Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Pamela June Ray Pt. One

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Pamela June Ray Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:29
Welcome back to the Pathway, Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
0:33
I'm Ashley, and this is a special episode, but I'll let Robin tell
0:38
you why in just a moment. Let's dive right into this week's case.
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August twelfth, nineteen ninety two, Panama City, Beach, Florida. After
0:49
leaving her home in Georgia on a vacation with her two children, thirty six
0:53
year old pan La June Ray arrives at a beachfront motel during the early morning
0:58
hours and parks in front of the office. Pamela's children are sleeping in the
1:02
back seat, but when they wake up a few hours later, they learn
1:07
that their mother is vanished, and a patrol officer reports having seen Pamela in
1:11
the company of an unidentified man shortly before she went missing. Years later,
1:17
a convicted murderer named Mark Reebe confesses to abducting and killing Pamela, but he
1:22
later recounts this confession and no trace of her is ever found. After that,
1:27
the path went chilly, So today we're going to be exploring a frightening
1:32
cold case involving a missing mother. The nineteen ninety two disappearance of Pamela June
1:37
Ray. Now, I covered this one on the Trail and Cold nearly three
1:41
years ago, and as you might know, I hold an ongoing contest where
1:45
each month I hold a live drawing in which I pick out the name of
1:48
a random winner who gets the opportunity to narrate the opening of an episode.
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Well back in April of twenty twenty one, I wound up drawing the name
1:56
Ashley Wellman, and she wound up recording the opening narration Pamela June Ray's case.
2:01
So to put this into perspective at that time, well, you'd only
2:05
recently launched the Path Went Chilly, But I had no idea that Ashley had
2:07
originally entered the Trail Went Cold voiceover contest back in January of twenty eighteen,
2:14
back when she was just a casual fan of the show and we did not
2:16
know each other. So it was quite an astonishing coincidence when I picked out
2:21
her name, and the rest is history. Okay. I wish you guys
2:23
could see my face right now, because I have a very nerdy like fangirl
2:28
smile and giddiness to me. Yes, I beg of that. Still,
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I remember sitting on the couch and opening up my email and being like,
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hey, Ash, can you record this? You know you got picked for
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this contest? Can you record this opening? And being so excited and so
2:45
honored to be able to do that for your podcast because I was a huge
2:49
fan before becoming a friend, and yeah, I'm wondering, have I gotten
2:53
better? I think so, Yes, you've improved. I'll definitely second that.
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But what is kind of funny is that when you originally entered it,
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you had an entirely different email, which I think has since gone defunct.
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So it was a good thing we'd become friends because otherwise I wouldn't have known
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how to contact you. It was one of my university emails and then found
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you tracked me down and found me that's right. Yeah, well it was
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an honor and I am excited to listen to the case that I got to
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introduce a couple of years ago. When Jules was reading the intro, did
3:27
you recognize this case? No? And then I got this huge grin when
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you started talking. I went, stop it stop, that's exciting. The
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only thing that did trigger anything was Panama City because that's so close to where
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I grew up in Pensacola, Florida. So then I was like, wait
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a minute, A lot of crimes have happened there. So here we go
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with Pamela June Ray. I love how when Ashley won the contest, so
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many people accused you of fixing it. Exactly like I had a ball with
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five hundred names of Ashley Willman in there and just happened to it out in
4:00
front of the camera, just to rig the whole thing. I mean,
4:02
you got to play favorites when you're one of your fans as your co host,
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right, exactly right. He did not rig it up, just as
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giddy, just as giddy, and just as excited and actually a little nervous
4:14
to record his intro. So it was quite a pleasure. It was a
4:17
serendipitous moment, and it's one of those things that brings us back to the
4:21
fact that before we were friends with Robin, both Ashley and I were fans
4:26
of the show. Right, so we've become friends over these years, but
4:30
before then, back in twenty eighteen, we were both just listening to the
4:33
trail and Cold, never thinking that we would be partnered with Robin on a
4:38
podcast. So one of the poor unfortunate souls that's listening right now might be
4:43
doing a podcast with one of us. So given the circumstances, I thought
4:50
it would be a good idea for all of us to revisit the Pamela June
4:54
Ray case. It involves a mother who decided to take her two children on
4:58
a vacation to Florida, but vanished from a motel parking lot shortly after she
5:01
arrived, presumably after being abducted by an unidentified male. The case was once
5:06
featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and in recent years has received coverage
5:12
on the British true crime series Serial Killers with Pierce Morgan, which featured an
5:16
interview with a convicted murderer named Mark Reebe, who once confessed to being responsible
5:21
for Pamela's disappearance. Even though Reebe has only officially been linked to one murder,
5:27
there has been speculation that he is a serial killer who may have been
5:30
responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen women, including Pamela. This
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episode will also contain research from the website Lost and Found blogs dot com,
5:39
which is run by my friend and fellow Unsolved Mysteries van Heather Grautman, who
5:44
goes under the name Crystal Dawn and has published a pair of extensive articles about
5:47
this case. Even though there have been some compelling leads in the investigation,
5:51
Pamela is still a missing person, which is why we'll be exploring this story
5:56
together. Okay, so Robin, in this case, she's with her children
6:00
right when she pulls up to this hotel, and then the children are found
6:03
in the car later. Yet they literally slept through the whole thing. They
6:08
just woke up and their mother was missing, and they to this day they
6:10
have no idea what happened. Okay, I don't care what's going on.
