Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Mary Jane Vangilder PT. Two

Transcript

Mary Jane Vangilder PT. Two · The Path Went Chilly

0:30
Welcome back to part two of our coverage about the disappearance of Mary Jane Dan
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Gilder. Yes, because what they said about Albert is he was just not
0:37
a guy who would adhere to any traditional structure, and like I said,
0:41
he would just kind of drift in and out of his family's lives. He
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did have a history of trouble with the law, as he spent some time
0:48
in jail for larceny for doing stuff like stealing contributions from an Easter Seals container
0:53
at a tavern, and at one point apparently he stole his sister's table model
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radio and I know that to Adam did like a search on newspapers dot com
1:02
to see if he could find anything about Albert, and it turned out that
1:04
he made the news in nineteen sixty one when he was arrested for stealing a
1:08
car and apparently bragged to the police that he had stolen over one hundred cars
1:12
through of the course of his life. According to his grandniece, Tina Barrett's,
1:18
no one really knows like when Albert was last seen. They apparently the
1:22
surviving relatives think that they last saw sometime in nineteen sixty three or nineteen sixty
1:26
four, but there was no record of his death anywhere, so it was
1:30
just one of those things where he just stopped making contact with everyone. But
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they never reported and missing because they just thought that was typical behavior for Albert.
1:38
They just thought he was just off doing his own thing and were unaware
1:41
that he somehow wound up dead in a drainage ditch in Preble County, Ohio.
1:47
That's crazy. So do they have any idea what his cause of death
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was? Do they think it was like an accidental in misadventure murder? We
1:56
don't know yet. I know that you were unable to determine the exact cause
1:59
of death back in nineteen sixty eight, so they're probably going to try to
2:02
do like a new investigation on his body to decide if he was the victim
2:06
of a homicide. I know that he originally lived in Hamilton and Hamilton,
2:10
Ohio, which is in Butler County, and his remains were found about twenty
2:15
five miles away, so we don't know what he was doing there when he
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wound up dead. But apparently there were some rumors, a family rumor that
2:23
spread that Albert had been murdered rolled up in a piece of carpet and left
2:27
on someone's porch, And these are rumors that are being told by today's generation
2:31
that they've heard. I think they were shared by Albert's nieces, who are
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the surviving daughters of Albert's brother, But they don't really have any context to
2:39
it because they heard these stories when they were little kids, and all the
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people who would have shared these rumors about Albert being killed are now deceased,
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so we don't know where they come from, what the context is to all
2:50
this. But apparently there might have been some people in the family who felt
2:53
that Albert was murdered, but they don't really have any art evidence. So
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were they telling this story like somebody within the family murdered Albert or like an
3:02
acquaintance murdered him. Was there no details on who this person might have been
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and how this family might have got this information? Not really no, Like
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this is being provided by his nieces who would have been really, really young
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when they heard them. And I'm guessing that whoever shared these stories did not
3:20
provide much context or and because so much time has passed, they may not
3:23
even remember the details all that well. But they just said, when we
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grew up, we heard all these rumors about our uncle Albert and how he
3:30
died, but we don't have anything substantial. And of course their father,
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Albert's brother George, has since passed away, so they can't question him to
3:38
find out where he might have heard this. I've got to wonder if it's
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rooted in some type of truth, because how would they have that information.
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There's a lot of specificity with he was murdered and wrapped up in a rug
3:53
and put on somebody's porch. Said, yeah, yeah, very specific,
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Yeah, very weird. And another detail about Albert is that he was briefly
4:03
married in nineteen fifty nine, and he was and I think the marriage lasted
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only fourteen months before the divorced. But Albert also had a daughter at one
4:13
point. I'm not sure if it was with the same woman he was married
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to or if it was a completely different woman. But this daughter was put
4:19
up for adoption and Adam wound up tracking her down because of DNA testing and
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stuff, and I think he reached out to her on Facebook or something and
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then finally spoke to her, and she had no idea that she had a
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father who had gone missing during the nineteen sixties and a half now been identified
4:35
as a Jane Doe slash John Doe. So needless to say, she was
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quite shocked when she learned this news. I can't even imagine having somebody reach
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out and now you're going down the rabbit hole trying to find all this information
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out. And also you've got this whole other family that you maybe didn't have
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access to prior. So I think it's both upset, but it's also going
5:01
to be really interesting, and you've got the potential to make a lot of
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connections and feel a sense of closeness with people who share your DNA. Yeah,
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that always happens. I've heard stories about people who have been adopted where
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they've done DNA testing when they're adults to find out who their biological parent is.
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And have you heard of William Bradford Bishop, Yes, the family Annihilator.
