Latest / The conspiracy / This Cold Case STUMPED The FBI _ The Springfield 3
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: On a summer night in nineteen ninety two, in a quiet,
- 0:02Speaker 1: Missouri neighborhood, three women came home, changed into their pajamas
- 0:06Speaker 1: and climbed into bed. But by morning they had vanished.
- 0:10Speaker 1: No screams, no struggle, no blood, and no bodies. And
- 0:15Speaker 1: the question that still haunts Springfield over three decades later
- 0:20Speaker 1: is how do three people simply disappear from their beds
- 0:24Speaker 1: in the middle of the night without leaving a single
- 0:27Speaker 1: trace behind?
- 0:28Speaker 2: Crime?
- 0:29Speaker 1: Conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder all things that I
- 0:33Speaker 1: love to consume and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful,
- 0:36Speaker 1: intellectually muddy break. Today we are talking about an extremely
- 0:42Speaker 1: mysterious case. A lot of you have recommended me looking
- 0:46Speaker 1: into this case, so I did so without further ado.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Let's sunbuckle, our seatbelts, go macright on the highway side
- 0:51Speaker 1: of the breaks and muster this windshield into this cold
- 0:54Speaker 1: case together. I have a message for you guys before
- 1:11Speaker 1: we get into the video.
- 1:12Speaker 2: No, it's not an ad spot.
- 1:13Speaker 1: It's okay, but it is regarding that and I just
- 1:16Speaker 1: want to say I do really, really appreciate your guys'
- 1:19Speaker 1: support and you know, getting through the ads that are
- 1:24Speaker 1: in these videos. They are what keep this series going
- 1:27Speaker 1: because often YouTube really doesn't like these types of videos.
- 1:31Speaker 1: Even though I try to heavily sensor and follow all
- 1:33Speaker 1: the guidelines it be respectful xyz. It just it doesn't
- 1:39Speaker 1: happen a lot of the time. So these ad spots
- 1:41Speaker 1: are a way I can keep doing these videos. And
- 1:44Speaker 1: I also give part of those proceeds from the ad
- 1:47Speaker 1: spots to Victim's Charities as well. But I just want
- 1:50Speaker 1: to say I have heard your concerns about ad spots.
- 1:53Speaker 1: I am trying to space them out a little bit better.
- 1:57Speaker 1: They're a little bit finicky on those these beetle lice
- 2:00Speaker 1: to God, but I want to make your listening experience
- 2:03Speaker 1: as best as possible. But I hear you, and I always, always,
- 2:06Speaker 1: always appreciate feedback. Yeah, I just wanted to say that,
- 2:09Speaker 1: But I'm going to stop, yeap, and I'm going to
- 2:12Speaker 1: get into the video all right.
- 2:13Speaker 2: Thank you.
- 2:15Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, Springfield was a mid sized Midwestern
- 2:18Speaker 1: city of around one hundred and forty thousand people nestled
- 2:22Speaker 1: in the Ozark Hills of the southwest Missouri, and it
- 2:24Speaker 1: was the kind of place where screen doors stayed unlocked
- 2:28Speaker 1: where neighbors borrowed sugar and returned with cookies, Where graduation
- 2:33Speaker 1: parties spilled out from one backyard into the next, and
- 2:37Speaker 1: nobody really minded. Maybe crazy caret across the street, but
- 2:40Speaker 1: you know, in general, people were more lax. But it
- 2:43Speaker 1: was all around a conservative, church going town where violent
- 2:47Speaker 1: crime was something that only happened in the big cities,
- 2:50Speaker 1: in Kansas City or Saint Louis, somewhere else, but not here.
- 2:54Speaker 1: And the Delmar Street neighborhood specifically sat in the heart
- 2:57Speaker 1: of the ordinary American landscape, tree lined and unassuming. It
- 3:02Speaker 1: was neither majorly wealthy nor extremely poor, just block after
- 3:07Speaker 1: block of modest, single story homes with tidy lawns and
- 3:10Speaker 1: car ports, the kind of street where children rode bikes
- 3:13Speaker 1: until the street lights came on, and everyone seemed to
- 3:16Speaker 1: know everyone else's business, you know, class sic, small town stuff.
- 3:20Speaker 1: And at seventeen seventeen East Delmar, a small house had
- 3:23Speaker 1: recently changed hands. And in April of nineteen ninety two,
- 3:27Speaker 1: just two months before the events that would make this
- 3:29Speaker 1: addressed infamous, a woman named Cheryl Levitt signed the papers
- 3:33Speaker 1: and made it hers. And it was a very practical purchase,
- 3:37Speaker 1: financial constraints from a difficult divorce meant she couldn't afford much,
- 3:41Speaker 1: but Cheryl saw potential, and she spent that spring painting walls,
- 3:45Speaker 1: hanging curtains, finishing old furniture, et cetera. Making something out
- 3:50Speaker 1: of nothing the way she had always done, just a
- 3:53Speaker 1: fresh start after years and years of struggle, and by
- 3:56Speaker 1: June the house was beginning to feel like a home now.
- 3:59Speaker 1: Cheryl Levitt was forty seven years old in the summer
- 4:02Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety two, and she was petite, at just
- 4:05Speaker 1: five feet tall. She had blonde, curly hair and brown eyes,
- 4:09Speaker 1: and she would be born in November one, nineteen forty four,
- 4:12Speaker 1: in Bellevue, Washington, or at least she was raised in Bellevue, Washington.
- 4:17Speaker 1: We don't know exactly where she was born, but Cheryl
- 4:19Speaker 1: grew up as the older sister, the caretaker, if you will,
- 4:23Speaker 1: and her younger sister, Deborah, would later remember her as
- 4:26Speaker 1: very nurturing and protective, saying quote usually the one to
- 4:30Speaker 1: cook me dinner, definitely always looking out for me unquote,
- 4:34Speaker 1: and that instinct to care for others to find Cheryl's
- 4:37Speaker 1: life even when life didn't return the favor, and Cheryl
- 4:41Speaker 1: married young to Brent Streeter in nineteen sixty four in Seattle,
- 4:45Speaker 1: full of hope and plans for the future, as you
- 4:48Speaker 1: do when you first get married, you know, and they
- 4:50Speaker 1: would go on to have two children, a son, Bart
- 4:53Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen sixties and a daughter, Suzanne on
- 4:56Speaker 1: March ninth, nineteen seventy three. But the marriage fell apart
- 5:00Speaker 1: shortly after Susie's birth, and Brent reportedly proposed an arrangement,
- 5:04Speaker 1: and the arrangement was that they would divorce on paper
- 5:08Speaker 1: but continue living together so Cheryl could qualify for welfare
- 5:11Speaker 1: to cover their daughter's medical expenses for a cosmetic birth defect.
- 5:16Speaker 2: On her chin.
- 5:17Speaker 1: But Cheryl refused because whatever else she was willing to sacrifice,
- 5:21Speaker 1: her dignity wasn't part of that bargain, and she walked
- 5:24Speaker 1: away from the marriage and rebuilt her life as a
- 5:27Speaker 1: single mother with two children. So in nineteen eighty she
- 5:30Speaker 1: tried again and she married Don Levitt, and the blended
- 5:34Speaker 1: family they created felt, as friends described it, like the
- 5:37Speaker 1: Brady Bunch, and they moved to Springfield, Missouri, a fresh
- 5:41Speaker 1: start in a new city, and for a while it
- 5:43Speaker 1: did work, but then Don's business failed and creditors came
- 5:48Speaker 1: after Cheryl for his debts, and the second marriage ended
- 5:51Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, and this time something in Cheryl
- 5:55Speaker 1: seemed to close off, and friends just noticed she'd given
- 5:58Speaker 1: up on romance and tie One described her quote hermit's side,
- 6:03Speaker 1: a woman who'd learned through hard experience to protect herself,
- 6:06Speaker 1: to expect disappointment, to build a life that didn't depend
- 6:09Speaker 1: on anyone else. And what she built was a career.
- 6:13Speaker 1: Cheryl worked as a cosmetologist at New Attitude's hair salon
- 6:17Speaker 1: on West Sunshine Street, where she'd established herself as a
- 6:21Speaker 1: model employee with a devoted clientele of over two hundred
- 6:24Speaker 1: and fifty customers, which as a previous.
- 6:27Speaker 2: Hairshellist, that's very impressive.
- 6:30Speaker 1: And she was the kind of hairdresser who remembered your
- 6:32Speaker 1: children's names, asked about your mother, made you feel like
- 6:35Speaker 1: you just mattered. And her friend Janet Bussel Oliveris would
- 6:39Speaker 1: later say of her quote, she was about as close
- 6:42Speaker 1: to mother Teresa as you could get.
- 6:44Speaker 2: So by the.
- 6:44Speaker 1: Spring of nineteen ninety two, Cheryl was pouring her energy
- 6:47Speaker 1: into the little house on East Delmar Street, painting, decorating,
- 6:51Speaker 1: refinishing furniture piece by piece, and on the night of
- 6:54Speaker 1: June sixth, she was actually working on an old dresser
- 6:57Speaker 1: and the sharp smell of varnish was filling the room,
- 7:00Speaker 1: and unfortunately it would be a project that she would
- 7:02Speaker 1: never finish. But for all her independence, for all the
- 7:06Speaker 1: walls she built around herself, everyone who knew Cheryl agreed
- 7:11Speaker 1: on one thing. Her greatest joy was her daughter, Susie
- 7:15Speaker 1: now Susie Streeter at the time, was nineteen years old,
- 7:18Speaker 1: with her mother's blonde hair and brown eyes, and she
- 7:21Speaker 1: stood five foot two and was also very petite, and
- 7:25Speaker 1: a small mole near the left corner of her mouth
- 7:27Speaker 1: gave her an appearance of always having something tucked in
- 7:30Speaker 1: her cheek, a very distinctive feature that people remembered about her.
- 7:34Speaker 1: And she was born in Seattle but raised in Springfield,
- 7:37Speaker 1: Missouri after the nineteen eighty move, and Susie had never
- 7:40Speaker 1: really known her biological father, and she'd grote up watching
- 7:44Speaker 1: her mother work and struggle and rebuild, and she just
- 7:47Speaker 1: absorbed those lessons. And her cousin, Sarah Beeson described her
- 7:51Speaker 1: as independent and tough and always always fashionable, saying quote
- 7:57Speaker 1: she would always have the trendy haircuts and the trendy
- 7:59Speaker 1: cl unquote, and other words like bubbly, outgoing and full
- 8:04Speaker 1: of life, just a teenager that liked to have a
- 8:07Speaker 1: good time. But there was vulnerability beneath the surface, and
- 8:11Speaker 1: Susie struggled academically with dyslexia, so school had never really
- 8:16Speaker 1: been easy for her. And despite her outgoing personality, she
- 8:19Speaker 1: carried an insecurity that those closest to her could see,
- 8:23Speaker 1: and Janet Bussel noticed it, saying, quote, she was a
- 8:26Speaker 1: very sensitive girl. She felt like she wasn't part of
- 8:29Speaker 1: the crowd, like she didn't have enough friends unquote. But
- 8:33Speaker 1: despite the struggles, Susie had made it, and on June sixth,
- 8:37Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, she walked across the stage at Hammond's
- 8:40Speaker 1: Students Center and received her diploma from Kickapoo High School,
- 8:44Speaker 1: and her whole future stretched out ahead of her, and
- 8:47Speaker 1: she planned to follow in her mother's cosmetology footsteps to
- 8:50Speaker 1: build a career doing what Cheryl did, working side by
- 8:53Speaker 1: side if things worked out that way. And she'd actually
- 8:56Speaker 1: been working at a movie theater during high school, saving
- 8:59Speaker 1: money and made making plans, and she'd recently ended a
- 9:02Speaker 1: relationship with a young man named Dustin recla and she
- 9:05Speaker 1: was ready for whatever came next. But what stood up
- 9:08Speaker 1: most to everyone who knew her was the bond between
- 9:11Speaker 1: Susie and her mother, because it was unusual for a
- 9:15Speaker 1: nineteen year old was unlike most teenagers straining against their parents.
- 9:19Speaker 1: So desperate for independence, Susie would sometimes cancel plans with
- 9:23Speaker 1: friends to spend time with Cheryl instead, which I think
- 9:26Speaker 1: is really sweet. And they were described over and over
- 9:30Speaker 1: by everyone who knew them as inseparable, two women who
- 9:34Speaker 1: had been through hard times together and come out on
- 9:36Speaker 1: the other side. So on graduation night, Susie's best friend
- 9:40Speaker 1: since childhood would be by her side to celebrate, and
- 9:43Speaker 1: that friend was Stacy McCall, who at the time was
- 9:47Speaker 1: eighteen years old, and she would be the youngest woman
- 9:50Speaker 1: of the three, though only by a year. And she
- 9:53Speaker 1: had long, dark blonde hair and freckles scattered all over
- 9:56Speaker 1: her face and neck, and when she smiled, which was often,
- 10:00Speaker 1: people described it as infectious. And she was the youngest
- 10:03Speaker 1: of three children born to Stuart and Janis call and
- 10:06Speaker 1: Stacy also attended Kickapoo High School alongside Susie, and she
- 10:10Speaker 1: would walk across the same stage on June sixth, nineteen
- 10:13Speaker 1: ninety two, receiving the same diploma, ready for the same
- 10:17Speaker 1: bright future, and where Susie was sometimes insecure, Stacy seemed
- 10:22Speaker 1: to have figured out the whole world. And she worked
- 10:25Speaker 1: as a secretary and receptionist at Springfield Gymnastics and modeled
- 10:29Speaker 1: wedding gowns for the Total Bride at the Brentwood Center,
- 10:32Speaker 1: and she planned to attend Southwest Missouri State University in
- 10:35Speaker 1: the fall. And her family described her unique personality infectious
- 10:39Speaker 1: smile and love for dancing. She was giggly, conscientious about
- 10:43Speaker 1: her appearance, and responsible, the kind of girl who showed
- 10:47Speaker 1: up when she said she would, called when she was
- 10:49Speaker 1: supposed to, and never left people wondering where she was.
- 10:53Speaker 1: She was overall just a very responsible girl, and that
- 10:56Speaker 1: reliability would become significant, very very quickly. And one detail
- 11:01Speaker 1: about Stacy Mattard more than anyone new at the time,
- 11:05Speaker 1: and that is that she suffered from dehabilitating migraine headaches
- 11:09Speaker 1: that required prescription medication to manage, and she never went
- 11:13Speaker 1: anywhere without it. And Stacy and Susie had known each
- 11:16Speaker 1: other since second grade, and along with their friends Janelle,
- 11:20Speaker 1: Kirbie and Adina, they'd formed the kind of tight knit
- 11:23Speaker 1: group that carries girls through the complicated terigin of adolescence,
- 11:26Speaker 1: and in the months leading up to graduation, Stacy and
- 11:29Speaker 1: Susie had grown closer than ever, best friends standing on
- 11:33Speaker 1: the edge of adulthood, ready to step into their new lives.
- 11:37Speaker 1: By June of nineteen ninety two, the paths of these
- 11:39Speaker 1: three women, a mother rebuilding her life, a daughter finding
- 11:43Speaker 1: her footprint, and a best friend along for the ride,
- 11:46Speaker 1: were about to converge at a single point at graduation celebration,
- 11:51Speaker 1: a night of parties and plans, the kind of night
- 11:54Speaker 1: that happens in towns like Springfield every summer, and it
- 11:57Speaker 1: should have been the new chapters and new beginnings for
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- 12:18Speaker 1: aggressively at night, and I've gone to the dentist and
- 12:21Speaker 1: they said that I've been grinding my teeth too much.
- 12:24Speaker 1: According to him, it sounds like I'm chewing gravel at
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- 14:04Speaker 1: So the ceremony began at four o'clock on June sixth,
- 14:07Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, at Hammond's Student Center on the campus
- 14:11Speaker 1: of Southwest Missouri State University. And rows of folding chairs
- 14:14Speaker 1: filled with families, mothers clutching cameras, fathers loosening ties in
- 14:19Speaker 1: the June heat, and younger siblings squirming with boredom, and
- 14:22Speaker 1: the Kickapoo High School class of nineteen ninety two filed
- 14:25Speaker 1: in wearing caps and gowns, nervous and grinning, ready to
- 14:29Speaker 1: cross the threshold into whatever came next, and Cheryl Levitt
- 14:33Speaker 1: sat somewhere in the audience watching her daughter Susie walk
- 14:36Speaker 1: across the stage to receive her diploma, and nearby, Stuart
- 14:40Speaker 1: and Janie McCall watched their daughter Stacy do the same,
- 14:43Speaker 1: and by six o'clock it was over. Caps flew into
- 14:46Speaker 1: the air, hugs and handshakes and plans shouted across the
- 14:49Speaker 1: parking lot, and the Kirby family invited Cheryl to join
- 14:52Speaker 1: them for dinner, but she declined, and instead she drove
- 14:56Speaker 1: home with Susie to the little house on East Delmore Street,
- 14:59Speaker 1: just the two them, mother and daughter, sharing takeout pizza
- 15:02Speaker 1: and savoring the milestone. And at six thirty eight pm,
- 15:05Speaker 1: a family friend named Nigel Kenny stopped by with a
- 15:08Speaker 1: small white graduation cake and more photographs were taken and
- 15:12Speaker 1: Susie posed with.
- 15:13Speaker 2: Her mother smiling.
- 15:14Speaker 1: And the school had organized an alcohol free lock in
- 15:17Speaker 1: for graduates, which is a supervised celebration that would last
- 15:20Speaker 1: until eight the next morning, and Susie and Stacey weren't
- 15:24Speaker 1: really interested because they had their own plans. Remember, they
- 15:27Speaker 1: were really close. They actually liked to hang out with
- 15:30Speaker 1: each other as mother and daughter, and they would spend
- 15:32Speaker 1: the night at their friend Janelle Kirby's house in Battlefield,
- 15:36Speaker 1: about ten miles southwest of Springfield, and then wake up
- 15:39Speaker 1: early and drive to Branson because a hotel room was waiting,
- 15:43Speaker 1: because Branson had Whitewater Water Park, a perfect post graduation
- 15:48Speaker 1: weekend that they could spend with their best friends.
- 15:51Speaker 2: That was the plan.
- 15:52Speaker 1: So between eight and eight thirty pm that evening, Susie
- 15:55Speaker 1: and Stacey arrived separately at Janelle Kirby's house in Battlefield,
- 15:59Speaker 1: each driving their own car, Susie's red Ford Escort and
- 16:03Speaker 1: Stacy's Toyota Corolla, and they parked in the driveway and
- 16:07Speaker 1: walked together, and they walked about seven hundred meters down
- 16:10Speaker 1: the road to a graduation party at a neighbor's house.
- 16:13Speaker 1: And Brian Joy lived on Coach Drive and his place
- 16:16Speaker 1: was full of teenagers celebrating and music spilling out into
- 16:19Speaker 1: the very warm night. And back at East Delmar Street,
- 16:22Speaker 1: Cheryl Levitt was on the phone around nine thirty pm
- 16:25Speaker 1: talking with the friend and she mentioned she was working
- 16:28Speaker 1: on refinishing an old dresser. Nothing particularly unusual in her voice,
- 16:33Speaker 1: nothing to suggest anything was wrong, Just another Saturday night,
- 16:37Speaker 1: a mother pottering around her house while her daughter was celebrating,
- 16:40Speaker 1: and at ten o'clock, Stacey called home to check in
- 16:43Speaker 1: with her mother, saying, quote, Mom, don't worry, We're not
- 16:46Speaker 1: going to Branson tonight unquote. So the plan had shifted slightly.
- 16:51Speaker 1: They would stay local, get some sleep, and meet up
- 16:54Speaker 1: between eight and eight thirty the next morning to head
- 16:56Speaker 1: to Whitewater. So it was a small change the teenagers
- 17:00Speaker 1: make one hundred times over summer without thinking twice. So
- 17:03Speaker 1: at eleven fifteen PM, Cheryl had her last known phone conversation,
- 17:08Speaker 1: and she spoke with a friend about the armoir she
- 17:10Speaker 1: was painting and varnishing in her bedroom.
