yet. Which is crazy because I feel like you just told us like half of the case. I mean we can stop. No, please don't. Please don't, please don't, please don't. I'm I'm really intrigued and vested because as y'all know, we show each other pictures before we start the episode. And I like I don't know if I recognize the pictures. Okay. I'm familiar with it. Or if they just look so classic 80s. Yeah. That they just look familiar because to be honest, anybody who's flipped through a photo album from the 80s of their family has seen half of these pictures, I feel like. Absolutely. and also I think the dad looks like a Tom Hanks that's like Tom Hanks. Like like coming into like his like late 20s, early 30s, that like Mm-hmm. It's not a it's a weird air of Tom Hanks for me because he's either really young or older in movies by the time I saw him. So when he's in that like weird like twenties ish realm. Sure. I don't know. It's like he's like you can still see young, but he looks a little older. Like Tom Hanks and Big. Yes! Thank you. That Tom Hanks. Right as he's, you know, getting into that more of like adult face. yeah, so I think that I just might be confused because this is very generic eighties looking people. Totally. Sorry to all of you alive in the eighties. Also If you're just listening to this on Spotify or Apple or just listening anywhere, you should go check out the pictures on all of our socials. And while you're there, follow us. Yeah. Like us. Subscribe to us. It's free and we're cool. It is. And all of our pictures are on the website as well. You can find all of our seasons. We broke all of our episodes down into seasons. Go through there and all of our pictures are on there so you don't have to scroll through Facebook. but yeah. Yeah. Also you can find tickets to our live show, which is coming up. In a couple weeks. It is October 30th at Painting with a Twist off Pires and Constitution is going to be a candle making event. it starts at 7 p.m. This is an 18 and up event. Yep. You can drink there. Yes. You can purchase alcohol there. Yes, you can. We do have a little fun activity planned for you guys as well for while we are discussing our case. And I just showed it to Sam and she's freaking out. She she was like, I need you to close your eyes. I'm like, okay. And she's wait, are your hands clean? The fuck? Yeah. Also, we are having a costume contest. yes, we are. So Please bring your best costume. Wear your best costume. There will be a prize. You guys have to figure out how to beat Steve's costume because his costume is like top tier. Steve's costume is pretty cool. So that's your goal. Beat Steve's costume. Yeah. Our costume's also pretty cool. And if you don't wear a costume, we are gonna judge you. We are gonna judge you. I will call you out in front of everyone. I don't care. We will. So wear a costume. It'll be it'll it'll be way less awkward if you wear a costume. It's true. It's true. So Let's get into this, y'all, because this is gonna be a long one. I'm gonna be real. Hopefully not too long. But there's a lot of this is crazy. I'm so excited to get into this. Just off of that intro alone, I am I'm so excited. My intros are getting kind of interesting. They are. Okay. Before Kurt Sova became the center of a mystery that would leave his family searching for answers for decades, he was simply a seventeen year old boy growing up in Cleveland, Ohio area. Okay. We've done a lot in Ohio lately. We really have. Kurt Eugene Sova was born into a working class family and was the youngest of four boys born to Kenneth and Dorothy Sova. His three older brothers were Kevin, Kenny, and Keith. Lots of K names. I really need to know what was going on in the eighties for all of these Ks. All these Ks. Because the Kardashians were also in the eighties. So like what? Yeah. What was wrong with the eighties and everybody having the same letter? Especially K for the first name. I don't know, ma'am. Dorothy poor Dorothy is the only one that doesn't have it, so we're calling her K Dorothy. Yeah, I've renamed her the K Dorothy because if I married into the family of all the K names, I would have like, and I have a new name. She helped with this. I know. god, she facilitated this. She did. We can just say the K is silent. We can. We can. But that's what we're going with. Anyway, so growing up in a house with four boys meant there was rarely a dull moment. The family didn't have a lot of money, and when the boys were younger, they actually all shared a single bedroom. They had I want to look this up because I never realized this was a thing. They had a three-level bunk bed. yeah, they are totally a thing. First of all, IKEA has a great selection of them. I only have one child. Don't ask me why I know this, but I loved my bunk bed as a kid, right? And so whenever I started looking at like different bunk beds for my kid, I noticed they have three ones. So they have ones that are like single, single, single on top, right? Then they have ones that are like single and they like offset like this. And then they have ones that have like a full bed on the bottom and then like two single ones. They have ones that some of them fold up. They have ones that go like this and then like this and then like this. So you can like put it in the corner. yeah. There are so many different options for triple bunk beds. You guys definitely need to get on the YouTube video and watch her hands to understand what she's saying. But yeah, no, triple bunk beds are so cool. Go down the IKEA rabbit hole. You what? Hell yeah. So they had the three level bunk bed with an additional bed that pulled out from underneath. And according to later family a triple bunk bed with a trundle bed? Yeah. That is the most idy shit I have ever heard in my life. Totally. I had a trundle bed when I was in elementary school. I love that sucker. I understand. You could rank your f like you could tell how much you liked your friend if you put the trundle bed all the way up so it was a giant bed or if you made them sleep floor level below you. You know who you are. according to later family recollections, there was plenty of competition over who got to sleep where in this bed though. yeah, most definitely. I'm sure. And Kurt being the youngest and smallest of all the brothers often ended up with whichever bed nobody else wanted. When he was little, his family actually gave him the nickname Mouse. Because he was one the smallest and two, he used to make this squeaking noise that everyone thought was just hilarious. I thought you were gonna say 'cause he's like really quiet and like scurried everywhere, but no, I like the squeaking noise better. But despite being the baby of the family, Kurt wasn't someone who faded into the background. His older brother Kevin would later describe him as funny, fun loving, and athletic. He enjoyed sports, had a natural sense of humor, and was apparently pretty good at making people around him laugh. Kevin even suggested that Kurt might have been one of or might have been the most talented of all four of the brothers. Okay. Mm-hmm. By October of 1981, Kurt was a junior in high school. He lived with his parents in a quiet blue-collar neighborhood just outside of Cleveland, and by the accounts of those closest to him, he was a pretty typical teenager. He had friends, enjoyed spending time with them, and was beginning to experience the independence that comes with getting older. How especially in the eighties? Seventeen, okay. I mean especially in the eighties there was more freedom from a younger age, but yeah, by seventeen you were pretty much an adult doing your own thing and Essentially, yeah. Yeah. But one thing that stood out about Kurt was how close he was with his family, especially his parents. I can tell by like the pictures alone that they're a pretty close family, you know? Yes. And even because like even in to the older years with what you showed me. Absolutely. Yeah. Dorothy would also later explain that Kurt had never been the kind of kid who caused problems. She hadn't experienced trouble with him at school. He wasn't known for getting into trouble with the police. And he didn't have issues with any of the neighbors complaining about behaviors. Anything like that, especially in the eighties. You know how he's a troublemaker. You better stay Yeah, you have all the stay-at-home moms who are always watching out the windows. You've got, you know. Yeah. Yeah. As far as Dorothy knew, Kurt was a good kid who generally respected the boundaries his parents had completely established with him. And one of those boundaries involved knowing where he was and when he would be home. Which is understandable. Understandable, especially in a time with no cell phones. Yeah. You know, if you were calling somebody, it was a landline to a landline, and you know. So that's a pretty that was a pretty standard understandable rule, I feel like, especially for a closer knit family back then. According to Dorothy, Kurt usually came home around ten or eleven o'clock at night, and if he was going to be out later, his parents generally knew where he was. He wasn't somebody who regularly disappeared for an entire night without contacting his family. Okay. Now, obviously, Kurt was seventeen. And anyone who's either been seventeen, which I hope the majority have you have been already or raised a seventeen year old. You're not there yet. I'm getting there. Don't don't no. No. having a crisis. Or if you've