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Transcript

The Grave in the Phantom Basement · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: So I want you to just picture this for a second.
0:02
Speaker 1: It is a freezing December night in Wisconsin. The year
0:06
Speaker 1: is nineteen eighty nine.
0:07
Speaker 2: Oh Man, Wisconsin in December is no joke, right.
0:10
Speaker 1: It is absolutely bitterly cold, and you are nineteen years old.
0:14
Speaker 1: You're curled up in your dorm room in Milwaukee and
0:17
Speaker 1: you are just completely safe from the biting cold.
0:20
Speaker 2: Outside, just kind of cozying up exactly.
0:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're watching The Nutcracker with your roommate. Yeah, just
0:25
Speaker 1: soaking in that whole holiday spirit. The room is warm,
0:29
Speaker 1: it's quiet, and then out of nowhere, the landline rings, which.
0:33
Speaker 2: You know back then, a late night landline call is
0:35
Speaker 2: always a little startling totally.
0:37
Speaker 1: So you pick it up. It's your brother in law, Tracy,
0:39
Speaker 1: and his voice is just it's tight, very tense, and
0:43
Speaker 1: he asked you this really bizarre question. He says, is
0:45
Speaker 1: Carrie with you?
0:47
Speaker 2: And to really understand how terrifying that specific question is,
0:52
Speaker 2: you have to look at who Carrie actually is, right,
0:54
Speaker 2: because Carrie is your thirty two year old sister. She's
0:57
Speaker 2: a mother to a three year old girl. She works
0:59
Speaker 2: at this really debdy, very demanding job in public relations
1:02
Speaker 2: for a sporting goods comtes. She's not a teenager exactly,
1:06
Speaker 2: a woman with those kinds of serious responsibilities. She does
1:09
Speaker 2: not just spontaneously drop by a college dorm room an
1:13
Speaker 2: hour away from her home in Burlington without calling first.
1:15
Speaker 3: I mean, she just doesn't.
1:16
Speaker 1: And that one tense, just completely illogical phone call it
1:21
Speaker 1: kicks off this baffling, surreal mystery. So today's deep dive
1:26
Speaker 1: is about Carrie O'Brien Krueger, a mother who just seemingly
1:30
Speaker 1: vanished into the winter dawn.
1:32
Speaker 2: It really is one of the most frustrating cases I've
1:34
Speaker 2: ever looked at.
1:35
Speaker 1: Oh it's wild, Yeah, because we are stepping right into
1:38
Speaker 1: the shoes of criminal investigators today to untangle this whole thing.
1:42
Speaker 1: We've been looking through a massive stack of source material.
1:44
Speaker 1: We're talking decades old police reports, forensic psychiatric evaluations, and
1:48
Speaker 1: all these archival case files.
1:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, the paper trails is huge.
1:51
Speaker 1: It is. And we're examining a story that is just
1:54
Speaker 1: riddled with forged documents, phantom crime scenes, and a primary
1:58
Speaker 1: suspect who claims his memory of the entire decade was
2:01
Speaker 1: simply wiped clean.
2:02
Speaker 2: And I think what's so fascinating here is that, well,
2:05
Speaker 2: while a lot of missing persons cases feature this frustrating
2:08
Speaker 2: lack of physical evidence, right, this one feedures something much
2:11
Speaker 2: more insidious. Yeah, it features this impossible, just totally broken timeline,
2:17
Speaker 2: a timeline that frankly seems deliberately designed to misdirect investigators from.
2:21
Speaker 1: Day one, right like an intentional maze.
2:24
Speaker 2: Exactly, we are basically trying to untangle a masterful web
2:28
Speaker 2: of physical and psychological misdirection.
2:31
Speaker 1: So let's start with the anatomy of that timeline, because
2:33
Speaker 1: it's a lot. Tracy's version of events from that Tuesday
2:37
Speaker 1: night is packed with these extremely specific details. Can you
2:41
Speaker 1: just kind of walk us through the story he originally
2:43
Speaker 1: gave to police.
2:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, according to Tracy, on Tuesday, December fifth, Carrie
2:47
Speaker 2: gets a call around eight thirty pm, and he claims
2:49
Speaker 2: it was her manager, a guy named Jim Okay. So
2:51
Speaker 2: Carrie allegedly hangs up the phone and tells Tracy that
2:54
Speaker 2: she has to, you know, fill in for someone at
2:57
Speaker 2: a trade show in Wyoming, and she has to leave
2:59
Speaker 2: the very next day. Jim is supposedly going to drive
3:02
Speaker 2: them to Chicago for the super early morning.
3:05
Speaker 4: Flight, right like a sudden work emergency exactly. So Tracy
3:08
Speaker 4: then says that by four point zero or four point
3:12
Speaker 4: thirty the next morning, which is Wednesday, Carrie gets up
3:15
Speaker 4: in the pitch dark, gives him a kiss goodbye, reminds
3:18
Speaker 4: him to take care of their daughter, and then she
3:20
Speaker 4: just leaves.
3:21
Speaker 1: But the very foundation of that story it just crumbles
3:24
Speaker 1: a few hours later, because mid morning on Wednesday, Tracy
3:27
Speaker 1: gets a message from Jim, the manager.
3:29
Speaker 2: The guy who's supposedly called the.
3:31
Speaker 1: Night before, right, and Jim is super confused. He's asking
3:34
Speaker 1: where Carrie is because she has pulled a no call,
3:37
Speaker 1: no show at work for the very first time in
3:39
Speaker 1: her entire life.
3:40
Speaker 2: Which is a huge red flag for someone like her.
3:43
Speaker 1: Totally, so Tracy plays dumb. He acts all surprised and says, well,
3:47
Speaker 1: she went with you to Wyoming, And that is when
3:50
Speaker 1: Jim drops the bombshell there is no trade show in Wyoming.
3:53
Speaker 2: Wow.
3:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus, Carrie's actual job is tracking these trade shows
3:57
Speaker 1: for the company. She would have known immediately that a
3:59
Speaker 1: Wyoming trip was entirely fictional.
4:01
Speaker 2: See when investigators hear a story that falls apart this quickly,
4:04
Speaker 2: they immediately pivot to the physical environment, you know, Like,
4:07
Speaker 2: what does the crime scene tell us or in this case,
4:09
Speaker 2: the lack of one.
4:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was missing?
4:11
Speaker 2: Well, when Carrie's family eventually searches the house, they find
4:15
Speaker 2: that her purse and her id are gone, which, you know,
4:19
Speaker 2: on the surface, that suggests a voluntary departure.
4:21
Speaker 3: She packed up and.
4:22
Speaker 1: Left, sure, yeah.
4:24
Speaker 2: But the illusion breaks completely when you look.
4:27
Speaker 3: At what she left behind.
4:28
Speaker 2: So she supposedly packed for a December trip to Wyoming,
4:32
Speaker 2: right right, Yet the heavy insulated lining of her winter
4:36
Speaker 2: coat is still hanging in the closet. She only took
4:39
Speaker 2: the thin outer.
4:40
Speaker 1: Shell in December for a trip to Wyoming, exactly.
4:43
Speaker 2: It makes zero sense. She also left her brand new makeup,
4:47
Speaker 2: her wedding ring was just sitting in a little dish
4:49
Speaker 2: on the dresser, and most crucially, her stomach medication was
4:53
Speaker 2: left behind.
4:53
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I mean didn't she have chronic pain?
4:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, she had been suffering from these severe, unexplained stomach
4:59
Speaker 2: pains for like a year, year and a half. A
5:01
Speaker 2: chronic pain sufferer does not leave for a surprise cross
5:04
Speaker 2: country trip without their medication.
5:06
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not. That's the first thing you pack, and
5:08
Speaker 1: the packing story itself, it just keeps shifting too. Like
5:11
Speaker 1: Tracy initially claims, she packed his big brown suitcase. But
5:15
Speaker 1: when Carrie's sister points out that the brown suitcase is
5:18
Speaker 1: visibly sitting right there in the attic, like you can
5:20
Speaker 1: just see it, Tracy immediately back pedals and says, oh, wait,
5:25
Speaker 1: she took a different one, just making it up on
5:27
Speaker 1: the fly, literally. And then there's the money. Tracy claims
5:32
Speaker 1: Carrie took five hundred dollars cash from a hidden emergency
5:35
Speaker 1: statch they kept in a basement air duct. But when
5:39
Speaker 1: police finally search the house, they go looking for this
5:42
Speaker 1: air duct and it doesn't exist.
