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The Disappearance of John and Shelley Markley · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: Transport yourself for just a minute to the freezing afternoon
0:03
Speaker 1: of December fifteenth, nineteen ninety five.
0:05
Speaker 2: Oh, it was a bitterly cold day.
0:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. You are standing in the rural, snow dusted
0:12
Speaker 1: town of Bristolville, Ohio. The biting winter wind is just
0:16
Speaker 1: howling off the fields as a fifteen year old girl
0:18
Speaker 1: named Ruth Marklee steps off a yellow school bus right
0:21
Speaker 1: and she pulls her coat tight. Her stomach is just
0:24
Speaker 1: in knots. She is dreading the evening ahead because tonight
0:28
Speaker 1: is the funeral for her father's twin sister.
0:30
Speaker 2: That is just a heavy, sorrowful day for the entire.
0:33
Speaker 1: Family, it really is. So she turns the knob on
0:35
Speaker 1: her front door, and she's expecting to be met with
0:37
Speaker 1: the comforting, you know, chaotic hustle of a large family
0:40
Speaker 1: getting ready for a solemn event. But instead she steps
0:43
Speaker 1: inside and is hit by a wall of absolute silence.
0:47
Speaker 2: Wow, And you know it is the kind of silence
0:50
Speaker 2: that immediately triggers your primal instincts. Yeah, the air in
0:54
Speaker 2: a house of seven people should just never be that
0:56
Speaker 2: still at three point thirty in the afternoon. Absolutely not
0:59
Speaker 2: so today, Our mission in this deep dive is to
1:03
Speaker 2: open the files of a small town missing person's case
1:06
Speaker 2: that begins in that eerily quiet house. Yeah, and it
1:11
Speaker 2: violently spirals into exhortion, whispers of a satanic cult, and
1:16
Speaker 2: deeply buried family secrets. Wow, we are examining how a normal,
1:20
Speaker 2: hard working couple with five children, John and Shelley Markley
1:24
Speaker 2: can just vanish into thin air, leaving behind a trail
1:27
Speaker 2: of clues that completely contradict one another.
1:29
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, let's unpack this. Imagine stepping into a home
1:33
Speaker 1: where life just stopped mid sentence. You walk into the kitchen,
1:36
Speaker 1: The coffee pot is probably still warm, and the very
1:38
Speaker 1: first thing you see is Shelley's purse sitting right on top.
1:40
Speaker 2: Of the fridge, which is strange on its own.
1:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and directly below it, resting on the counter are
1:45
Speaker 1: her cigarettes and her lighter. Oh wow, I mean too
1:47
Speaker 1: an outset observer that might look like nothing, just you know, clutter.
1:51
Speaker 1: Look to Ruth, this is a blaring siren. Her mom
1:53
Speaker 1: is a packa day smoker. She absolutely never leaves the
1:56
Speaker 1: house without those cigarettes in her hand.
1:58
Speaker 2: Exactly when you analyze an abandoned scene, you were looking
2:01
Speaker 2: for deviations from baseline behavior. Leaving the purse is strange enough,
2:06
Speaker 2: but leaving the primary addiction mechanism, the cigarettes, means Shelley
2:10
Speaker 2: didn't walk out that door willingly. She didn't expect to
2:14
Speaker 2: be gone for more than a few seconds.
2:15
Speaker 1: No, not at all, And the dread just compounds as
2:18
Speaker 1: you move deeper into the house. In the master bedroom,
2:21
Speaker 1: John and Shelley's close for the funeral are neatly laid out.
2:24
Speaker 2: On the bed, so they were definitely preparing to go.
2:26
Speaker 1: They were clearly in the middle of preparing to attend.
2:30
Speaker 1: But then Ruth looks over and notices her father's gun cabinet.
2:34
Speaker 1: John is a meticulous guy, right, He's a protective father
2:37
Speaker 1: of five. He never leaves that gun cabinet unlocked, never.
2:41
Speaker 1: But today the door is hanging wide open, and three
2:45
Speaker 1: shotguns are missing from the rack.
2:47
Speaker 2: Which completely shifts the narrative from a sudden departure to
2:50
Speaker 2: a potential home invasion.
2:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does.
2:53
Speaker 2: Taking the firearms suggests someone was actively securing resources and
2:57
Speaker 2: removing threats from the environment. They're disarming the homeowner. But
3:01
Speaker 2: the intent gets incredibly muddy when you walk into the bathroom.
3:04
Speaker 1: Because what you find in the bathroom makes zero logical sense.
3:07
Speaker 1: There is a small metal safe which John and Shelley
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Speaker 1: usually kept hidden away in a closet, and it's lying
3:14
Speaker 1: wide open on the bathroom counter, just out in the open,
3:16
Speaker 1: completely out in the open, and it is completely empty
3:19
Speaker 1: of the twenty four hundred dollars in cash John usually
3:21
Speaker 1: kept tucked inside, but scattered all across the porcelain sink
3:26
Speaker 1: and just trailing onto the floor are the family's most
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Speaker 1: sensitive important papers. Oh jeez, we are talking original birth certificates,
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Speaker 1: their marriage license, property documents, just strewn about like trash.
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Speaker 1: I mean, it's like finding a ghost ship where the
3:42
Speaker 1: coffee is still warm.
3:43
Speaker 2: It's so unsettling.
3:44
Speaker 1: If you are running away to start a new life,
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Speaker 1: why on earth do you leave the most essential tools
3:49
Speaker 1: for survival behind but scatter your children's birth certificates across
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Speaker 1: the bathroom sink.
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Speaker 2: You wouldn't. The juxtaposition of those two spaces is fascinating.
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Speaker 2: The bedroom has the neat, orderly funeral cls. The bathroom
4:02
Speaker 2: is a chaotic scene of ransacking. If a couple is
4:05
Speaker 2: fleeing to start a new life, they absolutely take the
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Speaker 2: birth certificates and the marriage license to establish new identities
4:12
Speaker 2: and they might leave the heavy shotguns behind exactly. The
4:16
Speaker 2: fact that the cash and weapons were taken while the
4:18
Speaker 2: vital identification papers were discarded like garbage tells us this
4:22
Speaker 2: is the anatomy of an abduction, and it happened right
4:25
Speaker 2: in the middle of a mundane Friday morning routine.
4:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, so obviously the family starts to panic when John
4:31
Speaker 1: and Shelley don't show up for the funeral that night.
4:35
Speaker 1: By midnight, they call the police. The physical trail at
4:38
Speaker 1: the house is completely cold, but investigators have one tangible
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Speaker 1: thread to pull on that actually left the property. The truck, Yes,
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Speaker 1: John's prized red nineteen ninety Chevy Silverado. At five in
4:51
Speaker 1: the morning, an officer on the night shift spots that
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Speaker 1: red truck. It's parked in a restaurant parking lot about
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Speaker 1: twenty minutes away from the Markley home, and the.
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Speaker 2: Condition of the truck is what immediately stands out is
5:01
Speaker 2: covered in heavy tarps. But investigators recognize these aren't just
5:05
Speaker 2: any tarps. They were taken directly from John's garage. There
5:09
Speaker 2: are the specific tarps he used to protect his beloved corvette,
5:13
Speaker 2: which is such a weird detail it is, And when
5:16
Speaker 2: they look inside the locked cab of the truck, they
5:19
Speaker 2: find Shelley's cell phone sitting right there on the seat.
5:22
Speaker 1: So to understand how the truck got to that restaurant,
5:25
Speaker 1: we have to rewind the timeline a bit to the
5:27
Speaker 1: afternoon before the Markleys were officially reported missing. A niece
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Speaker 1: of John's was running errands and happened to see his
5:34
Speaker 1: red truck parked in a Walmart parking lot directly across
5:37
Speaker 1: the street from where the police eventually found it.
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Speaker 2: Wow, across the street.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and the truck was completely covered in a thick,
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Speaker 1: heavy film of mud. Now, John was a guy who
5:47
Speaker 1: obsessed over his vehicles. Seeing his truck this filthy was
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Speaker 1: incredibly out of character. I bet she actually walked right
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Speaker 1: up to it and playfully wrote hi uncle John in
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Speaker 1: the dirt on the side of the truck, just to
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Speaker 1: mess with him.
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Speaker 2: Because she is assumed John and Shelley were inside the
6:02
Speaker 2: Walmbart shopping for last minute things for the funeral exactly.
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Speaker 1: But when she exited the store a little while later,
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Speaker 1: the truck was gone.
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Speaker 2: Whoever was sitting inside, or whoever came out and saw
6:12
Speaker 2: that message written in the mud, was clearly spooked.
6:15
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, they realized.
6:17
Speaker 2: The vehicle had been recognized, so they immediately moved it
6:20
Speaker 2: across the street to the restaurant lot, abandoning it and
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Speaker 2: throwing those stolen Corvette tarps over it to hide it
6:26
Speaker 2: from plain sight.
6:28
Speaker 1: Whoever drove that truck was likely watching the parking lot.
6:31
Speaker 1: The police then dig into the family's bank records and
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Speaker 1: uncover a massive, chilling clue.
6:37
Speaker 2: This part is wild.
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Speaker 1: It really is. At ten thirty six am on the
6:41
Speaker 1: day they vanished, so hours before Ruth got off the
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Speaker 1: school bus, a one thousand dollars check was cash from
6:48
Speaker 1: the Mark Lee account.
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Speaker 2: I had a drive through.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I drive through window. The teller actually knew John personally.
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Speaker 1: She watched him pull up in the red truck, but
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Speaker 1: she saw Shelley sitting in the middle seat physically wedged
7:00
Speaker 1: between John and the driver's seat, and an unknown slim,
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Speaker 1: dark haired man in the.
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Speaker 2: Passenger seat wedged in the middle.
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Speaker 1: Yes, and John, who was usually like super chatty, just
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Speaker 1: stared straight ahead in a robotic, terrified silence. He didn't
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Speaker 1: say a single word to the teller.
7:16
Speaker 2: It is the textbook behavior of a hostage under extreme dress.
7:21
Speaker 2: You really have to put yourself in John's mind in
7:23
Speaker 2: that exact moment, he is doing exactly what he has
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Speaker 2: told Because the captor is sitting inches away and his
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Speaker 2: wife is trapped right in the middle. The physical proximity
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Speaker 2: alone is.
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Speaker 1: A weapon, absolutely terrifying.
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Speaker 2: John likely believed that if he made a sudden move
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Speaker 2: or you know, slipped the teller note, the man in
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Speaker 2: the passenger seat would instantly harm Shelley.
7:44
Speaker 1: I mean, here's where it gets really interesting but also
7:47
Speaker 1: infinitely frustrating. It's the nineties. Banks have had security camera
7:51
Speaker 1: since the dawn of time. True, how is it possible
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Speaker 1: we don't have a crystal clear or at least passable
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Speaker 1: photo of the guy in the passenger seat. A bank
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Speaker 1: drive through should have this guy's face the second they
8:01
Speaker 1: pulled up.
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Speaker 2: Well, we tend to project modern technology onto the past.
8:05
Speaker 2: Assuming a four K cameras running at all times. In
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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, the reality of bank surveillance was incredibly primitive.
8:13
Speaker 2: Most bank cameras were recording on VHS tapes on a
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Speaker 2: continuous slow time lap sloop. They were often capturing just
8:21
Speaker 2: one frame every few seconds to save tape space.
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Speaker 1: That makes sense, but it's so frustrating it is.
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Speaker 2: The footage was notoriously grainy, always black and white, and
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Speaker 2: positions specifically to capture the license plate or the driver's face.
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Speaker 1: At the window, so the passenger is just a blur exactly.
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Speaker 2: The camera angles simply didn't penetrate the deep interior of
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Speaker 2: the passenger side, especially considering the glare on the windshield.
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Speaker 2: The footage did exist, but it was practically useless for
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Speaker 2: identifying the mystery.
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Speaker 1: Man, which places a massive burden on the eyewitness testimony
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Speaker 1: of the teller, and she was understandably terrified when she
8:55
Speaker 1: realized she had likely witnessed a kidnapping in progress, Oh
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Speaker 1: for sure. So the physical trail of track and that
9:00
Speaker 1: bank visit goes completely cold, days agonizingly drag by, Christmas arrives,
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Speaker 1: the Markelely children are living a waking nightmare, staying with
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Speaker 1: their aunt and uncle Jean.
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Speaker 2: I can't even imagine.
9:13
Speaker 1: The investigation transitions from a hunt for physical evidence into
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Speaker 1: a terrifying psychological warfare, because the morning after Christmas, the
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Speaker 1: phone at the Markeley house finally rings, and Jane.
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Speaker 2: Picks up the receiver on the other end as a
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Speaker 2: man speaking with a muffled, raspy voice. Yeah, he demands
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Speaker 2: ten thousand dollars, claiming that John and Shelley are alive
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Speaker 2: and being held captive in Toronto, Canada.
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Speaker 1: Just totally out of left field. And three days later,
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Speaker 1: on December twenty ninth, the guy calls back. The escalation
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Speaker 1: in his demands is jarring, it really is. He tells
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Speaker 1: Jane to sell John's corvette out of the garage to
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Speaker 1: get the cash, and if he doesn't comply, the caller
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Speaker 1: claims that John and Shelley are going to be sacrificed
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Speaker 1: by a satanic cult on New Year's Eve.
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Speaker 2: The narrative shift here is staggering. We go from a
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Speaker 2: highly controlled, silent abduction at a bank drive through in
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Speaker 2: rural Ohio to wild claims of international kidnapping and satanic
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Speaker 2: ritual abuse.
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Speaker 1: It's just bizarre.
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Speaker 2: The police, of course, have tapped the phones by this point.
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Speaker 2: They work with Gene to set up a sting operation
10:14
Speaker 2: for New Year's Ease, effectively calling the extortion spluff. Gene
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Speaker 2: tells the raspy voice caller that he has the money ready.
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Speaker 1: To go, and the caller's master plan for this ransom
10:25
Speaker 1: drop is almost comical. So let me get this straight.
10:28
Speaker 1: We go from an invisible flawless abduction to leaving a
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Speaker 1: ransom note at.
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Speaker 2: A mall, a very specific mall display.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he directs Gene to a local mall. Gene has
10:39
Speaker 1: to walk to a specific payphone and check the coin
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Speaker 1: return slot to find a handwritten note like a bed
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Speaker 1: spy movie exactly he finds it. The note is riddled
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Speaker 1: with bizarre spelling errors, and it instructs him to take
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Speaker 1: the bag of money, which the police have actually stuffed
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Speaker 1: with worthless dish rags, and leave it inside the Kaufman's
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Speaker 1: Department store. But he has to leave it in a
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Speaker 1: display of Penguin sweat shirts near the entrance.
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Speaker 2: The whiplash of this criminal mastermind.
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Speaker 1: Is baffling Penguin sweatshirts.
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Speaker 2: It is an overly complicated, highly specific set of instructions,
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Speaker 2: which is a classic hallmark of an amateur offender. They
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Speaker 2: watch too many movies and try to construct a labyrinthine
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Speaker 2: drop to feel in control. All right. Once Jeane leaves
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Speaker 2: the dummy bag at the Pengin sweatshirt display, undercover police
11:22
Speaker 2: are watching from every angle. They observe a very pregnant
11:26
Speaker 2: teenage girl slowly approach the bag. A teenager Yeah, she
11:31
Speaker 2: scouts it out, lingers, but ultimately doesn't take it. Suddenly,
11:36
Speaker 2: the extortionist calls Jean's wife back at the house, screaming
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Speaker 2: into the phone. He realizes the police are watching the mall.
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Speaker 1: But despite knowing the police are involved, the guy is
11:45
Speaker 1: so greedy he refuses to abandon the plan. He re
11:48
Speaker 1: routes Jane to a nearby gas station bathroom.
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Speaker 2: You just won't give up.
11:52
Speaker 1: Jean drives over and drops the bag. The police adjusts
11:54
Speaker 1: their perimeter and watch from a distance. A white car
11:57
Speaker 1: pulls into the gas station and who gets out exact
12:00
Speaker 1: same pregnant teenage girl from the mall. She walks into
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Speaker 1: the bathroom, discovers the bag is full of rags, comes
12:06
Speaker 1: out empty handed, and gets back into the car. The
12:09
Speaker 1: police instantly swarm the vehicle. They arrest the eighteen year
12:13
Speaker 1: old girl, Deanna, and the driver of the car, who
12:16
Speaker 1: turns out to be her thirty five year old father,
12:19
Speaker 1: Stephen Durst.
12:20
Speaker 2: Let's analyze the behavior we are seeing here. Yeah, if
12:23
Speaker 2: we connect this to the bigger picture, this is classic
12:26
Speaker 2: disorganized defender behavior. Yeah. The initial crime vanishing two adults
12:30
Speaker 2: in broad daylight might have been a crime of passion
12:33
Speaker 2: or sudden violence. But this extortion attempt is a desperate,
12:37
Speaker 2: sloppy scramble for cash.
12:39
Speaker 1: Oh completely.
12:41
Speaker 2: The juxtaposition forces investigators to ask a difficult question. Is
12:45
Speaker 2: the person demanding the ransom actually the same persons who
12:48
Speaker 2: committed the kidnapping or is this an opportunist trying to
12:52
Speaker 2: cash in on a local tragedy.
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Speaker 1: Well, when you look at Stephen Durst, the puzzle pieces
12:56
Speaker 1: start looking like they might actually fit the original crime.
13:00
Speaker 1: He wasn't a random stranger pulling names out.
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Speaker 2: Of a phone. Oh he knew them well right.
13:04
Speaker 1: He was a former long haul trucker who worked directly
13:06
Speaker 1: for John Markley. Actually, Stephen and his kids had lived
13:10
Speaker 1: with the Markleys for a few months while he was
13:12
Speaker 1: going through a messy divorce.
13:13
Speaker 2: And that living arrangement ended incredibly corely it did. John
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Speaker 2: fired Stephen from his trucking company, suspecting him of siphoning
13:22
Speaker 2: and stealing fuel on his routes.
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Speaker 1: And it wasn't a peaceful separation. John's sister told investigators
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Speaker 1: that Stephen had come back to the house furiously demanding
13:31
Speaker 1: money he felt he was owed.
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Speaker 2: Oh wow.
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Speaker 1: The argument escalated to the point that Stephen grabbed a
13:37
Speaker 1: heavy two by four piece of wood from the garage
13:40
Speaker 1: and threatened to beat John with it right there on
13:43
Speaker 1: the property.
13:43
Speaker 2: That's a serious threat.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you have a guy with a financial motive,
13:47
Speaker 1: a documented history of violence toward the victim, and he
13:50
Speaker 1: just got caught red handed orchestrating a ransom sting for
13:54
Speaker 1: the victims. It feels like you close the file right there.
13:57
Speaker 2: You would certainly think so. The police bring Steve in
14:00
Speaker 2: and administer a polygraph test, asking him point blank if
14:03
Speaker 2: he had anything to do with the Markley's actual disappearance.
14:06
Speaker 1: He fails every single question regarding their abduction miserably. The
14:11
Speaker 1: machine indicates massive deception. Yet, despite failing the polygraph and
14:16
Speaker 1: being caught in the sting, the police hit a brick wall.
14:20
Speaker 1: How they cannot tie him to the physical abduction. There
14:23
Speaker 1: is no blood, no hair, no fingerprints placing him inside
14:27
Speaker 1: that muddy red truck or at the house. He is
14:30
Speaker 1: convicted of extortion and sentenced to four to ten years
14:33
Speaker 1: in prison, maintaining the entire time that he was just
14:36
Speaker 1: at the mall and the gas station by pure coincidence.
14:40
Speaker 2: A coincidence. He just happened to be browsing the Penguin
14:42
Speaker 2: sweatshirt display and needed to use that specific gas station bathroom.
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Speaker 1: That's his story.
14:47
Speaker 2: It's insulting. And years later, secret audio surfaces of a
14:51
Speaker 2: man allegedly Stephen, bragging to a friend about extorting a
14:53
Speaker 2: couple who owed him money, though he claims the police
14:56
Speaker 2: planted the specific ransom note to frame him, of course,
14:59
Speaker 2: But right when you think Stephen Durst is the obvious,
15:02
Speaker 2: undeniable answer, you look at John and Shelley's finances and
15:05
Speaker 2: the waters get incredibly murky because investigators naturally dig into
15:09
Speaker 2: the background of the victims and they find a glaring anomaly.
15:15
Speaker 2: The day before they vanished, John Markley took out a
15:18
Speaker 2: highly unusual consumer loan for just over sixteen hundred dollars.
15:22
Speaker 2: To secure this relatively small amount of cash, he put
15:26
Speaker 2: up his beloved shotguns, his living room furniture, his television,
15:30
Speaker 2: and a lawnmower as collateral.
15:32
Speaker 1: Okay, my head is spinning right now. Why does a
15:34
Speaker 1: man who owns successful trucking business, who owns his home
15:39
Speaker 1: need to pawn his lawnmower and his TV for sixteen
15:42
Speaker 1: hundred dollars?
15:43
Speaker 2: Doesn't make financial sense?
15:44
Speaker 1: No, and why does he do it? Twenty four hours
15:47
Speaker 1: before he gets kidnapped. Does he have a secret gambling problem?
15:50
Speaker 1: Is he paying off the hidden debt?
15:52
Speaker 2: These are the questions you have to ask this.
15:54
Speaker 1: Haytel cracks the door open to theories that John and
15:57
Speaker 1: Shelley were drowning in financial trouble that absolutely nobody and
16:00
Speaker 1: the family knew about, which leads us to Shelley's brother,
16:03
Speaker 1: who comes forward with a theory so intricate it feels
16:06
Speaker 1: like a movie script.
16:07
Speaker 2: Right and before we detail the brother's theory, we need
16:10
Speaker 2: to understand a psychological concept called ambiguous loss. When a
16:15
Speaker 2: family is subjected to a missing person's case, the human
16:18
Speaker 2: brain cannot tolerate the lack of a definitive ending. We
16:22
Speaker 2: crave narrative closure.
16:23
Speaker 1: That makes total sense when.
16:25
Speaker 2: People don't have answers for decades. They fill that excruciating
16:29
Speaker 2: silence with the most complicated movie plot theories imaginable. They
16:33
Speaker 2: connect dots that aren't there, because believing in an elaborate
16:36
Speaker 2: conspiracy is somehow easier to stomach than the violent, simple
16:40
Speaker 2: truth standing right in front of them.
16:42
Speaker 1: That context is crucial because the theory involves a deep,
16:45
Speaker 1: dark family secret from decades prior, back in nineteen seventy seven,
16:50
Speaker 1: a man was murdered, shot with a shotgun, and left
16:53
Speaker 1: on a set of railroad tracks.
16:55
Speaker 2: A brutal crime.
16:56
Speaker 1: Yes, and Shelley's father was actually convicted of this murder
16:59
Speaker 1: and served time. I'm in prison. But according to Shelley's brother,
17:02
Speaker 1: years later, the victim's own grandson made a drunken confession
17:06
Speaker 1: at a party. Oh boy, He claimed that his father,
17:09
Speaker 1: so the victim's son, had actually pulled the trigger to
17:12
Speaker 1: secure a massive inheritance, and that they had intentionally framed
17:15
Speaker 1: Shelley's dad for the crime.
17:17
Speaker 2: So the brother theorizes that John Markley, who is always
17:20
Speaker 2: looking for a business angle or a way to make
17:22
Speaker 2: extra money, somehow caught wind of this true killer's identity. Right,
17:27
Speaker 2: he believes John might have been blackmailing this murderer for
17:30
Speaker 2: a mass of sum of money rumored to be a
17:32
Speaker 2: thirty thousand dollars withdrawal from a family bank account.
17:36
Speaker 1: So we thought John and Shelley were the victims of
17:39
Speaker 1: an extortionist. But is it possible they were playing a
17:42
Speaker 1: deadly game of blackmail themselves.
17:44
Speaker 2: An extortion inception.
17:46
Speaker 1: Essentially exactly where the blackmailer pushes the wrong guy too far.
17:49
Speaker 1: And gets silenced. It's a dizzying theory to try and
17:53
Speaker 1: map out.
17:53
Speaker 2: It is dizzying, But this is exactly where we have
17:56
Speaker 2: to apply Akham's razor. The simplest explanation is usually the
18:00
Speaker 2: correct one. The grand conspiracy theories distract from the physical evidence. Yeah,
18:04
Speaker 2: you're right, the Marklis were likely abducted and killed by
18:06
Speaker 2: someone they knew, someone who had a personal grudge, and
18:09
Speaker 2: someone who desperately needed quick cash.
18:11
Speaker 1: Bringing it back to the physical reality really grounds us
18:14
Speaker 1: in the dirt and the mud of rural Ohio. The
18:17
Speaker 1: wild theories eventually fade into the background and the family
18:20
Speaker 1: is left with just a desperate, agonizing search for physical.
18:24
Speaker 2: Remains, which is so heartbreaking.
18:26
Speaker 1: Fast forward to two thousand and five and two thousand
18:28
Speaker 1: and six, the FBI receives highly specific tips that lead
18:32
Speaker 1: them to search a massive, sprawling rural wildlife reserve.
18:37
Speaker 2: And significantly, this wildlife reserve is located just off a
18:41
Speaker 2: remote dirt road. It is the exact same dirt road
18:44
Speaker 2: where John's brother believed the red pickup truck had driven
18:47
Speaker 2: on the day of the abduction. Oh wow, which would
18:50
Speaker 2: perfectly explain the thick film of mud the Nis saw
18:52
Speaker 2: before it was parked at the Walmart.
18:54
Speaker 1: That is a huge connection. So the FBI brings out
18:57
Speaker 1: specialized cadaver dogs. The dogs actually hit on specific areas
19:01
Speaker 1: deep in the reserve, signaling the scent of human remains.
19:04
Speaker 2: They were so close.
19:05
Speaker 1: Law enforcement brings in equipment. They dig, They scour the area,
19:08
Speaker 1: but the reality of searching a forest is grim. The
19:11
Speaker 1: wilderness is just too vast, and the earth has shifted
19:13
Speaker 1: and settled over a decade. They find absolutely nobodies.
19:17
Speaker 2: The source of that FBI tip was heavily redacted in
19:20
Speaker 2: the case files, but locals and investigators heavily suspected was
19:24
Speaker 2: Deanna Stephen Durst's.
19:26
Speaker 1: Daughter, the pregnant teen from the mall sting exactly.
19:30
Speaker 2: It is remembered that around twenty fifteen, she suffered a
19:33
Speaker 2: massive crisis of conscience. She allegedly confided in a relative,
19:37
Speaker 2: breaking down and saying she finally realized her dad had
19:40
Speaker 2: done something truly terrible, something fully premeditated, on the day
19:45
Speaker 2: that Markley's vanished.
19:46
Speaker 1: That crisis of conscience aligns perfectly with the darkest rumor
19:50
Speaker 1: that had been circling this case for years. Oh of that,
19:53
Speaker 1: people in the town whisper that On December fifteenth, nineteen
19:55
Speaker 1: ninety five, Stephen Durst showed up to a friend's house
19:58
Speaker 1: completely covered in blood. He allegedly asked that friend to
20:01
Speaker 1: help him move John's red truck, parking it across from
20:04
Speaker 1: the walmart, right where the Knees playfully wrote in the mud.
20:07
Speaker 2: It all comes back to that muddy truck.
20:08
Speaker 1: It does put yourself on the shoes of those five kids.
20:11
Speaker 1: You're sitting there thirty years later, knowing the answer is
20:14
Speaker 1: likely buried just a few miles away in your own hometown,
20:17
Speaker 1: hidden just beneath the dirt and the leaves.
20:19
Speaker 2: It is a devastating, unresolved reality. John and Shelley Markley
20:24
Speaker 2: were officially declared legally dead in April of nineteen ninety nine,
20:28
Speaker 2: so tree, so for their children. The case has never
20:30
Speaker 2: truly closed. It remains a haunting puzzle of muddy trucks,
20:35
Speaker 2: strange bank runs, and a missing twenty four hours that
20:38
Speaker 2: completely shattered a family.
20:39
Speaker 1: We always assume that when a body has never found,
20:42
Speaker 1: the killer must have been a criminal mastermind who pulled
20:44
Speaker 1: off the perfect crime, wiping away fingerprints and outsmarting the
20:48
Speaker 1: FBI at every turn.
20:50
Speaker 2: Right like a movie villain.
20:51
Speaker 1: But looking at the vast, unforgiving expanses of rural Ohio.
20:55
Speaker 1: What if the extortionist wasn't a genius at all. What
20:58
Speaker 1: if the wilderness is simply too massive for justice to
21:01
Speaker 1: penetrate without a map.
21:03
Speaker 2: That's a chilling thought.
21:04
Speaker 1: It makes you look at the deep, quiet forests on
21:06
Speaker 1: the edge of your own hometown and wonder what secrets
21:10
Speaker 1: are they keeping for the people who walk among you.