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Transcript

The Joyce LePage Murder Case · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture this, Right, it is Friday morning, July twenty third,
0:03
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. You are standing on the campus of
0:06
Speaker 1: Washington State University in Pullman.
0:09
Speaker 2: And it is the middle of summer. So that usual chaotic,
0:12
Speaker 2: buzzing student energy is just completely gone.
0:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. The air is heavy, it is sun drenched,
0:18
Speaker 1: and it is just incredibly quiet, almost like the whole
0:21
Speaker 1: campus is holding its breath. Right, So, a university custodian
0:25
Speaker 1: is doing his morning rounds, his keys are jingling in
0:28
Speaker 1: the silence, and he walks into the lounge of Stevens Hall.
0:32
Speaker 1: Now Stephen's Hall is a dormitory that has been totally
0:35
Speaker 1: locked down and closed off for summer renovations.
0:37
Speaker 2: Right, so he is expecting to find just the usual
0:40
Speaker 2: remnants of a construction site, you know, plaster dust coating
0:43
Speaker 2: the floors, maybe some forgotten hand tools, the smell of
0:46
Speaker 2: fresh paint exactly.
0:47
Speaker 1: But instead he steps into the lounge and finds a bizarre,
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Speaker 1: just deeply unsettling site that instantly makes the hair on
0:54
Speaker 1: the back of his neck stand up.
0:55
Speaker 2: Because right in the middle of that room, a massive
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Speaker 2: five by five foot swap of the dark green carpet
1:02
Speaker 2: is just missing, just gone, completely gone, and it hasn't
1:06
Speaker 2: been carefully lifted by professional contractors, you know, rolling up
1:10
Speaker 2: the edges. It looks frantic. It looks like it has
1:12
Speaker 2: been furiously hacked out of the floor, probably with a
1:15
Speaker 2: pair of heavy shears or scissors, leaving this jagged, ugly
1:19
Speaker 2: square of bare, cold concrete.
1:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the missing carpet isn't even the most disturbing part,
1:24
Speaker 1: because sitting just a few feet away from that jagged
1:27
Speaker 1: square of concrete is an abandoned woven purse.
1:31
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Yeah.
1:32
Speaker 1: Inside that purse, the custodian finds a headscarf, a German
1:35
Speaker 1: language textbook, and several highly personal handwritten letters.
1:39
Speaker 2: So this clearly isn't just bizarre campus vandalists.
1:42
Speaker 1: No, not at all, And that is what we are
1:44
Speaker 1: getting into today. In this deep dive. We are opening
1:46
Speaker 1: up a stack of original case files, forensic reports, and
1:50
Speaker 1: decades of investigative notes to understand what really happened in
1:53
Speaker 1: that room.
1:54
Speaker 2: Because that violently hacked square of carpet is the very
1:58
Speaker 2: first chilling physical plue in the fifty five year old
2:01
Speaker 2: unsolved murder of a brilliant young woman named Joyce Lapage.
2:05
Speaker 1: Right, we are going to walk you through the timeline,
2:08
Speaker 1: dissect the forensics, and examine the psychology of the suspects.
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Speaker 1: To figure out how a vibrant college student vanished into
2:15
Speaker 1: thin air and.
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Speaker 2: To understand the sheer strangeness of that purse sitting in
2:19
Speaker 2: an abandoned, lockdown dorm room on a Friday morning, we
2:23
Speaker 2: first have to look at the psychology of who Joyce
2:25
Speaker 2: was and well, more importantly, why she was hiding.
2:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, hiding is the keyword here.
2:31
Speaker 2: It is so. She was twenty one years old, a
2:33
Speaker 2: farmer's daughter from Pascal, Washington, but she completely defied the
2:37
Speaker 2: conventional mold of a nineteen seventy one co ed. Her
2:41
Speaker 2: mind was just always moving.
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Speaker 1: She was a really dynamic person totally.
2:44
Speaker 2: She was taking intensive summer classes in chemistry and German
2:47
Speaker 2: to graduate early. She practiced meditation, She played the piano beautifully,
2:52
Speaker 2: and she listened to heavy rock bands like Steppenwolf.
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Speaker 1: Not to mention, she was literally taking to the skies.