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Well, a couple of years ago a woman did a DNA test and
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found out he was her biological father because he had had an affair with her
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mother while he was in college. And she had no idea that one of
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the most famous wanted family annihilators of all time was her biological father. Oh
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my god, that had to have been a very complex emotional reaction because you're
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excited to find out who this person is and find out everything that you can
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find out about them, and then to know that your father likely did this
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and he's never been found. I would feel some type of way about that
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exactly. Sometimes just say maybe I shouldn't have submitted the DNA, Maybe I
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was better off not knowing. Yeah, yeah, I don't know how I
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would reconcile that. I would feel like maybe I would want to put it
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back in Pandora's box. So as if Albert's story isn't weird enough, it's
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an even bigger rabbit hole now because it turned out that Albert had a sister
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named Clara, who went missing sometime between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty two,
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when she would have been in her early twenties, And of course there's no
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record of her ever having been reported missing or any record of her death.
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And we have a lot of like third hand information being shared by some people
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who were children at the time. These are Albert's nieces. They said they
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also heard weird stories about the aunt Clara, how apparently her mother had sold
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her to a German Man when she was a teenager. And it does turn
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out that she was married to a German Man named Chester Kaprowski, and they
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had a pair of children and a pair of after Clara went missing. Not
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long afterwards, Chester got remarried to another woman, so you can kind of
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put two and two together. It's like, we don't have any specific details,
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but since we have these stories that Chester was abusive, it's looking more
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and more that he might have murdered Clara and gotten rid of her body and
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then got remarried. But unfortunately Chester and both of Chester and Clara's two children
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are now deceased, so no one can really ask them anything firsthand to find
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out what happened. So once again we have nothing more than hearsay from people
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who were just kids at the time, some juicy gossip going around in this
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family. I know, this is a weird family. I mean, I
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can't even imagine being like the child of one of these people and you're hearing
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all this stuff. But then it's like multiple generations, so it's like a
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generational game of telephone. You wonder how many of the details are actually accurate
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exactly. Yeah, So it's kind of weird. You have two different siblings
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in the family that just went missing at different times, and one of them
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has found dead, and we have another one who was likely murdered during the
8:03
nineteen fifties. So I really want to learn more about this family because it
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sounds like there was a very interesting family dynamic that we don't know about,
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because it sounds like a lot of their siblings were kind of non plus by
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the fact that their brother and sister just kind of disappeared and nobody bothered to
8:20
perform an investigation, and their mother sold her. Yeah you're a German Man,
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like ooh, I know. So, I mean she was married to
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a German Man, so I'm guessing that is what happened. But it's kind
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of crazy that the family would just share that information with these little children and
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stuff that, Hey, your grandmother likes to sell her own daughter, Like,
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what's going on here? Yeah, maybe they didn't feel too warmly towards
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her. I'm just going to take a shot in the dark if you're going
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to sell your children, I mean, unless it was out of a sense
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of desperation, and this is some weird Dowry situation. I don't know exactly
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the way it worked out, but it doesn't sound like a very happy situation,
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especially since he would likely be the prime suspect if she did go missing.
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So just not a good situation all around, definitely, And it is
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incredible to think that we would have never heard of Albert or Clara if they
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had not launched this investigation into Mary Jane van Gilder's disappearance. So that's what's
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great about this whole thing is that because they launched a completely unrelated missing person's
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investigation and decided to exhum like a Jane Doe who turned out to be a
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John Doe, we learned about two completely different missing persons who had been completely
9:37
lost to history. And that was the bright side here is that if it
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wasn't for Adam Turner, we would never have heard the name Albert Alan Frost.
9:46
But at least now he's been got his legacy restored, and they were
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able to dig up an old high school yearbook photograph of him and spread it
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around in all the newspapers, and now everyone knows that Albert it was a
9:58
person and he deserved to be remembered, and his legacy has finally been restored,
10:05
And we don't know yet what's going to happen in the investigations. I'm
10:09
sure they're going to try to figure out what happened to Clara and try to
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figure out if Albert was the victim of a homicide. But at the very
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least we now have some sort of resolution in this case, and we know
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that at least Albert's surviving loved ones know what happened to him. This case
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is crazy just to think that the primary missing person starts out being Mary Jane,
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and then we've got these tertiary missing people who just kind of pop up
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out of nowhere, who are forgotten to the sands of time, and then
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all of a sudden, it's like they're plucked from obscurity out of the ground.
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Not Clara, but Albert, and everyone thinking that this is a woman
10:50
who's given birth and now he has his identity back and he's properly gendered,
10:54
and now his family know, well, not what happened to him, but
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what became of him where he ended up. And then Clara's disappearance gets to
11:03
be discussed, because I think just the simple act of discussing missing people,
11:09
not having them be forgotten, I think is something that we should never really
11:13
take for granted, because to speak somebody's name is in remembrance of that person.
