Missing Interviews True Crime Garage /// Part 1

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Welcome to Off the Record.

I'm your host, Nick Mosnick.

True Crime Record.

It's good to be seen and it's good to see you.

Off the Record.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for telling me, friends.

True Crime Podcast Podcast.

Be good, be kind, and don't live.

True crime,

gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer.

Let's talk some true

Welcome back to Missing.

I am Tim here today with Lance.

Lance, how are you today?

I'm doing great today, Tim.

I hope all the listeners out there are doing great as well.

We have quite a treat here on this episode.

This is going to be a good conversation.

I think everyone's going to love this collaboration that we are embarking upon right now.

But, Tim, let's find out how you're doing before we get to this amazing episode.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing great.

Thanks a lot for asking.

And yes, I'm very excited to to introduce this two-part episode and our wonderful guests.

It's Captain and Nick from True Crime Garage.

And we go back a long ways with these guys,

having, I guess, met them probably 2016 range,

somewhere in that timeframe.

So we've covered some cases together.

We've talked a lot at Crime Cons and other various conferences.

And

here we invited them back for a great conversation.

It's a wide-ranging conversation, Lance.

We get into a lot of different topics.

We talk a little bit about Nick's book.

We talk a little bit about the Porchlight Project, which is Nick's nonprofit.

We talk a little bit about the cases that haunt us or stick with us.

And so for us, Maura Murray's case comes up and also Brian Schaefer's case comes up as well.

And Lance, I know you'll remember, you and I covered Brian Schaefer's case with Nick and Captain in the garage on True Crime Garage several years ago.

So we're a little bit familiar with that case.

But most of the Brian Schaefer discussion happens in part two and most of the Moore Murray discussion happens in part one of this two-part episode.

I mean, it's almost impossible to have a conversation with these guys with the microphones on, with the recording happening, and not talk about the two major stories that each of us have covered, respectfully, Maura Murray and Brian Schaefer.

And one thing that just strikes me off the bat about the two of them: no matter what we're talking about, there's always just this sense of calm.

Like, you just feel calm and comfortable talking to these two.

And I can totally see how their listenership is so loyal to them because they are just like a couple of

good dudes who are trying to do some good stuff.

And this felt to me like,

one,

a catch-up session.

We were circling back to some topics that interest us and that we can talk about seriously for hours on end.

But also,

I don't know if Captain meant to do this, but

he was

going down this road of

coming to terms with the fact that his life and if you do this true crime podcasting thing, your life doesn't have to always be about this and it seemed like he kind of

battled with that for a while and I didn't realize how much that was a topic for him because he brought it back a couple of times throughout the conversation that hey I'm I'm fine with not being the person who's a hundred percent my entire life is about true crime he he

had like what 20 guitars behind him you know he's he does a bunch of other things and I think that's why it works really well between the two of them, because he can put his technical hat on.

He can do all the editing and all the sound design and, you know, the behind-the-scenes clicks and edits that they need for that show to work.

And Nick can do his thing with the writing and the researching and bringing the stories to them.

And I just thought it was really cool that we were able to get a glimpse inside of Captain's, I guess, psychological

wherewithal during that conversation where he was like saying, you know, it's okay.

You don't don't always have to be always about true crime.

You don't have to let it consume you.

And that's a good piece of advice, too, for people who want to get involved in this, who are just starting, or people who have been doing it for years who are like, I don't know what to do.

I feel bad every time I

read an article that doesn't have anything to do with true crime.

It feels like I'm not doing my job, but it's 11 p.m.

on like a Tuesday night.

Yeah, definitely a balance there.

Yeah, and most of the sort of personal conversation comes in the second

And we also spoke a little bit about our nonprofit in the conversation, and our nonprofit is called Private Investigations for the Missing.

You can learn more about that at investigations for the missing.org.

And we're going to be doing another live fundraiser for PIs for the missing.

And I think that's going to be at the end of May.

So stay tuned for a date and a time for that.

Very good.

The last time we had a fundraiser, Tim, I think I got a tattoo because we raised enough money so that we went over the threshold.

We haven't set a goal yet for that particular threshold.

We do know that people's finances are tight, so who knows?

We're going to discuss this internally, and then we'll maybe come up with some other fun, goal-reaching

event that can take place.

But yeah, stay tuned for the date on that.

But we did hear from Lou and from a few other people that we will have some very, very interesting, cool guests to join us and to discuss stories that are all like in relation to private investigations for the missing.

And can't wait to do that.

It's been too long.

It's been too long since we've had a PIs for the missing fundraiser.

All right, everyone.

So, we're going to play part one of this two-part conversation with True Crime Garage now.

Make sure to check out what they're doing at truecrimegarage.com.

They have a great show.

And hey, while you're going to find out more about True Crime Garage and listening to their show, Tim, we also have another True Crime show, Crawl Space.

Most of our listeners probably know about that.

I don't know how many of those actually make the transition to listen to that podcast as well.

But over the past like few months, since the beginning of the year, we've had some great, great guests come on and they're either talking about the crimes that they've committed.