2:57
Speaker 1: She actually earned her private pilot's license when she was
3:00
Speaker 1: just eighteen years old, and she spent her free summer
3:03
Speaker 1: afternoons siddiving, which is amazing, right. This is a young
3:06
Speaker 1: woman who was adventurous highly capable and just fiercely independent.
3:12
Speaker 1: But that fierce independence had recently driven her into a
3:15
Speaker 1: highly precarious living situation.
3:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, the roommate's situation exactly.
3:20
Speaker 1: For the summer, she was subleasing a room in an
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Speaker 1: off campus apartment with a male roommate named Bruce Beerbaum.
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Speaker 1: By all accounts, she found him incredibly overbearing and she
3:30
Speaker 1: actively wanted to avoid him, which.
3:32
Speaker 2: I think anyone who has ever done the college roommate
3:34
Speaker 2: coin toss can relate to right. Sometimes you just need
3:37
Speaker 2: to get.
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Speaker 1: Away, absolutely so think of it like an aircraft turning
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Speaker 1: off its transponder to drop off the radar. Joyce decided
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Speaker 1: that to protect her peace of mind, she was going
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Speaker 1: to go completely dark. She quietly took over the head
3:50
Speaker 1: residence room in Stephen's Hall, which is that same dorm
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Speaker 1: that was closed for renovations. She would literally sneak in
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Speaker 1: through a ground floor window just to sleep.
3:59
Speaker 2: She essentially created a secret sanctuary. In a letter to
4:02
Speaker 2: a friend, she described using the empty dorm as her
4:05
Speaker 2: private hideaway where she could shower, watch television, and play
4:08
Speaker 2: the piano in the lounge without anyone bothering her.
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Speaker 1: It sounds kind of peaceful. Until you realize the risk.
4:14
Speaker 2: Exactly, because if we connect this to the bigger picture,
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Speaker 2: here is the profound danger in that kind of isolation.
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Speaker 2: She was so hyper focused on avoiding one specific annoyance
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Speaker 2: her roommate that she created a massive, dangerous blind spot
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Speaker 2: in her daily routine.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody knew where she really was, right.
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Speaker 2: Her family back in Pasco had no idea she was
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Speaker 2: sleeping in a construction zone. Her friends knew about the hideaway,
4:40
Speaker 2: but they weren't checking on her there. She made herself
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Speaker 2: invisible to the very people who could have recognized she
4:46
Speaker 2: was in trouble.
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Speaker 1: And that illusion of safety was actually already cracking. In
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Speaker 1: one of her undated letters, she casually mentions a terrifying
4:54
Speaker 1: close call.
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Speaker 2: Oh, this part is so creepy, it really is.
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Speaker 1: She writes that a workman accidentally stumbled upon her while
5:00
Speaker 1: she was hanging out in the head residence room. He
5:02
Speaker 1: asked her where the storm windows were, mumbled an apology,
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Speaker 1: and then.
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Speaker 2: Just left just left her there.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she brushed it off, but the reality is chilling.
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Speaker 1: I mean, a stranger now knew that a twenty one
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Speaker 1: year old woman was living completely alone in an otherwise
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Speaker 1: abandoned unsecured building.
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Speaker 2: Which perfectly and tragically sets the stage for a timeline
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Speaker 2: where her absence went unnoticed for entirely too long because
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Speaker 2: she had effectively erased herself from the grid. That crucial
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Speaker 2: window of time where someone might have intervened, Yes, just vanished.
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Speaker 1: So let's unpack this and actually reconstructs that last twenty
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Speaker 1: four hours. Just a couple of days prior, on July twentieth,
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Speaker 1: she wrote a warm letter to her parents. She told
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Speaker 1: them she was planning to come home to Pasco that
5:43
Speaker 1: upcoming weekend.
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Speaker 2: Right, she had stuff to do.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she had an eye doctor appointment scheduled, and she
5:48
Speaker 1: was really excited to watch the Waterfall's annual boat race.
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Speaker 1: She was looking forward to the future. Then comes Thursday,
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Speaker 1: July twenty second, her last known day. Right, she spends
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Speaker 1: the afternoon doing what she loves. She goes skydiving at
6:01
Speaker 1: the Pullman Moscow Regional Airport with her good friend hol
6:04
Speaker 1: Wood and his girlfriend Patty. After they wrap up the lesson,
6:07
Speaker 1: the three of them ride over the border to Moscow,
6:09
Speaker 1: Idaho to grab a few beers at the Spruce Tavern.