5:43
Speaker 3: Wait, there was no air duct.
5:45
Speaker 1: There is no air duct in that basement at all.
5:47
Speaker 1: It's like an actor reading from a script. But he
5:50
Speaker 1: completely forgot to check if the stage props were actually
5:52
Speaker 1: built on the set.
5:53
Speaker 2: That is wild, and worse than failing to check his props,
5:56
Speaker 2: he completely flubbed his lines. If you really want to
5:59
Speaker 2: see the fatal flaw in Tracy's story, you have to
6:02
Speaker 2: look at how he constructs his timeline. What do you mean, Well,
6:04
Speaker 2: he was working backward from Wednesday morning to create this
6:07
Speaker 2: whole fiction, but he made a massive chronological error.
6:12
Speaker 1: Okay, laid on me.
6:13
Speaker 2: Tracy's own father told the police that Tracy casually mentioned
6:16
Speaker 2: Carrie's Wyoming trip to him on Monday, wait, Monday, December fourth,
6:20
Speaker 2: That is a full twenty four hours before Carrie supposedly
6:24
Speaker 2: received that surprise eight thirty pm phone call on Tuesday night.
6:29
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he pre planted the alibi before the
6:31
Speaker 1: inciting incident even happened, exactly.
6:33
Speaker 2: It proves total premeditation. The Tuesday night phone call wasn't
6:37
Speaker 2: some sudden change of plans. It was a completely fabricated
6:41
Speaker 2: event that Tracy had already decided was going to happen.
6:44
Speaker 1: Just think about that for a second. Think about the
6:45
Speaker 1: last time someone told you a lie that was so massive,
6:49
Speaker 1: just so easily disprovable, that you almost believed it just
6:52
Speaker 1: because of the sheer audacity of it. That is what
6:55
Speaker 1: these investigators were facing.
6:56
Speaker 3: Because this wasn't just a normal.
6:57
Speaker 1: Bad marriage, No, it was a psychological pressure cooker, and
7:01
Speaker 1: Tracy was the one actively turning up the heat. Carrie
7:04
Speaker 1: already suspected he was cheating. They were drowning in financial problems.
7:07
Speaker 2: And Tracy used these incredibly dramatic falsehoods to escape accountability
7:11
Speaker 2: in like every single aspect of his life.
7:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when Carrie confronted him about his behavior
7:18
Speaker 1: and just begged him to go to marriage counseling with her.
7:20
Speaker 1: Do you know what he said? He told her he
7:22
Speaker 1: couldn't go because he had a terminal brain.
7:25
Speaker 2: Tumor, which was completely made up.
7:27
Speaker 1: A complete, unadulterated lie.
7:29
Speaker 2: And that's not even the end of it. He was
7:31
Speaker 2: also patting his worktime cards. He secretly bought a brand
7:34
Speaker 2: new Ford pickup truck, and investigators later found really strong
7:38
Speaker 2: evidence suggesting he forged Carrie's signature on the loan paperwork.
7:43
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy is just constantly manipulating the narrative.
7:46
Speaker 1: He was always trying to control how everyone perceived reality.
7:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, he even tried to lay the groundwork for a
7:51
Speaker 2: tragic narrative. Before she disappeared, He suggested she cancel a
7:55
Speaker 2: doctor's appointment by claiming she was out of town.
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Speaker 1: Right, And he actually handed police a note supposedly written
8:01
Speaker 1: by Carrie's doctor claiming she was being treated for severe
8:04
Speaker 1: depression and might be suicidal, just.
8:06
Speaker 3: Handing them this fake evidence.
8:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when the police finally bothered to go check
8:11
Speaker 1: with that specific doctor, the doctor looked at them and said,
8:15
Speaker 1: I never wrote that. I've never treated this woman for
8:17
Speaker 1: depression of my entire life.
8:19
Speaker 2: It's just staggering. And all of this manipulation, all of
8:23
Speaker 2: these frantic, messy attempts to control the story, they culminate
8:27
Speaker 2: in a truly bizarre event, exactly one month after Carrie vanished.
8:32
Speaker 1: Right, January fifth. Yeah, so put yourself in the police
8:35
Speaker 1: waiting room that day. The walls are really closing in
8:38
Speaker 1: on Tracy. He had already taken one polygraph which was
8:41
Speaker 1: ruled inconclusive.