- 17:12Speaker 2: But this is the last.
- 17:13Speaker 1: Time anyone is confirmed to have spoken with Cheryl Levitt
- 17:17Speaker 1: is sometime between eleven thirty pm and one thirty am.
- 17:21Speaker 1: Sources differ on the exact timing. Susie, Stacy and their
- 17:24Speaker 1: friends moved on to another party at Michelle Elder's house
- 17:28Speaker 1: on East Hannover Street in Springfield. In the night stretched
- 17:32Speaker 1: on teenagers laughing, talking, doing whatever teenagers do on graduation night,
- 17:37Speaker 1: and at one fifty am on June seventh, Springfield police
- 17:41Speaker 1: arrived and broke up the party and the graduates scattered
- 17:45Speaker 1: into the darkness as they do, and at around two
- 17:47Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, Susie, Stacy, and Chanelle made their
- 17:51Speaker 1: way back to the Kirby House in Battlefield. But when
- 17:54Speaker 1: they arrived, the house was really crowded and out of
- 17:57Speaker 1: town relatives had come for Chanell's graduation, and there were
- 18:00Speaker 1: people sleeping in every available space, so too many bodies,
- 18:04Speaker 1: not enough room, not enough quiet for three young women
- 18:07Speaker 1: who wanted to stay up late. Talking, and Susie mentioned
- 18:10Speaker 1: her new waterbed, which was a king size and it
- 18:13Speaker 1: was a graduation present from her mother, so why not
- 18:16Speaker 1: just go to her house instead? It was only fifteen
- 18:19Speaker 1: or twenty minutes away in fact, and it had more
- 18:22Speaker 1: space and more privacy, and they could stay.
- 18:24Speaker 2: Up as late as they wanted.
- 18:25Speaker 1: It made perfect sense in the moment, So sometime between
- 18:29Speaker 1: two fifteen and two twenty am, Susie and Stacy gathered
- 18:33Speaker 1: their things and prepared to leave, and they would take
- 18:35Speaker 1: both cars and caravan to East Delmar Street. And Janelle's mother,
- 18:40Speaker 1: Kathy Kirby, was in bed but still awake, and through
- 18:43Speaker 1: the walls she heard the girls saying their goodbyes. Susie's
- 18:46Speaker 1: voice would say follow me to my house, and Stacy
- 18:49Speaker 1: would reply okay, I will, and these would be the
- 18:52Speaker 1: last words anyone heard either of them speak. So two
- 18:55Speaker 1: sets of headlights pulled out of the driveway and disappeared
- 18:58Speaker 1: down the dark road towards Field, and the drive would
- 19:01Speaker 1: have taken about fifteen to twenty minutes at that hour
- 19:04Speaker 1: because the streets were empty and the town was pretty
- 19:06Speaker 1: much fully asleep, and they would have arrived at seventeen
- 19:10Speaker 1: seventeen East del Mar Street sometime between two thirty and
- 19:13Speaker 1: two forty five am, So Susie and Stacey arrived at
- 19:16Speaker 1: the house on East Delmar Street, and the evidence would
- 19:19Speaker 1: prove it, because both cars parked in the driveway, their
- 19:22Speaker 1: clothes from graduation night were folded on the dresser and
- 19:25Speaker 1: used makeup wipes indicated they'd wash their faces and prepared
- 19:29Speaker 1: for bed, and jewelry was removed and set aside for
- 19:32Speaker 1: the night as well, So every sign pointed to two
- 19:34Speaker 1: young women who made it home safely and went to sleep.
- 19:38Speaker 1: And whatever happened next occurred sometime between approximately two thirty
- 19:42Speaker 1: am and eight am, a window of five and a
- 19:46Speaker 1: half hours, so the neighborhood slept and a newspaper carrier
- 19:50Speaker 1: made his rounds during those dark hours and noticed nothing unusual.
- 19:54Speaker 1: No screams echoed down the block, no sounds of struggle,
- 19:58Speaker 1: no unfamiliar cars idling at the curb. Just the ordinary
- 20:02Speaker 1: silence of a summer night in the Midwest, the kind
- 20:04Speaker 1: of quiet that settles over a town when everyone is
- 20:07Speaker 1: home and the world just feels safe. But Susie and
- 20:10Speaker 1: Stacy were supposed to meet their friends between eight and
- 20:13Speaker 1: eight thirty to head to Whitewater. So by seven thirty am,
- 20:17Speaker 1: when they hadn't shown up and hadn't called, Janelle Kirby
- 20:20Speaker 1: started dialing the house on East Delmar and the phone
- 20:23Speaker 1: rang and rang and rang, and no one answered. So
- 20:28Speaker 1: she tried again and again, but nothing. And this wasn't
- 20:32Speaker 1: like Stacy. She's reliable and responsible, the girl who always
- 20:36Speaker 1: showed up when she said she would. And this wasn't
- 20:39Speaker 1: like Susie either, and something felt very, very wrong. So
- 20:43Speaker 1: by approximately nine o'clock that morning some accounts say closer
- 20:47Speaker 1: to noon, Janelle and her boyfriend Mike Henson decided to
- 20:50Speaker 1: drive over and check. And when they pulled up to
- 20:53Speaker 1: the house, they saw what should have been reassuring all
- 20:56Speaker 1: three vehicles parked outside, Cheryl's blue cheval in the car port,
- 21:01Speaker 1: Susie's red fort Escort in the driveway, and Stacy's Toyota
- 21:04Speaker 1: Corolla parked behind it. So the women had to be home.
- 21:08Speaker 1: But when they went to the front door, it was unlocked,
- 21:11Speaker 1: which was pretty unusual, And when they walked in the
- 21:15Speaker 1: house was empty and Cinnamon, the family's Yorkshire terrier, was
- 21:19Speaker 1: pacing and agitated, whimpering at silence, But there were no
- 21:24Speaker 1: sign of the three women who should have been there,
- 21:27Speaker 1: not in their bedrooms, not in the kitchen, not anywhere.
- 21:30Speaker 1: And one small detail struck Nigel Kenny as wrong, and
- 21:34Speaker 1: that's that Susie's car wasn't parked in her usual spot.
- 21:38Speaker 1: He knew her well enough to know she was a
- 21:40Speaker 1: creature of habit about things like that. It was a
- 21:43Speaker 1: small thing, but it was unsettling. And while Janelle and
- 21:46Speaker 1: Mike were at the house, the phone rang and there
- 21:49Speaker 1: was a male voice on the other end making up
- 21:51Speaker 1: scene comments and sexual innuendos, and Janelle described the voice
- 21:56Speaker 1: as sounding teenish, and the collar hung up, and then
- 22:00Speaker 1: the phone rang again and the same thing. And Susie
- 22:04Speaker 1: had complained about prank calls since moving into that house
- 22:08Speaker 1: that spring, and an elderly man would later be arrested
- 22:11Speaker 1: for making obscene calls throughout Springfield that summer, and police
- 22:15Speaker 1: would determine these calls were unrelated to the disappearance, apparently,
- 22:20Speaker 1: But in the moment, standing in an empty house with
- 22:22Speaker 1: the dog whimpering and the phone ringing with strange voices,
- 22:25Speaker 1: nothing felt right. And throughout the day, friends and family
- 22:29Speaker 1: came and went, and everyone assumed there had to be
- 22:33Speaker 1: some sort of explanation, because what else are you supposed
- 22:35Speaker 1: to think? Maybe the three women had gone somewhere together
- 22:39Speaker 1: for breakfast or a last minute errand maybe Cheryl had
- 22:43Speaker 1: decided to take the girls out for a post graduation
- 22:46Speaker 1: treat and they would eventually turn up. They had to
- 22:50Speaker 1: turn up, so people tidied, and they waited, and someone
- 22:53Speaker 1: even emptied the ash trays, and someone washed the coffee
- 22:57Speaker 1: cups in the sink, and Mike Henson noticed the broken
- 23:00Speaker 1: glass from the front porch lights scattered across the concrete
- 23:03Speaker 1: because the globe had shattered, though the ball itself was
- 23:07Speaker 1: still intact and burning, and he was worried that that
- 23:10Speaker 1: barefoot Janelle might cut herself, so he swept up the
- 23:13Speaker 1: shards and threw them in the garbage, and he had
- 23:16Speaker 1: no way of knowing he was destroying evidence at this point.
- 23:20Speaker 1: So the hours stretched on and no one appeared, and
- 23:23Speaker 1: no one called, and the women's cars sat in the
- 23:26Speaker 1: driveway going nowhere. So by seven o'clock that evening, Janie
- 23:30Speaker 1: McCall had waited far long enough, and she drove to
- 23:33Speaker 1: the house on East Delmar, her worry hardening into something
- 23:37Speaker 1: closer to dread. And when she walked through the door,
- 23:40Speaker 1: Cinnamon came barreling toward her, yipping and crying, frantic in
- 23:43Speaker 1: the way a little dog had never been before. So
- 23:46Speaker 1: Janie moved through the house. In Susie's bedroom, she found
- 23:50Speaker 1: all three purses stacked together on the floor, and she
- 23:53Speaker 1: opened them and the contents were intact, and wallets with
- 23:56Speaker 1: cash and cards were still inside, and there were carpets
- 24:00Speaker 1: as well, and nearly nine hundred dollars from Cheryl's salon
- 24:04Speaker 1: deposits untouched, and Stacy's clothes from the night before were
- 24:08Speaker 1: neatly folded on the dresser, but her shirt and underwear
- 24:11Speaker 1: were missing, and she had apparently changed into sleep wear.