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Speaker 2: Sound like a perfect care free summer evening.
6:15
Speaker 1: It does, and around ten zero pm, Hal and Patty
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Speaker 1: drop Joyce off in the front yard of her official
6:20
Speaker 1: off campus apartment. They say they're goodbyes. They watch her
6:24
Speaker 1: standing in the yard, and they drive off into the
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Speaker 1: night on their motorcycle. That is the very last confirmed
6:30
Speaker 1: sighting of Joyce Lapage alive.
6:32
Speaker 2: Because the sun comes up on Friday, July twenty third,
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Speaker 2: and the alarm bells start ringing, but because of her
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Speaker 2: isolated living situation, they only ring in total isolation.
6:42
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
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Speaker 2: Well, at eight twenty two am, the campus custodian finds
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Speaker 2: the hacked carpet and the purse in the dorm lounge.
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Speaker 2: He turns it in, but the campus police have absolutely
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Speaker 2: no context for it. Two hours later, Joyce fails to
6:54
Speaker 2: show up for a ten thirty am German.
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Speaker 1: Exam, which is very unlike her.
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Speaker 2: Extremely That afternoon, she is a no show for a
7:02
Speaker 2: four thirty pm skydiving lesson with how Later that evening
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Speaker 2: she misses a tentative date she had arranged to go
7:07
Speaker 2: to a high school dance in Oakdale with an agriculture
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Speaker 2: teacher named Mike Finch.
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Speaker 1: Right, So that is four separate people or places that
7:14
Speaker 1: missed her in one day exactly.
7:16
Speaker 2: And by the time the weekend rolls around, she completely
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Speaker 2: misses her trip home to Pasco. Her family is calling
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Speaker 2: her apartment, but her roommate Bruce just assumes she's still
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Speaker 2: dodging him and tells them she isn't around.
7:27
Speaker 1: It takes a full week and a half for all
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Speaker 1: those isolated alarm bells to finally sync up. On Monday,
7:32
Speaker 1: August second, her father, Walter, realizes something is horribly wrong
7:37
Speaker 1: and officially calls the campus police to report her missing,
7:40
Speaker 1: which changes everything. Yeah. This is when the investigation shifts
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Speaker 1: from a passive inquiry into a physical hunt across the
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Speaker 1: landscape of eastern Washington, and the very first thing police
7:50
Speaker 1: start looking for is her car, which is a light
7:53
Speaker 1: green nineteen sixty six Dodge Coronet.
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Speaker 2: And they actually find it pretty fast.
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Speaker 1: They do by one four fromt pm that same day.
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Speaker 1: They find but the location makes zero sense. It's parked
8:03
Speaker 1: outside a fraternity house at seventeen oh four ople Street,
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Speaker 1: which is a full seven blocks away from.
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Speaker 2: Her apartment, right just completely out of the way.
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Speaker 1: Tucked under the windshield wiper is a parking ticket dated
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Speaker 1: July twenty ninth, meaning it had been sitting there for days.
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Speaker 1: The doors are locked. Peering through the blast, police can
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Speaker 1: actually see her textbooks, scattered papers, and a pair of
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Speaker 1: women's shoes left inside.
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Speaker 2: And this is where we run into the profound frustration
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Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy one police procedures. The Washington State Crime
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Speaker 2: Lab was called in to process the Dodge coronet right
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Speaker 2: there on Ople Street. But we have to understand why
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Speaker 2: they handled it the way they did.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a very different time for forensics exactly.
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Speaker 2: In that era, forensic processing was highly visual, not microscopic.
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Speaker 2: Investigators looked at the car, saw no shattered glass, no
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Speaker 2: pooled blood, and no obvious signs of a violent struggle.
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Speaker 1: So they just assumed it wasn't a crime scene.
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Speaker 2: Pretty much because there was no glaring visual evidence of
8:59
Speaker 2: a crime. Standard operating procedure dictated that they simply hand
9:02
Speaker 2: the vehicle back to her family. Current investigators strongly suspect
9:06
Speaker 2: the car was never thoroughly dusted for fingerprints, nor was
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Speaker 2: a vacuum for trace evidence like hair or fibers.
