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The twelve headless victims of Wisconsin · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So picture this. It's a really bone-chilling morning, right?
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, Wisconsin in the cold, yeah. Exactly.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Sometime just before sunrise in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. And the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: year is 1989. Right. There's this couple, and they're out
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: for an early walk along the quiet, misty banks of
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Nichols Creek. And, you know, the water is murmuring. The
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: woods are completely still. The air is just biting at
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: their faces.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Very atmospheric. Very atmospheric.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but then sticking out against the natural landscape, they
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: stumble upon something just horrifying.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where it turns.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: It's a dead body. Wow. And it takes time, but
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: eventually investigators are able to identify her, actually thanks to
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a very distinct gallbladder surgery scar.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow, that's specific.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really specific. Her name was Reese Poken, and she
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: was 35 years old.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: You know, if this were just a standard true crime
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: deep dive, that creek bed is basically where our story
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: would begin and end.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We would just dive into a singular, isolated tragedy,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: like a localized Tudin to focus purely on Sheboygan County.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: But the reality of what happened to Reese is it's
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: far more expansive and, frankly, far more terrifying.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It really is. And, you know, that is the core
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: mission of our deep dive today. We are pulling from
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: this massive stack of sources.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's huge. Like everything.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Decades of neglected cold case police files, complex jurisdictional maps,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: missing persons databases. Right. And these really heartbreaking interviews with
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the families left behind.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those are tough to get through.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: They really are. And we are using all of this
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to understand how Reese was, well, she was actually part
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of a staggering macabre pattern.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: A huge pattern.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Right. Because between the years of 1982 and 2021... At
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: least 12 people in Wisconsin, 11 women and one man.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They were murdered and dismembered. And they shared this
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: highly specific, gruesome signature, you know.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Their heads, their hands, or, you know, both were deliberately removed.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: It's just chilling. It is a profound failure of the system.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Like what we are unpacking today isn't just a story
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: about a potential undetected serial killer. Or even, you know,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: a localized group of killers operating in the shadows for
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: all those decades.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: It is a masterclass in how invisible county lines, overlapping jurisdictions,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and just, frankly, bureaucratic apathy can create the perfect blind spots.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Like letting monsters slip through completely unnoticed.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Just right through the cracks.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So we're going to take you down into this chilling
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: web of connected crimes today.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: We'll examine the actual mechanics of those blind spots. And
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: most importantly, we're going to talk about the families who
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: absolutely refuse to let these cases die.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Which is so important. It is.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: But to really understand how this happens, we have to
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: rewind a few years before Reese was found in that creek. Right.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Going back a bit.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We need to go back to October 14th, 1986,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and we need to talk about Reese's cousin. Yeah.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Ray Tortillon.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Ray.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Ray's story is just devastating. She was just 18 years old.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So, yeah.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Right. And she was a Menominee tribal princess, which meant
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: she was a highly visible, celebrated representative of her community's culture,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Like a real pillar of her tradition.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And she had just stepped into this new role
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: in life, too. She was a mother to a two-month-old
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: daughter named Elise.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And from all the family accounts, she was fiercely devoted
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: to this baby. Like, she loved being a mom.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: But on this specific October night, Ray is out at
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: a small house party on the Menominee Reservation.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: It's an intimate gathering, like just six other people, all
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: friends of hers. And the timeline of the night is
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a bit disjointed.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: As parties usually are.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. But it goes roughly like this. She leaves
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the party, gets a ride home, decides she doesn't want
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: to go inside just yet, cruises around with a friend
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: for a bit, and then eventually winds back up at
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the same party.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is entirely typical behavior for a teenager
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: on a weekend.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Totally normal.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: There's nothing in that timeline that suggests high-risk behavior or
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: immediate danger.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Not at all. But then, sometime after midnight... Ray steps
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: out of that house again into the freezing pitch black night.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And she just vanishes. Poof.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Gone.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: It's just like that. And, you know, when you look
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: at the initial response to her disappearance, you immediately start
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: to see the structural cracks.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, big time.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Like how these investigations are handled. The tribal police do
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: act quickly on their end, actually.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they did try.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: They organize search parties. They bring in canines to track
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: her scent. They interrogate the partygoers.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: But they are a small agency, right?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Limited resources. So when they realize they are out
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: of their depth, they reach out to the FBI for assistance.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense. Right.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: And the mechanics of jurisdiction are crucial here. Because this
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: happened on sovereign tribal land, the Major Crimes Act dictates
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: that the FBI has jurisdiction over serious felonies.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Like kidnapping and murder.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Which makes what happens next absolutely infuriating to me.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: It's awful.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: The FBI literally refuses to help.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And their official documented reason was that there was, quote,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: no evidence of foul play.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: It's just wild.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Let's unpack this logic because it drives me completely crazy, honestly.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Saying there's no evidence of foul play when an 18-year-old
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: new mother vanishes into thin air is, well, it's like
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: staring at a burned down house.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Okay. Okay.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Looking at the smoldering ashes and saying, well, there's no
