Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Bobby Bizup Pt. One

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Bobby Bizup Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:28
Speaker 1: Welcome back to our latest series of episodes of The
0:30
Speaker 1: Path Went Chili. Today we're technically recording on New Year's Day,
0:33
Speaker 1: so Ashley is on holiday. She's busy with her family,
0:36
Speaker 1: so it'll just be Jules and I where I'll be
0:39
Speaker 1: sharing the details about a case and she'll be giving
0:41
Speaker 1: off her reactions. So, Jules, have you heard of the
0:45
Speaker 1: disappearance and death of Bobby Bisup?
0:48
Speaker 2: The name isn't ringing a bell. But like before we recorded,
0:51
Speaker 2: you said that I may I may be. I can't
0:55
Speaker 2: even speak today. My memory might be jogged by the
0:59
Speaker 2: details when you share them because it is a fairly
1:01
Speaker 2: recent case.
1:03
Speaker 1: Well it's actually an older case though, but it has
1:06
Speaker 1: popped up back into the news for very unexpected reasons.
1:09
Speaker 1: This was a case that took place all the way
1:11
Speaker 1: back in nineteen fifty eight, and Bobby Bissop was a
1:14
Speaker 1: ten year old boy who was hearing impaired and went
1:17
Speaker 1: missing while attending a summer camp at a Catholic camp
1:20
Speaker 1: in Colorado before some of his remains were found in
1:23
Speaker 1: a wooded area about a year later, and at the
1:25
Speaker 1: time they just assumed that he wandered off and died
1:28
Speaker 1: of exposure and it pretty much faded from the spotlight
1:31
Speaker 1: for several decades, but then in twenty nineteen, an investigated
1:35
Speaker 1: reporter named Kevin Vaughan who worked for the Denver based
1:38
Speaker 1: TV station KUSA, was doing a deep dive into a
1:42
Speaker 1: cover up and a sexual abuse scandal involving Catholic priests
1:46
Speaker 1: and children and wound up having an unexpected tie into
1:50
Speaker 1: Bobby Bisop's disappearance. And then in twenty twenty one, this
1:53
Speaker 1: case went in a very unexpected direction when a man
1:56
Speaker 1: came forward with a human skull belonging to a child
2:00
Speaker 1: that he said had been in the possession of his father.
2:02
Speaker 1: And there's been speculation that this skull might have belonged
2:05
Speaker 1: to Bobby Bissum. And I don't know if you were recalled,
2:08
Speaker 1: but in twenty twenty one, this story was everywhere for
2:11
Speaker 1: a while, it was all over social media just because
2:14
Speaker 1: of how unusual it is. So do you have any
2:16
Speaker 1: recollection of hearing about this four years ago?
2:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were right when you gave me the details.
2:22
Speaker 2: It definitely jogged my memory. And how can you not
2:25
Speaker 2: remember the details of somebody having a child's skull in
2:30
Speaker 2: their possession. And then the really dark history of the
2:34
Speaker 2: sexual abuse at the hands of these priests. It's really
2:39
Speaker 2: memorable in the darkest of ways.
2:42
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, and I started researching it because, as
2:45
Speaker 1: you can imagine, I started getting requests to cover it
2:48
Speaker 1: on the trail went cold. And you look back through
2:50
Speaker 1: the newspaper articles and all the original coverages back from
2:53
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight nineteen fifty nine, and there's no reason
2:56
Speaker 1: to believe that this is anything more than a tragic
2:58
Speaker 1: story of a boy who wandered off and died of exposure.
3:02
Speaker 1: At the time, there was no suspicion of foul play.
3:04
Speaker 1: But back in the nineteen fifties, there wasn't as much
3:07
Speaker 1: public knowledge about the cover up of sexual abuse from
3:10
Speaker 1: priests in the Catholic Church of Children, so nobody really
3:14
Speaker 1: suspected that anything bad happened. But of course, once they
3:17
Speaker 1: started doing this deep dive several decades later and they
3:21
Speaker 1: found out some new information about Bobby Bisop's disappearance, everyone
3:25
Speaker 1: started looking at this in a different light. And once
3:27
Speaker 1: they uncovered this skull, everyone was going, WTF, what actually
3:31
Speaker 1: happened here? And it became one of the weirdest mysteries
3:34
Speaker 1: of the modern era.
3:35
Speaker 2: It's amazing how our perspectives can change with the advantage
3:40
Speaker 2: of time, where you can step back and we have
3:42
Speaker 2: so much more information, whereas one of the major variables
3:46
Speaker 2: in this case was the sexual abuse at the hands
3:49
Speaker 2: of the Catholic priests. But when you don't have that information,
3:53
Speaker 2: you're going to look at the case in an entirely
3:55
Speaker 2: different way because you're going to assume that it's most
3:58
Speaker 2: likely that be wandered off and you know, to come
4:02
Speaker 2: to the elements. But when you know that there's children
4:06
Speaker 2: that are being preyed upon by these priests and Bobby
4:09
Speaker 2: could have potentially been one of them, then you look
4:12
Speaker 2: at it in a whole new light. So that is
4:15
Speaker 2: the advantage when time passes and we gather more information
4:19
Speaker 2: and then we have the ability or investigators have the
4:22
Speaker 2: ability to go and revisit these cases and to look
4:25
Speaker 2: at them with this new information in a fresh set
4:28
Speaker 2: of eyes.
4:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, this whole story is a complete reversal from the
4:32
Speaker 1: type of cases we usually do. Like we've covered a
4:34
Speaker 1: number of mysteries where someone's death was ruled to be
4:37
Speaker 1: an accident or a suicide and the authorities closed the
4:40
Speaker 1: case they didn't think there was any foul play involved.
4:43
Speaker 1: But the victim's family felt differently and kept trying to
4:46
Speaker 1: keep the case in the spotlight and trying to get
4:48
Speaker 1: the authorities to reopen the case. But here the complete
4:51
Speaker 1: opposite happened, because, as we're going to talk about, Bobby's
4:54
Speaker 1: parents at the time did not think that there was
4:56
Speaker 1: anything suspicious about the way he died, accepted that it
5:00
Speaker 1: was nothing more than a tragic accident, went on living
5:03
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives, and then passed away. And
5:06
Speaker 1: now many years later, people are now looking at the
5:09
Speaker 1: case at a different light and are now thinking, nearly
5:11
Speaker 1: seventy years after the fact, that hmm, maybe foul play
5:14
Speaker 1: did take place after all. So, like I said, this
5:18
Speaker 1: took place all the way back in nineteen fifty eight
5:20
Speaker 1: in Colorado. Bobby Bisop was the only child of Joseph
5:24
Speaker 1: and Connie Bissop. His father, Joseph, was a master sergeant
5:28
Speaker 1: in the United States Air Force who was stationed in
5:31
Speaker 1: California when Bobby was born, so he was actually born
5:34
Speaker 1: on an Air Force base, but they eventually transferred to Colorado,
5:38
Speaker 1: and at this particular point, Joseph is now stationed at
5:41
Speaker 1: Lowry Air Force Base, while Connie is a stay at
5:44
Speaker 1: home Mump and Bobby sadly had been completely deaf since
5:48
Speaker 1: birth nearly He was now, at this particular point, a
5:51
Speaker 1: fifth grade student at a school for children with disabilities,
5:55
Speaker 1: and he did wear a hearing aid, but he could
5:57
Speaker 1: still barely hear it all and had difficulties speaking King,
6:00
Speaker 1: so he pretty much had to communicate with sign language
6:03
Speaker 1: and was also an accomplished slip reader. But Bobby was
6:07
Speaker 1: described of still being a positive, upbeat boy and he
6:10
Speaker 1: loved to go to a destination called Camp Saint Malo,
6:14
Speaker 1: which was a Catholic boy summer camp located in Boulders
6:17
Speaker 1: County near the town of ST's Park. And as a
6:21
Speaker 1: side note, if you never heard of SD's Park, this
6:23
Speaker 1: place is kind of famous because it has the Stanley
6:26
Speaker 1: Hotel there, which is the hotel that Stephen King stayed
6:29
Speaker 1: at when he wrote his classic novel The Shining. And
6:33
Speaker 1: as a side note, when I went to the True
6:34
Speaker 1: Crime Podcast Festival in Denver in twenty twenty four, I
6:38
Speaker 1: decided to take a side trip to SD's Park and
6:42
Speaker 1: went to the Stanley Hotel because they do a full
6:44
Speaker 1: fledged Shining tour and have some hotel rooms there that
6:47
Speaker 1: are made up to look like the hotel rooms in
6:49
Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick's movies. So EST's Park is a very beautiful
6:53
Speaker 1: mountainside town and it's not the place you would expect
6:56
Speaker 1: that a scandal would be taking place involving the disappearance
6:59
Speaker 1: in death of a ten year old boy.