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Speaker 1: Which is just heartbreaking. They effectively threw away what was
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Speaker 1: arguably the most crucial piece of physical evidence outside the
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Speaker 1: dorm room itself. They really did, and handing the car
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Speaker 1: back meant they couldn't fully analyze the absolute absurdity of
9:24
Speaker 1: where it was parked. I mean, think of her daily
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Speaker 1: routine as a tight geographic triangle. Her apartment is the
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Speaker 1: bottom left point. Stephens Hall is the bottom right point.
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Speaker 1: Ople Street is way up at the top, completely out
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Speaker 1: of the way right.
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Speaker 2: It wasn't on her route to class, and it wasn't
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Speaker 2: near her secret hideaway.
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Speaker 1: It's a geographical impossibility for her daily routine. Someone moved
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Speaker 1: that car to Ople Street. But for nine agonizing months,
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Speaker 1: that oddly parked car and that missing square of green
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Speaker 1: carpet were the only puzzle pieces the investigators had.
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Speaker 2: And that silence held until the spring of the following year.
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Speaker 2: April six, nineteen seventy two. I want you to visualize
10:03
Speaker 2: the rugged, vast landscape of eastern Washington. It is defined
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Speaker 2: by steep basalt cliffs, jeep ravines, and just unforgiving terrain.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it is beautiful, but treacherous.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. So that's Sunday. A teenage boy and his mother
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Speaker 2: were out hunting for gemstones in a place called wah
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Speaker 2: Wahwie Canyon. This is a brutal steep gorge about twenty
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Speaker 2: five minutes southwest of the university campus. While scrambling down
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Speaker 2: a particularly treacherous cliff face, the boy stumbled upon something horrific. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: The terrain was so steep and inaccessible that when the
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Speaker 1: sheriff's deputies arrived, they literally had to tie a heavy
10:41
Speaker 1: rope to the bumper of their patrol car just to
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Speaker 1: repel down the cliff face to reach the site.
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Speaker 2: Oh my god, that is intense. Right.
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Speaker 1: Resting on an embankment about three feet above a seasonal
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Speaker 1: creek bed, they found skeletal remains, and those remains were
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Speaker 1: wrapped inside the missing five y five green parpet that
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Speaker 1: had been hacked out of Stephen's hall nine months earlier.
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Speaker 2: Wow. And the forensic details of this recovery scene are
11:04
Speaker 2: what elevate this case from a tragic murder to a
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Speaker 2: highly complex staging. The remains weren't just wrapped in the
11:10
Speaker 2: green carpet. They were also tightly bundled in an olive
11:13
Speaker 2: drab us army medical.
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Speaker 1: Core blanket a military blanket, Yes, and.
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Speaker 2: The entire package was bound together around the pelvis with
11:20
Speaker 2: heavy duty fishing twine. When the medical examiner examined the
11:24
Speaker 2: remains they found she was wearing women's floral underwear. But
11:27
Speaker 2: the sides have been cleanly sliced open.
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Speaker 1: Okay, that is an incredibly disturbing detail. Now, you mentioned
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Speaker 1: the bones in your notes earlier. The autopsy report noted
11:36
Speaker 1: markings on the skeletal remains that indicated possible knife punctures.
11:40
Speaker 1: But how can forensic anthropologists definitively look at a bone
11:44
Speaker 1: that has been exposed to the elements and predatory wildlife
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Speaker 1: in a rugged canyon for nine months and say with
11:50
Speaker 1: certainty you know that is a knife wound.
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Speaker 2: It comes down to microscopic margins. When an animal like
11:55
Speaker 2: a coyote or a feral dog scavenge is a bone,
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Speaker 2: their teeth leave what anthropologists call U shaped striations. The
12:02
Speaker 2: edges of the mark are crushed and rounded from the
12:04
Speaker 2: blunt force of the bite.
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Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
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Speaker 2: But a ninth blade leaves a distinct V shaped defect.
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Speaker 2: The margins are sharp, clean, and linear. The medical examiner
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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two saw those clean V shaped cuts
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Speaker 2: on her ribs, strongly suggesting she was stabbed multiple times.
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Speaker 1: But here is the forensic anomaly that completely baffled the
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Speaker 1: crime lab. Despite those puncture wounds, there was absolutely zero
12:28
Speaker 1: blood found on the green carpet and no blood on
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Speaker 1: the military blanket.
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Speaker 2: Wait, really no blood at all.
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Speaker 1: None. Think about the mechanics of that. If she was
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Speaker 1: stabbed repeatedly and there is no blood on the carpet
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Speaker 1: she was wrapped in, well, that heavily implies she was
12:42
Speaker 1: killed on the bare concrete floor of the lounge, allowed
12:45
Speaker 1: to bleed out, and then rolled into the carpet long
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Speaker 1: after the fact.
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Speaker 2: Or she was killed somewhere else, entirely cleaned and then
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Speaker 2: brought back to the dorm to be wrapped in the carpet.
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Speaker 1: Yes, either way, it shows a terrifying level of calculation.
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Speaker 2: It really does. But the physical materials used in the staging,
13:02
Speaker 2: specifically that US Army Medical Corps blanket, and the proximity
13:06
Speaker 2: to the construction zone in Stephen's Hall, well, it immediately
13:09
Speaker 2: forced investigators to look closely at the men in her
13:12
Speaker 2: immediate orbit.
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Speaker 1: Let me push back on that for a second. Though,
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Speaker 1: we have a violently hacked carpet, a young co ed
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Speaker 1: missing from a college town in the Pacific Northwest in
13:21
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, and sliced underwear at the crime.
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Speaker 2: Scene, right, I see where you're going with this.
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Speaker 1: It sounds exactly like the bizarre, sexually motivated staging of
13:30
Speaker 1: a serial killer, specifically Ted Bundy, who's actively hunting in
13:35
Speaker 1: Washington State during this exact time period. I mean, why
13:39
Speaker 1: wouldn't police zero.
13:40
Speaker 2: In on him? It is a totally logical leap, and honestly,
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Speaker 2: Bundy was heavily investigated for this exact reason. We have
13:46
Speaker 2: to look at all the possibilities. But when you break
13:48
Speaker 2: down the behavioral mechanisms of this crime, it completely deviates
13:52
Speaker 2: from Bundy's established modus operandi. Y Oh, so Bundy relied on
13:56
Speaker 2: blitz attacks or feigning injury to lure victim from highly
14:01
Speaker 2: public places, you know, beaches, crowded walkways, parking lots. He
14:05
Speaker 2: was an opportunist navigating the dark corridors of a closed
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Speaker 2: down lock dormitory under renovation to find one specific girl
14:13
Speaker 2: who was secretly sleeping in a head residence room. That
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Speaker 2: requires intimate prior knowledge of her hidden routine.
14:20
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Bundy outright denied involvement before his execution, and behavioral
14:25
Speaker 2: analysts agreed that this crime wasn't random.
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Speaker 1: It was targeted so we have to look at the
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Speaker 1: people who were actually there. Let's start with suspect number one,
14:33
Speaker 1: Robert Lauren Johnson.
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Speaker 2: Okay, the contractor, right.
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Speaker 1: He was a professional contractor laying tile in Arts Hall,
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Speaker 1: which is just one to two hundred yards away from
14:41
Speaker 1: Stephens Hall. The timeline for Johnson is undeniably suspicious. He
14:47
Speaker 1: admitted to police that he was working late on the
14:49
Speaker 1: campus the night of Thursday, July twenty second, staying until
14:52
Speaker 1: about two thirty in the morning and off campus.
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Speaker 2: Police officer even noted seeing Johnson's car parked right outside
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Speaker 2: Stephen's Hall in the middle the night exactly.
15:01
Speaker 1: Plus rumors were heavily circulating around the construction crews that
15:05
Speaker 1: summer that a worker had been messing around with a
15:07
Speaker 1: girl in the closed dorms.
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Speaker 2: And Joyce was the only woman sleeping in that building.
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Speaker 2: We already know from her letter that a worker had
15:13
Speaker 2: stumbled upon her previously.
15:15
Speaker 1: Right, But despite his proximity and the late night timeline,
15:18
Speaker 1: Robert Lauren Johnson submitted to a polygraph test early in
15:22
Speaker 1: the investigation, and the results showed no deception. Police dug
15:26
Speaker 1: into his background found he was a married father with
15:29
Speaker 1: no glaring history of violence and eventually moved their focus elsewhere, which.
15:33
Speaker 2: Brings us to the man who remained the primary target
15:36
Speaker 2: of this investigation for decades. SUYS pick number two. Mike Finch,
15:40
Speaker 2: oh Man, this same Yeah, he was the twenty seven
15:43
Speaker 2: year old agriculture teacher from Oakdale, the guy Joyce supposedly
15:47
Speaker 2: had a date with for the high school dance on Friday.
