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Listverse: No Longer a Mystery Pt. Three · The Path Went Chilly

0:30
Speaker 1: So welcome to our final episode in our series about
0:33
Speaker 1: ten non mysterious cases involving unidentified people. If you've listened
0:37
Speaker 1: to our first two episodes, you might know that the
0:39
Speaker 1: format here is quite different than usual. We're going back
0:42
Speaker 1: to an article I wrote for listfirst dot com way
0:45
Speaker 1: back in June of twenty thirteen, which was titled ten
0:48
Speaker 1: mysterious Cases involving Unidentified People. Because all ten victims on
0:53
Speaker 1: this list over the past twelve years have wound up
0:56
Speaker 1: being identified. So we've been following the format where I
0:59
Speaker 1: will read my original entry, then you too will share
1:02
Speaker 1: your thoughts, and then I will reveal the details about
1:05
Speaker 1: how these victims were identified. So we've done entries ten
1:09
Speaker 1: through four on our last two episodes. So for our
1:12
Speaker 1: final episode, we're going to do the last three entries
1:14
Speaker 1: on the list, and I'm going to start off by
1:16
Speaker 1: what is undoubtedly the saddest one and most tragic, and
1:20
Speaker 1: this involves a istdent known as Baby Hope. So one
1:24
Speaker 1: of the largest homicide investigations in New York City history
1:27
Speaker 1: was launched on July the twenty third, nineteen ninety one,
1:30
Speaker 1: when a cooler was found in a park bordering the
1:32
Speaker 1: Henry Hudson Parkway. It contained the decomposed body of a
1:36
Speaker 1: young girl estimated to be between the ages of three
1:38
Speaker 1: and five. She was wrapped in a black garbage bag
1:42
Speaker 1: and buried under cans of Coca cola. The girl had
1:45
Speaker 1: been asphyxiated and likely been dead for days, and evidence
1:48
Speaker 1: was later discovered that the girl was sexually abused. With
1:52
Speaker 1: no clue to her identity, she was nicknamed Baby Hope.
1:56
Speaker 1: Authority sent out a publicly for information and later received
1:59
Speaker 1: a call from a woman using the name Judy Brown.
2:02
Speaker 1: She claimed that while she was driving on the parkway
2:04
Speaker 1: nine days before Baby Hope was found, she saw a
2:07
Speaker 1: well dressed Hispanic couple carrying a cooler, but this woman
2:11
Speaker 1: never came forward to provide further information, while Baby Help
2:14
Speaker 1: remains identified. Over twenty years later. Detectives initially thought they
2:18
Speaker 1: saved the case when they found sexually abusive images on
2:21
Speaker 1: polaroids with a goal resembling Baby Hope in the same
2:24
Speaker 1: area three months later. They later discovered the person in
2:28
Speaker 1: the photos was actually a twelve year old girl living
2:30
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, and in an eerie coincidence, her name
2:33
Speaker 1: was also Hope.
2:34
Speaker 2: This whole case is heartbreaking. It involves not one, but
2:39
Speaker 2: actually two little girls who are physically and sexually abused.
2:44
Speaker 2: You know, they're emotionally abused as well. The fact that
2:47
Speaker 2: this cooler is found and there's a child's body discarded
2:52
Speaker 2: like trash, knowing that she had also been sexually abused.
2:55
Speaker 2: I can't imagine the horror that her first three to
2:58
Speaker 2: five years entailed. And then you continued to go down
3:02
Speaker 2: and twenty years later detectives think, hey, we might actually
3:06
Speaker 2: have a lead. There's these explicit photos we found of
3:09
Speaker 2: a child who resembles this baby, and turns out it's
3:13
Speaker 2: another child who's being exploited and abused. It's just absolutely heartbreaking.
3:18
Speaker 2: And to think that for so long this child didn't
3:22
Speaker 2: have a name, and there was no one who said
3:24
Speaker 2: she's of value to claim and to know her name.
3:27
Speaker 2: It's absolutely heartbreaking.
3:30
Speaker 3: Just looking at her photo, she looks like a little angel.
3:34
Speaker 3: She looks so sweet and so innocent. But to think
3:38
Speaker 3: of the cold, calculated and casually callous nature of whoever
3:44
Speaker 3: decided to put her body into a cooler and then
3:47
Speaker 3: to cover it with cans of coke like they had
3:49
Speaker 3: to have known that this isn't going to be something
3:52
Speaker 3: that's going to be able to camouflage the body long term.
3:55
Speaker 3: Just the decision to put this everyday item that people
3:59
Speaker 3: consume it's full of sugar on top of the body
4:02
Speaker 3: of this deceased child who we later find out has
4:06
Speaker 3: been sexually abused. It's so horrific, And there's something about
4:11
Speaker 3: this case that just really as soon as we started
4:14
Speaker 3: to read through the description, it just really gets under
4:16
Speaker 3: your skin.
4:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm always heartbroken by all the cases involving unidentified
4:21
Speaker 1: decedents when they're children, especially when they're a really young age,
4:24
Speaker 1: because you think to yourself, well, if no one ever
4:26
Speaker 1: reported this child missing and they can't match it up
4:28
Speaker 1: to someone, then there's a good chance that this poor
4:31
Speaker 1: baby has been murdered by their parent or their caregiver
4:35
Speaker 1: who just disposed of them and hope that they will
4:37
Speaker 1: never get caught. We're actually seeing more and more cases
4:40
Speaker 1: like this in recent years get solved, where they use
4:43
Speaker 1: genetic genealogy to finally trace the deceased child back to
4:47
Speaker 1: their parent and they wound up getting arrested and you
4:49
Speaker 1: find out that they had a child that they just
4:51
Speaker 1: got rid of early on in life and just moved
4:53
Speaker 1: on with their lives if nothing has happened. I'm going
4:57
Speaker 1: to talk about how Baby Hope was solved, and this
4:59
Speaker 1: one actually pre date genic genealogy. It actually gets solved
5:02
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, only a couple months after I published
5:07
Speaker 1: this article, so I think it was the very first
5:09
Speaker 1: case on the list to finally have a resolution. And
5:12
Speaker 1: of course, why don't you hear what happened? It's pretty infuriating.
5:16
Speaker 3: Did I just ask a quick question?
5:18
Speaker 1: Sure?
5:19
Speaker 3: So, as far as when I look at the photo
5:22
Speaker 3: of baby Hope, she looks to be Southeast Asian to me,
5:26
Speaker 3: like she looks like she could be from Myanmar or Cambodia.
5:31
Speaker 3: The fact that I lived in Southeast Asia, I feel
5:34
Speaker 3: like this just looks like so many of the girls
5:37
Speaker 3: that I saw who lived there. And it's said in
5:42
Speaker 3: the description that you wrote that two well dressed Hispanic
5:46
Speaker 3: people were seen holding a cooler, so perhaps it was them.
5:50
Speaker 3: Did they release any information about what they thought would
5:54
Speaker 3: be her heritage?
5:58
Speaker 1: I don't know if they did. At the time, I
5:59
Speaker 1: think they mostly thought that she was going to be
6:01
Speaker 1: Mexican American, and that turned out to be true. You
6:04
Speaker 1: were going to find out that she was born in
6:06
Speaker 1: New York, but I think her family was from Mexico.
