Killing was Purposeful /// Part 2 /// 842

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Welcome to True Crime Garage.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening.

I'm your host, Nick, and with me, as always, is a man who is like the Michael Jordan of being a son of a bitch.

Here is the captain.

Yeah, the roof is the ceiling.

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All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer, let's talk some true crime.

Where we left off here, Captain, was the

talking and speaking with Walter Zempic back in 1985, giving conflicting statements to different investigators, conflicting statements about his whereabouts of the night in question,

to different law enforcement agencies.

However, what we do know is that police moved on from Walter Zempic after he passed a lie detector test back in 1985.

The exam, which was, of course, all centered around on questions if he had killed Lori, revealed no deception.

So at some point they decided to move on from him and the case went cold until 2008.

So let's fast forward back to 2008, go back to the future here.

The cold case investigators reviewed that case file and were struck by these inconsistencies that they were seeing in Walter Zempic's stories.

They spoke with his mom, Carol.

Now, his mother, Carol, had been interviewed interviewed in 1985.

But because Zempic had already passed that lie detector test when she was spoken to, she was never really asked about

her son's alibi in 1985.

She was only asked about like his character.

Now, in 2008, she tells the cold case investigators the following, that on the evening that Lori Ann Hill disappeared, Zempic had left their home to go find her, stating that later that evening, Hill called the house three times times looking for Walter Zempic.

The first call was early in the evening.

We're not getting exact times on some of this, Captain, but keep in mind she's being asked these questions 23 years after the fact.

So, during this first call, Carol answers the phone.

She says that she was surprised.

She thought that

her son was already with Lori Hill.

So, she was surprised that Lori was calling looking for her son.

Then she says there was a second call.

This took place several hours after the first call.

And this is the one that it sounds like investigators believe that this is the call that most likely came from Mr.

G's pizza.

And this is because Carol, when she's talking to the police, she says, Look, I remember it being very noisy in the background.

And I also remember Lori being very angry

when I told her, Look, I already told you he's he's not home.

So he's still not home at this time, several hours after the first call.

Well, this call could have came from the party as well.

We don't know if she made a call from the party.

That's a good point.

And we also don't have time stamps for these calls.

Exactly.

So she also remembered that Lori was again very angry during a third call, which she says she believes was one hour later, approximately one hour later.

She even swore at the mother, saying something nasty to the mother, and then hung up on her.

During the third call, though, the mother, Carol, says that she couldn't hear noise in the background.

There wasn't a bunch of noise in the background like she had heard on the second call.

Carol further remembered that the phone rang two more times that night.

The first of those two was very late.

Again,

this time it was Hill's sister, Lori Ann Hill's sister, Rachel, calling looking for her.

Carol remembered that after that phone call, her son, Walter Zempek, came home with his friend whose last name Carol remembered being Lonsway.

L-O-N-S-W-A-Y.

We would later learn, so she doesn't know this in her statement

at this time when she's giving this statement in 2008.

We would later learn that

a friend of

Zempek's did exist with the last name of Lonsway, and his name was Willie Lonsway.

So Zempic's mother, Carol, stated that Lonsway was a good friend of Zempic's and that he was around Zempek's age.

Carol noted that Zempic was drunk when he came home.

Later, the phone rang again.

She says again, it was Lorian Hill's sister reporting that Lori was missing.

Zempic then said that he was leaving to go to Lori Hill's parents' home, and he left with Willie Lonsway.

Upon questioning by the investigators during this interview, Carol was consistent in her memory of the events of October 25th, 1985.

It's interesting, too, here, Captain, that not only is she, you know, not only does she say she remembers it, but she appears to remember that quite clearly, being able to give some

decent description to some of the phone calls and the order of the events.

Now, regardless of how much weight and credibility we want to give to Walter Zempic's mother's statement in 2008, we need to note that that is completely inconsistent with what Walter Zempek told investigators in 1985.

Both stories, right?

Both stories that he gives.

Now, in 2008, we have Walter Zempek.

He's living in Strawberry Plains,

Tennessee.

Strawberry Plains forever.

Investigators traveled there to speak with him, armed with a search warrant for his DNA.

In the interview, he admitted he had lied to both the Lucas County and Fulton County authorities back in 1985, but he said he couldn't remember why he lied to them.

But he did deny being with Willie Lonsway at all.

Yeah, so this is December 30th, 2008, and we do have the

transcript from that.

We'll

read through a brief portion of it here.

This is the part of the 2008 interview where the detectives are confronting him about his statements that he gave in 1985.

So the first question is, okay, I'm going to ask you this again now.

You gave two different statements to two different police officers, and both of them, we know, were lies because you weren't home that night.

Your mom said you weren't home.

Lori called your house.

And if Lori called looking for you, that means you weren't home.

Walter's answer?

Right.

Question.

So we are clear.

The 29th, two days later, and then on the first, three days later, you talked to police.

All of this is fresh in your mind.

They're talking about all of this is fresh in your mind at the time.

Right.

They say, what did you do on that night?

And you said, well, I was home at seven o'clock and I went to sleep at 11, which isn't true because your mom said you weren't home.

Answer, right.

I wasn't home.

Question.

Then four days later, you talk to different police.

They say, what did you do?

I went to Southwick, meaning the mall that he had mentioned, hung out with this girl.

I can't remember her last name.

She was at my house from 10.

till 2, which wasn't true, right?

She wasn't at your house from 10 to 2.

Answer, no.

Question.

So that's twice.

That's two stories that weren't true that you'd given to police just after your girlfriend is found murdered.

Answer, uh-huh.

And affirmative is the response given there.

He's agreeing with what they're saying.

I can say if I'm law enforcement, if I'm a detective and somebody is inconsistent and somebody's lying,

that is a...

That's like giving a dog a bone, and I would have a hard time letting go of that bone.

Yes, and clearly in 2008,

that's the investigator's feelings as well.

If it were me there interviewing him, I wouldn't show any signs of this.

I wouldn't react to it or I wouldn't say anything.

But it would be surprising to me for him to just so casually agree.

Yeah, I was.

Yeah, I did lie.

Yeah, I did give two different statements.

Like, he doesn't seem to try to.

talk his way out of that.

It's kind of strange, though, that he doesn't remember.

He's basically telling law enforcement yeah i lied but i don't remember the reason why but you have to remember he's he's a young adult at this time

so is it just possible that he just got scared initially like yeah she was my ex-girlfriend yes she was calling me you know we know what happened to her we know that her body was found is it is it a possibility that he's just scared that somehow they're they're going to try to pin this on him see dude i totally agree with that because, I mean, like you said, he's 18 at the time when he's first questioning, question.

She's missing for a period of time, and then she's found.

If he had nothing to do with this, no one could imagine their girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, being found dead in a cornfield days after being reported missing.

And now we fast forward to 2008 when they're questioning him in December of 2008.

And it's over 20 years later.

And I think that I, you know,

anybody that looks back, given a long enough timeline, I think anybody that looks back to their teen years and even when they're 18, as was Walter at the time of this horrible event, I think it's

almost all of us can say,

that thing, that thing was really dumb.

Why did I do that?

I don't even know why I would do that.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, you don't, you can't even reconcile with why you would have behaved a certain way or said something in in the moment back then it it's

i think of times where i i lied to get out of being busted for something or kind of squirmed or weaseled my way out of or into something and i kind of look back and i go

why wasn't i just honest in the moment like Yeah, or sometimes the lie that you come up with is worse than just telling the truth.

Gets you into more trouble but what are your thoughts on the statements from his mother is there anything that jumps out to you

well

i wish that i wasn't armed with all the information that i that i am fully aware of now right to give you what my reaction would be to that question without all the information she's going to change her statement at some point and so while it sounds to me i i think that if, regardless of her changing her statement, what the other statement is, I actually think that there's probably a lot of truth in this statement that she gives.

She remembers it so clearly and so vividly to the point of saying, hey, on this one call, I heard a whole bunch of noise in the background.

And on this other call, I didn't hear any noise in the background.

And those

sometimes people stretch a story and say too many words because they're trying to make up for something.

They're trying to cover their tracks.

They're trying to sell you a lie.

And other times there are details in a story or explanation that simply because

they're true.

They're factual information or at least they believe them to be true.

And so I think that there's probably a lot of truth in this statement.

I wouldn't boil it down to that she remembers correctly 23 years later exactly how many phone calls she received.

We know that she's unable to provide a time other than vaguely.

This one was early in the evening.

This one was a couple hours later.

She does recall speaking to the sister at some point that the sister calls because Lori's missing.

I think she's got the details right.

The timing's a little off.

But what's the most important part of her story is Walter Zempic is not home.

during the times that he in both of his statements, even though they're different, they both end up with him being home

at 10 o'clock.

And that is when everything is in question, because regardless if you believe the Bettingers sighting of the three kids in the middle of the county road on their way home, we have confirmed sightings by several people that Lori Hill was alive and well using the phone at the pizza joint, offered more than one ride by two different credible people.

Eyewitnesses seeing her walking.

It's that 10 p.m.

time marker and everything after that is in question.

And he, in both of his versions of his alibis for that night, he puts himself at home at 10.

His mom asked in 2008, he's not home at 10 o'clock in her story.

Yeah, but

here's what sticks out to me.

And I think one of the things with you know, a tragic event is sometimes you have to try to make sense of crazy.

But as as you know, sometimes in these cases, there's logic to it.

There's reason to some of this stuff.

And so what sticks out to me, if I'm law enforcement, where I'm confused by, is I have this individual that's lying to me.

Okay.

Inconsistencies, changing stories multiple times.

And then...

In the future, now he is now telling me, yes, I did lie.

I don't know why I did.

But what she says that sticks out to me contradicts the end result in the sense of she says well i got these calls from his ex-girlfriend he's 18 she's 14.

they like we said they they either dated for a few months or maybe it was even a little bit longer but she's calling for help essentially or calling that's what he believes and we have the call from the sister so then what does he do he goes out now whether he's by himself or with a friend,

he is going out.

The sister is calling for help because

she can't find your sister because Lori's missing.

According to Carol's statements,

Lori isn't calling looking for a ride.

She's simply calling, looking for Walter Zempic.

But what I think

sticks out to me, which would be confusing if I'm law enforcement, is he goes out, whether it's by himself or with a friend, to go look for her.

And so to me, that is an act of

kindness, of caring, of, you know, did something happen?

Did she go, you know, did he know she was going to this party?

Did, you know, did he hear about this altercation?

But to me, it's an act of kindness or caring that I need to go find her.

You know, her sister said she's missing.

Well, I'll go look for her.

I'll swing by her parents' house or whatever.

So to me, that's an act of caring as opposed to what is the end result.

We have a murdered 14-year-old in a cornfield.

So do you see that as conflicting?

The act of caring?

No, no, I'm saying like, if I'm law enforcement and I hear the statements from his mom, it doesn't seem like there's no confrontation between Lori and Walter.

that we know of.

So it's just, it doesn't, it doesn't seem to make any sense of why would he want to find her and kill her.

You know, and also he tells his mom, well, I'm going to go look for her.

So, I don't know.

It just kind of contradicts the ending.

Right.

But, I mean, I get that it could be viewed as an act of kindness, but I, but I mean, if you give me the afternoon, I'll give you a baker's dozen of people that killed somebody and then went out and joined a search party to look for them.

I think the big part that stands out to me here is regardless of why he lied, you know, he's not, he's not there at 10 o'clock.

He's, he's confirming that in 2008.

And both of his stories in 1985 put him at home at 10 o'clock and then staying there for the entirety of the night after that 10 o'clock marker.

His mom's story is not that.

His mom's story is that he wasn't home until it was notified that she was missing.

Remember, Rachel doesn't go out looking for her sister until what is close to 2 a.m.

That's four hours after that 10 o'clock marker.

And so, what stands out to me, I find it incredibly weird that if he did go out and look for, as his mom says, which I believe that he did, that is not anything that suggests that he is guilty, right?

Like, I don't understand why in 1985 he didn't tell them that he went out looking for

her at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Further, I want to point this out.

We do know,

based off of the reports, off of the paperwork, that Walter Zempek in 2008 was interviewed on December 30th.

What we don't know is when his mother, Carol, was interviewed in 2008.

Right.

Because

I wonder, is there a chance that mom is interviewed prior to December 30th?

And she calls her son and says, hey, you're never going to believe this.

The sheriff's department showed up today and they were, remember your old girlfriend, Lorianne Hill from when you were a kid?

They were asking me about her disappearance and about the night that she disappeared.

I mean, it's like 20-some years later, right?

And son is asking mom, well, it's highly likely.

Yeah.

Well, what did you tell them?

And she tells them what, what, tells him what she told them.

And now he is armed with information.

Oh, they're probably going to come and talk to me because I remember telling them something different.

And he's got some time to sort out,

well, do I try to talk my way out of it?

Or do I just admit, yeah, I told you guys a story.

I fed you a story back then, and I don't remember why, or I don't know why.

Yeah, that's weird to me.

That sticks out to me.

Why couldn't you remember why you lied?

What was it?

Question number four that I went through.

They get him to confirm that, right?

He says they say so twice.

That's two stories that weren't true that you gave to police after your girlfriend is found murdered.

He answers, uh-huh, which is,

according to the paperwork, is an affirmative response.

And then they go on to ask him, so how can anybody not want an explanation for that?

So that's why we came to you to give you a chance to explain that to us.

His answer is, look, I don't know what to say to you.

I mean, I don't question.

And then the next morning, you told the Hill family that you got in a bar fight that night.

Answer, uh-huh, affirmative response, question.

And then your mother, he cuts them off.

Answer, I don't necessarily remember that either, but I mean

then the interview's cutting him off.

But your mother told, he cuts them off, answer, this was 20-some years ago.

So part of his story to

Lorianne Hill's family is that he

was in a bar fight sometime that night, which that's, seems to be news to everybody else as well, right?

Like

they weren't armed with that information in 1985.

That wasn't part of his story in 1985.

So as you hear, as, you know, from this, this transcript that we went through, Walter Zempic really had no explanation for the inconsistencies.

He didn't even really try to explain them.

And then after this 2008 interview, he spoke with both his mother and with Sandy.

Remember the girl that he said he had brought home that night.

So when investigators then return to talk to his mother, Carol, all of a sudden she's less certain about her story, according to the investigators.

And they say it was clear that she had spoken with Walter Zempic since she had been interviewed by the officers several days before, and that Zempic told her that Sandy was in his bedroom on the night that Lori Hill had been killed.

And she also affirmed that Willie Lonsway was the boy who was with Walter Zempic that night.

So now she remembers the first name.

These detectives, they do track down this Sandy girl.

She had never been interviewed up to this point.

She does tell investigators that she remembers dating Walter Zempic for maybe a month, this back in 1985.

They did meet at the Southwick Mall in the fall of 1985, but she said she did not go back to his apartment on that first night that they met, and she certainly never remembers sneaking in through a bedroom window.

She recalled that their first phone conversation was where he told her that his ex-girlfriend had been killed and he said it happened the night that they met and that she was his alibi.

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Every week, Morgan uses her unconventional style and brilliance to crack LAPD's most perplexing cases.

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High potential premieres Tuesday at 10-9 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.

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All right.

We are back.

Thanks for joining us here in the garage.

Cheers to you all and cheers to you, Colonel.

Cheers to you, Captain.

So these cold case investigators, they even tracked down some of the other names that they were seeing in their old case file.

Some of these people, their names were in the file, but they had never been interviewed.

And one of those persons was a lady named Linda Ferraso.

She was a family friend of the Hills.

She recalled that on October 26th, so this is the day after Gloria is missing.

Her body's not been found yet.

She recalls that Walter Zempek was helping her post flyers looking for the missing girl.

And she said that she noticed that he had scratches all over his arm that she said it looked like he run through a rose guard.

And she overheard him telling someone else that he had gotten into a bar fight the night before.

After eight months of investigation in 2008, Walter Zempic was arrested at his home.

Fulton County detectives announced the cold case arrest to the media, and they blared it with headlines screaming about the Hill case, Cold Case, kidnap, rape, and murder at long last being solved.

Walter Zempic was,

he waived extradition, was transported to Ohio to face these charges.

He pled not guilty on both counts, and bond was set at $1 million.

So, really, a lot of this is going to boil down to trying to reconstruct his actual whereabouts on the night of the murder.

And now we have to introduce his defense attorney.

He had two defense attorneys.

This is a father-daughter duo here: lawyers Greg and Amber Van Gunton.

They filed a series of motions,

36 of them, including a motion to dismiss the case because they argued that their client's defense was prejudiced by the passage of 24 years since the murder, because some of the witnesses had died, moved on, forgotten, or just plain vanished, they argued.

And the physical evidence had either been used up

or stored improperly because it was revealed that the physical evidence was misplaced.

So, testing that could

have the result

in

the exoneration of their client, Walter Zempic, would be impossible, right?

There's not this physical evidence still existing today while we're waiting on a court date that

there's a chance this could exonerate our client.

So, in short,

what they're saying is the delay in bringing Walter Zempek and the delay in charging him with this for 20-some years

was reasons for

why

he couldn't put up a great defense.

At the motion to dismiss the hearing altogether, His mother, Carol, testified that she received only one phone call the night that Lori

went missing.

She said that she did not recall Willie Lonsway being with her son Walter at all that night.

This was totally different from what she said in her interview in 2008.

The prosecution filed 39 motions of its own, arguing that the delayed prosecution wasn't just a matter of negligent failure to prosecute back in 1985, but that actual new evidence was discovered.

And that new evidence, of course, being all of these inconsistencies in Zempic's statements and his mother with her flip-flopping stories that she's now giving to police.

Well, this family is known for flip-flopping on their stories.

They're a family of flippers and a family of floppers.

Floppers, yeah.

You'd think they'd be able to test something to either try to link him to the crime or,

you know, possibly just go, well, we ran the test and we didn't find his DNA, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't the killer.

Well, I mean,

so they had the tests back then, they had the results back then, but of course,

those results are they even comparable to something that you would be able to come up with in 2009.

Right.

And then, furthermore, the whatever physical evidence that once existed, nobody can get their hands on it anymore because it was misplaced or destroyed or what have you.

So,

you know, people that don't do these things, that aren't involved in these things, they don't have a great understanding of how important the chain of custody of physical evidence is in all of these cases.

And if you slip up, if there's one misstep on the chain of custody, on someone lawfully and correctly storing evidence, then it's all tainted, right?

It's tainted whether it was tainted at all because you can argue that it was tainted.

If it's unaccounted for for any time,

who's to say what the hell was going on with that physical evidence?

And so because they don't have it or it disappeared for a while,

it's basically moot.

It's no good.

It's good for nothing.

There was some physical evidence that did suggest that maybe Walter Zempek wasn't the killer.

They did have a...

Okay, so in 2009, with Walter Zempek facing trial, Defense Attorney Amber Van Gunten said in interviews with members of the media that there was no evidence against her client.

In fact, the evidence exonerated her clients, she claimed.

She cited the lab report testing a pubic hair found on Lori that did not, NOT, not match Walter Zempic.

She told NBC 24, quote, I've never been more convinced in my 10 years of law practice that this man is innocent.

He should be released from jail based on the evidence that has finally come forth, end quote.

In another interview, she says, this case is absolutely ridiculous.

I don't understand why they are still pursuing charges at this time.

So remember, they're trying to get this tossed out of court altogether.

At the first go-around, it does get tossed.

The judge is like, yeah, there's not a whole lot going on here.

There's not a whole lot of evidence.

There's nothing really new.

This is not a great idea to actually charge this guy and take him to trial.

But

that would ultimately get overturned by a higher court.

And without going through all of those court proceedings that took days and days to sort through,

what we end up with is the case was going to go to trial in 2012.

The state's first witness being Craig Rupp, the guy that was

dating Lori at the time.

Remember, he said he never saw her after she left the party that night.

He told the jury that he had heard that Lori had had been concerned that she was pregnant.

And he said that he met Walter Zempek during the search for Lori.

Zempek telling him that Lori had been about to dump him, dump Craig, and if she was pregnant, that the baby was his, Walter Zempek's.

But with this fight, because this fight that Walter says he got in, this bar fight.

Do we have any eyewitnesses to this fight?

Well, I don't think that it's even

a sticking matter because when he's interviewed in 2008 he says he doesn't remember a bar fight right

um he may have told one or two people that back in 1985 but now he's he's admitting that his statements were inconsistent that he lied to police twice in both of those statements and then when asked about the bar fight he's saying yeah i don't I don't remember saying that.

I don't remember that.

Doesn't remember why he lied, doesn't remember the bar fight statements.

Very fascinating.

Now, during this trial, we also get some...

You know, in these true crime stories, Captain, there are certain things that I'm a sucker for.

And I don't know why this part of these stories always intrigues me.

Maybe it's that

if I were ever to be on a jury.

You know, I've been called for jury duty at least once that I can recall, but

I always think think that it's neat when they go out to a scene.

So the jury was driven to Swanson to

view the spot where Lori was last seen

and then into that rural area where her body was eventually found.

They heard the testimony, obviously, from the men who found her body.

They heard testimony from first responders and the medical examiner.

And they also heard testimony from Lori's friends and family about the circumstances of her disappearance and death.

But, but,

okay, so

what actual evidence do they have against Walter Zempic

at this trial, right?

Because you're going to have a whole political evidence.

Correct, right?

You, what we end up with, and you're going to love this.

Oh, this is going to get your goat, my friend.

We have a jailhouse confession.

Three months.

So, three months after he's arrested, there's this guy named Steve Moden.

But hold on.

When there's no physical evidence and there's no other really hardcore evidence, they always seem to get a confession.

Well, because jailhouses are often filled with liars and cheats who probably are willing to make a deal to benefit themselves

and throw anyone under the bus at any time.

That's why I always look at these as like a with a side side eye, right?

And I would, I would, um,

find these more credible if the person didn't ask for anything

and didn't receive anything because you, sometimes you don't ask for anything, but, but the law, uh, the law enforcement agencies that you're helping out with this confession will give you something, even if you don't ask for it.

So here's,

here's the thing that boggles the brain, right?

So, like, if, if I'm just some dude, which well, I actually am,

um, but if, if I'm some dude, not in a jailhouse, not in a prison,

Mr.

Joe Citizen, as I am,

Mr.

Civilian, and I call up the police and I say, hey, this guy I know, he confessed to murdering

somebody,

and or, hey, I know you're investigating such and such, and I, this person admitted it to me, told me that he did it.

Typically, what is their protocol?

They'll mic that guy up.

They'll mic me up and try to get that story out of him once again, or they'll tap my phone and try to get him to tell me the story once again, right?

Why in the hell in all of these jailhouse confessions, there's only one that I can think of where they actually mic'd up the inmate.

And in that scenario, they only mic'd up the inmate because he was placed there.

He was working undercover.

Why not mic up this Steve Moden

and see if he can get Walter Zempic to repeat what he once told him?

They never seem to do that.

They just like, oh, you know, wheel his ass into the courtroom and have him testify and we'll see what, let the jury sort it out.

So he says that he tells police,

he mailed a letter to the prosecutor.

The prosecutor's name is Scott Hasselman.

He

mails the prosecutor a letter saying that, look, I'm a bit of a legal resource to some of these other inmates, a lot of the other persons waiting trial, or that they will seek me out for some legal advice.

And I ended up talking with Walter Zempic while he was locked up before his trial.

He admitted to me that he kicked and beat Lori to death because he wanted, because she wanted to break up with him, and he couldn't handle the rejection.

And the Steve Moden guy goes on to say that Walter Zempic allegedly told him that he blacked out in a fog of rage while he was beating her.

And that Zempic went on to tell him that he had several people helping him out by lying to cover up his crime, including a friend whose house he had walked to after dumping Lori's body in some brush.

So you got this confession,

supposed confession.

You have a couple people that do testify that he had scratches on his person.

You have the inconsistent statements, and then the rest is all like,

take it for what you will, right?

Like, was he jealous?

How jealous was he?

Was she rejecting him?

Could he handle the rejection?

There's really no physical evidence.

In fact, the physical evidence you do have,

if

that has, if that should even play a role in it, I don't know,

right?

Because

you're going to get the defense that rightfully so will continually point out that Walter Zempek's DNA was not a match to that hair that was found on Lori.

So the only physical evidence is pointing away from the guy that's on trial.

Well, and if you're his defense team, you want to hit that home

over and over.

Hey, we got physical evidence.

that points to somebody else, not my client.

Walter Zempek did not testify at this trial.

As you just correctly said here, his attorneys had effectively emphasized that there was zero physical evidence against their client.

About 11 hours spread out over three days for the jury to conclude that they could not agree whether Walter Zempek II had, if he was guilty of murder.

And so the judge had to declare this a mistrial in the case.

The jury was sent home.

However, Mr.

Zempic, Walter Zempic, still remained charged with murder.

He was free on bond, but must continue to stay in the state of Ohio on electronic home monitoring.

This is,

this sucks.

All right.

Look, I know that there's a lot of people out there.

The room is probably divided right now.

Shout out to the people in the back.

The room is probably divided on

who believes this guy might be guilty, who thinks that he's getting railroaded here, regardless of the situation.

Look, if he's guilty, we really don't care, but we don't know that.

A big part of this, too, for him, he's a business owner.

He lives in a different state, and he's had to remain in Ohio for a very long time, years.

But because this was a mistrial, not an acquittal, he was able to be retried.

Now, what takes place here behind the scenes, Captain, is the prosecuting,

the prosecution, they are interviewing.

This is like almost like a debriefing of the jury, right?

They're interviewing the jury, asking them, you know, what certain questions.

And it was after talking with the hung jury, they decided that they were not going to

further

the case against him.

So

they dismissed,

the prosecution dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled should additional evidence be found against Zempic.

But three years of Walter Zempic's life had been spent as an accused murderer.

18 months of that had been spent in the state of Ohio.

However, he was free to return to Tennessee at that time.

And he says that due to the amount of time he lost his business because of the accusations against him and his time away from the state of Tennessee.

So I'm guessing law enforcement at this point just thought: okay, if we pursue, we don't have enough.

It's been some time that has passed, but maybe if some more time passed, that we'll be able to build a stronger case against him.

Yeah, this is one of those tough ones where

you can see maybe not just a garage divided, like I had mentioned, but maybe a house divided amongst some of the law enforcement officers and even the prosecution.

Of, you know,

is this a situation where we have the guy, we know who did it, we just can't prove it in court, or is it a situation where maybe they got the wrong guy?

It's the hair evidence for me that makes this all very shaky, right?

Like, if,

but what does that hair evidence mean?

And I, and I hate to be going down this road because I'm somebody that with the Porchlight Project, we, we,

DNA is the holy grail for us in, in, in our cases, and it's, and it often is telling us who is responsible for what in this scenario is simply a hair found on her person we know that her current boyfriend craig rubb he says they went to this pond to spend some time together his words what what does that mean did they do everything except for have sex that night as he says right it appears that based off of the evidence that they collected in 1985 that she was either sexually assaulted or did have some kind of sexual had sex with somebody that evening.

But what I'm getting at is, I do believe that there's a world where Craig Rupp or somebody else left that hair on her person

and Walter Zempic

then later killed her.

I believe that that's a possibility.

I also believe that there's a world where he's completely innocent and lied about where he was that night because he was a dumb 18-year-old kid and scared.

What we do get is a lot of more

drama in this case.

So nothing happens publicly after Zempic walked on the case

until, let's go to 2014.

We have Rachel Hill, Lori's older sister, and Walter Zempic

both appear on the Dr.

Phil TV show.

Now, a lot happened.

I'll give you the old colonel's summary here.

Of course, Rachel Hill was fully in, full tilt, on Zempic's guilt.

Basically, it was evident that since the arrest of 2009, her rage against him had been festering inside of her, and it was only heightened by them not being able to get a guilty conviction.

Rachel told Dr.

Phil that when the relationship ran its course and Lori moved on, Walt, she refers to him as Walt, did not accept this.

Quote, he was a stalker, she said.

She said Walt gave Lori an ultimatum, and then she was killed.

Rachel laid out the last hours of Lori's life for Dr.

Phil about her going to the party, arguing with her boyfriend, and being seen by neighbors walking alone toward home.

Then she went missing and Walt was a crying mess, huddled in a fetal position, an extreme, an extreme reaction, maybe.

Like maybe he's overreacting on purpose.

Maybe he's...

He's putting on a show.

Rachel told Dr.

Phil that when Lori was found, the damage to her her sister's head and face was so bad that her father told the girl's mother that Lori had been shot.

There was a hole in the center of her forehead.

Her right ear had been missing, been eaten by animals.

The Hill family never, she says the Hill family never suspected Walt back then.

Rachel said that he was the best man at her wedding.

He spent time, he says he spent time at their house after Lori was killed, stored a car there for a period of time.

But she says that she began to suspect Walt in 1991.

That year, I guess Walt had taken her

Rachel's babysitter out on a date, and Rachel walked into the room and found Walt attacking the teenage girl, beating her, and in her words saying trying to rape her.

She says that she chased him off with a shotgun, and that's when the thought came to her, well, maybe he had done the same thing to my sister.

She went on to tell Dr.

Phil that when police went to serve the warrant on

Walt for this incident, so this would be 1991, that he had photos of Lori on his walls and his bedside table.

They found her earring, Lori's earring that she had worn the night she was killed.

It was all bent and misshapen.

Rachel said that it was misshaped because she had been hit while, you know, the earring was still in her ear.

She said that Walt told police that the family gave him this earring as some kind of memento of Lori.

She denies this when he says that.

She told Dr.

Phil that, quote, I am 100% positive that Walt is my sister's killer beyond a shadow of doubt.

And then she called Walter a psychopath.

Earlier during the week

of the Dr.

Phil taping for the show,

Rachel admitted she

had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital because she had threatened to kill both Walter Zempic and his attorney,

Amber Van Gunton.

I mean, look,

this is not a great way to handle your problems.

I can maybe

reconcile with the idea of going after Walter Zempic, but I don't know that you need to threaten to kill the attorney as well.

But clearly, she's not in her right mind.

She did say she was honest about being admitted to the psychiatric hospital.

She did say the hospital, they were keeping me safe from hunting Amber and Walt Down.

Rachel said that she promised her father on his deathbed that she would kill the man who killed Lori, and she was determined to keep that promise.

Yeah, but you have to figure out who it is first.

You have to figure out who it is first.

And she did say that,

you know, when she was able to

clear her mind, clear her thoughts, she

changed her mind on wanting to carry out that promise to her father because she was older.

She had five granddaughters.

She, you know, she had a family.

She had many more reasons for staying out of prison than just the one.

for getting even and getting that eye for an eye that her father wanted.

But this is, I mean, this is a

strange and bizarre scenario right she's not seen the accused since the trial that he that he walked away from

and now they were going to be face to face on set together well this is a dr phil special this is what he does this is what he does yeah it's what old philosophy

at some point she's heard she can be overheard asking dr Phil if his security guards were present because she wanted to make sure that if needed, they would be there to stop her from hurting Walter Zimpek.

So

Zimpek said in a pre-taped interview, you know, when they pre-taped something and then later they air it on the show,

he's saying in that pre-taped interview that Rachel was fixated on him.

He says, I've always been in love with Lori.

He maintained that he and Lori had started talking about getting back together.

And that night she was supposed to leave the boy that she was seeing at the time.

He said, in essence, she was at the party.

I was at the mall with some friends.

That night I got a call from the police around 1:30 a.m.

asking if I had seen or heard from Lori.

I said no.

The next day, I saw Rachel at her house and helped search for Lori.

He denied having any scratches on him of any sort.

He said he was crushed when Lori was found dead.

He did go on to tell the show: hey, look, I passed a polygraph exam back in 1985.

My DNA was tested against the DNA on Lori's body.

It didn't match.

And

while he's trying to defend himself and point out reasons why he might be innocent, Rachel starts spouting off.

You know, I hate you.

I know you killed Lori.

Rachel said, man, this is disturbing.

Rachel said that Lori,

when she was attacked that night and killed, that Lori fought so hard her knuckles were broken.

Her argument was that the DNA was so disintegrated, there was nothing left that he could not have been cleared by DNA.

He did,

this is odd because we know he had a different stance on this when interviewed in 2008.

On the show, and maybe he was just trying to present himself in a certain light, a bad light, but he he did deny lying to the police.

He said he did give two conflicting stories about that night, and one, he just

left out the facts that he was with a girl that night, with the, with the Sandy girl.

Now, of course, Dr.

Phil's not going to allow this to stand, right?

We know his

mojo.

So now you can see him armed with the transcript from the interviews, and he's going to confront Walter saying, like look man in this interview you admit that you lied like so don't don't sit here and tell us that you didn't lie to the police you you admit it right here we have your words so Walter gets all kind of shifty during this part he's he's he's kind of denying it again yeah but you can be a liar and not a murderer true and and and and in his defense he has a different answer for it at this time he's saying look yes i gave them two different stories the only difference in my stories is that i left Sandy out.

In the second story, I gave them, I didn't leave Sandy out.

And he's saying now to Phil, Dr.

Phil, I was young, I was scared, I was nervous when I was talking to the police back in 1985.

And of course, Phil's, Dr.

Phil is going to point out: look,

this looks very suspicious.

And, and look, I,

I don't like Walter in this part, but I can agree with both Dr.

Phil and Walter's statements when he's confronted.

And

Dr.

Phil pushes him even further, challenges him even more.

Why did you give, at this point, Dr.

Phil is saying three different alibis?

The rebuttal here is that

Walter's saying, I always said that I was at the mall.

And he goes on to say that

the things that remain true to this day, I always said that I was at the mall, number one.

And number two, I never saw, I always said I never saw Lori on the night that she died.

Walter's attorney, Amber, then points out on the show to Dr.

Phil that she speaks up and she raised a theory that has never been presented before in the case, saying that it was a ritualistic killer.

She said that two sticks were found on Lori's stomach in the form of an upside-down cross.

I guess it's so out of left field here, Captain, that during the course of the Dr.

Phil episode, that's not really further further explored.

Right.

There's similarities to this case and the Delphi case.

But when you find

a victim in a wooded area or a field,

sometimes these killers decide to, well, maybe I can conceal the body and after

starting that process, realize there's not enough material around them and they

right or that a car drives by and they

take off.

It's like the first time that somebody brought up to me with Delphi, they go, you know, they

found some sticks on the girls in the form of a cross or a form of something.

And I said, yeah, they were in the effing woods.

It would be strange if they didn't find some sticks.

Like, I mean, come on here, people.

So I'm not going to go through the 1985 polygraph, but we do have the transcript of that.

And Dr.

Phil did as well.

They brought on an expert, a polygraph expert, former FBI special agent, who reviewed the 1985 test that Walter passed.

And, you know, he passed that test.

The expert said this would be a very, very difficult test for him to lie his way through and to pass.

This would be a very,

it would be very difficult to end up with these results with the way that the test was administered, with the questions that were asked, and for him to

be deceptive, but not give off the result that he was being deceptive.

So that, I mean, if you're scoring at home, put one in favor of Walter here.

But there was a second episode, a second Dr.

Phil episode.

Dr.

Phil made Rachel Hill promise to put some stock in the polygraph results.

In other words, he's saying, hey,

we're going to do another episode here, but I want you to try to keep more of an open mind.

And on this episode, it was very different.

Walter said to Rachel, I feel sorry for you, and I feel sorry for your family.

Rachel asked only one question.

The purpose of this second episode here, Captain, was they were going to administer polygraph examinations of both Rachel and of Walter.

This would be Dr.

Phil's team doing this.

And that's why he's saying, look, you know,

we know that he passed the polygraph in 1985.

We're going to give him another one today.

We're going to give you one as well.

And we want you to

try to keep an open mind about the results that may come of this.

So what were the results?

Well, this is interesting because part of the

questions for Rachel centers around that babysitter incident.

Remember where she says, this is the light that went off after I saw him assaulting this teenage babysitter that I wondered, did he do the same thing to my sister years ago?

Right.

And the

examiner said that

regarding that babysitter incident, Rachel's statements and answers were truthful.

The results were truthful.

Now, the flip of that is in regard to

Walter Zimbeck killing Lori and all the questions that were involved for him in this new updated polygraph gets the same result.

He says he didn't kill her, and the result is he's not being deceptive.

Right.

And in this moment, and I think, look, I mean, sometimes it takes a person to have walked in another person's shoes.

And what I mean by that in this

scenario is Rachel knew all along that this guy passed the 85 polygraph.

But doesn't that polygraph mean a whole lot more when you know something to be true and you have to sit down and give your own and then

the results are in and they're saying, yeah,

it came back that you were telling the truth about this incident that this guy didn't want to admit to?

In Zimpic's test, he's only asked about if he killed Lori.

He's only asked about questions pertaining to the night that Lori disappeared and about uh Lori's homicide.

It comes back non-deceptive.

He says he didn't do it, says he wasn't involved, Non-deceptive.

So in this scenario, Captain, Rachel seemed to immediately accept that the polygraph results were, in fact, accurate.

She began crying.

She was almost hysterical.

She pleaded with Walter, asking him questions as she's crying.

Why all the lies?

Why all the different stories?

He said he didn't even remember saying those things to police.

He said he was a kid.

She cried.

He cried.

Walter goes on to say on the show that he loved Rachel's family, that he loved the Hill family, saying, I would, quote, I would do anything for Lori.

And then he approached Rachel and they hugged it out.

And he says to her, let's go find the person who did this together.

Rachel acknowledged that she has

that she

has to forgive him and that she has accepted that he didn't do it, but she said she hoped it was him because if it wasn't him who had killed her sister, then it was a monster.

And

back in'85, and in the moment that her poor sister knew that she was going to die.

And it doesn't end there because we fast forward two years later, the case was pretty much stone cold after the charges against Walter Zimbeck were dropped.

It was stone cold up until the Dr.

Phil drama, and then even after that, stone cold, at least

as far as as the public knows.

So years go by, but in 2016, a man was arrested in Fulton County for the murder of another young woman in a crime that seems eerily similar.

And this arrest would revive Lori Ann Hill's homicide case, at least in the eyes of the public and especially in her family.

The victim in that case was Sierra Jogan.

The man, the local man arrested for her murder was James Dean Worley.

And after Worley's arrest, Rachel Hill spoke with NBC 24.

She said that she believed when

Zimbeck was arrested that he did in fact kill Lori.

But now,

after this new information, she believed that James Worley killed her sister Lori.

Now, to be perfectly clear here, Captain, this seems to be more of a gut feeling type of thing rather than Rachel having any evidence of Worley's involvement or having killed her sister.

This next part here is from NBC 24.

It says, quote, Rachel believes it was Worley who killed her sister after she saw him at his first arraignment in Fulton County.

She said, the evil that oozed out of him and the bloodstained hands

and the fact that he wrote with his left hand is what convinced her.

Rachel said she she was told years ago that her sister's killer was left-handed.

Anyone who has any information about the murder of Lori Ann Hill, please contact the Toledo Police Department at 419-245-3142.

And if you have any information about James Dean Worley, convicted murderer James Dean Worley, please call the Fulton County Sheriff's Office at 419-335-4010.

I want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage each and every week, and thanks for sharing these cases on social media.

Colonel, do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners?

Absolutely, Captain.

This week, this one was

one that I think is

properly handpicked by yours truly because we've been getting a few requests lately for Dayton, Ohio cases.

And so this is by a great historic true crime expert.

You know, it's one thing to cover these stories that happened 10, 20 years ago.

It's one thing to cover these stories that are new, fresh in the news just a few months ago, like

we did it a week or so back.

All of these cases are unique, but it's incredibly difficult to go way back in time and find a good deal of information and historic facts to piece together a story about an old true crime story.

And

Sarah Kashal does it better than most.

And we've recommended some of her books previously on True Crime Garage, but this week we are recommending a, it's called Murder in Victorian Dayton, The Tragic Story of Bessie Little.

The murder of Bessie Little and the trial of her murderer rocked Victorian Dayton.

Believing herself pregnant and desperate to save her reputation, young Bessie tried to force her boyfriend to marry her quickly.

Instead, he took her out for a buggy ride, shot her twice in the head, and dumped her body in the river.

When she was discovered, he tried to convince everyone that she had committed suicide.

We talked about a dramatic trial this week on True Crime Garage.

We talked about the drama on Dr.

Phil.

There was a dramatic trial in this case as well.

So go out and check out this great book, Murder and Victorian Dayton: The Tragic Story of Bessie Little.

You don't have to write that title down now because you can go to our website, truecrimegarage.com, click on the recommendation tab, and we have podcasts, documentaries, and other books recommendations there for you.

And until next week, be good, be kind, and don't liver.

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