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So even if we don't know what happened to Clara, the fact that
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we're talking about her and the fact that we're remembering her in that way,
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I think it's something exactly. It sounds like she led a sad life if
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she was sold to an abusive man by her mother. But at least she
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is being talked about for the first time in nearly seventy years. But Yeah,
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Adam held a press conference in November of twenty twenty three, and I
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still remember getting a message for him saying, do you remember when I was
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exhuming a Jane Doe in the Mary Jane van Gilder case. Well, I've
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got some big news about that. I can't tell you about it, but
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I'm in a hole of press conference and he had actually invited me, And
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if I didn't have another job, I might have made the drive to Shelby,
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Ohio to be there. But it was kind of cool to be in
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the loop. But after he told me about this, and he says,
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I've got some other big news. I've solved the Mary Jane van Gilder case.
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And I'm like what, And he says, you can't tell anybody because
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I have to work out some details. But hopefully within the next few months
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I will hold a press conference and share all the details about that. So
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it was a pretty exciting time because I watched the live stream of the press
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conference about the announcement about the identification of Albert, and near the end he
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was saying, well, we still don't have answers about Mary Jane's case,
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And I'm thinking to myself, Oh, yes, you do, and we're
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going to find out soon. And thankfully, in February of twenty twenty four,
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he finally went public for it and held a press conference in which he
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revealed the truth about what happened to Mary Jane. Thank god for Adam Turner
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and his perseverance, because to tackle a missing person's case like this, the
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probability of getting a resolution and solving it is pretty low. But the fact
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that he has is kind of noble pursuit where he really wants to give people
13:03
back their identities, and he's attracted to these cases where people have been lost
13:07
in the shuffle because police departments will pursue newer cases typically, and so people
13:13
that have been missing or murdered and nobody knows who they are. Well,
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who's going to give them their name back? At least we know that Adam
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Turner's on the case and he solved this one, so good for him.
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It's great to hear that investigators are really doing great police work. Oh,
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definitely. And the press conference where they announced the identification of albert Police Chief
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Lance Combs went to the podium and he actually gave a message to the camera
13:39
saying, if you're a criminal, don't commit a crime in Shelby, Ohio,
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because Adam Turner will find you. I love that. So it was
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kind of crazy because they announced the identification of Mary Jane I think the same
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week as my podcast eight year anniversary, so it was kind of a momentous
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occasion. And on a side note, it was on the exact date of
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my seven year anniversary in twenty twenty three when they salved another very old case
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that I had covered on the podcast, and that was the abduction of Mary
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Agnes Moroni, a two year old girl who was abducted from her family in
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Chicago in nineteen thirty. That is still officially the oldest case on the Trailmen
14:20
Called, which went solved, but it was another one where they signed a
14:22
detective to the case a few years ago when it was a daunting task,
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but he used DNA genetic genealogy and he found out that Mary Agnes Moroni was
14:31
actually a woman who died in two thousand and one while living under a different
14:35
identity. She was probably abducted, raised under a false identity, and lived
14:41
her entire life without knowing she was an abducted child and had like children and
14:46
grandchildren of her own before she passed away. And it's like, wow,
14:50
because of DNA they were able to solve a missing children's case that was nearly
14:52
a century old, Like do you think that in nineteen thirties case? I
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mean, it's nice to that she lived a full life and that she wasn't
15:03
deceased or killed shortly thereafter after she was abducted. But it's really sad to
15:07
think that somebody took it upon themselves to steal a child, either because somebody
15:13
else wanted the child or they themselves wanted the child. I mean, we
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don't know the full scenario, but to rob a family of their baby girl
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is just really sad. Oh, definitely. And the circumstances of that is
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that she was abducted by a woman pretending to be a social worker using a
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fake name, and because pretty much everyone from her immediate family has passed away,