6:09
Speaker 1: But I don't think they really thought that she was
6:11
Speaker 1: going to be Asian or Cambodian or anything. I think
6:14
Speaker 1: they thought from the very beginning that she was from
6:16
Speaker 1: an Hispanic heritage. So it was in the summer of
6:20
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen when the New York Police Department decided to
6:24
Speaker 1: reopen the case because this is one that had haunted
6:26
Speaker 1: them for over twenty years, and they finally got a
6:29
Speaker 1: tip from someone who had seen the new media coverage
6:32
Speaker 1: and openly wondered if the child might be her older sister,
6:36
Speaker 1: Angelica Castillo, whom she had not seen in over twenty years.
6:40
Speaker 1: This led the investigators to this person's mother. Her name
6:44
Speaker 1: was Margerita Castillo, who had a total of ten children,
6:47
Speaker 1: and confirmed that Angelica, this missing child, had left New
6:52
Speaker 1: York when she was only four years old. But Margerita
6:55
Speaker 1: just said that she assumed that Angelica's biological father had
6:59
Speaker 1: taken her back to his native Mexico. So that's why
7:02
Speaker 1: she never filed a missing person's report and why no
7:05
Speaker 1: one ever put two and two together back in nineteen
7:07
Speaker 1: ninety one. Well, they would use DNA testing to eventually
7:10
Speaker 1: confirm that Margarita was baby Hope's biological mother, so the
7:15
Speaker 1: victim was positively identified as Angelica Castillo, and Margherita, as
7:21
Speaker 1: you can imagine, faced a lot of criticism for not
7:23
Speaker 1: reporting Angelica missing. It's unclear if she knew what really
7:27
Speaker 1: happened to her baby, but it turned out that she
7:30
Speaker 1: was not directly responsible for Angelica's death, as the investigation
7:34
Speaker 1: soon focused towards Margherita's fifty two year old paternal cousin,
7:39
Speaker 1: whose name was Conrado Juarez, and after being extensively investigated
7:44
Speaker 1: by police, Warez finally confessed to being responsible for Angelica's murder,
7:49
Speaker 1: claiming that he had sexually assaulted the child inside his
7:51
Speaker 1: apartment and then wound up smothering her to death with
7:54
Speaker 1: a pillow when she started screaming, and then afterwards, Warez
7:58
Speaker 1: and his sister, who were presumably the couple seen with
8:01
Speaker 1: the cooler, decided to place Angelica's body into the cooler
8:05
Speaker 1: and dumped it alongside the Henry Hudson Parkway a. Warez
8:09
Speaker 1: his sister was already to cease by this point, but
8:11
Speaker 1: they were able to charge Warez with a felony second
8:14
Speaker 1: degree murder, but he soon recanted his confession and claimed
8:18
Speaker 1: it was coerced, so he entered a plea of not guilty,
8:21
Speaker 1: But there never would be a trial for the crime,
8:23
Speaker 1: as Warez wound up dying of pancreatic cancer while he
8:27
Speaker 1: was in jail in November of twenty eighteen. And that's
8:30
Speaker 1: a very unpleasant way to eye. So even though it
8:32
Speaker 1: was very unsatisfying to not see this case achieved total justice,
8:36
Speaker 1: I guess you could say that karma really got this
8:38
Speaker 1: guy in the end.
8:41
Speaker 3: That sounds so terrible to think that you would take
8:45
Speaker 3: this small little child and sexually abused her, and then
8:50
Speaker 3: when she screams out, likely for her mom or whomver,
8:54
Speaker 3: you decide that you just can't handle this sound of
8:56
Speaker 3: her screen so you don't want anyone to hear it.
8:59
Speaker 3: Let's just it's horrific. And to think that he didn't
9:04
Speaker 3: pay for what he did, I mean, pancreatic cancer. Like
9:08
Speaker 3: you said, that could be his karma. But anytime there's
9:11
Speaker 3: a case with a child involved, it just it like
9:15
Speaker 3: rocks me to my core. I have such a hard
9:17
Speaker 3: time with that, especially when there's the inclusion of sexual
9:21
Speaker 3: abuse like this. To think of a young baby dying
9:25
Speaker 3: like that, in total fear, screaming for her mommy. It
9:29
Speaker 3: just hurts my heart in ways I can't even describe.
9:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's disgusting. It makes me so heartbroken when you
9:36
Speaker 2: think about this, and to think that this is somebody
9:39
Speaker 2: who was able to do this, discard of a child
9:42
Speaker 2: like she had no value, and then continue to live
9:45
Speaker 2: a normal life. There's a chance this was not his
9:47
Speaker 2: only victim. This is a victim that wasn't able to
9:51
Speaker 2: have her voice heard right until decades later when she
9:54
Speaker 2: got her name back. But this is likely not his
9:57
Speaker 2: only victim. And you think about the poor mom. You know,
10:00
Speaker 2: their Hispanic family, They had immigrated here to the United States.
10:04
Speaker 2: She thought that the father had taken her. And one
10:09
Speaker 2: review that I read, one article that I read, said
10:11
Speaker 2: that she actually feared reporting anything or reaching out for
10:16
Speaker 2: help or even trying to find her daughter because language barriers,
10:20
Speaker 2: immigration issues, And so it really does highlight this idea
10:24
Speaker 2: that you know in the nineties, she's also scared for
10:28
Speaker 2: the safety of the children that are still in her care.
10:30
Speaker 2: If she were to call and to say I can't
10:31
Speaker 2: locate my child. Is she charged with neglect? Is she
10:35
Speaker 2: investigated for a potential deportation, and so all of these
10:39
Speaker 2: things were also weighing on the mother. I'm not saying
10:41
Speaker 2: it makes it right. She's just as much value as
10:44
Speaker 2: the other nine children in the family. But if she
10:47
Speaker 2: truly believed she went with the father, and let's say
10:50
Speaker 2: she's struggling to make ends meet, she trusts that, you know,
10:53
Speaker 2: a biological parent is caring for this child, and unfortunately,
10:57
Speaker 2: because she did not know where that baby was, it
11:00
Speaker 2: ended up in the hands of the cousin. And like
11:03
Speaker 2: I said, of what breaks my heart the most is
11:05
Speaker 2: I highly doubt someone who's that sick and unhealthy and
11:10
Speaker 2: can continue to live a normal life that that was
11:13
Speaker 2: his only victim. I highly doubted. So it makes me
11:16
Speaker 2: incredibly upset to think of what other child suffered at
11:18
Speaker 2: his hands, either deceased or continued to fight to have
11:23
Speaker 2: a life after abuse from him. So very, very tragic
11:26
Speaker 2: case by far to me, the most disturbing we've talked about.
11:29
Speaker 3: And it's crazy to think too that that was Like
11:32
Speaker 3: you brought up the fact that it was the nineties,
11:34
Speaker 3: but if there was a woman who was in a
11:36
Speaker 3: similar situation now as Baby Hope's mother, I could see
11:41
Speaker 3: it in current times her having difficulty reporting it, especially
11:44
Speaker 3: if there was immigration issues, because you would be very
11:47
Speaker 3: worried about what would happened to your other nine children.
11:50
Speaker 3: So I have deep empathy for her experience as a
11:54
Speaker 3: mother when you have to go like the ends justifies
11:58
Speaker 3: the means, like I'm not reporting my daughter missing, and
12:01
Speaker 3: it's easy to judge, but when you have nine other
12:04
Speaker 3: mouths to feed and you're worried about potential deportation or
12:08
Speaker 3: like you said, language barrier, any type of issues that
12:12
Speaker 3: people who are minorities would face in that type of
12:15
Speaker 3: a situation, and they would have been a lot, especially
12:18
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety one. So for her mother, I could
12:22
Speaker 3: understand where she came from. Although it obviously led to
12:28
Speaker 3: this taking a lot longer to be solved, it's just
12:32
Speaker 3: it's a sad case overall for so many reasons.
12:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the woman that called in the tip that
12:38
Speaker 1: finally led to this being solved, it turned how her
12:40
Speaker 1: name was Laurenceita Ramirez, and it turned out she was
12:43
Speaker 1: Angelica's biological sister, and she also said that she didn't
12:47
Speaker 1: even know that Angelica existed until she was eleven years old,
12:51
Speaker 1: because apparently her mother and the rest of her siblings
12:54
Speaker 1: never talked about her and just went with the narrative
12:57
Speaker 1: that her father had come and kidnapped her and taken
13:00
Speaker 1: her back to Mexico. They did look into her father,
13:03
Speaker 1: Gennaro Ramirez, and initially they thought he might have been
13:07
Speaker 1: involved in Angelica's murder until Conradojarez made his confession, and
13:12
Speaker 1: they still haven't located Gennaro. He is still believed to
13:15
Speaker 1: be living in Mexico, and he may not even know
13:17
Speaker 1: what happened to his daughter because he hasn't been part
13:20
Speaker 1: of his family's life in so many years. But and
13:23
Speaker 1: for the record, I do not believe Conrado Juarez's claims
13:26
Speaker 1: that confession. His confession was coerced, because we've seen this
13:30
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases where a lot of people
13:32
Speaker 1: are wrongfully convicted after being forced to give a confession.
13:35
Speaker 1: But when you look at all the evidence, it strongly
13:37
Speaker 1: suggests that he and his sister were the two people
13:40
Speaker 1: who were seen disposing of the cooler next to the parkway,
13:44
Speaker 1: And I do think that if he had had a
13:45
Speaker 1: chance to go on trial, he would have been convicted.
13:48
Speaker 3: Can you imagine what that conversation with his sister would
13:52
Speaker 3: have gone like? Because she was also related to his
13:55
Speaker 3: sister would have been her cousin as well. To think, Okay,
13:59
Speaker 3: I accidentally killed our baby cousin while I was molesting her,
14:04
Speaker 3: or while I was sexually abusing her, and then the
14:07
Speaker 3: sister decides to help. Maybe she too, Like astually brought
14:10
Speaker 3: up that he likely had other victims. Maybe she too
14:13
Speaker 3: was a victim. Maybe she was scared of him at
14:15
Speaker 3: some point, and maybe he exerted some kind of coercion
14:19
Speaker 3: or control over her. It's just a really unthinkable scenario
14:24
Speaker 3: when we don't know all of the details to think
14:26
Speaker 3: that you just jump up and help to dispose of
14:29
Speaker 3: your cousin in a cooler topped with coke.
14:31
Speaker 2: She also could have been an abuser as well, So
14:34
Speaker 2: we think about, you know, the men being sexual abusers
14:37
Speaker 2: or physical abusers, but women also play a role. And
14:40
Speaker 2: when you have people who are in this unhealthy relationship,
14:43
Speaker 2: let's say it was a offender and victim, even though
14:46
Speaker 2: they're related, or they're both just offenders.
14:50
Speaker 1: Right.
14:50
Speaker 2: That's not uncommon where you'll see multiple family members who
14:53
Speaker 2: engage in the abuse of one child. They become the
14:56
Speaker 2: scapegoat of all anger, frustration, sexual tension, right, that that
15:00
Speaker 2: child's just the target, and so I wouldn't put it
15:04
Speaker 2: past her actually having knowledge of and or participating in
15:07
Speaker 2: abuse as well.
15:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, when na Warez recanted his confession, he tried to
15:12
Speaker 1: put all the blame on his sisters, saying that oh,
15:15
Speaker 1: all he did was disposed of the body, that his
15:17
Speaker 1: sister was the one who asked him for help and
15:20
Speaker 1: told her that Angelica had died from a fall down
15:22
Speaker 1: the stairs. Because the sisters no longer round, we can't
15:25
Speaker 1: hear her side of the story. But maybe he did
15:27
Speaker 1: the same thing to her. Maybe he just said, oh,
15:29
Speaker 1: Angelica fell down the stairs, and he didn't tell her
15:32
Speaker 1: that he'd been abusing her, and then she agreed to
15:34
Speaker 1: dispose of it to avoid potential legal problems. So yeah,
15:38
Speaker 1: this is a technically a SOLVET case. But because the
15:41
Speaker 1: main perpetrator died before he could go on trial and
15:44
Speaker 1: the accomplice died many years ago, we were probably never
15:47
Speaker 1: going to learn the full story about how these events unfolded.
15:51
Speaker 1: So our next entry on the list is the Huntington
15:54
Speaker 1: Beach Jane Doe. On April the first, nineteen ninety, a
15:57
Speaker 1: young woman stepped on to Pacific Coast high at Huntington Beach, California,
16:01
Speaker 1: and was instantly killed after being struck by two vehicles.
16:05
Speaker 1: She carried no identification, but wore one very unique item,
16:09
Speaker 1: a ring made of human hair. When the media published
16:12
Speaker 1: a sketch of the woman, many residents came forward to
16:15
Speaker 1: claim they had interacted with her. She had told some
16:18
Speaker 1: people that her name was Andrea and that she was
16:20
Speaker 1: twenty five or twenty six, though she looked young enough
16:23
Speaker 1: to be between sixteen and eighteen years old. One resident
16:27
Speaker 1: claimed that Andrea was a transient and that he let
16:29
Speaker 1: her spend the night with his family. This is where
16:31
Speaker 1: he witnessed the woman cut off a chunk of her
16:33
Speaker 1: hair and wrap it around her finger as a ring.
16:36
Speaker 1: Other residents who spoke with her gave conflicting stories about
16:39
Speaker 1: her being from Virginia and New York. One person said
16:43
Speaker 1: the woman mentioned she was adopted and was searching for
16:45
Speaker 1: her birth family, and she also claimed that her parents
16:48
Speaker 1: were pretty well known. In spite of investigators following up
16:51
Speaker 1: on numerous leads, the woman still remains unidentified over twenty
16:55
Speaker 1: years later.
16:57
Speaker 3: This is such a strange case that this woman who
17:01
Speaker 3: went by the name of Andrea was obviously a lot
17:03
Speaker 3: younger trying to pass herself off is older and more mature,
17:07
Speaker 3: maybe because she would be taken more seriously, or you
17:11
Speaker 3: would feel safer if people perceived you to be older
17:13
Speaker 3: and more worldly than being like eighteen years old, where
17:17
Speaker 3: you're just kind of discovering things for the first time.
17:20
Speaker 3: It makes me wonder what her home life was like
17:23
Speaker 3: if she was indeed that young, What was she running
17:26
Speaker 3: away from? What was she running towards? Was there something
17:30
Speaker 3: traumatic that happened. I also find the human hair ring
17:33
Speaker 3: to be a really bizarre detail.
