Latest / Crime Night / The Secret Diary of Dawn Mozino
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Picture this if you will. It is May twenty sixth,
- 0:03Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. Okay, I am picturing it right. So
- 0:06Speaker 1: it is late afternoon in southeastern Pennsylvania. You can practically
- 0:10Speaker 1: smell that well, you know, that faint trace of antiseptic
- 0:13Speaker 1: in the air.
- 0:14Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that very specific hospital smell exactly.
- 0:17Speaker 1: And you can hear the low hum of this bustling
- 0:20Speaker 1: hospital shifting gears as the grueling day shift finally ends.
- 0:24Speaker 2: Right, everyone is just exhausted and ready to clock out.
- 0:26Speaker 1: Yeah, So a twenty three year old woman named don
- 0:29Speaker 1: Mazino does exactly that. She clocks out. She steps away
- 0:32Speaker 1: from her station, and she's wearing this highly distinct uniform.
- 0:37Speaker 2: It was a gray skirt, right, a.
- 0:38Speaker 1: Gray skirt, yeah, a maroon vest, and a sharp black
- 0:41Speaker 1: bow tie. She pushes through the heavy glass doors into
- 0:44Speaker 1: the crisp spring air, preparing to either catch her usual
- 0:47Speaker 1: bus or take her familiar twenty minute walk back to
- 0:49Speaker 1: her house.
- 0:50Speaker 2: Just a totally normal routine.
- 0:51Speaker 1: For her, totally normal. She walks outside of the hospital
- 0:54Speaker 1: entrance and then she simply vanishes off the face.
- 0:56Speaker 2: Of the earth, leaving absolutely no physical trace behind.
- 0:59Speaker 1: I mean none, none at all. And today we are
- 1:02Speaker 1: going on a mission to deconstruct this thirty six year
- 1:05Speaker 1: old mystery.
- 1:06Speaker 2: It is such a wild case.
- 1:08Speaker 1: It really is. We have this fascinating stack of sources
- 1:11Speaker 1: laid out in front of us. We've got dense, aging
- 1:14Speaker 1: police files, totally contradictory witness statements, and well, at the
- 1:19Speaker 1: very center of it all the victim's own secret.
- 1:22Speaker 2: Diary, which is where things get truly unbelievable.
- 1:25Speaker 1: Yeah, we are going to dive deep into a case
- 1:27Speaker 1: that completely redefines the concept of a twist. And for
- 1:30Speaker 1: you listening, this deep dive is an absolute masterclass in
- 1:33Speaker 1: the dangers of the human mind.
- 1:35Speaker 2: It really is. It demonstrates perfectly how early assumptions and
- 1:39Speaker 2: tunnel vision can just completely destroy a search for the
- 1:42Speaker 2: truth exactly.
- 1:43Speaker 1: It serves as this haunting reminder that the most explosive
- 1:47Speaker 1: case breaking clues, well they aren't always found scattered at
- 1:50Speaker 1: a bloody crime scene.
- 1:51Speaker 2: Sometimes they are hiding quietly gathering dust right in a
- 1:54Speaker 2: victim's own bedroom.
- 1:55Speaker 1: So to truly grasp why Dawn's sudden disappearance triggered such
- 1:59Speaker 1: an immediate, like visceral panic, we really have looked closely
- 2:02Speaker 1: at who Dawn was as a person.
- 2:04Speaker 2: Right. Her background is so important here it is.
- 2:06Speaker 1: She was twenty three years old and she lived at
- 2:09Speaker 1: home with her mother and her sister, cath and Dawn
- 2:12Speaker 1: navigated the world with learning differences.
- 2:14Speaker 2: She was officially described as high functioning but developmentally delayed.
- 2:18Speaker 1: I believe, yes, that's right. But despite those challenges, she
- 2:22Speaker 1: was absolutely thriving. I mean, she was an incredibly dedicated
- 2:26Speaker 1: Special Olympics medallist.
- 2:27Speaker 2: Wow, that is amazing.