They're talking about, and now they're trying to redeem themselves, or they're talking about the undercover work that they did for the FBI and the crazy situations that they got themselves involved in.

We talked to a a bunch of authors, journalists.

The past few months have just been chock full of these incredible episodes.

So, why don't you go over and give that a listen as well?

Hit up True Crime Garage, hit up Crawlspace.

And please follow us on social media at Missing CSM.

And we're going to break quick for commercial here, and we'll be right back with Nick and Captain.

We are being joined by Captain and Nick of True Crime Garage.

How's it going, guys?

Thrilled.

It's been a while, fellas.

It's been, what, a couple years?

Too long.

Too long.

Tim only calls me.

Tim only calls me when he's mad at me.

But really, is is that unusual for the people in your in your life though?

Yeah, people only call me when they're upset.

Well, you guys are a sight for sore eyes.

It's really good to see you.

You guys look good.

You guys look like you haven't aged, and we look like we've aged twice the speed.

That's not true.

No, definitely not true.

That's not true.

We're both old men at this point.

We're decrepit.

We're decrepit.

What's going on?

You have a lot of guitars behind you.

Arms don't work.

Legs don't work.

Nothing works no more.

They asked me to fight the big fight.

I'll fight the big fight.

How many guitars do you have behind you?

This is the small room.

The big room is like, oh, I have issues.

I have issues.

My therapist told me I'm just trying to fill up holes from childhood trauma.

Okay.

I had a very we could go down that rabbit hole if you want.

Had a very abusive older brother.

Oh.

Oh, my goodness.

No, I'm just joking.

Nick, you have a lot of books behind you.

Yeah, filling up holes for my childhood trauma.

He had a very abusive younger brother.

Wow.

Two minutes in and we're already so deep in the psychology of True Crime Garage.

Hey, 20 minutes in, we'll all be crying.

I do like the red you guys both got going on in the background there.

It looks pretty nice,

synchronized in a way.

Very fancy.

We're actually in the same room, just

different backgrounds.

Do you guys still record in the same place?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very cool.

So I'm in the spot that we normally record, and he's normally on the other side of the window, but um yep not today he's in his home office so the garage 2.0

right

well what's been going on with your you guys' uh your show tell us a little bit about uh your journey where are you guys at in uh 2025 well we just finished up doing a series a six-part series called hate made in america it was um it spans it's a story that spans decades and starts with some uh white supremacist groups that wanted to overthrow the U.S.

government many years ago.

And actually, they started, they were tried, a handful of guys were tried for conspiracy to overthrow the government in the 80s.

And they were unable to convict the guys.

And this story really has,

it's really kind of the roots of the Oklahoma City bombing that occurred in 1995.

So we start with that group that was tried for conspiracy, and we end on the Oklahoma City bombing, which was a ⁇

it's interesting because I think that

the Timothy McVeigh story is much larger than most people think.

You know, he's often thought of as this lone wolf, homegrown terrorist.

And

I mean, it really,

it's a story that spans hate begets hate.

You know, that's what the Bible tells us.

And this story proves that to be factual.

Great, great.

I got some follow-up questions here.

You must have a number of topics that you want to do these expanded series on.

It's such a daunting task to take on something like this, especially in the climate that is today.

There's a lot of hate going around, and there's a lot of white supremacists that are starting to become just kind of brazen in their activities.

This is something that happened in the 90s, but you said it goes beyond that.

And you also said that everyone looks at McVay and says, oh, it's a lone wolf.

Do you think that that's just like the comfortable way of saying, I don't want to know the history?

I don't know what want to know what's going on today because my life is comfortable.

So we're just going to keep it at lone wolf?

Well, I think that it's a, it was such a horrific event.

And then to learn within a span of less than two days that it was committed by an American.

You know, they initially thought that this would have Middle Eastern ties.

And to learn that it was committed by an American makes it even more harder to kind of try to wrap your head around it.

And it's just, I think it's the emotions that are involved, especially if you've not been to that part of the country,

they will never heal from this.

They'll never ever heal from this.

And so it really truly was, though, when we started doing the research and started putting the shows together, the episodes together for this, we were quite surprised because we were starting to go, we we think that maybe six episodes is not enough, that we just kept finding things that were interesting and taking us down different paths that some of these extreme hate groups were a part of over the years.

In fact, there's a double homicide out in the Garden State Parkway that goes back, I think, to the early 70s.

I'm pretty convinced that that a member of one of these hate groups had intimate knowledge of that double homicide.

And he created this Aryan nation group that went on to rob banks.

So they would go in with these pipe bombs.

And

once they're caught, we learned that they weren't actual bombs.

But they would go in and tell these banks that they had pipe bombs on them.

And they were stealing money from the banks.

In fact,

they did this in multiple states.

They started in Utah and worked their way all the way to Ohio.

They were robbing banks to fund

an attempt to commit terrorist acts and overthrow the government.

And so, I mean, in that, so we didn't even get a chance to start talking about the bank robbers in the story because it's really a story that took six hours for us to tell the version that we were able to put together with our original idea of starting off with Richard Snell, who not only kicks off the story, he goes to prison.

