The Informant

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Speaker 3 She was an 18-year-old girl.

Speaker 4 It broke my heart.

Speaker 3 It destroyed me.

Speaker 5 What do you do?

Speaker 3 You just keep fighting.

Speaker 6 They called from the store. They can't find Heidi.

Speaker 7 They noticed somebody wrestling with somebody in a van.

Speaker 8 Who'd grab an 18-year-old girl?

Speaker 7 Our theory then was probably a sex crime.

Speaker 9 But was it? Two women were determined to investigate and uncovered something very different.

Speaker 10 Attached was a photograph of Heidi Allen. It had a code name, Julia Roberts.
I thought, what is this?

Speaker 9 Heidi had a secret mission. Had she made a secret enemy?

Speaker 10 They're going to want to shut her up permanently.

Speaker 9 But who were they? Decades of digging and then then a chilling chance encounter.

Speaker 3 He said to us, Do you really want to know what happened to her?

Speaker 3 And he said, I grabbed her like this.

Speaker 10 Oh my God, finally.

Speaker 12 It was unbelievable.

Speaker 10 That was jaw-dropping.

Speaker 15 Tanya Priest never wanted to be a star witness, least of all in a long-ago abduction and murder investigation.

Speaker 18 But after that guy blurted out what he did, she felt she had to come forward.

Speaker 12 Would you live with it?

Speaker 3 Could you live with all of that?

Speaker 19 And she found herself on the phone talking to a district attorney in upstate New York.

Speaker 17 I know, Dr. Sir.

Speaker 20 Tanya believed she knew who'd done it.

Speaker 14 Who'd done that terrible thing at the convenience store on an Easter Sunday morning many years ago?

Speaker 15 That store clerk abducted and never seen again.

Speaker 3 They probably only took maybe 60 seconds to do what they needed to do.

Speaker 20 What Tanya reopened was a wound that had never really healed in Oswego County, New York.

Speaker 10 I can't let it go, and I won't let it go.

Speaker 26 I will die trying

Speaker 26 and fighting for her.

Speaker 3 If they think I'm going to walk away, they are mistaken. I am not.

Speaker 28 Even today, just say the name Heidi Allen and a swirl of memories come back.

Speaker 30 Some of them fuzzy now.

Speaker 23 It was 1994, that missing girl.

Speaker 16 The van, was it blue or was it white?

Speaker 22 And didn't they get the guy who did it and send him away?

Speaker 33 Tanya was a teenager back then.

Speaker 34 Did you follow it in the news or did kids talk about it in school?

Speaker 3 I knew about that they were looking for a van. That's basically all I knew at that point.

Speaker 36 Here's what's not in dispute about that snowy Easter Sunday morning.

Speaker 20 18-year-old Heidi Allen, taking the early shift for a co-worker, opened the convenience store about 5.45 a.m.

Speaker 19 It was a part-time job for her, a way to defray some of her freshman college bills. Lisa Busky is Heidi's sister.

Speaker 26 She was sassy and energetic and a risk-taker.

Speaker 39 She liked school?

Speaker 26 Oh, she liked school because she was smart. She didn't have to study.
She was one of those.

Speaker 40 She was one of those kids, huh?

Speaker 26 She's one of those.

Speaker 39 So what was the job at the convenience store about?

Speaker 26 It was close to home and our friends owned it. You know, so mom and dad felt safe.

Speaker 29 Before the early birds started showing up for their newspapers, Siggy's maybe a few gallons of gas at the pumps, Heidi's boyfriend was there with her to help get things up and running for the day.

Speaker 26 He would take her so that she wasn't alone until people, you know, like the traffic was picking up, and then he would go.

Speaker 39 And that's what happened that day. Right.

Speaker 18 Richard Thibodeau, a regular, lived a few miles down the road and saw Heidi that morning.

Speaker 44 I asked her for two packs of basic cigarettes.

Speaker 45 Paid her.

Speaker 44 I said, have a nice day.

Speaker 34 A few more cars pulled up to the DMW.

Speaker 18 Reporter John O'Brien covered the case for Syracuse.com.

Speaker 47 Some customers had come in and didn't realize she wasn't there until they'd been there for a while. They flagged on a deputy and

Speaker 47 no Heidi.

Speaker 18 Heidi's sister Lisa woke up that morning to very bad news.

Speaker 26 And my aunt was on the machine and she said, Lisa, Heidi's missing.

Speaker 16 Missing?

Speaker 26 We We saw her the night before

Speaker 26 when she delivered our Easter baskets and

Speaker 26 her usual goofiness.

Speaker 47 It was shocking that an 18-year-old girl could just disappear like that on an Easter morning.

Speaker 49 The convenience store was strung with crime scene tape by the time Heidi's sister arrived.

Speaker 26 I just really felt like I was just watching a movie.

Speaker 30 Inside the store, not promising.

Speaker 43 They'd found Heidi's purse, her car keys, money undisturbed in the register.

Speaker 15 No signs of a struggle, and her car was parked in the lot.

Speaker 26 I just remember sitting and just watching. I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 52 The community made a Find Heidi volunteer command center at the old firehouse while the authorities readied their first news alert.

Speaker 55 We have an 18-year-old girl by the name of Heidi Allen.

Speaker 47 who lives here in New Haven, who was the clerk.

Speaker 23 Someone listening to that bulletin was Richard Thibodeau, who of course recognized Heidi from the convenience store where he'd shopped earlier.

Speaker 17 He turned to his girlfriend Teresa and said as much.

Speaker 12 And Richard said, Well, my daddy said I was there. I bought two packs of cigarettes.

Speaker 8 So he picked up the phone and he called.

Speaker 36 Called the sheriffs and set in motion a sequence of life-changing events he could not stop.

Speaker 56 Other callers that morning offered tips about a suspicious van at the store.

Speaker 45 Rule Todd was undersheriff at the time.

Speaker 7 They noticed somebody driving very erratically, wrestling or struggling with somebody in a van.

Speaker 39 This fan sheriff, did you get a make model color, anything useful?

Speaker 7 A different color, white, light blue, that type of stuff.

Speaker 22 But in those early hours, in the days before smartphones and ubiquitous security cameras, nothing was coming together.

Speaker 16 Volunteers searched. The National Guard was called out.

Speaker 36 But Heidi was gone and stayed gone.

Speaker 52 We followed up on every leave.

Speaker 32 We had no major people.

Speaker 20 Weeks went by without an arrest, without answers, and then a couple of months passed.

Speaker 16 They had brought in a criminal profiler with the FBI's behavioral science unit, someone who would later correctly profile the Oklahoma City bomber.

Speaker 22 But in this instance, Clint Van Zandt was the agent in the unit who got assigned to the Heidi Allen case in upstate New York.

Speaker 24 His take, look for someone with a history of violence and someone obsessed with the case.

Speaker 60 The person who committed this is somebody who was really interested. I mean, the community was interested in the case, but this is more interested.
Obsessed. Could not let it go.

Speaker 60 This is somebody who'll be saving newspaper articles.

Speaker 31 And there would be many newspaper articles.

Speaker 20 Decades of them, in fact. The case of Heidi Allen was just getting started.

Speaker 8 Clues to the mystery would grab an 18-year-old girl.

Speaker 7 Our theory then was

Speaker 7 a sex crime.

Speaker 41 And then, unbelievably, the killer seems to out himself.

Speaker 7 He says, yeah, I killed this girl.

Speaker 13 He gives it up. He gives it up.

Speaker 22 Heidi, the teenager behind the convenience store counter selling Sunday papers and cigarettes, had vanished that Easter morning.

Speaker 53 Then-Sheriff Rule Todd.

Speaker 8 So what was your working theory? Who'd grab an 18-year-old girl?

Speaker 7 Our theory then was probably a sex crime.

Speaker 36 Abducted and after weeks of fruitless searching, presumed murder.

Speaker 26 She's the 18-year-old girl that had her life taken from her. She was a good kid with goals.

Speaker 43 But the Sheriff's Department was pursuing a promising lead, and it concerned the guy who'd bought cigarettes from Heidi that morning.

Speaker 13 Richard Thibodeau.

Speaker 39 Did the cops on the phone start to ask you questions?

Speaker 44 They sent someone over to the house and asked me a bunch of questions.

Speaker 49 Investigators, it turned out, were suspicious of him from the get-go.

Speaker 17 They'd even put him under surveillance.

Speaker 43 The reason, Thibodeau's was the last transaction recorded on the register that morning.

Speaker 16 And Richard Thibodeau also drove a white van, one that seemed to match a vehicle described by a witness at the scene.

Speaker 47 At first it was blue. It changed to white as time went on.
But he did say in the end, that van, the Thibodeau van, that was the van.

Speaker 30 The witness reported seeing more than one man, so investigators also brought in Richard's brother, Gary, for questioning.

Speaker 16 The brother said he was home asleep that morning, and his girlfriend vouched for him.

Speaker 18 But Gary Thibodeau didn't have a spotless record.

Speaker 16 He had an outstanding warrant on a minor drug charge in neighboring Massachusetts.

Speaker 47 They extradited him to Massachusetts, which was an odd thing on a drug charge.

Speaker 17 In the county jail, Thibodeau struck up a conversation with a fellow prisoner.

Speaker 57 Him and Gary are sitting in there shooting the breeze

Speaker 7 and they get talking about something like all of them do. He says, yeah, I killed this girl from Swiggle.

Speaker 39 He gives it up, though.

Speaker 13 He gives it up.

Speaker 30 Brother Gary is eventually said to have told two prisoners about his involvement in the crime.

Speaker 38 That he and Heidi used drugs together and that she feared Gary was going to screw her over in a drug deal.

Speaker 64 And with that jailhouse confession, investigators now believe they had their case.

Speaker 45 The two brothers, drugs, and abduction and murder.

Speaker 65 I was waiting for my school bus to come.

Speaker 28 This is Richard Thibodeau's stepdaughter, Amanda.

Speaker 64 She was just 11 at the time.

Speaker 65 And police cars came pulling into my driveway. I don't know how many,

Speaker 66 but they just came shooting right in and stopped quickly.

Speaker 17 Both brothers were arrested and charged with kidnapping in the first degree.

Speaker 67 A major break in the Heidi Allen case.

Speaker 39 What's the motive, Sherry?

Speaker 34 What's the theory that goes with them in their van and being at the convenience store?

Speaker 57 Do you know what the motive is?

Speaker 7 Opportunity. They stopped in there to get the cigarettes, and that was the opportunity.

Speaker 39 It's about to abduct this young cute girl, huh?

Speaker 45 Appears to me.

Speaker 20 There would be two separate trials for the brothers, two separate juries to decide their fates.

Speaker 19 And in the summer of 1995, the first of the two, Gary, went on trial.

Speaker 13 Joe Fahey, now a retired judge, was Gary's defense attorney. He says the case was forensically and circumstantially light.

Speaker 68 There was no indication that Gary had ever been near the DMW that morning.

Speaker 67 Gary testified that he was home asleep that morning, and the jailhouse snitches who got him indicted were flat-out lying. He figured they must have been angling for favors from the prosecution.

Speaker 68 The only thing they really had to contend with were

Speaker 68 the two guys from Massachusetts. They said that Gary kind of boasted about they were looking for me, but they'll never find her.

Speaker 30 But they were statements a jury apparently believed.

Speaker 36 It took just four hours to render a verdict.

Speaker 70 How do you find the defendant after count number one, kidnapping in first degree?

Speaker 3 Guilty.

Speaker 17 Brother Richard, owner of the van, the one who bought the cigarettes and placed himself at the store, went on trial a few weeks later.

Speaker 25 His stepdaughter, Amanda, was certain he'd be found guilty as well.

Speaker 65 It didn't make sense for them not to find him guilty because they found Uncle Gary guilty and they're saying that Uncle Gary did it with him.

Speaker 28 Richard was without a doubt Heidi's last customer, and witnesses testified they'd seen a van like his at the scene.

Speaker 16 Richard's van, however, showed no trace of blood or anything connected to Heidi.

Speaker 17 This time, the jury deliberated eight hours and we find him not guilty.

Speaker 16 Two trials, two opposite results.

Speaker 39 So here's the strange thing about the two brothers, it seems, Sheriff. You've got Richard, who's acquitted, and yet he is the one that says, yeah, I was in the shop.

Speaker 39 And his brother, who doesn't put himself in the shop, is the one

Speaker 8 who goes down for it.

Speaker 39 But don't they have to be in cahoots cahoots together for this to make sense?

Speaker 7 I would say so, but it still doesn't matter.

Speaker 39 And that's what happens with differing juries. Do you believe good arrest, good conviction?

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 28 Heidi's family wasn't quite sure what to make of the two trials.

Speaker 36 Heidi's first cousin is Missy Searles.

Speaker 6 It was confusing to have

Speaker 6 basically the same evidence, just

Speaker 6 different jury, and then you end up with two different verdicts.

Speaker 21 And there was something that always bothered cousin Missy about the trial.

Speaker 37 The jailhouse informants testified that it was a drug deal gone bad.

Speaker 14 Didn't make sense.

Speaker 6 And she wasn't a drug user herself. She didn't participate in that.

Speaker 16 Clint Van Zandt, the FBI profiler, was also left scratching his head.

Speaker 36 His profile predicted the person responsible would be an obsessive stalker type.

Speaker 39 Did you think he maybe missed something in your evaluation?

Speaker 60 The Thibodeau brothers did not add up to my profile, so I was trying to figure out what I missed. You know, was it something that I didn't know about, that I didn't have a handle on?

Speaker 22 The years went by.

Speaker 32 A fading sign at the center of town was the lingering reminder that once there'd been a girl named Heidi Allen whose life was taken from her.

Speaker 47 Heidi Allen has been huge in everyone's mind for years. I mean, because she's never been found.

Speaker 32 And there was a lingering feeling in the town among some people that just maybe there was more to the story.

Speaker 3 I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 4 Broke my heart.

Speaker 3 It destroyed me.

Speaker 64 A chance encounter and the shock of a lifetime.

Speaker 3 He said to us, do you really want to know what happened to her?

Speaker 16 Are we about to learn Heidi's fate?

Speaker 3 He said, I grabbed her like this.

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Speaker 23 It was an odd conclusion to the Heidi Allen case.

Speaker 24 One brother convicted, The other brother, the one who admitted to being at the store, acquitted.

Speaker 62 And even though Richard Thibodeau was found not guilty, in some people's minds, he'd simply had a lucky day in court.

Speaker 43 Stepdaughter Amanda.

Speaker 65 Growing up, we were known as the Kidnappers' Kids. We were known as the Murderers' Kids.
We weren't treated nicely.

Speaker 33 For the Allen family, it was an unsatisfying result.

Speaker 22 They still didn't know what had happened to Heidi, and her body had never been found.

Speaker 39 She's out there somewhere, and somebody knows.

Speaker 26 That's right.

Speaker 26 And someday we're going to know. You can't give up hope on your missing loved one.

Speaker 67 Even after the dust settled, the case stayed in the news for years to come.

Speaker 17 Some young people like Tanya Priest never really forgot.

Speaker 3 Nothing like that had ever happened in our area before, so yeah, it stood out.

Speaker 16 A full decade rolled by.

Speaker 14 Tanya was now in her mid-20s, and one day while visiting a friend named Vicki, the TV was on, up popped a story about the Heidi Allen case, an anniversary report.

Speaker 3 When the news flashed about Heidi, I said to her, I wonder what happened to Heidi and she said, yeah, me too.

Speaker 17 It wasn't really a question, just an out loud thought.

Speaker 51 But someone in the room decided to answer.

Speaker 16 It was the friend's boyfriend, a guy nicknamed Thumper.

Speaker 3 He said to us, do you really want to know what happened to her?

Speaker 11 And we were like,

Speaker 4 okay, yeah.

Speaker 33 And this next version of that Easter morning is one that needs close attention.

Speaker 48 Because it didn't involve the Thibodeau brothers at all, but put Thumper himself and two young buddies at the epicenter of Heidi's abduction.

Speaker 3 He said that we pulled in right up by the doors with the vehicle running. They left the back doors open.
And he said, I grabbed her like this.

Speaker 3 He said, We dragged her out of the store, and then he laughed. He said, and when we hit that van, we hit that van hard with her.

Speaker 56 Could he be serious?

Speaker 39 I mean, is this a guy just kind of flexing his biceps for the girls?

Speaker 3 You know, the more we didn't believe him, the angrier he became. I said, okay, well, how did the white van get involved?

Speaker 10 He said, we just got lucky.

Speaker 3 One showed up before we did. I said, Thumper, there's an innocent man in prison.
He said,

Speaker 4 not my problem.

Speaker 31 So did she run to the police then and there, scream out to anyone who'd listen?

Speaker 33 It wasn't that simple.

Speaker 39 Tanya, why didn't you go to the sheriff's office at that point? Say, I got a story to tell you.

Speaker 3 Well, he lived a mile down the road from my house.

Speaker 28 Tanya says she was paralyzed by fear of Thumper.

Speaker 27 I went home and cried.

Speaker 3 I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 20 But she never forgot about that chilling conversation.

Speaker 17 She tried to cut off contact with her friend Vicki and the boyfriend, and eventually Tanya moved out of state.

Speaker 3 She was an 18-year-old girl.

Speaker 4 It broke my heart.

Speaker 3 It destroyed me.

Speaker 54 The turning point came in 2010, three years later.

Speaker 48 That's when Tanya learned some sickening news.

Speaker 63 In a domestic dispute, Thumper had shot and killed her former friend.

Speaker 39 Did you then think he was capable of having done that thing to Heidi?

Speaker 12 No, of course.

Speaker 39 a domestic and an uncle? Of course.

Speaker 59 Thumper, real name James Steen, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 16 Tanya says that conviction and a tragedy in her own life, the death of her husband, galvanized her to finally speak up.

Speaker 29 She picked up the phone and called the county prosecutor, a guy she once knew.

Speaker 39 This is Tanya from high school.

Speaker 11 This is Tanya from high school.

Speaker 16 Greg Oaks had risen through the ranks to become a Swego County District Attorney, now running that same office that had gotten the Gary Thibodeau conviction years earlier.

Speaker 22 And of course, he remembered the case of the missing girl.

Speaker 11 I was home for Easter, and I remember that being on the news.

Speaker 25 So when Tanya Priest called him with a story that implicated three new suspects in Heidi Allen's abduction, he listened carefully. I know the truth, sir.

Speaker 25 I have nothing to lose and nothing to gain from this.

Speaker 3 It's just my conscience. Absolutely.

Speaker 43 The DA flew Tanya up to New York to hear more details, and together they discussed how to verify her story.

Speaker 17 And there was one detail that seemed promising.

Speaker 67 In the story told by Thumper that day, he said they'd taken Heidi in the van to the home of a young woman named Jennifer Westcott.

Speaker 3 He screamed, if you don't believe me, go ask Jennifer.

Speaker 11 What we wanted to do is try to follow up to see if there's any truth to that.

Speaker 63 Jennifer Westcott was a girl Tanya knew from high school.

Speaker 22 The DA encouraged her to get in touch by Facebook.

Speaker 21 They exchanged telephone numbers, and then it was time for a phone call.

Speaker 3 They plugged into my phone, taped the whole conversation.

Speaker 75 Hello?

Speaker 22 It had been years since they last spoke.

Speaker 16 Tanya made small talk at first and then eased into the story that she'd heard.

Speaker 14 The murder of Heidi all those years ago.

Speaker 75 He just told me that they grabbed her from the store and they brought her to your house.

Speaker 77 I really, uh, in my own hat, dropped it.

Speaker 77 I don't know, probably about ten years ago.

Speaker 32 Jennifer didn't deny a thing, but she wasn't saying much either.

Speaker 75 Why did they even involve you or even do this?

Speaker 75 I don't even know who which one of them killed her, though.

Speaker 77 No idea.

Speaker 3 I had to keep throwing stuff at her, and finally, she would bite.

Speaker 75 Did you even know that this was Heidi that they brought there and that this is what they were gonna do?

Speaker 50 Uh-uh.

Speaker 75 You had no clue what they just showed up with her?

Speaker 77 Yeah, I mean, they didn't even bring her in the house.

Speaker 50 Yeah, that's

Speaker 77 man.

Speaker 14 It sounded as though Jennifer had real information, had just delivered the DA the evidential goods.

Speaker 77 It bothers me to talk about it. I won't lie to you.

Speaker 37 Tanya had just one more question.

Speaker 41 Had Jennifer ever considered going to the police?

Speaker 77 I would never open a can of worms like that, God Almighty.

Speaker 77 I'm not doing the investigators' job.

Speaker 77 I don't get paid enough.

Speaker 3 Say, at first, I felt sorry for her because the more I talked to her on the phone and the more I realized she had no remorse.

Speaker 11 Based on the conversation that takes place, we had concerns that maybe there was some truth to Tanya's claim.

Speaker 54 20 years, 20 Easters had come and gone since Heidi's disappearance.

Speaker 76 And now with Tanya's story, everything old was new again.

Speaker 49 The DA starts looking into the evidence Tanya helped gather.

Speaker 11 And when the investigator talked to Jennifer Westcott, she explained that, look, my statements to Tanya Priest simply weren't true.

Speaker 38 What will that mean for the case?

Speaker 16 Greg Oakes had grown up not far from where Heidi Allen disappeared.

Speaker 61 And now, as district attorney of the county, he was tentatively giving the case a fresh look.

Speaker 11 When somebody comes forward with a claim that potentially exonerates a convicted man, we have to take it seriously.

Speaker 17 Inside the walls of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Danimore, New York, we met the convict who was the subject of all this reconsideration.

Speaker 32 This is Gary Thibodeau, then an old 61 with gimpy legs and a bad lung.

Speaker 39 Did you abduct Heidi Allen?

Speaker 78 No, I did not. And then kill her?

Speaker 47 No.

Speaker 78 Never abducted or killed anyone.

Speaker 25 He says those jailhouse snitches lied, and their testimony was the only real evidence against him.

Speaker 39 Did you tell those two they're never going to find the body? No, you're not doing drugs with Heidi there. No, no, no.

Speaker 67 Thibodeau had been inside for 22 years.

Speaker 18 He's always proclaimed his innocence, but has long since resigned to the way life turned out for him.

Speaker 39 Do you say, why me?

Speaker 78 Why is this the best? I've gone through all of them failings and emotions and thoughts over the years, but I kind of believe that you are where you are in life

Speaker 78 because that's where you're supposed to be, whether it has anything to do with the innocent and guilty or...

Speaker 39 But yours is more than 20 years now in the New York State correction system.

Speaker 78 Yeah.

Speaker 39 For a crime you say you didn't commit?

Speaker 78 No, I didn't.

Speaker 43 Back in 2013, when Tanya Priest stepped forward, Gary had no idea the case was being given another look.

Speaker 36 He had exhausted his appeals.

Speaker 24 The other brother, Richard, the one acquitted of Heidi's kidnapping, says his life has been filled with anxiety.

Speaker 44 I've been afraid for the past 20 years of actually going anywhere by myself.

Speaker 39 So, you've really been traumatized for this whole thing.

Speaker 40 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 41 And he has also regretted coming forward as the good Joe who told investigators that he'd been in the convenience store that morning.

Speaker 39 The worst mistake of your life, Richard, picking up that phone?

Speaker 8 Yeah. Calling the cops?

Speaker 40 Yes.

Speaker 44 They had to convict somebody.

Speaker 68 Why us?

Speaker 44 Because I had a van.

Speaker 39 Are the two brothers self-pitying, saying, why me?

Speaker 12 they're together as as like one like why did that happen to us

Speaker 16 neither brother was aware that a woman unknown to them was banging on the authorities doors to get Thibodeau's case reopened prosecutor Oakes was investigating and he asked Tanya's old friend the woman on the phone who seemed to know more than she should they didn't even bring her in the house

Speaker 41 to come down to the station for a talk What do you know about the Heidi Allen? I don't know anything about the Heidi Allen case.

Speaker 25 The investigator asked her about that recent phone call with Tanya, omitting the fact that they had it all on tape.

Speaker 25 Did you make reference saying that they brought her to the house and yet you stayed she they kept her out in the van?

Speaker 25 No, I never said anything to her about a van.

Speaker 16 Well, in fact, she had.

Speaker 74 That's when they told her the call was recorded. Oh my god.

Speaker 74 I really don't. I mean, I was

Speaker 74 this

Speaker 74 lady. Where does she even come up? What is this about? And I said, I don't know anything about them taking her in a wing.

Speaker 74 I just thought I was just shutting her up. I don't guess I was confessing I have an idea.

Speaker 11 When the investigator talked to Jennifer Wescott, you know, she explained that, look, my statements to Tanya Priest simply weren't true. I was trying to get her off the phone.

Speaker 11 I was trying to appease her.

Speaker 34 The DA tracked down Thumper, a.k.a. James Steen, and the other two men.

Speaker 40 Each said that the Tanya Jennifer story was baloney.

Speaker 33 Investigators also contacted the jailhouse snitches from back in the day, and they stood by their testimony.

Speaker 24 More importantly, Greg Oakes said they got nothing for testifying.

Speaker 39 So as you reviewed him, you found him credible?

Speaker 11 I did.

Speaker 39 Why do you believe some people and not others?

Speaker 11 We have to look beyond just do we believe somebody or not? Is there information that they can provide that can be backed up by other independent evidence?

Speaker 33 The DA didn't think he could believe anything Jennifer Wescott had to say.

Speaker 30 And he came to question Tanya's credibility too.

Speaker 11 I don't believe in Tanya Priest and her story. She said that she had heard these admissions back in 2006.
And I asked her, why didn't you immediately come forward to the police?

Speaker 11 And her response was, I simply didn't believe them.

Speaker 16 And after reviewing all the evidence, he decided there was no there there.

Speaker 11 I was convinced that they had had the right person.

Speaker 8 What would the motive be for these two Thibodeau brothers?

Speaker 11 Unfortunately, Dennis, there's been no obvious motive for all these years.

Speaker 17 Months had gone by since Tanya first called the DA's office.

Speaker 16 Now she got a phone call.

Speaker 3 I was told that there would be no further investigation.

Speaker 35 What case clothes?

Speaker 39 We've got the Thibodeau's for this thing in? Yep.

Speaker 3 Yep, I started crying.

Speaker 19 So, was that it?

Speaker 13 Had she given it her best shot?

Speaker 16 Time to go home.

Speaker 76 Well, you'd think so.

Speaker 3 If they think I'm going to walk away, they are mistaken. I am not.

Speaker 32 A secret document and a stunning revelation.

Speaker 16 Heidi Allen was a young woman with an alternate identity.

Speaker 10 Code name Julia Roberts.

Speaker 16 Why this case might just be blown wide open.

Speaker 3 How did this not come out during the trial?

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Speaker 76 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 73 It's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 45 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 79 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 73 Fox.

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Speaker 36 Tanya Priest had gone to the authorities with an explosive allegation.

Speaker 43 She said a man nicknamed Thumper had confessed to her that he and two buddies had abducted and murdered Heidi Allen back in 1994.

Speaker 13 And she was devastated when the prosecutor checked out her story and ultimately chose not to believe her.

Speaker 27 I was doing it because I was a good person,

Speaker 27 and that's how I felt.

Speaker 13 But Tanya wouldn't give it up. She was convinced an innocent man, Gary Thibodeau, was in prison.

Speaker 34 She made calls and was eventually put in touch with a New York federal public defender named Lisa Peebles, someone who had ties to the defense lawyers who'd worked on Thibodeau's failed appeals.

Speaker 10 Tanya felt as though things were amiss by the time she called our office.

Speaker 34 Lisa, the lawyer, listened to that secretly recorded phone call between Tanya and her childhood pal and came away with a different take than the DA.

Speaker 77 I would never open a can of worms like that. God Almighty.

Speaker 10 That was like jaw-dropping.

Speaker 52 What do you hear on that tape?

Speaker 10 A woman confiding it took her a long time to get the images out of her head. I heard her say they made her sit in the van.
She also said that she would never go to police.

Speaker 39 Did you believe Tanya Priest when she came forward?

Speaker 10 I absolutely did. I said, we can't let this go.

Speaker 59 Lisa called up her friend John O'Brien, then a reporter with Syracuse.com.

Speaker 47 She says, you know, you've always told me to call you when I have a good case, and I got one.

Speaker 20 Lisa had a morsel that intrigued the reporter.

Speaker 47 This was the first time in 20 years that anyone said they knew anything about what happened to Heidi Allen.

Speaker 64 One of the early doors the reporter knocked on was Richard Thibodeau, the brother who'd been accused back when but acquitted.

Speaker 3 Oh my God, finally.

Speaker 12 It was unbelievable.

Speaker 44 Finally, someone come forward to help my brother get out of prison.

Speaker 47 I just said, you know, if you have anything that might help here, you know, let me know.

Speaker 66 He said, well, I do have these these seven boxes of documents in my garage. Holy cow, he's gathering dust.
I said, we'd absolutely like to see those right away.

Speaker 19 For two decades, Richard had kept every scrap of paper related to his trial.

Speaker 46 Was there something buried in there that the other lawyers had missed?

Speaker 21 Something that might help his brother?

Speaker 54 For Lisa and the reporter, eagerly digging through those boxes was like opening presents at Christmas.

Speaker 10 And I thought, what is this stuff? The whole thing was so bizarre to me.

Speaker 20 There was something buried in the box, something forgotten that almost glowed it turned out to be so important for their quest.

Speaker 16 What they fished out was an internal memo from the Oswego County Sheriff's Office that put Heidi Allen in a whole new light.

Speaker 17 She wasn't just the bright-faced, smart girl selling Sunday papers.

Speaker 16 It turned out she had a secret arrangement with local law enforcement.

Speaker 10 Heidi Allen was a confidential informant.

Speaker 39 Telling us who's selling acid on the school grounds, who's stealing dope.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 28 She'd been issued a 3x5 informant index card.

Speaker 69 It had her name, fingerprints, even a secret squirrel informant alias.

Speaker 10 It had a code name, Julia Roberts. It had all of her personal information on this card.

Speaker 8 Saying this woman, code name Julia Roberts, is a drug informant for the County Sheriff's Office?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 10 I was thinking, how did this not come out during the trial?

Speaker 16 The discovery of Heidi's informant status offered up whole new theories about her disappearance.

Speaker 10 That certainly would have opened up the field to many other other possible suspects with motive to harm her.

Speaker 36 Turns out, Thumper had said as much to Tanya.

Speaker 3 He said that that's what happens to rats.

Speaker 3 She was a rat. She was going to turn some big, big guys in, and that's why they did it.

Speaker 39 As Thumper tells it, she's a snitch.

Speaker 3 She's a snitch.

Speaker 18 Lisa Peebles immediately got on with Gary Thibodeau's trial attorney from 1995, Joe Fahey.

Speaker 15 He says, back when he did hear rumblings that Heidi might have been working with the sheriff's office, but was told there was no file, file, that it simply wasn't true.

Speaker 29 And one day, two years before she disappeared, he lost it, dropped it in the parking lot of the DNW convenience store where Heidi would one day become a cashier.

Speaker 25 The ID was later found.

Speaker 34 It's essentially like outing an undercover officer or a protected witness.

Speaker 10 Yes. Yes.
The idea that it's out there, that they believe she's an informant, is a problem.

Speaker 28 What was important for Lisa Peebles about the discovery of the Heidi identity card was that even though it was in the brothers' case file, it had apparently never been given to Gary Thibodeau's defense team.

Speaker 69 She argued that was something called a Brady violation.

Speaker 74 Prosecutors are required to turn over any evidence that might help the defense.

Speaker 13 Lisa filed a motion to have Gary's conviction thrown out.

Speaker 36 And John O'Brien broke news, writing the first of many Heidi stories to come.

Speaker 47 It just took off and people are devouring it.

Speaker 20 A rock had been kicked over.

Speaker 17 The reporter was now getting hundreds of tips and leads.

Speaker 16 He even tracked down one of the jailhouse informants from the trial, Robert Baldassaro, and recorded the interview.

Speaker 17 The man's story had changed somewhat.

Speaker 55 Your testimony came out that he confessed to it.

Speaker 55 I never said he confessed to anything. I just said, you know, he never come fat out and told me that he killed anyone.

Speaker 41 And a co-worker of Heidi said in a sworn statement that shortly before Heidi went missing, she'd been afraid because the Sheriff's Department wanted her to nail people for dealing Coke.

Speaker 17 But Heidi's sister, Lisa, was having nothing to do with the new theories.

Speaker 40 You believe that the...

Speaker 39 conviction of one of those brothers explains everything or do you think there's more to be told?

Speaker 26 This means that we trust our law enforcement and we trust our DA.

Speaker 39 You had confidence in their professionalism then

Speaker 39 and you do now, I think you're saying.

Speaker 12 Of course we do.

Speaker 18 The judge looking at the new evidence decided to hold a hearing.

Speaker 39 You're saying to the court, there's new evidence, give him a new trial or cut him loose?

Speaker 10 Yes, I think that there's been a huge injustice and it's been a huge mistake.

Speaker 39 Are you in a better place now?

Speaker 3 I feel relieved. I finally got somewhere.

Speaker 16 But all of the fervent interest outside the walls over the fate of Gary Thibodeau seemed to wash right over the man himself.

Speaker 39 Can you imagine life on the outside? No, no, I.

Speaker 47 No.

Speaker 78 I'd like to go fishing with a can of beer.

Speaker 78 That would be nice sitting on a bank fishing, having a can of beer.

Speaker 30 The question that provoked this response.

Speaker 71 Are you out of your ever-loving mom is Heidi?

Speaker 58 Why in God's name would we ever do something like that?

Speaker 4 Why?

Speaker 16 And then another victim steps forward.

Speaker 5 He was dragging me backwards with his hand over my mouth.

Speaker 63 Will her story reveal Heidi's true killer?

Speaker 18 In January 2015, a judge granted a hearing in the matter of Gary Thibodeau, the man convicted of kidnapping Heidi Allen in 1994.

Speaker 43 His brother, Richard Thibodeau, was also in the court with his family.

Speaker 47 I want the truth to come out. I want to know what happened.
I want my uncle to be home.

Speaker 3 So even though I went through all this crazy crap, if he gets to go home in the end, I've done what's right.

Speaker 61 Heidi's family was there, but not expecting much.

Speaker 26 There's nothing new today. It's just sensationalized.

Speaker 36 The narrow issue with this hearing was whether or not prosecutors years ago unfairly and illegally failed to turn over a key document to the defense, that ID card of sorts, indicating that Heidi had been recruited as a teenage sheriff's drug informant.

Speaker 43 District Attorney Greg Oakes argued that the state had, in fact, turned over the confidential informant records before trial.

Speaker 11 They did receive this information. They did know about this.

Speaker 34 But beyond the issue of who saw what discovery evidence when, was another layer.

Speaker 36 The prosecutor said it didn't really matter.

Speaker 11 Your activity was limited to giving some high school information to the deputy.

Speaker 39 There was not a contemporaneous investigation about to go down?

Speaker 11 Around the time of her disappearance, no investigation that she was involved with.

Speaker 17 So, if Heidi wasn't naming names and turning in drug dealers, then the prosecution argued there was no foundation to this new theory that bad guys had killed her in revenge for being a snitch.

Speaker 34 Sheriff Rule Todd vehemently denied the defense innuendo that the deputies were somehow responsible for getting Heidi killed.

Speaker 39 Did you guys carelessly bust her identity, Sheriff?

Speaker 71 Are you you out of your ever-loving mindset?

Speaker 58 Why in God's name would we ever do something like that and jeopardize a girl's life or career or anything?

Speaker 8 Why? Accidentally.

Speaker 39 You know, this resulted in the girl being vulnerable.

Speaker 7 How did she become vulnerable?

Speaker 53 Sheriff Todd said, yes, her ID card was dropped in a parking lot, but was returned to the office right away.

Speaker 16 Only the store owners saw it.

Speaker 17 But something else was going on in the hearing.

Speaker 16 Lisa, the defense attorney, was also acting a little like a prosecutor. She was about to introduce evidence about those three men identified as the so-called abductors and killers.

Speaker 10 All I have to do is say, hey, there's this new evidence, and had it been available, it would have created a reasonable doubt for a jury to acquit him.

Speaker 76 The attorney called other witnesses who, like Tanya, had heard stories about these three men killing Heidi and disposing of her body.

Speaker 47 He would tell us several times that he would do us like he did Heidi.

Speaker 22 And then the men themselves.

Speaker 59 First, there was Thumper, real name James Steen, doing life for murder.

Speaker 47 I have nothing I can tell you, ma'am, about that'll save that man over there.

Speaker 67 Nothing.

Speaker 52 He claimed not to know about Heidi's abduction, nor did potential suspect number two, his buddy Roger Breckinridge, another guy with a record.

Speaker 43 And then there was the third guy from Tanya's story.

Speaker 59 His name was Michael Bohr.

Speaker 34 He lived a mile from the convenience store and had Heidi make him a sandwich most days she was working.

Speaker 36 What made Borer stand out among the three was his admitted obsession with the Heidi Allen case. Had told investigators as much months earlier.

Speaker 50 I knew one day I'm going to pop in the picture somewhere. He seemed so preoccupied with the case, I was obsessed with it because it just freaked me out.

Speaker 16 Turns out he had a shoebox full of old news clippings he'd kept for two decades.

Speaker 31 In court, Borer's testimony was not videoed, but he admitted years back he'd been a drug dealer, and he became very emotional.

Speaker 10 He started crying when it came to questions concerning his obsession with the case and he kept driving by the sign that says, where's Heidi? And he thought about her six times a day.

Speaker 16 Strange.

Speaker 23 And remember that profile drawn up by the FBI agent Clint Van Zandt, today a contributor to MSNBC.

Speaker 18 Back then, he'd predicted Heidi had been killed by someone who would later appear to be obsessed with the case.

Speaker 60 It's going to be someone who knew the victim. It's somebody who will follow this crime very closely, who will gather newspaper clippings, articles.

Speaker 16 And there was something else the FBI profiler had predicted.

Speaker 60 What I suggested was: this is so bold. They're going to have other types of offenses in their background.
You may see stalking, you may see other type of kidnappings.

Speaker 10 Holy cow, he just profiled Michael Bohr.

Speaker 19 The attorney tracked down this woman, Catherine Schmidt, who says she was attacked by Bohr years before Heidi's abduction.

Speaker 30 She She told us he tried to push her into a car.

Speaker 5 Had me in a chokehold and was dragging me backwards with his hand over my mouth. And I mean, I couldn't breathe.

Speaker 59 She managed to run away with minor injuries.

Speaker 28 Bohr pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment.

Speaker 16 But the judge wouldn't allow Catherine Schmidt to testify at this hearing, ruling her story about Michael Bohr was not relevant.

Speaker 11 He is absolutely very curious. I think he's mentally unstable.

Speaker 39 Or he knows what happened to Heidi and he feels remorse all these years later.

Speaker 11 I don't believe believe that's the case

Speaker 43 so the judge took it all under consideration it's giving me a reason to live now but in the end he ruled against thibodeau saying there was no proof that the state did not hand over documents related to heidi's drug informant status and he agreed with the da that it wasn't legally relevant anyway and as for those alternative suspects the judge said it was all too speculative and remote to warrant overturning the jury's verdict none of the three men has been charged with anything related to the Heidi Allen case.

Speaker 10 As long as Gary's alive, I'm just going to keep on fighting for him.

Speaker 21 And the fight wasn't over.

Speaker 13 Lisa took the appeal to a higher court, and a panel of four judges agreed to give the case fresh eyes and ears, peppering both sides with questions.

Speaker 81 Does this court have the discretion to grant a new trial of new believers of great risk

Speaker 81 within this advancement?

Speaker 11 The defense hasn't established that in this case, Your Honor.

Speaker 63 Lisa Peebles disagreed.

Speaker 10 I'm here here today to address a miscarriage of justice that occurred more than 21 years ago.

Speaker 74 Weeks went by, then months.

Speaker 10 Yes, it's here.

Speaker 48 The decision was posted online with little fanfare.

Speaker 64 One judge wrote a detailed argument on why he believes Gary should get a new trial, but the other three judges voted to uphold Gary's conviction.

Speaker 10 Oh my god, this is unbelievable.

Speaker 4 This is like disgusting.

Speaker 14 Lisa immediately broke the news to Gary.

Speaker 66 Gary,

Speaker 10 I got some bad news.

Speaker 21 But try to instill some hope.

Speaker 10 But we're going to work on it as quickly as we can and we really do have a solid ground to go to the Court of Appeals.

Speaker 13 Lisa continued the fight.

Speaker 34 She convinced New York State's highest court to one more review of the case.

Speaker 13 But Gary's health was deteriorating.

Speaker 10 I hope Gary lives to see the day.

Speaker 13 Months later, Gary's appeal was again rejected.

Speaker 45 And in the summer of 2019, a 64-year-old Gary Thibodeau died in prison.

Speaker 40 But the story that began so long ago isn't really over.

Speaker 34 There is no closure for those two families, the Thibodeau's and the Allens.

Speaker 40 Divided as to guilt and innocence, both all these years later have the same question.

Speaker 16 What did happen to Heidi?

Speaker 24 And will we ever find a shallow grave?

Speaker 8 I think eventually, eventually something's going to happen.

Speaker 44 Someone's going to say something.

Speaker 26 I might not know on this side of heaven. I might have to wait.

Speaker 26 But I will die trying

Speaker 26 and fighting for her.

Speaker 36 She went to work early on an Easter Sunday morning and was never seen again.

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