- 2:29Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an achievement she wore with immense pride.
- 2:31Speaker 1: She took it very, very seriously. But because of those
- 2:34Speaker 1: learning differences, her entire existence was anchored by a very strict,
- 2:39Speaker 1: unbreakable routine.
- 2:40Speaker 2: Predictability was her safe haven.
- 2:42Speaker 1: Exactly so, on the afternoon she vanishes. The alarm bells
- 2:46Speaker 1: don't take days to start ringing. They start ringing within
- 2:48Speaker 1: a matter of hours.
- 2:49Speaker 2: Which makes sense given how rigid her schedule was.
- 2:51Speaker 1: Right, first, she fails to come home at her usual
- 2:54Speaker 1: time to let the family dog out, Then she completely
- 2:57Speaker 1: misses a planned meet up with her incredibly devoted boyfriend Dan,
- 3:00Speaker 1: and perhaps most alarmingly, she skips her Special Olympics practice
- 3:05Speaker 1: at the local YMCA for dawn blowing off these commitments
- 3:10Speaker 1: is not just uncharacteristic, it is practically unimaginable.
- 3:13Speaker 2: You know, from an investigative standpoint, when someone who's entile
- 3:17Speaker 2: psychological foundation is built unpredictable daily routine suddenly shatters every
- 3:22Speaker 2: single one of them at the exact same time. While
- 3:25Speaker 2: investigators know they aren't looking at a spontaneous road.
- 3:28Speaker 1: Trip, right, they aren't dealing with a runaway.
- 3:30Speaker 2: Exactly, They are looking at an immediate crisis. Something intervened.
- 3:33Speaker 1: So the local police jump into action, and almost immediately
- 3:37Speaker 1: the universe hands them what looks like a massive lead,
- 3:40Speaker 1: A huge one. Yeah. A witness named Kathy comes forward
- 3:42Speaker 1: to report something highly specific. She says she spotted a
- 3:46Speaker 1: young woman matching Don's exact physical description, wearing that unmistakable
- 3:50Speaker 1: hospital uniform, the gray skirt, the maroon vest, the black
- 3:54Speaker 1: bow tie, standing in a bus stop near the hospital.
- 3:57Speaker 2: But she wasn't alone, was she?
- 3:59Speaker 1: No, she wasn't. Kathy vividly recalls seeing her engage in
- 4:02Speaker 1: conversation with the black man in his early thirties.
- 4:05Speaker 2: That provides investigators with a concrete physical description, a last
- 4:09Speaker 2: known location, and a potential suspect timeline. I mean, it
- 4:12Speaker 2: is the kind of starting point. Detectives pray for.
- 4:15Speaker 1: Right, and then it's even more intense. Police start executing
- 4:19Speaker 1: the standard protocol of looking into the victim's inner circle.
- 4:22Speaker 2: The address book.
- 4:23Speaker 1: Yes, they flip through Don's personal address book and they
- 4:26Speaker 1: find a terrifying name written inside. Thomas Hawkins Junior.
- 4:30Speaker 2: Finding that specific name in a missing woman's address book,
- 4:34Speaker 2: I mean that is enough to make any seasoned investigator's
- 4:37Speaker 2: blood run cold.
- 4:38Speaker 1: Seriously, Hawkins wasn't just some unpleasant acquaintance, you know. He
- 4:42Speaker 1: and Dawn had worked together years prior at a local
- 4:45Speaker 1: rehabilitation center, and he had relentlessly and cruelly bullied her.
- 4:49Speaker 2: The harassment was actually so severe that Don's sister Kath
- 4:52Speaker 2: had to personally intervene to protect her.
- 4:54Speaker 1: Yeah, she had to step in, but being a cruel
- 4:56Speaker 1: workplace bully was the least of it. Thomas Hawkins Junior
- 5:00Speaker 1: was a convicted murderer.
- 5:01Speaker 2: That is just wow.
- 5:03Speaker 1: Nine years prior to Don vanishing in nineteen eighty, he
- 5:06Speaker 1: had sexually assaulted and murdered a fifteen year old girl,
- 5:10Speaker 1: and through a shocking failure of the justice system, he
- 5:13Speaker 1: had somehow only served six years in prison for that
- 5:15Speaker 1: horrific crime.
- 5:16Speaker 2: The fact that he was walking the streets at all
- 5:19Speaker 2: is astounding, but it creates this incredibly high stake scenario
- 5:23Speaker 2: for the detective searching for Don.
- 5:24Speaker 1: Definitely, so shortly after police bring Hawkins in to question
- 5:28Speaker 1: him about Don's disappearance, they are forced to let him go.
- 5:32Speaker 1: They simply lack the physical evidence to hold him.
- 5:35Speaker 2: Right, you can't just hold someone on suspicion Alan.
- 5:37Speaker 1: Exactly, But just days after walking out of the police station,
- 5:40Speaker 1: Hawkins brutally murders his own niece and Drea Thomas, and
- 5:45Speaker 1: he attempts to stage the crime scene to look like
- 5:47Speaker 1: a random burglary gone wrong.
- 5:49Speaker 2: So you now have a known, highly active killer who
- 5:52Speaker 2: possesses a documented history of targeting and bullying the victim,
- 5:56Speaker 2: sitting right there in her personal address book.
- 5:58Speaker 1: And geographically close to where she went missing. I look
- 6:01Speaker 1: at the scenario and I think, you know, this is
- 6:03Speaker 1: like finding a lip matchtick sitting right next to a massive,
- 6:06Speaker 1: raging forest fire.
- 6:07Speaker 2: That is a great way to put it.
- 6:08Speaker 1: It feels so perfectly placed, so undeniably obvious, that you
- 6:12Speaker 1: completely stop looking for the actual arsonist. If a known
- 6:17Speaker 1: active killer is in her address book and seeing near
- 6:20Speaker 1: the scene, why didn't the police just charge him with
- 6:23Speaker 1: Don's disappearance?
- 6:24Speaker 2: Well, we have to look closely at the mechanics of
- 6:26Speaker 2: criminal mo or modus operande. Okay, break that down for
- 6:29Speaker 2: us as an investigator. You don't just look at what
- 6:32Speaker 2: a killer does, right, You analyze why they do it,
- 6:35Speaker 2: because their methods fulfill a very specific psychological needs. Right,
- 6:39Speaker 2: it's not random, exactly. Look at Hawkins's established pattern. He
- 6:43Speaker 2: killed his first victim indoors inside an apartment complex they
- 6:47Speaker 2: both lived in. He killed his niece indoors inside her
- 6:50Speaker 2: own home.
- 6:50Speaker 1: Right, so he likes the privacy of closed doors.
- 6:52Speaker 2: Yes, in both cases he brutally assaulted them behind closed
- 6:56Speaker 2: doors and then meticulously staged the crime scenes to look
- 6:59Speaker 2: like robbery. Furthermore, his preferred victims were.
- 7:02Speaker 1: Teenagers and Don is twenty three years old.
- 7:04Speaker 2: Don is older. Yes, and the circumstances of her case
- 7:07Speaker 2: represent a total deviation from his established psychological.
- 7:10Speaker 1: Pattern because there's no indoor crime scene.
- 7:12Speaker 2: Exactly, There is no indoor crime scene, There is no
- 7:15Speaker 2: staged robbery. She simply vanished in broad daylight in an
- 7:19Speaker 2: outdoor public transit environment. It fundamentally does not fit his moo.
- 7:24Speaker 1: But this is where we witness the sheer destructive power
- 7:27Speaker 1: of confirmation bias, isn't it?
- 7:29Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely the original detective, a guy they nicknamed Lucky,
- 7:32Speaker 2: alongside the prosecutor, Bruce Caster, they become utterly and hopelessly
- 7:37Speaker 2: fixated on Thomas Hawkins Junior.
