Latest / Hell and Gone: Murder Line / The Waiting Game

Transcript

The Waiting Game · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:08
Speaker 1: School of Humans. I get a lot of emails about
0:20
Speaker 1: cold cases all the time, and I always google it
0:24
Speaker 1: and kind of look and see if it would be
0:26
Speaker 1: something that, you know, maybe we could help with. And
0:31
Speaker 1: this one first, I was kind of struck by the
0:35
Speaker 1: fact it's another girl, it's another situation where there are
0:39
Speaker 1: a lot of suspects, potential suspects. Usually when I look,
0:43
Speaker 1: you know, doing a lot of true crime stuff. And
0:46
Speaker 1: usually when I look at a story, I can tell
0:47
Speaker 1: in the first five minutes will probably happened. But this
0:50
Speaker 1: one's really strange. As I drive the long and winding
0:59
Speaker 1: roads into the Ozarks, I think about a conversation I
1:03
Speaker 1: had in a high school physics class. The teacher was
1:07
Speaker 1: talking about time travel. Where would we go? He asked
1:11
Speaker 1: if we could be instantly transported to any point in history.
1:16
Speaker 1: Some people said they would pop back to see a
1:18
Speaker 1: dinosaur or visit Jesus, But the response that stopped everyone
1:22
Speaker 1: cold was from the quiet kid in the back. I
1:26
Speaker 1: would go back to the day my mom was murdered,
1:28
Speaker 1: he said, so I could be there and stop it.
1:32
Speaker 1: And if I couldn't stop it, at least I could
1:34
Speaker 1: see who did it. Investigating a cold case murder is
1:42
Speaker 1: the closest thing I will ever get to time travel.
1:46
Speaker 1: A lot has happened since last season. After spending months
1:51
Speaker 1: in the Ozarks, I went back to New York City
1:54
Speaker 1: for my job, and I tried to get on with
1:56
Speaker 1: my life. But wherever I am interviewing an FBI profiler,
2:02
Speaker 1: riding the subway, and drinking beers with a date, A
2:06
Speaker 1: big part of my brain is stuck replaying September twentieth,
2:10
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, the day Rebecca Gould was murdered.
2:16
Speaker 1: Six months after our last season wrapped, I'm back in Arkansas.
2:22
Speaker 1: Like I said back then, when we started Rebecca's case,
2:26
Speaker 1: we thought we knew who the good guys were and
2:28
Speaker 1: who the bad guys were. But now I'm not so sure.
2:34
Speaker 1: We have given all kinds of information to the police,
2:37
Speaker 1: piles of documents and letters, uncut audio clips, as our
2:42
Speaker 1: intention has always been to help the investigation, and yet
2:46
Speaker 1: in many ways, the investigation feels just as still as
2:49
Speaker 1: it was before. For now it's a waiting game. But
2:54
Speaker 1: patience has never been my strong suit. Since the end
2:59
Speaker 1: of season one, I've received hundreds of messages about other
3:03
Speaker 1: unsolved cases in Arkansas. People reach out at all hours
3:07
Speaker 1: of the night on social media. I had no idea.
3:11
Speaker 1: There were so many unsolved murders and so many people
3:13
Speaker 1: who needed help. Then one night I get a Facebook
3:18
Speaker 1: message that says I should look into the mysterious death
3:20
Speaker 1: of Olivia Jane Ward. It started on September ninth, nineteen
3:26
Speaker 1: eighty nine, sixteen year old Janey headed out to a
3:29
Speaker 1: cabin in the woods outside the tiny town of Marshall, Arkansas.
3:34
Speaker 1: It was just another weekend, another high school party, But
3:39
Speaker 1: a few hours later, Janie was dead. The story goes
3:44
Speaker 1: that she died from falling off a porch, a porch
3:47
Speaker 1: that was no more than ten inches tall. As Jane
3:51
Speaker 1: lay there, dead or dying, her friends made the decision
3:55
Speaker 1: to load her into the back of a pickup truck
3:57
Speaker 1: and drive her to the middle of town. They ended
4:00
Speaker 1: up at the bank parking lot. One of the paramedics
4:04
Speaker 1: to examine Jane noticed that she was wet and covered
4:07
Speaker 1: in debris. The paramedic immediately concluded that she believed this
4:11
Speaker 1: was a suspicious death. In the thirty years since she died,
4:16
Speaker 1: her body has been exhumed twice. There have been three
4:20
Speaker 1: different autopsies conducted by three separate people and several investigations,
4:25
Speaker 1: both by police and by private detectives, but no one
4:29
Speaker 1: has been able to explain the inconsistencies, and no one
4:33
Speaker 1: can answer the question what or who killed Jane Ward?
