Under the Bridge ////// 828

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I'm your host, Nick, and with me, as always, is a man who would like to know, what time does your rooster crow?

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Garage grade four.

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All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer.

Let's talk some true crime.

Won't you say something I like without you?

I like without you

In 1970, more than a half century ago, 15-year-old Marily Burt set out to do something that kids did most days back then, walk home.

She likely thought nothing of it as she set out to walk the two miles, other than to shudder at the cold.

It was February in Littleton, Colorado.

At that time of year, the temperatures can be dangerous.

For Merrily's walk home, it was dark, and it was cold.

And that is why perhaps Merile might have been open to the idea of accepting a ride.

But But the dark outside was nothing compared to the dark traveling next to her in whatever vehicle she may have entered.

Merrily was last seen on the side of the road, talking to the driver of a vehicle, and then she was gone.

Her body was found the next day.

To this day, the driver of that vehicle has never been found.

Who killed Merile Burke?

This

is is True Crime Garage.

Mary Ruth Burt was born January 28th, 1955, to parents Nathan Allen Burt and his wife Sherry.

Marilee had two older brothers, Alan Burt Jr.

and her other older brother Raymond.

Marilee grew up in Littleton, Colorado, which had a population of about 26,000 people in 1970.

It was a nice small town outside of Denver, but Marilee's family, they weren't the farming type or the blue-collar family.

The Burts owned a number of car dealerships in the Denver area and were very well-to-do financially.

Her father, Alan, was the VP and general manager of Burt Chevrolet in Englewood, which was owned by his father, Nathan.

Marilyn's granddad and grandma, Mr.

and Mrs.

Nate Burt, lived in Englewood and her mom, Sherry's parents, last name Booth, lived in Middleton.

Marilyn Burt was about as normal of a kid as you can find.

She was a ninth grader at Goddard Middle School, a B student, a member of the student council, and very popular.

Mary was very pretty.

She was 110 pounds with blonde hair and a winning smile.

She was athletic too, excelling in both ballet and tap dancing.

And she loved swimming and diving and was an avid water skier and was on a gymnastics team as well.

It's been reported that her lifelong goal was to join a ballet troupe in New York City.

For now, in ninth grade, she was happy going to school, cheering, hanging out with friends, and pursuing all of her hobbies.

On the last day of her life, Merrily was excited to cheer at the middle school basketball game.

She wore her green and gold cheerleading uniform, emblazoned with a large G on the sweater's front, and her name Merrily in cursive embroidered on the back.

She also met with her guidance counselor about selecting her classes for her first year of high school in the fall of 1971.

She planned to try out for the high school cheer team, and she was excited for the next chapter of her life.

So let's get into the timeline of this case.

We're going to start in February 26, 1970.

This is a Thursday evening.

We have 15-year-old Marilee who was scheduled to cheer at the basketball game at her school, Goddard Middle School.

We don't have any reports about the basketball game or what went down there.

Marilyn presumably cheered happily with her squad and everything was a normal evening.

After the game, Marilyn and her friend, Cheryl Cook,

they decided to walk to Cheryl's home.

She lives nearby, close to the school.

Marily called her mother or called the house and left a message.

And there's varying reports on this message, and we'll get back to it.

But

what we do know about this message or the phone call home captain is that somehow her location got lost in translation

because

she needs a ride home her ride never shows up now what we do know is that her mother actually set out in her vehicle and drove to marilee's school that evening where she had picked up her daughter plenty of times before this night But on this night, Marilee wasn't there.

She wasn't standing out front and she never walked out of the building.

So, mom is puzzled.

She's sitting in her vehicle, engine on,

and she probably got annoyed.

And we do know that she went inside.

She went inside looking for her daughter.

Marilee was not at the school.

There were only a couple of custodians left in the building cleaning up.

None of them had seen Marilee since the end of the game.

So she's puzzled, she's concerned, and she decides to return home, but she's going to drive slowly because she's looking for her daughter, expecting to see her walking, making her way home.

She doesn't see her.

In fact, Marilee never came home.

So later that night, frantic, mom called around to Marilee's friends.

This is when she learned that Marilee had been at her friend's house.

This is Cheryl Cook.

But she had left to walk home hours prior.

She set out to walk the estimated two miles to the Burt home located at 30 Wedge Way, and she's on foot.

It's hard to imagine the Burts' panic as they called the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office to report Marilee missing.

It was three and a half hours since Marilee had last been seen.

So, if I'm getting this right, after the game, Marilee heads to her friend's house instead of waiting for her mother to pick her up.

Police searched for Marilee immediately throughout the night, and it didn't take long before there was news.

The nude body of a blonde female teen was found on Friday around 1 p.m.

This is about 18 hours after police were called.

A Jefferson County road crew worker saw the crumpled form partially submerged in Deer Creek and radioed the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office that he had found a dead girl.

She lay under a bridge in Deer Creek Canyon.

This is one and a half miles west of Phillipsburg and six miles from her home.

This was not not one of those high overpass type bridges.

This was a one-lane scenic country type bridge over a stream.

Crime scene photos show police officers standing on the bridge looking down into the creek where Marilee was found half in the water, half on the rocks.

She was dumped off of the low bridge, likely from a vehicle, stopped on the roadway.

The other side of the roadway was abutted by a rocky hillside.

Her clothing was nowhere to to be found.

All of the following items are missing and was missing from this horrific scene.

A green pullover sweater with a large gold G on the front and the numeral 70 on the sleeve with Merrily embroidered on the back, a green and gold pleated skirt, a white blouse, a dark nylon windbreaker, and white sneakers.

Now, there is no mention of these items in the missing list, but we have to assume that Marilee was also wearing socks and undergarments.

Also, not located was her book bag and the three textbooks that she had been carrying that day.

Police officers were dispatched to comb the area looking for these items or any other clues to what happened to Marilee.

A Denver police helicopter was sent up on Saturday to fly over this area where they found the girl, looking for the bright colored clothing, the book bag, or anything suspicious.

Merrily's personal items have never been found.

Well, if you're a law enforcement, I think you have to then look at this scene where Marilee is at and say, well, this is the dumping ground.

And by

surveilling the rest of the area, you're looking for these items to see if these items were discarded of, too.

I think this lends itself to the idea because we know she wasn't walking six miles away from her home.

So the crime probably took place somewhere else, possibly in a vehicle or a house, and then she was discarded here.

Jefferson County coroner Ken Renee revealed to the media that Marily's cause of death was strangulation.

What was not revealed at the time was that Mary was found with the murder weapon still attached to her.

This is a 10-foot length of sturdy rope that was wrapped around her neck.

It had been used to strangle her.

But before she was strangled, she had been immobilized by a single blow to the head with something very heavy.

It left bruising, an abrasion, and trauma to her head, but did not fracture the skull.

So the blow would likely not have killed her, but was believed likely to have knocked her out.

Close inspection of the body detected wood pieces among Mary's fingers and metal shavings in her hair.

These shavings were described to a reporter for the the Denver Post as similar to those found on the floor of a machine shop.

The coroner also told the media that there was evidence that Marilee had been sexually assaulted.

A sexual assault kit, hair samples, and fingernail scrapings were collected.

A funeral for Marily was held on Monday, and

it's hard to contemplate.

Just how somber that must have been.

Mary was full of life on Thursday, and within three days, her parents were at her grave site.

This from the Denver Post blog.

Quote, at her funeral at the First United Methodist Church, Reverend Fred Venable described Mary as an angel with the proper amount of mischief to make her superbly human.

End quote.

Well, and the whole town must have been shook up because of this, because at that time, there's a lot of people that walked home from school events or walked home from school.

To set the stage here a little, the area where Merrily had gone missing from, this is Columbine Valley.

This at the time was only settled by about like 120 families.

So there's not a lot of people here.

Merrily's family lived in the Columbine Country Club development in Littleton.

When news got out that a girl from a respectable family in a high-end area had been murdered and dumped in Deer Creek Canyon, people were shocked, horrified, and of course devastated.

When the Jefferson and Arapahoe County sheriffs requested anyone who had anything, any information at all to please come forward, the community called in about 70 tips.

Some of these tips backed up some crucial information given to police on the night Marily disappeared by her own brother, Raymond.

It's a little unclear what exactly Raymond saw, but here is the gist of it.

Raymond, who was older than Marily, was driving on South Middlefield Road, heading home right around 6.50 p.m.

on Thursday evening.

According to the Denver Post blog, this road was at the time a deserted stretch of road bordered by trees on both sides.

Raymond's car approached and then passed a girl walking in the same direction that he was going.

And he saw a truck

flash its lights, pull over, and stop right where the girl was walking on the side of the road.

Now, of course, people have questioned why Raymond didn't in the moment recognize that the girl he saw walking was his sister.

We have to keep in mind, it's dark out.

He was driving by probably fairly fast, and he saw the girl from the rear.

She's going in the same direction that he's driving toward their home.

He did not see her face.

And Marilee reportedly did not typically wear her hair and pigtails.

So she's wearing pigtails that day.

So it didn't occur to him in the moment that the girl walking on the side of the road was his sister.

And the whole thing probably happened very quickly.

He got a flash of the girl and then the truck pulled over and that was it.

I think this is a piece of information that's rightful that people question because she would have been wearing her cheerleading outfit, but because he saw her from the backside, She would have also been wearing her book bag, which would have basically covered up any distinguishing marks that he would have seen as far as clothing or anything that he would recognize easily.

Correct.

And keep in mind, due to the cold, due to the time of year, she had a lightweight jacket on over top of that cheerleading outfit.

This information, though, Captain, is

a really good clue for the police in their investigation.

Captain Stanley Smith of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office told the Associated Press:

All indications suggest that the girl in pigtails was Merrile Burt.

But I'm guessing he was questioned by law enforcement.

Raymond was grilled by police about every detail relating to the location where he saw his sister.

What do you know about the truck?

What did you see about the truck?

Can you describe the driver?

The sighting was on South Middlefield Road in Arapahoe County near the Columbine Country Club.

Raymond told investigators he drove by a man who was driving in the opposite direction and as he glanced in his rearview mirror, he saw the girl turn to speak with the man in the truck.

Raymond was able to remember some of the truck's physical features, but police never released any sketches or photos of similar trucks, but they did issue a request to the public to call in information about this vehicle, described as a pickup or a carry-all, which I had to look up what a carry-all is.

That's not a term that we use in my neck of the woods.

A carry-all, the best way I can describe it, is more like an outdoor working type of vehicle.

It is shaped similarly to a pickup truck, but it would be, I would consider it more of like an easy go, something that you would see maintenance workers or landscapers using to get around for people that maintain a golf course or something of that nature.

Yeah, or like you said,

this is a town where it's not heavily populated, and we have individuals in this area that are farmers.

So it's possibly a utility vehicle that a farmer would use.

And I would guess that right now there's somebody that's angry saying, well, why would the police, if he said truck, if Raymond said truck, why would the police include a carry-all?

It just seems to kind of confuse the matter.

But we've seen this in plenty of other cases where the police will go out of their way to be extra vague with the information that they're seeking and be extra vague about the information that they know, in part because you don't want anybody to rationalize away any information.

A lot of times, people have information that may be important to the investigation that they don't know is important.

So, you be by being extra vague, in a way, you are opening up the phone lines and opening it up for more information to come in yeah for example if the eyewitness thinks the truck was black but possibly could have been dark blue because of the lighting or because of the weather or whatever their vision was somewhat obstructed or maybe their memory is a little vague then police will put out that it it's a black truck or possibly a dark blue truck because they don't want anybody to eliminate uh calling in a tip on a on a dark blue vehicle.

And your witness could be misremembering.

Exactly.

The general description here, meshing with the somewhat vague description given by Raymond, was that it was a late model light colored two-tone pickup truck.

Now, Raymond may not have been the only eyewitness because we have another witness that says that they saw a truck speeding away from the area.

We don't get a great description on if this is the exact same spot.

It's just a truck speeding away from the area, but also running a stop sign.

If, in fact, this truck is the same

as what the perpetrator was driving, I worry, given this description,

that maybe she may have been incapacitated, that blow to the head may have already have taken place.

It seems to me it would be extra risky running a stop sign,

but maybe he ran the stop sign because he was trying to control her and was struggling to do so.

I feel like this, this truck may be the same one that we are looking for.

Now, Raymond was also able to describe the man that he saw drive past him.

He said that the man was white, 30 to maybe 40 years old, and had dark brown hair with a receding hairline and long squared-off sideburns.

It's worth mentioning that at least one of the tips also mentioned that the car had pulled into Middlefield Road at about 6.50 p.m., which is exactly the time when Merrily, when Merrily was seen near the truck.

Police sought the car

and the driver as well, although they had no description to guide them.

So they're technically looking for two vehicles and asking the public for help with two vehicles.

But one of the vehicles, a car, other than saying that it was a car, they have no description for it.

We don't know if police were ever able to track down this car or, of course, the driver that went with it.

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office was involved in the investigation because Merrily was found in their jurisdiction.

They dispatched eight investigators to go door-to-door canvassing families who lived near the dump site to see if they had seen anything.

Now, note, we'd already mentioned this is a remote area, so the chances of having additional witnesses are very slim.

Of course, the abduction was believed to have happened in Arapahoe County, and that's where Merrily lived.

And you see this a lot of times with older cases.

We have two jurisdictions working this investigation, Arapahoe County and Jefferson County.

She lived in Arapahoe.

Her body was found in Jefferson.

Both were heavily involved in the investigation.

They assigned about 20 men under the leadership of Inspector David Tetch

to investigate what had happened to Merrily.

Several investigators were assigned to talk to everyone Merrily knew, and others were assigned to look into all sex offenders known to police in the area.

Englewood Police Department contributed three detectives to the investigation as well, running down tips and looking into similar crimes.

The Arapaho Sheriff's Department worked around the clock, holding meetings behind closed doors, interrogating witnesses, and brainstorming for ideas.

Authorities revealed that they believed whoever picked up Merrily in the truck

that he was someone she, quote, knew and trusted.

This is according to the sheriff.

This is because they learned that Merrily's parents had a strict policy about any of their kids not accepting rides from strangers.

So it was felt that Merrily, by all accounts, a good girl who followed the rules, would not have ignored her parents' rules.

But doesn't this become more complex because it's such a small community?

So she would know a lot more people.

And so the idea of how well you need to know this individual before you get or before you accept a ride from them.

Well, and she's outgoing, she's popular, and she's in ninth grade.

Right.

Just that day alone, we talked about she was at school.

She met with a guidance counselor.

She went to the basketball game after school.

She was a cheerleader at the basketball game.

She went to a friend's house.

Marilee knows a lot of people.

So, this may, in some ways, may shorten your list or gives you a nice theory to be working.

I don't think it trims down the possibilities very much, to your point.

Now that we have a rough description, and I'm sure law enforcement has more details about this description, if I'm law enforcement, I'm going and questioning everybody at that basketball game to see if anybody saw this individual's vehicle at the basketball game during the time that she was cheerleading.

Police concluded that Marilee knew the guy, even if it was just on the fringes of her social circle.

It could be something as simple as a parent of a friend or a teacher or an administrator at the school or a coach.

It could also be somebody that knew somebody that she knew.

As we mentioned, it was dark and it was cold.

She may have been more willing to get into a vehicle due to the circumstances.

And I

keep saying this:

that

may have been willing to get into the vehicle because we don't know for certain that she wasn't pulled into a vehicle after talking to the driver.

She may not have been willing to get into a vehicle at all.

But as said, it was cold, it was dark, her books were heavy, and the vehicle may have looked warm, and the man may have seemed nice.

And it is possible that she got in and accepted the ride.

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All right, welcome back.

I want to publicly apologize for my throat issues.

I'm struggling through, but we'll make it through, Colonel.

Cheers to you.

Cheers to you.

I was considering calling you by a different name so the listeners would think that

there was a stand-in to be a little bit more like a title.

Like a special guest.

Yeah.

A not-so-special guest.

Yeah, Captain

Grumpy Throat.

Yeah.

All right, Captain Fagans.

Thank you.

Cheers to you and cheers to all the people in the back.

There were several witnesses here, Captain, that saw a young girl walking.

Okay, and as we heard earlier, the sheriff is pretty convinced based off of these statements and what they probably know about the case, tying everything together, it just seems likely that the girl that everybody saw was our victim, Merrily Burt.

Now,

this is due to the fact that some of these witnesses saw a girl walking at different portions of her route.

And all of the portions where somebody reports seeing somebody walking on the side of the road would have been a route that would have been natural for her to take from her friend's house back to her home.

Now, no one saw her get into the truck, but nobody saw her walking after that.

So it also seems likely that this truck is what we should be looking for as well.

Right.

Raymond, her brother, later said that when he realized that Marilee was not home, he realized that it was her, likely her that he had seen.

He goes back to the spot.

Once they believe her to be missing, he and some others go back to the spot where he had seen the girl talking to the truck.

No truck, and of course, no Merrily is there, and there's no sign or indication of what took place.

Well, like you said, we have missing items.

clothing, backpack, jacket, all those things.

So they didn't find any of that at the scene where he believes that she would have got into that truck.

And considering the sheriff and police being so adamant that Marilee was likely picked up by someone she knew, let's go beyond the rule, right, established by her parents.

We have to keep in mind, as you've already pointed out, this is a smaller community.

This was not a major roadway either where she was last seen.

South Middlefield Road is a relatively short connector road between Commercial West Bowles Avenue and on its north end, the Residential Club and Niblick Lanes on its south end.

Its span is all basically in and around the golf course community.

Now keep in mind though, one thing we do know about the description is that whoever was in that truck was driving a road that led only to and from the golf course residential community and the Columbine Country Club facilities.

So this is not a place where one would go trolling for victims after dark.

You wouldn't expect to see anybody here.

There would be no reason for the driver of the truck to be there unless they lived or worked there.

Yeah, or possibly they were driving home and saw her walking, maybe went back, switched vehicles.

double back to catch up to her.

Within days of Mary Lee's murder, the Metropolitan Denver Automobile Dealers Association announced a $5,000 reward for information about the case.

Now, that is a lot of money in 1970.

In fact, I would like to have $5,000 right now.

And plenty of tips were called in.

Keeping investigators busy, keeping track of all the tips and running them down was incredibly time-consuming in 1970, the days before computers and cell phones.

On March 6th, the Arapaho authorities released more information.

This is when we learned that Marilee had been found with a 10-foot piece of rope around her neck.

We don't know a lot about this rope that was used to strangle the girl.

No photos of it have been released, so we don't know what it looked like.

We do know that the rope was sent to the FBI for analysis.

Reportedly, they found a black hair on the rope.

Marilee was blonde.

But at the time, hair analysis was useful only for comparison, and even then, it was done imperfectly by imperfect humans using microscopes.

But like you said, the brother says this could be a pickup truck or it could be some kind of utility vehicle that you would use on a farm or maybe a golf course.

If I'm law enforcement, I'm going to this golf course to say, do you have a vehicle that matches this description?

Because the 10-foot rope would lend itself to be something that maybe you would would have on a utility vehicle if if your job was maintenance.

Well, and you're working off the theory that she may have known

the attacker, may have known the killer,

even if it's in some weird roundabout way.

But smaller community.

And keep in mind, where she is believed to have been picked up, it's described by the people that live and work there that this is a stretch of road that would only be traveled by people that live or work there.

And then where she's found underneath this scenic bridge

is a location where I don't think that they ended up there by accident.

I think that now I have something I've got to get rid of, and they chose to go to that location, meaning this is a location that would be known to the locals.

All of this is lining up to be highly suggestive that it was somebody from the area.

And I'm with you, Captain.

The first place I'm looking is, I want to know who was leaving that country club, who was leaving that golf course and heading in the direction that her brother described the truck as going.

I have a feeling it may have been somebody that was simply leaving that area to go to their home.

Right.

Saw an opportunity.

Exactly.

And we've talked about this before with

a sexual predator, and they're all a little different,

but keep in mind, some of them at the very basic of level,

you have the abilities.

Well, so if I'm law enforcement, I'm going to that golf course and saying, hey, do you have a vehicle that matches this description?

And

who works here?

Who's members here?

And do they have any connection, whether it's their daughter's friends with her, or they are on the same cheer squad, or is there any connection between any worker there and

Marley?

But we have the three abilities that we always want to keep in mind.

Desirability, vulnerability, and availability.

Right.

Sometimes it only takes one of those for a predator to see an opportunity.

Regarding this hair that was found on the rope, as said, it can only be used for comparison.

I wouldn't put a lot of weight into that.

What I'm hoping, Captain, is that we do have some suspects that were ultimately ruled out in this case.

I'm hoping that none of them fall into the category of having been ruled out based off of this hair that may be key to solving it or leading you to the right guy or may have no connection to the killer at all.

We also mentioned that the coroner believed that Merile was raped.

We can presume that this meant that seminal fluid was detected and hopefully collected.

Back then, the only way this would prove useful was for blood typing.

From a semen sample, the investigators could learn the suspect's blood type.

But again, that was only helpful for elimination purposes and even then was only able to eliminate those of a different blood type.

Which seems like not that big of a deal, but I think in a small community that could help.

You also have secreters and non-secreters.

We've talked about that in other cases.

Right.

And sometimes that can be useful as well.

Let's talk about the metal shavings for a moment.

Police said they were found in Marilee's hair.

We don't have her clothing, right?

We the clothing was never found.

Because my first thought when I learned metal shavings found in the hair, I wanted to know was it found on her clothing as well?

But obviously, that is going to be of no help.

This could be, obviously, metal shavings shavings could be on the floor of this truck.

Yes.

Could be in the truck.

No doubt about that.

But it also could suggest that she was moved to another location before she was eventually tossed over the side of the bridge.

Almost right away, Arapahoe County Sheriff Roy Voigt said that they would be looking into whether there was any connection between Marilee's death and that of Constance Parris,

who was killed in March of 1968.

Connie Parris was an 18-year-old blonde woman who had gotten off of a tramway bus on March 26th at 9.45 p.m.

at Gerard Avenue and South Broadway in Englewood.

Englewood police said she was attacked on Little Dry Creek Path and killed by strangulation.

Similar look, similar M.O., possibly.

Her body was found on March 31st on the side of the road on West Canyon Avenue, abutting Bear Creek Park in southwest Denver.

According to the Greenlee Daily Tribune, she was nude and badly beaten.

Did they find any wood shavings or metal shavings?

That we don't know.

What we do know is her clothing was never found either.

At first look,

her murder sounds an awful lot like Marilee's case.

And we roughly think that Merrily was picked up a little bit before 7 p.m.

Correct.

And so one of the things that this kind of reminds me of, so if I'm law enforcement, I'm also asking the public, was there anybody neighbor-wise, was any of your neighbors, did they have a fire that night?

Did they have a bonfire that seemed abnormal?

This this kind of reminds me a little bit of uh Wayne Williams, Lane and Child murders.

Remember how the the neighbors would say that he'd be burning stuff real late hours at night?

Because somehow you have to discard these clothing.

And you could do that by simply hiding it in your workshop or you could burn it somewhere.

Yeah, the clothing never being found and how distinctive it is in one of the articles having her name on it

seems like somebody would have to do a good deal of work to make it so that these items are never located.

Because in some cases, look, sometimes we have situations where items belonging to a victim are found by people that don't know about the case or don't know or have any, or have any way of knowing that it belonged to a murdered victim.

Things can just be tossed on the side of the road.

Your mind going to a serial killer,

we're sharing a brain, Captain.

Not just a garage, we're sharing a brain.

My mind immediately, I started thinking about about Ted Bundy,

picking up a victim, striking them in the head, strangulation, rape,

dumping the body in a wooded area or near the woods.

That's all very Ted Bundy-ish.

It also made me think of Harvey Kairignan, who we had talked about with, he actually used a truck in most of his cases, and sometimes he was picking up girls on the side of the road, and he lived for a bit in Minnesota, lived for a bit in Washington state.

It's very likely that it's a local, but this case mirrors some other cases that we've examined in the past.

Law enforcement has to spend a lot of time weeding through these call-ins and these tips, but we do end up with a prime suspect.

Yeah, and it's not clear why, Captain.

This seemed to have taken 11 years, but let's fast forward, zoom ahead to 1981.

We have police taking a very hard look at a man who became a prime suspect in this specific case.

His name, Ronald Bloom.

He had been a volunteer gymnastics instructor at Goddard Middle School who helped train Merrily.

So he's fitting the bill so far.

Now, it's absolutely horrifying to think about him working with young girls because, as it turns out, Bloom had a history of sexual assaults against women and girls dating back to 1955.

Yeah, but that's what these predators do.

They put themselves around children.

They put themselves around people that they want to make victims.

And back then it worked.

Yeah.

In 1981, police investigating Merrilee's case, quote, detained him and interrogated him, and he gave a sample of his hair so it could be compared to the hair found on the murder rope.

This must not have matched because Bloom was never charged in Merrily's case, even though per the Denver Post citing an affidavit during his interview, Bloom told investigators that, quote, the problem he had with underage girls involved picking them up in vans and sexually assaulting them, end quote.

Those are his words to police.

Merrily was heavily involved in gymnastics.

We know that, and had a...

meet scheduled for the very week after she was killed.

So she would have known this man.

She would have known Ronald Bloom.

The question is whether she would have gotten into his truck.

It's pretty clear police thought that

it was highly unlikely to be a coincidence that Ronald Bloom knew Mary.

She might have trusted him, and he was a pedophile and a rapist who victimized girls and victimized women.

Well, this hair that they found might have nothing to do with the crime.

In 1998, zooming ahead again, there was a major reinvestigation of this case.

At that point, it's 28 years old.

Detectives decided we're going to start all over with fresh eyes, but now they had something to work with.

This is from the Denver Post in 1998.

Quote, recently the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Department submitted old evidence in the case to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for DNA testing.

The evidence submitted to us was collected 28 years ago and never submitted to the laboratory, said a Pete Meng.

He's the inspector with the CBI.

The Rocky Mountain News had details.

Quote, the tests are the results of slides collected and preserved during Merrilee's autopsy.

Tom Henry of the Denver Medical Examiner's Office found the slides still in the original sealed envelope while making one last sweep through the office's files.

The discovery gave new life into a stalled investigation.

Analysis of the slide samples determined that they contained sufficient biological material to develop a full DNA profile of the offender.

So, this is coming from the Siemens sample.

We can't say for certain, but that's what would make the most sense.

Right.

And what we do know is 1998 was the year that CODIS, the National DNA Database of Convicted Offenders and Arrestees, this is when that got up and running in every U.S.

state.

But many of the states had statewide databases operating before 98.

And Colorado, fortunately, was one of them.

They submitted the DNA samples and searching through these databases, they were hopeful to find a match.

They did not.

This is short-lived hope for finally solving this case.

No match was made.

Whoever had slain Merrily was not in the database.

But at least police did have the DNA sample to work with.

But with this DNA sample, now with technology catching up, we could do some genealogy testing on this DNA sample.

So the person might not be in CODIS because they might never have been arrested or their sample has never been collected.

But you'd think that we could do a genealogy test.

And some people were willing to give their DNA to police if they had been questioned or looked at or if they had any involvement in the case at all, even being completely innocent.

So, what we do know is the sheriff's office is on record saying that they've excluded two dozen suspects or excluded two dozen persons

because some of these people include family members.

They did openly say at this time, too, that like, look, we had seven,

maybe 10 suspects that we really thought could have been the guy.

We didn't get a hit hit on any of them.

And in fact, they went so far as to exhume a body of a suspect who had passed to compare the DNA and still no match.

And then I know what you're wondering here, Captain.

Everybody's wondering.

Investigators would not confirm that one of those men ruled out was Ronald Bloom.

This is, again, 1998.

I think they were still locked and loaded on this guy, even though the science would ultimately tell them he's not the guy.

They had a hard time moving off of him he knew the victim he was he told the police can you imagine you're a detective you're questioning this rapist pedophile guy yeah and he tells you he did he doesn't even hide from it he says i have a problem my problem is picking up girls and women and women and sexually assaulting them well it's hard for our brain sometimes to wrap around the idea that there's different spectrums of monsters.

To think that somebody could kidnap somebody, rape them, but not be a murderer doesn't seem, doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

And this guy is telling you, yeah,

I'm a bad dude.

I am a monster, but I'm not a monster that kills.

Well, and we've talked about the old pervert Roundup a dozen times, maybe

four dozen times on the show.

I'd love to make a t-shirt about it, but I don't think anybody would wear it.

It would be confusing.

The old pervert Roundup Club.

To see a man sitting there enjoying a salad at the Olive Garden wearing a pervert Roundup t-shirt.

Right.

Not something that's going to sell well on Etsy.

Shout out to Olive Garden.

Hashtag not a sponsor.

Hashtag love their breadsticks.

Yes.

Here's the thing.

So while they couldn't move off of this guy,

in all reality, just like you were saying here, Captain, Ronald Bloom,

absolute creep.

He's a creep and he's a rapist, but he wasn't Merrile's killer.

We know this based off of a DNA comparison that did not match.

It excluded him.

And then

with the Roundup, a lot of times when, because

most of these guys, almost all of them, are still on parole when they're doing the Roundup.

So it's pretty easy to make phone calls and knock on doors.

These guys know.

That they're being looked at and considered in a major case.

And so

99% of the time, they're extremely cooperative.

They don't want to go back to prison.

They don't want to end up getting convicted of something they didn't do.

So the Roundup does work.

It's very successful, regardless of what funny name we choose to give it.

This is from

February 26th, 2002.

So exactly 32 years after Merrily was killed.

This is from the Rocky Mountain News.

And here's some excerpts.

Today, 32 years to the day after one of Arapahoe County's most notorious homicides, investigators are making one last push to crack the heartbreaking mystery.

Witnesses and suspects are getting older.

They are dying, said investigator Bruce Isaacson.

This is probably our last chance.

Maryley had been raped in indignity that investigators now say could give them their best evidence.

For the past three years, authorities have been quietly conducting DNA testing.

Quote, we now know if we have DNA, it's huge.

It is great evidence one way or another to include or exclude, Isaacson said.

We don't have to depend on a confession.

We can let science do some speaking, end quote.

What we do know, Captain, where it sits today, or at least the last time they gave us a good solid update on this, the results of the laboratory test have ruled out 24 possible suspects as sources of this DNA.

The people tested included a child molester who knew Marily

and moved to the top of the suspect list after he told authorities he probably had feelings of wanting to have sex with her.

The convicted pedophile was identified years ago as the prime suspect in the slings.

His DNA has been tested twice.

They couldn't move off of this guy so much that they tested him twice.

And of course, we know that it did not match.

Authorities racing the clock, racing against the clock, have also tested the DNA of two dead men.

Let me say that more.

Of two dead men.

In one case, the man's DNA was on file from an autopsy, and the other case, investigators persuaded the suspect's parents to give samples.

Both men were cleared.

The majority of the suspects were more than willing to be tested, said the investigator.

Merrily's friends and family hope that the DNA will lead investigators to her killer, but said the process of excluding suspects has also brought some peace.

Since the slaying, Merile's mother, Sherry Burt, has devoted her time to working with victims programs, particularly Courthouse Inc.,

which provides court-ordered housing for young girls, many of whom are the victims of sexual assault.

One of the homes is named after Merile.

Bruce Isaacson and Rick Falstead, the Arapaho sheriff's investigators, who were assigned to work Merrily's case after the DNA samples were analyzed, their job was to call through the list of 140 men mentioned in the initial reports.

Some were listed as witnesses rather than suspects, but they all needed to be revisited.

By 2002, they had already contacted 100 of the 140.

Here's a little more from that Rocky Mountain News.

This was the friend, Cheryl Cook, the friend whose home Marily left the night that she was killed.

She said that she was pleased to hear that authorities haven't given up on solving the crime.

She said that that would be so great for Merile's mom.

It was just such an awful, awful time.

I would love for her to be able to know even if the person is dead.

She went on to say that sometimes she dreams about the day her friend disappeared, adding, you are 15 years old.

Your girlfriend leaves your house and you never see her again.

Everything just kind of changed after that.

I'm going to be 47 this year, she said.

I think, my God, we were 15.

Look at all the years she didn't get.

Sadly, Mary Lee's parents have passed away without having any closure or answers to who did this to their daughter.

But this is a very solvable case with technology.

And we were hearing as late as 2019 here, Captain, that this is from the investigators, from the authorities working the case, saying that it's the second oldest unsolved case in the area.

It's probably the most notorious unsolved case from yesteryear.

They did go on record saying that the case still draws about a half dozen or so tips each year.

In 2021, the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office undertook yet another big push to attempt to solve the now 51-year-old case, accompanied by a massive increase in the reward money, jumping it up to $30,000.

This was funded by donations.

Sheriff Tyler Brown said the substantial increase in the reward hopefully allows us to collect more information and bring the suspects in the Merrily Burke case to justice.

It is not a cold case by any means.

Every year, we receive several tips on this case.

More tips were called in after the 2021 publicity push, but here we are in 2025 today,

and nothing has been resolved.

Quote, there's got to be someone out there who knows something, said Meriley's nephew, Trevor Burt.

It really seems that if someone knows anything about Merile's case, they would have come forward by now.

It's been 55 years.

If anyone had found her cheer uniform or her book bag or books, police would almost certainly have said as much.

Police have said no tip ever led them to the truck.

It remains unidentified.

The $30,000 reward has gone unclaimed.

A case-breaking tip seems very unlikely at this point, but luckily, as you said, Captain, we have the DNA.

Of course,

Knowing that they have DNA, we all hope that the Sheriff's Office is using forensic genealogy to attempt to solve Marilee's case.

It seems likely that this is the only way Marilee's case will be solved at this point.

Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the the garage each and every week.

We love you.

Hugs and kisses.

Cheers, mates.

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

This week, we are recommending In Light of All Darkness by New York Times best-selling author Kim Cross.

This is a fantastic true crime book, paced like a thriller and full of insider information.

This book embeds listeners in one of the most famous true crime stories of our generation, the kidnapping of of Paulie Class.

You can find that great title and many more on our recommended page on our website, truecrimegarage.com.

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

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