- 7:40Speaker 1: Human brain naturally craves a cohesive narrative. When you have
- 7:44Speaker 1: a suspect, this genuinely monstrous, who is geographically close to
- 7:48Speaker 1: your victim and already on your radar, it's hard to
- 7:51Speaker 1: look away.
- 7:52Speaker 2: The cognitive dissonance required to look away and say no,
- 7:54Speaker 2: it must be someone else is just incredibly uncomfortable for them.
- 7:57Speaker 1: They wanted it to be him because it tied a
- 7:59Speaker 1: chaotis terrifying mystery up in a neat, albeit horrific bow.
- 8:04Speaker 2: And that psychological trap freezes the investigation completely. When investigators
- 8:09Speaker 2: lock onto a theory that tightly, their brains will actively
- 8:12Speaker 2: begin filtering out any dissonant information.
- 8:15Speaker 1: Or any alternative leads right, yes.
- 8:16Speaker 2: Right, simply to alleviate the cognitive load of having an
- 8:20Speaker 2: unsolved case.
- 8:21Speaker 1: And when investigators fall into that trap, the case freezes.
- 8:25Speaker 1: And this one froze for decades. It weathered everything from
- 8:28Speaker 1: dead ends to a completely fabricated two thousand and one
- 8:32Speaker 1: confession from an out of state killer named Gerald Bennett.
- 8:35Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he just wanted attention exactly.
- 8:38Speaker 1: He was easily proven to be in another state. So
- 8:40Speaker 1: it wasn't until the twenty tens that the ice finally broke.
- 8:45Speaker 1: A new detective takes over the case, a guy named Maguire.
- 8:48Speaker 2: And he does something the old guard never bothered to do.
- 8:50Speaker 2: Does he?
- 8:50Speaker 1: He does? He takes a piece of untouched evidence and
- 8:53Speaker 1: lets Don's sister cath finally read Don's personal diary.
- 8:57Speaker 2: This diary had literally been sitting in a police seven
- 9:00Speaker 2: and slacker unread for over twenty.
- 9:02Speaker 1: Years, decades of dust. You would think, given the intense
- 9:05Speaker 1: police fixation on Thomas Hawkins, this diary would be filled
- 9:09Speaker 1: to the brim with terrified mentions of him, or at
- 9:11Speaker 1: least a passing reference.
- 9:12Speaker 2: He is not mentioned a single time in the entire diary.
- 9:15Speaker 1: Wait, really, not once, not once.
- 9:17Speaker 2: Instead, the contents completely flipped the foundational understanding of the investigation.
- 9:22Speaker 1: The diary reveals that Dawn, sweet, routine driven, predictable Dawn
- 9:27Speaker 1: was secretly living a vibrant, complicated double.
- 9:30Speaker 2: Life, which is wild to think about given how she
- 9:33Speaker 2: was portrayed.
- 9:34Speaker 1: Right the pages outlined in meticulous detail that she was
- 9:37Speaker 1: actively cheating on your boyfriend, Dan.
- 9:40Speaker 2: We must always analyze the victim's own words and hidden realities.
- 9:44Speaker 2: The public profile of a victim is almost always a
- 9:46Speaker 2: sanitized version of the.
- 9:47Speaker 1: Truth, and Dan's part in this story is just absolutely heartbreaking.
- 9:51Speaker 1: Dan also navigated life with learning differences, and they competed
- 9:55Speaker 1: in the Special Olympics together. He was very dedicated to her,
- 9:58Speaker 1: so deeply devoted that thirty six year years later, he
- 10:01Speaker 1: still calls Don's mother every single night just to say
- 10:04Speaker 1: good night.
- 10:04Speaker 2: Wow. That is so sad.
- 10:06Speaker 1: It is. He remains completely oblivious to the affair to
- 10:09Speaker 1: this day, but the diary paints a stark contrast. Don
- 10:13Speaker 1: had become dangerously infatuated with a man named Nick Catona.
- 10:17Speaker 2: A textbook toxic dynamic if I ever saw one.
- 10:19Speaker 1: Yeah. Don fills her diary pages writing about listening to
- 10:22Speaker 1: Poison's ballad Every Rose has its Thorn on endless repeat
- 10:25Speaker 1: because the lyrics remind her of Nick.
- 10:27Speaker 2: But Nick's treatment of her was abysmal.
- 10:29Speaker 1: Oh, it was terrible. He was constantly stringing her along,
- 10:32Speaker 1: blowing off their plans at the last minute, only taking
- 10:35Speaker 1: her to cheap hotels for hidden hookups. He generally treated
- 10:38Speaker 1: her like a disposable convenience.
- 10:40Speaker 2: She was entirely obsessed, and he was profoundly apathetic.
- 10:44Speaker 1: Right. Discovering this dynamic shatters the initial, simplified profile the
- 10:50Speaker 1: original detectives had built around her.
- 10:52Speaker 2: She wasn't just a naive girl walking home. She was
- 10:54Speaker 2: a young woman entangled in secretive, high emotion relationships.
- 10:59Speaker 1: Finding this diary is like uncovering a brand new, highly
- 11:03Speaker 1: detailed treasure map after you have just spent twenty years
- 11:07Speaker 1: digging until your hands bleed on the completely wrong island.
- 11:11Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
- 11:12Speaker 1: Suddenly there is an entirely new landscape of suspects. But
- 11:15Speaker 1: you know, I find myself struggling with Nickkotona as a
- 11:18Speaker 1: viable murder suspect.
- 11:19Speaker 2: Why is that?
- 11:20Speaker 1: Well? When I look at his behavior, yes, he is
- 11:23Speaker 1: a terrible partner, but where's the motive for murder? He
- 11:26Speaker 1: seems far too apathetic to orchestrate a complex, traceless disappearance.
- 11:31Speaker 2: He didn't even seem to care enough about her to
- 11:33Speaker 2: want her gone.
- 11:34Speaker 1: Right, He just ignored her when it suited him.
- 11:35Speaker 2: Looking at this through the lens of behavioral psychology. Your
- 11:39Speaker 2: hesitation is spot on. Apathy very rarely breeds premeditated murder.
- 11:44Speaker 1: It just doesn't make sense, No, it doesn't.
- 11:46Speaker 2: Nick was successfully getting exactly what he wanted, casual physical
- 11:50Speaker 2: encounters with zero emotional commitment or public accountability.
- 11:54Speaker 1: So why rock the boat.
- 11:55Speaker 2: Exactly when a victim is merely a convenience to someone
- 11:59Speaker 2: that a person does not typically go through the incredibly
- 12:02Speaker 2: high risk, high effort process of abduction and murder.
- 12:06Speaker 1: But the diaries revelations don't stop with Nick's apathy, do
- 12:08Speaker 1: they not at all? The pages keep turning and they
- 12:11Speaker 1: reveal a second love triangle, and this one introduces a massive,
- 12:15Speaker 1: glowing motive.
- 12:16Speaker 2: A huge one.
- 12:17Speaker 1: Dawn spent a lot of her free time hanging out
- 12:19Speaker 1: at a local kmart with her best friend, Carol, who
- 12:22Speaker 1: also navigated a learning disability, and through her diary, Dan
- 12:26Speaker 1: reveals that Carol was engaged in an ongoing affair with
- 12:29Speaker 1: a married black man named Hampton.
- 12:31Speaker 2: Now this is where things get really tense.
- 12:33Speaker 1: Yeah, because Dawn was raised deeply religious. She grew up Catholic,
- 12:37Speaker 1: regularly attended Bible studies, and she felt an intense, overwhelming
- 12:42Speaker 1: moral conflict about her best friend's affair.
- 12:46Speaker 2: So she decided to do something about it.
- 12:47Speaker 1: She took it upon herself to become the ultimate whistleblower.
- 12:50Speaker 1: She started telling Hampton's wife about the cheating.