15:49
Speaker 2: He was an ex army man, which immediately provides a
15:52
Speaker 2: potential terrifying link to that US Army Medical Corps blanket.
15:56
Speaker 1: That is a huge red flag, and.
15:58
Speaker 2: The psychological profile while his peers provided to police was grim.
16:03
Speaker 2: He was known as a heavy, aggressive drinker. Friends told
16:06
Speaker 2: investigators that when he drank, his personality shifted darkly. One
16:11
Speaker 2: of Joyce's own friends was quoted in the original case
16:14
Speaker 2: file stating, the more you knew Mike Finch, the less
16:16
Speaker 2: you liked him.
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Speaker 1: Wow. So the behavioral red flags were abundant. But here's
16:20
Speaker 1: where it gets really interesting. It was his alibi that
16:23
Speaker 1: truly caused investigators to lock onto him. When you map
16:26
Speaker 1: out the geographic movements he claimed to have made over
16:28
Speaker 1: the weekend she disappeared, it defies all logic.
16:32
Speaker 2: It really does. It reads like a chaotic, desperate attempt
16:34
Speaker 2: to explain away missing chunks of time.
16:36
Speaker 1: Let's actually trace this route because it is absurd. He
16:39
Speaker 1: tells police that on Friday night he was up north
16:42
Speaker 1: in spoke Anne, Washington. He says he called Joyce from
16:45
Speaker 1: a friend's house there. Then he claims he got in
16:47
Speaker 1: his car and drove south to Pullman around midnight.
16:51
Speaker 2: Okay, a midnight drive, right, And he.
16:53
Speaker 1: Says he drove past her apartment, saw the lights were off,
16:55
Speaker 1: and decided not to stop. Then he claims he kept
16:58
Speaker 1: driving further southward to Pasco for the weekend boat races.
17:02
Speaker 2: Wait, but he originally told police that his actual plan
17:05
Speaker 2: was to pick Joyce up, drive her back to Pullman
17:08
Speaker 2: for her Monday morning classes, and then he would drive
17:10
Speaker 2: himself to a teacher's conference in Bellingham.
17:12
Speaker 1: Yes, and to understand why that is a totally fabricated itinerary,
17:16
Speaker 1: you have to look at a map of Washington State.
17:19
Speaker 1: Spokane is north, Pullman is south, Pasco is deep in
17:22
Speaker 1: the southwest. Bellingham is a five hour, grueling drive to
17:27
Speaker 1: the extreme northwest corner of the state, near the Canadian border.
17:30
Speaker 2: It makes absolutely no sense. Nobody drives from Pasco back
17:34
Speaker 2: east to Pullman and then zigzads entirely across the state
17:37
Speaker 2: to Bellingham.
17:38
Speaker 1: Exactly. It is a dizzying, nonsensical route across hundreds of
17:43
Speaker 1: miles of two lane highways in the dead of night.
17:46
Speaker 1: You only invent a route that chaotic if you were
17:48
Speaker 1: trying to cover your tracks, or if you need a
17:50
Speaker 1: built in excuse for why someone might have spotted your
17:53
Speaker 1: car in different random locations at very specific times.
17:57
Speaker 2: Right, and his story just kept shifting, you know. He
17:59
Speaker 2: told the vestciars, remember what day the dance was supposed
18:01
Speaker 2: to be. Sometimes he said Friday, other times he said Saturday.
18:05
Speaker 1: But here's the detail that I just cannot let go of.
18:08
Speaker 1: Just a few weeks after Joyce vanished, Mike Finch got
18:11
Speaker 1: into a severe rollover accident and completely totaled his car.
18:15
Speaker 1: Was he driving drunk? Was he consumed by guilt? Or
18:18
Speaker 1: was he actively trying to destroy trace evidence that might
18:21
Speaker 1: have been left in his vehicle?
18:22
Speaker 2: Those are the exact questions investigators wrestled with. Now. It
18:26
Speaker 2: is crucial to note that Mike Finch was reinterviewed in
18:29
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, over forty years after the murder. The cold
18:32
Speaker 2: case detectives finally convinced him to take a polygraph test,
18:36
Speaker 2: and he passed it, passed it. Well, we have to
18:39
Speaker 2: understand the science behind that. A polygraph does not detect lies.