raised a 17-year-old, you know that teenagers don't always tell their parents everything. They might make plans without mentioning every detail, change their minds about where they're going, or occasionally do something their parents wouldn't necessarily approve of. And As we'll get into shortly, Kurt's final Friday was not entirely consistent with the responsible teenager his family thought he was. But there is a significant difference between a teenager occasionally bending the rules and a teenager disappearing without a word. Friday, October 23rd, 1981, started a little differently than an ordinary school day for Kurt. Instead of attending classes, Kurt decided to skip school that day. And at some point during the afternoon, he managed to get his hands on a bottle of Everclear. Ugh. Now, anyone who is unfamiliar with Everclear, it is a particularly strong type of grain alcohol, and certain versions contain as much as 95% alcohol. We're talking about 190 proof. Ugh which is considered sh stronger than vodka, whiskey, and other liquors most people are accustomed to seeing and it tastes like pure fucking rubbing alcohol. Yuck. Yeah. god. Mm-hmm. He had apparently convinced an adult to purchase the Everclear for him at a local liquor store, and he spent part of the afternoon at his girlfriend's house, where he had been drinking before eventually heading out again. Later that afternoon, Kurt crossed paths with his friend Samuel Carroll, who went by Sam. Lots of Sam's here. All the Sam's. Mm-hmm. Sam was heading to a Halloween party at a duplex on Harvard Avenue in Newburgh, which is less than two miles from Kurt's home. The two got to talking and Kurt decided to tag along. The party was being held at a resident. Isn't that Harvard Boulevard? Isn't that the last place he was seen? Harvard Avenue. Harvard Avenue. The party was being held at a residence associated with a woman named Debbie Sam's. my gosh. I know. That was the last Sam's Okay. And like as a person. although some accounts identify the hostess by a different name, which was Susan. I explain it in a little bit. I'm calling her Debbie. Because her name is Debbie. I don't give up. more than a dozen people were said to have attended throughout the evening at this party, and several of them were older than Kurt. Many weren't people he ordinarily spent time with, which would make it difficult for his family to piece together exactly what happened that night. As the evening went on, Kurt continued drinking. Was this okay so like According to his family, the drinking part's weird, right? Yes. But like according to like his girlfriend and friends, what did they say about his drinking? Or do they? Or we am I getting too far ahead? You're I just wanna know if this is like out of the ordinary for him or if this was something that was like normal for him and his friend group. Drinking this heavily is out of the ordinary. Okay. But he was known to occasionally drink and stuff, you know, high school parties, other things like that. Okay. I mean typical eighties bonfire parties thing drinking. Yeah. Okay, maybe you're gonna be very upset. Okay. I just I was just trying to get a gauge on like if this was normal behavior for him to be doing this or if this was like really out of the normal. Not like this. I think this was just like a my god, it's Halloween. Halloween, almost Halloween thing. You know. As the evening went on, Kurt continued drinking, and eventually he became extremely intoxicated. He was feeling sick, and Sam decided to take him outside for some fresh air. The two stepped outside of the duplex away from the other partygoers, and Kurt remained near a fence while Sam went back inside to grab their jackets 'cause apparently it was cold. October. October, Ohio. Yeah, it could be. Sam said that he was only gone for approximately two or three minutes. But when he returned, Kurt was gone. No. Sam looked around a side quester. He's me. He's a sidequester. I understand. I if I have a lot to drink, I'm a hobbit, you guys. I go on adventures. Yeah. Sam looked around for his friend, but there was no sign of him. He hadn't mentioned going anywhere, and Sam hadn't actually seen him leave with anyone. One moment Kurt had been standing outside, and just a few minutes later he seemed to vanish. Rather than immediately assume something was wrong, Sam figured Kurt must have gotten a ride from someone he knew, or he decided to head home on his own. So Sam returned to the party. Okay. Stop leaving your fucking friends. Right. Or like accepting the fact that like if they're already intoxicated enough that you need to help them, maybe he just all of a sudden he's logically thinking she's fine. The fuck? Okay. With this though, there was no immediate search for Kurt, no call to his parents, and no indication that anyone believed he might be in danger. And as far as people at the party were concerned, Kurt had simply just left. I mean it's the eighties. Yeah. But he never made it home. When Saturday morning arrived, which was October twenty fourth, Kurt still hadn't returned home. For Kenneth and Dorothy, this was completely out of character for Kurt. And although he was certainly old enough to spend time with his friends and occasionally push the boundaries with his parents, staying out all night without letting anyone know where he was was simply something he wouldn't do. Yeah. Kenneth began searching the neighborhood. Almost instantly. Mm-hmm. Dad the dad. Dad. I'm sorry. I shall I'll say that. Or we call the the brother with Kenny. Kenny. Kenneth Kenny and Kenneth. Kenneth I'll just call him Dad. Dad started searching the neighborhood. Okay. Checking places Kurt might have gone while Dorothy started making phone calls. She called his friends and anyone else she thought might have seen him the night before, hoping someone could tell her where he spent his previous evening. Yeah. At first, there was still the possibility that Kurt had simply stayed with a friend. Maybe he'd been drinking, decided not to come home, and was just sleeping it off somewhere. Yeah. But as the Saturday went on, nobody seemed to know where Kurt was. They haven't seen him, they haven't heard from him. Well that's a little suspicious. Yeah. Definitely now we're getting into the non normal territory. Like he should have woken up, at least given a call to somebody. Yes. Somebody should have seen him at this point or know who he left with or what he was doing. Yep. Their search soon expanded beyond Kenneth and Dorothy. So mom and dad. Family members, friends, and neighbors joined in, spreading out throughout the surrounding neighborhoods and checking anywhere that he might have gone. They searched alleys, wooded areas, ravines, and even dumpsters. Hoping to find some indication of where the fuck he is. In one later interview, Dorothy recalled as many as 40 people being involved in the search, working in groups throughout the neighborhood, both during the day and into the night. And Kurt's three older brothers were doing what they also could to help. They printed missing person flyers featuring their younger brother's photograph and information about his disappearance. Which were then distributed throughout the area and displayed on local businesses, utility polls. Okay. The usual. As the hours passed, the possibility that Kurt had simply spent the night with a friend became even more difficult to believe. Yeah. And by Sunday, October twenty fifth, Kenneth and Dorothy still had no idea where he was. Now there is a small disc discrepancy in the reporting surrounding when he was officially reported as missing. At least one secondary account suggests that the missing person report was filed on Saturday, October 24th. However, the original unsolved mysteries coverage and other reporting places suggest that it was Sunday, October twenty fifth. I haven't been able to verify the Saturday date through like a police record. So Sunday is the date that we're gonna go with, as the official date of him being reported missing. Cool? Okay. Mm-hmm. Regardless of exactly when that report was filed, Kurt's family wasn't waiting around. Yeah. For someone else to try to They were already doing missing persons flyers and all of that. So like Yes. They still continued she was Okay, so I wonder if we are in eighty one. Yep. Okay. So I can see where the discrepancy in reporting is. Mm-hmm. Dorothy and Kenneth tried to report him missing on Saturday and police told them it hadn't been twenty-four hours yet, so they had to wait twenty-four hours and they weren't going to do that. So they s automatically started the missing person flyers doing all that. And Sunday it had been twenty-four hours. And so by Sunday morning, then they could officially report it. Yeah. And that's where I think it comes in because they were doing the missing person flyers before on Saturday, before he was reported on Sunday. And this was the time frame of you have to wait twenty four or forty eight hours. So I could see that they did try to report him missing, but the missing police report wasn't taken until Sunday. I want you to hold on to that a little bit. So on Sunday afternoon, Dorothy finally learned something that gave her a specific place to start looking. After speaking with some of his friends, she discovered that he attended a party on Friday night at a duplex on Harvard Avenue. Okay. The house was less than two miles from the Sova's family home, so Dorothy made her way over