6:15
It takes a heck of a lot for a mother to choose to leave her
6:18
children. I just it is devastating to think that those babies were in the
6:24
back of that car and she gets out for who knows what, and doesn't
6:29
return. That is the most heartbreaking part of all of this is those kids
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had no idea. She likely had no idea she wasn't coming back to jump
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right back in the car with them. And now we have no answers.
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Those kids have no answers as to what happened to their mom. This case
6:44
is already going to be devastating to rehear and listen to the details of it.
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Our story begins in nineteen ninety two, and our central figure is thirty
6:55
six year old Pamela June Ray, who lives in Phila Rica, Georgia,
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with her husband, been Michael Ray, and their two children, twelve year
7:01
old Shane and five year old Brandy. Since school is going to be starting
7:06
soon, Pamela wants to take her kids on one last vacation to visit Panama
7:11
City Beach, Florida, but since Michael is busy working, he'll be unable
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to come along with them. On August eleven, Pamela loaded her son and
7:19
daughter into her blue nineteen ninety one Plymouth Sun Dance and went to visit her
7:24
brother in the town of Luthersville. After visiting his house at around ten thirty
7:29
pm, Pamela began her two hundred and fifty mile drive to Panama City Beach
7:33
and would arrive during the early morning hours of August twelfth. The previous evening,
7:39
Pamela had phoned the manager of the Wilheight Motel on Front Beach Road to
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inquire about making a reservation and was told that a room would be available at
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nine or ten AM. When she arrived, Pamela parked her car in front
7:53
of the motel's office while Shane and Brandy remained sleeping in the back seat,
7:57
but shortly thereafter she would vanish without a trace. At around eight thirty am,
8:03
one of the motel's employees noticed that the two children were sleeping unattended inside
8:07
the Plymouth Sun Dance and became concerned enough to contact the Panama City Beach Police
8:13
Department. When police arrived at the scene, they discovered that the sundance was
8:18
locked, so they knocked on the window to wake up Shane and Brandy,
8:22
who told him that they had no idea where their mother was. It turned
8:24
out the paneless keys and her purse, which contained two hundred dollars in travelers
8:30
checks, were still inside the car, and since she was known for being
8:33
a very devoted mother who was protective of her children, it seemed very unlikely
8:37
that she left them alone of her own accord. A missing person's report would
8:41
be filed for Pamela, and after the rest of her family were informed about
8:46
what was happening, they traveled down to Panama City Beach to pick up the
8:50
children and participate in The search for her front beach road contained a number of
8:54
beachfront motels, including the will Height, but even though every single room was
9:00
checked, it failed to turn up any trace of Pamela. This is so
9:05
bizarre because she is doing exactly what she's told everyone she's going to do.
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She sees her brother, She gets on this long overnight road trip. I've
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done it as a mom. The kids are sleeping, it's quiet. Get
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in the car. I can make it through the night and take a nap
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when I get to the hotel, and she does. She gets there about
9:22
thirty minutes before the hotel employee says that her room's going to be ready,
9:26
right or yeah, about thirty minutes before nine o'clock, And she's likely waiting
9:33
for that permission to go check in and get the room key so she can
9:37
take the kids in, she can rest, clean up, and they can
9:39
start their little mini vacation. And her car's in the hotel parking lot right.
9:46
Yes. One thing I wanted to correct is that she didn't arrive at
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eight thirty. That's when they noticed that the children were sleeping inside. So
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she had probably arrived like a couple hours before, like the early morning hours
9:56
when when most people would have been sleeping, and that's probably the reason why
10:00
she disappeared, and no one really recorded seeing anything. Okay, Okay,
10:03
that makes even more sense. So she knows that she's too early to check
10:07
in, which means she probably was napping in the car and maybe had to
10:11
get out and go to the restroom or something that got her out of that
10:15
vehicle, or maybe someone even came and got her out of that vehicle.
10:18
But that makes even more sense, Robin, thank you for clarifying. So
10:22
she's there early and is waiting for that time where she's been given permission to
10:26
go in get the room key, and between the times she pulls up to
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where she was supposed to be and the time that the kids are found at
10:33
eight thirty, someone or something happened that took her away from those babies.
10:41
So wow, And I think it's such an important distinction that eight thirty is
10:48
when the children were found, not when Pamela got there, because the difference
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between eight thirty and when she potentially got there at maybe say around five am,
10:56
you would have the cover of darkness, and a lot of things can
11:00
happen under the cover of darkness that people would not even attempt to do if
11:05
it were light outside, because there's going to be all these different eyeballs on
11:07
them. But to think that somebody could have attempted something when her vehicle is
11:13
right there, the motel is right there, and there's so many potential people
11:16
who could see this person abduct Pamela or do something to Pamela, because we
11:22
know she would never leave of her own accord, because her babies are sleeping.
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Like Ashley had said earlier, nothing is going to take her away from
11:28
those children. All she wants to do is just hunk her down for a
11:33
night with those kids and finally catch up on some sleep after this long drive.
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Like it's just it's so shocking. I can't imagine what these people must
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have felt when they came upon these like sleeping little babes in the car and
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just where's their mother? So here a more details about the circumstances of how
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Pamela went missing. Investigators would hear from multiple witnesses who were called seeing Pamela
11:56
sitting inside her plymous sun dance in front of the motel office around five am
12:01
on the morning of August twelfth. However, the most interesting sighting would be
12:05
from a patrol officer who was driving through the area at five twenty five and
12:09
thought he saw Pamela standing outside her vehicle with an unidentified white male. After
12:13
being placed under hypnosis, the officer recalled the white male as being around six
12:18
feet tall and one hundred and fifty pounds, with light hair and light eyes,
12:22
and wearing a shirt which had alternating dark and light colored horizontal stripes.
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He saw Pamela lock her car and followed the man towards the parking lot next
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to the motel's swimming pool area. A few minutes after the officer drove off,
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some of the guests at the motel recalled hearing the sounds of a woman
12:37
screaming out for help, but since the rooms there did not have phones,
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they were unable to call anyone for assistance. Unfortunately, the area would also
12:46
be hit with a heavy rainfall during his time period, which may have washed
12:48
away potential evidence prior to Pamela's arrival at the Prior to Pamela's arrival at the
12:54
motel, other witnesses had also recalled seeing a man urinating in public who matched
12:58
the description of the unidentified male. Okay, do we know if Pamela smoked
13:05
or anything like could she have been leaning up against the car when she arrived
13:09
and having a cigarette and someone walked up to talk to her, or maybe
13:11
she was trying to snag a cigarette from somebody walking by and that sparks a
13:15
conversation, or like, what do we know about why she might have been
13:20
outside the car. I'm just checking the Charlie Project profile page for it doesn't
13:24
say anything about cigarettes or her being a smoker, so I'm not entirely sure
13:28
about that. But one theory which has been pushed forward is that she might
13:33
have thought that this man was a motel manager or a motel employee who might
13:37
have been saying, Hey, your room's ready earlier than expected, you can
13:39
come in now, and was saying, like, accompany me to the office
13:43
or something. But of course he was just like a predator who took advantage
13:46
of the situation and then abducted her from the scene. It's like a bold
13:50
predator who would do that with two sleeping children in the car exactly. And
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it's just pretty much like pure chance, because you're not going to be expecting
13:58
to be hanging outside a motel at five twenty five am and just see a
14:03
woman arriving without her husband, just being alone with two kids, and know
14:07
that, hey, I can abduct her. So it just seems like Pamela
14:11
was just in the wrong place, the wrong time and just found this very
14:13
bold predator who just happened to be hanging around the area during the early morning
14:18
hours. One month after Pamela went missing, police received a promising lead when
14:24
a twenty nine year old Panama City resident named Andrew Paul Henry was arrested for
14:28
kidnapping and rape. On March fourth, a male suspect abducted a woman outside
14:35
a convenience store in the town of Chipley, located over fifty miles away.
14:39
He proceeded to hit her on the head with a bottle and choke her into
14:43
unconsciousness, before taking her into a wooded area and raping her. Even though
14:48
the perpetrator threatened to kill the woman, she managed to convince him to let
14:52
her go, and she subsequently reported the crime to police. When Henry was
14:56
arrested six months later, the vic and picked him out of a photo lineup,
15:01
But the problem is that there were some inconsistencies between Henry and the original
15:05
description that she provided of her attacker. For instance, she mentioned him sporting
15:11
a tattoo in a spot where Henry did not have one, and described the
15:15
attacker as driving a different brand of car than the one Henry drove. As
15:20
a result of these inconsistencies, the kidnapping and rape charges against Henry were dropped.
15:26
Henry did seem to match the description of the man seen with Pamela,
15:30
and there were also reports that he'd been sitting in a folding chair outside the
15:33
Wilheighte Motel in the hours prior to Pamela's disappearance. This guy in the chair
15:39
was also described as wearing a striped shirt, the same type of shirt the
15:43
patrol officer had seen on the man with Pamela. Police used cadaver dogs to
15:48
search the wooded area where the first female victim's attack took place, but they
15:52
never found evidence linking Henry to Pamela's case, and he has since passed away.
15:58
So they were thinking that this is somebody who has his own mo in
16:03
safe space where he's going to take his victims, right, So that's why
16:06
they go back and they're looking at that place where the first female victims attack
16:10
took place, but they find nothing. It is very interesting that while he
16:14
matches the description of the man in Pamela's case, this first victim actually isn't
16:21
necessarily describing him to a tee. The tattoos particularly concerning, because that's something
16:26
that you can't eliminate quickly or easily. She describes a tattoo, which is
16:33
something that was burned into her mind, something she wanted to remember. And
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then here is Henry and he doesn't have that tattoo. You could easily explain
16:41
the car away right, like how he borrowed somebody's car, or he even
16:45
stole a car when he abducted this other victim. But the tattoos concerning Now,
16:49
clearly Henry seems to have some problems. To what extent do you believe
16:56
he really was someone of interest in this case? Well, I even though
17:00
he was never charged with his rape, we're going to talk about how he
17:02
had other troubling stuff in his background at this time, so he definitely did
17:06
not seem like a good guy. And even though the attack the victim could
17:10
not do a positive ID, I think there's a good chance he did actually
17:14
raper and that maybe the inconsistencies with the tattoo in the car, maybe the
17:18
result of trauma of her being in like a terrible situation, so she's just
17:22
not remembering things as clearly as she could have. But I don't know if
17:25
there's anything that really ties him to Panama City Beach. Like. That's the
17:30
thing, is that even though he lived in the area where Pamela went missing,
17:33
he decided to drive over fifty miles away to abduct this woman in the
17:37
town of Chipley, which makes you think, well, if he's going to
17:40
commit crimes, maybe he prefers to commit them away from where he lives so
17:44
that it's more difficult to link him to them. So I don't know if
17:47
there's really a lot that links him to Pamela's case, but he definitely was
17:49
worth checking out because he does have a history of violence towards women. Yeah,
17:55
problematic behavior, but not necessarily fitting the description of what's happening here.
18:00
Can we clarify one thing if you know the answer, Robin, So the
18:04
guy sitting in the folding chair. Was he seen sitting in the folding chair
18:08
at like five am or is this after Pamela went missing? He was in
18:14
the folding chair just the hours prior to Pamela's disappearance, I mean, I
18:18
don't know if that means he was there at five am or if he had
18:21
just been seen like during the early morning hours before Pamela arrived, but he
18:25
apparently was not there after Pamela waent missing. Because the guy sitting in a
18:29
folding chair at eight thirty in the morning doesn't seem so weird, but being
18:33
out there at five am, just like chilling in a folding chair is a
18:37
little odd. Yeah, It's like, regardless of whether or not that guy
18:41
was Henry, I do think that the guy in the chair was probably Pamela's
18:44
a doctor. So after Pamela's father, Ralph Bennett, sent in a letter
18:49
to Unsolved Mysteries asking them to feature her story, they put together a special
18:53
alert segment about her disappearance, which aired in December of nineteen ninety two.
18:57
Well, the case would take us a prizing turn in nineteen ninety eight,
19:00
when a convicted murderer named Mark Reebe confessed to being responsible for the murders of
19:06
thirteen women, including Pamela. At the time, Reebe had recently started serving
19:11
a life sentence for another murder, which had also previously been featured on Unsolved
19:15
Mysteries. Several years ago, I released a minisode about the unsolved disappearance of
19:21
Deborah Po, a twenty six year old convenience store clerk who vanished while working
19:25
the graveyard shift at a Circle K in Orlando on February the fourth, nineteen
19:30
ninety and if you're one of our patrons, you might recall that we also
19:33
covered this one on an exclusive bonus minisode of The Path Went Chile. While
19:37
Deborah is still a missing person of this day, the Unsaw Mystery segment about
19:41
her case explored the possibility that her disappearance might have been connected to some other
19:47
cold cases from Florida involving female convenience store clerks. Six months earlier, on
19:52
August the sixth, nineteen eighty nine, twenty nine year old Donna Callahan,
19:56
who happened to be three months pregnant, vanished during in the middle of her
20:00
ship at a convenience store in Gulf Breeze. As the years went on,
20:03
words spread that a convicted inmate named William alex Wells, who was serving a
20:08
thirty year prison sentence for armed robbery, had confessed during a prison Bible study
20:12
session that he was responsible for killing Donna Callahan. After building up a case
20:18
against Wells, investigators eventually indicted him for Donna's murder, but in July of
20:22
nineteen ninety six, just as his trial was said to begin, Wells confessed
20:27
that both he and his half brother Mark Reebe were responsible for the crime.
20:32
According to Wells, as he was driving away from the convenience store following Donna's
20:36
abduction, Rhebe strangled her to death in the back seat before her body was
20:41
placed inside the trunk. They then proceeded a barrier in a wooded area of
20:45
Walton County, located just three hundred and fifty yards from their childhood home.
20:49
Wells passed a polygraph when he shared this story before leading investigators to Donna's remains,
20:55
and just under one year later, Rhebe would also be charged for his
20:59
role in the crime. In order to avoid the death penalty, both men
21:03
agreed to plead no contest to first scree murder, with Wells receiving two life
21:07
sentences without the possibility of parole, while Reebe received a sentence of twenty five
21:11
years to life in prison. Unbelievable. Gold Breeze is where I grew up.
21:17
I was five years old and I know of that case, So that
21:21
is insane. So Reebe is definitely tied to Donna's murder and disappearance, but
21:30
he's going to go on and claim these thirteen other victims, which is really
21:33
surprising because you have criminals who are going to come into prison and say they
21:38
didn't do anything, they're not guilty, and we also have the prisoners who
21:44
say, if I'm in here, I'm going to start to become as grandiose
21:47
as possible. And in my gut, I'm almost wondering, is Reebe going
21:51
to be one of those latter people who says, if I'm here, then
21:53
I'm going to be this grand killer and I'm going to go through like cold
21:57
case playing cards or newspaper articles and find women that I can claim I killed
22:02
as well. Yeah, we're going to talk about that in more detail as
22:06
we go along, but it's still up for debate if Reeby is one of
22:07
those guys who genuinely committed other crimes, or if he just wants to do
22:11
this to keep himself the center of attention because now he's locked up for the
22:15
rest of his life and has nothing else to lose. But one reason that
22:19
some people are skeptical that he may not want to commit to confessing to these
22:22
murders is that he may get the death penalty if he's convicted of one of
22:26
these other crimes, because Florida has the death penalty. So I think that's
22:30
what's held him back if he is guilty of offering corroborating evidence or leading the
22:36
authorities to these missing victims remains because it doesn't seem it doesn't seem like it
22:41
would be unlikely that he would have committed another murder because of the type of
22:45
murder that this was. That he strangled a woman. I mean, that
22:51
is a great predictor, just the strangling alone. When you see in domestic
22:53
violence situation that somebody will later murder their partner. But you've got somebody just
23:00
so easily murders a woman in the back seat in that way. It is
23:03
so upclose and personal and so intimate. To think that he never did before
23:08
and he never did again after that just seems unlikely to me. But I
23:12
think you're probably right, Robin. Why would you want to admit that you
23:15
did it in Florida and like really confess to it, put your name on
23:19
the dotted line when you could be executed because of it. And I mean,
23:23
I'm sure that there would be district attorneys who would say, okay,
23:27
well, if you decide to do that, so we close this case.
23:30
We'll take the death penalty off the table. But if you've got a district
23:34
attorney who's not willing to do that, then what would be his motivation to
23:40
confess and then potentially die. What I think is interesting, though, is
23:45
you see such a cowardly act in that, Like you have these guys who
23:48
come for the like, oh, I had stuff to do, I've killed
23:51
twenty five people, and then when like you're faced with consequences or having to
23:56
be accountable or help the family get justice, it's like, oh, I
23:59
I don't I'm not gonna do that. I'm you know, I'm scared at
24:02
this point. And then you still portray yourself as some big, bad killer.
24:06
It's like a serial killer like Dick measuring competition. You get these awful
24:11
dudes like the Henry Lee Lucases and stifle ouh, yeah, kill little of
24:14
these people, and it's like, dude, no one's impressed. Yeah,
24:18
I was just gonna mention Henry le Lucas that he confessed to any murder that
24:22
he that he could find. But once he actually got sense to death for
24:26
one of these and there was a chance he would be executed, that's when
24:27
he started recanting. And that's kind of the ironic thing with Henry Lee Lucas
24:32
is that the one crime he was sent to death for was the murder of
24:34
a woman named Deborah Jackson. But it turned out like he was in Florida,
24:38
like in an entirely different state. He was murdered in Texas at the
24:41
time that the crime was committed, and I think he realized, uh,
24:45
oh, they're actually gonna kill me for confessing to this one. I better
24:47
recant and stop doing this. Well, like we just mentioned, shortly after
24:52
he was sent to prison, Reevey started confessing to a number of other unsolved
24:57
cold cases from Florida, including the disappearance of Pamela June Ray. In nineteen
25:03
ninety two, Rhebe was married to his fourth wife and living in the town
25:07
of Shallamar. According to Reeb they both decided to go out partying at a
25:11
club in Panama City Beach, but after running out of money during the early
25:15
morning hours, they started driving around in the red Pontiac Firebird looking for someone
25:19
to rob while cruising down Front Beach Road, Rhebe saw Pamela's Plymouth sun Dance
25:25
parked at the Willheight Motel, and after noticing that it had out of state
25:30
tags, he told his wife to pull over. He then proceeded to abduct
25:33
Pamela at knife point, before placing her inside his firebird and fleeing the scene.
25:38
Rieby then claimed that he murdered Pamela, but he would provide two different
25:42
accounts of how he disposed of her body, at first claiming that he buried
25:47
her body in Walton County, until he revised his story and said he dumped
25:51
Pamela in the ocean. Rebe's story seemed to match the account of the patrol
25:56
officer who saw Pamela following another man, and Reeby also mentioned that she let
26:02
out a scream for help when he pulled a knife on her, which had
26:04
been reported by other guests at the motel. When asked to provide a detail
26:08
that only the perpetrator would have known, Reeve stated that Pamela had been carrying
26:12
a single key in her hand, a detail which seemed to be accurate,
26:17
as Pamela was seen locking her car door and the rest of her keys were
26:21
found inside the vehicle. However, Reebe would eventually recount his confession, not
26:26
only denying any involvement in Pamela's disappearance, but also to the other dozen murders
26:30
he admitted to. Yeah, this is definitely an attorney got in and said,
26:36
what are you doing. Shut your mouth, recant everything that you've ever
26:38
said to anybody, trying to get his client off of these other charges.
26:44
But what kind of person is this? Is this like a David Parker Ray
26:48
who the toy box killer, who cruises around with his wife and when they
26:52
need to or when the opportunity strikes, they abduct and kill women. Like
26:57
what is his wife doing when this is happening, Like, hey, honey,
27:00
pull over, we're gonna jump this woman over here. And she's like
27:03
cool and pulls over and helps him. Yeah. This is the thing about
27:08
the case that confuses me is that even though, like my friend Crystal Don,
27:11
has done extensive research, she's never been able to find any clarification on
27:15
how the authorities view Reebe's wife. I mean, I'm sure they've interviewed her,
27:19
but if they found any evidence that she was involved in any of his
27:25
crimes, They've never said so, so, I mean it could be true,
27:27
but since we know so little about Reebe's wife, he could completely be
27:32
making up this detail and she had no involvement. I'm gonna guess that Reebe
27:37
was not the best husband, though, because he had four wives exactly.
27:41
Yes, nobody stayed married to him for very long. Hey, King Henry
27:45
had six, so just let it. Let it be, okay. Oh,
27:48
and he was a great husband, I'm sure so. In spite of
27:55
Reebe's recantation, in April of two thousand, a search was conducted of the
27:59
Wood and Walton County where Donna Callahan's remains have been found, and some skeleton
28:03
remains would be discovered just one hundred yards away from the location where Donna had
28:07
been buried. They were sent to Canada for further DNA and forensic testing,
28:12
and it's unclear what happened next, as I've never been able to find any
28:15
more details about this. But here's the complication. The remains were discovered by
28:21
a Doberman pincher named Eagle, who had been trained by his notorious handler,
28:25
Sandra Anderson. Eagle supposedly had a talent for sniffing out human remains and Unsaw
28:30
Mysteries even produced a segment about his unique gift. But the problem is that
28:34
Anderson was a complete fraud who would steal human bones from a medical examiner's office
28:40
and plant them for her dog to quote unquote discover during police searches. Anderson
28:45
wound up receiving a twenty one month prison sends. And while it's never been
28:48
officially confirmed that she planted any remains during the search for Pamela, it would
28:52
not surprise me if this is the reason there has been no follow up news
28:56
on the remains from Walton County. This makes me so angry and devastated because
29:03
forensic science and the faults that come with that, both purposeful and then just
29:07
human error, have been a really big topic of research and you know,
29:14
media and things like that in the recent years. But these are pieces of
29:18
quote science that put people in prison. It took people and put them on
29:23
death row and had them executed. And to know that there are people like
29:29
Sandra Anderson who said, my fame, my notoriety, is more important than
29:34
a victim's family, getting the truth, getting the right person off the street,
29:41
putting someone in prison and taking their life away from them, or even
29:44
physically taking their life away from them with the executions. There are so many
29:49
people that have done this in our history of forensic science that you go,
29:55
it makes it hard to trust any of the human based sciences that we have.
29:59
And it's people like Sandra Anderson to think she got twenty one month and
30:03
that's it for stealing human remains, planting different things, becoming a fraud,
30:10
helping police possibly convict the wrong people. It's so much bigger than a year
30:15
and a half. Like that blows my mind. Oh yeah, Sandra Anderson,
30:19
this is not the only case I've covered on the Trail and Cold in
30:22
which she is screwed up the investigation by planting human remains. And there was
30:26
another case where she almost got a guilty murderer freed because she actually used her
30:30
dog and the dog legitimately found human remains of a woman that had been murdered
30:36
by her husband and he did do it. But because Sandra Anderson, like
30:41
had screwed up the investigation so badly, she almost got a new trial just
30:45
to say, well, if she planted remains in this case, then maybe
30:48
she planted remains in this case as well. So when people do this then
30:52
it puts their entire body of work into question and screws up so many investigations.
30:56
In recent years, there's been a renewed interest in this case thanks to
31:00
an unusual story which was shared by Mark Greeby's daughter, Jelena Hayes. Jelena
31:06
grew up in an abusive household, but she has since developed a close friendship
31:10
with Pamela's sister Ronda Bishop and wants to help her solve this case. When
31:15
Jelena was four years old, her father was being investigated for Donna Callahan's disappearance
31:21
and an excavation was being performed of her family's property to search for Donna's remains.
31:26
While this was going on, Jelena claimed that her father made an abrupt
31:30
decision to pack up all their belongings into a pair of Uhaul trucks in the
31:34
middle of the night and move the entire family away from their home. They
31:38
would travel all the way to Warrensburg, Illinois, and during the trip,
31:42
Jelena noticed that some garbage bins had been loaded into one of the trucks,
31:47
and her father told her not to go near them. After they arrived at
31:51
some property in Warrensburg which belonged to the sister of Reeby's wife. He instructed
31:55
Jelena and her siblings to dig up some large holes, which he said would
31:59
be used for a garden. The children did as they were instructed, but
32:04
afterwards Reebe removed some garbage bags from the aforementioned bins and buried them in the
32:08
holes. Jelena now fears that the begs may have contained some of the remains
32:13
of some of her father's victims, including Pamela. By the time Jelena shared
32:17
this story, the property had new owners, but they gave the Macon County
32:22
Sheriff's Office permission to perform a search of the property in July twenty nineteen.
32:28
However, after spending an entire day performing an excavation, they were unable to
32:31
find anything. Yikes. I feel really sad for Jelina. She's clearly someone
32:38
who grew up in a very volatile home, was very aware of her father's
32:44
violent temper and possible involvement in criminal behavior, and so that insecurity that instability
32:51
that she grew up with, she sees a family who's struggling and hurting,
32:54
and a father who's claimed that he actually had something to do with these other
33:00
disappearances are murders, and she's saying, how can I help? How can
33:04
I right the wrongs of my father? Imagine the weight and the heaviness that
33:08
would come from being the daughter of a killer and saying, Okay, I'm
33:15
not him right, having the strength to say that's not me. And if
33:17
I might know something, I'm gonna help. I'm gonna reach out and not
33:22
only try to help, but befriend people. And how strong is Pamela's sister
33:28
to say, heck, yeah, I'd love your help like I would love
33:31
to have you help me. That takes a lot of grace and understanding on
33:36
her part as well. So I'm in my head, I'm racking my brain
33:39
going, Okay, did they use ground penetrating technology? How did they search?
33:44
Did they just excavate by, you know, shovels and tractors or what
33:47
were they? What were they doing? Not that we have all that information,
33:52
but man, can you imagine what if that really was evidence from her
33:58
father's crimes. Yeah, were gonna talk more about this in our next episode.
34:01
But one of the few bright spots of this story is that it sounds
34:06
like Mark Reebe's family has developed a very close relationship with Pamela June Ray's family
34:10
and that they've become very close, and that even Mark Reebey's own family thinks
34:15
he's a douchebag. They think that if he did kill Kamela, that he
34:19
should come clean and admit it, because he sounds like someone who has treated
34:22
everyone he has known in his life very badly. I mean, we talked
34:25
about him being a bad husband, and this kind of proves that he was
34:29
a bad father as well, that he may have taken his children out and
34:32
helped him bury some bodies. So that is kind of heartwarming that Baby's family
34:37
has offered Pamela's family they're one hundred percent support to try to get this case
34:42
solved. Around the same time period, Jelena would also uncover a photograph of
34:46
her mother wearing a ring, which Ronda Bishop believes is the same ring Pamela
34:51
had been wearing at the time she went missing. Ever since Reebe confessed to
34:54
Pamela's murder, Ronda has written him five letters to ask if he killed her
34:59
sister, but while Reebe has always responded, he has never actually answered the
35:04
question. His letters are usually filled with ramblings, and he refused to meet
35:07
Ronda in person at the moment. Mark Raeby is still considered to be a
35:12
suspect in Pamela's disappearance, but no evidence is ever conclusively linked him to the
35:16
crime, and she continues to remain a missing person. So I guess you
35:21
could say the path went chilly, man. I know I just said this,
35:25
But the fact that Ronda and Jelina have that relationship, and that Ronda
35:30
is saying, I'll continue to fight for answers. I even have someone in
35:34
his own family who is beside me helping me try to get information. You
35:39
see these moments in court where a killer will get sentenced, and very recently,
35:45
I can't remember whichdays it was, but the daughter of the killer walks
35:47
out of court crying, and all she did was look at the other family
35:51
and say, I'm so sorry. And she's crying. She just lost her
35:54
dad, right because he's going to prison as a murderer. So the man
35:59
she up with she's lost. And I remember in this case that I watch
36:04
the mom turn away from her family, walks over to the daughter and embraces
36:08
her and says, I'm so sorry. We both lost here, Like I'm
36:12
so sorry and I love you. I don't blame you, and that grace
36:15
and support that those two families have from this freak decision somebody else makes Wow.
36:23
It is probably the only ray of humanity and hope you see when you're
36:28
looking at cases like this, when you truly see that kind of grace.
36:31
It's unbelievable to me. And the fact that Ronda is writing him and he
36:36
writes back but won't answer her questions is very manipulative and narcissistic of him.
36:42
He loves the attention, but he's refusing to give Ronda either I didn't do
36:45
it and I lied, I'm sorry that I misled you, or admit to
36:49
doing it and get justice for her. He won't do either. So it's
36:52
to me very disgusting and disgraceful. Yeah, because even if Reeby did do
36:58
this, he could just like it all by just saying no, I did
37:00
not kill your sister. But he just knows well, if I never provide
37:04
her with a concrete answer, she'll keep writing me and I can still be
37:07
the center of attention. So regardless of whether he's guilty or innocent, the
37:10
behavior is despicable. So I think this would be a good time to bring
37:15
it into Part one, but join us next week as we present part two
37:17
of our series about the disappearance of Pamela June Ray Robin, do you want
37:23
to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes,
37:27
The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer
37:30
these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out
37:36
stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon.
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If you join our five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly
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bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail
37:50
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38:02
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38:07
episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
38:13
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in
38:16
this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary
38:21
track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download
38:24
a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor,
38:30
then be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you know
38:32
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38:39
which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're
38:44
just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those.
38:46
So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the
38:50
show notes. So I want to thank you all for listening, and any
38:53
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38:57
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39:00
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39:05
until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and Chili pass
39:08
call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy