Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Maureen Fields BONUS Patreon Upcycle

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Maureen Fields BONUS Patreon Upcycle · The Path Went Chilly

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Welcome back to the Path wind Chili for this month's bonus Patreon minisoke, I'm
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Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's
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case. February fourteenth, two thousand and six, horum Nevada, forty one
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year old Marine Fields arrives her work at her bank and expresses concern that something
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is going to happen to her. The following day, Marine fails to show
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up for work, and her husband, Paul Fields, claims that he last
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saw her when she left the house that morning. Maureene's abandoned car is discovered
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in the desert, along with many of her personal items, which she is
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nowhere to be found, and suspicion is directed towards her husband. Years later,
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DNA evidence from the scene is matched to a convicted sex offender named Keith
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Wayne Holmes, but because he's suffering from dementia, he's unable to provide concrete
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answers about what happened and soon passes away. After that, the Path went
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chilly, So today we're going to be exploring a case which took place on
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Valentine's Day. The two thousand and six Disappearance of Marine Fields. This is
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the story of a Nevada woman whose abandoned car was discovered in a remote desert
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area of California, but a search of the area failed to turn up any
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trace of her body on the surface. This appeared to be one of those
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missing persons cases where it seemed obvious that the spouse was responsible, as Marine's
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marriage to her husband, Paul Fields, was in a very troubled place,
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and prior to her disappearance, Marine had expressed concern that her life might be
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in danger. But to everyone's surprise, when DNA testing was performed on a
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pair of pantyhose found in Marine's car, it wound up matching an elderly convicted
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sex offender named Keith Wayne Holmes, who was serving time in a California prison
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at that point for an unrelated crime. When questioned, Holmes originally stated that
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he knew Paul Fields, which implied that Paul may have hired him to murder
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Marine. But the problem is that Holmes was suffering from dementia, so he
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kept changing his story and was unable to provide a consistent answer about why his
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DNA was found on Marine's pantyhose. Holmes eventually passed away, so investigators have
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been unable to figure out how he fits into this case or what actually happened
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to Marine. So we're definitely going to have a lot to talk about on
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today's episode. Well, here's what I was thinking as you're starting to describe
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this case. I thought, Oh my gosh, her poor husband. Of
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course becomes the number one suspect and the person that is going to be tied
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to this murder because or disappearance, because that's what happens in these cases.
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We all know the husband is going to be number one suspect. And then
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you have the idea that the DNA actually matches Holmes, who's suffering from dementia.
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But Holmes does throw out that it's possible Paul Fields hired him to kill
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his wife, and then we learned that there's a trouble marriage, so I
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have to know more. I wanted to have complete empathy and sympathy for the
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husband, and now I just need answers. Well, I'll tell you that,
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regardless of whether or not the husband did it, it does sound like
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he was a major jerk, So I don't think you can have much sympathy
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for him. By the way, Our story begins in two thousand and six
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in Perumph, Nevada, an unincorporated desert town located in Nye County, over
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sixty miles west of Las Vegas near the California state line. Our central figure
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is forty one year old Marine Fields, who lives with air fifty six year
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old husband, Paul Fields. The couple have been married for nearly fifteen years
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and originally hail from New Jersey. They've lived in Perump for ten months,
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and Marine now works as a bank teller at the local Wells Fargo branch.
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On Valentine's Day, Marine showed up for work at the bank, but both
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her co workers and customers noticed that she seemed very perturbed. At various points
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throughout the day, Maureene broke out into tears, but would not go into
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any specifics about what was bothering her, only stating quote, Something's going to
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happen. When one of her colleagues asked if she was going to have a
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good Valentine's Day, Marine replied no. Marine never did share what was wrong,
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and when she left the bank at the end of her shift that day,
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he would turn out to be the last time she was confirmed to be
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alive. The following morning, Maureene was supposed to show up for work at
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eight thirty a m. But never arrived. After twenty minutes passed, her
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co worker decided to phone Marine's husband, Paul at home. Paul claimed that
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Marine had left the house at eight am to drive to work and he didn't
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have any idea where she was. However, he said that he was going
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to go to the police station and file a missing person's report for her.
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Well. Paul went to the police that morning, but the only thing he
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did was inquire about whether or not there had been any reported accidents involving a
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green two thousand and four Hyundai, which was the vehicle Marine drove. When
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the police told him no, Paul left the station. He would later claim
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that he attempted to report Maureene missing but was informed that he'd have to wait
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at least twenty four hours. However, the deputy on duty said that when
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Paul inquired about the accidents, he never actually mentioned anything about his wife at
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all. Okay, Robin, you're right, Paul seems like he already is
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a suspicious character, because the I thanks calling him around eight point fifty in
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the morning, saying hey, Marine never showed up for work, and he's
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like, I'm on it. I'm going to file a missing person's report.
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It's like, okay, I don't think that would be your first reaction.
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I think you'd be in a little bit of a panic, like, Okay,
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let me retrace her steps, let me call me if you hear something,
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and then you might start going I need to go have the police help
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me look for her. But the first thing you do when you walk through
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those doors is say, my wife hasn't shown up for work. I need
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help. Can you please help me look for her. I need to file
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a missing person's report. I'm horrified of what could have happened to her.
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He's basically just saying have you had a car accident reported? Or Okay,
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then have a great day, and he walks off. He's lying to the
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people at the bank. He's misrepresenting what he did at the police department.
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Why would you do that? I know grief makes you do very bizarre things,
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but why those actions when you think he would have a totally different,
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more calculated approach to trying to help find Marine. I'm going to venture a
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guess, and this is just allegedly, but grief does not make you behave
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like this. This is a bit of a reach for me. The fact
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that he goes into the police station and we see people sometimes when it's like
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the quote unquote the husband did it, and they're doing the most in order
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to kind of avert any eyes or suspicion away from them. But in this
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case, it feels like he's doing the very bare minimum so he can say,
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oh, yeah, I was there, I did this, but he
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actually doesn't want to alert law enforcement for any number of reasons. Maybe he
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wants to make sure that whoever he collaborated with, if he was indeed involved,
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he has had time to get rid of any evidence, or he himself
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needs to come up with a proper story or alibi. It just is very,
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very concerning because that doesn't seem to be the reaction of a loving husband.
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I know grief makes people do crazy things, but it just doesn't seem
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like if you're grieving that you wouldn't care where your wife was. Because these
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seem to be the actions of somebody who doesn't really and truly want to find
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his wife, because he hasn't even articulated that she's missing, And would you
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go straight to a missing person's like finding a missing person's report fifty minutes after
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she was supposed to be at work. Like my first reaction would be like,
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oh my god, Okay, something's happened. I'm going to call these
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people. Can you guys call these people. I'm gonna drive her route to
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work. I'll meet you at the bank, And like there would just be
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a different reaction of like, Okay, she's an hour late to work.
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That's weird, but let me do let me do these things, let me
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get up there and let's see what we can do. Like I don't know
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that I'd be heading to the police department five zero minutes later, fifteen minutes
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later, and you'd call a hospital, you'd call her good friends, you'd
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call her mother, anybody who's related. You'd start like a phone chain and
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be like, has anybody seeing Maureen? This is completely uncharacteristic. I agree
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with you. I think fifty minutes seems like a very narrow timeframe to go
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straight to the police, and then the way that he approached it seems extremely
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odd. So there's some incongruities here for sure. And technically it's not even
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fifty minutes because she was supposed to arrive at eight thirty, and they called
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him twenty minutes later, so technically, she's only twenty minutes late, like
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she could have gotten caught in traffic or something. And his first response was,
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Oh, I'm going to go straight to the police and foul a missing
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person's report, Like even the most loving spouses are not going to be that
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concerned that fast. Oh my gosh, I thought you I thought work was
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at eight. It is. She left the house supposedly at eight, Robin,
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You're so right, So twenty minutes late, he's going missing person's report,
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time to turn her in. Red flag, red flag. Yeah,
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Like he was just trying to put on a show to make himself look like
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the concerned husband. Like what if she just lost track of time and stopped
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at a Starbucks or got a flat tire. Any number of things can happen
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in twenty minutes. I could understand if she was like six hours late and
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you haven't heard from anybody, and you're going, okay, at this time,
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we really got to do something, glad to go to the police.
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But twenty minutes, I mean, my husband's been late twenty minutes for plenty
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of things. And the last thing I was thinking, is I better alert
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the authorities. So the day after Marine disappeared, her green Hyundai was discovered
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abandoned across the state line in the Mojave Desert in Inyo County, California.
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It was parked nearly one hundred and twenty feet from the highway at a location
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which was over twenty miles away from Perump and in close proximity to Death Valley.
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The keys were still in the vehicle's ignition, the driver's seat was fully
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reclined, and Marine's purse, which still contained her wallet and credit cards,
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had been left behind. There were numerous items inside the vehicle, including a
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pair of knotted pantyhose, some religious pamphlets, and Marine's eyeglasses and slippers,
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which were underneath the gas pedal. There was also a twenty two caliber rifle
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in the back seat, along with multiple bottles of prescription painkillers, including one
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bottle of Xanax which appeared to be empty. On the ground outside the vehicle,
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there was a blanket with very small traces of blood and vomit on it.
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However, an extensive search of the surrounding desert turned up no trace of
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Marine. Initially, there was speculation that Marine might have wandered off into the
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desert and completed suicide by overdosing on the pills from the empty Xanax bottle,
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but this theory was shot down once it was discovered that the bottle had been
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completely wipe clean of fingerprints. In addition, there was unidentified male DNA on
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the knotted pantyhose, so fear began to set in that Marine had been the
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victim of foul play. There's a lot of concerning things here. You have
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the twenty two caliber rifle in the back seat, but you also have that
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front seat that's tilted backwards, it's reclined. We see this so often in
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criminal cases where when you arrive at the car and that front seat is out
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of the traditional position of like what that victim would be driving, So location
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of the steerum wheel, the way that the back would be set, all
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of those things, it shows that something else happened that front seat beyond driving
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to that location and leaving, almost like a sexual assault happened in the front
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seat where the attacker pushes the seat back to provide that room to attack the
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victim. And so for me, that's always one of those things I look
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for in a case is I say, what was the position of the front
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seat. Was it the same spacing and the same upright position that she'd be
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driving in And in this case no, So that to me, an addition
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to the DNA you find on the panty hose, shows that something else happened
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here. She didn't drive there to complete suicide. And one clarification is that
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I don't know if they've ever done DNA testing on the blood in the vombit
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to confirm that it belonged to marine. I'm kind of guessing it did,
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because if it matched anyone else, I'm sure we would have heard about it.
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But the blood isn't unusual if she was murdered, but the bombit is.
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So it almost makes me wonder maybe she was forced to follow swallow some
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pills against her will. Either that or with trauma, end up being upset
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of being let's say, sexually assaulted or something of that. Instead being so
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scared, she could have also vomited. You could have had a killer that
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may have felt remorse or discussed with what they did, and they also could
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have vomited. Well. Suspicion immediately turned towards Paul Fields, who still claimed
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he last saw Marine when she left for work on the morning of February fifteenth.
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He said they'd gotten into an argument before she left, and the last
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words she said to him more quote, I might as well do it now.
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Why wait? According to Paul, the argument had stemmed from him turning
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down sex with her the night before, but no one could be certain if
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Paul's story was true, as the last independent eyewitnessed who could confirm having seen
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Maureen were her coworkers, who saw her leave the bank on Valentine's Day.
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According to Marine's family and friends, her marriage to Paul was not in good
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shape at that point and she was looking for a divorce. He was known
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for being a jealous, domineering husband, and even though Marine claimed Paul had
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never crossed the line into physical abuse, she appeared to be afraid of him
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and had even said quote, if I ever disappear, tell police. Paul
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did it. Before he met Marine, Paul already had a previous divorce under
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his belt and was estranged from his two daughters. According to Paul's ex wife,
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he would miss his child support payments, and whenever she denied him visitation
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with his daughters, she would soon find her windshields smashed or tires slashed well.
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Paul denied harming Marine and seemed certain that she had abandoned her car in
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the desert and orchestrated her own disappearance. He claimed the Marine had been draining
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money from their joint bank accounts because of a gambling problem, and had withdrawn
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two thousand and taken seven thousand in cash advances off their credit cards before she
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went missing. When police checked the couple's financial records, they discovered the Marine
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had taken a four thousand dollars advance off of one of her credit cards,
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but used the money to pay off the balance on another card. The one
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detail which made Marine's family and friends skeptical about her disappearing voluntarily was the fact
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that she left behind her pet pitbull dog, Wolfy, whom she absolutely adored,
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and no one believed that she would have ever taken off without WOLFI okay
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for me, I almost feel like this is a reverse of what actually happened
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that day. So you have Paul who says, oh, Marine's mad because
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I denied her sex and she took all this money and was gambling it away.
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And I wonder if it's really Paul who's gambling their money away. Maureene
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cans him. Maureene's the one who denies him sex because she's so mad at
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him, and then he stages this idea that he's gonna hurt her. But
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it seems to me like he would be the one who is sitting there saying,
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okay, let me take my actions and reverse them on themselves. Like
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Maureen was mad at me about all of these things. I attacked and killed
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her, maybe even accidentally, but just of a rage. So I'm going
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to stage it and tell the police she did all of these troubling behaviors which
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would set her up for that suicide or running away. And instead he's really
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covering for his own actions, like she's so upset that she was denied sex
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from the man that she wants to divorce from, that she's going to decide
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to end her own life. Like okay, Paul, I agree. It's
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like classic projection exactly, and just the whole line, like I might as
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well do it now. Why wait? It sounds like something you'd hear a
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character say on a soap opera, Like you're rarely going to see someone say
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that if they're being suicidal, say this very dramatic line, and then conveniently,
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when they find her car, it's like an empty Xanax bottle. So
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there it sounds like he's trying to plant the seats that she went off on
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her own and completed suicide. But of course, since there were no fingerprints
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found on the pill bottle, the police did not buy that at all.
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So it definitely seems like major projection, and he's accusing Marine of doing a
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lot of the stuff that he himself had done. So Paul's alibi for Valentine's
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Day was that he went out to dinner with a friend, brought home food
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for Marine, and then spent the rest of the evening watching television without leaving
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his mobile home. However, police checked Paul's cell phone records from that night
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and saw that he made a call to an acquaintance which pinged off a cell
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phone tower. The location of this tower seemed to suggest that Paul would have
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had to be on the other side of town in order to make this call.
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When questioned by police, there were numerous details about Paul's story which would
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change. As you recall, a twenty two caliber rifle had been found in
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the back of Marine's hunday, and when asked by police if any weapons were
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missing from his home, Paul checked his closet and expressed surprise that a twenty
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two caliber rifle was missing. However, in an interview years later, Paul
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claimed that he had given the rifle to Marine to take to a gun shop
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in order to get an estimate on how much it would cost repair, which
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seemed to go against his story about giving off a surprised reaction when he discovered
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the rifle was not in his closet anyway. After the mandatory ninety day waiting
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period following Marine's disappearance, Paul immediately went to court to try to get her
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name taken off their joyly owned property, and was met with resistance from Marine's
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family. Paul was able to have Marine declared legally dead in two thousand and
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nine and became executor of her estate, though it was generally standard practice for
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a person to be missing at least seven years before they're declared dead in absentia,
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the police openly considered Paul to be the prime suspect and attempted to file
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charges against him for Marine's disappearance, but the local district attorney's office felt that
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the evidence was insufficient. Paul continued to maintain his innocence, and the investigation
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would eventually turn in a very surprising direction. Okay, so the gun is
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really an interesting tibet. But let's back up. Even before that, him
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Valentine's Day, he's out to dinner with his friend, very weird, and
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then he's going to bring dinner home to Marine. It seems like when he
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talks about, oh, I just had this amazing night with my friend,
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I brought up home dinner for my wife. We just hung out, you
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know, and I watched TV because supposedly she was there and left at eight
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am the next morning. So it's interesting that Maureene was having such a bad
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day at work and she said she's going to have a terrible Valentine's Day.
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And his story is that he was out with friends, he came home and
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brought her dinner. It was just a very calm and relaxing night. I
19:22
just don't think that is what happened. I think the day had started off
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horrific and she knew she was coming home to a hailstorm of abuse, and
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something happened that evening. It could be that Paul even had that dinner with
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friends and was across town on purpose to show police. You know, I
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was not even near Maureene at the time. And then you get to this
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gun where he says, oh, my goodness, a gun is missing from
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my closet and it happens to be a twenty two caliber weapon. Oh wait,
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there was a twenty two found in our car. Okay, well,
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I had actually given that to her to go see if you can get fixed.
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Those are massive errors in your story. One that would be a shock
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and it's missing. Did Maureene take it to hurt herself? And the other
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one's like, oh, I can explain that away because maybe his fingerprints were
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on it or whatever else he was trying to cover. With the second story,
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he tells, Paul's a mess. I've got a question for you both.
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Who casually goes out for Valentine's Day dinner with friends but doesn't take their
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wife Because typically most restaurants have set menus. You're going to pay like double
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the price, and you're gonna be sitting around all of these couples and sometimes
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like awkward first dates. It can be such a hallmark holiday type of a
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situation and it just feels really bizarre that he's gonna be out like, oh,
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just super casual out with friends on Valentine's date and going to bring my
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wife who's sitting at home dinner. Doesn't that feel weird? That's the part
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that seems weird to me is if you're gonna go out with your friends because
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you're pissed at your wife, go out with your friends and stay out all
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night, but don't say you went out with friends, waited hours to get
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seated at a table, and then brought her home dinner and had this relaxing
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night. You were either going to spend it with your friends or you were
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going to spend it with your wife, like which one isn't Because as we're
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going to talk about, we're going to explore a theory that Paul hired someone
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to kill his wife. So I see no indication that this story about going
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out to dinner with a friend isn't true. So that could have been his
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way of making an alibi for himself and placing himself in public if someone else
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was killing his wife. But of course it just doesn't fit the facts because
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he's the one saying that, oh, when I got home, I was
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the one who denied sex to my wife, And I'm thinking, if you
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spent dinner with friends, I think she would be the one denying sex for
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you. So nothing about this story holds up. In twenty twelve, there
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was finally a match on the unidentified male DNA found on the knotted pante hoose
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inside Marine's car. It was linked to an eighty one year old registered sex
21:56
offender named Keith Wayne Holmes, who was incarcerated for trying to lure a twelve
22:00
year old girl into his car in Pere Blossom, California. When Holmes was
22:06
arrested for the incident in June twenty eleven, a newspaper clipping of an anniversary
22:11
article about Marine's disappearance was found under a mattress in his nineteen sixty five Ford
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Camper. At that time, Holmes already had numerous sexual offenses on his record,
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and he also apparently had a history of picking up sex workers, beating
22:26
them, and abandoning them by the side of the road. While Pear Blossom
22:32
was over two hundred miles away from Perump, investigators did uncover evidence that Holmes
22:37
was in the parumpt area in two thousand and six, witnesses remembered homes frequenting
22:42
local campgrounds during this time period in his forward camper, and he was known
22:48
for singing church music around the campfire. When investigators questioned Holmes, he admitted
22:53
to knowing Marine and explained the presence of his DNA by claiming that they had
22:59
considered and jewel sex together, but he denied harming Marine and said that he
23:03
left her alive in Death Valley before they went their separate ways. When asked
23:08
about Paul Fields, Holmes claimed he did know him, but he wouldn't provide
23:12
any further details. That's a really disturbing part that he does say that he
23:18
one did have sexual contact with her and two knew who Paul Fields was.
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Again, he has dementias, so we can't necessarily say with certainty that he's
23:29
confident in what he's saying or that he's not falsifying information to get attention.
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But he does have these sex crimes on his record. You do see that
23:37
front seat leaned back and the DNA is located on the panty hose, indicating
23:42
a sexual encounter of some nature. But I feel like if you were having
23:48
an affair and you were at your wits in with your husband, and you're
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telling people that you know, if I go missing, it's my husband.
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I feel like there might have been one or two friends, your mom,
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somebody that knew like, hey, I'm like getting attention from somebody else.
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It's amazing. I'm going to pursue that I want away from my husband.
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There was no part of Marine. I don't think of as having an affair
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on the side with a convicted sex offender and then just accidentally goes missing or
24:18
is killed after their casual sexual encounter. That just does not seem to fit
24:22
the bill here at all. Well, Marine was forty one years old at
24:26
the time and Holmes was in his seventies, and if you look up photographs
24:30
of him, he's a creepy looking dude. And I find it very unlikely
24:33
that someone like Marine is going to be having consensual sex with him, even
24:37
if she was angry with her husband. And of course this thing about oh
24:40
I left her alive and Death Valley we went our separate ways, and it's
24:42
like Death Valley is a desert area in the middle of nowhere which can get
24:47
very hot and you can die if you're left alone there. So it seems
24:51
pretty weird that they would just go and have sex out there in the desert
24:53
and then just leave her there and stuff. It just doesn't hold up.
24:56
And I don't know if he was making up the story to cover him himself
25:00
or because of his dementia, he had no idea what was really going on,
25:03
and it just had these elaborate fantasies, but nobody bought it. It
25:07
sounds pretty calculated though. It sounds like you're trying to explain away if they
25:12
ever find the body and you can actually connect the physical evidence that he's like,
25:17
well, obviously it's there. I said that we had consensual sex.
25:21
It seems like maybe he just made up the story. But it's one of
25:25
those things we see perpetrators do where they lie and they're like, oh,
25:29
yeah, like I had consensual sex with the victims. So if you find
25:32
my fingerprints or my DNA, then that's why it's not because I murdered them.
25:37
I left them alive. Somebody else must have done that. Well.
25:41
Needless to say, no one believed Holmes's story about consensual sex with Marine,
25:45
but there were already major issues with questioning him. By this point, Holmes
25:49
was suffering from dementia. And while police continued to interview him on multiple occasions,
25:55
he became less and less lucid. It eventually reached the point where Holmes
25:59
would confess such crimes as the murders of his mother and his wife, and
26:03
he even started believing that one of the detectives was his son. The final
26:07
time Holmes was questioned, he was in a prison hospice bed, and when
26:11
asked if he knew Paul Fields, he answered quote, I think so.
26:15
But when asked if he remembered how he knew Paul, Holmes simply replied no.
26:19
In the end, Holmes could not provide any conclusive answers about what happened
26:22
to Marine, and he died in April of twenty fourteen. For his part,
26:27
Paul denied knowing Holmes, and obviously the statements of a suspect with dementia
26:32
could hardly be considered concrete evidence against him. However, in spite of the
26:37
DNA match to Holmes, investigators made it clear that they have not eliminated Paul
26:41
as a suspect. But unfortunately, there's still no answers about what actually happened
26:45
to Marine, and her body has never been found, So I guess you
26:49
could say the path went Chile. That's pretty powerful when you have a DNA
26:56
mounted to a convicted sex offender and you're pretty confident that we did not survive
27:00
this attack, and you say, okay, yes, so we have this
27:04
match to Holmes. Yes, he says he had an encounter with Maureen,
27:07
even though he's lying about the nature of that encounter. But just so you
27:11
know, Paul is not off of our radar whatsoever. That's pretty damning,
27:18
exactly like I've seen a lot of cases like this where the husband is a
27:22
suspect and then they do have a DNA match to someone else, and then
27:25
the husband is exonerated. But this is a rare case where that has not
27:29
happened, where they think that maybe Holmes was the one who killed her,
27:32
But we haven't eliminated the possibility that Paul orchestrated the whole thing, and that
27:36
he might this might have been some sort of murder for hire. So on
27:41
the surface, this seemed like yet another one of those tragic spousal disappearances where
27:45
the only possible resolution could be the husband did it. I've seen far too
27:48
many stories like this where a husband will claim that he and his wife got
27:52
into an argument, she decided to storm off on him and then mysteriously vanish
27:56
without a trace. And this particular story seems even less believable than usual because
28:02
Marine's disappearance would have had to take place during a very narrow time frame.
28:07
The story goes that Marine left her house at aam, did not show up
28:11
for work as planned at eight thirty, and her coworker's phone Paul to mention
28:15
this at around eight fifty or so. So if Paul is telling the truth,
28:19
something had to happen to Marine between eight and eight thirty. But of
28:23
course, Paul instantly aroused suspicion by lying about his attempt to file a missing
28:27
person's report when all he did was ask police if any accidents had taken place
28:33
involving Marine's vehicle. What was most bizarre to be is that if Paul had
28:37
no involvement in Marine's disappearance, why would he even visit the police station to
28:41
begin with. I mean, I'm not saying there isn't a reason for him
28:45
to be concerned about Marine not showing up for work, But most people aren't
28:48
instantly going to run to the police because their spouse is twenty minutes late.
28:53
If he only wanted to acquire about accidents. That would be one thing,
28:56
But why make the false claim that he attempted to file a missing person's report.
29:02
It almost looks like Paul was just putting on a show to make himself
29:04
look like a concerned husband. I mean, there are just so many red
29:08
legs to suggest he was responsible. Maureen openly expressing fear about her husband,
29:14
Paul trying hard to push forward the theory that marine ran away voluntarily, Paul
29:18
sharing an inconsistent, constantly changing story about the last time he saw and there's
29:23
also the fact that he tried to get his wife's name off their property and
29:26
have her declared dead as soon as possible, and all the interviews I've seen
29:30
with Paul, he comes off as an unlikable jerk, and law enforcement has
29:34
always considered him to be the prime suspect from day one, as they've openly
29:38
said that they would charge him with a crime and a heartbeat if stronger evidence
29:42
against him surface. Very easy to see where police are coming from. Like
29:48
we said earlier in the episode, I mean, you're right, Robin,
29:51
it's twenty minutes late, and the first reaction is like, what, my
29:53
wife's not at work. She's twenty minutes late. I'm off to file a
29:57
missing person's report. I knew this was going to happen. I knew she
30:00
was gonna go kill herself. I would have thought broken down. I would
30:06
have thought lost track of time. I would have thought met up with a
30:10
friend, or is doing something else, And then I would have started to
30:14
get really worried. I might have made some phone calls immediately, but I
30:18
wouldn't lie in Concock's stories to draw attention to her. I also wouldn't be
30:25
trying to put on a show for people, which it feels so disingenuine.
30:30
His actions right then, and how quickly he tells everybody the awful things Maureen
30:36
has done and how she's really the one that fault for all these things in
30:40
their marriage, it's, oh, it's just it's just bad. It's a
30:44
bad look on him. And when you have the DNA link to a man
30:48
who says he knew Paul, it makes him even more suspicious. Paul is
30:52
just like the most performative person. It's like he's looked up how you should
30:56
act, what type of script you should write. The things that he says
31:00
that Maureen had said, like I might as well and do it now.
31:03
After she'd been quote like denied sex from him and then coming up with the
31:07
gambling stuff. It's like, you've got nothing to substantiate this. And we
31:12
know that from her friends and family that she had a troubled marriage that she
31:18
wanted out of. So I really don't think that she's going to be barking
31:22
up your tree for sex and then so distraught about it that she wants to
31:26
then just go and end her life. I think she just wanted to get
31:29
away from him, and he feels like he's just he's like written this like
31:33
Telenavella about how a husband should act in the wake of his wife's disappearance,
31:40
and he's just hitting the gas a little bit hard with this twenty minute timeline
31:44
and then straight to the police. I also think you have to pay attention
31:48
to what she's saying throughout all of this. You have her showing up to
31:52
work on Valentine's Day and people can tell she's really agitated. People can tell
31:56
that she's anxious and kind of on edge, and when they are you going
32:00
to have a good Valentine's Day? She says no, And when they are
32:04
listening to her she says something to the extent of something bad is going to
32:07
happen, and she's gone so far as to tell her family, if something
32:10
happens to me, it's Paul. If I go and I disappear, it's
32:14
Paul. So that is wild. Like every couple fusses. I know that
32:21
when you're contemplating divorce and things like that, you still share information. But
32:25
to say I'm scared and I think if something were to happen to me,
32:29
you need a point to him that goes beyond a typical divorce of a husband
32:32
and wife that is class A domestic violence fear and proof that I've seen him
32:38
act in certain ways before that scare me to where I don't think him escalating.
32:44
It would be that big of a stretch. However, when the DNA
32:47
evidence from Marine's panteos matched up to this sex offender, Keith Wayne Holmes,
32:53
it's through the entire case for a loop. Now. Just because the DNA
32:58
was linked to another SUSPEC effect does not mean investigators believe Paul is innocent.
33:04
But this definitely opens up a lot of questions about Keith Wayne Holmes's role here.
33:08
It's entirely possible that Paul hired Holmes to murder his wife, or that
33:14
they both committed the crime together. The problem is that there's just no evidence
33:17
to connect the two of them, except some vague statements Homes made about them
33:22
knowing each other while he was a dementia patient in hospice care, which can
33:27
hardly be considered reliable. Since it was established that Holmes was camping in Perump
33:32
around the time period Marine went missing, it seems very likely he was involved.
33:37
The fact that his DNA was found on a pair of knotted pantehose suggests
33:43
that he might have used it to time Marine's hands together, but the question
33:46
is did he act alone. Well, if Paul's account of what happened is
33:51
true and he last saw Marine leaving their home to go to work, then
33:54
that means Marine would have had to have cross paths with Homes some time between
34:00
eight and eight thirty am during her drive to the bank. But how would
34:04
this have happened? I guess it's possible that if Holmes attempted to flag down
34:08
a ride that morning, he could have tricked Marine into pulling over and then
34:13
forced her to drive out to the area. Once he entered her vehicle,
34:16
or he forcibly entered Marine's car after she pulled over to park at the bank.
34:22
He then forces Marine to drive out to a remote area in the Mohave
34:24
Desert before he sexually assaults and murders her before disposing of her body. Now
34:30
we know Holmes was a sex offender who apparently had a habit of picking up
34:36
sex workers, beating them, and then abandoning them by the road. So
34:39
this could have been a case of things escalating to the point where he wound
34:43
up killing Marine. But there's a big problem with the scenario, namely the
34:47
fact that Marine's Handai was abandoned in the middle of nowhere. It was parked
34:52
nearly one hundred and twenty feet from the highway, in the middle of a
34:55
barren desert, at least twenty miles outside of Parum. So if Holmes forced
35:00
Marine to drive there and abandon her vehicle, how did he leave the area?
35:07
I also want to know if we go back a little bit and we
35:08
look at this timeframe that Paul's talking about. He says that they had this
35:13
normal Valentine's night, very typical Valentines. He goes out with friends to have
35:17
dinner. He brings his wife dinner home, and he has an easy evening
35:23
watching television before she leaves the next morning for work as usual. I don't
35:29
think that ever happened. I think either he had arranged for her to be
35:32
killed that evening while he was out of dinner with friends, or they got
35:37
into a fuss and something happened later that evening. But I feel like it
35:40
had to have been planned. If you allowed and you connected homes to marine,
35:45
I feel like he had to have some kind of knowledge because those two
35:50
things, killing her or starting to get into a fuss, you wouldn't have
35:54
really included homes in that. But if you had said, I'm going to
35:59
let him kidnap her and take her when she gets home from work tonight,
36:02
or maybe he even drove her out somewhere and left the car and Holmes met
36:07
them there and he just said, do what you want. That seems way
36:10
more probable than an eight to eight thirty am attack on her. Oh yeah,
36:15
exactly, because there are no other independent eyewitnesses besides Paul who could confirm
36:20
having seen her since she left the bank the previous day at around four thirty
36:23
and five pm, So this easily could have happened. During this timeframe of
36:28
about fifteen hours, and that there's no one else who can confirm that she
36:31
left at eight am the following morning to drive to the bank. And like
36:36
we were talking about, if this was a planned murder for higher plots,
36:38
he could have arranged things so that Holmes would kill his wife and dispose of
36:43
her body while he was out having dinner with a friend, establishing an alibi
36:46
for himself. I think Paul is about as reliable as Scott Peterson. Yeah,
36:51
exactly. Now we know that Holmes owned a Ford camper, but it's
36:55
not like he could have driven two vehicles out into the desert at the same
36:59
time. Sure, I guess Holmes could have made it back to the highway
37:02
at hitchhiked, but this location was in close proximity to Death Valley, which
37:07
is one of the highest places on Earth during the daytime. When you couple
37:10
in the fact that Holmes would need to perform a lot of physical labor in
37:14
order to hide Marine's body, there's a huge risk that he's not going to
37:17
get out of the area alive if he doesn't have transportation. Not to mention
37:22
that the scene at Marine's vehicle looked staged in order to give off the impression
37:25
that she might have wandered off and completed suicide. In fact, the authorities
37:30
actually considered this possibility at first, until they discovered that Marine's empty pill bottle
37:36
had been wiped clean of fingerprints. Holmes does not strike me as a particularly
37:39
sophisticated criminal, and if this was just a random stranger abduction, I see
37:45
no reason for him to go to the trouble of staging the scene like that.
37:49
No, it seems likely that two people had to be involved, one
37:52
who could drive Marines hyun date to that remote spot in Inyo County, and
37:57
another who could provide transportation out of the area. So the most logical explanation
38:01
is that Paul and Holmes work to stage the scene together. Okay, so
38:07
I'm wondering when his phone is identified as being used, he's nowhere near this
38:12
area, Well, he's nowhere near his home, Like it's showed pinging off
38:15
a cell tower on the other side of prompt And I don't know if there
38:20
were any cell towers out there in the remote desert, so I don't know
38:22
if there were any towers to be pinged off it. But of course this
38:25
ping that on the other end of the town goes against Paul's story that it
38:30
was alone he was home all night, because otherwise his cell phone wouldn't have
38:34
pinged in that area. Yeah, something's going on. I almost wonder if
38:37
Holmes is the quote friend he went to dinner with. That is possible because
38:42
I haven't seen any information about this friend speaking to police or corroborating his alibi.
38:46
So maybe it was with Holmes in this dinner was just a cover story.