there, hoping someone could tell her when Kurt had left, where he might have gone if he was with someone, you know what I'm saying. When Dorothy arrived at the complex, she knocked on the door hoping to speak with the woman who had hosted the party, but the woman who answered the door was not that person. the young woman explained that she was babysitting and that the woman who rented the apartment was currently at work. Dorothy asked whether she knew anything about the party that had taken place, and she was like, I don't know. I don't know anything. She also a babysitter, so I can't I mean and you did say the party was like older people. Yes. So that that makes sense, okay. And so with no other information to go on at that point, Dorothy ended up leaving her name and telephone number and asked the woman there, like, please tell the lady who lives here to call me when she gets home. Yeah. Right away. Right away. And later that day, Dorothy received a f the phone call that she was waiting for. The woman who rented the duplex I d okay. This is where that confusing part comes in. She was identified as Susan in the Unsolved Mysteries coverage, but then in reports, her name is Debbie Sam's. So that's why I'm calling her Debbie. Sometimes Unsolved Mysteries changes the names of people. just for the episode purposes or because there's potential that the report with her name didn't come out until after the unsolved mysteries episode. Because sometimes that unsolved mysteries episode is like still like Jeremy Bright. We had multiple unsolved mysteries episodes for him. So I'm just saying that like sometimes they just give random ass names to people in there. Yeah. Her name's Debbie, y'all. We're going with Debbie. Alright. Alright, so Debbie calls her. Okay? And instead of providing any information to her, she was just like, no, I haven't seen Kurt. she also was like, hmm, I also didn't throw a party on Friday. So Okay, cool, cool. that's confusing to say the least. Dorothy has spoken with many people who told her that Kurt was at a party at this woman's house. she had gone there specifically because it was the last place anyone was able to connect to her son. Yeah. And now the woman who was supposedly hosting this gathering is saying that it never happened. But Dorothy was not about to abandon the first real lead she's gotten. Yeah. At all. And at some point, she actually ended up speaking with a pizza delivery driver. I love this woman. We love Dorothy. She mama bear. Love her. Mm-hmm. She spoke to a pizza delivery driver who confirmed that there had in fact been a party at that duplex on Friday night because he delivered pizza there. That night directly contradicting Debbie. I love this. I love this. Mm-hmm. Armed with that information, Dorothy called her back up. Boop boop. Debbie. Hey girl, hey. What's up, you lying ass bitch? and this time the story changed. Debbie's story changed. The woman finally admitted that there had been an a a party on Friday. And she also acknowledged yeah, also Kurt was definitely there. I'm I'm gonna go ahead and assume, you know, she was trying to cover her ass since she was serving alcohol to underage Underage I mean minors. Yeah. And also it's the eighties, so I'm gonna be willing to assume that there was other party favors involved in here that she was trying to not K yeah. She did explain that more than a dozen people had come through the rev residence that evening, including several people who were older than Kurt and others that he like had never met. She also told Dorothy that Kurt had been drinking heavily. This was a surprise to Dorothy, who didn't know her youngest son to be much of a drinker at all. She understood that teenagers sometimes experiment with alcohol, particularly when they're around older people, but the amount Kurt was said to have consumed was not something she ever associated with him. And as Dorothy continued asking questions, not not to Deb anymore. She just started asking other people questions because Deb's no help whatsoever. Yeah. She learned what Sam had told others about the final minutes he spent with Kurt. Okay. so I told you guys a little bit, but I'm gonna reiterate just a little bit. He claimed Kurt had was so intoxicated that he had taken him outside for fresh air, only to return a few minutes later and discovered he was gone. Now imagine hearing that explanation as Kurt's mother, knowing your son had already been missing for two days. Yeah. Dorothy was being told that her seventeen year old son, who had been extremely intoxicated on Everclear, was left alone outside. And then vanished. I mean, that's horrible to hear as a mom, but like also at the same time, like it was like two minutes. What could happen in two minutes? A lot apparently can happen in two minutes, I'm aware now. Yeah. Sam believed Kurt might have gotten a ride or made his way home on his own. And Dorothy was like, Yeah, no, that didn't happen, obviously. and there was still something about the entire situation that just did not sit right with Dorothy. Yeah. Why had the woman initially denied hosting that party? I think we already answered that. Why hadn't anyone contacted Kurt's family when he disappeared? And if he was as intoxicated as everyone was claiming, how far could he realistically have gotten on his own? Yeah. Dorothy didn't have answers to those to those questions and she wasn't willing to stop asking them. So over the following days, the Sova family continued trying to get information from the people associated with the duplex, anyone involved with this party. And where were the police at on this? Were they like Thinking that Kurt was missing, were they like, he's seventeen, he'll show back up again. He's a teenager. Like, were they helping with searches? Were they doing anything? Cool, cool. So just the family is just really doing this on their own. Yeah. Okay. The police were not doing much. Gotcha. This is reminding me so much of the Jeremy Bright episode. I'm Yeah. Like. Mm-hmm. so later accounts describe repeated visits to the property from the Sova family, who reportedly became such a source of tension like between the family and the residents at this duplex that police eventually instructed them to stay away. Yeah. You know what? You know what? Become this level of a problem. Become this level of a problem when your family member goes missing. It's true. Yeah, because we have multiple cases where family members becoming a problem like this got stuff done. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I mean there still might be cold cases, but if their family didn't do what they did, we wouldn't be where we're at with them. Mm-hmm. By Monday, october twenty sixth, Kurt had been missing for three days. His family continued searching the neighborhood, distributing flyers, and speaking with anyone who might know where he would have gone. But despite their efforts, there was still no confirmed sighting of Kurt after he disappeared from the party on Friday night. What his family didn't know at the time was that someone who knew Kurt would later come forward with an account of seeing him that very Monday. What? Kurt's friend David Truznick was driving to a job interview when he spotted someone who he believed was Kurt walking along a busy street less than a mile from the Sova family home. But Kurt wasn't alone. Another boy, who David did not recognize, was walking beside him. David pulled his car over, intending to offer Kurt a ride, but before he could speak to him, a van approached. From the opposite direction. David recalled Kurt calling out a name that sounded like Franco, but boys the both boys then ran towards the van, climbed inside, and drove away. David didn't think much of the encounter at the time. He'd actually been out of town and wasn't aware that Kurt had been reported missing. As far as he knew, he simply spotted his friend walking down the street. and watched him accept a ride from s someone that Kurt hopefully recognized. It was only after David learned that Kurt had disappeared that he realized how important this k encounter might have been. And this is where the timeline becomes particularly interesting. If David really did see Kurt on Monday, that would mean Kurt ha was alive for three days after leaving the Halloween party. He was apparently able to walk around the neighborhood, recognize someone, approaching in a vehicle and get into the vehicle without any obvious indication that he needed help. But David never actually spoke to Kurt that morning, and the sighting wasn't independently confirmed. So while his account provided a possible glimpse into Kurt's movements, it didn't establish where Kurt had spent the previous three days or where the van had taken him, and if it was actually him. He just believes it was him. I mean, he was I I'm not gonna lie, Kurt had a very generic eighties haircut. He did. And if you saw him from the side or from the back, you honestly he could have been mistaken with multiple other people. But wasn't really on board with like believing too much of this until you got to the part where he wasn't even aware that Kurt was missing. So it wasn't like he'd been sitting on this information. He wasn't aware he even had information in something. It was just when he got back into town he realized that this was all going on. He's all hey, y'all I saw him on Monday. Like what are y'all doing? And because like what would he have been doing for three days? Yeah. Yeah yeah. There was still also the question of who the fuck is Franco? But also how far did you say he was from him again? that's a good question. What did I say? He was driving on the busy road that he was apparently walking along, which was less than a mile from the Sova family home. So like was he like driving this way and Kurt was walking this way? I wanna say yes. I don't have an actual confirmation of that for sure. But I'm going to assume yes, because then he said he pulled his car over. But he could they both also could have been going the same way and he was just like, hey Yeah and then pulled up to the side to wait for him to come up there and then the van came. Okay, so I don't know. Let's I'm I'm just hold that over here for a minute because that's that's pretty compelling. Mm-hmm. also David didn't recognize the other boy that Kurt was apparently walking with and the identity of the van driver was never conclusively established in the original coverage. It was the eighties and it's a white van, so yeah, absolutely. That same Monday, another unsettling encounter took place at a local record store. The store had one of Kurt's missing person flyers displayed in its window. And a man who had been hanging around the neighborhood noticed the poster. He approached the store manager and made a statement that she would have little reason to forget. He told her she might as well take that poster down because Kurt would be found dead in two days. What the fuck? He claimed that nobody would know his cause of death. And at this point, Kurt was still considered. Missing. Who the fuck is this guy? I don't know. His family so Kurt's family was actively searching for him. There had been no public am announcement that he was dead. So for a complete stranger to make such a specific prediction was understandably disturbing. and the manager that was there of the record store didn't know whether the man was just simply trying to frighten her or whether sh he this guy had some r reason to believe Kurt was already dead. But the encounter actually didn't end there. When she returned to the store the following morning, she discovered that that strange man left flowers and a handwritten note for her outside. The note contained a threatening rhyme suggesting that Kurt would be found dead and that the store manager would be next. What the fuck? Mm-hmm. This was no longer just an unsettling comment from a stranger. The man had returned to the business, left something for the man that the manager essentially interpreted as a threat, rightfully so. So she actually she actually contacted the police who eventually located this guy and questioned him. An investigator sorry, you'll understand in a little bit on why I'm so upset about this. Investigators reportedly determined that the man was experiencing mental health difficulties, but they found no evidence connecting him to Kurt's disappearance. He was So he was talked to by police. Yeah. Okay. Was he talked to by police again after we found Kurt? 'Cause I do remember your intro for this episode. But there's an important distinction between someone making a frightening prediction and someone processing actual knowledge of a crime. Knowledge that nobody else knew yet. Yeah. No evidence presented in the original coverage established that this man knew what had happened to Kurt. I need you to hold all of this anger for a little bit later. I need you to hold all of this. Thank you. Meanwhile, the Sova family continued searching. We're gonna get into the police investigation on all of it in a little bit. Okay, fine. Continue. So Kenneth d dad had been checking the surrounding neighborhoods and the areas near the duplex on Harvard Avenue. His search included a ravine not far from the house where Kurt had attended the party. Kenneth would later insist that he examined the area carefully and that Kurt definitely had not been there. He remembered the terrain and he believed that if his son had been lying in the ravine, particularly wearing a bright yellow shirt, he would have seen him. Yeah, I was about to say, it was only like a mile or two from the house. Mm-hmm. And they'd already been searching all these places and stuff. And so like from the very beginning, as soon as you said they were searching, I like, How did they miss him? By Tuesday night, the family had been searching for four days. They had spoken with Kurt's friends, learned about the party, confronted conflicting accounts from the woman who hosted the party, and searched the surrounding neighborhood, and they still had not found Kurt. Then early Wednesday morning, October twenty eighth, Dorothy received a phone call. And it was at approximately 3.30 in the morning. And the person calling her was Debbie Sams. The lady who hosted the party. This time she told Dorothy that someone was sleeping in her basement. And she thought it was Kirk. For Dorothy, the call was very confusing, but also potentially important. so she was like Kenneth, Kenneth, wake up. Go to this lady's house, please. She thinks Kurt's in her basement. So he goes there to investigate this, makes his way into the basement, hoping that Kurt may have been there. And perhaps he was just sick or injured or unable to get home. You know, hope. Hope, hope. If his son was inside that house, Kenneth wanted to find him and get him whatever help he needed. But when he entered the basement, Kurt was nowhere to be seen. Actually, there was no one in the basement. There was, however, a cot that looked like someone had recently been sleeping in it. He searched the basement further and he didn't find anyone. There was no way for him to determine who was using the cot and whether that person had been his son. Then, later in the day, is when the three boys found Kurt's body in the ravine. His body was found approximately 500 yards away from the duplex where he had attended the party five days earlier. And while the discovery finally answered the question of where Kurt was, it left his family facing an entirely different question: what had happened to him? With Kurt's body finally located, investigators turn their attention to determining what happened to him over the last five days that he's been missing. I'm so confused. Okay. I know. I know. Did the family search this area after he went after knowing that he was at that party, or were like their searches in like they searched that area. Like they searched that ravine and he was not there before this. Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kenneth Kenneth stands ten toes down that he searched this area. The area surrounding the ravine was searched for evidence, but there was very little at the scene to explain how Kurt had died. Aside from some minor scratches and bruises, there was no obvious signs of a violent attack, and nothing immediately indicated that he had suffered a fatal injury. There was, however, something unusual about the condition in which Kurt had been found. He was barefoot. Completely barefoot. Investigators discovered his left tennis shoe wedged among some rocks less than twelve feet from his body. But despite searching the surrounding area, they were never able to locate his right shoe or his socks. Like how far down was this ravine? Were we like down like a decent embankment? Is it just like a little dip down? What are we talking here? It's a pretty big ravine. 'Cause we're my mind's going to is we're only five hundred feet away. So if he did like walk off while he was drunk like that, thought maybe he was going back towards the house, he was going the other way, thought he was going towards the road. But he stumbled and fell down into this ravine. Mm-hmm. He had his shoes on. But him trying to get out of the ravine was in the rocks. His shoe got stuck in the rocks. Now he's over here. And he could have like stumbled back and fell and hit his head or something. But I know that you have more things for me. But like that's just kind of where I'm initially at was like there was no indication on his body of a head injury. Interesting. Mm-hmm. There's zero indication of any like physical trauma? No. Minus slight bruises and scratches. Minor scratches. Obviously from going into the ravine. Probably. Huh. Also, where's his right shoe then? If he had walked into that ravine and maybe his foot got stuck in he got stumbled into that, yeah. Yeah, where would the other shoe be? They'd be able to find the shoe somewhere. Yeah. I mean because he took his socks I mean okay, listen. Okay. I I was as we're walking ourselves through that real quick. I mean, like you're drunk, your patient level is down there. I mean, one of his shoes gets stuck in the rocks and now he's sitting there with one shoe on, so he just takes the other shoe off and throws it. And now we're sitting there trying to do things and get grip and and now my socks aren't working 'cause you know it's grass or whatever, so take the socks off and use your barefoot to like try to you know what I mean? I know what you're I absolutely understand what you're saying. As a drunk person with a little bit of the tism, I don't like certain things touching me and he was in a puddle. Well if my socks are wet and bitches coming off, why can't they find them? But why can't they f yeah, the thing is is that like animals don't just take a shoe. Or a sock. And or a socking and go run. I mean, well the sock for small critters would for burrows and stuff like that, but a shoe that's Yeah. Yeah. So