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5 Lesser-Known American Serial Killers Who Have Yet to Be Captured · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: We all know the big names, don't we, Bundy, Dahmer, Gaycy,
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They're kind of fixed points in our minds when we
0:06
think about serial killers. We've seen the movies The.
0:09
Speaker 2: Docks, right, and there's almost this weird sense of I
0:11
don't know completion because they were caught.
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Speaker 1: We know the ending exactly. But what's maybe even more
0:18
terrifying when you really dig into it, are the ones
0:20
we don't know, the shadows, the killers who just vanished, and.
0:25
Speaker 2: They often operated by exploiting blind spots in society and
0:30
law enforcement. They remain totally unidentified. Those are the ones
0:33
that frankly succeeded.
0:35
Speaker 1: And it's not like this is just some historical footnote.
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The scale is well, it's pretty staggering. The FBI estimates
0:42
even now.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the current thinking is somewhere between twenty five and
0:47
maybe fifty active serial killers operating in the US at
0:51
any given moment.
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Speaker 1: Fifty Just think about that for a second. Dozens of
0:54
people actively murdering, walking around completely unknown.
0:57
Speaker 2: It means for so many victims families there's just no justice,
1:01
no closure. And what's really striking when you look at
1:04
these cold cases, these decades old mysteries, there's often a
1:08
pattern not necessarily in the killer's profile, but in the
1:11
victims the environment. They targeted marginalized groups, people.
1:15
Speaker 1: Who are less likely to be missed or less likely
1:17
to get immediate.
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Speaker 2: Attention, precisely low income individuals, minorities, LGBTQ plus people, sex workers.
1:25
It often meant investigations started slower or were hampered by
1:30
well societal biases of the time.
1:32
Speaker 1: And that's really what we want to unpack in this
1:35
deep dive. We're going to look at the sources, the
1:37
details behind five of these really elusive unidentified killers.
1:42
Speaker 2: We need to understand not just what they did, but
1:44
how they managed to get away with it for so long.
1:46
Speaker 1: We'll be digging into the Freeway Phantom, the Doodler, the
1:49
New Bedford Highway killer, the West Masa bone collector, and
1:52
the I seventy killer.
1:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and across these cases you see how geography plays
1:56
a role, highways, deserts, big cities providing cover, and how
2:00
sometimes just institutional indifference gave them room to operate.
2:04
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start with a case that's just a brutal
2:06
example of how race and class can create that exact
2:09
kind of blind spot. Washington d c's freeway phantom. So
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this is happening in DC nineteen seventy one to nineteen
2:16
seventy two, and you have to remember the context DC
2:19
back then.
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Speaker 2: Oh, it was turbulent, intense civil unrest, massive social changes,
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and the police force was stretched incredibly thin.
2:27
Speaker 1: Right, and into that chaos steps this killer, the freeway fantom.
2:31
At least six confirmed victims, maybe more, And the pattern
2:35
was there from the start.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely young black girls, teenagers, mostly from low income neighborhoods,
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just disappearing while walking home, going to the store, living
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their lives.
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Speaker 1: The first victim darning Nia Johnson.
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Speaker 2: She was sixteen, yes, July nineteen seventy one. She vanished
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after work, found days later, strangled, sexually assaulted, left in
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a vacant house. At first, maybe it seemed like, you know,
2:55
another tragic but isolated crime in a city facing a
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lot of violence.
2:59
Speaker 1: So then it happened again, really quickly.
3:00
Speaker 2: Less than three weeks later, Brenda Crockett, just eleven years old.
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She disappeared while babysitting. Her body was found under a
3:09
bridge on Suitland Parkway. That's when police knew this wasn't isolated.
3:13
They had a serial predator.
3:15
Speaker 1: And this is Where it gets particularly chilling.
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Speaker 2: The message he left mm hmm on Brenda Crockett's jacket,
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a note that single piece of evidence has just echoed
3:25
down the decades.
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Speaker 1: It said, this is tantamount to my insensitivity to people,
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especially women.
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Speaker 2: Tantamount.