7:01
Speaker 2: It's such an interesting side note that it's the same
7:04
Speaker 2: place that Stephen king stave and the fact that they
7:07
Speaker 2: have these tours doesn't surprise me, because why not continue
7:11
Speaker 2: to capitalize on one of the most iconic horror movies
7:15
Speaker 2: ever made. So I totally get that, but that is
7:18
Speaker 2: strange aside, And like you said, it's not somewhere that
7:21
Speaker 2: you would think that something like this would happen. But
7:24
Speaker 2: how many true crime cases open with not in a
7:28
Speaker 2: town like ours. We left our doors unlocked. It's almost
7:31
Speaker 2: a true crime trope.
7:33
Speaker 1: That's pretty much it. Yeah, because I don't think there
7:35
Speaker 1: was any history of violent crime in this town at
7:37
Speaker 1: the time, and like I mentioned, nobody expected anything bad
7:40
Speaker 1: happen to Bobby in the nineteen fifties. It's still kind
7:44
Speaker 1: of a landmark because even though Camp Saint Malo has
7:47
Speaker 1: since closed down, it had a chapel on the property
7:50
Speaker 1: known as the Saint Catherine of Siana Chapel, which rests
7:54
Speaker 1: on a large rock formation and has since become known
7:56
Speaker 1: as the Chapel on the Rock and is pretty much
7:59
Speaker 1: a still a major tourist attraction, and in the nineteen
8:02
Speaker 1: eighties they actually turned it into a retreat and conference
8:06
Speaker 1: center and it was visited by none other than Pope
8:08
Speaker 1: John Paul the Second. So this is a town that
8:11
Speaker 1: has a lot of history to it.
8:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, no kidding. And one thing I wanted to mention
8:15
Speaker 2: is it seems really progressive for nineteen fifty eight that
8:19
Speaker 2: Bobby had the ability to go to a school for
8:22
Speaker 2: differently abled children or for those who were hearing impaired.
8:27
Speaker 2: I can't imagine that there would have been that many
8:29
Speaker 2: schools because the approach to learning back then seemed to
8:32
Speaker 2: be like a one size fits all and if you
8:35
Speaker 2: don't fit into this very narrow paradigm of like how
8:39
Speaker 2: we view a student should be or how learning should happen,
8:43
Speaker 2: then you were kind of left to fend for yourself.
8:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, like Bobby got pretty much the best care you
8:49
Speaker 1: could hope for for a hearing impaired boy during the
8:52
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. And what is especially tragic about this story
8:55
Speaker 1: is that at the time Bobby went missing, he had
8:58
Speaker 1: been attending Camp Saint Malo for a year. They kind
9:00
Speaker 1: of divided it up into like one week sessions, and
9:03
Speaker 1: he had already gone to three weekly sessions, and by
9:06
Speaker 1: all accounts, he really loved it there, from what he
9:09
Speaker 1: told to his parents writing in letters, saying that they
9:13
Speaker 1: always treated him very nicely, that he got a lot
9:15
Speaker 1: of support there. So in retrospect, you can understand why
9:18
Speaker 1: his parents never thought that anything suspicious happened, because everything
9:22
Speaker 1: that Bobby was communicating to them in his letters made
9:25
Speaker 1: it sound like he was having a great time there,
9:27
Speaker 1: so you would never think that anyone was trying to
9:30
Speaker 1: take advantage of them.
9:31
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess you could look at it like,
9:34
Speaker 2: if they're sending letters to their families and there's the
9:37
Speaker 2: potential that we know that they're sexual abuse from the
9:41
Speaker 2: Catholic priests. So if you know that you're abusing a
9:45
Speaker 2: child and those children are going to be writing letters home,
9:49
Speaker 2: then I would think that maybe they would read those
9:52
Speaker 2: letters before they were spent, so that the children would
9:56
Speaker 2: have to either edit it or send home a specific
9:59
Speaker 2: type of a tone so that it might cover that up.
10:02
Speaker 2: But the one thing that would kind of fly in
10:03
Speaker 2: the face of that is that it's not like this
10:06
Speaker 2: was just his first time going to the camp. He'd
10:09
Speaker 2: been going previously, and so when he gets home, if
10:14
Speaker 2: he felt safe to speak to us, to sign with
10:17
Speaker 2: his parents about this, because we know in the cases
10:21
Speaker 2: of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, it can take those
10:25
Speaker 2: who have been children at the time, like twenty to
10:28
Speaker 2: twenty five years to come forward with their stories. So
10:32
Speaker 2: I can't assume that if that was happening that we
10:36
Speaker 2: would have necessarily seen all the telltale signs, or that
10:39
Speaker 2: he would have spoken to his parents about that.
10:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even if it was happening, even if he
10:44
Speaker 1: was given off hints, maybe his parents just didn't pick
10:47
Speaker 1: up on it because it was just a different mindset
10:49
Speaker 1: back then where parents are never going to suspect a
10:52
Speaker 1: priest of harming their children. But I am inclined to
10:55
Speaker 1: think that nothing happened to Bobby during his previous sessions,
10:58
Speaker 1: and at that it's something did happen to it. It
11:00
Speaker 1: probably took place during his most recent session in August
11:04
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty eight, So it was August fifteenth when
11:08
Speaker 1: Bobby went fishing at Cabin Creek, And there are many
11:12
Speaker 1: different versions of how Bobby disappeared, but this was the
11:15
Speaker 1: official one that I'm going to share now that was
11:17
Speaker 1: published in news accounts back in nineteen fifty eight. But
11:22
Speaker 1: the story was that he was fishing at Cabin Creek.