now I understand we're getting into this. A missing shoe does not automatically mean something suspicious happened. People can lose shoes during falls, accidents, or while moving through difficult terrain. But in Kurt's case, investigators didn't know why he ended up in the ravine. Yeah. So the missing shoe became another an like unanswered question. And Kurt's father, Kenneth, had an additional concern about the location where his son was discovered. Kenneth had previously searched that area while Kurt was missing, and he was adamant that his body, his son, was not there. Yeah. He remembered looking through the ravine and believed that Kurt's bright yellow shirt would be extremely difficult to miss in the surrounding terrain. To Kenneth, that suggested someone had someone had placed Kurt's body there after he had already searched the area. But there was no conclusive physical evidence establishing that Kurt's body had been moved. Kenneth's recollection was important, particularly because he had been actively searching for his son, but investigators couldn't determine whether Kurt had died in the ravine or someone else. Well, and the other part is is that Like that yellow is very obvious against that train. Like yeah. They would have seen him. It's not like he was hidden underneath tree branches or underneath a tarp or anything like that. He was literally just laying out there in the open. Yeah. his body was transported to the county coroner's office, where Chief Deputy Coroner Dr. Lester Adelson examined his remains. And the autopsy findings were about to raise an entirely new set of questions. They first concerned Kurt's estimated time of death. doctor Edelson determined that Kurt had died approximately twenty-four to thirty eight er I'm sorry, twenty-four to thirty-six hours before his body was discovered. Yep, remember that timeline. She's already piecing it together in her head. Kurt disappeared on Friday, October twenty third, after leaving the Halloween party. His body was not discovered until Wednesday, October twenty eighth. So he could have been seen on Monday. Yes, he could have. But according to the medical examiner's estimate, Kirk hadn't been dead for five days. He had only been dead for about a day or a day and a half, which meant that If the estimate was accurate, Kurt was still alive for several days after he disappeared from the party. However, that also pieces together that he was not the one in the basement. That she Debbie called Dorothy about. So this would indicate his death would have occurred sometime between Monday and Tuesday, October twenty sixth to the twenty-seventh. And that brings us right back to David Trusnik. But also Let's go with this is a case from eighty one. Mm-hmm. a lot of time has passed. The police's investigation was absolute fucking shit, and we're basically playing a telephone game with these telephone conversations for how they're being relayed. There's a reason that game is called what it is. She was woken up at three thirty in the morning. Yes. She was groggy. Is there a possibility that what Deborah I'm using her government name. Deborah said was, I think Kirk's been sleeping in the basement. I mean maybe. Like she found the cot. Uhhuh. And maybe she realized that he had been sitting there. Cause you know, we had the discussion about party favors. He could have been hanging out and partying, but here's the other thing. The babysitter was there by the time that Dorothy got over there. Yep. But also she could have had no knowledge that Kurt was downstairs in the basement. Yeah. So If you look at it from Deborah saying that she like found all that stuff and thought he was leaving there, it's really weird that she did this at three thirty in the morning. Not in a normal time of day, 'cause what are you doing? Mm hmm. Even if she like heard something and made her go down there, he would have been dead by then. I don't know. I don't know. Every time you give me a new piece of information, I figure something out to be more confused. I agree. But this does make David Truznick's account of seeing him on Monday A little bit more of like a Because he had this account before we found the body and now the body matches his account for that. And that's like that backup of that makes it even more Yeah. If David had correctly identified Kurt, then his sighting could fit within the estimated time of death. Yeah. Kurt may have been alive and moving around in the neighborhood as late as Monday evening. Of course, the sighting was never independently confirmed though, and estimates of a time of death are not exact. Factors such as temperature, environmental exposure, and the condition of the body can affect these calculations as well. You said it was colder and he was in water. So we could have been preserved the body a little bit more. It was a very shallow puddle of water. So it wasn't but it wasn't like consumed. Yeah, but like with colder temperatures it's at least like keeping him chilled. Yes, precisely. So If all of this was true, like if he was in fact alive for a few days. Where the fuck was he? What where the fuck was he? Had he been staying with someone? Was he sick? Was he injured? Was he able to move around freely? Like why hadn't he contacted his family who were desperately searching for him? And just a short distance too. It's not like he was Yeah gone. He was right there. And it doesn't look like he was being held anywhere. There's not like he wasn't being held and tortured. There's no other like unfortunately, the autopsy couldn't answer any of these questions. It couldn't answer the most important question. What killed Kurt Sova? Dr. Adelson found no evidence that Kurt had been beaten or signific or suffered significant physical trauma. There were no injuries that adequately explained his death, and the examination didn't identify any pre-existing natural disease that would account for a seemingly healthy teenager suddenly dying. Toxicology testing didn't prove didn't provide an explanation either. Kurt's blood alcohol concentration was approximately 0.11%. Now, to put that into perspective, the legal drinking limit for adults in most of the United States today is 0.08%. So Kurtz's blood alcohol, his BAC was certainly high enough to indicate intoxication, But Dr. Adelson didn't believe that the level of alcohol by itself was sufficient enough to explain Kurt's death. And although there had been accounts of Kurt drinking heavily at the party, I'm really happy you brought this up. Investigators found zero evidence of hard drugs in his system. See, because then my whole theory of him just being on a drinking in a bender for a few days doesn't add and him like not having like not being in his normal self to call home or do this, like that doesn't add up either. Because that's where my next thing was was that he overdosed. Was that he was drinking and partying and went over with these people from like somebody from the party took him somewhere, but like Yeah. So the medical examiner was left with a teenager who had no obvious fatal injuries, no identifying natural disease, and no toxicology findings that adequately explained why he died. Dr. Adelson described the conclusion as a diagnosis by exclusion. Essentially, the examination had ruled out several possible explanations, but it hadn't established a specific medical event that caused Kurt's death. The coroner used the term quote. instantaneous psychol physiological death. And Kurt's manner of death was classified as probable accidental. Are you confused? I'm fucking confused, bro. Yeah, because with an autopsy we would like be able to see if he had an aneurysm, or if he had a brain bleed, or if he had like a heart attack. All of that would show up in there. Yep. So the heart attack there'd be other enzymes and stuff in the body. But that didn't mean investigators had established what kind of accident could have possibly occurred. There was no confirmed fall that explained his death, no identified injury or medical condition that could account for any of it, and no definitive evidence establishing what happened during Key's final hours. And for the Sova family, those findings were extremely difficult to accept. They had spent five days searching for their youngest son. They did everything right. Yeah. They did everything that they could to get answers from the people who had last seen him. And now his body's been found and they're being told that the medical examiner couldn't determine what had killed him. Hello? Yeah. Like Dorothy couldn't understand how a healthy seventeen year old boy could simply disappear and then be f found dead without an identifiable cause. She also could not stop thinking about the phone call she received from Debbie, Deborah, that Wednesday morning. Yeah, I'm that's just Dorothy did begin to wonder if her son had actually been inside of that basement. She developed a theory that Kurt had been staying there, that he had died inside of the house, and that someone had panicked and moved his body into the nearby ravine rather than contacting authorities. And that's where I was going with it. That's where I was going with it. But there's still no physical evidence establishing that Kurt had died in the basement and nobody had confirmed that. he was the person that had slept on that cot. Kenneth has also again he's if he could grow ten more toes to stand twenty four da twenty toes down. Twenty four toes down. Twenty-four toes down. Yeah, you never know. he would remained convinced that Kurt's body was not in that damn ravine when he searched it. No, and I believe that. Like it's it wasn't concealed. He was wearing a bright yellow shirt. And the other thing I I'm curious about as well is like I wanna know if his body looked like it had been there for five days, three days, however long they think, because Even within twenty four hours, animals are already gonna be descending on that body. Yeah. You know what I mean? They're not in hibernation yet. Like that would have been prime. I'm sorry to say this. But no, it would have been the perfect time and where he was wasn't like an area with a lot of people, so he was in a more remote area where animals are more free to do what they want to do. So there should have been more scavenging. Like I'm I'm genuinely curious about the state of his body when they found it exactly. I'm sure everybody is. Anyway, continue. Yeah. As the years passed, those questions that we keep asking would be even more difficult to ignore. Because Kurt wouldn't be the only young boy connected to the area whose body would be discovered in a ravine under unusual circumstances. What? Actually, approximately three months after Kurt's death, another family in the Newburg Newburg Heights, Ohio would experience a tragedy of their own. And his name was Eugene Cavet. Eugene, who sometimes went by Jean, was just thirteen years old and lived in the same neighborhood as Kurt. In fact, their families lived only about a block apart, and although the boys weren't particularly particularly close friends they knew of each other from around the neighborhood. In late January of nineteen eighty two, Eugene disappeared. There is considerably less publicly available information about Gene's disappearance than there was about Kurtz. Which is kind of wild to me because you would think that three months later another kid disappearing in this would make it have more media traction. So we don't have the same detailed timeline of his final movements and much of what happened during the days that he was missing remains unclear. Okay. Mm-hmm. But on February first, nineteen eighty two, Gene's body was discovered in the Ravine along Harvard Avenue. Like the same ravine? Mm-hmm. The location was approximately two and a half miles from the ravine. It was the same ravine. But just further down the ravine. Two boys from the same neighborhood both disappearing for several days before being discovered dead in ravines along the same road. And it wasn't the only similarity. Eugene's body when his body had been discovered, his right shoe was missing. wait, these aren't just similarities, it's the fucking same thing. Despite searching the area, investigators had never recovered his right shoe. Yeah, so his right shoe was missing and was not found either. I'm sorry. In criminal minds it's at this point that the BAU gets it gets pulled on in here. It's at this point we realize that this shit is connected. Second question now. 'Cause I have my criminal minds thinking cap on, do we have stomach contents? No. I don't like this medical examiner and their autopsies. I think they need to do a better job. Yeah. for the Sova family, the similarities were too difficult to ignore ignore, but there was an important difference between the two cases. Unlike Kurt's autopsy, which had failed to establish a definitive cause of death, Jean's examination revealed he had died from injuries sustained in a fall into the ravine. What remained unclear was how that fall occurred. Had Gene accidentally lost his footing or had someone else been involved? The available evidence didn't establish that someone had pushed or thrown him into the ravine, and investigators never publicly confirmed a connection between Gene's death and Kurt's death. Still, the circumstances left some very troubling questions. I don't like you right now. I know you don't. That's fine. For Kenneth and Dorothy, Eugene's death only added to the uncertainty surrounding what had happened to their son. And while similarities between the two cases attracted attention, they didn't provide any answers into Kurt's final days. But approximately a year after Kurt's death, Kenneth would have an unexpected conversation with a woman who claimed to have witnessed something near the ravine. And her name was Angeline Reddicks. Angeline lived on Washington Park Boulevard in a house situated between the duplex and where Kurt had attended the hollow or like the duplex he had planned the The Duplex where he attended the party. Thank you. And the ravine where his body was discovered. Okay, so sh her house sits in between those two things. Sure does. Okay. And she had something to tell Kenneth about the days surrounding his son's disappearance. Something she had not reported to the police. Angeline explained that sometime shortly between Halloween and 1981, she had been looking out the window of her home when she noticed two young men moving down an alleyway, and they weren't alone. Between them was a third person, someone who appeared to be a teenage boy. The two young men seemed to be dragging or supporting this young man as they made their way toward the ravine bef behind her house. And from what Angeline could see, the boy didn't appear to be conscious. Angeline didn't immediately assume that she was witnessing a crime. She thought the boys just may have been drinking and that the two who were still on their feet were simply helping their intoxicated friend. But there was one detail about the person being carried that kind of stuck with her. He was wearing a yellow shirt. He had bare feet. Very specifically, one of his shoes was off. See, and before you start talking about this, I was already having the thought process with after we got Eugene, and like he died from injuries from a fall, was that they were unconscious and they were thrown down there. Mm-hmm. Eugene died on his injuries on the way down. I'm thinking maybe Kurt was unconscious, mm-hmm, obviously. But he didn't have any like signs of it, so like he probably was like they thought he they probably thought he was dead. Yeah. Or he was really close to it, and when he got thrown down there, however he landed or whatever, maybe he landed in a way that like I feel like he would have had bruising or something like further bruising from that far of a fall. I mean, when you're drunk and when you're unconscious, you don't try to stop yourself. It's just like getting into a car accident. Some most of time they walk away with nothing but scrapes and bruises on them. So if you're unconscious and you're not trying to break And stop yourself, he would just have some normal scratches and bruises on him going down. So Angeline later recalled that she was extremely certain, by the way, that the barefoot was his right foot. Okay. At the time, Angeline witnessed the scene. She had no way of knowing whether the boy she was watching was Kurt. She hadn't spoken with him, hadn't approached the group, and couldn't positively identify any of the three individuals. So she didn't intervene. But a few days later, when news spread that Kurt's body had been discovered in the nearby ravine, Angeline began to wonder whether the teenager she had seen was the same boy everyone had been searching for. Yeah. She considered contacting the police, but according to her, her husband discouraged her from getting involved. He believed they should mind their own business rather than insert themselves into a situation they knew very little about. So she stayed quiet. I don't know if I like him for that, but okay. But she would have recognized her husband being one of the people who was doing this, so mm-hmm. Where was he at? Was he at the party? The husband. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I know nothing about the husband. I figured you did it, but it's just a fun thought. it wasn't until she encountered Kenneth Kenneth about a year and a half later that she finally told him what she had witnessed. A fucking year later. A year and a half, yeah. Ugh. Mm hmm. However, this could support the possibility that someone else had been with him shortly before his body was found, but there were some serious limitations. Angeline hadn't positively identified Kurt, especially if he's wearing a bright fucking yellow shirt. I feel like that's a pretty Yeah, the the yellow shirt really is something that's gonna stick out. I She couldn't identify the other two men. also she could not actually place when the encounter happened. She just remembers it happening around. Correct. Okay. Yep. So I can see her hesitation of coming forward and things because it's not mm-hmm. There's also The delay in which she reported it. By the time that he had learned about the encounter, approximately a year had passed. Memories change over time, especially when someone learns information. Afterwards, and especially if you hear the case so many times, and then you can start confusing things together. I get it. Precisely. We do it all the time with kids. All the time. Yeah. That does not mean that she was lying or that her account should have been dismissed. It simply means investigators wouldn't have needed to examine her recollection carefully and look for independent evidence. Supporting it. Yeah. The Sova family obviously reported all of this to the police. Yeah. And Angeline actually later said that the investigators never interviewed her at that time. I'm not