Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Man sex obsessed with brother's girlfriend ends in murder

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Man sex obsessed with brother's girlfriend ends in murder · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:05
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A gorgeous young mom, Stephanie
0:15
Speaker 1: Eldridge seemingly vanishes into thin air. Where is Stephanie? What happened?
0:23
Speaker 1: What a horrible question to be asking? What if you
0:27
Speaker 1: come home from work one day or like me, and
0:29
Speaker 1: suddenly Davey's just gone and there's no trace and I
0:34
Speaker 1: see his cell phone and his car keys sitting there,
0:36
Speaker 1: So where is he? What do you do when that happens?
0:48
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The twenty one year old
0:57
Speaker 1: disappeared from her Idaho Falls apartment. Just a beautiful, beautiful
1:01
Speaker 1: young lady. The mother of four vanished on a warm
1:03
Speaker 1: August night, Her baby left behind in the apartment, along
1:07
Speaker 1: with Stephanie's phone, car keys, purse, and shoes. There is
1:12
Speaker 1: several items that was left behind. The indicated there was
1:17
Speaker 1: fould play involved. Well, I guess so, guys, you're hearing
1:22
Speaker 1: our good friend Nate eat at East Idaho News dot Com. Yeah,
1:27
Speaker 1: none of that makes sense. Who would leave the baby
1:30
Speaker 1: at home unattended with the cell phone, the car keys,
1:35
Speaker 1: the purse and the shoes all still there. Of course,
1:39
Speaker 1: most women have more than one pair of shoes. That
1:42
Speaker 1: doesn't tell me anything but the baby speaks volumes with
1:46
Speaker 1: me an all star panel to try to apply logic
1:50
Speaker 1: to an illogical situation in the search for twenty one
1:53
Speaker 1: year old Stephanie Eldris, Beautiful on the outside and the inside.
1:58
Speaker 1: Kathleen Murphy, veteran trial lawyer, joining me out of North Carolina.
2:03
Speaker 1: You can find her at NC Domestic Law dot com.
2:07
Speaker 1: That's se mystery to me. Why do they call husbands
2:10
Speaker 1: and wives fighting like two wit kats in a barrel? Domestic?
2:14
Speaker 1: That's for you, Kathleen, not for me. I prefer something
2:18
Speaker 1: with yellow crime scene tape around it. Doctor Bethany Marshall
2:21
Speaker 1: renounced psychoanalysts, joining us from LA. She said, doctor Bethany
2:26
Speaker 1: Marshall dot com. And she's starring a new Netflix hit,
2:30
Speaker 1: Bling Empire. Greg Smith, you know his name well, Special
2:34
Speaker 1: Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County Sheriff's Office, Executive director of the
2:39
Speaker 1: Kelsey Smith Foundation. You can find that at Kelsey's Army
2:43
Speaker 1: dot com. I've learned a lot there. Greg Smith, Professor forensics,
2:48
Speaker 1: Jacksonville State University, author a Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon,
2:53
Speaker 1: star of a new hit series on the True crime network,
2:56
Speaker 1: Poisonous Liaison's death investigator joining me Joseph Scott Morgan, but
3:02
Speaker 1: first straight out to our friend Eric Grossarth, joining us
3:06
Speaker 1: from East Idaho News dot com. You can find him
3:09
Speaker 1: on Insta and Twitter at Eric Grosarth. Eric, let's just
3:12
Speaker 1: start at the beginning. Tell me about Idaho Falls. Idaho
3:16
Speaker 1: Falls is just a nice, calm, quiet community, lots of families,
3:22
Speaker 1: kids running around in the streets. It's it's not a
3:25
Speaker 1: place that bad things happen. I mean people around here
3:29
Speaker 1: leave their doors unlocked. Quite frankly, Wow, it kind of
3:32
Speaker 1: sounds like where I grew up, Eric GROSSARTHI population in
3:36
Speaker 1: Idaho Falls is a little over sixty one thousand by
3:39
Speaker 1: the last census. And you know, doctor Bethany Marshall and
3:43
Speaker 1: Jessica Morgan, you've heard me talk at nauseum about our
3:47
Speaker 1: families last RV trip where we retrace the Lewis and
3:51
Speaker 1: Clark trail. Yes, we did. This is part of that.
3:55
Speaker 1: So that's how I know a little bit about Idaho Falls.
3:58
Speaker 1: In fact, they have a museum there that's almost completely
4:01
Speaker 1: dedicated to Lewis and Clark. And if you remember the
4:06
Speaker 1: significance of this is Lewis and Clark went through the
4:09
Speaker 1: wilderness to get from A to B and they went
4:14
Speaker 1: through Idaho Falls. It's absolutely stunning country, but it is country.
4:19
Speaker 1: What does that mean to me, doctor Bethany Marshall, as
4:23
Speaker 1: we're talking about the disappearance of a young woman, it
4:26
Speaker 1: means low crime rate. You're gonna have a lot higher
4:29
Speaker 1: crime rate and possibility of kidnap, rape, disappearance if you're
4:35
Speaker 1: in a concentrated area like New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Philly.
4:40
Speaker 1: But in Idaho Falls, not a lot of people just
4:45
Speaker 1: vanish into thin air a Bethany, Nancy, do you know
4:48
Speaker 1: what else it means. It means families who stay together,
4:52
Speaker 1: not two cast dispersions on big cities. But this is
4:55
Speaker 1: not a place where a woman has an internet affair
4:59
Speaker 1: or you know, meet somebody. I don't know what you're
5:01
Speaker 1: talking about, because women get online and look in small
5:04
Speaker 1: communities and meet these horrible people. I mean, yes, what
5:11
Speaker 1: are you saying that you can't follow love online if
5:14
Speaker 1: you live in a small town. That's just absolutely not true.
5:17
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying, Nancy, is that getting together
5:20
Speaker 1: medal town. I'm going to get it together, Okay, logic, logic,
5:24
Speaker 1: What I'm trying to say is in small towns, these
5:28
Speaker 1: communities are so close knit that families tend to be
5:32
Speaker 1: held together by the community. You have your pastor, you
5:36
Speaker 1: have your school teachers, you have your mother in law
5:39
Speaker 1: or your sister living down the block. And even if
5:41
Speaker 1: there's some form of acting out, sure it can happen
5:44
Speaker 1: in small town just like you can in a big city.
5:47
Speaker 1: The values I think hold people together and because of that,
5:50
Speaker 1: it's less likely, I believe, I'd have to look at
5:53
Speaker 1: the research that a woman is just going to meet
5:56
Speaker 1: somebody else and abandoned her family. Know what, I'm surprised
6:01
Speaker 1: she fed into that doctor Bethany Marshall because Greg Smith.
6:04
Speaker 1: You know, I never get to disagree with Bethany because
6:07
Speaker 1: she's always right. But Greg, did you hear what she
6:10
Speaker 1: just said. It's less likely a woman's going to meet
6:13
Speaker 1: someone and run away with them in a small city.
6:16
Speaker 1: But you know what drives me crazy every time a
6:18
Speaker 1: woman goes missing, that's the first assumption she ran off
6:21
Speaker 1: with her new boyfriend. You know what, my grandmother on
6:25
Speaker 1: my father's side used to say, Men are like buses.
6:28
Speaker 1: I knew one comes along every fifteen minutes, no offense.
6:31
Speaker 1: Man Sorry Joe Scott, Sorry Greg, Sorry Eric Grossarth, But
6:36
Speaker 1: I find it really difficult to believe. I mean, look,
6:39
Speaker 1: consider the source. I remember when Drew Peterson said that
6:43
Speaker 1: about his fourth wife Stacy. She went off with her boyfriend.
6:46
Speaker 1: She's dead, her body has never been found. We hear
6:49
Speaker 1: it over and over. Why is that, Greg? When a
6:52
Speaker 1: woman goes missing, everyone assumes they ran off with a boyfriend.
6:56
Speaker 1: Do they need sex that badly? They have to run
6:57
Speaker 1: away and get it? I mean, I don't think so
7:00
Speaker 1: you can just run down to the local motel for
7:02
Speaker 1: what an hour and be done with it, right? So
7:06
Speaker 1: why do you have to leave your babe behind? Why
7:08
Speaker 1: is that always the first asception? Greg Smith? Well, I
7:11
Speaker 1: think I think we're safe to say that leaving a
7:14
Speaker 1: baby behind us, that's probably not what happened. That just
7:18
Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense, particularly from what I was able
7:22
Speaker 1: to find out about her. She has more than one child,
7:26
Speaker 1: so obviously she's a mother that has a family, and
7:30
Speaker 1: I don't think that she'd just take off and leave
7:33
Speaker 1: them all behind, and that's that's a missing person cases.
7:37
Speaker 1: Has that happened? Yes? Does it happen a lot? No?
7:39
Speaker 1: It really doesn't. I can't really think of that many cases.
7:43
Speaker 1: Greg Smith, Special Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County Sheriffs. You can
7:46
Speaker 1: find him Keltzy's army dot com. Greg, I can't think
7:49
Speaker 1: of really any cases just off the top of my
7:53
Speaker 1: head now that we're getting into this topic where a
7:55
Speaker 1: mom just left her children to run away with a boyfriend.
8:00
Speaker 1: And you're absolutely right, and doctor Bethany Marshall, the baby
8:06
Speaker 1: is the fly in that ointment. She would never just
8:09
Speaker 1: leave the baby unattended. So there goes that theory. Nancy,
8:13
Speaker 1: there's a baby, there's other children. But you know when
8:17
Speaker 1: women abandoned their children, do you know what we see?
8:22
Speaker 1: We see baby photos in the dumpster next to the house.
8:25
Speaker 1: We see the woman giving away baby things. Remember all
8:30
Speaker 1: the crimes we've covered where there's in fantaside, not to
8:33
Speaker 1: compare this with in fantaside, because this would be abandoning
8:36
Speaker 1: the children, not killing them. But there's already a dissociation
8:39
Speaker 1: from the children in advance of leaving them, killing them,
8:45
Speaker 1: moving away with somebody else. There's no indication that this
8:48
Speaker 1: mother was not bonded with her baby. If so, other
8:53
Speaker 1: people would be coming out and saying, well, she didn't
8:55
Speaker 1: feed the baby, or you know, she went to the
8:57
Speaker 1: pediatrician and you know the pediatrician, you know, recommended some
9:02
Speaker 1: kind of a class or chorus or parenting training or
9:06
Speaker 1: something like that. There is nothing like this. This is
9:09
Speaker 1: a mother who loved her baby and was not planning
9:13
Speaker 1: to separate from baby. That's what makes this tape so suspicious.
9:30
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace to you. Kathleen Murphy, North Carolina,
9:36
Speaker 1: a trial lawyer. You can find her at NCA Domestic
9:39
Speaker 1: law dot com. She's just straight off a huge win
9:42
Speaker 1: in court. You know, you gotta have some backbone to
9:45
Speaker 1: go in court and fight like a gladiator. Kathleen Murphy, congratulations. Yeah,
9:52
Speaker 1: I'm proud for you. But Kathleen, I just want to
9:56
Speaker 1: point out that what we're doing right now, yes, some people,
10:01
Speaker 1: Jackie may think we're off topic, but this is exactly
10:04
Speaker 1: how cases are discussed at the DA's office, at the
10:09
Speaker 1: homicide investigator's office, at the missing person's office. You talk
10:13
Speaker 1: and it's free flow, and you think of all the
10:16
Speaker 1: variants and then somehow you narrow it down to a theory.
10:21
Speaker 1: Would you agree or disagree? I would absolutely agree. We've
10:24
Speaker 1: been doing this long enough we get to know the
10:27
Speaker 1: human nature of the type of people that come through
10:31
Speaker 1: the system. I mean, frankly, it is down to human nature,
10:36
Speaker 1: and you have to explore every single detail. You know.
10:39
Speaker 1: We started off with Eric Grossarth with East Idaho News
10:42
Speaker 1: dot Com talking about where is Idaho Falls and somehow
10:47
Speaker 1: we got into a one hour stay at a motel
10:49
Speaker 1: and Lewis and Clark and I don't know what else,
10:51
Speaker 1: and I take full responsibility for that, but as a
10:54
Speaker 1: trial lawyer, I'm taking the fifth Eric Grossarth, let's just
10:57
Speaker 1: start all over. Let's start with the day that she
11:00
Speaker 1: goes missing that we know of, Okay, what happened that day? Okay?
11:06
Speaker 1: So Stephanie Eldridge lived in an apartment with her boyfriend,
11:10
Speaker 1: her boyfriend's mother, and her boyfriend's half brother, Kennedy. Hold on, Jackie,
11:14
Speaker 1: is it's true they were planning a wedding. So yes,
11:17
Speaker 1: So that's her fiance and she lived with her fiance's family,
11:21
Speaker 1: so they were all very very close. So you've got
11:24
Speaker 1: the mom I know of, You've got the fiance, and
11:28
Speaker 1: you've got the brother. Was there anybody else living there
11:30
Speaker 1: beside her baby? From what we have in court documents,
11:34
Speaker 1: that's who lived at the house. Okay, so what happened
11:37
Speaker 1: that day? So what happened that day is Eldridge disappeared.
11:42
Speaker 1: She left her keys, her purse, her shoes, and the
11:46
Speaker 1: baby that we talked about. I hear what you're saying,
11:49
Speaker 1: Eric grossor so she lived there in the apartment. But
11:53
Speaker 1: the day she went missing. We've got to take a
11:55
Speaker 1: look at who is Stephanie Eldridge. Take a listen to
11:59
Speaker 1: our is at crime online dot com. Stephanie Eldridge had plans.
12:03
Speaker 1: This mother of three wanted her two oldest daughters, who
12:06
Speaker 1: were living with other family members, to join her. Family
12:09
Speaker 1: members say her children were her pride and joy. The
12:12
Speaker 1: twenty one year old was living with her boyfriend, Michael Jimenez,
12:15
Speaker 1: the father of her third child, another girl. Jimenez's mother
12:19
Speaker 1: and his half brother also lived in the home. Eldridge's
12:22
Speaker 1: plan for the future also included continuing her education. She
12:26
Speaker 1: was slated to attend Eastern Idaho Technical College in the
12:29
Speaker 1: fall to begin studying to become a dental hygienist. That
12:33
Speaker 1: was because it would allow her to make a nice
12:35
Speaker 1: income to support her family. Her ultimate goal, according to family,
12:39
Speaker 1: was to open her own dance studio. Humm all those
12:43
Speaker 1: plans seemingly go up and smoke when she goes missing.
12:48
Speaker 1: What happened to that day? Take a listen again to
12:50
Speaker 1: our friends at crime online. The young mother vanished from
12:53
Speaker 1: her Idaho Falls apartment on a Monday late in August.
12:57
Speaker 1: Jimenez said the last time he saw his fiance was
12:59
Speaker 1: around exam, when he left for work. She called him
13:02
Speaker 1: around nine am to say she was not feeling well.
13:05
Speaker 1: When Jimenez tried to call her back, she didn't answer.
13:08
Speaker 1: Her boyfriend's mother, Lynette Theeson, came home around twelve thirty
13:12
Speaker 1: that afternoon. What she found was disturbing. The four month
13:15
Speaker 1: old baby girl was home alone, elder dies, cell phone,
13:19
Speaker 1: car key's purse, and even her shoes were still there.
13:22
Speaker 1: Investigators believed foul play was involved, but couldn't prove it.
13:26
Speaker 1: So let me understand the timeline to Eric Grossarth joining
13:29
Speaker 1: us easiaews dot com. Eric the fiance at least for work.
13:35
Speaker 1: She Stephanie's still there with the baby. She toss to
13:39
Speaker 1: him at nine am. We think, I guess by cell phone.
13:45
Speaker 1: Then at twelve thirty at lunchtime, the future mother in
13:50
Speaker 1: law comes home and finds the baby unattended and Stephanie gone,
13:57
Speaker 1: Do I have the timeline correct? Yeah, that is what happened.
14:02
Speaker 1: She was home with this baby, and sometime that morning
14:06
Speaker 1: when the family left to the home, she vanished. Stephanie
14:11
Speaker 1: vanished from the home. They find the baby there, and
14:14
Speaker 1: it wasn't one of these mothers like we've talked about
14:16
Speaker 1: that would just leave her child here in the house.
14:20
Speaker 1: She was wanting to care for her children. I mean,
14:23
Speaker 1: that was her pride and joy was her daughters. And
14:27
Speaker 1: so it was just mysterious to them, and investigators quickly
14:31
Speaker 1: believed that foul play was involved, but they weren't able
14:35
Speaker 1: to prove anything. Let me ask you about Michael Jimenez.
14:38
Speaker 1: He's also the father of the baby girl. Now, how
14:42
Speaker 1: old was the baby girl, Eric Grossharth, She she was very,
14:47
Speaker 1: very very young. I believe she was around for four months.
14:51
Speaker 1: So given that to you, Kathleen Murphy, a four months
14:56
Speaker 1: old baby left at home, so we know for at
15:00
Speaker 1: least three and a half hours, because the fiance spoke
15:04
Speaker 1: to her at nine. The future mother in law get
15:07
Speaker 1: home at twelve and thirty. So in those three and
15:09
Speaker 1: a half hours, Stephanie Elders seemingly vanishes into thin air.
15:14
Speaker 1: You can tell, Kathleen, when a baby has been unattended. Explain,
15:19
Speaker 1: you can tell when a baby's been unattended for a minute.
15:22
Speaker 1: At that age, they are so needing the holding of
15:26
Speaker 1: the parents, the feeding, the burping, the coddling. It's just
15:30
Speaker 1: such an obvious situation. If this woman has disappeared, I mean,
15:34
Speaker 1: when these police officers or whoever came into the apartment
15:37
Speaker 1: to find this woman missing, probably we're able to immediately
15:43
Speaker 1: tell that this child had been abandoned. Well, I'm sure
15:45
Speaker 1: the mother in law realized because the baby hadn't been
15:48
Speaker 1: changed or taking care of. So let me understand something,
15:52
Speaker 1: Eric Grossar. According to reports, the boyfriend, Michael Heimenez says
15:57
Speaker 1: he hears from her at nine o'clock by sale, but
16:02
Speaker 1: when everyone gets home, her cell phone is right there. Correct, Correct,
16:08
Speaker 1: the cell phone was in the apartment, along with her purse, keys,
16:12
Speaker 1: and the baby. So the boyfriend, oh, sorry, the boyfriend,
16:17
Speaker 1: Michael Jimenez, Eric Grossarth, do we know where he worked?
16:21
Speaker 1: I mean, did he punch a clock? Can we make
16:23
Speaker 1: sure he was where he said he was? Invest Getter
16:27
Speaker 1: said that the boyfriend and the mother were both cooperative, forthcoming,
16:32
Speaker 1: and they were able to determine that they were being
16:35
Speaker 1: truthful when they spoke with investigators that morning when she disappeared.
16:39
Speaker 1: To you, Greg Smith, Special Deputy Sheriff, Johnson County Sheriff's
16:43
Speaker 1: Office in Kansas, when the cops come out at the
16:47
Speaker 1: get go and say, boyfriend, fiance, husband, whoever the boy
16:52
Speaker 1: the man is in the life is being cooperative, that
16:56
Speaker 1: is a big sign to me. Normally they won't say
17:00
Speaker 1: anything like that. If that male and the family is
17:04
Speaker 1: under suspicion, well, it is kind of telling that he
17:07
Speaker 1: was willing to cooperate. I know a lot of families
17:11
Speaker 1: when they find themselves in an unfortunate situation like this,
17:16
Speaker 1: one of the things that they are kind of upset
17:20
Speaker 1: about is the way that they're treated by police because
17:22
Speaker 1: a lot of times it is a family member or
17:24
Speaker 1: somebody that's close to the person that committed the offense.
17:26
Speaker 1: But I've heard a lot of families complained to me
17:29
Speaker 1: and say, you know, why do they do that? Why
17:32
Speaker 1: did they come down on us? And I explain that
17:35
Speaker 1: the dynamics are usually such that it is somebody that
17:37
Speaker 1: the person knows, and that the best thing you can
17:39
Speaker 1: do is cooperate with the investigation. So that they can
17:42
Speaker 1: clear you and move on and find the person who
17:45
Speaker 1: really did it. So that's pretty telling that he was
17:47
Speaker 1: willing to do them crime stories with Nancy Grace Guys.
18:05
Speaker 1: Greg Smith is not just a special Deputy Sheriff at
18:08
Speaker 1: Johnson County and executive director Kelsey Smith Foundation. He is
18:13
Speaker 1: a crime victim. His daughter, Kelsey was kidnapped and murdered
18:19
Speaker 1: and that propelled him to his life's work of helping
18:24
Speaker 1: other people. You know, Greg, I've spoken to our friend
18:27
Speaker 1: Mark Class many many times about when his daughter the
18:31
Speaker 1: found Marks the founder of Class Kids Foundation, When his
18:35
Speaker 1: daughter Polly went missing at a sleepover in her own home.
18:41
Speaker 1: Mark was divorced from the mom and lived nearby. The
18:45
Speaker 1: first thing cops did was raced to Mark Class's home,
18:50
Speaker 1: search it. They wanted DNA, they wanted fingerprints, they wanted
18:53
Speaker 1: everything from him. And you know what he did. He said, Fine,
18:56
Speaker 1: search my car, search my office, search my home, take
19:00
Speaker 1: my blood, take my DNA, take my fingerprints, anything, just
19:04
Speaker 1: find my daughter. He understood what you just said. Statistically,
19:11
Speaker 1: the person you're looking at is within the family and
19:14
Speaker 1: is a male. So by cooperating, you advanced the police
19:19
Speaker 1: search for whoever took Stephanie Eldridge. Did that happen when
19:26
Speaker 1: Kelsey went missing? Did cops want to know, Hey, where
19:28
Speaker 1: were you? Oh? Absolutely, I mean we had we had
19:32
Speaker 1: found her car and called the police. They came out
19:37
Speaker 1: and oh, they were on you like a cheap suit
19:40
Speaker 1: if you found her car. Yeah. Actually they were good.
19:44
Speaker 1: I mean I was a police officer. I knew a
19:45
Speaker 1: lot of the officers that were on the scene, so
19:47
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of that. But eventually we were
19:51
Speaker 1: asked to come into the station, my wife and I
19:53
Speaker 1: and put in an interview room and left alone for
19:56
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty minutes. And I looked at my wife
19:59
Speaker 1: because I knew they we're watching this, and they said,
20:01
Speaker 1: you know why we're in here, don't you. They think
20:02
Speaker 1: we're suspects. So as soon as they come back, we'll
20:05
Speaker 1: tell him everything that happened and get this over with
20:08
Speaker 1: so they can find the right person. And no more
20:10
Speaker 1: than probably thirty seconds after I said that, the detective
20:13
Speaker 1: walked in. We had our conversation that we needed to have,
20:16
Speaker 1: and they were out the door looking for who really
20:18
Speaker 1: killed Kelsey. So Eric grossarthat sidhoenews dot com. That tells
20:22
Speaker 1: me a lot that they came out right at the
20:25
Speaker 1: get go and state that the fiance is actually cooperating.
20:31
Speaker 1: A young mom vanishing from her apartment on a Monday
20:35
Speaker 1: late in August. She calls the fiance around nine o'clock.
20:40
Speaker 1: He saw her at six am when he left for
20:42
Speaker 1: work and she wasn't feeling well, but when he tried
20:45
Speaker 1: to call her back, she didn't answer. The boyfriend's mom,
20:50
Speaker 1: Lynette Theson, came home and what she found was a
20:53
Speaker 1: very upsetting The four month old baby was unattended, Eldridge's
20:59
Speaker 1: cell phone, Harky's purse, and even her shoes were still there.
21:05
Speaker 1: Straight out to doctor Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst joining us from LA.
21:10
Speaker 1: Then I'm going to follow up with our forensics expert,
21:13
Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan. You know, at first, when I thought
21:18
Speaker 1: saw that her shoes were still there, I went, well,
21:21
Speaker 1: you know, women have a lot of shoes. That means nothing.
21:23
Speaker 1: That's not true because the other day my son went
21:29
Speaker 1: into our pantry soft for kitchen, and that's where I
21:32
Speaker 1: keep my favorite tennis shoes and my cowboy boots, which
21:35
Speaker 1: I wear both of them all the time, and goes, mom,
21:39
Speaker 1: your cowboy boots have been in here for like four
21:42
Speaker 1: days straight. What was why aren't you wearing them? And
21:47
Speaker 1: this is a thirteen year old boy who knows nothing
21:49
Speaker 1: about design her shoes. And I said, I heard my
21:53
Speaker 1: ankle sweeter, right, That's why I'm wearing my tennis shoes
21:55
Speaker 1: every day. So it doesn't matter if you have a
21:59
Speaker 1: favorite pair of shoes. People notice. And there I assume
22:04
Speaker 1: by her purse, her cell phone, and her keys were
22:07
Speaker 1: her shoes. So it does matter. It's it's very individual
22:11
Speaker 1: to the person. It's very individual, Nancy. These kinds of
22:15
Speaker 1: behavioral physical cues are vital. The first time I ever
22:20
Speaker 1: met you at CNN, you were wearing your cowboy boots.
22:24
Speaker 1: The second time you were wearing your cowboy boots. The
22:27
Speaker 1: third time you were wearing your cowboy boots. I'm assuming
22:31
Speaker 1: I'm hearing today that you still have those cowboy boots
22:33
Speaker 1: or a new pair, but speak about it's the same pair.
22:37
Speaker 1: And once you break them in, it's like a baseball glove.
22:39
Speaker 1: You know, once you break it in that you're together
22:42
Speaker 1: for life. That's right. I love those cowboy boots. Anyway.
22:46
Speaker 1: You know this from a small apartment. We're not talking
22:49
Speaker 1: a mansion. We're not talking in Melvill Marcos here. We're
22:53
Speaker 1: not talking, you know, a family who lives in the
22:56
Speaker 1: flats of Beverly Hills, you know, with a shoe closet
23:00
Speaker 1: the size of a small bedroom. We're talking a twenty
23:03
Speaker 1: one year old with a four month old, likely struggling
23:07
Speaker 1: financially as we all did when we were twenty one
23:10
Speaker 1: years old, trying to work her way through school. A
23:14
Speaker 1: young woman like that will only have a few pairs
23:18
Speaker 1: of shoes, and anything a miss in that apartment is
23:22
Speaker 1: going to be noticed, especially the child. I was thinking
23:25
Speaker 1: about this four month old baby being left for three
23:28
Speaker 1: and a half hours. Nancy babies, you know, as one
23:32
Speaker 1: of the other guests were saying, they need to be
23:33
Speaker 1: picked up, hugged, swaddled. This baby was probably very disregulated
23:38
Speaker 1: at this point, screaming, crying, soiling the diapers. I'm sure
23:45
Speaker 1: when the mother future mother in law walked in and
23:47
Speaker 1: saw this scene that her heart dropped like she knew
23:54
Speaker 1: something was a miss. This was a vast departure from
23:57
Speaker 1: how this young woman lived her life, you know, Joe
24:00
Speaker 1: Scott Morgan, we're talking about the shoes and a cell
24:04
Speaker 1: phone and the keys I think I've told you I
24:08
Speaker 1: was investigating a serial killer and in the end I
24:11
Speaker 1: managed to get him on one murder and it was
24:15
Speaker 1: of a Jane Doe. And there was a vital piece
24:18
Speaker 1: of evidence. It was one earring. And I thought, and
24:21
Speaker 1: I thought, and had help thinking about the location of
24:25
Speaker 1: the earring, how the earring got there? What did that
24:27
Speaker 1: mean in the way that the crime unfolded? One clue
24:33
Speaker 1: like that may mean nothing to somebody else, but it
24:35
Speaker 1: could mean volumes if it's analyzed correctly. If you were
24:40
Speaker 1: in that apartment Joe Scott, and you had reasonablieve this
24:43
Speaker 1: was the last place that she was known to be safe,
24:47
Speaker 1: what would you be looking for? Well, you know, I
24:51
Speaker 1: teach my students Nancy as Crome sing investigators one thing
24:55
Speaker 1: you look for is not just evidence of a strugg well,
25:00
Speaker 1: you look for absence of a struggle as well. So
25:03
Speaker 1: just because things are negative or positive in crime, seeing
25:07
Speaker 1: investigation does not make it a bad thing, because you
25:09
Speaker 1: can eliminate certain things. I think a big question is here,
25:14
Speaker 1: How is a young lady of this age lured out
25:22
Speaker 1: of an apartment where a four month old in the apartment?
25:25
Speaker 1: How do you get her out of the door, and
25:27
Speaker 1: there's no signs of forced entry or struggle. So that
25:31
Speaker 1: tells me that someone had to have access to her.
25:34
Speaker 1: Because you know what we're hearing now relative to what
25:37
Speaker 1: the police found quote unquote found when they got there.
25:40
Speaker 1: They're not saying they found broken furniture or busted out
25:42
Speaker 1: glass or you know, somebody kicked the door in or
25:45
Speaker 1: anything like that. What they're saying is, we have the
25:48
Speaker 1: presence of shoes, we have the presence of keys, we
25:51
Speaker 1: have presence of wallet, and we have the presence of
25:54
Speaker 1: a baby, but we don't have the person that's missing.
25:58
Speaker 1: So I've out a four month old granddaughter, all right.
26:02
Speaker 1: I get to watch her regularly, which is one of
26:05
Speaker 1: the greatest gifts I've ever had, i gotta tell you.
26:08
Speaker 1: And this goes from my wife as well. If somebody
26:12
Speaker 1: tried to separate me from that baby, okay, it would
26:16
Speaker 1: take very large, strong men, a huge battalion of them,
26:21
Speaker 1: to put any kind of distance between me and that child.
26:25
Speaker 1: So as an investigator, I'm thinking the individual or the
26:30
Speaker 1: rationale for her leaving department must have been something that
26:34
Speaker 1: felt at least remotely comfortable or safe for her, Because
26:38
Speaker 1: you don't have any evidence of struggle here. But what
26:41
Speaker 1: we do have is an abandoned girl. You know, I
26:44
Speaker 1: find its significant. Eric Grossarth East Idaho News dot Com
26:48
Speaker 1: that it was he meant as that call police and
26:52
Speaker 1: reported her missing. I mean, think back on it. When
26:55
Speaker 1: Scott Peterson realized Lacy was missing, he didn't call police.
27:01
Speaker 1: He called her parents. Very often we see the perp
27:05
Speaker 1: who's ultimately held responsible, they're not the ones that call police.
27:09
Speaker 1: In this case, isn't it true the fiance, Michael Hemanez
27:13
Speaker 1: called police to report her missing. Yeah, he called police.
27:17
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, she's gone. I don't know where she is.
27:21
Speaker 1: Can you help me find her? So it's very telling
27:26
Speaker 1: the beginning. He was again cooperative forthcoming that she disappeared.
27:32
Speaker 1: He were able to cooperate all that because, I mean,
27:36
Speaker 1: typically speaking, the purp would want to put as much
27:40
Speaker 1: time as possible between the murderer or the kidnap and
27:44
Speaker 1: police finding out about it, because delay, delay, delay is
27:47
Speaker 1: a defendants best best friend. So the search was on
27:52
Speaker 1: until Take a listen to what Anthony Conji at ki
27:56
Speaker 1: DK Channel three has to say. On April twenty three,
27:59
Speaker 1: repair working on windmills stumbled across the remains and reported
28:02
Speaker 1: it to authorities. Ever since then, police had a good
28:05
Speaker 1: idea of who the remains were. There was evidence at
28:08
Speaker 1: the scene and information that we'd gained throughout the investigation
28:14
Speaker 1: that led us to believe that the remains were those
28:15
Speaker 1: of Stephanie, and so we've already been working on it
28:20
Speaker 1: as if they were Stephanie. The Idaho Falls Police Department
28:22
Speaker 1: received confirmation through a positive dental idea made by a
28:26
Speaker 1: forensic audientologist and take a listen to our friends at
28:29
Speaker 1: crime online. Stephanie Eldridge's badly decomposed remains were found in
28:33
Speaker 1: a shallow grave in the foothills east of Idaho Falls.
28:37
Speaker 1: The body was wrapped in a blanket and her wrists
28:39
Speaker 1: were bound by electrical tape. Eldridge's grandfather told the East
28:43
Speaker 1: Idaho News that the remains were so decomposed that forensic
28:47
Speaker 1: evidence wasn't able to determine the cause of death or
28:50
Speaker 1: even a suspect. In fact, the body had to be
28:53
Speaker 1: identified by dental records. Then Idaho Falls Police detective Jessica
28:57
Speaker 1: Marley was a sign. She began working the case full time.
29:13
Speaker 1: Time stories with Nancy Grace to Eric Gross Artheastidahnees dot com.
29:19
Speaker 1: Where was her body found in relation to the apartment.
29:23
Speaker 1: She's wrapped in the blanket, and I would want to
29:26
Speaker 1: find out where the blanket came from. Did it come
29:29
Speaker 1: from the apartment? And her wrists were bound. She was
29:33
Speaker 1: in windmill areas. A windmill workers the one who discovered
29:37
Speaker 1: her and reported the body found. Where was she found
29:41
Speaker 1: in relation to the apartment? Eric? So this is an
29:44
Speaker 1: area I'd say fifteen twenty minutes east of Idoballs. This
29:48
Speaker 1: is where it gets rural. There's not many houses out there.
29:53
Speaker 1: There's the windmills out there, and windmill workers go out
29:56
Speaker 1: there regularly. People are out there hunting. It's it's an
29:59
Speaker 1: area that people don't go very often. It's not populated,
30:03
Speaker 1: it's dark in the morning at night, so it is
30:08
Speaker 1: essentially the middle of nowhere as close as he can
30:11
Speaker 1: get to town. And her wrists were bound with tape,
30:15
Speaker 1: the electrical tape. That that is correct. Wrists were bound
30:19
Speaker 1: as well as her face. Let me follow up on that,
30:24
Speaker 1: Jessic Scott Morgan, Professor Forensics. Her face and head and
30:30
Speaker 1: her wrists were bound with electrical tape. She was so decomposed,
30:36
Speaker 1: she had to be identified through her dental records. What
30:40
Speaker 1: does that tell you? Well, when I hear her hands, feet,
30:46
Speaker 1: face that are bound with this electrical tape, it gives
30:52
Speaker 1: me an indication that restraint is involved. This is not
30:56
Speaker 1: like a packaging event like I've worked a lot of
30:59
Speaker 1: cases is where people will take tape and wrap bodies up,
31:02
Speaker 1: say for instance, in a blanket. But if what they're
31:05
Speaker 1: saying is accurate, that means that she may have been
31:09
Speaker 1: bound and gagged. So that tells me that at that
31:12
Speaker 1: moment in time when this occurred, she was probably alive.
31:16
Speaker 1: They wanted to be able to muffle any kind of
31:18
Speaker 1: screams or sounds that are coming out of her mouth.
31:21
Speaker 1: But Nancy, this is the beauty part about tape from
31:23
Speaker 1: an investigative standpoint, is there's something that are referred to
31:26
Speaker 1: as plastic prints. And when you have a medium like tape,
31:33
Speaker 1: if everybody at home, all of our listeners will just
31:36
Speaker 1: take a piece of tape at some point in time,
31:38
Speaker 1: and on the adherent side, I'm not to decide where
31:41
Speaker 1: the adhesive is, and I'm talking about the smooth, the
31:44
Speaker 1: sticky side. Place your thumb on there, Okay, place your
31:47
Speaker 1: thumb on there. And you can actually have a latent
31:51
Speaker 1: print that is what referred to as a plastic print.
31:54
Speaker 1: It's different than having to dust for it necessarily, and
31:57
Speaker 1: you can leave that print, Nancy. I've seen cases with
32:00
Speaker 1: plastic prints in particular, and you can get them in
32:03
Speaker 1: oil and grease, and that's what I'm saying, where a
32:05
Speaker 1: print will survive literally for years and years in that.
32:10
Speaker 1: So that's a juicy piece of evidence. And if they're
32:13
Speaker 1: using as much tape as Eric has alluded to, that
32:19
Speaker 1: means that it exponentially increases the opportunity that you can
32:22
Speaker 1: potentially recover a print off this. And also what's the
32:26
Speaker 1: nature of the tape, who manufactured it, how's it been cut,
32:29
Speaker 1: what was it cut with, and what's the width, because
32:32
Speaker 1: there's different sizes of electrical tape, okay, and there's different qualities.
32:36
Speaker 1: So all of that is key information to you. Doctor
32:39
Speaker 1: Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst joining us out of Beverly Hills. Dr Bethany,
32:44
Speaker 1: what does it tell you when a victim's face has
32:48
Speaker 1: been bound? When you duct tape a person's face, you
32:53
Speaker 1: are hold blooded, you have no remorse, you do not
32:58
Speaker 1: care for the victim. You're you're literally facing them, you know, Nancy,
33:04
Speaker 1: and we talked so many times about the fact that
33:06
Speaker 1: even in death, often a victim will have a blanket
33:09
Speaker 1: placed over them more or their head put on a
33:12
Speaker 1: pillow more. Kelly was wrapped in a blanket similar to
33:18
Speaker 1: this as well. What does that mean to you? Well,
33:20
Speaker 1: to me, there's there's at least some act of kindness
33:25
Speaker 1: towards the victim at the end, very end. I don't
33:28
Speaker 1: know about kindness. When you just duct takes somebody's mouth
33:30
Speaker 1: and nose and face and eyes, I don't know about kindness.
33:33
Speaker 1: But it tells me then about somebody that's been in
33:36
Speaker 1: at home. That's what it tells me. That's right. Then
33:39
Speaker 1: the investigation hit a dead and take a listen to
33:43
Speaker 1: our friend Nate eating and East Idaho knees. Stephanie's family
33:47
Speaker 1: thinks about her constantly and now they're hoping this new
33:50
Speaker 1: Idaho cold Cases deck of playing cards will lead to
33:54
Speaker 1: a break in the case. The cards are being distributed
33:56
Speaker 1: among prisoners and jail inmates throughout Idaho with the idea
34:00
Speaker 1: that these photos may get someone to talk. Hope is
34:04
Speaker 1: too illicit new tips the in the population, because as
34:10
Speaker 1: we know it they' like to talk about each other's crimes,
34:13
Speaker 1: and kids bag about each other's crimes after day playing cards.
34:18
Speaker 1: Cold case card decks have been used in prison systems
34:21
Speaker 1: in other states, and law enforcements say they can be
34:24
Speaker 1: an effective tool in solving crimes. There's a lot of
34:28
Speaker 1: chatter that comes from the prison system, and if anybody
34:34
Speaker 1: wouldn't know, it would probably be beginning. Stephanie's family says
34:38
Speaker 1: if the cards help close any case, it's worth it,
34:41
Speaker 1: and they look forward to the day when whoever killed
34:44
Speaker 1: their precious girl is found. Cold case playing cards like
34:51
Speaker 1: a deck of cards. But let me understand, Eric Grossart,
34:54
Speaker 1: East Idaho News. So their cards with for instance, a
34:58
Speaker 1: picture of the victim on one side, and like the name,
35:01
Speaker 1: I guess they're like milk carton photos, except they're on
35:07
Speaker 1: playing cards and they somehow get distributed behind bars and
35:13
Speaker 1: the hope that the inmates will start discussing the cases. Yes, no, yeah,
35:17
Speaker 1: that is exactly what it is around here. A lot
35:19
Speaker 1: of the cold cases have been put on the playing
35:22
Speaker 1: cards and they get distributed to the prisons, and thankfully,
35:27
Speaker 1: since those were put out in twenty sixteen, several of
35:29
Speaker 1: these cases have been solved, not all of them from
35:33
Speaker 1: tips and the jail and prisons. But but yes, they
35:36
Speaker 1: do have the picture on there, a little detail about
35:39
Speaker 1: the name, where they disappeared, and how long they've been searching.
35:42
Speaker 1: Very very ingenious. So the playing decks are disseminated into
35:48
Speaker 1: jails and prisons with the hope that someone will say something.
35:52
Speaker 1: Somebody will start bragging, and boy where they right. Take
35:57
Speaker 1: a listen to our friends at online dot com. Police
36:01
Speaker 1: had a suspect in mind from the day Sephanie Eldridge
36:04
Speaker 1: disappeared her boyfriend's step brother, Kenneth Jones. During the initial investigation,
36:10
Speaker 1: the boyfriend, Himenez, and his mother cooperated with authorities. Their
36:14
Speaker 1: stories stayed consistent, but Jones's story changed more than once.
36:18
Speaker 1: Two years after the mom of three disappeared, Jones was
36:21
Speaker 1: arrested for an unrelated crime, and while in jail, Jones
36:25
Speaker 1: reportedly told his salemate that he had violently killed Eldridge.
36:29
Speaker 1: Jones said that he and Eldridge had been in a
36:31
Speaker 1: fight and he pushed her and Eldridge hid her head.
36:34
Speaker 1: Jones said he panicked and hid the body, but the
36:37
Speaker 1: case still went cold as investigators did not believe the
36:40
Speaker 1: jailhouse confession was enough to charge him with murder. And
36:44
Speaker 1: that is so true. Kathleen Murphy, North Carolina family lawyer
36:48
Speaker 1: at NC Domestic Law dot com. It is not only
36:51
Speaker 1: interpreted through our constitution through case law, but crime one
36:58
Speaker 1: O one in law school cannot under our law convict
37:03
Speaker 1: someone with a confession alone. There's got to be substantial
37:08
Speaker 1: corroborating evidence. Yes, yes, guys, what do we know about
37:15
Speaker 1: this brother in law to be? Who is this guy?
37:19
Speaker 1: Take a listen to our forensic crime online dot com.
37:23
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jones had a long criminal history, beginning with the
37:26
Speaker 1: DUI arrest. From there, misdemeanor drug and resisting arrest charges
37:30
Speaker 1: were brought against him. Then he was charged with a
37:32
Speaker 1: felony third degree arson. Court record show police responding to
37:36
Speaker 1: a report of harassment at the same time and same location,
37:40
Speaker 1: a call came in about a suicidal man threatening to
37:43
Speaker 1: burn down his mother's home. Police believe he was the
37:46
Speaker 1: same man who was sending the harassing text messages. The
37:49
Speaker 1: person who reported the harassment told police she was in
37:52
Speaker 1: fear for her safety and her child. The victim said
37:55
Speaker 1: Jones had been living with her and her fiance, but
37:58
Speaker 1: Jones and the man got into an argument. To fight
38:00
Speaker 1: broke out, and Jones threatened to burn down the house.
38:03
Speaker 1: The victim said she and her daughter left for a while,
38:05
Speaker 1: but when she returned, Jones told her he had started
38:08
Speaker 1: a fire. She had better call the fire department. Inside,
38:12
Speaker 1: the woman found a pile of clothes burning. So Eric Grossarth,
38:17
Speaker 1: let me understand. What we know now is that the
38:21
Speaker 1: brother in law to be gave multiple stories about what
38:25
Speaker 1: happened to Stephanie Eldridge after his brother left the apartment
38:29
Speaker 1: that morning. He told one person that he pushed her
38:34
Speaker 1: in the middle of an argument. She quote hit her
38:36
Speaker 1: head and instead of calling nine one one, he bound
38:40
Speaker 1: and gagged her with duct tape and hit her body.
38:42
Speaker 1: That he choked her dead. That story number two and
38:46
Speaker 1: bound and gagged her with duct tape and hit her body,
38:48
Speaker 1: and he told people that she was his girlfriend. Is
38:53
Speaker 1: all of those stories did they all come out of
38:56
Speaker 1: his mouth? You know, there's even more stories that came
38:59
Speaker 1: out out of his mouth that day as well. He
39:02
Speaker 1: actually told investigators that he used Eldridge's phone, went to work,
39:06
Speaker 1: came back for a little bit, watched the child well
39:09
Speaker 1: Elsorge left, then she came back and he went back
39:12
Speaker 1: to work. All of this before noon, so he said
39:14
Speaker 1: he was going back and forth that morning. One time
39:18
Speaker 1: he said he went and bought some weed off of
39:20
Speaker 1: a friend, and that friend said he never saw Jones
39:25
Speaker 1: that day, and then his boss said he never showed
39:28
Speaker 1: up to work. So there was all sorts of stories
39:30
Speaker 1: floating around out of Jones's mouth what happened that day,
39:33
Speaker 1: And so it made investigators very very suspicious early on
39:37
Speaker 1: of him because he couldn't give a straight story, you know,
39:41
Speaker 1: to you datter Bethany Marshall, why do suspects even taught
39:47
Speaker 1: and they give conflicting stories, is that they just can't
39:50
Speaker 1: keep their stories straight. Nancy. I think there's something about
39:53
Speaker 1: that criminal mindset, that particular type of psychopathology, which is
39:58
Speaker 1: a fancy word for psychologic goal disturbance that causes an
40:02
Speaker 1: interference in what we call big picture thinking cause and effect.
40:06
Speaker 1: It comes from the prefrontal cortex, the part of the
40:10
Speaker 1: brain just behind the forehead. It's the part of you
40:14
Speaker 1: that learns from mistakes, is able to plan ahead. It
40:18
Speaker 1: teaches you how to read the room and see what
40:20
Speaker 1: other people see in yourself, what other people see in you.
40:25
Speaker 1: This guy didn't have any of that. He was in
40:28
Speaker 1: his own little world thinking that everybody would believe whatever
40:32
Speaker 1: he said. And you know that thing about going to
40:34
Speaker 1: get weed, I you know that was true, except cannabis
40:41
Speaker 1: makes you passive. So it's unlikely that somebody using cannabis
40:46
Speaker 1: is going to kill somebody. Maybe wis just say, you know,
40:51
Speaker 1: because I have attics in my practice, and I think
40:53
Speaker 1: that it's better to use the technical terms on the
40:58
Speaker 1: pig and how to know everything that Eri ject saying.
41:01
Speaker 1: But I do know this, when someone starts changing their
41:04
Speaker 1: story around the time someone goes missing and their bodies
41:07
Speaker 1: found in a windmill field, that suspect number one. Well,
41:13
Speaker 1: I know you're not going to be surprised to hear this.
41:15
Speaker 1: Our cut ten take a listen with the invented information.
41:19
Speaker 1: Then you do have as we just talked about, Count
41:22
Speaker 1: one voluntary manslaughter, account to instruction, alteration or consulative evidence.
41:28
Speaker 1: Count three resistant or obstructing an officer. You will have
41:32
Speaker 1: a rate to have these charges read to you. Is
41:34
Speaker 1: that something you would be interested in? I don't know,
41:38
Speaker 1: Eric Grossharth, this guy, after all those years watching the
41:44
Speaker 1: family twist and turn suffer, the children grow up without
41:48
Speaker 1: a mom not knowing really what happened to her. He
41:52
Speaker 1: finally pleads guilty. What's his sentence. Yeah, so he played
41:56
Speaker 1: guilty and just recently got sentenced ten to twenty one
42:01
Speaker 1: years in prison when you do all the map on
42:04
Speaker 1: those charges. So he gets at least a decade in
42:08
Speaker 1: prison when pleading guilty to that voluntary manslaughter charge as
42:13
Speaker 1: well as the alteration of evidence and then the obstruction charge.
42:18
Speaker 1: And this happened thirteen years after Deane that little baby girl.
42:25
Speaker 1: The other children are all grown up without mommy now,
42:29
Speaker 1: and finally he comes clean as clean as he can.
42:33
Speaker 1: Twenty one years for him, but life without a parole
42:39
Speaker 1: with the death of their mother for her three children.
42:44
Speaker 1: Nancy Grace Crime Story signing off goodbye friend.