15:35
we don't know if this woman was the person who raised Mary Agnes under
15:39
her false identity, or if it was just someone in a black market adoption
15:43
who could have sold the child to a family who was completely oblivious that she
15:48
had been abducted. So we'll probably never know the full truth about what happened
15:52
here, but at least we have a resolution in this case, and Mary
15:54
Agnes's descendants know what happened to her. So I mentioned earlier that the key
16:00
to finding out what happened to Mary Jane happened to be her civilian personnel file
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from her time in the military at the Shelby Army Air Force Depot. And
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it was actually a civilian sleuth, as Adam classified it, who provided the
16:14
clue which led to this case being solved. And when Adam gave his press
16:18
conference, he wanted to give full credit to this person, but they preferred
16:21
to remain anonymous, and this person privately emailed me, so I know who
16:25
they are, but I just find that incredible that they helped solve a cold
16:29
case that was over seventy five years old. But they don't want anyone to
16:32
know who they are. It sounds like they're a very modest person who just
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doesn't want the credit. Well, shout out to that super sleuth whoever they
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are. Yeah, exactly, they did an amazing thing. But what was
16:44
great is that when Adam obtained the military personnel file, he decided to post
16:48
it publicly and he thought, well, I'll just give the general public a
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chance to read it, because maybe they'll uncover a key piece of information that
16:56
I missed that I did not see the significance of, and it will help
16:59
pay the way for this case being solved. And that's exactly what happened,
17:03
because this anonymous luth looked at her personnel file and saw the name Percy Lee
17:08
Sebron, who had actually been Mary Jane's predecessor. He had been the previous
17:14
high lift fork operator before she got the job, and apparently helped trainer to
17:18
get the new position. And we're thinking about that, this is nineteen forty
17:22
five. It seems kind of unusual that a man would be willing to give
17:26
up a position like that to a woman, So maybe we should look into
17:30
this name, see if we can find anything. Well. Adam then looked
17:33
at Percy Lee Severn's name at findegrave dot Com and he found out that he
17:40
had died in Kansas City in April of nineteen sixty nine at the age of
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forty nine. And it turned out he had been run over by a train,
17:45
which is an awful way to go. But what Adam found particularly interesting
17:51
is that, I'm sure you know that find a Grave each page has links
17:55
to relatives of each deceased person, and he found a page for Per' wife
18:00
named Mary j. Sebron. Then he goes to her page and he sees
18:03
her birth date November the nineteenth, nineteen eleven, and he realizes that's Mary
18:08
Jane Van Gilder's birth date. So you can kind of see where this is
18:11
about to go. Wow, Okay, so this has really taking a different
18:18
turn. Yeah, And what was crazy is that Adam had already gone to
18:22
find Grave like he had pretty much put together this huge list of names of
18:27
people who had graves where their birth date was November the nineteenth, nineteen eleven,
18:33
and he said, I'm just gonna kind of, if I have time,
18:34
gradually check through these one by one to find out like if any of
18:38
them look like they might have a connection to Mary Jane van Gilder, And
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he did have Mary Sebron's name on his list, but he just hadn't gotten
18:47
to it yet. But this lead with Percy Sebron allowed him to fast track
18:51
it, so he looked at the grave site. He found out that Mary
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Sebron died in Arkansas on May the thirty first, nineteen ninety at the age
19:00
of seventy nine, and that Mary and Percy were both buried at the New
19:04
Forest Cemetery in Louisiana, which happened to be Percy's home state. And what
19:10
was even more interesting is that there was a fine a grave profile page for
19:14
Percy and Mary's children, and her first child, named Percy Sebrand Junior,
19:18
was born in Louisiana on December the ninth, nineteen forty five. And you
19:23
kind of realize, if you remember Mary's Mary Jane's personnel file where she decided
19:29
to quit in March of nineteen forty five for added household duties, and you
19:33
kind of do the math and you realize Percy Junior was born about nine months
19:38
after she quit. And then they realized that she also was asking, like
19:44
her daughter Anime, for the war bonds back because she might have wanted money.
19:48
And she also happened to ask James for a divorce in February of nineteen
19:52
forty five. So on the surface, it's kind of looking like perhaps Mary
19:56
Jane started a relationship with Percy Sebryn became regnant and that's why she quit her
20:02
job and left the area. Well, this is all making sense now,
20:06
all of it, except for the fact that she dropped off the face of
20:10
the earth and stopped talking to her children. Yes, that is the big
20:12
mystery here that we will probably never know the answer to. But Adam had
20:17
a good punch now, But he just needed evidence, And of course it
20:21
turned out that both of Percy and Mary's children had passed away, but Percy
20:26
Junior had four children of his own, So Adam decided to contact one of
20:30
his daughters on Facebook, who was able to provide some backstory about being raised
20:34
by Percy Jr. And her grandparents, and of course she had fond memories
20:41
of her grandmother Mary's. They said that they spent the most of their lives
20:44
living in Arkansas, and she described Mary Jane as a very amazing grandmother,
20:48
very loving, but she was also apparently very secretive about her life, and
20:53
apparently her past was just one of those topics that the family never discussed.
20:59
And when Mary Shane was dying of cancer in nineteen ninety, she apparently told
21:03
one of her granddaughters quote that there was something she couldn't tell her and that
21:07
she could never find out. Wow, So it's got to be that she
21:11
had this whole other life before. And I could see maybe at the time,
21:15
to keep in contact with your children and to like acknowledge that you have
21:19
this whole other life might be something where people would impart judgment upon you.
21:26
So her motivations might have been different than like motivations that people would have today.