17:37
Speaker 2: For sure, And you also have to think that you know,
17:39
Speaker 2: what is she battling, not only what home life is
17:41
Speaker 2: she escaping or what perceived home life is she escaping,
17:45
Speaker 2: but it almost sounds like she's struggling with mental health
17:47
Speaker 2: issues as well. She's telling multiple stories. Could it be
17:51
Speaker 2: to cover and to try to, like you said, appear
17:53
Speaker 2: to be a different person to the people she's interacting with,
17:56
Speaker 2: possibly and keeping a live straights very hard. So what
18:00
Speaker 2: if some of these ideas she's expressing and these kind
18:03
Speaker 2: of contradictions are a result of a mental health episode
18:06
Speaker 2: where she's continuing to tell people these grand stories. You
18:10
Speaker 2: know she's adopted, she's running away. She has these parents
18:14
Speaker 2: that are well known. You know, she's radically shifting on
18:17
Speaker 2: the spectrum. Could she have run away from a home
18:20
Speaker 2: that maybe wasn't bad and she's perceived it because she's
18:24
Speaker 2: had this mental health break? Is she running from something?
18:27
Speaker 2: Or do we really not know the background whatsoever? There's
18:30
Speaker 2: so many things that could have happened. But am I
18:33
Speaker 2: right that one of the witnesses said that they actually
18:36
Speaker 2: watched her cut her own hair off and tie her
18:37
Speaker 2: own hair around her finger.
18:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was staying with someone because she was a transient,
18:42
Speaker 1: and they welcomed her in her home and they just
18:44
Speaker 1: saw her just do this out of nowhere. And when
18:47
Speaker 1: her body was found, she was still wearing the uh
18:49
Speaker 1: ring man out of hair.
18:51
Speaker 2: Okay, So when I first read it, I was thinking
18:52
Speaker 2: like an antique hair ring that they would use in
18:55
Speaker 2: morning jewelry. But no, this is a kid who's cutting
18:59
Speaker 2: off a think of her hair and tinyen around her finger.
19:01
Speaker 2: So again I think it really screams this idea of
19:04
Speaker 2: she's having a almost psychotic break of reality. And maybe
19:08
Speaker 2: each person's story is what they were told, and you
19:12
Speaker 2: have this person who we don't know much about but
19:15
Speaker 2: did she really have touch of her reality before she
19:18
Speaker 2: went missing.
19:20
Speaker 1: Well, as we're going to find out, she probably did
19:22
Speaker 1: have mental health issues, and she hailed a long way
19:25
Speaker 1: from California, and we'll probably never know the real story
19:27
Speaker 1: about why she traveled there. I first became familiar with
19:31
Speaker 1: this when it was featured on Unsolved Mysteries during the
19:34
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. They did a segment on Unidentified John or
19:37
Speaker 1: Jane does and at the end they had kind of
19:40
Speaker 1: a role call where they would show a couple of
19:42
Speaker 1: unidentified decedents and ask people to come forward if they
19:45
Speaker 1: had information. And ironically enough, the roll call also featured
19:49
Speaker 1: the Sumpter County Doze, which we talked about on our
19:51
Speaker 1: first episode, and they've also been identified. And I actually
19:55
Speaker 1: briefly talked about this one on The Trail Went Cold
19:58
Speaker 1: in early two thousand and six seventeen, when I did
20:01
Speaker 1: my minisode about the disappearance of Janelle Matthews, which took
20:05
Speaker 1: place in Greeley, Colorado, in nineteen eighty four. And I
20:09
Speaker 1: only brought it up because someone made a Reddit post
20:12
Speaker 1: which brought up the possibility that perhaps Janelle was the
20:15
Speaker 1: Huntington Beach Jane Doe because there were some compelling similarities.
20:19
Speaker 1: But of course, as we all know, Janelle Matthews was
20:22
Speaker 1: abducted and murdered by a man named Steve Panky, so
20:25
Speaker 1: these cases are completely unrelated. But ironically enough, just a
20:29
Speaker 1: couple months after I dropped that trail and cold episode
20:32
Speaker 1: in May of twenty seventeen, we finally got an identification
20:36
Speaker 1: in this case. And much like Little Miss PANASOFKI, this
20:39
Speaker 1: one wasn't done with DNA. It was done by the
20:41
Speaker 1: old fashioned method of fingerprints. It turned out that the
20:45
Speaker 1: victim's name actually was Andrea. Her name was Andrea Kuyper.
20:49
Speaker 1: She was twenty six years old at the time of
20:51
Speaker 1: her death, and she originally hailed from Fairfax, Virginia, all
20:56
Speaker 1: the way on the other side of the country to California.
20:59
Speaker 1: The upload Jane Doe's fingerprints into the FBI's automated fingerprint
21:03
Speaker 1: identification system, and it turned out the back in nineteen
21:07
Speaker 1: eighty seven, Andrea Kuiper had gotten a job with the
21:10
Speaker 1: US Department of Agriculture, which required her to provide her
21:13
Speaker 1: fingerprints on her application, and because those prints were entered
21:18
Speaker 1: into a government database, they wound up being matched to
21:20
Speaker 1: the Jane Doe. So they got in touch with Andrea's family,
21:24
Speaker 1: who were still living in Virginia, and they confirmed that
21:27
Speaker 1: they had not seen her since nineteen eighty nine, that
21:31
Speaker 1: she just decided to leave home for unexplained reasons. And
21:35
Speaker 1: then a few months before her death, a friend of
21:37
Speaker 1: hers called her family to let them know Andrea was okay,
21:40
Speaker 1: but didn't share any information from about her current whereabouts.
21:44
Speaker 1: They completely lost touch with her, and of course they
21:46
Speaker 1: were unable to file a missing person's report because there
21:49
Speaker 1: was no real jurisdiction. She didn't have a fixed address,
21:52
Speaker 1: they had no idea where she was at the time,
21:54
Speaker 1: and they just figured that, oh, maybe she's gone off
21:57
Speaker 1: living her life somewhere, and maybe she's still a lot
22:00
Speaker 1: today and has just never contacted us. But sadly, it
22:03
Speaker 1: turned out that only a year after she left home,
22:06
Speaker 1: she was killed in a traffic accident when she was
22:08
Speaker 1: hit by two vehicles in Huntington Beach, California. So it
22:12
Speaker 1: turned out that Andrea did have a history of bipolar
22:15
Speaker 1: disorder and drug usage. Because this was the nineteen eighties,
22:19
Speaker 1: I don't think they really delved too deeply into what
22:22
Speaker 1: kind of mental health issues she had. But it sounds
22:25
Speaker 1: like she just decided to leave Virginia for her own reasons,
22:28
Speaker 1: make a cross country trip to California, and then she
22:31
Speaker 1: wound up dead. So it's a tragic end of the story.
22:34
Speaker 1: But at least Andrea's parents finally have answers about what
22:37
Speaker 1: happened to her, and she has finally gotten her name back.
22:41
Speaker 3: It's wonderful for the family anytime that they have the
22:44
Speaker 3: answers and they now can lay that to rest. And
22:48
Speaker 3: it's not a case where we're looking at somebody being murdered.
22:51
Speaker 3: The difference here is we're looking at a tragic accident
22:54
Speaker 3: with somebody who had likely descended into psychosis. I mean
22:58
Speaker 3: the hair being that could just be something that this
23:02
Speaker 3: individual did. But when you mention that she has bipolar disorder,
23:06
Speaker 3: then it seems likely that this could have been an episode,
23:10
Speaker 3: especially if she was putting herself into dangerous situations that
23:13
Speaker 3: would have got her killed, like getting hit by those cars.
23:16
Speaker 3: So it's a real tragedy and it brings up, you know,
23:19
Speaker 3: the larger conversation of what was the conversation around mental
23:23
Speaker 3: health during this time, And it was nineteen ninety so
23:27
Speaker 3: there wasn't much of a conversation around mental health, and
23:30
Speaker 3: it was really poorly understood. And a lot of it
23:33
Speaker 3: is an invisible illness. And so unless somebody is having
23:37
Speaker 3: an active episode where they're dealing with psychosis, or they
23:42
Speaker 3: deal with something that you can see every day, perhaps
23:45
Speaker 3: somebody who is dealing with OCD, but somebody who's bipolar,
23:49
Speaker 3: if they're having a youthmic period, you're not going to
23:53
Speaker 3: see it. They may seem very like like quote unquote
23:57
Speaker 3: normal or typical, but then if they go into a
24:00
Speaker 3: manic or a hypomanic episode, you're going to notice that.
24:03
Speaker 3: And if that mania goes into the territory of psychosis,
24:07
Speaker 3: which it very often does, then dangerous things can happen,
24:11
Speaker 3: and people will put themselves in great danger and they
24:14
Speaker 3: won't realize it.
24:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a sad thing is that I think her
24:18
Speaker 2: ability to recognize a need for help is impossible at
24:22
Speaker 2: that point, right when you're sick or you're struggling and
24:25
Speaker 2: you're not getting the treatment you need, and you aren't
24:27
Speaker 2: around people who are aware of your diagnosis and can
24:30
Speaker 2: help keep you in a healthy state, when you yourself
24:34
Speaker 2: can't regulate that, I think it's really sad in here.
24:38
Speaker 2: Robin how old was she.
24:40
Speaker 1: She turned out she was twenty six when she died,
24:42
Speaker 1: even though she looked like she could have been young
24:44
Speaker 1: enough to be in her late teens.
24:46
Speaker 2: Okay, so she was an adult. And that's another thing
24:48
Speaker 2: that you'd struggle with here. The family, even if they said, hey,
24:52
Speaker 2: she left, well she left voluntarily, and friends are even
24:56
Speaker 2: calling and saying, hey, she's okay, don't worry about her,
24:58
Speaker 2: she's okay. It gets to the point as a parent
25:02
Speaker 2: parenting an adult child you almost have to just say
25:06
Speaker 2: a prayer and hope that you know, at some point
25:09
Speaker 2: she comes home. And like you said, they said, we
25:11
Speaker 2: often just hoped, hey she's living her life and she's okay.
25:15
Speaker 2: There's not much action law enforcement can take unless you
25:18
Speaker 2: can report a concern or a known act of violence.
25:22
Speaker 2: Right an adult wanting to leave on their own, especially
25:26
Speaker 2: an adult with mental health issues, it's very easy for
25:29
Speaker 2: the police to say she made a choice and she's
25:31
Speaker 2: allowed to do so. And for this poor family, it
25:34
Speaker 2: ended up where because she likely was struggling, she was
25:38
Speaker 2: perhaps doing something where she walked in front of these
25:40
Speaker 2: cars or was in a location where she could be
25:43
Speaker 2: hit by vehicles, and she lost her life. So as
25:47
Speaker 2: helpful as the answers are, it's so sad to think
25:50
Speaker 2: of a family who's saying, you know, God, please just
25:52
Speaker 2: let her be okay, let her be consciously living a
25:55
Speaker 2: life and be happy and healthy. To know that that's
25:58
Speaker 2: not how it turned out had to be absolutely devastating.
26:01
Speaker 1: It was, But I have so much empathy because it's
26:04
Speaker 1: a recurring theme in a lot of these cases where
26:06
Speaker 1: these decedents broke off all contact with their family, but
26:10
Speaker 1: they just weren't able to do anything with the authorities
26:12
Speaker 1: because they were living a transient lifestyle, just kind of
26:15
Speaker 1: moving along the country, so they just couldn't get law
26:17
Speaker 1: enforcement to perform an investigation because there was no direct
26:20
Speaker 1: evidence of foul play. And I'm sure that the Kuyper
26:23
Speaker 1: family never would have thought that poor Andrea would be
26:26
Speaker 1: killed on the other side of the country and briefly
26:28
Speaker 1: be mentioned on Unsolved Mysteries, And for all we know,
26:31
Speaker 1: maybe they watched the episode but just didn't have any
26:34
Speaker 1: inkling that this Jane Doe would have been Andrea. And
26:37
Speaker 1: it was just kind of a luck that now that
26:39
Speaker 1: they had a more advanced fingerprinting system that they get
26:42
Speaker 1: enter or prints into that's how they wound up making
26:44
Speaker 1: a match. But yeah, you do feel with the families,
26:47
Speaker 1: but at the very least they finally get to their
26:49
Speaker 1: loved ones back. And I know that Andrea was transported
26:52
Speaker 1: back to Virginia so that she could get a proper burial,
26:55
Speaker 1: so her family finally does have answers. So our final
26:59
Speaker 1: entry the list is one of our most unique stories
27:02
Speaker 1: about the El Dorado Jane Doe, and this is one
27:05
Speaker 1: where she had a number of friends and acquaintances that
27:08
Speaker 1: she'd been interacting with for years, but it turned out
27:11
Speaker 1: that she had been living under a false identity before
27:14
Speaker 1: she died, and they were trying to figure out who
27:16
Speaker 1: she really was. So on July the ninth, nineteen ninety one,
27:20
Speaker 1: a blonde woman was found beaten and shot to death
27:22
Speaker 1: in her room at the Whitehall Motel in El Dorado, Arkansas.
27:26
Speaker 1: Her id said that her name was Cheryl Anne Wick,
27:29
Speaker 1: but investigators soon discovered that she had stolen this identity
27:32
Speaker 1: from another Sharyl Anne Wick in Minneapolis, who was alive
27:35
Speaker 1: and well and did not know the victim. The blonde
27:38
Speaker 1: had been murdered by her boyfriend, James Roy mcalfin, who
27:41
Speaker 1: served twelve years in prison. For the crime, but Kanacha
27:44
Speaker 1: had any light on her real identity. The woman was
27:47
Speaker 1: known to have resided in Dallas, Houston, Shreveport in Little
27:51
Speaker 1: Rock before she arrived in El Dorado, and also told
27:54
Speaker 1: her friend she was originally from Florida. In addition to
27:57
Speaker 1: Cheryl Anne Wick, she also went under the aliases Kelly
28:00
Speaker 1: Lee Kharr, Shan Wiley, and Mercedes. She had worked as
28:04
Speaker 1: a sex worker and topless dancer, had been arrested on
28:07
Speaker 1: numerous occasions for sex work and writing bad checks. It
28:10
Speaker 1: was possibly wanted for bank robbery in Virginia. She also
28:14
Speaker 1: had a bible in her possession which included names from
28:16
Speaker 1: a family she had lived with for a while. But
28:19
Speaker 1: in spite of all these leads, no one has ever
28:21
Speaker 1: been able to uncover her true identity.
28:24
Speaker 2: This one's incredibly interesting because you have someone who we
28:27
Speaker 2: actually know who the perpetrator was, and there's someone who
28:32
Speaker 2: has quite a history, and yet that whole history is
28:35
Speaker 2: underneath this alias and stolen identity of this poor woman
28:39
Speaker 2: who's living somewhere else and going that's not me. I'm alive,
28:43
Speaker 2: and well, that is not me. She must have stolen
28:45
Speaker 2: my identity. It's incredibly interesting. I wonder if it took
28:50
Speaker 2: time for this investigation to really gain traction because of
28:54
Speaker 2: her lifestyle, or did police act pretty quickly to try
28:58
Speaker 2: to figure out who she is.
29:00
Speaker 1: I think they did, Like they just looked into her name,
29:02
Speaker 1: Cheryl Ann Wick, but then they found this other Cheryl
29:05
Speaker 1: Ane Wick living in Minneapolis, and once they realized, oh,
29:08
Speaker 1: she stole this identity, we'n't got quite a mystery here.
29:11
Speaker 1: We have to figure out who this woman is because
29:13
Speaker 1: she had a lot of friends and acquaintances who just
29:15
Speaker 1: thought of her as Cheryl. They thought that was her
29:18
Speaker 1: real name. And while the other victims that we've talked
29:21
Speaker 1: about have only had composite sketches released of them, this
29:24
Speaker 1: one they actually had photographs of Cheryl that her friends
29:28
Speaker 1: had taken over over the years that they displayed on
29:30
Speaker 1: the internet. And everyone's just so confused, like, we know
29:33
Speaker 1: what this woman looks like, how come no one has
29:35
Speaker 1: recognized her? Who knows her true identity? So it became
29:39
Speaker 1: a very different mystery than the other ones on this list.
29:42
Speaker 3: Maybe she had been impersonating other people for a very
29:46
Speaker 3: long period of time that she'd been on the run
29:49
Speaker 3: or trying to evade charges in other States, and we
29:52
Speaker 3: know she went by multiple aliases, so she'd been estranged
29:56
Speaker 3: from her family and what her original name was for
29:59
Speaker 3: a very long time. Perhaps her physical appearance had changed
30:03
Speaker 3: or shifted really dramatically and the family just didn't recognize her,
30:07
Speaker 3: or the images weren't distributed widely enough for them to
30:10
Speaker 3: have been able to see them. But one thing I
30:14
Speaker 3: find interesting and I'm curious with if you have any
30:17
Speaker 3: more information, is about her murder. Did they figure out
30:22
Speaker 3: that it was a boyfriend right away? Did they think
30:24
Speaker 3: it could have been one of her clients? Did he
30:26
Speaker 3: say what the motivation was? He didn't shed any light
30:29
Speaker 3: on who she was. It was it that he didn't know,
30:33
Speaker 3: or was it that he didn't want to share any information.
30:37
Speaker 1: Well, if they solved this mystery right away, because they
30:39
Speaker 1: had been getting into an argument in a motel room
30:42
Speaker 1: and there was suddenly a gunshot and they called the
30:44
Speaker 1: police and macalvin was arrested immediately. And obviously he tried
30:48
Speaker 1: to say that she shot herself, but nobody believed that.
30:51
Speaker 1: But because they couldn't prove it, that's why he was
30:54
Speaker 1: allowed to enter a plea deal to second degree murder
30:57
Speaker 1: and only wound up serving twelve years, and he was
31:00
Speaker 1: very manipulative with the police. Like in retrospect, I believe
31:04
Speaker 1: he legitimately didn't know her real background because he'd only
31:07
Speaker 1: known her for a few years, But as the years
31:10
Speaker 1: went on he would try to like bargain with him
31:12
Speaker 1: and say with the police, if you give me money,
31:13
Speaker 1: I will finally tell you her real backstory. And are
31:17
Speaker 1: you familiar with the fort Worth missing trio case?
31:21
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I'm Mark.
31:23
Speaker 2: And I lived in Fort Worth.
31:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you are ash. We might have talked
31:27
Speaker 3: about it at some point in time.
31:29
Speaker 2: Okay, well, real quick, one second digestion of it. What
31:32
Speaker 2: is the case?
31:34
Speaker 1: Okay? What's about three girls who went missing from Fort Worth,
31:37
Speaker 1: Texas in nineteen seventy four. They had gone Christmas shopping
31:41
Speaker 1: at a mall and they found the abandoned car, but
31:43
Speaker 1: they didn't find the three girls. And then the following day,
31:47
Speaker 1: her family received a letter in the mail where she
31:49
Speaker 1: said that she just needed to get away, so they
31:52
Speaker 1: all ran away together. But they don't think it was
31:54
Speaker 1: in her handwriting, and they think the letter was probably
31:57
Speaker 1: sent by someone who was responsible for their disappear urans
32:00
Speaker 1: in order to throw off the investigation I covered it
32:03
Speaker 1: all the way back on episode number two of The
32:05
Speaker 1: Trail Went Cold, way back when, and in a weird coincidence,
32:10
Speaker 1: it got mentioned just a few weeks later in conjunction
32:12
Speaker 1: with this case because Mcalvin said, Cheryl told me that
32:17
Speaker 1: during her early days she was part of a sexual
32:19
Speaker 1: slavery ring and that she was with three other kidnapped
32:22
Speaker 1: girls who were probably the fort Worth Missing Trio. But
32:25
Speaker 1: of course in retrospect, it looks like Mcalvin was completely
32:28
Speaker 1: full of it, Like, I seriously do not think that
32:31
Speaker 1: the fort Worth Missing Trio were kidnapped and sold into
32:34
Speaker 1: sex slavery, or that they crossed paths with Cheryl, So
32:37
Speaker 1: I think he was just kind of make that up
32:39
Speaker 1: to try to make money. But at the time I
32:41
Speaker 1: was like, WHOA, this is a pretty big development a
32:43
Speaker 1: connection between the two cases. But it just kind of
32:46
Speaker 1: shows that I don't think he had any idea of
32:48
Speaker 1: her background and he was just doing this just to
32:50
Speaker 1: try to get attention, and that the actual truth about
32:54
Speaker 1: where Cheryl came from was a lot less sensational. So
32:58
Speaker 1: in January of two thousand nineteen, it was announced that
33:01
Speaker 1: there had been a major breakthrough in this case. Because
33:04
Speaker 1: El Dorado, Jane Doe's DNA have been uploaded again, match
33:07
Speaker 1: and hint was made, which eventually led to an Alabama
33:10
Speaker 1: woman named Christina Tilford who had the same genetic profile
33:14
Speaker 1: of the victim. But here's where it's get interesting, because technically,
33:18
Speaker 1: even though this showed that Christina Tilford was Jane Doe's
33:22
Speaker 1: second cousin, she claimed that she had never met her
33:25
Speaker 1: and had no idea who she was, So a genealogist
33:28
Speaker 1: would identify Jane Doe's biological father as being a descendant
33:32
Speaker 1: of a Virginia cuff pole named Daniel Wood and Mamie Carter,
33:36
Speaker 1: who happened to be Christina Tilford's great grandparents and had
33:40
Speaker 1: nine children of their own. So the most prevalent theory
33:43
Speaker 1: which came up was that Jane Doe might have been
33:45
Speaker 1: conceived when one of the male members of that family
33:48
Speaker 1: had an extramarial affair and fathered an illegitimate child, which
33:52
Speaker 1: would go a long way at explaining why Christina Tilford
33:56
Speaker 1: had no idea who she was and why no one
33:58
Speaker 1: from the family seemed to know who she was either,
34:01
Speaker 1: And it would actually be another three years before they
34:04
Speaker 1: were finally able to figure out the Jane does true identity,
34:08
Speaker 1: and for privacy reasons, they haven't really revealed everything. But
34:12
Speaker 1: in May of twenty twenty two, they finally announced that
34:16
Speaker 1: the victim have been positively identified as a woman named Kelly,
34:20
Speaker 1: but for privacy reasons, they have never released her surname publicly,
34:25
Speaker 1: and most of it has been written in a blog
34:27
Speaker 1: post by a genealogy expert who worked on the case.
34:30
Speaker 1: But they have revealed that Kelly was originally born in
34:33
Speaker 1: Virginia in nineteen sixty eight, which meant that she was
34:35
Speaker 1: twenty three years old at the time she was murdered.
34:38
Speaker 1: Her mother was named Brenda, and she also had a
34:40
Speaker 1: half sister who was three years younger than her. And
34:43
Speaker 1: even though Brenda had a couple of different husbands during
34:46
Speaker 1: Kelly's childhood, one of whom was very abusive, it does
34:49
Speaker 1: not sound like Kelly ever met her biological father. I
34:53
Speaker 1: don't know if the investigation has uncovered the identity of
34:56
Speaker 1: Kelly's father, as they may have withheld that from the
34:59
Speaker 1: public for private reasons, and I don't even know if
35:01
Speaker 1: he knew Kelly's existence. But like I said, it's possible
35:06
Speaker 1: that the father had an extramaral affair or a one
35:09
Speaker 1: night stand with Brenda, and that's how Kelly was conceived,
35:12
Speaker 1: and this man just may have moved on with his life.
35:15
Speaker 1: So it sounds like Brenda Hale from a pretty unstable family.
35:19
Speaker 1: Is she had a lot of personal problems, like a
35:21
Speaker 1: cocaine addiction, and did multiple stints in jail for such
35:25
Speaker 1: offenses as grand larcity and credit card theft, and as
35:28
Speaker 1: a result, Kelly wound up spending her teen years moving
35:31
Speaker 1: around a lot with her mother, and she dropped a
35:33
Speaker 1: high school during the tenth grade, and she wound up
35:36
Speaker 1: developing a cocaine addiction of her own after her own mother, Brenda,
35:40
Speaker 1: introduced her to cocaine, which is another sad element to
35:43
Speaker 1: the story. So Kelly did a stit in rehab at
35:46
Speaker 1: age eighteen and then spent the next five years living
35:48
Speaker 1: in a number of different states where she pretty much
35:51
Speaker 1: broke off all contact with her mother and then started
35:54
Speaker 1: living under a bunch of false identities, including the name
35:58
Speaker 1: Cheryl Ann Wick, which she stole from I'm an Exotic
36:00
Speaker 1: Dancer and she was using at the time she was murdered.
36:04
Speaker 1: And as for Brenda, she moved to Florida, to live
36:07
Speaker 1: with her sister in nineteen ninety two, the year after
36:10
Speaker 1: Kelly was murdered, and even though she was sometimes was
36:13
Speaker 1: asked where Kelly was, Brenda just did not seem to
36:15
Speaker 1: know or care all that much. And she died in
36:18
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. So pretty much it sounds like
36:21
Speaker 1: Kelly led a really troubled lifestyle. And after all this
36:24
Speaker 1: stuff with the genetic genealogy, they were finally able to
36:27
Speaker 1: figure out who she was, so at the very least,
36:29
Speaker 1: a lot of the rest of her genetic relatives finally
36:32
Speaker 1: got conclusive answers about what happened to her. They know
36:35
Speaker 1: that she got murdered, and also we know that Kelly
36:38
Speaker 1: had a genetic connection to Christina Tilford, but we still
36:41
Speaker 1: don't know the full story about Kelly's father. But yeah,
36:43
Speaker 1: this is a really convoluted backstory. I had to share
36:46
Speaker 1: with you about this one. But they finally do have
36:48
Speaker 1: a resolution.
36:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just really sad. It's like she didn't
36:51
Speaker 2: even have a chance when she started, you know, could
36:54
Speaker 2: she have been the result of an extra marital affair
36:56
Speaker 2: and then she was this child who wasn't wanted or
36:59
Speaker 2: needed to be hidden, and then she quickly becomes in
37:02
Speaker 2: a lifestyle where it's very difficult to get out of that.
37:06
Speaker 2: Right as a young young girl, she's battling addiction and
37:09
Speaker 2: she's trying to get help. But once you start going
37:12
Speaker 2: down that road, unless you have a really stable support system,
37:15
Speaker 2: it's very difficult not to continue to use and then
37:18
Speaker 2: to do crimes to supplement your usage too. So it's
37:21
Speaker 2: just a very tragic case when you think about her
37:23
Speaker 2: early life and then how quickly it was ended at
37:26
Speaker 2: age twenty three.
37:28
Speaker 3: I think it's so sad that we still don't know
37:30
Speaker 3: who her biological father is, and the fact that her
37:33
Speaker 3: mother introduced her to cocaine, that she was at rehab
37:36
Speaker 3: at eighteen, it just speaks of a life that was
37:40
Speaker 3: filled with sadness and substance used disorder. Given her background,
37:45
Speaker 3: I can completely empathize with why she likely wanted to
37:48
Speaker 3: escape and how she ended up down the road that
37:51
Speaker 3: she ended up. And it is tragic that she died
37:54
Speaker 3: at the hands of her boyfriend, who we maybe can
37:58
Speaker 3: assume from the way that she dies that he could
38:01
Speaker 3: have been an abusive partner and that this is something
38:04
Speaker 3: that she dealt with on a continuous basis. But the
38:07
Speaker 3: fact that she didn't feel comfortable enough to share who
38:11
Speaker 3: she truly was with people that really resonated with me.
38:15
Speaker 3: Can you imagine You've got all these friends, like people
38:18
Speaker 3: have taken photos of her, but nobody knows who she
38:20
Speaker 3: truly is. And maybe because her father's out there and
38:26
Speaker 3: she feels rejected by him, maybe there's a sense that
38:29
Speaker 3: she doesn't feel like she knows who she is and
38:31
Speaker 3: that's why she goes by all of these other different aliases.
38:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, according to some of the friends she had during
38:37
Speaker 1: the last years of her life, she was very secretive
38:40
Speaker 1: when talking about her background, but which she would say stuff, Oh,
38:42
Speaker 1: I can't talk about it because I'm in a witness
38:44
Speaker 1: protection program, which obviously turned out not to be true.
38:48
Speaker 1: And I don't think she ever mentioned any of the
38:50
Speaker 1: stuff we eventually learned about her, about her having this
38:52
Speaker 1: mother who introduced her to cocaine and got her addicted.
38:56
Speaker 1: So it sounds like she was like really ashamed from
38:58
Speaker 1: like her past life, and at the age of eighteen,
39:01
Speaker 1: she just decided, I'm starting a clean slate here, I'm
39:04
Speaker 1: starting over, and she felt that the only way to
39:06
Speaker 1: do that is to commit petty crimes, travel across the country,
39:09
Speaker 1: and take up these new identities. I think she was
39:13
Speaker 1: going to continue doing it until she found a life
39:15
Speaker 1: that worked for and tragically she wound up being trapped
39:18
Speaker 1: in a terrible life with an abusive boyfriend who was
39:21
Speaker 1: also her pimp as well, so it was a pretty
39:24
Speaker 1: terrible relationship and wound up being murdered at the age
39:28
Speaker 1: of twenty three. But it sounds like she lived a
39:30
Speaker 1: lot in those twenty three years and had to go
39:32
Speaker 1: through some really rough patches. And I'm just glad that
39:36
Speaker 1: even though we don't know her last name, we can
39:38
Speaker 1: now refer to her as Kelly instead of referring to
39:40
Speaker 1: as El Dorado Jane Doe, we're referring her to Sheryl
39:43
Speaker 1: Anne Wick, and that they have finally resolved this mystery.
39:47
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's always a thrill to me because, like
39:50
Speaker 1: I said, the Huntington Beach Jane Doe and the El
39:52
Speaker 1: Dorado Jane Doe were featured on the Trail Went Cold
39:55
Speaker 1: at one point, and it's always exciting to see cases
39:58
Speaker 1: from the podcast we have a resolution after so many years,
40:02
Speaker 1: And this rings true ten times as much for this
40:05
Speaker 1: particular list, because, like I said, I wrote it in
40:08
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, and as the years went on, they just
40:10
Speaker 1: started solving more and more of them, and until earlier
40:14
Speaker 1: this year, the only Loane hold out was little miss Panasofki,
40:18
Speaker 1: but only a few weeks before we recorded this, they
40:21
Speaker 1: finally identified her as Mare and Rowan, meaning that every
40:24
Speaker 1: single victim on this list officially got her name back.
40:27
Speaker 1: And that's why Jules and I decided that we have
40:29
Speaker 1: to do an episode about this where we go through
40:31
Speaker 1: all these cases one by one, and I'm glad we
40:34
Speaker 1: did because we have finally given names back to these
40:36
Speaker 1: people who for so many years were nothing more than
40:39
Speaker 1: unidentified John or Jane does. But now we have finally
40:42
Speaker 1: gone over the backstory for all these people.
40:45
Speaker 3: This fills my heart with joy because I feel like
40:48
Speaker 3: we have referenced, We've either covered or referenced every single
40:52
Speaker 3: one of these cases during the time that we've been
40:55
Speaker 3: doing this podcast. I think it's been five years, has it, brother?
40:58
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, it's almost ten year anniversary for
41:01
Speaker 1: the Trail a Cold, So I think we're getting up
41:03
Speaker 1: on our five year anniversary, which is wild.
41:06
Speaker 3: And to think that we have talked about this list
41:08
Speaker 3: for US article countless times and there was always those holdouts,
41:13
Speaker 3: and I remember the last time we talked about one
41:15
Speaker 3: of the cases and you were like, you're still miss Panasaki.
41:17
Speaker 3: It needs to be solved. And then finally coming full circle,
41:22
Speaker 3: every single person on that list being identified. Some of
41:26
Speaker 3: the mysteries aren't solved because we don't know with some
41:28
Speaker 3: of the murders who murdered them. But to have their
41:31
Speaker 3: dignity back, to have their names back, and to give
41:35
Speaker 3: the family that peace of mind to know where their
41:37
Speaker 3: loved one is, that is a beautiful thing.
41:40
Speaker 1: Any final thoughts, Ashy.
41:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, this is one of those that was a
41:44
Speaker 2: pleasure to record. I love that we got to do
41:46
Speaker 2: a three part series. And the real idea here is
41:49
Speaker 2: that these individuals mattered no matter what their life style was,
41:54
Speaker 2: no matter what their age was, no matter what their
41:56
Speaker 2: background was, right they're herited their culture, none of that.
41:59
Speaker 2: These were people's lives who were lost to some extent
42:04
Speaker 2: from either accident, violence, potential suicides, and we didn't know
42:10
Speaker 2: who these people were, which means there's a family who
42:12
Speaker 2: didn't know the end result of their loved ones life.
42:17
Speaker 2: And so for me, it's that dignity and repairing this
42:19
Speaker 2: idea to assign a name, to be able to call
42:23
Speaker 2: them by their name, to be able to give them
42:25
Speaker 2: a proper burial in many of these cases, and for
42:27
Speaker 2: the family to have an idea of what happened and
42:31
Speaker 2: a place or an ability to mourn and grieve this individual.
42:37
Speaker 2: So for decades in most of these cases, that was
42:39
Speaker 2: not a possibility, and because of police work, genetic genealogy,
42:46
Speaker 2: random tips, decades later, these individuals got their name back.
42:50
Speaker 2: And to me, that is the most incredible thing, and
42:52
Speaker 2: that your whole list was named amazing. Thank you for
42:56
Speaker 2: letting us be part of this special episode.
42:58
Speaker 1: I please you. This is definitely when my favorite episodes
43:01
Speaker 1: to record, and I've mentioned in countless times that we're
43:04
Speaker 1: seeing more and more of these cold cases get solved
43:06
Speaker 1: thanks to genetic genealogy. And there are a lot of
43:09
Speaker 1: other lists that I've written in the past where there
43:10
Speaker 1: are cases from that that have been solved. So maybe
43:13
Speaker 1: one of these days we'll be able to do another
43:14
Speaker 1: list where every single entry on my list that I
43:17
Speaker 1: wrote something like twelve thirteen years ago gets solved and
43:20
Speaker 1: we'll be able to go through them one by one.
43:23
Speaker 1: But until then, thank you so much for listening to
43:25
Speaker 1: this episodes. Next week, we'll return by doing one of
43:28
Speaker 1: our traditional episodes about an Unsolved Cold case and we
43:31
Speaker 1: will see you then, So goodbye everyone. Robin.
43:36
Speaker 3: Do you want to tell us a little bit about
43:37
Speaker 3: the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
43:39
Speaker 1: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
43:41
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
43:45
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
43:49
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
43:51
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
43:54
Speaker 1: tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
43:58
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
44:01
Speaker 1: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
44:05
Speaker 1: and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
44:08
Speaker 1: ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
44:11
Speaker 1: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsaved Mysteries,
44:15
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
44:18
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
44:21
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
44:25
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
44:28
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
44:31
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
44:34
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
44:37
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
44:40
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
44:43
Speaker 1: Tier three.
44:44
Speaker 4: So I want to let you know a little bit
44:45
Speaker 4: about the Jewels and nashty patreons. So there's early ad
44:48
Speaker 4: free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
44:51
Speaker 4: Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
44:54
Speaker 4: so they're not very mini, but they're just too short
44:56
Speaker 4: to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
45:00
Speaker 4: so we hope you'll check out those patreons will link
45:02
Speaker 4: them in the show notes.
45:04
Speaker 1: So I want to thank you all for listening, and
45:06
Speaker 1: any chance you have to share us on social media
45:08
Speaker 1: with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
45:11
Speaker 1: You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
45:14
Speaker 1: You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwink. So
45:17
Speaker 1: until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
45:20
Speaker 1: trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
45:23
Speaker 3: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy