Latest / Crime Night / The Vanished Cyclist of Highway 95

Transcript

The Vanished Cyclist of Highway 95 · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: So it's late June nineteen eighty one. Picture of this long,
0:05
Speaker 1: mostly downhill stretch of Highway ninety five.
0:07
Speaker 2: Right winding right through the Pacific northwest.
0:10
Speaker 1: Exactly between Moscow and Lewiston, Idaho. The summer sun is
0:13
Speaker 1: just beating down on the asphalt, you know, so hard
0:16
Speaker 1: that you get those shimmering heat waves off the road.
0:18
Speaker 2: It's hot. It smells like dry pine needles.
0:20
Speaker 1: And truck exhaust. Yeah, and riding her ten speed bicycle
0:24
Speaker 1: along the shoulder is twenty two year old Kristin David.
0:28
Speaker 1: She's a college student at the University of Idaho.
0:30
Speaker 2: Just trying to get a few things she left at
0:31
Speaker 2: her campus apartment back to her sister's place in Lewiston.
0:34
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly. It's a thirty mile ride. Since it's
0:37
Speaker 1: mostly downhill, it should take her like maybe three hours.
0:40
Speaker 1: It's strenuous, but it's an entirely routine summer ride. But instead,
0:45
Speaker 1: somewhere on that desolate stretch of sun Bag Highway, Kristen
0:49
Speaker 1: and her bicycle just vanish into thin air.
0:51
Speaker 2: Which is it's the exact kind of setting that lulls
0:54
Speaker 2: you into a false sense of security. You know, you
0:56
Speaker 2: have the vastness of the Pacific Northwest and the quiet
0:59
Speaker 2: hum of rural highway. You simply do not expect a
1:02
Speaker 2: scene of absolute calculated terror to unfold in broad daylight
1:05
Speaker 2: with cars passing by.
1:07
Speaker 1: Right, And that is why we're opening the case files
1:09
Speaker 1: on this today. The mission of this deep dive is
1:12
Speaker 1: to really unpack one of the most baffling, gruesome cold
1:17
Speaker 1: cases in the history of the region. We are looking
1:20
Speaker 1: at a stack of archival documents, witness statements, police reports,
1:24
Speaker 1: and they completely defy the usual local serial killer theories.
1:27
Speaker 2: They really do. It's a completely different kind of case.
1:30
Speaker 1: If you have ever driven down a peaceful, small town
1:32
Speaker 1: highway and wondered how such a quiet place can hide
1:35
Speaker 1: a monster, this deep dive is going to show you
1:38
Speaker 1: just how complex, layered and terrifying investigation can get. I mean,
1:42
Speaker 1: we are talking about a chilling web of shifting memories,
1:45
Speaker 1: a phantom identity that shouldn't mathematically be possible, and an
1:49
Speaker 1: incredibly detailed FBI profile.
1:51
Speaker 2: And you know what makes these files so vital to
1:53
Speaker 2: study is that they force us to confront the very
1:55
Speaker 2: mechanics of an investigation. We get to see the fragile
1:58
Speaker 2: nature of human memory, the limitations of early forensic science
2:02
Speaker 2: and the unsettling reality of how a perpetrator can slip
2:05
Speaker 2: through the cracks of seemingly thorough police work just.
2:08
Speaker 1: By like crossing a state line. So let's start with
2:11
Speaker 1: the immediate aftermath of June twenty sixth, nineteen eighty one.
2:15
Speaker 1: At first, local police didn't even suspect foul play. They
2:18
Speaker 1: assumed a college student just went off the grid for
2:20
Speaker 1: a weekend.
2:21
Speaker 2: Which wasn't uncommon back then.
2:24
Speaker 1: Right But as the local news started circulating Kristin's disappearance,
2:28
Speaker 1: the police tip line started ringing, and a terrifying pattern
2:32
Speaker 1: emerged from those calls. Multiple drivers reported seeing Kristen on
2:36
Speaker 1: the side of the highway, but she wasn't alone. She
2:39
Speaker 1: was standing near a mysterious brown van with an Oregon license.
2:43
Speaker 2: Plate, an organ plate ending in either thirty seven or
2:46
Speaker 2: seven thirty seven.
2:46
Speaker 1: Right exactly now. Investigators back then relied heavily on a
2:50
Speaker 1: technique that is super controversial today, forensic hypnosis. They brought
2:54
Speaker 1: these passing drivers in, hoping to pull those exact plate
2:57
Speaker 1: numbers from their subconscious minds.
2:59
Speaker 2: Which didn't exactly work for the plate numbers, but a
3:01
Speaker 2: very specific physical description of the suspect emerged.
3:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.
3:04
Speaker 1: The witnesses described a white male around thirty years old,
3:07
Speaker 1: standing between five foot ten and six seat tall, with
3:10
Speaker 1: a husky build like around one hundred and seventy five
3:13
Speaker 1: to one hundred and eighty pounds. He had a neatly
3:16
Speaker 1: trimmed beard, brown hair, and wore a brown and white
3:19
Speaker 1: checkered shirt with army style khaki pants. One witness distinctly
3:23
Speaker 1: describes his overall appearance as just grubby, but relying.
3:27
Speaker 2: On that eyewitness testimony brings us to a major roadblock
3:30
Speaker 2: in the file. There is a witness that documents referred
3:33
Speaker 2: to as James, and his story is well, it's.
3:35
Speaker 1: A wild rive, oh man, James, Yeah, his account is crazy.
3:38
Speaker 2: It's a masterclass and a psychological phenomenon called retroactive interference.
3:42
Speaker 2: So in nineteen eighty one, just days after the disappearance,
3:45
Speaker 2: James reported driving past a brown van pulled over near
3:48
Speaker 2: a town called Genesee, Okay. He said he saw the
3:51
Speaker 2: bearded driver standing outside and a blond woman matching Kristen's
3:55
Speaker 2: description standing near the back of the van with her
3:57
Speaker 2: bike lying in the weeds. To James, look like a
4:00
Speaker 2: totally mundane, broken down bike. Situation. The man seemed to
4:03
Speaker 2: be helping.
4:04
Speaker 1: Her right, like a good Samaritan exactly.
4:06
Speaker 2: James even noted seeing a shadow and two feet on
4:08
Speaker 2: the opposite side of the van, implying a second person
4:11
Speaker 2: was present. Believing everything was fine, he just kept driving.
4:14
Speaker 1: Okay, time out because you fast forward to twenty eighteen,
4:18
Speaker 1: James gives a new interview for a documentary project and
4:21
Speaker 1: his story is unrecognizable. Suddenly he remembers Kristin lying in
4:27
Speaker 1: the grass as if she'd been violently struck by the
4:29
Speaker 1: van and that bearded man. James now claims the guy
4:33
Speaker 1: was walking toward her with his sinister, evil smile. I mean,
4:37
Speaker 1: how does a memory go from helpful guy fixing a
4:39
Speaker 1: bike to grinning psychopath standing over a hit and run victim.
4:43
Speaker 2: You can't just chalk that up to forgetting right well,
4:45
Speaker 2: and that is exactly where retroactive interference comes in. Memory
4:49
Speaker 2: is not a video recording stored on a hard drive.
4:51
Speaker 2: It is a neural pathway that gets reconstructed every single
4:54
Speaker 2: time you recall it. It's like a piece of wet clay.
4:56
Speaker 3: We clay.
4:57
Speaker 2: Okay, unpack that well when horrific news breaks about it,
5:00
Speaker 2: an event you witnessed your brain struggles to reconcile your
5:03
Speaker 2: initial neutral memory with the new traumatic information. Over decades,
5:08
Speaker 2: James's brain continually molded his memory of that day to
5:12
Speaker 2: fit the horrific tragedy he later learned how occurred.
5:14
Speaker 3: So he didn't consciously lie.
5:16
Speaker 2: No, not at all. His brain literally overwrote the original
5:19
Speaker 2: file to make sense of the horror and the horror that.
5:22
Speaker 1: Triggered that overright was unimaginable because for eight days Kristin
5:26
Speaker 1: was just a missing person. But that ambiguity came to
5:29
Speaker 1: a violent end on the fourth of July. You know,
5:32
Speaker 1: while people are out having barbecues and shooting off fireworks,
5:35
Speaker 1: a fisherman is out on the murky waters.
5:37
Speaker 2: At the Snake River and he spots a heavy black
5:40
Speaker 2: garbage bag bobbing in the water near the river bank.
5:43
Speaker 2: It's out of place enough that he maneuvers his boat
5:45
Speaker 2: over and he opens it. Inside he finds human remains.
5:49
Speaker 2: Over the next few days, police recover a total of
5:51
Speaker 2: five black garbage bags from the river, some of them
5:54
Speaker 2: double bagged, containing Kristin's dismembered body. It takes them nearly
5:58
Speaker 2: a week just to officially con firm her identity. Through
6:01
Speaker 2: dental records, which is just nightmare fuel.
6:04
Speaker 1: But those bags gave investigators a surprisingly specific timeline. The
6:09
Speaker 1: files mentioned they knew she was murdered almost immediately after
6:11
Speaker 1: she vanished. How do they pinpoint a twenty four hour
6:15
Speaker 1: window when she had been in the river for over
6:18
Speaker 1: a week.
6:18
Speaker 2: It comes down to the forensic mechanism of decomposition, specifically
6:22
Speaker 2: a process called skin slippage.
6:24
Speaker 1: Skin slippage, Okay, that sounds grim.
6:26
Speaker 2: It is grim. After death, the enzymes in the body
6:29
Speaker 2: begin to break down the proteins that anchor the top
6:32
Speaker 2: layer of skin, the epidermist, to the underlying dermis. The
6:35
Speaker 2: skin essentially starts to loosen and slip off.
6:38
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Okay.
6:39
Speaker 2: However, the cold waters of the Snake River acted like
6:42
Speaker 2: a refrigerator, drastically slowing down this enzymatic breakdown. By analyzing
6:47
Speaker 2: the precise stage of the skin slippage and factoring in
6:50
Speaker 2: the water temperature, forensic pathologists calculated that she had to
6:53
Speaker 2: have been killed, dismembered, and dumped within twenty four hours
6:57
Speaker 2: of her disappearance on June twenty six.
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Speaker 1: The bags like sank to the bottom initially, then bloated
7:02
Speaker 1: with decomposition. Gases and surfaced a week later, so while
7:05
Speaker 1: search parties were out scouring the highway, she was already gone,
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Speaker 1: and the killer scrubbed the timeline of physical evidence. Her
7:11
Speaker 1: ten speed bicycle never found, her clothing gone, the personal
7:17
Speaker 1: effects she was known to carry in her pockets, like
7:19
Speaker 1: her check book and her little coin purse, completely vanished.
7:23
Speaker 2: But wait, there was one bizarre clue inside those black
7:26
Speaker 2: garbage bags that changes the entire profile of the suspect.
7:29
Speaker 3: The newspapers.
7:31
Speaker 1: Every single part of Christen's remains was meticulously wrapped in
7:35
Speaker 1: newspaper before being placed in the garbage bags, and.
7:37
Speaker 2: They weren't just random pages grabbed from a gas station
7:40
Speaker 2: trash can. There were four very specific sequential issues of
7:44
Speaker 2: the Loosed and Morning Tribune, dated April seventh, seventeenth, nineteenth,
7:48
Speaker 2: and twenty fourth.
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Speaker 1: Right, why April it's July. If you commit a murder
7:52
Speaker 1: on the side of the highway, you don't just happen
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Speaker 1: to have a sequential archive of two month old local
7:56
Speaker 1: newspapers in your trunk.
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Speaker 2: Which tells behavioral analysts exactly where the crime took place.
8:01
Speaker 2: Keeping sequential two month old local newspapers implies a high
8:06
Speaker 2: level of comfort and domestic stability. It points away from
8:09
Speaker 2: a transient drifter sleeping in his van and heavily towards
8:13
Speaker 2: someone with a permanent local residence, someone who has.
8:16
Speaker 1: The daily paper delivered to their home, reads it and
8:18
Speaker 1: stacks in the garage exactly.
8:21
Speaker 2: This indicates the murder and dismemberment happened in a controlled environment,
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Speaker 2: taking a significant amount of time.
8:27
Speaker 1: The physical evidence on the remains backs that up, but
8:30
Speaker 1: it also creates a massive debate in the case files
8:34
Speaker 1: because the autopsy described that dismemberment as almost surgical. But
8:39
Speaker 1: if it was so surgical, why did the medical examiner
8:41
Speaker 1: note that the killer struggled significantly with Kristen's legs, specifically
8:45
Speaker 1: making the cuts around her upper thigh and hip joint.
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Speaker 2: This sparks the classic forensic debate of the surgeon versus
8:51
Speaker 2: the hunter, and it all comes down to biomechanics. A
8:54
Speaker 2: big game hunter knows how to break down a deer
8:56
Speaker 2: or an elk with incredible precision. But humans are bipede.
9:00
Speaker 2: We walk on two legs and elk is.
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Speaker 1: Quadrupedal, right, so the joints are different.
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Speaker 2: Vastly different. Because of this, a human hip joint sits
9:08
Speaker 2: much higher and add a completely different angle in the
9:10
Speaker 2: pelvic girdle than an animal's hip joint. A trained medical
9:14
Speaker 2: professional would know exactly where that human joint articulates and
9:18
Speaker 2: how to sever it cleanly. A hunter relying on muscle
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Speaker 2: memory from field dressing animals would miscalculate the angle and
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Speaker 2: struggle to separate the joint.
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Speaker 1: And given that this rural Idaho, the area is teeming
9:30
Speaker 1: with experienced big game hunters. Right, But there is a
9:34
Speaker 1: much darker detail about the remains that we have to discuss.
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Speaker 3: When the police finally packed up.
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Speaker 1: Their shoreline search, having recovered her head, torso, arms, and
9:42
Speaker 1: upper legs, there was a piece missing from the knee down.
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Speaker 1: Kristen's right leg was never recovered. Now, there was a
9:50
Speaker 1: fleeting report of a black bag floating in the choppy
9:53
Speaker 1: waters out in the middle of the river, but it
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Speaker 1: sank before anyone.
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Speaker 3: Could reach it.
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Speaker 2: Investigators had to consider the behavioral alternative, though, What if
10:00
Speaker 2: that bag wasn't in the river? What if the killer
10:02
Speaker 2: kept the lower leg, which.
10:03
Speaker 1: Leads us straight into the FBI's involvement. Local police in
10:07
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one weren't equipped to build psychological profiles, so
10:10
Speaker 1: the FBI's Behavioral Science unit comes in and lays out
10:13
Speaker 1: a twenty point psychological breakdown of the suspect. They describe
10:17
Speaker 1: a white male aged twenty one to twenty eight. They
10:20
Speaker 1: labeled him an arrogant underachiever. How do they extrapolate that
10:24
Speaker 1: specific personality trade from a crime scene?
10:27
Speaker 2: It's about reading the contradictions and the killer's actions. The
10:30
Speaker 2: crime is highly organized, the controlled environment, the specific use
10:33
Speaker 2: of newspapers, the double bagging that requires intelligence and planning.
10:37
Speaker 2: But choosing to dump the body locally in a heavily
10:40
Speaker 2: fished river is brazen and risks exposure.
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Speaker 3: Ah so it implies a massive ego.
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Speaker 2: Yep, The FBI deduces this is a man who considers
10:47
Speaker 2: himself vastly superior to law enforcement and highly intelligent, that
10:51
Speaker 2: likely has a hard time holding down a steady job
10:53
Speaker 2: because his arrogance makes him resent taking orders from superiors.
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Speaker 1: The profile goes on to say he drives a late
10:58
Speaker 1: model car he's in densely proud of, likely has a
11:02
Speaker 1: juvenile record for weirdly intimate violent acts like biting, and
11:07
Speaker 1: crucial to our missing items, the profile stated he would
11:11
Speaker 1: keep souvenirs to fuel his fantasies. Later, this could be
11:14
Speaker 1: personal items the victor had, like that missing coin, actual
11:17
Speaker 1: body parts like a severed lower leg.
11:20
Speaker 2: The profile concludes that this crime was a psychosexually satisfying
11:23
Speaker 2: event for the killer, but completely impersonal. He wouldn't have
11:27
Speaker 2: known Kristen beforehand, and he would feel zero remorse.
11:30
Speaker 1: So if the FBI profile points to a local resident
11:33
Speaker 1: with a highly controlled private environment, investigators have to figure
11:37
Speaker 1: out where he took her, which brings us to a massive,
11:39
Speaker 1: prominent hotel right in downtown Lewiston called the Sackage Wheel Lodge.
11:43
Speaker 2: On June thirtieth, just four days after Kristen vanishes, a
11:46
Speaker 2: housekeeper goes into a room to clean. She finds a
11:48
Speaker 2: bath towel and a hand towel. The larger towel is
11:51
Speaker 2: saturated in blood. Save for one tiny dry corner, it
11:54
Speaker 2: is completely soaked.
11:55
Speaker 1: I have to pause here because this detail is maddening. Well,
11:58
Speaker 1: I get irritated if a hotel hell housekeeper forgets to
12:01
Speaker 1: leave extra coffee pods. This housekeeper finds a towel that
12:04
Speaker 1: looks like a prop from a slasher film, and her
12:06
Speaker 1: reaction is basically well, laundry day is Tuesday, She tosses
12:10
Speaker 1: it in her cart, sends it to the wash, and
12:12
Speaker 1: doesn't even write.
12:13
Speaker 3: Down the room number. It is absolutely baffling.
12:16
Speaker 2: It is a staggering failure of basic situational awareness. But incredibly,
12:21
Speaker 2: she gets a second chance. Ten days later, on July tenth,
12:25
Speaker 2: she is cleaning room two seventy three and finds more
12:28
Speaker 2: blood on a padded suitcase stand. This time she finally
12:31
Speaker 2: notifies her manager and the police are called. The FBI
12:34
Speaker 2: steps in and processes the room, discovering hair samples.
12:37
Speaker 1: But this is nineteen eighty one. There's no DNA testing.
12:40
Speaker 1: You can't just swab a blood drop and match to
12:41
Speaker 1: a database. So how did they connect hair found in
12:45
Speaker 1: a hotel room to a girl whose body was pulled
12:47
Speaker 1: out of a river.
12:48
Speaker 2: They used microscopic hair analysis. Forensic technicians would place the
12:52
Speaker 2: found hair and a known sample of Kristen's hair under
12:55
Speaker 2: a high powered microscope. They aren't looking at DNA, they
12:58
Speaker 2: are analyzing the physical shit structure. A look at the
13:01
Speaker 2: pattern of the scales on the hair's outer cuticle, the
13:04
Speaker 2: thickness of the inner modula, and the distribution of pigment granules, and.
13:08
Speaker 1: The FBI concluded that the hair in Room two seventy
13:11
Speaker 1: three was microscopically consistent with kristin David's hair. It wasn't
13:15
Speaker 1: a one hundred percent definitive match like DNA, but it
13:18
Speaker 1: was enough to blow the case wide open.
13:20
Speaker 2: So investigators sprint to the front desk and pull the
13:23
Speaker 2: registry for Room two seventy three. On June twenty ninth.
13:26
Speaker 2: The room was rented to a man calling himself Pete Matson.
13:29
Speaker 1: The desk clerk described him as tallish, maybe five foot
13:32
Speaker 1: nine to five', eleven with collarlank blondish, hair weighing between
13:36
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty one hundred and eighty. Pounds he
13:38
Speaker 1: filled out the registration card with an address In, Emmett,
13:41
Speaker 1: idaho which is about five hours, south and listed his
13:44
Speaker 1: vehicle as a Yellow, oldsmobile complete with a license plate.
13:46
Speaker 2: Number police run the license plate through. Dispatch it is
13:50
Speaker 2: a real active, plate but it belongs to a man
13:52
Speaker 2: Named glenn who lives In, boise Not. Emmett, Furthermore glenn
13:56
Speaker 2: doesn't drive a Yellow. Oldsmobile he drives A, ford and
14:00
Speaker 2: when police Contact, glenn he has an airtight. Alibi he
14:03
Speaker 2: was In california at a family wedding during the, murder
14:06
Speaker 2: and His ford was safely parked at The Boise airport.
14:09
Speaker 1: Stop this makes absolutely no. Sense you have a suspect
14:12
Speaker 1: using a fake, name a fake, address and a license
14:14
Speaker 1: plate number stolen from a completely unrelated.
14:16
Speaker 3: Vehicle that's.
14:17
Speaker 1: Clever but when THE fbi goes to that fake address In,
14:20
Speaker 1: emmett the person living there actually knows a Real Pete,
14:23
Speaker 1: madson and that Real Pete madson is a master student
14:26
Speaker 1: at The university Of idaho And, moscow the exact Town
14:29
Speaker 1: kristin left. From how does a killer invent an identity
14:32
Speaker 1: that perfectly matches a real college student from the victim's
14:35
Speaker 1: town while memorizing the license plate of a Random ford
14:38
Speaker 1: from an.
14:38
Speaker 2: Airport it is a mathematical nightmare of. Coincidences the file
14:42
Speaker 2: show THE fbi did track down the Real Pete, madson
14:45
Speaker 2: who actually drove An, oldsmobile but he was tentatively ruled.
14:49
Speaker 2: Out the phantom identity was a dead. End, furthermore later
14:53
Speaker 2: chemical testing couldn't even confirm the blood on the suitcase
14:56
Speaker 2: stand was human. Blood the housekeeper's story kept changing and
15:00
Speaker 2: growing more exaggerated with every police, interview completely destroying her.
15:04
Speaker 2: Credibility the entire sackage away a lodge led evaporated into, smoke.
15:09
Speaker 1: Which pushes investigators back out onto the, street desperately looking
15:12
Speaker 1: for anyone who matches THE fbi, profile and unfortunately they
15:15
Speaker 1: found a bizarre parade of men who seemed eager to
15:18
Speaker 1: look like. Monsters there's a guy Named George williamson who
15:21
Speaker 1: went By. Buzz he closely matched the composite. Sketches he
15:24
Speaker 1: was incredibly bitter toward women due to a custody, battle
15:27
Speaker 1: and he voluntarily told police these horrific stories about disemboweling
15:30
Speaker 1: people during The Vietnam.
15:31
Speaker 2: War but behavioral profiling requires verifying the baseline. Facts THE
15:36
Speaker 2: fbi dug Into buzz's military records and discovered he was
15:39
Speaker 2: never even deployed To. Vietnam he was deeply mentally, ill
15:43
Speaker 2: suffering from, delusions and prone to making, wild unsubstantiated claims
15:47
Speaker 2: to feel. Powerful he was ruled.
15:49
Speaker 1: Out then there was a butcher Named Mike. Spring this
15:53
Speaker 1: immediately triggered the anatomical knowledge. Theory he crashed his truck
15:56
Speaker 1: and fled the scene on, foot leaving behind a cache
15:59
Speaker 1: of large professional butchering. Knives it turned out he was
16:02
Speaker 1: also using a fake. Name his real name Was Jim,
16:05
Speaker 1: blunk but police verified he had a solid alibi for
16:08
Speaker 1: the Day kristen, vanished clearing.
16:09
Speaker 2: Him, however the most chilling local suspect to emerge from
16:13
Speaker 2: these files wasn't found through a tip. Line he was
16:15
Speaker 2: found in a university sports.
16:17
Speaker 1: Program this detail makes my skin. Crawl in nineteen eighty,
16:21
Speaker 1: two a student At Washington State, university which is just
16:24
Speaker 1: across the border incredibly close To, moscow wrote a song
16:27
Speaker 1: that was printed in a program promoting a local rugby.
16:29
Speaker 1: Game the song was TITLED I Don't want to go To.
16:31
Speaker 2: Jail the lyrics of this song are a near, perfect
16:35
Speaker 2: terrifying mirror of the FBI's psychological profile and the undisclosed
16:40
Speaker 2: physical evidence Of kristen's.
16:41
Speaker 1: Murder i'm going to read a few of these lyrics
16:44
Speaker 1: Keep christen's case in your. Mind the song includes the
16:47
Speaker 1: LINES i took barbed wire and wrap it around her,
16:50
Speaker 1: throat through her in the, river just to see if
16:52
Speaker 1: she would. Float it goes on to describe horrific, mutilation
16:56
Speaker 1: specifically mentioning breaking a victim's, legs cut out off chunks of,
17:00
Speaker 1: flesh and keeping a victim's hand as a. Souvenir kristin
17:04
Speaker 1: was thrown in a, river meticulously, dismembered and a portion
17:08
Speaker 1: of her leg was kept as a.
17:09
Speaker 2: Souvenir the parallels are. Undeniable you have this specific mention
17:13
Speaker 2: of a river, disposal the, dismemberment and the behavioral trait
17:16
Speaker 2: of taking a. Souvenir when questioned much, later the author
17:20
Speaker 2: of the song claimed it was simply a, dark drunken
17:22
Speaker 2: joke meant to hype up his rugby.
17:24
Speaker 1: Buddies and what did law enforcement? Do absolutely. NOTHING a
17:28
Speaker 1: local women's rights group found the, program realized the horrifying
17:31
Speaker 1: connection To Kristin, david and called the student out in the,
17:34
Speaker 1: newspaper but the police never interviewed.
17:36
Speaker 2: Him it highlights a severe case of tunnel vision within the.
17:39
Speaker 2: Investigation law enforcement was so hyper focused on finding physical
17:44
Speaker 2: evidence like the brown van or the organ license, plate
17:47
Speaker 2: that they completely bypassed a glaring psychological red flag waving
17:50
Speaker 2: right in their. Faces they didn't understand how to integrate
17:54
Speaker 2: behavioral evidence into a physical man.
17:56
Speaker 1: Hunt there was Also Harry, hatman an escaped convict and
17:59
Speaker 1: big game. Hunter he lived in a remote cabin In Hell's.
18:03
Speaker 1: Canyons the couple of hours. Away he had a documented
18:06
Speaker 1: history of violent crimes against women and was known to Dry.
18:08
Speaker 1: Vans he perfectly fit the hunter profile we discussed. Earlier
18:12
Speaker 1: he had the, isolation the anatomical knowledge of breaking down large,
18:15
Speaker 1: game and the. Proximity but he died by suicide in
18:18
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, four taking any potential confessions to the.
18:21
Speaker 2: Grave, now if you are studying true crime in The Pacific,
18:24
Speaker 2: northwest you might be wondering why a very specific name
18:28
Speaker 2: hasn't come. Up in the late seventies and early, eighties
18:31
Speaker 2: The Lewiston Clarkston valley was played by a series of
18:34
Speaker 2: unsolved murders and. Disappearances the name most heavily associated with
18:39
Speaker 2: those crimes Is Lance. Voss he is the local. Bogeyman
18:43
Speaker 2: yet the case files explicitly show That Lance voss is
18:46
Speaker 2: conspicuously absent from The Kristen david.
18:48
Speaker 1: Investigation why rule out the most prolific local, suspect.
18:52
Speaker 2: Because the modus operande the MO o is entirely. Different
18:56
Speaker 2: the other victims in the valley weren't dismembered and placed
18:58
Speaker 2: some plastic bags in a. River dismemberment is an incredibly,
19:02
Speaker 2: specific labor intensive and psychologically revealing. Method of disposing of a.
19:06
Speaker 2: Body it requires, time, space and a specific psychological. Drive
19:11
Speaker 2: it is not something a serial killer just tries out
19:13
Speaker 2: once on a whim and then.
19:14
Speaker 1: Abandons which brings our sources to a terrifying modern. Theory
19:17
Speaker 1: what if THE fbi profile was right about almost everything
19:21
Speaker 1: except the killer being a permanent local. Resident what if
19:23
Speaker 1: they were only local for a few.
19:25
Speaker 2: Months the archival research points to a theory involving a
19:28
Speaker 2: former military man and his specific assignment in the. Military
19:31
Speaker 2: he was a medical lab.
19:32
Speaker 1: Specialist that answers the surgeon versus one hundred debate. Definitively
19:37
Speaker 1: this is someone with clinical anatomical.
19:39
Speaker 2: Training, precisely and the geographical footprint of this individual is
19:43
Speaker 2: what makes the theory so. Compelling he was stationed at
19:45
Speaker 2: bases all over the Country, Colorado South, Carolina, Idaho, Illinois.
19:50
Speaker 2: Georgia the theory tracks that in the, seventies, eighties and
19:53
Speaker 2: nineties wherever this man was, stationed women were, murdered surgically,
19:57
Speaker 2: dismembered placed in heavy plastic, bags and frequently left near
20:00
Speaker 2: bodies of.
20:01
Speaker 1: Water it perfectly Matches kristen's. Case he had the anatomical,
20:05
Speaker 1: skill the, opportunity and he would have had access to
20:08
Speaker 1: local newspapers while stationed at the nearby. Base but here's
20:11
Speaker 1: the thing that will keep you up at night. Today
20:14
Speaker 1: if you look the suspect, up he looks like a,
20:17
Speaker 1: happy smiling family man On. Facebook decades, ago while stationed,
20:21
Speaker 1: overseas he was actually charged with, murder but he beat
20:24
Speaker 1: the charge on a legal technicality regarding. Jurisdiction he continued to,
20:28
Speaker 1: serve continued to move around the, country and if you
20:30
Speaker 1: search public records for his name, today, nothing absolutely zero
20:34
Speaker 1: digital criminal record pulls.
20:36
Speaker 3: Up he is a, total blank.
20:37
Speaker 2: Slight it is the ultimate failure of the justice. System
20:40
Speaker 2: you have a man with the exact specialized knowledge required
20:43
Speaker 2: to commit this specific, crime with a geographic history that
20:46
Speaker 2: perfectly tracks with similar dismemberment crimes across the, nation hiding
20:50
Speaker 2: in plain sight behind a completely clean public.
20:53
Speaker 1: Record so what does this all mean for The Christen david.
20:56
Speaker 1: Investigation we started this deep dive looking for the one
20:59
Speaker 1: monster hiding on a quiet stretch Of highway ninety. Five
21:03
Speaker 1: but what unpacking this case file reveals is so much.
21:06
Speaker 1: Worse this isn't a cold case because the police couldn't
21:09
Speaker 1: find a. Suspect it's a cold case because the world
21:12
Speaker 1: is inexplicably full of people who perfectly fit the profile
21:15
Speaker 1: of a. Monster from the mentally ill making false confessions
21:19
Speaker 1: for attention to the college students writing odes to, dismemberment
21:22
Speaker 1: to the big, game hunters hiding in remote, cabins to
21:25
Speaker 1: a military lab tech leaving a cross country trail of plastic.
21:29
Speaker 2: Bags it raises a fundamental question about how we view onsolved.
21:33
Speaker 2: Crimes it underscores the absolute necessity of challenging established. Assumptions
21:37
Speaker 2: THE fbi profile insisted the killer had to be a
21:40
Speaker 2: permanent local resident because of the two month old, newspapers
21:43
Speaker 2: but a military man stationed at a base nearby might
21:46
Speaker 2: also subscribe to the local paper to blend. In if
21:48
Speaker 2: investigators get locked into one rigid interpretation of the behavioral,
21:52
Speaker 2: evidence a killer can slip away simply by getting transferred
21:55
Speaker 2: to a base in another.
21:56
Speaker 3: State we want to leave.
21:57
Speaker 1: You with one final provocative. Thought let's go back to
22:01
Speaker 1: THAT fbi. Profile the behavioral science unit was certain that
22:05
Speaker 1: this killer would keep a souvenir to relive the fantasy
22:07
Speaker 1: of the murder long after the. Event they specifically mentioned
22:11
Speaker 1: he would take personal items or body Parts kristen's coin
22:14
Speaker 1: purse was never. Found her right leg from the knee
22:17
Speaker 1: down was never.
22:18
Speaker 3: Recovered it is.
22:19
Speaker 2: A chilling reality of behavioral profiling if that profile is.
22:23
Speaker 2: Accurate those items didn't just disappear into the. Woods they
22:26
Speaker 2: were deliberately. Kept they were hidden away in a box
22:29
Speaker 2: or a trunk or a locked cabinet in someone's.
22:31
Speaker 1: Home and what happens when a killer eventually. Dies what
22:35
Speaker 1: happens to the trophies of a man who looked like
22:37
Speaker 1: a smiling grandfather On. Facebook somewhere out there right, now
22:41
Speaker 1: someone might be cleaning out an attic or inheriting a
22:43
Speaker 1: dusty box from a deceased. Relative they might pull out an,
22:46
Speaker 1: old faded coin, purse completely unaware that they are holding
22:49
Speaker 1: the final missing piece of The highway ninety five horror