Latest / The conspiracy / This Cold Case Was Solved By The Internet _Tent Girl

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This Cold Case Was Solved By The Internet _Tent Girl · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: Some murders are solved in days and some are solved
0:03
Speaker 1: in months. But this one, this one took thirty years.
0:08
Speaker 1: And it began with a man who wasn't even looking
0:10
Speaker 1: for a body, and ended with another who couldn't stop
0:13
Speaker 1: thinking about one. And between them a woman no one knew,
0:17
Speaker 1: a crime no one witnessed, and a silence that stretched
0:20
Speaker 1: across decades. This is the story of the tent Girl.
0:24
Speaker 2: Crime.
0:25
Speaker 1: Conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder all things that I
0:29
Speaker 1: love to consume, and I know.
0:30
Speaker 2: You do too.
0:31
Speaker 3: You sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually mind did break, And today
0:38
Speaker 3: we are talking about a cold case that was helped
0:40
Speaker 3: solved by Internet sleuths.
0:43
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's unmackle our seatbouts, go mock
0:45
Speaker 1: fied on the highway, slam on the brakes, and muster
0:47
Speaker 1: this windshield into this cold case together.
1:05
Speaker 2: It was a cool.
1:05
Speaker 1: Spring morning in May nineteen sixty eight when Wilbur Riddle
1:09
Speaker 1: set out along a rural stretch of US Highway twenty
1:12
Speaker 1: five near Georgetown, Kentucky, and Riddle, a well digger by trade,
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Speaker 1: was scavenging the roadside for discarded glass insulators from telephone poles,
1:20
Speaker 1: but as he walked through the brush in the quiet
1:23
Speaker 1: Kentucky backwoods, he noticed an oddly shaped green canvas bundle
1:27
Speaker 1: lying just off the road, and curiosity got the better
1:31
Speaker 1: of him, so Riddle walked up and nudged the bundle
1:33
Speaker 1: tarp with his boot, accidentally sending it tumbling down a
1:37
Speaker 1: small embankment. But as it rolled, the wrapping unraveled and
1:41
Speaker 1: slightly enough to reveal what was inside, and his heart
1:45
Speaker 1: jumped out of his chest because the object was shaped
1:48
Speaker 1: like a human body. So Riddle froze in shock, and
1:52
Speaker 1: gathering his wits, he ran to the nearest gas station
1:54
Speaker 1: to call the authorities, and soon the Scott County Sheriff
1:58
Speaker 1: arrived at the scene, and together they approached the mysterious tarp.
2:03
Speaker 1: So with trembling hands, the sheriff used a knife to
2:05
Speaker 1: cut open the canvas covering, and the site underneath made
2:09
Speaker 1: them recoil in horror because inside the makeshift sack was
2:13
Speaker 1: a badly decomposed, unclothed body, and the body was curled
2:18
Speaker 1: in the fetal position, limb stiff from rigor mortis, and
2:21
Speaker 1: in death, their posture looked as if they had been
2:24
Speaker 1: trying to escape from something just frozen in a final
2:27
Speaker 1: act of desperation, and the corpse appeared to be that
2:31
Speaker 1: of a young white girl age unknown at this point,
2:34
Speaker 1: and aside from the obvious effects of decay, nothing distinctive
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Speaker 1: stood out about her appearance, so it was immediately clear
2:41
Speaker 1: to the sheriff that this was no accident. The body
2:44
Speaker 1: had been deliberately concealed, and the heavy green canvas that
2:48
Speaker 1: enveloped the girl looked like the kind used for a tent,
2:51
Speaker 1: possibly tied tightly with a length of rope, and the
2:55
Speaker 1: victim was unclothed except for one odd detail. A small
2:59
Speaker 1: shrimp of white cloth resembling part of a baby's diaper
3:03
Speaker 1: or towel, clung to her shoulder, and investigators would later
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Speaker 1: know to other clues like the girl's eyes have long decomposed,
3:10
Speaker 1: her right hand was tightly clenched, and she had three
3:13
Speaker 1: broken fingernails, suggesting she had desperately struggled while inside of
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Speaker 1: the tarp, trying in vain to free herself. So the
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Speaker 1: horrifying discovery on that quiet roadside instantly turned the area
3:24
Speaker 1: into a crime scene, and the authorities secured the site
3:28
Speaker 1: and carefully collected whatever evidence that they could, and the
3:31
Speaker 1: body was removed and sent for an autopsy, but the
3:34
Speaker 1: level of decomposition suggested she had been dead for many weeks,
3:38
Speaker 1: and there was also no immediate identifying documents or personal
3:41
Speaker 1: items with the remains, so for local law enforcement and community,
3:45
Speaker 1: an urgent question hung in the air, and it was
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Speaker 1: who was this young woman and what terrible fate had
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Speaker 1: befallen her to News of the grim discovery spread quickly
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Speaker 1: in Scott County, and by the time reporters began covering
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Speaker 1: the story, they had given the unknown girl a nickname,
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Speaker 1: and that was Tent Girl and the Moniker Stuck. Inspired
4:06
Speaker 1: by the tent like canvas in which she was found,
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Speaker 1: and in an era long before instant internet updates, the
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Speaker 1: bizarre name and the mystery behind it captured the public's
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Speaker 1: attention because a small Kentucky town chillingly now had a
4:19
Speaker 1: who done it on its hands, and a family somewhere
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Speaker 1: had lost a daughter, though no one yet knew who
4:26
Speaker 1: or where they were, so from the outset, investigators treated
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Speaker 1: the case as a probable homicide because the way the
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Speaker 1: victim was trussed up in a tarp and dumped by
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Speaker 1: the highway pointed to foul play and detectives from Scott
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Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Office on the Kentucky State Police began working
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Speaker 1: to identify the young woman, and they noted her physical
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Speaker 1: characteristics a petite female estimated around five feet to one
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Speaker 1: inch tall and one hundred and ten to one hundred
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Speaker 1: and fifteen pounds, with reddish brown hair. So because of
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Speaker 1: her small stature and youthful looking features, authorities initially guessed
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Speaker 1: she was in her mid or late teens, perhaps sixteen
5:03
Speaker 1: to nineteen years old, and the medical examiner believed she
5:06
Speaker 1: had likely died several weeks before her discovery, and an
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Speaker 1: early estimate placed her time of death around April of.
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Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty eight. But with no id on the.
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Speaker 1: Body, the only name investigators could call her was the nickname.
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Speaker 2: Already in the papers, which was ten Girl.
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Speaker 1: So the autopsy and crime scene evidence gave investigators a
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Speaker 1: few clues, but not nearly enough to solve the case outright,
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Speaker 1: and the corner could not pinpoint an exact cause of
5:32
Speaker 1: death from the decomposed remains. There were no bullet holes
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Speaker 1: or obvious knife wounds. However, subtle signs suggested a violent end,
5:41
Speaker 1: and that was that bruising on the skull that they
5:43
Speaker 1: had found indicated a possible blow to the head, and
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Speaker 1: the position of the body hinted that the girl might
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Speaker 1: have been alive when confined in the tarp, so a
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Speaker 1: state police officer at the scene speculated grimly about what
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Speaker 1: had happened, saying, quote, we think the girl was rendered
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Speaker 1: unconscious by a blow to the head that tied up
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Speaker 1: in the bag to die a slow death by exphyxiation unquote.