11:24
Speaker 1: He was about a few hundred yards away from the
11:26
Speaker 1: main lodge, and at around six pm, one of the councilors,
11:29
Speaker 1: Terry Cowan, said that he saw Bobby fishing there with
11:33
Speaker 1: an ice cream carton full of worms, and he pointed
11:36
Speaker 1: at his watch to indicate that it was nearly time
11:38
Speaker 1: for dinner, so he needed to gather up his things
11:40
Speaker 1: and return to the camp to visit the mess hall.
11:43
Speaker 1: And Bobby then nodded a Cowan to acknowledge that he
11:46
Speaker 1: understood him. But the story goes that after Cowan walked away,
11:50
Speaker 1: Bobby soon banished without a trace. An hour passed and
11:53
Speaker 1: Bobby had still not returned to the mess hall for supper,
11:56
Speaker 1: so the councilor started searching for them. It's been reported
11:59
Speaker 1: that they found Bobby's fishing pole and a carton of worms,
12:03
Speaker 1: but there are differing counts from different sources about where
12:05
Speaker 1: they found it. One of them said that it was
12:07
Speaker 1: on a hillside near the camp, and there was another
12:10
Speaker 1: account that said it was a full half mile away.
12:13
Speaker 1: But they checked the creek, it was only a foot deep.
12:16
Speaker 1: So they found it very unlikely that Bobby could have
12:18
Speaker 1: fallen in and drowned, because otherwise they could have found him.
12:21
Speaker 1: So they decided to launch a major search effort for him,
12:24
Speaker 1: and it would involve the United States Forest Service, the
12:27
Speaker 1: Boulder County Sheriff's office, and because Bobby's father, Joseph, was
12:32
Speaker 1: a station with the Air Force, they got two hundred
12:34
Speaker 1: airmen from Lowry Air Force Base to search the surrounding
12:38
Speaker 1: area and the mountains because it was right next to
12:41
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain National Park. But unfortunately, they just had trouble
12:44
Speaker 1: finding any trace of them.
12:46
Speaker 2: That's heartbreaking, and it's a case where there was so
12:50
Speaker 2: many resources deployed to look for Bobby, and it's just
12:55
Speaker 2: it shows how difficult it is when you're in an
12:57
Speaker 2: area where there can be dense brush or canopy of trees,
13:02
Speaker 2: any of that can severely impair search efforts, whether by
13:06
Speaker 2: air or by land. And that's clearly what happened here.
13:10
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like we've done many other cases on this
13:12
Speaker 1: podcast where there are major search efforts for a missing
13:15
Speaker 1: person and then it's only years later when they stumble
13:19
Speaker 1: across the victims remains by pure chance, and you realize
13:22
Speaker 1: that they were probably in the area all along, but
13:24
Speaker 1: the search efforts failed to miss them. And this was
13:27
Speaker 1: particularly devastating for the Bisops because Bobby was her only child,
13:31
Speaker 1: and it's been reported that his mother was so devastated
13:34
Speaker 1: that she became seriously ill and had to be placed
13:37
Speaker 1: under doctor's care. They got a fairly promising lead about
13:41
Speaker 1: a week later when there were sightings of a boy
13:43
Speaker 1: in SD's Park who had gone into a shop and
13:46
Speaker 1: the witnesses said that he kept pointing to his mouth
13:49
Speaker 1: in his ears and seemed to have trouble communicating, and
13:52
Speaker 1: they're thinking, how many hearing impaired boys are going to
13:55
Speaker 1: be there, So they thought there was a good chance
13:57
Speaker 1: that this was Bobby, and they started wondering that maybe
14:00
Speaker 1: Bobby was just worried that he was going to get
14:03
Speaker 1: into trouble because he had not come back to the
14:05
Speaker 1: mess hall in time for supper, So they were hoping
14:07
Speaker 1: that he had run away and was hiding out and
14:10
Speaker 1: was just not coming forward because he thought he was
14:12
Speaker 1: going to get in trouble, so his father actually arranged
14:15
Speaker 1: for a pilot to fly over the camp and drop
14:17
Speaker 1: thousands of leaflets containing this message quote mother and father
14:22
Speaker 1: love you. We need you. Mother is sick, she needs
14:24
Speaker 1: you at home. We love you end quote. So it's
14:27
Speaker 1: so heartbreaking to hear that, because I think they were
14:29
Speaker 1: holding out hope that Bobby was still alive and that
14:32
Speaker 1: if he got one of these leaflets he would finally
14:34
Speaker 1: come forward and return to the camp on his own.
14:38
Speaker 2: It always makes me wonder about those witness statements when
14:41
Speaker 2: you get a statement like that and it's like, did
14:44
Speaker 2: you actually see that, or is somehow hearing about this
14:50
Speaker 2: lost boy influencing your perception of a past event, and
14:55
Speaker 2: so you so badly want to help, but in doing so,
14:59
Speaker 2: your gift having incorrect or wrong information to law enforcement.
15:03
Speaker 2: Because how likely is it that some other boy who's
15:06
Speaker 2: hearing impaired is going to come in all on his
15:08
Speaker 2: own and start pointing to his mouth in his ears.
15:12
Speaker 2: It just seems like there's a higher probability that that
15:16
Speaker 2: was not an accurate sighting.
15:19
Speaker 1: Well, it would actually turn out that a man from
15:21
Speaker 1: Illinois came forward who claimed that he and his family
15:24
Speaker 1: were visiting SD's Park at that time, and he had
15:27
Speaker 1: his own eleven year old son who was also hearing
15:30
Speaker 1: impaired and become separated from him while they were in town.
15:33
Speaker 1: So in retrospect, it seemed very likely that the witness
15:37
Speaker 1: sightings were accurate. But it was a completely different eleven
15:39
Speaker 1: year old boy with the same disability, and unfortunately he
15:43
Speaker 1: was mistook for Bobby. And we now know that this
15:46
Speaker 1: was a mistake in sighting and it was not actually him.
15:48
Speaker 2: Well that's incredible because usually when it's an eyewitness sighting,
15:51
Speaker 2: it's just wrong. But that is why we speak in
15:54
Speaker 2: probabilities and not an absolutes.
15:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those rare cases where they
15:59
Speaker 1: actually explained the sightings that sound incredible, and you knew
16:02
Speaker 1: for certain that, oh, they didn't actually see the victim.
16:05
Speaker 1: They just, by pure chance, happened to see another boy
16:08
Speaker 1: who was exactly like him. So, sadly the search effort
16:11
Speaker 1: came to an end. They have found were unable to
16:13
Speaker 1: find any trace of Bobby, but his father did not
16:16
Speaker 1: give up. Over the course of the next year, he
16:18
Speaker 1: would return to the area to perform his own independent
16:21
Speaker 1: searches for Bobby at the camp and the surrounding wooded
16:25
Speaker 1: areas and the surrounding mountains, but unfortunately he was unable
16:28
Speaker 1: to find anything. It would be in almost an entire
16:31
Speaker 1: year before we got some sort of resolution because on
16:34
Speaker 1: July third, nineteen fifty nine, tre of councilors from Camp
16:38
Speaker 1: Saint Malo were taking a group of campers on a
16:40
Speaker 1: hike through the adjacent Rocky Mountain National Park, and one
16:44
Speaker 1: of the councilors was a young man named Neil Hewitt.