38:52
However, I'd be really curious to know how Paul would have cross paths
38:57
with homes in the first place. Given the Holmes was a frail old man
39:00
who was in his mid seventies at that point, he seems like an odd
39:05
person to enlist as an accomplice to murder. But then again, Perump is
39:09
an unincorporated town in the middle of nowhere, and Paul hadn't lived there that
39:14
long, so maybe he just had slim pickens to choose from. Since Holmes
39:20
drove afored camper, Pole might have thought it would be an ideal vehicle to
39:23
transport a body. Even though Paul claimed that he spent the entire evening at
39:29
home on Valentine's Day, cell phone pings seemed to place him on the other
39:32
side of town. This strongly indicates that Paul is lying, though I wouldn't
39:37
say it's strong enough evidence to bring criminal charges against him. But if those
39:42
pings are accurate, then Paul could have been out there disposing of his wife's
39:46
body. If Holmes bound Marine's hands together with her pantyhose, this would explain
39:52
how his DNA got there. He could have used his camper to drive Marine
39:55
out to the desert while Paul drove his wife's Hondai. Una is abandoned over
40:00
one hundred and twenty feet from the highway because Paul wants to ensure that no
40:05
one will find it until after Marine fails to show up for work on the
40:08
morning of February fifteenth. Paul then stages the scene to make it look like
40:14
Marine wandered off, and then hitches a ride back to Perump in Holmes camper
40:17
before they go their separate ways. It's worth noting that investigators did find a
40:22
second set of vehicle tracks near the Hyundai, but since the scene was not
40:27
properly secured at first, no one is certain if the tracks were already there
40:30
when the Hyundai was originally found. That is awful because the reality is if
40:37
we could know, or if we had anyone who spotted vehicles in that area
40:40
at a given time, if they had preserved the scene and we were able
40:44
to link the two sets of tire tracks to one another, we wouldn't be
40:49
talking about the same case the way that we are. You would have had
40:52
a link, possibly to one of Paul's vehicles and been able to place him
40:58
at the scene with home. It is tragic that Holmes had dementia at the
41:04
time, and therefore even his saying I knew Paul is called into question right
41:08
and the extent to get details is to how you knew Paul? Those were
41:13
never provided before his death. So it's one of those things where it's like,
41:15
did Paul get away with murder and staging a way to get rid of
41:20
his wife? Where then he benefits because they declare her dead and he's able
41:24
to be the head of her estate and get all of her belongings and money
41:29
because of this man's illness and death. I mean, is that really what
41:31
it came down to is that because Holmes passes away and has this decline in
41:37
mental stability, that we've lost our chance to figure out what happened. That's
41:44
certainly possible, and maybe that was Paul's plan all along. He's figuring,
41:46
well, I mean, en list this guy to help me commit a murder,
41:50
but he looks old, so he's not going to be around for too
41:52
long and that lessens the chance of him ever speaking with the police and giving
41:57
me up and implicating me in this crime. O of detail we haven't even
42:00
talked about is when Holmes was arrested for trying to lure that twelve year old
42:04
girl into his vehicle in twenty eleven, they found a newspaper clipping about Marine's
42:08
disappearance inside his camper, and at that point they didn't really see any significance
42:13
for it. But then you're wondering, why is he having this random newspaper
42:16
clipping about a crime that took place in another state five years earlier, involving
42:22
a woman he shouldn't have even known. So that was the instant red flag
42:24
there that he did have some sort of connection to this case. Now we
42:30
know police performed in extensive search of the area where the Hyundai was abandoned and
42:34
found no trace of Marine's body, But I have to wonder if she might
42:37
not have even been buried at that location. Remember, the route from perumpt
42:42
to Inyo County is nothing but desert, so theoretically Paul could have stopped somewhere
42:46
else to bury her body and abandon her vehicle at a different spot in order
42:52
to throw everybody off the track. I'm not sure if any of Paul's DNA
42:55
was found at the scene, but the problem is that the Hyundai belonged to
42:59
his wife and he would have been inside the vehicle on multiple occasions, so
43:04
even if his DNA is there, that's hardly incriminating. So it's difficult to
43:07
pin anything on Paul. But when you break everything down, the most logical
43:12
explanation is that he and Holmes committed this crime together, and the discovery of
43:16
holmes DNA at the scene does not exonerate Paul in any way. If this
43:21
is what actually happened, then Paul got really lucky that the DNA match did
43:25
not occur until after Holmes was suffering from dementia, so any incriminating statements he
43:30
may have made about Paul are not admissible as evidence. So while it might
43:35
seem unusual that Paul enlisted the help of an elderly man in order to murder
43:38
his wife. The strategy technically did pay off, since Holmes passed away before
43:44
he ever had a chance to testify against him. Sadly, until Marine's body
43:49
can be found or other evidence surfaces against Paul, it would be difficult to
43:52
charge him with anything. At the moment, there is no evidence that Paul
43:58
and Holmes knew each other, so the press and stuff another suspect's DNA would
44:01
be more than enough to generate reasonable doubt if Paul ever went to trial.
44:06
So if you happen to have any information on the unsolved disappearance of Marine Fields,
44:10
please contact the Nye County Sheriff's Office at seven seven five seven five one
44:16
seven zero zero zero at seven seven five seven five one seven zero zero zero,
44:22
Jules Ashley any final thoughts on the case. This is one of those
44:28
that goes to meet at the heart of domestic violence and where you hear Marine
44:34
telling friends and family it's bad, like it's gotten really bad. I have
44:37
to get away from him if I disappear. Please it's him. It's Paul,
44:43
and she's even at work. Like usually a victim of domestic violence,
44:46
they're really protecting their abuser, especially out at work or with acquaintances around town.
44:52
You're like, oh, it's wonderful. Oh yes, I can't wait
44:55
to get home for Valentine's Day. Here she's at her wits end. You
45:00
can tell where she's saying it's bad, like something might have happened the evening
45:04
before, he might have made threats that morning, and she's saying something bad
45:07
is going to happen. No, I'm not excited that it's Valentine's Day.
45:12
This is to not her friends, this is to colleagues. So you know
45:15
that it's gotten pretty intense. And then Maureene never shows up the next day.
45:21
I am so sad because she wasn't ever recovered. Her body was never
45:25
found. It's very clear something bad happened to marine. She had a family
45:30
that was supportive of her, She had that dog that she loved. She
45:34
did not leave voluntarily. She was being responsible, trying to pay bills off,
45:37
so there was no reason for her to end her life while she's also
45:42
trying to manage and be responsible. It's just pitiful because her family never got
45:47
to even give her a burial where they could have some kind of physical ability
45:52
to say goodbye to her. It's just questions, and it's rage about someone
45:57
that was supposed to love and protect her could be involved in that. That's
46:00
the ultimate betrayal of this feeling of human safety. So so so so sad.
46:07
I would be elated if someone had information who knows maybe Paul says the
46:12
wrong thing to the wrong person and there is a change in that relationship or
46:16
dynamic and that person has the courage to come forward and say something. Just
46:22
a question before I give my final thoughts, Robin, So, Paul and
46:27
Marine lived in a mobile home? Correct? Yes? Yeah? So did
46:31
they live in a mobile home park? I'm not entirely sure. I mean,
46:35
I know we talked about homes living at a campground in a camper,
46:38
So I don't know if homes ever frequented like a park nearby where Paul and
46:45
Marine lived, But that is a possibility for how they could have crossed paths,
46:49
because I was just thinking if it was a mobile home park or something
46:52
to that effect, they might have mixed in somewhat similar circles. Because although
46:58
Marine was quite far off in age from homes, Paul was closer in age
47:04
like what like maybe like ten years apart, fifteen years apart, something like
47:07
that. Yeah, Paul was fifty six, so he would have been closed
47:10
her eyes. Yeah, yeah, So it's possible that they might have known
47:15
or had, you know, similar friends in common or people in common where
47:19
he might have been griping about Marine and somebody might have been like, well,
47:22
you know, I know this guy who's a sex offender and or whatever.
47:28
I don't know the type of people that he mixed with. Just based
47:30
on Paul's behavior, he sounds like a pretty abhorrent person, and it sounds
47:35
like Marine was really stuck in a situation where it was pretty clear domestic violence.
47:39
It meets the criteria even if he didn't physically put his hands on her.
47:45
But I don't think that we can count that out either. Even though
47:47
she said that it hadn't crossed the line, a lot of women say that
47:51
it has to cross the line when it very clearly has. We don't know
47:53
exactly what Mariene was dealing with, only that she was really scared and that
47:58
she said, if I go missing, Paul did it, and that to
48:01
me is everything. I think we should trust her words, and we should
48:06
trust that when a victim says something like that, that they are actually in
48:08
danger and it is such a travesty that this poor family doesn't have a grave
48:14
to go to, they don't have a body that they they don't get a
48:17
resolution in this case. I don't know how the two of them met,
48:21
but I think that in my mind, it seems to be the most logical
48:24
explanation that they collaborated together, because I don't think anybody walked twenty miles in
48:29
the desert like back to Perump. It just doesn't seem likely, and it
48:32
seems also dangerous. So it feels like two people had to be there,
48:37
and these two are the best suspects. So I just my heart breaks for
48:43
the family, and I really hope that if anybody knows anything, that they
48:46
would come forward with information at this point in time, Yes, I remember
48:51
when I researched this one on the Trail Went coldy years ago, and I
48:53
was looking through the earliest media coverage from like two thousand and six to twenty
48:58
twelve. Then this just seemed like an afe case of the husband. Did
49:00
it that we have a woman trapped in a very unhappy marriage, filled with
49:06
abuse, and a husband acting very suspiciously, And you just had this feeling
49:09
that the only reason the authorities haven't arrested him yet is because they don't have
49:14
a body or any incriminating physical evidence. And of course I remember reading the
49:17
media coverage in twenty twelve when the DNA matched Keith Wayne Holmes, and everyone's
49:22
thinking, WHOA were we wrong about this all along? Could the husband have
49:27
been innocent this whole time? Did she just cross paths with like a random
49:30
predator, a sex offender who decided to kill her? But when you look
49:34
at the facts of this case, that just doesn't seem likely. It doesn't
49:37
seem possible that Holmes could have done this on his own and then disposed of
49:40
Marine's body. And there's very, very unlikely that a complete stranger who didn't
49:46
even know Marine would go to the trouble of staging the scene and emptying out
49:50
her pill bottle and then wiping the fingerprints from the bottle to make it look
49:53
like she wandered off and completed suicide. No, the only person who would
49:57
do go to the trouble of doing something like that someone who knew her personally,
50:00
And the only suspect in that case is Paul, So it just seems
50:05
likely that he crossed passed with this sex offender and enlisted him to help him
50:09
murder his wife and dispose of her body. And unfortunately, even though in
50:13
most circumstances, the DNA match could have led to this case being resolved,
50:17
that if Holmes was a free man at that point, he may have decided
50:21
to talk and get himself a good plea deal, But unfortunately for investigators,
50:24
he was already in prison. He was suffering from dementia, so he just
50:29
could not provide a consistent story before he passed away. So Paul just got
50:32
incredibly lucky. And it is sad to think that he's still getting away with
50:37
it to this day. But I do know that if new evidence surfaced that
50:40
the authorities would probably rest Paul in charge him in a heartbeat. So,
50:45
like we said, if you have any information about what happened to Marine that
50:49
could be beneficial to the investigation, please come forward. So that about brings
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an end to this month's bonus Patreon miniso. Thank you so much for your
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support, and we'll return again next month for an other bonus minisodes. So
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until then, everyone have yourself a great month.