18:43
Speaker 2: It measures physiological arousal, you know, heart rate, sweat, gland activity,
18:47
Speaker 2: blood pressure. When you have a forty year gap between
18:50
Speaker 2: an event and an interview, a psychological phenomenon known as
18:54
Speaker 2: memory consolidation occurred.
18:55
Speaker 1: Okay, so his memory literally changed.
18:58
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, human memory is highly malleable. If Finch fabricated
19:02
Speaker 2: an alibi in nineteen seventy one to cover up a
19:04
Speaker 2: panic induced accident, he has been four decades repeating that
19:08
Speaker 2: exact narrative to himself. By twenty thirteen, his brain may
19:12
Speaker 2: have fundamentally accepted that fabrimated timeline as his absolute truth, so.
19:16
Speaker 1: His body wouldn't register the physiological stress of deception exactly.
19:20
Speaker 2: He died in twenty twenty four, taking whatever he truly
19:23
Speaker 2: knew to his grave.
19:24
Speaker 1: The army blanket, the chaotic driving route, the total car.
19:28
Speaker 1: It just leaves you with a knot in your stomach.
19:30
Speaker 1: It feels like the answer is right there, But just
19:33
Speaker 1: when you think you have a handle on the narrative,
19:35
Speaker 1: there is one final devastating piece of evidence that forces
19:38
Speaker 1: us to look in a completely different direction, and it.
19:41
Speaker 2: Brings us right back to the one flu that never
19:43
Speaker 2: made sense, which is the seemingly random location of Joyce's
19:48
Speaker 2: abandoned Dodge coronet on Ople Street. Right.
19:52
Speaker 1: We established earlier that Ople Street was a geographical impossibility
19:56
Speaker 1: for her daily routine. It wasn't near her apartment, and
19:59
Speaker 1: it wasn't near Steve. It was parked right outside a
20:01
Speaker 1: fraternity house.
20:03
Speaker 2: But it turns out that location wasn't random at all,
20:06
Speaker 2: not at all.
20:07
Speaker 1: Just two doors down from where her car was abandoned
20:10
Speaker 1: was a house occupied by a local meditation group. Joyce
20:13
Speaker 1: was highly active in that group. In fact, she was
20:15
Speaker 1: actively making plans to permanently move into that exact house
20:19
Speaker 1: at the end of the summer.
20:20
Speaker 2: Which completely shatters the timeline. The car wasn't just dumped
20:23
Speaker 2: in a random neighborhood to confuse police. It was parked
20:26
Speaker 2: deliberately near her future home.
20:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, and here is the final shilling detail that was
20:31
Speaker 1: uncovered in her personal belongings. In one of the last
20:35
Speaker 1: letters she ever wrote, penned right before she was murdered,
20:38
Speaker 1: Joyce revealed a terrifying secret. She had just learned about
20:41
Speaker 1: her new living situation.
20:42
Speaker 2: This part is so unsettling.
20:44
Speaker 1: She wrote to her friend that she had just discovered
20:46
Speaker 1: one of her future housemates, someone she was literally preparing
20:49
Speaker 1: to live with, had previously been institutionalized in a mental
20:53
Speaker 1: health facility for repeatedly trying to strangle people.
20:56
Speaker 2: It forces a complete paradigm shift, doesn't it spend all
21:00
Speaker 2: our time analyzing the men she dated, the transient construction
21:04
Speaker 2: workers the dark corners of her secret hideaway in the dorms,
21:08
Speaker 2: But this letter suggests the real imminent threat might have
21:12
Speaker 2: been sitting right inside the house she was preparing to
21:14
Speaker 2: call home.
21:15
Speaker 1: It really leaves you with this haunting realization about the
21:18
Speaker 1: illusion of safety. We spend so much energy trying to
21:21
Speaker 1: protect ourselves. We dodge overbearing roommates, we build secret hideaways,
21:26
Speaker 1: We lock our doors against the random monsters we think
21:29
Speaker 1: are roaming the streets outside.
21:31
Speaker 2: But how often are we completely wilfully blind to the
21:34
Speaker 2: threats we actually invite inside?
21:36
Speaker 1: Exactly how well do we really know the strangers we
21:39
Speaker 1: choose to share our lives with, or the secrets hiding
21:41
Speaker 1: just on the other side of a shared wall. Keep
21:44
Speaker 1: turning over those stones and stay endlessly curious,