- 12:53Speaker 2: She inserted herself directly into the blast radius of someone
- 12:56Speaker 2: else's collapsing marriage.
- 12:58Speaker 1: She lit the fuse on their entire lives. Let me
- 13:00Speaker 1: read you the chilling final entry from Don's diary, written
- 13:04Speaker 1: on May seventeenth, nineteen eighty.
- 13:06Speaker 2: Nine, just days before she went missing.
- 13:08Speaker 1: Exactly five days before she vanished into thin air. Quote
- 13:12Speaker 1: these few days have been held with Carol and hamp
- 13:15Speaker 1: They're getting more in trouble. Plus his wife is asking
- 13:18Speaker 1: for things I know end quote.
- 13:19Speaker 2: That entry documents a textbook escalation of threat.
- 13:22Speaker 1: Five days later, she is gone.
- 13:25Speaker 2: Let's break down the factual alignment surrounding Hampton. He is
- 13:28Speaker 2: a black man in his thirties.
- 13:30Speaker 1: Right.
- 13:30Speaker 2: He lived in an apartment complex situated directly along Don's
- 13:34Speaker 2: usual walking route home from the hospital, and he perfectly
- 13:37Speaker 2: matches the specific physical description provided by the eyewitness Kathy
- 13:42Speaker 2: of the man talking to Dawn at the bus stop
- 13:45Speaker 2: on the exact afternoon she disappeared.
- 13:47Speaker 1: That is a lot of coincidences.
- 13:49Speaker 2: Psychologically, the motive here is light years away from Nick
- 13:53Speaker 2: Katona's lazy apathy. Having your marriage, your social reputation, and
- 13:58Speaker 2: your entire financial life blown up by a whistleblower is
- 14:01Speaker 2: a classic high stakes trigger for sudden violence.
- 14:04Speaker 1: Because Hampton's wife is actively pressing Dawn for the damning details.
- 14:08Speaker 2: Yes, Dawn is the leak that threatens to entirely sink
- 14:12Speaker 2: Hampton's ship. That dynamic creates profound desperation.
- 14:16Speaker 1: And desperation is one of the most reliable breeding grounds
- 14:18Speaker 1: for violence.
- 14:19Speaker 2: It really is.
- 14:20Speaker 1: But if we just assume it's Hampton because the puzzle
- 14:22Speaker 1: pieces fit so perfectly and the motive makes logical sense,
- 14:25Speaker 1: aren't we in danger of committing the exact same sin
- 14:28Speaker 1: the original detectives committed with Tomath Hawkins.
- 14:30Speaker 2: That is a very valid point.
- 14:32Speaker 1: We have to fight that cognitive bias and look at
- 14:34Speaker 1: who else was hovering in the periphery of Don's life.
- 14:36Speaker 1: And that brings us to one final terrifying wildcard, a
- 14:40Speaker 1: man named Maurice Beele.
- 14:42Speaker 2: An angle that remained completely unexplored during the initial frenzy
- 14:46Speaker 2: of the investigation.
- 14:47Speaker 1: Maurice Beele was a kmart employee, who hung around the
- 14:50Speaker 1: edges of Don's social group. On the surface, he might
- 14:53Speaker 1: just seem like a familiar face from the store good Underneath,
- 14:56Speaker 1: his criminal history is absolutely staggering. We're talking documented drug possession,
- 15:01Speaker 1: violent assault, reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, and later in his
- 15:05Speaker 1: life he faced severe charges for sexually abusing an eight
- 15:09Speaker 1: year old girl and brutally stabbing her older sister multiple
- 15:12Speaker 1: times when she attempted to escape.
- 15:14Speaker 2: Bringing Beale into the suspect pool forces us to confront
- 15:17Speaker 2: the grim, deeply unsettling reality of victimology.
- 15:21Speaker 1: I struggle to connect Field to Down's disappearance. Though when
- 15:25Speaker 1: you look at his known history, specifically that horrific attack
- 15:28Speaker 1: on an eight year old child and her young sister,
- 15:30Speaker 1: Dawn was a twenty three year old adult woman.
- 15:33Speaker 2: Right, it seems like a mismatch.
- 15:35Speaker 1: It feels like a massive leap in logic to suggest
- 15:37Speaker 1: he would target someone so fundamentally different from his known victims.
- 15:41Speaker 2: Well, on paper, the demographics look entirely different, but predators
- 15:45Speaker 2: do not always hunt based on a specific biological age.
- 15:48Speaker 2: They hunt for a specific vulnerability. This is a crucial,
- 15:53Speaker 2: often misunderstood concept in criminology. Predators actively seek out populations
- 15:58Speaker 2: they perceive as easy to con manipulate or overpower.
- 16:02Speaker 1: So you think he saw her learning differences is of
- 16:04Speaker 1: vulnerability exactly.
- 16:06Speaker 2: An opportunistic predator like Beale might have targeted Dawn specifically
- 16:10Speaker 2: because he recognized her developmental delays. He may have spent
- 16:14Speaker 2: time around her at KMART, assessed her learning differences and
- 16:17Speaker 2: fundamentally underestimated her ability to fight back, scream, or successfully
- 16:22Speaker 2: report him to authorities.
- 16:23Speaker 1: Utilizing the exact same predatory calculus he would use when
- 16:26Speaker 1: targeting a child.
- 16:27Speaker 2: Yes, they prey on the marginalized, regardless of the number
- 16:30Speaker 2: on their birth certificate.
- 16:31Speaker 1: Which brings us to where this investigation stands today. He
- 16:34Speaker 1: are currently witnessing a massive frustrating clash of eras.
- 16:38Speaker 2: The Old Guard versus the News.
- 16:40Speaker 1: Yeah, you have the old Guard represented by the original prosecutor,
- 16:43Speaker 1: Bruce Caster, who refuses to yield an inch on his
- 16:46Speaker 1: theory about Thomas Hawkins.
- 16:47Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
- 16:48Speaker 1: Caster actually keeps a framed newspaper clipping of Hawkins's death
- 16:52Speaker 1: sentence hanging proudly on his wall. He is sitting there, confidently,
- 16:56Speaker 1: waiting for history to prove him right.
- 16:59Speaker 2: Hanging that clip is a profound example of psychological anchoring. Really,
- 17:03Speaker 2: how so, when an investigator publicly ties their ego and
- 17:07Speaker 2: their professional identity to a specific outcome, tearing down that
- 17:11Speaker 2: theory hurts the.
- 17:12Speaker 1: Ego too much, so they just double down.
- 17:14Speaker 2: Right, their brain will actively reject any new evidence, like
- 17:18Speaker 2: the contents of a hidden diary that threatens to prove
- 17:21Speaker 2: they spent decades being wrong.
- 17:23Speaker 1: Well, on the other side of this clash, you have
- 17:25Speaker 1: a new detective, Brian Bell and a civilian criminologist named.
- 17:29Speaker 2: Clark Williams, who are actually doing the work.
- 17:31Speaker 1: They are finally methodically chasing down the explosive leads hiding
- 17:35Speaker 1: in the pages of that diary. But because the immense
- 17:38Speaker 1: passage of time, Don's family is drowning in.
- 17:41Speaker 2: Desperation, and you really can't blame them.
- 17:43Speaker 1: No, not at all, And that profound desperation led them
- 17:46Speaker 1: to seek out a very eerie modern twist in the search.
- 17:50Speaker 1: Don's sister Cath eventually consulted a remote viewer.
- 17:53Speaker 2: Now, for those unfamiliar, a remote viewer is an individual
- 17:56Speaker 2: who claims to utilize extrasensory or psychic abilities to locate
- 18:01Speaker 2: missing people or hidden objects.
- 18:03Speaker 1: Right, and Kath intentionally gave this person almost zero background information,
- 18:09Speaker 1: just a basic physical profile of her sister.
- 18:12Speaker 2: Which makes the results so strange.