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Speaker 1: Ye, that word jumps out, isn't it. Yeah, it's not
3:33
everyday language. It sounds educated. We're deliberately chosen exactly.
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Speaker 2: That's what investigators keyed in on. It suggested someone not
3:40
just violent, but maybe educated, definitely arrogant. It felt provocative,
3:46
almost literary, like he was showing off, mocking them.
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Speaker 1: Using sophisticated language while doing these incredibly brutal things.
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Speaker 2: It speaks volumes about his psychology, right, that need for control,
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that contempt positioning himself is somehow superior control.
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Speaker 1: It showed up in his methods too, and where he left.
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Speaker 2: The victims absolutely consistent. The mo O was manual strangulation,
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sometimes using ligatures like belts, sexual assault, and then the
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key element disposal along major freeways.
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Speaker 1: I two ninety five, Suitland Parkway, the BW Parkway, hence
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the name freeway fandom.
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Speaker 2: He wasn't just using the highways to get around, he
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was using them as disposal sites, anonymous, easy to access,
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complicates jurisdiction DeLay's discovery. The freeways were his signature.
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Speaker 1: The last confirmed victim of on Meyer seventeen. She disappeared
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in January seventy two. Body found months later. Same pattern,
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But why did it go cold? The clear pattern a
4:41
distinctive note.
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Speaker 2: That really comes down to the systemic issues of the time.
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The victims were young, black, poor in a city dealing
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with riots, protests, massive crime waves. Frankly, their disappearances didn't
4:53
command the same urgency or media spotlight as.
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Speaker 1: Maybe a missing white girl for the suburbs would have.
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Speaker 2: Sadly, yes, police resources were overwhelmed. It created this vacuum,
5:01
the societal blind spot, and the phantom just operated right
5:04
in it.
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Speaker 1: Did they ever get close any descriptions?
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Speaker 2: There was one potential survivor, a fourteen year old girl
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escaped an abduction attempt in seventy one. She described a
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black man, clean shaven, maybe twenties or thirties, driving a
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blue green sedan like a Plymouth or Dodge.
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Speaker 1: But that's still pretty broad right.
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Speaker 2: And Leeds got confused. There were false trails. The investigation
5:25
wasn't as focused as it could have been.
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Speaker 1: You mentioned a task force arrest in seventy one the
5:30
went sideways.
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Speaker 2: Oh, that was a real setback. They were under huge pressure,
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arrested seven guys from a car seft ring. One of them,
5:37
John David Norman, was a white supremacist with a history
5:41
of child abuse. They really pushed the theory.
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Speaker 1: It was this ring, but the evidence wasn't there.
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Speaker 2: Purely circumstantial. The charges eventually got dropped. The crucial time
5:50
was lost, resources were diverted, and the real killer was
5:53
still out there, completely untouched by that effort.
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Speaker 1: So fifty years on, what's the status now? What keeps
5:58
this case from being completely forget?
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Speaker 2: It's forensics really, in the two thousands they managed to
6:03
get DNA from semen found on Brenda Crockett's clothing. They
6:07
developed a partial mail profile.
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Speaker 1: Okay, that's huge a DNA profile it is.
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Speaker 2: But here's the hurdle.
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Speaker 1: No match in codis the National DNA database exactly.
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Speaker 2: So either this guy had no prior felon new record,
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or somehow he just never got into the system. The
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profile exists, but it hasn't hit anything. There is still
6:25
a one hundred and fifty thousand dollars reward out there
6:27
but without that match or maybe a future genetic genealogy break,
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he remains a phantom.
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Speaker 1: Just incredible, a story of exploitation tied directly to race,
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class and the chaos at the times. Okay, let's shift
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focus now move across the country. A different kind of
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prejudice fueled another killer's anonymity San Francisco.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really stark contrast in some ways, but
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you see the same theme of systemic failure. If DC
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struggled with race and class bias San Francisco in nineteen
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seventy five, the defining issue was homophobia and.
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Speaker 1: The killer Udler created specifically on the gay community January
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to April nineteen seventy five.
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Speaker 2: Right in the heart of what was becoming a vibrant,
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visible LGBTQ plus community, but one that was still incredibly vulnerable.
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Speaker 1: And his method, the name Doodler, comes directly from how
7:14
he operated. It's psychologically chilling.
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Speaker 2: It really is. This wasn't just random attacks. He had
7:19
this signature m He'd go to gay bars, cruising spots,
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places like that. He'd struck up conversations and then he'd
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sketch them.
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Speaker 3: He'd draw his victims like on napkins, exactly draw their portrait,
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use that artistic skill, that moment of connection, maybe flattery,
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to build trust, to seem charming, non threatening, and then
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he'd lure them somewhere isolated, usually ocean beach, and.
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Speaker 1: Attack them there. Wow, the level of calculation to sit
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there sketching someone you intend to kill moments later. That
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takes a certain kind of nerve or.
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Speaker 2: A profound psychological distortion. It suggests this bizarre fusion of
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intimacy and destruction, and the attacks themselves were incredibly violent.
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Speaker 1: Need Bruno hill Are twenty seven.
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Speaker 2: He was one of the first yeah found January twenty seven,
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teen seventy five, stabbed just brutally fifty nine times, throat
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slash John Bambick. A week later. Gerhard Kaiser in March
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stabbed repeatedly.
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Speaker 1: Found on ocean beach, stabbed often frenziedly and again like
8:12
the I seventy killer will get to no robbery.
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Speaker 2: Correct, nothing taken. The motive seems purely psychological power rage,
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maybe specifically targeted at gay men. It felt ritualistic, not
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a mugging gone bad.
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Speaker 1: Some estimates put his victim count higher, maybe up to sixteen,
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including older.
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Speaker 2: Cases Yeah, investigators started looking back at unsolved stabbings from
8:35
nineteen seventy four, wondering if they fit the pattern. The
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potential scope is quite large.
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Speaker 1: Now, if he's interacting socially, sketching people, surely someone survived.
8:44
Someone got a good look at him.
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Speaker 2: They did. That was the crucial break. May nineteen seventy five,
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a man named Rick Stager, he was twenty eight, met
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a guy at the Zodiac Laune on Castor Streets.
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Speaker 1: The Zodiac Lounge.
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Speaker 2: The man fit the profile, young, charming African American. He
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sketched stage portrait on a napkin classic noodler convinced him
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to drive out to Ocean Beach and he attacked, pulled
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a knife, stabs Stager in the chest and back, but
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Stager fought back. He managed to escape, get help, and
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gave the police a detailed description.
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Speaker 1: Finally, what did he look like?
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Speaker 2: Slender black man, young, nineteen to twenty five, around five
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foot ten neat features police noted, and this sort of
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disarming smile. That description led to a composite sketch. They
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even got tips linking him to a local bakery.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so they have a survivor ID. A sketch, maybe
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even a workplace. Yeah, why didn't they get him? What
9:35
went wrong?
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Speaker 2: This is where the homophobia of nineteen seventy five just
9:40
slams the door shut on the investigation. It's tragic. Ohso,
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both Rick Stager, the survivor, and reportedly another key witness
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some sources say a prominent figure, maybe even a diplomat
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or celebrity, though that's less confirmed, refused to testify publicly.
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Speaker 1: They wouldn't go on the record, even with a serial
9:56
killer out there.
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Speaker 2: They were terrified not just of the killer, but of
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being outed in nineteen seventy five, being publicly identified as gay,
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especially if you were prominent or closeted. It could mean
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losing everything, your job, your family, your standing in the community.
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It carried immense stigma, even legal risks in some contexts.
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Speaker 1: So their fear of social ruin essentially shielded the killer.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened. Prejudice became his best defense. Police
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had the sketch, they had leads, but they couldn't build
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a solid case for court without that crucial eyewitness testimony.
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The doodler just walked away, protected by the very society
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whose members he was targeting.
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Speaker 1: Has modern science offered any hope here DNA?
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Speaker 2: Yes. Thankfully, the SFPD cold case unit revisited it in
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twenty fifteen. They managed to get DNA from a cigarette
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butt found at one of the scenes, and they got
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a full male profile.
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Speaker 1: Okay, same situation as the freeway phantom then got the profile,
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but no match in CODIS.
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Speaker 2: Initially yes, no CODIS match, but there was another hurdle
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back in twenty fifteen. Privacy laws at the time really
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restricted using that unknown profile for public get genealogy searches.
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Speaker 1: So even with his DNA, they couldn't legally use sites
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like ancestry DNA or twenty three and meters to find relatives.
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Speaker 2: Precisely, the most powerful tool for identifying unknown subjects through
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familial links was at that moment largely off limits legally
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for this purpose. The legal landscape has evolved since then, thankfully,
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so there's still hope there is. The case is active,
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there's a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars reward, and
11:23
the potential to use genetic genealogy now undercurrent guidelines might
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finally break the case open. But it's a stark example
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of how time and legal frameworks can stall even promising
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forensic leads.
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Speaker 1: Two cases down, two chilling examples of how societal blind spots, race, class,
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sexual orientation allowed killers to operate. Let's move now to
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a pair of cases where the victims were perhaps seen
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as even more disposable, making the killers harder to track.
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Speaker 2: Okay, next stop is New England, southeastern Massachusetts, the New
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Bedford Highway killer, operating nineteen eighty eight to nineteen eighty nine,
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and again the obscurity seems tied to who the victims were.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, you really got to understand what New Bedford was
12:04
like back then. You know, late eighties, the fishing industry,
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which was the heart of the local economy have basically collapsed.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the economy was rough, wasn't.
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Speaker 1: It devastated and that fueled a lot of social problems. Addiction,
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particularly cracked cocaine, was rampant. It created this population of
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highly vulnerable women, many involved in sex work, many transients
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whose lives were precarious, families fragmented, maybe not even reported missing.
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Speaker 2: Right away exactly, or if they were, police were so
12:29
overwhelmed with drug crime and violence, these disappearances often got
12:32
lost in the shuffle. They were, as one source put it,
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kind of invisible until the bodies piled up, and pile
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up they did.
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Speaker 1: At least nine women vanished for New Bedford, their bodies
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found along Route one forty.
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Speaker 2: Route one forty is key here geographically, It's like the
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freeway Phantom's I two ninety five. It's this somewhat desolate
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highway running from New Bedford out towards Fall River, more
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rural areas perfect for dumping botteries without immediate discovery, and
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the mo was consistent. Very strangulation or stabbing. Victims often bound,
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sometimes with their own clothes. Mary Lisa Goosha twenty seven
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was found strangled with her own pants, a detail that
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really stuck. Often sexual assault post mortem bodies sometimes posed.
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It suggested ritual, and.
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Speaker 1: The timing was tight. All within about a year.
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Speaker 2: Really concentrated. March eighty eight, Ghosh and Deborah Madero's disappear,
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then more through the summer and fall. Kathleen don West,
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Marianne Cunningham, Ellen, Theresa Susa all vanished by October eighty eight,
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all asphyxiated or strangled.
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Speaker 1: Nine confirmed victims in roughly seven months. That takes organization.
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Speaker 2: It suggests someone local, someone familiar with the area, comfortable
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operating there repeatedly, someone methodical.
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Speaker 1: What about suspects? Back then? Any leads?
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Speaker 2: Witness descriptions were pretty vague. Unfortunately, A stocky white man
13:48
maybe his thirties seen driving our rusty van, possibly afford
13:52
to connell In.
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Speaker 1: Not much to go on, but forensics eventually came through.
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Speaker 2: Yes, much later in two thousand and five, they got
13:59
a boost from nij grants. That's the National Institute of Justice.
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They fund a lot of cold case work. They were
14:05
able to get a DNA profile from evidence found on
14:07
Kathleen don West's clothing.
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Speaker 1: Another profile, another dead end and code.
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Speaker 2: Is initially seems to be the pattern, right, but the
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big news came recently twenty twenty two.
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Speaker 1: Genetic genealogy Ah, the same technique we just talked about
14:21
with the doodler. Potentially explain again how that works when
14:24
you don't have a direct database match.
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Speaker 2: Sure, so they take that unknown killer's DNA profile, the
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one from the crime scene, and they upload it to
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public genealogy databases, the kind people use to trace their
14:34
family trees. It doesn't pop up with the killer's name. Instead,
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it finds people in the database who are distant relatives,
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like third, fourth, fifth cousins people who share small segments
14:45
of DNA.
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Speaker 1: So you get a list of distant cousins.
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Speaker 2: Then what Then the real work begins. Investigators, often working
14:53
with specialized genealogists, build out massive family trees. Based on
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those matches, they trace ancestors back and then descendants forward,
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looking for lines that converge in the right place and time,
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in this case, southeastern Massachusetts around nineteen eighty eight.
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Speaker 1: That sounds incredibly painstaking.
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Speaker 2: It is, but it can narrow down the possibilities from
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millions to potentially just one family or even one individual
15:16
who fits the timeline, location, and physical description.
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Speaker 1: And it worked. In the New Bedford case.
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Speaker 2: It seems to have made significant progress. The reports say
15:24
the genealogy pointed towards specific Portuguese American family lines, which.
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Speaker 1: Is a major community in that area right New Bedford
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Fall River exactly.
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Speaker 2: So while they haven't publicly named a suspect, it means
15:36
the investigation isn't cool anymore. It's actively focused on specific lineages,
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specific families. Thanks to that combination of old DNA and
15:44
new technology. There's one hundred thousand dollars reward still active too.
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Speaker 1: Okay, from the cold coast of Massachusetts. Let's go completely
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across the country to the desert outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico,
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the West Masa bone collector.
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Speaker 2: And this discovery was just shocking in its scale. The
16:01
killer likely operated between say, two thousand and three and
16:03
two thousand and five, but nobody knew until February two
16:07
thousand and nine.
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Speaker 1: What happened.
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Speaker 2: Then, a woman walking her dog found a human bone
16:11
sticking out of the dirt on West Mesa, this barren
16:14
area just outside the city. That led to a wider search.
16:17
Police brought in equipment and what they found was essentially
16:20
a mass grave. How many victims Eleven female skeletons plus
16:24
the remains of a fetus, all buried in shallow graves
16:27
scattered across this desolate landscape.
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Speaker 1: Eleven women and again, the profile of the victims seems
16:31
crucial to why it went undiscovered for so.
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Speaker 2: Long, heartbreakingly so primarily Native American and Hispanic women. Many
16:39
had histories of drug use, maybe sex work. Last seen
16:42
in Albuquerque's International District, an area known for transience and crime.
16:47
These were women living on the absolute margins.
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Speaker 1: The phrase Society's forgotten keeps coming up with this case,
16:53
it's tragically apt.
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Speaker 2: They could disappear from that environment and maybe friends or
16:57
family noticed, but the official alarm bells just didn't ring
17:00
loudly enough. People might assume they just moved on left town.
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Speaker 1: Victims like Monica Lsarro, a mother of three, found shot
17:07
Victoria Chavez strangled, lives just erased, and.
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Speaker 2: The system maybe implicitly didn't prioritize finding them until the
17:14
bodies literally surfaced years later.
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Speaker 1: Now, the method of killing varied here, Unlike some of
17:18
the others.
17:19
Speaker 2: A bit yeah strangulation, bludgeoning, Some were shot, often with
17:23
a point two two caliber weapons, so not one single method,
17:27
but the disposal was consistent. The burial had a ritualistic feel.
17:31
Victims were often wrapped in blankets, comforters, sometimes clothing, often
17:35
placed in a fetal position, even though the desert environment
17:38
and time degraded a lot of evidence, making sexual assault
17:41
hard to confirm in all cases. That careful wrapping and
17:44
posing suggests a need for control, a ritualistic element beyond
17:49
just hiding the bodies.
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Speaker 1: And like new Bedford technology is offering the main path forward.
17:54
Speaker 2: Now it seems to be cold case funding helped get
17:57
a partial male DNA profile back in twenty ten ten,
18:00
but again no code is it. But just this year
18:03
twenty twenty four, reports emerged about significant progress using genetic genealogy.
18:07
Speaker 1: Finding those distant relatives.
18:09
Speaker 2: Again exactly identifying distant kin pointing towards local family groups
18:13
clans within the Albuquerque area. This aligns perfectly with the
18:16
FBI profile they developed years ago. We suggested what a
18:19
Hispanic mail probably thirties or forties at the time of
18:22
the killings, likely local knew the area well, and critically,
18:27
someone with access to a vehicle capable of getting out
18:29
to that remote West Mesa site repeatedly to transport and
18:33
bury the bodies without being noticed. The genealogy seems to
18:36
be confirming that local connection. A fifty thousand dollars reward
18:40
is still active there.
18:41
Speaker 1: New Bedford in West Mesa just grim reminders of how
18:44
vulnerability combined with geographic isolation can create perfect hunting grounds.
18:50
Speaker 2: Now we shift to a different kind of predator, one
18:52
who wasn't tied to a single city or disposal site,
18:55
but used the vastness of the American infrastructure itself as
18:58
his weapon and shield. The Ice seventy killer.
19:00
Speaker 1: This guy was terrifyingly efficient, a blitz six attacks four
19:04
states Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, all in just three months
19:08
back in nineteen ninety two.
19:09
Speaker 2: The speed in the transience, that's what defines him. He
19:12
specifically hits small retail stores, gift shops, card stores, little boutiques,
19:16
usually located right near an exit ramp for Interstate seven, places.
19:19
Speaker 1: With likely minimal staff, easy and.
19:21
Speaker 2: Easy out exactly, often just one or two clerks, typically female.
19:26
He could enter, commit the crime, and be back on
19:28
the interstate and heading towards the next state line within minutes.
19:31
Speaker 1: Let's just run through that timeline quickly because it shows
19:33
the geographic spread.
19:35
Speaker 2: It started April eighth, in nineteen ninety two, tear Hoe, Indiana,
19:38
Sarah Muck thirty five, shot execution style in a ceramics store.
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Speaker 1: Three days later, he's way over.
19:44
Speaker 2: In West Virginia April eleventh, Wheeling, West Virginia, Patricia Majors
19:49
thirty five, and Michael McCown twenty one, killed in a
19:52
bridle shop. McCown is the only male victim we know
19:56
of in this series, killed alongside the female clerk.
19:59
Speaker 1: Then, over the next month or so, he hits Missouri, Kansas,
20:02
and Indiana again that rapid movement across state lines must
20:06
have been an investigative nightmare.
20:08
Speaker 2: Absolutely every time he crossed the state line, jurisdiction shifted.
20:11
Local police in Indiana are investigating a murder, then days
20:14
later police in West Virginia have a similar one than Missouri.
20:17
It took time for them to connect the dots to
20:19
realize this wasn't isolated. It was a single person moving
20:22
along I seventy.
20:22
Speaker 1: He used the seams in the system, He.
20:24
Speaker 2: Exploded them perfectly. By the time they started sharing information effectively,
20:28
he was potentially hundreds of miles away, maybe already planning
20:32
the next attack. Geography was his camouflage.
20:35
Speaker 1: And the EMA was consistent, execution style shooting point three
20:39
to eight revolver, but crucially no robbery.
20:44
Speaker 2: That's the detail that really points to the psychology. Cash
20:46
drawers were untouched, money was left behind. This wasn't about need,
20:50
It was.
20:50
Speaker 1: About the act itself, cure thrill.
20:52
Speaker 2: Killing seems like it hunting for the power, the control.
20:55
It points to an organized killer, someone who planned these
20:58
encounters whose sole motive was murder.
21:01
Speaker 1: You think in the Midwest, the heartland as maybe safer,
21:04
more spread out. Yeah, but he turned that I seventy
21:07
corridor into his personal hunting trail.
21:10
Speaker 2: The anonymity of the interstate was perfect for him. The
21:12
FBI put out a profile in ninety four suggesting he
21:15
was organized transient, maybe someone whose job involved.
21:19
Speaker 1: Travel, like a long haul trucker or a salesman.
21:21
Speaker 2: Could be someone familiar with the highway system, comfortable moving
21:25
between states without drawing attention, someone who could blend into
21:29
those small towns, commit the crime, and just disappear back
21:32
into the flow of traffic. Possibly military background was also considered.
21:36
Speaker 1: Were there witness descriptions? How did he remain so anonymous?
21:39
Speaker 2: There were descriptions fairly consistent ones too. White male, maybe
21:43
twenty five to thirty five, slim build or on five
21:46
foot eight, often seen wearing glasses and a baseball cap,
21:50
driving a tan or possibly light colored Ford van.
21:53
Speaker 1: But that description a huge number of people right, especially
21:58
in the Midwest in the early nineties. A white guy
22:01
in a baseball cap driving a Ford Van, It's incredibly generic.
22:04
He blended in perfectly.
22:05
Speaker 2: There was a mention of a recent break though, something
22:08
about an Arkansas license plate in twenty nineteen.
22:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was potentially significant. A witness came forward decades later,
22:14
we'recalling seeing the van and remembering an Arkansas plate. That's
22:17
a concrete detail.
22:18
Speaker 2: So why hasn't that cracked the case? It seems like
22:21
a solid lead. Well, think about the time gap nearly
22:23
thirty years trying to trace the ownership history of a
22:27
specific vehicle, possibly sold multiple times across different states over
22:32
three decades. It's incredibly complex. Records get lost, people move,
22:37
memories fade, so it's not like they could.
22:39
Speaker 1: Just punch the plate number into a modern database and
22:41
get the owner from nineteen ninety two.
22:43
Speaker 2: Not easily, No, yeah, but it did give them something
22:46
specific to work with. They could create cold case, playing cards,
22:49
posters focusing on that specific detail, the tan van with
22:53
Arkansas plates seen near I seventy stores in the spring
22:56
of ninety two. It helps focus the public's memory.
22:59
Speaker 1: What about DNA? Did they get anything from the scenes shellcasings?
23:02
Speaker 2: Maybe they did try. There was trace DNA found on
23:05
shell casings and potentially other items, but given the age
23:08
environmental exposure, the DNA was highly degraded. They confirmed a
23:12
male profile, but it wasn't strong enough for a straightforward
23:14
Codis match or at the time reliable genetic genealogy.
23:18
Speaker 1: So is still waiting for that one key piece of information.
23:21
Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, the seventy five thousand dollars reward is still active.
23:25
They're hoping someone remembers that van, that specific person in
23:29
one of those towns along I seventy back in April
23:32
or May of nineteen ninety two, someone who maybe thought
23:35
something was off at the time but didn't connect the dots.
23:37
Speaker 1: Okay, we've journeyed through five incredibly disturbing cold cases. Yeah, DC,
23:42
San Francisco, Masters, it's New Mexico, the I seventy corridor,
23:45
different places, different times, different specific mos in some ways.
23:48
But when you pull back, what are the common threads?
23:52
Why do these particular phantoms still haunt us?
23:54
Speaker 2: You can really boil it down to three core reasons.
23:57
Three systemic failures that allowed these killers to thrive, at
24:01
least for a time.
24:02
Speaker 1: Okay, walk us through them. What's the first major takeaway?
24:04
Speaker 2: Number one, and it's maybe the most crucial institutional disregard
24:08
and victim selection. Every single one of these killers targeted
24:11
people on the.
24:12
Speaker 1: Margins, the freeway fandoms, young black victims, the doodlers, gay victims,
24:17
the women in New Bedford and West Masas struggling with
24:19
addiction or poverty exactly.
24:21
Speaker 2: They preyed on invisibility. They chose victims who, sadly, society
24:25
at the time was less likely to notice missing immediately,
24:29
less likely to mobilize resources for quickly. They exploited the
24:33
fact that these communities often had strained relationships with law enforcement,
24:37
or that witnesses might fear coming forward themselves.
24:40
Speaker 1: Prigidice and indifference created the hunting ground.
24:43
Speaker 2: It absolutely did the killers leverage society's existing biases.
24:47
Speaker 1: Okay, what's number two Number two?
24:49
Speaker 2: Geography and infrastructure as a tool. This wasn't just about killing,
24:53
It was about a saping. They used the landscape.
24:56
Speaker 1: Masterfully, like the I seventy killer using the Interstate for
24:59
rapid trans it across state lines.
25:01
Speaker 2: Right, or the freeway phantom and the New Bedford Killer
25:04
using specific highways for quick anonymous disposal, the West Mesa
25:07
collector using the vast remote desert, the Doodler using the
25:11
isolation of ocean beach at night. They understood how to
25:14
use physical space, distance, isolation, jurisdictional boundaries to delay discovery
25:19
and complicate the investigation.
25:21
Speaker 1: Making geography their accomplice.
25:23
Speaker 2: And number three number three investigative limits and historical bias.
25:28
We have to remember the context of the times these
25:30
crimes occurred, like.
25:31
Speaker 1: The homophobia crippling the Doodler investigation in.
25:35
Speaker 2: The seventies, Precisely key witnesses silenced by fear of social ruin,
25:39
not just the killer, or the racial and economic biases
25:43
in the seventies and eighties that likely slow the response
25:45
to the freeway phantom or the initial dismissals of missing
25:48
women in New Bedford. DNA technology wasn't what it is now,
25:52
communication between agencies wasn't a seamless These historical realities created
25:58
roadblocks that took decades to even begin to overcome.
26:01
Speaker 1: That. There's a counter narrative here, right, These cases aren't
26:04
totally frozen. Justice is still being pursued, absolutely.
26:06
Speaker 2: And that's driven by technology and sheer persistence. We're seeing
26:09
specialized cold case units, dedicated funding like those NIJ grants,
26:14
huge advancements in DNA analysis and.
26:16
Speaker 1: Especially genetic genealogy that seems to be the game changer
26:19
in several of these.
26:20
Speaker 2: It really is that ability to take an unknown profile,
26:24
find distant relatives in public databases, and build family trees
26:28
to pinpoint potential suspects. It's cracking cases that seem permanently cold.
26:34
We're seeing real progress in New Bedford and West Mesa
26:37
because of it. It offers genuine hope where there was
26:39
very little before.
26:41
Speaker 1: Science is essentially reaching back through time to potentially unmask
26:44
these killers.
26:45
Speaker 2: It's providing leads that simply didn't exist five or ten
26:48
years ago.
26:49
Speaker 1: And behind all the science, all the investigation, are the families,
26:52
the Williams family in DC, the relatives in Albuquerque, New Bedford.
26:56
For them, it's not just about solving a puzzle.
26:58
Speaker 2: No, it's about closure. It's about answers. It's about ensuring
27:01
their loved ones aren't just statistics, not just forgotten victims,
27:04
labeled disposable. It's about accountability driven by love and the
27:08
need for truth after decades of waiting.
27:11
Speaker 1: The human cost is just immense. So as we wrap
27:14
up thinking about these five cases and remembering that FBI
27:17
estimate twenty five to fifty active killers potentially out there
27:20
right now, what's the final thought we should leave our
27:22
listeners with.
27:23
Speaker 2: It's a chilling one. I think if these five individuals
27:27
manage to operate for so long, commit so many horrific
27:30
acts by exploiting societal blind spots, vulnerable populations, and the
27:34
anonymity of our own infrastructure. What does that imply about
27:38
who else might be out there, right now, right now,
27:42
operating completely under the radar. These five cases are the
27:45
ones we know about because bodies were found, patterns were
27:48
eventually noticed, but they represent just the documented failures. The
27:52
truly unsettling thought is the potential for an invisible layer
27:56
of ongoing, undetected violence happening in those same blind spots.
28:00
Speaker 1: Because until a killer is caught, until their identity.
28:02
Speaker 2: Is no they're still free. They could be anyone walking
28:05
among us, living seemingly ordinary lives, maybe even in the
28:08
very communities they once terrorized. That anonymity, that potential presence,
28:13
that's the enduring horror of the unsolved serial killer.