16:47
Speaker 1: And it was pretty much state or procedure for a
16:49
Speaker 1: lot of the counselors there to be seminary students who
16:52
Speaker 1: were training to become priests, and that's exactly what would
16:55
Speaker 1: happen to Hewitt. He would become a priest a couple
16:57
Speaker 1: of years later, and he claimed that he was looking
17:00
Speaker 1: down ravine and he noticed what appeared to be a
17:03
Speaker 1: scrap of clothing and a bone which was concealed beneath
17:06
Speaker 1: some heavy underbrush. So he took the bone in the
17:09
Speaker 1: clothing and brought it back to the camp's director, a
17:12
Speaker 1: priest named Reverend Richard Heaster, and he subsequently contacted the
17:17
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain National Park rangers and they decided to launch
17:20
Speaker 1: another search effort on that mountain, and sure enough, they
17:24
Speaker 1: soon found some additional clothing scraps which seemed to match
17:27
Speaker 1: the description of what Bobby was last seen wearing. And
17:31
Speaker 1: they also found some additional human remains, including a scapula,
17:34
Speaker 1: a clavical, a humorous, several vertebra, some vertebral discs, and
17:39
Speaker 1: a number of ribs. And they were not able to
17:42
Speaker 1: find a skull. And obviously they could not check for
17:45
Speaker 1: Bobby's dental records, and because this was nineteen fifty nine,
17:49
Speaker 1: they could not do DNA testing. But they also happened
17:52
Speaker 1: to find a Zenith hearing aid battery case which would
17:56
Speaker 1: match the one that Bobby often carried for his own
17:58
Speaker 1: hearing aid. Well, even though they cannot positively identifying the
18:02
Speaker 1: remains as belonging to Bobby, they figured, well, what are
18:05
Speaker 1: the odds that another hearing aid case is going to
18:07
Speaker 1: be found next to these skelt remains. So they felt
18:10
Speaker 1: comfortable saying that even though we can't use dental records
18:13
Speaker 1: and they couldn't use DNA, that they were positively certain
18:16
Speaker 1: that these remains did belong to Bobby.
18:19
Speaker 2: I think that's a pretty fair assessment. Especially when you
18:22
Speaker 2: look at the different reports for missing children in the area,
18:26
Speaker 2: how many of them were hearing impaired. I'm sure it's
18:29
Speaker 2: a pretty small list, so there's a strong likelihood that
18:32
Speaker 2: it would be Bobby. But question about Hewett's sighting of
18:37
Speaker 2: this bone and the scraps of clothing. How deep a
18:40
Speaker 2: ravine was this do you know?
18:43
Speaker 1: We don't have that information, But as we're going to
18:45
Speaker 1: talk about, Neil Hewitt is going to be a very
18:48
Speaker 1: suspicious character in this story. So many years later people
18:52
Speaker 1: have started to speculate that he didn't just happen to
18:54
Speaker 1: see these bones in the ravine, that he may have
18:57
Speaker 1: conveniently found them and turned them in because they wanted
19:01
Speaker 1: to have some sort of resolution in Bobby's case and
19:04
Speaker 1: ensure that people would stop coming into the area to
19:06
Speaker 1: search for him.
19:07
Speaker 2: That was my gut feeling, because looking down a ravine,
19:11
Speaker 2: as somebody who's done a lot of hiking, I can't
19:13
Speaker 2: imagine that I would be able to spot a bone
19:16
Speaker 2: sticking up and just like a piece of fabric amidst
19:19
Speaker 2: all the trees and all the brush and everything. I mean,
19:22
Speaker 2: it really does depend on what the ravine landscape was like,
19:26
Speaker 2: and if it was pretty far away, and I mean
19:29
Speaker 2: being a ravine, it's going to be a certain depth.
19:32
Speaker 2: It would be really hard to spot that. So it
19:34
Speaker 2: seems pretty unlikely that somebody just would happen to catch
19:39
Speaker 2: it in their eye and then be like, Oh, let
19:41
Speaker 2: me go down this ravine and check it out.
19:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we had a major search effort taking place
19:46
Speaker 1: the previous year, they were probably in that same area
19:49
Speaker 1: and no one stumbled across these remains. And we'll talk
19:52
Speaker 1: more about this later, but my personal theory was that
19:55
Speaker 1: because Bobby's father, Joseph, kept coming back to the area
19:58
Speaker 1: to perform his own independent search, I'm thinking that if
20:01
Speaker 1: there was some sort of cover up and foul play
20:04
Speaker 1: took place, that maybe the people at the camp were thinking,
20:06
Speaker 1: if he doesn't find something, then his father is just
20:09
Speaker 1: going to keep coming over and over again. But if
20:12
Speaker 1: we can plant some of the remains here and pretend
20:14
Speaker 1: that we discovered them, then maybe there will be closure
20:17
Speaker 1: here and Bobby's family will accept that he wandered off
20:20
Speaker 1: and died of died of exposure, and we can finally
20:23
Speaker 1: close this case for good.
20:25
Speaker 2: So when we're talking about these camp counselors, you said
20:28
Speaker 2: that most of them are seminary students, so they would
20:31
Speaker 2: be what between like the ages of eighteen and will
20:37
Speaker 2: depend on the twenties and mid twenties. I mean, unless
20:40
Speaker 2: they're if they were doing a PhD in theology, they
20:42
Speaker 2: could be like twenty six years old or something if
20:45
Speaker 2: they were just coming to the end of their PhD
20:47
Speaker 2: and they did it straight from like you know, bachelors
20:50
Speaker 2: to Masters to PhD. So yeah, they could be anywhere
20:54
Speaker 2: from eighteen to like, yeah, mid twenties, maybe late twenties.
20:58
Speaker 2: But it's not the like camp counselors that I was
21:01
Speaker 2: picturing in my head, which was like the teenage camp
21:03
Speaker 2: counselors that I used to have a Bible camp that
21:06
Speaker 2: were like fifteen or sixteen.
21:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think all the counselors they had there were
21:10
Speaker 1: technically adults. I think they were eighteen years older or
21:14
Speaker 1: eighteen years of age or older. And even if they
21:17
Speaker 1: were doing their own suspicious things as we're going to
21:19
Speaker 1: talk about, there are a lot of speculation that there
21:21
Speaker 1: was cover ups taking place here. So even though these
21:23
Speaker 1: seminary students like Neil Hewett were quite young, they probably
21:27
Speaker 1: would have had older mentors who would have been able
21:29
Speaker 1: to help them orchestrate a cover up if that is
21:31
Speaker 1: what happened.
21:32
Speaker 2: And I think the context of a cover up, it's
21:35
Speaker 2: important to understand their ages because when I was thinking
21:38
Speaker 2: of like camp counselors being teenagers, not eighteen, but like
21:42
Speaker 2: fifteen sixteen, I'm thinking like, how could they help orchestrate
21:46
Speaker 2: to cover up or even stay silent after maybe agreeing
21:50
Speaker 2: to it and not say anything to like their parents
21:52
Speaker 2: or somebody who would blab about it. But the fact
21:55
Speaker 2: that they're all technically adults, that makes a lot more
21:58
Speaker 2: sense to me.
22:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, because, as we're going to find out, there
22:02
Speaker 1: were a lot of other suspicious characters at the camp
22:05
Speaker 1: at the time, not just Neil Hewitt. And this is
22:08
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. But even though they first found the bones
22:11
Speaker 1: on July third, there was not actually any publicity about
22:14
Speaker 1: this in the media until July to ninth, and that
22:18
Speaker 1: was because Bobby's parents were on vacation in Pittsburgh, and
22:21
Speaker 1: of course this was the arab about cell phones, so
22:24
Speaker 1: it was really hard to reach people when they are
22:26
Speaker 1: away on vacation. So the authorities pretty much had the mindset,
22:29
Speaker 1: we don't want Joseph and Connie reading about the discovery
22:32
Speaker 1: of their son's remains in the newspaper until we have
22:35
Speaker 1: the chance to personally talk about them. And it was
22:37
Speaker 1: not until a couple days later that they were finally
22:40
Speaker 1: able to track the Bisoms down and inform them about
22:42
Speaker 1: what happened, and then it would be made national news
22:45
Speaker 1: on July the ninth. But all I'm thinking is if
22:48
Speaker 1: this happened today, then there's no way that this would
22:50
Speaker 1: not have leaked out. That if they found the remains
22:53
Speaker 1: of a missing person, it would be out on the
22:54
Speaker 1: internet immediately, and those poor parents would probably read about
22:58
Speaker 1: it on social media. But because it was nineteen fifty nine,
23:01
Speaker 1: they were able to keep it a secret until they
23:03
Speaker 1: could finally tell the parents face to face.
23:05
Speaker 2: You can't keep anything secret. Now, there'd be like one
23:08
Speaker 2: hundred tiktoks, one hundred Instagram reels, people would be posting
23:12
Speaker 2: on x and everywhere else. So I just don't think
23:15
Speaker 2: and read it. I don't think that you would be
23:17
Speaker 2: able to get away from the details of a story
23:21
Speaker 2: like that. You wouldn't be able to be on vacation
23:23
Speaker 2: and not have access to that. It's just we're in
23:26
Speaker 2: an age that's past that point. Unless you're on like
23:29
Speaker 2: some silent retreat where there is no internet and there's
23:32
Speaker 2: no looking at your phone. There would be no way
23:35
Speaker 2: you would be able to escape that information, and it
23:38
Speaker 2: does put investigators in a precarious position because you don't
23:42
Speaker 2: want the family to find out that way and when
23:44
Speaker 2: you don't have a way to contact them. They found
23:47
Speaker 2: their remains on the third and they don't get ahold
23:49
Speaker 2: of them till the sixth. It seems like that's several
23:52
Speaker 2: days where they could have had some kind of resolution
23:55
Speaker 2: and at least some kind of piece. Just on a
23:57
Speaker 2: side note, do you know what Connie's health was like
24:00
Speaker 2: at this point?
24:02
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like she was being hospitalized or anything.
24:04
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like she was utterly devastated when
24:07
Speaker 1: she was told that Bobby's remains have been found, But
24:10
Speaker 1: I don't think she had to go back into the
24:12
Speaker 1: hospital or anything. But I'm sure they were keeping that
24:15
Speaker 1: in mind, saying that she had to be hospitalized when
24:17
Speaker 1: her son went missing. So we have to tell her sensitively,
24:20
Speaker 1: and we can't have her reading about it in the newspaper.
24:23
Speaker 1: So that's why it's very good that they were able
24:25
Speaker 1: to keep this dark until they were able to talk
24:27
Speaker 1: to Joseph and Connie face to face, so there were
24:31
Speaker 1: no apparent signs of foul play on the remains, so
24:34
Speaker 1: the coroner was inclined to believe the Bobby had simply
24:36
Speaker 1: wandered away from the camp and gotten lost, and his
24:39
Speaker 1: death was likely the result of exhaustion and exposure. And
24:43
Speaker 1: Joseph and Connie they accepted the coroner's conclusion and didn't
24:46
Speaker 1: think that anything suspicious took place, And they even made
24:49
Speaker 1: a public statement saying that they did not hold any
24:51
Speaker 1: resentment towards the camp or the counselors, and they actually
24:54
Speaker 1: praised them for having taken good care of Bobby while
24:57
Speaker 1: he was there, because as far as they knew, he
25:00
Speaker 1: always had a great time there. And of course these
25:02
Speaker 1: words would turn out to be ironic when you learn
25:05
Speaker 1: about some of the new information that would serve as
25:07
Speaker 1: decades later. So sadly, Joseph and Connie I don't believe
25:11
Speaker 1: they went on to have any more children. Joseph died
25:14
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one and Connie passed away in
25:16
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. And as morbid as it might
25:19
Speaker 1: be to say this, that was probably a blessing in
25:21
Speaker 1: disguise that they died before all this new information came
25:24
Speaker 1: out about Bobby's disappearance many years later. Because they were
25:28
Speaker 1: pretty much at peace, they figured, well, we lost her son.
25:31
Speaker 1: He died of exposure, but they didn't have to hear
25:34
Speaker 1: any information to make them believe he was being abused
25:37
Speaker 1: or might have been murdered. So if they had to
25:39
Speaker 1: hear about this scandal that we're going to talk about
25:42
Speaker 1: before they passed away, it would have been just devastating.
25:44
Speaker 1: So in a way, it's very good that they died
25:47
Speaker 1: at peace not having to learn any of these horrible
25:49
Speaker 1: things that potentially happened to Bobby.
25:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I one hundred percent agree with your perspective there,
25:54
Speaker 2: because it's one thing to believe that your child wandered
25:58
Speaker 2: off and succumbed to the elements, but it's a whole
26:00
Speaker 2: other thing to believe that they were sexually abused and
26:03
Speaker 2: murdered at the hands of potentially their camp counselors who
26:07
Speaker 2: were supposed to protect them.
26:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And like we mentioned earlier, back in the
26:12
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, people didn't have these suspicions about priests like
26:16
Speaker 1: sexually abusing boys and like the church helping to cover
26:20
Speaker 1: it up. So I'm sure they still fought the best
26:23
Speaker 1: of the counselors at the camp until the day they died,
26:26
Speaker 1: and just never the idea of Bobby being abused and
26:29
Speaker 1: murdered just never crossed their mind. So the case would
26:33
Speaker 1: return to the spotlight in October of twenty nineteen, when
26:37
Speaker 1: Robert Troyer, the former US Attorney of Colorado, released a
26:40
Speaker 1: report titled Roman Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children in
26:44
Speaker 1: Colorado from nineteen fifty in twenty nineteen. The report came
26:49
Speaker 1: about after an independent review of records from the Archdiocese
26:52
Speaker 1: of Denver, the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and the Diocese
26:56
Speaker 1: of Pablo as the dioceses and the Colorado Attorney General's
26:59
Speaker 1: off has had a degree to fund an investigation into
27:02
Speaker 1: child's sex abuse allegations against Catholic priests, and the final
27:07
Speaker 1: numbers have since increased, but back in twenty nineteen, the
27:10
Speaker 1: initial report concluded that a total of forty three priests
27:13
Speaker 1: had molested at least one hundred and sixty six children
27:16
Speaker 1: in Colorado between nineteen fifty and twenty nineteen, and most
27:20
Speaker 1: of these incidents were covered up by the church and
27:23
Speaker 1: never reported to the police. And it would turn out
27:26
Speaker 1: that at least three of these children were abused at
27:28
Speaker 1: Camp Saint Malo from the late nineteen forties until the
27:31
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and one of these children claimed that he
27:34
Speaker 1: had been victimized by the camp's original founder of Reverend
27:38
Speaker 1: Joseph Bassetti, and while they were still seminary students at
27:41
Speaker 1: the time, two other accused priests in the report had
27:44
Speaker 1: been working at the campus counselors at the time that
27:47
Speaker 1: Bobby went missing. One of them sounds like a real monster.