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: evidence of a match. Right. The sudden, inexplicable absence of
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: the person is the evidence that something is terribly wrong.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: You are hitting on a devastating bureaucratic catch-22 that plagues
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: cases on tribal lands all the time.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: It's so backwards.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: It really is. Federal law enforcement agencies often require tangible,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: physical evidence of a crime. You know, like blood, signs
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: of a struggle, a weapon.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: They need that to trigger the deployment of their massive resources.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: But how do you get that without them?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Without those federal resources, finding that physical evidence in
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: a vast, rugged, densely wooded rural area is nearly impossible
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: for a local tribal force.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a huge area.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: So you have a situation where they need evidence to
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: get help, but they need help to get the evidence
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: in the first place.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: It's a complete paradox.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: And in the meantime, critical hours and days are just
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: slipping by.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: While Ray's family is basically screaming from the rooftops that
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: she would never abandon her baby.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: But officially the investigation just stalls out.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: It stalls out for months. I mean, the snow falls,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: the snow melts, and nothing.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Nothing at all.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Until we get to April of 1987. A hunter is
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: walking through this really remote, incredibly swampy area of the reservation.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: The ground is super soft. The brush is thick. And
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: as he's navigating the terrain... he spots something unnatural snagged
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: in the brush.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, no.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: It's a bra strap.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: And that single thread, unfortunately, finally breaks the case open,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: leading investigators to raise remains.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Or, well, more accurately, her partial remains.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: It's a gruesome scene. Her body is headless.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: And because of the severe decomposition from just sitting in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: a damp swamp for six months and, you know, the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: fact that her head is entirely missing, the coroner can't
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: even determine a cause of death.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Which leaves investigators with an undeniable homicide, but virtually no
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: forensic starting point at all.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Right. Where do you even begin?
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: You can't. No cause of death means no weapon to
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: look for. A missing head means missing dental evidence and
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: potential trauma indicators.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: So the trail just goes freezing cold.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And, you know, if. The tribal police's lack of resources
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: created a blind spot in the rural areas. We have
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: to look at what happens when these exact same circumstances
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: start happening in other jurisdictions.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it spreads.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Which brings us directly back to Reese Pocan, who was
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: found murdered and dismembered two years later in Sheboygan County.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Right, the cousin.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, and this is where the story gets deeply psychological
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: and honestly just terrifying.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Because just two months before Reese went missing in Milwaukee,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: she confided in a church friend. A woman named Jerry. Okay.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Reese was deeply depressed. She was constantly looking over her shoulder.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And she told Jerry something that sounds like it was
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: scripted for a horror movie.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: The weight of what she said is just staggering. It is.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: When you read the police files, it forces you to
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: pause and just sit with the sheer terror Reese must
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: have been experiencing daily.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She literally told Jerry, quote, he's going to cut
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: off my head. He already killed my cousin. She knew
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: her fate. She predicted her own decapitation, tied it directly
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: to the unsolved murder of Ray, and she even gave
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Jerry a name.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: She named him.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: She named the man she was terrified of. But tragically,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: you know, human memory is frail.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: When Jerry was interviewed by police later, after Reese was
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: found dead, she couldn't remember the name.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: That is just heartbreaking. And, you know, to hear a
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: victim articulate the exact, highly specific, horrific signature of her
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: own impending murder... is chilling enough.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: But sociologically, you really have to ask yourself, how does
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: a woman predict this, tie it to her cousin's death,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: and yet the policing system completely fails to connect the
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: dots between the two murders?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Makes no sense.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: This is the textbook definition of siloed policing.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Well, break the mechanics of that down for us, because
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: from the outside, it seems literally physically impossible that nobody
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: noticed two cousins murdered two years apart, both missing their heads.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: I know, it sounds crazy, but you have to look
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: at the historical context of policing in the 1980s. Okay,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: set the scene. Information was treated like proprietary property, not
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: a shared resource.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Ray's murder happened on the Menominee Reservation. Reese vanished from
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the city of Milwaukee and was dumped in Sheboygan County.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: So that's three different areas.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You're dealing with tribal police, city homicide detectives, and
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: rural county sheriffs. Right.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Lots. of cooks in the kitchen.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: And this is pre-internet, pre-digitized databases.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's true.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Detectives built their careers on solving their cases. If a
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: detective in Milwaukee didn't physically pick up a landline telephone
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: and call a sheriff in Sheboygan or, you know, drive
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: to the reservation to request paper files, those investigations never
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: crossed paths.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Wow. And from our sources, the tribal police were guarding
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: those paper files incredibly closely.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Very closely.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: The chief of the tribal police at the time was
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: a man named Keith Tortelot.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And what's deeply complicating here is that Chief Tortelot
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: was actually a cousin to both Ray and Reese.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Wait, I'm stuck on this. He's their cousin.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, he is.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Why would a grieving family member in a position of
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: power actively sabotage the public search?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: It's complicated.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Like, Our sources say he claimed to have suspects but
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: refused to name them, and he blocked his own detectives
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: from doing media interviews. Was this just pride, or is
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: there a systemic issue here?
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: It's as a complex mix of tribal sovereignty, historical mistrust, and, honestly,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: the desire to control the narrative. Makes sense. Historically, tribal
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: communities have had incredibly fraught relationships with outside media and
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: state law enforcement.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Who often misrepresent them?
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Or handle their cases with profound disrespect.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Chief Tortolat likely felt that by keeping the investigation entirely in-house,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: he was actually protecting the integrity of the case. Oh,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: I see. But functionally, sealing off the flow of information
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: is fatal to a cold case.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: It completely starves the investigation. If you don't talk to
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the media, you don't generate tips from the public. But,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I have to pivot and ask you about
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the signature itself because it is so prominent in these files.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very distinct.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: As an expert looking at this, why go to these lengths? Like,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: why is a killer consistently taking the time and effort
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: to remove the heads and hands of these victims?
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Well, in the criminological context, there are a few distinct
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: mechanisms at play here. Okay. The most pragmatic is purely forensic.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: It's about preventing identification.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, right.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: If you remove the face, the dental records, and the fingerprints...
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: You severely delay the police's ability to even put a
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: name to the victim.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Which buys you time.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Yes. It buys the killer time to distance themselves from
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: the drop zone.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Which clearly worked, given the state of forensic science in
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the 80s.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, yes, it did. But dismemberment of this nature is
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: rarely just pragmatic.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: There's more to it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: There are deep psychological layers. It can be an expression
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: of visceral, consuming rage. Wow. It is the ultimate dehumanization
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: and destruction of a victim's identity.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: And interestingly, some sociological sources point to cultural superstitions.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In certain belief systems, there is a mythology that
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: if a body is not buried fully intact, the victim's
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: spirit is trapped.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: They cannot rest in peace, and therefore they cannot haunt
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: or seek vengeance against the killer.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. The idea that someone is doing this not
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: just to hide evidence, but to literally trap a victim's
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: spirit is just deeply unsettling.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: It is truly dark.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: But, you know, if tribal secrecy explains the blind spots
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: in the rural counties, what was the excuse for the
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: authorities when this exact same violence spilled into a dense
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: city block?
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Milwaukee.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Because just nine months after Reese disappears, another woman vanishes.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And geographically, she lived only a half block away from
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Reese's direct path on National Avenue in Milwaukee.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: A half block. When you map that proximity, the idea
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: of this being a coincidence becomes statistically absurd.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Right. Her name was Julia Baez. She was 36 years old,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a Puerto Rican mother of four. In June of 1990,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Julia goes out for a night of dancing with her
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: best friend, Maricela.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Sounds fun. Yeah. They are at a local tavern, pulsing lights,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: loud music. There are rumors going around that she got
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: into a heated argument with her boyfriend, Pedro, that night.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Right. Standard tavern rumors.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Right. But after she leaves the glow of that tavern,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: she walks out into the city and goes completely off
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: the grid.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And this brings us to another systemic failure, one that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: really highlights the tragic mechanics of marginalization.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about that.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Julia struggled with drug use, and she lived a highly
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: transient lifestyle. Right. Because of that instability, her children were
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: living elsewhere, like with their fathers or in the foster
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: care system.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: So when she disappeared... The societal alarms just didn't sound.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: No one officially even realized she was missing for five months.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Five months. It took five months for anyone with authority
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: to notice.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And this forces us to look at how law enforcement
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: values certain lives over others.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Women of color, indigenous women, individuals struggling with addiction or poverty.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: They are frequently written off by the system.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Like, they don't matter. Their absences are easily rationalized. Like, oh,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: she just took off or She's on a bender. She'll
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: turn up.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: And because the police fundamentally assume the victim chose to leave,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: the entire burden of the investigation falls squarely onto the
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: shoulders of the families.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Which is so unfair.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: The killers know this. Poverty and transience provide the ultimate cover.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Well, to give you a clear picture of just how
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: jaw-droppingly apathetic the police work was in Julia's case, Let's
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: look at a document from 2012.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part is wild.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: 22 years after Julia vanished, a police officer is finally
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: sent out to do a follow-up at her last known address.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: The file says to check apartment 6. The officer goes out,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: comes back, and writes a report stating that they couldn't
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: complete the follow-up because the building only has apartments 1
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: through 5.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: You have got to be kidding me.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: And there's no bays on the mailboxes. Case closed.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: The lack of investigative curiosity is just stunning.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: It is like an IT guy closing your urgent tech
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: support ticket because you weren't physically sitting at your desk
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: when he walked by 20 years later.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: It's the illusion of work designed to clear a backlog,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: not an actual investigation. I mean, did they really expect
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: her to be sitting in an apartment next door to
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: her last known address two decades after vanishing?
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: No, it is purely administrative box ticking.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: And the darkest irony of this bureaucratic failure is that
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Julia wasn't actually missing.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Wait, what?
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: She had been found almost immediately after she disappeared. But
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: because of this apathy, no one ever connected the dots.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, let's follow that thread and connect the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: city failure back out to the rural drop zones.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It is October of 1990, just four months after Julia
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: vanished in Milwaukee. A man is walking through the dense,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: damp woods of Black River Falls.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Which is pretty far.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is about three hours west of Milwaukee, and notably,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: it's very close to another Native American reservation. He's out
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: foraging for mushrooms. He's looking down at the brush, scanning
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: the ground, and he spots a large black garbage bag.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: And inside that bag are human limbs. Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Police descend on the area. They secure the woods and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: find a shallow grave nearby that animals had already partially
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: dug up.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: So grim.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: There are more bags containing a torso, but matching the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: exact horrific signature of Reese and Ray, the head is
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: completely missing. Right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: And what happens next with the local leadership is baffling.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Honestly.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: The Jackson County Sheriff holds a press conference.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: And instead of sounding the alarm that a killer is
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: utilizing rural drop zones for dismembered bodies, he actively downplays
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: the severity of the discovery.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I have read this quote a dozen times and it
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: still shocks me.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: He literally tells the press not to worry because dismembered
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: bodies are found, quote, all over the state.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: What?
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: He says you have heads without bodies, bodies without heads.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Why on earth would an elected law enforcement official say that?
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Is he acknowledging a massive statewide pattern of serial murder
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: just to make his local constituents feel better about the
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: dismembered body in their own backyard?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: It's crazy, but you have to look at the motives
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: of a rural county sheriff.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Which are?
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: It's highly likely this was driven by local economics and
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: election year politics. Ah, of course. Money. Black River Falls
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: relies heavily on outdoor tourism. like hunting, fishing, foraging.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: A serial killer dumping bodies in the woods destroys that economy.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: So he mitigates local panic by normalizing the violence.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Don't worry, folks. This happens everywhere.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But the profound tragedy is while he's verbally acknowledging
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: a statewide pattern of dismemberment to the cameras, his department
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: is doing absolutely zero investigative work to actually link these
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: crimes together or share evidence with neighboring counties.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Which leaves the victim as a nameless Jane Doe. And
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: this is where the emotional core of our deep dive
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: really hits. Because while the police are checking the wrong
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: mailboxes two decades later, Julia's daughter, Marisol, never stopped fighting
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: for her mom.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Never. Marisol was just a teenager when her mother vanished.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: She had to grow up with that void.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: For 25 years, Marisol scoured the Internet. She practically lived
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: on the Doe Network, you know, which is a volunteer-run,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: crowdsourced database of where families and amateur sleuths cross-reference missing
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: persons reports with files of unidentified remains.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: It's an incredible resource.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It really is. She was constantly looking for any clue.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And the craziest part of this entire story, Marisol actually
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: saw the file for the Black River Falls Jane Doe
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: multiple times over those decades.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: She saw it, but she dismissed it based on a
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: fatal flaw in the police reporting.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Exactly. She dismissed it because the official coroner's file noted
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: that the victim had a highly distinct mushroom tattoo. Right.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Marisol knew for an absolute fact her mother didn't have
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: any tattoos.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: This is one of the most heartbreaking, forensic misinterpretations I
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: have ever encountered.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: It is devastating. Because it turns out Julia didn't have
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: a tattoo.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: No, she didn't.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: The so-called tattoo the coroner officially logged was actually a
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: botanical imprint on her decomposing skin from the mushroom she'd
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: been buried on top of in that shallow grave.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: A temporary natural post-mortem artifact was officially recorded as a
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: permanent identifying body modification.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: It's just unbelievable.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: And that single sloppy error threw a grieving daughter off
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: the trail of her own mother for a quarter of
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: a century.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: 25 years. It wasn't until 2014 that Marisol finally reached
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: her breaking point.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Good for her.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: She marched into a police station and practically forced them
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: to take her DNA swab. She told them, my mom
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: is a Jane Doe out there. She wouldn't have just
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: abandoned this.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: And eight months later in 2015, they run it through
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the system and get a hit.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: The Black River Falls Jane Doe with the phantom mushroom
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: tattoo was Julia Bayes. She finally had her name back.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: You know, giving a victim their name back is a
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: profound and necessary step, but it doesn't automatically equal justice.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Because even after Julia was identified in 2015, those jurisdictional
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: walls remained stubbornly in place.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't just fall down.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: The dock between Ray, Reese, Julia, and the nine other
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: victims still weren't being officially connected by a centralized, well-funded
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: task force.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the current fight, like right now.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Because there is a glimmer of hope in this massive
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: stack of sources. There is a singular force pushing against
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: this historical tide of apathy.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Detective Nathan Hatch.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, Detective Nathan Hatch in Sheboygan County.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Detective Hatch seems to be the very first investigator in
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: 40 years to step back Look at this entire map.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: See the severed hands, the missing heads, the geographic proximity.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And say enough is enough.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Definitively say we have a massive interconnected problem.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So in late 2024, Detective Hatch finally managed to do
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: what should have been standard protocol in the 1980s.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Finally.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: He forced the different agencies, the FBI, the state investigators,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the county sheriffs, and the tribal police into the exact
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: same room for the very first time.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: That is a huge deal.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: They finally sat down around a single table and started
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: cross-referencing their persons of interest lists, comparing notes, and actually
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: sharing the files they had hoarded for decades.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: It's a monumental, vital step. But we cannot ignore that
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: it is a very late one.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: True.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: The trail's freezing cold, human memories have faded, and many
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: potential witnesses, or even suspects, have likely passed away.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the reality.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: But the machinery is finally moving, the walls of siloed
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: policing are slowly coming down.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: And this is where you, listening right now, come in.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Because there is an incredible power in collective attention. For decades,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: these women were isolated in dusty filing cabinets in different counties,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: their files carefully guarded or casually ignored. Right. But by
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: learning their names, Ray Tortola, Reese Pocan, Julia Baez, you
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: are actively participating in the fight to ensure they are
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: not forgotten.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Which is everything.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: You are bringing the weight of public scrutiny to a
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: fractured system that desperately needs to feel the pressure.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Public pressure is often the only currency that stubborn bureaucratic
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: systems actually respond to.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: The daughters of these women, you know, Elise, Marisol, and
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: so many others, they have carried this heavy torch entirely
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: alone for decades.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Which they never should have had to do.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It shouldn't solely be on the families to demand
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: that their loved ones matter to the system.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: We have to help them demand it.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: I really do. And, you know, as we look back
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: at the sheer scale of the documents and files we've
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: reviewed today, I want to leave you with this final
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: thought to consider.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Okay. What is it?
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: We're talking about at least 12 dismembered victims sharing the
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: exact same highly specific gruesome signature.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: And they were able to hide in plain sight for
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: 40 years simply because a killer or a group of
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: killers knew how to quietly step across invisible county lines Right.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: So if a pattern this violent and this obvious can
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: go completely undetected for four decades just because of jurisdictional chaos,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: how many other horrific patterns are currently operating in the
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: shadows between our cities right now?