The Deck Investigates S1 | Part 2

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Speaker 33 By January 1987, Marshall County authorities were noticing a pattern emerging. Here's an excerpt read from Sergeant Dave Yokolet's case summary.

Speaker 10 In the past several years, since 1982, this officer has been involved in the investigating of several violent crimes that have occurred in the extreme southern portion of Marshall County, Indiana.

Speaker 10 Two of those crimes involved homicides, one of which was in 1984, the Hulse homicide, the other in 1986, the Peltz homicide.

Speaker 10 In each of the three cases that have been investigated, I have found to be a two-year interval. The geographical area and the close proximity of each of these cases are a concern of this investigator.

Speaker 33 Yogalit starts that window of time in 1982 because he's including Pam's case. If you remember from last episode, Pam is the woman who survived a break-in and attempted rape in December of 1982.

Speaker 33 That was the first of the three cases. There's nothing I can find that shows what exactly the thread was that finally connected all three.

Speaker 33 38 years later, and the people in charge today say that they don't know either. But I think it was just one of those things, like an autostereogram.
It's fuzzy until you see it.

Speaker 33 And then once the image within the picture emerges, you can't unsee it.

Speaker 33 Brandy was killed just a mile and a half away from Darlene in the middle of the day. It's easy to see why Darlene's case, which was still fresh in everyone's mind, was compared.

Speaker 33 But unlike Darlene, Brandy got a harassing phone call before her death. And maybe that is the piece of red string that they were connecting from Brandy to Pam.

Speaker 33 Because if you remember, Pam too got a harassing call right before the intruder broke into her home. Once you're looking at Pam's case, you're reminded just how similar that was to Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 Darlene's body was found just a stone's throw away from Pam's home. On their own, they can seem different.
But all together, you see the picture, right?

Speaker 33 A triangle of connections from each case back to the other. Sergeant Dave Yocolet had no idea if he was right, but there was a way he could begin to find out.

Speaker 33 This is episode seven, Bring in the FBI.

Speaker 33 If the string connecting Pam and Brandy's case was the phone calls, then that is where police were going to start. For the first time, it seems.

Speaker 33 Because in December of 1987, there is documentation of police requesting the phone records for Pam's home from August of 1982 to January of 1983.

Speaker 33 They requested such a large window of time because Pam had other harassing phone calls prior to the break-in.

Speaker 33 She even got one after where the man breathed into the phone and said that he was the one who'd been inside her home.

Speaker 33 She reported all of those calls to police, but for some reason, officers never checked to see where the calls had come from in 1982 or even in 1984 after Darlene was murdered and left in a wooded field right by Pam's house.

Speaker 33 So why now, you ask?

Speaker 33 Great question. One I love to get the answer to.
But no one connected to the investigation has given us a solid answer. So I can only guess.
But I think I have a good guess.

Speaker 33 It stems from the way I hear people, mostly men, talk about Pam's case now. They'll tell you, yeah, he broke in, but nothing happened.
And I think that's how they thought about it then.

Speaker 33 Nothing really happened.

Speaker 33 After Darlene's murder, it's clear from the tips that were called in and the canvassing that was done that harassing phone calls were commonplace in Argus at the time.

Speaker 33 So even though a line had been crossed, a very serious, very physical line into Pam's home, it doesn't seem like a lot of resources were expended trying to figure out who that man was that crossed the line.

Speaker 33 Pam went on to live in fear after her attack. She always wondered what the man in her home was capable of, if he would escalate.

Speaker 33 And now, with a woman dead and a child dead, a child who had received a similar call, police were probably wondering if this guy had escalated. So now they decide to pull Pam's phone records.

Speaker 33 They got the call logs back almost immediately after requesting them in December of 1987. And that was it.
Once they had those, Pam's case was solved. That easy.

Speaker 33 The harassing calls pointed to one man. a guy from nearby Culver, Indiana, named Kenneth McCune Jr.

Speaker 33 Two calls prior to the break-in at Pam's house were made from Kenneth's home, and the one made to Pam's house just before the home invasion was from Kenneth's dad's barn where he worked.

Speaker 33 Now, Kenneth wasn't exactly a stranger to police, but he also wasn't considered a local bad boy the way that Ricky Mock and Danny Bender had been.

Speaker 33 While those guys seemed hard up for cash, Kenneth's criminal motivations seemed sexually driven because he had been accused of being a serial flasher.

Speaker 33 There had been several complaints made by women about a man flashing his penis in different places around the county, and one of those women specifically identified Kenneth.

Speaker 33 Police learned that Kenneth went to high school in Culver, but lived in rural Marshall County, not too far from where Pam lived, and not too far from where Darlene's body was found.

Speaker 33 They also learned that he had worked as a farmhand on his uncle's farm, which was even closer to the woods where Darlene's body was found.

Speaker 33 He'd also worked as a bus driver for Culver School District and dabbled in used car sales throughout the 80s alongside his dad Kenneth Sr.

Speaker 33 Now they knew they had Kenneth Jr. for Pam's case.

Speaker 33 Along with the phone records pinning him as the caller, there was actually a tip early on in Pam's case from Kenneth's sister saying that she saw her brother's truck in front of Pam's house the morning of the crime.

Speaker 33 Now, she had a caveat in that very same statement saying that it wasn't her brother's truck, just one that looked exactly like it.

Speaker 33 But his name was there in their case file from just weeks after Pam's attack. But they weren't ready to move in on Kenneth just yet.
If this was bigger than just Pam, they wanted to be sure.

Speaker 33 So Sergeant Yocolet pulled in the big guns and he wrote to the FBI.

Speaker 10 The undersigned, investigating the homicides of Brandi Peltz and Darlene Hulse and the home invasion of Pam, has investigated these crimes from the standpoint of being individual cases.

Speaker 10 and that the assailants responsible for those cases are separate individuals and that these cases are unrelated.

Speaker 10 and it is only coincidence that they have occurred within a particular geographical area.

Speaker 10 At the same time, this officer has geared my investigations to include that very well, that all three of these cases may be linked together, and I base that opinion on several similarities that I feel exist in each of these cases.

Speaker 33 In total, the summary Sergeant Yokelet submitted was five pages long and went over every detail he knew of each crime. Yokelet was requesting help.

Speaker 33 He was looking for insight into what characteristics they could expect to find in the perpetrator of the Hulse homicide.

Speaker 33 But I also think by including information about the other cases, Sergeant Yocolet was trying to see if the FBI saw the same connection he did.

Speaker 33 From the response he got, it doesn't look like the FBI even acknowledged the other cases. They just honed in on the analysis of Darlene's case.

Speaker 33 But what FBI agent Thomas Saup had to say about the profile of Darlene's killer was very enlightening.

Speaker 8 Offender characteristics and traits. The offender in this case is a white male.

Speaker 8 Our experience and research reflects that the behavioral factors noted in this crime suggest that the offender would be from the low 20s to 30 years of age.

Speaker 8 Our research and experience reflects that offenders will dispose of victims' bodies in locations that are familiar to them.

Speaker 8 In this case, the remote, isolated area where the victim's body was found suggests that the offender had a strong familiarity with the area, which is most likely due to having lived, worked, or visited in the area.

Speaker 8 Our experience relates that the offender would not have more than a high school education and would not have done well scholastically. His school records would likely reflect disruptive behavior.

Speaker 8 He has an inadequate personality and is lacking in interpersonal skills. He has a difficult time time relating to females and feels insecure when in their company.

Speaker 8 Any relationships with females would be marked with conflict or even physical violence.

Speaker 8 His choice of female companionship would be with someone considerably younger than him, that he would be able to dominate.

Speaker 8 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 he is somewhat dependent.

Speaker 8 He would be described by others as a loner and likely does not have a a close circle of friends.

Speaker 8 The brutality at the crime scene reflects anger, resulting from short or long-term stressors in the offender's life experiences.

Speaker 8 Our research and experience reflect that these precipitating stressors can be the result of conflict with a significant female in the offender's life, employment pressures, death of a significant person, etc.

Speaker 8 The use of drugs or alcohol by the offender in this case should not be ruled out.

Speaker 8 Although the offender apparently brought duct tape with him, the crime scene does not reflect a great deal of criminal sophistication.

Speaker 8 The offender likely has a police record that would reflect assaultive type behavior, possibly sexual assault, and drug or alcohol-related violations.

Speaker 8 If the offender is employed, it would be in unskilled to semi-skilled work, and he would have a spotty work record, which also reflects an inability to work well with others.

Speaker 8 The time of the assault also indicates that the offender did not have to account for his time on that morning.

Speaker 8 If the offender owns a vehicle, it would reflect his financial and social standing in the community. Post-offensive behavior.

Speaker 8 After disposing of the victim's body, the offender would have gone to a location he considered safe to decompress.

Speaker 8 He would not have any remorse for his crime, and his only concern would be a fear of being connected to the crime. He would have cleaned the blood from his clothes.

Speaker 8 However, our experience indicates that this offender would not be likely to dispose of the clothes he wore during the commission of the crime.

Speaker 8 The offender would have become reclusive for several days following the crime and would have tried to establish an alibi in case he was questioned by the police.

Speaker 8 If he was employed, he may have provided a reason to be absent from work the day after the crime.

Speaker 8 His physical appearance would have deteriorated more than usual, and if he uses drugs or alcohol, his consumption of those products would have increased.

Speaker 8 Persons who know him well would have recognized his increased anxiety. If contacted by the police, he likely would have appeared cooperative, but would have claimed no knowledge about the crime.

Speaker 8 He would probably have followed the progress of the investigation through the media and by overhearing others in the community.

Speaker 8 However, the offender would not be likely to engage in conversation about the crime.

Speaker 33 At the time, there was only one person to hold up against this profile and compare: Kenneth McCune Jr.

Speaker 33 On one hand, a few of the characteristic traits matched McCune to a T. Familiar with the area, check.
Only a high school degree, check. Odd jobs, jobs, no established career, check, check.

Speaker 33 He even slightly resembled the suspect description with his long, skinny nose.

Speaker 33 But one thing that didn't match was the fact that Kenneth was married with kids. Knowing what they knew about Kenneth's alleged flashing habits, that fact puzzled investigators.

Speaker 33 It seems that in 1988, Yokolet tried to talk to Kenneth specifically about Darlene's case. Here's a reenactment of that transcript.

Speaker 37 Kenny, you're familiar with the investigation I've been conducting into the death of Darlene Hulse? Yes. Were you familiar with Darlene Hulse?

Speaker 37 Okay.

Speaker 37 How was it you knew where she lived?

Speaker 37 Well, one time me and my dad had bailed some straw or some hay down a road, and when that happened, the way it was described to me where it had happened was associated with that particular year we bailed the hay, as far as, you know, my memory goes.

Speaker 39 You never seen Mrs.

Speaker 37 Hulse when you were bailing hay or driving up and down the road?

Speaker 37 I could, yeah, I think. Do you remember where you saw her at?

Speaker 41 I think she

Speaker 40 went down in front of the house and the kids were outside or something.

Speaker 37 I'm not sure. Were there any other times other than this that you'd saw Mrs.
Hulse anywhere?

Speaker 37 I wouldn't know if I would recognize her, you know, walking down the street or anything. No.

Speaker 33 That was only part of the transcript of Kenneth's interview with Sergeant Yokelet.

Speaker 33 We have this part because the recording of that interview was played during a court proceeding that we did a records request for.

Speaker 33 That's the only part they played in court, and we don't have documentation of the full interview, so I'm not sure where the conversation went from there.

Speaker 33 And we weren't able to find any further documentation about how or even if they tried to connect Kenneth to Darlene's case back in 1987.

Speaker 33 And obviously, a few similarities in an FBI profile aren't enough to accuse him of murder. So later that year, they just moved forward with cases that they did have evidence for.

Speaker 33 In November 1987, police charged Kenneth with public indecency for one of the flashing incidents, the one where the victim identified him.

Speaker 33 And a month later, they arrested him for the 1982 home invasion and attempted rape of Pam.

Speaker 33 At first, Kenneth had denied the crime.

Speaker 33 But when he realized that police not only had record of him calling and harassing her, but they also had collected blood on her doorframe where the intruder had cut himself and it belonged to him, the jig was up.

Speaker 33 Kenneth admitted to everything and took a plea deal for a lesser charge of burglary. The prosecutor just dropped the attempted rape charge altogether.

Speaker 33 Oh, and that indecent exposure case, that actually went to trial.

Speaker 33 Kenneth was acquitted, but according to the transcript from his 1989 sentence modification hearing, he admitted that it was actually him.

Speaker 33 Now, I want to take just two seconds and acknowledge how infuriating this must have been for Pam.

Speaker 33 All these years, they had the evidence they needed to solve her case, but it took two more people dying for them to thoroughly investigate it.

Speaker 33 And when they finally did, the end result had to feel like what they were saying all along. Well, nothing really happened to you.
He just broke in. She deserved to be believed from the beginning.

Speaker 33 And I guess delayed justice is better than nothing, but it meant that she lived in fear for nearly five years before Kenneth was finally arrested.

Speaker 33 Despite being caught in a lie over Pam's assault, Kenneth denied having anything to do with Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 He went on to serve time in prison until 1991, and then he went on to live a crime-free life. His wife stayed with him.
They raised their daughters.

Speaker 33 He kept a job and even volunteered in his community.

Speaker 33 Now, we don't have access to any of the reports or documentation on Brandi's case, so I don't know if Kenneth was ever questioned about her murder.

Speaker 33 We asked prosecutor Nelson Chipman, who is in charge of that case today, if they were ever able to trace the call Brandy got before her murder and if any calls were linked back to Kenneth McCune.

Speaker 33 But he wouldn't say. I would highly doubt anything in Brandi's case was ever linked back to Kenneth.

Speaker 33 Like I mentioned last episode, her case went on to garner far more attention, and he has never been named by anyone official or otherwise in connection to the case.

Speaker 33 Like I said last episode, after Brandy was murdered, her death really overshadowed Darlene's.

Speaker 33 And former Sergeant Dave Yocalet seemed to take offense today when I told them Darlene's name isn't known around town because they say they remember it so well. But it's the truth.

Speaker 33 After 1987, Darlene's case had come to a screeching halt, and it stayed there for damn near 40 years.

Speaker 33 That is until the one daughter, who was too young to remember anything, started asking questions.

Speaker 42 I remember dad saying, if you have any questions, you can go ask Marie Melissa.

Speaker 43 So I started inquiring then.

Speaker 33 You were young.

Speaker 33 I mean, we always told you.

Speaker 43 I mean, I don't remember, like you said, a knot.

Speaker 43 It was never a secret.

Speaker 45 Do you remember how old you were when you started asking your sisters questions?

Speaker 46 Seven or eight.

Speaker 42 I remember sitting on the steps in the garage and asking some things

Speaker 42 and I'll never forget one time Melissa said the one thing that she regrets was not getting me, not grabbing me when they were

Speaker 33 running out and I think that's kind of piqued my interest.

Speaker 42 Like what do you mean? Like where was the Huzzai? What was going on? So then started asking more and that's why I told myself when I get older I'm gonna do some digging.

Speaker 42 and see what I can find or if I can ask questions that I wanna know about to to the detectives. So that's kind of where I'm coming from.

Speaker 42 And then it got to a point about seven years ago where I was like, okay,

Speaker 42 I'm going to do this.

Speaker 33 What Kristen would go on to do would completely change the trajectory of her mother's case. That's next in episode eight.
It all goes through one guy. You can listen to that right now.

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Speaker 33 In 2016, Kristen was all grown up and a mom of her own when she decided to take her mom's cold case into her own hands.

Speaker 42 It got to a point about seven years ago where I was like, okay,

Speaker 42 I want to do this. I was sitting at home with little kids and I just started reaching out and be like, hey, is there anything new, anything going on?

Speaker 33 Who can I talk to?

Speaker 42 And a lot of them were, no, there's nothing new. There's nothing I can tell you because I don't know anything type of thing.

Speaker 33 She was asking all those questions over the phone and via email from hundreds of miles away. So it's not like she could just march down to the prosecutor's office and demand answers.

Speaker 33 You see, it had been decades since Kristen or any of her immediate family members had lived in Indiana.

Speaker 33 Back in 1989, five years after Darlene's murder, Ron got a new job opportunity with the Door Manufacturing Company.

Speaker 33 So, the Hulse family moved away from Argus and not just out of town, to a whole different state.

Speaker 33 This is episode eight. It all goes through one guy.

Speaker 33 By then, Ron and his wife, Chris, had also added a son to the family. So Marie, Melissa, and Kristen had a new baby brother.
Tons of changes for their family in just five years.

Speaker 33 So the girls were a bit hesitant about leaving Argus. It was the only place they'd ever called home, even though it was a constant reminder of their family's biggest tragedy.

Speaker 48 I was not excited because I was leaving all my friends and all of our family was there.

Speaker 43 I was not excited.

Speaker 48 And the South is so different from the North.

Speaker 43 The only part I was looking forward to moving down here is because I got my own room.

Speaker 1 They're like, we're going to get you enrolled.

Speaker 2 I was like, okay, that works.

Speaker 33 From 1984 to 1989, the family was defined by what happened to Darlene. and the failed investigation into finding her killer.

Speaker 33 The move wasn't exactly intended to be a fresh start for them, but in many ways it was.

Speaker 33 They settled in and all of a sudden no one at school knew the horrible thing that had happened to their family. Of course, they would visit family members back in Argus every so often.

Speaker 48 I mean, we would try and go back twice a year, but then they got fewer and further between after that, but we would go back for a long time.

Speaker 33 But it got to the point where they sort of dreaded going back there. They figured if a huge breakthrough ever came in Darlene's case, someone would let them know.

Speaker 33 But in the 30-plus years since, no one ever called.

Speaker 33 So, when Kristen started making calls about her mom's case back in 2016, she was frustrated to learn that nothing had been done in years.

Speaker 33 She found out the case file was essentially sitting on a shelf in Marshall County Prosecutor Nelson Chipman's office in Plymouth, Indiana.

Speaker 42 So, I reached out to Nelson and he talked to me because he remembered about mom's case. He said he had her picture up in his office still,

Speaker 42 but that there was nothing new going on with it.

Speaker 33 Of course, Kristen's next question was, well, how do we change that? She pushed and pushed call after call, but she felt like she was getting nowhere.

Speaker 33 Kristen even arranged an in-person meeting with Prosecutor Chipman, and he basically dismissed her, saying that what's been done has been done and there's not much else he can do.

Speaker 42 I said, you guys, the case piles are just sitting there collecting dust and he leaned across his desk. He goes, you don't think I know that?

Speaker 42 I was like, well, obviously nothing is going to get done when it's just sitting there. You know, have a fresh pair of eyes look at it, something, you know, do the touch DNA testing.

Speaker 42 After that meeting I had with him, when I left, I got up and left his office in tears. And I didn't, we haven't spoken since then.

Speaker 33 Kristen left that meeting, not knowing if anything would even happen. And Marie knew how hard Kristen had worked for years by that point, trying to get some movement in their mom's case.

Speaker 33 So being the big sister she is, Marie called Prosecutor Chipman.

Speaker 48 I said, you know, you don't understand what it's like. I said, you don't have this in your life.

Speaker 48 And I said, you need to be a little more gentler with her because you are coming off rude and you've got to understand where she's coming from.

Speaker 48 And I just think he's lost that sense, that touch of things because it's not his personal life. And I get that, but you still don't need to talk that way.

Speaker 1 A little more kinder.

Speaker 33 There were no apologies or mending fences. Instead, Nelson assigned someone in his office to act as a liaison between Kristen and himself.

Speaker 33 But maybe something about what Marie said tugged at his heartstrings. Or maybe Kristen's persistence paid off.

Speaker 33 Either way, Kristen was shocked, surprised, encouraged, all the emotions when in 2019, Prosecutor Chipman was in the local news talking about how they were planning to use new DNA technology to try and solve Darlene's case once and for all.

Speaker 33 Detectives are not giving up. Right now, they are starting over with fresh eyes, once again tracking down persons of interest and conducting interviews.

Speaker 33 Chipman also says they're choosing new pieces of evidence to send to the Indiana State Police Crime Lab.

Speaker 33 Kristen was hopeful. She could feel answers just around the corner.

Speaker 33 But around the same time, that liaison that Nelson had appointed, Kelly, who'd been keeping Kristen in the loop on stuff that was going on in the case, she left Nelson's office for a different job.

Speaker 33 She still tried to keep up to date on the investigation in order to text Kristen updates, but new information was scarce after that. It took some time.

Speaker 33 I mean, so much so that Kristen thought the ball had been dropped yet again. But at some point, she heard that they had gotten some kind of DNA off some piece of evidence, but the details were fuzzy.

Speaker 33 Now, she knew nothing was gonna happen overnight, but months were going by, and then years.

Speaker 33 February 2021 was when I came across that 2018 news story. I had stumbled across Darlene's story and become a little obsessed, as I've been known to do.
But there was just nothing.

Speaker 33 A big void where I expected answers were sure to be. Now, normally I'd set my Google alerts and wait for something to pop, but I don't know what it was about this one.

Speaker 33 Instead, I found Kristen on Facebook and sent her a DM.

Speaker 33 And that message put us on a wild journey that I could have never imagined.

Speaker 33 After my message to Kristen, we hopped on a phone call and she got me up to speed with everything she'd been doing since 2016, which included not just pushing the prosecutor's office, but doing some sleuthing of her own, creating maps, connecting important events through newspaper archives.

Speaker 33 But she said that she was stuck. What needed to happen was DNA testing, which brought us full circle to the reason for me reaching out.
My My big question was,

Speaker 33 well, what the hell happened after that article in 2019?

Speaker 33 And she said, she had no idea.

Speaker 33 She explained to me the falling out that she had with Prosecutor Nelson, and by 2021, his liaison no longer worked in his office. Her only lifeline of communication was gone.

Speaker 33 So really, she had no idea exactly what evidence they had or what was happening with it.

Speaker 33 I've worked with a lot of good people in law enforcement, and I've worked with a lot of families. And this kind of rift that happens is something that I'll never fully understand, but it happens.

Speaker 33 I knew there was no fixing it by the time we came in, but maybe there could be a bridge. Maybe we could be that bridge, is what I was hoping.

Speaker 33 When I asked Kristen if she wanted our help, I'll be honest, she wasn't jumping. I mean, don't get me wrong, she wasn't against it, but I think over the years, she learned to keep her hopes tempered.

Speaker 33 So instead, she gave me a resounding, at this point it wouldn't hurt. We dipped our toes in slowly.

Speaker 33 Kristen sent us everything she had and we tried wrapping our heads around the case, one little piece of the puzzle at a time.

Speaker 33 By 2022, I had assigned our reporter Emily to start digging into Darlene's case full-time.

Speaker 33 And like any good reporter, she knows that you got to get to the source. And the source in this case is prosecutor Nelson Chipman.
So she started there.

Speaker 33 It took several phone calls to Chipman's office before he even called her back. And when we asked for a sit-down interview with him, this is what he said.

Speaker 39 Why would I?

Speaker 39 I don't understand.

Speaker 39 It's just foreign to us to conduct interviews during an investigation. I know this is a cold case.
I know that that's different.

Speaker 39 But to be doing interviews about evidence, you know, it's just very uncomfortable.

Speaker 33 Foreign says the guy who had gone on local TV saying he was reopening the case.

Speaker 45 What's changed between then and now that makes you not want to do another interview?

Speaker 49 I mean, isn't it always worth trying?

Speaker 39 Just say that again.

Speaker 36 What was the last part?

Speaker 45 Isn't it always worth trying just to get some new publicity out there in case it does spark someone's memory?

Speaker 39 Well,

Speaker 6 who's listening to your podcast?

Speaker 33 You're listening, right?

Speaker 33 Even if Nelson doesn't think anything will come of this, he's the gatekeeper.

Speaker 33 And I know this because we also tried getting interviews with the Indiana State Police and the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, even the State Crime Lab.

Speaker 33 And they all say that we have to talk to Nelson, that he is in charge of the case.

Speaker 33 And I just have to preface this by saying it's unusual for a prosecutor to be the gatekeeper of a case that has never even been close to an arrest.

Speaker 33 He's not a detective and his office doesn't have detectives. But when we asked him why he had it, he said that he just inherited it from the prosecutor before him.

Speaker 33 Like at some point, Darlene's case went from the jurisdiction of the Marshall County Sheriff's Office to the Indiana State Police and then the Marshall County Prosecutor's Office.

Speaker 33 But no one really has a logical explanation for why that happened or any real plans to transfer it again.

Speaker 33 But Emily is nothing if not persistent. Let me just pop by your office and we can have a conversation, she said.

Speaker 33 And reluctantly, reluctantly, he agreed.

Speaker 49 I think it'll be worth our time either way.

Speaker 47 All right. Okay, thanks, Nelson.
I will.

Speaker 33 Emily traveled to Plymouth, Indiana for that meeting. And the first thing Nelson did was take her to see the photo of Darlene that he keeps on the wall in his office.

Speaker 46 What has made you want to keep that up on your wall?

Speaker 55 Just a reminder what

Speaker 3 we're here for.

Speaker 33 Our big goal for that first meeting with Nelson, which was in September 2022, was to see what results, if any, they had gotten from the new DNA testing they allegedly tried around 2018 or 2019.

Speaker 33 And keep in mind, Nelson talks in circles and sometimes the details are fuzzy or he says he can't answer a question. But about a half an hour into the interview, he started to open up a bit.

Speaker 33 And he said, okay, yes. After Kristen and I had our disagreement, I sent off a piece of evidence for MVAC testing, and the results were exciting, but quote, not a slam dunk.

Speaker 50 So it sounds like you got something partial.

Speaker 57 Right. And it identifies a male.

Speaker 58 An unknown male?

Speaker 2 Yeah, right.

Speaker 59 I mean,

Speaker 55 they don't have a standard to go with. If we had a standard,

Speaker 55 you'd be here talking taking pictures of a herp walk or something, right?

Speaker 33 A partial profile isn't enough to put in CODIS, but it is enough to do direct comparison tests.

Speaker 46 Do you have DNA swabs for the suspects in the case?

Speaker 59 I can't talk about that.

Speaker 33 So Nelson wouldn't say if they were in the process of doing any direct comparisons with suspects or persons of interest, but he was sort of willing to theorize about what he thinks happened to Darlene.

Speaker 33 And his theories, even decades after the crime, are very similar to what Sergeant Dave Yokolek was theorizing back in the 80s.

Speaker 33 Though they're still in touch today, so that's likely where the theory came from.

Speaker 62 I think it's one person.

Speaker 55 I think it was sex-driven.

Speaker 62 You would think that

Speaker 62 the person would have the tendency to have done something like that before

Speaker 3 and would have done something like that after.

Speaker 59 You would think.

Speaker 62 Amateur.

Speaker 55 I'm an amateur.

Speaker 61 That

Speaker 59 paradigm and that way of perspective of for me has has proven useful through the years of

Speaker 3 if I'm going to go into a courtroom

Speaker 55 those people in there in the jury box they

Speaker 61 they're going to know less than

Speaker 62 and I need to convince them

Speaker 62 so if I'm going to convince them I need to be convinced do you think it was someone who has

Speaker 46 really strong local ties, who's lived here, who lived here at the time, and it sounds like still might be in the area?

Speaker 3 You're not going to let up, are you?

Speaker 33 When we asked Nelson to explain how he managed to have a falling out with a victim's daughter, he said that when she first reached out, he was really open with her about investigative information.

Speaker 33 and that he was getting criticized by certain people, quote unquote, on his side for being too open.

Speaker 33 And then everything came to a head when they met in person. Nelson even accused Kristen of lying about her grandfather's funeral in order to come to Indiana to meet with him.

Speaker 62 It was just, it was a bad scene, and she was very emotional. She'd come up here.

Speaker 62 She said she came up here for a family funeral,

Speaker 3 but she couldn't tell me where it was or who, you know,

Speaker 62 whatever was going on. I think

Speaker 3 it was just an excuse to get here,

Speaker 55 which is fine.

Speaker 59 You know, I could feel for her, but it was very uncomfortable.

Speaker 33 For the record, I don't think it matters why Kristen was in Indiana. I mean, she has a right to meet with authorities in charge of solving her mom's case anytime she wants.

Speaker 33 But just in case anyone's wondering, her grandpa did, in fact, die. We found the obituary complete with funeral service information.

Speaker 58 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 45 I don't blame them for wanting answers.

Speaker 46 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 32 And I felt bad.

Speaker 62 You know, I hate for it

Speaker 11 to have

Speaker 55 ended like that,

Speaker 62 and I sure as hell hate like

Speaker 59 if in

Speaker 62 14 months, 16 months, whatever it is, 18 months,

Speaker 62 and I'm gone, you know, I sure hope whoever takes over, if it was just going to be Tammy, that they'd take over with as much passion.

Speaker 33 Passion.

Speaker 33 Prosecutor Chitman is saying that he hopes whoever takes over his job will have as much passion as him when it comes to trying to solve Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 But this guy talks a lot about retirement.

Speaker 33 He's been in the role for a decade, and when Emily met with him in September 2022, he was in the middle of running for re-election, and he ran unopposed, so he won the bid for Marshall County prosecutor in November 2022.

Speaker 33 But he says he'll be retired by 2024.

Speaker 33 He also talks a lot about how busy his office is and how huge their workload is and how they don't have a dedicated investigator working on Darlene's case.

Speaker 43 Do you wish you had like a full-time cold case investigator looking at both of these cases?

Speaker 62 I couldn't justify that.

Speaker 62 If it was supplied, yeah, it would be great. But,

Speaker 62 you know, just two cases. We had three, but everybody seems to think pretty well that the suspect on the third one is deceased.

Speaker 33 So apparently, in Nelson's opinion, two unsolved murders isn't enough to justify a dedicated homicide investigator. And unfortunately, passion without action ain't going to cut it.

Speaker 33 So Emily and I decided, we'll do it. We'll investigate Darlene's case.
And we'll start from scratch.

Speaker 33 What we didn't realize in the fall of 2022 after that first meeting with Nelson was just how much more there was to uncover.

Speaker 33 Part of that meant staying on Nelson's good side because the guy's a talker. You can tell he wants to talk and be a part of this.
And to his credit, he gave us time, a lot more than we expected.

Speaker 33 So Emily thought, why not ask for just a little more?

Speaker 33 She asked if he would take her out to the crime scene.

Speaker 55 Yeah,

Speaker 3 if you want to go that way, I can lead you that way.

Speaker 2 Yeah?

Speaker 50 Let's do it.

Speaker 33 Nelson escorted Emily himself past Darlene's house and the patch of woods where her body was found. And along the way, he opened up more about his real theory of Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 And it gave us a really great place to start our investigation.

Speaker 33 That's in episode nine. Let's go for a ride.

Speaker 33 You can listen to that right now.

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Speaker 64 Okay, so tell me where we are now.

Speaker 40 We're just a miles south of Plymouth on Old 31, headed south to Argus.

Speaker 33 Argus is about 15 minutes south of Plymouth, and it's mostly just cornfields and backroads between the two towns.

Speaker 33 Once you turn off of new US 31 onto old Highway 31, you cross some railroad railroad tracks, and a few miles south of there, you pass right by Brandy Peltz's old house, where she was murdered in 1986.

Speaker 26 All right, well,

Speaker 33 let me get the feel here.

Speaker 40 We'll come up with the first one to be Peltz.

Speaker 40 All right, I think Peltz is in the left-hand side with the trees here.

Speaker 40 Yeah,

Speaker 57 that's it. That's her.
Yeah, Peltz.

Speaker 33 This is episode nine. Let's go for a ride.

Speaker 33 The Peltz house is right on the two-lane highway. It's a yellow two-story home with a front porch and a driveway to the right with trees and fields on either side.

Speaker 33 By the way, we have photos from this ride along with Nelson. They're on our website, thedeckpodcast.com.

Speaker 33 As you keep going by Brandy's old house, a few more miles south and you come to 20B Road, where the Hulses lived.

Speaker 39 Still

Speaker 41 gravel.

Speaker 41 Try here.

Speaker 41 First house on the left.

Speaker 66 Who lives there today?

Speaker 67 I don't know.

Speaker 55 There used to be a house there, but I don't think that was Grandpa's.

Speaker 40 I thought Grandpa was across the road.

Speaker 33 Unlike the Peltz home, the Hulses lived a little ways off Old 31, so you have to turn on to 20B Road, which is unmarked, and there's a field before you get to their house on the left.

Speaker 33 The ranch-style house is still there and looks similar to how it did in the 80s. Same door, same windows, with a few updates to the siding and stuff.

Speaker 64 Do you think that he was

Speaker 66 watching the house in the days leading up to August 17th?

Speaker 67 Um,

Speaker 67 yeah.

Speaker 40 I don't know how

Speaker 7 studious,

Speaker 40 you know, how tense. You saw, you know, you couldn't like park in a parking lot or something and watch.

Speaker 33 So Nelson believes that the man went to Darlene's house with plans to sexually assault her, but that the interaction turned too violent and then he panicked.

Speaker 40 So I would think he's like, oh my God, I got it.

Speaker 55 I don't think she's breathing.

Speaker 6 All right,

Speaker 57 I gotta get rid of her.

Speaker 40 She's no longer a target of sex.

Speaker 33 Nelson didn't know if Darlene was still alive when she was pulled from the house and placed in the man's car.

Speaker 33 If she was alive but unconscious, that would likely still cause her attacker to panic and flee.

Speaker 33 Investigators think because of those skid marks that they saw at the end of the driveway, the ones that I mentioned all the way back in episode one, that Darlene's abductor put her in his car, backed out of the driveway, and then drove east away from the highway.

Speaker 33 So that's the way Nelson drove Emily.

Speaker 40 So you can see why, instead of going back to that road, you'd think he would go this way. I would.

Speaker 70 So this is the route you think the killer drove.

Speaker 64 Yes. With Darlene.

Speaker 40 Yes.

Speaker 40 And he would have, if he's local,

Speaker 40 he's local.

Speaker 40 He would have known that, yeah,

Speaker 40 this is going to be his escape route.

Speaker 70 So where does this take us?

Speaker 40 It'll take us to 110.

Speaker 40 110 is really the county line road between Marshall and

Speaker 40 Fulton. So, you know, no houses on here.
So that would have been another reason why I would think he would be comfortable about going. This would be his escape route.

Speaker 33 Nelson thinks that the man drove the back roads in a square from the Hulse house to avoid getting back onto the highway.

Speaker 33 But he would have come to a highway and had to cross it in order to head west toward the dirt road where he ended up leaving her body.

Speaker 40 Okay, we're looking at for Olive.

Speaker 70 Olive Trail, right? Yeah.

Speaker 40 Now, Olive Trail,

Speaker 40 you know, goes, I think,

Speaker 40 through the county, but it right here is going to be disjointed.

Speaker 37 It's not unusual.

Speaker 33 Olive Trail is just a few miles straight west of Darlene's house. And today, it's still a dirt road, but it's a lot more open now, with a cornfield on one side and some woods on the other.

Speaker 33 Back in the 80s, it was woods on both sides, and the road was much more hidden than it is today.

Speaker 38 Just up there.

Speaker 67 I mean, I'm reconstructing it myself, so, but I'm fairly certain it's still these woods.

Speaker 40 If you looked, like I said,

Speaker 40 some of the crime scene, you know, somebody was taking old-fashioned photos, and it was like a tunnel almost, because this would all was trees touching.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's in here.

Speaker 40 It's in here, and you know, it's so we can get out

Speaker 40 where precisely, I do not know.

Speaker 70 So, you think the temper buyer finding her is a total coincidence?

Speaker 66 Yes.

Speaker 40 You don't?

Speaker 40 No, I... I'm just asking questions.

Speaker 42 Yep, yeah, I...

Speaker 40 I'm feeling it was divine intervention, actually.

Speaker 38 Really?

Speaker 38 I have things.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 40 Say, help them out, go there.

Speaker 33 Nelson definitely opened up a little during this ride along.

Speaker 33 I'm not sure if it was getting him out of his stuffy office or maybe he came around to the idea of this podcast actually helping rather than hurting the investigation.

Speaker 33 But it helped to have him share his thoughts about the case while literally looking at the crime scene.

Speaker 33 He thinks whoever killed Darlene knew exactly where he was going to take her the whole time, that he planned it.

Speaker 64 If he was worried about

Speaker 70 the daughters having escaped to go get help, he was probably thinking like, oh, the police are

Speaker 70 about to be on their way.

Speaker 6 Yes, but

Speaker 40 I think about

Speaker 40 you know levels of communication radio or otherwise

Speaker 40 you know telephone you know they would have converged on the scene they would not necessarily be look you know know where he he was going right but that would be another reason to go that way rather than back this way but you notice that there wasn't a house on that thing other than that that one we saw but I don't that didn't exist then

Speaker 6 He had to know that.

Speaker 40 If he was gonna have sex and then kill, um, that might have always been his end place.

Speaker 33 If you're keeping up with Nelson's riddles, it's apparent that he thinks the killer has strong ties to the exact spot he left Darlene.

Speaker 33 But anytime Emily brings that up, he deflects or changes the subject pretty quickly.

Speaker 70 So, do you know anything else about the

Speaker 70 people who owned that land back in the day or

Speaker 40 I can pull out because I know I have them in there somewhere

Speaker 40 You know an old plat map that gave us a name

Speaker 66 when the landowner was questioned

Speaker 40 That I don't recall any specific thing. You know, he was just a you know

Speaker 40 They were not thinking of him

Speaker 40 that I they must have talked to him right

Speaker 64 just to even ask you know, to

Speaker 66 get impulses,

Speaker 38 I would think.

Speaker 55 Where's this fire truck?

Speaker 33 Nelson either got distracted by a fire truck driving by, or he was trying to change the subject. But before he took Emily back to her car, he said, I'll show you one more place.

Speaker 33 It's this property that belongs to a longtime local family who used to bury cars in their yard. And there's still a buried bus there today.

Speaker 57 Back there is where the buried bus.

Speaker 64 Oh, back here?

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 66 Down this drive?

Speaker 69 Yeah, back behind that house.

Speaker 39 You're not going to get a very good photo.

Speaker 63 So it's creepy.

Speaker 63 Major creepy.

Speaker 33 Emily wasn't totally sure why this place warranted a stop. The rumor about the buried bus wasn't new to us.

Speaker 33 But we hadn't seen any records that tied that property or the family necessarily to Darlene's case yet.

Speaker 33 I mean, other than like the obvious assumption any armchair detective could make, which is that burying a vehicle that everyone is on the lookout for is one way to make sure that it never gets found.

Speaker 62 Ten years ago, I had dreams of finding the head of the fireplace poker in the.

Speaker 47 In the bus. Yeah.

Speaker 59 I mean, I

Speaker 62 mean, how would you explain that, please?

Speaker 2 It's nothing, nothing.

Speaker 47 It's not exactly wild speculation to think that like something like that could happen because that is very unusual.

Speaker 3 What, the buried bus?

Speaker 47 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that's not very far away.

Speaker 33 But then Nelson said, but you know, the family who lived there was never suspected in the Hulse murder. They were sort of looked at for Brandy Peltz's murder.

Speaker 33 And this is where things get really fuzzy because Nelson couldn't remember for sure, but he said he thought police even dug through that yard looking for evidence in the Peltz Peltz case, but that they didn't find anything.

Speaker 33 And you can tell that Nelson is still suspicious of the people who lived there because he keeps mentioning this small geographic triangle.

Speaker 55 There's a triangle.

Speaker 2 Pelts, Polts, Buried Bus.

Speaker 33 If you draw a line from Darlene's house to Brandy's house to the buried bus property, back to Darlene's house, it makes a little triangle.

Speaker 33 So Nelson keeps pointing that out, but then he'll say that the buried bus has nothing to do with Darlene as far as he knows. Sometimes talking to Nelson is like trying to swim through mud.

Speaker 33 On one hand, it was great to get more bits and pieces of info about Darlene's case, but sometimes we came away from him more confused than ever. And right now was one of those times.

Speaker 33 We just had this weird puzzle piece that we weren't even sure fit the puzzle we were working on. But we held on to it anyways.
And in a few episodes, you'll be glad you held on to it too.

Speaker 33 As Nelson was driving Emily back to her car, he comes as close as ever to hinting at who his main suspect is.

Speaker 70 Do you think the person who killed Darlene went on to commit more violent crime, or do you think that they've gone pretty much undetected all of these years or both?

Speaker 40 I think there was another

Speaker 40 assault after that.

Speaker 40 I think there might have been some deviant stuff, you know, like

Speaker 55 maybe exposure or something.

Speaker 32 Yeah,

Speaker 61 and

Speaker 40 I think he paid for one of them and paid in the sense of a conviction for one of them and

Speaker 55 might have learned to stay back, you know, to suppress it.

Speaker 71 I cannot believe the rehabilitated him

Speaker 57 I believe he'd still have the urges whether he acted out on them or not that's pure conjecture

Speaker 33 deviant stuff exposure he paid for that that was sounding a lot like one man Kenneth McCune Jr.

Speaker 33 If you remember from episode seven, we knew Kenneth McCune Jr. was at least questioned about Darlene back in the 80s after he was arrested for the break-in and attempted attempted rape of Pam.

Speaker 33 But up to this point, we had no idea if he was still being looked at in relation to Darlene's case.

Speaker 33 Prosecutor Nelson won't confirm on record that Kenneth McHugh Jr. is an official suspect or even person of interest.

Speaker 33 But that ride-along left me and Emily with a lot of questions, specifically about Kenneth. And we had a really clear idea of what we needed to do next.

Speaker 33 Not to beat this puzzle analogy into the ground, but it seemed to us like everyone kept trying to make the puzzle work with the same couple of pieces, smashing them together over and over for three decades.

Speaker 33 But we had this sneaking suspicion that the picture might be a lot bigger than anyone ever knew.

Speaker 33 So Emily left that ride along with Nelson and went straight to the Marshall County Courthouse to dig up some records on Kenneth McCune Jr.

Speaker 33 In Indiana, court records searches have to be done in person at most courthouses.

Speaker 33 And you have to be armed with enough information like a suspect's full name, date of birth, and case number to even get access to criminal case files. And sometimes it's even trickier than that.

Speaker 33 A court clerk might take your request and tell you to come back in two days once they have time to locate the records.

Speaker 33 Or sometimes they'll find the records right away, but make you name specific documents that you want to see, which is such a catch-22 because it's impossible to name the exact document until you have access to the old dockets, unless you just ask to see the PC affidavit.

Speaker 33 But that's often just the tip of the iceberg. In the McCune case, we got a helpful clerk who went to the basement and dug up his files from the 80s.

Speaker 33 But then she spent like an hour going through the folders with a supervisor and pulling out information that they thought should be redacted.

Speaker 33 After that, Emily was allowed to thumb through the files and pay for copies of the ones she wanted.

Speaker 33 But it was worth the trouble because that record search was the key that unlocked so much information for us. Names, dates, interview transcripts, even witness lists.

Speaker 33 Included in those names was Kenneth McCune's previous victim, who we've been calling Pam to protect her identity. Pam had never spoken publicly about her attack as far as we could find.

Speaker 33 And we knew that if we were really going to understand what happened to her and determine if there were any similarities between her attack and other cases, we couldn't go off a short one-page report or blurbs in old newspapers.

Speaker 33 We needed to talk to the woman who lived it. So Emily reached out to her and to our surprise, she was willing to tell her story.

Speaker 58 Do you remember what you were doing that day?

Speaker 44 Yeah, I was sleeping. It was very early morning.
And the phone rang, and

Speaker 44 the person on the other end of the phone asked if my husband was home. And I said, no, he won't be home till night after work.

Speaker 4 And so, like, okay.

Speaker 44 And then hung up, went back to bed.

Speaker 33 About 30 minutes later, Pam woke up to a loud noise, like a crashing sound coming from the front of her house. Her dog started barking its head off.
So Pam got up to investigate.

Speaker 44 I just thought, oh my gosh, what fell?

Speaker 44 And so I jumped out of bed. And by the time I took just one step to the doorway, he was already running down the hall to me, about maybe 20 feet away.

Speaker 33 It was dark in Pam's house because all the shades were drawn. So, Pam said really all she could see was this big figure running toward her.

Speaker 58 What was going through your mind right then?

Speaker 44 Just

Speaker 44 panic, I guess, just shock. Like, there was nothing going through my mind other than

Speaker 44 disbelief, I guess.

Speaker 58 At what point did reality set in?

Speaker 44 I took, as he approached,

Speaker 44 I took a step backwards. And of course it was small room, so I was right there at the bed.

Speaker 33 And he had grabbed my arms and pushed me back onto the bed.

Speaker 72 And

Speaker 44 I was screaming by that point. And he said, shut up or I'll, what I thought was, stick you.

Speaker 33 is what I thought I heard.

Speaker 44 And then when I realized he had hold of both of my arms I realized he didn't have a knife or something in his hands so then I fought harder

Speaker 33 Pam said when she realized he wasn't holding a weapon she thought I'm not just gonna lay here and take this I'm gonna fight

Speaker 33 I was angry then

Speaker 2 uh self-defense mode angry what happened after that whatever gave him the change of mind or heart, he just got up and took off and ran back down the hall and to the front door.

Speaker 58 How long do you feel like you were struggling with him?

Speaker 44 I would say maybe 30 seconds to a minute is all that that whole incident took.

Speaker 44 As I got up

Speaker 74 after he left or got up,

Speaker 44 I grabbed a drinking glass that I had full of water on the nightstand

Speaker 44 and chased down the hall, and I actually threw it at him at the front door as he left.

Speaker 33 Kudos to Pam for throwing a glass at that motherfucker's head. Unfortunately, the glass just missed him and hit the door instead.
But the intruder didn't leave unscathed.

Speaker 33 He cut his hand on the doorway as he was running out, leaving his blood at the scene of the crime. Pam didn't follow him outside.

Speaker 33 Instead, she ran to the bay window in her house and peered out to see what kind of car he was in. It was one that she'd never seen before.

Speaker 44 I could tell it was a truck with a camper on the back because the sun was starting to come up a little bit by then.

Speaker 44 And I thought, well,

Speaker 44 that must have been who it was because there's nobody else that has gone by.

Speaker 35 You know, no other cars were around.

Speaker 33 Pam immediately called the police after that.

Speaker 33 They responded to her house and once she told them what had happened, officers decided that Pam was likely being stalked by this man, not just because of the phone call right before he broke in, but because of the other phone calls that she had gotten as well.

Speaker 44 The summer prior, I had received obscene phone calls, and I had gone to the sheriff's department and filed a complaint and put what they could as far as a tracer on the phone.

Speaker 57 But then, of course, there weren't any more calls until that morning.

Speaker 33 So the police immediately,

Speaker 44 pretty immediately said that he was there

Speaker 44 to hurt me because I just couldn't imagine. I thought, well, maybe it was just a break-in.

Speaker 44 And of course, they're like, okay, with a phone call and all of that. It was more premeditated.
And he was here to do something to you.

Speaker 33 In the first two calls Pam had gotten, the man called her by her longtime nickname, which made her wonder if the guy knew her. But Pam didn't recognize his voice.
All of the calls were sexual.

Speaker 33 He would tell her what he wanted to do to her. Pam never responded and would just hang up.

Speaker 33 She said based on his voice alone, she couldn't tell if the man who attacked her was the same man who'd been calling, but police thought it was very likely.

Speaker 33 Just 20 months later, when Darlene's body was found so close to Pam's house, she wondered if the same man was back.

Speaker 44 That's not my job to prove or disprove, but there's a lot of links and similarities.

Speaker 44 I didn't know at the time before my attack that he had

Speaker 44 bailed hay right around behind us. I didn't know that till after the investigation began with him.
And then, of course,

Speaker 44 when they found Darlene's body, it was immediately behind our house. And so the helicopters ascended, all of the police ascended, and I got in my car.

Speaker 44 Well, we could watch it all from our yard. And I got in my car and I went down to the officers who had the road blocked off.
And I said, you know, I said,

Speaker 44 I wasn't killed, but I was attacked and my home was broken into.

Speaker 44 So I feel like it's similar enough, and this is close enough to where this happened, to where Darlene lived, that it warrants investigation.

Speaker 33 They seemed to take her seriously, but as far as she could tell, they didn't really dig deeper into any potential connection at the time.

Speaker 33 So as an investigation into Darlene's case got underway, Pam was just left to wonder if her attacker was still out there and if he might come back.

Speaker 33 It was

Speaker 2 living hell

Speaker 44 and a lot to come to terms with as a young woman.

Speaker 74 So

Speaker 44 different measures. We took different measures, you know, put up a fence, got an outside dog.
People stayed with me for probably a good six months.

Speaker 33 When Pam's attacker was finally caught in the winter of 1987, the name Kenneth McCune Jr. barely rang a bell.
She didn't know him personally.

Speaker 33 She just said that she knew his little sister because they'd gone to high school together in Culver.

Speaker 33 But that was it.

Speaker 33 And at the time of his arrest in 87 and the sentencing in 88, Darlene's case was already cold. And the only thing even remotely linking Kenneth McCune Jr.
to Darlene was a bunch of weird coincidences.

Speaker 62 We talked in terms of coincidence. I can't prove a case on coincidence, but man, there's a lot of coincidence.

Speaker 33 We find even more coincidences in episode 10. Look at the deeds.

Speaker 33 You can listen to that right now.

Speaker 11 Planning a trip this year?

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Speaker 33 Here on the deck, our work is all about finding the truth for those who deserve it most.

Speaker 33 But there are some stories where the truth is so obscure and the web of lies is so complicated that it's almost impossible to unravel.

Speaker 33 On Chameleon, host Josh Dean puts the pieces of these stories together to tell you about some of the most shocking cons, frauds, and imposters in history.

Speaker 33 You can listen to these stories now on Chameleon, the newest show from Audio Chuck, every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 33 Everyone from the current prosecutor to the FBI back in 87 says the same thing. Look at where her body was found.
Her killer knew the area, knew where he was going to take her.

Speaker 33 If that's true, we decided to see what the land would tell us. So we pulled the deed records for the lot where Darlene was found, and we looked at parcels around it.

Speaker 33 And sure enough, right up the road is McCune Farms, LLC.

Speaker 62 We talked in terms of coincidence. I can't prove a case on coincidence, but man, there's a lot of coincidence.

Speaker 33 This is episode 10.

Speaker 33 Look at the deeds.

Speaker 33 McCune Farms has changed hands a few times in the last several decades, and there are different plots around Marshall County that are also listed as McCune Farms.

Speaker 33 So it's hard to say which plots were whose back in the 80s because we know that both Kenneth's dad and his uncle were farmers and they all lived close to each other. So let's unpack this.

Speaker 33 According to property records, the actual land where Darlene's body was found was owned by this Chicago man named George Piascawi.

Speaker 33 And some locals have told us that George leased the land to local farmers or timber buyers, but we checked with the Marshall County Assessor's Office and they have no record of who leased the land in 1984.

Speaker 33 They said it was common back then, and actually still is today, for landowners to lease their properties for agricultural uses via a handshake deal. So, no documents.

Speaker 33 But the land just north of where Darlene's body was found belonged to Kenneth's uncle, Jim.

Speaker 2 Kenneth McCune's uncle,

Speaker 48 who owned that farm

Speaker 46 near where the body was found, what did he have to say in an interview?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 21 Was he interviewed?

Speaker 3 I think they might have made contact with him, like,

Speaker 3 you know, even for permission to go on there, I think. But I may be mixing that up.

Speaker 2 I know nothing of significance coming from that.

Speaker 33 We found an old supplemental report where an officer did, in fact, interview Jim McCune, and he's right.

Speaker 33 It was just a general door knocking, seeing if he'd seen anything or if anything weird had happened in the area recently.

Speaker 33 Nothing about the report stands out, and there's no mention of Darlene's body being found on his land.

Speaker 33 So although the prosecutor seems to be aware of the close proximity now, I'm not sure anyone was back in 1984.

Speaker 33 Now, just because Kenneth's family owned the property near where she was found doesn't mean he himself would just inherently be familiar with it.

Speaker 33 But if you remember, the court records we got from the 80s detailed McCune's jobs back then.

Speaker 33 He worked as a bus driver for the Culver School District, a salesman at a used car dealership, and as a farmhand at McCune Farms. On Kenneth's marriage certificate, he listed his job as dairy farmer.

Speaker 33 And speaking of jobs, according to various documents from back then, Kenneth worked at M ⁇ M Auto. a used car dealership where he had access to a number of cars.

Speaker 33 The question was, were any of them the car?

Speaker 33 If police had more thoroughly investigated Pam's case back in 1982, Kenneth McCune Jr. would have already been on their radar for Darlene's abduction in 1984.

Speaker 33 And they could have just rolled over to Eminem Auto, where he worked, and looked to see if the car was there. But now.

Speaker 46 So there's no way to tell what kind of car he may have had access to.

Speaker 4 We were aware that he took a vehicle to Florida.

Speaker 2 i don't want to go in that

Speaker 33 nelson wouldn't talk more about florida but he would talk about how hypothetically you could hide a car if you had the right resources

Speaker 60 what little i know about that that business is

Speaker 39 things are you know

Speaker 55 they they would just as soon sell it that

Speaker 55 they would just as soon get a used car clean it up add a couple hundred bucks more than they

Speaker 65 bought it for, and sell it within a couple days.

Speaker 3 That's what

Speaker 2 little I know about that line of work.

Speaker 3 And the way they do that is they clean it out now,

Speaker 4 or they sell it wholesale somewhere else to another used car.

Speaker 39 And

Speaker 55 it was those

Speaker 4 temporary plates

Speaker 39 that they

Speaker 3 tried to

Speaker 4 trail, but without any luck. Paper plates back in those days.

Speaker 33 Police believe that the car had metal Indiana plates on it.

Speaker 33 So what I think Nelson was trying to say is if the killer owned a car dealership or worked at one, he could have taken it there right after, swapped the plates out, cleaned it out, maybe even painted it and sold it out of state.

Speaker 33 Now, personally, I think this idea of the car being painted is really interesting because one of the consistent descriptions about the green suspect car was how bad the paint job was.

Speaker 33 Witnesses who saw the car described it as chalky, bad, not normal, a homemade paint job. But is there any proof Kenneth Jr.
did any of this? No.

Speaker 33 There is no proof that he owned a green car, painted one, sold one, none of it. In fact, there's a report from 1988 where police interviewed a man who bought a car from Kenneth Jr.
in July of 1984.

Speaker 33 This man was Kenneth's cousin, and he told police that he traded a white Plymouth Valiant for Kenneth Jr.'s GMC Jimmy. That GMC was actually the car Kenneth was driving the day he attacked Pam.

Speaker 33 The cousin said the Jimmy was two-toned, maroon and gray, but he had since painted it and it was mostly silver now.

Speaker 33 Police took some photos of the Jimmy and got the license plate number, and that's the end of the report. So all that tells us is that Kenneth wasn't still driving a GMC Jimmy in August of 1984.

Speaker 33 So the ties to the land were interesting. The access to cars was interesting, but they were still just more coincidences.

Speaker 33 If Kenneth McCune Jr. was at all tied to Darlene's murder, there was nothing concrete to prove it.
But we still had questions about him.

Speaker 33 So one cold November day, Emily and I went directly to the source to ask our burning questions.

Speaker 56 Hi, are you tired? Hi,

Speaker 56 I'm Emily, and this is Ashley. Hi.
We're covering some old cases over in Arga.

Speaker 63 Yeah, yo, might as well just leave.

Speaker 56 We would love to get your side of the story.

Speaker 63 My side of the story is, David Yokolette is a cricket cop.

Speaker 33 I gotta tell you guys, we weren't sure how this would go down when we knocked on his door. We were fully expecting him not to be home or someone else to answer the door, but it was him.

Speaker 33 And despite telling us that we might as well leave, he talked to us for about 20 minutes through his doorway, us on his porch, him standing inside.

Speaker 63 I've been through a lot of counseling and stuff over the years. This is a terrible thing.
I've lived a really good life since then, and

Speaker 63 it's sad that somebody like,

Speaker 63 I don't even know if he's still a cop or not, can do that to people, to say stuff that's not true.

Speaker 12 So are you saying?

Speaker 63 With no proof of anything, I mean, obviously, I would know if there was proof or not because I would know.

Speaker 33 Kenneth was defensive from the get-go.

Speaker 33 Before we even said what case we were covering, I tried to clarify, thinking maybe he was upset that we were talking about Pam's case, which he'd been tried for and served his time.

Speaker 33 So are you talking about the?

Speaker 63 No, I'm talking about another one.

Speaker 33 Darlene Hulse. Yeah.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 33 Most of Kenneth's anger seems to lie with Dave Yokolet, still today.

Speaker 33 He basically said he doesn't appreciate being a suspect in Darlene's case because nobody has ever physically tied him to it.

Speaker 75 To have this hanging over me,

Speaker 63 how would you feel if somebody said oh well i think you might have

Speaker 63 you know because you did stupid when you were young you know what i'm saying dave i got to be careful with him because he's he's a little bit loony i mean this guy drugged me out of a jail cell years ago and started accusing me of stuff after i had already been prosecuted for that other deal and next thing i know he's running for sheriff he's going to solve this if he's going to solve that and He has no reason to even ask me any questions about that.

Speaker 60 There's just none.

Speaker 75 So I don't know.

Speaker 56 I think it had to do with the location.

Speaker 69 Are you recording any of this?

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 63 You should have told me.

Speaker 33 That was the moment we thought he was going to slam the door in our faces. But he didn't.

Speaker 63 Yeah, it's sad. It's sad that I have to deal with it now because I paid my debt to society.
And having something else come up

Speaker 63 that doesn't have a freaking...

Speaker 63 It just... It doesn't have nothing.

Speaker 69 Me of all people knows better than anybody, correct?

Speaker 76 Well, and if that's the case, I mean, it's, I

Speaker 76 agree, that it's like the unfortunate circumstance of just kind of how similar, how close in proximity.

Speaker 40 Well,

Speaker 41 we were farmers. I mean,

Speaker 41 we lived in that area. I mean, the whole Culver, Argus, the whole area, my uncle's a huge farmer over there.

Speaker 40 Proximity?

Speaker 40 Hell, I lived there my whole life.

Speaker 63 What's proximity?

Speaker 76 Do you know of anyone who would have been familiar with your uncle's farm? Because that's what we're trying to get to.

Speaker 76 It's not, we're not trying to just go with whoever people are pointing the finger at. We're working with Darlene's daughters and we really want to find out who did this.

Speaker 38 No, not a clue.

Speaker 63 Not a clue. Other than my uncle and his, his hired hand.

Speaker 56 Who's that?

Speaker 63 Do you know?

Speaker 63 Yeah, I'm not going to put anybody else into this situation after all these years. Yeah, every time this comes up,

Speaker 63 I get to spend the next few months just being bummed out and stressed out.

Speaker 40 and

Speaker 63 worrying about whether it's going to make my family sad.

Speaker 63 You know, I mean, I already did my time for what I did wrong. It doesn't mean you automatically did everything else wrong.

Speaker 41 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 76 Would you talk to us just sitting down? I mean, I'm sorry.

Speaker 68 I've already, I've already talked too much. There's no reason for me to have to talk to anybody about something that has nothing to do with me.

Speaker 69 There really isn't.

Speaker 76 So you are saying you didn't have anything to do with the Darling Holst case.

Speaker 69 Yeah, I think, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 41 I'm sorry.

Speaker 63 It's just, it's sad.

Speaker 69 It's, it's sad that I have to deal with this.

Speaker 76 Well, And I hope that not much longer. I mean, they have DNA now.

Speaker 76 Good.

Speaker 41 Good. That looks awesome.
That is awesome.

Speaker 45 Yeah, they might actually solve it.

Speaker 33 Kenneth went back to talking about Dave right after we brought up the DNA. And he said that Dave has it out for him because he initially lied about breaking into Pam's house.

Speaker 63 I felt terrible about what I did. I wasn't in the...

Speaker 63 You know, like I said, I got counseling and stuff after I came home.

Speaker 56 That case, why did you go to her house in the first first place i wish i could tell you

Speaker 33 it was just like that spurred like that morning because you had been calling her right and so you just picked her kind of out of

Speaker 63 yeah i kind we kind of knew or i kind of knew them

Speaker 63 and uh

Speaker 63 obviously nothing happened other than being stupid enough to break into a house and uh it just uh

Speaker 63 an addictive personality got me caught up

Speaker 33 Kenneth seemed fine talking about what he did at Pam's house, but anytime we steered him back to Darlene, he said not only did he not want to talk about it, but he didn't even want to hear anything about what's going on with the case.

Speaker 56 Have you ever heard any other, like,

Speaker 39 ideas on who could have been involved with the other because you were...

Speaker 63 No, and I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear.
And people keep trying to tell me things, and I don't want to hear them.

Speaker 4 I don't want to know.

Speaker 72 Like who?

Speaker 63 Just in general, listening to different things or having people call me and saying the stuff, so I've been on a podcast.

Speaker 4 I don't need to know.

Speaker 33 But right before we were about to leave, Kenneth did seem interested in the fact that we mentioned there might be new DNA in the case.

Speaker 41 What the hell takes so long with the DNA? Which kind of crap's that?

Speaker 78 I think new technology, they've been able to get some new stuff.

Speaker 33 So if they came, would you give them your DNA to just rule you out?

Speaker 76 They have it.

Speaker 41 They took it from me years ago.

Speaker 43 If they didn't still have it and they needed a new sample, would you be cool with it?

Speaker 4 No, I'm not going to work with them at all.

Speaker 11 They have my DNA.

Speaker 63 I went in to a hospital and all that stuff was taken off of me. If they were dumb enough not to keep it and not to check it all those years ago, that's on them.

Speaker 39 I'm sorry.

Speaker 63 I have no reason to even associate myself with any of that anymore.

Speaker 56 And I'm not going to. Just to eliminate yourself, and then it would be on her.

Speaker 41 I don't need to. I don't have to.

Speaker 40 I know.

Speaker 75 I know.

Speaker 6 I know.

Speaker 63 It makes me sick to my stomach to think about that I was capable of doing the stupid shit I did when I was young. But it was, my life was different then.

Speaker 63 Drugs, alcohol, stupidity, running around like an idiot. I just wish they'd catch whoever it is and be done with it, but I got my doubts.

Speaker 63 After all these freaking years, they're just going to keep blaming people.

Speaker 50 You said you really hope they catch who did it.

Speaker 41 Please, yes.

Speaker 78 Did you ever meet Darlene? Or why do you

Speaker 75 feel like that?

Speaker 63 Because

Speaker 63 of this right here.

Speaker 40 Why else?

Speaker 33 Then people saw something through your door.

Speaker 63 Well, this is the first time somebody's ever showed up at my my door.

Speaker 33 There was one more question I had burning at the back of my brain ever since Emily interviewed Pam.

Speaker 33 And she said that after Kenneth was arrested, but before he was sentenced in her case, he showed up at her house and her husband ran him off. Kenneth's answer to my question surprised me.

Speaker 33 So she was wondering what you were going to say to her, why you came to her house.

Speaker 63 When was that?

Speaker 56 After.

Speaker 63 I was going to apologize to her.

Speaker 33 That's that's for being an idiot.

Speaker 63 I'm really sorry that that ever happened. I really am.
And I would love to tell her that.

Speaker 75 I really would.

Speaker 63 I would apologize tomorrow

Speaker 75 if I could, but I don't want her to be afraid or offended or

Speaker 63 you know what I'm saying? That I would even think about trying to approach anybody because I don't think that would be fair either. If you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 33 Sure.

Speaker 63 But yeah, I just, I've screwed her life up.

Speaker 75 Right?

Speaker 63 I mean, I'm sure she lived on edge for all that time when that shit was going on. Yeah.

Speaker 63 So,

Speaker 38 I don't know.

Speaker 63 Sad.

Speaker 33 I don't know Kenneth. So I don't know when he's being sincere or if the apology will mean anything to Pam all these years later, knowing that it took a podcaster and a reporter to go track it down.

Speaker 33 When we left Kenneth's house, we didn't know what to think. I mean, the thing about everything he said is that you can view it any way you want.

Speaker 33 If someone had a bias toward believing he was involved in Darlene's murder, then him not wanting to give his DNA is suspicious.

Speaker 33 But if he is presumed innocent, which is how our legal system is supposed to work, you can understand his frustration. They took every sample they ever needed.

Speaker 33 And in Kenneth's own words, if they were dumb enough to not keep it and not check it all those years ago that's on them i get that something i didn't totally get is why he was so unwilling to even discuss darlene's case not just with us but according to him with anyone he said people would try and talk to him about it or tell him things and he doesn't want to hear them it reminded me of a specific part of the behavior profile that the fbi did for darlene's killer That part of the post-offense behavior section reads, quote, he would probably have followed the progress of the investigation through the media and by overhearing others in the community.

Speaker 33 However, the offender would not be likely to engage in conversation about the crime, end quote. Like everything else, that might just be a weird coincidence.
I'm not here to point a finger at Kenneth.

Speaker 33 In fact, I don't want you walking away from this episode or this series thinking he's guilty because there has been nothing to date to prove that he is.

Speaker 33 There is only enough circumstantial evidence to warrant him him being crossed off the list through DNA testing, which I don't think is a huge ask.

Speaker 33 I could tell Kenneth was scared about what we might say. He wouldn't even take Emily's card.
He said he didn't want to know our names or anything else. I think he just wanted us and this to go away.

Speaker 33 Not for his sake, he said, but for his family's.

Speaker 63 But you know, just remember one thing:

Speaker 63 if you don't know, you don't know. And to drag me through a media thing, and it's not me that you're hurting anymore.

Speaker 63 I hurt myself years ago, and it's going to be my family, my wife, that's stuck with me through all this. And every time it comes up,

Speaker 63 it tears open wounds. You know what I'm saying? I've been a practicing Catholic for years, and I was fire chief here for 11 years.
This community's accepted me. for who I am.

Speaker 63 And I worked for the state of Indiana for 27 years.

Speaker 63 You know, I mean,

Speaker 63 if I was the one that was the problem,

Speaker 63 my DNA would have caught me a long time ago.

Speaker 14 Because they have it.

Speaker 63 They do have it.

Speaker 33 Unfortunately, they don't. Nelson has confirmed they don't.
And it's a shame because I agree that DNA should have been kept and tested a long-ass time ago.

Speaker 33 If it was and it didn't match Kenneth McCune Jr., I probably wouldn't be talking about him today. But I am.
Not to ruin this guy's life, but for Darlene, for Marie and Melissa and Kristen.

Speaker 33 Prosecutor Nelson seemed as worried as Kenneth about us naming people in our podcast, even if we were abundantly clear that they have not been charged with anything in relation to Darlene's homicide.

Speaker 33 Nelson kept referencing another case in his county where a man who'd done nothing wrong was dragged through the mud and it did ruin his life.

Speaker 33 But there was a big difference between that guy and some of the people people that we're talking about on this show, including Kenneth.

Speaker 33 And I pointed that out to Nelson in one of our meetings when he brought it up again.

Speaker 33 The people that we're talking about, every one of them is on our list because they've done something heinous in their past.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 33 Do you think it's different to

Speaker 33 ethically to talk about them? Because again,

Speaker 33 you didn't just walk on the wrong street. You tried to rank a woman.

Speaker 33 Nelson didn't have much to say to that. Listen, I hope Kenneth is telling the truth for his sake and his family's.

Speaker 33 I hope that he served his time, got counseling, was rehabilitated, and went on to be a good husband, father, and grandfather who gave back to his community.

Speaker 33 But even if that is true, it doesn't erase what happened to Pam.

Speaker 33 That will always be there because unfortunately, there are some choices, even ones made when we're young and dumb, as Kenneth would say, that can't be erased.

Speaker 33 And it's Pam's case that keeps uncovering coincidence after coincidence in Darwin's murder. Even still.

Speaker 33 You see, two weeks after we knocked on Kenneth's door, some more records from Pam's case came in.

Speaker 33 We'd requested dozens of different documents from when Kenneth was tried for the indecent exposure and for Pam's attack, including witness lists, dockets, testimony, transcripts, letters, and exhibits.

Speaker 33 It was actually a request we placed pretty early on in our reporting, but sometimes things are slow.

Speaker 33 When we finally got it all, it was hundreds of pages of stuff that took forever to go through. Emily thumbed through them first, and there was a lot of the same stuff we already knew.

Speaker 33 But deep in the exhibits was a gem.

Speaker 33 Emily ran to my office and slapped a few pages of paper against the glass door. It was a medical report.

Speaker 33 If you remember from last episode, when Pam's attacker fled, he cut his hand on the way out. Well, once they had a name for Pam's attacker, authorities requested Kenneth's medical records.

Speaker 33 They showed that he went to the doctor after Pam's attack and got treatment, but lied about how he'd been injured.

Speaker 79 December 28th, 1982. Patient lacerated palm of left hand, getting caught between a metal object and a cow's hoof.
He is able to move all fingers and does not notice any numbness in the fingers.

Speaker 79 Doesn't feel as if he has a broken bone. Laceration 2.5 inches.

Speaker 33 I'm guessing this was going to be used as an exhibit if Pam's case would have gone to trial. After Kenneth took a plea, they didn't need to use them.

Speaker 33 But it's not that part of the report that was jaw-dropping. It's what came next.

Speaker 33 The medical reports continued into 1984, and there are detailed reports about Kenneth's doctor visits right before and right after Darlene Hulse's murder.

Speaker 33 The first one we found interesting was from roughly two months before the murder. Now, the reason for the visit was super mundane.
I don't want to discuss health information not relevant to the case.

Speaker 33 But there was one line that caused Emily to run to my office.

Speaker 79 June 11th, 1984. Patient is here, mainly related to stress.
Also having some breathing difficulty and doesn't feel well when he spray paints cars, which is a new line of business for him.

Speaker 33 Emily and I audibly gasped when we read this. Kenneth was in the business of spray painting cars the summer of Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 We hadn't seen this information mentioned anywhere else, so we're unsure if law enforcement even knows or if they know what we found next.

Speaker 33 There was another visit in the files from five weeks after Darlene's murder.

Speaker 79 September 22nd, 1984. Feeling very nervous, under a great deal of stress at times, working 18-hour days.
Normal exam, tender left upper quadrant. Probable stress overwork.

Speaker 79 Recommended change in lifestyle.

Speaker 33 From the medical records included in the court exhibit that spanned from June 1975 to March 1988, there wasn't a single other instance of Kenneth McCune Jr. visiting his doctor for nervousness.

Speaker 33 So one might wonder, what was going on in Kenneth's life back in September 1984 for him to be feeling very nervous, so nervous that he went to the doctor.

Speaker 33 In a psych eval that was also part of our records request, a doctor wrote that when Kenneth committed crimes, it was when his wife was pregnant.

Speaker 33 They wrote, quote, in 1982, he got in trouble allegedly for indecent exposure. He and his wife were having their ups and downs.

Speaker 33 His wife was pregnant with their second child, and Kenny and his wife were not sexually appealing to each other at that time, end quote. Well, you wanna know what's interesting?

Speaker 33 Kenneth's wife was pregnant again in August of 1984.

Speaker 33 If you'll recall the FBI profile again, they theorized,

Speaker 33 the brutality of the crime scene reflects anger resulting from short or long-term stressors in the offender's life experiences.

Speaker 33 Our research and experiences reflect that these participating stressors can be the result of conflict with a significant female in the offender's life, employment pressures, death of a significant person, etc., end quote.

Speaker 33 Emily got a hold of employment records from the Culver School District, and those showed that Kenneth resigned as a bus driver on June 28, 1984, just weeks before Darlene was murdered.

Speaker 33 This could mean nothing, but it also could show that around the time of Darlene's murder, there were some big changes happening in Kenneth's life.

Speaker 33 To quote Nelson, man, there are a lot of coincidences.

Speaker 33 But then, there are also a lot of coincidences when you take a look at another crime committed by someone else just months before Darlene's murder.

Speaker 12 So, John Paul Clark is the first time this name has been brought up.

Speaker 62 I mean, where did you get that?

Speaker 33 That's next in episode 11, Bad Seed. You can listen to that right now.

Speaker 11 Planning a trip this year?

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Speaker 12 Choose from over 25 languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese, and more.

Speaker 22 Their true accent speech recognition technology gives real-time feedback to help perfect your pronunciation.

Speaker 24 No translations, just natural learning that builds from words to phrases to full conversations.

Speaker 26 Whether you have five minutes or an hour, you can learn anytime on desktop or mobile.

Speaker 12 Get a lifetime membership and unlock all 25 languages.

Speaker 28 Learn as much as you want, whenever you want.

Speaker 21 Rosetta Stone, learn confidently, connect authentically.

Speaker 19 Don't wait. Unlock your language learning potential now.

Speaker 29 Listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off.

Speaker 31 That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life.

Speaker 32 Visit RosettaStone.com slash pod50 to get started and claim your 50% off today.

Speaker 29 Don't miss out.

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Speaker 33 Here on the deck, our work is all about finding the truth for those who deserve it most.

Speaker 33 But there are some stories where the truth is so obscure and the web of lies is so complicated that it's almost impossible to unravel.

Speaker 33 On Chameleon, host Josh Dean puts the pieces of these stories together to tell you about some of the most shocking cons, frauds, and imposters in history.

Speaker 33 You can listen to these stories now on Chameleon, the newest show from Audio Chuck, every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 33 In any good good investigation, you're running down multiple leads at once. It's not just a time efficiency thing.
It's what helps you avoid getting tunnel vision.

Speaker 33 So one of the times we met with Nelson, it wasn't just Kenneth McCune Jr.'s name that we brought up. We also asked him about another name.
We said, hey, what do you know about John Paul Clark?

Speaker 33 Did your office ever seriously look at him?

Speaker 62 So, John Paul Clark is the first time this name has been brought up.

Speaker 55 I mean, where did you get that?

Speaker 33 I'll take that as a no, and I'm not just guessing. It was actually one of the very few things the original investigator David Yocolette would talk to us about.

Speaker 33 He'd never heard the name John Paul Clark, but what we had to say about him was interesting enough to make David scribble down his name on a pad of paper that he brought with him.

Speaker 33 But John Clark's name was there in Darlene's file all the way back in August of 1984.

Speaker 33 This is episode 11, Bad Seed.

Speaker 33 Five days after Darlene was taken from her home, an anonymous letter was written to the sheriff's office.

Speaker 33 Dear Sheriff, John P. Clark of Park County, Indiana allegedly assaulted and stabbed a woman at Rockville.
He sense has escaped from the Park County jail last seen near Ladoga.

Speaker 33 The Hulse murder sounds like the Rockville incident where John posed as needing to use the phone. The dark streaked hair could be dyed as John has dark hair.
I have met John twice.

Speaker 33 A check with Park County could get you a picture and fingerprints. Yours truly, Just Afraid.

Speaker 33 It's hard to tell what work investigators did did back in 84 after they got this tip about a violent fugitive on the run from Rockville, Indiana.

Speaker 33 They would have received this letter when they were hot on Danny Bender's trail, so maybe it got overlooked. But it piqued our interest enough to at least Google the guy.

Speaker 33 If he escaped in Rockville before Darlene's murder and was spotted near Ladoga, it meant he was heading northeast out of Rockville.

Speaker 33 It's not a straight shot northeast from Rockville to Argus, but Ladoga is on the way, ish, if you take your time and aren't bothered by taking the scenic route. So who is this guy? What came of him?

Speaker 33 Where is he now?

Speaker 4 John Paul Clark.

Speaker 33 The top search result about John Paul Clark was a newspaper article written about him from 2007. The Herald Bulletin headline reads, Redeemed, man explores his life in prison and beyond.

Speaker 33 The article does a poor job of explaining the crime that got John sent to prison.

Speaker 33 It mostly talks about how he found God while behind bars and how he's lived a life dedicated to youth ministry ever since he was freed. But when we read the article, some things weren't adding up.

Speaker 33 The Herald Bulletin reported that prior to the time John stabbed a woman at her house in either 1983 or 1984, he hadn't committed any other violent crimes.

Speaker 33 But we had already found some old newspaper archives online that said otherwise.

Speaker 33 The article also didn't mention anything about him escaping from jail or his motive or his victim or really anything about the crime or the charges he faced.

Speaker 33 Essentially, it was a puff piece that totally ignored his victims, which we weren't into.

Speaker 33 So Emily got a case number from the Indiana Department of Corrections and headed to Rockville, which is like two and a half hours south of Arcus.

Speaker 33 Since John had been convicted, we knew there would be some court documents that might clear up what exactly he did and where exactly he was in August 1984.

Speaker 33 Emily's first stop was the Park County Courthouse.

Speaker 56 This is what I have. So we're looking for this call's number, which is what you gave me.

Speaker 56 And then John Paul Clark.

Speaker 78 There he is.

Speaker 46 Attempted murder.

Speaker 39 That's it.

Speaker 74 All right, let's go take this back upstairs.

Speaker 56 Let's see. What was it you were looking for?

Speaker 45 Pretty much anything I can find.

Speaker 58 Just let her look through it.

Speaker 74 All right, there you go.

Speaker 33 There were hundreds of pages to thumb through, but we were basically searching for context about John's stabbing arrest, his subsequent escape, and any information about his whereabouts when he was on the run.

Speaker 33 We figured if John had any ties to Argus or Marshall County, they might be mentioned in records from his previous crimes.

Speaker 35 And here's what we figured out.

Speaker 33 John Paul Clark was arrested for attempted murder and attempted rape in April 1984 after he went to a woman's house in Rockville and stabbed her multiple times, almost killing her.

Speaker 33 He was arrested for that crime the same night it happened and got booked into the Park County Jail in Rockville.

Speaker 33 He stayed behind bars awaiting trial for the next five months or so, until August 5th, 1984, when John escaped. According to police reports, John saw a door wide open in the jail and just left.

Speaker 33 Then he walked to his parents' parents' house nearby, went inside, stole some loose change, and then took their car, a 1974 green Dodge Colt station wagon.

Speaker 33 And that was the first kind of, oh shit, moment that we had.

Speaker 33 When you're talking in coincidences, a man accused of attempted murder being on the run in a green car 12 days before Darlene was killed, that's an interesting coincidence.

Speaker 33 But one small thing stuck out. None of the car descriptions in the Hulse case say the suspect's car was a station wagon, just that it was a rusty 1970s old greenish car with a quote-unquote big trunk.

Speaker 33 So could a station wagon look like a big trunk? Some of the descriptions we'd come across had been muddy before, so we figured we should just keep digging.

Speaker 33 And to be honest, if John had escaped and fled in a red car, we might have stopped right there.

Speaker 33 But there was something else that made us keep digging.

Speaker 33 Because of an eyewitness eyewitness account, police believed that 21-year-old John took his parents' car and drove north from Rockville.

Speaker 33 And in the documents Emily got, police wrote that they had reason to believe he had connections, quote unquote, up north because of a prior stint in Juvie for a different crime that John committed in 1981.

Speaker 33 The sheriff at the time was quoted in the Park County Sentinel saying John probably knew how to go into hiding thanks to his quote unquote connections and that he was very street smart.

Speaker 33 The sheriff also told area newspapers back then that he had reason to believe that John might be meeting up with an old buddy and swapping his parents' car for a motorcycle.

Speaker 33 The documents stated that John was on the run and missing from August 5th to August 27th, 1984.

Speaker 33 And that's when a tip led to him being apprehended on a motorcycle in Oklahoma. So that confirmed that he was in fact out of jail and still on the run when Darlene was killed on August 17th.

Speaker 33 But the old reports didn't say anything about how long John hung around Indiana before heading out to Oklahoma.

Speaker 33 Now, because John was a juvenile for the first crime he committed, we weren't able to obtain those records.

Speaker 33 So we couldn't see if it was a similar crime or what slash who in that case could give him ties to northern Indiana. But...

Speaker 33 Emily was able to look up the old investigators on both of the cases to see if they remembered John ever being being in Marshall County or near Argus while he was on the lamb, or if they knew who he'd gotten the motorcycle from.

Speaker 33 But unfortunately, we didn't get anywhere there because the former sheriff and ISP detective who worked the case are both deceased.

Speaker 33 So, if we couldn't talk to the people who investigated John, then there are two other people we felt could give us the information we were looking for. John himself and the woman he attacked.

Speaker 33 Using the court documents documents we'd obtained, we looked that woman up on Facebook and sent her a DM. While we waited, we also called and emailed John Paul Clark.

Speaker 33 We were hopeful at first that this redeemed man of God would be willing to talk with us, you know, since he opened up to a reporter before.

Speaker 33 But it wasn't quite that easy. His landline was disconnected and we didn't get a reply via email.
But we did get a call back from the woman he nearly killed in 1984, Sherry Dodson-Lasser.

Speaker 33 And she was eager to talk.

Speaker 80 It said in the paper that he had stabbed me one time, which was a lie.

Speaker 7 He stabbed me 18 times.

Speaker 33 In spring of 1984, Sherry was in her early 30s and newly divorced with two sons. On the night of April 28th, Sherry had been at a girlfriend's house and got home at around 10.30 or 11.

Speaker 33 She poured herself a glass of wine and fell asleep in her recliner in the room.

Speaker 80 I got home probably around 10.30, 11, something like that.

Speaker 80 And I poured myself a glass of wine and I sat down on my recliner and just sat there crying and thinking, you know, about my mom.

Speaker 33 And I fell asleep.

Speaker 80 And it was raining and storming out really bad that night. And

Speaker 80 the next thing you know, I woke up to this pounding on my sliding glass door,

Speaker 80 and I looked out the door. I pulled my curtains back and I looked out the door.
And there was this kid there, and he said, You know, can I use your phone? And I said, I'm sorry, you know.

Speaker 80 And he said, Well, he said, and he says, Please, it's raining outside. My car broke down, and I just need to call my uncle.
So I let him in to use my phone.

Speaker 35 So

Speaker 80 he tried using the phone, and it would,

Speaker 80 he said it was busy. So we sit down at my dining room table

Speaker 80 and we had a cigarette and

Speaker 33 he tried it again.

Speaker 80 He said, oh, it's still busy. And I said,

Speaker 80 well, what's the number? Let me try it for you.

Speaker 80 And so when I did, it said this number is out of service. I said,

Speaker 80 this number is out of service. I said, it's probably because of the storm.

Speaker 80 And I said, let me get you a garbage bag to put over your your head. I said, you're not that far.

Speaker 80 And so I got him the garbage bag and I gave it to him. And I was walking to the door to open it up for him.
And he grabbed me and he turned me around.

Speaker 80 He says, you make a move or a sound and I will kill both your kids. And I said, oh, please.
I said, my kids are sleeping. I'll do anything you want, right?

Speaker 80 So

Speaker 33 I can't remember.

Speaker 80 The first thing I said, though, was, oh please because the first thing he said to me was you make a mover sound and I'll kill you and I said oh please my mom's dying I can't take this please don't do this that's what it was and he said you either listen to me or I'm gonna kill both your boys that's what it was

Speaker 80 and so I looked him in the eyes and there were the the just the red all kinds of he looked like a monster

Speaker 80 he doesn't look like the person that's walking out there right now.

Speaker 80 And so I just thought, you know what? He's a kid. I'll faint and he'll run, right? So I acted like I fainted.
And when I did that, he started cutting my clothes off.

Speaker 80 So I thought, you know what? I'm going to get raped.

Speaker 80 Maybe once that happens,

Speaker 80 he'll run.

Speaker 80 So

Speaker 80 when I did that, he started cutting my breasts. So you can't lay there when you're getting cut.

Speaker 80 So I came up with my knee and I caught him in the crotch and I shoved him and I jumped up and I almost got out the door and he grabbed me and I grabbed, I can remember I grabbed the curtains and as he pulled me back, I pulled the curtains down.

Speaker 80 And he said,

Speaker 80 you try that again.

Speaker 65 Your boys are dead.

Speaker 80 And I said, oh, please let's go somewhere. I don't want my boys to see this.
Let's just go somewhere.

Speaker 80 I promise you I won't do anything if you'll just let,

Speaker 80 let's just go somewhere.

Speaker 80 So he said, okay.

Speaker 80 And I'm shocked.

Speaker 80 So we get out by my car

Speaker 80 and we're on the back of my car and

Speaker 80 I don't remember how blood got on my car. So I can remember there's spots of blood on my car and I took off running.

Speaker 80 I broke loose and took off running. Well, the neighbor's yard, it was raining so bad and muddy, and the neighbor's yard goes up a hill

Speaker 80 and I slipped and fell and when I did he just started stabbing me and I rolled up in a ball like this

Speaker 80 and

Speaker 80 my little dog got out of the house and was biting him

Speaker 80 and between the dog barking and

Speaker 80 I'd actually I saw the light I saw

Speaker 80 I was gone.

Speaker 80 And

Speaker 80 it was beautiful. I didn't want to come back.
And I heard my neighbor yelling, what's going on out there?

Speaker 80 And they said that my knees shot out and I shoved him all the way off me.

Speaker 78 He took off running.

Speaker 80 I remember there was an ambulance and I could just remember shaking like,

Speaker 80 so I was cold, but I guess I was in shock. And I said, just get me to the hospital.
So as we're going to the hospital, and we're,

Speaker 80 36 has these winding roads, and they're discussing, like

Speaker 80 should we take her to Terre Ho? The other one said, Do you think she'll make it that far?

Speaker 33 She did make it and John Paul Clark was apprehended before the son even came up.

Speaker 33 A police officer testified that he went to John's parents' house right after Sherry's attack and found him in his childhood bedroom still covered in Sherry's blood.

Speaker 33 He was arrested that night and was locked away until he escaped the Park County jail a few months later. Sherry moved to a different town when she was released from the hospital.

Speaker 33 And when police called her a few months later to tell her John escaped, she was so shocked that she actually passed out.

Speaker 33 She thought he was coming to finish her off, and she lived in absolute fear for her safety and the safety of her kids until he was arrested three weeks later in Oklahoma.

Speaker 33 John was clearly a violent man. And just like in Darlene's case, it seemed like he used a ruse to get into Sherry's home.

Speaker 33 But there weren't many other standout connections between the crime he committed against Sherry and what had been done to Darlene.

Speaker 33 But then,

Speaker 33 Sherry told us something that made our heads spin.

Speaker 33 Sherry eventually learned more about John Paul Clark. An Indiana state trooper said that he had been stalking her home since he got out on probation for his prior crime.

Speaker 33 Now, on probation for what is the natural question.

Speaker 33 Now, like I said, those 1981 Juvie records are sealed.

Speaker 33 The only info we can see is that he was charged with attempted rape, but took a plea deal for battery and was sentenced on a C felony for battery.

Speaker 33 But the memory of that sealed record was still fresh in the trooper's mind when he talked to Sherry.

Speaker 33 He said that in 1981, John was arrested for beating and sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl with a fireplace poker.

Speaker 33 You understand why our jaws dropped, right? This was the first we had ever heard of John using the same type of weapon Darlene was killed with. But the problem was we needed proof.

Speaker 33 We couldn't responsibly report this if all we had was the word of a trooper who told Sherry Sherry some 38 years ago.

Speaker 33 So we went back through everything we had to see if we could verify it. And sure enough, we found it.

Speaker 33 The very day Darlene's body was found, August 18th, 1984, police in Marshall County got this facts from former Park County Sheriff's Deputy Jack Shannon.

Speaker 8 For your information only, our department is looking for a John Paul Clark.

Speaker 8 Hair is punk-style short around ears and long in the back, possibly driving a 72-green Colt wagon and is believed to be in the Westfield, Indianapolis area.

Speaker 8 This subject in 1980 raped and beat a woman with a fireplace poker. If you have any questions, contact our department.

Speaker 33 Clearly, other law enforcement officers who were familiar with John Paul Clark were making the connection once they heard that Darlene had been killed with the same weapon their newly escaped inmate was known to use.

Speaker 33 But even with this facts and the anonymous letter signed from Just Afraid, I'm not sure law enforcement in Argus were seeing the same thing.

Speaker 33 I don't know if these just slipped through the cracks or if they were ignored, but we can't find any documentation that John Clark was looked into at any point.

Speaker 33 Even today, when we asked Prosecutor Chipman and retired Sergeant David Yocolet if they'd ever looked into him,

Speaker 33 they didn't even know his name.

Speaker 33 There was one more tip in the Hulse case that we found regarding John Clark, and it was from the ISP trooper who had worked his case, a guy named Dan Clevenger.

Speaker 33 He called police in Marshall County on August 20th, 1984 to advise them, quote, subject escaped from Park County jail two weeks ago, was there for attempted rape, stabbed victim 18 times, end quote.

Speaker 33 The end of the handwritten tip said Clevenger would check to see if John has any connections to Argus.

Speaker 33 So either he checked and there wasn't any documentation of his findings or there wasn't anything worth following up about.

Speaker 33 Jerry doesn't know where John went or what he did while he was a fugitive for those three weeks.

Speaker 33 So we tried calling the former prosecutor and John's attorney from back in the 80s, who are surprisingly both still practicing law today.

Speaker 33 His former defense attorney, Jim Bruner, remembered representing John and remembered him escaping jail. And he represented him when he was extradited back to Indiana.

Speaker 33 You don't remember him saying where he went during those two or three weeks?

Speaker 8 I don't remember that.

Speaker 63 I have no recollection of that at all.

Speaker 33 Former Park County prosecutor Jim Hanner is the one that sent John to prison, and he feels he deserved hard time.

Speaker 33 Wherever John was, it seems only John knows. There isn't anything we've been able to find yet that places him in Argus.

Speaker 33 But we did find a possible connection, albeit a very loose connection to the town.

Speaker 33 John served time in the same juvenile facility as a man named Bill Sweihart, whose grandma was a longtime Argus local.

Speaker 33 When we dug even deeper, we actually found a few leads in the Hulse case involving Bill and his grandma. Someone must have known Bill had a violent history.

Speaker 33 The tip says Bill, quote, did time at Youth Center for cutting someone up, end quote. And guess what? The tip also says Bill's grandma had an old green car.

Speaker 33 Emily called Bill and left him a few voicemails along with one of his relatives, but we never heard back.

Speaker 33 We even tried getting the Indiana DOC to tell us if John and Bill had been cellmates in Plainfield, but no luck.

Speaker 33 So, so far, that is the only potential tie we could find that John might have had to Marshall County.

Speaker 33 Something I keep coming back to, though, is the car.

Speaker 33 Even today, Marie is certain that the suspect's car was not a station wagon.

Speaker 33 Could John have met up with his old buddy Bill at his grandma's in Argus and taken her green car and then swapped it out for a motorcycle that he was found with in Oklahoma?

Speaker 33 You have to preface this with a lot of what-ifs and maybes and could have been possibles to get A and B to connect. But then, just when it feels like a stretch, we find things like this.

Speaker 33 It's an anonymous letter written to Marshall County Police on October 11th, 1984.

Speaker 52 Dear sir, this probably isn't anything, but I thought I would mention if in some way it might bring a clue to your murder case.

Speaker 52 On Saturday, about 9 o'clock, don't know the date, but it would have been Saturday morning after you brought the guys back from Colorado. A station wagon passed me at a great speed.

Speaker 52 There was a woman driving and two men in the front seat.

Speaker 43 I noticed their license plates was at a state plates.

Speaker 52 I could not see the state, but the plates were a dark color, dark blue, I think. It went south and turned onto 19th Road.

Speaker 52 What seemed so funny was that it turned into a lane that goes back into a cornfield right to the east of Clarence Alts' house and disappeared over the hill.

Speaker 52 It didn't bother me too much at the time because I thought it was someone that Alts knew, yet I wondered why they didn't go into the drive to their house.

Speaker 52 There about half an hour later, I saw a man on a small motorcycle going north on Fir Road. The morning was cloudy and no sun.
This man had on a helmet, dark sunglasses, and a jacket.

Speaker 52 I don't know if any of this has anything to do with your case or not, but it seemed a little strange. Not wanting to be involved, I can't sign my name.

Speaker 33 The fact that John Clark swapped a green station wagon for a motorcycle in northern Indiana before fleeing the state, and the fact that this witness thinks they saw a suspect coming in a station wagon and leaving on a motorcycle could be a total coincidence.

Speaker 33 There have been a lot of those, right?

Speaker 33 So we got to the point where the only thing left to do was to ask John where he was on August 17th, 1984.

Speaker 33 After not receiving any response to two emails last fall, Emily tried calling the church John was affiliated with, but she got no answer there either.

Speaker 33 So she grabbed our photographer Jake and set out to see if they could track this guy down. He still lives in Indiana.

Speaker 33 Now, nobody was at his church, and the HR department at the university that he used to work for said that the last time John was on the payroll was over a decade ago.

Speaker 33 But they did have an address on file.

Speaker 33 So Emily and Jake headed there.

Speaker 61 If no one answers, I'm gonna slip my card and my note in the mailbox.

Speaker 61 Hi.

Speaker 74 Yeah, are you John?

Speaker 77 My name's Emily.

Speaker 54 I'm from Carnalist.

Speaker 6 Talk about a piece.

Speaker 33 You're just on a list.

Speaker 73 You need to read the police reports.

Speaker 33 Look, I got nothing to do with anything else.

Speaker 73 You need to leave people alone.

Speaker 77 I just want to know. I want to cross you off the list.
I have a long list. You're one of many people that...

Speaker 73 The police reports. They'll tell you everything you need to know.

Speaker 74 I have all of that.

Speaker 70 I wasn't there, sorry.

Speaker 77 I just want to know where you were between those.

Speaker 73 You don't need to know anything. Leave me alone.

Speaker 77 Do you remember where you went after Park County?

Speaker 73 If you bother me, I'm going to call the police on you. And if you don't cease or desist, you'll get a letter from an attorney.

Speaker 74 So leave me alone.

Speaker 54 Thank you. I got nothing to do with anything.

Speaker 73 I don't even know why you got my name, why you came to my house, my address. You're like stalking me.

Speaker 73 I want to know how you got my information, how you found out everything where I live at, how you got my email address, the internet. You're stalking me.

Speaker 77 I'm not. Your name is in the police reports, and you're one of many people that I'm reaching out to.

Speaker 73 Look, there's no way I didn't even know where you were at or where this thing happened at or anything.

Speaker 73 And the police know where I was at.

Speaker 4 So you need to leave people alone.

Speaker 77 So you were never in Argus?

Speaker 73 I didn't even know where that's at.

Speaker 54 Okay, thank you.

Speaker 33 John was angry. And I understand being mad about a reporter showing up at your door bringing up your criminal history from the mid-80s.
But two emails and a doorknock being stalking?

Speaker 33 So he'd obviously gotten the emails and knew exactly why Emily was there, but he did not want to talk about it.

Speaker 33 We were truly hoping he could just recall the route that he traveled after his jailbreak so we could move on.

Speaker 33 But then he said something that sort of had the opposite effect.

Speaker 73 Look, I'll say this to you, so you get this right.

Speaker 73 I left on the 5th of August.

Speaker 73 That's a Sunday night.

Speaker 73 Within three hours, my car was parked. In the northern part of Indiana, you know where it was at.

Speaker 33 I don't.

Speaker 73 Well, it was in northern Indiana, and it never moved until my dad got it. So if this car was supposed to be involved in some crime, why in the fuck did they let my parents go pick it up?

Speaker 73 Why in the fuck would the cops let anybody do that shit? Where did he pick it up? Leave me the fuck alone!

Speaker 33 Jake was watching this interaction from the car per Emily's request. She figured it was better to have a driver at the ready, but Jake said that John's body language was aggressive.

Speaker 33 He was close to interjecting when Emily hurried back to the car.

Speaker 56 Did you hear him? He's angry.

Speaker 39 He looked very angry. Let's get out of here.

Speaker 77 He says his car, he left the car in northern Indiana.

Speaker 8 That's what he was yelling at you?

Speaker 33 He told me to leave him the fuck alone.

Speaker 39 Yeah, I kind of gathered that too.

Speaker 40 Okay.

Speaker 47 Yeah, better than him slamming the door in my face.

Speaker 74 You got something. Yeah.

Speaker 33 Sometimes we're the scapegoats in these situations. We're out looking for the truth for Darlene and her family.

Speaker 33 And when we go looking for answers that police should have tried to track down decades ago, we're the ones that get cussed at.

Speaker 33 So that was obviously all we were going to get out of John.

Speaker 33 After his release in 2002, John has never been convicted of another violent crime, as far as we know.

Speaker 33 John emailed us a few weeks after Emily's visit, threatening to sue. So I'll say this.

Speaker 33 We don't know if John had anything to do with Darlene's murder, and police never looked into him, so he's never been named a suspect or even a person of interest.

Speaker 33 But based on our very pleasant conversation with the maybe ex-pastor whose life was once labeled redeemed, we were unable to mark him off our list because he couldn't or wouldn't say where he was on August 17th, 1984.

Speaker 33 If anyone is listening who knows more about where John's car was in northern Indiana or what he was up to the day Darlene died, we would love to hear from you.

Speaker 33 We'd also love to talk to the young woman who survived John's 1981 attack, if that's something she'd be comfortable with. But until then, there's someone else that we have to consider.

Speaker 9 He cannot be ruled out as a suspect. When you look at means, motive, and method, and opportunity, he's the guy who stands up above everyone else.

Speaker 33 That's next in episode 12, P.I.'s Best Lead.

Speaker 33 You can listen to that right now.

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Speaker 33 Here on the deck, our work is all about finding the truth for those who deserve it most.

Speaker 33 But there are some stories where the truth is so obscure and the web of lies is so complicated that it's almost impossible to unravel.

Speaker 33 On Chameleon, host Josh Dean puts the pieces of these stories together to tell you about some of the most shocking cons, frauds, and imposters in history.

Speaker 33 You can listen to these stories now on Chameleon, the newest show from Audio Chuck, every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 33 About a year before we got involved with Darlene's case, her family worked with a private investigator, Patrick Zerpoli, who goes by Zip to those who know him.

Speaker 33 Zip spent his career with the Pennsylvania State Police. He retired in 2015 as a corporal and the unit supervisor of the Criminal Investigation Assessment Unit.

Speaker 33 One of his specialties is cold case homicide investigations. And after retirement, he's gone on to consult in cold cases.

Speaker 33 Zip had the opportunity to review Darlene's case file, and he honed in on a particular person of interest.

Speaker 9 He cannot be ruled out as a suspect. When you look at means, motive, and method, and opportunity, he's the guy who stands up above everyone else.

Speaker 33 This is episode 12: P.I.'s Best Lead.

Speaker 33 We're not using the real name of Zip's POI for legal reasons, so I'm going to call him Daryl Lemon.

Speaker 33 Daryl first came on the radar for police back in January 1985 via a tip from a woman named Dolores who worked at Young Door. That's the same manufacturing company in Plymouth where Ronhulst worked.

Speaker 33 Dolores told police that during the summer of 1984, Daryl Daryl had been in Argus under quote-unquote peculiar circumstances, and he had been staying at a home on 15B Road just northeast of the Hulse home.

Speaker 33 This was on the edge of Argus, and he was staying with a couple named Larry and Bonnie Berger.

Speaker 33 He'd been staying with them for a couple of months before taking off in either October or November and then moving to Arizona. There isn't much follow-up on this tip.

Speaker 33 Just a note that I can find about Daryl having brown hair, not blonde like the suspect. So maybe that's how they determined that this tip didn't warrant any further action.

Speaker 33 But almost a year later in December 1985, Marshall County dispatchers got a call saying that a detective needed to contact Ron Hulse ASAP.

Speaker 33 Sergeant Yocolet called Ron right away, and Ron said that he had just gotten a call from his brother Randy, who had gotten a call from another woman saying that she had information about Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 Now, the woman said that she knew a man who was in a motorcycle gang and that he killed Darlene.

Speaker 33 The woman told Randy that she was afraid to report the information directly to law enforcement because she was scared of the gang.

Speaker 33 The woman said that she even knew where the murder weapon or the suspect car could be found.

Speaker 33 So at this point, we're talking almost a year and a half after Darlene's murder. This was a pretty exciting potential lead at the time when all other leads had dried up.

Speaker 33 But it was born out of a confusing game of telephone. By the time it got to police, it was like four sources removed.

Speaker 33 Now, Ron's brother Randy knew the name of the woman who called him, but he didn't want to share her name because she was scared, but also because she claimed she wasn't the direct informant, because she had actually heard this information from a friend of hers.

Speaker 33 So now we're like five people removed. So Sergeant Yokolet contacted Randy Hulse directly to cut out at least one middle person.

Speaker 33 And Randy had enough information to get them going.

Speaker 33 He told them that the guy everyone is talking about is a man named Darrell Lemon, and the people that he was staying with, the ones who started this chain of information, were Larry and Bonnie Berger.

Speaker 33 Maybe because the case had stalled out, or maybe because of how the information reached Sergeant Yocolet, this time there was documented follow-up of him sitting down with the burgers.

Speaker 33 Larry Berger told Sergeant Yocolet that yes, his former friend Daryl Lemon had been a house guest of theirs in Argus during the summer of 1984, specifically from July to early October.

Speaker 33 Larry described Daryl as slim, tall, with blue eyes and brown hair.

Speaker 33 When Sergeant Yocolet asked Larry and his wife if they could recall what Darrell was up to on August 17, 1984, they couldn't account for all of his movements that day because Larry said that he'd been at work until the evening and Bonnie had been running errands in the critical window of time when Darlene was attacked.

Speaker 33 Specifically, Bonnie Berger said that she went to Rochester around 9 that morning to shop and then she got back at around 10.30.

Speaker 33 But she remembered so clearly, even a year and a half later, because on her way home, she was driving north toward Argus and she saw all of the police activity on State Road 110.

Speaker 33 She said at the time, she had been driving their four-door light-green 1970s Plymouth satellite, a car that closely matches the suspect car police had still yet to locate.

Speaker 33 Apparently, Daryl had borrowed that car quite a bit while he was staying with the burgers, but Bonnie was certain she was the one that had the green car the morning of the homicide.

Speaker 33 And Bonnie was also certain that Daryl was at their house when she returned home that morning at 10.30.

Speaker 33 Before the interview wrapped up, Sergeant Yocolet asked the burgers if they thought Daryl would have been capable of murder. And they both said, yes.

Speaker 33 But Sergeant Yocolet was already pretty convinced Daryl didn't have anything to do with Darlene's murder, mostly because Bonnie said that he didn't have the green car that day. And that was that.

Speaker 33 Until about a month later, in January 1986, when Larry Burger called Sergeant Yocolet and he said he had some more information to provide now. You see, Larry and Bonnie had since moved to Chicago.

Speaker 33 So Sergeant Yocolet and another officer drove up to interview them immediately. The burgers told police that they had known Darrell Lemon for years because he was originally from Indiana.

Speaker 33 They said that Darryl was a member of a motorcycle gang from Arizona and that in October 1984, Larry had tried to kick Daryl out of their house because he was trying to manipulate them.

Speaker 33 Larry said during that summer, Daryl was trying to drive a wedge between him and his wife Bonnie, and he was trying to convince them to move to Arizona with him.

Speaker 33 They were all getting high a lot and apparently Daryl gained so much control over the couple that they signed over their bank accounts to him so he had free access to their money.

Speaker 33 Bonnie also came clean about her suspicions from the day Darlene was abducted. She said that her story before about going to the store in Rochester was mostly true, but her timeline was off.

Speaker 33 And this time around, her story got a lot more detailed.

Speaker 33 Bonnie said when she left that morning, Larry was already at work and she's pretty sure Daryl was asleep in his sleeping bag on the floor, but she can't say for sure.

Speaker 33 She said that when she left that morning, which she puts at around 8 a.m., well before Darlene's attack, she remembered looking at the Hulse's house when she passed by it.

Speaker 33 She doesn't say she saw anything, just makes it a point to say that the house drew her attention and she looked at it, even though it, quote, had no significance to her at the time, end quote.

Speaker 33 On her way back from Rochester in the green car, Bonnie said she saw the police near the Hulse home, but she didn't go straight home.

Speaker 33 In this version of her story, she says, instead, she went to her mom's realty office in Argus and told her mom that she was worried Daryl had done something bad.

Speaker 33 She didn't get back to her house until 3.30 that afternoon, and that's when she saw Daryl was there.

Speaker 33 Now, here's where the burger story gets really weird. They told Yocolette that Daryl always carried a Bible with him and would quote from it.
But they said that he wasn't a church-going guy.

Speaker 33 And they said Daryl kept telling Bonnie about a quote-unquote black market for babies that he had connections to.

Speaker 33 And he kept saying that they could sell Larry and Bonnie's blonde-headed, blue-eyed children and make a huge profit.

Speaker 33 Larry said when Daryl was in Indiana, he would make a point to dress like a clean-cut businessman because he was paranoid of police.

Speaker 33 Larry said one time after the Hulse murder, he and Daryl were driving around southern Marshall County and Daryl became very nervous when they got close to the intersection where the Hulse home was.

Speaker 33 Oh, and by the way, they said there was this other weird thing.

Speaker 33 During the months that he was staying with them, Daryl would act weird at night and he would ask them to drive him around the back roads.

Speaker 33 Like no particular destination in mind, just aimlessly drive off the beaten path for like hours at a time. We're talking 11 p.m.
till the wee hours of the morning.

Speaker 33 At one point in October of 1984, Daryl tried to get Bonnie to leave Larry and move with him to Arizona, which was the last straw for Larry. And that's when he kicked Daryl out.

Speaker 33 The burgers said that before, they had been scared to reveal all of this information about Daryl because they were scared of him.

Speaker 33 But after thinking about it for a while, they definitely thought Daryl had been involved in Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 This was a bombshell. But could they prove it?

Speaker 8 Not exactly.

Speaker 33 Though they did say all of his actions after the murder seemed like that of a guilty man. Like, they said he started growing a mustache and beard after the homicide, which seemed sus.

Speaker 33 And Bonnie said all of a sudden, a pair of his pants went missing because they weren't cycling through their laundry anymore.

Speaker 33 Daryl also became violent and even physically hurt their children a few times after Darlene's death. And they said he wouldn't go out during the day, only at night.

Speaker 33 Larry said he became so certain that they had a killer living with them that at one point, he even went out and searched behind their house for the missing fireplace poker.

Speaker 33 He and a friend dug up a 55-gallon drum in the woods behind his house looking for it. And yeah, same reaction as you.

Speaker 33 The cops were like, why the hell did you have a 55-gallon drum buried behind your house? But Larry said, oh no, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 33 That's just where we kept marijuana and we didn't find any weapon anyway.

Speaker 33 Before the officers left Chicago, the burgers said they also believed that Daryl stole their motorcycle and they had filed a report with the local police about it.

Speaker 33 The burgers also let them look at their old green car, which they still had, but a cursory glance didn't reveal any bloodstains or anything else suspicious.

Speaker 33 So it seems like the police didn't take the vehicle with them or do any formal testing.

Speaker 33 On the ride back to Indiana, the officers discussed what they'd learned about Daryl Lemon from the Burgers, and they agreed that the couple didn't seem trustworthy.

Speaker 33 It seemed like Bonnie was still hiding something from them, and to them, it was more likely that the Burgers just wanted revenge on Daryl for possibly stealing their motorcycle.

Speaker 33 So that's where the Daryl Lemon leads seem to stop. And if Daryl was involved in trafficking children, wouldn't his motive to go to the Holes home have been the girls rather than Darlene?

Speaker 33 From the record searches we conducted, Daryl also doesn't appear to have any type of criminal history outside of some drug-related crimes. But Zip wasn't put off by the same things we were.

Speaker 33 He told us this guy had all the behavioral characteristics of a murder suspect.

Speaker 33 I'll let him explain.

Speaker 9 After looking at everything, looking at the motive of

Speaker 9 the crime, how the crime was committed,

Speaker 65 his post-crime behavior, he's the guy that you have to deal with before you can move forward.

Speaker 9 Either it's him or it's not him, but they have to make that decision. Before the incident occurs, he's doing a lot of strange things.

Speaker 71 Like I always look for those people who are roaming around at night. He's having the people he's living with drive him around at night.
He acts very suspicious there.

Speaker 9 Plus he has access to a vehicle that is almost described exactly as the vehicle that's there.

Speaker 36 And it's interesting when you read the report,

Speaker 36 there's different people who are saying he has that vehicle that day of the incident occurring.

Speaker 9 And there's some confusion to that, but I think he has a lot of control.

Speaker 36 again, power and control and being manipulative over the people that he's living with, over these burgers.

Speaker 33 Zip thinks Daryl could have wanted to cruise the back roads at night to stake out houses in different areas.

Speaker 9 You know, it's someone from the area. This is not your wandering psychopath who just is wandering through the area.
It's someone from the area.

Speaker 34 And like I always tell people, like when you, again, bigger picture here, whoever did this knew the area.

Speaker 9 It's not like they knew where to, then, here's a remote place to dump her body.

Speaker 9 And what to me is very interesting is that the female burger makes a comment that she drove past the Hulse residence the morning of this happening with the vehicle that matches the description of the vehicle that was in the driveway.

Speaker 36 Well, why are you putting yourself there?

Speaker 34 Why are you even making that comment?

Speaker 65 And that's to a third party.

Speaker 71 It's not even to the police.

Speaker 9 You know what I'm saying? And then, you know, his kind of manipulative power and control behavior fits the crime scene.

Speaker 65 It fits the person who committed the crime.

Speaker 34 And then afterwards,

Speaker 4 that's even amplified even more, where he starts taking more control over the burgers and more control of their finances.

Speaker 9 He's having them ship stuff to Arizona because he wants them to come down there and live.

Speaker 65 It's reported that he changes his appearance, which is a big piece of this, that, you know, why all of a sudden change your appearance?

Speaker 71 And, you know, and after this crime is committed, again, you know, it's another red flag that you see there.

Speaker 33 Zip also thinks that even though robbery wasn't explicitly stated as a motive and even though ron said nothing was taken from the house it's clear by the suspects police did have early on that police's theory was a robbery gone wrong and zip really believed that if they wouldn't have chased that motive from the get-go that this could have been solved a long time ago

Speaker 34 This is not a multiple person crime.

Speaker 9 Like if two people did this, like one drove and one went in there and did this, this would have been solved because one of them would have talked. You know, this is that one person crime.

Speaker 9 And I think the problem is they missed the motive from the beginning.

Speaker 36 They missed the why from the beginning.

Speaker 71 And when you miss that, it leads you in the wrong direction. And now you're trying to play catch up so many years later too.

Speaker 9 And again.

Speaker 9 You know, people are deceased now. Time is, you know, there's, there's, you know, you're never going to get that back again.

Speaker 34 So now it's try to figure out how to solve the case, you know, using new technology that we have today.

Speaker 33 Zip's theory of motive actually fits what most people agree on today, that the crime was sexually motivated, but it didn't go as planned.

Speaker 33 The consensus now is that Darlene's murder wasn't premeditated. If the killer would speak, he'd probably tell you she wasn't supposed to die.

Speaker 48 Do you think that the person who killed Darlene went on to commit other violent crimes?

Speaker 10 Because of

Speaker 9 why he did it, it might not be violent homicide it could be you know domestic violence being abusive it's that power and control piece i think the homicide came out of anger um because he couldn't control the victim um and he tried to control her but he went too far and killed her i think you you're gonna have some of those power and control behaviors and power and control crimes might not be homicide um and and sometimes you know if

Speaker 9 like a lot of people like this is how we get our serial killers and sexual status who

Speaker 9 get excited from that homicide.

Speaker 38 If he's a person who's like, I didn't want that to happen, he might never see anything on him again, you know?

Speaker 9 And in this case, I think it was just trying to control her.

Speaker 34 And he ended up hitting her, not realizing that he killed her until he gets her to where her body's dumped.

Speaker 54 And he's like, she's dead.

Speaker 38 And just kind of dumps her and goes off from there.

Speaker 33 We tried reaching Daryl for comment. We found a few numbers for him in Arizona and we messaged him on Facebook but never heard back.

Speaker 33 We also tried a dozen different numbers trying to track down Larry and Bonnie. Most of them were disconnected or we were told that we had the wrong number.

Speaker 33 A few of them went to voicemail so we left messages. Now we didn't get any calls back, but one of the numbers did text us back saying, quote, hi, Emily, I believe you have received the wrong number.

Speaker 33 I am in no relation to Larry Berger, but after doing some research, I learned that Mr. Berger had unfortunately passed passed on the 17th of May, 2022.

Speaker 33 But if you don't mind me asking, what case are you working on? End quote.

Speaker 33 Emily dodged that question about the case and just asked if they knew that their number was on several different websites as being associated with Larry Berger, but whoever was on the other end just said that they didn't know, and that was the end of that.

Speaker 33 Now, there is an O bit for A. Larry Berger from May 2022, but it's just one sentence, so it doesn't help us confirm if it's the same guy.

Speaker 33 Bonnie, on the other hand, she has a new last name now, and we found four numbers for her, but they were all dead ends. So, Bonnie, if you're listening, call us back.

Speaker 33 When we asked Prosecutor Nelson Chipman about Darrell Lemon, he said that it made him uncomfortable talking about him in case he's innocent.

Speaker 33 We asked him if he was ever interviewed by police in the Hulse case, and he gave a weird answer.

Speaker 3 I think one of them was,

Speaker 59 but nothing came of it.

Speaker 33 One of them? Nelson wouldn't go into more detail about what he meant by one of them. Did he mean Larry and Daryl? Someone else connected to Daryl?

Speaker 33 From the context of the rest of our conversation, the best we can piece together is that he maybe meant a family member of Daryl's, but he wouldn't give a name.

Speaker 33 And then he moved on making mention of how close Daryl's family lived to Darlene, which again made us scratch our heads because Daryl Lemon didn't live anywhere near Darlene.

Speaker 33 He was staying with the burgers who lived nearby, but the location of where Nelson was pointing to was in the opposite direction of where the burgers lived.

Speaker 33 Specifically, Nelson was pointing to a property west of Darlene's house.

Speaker 33 It was that same property that he had pointed out to Emily on their ride along the very first time they met, that same property with the lore of the buried bus in the yard, the bus where Nelson said he had dreams about finding the fireplace poker.

Speaker 33 Now, we knew about the buried 55-gallon drum behind the burger's place, but surely that's not what everyone is confusing with a bus. Nothing was adding up.

Speaker 33 So, to try and make sense of all of it, we are sitting down with Nelson in his conference room back in November, and so we bring up Daryl again. And Nelson says something about him being dead.

Speaker 33 And we knew Daryl was still alive and living in Arizona, so we pressed and Nelson walks over to this whiteboard where there's this huge piece of white paper covering something up.

Speaker 33 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 It's behind the paper up there.

Speaker 2 Can we peek behind the paper? Yeah.

Speaker 33 Nelson takes off his mic, lifts up the paper, and there's something that looks like a family tree. Maybe with some photos and initials written in little boxes.

Speaker 33 And that's when he's like, yeah, Daryl died. And then he puts the paper back down.

Speaker 61 Do you think there's some kind of connection? I don't have any idea. Okay.

Speaker 27 Any idea?

Speaker 32 You know, I despise that expression.

Speaker 21 I don't have any idea. You have some idea.

Speaker 2 Well, as far as goes, not really.

Speaker 46 He's a lot harder to research because he doesn't have much of a criminal history. He has a little bit, but there's not.

Speaker 46 It seems like most of it was after.

Speaker 62 If there is a connection,

Speaker 3 no one's brought it together

Speaker 3 to even, you know, even go to the next sentence about, oh yeah, there's something to look at here.

Speaker 33 We tried to get Nelson to let us take a closer look under the paper on the whiteboard before we left, but another meeting was about to start in the conference room and we were being told to leave.

Speaker 35 But I just couldn't let it go.

Speaker 33 I was certain from the little bit I'd seen that it wasn't Daryl Lemon's family on that board. And I was right.

Speaker 33 Some internet sleuthing using the names and initials that I was able to see led me to a completely different family, one that I'll call the Parsons.

Speaker 33 So between that meeting and meeting back up with Emily for lunch, I am frantically looking up what I can about this family.

Speaker 33 specifically these four brothers who grew up in Argus and would have been in their 20s at the time of Darlene's murder.

Speaker 33 And listen, you guys, I was literally shaking, 99% from excitement for what I was finding, and 1% because I thought Emily might kill me when I tell her, hey, we've been working on this for a year and everything was going in kind of one direction, but we got a pivot.

Speaker 33 But she's as deep in as I am, and she was just as excited about this new possibility. Because for us, it's not about proving a theory, it's about finding the truth.

Speaker 33 And speaking of truth, Emily and I were left with one giant question after we debriefed. Had Nelson been lying to us?

Speaker 33 I mean, the more innocent explanation is that maybe he's confused. A few of the sons in the Parsons family have the same names as members of the Lemon family, so maybe that was the mix-up.

Speaker 33 But to me, that's more than an innocent mix-up because it wasn't just one slip of the tongue. He didn't confuse the names once in passing.
We had talked over and over about the lemons.

Speaker 33 And again, that very first meeting Emily had with Nelson, where he offered to give her a ride along around town, it was him who pointed out what he said was the lemon property.

Speaker 33 So was the guy in charge really that turned around, or was he intentionally trying to throw us off?

Speaker 33 At that point, I was kind of done taking his word for things. So I had Emily look up the property records for this mythical bus property in Nelson's infamous triangle.

Speaker 33 And sure enough, the buried bus property that Nelson was pointing to,

Speaker 12 it's the Parsons.

Speaker 33 When we started digging into this new lead, we found more than just a buried bus.

Speaker 33 We track Nelson down again for an explanation and investigate brand new people next in episode 13, Untangling Misinformation. You can listen to that right now.

Speaker 33 Have you ever experienced something truly unexplainable?

Speaker 33 A moment that felt almost like a vivid dream, leaving you with a lingering sense of wonder, leaving you questioning everything you thought you knew?

Speaker 33 Perhaps it was a fleeting glimpse of something extraordinary, a chilling whisper in the dead of night, or an undeniable premonition that comes to life.

Speaker 33 I'm Yvette Gintile, and I'm her sister, Rasha Pecarrero.

Speaker 33 Each week on our podcast, So Supernatural, we partner with the one and only Ashley Flowers, host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie, to take you on a journey of the world's most mystical mysteries.

Speaker 33 Ready to explore the unknown? Join us every Friday for a new episode of So Supernatural, available wherever you listen to podcasts.