The Deck Investigates S1 | Part 3

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Speaker 7 When we made the discovery about the Parson family, it made us question everything Nelson had told us so far.

Speaker 7 And again, Lemon and Parson are pseudonyms because these guys have never publicly been named suspects by law enforcement.

Speaker 7 So to see if this was just some kind of huge mix-up, we first reached out to a former employee of Nelson's who Emily had interviewed prior.

Speaker 7 She's actually the one who was assigned to be the liaison between Nelson and Kristen when their relationship deteriorated. So she's very familiar with the Hulse case.

Speaker 7 She was also someone who told us that buried bus property was Daryl Lemmons.

Speaker 7 So we fired off a quick text just asking for clarity and she texted back right away and was like, oh, I misspoke. That's the Parsons.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 7 So I threw together a Parson family tree and realized that most of the four Parson boys were dead and none of them were all that old when they died.

Speaker 7 From what I can tell, only one of them was still alive. We'll call him Mike.
The others we'll call Jay, Jacob, and Daryl.

Speaker 7 Now, I'm not calling Daryl Parson the same name as Daryl Lemon just to confuse you.

Speaker 7 I'm doing it because they really have the same first name, which might be why Nelson and his staff have confused them for so long.

Speaker 7 I mean, it's not really an excusable mistake in a homicide investigation, but I thought the context was important to add.

Speaker 7 Now, the brothers who had died were too old in their OBIT photos to see if they met the description of Darlene's killer.

Speaker 7 So we headed to the historical archive in Plymouth to dig through old yearbooks. And there were two brothers that stood out to us.

Speaker 22 Am I here?

Speaker 7 This is episode 13: Untangling Misinformation.

Speaker 7 While Emily was trying to track down Nelson again to confront him about the discrepancy between the Lemon and the Parson families, I went back through all our materials to see if any of the Parsons sons showed up in any reports, because so far, no one had brought them up to us.

Speaker 7 And isn't it amazing what a little context can provide? A couple of names on a prosecutor's whiteboard suddenly gave a whole new meaning to things that I had looked at a hundred times.

Speaker 7 Tips and reports from the very first days of the investigation that seemed to be investigative dead ends were now our best lead.

Speaker 7 And so once again,

Speaker 7 We had to start back at the beginning.

Speaker 7 On August 18th, the day Darlene's body was found, a local mail carrier called police and said the suspect might be Jay Parson of Kenilworth Road.

Speaker 7 She said about two weeks before Darlene's abduction, she saw a light-colored car by the Hulse house.

Speaker 7 At the time, she didn't pay it much attention because she thought that they were probably just picking marijuana out of a field nearby.

Speaker 7 And for context about the marijuana crops, we did find old police reports where an ISP trooper with a plane had been doing flyovers and investigating a field right behind the Hulse home.

Speaker 7 Now, the Hulses were in no way involved with this. Their house just happened to be close by.
But apparently, the Parsons were thought to be involved in that grow patch.

Speaker 7 That same day, August 18th, a different tipster called to say that the suspect's sketch in the newspaper looked like Mike Parson. That's all the tip says.

Speaker 7 Then the next day, August 19th, another woman called police and said she also thought the suspect might be Jay Parson.

Speaker 7 The woman said she saw him, quote, drive by her house two weeks ago, driving a dark green, over dark top mid-sized car. She lives 20B west of Old 31 Southside, end quote.

Speaker 7 Now it's a little tough to translate these. Does she mean that she saw Jay driving a green car by her house or by Darlene's? Some of these handwritten tips and notes just leave a lot to be desired.

Speaker 7 Now, two days later, on August 21st, police got a call at 2 a.m. about a person hiding in a cornfield at State Road 110 and Highway 31.

Speaker 7 An officer went out to check the area and didn't find anybody.

Speaker 7 Then 15 minutes later, police got another complaint, this time about a guy who ran off the edge of the road in the same area and quote unquote hid in a culvert.

Speaker 7 So this is written on a police follow-up sheet, and here's what's confusing. At the top of the paper, someone wrote Daryl Parson, not to be confused again with Daryl Lemon.

Speaker 7 But then at the bottom of the sheet, the officer wrote that, quote, subject was located and arrested for 1056, end quote. In Indiana, 1056 means intoxicated person.

Speaker 7 The guy told arresting officers that he had just hitchhiked and that was the end of the report.

Speaker 7 So our question was, is it Daryl Parson who is being arrested in the incident or is it Daryl Parson who's the one calling in the incident?

Speaker 7 Emily put in a records request for Daryl Parsons' criminal history in Marshall County and there was a public intoxication arrest on his record, but it was in 2008, not 1984.

Speaker 7 Daryl also had a domestic battery charge on his record, also from 2008. And it's Daryl, who was blonde with a long nose that fits the physical description for Darlene's killer.

Speaker 7 But what did police do with these tips? Well, it seems like they did look into them because on August 21st, there's a follow-up sheet with an alibi that got called in for Daryl Parson.

Speaker 7 Someone said that he couldn't have killed Darlene because he wasn't even in Argus. He was in Boone County, Indiana that morning filling out a job application at 9 a.m.
and he was there for an hour.

Speaker 7 Now, it's worth noting that Jacob Parson is never mentioned in any of the reports that we have. But what about Mike and Jay?

Speaker 7 We couldn't find much else about about Mike right off the bat, but Jay was interviewed by police.

Speaker 7 And Jay is really the one I find myself having the most questions about, mostly because of the stuff that we've learned and how it ties back to the FBI's profile.

Speaker 7 He would have been 30 years old in 1984, and he lived in Argus all his life on the property with the buried bus, really close to Darlene.

Speaker 7 His obituary said that he graduated high school in 1974, though we couldn't find him pictured or even listed in the graduating class of that yearbook.

Speaker 7 We also couldn't find any records showing that he ever got married or had any kids. And he too has a long flat nose, just less pronounced than his brother Daryl's.

Speaker 7 Oh, and get this, in a weird turn of events, looking into Jay Parson truly did bring us right back to the beginning because I found out that he ran with Danny Bender. Remember him?

Speaker 7 The very first suspect in Darlene's case.

Speaker 7 And we know this because there are some old reports from a few of Danny's friends that mentioned Jay being with Danny, like riding their bikes around town and partying together and stuff.

Speaker 7 The Marshall County Sheriff's Office gave Jay a polygraph exam on September 5th, 1984, but it seemed more centered around Jay's friendship with Danny than Jay's possible involvement.

Speaker 23 In the pre-test, the subject gave the following information and admissions. The subject stated, he knew why he was there, reference, he was there to help this department out in any way he could.

Speaker 23 He advised that he knows Danny Bender, and because of him knowing Danny Bender, he feels that he may be able to help.

Speaker 23 The subject advised that he thought Danny Bender had streaks in his hair and was light complexed.

Speaker 23 He advised that the last time he saw Danny Bender was on July 28, 1984, which would have been the subject's birthday.

Speaker 23 He advised that his brother had driven him over there and that his brother owns a purple Chevrolet.

Speaker 23 He advised that he had a couple of beers at Danny's house and the other person was Jackie, who is Danny's girlfriend and her five kids. He advised that he was there for approximately one half hour.

Speaker 23 He advised that the day of the homicide he was at home and that he has slept out in his car, which he keeps buried in the garden.

Speaker 23 He advised that he got up around 8.30 a.m., at which time his father told him that they were looking for three convicts that had gotten loose.

Speaker 23 He advised that he was home all day working in the garden and observed the helicopter that went over his house in the afternoon.

Speaker 23 The subject advised that he does not know the Hulse family before the homicide, and after seeing the woman's picture on TV, he remembers seeing her at the laundromat in Argus some time before.

Speaker 23 The subject was given two tests. His polygrams did not contain specific reactions to relevant questions, indicative no attempt at deception.

Speaker 24 Conclusion.

Speaker 23 After careful analysis of this subject's polygrams, it is the opinion of the examiner that he told substantially the truth during his examination.

Speaker 7 It seems like this was the end of investigators looking into Jay, which is weird because I was left with a lot of questions.

Speaker 7 I mean, they didn't even have any follow-up questions about him sleeping in a buried bus underground. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 7 The other thing that stood out out is this whole thing about his dad waking him up and immediately mentioning something about three convicts on the loose. What is he talking about?

Speaker 7 We couldn't find anything about another manhunt going on that day in Argus. So maybe Jay's dad was conflating what he'd heard regarding Darlene's abduction?

Speaker 7 I mean, were there rumors going around that three men were involved?

Speaker 7 The other thing that doesn't make sense is Jay said he recognized Darlene's photo on TV because he had seen her at a laundromat in Argus.

Speaker 7 But Ron Hulse told police that they had a washer and dryer at home, and all of their laundry was done there.

Speaker 7 He was insistent. Darlene never went to the laundromat.

Speaker 7 There is no more mention of any of the Parson brothers or their family that we have been able to find yet. So the question is, why is their whole family listed on that whiteboard?

Speaker 7 When Emily tried to track Nelson down again to see if he was confused or if he lied to us, this is what he texted her, quote, I'm sorry. I'm in something deep.

Speaker 7 I trust you have a sense of how many demands are put on my time, end quote. But the next day when we followed up, Nelson agreed to meet Emily over his lunch hour at the Martin Supermarket salad bar.

Speaker 7 The audio isn't great because the store is loud with people talking and top 40 radio.

Speaker 7 But when they sat down, Emily asked about the lemon-parson discrepancy, and Nelson just brushed it off as a simple mix-up. Basically, no big deal.

Speaker 7 Okay, fine, maybe he was confused only when talking to us. But again, why are the Parsons even relevant?

Speaker 25 I cannot go into that.

Speaker 6 Oh, come on.

Speaker 6 How does it apply?

Speaker 25 There's a lot along long line of detectives that have all done that kind of work. I don't know if you know what my role is.

Speaker 26 No, I do, but you're the only one I'm given access to for this.

Speaker 26 None of the detectives will talk to me.

Speaker 27 I'm on their shit list.

Speaker 7 I'll spare you from listening to all of that supermarket audio, but basically, Nelson admits our findings are correct.

Speaker 7 That Daryl Lemon was at the Burgers that summer, and the Parson family are the ones who live near Darlene with the berry bus in their yard.

Speaker 7 He said the Parsons have only ever been considered persons of interest in Brandy Peltz's case, not Darlene's.

Speaker 7 Emily asked if the Parsons were still on police's radar for either case and Nelson said no.

Speaker 7 So, I mean, I know what you're wondering. Why is there a family tree on the conference room whiteboard at the prosecutor's office?

Speaker 7 Nelson said he wrote it up there a long time ago because he was getting confused and that he also put the the paper over the family tree because it's quote unquote nobody's business and no one in his office has taken an interest in Brandy or Darlene's case.

Speaker 7 So it shouldn't just be on display every day for unrelated meetings.

Speaker 7 I also had Emily ask Nelson if they'd consider doing any genealogy testing regarding the Parson family for either case.

Speaker 7 And he said, quote, I suppose if there was convincing evidence to move forward on that path, end quote.

Speaker 7 But then I still wonder how the Parsons got up there. Were they considered for Brandy Peltz's case?

Speaker 7 And if so, why when none of them seemed to have violent criminal records, save for Daryl's domestic violence charge?

Speaker 7 Maybe it was because they were being investigated for involvement with that marijuana field. The weed patch was just north of the Hulse home, which was also in the direction of the Peltz house.

Speaker 7 But that seems like a stretch. Maybe a bunch of tips came in about them after Brandy's murder.
It's hard to say. We messaged Daryl's victim from his 2008 arrest on Facebook, but never heard back.

Speaker 7 And with most of the family deceased, it was a lot harder to find information about how they connected to the investigations.

Speaker 7 We even swung by their old homestead where the bus is allegedly buried, but no one was home. And it was hard to tell if anyone still lived there.

Speaker 7 Emily pushed on Nelson and asked him to be a little more specific during that lunch break meetup. Basically, she wanted him to clarify all of this.

Speaker 7 And Nelson said, well, everyone always had their suspicions about Mike because he had some sort of mental illness.

Speaker 7 Nelson didn't know if Mike Parson had been interviewed before or if he had the ability to be interviewed. He thought he was in assisted living today.

Speaker 7 And Nelson sort of acted like the idea of the Parsons came about in the Peltz case after law enforcement's other theories just fell apart.

Speaker 7 They had a suspect early on in that case, this guy from England who had spent some time in Argus. But then Nelson said by the time he returned overseas, it was too late to interview him.

Speaker 26 I think, I feel like there's more about the that you're not telling me.

Speaker 27 I'm not telling you, yeah, I'm telling you what is in my mind.

Speaker 26 Why take the time to like write out their family tree on your whiteboard?

Speaker 26 But you're interested in

Speaker 7 something.

Speaker 7 After that, Nelson said, quote, I can't spend any time on it right now. I got too much shit going on, end quote.

Speaker 7 But then he made a mention that there was an effort made recently where a detective went to a relative's house to try and get more information about the Parsons' involvement in basically just crime in the mid-80s around Argus.

Speaker 7 And he said that interaction didn't go well. They got yelled at, and the family they tried talking to wouldn't cooperate.
But again, I ask, what was the motivation behind that house call?

Speaker 7 In one breath, Nelson said they aren't looking at them. It's been ages.
They're just up there because there's nothing else.

Speaker 7 Then he's talking about detectives visiting living family members to get information on one or more of the brothers.

Speaker 7 When we tried to hone in on this, Nelson said, well, we just knew that they were around. So an investigator went.

Speaker 30 Well, you know that Ken McCune's around.

Speaker 7 What's the difference?

Speaker 30 See,

Speaker 7 what are the candles you take?

Speaker 6 Why the fuck you aren't doing this? Why the fuck you aren't doing that?

Speaker 30 Well, no, just help me understand the difference.

Speaker 25 Well, I'm trying to convince you that there is no logical

Speaker 25 plan here.

Speaker 28 We're trying to exist day to day.

Speaker 7 Emily brought up Kenneth McCune Jr.

Speaker 7 because if you remember, at the time we spoke with him, Kenneth said investigators haven't questioned him about Darlene's case since he was arrested and sentenced back in like like 87, 88.

Speaker 7 So you get that something's not adding up, right?

Speaker 7 Over the many, many months we've spent interviewing Nelson, there were no new efforts made by any law enforcement to go knocking on suspects' doors to try and get DNA swabs or information.

Speaker 7 So to hear that someone went quote-unquote recently to check in on a relative of the Parson family was surprising. Was it for Peltz or was it for Hulse? Nelson wouldn't say.

Speaker 7 Nelson also said he cannot say one way or another if Brandi and Darlene's cases are connected. P.I.
Zip, who you heard from last episode, said he would be shocked if they aren't connected.

Speaker 7 But no one can say for sure.

Speaker 7 And I keep coming back to something else. Daryl Lemon, the Parson family, Kenneth McCune Jr.

Speaker 7 all have one thing in common. They all stayed or lived near Darlene and where her body was found.

Speaker 7 And that seems to be the key to the Hulse investigation, at least for Nelson, which is also in line with what the FBI analysis said.

Speaker 7 When Emily and Jake and I were in Marshall County visiting the crime scenes, Nelson texted Emily to ask what our reaction was to seeing the locations, referring to me and Jake.

Speaker 7 Emily responded that it was more rural than we had expected. And Nelson texted back, quote, and therefore beyond coincidence, end quote.

Speaker 7 By now, I was kind of done trusting that guy. We decided to go back to the office and do a hard reset on everything he told us so far.
And not just the stuff he had told us.

Speaker 7 We basically set out to double check everything, including things reported from decades before that have been the factual building blocks of the investigation, starting with Darlene's autopsy.

Speaker 7 I told you about the autopsy findings way back in episode three, and that her cause of death was listed as blunt trauma caused by the fireplace poker.

Speaker 7 But like everything else in this case, nothing is what it seems.

Speaker 22 She died of strangulation and then he kept squeezing.

Speaker 7 A new cause of death. A new witness interviewed, and a whole new opinion about what happened to Darlene moments before her death.
That's all next in episode 14, a massive revelation.

Speaker 7 You can listen to that right now.

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Speaker 7 For almost four decades, no one questioned Darlene's cause of death. And honestly, at first, neither did we.

Speaker 7 We didn't set out to debunk the cause of death in Darlene's case, but when we went through the pathologist's 1984 findings, a few things just didn't make sense.

Speaker 7 It wasn't that we thought the report was wrong or that we knew more than a trained pathologist. In fact, it was the opposite.

Speaker 7 Surely someone with more education than us just needs to explain a few things to me and Emily in layman's terms.

Speaker 7 But when we got the report translated from medical jargon to everyday speak, it proved that everything that stood out to us should have, and it should have stood out to people for the last 38 years.

Speaker 7 But for some reason, it didn't. And now we're about to tear apart the very foundation on which Darlene's case was built.
So here goes nothing.

Speaker 7 This is episode 14, a massive revelation.

Speaker 7 Darlene's official cause of death is listed as craniocerebral blunt trauma. Here's an actor reading word for word Dr.
Rick Hoover's conclusion.

Speaker 33 It is my opinion that Darlene R. Hulse, a 28-year-old white female, died as a result of blunt head injuries, causing extensive deep tears and bruising about the face and head.

Speaker 33 Diffuse hemorrhage was seen within the soft tissues of the scalp, and hemorrhage was seen over the surface of the brain as well.

Speaker 33 Additionally, areas of blunt trauma were seen involving the neck, back, and extremities.

Speaker 7 Now, the conclusion was all fine and good, but it was some of his notes leading up to the conclusion that we didn't understand.

Speaker 7 Subsequent internal examination demonstrates diffuse scalp line hemorrhage, but no evidence of skull fracture, with diffuse, mild subarachnoid hemorrhage seen over the right parietal cerebral cerebral cortex over an area measuring the problem see what i mean about the medical jargon but the part that we honed in on was at the beginning but no evidence of skull fracture for someone who died of blunt force trauma we thought that was strange but for all we knew maybe this was common

Speaker 7 The other thing that stood out in the report where Dr. Hoover listed off Darlene's injuries was a part that mentioned a, quote, focal fracture of hyoid bone.

Speaker 7 A quick Google search will tell you that a fractured hyoid bone is super rare, and a life in true crime will tell you that it's most commonly caused by strangulation.

Speaker 7 But to be clear, there is nothing in Darlene's autopsy that mentions strangulation or asphyxiation.

Speaker 7 So, were these inconsistencies just the result of real life clashing with the tropes that we see and read and hear in our true crime content? Or was there something there? We tried reaching Dr.

Speaker 7 Rick Hoover to ask. He still works as a pathologist in Indiana today, but I wasn't super hopeful about getting a sit-down with him.

Speaker 7 He was actually someone that one of our other reporters, Delia Diambra, wanted to speak with a couple of years back about her investigation into the murder of the Pelley family.

Speaker 7 That was for Counterclock Season 3. But he iced us out pretty hard back then, so I didn't see this going much different.
And I wasn't wrong.

Speaker 7 We never heard back from him or his office in response to our request. So with Dr.
Hoover not returning our calls, we turned to another expert to walk us through the findings.

Speaker 35 Dr.

Speaker 35 Bill Smock, police surgeon, Louisville Metro Police Department, medical director of the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, consultant to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies across the United States.

Speaker 7 Dr. Smock also served as assistant medical examiner in Kentucky and worked as a medical advisor to the Louisville Division of the FBI for years.

Speaker 7 He doesn't dispute that Darlene's killer killer hit her in the head and other parts of her body with the fireplace poker, but he thinks she survived that.

Speaker 35 Subarachnoid hemorrhage may not cap it, that's not what killed her.

Speaker 7 What makes him so certain? That same little line that bothered us, but no evidence of skull fracture.

Speaker 35 There was evidence of what's called subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is hemorrhage right on the surface of the brain. Subarachnoid hemorrhage does does not kill you.

Speaker 35 It's evidence of an acceleration, deceleration injury within the skull, but it's not enough to kill you. It may render you unconscious, but you do not die of subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Speaker 7 So, if the findings are telling him that Darlene did not die of blunt force trauma, then what did kill her?

Speaker 22 She died of strangulation, and then he kept squeezing.

Speaker 7 Dr. Smock reached this conclusion because he honed in on the broken hyoid, same as we did.
But his expert eye also caught everything else around that.

Speaker 6 The

Speaker 35 autopsy documented the presence of hemorrhage within the strap muscles of the neck. The strap muscles of the neck are the muscles that turn our head back and forth and up and down.

Speaker 35 So there is evidence of trauma to those muscles, which is absolute consistent with strangulation.

Speaker 7 Now, I want to note that it isn't unusual for medical experts to come to different conclusions. Even causes of death are subjective and totally dependent on the experience of the pathologist.

Speaker 7 Back then, Dr. Hoover labeled the neck injuries on the autopsy as post-mortem.
Dr. Smock said that he thinks the pressure on the neck started when Darlene was alive, but then continued after she died.

Speaker 35 Dr. Hoover said there was no evidence of a hemorrhage associated with those fractures, which led him to believe that those fractures occurred post-mortem, meaning after her heart had stopped beating.

Speaker 35 So it's certainly possible that she was strangled to death.

Speaker 35 Then after her heart stopped beating, either pressure was again applied or continually applied to her neck, resulting in the fracture of the hyoid bone, as well as the fracture of the laryngeal cartilage.

Speaker 7 But what does Dr. Smock's new findings mean for Darlene and the investigation? Well, if he's right, it could potentially tell us a lot about the suspect, his behavior, his motive, and his rage.

Speaker 7 Based on the locations of Darlene's head wounds, Dr. Smock thinks that the man was hitting Darlene with the fire poker at the house as she was trying to escape.

Speaker 35 The blows are coming from Darlene's right. suspect's left.
If he is facing her back and she is attempting to get away and he's striking her head from behind.

Speaker 35 And there is some evidence that she did sustain multiple blows from a rounded linear object to the back of her thighs.

Speaker 35 If she is attempting to run away, then it would be a strike with the right suspect's right hand.

Speaker 7 We know from the blood in the house and the trail of blood to the car that some of the violence happened inside the home. But if Dr.

Speaker 7 Smock is right, then the question becomes, when did her killer strangle her? The suspect was still in the house when Marie and Melissa ran to their grandparents.

Speaker 7 And it was just a few minutes after that when police were called, and a few minutes after that when an officer arrived and the suspect and Darlene were already gone.

Speaker 7 So he didn't stay at the house long before deciding to take Darlene with him.

Speaker 35 A human can be rendered unconscious from pressure, just 11 pounds of pressure on either side of the neck, in less than 10 seconds.

Speaker 35 And if that pressure is maintained, they will cease breathing somewhere between one and two and a half minutes.

Speaker 7 So he might have had time to kill Darlene before even taking her out of the house. But if this man was willing to manually strangle her, why beat her first?

Speaker 35 In this case, the suspect displayed some

Speaker 35 degree of anger toward the patient.

Speaker 35 The blows, multiple blows from an object, plus When you strangle someone, that is an intimate type of assault because you were right in their face, literally squeezing the life out of somebody who was in front of you.

Speaker 7 All of this could help inform the investigation and what we know, or what we thought we knew, about the man who killed Darlene.

Speaker 7 If police hadn't been working with the wrong motive and the wrong cause of death from the very beginning, it makes me wonder if Darlene's case could have been solved back in the 80s.

Speaker 7 I mean, I honestly wish we could have the FBI agent who did the behavioral analysis redo his report, knowing what we know now, because there's more that Dr. Smock disagrees with Dr.
Hoover on.

Speaker 35 You have to assume, till proven otherwise, that a sexual assault also occurred.

Speaker 7 It seems like a sexual assault kit was done after Darlene's body was found because it's on an old evidence list, and it's even mentioned in the autopsy report.

Speaker 7 But we haven't been able to find much context around it. Aside from a mention in that coroner's report about a quote-unquote rape kit specimen being collected by Dr.

Speaker 7 Hoover and sent off with a state police technician by the name of Harmon, there are no results, no notes, nothing.

Speaker 7 We just know that at some point authorities communicated to Darlene's family that she was not sexually assaulted. But there's a photo from her autopsy that perplexed us.

Speaker 7 It shows blood drops on the top of Darlene's underwear.

Speaker 7 But remember, she was found with her clothes on, which was one of the reasons authorities back then said that they didn't think she'd been sexually sexually assaulted.

Speaker 7 Now, her skirt was covering this part of her underwear when her body was found.

Speaker 7 There's no explanation in Dr. Hoover's report for the underwear bloodstains, so we wondered if there were more injuries to her lower body that weren't documented.
But Dr.

Speaker 7 Smock said that those blood spots aren't from injuries. He says they're transfer droplets.

Speaker 35 Which means blood has to be coming vertically down onto the underwear. She was in a skirt based on the photographs from the scene.

Speaker 35 So if the skirt were actually over the underwear, then you would not expect to see any blood on the underwear.

Speaker 35 So looking at the photo from the autopsy, that indicates to me that clearly the skirt was up.

Speaker 7 There are two likely scenarios where blood could have dropped down at that angle onto Darlene's underwear.

Speaker 7 The first is that it's Darlene's own blood that dropped there, which for that to have happened means that Darlene would have had to been in a seated seated position with her skirt off or pushed way up and blood from a higher part on her body, likely her head, dripped down at that angle.

Speaker 7 So when would Darlene have been in a seated position? Well, probably when she was put in the suspect's car. Now the second option is that it's not Darlene's blood at all.

Speaker 7 And instead, it could be a large sample of blood from our suspect.

Speaker 7 For a long time, if you made me bet, I'd have said that it was the suspect's blood purely based on the fact that for so long, everyone believed that Darlene was pulled from the house unconscious or already dead.

Speaker 7 I'd always envisioned the man having to lay her across the back seat of his car to transport her from the house to Olive Trail.

Speaker 7 But we recently found a witness statement that contradicted that idea.

Speaker 7 And when we tracked this witness down 38 years later, her testimony made us even more sure that police had it all wrong back in 1984.

Speaker 7 This witness is a woman named Cindy Sellers.

Speaker 7 She first came forward not long after Darlene's abduction and told police that she had seen the killer in the green car with Darlene sitting up in the passenger seat.

Speaker 7 It doesn't seem like police ever gave her statement too much weight back then, but her account was pretty detailed, and it hadn't changed in almost four decades when we sat down with her.

Speaker 37 I happened to look out the window and saw them there on the road. And it just, it was just, it was just a really freaky thing.

Speaker 7 In 1984, Cindy was a 21-year-old art student. And on August 17th, she was with her parents and her brother driving from Culver to Rochester for some shopping.

Speaker 7 The family was driving east on State Road 110 near Argus, with Cindy sitting in the back seat on the driver's side next to her sleeping brother.

Speaker 7 She said there was a black Cadillac that was in front of them going slow, so her dad had to slow way down.

Speaker 7 And that's when she looked out her window and saw a 1970s poorly painted olive green rusty car with two people in it. A man driving and a woman in the passenger seat.

Speaker 7 The description she gave of the man and the woman were a dead ringer for Darlene and the suspect. She said that the car was moving slowly on Olive Trail coming toward them on 110 as they passed by.

Speaker 7 Here's what an officer wrote in a report after interviewing Cindy back in 84.

Speaker 23 The passenger in the vehicle was female and slumped back in the seat with blood on her and a grayish-looking skin.

Speaker 23 At this time, the driver placed something over the upper part of the body of the female, and the driver of the vehicle glared at the family.

Speaker 7 Cindy said something about the people in the car seemed off. So when they passed by, Cindy turned around to get a better look at the woman.

Speaker 37 She was trying to grab the steering wheel, and he swatted her away, and she kind of crumpled into the door.

Speaker 37 And then that was the last of it.

Speaker 37 He turned around. I turned around to look because I wondered what was going on.
And he had turned the car around to go back down the road they were on.

Speaker 7 Now, we stopped her right there and had her re-explain this over and over because this little detail was huge to us, but not really included in the original report.

Speaker 7 What Cindy described is that after the suspect realized he'd been noticed, he did a U-turn and went back north on Olive Trail. And I hope I'm making this clear because I think it is so important.

Speaker 7 If what Cindy saw was Darlene and her captor, that means that Darlene was still alive inside his car and that they were were already on Olive Trail about to turn onto 110, like away from the wooded area she was eventually found in.

Speaker 7 But then for some reason, he doubles back and does a U-turn to go back onto Olive Trail.

Speaker 7 Now, this is so important to me because authorities theorize, at least in recent years, that the suspect knew the area and knew exactly where he was going to take Darlene, meaning that he headed straight from her house, right to that cutout in the woods where he dragged her through and left her.

Speaker 7 But now that doesn't make as much sense. Maybe he was out looking for any place to take Darlene and then he realized that he'd been seen by witnesses.

Speaker 7 So he turned around and just happened upon that opening in the fence.

Speaker 7 But really, if this is the moment where we reconsider everything, I'm not sure that's where Darlene even entered the woods.

Speaker 7 Recently, we came across a photo that we had never seen before of the fence that went along Olive Trail.

Speaker 7 The way the cutout has always been described, we imagined a hole in the bottom of the fence, like where it meets the ground, so you could drag someone through it.

Speaker 7 But actually, the cutout is from the top of the fence halfway down, leaving a few feet of fence from the ground up.

Speaker 7 That would mean either Darlene was still alive and this man forced her to climb over the fence herself and walk into the woods, or he somehow lifted her body over the cutout.

Speaker 7 But that's if you take everyone's word for it, that that is where they entered. But what if he didn't bring her in right there?

Speaker 7 Based on a statement from a hunter, it seems like there was an area where you could drive a car back onto the land.

Speaker 7 The hunter had told police during their canvassing efforts that he'd seen a green Nova back in those same woods just two days before Darlene's murder.

Speaker 7 Now, nothing ever came of that lead, but maybe however that person got in the woods is how the suspect went in, which would have hidden his car as well in the critical hours that they were looking for it right after Darlene was taken.

Speaker 7 Until the suspect is in custody, we may never know the answer to why he made the moves he did, which is why I think police need to hone in on the physical evidence left behind, like Darlene's underwear.

Speaker 7 Cindy said that the woman she saw in the car was sitting up in the front seat, but sort of slumped back.

Speaker 7 So that's potentially when Darlene's head wounds could have dripped blood down onto the front of her underwear, but only if she wasn't wearing her skirt. Or again, her skirt was pulled all the way up.

Speaker 7 So the whole thing was around her waist. So if police haven't yet, they have to test her underwear and the sexual assault kit that they took back in 1984.

Speaker 7 The underwear is listed as evidence in this case, along with a number of other seemingly vital pieces of evidence like fingernail clippings.

Speaker 7 While Prosecutor Chipman does seem to understand the importance of new DNA testing, he doesn't seem to be in a hurry. He also said that the items they have to test are limited.

Speaker 36 I mean, the last several years, it was like, well, what else can we test? Can we test that again?

Speaker 7 When we asked for specific examples of what's been tested in those results, Nelson seemed unsure.

Speaker 7 For example, he said that they've tested Darlene's fingernail clippings, but that it didn't result in anything. But when was that done and using what method? He can't remember.

Speaker 7 And there's the phone cord and her other pieces of clothing and the carpet and the duct tape and the hairs that were found on her body and at the scene.

Speaker 7 I mean, Darlene fought for her life so hard that she broke a finger. So it's hard to believe that Darlene didn't have some of this man under her fingernails.

Speaker 7 For clarity, we tried to interview the lab director at ISP to help us figure out what's been tested and when, but every single inquiry we made led back to gatekeeper Nelson.

Speaker 38 Hey, Emily, it's Ron Gallivas with the state police again.

Speaker 38 After making a few phone calls and talking to a couple of different people, I'm going to refer you to the Marshall County Prosecutor for an answer to your inquiry about materials being tested or items being tested, if any at all.

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 38 I understand he's the one kind of heading this

Speaker 38 collaboration between us and the Sheriff's Department up there on this investigation. So they said the question should go through that, through him.

Speaker 38 So I hope, I'm sorry to have to punt this elsewhere, but I hope you get the answer you're looking for. Okay, and good luck with the project.
Take care. Thank you.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 7 No shade toward Captain Galavez, by the way.

Speaker 7 He's the chief public information officer for ISP and only intercepted Emily's call that she made directly to the lab after getting turned down by the state police investigators who are technically assigned to Darlene's case.

Speaker 7 But we had already asked those questions to Nelson, and he didn't know. So we figured going directly to the source would help, but we're running around in circles.

Speaker 36 I know that those people,

Speaker 36 I talk about ISP and Cold Case, you know,

Speaker 36 they're not thrilled that, you know, outsiders are prodding into this thing.

Speaker 7 I'm not offended that the government officials in charge of Darlene's case see us as prodding outsiders, but I am frustrated that they don't seem to have done much with the information that we've gathered over the last year, especially when the message we keep getting from them is that the case was stalled for so long because they didn't have the resources to gather new information themselves.

Speaker 7 So we are left guessing or making assumptions about what was tested and what results came of it.

Speaker 7 Like with the sexual assault kit. We know a kit was performed on Darlene.
It is noted in that coroner's report, but I don't know exactly what was collected because in 1984, sexual assault kits varied.

Speaker 7 Dr. Smock performed hundreds of them back in the 80s when he worked for the Kentucky ME.

Speaker 7 And he told us that the training and experience of the individual pathologists came into play back then and affected how the kits were done.

Speaker 7 Basically, a simple one could be done where they looked for foreign hairs and trauma and took a blind swab, or a more sophisticated one could have been done where they would have come away with a more detailed look at potential trauma and a specific sample of semen if it was present.

Speaker 7 Oh, and by the way, there was semen present. Yeah, that doesn't feel like an, oh, by the way, kind of statement in episode 14, does it? But that's exactly how we found out.

Speaker 7 There is nothing about semen being found in the old reports or even in the coroner or autopsy reports.

Speaker 7 But when we asked former investigator Yokolette and Prosecutor Chipman if they knew how it had been determined that Darlene wasn't sexually sexually assaulted, they've revealed this pretty casually.

Speaker 10 I think they did eat.

Speaker 27 Well, I know they did a

Speaker 36 ranked kit, per se, and it was sent off to the lab, but there was nothing in their room.

Speaker 6 Well, there's semen, but they figured it was

Speaker 10 because they

Speaker 7 did they do tests

Speaker 26 to determine it was Ron's?

Speaker 26 I don't know.

Speaker 7 Are you screaming yet? Emily and I were past the screaming phase and to the speechless phase. So clearly, we don't have everything.

Speaker 7 Or maybe there is some stuff that only lives in the original investigators' brains, which is a terrifying thought because how much has been lost as people associated with this case have retired or died.

Speaker 7 So they tell us we know there is semen, but it's Ron's. We just don't know exactly how that was decided or by whom.

Speaker 7 Nelson and Yokolette said something about Ron telling them that they had sex like a day before or a couple days before. Again, something we can't find documented anywhere.

Speaker 7 In 1984, they could have done an acid phosphate test and determined the blood type of the person that the semen belonged to.

Speaker 7 And we have no idea if that was done or if they just went off of Ron's statement about having sex. And since Hoover said that there was no sexual assault, they thought that the semen was irrelevant.

Speaker 7 I don't know. But it seems like something you'd want to be sure of, right?

Speaker 7 The technology is available today to get a DNA profile from the semen sample as long as they preserve the seminal fluid on a glass slide after the sexual assault kit was done. It's a lot of ifs.

Speaker 7 But let's say they don't still have the semen. We're pretty sure ISP still has her underwear, which Dr.
Smock said could also lead to answers through the blood or potential seminal fluid or both.

Speaker 35 If the state police or the prosecutor's office had asked me to consult on this case, I think the most important evidence at this point is submitting whatever evidence we have, the sexual assault kit, the underwear, for DNA testing.

Speaker 24 That's where I think the answer to who the murderer is lies.

Speaker 7 Another interesting observation Dr. Smock pointed out was in a photo of Darlene's wrists.
He asked us if investigators had ever said if Darlene had been bound, which they haven't.

Speaker 7 We know her killer had duct tape because there were pieces of tape found at the house, but she wasn't found with any duct tape on her. But Dr.

Speaker 7 Smock pointed out that the skin on her wrists is lighter as if she had been bound there with tape. If that's true, the suspect likely ripped off the tape before leaving the woods.

Speaker 7 And that tape would have been loaded with DNA if it had ever been found. Even if it was found today, there could still be traces of Darlene or her killer on it.

Speaker 7 After Emily left Dr. Smocks, she called Prosecutor Chipman.
Not only did we want to share Dr. Smock's findings, but we also wanted to ask if Darlene's underwear had ever been tested.

Speaker 7 She tried calling, texting, no answer. But that's okay.
For us, it was even more important to tell Darlene's daughters what we had just heard.

Speaker 7 We kept them in the loop during our reporting and shared every bit of new information that we found along the way.

Speaker 7 And while this news about strangulation and a possible sexual assault was a lot to take in, and it made them rethink everything they've been told for 38 years about their mom's death.

Speaker 7 It wasn't exactly a shock, especially not to Marie.

Speaker 31 I believe she was raped. No one can tell me otherwise.
I don't care if they say they were steaming or not found.

Speaker 31 I just feel like it was sexually motivated because it's never made sense any other reason. Like Melissa and I were talking about it, like when Melissa came out, he had her on the ground.

Speaker 31 You know, he was on his knees in a position to do something.

Speaker 8 And so, you know, he never took anything.

Speaker 31 And, you know, for years we've been told, oh, she was not raped. I'm like, you don't know.
You messed everything up. And so

Speaker 31 I just feel like it was sexually motivated. It makes so much more sense to me.

Speaker 40 It makes the pieces fit better.

Speaker 31 And I want to know what made them originally say that she was

Speaker 7 not raped.

Speaker 10 Like,

Speaker 40 I definitively, like, we're, how did they miss the strangulation is what I want to know.

Speaker 7 I'd like to know the same thing, but I don't get too caught up in what should have been. Investigators and pathologists are human.
They work with what they have and what they know.

Speaker 7 And in a small town like Argus, resources are limited. And I don't hold investigators now responsible for how the investigation was handled back then.

Speaker 7 Here is what I do hold them responsible for. Doing everything humanly possible to solve the case today and doing it soon so someone can be held accountable.

Speaker 41 So what are you waiting for?

Speaker 10 I'm not waiting for, I'm waiting for my people.

Speaker 10 I gotta do, I got work to cut out.

Speaker 36 I mean, I got work to do.

Speaker 24 Maybe you're too early.

Speaker 26 It's been almost 40 years.

Speaker 7 We are running out of time. And every day, Emily and I are still uncovering new information.
So what are the next steps for investigators and where do Emily and I go from here?

Speaker 7 All of that is in our final episode, episode 15, next in the investigation. You can listen to that right now.

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Speaker 7 As of last summer, authorities have Ron Hulse's DNA swab. They agreed to do a direct comparison test against the partial male profile found on Darlene's blouse.

Speaker 7 Not because Ron is a suspect, but because he's her husband. If that DNA belongs to Ron, then it actually means the profile is kind of useless.

Speaker 7 Maybe it was from their hug goodbye that morning when he went to work, in which case, it means that we need to start testing other items while we still can to get a suspect sample.

Speaker 7 And that sample might be right there in the slides from her autopsy if they still have them.

Speaker 7 If they did a comparison between Ron Swab and the semen, they could figure out pretty quickly if it did, in fact, belong to Ron.

Speaker 7 But we asked Prosecutor Chipman if that has been done yet, and he said no.

Speaker 7 It was the first of many no's that we'd hear.

Speaker 7 This is episode 15: next in the investigation.

Speaker 7 We also asked Chipman if there were any immediate plans to get a swab from Kenneth McCune Jr., and he said he still needed to write an affidavit to get a court order to do so.

Speaker 40 So, what are you waiting for?

Speaker 6 I'm not waiting for, I'm waiting for my people.

Speaker 10 I got work to cut out. I mean, I got work to do.

Speaker 24 Maybe you're too early.

Speaker 26 It's been almost 40 years.

Speaker 7 I feel like you could put that clip on repeat, and it was every conversation we had with Nelson. When Emily met with him in August, the plan was to get some comparison testing done in October.

Speaker 7 Then the goal was by Thanksgiving, then by the end of the year for sure. We haven't gotten any updates since then.
When we push, Nelson gives us the same story he's always given Kristen. They're busy.

Speaker 7 New cases come in every day. No doubt.
I don't think he's bluffing, but I also don't think that's an excuse.

Speaker 26 What keeps you motivated in wanting to solve this case?

Speaker 36 Justice? That's the romantic way of saying it, but it's also there's ego.

Speaker 6 You know, I want to win, but I want to, you know, I want that family to have some kind of closure.

Speaker 6 I never liked that term or that concept.

Speaker 36 Don't even understand what it means.

Speaker 7 Justice, ego, and closure for the family. If his ego wants a win, it seems like a softball.
We're at the point where the only thing that's left to do is test the freaking evidence.

Speaker 7 It's the only thing I personally can't do.

Speaker 7 Nelson's lack of urgency around this has been driving us bonkers for the last year.

Speaker 7 And please keep in mind, the frustration that we've felt is just a fraction of what Darlene's family has lived with for nearly four decades.

Speaker 7 If I put myself in their shoes

Speaker 7 and we're talking to the state police, what I want to say is

Speaker 7 I get that new crimes are popping up every day, but like if we've got something so viable and we've been waiting 38 years, like when do we get to cut to the front of the line?

Speaker 7 And I understand the frustration.

Speaker 36 I understand the frustration.

Speaker 7 Right. And I'm not saying there's like an easy fix or something.
It's it's

Speaker 7 It's disheartening.

Speaker 7 Nelson said he's never thought about it that way. About Darlene's case getting to cut the line because she and her family have already waited so long.

Speaker 7 I mean, it seems like the most natural conclusion to me, which is why I think bringing in fresh perspectives can be good sometimes.

Speaker 7 So, what now?

Speaker 7 The to-do list for authorities is short and simple. Number one, compare the unknown sample to Ron.

Speaker 7 If it ends up being his DNA, go back to the underwear, to the sexual assault kit, other pieces of evidence, and do more retesting to get a new sample.

Speaker 7 Number two, if it's not Ron, or once another sample is obtained, start going down the list and testing it against people known in the investigation, both then and now.

Speaker 7 Now, for me and Emily, our to-do list is a little less straightforward.

Speaker 7 I mean, really, our to-do list comes to a grinding halt the second comparison testing is done and Darlene's killer is identified.

Speaker 7 But until then, we want to keep looking at all the things that still don't make sense and we want to keep pulling at little threads that unravel into something bigger.

Speaker 7 And there are all of these little threads, some that lead nowhere, some that might mean nothing, but we don't know unless we pick and pull them apart. Here's an example.

Speaker 7 Back around the holidays, as Emily and I were in the thick of writing this series, we kept going back through old reports to fact check and also to make sure that we hadn't missed anything.

Speaker 7 And almost almost every time we did, we came up with another person worth investigating. Like, do you remember the Argus appliance guy, Lee? I told you about him back in episode six.

Speaker 7 Ron Hulse said that he was going to do a house call on the day that Darlene was abducted.

Speaker 7 Ron told police in one of his original interviews that Lee was supposed to stop by that morning to check out a faulty refrigerator light.

Speaker 43 We called him and he was supposed to come down shortly then and fix it.

Speaker 43 As it turned out, he was on his way at 9.30 that morning, drove by the road and said, well, I promised I'd call first, so he kept driving and went into Rochester.

Speaker 7 Police didn't pose any follow-up questions about this, but I have a few.

Speaker 7 First, we know Darlene was about to head out the door that morning with all three girls for Kristen's doctor appointment, which was at 10 o'clock in Plymouth.

Speaker 7 So she wasn't even planning on being home at 9.30 that morning to meet a fridge repairman. So was it an unplanned spontaneous house call?

Speaker 7 I mean, you have a man who says that he's gonna stop by the Hulse house on the day and the exact time a murder is going down, and you don't interview him?

Speaker 7 We asked Sergeant Yocolet about this, and he said that he remembered this lead about Lee Chisholm, but he doesn't remember anything coming from it.

Speaker 7 I gather that Lee was older and didn't quite fit the physical description of the suspect, so it was discounted quickly.

Speaker 7 But after doing a little digging ourselves, we found out that Lee has a son who was within the suspect's age range, who is a convicted sex offender.

Speaker 7 Sergeant Yocolet didn't remember anything about the son, and the son didn't return our calls, so it's hard to say if he even worked for his dad back in the mid-80s or would have known about the Hulsis refrigerator problems.

Speaker 7 But again, this is another question worth getting answers to in this case.

Speaker 7 Another name that sometimes gets tossed around in Darlene's case is Ray Oviat, a former Baptist pastor from Argus who was arrested for child molestation in 1986.

Speaker 7 That would would have been two years after Darlene's murder.

Speaker 7 He was head of the First Baptist Church in Argus in the 80s, which is one of the churches that the Hulses attended for a bit while they were kind of church hopping.

Speaker 7 Now, there's a rumor around Argus that because Darlene played piano for the church, that she was there during a weekday and maybe walked in on the pastor molesting a young boy, and that her murder was a silencing tactic.

Speaker 7 But according to Darlene's family, Darlene did not play piano at First Baptist and wouldn't have ever had a reason to go there for anything besides Sunday service.

Speaker 7 And by the time Darlene died, the Hulses were attending a completely different church, Liberty Baptist.

Speaker 7 We've already talked about why, but nothing about Darlene's case says it was a hit job. And her family feels like the pastor theory is just a baseless rumor.

Speaker 7 But do you want to hear about the little thread that really keeps me up at night?

Speaker 7 There's another man that police questioned briefly back in 1984 because of something an officer found in the Hulses yard after the murder.

Speaker 7 It was this torn piece of a prescription paper with the name Robert Ewing on it. Now, that alone is not all that suspicious until you look at the date.

Speaker 7 There is something scribbled out and written in its place is August 17th, 1984, the day Darlene was abducted.

Speaker 7 According to old reports, Robert told police that he didn't know the Hulses, but he thought that maybe he had been at their house for a yard sale a few weeks prior.

Speaker 7 We asked Darlene's family, but they don't remember there ever being any yard sales at their house.

Speaker 7 I even had Emily check old newspaper ads for yard sales at the Hulse home from that summer, and there weren't any. We even had Darlene's daughters ask their dad Ron.

Speaker 7 Nobody remembers hosting yard sales there.

Speaker 7 Now, Sergeant Yocalet told us that he remembers this lead, and he remembers following up on it because he said there was a valid reason for that paper to be there.

Speaker 7 He just doesn't remember what it was.

Speaker 7 Nelson suggested that maybe the piece of paper flew over into the hulse's yard from the nearby landfill, which we found so weird. Why even suggest a thing unless it had any merit?

Speaker 7 I mean, there is a landfill about a half a mile south of where the hulses lived, so his suggestion wasn't totally random, but it's not like trash from there is constantly blowing into people's yards.

Speaker 7 And that logic doesn't even make sense. Again, it was dated 8-17.

Speaker 7 Then you're saying it made it to the landfill on 8-17 and then blew into Darlene's yard that same day? I don't think so. Old reports are vague.

Speaker 7 They don't say exactly where or what day the paper was found.

Speaker 7 Though, the way that the reports are written makes us think that this piece of paper was found pretty soon after Darlene's body was found, like when police were all over the property looking for evidence.

Speaker 7 It seems like police just took Robert's word for it because in the report, the officer wrote that there was no need to follow up.

Speaker 7 We tried to reach Robert Ewing, but we got a family member instead who said that Robert wasn't in good enough health to speak with us.

Speaker 7 We're also actively trying to track down this guy, or pretty much a kid at the time, who was in the woods hunting the day Darlene's body was found.

Speaker 7 He claimed to be just 20 feet from where where the body was discovered, but said that he never saw anything.

Speaker 7 It's particularly interesting to me because there were reports from other Hulse women, Ron's mom and sister, about someone who was lurking around their properties and peeping into the window months or even years before Darlene's death.

Speaker 7 And the officer who interviewed this young man mentioned that there were rumors that he was that peeping Tom, which he denied, but I'd still love to talk to him.

Speaker 7 And then there are all these other rapes and murders at the time. First and foremost, I think the Brandy Pelts case needs a second look, specifically in comparison to Darlene's case.

Speaker 7 For years, Marshall County authorities have discounted a connection between Brandy and Darlene's case because of the different causes of death.

Speaker 7 But now we have an expert saying that Darlene was likely sexually assaulted and strangled, just like Brandy two years later and just less than two miles up the road.

Speaker 7 The big difference between the cases was the fact that Darlene was taken from her home and Brandy was placed in the bathtub and her killer lit a fire inside the house.

Speaker 7 But even those details make the Hulse daughters wonder about a connection.

Speaker 40 I can't tell y'all those are not related.

Speaker 40 Right there.

Speaker 44 But why did he set that house on fire?

Speaker 8 Well, think about it though.

Speaker 31 He's trying to cover it up. He's like, okay, I jacked up moms.
Like I took her somewhere and they found her body. How am I going to get rid of this one? I mean, honestly, what would you do?

Speaker 31 What would get rid of all the evidence? You would set something on fire. I mean, also seeing us coming out of the bathtub, did that spark his imagination of, oh, bathtub? I don't know.

Speaker 8 I know that sounds weird, but he's reviewing everything in his head and he's like, yeah, water.

Speaker 6 Fire.

Speaker 7 Brandy's not the only case I'm interested in giving a closer look. There was a string of rapes across northern Indiana at the time that I find particularly interesting.

Speaker 7 And a weird tip I've never been able to shake suggests that Darlene's case could be connected to the murders of other Indiana housewives in the surrounding years.

Speaker 7 Is there a season two of Darlene's case up our sleeve? I don't know. Honestly, I hope not, because that would mean the authorities did the testing and we don't have to keep digging.

Speaker 7 It means Marie, Melissa, and Kristen finally have the answers after all of these years. And you know what? Answers is all they want.
Not justice or vengeance. Just answers.

Speaker 8 It's the why.

Speaker 31 What did you think you were going to accomplish? But now that we know more about it, I feel like that answers some of the why.

Speaker 17 But like, why her?

Speaker 31 Why that time of day?

Speaker 6 I selfish.

Speaker 31 Selfishly, I want to be like, you saw us.

Speaker 6 You saw us.

Speaker 44 You knew what you were taking away from three young girls.

Speaker 6 You saw us all. You saw her crawling around.

Speaker 44 You saw her.

Speaker 7 You chased.

Speaker 6 Like, what?

Speaker 8 How did you think it was going to turn out?

Speaker 40 If you'd get the chance to,

Speaker 26 you know, ask this person any questions or anything you'd want to say to him.

Speaker 8 What did you hope to accomplish?

Speaker 40 And please tell me that you took her life and she was not aware of it.

Speaker 8 That she didn't suffer.

Speaker 6 Do you ever think about us?

Speaker 40 Did you follow any of us?

Speaker 40 I've had that question asked to me a lot.

Speaker 6 Like

Speaker 40 when people find out, they're like, is that why you moved? And I was like, it's actually not why we moved, even though it seems that way. There's a lot of questions.

Speaker 8 Did you follow her? Did you stalk her?

Speaker 40 When did you see her?

Speaker 44 How did you get over that and then live a normal life?

Speaker 31 What did you do after you dumped her? What was your day like?

Speaker 31 What did you do the following weeks?

Speaker 39 Where did you go?

Speaker 44 I'm not about all about him getting punished, but just the fact that we could go on and never, never know anything.

Speaker 44 Just, I don't know.

Speaker 6 I mean, once upon a time, I would have been a lot harsher, but now I just want closure.

Speaker 40 I just want, I feel like time is running out for my dad.

Speaker 31 He told me yesterday we were in the kitchen, and I was asking him all those questions. He's like, I've just,

Speaker 40 oh, Kristen, I've just, I've just resorted and told myself that this is never going to get solved.

Speaker 6 We'll never know.

Speaker 7 The Hulse family deserves deserves those answers, and they do deserve justice.

Speaker 7 Something that has been so remarkable about working on this project has been seeing that despite the awful tragedy that happened to their family, they all have so much happiness and love in their lives.

Speaker 7 I mean, in half the audio from our interviews with them, you can hear it. Babies cooing, kids interrupting to ask their moms for snacks, and teenagers running through the house.

Speaker 7 The first time I heard it, the audio producer and me was like, crap, we can't use any of this.

Speaker 6 But then I listened close.

Speaker 7 I listened as a mom.

Speaker 6 You hungry, baby?

Speaker 31 Okay, get you some food.

Speaker 7 She eats french fries in the fork.

Speaker 6 What kind of crazy is she?

Speaker 7 Love and laughter fill their houses, and it's comforting knowing that whoever did this to Darlene couldn't take that away from her family. And I hope Darlene can hear all of it.

Speaker 7 Darlene will always be their mom. She's not the body in the woods or the homicide victim.

Speaker 7 She is the woman who made all of their own bedding and clothes and lived frugally to make sure she could send all three of them to college.

Speaker 44 She would try and make a meal, like a dollar a meal. You know, this is what she wants to do because she was trying to save for our college.

Speaker 44 Even when I was little, that was something that she was already saying, you know, we're going to save for your college.

Speaker 44 You girls are going to college.

Speaker 7 When the girls were little, Darlene would do these audio diaries with them and she would ask them questions and help them practice pronouncing words.

Speaker 45 It's now March 29th, 1980. Marie is three and a half.
Melissa is 27 months old. They're taking their bath now.
We're going to be talking.

Speaker 45 Okay.

Speaker 45 Marie, say your ABCs.

Speaker 7 She did these to document what her kids sounded like at different ages, not knowing that they would grow up to cherish the recordings to remember her voice.

Speaker 45 Today is December 17th, 1980. Marie is four years old, and Melissa will be three on December 29th in a couple of weeks.
And here is what they sound like at this age.

Speaker 45 Marie, what would you like for Christmas this year?

Speaker 10 Tinkerbell.

Speaker 45 Tinkerbell, what? What's that? What kind of Tinkerbell?

Speaker 45 Lipstick. What do you want, Melissa? Candy cane.
Candy cane? Did you see Santa last week? Yeah, we did. What did he say? He said, you want some Tinkerbell? Yeah, I want something.

Speaker 45 I said, that's a good girl or a bad girl. Good girl.
He thought you were a good girl. What did you say, Marissa?

Speaker 45 Did you like Santa?

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 45 You did? How come you want to have a lap?

Speaker 45 Cause I don't want to. Oh, well, maybe next time, huh?

Speaker 7 Darlene was also the kind of mom who would just choke around with her kids. She was silly and she wasn't afraid to go outside and play with them.

Speaker 40 She had on a Playboy Bunny shirt. Do you remember remember that?

Speaker 17 You probably don't remember that.

Speaker 40 Vaguely remember the stupid shirt.

Speaker 31 Yeah, she, we were like, you can't run. You can't run as fast as we can.
And it's the stretcher ride between our house and our grandparents.

Speaker 40 And she's like, I can too.

Speaker 7 I remember her running and me thinking, you don't have the right bra on.

Speaker 7 Darlene also made everything homemade. curtains, comforters, clothes.

Speaker 7 And she made her daughters and other family members dolls that they can't bear to display in their homes because they're so creepy, but that they can't get rid of because they represent how much their mom loved them.

Speaker 31 I literally have them in my attic and I try not to look at them.

Speaker 6 I have one in my closet.

Speaker 44 I think it's one that she was making for one of my cousins.

Speaker 7 Darlene Hulse spent one day of her life as a victim, but she had 28 years of being a friend and a sister and a daughter, a wife, and a wonderful mom.

Speaker 7 She was a talented piano player, an intelligent, natural leader who graduated the top of her classes.

Speaker 7 And she was a woman who loved her kids so much that she spent her last living moments fighting like hell to protect her daughters.

Speaker 45 What else can we talk about?

Speaker 7 Wanna talk about teddy bear?

Speaker 45 Who's teddy bear? Teddy Bear's my puppy.

Speaker 46 What color is he?

Speaker 45 Why?

Speaker 46 What's he do?

Speaker 45 Uh, don't over people.

Speaker 45 Mommy said, pick up your twin, and she's a good mommy. Cause see you later.

Speaker 45 I love you, mommy.

Speaker 7 This might be the end of our series for now, but Darlene's story is far from over. We will keep investigating her murder, and we aren't done demanding action from investigators to solve it.

Speaker 7 And this is where you come in. We need each and every one of you to support Darlene's family by signing a petition to have her evidence tested and comparisons done in a timely manner.

Speaker 7 We have a link for that petition directly in the show notes, and you can also find the link on darlenehulse.com. I also think there are some of you out there who can help us dig even deeper.

Speaker 7 If the following people are listening, please reach out to us by emailing thedeck at audiochuck.com.

Speaker 7 Officer Fish, you were the first on the scene that day and we have questions that the photos that we've been given just can't answer. We would love to talk to you.

Speaker 7 I want to talk to that young man who was hunting in the woods that day her body was found.

Speaker 7 Robert Ewing, I think you could quickly clear up the confusion we have about your prescription and how it got into the yard.

Speaker 7 If there's anyone who worked with Ron Hulse at Young Door in Plymouth remembers the day Darlene was abducted, you might have valuable information. I'd also like to talk to the Hulse's dog breeder.

Speaker 7 Their dog Ling was with you at the time of Darlene's attack, and we wonder if her killer knew that the dog wouldn't be home.

Speaker 7 So we're trying to find find out who would have known their dog was with you.

Speaker 7 If there's anyone familiar with the people that we've discussed in detail, knowing more about their whereabouts and demeanors around the time of Darlene's murder could be critical information.

Speaker 7 We're also trying to get in touch with a former 911 dispatcher from Fulton County, Indiana named Stephanie Miller.

Speaker 7 You took a call regarding Darlene's abduction in 1984 that we think could be important to her case, so we need to talk to you.

Speaker 7 We'd also be interested in talking to the people in the car that passed by six-year-old Melissa on August 17th, 1984, near the intersection of US 31 and 20B Road in Argus, Indiana.

Speaker 7 It would have been around 9.30 that morning. There's also the people in the Black Town car that were driving slow near Interstate 110 and Olive Trail on August 17th between 9.30 and 10.

Speaker 7 You likely saw the suspect vehicle along with Cindy Sellers, and we'd love to see what you remember. And we'd still love to talk to Dr.
Rick Hoover.

Speaker 7 If nothing else, it's time to re-examine your 1984 findings regarding Darlene Hulse's autopsy. And we need to know if the slides from her sexual assault kit were preserved and can still be tested.

Speaker 7 And to the Indiana State Police, please expedite testing of blood and potential semen on Darlene's underwear.

Speaker 7 And finally, If anyone listening has any information about the August 17th, 1984 murder of Darlene Hulse in Argus, Indiana, even if I didn't mention you above, please reach out.

Speaker 7 Again, you can email us at thedeck at audiochuck.com. That email is also in the show notes.
And please do not forget to sign the petition.

Speaker 7 With your help, Justice for Darlene could be right around the corner.

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Speaker 12 Tis the season of gifting and holes

Speaker 12 They shouted. Would they find it in one place?

Speaker 21 This they questioned and doubted.

Speaker 11 When suddenly a who yelled, Walmart's the place to start.

Speaker 21 And these who added headphones, TVs, and games to their carts.

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Speaker 7 It's been seven months since we released the final episode of Darlene Hulse's season. But if you thought that meant we were done, you thought wrong.

Speaker 7 In the next three episodes, I'm going to tell you everything that's happened since our series was released.

Speaker 7 From the response to the podcast from officials on the case to one of many tips we received that led us to a completely new person of interest, and more information about a previous one.

Speaker 7 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the Deck Investigates.

Speaker 7 This is episode 16, Government Discretion.

Speaker 7 Any working relationship we had with Marshall County Prosecutor Nelson Chipman ended when the podcast was released.

Speaker 7 He no longer takes our calls, and the last time Emily texted him, passing on a tip, he told her to send the information we have to the lead investigator, ISP Detective Sergeant Don Curl.

Speaker 7 Nelson also turned down Emily's request to meet with him one last time. And he's also refusing to meet with Darlene's family.
On April 10th, her daughters wrote him a letter requesting a sit-down.

Speaker 7 Here's Darlene's oldest daughter, Marie, reading that letter.

Speaker 8 Dear Nelson Chipman, this letter should come as no surprise to you. Our family has repeatedly reached out to you for updates and questions about our mother's case.

Speaker 8 In the past seven years, we have begged for answers, pleaded that the case be brought up to, quote, contemporary status with DNA testing.

Speaker 8 Your gatekeeping of this case has only resulted in more anguish for our family and anger with your continual excuses. We deserve to be treated with respect.

Speaker 8 No more patronizing answers of, number one, we don't have the funds. Our response, we've offered to pay privately and the DOJ offered to test with the grant.
Number two, quote, I am extremely busy.

Speaker 8 We have a large caseload. Your mom's case isn't the only one we have to work on.
Number three, look. I have a picture of your mom on my desk.
Our response, this literally means nothing without action.

Speaker 8 Number four, promising to write the affidavit for testing McCune's DNA by October 2022, which came and went.

Speaker 8 Then, you promised again after a November sit-down to have it written by December 31st, 2022. Once again, we heard nothing from you.

Speaker 8 Number five, when asked, wouldn't it be easy for you to take half a day and drive to McCune to get his swab? You said, quote, oh yeah, it would be nothing.

Speaker 8 I think everybody's fearful about what the ramifications of that would be.

Speaker 6 Quote.

Speaker 8 Isn't that the point? The ramifications would equal answers to us.

Speaker 8 Number Number six, when asked what keeps you motivated, and I quote, uh, well, that's the romantic way of saying it, but also there's ego.

Speaker 8 Number seven, you admitted, quote, because I'm an amateur at this, basically. You know, investigative end of it usually.

Speaker 8 I think we talked about that, you know, my role, the prosecutor's role here is a case that's already been solved. So my question to you is, why do you have the case then?

Speaker 8 This entire list of excuses and runaround over the years is downright negligent. We don't want any more empty promises from you.
Enough is enough. We will not stop our push for answers.

Speaker 8 We are asking for a sit-down meeting involving us and our spouses. No reporters or recordings will be done.
If you refuse or do not respond, we will move forward with our efforts.

Speaker 8 Our next contact will be to the Indiana District Attorney Todd Riquita via our Attorney General.

Speaker 7 10 days later, Nelson responded. Here is a voice actor reading his response.

Speaker 24 To the Hulse family, I sincerely apologize for the state to which our relationship has evolved.

Speaker 24 I attribute this to many factors, not the least of which are my own infirmities and feeble efforts to honor my career-long commitment to make government as transparent as legally and ethically possible.

Speaker 24 In this case, I underestimated how the curinary interest of the podcasters commingled with their drive to entertain and create a saleable, virtual package could so readily be used to distort good faith efforts to solve this case and instead create a perverse picture of callous indifference and incompetence.

Speaker 24 Consequently, and quite obviously, I chose a while ago to cease cooperating with the podcasters.

Speaker 24 Recently though, a local television station contacted me to give my side to the podcaster's claim of a failure to retrieve biological material from the evidence and test it with the most advanced methodologies of DNA analysis available.

Speaker 24 As this too was based on a false premise, I chose to not participate in that coverage as well. I did, however, present the enclosed statement.

Speaker 24 This is the official position of this office as it relates to this case. I will eagerly amend the statement to include any significant updates as they occur.

Speaker 24 Until then, I regrettably conclude that a face-to-face meeting would be counterproductive. Therefore, I must respectfully decline your request to meet.
I wish you well.

Speaker 3 Most sincerely, sincerely, E.

Speaker 24 Nelson Chipman Jr.

Speaker 7 Now, the statement Prosecutor Chipman is referring to was in response to a local station, WNDU, who picked up Darlene's story after the podcast launch.

Speaker 48 Now, we did reach out to the Marshall County Prosecutor's Office to talk about this case and where it is today.

Speaker 48 Last we heard in 2019, the game plan was to start over with fresh eyes and even test new pieces of evidence.

Speaker 48 While Prosecutor Nelson Chipman declined an interview, he did release a statement saying in part, the exhibits have undergone extensive study by consecutive administrations of detectives, crime scene analysts, psychologists, cold case investigators, and prosecutors.

Speaker 7 I'm going to have an actor read the statement Nelson provided WNDU-TV on April 17th, and I'll unpack it as we go.

Speaker 24 The events that resulted in the home invasion and senseless murder of Darlene Hulse occurred south of Argus, Indiana on August 17th, 1984, 38 years and eight months ago.

Speaker 24 The physical evidence acquired throughout the investigation of this horrific, needless tragedy continues to remain in secure custody of the Indiana State Police, with the exception of items under examination.

Speaker 24 As custodians, the ISP must document and ensure an intact chain of custody for more than 38 years for each of the over 4 dozen items held under lock and key.

Speaker 24 The exhibits have undergone extensive study by consecutive administrations of detectives, crime scene analysts, psychologists, psychologists, cold case investigators, and prosecutors.

Speaker 24 I am the fourth sequential prosecutor to exercise jurisdiction over this case.

Speaker 24 Although forensic DNA processes did not exist until the latter 1980s, several years after the murder, each successive generation of investigators have scoured the investigative reports and examined the evidence utilizing the then-most advanced, scientifically acceptable methods of deoxyribonucleic acid collection and analysis available at that time.

Speaker 7 Here's what we know. According to old case reports, testing was done in 1984 and 1989, but only with fingerprint and basic blood detection tests.

Speaker 7 Now, despite Nelson originally telling us that nothing was found, records indicate that a partial fingerprint was found on the phone receiver at the Hulse home.

Speaker 7 Decades later, again, according to old evidence lists and letters in the case file, the lab suggested follow-up touch DNA testing on that evidence, which as far as we know was never done.

Speaker 7 And I say that because we straight up asked Nelson if he had anyone doing that or preparing to do that. And he said, quote, um,

Speaker 7 nothing sticks in my mind, end quote.

Speaker 24 Those painstakingly detailed processes continue to this day, but with even more advanced scientific methods that continue to evolve.

Speaker 24 Any suggestion to the contrary, as the podcasters are apt to do, is false.

Speaker 7 We also know, because Nelson told us, that the semen found in Darlene was never tested, nor was her bloody underwear.

Speaker 24 In my limited interactions with Miss Muir, and even less so with Ms.

Speaker 24 Flowers, it became quite evident the podcasters neither concern themselves nor are burdened with proof beyond a reasonable doubt derived from evidence legally acquired within the bounds of law, admissible in accordance with the formal rules of evidence, and all the while observing the dictates of professional ethics.

Speaker 24 Tested in court by rigorous cross-examination, determined admissible at trial by jury, and subject to confirmation on appeal is the most reliable method to obtain the truth and secure justice.

Speaker 7 We absolutely want things to be admissible in court. But all you need to obtain comparison swabs is probable cause, of which I believe there is plenty for at least three suspects in this case.

Speaker 7 And to be honest, I think a court would agree.

Speaker 7 But Nelson told us us he didn't have the time to write a probable cause affidavit for kenneth and kuhn jr's swab and when we asked if they had tested ron hulse's swab against the partial profile yet nelson implied money was the holdup

Speaker 24 through the years isp command has assigned to this case some of the most experienced and dedicated detectives and crime scene investigators in northern indiana Several have since retired, but those of us that remain continue to be confident we are on the verge of a breakthrough.

Speaker 24 We will continue our best efforts to secure justice for Darlene, her children, her widower, her family, and our community. It has been far too long.
Nelson Chipman, Marshall County Prosecutor.

Speaker 7 Listen, I think ISP is dedicated and good at their jobs, and no one is questioning the investigators. We are questioning Nelson.

Speaker 7 Because when we've asked about specific evidence being tested and plans to move the case forward, he said he didn't know if the fingerprint or bloody underwear or semen or hairs or duct tape had been tested.

Speaker 7 He also told us last fall, quote, I'm trying to convince you there is no logical plan here, end quote.

Speaker 7 We tried numerous times to let Nelson correct the record.

Speaker 7 We don't go into these interviews expecting him to have everything memorized, but when we come away feeling like he doesn't even know the case, and then we see him putting out a statement like that, we got to question things.

Speaker 7 Marie, Melissa, and Kristen did make a plea to the Indiana Attorney General in spring of this year, and they got a heartbreaking response.

Speaker 7 Someone in the AG's office said that they couldn't help and encouraged the family to take their grievances to the State Disciplinary Commission, which investigates lawyer misconduct.

Speaker 7 But the thing is, the AG could help if he wanted to. And that's not just me spouting off.
We talked to experts in law and legal ethics who said so.

Speaker 7 Unfortunately, the likely reason of why the Indiana AG refuses to step in is, you guessed it, Nelson.

Speaker 22 The prosecutors are supposed to do the best they can to serve the public, which includes taking the victim's interests into account.

Speaker 7 That's lawyer and Fordham University School of Law professor Bruce Green. He heads up the university's Center for Law and Ethics.

Speaker 7 He served as a federal prosecutor in the 80s and has been a professor at Fordham for 35 years. He said prosecutors in the U.S.
have a ton of discretion.

Speaker 7 So they can basically decide how they spend their time. And unless they show undisputable gross negligence, basically no one is going to do anything about it.

Speaker 22 I do think it's probably unusual anywhere for

Speaker 22 the state prosecutor to forcibly take a case away. from a prosecutor.

Speaker 7 Professor Green said it would be much more likely for the AG to take over the case or assist in the case if Nelson would ask for help, which often happens when a small prosecutor's office doesn't have enough resources.

Speaker 7 But we know that Nelson doesn't want the AG's office involved because when the Holz family made such requests, Nelson got defensive and even asked Marie to explain her reasoning for basically trying to go over his head.

Speaker 22 Is there some reason? Why you wouldn't enlist investigators to assist you in investigating a murder case when you have possible avenues that haven't been explored.

Speaker 22 It's hard to see why you would do that unless you could investigate yourself. And it sounds like in this case, nothing's happening.
The prosecutor's not investigating and the police are hamstrung.

Speaker 22 If they can solve a murder, they want to do it.

Speaker 7 Professor Green told us that prosecutors are administers of justice and they are supposed to do what's in the interest of the public.

Speaker 7 So in this case, Nelson is supposed to do whatever is in the best interest of the people of Indiana.

Speaker 7 Professor Green said that if there is viable evidence and suspects who are still alive today, which there are, then there shouldn't be anything holding back the Marshall County Prosecutor's Office or ISP from investigating further and doing more DNA testing.

Speaker 22 The job of a prosecutor and of law enforcement is to investigate cases and to bring the cases when you have somebody who you can prove is guilty.

Speaker 22 And while there's a lot of discretion, prosecutors and police treat murder cases pretty seriously.

Speaker 22 And so if you have the possibility of bringing a case against someone who's still alive who committed a murder, even if a long time ago there's a reason why the statute of limitations hasn't run, it's because the legislature recognizes this is a really, really serious crime and they want to allow for the possibility of prosecuting it even many years later.

Speaker 26 So the question is really like how how do they get this case solved if the person calling the shots

Speaker 26 isn't you know giving any marching orders?

Speaker 22 Well that's that's the problem. You know it would be interesting to know you know why the prosecutor isn't.

Speaker 22 investigating, if

Speaker 22 there's investigative measures that could be taken that might be fruitful.

Speaker 7 I agree. It would be interesting to know why Nelson isn't doing anything.

Speaker 7 And by the way, if you're wondering, there's not exactly a legal requirement for a prosecutor to be nice to a murdered victim's family.

Speaker 7 But there is a victim rights law in Indiana, which says that victims must be treated with respect. But like all the nuances in state statutes, respect is open to interpretation.

Speaker 7 And I believe the Hulse family has experienced a level of disrespect that no loved one of a victim should ever have to deal with. And based off all the emails you sent, I'd say you guys agree.

Speaker 7 In those messages, some of you were simply compelled to write in just to make sure your love and support was heard and felt by us and, more importantly, Darlene's daughters.

Speaker 7 Some of you had ideas on how to propel Darlene's case forward. But then some of you had tips for us.
And many of those tips were legit investigative leads.

Speaker 7 Most recently, back in August, one of you forwarded us a reply that you got from Nelson that actually gives me a little hope. I'm just going to read you the entire exchange.

Speaker 7 So someone named Elizabeth wrote, to whom it may concern, I stand with Darlene Hulse's family and their fight to bring her murderer to justice.

Speaker 7 Marshall County should be embarrassed and ashamed of the failed investigation. The world is learning about Darlene's murder on a global span and the lack of integrity of Marshall County.

Speaker 7 And here is Nelson's response.

Speaker 24 I am sorry you jumped to that conclusion based on the podcaster's rendition.

Speaker 24 For almost 40 years, dozens of investigators and four different elected prosecutors have given their best to test, retest, and analyze with the then most current techniques the evidence accumulated.

Speaker 24 We are currently in a round of expensive cutting-edge technology, attempting to find the one bit of DNA that can solve the case.

Speaker 24 I am proud of the efforts law enforcement has exerted to solve this case over the last four decades. You don't know anything about those efforts.

Speaker 24 Your hateful comments will not dissuade us from the goal, but your shallow analysis, based on an entertainment hit piece, certainly don't help bring the murderer to justice.

Speaker 24 Sincerely, Nelson Chipman.

Speaker 7 So, according to this most recent statement by Nelson, they are currently in a round of DNA testing. So, it makes me wonder if recent strides have actually been made in the right direction.

Speaker 7 Because you see, around the same time, Emily actually got a text from a source saying that they had also heard new DNA testing was being attempted.

Speaker 7 So it seems to be working. Keep the pressure on.

Speaker 7 As of this recording, more than 141,000 of you have signed the Hulse family's petition demanding answers. Just for 2023 context, that's double the size of the average Taylor Swift era's tour stop.

Speaker 7 So keep signing, keep sharing Darlene's story, and keep sending us your tips. Because your tips are what led us to explore someone completely new over the last seven months.

Speaker 41 Hello, I'm reaching out about information I have about the Darlene Hulse case. I'm trying to keep calm typing this because I feel this could potentially lead to the killer, and I really mean it.

Speaker 41 Please bear with me while I explain. I wasn't sure if this is small town rumor mill or if it's it's truly the killer's confession.

Speaker 41 What I was told is that a man in town confessed to killing Darlene while falling down drunk at a bar one night.

Speaker 7 That's next on episode 17, A Secret Confession. You can listen to that right now.

Speaker 12 Tis the season of gifting and holes to deck.

Speaker 10 And the Who's and Who Louville were in love with new tech.

Speaker 47 Where can we find Sonos and Samsung and Nintendo?

Speaker 12 They shouted. Would they find it in one place?

Speaker 21 This they questioned and doubted.

Speaker 11 When suddenly a who yelled, Walmart's the place to start.

Speaker 21 And each who added headphones, TVs, and games to their carts.

Speaker 12 With Walmart, their shopping was done in a flurry. They cried out, who knew? and ordered their gifts in a hurry.

Speaker 11 Shop the latest tech gifts in the Walmart app.

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Speaker 7 Just a quick note: all emails referenced in this episode have been altered slightly to maintain anonymity and for clarity.

Speaker 7 As a general general rule, small towns don't usually keep big secrets for very long. Arcus, Indiana, though, might be the exception.

Speaker 7 This is episode 17, A Secret Confession.

Speaker 7 During our year-long reporting on Darlene's case, we spent our fair share of time in Marshall County.

Speaker 7 We ate at local restaurants, stayed at local hotels, chatted up locals in small smoke-filled bars, and even had hushed conversations with local people in libraries, coffee shops, and on street corners.

Speaker 7 We thought we'd heard it all. But on March 13th, 2023, four days after we dropped the Deck Investigate series, we got a tip via email from someone with a story that we'd never heard before.

Speaker 7 For reasons you'll soon come to understand, Art Tipster wanted to remain anonymous, but here's what I can share.

Speaker 42 I know for certain the people involved in the information wouldn't want to be spoken to or included in any investigation.

Speaker 42 I also wouldn't wish to be identified or spoken to by police or anything like that.

Speaker 42 I'm not looking for enemies or trouble of any kind, and I just don't want to be involved in any of this on the record. It's why I've held on to his name, but I was hesitant to do anything with it.

Speaker 42 Now that you're acquainted with how Marshall County Law Enforcement operates, I hope you understand they weren't going to do anything with the information anyway.

Speaker 42 But for Darlene and her kids, if you think it will help, I can provide the name of someone who got drunk some years back and confessed to one of my friends that he's the one who killed Darlene.

Speaker 7 Over the next few weeks, we built a rapport with that tipster to get the man's name who reportedly confessed to Darlene's murder. And then we received another email,

Speaker 7 also from someone who wants to remain anonymous.

Speaker 41 Hello, I'm reaching out about information I have about the Darlene Hulse case. I'm trying to keep calm typing this because I feel this could potentially lead to the killer and I really mean it.

Speaker 41 Please bear with me while I explain.

Speaker 41 I am from Indiana and almost one year ago, this person mentioned to me one day that one of his friends was at a bar and there was a gentleman sitting near him that started talking to him.

Speaker 41 It sounds like this man definitely had a couple drinks in him, but after a couple conversations, he told this person that he murdered Darlene Hulse.

Speaker 41 I don't have the exact details of how this conversation went, but this person knows of the man that told his friend this. The man's name is Jason, and he is from Argus, Indiana.

Speaker 41 If you start digging, I believe you will find even more crazy connections based on the land and areas where he would have farmed and where he lives.

Speaker 7 If we start digging. Now, were these separate tips talking about the same bar confession or were there two confessions at two different times?

Speaker 7 Honestly, I still don't know the answer to that, but I do know that these two separate people named the exact same man.

Speaker 7 Problem was, our tipsters seemed to have each heard it like third hand. We needed to get to the source.

Speaker 7 So after promising anonymity, one of our sources put us in contact with somebody next in the chain, someone who heard it secondhand.

Speaker 7 They weren't the direct witness to the confession, but they were one of the people the witness told about the confession right after it happened.

Speaker 7 Our source didn't have that that person's contact information anymore, just a name, which unfortunately for us was a super common one. So it took quite a bit of sleuthing.

Speaker 7 But we love sleuthing and we're good at it.

Speaker 7 So we ended up calling this person and gotta be honest, we're like half expecting them to be like, wow, that's wild, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Please just leave me alone.

Speaker 7 And we were half right. They did want us to leave them alone, but not because they didn't know what we were talking about.

Speaker 7 Rather, because because it was clear they were scared for their life, which is why I won't be using their name. They didn't, quote, want to say for sure that I heard something like that, end quote.

Speaker 7 This person admitted that they used to frequent the bars in Marshall County and that they would run into this man in question, but they stopped short of admitting that they heard the guy confess to anything.

Speaker 7 Instead, they said they aren't inclined to believe anything someone says at a bar, especially if the person was drunk. But before rushing off the phone, they said that they hope we cracked the case.

Speaker 6 Thanks.

Speaker 7 We were hoping that they would at least tell us when and where this alleged confession happened, but no luck. Our thread was effectively cut, but that doesn't mean we were out of options.

Speaker 7 We started researching the man who allegedly confessed. Maybe we'd look into him a little and it wouldn't make any sense and we could walk away and focus on other things.

Speaker 7 But then again, maybe there was something here.

Speaker 7 Because what we found was pretty interesting. This man, I'm going to call him Jason, but that's not his real name.
He's from Argus and would have been in his 20s in the mid-1980s.

Speaker 7 He's six foot two, slim build and blonde. So check, check, check.
The next thing we did is we did what we'd done with every other person who'd come on our radar in our initial investigation.

Speaker 7 We found some photos of Jason from the 80s and asked Marie and Melissa to look at them.

Speaker 7 We actually got so many emails from you guys asking if Darlene's daughters recognized any of the persons of interest we've explored.

Speaker 7 And there's no easy answer because, I mean, there have been features of all of these persons of interest that have made their eyes go wide.

Speaker 7 And they were almost clinical in the way that they dissected them. This part, yes, this part, I don't know.
But they've never been able to say, yeah, that's the guy.

Speaker 7 So this time around, we got some old mug mugshots and yearbook photos of Jason, even found some old family photos and sent them off. But something different happened this time.

Speaker 7 Melissa started physically shaking when she first saw Jason's photo, and Marie was overcome with emotion. So who is this guy?

Speaker 7 We got his criminal history through a records request and printed it out, and it's extensive.

Speaker 7 Just his rap sheet in Marshall County alone is several inches thick. It includes stalking, intimidation, harassment, disorderly conduct, protection order violations, trespassing, even a death threat.

Speaker 7 So then we went back to Darlene's case file to search for his name. Because according to Dr.

Speaker 7 Robert Keppel, who became infamous as a detective from his investigations into Ted Bundy, In 95% of cold cases, the real perpetrator will be named in the case file in the first 30 days of the investigation.

Speaker 7 So I shouldn't have been completely completely shocked when we found his name, but I still was.

Speaker 7 What was there though, and why is a bit of a mystery in and of itself.

Speaker 7 Now, full disclosure, there is nothing indicating when these documents were requested, received, or made by investigators. Meaning, I don't know when they made it into the case file.

Speaker 7 So I don't know in what order they even came. I can only guess.
But my best guess would be that the piece of plain paper with some handwritten notes notes on it came first.

Speaker 7 At the top of the paper, there is someone's name with an address and then quote, was a TK driver for Young Door 1984, end quote. I'm guessing TK driver in this instance means truck driver.

Speaker 7 So this person that is named, not Jason by the way, this person was a truck driver for the company Ron Hulse worked for.

Speaker 7 Now under that, someone wrote Jason's full name, an Argus address, his date of birth, social security number, a Plymouth address, and then next to it, it says, quote, TK driver on contract, potentially implying that Jason was working as a contract truck driver for Young Door.

Speaker 7 Under Jason's name, it also listed another address and listed the name of his employer, along with, quote, old PK.

Speaker 7 Now, I've gone back and forth on what old PK could mean. I even took to the crime junkie Instagram stories a few months ago to crowdsource what you guys thought it meant.

Speaker 7 And the consensus, which is just all of us guessing, is that PK could mean pickup truck. So maybe they were noting that that's what he drove at the time.

Speaker 7 I mean, they were really interested in vehicles because they were constantly looking for that old rusty green car that the girls saw. But according to this, maybe he might have driven a pickup truck.

Speaker 7 Was he a contractor for Young Door, though? It's very possible. Aside from this cryptic handwritten note, we also found a single page from Chase Leasing Corporation.

Speaker 7 It's a mileage and odometer log with Jason's name on it.

Speaker 7 And through talking with the Hulse family, we found out that Chase Leasing Company was the same company Young Door worked with to find contract employees.

Speaker 7 Anyway, if Jason was working as a truck driver on contract for Young Door in 1984, that would mean he likely knew or knew of Ron Hulse.

Speaker 7 Now, whether or not Jason was a contract driver for Young Door is TVD, but we were able to find out what company he was employed at, kind of on a regular basis during this time.

Speaker 7 And we found out he was working a trucking and delivery job in 1984, delivering bathroom appliances for a big bathroom manufacturing company that was based out of Plymouth.

Speaker 7 And that kind of made us wonder something else. According to property records, Ron built his family home on 20B Road in 1979 and 1980.

Speaker 7 We wondered if his bathroom finishings came from that same company. So we had Kristen call her dad Ron to ask if he could remember where he bought the tub and shower.

Speaker 7 And sure enough, it was from the same manufacturing company.

Speaker 7 Now this is all tenuous at best. So where was Jason at 9.30 a.m.
on August 17th, 1984, when a man was forcibly taking Darlene from her home?

Speaker 7 Well, according to the next thing we found his name on, he was somewhere between Indiana and New York. Super helpful, I know, but bear with me here while I explain.

Speaker 7 The report I'm looking at is just a few pages long. It's not a police report or an interview or anything like that.
It's Jason's work logs from August 16th to August 19th of 1984.

Speaker 7 We don't know why it's in the case file or when it was requested or if anything was done with it, but one could assume it's here because police went searching for his alibi.

Speaker 7 The logs are on a printed template and handwritten in the lines are the days and hours Jason presumably worked that week.

Speaker 7 The company he worked for, which I'm not naming on purpose, was a big bathtub manufacturer in Plymouth back in those days.

Speaker 7 It's actually still around today, but it was bought by a bigger corporation years ago.

Speaker 7 As a delivery driver for them in 1984, Jason was expected to keep track of his own hours and mark his logs accordingly when he was on the road, which included when he was actually driving, when he stopped asleep, etc.

Speaker 7 So according to Jason's self-reported logs, he left Plymouth on August 16th and headed toward Riverhead, New York for a delivery.

Speaker 7 The mileage he entered would have had him stopping overnight probably somewhere in Ohio each way, which clearly puts him out of town on August 17th.

Speaker 7 Jason's own notes says he arrived back in Plymouth at 3.30 a.m. on August 18th and was off the next two days until starting a new route on August 19th.
And that's when the notes cut off.

Speaker 7 His name appears again on another document floating among the 3,500 other pages about Darlene's case. And this single page report is also related to his work.
It's an injury report.

Speaker 7 dated five days after Darlene's murder on August 22nd, 1984. That's when Jason reported some injuries to his employer.

Speaker 7 And what's typed into line six, nature and location of injury slash illness, is quote, strained muscles and minor bruises to ribs.

Speaker 7 According to the documentation, he said he got them two days prior at 8 a.m. on August 20th while quote, unloading double tier of fiberglass tub slash shower units at job site.

Speaker 7 There is a place to list the names of those who witnessed the injury, but it just says employees at the job site receiving the load of tubs, which is vague, but in all fairness, I don't expect that he would know their names.

Speaker 7 For all we know, it was this injury that made police suspicious of Jason because pretty much everyone agrees that Darlene's killer didn't leave unscathed. I mean, she fought back.

Speaker 7 But it seems he has an explanation for that.

Speaker 7 So far, everything we have, it kind of all adds up, makes sense, right?

Speaker 7 Even though the trail of how we got from A to B to C isn't there, you can reasonably fill in the pieces. But this next one is a complete mystery to me.

Speaker 7 The next page after that injury report is a calendar for the month of August 1984. It looks like any old wall calendar that you might have seen or had yourself back in the 80s.

Speaker 7 It's branded with the NFL and Pepsi logos in the top right-hand corner, and there are a couple random NFL trivia facts sprinkled on random dates.

Speaker 7 There is nothing handwritten on the calendar, except for three little X's right next to the date. One on August 17th, one on August 20th, and one on the 22nd.

Speaker 7 So that's the day Darlene was murdered, the day Jason claimed to have been injured, and the day he reported the injury to his employer. Whose calendar was this? Where did it come from?

Speaker 7 God do I wish I knew. I mean, there's a world where a detective was maybe suspicious of the injury and marked the relevant days related to like the injury itself and Darlene's case.
But if so, why?

Speaker 7 I mean, all that stuff is written on paper already. And if it wasn't, you could way more easily just like handwrite a note and throw it in the file.

Speaker 7 So why put X's on your calendar, take it off the wall, which it was on the wall, by the way, because you can see the nail or pinhole at the bottom of the August page like it'd been flipped.

Speaker 7 So why take the calendar off your wall, flip it back to August, mark the dates, then photocopy it? It would all make a little more sense if this were a calendar somehow related to Jason.

Speaker 7 And it'd be awfully strange if he marked the day Darlene was murdered, the day he says he was injured on the job, and then the day he reported it.

Speaker 7 If police stopped investigating Jason after looking at his work logs, I could see why. He clearly says he was out of town on the day Darlene was killed.

Speaker 7 But I can't help but wonder what they did in 1984 to confirm those handwritten logs. I mean, Jason was trucking by himself.

Speaker 7 We know that because there's a line on his work logs where you could list a co-driver and that's blank.

Speaker 6 Now, here's where things get interesting.

Speaker 7 There is one other report attached to his work logs where it looks like they tried to confirm his locations by looking at his self-reported mileage.

Speaker 7 The handwriting on it gets really faded, especially as you go towards the bottom.

Speaker 7 And at first we thought it was maybe too faded to even read, but I had Emily print it out so we could take a closer look. And what we found was pretty unbelievable.

Speaker 7 I laid Jason's driving logs next to the faded mileage and leasing sheet. The Chase Corporation lease sheet is what I assume Jason kept because he was leasing his truck.

Speaker 7 So that mileage and odometer log would get turned into Chase Leasing Corporation. And then his daily driving logs would get turned into his supervisor at the manufacturing company.

Speaker 7 All that to say, I don't know that he ever expected anyone to be comparing the two.

Speaker 7 So we started crunching the numbers to see if the hours and miles that he was reporting on his daily logs matched the odometer readings on his leasing sheet.

Speaker 7 By the time we were done, I was fully convinced that Jason cooked his books because things just weren't adding up. But I wasn't so convinced that it could be a smoking gun or anything.

Speaker 7 I mean, it was more like maybe his math was wrong here or maybe he took longer route here. Like I couldn't, it just felt wrong.

Speaker 7 So I pulled in AudioChuck COO, Bob, who is much better with numbers than me or Emily.

Speaker 7 He actually took the reports to his office, started punching everything into Google Sheets, columns for states, dates, the odometer reports, plus listed time that he was off duty, sleeping, driving, everything.

Speaker 7 And he even got a map to fact check all the miles. Bob cross-referenced all of it.
And what he found was that none of it matched up. But he noticed something even more damning.

Speaker 7 Jason's leasing log is a whole state and a whole day behind his daily driver logs, which just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 7 Like it looks as if Jason just delayed everything by 24 hours to put himself across the country on August 17th, when in reality, he could have absolutely been back in Plymouth on August 17th, 1984.

Speaker 7 Listen, I understand lying on the daily driver logs because truckers back then will be the first to admit that they didn't stick to the eight or 11 hour max driving capacity that they were supposed to abide by to stay in compliance.

Speaker 7 Because I mean, honestly, if you're two hours from home, are you going to keep driving or are you going to stop for the night? You're going to keep driving and just say that you stop for the night.

Speaker 7 But what's the incentive to lie on the leasing sheet? I can't think of one. Also, the odometer on his truck would have shown the real miles, so it was a big risk to lie.

Speaker 7 So basically, Jason could have easily gotten away with fudging his logs and he could have been back in Marshall County by August 17th.

Speaker 7 So this is something that, like, at first glance, it seems like a strong alibi, but if you really study it, it's shaky at best.

Speaker 7 And I won't lie to you guys, I honestly was kind of half hoping that all of this would confirm Jason's alibi and we could call the alleged bar confession Argus folklore.

Speaker 7 But knowing this, we had to keep digging.

Speaker 7 There were a few names of Jason's old employers written on the work logs in the case file.

Speaker 7 like the owner of the manufacturing company and his manager from back then, but we found out they're both deceased.

Speaker 7 So, we tried to call around to people associated with some of the names and the reports from back then.

Speaker 7 We even tried getting in touch with the admin staff at the company to see if they could give us Jason's employment history, but that didn't lead anywhere because, like I said, the company was bought out years ago and it's a massive corporation now.

Speaker 7 So, we were kind of left with so many questions that we needed answered, and no one to answer them except Jason himself.

Speaker 7 At the tone, please record your message. When you finish recording, you may hang up or press one for more options.

Speaker 26 I'm a reporter covering the unsolved homicide of Darlene Holse in Argus, Indiana. I have some questions for you and wanted to see if you'd be willing to be interviewed.

Speaker 26 You can call or text me back at this number.

Speaker 7 It's pretty standard that we don't get calls back. I mean, Kenneth McCune Jr.
or John Paul Clark never called us back. We only got to them by showing up at their door.

Speaker 7 But in Jason's case, we'd been advised not to.

Speaker 7 The other people that we tracked down didn't have the extensive violent history that Jason does.

Speaker 7 I didn't want to put anyone on our team in that kind of risk, especially when there was still other people we could talk with, like people who've been known to personally associate with Jason.

Speaker 7 Someone from Jason's circle back then told us that he did in fact have a rusty old green car, but they weren't sure the make or the model and they didn't have any photos of it.

Speaker 7 In fact, when we started asking more details about it, they realized that, you know, after the summer of 1984, they stopped seeing Jason drive that car.

Speaker 7 We had also been given a guy's name that Jason might have lived with in the 80s, but he didn't text or call us back either. We fired off more Facebook DMs to no avail.

Speaker 7 We called local bars where the alleged confession likely went down. Nothing.
And just when we thought we'd hit a wall, we got an email from someone surprising.

Speaker 7 I agreed not to share this person's name or how they're associated with Jason, but let's just say it is someone who knows him quite well.

Speaker 7 The one thing that really is eerie to me is hearing that he said something in a bar one night about it being him.

Speaker 22 I've never known him to lay claim on someone else's account. He has been very

Speaker 22 adamant and bracketocious, I don't know what other word to use, about his fighting and his beating people up and his ability to threaten people when they leave him alone.

Speaker 22 And I mean, and he's had countless restraining orders put on him and all kinds of stuff. And you've probably seen his criminal history.

Speaker 7 Hearing this made sense because everyone we got in touch with during our reporting who knew Jason back in the day is still scared of this guy. And they were too afraid to talk.
And I don't blame them.

Speaker 7 It's not like Jason's criminal history can be chalked up to being young and stupid. This guy was charged in a bar fight as recently as 2016.

Speaker 7 And our source shared that Jason wasn't exactly known to respect women.

Speaker 7 As long as I've known, he's viewed women as possessions and for pleasure purposes mainly.

Speaker 7 That prompted us to look up some marriage records. And sure enough, Jason had been married, but he'd gotten divorced just before Darlene's murder.

Speaker 7 This felt relevant because of the FBI profile that was done for Darlene's case.

Speaker 7 If you remember, it said, quote, the brutality of the crime scene reflects anger resulting from short or long-term stressors in the offender's life experiences.

Speaker 7 Our research and experiences reflect that these participating stressors can be the result of conflict with a significant female in the offender's life, end quote.

Speaker 7 Something else the FBI analysis pointed out was, quote, he would probably have followed the progress of the investigation through the media and by overhearing others in the community.

Speaker 7 However, the offender would not be likely to engage in conversation about the crime.

Speaker 26 Do you remember like ever mentioning Darlene or this murder?

Speaker 22 Zero Times.

Speaker 7 Our source was also able to fill in the blanks for us on some of Jason's whereabouts from back in the 80s.

Speaker 7 He had three addresses back then, which we confirmed through court records, two of which were in Plymouth and another in Argus. The one in Argus was less than six miles from where Darlene lived.

Speaker 7 But the address listed on his work injury report, which would have been from August of 1984, was one of the Plymouth addresses.

Speaker 7 At that time, he would have been recently divorced, and according to locals we talked to, he was living with either a friend or a girlfriend at the time.

Speaker 7 After we'd been chasing down leads and endlessly trying to bang down the doors for the the powers that be, this call gave us renewed hope.

Speaker 7 Honestly, I was surprised our source was even willing to talk to us, considering I'm mostly used to people being defensive when you try and talk about someone they know being a person of interest in a murder.

Speaker 7 But this person said thinking about Darlene's family is what compelled them to reach out to us.

Speaker 22 If this is true, she needs to serve time for it. And that family needs justice and they need to know why and they need to be told the truth once and for all.

Speaker 7 So in the spirit of justice, we figured, why not pass along everything we've learned about Jason and let the guys with badges take it from here.

Speaker 7 We sent everything we learned to Prosecutor Chipman and former Detective Dave Yokolet back in April. Nelson sent a two-word response and to our surprise, it wasn't, fuck you.
It was thank you.

Speaker 7 We gave Nelson a month to see if he would do anything with the info, but we heard nothing. I mean, crickets.
So in May, Emily emailed ISP Sergeant Don Curl.

Speaker 26 Hi, Sergeant Curl. I'm not sure if you remember, but last summer I reached out trying to get an interview with you about the 1984 unsolved murder of Darlene Hulse.

Speaker 26 Over the course of a year, I ended up doing several interviews with Prosecutor Chipman.

Speaker 26 The information I'm about to give you, I've also sent to him and retired Marshall County Detective David Yocolet. But I haven't heard anything from them.

Speaker 26 And since this is an investigative matter and you're the investigator assigned to the case, I want you to be aware.

Speaker 26 I think at the very least least it warrants direct comparison of DNA testing to the partial profile ISP secured from Darlene's blouse with help from the Cold Case Foundation.

Speaker 26 Since our series about Darlene's murder, the Deck Investigates dropped, we've gotten hundreds of emails from people with wide-ranging information.

Speaker 26 But the tips I want to urgently bring your attention to are a few emails we got from locals who say Jason has confessed once or twice to various people to killing Darlene Hulse.

Speaker 26 Since learning about this, we've shown Darlene's older two daughters, who were eyewitnesses to the murder, Jason's photos from back then, and their reactions were notable, both emotionally and physically, which is evidence in and of itself.

Speaker 26 Jason has an extensive criminal record, so the state of Indiana might already have his DNA, but the partial profile extracted from Darlene's blouse isn't enough to put in CODIS.

Speaker 26 I'm sure you know, but solving this will take direct comparison testing. In FYI, Jason also has an active warrant for his arrest out of Marshall County, but I hear he's living in Indiana.

Speaker 26 I know it will take more than a rumored confession to prove this case, so I tracked down the witness who heard Jason's alleged confession. Would you or anyone at ISP be up for a meeting?

Speaker 26 Again, we just want to get these leads in the right hands and see this case get solved.

Speaker 7 Sergeant Curl responded three days later saying, quote, Please provide the names and contact information for the individuals you have interviewed related to this information, end quote.

Speaker 7 Emily responded saying it'd be a lot easier to relay the information in person, but Sergeant Curl's response was, email is fine. So rejected again.

Speaker 7 But it was the first time that Sergeant Curl had ever responded to any of our emails. So honestly, I'll take that as a small win.

Speaker 7 A month later, we know that Sergeant Curl did call our anonymous Jason source, because that person said Sergeant Curl asked him some questions about Jason and his whereabouts these days.

Speaker 7 Our source said he also asked Sergeant Curl about what he plans to test DNA-wise, but he left the conversation feeling like Sergeant Curl wasn't super interested in DNA.

Speaker 7 He was more interested in the alleged confession and getting witnesses to talk about it, which I can appreciate.

Speaker 7 Even with DNA, if anything's going to go to trial, you need a good investigation to back it up. So I appreciate that he's doing the legwork.
I'm not sure what's happened since then.

Speaker 7 We reached out to Sergeant Curl again in July when Emily was back in Indiana asking him to meet with us.

Speaker 7 We even said he could bring a public information officer with him, but this time we didn't get a response. We had to know if Jason was worth pursuing further.

Speaker 7 So we actually met with private investigator Patrick Zerpoli again. Remember him from episode 12? We all had a mutual event in Utah last spring.

Speaker 7 So Emily and I met up with Zip one morning to chat about Darlene's case and Jason from a behavioral standpoint, which is Zip's specialty.

Speaker 7 We told him everything we knew, the alleged bar confession or confessions, the criminal history, his work logs deep in Darlene's case case file.

Speaker 7 And the thing that really stuck out to him was the emotional response Marie and Melissa had just to seeing his photo.

Speaker 34 Well,

Speaker 34 that speaks volumes. And I've said that to Don Currow when I talked to him years ago: that you have eyewitnesses to this whole thing.

Speaker 34 You have someone who physically saw him, even though she was eight years old. They physically saw him.
If you get that reaction from them, that's got to be your guy.

Speaker 34 This guy fits, you know what I mean? And you'll see people, he'll never go back up. You know, for him,

Speaker 34 he just doesn't need to go to to that level anymore. But the level of violence that he has, the level of crimes that he commits even afterwards fit that level.

Speaker 34 So there was no intention going to Darlene's house that day to kill her.

Speaker 28 The intention was to rape her.

Speaker 34 And it just went sideways.

Speaker 7 Zip thinks whoever went to Darlene's house that morning likely knew Ron wouldn't be home. So either he'd been watching their routine or it's someone who had a way of knowing his schedule.

Speaker 34 So you know him from work or you know him from somewhere, but you know the husband's not home. She's by herself And have absolutely zero care over those three kids.

Speaker 34 You're going to do what you want to do. I don't give a shit about anybody else.
That's his attitude, but that's also his future crime attitude also.

Speaker 28 I'm going to do what I want to do.

Speaker 7 Zip also wasn't surprised. We mostly struck out trying to get interviews with Jason or others who knew him.

Speaker 34 Someone like this, I think that's why you have witnesses will come forward, but they're not. going to say that they don't want to be the guy to point the finger and say that's him.

Speaker 7 There was an important distinction I wanted to make clear about Jason's alleged bar confession to see what Zip thought.

Speaker 7 From everything that they heard, he wasn't when he like is drunk and confessing, it's not like a threatening, I did this, I'm gonna do this. It's always like super sad.

Speaker 28 Because again, it wasn't planned.

Speaker 34 Like he wasn't, he didn't go in there and say, I'm gonna kill this lady. It's just that it went too far.
And I think that's when it comes out.

Speaker 34 And a lot of times too, you know, it doesn't mean anything until you tell somebody. And that makes it real.

Speaker 28 And I think that's why sometimes when he's that intoxicated, it comes out.

Speaker 7 I just keep thinking, why would this person who reportedly heard this confession just make it up? They aren't friends with Jason or even the same age or have beef or anything.

Speaker 7 From what we've heard, they weren't even there together, just acquaintances in the same small town when one of them whispered something heinous that the other has never been able to shake off.

Speaker 7 And we're told, even though it's thirdhand, that it rattled this person so much he ran home that night and immediately told his roommate what Jason said at the bar.

Speaker 7 So it seems like if it all was true, there's no reason to lie about this.

Speaker 7 But good investigations have to consider every lead.

Speaker 7 And while we waited to see if Jason would come around to talking to us or if the investigators would make any big moves, we had more tips to weed through and more people we needed to track down,

Speaker 7 which meant one more trip back to Argus to revisit a new brother in a family that we've already told you about.

Speaker 7 Have you ever seen the movie The Shiny?

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah, that's like a yeah.

Speaker 26 Is he violent?

Speaker 6 Well, he's something he's different.

Speaker 7 That's next on episode 18, Our Lingering Obsession. You can listen to that right now.

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Speaker 7 There's one person who's been a recurring theme in our inboxes since the release release of this series. He's the person of interest we actually know the least about.
A modern-day ghost.

Speaker 7 No social media presence, no phone number, no criminal record, no spouse or kids. And he's the only Parson brother still alive today.

Speaker 7 This is episode 18. Our lingering obsession.

Speaker 7 I first told you guys about the Parson brothers back in episodes 12 and 13 when I had my whiteboard revelation and we realized that Nelson had been confusing the Lemon and the Parson families during our conversations with him.

Speaker 7 Once we unpacked all of that and made a family tree, we realized that there were at least four Parson brothers who would have been young men in their late teens or early 20s back when Darlene was murdered.

Speaker 7 Three of those brothers showed up in the case file in the first few days after Darlene's abduction.

Speaker 7 They were subjects of tips from the public, mostly people claiming the police sketch looked like them.

Speaker 7 Also, it's clear the locals knew about the infamous buried bus at the Parson property, which is very close to the Hulse house.

Speaker 7 It seems like the boys had a reputation for running around that area, and maybe one or two of them were rumored to have been associated with the marijuana patch right behind the Hulse house.

Speaker 7 So it's not surprising that they popped into people's minds. But it was the youngest brother, the one we refer to as Mike Parson, who was almost impossible to research.

Speaker 7 We aren't using his real name here because he has no known criminal record.

Speaker 7 Nelson told us Mike was always sort of on police's radar, but he didn't know if he'd ever been interviewed or even had the ability to be interviewed because of his mental state.

Speaker 27 I mean, the only one that would have been would have been.

Speaker 27 is that driven by a prejudice?

Speaker 25 One of the stories is that an officer knocked on the door and came to the door with an aluminum foil hat to ward off the raids.

Speaker 7 That's what inspired so many of you to reach out to us. And it was your emails that made us revisit Mike as a person of interest.

Speaker 7 If Mike had a mental disability, is there a chance that he was nonverbal? That was the question you guys kept asking us.

Speaker 7 The girls described the sounds the man who attacked Darlene was making as like grunts and growls.

Speaker 7 And it could be possible that these sounds could come from someone who is nonverbal, which also could explain why he was never interviewed. But my mind didn't immediately jump to that conclusion.

Speaker 7 I mean, there are lots of different ways to interpret what Nelson meant by Mike's inability to be interviewed. But it was an interesting thought.

Speaker 7 We knew we needed more information about Mike, but that started proving very hard to get.

Speaker 7 We filed records requests for any inkling of a criminal history and came up empty aside from some speeding tickets and reckless driving charges.

Speaker 7 Now, the one thing that did tell us was that he was able to drive, at least at one point.

Speaker 7 But he wasn't arrested for those incidents. So there weren't even any mugshots for us to see if he matched the suspect description.

Speaker 7 The only photo we've been able to find of him was from the eighth grade when he was enrolled in Argus schools, which proved to not be super helpful.

Speaker 7 But then our luck turned around a little when we received a very helpful email back in March from a relative of Mike Parson. Finally.

Speaker 7 Now we agreed not to identify them, but we did confirm that they're a family member. They actually grew up going to the Parson house and they confirmed something that we had heard.

Speaker 7 The second to youngest brother of the Parsons had actually died in an accidental electrocution on the property.

Speaker 7 And this family member said that Mike and another brother, the one that we called Jay Parson in episode 13, the two of them had witnessed it.

Speaker 7 I'm going to have a voice actor read some of the quotes from our interview with the Parson relative, but names have been changed to pseudonyms.

Speaker 5 I think maybe Mike would have done it. He fits more of the profile.
He fits more of someone who would do something like that.

Speaker 5 One of our relatives had said that one time Mike had been gone for a few days. He was off in the woods, living like a dog, and that he would growl and bark and stuff like an animal.

Speaker 5 And they would dig holes in the backyard and bury things, which you talked about in the podcast.

Speaker 5 And another relative at one point was able to sneak back there with some other cousins and they went in the tunnels and they found a straitjacket and some other weird stuff.

Speaker 5 And then they got scared and ran out. Mike had a trailer of his own own that he accidentally burnt down he accidentally burnt down his mom's house and they had to build her a new one

Speaker 7 unfortunately our source didn't have any idea when that fire was i would love to know if it was after 1984

Speaker 5 he also had cardboard people that he would cut out and sit inside his trailer and talk to and there's another thing One of

Speaker 5 the wives went to their house. She always went to their house all the the time.
But at one point, Mike pinned her in a back room to rape her, and Jay came in and pulled him off of her.

Speaker 5 She's pretty tough. So when I heard this story, I was like, whoa.

Speaker 7 All of this was a lot to take in. I mean, a straitjacket in the underground tunnel and cardboard people.

Speaker 7 But after so many years and the way stories tend to grow over time, those could be conflated. I mean, you could say the same for the growling and barking, but what about his alleged disability?

Speaker 7 Our source didn't remember Mike being nonverbal.

Speaker 5 I don't remember him being different

Speaker 5 at all when we were young, but we were told that Jay gave him drugs and that it messed up his brain. And when he came back from the Institute, that's when he was different.

Speaker 7 If you remember, Mike seemed to have been ruled out by police in the early days of the Hulse investigation because he was a patient at a mental health facility called the Bowen Center.

Speaker 7 According to an old police report, three days after Darlene was murdered, Marshall County Deputy Rex Gilliland went to the Bowen Center in Warsaw, Indiana, and confirmed Mike's alibi.

Speaker 7 The report states that on the morning of the murder, Mike was, quote, at the Bowen Center on Friday from 9 a.m. till 2 a.m.
Per Karen Rosegarten, an employee.

Speaker 7 At one o'clock, his father arrived and they had dinner from one till two.

Speaker 6 End quote.

Speaker 7 The report is signed by Rex and dated.

Speaker 7 Now it seems Rex is still alive today, so we reached out to him to see if he could remember any other details or to see if he spoke to Mike or his father directly, but we couldn't get a hold of him.

Speaker 7 I also really want to ask Rex if there is a typo in this report because it says that Mike was there from 9 a.m. till 2 a.m.
And I wonder if maybe he meant 2 p.m.

Speaker 7 because it seems more likely that he he ate a meal with his dad from 1 to 2 p.m., not 1 to 2 a.m.

Speaker 7 And if that's true, where was Mike before 9 a.m. and after 2 p.m.
on August 17th? And how precise were those times? Did employees see Mike there or could he come and go pretty loosely as he pleased?

Speaker 7 Emily stopped by the Bowen Center over the summer because it's still open today and has a few locations in northern Indiana.

Speaker 7 And someone at the front desk was like, yeah, I have no idea what our sign-in policies were in the 80s. And they basically gave us a number of a public relations rep who never called us back.

Speaker 7 But the Mike Parson intel didn't stop there.

Speaker 7 In the spring, we got another message from a local who said, quote, he would ride his moped by our house and wait at the end of our driveway for my sister to get off the bus.

Speaker 7 He would never say anything to us, but just stare at us. He was a very strange young man.
I believe he lived alone with his mother.

Speaker 7 He actually broke into our home while we were at church one Sunday and stole a beer and one of my mother's undergarments.

Speaker 7 I always thought he was somehow involved, and maybe that's just because I was terrified of him. End quote.

Speaker 7 After that, we received a message from someone else who said that they actually saw Mike the day before Darlene's murder.

Speaker 7 According to our source, Mike was seen sitting in a hand-painted green car at the Argus Parkins shop on August 16th, 1984.

Speaker 7 And right after they saw Mike sitting in the parking lot, they went into the store and saw Darlene Hulse.

Speaker 7 They said Darlene was buying something inside the store the very moment that Mike was in the parking lot. And apparently Mike and Darlene were parked right next to each other.

Speaker 7 This person was spooked enough back then that they reported this to then-detective Dave Yokolet after they had heard what had happened to Darlene.

Speaker 7 But Dave told her that she must be mistaken because Mike had been at the Bowen Center.

Speaker 7 We knew that we needed to do some on-the-ground reporting to sort all this out and to try and confirm some things for ourselves. So the first stop in a small town when looking for information,

Speaker 6 usually the local watering hole.

Speaker 7 There's a bar in Argus called the Bear's Den. It's one of those Midwestern dives where patrons still smoke cigarettes inside with a jukebox playing Tom Petty on repeat.

Speaker 7 The first time Emily and I went there last year, we made the mistake of showing up after dinner when the regulars were already pretty sauced.

Speaker 7 When we asked some locals about Darlene's case, instead of concrete information or even local rumors, we ended up just hearing ghost stories, like literal ghost stories.

Speaker 7 But when Emily went back in July, she decided to try again. And this time she entered the smoky bar in the middle of the day to try and get some more information on Mike Parson.

Speaker 26 Do you know either of these people or if they come around here?

Speaker 50 Which one?

Speaker 7 He's the youngest.

Speaker 7 The bartender had worked there for decades and said that she thought Mike Parson lived underground in tunnels out on his mom's property where the buried bus is.

Speaker 7 I swear, every single time we went back to Marshall County and brought up Darlene's case, someone mentioned the buried bus at the Parson property.

Speaker 7 We also heard from people that there were other buried cars and even underground tunnels on the property that the brothers had dug years ago.

Speaker 7 The bartender said she thought Mike still lived there with his mom.

Speaker 7 Then a man sitting at the bar overheard Emily and the bartender and joined the conversation. When Emily asked if he knew Mike Parson, he said,

Speaker 7 I'm his best friend, actually.

Speaker 49 Oh, really? He's got a lot of problems, ma'am.

Speaker 7 Is he okay?

Speaker 49 He's alive.

Speaker 26 Do you have his number?

Speaker 49 You can go out to his mother's house

Speaker 49 because I think he's already been questioned about that before

Speaker 7 so there was only one thing left to do go to the infamous buried bus property and try and interview mike parson ourselves wait let's see if anyone's home

Speaker 7 It was a short drive from the bear's den to the Parson house, and when Emily pulled up, she noticed that there were two cars there.

Speaker 7 Last year, when she went, the property looked as if no one lived there. But this time, there were cats all over the lawn as well.
It was Mike's mom who answered the door.

Speaker 7 Hi there, are you

Speaker 30 good? Hi, my name's Emily, and I'm a journalist.

Speaker 29 I ran into

Speaker 29 in town.

Speaker 7 He told me to tell you hello.

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 29 Oh, but friends with, I think? Could be.

Speaker 6 He told me that might be here.

Speaker 6 Does he live with you? Yeah.

Speaker 7 Is he available?

Speaker 39 She gets afraid of gun.

Speaker 6 Okay. And

Speaker 51 yeah,

Speaker 51 sure.

Speaker 51 And he probably wouldn't even come out.

Speaker 7 Now you'll notice we removed all names mentioned in this conversation to protect identity. But Mike's mom went on to say that her son hasn't left her home for two years.

Speaker 7 She eventually came out of her house and took a seat on her front porch and chatted a little further. She seemed genuinely curious about why we wanted to talk with Mike.

Speaker 30 We're looking into the Darlene Hulse case and

Speaker 29 name had come up and I, what case?

Speaker 6 Darlene Hulse.

Speaker 29 Who's that? Do you remember her?

Speaker 26 She was, it's an unsolved murder from 1984.

Speaker 7 Good lord, you know, they had something to do with that.

Speaker 30 I'm not saying that, but we,

Speaker 26 his name came up a couple times, and we just, we wanted to give him an opportunity to talk if he wanted to but like I said

Speaker 7 probably wouldn't even come out if I asked him to

Speaker 7 We asked Mike's mom if she could remember anyone coming around to ask Mike anything about Darlene's case back in the 80s. She shook her head no, but then

Speaker 46 seems to me like at that time

Speaker 39 my son was still alive

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 8 they brought that up, and they both went in and took lie detector chips.

Speaker 6 Oh, really?

Speaker 8 Yeah, they volunteered for that.

Speaker 7 The names we cut were her two sons that we've been calling Jay and Mike.

Speaker 7 In the old case reports, we've only seen a polygraph for Jay Parson, not Mike. So then we asked if she recalled her sons ever saying anything about their police interviews or even Darlene.

Speaker 7 And the only thing she remembered came from her older son, Jay.

Speaker 39 I think I remember there was two murders at that time. There was a little girl that was killed.

Speaker 50 Brandy.

Speaker 46 She says, My godmom says, that's bad enough.

Speaker 39 They accused me of the first one, but to kill a child, it's unthinkable.

Speaker 29 Do you remember why they accused him of it?

Speaker 6 No, I don't.

Speaker 6 No,

Speaker 50 I don't remember.

Speaker 39 I know it was unthinkable to me at the time, you know, that they thought he could have done something.

Speaker 7 Mike's mom kept bringing up her other son, Jay. It seems like from her perspective, that's who, at least in her household, police focused on.

Speaker 7 We asked her if Mike has ever mentioned Darlene's case to her and she said no. She also couldn't recall if police searched their property back then.

Speaker 7 In fact, she thought they lived at a different house in 1984, but all the records we've been able to locate indicate otherwise.

Speaker 7 Before leaving, Emily left her business card and said that if Mike felt like talking, he should call us.

Speaker 39 I never leaves this place.

Speaker 8 Schizophrenia, I guess, is caused by childhood trauma.

Speaker 46 When he was eight years old, he seen his brother, his 10-year-old brother electrocuted.

Speaker 50 He says that's what causes such schizophrenia.

Speaker 26 I'm sorry.

Speaker 46 And there's days when he has his good days and other days when he's talking to his voices.

Speaker 7 Mike's mom said his condition has worsened over the years.

Speaker 7 Back when he was a teenager, he drove and had his own car and didn't outwardly show many signs of the mental disorder he now struggles with as an adult.

Speaker 7 There were just a few thin walls separating Emily from Mike and the answers that he might have held.

Speaker 7 But this is as far as we would press. When mental illness is a part of the equation, there's an ethical line we don't want to cross.

Speaker 7 Yeah, we got to be dogged when searching for the truth behind what happened to Darlene, but we also don't want to go around causing more harm than is absolutely necessary. Did we want to talk to Mike?

Speaker 7 Yeah, of of course. Do I want to go back there with an excavator and search their backyard for a fireplace poker or a green car?

Speaker 24 Would love to.

Speaker 7 And maybe one day, if he's having one of his better days, Mike will give us a call. But until then, I can only go off of what we have.
So I went back to the FBI profile.

Speaker 7 The special agent summarized that the offender went there to sexually assault Darlene, even bringing duct tape with him to help secure her.

Speaker 7 He also notes that because the man didn't bring a weapon with him, he likely thought he'd be able to get control over her pretty quickly.

Speaker 7 But because of the way Darlene defended herself, he reacted impulsively and violently by grabbing the closest weapon, the fireplace poker.

Speaker 7 The analysis says that when Marie and Melissa ran from the house, the offender was in a frenzied state and decided to remove Darlene from her house to take her somewhere to continue the sexual assault.

Speaker 7 It also states that the manner in which the victim was, quote, brutally assaulted, dragged, and her body disposed of indicates the possibility of the use of drugs or alcohol by the offender prior to the attack, end quote.

Speaker 7 We know Mike and his brothers lived nearby and that one of them had an old green car. We also know that there have been allegations of sexually deviant behavior with Mike.

Speaker 7 In addition to that, we know that he and his brother Jay were experimenting with drugs back then.

Speaker 7 The FBI analysis said that the man was probably in his low 20s to 30 years old. Mike would have been 19 when Darlene's attack happened, and we still don't know what he looked like in 1984.

Speaker 7 But 19 isn't far off from low 20s, though it's worth mentioning that he is the youngest person of interest that we've personally looked into so far.

Speaker 7 The special agent's report also says that the killer would not have more than a high school education and would not have done well in school.

Speaker 7 From yearbook pictures alone, which are by no means the end-all-be-all for records, it seems like Mike may have quit school in 1979 and never graduated.

Speaker 7 We also haven't been able to find out if he's ever held any type of a job. But here's the part of the FBI report that really sticks out with me as it relates to Mike Parson.

Speaker 7 Quote, We would expect him to be living alone or with a significant family member, such as a domineering mother, older sister, or grandmother upon whom whom he is somewhat dependent.

Speaker 7 He would be described by others as a loner and likely does not have a close circle of friends. End quote.

Speaker 7 Of course, this analysis was done decades ago, back when authorities thought Darlene died of blunt force trauma to the head. But as you all know, we are now exploring the differing opinion by Dr.

Speaker 7 Bill Smock that Darlene could have been strangled, which might change that assessment. And speaking of Darlene's cause of death, as of now, it is still technically listed as Blunt Force trauma.

Speaker 7 But because it's still an unsolved murder in Marshall County, we reached out to the elected coroner there, John Grolick, to see what he thought of the new opinion around her cause of death.

Speaker 7 And our conversation with him got him thinking about the case again and looking at the old crime scene photos for the first time in a very long time.

Speaker 22 Poor lady went through hell trying to survive.

Speaker 7 We asked him what he thought about the lack of a skull fracture, which is what got us asking questions related to her cause of death in the first place.

Speaker 7 And he actually said something related to Darlene's attacker that we hadn't considered before.

Speaker 22 Well, the first thing I would think about with the amount of injury to the head, you would almost wonder if that person was either a smaller person or not very strong or not very old.

Speaker 22 To do that much damage to the tissue and

Speaker 22 not cause a skull fracture, that kind of makes me wonder. That's curious.
Makes me curious.

Speaker 22 Just a few years ago, we had a young lady that was attacked by a person high on meth, and he attacked her with a machete, and he hit her in the head a few times, and there were obvious skull fractures.

Speaker 22 So I realized that the fireplace device is not sharp, but it's pretty rigid metal. And you would think that if somebody took a full swing that you would very possibly have skull fractures.

Speaker 22 So I kind of wonder if that person either was a young person or a small person that didn't have a lot of strength.

Speaker 22 But then you'd have to wonder how did they get the body removed out into a vehicle and then discard it out into a wooded area.

Speaker 7 I suppose adrenaline could account for more strength after the initial attack. But in the chaos of a violent crime, I guess there could be other plausible reasons that her skull didn't fracture.

Speaker 7 Coroner Grohlich admitted that both Dr. Rick Hoover, who did the autopsy in 1984, and Dr.
Bill Smock, who we interviewed in episode 14, are both more qualified to make such determinations.

Speaker 7 But during our conversation with Coroner Grolich, out of the blue, he brought up none other than Mike Parson.

Speaker 7 The kid

Speaker 22 lived underground.

Speaker 22 Everybody said he was crazy. I tried to serve them once.
I worked part-time for the Sheriff's Department. I worked, and I think I tried to serve him papers once.

Speaker 22 And there were two of us because they knew he was a little psycho. And he came out of the door charging at us.
So we just got back in the car and left.

Speaker 26 Do you remember what you were serving him for?

Speaker 22 No, I had no idea.

Speaker 7 Coroner Grohlich couldn't remember when that was either, but it was a long time ago when he worked part-time as a reserve deputy for the sheriff's office.

Speaker 7 It's also interesting that if they were there to serve him court papers, that they never returned to finish the job. They just, what, left and never went back? I mean, what were they serving him for?

Speaker 7 I have so many more questions about this. I mean, we even put in a records request for any such filings at the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, and it came back empty, like nothing.

Speaker 7 But there's something else I want to touch on that he said.

Speaker 7 I think it's important to note that everyone we talked to about Mike Parson described him in that same way, crazy.

Speaker 7 And I can't help but wonder if the rumors and negative talk around his mental health have driven people to view him in a sinister light when in reality, he could just be a man who has been struggling his whole life.

Speaker 7 Before we ended our interview with Coroner Grolick, we asked about Darlene's underwear because, if nothing else, we wanted to make sure the coroner was aware of the unexplainable transfer of blood droplets.

Speaker 22 They really don't look like drops that came from her head if she was in an upright position.

Speaker 26 And there's no notes in the coroner's report about, you know, trying to make sense of this blood. Because if you look at the colored photo from the scene, her underwear isn't exposed.

Speaker 30 Right.

Speaker 6 Does the police, state police still have her underwear?

Speaker 7 What a great question.

Speaker 7 We certainly hope so.

Speaker 7 It was on an evidence list, but without confirmation from state police or Nelson or lab techs, which we have not been able to get, there is no way for us to know for sure how it was preserved or stored or if they even still have it.

Speaker 22 A trained evidence technician, I think, could probably saturate that blood and collect some with some sterile saline and a swab and identify a DNA from that.

Speaker 7 That DNA could be Darlene's, but it could also be the killer's DNA just sitting in evidence storage for 39 years. Same goes for the semen.

Speaker 7 Coroner Grolick thought it would be unlikely for the semen found during an autopsy to have been Ron's unless the two were intimate like right before he left for work that morning.

Speaker 7 And according to to Ron's recollection, they had been together the night before. But for some reason, everyone assumed the semen was his.

Speaker 7 Though, if you remember, Nelson couldn't remember why that assumption was made.

Speaker 6 I think that did a well, I know they did a

Speaker 36 rate kit, per se, and it was sent off to the lab, but there was nothing that they were.

Speaker 6 Well, there was semen, but they figured it was

Speaker 6 Ron's. Yeah,

Speaker 6 because they thought

Speaker 7 they do tests

Speaker 3 to determine it was Ron's?

Speaker 6 Um.

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 7 Coroner Grohlich said he would need to have a conversation with both Dr. Hoover and Dr.
Smock before making his own determination on Darlene's cause of death.

Speaker 7 But he said if he ends up being convinced that she did die by strangulation, he would amend the cause of death in her file and on her death certificate.

Speaker 7 Some people might wonder why that even matters, and here's why I think it's important.

Speaker 7 As Nelson told told us more than once,

Speaker 6 I've told everyone that

Speaker 6 my intent is in mid to early 2024

Speaker 6 to either be running for a different post

Speaker 6 or

Speaker 6 retiring.

Speaker 26 Those are two very different things.

Speaker 6 Yes, I'll be 70 years old at that time.

Speaker 7 It's very likely that Nelson won't be the last person to touch Darlene's case. Investigators and prosecutors will come along someday who might be willing to try and solve it.

Speaker 7 And when they do, it's paramount that they have the most accurate information possible. I mean, what if there's a confession someday, but the cause of death doesn't line up with what's on paper?

Speaker 7 Would it get thrown out, ignored? I know it's a lot of what-ifs, but I just want everyone to be dealing in facts, no matter what those facts are.

Speaker 7 Sometimes when I'm just sitting and spiraling down and down the endless rabbit holes, I think of Marie, Melissa, and Kristen.

Speaker 7 It's almost impossible to imagine these children witnessing their mom being attacked by a stranger in their own house at any age, but especially at the vulnerable ages they were.

Speaker 7 Someone stripped them of their sense of safety and of any future memories with the woman who loved them the most.

Speaker 7 And in broad daylight, he drove off getting away with a heinous crime, leaving those little girls to grow up without their mom.

Speaker 7 The woman who they would always remember as the person who spent her last waking moments fighting to protect them. And here we are, 39 years later, and the tables have turned.

Speaker 7 Marie, Melissa, and Kristen are the ones fighting now on behalf of their mom. And the wild part, the thing I think about the most is that they aren't even vengeful.

Speaker 7 In fact, when we filled them in on what we learned after visiting the Parson house about the childhood electrocution tragedy, about Mike's condition now, their response was, that's so sad.

Speaker 7 And what a horrible life.

Speaker 7 Over the past 15 months, I have been in constant awe of them. Anytime we update them on certain things about specific persons of interest, they were the ones showing empathy for these men.

Speaker 7 One of which is very likely to be the person who killed their mother.

Speaker 40 If this person is still alive, if they would just, they could even reach out to one of us and just tell us, and I would be happy with that, I just think I would just want to know.

Speaker 6 It's really not about punishment. I wouldn't want to want to, there's no punishment that would cost

Speaker 7 sufficient.

Speaker 6 No, no.

Speaker 40 I'll let God handle that.

Speaker 6 I just,

Speaker 6 I just need closure. That's all.

Speaker 7 As of this recording, no one from Marshall County or the Indiana State Police will meet with us or give us an update.

Speaker 7 Nelson still won't meet with Darlene's daughters, so they aren't being given any updates either.

Speaker 7 Local media has tried to press, but they just get blanket statements that don't answer any real questions, but rather just blame silly journalists for getting people all worked up.

Speaker 8 So if this doesn't work,

Speaker 31 what do we do after that?

Speaker 7 That's a good question. What do you do when your mother's been murdered, taken in front of your eyes 39 years ago, and the only person in charge of the case won't talk to you?

Speaker 7 Years ago, when I first started talking to Kristen and got a grasp of everything they were up against, I told Emily that their frustration must feel similar to screaming underwater because no matter how hard you scream, no one's really ever going to hear you.

Speaker 7 And I have a deeper understanding of that feeling now, at least to some extent.

Speaker 7 I know we caused some waves in Marshall County with this series.

Speaker 7 But all I can hope for now is that somebody in a position of power decides to do the right thing and find the truth for Darlene and her family.

Speaker 7 And I also hope that all of you will start screaming with us. If this were your mother, your sister, your daughter, you would scream.
So scream.

Speaker 7 Not hateful or menacing, but just be heard.

Speaker 7 You can still sign the petition in Darlene's case. You can share this series.
You can even send emails to those in positions of power asking for updates and letting them know that everyone's watching.

Speaker 7 Because even though this series might be over, I'll be keeping one eye on Marshall County until there are answers.

Speaker 7 The Deck Investigates is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.
So, what do you think, Chuck?

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