Stolen: The Angie Housman Story /// Part 1 ///

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Let's talk some true crime.

I can't tell you where I was, but I can remember being just sick.

Just sick.

Anytime a child is involved, it's the worst.

So,

you know, you hold your kids tighter.

You look at people differently for a long time, you know, and trusting.

And

it's just,

it was tough.

I mean, you just feel horrible for the family and the community.

So we knew she was,

based upon, you know, when she was found, where she was left,

she was held somewhere.

There's no doubt about it.

So, I can't, we just, what she went through.

If you let your mind go too far,

open a rage, you know, it's hard to contain.

It was actually the weather, I think, that gave them the clearest

idea because

she had snow and ice on her and it had snowed and you know we'd had that winter weather

overnight and she had

that precipitation on her body so we know she was there at least before that

but sure there was and I'm sure the temperature had a lot to do with it because it was winter but there was no decomposition per se so

she wasn't we they figured she wasn't out there very long because because,

like I said, she had that snow on there.

So we know she was there before that, but again, no decomposition or anything.

So

I don't know that they narrowed it down, but they figured she was home somewhere for several days.

This week we go out to St.

Louis County, Missouri for a true crime story that starts off in the late fall of 1993.

To hone in a little closer, we will be in St.

Anne, Missouri.

And our coverage of this case, you're going to hear a lot of saints.

St.

Louis County, St.

Charles County, City of St.

Anne, and of course we have the city of St.

Louis.

So my apologies in advance if the number of saints here makes.

this case more confusing than it needs to be.

The real pisser is all of the saints in the world didn't stop the evil that invaded St.

Anne and northwest St.

Louis County in the late fall and early winter of 1993.

Let's start with the late fall and work our way through.

So we're going to talk about November 18th, 1993.

That is the day in question.

This is one week before Thanksgiving, 1993.

November 18th should have been just another Thursday, just another ordinary day for the folks of St.

Anne, Missouri.

That day was a school day, of course, and just like she had done so many times before, little nine-year-old Angie Houseman packed up her backpack, walked out of her home on Wright Avenue.

She walked about eight or so houses down to the bus stop where she met up with some of her schoolmates.

They boarded the bus and it was off to school for another day of learning and hopefully a little fun as well.

Angie was in the fourth grade at Butter Elementary School on Baltimore Avenue in St.

Anne.

This is a quiet blue-collar suburb of St.

Louis.

Angie was a cheerful and kind-hearted kid.

She was regarded to be quite a gifted student, so very smart, and she applied herself and worked hard in the classroom.

She was outgoing and very quick to make people smile.

To say she was outgoing, I think, is a bit of an understatement.

She would regularly approach people that she may not have known and speak with them and talk with them and engage them in conversation.

And I have seen several reports, and many people say

that if she met you once or twice, she considered you to be a friend.

She was just that kind of person inviting you into her world.

The school day on that Thursday came and went with all of the normal regularities, lunch, recess, and book learning.

And at the end of the school day, just a bit after 3 p.m., little nine-year-old Angie Houseman packed up her blue and white book bag and joined a number of her schoolmates once again on the big yellow school bus.

Destination, Wright Avenue, back to her home.

The bus pulled up to stop at Wright Avenue at the normal time.

The bus stop located just eight houses down from her home.

Angie got off of the school bus just like she did each afternoon in her neighborhood.

She's not the only kid at this stop.

Typically, two parents on the street would watch as the kids walk to their houses on Wright Avenue.

However, on this Thursday, those two parents were both busy and no one was watching the children as they walked home.

Now, a short time later, Angie's stepfather, his name is Ron Bone, he returned from work.

Typically, when Ron would arrive home on a school day, he would see Angie's backpack placed in its usual after-school resting place between the back of the couch and the front door in the living room of the home.

They lived in a duplex.

On this Thursday, when Ron came home, there was no backpack.

And quickly, he learned that there was no Angie as well.

Angie had to walk eight houses to her home from that bus stop.

We have other school kids to tell us that, yes,

Angie rode the bus that afternoon and yes, she got off with the other kids as usual.

In fact, some of the kids remember seeing her get off of the bus and walking in the direction of her home.

But at some point she seemed to just simply vanish.

Eyewitnesses at the bus stop confirmed that Angie had gotten off the bus at the regular time.

To be very specific, this bus stop was located at the corner of Wright Avenue and St.

Gregory Lane.

Quote, She had four more houses to go to make it into the house and she never made it, said Angie's stepdad, Ron.

It sounds to me, Captain, like several of the other schoolmates must have seen her walking for some time passing a few houses before they went on their way or made their way into their own homes, thus losing sight of the little girl.

And what happened from that point is

really up for debate and what is in question here.

So we have eyewitnesses in this case, but limited details.

Exactly.

Kids in the neighborhood did not recall seeing where Angie went.

And one thing they do recall when being asked is that, I mean, she wasn't with anybody at some point.

When she gets off of this bus, she is then at some point walking alone.

So, she is there one minute and simply gone the next.

There are different reports on what time she got off of the bus.

And this case has no shortage of internet coverage over the years.

I think a lot of that was spawned from the very extensive coverage that this received in the newspapers, local and even in the region.

As far as Chicago, this case was heavily reported on.

So over time, I think maybe that exact time has been lost.

We'll get into that in just a second here, Captain.

The key thing here is that all reports state that it was only a short time between the bus

ride home and when Ron got home.

This typically would be

between 30 and 60 or so minutes.

Ron's wife and Angie's mother, Diana, was home at this time as well.

I asked the detectives who worked the case, and they said that the times that they had were pretty exact.

And they broke it down for me like this.

The bus dropped her off between 3.50 and 352 p.m that afternoon that's pretty precise there

ron gets home on this day around five or so he works at sears auto which was close to the home so it's just a very short drive when he gets home diana and the toddler so angie had a

little brother

and he was about two at this time.

Mom and her little brother are sleeping on the couch when Ron gets home.

The backpack, as we said, was not there.

So he wakes up Diana.

They go out in the neighborhood and they are looking for little Angie.

Around 6 p.m., or maybe a few minutes after, this again, according to detectives, this is when Diana and Ron flag down a St.

Anne patrol officer.

So there's an officer just driving in the area, making their rounds.

They see the officer, flag him down, and that is when a report is made saying, hey, our daughter is missing.

She's nine years old.

This is what she looks like.

We can't find her.

This is similar to, we've seen this in some other cases where parents are out looking for a child or children and happen to see a police officer and report it then and there without having to make a call or go to the police department.

I believe it was in the West Memphis III case when you had Mark Byers and his family out looking for Christopher Byers, and they flagged down an officer.

But I do think that's important in this case and in other cases because that's a definitive dot on the timeline where some other things could be speculation or you just have to take that person's word for it.

This is at least something that is probably documented in the police records.

The detective stated that there was no hesitation from police.

They sprung into action immediately looking for the little girl.

So

we do have to point out here, though, given this fairly exact timeline, very precise, within two minutes, 3.50 to 3.52 that afternoon when the bus dropped her off.

Ron arrives home around 5.

They're out looking for her shortly after and then reporting it to police around 6 or just after.

The abductor had time to move.

It was a small amount of time, but the abductor had some time to move.

Now, the St.

Louis Post Dispatch reported that one neighbor who usually stood guard at her window to watch children get off of the bus did not do so that day.

And another neighbor who also watched the afternoon drop-offs from her front porch, she just so happened to be away taking care of her sick father that day.

So, this is one of those weird scenarios.

And we come across this in so many cases where things just line up to fail that day.

And it's all happenstance.

It's no one's fault.

But on this day, things that normally would happen did not occur.

And so nobody saw where this little girl went, what happened to her.

When Angie failed to return home after school, her mother mother and stepfather, as we said, became concerned.

This is part of the story and it forever will be.

But like I had talked about when we were going through some of her personality traits, her mother and stepfather were very upfront with this right away, saying that Angie was outgoing.

And it was not uncommon for her to get engaged in conversation with other schoolmates when she's getting off the bus, maybe even follow them to their home briefly, and then she would make her way back to her house.

It was also not uncommon for her to come home, drop the book bag, and then go back out into the neighborhood and look for somebody to hang out with, or talk to, or play with.

She was always looking to hang out with some people, but their general stance on this captain was that she would rarely be gone for very long.

Right.

And so this is why they sprung into action very quickly.

Part of it, too, is her age.

And this is a heavily populated area.

Now, St.

Anne's, from my understanding, is, I don't know, three quarter mile, four quarter miles.

But there's a lot of people that live here.

St.

Louis is a very heavily populated area and it is a very expansive area.

And really what set this whole thing off was the book bag.

No book bag.

So mom and dad sprung into action.

They began to search the neighborhood.

No sign of Angie.

They're knocking on doors during this time before they flag down the police, asking the neighbors if they had seen her, or maybe is she somewhere playing with your kid?

This turned up a whole lot of nothing.

The parents quickly reported the child missing, as we said.

And very quickly, a bolo goes out to all the patrol officers in the area to be on the lookout for a small Caucasian girl with dark hair, likely carrying a backpack.

And the search for a little girl began

that evening.

This is a heavily populated area.

So I'm guessing with the neighbors having young kids and

other school kids in the area, that a lot of individuals start searching for her and trying to help the family out.

Yeah, this, as said, is a blue-collar neighborhood.

It's a lot of nice homes, small homes, but it's a tight-knit community.

And a lot of people know one another.

And as you heard, we have a scenario where we have folks looking out for each other, right?

Moms or dads watching as the bus picks up the children or the bus is dropping off the neighborhood kids at the end of the day.

Now, when nighttime hits, that is when things really start to get scary, especially for the family and the parents in particular.

By the next morning, you have a whole new set of concerns, of course.

I'm going to try to stick to looking at this from the investigator side of things.

The very first thing that you would be doing is to do a canvas of the area, confirm that she was, in fact, on the bus.

Once you've confirmed this, now you're canvassing the neighborhood, her street, the surrounding streets, the bus route.

It's a six or seven-minute drive from Butter Elementary to Angie's house.

Of course, you're going to question the parents, the parents' friends, and extended family.

For your neighborhood canvas,

you are doing a knock and talk.

You're going to knock.

Somebody opens up the door and you are going to engage them in conversation and you are going to peek around them, see what you can see into their home.

It would not be out of the realm of possibility that whatever happened to her, she may still be close, even if she was abducted.

You're going to also want to be set up for a trap and trace.

At some point, you have to set up for a trap and trace.

We could get a ransom call.

You are, look at a lot of these scenarios, you,

as weird as it may sound, you are hoping for some kind of ransom call if you cannot locate the missing individual.

And then

ransom or no ransom, state lines or no state lines, you are contacting the FBI and informing them that you have a child, a missing child.

And what you are.

seeing here is telling you that this child may have been abducted.

And especially in this case, right?

Because you have a great FBI field office right there in St.

Louis that covers St.

Louis and five counties.

And I don't know about 30 years ago, but today the FBI has three resident agencies in that area as well.

The other thing you have here, and this is true for a lot of other heavily populated areas where you have expanding and expanding populace sprawling across several jurisdictions, like what we have here in St.

Louis, the greater St.

Louis area, they have a major case squad.

This will be investigators from multiple agencies, oftentimes working together side by side, or at least with regular open-door communications with each department and agency.

Of course, we don't want a kidnapping case anywhere ever, but at least here you have resources at a very, very high level.

It is only about a 15-minute drive or so from the FBI field office out to the abduction site.

So the FBI joined the search for nine-year-old Angie Hausman on that Friday.

So just under 24 hours after Angie goes missing, we have the FBI involved.

Now, speaking of FBI, because their agents typically investigate far more abduction cases, especially abduction cases involving children, one agent that worked a lot of these kinds of cases out in California is on record saying that often you are reminded the very sad, very grim, and scary reminder of thirds when it comes to these types of cases.

This agent said that a third of the kids are located and returned home.

A third of the kids are found dead, and a third are never found at all, ever.

And another agent who worked a very well-known, infamous case in California is on record saying that he, out of all the child abduction cases that he worked,

he only got two ransom calls.

The rest, no ransom calls.

And in those cases, the child was no longer alive once found.

And obviously, this could be just happenstance that

somebody came across her, but you would think

it's maybe more likely that they understood the schedule.

And so we were talking, I think, last week about how these killers will go to a mall because their victim type is a teenage girl.

Well, if your victim type is a elementary school girl, you can follow the bus.

Yeah, and that's the another sad, scary realization here that the short amount of time that it would have taken her to walk the eight, maybe nine houses

from that intersection, the corner bus stop, back to her home.

It's such a short window of time that it would seem plausible that whoever took this kid

may have followed the bus on that day.

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All right, we are back.

Cheers, mates, and cheers to you, Colonel.

Cheers to you, Captain.

Happy, happy, happy

4th of July and Independence Day to all of...

our great fellow Americans out there.

Please celebrate responsibly, have a great time, grill out, crank up some music, get together with friends and family, and just have a great time.

And this year, it's awesome that it falls on a Friday.

So everybody gets a, hopefully you're getting a big, long weekend to spend with your friends and family.

The victimology here, and it gets a little trite and generic when we have such young victims.

And like we do in this case, you know, a lot of these children have very similar personalities or at least situations, right?

Living situations.

And here seems to be a very common situation.

We have Angela Marie Angie Hausman, who was born February 18th, 1984.

She was born in St.

Louis, Missouri.

As we had said, she is a fourth grader who lived in St.

Anne.

She lived with her parents in a two-bedroom duplex on Wright Avenue.

She was a big sister to her little brother.

he was about two years old when angie went missing her mother diana houseman married her stepfather ronald bone when angie was just a toddler so he had been in the picture they'd been living together for quite some time leading up to this years later

years after she went missing ron described himself as a proud father Angie's biological father wasn't much in the picture.

He is known.

He is somebody that police spoke with many times, but he wasn't somebody that was really playing much of a role at all in her life.

Now, I'm not saying this suggesting that there was a really good reason to, but the parents were looked at very strong in this case.

The biological parents and Angie's stepfather were all looked at very strong in this case.

This was much, much more.

It's difficult to say because I think that

this case has so many complexities that I think the opinions and theories and thoughts of detectives that worked this case over the many, many years probably went in and out and changed their thoughts on this case and who looked suspicious, who sounds suspicious, and who they should be looking at.

But I think in large part, mostly here, Captain, that this was just a matter of due diligence in conducting a proper and thorough thorough investigation when it comes to the parents.

Yeah, that'd be a tough situation.

But again, it's like, look at me, do the work that you need to do to rule me in or out so we can start looking in the right direction.

Yeah, and the stepfather, he complicates the case even further because he says weird stuff throughout

the course of this investigation.

Some of his statements are downright incriminating,

but from my understanding, there's a

I hesitate to say this because I don't know that it to be fact, but I question if he has some disabilities and that maybe some of those statements come from

stem from that.

I don't want to linger on this too long because it's

I've not met the man.

Where we go here now, though, we got Thursday night is over.

Friday comes and goes, then the weekend passes, all with Angie

still gone.

Not good.

No ransom call.

No great leads early on.

Police and detectives are working around the clock.

It's late in the year.

The days are getting shorter.

The nights are getting longer.

And it's getting colder outside as the calendar works itself closer and closer to the end of November.

Now, obviously, at this point, they don't find her, but do they find any evidence of her?

Do they find her book bag?

Do they find a notebook?

Do they find anything?

No.

And usually in these cases, we have something like that, right?

Where we have the start of a breadcrumb trail, or somebody saw something, or, oh, I think I heard something.

Right.

You know, or, or even maybe blocks away or down the road somewhere, somebody goes, yeah, I saw a...

a guy in a vehicle that I've never seen before.

And there was some kind of kid, looked like there was a kid in the car.

We don't have any of that here.

It's crickets.

crickets it's nothing yeah or there's a some weirdo that was walking down the street and he was fugly as hell might be somebody we want to look into the city and the area was on high alert and people were afraid openly afraid who would take a little girl and why

and where the hell is she a sicko We're looking for a sicko.

I mean, that's what we know we're looking for.

Do we do a pervert roundup?

Old famous pervert roundup.

They did the old pervert roundup.

Old Mr.

Micksticky.

Three days after Angie vanished, we are now at November 21st on the timeline.

I mentioned the major case squad earlier.

This is when they were brought in.

So you have the FBI there on day two, and then by Monday, you have the major case squad that is brought in.

This was no doubt a massive search effort for this little kid.

The local media covered the case very well.

Angie's face and last-seen information were plastered everywhere.

Police received hundreds of tips from all over the St.

Louis area to emphasize just how well the local law enforcement fully understood the urgent nature of this case.

This was only the second time in history that the major case squad came in to work a case without a body.

So this is all hands on deck situation.

Now, one thing that was reported and the police learned about fairly early in their investigation here, Captain, there was an attempted abduction nearby that was reported just a little more than a week before

Angie's disappearance.

Wow.

But that girl was lucky.

Somehow she managed to get away from the creep.

Now, here is what we know.

This happened on November 8th in Maryland Heights in the 2,800 block of Smiley Road.

So this is about four miles from Angie's house, just a short 10-minute drive away.

The perp was described as a white male, mid-40s, approximately 200 pounds, a mustache and glasses.

He was driving a white car.

A police sketch was produced of this perpetrator, of the person attempting the abduction of this other little girl, and it was displayed on the evening and nighttime news as well as in the paper.

So the sketch was in the paper multiple times,

but the sketch didn't really produce any leads that would direct police to a suspect or, more importantly, to Angie.

So I'm looking at the sketch now.

It's pretty detailed.

The guy has distinguishable hair, I would say, and

looks like we got a double chin and

a

little bit of a chubby bohemoth.

One week after Angie disappeared, it was Thanksgiving.

And at the Bone Houseman

family home, they had little, if anything, to be thankful for.

The city was on high alert and people were very much afraid.

Who would take a little girl and why and where the hell is she?

Thanksgiving 1993 was celebrated on Thursday, November 25th.

Angie vanished on her way home from school exactly one week prior.

On this Thanksgiving, people watched the 67th annual Macy's Day parade featuring the great Stevie Wonder, one of my favorites, and actor Kelsey Grammer.

Folks tuned in to see the Dallas Cowboys take on the Miami Dolphins at Texas Stadium in a game later called the Sleet Bowl or the Snow Bowl, as temperatures in Dallas never got above 35 degrees in that game.

Meanwhile, at a house in a neighboring county, a 13-year-old boy was visiting friends on that Thanksgiving.

There, the folks were sitting around watching the Thanksgiving Day football game.

During which, an enticing preview for the later newscast came on the TV screen.

The newspaper

said something to the effect of coming up tonight, the search for nine-year-old Angie Houseman continues.

So after this news break, the 13-year-old boy, the one visiting the home, he tells his friend and the grown-ups in the room, I know where they will find her.

They'll find her tied to a tree in bush wildlife area.

And then bizarre.

Then the kid mentions something about a blue car.

So he told the room that he saw it in a dream.

No one really said much.

The sad and scary subject was not brought up again.

The commercial break was over, and the football game resumed.

Late in the game, Dallas Cowboy defensive player Leon Lett performed another in-game mistake by slipping in the snow to accidentally touch the football after a blocked field goal attempt.

This error gave the Dolphins the ball back deep.

In Cowboys' territory, Miami would go go on to win 16 to 14.

so while america celebrated with food family friends and football at angie's house they cried hugged one another and tried to keep it together all while praying that the little girl would somehow return home safe but that was not to be well let's go hold on let's go back to this uh 13 year old boy this with the weird dream i mean if you're at thanksgiving and and

This news report came on TV and your little nephew said something strange, Don't you think you're going to do something with that information?

Are you just going to view it as, well, I mean, we don't know the kid, so maybe he just says weird stuff all the time.

Yeah, I don't really know how to

wrap my head around that situation.

Yeah, it's very bizarre.

Two days later, on Saturday, November 27th, 1993, just nine days after she disappeared, a deer hunter found something in a wooded area.

This is in

August A.

Bush Wildlife Area, August Anheuser-Busch Wildlife Area.

I spoke with the officer that was first on the scene,

and the wounds of what he experienced have not healed.

I'm saying that for him.

This is not what he told me.

This is...

Just the feeling that you got when you were speaking with him.

Yeah, and I've spoke with a lot lot of law enforcement personnel on many different matters.

This one is one of the most difficult conversations I've ever had.

So maybe I was in my feelings a bit, but

it would be weird if he didn't feel.

I mean, this man is scarred by what he witnessed that day.

He's scarred by the whole investigation.

That seems plain as day to me.

I'll go through some of what's what's been reported online and try to weave in his description of the area.

So while it's reported that a deer hunter was the person that found

this gruesome site in this wooded area, the officer says,

I didn't know 100%, but I was pretty convinced immediately that it was Angie Houseman.

I knew she was missing.

Everybody in the area knew she was missing.

We didn't really have any other missing little kid cases at the time.

And it was obvious that it was a child that they had found, not an adult.

Now, it's a complicated crime scene.

And you'll understand, if you don't know this case, you'll understand very quickly why.

So the deer hunter was actually out with somebody else.

It was two

hunters, let's call them, but they weren't out hunting that day.

They had drove up to the area and they were scouting.

A lot of times hunters will go out and scout an area because if there's no no animal activity, if in fact they were hunting for deer, if there's no deer activity in the area, it's pointless to go up and spend a whole day looking and waiting to

find and hunt something.

So they're up there kind of scouting out this area.

But, you know, if there's no deer in the area, it gives you guys more time to talk about your feelings and hold hands.

Well,

they had checked in with a conservation officer earlier.

I don't know if there was a check-in process or if this was more happenstance, but anyway, they had spoke with a conservation officer.

His name escapes me at the moment.

They come across this horrific scene and they immediately contact the conservation officer.

And then we have a domino effect of the conservation officer contacts the sheriff's department.

Now, we need to note here that this is, while it's still relatively close to where Angie Houseman lived, it is in a neighboring county.

So now we are talking about St.

Charles County, Missouri.

So this deputy, he was very nearby when,

so he gets the call just because he's in close proximity.

He arrives, he talks to the conservation officer who tells them, hey, I went in there and looked, and I,

just to confirm that I was seeing what they thought they had seen

before calling you.

And I'm here to tell you that I'm pretty sure that what they were reporting is correct.

So, very astutely, the officer, the deputy says, Show me exactly how you walked in.

Let's enter this area the way that you entered, and let's exit the way that you exited.

So, there had been some snowfall, some light snowfall, And the deputy said that he could see the conservation officer's footprints in the snow.

So he knew

where to go in and how to leave.

And he was already very mindful of the idea that there is going to be physical evidence here.

We do not want to disturb the scene or create any kind of chaos.

at the scene.

And he described this area as a heavily wooded area.

But he said that

even though the leaves had mostly fallen or all had fallen by this time of year, that it would still be very difficult to see back in

to this space.

However, she was found on the ground.

And he had said, had she been

standing up or maybe even sitting up, that he may have spotted her sooner on his own, even without the report coming in, because he often patrolled that area.

This was an area that people would go back and park.

You might get teenagers that would go drink back there.

There's a party spot.

And this seemed very strange, but he said it so matter-of-factly that it doesn't seem strange at all to the people that live there.

He had said that he would go back and check cars in this area of this wildlife preserve because it wasn't uncommon for

someone to commit suicide in their car

back in this area.

And I also wonder with, you know, this is the early 90s, but since then, I also wonder if this is maybe an area where people accidentally overdose

as well.

So, anyway, this was an area where not too far from where she was found,

he would go back there and check vehicles and snoop around and look around.

And

he patrolled this area regularly.

He told me that she was found about 30 yards from the road.

Again, heavily wooded area, difficult to see back in there.

I'll go off of what the internet and newspaper reports are and then,

if needed, fill in some of the additional information that we received from the detectives.

So eventually, of course, they will identify the body that was located as that of Angie Hausman.

She was found nude, and the

short description is that she was tied to a tree about 90 feet from the road.

Her wrists have been handcuffed.

She had duct tape covering most of her face, except for her nose.

Under the duct tape, they found a cut piece of Barbie doll underwear, which was confirmed to be hers.

The rest of her clothing was found somewhat near the body in a Dollar General bag, you know, one of those

thin plastic bags that you get from

the store when you pick up items.

And the backpack was found as well.

This was actually located on the other side of the street.

So if you can kind of picture this, you go back into this wooded area, and on one side of the street, you're going to have where you would walk in and find the body about 90 feet from the road.

And then on the other side of that road, in a basically an adjacent location, is where they find what would probably look like debris to just anybody that's passing by, or like, oh, great, somebody littered out here in this wildlife.

area, but it was actually evidence for their case because it was items belonging to the victim.

So now we have a body.

We have an absolutely horrific crime scene and a missing person's case that just turned into a homicide case.

A little more description here.

Tied to the tree.

So she was tied to the tree with her own jeans.

These would have been jeans that she was wearing when she went missing.

Whoever placed her there, we had mentioned handcuffs.

They had taken the legs of the jeans and tied it around a tree and then tied a knot to the handcuffs.

And this is what secured her to that tree.

Now, the detective speculated that had she been in better shape when she was placed,

so one of the most,

this is one of the most difficult and horrific cases that we've ever had to cover.

I think just because the nature of how this poor little girl was found.

And so bear with me here as I struggle to go down this road here

one more time and hopefully for the last for me anyway.

The handcuffs were not like a police grade.

These were like novelty handcuffs that you would purchase at a store

for

I think most kids own a pair of these when they're younger.

Well, I'm glad you pointed that out because these are not like the play handcuffs that are of,

you know, for magic tricks or for

even plastic ones that are just straight up toy handcuffs.

These are a little more novelty, maybe, that

adults would purchase for bedroom activities, I guess you would say.

Toy toys.

The jeans were tied around these

handcuffs.

Her hands were cuffed behind her back.

The detective speculated that had she been, she was alive when she was placed there.

They're absolutely certain of that because there is physical evidence telling them that at the scene.

Right.

Now, what he said to me, had she been in better health when she was placed there, she might have been able to stand up.

And if that were the case, like he said, he may have spotted her or somebody may have spotted her prior to this.

Now.

Just point out a couple of things.

I mean, one of the things that you said that you can just visually see, you almost said it perfectly to put a picture in your mind is when the law law enforcement officer is going out to the scene and he sees these footprints.

So then, obviously, it's like you got to make this mental note that if somebody's leaving footprints, there could be other footprints.

There could be other evidence at this scene.

And also, the placement of her,

it's confusing because

on one level, you go, well, was she placed out here to die?

Or did the person that attacked her thought, did he think she was dead already and and just left her thinking that she was already dead because obviously if she's not dead that would give her some kind of a chance possibly uh but like you said law enforcement officers saying that she's so um

in a bad situation

but the imagery kind of reminds you of the first case in True Detective Season 1, just the placement of the body around the tree and the hands behind the back.

And then,

am I missing something?

We have this 13-year-old that basically tells his family that she's going to be found tied to a tree.

Yeah, that is just, I mean, one of many, many very strange and complicated parts to this case and investigation.

So, one thing that I struggled with early in this was the thought, like you had said, maybe

and I think shame on me because I think I gave the killer far too much credit when I had pondered the idea of, well, maybe he or they thought she was dead when they placed her there, but but they wouldn't they wouldn't tie the jeans to the handcuffs like that.

I think that that is more of an indicator that the person or persons knew that she was still alive and they were just too big of fucking cowards to do the job themselves.

And they left her out there

in a very cruel, one of the most cruel acts I've ever

read about or talked about.

And

the but then you also wonder if there's

something that happened when the individual was out there.

This is obviously not a heavily populated area, but if you look into the Delphi case, you know, there's some evidence that if the killer got disrupted, that one of the victims, we believe, wasn't fully dead by the time that the killer left.

So is it possible that there was supposed to be more that happened at this crime scene and didn't because of some kind of disturbance to the killer?

Yeah, I think that's always in consideration.

In regard to the Delphi case, I think he simply just didn't know that she was still clinging to life because

he made some efforts.

He did some things that are very common that other killers have done after

similar to when they're dumping a body

at some place.

So, as far as the duct tape goes, so the duct tape was covering

the internet reports say almost all of her face and head, but the detective told me that it other than her nostrils, those were the only that was the the only part that was not covered by duct tape.

Again, a portion of the internet says a cut piece of her Barbie underwear was stuffed in her mouth underneath the

duct tape, but it was it was a torn piece.

And then the the killer or the killers

also duct tape around the they duct taped around the the handcuffs as well.

And so I just see a lot of effort going into placing her there so she can't leave.

That

I think they were well aware that she was still alive, as the detective said, in very bad condition.

But the other thing that, and this is speculative, because, you know, there's no, all the reports that have made their way to the newspapers and the internet over the years all say a very similar statement that she

likely expired within just a very short time period, very, you know, just hours before she was found.

And had the, yeah, had the weather conditions been better, or had she been clothed, that she may have survived long enough to be recovered and taken to a hospital.

I don't think that that's the case based off of the information that I received, that we received.

It was

so remember, she is finally located on a Saturday.

On that Thanksgiving, there was freezing rain.

So when she was found, there was ice on her, freezing rain on her.

And so that tells me that she probably, she was placed there before

that freezing rain on Thanksgiving.

which is a couple days before she was located.

And Jesus,

she wasn't doing a whole lot of moving

after that freezing rain situation.

So the autopsy, of course, was conducted.

And the short of it was that they had confirmed that in the days that she had been missing, that she was

held somewhere before she was placed there in the woods.

She had been brutally sexually assaulted, beaten, starved, and denied fluids.

Some reports state that her hair had been cut and

maybe dyed to some different color.

It seems, I don't know about the dying of the hair, but the hair seems to be cut.

That seems to be a consistent statement through and through.

Her autopsy determined that Angie likely died of exposure probably,

again,

the reports out there are just hours before her body was found.

I think it was probably a day or so.

Most reports state that the cause of death is hypothermia.

It was very, it was getting very cold and she wasn't she wasn't clothed and she was in bad shape when she was placed there.

Whenever that was, she was in bad shape when she was placed there.

Yeah, it's almost hard to hear.

The cause of death is hypothermia.

No, the cause of death is that she was abducted and

basically she was abducted and tortured by a sick, sadistic psychopath.

That's the cause of death.

There was a deep cut on one of her thighs, and then

her wrist had several cuts on them as well.

And one thing that I had speculated was: oftentimes, when you see cuts on wrist and you find a victim handcuffed, a lot of times those cuts on the wrist come from the handcuffs, right?

Where they're struggling to get free or they're being moved and controlled via the handcuffs and it creates bruises or even cuts and injuries to the wrist.

And so I had said to the detective, so that she clearly was handcuffed for quite some time.

And they said, yes, that seems very likely.

However, they could not, they tried to reconstruct those injuries to the wrist using handcuffs, and they couldn't do it.

So they think she's bound somewhere else.

Well, they, yeah, they don't know where those cuts came from or how they were administered, but they feel confident that they didn't come from the handcuffs, especially from the handcuffs with her trying to break free.

So

she had a lot of injury.

She wasn't cared for.

And that also, I found that to be incredibly cruel, but also strange, right?

There's a lot of strange pieces to this case immediately when you look at the crime scene.

One, handcuffs.

Two of the detectives that we spoke to have had careers where they worked 30 years and covered many homicides, many death investigations.

I said to both of them, I said, how many of those death investigations or homicides did you find a pair of handcuffs on the victim?

This was the only one.

Damn near 60 years of experience.

This is the only one.

Or like you said, the amount of duct tape around the handcuffs and then the duct tape around the mouth.

And then I think it's probably, and you know this better than I would, but you'd think on some level this individual, the victim's going to be tied up to a tree with a rope or something, not necessarily an item of their clothing.

Yeah, that's the other thing, too.

There's very little items here that you would be finding.

And I don't have a complete inventory because I know that they collected dozens and dozens and dozens of items.

I don't want to go down this road again because we've covered it a lot of times here in the garage.

If you're new to the garage,

we got two or three old episodes you could go back and listen to.

We're new to the true crime space.

Yeah, we're new to the garage.

They call us newbies.

The complications with an outdoor crime scene, we've talked about that, but there's also an abundance of items that would need to be collected.

Some of it's just straight-up debris.

Some of it could be physical evidence.

Here, without having an inventory, I can see some things that very obviously seem to have belonged to the killer or killers.

The The duct tape was not hers, the handcuffs were not Angie's, and the, I would, I would guess that even the Dollar General bag where her clothing, some of her clothing was found, was not hers as well.

So, as horrific as this crime scene is,

you're looking at it going, okay, well, I would expect to find some physical evidence that may lead me to the person or persons responsible.

Duct tape is usually something that will lead you to a perpetrator.

And we can get into that, but

because there's many reasons, it's so the effort that it takes to tear it, to place it on someone, to use somebody to bind them with it, it takes a lot of effort and a good amount of physicality.

And even if you use gloves, there's a possibility for DNA or touch DNA or even some kind of fabric transfer.

Yes, and they did have fibers that were found and hairs that were found that were physical evidence that they were going to be using and they did use quite a bit in this case.

But the first piece of evidence that they thought may have been promising was a fingerprint that was found on the adhesive side of one of the pieces of duct tape.

In fact, I think there's a chance that it may have been found on more than one piece of the duct tape because it was torn several times.

This wasn't one or two or three pieces of duct tape.

This was many tears of duct tape that were placed.

And look,

there were small bits of ice that formed all over her body.

I believe some of that was from

the frozen rain.

And she suffered a terrible death that unfortunately did not come quick.

The body was recovered in saint charlestown

reading the case file and also um we spend a lot of time at the scene just because it helps your mind or it helps me think

she

just the way she was left it's like she was just

she was just discarded

and

her cause of death when they Dr.

Case performed that autopsy and what they found was pretty horrific.

Ed finding that, first of all,

he's probably

the biggest bulldog for kids.

I can only imagine, I mean, I wasn't there with him then, but yeah, the right person was the first person on scene because there was no stopping him.

And him and John worked this for plus 20 years, over 20 years.

So

the pictures and having, seeing her there and then with pictures and then having been there,

it's just

the one thing I couldn't wrap my mind around.

It's, again, what kind of person does this?

And it was just, if I had, I'm glad I didn't see it in person.

I've seen plenty.

But

that had to be tough.

And I'm sure something that I still think about it.

So I imagine anybody involved, the hunter, bless his heart, I can only imagine him seeing something like that.

Children were dying,

and not just, you know, from a sickness or something, which would be bad enough.

These were horrific deaths, and

it was terrifying.

Want to thank you so much for joining us here in the garage.

So much more to get to in this case.

Stick around for part two.

Until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.

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