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Rachel, Allison, and Kim don’t know each other. They don’t even live in the same town. Using old-school detective work and modern-day cyber tools, Detective Dave uncovers the disturbing way in which the three victims are linked and, in the process, reveals a family of like-minded predators.

WARNING: This case involves the sexual assault of children. Listener discretion is advised.

Read Transcript

Paul:  Hey, Small Town Fam, this is Paul Holes. Make sure you subscribe to The Briefing Room with Detectives Dan and Dave. Season 2 is out now. Subscribe now and thanks.

Zibby:  Please be warned that the details of this case are graphic and may be difficult to hear. It is not an episode for young listeners.

[music]

Dave:  She disclosed to a doctor the extra details on this child protective services, cross report was mother has heard this disclosure from her daughter personally and does not believe her.

Yeardley: Ah.

Zibby:  No.

Dave:  So, we’ve got a failure to protect issue here.

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  I’m Zibby and we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  To sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I am Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave. We’re identical twins and we’re detectives in small town USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together we’ve worked on hundreds of cases including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse, and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, places, and certain details including relationships have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dave:  Though we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  Today, on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan:  So glad to be back.

Yeardley:  And we have Detective Dave.

Dave:  Good afternoon.

Yeardley:  Good afternoon, sir.

Dave:  I sounded cheery.

Yeardley:  You did, chipper. So, Dave, you’re in the hot seat today. You have a case for us. Tell us about that.

Dave:  Well, just to get this out of the way, it’s something that concerns me about my caseload specifically. It’s not like an assault or a murder case. These are especially sensitive because of the content, subject matter, and the victims that are involved. I’m terrified that I out one of my victims. So, it’s imperative that our listeners know that we’re changing relationships, we’re changing names. We don’t give out specifics. We speak in pretty broad and general terms and that’s intentional. So, I’m not giving away too much that would allow someone to track down a particular case.

Yeardley:  Absolutely. We appreciate that.

Dave:  So, this case dates back to 2012 and over the course of almost three years, we come across three named victims that are victims of sex abuse. All three of these victims are known to the suspect, suspect is Dylan. And all three of these girls are under the age of 10 when they suffer the abuse at the hands of Dylan. This case comes to me originally in 2012 from a cross report from our child protective services.

Yeardley:  And what’s a cross report?

Dave:  The laws in our state are that any report or concern of abuse that could be anywhere from a threat of harm, like the children are in an environment where drugs are being used, where a sex offender lives with the parent, could be that the living conditions in the house are such that it’s an unhealthy or dangerous environment for children. Anything across that spectrum where the children might have some issues, those generate calls to child protective services and they in turn will cross report it to us. So, it’s kind of an FYI, “Hey, this is what we have a report of you guys might want to be aware of this too.” In this case, a girl who was 10 at the time, she reports that her uncle, unnamed uncle, just says uncle, had touched her privates and there wasn’t any other information given.

 So, I went out, talked with that child’s mother. The child in this case, her name’s Rachel. She’s developmentally disabled. She’s not as verbal as one might expect. But Rachel, in her disclosure, it’s very general. No context, no detail. She discloses that it’s her uncle that had touched her privates. I researched the only biological uncle that she has that I’m suspecting is my suspect in this case, and he’s a registered sex offender. So, I’m thinking I’m on the right trail here. But in speaking with the family, he had been living in another state for years, so he’s got an alibi. I can’t place him in the state around the time that she says that she was sexually abused by her uncle. But she’s very clear that somebody touched her privates and she refers to this person as uncle.

 And in asking the family could it be anybody else, they’re all shaking their heads like, “No, that’s who she calls her uncle. That’s all she knows as her uncle.” So, at that point, I don’t have much to go on. And we set it aside. I let the mom know, get a hold of me if she comes up with more detail, and she assures me she would.

Yeardley:  Do you ask her to describe the man she’s calling uncle, or we automatically assume it’s the uncle who lives in another part of the country.

Dave:  I never spoke with the girl at that time, just the mother. And that was right after I became a detective. I would certainly handle that circumstance different now that I’ve got some years under my belt. I wish I would have gone to that girl right at that moment and spoken to her, turns out that I wouldn’t have gotten anything from her anyway, because the first time we get her forensically interviewed, she doesn’t disclose anything.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Dave:  So, there’s no disclosure. She’s not giving us any details. And I’m thinking, “Okay, well, I don’t have anything to go on now.”

Zibby:  So how did the information originally come to you? Was it that the little girl told her parents, my uncle had touched me, and then the parents called you concerned.

Dave:  So, Rachel had been given a medical examination by a nurse practitioner, and during that medical exam, they had the safety talk. She discloses in very general detail that she had been touched on her privates. Doesn’t give any context to that, but says that it’s her uncle.

Zibby:  And that’s the cross reporting.

Dave:  Yes. That gets reported to child protective services. That then, in turn, is forwarded to law enforcement.

Yeardley:  Was Rachel seeing a doctor because she was complaining about pain?

Dave:  No, just a general wellness check on the child. There’s nothing that really prompts her having to go to the doctor, like irritation down on her genitals. There’s nothing like that. It’s just a general wellness check and the nurse practitioner being thorough. So, that case goes stagnant for me. I still think that I need to be looking at this biological uncle, but he’s been out of state. Fast forward a few months, Rachel has another doctor’s appointment and she discloses a little bit more detail this time. She refers to her uncle as Uncle Dylan. So, now I’m thinking, who’s Dylan? So, now I actually have a person to look at. And before I go talk to Dylan, I want an actual forensic interview with one of our forensic interviewers to get those extra details that I need for my investigation to confront that guy.

 So, Rachel gets forensically interviewed, and she discloses two specific instances that she recalls involving Uncle Dylan. And one of them is at the house where she lives with her mom and grandma and some other people who swing in and out of the house every once in a while. She remembers Uncle Dylan coming over, and she wakes up in the middle of the night while she’s asleep in the living room. And he puts his hands on her body and touches her inappropriately.

Zibby:  Oh.

Yeardley:  Oh, no, no.

Dave:  She goes on to describe one more incident, and she recalls it being around the time of Uncle Dylan’s birthday. So, that gives me a pretty specific reference, and it’s a fairly critical detail because she’s associating this birthday with this abuse. So, those are details that really perk my ears when I’m hearing those in an interview. Why does she remember this specific time in her life and she’s just relating a date to an experience?

Zibby:  Does she disclose more details about what happened to her this time?

Dave:  Yes. She talks about Uncle Dylan being over at the house and she had gone to sleep. She’s in the room with her brother. Her door is closed but not locked. And sometime in the middle of the night, closer to the morning, she remembers hearing the door open. And she opens her eyes slightly and sees that it’s uncle Dylan. And she’s already got this other experience with him in the living room in her head. So, he approaches her bed and puts his hands on her in a way that made her really uncomfortable.

Yeardley:  Oh, boy.

Zibby: : Oh.

Dave:  So, she’s ID’ing him. It’s not the boogeyman, it’s not some other remembering that it’s Uncle Dylan. And this happens for a few seconds, and he calmly walks out of the room, closes the door behind him, and she hears him get into a car outside the house and drive off.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Dave:  So, she is typical of a lot of sex abuse victims, especially at that age, 10 and under, even older ones. She’s afraid for two reasons. One is that she doesn’t understand what happened. She’s developmentally delayed and she’s also scared that she did something wrong and she’s going to get in trouble if she tells anybody about it. So that explains this delayed disclosure and not getting many details out of her. But now at least I’ve got something to work with. Why do they call him Uncle Dylan? He’s referred to as Uncle Dylan because he is the other uncle’s friend and kind of grew up with this guy.

Yeardley:  Oh, the sex offender uncle.

Dave:  The sex offender uncle has got a friend who has an affinity for young girls. So it kind of threw me. Now there’s another uncle. I thought there wasn’t an uncle at first, but turns out there is. There just wasn’t a biological uncle. I didn’t ask the right questions. Is there anybody she could refer to as uncle? Is where I should have gone. Again, first year being a detective, you learn those nuanced questions sometimes will elicit a little bit more information from the family.

Yeardley:  And how old is Dylan?

Dave:  He’s 25.

Yeardley:  Okay.

Zibby:  And what do Rachel’s parents have to say about these new details? She’s named Dylan specifically.

Dave:  When the family learns these details, the family starts texting Uncle Dylan and Uncle Dylan’s family and basically said, “What the hell did you do to her?”

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Zibby:  So, now he’s aware that there’s an allegation.

Dave:  Right. So, I talked to Uncle Dylan, and as I said, he’s aware that there’s this allegation out there. And I said, “Any reason why a detective would be knocking on your door?” “No, I have no idea.” Lie number one. Right.

Zibby:  And you knew it at that point.

Dave:  Yeah. The family self-reports that they’ve let the cat out of the bag. I saw Yeardley roll her eyes, kind of an ongoing thing on this podcast where we go, ugh.

Yeardley:  Ugh.

Dave:  You serious?

Yeardley:  Just zip it.

Dave:  Right. Call me, not him.

Yeardley:  Right.

Dave:  So, he’s aware but now those are also good opportunities for me to see how deceptive is this guy going to be? The first question I ask is, “Any idea why I’d want to talk to you?” “No. Have no idea.” I said, “Well, I’d really like you to come down to the police station.” I don’t like. And Dan probably would agree, interviewing someone on their property, in their environment does not lend itself to an advantage for me. They can control the flow of what’s going on. They’re distracted. They’re not focused on what we’re talking about, and they feel comfortable there. I want him to come down to the police station and talk to me, and I even give him the guarantee that whatever we talk about, you’re walking back out the front door of the police station.

 But I want to get him in a controlled environment where there’s no distractions. The phone isn’t ringing. Nobody’s coming home after work and interrupting our interview. So, he agrees to come down to the police station and talk to me. I interview him for maybe 30, 45 minutes, and during that time, he’s denying. Says, “No, I don’t know why she would say that.” Agrees that she has no reason to be making these allegations against him because they’re on pretty good terms. But there’s no admissions from him and I ask some follow-up questions. “Would you take a polygraph?” “I don’t know if I want to do that.”

Yeardley:  Really?

Dave:  Okay. Again, my interest is piqued. Why not take the opportunity to clear yourself? It’s his choice. And he basically tells me, “I’ve got other things I got to do today, but if you need to talk to me, feel free to reach out. I’ll be happy to talk to you again. Okay.” For detectives, these are the very frustrating cases where I have probable cause. I’m thinking, this guy did this. How do I prove it? I’ve got to be able to bridge that gap between more likely than not and beyond a reasonable doubt and that is an enormous leap to get over that hurdle sometimes, especially in this case where I’ve got the girl saying, this happened, I’ve got him saying, “No,” I have no witnesses and I have no evidence.

Yeardley:  And the fact that she’s developmentally delayed, does that make it harder to make her testimony more credible in front of a jury because they think, well, she’s more susceptible to being confused?

Dave:  That’s certainly a consideration that I was worried about, is how articulate is she going to be able to be, and can she sway a grand jury and ultimately a trial jury with what she’s telling us? I believe what she’s telling me. There’s no incentive for her to be throwing Uncle Dylan under the bus. She’s telling what she experienced. To me that’s credible, to somebody who maybe hasn’t, like a juror that hasn’t had these types of interactions or have been exposed to this type of caseload, they might not see the same credibility factors that I’m seeing.

[Break 1]

Yeardley:  So, with no physical evidence and no witnesses, this is really a he said, she said situation. What do you do with that?

Dave:  Well, I filed this case away kind of in the “I bet you I hear his name again, I’ll deal with this guy at some point.” Fast forward a couple years after that, and Uncle Dylan has moved on with his life. He’s no longer connected to Rachel’s family because of this divide they had with the disclosure. He now has a girlfriend. And typical of sex offenders, he’s got a girlfriend with an eight-year-old girl.

Zibby:  Oh.

Yeardley:  No, no, no.

Zibby:  I knew it.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Dave:  This eight-year-old girl, she is guarded, but she has a medical exam and gets seen for a rash. And so, she gets taken to the doctor, and during that, she discloses that mommy’s boyfriend Dylan has been touching her. So, that generates another cross report to child protective services. And my partner gets that call from them saying, “Hey, we’ve got this guy.” I hear him on the phone. His desk is right beside mine. And he says, “Dylan.” And gives the last name. And I sit straight up in my chair. And I said, “What is that? What are you dealing with?” And he starts telling me, “I said, that’s my case.” That’s number two that’s come forward. And I knew it would happen. And Matt says, “You want to take that case, be my guest.”

Yeardley:  And Matt’s your partner?

Dave:  That’s my partner. And he says, “Hey, yeah, absolutely.” And that’s how it works. If I get a case where it’s a victim of his or a suspect, typically, we’ll follow those through because we know the whole family dynamic.

Yeardley:  Sure.

Dave:  There’s exceptions to that, but in this one, Matt says, run with it. So, we go out and meet child protective services at the house where this girl, her name’s Allison, she’s eight years old. She lives with her mother, Dylan, and Allison’s two brothers. Allison’s mother has been dating Dylan for a matter of months, but they live together. Dylan isn’t a very ambitious person. He has no work ethic whatsoever. He’s jobless. But the mother, she works pretty hard, actually, and she works graveyard shift. So, when mother goes away to work, who is left to take care of kiddos? Dylan.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Dave:  So, he’s babysitting the two brothers and Allison. Allison shares a bedroom with her younger brother, and they have bunk beds. Allison’s bunk is the top bunk. The other brother has his own bedroom. And then Dylan and the mother have their own bedroom. So, Allison has disclosed to a doctor, which gets the ball rolling on CPS, which ends up with us knocking on their door. I remember walking up to the door. The extra details on this child protective services cross report was, mother has heard this disclosure from her daughter personally and does not believe her.

Zibby:  No.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Dave:  So, we’ve got a failure to protect issue here.

Zibby:  Right.

Dave:  And DHS has to deal with that right away. While there’s this investigation into sex abuse, we’re not going to allow Dylan to be around any of the kids. So, either he’s got to leave or the kids are going.

Zibby:  So, when you arrive at the house with CPS, child protective services, do you lay the information out for that family right there on the spot and say, these kids are coming with us or Dylan has to be removed from the house? Does that all happen in person in that confrontation? I mean, how does that work.

Dave:  In this situation and in others that’s the way it happened. There were two CPS workers and there were two of us detectives there. When you start pulling kids out of homes and taking kids from their parents, those turn into volatile situations. So, my partner and I are there to partially be security for these two female CPS workers that are potentially dealing with a whole hornet’s nest of angry family members. And at the same time, I want to get my eyes on all the players. I want to see what the dynamic is in that situation. I spoke with Allison’s mother and she confirms to me, “I think my daughter’s lying,” and I did what I always do with those families. I say, I just encourage you to keep an open mind.

Yeardley:  Mm-hmm.

Zibby:  Then were the kids taken in that moment?

Yeardley:  We took the kids, and it’s not the police that take the kids. I don’t have the power as a police officer to remove children, but child protective services does.

Zibby:  Was the mom hysterical or did she get it? What was she like?

Dave:  She was appropriately upset, but she wasn’t hysterical. I was able to calm her down within a reasonable amount of time. I mean, taking children from a mother, I can’t imagine what she was going through. But I wouldn’t say that she handled it inappropriately other than saying, “I don’t believe my daughter.” She had an understandable reaction. You’ve heard that from me before, that it’s an understandable reaction. She’s dealing with a lot. I know it wasn’t the first time she had heard this allegation, and it’s not the first time she’d said that “I believe my daughter’s lying,” but she hugged her kids. She was crying, but she wasn’t inconsolable.

Yeardley:  And because Dylan hadn’t been previously charged with anything, he’s not in the system as someone with a prior history as a sex offender. He’s just coming up on your detective radar because he’s not on the books.

Dave:  All he would have in our system would be where he’s mentioned as a suspect in a sex abuse case. But I remembered him. Yeah. There is two systems at work here .[Yeardley laughs]

Dan:  And the most important system is-

Yeardley: – is Dave’s.

Dan:  Yeah. Dave knows that guy’s no good.

Dave:  Yeah. So, my probable cause. I’m feeling really good about probable cause now because these two girls don’t know each other. Allison and Rachel have never met, but they’re describing similar things. But I still haven’t had Allison interviewed forensically at our child advocacy center.

Yeardley:  And what does a child forensic interview entail exactly?

Dave:  So a forensic interview would take place at a child advocacy center, the one that we have here, I think you’ve heard me rave about. They are widely considered among myself and other sex crimes detectives as the most important and valuable resource we have when it comes to these investigations. Forensic interviewers are very educated on child development. They are also trained to the extreme on being able to ask the right questions, the right way of children, and it’s very open ended. The beginning of a forensic interview is typically rapport building, and it’s the chance for the interviewer to gauge the child’s verbal and cognitive development. So, you’re asking questions that have nothing to do with the topic that we’re really there for. They might ask, “Tell me about your birthday, what you guys do. Tell me about your favorite memory,” those types of things.

 To see if this child can provide an open-ended narrative, to see how they recall details. Also to pick up on the type of sentence structure they speak in, what types of words they use. It’s all a way for our interviewer to get a baseline about where this child is, as well as just seeing their general demeanor when they’re engaged in small talk. At some point, the forensic interviewer will ask them, “So what brings you to our center today?” And we hear what the child has to say. And sometimes the child knows exactly why they’re there. Sometimes they look at you and, “Well, I was told that I was just going to a meeting.”

 So, sometimes they have to pull information from the child. There’s other times where the child knows what’s up. There’s other times where you might have to prompt the child about the actual subject. But we do our best not to introduce the suspect’s name or the subject. We want it to come from the child themselves. We might say, are people worried about you because of something? “Oh, yeah. Because Uncle Dylan keeps putting his hands on me.” In Allison’s case, she’s a tough nut to crack. With her eight years comes the life experience of a 15- or 16-year-old.

Yeardley:  Oh.

Dave:  She’s been around drugs. She’s been around the unhealthy environment. Her mother’s got a picker for men that you might consider broken. She’s in a relationship with Dylan. And when her daughter, who has no history of making outlandish comments, when her daughter discloses sex abuse, mom’s default is to side with the boyfriend and not believe her daughter. Frustrating, I see you all shaking your heads.

Yeardley:  That’s heartbreaking.

Dave:  Well, it’s so common that we hear from you that occurs. It angers me. Right. I try to put myself in parent’s positions in these situations because they might think that this is a reflection on them. And I would never make my child available to a sex offender. How dare you? Like, this is an impeachment of their character. We’ve talked about this at length, but sex offenders are master manipulators. They get people to trust them. So, it’s trying to get that lodged into someone’s head about what sex offenders do and that they’re a victim too.

Yeardley:  And you’ve always said that one of the things sex offenders do well is they blend in.

Dave:  They do.

Yeardley:  And they don’t call attention to themselves.

Dave:  Correct. So, this mother doesn’t believe what her daughter has to say.

Zibby:  When you made that initial house call, you didn’t interview Allison yourself?

Dave:  No. At the house? I didn’t speak to her at all. I knew that she had already made this disclosure once. I’m going to limit the amount of time she has to do that, and I’d rather it be one of our fantastic forensic interviewers rather than knuckle dragon cop.

[laughter]

Dave:  So, I’m going to put her in a more comfortable position with somebody who’s not a police officer, a forensic interviewer. In this case, Allison is not ready to talk at all. And she actually says, “I don’t want to talk about this. I already told my mom, and I already told those other people about what he did. Why do I need to tell you too?”

Yeardley:  Wow. But what’s interesting is she actually acknowledges that there is something to tell.

Dave:  Right. So, that’s not a nondisclosure, that’s “I’m not ready to talk yet.” And this case taught me patience. Had to wait. I already know that I’ve got a bad guy out there, but I need some more information for me to get to where I can put bracelets on him.

Zibby:  Was Dylan there when you and CPS showed up at the house.

Dave:  Yes. I remember going to Allison’s house, and I remember him standing behind the mother while I’m at the door. He and I locked eyes, and he averted his eyes very quickly. And come to find out after that meeting where the kids were removed from the house until mom figures out how to be protective, that Dylan takes off.

Yeardley:  Oh, he leaves her.

Dave:  He leaves her and he starts couch surfing, and he’s going from house to house. Whoever would let him stay, because this mother knows that as long as he’s around, child protective service is going to say, “Well, she didn’t get rid of the sex offender. The kids aren’t coming back to the house,” so she’s got to play ball with child protective services.

Yeardley:  I see. But was it really that the mother was just playing ball to get her kids back, or was she actually taking the allegations against Dylan seriously now?

Dave:  After this child’s nondisclosure at our child advocacy center, I go back and recontact this mother, and she’s still on Dylan’s side, but she’s a little bit more open minded. And I have to keep an open mind that there’s a possibility this did happen, that your daughter is not lying to you. And what happens when I tell you that she’s disclosed x, y and z and that I believe her? She says, “I’ll serve his ass up on a silver platter for you, if that’s the case.”

Yeardley:  Oh.

Dave:  And I’m like, “Okay,” mom’s starting to turn the corner.

Zibby:  And at this point, are you allowed to tell her that there have been other accusations made against Dylan by another young girl?

Dave:  I’m guarded with that information with this mother, because I’m still not trusting her that she won’t go to him.

Yeardley:  And tip him off.

Dave:  Right. So, I’m a little bit more guarded with her than I would with other mothers, where I might say, “Well, by the way, this is also the third girl or fifth girl that’s come forward and said this.”

Yeardley:  Right. I see. Meanwhile, you’re still in this situation where your hands are tied, because now you have this physical evidence, you have this rash, which means, obviously, something isn’t right. But Allison hasn’t disclosed anything, so you can’t move on Dylan.

Dave:  Correct. So, another occasion where we have to hurry up and wait, and I tell the DHS workers, if she gets to a point where she’s ready, let me know, and we’ll get back to the forensic interview. A few weeks go by, and we’re there so that she’s ready to talk. During that interview, Allison starts talking about what would happen when mom went away to work, his babysitting style, which was, she got a lot of attention and her brothers didn’t get a whole lot. She describes times where she would be in the bathroom and she would be taking a bath at night, getting ready for bed, and he would walk in to the bathroom, close the door behind him while her brothers are off doing other things in the house, and he would take that opportunity to abuse her.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Dave:  She describes exactly how he’s positioned on his knees, seated as he reaches his hand over into the tub. She’s telling us what positions they’re in. She describes another instance where, during TV time, Dylan would do some of the grooming techniques we’ve discussed. He’d ask her to sit on his lap to cuddle. He would test her physical boundaries with seemingly innocent touching. But based on her disclosure, she perceived these instances as creepy and inappropriate.

 When it was time for bed, she used to have this conscious thought that when she got up under her bunk bed, she would roll as far away from the edge of the bunk bed over to the wall side, because she knew that at some point, there would be a hand on her in the middle of the night, and she wanted to make it as hard on him as possible to get his hands on her. So, she would sleep rolled over with her front side hugging the wall.

Zibby:  That is a nightmare.

Dave:  When she described that, I had tingles in the interview because I said, “That is an amazing detail.”

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Dave:  It speaks to what this girl was experiencing every night before her eyes closed and she went to sleep, where her state of mind was and really infuriated me, I can’t wait to put handcuffs on this guy. While I’m at the child advocacy center, I get a report dropped in front of me, and it’s from 2012, and it’s from another girl who talks about Dylan. And during this interview, she did not disclose any sexual abuse, didn’t want to engage. And back at that time, the practice was without a disclosure or without any information whatsoever. If we had just a child who went into the room and didn’t even say a word, it might not necessarily generate a police report, but we’d have a report from child protective services on, this is what happened. So, that gets brought to my attention, and I say, “There’s number three.”

[Break 2]

Zibby: So, you now have a third report about Dylan specifically. Jesus.

Yeardley:  Good God.

Dave:  Yeah. I got three victims now, and I need to track this victim down. And that victim’s name is Kim.

Yeardley:  And how old is she?

Dave:  She’s eight.

Zibby:  Now, if this was 2012, would Kim predate both Rachel and Allison?

Dave:  Kim predates Rachel and Allison. She predates Rachel by a few months.

Zibby:  Okay.

Dave:  Turns out Dylan had been dating this woman who had a daughter, Kim, and it predates his experience with Rachel. But certainly, there’s probably some overlap here because Rachel describes multiple instances where Dylan put his hands on her. But Kim is similar to Allison in which she’s got this fear that she’s going to get in trouble, that she bears some blame in this situation. And so, during her interview in 2012, she did not disclose anything.

Yeardley:  But why did DHS drop this report about Dylan in front of you now?

Dave:  They bring it to my attention just being proactive. Somebody got curious and said, “I wonder if that guy’s been a suspect before other than what we know about.” And they bring this case to me. So, I say, “Well, when I leave here, I’m going to follow up with that family.” They had moved to an opposite side of the state by now, but the mother says that, “Oddly enough, within the last couple of weeks, her daughter had started talking about Dylan,”

Yeardley:  Oh.

Dave:  Even though in this 2012 interview, she didn’t come forward with any information. Coincidentally, as she had gotten older, she starts asking her mom about Dylan, and she makes a reference to, she didn’t like Dylan because he asked her once to try, “baby making.”

Yeardley:  Oh.

Zibby:  Oh, my God.

Dave:  And I say, “Well, I need to get this girl interviewed.” So, I asked the mom if she can go to a nearby child advocacy center because we got them spaced out over the state. She says, “Well, I’m actually coming to your town next week. Can we try it then?”

Zibby:  Yes.

Dave:  Things are starting to fall into place. So, we get her interviewed, and her interview is similar to the other girls. She says that this guy’s kind of an opportunist when nobody’s around, that he will put his hands on her in a way that she feels is unsafe. And now that she’s gotten older, she realizes it’s not her fault.

Yeardley:  Did she give you a lot of details about Dylan?

Dave:  She’s not quite as detailed. She gives me a little bit more detail than Rachel, but less than Allison.

Yeardley:  I see.

Dave:  But now I’ve got Allison, Rachel, and Kim, and none of them know each other, and they’re all describing the same guy, doing the same type of stuff. So now I’m way over the top with probable cause here, and I feel like I’m beyond a reasonable doubt. I don’t have any physical evidence, but what are the chances, three girls that know this guy but don’t know each other all come up with the same story?

Yeardley:  Right.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Dave:  It’s not a story. It’s the truth. It’s what Dylan does. So, I start looking for Dylan, and I can’t find him. I find a house that he landed at some time after he broke up with Allison’s mom, and he spent a few days there. Then he moved on. So, I go out to his old former house that I had been to the first time we had Rachel come forward. He’s not hanging out there, and his family still lives there and they “Why are you looking for Dylan?” Okay, I’m not going to get much cooperation out of you guys. I end up getting information from a girlfriend that says, “He ended up over at this guy’s house.” And I said, “Does that guy have daughters?” And they said, “Well, he’s got nieces that go over to his house all the time.”

Yeardley:  Ah.

Dave:  So, I go over and speak with this guy. He lives in our town, and I start asking him questions. And I said, “Has this guy ever told you why he’s bouncing around from house to house?” And he says, “Well, he said something about child protective services wanted him to do a psychosexual evaluation, which is an evaluation by a psychologist.” You get a battery of tests to see where your fetishes and where your sexual proclivities lie. And at the end, the psychologist will advise whether or not they think that you’re a risk as a sex offender, what your strike zone is age wise, and what your general tendencies are towards sexual attraction. It’s a pretty in-depth test. I think the shortest one I’ve ever seen was 35 pages of narrative.

Zibby:  Good God.

Dave:  They’re comprehensive.

Zibby:  I guess they should be.

Dave:  Right. So, Dylan didn’t want to go through that. He’s not cooperative with child protective services. He’s not cooperative with me because now I can’t even track him down. I have no idea where he is.

Zibby:  Didn’t this friend of Dylan’s find it a bit disturbing that the police would want Dylan to take a psychosexual evaluation?

Dave:  Yeah. Guy says no. When he told me that he didn’t want to take this evaluation, I started asking him more questions, and he said basically that he had been accused of sexually abusing little girls. And he said, “Didn’t take me long for me to kick him out of my house.”

Yeardley:  Thank God.

Dave:  I said, “Well, where’d he go?” He said, “He moved out of state.” I said, “Well, which state?” And he gives me two states.

Zibby:  Two states.

Dave:  It’s either one which is in one direction, or another which is in a completely opposite direction. I say, “Well, geez, what a–”

Yeardley:  Thanks for nothing.

Dave:  Yeah. Where do I go from here?

Yeardley:  Where do you go from here?

Dave:  I go to his social media.

Yeardley:  [laughs]Again with the social media.

Zibby:  Here we go.

Dave:  Dylan’s got his page set to private, but he’s tagged in a few photos, and he’s tagged others in photos. So, I get a little bit more than I usually get with somebody with a private profile. And I look at one picture, which was taken within the past month, and it’s a picture of an intersection, and it’s snowy. So, it’s trying to be like an Ansel Adams, but it’s at this dumpy apartment complex somewhere.

[laughter]

Dave:  And I can just barely make out what I think are the streets on these street signs of this intersection. And I google it and it comes back to an address in this neighboring state.

Zibby:  Oh, my God.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Dave:  And I start doing a lot more research on Dylan’s family, and I find out who his brother and who his dad are. And I look up their address and it’s at the intersection of–

Yeardley:  That’s in the photo.

Zibby:  Stop it.

Dave:  –in the photo. So, I google this apartment complex where I think that it is, and I actually come down to, I think he’s in one of these two apartments, based on the angle.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Zibby:  This is some serious new agey detective work.

Yeardley:  Yeah, the modern sleuth.

Dave:  Yeah, I’m like, that’s like a back deck. And it must be based on the orientation of this building. It’s got to be one of these two apartments over here.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Dave:  I call that neighboring states agency and say, “Hey, I’ve got probable cause for this guy. I’m in the process of getting a warrant for his arrest for three victims here, and I want you to go pick him up.” They say, basically, “Once you get that warrant, let us know.” So, I get that warrant with full nationwide extradition, and I call them up and they’re on it. They’ve got a street crimes team that all they do is hunt for wanted people, especially the special request projects like this one.

Zibby:  Your town doesn’t have that? Is that like a separate budgeted thing that some cities have and some don’t?

Dave:  Yeah, we don’t have the budget for it and we don’t have the staffing, but I’ll tell you, when a request like that comes in, we’re all over it.

Zibby:  Okay.

Dave:  So, I get a call probably an hour after I make that call, and it’s the guy I’d spoken with earlier, and he says, “Hey, I’ve got a team on that apartment complex. And we ran the car, and it comes back to this name,” and it’s Dylan’s dad, and it’s registered to one of the apartments that I said it probably would be. I said, “Perfect. Any movement?” Now, we’ve been sitting out there. Well, I’ll let you know. I get a call the next day at about 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning, and they were out there that night. They stay there throughout their shift, handed off to the next shift into the day. They’re just sitting on this house. And the guy says, “You ready for some good news?” I said, “I am ready for some good news. What do you got?”

 He says, “Well, Dylan stepped outside this morning to smoke a cigarette, and we immediately recognized him. And we ran upstairs and he literally pissed all over himself. He left a puddle on the balcony.” And I said, “You’re kidding me?” And he said, “No, I thought you’d appreciate that.” He said, “Well, we’re buttoning him up and we’re just going to send him down to our jail and you guys can get the extradition taken care of.” But, “Hey, pleasure doing business with you. If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to holler.”

Yeardley:  That’s cool.

Zibby:  Yes.

Dave:  Insult to injury, right? He wets himself. So, Dylan gets extradited back to our state. He gets assigned an attorney. We start down the process. As Dan knows, these things take months to resolve. The story ends abruptly, but he at some point says, “Uncle.”

[Laughter]

Zibby:  I see what you did there.

Dave:  And he takes a prison sentence of 19 years.

Zibby and Yeardley:  Wow.

Dave:  The story is not over.

Zibby and Yeardley:  Oh.

Dave:  Dylan goes to prison for 19 years. My partner Matt gets a case maybe a year later, and it’s another uncle that lives at the same address as Dylan used to live at, in the house that I had originally talked to him at. And it’s a disclosure by a little boy who describes being sexually abused by this other uncle.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Dave:  So, now we’ve got two sex offenders out of that house, and they’re from the same family, and they actually end up at the same prison.

Yeardley:  And how are they related?

Dave:  This guy is Dylan’s cousin.

Yeardley:  Oh, wow.

Dave:  And if that wasn’t bizarre enough, I get a third case months later that involves a 14-year-old girl and the new person who had moved into that house had plied her with alcohol one night and took advantage of her. That was a Facebook sting that I did where I took over this girl’s account and basically confronted him on Facebook. And he ends up confessing on Facebook and says, “Can we not talk about this? I really want to move on and live my life with my wife. I want to be happy. I made a mistake.”

Yeardley:  He’s married and he’s unrelated to Dylan and Dylan’s cousin.

Dave:  Correct.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Dave:  Just happened to move into the same house. So that’s the third one that I got out of that house within three years.

Yeardley:  That’s unbelievable and so disturbing. Are all three of them in prison now?

Dave:  Yeah, they’re all in prison.

Zibby:  That really does seem crazy coincidental, but I’m curious how much of that is just simply reflective of how rampant this thing is in your experience?

Dave:  Our town, as we all know, is a small town. And my partner and I are busy every single day of every week that we work. There’s no downtime. There are sex offenders among us, not trying to do the scare tactics or anything like that, but there are sex offenders everywhere. And it’s on the parents to educate their kids and on parents to be vigilant about the warning signs and who they’re allowing their kids to spend time around, who they expose them to. I’m not going to go out there and say that you pass 10 people on the sidewalk and at least one is a sex offender. But there’s certainly plenty of sex offenders in our local community to keep detectives in my agency and all the other agencies in our county busy every day that they work.

Zibby:  See, that feels like an epidemic to me. And if that’s happening in this small town, I feel like that’s happening everywhere.

Dave:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you speak about a case where you heard of a disclosure like this and you weren’t able to move quickly, where you just thought, “Oh, no, I have to sit on my hands and wait for more information because I just don’t have anything.” How is that for you? Where does that go in you?

Dave:  The biggest fear I have in this job, particularly, is that after I find out about a suspect doing something, my inability to arrest somebody, that something happens in that window of time, I think anybody that knows me knows that I am not afraid to put hooks on a bad guy, that I’m not afraid to arrest people. But with that goes a lot of responsibility when you are denying people their freedom and arresting them. I personally, and I know other cops feel the same way, is in my gut, I have to believe that I have probable cause to arrest that person. And I don’t arrest just based on probable cause. For a detective and their prosecutor, the difference is, I need to get over beyond a reasonable doubt too.

 So, do I want to take a case where I just feel like I’ve got about 58% of myself? I mean, all I need is 51% more likely than not this happened to arrest somebody, but beyond reasonable doubts high 90s right. I need to be like, this guy did it. And for me to put somebody in handcuffs and truly believe in that arrest, which is my litmus test, I need to have that. I need to have that kind of evidence or that gut feeling that’s corroborated by facts or by the suspect’s lies. Where I go, there’s no doubt in my mind, this happened. There’s a lot of responsibility that goes with that. When you’re taking people’s freedom, I don’t take it lightly.

[music]

Yeardley:  I’m so glad I asked that. Thanks for telling us this story, Dave.

Zibby:  Yeah, thank you.

Dave:  Thank you.

Zibby:  And to our listeners, please visit our resources and information page for helpful links relating to the content of today’s episode.

Yeardley:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  This episode was edited by Logan Heftel, Yeardley Smith, and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forest. Our associate producer is Erin Gaynor and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby:  If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com and become our pal on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam, so hit us up.

Yeardley:  Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes and we are part of Stitcher Premium now.

Zibby:  That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley:  Nobody’s better than you.

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