Latest / PNW Haunts & Homicides / Leah Roberts: The Crash That Wasn't an Accident | Unsolved, Bellingham, Washington

Transcript

Leah Roberts: The Crash That Wasn't an Accident | Unsolved, Bellingham, Washington · PNW Haunts & Homicides

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: They found a note reading I'm not suicidal, I'm the opposite.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: WHOA, that's unsettling, Like it shouldn't be that should be
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: a good thing. But like, right, why would you need
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: to why would you need.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: To say that?
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, it's like you're trying to convince yourself almost.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it just very much is giving the lady
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: doth protest too much to me, you know.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Aside from that rather ominous statement, the note made reference
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to Carawac and included a drawing of the Cheshire cat's grin.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Ooh yeah, Hi Cassie, Hi Caitlin, Hi, creepy people. Hello,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: what's up? So this is pn W Hants and Homicides,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: where we chat about true crime, the paranormal, Cassie's haunted
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: doll stickers.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Ooh, I'm saying we might have to do patroon on us,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: where I read not haunted doll stickers, because they're funny.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: They are really funny. They're a lot funnier than I
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: thought they would be.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: Charlotte thinks they're not funny at all.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was deeply offended, and that's why she has
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: once again decided to go supersonic. So if you hear
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: anything that sounds like a tea kettle. It's not because
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: it's hot in its summer and we're not drinking hot tea.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: It is, in fact, my tiny, tiny dog.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that thing over there interrupting.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: We just started. Charlotte. I know it's a good thing.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: She's cute. Goodness. She really has no idea how lucky
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: she is.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Maybe we'll figure out how lucky she is in the
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: terror reading we do at the end of every episode.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: She won't believe us. But the tower card, you're chaos
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: and destruction. She is chaos and destruction. All right, Well
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: should we get into this? Yeah, let's do it. What
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: are we doing? What do we go?
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So it's this is my episode. So yay, point one
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: for the True Crime Team.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: I guess you didn't do a spooky I you.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Know, know, really, although I do feel like there's it's
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: not so much that there's like a haunting related to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: this case, but it does have a very eerie feel
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: to it. Oh okay, I don't really know how else
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to say that without just giving away the plot.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: I don't know if that's better or worse. But here
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: we go, yep, and then there we go.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: There we done what Yep. By the time Leah was
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: twenty two, she had lost both of her parents. And
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: here she is on the verge of graduating from college.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And I think she just really felt lost and didn't
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: have a lot of direction. And I feel like she
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: took this trip as a soul searching trip, said Kara Roberts,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: reflecting on her sister's state of mind on the Larry
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: King Live Show Larry King, Larry King Oldest Wooze done yet?
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: You know, I think he's alive. I believe so.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: In her early twenties, Leah learned guitar, took up photography,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: and adopted a kitten she named b after dropping out
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: of North Carolina State University in Raleigh against the wishes
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of her older siblings just months prior to completing her degree.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but fuck them. I love all of that.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I know you do, you girl, Yeah, you do. But
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: here's the thing is, if you're that close to graduating
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and you have presumably accumulated, shall we say, perhaps a
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: sizeable debt for the degree program that you're about to complete, listen,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: if you're not feeling it, I know, but you're so
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: close and you're gonna have to pay for it. It
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: literally sounds like something I would do, So, yeah, I know,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: and I just I'm a finisher. I'm a closer. I'm
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: not I have a hard time. I can be a
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: little bit.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Of a completionist.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: So that's what she said.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: That is indeed what she said.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: In the short span of just about two years, she
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: had lost both of her parents and survived her own
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: brush with death after a near fatal car crash.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Oh shit, yeah, I kind of a lot going through
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: a lot, like I can understand. Yeah, like, if you're
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: that traumatized, maybe making decisions that are right aren't exactly
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: the best, but maybe feel right in the moment for
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: what you're going through.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: I don't really know.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like that, And I don't think I'm
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: gonna remember the exact phrase, but it's it kind of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: reminds me of like you're coming up with short term
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: solutions for a long term problem.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: You know, from that accident, she'd suffered both a punctured
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: lung and shattered her femur, and while she survived, no
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: doubt the recovery would be brutal for either singular injury.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I can say that with some level of certainty because
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I watched my brother recover from I mean, not shattering
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: but breaking his femur. It didn't look like that much
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: fun kind of ruined this summer. I'm gonna be honest, dude,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I can't even so. I just I broke my ankle right, like,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine shattering a bone, like a bone that
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: you use to walk like, Yeah, mine wasn't that bad.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And it was bad.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and the femur is so serious because people
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: can die from that like it. Oh, I mean the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: combination of the two for me is truly unimaginable, Like
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: either one of those is really not awesome, and both
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: of them at the same time when you've already just
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: kind of been through so much and it's like you say,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: it's like you're maybe not in the right headspace for
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: good decision making.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it doesn't sound like it.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And you're already young, so we know you're kind of
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you're winging it, you're flying by the city,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: your dumb dumb pants. I'm still doing that, I know.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I was like, I say that as someone who is
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: still very much flying by the seat of their dumb
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: dumb pants. Whatever you have a grown up job. You're fine.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm that you have a grown up job. You're
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: doing great.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I guess I don't know. I do have a retirement account.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It does frequently tell me I'm not saving enough, but
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: we are. We don't want to talk about mine, You're like,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I'm like, listen, everyone is assuming that I live long enough. Okay,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: So I feel like we're throwing a lot of eggs
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: in that basket. In light of all she'd been through,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: it made sense to those closest to her that it
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: seemed like she was searching for something, something like meaning
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: or direction, maybe just something different, but it was clearly
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: still a very active search. She became deeply drawn to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the writings of Jack Kerouac, as so many similarly searching
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: young people have for decades.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Now sounds familiar, but I don't know who that is.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'll be honest, I have I've never
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: really gotten into like reading his you know, on the
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: road or it sounds really interesting.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: Maybe we should. Yeah, I feel like I might just.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Kind of be at a point in my life where
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I would appreciate it in the
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: same way because I'm I'm just I'm past the point
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: of where I'm like, oh, I'll sleep on the floor
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: or you know this or that, just so that I
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: can have the adventure.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: You know, a venture av.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm down for an adventure if they have
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: clean linens, yes, and a comfortable mattress okay, and hopefully
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: they've preferably also chilled my wine prior to arrival.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Toilets are a must. Oh god, a clean toilet is
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: a must. Clean toilet. Yeah, that's kind of key.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I can't go anywhere without my wipeies. If you're that way,
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: it's the toilets not clean. You can clean it with
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the wipeies.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: It's kind of I mean, but it's so true. How
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: did we ever live before white flushable white bees? I
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: have no idea how I survived. I don't know. I
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: Billy Paper just didn't cutting it.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: At one point, she had discussed with her roommate Nicole
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and another friend Janine, her desire to take a Carauhac
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: inspired road trip west, which is to say, apparently like
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: kind of like the rough and tumble, kind of definitely
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: not staying in like three star, four star, probably really
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: like no star accommodations. Do you know what that is?
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: What that's Carol? Whack bro Sorry, I had to How
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: did you know that was going to come?
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Because it was obvious. I had to make the obvious joke.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: It was right there.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: It's because I'm sensing something bad. It's going to happen,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: and so I'm trying to stall and bunnies anything I.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Can kill four hours. But let's circle back to the beginning.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Leah Toby Roberts was born July twenty third in nineteen
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: seventy six in Durham, North Carolina. She was the youngest
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of three children born to Nancy in Stancil Roberts. Leah
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: was known to those who loved her as an intelligent, introspective,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and deeply curious person, someone drawn to philosophy, literature, and
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: big questions about life and meaning. She was fluent in Spanish,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: as well as both a vegetarian and a smoker.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Hey now balanced, Yeah, and so.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: To me, it just seems an odd contradiction to be
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: a vegetarian and also a smoker, Like those two lifestyle
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: choices are not necessarily diametrically opposed, but it's just an
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: observation as an outside outside you know, to her inner world,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and I don't know, not mutually exclusive. Plenty of people
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: like hold really health conscious or ethical food choices alongside
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: other habits that kind of work against those same goals.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: We all contain multitudes.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I actually wasn't able to find whether she was a
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: vegetarian for whether it was like more of a health
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: choice or more of like an ethical consideration.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know so, but I just didn't like it
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: meets yeah, gross, Like most of the time, I don't
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: really like meat that much.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: It just I mean, obviously I'll eat pepperoni and a pizza.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: But like if I think about it too much, or
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: if I'm like chewing like steak, because you have like
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: when it's chewy, I don't know if it's it just
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: depends on the mood and what I'm thinking about, and
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: if it's infiltrating. I can get grossed out by meat
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: like pretty quickly.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: It's not hard to do, even as someone that is
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: definitely a meditarian. She had a strong Southern accent and
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: beauty mark on the right side above her upper lip.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, I love a beauty mark. I know, so, Marilyn
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: of her I know, even though Marilyn's was fake.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: It's fine. Yeah, I think I knew that at some point,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and then I always forget because it was such like
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: a core thing.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: It is fake, right, I'm positively I don't know. Google
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: now I'm down.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I know Google it it was real. It's real.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: That's what Google is.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: That Why did I think it was fake? So here's
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: what it says. Yes, Marilyn Monroe's famous mole was real,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't always as dark as it appeared on screen. Oh.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: She naturally had a faint, flesh toned mole on her
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: lower left cheek, which she regularly traced and accentuated using
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: an eyebrow pencil to create her iconic dark beauty mark. Okay,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that's why. Okay, so it looks fake because she was
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: like doing.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: It up, and if you're wearing like makeup, obviously you
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: know you have to like either swab it off to
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: like have a show or like yeah color.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so we're it was both fake and real. Yeah,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: huh huh. Known for her warm and engaging personality, when
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Lea was enrolled at NCSU, her course of study was
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: a double major in Spanish and anthropology, though for many
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the college experience isn't without challenges. Her college years were
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: marked by compounding personal tragedy. It was during her sophomore
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: year that her mother, Nancy, died suddenly of heart disease.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: It was soon after, in the fall of nineteen ninety eight,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: when Leah was involved in the car accident that could
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: have claimed her life. The resulting injury to her femur
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: requiring surgery that left a metal rod the length of
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: her right femur and a surgical scar on her right hip. Shit, yeah,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: pretty intense, but surprisingly, she told her sister Kara, she
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: felt born again after her recovery. As someone who's never
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: broken a bone, I have to imagine it has to,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: in some respects be kind of a transformative experience.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: I'll have to ask my brother, we're going to bone
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: that badly?
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: He was so young, Like, was that your experience, like
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: even at a like pre k age, or is that only.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: When it happens like as an adult.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I feel born again. That's because my memory showed up.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: I don't remember anything else for her memory so short.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I'm starting over. The third and final blow in the
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: spring of nineteen ninety eight, just three weeks before she
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: was scheduled to leave for a field work slash study
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: program in Costa Rica, her father's Stancil, who had battled
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: a chronic lung illness since Leo was seventeen, died well.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: So from what I understand, because he had been kind
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: of chronically ill, I think that her, even though her
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: mother died first, it was like she was so actively
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: like kind of trying to caretake for him that it
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: was like kind of one of those situations where you
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: like forget to take about, like take care of yourself
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: in a way, which I think is like, that's just
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: really sad. It's hard because you know that's like the
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: love of her life. And and then you know, for Leah,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: now she's lost both both of her parents. Yeah, I know,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: she decided to go to Costa Rica anyway because she
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: no longer had living parents. She granted her sister Kara,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: power of attorney over her bank accounts before leaving the country.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Her brother said she wanted to see the world and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: spread her wings. And I feel like at that point,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: you've earned it. You know, you've been through a lot,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and I think people deserve to be able to go
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and have experiences and travel regardless.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: But it's like, girl, you, more than anybody, know that
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: life can be so short. Yes, yeah, you know that
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: is very true.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Leah spoke to her sister Kara, and though her plans
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: for the future were very uncertain, their conversation seemed relatively normal,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: ending with warm sisterly regards, the pair both apparently expecting
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: to see each other soon. That was March ninth, two thousand.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: That same afternoon, Leah agreed to join Nicole for a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: babysitting gig the following day, but Leah missed the babysitting
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: appointment the next day. So this is after she's returned
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: from Costa Rica. Just to kind of like clarify in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: terms of the timeline, okay, I just thought it was like,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: it's a really unique thing because I feel like having
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: you know, in such a short time, like her mom
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: had already passed away the year prior.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: But then her dad dies less than a month.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Before she's supposed to go to Costa Rica. I could
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: understand the temptation to be like, I can't, like I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: just don't have it in me to still go and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: do this trip. But you know, she went, and this
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: is after she's come back. But later in the day,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: when Nicole returned, Leah and her white nineteen ninety three
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: jeep Cherokee were gone.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: No, I love a jeep Cherokee Cheroke.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Because Leah hadn't kept a consistent schedule since dropping out
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: of school, Nicole wasn't initially concerned. She was like, eh,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, she said she'd come do the babysitting
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: with me, and like she didn't show up, but like, eh, whatever,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: you know, and now she's not here when I come home.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: But like she doesn't have a normal like nine to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: five or you.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Know, she's a free spirit.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. However, by March eleventh, when she was still unreachable
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the family and friends trying to contact her, they were
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: growing pretty worried. Two days later, on March nineteenth, Kara
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: reported her missing to the Durham Police Department. On March fourteenth,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Kara and Nicole searched Leah's room. It was apparent to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: them that a number of personal items and much of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: her clothing were missing. And I'd argue the biggest giveaway
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: so was b No the kiddy for kitty.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: I love that cat.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know this cat. I know I don't. I
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: looked so hard to try to find like pictures of
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: her too, and the yeah, they found a note reading
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not suicidal, I'm the opposite.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Whoa, that's unsaide like it shouldn't be that should be
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: a good thing. But right, why would you need to
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: why would you.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Need to say that? Yeah?
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly, It's like you're trying to convince yourself almost yes, yeah,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: it just very much is giving the lady doth protest
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: too much to me?
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: You know, yeah, weird okay.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Aside from that rather ominous statement, the note made reference
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: to Kerawhak and included a drawing of the Cheshire cat's
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: grin ooh yeah. Alongside the note was enough money to
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: cover expenses for their apartment for roughly a month. Using
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: her power of attorney, Kara was able to access Leah's
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: bank records. Leah's route had been partially reconstructed through bank records, receipts,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and confirmed sightings. Leah had withdrawn several thousand dollars on
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the afternoon of March ninth. Her debit card had been
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: used for a motel room near Memphis, then for gas
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and food along a route, suggesting she was traveling west
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: on I forty and then north on I five after
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: reaching California.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Oh okay, I made it to the PNW.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: The last activity on her accounts was a gas purchase
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: shortly after midnight on March thirteenth in Brooks, Oregon. Investigators
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: would learn from one of Leah's friends that she had
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: talked specifically about wanting to visit Desolation Peak in Washington,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: inspired by Kerouac's tenure there as a fire lookout in
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. So it's a gorgeous spot. It overlooks
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Ross Lake and I looked you unfortunately cannot stay there.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: It's a great loss to the Kerouac community well, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: just people that enjoy the great outdoors. But it's beautiful.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: You can definitely still hike it. It is apparently a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: pretty challenging hike.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: So it looks like it would be. It looks high
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: up and it's like in the mountains.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it's it's like desolate is the word
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: for sure. Can't breathe up there that, yeah, the air
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: would be thinner. As they continued to investigate, police recovered
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: security camera footage from the gas station in Brooks, Oregon
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: just before one am on March thirteenth. It shows Leah
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: alone no obvious signs of distress, but in the short
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: time she appeared on screen while completing her transaction, her
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: gaze kept straying towards the parking lot because there apparently
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: weren't any cameras placed outside or that had a clear
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: view of the parking lot. It's unclear what or who
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: she might have been looking at.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Why not put cameras on the park lot?
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Honestly, honestly because especially those little kind of gas station
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: mini mart type, you know, businesses, they get robbed frequently
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: or they have to deal with all kinds of situations.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I just yeah, I will never understand. But it was
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: a different time. This was This was like nine to eleven,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: hadn't even happened. Okay, so was twenty six years ago,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: basically damn. That same day, Leah arrived in Bellingham, Washington,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: roughly a five to six hour drive from Bricks, Oregon.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Just after one thirty that afternoon, she bought a ticket
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: to a two ten showing of the movie American Beauty
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Oh Snap, Yeah at the bellis Fair Mall Theater. So
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: that also is like dating this era. Horde is the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: ticket stub later found in a keepsake box in her jeep.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Is how her arrival in Bellingham was confirmed. Near the
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: theater was the mall's reportedly only sit down restaurant, Elephant
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: and Castle. Police interviewed two men that had also been
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: there that evening who had spoken with her about her
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Carauac inspired road trip.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: One man called into.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Authorities and the other they were able to track down,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: but the two had differing stories. The first man they
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: spoke to after he came forward, said he hadn't seen
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Leah leave there with anyone. Barry enters the chat when
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: police hear the second man's story. He said Leah left
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: with a man that night that he heard her call
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Barry Berry.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: He was able to describe Barry in such great detail
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: that they had him work with a sketch artist. Not
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: only did the other man not recall seeing Barry, but
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: neither did any of the other restaurant customers. Was Barry
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: a ghost? I mean? Is this the eerie par that's
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: so weird? Law enforcement may have been more inclined to
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: believe the first man, as he had readily come forward
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: rather than waiting to be tracked down, but it doesn't
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: seem as though they dismissed the barrier of it all,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: like outright, they fully followed this up, but Barry only
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: existed in the mind and recollection of the second man
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: that had been sitting.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Next to Why would you make that up too?
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: That is so weird, right, Yeah, why would you make
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: that up?
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: Is he Berry? It's hard to say.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I don't believe the identity of most of these people
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: that are, you know, witnesses after the fact. I don't
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: think that their identities have really been released publicly.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Not saying he's guilty, But that is interesting that if
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: everyone else, nobody else remembers Barry.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: But means it's like you made up Berry and you
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: attacked her after she left. That's why no one else
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: remembers anything.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that happen.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: That's just what is going through my mind.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem an unreasonable theory.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, man number two?
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Who are you?
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Man number two?
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: It was five days after the last sighting of Leah,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: early on the morning of March eighteenth, two thousand, that
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a couple jogging along Canyon Creek Road made discovery on
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: a side route of the Mount Baker Highway in Wacom County,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: roughly thirty miles east of Bellingham. They noticed clothing near
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the top of a slope. Now, depending on the source,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the clothing was found either hanging on the trees or
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: is other descriptions.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: State tied to them.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, both are a bit odd just given the location,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: but one is I think decidedly creepier tied. Mm hmmm, okay, good,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we're on the same page about that.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: Unless it's windy and she didn't want them to blow away,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: It's weird either way. That caught their attention, of course,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: because they're like, what are these clothes doing here? Yeah,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: as any good Samaritan or sacrificial lamb in a horror movie,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: would they continued to follow the trail. Were the clothes
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: like on different trees? You know, it's not described in
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: enough detail. It seems like it was a singular tree. Okay.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I think that just caught their attention, and then they
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: kind of continued.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Along because I'm like, the trail if the clothes were
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: tied to different trees from yes, like you're trying to
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: find your way back or something or exactly.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be a completely valid reason I supposed
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: to do to do that.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Eventually, they found Leah's white.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Jeep Cherokee at the bottom of a steep embankment, severely damaged.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: As of course, the location would imply down an embankment
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: is not usually where you want your car to go.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: No, please, Just in case that was unclear, they called
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: nine to one one.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Several things stood out to deputies immediately upon arriving to
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the remote scene. I mean, number one, it's remote. The
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: vehicle's broken windows had been covered with blankets and pillows.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: It looked like someone may have been using it for shelter.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: The North Carolina plate JVP DASH two eight eight one
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: traced back to the missing persons report Kara had filed.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: They were able to recover Lea's driver's license, passport, credit card, checkbook,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: guitar CDs, and twenty four hundred dollars in cash from
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the vehicle. Perhaps even more significantly, though, items.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: That were not found.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Leah, Right, Leah, that's a pretty significant Her cat carrier
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: along with cat food were found, but there was no
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: sign of be Oh.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Also found underneath.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: The driver's side floor Matt a prized piece of jewelry
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: that Leah had never been known to willingly remove her
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: mother's wedding ring.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's suspicious, right ominous, And.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: In a spot where even if someone was going to
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: be rummaging through the vehicle, they might not come across that.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: It kind of seems like they're like, you're trying to
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: make an effort to protect it. But robbery did not
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: appear to be a motive or whatever occurred with so
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: many valuables left behind in her vehicle, Well, sure a
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: cat napper, right is it a valuable cat? I don't know.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Nothing I have learned has led me to believe that's
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the case, but as possible, but there was little evidence
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: to support any other theories of foul play. There was
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: no blood or shattered glass, no signs of injury, or
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: any evidence of a struggle. Leah's siblings, Kara and Heath,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: flew to Bellingham within days. They visited the spot where
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: her vehicle had been discovered. They worked with the Sheriff's office,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: creating and distributing flyers throughout Bellingham, asking locals they encountered
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: if anyone had seen their sister. Washington State Patrol investigators
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: determined the jeep had been traveling at nearly forty miles
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: per hour uphill before going over the embankment, rolling multiple
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: times on its downward trajectory nikes. A vehicle losing control
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: or a driver braking in an emergency would typically leave
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: skid marks, but on the road above the embankment, none
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: were found. Their absence suggested that Jeep had not left
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the road by accident, or maybe she just couldn't see
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: how many lights are up there, you know, Yeah, I
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: guess it's hard to say too. We don't know when
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: necessarily this occurred. You know. It could have been broad daylight,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: could have been late at night. Oh yeah, we don't
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: really have a way to know for sure. Search teams
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: covered the surrounding terrain extensively in the weeks that followed,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: utilizing cadaver dogs and helicopters throughout early April, as well
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: as metal detectors. The latter would be capable of locating
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the metal rod in Leah's lake.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, genius.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: If they were to recover remains that were not immediately identifiable.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Such medical devices typically also have serial numbers for identification. Still,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: nothing was found, not a single trace of Leah or
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: her kitten. The absence of physical trace, no footprints or
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: clothing fragments, no biological evidence anywhere in the surrounding terrain
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: is one of the most unsettling aspects of the case.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: What about the clothes? Are the where those hers?
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Or was that just random?
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I really didn't find where that was conclusively determined.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Huh.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: So, I mean when I say that, like all of that,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: like the lack of any trace that, it's like, that's
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: so unsettling. It's like it's just especially given how extensive
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: the search was.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: That's what makes it so eerie. That is weird.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: About a week after the jeep was found, an anonymous
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: man called the wocom County Sheriff's office to report that
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: his wife had seen a woman matching Leah's description, disoriented
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: and confused at a Texico gas station in Everett, Washington,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: near Seattle.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: How far away is that from there? From where the
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: car was like an hour away?
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: It looks like, is that right? No, it's actually like
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: two hours away. I mean it's not close. My recollection
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: was more like three hours, to be honest. But yeah,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I mean it's just it's.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Not close, but on foot it would be like forever.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly like, she doesn't have a vehicle, so it
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: does kind of start to like some other questions kind
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of start ruminating in your mind. Though the man seemed
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: a bit panicked and hung up before identifying himself, the
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: police considered that tip credible, though it does not appear
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: that it actually led to any particular breakthrough in the case.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Following the crash and her subsequent disappearance, Leah's jeep remained
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: in the custody of the Wokam County Sheriff's Office for years.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: In that time, the car was never fully processed. Why
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: it's a really good question full and like a missing
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: person's investigation.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: You know, it's funny you should say that. It wasn't
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: until two thousand and six.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: When investigators began re examining the case, that a critical
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: discovery was made. Oh weird. I know what, you process
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: all of the evidence, you find something what holy shit,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: holy shit balls.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to tell you how to do your job.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Well a little bit, a little bit, just a little
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: They opened the hood of her jeep for the first time.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: I don't want to know, literally hadn't even opened the hood,
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Like what.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: If you're looking for a cat right, hullu he lure. Yeah,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: a cat in particular, they are really like cats, squirrels
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: other small mammals. They are very well known for trying
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: to like hide in engine blocks and stuff, especially when
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: it's cold. Huh.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: Thankfully, that's not why we're here.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, good, but still like that's the first place you
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: look for a damned cat of car.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I don't literally, if you removed the engine from the car,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: you could presumably also fit a whole ass human in there.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: So the fact that they never opened it is fucking wild.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she could have been in there. She could
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: have been Is that likely?
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: No, but people are fucking weird, especially murderers.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there could have been a fucking note, anything. There
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: could have been a gun, literally anything.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Whoa, that's crazy to me.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Yep. So they opened the hood of her jeep for
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the very first motherfucking time, which is insane. Everybody take
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: a deep breath and process that. What are they find?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: And found that the cover for the starter relay had
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: been removed and a wire had been cut. My official
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: assessment was that you should never cut wires in your
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: car if you're anything like me, and for the most
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: part don't really know what they do, good things slightly
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: more mechanically inclined. People have offered explanation of the significance
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: on this one, because I don't know a break line?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: What is it? The modification would apparently allow the jeep
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: to accelerate on its own or from outside the vehicle,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: simply by pushing on the relay, so as long as
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the key was in the ignition, it could accelerate without
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: a driver.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: Essentially what that is?
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: I don't understand this at all. I should have looked
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: up like YouTube videos to like make my brain understand
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the mechanics of this better.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: It felt like a little bit of a rabbit hole.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: But why wouldn't the car just stop working if something
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: is cut? Just it stopped in a workie?
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: No more cut it cut makes it worky extra hard.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: That makes no sense.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: I'm terrified.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: I'm getting rid of my cheep cherokey right this instant.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I don't like this at all all. This meant that
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Lea's jeep could be sent down the embankment with no
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: one inside of it, apparently confirming what investigators had long suspected.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: The crash had been deliberately staged, and the tampering itself
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: required real mechanical knowledge.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Damn, I'm scared. Yeah, it is scary.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: They also recovered fingerprints from the underside of the hood.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: No shit, weird, almost like.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Somebody had opened the hood and did that thing and
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: then they left their prints there.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: But how would you know that if you never opened it?
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: How many years after?
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Six years later, in two thousand and seven, Watcom County
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: detectives sent several articles of Leah's clothing to the FBI
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: for DNA testing. By twenty ten, a small amount of
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: male DNA was identified on an article of clothing found
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: near the scene. I don't know if that was in
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the trees or if it was just found near her car. Unclear,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: But all these years later, no update has been made
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: available to the public. The possessor of that male DNA
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: his identity, if it is known, has also never been
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: made public.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: So if they identified who that DNA belonged to, they
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: have never said. I'm irritated, because it's honestly pretty fucking irritating.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Can you imagine if they had this information.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Right when they found a basic What we do know
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: is that the technology related to DNA testing and processing
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: matches and all of that it's made leaps and bounds,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: all of.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: These strides and advancements.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know what result they would have
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: gotten from the DNA back in two thousand in versus
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, twenty ten.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: But at least you would have collected it. You could
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: say you did it, which feels like, if nothing else,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: check the motherfucking box.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Pretty wild.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Both discoveries led investigators back to the second man from
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: the restaurant, the one who claimed to have seen Leah
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: leave with.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Barry, the fake Barry.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: He had a military background and experience as a mechanic,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: which made the nature of the tampering particularly relevant to
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: his potential involvement.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: I told you he did it. I called it. From
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: the moment you said you talked about it.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: I was like, he did it.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: You're gonna that guy.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: You're gonna really have some oh shit moments here. I
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: don't know that they're going to be that satisfying. I'm
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna lead with that so that I'm you know,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: tempering your expectations. He had since relocated to the Great
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Wild North aka Canada, requiring investigators to work with Canadian
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: authorities to obtain his fingerprints and DNA in two thousand
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and eight. His fingerprints were compared to the print found
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: under the hood, but they weren't a match. Okay.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: Whatever.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: The DNA comparison result has never been publicly disclosed. As
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: of the most recent sourcing available, more than twenty five
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: years after Lea disappeared, it still hasn't been One would
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: assume if it had been a match, there might have
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: been movement in the case. But if that's all they had,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: maybe not. Maybe just the presence of his DNA on
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: an article of her clothing wouldn't be enough. Also, keep
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: this in mind because he's in Canae area. Plenty of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: countries have been reticent to relinquish citizens to our nation
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: in the past, frequently quite fond of lengthy incarceration as
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: well as capital punishment.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: They don't want to send people back.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: We can't extradite a lot of people in a lot
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: of countries because we have the death penalty. They will
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: not send them here. That's interesting, So it could be
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: something related to that. I don't know, that's honestly, you know,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: speculation on my part and you know, other parties on
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: the internet.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm hearing in my head about like America.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: The other countries are the gingerbread man from Shrek You're
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: a Monster.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I would say that that's a really good that's a
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: meme of of sort of the whole deal.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I like it. Sums it up nicely.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I think Leah leaving the Bellis Fair restaurant with a
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: man she called Barry remains one of the most contested
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: claims related to the case for obvious reasons.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: I don't believe in Berry at all, not for a second.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: I kind of think Barry is perhaps a ghost or
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: a figment of someone's imagination. It's hard to say, but
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: seems reasonable enough to me. This is about as close
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: to like a haunting as I've gotten, I think in
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: a while. Only one of the two men interviewed reported
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: seeing a third person. No other patron or staff member
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: corroborated it. Whether Berry existed has never been established, at
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: least in relation to this case. Nobody is saying that
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: all berries are fictional, only that this supposed berry allegedly
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: might be All berries are birds aren't real.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Have you watched that show Berry?
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: No?
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, you should watch it.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's difficult to say for sure base on the
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: available information, but no one matching the police sketch description
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: has ever been identified or located. That's the other thing.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: If you have a sketch and that's been released, you know,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: at at any level, you would think usually someone comes
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: forward and goes, hey, you know, I do have this
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: friend and like this. Even this happens in a lot
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: of cases where they're like, well, their name isn't Barry,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: but I do know a guy that looks like that,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: you know, Like, I don't know whether the witness was
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: reporting something he genuinely saw, attempting to mislead investigators, or
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: himself involved in what happened to Leah remains unknown. This
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: individual has never been charged and maybe entirely innocent for
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: legal reasons. He is someone investigators re examined due to
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: his mechanical and military background, not someone the public record
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: confirms as a suspect.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: He was tested but never really implicated. Okay, mister runaway
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: to Canada.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Hopefully the Mounies are keeping their eyes open in his
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: direction in case, eh exactly, And I feel like that
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: in particular, is we're going to get into it because
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: remember I said, were the cloth we were talking about,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: were the clothes hanging on the tree where they tied
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: to the tree. Like the differences in kind of like
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the impression that gives. We're going to get into that
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: more because there have been some people that have had
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: some really hot takes on this case, and they have
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: said some things that I'm like, you guess your mother
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: with that mouth, but you said that with your chest,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, you might be right, you could be,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: but that is that is a hard line to take
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: for somebody who is not personally actually investigating this, boots
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: on the ground just saying huh okay, so foul play.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Many believe leah encountered someone after arriving in Bellingham, and
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: that whatever happened afterward wasn't her own doing. Entirely possible, right,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, the stage crash strongly implies at least one
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: other person was involved. I mean, some people believe anyway,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: someone cut the starter relay wire, someone covered the broken
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: windows with blankets, someone placed clothing in the trees along
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Canyon Creek Road. None of this is consistent with an
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: accident like a traditional car collision. Whether leah encountered this
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: person willingly or was taken against her will? Debatable, unknown, unclear.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Here is the part where people have some hot takes,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: and I think maybe they need to take several deep
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: breaths and potentially several roll seats. I see where they're
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: coming from. But WHOA, they're sir, self staged voluntary disappearance.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking, Yeah, and that is a
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: totally fair and valid theory. People have said some things
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: that I felt like were a little strong. I do
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: think there's a fair bit of evidence to kind of
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: support this theory.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: I don't think she did it, though, because of the
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: ring and the money, right, So I think.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Basically just people were saying it's really fucked up what
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: she did, and they were taking this very hard line
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: stance that like, she staged this crash, she voluntarily disappeared,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and she is a bad person and blah blah blah,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: And I'm like.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: An interesting thought, but I don't think she did it.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And that could be true, and that could be true,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: and in that case I kind of would maybe be
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: inclined to agree. I just think this is someone that
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: still spoiler alert has not been located, and like saying
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: certain things and stating them like their facts is kind
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: of it's not something I would do. Yeah, that's all
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: I'll say.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: Huh, I've probably said plenty. A separate and genuinely.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Widely held theory holds that Leah herself staged the crash
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: and chose to vanish a deliberate, permanent break from her
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: old life. Her emotional state, her Cara Wax fixation, and
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: the note she left kind of all support this reading
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: of the facts like this theory, and at least one
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: recent source frames this as the leading theory rather than
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: a secondary one. Like a lot of people definitely think
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: this is like a very strong possibility, but again because
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: we don't know.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: But it would be harder, Like it's a.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Cool theory and like a movie where you can like, oh,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: I have someone to get them fake ideas and blah
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. It's easy in a movie, but like, yeah, realistically,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: it is not easy. It's hard. It is not easy.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Would you live like with no ideas and things right,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of very practical considerations that go
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: into that.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Why I haven't done it yet? She would literally like
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: she was not somebody who had a background where she
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: could have done the thing to the car herself, right
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: there was no YouTube, well I guess there was, Yeah, but.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: I don't know that you were going to find a
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: video that tells you how to do that.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: She would have to know that that was something you
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: even could do to a car, which to me just
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: kind of leans more in the direction of like whether
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: it was in cooperation with her or against her will,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: whatever the situation. It kind of it really does seem
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: like there had to have been somebody else involved at
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: some level.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: Barry was a man in black.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: He wiped everyone's memory of him at the restaurant, ex
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: for that one guy.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: He forgot I was wearing sunglasses.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: Ah, now we figured it out. See how crazy that sounds,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: you guys, But you're welcome. I mean, you know, well,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: like that's more logical than her just figuring out how
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: to have a new identity all by herself.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Like I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible, but yeah,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: I'm inclined to agree. I just think, like, I don't
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: know that I fully buy that, and I don't know.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: I don't know her, but having like her parents gone,
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: I feel like she would not abandon her siblings like that,
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Like in that way.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of my thought too, And I'm like,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: you might be a free spirit, but like that kind
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: of comes across almost more like sociopaths. Yeah, you know,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: like there's a difference. Just to be clear, not everyone
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: who's a free spirit is a monster, because that would
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: be a little bit monstrous to me to do that
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: to the remaining family you have left. I don't know,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: And maybe she had a good reason to do that,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: but again, I just feel like there are a lot
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: of people that like they feel so strongly about a
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: theory that they kind of say things in a way
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: that they're almost like stating it like fact. Yeah, And
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I just think that's irresponsible. And I realized that in
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: this country we've been led to believe that that's okay
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: to do. However, I disagree.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: So I know, I feel like we're always so careful
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: to be like, Okay, that's probably not or maybe not,
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: And this is just like a theory that we're if
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: it hasn't coming up with like specifically explicitly proven.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I just feel like, why would you not qualify certain
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: statements and certain like.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Theories, Yeah, because you're an asshole? Maybe I was literally
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: just because oh, maybe you're an asshole.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: What do we both w spread asshold, Yeah, that's right,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: saying with your chest, because they're saying that shit.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: With their chest at all anyway.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: But the theory is significantly undermined by what she left
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: behind her siblings, obviously, her only remaining family, over two
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars in cash, her identification, her passport, her mother's ring,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: and possibly her kitten. Like we don't we don't know
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: where the cat is. I mean, I guess it could
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: be with her. There has been no confirmed financial activity
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: or verified sighting of her since March thirteen, two thousand.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Sustaining a self staged disappearance for over two decades without
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: money or ID would be extraordinarily difficult. I mean you
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: pointed that out right away. I was like, bitch my
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: next line, because.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: I've thought about it and it's too hard.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Still, other possibilities were accident followed by wandering. It may
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: seem implausible now, but following Leah's disappearance, police and her
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: own family seriously entertained that this specific theory. For years,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Kara Roberts had said both family members and police considered
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the possibility that Leah survived the crash having suffered a
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: head injury resulting in amnesia. Totally possible. That's what I
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: thought it at first, until Yeah, the whole car the
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: car sabotage thing kind of undercuts that. Yeah, from there,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: it was entirely possible that she had wandered away from
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: the scene just disoriented. The two thousand and six discovery
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: of the tempered starter relay has since made.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: This theory very difficult to sustain.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: The vehicle was confirmed to have gone over the embankment
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: without a driver. There would be like blood, there would
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: be something, There would be iological evidence of some sort.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: There would be torn clothing, there would be blood, there
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: would be something.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I'm not anything.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like it would be very difficult to
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: walk away from a collision of that magnitude without leaving
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: some sort of evidence of said collisions impact to your
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: physical human shell in the beagle weird.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: And then here's where it gets a little bit like
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: I don't want to say tenfoil.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Hat because I feel like it's worth exploring this and
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's a reason it gets brought up.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: But I will say, we can't just point to all
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: of the most famous serial killers and say done, solved it,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: because that's not how this works. Israel Keys.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Oh, I was like, which one is she?
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: What time?
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Running time in my life?
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: Who?
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Serial killing? Yeah?
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: Unfair online speculation.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: So here's the thing. I feel like this one is
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: very valid because truly, the breath and magnitude, the volume
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: of his crimes, like they know that there are there
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: are more, and they don't know who or where and when.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: But he was alive long enough, and he traveled frequently
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: enough that there's more.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: I hate it.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Israel Keys, a confirmed serial killer active across the United
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: States and known for targeting victims in remote locations before
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: his twenty twelve arrest and death by suicide, is frequently
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: raised in true crime forums and online comment threads. In particular,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: it's always in the comments in connection with Lea's case,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: among men many others.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: It is not the first time Israel's come up.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: No, no, Key's told the FBI investigators he had committed
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: murders in Washington State. He spent a lot of time
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: in and around the state of Washington, murders that he
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: claimed to have staged to look like accidents. Oh speculation
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: and comments online have suggested that could explain Leah's case,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: and certainly the level of sophistication with like the mechanical
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: piece of things, I can see how you get going
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: down that road. Though, it was important to note that
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: no investigative source or verified reporting has ever linked Israel
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Keys to Leah Roberts case, not the Walcome County Sheriff's office,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: no major media outlet like not A And that wouldn't
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: really be good enough for me, to be honest, because
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: if enough people have this same idea, I feel.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: Like I'm in 't me see what I can find.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: The fingerprint found under the hood has never been publicly
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: identified as belonging to Keys, which isn't saying much because
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: they've never identified who's printed.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Was right, But I feel like if it did belong
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: to someone who's known to serial kill, they.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: Might have they might have let that little tidbit go.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: I don't know, huh. You would think maybe I don't.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Know whose fingerprint is it tell us they might not
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: know either, And I think that's the truth of it.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: I don't think they know whose fingerprint it is someone
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: off the grid.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: Perhaps to date, so far as we know, the individual
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: that left those fingerprints behind has never been identified allow
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: me to be explicit. Though the potential connection to Israel,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Keys is purely unverified online speculation without a deep dive investigation.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: I suppose we can't say it's impossible, but it does
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: seem unlikely.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: And here's the thing I did. I did a little
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: I did a little thing. Not hours and hours of work,
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: but it did take some time.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Time.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: There's no indication that Keys was near the area at
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: the time of her disappearance. According to the FBI's map
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: and timeline of his known travels and activity from nineteen
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: ninety seven to twenty twelve, Keys was stationed in Egypt
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: on a temporary duty assignment from January fifteenth to June
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: first of two thousand, all right, making it pretty unlikely
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that you know, hop skip and a jump and multiple
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: flights and yeah.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: There's a time, a time, map, time, map time, Yeah,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: timeline and a map line.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. I mean some people that's not going
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: to be enough for them, And I get it. He
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: was certainly a real duplicitus taint and I wouldn't put
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: it past him, but I'm like, he was assigned there,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: you guys, I don't like in record. Yeah, it's pretty
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: hard for them to just kind of sneak away from
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Egypt and right beer b ib guys, I just have
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: to go and like for why because it's not like
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: he knew Leo, Like, oh, I've been.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: Like what, I've been called to this remote location from Egypt.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: R Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's a pretty definitive, like
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: six month block of time roughly where we're like, I
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: feel confident saying he was pretty definitely like not in
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: the state of Washington.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Do you think he killed people in Egypt?
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: A lot of people think so. A lot of people
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: think so, and not necessarily in like a military capacity.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking, Like,
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: but a.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Lot of people are attracted to the military, oh for that,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: oh boy, yeah, it's troubling.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: And law enforcement yeah yeah.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Wait, you're telling me there's a position that will legally
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: protect me when I kill someone?
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: What what?
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Leah's siblings, Kara and Heath, have remained central to keeping
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Leah's case alive. They flew to Bellingham within days of
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: her jeep being found and visited the crash site, as
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: well as their grassroots efforts with flyers in the community.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: So they flyed the shit out of Bellingham, Kara told
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Larry King Live in two thousand and five. We're just
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: trying to keep Leah's face out there as much as possible.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Community United Effort or Q, was founded in Wilmington, North Carolina,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: to provide assistance in missing persons cases, boosting public awareness
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: and advocating for those impacted like their families. They deploy
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: volunteers to support search efforts and operate a twenty four
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: hour public tip line. In two thousand and five, they
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: organized a fourteen day expedition that would retrace Lea's route
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: from her home in North Carolina all the.
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: Way west to Bellingham.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: They're on the Road to Remember tour has become an
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: annual tradition aimed at raising awareness for not just Lea's case,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: but other cases and nationwide.
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: That's a long trip to do every year. Holy guacam Molly, Holly,
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: guacam Moly.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Indeed, though her case has been featured on Unsolved Mysteries
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and Disappeared, among other programs, Leah Roberts has never been found.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Her GEEP remains in police custody, and, in the words
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: of one investigator featured on Disappeared, that car has something
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: to tell us because we don't have a crime scene,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: we don't have a body. It told us, yeah, literally
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: told us yeah. Someone cut the line. Yeah, better late
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: than never.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: But Jesus Christ, I think the other thing is the
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: fact that there's like someone else's fingerprints too.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: Was like, hmm, and he knows.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: I kind of looked at it if she was having
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: like car trouble or something. I don't know, but like
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: to me, says someone else was with her at some point.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: It's so hard though, because you can't really date a
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: fingerprint necessarily, Like you can tell when a fingerprint maybe
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: is like super recent versus very old, but like that
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: is very imprecise from what I understand, could have been
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: like an oil change or yep, exactly. Investigators believe her
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: remains are likely somewhere in the area surrounding where the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: jeep was discovered. The case remains open, though no arrests
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: have ever been made and no legal declaration of death
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: has ever been publicly reported.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: Twenty six years, they've never declared her dead.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: The case of Leah Toby Roberts remains classified as missing,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: not legally deceased. In many cases, the disappeared are declared
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: presumed dead for practical purposes such as settling a state
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: claims or death benefits, or any number of other legal
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: and or financial reasons, like completely logical things. Leah was
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: in her twenties, almost certainly didn't have her own life
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: insurance policy, had no spouse, no children, and had already
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: granted Kara power of attorney over her bank accounts before
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: she left, before she left for Costa Rica all that
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: time back.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: That was a little odd of a thing to I
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: don't think that's like a standard thing to do when
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: you're just leaving the country for a vacation, right.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Not necessarily, but if both of your parents are deceased,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: and you know, that's going to make you frame things differently.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: She also had, you know, a modest inheritance after her
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: parents had passed, so okay, I'm sure she wanted them
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: to be able to access that money, whether you know,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: in case of emergency, for so many different potential reasons.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think that that's unusual in and of itself,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: but that may have given the family enough practical access
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: to whatever modest assets existed her inheritance, which you know,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: she wasn't going to retire, but she at the time,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: you know, had dropped out of college, wasn't really working,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: and she was kind of living off of that. Okay,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: So without ever needing a formal death declaration to unlock
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: anything beyond that kind of pragmatic explanation that side of things,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: there's an incredibly emotional aspect to that. Some families of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: long term missing persons deliberately avoid pursuing legal death declaration,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: specifically because it can feel like giving up the search. Yeah,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: even decades in or in cases that perhaps the likely
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: outcome has already been accepted by them and kind of
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: unconfirmed as near to fact private given that Kara has
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: spent over two decades organizing, putting up flyers, you know,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: they've had their advocacy campaigns and the caravans. Yeah, I
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: mean the expedition that they're doing, you know, annually and
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: media appearances to keep Lee's case alive. It wouldn't be
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: surprising if pursuing a death declaration simply never aligned with
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: how the family has approached this. I mean that's purely
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: speculation on my part, but like they don't need to, right,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: in a lot of respects, I think it's smart for
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: them not to if you have them legally declared dead
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: because you have to for practical purposes. There's a little
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: bit of a mental shift, I think for a lot
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: of people as outsiders, and the grief that you would
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: have to process, even not knowing.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very different to like put it out there,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: yeah in.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: Concrete like, yeah, we're saying she's dead and then if
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: she comes back, like then what, Yeah, to go through
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: a whole nother leag thing to me get her alive again.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, quite literally.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: I mean that obviously in rare instances like that, you
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: know that has and can happen. But I get why
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: maybe they they don't need to, and I get why
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't want to. Anyone with information is ask to
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: contact the detective sergeant of the Wocome County Sheriff's Office.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: We'll put the phone numbers for the Sheriff's office and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: for their dispatch center in the show notes and that's
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: that's it. That's as far as this goes. And I
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: apologize because I feel like I kind of feel like
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: I'm ending in like this kind of abrupt way, but
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: it's like that's that's where we're at.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, every time you talk about a missing person who's
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: just never been found, like, it just makes me realize
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: how big the world actually is, Like we can't find somebody,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: like right, so crazy to me.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: I know that's the part that to me that really
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: does it just makes you feel small in a way
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: that like most of the time, Like you know, we
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: talked about this earlier, it's like, oh yeah, I feel
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: like an adult kind of now. But like when you're
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: a kid, you feel like everything is so big and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: there's you know, and these cases make you feel like
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: that again, like in a way it is scarier way,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: but like very similar to like when you're a kid
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: and everything just feels like whoa. I mean, if if
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: there's any case that you know has a good chance
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: of like being solved, it's you know, there's a lot
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: we can do with DNA. You know, she has the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: metal rod that should help to make things, you know,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: in terms of identification a little bit easier. But it's
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: it's been a long time.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: Well should we see what the taro has to say.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: Let's do some teraro about it.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, but this one is I feel
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: like it's just sitting heavy, you know, it is I
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: think the missing.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: The missing cases kind of always have.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: They do for me, thinking that like every because you
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: just did one like pretty recently too.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I have been trying to do some more of
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: the missing because I do feel like as heavy as
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: they feel in a lot of respects, like to research,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: to write, and then you know, to talk about. I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: feel like that's kind of how we pay our dues
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: in a way, you know, just solely talking about like
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: sort of the sensational serial killer cases. While those can
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: be really interesting, I feel like we owe it to
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: kind of the community and to the victims of you know,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: some of these crimes to share the stories that like
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: we don't have an end to.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that could have an end at some point hopefully.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And this has happen been in our lifetime. It's
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: crazy to think about like where we were, you know,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: March two thousand in middle school, right, Yeah, Yeah, I
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: know it's crazy.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: Great, Yeah, I feel like I would have been.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: I think you're right. That perspective is just like it's wild.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: It's wild to think that she has been missing that
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: long and like all of the things that have happened
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: in our lives, obviously she is older, you know, than us. Yeah,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean it's just wild to think about,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: like all of these people that like their stories overlap
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: with ours in terms of all of human existence.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: But speaking of human existence, Oh boy, what Larry King
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: is dead? What when he died in twenty twenty one? Oh,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: I felt like I had some memory, like, okay of
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: him passing during COVID times.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense. I don't know if it was
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: due to COVID. I didn't look why Yeah, yeah, but.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was curious.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: That's interesting because he, I mean.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: His Larry King live thing was like eighty years long.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Oh my god? Yes, really though? Wow, Okay, and you've
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: got a good picker. I've been doing all the picking,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: are you sure?
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: I feel like we can kind of like reel it
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: rather Yeah, if we do like it, But I feel
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: like I want you to be the one to draw it.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling kind of towards the left, like you're left.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: That's way, That's where I was headed. Yeah, okay, so
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: so far we're doing good. We're like drawing to the
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: same place. Is there any of them that kind of
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: stick out to you? I was thinking that one or
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: like even lefter yeah, that one or that one.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: I don't feel in this one. What do you think?
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: Go?
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: Go do them both? Well, grab the first one. I
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: want to see what that is because got that aside.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: Oh I kept seeing this one while I was shuffling
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: the Ace of Cups and it was in reverse.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: It was in reverse.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: Okay, aout the card.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: We've gotten a lot, a lot in reverse. Okay, I'm
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: pulling the other card now, just go. Oh she wants
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: to know the Night of Pentacles in reverse. And it's
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: interesting because it's like a deer running away from something.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: Oh interisonte Okay, I think we've gotten the Night of
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: Pentacles before.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: But not often.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, not as often.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Ace of Cups are keywords are new, love, beginning, a
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: creative activity, and joy. Well she was so creative, right,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: she had the guitar. Yeah, she had a lot of
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: creative pursuits, that's for sure. The reverse A can indicate
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: a delay in starting a relationship. It can also mean
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: a romance that seemed promising doesn't develop or turnout as
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: you'd hoped.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: Barry, I mean, if he's real, this may not be.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: The right time to start something new, Verry, huh. In
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: a reading about money, The reversed ace suggests you may
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: have to wait a while to profit from a new venture,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: or it can mean you won't make as much as
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: you'd hoped. If the reading is about your work, you
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: may encounter delays in landing your dream job. For creative people,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: this ace can represent a dry spell when you feel
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: stifled or uninspired. That feels on.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: Point, Yeah, like quitting school.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do think this first line, you may
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: encounter delays in landing your dream job. It's funny because
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: I know, like I think back to her wanting specifically
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: to go to Desolation.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: Peak and that being like kind of a job that Kerouak.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: Held in the Overlook.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I don't know that. That just kind
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: of sparks for me.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: But in a reading about love, you may run into obstacles, limitations,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: or disappointments. Well, there were some obstacles a Night of Pentacles.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Also in reverse. Our keywords are steadfastness, practicality, caution, lethargy, narrowness,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: and boredom, the two of them combined.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: I feel like we're picking up a vibe like a
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: free spirit wanderer.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, type of vibe. Yeah, reversed The Night of pentacles
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: can mean stagnation, stubbornness, and inability to step outside the
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: box and traditional ways of doing things. Lack of imagination
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: or courage can limit success. If the reverse Night signifies
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: an actual person, he's probably a young man without vision
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: or curiosity, a stick in the mud. He may lack
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: spiritual insight because his focus is on money and material possessions.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the reverse Night shows a hedonistic nature or a
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: willingness to take the low road if that leads to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: wealth or status.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: Weird. Interesting.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this feels like sort of the
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: antithesis of Leah, or if this feels like it's identifying
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: maybe a male person of interest. Yeah, that's like what
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: I'm getting.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: That's when I first pulled it, because it's like even
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: the difference in how the cards look like one is
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: very beautiful and very like Leah. Yeah, Leah, and the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: other one's like a male deer. Yeah he's running away.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: Running away, And yeah, that's interesting. It does look like
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: a mountain behind.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: The deer too. It does. In a reading about money,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: this card suggests you're so caught up in making money
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: you can't enjoy anything else. Conversely, it may say you
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: lack the patience, persistence, and pragmatism to prosper. If the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: reading is about your job, the reverse night indicates boredom,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: but you aren't willing to do what's necessary to improve
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: your lot. Laziness, lack of direction, indulgence, or feelings of
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: unworthiness can inhibit your success.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: In a reading about.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Love, You're bored but unwilling to put in the necessary
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: effort to revive a romance. You're just slogging along, sloggingo.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: Perhaps a relationship is based on security, financial, or otherwise.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: You long for a change, but you're afraid to go
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: for it.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: It is interesting, though, because I feel like whatever happened,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: they obviously weren't about the money, because there was money
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: left behind. Yeah, or maybe they just didn't know about
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I think if you were killing someone
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: for their money, you would search for it.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know you.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: Would, Yeah, I mean you would think.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I feel like that particular point kind
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: of almost points to less of a person of interest
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: in the shady kind of like, oh, this is like
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: someone who targeted her, and more points more to like
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: a collaborator.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, does that make sense?
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, It's also very weird to me when
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: people don't take money if someone's like murdered or something happens,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: like obviously, if kills them, should just take the money,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: right if they're gone anyway, And like that so awful,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: like if I were.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: But like when you get down to like these base
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: human instincts, it's like, you know, there's like violence and greed,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: and you've been motivated to commit some act of violence.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: But like it makes me think they're like already a
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: really really rich person.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Because if you were a killer and.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: You were just you know, living on minimum wage whatever,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: Like why wouldn't you just take the money just to
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: have extra money?
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, maybe Washington, maybe Christian Gray Bruce Wayne type
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: hybrid killer situation.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: It's so weird to me.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: Where is she?
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Huh. There is an extra excerpt between the upright and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: the reverse interpretations. You have fought some battles and enjoyed
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: some adventures. Now you'd like to rest and regroup, maybe
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: spend some time enjoying quieter, more domestic scenes.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: Huh. Really interesting, that is weird. Yeah, did you have
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: a chance.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of that. I know
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not really sure either, but she have a chance
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: to look at both of the Little Book stories and
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: see what you think is like worth kind of like
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: reflecting on yell me, Okay, this is kind of weird. Okay,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to read the.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: Night of Pentacle's uh interpretation from the Little Book, and
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: just by the first couple of sentences, I'm kind of like, huh, okay.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: The black tailed buck turned hoof the silver coated doze.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: Ideas sounded grand, but could they ever really be achieved?
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: Some had followed her path, but this buck sure wouldn't
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: I know what she thought of as progress? He called fantasy.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, the forest was the way it was for
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: a reason, and it had been in that way for generations,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: at least the buck thought it had, and so why
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: mess with it?
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: Anyway?
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: He knew that change happened best slowly, little by little.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: Let them try their big ideas and fail. He would
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: work patiently for small changes. He'd start tomorrow or maybe
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: the next day. Interesting. It is interesting because it's.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: Like she had this idea of like her like wanderer face,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: and I feel like, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: Maybe she came across someone who thought that maybe sounded good,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: but like.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: It wasn't really wasn't into it. I don't.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is kind of the same.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: That's kind of the vibe I was picking up. That's interesting,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: like we'll never know what happened, No, unless someday we do.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I know.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: I hate to say yeah, no, we'll never know, because yeah, I.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: Mean maybe we will, but we don't now.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm all about instant gratification, so I know,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: I know, Oh my gosh, should we do the thing. Yeah,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: let's do the thing, all right, have a.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: Creepy as day.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next Thursday.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: I almost said Tuesday.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Ah good, Yeah, well just because like we've been saying Thursday,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: and we've been remote a lot recently, but seeing you
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: again in person and being here recording together, I was like,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: Tuesday brings you back to old day, Yes, nostalgia.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe we'll switch back to Tuesdays at some point, you
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: guys don't who knows?
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Keeping me on your toes? Yeah, hopefully you come back
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: next week. That's so weird. It was like muscle memory.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: I was like I had to force myself to say Thursday.