8:42
Speaker 2: Right, they couldn't get a clear reading.
8:44
Speaker 1: So the investigators they schedule a second one for January fifth.
8:47
Speaker 1: But Tracy never actually makes it into the room. He's
8:49
Speaker 1: at his workplace. He supposedly just glances at a newspaper
8:53
Speaker 1: article about his missing wife, and he just collapses.
8:56
Speaker 2: Out cold, out cool, And so he's rushed to the
8:58
Speaker 2: emergency room. Right. The doctors run this whole battery of tests.
9:02
Speaker 2: They are checking for a stroke, checking for any physical trauma,
9:06
Speaker 2: any kind of neurological event. They find absolutely nothing physically
9:10
Speaker 2: wrong with him.
9:11
Speaker 3: Nothing.
9:12
Speaker 2: But when Tracy wakes up, he looks at the medical
9:14
Speaker 2: staff and he claims that the year is nineteen seventy nine.
9:18
Speaker 1: Wow.
9:18
Speaker 2: He genuinely claims he believes he is a teenager, so
9:21
Speaker 2: he just.
9:22
Speaker 1: Claims his memory of the entire nineteen eighties has vanished
9:24
Speaker 1: into thin air hoof con which you know conveniently means
9:28
Speaker 1: he has no memory of meeting Kerrie in nineteen eighty two,
9:31
Speaker 1: no memory of their marriage, no memory of their three
9:33
Speaker 1: year old daughter, and obviously, most importantly, no memory of
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Speaker 1: December fifth, nineteen eighty nine.
9:38
Speaker 2: And what's crazy is the initial medical staff actually diagnosed
9:41
Speaker 2: this as hysterical amnesia, which is it's a real phenomenon
9:45
Speaker 2: known medically as a dissociative fugue stage.
9:48
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, how does that even work?
9:50
Speaker 2: Well? To understand how it works biologically, just imagine a
9:52
Speaker 2: circuit breaker in a house. When a house is hit
9:54
Speaker 2: by a massive power surge, the breaker trips, right, it
9:57
Speaker 2: shuts off the electricity to prevent a catastrophic fire. Right.
10:00
Speaker 2: In real cases of severe, unspeakable trauma, the human brain
10:04
Speaker 2: can act similarly. It essentially shuts down access to autobiographical
10:08
Speaker 2: memory to protect the psyche from completely shattering.
10:11
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop you and push back hard
10:13
Speaker 1: on this. Go for it, because I understand the biology
10:16
Speaker 1: of genuine trauma. But if Tracy is faking this specifically
10:19
Speaker 1: to avoid a murder charge. Why wouldn't he just remember
10:23
Speaker 1: Carrie walking out the door?
10:24
Speaker 3: I see what you're saying, right, Like, if he.
10:26
Speaker 1: Suddenly just remembers seeing her get into a cab or
10:29
Speaker 1: walking down the street with a suitcase, that permanently solidifies
10:33
Speaker 1: his alibi. Why wipe the whole decade? It feels like
10:37
Speaker 1: the absolute nuclear option of lies.
10:40
Speaker 2: You're entirely right to be skeptical, and that is precisely
10:43
Speaker 2: why the forensic psychiatrists who reviewed his records years later
10:47
Speaker 2: completely called.
10:47
Speaker 3: Out the deception.
10:48
Speaker 1: Okay, thank goodness, Yeah.
10:49
Speaker 2: They were like, a grown man does not simply factory
10:52
Speaker 2: reset his brain to avoid a polygraph test. But if
10:56
Speaker 2: you think about it strategically, okay, wiping the whole decade
11:00
Speaker 2: is the ultimate defensive shield. How So, because if he
11:03
Speaker 2: claims he remembers her walking out the door, skilled police
11:06
Speaker 2: interrogators will tear him apart on cross examination. They'll say,
11:10
Speaker 2: what was she wearing, which door did she use? What
11:12
Speaker 2: were her exact words? Did she take a cab? Who
11:15
Speaker 2: drove the cab?
11:16
Speaker 1: Oh icy?
11:17
Speaker 2: But by erasing his memory entirely, he absolves himself with
11:21
Speaker 2: having to answer a single question. He turns himself into
11:24
Speaker 2: a victim. He forces everyone around him to nurture him
11:27
Speaker 2: and take care of him rather than interrogate him.
11:30
Speaker 1: That is deeply, deeply manipulative. But with a suspect putting
11:35
Speaker 1: up an impenetrable psychological shield like that, you would expect
11:39
Speaker 1: the police to just pivot entirely to hard physical evidence,
11:43
Speaker 1: like let the science do the talking.
11:45
Speaker 3: You would hope so.
11:46
Speaker 1: But this is exactly where the local police completely drop
11:49
Speaker 1: the ball. The investigative fumbles in the early days of
11:52
Speaker 1: this case are just staggering.
11:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a classic example of how early cognitive bias
11:57
Speaker 2: can corrupt a crime scene. Some investigator seemingly bought into
12:01
Speaker 2: that suicidal wife who walked away narrative, which just drained
12:04
Speaker 2: all the urgency from the case.
12:05
Speaker 1: And the physical evidence just suffered.
12:07
Speaker 2: Because of it, oh terribly. For instance, detectives found a
12:10
Speaker 2: very suspicious red sandy residue scraped onto the interior ceiling
12:14
Speaker 2: of Tracy's new Ford pickup truck. They actually scraped it
12:17
Speaker 2: and collected it, but then a detective literally threw it
12:20
Speaker 2: in the trash before it could be tested by the
12:22
Speaker 2: independent soil expert. Carrie's family had hire threw it in
12:25
Speaker 2: the trash.
12:26
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't make this stuff up. And the
12:28
Speaker 1: really strong rumor circulating at the time was that this
12:31
Speaker 1: specific detective was actually a close friend of Tracy's family.
12:34
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah, But the negligence doesn't stop there. Months later,
12:40
Speaker 1: deputies in a neighboring county discovered these bloody men's pajamas
12:44
Speaker 1: riddled with bullet holes, just discarded out in a field
12:47
Speaker 1: about sixteen miles away.
12:48
Speaker 2: And Carrie's sister saw photos of them, right.
12:51
Speaker 1: Yes, she saw the photos and said it looked exactly
12:53
Speaker 1: like something they owned. So what happened to that evidence?
12:56
Speaker 1: It was lost, lost, no record of blood typing, no
12:59
Speaker 1: forensic tests, the physical items just vanished from police custody.
13:03
Speaker 2: Which creates this massive vacuum of physical evidence. And honestly,
13:07
Speaker 2: whenever there is an investigative vacuum, chaos just rushes in.
13:11
Speaker 2: And in this case, that chaos took the form of
13:13
Speaker 2: Philip Andrew.
13:14
Speaker 1: Fox oh Man, the monster next door. If he wrote
13:18
Speaker 1: this guy into a thriller, a publisher would reject it
13:21
Speaker 1: for being two over the top. Philip lived just a
13:24
Speaker 1: few doors down from Kerry and Tracy, and he was
13:26
Speaker 1: a forty eight year old violent felon who was out on.
13:29
Speaker 2: Parole, and his record was horrifying.
13:31
Speaker 1: Oh back in the sixties. He shot and killed his
13:34
Speaker 1: own uncle, He abducted a teenager, he shot a gas
13:37
Speaker 1: station attendant, and when he moved into Carrie's quiet little neighborhood,
13:41
Speaker 1: he was actively the prime suspect and the murder of
13:43
Speaker 1: his own wife over in Ohio.
13:45
Speaker 2: I mean, he was impossible to ignore. He walked around
13:48
Speaker 2: the neighborhood in these loud, three piece suits, wearing heavy
13:52
Speaker 2: ornate rings on every single finger.
13:54
Speaker 1: Like a movie villain exactly.
13:56
Speaker 2: But his wardrobe wasn't what alarmed his parole officer. It
13:59
Speaker 2: was his behavior on the exact night Carrie vanished, December fifth.
14:03
Speaker 1: Right, because Philip suddenly flees town that night. He tells
14:07
Speaker 1: his prole officer he has a sudden family emergency in Virginia,
14:10
Speaker 1: but then his story shifts to a business deal in Ohio.
14:13
Speaker 1: He just bounces around multiple states for months.
14:15
Speaker 3: It's incredibly suspicious.
14:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, and years later, when cold case investigators from Racine
14:21
Speaker 1: County finally take over, they realize they have a known
14:25
Speaker 1: killer who lived on the exact same street as a
14:27
Speaker 1: missing woman. Who fled on the exact same night.
14:30
Speaker 3: So what do they do.
14:31
Speaker 1: They track Philip down to a prison in West Virginia
14:34
Speaker 1: where he is serving time for arson, and they offer
14:37
Speaker 1: him the holy Grail of legal deals.
14:39
Speaker 3: They really did.
14:40
Speaker 2: They literally slide an offer across the table. They tell him, look,
14:44
Speaker 2: if you tell us where Carrie is, we will give
14:46
Speaker 2: you total immunity for anything related to her disappearance, and
14:49
Speaker 2: we will drop your current arson and fraud charges.
14:51
Speaker 1: That's a get out of jail free card.
14:53
Speaker 2: A literal get out of jail free card. Most guilty
14:56
Speaker 2: men sitting in a prison cell would take that in
14:58
Speaker 2: a heartbeat.
14:59
Speaker 3: But phil it profuses.
15:01
Speaker 2: He looks the investigator's dead in the eye and in says,
15:03
Speaker 2: I didn't kill her. I don't know where she is.
15:05
Speaker 1: Wait. I am really struggling with this part. You were
15:08
Speaker 1: telling me a literal killer lived on our street, fled
15:11
Speaker 1: town the exact same night she vanished, and we are
15:14
Speaker 1: supposed bely that's just a coincidence. I mean, that feels
15:16
Speaker 1: way too convenient for Tracy.
15:18
Speaker 2: It is incredibly convenient, and it really highlights a core
15:21
Speaker 2: tension in criminal investigations, which is figuring out the difference
15:25
Speaker 2: between a coincidence, and a smoke screen, right, Investigators had
15:29
Speaker 2: to weigh the totality of the circumstances here. On one side, yes,
15:34
Speaker 2: you have Philip Fox, a known predator, very scary guy.
15:37
Speaker 2: But on the other side, you have a husband with
15:39
Speaker 2: an impossible timeline, a pre planted alibi, a history of
15:42
Speaker 2: forging documents, and a sudden, highly suspicious case of amnesia
15:46
Speaker 2: right before a polygraph test.
15:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that list is pretty damning.
15:50
Speaker 2: It is so based on the overwhelming behavioral evidence against Tracy,
15:55
Speaker 2: investigators strongly concluded that Philip Fox was just a terrifying coincidence.
16:00
Speaker 2: His presence simply provided this chaotic smoke screen that muddied
16:03
Speaker 2: the waters.
16:03
Speaker 1: For years, which really forces us to look at the
16:06
Speaker 1: devastating long term ripple effects of Tracy's actions, because if
16:10
Speaker 1: you fast forward through the decades, Tracy raises his and
16:12
Speaker 1: Carrie's daughter, Megan, and he feeds this little girl an
16:17
Speaker 1: incredibly cruel narrative. He tells her that her mother was cold,
16:21
Speaker 1: that she didn't care about her, that she simply walked
16:24
Speaker 1: out on them because she was tired of being a mother.
16:26
Speaker 2: It breaks your heart, and the environment Megan was raised
16:30
Speaker 2: in is just deeply unsettling. Tracy eventually moved them away
16:34
Speaker 2: from Burlington, and they landed on the exact same property
16:37
Speaker 2: as the very therapist who originally validated Tracy's amnesia.
16:41
Speaker 1: Are you serious?
16:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, this therapist essentially became a surrogate family member. So
16:46
Speaker 2: Megan grew up completely isolated in this carefully constructed echo
16:50
Speaker 2: chamber where her father was always the tragic victim and
16:54
Speaker 2: her missing mother was the villain.
16:55
Speaker 1: But the truth is dumbored, right, it refuses to stay
16:58
Speaker 1: buried forever. Get to twenty thirteen and Carrie's case is
17:01
Speaker 1: finally transferred to the Racine County Sheriff's Office. Real resources
17:06
Speaker 1: and real forensic science are finally brought in, finally, and
17:09
Speaker 1: they managed to track down Tracy's old Ford pickup truck,
17:12
Speaker 1: the exact same one he secretly bought back in the eighties,
17:15
Speaker 1: And they bring in Taser.