surprised. I'm really not, because the police haven't really fucking done shit up to this point, nor do they care when an identical s scene and situation was found three months later. So yeah. I do wanna say though that this is not the end of Angeline's involvement. In nineteen eighty nine, eight years after Kurt's death, detectives from the County Sheriff's Department conducted another investigation into the case, and during that investigation, they did finally go interview her about what she had seen. But this is eight years later, so now we're even gonna be a little bit more messy on the details. Precisely. Unfortunately, the publicly available reporting doesn't establish what investigators concluded from that interview, whether they were able to identify either of the young men, and whether Angeline's account led to any additional evidence. Okay. So while her story was eventually examined by investigators. The questions surrounding it are still unanswered. Yeah. As the years passed, Kenneth and Dorothy continued searching for answers about their son's death, but their frustration wasn't limited to the fact that Kurt's cause of death remained unknown. They also began to question whether the investigation itself had been handled properly. No, it hadn't, but alright. Eventually, other investigators would raise many of those same concerns. One of the most significant problems involved was the documentation of the scene where Kurt's body was discovered. When other law enforcement agencies later reviewed the Newburgh Heights Police Department's case file, they found it contained only a handful of photographs. Those photographs showed Kurt after His body had already been placed on a stretcher rather than documenting his original position in the ravine. And there were no photographs in the file showing precisely how his body had been found. That was an important omission. Investigators trying to determine whether Kurt died in the ravine or had been brought there afterward would have been. benefited from detailed photographs of the body, the surrounding vegetation, and the position of any nearby evidence. The original police chief James Lucas maintained that additional photographs had been taken, but the records available to later investigators did not contain them. Okay, so where were they? Also, I want to point out the photographs are all Polaroids. I mean, we have other cases that we did Polaroids off of and they were phenomenal. Mm-hmm. Phenomenal. But the problems didn't stop there. Of course they didn't. The problems haven't started stopped this whole damn time. Yeah. Investigators reviewing the case also discovered that police had not obtained written statements from the people who were with Kurt on the night he disappeared. There were no documented search. Of the duplex where he had last been seen, and several potentially important witnesses had not been thoroughly questioned. so they did nothing. They literally did nothing. Okay, that's why you didn't tell me about the investigation, because they did nothing. Literally did nothing. When the Cleveland police detective, Al Figler, became involved approximately 18 months after Kurt's death, he described receiving a case file containing only a few pieces of paper and four Polaroid pictures. By then, valuable time has already passed. Witnesses' memories were becoming less reliable, potential evidence was disappearing, and the opportunity to examine the party house and the surrounding area as they existed in 1981 was gone. And eventually the criticism became even more direct. The County Assistant Prosecutor, James Gutierrez, who reviewed the case years later, publicly condemned the original investigation. He suggested that if he had known about some of the investigation failures earlier, he might have considered pursuing de reelection of duty charges. The Newburgh's police chief who had overseen the original investigation disagreed with that statement. He maintained that his officers had conducted a reasonable investigation under difficult circumstances. Particularly because the coroner had been unable to establish what caused Kurt's death. Y'all weren't investigating before we even got to a cause of death with a coroner. Y'all what wa okay, so that's what you want for after the cause of death came out. So what the fuck is your excuse for before the cause of death? But other investigators investigators continue to raise concerns about the lack of documentation and the failure to pursue certain leads. Then there was the detective originally assigned to Kurt's case. His name is Robert Karis. Robert would later be convicted and imprisoned for offenses involving his treatment of people in police custody. And his prison name was Robert Kerr Less. His subsequent criminal conduct cast an even darker shadow over the department's handling of Kurt's death. At one point, prosecutors even questioned him about whether he had any involvement in Kurt's disappearance or death. He obviously denied him. And it's important to make clear his later convictions did not establish that he had anything to do with Kurt's death. There is no publicly established evidence connecting him with what happened, but it was just some. Does he have sons? I have no idea. Kurt's age? I'm actually not sure. Because generally when there's a lack of investigation or caring, somewhere, somehow, we might have a connection here. Like Kendrick Johnson? huh. Yeah. So that's where my next thought was going was that somebody who was investigating this and now we have somebody who's already serving time for their shady ass crap, had a son, nephew, somebody related in the family who was involved in this and they're burying it. Over the years, other agencies did become involved, including the Cleveland Police Department. The Cuyahoga's County Sheriff's Department and the prosecutor's office. The FBI also examined aspects of the case. Investigators revisited witness accounts, if there was any, examined the available evidence and attempted to reconstruct Kurt's final days, but none of those efforts produced a definitive explanation for his death. And as the years passed, the Sova family began losing the people who had spent so long searching for answers. Kenneth died in 2001. Kurt's brother Keith died in 2014, followed by Dorothy later that same year. And then their brother Kenny died in 2017. That left Kurt's oldest brother, Kevin, as the surviving member of their immediate family. And Kevin knew just how much the uncertainty surrounding Kurt's death had affected everyone. In an interview with Crimecon, Kevin spoke about the enormous toll his youngest brother's death had taken on their family. He described how their parents were never the same afterward, and how Dorothy continued blaming herself, wondering whether something could something she could have done differently might have prevented Kurt's death. But Dorothy also spent decades refusing to let the case disappear. She collected newspaper clippings, recorded information, kept notes, and saved documents connected to her son's disappearance. Over time those records accumulated into boxes of material that remained in the family's home. Hell yeah, Dorothy. And after Kenny died in twenty seventeen, Kevin found them while sorting through the house. He could have thrown everything away, but instead he kept the boxes. And in twenty nineteen, nearly thirty eight years after Kurt's death, Kevin received an unexpected phone call from the Newburgh Heights police chief John McJoy. Huh. McJoy wanted to discuss reopening the investigation and at first Kevin was reluctant. He spent decades living with the loss of his brother and the pr and the rest of his family, and the prospect of revisiting the case brought back memories and emotions that he had just tried to put behind him. And now he was gonna have to do it alone. Exactly. But he offici he eventually agreed to meet with the chief. Yeah, 'cause I'm curious about what made them want to reopen this all of a sudden without a push from the family. When he did, he brought some of the records that his mother had been preserving. In December of twenty nineteen, the Newburgh Heights Police Department publicly announced a renewed investigation into Kurt's death, working with Tiffin University and other partners to review the case. They they didn't say exactly what caused them to reopen the case. I think he was a new sheriff or okay and a new police chief and was going through cold cases and or that's what it was. Or also honestly he could remember this case. Maybe. He could have been a kid when this happened. He could you know what I mean? Like it could be something that has just or somebody in his family is a little true crime person and was like, hey, hey, yeah, hey, you should you should look at this. Look at this right here. Yeah. Then in February of twenty twenty, Kurt's disappearance and death became the focus of a crime con CrowdSolve event in Chicago, where investigators and members of the public examined the available information and explored possible leads. Holy shit. For the first time in years, Kurt's case was receiving significant public attention. That's so cool. Do you remember the date I just said though? Twenty nineteen. No. February twenty twenty. fuck. Investigators conducted additional interviews, followed leads, and administered polygraph examinations on some of the people who have known Kurt and or could have been connected to him in his final moments. They were also able to revisit some of the stories that had circulated for decades. Okay. But despite those efforts, investigators went were unable to establish exactly what happened to Kurt. Also That's a sweet frickin' event. Right? I would like to attend one of these. We hopefully will next year. Hopefully. And y'all should come with us because we're gonna be at CrimeCon. Twenty twenty seven. Yeah. September twenty twenty seven. Orlando. We will be there. In October of twenty twenty four, Cleveland nineteen news reported that the investigation remained opened but was considered dormant. Police Chief McJoy believed Kurt's death was most likely accidental. While Kevin continued to believe that something happened during the party and that people involved may have panicked. In August of 2026, Chief McJoy discussed the reinvestigation in a two-part interview with the podcast called Speculating Wildly About Crime. During those conversations, he explained that investigators had been unable to substantiate several longstanding claims surrounding Kurt's disappearance, including the account of the mystery man that predicted his death, the reported sighting involving the van. And the theory that Kurt had been dragged towards the ravine by two young men. he also discussed the longstanding belief that Kurt's body must have been placed in the ravine after the family searched it. He suggested that the distance between the body and the path combined with the tall vegetation could explain how searchers might have passed through the area without seeing him. But we don't have fucking pictures of it. No, we don't have pictures of exactly where he was or how visible he was. The explanation differs from the family's belief that Kurt hadn't been there during their during their earlier searches. But neither interpretation can be conclusively established. And while investigators re-examined the circumstances surrounding his death, they still found the same fundamental problem that caused this issue back in 1981. No one had established what killed Kurt Sova. Yeah. Chief McJoy said he believes Kurt most likely died from an accident or an undetermined medical event. potentially involving intoxication or exposure. But those remained possibilities rather than a medically confirmed cause of death. The renewed investigation also did not establish that Kurt had been murdered. For Kevin, the lack of a definitive answer was meant living with uncertainty for the most for most of his life. He has spoken about the possibility that Kurt's death was an accident and that someone, perhaps frightened of getting in trouble, failed to get him help or made a terrible decision afterward. If that happened, Kevin said he would want those people involved to come forward. If someone deliberately harmed his brother, he would want justice. But above all, he just wants to understand what happened. Yeah. For Kevin, Kurt's death wasn't simply an unsolved case. It was the loss of a little brother he'd grown up sharing a bedroom with, teasing, laughing, and making memories. And while so much of Kurt's story has become defined by circumstances of his disappearance, those who loved him remember an entirely different person. Kurt Eugene Sova was the youngest of four boys. His family called him Mouse, like I said, because when he Was little, he used to make the squeaking sound that everyone would laugh at. According to Kevin, Kurt was the family's comedian, always finding a way to tease his brothers and make the people around him smile. He was athletic, artistic, and full of personality. Kevin remembered him as someone who was in who with an incredible sense of humor, the kind of kid who could turn an ordinary family moment into something everyone would remember. And that is the Kurt his family knew. Not a mysterious death in a ravine, not a missing shoe or an unexplained autopsy. A funny, talented seventeen year old boy who loved his family, who had friends who cared about him, and had an entire future waiting for him. Dorothy spent the rest of her life trying to find answers. She never learned exactly what happened to her youngest son, nor did Kenneth, but the records she preserved eventually helped bring renewed attention to his case. And Kevin continues to carry Kurt's memory forward. If you have any information about Kurt Sova's disappearance or death, no matter how insignificant it may seem, please contact the Newburgh Heights Police Department in Ohio. at 216 641 5545. You can also submit information through the official unsolved mysteries website at unsolved.com. I love unsolved mysteries. It's one my favorites. More than four decades have passed since Kurt was found. His parents are gone, two of his brothers are gone And many of the people who knew him as a teenager have grown old or have passed away themselves. But Kurt's story hasn't been forgotten. He was only seventeen. He deserved the chance to grow up, to make mistakes, to discover who he wanted to become, and to live a life beyond that Friday night in October. And his family deserved to know why that chance was taken away. Today the same questions remain. Where was Kurt during those days that he was missing? What happened in the final hours of his life? And after all this time, is there someone out there who knows why Kurt Sova never came home? And that is our case today. That's crazy. Like I'm so confused. I'm still so confused. I've been bringing you so much of that lately. Yeah, it's just like every piece of new information you get leads to another question. As soon as you think you solve one piece, another piece doesn't make sense anymore. Yeah. Like that is absolutely crazy. And I feel like this is one of those cases that unless somebody comes forward, we're never gonna know what happens Somebody or someone's have one piece of information or have the whole piece of information as what happened to him. Yeah. And there's also a possibility that these people aren't even alive anymore. Yeah. It's crazy. Crazy to think about. 'Cause for sure. We had that one case where like the main people that they needed to talk to both died in a car accident. Yes. And then that other accident and it was like, that was all of our our witnesses. Yeah, all of our witnesses talked to. So that's just crazy. Yeah. It's I'm doing way too many of these of these missing persons. But they need to have the attention. I mean, like yeah, Bryce Lipieces i is kind of the same in here and it's just Yeah, that's wild. Yeah. But I it's just crazy to me also is that there's been so many people with their hands in this case. Like Yeah, a lot because the beginning was not investigated properly. Th there's nothing we can do. Yeah, and initial investigation is so important and if this doesn't go to show that investigators like really need to be on their shit, then I don't know what does. From the moment they show up, taking all the pictures, doing all the things, securing a crime scene, like interviewing people, take written and statements and pictures. And I just I can't believe the lack of like actual crime scene photographing that there was. Like what are we doing? This was nineteen eighty one. This wasn't the fifties, this wasn't the sixties. It was nineteen eighty one. We were documenting crime scenes at this point. Yeah. Yes we were. it's crazy to me. Yeah. But that was the case of Kurt Sova. Damn. We're on Halloween. Speaking of Halloween. We're almost there. Which means we're almost to our live show, painting with a twist. So please click that link below. Get your tickets. Go on our website. Get your tickets. Get your Halloween costume. We have such a fun night planned. there's gonna be a costume contest. It's at seven PM Powers and Constitution. it's just it's gonna be such a great night and we can't wait to see everybody there. make sure you're followed and subscribed to wherever you're listening on all of our socials at Justice Four Podcast. yeah, I don't really have anything else to add, do you? I mean, I didn't actually ask you what do you think happened? Do you wanna do that? I think that I have said what's happened all throughout this episode. Like Salad. Everything I said still stands in this. I think that we should have given there's more of a link with him and Eugene. I think there's more to that goes on with that guy at the record store. For some reason I see him in a trench coat and you can't change my mind on that. Period. none of it makes sense. None of it makes sense whatsoever. No. No. Okay. Well, go get your tickets for our live show, you guys. Please, please, please, please, please. And let us know what you think happened in the comments. there's comments on Apple or not Apple. Comments on Spotify and YouTube. go put it in a review on Apple because that's just fun to confuse people. That is just go on our social media posts on Facebook for this episode so that you can get in the discussion. And see all the pictures, everything. So we will catch you guys next week with an all new episode. Please make sure you're there. Also, we added some stuff in the room. You can't see it. Let us know if our echoey our sound is a little bit better. I want to know what you think. Yeah. we think we fixed our echoey problem a little bit. I think we did. So we will catch you guys next week with an all new deep dive episode. Stop. Killing each other. Lock your damn doors. Stop leaving your fucking friends. For real. For real though. Okay? Okay. Love you. Bye.