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Speaker 1: And strands of fiber and traces of materials were collected
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Speaker 1: from the scene, one being the obvious green canvas itself,
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Speaker 1: and also pieces of nylon rope used to tie the bundle,
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Speaker 1: and the scrap of white cloth identified as part of
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Speaker 1: a baby's diaper or towel found on her body, and
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Speaker 1: these items were sent to the FBI laboratory for analysis
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Speaker 1: on the chance they could be traced to a manufacturer
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Speaker 1: or a specific source, but unfortunately, the FBI reported that
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Speaker 1: all the materials were generic and mass produced. The canvas, rope,
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Speaker 1: and cloth were too common to track down one single origin,
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Speaker 1: so nothing in the bundle provided a smoking gun to
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Speaker 1: the killer's identity or the girl's identity. Investigators next turned
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Speaker 1: their efforts to just identifying tent girl herself, and they
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Speaker 1: compiled her description and reached out far and wide. Local
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Speaker 1: newspapers and radio stations announced the discovery and asked for
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Speaker 1: the public's help in finding any missing girl who fit
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Speaker 1: the profile, and in those first weeks and months, tips
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Speaker 1: trickled in, but each lead led to frustration. But one
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Speaker 1: promising tip came when police learned of a missing teenager
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Speaker 1: from another state who seemed to match the description. Detectives
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Speaker 1: looked into a seventeen year old girl named Debbie who
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Speaker 1: had vanished around the same time, and she had similar features,
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Speaker 1: and a trucker even reported giving a ride to a
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Speaker 1: hitchhiking couple that could have been Debbie and a boy
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Speaker 1: in Kentucky. So excited by the possibility, a Kentucky investigator
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Speaker 1: tracked a lead all the way to Pennsylvania, only to
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Speaker 1: discover Debbie Crane alive and well, living with her boyfriend
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Speaker 1: and never having set foot in Kentucky. So it was
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Speaker 1: a relief for Debbie's family, obviously, but a dead end
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Speaker 1: for the ten year old case, and another lead drew
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Speaker 1: investigator's attention to Pennsylvania again a few months later, when
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Speaker 1: a sixteen year old named Candace Clothier was found murdered
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Speaker 1: and dumped in a canvas bag in April of nineteen
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Speaker 1: sixty eight, and the eerie similarities to young women being
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Speaker 1: found in a tied canvas prompted police Chief Anthony Fergione
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Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania to personally drive to Kentucky and just compare notes,
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Speaker 1: and for a moment, officers wondered if the two cases
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Speaker 1: were connected by a roaming killer, but despite the near
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Speaker 1: identical method of disposal, no definitive link could be established,
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Speaker 1: and the Pennsylvania victim was eventually identified as canvas unrelated
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Speaker 1: to ten girl, and her murder remained its own mystery.
8:28
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8:47
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8:50
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8:53
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8:58
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Speaker 1: So Kentucky authorities followed up on every rumor and report
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Speaker 1: of missing girls, checked missing persons files across multiple states,
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Speaker 1: comparing fingerprints and dental records where they could, and at
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Speaker 1: one point, an anonymous caller claimed tent Girl was a
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Speaker 1: runaway from Covington Kentucky, but that lead, like the others,
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Speaker 1: proved false when the supposedly missing girl was found alive
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Speaker 1: and safe yet again. And detectives even received help from
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Speaker 1: Master Detective magazine, which was a national true crime publication,
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Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixty nine, the magazine actually ran a
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Speaker 1: feature story on the Tent Girl case, complete with an
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Speaker 1: artist sketch of the victim's face and an.
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Speaker 2: Appeal to readers for tips.
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Speaker 1: The authorities were hopeful that somewhere a worried family might
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Speaker 1: recognize her smile and come forward, and as one official
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Speaker 1: later recounted, quote, if we could only identify the tent Girl,
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Speaker 1: I'm sure we would find whoever caused her death unquote.
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Speaker 1: And in that article, investigators highlighted one distinctive detail they
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Speaker 1: had observed, and that was the dark gap of decay
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Speaker 1: between the tent girls two upper front teeth, which was
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Speaker 1: a feature that might have been noticeable when she was alive,
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Speaker 1: and indeed, sketcher Harold Musser intentionally made special notes of this,
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Speaker 1: and it was a long shot, but they were desperate
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Speaker 1: for a break. But despite these exhaustive efforts, tent Girl's
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Speaker 1: identity remained a riddle, and no family stepped up to
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Speaker 1: claim her, and every promising tip eventually hit a dead end.
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Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy one, local authorities made the compassionate
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Speaker 1: decision to lay the young woman to rest rather than
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Speaker 1: keep her remains in storage indefinitely. So in Georgetown Cemetery,
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Speaker 1: a modest tombstone was erected, donated by a local company
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Speaker 1: moved by the tragedy, and the stone was unlike any
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Speaker 1: other in the graveyard, and it bore no true name,
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Speaker 1: only the placeholder identity that had become famous in local lore.
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Speaker 1: Tent girl found May seventeenth, nineteen sixty eight, on US
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Speaker 1: Highway twenty five North, died about April twenty sixth to
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Speaker 1: May third, nineteen sixty eight, age about sixteen to nineteen years, height,
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Speaker 1: five feet one inch, weight one hundred and ten to
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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifteen pounds, reddish brown hair, unidentified and
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Speaker 1: underneath a carved likeness of the unidentified girl's face based
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Speaker 1: on police sketch, gazed out blankly as if still waiting
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Speaker 1: for someone to recognize her. And the tent girl was
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Speaker 1: now at rest, but not at peace, because her true name,
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Speaker 1: her story, and her killer were all still mysteries. Buried
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Speaker 1: with her, and for the detectives who worked the case
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Speaker 1: and for the community, it was a frustrating and heartbreaking conclusion,
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Speaker 1: and by the early nineteen seventies, the Tent Girl case
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Speaker 1: had gone completely cold, with no clues to follow. The
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Speaker 1: file was shelved among the ranks of unsolved murders, and
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Speaker 1: in the decades that followed, the story of the unknown
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Speaker 1: Girl in the Ten Canvas faded from national headlines, but
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Speaker 1: it was never completely forgotten, especially not in central Kentucky,
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Speaker 1: and the Tent Girl even took on a haunting foot
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Speaker 1: or status, sometimes told as a ghost story in the dark.
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Speaker 1: But no matter how many years went by, Wilbur Riddle
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Speaker 1: could not escape the memory.
14:08
Speaker 2: Of that day in nineteen sixty eight, and.
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Speaker 1: He reportedly told the tale of discovering ten Girl many
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Speaker 1: times over the years, almost as if unburdening himself of
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Speaker 1: a horrific story. And he even kept a copy of
14:20
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty nine Master Detective magazine article about the
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Speaker 1: case and would show it to people, determined people would
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Speaker 1: remember this poor unnamed girl. It just stirred something deep
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Speaker 1: in those who had tried to solve it.
14:33
Speaker 2: Quote.
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Speaker 1: This case has bothered me more than anything that has
14:36
Speaker 1: happened in my twelve years as sheriff. Unquote, the former
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Speaker 1: Scott County sheriff admitted to the magazine back then, and
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Speaker 1: they took some consolation in the fact that they had
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Speaker 1: at least given ten girl a dignified burial, But there
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Speaker 1: was an unfinished feeling. As her gravestone's epitaph, unidentified silently testified,
14:55
Speaker 1: the case remained unresolved, and every so often a possible
14:59
Speaker 1: lead would surface and briefly rekindle hope, only to fizzle out.
15:04
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Speaker 2: And let's get back to it.
17:24
Speaker 1: So over the years, a few families of long missing
17:27
Speaker 1: young women wondered if ten Girl might be their lost
17:30
Speaker 1: daughter or sister, but tentative inquiries never came up with
17:33
Speaker 1: anything useful, and any missing person's cases outside the initial
17:37
Speaker 1: estimated age range or timeframe were generally ruled out, which
17:42
Speaker 1: was later found to.
17:43
Speaker 2: Be an issue.
17:44
Speaker 1: And without modern DNA databases or centralized records, connecting the
17:48
Speaker 1: dots between states was impossible in that era. Specifically so
17:52
Speaker 1: as Todd Matthews, a name of great importance that we'll
17:56
Speaker 1: discuss shortly noted during those decades, quote, Chicago didn't know
18:01
Speaker 1: what was happening in Detroit. They weren't sharing information, unquote,
18:06
Speaker 1: because each police department had its own dusty binders of
18:09
Speaker 1: runaways and Jane does. But no one realized that the
18:12
Speaker 1: key to ten girls identity might lie in a missing
18:15
Speaker 1: person's report filed far far away. And so the ten
18:18
Speaker 1: Girl remained an unsolved mystery, frozen in time, and her
18:21
Speaker 1: grave became a somber landmark in Georgetown. It was as
18:24
Speaker 1: if an entire life had been condensed to a few vague.
18:28
Speaker 2: Lines on a tombstone, and the.
18:29
Speaker 1: Original investigators had retired or moved on, and new technologies
18:34
Speaker 1: like forensic DNA typing were still in their infancy and
18:37
Speaker 1: had not yet been applied to cold cases like this,
18:40
Speaker 1: And it would have stayed that way forever had it
18:43
Speaker 1: not been for an unexpected spark of interest from an
18:46
Speaker 1: unlikely source, a young man with a relentless imagination. So
18:50
Speaker 1: the stage was set for one of the most remarkable
18:53
Speaker 1: second acts in cold case investigation history, and ten Girls
18:56
Speaker 1: story was far from over. So in nineteen eighty seven,
19:00
Speaker 1: nearly two decades after tent girl's body was found, the
19:04
Speaker 1: mystery found its way into the ears of a seventeen
19:06
Speaker 1: year old named Todd. Matthews and Todd lived in Livingston, Tennessee,
19:11
Speaker 1: a small town not too far from the Kentucky state line,
19:14
Speaker 1: and he was a thoughtful kid known for his empathy
19:18
Speaker 1: and curiosity. And Todd had grown up with a sensitivity
19:21
Speaker 1: to loss, as two of his own siblings had died
19:24
Speaker 1: in infancy and were buried in little marked graves that
19:27
Speaker 1: his family visited often. Perhaps because of that, Todd understood
19:32
Speaker 1: the ache of a life taken too soon and the
19:35
Speaker 1: importance of remembering those who are gone, and he never
19:38
Speaker 1: could stand the idea of someone being forgotten or mistreated.
19:42
Speaker 1: So that October, as Halloween approached, Todd began dating a
19:46
Speaker 1: local girl named Lourie Riddle, and Laurie happened to be
19:49
Speaker 1: the daughter of none other than Wilbur Riddle, the man
19:52
Speaker 1: who had discovered tent Girl's remains all those years ago.
19:56
Speaker 1: And on Halloween evening, Todd and Laurie sat together swapping ghosts,
20:00
Speaker 1: stories and local legends, and Laurie mentioned the strangest, scariest
20:04
Speaker 1: true story.
20:04
Speaker 2: She knew, the tale of the tent girl, and.
20:07
Speaker 1: She recounted how her father had stumbled on a dead
20:10
Speaker 1: body wrapped in a tent canvas when she was just
20:13
Speaker 1: a baby. Not the girl in the tent, but the
20:15
Speaker 1: guy's daughter. The daughter was the baby. Sorry if I
20:18
Speaker 1: said that weird, But the story had everything. An unsolved murder,
20:22
Speaker 1: a nameless victim, a frustrated sheriff who pleaded for a
20:25
Speaker 1: reader to help solve the case, etc. And Todd was transfixed,
20:31
Speaker 1: and as he later described it, it was quote fascination,
20:34
Speaker 1: instant fascination unquote. And Laurie even invited Todd over to
20:39
Speaker 1: meet her dad, who showed him the old Master Detective
20:42
Speaker 1: magazine article, the one he kept from all those years ago,
20:44
Speaker 1: and the haunting image of the tent girl and the
20:46
Speaker 1: idea of a young woman without a name struck a
20:49
Speaker 1: chord deep within him. Quote this girl's got a mother,
20:52
Speaker 1: she's got a daddy, she could have a husband. We've
20:55
Speaker 1: got to find out who this girl is unquote. Wilbur
20:58
Speaker 1: told Todd, remember the thought that had nagged him for years,
21:02
Speaker 1: and Todd agreed wholeheartedly. And at that moment, the teenager
21:06
Speaker 1: made a quiet vow that he would give ten girl
21:08
Speaker 1: her name back some day and it felt like fate
21:11
Speaker 1: that the story had landed in his lap. But Todd
21:14
Speaker 1: had no idea that this obsession would come to dominate
21:18
Speaker 1: the next decade of his life.
21:20
Speaker 2: So when I research for these videos.
21:23
Speaker 1: I tend to give in to my bad habits, those
21:26
Speaker 1: being biting my nails, chewing on the end of a
21:30
Speaker 1: pen et cetera.
21:31
Speaker 2: Right, a lot of hand to mouth stuff for me.
21:34
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21:38
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21:41
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21:54
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21:57
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22:02
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22:04
Speaker 1: five months now, especially during those late night research sessions
22:08
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22:13
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22:14
Speaker 1: It's been extremely helpful. And my favorite at the moment
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22:23
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23:06
Speaker 1: So Todd's quest began in the late nineteen eighties using
23:10
Speaker 1: the only tools available at the time, which was physical
23:13
Speaker 1: trips and searches, telephone calls, and boundless determination. And he
23:17
Speaker 1: started by absorbing every detail from the old case files
23:21
Speaker 1: and newspaper clippings he could get, and he visited the
23:24
Speaker 1: Scott County offices and local libraries requesting any public records
23:28
Speaker 1: of the Tent Girl case. And he even drove to
23:31
Speaker 1: Georgetown Cemetery to stand at Tent Girl's grave in person,
23:35
Speaker 1: staring at the enigmatic headstone for inspiration, and the site
23:39
Speaker 1: just moved him deeply, and Todd imagined her real family somewhere,
23:44
Speaker 1: not even knowing they should be visiting this grave. Quote,
23:48
Speaker 1: my brother and sister passed away as infants. We visited
23:52
Speaker 1: their graves, but ten girls, siblings, her parents, and her
23:55
Speaker 1: children couldn't visit her grave because they didn't know where
23:58
Speaker 1: she was. Just absolutely heartbreaking. So this thought fueled his resolve,
24:05
Speaker 1: and in those early years, Todd worked methodically, though he
24:08
Speaker 1: was very much an amateur sleuth, learning as he went,
24:12
Speaker 1: and he contacted the Scott County Sheriff's office and coroner,
24:15
Speaker 1: introducing himself and explaining his interest in the cold case.
