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The Shoe on the Drain: Ransom Note, Missing Seven-Year-Old · True Crime: Killer Confessions

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The shoe was standing upright on the concrete lip of
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: a storm drain, not lying on its side, not kicked
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: into the gutter, standing. A red sneaker, size six and
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a half, placed there with intention on the morning of
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: July 9, 1988. Tucked beneath the lace was a folded note,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and somewhere in Addison County, Ohio, a seven-year-old girl named
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Jessica Cooke had been missing for less than 24 hours.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: The town of Dillard sits in the flat middle stretch
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of Northwestern Ohio, the kind of place where a hardware
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: store closing is front page news and a missing child
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: stops everything. In 1988, Dillard had roughly 11,000 residents. People
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: left doors unlocked. Kids walked to school alone. The Elm
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Trove Circle neighborhood where this story begins was three quiet
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: blocks of ranch houses and mature elms, the kind of
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: street where neighbors knew each other's schedules better than their own.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Tom Cook taught history at Dullard Middle School. Diane Cook
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: taught third grade at Clement Elementary, six blocks from home.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Jessica was their only child. She had just finished first
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: grade that spring and spent most of June riding her
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: bicycle in the driveway. or sitting on the front steps,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: counting passing cars. She had a specific method for counting.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Red cars were worth two points, blue ones worth one.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: She kept a running total in a small green notebook.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: On the afternoon of Friday, July 8th, 1988, the temperature
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: in Dellard reached 80 degrees. The sky was clear, neighbors
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: were outside. Jessica left a birthday party at the home
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of Karen Patton, three blocks from the cookhouse on Elm
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Grove Circle. She had done this walk dozens of times.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: She knew every crack in the sidewalk. She was supposed
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to be home by 5 o'clock. She never arrived. Tom
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Cook called Diane at 5.55. Diane called Karen Patton. Karen
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: said Jessica had left the party a quarter past four.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: That was 40 minutes. Three blocks. Dillard PD opened a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: missing child report at 8, that evening, and assigned it
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: to Detective Sergeant Harold Finch. Finch was methodical. He interviewed
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: every neighbor on Elm Grove, every parent who had attended
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the party. He pulled every vehicle registration for the surrounding blocks.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: He found nothing. No witness reported seeing a child walking alone.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: No one heard a car pull over, a door slam,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: a voice raised. It was as if the street had
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: simply absorbed her. Then came the shoe. Monica Casey was
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: walking her dog along Fenwick Road the following morning. Saturday,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: July 9th, when she spotted the red sneaker, balanced on
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the drain edge, She recognized it immediately as a child's shoe.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: She walked a quarter mile to the quick stop on
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the corner and called the police from the payphone inside.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: When Finch arrived and unfolded the note tucked beneath the lace,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the case changed shape entirely. This was not a runaway.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: This was not an accident. Someone had taken Jessica Cook,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: kept her, and was now making demands. What Finch did
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: not know yet, what no one would know for another
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: 23 years, was that the person who placed that shoe
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: on that drain had been inside the Cook family home
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: six weeks earlier, had stood in their hallway, had spoken
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: to Diane for 20 minutes about a work order, and
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: had walked out with enough information to plan every step
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of what followed. This is the case of Jessica Cook,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and the detail that finally broke it open was something
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: so small it spent two decades folded inside a sealed
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: paper envelope. waiting for technology that did not yet exist.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: To understand what the Cook family lost in those seven days,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you have to start before the disappearance. Before the ransom
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: notes and the police tape and the sleepless nights, you
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: have to start with an ordinary house on an ordinary
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: street and a little girl who had very strong opinions
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: about the color of her shoes. Jessica Cook was born
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: in the spring of 1981, the only child of Tom
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and Diane. Tom was 33 that summer, a deliberate, soft-spoken
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: man who coached junior varsity track in addition to teaching history.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: His students described him as the kind of teacher who
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: remembered which book each kid had mentioned, liking the year before.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: He kept a handwritten list. Diane was a year younger, organized,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and warm, the sort of elementary teacher who hand-lettered every
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: student's name on their cubby hook. and stayed 45 minutes
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: after the bell to call parents back. They were not wealthy.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: They were comfortable in the specific way of two teachers
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: in a small Ohio town. Steady, careful, deeply embedded in
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the community they served. Their house on Elm Grove Circle
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: was a three-bedroom ranch they had bought in 1983. The
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: front yard had a concrete birdbath. Diane had painted herself.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Tom built a low wooden bookshelf for Jessica's room. that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: ran the full length of one wall. Jessica, at seven,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: was particular about things. She liked her sandwich cut diagonally,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: not straight across. She corrected adults who mispronounced words, gently
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: but immediately. She had recently decided she wanted to be
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a veterinarian, and she checked out the same two library
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: books about animal bones repeatedly, returning them and requesting them
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: again the same day. The same day, She wore red
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: canvas sneakers almost exclusively that summer. Tenia does pars. That spring,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Diane had scheduled a routine home repair through Berwick Home Services,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a small contracting company operating out of Addison County, a
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: downspout on the north side of the house needed replacing.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: The technician who came was a 34-year-old man named Gordon Gardner.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: He replaced the downspout, He came inside briefly to check
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: a connection near the bathroom. Diane walked him through the hallway,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and they talked for approximately 20 minutes while he completed
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: his work order. At some point in that conversation, she
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: mentioned Jessica's school schedule. She said it the way any
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: parent would, the kind of thing you say to fill
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: a comfortable silence with a stranger who has just been
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: in your home. She thought nothing of it. Gardner left.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: The downspout was fixed. Diane paid the invoice and filed
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the paperwork. She had no reason to think about Gordon
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Gardner again, not in June, not in July, not for
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the next 23 years. What she did not know was
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: that Gardner had noted the family's address from the Berwick
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: work order, that he had observed enough about the household,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the single child, the school routine, the neighborhood layout, to
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: begin something deliberate, and that, in the weeks following his visit,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: he had been watching. There is one more piece that
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: belongs here, before the timeline moves forward. In the late
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: spring of 1988, Clement Elementary sent home a mimeographed flyer
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: announcing a birthday party for the daughter of Karen Patton,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: a parent in Diane's school community, standard paper, standard format,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the kind of notice that cycled through the school a
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: dozen times a year. Karen later told investigators she believed
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: she had delivered the invitation to the Cook family in person.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: She did not remember mailing it, but the Cook family
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: received an invitation by mail. That envelope, the one that
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: arrived at the house on Elm Grove Circle, the one
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Diane opened and read and pinned to the refrigerator, was
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: not the one Karen Patton sent, and the man who
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: created it had left something behind on the inside flap
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of the seal, something no one would think to test
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: for another two decades. The morning of July 9th, 1988,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: was already warm by eight o'clock. Monica Casey was walking
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: her usual route along Fenwick Road when she saw it.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: A single red tennis shoe, size six and a half,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: placed upright on the concrete lip of a storm drain.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Not dropped, not kicked aside, placed. She stopped. She looked
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: at it for a long moment. Then she walked a
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: quarter mile to the quick stop and called the police.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Inside the shoe, Folded under the lace and topped against
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the inner sole was a ransom note. Harold Finch was
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: at the scene within the hour. He had been working
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the disappearance of seven-year-old Jessica Cook since eight o'clock the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: previous evening, when Tom and Diane Cook called the department
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: to say their daughter had not come home from a
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: birthday party. Three blocks away. Now he had a shoe
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: that belonged to a missing child and a note that
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: told him exactly what someone wanted in return. $ 14, 000. Delivered
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to a storm drain on the south side of Kellner Park.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: By 2 o'clock on July 13th, the shoe was the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: first image that would not leave investigators. Because it was
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: not the shoe Jessica had been wearing when she left
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the party on Elm Grove Circle. That shoe was gone.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: This one was the same model, the same size, the
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: same color, but it had never been worn. Someone had
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: purchased it separately, placed it there. and used it as
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: a message container. That was not improvisation. That was planning.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Two days later, a second note arrived at the cookhouse
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: by mail. The postmark showed two different post offices in
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Addison County, used on consecutive days, whoever had sent it
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: had moved between them deliberately, splitting the trail. Tom and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Diane read it at the kitchen table. They had five
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: days to gather the money. They pulled together $ 14, 000 through
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: family loans and Tom's credit union. On the morning of
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: July 13th, they delivered it to Kellner Park. Dellard PD
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: had surveillance at the drop site. Officers watched the storm
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: drain from multiple angles. Nobody approached. Nobody was seen. At
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: approximately 2.15 that afternoon, the money was gone, the drain
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: connected to a larger culvert system that ran beneath the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: park fence and emerged on the street side. Gardner, but Cardner,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: according to the confession he would sign 29 years later,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: had pulled the package from outside, lying flat against the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: exterior of the culvert, reaching through the pipe's far opening
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: while the surveillance team watched the entrance. The team had
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: been watching the wrong end That was not luck on
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: his part. He had measured the geometry of the system
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: before the drop. Two days after the money disappeared, on
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: July 15th, a library employee at the Addison County Public
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Library in Varnell found Jessica Cook sitting alone in the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: waiting area. She was wearing the same clothes she had
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: been wearing on July 8th. Her left shoe was missing.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: She was physically unharmed. She told investigators she remembered a
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: room with wood-paneled walls, a television, a man in a
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: baseball cap who spoke in a low voice, and food
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: that came in paper bags from a fast food counter.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: She could not give a useful description of her captor.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: She mentioned the possibility that a second person had been present,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: but she was not certain. Jessica was 22 miles from home.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: She had been gone seven days. Harold Finch worked the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: case for four years. In the summer of 1990, he
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: interviewed Gordon Gardner, then 34 years old, a home services
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: contractor in the Varnell area. Gardner cooperated. He offered a alibi,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: a barbecue at the home of Dennis Sauer in Varnell.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Beginning around 6 in the evening, on July 8, and
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: running until dark, Sauer confirmed the timeline. Finch noted it,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: weighed it, and moved on. Gardner had no criminal record
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: in Ohio. There was nothing to hold. In 1994, Finch retired.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: He took the case box home with him. In 1997,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Dellard PD marked the file inactive. The shoe photograph stayed
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: in the box. So did the sealed evidence bag containing
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the fake birthday party invitation, the one mailed to the cookhouse,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the one Karen Patton had not sent. That envelope had
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: been stored inside a paper sleeve. inside a sealed container
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: for 23 years. In March of 2011, Jessica Cook, now
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: 30 years old, living in Columbus, working as a pediatric
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: occupational therapist, called Dellard PD. She asked whether modern fingerprint
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: technology could be applied to the original evidence. Dellard connected
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: her with Detective Grant Jones of the Addison County Sheriff's Office.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Jones pulled the sealed container, The partial fingerprint on the
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: inside flap of the invitation envelope was still readable. It
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: had been preserved by the paper sleeve and the sealed
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: environment across more than two decades. In April of 2011,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Jones entered it into the National IFS system using probabilistic
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: matching algorithms that had not existed when Finch worked the case.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Six days later, the system returned a candidate match. The
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: print belonged to Gordon Gardner. The National Database held his
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: print because he had been detained, though never prosecuted, on
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a breaking and entering complaint in West Virginia in 2003.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: The probabilistic match came back at 94.3%, confirmed independently by
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: two forensic examiners. Jones sat with that number for a moment.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Then he pulled the 1990 interview notes. Finch had spoken
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: to this man. Finch had written down his name and
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: his alibi, and moved on. The case had been sitting
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: in a retired detective's spare room, while the answer was
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: in the files the entire time. He understood why. In 1990,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: there was no national database to catch a print from
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: an envelope mailed in Ohio by a man who had
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: never been arrested in Ohio. The partial print alone, without
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: a system to run it against, was evidence with nowhere
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to go. It could not speak until the database existed
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: to hear it. But now it had spoken. This is
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the detail that refused to settle. That Gardner had touched
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: that envelope. He had moistened the seal with his own hand,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: or run his finger across the interior flap in the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: act of closing it, and left an impression in the adhesive.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: He had sent a forged invitation to a child's birthday party,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and in doing so, he had placed himself inside the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: evidence chain 23 years before anyone had the tools to
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: find him there. Jones drove to Wheeling, West Virginia in
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: May of 2011. He found Gardner, now 55, in the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: parking lot of a roofing supply company. Gardner denied everything. Calm,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: cooperative on the surface, the same tone Finch had described.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Two weeks later, Jones obtained a court order for a
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: DNA sample and a fresh set of prints. The prints
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: confirmed the AFS result. The match was no longer probabilistic.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: It was structural. Gardner was arrested that spring. There were
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: two versions of what happened between July 8th and July
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: 15th of 1988. Not two suspects, two readings of the
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: same man, tested against the same physical record. Picture Gardner
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: in the weeks after the Berwick service call. He has
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the cook address on a work order. He has watched
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood. He knows the child is seven, that she
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: walks to school, that her shoe size is six. and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a half because he has observed her closely enough to
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: memorize it, he produces a counterfeit invitation on paper that
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: mimics the Clement Elementary format. He seals the envelope, and
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: in that moment of sealing it, his finger crosses the
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: inside flap and leaves a partial print in the adhesive.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: That version asks you to believe in patience. In the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: gap between the service call in early June and the
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: disappearance on July 8th, Roughly four to six weeks of preparation.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: The second shoe, purchased at a discount store in Varnell
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: two days before the abduction, was the same model and
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: size as Jessica's. It had never been worn. It was
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a prop built before the act, which means the act
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: was already decided before Gardner bought it. But here is
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the thing about that version. It depends entirely on the envelope.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And the defense at trial would argue that a 94.3%
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: probabilistic match, even one confirmed by two examiners, is not
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: a certainty. That the print could be a near match.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: That the chain of custody across 23 years, across a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: retired detective's home, across storage conditions that were careful but
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: not laboratory controlled, introduced doubt. Walk that version to its conclusion.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: If the print is wrong, there is no physical link
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: between Gardner and the cookhouse before the abduction, the barbecue
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: alibi stands. Sauer confirmed it. Finch could not break it.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Gardner is a man who lived near Varnell, matched a
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: partial print, probabilistically, and had no Ohio record. The problem
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: with that version is Emma Shuler. In 1984, four years
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: before Jessica Cook disappeared, a seven-year-old girl named Emma Shuler
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: vanished from Hardin County for three days. She was returned safely.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: No ransom was ever collected. The case was never formally resolved,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and Gardner was never charged in connection with it. But
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the structure was the same. A young girl, a short disappearance,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a return unharmed. The Shuler case does not prove Gardner's
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: guilt in either instance. What it does is is collapse
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: the idea that the envelope print is a coincidence. Because
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: if you accept that Gardner planned the Cook abduction, and
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the unscuffed second shoe, bought in advance, is difficult to
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: explain any other way. Then the Schuller pattern, before it
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: suggests this was not his first attempt at the architecture.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: And then there is the culvert, Gardner's confession, signed from
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Chillicothe Correctional Institution, 11 months after the appeals court denied
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: his challenge. described the geometry of the drain retrieval in
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: detail that was never made public. The surveillance team's error,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: watching the park entrance while the money was pulled from
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the street side, was not in any public record. Only
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: someone who had measured that culvert in advance could have
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: described which end they were lying against. That was the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: moment the defense version collapsed entirely. Gordon Gardner was convicted
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: in Addison County in the spring of 2013. The jury
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: found him guilty of kidnapping and extortion. The sentence was
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: 22 years. He appealed in 2015. The Ohio Court of
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Appeals denied that challenge in 2017. Eleven months after that denial,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Gardner signed a written statement from Chillicothe Correctional Institution. In it,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: he described the abduction in his own words. He confirmed
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the geometry of the culvert. He confirmed the shoe. He
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: did not explain why he returned Jessica unharmed. and no
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: public record answers that question. The confession arrived too late
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: for Tom Cook. He died in 2014, before the appeals
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: court ruled, and before Gardner put his name to anything.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: He never heard the word guilty spoken in connection with
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: his daughter's case. Diane Cook sat in that courtroom every
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: single day of the trial. She heard the verdict. She
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: was there when it was read. Jessica Cook was 31
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: years old when she testified. She stood in that room
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: and described a paneled ceiling, a television, a man in
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a baseball cap who kept his voice low. She could
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: not identify him by sight. She did not need to.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: The envelope had already done it. Harold Finch, 71 years
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: old and retired in Sandusky, learned Gordon Gardner's name from
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Grant Jones in the autumn of 2018. Finch had carried
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the case file out of Dellard in 1994. He had
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: interviewed Gardner in 1990. He had written down the alibi
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and moved on. Jones called to close the loop, not
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: to assign blame. Finch had worked the case for four
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: years with the tools he had. The Emma Shuler case
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: from Hardin County, 1984, remains formally unresolved. Gardner was never
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: charged in connection with it. There is a version of
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: this story where the envelope is thrown away, where a
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: postal clerk does not notice the crease, where a storage
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: container is not sealed properly, and 23 years of Ohio
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: humidity dissolve the one thing that connects a man to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a door. He stood in for 20 minutes in the
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: spring of 1988. 8. In that version, nothing closes. What
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: closed this case was not a dramatic break. It was
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: a 7-year-old girl's mother, Mentioning a school schedule to a plumber,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it was a partial print left on a paper flap.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: It was a storage protocol followed by someone whose name
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: never appeared in any report. It was Jessica Cook, at
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: 30 years old, picking up a phone and asking for
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: one more look. She is a pediatric occupational therapist in
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Columbus now. She works with children. She chose that, knowing
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: what she knows about what can happen to them. and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: knowing that most of the time the people around those
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: children are exactly who they appear to be. That detail,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: more than the conviction, more than the confession, is the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: one that stays. Cases like this one do not restore
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: what was taken. 22 years in Chillicothe does not give
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Tom Cook a phone call. It does not return the summer.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Jessica Cook never had. What it does is draw a
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: line between what happened and what the record says happened.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: For 30 years those two things were not the same.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Now they are. The shoe was placed on the curb,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: not dropped, not lost, placed. Someone wanted it found, which
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: means someone was watching to see if it would be.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: That kind of certainty about another person's fear requires a
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: particular coldness. The jury saw it. The appeals court confirmed it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Gardner eventually put his name to it. Jessica Cook already knew.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: This show is made by Oboe Media.