Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Support Us
Our SuperFam members receive exclusive bonus content for $5/mo Support Us

Subscribe

A young couple go missing after heading out to a local camping spot. A search party discovers their bodies – both have been shot to death. Investigators from this rural town turn over every stone in search of the killer but come up empty. Over 40 years pass before a DNA test points to a suspect. Detectives scramble to arrest him and get justice for the victims.

The Detectives: Detective Chad went to school with Detectives Dan and Dave. In high school, Chad started as an Explorer/Cadet with his local police department. He was hired by the Sheriff’s office after college, and has been in law enforcement for 24 years. He’s worked in corrections and patrol and has been a detective for 9 years.

Detective Greg has worked at his current agency for 24 years. During that time, he spent 3 years working in corrections, 13 years in patrol, 3 years in narcotics, and 5 years investigating violent crime. He has also been active on SWAT for 16 years.

Read Transcript

Yeardley: [00:00:02] Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley.

Dan: [00:00:04] Dan.

Dave: [00:00:06] And Dave.

Yeardley: [00:00:07] Yay. Okay, one of you tell them because I’m not telling them.

Dan: [00:00:10] This episode marks the end of Season 10. But if you can’t live without us, hop on over to Patreon at patreon.com/smalltowndickspodcast, where we have special weekly content, including our new biweekly series called The Briefing Room.

Yeardley: [00:00:26] Which is awesome, and it’s where Dan and Dave break down all things law enforcement for us.

Dan: [00:00:32] We’d love to see you on Patreon.

Dave: [00:00:34] Also, stay close to our social channels for updates about summer bonus episodes, news, and the upcoming season.

Yeardley: [00:00:41] So, there you have it, Small Town Fam. Now, back to Gone Fishin’.

Chad: [00:00:50] At the scene, as the sun came up, they discovered the bodies. They also found a tablecloth on the picnic table next to where Allie was found and a towel on the picnic table. They seize these items for evidence, and I know the detectives at that time had no idea how valuable this was going to be. But fortunately, all that evidence was held on to, properly stored and preserved so that, 30 years later, we have nondegraded DNA samples.

[Small Town Dicks intro]

Yeardley: [00:01:17] Hi, there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan: [00:01:19] I’m Dan.

Dave: [00:01:20] And I’m Dave.

Yeardley: [00:01:20] And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: [00:01:23] Dave and I are identical twins, and we’re retired detectives from Small Town, USA.

Dave: [00:01:28] Together, we’ve investigated thousands of cases. From petty theft to sex crimes, from child abuse to murder.

Dan: [00:01:34] Everycase on our podcast is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare personal account of how they broke the case.

Dave: [00:01:41] Names, places, and certain details, including relationships, have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dan: [00:01:49] 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, out of respect for what they’ve been through.

In Unison: [00:01:59] Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme playing]

Yeardley: [00:02:09] Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dave.

Dave: [00:02:15] Happy to be here.

Yeardley: [00:02:15] Happy to have you. And we have Detective Dan.

Dan: [00:02:19] Good afternoon.

Yeardley: [00:02:20] Good afternoon, you. And Small Town Fam, I’m super excited because we have a doubleheader here with us at the table today. We have two of our favorite returning guests, Detective Greg.

Greg: [00:02:33] Hi, thanks for having us.

Yeardley: [00:02:34] So happy that you’re back, Greg. And Detective Chad.

Chad: [00:02:38] Hello. Thanks for having us on the show.

Dave: [00:02:40] Chad?

Chad: [00:02:41] Yeah.

Dave: [00:02:42] I heard you have one for us.

Chad: [00:02:43] Yeah, this is actually a cold case that we just recently resolved. Most of the work done in this was done by our cold case squad, but the detective that is on that wasn’t able to be here.

Dan: [00:02:53] I assume you’re talking about Detective Curt.

Chad: [00:02:55] Yeah. But I have worked on this case on and off for years as well. It’s over 40-year-old double homicide case that occurred in the late 70s in our county up in the national forest area that went cold and by no fault of the investigators on the front end of the day, spent almost 40 of those years running down various leads and tips. We sent investigators all over the country on this case chasing leads. It just was a legit whodunnit. Until science and DNA technology progressed to where it is today, there wasn’t viable physical evidence. The victims were two high school age kids that are boyfriend-girlfriend and they had just gone for a day outing a picnic and fishing at a campground picnic area that was frequently used. It wasn’t like it was some obscure gravel roads type. This was a well-used place and they ended up getting murdered and she wound up being sexually abused also.

Yeardley: [00:03:49] What were the victims’ names?

Chad: [00:03:51] Rick and Allie.

Yeardley: [00:03:53] How old was the case by the time you picked it up and started running with it?

Chad: [00:03:57] By the time I got it, it would have been 36 or 37 years cold by the time I picked it up to start looking at it again. And then, it was just last year, 2021, that we finally cleared the case. So, it’s been a long run.

Dave: [00:04:12] This case originates, what month was it?

Chad: [00:04:15] June.

Dave: [00:04:16] So, this is the summer of 1977?

Chad: [00:04:18] Mm-hmm.

Dave: [00:04:19] Kind of walk us through. First of all, we have two victims that are high school age. We have, you said Rick and Allie?

Chad: [00:04:26] Yeah.

Dave: [00:04:27] Okay. And they’re 16-17ish?

Chad: [00:04:29] Yeah.

Dave: [00:04:30] Okay. And back in June of 77, assuming that the sheriff’s office got a call of something horrible that had happened at a campground day use area.

Chad: [00:04:41] Yeah. So, they had told Rick’s parents they were going up to this day use area to have picnic and fish and swim. Like I said, this was a well-used location. It’s not like some obscure off-the-map thing. But Rick was having starter troubles with his pickup, so he told his folks, “Hey, if we’re not back by 10 PM, come up and look for us because my truck’s not starting.” Now, this is well before cell phones, obviously. So that’s kind of how it goes. They leave about 4 in the afternoon. They head up for their evening picnic and fishing and whatever. And then, by 10 o’clock, they’re not home. Rick’s parents haven’t heard from them. They wait a little while, things happen. By 11 PM, they give the sheriff’s office a call to report that Rick and Allie are missing.

Yeardley: [00:05:24] Did they go to the campground though and look for them and didn’t find them and that’s why they called the cops?

Chad: [00:05:30] Yeah, they drove up to the campground, found Rick’s truck, but didn’t find anybody up there. And then, they drive back to the nearest town where there’s a payphone. And then, they call the sheriff’s office again. The deputy was already on his way up there. So, they met the deputy back where the payphone was, and they drove up to the spot. The deputy had a reserve deputy with him, it’s a volunteer part time. They cruise up there, and they drive right to the spot, they parked next to where Rick’s truck was, they look around. The parking space where his truck is, isn’t at an individual picnic or campsite, there’s a row of parking. And then you just walk on this a loop road. And then you walk into these individual spots.

[00:06:13] They find Allie almost right away. The deputy does, fortunately, it wasn’t parents who found her, but finds her deceased, laying in the middle of this picnic area, between the picnic table and the metal box fire pits that campgrounds have. She’s nude, on her back, legs spread and arms over her head. The deputy has no radio service in this location. He has the reserve deputy stay there to preserve the scene, tells the parents, “Hey, you’ve got to leave. Follow me down.” He tells them what they found. He then has to drive back down to that same payphone or throw a dime in it, to call our dispatch center to get more resources up because this is more than just some kids missing, obviously.

[00:06:58] More deputies and whoever the on-call detectives were at the time come up. They decide to wait and not process the scene until sunlight. By this point, it’s super early morning hours and it just makes sense to not stumble around in the dark and potentially ruin or alter evidence. So, they just guard it all night. And then, first thing in the morning, the forensic people come up in their vehicle and they launch the helicopter and do a bunch of aerial photos and search with the helicopter.

Dave: [00:07:26] Because they’re still searching for Rick?

Chad: [00:07:29] Yeah. Shortly after sunup, it’s about 20 minutes after they start searching for Rick now, they’ve cordoned off where Allie was and now, they’re looking out for him. They go down this narrow trail that ran out of the backside of this little camp spot to the river. And they find Rick down in the bushes, he had fallen into the brush. That’s partly why they couldn’t see him in the dark earlier. He’s about 100 feet from where his truck was parked. It’s just the brush was so dense that they just couldn’t see him.

Yeardley: [00:07:54] Couldn’t they tell if he’s been shot or strangled or–?

Chad: [00:07:58] They both been shot. Allie had either a contact or very near contact gunshot wound to her left breast chest area.

Yeardley: [00:08:09] What does that mean? That means that the gun was right up against her, contact?

Chad: [00:08:12] Yeah, so either the barrel was pressed to her or it’s super close. When the bullet leaves the barrel from a gunshot at super close range or contact, it causes stippling and tattooing. It’s where the gunpowder makes burns on the skin. Also, if it’s a contact where it’s actually touching pretty firmly, because of the massive amount of pressure being forced under the skin, it also causes bruising that mirrors the gun barrel sometimes. In this case, there was less of that actually, mirroring of the gun, but a lot of tight stippling and tattooing from the burning embers of the gunpowder coming out of the gun. So, they knew it had to be within X amount of distance from the body.

Dave: [00:08:49] Depending on the firearm, stippling usually drops out after a few feet.

Chad: [00:08:54] Yes, once you know what the specific firearm is and the ammunition, the forensic folks can do testing to show in general, what distance out tight or wide that pattern of stippling is. That one passed through Allie’s heart. She also had a second near or contact gunshot wound to the center of her forehead, that will have penetrated her skull and brain and that’s the one that will be the actually recovered, the majority of a bullet. And then, she had a third gunshot wound to her left temple. This one didn’t have evidence that it was a near or contact. This was a shot from a little further away, enough that it didn’t leave that pattern.

Yeardley: [00:09:31] Could they tell which gunshot occurred first?

Chad: [00:09:35] They could not. All three were fatal shots. So, it was difficult for the doc to prioritize those.

Dave: [00:09:41] So, your deputies that night have confirmed that Allie is dead. They relay that message to Rick’s parents. Who made the death notification?

Chad: [00:09:51] Other deputies closer into town were able to notify Allie’s parents.

Dave: [00:09:55] And Rick’s parents have to wait overnight for fate?

Chad: [00:09:59] Yes.

Dan: [00:09:59] And they’ve got to be wondering, “Did our son do this?”

Chad: [00:10:02] Yeah, they had a lot of things going on. And there were just not very many answers at that very early part of the investigation. When they find Rick in the brush, he has a gunshot wound just to the right of the centerline of his chest, and this did not have any like close range evidence, this would have been from some distance. That wound doctor determined it was front to back much like the chest wound to Allie, and it wasn’t a contact. That bullet also was recovered mostly intact. And then, he had a second gunshot wound that was to the top of his head or like a scalp line up high. It was a through and through again, and it was determined by the doctor that that was from back to front. So, he gets shot in the back of the head and then the bullet traveled over the skull and exited out the front. Rick’s like 100 feet from his truck, he fell where he died basically. There was no indication that he was moved, or he moved after being shot.

Dave: [00:10:55] Like he fell down where he got hit.

Chad: [00:10:57] Yes.

Dave: [00:10:57] Okay. So, I’ve worked with your agency on big crime scenes back in the late 70s. Personnel wise and staffing, how many people from your office would have been on that crime scene that morning?

Chad: [00:11:12] Back in the late 70s, our agency was at its largest. We had the largest Sheriff’s patrol in the state back then. Fast forward to now, where we have not the smallest, but smallest per capita for sure. So, all the violent crimes detectives came out. I know our total detective pool was like 25, and almost half of that was violent crimes guys.

Dave: [00:11:29] And this is back when the lumber business was roaring.

Chad: [00:11:33] Yeah, the county was getting money hand over fist from lumber. That’s why we had so much staff back then.

Dave: [00:11:38] And then, when that dried up, it changed everything.

Chad: [00:11:40] The whole state had changed, but certainly hit us hard.

Yeardley: [00:11:43] How many detectives in your pool now?

Chad: [00:11:46] Currently, there’s four and a supervisor.

Yeardley: [00:11:48] Four?

Chad: [00:11:48] Yeah.

Greg: [00:11:49] We’ve got 50% of us sitting right here at the table right now.

Dave: [00:11:52] I was worried about that. I was like, “What if they get called out?”

Greg: [00:11:54] We put the county on the honor system while we’re going, “You guys behave.”

[laughter]

Chad: [00:12:01] At the scene as the sun came up, they discovered the bodies. They also found a tablecloth on the picnic table next to where Allie was found and a towel on the picnic table. They seize these items for evidence, and I know the detectives at time had no idea how valuable this was going to be because later it was determined there was semen on both the towel and the tablecloth. It was determined in the autopsy, the firearm used was a .22 caliber firearm. Later, ballistic work at the lab determined it was a .22 caliber handgun revolver. And then also at autopsy, when Allie was examined, they did a sexual assault kit and there was semen in her vagina. But all they could do back then was blood type that. But fortunately, all of that evidence was held on to, properly stored and preserved so that, 30 years later, when DNA becomes really viable for us, we have nondegraded DNA samples that ultimately is what got us to where we got to closing this case.

Yeardley: [00:12:58] That’s incredible. That sort of DNA typing was not even on the horizon. What do you think inspired those detectives who collected that evidence to preserve it so well? That’s incredible foresight.

Chad: [00:13:12] Well, initially, they collected it and preserved it for blood typing, which didn’t do a whole lot for us. But if you get a blood type to match and a little bit of either physical or testimonial evidence to support your case, that was a big deal back then. And then, we learned as time went on, that became less of a valuable thing.

Dave: [00:13:29] Back to the crime scene, Rick and Allie’s campsite, is it still fully erected, like they’ve got the tent up still?

Chad: [00:13:37] They weren’t camping. They had just gone for a picnic and a fishing day. They were supposed to be home that night. It was just at a campsite.

Dan: [00:13:42] Oh, so not even an overnight trip?

Chad: [00:13:44] No. They were going to be home at 10 o’clock that night. And then, they weren’t. In addition to collecting the evidence and processing the camp spot in the scene, they had investigators basically comb through that whole park, talk to anybody that they could that was still there or had been there the day before. They mean they did all they could do. Anybody who saw even a car description passing on that road, those tips were getting called in and they ran all those tips in. I mean, there’s, I think, it’s two three-inch binders of just the tip work they did over the years. Someone would call in on the phone line, we have a tip form that’s standardized, and the call taker takes the info and then that goes to the detectives, and it gets assigned out. And they follow it up on all of that stuff. Ultimately, eliminating every person they contacted, but they didn’t shortcut this or cut any corners. They pulled out all the stops, all the help, all the everything. It just was a complete whodunnit. The only physical evidence he left was DNA, which wasn’t a thing back then.

Yeardley: [00:14:44] Were there any witnesses at all, like anybody else out for a night fishing trip?

Chad: [00:14:49] There was an earshot witness who heard gunshots.

Dave: [00:14:53] But also, hearing gunshots out where they were, it’s not uncommon. People go out there and shoot recreationally, shoot targets. In the fall, people are hunting out there.

Chad: [00:15:04] Mm-hmm. So, we knew it was a .22. And then, some of the detectives did something, I don’t know that I even would have thought of, they went out and had one detective stand where the ear witness was, and then they had another detective put some waders on, wade out into the creek and then measured off, and he had a 22 revolver, and he would cook some rounds off to see how far away they lost track of that sound. So, I mean, I don’t know that I would have thought to do that.

Dave: [00:15:29] Like to get a comparison on the report of the gunshot and how far away this witness would have been.

Chad: [00:15:35] Right.

Yeardley: [00:15:36] That’s really clever.

Chad: [00:15:37] Ultimately, it didn’t help us much. But it was just another one of the things they didn’t, this wasn’t for lack of trying.

Dave: [00:15:42] You’ve got Allie and Rick’s parents are both now informed of their children being deceased and murdered. I imagine in this community, two high school kids being murdered at a day use area would be a huge deal.

Chad: [00:15:59] Yes. In fact, my mom remembers when this case happened. I was two when it happened. But it was a big deal in the community. The kids went to one of the larger local high schools. So, it was like front page top of the line news. Ultimately, the only physical evidence they wind up getting, like I said, was the tablecloth, the towel, and then what’s in their bodies. There was nothing in Rick’s pickup that indicated– there’s nothing missing. It wasn’t a robbery. His fishing tackle’s there, his wallet with money and it was still laying in the seat of his pickup. So, they kind of ruled out the robbery motive right away, basically, because there’s nothing missing.

Dave: [00:16:35] And I might be getting out front of the story here, but Allie is found between the firepit and the picnic table, and Rick is found 100 plus feet away from his truck closer to the waterline. The sequence, I would imagine, is take care of the guy first because he’s the bigger threat.

Chad: [00:16:53] Ultimately, we can’t really answer that. But our belief based on everything is that actually he was second. So, Rick had his swim trunks on and he was on the trail coming back from the creek, presumably, where he was shot. We think that the sexual assault of Allie happens first and that Rick interrupts that. He’s walking back up from the creek is what we think. Hears her screaming, her clothes were found on the picnic table. Clearly, the sexual assault’s in play. And then our belief is, is that as Rick’s coming up, he sees what’s happened, dude points a gun at him. He catches the first one in the back of the head. Maybe that spins him around and then he gets shot center punched in the chest. Now suspect has to kill Allie. And the three gunshots to her, all three fatal gunshots to her, two to the head, one to the chest is indicative of rage or anger. So, he’s pissed now because he has to kill Rick who’s witnessing him rape Allie, and then now he’s angry he has to kill her and kills her and then disappears into the backwoods. Again, this is all our supposition.

Yeardley: [00:17:53] Did Allie have any defensive wounds, like skin under her fingernails or anything like that?

Chad: [00:17:59] They didn’t collect anything or scrapings. The only DNA we had to compare to was the sex assault kit, the towel, and the tablecloth.

Yeardley: [00:18:06] Again, just a different time.

Chad: [00:18:08] Right, long time ago.

[00:18:24] So, all of our resources are up at the scene that morning. At about 8 o’clock that morning, the sheriff’s office receives a phone call from a local defense attorney who’s long since out of business and moved on probably, I would assume passed actually. His office was just like a block away from the sheriff’s office. He comes into work and he had what we would call voicemail today, but it was an answering service type deal. He had received a phone message sometime after 5 PM when he closed shop the day before and then 7:30 AM, I think, when he and a secretary came to work that morning, a recording on there from a female voice. And it said, “I think there’s been a murder committed. I’ll contact you later. Thank you.” Click, and the call ends. Well, there’s no caller ID, there’s no way to go back through that at the phone company, because it’s all analog. There’s no recording of what number that came from. And so, we send a detective over there right away. He makes a copy of that recording. Ultimately didn’t do a whole lot for us, but she never calls this attorney back. Fortunately, he was heads up to realize he needs to report this stuff to us.

[00:19:31] That was one of the things at the tail end that Curt and I really tried following up on because we ultimately thought maybe this was a girlfriend of the suspect. We learned through the course of things way later on that he had had a girlfriend and was cheating on his wife and we thought maybe that’s who it was. But we were never able to run down who that was.

Dave: [00:19:51] And when you say way later on, we’re talking decades.

Chad: [00:19:53] I’m talking last year.

Dave: [00:19:55] So, 40 years.

Chad: [00:19:56] Yeah. And so, all we have is this female voice, we didn’t have a name. And so, Detective Curt, he was like calling people who are in law enforcement back in the late 70s and early 80s, anything he could do, and ultimately, a lot of the people he tried to reach had passed. And so, that’s one little thing we never kind of closed the loop on.

Dave: [00:20:14] Given the timing, the assumption is she’s referring to this double murder. You guys didn’t have any other one-offs.

Chad: [00:20:20] Right. And it was the headline of the paper that morning. So, that’s what she had to be talking about.

Dave: [00:20:25] So, that call is fruitless, but was an interesting nugget.

Chad: [00:20:29] Yep.

Dave: [00:20:30] So, I’m guessing you guys spent several hours of the whole day out at that scene, just canvassing.

Chad: [00:20:36] They spent days. The forensic unit was out there for two solid days. They fine tooth combed to this thing. They did the whole deal. Just there was nothing but those two items, well, and DNA, but those two items really left.

Dave: [00:20:48] I was going to say after several days, you’re still no closer to suspect than you were that night, the night of the murder.

Chad: [00:20:56] Right. And it goes that way for years and years. Once DNA became a thing that the criminal justice system recognized, and we could use it, and then it was proven to be–

Dave: [00:21:06] Scientifically reliable.

Chad: [00:21:07] Yeah, reliable forensic evidence. The active detectives and the cold case detective started going back and recontacting people they had interviewed to get DNA to see if it matched up or eliminate. Like I said, turns out all of it except recently was elimination. We talked about how they packaged and preserved the DNA evidence properly so that it was of use. It was extracted and typed, and it was put into CODIS, the Federal DNA database for criminals. The suspect ultimately will have never been to prison had been arrested a few times, but never anything big enough to get court ordered DNA standard put into CODIS. So, our DNA profile is encoded in every 30 days, it would cycle through and be run against the new stuff coming in. And it just never matched, never hit.

Yeardley: [00:21:48] So, how do you continue on with an investigation that’s years old and the tips have basically dried up? Or, had they not dried up, would you continue to get dribs and drabs of information so that you could go, “Okay, now we’ll pursue that lead”?

Chad: [00:22:04] Yeah, so as time goes on, decades in this case, new tips would come in periodically, certainly not as fast and as furious as they did when the case was young. A big part of it is going through and making sure they’re not duplicate tips. So, Detective Curt, a lot of his time working on this case as a cold case, guy, and also the full-time detectives when we have time to focus on some of the stuff, is first taking any new information in and making sure it’s not in these binders of tips already. By this point, we kind of computerized stuff and so we could plug a name search in or whatever, and it made it easier. But early on, it was pencil and paper, line by line going through. So, once you determine that it’s not a duplicate tip, then you’ve got to look at the quality of the tip and–

Dave: [00:22:46] Specificity, who’s it coming from? Can they give corroborating information?

Chad: [00:22:51] And then if it meets all those benchmarks, then at some point, it goes in the stack for us to work on when we have time. And so that’s a lot of what the– probably about 15-20 years of it were was tips every once in a while would come in and you have to vet them. And then by that point, Detective Curt had a network of detectives he had talked to, this and other cases. And so, a lot of times he’d have a guy he could call on that jurisdiction say, “Hey, can you go check this person, and under consent, you have a DNA standard.” And whether it be the actual bad guy, or familial DNA. As familiar DNA became a thing, that was just a wider search pattern for us.

Yeardley: [00:23:28] For our listeners who might not be familiar with familial DNA, it’s how you identify your suspect by creating this elaborate family tree based on your suspect’s relatives who have uploaded their DNA samples to public databases. And then, through that family tree, they can zero in on the suspect who has left his or her DNA at the crime scene. For instance, it’s how Paul Holes and his team ended up identifying the Golden State Killer. It was familial DNA.

Chad: [00:24:02] Right.

Yeardley: [00:24:03] Who doesn’t come forward with a tip right out of the gate? Who waits a decade, 15 years?

Chad: [00:24:08] You would be amazed. A lot of time spouses or domestic partners because they’re fearful of the suspect, or people don’t want to be involved in this type of stuff. Maybe it’s a relative who they don’t want to see get in trouble. And then once that person passes, maybe they’ll call in because what harm is there now? It’s a twisted road to go down. There’s a lot to that, and we just have to sort through it as best we can.

Dave: [00:24:31] At this point, once DNA is useful enough to help with a criminal investigation, you haven’t identified, you don’t know his name, and you don’t know where he is.

Chad: [00:24:40] Right. But we’ve got his genetic print.

Dave: [00:24:41] You know who’ve raped Allie.

Chad: [00:24:43] Yeah.

Dave: [00:24:44] So, in this case, until your suspect comes forward, or you have a tip that puts you on to the trail of the actual suspect, you’re at the mercy of, is this guy’s DNA ever going to be entered into CODIS?

Chad: [00:24:57] Right, to cross match our sample. Yeah. So, there was big chunk Some years that went by where we didn’t get any tips, it just sat cold, because there’s no work left to do. In 2018, DNA evolved again. So, Detective Curt submitted some of the DNA from this case to Parabon.

Dan: [00:25:15] Parabonis the highly advanced lab that actually deals with a lot of genetic genealogy.

Chad: [00:25:20] Yeah. The first thing they did, which is amazing, by the way, created a computer composite of what this guy will likely look like now.

Dave: [00:25:30] Based on his DNA.

Yeardley: [00:25:31] I’ve seen that on various crime shows, it’s fucking unbelievable.

Chad: [00:25:36] And it’s accurate. His hair was a little different. I mean, he styled his hair a little different, but accurate.

Dave: [00:25:41] So, you get this Parabon photo, describe your suspect.

Chad: [00:25:45] Looked like a Viking. And oddly enough, his genetic DNA indicated he was a first or second-generation emigration from the Norwegian area of Europe, but it still doesn’t hit anything. And they tried to do the genetic genealogy, and they kind of hit a dead-end. They get as far as first or second generation over from Europe, but there wasn’t enough, at least of this guy’s family lineage in the various genetic databases they use, that just wasn’t there. But we had this picture and Detective Curt learns about a deceased serial killer from a neighboring state, and we started looking at that guy.

Dave: [00:26:22] What’s his name?

Chad: [00:26:23] His name is Odin. He was only convicted, I think, of two of the murders he committed in our neighboring state, but he was suspect in several others. His parents emigrated from the Norwegian part of Europe, and he looks like that picture Parabon created for us. He was convicted in the early 80s, and then he winds up getting killed in prison.

Yeardley: [00:26:46] Did they have any DNA for him, was he in CODIS?

Chad: [00:26:49] Well, you would think, but back then, it was way before DNA, but he gets stabbed. At one point, they had the shank, the knife that he was stabbed with, should have had his DNA on it, but they lost it. So, we figured out who his surviving family is. None of them are willing to give us familial DNA. They have lived in his shadow. But Goddamn, if he doesn’t look just like that picture that Parabon sent us, like ridiculous. Oh, and then we determine that Odin had been in our state, in our county, and one of the neighboring counties to the north, the summer our murders happened. And then, we get the reports and dig into the MO, .22 caliber handgun, MO is very similar. And so Detective Curt and I are like, “We got this guy, it’s got to be him.” We just can’t prove it. And again, a credit to Detective Curt’s tenacious, just on the trail, he constantly trying to reach siblings of Odin, his parents, nobody will cooperate, nobody will give us familial DNA.

Dan: [00:27:47] They just want it all to go away.

Chad: [00:27:48] Yeah. They don’t want to be brought back into the news again. One of the detectives that Detective Curt coordinated with quite a bit down there, because that jurisdiction had an open case that they were certain he did also, but they couldn’t get DNA either, one of Odin’s family members, I think, his mom passed in a hospital, and Detective Curt was able to get a DNA sample at that point.

Dave: [00:28:10] Detective in the other state working with Curt.

Chad: [00:28:13] Sends it up here to us. And we’re like, “Oh, we got it. We’re going to finally close this case.” So, this was back in ’18, ’19 by this point. We send that familial DNA off to the lab to compare to our standard, not a match, not even like a cousin, not a distant, nothing. “Nope, you’re on the wrong track.” Curt and I are looking each other like, “How can that be? That picture you sent us, that’s what this guy looked like. That’s him.” But DNA is a science and it doesn’t lie.

Yeardley: [00:28:38] When you got the DNA from the mom of this Odin who had died, how do you get that DNA? Can you just get it because she’s dead? Do you have to write a warrant for it? What’s the process?

Chad: [00:28:51] They got it from the medical examiner’s office down there. In our state, once a person passes or dies, for all intents and purposes, they become the property of the medical examiner’s office. And so, we get basically what’s called a blood dot.

Yeardley: [00:29:04] What’s a blood dot?

Dave: [00:29:05] It is just a blood sample taken at autopsy that allows us to obtain a DNA standard from a victim.

Chad: [00:29:14] Right.

Yeardley: [00:29:14] Oh, got it.

Chad: [00:29:15] First, it got typed at that other agency because they were using it in their unsolved cold case down there, and then once it gets typed, it’s just numbers basically, and they transmit those numbers to us. And then we gave them to our lab and then we learned that we were off the mark.

Dan: [00:29:28] When those results come in, what does that feel like?

Chad: [00:29:33] Like a kick in the gut. All of us just felt deflated when that DNA hit didn’t come back.

Dave: [00:29:37] You’ve got to start from square one.

Chad: [00:29:38] Now, we’ve got to start from scratch again.

Greg: [00:29:40] We’ve got balloons and everything. [crosstalk] [laughter]

Chad: [00:29:44] We had the cake, scraped the words off of it, it was just sad cake.

[laughter]

Dave: [00:29:48] People don’t understand that detectives take these cases home with them. So, for a guy like Detective Curt, who’s had this since–

Chad: [00:29:57] Since ’80, ’81.

Dave: [00:29:58] For him to have it with no closure, I can’t imagine what families feel like. But I know what from the law enforcement perspective, it’s really frustrating. And you’re like, “What am I missing?” And you wake up in the middle of the night and you jot down a note, well, wait to hear the next little bit of frustration in this case.

Chad: [00:30:14] Detective Curt talks with us. And then, Detective Curt contacts Parabon and has them retry the genealogy thing. And this time, more samples have been put in. By this point, we’re about 2020. And they work it up and they’re highly confident, it goes up to this level in the family tree. Have you guys ever seen one of those trees they put together where it’s like– I had to download software so I can look at it.

Dave: [00:30:37] It’s too wide for the screen. Parabon did all that family tree building for you.

Chad: [00:30:42] Mm-hmm. They narrow down to these three brothers, and they’re confident it’s these guys. So, we learned the middle brother still lives in our jurisdiction, not too far from where our office is. And then, the older brother and the younger brother lived together in another state, couple states away.

The oldest brother is Kimball, the middle brother is Bill, and the youngest brother is Jimmy. Jimmy and Kimball lived together in another state, and Bill lives here. He’s in our town. He’s a professional guy. He didn’t have any record or anything. So, we have to figure out which brother it is because now we’re starting to think about writing search warrants, looking for his gun, search warrant to force DNA samples standards from them. But search warrants are only granted when you have probable cause that X person or X location is instrumental to a crime. They’re not granted for elimination purposes. So, we need to know which guy.

Dan: [00:31:49] When you got three, two, more likely than not, is the threshold.

Chad: [00:31:53] And we believe probably it was the older brother Kimball, but what we believe doesn’t amount to a whole lot as far as probable cause in an affidavit for a search warrant, unless we can back our belief up with evidence.

Yeardley: [00:32:03] Do any of those brothers have police records?

Chad: [00:32:06] Yes, but not enough to generate DNA on file.

Yeardley: [00:32:09] So, they’re like in GEDmatch sort of system, 23andme.

Chad: [00:32:14] So, those three were not because that would have identified which one, so family members had.

Dan: [00:32:18] So now, you’ve got it narrowed down to what you think are these three brothers?

Chad: [00:32:22] Correct.

Dan: [00:32:23] What do you do then?

Chad: [00:32:24] You start doing backgrounds on them. We start working them up, I get some reports from this jurisdiction where the two brothers live couple states south. They don’t get along very well. The older brother had been arrested for beating up the younger brother a few years earlier. They’ve got some problems. In that report, there were some allegations of sex assaults by older brother to youngest brother, historical, many years ago. It’s very briefly mentioned, but it starts painting a little bit of a picture for us. The middle brother, we got zero record on. We determined the oldest and youngest had been in different branches of the military at different times that didn’t overlap. But we’re trying to build a character profile, for lack of a better term. So, what we did have going for us was that the one brother lived locally.

Yeardley: [00:33:08] The middle one.

Chad: [00:33:10] Yeah, Bill lives locally for us. Also, over the course of years, the rules that we get to play by for collecting DNA had changed a little bit. We can’t just go, take someone’s trash anymore like we used to be able to do to get DNA out of– if someone’s going to discard DNA where they are going to throw something away, they have to toss it somewhere publicly for us to get it. Actually, Greg was the hero of this part of the story. I wasn’t even at work this day.

Dave: [00:33:35] Why don’t you take it from here, Greg?

Greg: [00:33:37] Like you mentioned, Parabon had determined one of these three brothers was most likely going to be the suspect. The two that are other states away, we’ve got no opportunity to try to get a DNA sample from. So, we work on the one who is here. So, I organized a surveillance operation for Bill who works from his home. He does his own business from there. But we found out from watching him, he makes frequent trips around making deliveries to other businesses for the product that he makes. Doing surveillance means getting somewhere where you can see the house, you can take note of his cars, and you just start watching his lifestyle profile. When does he come and go, when the lights turn on, that sort of thing.

[00:34:20] So, then you’ve got to find a spot that’s not going to generate a lot of attention, have easy access onto the roadways to maybe pull out in there. So, we have people situated around the area, just sitting. Bill leaves the house at one point. So, we do good mobile surveillance techniques. At one point, I’m able to pull into a parallel lane next to Bill and I’m watching, and I can see that he’s furiously smoking a cigarette. “Okay, well, maybe he’ll toss that somewhere.” So, we follow him all the way to the business that he makes a delivery to. We follow him across town to another place. Meanwhile, I can see smoke pouring out of the window and at no point does an opportunity present itself. So, that’s it for the day. He goes back to the house.

[00:35:07] And we come out again for another time. Same deal, sit there for a long time. He makes a move, go do another delivery. We’re following around swapping out positions around. And I wind up in a vehicle at a red light, two or three vehicles behind Bill and I can see that he’s smoking and pull up to the red light. The arm comes out, he’s got his cigarette dangling. And I’m just willing him using my crappy Jedi mind powers, “Just do it, drop it, drop it.”

[chuckles]

[00:35:36] And he does. He drops that smoke on the ground on a public roadway. When the light turns green, he drives off, couple of cars ahead drive off. I pull up stop, very quickly had anticipated that, got a rubber glove on, got a paper sack handy, open the door, reach out, grab it and still hot, throw it in the bag. And now, we’ve got our evidence.

Dave: [00:35:56] And now your car is on fire.

Chad: [00:35:58] Yeah, that’s how our luck goes, yes.

Greg: [00:36:00] I threw it on my pile of oily rags I keep in my car.

[laughter]

Dan: [00:36:03] And I guess at this point, you really don’t care if he’s looking at his mirror at you picking up his cigarette butt.

Greg: [00:36:08] Nope, doesn’t matter. But still curious to see if he did, made sure he didn’t, still few cars away. Grabbed it and we go back to the office where we then can submit that. And we’ll see we’re either ruling him in or out at that point.

Yeardley: [00:36:22] Greg, are you in a marked car or an unmarked car?

Greg: [00:36:25] That’s an unmarked car.

Yeardley: [00:36:27] So, you’re just the weirdo picking up discarded cigarette butts.

Greg: [00:36:30] Yeah, I go to great lengths to make sure my car’s dirty, fades into the background. It looks like I’m living out of it.

Chad: [00:36:36] All of the cars assigned in our work group are random. There’s no two the same, not the same color.

Dan: [00:36:42] Intentionally.

Chad: [00:36:42] Yep, it makes this kind of work a little easier for us.

Dave: [00:36:45] So, you guys have now seized a discarded cigarette as a DNA standard for one of the brothers. Does that go to Parabon or you guys send it to the state lab?

Chad: [00:36:55] Goes to the lab first to have the DNA extracted. The DNA comes back, they’re able to say, “Nope, the DNA that Detective Greg got, it’s a brother. It’s his first-year sibling to your suspect, but it’s not your suspect.”

Yeardley: [00:37:06] So, it has to be Kimball or Jimmy.

Chad: [00:37:09] Yeah, we don’t know which one. At the same time, while this was going on, I had been in contact with the Homicide Unit at the jurisdiction where the two brothers live, where Kimball and Jimmy live. So, I get put in touch with the homicide detective down there, and we’re kind of asking them to help us out do the same thing for Kimball and Jimmy’s place.

Yeardley: [00:37:28] Asking them to do stakeouts and collect discarded DNA?

Chad: [00:37:33] Yes. And they’re on it. They’ve got not just their homicide guys, but they also have a surveillance unit. It’s a much larger metropolitan jurisdiction than us. So, they’re putting resources on it. But the two brothers, where they live is gated, for lack of a better term. There’s just not a good way to watch their place. The garbage is taken to a community dumpster. Then, have to explain to these detectives down in this other state, that now they just wanted to do a trash pull.

Yeardley: [00:37:59] And a trash pull is collecting discarded DNA from someone’s personal trash?

Chad: [00:38:05] Yes, because they do those in their jurisdiction. It’s, “No, no, can’t do that.” Because we can’t use evidence in our court jurisdiction that’s obtained in a manner that’s not lawful for us to do here.

Yeardley: [00:38:18] So, even though it’s lawful for them to do it, it’s irrelevant for you?

Chad: [00:38:22] Right, we can’t use that evidence. So, they’re sitting up doing kind of similar stuff. They just don’t catch either one of them moving around much. Obviously, they have their own crime they have to deal with also, they’re just helping us out. And so, they get busy with crimes. So, we start trying to plan our trip down there, to try and contact these folks. We’re still working out how we’re going to write a search warrant for at least the home down there, because both brothers live in there. We’re working with the deputy district attorney, and we’re trying to figure out how to pre-write our search warrant up here that meets our muster. And then, we would take that signed warrant down to the other jurisdiction, and then they would apply for a warrant in their jurisdiction and to say refer to addendum A so that we could lawfully operate down there to gather evidence. So, we’re working through that.

[00:39:07] And then, we get hit with just kind of a slew of major cases or big cases that pull all of us off this case. Detective Curt’s still working on it. I still keep in phone contact with the detective down in the other jurisdiction. And whenever they have time, basically, they’re trying to sit and do some surveillance in between their case, which they did way more than I expected. Some months go by, but keep talking about it. But we just don’t have the resource time to get back down there. We’re still hung up on how we’re going to get search warrant DNA from both brothers, because again, we can’t get not the bad guy evidence. We have to be specific to which one and we don’t want to gamble and be wrong and then give him a heads-up.

[00:39:50] It was one of those busy days where we all got called to work. I was on my day off. And we had two shootings happened within a few hours of each other in our county. So, I get called. And as I’m walking out the door to put my equipment in my vehicle to leave to go to work, my phone rings, and it’s the detective from the other jurisdiction. And she says, “You’re not going to believe this.” I said, “I bet I would.” And she goes, “We had just scheduled and set up tasks to solidly sit on Kimball and Jimmy’s place for a week. But last night on night shift, patrol gets a call of assault going on in the two brothers’ home.” Kimball and Jimmy are back to boxing again, basically. So, I’m like, “Oh, no,” she says, “Well, yeah.” Patrol goes, and as the call comes in, that sounds like now maybe someone’s been shot there. They get there thinking it’s a homicide deal.

[00:40:47] They get there, and Kimball is dead in his bedroom at the house, a single gunshot wound to the– [unintelligible [00:40:57] determined it was the mouth, but they said head at that point, that’s all they knew. And then, Jimmy is in the other part of the house, all bloody, just beat up. So, they treat it as homicide. She gets called out as part of the night homicide compensated crew, initially not realizing that it’s our place. And holy cow, they determined it was suicide, self-inflicted. So, they got into a physical fight. Older brother, Kimball, beats Jimmy up, like punches, beats him up, bad enough– When I went down and saw him a few months later, his nose was still not straight. And there’s blood everywhere. I got the crime scene pictures and the reports and everything.

[00:41:30] When Jimmy went to call 911 after Kimball beat him up, Kimball just walks off into his bedroom, it’s his rifle out, sit down on his bed, shoots himself in the mouth. It’s over.

Dave: [00:41:42] Totally unrelated to your case.

Chad: [00:41:44] 100% unrelated to our case. Based on the things Kimball said to Jimmy before this all happened, he didn’t want to be arrested for beating me up again. Didn’t want to go back and spend the weekend in jail again, essentially. When they were treating it like a homicide on the front end, they got Jimmy’s DNA under consent from him. And then at autopsy, they get Kimball’s DNA. So, they sent that information to us right away, send it to the lab. And right away, the lab matched Kimball to the DNA from 1977.

[00:42:27] A few months later, when our schedule kind of clears up here, I coordinate with the detective in the other state. And Detective Curt and I fly down there. We didn’t want Jimmy to know we were coming to talk to him. And the detective down there had kind of stayed in contact with him. Periodically, he had some problems since his brother shot himself in their house and stuff. And so I had her just like, “Hey, can you, like a ruse tell Jim need to come talk to about something.” She’s like, “Oh, I’ll tell him we’re going to return some of the items taken that night to make sure he’s home,” because we don’t want to go down there and then have to find, maybe he’s left town or whatever. So, Jimmy’s there. We fly in one afternoon. And that next morning, we meet with the detective at our hotel. She drives us right to this place.

Yeardley: [00:43:10] To Jimmy and Kimball’s residence.

Chad: [00:43:12] Yes, I totally see why it was not easy to do surveillance at this place. There’s just no place you can sit and not be seen or not be observed. So, we talk about how we’re going to do this. And so, the detective contacts Jimmy first because he recognizes her and just prepped him a little bit. I had a couple of broad questions for her to kind of start down, and then she turned it over to Detective Curt and I.

Dave: [00:43:37] You’re in the house?

Chad: [00:43:38] We’re sitting out on the patio, basically, the carport area is turned into Jimmy’s patio. It’s like 10 o’clock. He’d been putting away some beers already. And we had a prepared list of questions regarding Kimball. So, Jimmy said that Kimball was very proficient with his handgun, always had it with him. By the point the homicides happened, Kimball had been in the military and out. His MOS was something in like the medic field or something mostly but still, military training.

Dave: [00:44:07] He’s demonstrated some competency with weapons.

Chad: [00:44:09] Yes. Even before the military, they lived up in a rural part of our county also. They grew up in the woods, hunting and fishing, and his whole life familiar with firearms. So, this .22 revolver, Jimmy is able to say he hasn’t seen it since late 70s, early 80s. He couldn’t put a date on it, but he knew that Kimball had that revolver in the late 70s while Jimmy was still in the military. Somewhere in the 80s before they reconnected, it disappears. He doesn’t know where it went. He’s never seen it. We looked at the house a little bit. The cops had already tossed the house down there for their case and the firearms that they did find there are nowhere close to a match.

Yeardley: [00:44:46] Did Jimmy give any sort of description of Kimball’s personality, his proclivities, anything like that?

Chad: [00:44:53] Jimmy describes Kimball as having a very insatiable sexual appetite all through their life, and Jimmy had stayed away from Kimball till way into the late 80s and 90s. He just had nothing to do with him. But he says Kimball bragged about being part of a weird underground sex club scene when he lived in another state further away. Jimmy really doesn’t have any direct information or knowledge about our case. It’s not familiar to him. But again, he was living on the other side of the country when this all happened. So, that makes sense.

[00:45:24] So, we talk and we talk and we talk and then he talks about the dispute where Kimball killed himself. And then, I bring up the prior dispute, like I said, just a couple of lines in the report where Jimmy tells one of the cops that Kimball had sexually abused him as a child. And Jimmy starts to cry a little bit and says, “Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it. But yeah, it happened.” He talked also about all through high school, basically that Kimball was a bully who was constantly in fistfights, beating people up, and constantly beating up Jimmy. Not only did he sexually assault him somehow, we never did figure out how, but he daily would just beat Jimmy up, physically beat him up.

Dan: [00:46:01] There’s a definite domestic violence aspect to Jimmy and Kimball’s relationship. Why would you stick around? But we know the answer.

Chad: [00:46:09] Neither one of them could afford to live on their own. They inherited this place after mom passed. They didn’t have enough money to live anywhere else, basically. That’s one of the things Jimmy talks about, is one of the reasons they fought was money, because he would get his pension check on whatever day, and it wasn’t a 50-50 split. Kimball would just take all the money, pay the bills, and then what little money Kimball had coming in was what he bought beer with, and food, mostly beer though. Jimmy talked about at one point, they needed money to pay the annual lease for the space. Jimmy had this little pickup truck, I’m sure it wasn’t worth much, but it was his. Kimball was outright set up so they can pay their lease payment without even asking him to set up the deal, said, “Oh, by the way, these people are coming to buy your pickup. They’ll be here in 20 minutes.”

Greg: [00:46:52] Get your stuff out of the truck.

Dan: [00:46:53] Kimball’s an asshole, constantly taking his brother’s lunch money.

Chad: [00:46:58] Yeah. We’re kind of being coy on the front end of this interview with Jimmy, like, “So, you ever see those TV commercials for like 23andMe, these other DNA spots?” Basically, what Jimmy and Kimball did was sit around in recliner chairs all day long and, drinking beer watching TV. So, Jimmy is like, “Oh, yeah, we were sitting there watching whatever.” And one of the familiar DNA genetic commercials comes up. And Jimmy tells me, “Yeah, I told Kimball. I was thinking about doing that. I want to see where our people come from.” And he said like a light switch, Kimball got angry, started yelling at him. Like, “What the fuck would you do that for? Why would you do that? You don’t want to lose control your DNA. You don’t want the government to get it.” And it was just totally out of track for what they had been talking about. They’re watching some true crime show. And Jimmy said it took him aback, it was so like a light switch flipping on. Not so much that Kimball was being an asshole to him, that’s by all accounts from what he said is pretty standard, but just the tone of this one and just what set it off. And then it was never brought up again.

Yeardley: [00:47:58] When you finally encounter Kimball, even though he had taken his own life, did he actually look like the mockup, the sketch that Parabon had created?

Chad: [00:48:09] Yes, his hairstyle was a little different. But face structure was correct. Eye color, hair color was correct. Just the styling was different.

Dan: [00:48:18] How long had Kimball and Jimmy lived out of state? When did they leave the area where this double homicide occurred?

Chad: [00:48:24] Okay, Jimmy, he left the state when he joined the military in the mid-70s. Kimball joined the military earlier in the 70s, came back to our area for a short time, worked at one of our local hospitals for a short time, and then moved to various states, just bouncing around. He was married to his first wife, who he met in the military and they bounced around for a while, then they split. We winds up talking to her and two other ex-wives. No kids.

Dan: [00:48:52] Never a mention of what happened in ’77?

Chad: [00:48:56] No. And so, the wife Kimball was married to at the time, the two of them, they were both, I guess, some sort of medical something in the military. When Kimball and his first wife come back to our area, they wind up working at the same hospital. And she tells us, they got divorced because he was cheating on her with another female who worked at the hospital. Ultimately, that’s who Detective Curt and I think was the one that called that lawyer.

Yeardley: [00:49:21] The woman who called the lawyer and left a message saying, “I think there’s been a murder.”

Chad: [00:49:25] Yeah.

Dave: [00:49:26] Never been confirmed, but strong suspicions.

Chad: [00:49:29] Like it has to be, but nobody could remember a name. A vague physical description, but trying to search 40 plus year old employment record with a vague physical description went nowhere. It just wasn’t enough info there to figure out who that was.

Yeardley: [00:49:42] Is Jimmy ever curious as to why detectives from another state have shown up at his house to question him?

Chad: [00:49:50] Yeah, at some point, just very matter of fact, we tell him, “Probably not a big surprise to you that we got your brother’s DNA after he committed suicide. Would it surprise you if I told you it matched to a homicide case from the late 70s?” And it kind of took him aback a little bit. That kind of what led us into the talking about what a bully he was and the sexual appetite thing. So, I’m telling him matter of fact, I’m like, “I appreciate you’ve been talking with us and been forthcoming and honest with us. I’m going to tell you that this is going to become public. This was a big deal case in our area back when it happened.” And Jimmy at the time, you could tell it affected him. He was bothered. He cried a little bit more.

Dave: [00:50:29] Jimmy’s appropriately upset.

Chad: [00:50:30] Yeah. And he tells us, he tells Detective Curt and I, “Well, yeah, he probably did it.” So, we end the interview. We thank Jimmy for his time and we leave, and then we’re done. So, our flight’s the next morning. So, Detective Curt and I, we catch our flight the next morning, we come back.

Chad: [00:50:45] So, Greg, you spoke to Bill locally, and I imagine it was a similar conversation, maybe not as in depth.

Greg: [00:50:55] Not so much. He had admitted they grew up there in the area. And basically, they all went their separate ways and he’s really had minimal contact over the years.

Dave: [00:51:05] You told him what the case was, and what you guys were investigating, what was his affect when you drop the bomb on him?

Greg: [00:51:12] He was taken aback by that a little bit, and didn’t say he was surprised, didn’t react to it one way or the other you would expect, like, “Not Kimball. He’s not that kind of guy.” Bill didn’t give me any of that. No pushback, no acknowledgement either. Just kind of took it matter of factly and pushed on.

Dave: [00:51:32] Do we have any idea what happens in the minutes, hours leading up to Allie and Rick getting killed?

Chad: [00:51:40] No, I mean, their picnic basket was there, they’d eaten. Rick was wearing swim trunks, Allie had– at least her clothes that were on the table, a swimsuit that was removed from her. Rick’s fishing tackle and pole were there. Seemingly, they did what they wanted to do, and then–

Dave: [00:51:54] Kimball just wandered upon them.

Chad: [00:51:55] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:51:56] How old was Kimball when he committed this crime, this murder?

Chad: [00:52:00] He was in his early 20s.

Dan: [00:52:02] What’s pretty remarkable to me is that Kimball never talked about it.

Chad: [00:52:07] Not that we ever could find evidence of.

Dan: [00:52:08] Maybe he’s the off guy who one day had a really bad day and went out and killed two people, and didn’t kill anybody else. I don’t think I completely believe that. But you never know. I mean, it’s amazing that maybe he doesn’t have more victims, and he never talked about it.

Chad: [00:52:24] Right.

Dan: [00:52:24] Especially with how much he was drinking.

Chad: [00:52:26] Yeah. But he held it together for all those years.

Dan: [00:52:29] You know, I really hope for 40 years, that just ate at him.

Chad: [00:52:32] I hope so.

Dave: [00:52:34] Do you guys have any evidence or curiosity about him committing other murders that have been unsolved?

Chad: [00:52:40] We have not been able to find anything. So, both for him and for the Odin guy, we did learn that Odin, the faux suspect, if you will, had been in our state, in our area when this happened. So, I sent a statewide bulletin out to all agencies in our state, if you have cold case, homicides from this time period, we have determined in our case that this serial killer was in our state in this area during these two years, basically. DNA is now on file, yada, yada, all that stuff. We suspect Odin killed somebody while he was in our area. Other than the suspicion, we don’t have any evidence to back that up, but we share the information and then we’re willing to share anything with anybody, they’ve just got to contact us, and we haven’t heard back from anybody.

Dave: [00:53:24] So you guys have now solved Allie and Rick’s murders.

Chad: [00:53:28] Yeah, we’ve closed that case.

Dave: [00:53:30] What are your next steps? I’m imagining that Rick and Allie’s families get contacted by you?

Chad: [00:53:35] Yep.

Dave: [00:53:36] And how satisfying is that?

Chad: [00:53:37] That was incredible. We’ve had contact with them over the last couple of years, kind of infrequently. Rick’s parents are still alive. Allie’s folks weren’t, but her other family members were who we kind of kept in touch with. Curt mostly talked to them periodically on the phone. I talked with Rick’s mom. She would call my desk number, so I talked to her quite a bit. And once we got back from doing Jimmy’s interview, and got everything figured out, really the case was done. We closed up every loop we could. We contacted the families and had them come to our office and we told them what we’d found and who it was and how it happened, and X, Y, Z. They were super appreciative. It was very satisfying.

Yeardley: [00:54:23] Does the suspect, having taken his own life, provide as much closure as being able to arrest and put that man on trial for the families, did you get a sense of that?

Chad: [00:54:33] For me, I’m fairly jaded, yeah. I really wanted to arrest them also, but this will do. The family members were very appreciative just to know, and we hear that or we see that on TV shows whatever but when we sat in our conference room with him and explain things to him and show them how it all fell together 40 years later, the appreciation from them was more than I expected. And then, I mentioned Detective Curt a lot in this. He worked on this case for almost the whole time, it was a case. But there’s two other cold case detectives that we have also, Detective Chuck and Detective Kirk, we all did a bunch of work on this. But our cold case guys do a tremendous amount of work for us, help us out. We just don’t have the staffing level to do a lot of this stuff with full time staff, we just don’t.

[00:55:15] When it was all said and done, cold case, guys, and Detective Curt, specifically, were presented with several awards from across our state from different organizations and then also an award from our department and our sheriff. The families had a plaque made for the cold case guys, and the rest of us are on there too. But it’s the cold case, guys. I mean, they did the heavy lifting in this case. They had a lunch thing at their church, and they did a collection, and they presented Curt with, I think, it was $5000 or $6,000 donation to our cold case fund. And so, in our hallway right next to the cold case detectives’ office is a plaque from the family and then the plaque from our sheriff.

Dan: [00:55:58] Well, good work, fellas. Like Dave said, people in law enforcement around the community where this happened, everybody knows about that case and you’re just wondering, “Are they ever going to solve it?” And well done to you and Curt and Greg, and everybody involved.

Dave: [00:56:14] As Dan said, great job. This is a big case for local law enforcement, and I was very pleased when I heard you guys had solved that.

Chad: [00:56:21] Well, thank you.

Yeardley: [00:56:21] It’s a tribute to your unfailing tenacity. There comes a point where you think, “Crap, I don’t know. I’ve nowhere else to look, and I don’t know what to do.” But the fact that none of you would let it go says so much about who you are and the way you do what you do.

Chad: [00:56:42] Like all of our successful cases, it’s a team effort.

Yeardley: [00:56:45] Well, thank you, Greg and Chad, so much, just for never giving up and for bringing us that case today.

Greg: [00:56:52] Thank you.

Chad: [00:56:53] Thanks for having us.

[Small Town Dicks theme playing]

Yeardley: [00:57:39] Small Town Dicks is produced by Gary Scott and Yeardley Smith, and co-produced by Detectives Dan and Dave. This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Gary Scott, and me, Yeardley Smith. Our associate producers are Erin Gaynor, and the Real Nick Smitty, and Alec Cowan. Our music is composed by John Forest. Our editors extraordinaire are Logan Heftel and Soren Begin, with additional editing assistance from Jacqui Fulton. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Dan: [00:57:31] If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, visit us on our website at smalltowndicks.com.

Yeardley: [00:57:39] Small Town Dicks would like to thank SpeechDocs for providing transcripts of this podcast. You can find these transcripts on our episode page at smalltowndicks.com. And for more information about SpeechDocs and their service, please go to speechdocs.com.

Dan: [00:57:56] And join the Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

Dave: [00:58:04] And if you support us on Patreon, your subscription will give you access to exclusive content and merchandise that isn’t available anywhere else. Go to patreon.com/smalltowndickspodcast.

Yeardley: [00:58:16] That’s right. Your subscription also makes it possible for us to keep going to small towns across the country-

Dan: [00:58:22] -in search of the finest-

Dave: [00:58:24] -rare, true crime cases told-

Dan: [00:58:26] -as always by the detectives who investigated them.

Dave: [00:58:29] So, thanks for listening Small Town Fam.

Yeardley: [00:58:31] Nobody’s better than you.

[music fades away]

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]