27:51
Speaker 1: His name was Harold Robert White, who has been accused
27:54
Speaker 1: of abusing at least seventy children throughout the course of
27:56
Speaker 1: his life and described as the quote unquote most a
28:00
Speaker 1: clergy child sex abuser in Colorado history. In total, White
28:04
Speaker 1: was assigned to six different parishes in one twenty one
28:07
Speaker 1: year period, as it seems apparent now that the church
28:10
Speaker 1: received numerous allegations of abuse against him, but then decided
28:13
Speaker 1: to cover it up by transferring him around, and eventually
28:16
Speaker 1: came to the point where the amount of accusations were
28:19
Speaker 1: so large that White was finally removed from the priesthood
28:22
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three, and he was subsequently defrocked by
28:25
Speaker 1: the Vatican in two thousand and four before he died
28:28
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six at the age of seventy three.
28:31
Speaker 1: But of course, he never faced any punishment from law
28:34
Speaker 1: enforcement about the whole thing. And even though there has
28:37
Speaker 1: never been any evidence to service that White may have
28:40
Speaker 1: personally abused Bobby, the idea that he was a seminary
28:43
Speaker 1: student and a counselor at the camp back at the
28:46
Speaker 1: time Bobby went missing really makes your skin crawl once
28:49
Speaker 1: you learn about all the abuse he got away with
28:51
Speaker 1: throughout the course of his life.
28:54
Speaker 2: And especially when they're saying at least seventy children in Colorado,
28:59
Speaker 2: and so if there's saying at the very least, that
29:02
Speaker 2: means that there's probably more, There could be double that
29:04
Speaker 2: there could be trouble that because we know the numbers
29:07
Speaker 2: of people who come forward and tell the stories about
29:10
Speaker 2: their sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, it's
29:13
Speaker 2: not like it's all of them, you know what I mean.
29:16
Speaker 2: It's very difficult, particularly for men, to come forward with
29:20
Speaker 2: their stories. It creates a whole host of issues where
29:24
Speaker 2: they question themselves on so many different levels, and it
29:28
Speaker 2: can create major issues within their relationships, to actually say
29:32
Speaker 2: that out loud and know that there's no legal recourse
29:36
Speaker 2: in most cases because of the way that the laws
29:38
Speaker 2: are structured. There's a statute of limitations. So we can
29:42
Speaker 2: know that this person did all of these horrible things,
29:46
Speaker 2: but never to be able to hold this person to
29:50
Speaker 2: account legally and to have them be punished is such
29:53
Speaker 2: a travesty of justice.
29:56
Speaker 1: It is. I mean, even though White's reputation has been
29:59
Speaker 1: ruined because been defrocked, this happened after he was long
30:02
Speaker 1: retired and shortly before he died, so he never had
30:05
Speaker 1: to face any legal repercussions. He never had to spend
30:08
Speaker 1: any time in prison. And as we're going to talk about,
30:11
Speaker 1: you're correct a lot of these abuse allegations only come
30:14
Speaker 1: out after these child victims reach adulthood, and they always
30:18
Speaker 1: say that, well, at the time, I thought this sort
30:20
Speaker 1: of thing was normal, or I thought that, well, I've
30:22
Speaker 1: been taught never to speak out against a priest, so
30:25
Speaker 1: maybe I deserved what happened. And it's only once they
30:27
Speaker 1: reach adulthood and find out how widespread this was that
30:30
Speaker 1: they feel comfortable coming forward and sharing their story. But
30:33
Speaker 1: like you said, the statute of limitations for the most part,
30:36
Speaker 1: have usually expired, so these priests can never be arrested
30:39
Speaker 1: or punished for what they did.
30:41
Speaker 2: And it's so important too when thinking about religious sexual abuse.
30:46
Speaker 2: The power dynamic between a child and someone who even
30:50
Speaker 2: if they are a seminary student, they aren't a priest
30:52
Speaker 2: yet there is a huge power dynamic that person is
30:56
Speaker 2: going to have a direct lind to God, because that's
30:58
Speaker 2: the way that the Catholic churches said up so it's
31:01
Speaker 2: not like this person is just a regular older person,
31:05
Speaker 2: which that in and of itself creates a power dynamic
31:08
Speaker 2: with a child. And then you're going to have manipulation,
31:11
Speaker 2: and you're going to have somebody who's brainwashing them to
31:14
Speaker 2: say that like this is normal or this is your
31:16
Speaker 2: path to God, or whatever they say. But you also
31:20
Speaker 2: have parents who are like, oh, this person is paying
31:23
Speaker 2: special attention to my child. That must mean that my
31:25
Speaker 2: child is special. And they also know how to target
31:28
Speaker 2: children that have some type of issue. And it could
31:32
Speaker 2: be in Bobby's case that he was hearing impaired, and
31:35
Speaker 2: in other children's cases that maybe their families were really busy,
31:39
Speaker 2: both parents were working all the time, or was a
31:41
Speaker 2: single parent household. There is something about that child that
31:45
Speaker 2: makes that person think like, Okay, I can target them
31:48
Speaker 2: and I can potentially get away with it. They're not
31:51
Speaker 2: going to pick a child where they think, Okay, if
31:53
Speaker 2: I target this child, they're going to go run and
31:55
Speaker 2: tell Oh.
31:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you mentioned Bobby because of his hearing impairments.
32:00
Speaker 1: If he was targeted, I think that's exactly why it happened,
32:02
Speaker 1: because he had trouble speaking, he had trouble communicating, and
32:06
Speaker 1: it would be very hard for him to convey what
32:08
Speaker 1: actually happened to him, even if he used sign language.
32:11
Speaker 1: So I can understand why he would be targeted if
32:14
Speaker 1: he was being groomed by one of the counselors there.
32:18
Speaker 2: It's hard enough for children to find the language to
32:20
Speaker 2: describe sexual abuse as it is. But then when you
32:24
Speaker 2: think of a child who's hearing impaired and they're using
32:27
Speaker 2: sign language, do they have the language capacity within what
32:32
Speaker 2: they've learned at that age to be able to convey
32:35
Speaker 2: exactly what happened? And I don't know what the answer is.
32:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is pretty sad because as we're going to
32:40
Speaker 1: talk about, we're going to get another eyewitness report from
32:44
Speaker 1: a child who said that they saw Bobby on the
32:46
Speaker 1: day he went missing, and thought he seemed pretty upset
32:48
Speaker 1: about something, but just was unable to communicate what was wrong.
32:52
Speaker 1: So a surprise surprise, it turned out that one of
32:54
Speaker 1: the other priests named in this report who had been
32:56
Speaker 1: accused of abuse was Neil Hewitt, the same counselor who
33:00
Speaker 1: had discovered Bobby's remains. He had studied at the Saint
33:04
Speaker 1: Thomas Seminary in Denver and was officially ordained as a
33:07
Speaker 1: priest in nineteen sixty two, four years after Bobby went
33:10
Speaker 1: missing and he decided to leave the priest who had
33:13
Speaker 1: eighteen years later when he decided to get married, And
33:17
Speaker 1: for many decades people really didn't suspect that there was
33:20
Speaker 1: anything wrong with Hewitt. But it all started in two
33:22
Speaker 1: thousand and two when a woman named Donna Ballentine was
33:26
Speaker 1: going through a box of her deceased mother's papers and
33:30
Speaker 1: uncovered a letter which had been written by her cousin
33:32
Speaker 1: named Stuart Sake, who had taken his own life with
33:36
Speaker 1: a self inflicted gunshot wound. He definitely had a very
33:39
Speaker 1: troubled life, and she read this line in his letter
33:42
Speaker 1: that really struck her, which said, quote, dear Neil it's
33:46
Speaker 1: been twenty four years since you sexually molested me. I
33:49
Speaker 1: have been an alcoholic for twenty four years. End quote.
33:52
Speaker 1: And the letter apparently detailed a lot of sexual abuse
33:55
Speaker 1: that Stuart claimed he had suffered as a teenager by
33:59
Speaker 1: a priest named Neil who would take him on trips
34:02
Speaker 1: and use alcohol in order to groom him. And now
34:05
Speaker 1: he was saying that this was the source of his
34:07
Speaker 1: substance abuse disorder that he developed as an adult. Well,
34:11
Speaker 1: Donni instantly figured out that the Neil that Stuart was
34:14
Speaker 1: referring to was Neil Hewitt, who had been a big
34:17
Speaker 1: part of her family's life. So she took the letter
34:20
Speaker 1: to the Archdiocese of Denver and filed a formal complaint
34:23
Speaker 1: against Hewett. And this is when the House of Cards
34:26
Speaker 1: started tumbling down.
34:28
Speaker 2: That is just so heartbreaking. It reminds me of what
34:31
Speaker 2: is that movie? It's Spotlight, right, I.
34:33
Speaker 1: Was going to talk about Spotlight in a minute, Yeah, because.
34:36
Speaker 2: You just think of all of these adults who are
34:38
Speaker 2: coming forward with these stories, but it has left such
34:41
Speaker 2: an indelible mark on their lives, and most of them
34:44
Speaker 2: have been unable to process exactly what happened. And so
34:48
Speaker 2: in order to cope with their very difficult feelings regarding
34:52
Speaker 2: what happened to them, the shame, the guilt, all of
34:55
Speaker 2: these things that unfairly sexual abuse survivors often feel. So
35:00
Speaker 2: they would turn to drugs or alcohol, and then when
35:03
Speaker 2: coming forward as adults against the Catholic Church, they only
35:07
Speaker 2: would use that to discredit them, which was so so heartbreaking.
35:11
Speaker 2: And it's like most of them would likely not have
35:14
Speaker 2: ended up with substance use or alcohol use disorder had
35:17
Speaker 2: they not been exposed to such egregious things by an
35:22
Speaker 2: institution that should have protected them. And like in Bobby's case,
35:28
Speaker 2: with the one priest you talked about, you molested like
35:30
Speaker 2: at least seventy children. Okay, well, they moved him six times.
35:35
Speaker 2: They had the opportunity to defrock him any one of
35:39
Speaker 2: those times because each time it would have been a
35:41
Speaker 2: major infraction to move a priest. It's because something really
35:46
Speaker 2: terrible happened. So they could have taken it upon themselves
35:50
Speaker 2: to take responsibility and say this guy's out, this is
35:53
Speaker 2: ruining the culture of the Catholic Church from the inside.
35:57
Speaker 2: But instead they just let it rock.
36:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like they figured that this is going to
36:02
Speaker 1: stain our reputation forever if anyone finds out that a
36:05
Speaker 1: priest is sexually abusing children, but because they don't do anything,
36:09
Speaker 1: they wind up getting to do it over and over
36:11
Speaker 1: again to many children over the course of several years,
36:14
Speaker 1: and that stains the church's reputations more a lot more
36:18
Speaker 1: than they would have if they had just taken action
36:21
Speaker 1: and saw legal action against this priest and allowed his
36:24
Speaker 1: story to become public. But as we're going to find
36:27
Speaker 1: out here, it sounds like Neil Hewitt did this repeatedly
36:31
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of different children over the course
36:33
Speaker 1: of two or three decades, and the only reaction to
36:37
Speaker 1: it was transferring them around to different parishes and covering
36:40
Speaker 1: it up. And you mentioned the movie Spotlight in case
36:44
Speaker 1: you haven't heard of it. It came out in twenty
36:46
Speaker 1: fifteen and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Had
36:50
Speaker 1: an a list cast of Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, and
36:53
Speaker 1: Rachel mccadams who play a bunch of journalists for the
36:56
Speaker 1: Boston Globe, and it was based on a real life
36:58
Speaker 1: investigation where they looked into the systemic sexual abuse of
37:02
Speaker 1: children by Catholic priests and hundreds of victims eventually came
37:05
Speaker 1: forward to share their stories after this series of articles
37:08
Speaker 1: came out, and one of them was another man named
37:11
Speaker 1: Michael Smolanik, who watched Spotlight in twenty fifteen and finally
37:15
Speaker 1: decided to come forward and make his own accusations against
37:19
Speaker 1: Neil Hewitt. He filed a formal complaint with the Archdiocese
37:22
Speaker 1: of Denver to say that Hewitt had habitually sexually abused
37:26
Speaker 1: him over the course of many years when he was
37:28
Speaker 1: a child, and he even went to the trouble of
37:30
Speaker 1: phoning up Hewitt to ask if he remembered what he
37:33
Speaker 1: did to him, and Hewitt apparently actually admitted to it
37:37
Speaker 1: on the call. So this was pretty much evidence that
37:40
Speaker 1: finally got Hewitt to frock by the Vatican in twenty eighteen,
37:45
Speaker 1: But of course he had been retired from the priesthood
37:47
Speaker 1: for nearly thirty years at that point, and because of
37:49
Speaker 1: the Statute of Limitations, they couldn't prosecute him. So it
37:53
Speaker 1: was another case where like a priest had his reputation destroyed,
37:56
Speaker 1: but he didn't have to spend any time in prison
37:58
Speaker 1: because so much time had passed and it would turn
38:01
Speaker 1: out that he had been accused of sexually abusing at
38:03
Speaker 1: least nine children at four different parishes over the course
38:07
Speaker 1: of eighteen years.
38:09
Speaker 2: That is horrific. And to think this is the person
38:12
Speaker 2: that discovered Bobby's body.
38:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And we're going to talk about now why
38:17
Speaker 1: people got more suspicious and started to wonder if maybe
38:20
Speaker 1: Bobby was abused and that some sort of cover up
38:23
Speaker 1: took place in part because of his death. So when
38:27
Speaker 1: all these sexual abuse allegations started coming out, Kevin Vaughn,
38:31
Speaker 1: an investigative journalist for Channel nine News at the Denver
38:34
Speaker 1: based TV station KUSA, decided to start looking into these
38:38
Speaker 1: allegations and he actually paid a visit to Neil Hewitt,
38:42
Speaker 1: who is now eighty three years old and living in Tucson, Arizona.
38:47
Speaker 1: This took place in April of twenty nineteen, which was
38:50
Speaker 1: over sixty years after Bobby originally went missing, and while
38:53
Speaker 1: Hugh would not agree to a formal interview, he did
38:56
Speaker 1: agree to answer some of Vaughn's questions on the porch
38:59
Speaker 1: for about thirty minutes, but he was unaware that Vaughan
39:02
Speaker 1: had secretly set up a camera in order to record
39:05
Speaker 1: the conversation from a distance, and when asked if all
39:08
Speaker 1: the allegations from Stuart Sake and Michael Smellanic were true,
39:12
Speaker 1: he would pretty much agreed to them. He said, yeah,
39:15
Speaker 1: I did this, and I'm really sorry for it, but
39:17
Speaker 1: there's nothing else we can do. So he was now
39:20
Speaker 1: finally trying to get all this off his chest and
39:23
Speaker 1: admit to all these horrible things that he had done
39:25
Speaker 1: when he was a priest. But during the conversation, Kevin
39:28
Speaker 1: Vond decided to bring up the death of Bobby Bisop
39:31
Speaker 1: because he knew from reading news reports that Hewitt was
39:34
Speaker 1: the counselor who had discovered Bobby's remains all the way
39:38
Speaker 1: back in nineteen fifty nine, and all of a sudden,
39:41
Speaker 1: Hewitt started bringing up this story about the day that
39:44
Speaker 1: Bobby went missing, claiming that he had been running the
39:47
Speaker 1: camp snack bar and Bobby attempted to buy some candy
39:50
Speaker 1: from him, and Hewitt said that he told Bobby that
39:53
Speaker 1: he had already had too many sweets and shouldn't have anymore.
39:56
Speaker 1: So Bobby started crying and took off, and Hewitt said
39:59
Speaker 1: that there was a the last time he saw him.
40:01
Speaker 1: But then Hewitt said this really odd remark quote, I
40:04
Speaker 1: did not do anything to him except not give him
40:07
Speaker 1: more candy, and of course Vaughn found this to be
40:10
Speaker 1: very strange because he had not accused Hewitt of doing
40:14
Speaker 1: anything to Bobby. He just said that line completely out
40:16
Speaker 1: of left field. So this compelled Vaughn to start digging
40:19
Speaker 1: into this case because, as you might recall, the official
40:22
Speaker 1: story of how Bobby went missing is that he was
40:25
Speaker 1: fishing by a creek and was supposed to be coming
40:28
Speaker 1: back for supper before he suddenly disappeared. And nobody had
40:32
Speaker 1: ever heard this story about him going to a snack
40:35
Speaker 1: bar and Hewett refusing to give him candy and then
40:37
Speaker 1: Bobby running him away crying. So Bond started thinking could
40:41
Speaker 1: there be more to this story? We did that.
40:43
Speaker 2: Whole episode on statement analysis, and I can just tell
40:46
Speaker 2: you from a statement analysis perspective, if somebody starts denying
40:50
Speaker 2: something before they've been accused, depending on what their baseline is,
40:54
Speaker 2: if there's somebody that's just highly paranoid. Okay, that's one thing,
40:57
Speaker 2: But it seems highly suspicious that he would be denying
41:01
Speaker 2: something when he hasn't been accused, and that he's coming
41:03
Speaker 2: up with an alibi without being asked where he was
41:07
Speaker 2: or what he was doing, and specifically saying I didn't
41:10
Speaker 2: do anything to him except not give him some candy.
41:12
Speaker 2: And it also in and of itself, is a little
41:15
Speaker 2: bit weird. So if you've got this candy bar where
41:17
Speaker 2: you're selling candy, it's because the camp is trying to
41:20
Speaker 2: make money. Are you then really going to turn down
41:23
Speaker 2: the money from one of the campers who's trying to
41:25
Speaker 2: buy candy and tell them that they can't. Is there
41:28
Speaker 2: some rule with how much you can buy. It's just
41:31
Speaker 2: it's such a weird story, and after hearing that, it
41:36
Speaker 2: makes me think that there's a strong likelihood, especially when
41:39
Speaker 2: we combine it with Hewitt being the one to point
41:41
Speaker 2: out the remains, that he had something either to do
41:44
Speaker 2: with the death or the cover up.
41:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because nobody had ever heard this candy bar
41:50
Speaker 1: story back in nineteen fifty eight or nineteen fifty nine.
41:53
Speaker 1: So it's so weird that we're hearing this for the
41:55
Speaker 1: first time sixty years after the fact. And what's weird
41:59
Speaker 1: is that if you watch some of the footage of
42:01
Speaker 1: this recorded conversation that Hewitt had on his porch with
42:04
Speaker 1: Kevin Vond, he's not denying all these terrible things he's doing.
42:08
Speaker 1: He said that Oh, yeah, I molested that boy and
42:10
Speaker 1: I feel bad for it, and I'm sure he feels that. Well,
42:13
Speaker 1: I can say whatever I want because I've already been
42:15
Speaker 1: defrocked and because of the Statute of Limitations, I will
42:18
Speaker 1: never be prosecuted for this. But of course there is
42:21
Speaker 1: no statute of limitations on murder, so it just seems
42:24
Speaker 1: weird that he's willing to confess all this horrible stuff,
42:27
Speaker 1: but then is getting very defensive when talking about Bobby
42:30
Speaker 1: and saying I didn't do anything to him. So you're wondering, hm,
42:33
Speaker 1: is he paranoid that he's going to be prosecuted for
42:36
Speaker 1: murder or something like that, and that's why he's making
42:39
Speaker 1: up this story completely at the left field. So that
42:42
Speaker 1: brings it in to part one of our series about
42:44
Speaker 1: the unexplained death of Bobby Bizop. Join us next week
42:47
Speaker 1: for part two.
42:48
Speaker 2: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
42:50
Speaker 2: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
42:52
Speaker 1: Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
42:55
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
42:58
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
43:02
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
43:05
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
43:07
Speaker 1: tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
43:11
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
43:15
Speaker 1: The Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
43:18
Speaker 1: and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
43:21
Speaker 1: ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is
43:24
Speaker 1: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsawved Mysteries,
43:28
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
43:31
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
43:35
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
43:38
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
43:41
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
43:45
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
43:47
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
43:50
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
43:53
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
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Speaker 1: Tier three.
43:57
Speaker 3: So I want to let you know a little bit
43:59
Speaker 3: about the Jewels and ash Patreons. So there's early ad
44:02
Speaker 3: free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've bought our
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Speaker 3: Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
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Speaker 3: they're not very mini, but they're just too short. To
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Speaker 3: turn into a series and we're really enjoying doing those,
44:13
Speaker 3: so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
44:15
Speaker 2: We'll link them in the show notes.
44:17
Speaker 1: So I want to thank you all for listening, and
44:19
Speaker 1: any chance you have to share us on social media
44:21
Speaker 1: with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
44:24
Speaker 1: appreciate it. You can email us at the Pathwentchili at
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Speaker 1: gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at
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Speaker 1: the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle
44:32
Speaker 1: up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
44:36
Speaker 2: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy