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The Hand in the Septic Tank: How a Glove Broke a 34-Year Silence · True Crime: Killer Confessions

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: A septic tank in Delwood Township, Ohio, had not been
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: serviced in about 34 years. In January of 2023, a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: worker named Sherry West lowered a pump hose into the
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: ground and pulled up a human left hand. The hand
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: still wore a red and white Fair Isle glove. The
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: thumb had worn through. A silver midi ring sat on
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the index finger. That detail alone should give you pause.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Someone had been down there since 1989. What followed was
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a cold case investigation that unraveled three decades of misdirection,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: a ledger entry written the morning after a murder, and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a conviction that came only after the woman, who spent
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: her life fighting for answers, was already gone. Her name
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: was Linda Doyle. She was 26 years old, and the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: night she walked into a neighbor's house to do the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: right thing, she never came back. Linda Doyle rented a
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: small house on Copper Mill Road in Pratt County, Ohio.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: She worked the early shift at a commercial laundry, up
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: before most of her neighbors, home by early afternoon. Wednesday
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: nights were hers. Every Wednesday from September of 1988 through
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: January of 1989, she laced up her bowling shoes and
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: drove to parkway lanes to bowl with her team. They
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: called themselves the Spare Parts. She was saving money, not
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: in a bank account, In a coffee can, she kept
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: behind the water heater. The goal was community college. She
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: had a plan, a direction, a deposit she intended to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: make good on. Her daughter Kelsey was four years old.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Kelsey had her mother's schedule memorized the way small children
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: memorize the things that keep them safe. Linda worked, Linda bowled,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Linda came home. That was the shape of their life together,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: on Copper Mill Road, and it was reliable. Linda's mother,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Doris Creel, lived close enough to watch Kelsey when needed.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: The two women spoke often. On the evening of January 12, 1989,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Linda told Doris she had been invited to a small gathering.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: She named the host, Dennis Edwards, a man who lived nearby,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: and who had helped her twice in the past few months,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: once in October to haul a dryer, once in November
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: to fix her furnace. She told Doris she would be
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: home before 9 o'clock. Kelsey would stay with her grandmother
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: for the night. Linda did not come home. Dennis Edwards
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: was 31 years old in January of 1989. He sold
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: heating and cooling equipment and kept a warehouse on a
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: county road outside town. His criminal record consisted of a
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: single disorderly conduct citation from 1984, a bar fight that
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: resolved as a fine. By every outward measure he was
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: an unremarkable man, doing ordinary business in a small Ohio county.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: He had called Linda that afternoon to extend the invitation.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: When Doors reported Linda missing, Chief Deputy Norman Bass opened
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: a file. Within weeks, the case was classified as voluntary missing.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Bass logged three items he considered evidence of Linda's decision
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: to leave, an empty coffee can, a missing suitcase and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: a neighbor's claim of having seen Linda at the Keller
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Station Greyhound Terminal. On the morning of January 14th, Doris
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: protested immediately. She protested in February and again that spring.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Vass noted her objections in the file. He made no
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: changes to the classification. There was something wrong with every
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: single item Vass had logged. The coffee can being empty
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: proved nothing. It could have been empty by anyone. For
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: any reason, the Greyhound sighting was one neighbor's unverified claim,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: no ticket, no name, no corroboration of any kind. And
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the suitcase, the suitcase that Linda had supposedly packed and
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: carried out of her life, did not exist. Linda's closest friend,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Patrice Dunlop, who bowled beside her every Wednesday on the
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: spare parts, confirmed it plainly when investigators finally asked in 2023.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Linda Doyle did not own a suitcase. In 1988, she
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: had borrowed a green duffle bag from Patrice for a trip.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: She returned it. That was the sum total of Linda's
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: luggage history. Vass never verified the suitcase. He recorded it
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: as fact and closed the path. By spring of 1989,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the case was cold. Doris kept fighting. In 1991, she
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: submitted a DNA reference sample to the Ohio Bureau of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Criminal Investigation. A formal act. a woman refusing to let
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: her daughter become a number without a name attached. She
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: did not know then that it would take 32 more
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: years for that sample to matter. The last confirmed record
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of Linda Doyle being alive was a bowling score sheet.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Tom Ashby, who kept the league binders at Parkway Lanes,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: had recorded every session with careful handwriting. Linda bowled every
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Wednesday without a single absence from September of 1988 through
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: January 11th, 1989, the night before she disappeared, she paid
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: a $ 5 deposit to hold her spot on the team
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: for the March season. $ 5 committed to a future she
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: intended to be present for. That detail does not belong
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to a woman who packed her life into a bag
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: and vanished. It belongs to someone who planned to be
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: sitting in that lane in March, chalk on her fingers,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: keeping score. but the score sheet could only carry the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: investigation so far. The truth of what actually happened that
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: night would take decades to reveal. What Frances Gardner needed
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: in 2023 was not confirmation that Linda had a future.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: She needed to know where Linda went. She found the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: answer in a ledger. Dennis Edwards kept records of his work.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: It was the habit of a careful businessman. Dates, service notes,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: property entries, all in his own hand. When investigators executed
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a search warrant at his storage unit in September of 2023,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: they pulled the ledger from a bin near the back wall.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Most of the entries were routine. Then Gardner turned to
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: January 13, 1989, one day after Linda disappeared. The entry read,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Tank sealed, no service needed. No contractor name, no county permit,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: no work order on file with Pratt County. A man
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: had noted the condition of a septic tank on a
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: property he did not yet own. He would not purchase
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: that lot until March of 1989, two months after the entry.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Gerald Pruitt held the deed in January. Edwards had no
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: legal standing to be on that land, no reason to
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: inspect that tank, and no business filing that could explain
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: the notation. But he wrote it down anyway. There is
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: something almost mechanical about that. A man who had just
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: made the worst decision of his life, sitting down the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: next morning and reaching for a pen, writing the date,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: writing the words, closing the book. The entry is either
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the most incriminating thing in the file, or it is
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the most baffling. Because careful men who do terrible things
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: do not usually leave handwritten records, they count on silence.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: And silence, for 34 years, is exactly what Edwards got.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the land itself became part of the record. Gardner traced
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: the deed through county filings. Pruitt sold to Edwards in
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: March of 1989, and Edwards held the property for six
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: years before selling it in 1995. He owned a place that,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: according to later forensic analysis, had not had its tank
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: serviced by any registered contractor since before his ownership began.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: He bought it, he held it, He let it, he
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: let it sit. By the time Sherry West arrived in
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: January of 2023, with her pump hose, the tank had
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: been sealed for about 34 years. What she pulled from
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that tank was a left hand. The palm was partially preserved.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: The fingertips had skeletonized. A red and white Fair Isle
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: glove still covered it. The thumb worn through. A silver
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: midi ring on the index finger. Sherry called the county.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: The county called the state, and the state, within one week,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: ran mitochondrial DNA against a reference sample stored in the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations database since 1991. Doris Creel
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: had submitted that sample 32 years earlier. She had died
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: in 2015, never knowing it would matter. The woman who
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: had disappeared without a trace in 1989 and whose mother
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: had fought tirelessly for answers, was finally found. The match
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: was confirmed. The hand belonged to Linda Doyle. Frances Gardner
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: had been working cold cases for the Ohio Attorney General's
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: office long enough to know that the first version of
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: a disappearance is rarely the true one. She had read
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Vass's original file. She had noted the three items log
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: as evidence. And she had done what Vass never did.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: she picked up the phone and called Patrice Dunlop. Patrice
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: still had the green duffel bag. The bag Linda had
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: borrowed in 1988 and returned before summer. The bag that
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: was supposed to have been Linda's means of disappearing, packed
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: with clothes, carried out the door, loaded onto a greyhound
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: at Keller Station two mornings after she vanished. The bag
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: was sitting in Patrice's hall closet Gardner pulled Tom Ashby's binders.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: She pulled the bowling schedules, the payment ledgers, the handwritten
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: attendance columns, going back to September of 1988. 8. Linda's
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: name appeared every single Wednesday. Zero absences. And there, on
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the line for January 11th annotations, $ 5 deposit, March season.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Here is the thing about that deposit. It is not
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: dramatic on its own. $ 5 is not a fortune. But
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: you do not pay $ 5 into a future you have
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: decided to abandon. You do not plan a secret departure,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: and then, the night before, commit money to a league
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: season two months away. The deposit did not say Linda
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: was happy. It said she was planning, and planning people
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: do not vanish voluntarily. Gardner looked at the three pillars
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Vass had used to classify Linda as a voluntary missing person,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and each one failed on contact. The coffee can was empty,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: that proved nothing. The suitcase had never existed. The Greyhound
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: sighting was a single neighbor's claim, unverified, with no ticket,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: no name, no corroboration. What the original investigation had built
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: was a structure with no load-bearing walls. Then Terrence Bolt called.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Boldit had shared a cell with Dennis Edwards. for 11
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: days in 2007, when Edwards had cycled through a county
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: facility on a minor matter. In August of 2023, after
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: news coverage of the Gardner investigation surfaced, Bolt contacted the
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Attorney General's office. He said Edwards had talked, not once,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: several times over those 11 days, the way men sometimes
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: talk when they believe the statute of limitations on regret
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: has passed. According to Bolt's account, Edwards had described killing
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: a woman who threatened to report him. He said he
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: disposed of her where nobody would look, because he owned
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the land. The phrase Boltz remembered, she went into the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: ground the same night she came through my door. Edwards
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: had said this in 2007. The hand would not be
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: found for another 16 years. Gardner had the ledger. She
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: had the DNA. She had Boldit. On October 2, 2023,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: She drove to a retirement community in Claremont County. Dennis
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Edwards was 75 years old. He had been living quietly
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: for decades. Gardner placed him under arrest at the entrance
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: to his building, in the morning, on a Tuesday. He
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: said nothing. For 41 days after his arrest, Edwards remained silent.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: His attorney entered a not guilty plea. The evidence was presented.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: The ledger was entered into the record. The DNA match
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: was documented. The property deed history was filed, Bolt's account
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: was disclosed to the defense, 41 days. Picture the scenario
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: investigators had been prepared to argue in court. Edwards, they
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: would say, had been stealing from a community medical fund,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: a small pool of money that a group of neighbors
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: had built up together for emergencies, medical costs, the kinds
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of expenses that fell through the gaps. Linda had found out.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: She had confronted him, and that confrontation, on the evening
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: of January 12, 1989, had ended in her death, the
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: ledger entry the next morning was not carelessness. It was cleanup.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Documented in a man's own handwriting. Because he believed no
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: one would ever come looking, the property purchased two months
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: later fit the same logic. If the tank was on
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: land Edwards controlled, the land would stay undisturbed as long
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: as he decided it would. He bought it in March.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: He held it for six years. He sold it in 1995.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Once enough time had passed that no investigator was asking
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: questions about Delwood Township. But that version of events, the
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: calculated pre-planned disposal ran into a single problem. The confession
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that came on November 12, 2023, did not match it.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Edwards said he had not planned it. He said Linda
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: confronted him that night about the stolen money and told
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: him she was going to the sheriff in the morning.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: He said it happened fast. That word fast, recontextualizes everything
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: that came after. Because the tank was not fast. Buying
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the land two months later was not fast. Holding it
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: for six years was not fast. Selling it only when
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: the investigation had gone completely cold was not fast. Whatever
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: happened in that house between Linda walking in, and Linda
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: never walking out. Edwards moved very deliberately after it. The
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: ledger entry. Written the next morning. a man reaching for
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: routine to contain what he had done. Linda had told
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: her mother she would be home before nine. She had
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: left Kelsey with Doris for the evening. She walked into
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Edward's house because she had decided that accountability mattered, that
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: money stolen from people who needed it for medical emergencies
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: could not go unreported. According to the confession, she was right.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: and it cost her everything. The jury convicted Dennis Edwards
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: of first-degree murder in the spring of 2024. He was
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: 76 years old at sentencing. The judge imposed life without parole.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: In December of 2023, while the case was still moving
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: toward trial, Linda's DNA profile returned a familial match to
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: unidentified female remains recovered from a drainage ditch in Sutter County, Indiana,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: in 1993. Edwards had operated a satellite sales location approximately
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: 40 miles from that site between 1991 and 1994. The
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Indiana case remained open at his sentencing. Edwards declined to
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: address it. The Indiana case file is still open. Frances Gardner,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the cold case investigator who built the case that finally
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: put Edwards in front of a jury, has not publicly
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: stated what she believes about Indiana. The record shows proximity,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a satellite sales location. approximately 40 miles from the recovery site,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: operating between 1991 and 1994. The DNA match is familial,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: not from Linda. Linda's profile returned a shared genetic marker
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: with the unidentified woman, meaning they may have been related.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: The connection is documented. The conclusion is not. What is
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: fully resolved is this. Kelsey Doyle was four years old
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: when her mother left for a gathering and did not
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: come home. She is 38 now. She spent her entire
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: life inside the shape of that absence. Keeping the family
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: files her grandmother started, understanding the case the way you
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: understand something you've lived with, so long it feels like
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: a second language. After the trial, the red and white
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Fair Isle glove was released to the family, the one
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: recovered from the septic tank. the one Linda's hand was
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: still wearing 34 years later. The matching glove was never found.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Kelsey asked Frances Gardner one question during the investigation. She
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: asked whether her mother had been scared. Gardner said she
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: didn't know. Then she said something that stayed. Linda walked
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: into that house because she believed accountability mattered. She was
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: going to report what Edwards had done to a community fund,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: money set aside for people who couldn't pay their medical bills.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: She knew what she was going to do in the morning.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: She told him so. That decision is why she is gone.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: It is also the truest thing known about who she was.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: This show is made by OB Media.