Latest / Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast / The Murder of Linda Pagano

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The Murder of Linda Pagano · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, a seventeen year old girl vanished
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: after returning home from a rock concert, leaving behind her car,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: her family, and a mystery that would remain unanswered for decades.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Despite searches and a missing person's report, she seemed to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: simply vanish, with no confirmed sighting of her and very
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: little evidence to explain where she had gone. Then, decades later,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: a curious college student began digging into the forgotten case
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: of an unidentified woman whose remains were found, and she
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: took what she found to read it, setting off an
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: investigation that would uncover a connection no one saw coming
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and finally reveal the truth about what happened to her.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: This is the story of Linda Pagano.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: and Grim, a.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: True crime podcast. The following mature audience.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Listener, I'm annoyed.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Why are you annoyed?
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know, husbands, I tell y, it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Was an accident. I didn't mean to. Before we hit record,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I burped, and apparently my burp drifted to Nicole, and
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: apparently it did not smell very nice.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Honestly, you did mean to, because I didn't constantly and
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: just below it in my direction.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: What No, I okay on the rare occasion and maybe,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: but wow, that's not something I just do on the daily.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about anyway? Ben also looks like
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: an entirely different person I do. I'm like living with
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: a new person.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I lost a shit ton of weight when I
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: shaved off my beard.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: It looks like he's lost twenty pounds in twenty years.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I do have a beard. I just I chopped a
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: lot off. It was getting quite long, like wizardly almost,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and now it's just a regular old beard, like an
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: inch off my chin.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: It's quite not even regular, it's like almost smaller than regular. Hey,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: what No, I don't know.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It's your typical beard that you'd see like walking down
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the street. It's not like a long beard. But it
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: was a long.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Beard it was, and I can't like I still am
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: not over it. I think the thing that's I don't know.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I'm sort of one of those people that like reads
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: people's mouth when they're talking, which is very odd. It's
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: almost like I sometimes think I have like a hearing
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: impediment or something. I don't know, but I sort of
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: watch mouth sometimes, and your mouth looks really fucking weird.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Well, because I also had a longer mustache and I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: trim that up too, and now you can see my
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: mouth much better and.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Your teeth and something. I like, what the heck?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: You can see my teeth and it bothers you.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: You just look really different. I look good though, right,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah you do.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you for clarifying unprompted too. But anyways, my appearance aside,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I think we should probably get into the story, don't
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you think the true crime case that we're here for.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, I agree, yeah.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I mean it might be a crime that I shaved
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: off my beard. I don't know, but I think we
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: should get into a better crime than that.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Some people might think so, some people might think.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: So I feel a little disappointed. I can't grab onto
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: much fur on my face anymore.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: You did cut off a bit more than you intended.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, a little bit because I just kind of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: grabbed my beard and like hacked it. And I was like, oh,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: that's about an inch more than I meant to. But whatever,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: it'll grow. I don't care.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: You know, it will grow, that's for sure.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But we do have an interesting case today. This
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: is still an unsolved case. I will clarify that before
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: we get into the story today, so that will no
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: one's yelling at me by the end of this story.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: I thought, for a second, you're going to say this
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: is a two parter. No it's not a ten, and
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I didn't know. I was like, oh, I didn't realize
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: it was.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: But okay, no, this is an unsolved case and I'm
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: just gonna leave it at that.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, Okay, that sucks, but let's do it.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Sometimes those are fun, for sure, fun.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Like I like mysteries and unsolved let's your brain kind
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: of go a little wild. It does you get to
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: think and rather than just being told a story, you
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: can actually put your brain to work and think about it,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: try and think of different angles, what might have happened,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: things like that. So I enjoy a good mystery, I'll
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: be honest. But yeah, of course there's someone's life who
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: was on the line in a case of a true
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: crime situation, and that's never good.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: That sucks.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: I will do my best to tell their story. Linda
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Marie Pagano was born on April eleventh, nineteen fifty seven,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the youngest of three children in a family from the Akron,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Ohio area. Her sister Cheryl was the oldest, about six
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: years ahead of Linda, while her brother Michael, who usually
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: went by Mike, was only about a year older than Linda.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: By the summer of nineteen seventy four, Linda was seventeen
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: years old and preparing for her senior year at Springfield
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: High School. Those who knew her described her as shy, honest,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: hard working, and even responsible. Mike remembered his younger sister
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: as the good kid in the family. He was more
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: rebellious and regularly found himself in trouble, while Linda usually
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: did what she was supposed to do. Now, even when
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: her siblings convinced her to keep quiet about something that
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: they had done, for example, the guilt would eventually get
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to her and she would tell her parents anyways. Quote
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Linda had a good head on her shoulders, Mike said,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: she always did the right thing. She also had plenty
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: going on in her life too. Linda worked serving food
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: at an A and W restaurant in the nearby city
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of talm Age. She had a large group of friends
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and loved rock and roll music. She also had a
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Ford Mustang car it was shine orange, and she was
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: very proud of it and regularly used it to get.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Around as she should be.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: That's cool, no kidding. Her home life was a little
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: more complicated though. During the summer of nineteen seventy four,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Linda and her siblings had been living at different times
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: with their stepfather, Byron Klaflin. Linda was staying with him
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: at his apartment on Carnegie Avenue in Akron as summer
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: came to an end. Byron worked as a bartender and
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: was known to drink regularly himself. Now years later, Mike
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and Cheryl would actually describe their stepfather as a man
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: with a temper who could be unpredictable and even prone
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: to angry outbursts. Mike's feeling towards him were particularly strong. Still,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: whatever problems existed within the family, Linda herself apparently managed
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: to get along with Byron reasonably well. Most of the time.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Everything seemed normal leading into the final weekend of August,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and for Linda, that weekend was supposed to be a
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: good one. On Saturday, August thirty first, nineteen seventy four,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the massive rock show was being held at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: It was part of the World Series of Rock, a
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: series of concerts that brought some of the biggest acts
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: of the era into the stadium. That day's lineup was
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: headlined by Crosby, Stills, and Nash and Young. For a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: seventeen year old who loved rock music, it was exactly
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the kind of event that Linda wanted to attend, so
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: she went to Cleveland with her boyfriend, Steve Wilson. The
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: concert ran late, and by the time Linda and Steve
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: made their way back towards Akron, Saturday night had rolled
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: into the early morning hours of Sunday, September. First, Linda
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: was driving, and before going home, she dropped Steve off
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: at his house. From there, Linda headed back towards the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: apartment on Carnegie Avenue. Exactly what had happened once she
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: arrived is difficult to reconstruct because only one account of
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: what follows exists, and that's Byron's account. According to him,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Linda came home very late, and her coming home at
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: such a late hour didn't leave him too please, and
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: soon the two began arguing. The disagreement escalated until Byron
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: kicked out the seventeen year old from his apartment, so
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: she left, and there was no known witness standing outside
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the door, no one who saw Linda walk away. There
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: was no friend who was waiting to pick her up,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: at least no one who ever came forward. Anyways, all
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: we know is that what happened immediately after the argument
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: rests entirely on Byron's version of events. But the thing is,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: even though Linda left that night or that morning, her
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Mustang did not. That was particularly strange considering how important
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that car was to her. If Linda had decided she
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: was finished with the argument and wanted to get away
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: from Byron for the night, she had transportation, it was
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: available to her, but instead, according to Byron, she just
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: left without it, and after that Linda Pagano was never
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: seen alive again.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Huh. That's interesting though, because that could even be where
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: she spent the night. Right was in her Mustang, so
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: it makes no sense that she didn't take it somewhere
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: exactly now.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Steve would have seen her when she dropped him off
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: after the concert. Byron said he saw her when she
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: is a return to the apartment, and when their argument
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: ended with him throwing her out, there was nothing. There
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: was no confirmed destination of where she was going, non
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: confirmed person that she was going to go see and
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: stay with, and no confirmed sighting of Linda after she
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: supposedly walked away from the apartment that night on September one,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four. Now, initially, there was no concern over
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: where she would go or where she went, because Linda
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: had plenty of friends, and after a fight like that,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it was very reasonable to think that she had simply
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: gone to stay with one of them for a while.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Cheryl Pagano assumed her younger sister was in fact just
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: with friends that she would eventually turn up, but that
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: assumption did not last long. Byron apparently didn't know where
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Linda had gone either, and he contacted Linda's mother to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: ask where she was staying or if she was with her.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And when it became clear that Linda wasn't with her
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: mother or any of the other people the family expected
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: her to turn to, the situation began to look very different.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: She had not returned to the Carnegie Avenue apartment, and
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: there had been no phone calls or messages explaining where
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: she was, and so around September second, roughly a day
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: after she had last been seen, Linda's family officially reported
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: her missing. Now, the response was unfortunately not exactly what
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the family had hoped for. Police approached Linda's disappearance as
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: a runaway case and not a missing person situation. It
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was an assumption that was not unusual for missing teenagers
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: at the time, honestly, But what it meant was that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: there was no major search effort or widespread appeal for
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: any information, and the case received essentially no media attention.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: But she still is classified as a child. Really, she's
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: not an.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Adult technically speaking, yes, but you have to remember this
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: is also the seventies, okay to che Yeah, in the seventies,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: seventeen year olds leaving home run away. Even though they're
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: not technically classified as an adult, they're basically treated as such.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Right back then. Even more so, Yeah, they would be
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: probably considered an adult. Yeah, I don't know if legally
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: they're No, probably no legally, but just you know.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: In society's eyes, they're an adult. Now. From the family's perspective, however,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: there was several problems with that idea of her just
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: being a runaway, and that was she had a job,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: she had friends and regularly spent time with them. She
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: also had school that she was finishing up and it
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: was waiting for her. And most importantly, the people closest
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to Linda simply did not consider her even the kind
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: of teenager who'd abandon her life life without telling anyone. Plus,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the car made the situation even harder to understand. Linda
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: was proud of her Ford Mustang and regularly use it,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: yet it remained behind even after she disappeared, and if
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Byron's versions of events were correct, Linda had left the
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: apartment following their argument without taking the car, which was
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: available to her. For someone supposedly running away, leaving behind
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: her own transportation made absolutely no sense to the family.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: There was also no indication or proof that Linda had
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: contacted someone else to pick her up or arrange another
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: way out of Akron. Now. Linda's brother, Mike was especially
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: skeptical of the runaway explanation. He described himself as being
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the rebellious sibling, the one who regularly got in trouble,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: But Linda, she was generally the responsible one. She worked,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: had the friends, and, in Mike's words, usually did the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: right thing. Now, that did not prove she couldn't have
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: left voluntarily after an argument. Of course, but as the
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: days passed without so much as a phone call, the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: runaway explanation became much more difficult for their family to accept.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: But in the situation at hand, regardless of their opinion
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and the little public attention being given to her disappearance,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Linda's family were forced to take much of the search
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: efforts on to themselves. Cheryl, Linda's older sister, made a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: missing persons flyer using a photo of her sister, and
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: she and her friend's distributed copies in hopes that someone
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: had seen Linda, or maybe knew where she was staying.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: The family continued asking questions and looked for her, but
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: there was no information to work with, since Linda had
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: just disappeared during the early morning hours when everyone was asleep.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: As the first days stretched into weeks, there was still
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: nothing to suggest that Linda had settled elsewhere. No friends
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: came forward to say that she was staying with them,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and there was no confirmed sightings that gave family another
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: location to try and search. The complete absence of contact
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: became increasingly significant as well, because whatever anger Linda might
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: have felt after the argument, she still had siblings, a mother, friends,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: and a life in this area. All of whom were
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: not part of the argument, and yet none of them
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: had heard from her. The family continued searching, but the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: days began to pass, and so did the months, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: without new information coming in, there just wasn't much that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: they could do beyond keeping Linda's photograph in circulation and
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: hoping that someone might recognize her. By the end of
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, the assumption that she would eventually just
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: come home had given way to a much more troubling reality,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a thought where she may never come home. Linda had
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: been missing for months at this point, and her family
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: was no closer to understanding what had happened after she
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: return from Cleveland that September morning. By the beginning of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: February nineteen seventy five, roughly five months had passed since
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: anyone in Linda's life could reliably place her anywhere. Her
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: missing Person's case had produced no answer, and the family
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: remained dependent on someone eventually coming forward with information. But
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: about thirty miles away from Akron, authorities in Strongsville were
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: about to be confronted with a completely different mystery. It
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: was on February fifth, nineteen seventy five, three teenage boys
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: were walking through parkland in Strongsville, Ohio, when they came
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: across human remains near the banks of the Rocky River.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: The area, part of what is known as the Mill
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Stream Run Reservation, was roughly thirty miles from Akron and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: near the Baltimore and Ohio railroad tracks. What the boys
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: had found was only the partial remains of a skeleton,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: one that had been exposed to the environment long enough
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: for there to be very little left for investment to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: work with. The remains were incomplete and heavily weathered. The mandible,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: or the lower jaw, was missing, along with a number
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: of other bones as well. The available case material indicates
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: that animals and possibly movement of the nearby water, may
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: have scattered parts of the skeleton over time. Now, investigators
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: did not recover a wallet, identification, jewelry, or other personal
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: property that could immediately tell them who this woman was.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, so there was more than just a skull found, right, Yes, Okay,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: it was just the teenagers stumbled on the skull first
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: kind of thing.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I believe. So, so there was the remains of a skeleton.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I'm going to guestimate approximately half remaining of a skeleton,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: scattered bones and the skull was the most notable. Okay, yes,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: but the jaw of the skull is missing. Huh so
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of it is missing due to animals, whether
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: even potentially the river taking some away. Right so, now,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: according to the Cleveland Metro Parks, no oh physical evidence
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: was recovered from the scene that could point investigators towards
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: the person responsible for putting her there. The condition of
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the remains also made some of the most basic questions
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: extremely difficult for investigators to try and answer. They could
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: establish that the skeleton belonged to a young Caucasian woman,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: but estimates of her age and physical characteristics varied. Some
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: reports placed her in her early twenties, while information later
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: recovered from the original case described an estimated aingrage of
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: seventeen to twenty three, and the estimation of the remains
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: also put her height around five foot one and estimated
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: she could have weighed somewhere between one hundred or maybe
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: even one hundred and ten pounds with only partial remains available. However,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: these were forensic estimates or guesses even rather than the
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: actual known description of this woman. Now, her teeth offered
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: another possible route towards identification, although Unfortunately, like the rest
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: of her remains, there were very few left to examine.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Accounts of the original records differ slightly over whether five
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: or six teeth remained, and later research noted a wisdom
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: tooth that had not grown in yet as well. Ultimately,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: beyond that, much of the woman's dental structure was still unavailable,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and that was mostly due to the fact that the
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: mandible was gone. But the teeth that did remain, though,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: showed some dental work, including fillings, which meant investigators at
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: least had something that could potentially be compared against the
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: records of a missing woman. Now there was more formal
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: examinations that followed. On February twelfth, which was one week
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: after the discovery, the skull and dental remains were examined
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: through the Coyuga County Corner System with doctor Charles Hurst.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: The examination helped narrow the profile of the unknown woman,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: but it also established something far more important. She had
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: not simply died in the park there where she was found.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: See there was evidence of a gunshot wound that was
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: found to her head. Some later accounts described the wound
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: more specifically involving the left temple area of the skull,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: but the sources are not consistent enough to establish that
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: detail with the same confidence as the broader findings. What
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: was established, though, was that the woman had suffered a
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: gunshot wound to the head, and her death was ultimately
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: ruled a homicide.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Dang.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So now investigators had two separate problems. Someone had killed
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: this young woman, and before they could begin reconstructing who
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: might have wanted her dead or how she had ended
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: up near the Rocky River, they first needed to determine
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: who she was. The state of the remains provided few
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: immediate answers. The body was believed to have been in
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the area for a matter of months before the February discovery,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: but decomposition and exposure had removed many of the things
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: that would normally help investigators identify a victim.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: That's really interesting with the range that they okay, when
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: there's like decomp and stuff and elements. I was watching
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: a show recently and they had like a date or
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: like a range of them being like twenty six to
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: forty six, and I'm like, holy shit, Like they really
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: can't tell ages. I guess like some of the victim Yeah,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: to the victims, Oh yeah, definitely, yeah, and I don't know.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I guess I just thought it would be a little
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: bit easier to tell. But maybe once you're kind of
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: like grown, you know, it's like not much more to it.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I think, in all honesty, no matter the age you are,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: it's just a general guess, a guestimation. They can look
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: at things like growth charts and you know, if there's arthritis,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: maybe that'll give an indication of age, and they see
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: that on bones. Those are the sort of indications that
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: they might have to guess. Yeah, there's nothing that you
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: can't cut a bone in half and count rings like
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: you do in a tree.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, because yes, I guess someone fully grown, you know,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: until they get to a certain age where they are
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: have like conditions or their bones are kind of starting
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: to deteriorate or something like, you really can't tell.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: You can't. And even still it's not a confirmed indication,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: because a young individual can still have something like arthritis.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a guessing game, a science of guessing,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: a quasi science. I don't know if it's a quasi science,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: but I can imagine it be difficult to try and
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: actually find an exact age on someone. Yeah, now there
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: was also no evidence found to help with any name
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: or a physical description that investigators could circulate of this victim.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: The location did not answer any questions either. Finding the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: remains in Strongsville did not necessarily mean the woman had
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: actually lived there, or that she'd even been killed there either. So,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: with no known witness to her death and no identity
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to work backwards from, investigators had no immediate circle of family,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: friends or acquaintances, or anyone to interview. Instead, the search
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: had to begin with the woman herself, with her estimated age, sex, race, height,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and dental characteristics which could be compared against women who
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: had been reported missing. And if someone recognized the description,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: or if investigators found maybe dental records that matched the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: surviving teeth, they might be able to give the victim
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a name and begin investigating a homicide. From there, somewhere,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: investigators hoped there might be a missing person report belonging
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: to a woman that had vanished during that period. But
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: for the moment, though there was no match. Police however,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: did not let that stop them as they quickly began
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: trying to match her to a name, and one possibility
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: quickly stood out, largely because her disappearance had already become
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: one of the most publicized missing persons cases in the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: United States at the time. Patricia Patty Hurst had been
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, on February fourth,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four. The nineteen year old granddaughter of newspaper
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: publisher William Randolph Hurst had been taken by members of
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the case had attracted national
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: attention throughout the year that followed, and by early nineteen
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: seventy five, her whereabouts remained a major mystery, and reported
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: sightings had come from different parts of the country, including
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: claims that placed her around Ohio. So when the remains
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of a young white woman were found in Strongsville, authorities
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: considered whether they might have found Patty. The estimated age
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and general physical characteristics were close enough to justify checking
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: in and investigating, but investigators obtained her dental information for comparison,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: and the surviving dental work on the Strongsville woman did
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: not match Patty's records, which means whoever had been found
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: near the Rocky River was clearly not her and was
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: someone else. Now. At the same time, Mike Pagano, Linda's brother,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: learned about the discovery of the unidentified remains through a
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: TV news report. At this point, Linda had been missing
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: from Akron since September, which was about five months, and
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Strongsville was roughly thirty miles away. The report described the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: remains of a young woman, and that was enough for
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Mike to wonder whether these two cases could be connected.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Could this person found be his sister?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: M hmm, well, yeah, when you first said Patricia, I
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: was just like almost taken it back because I just
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: kind of almost assumed it was Linda for some reason.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, would be Linda.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Now, despite his mother's objections, Mike called the police in Strongsville.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: A woman answered the phone, and Mike told her about
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: his sister Linda. He gave Linda's name and description and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: explained how long she'd been missing now. According to Mike,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the woman responded that the person found in Strongsville seemed
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: to be a little older and probably was even taller
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: than his sister, so she assured him that the remains were,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: in fact not that of Linda. Mike accepted that answer,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and there was no indication that I could find that
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Linda's dental records were actually even requested for comparison. At
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the time. Nothing appears to have moved beyond the telephone conversation.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: In fact, at all, the missing teenager in Akron remained Linda,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and the homicide victim in Strongville remained an unidentified young woman.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: The age estimate is likely what contributed to the missing connection.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Linda was seventeen when she disappeared, while some descriptions of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the Strongsfield victim placed her to be around twenty or
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: even in her early twenties. Other information from the original investigation, however,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: reportedly gave a broader estimate of roughly seventeen to twenty
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: three years old. Estimates of height also varied, and those
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: differences were enough to separate separate the two cases in
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, despite the relatively short distance between Linda's
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: last known location and the place where these remains were discovered.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, well yeah, that's like definitely worth checking out because
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: I'm just thinking, like, as a female, say I was seventeen,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I would have done much growing
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: like to my early early twenties. Yeah, Like I like,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're kind of already gone through puberty and
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: you're kind of already your height really at that point
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: for a female anyway, fair generally, well.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And I don't know exactly what they check in the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: in the skeletons to estimate an age, but even if
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay, that's a few years off of our estimate,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: it's still worth checking.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but whoever it was that talked with Mike and
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: the phone that day, whether it was a dispatch member
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: or whether it was an actual corporal or investigator or whoever,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: on the course, they decided that it was not close
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: enough of a match to investigate.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, kind of sitting here, I like,
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: that doesn't seem good, But obviously they had their reasons
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: for deciding that.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: I guess clearly. Now authorities continue trying to identify the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Strongsville woman, but no missing person's report produced a or
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: confirmed a match or anything, and eventually the investigation reached
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a point where authorities had little more they could do
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: with the information that was available to them. The woman
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: remained an unidentified homicide victim, and her remains were still
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: being held at the corner while officials confronted a much
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: more mundane question, and that was who was responsible for
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: burying her and laying her to rest. According to newspaper
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: coverage later recovered from the period, the approximate one hundred
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: dollars burial expense became the subject of a dispute between
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: local agencies. Strongsville, Cleveland, and Coyuga County each had different
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: views about where responsibility laid. Various departments were contacted, and
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: questions were raised about whether existing rules required municipalities to
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: arrange burials for people without money, as applied when the
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: deceased person had never been identified. While that disagreement played out,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the investigation into the woman's identity had stalled. The remains
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: could not be held indefinitely simply because authorities did not
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: know her name, and eventually arrangements were made for an
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: indigent burial. Now, these burials are generally provided at public
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: expense for people whose remains are unclaimed or whose families
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: cannot arrange a funeral. In this case, there was no
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: known family to contact because authorities still had no idea
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: who this young woman was, and on May fifteenth, nineteen
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: seventy five, a little more than three months after the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: boys discovered the skeleton, the unidentified woman was buried at
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: memorial gardens in Highland Hills, in the area used for
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: people whose remains were unclaimed or unidentified. There was no
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: family present to bury her, because no family knew she
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: was theirs, and there was no name to place over
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a grave. In the cemetery records, her identity was reduced
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: to a few pieces of administrative information an unknown white
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: female whose remains had been found in Strongsville. Her grave
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: itself was left unmarked. Meanwhile, for Mike, the television report
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: about the body had become another lead that went nowhere.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Had told them that this woman was too old and
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: probably too tall to be Linda, leaving his family exactly
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: where they had been before they made the call with nothing.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Linda remained missing, and there was still nothing to explain
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: what had happened to her after she returned to Byron's
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: apartment on September one, nineteen seventy four. As the years passed,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: the two investigations remained completely separate cases. One file concerned
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: a seventeen year old girl who had disappeared from Akron,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and the other concerned a young woman murdered and left
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: near the Rocky River whose identity investigators had been unable
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: to establish the investigation had not produced a name in
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and without one, there was little foundation
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: for a homicide investigation. Eventually, even finding the case itself
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of Linda became difficult, but that began to change around
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen when a Cleveland State University student named Christina
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Skates came across an unusual entry while doing genealogy research.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Christina had been working through cemetery records when she noticed
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: a line describing an unidentified burial in unusually sparse terms,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: quote unknown white female bones. The woman was associated with
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the identifying number eight two four eight three, but there
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: was little else in the entry to explain who she
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: might have been or why she had been buried without
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a name, just a number. Christina was accustomed to incomplete
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: historical records, but this case was comparatively recent. The remains
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: had been discovered in nineteen seventy five, well within living memory,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: yet the record offered almost nothing about the woman's life.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: That entry stayed with Christina, and over the following months
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: she began trying to find out what had happened, and
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: by twenty fifteen that curiosity had developed into a much
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: larger research project. She searched old newspaper coverages and library
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: archaves for information and trying to identify this woman with
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: unidentified woman reports and all found within northeast Ohio during
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. She contacted Strongsville Police, but the department
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: apparently had little information readily available because the remains had
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: been discovered on parkland. She also contacted Cleveland Metro Parks
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: and eventually even obtained material from the original case through
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Don Silvis. Those records allowed Christina to conduct much
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: more of the story. The woman had been found near
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the Rocky River on February fifth, nineteen seventy five, and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: her death had been classified as a homicide after examination
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: of the remains revealed the gunshot wound to the head.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Christina also located old newspaper reportings about the investigation in
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the eventual disagreement over the cost of bearing the unidentified
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: victim as well. What she could not find, though, was
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: evidence that the case had remained active or that the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: woman had ever been entered into the modern systems used
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: to compare unidentified remains with missing persons. So soon Christina
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: began sharing what she found online. On February second twenty fifteen,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: information about the unidentified Strongsville woman appeared in a Reddit
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: post under the username call me Ice, drawing attention to
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the cold case files and autopsy information. Christina also took
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the case two web sluts, where users interested in unidentified
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: remains and missing persons cases began examining the information and
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: suggesting possible matches. One of the people who became involved
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: was Karl Koppelman, a forensic artist who volunteered his time
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: on unidentified persons cases. Carl specialized in creating facial reconstructions
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: intended to show what a person may look like in life,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: but the Strongsville case presented a very obvious problem. The
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: skull was incomplete, the mandible had never been recovered, and
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: many of the teeth were missing. The photographs available from
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: the original investigation were also limiting using photographs of the skull, though.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Carl nevertheless created a reconstruction of the young woman's face
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: as best as he could, and the image gave the
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: case something it had lacked for decades, a representation of
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the victim that could be circulated alongside the basic forensic information. Now.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: The first reconstruction attracted little attention, but Carl continued to
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: take an interest in the case. The online research also
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: exposed a larger problem. When Christina checked Cyoga County's I
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Unidentified Remains information, she could not find the Strongsville woman
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: listed in the case or files at all.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Karl later spoke with the Cyuga County Medical Examiner's office
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: while communicating with them about another unidentified person's case, but
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: he asked about the woman found in Strongsville, and staff
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: couldn't locate her among the unidentified cases either. Now, the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: underlying records had not disappeared entirely, but the case had
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: failed to make the transition into the day dabase that
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: now allowed agencies across the country to compare missing people
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: with unidentified remains. Allegedly, it seems that the word quote
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: unidentified had been misspelled in the record, and ultimately that
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: misspelling of the word prevented the case from appearing with
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the other unidentified remains, which basically meant that a homicide
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: victim who had been waiting for identification since nineteen seventy
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: five was absent from the system specifically designed to help
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: identify people like her because there was a spelling error
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: on the file.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Holy shit. Okay, this is getting I don't know, this
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: is I'm sitting here just like, what the hell is happening.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I feel like shit's not been doing been I feel
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: like people haven't been doing what they should have been doing.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: I guess I don't know, Maybe I need to hear more.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: And there's something because I have a background in safety,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: and there's something in that safety world we call the
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Swiss cheese effect when something goes wrong because everything lines
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: up perfectly for that thing to go wrong. So if
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: you pile a bunch of pieces of Swiss cheese, yeah,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and a whole lines up perfectly between all of them,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: that means something got through every single layer.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: So kind of a rare incident that it did.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: But yes, everything had to line up perfectly for this
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: to go wrong. And I think that this case is
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: very much so that Swiss cheese effect.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah, I guess so, because it wasn't like
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: it was one thing, ye, Now there's several things severally, Yeah, because.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Well right here we have one thing, the spelling error.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of things that we were discussing,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: and I don't want to give anything away. I'm pretty
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: sure you guys already know, but I don't want to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: give anything away. We'll talk about it near the end.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: So on June twenty first, twenty sixteen, the National Missing
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: and Unidentified Person System was contacted and the Coyuga County
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Medical Examiner's Office the staff to the omission. The old
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: records were located, and information about the Strongsville woman was
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: subsequently added to the NAMOS or name US I think
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: is probably how you actually say it, but it's NamUs,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: which is the National Missing and Unidentified Person System. That
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: was a huge change. Until then, anyone trying to identify
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: the woman needed to know, you know, what the nineteen
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: seventy five case had held and everything that existed, and
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: it was located in only surviving records that they could
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: find those things. So once she was entered into name US,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: her estimated age, physical characteristics, location, and circumstances could actually
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: be compared against missing persons cases beyond the file that
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: investigators had checked decades earlier. Christina's original question had been
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: relatively simple. She wanted to know why a young woman
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: murdered in nineteen seventy five had been buried without a
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: name and appeared to have been forgotten, and by following
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: that question through cemetery records, old newspapers, police files, and
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: even online communities, she had helped bring the case back
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: into circulation more than forty years after the remains were discovered.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Good for her, because honestly, it just started with like
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: a curiosity.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Exactly that's so good, But the woman was still unidentified,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: mind you, like, it's still there's nothing came of this.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: It just brought the case to light, and Carl's reconstruction
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: was only an approximation of what she looked like, and
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: nothing uncovered by Christina couldn't, you know, provide a name
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: on its own. But for the first time in decades,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: she had, you know, the information needed to compare her
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: with missing women that was accessible in this national system. Now,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: within months, one of those comparisons would attract the attention
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: of police in Akron. Linda Marie Pagano had been seventeen
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: years old when she disappeared on September first, nineteen seventy four.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: The timing worked, the general age range worked. Akron was
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: only about thirty miles from the place where the unidentified
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: woman's remains had been found five months later. Even with
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: differences in some of the original physical estimates, there was
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: enough overlap for authorities to take the possibility seriously. On
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: December fifth, twenty sixteen, the Akron Police Department contacted the
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Coyuga County Medical Examiner's office about Linda as a possible match.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: This time, unlike when Mike had called the police originally
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five, Linda's dental records were provided for
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: an actual comparison, and eight days later, on December thirteenth,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: odentologist doctor Ken Caserta compared Linda's dental information with the
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: post mortem dental photographs and records retained from the unidentified woman.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Now Linda had undergone extensive dental work, and the few
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: teeth remained with the unidentified Strongsville woman actually contained fillings
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: that could potentially be matched against records taken during Linda's life.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: The comparison didn't prove anything, unfortunately, but also didn't reveal
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: an obvious reason to exclude Linda, meaning she could be
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: a possible match. So it was promising, but it was
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: not enough to declare that the mystery had been solved.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Investigators needed more, and more specifically, they needed biological confirmation
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: before assigning Linda's identity to a homicide victim who'd been
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: buried since nineteen seventy five, and to obtain that confirmation
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: they would need DNA from the original remains, which meant
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: exhuming them. From January through August of twenty seventeen, representatives
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: from several agencies and organizations worked through the process of
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: exhuming the unidentified woman. It was an extensive process, and
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: the problem was not simply receiving permission to open a grave.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: See the woman had been buried more than forty years
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: earlier in an area containing numerous unmarked graves, and investigators
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: first had to determine where the direct remains were located.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: The University of Akron was brought in to assist, and,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: using magnetic and electronic surveilling equipment, researchers mapped the unmarked
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: graves and helped authorities narrow down where the nineteen seventy
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: five burial should have been. Even with that work, though,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: locating the correct remains was extremely difficult, and accounts of
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the exhumations described multiple attempts before authorities were satisfied that
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: they had recovered the right person, and on October eighteenth,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, the remains were exhumed from the cemetery. Examination
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: found them to be consistent with a young white woman
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: described from the original case, and investigators could finally collect
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: materials suitable for DNA testing. Linda's surviving siblings could provide
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the other half of the puzzle for comparison. Mike and
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Cheryl both supplied DNA through mouth swaps, allowing investigators to
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: test whether the exhumed women shared their maternal family life,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: and because mitochondrial DNA is inherited through the mother, it
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: can be used for establishing a biological relationship between siblings
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and unidentified remains, even when decades have passed. On December eleventh,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, bone taken from the exhumed remains and the
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: reference sample from Linda's family were sent to the University
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: of North Texas for the DNA testing. There was little
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: left to do but wait, and months passed before the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: answer finally arrived. It was on June twenty ninth, twenty eighteen,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: when the DNA comparison came in and it confirmed the
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: maternal relationship investigators had been testing for the young woman
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: found near the Rocky River on February fifth nineteen seventy five,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: was in fact Linda Pagano.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: Uugh, that just seems like a piss off to me.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: I feel like if I was like well Mike or
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: like the family, I would just be like raging because
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: he had this thought and no one gave us shit.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, who knows. Maybe the person who answered the
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: phone wasn't an investigator or a police individual. They could
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: have been an administrative assistant or someone who just was
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: waving awfully in a random call or something.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Even well, that's like even worse though, because who is
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: she to just you know, not bring this up to
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: someone in charge.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: But it also could have been a high It could
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: have been, you know, the sheriff or I don't know
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: what ranking is in police, but it could have been
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: someone of higher ranking, a constable, or it could have
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: been a sergeant or whoever, who knows, someone of whatever
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: rank and they could have made the call too. But
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: whoever answer the phone that day just waved it off.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: I know, But like why not? Because just sitting here
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: thinking like it wasn't that much time had passed, like
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: the age kind of could match. It just doesn't make
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: sense of why you just wouldn't try, I.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Know, but they didn't. And again that Swiss Cheese effect,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: because if that had gone through, if it stopped there,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: they would have identified Linda, you know. And if these
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: remains didn't have the spelling mistake in the file, they
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: would have identified Linda. And there's things that go through
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: that just it kept slipping through this Swiss Cheese effect
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: hole to go all the way to the end to
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: end up, you know, in twenty eighteen.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's awesome, Like I love that they
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: did identify her, but I just I kind of just
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: find it like a little devastating too, Yeah, that it
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: took that long.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, back in early nineteen seventy five, Mike had
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: called police after hearing about that discovery and suggested that
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: the remains might belong to his sister, only to be
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: told that the identified unidentified sorry woman appeared to be
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: older and probably taller. But he had actually been right
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: all those years ago. For Christina, the confirmation brought an
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: end to a search that had begun with a cemetery
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: entry consisting of little more than a number and a
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: description of bones. Her decision to question that record had
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: helped return the forgotten Strongsfield case to law enforcement databases,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: where the connection to Linda could finally be examined using
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: evidence that had survived from both investigations. For Mike and Cheryl,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: the result finally answered the question they had followed with
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: their family since nineteen seventy four. Linda had not simply
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: walked away from Akron and started another life that day.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Her family finally knew where she had been, but the
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: DNA results could only answer that one question of identity.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Linda's death had been classified as a homicide back in
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five when the gunshot wound was discovered during
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: the examination of her remains, but it was not attached
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: to her name, only her remains. Now that investigators knew
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: who the victim was, they could officially return to the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: murder investigation with something police in Strongville had never had
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: when the case began. They had a name, Linda's name,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: and it still did not solve the case. Linda's identification
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: was publicly announced on July twelve, twenty eighteen, during a
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: press conference at the Coyuga County Medical Examiner's office. Mike
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: attended alongside officials involved in the case, and after spending
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: most of his life without knowing what had happened to
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: his younger sister, He struggled to believe that an answer
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: had finally arrived. Quote. I thought it was in a dream.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: I thought this day would never come. I thought it
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: would die wondering their mother. Unfortunately did She did not
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: live long enough to receive the same answer that he did.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: She died in twenty twelve, six years before Linda was identified.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Oh this is hurting my heart all lot.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: But with Linda's identity established, investigators could officially move forward
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: with the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. Now, because the remains
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: had been discovered on Metro Parks property, Cleveland, Metro Ark's
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: police assumed responsibility for the murder investigation. Detectives reviewed surviving
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: police reports and notes from the original case. They inspected
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the area where the remains had been discovered and began
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: interviewing people who might still be able to provide some information.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: But at this point, time was one of their biggest problems.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: More than four decades had passed since Linda's murder, and
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: no physical evidence from the scene was recovered, leaving modern
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: detectives without the kind of preserved evidence that could potentially
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: be tested using new or forensic technology. Witnesses had now aged,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: memories had faded, and some of the people who could
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: have answered important questions were already dead. But one person
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: investigator still wanted to find was Linda's boyfriend, Steve Wilson.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Steve had attended the concert with Linda on August thirty first,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, the night that she disappeared, and he'd
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: been one of the last known people to see her
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: alive when she dropped him off early the following morning.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: But according to the most recent update I have found,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Cleveland Metro Parks Polis have continued to try and locate
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: him without any success. Investigators believe he could provide valuable
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: information about Linda's final known moments that night. Now police
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: did not publicly identify Steve as a suspect, though his
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: importance comes more from his position as a key witness
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: who had spent those final hours with Linda before she
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: returned home. The other central figure was Byron Chaflin, Linda's stepfather.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: According to the account available since nineteen seventy four, Byron
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: was the last person known to have seen Linda after
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: she arrived at his apartment. His versions of events was
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: that they argued over a late return and then he
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: kicked her out. There was no known witness to Linda
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: leaving afterwards, which meant investigators attempting to reconstruct her movements
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: were still dependent on an account given by the single
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: person who had supposedly seen her last. Now, when it
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: comes to Mike and Cheryl, they eventually came to believe
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that Byron may have been involved in Linda's death. Their
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: suspicion was influenced in part by their own experience with
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: their stepfather, whom they remembered as volatile and capable of
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: violent outbursts. That belief, however, is not the same as proof.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: No available physical evidence places Byron at the location where
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Linda's remains were discovered, and the surviving sources do not
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: establish when or where Linda was shot. But at the
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: same time, there is also no evidence proving that Linda
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: ever left the apartment as Byron claimed. Sergeant Jeff Smith,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: who worked on Linda's disappearance, later spoke about the difficulty
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: facing Metro Park's investigation with a quote prime suspect having
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: died decades earlier. Now, Sergeant Smith did not name Byron
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: in particular with that statement saying he was the prime
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Sione suspect, but in the context of the investigation and
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: the family suspicion, Byron was clearly a major focus in
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: attempts to understand Linda's final hours, and by then there
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: was no opportunity to even question him again because Byron
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: had died in nineteen ninety Now, unfortunately, the missing identification
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five ultimately seems to carry consequences far
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: beyond the years Linda's family had spent searching for her.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Had her remains been connected to Linda what Mike called
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Strongsville Police in nineteen seventy five, investigators would have been
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: able to investigate a homicide within the year while things
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: were fresh, with everyone around the case being alive. Still Byron, Steve,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Linda's friends, and others connected to her life could have
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: been interviewed while the events were still relatively recent and
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: not forty four years later. Regardless, while the renewed murder
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: investigation continued, Linda's family was finally able to give her
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: a funeral under her own name and not just a number,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: and on January seventeenth, twenty nineteen, Mike Cheryl and other
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: relatives and friends gathered for a memorial service in Akron.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Linda's recovered remains were cremated, and she was ultimately laid
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: to rest with her mother at Holy Cross Cemetery. The
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: homicide investigation surrounding her death still to this day, remains open.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Cleveland Metro Parks say detectives have reviewed the surviving records,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: revisited the discovery site, and interviewed key people, but the
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: case had not produced an arrest. Still, police maintained that
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: it would remain an open case until the person responsible
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: was arrested, or if that person was already dead, investigators
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: could at least sufficiently establish who had killed Linda. As
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: of now, fifty two years has passed since Linda had died,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: and though Linda Pagano finally had her name back, the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: final question in her case remains unanswered. And that's who
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: killed Linda Pigano. And that's the story of Linda Pegano.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: H This one bothers me. I feel very bothered in
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: like my OCD.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Is going through the roof because of all those like
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: holes in the Swiss cheese.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm also thinking a lot because at first
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: I was like, there's no way this is Byron, Like,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: I just didn't think it would be. But the fact
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: that her vehicle was there, and if she did, like
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: get kicked out, it makes no sense that her vehicle
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: would still.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: Be It makes no sense if she got kicked out,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: she first thing she would have done was go to
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: her vehicle.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But then also, why why come up with a
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: story where you're in an argument, because that kind of
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: almost makes you look a little bit like suspicious or
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: like a susper.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think it's the most logical
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: thing to do because if you're saying she left this
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: apartment at this early hour after a long rock concert
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: and partying all night or whatever, she's gonna be tired.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: So why did she leave the apartment? The only reasonable
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: way to say she left the apartment is if he
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: kicked her out. Why would he kick her out an argument?
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: That's the most if he was doing something nefarious, if
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: he did murder her, take her whatever, it's the most
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: reasonable story to tell police because now it moves her
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: getting killed out of the apartment, and it's not on
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: your shoulders.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because even if you said, like she didn't come home,
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: that would almost be more suspicious with her vehicle there exactly.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: And then he's got to go down her vehicle, huh.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: And then the fact too that the siblings you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: have kind of thought that it's him, is like, oh gosh.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's terrible. If it's not him. The only other
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: scenario is someone intercepted her between the apartment and the vehicle.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: That's the only other scenario I can.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: See, which is what I had thought initially too when
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: I didn't think it was him. I was like, oh, man,
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: maybe someone in the apartment building her they were arguing
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: and then came out and was like, oh, you can
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: stay here with me, as.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: A possibility killed her. But that makes sense.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: That also seems more slim too than believing it's Byron.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Byron is in my mind, the most likely.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, damn, okay, I don't know. This one sucks. This
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: one hurts my heart alone.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: No, but thanks to Christina, Yeah, Linda has her name back,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: so good job to Christina. Christina is one hundred and
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: ten percent ah, the badass of the day for well
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: being such a badass period.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: If it wasn't for her, Linda would still be a
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: number yep. So you know, we do love that she
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: was able to be married by her family and they
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: have a resting spot for her to visit and stuff.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Well, Christina was the last piece of Swiss cheese that
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: needed the hole to line up. I'm sorry you guys
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: are going on with my Swiss cheese analogy here. It's
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: carrying on. But she was the last slice of the
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Swiss cheese where the whole didn't like did not line up.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Holy shit, I wonder if Christina likes Swiss cheese.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: I want to know that now she needs a tattoo
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: of Swiss cheese. If tattoo person.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: No kidd he just saying huh, well, yeah, I do
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: love her effort, like, because so easily could she not
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: have just been like, hm, weird and like moved on.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: But she didn't. She didn't hashtag badass of the day.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you Gowish.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Hashtag Swiss cheese. Anyways, thank you guys for being here.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: My throat's getting a little sorts day for some reason.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Sound a little raspy, smoky. Maybe that that might be it.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Hopefully I didn't bother you guys too much. I sound
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: a great at the beginning, but it slowly got worse
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: as we went on. But you guys are amazing. Thank
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: you for being here, Thank you for supporting us. If
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: you want to give the show a review, we are
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: an independent show and things like reviews go a long
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: way to helping us keep producing, getting new people to
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: listen to our show, and even getting victims' names out there.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: So if you give us a good review, that goes
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: a long ways. We really appreciate it and we appreciate
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: your support. You can check out many of our play
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: ways you can support us in the description of this podcast.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: If not, you're still here. You're listening. That's huge too.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. You guys are amazing, and until
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: next time, stay Wicked.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Thing a big bl