472 - Give Me All My Words

This week, Georgia covers The Beauty Queen Killer and Karen tells the story of The Tipster. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Nice, Hello, and welcome.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
My favorite murder that is Georgia hard Star, that is
Karen Kilgareff. So we just got back from south By
Southwest in Austin, Texas, Texas. Thank you to iHeart for
bringing us out there for the festivities and the iHeart Awards,
which is so much freaking fun and awesome to see
all these Like when do you see other podcasters. Never,
We're always in tiny rooms alone.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
We got to hang out extensively with Payne Lindsay. Always
a pleasure, just one of the great it's such a cool,
fun friend.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yes, and Sabrina as well, of course, they're so fun
to hang out with.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
And Sabrina's from Two Girls, One Ghost, Yes, yes, yeah,
which is so fun.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah. Yeah, that was awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
It was very nice and you may have heard already.
We actually won an award, which I've told Georgia this
and many people since it happened. We were genuinely so
shocked that we were not prepared none, And every time
people say that when they accept an award, I'm always
so grossed out at like, of course you thought of

(01:18):
something to say no, and normally.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
We do like okay, real quick, if we're gonna win.
We're gonna say I think this, think this person, think
that person, blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Great.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
And then Joe Mangianello was up there for the first
award and it's our category and I was like, oh, no,
what if we and then he announces our name.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yes, I just didn't know what to do. I had
no idea what to do. Georgia leans over to me
and goes, you have to talk like that and then
grabs my hand and pulls me because I was still
looking at the thing, like wait, what Like it was
just genuinely surprisal and surprising, not sure what I said.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
You did great. I just stood there in the daze
and I'm so embarrassed and horrified by it and me too.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, I mean this is podcasting, this is being perceived
in podcasting. Yeah for sure.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
But it was a very very lovely experience and we
met so many Murderinos all across Austin. Yeah, it was
really lovely to be kind of out and about and
get to talk to listeners. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
It really was, Like I feel like it doesn't happen
as much anymore in La because it's so la and
everyone's kind of over over it, sure, yeah, like over
running into people they like kind of know, but Austin, man,
you guys are here for it and we appreciate you.
Callen stopped us and said, like the most like the
thing that makes me feel so good about like the

(02:38):
message I send and like legacy about this podcast. She
goes because of you guys. You inspired me to get
botox and a nice husband. And I was like, well,
fucking shit, I'm done.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Your work is done here all I wanted. Yeah, And
then we went to Chicken Ship Bingo at the Sea
Boy Bar, which is one of the coolest experiences and
one of the best live bands I've genuinely ever seen.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
That was a fucking random four o'clock like banger that
was like the most fun I had in a long time.
Chicken Shit bingo. I keep saying, it's exactly what it
sounds like, and then people are like, I don't know
what it sounds like. Yeah, but it's really just a
bingo board and a chicken and we're whatever number of
the chicken shit's on your raffle ticket, you matches, you

(03:19):
win the money.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
You win the pot of however much people paid for
tickets that time. It's brilliant. And we met Kelly there, Yes,
and Kelly hung out with us a little bit and
we got to talk to her, and at one point
this made me laugh the hardest. She was telling us
like when she lived in New York and she used
to listen in New York her life, and then she
goes and then I kind of had to stop listening anyway,

(03:42):
I live here. And it was so hilarious because she
wasn't saying it like yeah it was was not lodging
a complaint in any way. It was kind of like,
I don't need to listen to that anymore. And we
were like, good help me. I am moved on. Yes, okay,
it's been a while.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, yeah, you can do that nine years.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah. Invited back in and back out any time you want. Absolutely. Yeah.
So thanks you guys for coming up and saying hi
and being nice to us. It's really a lovely experience.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, so good.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Did I ever get to tell you? And I'm sorry
to take up extra time. Did you know that I
met Kyle McLaughlin the night of the awards at that
after party. No, okay, I'll do this as fast as
I can.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
We get to the after party. Yes, I kind of
have to fight to get in, which was hilarious. Yes,
I did yell the words, but we won at the doorman,
which is kind of embarrassing humiliating, but we got it. Yes,
and lovely, amazing party. But everybody in our group basically
went and got in line for the bathroom because everyone
had to go to the bathroom except for OKK took

(04:43):
care of it before. So I was standing there and
I was like, I need to put my coat and
my purse down. We had been at this location before,
so I'm like, oh, I'm going to hide it behind
that couch. So I went over to this couch and
there was a woman sitting there with long blonde hair,
and I shoved my stuff basically behind where she was
sitting on the couch, and I looked her. I said,
do not steal anything out of my purse. All note

(05:04):
was you, and she starts laughing and talking to me.
I go, you can steal the coat because I bought
it off TikTok, and I shouldn't have even bought it
in the first place. We start talking about stuff like
that and not and basically not over consuming. Yeah, come
to find out she's the producer of Kyle McGlaughlin's podcast,
Oh my God, I introduced myself. Then she was like
I know, and I saw congratulations whatever, and then she

(05:26):
says that I'm like, oh my god, Georgia was so
excited to meet him last year, and she we take
a healthie yes, and she goes, well, wait here, he's
going to be right back and he would love to
meet you guys. So I was like checking down that
hallway to see who was coming out of the bathroom,
and I'm like, I'm going to stand here until you
guys come back. Seat we can hang out with Kyle McLaughlin.

(05:46):
He walks up immediately just starts, hey, Hi, how are
you did you win? Blah blah blah. Because he was
there and I got to talk to him, and I
got to tell Kyle McGlaughlin that my friend who helped me,
my brilliant friend, stylist Okara Banks, who is the best,
helped me find my like dress for that night. And

(06:07):
I told Kyl McLachlan that I told her my style
icon is Audrey Horn. I see it from Twin Peaks.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
I totally as soon as you started to say that,
I was like, oh yeah, I see it.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
I tell him that same and it was like that
man is the greatest.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Ye, he's such a lovely man. I'm honestly so glad
he didn't find me because I had some drinks.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Would you would you've maybe snuggled up into.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
His yack a little bit, would have probably like like
held him like.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
A baby a little bit kind of a plus weekend, Yeah,
that we got to have totally well, all right, back
to work?

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Should we do this? Let's get back to work. Hey,
we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media,
and hey, here are some highlights.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Okay, as you might have heard, but if you haven't,
you need to know. Last week we sat down with
Hannah Smith and Patia Eaton, who are the hosts of
our newest true crime podcast, The Knife. The Knife premieres
next Thursday, March twenty seventh, but you can follow them
right now on Instagram and Blue Sky at The Knife podcast.
Of course, please go over to The Knife on Apple

(07:11):
Podcasts or the iHeartRadio app wherever you listen, and go
follow them and get ready because on March twenty seventh,
you're gonna hear a brand new, incredible podcast from the
makers and old host of the Opportunist. It's one of
my favorites. Huge, I'm so excited about this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
And then on Ghosted, Ros welcomes Permanently Stone comedian Doug
Benson your old friend, to discuss all things paranormal. And hey,
guess what if you missed it last week?

Speaker 3 (07:38):
I me.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Georgia Hardstar was the guest on the episode of Ghosted.
So please go back and listen to that if you
feel like it.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Yeah, please do. This week on That's Messed Up, Lison
Kara breakdown SVU season six, episode fifteen, which was entitled Hooked,
and they dig into the mysterious murder of actor Bob Crane.
That's a good one. Also, we know you guys love trasure,
and we found some gems in the exactly Right warehouse.
We have got here's the thing, koozies. We've got murdering

(08:07):
no sweatshirts. We have sweatshirts that tell you not only
to stay out of the forest, but also to keep going.
We are bossy and we want you to get your
merch while you can go to the exactly rightstore dot com.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
And finally, we have some really exciting news if you're
a listener of this podcast. We're going to officially invite
you to become a watcher of this podcast because My
Favorite Murder is now officially on you doo but yay, but.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yes, the Exactly Right Network has its own YouTube channels,
so you can watch full episodes of My Favorite Murder.
You can watch full episodes if I said No Gifts,
ghosted with Roz Hernandez, all the Nick Terry MFM animated episodes.
There's all kinds of stuff over there, so head on over.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
And they're trasures And once The Knife premieres on March
twenty seventh, they'll be putting out video episodes two, so
it'll be like a big watch party with all of
your exactly Right friends. We're so excited about this channel,
been working on it for a while and here she comes.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, it's the future of podcasting.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
So go to YouTube dot com slash exactly Right. Please
please please like and subscribe. It really helps us out.
We're just starting out and we need all the help.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
We can get. Yeah, support us.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
All right, So I am first, and I have a
heavy hitter that I personally didn't really know about that
everyone should know about this case.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
It's fucking wild.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
It should be as notorious as Ted Bundy's horrific crime spree,
and in fact, this story also takes place in Florida
around the time that Ted Bundy was active. This is
the story of a truly horrific serial killer, slash spree killer.
It's kind of debated on what to call him. He
targeted models and young girls under the guise of scouting

(09:49):
them for modeling work, which we've heard of before. He
ultimately led the FBI on a nationwide manhunt that lasted
nine days and whose victim count is still being debated today.
This is the story of the Beauty Queen Killer.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
You know I'm talking about I don't think so. This
is so wild.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
So I was watching this documentary It's called The Beauty
Queen Killer Nine Days of Terror, and the documentary is
basically an interview with a survivor a couple survivors of
this killer and the story of it, and it just
unfolds and it's unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
And the other main sources for the story are reporting
from the Miami Herald and the Oklahoma and the rest
of the sources can be found in the show notes.
So it's April eleventh, nineteen eighty four, and we're at
the South Lake Mall in Maryville, Indiana. A sixteen year
old girl named Don is filling on application in a
store for a job, and she's approached by a girl,
a teenage girl who's around her same age. This blonde haired,

(10:48):
blue eyed teen asked Don if she would like to
model in an upcoming fashion show at the mall. And
I think a big thing like to know and understand,
especially for our younger listeners, is how central the MA
was to our lives back then. Yes, like there was
no like TV was live. If you didn't watch it,
or you weren't rich and had a fucking VCR, you

(11:09):
didn't see it. Yes, you went to the mall and
that's where you socialized. That's where you got a job,
that's where you shop, that's where you spent all of
your free time with your friends.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
That's right. And also just nineteen eighty four, it's such
a weird thing. But in the San Francisco area, the
brand a Spree would put out catalogs and use local
girls as models, right, And that was like this big
thing that everyone knew about. This was a very strange
time in America where like you were as a young
girl supposed to try to be a model, no matter

(11:39):
how tall you were, what you looked like, what your
background was, and your body type was gouted.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
You know, like it actually could happen that you can
be in local fashion shows be like a model. These
things did happen back then, and kind of it was
an opportunity for a lot of young women.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
An opportunity and kind of like the ultimate compliment as
as to like one of many things you could be, right,
things weren't really, that wasn't the messaging. So it's like
it was like someone coming up and saying, I deem
you a Disney princess.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
You're the most beautiful you must Yeah. It is a
very time and place kind of a thing.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
So, while Don is talking to this teenager who approached her,
a man walks up to both the girls and it
seems like he and this girl who approached Don seem
to know each other. They're friendly. The man introduces himself
as a photographer who knows about the upcoming fashion show.
It's like, so it sounds kind of legit. And there
were a lot of fashion shows in malls at the

(12:38):
time that were like sponsored by whatever big you know,
Macy's or whatever their store was there, or sometimes like
you know, fashion lines and magazines would actually have mall
fashion shows and local girls would walk in them. Right,
So he says that he'd like to shoot some photos
of Don now she's available. He says, they just need

(12:58):
to go to a nearby warehouse to get close for
the shoot. And so Don is like, this is legit.
This like other girls with him making it seem real,
this guy does seem legit. He does seem on the level.
So the three of them head to the parking lot.
They go to Don's car, and Don and the photographer
get in the car, and the other girl who had

(13:20):
approached her gets in their old car and starts following them.
But once they reach the car, the photographer pulls out
a gun and points at to Don. Immediately, he makes
her get in the car and give him the keys,
while the other girl who had approached her gets into
a different car and follows them. Don has just been
abducted by a man who was wanted in multiple murders

(13:41):
and inductions already across the country, who has come to
be known by the media as the Beauty Queen Killer.
So that was in April of eighty four. We're going
to go back to February twenty sixth of nineteen eighty four,
and we're in Miami. Miami is the center of this
busy modeling scene at the time, with lots of girls

(14:04):
with big hair and high cup bikinis. They're shooting local
commercials print ads like it is happening for a lot
of these women. And among the legions of very young
and beautiful women who call Miami home, there is twenty
year old former Miss Florida contestant Rosario Gonzalez. Rosario had
been born in Cuba and immigrated to the United States

(14:25):
as a child with her family, and on February twenty sixth,
Rosario has a gig as a spokes model at the
Miami Grand Prix. Her job is to hand out samples
of aspirin to people attending the race on behalf of
a pharmaceutical company. And like those are paid modeling gigs,
these are the kind of gigs that these girls are
trying to get. You know, it is legit in some way.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
She's been picking up as many jobs as she can
because she's engaged and she and her fiance are saving
up for furniture for the house they're going to move into,
but Rosario still lives at home at the time, and
her parents expect her back some time around five pm.
She always calls if she's going to be late, and
so when the evening wears on and they don't hear
from her, the Goodzales family knows something is wrong. Shortly

(15:08):
after they report her missing, Rosario's car is found near
the racetrack, presumably where she parked it, having gone to
the racetrack that day. On March third, after Rosario has
been missing for about a week, police release a composite
sketch of a man that multiple witnesses say they saw
walking with Rosario after the race. He's about five foot eight,

(15:28):
he's white, in his thirties. He has a mustache. And then,
about a week after Rosario goes missing, on March fifth,
another aspiring model, a woman named Beth Kenyon, also disappears.
So Beth is twenty three years old, and by all accounts,
she's this amazing young woman. She works at Coral Gables
High School as a special ed teacher, and she coaches

(15:50):
the cheerleading team. She's beloved by her family and friends
and everyone the Kenyan family is immediately worried when Beth
doesn't show up, as she's a reliable person, and they
quickly become frustrated with the police when they don't seem
particularly motivated to find Beth, despite the fact that this
is the second young model to disappear in Miami in
a very short time span. But it doesn't seem like

(16:11):
the two are linked in the minds of the police.
And let's not forget that there's like a drug war
going on in Miami at the time, and the police
are more concerned with that than a missing young, beautiful woman.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
Right Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
And there's also not a lot of communication between jurisdictions.
There's like fax machines and phone calls and that's it.
So it's just kind of a shitty time and place.
So the Kenyan family hi are a private investigator named
Ken Whittaker. Within a day or so of Beth disappearing,
they had the means to do that, and they immediately did.
And here's the part that's going to make you angry

(16:44):
and make us all want.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
To rip our hair out.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
By day three, this private investigator has figured out who
took Beth.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
He knows he.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Talks to her roommate and her coworkers. He finds out
that Beth's car had been acting up and they all
knew where she planned to take it to get serviced.
So the private investigator goes to the service station. The
people there say that Beth had been there that day,
the day she disappeared, and that she had been with
a man, and the private investigator Ken brings a photo

(17:12):
album of Beth's to the service station, asks everyone to
look through it, and everyone zeros in on a guy
in a photograph in her photo album. That was the
guy she was with the day she disappeared. It's a
picture of Beth at her racetrack, and they point to
the man standing next to her in the picture. I
remember the racetrack thing. Yes, So this man is thirty
nine year old Christopher Wilder, and the private investigator is

(17:35):
alarmed when he finds an extensive criminal record of violent
sexual assault dating back many years.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
I'm just already getting mad and assuming that I'm just
gonna like demand you tell me the things you're about
to tell me, but you're gonna tell me anyways, I'll
just listeny.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
I mean, there isn't a well, you'll see, let's talk
a little bit about this awful man.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
Christopher Wilder.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
He's born on March thirteenth, nineteen forty five in Sydney, Australia.
He's the oldest child of an American naval officer and
an Australian native. He grew up in Australia from his
teenage years on. I kind of can't tell exactly what's
going on, but he has sometimes he has an Australian accent.
Sometimes he does, and it kind of seems like he
can turn it on and off. I mean, this is

(18:17):
just it's classic and its early adolescents. He begins peeking
through windows and then by the age of seventeen, he's
arrested for the rape of a girl on a Sydney beach.
He pleads guilty to the offense and receives a year
of probation with counseling and electuro shock therapy. In nineteen
sixty nine, now in his twenties, Christopher Wilder left Australia

(18:40):
and heads to Florida after avoiding some charges for sexual
deviant accusations.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
So he splits he's just fleeing his record essentially exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
So he gets to Florida and you know, this is
the late sixties, early seventies. He works as a contractor,
also an amateur photographer and a race car driver as well.
So he's not particularly handsome, but he dresses really well.
Maybe that Australian accent comes into play sometimes and gives
him an air of respectability that maybe he didn't deserve.

(19:14):
But he looks like a typical eighties dude, like someone
my mom would have dated back then for sure. Yeah,
and he hangs out with the right crowd that lends
him legitimacy that actually tricks these women into trusting him
as a modeling scout because he does have access to the.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Modeling world because of his photography.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yes, and he had been hired by the Miss Florida
USA pageant to take photos of the models. So when
he comes up to them after the photo shoot and
is like, here's my card. I could really like, I
would love to take photos of you. I could make
you famous. I could be your manager. There's no reason
for them. But it's not some rando. It's this guy
who has been hired to do this.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
By basically a like modeling machine of a beauty pageant. Right,
And they don't vet those photographers. They don't God.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
So when I decided to do this, Alejandra and Ali,
my researcher, let me know that some of these stories
sound really similar to the one that I told in
our book that happened to me where I was like
eighteen or nineteen and trusted a regular at the cafe
I worked at and got in his car and went

(20:23):
with him to take He said he was a photographer.
He was a photographer. He showed me his work. It
was gorgeous. He took me to a secluded location, and
I realized that I needed to do what he told
me at the time, and so, you know, I complied
with what he demanded. And so I just want to

(20:43):
make sure we're making it clear that this is so
common and this is so I don't know what to say,
but just that I understand.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yes, And it's kind of a setup. It's a setup
in a way where what you're being asked as a
young woman is can you please meet these cultural requirements
of beauty? And then people are going to come around
you and be like, hey, I officially deemed that you
did that, and therefore let's capture that and show it
to other people. And since that is a drive that,

(21:16):
depending on how you were raised or what you are around,
like that's a huge accomplishment, especially in southern California, where
it's just like, yeah, you made it like this, this
is really something. Nobody's sitting there going, hold on, I
need to figure out why I'm not going to do
this right. You're going, Oh my god, my dream's coming true.
I get the ultimate reward here.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
And it's not really Like my sister's a photographer and
she took photos of me all through high school. It
wasn't weird to me to be like, oh, I'll model
for you. And then suddenly you find yourself in a
situation that you realize you made a big mistake and
you don't know how to get out of. And I
honestly think that this person who took me out to
take photographs of me at the time had nefarious intentions

(21:56):
and somehow I was able to get away, Yeah, you know,
not unscathed. But so I just I get it. I
get this in a weird way, and it like does
trigger some old things of like the shame. But then
when I read about these girls, I don't blame them
in any fucking way whatsoever. So why should I feel
shame about it as well. You know, it's like something

(22:18):
you did when you were young and not well.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Also, don't punish yourself for being trustful of people who
tell you to trust them, Right, that's that kind of
thing of like we all have to learn lessons like
that as we grow up. Everyone learns them the hard
way and it's a best disappointing. Yeah, and that kind
of risk, that's just growing up a woman in our culture,
and all other women understand that. And I think there

(22:43):
was a time where it was used against us, or
our own shame was kind of like weaponized. We would
use it against each other.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Well, yeah, wait until the end of the story, because
it fucking comes into play, and I just have the
hardest time. I have the hardest time with the ending
of the story because it's just so ugly.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
So he's gotten his papers from the Miss Florida Beauty context. Hey,
you can trust this guy. Don't worry about this official
photographer exactly.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
And he's very suave. He's manipulative. He owns a Porsche
and a speedboat and a nice house where he hosts
fancy parties where everyone goes to them. You know, it's
like that false sense of I know you, you're part
of my pack and you're safe. That's just luring and
it's just grooming. It's what predators do.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Also, if you have money, I think there's for a
long time the belief of, like, if you had money
and a good job, that meant you would never do
something like that. Totally, it's insane, Totally.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Later, manyone will come forward with stories of photoshoots that
became non consensual and led to sexual assault. And in fact,
after one sexual assault charge by a teenage girl, a
psychiatrist said that Wilder should be forced to undergo supervised treatment,
but the Florida jury acquitted him in that case. It's maddening.
There are multiple opportunities to punish this person and to

(23:58):
for this time gone a different.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Way, forbid that his career be effected.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Right, Yeah, right, he's a man of fucking the community.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
So back to this private investigator. When he tells Beth's
family about this man, they already know him because it
turns out Beth had met him when she competed in
that Miss Florida USA pageant two years prior, and they
had it's hard to tell, they kind of started dating
or maybe he was more interested than she was. So
at the same time as this is going on, as

(24:28):
Beth is missing, her family hears a news report about
another missing model, Rosario Gonzalez from earlier, who also had
competed in that same pageant as Beth two years earlier,
and they're like, this is too coincidental that two models
from the area are missing. And the private investigator speaks
to Christopher Wilder twice, once at his home and once

(24:49):
at work, and so the private investigator gives Christopher Wilder's
name to the Miami police at some point. It's unclear
exactly how long the police wait to go to Chris
House to question him, but by the time they do,
it seems a little like they dragged their feet on it.
By the time they do, the story of the two
missing models becomes linked in the media, and Christopher's name

(25:11):
is eventually brought into the story, and so it seems
like he realized the jig was up and fled knowing
that they were after him.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
I also wonder, sorry, just to make this side comment,
that if the first missing woman was Cuban, right, then
there's obviously, yeah, a racist issue.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Rosario Gonzalez she's not right looked forward, and the news
isn't as they're not going to.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Be as reactive as a white model.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Right, the media cares less? Yeah, right, And so this
alerting him to the fact that they're all onto him.
His realization that he's going to get caught, seems to
set him off on an absolutely horrific spree that I
don't know how we haven't heard of, this nine day
spree that's going to blow your fucking mind. And I
try to get a hold of my mom to talk

(25:58):
about it because comes all the way to La Oh
my god, but I don't know if she knows anything
about it anyways. So, surprisingly, and like maybe showing how
cocky he was that he wouldn't get caught, Wilder stays
in Florida at first, He doesn't leave the state, even
though he knows the authorities are after him. On March fifteenth,
three days after Ken the Private Investigator, last makes contact

(26:19):
with Christopher, he ends up in Daytona, Florida, and we
know that a fifteen year old girl named Colleen Osborne
disappears at Daytona Beach that same day. Christopher has never
been officially linked to Colleen's disappearance, but friends who were
with her say a man at the beach offered her
one hundred dollars to photograph her, and Collings's body is

(26:40):
found about three weeks later. Three days later, on March eighteenth,
Christopher abducts a twenty one year old woman named Teresa
Ferguson who goes by Terry from a mall on Merritt Island,
which is just south of Daytona. So we actually backtracks
closer to Miami, like this guy has no fear while
Colleen's murders only suspect to be linked to Christopher Wilder

(27:01):
as well, investigators are sure that he's responsible for Teresa's murder.
Her body is found five days later in a swamp
not too far from Tampa, on the opposite coast from
where she was abducted, and her body is found with
a rope tied to her neck and feet. But before
her body was found, Christopher Wilder abducts another young woman.
This is on March twentieth, two days after Teresa's abduction,

(27:24):
and it's in Tallahassee, the capital city and where Florida
State University is. So this young woman is named Linda Grover.
She's a nineteen year old student at Florida State, and
we know everything that happens to her and what she
goes through because Linda survives. Linda is in a department
store shopping for an anniversary gift for her boyfriend when

(27:45):
Wilder approaches her multiple times and is like bugging her
and doing his normal spiel of like you should be
a model, let me take photographs of you. I have connections.
He's wearing a suit, like a three piece suit. He's
well groomed. He's a gold watch and a diamond pinky ring,
which is kind of his signature. His camera on him,
you know, which is like so creepy that you're like, look,

(28:07):
I'm a photographer walking around. Anyone could put a fucking
camera on. It's like DJ headphones. It's like that doesn't
mean you're fucking DJA, right.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
And well, but it's just such an innocent time, like
you todding. It's just like that is only a professional
photographer would be walking around with such a nice camera.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Right, And this is also the time and place where
like Adam Walsh as a five year old was kicked
out of a mall for loitering and got kidnapped. Yeah,
and disappeared, like that's just what happened.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Then people did not know what was It was the
beginning of the right of this era of awareness.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
You'd still hope that Ted Bundy had at least because
I think in seventy nine is when his spree in
tallahassee right happened. So you'd think that they would be
a little more on edge and aware that these young
college girls are going missing and are being found murdered.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
But I mean, like again, like you're saying that means
people would have to be connected communicating.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Right, So, but Linda Grover is like, now, dude. She
politely declines his offer a couple times and they part way.
She's not interested. Then, at about three point thirty that afternoon,
she's out walking to her car and she realizes that
Christopher's following her out. It turns out he parked right
next to her because he had watched her enter the

(29:25):
mall from the parking lot, so he was orchestrating this
from beginning. He asked her one more time to look
at some covers that he shot, kind of to show
that he's legitimate. He opens his trunk, takes out a briefcase,
and then When he opens a briefcase, Linda sees an
Australian passport and then suddenly Christopher punches her multiple times

(29:45):
and throws her in the backseat of the car.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Oh my god, I know.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
He gags her, He covers her eyes, ties her up,
and puts her in the trunk. He then drives about
four or five hours to a motel in Bainbridge, Georgia,
which is close to the state line. Essentially, I'm not
going to get to into the details, but if you
watch the documentary they tell you more. He tortures and
sexually assaults her, and at one point he even attempted

(30:08):
to super glue her eyes shut, but she was able
to keep her eyes open and it didn't work. And
then this fucking badass breaks away from him, runs into
the motel bathroom in the same room, locks herself in
and starts banging on the walls and screaming to get
the attention from the people who were in the motel room.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Next door, which is just brilliant.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yes, Like, you're panicked, you're being tortured, and you have
the wherewithal to do such a thing.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, And this scares Christopher enough to flee, and so
Linda is able to run to the front desk and
the police are called and she's able to give the
police a detailed description. And by this point authorities realize
they're looking for this one man because she's able to
describe him that pinky ring, the photographer, the mall, all
of that stuff, the passport at the Australian passport. She's

(30:59):
able to give them an information that now the FBI
are called in.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Thank god, well not yet, okay, but amazing job, Linda.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Amazing job Linda. She also identifies him from a photo
like wow. The FBI are finally called in in a
nationwide manhunt for Christopher Wilder is on, but unfortunately they're
just following in his footsteps. They are trying to track
him down, and he's one step ahead of them the
whole way. Christopher drives along the Gulf Coast all the

(31:28):
way to Beaumont, Texas, and on March twenty first, just
one day after abducting Linda, just one day later, he
approaches a twenty three year old mother and nursing student
at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas named Terry Walden about modeling.
She turns him down, but Christopher stalks her and abducts
her two days later, like he fucking stalks her from

(31:51):
where he had tried to get her to come with him,
And so that's on March twenty third. Terry's body is
found three days later. She had been raped and stabbed
to death, and that same day, March twenty third, is
when the FBI publicly announces that they have mounted a
man hunt for Christopher, but over the next few days,
this news appears mostly in Florida newspapers, not nationwide. So

(32:13):
Chris steals Terry's car and drives to Oklahoma City, and
there he abducts a twenty one year old named Suzanne Logan.
On March twenty fifth, just two days after Terry's abduction.
This guy is on a berserker spree.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
It's the long, slow build to now this is the end,
and he knows it.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
So Suzanne's husband and parents report her missing to the police,
but the police tell them she's probably just decided to
take off, despite the fact that there's really no reason
to think this, and the FBI is already engaged in
an active manhunt for this man, and Suzanne has also
disappeared from a shopping mall. So it's unclear if the

(32:51):
police in Oklahoma City are unaware of all of this,
which is totally likely for the time, or if they
just failed to make the connection. But by this point
the story is in the newspapers all around the country,
so who knows why. So Wilder drives Suzanne almost two
hundred miles away to Newton, Kansas, keeps her alive overnight

(33:12):
in a motel room, and into part of the next day,
they eat breakfast in a restaurant together. And this is
how like cunning he is that he's able to take
these women into public places and still control them. Yeah,
I mean he must have been terrified, horrifying, Yeah, person exactly.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Christopher then drives her ninety miles farther north into an
area near Junction City, Kansas, and there he stabs her
to death and her body is found about ten days later.
So then, on March twenty ninth, Christopher abducts an eighteen
year old named Cheryl Bonaventura from a mall near Grand Junction, Colorado.
Over the next two days, the two are seen multiple

(33:50):
times together, looks like they're on this crazy drive, and
then Christopher checks into a motel in Page, Arizona, and
Christopher kills Cheryl around March thirty first, and her body
is found near the Arizona Utah border in May. So
then Christopher heads to Las Vegas. I mean, this guy's
going across the fucking country.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Yeah, which also if I'm very curious now how those
timelines overlap, because that is what Ted Bundy did in
the other direction. Now later if he knew that, of
just like, just keep crossing those right state lines and
they won't be able to track you as well.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
He definitely later they realize studied some serial killers for sure,
so possibly improbably, And so he heads to Las Vegas,
and unbelievably, despite the manhunt being wildly reported, Okay, fucking
wait for this, he attends a modeling contest at a
mall being held by seventeen magazine as a photographer as

(34:42):
a model photographer, and that's on April first. It's a competition,
and he targets a seventeen year old named Michelle Korfman
and ultimately kills her, and her body is found on
May eleventh at a highway rest area in southern California,
but she's not identified until about a month later. But
there's a photo of him at the mall watching the models.

(35:06):
It's it's him. He's not disguised, maybe he has a
thicker beard or something, but like I.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
Wonder if that the gal. It's the But it's also
that kind of thing of like they think it's a
man hunt where they're like, we need to check the
motels on the highway type of thing. Who what idiot
would go to exactly the place where everyone would think
he would be absolutely okay.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
So now the next abduction leads the spree in a
whole different direction, and this is a direction that will
baffle the media and the public, who, of course, at
the time had no issues with victim blaming and had
it in their heads how a perfect victim would and
should act, and when the victim doesn't, they go for her.

(35:55):
So on April fourth, three days after Michelle's abduction in
Las Vegas and almost a month before her body was discovered,
a popular friendly teenager, sixteen year old Tina Rizzico from Torrence, California,
is at a local mall called the Delama Fashion Center.
So Tina's feeling out a job application at the Hickory
Farm Store when Christopher approaches her with the same story

(36:18):
he's given all the other girls. And Tina is beautiful too,
so it's not out of the question that she'd be
approached near Los Angeles to model. He says he's a
photographer and that he thinks she has potential to be
a model, and that he'd like to photograph her to
show to his contacts at a modeling agency. That she
recognizes the name of the modeling agency as well, Soto
have to fucking be with them. He can even make cards.

(36:39):
Let's say that he's from that modeling agency, you know. Yeah,
and he's like, we could do the shoot right now.
So Tina, pretty blonde who is mature for her age,
she's sixteen, but kind of world wary after having had
a chaotic childhood. She's flattered, but she feels a little uneasy,
but she pushes down that uneasy feeling and they walk

(37:03):
out of them all together and get in Christopher's car.
And this is the person who is most centrally interviewed
in the documentary The Beauty Queen Killer. Yeah, and it's
just it's so moving. I highly recommend it because she's
just the survivor that had to do what she had
to do. And is still coming to terms with it

(37:24):
in a way that we can feel empathy for her
in a way that I don't think she could feel
for herself in some ways. And it's really heartbreaking, Tina
says later quote, this is the one point that I
regret every second of my life, every day I got
in the car with this perfect stranger when all the
bells and whistles were going off in my head. Why
didn't I listen to my instincts. Why didn't I listen

(37:44):
to the voice in my head? Don't get in a
car with a stranger.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
Because we are Tata's women to constantly question ourselves and
doubt ourselves and how dare you stand up for yourself?
And that's ugly, And don't be rude, don't be rude,
be pretty and feminine and quiet and do what men
want to do. That's fair. That's how we're all raised
to this fucking day, especially back then.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Yeah, and then it says Tina notices that the car
smells weird. And in our book, I wrote about getting
in his car and suddenly going, oh fuck, because there
was a rip in the ceiling of the car. It
was messy and nasty, and I suddenly was like, oh,
I don't know this person at all. And immediately as

(38:29):
we're driving away from the cafe, just all my alarm
bells were going off, and I was like, you have
to get through this. You fucked up, you know. So
she didn't fuck up though, No, I didn't.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Okay, you're right, yeah, And that's that's so important, I think.
Is that like it was a time and place then,
but it happened to me as well, not that long ago,
twenty years ago, I guess. So she is uneasy, but
she still pushes through that feeling. He drives her up
into the mountains into a aa like same Santa Monica
Thuga Mountains is where he took me. He starts photographing

(39:05):
Tina and posing her in different ways, and he has
her turn her back to him to kind of pose,
and when she turns back around, he's pointing a gun
at her. In the moment, Tina wonders if she should
run or scream, but she doesn't think anyone would hear her,
so she decides that her best shot is to go
along with everything he makes her do. He makes her

(39:27):
take her clothes off and takes more photographs. He then
rapes her and then has her get back in his car,
And when they get back in the car, Christopher tapes
her eyes shut and puts sunglasses over the tape. He
starts driving Tina across the country, stopping at motels along
the way. At each motel, Christopher he basically takes the

(39:48):
cord from the lamp and peels it apart and uses
it to give her electric shots.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
God so he tortures.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Her and rapes her at various motels. He threatens her
with a nine piece of gun as I said as well,
and he has her sleep handcuffed, and they actually go
into restaurants, and she says, the entire time she's sitting
next to him, he has a gun under his coat
pointing at her, and he is like, I will shoot
you if you try to do anything. The entire time

(40:16):
they're in the car driving, he has his hand on
the gun pointed at her like there's no escape, no,
and we all that's like part of it is like
why didn't you jump and roll? And why didn't you
She start screaming, and it's like, who knows how much
this guy told her about what he's already done, probably
at least enough to scare her to know that he
will do anything, and he's capable of anything, you know.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
So the collersion part of this is the is what
everyone should be talking about, Yeah, not why why didn't
you do this? And that? Why are men allowed over
and over again to do things like this and get probation,
to get off, to get acquitted to all these things?
The questions are the wrong fucking question totally. They're the

(40:59):
easy has questions to ask, and it's questions that have
answers that no one's listening to when the answers come right,
and they're the wrong questions absolutely.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
So Tina says that throughout this ordeal, when they're together,
she maintains an affectless demeanor. She doesn't react, she doesn't
show any emotion. Even when he's hurting her. She complies.
So by April tenth, Christopher and Tina are in Maryville, Indiana,
near Gary, Indiana. And this is where the story started

(41:29):
when the teenager approached the pretty girl at the mall. Remember,
and at this point Christopher has had Tina at gunpoint
and torturing and raping her for a week. So she's
under his command. And this is a sixteen year old
girl at the mall in Maryville, Christopher and Tina going together.
He points out Dawn and tells Tina what to say.

(41:51):
Tina says that she tries to think of some way
to warn Dawn, but she is so scared and broken
down at this point that she can't even figure out
a way to do that without getting killed. She thinks
the moment she starts screaming or says anything, he's going
to shoot her. And he probably would. Yeah, when you
hear the rest of the story, Okay, okay, So Don
agrees to go with them. Don gets into her car

(42:11):
with Chris driving it, and Tina, the girl had been abducted,
gets into the other car. And even then she doesn't
try to escape. She knows that he's a race car driver,
remember that, and she thinks that if she tries to
get away from him, he will be able to stop her,
run her off the road, he'll shoot her. She doesn't
think she can get away. I mean, she is she's

(42:33):
a child, she's brainwashed at this point, She's.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
A brainwashed, tortured child and victim entirely.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
It's awful and it's terrible, and I feel so much
for down the other victim and she's interviewed in this
documentary as well. To this day, she's still understandably like
can't wrap her head around it, and it seems like
can't forgive. And I totally understand that, but it's just
it's bigger than anything that we can wrap our heads around. Ever,

(42:59):
because we've never through it, we probably never will fucking
knock on wood, so we can't judge, you know.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
I mean well, And also the idea that somehow the
point is supposed to be forgiveness among the victims.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Oh, it's like, you don't have to.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Everyone is on their own trajectory. They have to get
to the place they need to be however they want to.
And again let's focus on animals that need to be
in cages. Yeah, and walk around the planet while everyone
else makes excuses. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
So eventually, the three of them, they ditch one of
the cars and they end up at a motel that evening,
and both of the girls are raped and tortured with
the electric shocks.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
It's monstrous.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
The next day, Christopher turns on the TV in the
motel and he sees himself on the news, and the
two kidnapped teenagers see as well that people are looking
for them, and it seems like this freaks him out,
and this is a turning point in his spree, Like
he has no control at this point, he fucking knows
it's kind of a yeah. So he gets everyone to

(44:03):
the car and he drives the teenage victims to western
New York into a remote area. It's just all over
the country. There's like no rhyme or reason to it,
which is probably why it was so hard to fucking
track him, because meanwhile, the cops in Torrance in southern California,
everyone thinks he's still in southern California.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
They're looking for him.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
There those FBI bulletins he's on the FBI Most Wanted
list at this point. Those are all happening in southern California.
Meanwhile he's in like upstate New York. Yeah, okay, and
this is just horrific. So he drives him to a
remote area in western New York. He leaves Tina from
Torrance's sixteen year old in the car. He takes the keys,
and he takes Dawn into the woods off the road,

(44:41):
so Tina's alone in the car. This is the point
where people are like, why didn't you take off why
didn't you run? Why didn't you? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (44:48):
Exactly. It just stop asking fucking questions like that, where
it's like, unless you have been tortured for two weeks
straight as a sixteen year old, why are you pretending
this is an normal situation?

Speaker 2 (45:00):
And it's a remote area, where would she fucking run to?
She was like, there's no coverage, there's no where I
can go. So he takes Don off into the woods
and he tries to kill her by suffocating her, but
Don fights back, and so he stabs her twice in
the chest and then flees back to the car and
he and Tina drive away. Tina later says in this

(45:22):
documentary that she is sure that he had just killed
Don and that his demeanor had changed. She was clearly
like freaking out, and she's like, I'm next, Yeah, this
is about to end. He's going to kill me, just
like he had just killed Don. Don is alive. Don
survives the stabbing. She's laying there, having been stabbed twice.

(45:42):
She thinks about her family and tells herself she just
needs to at least try to get to safety for them.
She ties her jeans around the stab wounds on her
chest and somehow is able to make it to a
road and flags down a passing truck driver. Driver takes
Don to the hospital. She's seriously injured. She had been

(46:03):
stabbed in the lungs. He had tried to stab her
in the heart, but stabbed her in the lungs, and
she was still able to get herself up and go
get fucking help for herself. Which is crazy because Christopher
tries to come back around. He was worried she wasn't dead.
He comes back to try to kill her twenty minutes later,
So if she hadn't gotten herself up and moving, he

(46:23):
would have come back.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
And killed her.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Jesus Chrasy, I know, I know. So Don is able
to give the FBI a lot of critical information. They
know all these cases or linked. They know that's the
same man that's that they've been looking for. But as
I said, they'd been still focusing their search around southern California,
and so now they know he had crossed the country.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
She tells them that Tina from.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Torrens is still alive and that he's using her to
get other victims. And she tells them that he said
he's heading for Canada. So now they kind of have
like an area of where he might be. So Christopher
hears on the radio that Don has survived and the
FBI are closing in on him, and this ultimately precipitates
his next and final murder. It's just so heartbreaking. So

(47:11):
it's April twelfth. Christopher of ducks a thirty three year
old woman named Beth Dodge in the parking lot of
the mall. We're still in western New York at this point.
He's like frantic and has given up the modeling pretense.
He simply needs a car, a new car, because he
knows they're looking for him. Beth had a gold Pontiac Firebird,
which is crazy that he picked such a distinctive car. Dude, like,

(47:34):
pick a fucking Corolla.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
He's out of his mind, right.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
He approaches Beth, he pulls out his gun and makes
her get into the car and drives it away with
Tina following, And it's like, why couldn't you have just
left her there and taken the car? This s guy
is a monster, that's why.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
He takes Beth to a remote area again with Tina
following in the car, and as she's watching, Tina's watching
from the other car. He has Beth get out of
the car and shoots Beth in the back, killing her,
and Beth leaves behind her husband and a four year
old daughter, who, as an adult, is interviewed in this
documentary as well.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
All right, what next?

Speaker 2 (48:13):
This is just inexplicable. Christopher then drives Tina, who had
kidnapped from Torrance and raped and tortured across the country.
He drives her to Logan International Airport in Boston. He
walks her up to the ticket counter, buys her a
ticket to Los Angeles, gives her like a thousand dollars
in cash, and then leaves her at the airport.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Yeah, so the idea in his mind is now you
can go home and I'll pay for it.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
And then just what and here's some extra cash for
the I don't even think he said anything like that.
He was just like, here's some extra cash for the ride.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
And did he think she would continue to be kind
of under his spell?

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Like the way she'd bet feel like her compliance for
survival must have told him something else about her, you know,
like that, Yeah, she would have been complicit. I guess
you have to imagine where her brain is, because she's like,
this is a trick. This isn't going to happen. She's
sure he's about to come back. She gets on the plane,

(49:14):
she takes the overnight flight, sleeps on the plane. There's
multiple stops, she doesn't say anything to anyone. She gets
off the plane in La in the morning and gets
into a cab. And she also was saying at the time, like,
I didn't think they were really looking for me. I
wasn't totally sure her mom was unstable. She was like
she might not have even like said I was missing.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
And she's been in a living hell, So all of
normal life is gone for her, right, and she's just
adapting to this weird, hellish world.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
The morning before, she saw him shoot an innocent woman
in the point blank in the back. Like the disassociation
going on there is fucking real, and it's a powerful tool,
and it was working for her, and she kept going
with it.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
And also she just like, get home, just get on
the plane, get home, stay within yourself, like yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
And the next thing that she does is totally scrutinized
by the media. And I'll never be able to explain
it because I'll never be in a situation exactly like this.
She is in the cab in La and she's like,
I haven't changed my clothes in over a week, So
she asked the cab driver to take her to a
lingerie store so she can buy new underwear and change.

(50:24):
We have to assume that this girl is going on fumes.
She's not thinking this through.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Or if you had been through something that horrible and
raped repeatedly, you would want those underwear eyes of you.
And you're not going to a lingerie store, right. You
are not making it that choice. You're saying, new underwear
there and I need to go get them, totally the end.
So she's the framework of that is disgusted.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
It's so creepy too, because she goes there and it
seems like she tells the store clerks who she is,
and because everyone was looking for her at that point,
like she was a missing person, and it was like
all the news they recognized her, and there was like
footage from that time in the documentary where they're like, yeah,
she was here and then she took off. And I
think it's an important thing to point out and for

(51:12):
us to know about Tina is that she did not
have a very stable home life. In fact, as I said,
it was chaotic. She had experienced childhood sexual abuse, her
mother had been a drug user, she had seen her
mother overdose, her mother hung out with bad motorcycle crowd
all through her childhood, and so she will later say

(51:34):
that she basically learned how to survive horrific things as
a child, and she thinks is what ultimately kept her alive.
Because Chris's m O is that he likes scaring women
and having them beg for their lives, and when Tina
didn't do that, because she already knew kind of how
to disassociate and comply, he must have seen her differently
than other victims somehow. Yeah, so her trauma saved her,

(52:00):
saved her in a really twisted way and informed how
to react to these situations, which is so sad.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
But also it's as sad as it is hopeful, I think, Yeah,
because the things that happened to you. No one wants
bad things to happen, but there are skills and coping
mechanisms that come from those bad things that absolutely benefit
your life later on. Yeah, they really do. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
So, after the lingerie store, Tina then goes to her
boyfriend's house, and which is really telling that she doesn't
go to her home because her boyfriend's family were kind
of more of a steady presence in her life than
her own family were at the time. They know who
she's kidnapped by. They think she's dead. She gets out
of the cab and they are all like what, They're
shocked and of course elated to see her, and she

(52:48):
takes a shower and then they convince her to go
to the police. I think she's just like going forward
in her mind and they're like, okay, here we go.
So in the weeks following Tina's return and when her
story and don survived story becomes known, Tina will sometimes
be referred to as an accomplice, and the media really
wants to pin this on her and make it seem

(53:08):
like she was complicit, And the whole thing is she
was a willing accomplice, a sixteen year old girl.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
The patriarchy was super strong back then, they were doing it.
And once again, just that idea of like, of that
whole story, Yeah, that's she's the one I'm talking about totally.
The lead character in the story is not her, Yeah,
it's him.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
And that's what happens every time.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, and through This whole ordeal with the media and
the public put her through is so ugly. Hopefully it
wouldn't happen today her full name is made public. There's
all sorts of speculation over her behavior before and after
the kidnapping. It's all scrutinized on the news. Reporters are
hounding her and her family. But the sixteen year old

(53:52):
girl who has been held captive and abused repeatedly for
ten days. Thankfully the Torrance Police, and this is unexpected
and kudos for them. They make a hard stance that
Tina is a victim and nothing more, and they have
press conferences saying she is a victim. That is, you know,
she has nothing really on her side. And I honestly

(54:12):
am like, what was amazed by that? And I shouldn't
be moved that they're on her side, but I was.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
I mean, it's not it wasn't common at all. It
certainly isn't expected from a police force totally. Like, so
that's pretty mind blowing.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, back to the same day. Tina had come home
on April thirteenth, after Christopher dropped her off at the airport,
he makes his way all the way up to a
town called Colebrook, New Hampshire, a small town. It's about
a fifteen minute drive from the Canadian border where he's headed.
He stops at a gas station to ask directions to
the border, and just so happens that two state troopers

(54:48):
are driving by the gas station at the moment, and
he has a fucking gold thunderbird, remember, and everyone's looking
for him at this point. Yeah, of course the troopers
see him, they see the car, and they get out
and confront him. There's brief struggle, and Christopher lunges into
the car for his gun, and there he uses it
to shoot himself. The bullet also injures one of the troopers,

(55:10):
and Chris is able to shoot himself one more time
and he dies by suicide. The trooper ultimately recovers and
in the weeks and years following Christopher Wilder's death, he
is linked as a suspect to multiple other disappearances, and
many other women come forward saying he sexually assaulted them.
And I of course went to our Gmail, my favorite

(55:32):
murder Gmail, and looked up his name and everything, and
there are just pages of murderino's telling their own story
about having met him or been approached by him Murderingo
is telling their mom's story, their grandma's story, like multiple emails,
and I couldn't even pick one because they were all
the same.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
It's kind of a thing and I have never known.
I think when you started talking about Tina's story and
the part that was happening in southern California, Yeah, I
was remembering like maybe a forensic file, yes, but it
told it in this kind of opposite way totally.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
It's like a vague like I know some of the circumstances,
but the spree, like I don't remember hearing that at all. Yeah, Okay,
here this is a part that, of course that I'm
fascinated by because it's about a cold case. It comes
out that right before this spree happened, Wylder had gone
back to Australia to visit his parents, and while there
he had abducted two teenage girls from a beach by

(56:26):
telling them he was a modeling scout, and then he
had sexually assaulted them and forced them to take photos
with their clothes off. They went to the police. He
was arrested, but he was bailed out by his parents,
and it was like a three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars bail, so clearly they were putting the money up
for him, and he was allowed to return to Florida
to wait for his trial, which was repeatedly postponed. Now,

(56:49):
if that case sounds familiar, it's because it's eerily similar
to the infamous Australian Wanda Beach murders which I just
mentioned recently, in which to fifteen years old Sydney girls
were killed in nineteen sixty five and there are reports
that they were last seen with a teenage boy, which
would have lined up with Christopher's age and his time

(57:10):
in Sydney. And it's never been solved, and it's one
of the most notorious cases in Australia. It's the first
episode of the podcast case File, So light up. Oh yeah.
The remains of Rosario Gonzalez and Beth Kenyon, the first
two women to be reported missing in South Florida, have
never been found. And that is the story of the

(57:31):
Beauty Queen Killer, the women whose lives he cut short,
and the women who survived him.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
I mean, it blew my mind researching the story.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
Yeah, I was just I can't believe it. I know. Wow,
great job, Thank you. Amazing thank you and amazing honesty.
I know that was probably very hard and very triggering
as you read this.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
I mean it's important for other people to hear you're
that you know and like know that everyone, especially when
you're a teenager, makes the kinds of mistakes that you
thoroughly regret in all kinds of ways. And if you've
already gone through pain about the mistake itself, torturing yourself
about making a mistake is what my therapist likes to

(58:20):
call the second arrow, and it is that's the kind
of thing you have to watch out for because you
already suffered, You already suffer. You don't need to suffer
more because you're a human being. It's not fair. Yeah,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
I tried looking up this photographer like while I was
doing it, because somewhere out there there's unconsenting topless photos
of me and he's out there somewhere and I couldn't
find anything.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
It's just it's chilling. Get me ripping on my nail polish.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
I know that's what I do when I was stressed.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
I've literally twisted this paper cliff into.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
This that gel nail like that is that this was intense.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Unbelievably, but also it's so really good job, Jordan, thank you.
All right, Well, it's gonna be tough to follow that. Sorry, No,
I mean that's huge. But the theme of this episode
is moniker killers, and I think when we learned we

(59:18):
were going to do this theme, we were like, oh,
how are there any that we don't know? And we
both learned that there are and this one Marin found
and again it happened in northern California. So I'm like,
what kind of job am I doing as a supposed
true crime enthusiast if I don't know this story? So

(59:40):
it begins in the mid eighties in Redding, California, a
town in central northern California, about one hundred and fifty
miles northeast of San Francisco and one hundred and twenty
miles south of the Oregon border. Have you been to Redding? No,
Reading is like far away Sacramento. It's like, if you're
in Sacramento, you drive three mi maybe four hours up

(01:00:01):
the five ish.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
It's rural.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
It's way up there and out there.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Okay, So but a lovely little kind of community. Yeah,
probably you hate it if you're a teenager. But you
have it, you move back later. Yeah. So it's May
of nineteen eighty five and a forty eight year old
woman named Avril Whedon my husband's last name. It's your
husband's last name. Weird. Avril's reported missing by her mother, Yula.

(01:00:26):
Yula desperately tries to track her daughter down, but weeks pass,
no one hears from April. This is completely out of
character for her and of course very concerning for her
family and her friends. Then three months later, on August eighth,
a woman named Shirley Landrath is fielding calls for Shasta
County's Secret Witness Program, which is a local tip line

(01:00:47):
where people can call in anonymously and report information they
might have on active investigations. Kind of like the local
writing version of Crime Stoppers. That's cool. Yeah. So Shirley
Landreth is a single mom in her fifties who has
run this answering service for this tip line for twelve years.
It's a job that means a lot to her. Shirley

(01:01:09):
suffered the tragic loss of her child in a house fire,
so she began to channel her grief into doing what
she could to better her community. So beautiful, So for
twelve years, Shirley's been answering calls to the Shasta County
Secret Witness tip line, But on this August day, when
the phone rings and she picks it up, something is off.

(01:01:30):
The caller tells Shirley that he knows where Avril Wheaton is,
but before he's willing to share those details, he wants
to know more about the Secret Witnesses reward for that information.
But for surely there's something very unsettling about this exchange,
because she's certain she's heard this man's voice before when
he has called in with a different tip, also about

(01:01:53):
April's case. And so what begins as a missing person's
investigation is about to unravel into something much darker, and
this tip line will be at the very center of
it all. This is the heroic story of tip line
operator Shirley Landreth and the hunt for a Northern California
serial killer fuck. The main source used today is illegal

(01:02:15):
filing from the Supreme Court of California, and the rest
of the sources are in our show notes. As I said,
the theme of the show is Moniker Killers, but I'm
holding it because of the story got it. So it's
August eighth, nineteen eighty five, my sister's seventeenth birthday. Oh shit,
and Shirley Landrath is on the phone with a man

(01:02:36):
she believes has called into the Secret Witness tip line before.
Phone records will later reveal that this man, who will
refer to now as the tipster, did reach out to
the tip line two months prior, on June nineteenth, my
mother's birth. How fucking weird? Is that? So creepy? And
in the beginning they were like, and this all begins

(01:02:57):
in May, so I was like, fifty, I may love it.
So it isn't just the caller's voice or the rushed
way he speaks that's familiar to Shirley because in that
first call, he also asked about the amount of money
he would be receiving for information on April's case. Only
when that dollar amount was confirmed, which was two hundred
and fifty dollars, did he give what he claimed were

(01:03:20):
directions to Averril's body. Shirley passed that information along to
the police, but it didn't result in anything. They didn't
find anything when they followed those directions, so the tipster
did not get a reward. So now on the second call,
he is not holding back. The tipster wants to make
one thing clear to Shirley upfront. He knows for a

(01:03:42):
fact that April's dead, but he says he is not responsible.
He then gives Shirley exact directions to the location of
April's body, and Shirley makes a particular note that the
man gives these directions in meters, not feet. Interesting so
then before he signs off, the tipster Shirley that he's
willing to give more information about April's case, as well

(01:04:04):
as six other unsolved murder cases in Shasta County, as
long as the tip line comes through with his reward
money quickly. Then he hangs up. Shirley is unsettled by
this call. She immediately reports the tip to police, But
this time, when investigators follow the tipster's directions, they do

(01:04:26):
lead directly to Avril Whedon's body, exactly where the tipsters
said she would be. An autopsy will later reveal that
Avril had been beaten and strangled to death, and because
this information did lead officers to finding her body, Sureley
arranges for a prompt and discrete drop off of the
tipsters two hundred and fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Dollars do a little investigation first place.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
I mean, this is how it worked, where it's like
you're not going to get anonymous tips on active cases
if you start, you know, turning it back on people.
Oh sure, but okay. So police have been investigating April's
missing case for months, and her mother, Eula, reported that
since she had gone missing on May twenty third, Eula

(01:05:13):
had called Avril's house several times, hoping to find her
daughter there, but every time the only person that was
home was a twenty seven year old man named Robert
Maury who goes by Bob and Morey was April's tenant
who had been renting one of her spare rooms. He
had recently been dishonorably discharged from the Army for smoking pot,

(01:05:35):
and now he worked sometimes as a landscaper and sometimes
as a flower arranger. He also became increasingly annoyed at
Eula every time she called completely bizarre and inappropriate, at
one point telling her quote, how the hell am I
supposed to know where April is? So when Yula reported
her daughter missing to the police, a detective named Dave

(01:05:55):
Mundy was put on the case. So Mondy began interviewing
everyone to Avril, including a male friend that last saw
her on the back of Bob's motorcycle, so Bob seems
to corroborate this. He can't remember the exact day of
this motorcycle ride, but he tells detectives that he dropped
Averril off at a local telephone booth while he drove

(01:06:16):
to a different location to buy weed. Bob claims he
didn't want Avril to come to a drug deal with him,
but he says that after he made that deal, he
went back to the phone booth, picked her up, and
they went home, and that's the last time he saw her.
So now it's August twelfth, just days after police recovered
Avril's body. At the secret Witness tip line, the phone

(01:06:37):
rings again. When Shirley answers, she hears the same voice.
It's the tipster. He tells Shirley that he's ready to
share more information on Avril's case in exchange for more
reward money. When Shirley tells the tipster that he could
speak directly with Detective Dave Mundy, he refuses. Instead, he
announces that he'll call Shirley back and answer the detective's

(01:06:59):
questions through her. Playing detective is far beyond the scope
of Shirley's job, but she agrees to this arrangement. She
just wants to keep him talking, so the two settle
on a reward amount for the tipster's participation and the
call ends. Shirley immediately calls Detective Mondy and tells him
what is happening. Three days later, on August fifteenth, the

(01:07:21):
tipster calls back into the tip line as promised, and
Shirley asks him questions on behalf of Detective Monday, and
in response to these questions, the tipster basically tells Shirley
that Abril had been murdered over a drug related dispute.
He claims she was killed with a nylon clothesline before
being dragged into the woods where her killer then hit

(01:07:43):
her with a rock to make sure she was dead.
Before ending the call, the tipster gives Shirley specific directions,
once again using meters where police can find the rock
that was used to strike April. He also shares that
he has even more information, but he's only going to
call back after he receives the reward money for this
newest tip. Shirley sends this new tip over to the

(01:08:06):
police and once again arranges for the tipster to pick
up his reward at a designated drop off point. So meanwhile,
Detective Monday is zeroing in on Bob Moray. He's the
prime suspect in this homicide, but Monday doesn't have much
physical evidence to go on. Bob is admittedly the last
person to see April alive, and he's also acting very,

(01:08:28):
very strangely. And then, three months later, in November of
nineteen eighty five, this is six months after April first
went missing, Morey calls the Reading Police Department and hints
that he knows more than he's letting on, but he's
not willing to share his information unless he gets something
in exchange. Specifically, Bob tells an officer that he wants
legal protections not just in this murder case, but in

(01:08:51):
an unrelated investigation involving stolen property. So, without promising anything,
the officer tells Maury that he'll see what he can do,
and then, of course, the next day, Detective Monday follows
up on that. He calls Bob back, and Bob tells
the detective that a friend of April's coincidentally the same
man who had last seen April on Bob's motorcycle is

(01:09:13):
the one who strangled her to death with the rope.
Bob claims that he actually witnessed this friend carrying out
the attack, and that he'd been forced to help dispose
of April's body at gunpoint. So a month later, and
so that'll makes sense of like the anonymous tipster aspect
of it is because the people who know real details

(01:09:35):
and real crimes can be associated. So a month later,
on December tenth, Bob and Detective Monday have another conversation.
This time Bob tweaks a few key details. He now
adds that April's friend had forced him to hit April
with the rock, suggesting Bob himself dealt the fatal blow
in her murder, but under duress. But as Bob speaks

(01:09:58):
with Monday, the detective notice is something odd. Bob always
relays the distances in meters, not feet, so they're basically
putting together that this is the same person the tipster
and Bob Mundy. So now it's the fall of nineteen
eighty six. More than a year has passed since April's
body was first discovered. The detectives are no closer to

(01:10:20):
bringing charges against anyone in connection with this murder. There
is no evidence against Bob Moorey. Everything is not coincidental, circumstantial,
thank you, circumstantial. But they are chasing leads they've gotten
from statements the people in April's life have given, like
her parents, neighbors, and Bob Moorey himself. And while police
are convinced Bob is withholding information and might even be involved,

(01:10:44):
they simply don't have the evidence needed to secure a conviction. Then,
on September eleventh, nineteen eighty six, the phone at the
Secret Witness tip line begins to ring. Surely answers once again,
and she immediately recognizes the voice on the other end.
It's the tipster. Shirley hasn't heard from him in about
a year, but his voice is unmistakable, and this time

(01:11:06):
the tipster's focus is not a murder. Instead, he claims
to have information about a local burglary. Shirley processes the
tip and the caller hangs up. But a couple weeks later,
the tipster calls back, and this time he tells Shirley
that he wants immunity in April's case. It's unclear what
he thinks Shirley can do here. We don't know exactly

(01:11:26):
how Shirley responds to him on the phone, but the
call ends and months pass with no new correspondence. So
now it's August of nineteen eighty seven. Two years have
passed since the tipster first called into the tip line,
and a year has passed since Shirley last heard from him. Meanwhile,
the police are still trying to figure out who killed April.

(01:11:48):
Then on August eighth, so to the day my sister's birthday,
the tipster calls into Secret Witness once again. This time
he tells Shirley that he can reveal the look of
a missing woman that he identifies as Gretchen Olsten, but
before he does, he wants to know how much the
reward money will be. Shirley wants to keep him talking,

(01:12:11):
so she reassures him that he will get money as
long as his information helps investigators solve an active case.
The phone call ends, and then days later, on August seventeenth,
the tipster calls back. This time he shares much more information.
He says Gretchen was killed over a month ago, and
then he gives the exact directions to her body. During

(01:12:34):
this call, the tipster makes it clear that he wants
his reward money handed over before an autopsy is conducted.
He also tells Shirley that once he picks up his reward,
he will leave an envelope behind for investigators, and inside
it he will leave a piece of paper with Gretchen's
killer's identity written on it. So almost every call with

(01:12:58):
the tipster so far has unsettled Shirley. He speaks in
a very pushy, specific kind of harsh tone. He's like,
very rushed, sounds very panicked. She knows his voice, of course,
you know, like the back of her hand at this point. Yeah,
But because this information has always proven to be valuable,
Surely is becoming convinced she's talking to someone who's directly

(01:13:22):
involved in these murders, and she wants to keep him talking.
She does something that she would normally never do as
the operator of an anonymous tip line. She decides she
needs to record a few seconds of her next phone
call with the tipster in case it's needed in a
future trial. Essentially, very smart, very smart, and Surely doesn't

(01:13:44):
have to wait long because within hours of their conversation
about Gretchen Olsten, the tipster calls back asking whether the
police have found her body. Yet, as Shirley explains, they
haven't found anything yet. She manages to get a couple
of sentences of this conversation and recorded, and now the
tipster's voice is captured for the record, and as we

(01:14:05):
were just saying during your story, but in a much smaller,
dumber way, recording a phone call in the mid eighties
is difficult to say the least, like, what are you
using one of these guys from school like a super
completely holding up this to do this?

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
Now, everything is manual, everything.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Is clunky, not easy to do, but she did it.
What Shirley didn't know was while she was capturing this
man's voice on the phone. That same day, based on
the tipster's information, officers do find a woman's body, and
it's clear that she has been murdered. What is not
clear as her identity. Detectives soon conclude that the name

(01:14:46):
the tipster gave, Gretchen Olsten, is a fake name. An
autopsy will later reveal that this unidentified woman was sexually
assaulted before being bludgeoned to death, and, as promised, the
five hundred dollars reward is placed in an un envelope
and left at a designated spot for the tipster to
anonymously pick up, and as he promised, the tipster picks

(01:15:07):
up the reward and leaves his own envelope behind for police.
But when the police take that envelope and open it up,
they find that it is empty. There is no reveal
from the tipster, but the envelope is kept and collected
as evidence. So it's around this time that a woman
comes forward to report that two months earlier, in June

(01:15:28):
of that year, she had been raped, and she names
Bob Morey as her rapist. The woman says Bob picked
her up on his motorcycle under the pretense that he
was taking her to a party, but then he pulled
into a remote wooded area and sexually assaulted her. As
he tried to strangle her, she was so sure that
Bob was going to kill her, but then he didn't.

(01:15:51):
He just took her home. She was so terrified she
didn't immediately report the attack. When telling investigators about the
location of her assault, the woman describes the exact same
area where police found the body of basically Jane Doe,
not Gretchen Olsten, but the Jane Doe that they found
based on the tipster's information. Here's an infuriating sentence. It

(01:16:16):
is unclear why, but Bob Morey is not taken into
custody after the survivor of his violent sexual assaults comes
forward and names him jes Christ. So now it's September,
I mean, this is just kind of well, just the theme.
The theme is time and place that the time in
place is the eighties. Yeah, not a pretty time. So
now it's September fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven. Surely still at

(01:16:40):
work at the tip line, the phone rings. She picks
it up once again. It's the tipster. This time he
asks about reward money in the case of a missing
twenty year old local woman named Don berry Hill. Dawn
was last seen on June twenty second, nineteen eighty seven,
on the back of an unidentified man's motorcycle. People, including

(01:17:01):
Don's mother, saw her with this man, but they don't
know who he is. Police learned that Don had told
a neighbor she was going to buy some pot with
a guy named Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:17:11):
So, Shirley confirms that the reward amount for this case
is five hundred dollars, but the tipster now tries to
play hardball over that amount. He hangs up. He calls
back repeatedly. He's trying to negotiate with her. Surely has
real reason to believe the tipster will have information that
will lead to police finding yet another body, So to

(01:17:33):
keep him talking, she actually gets secret witnesses permission, like
the association that put this tip line together. She gets
permission to bump up the reward to twelve hundred and
fifty dollars Jesus, and with that the tipster starts talking.
He tells Shirley where they'll find Don's body, again, relaying
distances and meters. Then he denies any involvement in her death.

(01:17:56):
At one point, the tipster seems paranoid, so Surely calmly
reaffirms to him that the line is anonymous and that
quote she could not recognize a person's voice since she
talked to so many people every day. Good for her
end quote. And then I just wrote you're allowed to
lie to liars. That's the rule, total and murderers. So,

(01:18:17):
using the tipster's information, police are able to locate the
remains of Don berry Hill. She's found in the same
area where both the body of the Jane Doe was
recovered and where the survivor of Bob Morray's sexual assaults
reported being attacked. Investigators are now convinced that Bob Moray
is responsible for the murders of at least three women,

(01:18:39):
Avro Whedon, Don berry Hill and their Jane Doe, as
well as the rape of one survivor, But before they
charge him with any of these crimes, they want to
confirm their suspicion that Bob Mourray is the tipster. So
for this Detective's turn to Shirley Landrath, who's just set
up yet another discreet drop off for the tipster reward money.

(01:19:01):
But she's very ethical as the operator of an anonymous
tip line, she very much believes in the importance of
the integrity of it. Okay, so she doesn't try to
find his name. But someone at the Secret Witness tip
line we don't know who shares the drop off point

(01:19:21):
for the tipster's latest reward. Nice you get him on
a technicality, Thank you. Can you give me all my
words on this episode? Please soon. Detective Mondy, who is
already actively tailing Bob Moray, watches as Bob arrives at
and then exits the designated building where the reward money
has been left for the tipster, and with that it's

(01:19:45):
confirmed that Bob Moury is the tipster. But when officers
confront him about picking up the tip money, he admits
to knowing quote all kinds of girls end quote who
have gone missing, but denies ever murdering anyone.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
Yeah, I know all kinds. What are you fucking talking about?

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
What are you talking about, Bob? Two weeks later, on
October fourteenth, nineteen eighty seven, Shirley receives a call at
the Secret Witness tip line. Once again, it's the tipster,
but this time he's pissed. He would like to speak
with the tip line's higher ups to complain about this
breach of anonymity.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
He wants to talk to the manager.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
He would like to cairn it up with the manager
about how he's been treated poorly.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
As reporting all these murdered women, being paid for the
information that only he knows about murdered women.

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
I hate him. Yeah. He even threatens to print ten
thousand flyers shaming Secret Witness for failing to protect his identity.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
Ah, I think everyone would be fine with.

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
That, yeah, flyer it up full. Yeah. Shirley tells him
that she'll see what she can do. She knows she's
playing the game. She knows exactly how to play this man.
Then she contacts her colleagues at the tip line and
the police, and they all together come up with a plan.
They're going to pull in another Secret Witness employee who
will meet Bob Morey to hear out his concerns while

(01:21:06):
trying to get more information out of him, their ultimate
goal being getting him to help them identify their Jane Doe.
At this meeting, Bob can't seem to help himself. After
some like questioning, he reveals that he knows where to
find the Jane Doe's purse, but that he wants money
for that information.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
He thinks he's smarter than everyone else.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
Right, They always do, They really do. They always do,
and in this way where it's just like you think
you basically figured out a way to get paid for
your drugs or whatever it else it is you're doing totally.
But also it's that part of I don't know if
it's always psychopaths or but that they have to talk
to police like it's part of the it's part of

(01:21:48):
the yes that they want to be known. They want
people to talk to them about it, it's what makes
them special totally. He wants money for the information about
where Jane Doe's purse is. He also wants help getting
a few traffic to gets taken care of. Dude. When
the secret witness staffer tells Bob everything he wants to hear,
Bob shares exact directions to the location of Jane Doe's

(01:22:09):
purse and police immediately find that purse and the driver's
license inside, which identifies the Jane Doe as thirty year
old Belinda Joe Stark. She was last seen in June,
around the same time Dawn was reported missing and when
the survivor of Bob's sexual assault reported being attacked. Incredibly,

(01:22:29):
Bob Maury, no longer an anonymous tipster and probably a
serial rapist and killer, collects the reward for his information
about the purse.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Stop it stop okay you think.

Speaker 3 (01:22:43):
You don't get the only frustrating story about how fucked
things are and work and continue to care. By this point,
police have collected some solid evidence. It's mostly thanks to
Bob himself, who's arguably maybe the dumbest person on the planet.
All the investigators have Bob's fingerprints that are all over

(01:23:04):
Belinda Joe's purse, as well as all over the envelope
left by the tipster at the drop off location. They
also show a blanket recovered near Belinda Joe's body to
two of Bob's former roommates, who confirmed that it looks
identical to one he used to have at his home.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
This is giving me like remember the movie River's Edge. Yes,
it's like giving me like vibes of that. Yeah, you know, yes,
kind of like scumbag that's doing stuff around town and
people kind of stupid getting away with him because it's
the eighties.

Speaker 3 (01:23:37):
On November sixth, nineteen eighty seven, investigators arrest Bob Maurray
and charge him with the murders of Avril Whedon, Belinda
Joe Stark, and Don berry Hill. He is also charged
with rape. When this case goes to trial, witnesses testify
to seeing Bob with these women before they disappeared, and
some even tell the court that Bob admitted to murdering women.

(01:23:58):
A former co worker test that Bob Morey once told
her quote, listen, bitch, I have killed before, and you'll
be just one more. I'm going to snuff you out.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:24:10):
End quote so it's nice because these days you could
turn around and report that as a co worker of
this person. But the key witness in this case is
Shirley Landreth. Over the past three or so years, Shirley
has spoken on the phone with the tipster somewhere around
twenty times, and she has processed his disturbing, ultra specific

(01:24:33):
tips that successfully lead to the recovery of three bodies
and repeated reward payouts. By this point, Shirley has revealed
her recording of the tipster's voice to investigators. They've listened
to it, compared it with Bob's own voice, and determined
it is the same man. It fits into the prosecution's
narrative that Bob carried out these murders himself, which is

(01:24:54):
how he had these tips in the first place. When
Shirley takes the stand, she tells the court that she
believed the tipster is Bob Mourray, pointing out the similarities
in their words like meters instead of feet, and the
tone of voice. She says, quote, the speed of the speech,
the pushiness of it, the way certain words are grouped together,
the abruptness of the way he terminates conversations.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
How scary that the whole time though, she goes home
from work and he could know who she is.

Speaker 3 (01:25:21):
You know what I mean. Yeah, it's not a big place.
I wouldn't sleep at night if I were her, I'd
be so scared. It would be really scary. Bob Moray
never admits to any of the crimes he's charged with,
and he brags that no jury would dare convict him.
But if there's one thing we know about Bob Morury,
he's dumb. He has found guilty of rape and murder

(01:25:43):
and to this day remains on death row at San Quentin.
Now known as the Tipster Killer, he is thought to
be responsible for other unsolved murders in Shasta County. Definitely,
because Bob is never confessed, we do not know his motive,
but it has been theoretic is that he liked playing
games with the police through those tips. Reports very on

(01:26:05):
how much Bob Morray collected from the Secret Witness tip line,
but we do know it was somewhere around a few
thousand dollars, which would be around eight thousand dollars in
today's money. He used it to buy, among other things,
a new motorcycle, but thanks to Shirley Landreth and her
work at the Secret Witness tip Line. She trusted her gut,

(01:26:26):
she kept him talking, and she did that write up
until his arrest. A few years after the trial. A
reading newspaper features a story about Shirley Landreth and her
deep commitment to the community via her involvement in Bob
Moorey's case, but it also talks about her participation in
local food drives, screening programs for sick children, and more.

(01:26:47):
In the article, she's quoted as simply saying, I like
to help people. Oh my God. Shirley Landreth passes away
in nineteen ninety four at the age of sixty two.
She had cancer. Today, the Secret Witness tip Line of
Shasta County still exists, and just like Shirley Landreth, its
current operators are committed to keeping callers anonymous. It takes

(01:27:10):
very special circumstances like a suspected serial killer repeatedly calling
in for months for that to change. As Detective Monday
once told reporters, quote, it's secret witness, not secret suspect, damn.
And that's the story of a serial killer known as
the Tipster Killer and Shirley Landreth, the tip line operator
who helped take him down.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
I mean, Ken, we get a made for TV movie immediately.

Speaker 3 (01:27:34):
Yeah, that's incredible, isn't that good?

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
Yeah? I had never heard of that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
Yeah I had either.

Speaker 2 (01:27:41):
That's just so sad, I mean, and then he was
getting money from it, which just feels so dirty.

Speaker 3 (01:27:46):
Yeah. Ugh.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
And this is exactly why we've decided to bring fucking
horay back, because we want to end this on a
cheery note, not just here. So we're doing fucking horays again.
You guys, just send us what your fucking horay is, like,
the good thing happening for you this week, this month,
this year, this life, the thing that you're excited about,
looking forward to, or have had happened to you or

(01:28:09):
happened to other people, or just things are happy about.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
And you can.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
Comment on our social media or email it to us,
or do whatever the fuck you know, yell it into
the sky. You can hashtag it fucking horay the end.
That was so much information, Jesus, that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
Was a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
Okay, you have one.

Speaker 3 (01:28:26):
I I go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
Okay, this one's called fucking horays. Are we still doing these?

Speaker 3 (01:28:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):
Hey, podcasters, I'm not sure if we're still doing fucking horays.
But maybe this is just for myself to have a
record to look back on bad days. I turned thirty
in five days, and although I dread the Big three
to zero, my high school self and even my twenty
five year old self would be so proud of the
person I have become and how far I've come from
where I was and where I could have been, which

(01:28:54):
I fucking hear you from growing up surrounded by drugs,
suss ass people and not always loving home. I am
making it in this world day after day and looking
back only a little other than the fond memories, I've
beaten the statistics of a poverty stricken drug using jailbird
shell of a person like the people I.

Speaker 3 (01:29:13):
Grew up around.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
And for that, I say fucking hooray. Stay sexy and
listen to Joe Dirt when he says keep on keeping
on and life's a guard and dig it because that
mullet wearing dude is right, Kelsey. Yeah, shout out to
someone that means a lot to me that I grew
up with and went through the same crazy shit.

Speaker 3 (01:29:31):
Kelsey.

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):
We beat the statistics and grabbed life by the balls.
To Kelsey, so I E and euy Are you serious?
I swear.

Speaker 3 (01:29:40):
Oh they're best friends were life. Oh, Kelsey, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
I'm so proud of you guys. And I heard this, like,
you know, one of those fucking quotes on social media.
It's like no one is cheering for you harder than
your childhood self. Who's watching you from the sidelines now
going that's right?

Speaker 3 (01:29:55):
Hell yeah, you're doing it. Hell yah, you're doing it.
Hellya Okay and Kelsey congratulations. All right, here's this one.
It says, hey, howdy, hey, ladies with Izzy. After owning
our house for not even a full year, our basement
flooded during a twenty four hour long power outage caused
by a tornado. Jesus, picture me home alone with a

(01:30:17):
bowl from the kitchen, baling water out of the basement
like it was a sinking boat. Sadly, it was all
in vain, and we ended up with a foot of
floodwater in our basement for roughly eighteen hours. Everything was trashed.
How is this a fucking horay, you may ask, because
after fighting like hell against the water and having our
basement look like an absolute war zone for four months,

(01:30:39):
we finally got our drywall replaced. The carpet and pad
were a total loss, but it feels good to finally
be taking our basement back. Fucking horay for home ownership,
even the really shitty parts. Stay sexy and for the
love of God, get a sump pump with a battery.
Back up Ashley with an eye.

Speaker 2 (01:30:56):
Oh my God, Like, I need to listen to that
because our basement has flooded.

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):
Multiple buckings. Go get that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
I'm gonna that's good advice.

Speaker 3 (01:31:02):
So scary, so surviving that, getting through it and.

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):
Still having a fucking horay even though it's like, Yeah,
that's the way to live your.

Speaker 3 (01:31:10):
Life and being grateful for what you have. Yeah, send
us your fucking hoorrays and stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
Our editor is Aristotle oce Vedo.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
Our researchers are Maaron McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:31:43):
Follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
Listen to my Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:31:50):
And now you can watch us on exactly Right's YouTube page.
While you're there, please like and subscribe. Goodbybye,