21:32
So I definitely don't want to think I don't want anyone to think that
21:36
I'm coming from a place of judging her when I say that, like why
21:38
did she go this log without talking to her children? Because I think that
21:42
the motivation could be manyfold here. It's difficult to leave a relationship that was
21:48
contentious, she didn't have custody, and then to start a new life.
21:52
It's sort of like, Okay, well, these are our children. Maybe
21:55
he doesn't want anything to do with me having other children. We don't know
21:59
the dynamic of the relationship and how he felt, and if he even knew
22:03
that she had other children. We don't know. Yeah, we don't know.
22:07
Like because Percy Senior has passed away, we will probably never find out
22:11
if he knew that she had a different husband and a different bunch of different
22:15
children in another state. Probably knew she could have lived in Ohio her entire
22:18
life. He may not have known she was even from West Virginia. But
22:22
I know that Adam finally obtained some photographs of Mary from her younger Mary Sebryn,
22:29
from her younger years and before she passed away. And I remember watching
22:33
the live stream of the press conference while this was going on. Thankfully it
22:37
was a Monday when I was working from home, so I didn't have to
22:40
worry about stuff on my other job. But I'm watching this and he puts
22:44
up he's doing a PowerPoint presentation and he does a side by side comparison with
22:47
a photograph of Mary Jane and Mary Sebrin when she's in her seventies, like
22:52
in the nineteen eighties, where she looks really old, and I'm looking at
22:55
that I'm like, I got chills. I was like, that is definitely
22:57
the same person, Mary, Mary Jane Van Guilder and Mary Jane Sebrn have
23:03
to be one and the same. And sure enough, Adam soon announced that
23:07
he was able to take DNA from one of Mary Jane Sebrn's granddaughters, made
23:11
a comparison with DNA from some of Mary Jane Van gilder surviving relatives, and
23:15
this proved beyond a shadow of the doubt that Mary Jane Sebron was Mary Jane
23:19
Van Guilder. Wow, Like, what a crazy ride that is. I
23:26
mean, Adam Turner must have been beyond thrilled to be able to let all
23:32
of these family members know. And also these are family members that don't know
23:37
that they brought other relatives out there to be able to let them know.
23:41
Hey, like, if you want to be in contact with these people who
23:44
you know are your cousins or distant you know, second cousins, whatever they
23:47
are, you have the ability to do so. And I think making those
23:52
connections and being able to commiserate over the shared story and the interesting family history
23:57
is really cool. Yeah, we us sound like the Sebron family and the
24:02
Van Gilder family have formed a close relationship because obviously they were both shell shocked,
24:07
and because, like the Seburns have said that the grandmother, we knew
24:11
she was a very loving person, Like we had no idea that she had
24:14
this past life. So when you learn this information that she abandoned her original
24:18
family, you're just taken by complete surprise, just thinking that she does not
24:22
seem like someone who would have been capable about that. And Mary Jane's granddaughter,
24:27
Mindy Wilson, who started this thing in the first place, who contacted
24:32
all these podcasts and YouTube shows in order to get exposure for her grandmother's case.
24:37
She did a very tearful speech at the press conference saying that we have
24:41
a lot of mixed emotions because we're very glad to have answers, but at
24:45
the same time, we kind of have to live with the knowledge that she
24:48
decided to walk away from her family and break off all contact with us for
24:52
the last forty five years of her life, which is just a very weird
24:56
feeling. And she still does have surviving children, some of them have passed
25:00
away. I know that she had a daughter named Martha who died in February
25:04
or sorry. I think it was just a few weeks before the press conference,
25:08
though Adam was able to tell her privately that they had found her mother.
25:14
But I know that it just must be a weird feeling knowing that this
25:17
woman that you thought had loved you just decided to take off and cut off
25:19
all contact with you and start a new life. I can't imagine how deep
25:26
those wounds would go and how it would feel to find out that information.
25:30
I think, like you said, it's incredibly complex. Now, some Misty
25:36
or Mindy a Mindy. Actually she had two granddaughters, Mindy and Misty,
25:41
but Mindy was the one who spoke at the press conference. Okay, okay,
25:45
okay. I was like, maybe I've been getting it wrong with the
25:47
Misty earlier, but this makes sense. There's a Mindy and a Misty.
25:51
Yeah. I can't imagine how they would feel. I personally would have a
25:53
hard time with that, knowing that there's this family member, just because you
25:57
don't have the answers to why. But I am sure given the time period,
26:03
you can understand why somebody might make those choices, particularly a woman.
26:10
So I'm sure that they are operating from a place of empathy and trying to
26:14
understand, but also trying to navigate their own feelings of a maybe not abandonment
26:18
of them specifically, but by association right their parents. So it's hard.
26:26
It's yeah, I'm sure it had to be so emotional for them exactly,
26:30
But I think you're right there that you just have to look at the time
26:33
period, because I'm sure I'm guessing Mary Jane did love her children, but
26:37
she was probably figuring I'm a woman and my husband's a man, and even
26:41
though he has alcohol problems and he's abusive, if we go to court over
26:45
this, I think there's a good chance he's going to get custody of the
26:48
children no matter what. So she might have felt I'm pretty much in a
26:52
losing battle. If I fight for custody, I'm not going to win.
26:53
But here, I've got a new life in Ohio. I found a man
26:57
that I love and I'm going to have his child, so it's probably better
27:00
that I just take off and start over. But I guess people are wondering,
27:06
like, why in the forty five years she just didn't attempt to reach
27:08
out to her children at all, at least to let them know she was
27:11
alive and say say that while I can't come and have contact with you,
27:15
but I want you to at least know that I'm not dead. But it
27:18
just must have been a hard thing, a bunch of conflicting feelings where she
27:21
felt that there'll be a bunch of shame on me if I come forward maybe
27:26
and just reveal that I ran off. It's literally what I was going to
27:30
say. The amount of shame attached to abandoning your children, to not reaching
27:36
out, I think would increase exponentially with every year that passed. I'm sure
27:40
that she felt that very heavily and it weighed upon her. So to not
27:45
reach out after so many years doesn't surprise me. Because the more years that
27:48
go by, the worse you're going to feel about the decisions that you've made,
27:52
and it's going to be difficult to hear the negative ramifications and the way
27:57
you've adversely affected people emotionally from your choices. It can be a big burden,
28:03
and it can be why a lot of people don't reach out to family
28:06
after a lot of time has passed and they haven't been in contact. So
28:10
I can kind of understand where she's coming from there, But being the family
28:14
who isn't getting that reassurance that she's alive. It had to have felt awful.
28:18
Oh I can imagine. Yeah, just very mixed feelings. But I
28:22
mean, it was a much easier to do this sort of thing back in
28:26
the nineteen forties, but this thing still happens today. I'm sure we've discussed
28:30
this case, the disappearance of Robert Hoagland. Oh yeah, yeah, And
28:33
he's one who went missing in twenty thirteen and then in late twenty twenty he
28:38
was found to be living under a new identity in a different state before he
28:41
died of natural causes. And you're thinking to yourself that it would be impossible
28:45
to disappear and start a new life under a new identity in this day and
28:49
age where everything's digital. But he somehow found a roommate to shack up with,
28:53
so he didn't have to have any credit or any electronic ID. He
28:56
pretty much spent his entire life like making cash from his job and paying his
29:00
share of the rent in cash, so he was able to survive for nine
29:04
years living under a false identity. And as you can imagine, his family
29:08
had mixed feelings like, Okay, we're glad to find out what happened to
29:11
him, But why did he just decide to take off and cut off all
29:15
contact with us. To not have those answers would be really difficult because it's
29:22
this big question mark, and then you start questioning, how did this person
29:26
feel about me? Did they truly love me? Did our relationship ever mean
29:30
anything? Because for them not to give you that reassurance and to just like
29:34
them, like to just reach out and say I'm okay. You could write
29:37
a letter from anywhere and just you know, postmarket from a place you're not
29:41
from and just literally write I'm okay and just let them know. But to
29:48
not do that, I I for family members, it has to be so
29:52
hard. Well, with Robert Hogland, I guess an issue with that is
29:55
that they wasted a lot of time and resources with the police investigation. But
29:59
at least for Mary Jane's case, we know that didn't happen because there was
30:03
no investigation when she originally disappeared. There was nothing they could really do,
30:07
and there are still a lot of un answered questions about how she pulled this
30:10
off. Because I know that when Adam acquired her personnel file, it listed
30:14
her social Security number and he was willing to post it publicly. He said
30:18
that there has not been any activity on her number since nineteen forty five,
30:22
but we want to get it out there just in case it generates any leads.
30:26
But he found out that when she became Mary Sebrin, she somehow generated
30:30
an all new Social Security number for herself, which she lived under for the
30:33
rest of her life. So we're probably never going to find out how she
30:37
managed to obtain a new one like that. I don't think you well,
30:40
nowadays, you can't just go out and get a new Social Security number,
30:42
like what you get is what you get. But I guess back then it
30:45
was easy to get like false identity documents or to change things like that.