- 24:15Speaker 1: And Stacy's migraine medication, the prescription she never traveled without,
- 24:19Speaker 1: sat on the counter where she'd left it, and nothing
- 24:22Speaker 1: had been taken, not money, not keys, not cars, just
- 24:26Speaker 1: the women themselves. And Janis would check the answering machine
- 24:29Speaker 1: and there was a message waiting. The message was a
- 24:33Speaker 1: man's voice, and very strange, and she would later describe
- 24:36Speaker 1: it only as disturbing the whole shock of the moment,
- 24:40Speaker 1: erasing the specific words from her memory almost as soon
- 24:44Speaker 1: as she heard them, and police would express significant interest
- 24:48Speaker 1: in that message, believing it may have contained a clue.
- 24:51Speaker 1: But answering machines in nineteen ninety two weren't like voicemail today,
- 24:55Speaker 1: and when Janis played the message, the machine did what
- 24:58Speaker 1: it was designed to do, and it erased automatically, making
- 25:02Speaker 1: room for the next recording. So the message was gone,
- 25:07Speaker 1: and whatever the voice had said, whoever had called and why,
- 25:11Speaker 1: vanished into silence. So at around nine o'clock PM that
- 25:15Speaker 1: evening on June seventh, nineteen ninety two, Jennis McCall picked
- 25:18Speaker 1: up the phone and called the Springfield Police Department. Three
- 25:22Speaker 1: women were missing, a mother, a daughter, and a daughter's
- 25:26Speaker 1: best friend, and their cars were still in the driveway
- 25:28Speaker 1: and their purses were still in the bedroom, and nearly
- 25:31Speaker 1: a full day had passed since anyone had seen or
- 25:34Speaker 1: heard from them, so the investigation was about to begin.
- 25:37Speaker 1: But as we were saying, the crime scene had already
- 25:40Speaker 1: been contaminated because the porch like glass had been swept
- 25:43Speaker 1: away and the answering machine message had been erased, and
- 25:47Speaker 1: ten to twenty people had walked through the house, touching surfaces,
- 25:52Speaker 1: moving objects, washing dishes, So whatever evidence might have pointed
- 25:57Speaker 1: toward answers was already slipping away. So when Springfield police
- 26:01Speaker 1: officers arrived at seventeen seventeen East Delmar Street on the
- 26:04Speaker 1: night of June seventh, nineteen ninety two, they walked into
- 26:07Speaker 1: a crime scene that had already been compromised beyond repair,
- 26:10Speaker 1: and an estimated ten to twenty people had moved through
- 26:12Speaker 1: the house throughout the day doing everything we just previously mentioned,
- 26:16Speaker 1: cleaning and moving stuff, erasing answering machine messages, et cetera.
- 26:20Speaker 1: And what remained by the time the police got there
- 26:23Speaker 1: was a strange and very incomplete story. Because we had
- 26:27Speaker 1: the three cars that were still there, all of their
- 26:29Speaker 1: purses were stuck together on the floor with everything still
- 26:32Speaker 1: inside them, wallet's cash, keys and everything accounted for, and
- 26:37Speaker 1: the house showed every sign that women had come home and.
- 26:40Speaker 2: Settled in for the night.
- 26:41Speaker 1: The Stacy's clothes from graduation neatly folded on the dresser,
- 26:44Speaker 1: and Susie's graduation outfit.
- 26:46Speaker 2: Had been put away and used.
- 26:48Speaker 1: Makeup wipes in the bathroom indicated both girls had washed
- 26:51Speaker 1: their faces before bed, and their jewelry had been removed
- 26:54Speaker 1: and set aside, and both Cheryl's beds and Susie's waterbed
- 26:57Speaker 1: appeared to have been slept in, and Susie's room. The
- 27:00Speaker 1: television was still on, displaying nothing but static and the
- 27:04Speaker 1: soft hiss of a channel that had gone off air,
- 27:07Speaker 1: suggesting a movie or late night program had played to
- 27:11Speaker 1: its end while no one was watching, and a half
- 27:14Speaker 1: finished can of Coca Cola sat warming on a table.
- 27:17Speaker 2: Next to Susie's cigarettes, and.
- 27:19Speaker 1: The whole house still carried that sharp smell of varnish
- 27:22Speaker 1: from the furniture Cheryl had been finishing. So three women
- 27:26Speaker 1: had clearly arrived home, and three women had clearly gone
- 27:30Speaker 1: to bed, and then somehow three women seemingly vanished into
- 27:36Speaker 1: thin air. So investigators would search for signs of what happened.
- 27:40Speaker 1: But they would find almost nothing. No forced entry. Every door,
- 27:44Speaker 1: every window, every lock was intact, although the front door
- 27:48Speaker 1: was open, so whoever took these women either had a
- 27:51Speaker 1: key or was let inside willingly, or found another way
- 27:55Speaker 1: in and left no trace. And there was also no
- 27:58Speaker 1: signs of struggle, no overturned furniture, no broken objects, no
- 28:02Speaker 1: indication that anyone broke into a fight or tried to resist.
- 28:07Speaker 1: So three adult women had apparently been removed from the
- 28:10Speaker 1: house without disturbing so much as a lamp, and there
- 28:13Speaker 1: was also no blood. This luminal testing revealed nothing, so
- 28:18Speaker 1: whatever happened, it either didn't involve violence inside the house
- 28:22Speaker 1: or any evidence of violence had been cleaned up so
- 28:25Speaker 1: thoroughly that nothing remained. And there was also no useful fingerprints,
- 28:31Speaker 1: nothing that connected to any known suspect or pointed toward
- 28:34Speaker 1: any specific person. And on top of that, there was
- 28:38Speaker 1: no witnesses because the neighbors had slept through the night,
- 28:41Speaker 1: and the newspaper carrier who made his rounds in the
- 28:44Speaker 1: pre dawn hours noticed nothing unusual. No one reported screams,
- 28:47Speaker 1: no one saw suspicious vehicles, no one heard anything that
- 28:51Speaker 1: suggested three women were being taken against their will, and
- 28:54Speaker 1: the only physical anomalies were small and ambiguous, like the
- 28:59Speaker 1: shattered porch light, but the glass had been thrown away
- 29:01Speaker 1: before anyone thought to examine it, and one window blind
- 29:05Speaker 1: in Cheryl's bedroom was awkwardly bent, left partially open if
- 29:09Speaker 1: someone had been peering outside. And the answering machine message
- 29:13Speaker 1: as we know, was erased before police could hear it,
- 29:16Speaker 1: and its contents were lost forever. So Captain Tony Glenn,
- 29:20Speaker 1: who worked the case, would later summarize it simply as quote.
- 29:24Speaker 2: The only thing unusual about this house was that three
- 29:27Speaker 2: women were missing from it, unquote.
- 29:29Speaker 1: So the Springfield Police Department recognized immediately that this was
- 29:32Speaker 1: no ordinary missing person's case. The three women don't vanish
- 29:37Speaker 1: from their beds in the middle of the night without
- 29:39Speaker 1: some sort of explanation, and two days after the disappearance,
- 29:42Speaker 1: on June ninth, nineteen ninety two, the FBI joined the investigation,
- 29:46Speaker 1: and detectives worked twelve hour shifts for weeks, and the
- 29:50Speaker 1: case consumed the department, and by June tenth, over twenty
- 29:54Speaker 1: thousand flyers bearing faces of Cheryl, Susie, and Stacy had
- 29:58Speaker 1: been distributed throughout Springfield and the surrounding area and the
- 30:01Speaker 1: three women stared out from telephone polls, storefront windows, and
- 30:05Speaker 1: gas station counters, and tips would begin flooding in almost immediately,
- 30:11Speaker 1: and it was people who thought they'd seen something, people
- 30:13Speaker 1: who thought they knew something, people with theories, with suspicions,
- 30:18Speaker 1: with fragments of information that might mean everything or just nothing.
- 30:23Speaker 1: And by June fourteenth, search teams fanned out across the
- 30:26Speaker 1: region and volunteers joined law enforcement officers in combing remote
- 30:30Speaker 1: and wooded areas outside Springfield, and dive teams search Lake Springfield,
- 30:35Speaker 1: and crews walked the banks of the James River and
- 30:38Speaker 1: dogs sniffed through fields and abandoned properties for miles around,
- 30:42Speaker 1: but they would find nothing, no trace of the three
- 30:46Speaker 1: women anywhere. But one lead early on seemed promising because
- 30:51Speaker 1: a witness came forward claiming to have seen Susie Straeter
- 30:55Speaker 1: around six thirty a m. On June seventh, just hours
- 31:00Speaker 1: after she would have arrived home, behind the wheel of
- 31:03Speaker 1: a green van. So the witness said Susie looked distressed
- 31:07Speaker 1: and from the back seat, a male voice allegedly.
- 31:10Speaker 2: Said, don't do anything stupid.
- 31:12Speaker 1: The police took the tip seriously and they searched thousands
- 31:16Speaker 1: of vans across the region, and they displayed a painted
- 31:19Speaker 1: green van outside the station, hoping to jog someone's memory,
- 31:23Speaker 1: hoping another witness might come forward with more information. But
- 31:27Speaker 1: the lead went nowhere, and no green van was ever identified,
- 31:31Speaker 1: and no driver was ever found, and the sighting was
- 31:33Speaker 1: never confirmed or explained. And another lead proved equally frustrating,
- 31:39Speaker 1: as someone had seen a vehicle in the Delmar Street
- 31:41Speaker 1: neighborhood in the early morning hours of June seventh, a
- 31:45Speaker 1: car that supposedly didn't belong there, moving through the quiet
- 31:48Speaker 1: streets while the rest of the neighborhood slept. The police
- 31:51Speaker 1: sought information, but withheld the vehicle description from the public,
- 31:54Speaker 1: hoping to use it to verify legitimate tips, and lead
- 31:57Speaker 1: investigator David Asher noted, quote.
- 32:00Speaker 2: Someone saw a car in that neighborhood. You just don't
- 32:03Speaker 2: drive through a neighborhood and not be seen unquote.
- 32:06Speaker 1: I mean, I can think of how many times I've
- 32:09Speaker 1: just been in my house and I hear a car.
- 32:11Speaker 2: I always check.
- 32:12Speaker 1: I'm just I mean, maybe it's because I like true
- 32:14Speaker 1: crime stuff so much, or I'm just so paranoid about it,
- 32:16Speaker 1: but I always check. It's just crazy. To think that
- 32:18Speaker 1: a car could drive through a neighborhood no one would
- 32:21Speaker 1: see it. But the car was never identified and the
- 32:25Speaker 1: driver was never found, and like so much else in
- 32:28Speaker 1: the case, the lead simply evaporated, and eleven days after
- 32:31Speaker 1: the disappearance, the Kansas City Star published a detail that
- 32:34Speaker 1: has never been explained, and that is that a convenience
- 32:38Speaker 1: store clerk named Steve Thompson told police that Cheryl Levitt
- 32:42Speaker 1: came into his store, the Apcoamart at forty one forty
- 32:47Speaker 1: seuth Fremont, at two fifteen am on June seventh, and
- 32:52Speaker 1: apparently she appeared very hurried, he would say, and she
- 32:55Speaker 1: stepped only halfway through the door, and she asked if
- 32:58Speaker 1: he'd seen her daughter and two friends, describing them as
- 33:01Speaker 1: a burnette and a blonde, and then she left quickly.
- 33:05Speaker 1: And police considered the clerk credible, but the timing creates
- 33:09Speaker 1: an impossible contradiction because at two fifteen am, Susie and
- 33:13Speaker 1: Stacy were still at the Kirby House in Battlefield, and
- 33:16Speaker 1: they didn't leave until after two o'clock, and they couldn't
- 33:20Speaker 1: have been missing yet, and Cheryl couldn't have known to
- 33:23Speaker 1: look for them. And Captain Tony Glenn posed the question, quote, what.
- 33:27Speaker 2: Would cause a mother to be out at two fifteen
- 33:29Speaker 2: am looking for her daughter? Unquote?
- 33:32Speaker 1: And no one has ever answered it, and the sighting
- 33:35Speaker 1: has never been reconciled within the known timeline, so it
- 33:39Speaker 1: remains one of the many details in the case that
- 33:41Speaker 1: just simply doesn't fit. But you know, my crazy theory
- 33:46Speaker 1: would be, if this is a credible tip, if it's
- 33:49Speaker 1: something that actually happened, who's to say she wasn't threatened
- 33:55Speaker 1: in her own home, that he had done something to
- 33:58Speaker 1: the daughter and the friend or you know, whoever had
- 34:01Speaker 1: taken them. If they were taken, something might have happened
- 34:05Speaker 1: where she knew that they were threatened, So maybe she
- 34:08Speaker 1: was looking.
- 34:09Speaker 2: I don't know.
- 34:09Speaker 1: I feel like something would have had to happen. Someone
- 34:12Speaker 1: would have had to tell her that, you know, I
- 34:15Speaker 1: don't know. It's mind boggling.
- 34:18Speaker 2: I have no.
- 34:18Speaker 1: Idea, but that's the only thing I could think is
- 34:20Speaker 1: that someone had come to the house ahead of time
- 34:24Speaker 1: or called, but there would be call logs, so probably not,
- 34:27Speaker 1: and just told her that, you know, her her daughter
- 34:30Speaker 1: and best friend were already in danger, and then they left,
- 34:34Speaker 1: and then they left her, But then I don't know,
- 34:36Speaker 1: because then they would come home, but maybe he was
- 34:38Speaker 1: still in the house.
- 34:39Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
- 34:40Speaker 1: I could go on and on. I have no idea.
- 34:42Speaker 1: I'm curious what you guys think down below. But we
- 34:44Speaker 1: have a lot more to go through, so let's do that.
- 34:46Speaker 1: So the FBI would bring in a criminal profiler to
- 34:48Speaker 1: analyze the case, to try to understand what kind of
- 34:51Speaker 1: person could make three women disappear without leaving a trace,
- 34:55Speaker 1: and the profilers conclusions were sobering because one person, the
- 34:59Speaker 1: analyst sud jested, had probably committed the crime, and if
- 35:03Speaker 1: there was a second person involved, they might not have
- 35:06Speaker 1: known what they were getting into until it was too
- 35:09Speaker 1: late to turn back. So the perpetrator almost certainly needed
- 35:12Speaker 1: a larger vehicle, probably a van, to transport three victims
- 35:16Speaker 1: at once, and the profile fit with the physical evidence,
- 35:20Speaker 1: or rather lack thereof, because no signs of struggle suggested
- 35:23Speaker 1: the women had been caught off guard and controlled very quickly,
- 35:27Speaker 1: perhaps threatened with a weapon, and the absence of any
- 35:30Speaker 1: trace evidence suggested someone who knew what they were doing,
- 35:33Speaker 1: or someone who had simply gotten lucky. But a profile
- 35:37Speaker 1: isn't a name, and it doesn't tell you who to arrest.
- 35:40Speaker 1: It only narrows the field of possibilities, and in a
- 35:43Speaker 1: case with no physical evidence and no witnesses, even a
- 35:47Speaker 1: narrow field can stretch to the horizon. But in any
- 35:51Speaker 1: case like this, investigators begin with the people closest to
- 35:54Speaker 1: the victims. Statistically they're often responsible. But in the Springfield
- 35:59Speaker 1: three cases, the inner circle was quickly cleared because first
- 36:03Speaker 1: there was Bart Streeter, Susie's older brother, who drew early attention,
- 36:07Speaker 1: a strange from the family and struggling with alcoholism. He
- 36:11Speaker 1: seemed a logical starting point, and he submitted to a
- 36:14Speaker 1: polygraph examination and he would pass it, and he would
- 36:18Speaker 1: eventually be eliminated as a suspect. And then we have
- 36:21Speaker 1: Don Levitt, who is Cheryl's ex husband, who was never
- 36:24Speaker 1: seriously considered. He had an alibi and really no motive,
- 36:27Speaker 1: And everyone who knew Cheryl said the same thing, and
- 36:30Speaker 1: that is that she had no enemies. So the investigation
- 36:33Speaker 1: would have to look elsewhere. So they looked at one
- 36:36Speaker 1: of the ex boyfriends, and more attention fell on Dustin Recla,
- 36:39Speaker 1: Susie's ex boyfriend, and Recla had a complicated history that
- 36:43Speaker 1: gave investigators reason to look closely as he and two friends,
- 36:47Speaker 1: Michael Clay and Joseph Riedel, had broken into a Springfield
- 36:51Speaker 1: mausoleum at Maple Park Cemetery and had stolen approximately thirty
- 36:55Speaker 1: dollars worth of gold fillings from a skull.
- 36:59Speaker 2: Our teenagers doing what is that what?
- 37:01Speaker 1: So it was a disturbing crime, the kind that suggested
- 37:04Speaker 1: something dark beneath the surface, and Susy had given police
- 37:07Speaker 1: a statement about the incident in words spread that she
- 37:10Speaker 1: might be called as a witness against Recla and if
- 37:13Speaker 1: true this gave him motive, then that would be to
- 37:17Speaker 1: silence the witness before she could testify. And Recla and
- 37:20Speaker 1: his associates were in the Springfield area on the night
- 37:23Speaker 1: of June sixth to seventh, nineteen ninety two, and during
- 37:26Speaker 1: police interrogations, Michael Clay reportedly made what investigator described as
- 37:30Speaker 1: quote unquote incriminating statements, though he ultimately claimed no involvement,
- 37:36Speaker 1: and both Recla and Clay had connections to the Galloping
- 37:39Speaker 1: Goose motorcycle club through mutual associates, and Recla submitted to
- 37:44Speaker 1: a polygraph and he would deny any involvement in the
- 37:46Speaker 1: disappearance and he would pass, and he testified before the
- 37:50Speaker 1: grand jury in August of nineteen ninety four, and he
- 37:53Speaker 1: received a suspended sentence for the mausoleum vandalism and eventually
- 37:56Speaker 1: moved to Colorado. So he was never charged in connection
- 38:00Speaker 1: with the Springfield three. But one thread runs through multiple
- 38:04Speaker 1: suspects in this case, and that is the aforementioned Galloping
- 38:07Speaker 1: Goose motorcycle club. Because the Galloping Goose was not a
- 38:10Speaker 1: Sunday riding club, they were involved in drugs, weapons, and
- 38:14Speaker 1: various criminal enterprises throughout the Springfield area, and their member's
- 38:18Speaker 1: names kept surfacing in connection with this case, and not
- 38:22Speaker 1: as direct suspects necessarily, but as reoccurring presence in the background,
- 38:26Speaker 1: basically a web of associations that kept drawing investigators back.
- 38:30Speaker 1: And one with Stephen Garrison. Remember that doctor's appointment you
- 38:35Speaker 1: were supposed to make a while ago, that one you
- 38:38Speaker 1: meant to book but maybe got sidetracked and completely forgot
- 38:42Speaker 1: about it until now, Because I'm telling you right now,
- 38:45Speaker 1: maybe it's an overdue annual checkup that's been five years
- 38:49Speaker 1: in the making, or maybe it's a dermatologist appointment for
- 38:52Speaker 1: that weird mole on the back of your butt O
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- 40:02Speaker 1: get back to it. So in January of nineteen ninety three,
- 40:04Speaker 1: seven months after the disappearance, a man named Stephen Garrison
- 40:08Speaker 1: told police he had information. Garrison was a Galloping Goose
- 40:11Speaker 1: member who had been released from prison on May fifteenth,
- 40:14Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, just three weeks before Cheryl, Susie and
- 40:17Speaker 1: Stacy vanished, and now he was back in custody awaiting
- 40:21Speaker 1: trial on weapons and drug charges.
- 40:23Speaker 2: And he wanted to make a deal.
- 40:25Speaker 1: So he claimed he'd been at a drug party where
- 40:28Speaker 1: someone confessed to killing the three women, and he said
- 40:32Speaker 1: he knew where the bodies were buried, and that place
- 40:35Speaker 1: was a hog farm in Webster County. And police were
- 40:38Speaker 1: obviously intrigued. They've got nothing up until this point, so
- 40:42Speaker 1: they obviously latched onto this lead. And Garrison seemed to
- 40:46Speaker 1: know details that hadn't yet made it to the public.
- 40:49Speaker 1: So a judge lowered his bail based on his cooperation,
- 40:52Speaker 1: and investigators put him up in a hotel where they
- 40:55Speaker 1: verified his information, and that's where Garrison would promptly escape,
- 40:59Speaker 1: and days later he broke into a woman's apartment in
- 41:02Speaker 1: Springfield and as her before he.
- 41:04Speaker 2: Finally got recaptured.
- 41:06Speaker 1: So, despite Garrison's obvious lack of credibility, police still followed
- 41:10Speaker 1: up on his tip and they searched forty acres in
- 41:13Speaker 1: Webster County and the property owner, it turned out, was
- 41:16Speaker 1: a convicted murderer.
- 41:18Speaker 2: So there's that. But the search yielded.
- 41:21Speaker 1: Nothing, no bodies, no evidence, and no confirmation of anything
- 41:25Speaker 1: Garrison had claimed. I'm assuming he just did that to
- 41:28Speaker 1: gain time and get the bail to lessen and just
- 41:31Speaker 1: for him to escape, because he's a giant piece of shit.
- 41:33Speaker 1: But what if there is some validity to it? You know?
- 41:36Speaker 1: But he is currently serving forty years in prison and
- 41:39Speaker 1: his claims about the hog farm were never verified. But
- 41:42Speaker 1: if the crime was committed by someone in Galloping Goose circles,
- 41:46Speaker 1: others might know about it, might have heard whispers, might
- 41:50Speaker 1: have pieces of the puzzle they never shared. So Gerald
- 41:53Speaker 1: Carnahan was a prominent Springfield businessman and heir to Springfield
- 41:57Speaker 1: Aluminum and Brass, a man who moved in respectable circles
- 42:01Speaker 1: while harboring something much darker beneath the surface. And like
- 42:04Speaker 1: Stephen Garrison, Carnahan had ties to the Galloping Goose, and
- 42:09Speaker 1: unlike Garrison. He had money status, a veneer of respectability,
- 42:14Speaker 1: and he also had a documented history of violence against women,
- 42:18Speaker 1: as in nineteen eighty five Jackie John's, a twenty year
- 42:20Speaker 1: old woman, was beaten, whipped and dumped in Lake Springfield,
- 42:25Speaker 1: and Carnahan was a prime suspect from the beginning, but
- 42:28Speaker 1: prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to charge him, so he
- 42:32Speaker 1: remained free. And in March of nineteen ninety three, nine
- 42:35Speaker 1: months after the Springfield Three vanished, Carnahan was arrested for
- 42:38Speaker 1: the attempted kidnapping of an eighteen year old Heather Starkey
- 42:42Speaker 1: in Springfield. And he was actively hunting women during the
- 42:45Speaker 1: same period. Suspicious, I think so, And it took until
- 42:50Speaker 1: two thousand and seven for justice to catch up with
- 42:53Speaker 1: him because DNA evidence finally matched Carnahan to the Jackie
- 42:56Speaker 1: John's murder, and in twenty ten he was convicted of
- 42:59Speaker 1: first degree murder and forcible and sentenced to two consecutive
- 43:04Speaker 1: life sentences without parole. So the pattern of his known
- 43:07Speaker 1: crimes was chillingly consistent. He abducted women and left their
- 43:12Speaker 1: purses and keys behind, the same detail that made the
- 43:15Speaker 1: Springfield three case so strange. Three women gone, all their
- 43:19Speaker 1: belongings left untouched matched Carnahan's signature, so police investigated him
- 43:25Speaker 1: in connection with the disappearance, and he was a free
- 43:27Speaker 1: man in June nineteen ninety two, living in Springfield, with
- 43:31Speaker 1: proven predatory behavior and a history of targeting young women.
- 43:35Speaker 1: But no evidence was ever found linking him to Cheryl,
- 43:37Speaker 1: Susie and Stacy, and he was never charged in their case.
- 43:41Speaker 1: But of all the names that have surfaced in connection
- 43:43Speaker 1: with the Springfield three, one has lingered longer and more
- 43:46Speaker 1: disturbingly than any other, and that's Robert Craig Cox. So
- 43:51Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, Cox was named quote unquote Soldier
- 43:54Speaker 1: of the Year at Fort Benning as a decorated Army ranger,
- 43:58Speaker 1: a young man with a promising military career ahead of him.
- 44:01Speaker 1: But somewhere along the way, something went wrong, and by
- 44:04Speaker 1: the time three women vanished from a house in Springfield, Missouri,
- 44:08Speaker 1: Robert Craig Cox had already left a trail of violence
- 44:11Speaker 1: against women that stretched across multiple states, and it started
- 44:15Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight in Florida. And Sharon Zeller's was
- 44:19Speaker 1: a nineteen year old employee at Walt disney World when
- 44:21Speaker 1: she disappeared on December thirtieth, and Cox's family happened to
- 44:25Speaker 1: be staying at a motel where her body was found,
- 44:28Speaker 1: and on the night of the killing, Cox showed up
- 44:31Speaker 1: at a local hospital with part of his tongue bitten off,
- 44:34Speaker 1: and he was questioned but not charged, And in nineteen
- 44:38Speaker 1: eighty five he was convicted in California for kidnapping and
- 44:42Speaker 1: with a deadly weapon and two separate incidences involving two
- 44:45Speaker 1: separate women near Fort Ord, and he received a nine
- 44:49Speaker 1: year sentence and was dishonorably discharged from the army. And
- 44:52Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight, Florida authorities finally charged him with
- 44:56Speaker 1: the Sharon Zeller's murder and he was convicted of first
- 44:58Speaker 1: degree murder and sentenced to death row, but on December
- 45:02Speaker 1: twenty one, nineteen eighty nine, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously
- 45:07Speaker 1: overturned the conviction, ruling that the evidence amounted to only
- 45:11Speaker 1: a suspicion of guilt, and Cox was released in March
- 45:15Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety so by June nineteen ninety two, he
- 45:20Speaker 1: was living in Springfield, Missouri, and he worked as a
- 45:23Speaker 1: utility locator in south central Springfield and in a detail
- 45:28Speaker 1: that has never been explained as coincidence or something more.
- 45:31Speaker 1: He worked at the same used car lot as Stuart McCall,
- 45:35Speaker 1: who Stacy's father, and when police questioned Cox after the disappearance,
- 45:40Speaker 1: he offered an alibi he was with his girlfriend at
- 45:43Speaker 1: church the morning the women vanished, but his girlfriend later
- 45:47Speaker 1: recanted and she admitted Cox had asked her to lie
- 45:50Speaker 1: to give him an alibi, and she confirmed he was
- 45:53Speaker 1: not with her that night, and Cox's parents said he
- 45:56Speaker 1: was at their home during the relevant hours, but they
- 45:59Speaker 1: couldn't actually bear by where he was or what he
- 46:01Speaker 1: was doing during the window when the three women disappeared.
- 46:04Speaker 1: And four years after the disappearance, in nineteen ninety six,
- 46:08Speaker 1: Cock sat down for an interview with KY three reporter
- 46:11Speaker 1: Dennis Graves, and what he said has haunted investigators since, saying, quote,
- 46:16Speaker 1: I know that they are dead unquote end quote.
- 46:20Speaker 2: I'll say that and I.
- 46:22Speaker 1: Know that quote, and when pressed, he repeated himself, quote.
- 46:27Speaker 2: I just know that they are dead. That's not my theory.
- 46:30Speaker 2: I just know that there's no doubt about that unquote.
- 46:33Speaker 2: And the reporter asked directly, did you abduct these women?
- 46:37Speaker 2: And he said, quote that's a frivolous question. Obviously, I'm
- 46:41Speaker 2: going to say no, unquote.
- 46:44Speaker 1: What the fuck? Just a giant asshole. And he went
- 46:49Speaker 1: further and he claimed the women were murdered by someone
- 46:52Speaker 1: with prior experience, someone who knew what they were doing.
- 46:56Speaker 1: And he said they were buried somewhere near Springfield. And
- 46:59Speaker 1: then he made a promise that still hangs over the case,
- 47:02Speaker 1: and that is that he would reveal what happened after
- 47:05Speaker 1: his mother dies. But as of twenty twenty two, Cox's
- 47:10Speaker 1: mother still alive. And in nineteen ninety five, Cox was
- 47:13Speaker 1: arrested again, and this time in Texas for armed robbery
- 47:17Speaker 1: and he had held a gun on a twelve year
- 47:20Speaker 1: old girl during a salon robbery indicator, and he is
- 47:23Speaker 1: currently serving a life sentence with parole eligibility in twenty
- 47:27Speaker 1: twenty six. So, despite the circumstantial connections his presence in Springfield,
- 47:32Speaker 1: his history of violence against women, and his lies about
- 47:35Speaker 1: his alibi, and his cryptic statements about knowing the women
- 47:39Speaker 1: were dead, police have never found physical evidence linking Cox
- 47:43Speaker 1: to the crime. An official sources state that investigators on
- 47:46Speaker 1: the case do not believe Cox has any credibility, and
- 47:50Speaker 1: some think he's toying with them, saying just enough to
- 47:52Speaker 1: keep himself in the conversation without ever actually incriminating himself.
- 47:57Speaker 1: But the question remains, how would he know they're dead?
- 48:01Speaker 1: Or is he just being a massive piece of shit
- 48:05Speaker 1: human being and just toying with everybody and the victims
- 48:09Speaker 1: and the victims family. It's just I have no idea,
- 48:12Speaker 1: but either way, it's extremely messed up. And some investigators
- 48:16Speaker 1: have looked beyond Springfield's local criminals to a man who's
- 48:19Speaker 1: hunting ground stretched across the entire Midwest, and that's Larry
- 48:23Speaker 1: Dewayne Hall. Larry Dwayne Hall is a suspected serial killer
- 48:28Speaker 1: believed responsible for somewhere between thirty nine and fifty four
- 48:32Speaker 1: murders of women and girls.
- 48:34Speaker 2: And they actually.
- 48:35Speaker 1: Wrote a show about him that I highly recommend watching
- 48:39Speaker 1: called Blackbird. It's probably one of my favorite miniseries that
- 48:43Speaker 1: did a really good job about it.
- 48:45Speaker 2: And the guy.
- 48:46Speaker 1: That's a rich guy who does drugs and he goes
- 48:48Speaker 1: to jail to try to capture Larry. The whole story
- 48:51Speaker 1: is extremely interesting and honestly, I actually will maybe do
- 48:53Speaker 1: a video about him because it's an extremely interesting story.
- 48:58Speaker 1: But I digress, and he traveled the region participating in
- 49:01Speaker 1: Civil War reenactments, and his killings correlate almost perfectly with
- 49:06Speaker 1: the re enactment calendar, occurring most frequently in March, June, August,
- 49:11Speaker 1: and September, and June nineteen ninety two, the month the
- 49:15Speaker 1: Springfield three disappeared, and Wilson's Creek National Battlefield, one of
- 49:19Speaker 1: the most significant Civil War sites in Missouri, sits just
- 49:23Speaker 1: five minutes from the Kirby Residence in Battlefield, where Susie
- 49:27Speaker 1: and Stacy had originally planned to spend the night, and
- 49:30Speaker 1: on June six to seventh, nineteen ninety two, a Civil
- 49:32Speaker 1: War reenactment was held at Old Settler's Day in Pleasant Hope, Missouri,
- 49:37Speaker 1: approximately thirty minutes north of Springfield, so Hall could have
- 49:41Speaker 1: been in the area, though his attendance at the specific
- 49:44Speaker 1: event has never been confirmed that In letters to author
- 49:48Speaker 1: Christopher Hawley, Martin Hall claimed there are several girls buried
- 49:52Speaker 1: in the Mark Twain Forest in Missouri, and he owned
- 49:55Speaker 1: a Dodge van similar to witness accounts of suspicious vehicles
- 49:59Speaker 1: seen around Springfield that weekend, and Hall is currently serving
- 50:03Speaker 1: a life sentence in federal prison for the nineteen ninety
- 50:05Speaker 1: three kidnapping of fifteen year old Jessica Roach, and he
- 50:09Speaker 1: has confessed to multiple murders, then recanted, then confessed again,
- 50:14Speaker 1: a pattern that has made it very difficult to know what,
- 50:17Speaker 1: if anything, he's telling is the truth.
- 50:20Speaker 2: But no direct evidence links him to.
- 50:22Speaker 1: The Springfield Tree at the end of the day, and
- 50:24Speaker 1: the connection remains circumstantial at best. Just a serial killer
- 50:28Speaker 1: who targeted young women, who was possibly in the area,
- 50:31Speaker 1: whose timeline of activity matches the disappearances, but possibility isn't proof.
- 50:37Speaker 1: But again, let me know if you want me to
- 50:39Speaker 1: deep dive into that case, because it is extremely interesting.
- 50:43Speaker 1: But of all the theories that have circulated about the
- 50:45Speaker 1: Springfield three, none has captured public imagination or generated more
- 50:50Speaker 1: controversy than the Cox Hospital parking garage theory because the
- 50:54Speaker 1: tip originated from an unlikely source, and according to a
- 50:58Speaker 1: former Green County Prosecutor's office at Darryl Moore, the information
- 51:01Speaker 1: came from someone who quote unquote claimed to be a
- 51:05Speaker 1: psychic or claimed to have a dream or vision about
- 51:08Speaker 1: the case. In crime reporter Kathy Bard, who covered the
- 51:11Speaker 1: case extensively, received numerous calls from people who believed the
- 51:15Speaker 1: same thing. The bodies of Sheryl, Susie, and Stacey were
- 51:19Speaker 1: buried beneath the South garage at Cox Hospital in Springfield,
- 51:23Speaker 1: So in two thousand and seven, Barr decided to investigate,
- 51:26Speaker 1: and she invited mechanical engineer Rick Norland from Paula, Kansas
- 51:30Speaker 1: to scan a section of the parking garage using ground
- 51:33Speaker 1: penetrating radar, and what he found was intriguing. Three anomalies
- 51:38Speaker 1: beneath the concrete roughly the same size, in a configuration
- 51:42Speaker 1: he said was consistent with the grave site, two parallel
- 51:45Speaker 1: and one perpendicular, and the discovery made headlines and for
- 51:50Speaker 1: a moment it seemed like the case might finally break open,
- 51:53Speaker 1: but Springfield police rejected the theory and their reasoning was straightforward.
- 51:58Speaker 1: The parking garage could. Construction didn't begin until September nineteen
- 52:02Speaker 1: ninety three, more than fifteen months after the women disappeared,
- 52:07Speaker 1: so if bodies had been buried at the location before construction,
- 52:11Speaker 1: the excavation process would have uncovered them, and the original tipster.
- 52:15Speaker 1: Police noted, quote unquote, provided no evidence or logical reasoning
- 52:19Speaker 1: behind this theory, and Cox's hospital officials said the anomalies
- 52:24Speaker 1: Norland detected were consistent with tree roots or normal construction debris,
- 52:29Speaker 1: and Norland himself acknowledged his findings were inconclusive, and former
- 52:34Speaker 1: prosecutor Darryl Moore put it simply, quote if the expert
- 52:38Speaker 1: had told us the only thing the disturbance could be
- 52:41Speaker 1: was bodies, we would have dug it. But he couldn't unquote.
- 52:45Speaker 1: And the parking garage has never been excavated, and the
- 52:49Speaker 1: lead is officially considered not credible. And the parking garage
- 52:52Speaker 1: has never been excavated, and the lead is officially considered
- 52:56Speaker 1: not credible. But theory persists in online form and armchair investigations,
- 53:02Speaker 1: a testament to how desperately people want an answer, even
- 53:05Speaker 1: one that comes from a psychic stream.
- 53:07Speaker 2: But as we've seen on.
- 53:08Speaker 1: This channel, I did a whole video about psychic's finding
- 53:11Speaker 1: people's bodies, and it is interesting. It's pretty interesting. So
- 53:16Speaker 1: I wouldn't shake a stick at this, is all I'm saying.
- 53:19Speaker 1: So among the stranger pieces of evidence in the case
- 53:21Speaker 1: is a note found in a Springfield Newsleader newspaper rack
- 53:25Speaker 1: at Smitty's on South Glenstone Avenue sometime after the disappearance,
- 53:30Speaker 1: and written on it was a cryptic phrase quote use
- 53:33Speaker 1: rows of gas man checking for leak unquote, and the
- 53:37Speaker 1: implication was clear enough. Someone had gained entry to a
- 53:41Speaker 1: house by pretending to be a utility worker, knocking on
- 53:45Speaker 1: the door with a plausible cover story, convincing Cheryl to
- 53:48Speaker 1: let them inside, and then overpowering the women once the
- 53:52Speaker 1: door was open, And it would explain the lack of
- 53:55Speaker 1: forced entry, and it would explain how someone got into
- 53:58Speaker 1: the locked house in the middle of the without breaking anything,
- 54:01Speaker 1: and it would explain why three women might have opened
- 54:04Speaker 1: the door to a stranger. But would Cheryl really have
- 54:07Speaker 1: opened her door to someone claiming to be a gas
- 54:10Speaker 1: company employee at three or four in the morning, And
- 54:14Speaker 1: would she have let a stranger into her home while
- 54:16Speaker 1: her daughter and her best friends were sleeping in the
- 54:18Speaker 1: next rooms. It seems pretty unlikely, But again, nothing about
- 54:24Speaker 1: this case follows the rules of what seems likely, So
- 54:27Speaker 1: the note was never definitively linked to any suspect, and
- 54:31Speaker 1: it was never proven to have any connection to the
- 54:33Speaker 1: crime at all. It just remains one of those many
- 54:36Speaker 1: tantalizing fragments, suggestive, disturbing, and ultimately inconclusive. But at the
- 54:43Speaker 1: heart of every theory lies the fundamental question why these
- 54:47Speaker 1: three women look The problem is that Stacy and Susie
- 54:51Speaker 1: weren't supposed to be at Cheryl's house that night. The
- 54:54Speaker 1: original plan was to stay at Janelle Kirby's house at
- 54:57Speaker 1: Battlefield and drive to Branson the next morning to water Park,
- 55:00Speaker 1: So the decision to go to East Delmar Street was
- 55:03Speaker 1: made on impulse sometime after two in the morning because
- 55:06Speaker 1: the Kirby house was too crowded. So this last minute
- 55:09Speaker 1: change creates two very different scenarios for what might have happened.
- 55:14Speaker 1: The first possibility would be that Cheryl was the target.
- 55:18Speaker 1: Someone came to seventeen seventeen East Delmar Street looking for
- 55:21Speaker 1: her specifically, and Susie and Stacy were simply in the
- 55:25Speaker 1: wrong place at the wrong time, collateral victims who had
- 55:29Speaker 1: the terrible luck to change their plans at the last moment,
- 55:32Speaker 1: but who would want to harm her. An unknown stalker maybe,
- 55:37Speaker 1: but everyone who knew Cheryl said she had no enemies
- 55:40Speaker 1: or you know, stalkers or lovers. And the second possibility
- 55:45Speaker 1: was that the girls were followed and a predator driving
- 55:49Speaker 1: through Springfield on graduation nights spotted two women in their
- 55:52Speaker 1: cars and followed them home from one of the parties,
- 55:56Speaker 1: and he waited until they were inside, until the house
- 55:59Speaker 1: went dark, and then made his move. But the scenario
- 56:03Speaker 1: raises its own problems because how would one person control
- 56:06Speaker 1: three adult women, and how would he subdue them without
- 56:10Speaker 1: any sign of struggle, without any of them screaming, without
- 56:13Speaker 1: leaving any evidence behind. And I honestly have no idea.
- 56:17Speaker 1: I mean, if we're looking at the other suspects, they
- 56:19Speaker 1: targeted younger women, and they were known to drive around
- 56:23Speaker 1: in either a van or some sort of vehicle, So
- 56:27Speaker 1: you know, my bet would be that that they were followed.
- 56:30Speaker 1: But then there's the incident where Cheryl was found at
- 56:33Speaker 1: a convenience store saying she was looking for them earlier
- 56:37Speaker 1: in the night, before they even arrived. So maybe there
- 56:40Speaker 1: was a loss of communication. Maybe she thought they'd be
- 56:42Speaker 1: back sooner and they were followed, and then as soon
- 56:46Speaker 1: as they all got into the house then that happened.
- 56:50Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Let me know what you guys think
- 56:52Speaker 1: down below. So the investigation continued, but answers remained elusive,
- 56:57Speaker 1: and in August of nineteen ninety four, a grand jury
- 56:59Speaker 1: was ven to examine the evidence and hear testimony from
- 57:02Speaker 1: witnesses and Dustin Recla was among those called to testify,
- 57:07Speaker 1: and so were others connected to the case, friends, family members,
- 57:10Speaker 1: people who might know something that hadn't yet been revealed.
- 57:13Speaker 1: And the grand jury proceedings were closed to the public
- 57:16Speaker 1: and the testimony was sealed, so we don't have a
- 57:18Speaker 1: lot to go off for this hearing, And when it
- 57:22Speaker 1: disbanded in early nineteen ninety five, no indictments were issued,
- 57:26Speaker 1: and whatever the grand jury learned, it wasn't enough to
- 57:28Speaker 1: charge anyone with the crime as we know, and the
- 57:31Speaker 1: findings remained sealed to this day. So as months turned
- 57:34Speaker 1: into years, the case that has consumed Springfield began to
- 57:38Speaker 1: recede from daily headlines, and the investigation continued, and tips
- 57:42Speaker 1: still came in and detectives still followed leads, but the
- 57:46Speaker 1: intensity of those first desperate weeks couldn't be sustained forever,
- 57:50Speaker 1: and by nineteen ninety seven, five years after the disappearance,
- 57:54Speaker 1: Cheryl Levitt and Suzanne Streeter, were declared legally dead. And
- 57:58Speaker 1: it was a formalaty, a legal necessity for settling estates
- 58:02Speaker 1: and closing accounts, but it carried a terrible weight, and
- 58:05Speaker 1: it meant that the system had given up on finding them,
- 58:08Speaker 1: and Stacy McCall's family refused to take the same step,
- 58:12Speaker 1: and her mother, Janice, would not declare her daughter dead,
- 58:15Speaker 1: not without proof, and not without a body, and not
- 58:18Speaker 1: without knowing for certain what had happened. And as the
- 58:21Speaker 1: years accumulated, so did the paperwork, and more than five
- 58:24Speaker 1: thousand tips were eventually processed. By twenty fifteen, the department
- 58:29Speaker 1: was still receiving approximately one hundred tips per year, people
- 58:33Speaker 1: who thought they'd seen something, remembered something, or knew something.
- 58:36Speaker 1: And over twenty seven thousand documents filled the case files,
- 58:40Speaker 1: a mountain of information that has yielded no answers, which is.
- 58:44Speaker 2: Just mind boggling.
- 58:46Speaker 1: So the investigation had become one of the largest in
- 58:48Speaker 1: Missouri history, and it had produced nothing, no arrests, no charges,
- 58:54Speaker 1: no bodies, and no closure. Just three women who vanished
- 58:59Speaker 1: into a night and never came back. So the Springfield
- 59:03Speaker 1: Police Department still classifies this case as open and active,
- 59:07Speaker 1: and a detective remains permanently assigned to it, even now,
- 59:11Speaker 1: more than three decades after Cheryl, Susie and Stacy disappeared.
- 59:15Speaker 1: Quote we do call it a cold case.
- 59:17Speaker 2: Unquote.
- 59:18Speaker 1: Police Chief Paul Williams said in twenty twenty two, quote,
- 59:22Speaker 1: but there's a detective always assigned to it because we
- 59:24Speaker 1: do get things to follow up on unquote. Because the
- 59:27Speaker 1: numbers tell the story of an investigation that never stopped,
- 59:30Speaker 1: but never arrived anywhere either. And a reward of forty
- 59:33Speaker 1: three thousand dollars remains available for information leading to the
- 59:37Speaker 1: location of the women and the prosecution of those responsible,
- 59:41Speaker 1: but it has never been claimed. And for the families
- 59:44Speaker 1: of the missing, there is no cold case. There is
- 59:47Speaker 1: only the absence that never ends. And Janis McCall has
- 59:51Speaker 1: spent more than three decades keeping her daughter's name alive,
- 59:54Speaker 1: and she has organized annual visuals. She gave countless interviews
- 59:58Speaker 1: to reporters, television crews, podcast hosts, anyone who might keep
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: the case in the public eye. And she created the
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: original Missing Persons flyers, the ones that papered Springfield in
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: those first desperate weeks. And she never stopped hoping that
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: someone somewhere would finally come forward with the truth. And
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, before the thirteenth anniversary visual, Jannis
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: suffered two heart attacks and her health has declined in
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: recent years, and she has stepped back from media interviews,
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: but her position has never wavered.
- 1:00:29Speaker 2: Quote.
- 1:00:29Speaker 1: Until I know one hundred percent that Stacy is deceased,
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: I will never declare her dead. They're going to have
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: to find some remains somewhere before I call her legally
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: dead unquote. So Stacy McCall has never been declared dead
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: because her mother refuses to give up that hope. And
- 1:00:46Speaker 1: Stuart McCall, Stacy's father, was not as fortunate, and he
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: passed away in October of twenty twenty five at the
- 1:00:52Speaker 1: age of eighty two, and he spent the last thirty
- 1:00:54Speaker 1: years of his life not knowing what happened to his
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: youngest daughter. And he and Janis created One missa Link,
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping other families with missing
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: loved ones a way to transform their pain into something
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: that might help others. And I looked into One Missing Link,
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: but it looks like it's closed and inactive. I will
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: do a more researching. If I find it, I will
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: link it down below. But I did find another nonprofit
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: that Janice McCall is actually a part of, and that
- 1:01:22Speaker 1: is the Surviving Parents Coalition, So I will definitely link
- 1:01:25Speaker 1: that down below.
- 1:01:26Speaker 2: And you can look into that and people's.
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: Stories, and there's volunteering and ways to donate, so I
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: will link that down below, although when I tried to donate,
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: it said it was inactive, so again will I will
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: have to look into that more. But you can still
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: read about other people's stories and volunteer in any way
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: you would like. But Stuart McCall would die without any
- 1:01:46Speaker 1: answers and without closure, and without ever being able to
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: lay his daughter to rest. And Debrah Schwartz, Cheryl's younger sister,
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: has remained active in keeping the case visible, and she
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: was featured in a twenty two tventy two NBC Dateline segment,
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: still searching for answers about the sister who raised her,
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: who cooked her dinner, and who was definitely always looking
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: out for me and Bart Streeter. Susie's older brother found
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: living in Springfield unbearable after the disappearance, and he left
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: the city and for years he maintained a family blog
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: about the case, and his daughter now manages it, carrying
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: the torch into another generation and the families grow older,
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: some have passed away, and the wound remains open. But
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: every June people gather at the Victim's Memorial Garden in
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: phelps Grove Park. A bench dedicated to the three women
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: was placed there in nineteen ninety seven, the same year
- 1:02:40Speaker 1: Cheryl and Susie were declared legally dead, and candles are
- 1:02:43Speaker 1: lit and names are spoken, and the community tries to
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: honor what was lost, even if they can never explain it.
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: And in some Springfield storefronts, missing person slyers still hang,
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: faded now the faces of three women who would be
- 1:02:58Speaker 1: unrecognizable today if they somehow walked through the door. And
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: the house at seventeen seventeen East Delmar Street still stands
- 1:03:06Speaker 1: and people drive by, sometimes trying to imagine what happened there,
- 1:03:10Speaker 1: trying to make sense of the senseless. And for many
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: who lived in Springfield in nineteen ninety two, the case
- 1:03:16Speaker 1: is a wound that never healed, and it changed the
- 1:03:19Speaker 1: way people thought about their town and about safety, and
- 1:03:22Speaker 1: about the assumption that terrible things happen only somewhere else.
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: And the Springfield three proved that nowhere is somewhere else,
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: and that ordinary streets and ordinary towns can hold extraordinary horrors.
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: But the Springfield three has never faded from public consciousness
- 1:03:40Speaker 1: the way some cold cases do, and television keeps returning
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: to it. In forty eight hours, America's most wanted investigation
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: Discoveries disappeared series People magazine, investigates NBC in dateline and podcasts.
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: Each new program introduces the case to a new audience
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: and generates a new wave of tips, and ultimately arrives
- 1:03:59Speaker 1: at the same place as of right now. And that
- 1:04:02Speaker 1: is no answers. But if, for whatever reason you know anything,
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: please reach out to authorities in Springfield, Missouri. And if
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: they were alive today, Cheryl Levitt would be eighty years old,
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: and she might be retired from the salon, spending her
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: days with grandchildren she never got to meet. And Susie
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: Streeter would be fifty two. Perhaps she built that cosmetology
- 1:04:24Speaker 1: career she dreamed of working alongside her mother the way
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: she always planned. And Stacy McCall would be fifty one,
- 1:04:32Speaker 1: and she might have children of her own by now
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: or in a career, and maybe even grandchildren. A family
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: wondering about the grandmother who still refuses to declare her
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: daughter deceased. But whatever happened in those dark hours of
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: June six to seventh in nineteen ninety two ended their
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: lives before they had the chance to become who they
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: might have been, and instead they now remain frozen in time.
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: But let's remember them for who they were. And that's
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: three beautiful women who deserve justice. But that is that
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: for the Springfield Three. Thank you so much for notifying
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: me about this case and allowing me to talk about it.
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: I really appreciate you.
- 1:05:12Speaker 2: Guys.
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: Let me know what other cases you want me to
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: deep dive into down below, and I will see you
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: guys in the next one.
- 1:05:18Speaker 2: Stay safe out there, all right.
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: Bye.