He was one of the guys that was charged with conspiracy.

And in fact, he had planned,

it's well documented.

He planned to blow up the Alfred P.

Murray building, which is the building that Timothy McVeigh blew up.

He planned to blow that up back in 1983.

And he decided that it was divine intervention that he didn't blow up that building.

And ultimately, he is arrested and convicted of two murders, one an absolute hate crime, and he is sentenced to death by the state of Arkansas.

And he is actually executed the same day that Timothy McVay blew up the Alpha P.

Murray building.

And some people say it's coincidence, some say that it was not.

And so this was sort of a long examination, including portions of Ruby Ridge and Waco with David Koresh, that we told that story and really kind of just pondered the question: what was McVeigh's real motivations here?

Was it just simply hate?

Was it revenge like he claims for Waco?

Was it

the first act of a revolution?

Or was it a going-away present for Richard Snell?

And Richard Snell watched

9.02 a.m.

is

when the bomb went off, when the truck exploded and blew up the Alpha P.

Murray building.

Richard Snell was executed 9 p.m.

that same day.

He watched, he asked the guards if they could bring in a TV, and he watched that play out on CNN that morning.

And there's varying reports of what his reactions were to

that.

But it's not.

So was it coincidence or was it something

far beyond that that McVay blew up, picked the same building out of all the buildings?

McVay had very little ties to even the state of Oklahoma.

So it just seems very odd and strange that he chose the same building.

And a bigger contradiction there could not be when it comes to McVay for his reasons of saying why he did it, why he chose that building, the revenge for what happened at Waco.

You got revenge by killing over 100 innocent people in a building that included children and a daycare center.

Come on, man.

Your argument has no legs and your war has,

it's all made up.

When I think of McVay, I liken him to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who

created all these reasons why

and rationalized away what he was doing when really it's truly just the act of a hateful madman.

Yeah, there's a number of other ways to exact your revenge, quote unquote, as opposed to targeting specifically a building that

there was no chance that there would be no children in that building.

You know, like that there was going to be children there.

He said that that building was his target, not necessarily the people in it.

Well, then blow it up in the middle of the night

when there would probably be four or five people in the entire building.

No, he picked 9.02 a.m.

when once everybody had arrived at work.

Right.

Wow.

Well, I'm glad you guys dove into that topic.

I think it's important to talk about that.

And we recently hosted a great conversation with a former retired FBI undercover agent who infiltrated some of these white supremacist groups.

And he's got a hell of a story to tell.

He just wrote a book

called

Code Name Pale Horse.

And I think he was on Joe Rogan and stuff like that, too.

So his story has gotten out there quite a bit.

That was my nickname in high school.

Pale horse?

Yeah, pale horse.

I was fast.

I was fast.

Oh, it was because you were fast.

Yeah.

Well, and I had four.

And very pale.

And very pale.

And I had four legs.

My code name was code name.

What topic gets you guys fired up?

Because I'm seeing Nick describe this.

And then once we get deeper into the conversation and the actual details of what happens in these attacks.

I do find myself getting fired up on something.

What was that, Captain?

Well, he starts screaming.

I always tell people,

well, we grew up in a family with four siblings.

So no matter what you were talking about, you had to be passionate about or nobody was listening.

So that's our gift,

probably his gift more than mine, but

We could take a case that he's like, I'm not really invested in this case in 20 minutes and he's screaming and yelling.

And I'm like, good, good energy.

Keep it up.

I'm like the juggernaut from X-Men Comics.

Once I start going, I just start building up momentum and getting bigger and bigger and stronger.

Stronger, louder.

Is there a breaking point, though?

You know, like, what's the point?

We'll start crying.

I've cried on Mike probably three times, I think, in the 10 years that we've done the show.

Yeah, okay.

So what were those moments?

What made you?

Yeah, we want to go back there, Lance?

That's where we're going.

I know, you're already talking about your childhood trauma.

I thought that's where we were going.

There was no childhood trauma, but the

no, there's a couple cases that

I've gotten pretty, well, like the captain said, I get worked up about almost all the cases, but there's a couple of cases that,

and I don't know why.

You guys are probably experienced the same thing.

There's some cases that just affect you differently, and you don't know why.

There doesn't seem to to always be rhyme nor reason for it.

And it's just,

it's something that it's difficult for me to explain and difficult for me to even understand myself.

Well, and your guys' path is a little different because you

were single case focused for a long time, and now

you're every case that you find interesting or that you want to shine some light on.

But do you feel that with some cases you feel more of a responsibility to?

Yes, 100%.

100%.

And sometimes,

and we could all say, in fairness, when you guys were covering Mars' case exclusively, like, obviously, that has a different level of responsibility and

the attachment.

And then, obviously, the outside world attaching that case to you is your own doing.

But we have some cases

initially with Delphi, the Delphi murders, or like Brian Schaefer, or some of these other cases that we've just talked about.

Sometimes we get painted as that's our case, but it's like

none of the podcasters, none of the YouTubers or content creators own

own a case, you know.

So sometimes the responsibility that you feel is put on by the audience, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

Yeah, I think that's a good point.

I also think the more we cover a case,

I think the more kind of emotional we get on it.

I guess I'll just speak for myself on that one.

You know, Maura Murray's case is the case you mentioned,

Captain, that we started our podcasting journey on.

And that was a case

that we covered very in-depth.

We did about 150 episodes or so.

And,

you know, it was really hard not to be emotional about it.

And I think

we had to take a step back.

There's a few reasons why we did.

Mostly because the nonprofit that we are on the board of, Private Investigations for the Missing, has taken the case on.

So it's a great nonprofit that was started by Bruce Maitland, who is Breanna Maitland's dad.

And

they aim to fund private investigations for cases that don't have private investigators, and the investigators do it pro bono with expenses paid.

So Maura Murray's case is probably the most high-profile case that the nonprofit has taken on, but

our role in the nonprofit is we will discuss cases, publicize them, will interview the private investigators if there's some purpose behind it, if the investigators want information out there for any specific purpose.

And with Mora's case and with all the cases, we're not going to cover them if the investigators aren't asking,

if they're being investigated by the nonprofit and they are not looking for publicity in that way, we stay away.

So that's kind of where we're at with Mora's case.

But I will say it came after, you know, five or so, you know, I don't even know how many years, several, maybe more than five years working on it.

And, you know, a lot of emotions, a lot of serious emotions,

you know, will get attached.

You get attached

in any case, especially unsolved ones.

It's kind of wild.

Well, and I think that's, again, you guys would know this

as well as Nick is

when you start doing this, you don't know how in-depth it's going to become or how much it's going to

start um

defining your your life i mean i remember meeting renner for the first time and he was like

oh you're interested in mara's case well you'll become part of

not necessarily her case but you're going to become a part of some of the cases that you end up uh discussing and

in say probably same way with you guys like when you meet julie

the case becomes more real It's not from a distance.

And then, you know, Ian, you guys know this.

I was a huge fan of your guys' show and your coverage of Mars case.

So even just meeting you guys, it was like, oh, now I'm more part of it.

And then you guys became a part of the six-part docu series.

And then you guys did your own.

And so it's like, it's, it's, it's amazing to me how you can just go from talking about a case with your friend to

being somewhat involved

or maybe even helping to

solve the case.

And you guys have your nonprofit as well.

No, no, Nick.

I always tell people, like, we started this journey and

Nick ran with it, you know, and Nick can talk about Project Porchlight.

Yeah, Project Porchlight was actually James Renner is the one who founded and had the idea.

And

really, though, you know, the captain would have been a part of it.

The problem is, and you guys know this from being on a board as well, but the problem with a board is you can't get too many people

from the same space because when you're voting on things, you don't want to have

any kind of bullying or

like an unbalanced power, right?

So

once I'm on the board, there's an unbalanced power.

Obviously, obviously.

Code name pail horse is coming out to play.

Well, with us covering cases on a weekly basis, we could have

possibly manipulated the board into covering cases that we wanted to cover for the show in some weird way.

That's something we wouldn't do, but who's to say?

You don't know when you're seeking out people to help.

So I'm very proud that True Crime Garage has been a part of Project Porchlight.

We've had some success over the years.

and I think it's been around four or five years now, but

we've had some success.

We've had some letdowns, as you will, in any of these situations.

But

yeah, we've solved

what was at the time an over 30-year-old cold case homicide through DNA work that we were able to fundraise the money for the DNA testing and the genealogy work that was done on that and make an arrest of a guy and

of the perpetrator.

And so that, I mean, that we were able to provide answers to the family in that case

that they probably resolved themselves to the idea that their sister or their daughter's case would never be solved after all that time.

And we've also been able to identify a whole bunch of people over the years, and some of them murder victims.

So, and

a homicide investigation is really difficult to conduct when you do not know who your victim is.

And so, just simply by identifying the victim,

right then and there, now you have

a list of potential suspects as an investigator because you now can start to hone in on this person's inner circle, their family, their friends, people that they may have worked with.

You can start to hone in and start talking to those people that you never knew to talk to in the first place.

And we'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors.

TV's number one drama, High Potential, returns with star Caitlin Olson as the crime-solving single mom with an IQ of 160.

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

It's the perfect blend of humor and mystery.

She's breaking the mold without breaking a nail.

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

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Thanks to our sponsors and now we're back to the program.

Tell us about, I know there was there was some recent news from the Porch Light project.

Yeah, tell us a little bit about what recently happened.

Well, and I'll tell you what, like when we're going to have success on one of these cases, I know it almost instantly because it's always kind of like magical how the connection of finding the case and getting to work the case comes about.

And anytime it comes back, it comes about in this really like mysterious, mystical way,

I know that, I know that we're going to solve it.

Like, I know that we're going to be able to further advance the investigation.

So, our part of our parameters for covering a case or taking on a case are

threefold.

One, it has to be a state of Ohio case.

Two,

law enforcement has to be willing

to let us in because

they're the ones that are ultimately going to solve the case.

We're just going to assist.

And the other parameter is that the family wants us to be involved in their case.

And so, once we have all three of those ducks in a row, we can move forward.

Well, this recent case that we had success with is known as the Toledo Jane Doe case.

And we were able to identify a young woman that had not been since 1987.

They had no idea who she was.

And I'll get into the case here in just a second, but this is an example, a prime example of how these cases sometimes can come about.

So I called

the investigating agency and I said, hey, I'm going through my whole spiel of introducing myself and telling them what it is that we do and how we do it and the successes that we've had.

And I'm about halfway through my spiel and the detective cuts me off.

He goes, I know who you guys are.

I said, really?

I go, tell me that's a good thing.

Because I'm not going to lie to you, there are departments we've reached out to about specific cases, and they just don't want any help with them.

They don't want anybody else involved in it for some reason, one reason or another.

I don't know.

But

with this case, the detective tells me, he goes, I know who Porchlight is because I've had it on my to-do list for the past two weeks to call you about the case you're calling me about today.

And I said, well, that's strange.

I said, because I've had it on my to-do list for the past two weeks to call you about this case too.

And, you know, you just get busy and bogged down with things, and there's always tomorrow.

And so

we shared a laugh.

And, well, no, there's not enough hours in the day, but we shared a laugh.

And very quickly, this was approved by the brass at Toledo Police Department.

And we were able to finally identify this young woman who went missing in 1987

from

Taylor, Michigan.

And so we now know her name is Tammy Lowe.

Well, the reason why Toledo had this case was because in 1987, in the early morning hours,

there was a body that was on fire, had been set on fire and left in an alley behind, like a, it was either an auto body shop or a mechanic shop that had been left there.

And

since then, they've been trying to figure out who she is, A, who she is, and B, who put her there.

And

we've got half of that.

We have half of that solution now.

We now know who she is.

And now

we need to get people from Taylor, Michigan to hear this and to see this and to see it on social media so we can start finding people that knew her back in 1987.

Who knew Tammy Lowe, 1987?

She was 18 years old, blonde, as said from Taylor, Michigan.

And we do have a photo with her with some friends that is new to our investigation.

So some of those people have been identified and talked to, but we're still trying to figure out the rest of what happened to her and who put her there.

You get all that information coming in at you.

How is that filtered through the nonprofit?

What information do you get and what information

does like law enforcement hold back?

So it varies with every case and it varies with every department,

which is true too for our work with True Crime Garage.

Sometimes on these cases, we are discussing the cases with law enforcement, and you get varying degrees of assistance when you're putting together these stories.

We've had some cases on the show where they hand us the entire police file, 300, 400 pages long.

We have other cases where we call and leave a voicemail that doesn't get returned until two months after we've covered the case.

And it's not because they're not checking their voicemail.

They're not interested in talking with us.

But then

they may have tuned in and heard us saying

we attempted to reach out to the investigating agency and they haven't talked to us.

So there's always varying degrees of it in regard to the Porchlight Project.

And if anybody wants to learn more about what it is that we do or how they can get involved and help, it's porchlightonline.org.

That's porchlightonline.org.

But with a case like this, we get a good amount of information.

There are other cases where we're more hands-off and just fundraising and paying for the funding of

testing that needs to be done.

There's,

you know, I've toured the coroner's office,

met with medical examiners on some cases.

And so it really, there is no cookie cutter version of what we do.

But with if tips start coming in, information starts coming in, some of it will go directly to Porchlight.

So that it's determined by Porchlight where that information goes, what to do with that information.

Me, if a tip or information finds its way to me, it's going to law enforcement.

Whether I think it's viable or not,

whether I think it's something that, you know, Lance, if you came to me with information and said, you know, and I would tell you up front, I'm taking this to law enforcement.

Even if you told me you already did, I'm taking it to law enforcement.

I will let them sort out.

They know the case better than I in all cases.

So let's let them determine what is good information and what is bad information.

Now, to be clear, the information I would be taking to law enforcement is that Tim did it.

Overall, blanket statements.

I agree.

No proof.

No proof, but I'd be a pretty good character witness.

He's a phone yeller.

When he gets on the phone, he's a yeller.

Likes to yell at people on the phone.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that, Captain.

I definitely

don't even remember the specifics.

I don't even remember.

I remember it being late one night, and I remember being

a little maybe under the influence and just, you know,

just emotional about these cases we cover.

I mean,

I do apologize to you personally,

but I don't apologize as a whole in getting emotional with these cases.

Well, okay, question for you guys.

And Tim, you can yell at at me whenever you want because

it's hard to be friends with people that you were a fan of.

You know what I mean?

Like, I listened to

probably a, I don't know, probably a hundred episodes of you guys before I actually met you.

So,

you know, and

I thought, hey, yeah, cool, True Chrome Garage, we got this cool show and everything.

But I'm like, this is Tim and Lance.

Like, these are the guys I listened to in the garage, like

100 episodes.

But, um,

But you guys started initially as

wanting to do documentaries, right?

It wasn't so much crime

enthusiast as much as it was film.

Correct.

Yeah, we have a film background.

And really the deep dive into Maura Murray's case that we began in 2015 as Missing Maura Murray was

really to further the documentary that we were making.

And we were talking more about the culture of armchair detectives that had kind of grown around that specific case more than we really were trying to get the facts right.

Because God knows, if you look at the YouTube comments, we did not get some of the facts right early on.

Yeah, but you're but what you guys were trying to,

what you were exploring is what is the narrative?

And to me, that's what's been so fascinating over the last 10 years is

learning a case and learning the narrative.

And then, the deeper you go, you realize that was a false narrative that was put out there in some cases.

But back to what you were saying, like with Nick and Project Portraite, and

other

boards that he's been a part of, and other investigations he's been a part of, and writing a book.

I think

that's something I've struggled with is like at first like this

podcast looking into these cases the victims families it

it like engulfs your whole life

and we were probably three or four years in where I was like

that's not what I signed up for you know I simply just signed up to help my friend

get out information about it about cases that he was fascinated with and next thing you know it was like

10 to 15 hours a week on the phone with victims' families or, um,

and, and let's just be clear.

Um, I know we're joking.

Uh, I, I, I don't hold anything against you.

What me and Tim got, I think, if I'm going to

hopefully get this right.

Uh,

I had an opportunity to talk to Mara's

boyfriend at the time that she went missing, Bill.

And here again, this is a, it's like, I don't want to be in this situation, but here I am.

And it's like, this guy's willing to talk to me.

And I end up talking to him for eight hours the first time.

And I felt like a responsibility to like just, he just keeps telling me information I've, I've never heard about the case.

I should just let him talk.

And maybe he'll say something

that helps with the case or helps the narrative of the case.

And then what he did, which this happens all the time, you talk to somebody on the phone, and then all of a sudden they go online and make it seem like you're best friends, and that like somehow you're vouching for them being a nice person.

And you're like, I just talked to you on the phone.

I'm not giving you a review online.

But so, there's been plenty of times in our journey where

if, you know, people will go, I saw Nick on court TV last night.

And I view Nick as a true crime expert.

That's how I view him.

That's what he's grown into.

In my brain, I'm still

just his buddy that he's tossing out the ideas to.

I don't want to be a, if somebody called me a true crime expert, I'd be like,

you're an idiot.

But, but I should have the right to not want to be that or not.

to be labeled as that, if that makes any sense.

And I'm sure I know more about cases than most people because we've covered,

I don't know, we've done almost a thousand episodes now.

So, but

that I should be allowed to determine whether I think I'm a true crime expert or not, and I'm not.

So, well, I think he's selling himself a little short because there are some cases I can think of them right away, a good number of them, that he is

like we said earlier, you don't know how or why some cases affect you differently than others.

And there are some cases that he knows a mountain more of knowledge about than I do.

So, you know, if there are some cases that have got under his skin, I know Mara Murray case is one of those, and

he could tell you a lot more about the Mara Murray case than I ever could.

But, you know, and the other thing, too.

This is Timmin Lance.

While I, well, and I did too.

You guys did a fantastic job, obviously, with that.

But, you know,

everything around.

But, I mean, you see all the guitars behind him.

You know, he's still in the music-making world and doing very good at it.

Losing money by the day.

Well, I do remember now.

Some of it's coming back to me, that conversation.

I totally forgot about that.

situation with Bill.

I don't even know what we were.

Yeah, I don't remember

exactly the argument, but I will say

there is this new lead in Maura Murray's case that came about because there was a fellow named Stefan Baldwin who was arrested on animal cruelty charges and, in fact, convicted.

But

his fingerprint was found apparently on a CD or on a CD case inside of Maura Murray's car.

And I guess the FBI has interviewed him about this.

So I think it was confirmed that Stefan knew Moore Murray from West Point.

But back to Bill for a second.

Like, where's Bill?

Like, you know, and I'm not, I'm really trying not to get involved.

Are you asking?

But where is Bill now, right?

Did it doesn't, wouldn't he have known this guy, too?

Like, are we going to hear from him on

this lead?

Okay.

Right.

In the eight-hour phone call, he didn't bring up that guy?

No, he did.

He did.

Yeah, and so what was crazy is,

you know,

me and Renner differ quite a bit,

but

I think he does want to have this case solved.

And I think

it's hard sometimes when you're just getting, I don't know who who gave him this information my gut feeling was that maybe he actually got it from julie and i know that they have a tension-filled relationship i don't think rener did get it from julie but when renner was um when he put out a youtube video talking about the lead

it was like

The more he talked about, the more I was like, this has to be the guy that Bill was talking about.

So when I would talk to Bill the first time,

he started talking about them questioning him

about some individual.

But I remember Bill saying, Mar

was seeing a guy before me.

And I want to say that he used the word dirtbag.

But dirtbag is a term that's kind of connected to Mara's case, right?

That's right.

The YouTube guy.

Fred Moore's dad

said that he thinks a local dirtbag took her.

So

there have been people over the years who have even used that sort of moniker.

But yeah, if someone says they're a dirtbag in this case, then you're essentially suggesting they could be guilty of something in regards to Morris case.

And I could be quoting Bill wrong, but during this conversation, he was like

saying how when they were talking to him initially, law enforcement, that this this guy got brought up and he was like, Oh, yeah, I don't know anything about him other than I heard he was a real dirtbag.

Again, could be misquoting him.

But I was like, Well, who was he?

What was his name?

And he didn't know the name.

So then I took that information and gave it to a contact that I know that knows Julie.

And they, I, what I'm guessing is that law enforcement has a record of who she was communicating with through Instant messenger.

I think this dirtbag, this Stefano guy, was one of those individuals.

That doesn't mean, you know, great, they're connected digitally

or through data, but that doesn't mean that they were planning to meet up or anything like that.

But they assumed when I said, hey, I talked to Bill and Bill talked about this guy that she was seeing beforehand,

they somehow believed that was connected to this guy up in New Jersey.

And so now with this new renter information, I'm like, no, I think Bill, I think Bill was talking about Stefano or whatever his name is.

And what I was hoping for, and I don't know what Renner's doing with it, but I was hoping Renner didn't run in his normal renter way where it's like, well, let's gather all this information about this guy and paint a horrible picture of him.

And yes, he's a horrible person, but none of that matters.

All that matters is: can we put him in the area at the time she goes missing?

You know, whether that's him driving a

tandem car or whether she was supposed to meet him in a certain location or was he there a week prior to her going missing?

If we can't put him in that location, then whatever character assassination we want to do on the guy won't matter.

If that makes any sense.

No, it totally makes sense.

You actually are almost quoting uh former u.s marshal art roderick there because his whole thing when he was investigating with the family was

this individual whoever it is might be a terrible person they might have a criminal record can you put that person with mora on that day right that's really where the math has to come together you need to make that equation equal something

And we'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors.

Thanks to our sponsors, and now we're back to the program.

We started covering the Delphi case before a lot of people, and that was

my big issue with the whole case was we're talking about thousands of individuals that people were posting.

Here's this guy, this is his name, this is where he works, and they couldn't put him.

They might not even be able to put the guy in the state of Indiana during the time of the murders.

And it's like, that's what you have to do first.

And

so that becomes frustrating when people don't do that.

And it's tough, though, too, because

when

Bill Rouse

has charges against him,

but I don't know if those charges would ever be brought up against him if he didn't have a girlfriend that went missing.

And so

it's tough because

I thought it was important for you guys to have him on your show to discuss because I don't know anybody

other than maybe one other person that knows this case as well as you guys do to have him on.

But I also understand it's hard to give that individual that has charges against them a platform

because people will then assume that you're siding with him or being a character witness for him and just giving him a platform it's it's very difficult and i talked to him for a long time and

i mean i do feel bad for bill in the sense of

if there's no involvement and uh if he's not involved at all with mars disappearance then this is this is a

event that has shaped the rest of his life and and i think maybe some of the mistakes he made in the and

the points of his life that he was a bad character, that he admits he was a bad character, might actually stem from

this event.

Um, and that's not to give him an excuse or anything, but I couldn't imagine if

I couldn't imagine having a girlfriend that I cared about and loved,

no matter if I was a good boyfriend or a bad boyfriend, I couldn't imagine her just disappearing and having zero answers.

Right.

Yeah, it's it's got to be a tough situation.

Yeah, we spoke with Bill as well a few times.

He really,

really

made us, like,

I don't know.

Work for it.

Really made us work for it.

And like, we would have had to have been even more patient than we had been with him to ever talk to him on the record.

And I felt like, and, you know, maybe this is part of the emotion of myself getting involved in this case, speaking a bit, but I don't really ever feel like he was totally honest.

And I don't know where that comes from, what he's holding back or whatnot, but he just didn't, he struck me as disingenuous.

Yeah.

And I wonder if some of that is part of his training.

Like military training, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or

like a PR training almost.

Right.

You know, because

you know what drove me insane is he kept saying my name

yeah and that's like a tactic that some people use where they'll go oh tim you know oh lance they constantly keep every well patrick that's a good question right what what you know i mean like he was just like constantly doing that it's like a salesy tactic and i got to the point where i was like

You need to stop doing that.

You're annoying the shit out of me.

Like, I think you're doing it for a reason

and

and and look i think maybe he was

more honest with me than some people because we come from the same area i mean he he grew up 20 minutes from me he he played against my high school team in basketball so maybe that's why he or maybe he's just trying to sell me some shit but i also think he had this weird misconception that one, the true crime space was bigger than it was,

and that we were all somehow connected.

And so I know for a fact that when he, he, I mean, he told me when he posted certain things online to try to clear up something that he heard on a podcast, he thought

somehow everybody was checking in on his Twitter account.

And I think,

but again, what a weird space to be in.

But, but there's people out there that have investigated this case and other cases that go, hey, Bill talked to me.

Not a bad guy because he's willing to talk to me.

And it's like, I didn't view it that way, but I just feel like when I talked to him, it was a sense of like

that maybe that he could use me in a

way.

You know, like, if I I can get this guy to like me,

then

all this other stuff with these other podcasters and these other investigators, maybe that will go away.

Um, but he was also very honest with some of the shitty things he's done as a person.

But there's guys out there, and we've all met them that they go on a date, they treat the girl like shit, and they go back and they brag to their friends.

And some of the guys listen to the story and go oh man you're the you're the man i've never been one of those guys

so i think when he was telling me these stories almost in a braggadocious way i just thought less of him you know like oh congratulations you did a horrible thing to somebody

like i'm i'm supposed to hold you in higher regard like i don't know do you see that as like a um

you know the length of the conversation that you had with him the fact that he was using your name so often that it got annoying to you, that you had to remind him, like, hey, this is annoying.

Do you think he was just overplaying his cards?

Like, thinking with his military training and the psychological ops that he does and just that salesman-y approach, did he kind of, again, overplay his hand in that conversation with you?

Yeah, I think he just thought, like, I'm just going to do what I...

normally do to manipulate people.

And then when somebody called him out on it, i think that's when he was like oh maybe i need to be you know a little more honest here yeah i mean eight hours well no and the total amount of time we talked was probably

i don't know 40 50 hours yeah but eight hours in a sitting like that that was the longest one but there was times that it was like six and a half hours There was like those are like torture scenarios.

When they capture prisoners and they're torturing them,

they push and push and push.

But there was a time period

that I thought he was suicidal.

He might not have been, but there was a time period that I thought he was.

And so my thought was anybody that's been there, you know, on the edge of that, right?

Whatever that is, that I just felt like I had to talk to him.

Because,

again, again, I don't think some of this stuff in his life would have

Again,

would his actions have changed?

Or

again,

that's where it gets complicated because you can say, did he do these things?

Did he not do these things?

And then would anybody ever brought charges against him?

Or, you know,

when you're having an affair on your wife, would this ever have been brought to light in the public space?

if he

never had a girlfriend that went missing.

And then I think somebody could then look at all these events in his life and say, well, does this mean it's possible that he could have been responsible for a girl going missing?

It's, but I mean, there's been, there's been several times in the true crime space that I'm talking to somebody on the phone because I think they're suicidal.

And that's not comfortable.

And I won't use the guy's name, but the guy got so rich and famous that he tried to kill himself.

And he, you know, shut the garage door.

He turned on his car.

He's five minutes in, he's feeling nothing.

And he looks it up online and realizes the car that he bought is so fancy that one of the features of the car is even if you turn the car on in a shut garage, that

it's impossible to kill yourself with the fumes because it's such a nice vehicle, you know?

So,

but that goes back to my thing of like, I think it's okay.

It's okay to have a podcast and not

identify as an expert or want to be an expert or want to do the work to become that.

I think that's okay.

And I still think we,

as much as the more Nick learns, the more his opinion can be

valuable.

As much as somebody that doesn't know about a case, their opinion can be valuable as well.

If I'm making any sense at all.

Yeah, no, I think that works.

I think sometimes someone who doesn't know much about the case can see it much clearly than someone who's been in the weeds for a long time.

You know, I think that's certainly true.

And yeah, Morris' case is something that I, you know, and Lance and I, I'm sure you guys, but we're always rooting for it, always rooting for it to get solved.

I really do hope this new lead goes somewhere.

I do think the investigators at PIs for the Missing kind of threw a little bit of cold water on it, but we didn't get too deep into why or anything like that, so we don't know any more details on that.

But it's definitely a case I follow all the time, and I'm always rooting for it to get solved.

And I just want to say that I think a big reason why we,

another big reason why we don't cover it regularly anymore is because julie is so active out there and there's no reason for us to you know i think we we like to do purposeful um missing persons cases um and maybe not every episode is purposeful especially if we're covering like a hundred year old case or something like that we're just interested in how it happened but A lot of times we're trying to get the information out there.

And with Maura Murray's case, Julie is by far the best advocate for that case.

So just want to give a big shout out to her for what she's doing with media pressure and her social media pages.

I think it's incredible, and I'm behind it 100%.

No, and I think that I loved it.

I loved everything that she did.

I think it adds, and this goes back to the narrative.

That's what I find, you know, after 10 years of doing this is how the narratives change.

You could, I mean, a lot of these cases,

it's like you have an elevator pitch well like take Mara's case for example well this girl she leaves college and she's going somewhere we don't know where she's going she gets a car wreck and then somebody stops to help her and seven minutes later she's gone like that's the elevator pitch and then then the story you know Fred has a narrative

Renner has a narrative Then then Tim and Lance come along and they're trying to uncover

more of the narrative and what is the truth.

Is Renner's narrative false in any way?

Is Fred's narrative false in any way?

And it might not be false in a nefarious way.

It might just be the

color glasses that they looked at the case or will view the case.

Fred is going to view Mara's case completely different than any of us because it's his daughter.

And so that's what I find so fascinating is

as you peel back the onion, you start realizing, I mean, some of these cases, I mean, the Schaefer case,

guy goes into a bar and never seen leaving the bar again.

All right, that's it for part one.

Make sure to tune in for part two coming soon.

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