30:51
It's not nearly the process that it is these days. Well, we see
30:55
in cases like Joseph Newton Chandler the Third where people will obtain like birth certificates
30:59
and so security numbers of children who died like many years ago, and nobody
31:03
checks that, so they're able to get away with it indefinitely until they pass
31:07
away. But like you said, we still don't know the answers of how
31:11
much her husband, Percy knew about her past, if she ever talked about
31:15
it. But I guess the good news is that it sounds like both families
31:18
are beginning to come to terms with it, and Mindy has said that she
31:22
has already made the trip to a Louisiana in order to lay flowers on her
31:26
grandmother's grave. I don't know if they'll make any attempt to move her body
31:30
back to West Virginia or anything to be with her family, and they might
31:33
feel that she's at peace being buried alongside her husband. But I guess the
31:37
fact that she was willing to visit the grave in the first place probably shows
31:41
that she's dealing with it, all right. I mean that's a hard one,
31:45
right, Like do you really want to move the body of somebody who
31:49
chose to have that be their resting place. Probably not, but to have
31:56
the ability to be able to go there and maybe sort out some complex feelings
32:00
that they have and to say some things that maybe they want to say,
32:06
because, like you said, for the family, like for Misty, for
32:08
Mindy, for all of them, and had to have been so difficult and
32:13
just so many mixed emotions. It would feel like a gut punch just to
32:17
know that our grandmother was out there, and like we never got to know
32:22
her, but that was her choice, you know, Yeah, exactly.
32:25
So, I mean, at least she was happy, because at least it
32:29
doesn't sound like her existence with James, her marriage was that happy. But
32:31
from what her grandchildren from the Sebran family have said, she did leave a
32:36
happy life until she died and seemed to be in a loving marriage with loving
32:38
children and grandchildren. So at least it was better for her. So,
32:44
like I mentioned, I also got a shout out at the press conference.
32:46
I know that Adam Turner wanted to list all the podcasts and YouTube shows who
32:51
had covered the case. She gave a shout out to also Mike Morfford's podcast
32:54
Missing Persons, which covered it, and the podcast Unfound Any great YouTube series
33:00
called Mysterious West Virginia. Have you ever heard of that one? Yes?
33:05
Do you remember Kayleia Leise who used to be on YouTube back in the day,
33:08
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, she recommended I think Mysterious West Virginia when
33:15
she stopped doing the YouTube series and I watched them. It's actually really good,
33:20
it is. Yeah. I love the host Sean McCracken. He kind
33:22
of has a Robert Stack look where he's wearing the trench coat and stuff when
33:25
he's doing the host segments. But he did a lot of legwork on this
33:29
because he found a lot of the old documentation about where Mary Jane lived during
33:34
the nineteen forties in Shelby, Ohio. Like, he searched through the records
33:37
and found a lot of interesting information, and I'm not sure this case would
33:40
have been solved without him. And he was even the one who broadcast the
33:45
live stream of the press conference, so I was able to watch it,
33:46
so it was pretty cool. But that just just goes to show the power
33:52
of true crime media where if you're independent, like the Trail Went Cold and
33:55
Mysterious West Virginia, you can cover whatever cases you want. So I'm sure
34:00
that a lot of like true crime TV shows, if you recommended doing a
34:02
missing person's case from like nineteen forty five, you'd have a lot of middlemen
34:07
and executives saying, oh, we don't want to do that. That's a
34:09
case that's so old, it's a waste of time. But being an independent
34:13
creator, you can show whatever you want. And it's just such a cool
34:15
feeling when you can actually see it reach your resolution. It seems like it's
34:20
happened a lot lately. We've seen a lot of cases closed I think with
34:23
DNA, Like, what was it used to do all those lists versus articles?
34:27
Yes, and like so many of them have come to a resolution now,
34:30
which is so crazy. There's one list I did in twenty thirteen.
34:36
Here are ten unidentified decedents, and nine of the ten victims on that list
34:39
have since been identified these past ten years, which is incredible through DNA testing.
34:45
I don't know, that's bananas, Like, just how far we've come
34:49
with technology being able to give these people back their identities. I love that
34:53
definitely. So yeah, this is definitely like one of the most amazing things
34:58
I've experienced during my eight year run as a True Grime podcast to kind of
35:00
witness such an old case get solved that I covered, which in case that
35:06
nobody knew about it all until twenty eighteen, but now it's all over the
35:09
internet and we've not only found out what happened to Mary Jane, but we
35:14
provided closure to another family, that of Albert Alan Frost and restored his identity.
35:19
And I'm thinking, even though it's going to be a daunting task to
35:22
try to figure out if Albert was murdered, or try to figure out what
35:24
happened to his sister Clara. But if anyone can solve those cases, it's
35:29
Adam Turner because he takes it as a challenge and will not let the age
35:34
or lack of evidence determ. He really is the unsung hero here. I'm
35:40
just so impressed the veracity of his investigation and his ability to be humble at
35:45
the same time and to release certain things and be like, Okay, well
35:50
I couldn't get anything out of this, but I'm going to let the public
35:52
take a crack at it and see if they come up with anything. I
35:55
think it takes a truly great investigator to say, okay, like I can't
35:59
do all of the things, but where I may lack, somebody else may
36:02
have a strength and they're going to see something that I didn't see. So
36:07
let's just do this collectively. And I think with the case this old,
36:12
it's only going to help you. So Adam Turner, you're a hero theod
36:16
way to go exactly if you're listening, Thanks a lot, Adam here.
36:20
Yeah, and one more thing I wanted to mention is that there is also
36:23
still yet another mystery within a mystery which is still unsolved because apparently Mary Jane
36:29
had a sister named Rose, who also went missing sometime during the nineteen forties.
36:34
But there's even less evidence to work with. All we really know is
36:37
that she lived in Fairmount, West Virginia and had been married to a man
36:40
named Harold Leeson. But at some point during the forties, Rose apparently left
36:45
home, and no one knows what happens to her. And here is the
36:49
one where all we really have to work with is a bunch of uncorroborated rumors
36:52
and hearsay. But it's been reported that sometime during the nineteen sixties, one
36:57
of Rose's sons received a letter from some sort of medical facility in New York
37:01
which stated that Rose was currently residing there because she was sick, and he
37:07
apparently told one of Mary Jane's children about this, But no one knows where
37:09
the original letter is and the son is now deceased, so we have nothing
37:15
more than like third hand information. And there's no official record of Rose being
37:19
reported missing, and all her children are deceased as well, so that's pretty
37:22
much all the information we have. But I'm thinking that if anyone can find
37:27
out what happened to Rose, it's Adam Turner. Wow, this is such
37:31
an interesting case with all these different siblings like Clara and Albert and Albert and
37:38
then here we've got Mary Jane and Rose. Like all these families that have
37:45
had to deal with multiple people within that family unit going missing. I can't
37:51
even imagine. And to have two of them in the same case kind of
37:53
interconnected in a weird way, is really blowing my mind. Yeah, I
37:59
mean probably know, oh, Rose's situation may be the same where she just
38:01
decided to break off all contact with her family and just went off somewhere and
38:07
got married to another man and started a new family. And it's also possible
38:10
she got sick and was put into some sort of facility, but we just
38:14
don't know. But hopefully now that Mary Jane's case has solved, maybe someone
38:17
will try to figure out what happened to Rose and give another resolution to this
38:21
family. So yeah, that about wraps it up. Like I said,
38:25
people should listen to. This case is kind of like a test how you
38:30
should never worry about not covering a case because you feel it's too old,
38:34
because you just never know who might be listening and who might have the right
38:37
information to help bring this case to a resolution. So just a phenomenal experience,
38:42
and I'm glad I got to share all the information about it with you.
38:45
Well, thank you so much for telling me about this, because I
38:49
heard just like small details on Crime Weekly, which is Derek and Stephanie's podcast,
38:53
and then when you brought up Preble County, I was like, ooh,
38:58
maybe this is the same case. And then when you went into the
39:01
details and you're like, oh, it's a twofur with the body and all
39:06
that, I'm like, oh, gotta be connected. And then when you
39:08
said, oh, criminal coffee finance this, I was like, yes,
39:13
this is the same case. So thank you so much for telling me about
39:16
this. I'm so glad that Albert's family was able to find a resolution and
39:22
that Mary Jane's family was as well. Yes, my pleasure. And it
39:25
was great to see your live reaction because when I was watching the conference and
39:29
heard about Mary Jane Sebrin having the same birth date and all that stuff,
39:32
and I had the same reaction on your face that I saw with you,
39:36
where you were just putting all the pieces together in your head and you're like,
39:37
oh my god, this is the same person. Yes, I mean
39:42
I'm so glad that she lived a long life and that it seemed like she
39:45
was really happy. It's really complex for her family that didn't know where she
39:51
was, that she cut off contact with What's a much better ending than a
39:54
lot of the cases that we cover in which somebody was murdered and that's why
39:59
they were in touch. So at least she had that. We know that
40:02
she lived a long life, and there's something peaceful about that, rather than
40:07
the open ended question that we often deal with with who murdered this person?
40:10
Now we've got their identity, but who murdered them? But that just isn't
40:14
the case here, So that is truly a happy ending. It is definitely
40:17
a bittersweet ending, but still a happy ending. So I guess I'll save
40:22
this left to say. Is I guess you could say the path did not
40:24
go Chilli Robin? Do you want to tell us a little bit about the
40:30
Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for
40:34
three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free
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episodes, and I also send out stickers and signed thank you cards to anyone
40:44
who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier
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Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases
40:52
which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive
40:57
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ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track
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it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia
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first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case.
41:29
So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more
41:32
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41:37
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We'll link them in the show notes. So I want to thank you
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cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from
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