- 18:14Speaker 1: Regardless of whether you believe in the practice or not,
- 18:17Speaker 1: the remote viewer produced a shockingly specific result, pinpointing a
- 18:21Speaker 1: highly residential neighborhood park.
- 18:23Speaker 2: Not just a random patch of woods, but a location
- 18:25Speaker 2: with terrifying geographic significance to the case.
- 18:28Speaker 1: Yeah the park the remote viewer pinpoint it sits directly
- 18:32Speaker 1: on the map between the apartment of Don's devoted boyfriend
- 18:35Speaker 1: Dan and the apartment of the desperate married man Hampton.
- 18:38Speaker 2: It is uncanny.
- 18:39Speaker 1: It's it's perfectly exactly right on Don's usual walking route
- 18:43Speaker 1: home from the hospital.
- 18:44Speaker 2: Geographically, it brings every single thread of this mystery back
- 18:47Speaker 2: to the most critical nexus of the entire case, the
- 18:50Speaker 2: path she walked every single day.
- 18:52Speaker 1: We've journeyed from a seemingly straightforward, open and shut assumption
- 18:57Speaker 1: about a known serial killer to angled hidden web of
- 19:01Speaker 1: secret affairs, explosive diaries, and multiple highly viable suspects.
- 19:06Speaker 2: Ranging from a desperate married man losing his life to
- 19:09Speaker 2: a predatory acquaintance seeking vulnerability, and.
- 19:12Speaker 1: All of their motives and geographic connections were completely ignored.
- 19:15Speaker 1: For decades just because investigators couldn't look past the first
- 19:19Speaker 1: shiny object they found.
- 19:20Speaker 2: You know, the overarching lesson here for you listening to
- 19:23Speaker 2: this deep dive extends far beyond the realm of true
- 19:27Speaker 2: crime or police procedure.
- 19:29Speaker 1: It really applies to everything it does.
- 19:31Speaker 2: It is a fundamental lesson in the dangers of cognitive bias.
- 19:35Speaker 2: Whenever you face a complex problem in your own life,
- 19:37Speaker 2: whether you are navigating a difficult business decision, trying to
- 19:40Speaker 2: untangle a complicated interpersonal relationship, or simply managing your daily life,
- 19:45Speaker 2: locking onto the very first obvious answer you find is
- 19:48Speaker 2: incredibly dangerous.
- 19:50Speaker 1: It creates that tunnel vision.
- 19:51Speaker 2: Exactly That tunnel vision will blind you to the vital,
- 19:55Speaker 2: undeniable evidence that is quietly screaming for your attention right
- 19:59Speaker 2: in fron front of you, just like Don's diary sitting
- 20:03Speaker 2: silently in an evidence locker, holding all the secrets unread
- 20:07Speaker 2: for over twenty years.
- 20:09Speaker 1: It truly makes you wonder how much critical information we
- 20:12Speaker 1: miss every single day just because we are arrogant enough
- 20:15Speaker 1: to think we already know the answer absolutely. And that
- 20:18Speaker 1: brings me to a final lingering thought I want to
- 20:21Speaker 1: leave you with today, if that remote viewer's coordinate is right.
- 20:25Speaker 1: If Dawn never made it past that highly residential, everyday
- 20:28Speaker 1: neighborhood park on her walk home that spring afternoon, that
- 20:32Speaker 1: means something terrifying.
- 20:33Speaker 2: What does it mean?
- 20:34Speaker 1: It means for thirty six long years, the people who
- 20:37Speaker 1: desperately loved her, the community that tirelessly searched for her,
- 20:40Speaker 1: and perhaps even the very person who killed her, have
- 20:43Speaker 1: been walking right past her resting place every single day.
- 20:46Speaker 2: That is chilling to think about.
- 20:48Speaker 1: It makes you ask yourself, what other massive, world altering
- 20:51Speaker 1: secrets are we walking right past in our own neighborhoods,
- 20:54Speaker 1: completely unaware