4:40
Speaker 1: Was it an accident or could it have been murder.
4:44
Speaker 1: On a recent trip back to Arkansas to visit my dad,
4:47
Speaker 1: I saw a huge black pickup truck drive by. On
4:51
Speaker 1: the back I saw a faded bumper sticker. It read
4:55
Speaker 1: Justice for Jane. It hit a nerve with me because
4:59
Speaker 1: I've been waiting for justice for Rebecca. I'm going to
5:03
Speaker 1: see if I can figure out what happened to to Janey.
5:07
Speaker 1: So once again we have to go back in time,
5:11
Speaker 1: but this time we're going back to September ninth, nineteen
5:15
Speaker 1: eighty nine, the night Jane died. I'm Catherine Townsend and
5:20
Speaker 1: this is Helen Gone. So we're right off the main
5:56
Speaker 1: highway in Marshall. Marshall is a small town with a
5:59
Speaker 1: population of about thirteen hundred, half the size of Mountain View,
6:03
Speaker 1: where we spent last season. We're next to Kathy's flea market,
6:06
Speaker 1: which has knives and tools and lots of knick knacks.
6:11
Speaker 1: The main drage two lane Highway sixty five is lined
6:15
Speaker 1: with flea markets, a few churches, and sonic At one
6:20
Speaker 1: intersection is the business district. There's the Daisy Queen, an
6:24
Speaker 1: old school burger joint that's been serving up fried Twinkie
6:27
Speaker 1: Sundays to locals since nineteen sixty six. Just past Harp's
6:31
Speaker 1: grocery store, a road veers off toward the woods. This
6:36
Speaker 1: is the route that Janie took toward the party on
6:39
Speaker 1: Zach Road on the last night of her life. I'm
6:42
Speaker 1: riding with Gabby, one of our producers. Head north on
6:46
Speaker 1: Spring Street, then turn left onto East Main Street. We
6:49
Speaker 1: don't have time to see the site for thirty nine miles. Yeah,
6:52
Speaker 1: continue street, it's easy, right, Yeah, here's We're headed north
6:55
Speaker 1: to meet with our first contact, Mike Masterson. I guess
6:58
Speaker 1: could you talk about him? And like, yeah, Mike is
7:03
Speaker 1: a real old school investigative journalist And how I met
7:06
Speaker 1: him was after getting tipped off about this case, the
7:09
Speaker 1: Jane Ward case, I started looking into journalists who might
7:12
Speaker 1: have written about it locally. And Mike has written over
7:15
Speaker 1: two hundred articles for the Arkansas Democrats at opinion pieces
7:19
Speaker 1: on the Jane Ward case. He's been a really strong
7:22
Speaker 1: advocate for getting justice for her. Like I said last season,
7:26
Speaker 1: in this neck of the woods, you're either from here
7:29
Speaker 1: or you're from off, and since I'm in the latter category,
7:34
Speaker 1: it helps to find someone local who understands the case.
7:38
Speaker 1: We meet him and his wife at his home office
7:40
Speaker 1: in here. So that's my Chuado Winston. Since I don't
7:47
Speaker 1: know when I'll be going home, I brought him with me.
7:51
Speaker 1: Mike is friendly and smart, and he has a great
7:54
Speaker 1: sense of humor. Framed copies of his many expose as
7:58
Speaker 1: from the Chicago Sun, Times and other newspapers cover the
8:02
Speaker 1: walls of his home office. Yeah, on these wall, associate.
8:05
Speaker 1: The accumulation looks kind of like a museum, doesn't it.
8:09
Speaker 1: Maybe forty six year, seven year career in journalism. There's
8:14
Speaker 1: a cowboy hat on the back of his chair and
8:16
Speaker 1: a display bottle of Crown Royal on his shelf. He's
8:20
Speaker 1: eager to talk about Jennie. Jennie Ward case is I think,
8:24
Speaker 1: by far of the complex cases that I've been involved in,
8:28
Speaker 1: matters that I consider to be injustice that remains today.
8:33
Speaker 1: Mike didn't start writing about Jane until two thousand and four,
8:36
Speaker 1: fifteen years after she died. He got interested in the
8:40
Speaker 1: case after her family was trying to get her body
8:43
Speaker 1: exhumed for another autopsy. Mike had investigated numerous murder cases
8:47
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, so a colleague of his thought he could
8:50
Speaker 1: help with Jane's and a reporter from this newspaper in
8:52
Speaker 1: Harrison called me one day and he said, Mike, there's
8:54
Speaker 1: a case you need to look at and involves the
8:56
Speaker 1: death of a young girl in high school. So I
9:01
Speaker 1: got in touch with Ron. Ron is Janie's dad, and on,
9:06
Speaker 1: being the dedicated father he was to his daughter, his
9:11
Speaker 1: late daughter, had been collecting every scrap of information he
9:16
Speaker 1: could get. The more I looked at it, the more
9:17
Speaker 1: I realized this thing. Thanks to Hi, I haven't you
9:21
Speaker 1: know she didn't fall off a nine inch tall porch,
9:24
Speaker 1: which I described at one column as the length of
9:26
Speaker 1: my shoe and tear her spinal column in half. None
9:30
Speaker 1: of it made any sense. To this day, Mike is
9:34
Speaker 1: not convinced that Jane simply fell off a porch and died.
9:38
Speaker 1: And I want to trust him because he's seen the
9:40
Speaker 1: underbelly of this state, and for him, a cover up
9:43
Speaker 1: is never out of the question. We'll be right back
9:53
Speaker 1: in his two hundred columns about Janney. Mike kept asking
9:57
Speaker 1: his readers, what if Janie Ward was your daughter. After
10:01
Speaker 1: I'd been writing about this for probably a year, they
10:05
Speaker 1: had a at the Capitol Justice for Jenny rally. Some
10:09
Speaker 1: went down there and probably two hundred people from around
10:12
Speaker 1: Arkansas showed up at that big rally. It was obvious
10:16
Speaker 1: to me that this case had really touched the nerve.
10:20
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people in this state and
10:22
Speaker 1: other states, but in this state have had injustices happened
10:26
Speaker 1: to them, and so in many ways, I think they
10:29
Speaker 1: could relate to what the words were going through trying
10:32
Speaker 1: to get answers. Can't get answers. When I get answers,
10:36
Speaker 1: nobody does anything. And I told Ron when we first
10:39
Speaker 1: started this, I said, you know, Ron, I can write
10:43
Speaker 1: a million words about what happened to Jenney, but you
10:46
Speaker 1: need to understand that at some point the system has
10:49
Speaker 1: to work. The system doesn't work. It doesn't matter how
10:52
Speaker 1: many words I write, or how many people in Arkansas
10:55
Speaker 1: know how bad this was and can see a lot
10:58
Speaker 1: of the truth of this case. It won't matter because
11:00
Speaker 1: nobody will take action that has the authority to take action.
11:09
Speaker 1: While he was writing about Jane. Mike Masterson became close
11:13
Speaker 1: with the Ward family, and he's agreed to set up
11:15
Speaker 1: a meeting with Janie's mom, Mona. Janie's dad, Ron passed
11:20
Speaker 1: away last year. You never met Ron, but what was
11:24
Speaker 1: he like as a person? Straightforward, six foot five three
11:28
Speaker 1: d and thirty pounds, big big man, had hands twice
11:32
Speaker 1: the size of mind, very driven. Ron was an extremely
11:37
Speaker 1: driven person to find out what happened to his daughter.
11:45
Speaker 1: The next day, we head to the Townhouse Cafe in Harrison.
11:49
Speaker 1: Mike is already there. He directs us to a table
11:52
Speaker 1: at the back of the restaurant, near the kitchen that's
11:54
Speaker 1: gearing up for a very busy lunch hour. Mona arrives
11:59
Speaker 1: along with her daughter and Janie's younger sister, Crystal. They
12:03
Speaker 1: hugged Mike. Their familiarity is almost like that of soldiers.
12:08
Speaker 1: They've clearly been through a lot together. Mona is emotional,
12:14
Speaker 1: but she's also tough. It's obvious that, no matter how
12:18
Speaker 1: hard this is for her, she wants to get her
12:21
Speaker 1: daughter's story out. I can recall it, but I've blocked
12:24
Speaker 1: out a lot on purpose to keep from dwelling on
12:28
Speaker 1: it because it's painful. Mona immediately dives into what happened
12:32
Speaker 1: on September ninth, nineteen eighty nine. All Right, the night
12:37
Speaker 1: happened a distant cousin he came and said that Janie
12:43
Speaker 1: had had an accident and she was in the hospital
12:45
Speaker 1: in Harrison, and so we just jumped in the car
12:48
Speaker 1: with him. And when we got to sixty five, instead
12:52
Speaker 1: of taking a left to go to Harrison to the hospital,
12:56
Speaker 1: it took a ride and Ronnie said, where are you going?
12:59
Speaker 1: What are you doing? He said, we got to go
13:01
Speaker 1: by the Sheriff's office, and we knew then something was happening,
13:05
Speaker 1: and right, and when we got there, there was probably
13:08
Speaker 1: over one hundred people, parents and children, and we just
13:12
Speaker 1: had to elbow way in. And when we got in
13:16
Speaker 1: it was lined with people, you know, small sheriff department.
13:20
Speaker 1: And then I was asking people, well, what's wrong, what's wrong?
13:25
Speaker 1: And when we got in the Sheriff's office, you know,
13:27
Speaker 1: he said, Jannie was there no explanation. After the sheriff
13:34
Speaker 1: told him the news, Mona said, he abruptly walked out
13:37
Speaker 1: of the room and didn't answer any of their questions.
13:41
Speaker 1: And I just lost it and Ronnie did too, and
13:45
Speaker 1: then they said you have to go. We had to
13:48
Speaker 1: take you to the moor again. I couldn't do it.
13:51
Speaker 1: I did not want that to be my last memory
13:54
Speaker 1: of Jane. I couldn't do it. Still in shock from
13:57
Speaker 1: the news, Ron went with the police to identify Jannie's body.
14:01
Speaker 1: I was going to say that I remember Ronnie when
14:03
Speaker 1: we had a long talk about this too several times.
14:06
Speaker 1: But he mentioned when he saw Jannie in the mortuary
14:10
Speaker 1: that she was wet, had the sand, and that he
14:14
Speaker 1: he touched her her neck just he could tell her
14:17
Speaker 1: neck was broken. Ron described Haimona what he saw. Janie
14:22
Speaker 1: was lying on a table and he immediately noticed her neck.
14:26
Speaker 1: It looked broken. He saw bruising on her face and
14:31
Speaker 1: down her neck. He ran his hands through her hair
14:34
Speaker 1: and felt what he believes to be sand, and he
14:37
Speaker 1: saw the condition she was in. And he told me
14:41
Speaker 1: and later I wish I had it so I could,
14:45
Speaker 1: you know, confirm everything he saw. But although I knew
14:48
Speaker 1: he saw what he saw. And they said to him,
14:52
Speaker 1: they said, do you want to use this funeral home,
14:54
Speaker 1: our funeral home or the other funeral home, And he said,
14:56
Speaker 1: I want an autopsy. Ron was suspicious that the coroner
14:59
Speaker 1: didn't immediately suggest an autopsy, but once he insisted, the
15:04
Speaker 1: police took Janie's box to the State Crime Lab in
15:07
Speaker 1: Little Rock, and when she got there, she was dressing
15:11
Speaker 1: all together different clothes than what he saw her in
15:13
Speaker 1: and what she let the house in, so naturally, you know,
15:17
Speaker 1: he knew then, and I saw the pictures of what
15:21
Speaker 1: she was in. She was in a T shirt that
15:23
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have ever worn. It was a T shirt
15:29
Speaker 1: with a scaping mouthed skeleton on it. And she would
15:34
Speaker 1: have never mourning thing like that. She wasn't even into
15:37
Speaker 1: that sort of thing or heavy metal music. It just
15:42
Speaker 1: wasn't hear at all. When Ron saw Janie's body, he
15:45
Speaker 1: said she had been wearing a blue and white pin
15:47
Speaker 1: striped shirt, but by the time Jennie was delivered to
15:50
Speaker 1: the State Crime Lab for the autopsy, a photograph taken
15:54
Speaker 1: of her showed her wearing a black T shirt with
15:57
Speaker 1: the band def Leppard on the front when he saw
15:59
Speaker 1: her at When Ron saw her at the morgue, was
16:01
Speaker 1: she wearing the pin striped shirt or the T shirt?
16:04
Speaker 1: Ronnie said she had on pinstriped shirt. She buttoned her
16:07
Speaker 1: top shirt buttoned because it was bloused and he buttoned it.
16:12
Speaker 1: That's how we know it must have been changed at
16:13
Speaker 1: the morgue. And also she didn't she didn't do drugs,
16:19
Speaker 1: she didn't smoke pot, and there was two rolled marijuana
16:24
Speaker 1: joints in her pocket, not in her system, so they
16:27
Speaker 1: depicted her. You know, it's like picking her as a
16:31
Speaker 1: wild child or something. And I'm not being naive. I
16:34
Speaker 1: knew my daughter very well, and I knew her friends,
16:37
Speaker 1: and she was totally out of her element, her league
16:40
Speaker 1: of friends. None of her friends were there that she
16:42
Speaker 1: ran with. Uh. I mean, she went to school with
16:45
Speaker 1: the kid. These kids were there that were there, but
16:48
Speaker 1: they were the the wablins, you know, And that wasn't her.
16:54
Speaker 1: It weren't her type. Mona has already raised a lot
16:57
Speaker 1: of questions for me. First, what happened to Janie's shirt?
17:02
Speaker 1: Ron insisted that she was wearing a different shirt at
17:04
Speaker 1: the crime Life than what he saw her in at
17:07
Speaker 1: the Morgan Marshall. He also saw injuries on her face
17:10
Speaker 1: and neck, So why didn't the coroner suggest an autopsy immediately?
17:15
Speaker 1: As an investigator, I know that every suspicious death should
17:19
Speaker 1: be treated as a homicide until it can be proven otherwise,
17:23
Speaker 1: And why was Jane at the party in the first place.
17:26
Speaker 1: According to her family, it seemed out of character when
17:29
Speaker 1: you said that she wasn't part of the crowd at
17:31
Speaker 1: the party that night. Can you just tell us a
17:34
Speaker 1: little bit about what she was like, what her life
17:35
Speaker 1: was like at that time. I she was she had
17:41
Speaker 1: her crowd, you know, everybody does. They have their little
17:44
Speaker 1: Bruce and hers worth saying more like the giddy twosy girls,
17:51
Speaker 1: you know more more so, you know not and once
17:57
Speaker 1: she those girls, these people at this part were the
18:01
Speaker 1: the snobs, the preppies. You know. Ever seen Rome and
18:06
Speaker 1: Michelle's high school reunion. This is Crystal, Janie's sister. Well,
18:10
Speaker 1: my sister was like the B group and the other
18:14
Speaker 1: girls were the A group, And that's kind of like
18:17
Speaker 1: how they treated her. And she had a job, right
18:20
Speaker 1: she was, Yes, she worked, and she was smart Maga grades.
18:27
Speaker 1: Everybody that knew her, unless they were in the A group,
18:31
Speaker 1: loved her. She really was. Jennie was a wonderful person,
18:34
Speaker 1: and I mean she just did. She just was for
18:37
Speaker 1: the underdog. She always worked and she would spend her
18:41
Speaker 1: money on other people. She would, she really would. If
18:45
Speaker 1: there was somebody poor than we were. She'd go out
18:46
Speaker 1: of her way to make sure that they had something. Yeah,
18:49
Speaker 1: Crystal told Jannie the story about a little girl on
18:52
Speaker 1: her grade who said all she wanted for Christmas is
18:56
Speaker 1: that she just wanted a Barbie doll. Oh, she didn't
18:59
Speaker 1: never have a Barbie doll. And Crystal told Janie, and
19:02
Speaker 1: Jane said, well, Crystal, you got it new Barbie doll.
19:06
Speaker 1: And you got Barbie dolls, plenty of Barbie dolls. And
19:10
Speaker 1: she said you could give her your new Barbie doll.
19:13
Speaker 1: And christ was like, come out, and Janey's relented, you know,
19:20
Speaker 1: I said, okay. So Janey bought balloons, you know, for
19:25
Speaker 1: the little girl because it was Valentine's Day. So she
19:28
Speaker 1: brought her balloons, and Chrystal contributed the new Barbie doll
19:32
Speaker 1: and had it put in the bag, and then Crystal
19:36
Speaker 1: had it sent by the flower shop to the little
19:38
Speaker 1: girl in her classroom. Chisticated for a kid to do that. Actually,
19:43
Speaker 1: that's the way she was. She just always did things
19:46
Speaker 1: like that. After Janie's death, Ron started obsessively collecting articles
20:01
Speaker 1: about the case, interviewing witnesses, and demanding everything piece of
20:06
Speaker 1: paperwork from police and from the Arkansas State Crime Lab.
20:09
Speaker 1: He was the one that had pursued it all this time,
20:13
Speaker 1: promise I'd carry it on. But you know, I can't
20:17
Speaker 1: do that because I can't do it. Do it like
20:20
Speaker 1: he did, because I can't. I can't handle that. But
20:23
Speaker 1: I guess by doing it like this, I am keeping
20:25
Speaker 1: my promise to him that I would would. Was it
20:28
Speaker 1: a heart or cancer or it WASDPD. Yeah. Yeah, he
20:35
Speaker 1: was a changemoker ever since Chaney died, and he would
20:40
Speaker 1: have been sixty nine in September. And I mean we all,
20:43
Speaker 1: we all three smoked cigarettes, but Dad really he did
20:46
Speaker 1: eat them. I mean like one after the other, because
20:50
Speaker 1: that's all he pretty much did it. Laid in bed
20:51
Speaker 1: and smoked the last set, got on the computer, read
20:54
Speaker 1: and stuff. The last several months, that's all he did. Yeah,
20:58
Speaker 1: he was a change smoker. Last several months. Ron wrote
21:01
Speaker 1: a letter to Jannie, promising her that he would get justice.
21:06
Speaker 1: He put it in her coffin before she was buried.
21:09
Speaker 1: I've never asked you that. I didn't get a chance
21:11
Speaker 1: to ask Ron. What did Ron say in that note?
21:15
Speaker 1: What did he tell her? You know, the promise that
21:19
Speaker 1: he would he would avenge her or you know the
21:23
Speaker 1: original letter. I think it was the original letter where
21:26
Speaker 1: he made the promise that he would have there would
21:30
Speaker 1: be justice for her, or that he would pursue justice
21:35
Speaker 1: as long as he lived. After two hours of talking,
21:39
Speaker 1: everyone is exhausted. Mona mentions that she's brought everything Ron
21:43
Speaker 1: collected over the years, and she's agreed to let us
21:46
Speaker 1: look through it. We pay the bill and head outside.
21:52
Speaker 1: The main box is a blue plastic bin. It's huge,
21:58
Speaker 1: and there's a second one. It's a little smaller. It's
22:00
Speaker 1: it brown. They're both a lot heavier than he was.
22:05
Speaker 1: Do you put the seats down? We don't know if
22:08
Speaker 1: we can even fit them into our car, and I wouldn't.
22:10
Speaker 1: We were going to go to Mount View and oh
22:14
Speaker 1: yeah no, We'll all right, we'll get it to you
22:18
Speaker 1: the next few days and I'll have Yeah, we're gonna
22:23
Speaker 1: guard it with our lives like it's gonna be well
22:26
Speaker 1: looked after. I mean, I feel good about it. I'm
22:29
Speaker 1: just saying, you know, I understand it. It's a huge
22:31
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a really huge saying because it
22:34
Speaker 1: so much to our family. And just promise my dad,
22:39
Speaker 1: you know, carry you're carrying the torch right, the torch
22:44
Speaker 1: hadn't died, right, but we take it extremely seriously. Run
22:48
Speaker 1: runs responsible for her being here too. It is yep. Otherwise,
22:54
Speaker 1: I mean, why this case years later, as long as
22:58
Speaker 1: E been since we were I was doing this. It's
23:01
Speaker 1: gonna fifteen years. You say goodbye to the family, giving
23:05
Speaker 1: them our word that we won't let anything happen to
23:08
Speaker 1: the boxes. Gabby and I get in the car and
23:11
Speaker 1: watch moaning Crystal drive off. Then all of a sudden,
23:16
Speaker 1: the emotion of the case hits us. Yeah, I'm not
23:19
Speaker 1: gonna cry in front of them because they you know,
23:23
Speaker 1: I don't do that, because like they shouldn't be humping me.
23:26
Speaker 1: You know. She just seemed like I was kind of
23:28
Speaker 1: trying to read it. She just seemed like I'm here,
23:30
Speaker 1: you know. So I was like, okay, let's just roll then. Yeah,
23:33
Speaker 1: so she doesn't repeat yourself. Yeah, I don't think they
23:37
Speaker 1: would have handled that box to anybody else. I'll tell
23:39
Speaker 1: you that right now, like unless Mike got involved, you know,
23:41
Speaker 1: unless we roll. And I just feel like, yeah, for them,
23:46
Speaker 1: they have to balance. They have children and families and lives,
23:48
Speaker 1: so you can't spend the rest of your life leaving
23:51
Speaker 1: it for your you know, you can't spend. At some
23:55
Speaker 1: point you do have to detach emotionally going with your life.
23:58
Speaker 1: But so it's really good when someone comes in and
24:00
Speaker 1: does that stuff for you, because it's also I can't
24:04
Speaker 1: imagine being like the Bravery. The dad had to have
24:08
Speaker 1: to do that investigation himself, to hear all that stuff
24:11
Speaker 1: over and over and you know, try to be objective.
24:17
Speaker 1: After a long day, we make our way back to
24:20
Speaker 1: my dad's house in Mountain View. We take the elevator
24:24
Speaker 1: and put the boxes in my dad's game room on
24:26
Speaker 1: the top floor of his house. Actually, I call it
24:30
Speaker 1: my war room because it's where I started investigating Rebecca's
24:34
Speaker 1: case all those years ago. But should we opened first?
24:37
Speaker 1: Maybe this big one, Yeah, I'm just curious how heavy
24:40
Speaker 1: it was? It probably one hundred pounds. Yeah, easy, because
24:44
Speaker 1: I carried the when I did for Rebecca's case, I
24:48
Speaker 1: was seeing a heart abeat to carry one hundred pounds
24:50
Speaker 1: demy and I don't think it was that heavy. Maybe
24:53
Speaker 1: it's just that seems to bulk here. But I opened
24:55
Speaker 1: the blue box wow, and immediately am hit by the
24:59
Speaker 1: overwhelming smell of stale cigarettes. I close my eyes and
25:04
Speaker 1: I can almost see run chainsmoking late at night, obsessing,
25:08
Speaker 1: making notes, circling, highlighting, trying anything to get answers. The
25:14
Speaker 1: first thing I see is a Manila folder labeled to
25:17
Speaker 1: do to do file he left us. Wow, this is
25:23
Speaker 1: information on It's like press clippings, some emails of my
25:32
Speaker 1: This looks like an autopsy. There are more folders and
25:37
Speaker 1: binders full of documents like transcribed interviews with witnesses, police notes,
25:41
Speaker 1: letters from Arkansas citizens interested in the case, and old
25:45
Speaker 1: newspaper clippings about Janie. The box is also packed with
25:49
Speaker 1: photos of Janey and at the bottom there's an aluminum
25:52
Speaker 1: tin with an imprint that says Dad on the top.
25:56
Speaker 1: Inside is a pocket knife. It's likely one of Janey's
25:59
Speaker 1: last gifts to her dad. So there's cassette tapes garried
26:04
Speaker 1: on Snow seven twenty four zero seven Part two. Wow,
26:09
Speaker 1: these are all interviews that looks like what are the
26:12
Speaker 1: only HG? How are we gonna watch that? These boxes
26:16
Speaker 1: are like a time capsule. There are multiple types of
26:19
Speaker 1: media DVDs, CDs, VHS's, and cassettes. We also find dozens
26:24
Speaker 1: of microcassettes. Fortunately, Ron's left behind his reporter it's beaten
26:31
Speaker 1: up in dented, but when I press play on another cassette,
26:35
Speaker 1: it works, and the war room is filled with Ron's
26:39
Speaker 1: deep booming voice. Okay. Now, when I went and saw
26:44
Speaker 1: my daughter, they're in the board up here. She had
26:50
Speaker 1: on a white pinstriped shirt. She lying over her head,
26:55
Speaker 1: turned like this out on the floorescent line on this table.
27:00
Speaker 1: And there was a loud blue jacket laying beside her.
27:04
Speaker 1: And how cool to shirt down and button the bottom
27:07
Speaker 1: button up. And it felt down to my touch, and
27:10
Speaker 1: I thought, what what's this? What? Uh huh? I said,
27:13
Speaker 1: what's this? What's this? You? So? You know, I touched
27:19
Speaker 1: felt over her hands and arms, and she was beginning
27:21
Speaker 1: to get it kind of stiff, and I had to
27:23
Speaker 1: touch her head, you know, and it tears my eyes
27:25
Speaker 1: and all. And when I I had it fell over
27:28
Speaker 1: her neck and her head to kind of roll just
27:29
Speaker 1: a little bit like that, and I saw this disfiguration.
27:34
Speaker 1: Her ear was purple up the hear was purple. It
27:38
Speaker 1: was purple all the way down the here down to
27:41
Speaker 1: the right here. Okay, nice f purple. Okay. I rum
27:47
Speaker 1: my fingers stare of her like this, and this stuff
27:50
Speaker 1: kept coming out it was like sand and flas. This
27:54
Speaker 1: was a fine sand also, you know it find it
27:57
Speaker 1: out before uh huh it was. Her hair was stiff
28:00
Speaker 1: and it cause you know, it started getting I was
28:03
Speaker 1: coming off on this flat table and one of her
28:05
Speaker 1: ears was half like four of their substance in it's
28:08
Speaker 1: owner face and uh, I thought, wow, you know and
28:17
Speaker 1: uh then I uh, I was told she fell off
28:20
Speaker 1: his porch. Well, and I wanted him on the hell
28:23
Speaker 1: that she get this huge bruise here, you know, and
28:27
Speaker 1: her earss like you know it's purple. It it's I mean,
28:30
Speaker 1: it was, it was coming out. Okay. What they done
28:38
Speaker 1: is they washed her and they cleaned her up. Well,
28:43
Speaker 1: when I saw her, I would might buy the story
28:47
Speaker 1: that she fell off at the porch. It's only about
28:50
Speaker 1: the etall. My daughter was beaten to dead. We signed
29:04
Speaker 1: the Arkansas State Release's six thousand page case file. On
29:07
Speaker 1: a disc on it are Jane's autopsy photos. Autopsy photos
29:13
Speaker 1: after a person that's been dug up are extremely graphic
29:15
Speaker 1: and disturbing. I can't imagine a grieving father having to
29:19
Speaker 1: look through these. The original autopsy concluded that she died
29:23
Speaker 1: of an upper spinal cord and neck injury. I found
29:27
Speaker 1: myself asking the same question Ron did. How could a
29:30
Speaker 1: healthy sixteen year old girl fall off a short nine
29:34
Speaker 1: and three quarter inch tall step and die? What really
29:39
Speaker 1: happened at that party? We'll be right back. As I
29:56
Speaker 1: said at the end of season one, We're all in
29:59
Speaker 1: this together. Unlike Rebecca's, Janie's case, at least on paper
30:04
Speaker 1: is closed. That means we have full access to Janey's
30:09
Speaker 1: case file, all six thousand pages of it. We can
30:13
Speaker 1: take a look at the entire investigation from beginning to
30:16
Speaker 1: end to tell Jane's story. We can see all of
30:19
Speaker 1: the facts. At least we should be able to see them.
30:24
Speaker 1: That night, after we met with Monan Crystal, I wake
30:28
Speaker 1: up at two am. Being back in Arkansas is weird
30:32
Speaker 1: but also familiar in many ways. It's like nothing has
30:36
Speaker 1: changed since I was a kid. Around here, things happen slowly,
30:41
Speaker 1: and big things are measured in geologic time. That's what
30:45
Speaker 1: geology is, the study of pressure and time. We don't
30:49
Speaker 1: notice the tiny changes every day as rain slides over stone,
30:52
Speaker 1: but over time, this is how mountains are formed and
30:55
Speaker 1: rivers change course. This theory applies to cold cases too.
31:00
Speaker 1: New DNA is found witnesses come forward, Journalists knock on
31:05
Speaker 1: a lot of doors before actually getting to the right
31:07
Speaker 1: people who can break the case. Years, sometimes decades later,
31:13
Speaker 1: killers are finally arrested. With enough pressure and time, anything
31:18
Speaker 1: can happen, and there is no statute of limitations on murder.
31:24
Speaker 1: I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone
31:35
Speaker 1: is a joint production between School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
31:39
Speaker 1: It is written and recorded by me. Katherine Townsend. Taylor
31:43
Speaker 1: Church and Gabby Watts are our producers and story editors.
31:47
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and l. C.
31:51
Speaker 1: Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne and Chuck
31:54
Speaker 1: Bryant for iHeart. Our Field producer is Miranda Hawkins. Theme
31:59
Speaker 1: and original score are by Ben Sale, available wherever you
32:03
Speaker 1: get your music. Please visit us at home and Gone
32:06
Speaker 1: podcast dot com, or follow us on social media. School
32:39
Speaker 1: of Humans