Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re all wonderfully well. We have fan favorite Lt. Ryan back with us today. So, just to refresh your memories, Ryan has given us a couple of cases over the seasons. One we called a “Race Against Time.” Another I called “Quicksand.” Ryan is great. Both of those episodes are worth a listen or a relisten if it’s been a while. So, for today, Ryan caught this case when he was still a sex crimes detective. The victim, whose father brings her to the police department to report the crime, is 17 years old. The man preying on her is 68. Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever be immune to the shocking ways people prey on others.

And you’ll actually hear me say in the first 10 minutes of this episode that I’m already pissed off. And I’ll just tell you, I wanted to rewrite the ending of this episode. I wanted a bigger hammer when it came to holding the predator responsible, and I wanted assurances that he wouldn’t prey on any other teenage girls. But as the saying goes, you can’t always get what you want. Here is “An Odious Obsession.”

Yeardley: Hi there, I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave: –And retired detectives from Small Town, USA.

Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare, personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul: Names, places, and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dave: -out of respect for what they’ve been through.

[unison]: Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley: Today on Small Town Dicks. My friends, I know you’re happy to be here, and I’m thrilled that you’re here. Guess who’s here with me? I have Detective Dan.

Dan: Hey, there.

Yeardley: Hey there. [laughs] Detective Dave.

Dave: Hello.

Yeardley: Hello. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: Hey.

Yeardley: Hey, hey. Oh, I love it so much. And Small Town Fam we are so thrilled to welcome back to the podcast fan favorite and certainly one of ours, Lieutenant Ryan.

Ryan: Hey, happy to be back, guys.

Yeardley: It’s so great to see you, Ryan, thank you so much. I actually know that this is one of your very precious days off and you’ve decided to spend it with us. So, we are deeply honored.

Ryan: Absolutely.

Yeardley: So, Ryan, you are an old hand at this now, so I’m going to hand it over to you and ask you how this case came to you.

Ryan: Sure. So, this case came to me back when I was a detective. I was working sex crimes. So, this case occurs in August of 2017. So, I get a call from my supervisor and he asks if I’m able to respond to meet with a father and his daughter. Apparently, there was a walk in to our district office and they wanted to report a crime. So, I first go out there and I meet with the father. His name is Hector. So, I meet with Hector, and I can already tell pretty quickly he’s somewhat emotional, he’s distraught of what’s going on. And the next person I meet and introduce myself to is his daughter Sophia. I can kind of tell that there’s some tension between Hector and Sophia.

So I asked Hector if he would step to the side and brief me of what’s going on. And so, what he tells me next is that he received some information from his neighbor Daniel and basically was asking him some questions about a recent trip that Hector took. So, Hector does work abroad, and sometimes he has to travel for work. And so, in this instance, Hector, about three to four weeks prior, he had taken a trip to Cuba. This is one of the few trips he took where he left his daughter Sophia at home. But she’s 17 years old, she’s a senior in high school. She’s not a girl that gets in any kind of trouble. She’s a rule follower. She does very well in school. She had good grades, good academics. And so he felt pretty comfortable with family living nearby, that he could leave Sophia at home.

Yeardley: And there’s no mom in the picture to stay with Sophia.

Ryan: So, Sophia’s mom lives in Iowa, so they’re separated, and she lives full time with her dad. So, she does travel to see her mom pretty frequently. And whatever reason, the circumstance was probably because she was in school this week, Sophia decided to stay home. So, Hector tells me that a couple weeks after returning home, he’s having a conversation with Daniel, his neighbor. And Daniel starts asking him questions about how Hector’s father’s doing. And Hector being somewhat confused because Hector’s father is deceased. So, he kind of perplexed says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said, well, “Yeah, the elderly man that I saw at your house a couple weeks ago when you were out of town, remember?” And so, still somewhat confused, Hector says, “Okay, thank you. That wasn’t my father.” He immediately goes and approaches Sophia.

So, Sophia is confronted with who is this older man that Daniel is telling me about? So, pretty much immediately, Sophia tells her dad that it was somebody that she was in a romantic relationship with and Hector sees red initially and is not very happy about what he’s hearing. And so, after he gets some details of what occurred, he tells Sophia, we’re going to go to the sheriff’s office and report this incident. Sophia was not necessarily thrilled about this, but she was compliant, she was cooperative. So, after he gives me kind of the brief of what occurred, I sit with Sophia and I ask Hector to give us some privacy. Typically, victims are going to be a little bit more open when it’s just the two of you. So, I asked Sophia if she’ll meet with me in private. And Hector has no problem with that.

So, we go into an interview room, and I sit with Sophia. And she starts off the interview with, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound perverse, but this is my story. And so, she tells me that she was engaged in a relationship with a guy named Walter. Walter is nearly 70 years old. He’s 68. And Sophia tells me in December of 2016, coming up on a year, is when she met Walter, kind of funny after speaking to Hector, Sophia was getting into swing dancing. And so, Hector went to a couple clubs or dance studios with Sophia. He wanted to take Sophia to a place where she wouldn’t be harassed or constantly viewed at by young men.

Hector kind of had this fear that there would be a young, suave guy that would come over and sweep Sophia off her feet. So, he wanted to check these clubs out. And this particular club were all older people, so he felt pretty safe with Sophia dancing here. So, this was somewhat of a hobby of hers. So, she engages in this swing dance club, pretty innocent from what Hector thought. And then over time, Walter and Sophia start to develop, I would say, an emotional connection. And so, after a couple of months, this becomes almost like an obsession for both of them, Walter and Sophia. So, they start meeting on a very regular basis. A lot of times, they would meet at a Barnes & Nobles, they would meet at a mall.

They would walk around different places, and they would sit in the parking lot and talk for hours. And so that’s kind of how the relationship starts.

Yeardley: So, it starts off sort of platonically, or does Sophia see Walter as a grandfather figure? Just to restate? Sophia is 17 and Walter is 68.

Ryan: That’s correct. So, she never tells me that. It starts off like more of like a father figure. She does tell me that she’s pretty much attracted to Walter in the beginning because she used the word cultured man. She claims that he has a lot of history, a lot of knowledge, and she was into history, she was into her academics. And so, she was very much attracted to Walter’s brain and his viewpoint and insights into the world. And this kind of swept her off her feet. She had never been in a relationship before, admittedly, so she said, I spend most of my time in my schoolwork and really didn’t ever have time for a boyfriend. And she claims that boys her age are immature, stupid and dumb. So, this is what she finds attractive in Walter at this point.

Yeardley: And I’m guessing since they met, swing dancing. I mean, I’ve taken swing dancing, and it can be pretty frisky, pretty invigorating. So, Walter is perhaps in relatively good shape.

Ryan: It’s funny you say that. When I meet Walter, I’ll share with you my observations of him, but that is a safe assumption. Able to move and sweeps her off her feet in a sense. So, they start to develop this relationship, and then over time, Walter tells Sophia a couple of things. Number one, “He’s very big on this needs to be a secret. We need to be very cautious. You can’t tell anybody about us.” That’s very much the groundwork that Walter laid for Sophia. It was until a few months later. Now they’re approaching the summer. Sophia tells Walter that her father, Hector, is going to go on a work trip. And so, they start to plan, quite frankly, when she was going to lose her virginity.

Yeardley: We’re like eight minutes in and I’m already so mad. I’m so mad. Okay. God.

Ryan: I know.

Yeardley: Fuck.

Ryan: I know. So, Hector is gone for seven days, and three of those nights Walter spends over at Sophia’s house. And so, Daniel, the neighbor, is attuned to what’s happening and who’s in the neighborhood. You might even call him somewhat of a neighborhood watch. So, I actually found out later, when I do a query of calls for service in this neighborhood during this time frame, that Daniel actually called the sheriff’s office on the third night of seeing this car and makes mention that this vehicle that seems out of place is in his neighborhood. It’s been there for two nights and then it was gone for a night and now it’s back again for a third night. And he asked for deputies to come and check it out.

So, deputies do respond, they run the tag, it comes back registered to Walter, which I was able to find out and learn all this stuff after the fact. But there was really nothing out of place about it. It was parked legally. It wasn’t a stolen vehicle or anything. So, the deputy clears it out as a non-suspicious vehicle and goes along his way.

Yeardley: Is the deputy able to determine that Walter is going to Sophia’s house or just that the car is parked legally and we don’t have grounds here to have a report or anything?

Ryan: Yeah, so that’s what the deputy discovers is that he has no idea where the owner or the occupant of the vehicle is. But just like in any other neighborhood, you could have a guest over, even somebody, a family relative or family friend visiting. We get these calls and sometimes they’re nothing and so we just clear them out. But it was a good data point for me later on, following back up, to say that Walter’s vehicle was in fact in front of the house during this time frame. So, Sophia and Walter’s relationship continues, but it’s coming to an end and I’ll kind of go into that. So, Walter has become increasingly obsessive with Sophia. And so, there were two incidents actually, after Hector left, that Sophia went and spent the night at Walter’s house.

Sophia had told Hector, her dad, that she was going to be at a girlfriend’s house. And when she gets to Walter’s house, she is pretty disgusted with this condition. She says it’s a very dirty home, very cluttered, very dusty. And she was really shocked at the living condition that Walter was in. And so, kind of through his obsessive behavior and constantly messaging her and talking to her and the condition of his home and kind of feeling like she had been misled. She felt like Walter was presenting a much more sophisticated, wealthier than he was kind of living in a higher status. And she just was really turned off by what she saw at his home. And so, Sophia travels– actually shortly after her dad comes back, she travels to go visit her mom in Iowa.

And Sophia actually tells her mom that she’s in a relationship. She leaves out the fact that the person she’s talking to is 68, [Yeardley chuckles] but she does tell her mom, you know, I need some advice on how to break things off. Sophia sends some messages to Walter. And shortly after, their relationship ends, they remain friends and remain cordial. And so really, it was maybe two weeks after their ending of their relationship when Daniel, the neighbor, has a conversation with Hector. And they wind up in my office.

[Break 1]

Paul: Hey, Ryan, I’m sure this is standard across the United States. What’s the age of consent in your state?

Ryan: Yeah, so in our state, really, there’s a window. So, anybody who’s 15 and under is not allowed to have sex statutorily. But in the ages of 16 and 17, there is a window. We kind of refer it to as the Romeo and Juliet laws. It’s a sliding scale. So, 16 and 17 can have a sexual consensual relationship with anybody through the age of 23. So, 24 and beyond is restricted statutorily.

Paul: Okay. And not that it really matters, but how far away from 18 is Sophia?

Ryan: When they met in December of 2016, Sophia was 16. And so, she was still six plus months away from being 18 when they ended their relationship.

Dave: Ryan, Walter is very aware of Sophia’s age at this point. Correct?

Ryan: So, that’s something that me and Sophia have a conversation about. I ask her, “Is Walter aware that you’re only 17 years old?” And she tells me that it wasn’t until about a month or two prior to that he really understood her true age. Walter thought that Sophia was in her 20s and that she really wasn’t 17. But they had already developed this relationship at this point, and so, of course, they’ve already fallen in love with each other. So, let’s not let age get in the way of our relationship is kind of what he presented to Sophia.

Yeardley: Ryan, I have another question about that. Even if Walter is saying, I thought Sophia was in her 20s, Sophia is spending her days at school. That just doesn’t pass muster, because what’s Sophia doing for eight hours a day or six hours a day while Walter is doing whatever he’s doing if he’s retired? Like what? You don’t know your girlfriend’s in school? That’s just, “Ugh, bullshit is what I say.”

Ryan: Sure, 100%. I will tell you that Sophia did somewhat minimize Walter’s involvement with this. She felt like Walter shouldn’t be in trouble. And the reason being is because she felt like this was a consensual relationship and she was a willing participant in this relationship, and she didn’t feel that Walter should be penalized for their actions.

Dave: Ryan, have you encountered that type of dynamic before between victim and suspect?

Ryan: Yeah, I have.

Dave: Yeah, me too. I wasn’t surprised about the rules. When you hear the rules start popping up like, this is a secret. You can’t ever tell anybody about us, those types of things they’re checking boxes on. I would guess most sex crimes detectives have a few of these every year.

Ryan: Yeah. And that was one of the things that struck me about this case was the fact that Sophia really didn’t see herself as a victim. You know, Walter, the way that he groomed Sophia was through admiration, was through his cultured background from Sophia’s standpoint. But really, it was just a way to manipulate her into this relationship.

Yeardley: So, how does Walter take the breakup?

Ryan: So, according to Sophia, he’s not very happy. He still claims that he loves her and wants to be with her, but he’s not violent or nasty or anything like that. So much so where they continue to have a friendship dialogue, which was somewhat to my benefit, because what happens next in this case is kind of what led me to develop some charges against Walter. After my interview with Sophia, I asked her if she’d be willing to participate in a controlled call and call Walter on the phone and talk about their relationship. And to my surprise, she agrees. Like I said in the beginning, she wanted to protect Walter, but she did understand that she was involved in a criminal investigation. And I don’t force anybody to do anything they don’t want to do. And I explain the parameters of what I’m asking.

And Sophia was still on board with what had to be done and what she felt like I was asking, she was comfortable with. So, we conduct a call with Walter from Sophia, and basically, they begin to talk about their relationship. Sophia tells Walter “The gig is up. My dad has found out about us.” And she pretty much just tells the story of what happened, that the neighbor Daniel, discovered them, had actually seen Walter coming in and out of the house and confronted that information to Hector, and that Hector confronted Sophia. And Sophia admits to it. And Walter is a little bit upset with Sophia and says, “Well, why did you admit to it? We had a backup plan. You know, if were ever to get caught, we would just tell parents or your father or whoever asked that we were just recording a song together, which was a random thing. I don’t know what that was their backstory.

Yeardley: Do either of them sing? Is there any validity to this potential backstory?

Ryan: You know, that’s a good question. I never really asked, but Sophia says, “Yeah, Walter, that didn’t work, that nobody’s buying that were singing songs.” Sophia is a very intelligent young lady. So, I get what I need on the call that there is no question that they had a consensual sexual relationship, which in our state, the charge of that is unlawful sexual activity with a minor. And so, at this point in time, I pretty much have determined that I have what I need to obtain an arrest warrant for Walter. And so, Sophia, what she does next was a little telling. I kind of give her the signal, like, “Hey, she can get off the phone.” And right before she lets Walter off the phone, she says, “Hey, do me a favor. You need to listen what I say next and delete everything you have of me at your house. Get rid of it.” And she hangs up the phone.

Yeardley: Jesus, ah, Sophia.

Dave: The amount of times that I’ve had a victim who was sympathetic to the suspect, and they’re on board, on board, on board, on board. At the end, every once in a while, they do things like that, trying to cover for the person that they either felt they were in love with or are in love with. And all this whole process with the police is being done to the victim, not with the victim is how they kind of picture that. So, it’s like, “Hey, I’m going to save the guy that I love.” I’ve had countless victims cover for the suspects, even with overwhelming evidence to overcome a victim’s denial. So, the dynamics in these are very interesting. And we talk about how people react to stress. And I imagine Walter on the other end of the phone, his blood pressure is through the roof. He’s probably scrambling, thinking, I got to cover a lot of bases here.

Paul: Yeah. I’m listening to this, and all of a sudden Sophia has thrown in maybe a level of exigency in terms of what evidence is Walter about to get rid of. But at this point, Ryan, I mean, you’ve got a case against Walter, right, just based on that pretext call. I think you mentioned that you have enough for arrest, but it’s like, well, what else is there? What other maybe potential criminal charges could be levied if that evidence is not destroyed?

Dave: I’m thinking photos and videos.

Paul: Yeah.

Ryan: Yeah. So, actually, that leads me to something I forgot to mention in my interview with Sophia. So, in going through everything, the story, what occurred, she did tell me and admit that most times when they would have sexual interactions with each other, that there would be photographs involved, that Walter would pose Sophia in certain positions and would take photographs of her, which we have some more charges there, potentially. We have production of child pornography and some other things to consider. Sophia gives me all that information, and now I know that I have enough for an arrest warrant based on the pretext call, and potentially based on her testimony, I may have enough for a search warrant of his residence.

Yeardley: Can I ask you a question, Ryan? Do you guys ever say anything to the victim when at the end of the call, Sophia tells Walter, “Get rid of all the evidence that you have of me. Do you ever question that after they hang up? Even a gentle confrontation of why did you do that?

Ryan: Yeah, I did ask her, what was that about? My emotions aren’t involved. Like, obviously when Hector found out about that, he was pretty upset. But I did ask, “What was that about?” And she said, “I’m doing everything you’re asking me to do, but I felt like I needed to at least let him know he needed to get rid of the things at his house.”

Yeardley: So, it’s what Dave said that the victim feels like you’re doing this to me, not with me.

Ryan: Sure. Yeah. Which is really sad because she doesn’t see herself as a victim. She doesn’t see herself as somebody that was taken advantage of. She doesn’t see and understand that really she is a victim and she’s just not coming to grips with that reality.

Yeardley: Right.

Dave: Yeah. I had a case with a 13-year-old victim and it was a 24-year-old suspect, and this case went on for over a year. And I remember being in the courthouse when this thing was going to finally end in a plea deal and I went over to say hey to the victim and double fingers “Fuck you,” and I was like, “Okay, that’s where we still are. Okay, I understand.”

Dan: Can I just cover that? Like that is a totally understandable reaction to Dave.

[laughter]

Dave: That’s probably true. [laughter] If you walk out, fuck you.

Yeardley: Oh, brother. So, fun.

Dan: I mean, I can’t. That’s a layup. I can’t just let that thing go.

[laughter]

Yeardley: Anyhow, we digress. [laughs]

Ryan: Yeah. So, I’ll tell you the thing that changed for me with her making that comment. Originally, this was closer to the end of the day. And so, I had my pretext call. I had everything I needed. And so, my plan was to take this information the following day to my state attorney, let them listen to it, and then discuss an arrest warrant and a potential search warrant. But because she had given him that information and kind of that tip off, I felt like I needed to act right then and there. I didn’t really have time to let me go home and come back fresh set of eyes and review what I have. I had to make a choice right then and there. Right after Hector and Sophia left, I called my supervisor and I called our state and we met after hours.

And they agreed. They issued the arrest warrant for Walter. And then off I went to go meet Walter that evening at his house. I get to the home. It’s a single-story residence. It’s not very big. Like Sophia had said, it wasn’t in very good condition. It was overgrown, unkept. The yard was atrocious. And so, I knock on the door– Yeardley, you had asked me a question about what Walter looked like and if he was light on his feet and able to move around pretty well.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Ryan: I will tell you, when I saw Walter for the first time, I was shocked. He looks like your typical old grandpa.

Yeardley: Really.

Ryan: He had the traditional high white socks, white sneakers. [Yeardley laughs] He shuffled his feet. He didn’t look like he could walk very good. His skin was kind of thinning. I mean, he had bruises on his arms. He was not in the best of health.

Yeardley: He did not seem like your star swing dancer who would catch the eye of a 17-year-old.

Ryan: No, he didn’t. And I was with another female detective that was going with me to serve the arrest warrant. And I remember later on she said, “I am just mortified that he and our victim Sophia had relations.” She couldn’t believe that Sophia had been swooned by Walter.

Yeardley: Wow.

Ryan: So, Walter meets me outside. He doesn’t want me to come into his home initially, and so I tell him why I’m there. I read him his rights, and he says, “Yeah, no, I’m not talking.”

[Break 2]

From there I say, “Walter, go ahead and put your hands behind your back, you’re under arrest.” And he kind of waddled, turned around slowly put his hands behind his back, and off he went. I had a deputy that was assisting us. He took Walter to the jail, and then me and one of my partners stayed at the house and executed the search warrant.

Dan: Ryan, can I ask you, in our state, when we execute a search warrant, we have to read the warrant to the resident, the homeowner?

Ryan: Yes.

Dan: Were you able to do that with Walter before he went down to the jail?

Ryan: Yes, I was.

Dan: I always get interested in the facial expressions. Once you start reading the search warrant and exactly what you’re looking for and what crimes are being investigated, you get different reactions from suspects and witnesses, people who are just merely there. You get a wide variety of reactions. What was Walter’s reaction to you reading the search warrant?

Ryan: Yeah. Walter had his head down at this point, he was already in the back seat of a patrol car, already in handcuffs. And when I was reading the search warrant, he just had his head down the entire time. He never looked at me. He never even said one word. He listened, I read it, I provided him a copy, and off he went.

Yeardley: I feel like you detectives can speak to this, but Walter having at the very beginning of this relationship with Sophia, said, “You must keep this relationship secret.” And then Ryan, you showing up with his search warrant and saying what it’s for along with his arrest, Walter knows the game is up. It feels like, well, you’re guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. Everybody go to lunch. [laughs]

Dave: I think, especially lead detectives and the folks who write the search warrant affidavit. You really know every aspect of a case and that goes into your affidavit. So, I certainly have not needed a jury to convict people in my own mind. Of course they have the right to that. But I think when you see a mountain of evidence and you just see it stacking up that you understand someone’s guilty. Like what you’re describing Yeardley, is not something that I could testify to in court because you can’t hold their silence against them. So, I could make an observation about their body language, but I couldn’t come to any conclusions about it. So, it’s one of those like, we all know what’s going on, but it doesn’t matter type thing.

Dan: Dave and I had different caseloads, obviously. Usually if Dave was present when I was reading a search warrant to say, a guy who’d barged five or six houses, there’s kind of a defiance, but there’s also sometimes you get the surrender. You can see it in their body language that they’re surrendering. I’ve been there when Dave was reading search warrants for sex offenders and Walter’s reaction is not unique.

Dave: Yeah, seen that a lot.

Paul: I’m very curious to hear more about Walter because as I’m listening to the facts of this particular case, Walter at 68 is going swing dancing. He’s going to have his swing dancing outfits, right? He’s going to be putting on a certain appearance out there swing dancing. And then when Sophia shows up at his house or when you, Ryan, show up at his house, it’s disheveled. He’s basically in knee high socks and whitey-tighties type of old man attire. And so, this whole facade aspect to Walter from my perspective is interesting. And it’s like, “Okay, so what is going on inside his house?” And at age 68, is Sophia the first young woman that’s been in his life?

Ryan: Yeah, this investigation for sure, my eyes are open to are there others? I’m not naive to think this guy’s been around a long time. Sophia clearly can’t be his first.

Yeardley: And one last thing about Walter being guilty, Walter really admits his guilt when he tells Sophia to keep the whole thing secret. Walter knows that what he’s doing is not right. That’s what that says to me.

Ryan: Sure.

Yeardley: It’s not a Romeo and Juliet situation, like, our families are fighting and you can’t let anybody know or both die. No, “I know I’m 68 and you’re 17, and this ain’t right.”

Dave: Yeah, it goes back to our grooming talks and setting rules and talking about secrecy and privacy nobody can ever know. Those are all boxes on that grooming checklist. I’m just curious. Walter takes a lot of control out of his life when he invites Sophia to his house. And now she gets a full picture of what Walter is all about. Certainly, I think Walter probably underestimated Sophia’s comfort with the situation by bringing her to an environment like that. Would you bring a date to a house like that?

Yeardley: Right.

Ryan: Well, you would think, right? Like, you typically, you’re going to try to impress somebody and clearly Walter was infatuated with Sophia. And so, you might think, like, okay, all you got to do is clean up a little bit, vacuum sweep, whatever, but when I get into Walter’s home, that’s not even possible. He’s somewhat of a hoarder. There is stacks upon stacks of stuff. There’s like a trail to get to different areas of the home. Now, it’s not garbage, but it is like books and records and just cluttered mess everywhere. And you’re trying to walk through and navigate through this house which made the execution of the search warrant very interesting.

Dan: I’m sure your coworkers had a lot to say when you opened the door to that house.

[laughter]

Oh, great.

Ryan: They weren’t really happy.

Dan: We’re going to be here for hours.

Dave: And given what Sophia’s said at the end of the pretext phone call about delete everything, you’re looking for something small, like presumably a cell phone. But what we know about sex offenders, especially those who love having photos and videos, it’s always on the thumb drive. And you think about a thumb drive, how small that is, and where you could hide it. And now you’ve got to go through a hoarder house to locate those items. This is going to be not a fun search. Like a regular house is one thing. A house like this will ruin your week.

Yeardley: Yes, I would say.

Paul: Yeah. And it’s surprising how many houses are like that that law enforcement goes into. I have one case, but we had to go get a dumpster put onto the front driveway in order to search the house and just literally remove everything as were searching and put in the dumpster.

Yeardley: Oh, my God. All right, so Walter’s in the car, head down, ashamed, we assume. And you are about to go through this, we’ll call it a hoarder house.

Ryan: Yeah. So luckily, the house was small. That was to my benefit. But the first thing I notice when I walk in is something on the wall. And it was a painting created by Walter of Sophia. Now, he’s not the best painter. I’m making an assumption it was Sophia, but it looked somewhat similar to her. The physical characteristics were all the same. And it was her laying on her back, and she had a bikini on, but the bikini back was untied, so it’s kind of like laying by the side. And that was the first thing I collected as part of my search warrant.

Yeardley: Yuck.

Dave: Yeardley. You’re not at all curious about the medium? And was it gouache? [Yeardley laughs] Was it acrylic or watercolor?

Yeardley: I know I started painting a year ago, but no, no. If you remember, I was mad by minute eight of this episode, [laughs] madder now.

Ryan: Yeah, the painting was underwhelming. I think my little family, relatives could do a better painting than he could. Needless to say, we start searching through the home, and we do discover SD cards. We do take two computers. I was able to find his phone. He left his phone there, so we were able to get all of that. So, we did collect a number of electronics. I did find a very expensive camera. Walter did have some things that we were definitely going to impound and search through later. But I got to give credit to our crime scene investigator, because I’m not the one who discovered this first. There was a planner sitting on Walter’s dining room table. And so, the crime scene investigator just starts opening and just kind of looking at this planner, and I find a treasure trove of documentation of Walter and Sophia’s relationship.

Yeardley: Like a diary?

Ryan: Yeah, almost like a diary. He would put little things on certain dates that would remind him or were special or important to him about their relationship. So, one of the things that I noticed, I knew that their relationship or their acquaintanceship started in December of 2016. And this was one of those calendars that had literally started in the month of December of the year prior. And so, I see on there that he has a comment on a certain date, and he says, “Met Sophia, 16 years old, high school student, and then lists her date of birth.”

Yeardley: Thank you very much.

Ryan: Yeah. “When I asked Sophia, did he know your real age?” And she said, “Well, it didn’t come up until a few months into our relationship.” And he could have swore I was in my 20s. Oh, no, he knew exactly how old she was, when her birthday was, that she was in high school. So, there was no question as far as what Walter thought of Sophia’s age.

Yeardley: Wow, that seems like a big deal in terms of your case.

Dave: Oh, yeah. The prosecutor is going to love that.

Yeardley: Right.

Dave: It’s like, okay, now we’ve shot down that defense.

Ryan: Yeah. And really, that’s not even a defense that can be used in our state, but it is something that people try to use. But even then, this clearly would refute that. And as we look through the planner, he has multiple times they meet, seven-hour conversation. He has their first kiss listed in his planner. I’ll let our listeners interpret what the next comment means. But he put big “O” in quotations on a certain date when she spent the night at his house. He also put in exactly when he spent the night. So, I knew the dates that Hector had gone out of town. And so wouldn’t, you know, three of those dates he’s got overnight with Sophia listed on his calendar. He even had when she was flying to Iowa to visit her mother. He had all of it.

Paul: Ryan, was this the only calendar that was found in his house?

Ryan: Yeah. So, this was the only calendar or planner I found of Walter’s. I’m sure that Walter had others. And within this mess of a home going through all of his stuff, this is the only thing that I could find of Walter that had any type of documentation of relationships. Some of the things that we found that were not necessarily indicative of Walter’s relationship with Sophia. Walter had collages of women, photographs of women. They were unassuming pictures. People definitely didn’t know they were being photographed. Walter would photograph these women and then cut them out and put them on collages. So, I found several collages in his home of just women walking in the street, walking in the park. These were all younger women, teenage almost, all throughout his house.

Like, there were probably over a dozen collages I found in one particular room that he had kind of near his camera.

Yeardley: What does that tell you, Paul?

Paul: Well, Walter, on the surface, there’s a certain voyeuristic aspect to taking those photographs. He’s seeing these women out in the wild, and he’s obviously finding aspects of them attractive. He’s taking the photos, and now he’s creating those collages so we can relive sort of that in person sighting of this woman out there. However, I’ve got a couple of cases, both involving serial killers who have similar types of photographs of women. In fact, one serial killer, this Joe Naso, made collages of just like what it sounds like Walter was doing. Now, many of the photos that he made collages of were photos that the women knew were being taken because he was a professional photographer. But all of this is to feed the fantasy of the predator.

And so the question, of course, with Walter and these collages is, did he contact any of these women that were subjects of his photographs? The other serial killer, Dale Holmes, who was deaf and mute. When I popped open a craftsman tool chest that was in his bedroom, he had all these polaroids of women that he had taken out in the wild. And of course, the question in that investigation was, “Are all these women safe, or are some of them victims?”

Dave: Ryan, what kind of criminal history does Walter have?

Ryan: Walter had no criminal history. He had nothing. And just to wrap up the things that I found there, I did find in Walter’s bedroom quite a bit of pornographic material, Magazines. I know everybody’s going to be shocked, but the title on the magazine was barely legal. I don’t know if it was a subscription that he had.

Dave: I called it.

[laughter]

Ryan: Yeah. And he also had a bag of women’s undergarments, probably about 10. And I never was able to identify who those belonged to.

Yeardley: And it didn’t seem like they had come as a package that had not been worn. Do you think they had already been worn?

Ryan: That’s what I believed, yes. That’s how they appeared to be.

Paul: I’ve got, like, flashing red lights going off inside my head right now.

[laughter]

Ryan: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah.

Paul: I mean, obviously, there’s many different ways that Walter could have acquired this woman’s underwear. You know, one common way, of course, is through fetish burglaries where he’s breaking into houses and he’s raiding women’s underwear drawers and stealing something. These could be garments from other women that he has physically interacted with whether consensually or non-consensually. Like, if I’m looking at those particular items of evidence, the assessment that I would be doing. Do these undergarments look like they’ve been worn and not laundered. And if that’s the case, then we potentially have those women’s DNA in that underwear. And in this day and age, there’s a possibility of identifying who those women are and determining are they still alive? No problem. And they weren’t a victim based on circumstances, or is this a missing person? Or is this a body that showed up somewhere?

Yeardley: Sure. Or even a rape victim.

Paul: Yes.

Ryan: Yeah. And I had asked Sophia if any point in time, did Walter take any of her underwear or did she volunteer any of her underwear? I did show her photographs of the underwear collected and asked her if she could identify any of them, and she did not identify any of them.

[Break 3]

Yeardley: Ryan, how much time transpired between the end of the control call with Sophia and Walter and you serving the search warrant? I’m asking because you can wipe your phone in a matter of seconds. So, after Sophia says delete all the evidence, by the time you show up, I’m guessing it’s several hours. Were you able to get anything off Walter’s phone?

Ryan: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I did send off all of the devices to be analyzed. Now, I will tell you that in the middle of these devices being analyzed, I transferred out of the unit. So, I had to give this case over to another detective. But of course, I follow up on all my cases that I start. And so, I had been watching and looking for some updates to this case. No pornographic images of Sophia were located on any of Walter’s devices. I’m either fairly confident either one. Walter had them all one particular device or SD card of some sort that he was able to destroy or get rid of out of his home. Or he was able to delete them from a device. Now, we did take Sophia and Walter’s phone.

We did have them analyzed, and we did recover some deleted material. But the material that we recovered was more conversations, no images or photographs of Sophia. And so, I’ll share some of those deleted messages. So, she says to Walter, “OMG, why am I hanging on your walls? And you did that after one date? You didn’t even know me. I find this very unusual.” And Walter’s response was. The picture, “Yes” was from our first date. However, you seem to skip over the fact that I didn’t enlarge them until later, when I knew you better. So there. I told you I had a photo of you where I could see you lying in bed. It’s very comforting to me.

Yeardley: Are the two of them talking about Walter’s painting of Sophia?

Ryan: These were photos. This isn’t the painting I found on Walter’s wall.

Yeardley: Oh.

Ryan: I had followed back up with Sophia in regards to these, and she said that there were images of Sophia in Walter’s home. He must have destroyed those or got rid of those. We even searched his trash can and his trash bin when we were there, and none of those items were located. So, I have a suspicion that Walter literally removed all of these items from his home.

Yeardley: Right, right, right. Yeah, that would be creepy.

Ryan: There was another message I found on Walter’s phone. He tells Sophia, “You’ve got great bone structure, but omg, it’s your lips.” Those lips are made for kissing. We know it’s true. Those lips are made for kissing and that’s just what I’ll do. And then Walter says– because he got no response to that message for a while, Walter says, “Did you read the text about your luscious lips? Maybe a poem about them? Nothing?” And Sophia replies, “I read it. Thank you.” So, this was coming to the end of their relationship when Sophia was getting a little inundated. Walter was becoming more obsessive and this was right around the time that they were ending their relationship.

Dave: At some point, Ryan, you let Hector and Sophia know that Walter had been arrested. I’m wondering what Sophia and Hector’s reaction was to Walter’s arrest.

Ryan: Yeah, Hector was extremely happy. He did not expect the quickness of this investigation. He came in with Sophia to report this crime probably around lunchtime. And within 24 hours, Walter was in jail. We had a pretext call as great evidence, and we had executed a search warrant at Walter’s home.

Dave: That’s good work. And then you wait months.

Ryan: Yeah, then we waited months. And I never did update Hector on everything that was found because that was transitioned over to another detective. But I did make contact with Hector, told him I was passing off the torch of the case, and Hector was very grateful. Sophia, on the other hand, was still not thrilled about this case. And it gave me an insight and maybe her mindset after because Walter never saw prison time, Walter was given a plea deal. He was, of course, made to be a registered sex offender in our jurisdiction, so he’ll have that. But he was put on house arrest for two years, followed by probation for 10.

Dave: Walter’s really lucky you didn’t find any photos and videos.

Ryan: Yeah.

Dave: Really lucky. I can see the look on Yeardley’s face. It’s, like, unsatisfied. That’s not enough. What the hell? And I’m not surprised. This caseload largely depends on ages of victims. That’s where you get big hits. And so, three years, four years, two years prior to Sophia turning 17, you get a lot more bang for your buck. With charges typically in states across the country. Once they get to 16, 17, almost 18, you’re looking at misdemeanors, some felonies, but they’re not presumptive prison time on some of these cases, as your victims get older and are about to become adults.

Yeardley: It does feel like, though, putting Walter on probation for 10 years. We’re talking about a piece of paper.

Dave: Yeah.

Yeardley: Right. So, it’s not unlike a restraining order where it has some teeth to it in terms of what the police can do if that order is violated. But in terms of impulse control, it’s potentially useless because if the suspect is like, “No, no I’m going to fuck with you, then they’re going to fuck with you.”

Dave: Yeah, you’re being totally reasonable about this. [Yeardley laughs] I think it’s just in the child abuse caseload, you get some calluses when it comes to punishment. Sometimes, a judge will hammer somebody and you’re like, “Oh, shit, that’s about 10 more years than I thought we’d be getting.” And then there’s other cases like this where it feels like a crime the sentencing. I’m guessing Walter, as a result of his sex offender registration, has some very pointed restrictions on his movements and who he can contact. And then, of course, with the conviction, Walter’s not allowed to reach out to Hector and Sophia. I’m guessing you can’t have contact with the victims. It’s frustrating, but I’m not surprised at the sentence.

Yeardley: To me, it also goes back to Walter knowing he’s committing a crime when right out of the gate, he tells Sophia to keep the secret. So, it’s like, “We all know you committed a crime. We can’t really punish you for it because of the various boxes that we need to check in order to do that.” That’s, I think, why I feel this sense of injustice. Everybody knows this was wrong from soup to nuts. This was fucking wrong.

Ryan: You know the other thing to consider, our state attorney, they don’t have a case unless they have a cooperating victim. And so, within a matter of months, Sophia is turning 18, and she’s no longer going to be under the parenting of her father, Hector. And so, there is no, you will go to this meeting with the state attorney’s office. She’s 18. She can do what she wants. And so from the get go, she didn’t feel like she was a victim. She was cooperative, but just didn’t want to play ball. She didn’t want to get involved with this case and put Walter behind bars.

Yeardley: Right.

Ryan: And so I would imagine that the state had a difficult time pinning her down, and so they offered a plea deal that was desirable for Walter. No prison time. You’re going to be a sex offender on paper? Pretty much.

Yeardley: yeah.

Yeardley: I mean, it’s not for me to say what anybody should do, but on this side makes me sort of mad.

Dave: [laughs] We get it.

Yeardley: Ryan. Any updates on Sophia and Hector?

Ryan: So, I haven’t reached out or had any contact with Sophia or Hector. As I was preparing for this case, I did look at Walter’s background and see if he had any involvement with us since then. He has not. He has remained compliant. He still lives in the same home. And as a result of being a sex offender, he has to be checked on certain amount of times per year for us to verify his living conditions, where he’s at. His address is the same. Walter lives on the west side of our county, and I have always traditionally been working and assigned cases and even patrol work on the east side of our county. But that’s getting ready to change. I’m moving over to the west side of the county here next month.

So, I’m thinking when it’s time to go check Walter’s house, I’m going to be the one to go pay him a visit.

Yeardley: You should go. Hey. Hi, it’s me, Lieutenant Ryan.

Dave: You just start writing police reports, parked right in front of his house and let that neighbor Daniel call you in as a suspicious subject [Yeardley laughs].

Paul: You’re perfect.

Yeardley: Amazing. Ryan, I’m always curious, when you’ve seen so much in your years as a cop, what is it about this particular that stands out to you?

Ryan: Something that I took away from this case is if you see something, say something. And I know we say that in law enforcement, but if it was not for Daniel, the neighbor, this case would have never broken like it did. Daniel would have never asked Hector about the older man coming in and out of his house. We would have never got the suspicious vehicle call from Daniel. And so, it just goes to show, like, when people see something that seems out of place, sometimes maybe it’s not, but then other times, maybe it is. And it was really his testimony that really kicked this whole thing off.

Yeardley: Right.

Dave: Don’t underestimate the power of grooming. I mean, Walter was able to manipulate his way into a relationship with somebody 50 years his junior. So, you think about the power of manipulation and all the communications back and forth. What Walter says and how he says it and when he says it those types of things is all part of the grooming thing, and Walter clearly has a skill with that.

Ryan: You’re absolutely right. And he disguised his grooming, as romance and poetry and secrecy and being this cultured man that was ideal to Sophia, but really, at the end of the day, it was a form of manipulation that felt like affection for Sophia.

Dave: Yeah. In the live shows and crime cons, we’ve talked about grooming and how offenders will deliberately put themselves in places to offend or find targets. And I’m guessing Walter wanted to get into swing classes to have access to females. It’s not Walter going, “Hey, at 68, I want to learn how to swing dance.” Walter has a different agenda, but he ends up in the same place as people who just want to learn how to dance.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Ryan: I was going to say desensitizing your victim to sexual touch. What a perfect place for it. Is this swing dance class.

Yeardley: Right?

Ryan: Sure.

Dave: Get your hands all over your swing partner.

Yeardley: And everybody expects it.

Dave: Yep. They do it right in front of you.

Paul: I think that the pornography that was found in Walter’s house is very telling. You know, he’s got the just barely legal type of magazines. This is his fantasy, you know, and he’s 68 years old. Walter has probably been looking at that type of material for 55 years. So that’s where that type of material is insight into Walter’s fantasy life. And this shows that Walter is a predator, and he’s placed himself into an environment in which the prey is at and that was Sophia and he may not have necessarily been expecting a 17-year-old girl at the swing dance, but I’m sure there were other younger women, maybe in their early 20s that would have sufficed for him at this point.

Ryan: Yep.

Yeardley: And I feel so bad for Hector, who is trying to protect his daughter, visiting these clubs with her which one seems appropriate? Here’s a club that’s mostly older patrons. It smacks of no-good deed goes unpunished. You’re like, “Oh, you tried to do the right thing, and you didn’t know that Walter was waiting in the wings.” Ugh. Thank you so much, Ryan, for bringing that to us. All of the cases that we cover are really a day in the life. Sometimes it’s weeks, sometimes it’s months in the life. But basically, taking an investigation from when you get the call to the end, even if you have to pass it off to another detective is so fascinating to me. It’s the detail that you never get to hear about. It’s the kind of detail. I truly appreciate what you all do and why you do it. Thank you.

Ryan: Well, thank you for letting me come here and tell my story.

Yeardley: Anytime.

Dan: Ryan. The people who I really admire in this job, what we call a calling, is I go back to the very beginning part of this case, and what really impresses me about what you did in this case is you could have gone home that night and slept on it and not found any evidence the next day, but you understood that I got to put my foot on the gas right now and, yeah, it’s inconvenient, but if I’m going to find justice for this victim or I’m going to go catch this bad guy, I got to do it right now and it matters, every minute matters.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Ryan: Yeah. I appreciate you saying that. You know, the people that you don’t hear about that kind of suffer, that type of work ethic is really our families, right? My spouse, thankfully, I have a spouse that’s on board and understands, “Hey, I’m not going to be able to make it home because I’m working a hot lead on a very important case.” And she was always supportive of that, which made all the difference.

Yeardley: Yeah. Amazing.

Dave: Nice work.

Ryan: Oh, thank you.

Dave: I have a special place in my heart for these types of victories.

[laughter]

Paul: Great job, Ryan.

Ryan: Thank you.

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editor is Christina Bracamontes. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

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The transcripts of this podcast are thanks to SpeechDocs and they can be found on our website, smalltowndicks.com. Thank you SpeechDocs for this wonderful service. Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 Production. Small Town Fam, thanks for listening. Nobody is better than you.

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