17:16
Speaker 3: Oh, Taser is amazing.
17:18
Speaker 1: Tell us about Taser.
17:19
Speaker 2: So, Taser is a highly trained cadaver dog. And you know,
17:23
Speaker 2: people often wonder how a dog can smell anything on
17:26
Speaker 2: a metal truck after twenty four years. It sounds impossible,
17:29
Speaker 2: it really does, Like, how does that work?
17:31
Speaker 1: Well?
17:31
Speaker 2: The science of canine oll faction is astounding. A dog's
17:35
Speaker 2: nose has hundreds of millions of scent receptors compared to
17:38
Speaker 2: our five million, And when human remains decomposed, they release
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Speaker 2: these specific chemical compounds, volatile organic compounds that can actually
17:49
Speaker 2: seep into porous materials like upholstery, okay, and they even
17:52
Speaker 2: settle into the microscopic grooves of metal and plastic. These
17:56
Speaker 2: molecules they don't just wash away in the veane. So
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Speaker 2: when they bring taser around that old truck, the dog
18:01
Speaker 2: doesn't hesitate for a second.
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Speaker 3: He circles the.
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Speaker 2: Vehicle and alerts incredibly strongly right at the front wheel well.
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Speaker 1: And he actually alerts three separate times on that truck.
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Speaker 1: So because of that, investigators bring the dogs into the
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Speaker 1: old Krueger house and the dogs alert on the stairs,
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Speaker 1: they alert in the basement. Suddenly, this dormant gold case
18:19
Speaker 1: is just crackling with electricity.
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Speaker 3: He can just feel the momentum shifting.
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Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, And then a chilling tip comes across the desk.
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Speaker 1: It's a tip originally reported way back in nineteen ninety one,
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Speaker 1: but it was completely brushed off by the original detectives.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, this tip came from a flooring contractor. He remembered
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Speaker 2: being called out to the Kruber house to lay carpet
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Speaker 2: in the basement, right around the time Carrie vanished. Okay,
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Speaker 2: And when he gets down there, he notices something highly,
18:44
Speaker 2: highly unusual. Right smack in the middle of the concrete
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Speaker 2: floor is a fresh, wet patch.
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Speaker 1: Of concrete, just a patch.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's three feet by six feet, the exact
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Speaker 2: dimensions of a human grave exactly. And Tracy is hovering
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Speaker 2: over him, acting incredibly nervous, aggressively rushing the contractor to
19:02
Speaker 2: just get the carpet laid over it quickly.
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Speaker 1: What was his excuse for the wet concrete?
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Speaker 2: Tracy claims the fresh concrete is for drainage. But this contractor,
19:11
Speaker 2: he knows basic construction drain tiles run along the perimeter walls.
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Speaker 2: They do not go in a perfect rectangle in the
19:17
Speaker 2: dead center of a room.
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Speaker 1: So the recine investigators realize they might finally have the
19:22
Speaker 1: exact location, They secure a search warrant. They bring ground
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Speaker 1: penetrating radar or GPR down into the Krueger basement. So,
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Speaker 1: for those who don't know how exactly does GPR determine
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Speaker 1: what's under solid concrete.
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Speaker 2: So ground penetrating radar works by firing these high frequency
19:39
Speaker 2: radio waves into the earth. When those waves travel through solid,
19:43
Speaker 2: uniform dirt or concrete, they move at a steady speed.
19:47
Speaker 2: But if they hit an anomaly like a buried object,
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Speaker 2: or even avoid in the dirt where soil was dug
19:52
Speaker 2: up and then loosely replaced, the waves bounce back to
19:55
Speaker 2: the surface differently.
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Speaker 1: It maps the disruption exactly.
19:58
Speaker 2: The radar machine reads that disruption, maps it out. So
20:01
Speaker 2: they scan the concrete floor looking for that three y
20:03
Speaker 2: six disruption. They scan the entire basement and the radar
20:06
Speaker 2: shows absolutely nothing, nothing at all. The ground beneth. The
20:10
Speaker 2: concrete is completely solid and undisturbed.
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Speaker 1: So they are stunned. The investigators actually bring that original
20:16
Speaker 1: contractor back to the house. They walk him down the
20:19
Speaker 1: stairs into the basement. They point to the floor and
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Speaker 1: they say, look, we scan it. There is nothing here.
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Speaker 1: Show us where you laid that carpet.
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Speaker 3: And what does he do?
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Speaker 1: The contractor just stands there. He looks around the room,
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Speaker 1: taking in the walls, the whole layout. Eh. He shakes
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Speaker 1: his head and he says, this isn't the basement I worked.
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Speaker 2: In, which raises a profoundly disturbing question. If he didn't
20:40
Speaker 2: lay that carpet over a fresh grave in the Kruger.
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Speaker 3: House, whose house was he in?
20:46
Speaker 2: Right, Tracy had to have taken him to a completely
20:48
Speaker 2: different property, but where it.
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Speaker 1: Is absolutely surreal to this day, investigators possess a sketch
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Speaker 1: of this phantom basement, drawn entirely from the contractor's memory.
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Speaker 1: It has concrete on one side, carpet on the other.
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Speaker 1: The stairs are in the far corner, tucked right next
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Speaker 1: to a washer, dryer and sink, and that fresh three
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Speaker 1: x six patch is right on the carpet at half.
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Speaker 2: But this layout, it doesn't match the Krueger house, It
21:14
Speaker 2: doesn't match Tracy's parents' house, It doesn't match any known
21:17
Speaker 2: relative's house that they search, And.
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Speaker 1: That phantom basement isn't the only cryptic clue they are
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Speaker 1: left holding. Remember Tracy's entire alibi hinges on that Tuesday
21:27
Speaker 1: night phone call from Carrie's manager.
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Speaker 2: Right the eight thirty pm call exactly.
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Speaker 1: Investigators actually possessed the late eighties Wisconsin bell phone bills.
21:35
Speaker 1: They could definitively prove whether that call ever happened, But
21:39
Speaker 1: they can't read them.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, because the billing codes on these documents read like
21:43
Speaker 2: undecipherable hieroglyphics.
21:44
Speaker 1: Why is that, Like, how could a phone bill be unreadable?
21:48
Speaker 2: Because before modern area codes unify the national telecom grid,
21:51
Speaker 2: these rural phone companies used fragmented hyperlocal zoning codes. Oh
21:56
Speaker 2: I see, Yeah, these codes were entirely unique to specific
21:59
Speaker 2: mets unicipal boundaries, and they were really only understood by
22:02
Speaker 2: the switchboard operators and billing clerks who worked at that
22:05
Speaker 2: specific branch at that specific time.
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Speaker 1: So they're just completely obsolete.
22:09
Speaker 2: Totally unless someone out there who worked for wisponsin bell
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Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine steps forward to decode those specific
22:15
Speaker 2: zoning ciphers. That physical proof just remains locked away in
22:19
Speaker 2: plain sight.
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Speaker 1: It's a case suspended in time, just anchored by physical
22:23
Speaker 1: evidence that investigators can see but can't fully comprehend or locate.
22:28
Speaker 1: It really is which brings us back to you, the listener.
22:31
Speaker 1: We walk through the world every single day. We step
22:34
Speaker 1: over concrete floors, we walk through basements, and we just
22:37
Speaker 1: assume they are foundations.
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Speaker 3: Just cold, boring, empty space.
22:42
Speaker 1: We really do take the physical spaces around us entirely
22:45
Speaker 1: for granted, assuming their history is exactly what appears to be.
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Speaker 3: But I want you to.
22:49
Speaker 2: Think about this as you go about your week. Somewhere
22:52
Speaker 2: out there, perhaps in a house currently occupied by an
22:55
Speaker 2: unsuspecting family, maybe even a family.
22:57
Speaker 3: Who just moved in.
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Speaker 2: Sits a three by six foot concrete slab. It's in
23:02
Speaker 2: a basement with the stairs in the corner, a washer
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Speaker 2: and dryer tucked right beside them.
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Speaker 1: It's out there somewhere.
23:07
Speaker 2: How well do you really know the history of the
23:09
Speaker 2: ground beneath your own feet. Could the final resting place
23:12
Speaker 2: of a decade's old mystery be hidden in plain sight,
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Speaker 2: just waiting for someone to finally recognize the layout of
23:18
Speaker 2: a room.