24:19
Speaker 1: And at first some officials were understandably skeptical of a
24:22
Speaker 1: teenaged outsider poking around a decade's old investigation. Nobody was
24:27
Speaker 1: really taking him very seriously, but Todd persisted politely asking
24:31
Speaker 1: questions and sharing any small observations he made. And Todd
24:35
Speaker 1: had a rather significant insight from re examining the evidenced notes,
24:38
Speaker 1: and he learned about the scrap of white cloth found
24:41
Speaker 1: on ten girl's shoulder, which the FBI lab had identified
24:44
Speaker 1: as a piece of baby's diaper, And to Todd, this
24:47
Speaker 1: detail practically leaped off the page because it implied something
24:51
Speaker 1: the original investigators hadn't fully considered, and that was, if
24:55
Speaker 1: this young woman had a baby's diaper with her, could
24:59
Speaker 1: it mean she was a mother. Perhaps she was older
25:02
Speaker 1: than the assumed.
25:03
Speaker 2: Sixteen to nineteen range.
25:05
Speaker 1: So this was a very logical hypothesis. Maybe ten Girl
25:09
Speaker 1: wasn't a runaway teen after all, but a young mother
25:12
Speaker 1: who had a child, and that would widen the pool
25:15
Speaker 1: of potential identities. So Todd actually wrote letters to the
25:19
Speaker 1: authorities sharing this theory and even suggesting they consider exuming
25:23
Speaker 1: the remains to look for signs of childbirth, such as
25:26
Speaker 1: examining the pelvic bones, urging them to question the original assumptions.
25:30
Speaker 1: But unfortunately his letters did not result in any immediate action, because,
25:34
Speaker 1: from the official's perspective, a full exhumation based on a
25:38
Speaker 1: hunch from a civilian was not a high priority, and
25:42
Speaker 1: Todd received polite but dismissive responses, if any at all.
25:46
Speaker 1: But despite these setbacks, Todd's obsession only grew, and he
25:50
Speaker 1: spent countless evenings pouring over what scarce documents he had,
25:54
Speaker 1: and he made long distance phone calls to anyone who
25:57
Speaker 1: might offer a clue, and sometimes tracking down retired officers
26:01
Speaker 1: or journalists who had covered the case at the time,
26:03
Speaker 1: and each small breadcrumb he gathered was carefully filed in
26:07
Speaker 1: this growing tent Girl folder. And as now girlfriend and
26:11
Speaker 1: later wife, Laurie watched as Todd's interest turned into an
26:15
Speaker 1: all consuming mission, and he would lie awake at night
26:18
Speaker 1: thinking about the unknown girl, running scenarios through his head,
26:22
Speaker 1: and often ten girl even invaded his dreams, and Todd
26:25
Speaker 1: began actually sleep walking from the stress, muttering about clues
26:29
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. So Laurie naturally grew concerned,
26:33
Speaker 1: and at times she felt he was spending quote too
26:36
Speaker 1: much time with a dead girl unquote and not enough
26:39
Speaker 1: time with the living. So the young couple argued frequently
26:43
Speaker 1: over his obsession, and Todd's own conscious also wait on him,
26:48
Speaker 1: but he couldn't let it go.
26:49
Speaker 2: Quote.
26:50
Speaker 1: I felt as guilty as if I were the one
26:52
Speaker 1: responsible unquote, he later said of his inability to identify
26:57
Speaker 1: the Tin Girl, and he also said I was tortured
26:59
Speaker 1: by so For ten long years, Todd chipped away at
27:03
Speaker 1: the Tent Girl mystery with only marginal progress, and by
27:07
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven he had amassed a binder of scribbled notes, contacts,
27:11
Speaker 1: and dead end leads. And to any outsider it might
27:14
Speaker 1: have looked like a futile endeavor, a decade of chasing
27:18
Speaker 1: ghosts with nothing to show. But Todd's timing was about
27:21
Speaker 1: to collide with a revolution in information technology, because the
27:25
Speaker 1: world was on the cusp of a new era, one
27:28
Speaker 1: that would finally give this determined amateur detective the break
27:31
Speaker 1: he needed. So in the early nineteen nineties, a new
27:34
Speaker 1: tool began to emerge that promised to shrink the world
27:37
Speaker 1: and connect people in ways never before possible, and that
27:40
Speaker 1: was say It with Me, the Internet, and Todd immediately
27:44
Speaker 1: recognized its potential for his investigation, and in nineteen ninety
27:48
Speaker 1: two he saw then senator and fellow Tennessee and Al
27:51
Speaker 1: Gore on TV talking about this information super highway and
27:56
Speaker 1: realized that if he could get online, distance would no
28:00
Speaker 1: longer be a barrier and searching for the ten girl's identity.
28:03
Speaker 1: But at the time, however, going online wasn't as simple
28:06
Speaker 1: as it is today. Shout out to my peeps who
28:09
Speaker 1: were on the internet in the nineties. That was rough
28:12
Speaker 1: because first of all, Todd didn't own a computer and
28:15
Speaker 1: very few people in Livingston did. So. Determined, he saved
28:19
Speaker 1: up money from his low wage factory job for months
28:23
Speaker 1: and eventually purchased a secondhand desktop PC. But teaching himself
28:26
Speaker 1: how to use it was another challenge because early internet
28:29
Speaker 1: access involved in dial up modems that screeched and buzzed
28:33
Speaker 1: painfully slow connections and text based bulletin boards that were
28:37
Speaker 1: far from user friendly. You know the sound that goes
28:39
Speaker 1: eh like that, he just made all kinds of noises.
28:45
Speaker 3: You've got mail, So.
28:46
Speaker 1: Every minute online tied up the phone line, and every
28:49
Speaker 1: search or page load crawled at a snail's pace. Nevertheless,
28:54
Speaker 1: to Todd, it was like discovering a secret weapon. He
28:57
Speaker 1: suddenly had a way to scour missing persons information, not
29:00
Speaker 1: just in Kentucky or Tennessee, but across the entire country
29:04
Speaker 1: and even the world. Because now he didn't have to
29:07
Speaker 1: rely solely on police to compare notes.
29:10
Speaker 2: He could do some.
29:11
Speaker 1: Digging himself from his own home. So Todd began exploring
29:14
Speaker 1: early missing persons websites and genealogy forums, any place where
29:18
Speaker 1: people might post about lost loved ones. So he became
29:21
Speaker 1: a regular on dial up bulletin board systems or bbs,
29:25
Speaker 1: devoted to unsolved crimes and cold cases, trading messages with
29:29
Speaker 1: other amateur sleuths, and at night he would sit in
29:32
Speaker 1: the glow of the computer screen in his small home
29:34
Speaker 1: and the tombstone photo of the ten girl pinned above
29:37
Speaker 1: her motivation. So with dogged patients, he typed in Quory
29:41
Speaker 1: after Kory, sifting through what little online data existed at
29:45
Speaker 1: the time, and early search engines were primitive and much
29:49
Speaker 1: information wasn't online yet, but still he managed to find
29:52
Speaker 1: lists of Jane Does and lists of missing women and
29:56
Speaker 1: cross reference them. And often the details were scant, just
30:00
Speaker 1: a name, a physical description, a date of disappearance, etc.
30:03
Speaker 1: And most entries led nowhere, but Todd combed through them
30:07
Speaker 1: one by one, and in nineteen ninety seven Todd took
30:10
Speaker 1: a bold step to expand his search, and he created
30:13
Speaker 1: a website devoted entirely to the ten Girl case, and
30:18
Speaker 1: registering a domain on the early web wasn't common for
30:21
Speaker 1: private individuals then, but he managed to set up tentgirl
30:25
Speaker 1: dot com, a simple homepage where he recounted the story
30:29
Speaker 1: and posted the known details of the Jane Doe, and
30:32
Speaker 1: he included the sketch of her face, the description from
30:35
Speaker 1: her gravestone, and an appeal for anyone with information to
30:38
Speaker 1: contact him directly.
30:39
Speaker 2: So it was.
30:40
Speaker 1: Essentially a one man missing person poster broadcast to a
30:44
Speaker 1: new digital highway, and Todd's Tentgirl site received a trickle
30:48
Speaker 1: of visitors and a few curious true crime enthusiasts emailed
30:52
Speaker 1: him theories or encouragement, but initially nothing that actually helped
30:55
Speaker 1: identify her. But even so, the site served as a
30:59
Speaker 1: beacon ensuring that the Tent Girl's case would not slip
31:02
Speaker 1: into oblivion, and it connected Todd with a newly growing
31:05
Speaker 1: community of online sleuths who were beginning to band together
31:09
Speaker 1: over similar mysteries. And by nineteen ninety eight, technology had
31:13
Speaker 1: advanced slightly and more people were coming online, and Todd
31:17
Speaker 1: upgraded his efforts by participating in early online classifieds and
31:21
Speaker 1: message boards and dedicated to genealogy and missing persons, and
31:25
Speaker 1: one such site allowed users to post missing person inquiries
31:29
Speaker 1: like a public bulletin board. So Todd would log on
31:32
Speaker 1: late at night and navigate through these boards, and he
31:35
Speaker 1: would scroll through list after list of names and descriptions,
31:38
Speaker 1: fighting off sleep as midnight passed, and each entry he saw,
31:43
Speaker 1: he'd mentally check against Tent Girl's profile. And it was tedious,
31:46
Speaker 1: straining work, but Todd was relentless. As we can see
31:50
Speaker 1: it's been ten years now, guy is committed. And on
31:54
Speaker 1: some nights he reviewed hundreds of postings quote I had
31:57
Speaker 1: already looked at maybe four hundred descript he later said,
32:01
Speaker 1: of one such marathon session, and most were just disappointments.
32:06
Speaker 1: Yet he would press on, driven by the conviction that
32:09
Speaker 1: somewhere out there, in some dusty database or family message board,
32:14
Speaker 1: someone had been looking for a girl who matched the
32:16
Speaker 1: Tent Girl. And Todd's dedication did not go unnoticed at home,
32:20
Speaker 1: and Laurie, now his wife, often had to practically drag
32:24
Speaker 1: him away from his computer to get some sleep, and
32:27
Speaker 1: the case continued to cause friction between them, and there
32:29
Speaker 1: were nights she would beg him to come to bed
32:32
Speaker 1: only to find him at the computer, still clicking through
32:34
Speaker 1: web pages in the early hours of the morning. Todd
32:37
Speaker 1: just couldn't help it, and every time he considered giving up,
32:41
Speaker 1: he thought of that lonely grave in Georgetown and the
32:43
Speaker 1: promise he'd made. So in those days, there was no
32:46
Speaker 1: template for what he was doing, and the term cybersleuth
32:49
Speaker 1: didn't even exist yet. Todd was just venturing into uncharted territory,
32:54
Speaker 1: pioneering an approach to cold cases that law enforcement hadn't
32:57
Speaker 1: fully embraced and wouldn't for another decade at least. And
33:02
Speaker 1: all he had was intuition, persistence, and this new thing
33:05
Speaker 1: called the Internet, and more and more data was appearing online,
33:10
Speaker 1: and in the back of his mind, Todd believed the
33:12
Speaker 1: right clue had to surface if he'd just cast a
33:15
Speaker 1: wide enough minut. So late one January night in nineteen
33:22
Speaker 1: ninety eight, Todd sat at his computer, fighting off never
33:26
Speaker 1: ending drowsiness as he performed yet another search. And by
33:29
Speaker 1: this point it had become his routine stay up through
33:32
Speaker 1: the night, coming through missing persons postings on various websites.
33:35
Speaker 1: But on this particular night, he was browsing a site
33:38
Speaker 1: known for its classified ads and personal notices, a place
33:42
Speaker 1: where people could post messages seeking lost relatives or friends.
33:46
Speaker 2: And Tod's eyes.
33:47
Speaker 1: Skimmed line after line, and he was exhausted, and after
33:51
Speaker 1: hours of fruitless searching, everything was starting to blur together.
33:55
Speaker 1: But then, just as he was about to call quits,
33:58
Speaker 1: three words practically just off the screen at him. And
34:02
Speaker 1: those words were Lexington nineteen sixty seven missing. And Todd's
34:07
Speaker 1: heart skipped a beat, and he clicked on the post,
34:10
Speaker 1: suddenly wide awake. And the message was from a woman
34:14
Speaker 1: named Rosemary Westbrook of Arkansas, and it was a plea
34:17
Speaker 1: for help finding her missing sister, and Todd read intently,
34:21
Speaker 1: adrenaline building with each sentence, quote, My sister Barbara has
34:26
Speaker 1: been missing from our family since the latter part of
34:29
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. She has brown hair, brown eyes, is
34:33
Speaker 1: about five feet two inches tall, and was last seen
34:36
Speaker 1: in the Lexington, Kentucky area. If you have any information,
34:40
Speaker 1: please contact me at the address posted unquote. Todd could
34:45
Speaker 1: hardly believe what he was reading. The physical description was
34:48
Speaker 1: nearly identical to the tent girl's stats etched on the
34:51
Speaker 1: gravestone in a location Lexington was about fifteen miles from
34:55
Speaker 1: where tent Girl's body had been found a very plausible match. Crucially,
35:00
Speaker 1: the timing overlapped. Barbara went missing in late nineteen sixty
35:04
Speaker 1: seven and ten Girl's body was discovered in May of
35:06
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, So Todd had long suspected that ten
35:10
Speaker 1: Girl might have died earlier than April nineteen sixty eight,
35:13
Speaker 1: and that the original time of death estimate was actually off.
35:17
Speaker 1: So here was a missing sister whose disappearance lined up
35:20
Speaker 1: almost perfectly with that intuition. And the only initially puzzling
35:25
Speaker 1: detail was Barbara's age, because Barbara was twenty four years
35:29
Speaker 1: old and ten Girl was thought to be a teenager.
35:33
Speaker 1: But Todd's diaper clue had already led him to suspect
35:36
Speaker 1: that the victim could indeed have been in her twenties
35:39
Speaker 1: and possibly a young mom, and Barbara an hackman. Taylor's
35:42
Speaker 1: profile fit in every way that mattered, and Todd's hands
35:46
Speaker 1: trembled on the keyboard, and in that electrifying moment, Todd
35:50
Speaker 1: knew this was it, and he leaped up from his
35:52
Speaker 1: chair so fast he almost knocked it over, running to
35:55
Speaker 1: the bedroom where Laurie was asleep, and shook her awake
35:58
Speaker 1: exclaiming quote, Laurie, wake up, h I found her, and
36:01
Speaker 1: Laurie opened her eyes in confusion as Todd, literally jumping
36:04
Speaker 1: up and down, tried to explain that he had discovered
36:07
Speaker 1: a missing person's post that match Tent Girl. So after
36:10
Speaker 1: years of enduring his late night searches and obsession, Laurie
36:14
Speaker 1: didn't fully understand what he was talking about in that
36:17
Speaker 1: groggy moment, but Todd was already racing back to the
36:20
Speaker 1: computer to figure out his next steps, so without wasting
36:23
Speaker 1: a minute, Todd saved Rosemary's contact information and drafted an
36:27
Speaker 1: email to her. And Rosemary, who was only ten years
36:31
Speaker 1: old when her sister vanished, had grown up not knowing
36:34
Speaker 1: Barbara's fate, and for her and her family, Barbara's disappearance
36:37
Speaker 1: had been a wound open for thirty years, and Rosemary replied,
36:42
Speaker 1: and soon the two were in direct contact, and Todd
36:44
Speaker 1: shared everything he knew about the unidentified tent Girl, and
36:48
Speaker 1: Rosemary shared everything she knew about her sister Barbara, and
36:52
Speaker 1: the puzzle pieces fell rapidly into place, and when Rosemary
36:56
Speaker 1: described Barbara's appearance and circumstances to Todd, the alignment with
36:59
Speaker 1: t V Girl's case was undeniable because both women were short,
37:03
Speaker 1: small framed burnettes, both had ties to Lexington area, both
37:07
Speaker 1: vanished in late nineteen sixty seven, and Rosemary confirmed something
37:10
Speaker 1: that gave Todd goosebumps. Barbara's baby daughter had been left behind.
37:16
Speaker 1: Tent Girl had a piece of a baby's diaper on her,
37:19
Speaker 1: likely from caring for an infant, and Todd could see
37:23
Speaker 1: the tragic picture merging. By all indications, tent Girl and
37:27
Speaker 1: Barbara were one and the same person. So the next
37:31
Speaker 1: hurdle was to convince law enforcement and medical authorities to
37:34
Speaker 1: act on this information, and Todd knew he needed official
37:37
Speaker 1: scientific verification, so he contacted the Kentucky State Medical Examiner's
37:41
Speaker 1: office and relayed the potential match between the ten girl
37:44
Speaker 1: case and Rosemary's missing sister. And Initially, officials were skeptical
37:48
Speaker 1: because for nearly thirty years, countless false leads had come
37:52
Speaker 1: and gone, But Todd now had something. Those earlier leads
37:55
Speaker 1: lacked a living family member Rosemary and a clear trail
38:00
Speaker 1: of evidence linking a specific missing person to Jane Doe.
38:03
Speaker 1: So after some persistence, Todd succeeded in getting the attention
38:06
Speaker 1: of doctor Emily Craig, a forensic anthropologist with the State
38:10
Speaker 1: Medical Examiner's team and in collaboration with the Scott County authorities,
38:14
Speaker 1: plans were made to exhumem Tent girls' remains and conduct
38:17
Speaker 1: a DNA test to confirm the identity. And this was
38:20
Speaker 1: the moment everything had been building toward. So on March second,
38:24
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, investigators and forensic experts gathered at the
38:27
Speaker 1: Georgetown Cemetery and the grave of ten girl was carefully opened,
38:31
Speaker 1: her casket brought to the surface after nearly three decades underground.
38:36
Speaker 1: So a sample of bone and tooth was taken from
38:38
Speaker 1: the remains and sent to the State Laboratory in Frankfort, Kentucky,
38:42
Speaker 1: and Rosemary provided a cheek swab for comparison, and then
38:45
Speaker 1: came the waiting. His DNA analysis at the time was
38:48
Speaker 1: not instantaneous and it took a few weeks to extract
38:52
Speaker 1: and compare the genetic material. So Todd, Rosemary, and all
38:56
Speaker 1: involved just held their breath for weeks. But in their
38:59
Speaker 1: hearts they already knew, and as Todd had felt in
39:03
Speaker 1: that fateful moment, online everything fit. It felt almost as
39:07
Speaker 1: if Barbara's spirit had guided Rosemary to post that online
39:10
Speaker 1: ad at just the right time and guided Todd to
39:14
Speaker 1: find it. So in April of nineteen ninety eight, the
39:16
Speaker 1: Kentucky State Medical Examiner's Office and the Scott County Sheriff
39:19
Speaker 1: received the lab results that would end a thirty year
39:23
Speaker 1: old mystery. The DNA comparison was conclusive the unidentified tent
39:28
Speaker 1: Girl and Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor were the same person,
39:32
Speaker 1: and the tent Girl finally had her real name back.
39:36
Speaker 1: And for local residents who remembered the long unsolved case,
39:39
Speaker 1: this news was nothing short of incredible because after decades
39:42
Speaker 1: of referring to the Jane Doe by a nickname, authorities
39:44
Speaker 1: could finally speak her real name, and the identification made
39:48
Speaker 1: headlines across Kentucky and beyond, and the tent Girl's tragic
39:52
Speaker 1: story now had a face and a history attached to it,
39:55
Speaker 1: and Barbara's backstory slowly emerged through information provided by her
39:59
Speaker 1: survi arriving family. So Barbara was born on September twelfth,
40:03
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, and grew up in the midwestern state
40:06
Speaker 1: of Illinois, and in her twenties, Barbara was described as
40:09
Speaker 1: a petite young woman with a friendly smile, and at
40:12
Speaker 1: some point in the mid nineteen sixties, she married George
40:15
Speaker 1: Earl Taylor, who worked as a traveling carnival employee, and
40:20
Speaker 1: because of George's job, the couple moved around a lot,
40:23
Speaker 1: and by nineteen sixty seven, they were living in Lexington, Kentucky,
40:26
Speaker 1: and Barbara had an infant daughter, only eight months old
40:29
Speaker 1: in late nineteen sixty seven, and she was also a
40:32
Speaker 1: stepmother to George's older daughter from a previous marriage, a
40:35
Speaker 1: seven year old named Bonnie, and Barbara was working at
40:38
Speaker 1: a local restaurant in Lexington to help make ends meet,
40:41
Speaker 1: and her family back in Illinois did not even know
40:43
Speaker 1: she had settled in Kentucky, and I actually believed she
40:46
Speaker 1: might be living in Florida around that time. But in
40:48
Speaker 1: December of nineteen sixty seven, Barbara vanished, and she was
40:52
Speaker 1: twenty four years old at the time and seemingly had
40:54
Speaker 1: everything to live for, but she also appeared to be
40:58
Speaker 1: in an unhappy marriage, and according to Barbara's family, her
41:02
Speaker 1: husband George claimed that one day Barbara simply up and
41:05
Speaker 1: left him for another man, and he said she had
41:08
Speaker 1: run off, abandoning her baby and stepdaughter, and this explanation
41:12
Speaker 1: struck the Hackman family as very out of caricture. But
41:16
Speaker 1: they were young and lived far away, and I didn't
41:19
Speaker 1: know what to believe at the time, and George never
41:22
Speaker 1: reported Barbara missing to the police. How CONVENI for George.
41:25
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until some time later that one of
41:27
Speaker 1: Barbara's sisters filed a missing person's report in Florida, hoping
41:31
Speaker 1: authorities there might look for her, since Florida was the
41:34
Speaker 1: last place Barbara had lived before marrying George. But tragically,
41:38
Speaker 1: that report didn't help, and Barbara's disappearance stayed in obscurity
41:43
Speaker 1: while I've beknownst to everyone else who loved her, her
41:45
Speaker 1: body lay in the Kentucky cemetery under a pseudonym. So now,
41:50
Speaker 1: in the spring of nineteen ninety eight, Barbara's siblings finally
41:53
Speaker 1: learned what had happened, and the revelation was met with
41:56
Speaker 1: a mixture of heartbreak and relief. Heartbreak because the family
42:00
Speaker 1: these worst fears were confirmed. Barbara had been dead for
42:03
Speaker 1: all these years, murdered in a horrific manner, but also
42:07
Speaker 1: relief and closure because the agonizing uncertainty was over. Quote
42:11
Speaker 1: it's been so long, It's just like finally we can,
42:14
Speaker 1: like the song Exhale, unquote, Rosemary told reporters, expressing the
42:19
Speaker 1: release of decades of pent up grief, so at last
42:22
Speaker 1: they could properly mourn Barbara, knowing where she was and
42:25
Speaker 1: that she hadn't simply chosen to abandon them. So the
42:28
Speaker 1: Hackman family thanked the Scott County Sheriff's office, and above all,
42:32
Speaker 1: they thanked Todd for refusing to let the case die.
42:36
Speaker 1: And also a standing ovation for Laurie Todd's wife, who
42:40
Speaker 1: stuck around with him after all those years, because that's
42:44
Speaker 1: a lot as well. She and Todd had never met
42:46
Speaker 1: in person until after the identification, actually, but they forged
42:50
Speaker 1: an immediate bond through this journey, and law enforcement officials
42:53
Speaker 1: were quick to acknowledge that this identification would have not
42:56
Speaker 1: been possible without Todd's extraordinary efforts, and the Scott County
43:00
Speaker 1: Sheriff at the time, John Walters, publicly praised Todd for
43:03
Speaker 1: providing the critical lead and it was a rare instance
43:06
Speaker 1: of a private citizen solving a cold case that professionals
43:09
Speaker 1: alone could not. And Todd, for his part, was humble
43:12
Speaker 1: about his role and he said he wasn't seeking fame
43:15
Speaker 1: or reward.
43:16
Speaker 2: Quote.
43:17
Speaker 1: I had no idea that I'd be talking about her
43:19
Speaker 1: twenty years later. Unquote, he remarked in an interview years afterward. Quote,
43:25
Speaker 1: I thought it would be long forgotten unquote. All he
43:28
Speaker 1: wanted was to give a name to the girl who
43:30
Speaker 1: had been denied one. And with Barbara's identity confirmed, preparations
43:34
Speaker 1: were made to update her grave and honor her memory properly,
43:38
Speaker 1: and at Georgetown Cemetery, a new gravestone was installed at
43:41
Speaker 1: Barbara's burial site, placed just below the original stone, and
43:44
Speaker 1: the update marker bore the name Barbara Ann Hackman, and
43:48
Speaker 1: it also listed her nickname Tent Girl, and the corrected
43:51
Speaker 1: dates of her birth and death as best they could
43:54
Speaker 1: be approximated. So the once anonymous victim was anonymous no more.
43:58
Speaker 1: And for Todd and the hack and family, this was
44:01
Speaker 1: a time of closure and reflection, and Todd and Rosemary
44:04
Speaker 1: had solved the identification, but a new question now loomed,
44:08
Speaker 1: who killed Barbara and why the case was not over?
44:13
Speaker 1: And it shifted from who is Tent Girl to who
44:15
Speaker 1: was responsible for her death? So, with Barbara identified at
44:19
Speaker 1: long last, the focus of law enforcement shifted to investigating
44:23
Speaker 1: the circumstances of her death as a homicide. Case is
44:26
Speaker 1: technically a murder investigation had been opened since nineteen sixty eight,
44:30
Speaker 1: but without an identity or leads, it had been dormant.
44:33
Speaker 1: But now the detectives could finally connect some dots and
44:36
Speaker 1: the prime suspect quickly came into sharp focus. In that
44:40
Speaker 1: suspect was George Earl Taylor, Barbara's husband, who had been
44:44
Speaker 1: the last person known to see her alive. So from
44:47
Speaker 1: the start, George's behavior in nineteen sixty seven had raised
44:50
Speaker 1: red flags. First of all, he never reported Barbara missing,
44:54
Speaker 1: Red flag number one, and he told relatives a dubious
44:57
Speaker 1: story that she had abandoned her family for another man
45:00
Speaker 1: and to please This sounded like a classic cover story.
45:03
Speaker 1: By claiming Barbara ran off, George likely hoped to prevent
45:06
Speaker 1: anyone from looking for her, buying time to conceal what
45:10
Speaker 1: had really happened. So investigators dug into George's background and timeline,
45:15
Speaker 1: and George was a carnival worker, as we know, a
45:17
Speaker 1: job that often required traveling from town to town, and
45:20
Speaker 1: he would have had easy access to heavy canvas like
45:24
Speaker 1: the one Barbara was found in because those tents were
45:27
Speaker 1: often used in camping and in carnivals and in late
45:31
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. The couple was staying in the Lexington area,
45:35
Speaker 1: and it appears that at some point around early December,
45:38
Speaker 1: Barbara either attempted to leave the marriage or confronted George
45:41
Speaker 1: about their relationship, and perhaps there was an argument, possibly
45:45
Speaker 1: over infidelity or finances, or perhaps an instance of those
45:49
Speaker 1: that escalated tragically, But we can't know the exact details
45:53
Speaker 1: of the fateful encounter. Only two people were there and
45:56
Speaker 1: one of them ended up in a grave, but the
45:59
Speaker 1: forensic evidence told part of the story. Barbara had likely
46:02
Speaker 1: been struck on the head, then bound in a canvas
46:05
Speaker 1: and left to suffocate, and the three broken fingernails on
46:08
Speaker 1: her hand suggested she woke up and regained consciousness well trapped,
46:12
Speaker 1: trying desperately to claw her way out. And this harrowing
46:16
Speaker 1: scenario points strongly toward George as the perpetrator, and it's
46:20
Speaker 1: unlikely a stranger would have left the victim alive and
46:22
Speaker 1: restrained in such a manner. That kind of slow death
46:25
Speaker 1: pointed to someone with a personal connection, possibly punishing or
46:30
Speaker 1: silencing her, so law enforcement in nineteen ninety eight openly
46:33
Speaker 1: labeled George Taylor as the main suspect in Barbara's murder.
46:37
Speaker 1: But by then, however, George himself was beyond the reach
46:41
Speaker 1: of justice because that piece of shit died of cancer
46:45
Speaker 1: in October of nineteen eighty seven at the age of
46:47
Speaker 1: fifty four. The police couldn't get him, but Krmersher did
46:51
Speaker 1: if he did it, if he did it, and this
46:53
Speaker 1: meant that authorities could not question him or bring charges.
46:57
Speaker 1: So it was frustrating the man widely believed to have
47:00
Speaker 1: gotten away with murder had effectively escaped. In earthly consequence,
47:04
Speaker 1: the Kentucky authorities announced that while the identity of ten
47:07
Speaker 1: girl was resolved, the homicide case remained officially unsolved because
47:11
Speaker 1: no one had been charged or tried in court. Unofficially, though,
47:15
Speaker 1: investigators in Barbara's family felt that they knew the truth,
47:18
Speaker 1: and Todd also believed George was indeed responsible, and supporting
47:22
Speaker 1: his belief were additional pieces of circumstantial evidence revealed by
47:25
Speaker 1: the family. For instance, Barbara's stepdaughter Bonnie, later recounted that
47:29
Speaker 1: she was seven years old in nineteen sixty seven and
47:32
Speaker 1: remembered her stepmother, Barbara, suddenly being gone, and George had
47:36
Speaker 1: told little Bonnie that her stepmom had run away and
47:39
Speaker 1: wasn't coming back, and Bonnie recalled that her father seemed
47:41
Speaker 1: unemotional about Barbara's disappearance and quickly moved on with life,
47:45
Speaker 1: raising the baby daughter alone or with help from others.
47:48
Speaker 1: And for a husband whose wife suddenly ran off, George
47:51
Speaker 1: showed remarkably little concern or effort to find her. And indeed,
47:56
Speaker 1: no one else in Barbara's life believed she would willingly
47:59
Speaker 1: abandon her infant child, and that was perhaps the most
48:03
Speaker 1: damning indication that foul play had occurred, because it was
48:06
Speaker 1: unimaginable to them that she would just disappear voluntarily and
48:10
Speaker 1: never contact her family again. And investigators in nineteen ninety
48:14
Speaker 1: eight tried to piece together George's movements and actions around
48:17
Speaker 1: the time at Barbara's disappearance. Unfortunately, given the passage of
48:21
Speaker 1: thirty years, memories had faded and some potential witnesses were
48:24
Speaker 1: deceased or just impossible to find. But what they could
48:28
Speaker 1: confirm was that George did not have an alibi for
48:31
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixty seven that could be verified. And after
48:34
Speaker 1: Barbara vanished, he left Lexington with the children and continued
48:37
Speaker 1: working in carnivals in other states, and he never remarried.
48:41
Speaker 1: Before his death, and there were whispers among an extended
48:44
Speaker 1: family that George had a violent streak, nothing that was
48:47
Speaker 1: documented in public records, but enough to make Barbara's relatives
48:50
Speaker 1: retrospectively suspect he might have harmed her. But still, with
48:54
Speaker 1: the suspect dead, the case was effectively at a dead
48:57
Speaker 1: end legally, and the Scott County Sheriff's Office eventually closed
49:01
Speaker 1: the active investigation, noting that the likely perpetrator would never
49:04
Speaker 1: face trial, and for Barbara's family this was of course bittersweet.
49:08
Speaker 1: They finally knew what had happened to their beloved Barbara,
49:11
Speaker 1: but they would never see justice served in the courtroom.
49:14
Speaker 1: There would be no confession, no chance for George to
49:17
Speaker 1: reveal any last details or motive. But in a symbolic gesture,
49:20
Speaker 1: the Hackman family chose to omit the name Taylor from
49:23
Speaker 1: Barbara's new gravestone, instead honoring her maiden name, which I
49:27
Speaker 1: think is so incredibly valid and sweet. They did not
49:32
Speaker 1: want the name of a man who likely killed her
49:34
Speaker 1: to mark her resting place in any way, and on
49:37
Speaker 1: the new marker she is engraved simply as Barbara Ann
49:40
Speaker 1: Hackman or Bobby, beloved sister and daughter with the year
49:44
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven and the date of her death. It
49:46
Speaker 1: was the one way the family could quietly repudiate George
49:49
Speaker 1: and acknowledge what they believed, that Barbara was not truly
49:53
Speaker 1: a tailor in the end, but forever a hackman, one
49:56
Speaker 1: of their own. And the detective work of Todd and
49:59
Speaker 1: the willingness the modern authorities to revisit the case brought
50:02
Speaker 1: resolution where none seemed possible. As one law enforcement official noted,
50:07
Speaker 1: this case was unique, possibly the only instance where the
50:10
Speaker 1: victim was identified thirty years later to efforts of the
50:13
Speaker 1: son in law of the man who found the body,
50:16
Speaker 1: just like the most serendipitous crazy It's just when I
50:23
Speaker 1: read first read the story, I was just perplexed, like
50:26
Speaker 1: there's some inner workings of the world, and it's came
50:31
Speaker 1: to a beautiful conclusion, as beautiful of a conclusion as
50:35
Speaker 1: it could. Obviously, death is horrible, but for all these
50:39
Speaker 1: people to come together in the way that they did,
50:41
Speaker 1: I think it is it's the best conclusion that we
50:45
Speaker 1: could have gotten. And while we can't change the tragic
50:48
Speaker 1: ending of Barbara's life, we can ensure her memory lives
50:51
Speaker 1: on named known and honored and she is ten girl
50:55
Speaker 1: no longer, and the world now knows who she is,
50:58
Speaker 1: and in that knowledge there is is a measure of peace.
51:02
Speaker 1: And with that that is the end of the tent
51:04
Speaker 1: girl case or Barber's case. Let's say that. Let me
51:08
Speaker 1: know what other cases you would like me to deep
51:10
Speaker 1: dive into. I always read the comments, and until then
51:13
Speaker 1: I will see your beautiful face. All right, Stay safe
51:16
Speaker 1: out there.
51:17
Speaker 2: Bye.