Latest / Crime Night / The Green Carpet Murder of Joyce LePage

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The Green Carpet Murder of Joyce LePage · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this. It's July twenty second, nineteen seventy one, Washington
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: State University. The summer night is just stagnant, you know,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: heavy with that oppressive July heat that makes it hard
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: to even breathe.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the kind of heat where everything just feels
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: totally still exactly.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: And inside Stephen's Hall, this historic brick dormitory, the linoleum
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: quarters are quiet, but that quiet is entirely deceptive, because
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: sometime during the dark hours of that night, a vibrant
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: twenty one year old student named Joyce Lapage just vanishes
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: into thin air.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: And she really wasn't the type to just walk away
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: from her life either. I mean, she was an adventurer,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: a licensed pilot of Skydiver. She really leaned into life
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: with everything she had right.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: But she disappears without leaving a single trace, And then
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: investigators discover this one detail that shifts this from a
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: standard missing person case into an absolute nightmare. That exact
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: same night, a massive swath of heavy green carpet from
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: inside Stephen's Hall is deliberately cut out and stolen, which is.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Just well, it's wild. You don't meticulously cut a huge
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: section of commercial carpet out of a building unless you
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: are attempting to conceal something catastrophic, right, Exactly, that kind
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: of physical removal points directly to a high volume crime scene.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: The perpetrator is clearly trying to erase forensic reality.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So today we are taking you with us on a
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: descent into a fifty five year old cold case. Scattered
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: across the table between us is this mountain of original
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one investigation files.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, brittle yellowed police reports, those faded carbon copy witness statements.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And the polygraph charts where you can literally see the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: ink jumping off the baseline, plus some incredibly haunting handwritten letters.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: These letters are really something else.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: They really are. So our mission for this deep dive
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: into the case files is to sift through the three
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: most chilling theories surrounding Joyce's unsolved murder. We're going to
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: untangle this web of bizarre suspects and see if we
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: can finally connect the docks that investigators missed half a century.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Because when you're looking at archival documents, physical nomalies like
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: a missing square of green carpet can actually become distractions.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: They create investigative tunnel vision.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Oh interesting. So We shouldn't just focus on the carpet.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Right, The physical evidence only tells half the story. In
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: cold cases, the actionable clues are almost always hidden in
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: the psychology of the people the victim interacted with during
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: their final days.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Well, the most logical place to start is where the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: physical evidence first settled. A little over a week after
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Joyce vanished, police located her abandoned.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Car right on ople Street.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was parked just maybe three or four houses
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: down from a residence at four hundred Howard Street.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: And four hundred Howard Street served as the local hub
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: for SIMS, the Student International Meditation Society. Joyce was heavily
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: invested in.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: This group, super invested.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she practiced transcendental meditation daily and it just returned
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: from an intensive week long course in Spokane. The residents
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: of that house were Mike and Celeste Lendberg, who led
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the local chapter, and the roommate.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Mark Wadley, and Joyce was actually planning to move into
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: that exact house for the fall semester. Mike and Celeste
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: were heading to Spain, Mark needed someone to cover the rent,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and Joyce was desperate to escape a really toxic living
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: situation at her own apartment.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: She needed a way out, basically.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Right, So her abandoned car is sitting one hundred feet
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: from their front door. The police logically knock on four
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: hundred Howard Street, and reading this original patrol report, the
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: behavioral red flags start immediately.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, Mark Wadley answers the door.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he admits he knows Joyce, acknowledges seeing her
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: car park down the street, but claims absolute ignorance about
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: her disappearance.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: He instantly starts downplaying their relationship, telling the officer they
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: only met a month ago and never dated.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: But the responding officer actually typed a note at the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: bottom of the page stating Mark was sweating profusely and
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: appeared visibly shaken by routine questions.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Then the whole interaction just escalates from suspicious to.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Theat Oh my gosh, yes, tell them about Mike.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: So, while the police are questioning Mark on the porch,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: his housemate Mike Lindberg slowly drives past.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: The house, just creeping on by.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Instead of pulling into his own driveway to see
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: why law enforcement is at his home, Mike.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Just keeps driving, which is so sketchy.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: The officers actually set up covert surveillance after they left
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: the porch, and they documented that Mike only returned to
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: the house after he believed the police were gone.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Why would you avoid the cops at your own house
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: unless you have something to hide?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Evading law enforcement at your own residence suggests a
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: severe spike in cognitive load. He needed time to process
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: the threat and likely coordinate a narrative before facing questioning.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: And you can see that cognitive load completely visible when
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: both men are brought in for polygraphs looking at the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: examiner's notes here. Mike takes his test first, and.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: The examiner concludes Mike wasn't directly involved in the physical abduction,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: but notes he is a nervous wreck.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Right. His physiological arousal, his heart rate and respiration just
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: spikes violently on one specific question.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the question was do you think Mark is involved?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And the underlying science of a polygraph isn't even about
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: detecting a lie, right, It measures the nervous system's response
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: to psychological stress exactly.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: And when Mike was pressed by the examiner about that
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: specific spike regarding Mark, Mike offered a highly evasive rationalization.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: He literally said, maybe I am holding back because I
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: feel a certain responsibility towards Joyce.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: But then he completely refused to elaborate on what that
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: responsibility even was maddening.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: But Mark's polygraph presents a totally different, yet equally alarming
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: psychological profile.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Mark presented with a flattened affect. He was remarkably
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: calm on the surface, yet his internal physiological markers betrayed.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Him twice wait on which questions.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: His heart rate spiked significantly when asked if he knew
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: whether Joyce was still alive, and it spiked again when
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: asked if he had been inside her car on July third.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it gets really interesting, because tucked away
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: in the back of these files, ignored for decades, is
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a letter Joyce wrote to her boyfriend David Arthur.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Folded up in her purse Beckett Stevenshull.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Right, Yes, I'm looking at a scan of the original
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: right now. Her cursive is frantic, heavily slanted, and incredibly
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: difficult to decipher.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: It requires real effort to read, which might explain why
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one investigators just glossed over its implications.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But the structure of that letter is a fascinating study
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: in psychological compartmentalization. She starts by describing a perfectly mundane evening,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: which makes the sudden shift in subject matter incredibly jarring.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Right she writes about having dinner with Mike, Celeste, and Mark.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: She details driving around visiting a rummage sale getting ice
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: cream cones. She explicitly writes, we had a very good.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Time, and then in the very next sentence, the tone
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: violently shifts.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: She drops a bomb. She writes, I discovered that Mark
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: one stayed at a mental institution for trying to strangle people.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Strangle people, just right after talking about ice cream.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, and she follows it up by saying he also,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I suspect was the informer to a narc for this
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: big drug bust two years ago.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Placing a casual mention of institutionalization for strangulation next to
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: a description of getting ice cream highlights how normalized the
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: danger had become in her environment. It's terrified and the
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: fact that investigators in nineteen seventy one completely failed to
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: follow up on this allegation of strangulation is a staggering oversight.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, And the second allegation that Mark was a confidential
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: informant provides crucial historical context for the early nineteen seventies.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: The war on drugs was rapidly escalating. Confidential informants were protected.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Assets, So if Mark was feeding information to narcotics officers,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: it introduces this very real mechanism of institutional protection. Local
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: police might have looked the other way to protect their
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: drug intelligence pipeline.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: So if you are listening to this and screaming why
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: didn't the police press the known informant, you have to
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: you this through the lens of nineteen seventy one. Policing priorities.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Drug busts made careers, visiting hippie college students often did not,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: and Joyce knew she was holding dangerous intelligence.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: We have a faded witness statement here from an old
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: roommate named Kay Garrison.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Kay ran into Joyce on campus shortly before the disappearance,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and she noted Joyce had lost a severe amount of weight,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: looked pale, and was visibly terrified.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Kay's testimony is vital for establishing Joyce's state of mind.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: When asked what was wrong, Joyce confessed she was afraid
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: she was going to reveal something she shouldn't.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: She used a very specific fatalistic phrase. She said she
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: was terrified she was quote sealing someone's coffin.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Such a dark thing to say, And when Kay tried
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: to pry further, Joyce deflected, claiming she understood her chemistry
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: class too well, and then she was afraid she was
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: going to hurt somebody with that knowledge.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: It's like she's walking on a frozen lake where she
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: can hear the ice cracking under her feet. You know,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: she is carrying the crushing weight of the Meditation Group's
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: drug secaks, where it's Mark's violent history, whatever else is
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: happening at that house.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: The stress fractures are visible to everyone she.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Talks to exactly eventually the ice has to break. And
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: when she says she knows chemistry too well, the context
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: does everything. The Meditation Group publicly claimed to be strictly
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: anti drug, yet.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Court record show Mike Lindberg had a nineteen sixty nine
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: drug conviction, so it.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Begs the question were they manufacturing substances? Was Joyce caught
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: in the crossfire of a condestined drug operation where Mark
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: was the protected informant and Mike was the manufacturer.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: The mechanics of her situation made her a massive liability
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: to multiple people. So the meditation group presents a highly
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: viable theory of external threat. But but investigative logic dictates
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: that if a suspect pool protected by informant status yields
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: a dead end, you look closer to the victim's immediate environment. Right.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: If the threat wasn't the group she was running toward,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: we are forced to analyze the person she was actively
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: running away from.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, yes, we have to move from the systemic secrets
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of the meditation group to the domestic secrets inside her
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: own apartment.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: We need to talk about Bruce Bierbaan.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: This is the roommate Joyce was so terrified of that
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: she was secretly sleeping on the floor of Stephen's hall,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: a dorm she didn't even live in, just to avoid
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: being in the same room as him.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: When investigators finally executed a search of the apartment she
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: shared with Bruce, they encountered physical anomalies that completely dismantled
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: the theory that Joyce voluntarily walked away from her life.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, her close friend Jan visited the apartment and discovered
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Joyce's distinctive blue vase shattered into pieces on top of
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the refrigerator.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: And when Jan confronted Bruce about the broken glass, he
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: casually dismissed it. He claimed it broke during an argument,
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: but he adamantly refused to provide any details about the conflict.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this for a second. Shattered glass following
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: an argument with a volatile roommate is a massive behavioral
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: red flag.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: It indicates physical escalation.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: And investigators then discover an even more damning piece of
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: evidence sitting right there in plain sight. Joyce's car keys
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: were inside the apartment.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Leaving the keys behind destroys the logic of a voluntary
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: disappearance or even an abduction that occurred while she was
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: out running.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Errand it places her, or at least her belongings inside
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: that apartment at the time of the event.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: And this physical evidence directly challenges Bruce's timeline, which is
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: a classic investigative trap.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Oh totally. During his initial interview, Bruce definitively stated he
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: woke up early on Friday morning, July twenty third, and
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: saw Joyce sound asleep on the couch when he left
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: for work at seven am.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: But then the police's interview Joyce's friend Patty.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Right and Patty provides a rock solid alibi. She confirms
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: she dropped Joyce off at the apartment on Thursday night
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: at ten pm.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And Patty told investigators that Joyce explicitly stated she was
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: not going back to Stephen's hall that night because it
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: was too dark to walk. She planned to sleep at
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: the apartment.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So when Bruce realized the police were tightening the timeline
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: around Thursday night, his memory magically altered.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: A changing alibi in a homicide investigation is one of
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: the most reliable behavioral indicators.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Of deception because it's hard to keep your lives straight exactly.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Maintaining a fabricated timeline requires immense cognitive effort, whereas recalling
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: the truth is automatic.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So when the detective pointed out the discrepancy, Bruce suddenly
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: developed amnesia regarding his Friday morning sighting. He shifted his
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: story to claim the absolute last time he saw her
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: was actually Thursday evening, and just.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Weeks into the investigation, while Joyce is still officially classified
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: as a missing person, Bruce sends an astonishingly tone deaf
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: letter to Joyce's grieving father.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Reading this transcript, it lacks any trace of empathy. Instead
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: of expressing hope for her safe return. Bruce uses the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: letter to demand ninety dollars from her father to cover
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: her share of unpaid rent and phone bills.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: He even refers to Joyce exclusively in the past.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Tense, and most disturbingly, he casually notes that he has
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: already packed up all of her personal belongings and shoved
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: them in a closet, demanding her father come retrieve them
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: because Bruce was moving out.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, Bruce's complete
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: lack of empathy and volatile behavior in nineteen seventy one
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: was not an isolated incident. It established the baseline for
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: a lifelong pattern of escalation.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Really yes. Criminology shows us that domestic abusers rarely deescalate
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: without intervention. Public records reveal that since the nineteen seventies,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Bruce has been married and divorced five or six times.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, and over the decades, multiple ex wives
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: have contacted the Sheriff's office to explicitly accuse him of
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Joyce's murder.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: And it goes beyond mere accusations. We found court documents
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: from twenty fourteen where he was charged with domestic battery
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: against his then wife, who was forty years younger than him.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: She was hiding in a friendcesse right.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he tracked her location, physically pinned her against a wall,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: and stole her purse. We also pulled his professional records.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Bruce actually became a veterinarian.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: But in two thousand and three his veterinary license failed
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: severe disciplinary action.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: By the state board because his ex wife provided evidence
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that he was regularly administering animal medications to his own
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: human children.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: So we are looking at a man with a heavily
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: documented history of duistic violence, a willingness to illegally chemically
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: restrain his own family, and a documented history of altering
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: his alibi regarding a roommate who was terrified of him.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, if Joyce supposedly wandered off or was abducted
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: by a random stranger on the street, there is no
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: logical universe where her car keys remain inside the apartment
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: she shared with the man she was actively trying to escape.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: You are entirely correct. Victims fleeing an immediate threat do
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: not leave their primary means of transportation on the kitchen counter.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: No, they take the keys and run exactly.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: But while modern investigators have heavily focused on Bruce. The
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: archival case files force us to confront a third man
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: in Joyce's orbit, Right, this individual displayed a level of
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: psychological obsession that simply cannot be ignored.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: We have to look at Steve Sully. He was the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: director of a university communications class where Joyce frequently acted
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: in student television commercials.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Joyce documented her fear of them in her letters, too,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: explicitly describing him as unstable and always moody.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Even Bruce, the volatile roommate, told investigators that Steve had
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: aggressively confronted Joyce, telling her to her face that she
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: was quote the source of all his troubles.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Stating that another person is the singular source of your
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: life's troubles indicates a severe psychological fixation. He was projecting
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: his internal instability onto her.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And this intense obsession aligns perfectly with a critical tip
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: from a campus witness who observed Joyce on July nineteenth,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: just days before she vanished.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Right, the tipster reported Joyce was in a state of
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: high distress.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she had just finished a tense conversation with Steve Solly.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Joyce told the tipster she had received a letter from
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a man she did not trust who was coming to
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: visit her, and she was terrified.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: But you have to wonder if she was utilizing a
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: visiting man as a desperate cover ste because she was
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Ashley terrified of Steve, who was standing in her immediate vicinity.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Using a fictional threat to escape a real one exactly.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: It's a common self preservation tactic, and Steve's behavior following
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: her disappearance is highly indicative of consciousness of guilt.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Because in August, at the height of the police search,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Steve walked into the police precinct and handed over Joyce's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: personal typewriter.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: He claimed he was holding it for safekeeping.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Psychologically, inserting yourself into an ongoing investigation by delivering the
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: victim's property is often a manifestation of guilt or a
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: desire to control the narrative.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: And shortly after this, right in the middle of the
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: fall semester, he abruptly dropped out of the university and
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: relocated across the country to New York.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Flight is one of the most primal responses to an
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: overwhelming threat of exposure.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We have three incredibly
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: viable suspects, each with a terrifying behavioral profile. But I
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: have to challenge this narrative based on the physical crime scene.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's hear it.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Let's look back at this FBI report regarding the missing
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: green carpet from Stephens Hall. The FBI anthropologists analyzed Joyce's
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: remains when they were finally discovered in a remote canyon, right,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: and their official report claims her bones showed distinct puncture marks.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: They categorize this as evidence of a brutal knife attack.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: But if she was stabbed forcefully enough to puncture bone,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: where is the blood?
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: That's the glaring question.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: The remaining carpet in that dorm and the floorboards underneath
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the stolen square were practically pristine.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how modern forensic analysis completely dismantles
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: that nineteen seventy one assumption. Really how so, the current
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: consensus from the sheriff's office is that those puncture marks
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: on the bones were not stab wounds at all.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Wait what were they?
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: They are highly consistent with animal scavenging activity in the
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: canyon during the months her remains were exposed to the elements.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, that completely rewrites the forensic reality of the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: crime scene.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: It changes everything. If a knife wasn't the way, it
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: perfectly explains the total absence of blood in Stephen's all.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: It suggests she was killed using a method that leads
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: no physical trace on a carpet.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: So if we apply this new forensic reality to our
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: first suspect, Mark Wadley and the secret letter.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: The institutionalization for strangulation.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Precisely, strangulation is a silent, intimate method of murder that
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: leaves no blood.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Pool exactly, and the only physical evidence recovered with her
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: remains was a pair of violently slashed underwear, which, despite
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: advanced modern testing protocols, has yet to yield any actionable
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: DNA profile.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: So we are left staring at a staggering web of
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: archival evidence. We have a meditation group hiding a history
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: of narcotics and a roommate with a strangulation record.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: We have Bruce Bierbaum, the violent domestic abuser with a
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: shattered vase and a fabricated timeline.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: And Steve Sully, the obsessive director who inserted himself into
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: the investigation before fleeing the state.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Entirely in an era where we are constantly overwhelmed by
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: information overload. This deep dive proves that the truth is
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: AWESO hiding plain sight.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the answers are buried in the discarded fragments of
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: a life, a shattered blue vase swept away, the cognitive
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: load recorded in the ink of a polygraph chart, or
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: a frantic, nearly illegible letter tucked away in a purse.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: When the physical evidence was compromised, the psychology of these
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: suspects preserved the story, and.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: The final chapter of that story hasn't been written. Joyce's
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: brother refuses to let these files gather dust. He is
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: currently offering a one hundred thousand dollars reward.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: That's sixty thousand dollars for information leading to an arrest
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: and an additional forty thousand for a conviction.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: He firmly believes someone out there holds the final fragment
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: of this puzzle.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Because cold cases of this magnitude do not get solved
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: by continued silence. They are resolved when someone finally realizes
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: that carrying a secret for fifty five years is a
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: burden they no longer need to bear.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: one final haunting detail hidden deep within these case files
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: and anomaly we haven't even touched on yet.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: The fall records.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, during the initial days of the investigation, detectives pulled
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the toll records for the phone inside Joyce's apartment. They
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: discovered an unexplained long distance call placed on July fifteenth
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to a specific number in Moses Lake, Washington, and.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: When detectives dialed it, the woman who answered adamantly claimed
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: she had no idea who Joyce Lapage or Bruce beierbaumb.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Wre Today that number leads to a deadline. No one
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: has ever identified who placed that call or who is
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: truly on the other end.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: It's just entirely unresolved.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Furthermore, the campus police officer who initially tried to steer
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the entire homicide investigation away from these suspects and toward
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a random tile setter working near the.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Dorm, Yeah, what about him?
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Archibal records show that same campus cop was the primary
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: suspect in a major campus molestation case just months prior.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Wait really, yes.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: And immediately after Joyce vanished, he abruptly resigned from the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: police force.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Wow, that is just another incredibly dark layer to all
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: of this.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: It really is. It raises an important question, one that
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: echoes through every page of these documents. In a case
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: defined by so many shadows, in a town actively burying
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: its secrets, who else was hiding in the dark