Ep.5: 99% Certain - Who Killed Jennifer Judd?

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Speaker 12 Previously, on who killed Jennifer Judd. I got goosebumps all over me just thinking about it.

Speaker 4 You know, our case is based on witnesses, and there's no doubt I could probably charge Chuck Chance based on the witness information, but I don't think I could convict him.

Speaker 12 Chuck and her got into it many times at parties, but it was just like bantering back and forth. There was no physical push-in or nothing like that.

Speaker 12 The main thing I want to know is if Justin and Jeremy ever ran around together.

Speaker 4 I went over to the jail, had him brought up to the front, and I said, how you been doing, Jeremy?

Speaker 12 From ID and ARC Media, I'm Sarah Kalen, and this is Who Killed Jennifer Judd.

Speaker 4 I was at a party and Jimmy Adams was dating Starla Morgan.

Speaker 4 And Jimmy told me that Starla had a friend that wanted to meet me over in Pitcher. And I said, all right, let's go.
And went over and I met her.

Speaker 12 This, at long last, is Justin Judd.

Speaker 12 Now that we have finally connected, I'm eager to learn as much as possible from him. And he seems equally eager to help in any way he can.

Speaker 12 We meet on a Saturday afternoon and decide to start at the beginning. The night he met Jennifer.
He was 16 years old.

Speaker 4 We walked from Starless house down to the softball field and we had our first kiss in the dugout sitting on the bench there.

Speaker 12 Nearly 40 years later, now more than twice the age he was on that cherished night, Justin looks as shy as a teenage boy describing a first crush.

Speaker 4 We kind of pretty much grew up together as far as, you know, from 16 to 20. Back then it seemed like it was forever.

Speaker 12 He immediately strikes me as being honest. He paints a picture similar to what I've heard from Jennifer's friends.

Speaker 4 Gosh, me and that girl, we were so jealous of each other.

Speaker 4 I mean, it was to the point where when we was in high school, we would over who could score the most points in a basketball game, you know, when she'd play and I'd play, you know, and stuff, we'd get home at college.

Speaker 4 I mean, you had a night, you know.

Speaker 4 It was just super competitive between her and i and we were pretty jealous of each other and stuff and we broke up weekly probably you know we're kids and look back at some of the stuff we were jealous over it's just it was ridiculous

Speaker 4 i can remember we broke up one time and i sent a roses to school and it was weight day we was lifting weights at school getting ready to practice football and jim buttram comes in and goes there's a mighty pretty girl out there wanting to see you i'm like cool

Speaker 4 And I go out there and it was her, her and Teresa Heatherly and Jane Gibbs, I think. And she brought me, give me the roses back.

Speaker 4 She was a Spitfire, that's for sure.

Speaker 12 As for their wedding.

Speaker 4 We just talked about getting married all the time. And then one day I can remember her always wanting to set a date.
When are we going to set a date? When are we going to set a date?

Speaker 4 And I didn't care. It didn't really matter to me.

Speaker 4 It's whenever we finally set a date.

Speaker 12 Jennifer originally pushed for a date in 1991 but they decided to wait until they could save a bit more money.

Speaker 12 They eventually chose May 2nd, 1992 and planned a big spring wedding at Jennifer's family church.

Speaker 4 I remember being really super super nervous. I just remember waking up and just getting around and going to the church and seeing everybody and she was really nervous.

Speaker 4 She was afraid that nobody was going to show up

Speaker 4 and ended up being a packed church. I mean, it was really a nice wedding.

Speaker 12 Justin is looking to the side. He seems to be holding back tears.

Speaker 4 Looking back, you know, when I was 20 years old,

Speaker 4 I grew up working in my dad's pipe and steel yard. We sold pipe and steel to all these farmers around this aircraft area and stuff and got to know them all.

Speaker 4 And if you've been around farmers much, they're the type of people that when you say something, you mean it. And I really took the vows serious and the part where

Speaker 4 to love and protect and I didn't protect her and them words haunted me for a long time.

Speaker 12 I ask how often he thinks of her.

Speaker 4 Daily.

Speaker 4 Pretty much daily. Not just the wedding, just the song you hear or

Speaker 4 different things.

Speaker 12 He mentions May 9th, 1992. They had just returned from their honeymoon in Branson, Missouri, and they met up with their friends at the Pitcher High School Field.

Speaker 4 I can still close my eyes and see them walking down the road walking to the soft law field. She was mad because we wouldn't go get her glove

Speaker 4 and she hurt her finger that day.

Speaker 12 He smiles as he talks about Jennifer, her entire family, including her parents, Debbie and Dale.

Speaker 4 Me and Dale at one point in time, we put a new motor in my truck. And I always worked on stuff with my grandpa when I was a little kid.
Me and my grandpa, my grandpa, he's like my hero.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 working with him on that truck and stuff, it brought back a lot. I got really close with Bill, I felt like.
I mean, he was just a great dude.

Speaker 4 I mean, I enjoyed so much going over there and working on that truck with him. And Debbie, I felt like was pretty close.
You know, she always joked with me and stuff. And it was just,

Speaker 4 I don't know,

Speaker 4 it

Speaker 4 fell apart.

Speaker 12 I've wondered about Justin's relationship with his in-laws. It definitely fell apart in the years after Jennifer was killed.

Speaker 12 He believes they started to question him after a family friend organized a fundraiser with the Harlem Magicians, a famous traveling basketball team.

Speaker 12 It was Harlem Magicians versus team Justice for Jennifer. Justin played with the Magicians.
Apparently, everyone took this as a sign.

Speaker 14 They were wrong.

Speaker 12 At the time, he actually found himself struggling with all of the Justice for Jennifer campaigns.

Speaker 4 Even being as young as I was, I wasn't a big fan of that

Speaker 4 because I really felt like it was printing the person, it was making it too much of a whodunit,

Speaker 4 and this person was less likely to talk because everybody in the community wanted to choke them.

Speaker 4 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 4 That's kind of how I've seen that. It's like, man, we're just backing this guy in a corner.
I did help him hang signs up and stuff like that. And the whole time, I just had the same feeling.

Speaker 4 In my opinion, I feel like one person done it, one person knows knows he did it, and he has not told a single person. And I think it's all because of pushing back in a corner.

Speaker 4 I mean, nobody wants to be that guy. You know, you wouldn't think.
I mean, in a community where everybody, I mean, she did not have enemies.

Speaker 4 I can't literally sit here and think of somebody that did not like her.

Speaker 12 I see a lot of love on his face, and I hate that I'm going to ask him to talk about the most painful day of his life, but it's inevitable. That's what we need to discuss.

Speaker 12 Let's be real.

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Speaker 13 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 1 Coach, the energy out there felt different.

Speaker 2 What changed for the team today?

Speaker 3 It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Speaker 5 Play is everything. Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Speaker 7 Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Speaker 3 Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game. That's all for now.

Speaker 4 Coach, one more question.

Speaker 8 Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

Speaker 9 A little play can make your day.

Speaker 10 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

Speaker 15 Picture yourself alone in the middle of nowhere, and there's somebody following you.

Speaker 12 He went on his way, we so thought, and then we went on ours. But in reality, he really followed us up there.

Speaker 15 On Deadly Nightmares, the true crime podcast from ID, listen to real stories of ordinary people stalked by serial killers and attackers.

Speaker 4 Please,

Speaker 4 we're not going to die.

Speaker 15 Listen to Deadly Nightmares on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 4 I remember getting to work, and I really bill your morning, I believe. And all I can really recall is getting to work.

Speaker 4 And then remembering I forgot my lunch, and I remember calling her, and she was going to bring it.

Speaker 12 In the notes from one of Justin's earliest interviews with detectives, the detectives wrote, quote, he asked if Jennifer would bring his lunch.

Speaker 12 He told Jennifer he loved her and she commented with words to the effect of, you're just saying that, so I'll bring your lunch.

Speaker 12 Justin commented this was typical of their relationship, teasing and joking with each other. End quote.

Speaker 12 We move on in the timeline of that Monday morning as Justin begins to explain how Chuck showed up at his guard shack at the chemical plant.

Speaker 4 I thought it was really odd because I believe we played basketball on Saturday, a bunch of us, and he was on the opposite team and he and I was not getting along on the basketball court at all.

Speaker 4 And I just thought it was really odd that he show up at my work.

Speaker 12 This has always seemed a little odd to me too. We know Chuck was unemployed at that time because he spent the morning looking for jobs.

Speaker 12 Justin says Chuck had never showed up at the chemical plant before.

Speaker 4 I thought it was odd that he knew that I was working because I worked a rotating schedule there too. And his clothing was kind of weird too.

Speaker 4 He had on penny loafers, a pair of gym shorts, and a polo shirt, which was not like him. He was always a pretty decent dresser.

Speaker 4 He just sat there and visited with me while I was, you know, doing stuff.

Speaker 12 Chuck asks if Justin wants to go to the gym after work and Justin agrees. Chuck sticks around for another two and a half hours until the end of Justin's shift.

Speaker 12 By then, Justin is really starting to worry about Jen. It's not like her to not show up, to not answer the phone, to not even call to let him know if something else came up.

Speaker 12 As soon as Justin's shift ends, he clocks out and speeds home. They plan to go to the gym, but Justin wants to check on Jennifer first.
Chuck follows and pulls into their driveway right behind Justin.

Speaker 12 Jennifer's car is in the driveway, and this makes Justin even more nervous. He gets out of his blue pickup truck and walks to the front door.

Speaker 4 I was always really big on locking the doors, you know, make sure the door is locked.

Speaker 4 And I had the key in my hand, and I reached, for some reason, I just reached down and grabbed the knob, and it turned. And at that point, I had a really bad feeling.

Speaker 12 Chuck gets out of his car and walks to the door behind Justin.

Speaker 4 I opened the door and it was dark

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 I went to the bedroom first and the bed was made. She'd made the bed.
It looked like somebody had laid on the edge of the bed.

Speaker 4 Now I walked back around and walked in the kitchen and seen her laying there

Speaker 4 and my first thought was

Speaker 4 she was anemic and had some problem issues there and I thought maybe she might have just passed out.

Speaker 4 And then when I turned the light on, I reached down and I felt her neck and it was cold and swollen. And I

Speaker 4 told Chuck to call 911.

Speaker 12 Justin stops himself. He takes a sip of water.

Speaker 4 Chuck got on the phone. He couldn't talk to 911 people, so I talked to him.
And after I hung the phone up, I just, I don't know, I just had this rage. I punched the wall.

Speaker 4 When the EMTs got there,

Speaker 4 you know, I don't, I might have been part of the shock or what, but I thought once they got there, things would be fine.

Speaker 12 This, of course, was the shock talking. Nothing would be fine.
Justin doesn't remember seeing blood or much else he saw that day. He believes he blacked out, or has at least blacked out the memories.

Speaker 12 This makes sense, and it doesn't make me suspicious. It's incredibly common.
His memories jump ahead in time.

Speaker 4 I just remember there was a bunch of people showing up at

Speaker 4 the police station.

Speaker 12 It's in this window of time, literally within minutes, that cops start to suspect Chuck.

Speaker 12 At first, Justin didn't agree.

Speaker 4 It took a lot of convincing for them to even have me consider him as a suspect because he was my friend, he was her friend, we all knew each other for years and years and years.

Speaker 4 Things like that didn't happen back then.

Speaker 12 What were they saying

Speaker 12 to try to convince you that he was a viable suspect?

Speaker 4 First it was the differences in our stories.

Speaker 4 There was one part of his statement and my statement that didn't go together.

Speaker 12 Do you remember what that was? Yeah.

Speaker 4 What was that? That he had stopped by and Jennifer Scar was there and nobody was there. And so he went on to his sister's house and changed clothes and then come back to my work,

Speaker 4 which

Speaker 4 really didn't make sense. I mean he could have changed clothes at my work, but

Speaker 4 anyhow, they were talking about that. And that night, he called me.
Chuck called me. And he said, why did you tell the KBI that I went to my sister's?

Speaker 4 And I said, because you did tell me you went to your sister's and changed clothes. He goes, no, I didn't.
That's when I told him, I said, you probably got to get a lawyer. And I'm going to phone out.

Speaker 12 Chuck took Justin's advice. He got a lawyer.
The lawyer handled all subsequent communication with the police, including their requests for Chuck's blood and hair samples.

Speaker 12 Chuck never mentioned his sister's house in his first statements to police.

Speaker 12 There are two ways to interpret this. First, Chuck might have hidden the stop at his sister's from police.
This could be the 23-minute window.

Speaker 12 If that's the case, he would have had to have killed Jennifer, driven to his sister's, changed, and made it to the bank in 23 minutes.

Speaker 12 The other possibility is that Justin is misremembering the details all these years later.

Speaker 12 Maybe at the time he was upset about the discrepancy we see in Chuck's two statements, but if so, it's lost to memory. That's one of the biggest challenges of reopening cold cases.

Speaker 12 I've learned not to dig deeper when this happens. Often, there isn't any more to dig up.
But even more troublesome is trying to force a memory into existence.

Speaker 12 This is how vague recollections become rumors and rumors become accepted facts, all of it leading to false leads and bad theories.

Speaker 12 We move on from this because there are other people I want to talk about.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 4 Tommy Davis?

Speaker 4 My best friend. Okay.

Speaker 12 It's so funny because all the papers refer to Chuck as your best friend and I'm like, that's not what I'm hearing from people who are around.

Speaker 4 Me and Tommy grew up together. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Do you think he had been at the apartment before the wedding? Oh yeah. Because it may have just been an elimination thing.
Sort of a follow-up question to that.

Speaker 12 There was supposedly something about a hand injury on that day that he went to the doctor for. He left work in the morning and then ended up at a doctor with a hand injury.

Speaker 4 I don't know anything about that. Okay.

Speaker 12 But do you have, I mean...

Speaker 4 But I do know where they wanted. the blood and hair and stuff.
One day he was at work and he heard that they needed something from him. He just walked off the job and went to the police station.

Speaker 4 Went in. Okay.
Very, you know.

Speaker 12 That's really good to hear. The more people we can eliminate quickly, the faster we can whittle the list down to a small group of viable suspects.

Speaker 12 And while I haven't seen anything in the files that states exactly what Justin is describing about this, neither is there any indication that they had to take legal action to compel Tommy's cooperation or that Tommy ever got a lawyer.

Speaker 12 I'm feeling better and better about checking Tommy off the list.

Speaker 12 Moving on to the next name. If on some weird Reddit rabbit hole, I told you that somebody said your mom today,

Speaker 12 how would you react to that?

Speaker 4 I said what?

Speaker 12 Your mom today.

Speaker 12 He's shaking his head and laughing. She's absolutely not in any report or file or anything.

Speaker 4 It was one of these weird, like, web, yeah, things.

Speaker 12 I feel bad even asking, but Justin reassures me.

Speaker 4 There's nothing you can ask me or say or anything that's going to bother me.

Speaker 4 I've already dealt with the worst part of it.

Speaker 12 He's had years to think about this and like everyone else, he has theories of his own.

Speaker 4 I really feel like they've, for lack of a better term, romanticized this murder into a point where it's some big

Speaker 4 fascination with drugs and a whole lot of stuff that just wasn't going on back then.

Speaker 4 We never, I mean, back then, steroids was just like a myth, stuff that happened in Hollywood or where bodybuilders and stuff.

Speaker 12 Speaking of, our producer Danielle has a question.

Speaker 4 Do you ever hear about a term quapa mafia?

Speaker 4 There is 906 people in Quapaw.

Speaker 4 Quapaw Mafia.

Speaker 12 I've asked other people about this so-called mafia, and they react like Justin. No one's ever heard of it.
There is just no evidence that any Quapaw mafia ever existed. There were no drugs.

Speaker 12 He laughs again at the idea of this having been a hired hit. With what money? He asks.
He says he was making $7 an hour and spent all of his savings on the wedding.

Speaker 4 And a thing that a lot of people completely, totally forget is we were 20-year-old kids.

Speaker 12 As far as Justin is concerned, there is one person who knows what happened. Chuck Chance.

Speaker 12 Justin never really says Chuck's name, by the way. He says, this person.

Speaker 12 Danielle Danielle asks what Chuck's motive could have been.

Speaker 4 Really super simple I believe. I think they were infatuated.

Speaker 12 Did you ever get signs of that over the course of you and Jennifer being together?

Speaker 4 Not until after. Not until after the fact.
And I look back on things and realize that this person,

Speaker 4 you know how guys together will joke around about other people's girlfriends and stuff, you know

Speaker 4 I cannot recall him ever mentioning her name in any capacity of anything, joking or anything like that, ever.

Speaker 12 Like nothing negative, nothing, like almost like he was protective of her biomission as opposed to.

Speaker 4 There was a time he and I was working on our football highlight film. We had all our, back in the old VHS days, you know, you pause and record and pause and record and put different clips on it.

Speaker 4 We were working on that and she went with me one night. And it was almost like, I went in there after, I mean, they got to talking about old school days and stuff.
And

Speaker 4 felt like you know you guys want me to leave you know it was it was that really sticks out in my mind

Speaker 12 Danielle and I continue working through the motive

Speaker 12 so the infatuation would almost potentially be showing up at your house when you knew you weren't there she rejects him

Speaker 12 but somehow it turns into a scuffle some like a fight that just escalated very quickly somebody who has a really bad temper

Speaker 16 he does

Speaker 12 what are other times you saw his temper

Speaker 4 uh well hell he and i got into football on the football field one day in practice into

Speaker 4 a fist fight he just always had a flyout to handle a temper

Speaker 12 if you closed your eyes and there was a world in which chance didn't exist

Speaker 12 was never part of this or had an airtight alibi. Is there anybody

Speaker 12 who you would be like,

Speaker 4 I don't trust that person? I would fall back on.

Speaker 4 I can remember the KBI telling me there's a

Speaker 4 99.9% chance that this one person did it, and there's a 0.1% chance that a random passer-by serial killer did it.

Speaker 4 I would fall back on that 0.1%.

Speaker 4 So just a total stranger. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 12 Well, they're going to look for strangers, too.

Speaker 12 The idea that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation told him there's a 99.9% chance that Chuck Chance did this is next level infuriating.

Speaker 12 I keep this frustration to myself. I want to talk about the other prime suspect, the one missing from KBI's list, but right at the top of my list,

Speaker 12 Jeremy Jones. When Jeremy Jones confessed to killing Jennifer, he said it was a lover's quarrel.

Speaker 12 He says they knew each other from school, but really met at a powwow party, and he describes having sex with Jennifer in a park. He says she always made him use a condom.
The details go on and on.

Speaker 12 Chris Hausch, Michelle McCorkle, and now Justin Judd have all told me that Jennifer and Jones did not know each other. So it seems like Jones is making this up, but not entirely.

Speaker 12 He might have been obsessed with Jennifer and fantasized about her so much that he created an alternate reality in his head. He's even worked Justin and Chuck Chance into this alternate reality.

Speaker 12 Here's his conversation with KBI agent Larry Thomas.

Speaker 4 When you run across Justin and Chuck, were you ever a part of any conversations? about Justin not wanting to get married.

Speaker 4 Yeah, she talked to me, me, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 12 She told me he was the one wanting to get married.

Speaker 4 And she didn't.

Speaker 12 She was afraid he was going to find out about me, that he would kill me.

Speaker 4 You know, and that Chuck would have seen us. She said, Chuck would have killed us.

Speaker 12 You know.

Speaker 12 Jones claims to have known Chuck around the time Jennifer was killed. He says they worked together at a place called Bayliner.

Speaker 12 Bayliner was another huge employer in the region, and it's entirely possible that the two men worked there at the same time.

Speaker 12 Jones says that after Jennifer was killed, he and Chuck had a conversation in the break room where Chuck seemed upset. Jones claims Chuck said, the police think I did this and I didn't do this.

Speaker 12 And Jones claims he told him, look, if you didn't do it, you got nothing to be worried about.

Speaker 12 Jones tells that story twice in the files. The first time he tells it is in his first interview with KBI agent Thomas.
He says it was right around the time Jennifer was killed.

Speaker 12 The second time Jones tells the story, it's as part of a follow-up interview Thomas did with Jones in his cell on death row a couple years later.

Speaker 12 In that one, he says it was probably two years after Jennifer was killed. This discrepancy makes it hard to believe this moment actually transpired.

Speaker 12 It seems like yet another one in which Jones is embellishing.

Speaker 12 As in, maybe he worked with Chuck and knew that Chuck was upset after Jennifer was murdered, but this actual conversation in the break room may be made up.

Speaker 12 Jones also claims to have hung out with Justin and Chuck at Powwow's. Chris Hausch and now Justin have rejected this claim.

Speaker 12 If Jones has knowledge of any aspect of the case not known to the public generally, I have to make sure he didn't get the information by any other means than having been present at the scene.

Speaker 12 It's one of the many things I want to ask Justin about.

Speaker 12 What have you been told about the Jones potential involvement?

Speaker 4 Well, whenever he first was saying that he did it and stuff, the KBI called me and said, What do you think? And I said, Not a chance.

Speaker 4 I just

Speaker 12 based on what?

Speaker 4 From what I gather, his MO was raped, and I really feel like he would have probably raped her if it was him.

Speaker 12 This is the same primary reason Jennifer's friends rule Jones out.

Speaker 12 I hate spelling out that we don't know for sure that the perpetrator did not attempt a sexual assault, or the fact that serial offenders often engage in acts that are sexual to them, but don't necessarily look that way at the scene.

Speaker 12 There's also his confession to grapple with. The problem with Jones is that it's about 75% bullshit and about 25%

Speaker 12 like on the money accurate.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 there just was stuff that he knew

Speaker 12 that I struggle to understand how he had the information.

Speaker 12 And especially because one of the things, again, that gets widely reported or is in like the Reddit rabbit holes and stuff is that you guys were like friends afterwards.

Speaker 12 Another prevailing rumor around this investigation is that Jeremy Jones knew so much about the case because he was neighbors with Justin sometime after the killing and he talked to Justin about the murder, thus gaining access to details never shared with the public.

Speaker 12 This seems nearly as far-fetched as the rest, but it's important to know for sure.

Speaker 12 Did you know Jeremy?

Speaker 4 Not prior to that. He actually

Speaker 4 was my neighbor. When me and Misty was was married and lived in Coapaw, he moved into one of the little apartments with Bias.

Speaker 12 Jones moved in next door to him in the mid-90s, a few years after Jennifer was killed. By then, Justin was remarried.
Who was he living with at the time?

Speaker 4 He had a girlfriend, and it was really bad. I mean, you could hear him beating her.
Misty called the police one time, and the police come and she would say, oh, nothing's happening.

Speaker 4 We're fine, you know.

Speaker 4 And my mom came over, and she heard it one time. She called the police, please come over.
Oh, nothing was going on.

Speaker 4 And me and my friend Sean Ray had been to the Quapaw Powwow, which it usually goes really late. It was almost daylight.
And we'd come back to my house and we were sitting there talking.

Speaker 4 He started beating on her. And Sean's like, I can't deal with this.

Speaker 4 And he got up and went over and knocked on the door and says, you want to hit on somebody? Come out here and hit on me. And Jeremy pulled a gun on him.

Speaker 4 and pointed right at his head and he goes, oh, you're going to shoot me with your little gun?

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 then it come out on the news, you know, that he's a serial killer.

Speaker 12 How long would you say you guys were neighbors?

Speaker 4 Just a few months, and me and Misty ended up buying a house.

Speaker 12 Did you ever, in those months, like sit on the back porch and have a beer with him or talk?

Speaker 4 Never had a conversation with him. Never had a conversation with him.

Speaker 12 And you never talked about the case with him?

Speaker 4 Nope.

Speaker 12 It's tough to hear, but Justin says, nope.

Speaker 4 You're sure. Pretty sure.

Speaker 12 Do you think there's any possibility that he and Chuck were friends?

Speaker 4 I don't know if they ever were friends or not.

Speaker 12 And so now then, you know, my other question is, could he have gotten some of this from Chuck?

Speaker 12 At this, Justin shrugs. He doesn't know, and now I'm asking him to speculate.
It's time to stop. I was hoping Justin could confirm this part for me, but I'll have to keep trying other avenues.

Speaker 12 We've been speaking for more than two hours, and I want to let Justin get on with his day. He's confirmed two important things for me.

Speaker 12 First, he still suspects Chuck Chance with 99% certainty. I'll keep searching, but I'm not sure what else can be said about Chuck.

Speaker 12 I have not eliminated him on my own suspect list, but I still struggle to see him as the primary suspect.

Speaker 12 The second thing Justin confirmed is that he doesn't think Jones killed Jennifer. I get it.
He's been told for so long with such certainty by people who should be in a position to know.

Speaker 12 I am not so convinced of this yet.

Speaker 12 I do think that he was wrongly dismissed without further digging and without perhaps at least getting his DNA compared to some of the blood that was found in the apartment stuff.

Speaker 12 And that was never done. So there's a lot of reason to be optimistic, I think.

Speaker 12 I never ever want to make promises, and I certainly don't want to make promises on time, but I can promise you that this is like now my job.

Speaker 12 You know?

Speaker 4 I really appreciate that. I really do.
It means a lot.

Speaker 12 Justin offers to share letters Jennifer wrote to him over the years they were together.

Speaker 4 I used to read them before going to bed, just hoping that I would maybe have some dreams or something, that she'd visit my dreams. And sometimes she does.

Speaker 4 I had this one dream where I was laying in bed. I'm laying in bed.

Speaker 4 It's like one of them sleep paralysis dreams and I'm wanting to turn over knowing she's there and I can't turn over and it's just it was just I would wake up just sweating and I mean it was just and it really never made no sense to me.

Speaker 12 I tried to help him make sense of it but like so much of this story it's hard to say if there is any sense.

Speaker 4 I had one dream one time where I was in a movie theater and

Speaker 4 I was by myself and somebody tapped me on the the shoulder and I turned around and it was her and she said, I just want you to know I'm okay.

Speaker 4 And that was a very comforting journey.

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Speaker 2 What changed for the team today?

Speaker 3 It was the new game day scratches from the California Lottery.

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Speaker 12 After speaking with Justin, I understand why he thinks Chuck Chance killed Jennifer.

Speaker 12 He thinks Chuck had a crush on Jennifer, and that this crush led Chuck to the Judds' apartment on the fateful morning of May 11th, 1992.

Speaker 12 Someone else was in the house at some point and left behind a half-empty can of orange soda.

Speaker 12 Justin had bought a case of the soda when he was getting supplies for taco night, but to find a can on its side in the middle of the bedroom floor, bright orange liquids spilling out onto the clean carpet, Jennifer would never have just just left that there.

Speaker 12 It doesn't tell us a complete story, but it does tell us that a person brought it back there into the bedroom and just left it on the floor.

Speaker 12 I see how Justin thinks this could have been Chuck, but I'm not convinced.

Speaker 12 Chuck was 20 years old. His record shows a history of violence, but of a very different variety than what was inflicted on Jennifer.

Speaker 12 He blew part of his own finger off in high school while messing around with a firecracker.

Speaker 12 He joined the military and was discharged nine months later, reportedly, for reasons related to the injury to his finger.

Speaker 12 When Jennifer was killed, Chuck was married with a child and had no official record of domestic violence against his then-wife, Tracy.

Speaker 12 Though people who knew the couple have stated they believed there was physical abuse that Tracy never reported to the police.

Speaker 12 In the years since Jennifer's murder, Chuck has been arrested on charges related to bad checks and methamphetamine. He's currently in prison for some of those.

Speaker 12 He was hit with protective orders in 2007 and 2011.

Speaker 12 Otherwise, his record reveals no signs of pattern violence. As a behaviorist, when I'm looking at a 20-year-old suspect without a history of this kind of violence, I need a firm motive.

Speaker 12 Sure, Chuck had a reputation as a hothead and a history of getting into fights, but there is an enormous range in the psychology of violence, and a guy who gets into dust-ups over a bad call in a softball game is not the same guy who escalates to the violent stabbing death of a childhood friend, not without a clear motive.

Speaker 12 I don't need this for known serial predators like Jeremy Jones, but I absolutely need it for someone like Chuck Chance.

Speaker 12 After hearing that Justin believes the motive is simple, that Chuck had a crush on Jennifer, maybe a crush going back to childhood, I go in search of confirmation.

Speaker 12 In the case file, I find a letter Jennifer wrote to a classmate four years before she was murdered. It's a typewritten page with October 27, 1988 in the top right corner.

Speaker 12 This would have been her junior year of high school.

Speaker 12 My number one sis, I am so sick of school, it's pathetic. I guess it's because everyone always starts about Justin.

Speaker 12 Me and Justin are going to get married in California and live happily ever after. I just love him to death sometimes, but then again, I want to get rid of him too.

Speaker 12 She adds four exclamation points at the end of that sentence. She adds, Jennifer loves Justin eight times, creating a huge block of text across the bottom of the page.

Speaker 12 It's a few lines in the middle of the note, though, that really jump off the copy.

Speaker 12 Chuck said last night that he hated Justin. I said, why? And he said, because he's a smart Alec and thinks he's better than everyone else, but he isn't.
I can't believe Chuck, though.

Speaker 12 If he thinks I like him, he's got another thing coming. Chuck just likes girls for one thing, too.
Oh well, life goes on.

Speaker 12 This note seems to contradict what I've heard from Jennifer's friends. Chris Hausch dismissed the idea that Chuck ever liked Jen.
Michelle did too.

Speaker 12 Both said it's a rumor that started after Jennifer's death. In the case files, I find that investigators spoke with many more of their friends.

Speaker 16 Their friends said things like, Chuck Chance had a crush on Jennifer based on the way he always wanted to be around her. Chuck would hang out at the Pitcher Express when Jen was working.

Speaker 16 Jennifer did go out with Chuck a few times. I think Chuck asked her out.
I was told Chuck still hung around Jennifer a lot because he still liked her. They hung around together a lot in eighth grade.

Speaker 12 Two statements really stand out, saying almost the exact same thing.

Speaker 16 Chuck pushed Jennifer in the upper chest with both hands. She was pushed back against the display shelves and fell to the ground.
Chuck quickly left the store.

Speaker 12 These statements put a new twist on the theory that Chuck had a crush on Jennifer.

Speaker 12 More importantly, they demonstrate that his notorious temper was allegedly directed squarely at Jennifer on at least one occasion.

Speaker 12 This alone could spell motive.

Speaker 12 I think of Jennifer asking her dad to follow her home from work in the last weeks of her life.

Speaker 12 Could this be why?

Speaker 12 Maybe. But this incident allegedly took place at least four months before Jennifer's death.

Speaker 12 No one reports a second incident like this one or any altercations between them closer to the date of her murder. It's horrible that it happened.

Speaker 12 My heart hurts for her knowing she went through that and in the end chose to keep it to herself to prevent what certainly would have been the end of Justin's friendship with Chuck. Or worse.

Speaker 12 But it still doesn't draw a straight line to May 11th.

Speaker 12 Several friends told investigators they thought that if Chuck killed Jennifer, he wasn't motivated by a crush on Jennifer.

Speaker 12 Rather, they think Chuck might have been mad at Jennifer for taking Justin from Chuck.

Speaker 12 This doesn't completely make sense, but there have been friends who said Jennifer and Chuck argued about whether Justin would still hang out with Chuck as much after the wedding.

Speaker 12 It's all so speculative. Even Even back then, it was a bunch of what-ifs and maybes about Jennifer disrupting the friendship between the men.

Speaker 12 Again, it doesn't add up to a motive for the kind of scene that would ultimately be discovered by those very two men in the duplex.

Speaker 12 As I read the statements, I keep coming back to Chuck's first conversation with police on May 11th, 1992.

Speaker 12 They're talking less than 90 minutes after Chuck and Justin found Jennifer's body.

Speaker 12 Nothing in the tape makes me think Chuck is covering up the fact that he just murdered someone he's known most of his life.

Speaker 12 Ultimately, I think there's really only one way we'll sort through Chuck Chance's involvement. Science.

Speaker 12 I've been counting on touch DNA. But as I dig through the case file, looking for every single mention of Chuck Chance, I realize we might not need DNA testing to rule him out.

Speaker 12 According to the files, the KBI attempted to lift fingerprints from the knife blade left lodged in Jennifer's back in 1992,

Speaker 12 but it was impossible because the blade was so bloody.

Speaker 12 Latent print technology advanced over the next few years, and in 2000, using newer tech, they were able to identify fingerprints on the knife blade. They lifted three nearly perfect prints.

Speaker 12 And the prints did not match Chuck. So who do they match?

Speaker 12 I should be able to answer that question fairly easily. I should be able to enter the prints into the national system, APHIS, and see if they return a match.

Speaker 12 Unfortunately, I can't. The actual print is not in the case file.
All I'm seeing is the report that says a print exists and that it doesn't match Chuck Chance.

Speaker 12 I'd love to know if the print matches Jeremy Jones' prints, but as far as I can tell, no one ever checked.

Speaker 12 Short of finding a copy of the print, I could repeat what they did in 2000 and pull the print off the knife blade.

Speaker 12 Could,

Speaker 12 if only we had the knife blade.

Speaker 12 Naturally, it's one of the pieces of evidence that we can't seem to find.

Speaker 12 It's not in the boxes and bags that Detective Joel Tabor and I sorted through at the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 12 A representative at the Baxter Springs Police Department initially said they had it, but later called Joel to say they were wrong. KBI says they don't have it.

Speaker 12 Finding the knife has always been on my list of priorities.

Speaker 12 Now, knowing that it contains a full print and that the print does not match the man listed as the primary suspect, I move this to the very top of my list.

Speaker 12 Still, I'm not pinning all hope on these. I've had my hopes dashed in other cases, and I try to hedge a bit more nowadays.
I'll still send evidence for DNA analysis, and I'm still looking at suspects.

Speaker 12 After several weeks with the case files, I have a few people I want to track down: names I've seen in the files, men who catch my attention,

Speaker 12 and one in particular: a man named Alan Redden.

Speaker 12 Next time, on who killed Jennifer Chudd. So they never told you that they have usable prints on the blade of the knife.

Speaker 18 Okay. Nope, they didn't, but that would be real handy.

Speaker 12 It's a guy named Alan Redden, who is still alive. Are you familiar with this one?

Speaker 4 He's a registered offender, I believe, isn't he?

Speaker 18 If something like that would have happened, it would have been bad. Actually, she told me this may never even happen, you know.

Speaker 19 They definitely moved her then because that has a ton of DNA. And I can't imagine why that would be too faint for interpretation.
Because if that's all blood, that's a lot.

Speaker 12 Who Killed Jennifer Judd is produced by Arc Media for ID. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 We'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 Coach, the energy out there felt different.

Speaker 2 What changed for the team today?

Speaker 3 It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Speaker 5 Play is everything. Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Speaker 7 Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Speaker 3 Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game. That's all for now.

Speaker 8 Coach, one more question: play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

Speaker 9 A little play can make your day.

Speaker 10 Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

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Speaker 17 Each Certipro Painters business is independently owned and operated. Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.