Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Kristen Modafferi Pt. Two
Transcript
- 0:29Welcome back to the Path Wind, Chile for part two of our series about
- 0:33the disappearance of Christian Mota Feri. Robin, do you want to catch everyone
- 0:37up on what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, Kristin Montiferi
- 0:41lived with her family in North Carolina, got a full scholarship to North Carolina
- 0:45State University, but decided to spend the summer of nineteen ninety seven living in
- 0:50San Francisco so that she could take a photography course at the University of California,
- 0:55Berkeley. Kristin arrived right around her eighteenth birthday. She got a job
- 0:59at a Look coffee shop and was there for about three weeks, where she
- 1:03would work the morning shift, then at three pm every day she would go
- 1:07out and see the sights of San Francisco, and she finally worked a shift
- 1:11which was scheduled the day before she was going to start her photography class,
- 1:15but then she just mysteriously vanished without a trace. A couple of her coworkers
- 1:19would recall seeing her at the mall with an unidentified blonde woman, and a
- 1:25couple weeks later, a man named John Ouma phoned in a tip to the
- 1:27news accusing two women that he knew of murdering Kristen, which turned out to
- 1:33be completely false because Onuma decided to get revenge on them because they had had
- 1:38some friction with his girlfriend and he thought that the best way to deal with
- 1:41it would be too falsely accuse them of murders. It turned out that they
- 1:46had nothing to do with Kristen's case, and even though Onuma said that it
- 1:49was just a stupid prank and that he had read about Kristen's case in the
- 1:53newspapers, people became more suspicious towards him because he turned out that he had
- 1:59a history of troubling behavior. As the years would come on, a bunch
- 2:01of women would come forward and say that they had been abused and tortured and
- 2:07scammed out of money by Numa, and apparently he said to one of them
- 2:10that she was going to wind up dead, just like Kristin Modiferi. But
- 2:15they also turned out that Kristin had possibly filed a personal ad in a local
- 2:21newspaper seeking companionship, and because Onuma was known for using other women in order
- 2:28to lure his victims to him, there has been speculation that the blonde woman
- 2:31seen at the mall with Kristin might have been involved somehow and could have been
- 2:36Onuma's girlfriend at the time, Jill Lampo, wearing a blonde wig. But
- 2:42in the end they never found any conclusive evidence to link Onuma to Kristen's disappearance.
- 2:46I know that a cadaver dog has detected kristen scent near the Sutro Bass,
- 2:52a tourist attraction located near the Pacific Ocean, but they've never been able
- 2:55to conclusively establish she was there, And in recent years, cadaver dogs have
- 3:00also detected kristen scent at the house in Oakland where she had been staying with
- 3:07four other male roommates, but they were never considered to be suspects and there's
- 3:09no evidence that foul play took place there. So after twenty seven years,
- 3:15this case is still unsolved and we have no idea what happened to Kristin or
- 3:19if she was the victim of foul play. So before we start discussing the
- 3:23known facts of the case, we want to talk about another odd lead which
- 3:27wasn't shared in Part one. Believe it or not, one person who's been
- 3:30looked at as a potential suspect in Kristen's disappearance is notorious convicted murderer Robert Durst.
- 3:38I'm sure most of you already know who Durst is, as he was
- 3:40a subject of a multi episode documentary series The Jinx The Life and Death of
- 3:46Robert Durst, which aired on HBO in twenty fifteen. Durst has always been
- 3:51the prime suspect in the nineteen eighty two disappearance of his a strange wife,
- 3:55Kathleen McCormick Durst, and during the filming of The Jink new evidence was uncovered
- 4:01to implicate Durst in the murder of a friend of his named Susan Berman,
- 4:06who was shot to death inside her home in Los Angeles on December twenty third,
- 4:11two thousand. Durst was charge of Bourbon's murder the day before the final
- 4:15episode of The Jinks aired, and in September twenty twenty one, Durst was
- 4:19finally convicted of the crime at trial and received a sentence of life imprisonment.
- 4:25Shortly thereafter, Durst was finally charged with second degree murder in his former wife's
- 4:29death, even though her remains have never been found, and these events were
- 4:33recently chronicled in The Jinks Part two, which dropped on HBO a few months
- 4:39ago. You're probably also aware that Durst once went on trial for the two
- 4:43thousand and one murder of a man named Morris Black, though he wound up
- 4:46being acquitted on the grounds of self defense. So officially, Durst has been
- 4:51implicated in the murders of three people, but attempts have been made to link
- 4:56him to some unsolved cold cases, many of them involving young missing women,
- 5:00and in an odd coincidence, when Robin recorded his original Trail Went Cold episode
- 5:06on the Christian Modi Faery case back in January of twenty twenty two, Durst
- 5:11died in prison a few days later. Okay, Robin, can you tell
- 5:15us more about the girls that he or these unsolved cold cases that Durst might
- 5:18have been tied to, Because I was obsessed with the jings, both parts
- 5:24of it thought it was fascinating and he's such a disturbed individual, but I
- 5:30had never heard that there were other unsolved cases that he might be tied to,
- 5:32especially Kristen's. Well, I'm going to talk about them right now,
- 5:35and you might recall that we did a bonus minisode on The Path Went Chiley
- 5:40about the first one I'm going to talk about, which is the nineteen seventy
- 5:43one disappearance of eighteen year old Lynn Cholsey, who vanished while attending Middlebury College
- 5:48in Middlebury, Vermont. The main reason durst has been looked at as a
- 5:53potential suspect in that case was because he owned a health food store in Middlebury
- 5:57at the time, and Lynn Scholsey was supposed seen frequenting the store a short
- 6:01time before she went missing. On November twenty fifth, nineteen ninety seven,
- 6:05five months after Kristin Mota Feri disappeared, sixteen year old Karen Mitchell vanished after
- 6:12visiting her aunt at a shoe store she owned at Bayshore Mall in Eureka,
- 6:15California, and an eyewitness reported seeing Karen climb into a light blue sedan being
- 6:21driven by an unidentified white male believed to be in his sixties or seventies.
- 6:27At the time, Dursta was living in the nearby town of Trinidad and had
- 6:30reportedly been seen frequenting the shoe store belonging to Karen's aunt, as well as
- 6:35a soup kitchen where Karen often volunteered, and he also does have a bit
- 6:40of a resemblance to the composite sketch of the older man seen driving the sedan.
- 6:46As for a Kristin Motaferi, there really isn't much to link Durst to
- 6:48her case at all, other than the fact that he owned a house in
- 6:53San Francisco during that time period. Though shortly after Durst was arrested in twenty
- 6:58fifteen, one of Kristin's sisters made a public plea for Durst to come clean
- 7:02and reveal what happened to Kristen if he was responsible for her disappearance. Wow,
- 7:09so even Christen's sister said it's possible that there is a link. It's
- 7:13disturbing because Darst is so He's incredibly smart and manipulative and somehow charismatic to people.
- 7:23Where they go towards him, they're drawn towards him. I think a
- 7:26lot of that had to do with money and a desire to have wealth to
- 7:30your name by being associated with him, or experiences being associated with him.
- 7:33But you know, for young women who were looking for someone with culture and
- 7:42knowledge and access to experiences and things like that, I could see where Durst
- 7:46became an attractive individual despite all of his bizarre quirks. But without there being
- 7:51much to go on. I'm assuming Durst is not really a main lead in
- 7:57her case. Is that right? Pretty much? Yeah? I mean,
- 7:59the the only reason people have looked at her at him as a potential suspect
- 8:03in the Christen Moda Fairy case is because Karen Mitchell just happened to go missing
- 8:07a few months later, And even though there's pretty much a tentative connection there,
- 8:11at least in that one, you have a suspect to kind of resembles
- 8:15Durst, and I think they were just looking at these similar cases of young
- 8:18women going missing in California so close apart will Durst happened to be living in
- 8:22the area that they kind of put two and two together. But I don't
- 8:26think this would have happened unless Durst had been a suspect in those other crimes
- 8:30we talked about, like the disappearance of his former wife and the murder of
- 8:35Susan Berman. If you've seen The Jinx, you'll know that Dursts sometimes like
- 8:39to dress and drag in order to disguise his appearance. So one of the
- 8:45more outrageous theories in this case is that he could have been the mysterious blonde
- 8:48woman seen with Kristin at the galleria. However, the Oakland pd IS announced
- 8:54that they never found any evidence to connect Rst to Kristen's disappearance, and it
- 8:58sounds like he's pretty much all but been ruled out as a suspect. In
- 9:01fact, if it wasn't for Durst's relatively tenuous connection to Karen Mitchell's disappearance,
- 9:07which took place five months later, I'm not sure anyone would have ever attempted
- 9:11to link him to Christian's case at all. Well, Durst is undeniably a
- 9:16murderer. It sounds like he only killed people whom he considered to be an
- 9:20obstacle or threat to him, So I'm not sure that being a predator who
- 9:24targets random young victims like Lynn Cholsey, Christian MOTIFERI, and Karen Mitchell was
- 9:30part of his modus operandi. The Durst connection was definitely worth mentioning here,
- 9:35but I ultimately believe he has nothing to do with this case. Yes,
- 9:39I definitely think when you look at some of the other case, especially Karen's,
- 9:41he was present often times, like going to the soup kitchen she volunteered.
- 9:46Dad. He has no reason to beat the soup kitchen, and there's
- 9:50those kind of bizarre ways that he would show up in scenarios where he didn't
- 9:54belong that would definitely make Karen's case seem like, hey, we need to
- 9:58look at this guy with kristin just saying it's another young girl who disappeared.
- 10:03Yes, there was the blonde lane in the mall, but no one reported
- 10:05that she was distinguished looking or odd looking, or looked like she had a
- 10:09wig on or anything like that. So I would tend to think it's just
- 10:13a kind of loose link of saying it's possible. But I would be much
- 10:18more inclined to think it's her going out and exploring and getting caught up with
- 10:22the wrong person and or John having something to do with it. And it's
- 10:28kind of funny how when I mentioned Robert Durst on my original Trail in Cold
- 10:31episode, he died a few days later, And earlier this year I did
- 10:35another Trail and Cold episode where I made reference to OJ Simpson and then he
- 10:39died a few days later. So it seems like if we mentioned notorious murderers,
- 10:43they'll drop dead. Maybe it's good. Should we talk about Should we
- 10:46talk about John o'numa. Now, there are alternate theories which do not involve
- 10:54Kristin being the victim of foul play, as it's possible that she could have
- 10:58traveled to land End on the day she disappeared and accidentally fallen into the Pacific
- 11:03Ocean near Sutra Bass before her body washed away. In fact, if she
- 11:07was feeling suicidal, she theoretically could have jumped into the ocean to take her
- 11:11own life. But this is one case where I'm pretty confident that there's absolutely
- 11:16nothing to back up a suicide theory unless she did a very effective job at
- 11:20hiding her depression from everyone. I suppose we can't completely discount the possibility that
- 11:26Kristin fell into the ocean accidentally. But the problem is that we can't even
- 11:31conclusively establish that she was at this location on June the twenty third, even
- 11:37though a bloodhound detector is sent there. Kristin had mentioned attending a summer Solstice
- 11:41party at Ocean Beach two days earlier, on June the twenty first. Yes,
- 11:46it was also never established that Kristin attended this party, but this could
- 11:50provide an alternate explanation for her scent being picked up on that area, as
- 11:54bloodhous are not going to be able to pinpoint the exact date as scent was
- 11:58left there. It's possible this entire lead is nothing more than a red herring.
- 12:03But regardless of whether Christen traveled with that location on the twenty first or
- 12:07twenty third, I do believe she went missing because she cross passed with the
- 12:11wrong person after her final shift at Spinelli's. That's exactly what I think would
- 12:16have happened. I think that she crossed paths with somebody. It's possible it's
- 12:22this blonde lady who kind of intercepted her at the mall. And you,
- 12:26if you've ever been in one of those situations where you start talking to a
- 12:30stranger and you can't really get away, It's possible something like that happened where
- 12:33she kind of felt obligated to continue this conversation with her. It's possible this
- 12:39lady presented as knowing a lot about the city and could show her places.
- 12:43And is it the woman who heard her, or is it that she did
- 12:46get away from that woman and then ran into somebody else on her adventure who
- 12:50took advantage of her. I think both are possible avenues, which, like
- 12:54we said before is what makes this so complicated. Blonde lady could be nothing
- 12:58but a red who's just distracting us from the actual perpetrator. The blonde lady
- 13:03could have been working with John to target her and get a vulnerable person in
- 13:09his care. Or she could have left that blonde woman and gone on a
- 13:13totally different route and not had anything to do with John or this per Now,
- 13:18for me, I don't think that that beach scent is very powerful whatsoever.
- 13:24If she had been down to the beach in the last couple of days,
- 13:26the dogs would have hit on her scent, And so is it possible
- 13:30she was there that night or that day. Sure, but she definitely was
- 13:33there two days beforehand. That we believe she was there two days beforehand,
- 13:39So it doesn't really give us much information. I do not think she was
- 13:43suicidal. This girl is chasing a major dream and putting all the puzzle pieces
- 13:48into place to make it come true, like working, getting her living situation,
- 13:52getting ready to start her dream class at Berkeley. She was a go
- 13:56getter and she was pumped about this dream. She was on really being a
- 14:00tourist, getting to explore a new place. No part of me thinks that
- 14:03she took her own life. I'm curious, but what is both of your
- 14:07gut feelings about the blonde woman. Do you think that she's somehow is complicit
- 14:13in this crime or as part of this or do you think that she's a
- 14:16red herring. I'm even considering the possibility that her coworkers may have been mistaken
- 14:22that maybe they saw someone else who wasn't Kristin with a blonde woman, or
- 14:26maybe saw her on a different day if that wasn't her final shift, and
- 14:30just got the dates mixed up. But that's the thing is that if John
- 14:33o'numa was responsible, then I would think that Jill Lampo would be the prime
- 14:39suspect to be the blonde woman. But she was a brunette at the time,
- 14:41and I don't know if she's the type of person who would go to
- 14:45the trouble of putting on a blonde wig in order to lure Kristin to her
- 14:48boyfriend. I think that she could have just been somebody who was there talking
- 14:54to Kristin, and she's one of these kiddos who's just kind of on this
- 14:58journey to it explore the city and to kind of meet new people and have
- 15:03new cultural experiences. So if she meets someone interesting and she's just talking to
- 15:07them, I could see her spending forty five minutes talking to somebody new and
- 15:11then walking away. I don't see it being someone who abducted her. I
- 15:18mean, could you have taken her somewhere that was dangerous, yes, But
- 15:22I also think it could have just been her being social and getting caught up
- 15:24in a conversation with someone who was interesting to her at the time. Yeah,
- 15:28I've got nothing to back it up, but it feels to me like
- 15:31gut feeling that it's a red herring. I mean, she could have come
- 15:35across so many different people while working at Spinelli's, because it appears that she
- 15:39worked a great deal. If she had a paycheck of four hundred dollars,
- 15:43that seems like she would have had to have worked a lot of hours back
- 15:48then to have that type of a paycheck. So she's opening herself up to
- 15:52a variety of people there, and like as she brought up in Part one,
- 15:56having this if it was her personal ad that she'd placed looking for friends,
- 16:03she's also opening herself up there. So there's just so many different possibilities
- 16:07that the idea that this woman has to be tied to her disappearance is like
- 16:11tenuous at best. So on our last episode, we mentioned a guy named
- 16:17Dennis Mann who approached the Modifery family back in nineteen ninety seven to volunteer to
- 16:22assist them with the investigation. He traveled to California and essentially lived in a
- 16:27van while he tracked down leads and interviewed people connected to the case. It
- 16:33sounds like he expected Kristen to be found within a couple of months and never
- 16:37dreamed this case would still be unsolved twenty seven years later. But regardless,
- 16:41Mann is not given up, which is why he continues to run his website
- 16:45find Christian dot com and released a multi episode podcast with the same title in
- 16:51twenty twenty. Throughout his investigation, Mann was able to dig up some interesting
- 16:56new information about John and Numa and Joe Lampo, and while there's still no
- 17:00direct evidence that they had any involvement in Christian's disappearance, there is a good
- 17:06reason to believe that at the very least, they might know more than they're
- 17:10letting on now. Regardless of whether or not he's guilty of harming kristin it,
- 17:15seems indisputable that John o'numa is a pretty terrible human because he's seriously hampered
- 17:21the investigation by phoning in a false tip to implicate two innocent women, And
- 17:26if even a fraction of the allegations about him abusing other women and conning them
- 17:30out of their money are true, then he's damn lucky that he's not in
- 17:33prison for something. The women who have accused a Numa of abuse claimed that
- 17:38he would use other women in order to lure them to him, and with
- 17:42the evidence that we have, it's easy to imagine a similar scenario happening to
- 17:47Kristin. A newspaper containing a circled personal ad was found in Christian's room in
- 17:52which the writer was seeking a female companion for a number of the same hobbies
- 17:56at Christen Light. So it's possible that a new placed the ad and she
- 18:00answered it. But since Kristen was living inside a house with only male roommates,
- 18:06perhaps she was looking for female friends and place the ad herself. In
- 18:10fact, she did tell her roommates that she went to the Summer Solstice party
- 18:14at Ocean Beach with two women on June twenty first, but they were never
- 18:18identified. Whatever the case, it's reasonable to assume that Christian might have met
- 18:22the unidentified blonde woman seen with her at the galleria through the personal ad.
- 18:27It sounds like it was very at a character for Kristin to still be hanging
- 18:32around the mall, to still be hanging around the mall forty five minutes after
- 18:36her shift ended, But part of me wonders if Christian's coworkers saw her from
- 18:40a distance, it might have mistaken her for someone else, or maybe just
- 18:44misremember the date and actually saw Kristin and the blonde on a previous occasion.
- 18:48The coworkers described them as walking shoulder to shoulder, which seems to indicate that
- 18:53they were together and it was not just a coincidental sighting where Kristin was just
- 18:57passing some random strangers that she did not know. But if deciding was accurate,
- 19:03then it's possible the blonde had some sort of involvement in Christian's disappearance,
- 19:07particularly since she's never come forward. It is odd that she hasn't come forward,
- 19:11but it's also very possible she never saw call to come forward. It's
- 19:17possible she didn't know Kristen that well, and so it wasn't paying attention to
- 19:21the news. And remember back then you didn't have things like the Internet,
- 19:23and you just didn't have the same access to media and news stories and things
- 19:30like that. So it's very possible this is someone else who's traveling. It's
- 19:33very possible that this is another student who comes and goes from campus. So
- 19:37all kinds of reasons why you might not have had that blonde come forward,
- 19:42More so than just being someone who's guilty, right, there could have been
- 19:48a very innocent reason why they never came forward. Also, if their young
- 19:51fear of being implicated in something they didn't have anything to do with might prevent
- 19:55them from coming forward as well. Now, if Onuba was behind the whole
- 20:00thing, then the most promising candidate to be the blonde is Jill Lampo.
- 20:03But, like we mentioned earlier, Lampo is a brunette. So unless Lampo
- 20:08dyed her hair or was wearing a blonde wig, could it be possible that
- 20:11Ouma was using other women to lure his victims to him during this time period.
- 20:17Well, here's what odd piece of evidence which suggests that Lampo may have
- 20:21some complicity. In June of twenty twelve, Lambeau had a lengthy and very
- 20:26emotional phone call with her uncle, which prompted him to start taking notes and
- 20:30writing down what she was saying. At one point, Lampo supposedly shared a
- 20:34story about having once dated a controlling man in San Francisco who convinced her to
- 20:41quote unquote assist in an unspeakable kidnap and murder. Well, these notes eventually
- 20:45made their way into the hands of Dennis Mann, and you can see a
- 20:48photograph of them at the Fine Christian website. These notes were turned over to
- 20:53the Oakland PD, but it doesn't sound like this lead has gone anywhere,
- 20:57as Lampo did not provide any specific details about this quote unquote kidnap and murder,
- 21:03and even though it was reasonable to assume that this quote unquote controlling man
- 21:07in San Francisco was John Onuma, she never actually referred to him by name.
- 21:12Lampo did agree to be interviewed during a KGOTV segment that aired five years
- 21:18later, where she claimed that she was at the library on the day Christen
- 21:22disappeared and even held up her library card for the camera. Though I'm not
- 21:26entirely sure how this card is supposed to prove that she was there on June
- 21:30the twenty third, nineteen ninety seven. However, when asked about the false
- 21:34tip that Onuma phone did during that time period, Lampo did not hesitate to
- 21:38express her suspicions about him, stating, quote to me, that would imply
- 21:44guilt. If you're going to call and draw attention to yourself, that implies
- 21:48you want attention for some reason. End quote. It's almost like she's putting
- 21:52little breadcrumbs out there to say, yes, something's wrong with him, or
- 21:56look at him, but I don't want to be associated with it. There's
- 22:00a very little reason the uncle would share this kind of information about the emotional
- 22:04phone call with her unless a he wants attention or two he's actually highly concerned
- 22:11about Lampo and or John and wanting to provide that kind of information to the
- 22:17police. But for me, when you do look at what she says,
- 22:21she said, this would imply guilt. If you're going to call and draw
- 22:23attention to yourself, it implies you want attention for some reason. And we
- 22:27talked about that earlier. John is an attention seeker. He's a problem starter.
- 22:33And for someone who made a mistake and did this horrible call to police,
- 22:40misleading the investigation, and said, oh, crap, I went too
- 22:44far. Shouldn't have done that. You should naturally fade away. John seems
- 22:48to continue to one up and continue to put his hand out to say,
- 22:53please look at me, include me in the coverage of this case years and
- 22:59years later. So I tend to believe what Lampo's saying when she says,
- 23:03hey, if you're going to call and draw attention to yourself, it implies
- 23:06you want attention for some reason aka guilt. She probably knows a lot more
- 23:11than what she's saying. And it is crazy to think, like we were
- 23:14talking about how ridiculous it was that when this first happened, when Onuma phoned
- 23:18in that false tip, he was thirty six years old at the time.
- 23:21He wasn't just some stupid teenager or some stupid kid, And now he would
- 23:25be in his early sixties, and he still is not shying away from the
- 23:29atension of this case. Whenever they try to interview him about it, he
- 23:33is willing to go on the record and speak to the cameras. So he's
- 23:37still not trying to distance himself from it, even though he's becoming a senior
- 23:41citizen. But before we talk anymore about Jill Lampo or John and Numa,
- 23:47we have to discuss another possible angle, and that's the possibility that Christian was
- 23:51harmed by one or more of the four male roommates that she was living with
- 23:55in Oakland. Their living situation was a bit unusual, as the house was
- 24:00going through foreclosure and the landlord had stopped paying the mortgage. However, since
- 24:03the foreclosure process usually took several months, Kristin and the other roommates could still
- 24:08keep living in the house as the actual eviction was not actually scheduled to take
- 24:14place until the end of the summer, by which time Kristin would return to
- 24:18North Carolina for her sophomore year at NC State. I know that one of
- 24:22these roommates had recently broken up with a girlfriend who'd moved out of the house
- 24:26to travel to France, which is why a spare room became available for Kristin
- 24:30to rent. Now, while the idea of an eighteen year old like Kristin
- 24:33living alone in a strange city at a house with four other guys she didn't
- 24:38even know might sound like a major red flag, it must be stated that
- 24:42Dennis Men personally interviewed most of these roommates and thought they were nice, cordial
- 24:48guys who didn't give off any suspicious vibes, so he's inclined to believe that
- 24:52none of them had anything to do with Kristen's disappearance. Guess it might seem
- 24:57odd that they waited three days with without reporting Kristin missing and did not take
- 25:02the initiative to call the police until after they spoke with her father, But
- 25:06the fact of the matter is that she'd only been there for three weeks,
- 25:10and it's not like any of them had a close relationship with her. The
- 25:12roommates were going in and out of the house all the time, and Kristen's
- 25:17routine was pretty much waking up early to work the morning shift at Spinelli's,
- 25:21exploring San Francisco after a shift ended, and then returning home late at night.
- 25:25These guys never saw Kristin all that much to begin with, so this
- 25:29probably explains why they didn't become alarmed when she didn't return home on the evening
- 25:33of June twenty third. Absolutely, I don't see this as suspicious at all.
- 25:38These guys had their own lives, Kristen's eighteen. She wasn't really close
- 25:42to these people. She had just been there a couple of weeks, so
- 25:45it is kind of this place to line my head. But she's not getting
- 25:48her socialization and bonding from the people inside her house. So the fact that
- 25:53they don't report her missing, the assumption would be she's living her own life.
- 25:57The girl comes and goes when she wants. We don't keep tabs on
- 26:00each other, so why would we report her missing? Now? What speaks
- 26:04volumes is at the moment they get a voicemail on the home answering machine and
- 26:10they hear her parents saying, has anyone seen Kristen? We're concerned something's not
- 26:15right. One of them calls right back, and all of them start to
- 26:18go into action to help the parents. While they're on their way over to
- 26:22San Francisco, they're making reports to the police that she's missing. So I
- 26:26just don't see them being helpful to the parents and being concerned when the parents
- 26:33express concern. I don't see that being any kind of red flags other than
- 26:38just these other kids living their life until adults say help, something's wrong,
- 26:44and they say, okay, tell me what to do. Under normal circumstances,
- 26:48there really wouldn't be much reason to suspect these roommates of any involvement,
- 26:52But we can't ignore the findings of Buster, the cadaver dog who detected the
- 26:56scent of human decomposition at the house two decades later, and the fact that
- 27:02a chemical signature denoting the presence of human blood was found near the location.
- 27:07Now, I must admit that I'm pretty confused about the whole DNA testing process,
- 27:11as DNA samples provided by Christen's parents supposedly matched the DNA within some decomposition
- 27:18chemicals found at the scene. This seemed to indicate that Christen's blood had been
- 27:22there twenty years earlier. But the issue is that the proprietary device doctor R.
- 27:26Pod Vas used to make these findings was so new that it was still
- 27:30under patent review at that time, so he couldn't provide much of an explanation
- 27:34of how this device actually worked. The details are pretty murky, but I
- 27:40get the impression that the Oakland PD may not believe these findings are credible enough
- 27:45to prove that foul play took place there, which is why they've never attempted
- 27:48to perform any additional searches. If nothing else. The findings would require a
- 27:53lot of independent scientific verification before they could be used as evidence to make an
- 27:59arrest or bring someone to trial. I'm not a fan of any of this
- 28:04evidence that came about when we're looking at doctor r pad Vas's information. To
- 28:10me, again, I think that the idea that you have these private experts
- 28:15who can kind of work within any realm they want to. There aren't the
- 28:19same restrictions, there are not the same protocols, there's not the same standards,
- 28:23and there's not the same communication with family. I have trouble when you
- 28:29mix a lot of those kinds of individuals into an investigation who are providing this
- 28:33incredibly promising information to the family and claiming that they've told the police, and
- 28:38the police don't react. If you told me you had a DNA hit and
- 28:44you shared it with law enforcement, why would they not want to work towards
- 28:48finding out what happened to this eighteen year old girl. I think there's something
- 28:52a little bit more fishy going on, especially when you look at these kind
- 28:55of new technologies and these tests that are performed years later. It's suspicious to
- 29:00me. It rings more of someone trying to exploit the family, and or
- 29:04not being as well versed in their craft as they claim to be, and
- 29:08just trying to present as a bigger influence in the case than they're able to
- 29:12do. I started rolling my eyes, and I'm thinking, Yeah, this
- 29:15DNA testing where the DNA from Christen's parents supposedly matched the DNA within some decomposition
- 29:22chemicals, is making me think that this is nothing more than junk science.
- 29:26But let's just say that these findings are credible even if Buster the cadaver dog
- 29:32was accurate and some sort of human decomposition did take place at that location.
- 29:37Let's not forget the Buster ones detected the remains of buried soldiers who were killed
- 29:41during World War Two. Human decomposition chemicals can remain in the soil for centuries,
- 29:48so for all we know, Buster could have detected a scent from a
- 29:51body which had once decomposed on that spot hundreds of years ago, and his
- 29:56reaction may not have had anything to do with Kristen's case. And the chemical
- 30:00signature denoting the presence of blood was not found inside Christian's former house, but
- 30:04rather at the base of the porch steps for the residence next door, which
- 30:08had been a halfway house for juvenile offenders who violated their probation back in nineteen
- 30:14ninety seven. This might imply that Christian could have crossed paths with one of
- 30:18the offenders from the residents and they did something to her near the porch steps
- 30:22before moving her body. But from what I can tell, this place mostly
- 30:26housed juvenile drug offenders rather than violent, hardcore criminals. Yeah, I absolutely
- 30:33think that when you look at the presence of blood, that when you say
- 30:37that there was a presence of this blood, or that you know there were
- 30:41decomposition chemicals and things like that, there could have been so many elements that
- 30:47fed into that reading and that fed into that conclusion. And so even those
- 30:52kids, those juvelenal Lincolns, what if they had gotten in a fight and
- 30:55someone had broken their nose, or there had been tissue that they sneezed out
- 31:00or coughed out or something like that. There's so many reasons you could have
- 31:06those things occur. I just don't think that Kristen was at the residence when
- 31:11she was hurt. I think she was exploring and got caught up with someone
- 31:15who was promising her an adventure, someone who wanted to be her quote friend
- 31:19and take her somewhere, and she trusted the wrong person. I just don't
- 31:23see the four guys at the house being the people who did that when she
- 31:27just wasn't a part of their kind of daily interaction. I almost think had
- 31:33they been super close, the roommates and Kristin, I'd be a little bit
- 31:37more suspicious, like maybe one of them had come on to her and she
- 31:41denied them, or maybe they had gotten in a fight or something like that.
- 31:45But I really feel like this was a state of convenience and that all
- 31:48of them kind of lived these separate lives. I just don't see the home
- 31:52being a big place of interest for the investigation. And I feel like we
- 31:56could almost write off the juvenile offenders because the sophistication that it would take to
- 32:00be able to dispose of a body. They just don't have the tools and
- 32:05implements at the ready for them, such as a vehicle and all the other
- 32:09things that would be required to do that. They are accountable to the people
- 32:13at the halfway house, and although most of them might be leaving to work
- 32:16and to reintegrate into society, it doesn't mean that they have all the time
- 32:22in the world, and that they would be able to manage something like concealing
- 32:27a body and disposing of it in a way that would never be found.
- 32:30I would pray there'd be more supervision and things like that for juvenile offenders who
- 32:35are needing to be in a home. There'd be more where people were watching,
- 32:37and wouldn't they wouldn't have time to do any of that. Yeah,
- 32:42The problem with these findings is that we have no eyewitnesses or any evidence that
- 32:45could confirm Kristin return to this location at any point after she left Spinelle's on
- 32:51June the twenty third. Remember, this house was in Oakland, and Kristin
- 32:54went missing in San Francisco, as she always used the Bay Area Rapid Transit
- 33:00system to commute back and forth across San Francisco Bay. John Onomah only lived
- 33:05a mile away from the Crocker Galleria, so if he was responsible for harming
- 33:08Kristin, it doesn't make any sense for him to transport her body back to
- 33:13Oakland, unless perhaps Numa followed Kristin back to her house or she invited him
- 33:17there. But if something happened to Kristin at that location, what are the
- 33:22odds that none of her four roommates would have seen anything. When I first
- 33:25heard about these new discoveries at the house years ago, I thought they might
- 33:30edge this case ever so closer to being solved. But they've only complicated things
- 33:35and made the circumstances of Kristen's disappearance a lot more confusing. Yeah, I
- 33:39think they've been distracting. I think that there are things that gave false hope
- 33:44and false promises, and yet when you look at her last whereabouts, it
- 33:47doesn't really make sense. No one saw her being on any kind of transportation
- 33:53to get home, no one saw her arrive at home, no one saw
- 33:59her over in Oaka. So to me, you've got to focus more on
- 34:01the mall where we know she was last seen, possibly that blonde lady,
- 34:07but especially the mall area that's the location you started, and focus on the
- 34:13house. I don't think she made it home after her shift, so I
- 34:15don't see that being a place that needs any further investigation unless new information came
- 34:22forward. What we have now seems like a distraction now. Dennis Mann has
- 34:27presented a very interesting theory about how the police bloodhound, which track Kristen sent
- 34:31to the Sutro baths, may have led the investigation in the wrong direction.
- 34:37As you recall, they followed Kristen Sent from the Crocker Galleria to the number
- 34:42thirty eight bus stop on Geary Street, and that bus route traveled west to
- 34:45Suture Heights Park at Land's End, And since Kristin attended to her coworkers that
- 34:51she was planning to go there, the police operated under the assumption that Kristin
- 34:55had hopped on the bus, a theory which seemed to be corroborated when the
- 35:00the dog detected her scent at that location. But like we've reiterated numerous times,
- 35:05it's possible that the only reason Kristen sent showed up there was because she
- 35:08may have attended a party at Ocean Beach two days earlier. Dennis Matt had
- 35:14speculated that if the police had not mistakenly assumed that Kristin climbed on the number
- 35:19thirty eight bus, the bloodhout might have wound up tracking her scent to John
- 35:22Oonuma's apartment, located about seven blocks west on o'faral Street, which is only
- 35:28a block south of the Geary Street bus stop. So, theoretically, if
- 35:30the blonde woman seen at the galleria was connected to Numa, and she was
- 35:36attempting to lure Christen to him. Perhaps they walked together to his place.
- 35:39At the time the bloodhouse was used, Numa had not yet inserted himself into
- 35:44the investigation, and the police had no idea who he was, so you
- 35:47can understand why they wouldn't have considered this angle. Oh that's a very good
- 35:52point. You have women who have said that Numa would use women to lure
- 35:58in other victims or to get somebody who is vulnerable to him. And so
- 36:01if this blond lady's talking, she could have easily said, Hey, I
- 36:06want to go out and show you this part of San Francisco. Let's go
- 36:08over to Alcatraz. Let's go here or there wherever. She's going to take
- 36:13her, and she says, but first, I got to run in my
- 36:15apartment real quick. It's just a block over right, it's just a mile
- 36:19this way wherever, and they start to go towards this location that could have
- 36:23been John's. I think that's a big possibility. It's definitely possible, knowing
- 36:29that other women have said this is an mo of his. But again,
- 36:31because of the timing and the way the bloodhounds were used, and we didn't
- 36:36have that lead yet, It's kind of impossible to go back and try to
- 36:39retrace that even right when John calls in the tips, it would have been
- 36:45too many factors going on to say, hey, that's probably what happened at
- 36:50the time. Oh yeah, like they could have. They had no idea
- 36:52who John Onuma was, so of course they're not going to try to trace
- 36:55his route to his apartment on O'Farrell Street. So they probably get to the
- 37:00bus stop and say, this is far enough. She probably got on here,
- 37:02but who knows. If they had kept going, maybe the bloodhound would
- 37:06have taken her sent elsewhere. It's possible that no one would have ever connected
- 37:12Onuma to this case had he not decided to call the newsroom and falsely accuse
- 37:15his girlfriend's two co workers of being responsible for Kristen's murder, which he always
- 37:21maintained was nothing more than a bad joke. On one hand, this would
- 37:25have been an incredibly stupid thing for Numa to do if he was guilty.
- 37:30But on the other hand, he sounds like such a narcissistic and vindictive person
- 37:34that I can actually picture him being brazen enough to falsely implicate a pair of
- 37:38innocent people for a crime he committed. Sadly, when cases like Kristen's get
- 37:44a lot of coverage in the media, it's not uncommon for people to anonymously
- 37:47send in false tips for no logical reason whatsoever. But what's interesting is the
- 37:53amount of details Onuma provided during his call to the newsroom. He did just
- 37:59give some vague statement about how these two women murdered Christin. He specifically said
- 38:04that they killed her in the backseat of a car on Market Street near Castro
- 38:07Street, before they drove north over the Golden Gate Bridge to the point Rey's
- 38:13Forest area and hit her body beneath the wooden bridge. Of course, no
- 38:16remains were found at this location, but you have to wonder if there might
- 38:21be some element of truth within the details of Anuma's story. If this had
- 38:25all ended with one false tip, I suppose I could write off Anuma's involvement
- 38:30as him being nothing more than some jerk hampering the investigation. But one of
- 38:35the women he abused claimed that Onuma threatened her and said she would wind up
- 38:39like Kristin Motaferi. We also have some missing pages from Jill Lampo's day planner
- 38:45from the time period Christo went missing, which she said he tore out because
- 38:49it contained information which could incriminate him. And we have a briefcase filled with
- 38:53articles about this case, which was found in the attic of Onuma's residence in
- 38:58Hawaii years after the fact. However, none of this conclusively proves that Numa
- 39:04ever met Kristen, as he very well could have only learned the details of
- 39:07her disappearance after hearing about it in the media. The one thing that stands
- 39:13out to me is his unwillingness to disappear from this case right, needing to
- 39:17be involved, needing to share information, making very bizarre statements, and like
- 39:22you said, when you find all this information, not just the facts he
- 39:27brings forward, not just the false allegations against the two girls, but that
- 39:31briefcase and the ripped out pages of his planner, that quote could implicate him
- 39:36or make him look bad. All of that added together just you can't take
- 39:40your eyes off of him, like, is there proof? No, is
- 39:45there a flaming pile of smoke that says, look at this guy. Absolutely,
- 39:51And when you add the women's statements that he was an abuser, that
- 39:54he is a narcissistic kind of person, that he threatened and said, you
- 40:00know what happened to that girl, Kristen now is going to happen to you.
- 40:04Those kinds of elements make it where this man, at the very least
- 40:08is a dangerous human being and at the most could have been the person who
- 40:13was responsible for Kristen's disappearance. During the course of the investigation, Dennis Man
- 40:20did manage to dig up one link between Kristin and Onuma, and while it's
- 40:24a very tenuous one, it did lead to a very odd situation. A
- 40:29few months after Kristen went missing, Spinelli's Coffee Shop hired a new employee named
- 40:34Matthew Luke, who was friends with another employee there named Kelly Strafman. What's
- 40:38interesting is that Matthew Luk had previously dated Jill Lampeau before she broke up with
- 40:44him and began a relationship with John Ouma. Now, since Luk didn't start
- 40:49working at Spinelli's until after Kristin vanished, this connection might not mean much.
- 40:53But here's where it gets odd. So in May nineteen ninety eight, Dennis
- 40:58Man got permission to reinter view all of Christian's coworkers from Spinelli's, but by
- 41:02this point Kelly Strathman had quit his job there and they did not have any
- 41:07contact information for him. Man managed to get in touch with Strathman years later
- 41:12and communicated with him via email, and it sounds like he was nothing but
- 41:16cooperative. But before this occurred, the other employees had suggested that Man also
- 41:22get in touch with Matthew Lukay since they were friends and he might have Strathman's
- 41:25phone number. Well. According to Mann, he called Luk up and the
- 41:30moment he mentioned that he was working with Christian Motifery's family, the moment he
- 41:35mentioned that he was working with Kristin Modifery's family, lu K became hostile and
- 41:38completely snapped at him and stated that he didn't have anything to do with that
- 41:44and told Man never to call him again before abruptly hanging up. This struck
- 41:49Man is very odd because he didn't even phone Luke to question him about Kristin,
- 41:52as he only wanted to ask if he had Kelly Strathman's contact information.
- 41:58Furthermore, Man that he didn't even finish saying Christian Modifery's entire name before Lukay
- 42:05snapped at him, but it was very clear that Luk just did not want
- 42:07to talk about the case, even though he had no apparent connection to it.
- 42:12Were it not for Lukay's extreme overreaction, I would have no reason to
- 42:15believe that he had any knowledge or involvement in Christen's disappearance. But what could
- 42:21have prompted him to act this way? I mean, for all we know,
- 42:23Luke could have just been having a bad day, was in a lousy
- 42:27mood, and when Man phoned him up, I can understand him not wanting
- 42:30to talk about Jill Lampo or John o'numa since Lampo technically dumped him for Onuma,
- 42:37but Man didn't even get the opportunity to mention their names before Luk went
- 42:40off on his angry rant. This whole situation is kind of a six degrees
- 42:45of separation thing because we know that Christian knew Kelly Strathman, who was one
- 42:50of Luka's closest friends. But even though Luka technically took Christen's job after she
- 42:54disappeared, there's no evidence that Christian ever met Luka, who is one degree
- 43:00of separation away from Lampo and Onuma. So I hope you can understand what
- 43:04I mean when I say there are a lot of pieces in this jigsaw puzzle,
- 43:07but they just don't quite fit together. I guess it's possible that maybe
- 43:12Lampo still had some kind of social connection to him, And what if she
- 43:17had told him, like, yes, it's my ex boyfriend. But what
- 43:22if at some point she tells him information that terrifies him. He feels threatened
- 43:27by John, or he gets really worried that he's gonna somehow get caught up
- 43:30in this investigation he has nothing to do with, and so he has this
- 43:34kind of paranoia surrounding it, and when he's asked about it, it triggers
- 43:37this kind of like trauma stress that I didn't have hing to do with it.
- 43:43I broke up with her, We have nothing to do with each other.
- 43:45I don't know why she would tell me that information, and now I'm
- 43:47at risk of being caught in an investigation and or being hurt. I wonder
- 43:52if that could have prompted anger instead of a kind of uneasiness, a reaction
- 43:58that's abnormal. That would make sense to me, because he should have no
- 44:01reason to act that way just from hearing Kristin Monifery's name. I mean,
- 44:06I know that her name has been in the media for a while, and
- 44:08that his friend Kelly Strathman took over her job at the coffee shop. But
- 44:13it's like, why would he get so hostile? So I think your assessment
- 44:15might be correct that at some point maybe Jill Lampa was still in touch with
- 44:20him and mentioned something about Kristin's case which terrified him and got him so fearful
- 44:24that he decided, I don't want anything to do with it, and I'm
- 44:27not going to talk to anyone who brings up her name. So even though
- 44:32everyone had nothing but glowing things to say about Kristin, one of her roommates
- 44:37from the house in Oakland made this interesting comment when he was interviewed on Unsolved
- 44:40Mysteries. Quote, she wanted to come to the big city and find some
- 44:45excitement, but it seemed to be coupled with a naivete not a real understanding
- 44:50of how the big city worked end quote. Interestingly enough, during the early
- 44:54stages of the investigation, the police were looking to speak with a young blonde
- 44:59man known only as Tristan, as Kristin had told people that she met himle
- 45:02attending a concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View on June the thirteenth and
- 45:07spent the night at Tristan's brother's house. Investigators were able to eventually track down
- 45:13Tristan and rule him out as a suspect, but it sounds like the only
- 45:15reason Kristin went to his brother's place was because she missed the last train to
- 45:20Oakland and was planning to spend the night at the train station, but Tristan
- 45:23convinced her that wasn't safe and offered her a place to crash before driving her
- 45:28to work the following morning. Thankfully, Tristan turned out to be a genuinely
- 45:32decent and helpful guy, because you can see how the situation might have turned
- 45:37out badly if someone like John Ouma had offered her assistance. I think that
- 45:43when you look at the roommate's statement, it's probably very true. You have
- 45:47an eighteen year old kiddo who is, yes, a legal adult, but
- 45:52that's a kid, and she's always been very academically focused. She's an overachiever.
- 45:59She has these big of school. But I will tell you, as
- 46:01someone who's very geared towards school and who might have that book smart driven smarts,
- 46:07it often comes at a cost of saying like well as kind of cultured
- 46:12and worldly as I am, my common sense can sometimes not be where it
- 46:16needs to be, right, And she has this little adventure or spirit,
- 46:20but she doesn't have a whole lot of life experiences. So when she comes
- 46:23from North Carolina to San Francisco, that's in Oakland. Also, that's a
- 46:30very different world. Every time you travel to these newer locations, a new
- 46:35university, it's just a different space. And for her to have that dream
- 46:40or attitude of I just want to see everything. I want to get to
- 46:44know people. I want to engage in things I don't normally get to do.
- 46:47Yes, I think being naive comes with that when you're that young.
- 46:52I think when you're thirty five, in traveling the world or you're going cross
- 46:55country, you just have a different worldly experience of knowing. Yeah, don't
- 47:00ask that to these people. Maybe wait to find a police officer or someone
- 47:05who's older or elderly, right, Like, there's just different experiences that would
- 47:09shape intelligent choices when you're in a new space, and bold, brave choices
- 47:15you might make that aren't as intelligent, right, that aren't as smart or
- 47:20wise. And so I don't see any kind of harm in what the roommate
- 47:23said, I believe he's probably right. There's this bushy tailed, bright eyed
- 47:30kid that came to Oakland and San Francisco without an idea of how these big
- 47:35cities work, and it takes one person who can smell that this person's vulnerable,
- 47:40this person wants help. I can help you. I can give you
- 47:45a ride, I can give you quote directions, I can walk you where
- 47:47you want to be, And you just happen to ask the wrong person who's
- 47:52a predator and takes your life. So I tend to agree with the roommate.
- 47:57I bet she was a young kid who just didn't have the world knowledge
- 48:00to navigate some of these new experiences. And for most people, they scape
- 48:05by without getting harmed in those situations because most people are good people. But
- 48:09it takes one that isn't for something disastrous to happen. And Tristan's sounded like
- 48:15a good guy, so it's kind of a shame they didn't become a couple,
- 48:19Kristin and Tristan. That would have been so adorable. By all accounts.
- 48:23John and Numa is a very manipulative con artist, which is how he
- 48:28managed to lure a number of women into situations where he can not only sexually
- 48:32and physically abuse them, but scam them out of their money as well.
- 48:37All that being said, while Onuma has been accused of doing terrible things to
- 48:40many different women, it does not sound like he's ever been looked at as
- 48:45a potential suspect in any other unsolved murders or missing person's cases. So if
- 48:51Onuma did something to Kristin, why did she wind up dead while the other
- 48:54victims he abused were allowed to live. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely
- 48:59a whole here to make me suspicious of Onuma, but this case is just
- 49:02lacking that one slam dunk piece of evidence which conclusively implicates him. There is
- 49:08nothing that conclusively places Kristin Modaferi and John and Numa together at the same location,
- 49:15and there are a few pieces of evidence which might lead away from Onuma,
- 49:17such as the evidentiary findings at the house in Oakland and the unidentified blonde
- 49:22woman seen with Kristin before she disappeared. I mean, for all we know,
- 49:27maybe that blonde killed Kristin and was acting completely on her own and Onuma
- 49:30had nothing to do with it, Or perhaps Christian cross paths with another predator
- 49:36who has never popped up on the radar as a suspect. The good news
- 49:39is that there are people like Dennis Man who have ensured that Kristin Modaferi is
- 49:43not forgotten. And if there are people out there who know more about her
- 49:46disappearance than they're saying, then all it might take to break this investigation wide
- 49:51open is for the right person to come forward. So if you happen to
- 49:54have any information on the unsolved disappearance of Kristin Modafari, please contact the Oakland
- 50:00Police Department at five one zero two three eight three six four one. That's
- 50:06five one zero two three eight three six four one, Jules Ashley, any
- 50:10final thoughts in this case. This is one of those where you look at
- 50:15Kristen and all the potential, all of the plans that she had, and
- 50:21your heart breaks. She is driven, she's excited, she's a go getter.
- 50:27She's an adventurer and a dreamer, and because of that adventure in dreams,
- 50:32her life was cut short. Right, There's somebody who saw this young
- 50:37girl just full of life and just wanting so badly to make friends, connections,
- 50:43cultural experiences, memories, and they saw her as someone that they could
- 50:47pray on. It's heartbreaking. It's so sad that her father passed away without
- 50:52knowing what happened to her. And it is magical to think of people like
- 50:57Dennis Man who said, look this girl North Carolina. I refuse to let
- 51:02her story die. I refuse to let people look away from this case because
- 51:07she mattered and she was important to those of us who knew her. I
- 51:10think it speaks volumes to her character and to her legacy, and it makes
- 51:15me really proud of her community and of Dentist for saying, I'm going to
- 51:20keep it going. I'm going to keep covering this case. My heart also
- 51:23breaks for some of the I think pseudoscience that plays into this case, where
- 51:29the parents and family are so desperate for answers that it's possible they too open
- 51:34themselves up to vulnerability and manipulation. And it really does speak to these cases.
- 51:39When you have someone who's eighteen and they're a legal adult, do you
- 51:45react in a way that errs on something's wrong from the get go? In
- 51:52Christian's case, yes, she was eighteen, but when people say something's wrong,
- 51:58we need to listen and if you get proven that they're okay and safe.
- 52:01What a blessing. But I can only imagine Christian's family's heartbreak where they're
- 52:07begging police to start day three helping them with this missing person's case. And
- 52:14it's not until I think we said day seven that they actually opened a case.
- 52:17So there's a lot of different criminal justice factors here too, but the
- 52:22main fact is that an amazingly talented young lady lost her life and the ability
- 52:29to chase those dreams and we just don't know what happened. It's devastating.
- 52:35This case is so sad because we've got Christian who's on the precipice of all
- 52:40of these new experiences. She's getting to indulge her creative side, taking this
- 52:45photography class at Berkeley and then going back to NC State. She had the
- 52:50world at her fingertips, and to think she gets to Oakland, she has
- 52:54all of these new experiences, she's working at Spinelli's, meeting all of these
- 52:58people, and I'm sure that her parents, Bob and Debbie were sitting at
- 53:01home and going, Okay, we know our girl has a good head on
- 53:05her shoulders. I'm sure it was intimidating a little bit scary for them because
- 53:09she's living with four guys, it's a whole new city, but they trusted
- 53:14her. And to think that some predator plucked her off the street or out
- 53:20of a coffee shop or followed her home and did something to her, it's
- 53:23just so sick. My gut tells me that there's a strong probability that that
- 53:29predator was John o'numa, just all of the red flags with him. Robin
- 53:34brought up the specificity by which he pointed his fingers at those two women,
- 53:38that he said it was a lesbian love triangle gone wrong, and then he
- 53:42detailed exactly how she was murdered and like where she was. They didn't find
- 53:46a body there, but Robin had said that it seemed like there could have
- 53:50been a possibility that part of that was true, and I happened to agree
- 53:53with him. I think that he's doing part of that from memory and maybe
- 53:58embellishing other parts, saying where he concealed the body or disposed of the body.
- 54:04But I just think the fact even that Jill Lampo was saying, well,
- 54:07you know, based on all this, it seems like there's a possibility
- 54:10could be guilty. Most signs point to him. Our pod Boss and all
- 54:15of that technology I think is one of those things we were looking at it
- 54:20and going, O, well, this could be good, but it's really
- 54:22not proven science. And Buster the cadaver dog, although very talented, there's
- 54:28a lot of strange things here. Where she was at that summer Solstice party
- 54:31on the twenty first, so there could have been her scent remaining there on
- 54:36the twenty third. She never confirmed for sure after she got off work at
- 54:39Spinelli's that she was going to be going back there. She just had mentioned
- 54:44the possibility, so I think that it's unlikely that she returned there that day
- 54:47and somehow went over the cliff. It's just such a sad case because I
- 54:52just feel in my bones that John o'numa is just the one to lean on
- 54:57here. Yeah, I tend to. I mean, there's no direct evidence
- 55:01implicating Onuma, but his behavior is just so creepy, and the fact that
- 55:06he took the initiative to falsely accused to innocent people in a missing person's case
- 55:10at the time, which he supposedly had nothing to do with is pretty troubling.
- 55:15I Mean, when I first watched this on Unsolved Mysteries, a lot
- 55:19of the abuse allegations hadn't come out against him yet, so I was giving
- 55:22him the benefit of the doubt that it was just a stupid prank. But
- 55:25then I just saw there was such a dark side to this guy, and
- 55:29also the fact that he did weird things like keep a briefcase full of news
- 55:34clippings of Christen's case. So yeah, I definitely do believe that Kristen was
- 55:37the victim of foul play and this was a major tragedy because I'm sure the
- 55:43decision haunted her parents because it is unusual to let someone who just turned eighteen
- 55:47go off and live in a strange city on her own for a couple months.
- 55:52But she was such a bright young girl who was such a vibrant personality
- 55:57that I think they trusted her judgment and felt she was do the right thing.
- 56:00And even though there might be red flags about her staying at a house
- 56:04with four other male roommates she didn't know, ironically enough, they turned out
- 56:08to be the good guys, and unfortunately, I think Kristin wound up crossing
- 56:13paths with a bad guy and wound up becoming the victim of foul play.
- 56:16I mean, I don't know if the sighting of the blonde woman is a
- 56:20red hairing or as connection to the case. But I do think that if
- 56:22John Unuma was involved, that Jill Lampo might have some knowledge about what actually
- 56:28happened. This case often gets overshadowed a little bit by the Christian Smart case
- 56:32because it also happened to take place in California one year earlier and involved another
- 56:38bright, young, vibrant university student who went missing. And in that case
- 56:43there was a prime suspect from day one named Paul Flores. But even though
- 56:47Kristen Smart's remains have still never been found, Paul Flores was eventually charged with
- 56:52her murder and found guilty at trial and sent to prison. So who knows,
- 56:57maybe the same thing will happen here these days, that maybe even if
- 57:00they don't find Christian's remains, they will amass enough evidence to potentially charge John
- 57:05o'numa or even another suspect and maybe bring them to trial. So it is
- 57:09sad that Kriston's father died without getting any answers, but I do hope that
- 57:14we find out the truth about what happened someday. Robin, do you want
- 57:19to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon. Yes,
- 57:22the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer
- 57:24these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out
- 57:30stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon
- 57:35if you join our five dollars tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus
- 57:39episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went
- 57:45Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our
- 57:49highest tier tier free the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer
- 57:52is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can
- 57:58download an audio file well and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on
- 58:02Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background,
- 58:07where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode.
- 58:13And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over
- 58:16was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary
- 58:21track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be
- 58:24sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you know a little
- 58:28bit about the Jules and Nashy patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of
- 58:31The Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always
- 58:36over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short
- 58:38to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we
- 58:43hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the show notes.
- 58:45So I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have
- 58:49to share us on social media with a friend or d rate and review is
- 58:52greatly appreciated. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
- 58:57You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwent So until next time, be
- 59:00sure to bundle up because cold trails and chilly pass call for warm clothing.
- 59:05Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy