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It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the second time.
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That day he was getting dark and he was about to give up.
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He smiled to himself such a pretty little girl, what was you thinking coming out here all alone?
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Welcome to Crime Raven; true crimes, real life stories from law enforcement and issues crime fighters face.
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This podcast highlights crimes researched by retired Detective Sergeant Mark Rein, using publicly available information, court records and personal recollections.
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Content may be graphic, disturbing, or violent.
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Listener discretion is advised.
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Suspects are considered innocent until found guilty in a court of law.
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That's free access for 30 days at audibletrial.com/crimeraven.
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We'll also put the link in the show notes.
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watcher was a guy who liked his job.
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He worked the highway for the Oregon Department of Transportation.
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The road was like life itself.
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You never knew what was around the next bend.
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And when the unexpected arose, you had to be decisive to rely on yourself.
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In that respect, watcher felt a kinship to those he imagined who were his pioneering ancestors.
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They were the people who had traversed these same mountains survived raging river crossings, desert, dry summers, snowstorms, and apocalyptic wildfires.
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Things hadn't changed much.
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The stretch of Mountain Road that watcher worked was the wild west lawless empty.
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Sure, the occasional car passed swiftly through, but his road was never The journey's end.
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Desolation bounded on either side, mostly steep slopes, a few flat turnouts winding through River Valley and pass.
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It was a rugged wilderness sandwiched between the green, wet central valley to the west, and the arid high desert to the east In his saga, watcher was the hero.
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He spent his time, day and night looking for trouble.
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Sometimes he found people, their pilgrimage interrupted.
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They were in distress on the roadside.
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Sometimes he came across collisions or travelers who missed the curve.
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Rescuing, stranded travelers, helping them get their cars towed to get gas, whatever they needed.
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Watcher was there to help everybody and doing so, he was helping himself.
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The girl is blonde pretty and just out of high school, so she's at a crossroads.
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It's really the first crossroads that everybody recognizes.
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What would her path in life be?
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She couldn't bear the thought of staying in the tiny, dusty town, living with her boring ass parents until she could squeeze her way into some boring ass job, maybe in some office somewhere, answering phones, maybe at the school.
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She imagined herself as one of those lunch ladies and shook her head.
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Etch a sketch style to erase the image.
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No, she had to get the fuck out of there at least for a while.
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Do something, see something before the rest of her life Solidified slowly around her, like wet concrete on a cold day.
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So one day the girl kissed and hugged her mom and dad lied about staying over at a friend's, picked up the pack that she dropped out of her bedroom window and walked away.
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Eventually, her parents would find the note explaining what she planned to do.
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She loved them.
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She didn't want to argue, didn't wanna see the fear and uncertainty in their eyes.
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In a few days, she would call.
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Maybe by then she would be at her friend's place in Eugene, safe and Sound.
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She shed guilt with every step, and by the time she hit the highway and was lifting her thumb to passing cars headed west, she was beaming with excitement again.
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The girl was lucky.
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A family headed south to Nevada was the first car that stopped for her.
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The dad smiled and nodded from behind the wheel when he pulled up.
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While the mother pretty maybe mid thirties questioned her out of the window in an almost scolding tone, asking why was she out here all alone?
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Telling her to get in while looking into the brush on the roadside, as if someone was gonna jump out of one of those scrubby bushes at any minute.
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They made her feel at home piled in the back of a station wagon.
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Kids bounced around her wrestling with each other, shooting her nonsensical questions.
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The mother turned sideways and from the front seat, asked the girl questions.
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In between refereeing the kid mayhem swirling across both back seats.
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As the girl replied, the mother parroted the answers to the side of her husband's head.
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It soon became clear that the mother thought the girl's plans were crazy.
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The girl is headed to Eugene.
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Could they maybe drop her off in Eugene?
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The husband chuckled to himself and said, hun, there is no way we can go all the way to Eugene and make it in time.
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They were going south to Nevada.
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Family thing.
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Husband said, I can take you as far as bend, and then you gotta catch a ride west.
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The girl smiled great, thanks.
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The mother,faced troubled, spent the next two hours alternately trying to manage the kid craziness while counseling the girl.
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The girl was not as fortunate in her next couple of rides.
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First, a man who mainly wanted to know if the girl had accepted Jesus Christ as her savior.
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She told him yes, but apparently not to his satisfaction.
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Then a lady was nice enough.
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The problem with those rides was that they were locals and not going far.
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The girl stayed overnight at a thankfully cheap roadside motel.
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The fatigue overcame the excitement of the journey that first night, and she was asleep within a minute of her head hitting the musty pillow.
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Mid-morning found the girl walking on the shoulder of us 20 in Oregon.
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The first ride had been fortunate.
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A man headed west on 20 took her out of the high desert, across the mountain passes and into the dense forest that blankets the west side of the cascades.
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The driver, a man who reminded the girl of her dad one day was too soon to be homesick, right?
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Turned out to be a college teacher.
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So when the girl didn't know much about the scenery, he filled what might have been an awkward silence with an hour's worth of geology facts.
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The professor dropped the girl off at a gas station at the turn where he went south and she continued west.
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There wasn't much traffic and the few cars that passed were headed east.
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It was a sunny day, a pleasant breeze on her face.
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So the girl counted her blessings and enjoyed the new scenery.
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First, she was thankful that so much of her walk was downhill.
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She could see a river running parallel to the road in the valley below.
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In the distance farmland looked like a patchwork quilt visible through the gaps in the dense surrounding forest.
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In the early afternoon, a truck driving east with an insignia on the door that read Oregon Department of Transportation pulled across the lanes of traffic and onto the shoulder behind the girl.
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The driver, a big bearded, bearish man leaned out.
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He wanted to know if she was all right.
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She told him she was trying to catch a ride.
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The man said that he had to go further up, but if he saw her when he came back, she could ride with him.
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He pointed in the direction she was walking.
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There's a gas station a few miles on down.
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Then she was walking again.
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The girl caught a ride from the gas station, a local lady who could only take her a couple of miles before she had to turn off, but she figured every mile was progress.
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As the afternoon turned to evening, the girl continued to hike West.
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She knew there was a reservoir up ahead and beyond that, a town where she planned to stay the night if she couldn't catch a ride.
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In the late afternoon, clouds had rolled in, casting everything in a gray pall.
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The girl was worried that it would soon be very dark and worse might rain.
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Just then a truck pulled past stopping on the shoulder in front of the girl.
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She ran up to the passenger door.
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The driver looked familiar, but it took her a second to realize it was the Oregon d o t guy that she talked to earlier.
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Only the truck was different.
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No insignia.
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The guy was the same.
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Bearish with a dark bushy beard.
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Looking through the open side window she could see it was his personal truck.
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He smiled at her.
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"I told you I'd give you a ride on my way back.
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You made it farther than I thought you would." The girl opened the door just as a light rain began to mist the windshield"and just in time" he joked.
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The pickup's rear wheels slipping on gravel as it accelerated back into the westbound lane
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It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the second time.
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That day he was getting dark and he was about to give up.
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He smiled to himself such a pretty little girl, what was you thinking coming out here all alone?
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His life on the road was like that.
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He was often in the right place at the right time.
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There were lists of people who would swear that he had saved them in their time of need.
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And for all those people that watcher had helped the road had repaid him.
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He could legitimately call himself the guardian Angel Highway 20.
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No one could blame him for the occasional indulgence.
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He only took a little off the top.
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Sometimes he drove his own truck, which made him anonymous.
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But the state rig that put people at ease.
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They suspected nothing with the state rig.
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After all, he could be anywhere and still be just doing his job What he loved was, it was just like hunting.
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Call it poaching of the very best kind.
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He knew his stretch of road, like the back of his hand, all the stopping spots, all the stalking spots.
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He knew where he could get away from the road and not be interrupted.
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And the times he had been interrupted, he was just out hunting.
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He had even admitted to poaching outta season once.
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Gotten a ticket.
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Yeah, that wasn't dear blood.
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Stupid assholes.
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Watcher was always careful.
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He had passed on girls that were ripe for the taking.
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After a little conversation, he could tell who would be missed, the ones who would bring the heat.
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He wanted the unaccountable girls, the ones who gave off that aroma of being strays, like that drunk Indian bitch.
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Nothing says stray like a young drunk Indian bitch.
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After he fucked her, he wanted more.
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He decided to let her live so he could have more, but she had betrayed his trust.
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No matter.
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The cops hadn't bought her bullshit anyway.
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This one, she felt like a stray.
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The girl relaxed into the old truck seat.
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After walking as long as she had today, it felt great.
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The guy asked her a couple of the common questions, where she from?
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Where she going?
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She's honest with him because why not?
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The guy was quiet for a few minutes.
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They passed the reservoir as the darkness outside enveloped.
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For a few minutes, there was light again as they went through the small town.
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Then they were back in the dark.
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The only illumination was two yellow headlight beams cutting through the misting rain and a weak green glow from the dashboard.
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The girl was almost asleep when she felt the truck slow, then turned left.
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She raised her head, but could only see a dirt road and an opening in the trees.
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The sound of the tires changed as the truck left the pavement and rocked slowly as it moved through Uneven wet dirt.
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The girl asked where they were going.
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The guy said something about taking a leak, but there was something new in his voice.
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Fully awake now the girl sat up and turned toward the driver.
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The guy stared back at her.
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His eyes were wide.
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She could see his teeth.
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He was breathing heavily.
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He was excited.
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He stopped the truck and reached down between his legs.
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It took the girl a second to realize that the guy had a hunting knife in his hand.
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He's holding it up.
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It had a green hue like everything else, but the blade flashed, metallic.
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The girl reached down desperate to escape.
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She realized there's no handle, no release.
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She screamed.
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Loud.
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He held the blade up and threw gritted teeth hissed,"do that again and I'll gut you bitch." The knife moved down.
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He pulled up her shirt and pressed the sharp cold metal against the skin of her soft belly.
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She submitted.
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He began cutting and ripping at her clothes.
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It's his ritual.
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Suddenly he opened the door and backed out, dragging the girl with him onto the damp ground.
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He cut and ripped at fabric, a show of strength of domination.
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He stripped off all of her clothes and groped her with rough hands.
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He's fat.
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Breath wreaking of food and coffee and beer.
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His beard rubs against her body as he violates her.
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In December, 1978, investigators from the Oregon State Police responded to a report of a woman who'd gone missing at Camp Sherman, a remote recreational site in central Oregon on the eastern slopes of the cascade range.
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The area boasts scenic, rugged geography in an alpine setting and is popular for hunting, fishing, boating, photography, and trail hiking.
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35 year old Kay, Jean Turner and her husband had been spending the holidays at the camp with a group of friends.
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All had driven up from Eugene.
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Just after 8:00 AM on Christmas Eve morning.
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Kay, who was an avid jogger set off on an eight mile run that should have taken less than an hour.
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Her preferred running circuit followed Camp Roads that led out near us Route 20.
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Despite it being the end of December, the air temperatures were unseasonably warm, mid fifties, and made for comfortable running.
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Kay was wearing a blue sweatshirt, yellow shorts, and Adidas shoes.
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Kay's husband Noel became increasingly concerned when his wife had not returned by 10:00 AM.
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He drove all the camp roads and finding no trace, called the police around 2:00 PM.
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The first agency to respond was the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
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After a brief consultation, they called out search and rescue personnel.
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Those teams brought in assets including volunteers, dog teams, and aircraft.
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The only thing they found by the time the sun that day were suspicious tracks in the snow on the side of the road.
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The prints were a tangle of two distinct sets of shoe impressions.
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One was large, probably a man's boot.
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The other was a small Adidas running shoe.
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The ground search continued in day two.
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As detectives from Oregon State Police join the effort.
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As a matter of routine, they began victimology, examining Kay's life for risk factors and scrutinizing the people around her.
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They discovered that Kay was having affairs with two men back home in Eugene.
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This led to obvious questions.
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Were they involved in her disappearance?
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Could this be a motive for her husband?
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Investigators quickly discounted the boyfriends, and significantly they did not cast suspicion back on Kay's husband.
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Although Noel Turner could never be completely ruled out, the police found no evidence that he was involved in his wife's disappearance.
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With the ground search and initial investigation underway, the community gave police their second suspect.
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Several locals pushed police towards a guy named John Aykroyd, a man who lived in the area.
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He wasn't well liked and rumors swirled around him.
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Many people characterized him as weird, creepy, and often hostile.
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He worked for the state d o t as a mechanic and road safety monitor, which meant Aykroyd spent long hours driving up and down a stretch of remote Oregon highway looking for trouble.
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As police officers combed the small community, an informant tipped them off.
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Aykroyd was talking about seeing Kay Turner while she was jogging on Christmas Eve.
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It didn't take the police long to find Aykroyd who was fairly unremarkable.
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six Feet tall, medium, build dark hair and glasses.
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When questioned Aykroyd told the police that he worked as usual overnight shift that Christmas Eve morning while driving towards one of his favorite hunting areas.
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He saw Kay Turner jogging.
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Aykroyd pulled over and spoke with her briefly explaining that he thought he'd hit a dog in the area and asked Kay if she'd seen anything.
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Aykroyd denied that there was any more to the contact, but his admission made him the last known person to see the missing woman.
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This placed him firmly on the top of the suspect list until his friend and coworker Roger Beck gave Aykroyd an alibi.
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Beck said that he and his friend had been together in the area illegally hunting deer.
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This assertion was corroborated by Beck's wife.
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The admission against self-interest.
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In mentioning the poaching and the alibi, witness deflected the investigation away from Aykroyd as fast as it had focused.
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The ground search rambled on for five days without success before they canceled it.
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Seven months after Kay Turner's disappearance On August 12th, Aykroyd walked into a local store.
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He told people he had found Kay Turner's remains in the woods while walking his dog.
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When police arrived, Aykroyd led them to his find, and they confirmed that the remains, although in an advanced state of decomposition, appeared to be human.
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Investigators found the fact that the last person to see Kay Turner was the same person who happened to find her remains months later, highly suspicious.
00:19:12.494 --> 00:19:17.595
In the interview, they asked Aykroyd to describe how he knew the remains were those of Kay Turner.
00:19:18.434 --> 00:19:22.365
Aykroyd's description of the body site confused the investigators.
00:19:22.845 --> 00:19:26.204
The area they were looking at was fairly nondescript.
00:19:27.224 --> 00:19:30.615
In the time Kay's body lay in the densely wooded hillside.
00:19:31.065 --> 00:19:33.105
It had been completely reduced.
00:19:33.555 --> 00:19:34.875
The bones were weathered.
00:19:35.414 --> 00:19:36.585
There was no flesh.
00:19:37.065 --> 00:19:41.055
Debris, partially buried what was left of her clothing on the forest floor.
00:19:41.775 --> 00:19:49.394
Yet Aykroyd described K Turner's yellow shorts and the wreak of decomposing flesh as if the body were still fresh.
00:19:51.464 --> 00:20:02.674
Police and volunteers conducted a series of increasingly detailed area searches, ultimately recovering major bones, a shoe, clothing items, and a wristwatch.
00:20:03.184 --> 00:20:08.315
In the days following the recovery, the medical examiner confirmed that the bones were Kay Turner.
00:20:08.825 --> 00:20:13.924
He could compare her dental records to a lower jawbone found at the scene.
00:20:14.525 --> 00:20:18.335
Kay Turner's skull would be found a year later by another hunter.
00:20:19.055 --> 00:20:22.025
It had been carried almost a mile away from the other remains.
00:20:23.884 --> 00:20:28.085
Aykroyd's submitted to follow-up interviews and polygraph examination.
00:20:28.684 --> 00:20:35.914
Under pressure, he changed his story saying that he'd actually found Kay's body in the snow in February.
00:20:36.365 --> 00:20:41.285
He gave details about her decomposing body that her throat had been cut.
00:20:41.795 --> 00:20:47.615
She had a bullet wound to the chest and animals had consumed part of her, including her eyes.
00:20:48.484 --> 00:20:54.924
Aroy told investigators he was nervous after the February discovery, that they would suspect him in her death.
00:20:55.255 --> 00:20:56.545
So he didn't say anything.
00:20:56.805 --> 00:21:01.569
He could not explain why he chose August 12th to change his mind.
00:21:02.529 --> 00:21:07.630
Perhaps Aykroyd came forward so that he could claim the find K Turner reward fund.
00:21:08.440 --> 00:21:13.299
The administrator of the fund refused to pay him because they had not ruled him out as a suspect.
00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:28.539
The K Turner missing person turned murder case spent a decade like this brief flurries of activity and long periods of dormancy as interest waxed and waned, and investigators came and went.
00:21:32.321 --> 00:21:38.741
July 10th, 1990 was the day that a 13 year old girl named Rashonda Pickle disappeared.
00:21:39.432 --> 00:21:50.082
Rashonda lived with her mother, Linda, her brother Byron, and a stepfather in Sanam Junction, barely a wide spot in the road where US Route 20 and Oregon.
00:21:50.082 --> 00:21:51.491
Route 22 meet.
00:21:52.602 --> 00:21:55.152
On the day her mother reported Rashonda missing.
00:21:55.541 --> 00:22:06.342
She was described as a four foot seven 90 pounds with brown hair wearing black pants, a white T-shirt, sneakers, and silver stud earrings.
00:22:07.001 --> 00:22:12.912
When police began interviewing about the girl, they discovered that there were problems inside the family.
00:22:13.632 --> 00:22:19.991
While the stepfather outwardly presented a calm, competent demeanor, those closest to him saw beyond the facade.
00:22:20.531 --> 00:22:26.592
Inside the home he was a brutal dictator, severely beating Linda and her children regularly.
00:22:27.221 --> 00:22:32.592
Rash ANDA's brother Byron, described the man's rages as sudden, unexpected, and volcanic.
00:22:33.221 --> 00:22:36.342
Friends said that they regularly saw bruises on both kids.
00:22:37.862 --> 00:22:40.781
Some of rash ANDA's closest confidants went further.
00:22:41.291 --> 00:22:43.392
They said the girl never wanted to go home.
00:22:43.721 --> 00:22:48.432
She would often bring a change of clothes to school and beg friends to let her stay with them.
00:22:49.031 --> 00:22:50.231
The reason was simple.
00:22:50.832 --> 00:22:55.301
Rashanda was trying to stay away from a stepfather who was sexually abusing her.
00:22:56.382 --> 00:22:59.892
That same stepfather was the last person to see Roshonda.
00:23:00.551 --> 00:23:02.461
His name was Ackroyd.
00:23:03.516 --> 00:23:08.556
Investigators interviewed Aykroyd several times at Key points in the search and investigation.
00:23:09.036 --> 00:23:12.756
He didn't have much to say and denied knowledge of what happened to Rashonda.
00:23:13.415 --> 00:23:20.826
He told them that on the day she disappeared, he spent the entire day driving around, taking pictures and scouting hunting locations.
00:23:21.425 --> 00:23:27.455
The only alibi he could offer is that several of his highway department coworkers saw him while he was out.
00:23:29.165 --> 00:23:33.828
The coworkers later confirmed seeing Aroy driving around with a camera that day.
00:23:34.278 --> 00:23:36.378
But Aykroyd's appearance was weird.
00:23:36.679 --> 00:23:41.749
They said it felt like he was going out of his way to be seen and waving the camera around like a prop.
00:23:42.858 --> 00:23:53.959
When the police talked to Rhonda's biological father who lived in a nearby city, he told them that he had recently talked to Linda, his ex-wife, about akroyd abusing his children.
00:23:54.663 --> 00:23:58.653
Byron had filled him in on some things happening at the home in Sanam Junction.
00:23:59.523 --> 00:24:05.463
Although Linda denied any abuse was happening, the ex threatened the report aykroyd to the cops.
00:24:06.304 --> 00:24:08.794
Rashonda disappeared the next day.
00:24:11.013 --> 00:24:14.644
The investigators confronted Aykroyd with this new information.
00:24:15.213 --> 00:24:20.463
He denied everything but made some unusual comments as the interrogation progressed.
00:24:21.003 --> 00:24:26.854
When asked Aykroyd speculated that someone passing on Highway 20 took her against her will.
00:24:27.483 --> 00:24:36.423
At this time, Aykroyd was six foot tall, heavyset, almost bearlike in stature with a dense scraggy beard that complimented that overall impression.
00:24:37.144 --> 00:24:42.243
He said 87 pounds is nothing for a guy like my size to carry.
00:24:44.314 --> 00:24:50.284
He also theorized that the kidnapper had a knife and that rashanda was the kind of girl who could be intimidated.
00:24:51.574 --> 00:25:00.798
The Sheriff's Office started a labor intensive search as the facts became widely known and Roy's linked to Kay Turner's murder hit the local media.
00:25:01.249 --> 00:25:03.769
The district attorney set up a task force.
00:25:04.278 --> 00:25:08.929
Their mission justice for Rashonda Pickle and Kay Turner.
00:25:10.489 --> 00:25:18.048
To this end, detective spent almost two years working Rashonda Pickle's disappearance, while reviving the Kay Turner case.
00:25:18.618 --> 00:25:22.638
Progress was slow, but persistence was rewarded with breakthroughs.
00:25:23.538 --> 00:25:30.284
Aykroyd's alibi, witness and friend from Beck in 1978, Beck was no longer married.
00:25:31.243 --> 00:25:35.713
When the detectives re-interviewed his ex-wife, she told them that she lied.
00:25:35.713 --> 00:25:37.453
When she supported Beck's Alibi.
00:25:38.023 --> 00:25:40.604
At the time, she was afraid the men would hurt her.
00:25:41.183 --> 00:25:49.523
The woman told police that not only were the two men unaccounted for after Turner's disappearance, she had heard the men talking about shooting her.
00:25:50.527 --> 00:26:03.104
The results of forensic reexamination of Kay Turner evidence allowed the prosecution to confidently assert that Kay Turner had been kidnapped, raped, beaten, stabbed, and shot.
00:26:04.213 --> 00:26:15.118
Oregon media outlets took notice of the task force activities as they churn through old police reports on crimes that had occurred over the last two decades along the Highway 20 corridor.
00:26:16.709 --> 00:26:26.878
There were numerous unsolved missing person reports over the years, along with several bodies, mostly young women discovered in dump sites adjacent to the roadway.
00:26:27.614 --> 00:26:39.163
The problem was that most of the remains by the time of discovery were almost impossible to identify, with cause of death, difficult to pinpoint beyond simply likely homicide.
00:26:40.304 --> 00:26:48.074
While canvassing old crime reports from towns in the Highway 20 corridor, a sexual assault caught the investigator's attention.
00:26:48.884 --> 00:26:51.044
Aykroyd was the named suspect.
00:26:51.554 --> 00:27:04.243
Although the rape was never charged, it gave the investigators a template, a kind of Rosetta Stone of Aykroyd's MO linking cases, and answering some questions about what he had been up to.
00:27:06.019 --> 00:27:15.259
One evening in 1977, Marlene Gabrielsson left the sister's rodeo and began hitchhiking home.
00:27:15.950 --> 00:27:20.630
The route was isolated, leading up into heavily forested mountainsides.
00:27:21.109 --> 00:27:26.210
A man she later identified as Royd, pulled over his truck and offered her a ride.
00:27:27.664 --> 00:27:32.795
At some point during the drive, Aykroyd turned off onto a logging road and pulled out a knife.
00:27:33.575 --> 00:27:38.134
Marlene tried to flee, but there was no handle on the passenger side door..
00:27:39.154 --> 00:27:41.164
Arod used the blade menacingly.
00:27:41.555 --> 00:27:46.444
He would wave the blade in front of Marlene's face and then slice away parts of her clothing.
00:27:46.865 --> 00:27:50.585
Suddenly he dragged her out of the truck and pinned her to the ground as he raped her.
00:27:51.484 --> 00:28:00.154
Marlene tried to look away, tried to imagine being somewhere else but the assailant demanded she looked directly at him while he assaulted her body.
00:28:01.505 --> 00:28:04.835
When Aykroyd finished, Marlene was afraid for her life.
00:28:05.345 --> 00:28:09.755
She pled with him to take her home, promising not to tell.
00:28:10.204 --> 00:28:15.125
She told him that her mother was babysitting her child and that she was expected to be back soon.
00:28:16.025 --> 00:28:19.805
Finally, in response, Aykroyd drove Marlene the rest of the way.
00:28:20.285 --> 00:28:22.414
Dropping her off near her mother's house.
00:28:23.404 --> 00:28:28.684
Marlene told investigators in 1990 that she never washed herself after the rape.
00:28:29.045 --> 00:28:34.115
She made her mom drive her straight to the hospital bringing the slashed clothing with her.
00:28:34.775 --> 00:28:39.775
The 1990 investigators examined the 1978 ER doctor notes.
00:28:41.634 --> 00:28:45.865
The cuts to the clothing, corresponded with lacerations on Marlene's body.
00:28:46.255 --> 00:28:49.615
They also noted that the cuts seemed almost ritualistic.
00:28:50.005 --> 00:28:53.095
The jeans were cut straight from the crotch to the hemline.
00:28:54.234 --> 00:28:56.234
The 1990 detectives.
00:28:56.775 --> 00:29:02.984
After reviewing the old reports and talking to Marlene, believed she was lucky to have lived through the incident.
00:29:03.704 --> 00:29:10.904
The problem was the original investigator in 1977 clearly believed that Marlene was lying.
00:29:11.744 --> 00:29:21.244
The initial interview with Marlene had devolved into an accusatory interrogation where minute details were scrutinized and her answers discounted.
00:29:22.174 --> 00:29:28.585
Conversely, when Aykroyd was interviewed, he admitted to giving Marlene a ride, but insisted that she came onto him.
00:29:29.924 --> 00:29:34.224
He denied having sex and claimed to have no idea how her clothes got slashed.
00:29:34.765 --> 00:29:37.525
His account went largely unchallenged.
00:29:39.744 --> 00:29:45.654
Task Force Detectives saw many similarities between the cases they examined and what Marlene had experienced.
00:29:46.164 --> 00:29:52.755
Clothing found in one of the Jane Doe found body scenes were slashed in a fashion similar to Marlene's.
00:29:53.595 --> 00:29:58.045
As the task force was finalizing its first case, tragedy struck again.
00:29:59.019 --> 00:30:12.939
In May, 19 92, 2 girls from the town of Sweet Home, Sheila Swanson, 19 years old, and Melissa Sanders, 17 years old, disappeared while hitchhiking on Highway 20.
00:30:13.778 --> 00:30:19.659
Both girls skeletal remains were found together at a remote dump site near the town of Chitwood.
00:30:20.108 --> 00:30:21.909
In October, 1992.
00:30:23.199 --> 00:30:34.403
Between the time Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders went missing, and when their bodies were recovered, the task force had charged and arrested Aykroyd for Kay Turner's murder.
00:30:35.273 --> 00:30:43.884
There were many compelling aspects of the Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders case that led the investigators to believe that Aykroyd was responsible.
00:30:44.874 --> 00:30:45.683
Timing.
00:30:46.134 --> 00:30:53.094
The girls were hitchhiking along Highway 20 at the same time, Aykroyd was driving in the area, a witness.
00:30:53.618 --> 00:31:16.388
A woman in a passing vehicle claimed to have seen an Oregon d o t marked pickup truck, picking up two girls in the area, coworker suspicion around the time the girls disappeared two o d t shop workers on overtime unexpectedly encountered Akroyd, who came in late one night, probably expecting no one would be there.
00:31:16.898 --> 00:31:20.229
The coworkers said his hands and arms were covered in blood.
00:31:20.528 --> 00:31:29.348
He claimed to have hit a deer, but neither man believed him and Aykroyd knew the girls, although he denied it.
00:31:29.499 --> 00:31:33.398
Aykroyd was living in the town of Sweet Home at the time the two girls disappeared.
00:31:33.939 --> 00:31:37.179
He frequented a popular local teen hangout.
00:31:37.838 --> 00:31:39.038
Because of his age.
00:31:39.098 --> 00:31:40.929
The kids there called him the perv.
00:31:41.499 --> 00:31:46.479
Some kids said that Swanson and Sanders both had spoken to the perv.
00:31:47.949 --> 00:31:55.568
Aykroyd and Beck, both 42 were arrested on June 12th, 1992 for the rape and murder of Kate Turner.
00:31:58.269 --> 00:32:02.199
The following year, they tried both men in front of separate juries.
00:32:02.648 --> 00:32:10.959
In the trials, Beck's ex-wife testified about covering their alibi and helping with cleanup, which included burning their clothing.
00:32:11.949 --> 00:32:17.108
The forensic work on Kay's clothes and Bones revealed the truth about her death.
00:32:17.739 --> 00:32:19.929
Her clothing had been cut off, not torn.
00:32:20.439 --> 00:32:23.019
Her bones bore marks where she had been stabbed.
00:32:23.409 --> 00:32:27.759
Metal fragments were embedded in the bones showing that they'd also shot her.
00:32:28.598 --> 00:32:35.199
This evidence corresponded with guesses Aykroyd had made at the time that he claimed to have discovered the body.
00:32:36.189 --> 00:32:40.959
It turned out that Marlene Gabrielsson was not the only woman to have survived a brush with Aykroyd.
00:32:41.723 --> 00:32:45.864
Investigators found another woman who worked as a waitress at Black Butte Lodge.
00:32:46.344 --> 00:32:54.683
She testified one day as she was riding her bicycle home from work, Aykroyd stopped on the roadside in front of her pointing a gun.
00:32:54.683 --> 00:32:57.953
He tried to make her stop, but she was able to elude him.
00:32:59.304 --> 00:33:05.213
At the conclusion of the murder trials, both men were found guilty on all charges and given life sentences.
00:33:06.263 --> 00:33:12.834
Several years later, Aykroyd pled no contest to a charge of murder for his stepdaughter Rashonda pickle.
00:33:13.973 --> 00:33:17.703
This plea eliminated any possibility that he could ever be granted parole.
00:33:19.548 --> 00:33:24.588
In spite of the plea, he refused to disclose the location of Shonda's body.
00:33:25.909 --> 00:33:34.249
Akroyd died of natural causes on December 30th, 2016, while incarcerated at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.
00:33:34.909 --> 00:33:38.058
He was 67 at the time of his death.
00:33:38.058 --> 00:33:46.759
Investigators from the Lincoln County District Attorney's Office were preparing to charge him for the murders of Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
00:34:03.461 --> 00:34:09.342
Transitioning to the discussion, this is really a set of cases over a very long timeline.
00:34:09.492 --> 00:34:11.322
Let's start by talking about Kay Turner.
00:34:11.782 --> 00:34:14.271
They were in a pretty remote area when this happened.
00:34:14.632 --> 00:34:15.922
What does the response look like
00:34:16.644 --> 00:34:20.724
As a responding officer, you're sent to a missing person, and this is a pretty common call.
00:34:20.875 --> 00:34:21.385
Wherever you are.
00:34:21.389 --> 00:34:27.054
I think you go and you start talking to the complainants and ask the initial questions.
00:34:27.054 --> 00:34:27.894
Who's missing?
00:34:27.954 --> 00:34:29.244
How long have they been missing?
00:34:29.695 --> 00:34:30.835
What's the situation?
00:34:31.105 --> 00:34:32.244
What's already been done?
00:34:32.275 --> 00:34:33.175
Where have you looked?
00:34:34.465 --> 00:34:38.155
And try to basically get a general feel of that situation.
00:34:38.902 --> 00:34:44.481
A search for a person, especially one that's urgent is a considerable deployment of resources.
00:34:44.791 --> 00:35:00.862
Basically to have a major situation like this where everybody's gonna be called out, you have to The original responding officer has had pretty high confidence that the situation's real, the person that's missing is in danger and that that kind of deployment will likely find this person.
00:35:01.722 --> 00:35:09.882
And the whole time you're really hoping that the person's going to, and honestly you're hoping the person shows up the first thing that's gonna be done is, who is the person likely to be with their friends?
00:35:09.882 --> 00:35:17.422
And we contact all those per people and run through that list of where is the person likely to be, let's check all those places first.
00:35:17.422 --> 00:35:26.001
like if you go for to a house where there's a kid missing, the first thing you're going to wanna check is the officers are gonna ask to thoroughly check the home.
00:35:26.572 --> 00:35:29.391
Now, if you have people that are like you're not checking our home.
00:35:29.396 --> 00:35:44.481
Wait a minute, your kid's missing, we need to check your home, we wanna check that off because if we begin a huge overland search here or a ever widening search for a truly missing kid, we need to say we checked off A to B first place, always the house.
00:35:44.661 --> 00:35:47.632
And likewise here, we're gonna make sure that.
00:35:48.481 --> 00:35:50.012
All the likely places are checked.
00:35:50.012 --> 00:35:55.831
Where Kay Turner was likely to be where she could have stopped off, does she have any friends in the area?
00:35:56.041 --> 00:35:57.481
Where does she like to go in the area?
00:35:57.487 --> 00:36:01.581
Is there a place she might go find a, a park bench and look at her favorite mountain?
00:36:01.681 --> 00:36:04.891
And obviously here the Sheriff's Department assess that Yes.
00:36:04.891 --> 00:36:07.771
Is a situation that needs to have resources brought out on.
00:36:08.072 --> 00:36:11.681
And they called out, their search team volunteers.
00:36:12.192 --> 00:36:19.021
They had some Boy scout groups in the area and those search teams brought out other resources like aviation and tracking dogs.
00:36:20.927 --> 00:36:22.996
Any major missing person, is gonna follow two tracks.
00:36:23.237 --> 00:36:27.047
You're gonna have the ground track which is searching the areas I just described.
00:36:27.347 --> 00:36:30.476
And then you're also gonna have the the investigative portion.
00:36:30.936 --> 00:36:36.487
You're gonna take all the people aside and you're gonna interview them and see what they really think separately from one another.
00:36:36.487 --> 00:36:44.706
Because these friends that went up with Kay Turner into the mountains, some of them knew some things about her that maybe the husband didn't know.
00:36:44.856 --> 00:36:53.556
The other thing you would wanna know is what do the friends there have to say about the relationship between Noel, the husband and Kay Turner, leading up to the event?
00:36:53.916 --> 00:36:55.117
Did it seem like they were happy?
00:36:55.121 --> 00:36:56.077
Was there any fights?
00:36:56.077 --> 00:36:57.277
Did they hear any arguments?
00:36:57.677 --> 00:36:58.306
This kind of thing.
00:36:58.456 --> 00:37:02.717
And those interviews will inform where you're gonna search,
00:37:02.987 --> 00:37:05.567
This morning you were talking about a recent Anchorage case.
00:37:05.567 --> 00:37:07.097
How does that relate here?
00:37:07.967 --> 00:37:19.717
Yeah I keep track of what's going on in, back in my old city and about, at the time of this recording, almost a week prior, there's a 21 year old female that was missing.
00:37:20.106 --> 00:37:29.706
And what I noticed about the missing personal report was that the report was coming from family that was, I think they might have been visiting South Africa or some, she had some family in South Africa.
00:37:30.876 --> 00:37:35.617
And my, the first thing I thought was, Why was there not a local appeal?
00:37:35.666 --> 00:37:37.197
Does she have no family in Anchorage?
00:37:37.197 --> 00:37:44.827
Now some people are military, they may not have any family in Anchorage, but why wasn't there somebody local announcing this calling for her search?
00:37:45.376 --> 00:37:50.297
My first question there when I thought, when I saw that, I was like, does she not have a boyfriend or a husband here in town?
00:37:50.686 --> 00:37:51.496
What's up with that?
00:37:52.586 --> 00:37:57.992
The reason I thought that is if you listen to our episode on Susan Bailey, a DV situation the same thing.
00:37:58.681 --> 00:38:04.442
The husband who lived in town was not eager to report this thing.
00:38:04.601 --> 00:38:06.072
It turned out he had killed his wife.
00:38:06.402 --> 00:38:13.302
And even though he should be the first reporter to the police, the people I went to, to talk to about her being missing were her coworkers.
00:38:13.581 --> 00:38:17.166
Likewise, I didn't know anything about the missing lady in Anchorage.
00:38:17.376 --> 00:38:21.097
But my first thought was I wonder if she's got a husband or her boyfriend at town?
00:38:21.931 --> 00:38:33.521
There was a lot of media on this missing person and searching for her And it turned out five days later, her body was found near to where her and her husband significantly lived.
00:38:34.012 --> 00:38:39.981
It turned out on the weekend prior, the husband had shot her in the middle of the night and hid the body in the woods nearby.
00:38:40.322 --> 00:38:46.572
Here's a situation where overland search, if you don't have the specific location, would be difficult to search.
00:38:46.672 --> 00:38:49.911
Although eventually they probably would've found her because she wasn't far from her house.
00:38:50.391 --> 00:38:54.322
But here the investigators directed the search that ultimately turned up her body.
00:38:56.072 --> 00:39:02.911
You've been involved in searches where the family was not immediately excluded, but then it turned out the family wasn't involved.
00:39:03.452 --> 00:39:05.762
How does that sort of thing get sorted out?
00:39:06.692 --> 00:39:07.172
Yeah.
00:39:07.322 --> 00:39:09.362
Especially with kids, it's hard to know.
00:39:09.931 --> 00:39:14.802
I helped in the ground search for a couple missing kids a long time ago.
00:39:15.231 --> 00:39:17.692
It wasn't clear that the parent wasn't a suspect.
00:39:18.222 --> 00:39:20.641
Some of those situations are, ambiguous.
00:39:21.242 --> 00:39:23.581
There's some suspicious background issues here.
00:39:24.121 --> 00:39:31.891
So one of the detectives had the unenviable task of pressing the parent, and they pressed the parent hard.
00:39:32.521 --> 00:39:35.431
And it later turned out the kids were deceased.
00:39:35.532 --> 00:39:37.572
And the parent wasn't directly involved.
00:39:37.572 --> 00:39:41.262
This missing kids thing lasted for a few weeks.
00:39:41.621 --> 00:39:46.161
And, I talked to one of the detectives that was, An interviewer there.
00:39:46.702 --> 00:39:54.181
And I can tell you that finding out that the parent that he had interrogated confronted actually didn't have anything to do with it.
00:39:54.521 --> 00:39:57.126
He felt like shit, but it had to be done.
00:39:57.186 --> 00:39:59.851
We had to find those kids, we had to figure out if they knew anything.
00:40:00.375 --> 00:40:08.969
In this case with the K turner, you'd locked the husband down to a timeline going in and, you'd see if they had any arguments.
00:40:09.389 --> 00:40:11.980
What did the husband say about the stability?
00:40:11.980 --> 00:40:13.510
Did he know about the boyfriends.
00:40:13.849 --> 00:40:16.340
And in those interviews you'd see what reaction you got.
00:40:16.670 --> 00:40:20.690
A lot of times they're not gonna be honest and there's gonna be clues to that.
00:40:20.739 --> 00:40:24.590
And like I said, you'd talk to the friends and see if they, did they see Kay leave?
00:40:24.889 --> 00:40:26.239
Did they know she went running?
00:40:26.300 --> 00:40:27.980
Or is that just what the husband said?
00:40:28.425 --> 00:40:31.574
And in general, what was the whole situation in the days prior?
00:40:32.382 --> 00:40:34.842
Do you think that the husband knew about the boyfriends?
00:40:34.842 --> 00:40:38.532
Do you think one of the friends knew and told investigators?
00:40:38.581 --> 00:40:39.481
How did that come up?
00:40:41.072 --> 00:40:45.001
I actually don't know who spilled the beans on that, or if he knew, or who knows.
00:40:45.001 --> 00:40:46.911
But it was something they investigated.
00:40:47.282 --> 00:40:54.902
In that case, say this came up in a case I was working at, track down the boyfriend, see if they knew anything, and significantly what did those guys say about the husband?
00:40:54.902 --> 00:41:00.117
Did the husband say that she's, seeing them because he's a tyrant and beats her, what's he saying?
00:41:00.117 --> 00:41:00.896
Or does he not know?
00:41:00.902 --> 00:41:01.677
Is he clueless?
00:41:02.186 --> 00:41:09.677
I imagine that based on the cases I'm involved in, the detectives pretty early had a theory about how that was gonna go.
00:41:10.077 --> 00:41:18.467
Just like on the case I talked about in Anchorage last week, I would bet those detectives had some idea pretty quick after touching base with that husband.
00:41:18.856 --> 00:41:25.347
Maybe the neighbors, because she was shot in an apartment, they had a pretty good idea that things weren't right inside the house.
00:41:25.396 --> 00:41:26.806
What was their relationship like?
00:41:27.106 --> 00:41:35.786
And I think in this case with Kay Turner, they would've had a pretty good idea that this doesn't smell like something that went bad suddenly, and she just disappeared.
00:41:36.507 --> 00:41:41.297
And as far as K Turner goes you might say is it the kind of thing where she would just up and leave her husband?
00:41:41.577 --> 00:41:42.836
It probably didn't feel like that either.
00:41:42.836 --> 00:41:50.186
Because why would she go away on a trip, Christmas trip with her friends and her husband, and, just step out on them.
00:41:50.246 --> 00:41:51.237
It just, it doesn't seem right.
00:41:51.507 --> 00:41:53.666
Versus so the middle of nowhere, right in the middle of nowhere.
00:41:53.666 --> 00:41:57.032
And versus, the week prior she leaves him or something.
00:41:57.161 --> 00:42:07.157
And like I said, in other cases I've seen and are familiar with husbands that just did in their wives or did something, their wives often aren't in a hurry to make that report.
00:42:07.157 --> 00:42:07.967
They want to delay it.
00:42:07.967 --> 00:42:10.097
They want to delay that confrontation with the cops.
00:42:10.097 --> 00:42:11.336
It's inevitably coming.
00:42:12.606 --> 00:42:15.722
This certainly served as a red herring for a while with the investigators.
00:42:15.992 --> 00:42:16.742
Yeah, the boyfriends.
00:42:16.742 --> 00:42:17.072
Yeah.
00:42:17.152 --> 00:42:23.931
The good thing is, like I said, with the two tracks, they were able to area search, which unfortunately the area search wasn't successful.
00:42:24.041 --> 00:42:29.202
And then they were also were able, they had the manpower to actually work the investigation too.
00:42:29.592 --> 00:42:33.641
So I think they pretty much discounted the boyfriends that red herring.
00:42:33.882 --> 00:42:36.581
And were able to move towards a real suspect
00:42:39.521 --> 00:42:42.942
setting plays a really huge role in this whole story.
00:42:44.442 --> 00:42:44.862
Oh yeah.
00:42:44.911 --> 00:42:52.507
And I'm familiar with searches in very large areas, densely wooded, rugged relatively sparsely populated.
00:42:52.697 --> 00:42:58.956
It's funny when I think of that it's like that movie alien where no in place areas where no one can hear you scream.
00:43:00.706 --> 00:43:08.692
anywhere where these places where any help is gonna be a long time incoming, ironically Aykroyd's job was that guy to come and help.
00:43:10.922 --> 00:43:16.257
The thing about the setting in this situation is Ayd was a predator in his own territory.
00:43:16.626 --> 00:43:18.007
He's been traveling it for years.
00:43:18.067 --> 00:43:23.697
He's familiar with the whole area and, he legitimately had a reason to be where he was committing crimes.
00:43:23.697 --> 00:43:26.067
So his presence is never suspicious.
00:43:28.387 --> 00:43:37.501
And when they really scrutinized him, he had this believable fallback excuse of, I'm just hunting, or I'm poaching, or I'm running over wild animals.
00:43:38.612 --> 00:43:38.911
Yeah.
00:43:38.911 --> 00:43:40.181
And he wasn't a dumb guy.
00:43:40.181 --> 00:43:46.452
He told investigators who's poaching and that's what's known as a, an admission against self-interest.
00:43:46.452 --> 00:43:49.206
And it one of the indicators that he might be telling the truth.
00:43:49.327 --> 00:43:55.597
It's an effort to appear that he's just an honest guy, caught making a small mistake when he doesn't really wanna admit to the big thing.
00:43:55.987 --> 00:44:03.717
So it's the perfect environment and it's coupled with poor oversight and supervision on that highway job.
00:44:03.771 --> 00:44:07.282
It's perfect for him to do what he wants to do live out his fantasies.
00:44:07.681 --> 00:44:15.981
As far as his preferred victims went, he obviously, he wasn't picking up every woman he saw, he put, he was selecting those that were vulnerable.
00:44:16.442 --> 00:44:19.387
And he had control enough to bite his time and wait for somebody.
00:44:19.387 --> 00:44:20.347
That's right.
00:44:21.737 --> 00:44:30.297
And as far as the body dump science, he could, he picked places where he knew only a few people frequented, not on popular hiking areas.
00:44:30.717 --> 00:44:34.266
it makes me think of if you watch the show Yellowstone.
00:44:34.942 --> 00:44:41.211
They have a thing called Moonlight Train, where the people on the ranch that are supposedly good guys, although this is a bad thing.
00:44:41.512 --> 00:44:58.697
When they want to bump off somebody, when they wanna kill somebody and eliminate them they call it, they were taking'em on the Moonlight train and they drive'em out to a Clifftop and they shoot'em and toss'em off the cliff, and they can do this time after time because they know nobody's gonna go in the rugged cliff side area that they're doing that on.
00:44:58.697 --> 00:45:02.327
And that's what makes me think here is this guy knew all those places.
00:45:02.847 --> 00:45:08.726
And the other thing that, the other thought that brought to me was he pled to Rashonda.
00:45:09.746 --> 00:45:15.981
And it made me wonder, why he didn't just give up where her body was located.
00:45:16.222 --> 00:45:22.672
It made me wonder if he had his own Moonlight train location where if he gave up Rashonda, there'd be other people there.
00:45:24.382 --> 00:45:27.472
Presumably he'd been killing for years by then.
00:45:27.711 --> 00:45:32.621
Do you think he would've developed a special spot to dump bodies rather than spreading them around that region?
00:45:32.831 --> 00:45:37.936
I know investigators are fairly certain that some of those women that were found at dump sites are his.
00:45:38.166 --> 00:45:47.012
I don't know, but I think it's possible, and I think that may be a reason why he wouldn't want to give up Rhonda's location is because there were other ones that he liked that spot.
00:45:47.112 --> 00:45:47.802
That's what I think.
00:45:50.592 --> 00:45:52.961
There were several initial searches for K.
00:45:52.992 --> 00:45:56.081
What were the problems with those overland searches?
00:45:56.472 --> 00:45:56.862
Yeah.
00:45:57.101 --> 00:46:07.442
When the investigators in later years looked at the original search what they saw was the, some of the areas where they searched were too broad, too big.
00:46:08.297 --> 00:46:10.007
And I think the investigator is right.
00:46:10.492 --> 00:46:17.672
A victim is unlikely to turn up miles off a roadway or path without any kind of means of getting there easily.
00:46:18.043 --> 00:46:22.117
And most dump bodies are found near the road, not five miles back.
00:46:22.697 --> 00:46:25.038
And same with corresponding articles of evidence.
00:46:25.307 --> 00:46:29.688
If you listen to our episode on the Bethany Carrera case, that's a good example.
00:46:29.737 --> 00:46:36.632
The suspects there drove her body away from the urban area of Anchorage out into the wilderness.
00:46:37.023 --> 00:46:41.972
And then when they got to where they thought they were safe, they drove basically across a gravel parking lot.
00:46:42.422 --> 00:46:45.682
And they couldn't dig a grave due to the ground conditions.
00:46:45.682 --> 00:46:50.753
So they threw her body down in embankment, but she still turned out to be very close to the road.
00:46:52.838 --> 00:46:56.818
Yeah, but the drive between Anchorage and Fairbanks is seven hours of wilderness.
00:46:56.847 --> 00:47:01.018
She could have been on the edge of the road and you still would've had trouble finding
00:47:01.018 --> 00:47:01.407
her.
00:47:01.858 --> 00:47:02.038
Yeah.
00:47:02.038 --> 00:47:05.143
That was the problem that they had to have some somebody point.
00:47:05.623 --> 00:47:09.913
And that's the problem they had with all the murders that we profiled here.
00:47:10.273 --> 00:47:14.353
Lots of densely wooded area, lots of roadside turnouts to scour.
00:47:14.532 --> 00:47:16.353
And, it's much too big an area.
00:47:16.353 --> 00:47:17.853
Just to randomly search
00:47:20.012 --> 00:47:31.952
while we're on the subject of Bethany Carrera, the investigation at the dump site had some commonalities with Kay Turner because her skull was found a year after the rest of her body, about three quarters of a mile away.
00:47:32.563 --> 00:47:33.427
Very similarly.
00:47:35.347 --> 00:47:42.907
I thought of that when I heard, when I looked at this case, both sets of remains were scattered by animals as they decomposed in the Bethany career case.
00:47:42.907 --> 00:47:47.632
Her remains were spread by animals, downhill across a meadow in case's case.
00:47:47.722 --> 00:47:51.918
And this may in the place that she was found, it wasn't super rugged in case.
00:47:52.217 --> 00:47:55.547
And in her intax skull was found.
00:47:55.608 --> 00:47:58.157
It's a pretty large item to be carried almost a mile.
00:47:58.438 --> 00:48:10.882
But it was probably decomposed enough to easily separate and it did separate from the jaw because they found that at the original site, and it separate from spine and any tissues left, which meant it'd be lighter than, an intact head.
00:48:11.422 --> 00:48:15.393
So what you'd expect is remains would travel more easily downhill.
00:48:15.393 --> 00:48:16.443
This a rugged area.
00:48:16.862 --> 00:48:21.873
But you're still probably talking about a d a dog or coyote versus an a small rodent.
00:48:23.309 --> 00:48:24.750
Back to the huge search area.
00:48:25.139 --> 00:48:27.389
What do you do with that kind of an area?
00:48:28.650 --> 00:48:28.829
Yeah.
00:48:28.829 --> 00:48:30.659
You take a look at what resources you have.
00:48:30.900 --> 00:48:34.610
You try and figure out the highest areas of probability of discovery.
00:48:34.920 --> 00:48:38.190
Maybe you look at places where the victim or suspect like to spend time.
00:48:38.190 --> 00:48:46.150
If you have that information you try to think like the victim or like the suspect, and you search places that seem right for the situation.
00:48:46.750 --> 00:48:50.619
You use resources like Aircraft canine to augment your effort.
00:48:51.019 --> 00:48:56.989
Basically you do the best you can with what you have and you have to accept it even after a search is complete.
00:48:57.349 --> 00:49:01.789
It doesn't mean that the target wasn't right there and that you just missed it.
00:49:04.250 --> 00:49:08.659
You did say you were surprised that they used Boy Scouts in the search for Kay's body.
00:49:10.280 --> 00:49:10.519
Yeah.
00:49:10.519 --> 00:49:17.590
My immediate reaction was, I was surprised that you're gonna bring, basically what are young some, sometimes young kids.
00:49:18.099 --> 00:49:19.989
But I guess I was spoiled living in the city.
00:49:20.380 --> 00:49:24.550
There were some fairly strict requirements on who could be a part of the civilian team.
00:49:24.949 --> 00:49:31.469
They need background checks, but I guess in a very rural environment, you can't be selective.
00:49:32.190 --> 00:49:38.135
I feel very fortunate that I never had to be part of a search that was so large that we were calling for, just any volunteer.
00:49:39.574 --> 00:49:43.324
You did coordinate overland searches that were strictly police?
00:49:43.835 --> 00:49:44.284
Yeah.
00:49:44.405 --> 00:49:48.934
The Kincaid Park searches that we're looking for, the episode we had with Mindy Schloss.
00:49:49.835 --> 00:49:52.025
She was killed by serial killer Joshua Wade.
00:49:52.474 --> 00:49:58.349
That was just Anchorage Police, F b i and other, any other federal agents who they could scrape up.
00:49:58.690 --> 00:50:00.184
I ran the line searches for that
00:50:00.184 --> 00:50:05.724
why would you keep it Just police versus adding civilians or boy scouts?
00:50:05.724 --> 00:50:11.195
Even some investigations are sensitive with Mindy Schloss case.
00:50:11.385 --> 00:50:16.440
The homicide team wanted to keep the, that information tight and have the fewer leaks, the better.
00:50:16.800 --> 00:50:25.505
So they saw to keep it as sworn personnel or only, I'm not trying to say by any means that civilian team members are unreliable.
00:50:25.534 --> 00:50:27.125
They're great and they're essential.
00:50:27.445 --> 00:50:33.375
But that case, particularly sensitive, we're trying to keep the identity of the, by that time the name Josh Wade.
00:50:34.034 --> 00:50:35.715
What it was explosive.
00:50:35.744 --> 00:50:46.605
He had gotten away with it, pretty much everybody knew he got away with it before, and for him to turn up in this high profile missing nurse case would've been explosive.
00:50:46.605 --> 00:50:49.934
We're trying to keep that noise down as long as we could.
00:50:49.989 --> 00:51:02.929
Now my concern with Boy Scouts searching is the effect that, if you find things that could have on a child, some of my adult searchers they talked about some of the, depression and being upset by finding some of these things.
00:51:02.934 --> 00:51:06.445
So I'd be worried about kids, especially with fresh body parts.
00:51:06.894 --> 00:51:09.144
Like I said, even adults can have trouble at experience.
00:51:09.519 --> 00:51:14.409
But again, if your choice is searching with kids or not searching at all, I'll take the kids.
00:51:16.840 --> 00:51:21.909
You mentioned that cases sometime need shepherding or they risk being forgotten.
00:51:23.079 --> 00:51:23.320
Yeah.
00:51:23.324 --> 00:51:26.500
If you listen to Susan Bailey, that murder is a good example.
00:51:26.750 --> 00:51:31.340
And there's some other ones that I can think of where they're not easy to solve.
00:51:31.409 --> 00:51:34.739
In Susan Bailey, we, everybody knew what happened and who did it.
00:51:35.289 --> 00:51:40.630
The case needed somebody to, to be an advocate to, to shepherd it, to push it through the end zone.
00:51:41.059 --> 00:51:42.110
And it gets stale.
00:51:42.150 --> 00:51:46.739
These cases get get cold, grow cold, and get stale on that.
00:51:46.795 --> 00:51:48.775
I was the initial responding officer.
00:51:49.085 --> 00:51:50.704
But I cared about it enough.
00:51:50.704 --> 00:51:51.965
I knew she was dead right away.
00:51:52.335 --> 00:51:53.139
I cared about the case.
00:51:53.144 --> 00:51:58.900
I checked back in homicide with it regularly, and it got passed between detectives because people are coming in and out.
00:51:59.320 --> 00:52:04.835
But I was thrilled when the detective who eventually ran with it cared about it as much as I did.
00:52:06.224 --> 00:52:08.610
On the other hand, some cases have to ripen.
00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:13.739
Witnesses can come forward after years of living with guilt or the horrible knowledge of what happened.
00:52:14.170 --> 00:52:17.079
Or, kids grow up and they can say, okay, now I'm gonna talk about it.
00:52:17.690 --> 00:52:21.480
For but for most cases, time does not make'em better.
00:52:21.480 --> 00:52:23.670
They don't get better with age like wine.
00:52:24.369 --> 00:52:34.585
One of the problems with the detectives is sometimes not taking action is easier than grinding out a tough case both for the investigator and a prosecutor.
00:52:35.764 --> 00:52:36.065
Now that
00:52:36.065 --> 00:52:39.034
sounds a little bit like you're trying to say investigators might be lazy.
00:52:39.164 --> 00:52:39.704
No, I'm not.
00:52:39.925 --> 00:52:41.664
I absolutely don't wanna give that impression.
00:52:41.934 --> 00:52:42.835
Quite the contrary.
00:52:43.014 --> 00:52:47.034
But keep in mind that investigator units are never overstaffed and over budgeted.
00:52:47.434 --> 00:52:52.204
There's always a new case coming in to distract you from that pile of shit you already have.
00:52:53.255 --> 00:53:02.405
It seems like the Marlene Gabrielsson case, that initial rape was forgotten until much, much later, maybe even till after Rashonda Pickle's disappearance.
00:53:06.005 --> 00:53:06.965
Yeah, I think that's true.
00:53:06.994 --> 00:53:17.594
I think that the reason that people, that investigators and later the press started looking back was that, you had this K turner, he's the main suspect.
00:53:17.655 --> 00:53:21.980
Like I said, on the, on some other things, you just know that's the people involved in that just know he's the guy.
00:53:22.030 --> 00:53:22.929
We just can't prove it.
00:53:23.289 --> 00:53:23.949
And here you have.
00:53:24.820 --> 00:53:27.070
A young girl, she's missing.
00:53:27.099 --> 00:53:28.809
He's the guy we pretty much know.
00:53:28.809 --> 00:53:30.760
He is the guy after looking into it a little while.
00:53:31.070 --> 00:53:34.820
Now we're gonna pull out all the stops'cause this guy, we're not, we gotta stop this guy.
00:53:35.030 --> 00:53:42.409
And the thing about the Marlon Gabrielson case is that it was a historical case.
00:53:42.409 --> 00:53:47.514
It's thought of to be as he, it's his first it's Aykroyd's first known rape case.
00:53:48.085 --> 00:53:51.315
And back then there wasn't a database.
00:53:51.375 --> 00:53:53.474
Case relations were not easily searched.
00:53:53.965 --> 00:53:55.284
And that's changed quite a bit.
00:53:55.686 --> 00:54:01.396
Now I could go to the computer and find cases, all the contacts, all the associates that dating back decades.
00:54:01.737 --> 00:54:04.197
And the ability to do that is only getting better.
00:54:04.536 --> 00:54:06.786
Despite people's fear of big brothers watching.
00:54:06.876 --> 00:54:08.016
I think that's a great thing.
00:54:08.016 --> 00:54:13.467
And I know I've benefited greatly from my career from that particular technological process.
00:54:15.237 --> 00:54:15.476
Okay.
00:54:15.476 --> 00:54:20.697
But the police were downright unresponsive to Marlene Gabriels son's initial report of being raped.
00:54:22.766 --> 00:54:23.396
Yes, they were.
00:54:23.396 --> 00:54:38.106
And it was significant in the later case, only as historical case because it pretty much showed what he what he liked to do, what he did and from, and they had the ability to talk to her first person and get the story.
00:54:38.376 --> 00:54:41.797
So we want, we wanna talk about why it wasn't worked.
00:54:42.246 --> 00:54:45.306
So first of all, I think it should have been worked.
00:54:45.311 --> 00:54:49.806
I think it, I think looking at the, at that specific case, I think there was plenty to go on.
00:54:49.811 --> 00:55:03.911
And let me explain that when the decision process for charging a complaint of sexual assault, what the investigator has to prove or has to secure evidence for is consent, right?
00:55:04.061 --> 00:55:12.192
So we have to prove that non-consensual sex happened and that there was no consent.
00:55:12.882 --> 00:55:14.202
That's the investigative burden.
00:55:15.081 --> 00:55:19.427
I'm trying to look at that case and figure out what would make the investigator skeptical, right?
00:55:21.581 --> 00:55:23.311
You have so much evidence there.
00:55:23.762 --> 00:55:29.132
The suspect talked to them and the victim talked to them and the victim told the story that he did this.
00:55:29.132 --> 00:55:32.592
And he cut her clothes up and you have he picks her up.
00:55:33.041 --> 00:55:43.092
He drives her to the place, he threatens her, holds a knife up, he cuts her clothes off and she convinced him to take her home.
00:55:43.601 --> 00:55:49.722
And she gets out of the car and she goes right to her mother and says, this guy raped me.
00:55:49.931 --> 00:55:50.981
Take me to the hospital.
00:55:51.192 --> 00:56:04.742
I've got all this cut clothes evidence, and we drive over the hospital and the ER doc takes a look at her body and says, yes, those cuts that are consistent with where he cuts your clothing and also cut your body while he is doing that.
00:56:05.342 --> 00:56:11.097
You'd have questions like of the mother, Hey, Did you hear that truck drop her off?
00:56:11.157 --> 00:56:18.061
What was her, because you can interview the mother on hearsay things because she's the first reporter or the first person that was reported to.
00:56:18.402 --> 00:56:21.487
She would get to tell her observations, but she also to say what was said to her.
00:56:22.746 --> 00:56:26.016
And then you put all that together and it makes sense.
00:56:26.047 --> 00:56:31.836
And now you talk to this other guy who picked her up and drove her somewhere and she came onto him.
00:56:32.197 --> 00:56:35.896
And then, at what point there she, he didn't see her cut, her clothing cut up.
00:56:35.896 --> 00:56:43.277
So what a point did her cut, her clothing become cut up, like between the time she jumped outta the car and what would the motive be there?
00:56:43.697 --> 00:56:47.896
And so there's so much here in this case that's provable.
00:56:48.117 --> 00:56:53.467
I do not know why they did not take it seriously and go with it other than.
00:56:54.016 --> 00:57:06.797
There's a couple of reasons why I can, there's conjecture, but I can say these cases, consent in this case based on my experience, would not be really a problem unless you had something else, right?
00:57:07.036 --> 00:57:16.496
Like you found out that the complainant had made all kinds of crazy things happen in the past that would cloud that at the same time you couldn't discount her statement.
00:57:16.806 --> 00:57:27.601
So you're looking for things that would add credibility to his defense or, that,'cause that's what you do is you sort through this what you have as much as you can get and you weigh it and you weigh it with the prosecutor.
00:57:27.842 --> 00:57:29.641
And can we overcome that consent?
00:57:29.882 --> 00:57:32.311
And in this case, it's pretty serious.
00:57:32.311 --> 00:57:33.717
She's got cut up clothing and stuff.
00:57:33.717 --> 00:57:37.317
And having just met this guy, it's unlikely they were into some weird.
00:57:37.766 --> 00:57:41.496
Weird game with a knife thing that where she was, it was a consensual situation.
00:57:42.306 --> 00:57:43.867
So these are the things you'd look for.
00:57:43.987 --> 00:57:50.567
And I would say, based on what I know about this case there's no reason to not move forward with Yeah.
00:57:50.567 --> 00:57:53.447
He lacked consent when he did what he did to her.
00:57:55.217 --> 00:57:58.067
And there's no evidence that they knew each other before this interaction.
00:57:58.067 --> 00:58:00.016
There was no prior association.
00:58:00.117 --> 00:58:03.027
In a case like this, that's, that is a very big piece of evidence.
00:58:03.077 --> 00:58:06.856
What's the likelihood that that all of these things are gonna happen like that?
00:58:06.862 --> 00:58:09.347
Like he's saying nothing, there's nothing wrong here.
00:58:09.347 --> 00:58:17.646
She came onto me and all I did was take her home and look at what ha what she's got evidence wise, and you talk to those two people and you.
00:58:17.887 --> 00:58:18.427
Okay.
00:58:18.476 --> 00:58:26.626
And a lot of it has to do with who's we have to, everything is overcoming consent, but some of that is whose story.
00:58:27.347 --> 00:58:38.297
It makes sense and whose story is off now that may not overcome that burden because sometimes content is very difficult to prove when you lack evidence like they have in this case.
00:58:38.777 --> 00:58:46.117
But in this case, I can tell you if it came into my office and somebody worked it it would very likely be an immediate arrest.
00:58:48.036 --> 00:58:59.407
So Marlene Gabrielsson Inupiat Alaska native, and she believes the reason that they completely discounted her complaint is because they thought of her as just a drunk Indian.
00:59:00.516 --> 00:59:01.836
And I actually think she's right.
00:59:02.137 --> 00:59:05.766
And that the initial investigation was a completely racist response.
00:59:07.757 --> 00:59:09.376
I can't say that you're wrong.
00:59:09.476 --> 00:59:14.112
And I can say that I think there's a that they should have arrested him for rape on this first case.
00:59:14.112 --> 00:59:18.222
Maybe not even his first case, but the one they got him on the first one they know about.
00:59:18.501 --> 00:59:19.222
But I can't say.
00:59:19.746 --> 00:59:22.947
In my mind, I can't say whether it's because she's a Alaska native.
00:59:23.126 --> 00:59:24.806
They would've thought of as her as Indian.
00:59:24.806 --> 00:59:51.907
But being from Alaska and tell you that she's thinking of herself as Alaska native what, the reason I say that is because if you look at the cases we have covered that are historical cases, and from my experience you look back at some of the cases we've covered, where white women were the victims and so forth, and they've received responses that were consistent like this, like a complete lack of appropriate response from all races of female victims of sexual assault.
00:59:52.086 --> 00:59:55.956
So part of that could have been just been, she was a woman in 1978.
00:59:56.547 --> 01:00:00.722
And not, I'm not to say that's not, these things don't ha don't still happen, and they do.
01:00:02.516 --> 01:00:06.206
And both can be true, but do you think that the situation has improved much?
01:00:06.447 --> 01:00:11.876
We still have a problem with missing and murdered indigenous women across the United States and Canada.
01:00:12.347 --> 01:00:23.206
As far as that goes the situation may not have improved much, but as far as the investigation, I think that in a lot of places, a lot of areas, I'm not saying across the board, there have been a lot of improvement.
01:00:23.211 --> 01:00:30.407
I think training, awareness, victim services have greatly improved in a lot of places.
01:00:30.516 --> 01:00:33.757
And there's a huge effort to do that nationwide.
01:00:33.876 --> 01:00:35.327
But there's still a long way to go.
01:00:35.726 --> 01:00:48.586
Just a few days before this, we're making this recording, the US coast Guard Academy has a scandal where the top commander of that institution was caught covering up decades of sexual assault complaints that happened at the military academy.
01:00:49.586 --> 01:00:50.427
Have we improved?
01:00:50.427 --> 01:00:51.447
I think we have.
01:00:51.746 --> 01:00:52.766
Are we where we need to be?
01:00:52.766 --> 01:00:53.427
Absolutely not.
01:00:55.827 --> 01:01:02.336
In the end, Marlene and Gabrielsson talked about going back to Alaska after she was raped so that she could feel safe.
01:01:02.936 --> 01:01:03.327
Yeah.
01:01:03.626 --> 01:01:07.891
That that part I, when she said that I, it's so ironic.
01:01:07.972 --> 01:01:17.831
Alaska, where I worked in the largest city in Alaska has, and this is true of the whole state, has some of the highest per capita levels of sexual assault in the country.
01:01:18.282 --> 01:01:22.121
And Alaska native females are disproportionately represented in that statistic.
01:01:23.505 --> 01:01:30.554
So a lot of work still to be done to make sure that indigenous women are protected appropriately.
01:01:30.664 --> 01:01:30.885
Yes.
01:01:31.014 --> 01:01:31.594
And all women.
01:01:32.764 --> 01:01:33.755
Yes, and all women.
01:01:34.574 --> 01:01:38.235
Rand's mother does not believe that Aykroyd killed her daughter.
01:01:38.295 --> 01:01:47.295
In fact, she was entirely super defensive about the idea that there was any sort of abuse of her daughter or anybody in the family, or any problems at all with Aykroyd.
01:01:47.414 --> 01:01:52.429
And it so pisses me off when mothers fail to protect their children from shit like this.
01:01:52.880 --> 01:01:56.269
Is she being selfish in pretending that everything was perfectly fine?
01:01:56.269 --> 01:01:57.469
Or what the hell is going on with
01:01:57.469 --> 01:01:58.130
that woman?
01:01:59.719 --> 01:02:03.710
I think it's selfish in a self-defense kind of way, in a denial kind of way.
01:02:04.250 --> 01:02:18.010
It's the same reason that the woman who alibied her husband in Aykroyd knowing that they just killed a woman that the fact that she would block investigation like that for years is pretty amazing.
01:02:18.570 --> 01:02:21.219
And why, rhonda's mother's protecting herself.
01:02:21.219 --> 01:02:27.289
She doesn't want to admit that she basically brought the guy in who murdered her daughter and allowed the abuse to happen.
01:02:27.869 --> 01:02:30.510
She's not gonna admit that to herself or anybody else.
01:02:31.699 --> 01:02:35.190
The alibi witness there, she's living in a rural place.
01:02:35.190 --> 01:02:38.099
She's maybe dependent financial support.
01:02:38.099 --> 01:02:40.449
I think they had kids what, where's she gonna go?
01:02:40.454 --> 01:02:41.019
What are they gonna do?
01:02:41.019 --> 01:02:44.650
How's she gonna get away from that guy that just helped murdered her murder, rape a woman?
01:02:45.289 --> 01:02:49.210
Obviously she knew what was going on, because it was big news in that area, right?
01:02:49.329 --> 01:02:50.530
This woman is missing.
01:02:50.530 --> 01:02:58.215
And then later she's raped and murdered and, her husband and her husband's friend show up with blood and talk about shooting her.
01:02:58.724 --> 01:03:00.344
So she knew what was going on.
01:03:01.315 --> 01:03:10.440
That aspect, people covering for other people it's heartbreaking, but I think it's human nature and it's not surprising in a DV relationship that happens.
01:03:11.103 --> 01:03:11.643
So he
01:03:11.643 --> 01:03:16.802
moved on to killing two people at once with Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
01:03:17.072 --> 01:03:20.193
That seems super risky to try and control two people at the same time.
01:03:20.583 --> 01:03:23.103
Do you think his buddy was involved in that one also?
01:03:24.193 --> 01:03:24.822
I don't think so.
01:03:24.862 --> 01:03:26.273
I don't think there's evidence of that.
01:03:26.273 --> 01:03:28.643
I think the buddy had moved to California by that time.
01:03:29.193 --> 01:03:37.818
These are two girls young and he's a big guy and he's got a weapon and he's got, He's got the element of surprise he may be the perv, they may joke he's the per'cause.
01:03:37.822 --> 01:03:39.648
He is the old guy at the teenage hangout.
01:03:39.648 --> 01:03:41.893
But they're gonna take a ride from him so they can get back home.
01:03:42.103 --> 01:03:43.483
And who knows how that went down?
01:03:44.262 --> 01:03:48.193
Maybe he's threatening one and kept the other one under control by threatening the other one.
01:03:48.193 --> 01:03:54.003
One of the other murders they suspect him of was actually a young woman and a young man.
01:03:54.052 --> 01:03:55.248
That's another issue of control.
01:03:55.253 --> 01:03:58.128
I don't know how he would've done that, but they're pretty sure he did that one too.
01:03:58.398 --> 01:04:00.347
We didn't profile that one'cause there isn't a lot known.
01:04:00.347 --> 01:04:05.237
They just know that the young woman, young man turned up at a Highway 20 pullout.
01:04:05.833 --> 01:04:06.822
Pretty same situation.
01:04:06.822 --> 01:04:09.853
I think that was maybe one of the ones where the clothing was cut.
01:04:10.003 --> 01:04:12.043
So I don't know.
01:04:12.043 --> 01:04:20.623
But it's not impossible, and I know that, a lot of those depend on securing one, one, threatening one.
01:04:20.952 --> 01:04:25.963
It doesn't seem like we know a whole lot about aykroyd beyond what's directly related to all these crimes.
01:04:28.043 --> 01:04:31.342
We know he grew up in the area he worked, which is very rural.
01:04:31.612 --> 01:04:35.733
There was a story from between 10 and 12 when he was a boy.
01:04:36.043 --> 01:04:47.222
His father was going to sell a litter of puppies that he had and Aykroyd took a machete and killed, cut up all the puppies so that the father couldn't sell them.
01:04:47.322 --> 01:04:49.932
That's an indication he was sadistic back then.
01:04:50.233 --> 01:04:53.143
We know he's as an adult, he's fairly antisocial.
01:04:53.143 --> 01:04:56.117
He had a couple of friends, and he had a friend who would be willing to kill with him.
01:04:56.538 --> 01:05:01.137
But his coworkers mainly thought he was a weirdo and most of them didn't like to be around him.
01:05:02.077 --> 01:05:05.648
We know that when he did have a living girlfriend with kids, he terrorized them.
01:05:06.038 --> 01:05:12.867
Which probably sadly also gives us insight into what his home life was like when he was growing up and
01:05:14.768 --> 01:05:29.347
we know he was actively raping and killing along that stretch of 20, between 1977 and 1992, is there any kind of estimation of how many more missing and murdered women he could be responsible for?
01:05:30.038 --> 01:05:32.288
I've seen guesses of 10.
01:05:32.668 --> 01:05:35.248
They're fairly certain four, but 10.
01:05:35.378 --> 01:05:41.583
When you look at the number of found bodies they had and the, they never found Rashonda Pickle.
01:05:41.733 --> 01:05:44.702
If you look at the 10, they think that's a possibility.
01:05:44.702 --> 01:05:47.552
And maybe there's some that weren't found like Rashonda.
01:05:48.483 --> 01:05:57.063
I don't know that there's a firm number there but a long time and with a lack of oversight and all the conditions that made him a perfect predator in the area.
01:05:57.112 --> 01:05:58.302
That was his hunting ground.
01:06:00.943 --> 01:06:09.342
I'm really interested in the fact that Rashanda Hass never been found and how that was probably his closest relationship of all of those victims.
01:06:09.342 --> 01:06:10.963
That was the person that he actually knew.
01:06:11.532 --> 01:06:14.922
I wonder if that's related to the fact that they've never found her.
01:06:14.972 --> 01:06:26.788
I think that the reason that we've never found her is because he knew her, that she was special to him or that relationship was different than just a random stranger off the street.
01:06:27.748 --> 01:06:31.512
Or like I, my theory is he found a place he liked to put her.
01:06:34.733 --> 01:06:48.052
And with K Turner, there was a little bit of indication that he might have gone and visit her body over time before he finally called the police and said that he found her officially, that he, that maybe he was revisiting the site, which I guess is a fairly normal serial killer kind of thing to do.
01:06:48.713 --> 01:06:48.893
Yeah.
01:06:48.898 --> 01:06:50.322
Lots of information about that.
01:06:50.373 --> 01:06:58.063
my theory about why he wouldn't give up rash, ANDA's resting places because it's a place he liked and there might've been others, o others there.
01:06:58.182 --> 01:06:59.413
That's just my personal theory.
01:07:01.972 --> 01:07:05.452
I hope that Marlene Gabrielsson feels safe now.
01:07:08.543 --> 01:07:09.293
I hope so too.
01:07:09.813 --> 01:07:17.277
She certainly feels vindicated although, sadly I know that she feels if they had listened to her way back in 77 that a lot of this could have been avoided,
01:07:17.548 --> 01:07:19.139
just an unspeakable tragedy.
01:07:24.637 --> 01:07:28.458
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00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.029
It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the second time.
00:00:03.029 --> 00:00:06.209
That day he was getting dark and he was about to give up.
00:00:06.629 --> 00:00:11.369
He smiled to himself such a pretty little girl, what was you thinking coming out here all alone?
00:00:14.397 --> 00:00:20.518
Welcome to Crime Raven; true crimes, real life stories from law enforcement and issues crime fighters face.
00:00:20.878 --> 00:00:30.128
This podcast highlights crimes researched by retired Detective Sergeant Mark Rein, using publicly available information, court records and personal recollections.
00:00:30.638 --> 00:00:33.508
Content may be graphic, disturbing, or violent.
00:00:33.957 --> 00:00:35.817
Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:36.357 --> 00:00:39.838
Suspects are considered innocent until found guilty in a court of law.
00:00:41.670 --> 00:00:45.631
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00:01:08.161 --> 00:01:10.081
We'll also put the link in the show notes.
00:01:25.412 --> 00:01:27.153
watcher was a guy who liked his job.
00:01:27.692 --> 00:01:30.393
He worked the highway for the Oregon Department of Transportation.
00:01:31.647 --> 00:01:33.236
The road was like life itself.
00:01:33.746 --> 00:01:35.546
You never knew what was around the next bend.
00:01:36.186 --> 00:01:40.986
And when the unexpected arose, you had to be decisive to rely on yourself.
00:01:41.677 --> 00:01:46.686
In that respect, watcher felt a kinship to those he imagined who were his pioneering ancestors.
00:01:47.436 --> 00:01:56.966
They were the people who had traversed these same mountains survived raging river crossings, desert, dry summers, snowstorms, and apocalyptic wildfires.
00:01:58.766 --> 00:02:00.206
Things hadn't changed much.
00:02:00.837 --> 00:02:06.096
The stretch of Mountain Road that watcher worked was the wild west lawless empty.
00:02:07.266 --> 00:02:12.217
Sure, the occasional car passed swiftly through, but his road was never The journey's end.
00:02:13.687 --> 00:02:21.997
Desolation bounded on either side, mostly steep slopes, a few flat turnouts winding through River Valley and pass.
00:02:22.776 --> 00:02:31.426
It was a rugged wilderness sandwiched between the green, wet central valley to the west, and the arid high desert to the east In his saga, watcher was the hero.
00:02:32.086 --> 00:02:35.296
He spent his time, day and night looking for trouble.
00:02:35.926 --> 00:02:38.717
Sometimes he found people, their pilgrimage interrupted.
00:02:39.586 --> 00:02:41.266
They were in distress on the roadside.
00:02:42.556 --> 00:02:46.426
Sometimes he came across collisions or travelers who missed the curve.
00:02:47.687 --> 00:02:52.787
Rescuing, stranded travelers, helping them get their cars towed to get gas, whatever they needed.
00:02:53.537 --> 00:02:57.437
Watcher was there to help everybody and doing so, he was helping himself.
00:02:58.759 --> 00:03:04.250
The girl is blonde pretty and just out of high school, so she's at a crossroads.
00:03:04.955 --> 00:03:08.615
It's really the first crossroads that everybody recognizes.
00:03:08.944 --> 00:03:10.895
What would her path in life be?
00:03:11.555 --> 00:03:26.615
She couldn't bear the thought of staying in the tiny, dusty town, living with her boring ass parents until she could squeeze her way into some boring ass job, maybe in some office somewhere, answering phones, maybe at the school.
00:03:27.305 --> 00:03:31.414
She imagined herself as one of those lunch ladies and shook her head.
00:03:31.414 --> 00:03:33.724
Etch a sketch style to erase the image.
00:03:34.085 --> 00:03:37.955
No, she had to get the fuck out of there at least for a while.
00:03:38.104 --> 00:03:47.014
Do something, see something before the rest of her life Solidified slowly around her, like wet concrete on a cold day.
00:03:48.680 --> 00:03:59.750
So one day the girl kissed and hugged her mom and dad lied about staying over at a friend's, picked up the pack that she dropped out of her bedroom window and walked away.
00:04:00.710 --> 00:04:04.669
Eventually, her parents would find the note explaining what she planned to do.
00:04:05.360 --> 00:04:06.349
She loved them.
00:04:06.740 --> 00:04:11.900
She didn't want to argue, didn't wanna see the fear and uncertainty in their eyes.
00:04:12.650 --> 00:04:14.479
In a few days, she would call.
00:04:14.569 --> 00:04:19.069
Maybe by then she would be at her friend's place in Eugene, safe and Sound.
00:04:19.759 --> 00:04:29.089
She shed guilt with every step, and by the time she hit the highway and was lifting her thumb to passing cars headed west, she was beaming with excitement again.
00:04:31.009 --> 00:04:32.000
The girl was lucky.
00:04:33.170 --> 00:04:36.769
A family headed south to Nevada was the first car that stopped for her.
00:04:37.069 --> 00:04:40.725
The dad smiled and nodded from behind the wheel when he pulled up.
00:04:40.814 --> 00:04:50.144
While the mother pretty maybe mid thirties questioned her out of the window in an almost scolding tone, asking why was she out here all alone?
00:04:51.014 --> 00:04:57.884
Telling her to get in while looking into the brush on the roadside, as if someone was gonna jump out of one of those scrubby bushes at any minute.
00:04:59.745 --> 00:05:03.314
They made her feel at home piled in the back of a station wagon.
00:05:03.524 --> 00:05:08.295
Kids bounced around her wrestling with each other, shooting her nonsensical questions.
00:05:09.014 --> 00:05:12.975
The mother turned sideways and from the front seat, asked the girl questions.
00:05:12.975 --> 00:05:17.475
In between refereeing the kid mayhem swirling across both back seats.
00:05:18.555 --> 00:05:22.964
As the girl replied, the mother parroted the answers to the side of her husband's head.
00:05:23.415 --> 00:05:27.435
It soon became clear that the mother thought the girl's plans were crazy.
00:05:28.305 --> 00:05:29.954
The girl is headed to Eugene.
00:05:30.074 --> 00:05:32.024
Could they maybe drop her off in Eugene?
00:05:32.475 --> 00:05:37.785
The husband chuckled to himself and said, hun, there is no way we can go all the way to Eugene and make it in time.
00:05:39.375 --> 00:05:41.264
They were going south to Nevada.
00:05:41.535 --> 00:05:42.254
Family thing.
00:05:42.764 --> 00:05:46.725
Husband said, I can take you as far as bend, and then you gotta catch a ride west.
00:05:47.175 --> 00:05:49.004
The girl smiled great, thanks.
00:05:49.394 --> 00:05:55.475
The mother,faced troubled, spent the next two hours alternately trying to manage the kid craziness while counseling the girl.
00:05:56.839 --> 00:06:00.050
The girl was not as fortunate in her next couple of rides.
00:06:00.470 --> 00:06:05.689
First, a man who mainly wanted to know if the girl had accepted Jesus Christ as her savior.
00:06:06.230 --> 00:06:09.560
She told him yes, but apparently not to his satisfaction.
00:06:10.550 --> 00:06:11.990
Then a lady was nice enough.
00:06:12.860 --> 00:06:17.120
The problem with those rides was that they were locals and not going far.
00:06:17.990 --> 00:06:21.889
The girl stayed overnight at a thankfully cheap roadside motel.
00:06:22.339 --> 00:06:29.449
The fatigue overcame the excitement of the journey that first night, and she was asleep within a minute of her head hitting the musty pillow.
00:06:30.889 --> 00:06:34.939
Mid-morning found the girl walking on the shoulder of us 20 in Oregon.
00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:37.310
The first ride had been fortunate.
00:06:37.639 --> 00:06:46.850
A man headed west on 20 took her out of the high desert, across the mountain passes and into the dense forest that blankets the west side of the cascades.
00:06:47.899 --> 00:06:53.899
The driver, a man who reminded the girl of her dad one day was too soon to be homesick, right?
00:06:54.379 --> 00:06:56.149
Turned out to be a college teacher.
00:06:56.329 --> 00:07:03.769
So when the girl didn't know much about the scenery, he filled what might have been an awkward silence with an hour's worth of geology facts.
00:07:04.279 --> 00:07:10.310
The professor dropped the girl off at a gas station at the turn where he went south and she continued west.
00:07:12.259 --> 00:07:16.279
There wasn't much traffic and the few cars that passed were headed east.
00:07:17.029 --> 00:07:19.850
It was a sunny day, a pleasant breeze on her face.
00:07:19.879 --> 00:07:23.449
So the girl counted her blessings and enjoyed the new scenery.
00:07:24.350 --> 00:07:28.069
First, she was thankful that so much of her walk was downhill.
00:07:28.519 --> 00:07:32.209
She could see a river running parallel to the road in the valley below.
00:07:32.689 --> 00:07:39.110
In the distance farmland looked like a patchwork quilt visible through the gaps in the dense surrounding forest.
00:07:39.764 --> 00:07:49.305
In the early afternoon, a truck driving east with an insignia on the door that read Oregon Department of Transportation pulled across the lanes of traffic and onto the shoulder behind the girl.
00:07:49.995 --> 00:07:52.875
The driver, a big bearded, bearish man leaned out.
00:07:53.324 --> 00:07:54.884
He wanted to know if she was all right.
00:07:55.514 --> 00:07:57.615
She told him she was trying to catch a ride.
00:07:57.915 --> 00:08:02.595
The man said that he had to go further up, but if he saw her when he came back, she could ride with him.
00:08:02.985 --> 00:08:05.055
He pointed in the direction she was walking.
00:08:05.384 --> 00:08:07.605
There's a gas station a few miles on down.
00:08:08.564 --> 00:08:10.095
Then she was walking again.
00:08:10.995 --> 00:08:19.935
The girl caught a ride from the gas station, a local lady who could only take her a couple of miles before she had to turn off, but she figured every mile was progress.
00:08:21.225 --> 00:08:24.615
As the afternoon turned to evening, the girl continued to hike West.
00:08:25.064 --> 00:08:31.394
She knew there was a reservoir up ahead and beyond that, a town where she planned to stay the night if she couldn't catch a ride.
00:08:32.205 --> 00:08:36.554
In the late afternoon, clouds had rolled in, casting everything in a gray pall.
00:08:37.365 --> 00:08:41.835
The girl was worried that it would soon be very dark and worse might rain.
00:08:43.514 --> 00:08:48.524
Just then a truck pulled past stopping on the shoulder in front of the girl.
00:08:49.034 --> 00:08:51.075
She ran up to the passenger door.
00:08:51.195 --> 00:08:57.254
The driver looked familiar, but it took her a second to realize it was the Oregon d o t guy that she talked to earlier.
00:08:57.945 --> 00:08:59.144
Only the truck was different.
00:08:59.475 --> 00:09:00.404
No insignia.
00:09:01.065 --> 00:09:02.115
The guy was the same.
00:09:02.115 --> 00:09:04.245
Bearish with a dark bushy beard.
00:09:04.725 --> 00:09:08.235
Looking through the open side window she could see it was his personal truck.
00:09:08.595 --> 00:09:09.884
He smiled at her.
00:09:10.544 --> 00:09:12.735
"I told you I'd give you a ride on my way back.
00:09:12.764 --> 00:09:21.195
You made it farther than I thought you would." The girl opened the door just as a light rain began to mist the windshield"and just in time" he joked.
00:09:21.524 --> 00:09:26.404
The pickup's rear wheels slipping on gravel as it accelerated back into the westbound lane
00:09:27.326 --> 00:09:30.355
It filled watcher with relief to spot the girl for the second time.
00:09:30.355 --> 00:09:33.535
That day he was getting dark and he was about to give up.
00:09:33.956 --> 00:09:38.696
He smiled to himself such a pretty little girl, what was you thinking coming out here all alone?
00:09:39.750 --> 00:09:41.309
His life on the road was like that.
00:09:41.639 --> 00:09:43.769
He was often in the right place at the right time.
00:09:44.009 --> 00:09:47.490
There were lists of people who would swear that he had saved them in their time of need.
00:09:47.669 --> 00:09:51.210
And for all those people that watcher had helped the road had repaid him.
00:09:51.750 --> 00:09:54.600
He could legitimately call himself the guardian Angel Highway 20.
00:09:55.019 --> 00:09:57.389
No one could blame him for the occasional indulgence.
00:09:58.350 --> 00:09:59.820
He only took a little off the top.
00:10:02.070 --> 00:10:05.190
Sometimes he drove his own truck, which made him anonymous.
00:10:05.399 --> 00:10:08.039
But the state rig that put people at ease.
00:10:08.549 --> 00:10:10.350
They suspected nothing with the state rig.
00:10:10.769 --> 00:10:16.240
After all, he could be anywhere and still be just doing his job What he loved was, it was just like hunting.
00:10:16.830 --> 00:10:18.659
Call it poaching of the very best kind.
00:10:19.350 --> 00:10:24.570
He knew his stretch of road, like the back of his hand, all the stopping spots, all the stalking spots.
00:10:25.289 --> 00:10:27.929
He knew where he could get away from the road and not be interrupted.
00:10:28.320 --> 00:10:31.590
And the times he had been interrupted, he was just out hunting.
00:10:32.210 --> 00:10:34.759
He had even admitted to poaching outta season once.
00:10:35.090 --> 00:10:35.929
Gotten a ticket.
00:10:36.860 --> 00:10:38.179
Yeah, that wasn't dear blood.
00:10:38.210 --> 00:10:39.320
Stupid assholes.
00:10:41.649 --> 00:10:42.879
Watcher was always careful.
00:10:43.299 --> 00:10:45.639
He had passed on girls that were ripe for the taking.
00:10:46.330 --> 00:10:51.129
After a little conversation, he could tell who would be missed, the ones who would bring the heat.
00:10:51.940 --> 00:10:59.440
He wanted the unaccountable girls, the ones who gave off that aroma of being strays, like that drunk Indian bitch.
00:10:59.620 --> 00:11:02.200
Nothing says stray like a young drunk Indian bitch.
00:11:03.309 --> 00:11:04.899
After he fucked her, he wanted more.
00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:09.370
He decided to let her live so he could have more, but she had betrayed his trust.
00:11:09.879 --> 00:11:10.419
No matter.
00:11:10.750 --> 00:11:12.580
The cops hadn't bought her bullshit anyway.
00:11:13.990 --> 00:11:16.450
This one, she felt like a stray.
00:11:18.519 --> 00:11:20.980
The girl relaxed into the old truck seat.
00:11:21.549 --> 00:11:24.940
After walking as long as she had today, it felt great.
00:11:25.870 --> 00:11:29.529
The guy asked her a couple of the common questions, where she from?
00:11:29.529 --> 00:11:30.549
Where she going?
00:11:31.090 --> 00:11:33.240
She's honest with him because why not?
00:11:33.929 --> 00:11:35.669
The guy was quiet for a few minutes.
00:11:35.940 --> 00:11:38.820
They passed the reservoir as the darkness outside enveloped.
00:11:39.750 --> 00:11:42.870
For a few minutes, there was light again as they went through the small town.
00:11:43.320 --> 00:11:44.730
Then they were back in the dark.
00:11:45.179 --> 00:11:52.470
The only illumination was two yellow headlight beams cutting through the misting rain and a weak green glow from the dashboard.
00:11:53.340 --> 00:11:57.960
The girl was almost asleep when she felt the truck slow, then turned left.
00:11:58.409 --> 00:12:02.820
She raised her head, but could only see a dirt road and an opening in the trees.
00:12:03.690 --> 00:12:10.500
The sound of the tires changed as the truck left the pavement and rocked slowly as it moved through Uneven wet dirt.
00:12:11.490 --> 00:12:13.200
The girl asked where they were going.
00:12:13.710 --> 00:12:18.000
The guy said something about taking a leak, but there was something new in his voice.
00:12:18.600 --> 00:12:21.659
Fully awake now the girl sat up and turned toward the driver.
00:12:22.259 --> 00:12:23.879
The guy stared back at her.
00:12:23.970 --> 00:12:25.500
His eyes were wide.
00:12:25.559 --> 00:12:27.299
She could see his teeth.
00:12:27.509 --> 00:12:29.100
He was breathing heavily.
00:12:29.100 --> 00:12:30.419
He was excited.
00:12:30.690 --> 00:12:33.750
He stopped the truck and reached down between his legs.
00:12:35.339 --> 00:12:39.629
It took the girl a second to realize that the guy had a hunting knife in his hand.
00:12:39.899 --> 00:12:41.399
He's holding it up.
00:12:41.999 --> 00:12:46.708
It had a green hue like everything else, but the blade flashed, metallic.
00:12:47.278 --> 00:12:49.144
The girl reached down desperate to escape.
00:12:49.683 --> 00:12:52.683
She realized there's no handle, no release.
00:12:53.433 --> 00:12:54.394
She screamed.
00:12:55.293 --> 00:12:55.803
Loud.
00:12:58.063 --> 00:13:04.604
He held the blade up and threw gritted teeth hissed,"do that again and I'll gut you bitch." The knife moved down.
00:13:05.053 --> 00:13:08.803
He pulled up her shirt and pressed the sharp cold metal against the skin of her soft belly.
00:13:09.403 --> 00:13:10.244
She submitted.
00:13:11.264 --> 00:13:13.094
He began cutting and ripping at her clothes.
00:13:13.313 --> 00:13:15.014
It's his ritual.
00:13:15.484 --> 00:13:19.604
Suddenly he opened the door and backed out, dragging the girl with him onto the damp ground.
00:13:20.083 --> 00:13:23.683
He cut and ripped at fabric, a show of strength of domination.
00:13:24.073 --> 00:13:27.224
He stripped off all of her clothes and groped her with rough hands.
00:13:27.464 --> 00:13:28.124
He's fat.
00:13:28.604 --> 00:13:30.943
Breath wreaking of food and coffee and beer.
00:13:31.333 --> 00:13:33.734
His beard rubs against her body as he violates her.
00:13:49.943 --> 00:14:04.884
In December, 1978, investigators from the Oregon State Police responded to a report of a woman who'd gone missing at Camp Sherman, a remote recreational site in central Oregon on the eastern slopes of the cascade range.
00:14:05.754 --> 00:14:14.953
The area boasts scenic, rugged geography in an alpine setting and is popular for hunting, fishing, boating, photography, and trail hiking.
00:14:16.033 --> 00:14:22.683
35 year old Kay, Jean Turner and her husband had been spending the holidays at the camp with a group of friends.
00:14:23.224 --> 00:14:25.024
All had driven up from Eugene.
00:14:26.614 --> 00:14:29.224
Just after 8:00 AM on Christmas Eve morning.
00:14:29.494 --> 00:14:35.283
Kay, who was an avid jogger set off on an eight mile run that should have taken less than an hour.
00:14:36.244 --> 00:14:41.583
Her preferred running circuit followed Camp Roads that led out near us Route 20.
00:14:42.183 --> 00:14:48.813
Despite it being the end of December, the air temperatures were unseasonably warm, mid fifties, and made for comfortable running.
00:14:49.803 --> 00:14:53.673
Kay was wearing a blue sweatshirt, yellow shorts, and Adidas shoes.
00:14:54.933 --> 00:15:01.053
Kay's husband Noel became increasingly concerned when his wife had not returned by 10:00 AM.
00:15:01.668 --> 00:15:07.818
He drove all the camp roads and finding no trace, called the police around 2:00 PM.
00:15:08.969 --> 00:15:12.714
The first agency to respond was the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
00:15:14.663 --> 00:15:18.053
After a brief consultation, they called out search and rescue personnel.
00:15:18.563 --> 00:15:23.604
Those teams brought in assets including volunteers, dog teams, and aircraft.
00:15:26.514 --> 00:15:32.364
The only thing they found by the time the sun that day were suspicious tracks in the snow on the side of the road.
00:15:33.144 --> 00:15:36.744
The prints were a tangle of two distinct sets of shoe impressions.
00:15:37.163 --> 00:15:39.563
One was large, probably a man's boot.
00:15:40.134 --> 00:15:42.803
The other was a small Adidas running shoe.
00:15:44.874 --> 00:15:47.303
The ground search continued in day two.
00:15:47.308 --> 00:15:50.663
As detectives from Oregon State Police join the effort.
00:15:51.609 --> 00:15:59.708
As a matter of routine, they began victimology, examining Kay's life for risk factors and scrutinizing the people around her.
00:16:01.208 --> 00:16:05.918
They discovered that Kay was having affairs with two men back home in Eugene.
00:16:06.788 --> 00:16:08.739
This led to obvious questions.
00:16:09.188 --> 00:16:11.349
Were they involved in her disappearance?
00:16:11.859 --> 00:16:14.019
Could this be a motive for her husband?
00:16:15.849 --> 00:16:22.928
Investigators quickly discounted the boyfriends, and significantly they did not cast suspicion back on Kay's husband.
00:16:23.619 --> 00:16:31.119
Although Noel Turner could never be completely ruled out, the police found no evidence that he was involved in his wife's disappearance.
00:16:33.188 --> 00:16:39.158
With the ground search and initial investigation underway, the community gave police their second suspect.
00:16:39.668 --> 00:16:45.788
Several locals pushed police towards a guy named John Aykroyd, a man who lived in the area.
00:16:46.269 --> 00:16:49.958
He wasn't well liked and rumors swirled around him.
00:16:50.558 --> 00:16:55.298
Many people characterized him as weird, creepy, and often hostile.
00:16:55.778 --> 00:17:06.999
He worked for the state d o t as a mechanic and road safety monitor, which meant Aykroyd spent long hours driving up and down a stretch of remote Oregon highway looking for trouble.
00:17:09.878 --> 00:17:14.019
As police officers combed the small community, an informant tipped them off.
00:17:14.378 --> 00:17:19.179
Aykroyd was talking about seeing Kay Turner while she was jogging on Christmas Eve.
00:17:20.169 --> 00:17:25.118
It didn't take the police long to find Aykroyd who was fairly unremarkable.
00:17:25.453 --> 00:17:28.911
six Feet tall, medium, build dark hair and glasses.
00:17:29.931 --> 00:17:38.631
When questioned Aykroyd told the police that he worked as usual overnight shift that Christmas Eve morning while driving towards one of his favorite hunting areas.
00:17:38.780 --> 00:17:40.820
He saw Kay Turner jogging.
00:17:41.661 --> 00:17:49.221
Aykroyd pulled over and spoke with her briefly explaining that he thought he'd hit a dog in the area and asked Kay if she'd seen anything.
00:17:50.780 --> 00:17:59.381
Aykroyd denied that there was any more to the contact, but his admission made him the last known person to see the missing woman.
00:18:00.431 --> 00:18:07.851
This placed him firmly on the top of the suspect list until his friend and coworker Roger Beck gave Aykroyd an alibi.
00:18:08.721 --> 00:18:13.730
Beck said that he and his friend had been together in the area illegally hunting deer.
00:18:14.421 --> 00:18:17.240
This assertion was corroborated by Beck's wife.
00:18:18.020 --> 00:18:20.000
The admission against self-interest.
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:28.250
In mentioning the poaching and the alibi, witness deflected the investigation away from Aykroyd as fast as it had focused.
00:18:29.173 --> 00:18:33.854
The ground search rambled on for five days without success before they canceled it.
00:18:35.734 --> 00:18:42.634
Seven months after Kay Turner's disappearance On August 12th, Aykroyd walked into a local store.
00:18:43.144 --> 00:18:48.095
He told people he had found Kay Turner's remains in the woods while walking his dog.
00:18:49.505 --> 00:18:59.684
When police arrived, Aykroyd led them to his find, and they confirmed that the remains, although in an advanced state of decomposition, appeared to be human.
00:19:01.515 --> 00:19:11.835
Investigators found the fact that the last person to see Kay Turner was the same person who happened to find her remains months later, highly suspicious.
00:19:12.494 --> 00:19:17.595
In the interview, they asked Aykroyd to describe how he knew the remains were those of Kay Turner.
00:19:18.434 --> 00:19:22.365
Aykroyd's description of the body site confused the investigators.
00:19:22.845 --> 00:19:26.204
The area they were looking at was fairly nondescript.
00:19:27.224 --> 00:19:30.615
In the time Kay's body lay in the densely wooded hillside.
00:19:31.065 --> 00:19:33.105
It had been completely reduced.
00:19:33.555 --> 00:19:34.875
The bones were weathered.
00:19:35.414 --> 00:19:36.585
There was no flesh.
00:19:37.065 --> 00:19:41.055
Debris, partially buried what was left of her clothing on the forest floor.
00:19:41.775 --> 00:19:49.394
Yet Aykroyd described K Turner's yellow shorts and the wreak of decomposing flesh as if the body were still fresh.
00:19:51.464 --> 00:20:02.674
Police and volunteers conducted a series of increasingly detailed area searches, ultimately recovering major bones, a shoe, clothing items, and a wristwatch.
00:20:03.184 --> 00:20:08.315
In the days following the recovery, the medical examiner confirmed that the bones were Kay Turner.
00:20:08.825 --> 00:20:13.924
He could compare her dental records to a lower jawbone found at the scene.
00:20:14.525 --> 00:20:18.335
Kay Turner's skull would be found a year later by another hunter.
00:20:19.055 --> 00:20:22.025
It had been carried almost a mile away from the other remains.
00:20:23.884 --> 00:20:28.085
Aykroyd's submitted to follow-up interviews and polygraph examination.
00:20:28.684 --> 00:20:35.914
Under pressure, he changed his story saying that he'd actually found Kay's body in the snow in February.
00:20:36.365 --> 00:20:41.285
He gave details about her decomposing body that her throat had been cut.
00:20:41.795 --> 00:20:47.615
She had a bullet wound to the chest and animals had consumed part of her, including her eyes.
00:20:48.484 --> 00:20:54.924
Aroy told investigators he was nervous after the February discovery, that they would suspect him in her death.
00:20:55.255 --> 00:20:56.545
So he didn't say anything.
00:20:56.805 --> 00:21:01.569
He could not explain why he chose August 12th to change his mind.
00:21:02.529 --> 00:21:07.630
Perhaps Aykroyd came forward so that he could claim the find K Turner reward fund.
00:21:08.440 --> 00:21:13.299
The administrator of the fund refused to pay him because they had not ruled him out as a suspect.
00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:28.539
The K Turner missing person turned murder case spent a decade like this brief flurries of activity and long periods of dormancy as interest waxed and waned, and investigators came and went.
00:21:32.321 --> 00:21:38.741
July 10th, 1990 was the day that a 13 year old girl named Rashonda Pickle disappeared.
00:21:39.432 --> 00:21:50.082
Rashonda lived with her mother, Linda, her brother Byron, and a stepfather in Sanam Junction, barely a wide spot in the road where US Route 20 and Oregon.
00:21:50.082 --> 00:21:51.491
Route 22 meet.
00:21:52.602 --> 00:21:55.152
On the day her mother reported Rashonda missing.
00:21:55.541 --> 00:22:06.342
She was described as a four foot seven 90 pounds with brown hair wearing black pants, a white T-shirt, sneakers, and silver stud earrings.
00:22:07.001 --> 00:22:12.912
When police began interviewing about the girl, they discovered that there were problems inside the family.
00:22:13.632 --> 00:22:19.991
While the stepfather outwardly presented a calm, competent demeanor, those closest to him saw beyond the facade.
00:22:20.531 --> 00:22:26.592
Inside the home he was a brutal dictator, severely beating Linda and her children regularly.
00:22:27.221 --> 00:22:32.592
Rash ANDA's brother Byron, described the man's rages as sudden, unexpected, and volcanic.
00:22:33.221 --> 00:22:36.342
Friends said that they regularly saw bruises on both kids.
00:22:37.862 --> 00:22:40.781
Some of rash ANDA's closest confidants went further.
00:22:41.291 --> 00:22:43.392
They said the girl never wanted to go home.
00:22:43.721 --> 00:22:48.432
She would often bring a change of clothes to school and beg friends to let her stay with them.
00:22:49.031 --> 00:22:50.231
The reason was simple.
00:22:50.832 --> 00:22:55.301
Rashanda was trying to stay away from a stepfather who was sexually abusing her.
00:22:56.382 --> 00:22:59.892
That same stepfather was the last person to see Roshonda.
00:23:00.551 --> 00:23:02.461
His name was Ackroyd.
00:23:03.516 --> 00:23:08.556
Investigators interviewed Aykroyd several times at Key points in the search and investigation.
00:23:09.036 --> 00:23:12.756
He didn't have much to say and denied knowledge of what happened to Rashonda.
00:23:13.415 --> 00:23:20.826
He told them that on the day she disappeared, he spent the entire day driving around, taking pictures and scouting hunting locations.
00:23:21.425 --> 00:23:27.455
The only alibi he could offer is that several of his highway department coworkers saw him while he was out.
00:23:29.165 --> 00:23:33.828
The coworkers later confirmed seeing Aroy driving around with a camera that day.
00:23:34.278 --> 00:23:36.378
But Aykroyd's appearance was weird.
00:23:36.679 --> 00:23:41.749
They said it felt like he was going out of his way to be seen and waving the camera around like a prop.
00:23:42.858 --> 00:23:53.959
When the police talked to Rhonda's biological father who lived in a nearby city, he told them that he had recently talked to Linda, his ex-wife, about akroyd abusing his children.
00:23:54.663 --> 00:23:58.653
Byron had filled him in on some things happening at the home in Sanam Junction.
00:23:59.523 --> 00:24:05.463
Although Linda denied any abuse was happening, the ex threatened the report aykroyd to the cops.
00:24:06.304 --> 00:24:08.794
Rashonda disappeared the next day.
00:24:11.013 --> 00:24:14.644
The investigators confronted Aykroyd with this new information.
00:24:15.213 --> 00:24:20.463
He denied everything but made some unusual comments as the interrogation progressed.
00:24:21.003 --> 00:24:26.854
When asked Aykroyd speculated that someone passing on Highway 20 took her against her will.
00:24:27.483 --> 00:24:36.423
At this time, Aykroyd was six foot tall, heavyset, almost bearlike in stature with a dense scraggy beard that complimented that overall impression.
00:24:37.144 --> 00:24:42.243
He said 87 pounds is nothing for a guy like my size to carry.
00:24:44.314 --> 00:24:50.284
He also theorized that the kidnapper had a knife and that rashanda was the kind of girl who could be intimidated.
00:24:51.574 --> 00:25:00.798
The Sheriff's Office started a labor intensive search as the facts became widely known and Roy's linked to Kay Turner's murder hit the local media.
00:25:01.249 --> 00:25:03.769
The district attorney set up a task force.
00:25:04.278 --> 00:25:08.929
Their mission justice for Rashonda Pickle and Kay Turner.
00:25:10.489 --> 00:25:18.048
To this end, detective spent almost two years working Rashonda Pickle's disappearance, while reviving the Kay Turner case.
00:25:18.618 --> 00:25:22.638
Progress was slow, but persistence was rewarded with breakthroughs.
00:25:23.538 --> 00:25:30.284
Aykroyd's alibi, witness and friend from Beck in 1978, Beck was no longer married.
00:25:31.243 --> 00:25:35.713
When the detectives re-interviewed his ex-wife, she told them that she lied.
00:25:35.713 --> 00:25:37.453
When she supported Beck's Alibi.
00:25:38.023 --> 00:25:40.604
At the time, she was afraid the men would hurt her.
00:25:41.183 --> 00:25:49.523
The woman told police that not only were the two men unaccounted for after Turner's disappearance, she had heard the men talking about shooting her.
00:25:50.527 --> 00:26:03.104
The results of forensic reexamination of Kay Turner evidence allowed the prosecution to confidently assert that Kay Turner had been kidnapped, raped, beaten, stabbed, and shot.
00:26:04.213 --> 00:26:15.118
Oregon media outlets took notice of the task force activities as they churn through old police reports on crimes that had occurred over the last two decades along the Highway 20 corridor.
00:26:16.709 --> 00:26:26.878
There were numerous unsolved missing person reports over the years, along with several bodies, mostly young women discovered in dump sites adjacent to the roadway.
00:26:27.614 --> 00:26:39.163
The problem was that most of the remains by the time of discovery were almost impossible to identify, with cause of death, difficult to pinpoint beyond simply likely homicide.
00:26:40.304 --> 00:26:48.074
While canvassing old crime reports from towns in the Highway 20 corridor, a sexual assault caught the investigator's attention.
00:26:48.884 --> 00:26:51.044
Aykroyd was the named suspect.
00:26:51.554 --> 00:27:04.243
Although the rape was never charged, it gave the investigators a template, a kind of Rosetta Stone of Aykroyd's MO linking cases, and answering some questions about what he had been up to.
00:27:06.019 --> 00:27:15.259
One evening in 1977, Marlene Gabrielsson left the sister's rodeo and began hitchhiking home.
00:27:15.950 --> 00:27:20.630
The route was isolated, leading up into heavily forested mountainsides.
00:27:21.109 --> 00:27:26.210
A man she later identified as Royd, pulled over his truck and offered her a ride.
00:27:27.664 --> 00:27:32.795
At some point during the drive, Aykroyd turned off onto a logging road and pulled out a knife.
00:27:33.575 --> 00:27:38.134
Marlene tried to flee, but there was no handle on the passenger side door..
00:27:39.154 --> 00:27:41.164
Arod used the blade menacingly.
00:27:41.555 --> 00:27:46.444
He would wave the blade in front of Marlene's face and then slice away parts of her clothing.
00:27:46.865 --> 00:27:50.585
Suddenly he dragged her out of the truck and pinned her to the ground as he raped her.
00:27:51.484 --> 00:28:00.154
Marlene tried to look away, tried to imagine being somewhere else but the assailant demanded she looked directly at him while he assaulted her body.
00:28:01.505 --> 00:28:04.835
When Aykroyd finished, Marlene was afraid for her life.
00:28:05.345 --> 00:28:09.755
She pled with him to take her home, promising not to tell.
00:28:10.204 --> 00:28:15.125
She told him that her mother was babysitting her child and that she was expected to be back soon.
00:28:16.025 --> 00:28:19.805
Finally, in response, Aykroyd drove Marlene the rest of the way.
00:28:20.285 --> 00:28:22.414
Dropping her off near her mother's house.
00:28:23.404 --> 00:28:28.684
Marlene told investigators in 1990 that she never washed herself after the rape.
00:28:29.045 --> 00:28:34.115
She made her mom drive her straight to the hospital bringing the slashed clothing with her.
00:28:34.775 --> 00:28:39.775
The 1990 investigators examined the 1978 ER doctor notes.
00:28:41.634 --> 00:28:45.865
The cuts to the clothing, corresponded with lacerations on Marlene's body.
00:28:46.255 --> 00:28:49.615
They also noted that the cuts seemed almost ritualistic.
00:28:50.005 --> 00:28:53.095
The jeans were cut straight from the crotch to the hemline.
00:28:54.234 --> 00:28:56.234
The 1990 detectives.
00:28:56.775 --> 00:29:02.984
After reviewing the old reports and talking to Marlene, believed she was lucky to have lived through the incident.
00:29:03.704 --> 00:29:10.904
The problem was the original investigator in 1977 clearly believed that Marlene was lying.
00:29:11.744 --> 00:29:21.244
The initial interview with Marlene had devolved into an accusatory interrogation where minute details were scrutinized and her answers discounted.
00:29:22.174 --> 00:29:28.585
Conversely, when Aykroyd was interviewed, he admitted to giving Marlene a ride, but insisted that she came onto him.
00:29:29.924 --> 00:29:34.224
He denied having sex and claimed to have no idea how her clothes got slashed.
00:29:34.765 --> 00:29:37.525
His account went largely unchallenged.
00:29:39.744 --> 00:29:45.654
Task Force Detectives saw many similarities between the cases they examined and what Marlene had experienced.
00:29:46.164 --> 00:29:52.755
Clothing found in one of the Jane Doe found body scenes were slashed in a fashion similar to Marlene's.
00:29:53.595 --> 00:29:58.045
As the task force was finalizing its first case, tragedy struck again.
00:29:59.019 --> 00:30:12.939
In May, 19 92, 2 girls from the town of Sweet Home, Sheila Swanson, 19 years old, and Melissa Sanders, 17 years old, disappeared while hitchhiking on Highway 20.
00:30:13.778 --> 00:30:19.659
Both girls skeletal remains were found together at a remote dump site near the town of Chitwood.
00:30:20.108 --> 00:30:21.909
In October, 1992.
00:30:23.199 --> 00:30:34.403
Between the time Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders went missing, and when their bodies were recovered, the task force had charged and arrested Aykroyd for Kay Turner's murder.
00:30:35.273 --> 00:30:43.884
There were many compelling aspects of the Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders case that led the investigators to believe that Aykroyd was responsible.
00:30:44.874 --> 00:30:45.683
Timing.
00:30:46.134 --> 00:30:53.094
The girls were hitchhiking along Highway 20 at the same time, Aykroyd was driving in the area, a witness.
00:30:53.618 --> 00:31:16.388
A woman in a passing vehicle claimed to have seen an Oregon d o t marked pickup truck, picking up two girls in the area, coworker suspicion around the time the girls disappeared two o d t shop workers on overtime unexpectedly encountered Akroyd, who came in late one night, probably expecting no one would be there.
00:31:16.898 --> 00:31:20.229
The coworkers said his hands and arms were covered in blood.
00:31:20.528 --> 00:31:29.348
He claimed to have hit a deer, but neither man believed him and Aykroyd knew the girls, although he denied it.
00:31:29.499 --> 00:31:33.398
Aykroyd was living in the town of Sweet Home at the time the two girls disappeared.
00:31:33.939 --> 00:31:37.179
He frequented a popular local teen hangout.
00:31:37.838 --> 00:31:39.038
Because of his age.
00:31:39.098 --> 00:31:40.929
The kids there called him the perv.
00:31:41.499 --> 00:31:46.479
Some kids said that Swanson and Sanders both had spoken to the perv.
00:31:47.949 --> 00:31:55.568
Aykroyd and Beck, both 42 were arrested on June 12th, 1992 for the rape and murder of Kate Turner.
00:31:58.269 --> 00:32:02.199
The following year, they tried both men in front of separate juries.
00:32:02.648 --> 00:32:10.959
In the trials, Beck's ex-wife testified about covering their alibi and helping with cleanup, which included burning their clothing.
00:32:11.949 --> 00:32:17.108
The forensic work on Kay's clothes and Bones revealed the truth about her death.
00:32:17.739 --> 00:32:19.929
Her clothing had been cut off, not torn.
00:32:20.439 --> 00:32:23.019
Her bones bore marks where she had been stabbed.
00:32:23.409 --> 00:32:27.759
Metal fragments were embedded in the bones showing that they'd also shot her.
00:32:28.598 --> 00:32:35.199
This evidence corresponded with guesses Aykroyd had made at the time that he claimed to have discovered the body.
00:32:36.189 --> 00:32:40.959
It turned out that Marlene Gabrielsson was not the only woman to have survived a brush with Aykroyd.
00:32:41.723 --> 00:32:45.864
Investigators found another woman who worked as a waitress at Black Butte Lodge.
00:32:46.344 --> 00:32:54.683
She testified one day as she was riding her bicycle home from work, Aykroyd stopped on the roadside in front of her pointing a gun.
00:32:54.683 --> 00:32:57.953
He tried to make her stop, but she was able to elude him.
00:32:59.304 --> 00:33:05.213
At the conclusion of the murder trials, both men were found guilty on all charges and given life sentences.
00:33:06.263 --> 00:33:12.834
Several years later, Aykroyd pled no contest to a charge of murder for his stepdaughter Rashonda pickle.
00:33:13.973 --> 00:33:17.703
This plea eliminated any possibility that he could ever be granted parole.
00:33:19.548 --> 00:33:24.588
In spite of the plea, he refused to disclose the location of Shonda's body.
00:33:25.909 --> 00:33:34.249
Akroyd died of natural causes on December 30th, 2016, while incarcerated at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.
00:33:34.909 --> 00:33:38.058
He was 67 at the time of his death.
00:33:38.058 --> 00:33:46.759
Investigators from the Lincoln County District Attorney's Office were preparing to charge him for the murders of Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
00:34:03.461 --> 00:34:09.342
Transitioning to the discussion, this is really a set of cases over a very long timeline.
00:34:09.492 --> 00:34:11.322
Let's start by talking about Kay Turner.
00:34:11.782 --> 00:34:14.271
They were in a pretty remote area when this happened.
00:34:14.632 --> 00:34:15.922
What does the response look like
00:34:16.644 --> 00:34:20.724
As a responding officer, you're sent to a missing person, and this is a pretty common call.
00:34:20.875 --> 00:34:21.385
Wherever you are.
00:34:21.389 --> 00:34:27.054
I think you go and you start talking to the complainants and ask the initial questions.
00:34:27.054 --> 00:34:27.894
Who's missing?
00:34:27.954 --> 00:34:29.244
How long have they been missing?
00:34:29.695 --> 00:34:30.835
What's the situation?
00:34:31.105 --> 00:34:32.244
What's already been done?
00:34:32.275 --> 00:34:33.175
Where have you looked?
00:34:34.465 --> 00:34:38.155
And try to basically get a general feel of that situation.
00:34:38.902 --> 00:34:44.481
A search for a person, especially one that's urgent is a considerable deployment of resources.
00:34:44.791 --> 00:35:00.862
Basically to have a major situation like this where everybody's gonna be called out, you have to The original responding officer has had pretty high confidence that the situation's real, the person that's missing is in danger and that that kind of deployment will likely find this person.
00:35:01.722 --> 00:35:09.882
And the whole time you're really hoping that the person's going to, and honestly you're hoping the person shows up the first thing that's gonna be done is, who is the person likely to be with their friends?
00:35:09.882 --> 00:35:17.422
And we contact all those per people and run through that list of where is the person likely to be, let's check all those places first.
00:35:17.422 --> 00:35:26.001
like if you go for to a house where there's a kid missing, the first thing you're going to wanna check is the officers are gonna ask to thoroughly check the home.
00:35:26.572 --> 00:35:29.391
Now, if you have people that are like you're not checking our home.
00:35:29.396 --> 00:35:44.481
Wait a minute, your kid's missing, we need to check your home, we wanna check that off because if we begin a huge overland search here or a ever widening search for a truly missing kid, we need to say we checked off A to B first place, always the house.
00:35:44.661 --> 00:35:47.632
And likewise here, we're gonna make sure that.
00:35:48.481 --> 00:35:50.012
All the likely places are checked.
00:35:50.012 --> 00:35:55.831
Where Kay Turner was likely to be where she could have stopped off, does she have any friends in the area?
00:35:56.041 --> 00:35:57.481
Where does she like to go in the area?
00:35:57.487 --> 00:36:01.581
Is there a place she might go find a, a park bench and look at her favorite mountain?
00:36:01.681 --> 00:36:04.891
And obviously here the Sheriff's Department assess that Yes.
00:36:04.891 --> 00:36:07.771
Is a situation that needs to have resources brought out on.
00:36:08.072 --> 00:36:11.681
And they called out, their search team volunteers.
00:36:12.192 --> 00:36:19.021
They had some Boy scout groups in the area and those search teams brought out other resources like aviation and tracking dogs.
00:36:20.927 --> 00:36:22.996
Any major missing person, is gonna follow two tracks.
00:36:23.237 --> 00:36:27.047
You're gonna have the ground track which is searching the areas I just described.
00:36:27.347 --> 00:36:30.476
And then you're also gonna have the the investigative portion.
00:36:30.936 --> 00:36:36.487
You're gonna take all the people aside and you're gonna interview them and see what they really think separately from one another.
00:36:36.487 --> 00:36:44.706
Because these friends that went up with Kay Turner into the mountains, some of them knew some things about her that maybe the husband didn't know.
00:36:44.856 --> 00:36:53.556
The other thing you would wanna know is what do the friends there have to say about the relationship between Noel, the husband and Kay Turner, leading up to the event?
00:36:53.916 --> 00:36:55.117
Did it seem like they were happy?
00:36:55.121 --> 00:36:56.077
Was there any fights?
00:36:56.077 --> 00:36:57.277
Did they hear any arguments?
00:36:57.677 --> 00:36:58.306
This kind of thing.
00:36:58.456 --> 00:37:02.717
And those interviews will inform where you're gonna search,
00:37:02.987 --> 00:37:05.567
This morning you were talking about a recent Anchorage case.
00:37:05.567 --> 00:37:07.097
How does that relate here?
00:37:07.967 --> 00:37:19.717
Yeah I keep track of what's going on in, back in my old city and about, at the time of this recording, almost a week prior, there's a 21 year old female that was missing.
00:37:20.106 --> 00:37:29.706
And what I noticed about the missing personal report was that the report was coming from family that was, I think they might have been visiting South Africa or some, she had some family in South Africa.
00:37:30.876 --> 00:37:35.617
And my, the first thing I thought was, Why was there not a local appeal?
00:37:35.666 --> 00:37:37.197
Does she have no family in Anchorage?
00:37:37.197 --> 00:37:44.827
Now some people are military, they may not have any family in Anchorage, but why wasn't there somebody local announcing this calling for her search?
00:37:45.376 --> 00:37:50.297
My first question there when I thought, when I saw that, I was like, does she not have a boyfriend or a husband here in town?
00:37:50.686 --> 00:37:51.496
What's up with that?
00:37:52.586 --> 00:37:57.992
The reason I thought that is if you listen to our episode on Susan Bailey, a DV situation the same thing.
00:37:58.681 --> 00:38:04.442
The husband who lived in town was not eager to report this thing.
00:38:04.601 --> 00:38:06.072
It turned out he had killed his wife.
00:38:06.402 --> 00:38:13.302
And even though he should be the first reporter to the police, the people I went to, to talk to about her being missing were her coworkers.
00:38:13.581 --> 00:38:17.166
Likewise, I didn't know anything about the missing lady in Anchorage.
00:38:17.376 --> 00:38:21.097
But my first thought was I wonder if she's got a husband or her boyfriend at town?
00:38:21.931 --> 00:38:33.521
There was a lot of media on this missing person and searching for her And it turned out five days later, her body was found near to where her and her husband significantly lived.
00:38:34.012 --> 00:38:39.981
It turned out on the weekend prior, the husband had shot her in the middle of the night and hid the body in the woods nearby.
00:38:40.322 --> 00:38:46.572
Here's a situation where overland search, if you don't have the specific location, would be difficult to search.
00:38:46.672 --> 00:38:49.911
Although eventually they probably would've found her because she wasn't far from her house.
00:38:50.391 --> 00:38:54.322
But here the investigators directed the search that ultimately turned up her body.
00:38:56.072 --> 00:39:02.911
You've been involved in searches where the family was not immediately excluded, but then it turned out the family wasn't involved.
00:39:03.452 --> 00:39:05.762
How does that sort of thing get sorted out?
00:39:06.692 --> 00:39:07.172
Yeah.
00:39:07.322 --> 00:39:09.362
Especially with kids, it's hard to know.
00:39:09.931 --> 00:39:14.802
I helped in the ground search for a couple missing kids a long time ago.
00:39:15.231 --> 00:39:17.692
It wasn't clear that the parent wasn't a suspect.
00:39:18.222 --> 00:39:20.641
Some of those situations are, ambiguous.
00:39:21.242 --> 00:39:23.581
There's some suspicious background issues here.
00:39:24.121 --> 00:39:31.891
So one of the detectives had the unenviable task of pressing the parent, and they pressed the parent hard.
00:39:32.521 --> 00:39:35.431
And it later turned out the kids were deceased.
00:39:35.532 --> 00:39:37.572
And the parent wasn't directly involved.
00:39:37.572 --> 00:39:41.262
This missing kids thing lasted for a few weeks.
00:39:41.621 --> 00:39:46.161
And, I talked to one of the detectives that was, An interviewer there.
00:39:46.702 --> 00:39:54.181
And I can tell you that finding out that the parent that he had interrogated confronted actually didn't have anything to do with it.
00:39:54.521 --> 00:39:57.126
He felt like shit, but it had to be done.
00:39:57.186 --> 00:39:59.851
We had to find those kids, we had to figure out if they knew anything.
00:40:00.375 --> 00:40:08.969
In this case with the K turner, you'd locked the husband down to a timeline going in and, you'd see if they had any arguments.
00:40:09.389 --> 00:40:11.980
What did the husband say about the stability?
00:40:11.980 --> 00:40:13.510
Did he know about the boyfriends.
00:40:13.849 --> 00:40:16.340
And in those interviews you'd see what reaction you got.
00:40:16.670 --> 00:40:20.690
A lot of times they're not gonna be honest and there's gonna be clues to that.
00:40:20.739 --> 00:40:24.590
And like I said, you'd talk to the friends and see if they, did they see Kay leave?
00:40:24.889 --> 00:40:26.239
Did they know she went running?
00:40:26.300 --> 00:40:27.980
Or is that just what the husband said?
00:40:28.425 --> 00:40:31.574
And in general, what was the whole situation in the days prior?
00:40:32.382 --> 00:40:34.842
Do you think that the husband knew about the boyfriends?
00:40:34.842 --> 00:40:38.532
Do you think one of the friends knew and told investigators?
00:40:38.581 --> 00:40:39.481
How did that come up?
00:40:41.072 --> 00:40:45.001
I actually don't know who spilled the beans on that, or if he knew, or who knows.
00:40:45.001 --> 00:40:46.911
But it was something they investigated.
00:40:47.282 --> 00:40:54.902
In that case, say this came up in a case I was working at, track down the boyfriend, see if they knew anything, and significantly what did those guys say about the husband?
00:40:54.902 --> 00:41:00.117
Did the husband say that she's, seeing them because he's a tyrant and beats her, what's he saying?
00:41:00.117 --> 00:41:00.896
Or does he not know?
00:41:00.902 --> 00:41:01.677
Is he clueless?
00:41:02.186 --> 00:41:09.677
I imagine that based on the cases I'm involved in, the detectives pretty early had a theory about how that was gonna go.
00:41:10.077 --> 00:41:18.467
Just like on the case I talked about in Anchorage last week, I would bet those detectives had some idea pretty quick after touching base with that husband.
00:41:18.856 --> 00:41:25.347
Maybe the neighbors, because she was shot in an apartment, they had a pretty good idea that things weren't right inside the house.
00:41:25.396 --> 00:41:26.806
What was their relationship like?
00:41:27.106 --> 00:41:35.786
And I think in this case with Kay Turner, they would've had a pretty good idea that this doesn't smell like something that went bad suddenly, and she just disappeared.
00:41:36.507 --> 00:41:41.297
And as far as K Turner goes you might say is it the kind of thing where she would just up and leave her husband?
00:41:41.577 --> 00:41:42.836
It probably didn't feel like that either.
00:41:42.836 --> 00:41:50.186
Because why would she go away on a trip, Christmas trip with her friends and her husband, and, just step out on them.
00:41:50.246 --> 00:41:51.237
It just, it doesn't seem right.
00:41:51.507 --> 00:41:53.666
Versus so the middle of nowhere, right in the middle of nowhere.
00:41:53.666 --> 00:41:57.032
And versus, the week prior she leaves him or something.
00:41:57.161 --> 00:42:07.157
And like I said, in other cases I've seen and are familiar with husbands that just did in their wives or did something, their wives often aren't in a hurry to make that report.
00:42:07.157 --> 00:42:07.967
They want to delay it.
00:42:07.967 --> 00:42:10.097
They want to delay that confrontation with the cops.
00:42:10.097 --> 00:42:11.336
It's inevitably coming.
00:42:12.606 --> 00:42:15.722
This certainly served as a red herring for a while with the investigators.
00:42:15.992 --> 00:42:16.742
Yeah, the boyfriends.
00:42:16.742 --> 00:42:17.072
Yeah.
00:42:17.152 --> 00:42:23.931
The good thing is, like I said, with the two tracks, they were able to area search, which unfortunately the area search wasn't successful.
00:42:24.041 --> 00:42:29.202
And then they were also were able, they had the manpower to actually work the investigation too.
00:42:29.592 --> 00:42:33.641
So I think they pretty much discounted the boyfriends that red herring.
00:42:33.882 --> 00:42:36.581
And were able to move towards a real suspect
00:42:39.521 --> 00:42:42.942
setting plays a really huge role in this whole story.
00:42:44.442 --> 00:42:44.862
Oh yeah.
00:42:44.911 --> 00:42:52.507
And I'm familiar with searches in very large areas, densely wooded, rugged relatively sparsely populated.
00:42:52.697 --> 00:42:58.956
It's funny when I think of that it's like that movie alien where no in place areas where no one can hear you scream.
00:43:00.706 --> 00:43:08.692
anywhere where these places where any help is gonna be a long time incoming, ironically Aykroyd's job was that guy to come and help.
00:43:10.922 --> 00:43:16.257
The thing about the setting in this situation is Ayd was a predator in his own territory.
00:43:16.626 --> 00:43:18.007
He's been traveling it for years.
00:43:18.067 --> 00:43:23.697
He's familiar with the whole area and, he legitimately had a reason to be where he was committing crimes.
00:43:23.697 --> 00:43:26.067
So his presence is never suspicious.
00:43:28.387 --> 00:43:37.501
And when they really scrutinized him, he had this believable fallback excuse of, I'm just hunting, or I'm poaching, or I'm running over wild animals.
00:43:38.612 --> 00:43:38.911
Yeah.
00:43:38.911 --> 00:43:40.181
And he wasn't a dumb guy.
00:43:40.181 --> 00:43:46.452
He told investigators who's poaching and that's what's known as a, an admission against self-interest.
00:43:46.452 --> 00:43:49.206
And it one of the indicators that he might be telling the truth.
00:43:49.327 --> 00:43:55.597
It's an effort to appear that he's just an honest guy, caught making a small mistake when he doesn't really wanna admit to the big thing.
00:43:55.987 --> 00:44:03.717
So it's the perfect environment and it's coupled with poor oversight and supervision on that highway job.
00:44:03.771 --> 00:44:07.282
It's perfect for him to do what he wants to do live out his fantasies.
00:44:07.681 --> 00:44:15.981
As far as his preferred victims went, he obviously, he wasn't picking up every woman he saw, he put, he was selecting those that were vulnerable.
00:44:16.442 --> 00:44:19.387
And he had control enough to bite his time and wait for somebody.
00:44:19.387 --> 00:44:20.347
That's right.
00:44:21.737 --> 00:44:30.297
And as far as the body dump science, he could, he picked places where he knew only a few people frequented, not on popular hiking areas.
00:44:30.717 --> 00:44:34.266
it makes me think of if you watch the show Yellowstone.
00:44:34.942 --> 00:44:41.211
They have a thing called Moonlight Train, where the people on the ranch that are supposedly good guys, although this is a bad thing.
00:44:41.512 --> 00:44:58.697
When they want to bump off somebody, when they wanna kill somebody and eliminate them they call it, they were taking'em on the Moonlight train and they drive'em out to a Clifftop and they shoot'em and toss'em off the cliff, and they can do this time after time because they know nobody's gonna go in the rugged cliff side area that they're doing that on.
00:44:58.697 --> 00:45:02.327
And that's what makes me think here is this guy knew all those places.
00:45:02.847 --> 00:45:08.726
And the other thing that, the other thought that brought to me was he pled to Rashonda.
00:45:09.746 --> 00:45:15.981
And it made me wonder, why he didn't just give up where her body was located.
00:45:16.222 --> 00:45:22.672
It made me wonder if he had his own Moonlight train location where if he gave up Rashonda, there'd be other people there.
00:45:24.382 --> 00:45:27.472
Presumably he'd been killing for years by then.
00:45:27.711 --> 00:45:32.621
Do you think he would've developed a special spot to dump bodies rather than spreading them around that region?
00:45:32.831 --> 00:45:37.936
I know investigators are fairly certain that some of those women that were found at dump sites are his.
00:45:38.166 --> 00:45:47.012
I don't know, but I think it's possible, and I think that may be a reason why he wouldn't want to give up Rhonda's location is because there were other ones that he liked that spot.
00:45:47.112 --> 00:45:47.802
That's what I think.
00:45:50.592 --> 00:45:52.961
There were several initial searches for K.
00:45:52.992 --> 00:45:56.081
What were the problems with those overland searches?
00:45:56.472 --> 00:45:56.862
Yeah.
00:45:57.101 --> 00:46:07.442
When the investigators in later years looked at the original search what they saw was the, some of the areas where they searched were too broad, too big.
00:46:08.297 --> 00:46:10.007
And I think the investigator is right.
00:46:10.492 --> 00:46:17.672
A victim is unlikely to turn up miles off a roadway or path without any kind of means of getting there easily.
00:46:18.043 --> 00:46:22.117
And most dump bodies are found near the road, not five miles back.
00:46:22.697 --> 00:46:25.038
And same with corresponding articles of evidence.
00:46:25.307 --> 00:46:29.688
If you listen to our episode on the Bethany Carrera case, that's a good example.
00:46:29.737 --> 00:46:36.632
The suspects there drove her body away from the urban area of Anchorage out into the wilderness.
00:46:37.023 --> 00:46:41.972
And then when they got to where they thought they were safe, they drove basically across a gravel parking lot.
00:46:42.422 --> 00:46:45.682
And they couldn't dig a grave due to the ground conditions.
00:46:45.682 --> 00:46:50.753
So they threw her body down in embankment, but she still turned out to be very close to the road.
00:46:52.838 --> 00:46:56.818
Yeah, but the drive between Anchorage and Fairbanks is seven hours of wilderness.
00:46:56.847 --> 00:47:01.018
She could have been on the edge of the road and you still would've had trouble finding
00:47:01.018 --> 00:47:01.407
her.
00:47:01.858 --> 00:47:02.038
Yeah.
00:47:02.038 --> 00:47:05.143
That was the problem that they had to have some somebody point.
00:47:05.623 --> 00:47:09.913
And that's the problem they had with all the murders that we profiled here.
00:47:10.273 --> 00:47:14.353
Lots of densely wooded area, lots of roadside turnouts to scour.
00:47:14.532 --> 00:47:16.353
And, it's much too big an area.
00:47:16.353 --> 00:47:17.853
Just to randomly search
00:47:20.012 --> 00:47:31.952
while we're on the subject of Bethany Carrera, the investigation at the dump site had some commonalities with Kay Turner because her skull was found a year after the rest of her body, about three quarters of a mile away.
00:47:32.563 --> 00:47:33.427
Very similarly.
00:47:35.347 --> 00:47:42.907
I thought of that when I heard, when I looked at this case, both sets of remains were scattered by animals as they decomposed in the Bethany career case.
00:47:42.907 --> 00:47:47.632
Her remains were spread by animals, downhill across a meadow in case's case.
00:47:47.722 --> 00:47:51.918
And this may in the place that she was found, it wasn't super rugged in case.
00:47:52.217 --> 00:47:55.547
And in her intax skull was found.
00:47:55.608 --> 00:47:58.157
It's a pretty large item to be carried almost a mile.
00:47:58.438 --> 00:48:10.882
But it was probably decomposed enough to easily separate and it did separate from the jaw because they found that at the original site, and it separate from spine and any tissues left, which meant it'd be lighter than, an intact head.
00:48:11.422 --> 00:48:15.393
So what you'd expect is remains would travel more easily downhill.
00:48:15.393 --> 00:48:16.443
This a rugged area.
00:48:16.862 --> 00:48:21.873
But you're still probably talking about a d a dog or coyote versus an a small rodent.
00:48:23.309 --> 00:48:24.750
Back to the huge search area.
00:48:25.139 --> 00:48:27.389
What do you do with that kind of an area?
00:48:28.650 --> 00:48:28.829
Yeah.
00:48:28.829 --> 00:48:30.659
You take a look at what resources you have.
00:48:30.900 --> 00:48:34.610
You try and figure out the highest areas of probability of discovery.
00:48:34.920 --> 00:48:38.190
Maybe you look at places where the victim or suspect like to spend time.
00:48:38.190 --> 00:48:46.150
If you have that information you try to think like the victim or like the suspect, and you search places that seem right for the situation.
00:48:46.750 --> 00:48:50.619
You use resources like Aircraft canine to augment your effort.
00:48:51.019 --> 00:48:56.989
Basically you do the best you can with what you have and you have to accept it even after a search is complete.
00:48:57.349 --> 00:49:01.789
It doesn't mean that the target wasn't right there and that you just missed it.
00:49:04.250 --> 00:49:08.659
You did say you were surprised that they used Boy Scouts in the search for Kay's body.
00:49:10.280 --> 00:49:10.519
Yeah.
00:49:10.519 --> 00:49:17.590
My immediate reaction was, I was surprised that you're gonna bring, basically what are young some, sometimes young kids.
00:49:18.099 --> 00:49:19.989
But I guess I was spoiled living in the city.
00:49:20.380 --> 00:49:24.550
There were some fairly strict requirements on who could be a part of the civilian team.
00:49:24.949 --> 00:49:31.469
They need background checks, but I guess in a very rural environment, you can't be selective.
00:49:32.190 --> 00:49:38.135
I feel very fortunate that I never had to be part of a search that was so large that we were calling for, just any volunteer.
00:49:39.574 --> 00:49:43.324
You did coordinate overland searches that were strictly police?
00:49:43.835 --> 00:49:44.284
Yeah.
00:49:44.405 --> 00:49:48.934
The Kincaid Park searches that we're looking for, the episode we had with Mindy Schloss.
00:49:49.835 --> 00:49:52.025
She was killed by serial killer Joshua Wade.
00:49:52.474 --> 00:49:58.349
That was just Anchorage Police, F b i and other, any other federal agents who they could scrape up.
00:49:58.690 --> 00:50:00.184
I ran the line searches for that
00:50:00.184 --> 00:50:05.724
why would you keep it Just police versus adding civilians or boy scouts?
00:50:05.724 --> 00:50:11.195
Even some investigations are sensitive with Mindy Schloss case.
00:50:11.385 --> 00:50:16.440
The homicide team wanted to keep the, that information tight and have the fewer leaks, the better.
00:50:16.800 --> 00:50:25.505
So they saw to keep it as sworn personnel or only, I'm not trying to say by any means that civilian team members are unreliable.
00:50:25.534 --> 00:50:27.125
They're great and they're essential.
00:50:27.445 --> 00:50:33.375
But that case, particularly sensitive, we're trying to keep the identity of the, by that time the name Josh Wade.
00:50:34.034 --> 00:50:35.715
What it was explosive.
00:50:35.744 --> 00:50:46.605
He had gotten away with it, pretty much everybody knew he got away with it before, and for him to turn up in this high profile missing nurse case would've been explosive.
00:50:46.605 --> 00:50:49.934
We're trying to keep that noise down as long as we could.
00:50:49.989 --> 00:51:02.929
Now my concern with Boy Scouts searching is the effect that, if you find things that could have on a child, some of my adult searchers they talked about some of the, depression and being upset by finding some of these things.
00:51:02.934 --> 00:51:06.445
So I'd be worried about kids, especially with fresh body parts.
00:51:06.894 --> 00:51:09.144
Like I said, even adults can have trouble at experience.
00:51:09.519 --> 00:51:14.409
But again, if your choice is searching with kids or not searching at all, I'll take the kids.
00:51:16.840 --> 00:51:21.909
You mentioned that cases sometime need shepherding or they risk being forgotten.
00:51:23.079 --> 00:51:23.320
Yeah.
00:51:23.324 --> 00:51:26.500
If you listen to Susan Bailey, that murder is a good example.
00:51:26.750 --> 00:51:31.340
And there's some other ones that I can think of where they're not easy to solve.
00:51:31.409 --> 00:51:34.739
In Susan Bailey, we, everybody knew what happened and who did it.
00:51:35.289 --> 00:51:40.630
The case needed somebody to, to be an advocate to, to shepherd it, to push it through the end zone.
00:51:41.059 --> 00:51:42.110
And it gets stale.
00:51:42.150 --> 00:51:46.739
These cases get get cold, grow cold, and get stale on that.
00:51:46.795 --> 00:51:48.775
I was the initial responding officer.
00:51:49.085 --> 00:51:50.704
But I cared about it enough.
00:51:50.704 --> 00:51:51.965
I knew she was dead right away.
00:51:52.335 --> 00:51:53.139
I cared about the case.
00:51:53.144 --> 00:51:58.900
I checked back in homicide with it regularly, and it got passed between detectives because people are coming in and out.
00:51:59.320 --> 00:52:04.835
But I was thrilled when the detective who eventually ran with it cared about it as much as I did.
00:52:06.224 --> 00:52:08.610
On the other hand, some cases have to ripen.
00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:13.739
Witnesses can come forward after years of living with guilt or the horrible knowledge of what happened.
00:52:14.170 --> 00:52:17.079
Or, kids grow up and they can say, okay, now I'm gonna talk about it.
00:52:17.690 --> 00:52:21.480
For but for most cases, time does not make'em better.
00:52:21.480 --> 00:52:23.670
They don't get better with age like wine.
00:52:24.369 --> 00:52:34.585
One of the problems with the detectives is sometimes not taking action is easier than grinding out a tough case both for the investigator and a prosecutor.
00:52:35.764 --> 00:52:36.065
Now that
00:52:36.065 --> 00:52:39.034
sounds a little bit like you're trying to say investigators might be lazy.
00:52:39.164 --> 00:52:39.704
No, I'm not.
00:52:39.925 --> 00:52:41.664
I absolutely don't wanna give that impression.
00:52:41.934 --> 00:52:42.835
Quite the contrary.
00:52:43.014 --> 00:52:47.034
But keep in mind that investigator units are never overstaffed and over budgeted.
00:52:47.434 --> 00:52:52.204
There's always a new case coming in to distract you from that pile of shit you already have.
00:52:53.255 --> 00:53:02.405
It seems like the Marlene Gabrielsson case, that initial rape was forgotten until much, much later, maybe even till after Rashonda Pickle's disappearance.
00:53:06.005 --> 00:53:06.965
Yeah, I think that's true.
00:53:06.994 --> 00:53:17.594
I think that the reason that people, that investigators and later the press started looking back was that, you had this K turner, he's the main suspect.
00:53:17.655 --> 00:53:21.980
Like I said, on the, on some other things, you just know that's the people involved in that just know he's the guy.
00:53:22.030 --> 00:53:22.929
We just can't prove it.
00:53:23.289 --> 00:53:23.949
And here you have.
00:53:24.820 --> 00:53:27.070
A young girl, she's missing.
00:53:27.099 --> 00:53:28.809
He's the guy we pretty much know.
00:53:28.809 --> 00:53:30.760
He is the guy after looking into it a little while.
00:53:31.070 --> 00:53:34.820
Now we're gonna pull out all the stops'cause this guy, we're not, we gotta stop this guy.
00:53:35.030 --> 00:53:42.409
And the thing about the Marlon Gabrielson case is that it was a historical case.
00:53:42.409 --> 00:53:47.514
It's thought of to be as he, it's his first it's Aykroyd's first known rape case.
00:53:48.085 --> 00:53:51.315
And back then there wasn't a database.
00:53:51.375 --> 00:53:53.474
Case relations were not easily searched.
00:53:53.965 --> 00:53:55.284
And that's changed quite a bit.
00:53:55.686 --> 00:54:01.396
Now I could go to the computer and find cases, all the contacts, all the associates that dating back decades.
00:54:01.737 --> 00:54:04.197
And the ability to do that is only getting better.
00:54:04.536 --> 00:54:06.786
Despite people's fear of big brothers watching.
00:54:06.876 --> 00:54:08.016
I think that's a great thing.
00:54:08.016 --> 00:54:13.467
And I know I've benefited greatly from my career from that particular technological process.
00:54:15.237 --> 00:54:15.476
Okay.
00:54:15.476 --> 00:54:20.697
But the police were downright unresponsive to Marlene Gabriels son's initial report of being raped.
00:54:22.766 --> 00:54:23.396
Yes, they were.
00:54:23.396 --> 00:54:38.106
And it was significant in the later case, only as historical case because it pretty much showed what he what he liked to do, what he did and from, and they had the ability to talk to her first person and get the story.
00:54:38.376 --> 00:54:41.797
So we want, we wanna talk about why it wasn't worked.
00:54:42.246 --> 00:54:45.306
So first of all, I think it should have been worked.
00:54:45.311 --> 00:54:49.806
I think it, I think looking at the, at that specific case, I think there was plenty to go on.
00:54:49.811 --> 00:55:03.911
And let me explain that when the decision process for charging a complaint of sexual assault, what the investigator has to prove or has to secure evidence for is consent, right?
00:55:04.061 --> 00:55:12.192
So we have to prove that non-consensual sex happened and that there was no consent.
00:55:12.882 --> 00:55:14.202
That's the investigative burden.
00:55:15.081 --> 00:55:19.427
I'm trying to look at that case and figure out what would make the investigator skeptical, right?
00:55:21.581 --> 00:55:23.311
You have so much evidence there.
00:55:23.762 --> 00:55:29.132
The suspect talked to them and the victim talked to them and the victim told the story that he did this.
00:55:29.132 --> 00:55:32.592
And he cut her clothes up and you have he picks her up.
00:55:33.041 --> 00:55:43.092
He drives her to the place, he threatens her, holds a knife up, he cuts her clothes off and she convinced him to take her home.
00:55:43.601 --> 00:55:49.722
And she gets out of the car and she goes right to her mother and says, this guy raped me.
00:55:49.931 --> 00:55:50.981
Take me to the hospital.
00:55:51.192 --> 00:56:04.742
I've got all this cut clothes evidence, and we drive over the hospital and the ER doc takes a look at her body and says, yes, those cuts that are consistent with where he cuts your clothing and also cut your body while he is doing that.
00:56:05.342 --> 00:56:11.097
You'd have questions like of the mother, Hey, Did you hear that truck drop her off?
00:56:11.157 --> 00:56:18.061
What was her, because you can interview the mother on hearsay things because she's the first reporter or the first person that was reported to.
00:56:18.402 --> 00:56:21.487
She would get to tell her observations, but she also to say what was said to her.
00:56:22.746 --> 00:56:26.016
And then you put all that together and it makes sense.
00:56:26.047 --> 00:56:31.836
And now you talk to this other guy who picked her up and drove her somewhere and she came onto him.
00:56:32.197 --> 00:56:35.896
And then, at what point there she, he didn't see her cut, her clothing cut up.
00:56:35.896 --> 00:56:43.277
So what a point did her cut, her clothing become cut up, like between the time she jumped outta the car and what would the motive be there?
00:56:43.697 --> 00:56:47.896
And so there's so much here in this case that's provable.
00:56:48.117 --> 00:56:53.467
I do not know why they did not take it seriously and go with it other than.
00:56:54.016 --> 00:57:06.797
There's a couple of reasons why I can, there's conjecture, but I can say these cases, consent in this case based on my experience, would not be really a problem unless you had something else, right?
00:57:07.036 --> 00:57:16.496
Like you found out that the complainant had made all kinds of crazy things happen in the past that would cloud that at the same time you couldn't discount her statement.
00:57:16.806 --> 00:57:27.601
So you're looking for things that would add credibility to his defense or, that,'cause that's what you do is you sort through this what you have as much as you can get and you weigh it and you weigh it with the prosecutor.
00:57:27.842 --> 00:57:29.641
And can we overcome that consent?
00:57:29.882 --> 00:57:32.311
And in this case, it's pretty serious.
00:57:32.311 --> 00:57:33.717
She's got cut up clothing and stuff.
00:57:33.717 --> 00:57:37.317
And having just met this guy, it's unlikely they were into some weird.
00:57:37.766 --> 00:57:41.496
Weird game with a knife thing that where she was, it was a consensual situation.
00:57:42.306 --> 00:57:43.867
So these are the things you'd look for.
00:57:43.987 --> 00:57:50.567
And I would say, based on what I know about this case there's no reason to not move forward with Yeah.
00:57:50.567 --> 00:57:53.447
He lacked consent when he did what he did to her.
00:57:55.217 --> 00:57:58.067
And there's no evidence that they knew each other before this interaction.
00:57:58.067 --> 00:58:00.016
There was no prior association.
00:58:00.117 --> 00:58:03.027
In a case like this, that's, that is a very big piece of evidence.
00:58:03.077 --> 00:58:06.856
What's the likelihood that that all of these things are gonna happen like that?
00:58:06.862 --> 00:58:09.347
Like he's saying nothing, there's nothing wrong here.
00:58:09.347 --> 00:58:17.646
She came onto me and all I did was take her home and look at what ha what she's got evidence wise, and you talk to those two people and you.
00:58:17.887 --> 00:58:18.427
Okay.
00:58:18.476 --> 00:58:26.626
And a lot of it has to do with who's we have to, everything is overcoming consent, but some of that is whose story.
00:58:27.347 --> 00:58:38.297
It makes sense and whose story is off now that may not overcome that burden because sometimes content is very difficult to prove when you lack evidence like they have in this case.
00:58:38.777 --> 00:58:46.117
But in this case, I can tell you if it came into my office and somebody worked it it would very likely be an immediate arrest.
00:58:48.036 --> 00:58:59.407
So Marlene Gabrielsson Inupiat Alaska native, and she believes the reason that they completely discounted her complaint is because they thought of her as just a drunk Indian.
00:59:00.516 --> 00:59:01.836
And I actually think she's right.
00:59:02.137 --> 00:59:05.766
And that the initial investigation was a completely racist response.
00:59:07.757 --> 00:59:09.376
I can't say that you're wrong.
00:59:09.476 --> 00:59:14.112
And I can say that I think there's a that they should have arrested him for rape on this first case.
00:59:14.112 --> 00:59:18.222
Maybe not even his first case, but the one they got him on the first one they know about.
00:59:18.501 --> 00:59:19.222
But I can't say.
00:59:19.746 --> 00:59:22.947
In my mind, I can't say whether it's because she's a Alaska native.
00:59:23.126 --> 00:59:24.806
They would've thought of as her as Indian.
00:59:24.806 --> 00:59:51.907
But being from Alaska and tell you that she's thinking of herself as Alaska native what, the reason I say that is because if you look at the cases we have covered that are historical cases, and from my experience you look back at some of the cases we've covered, where white women were the victims and so forth, and they've received responses that were consistent like this, like a complete lack of appropriate response from all races of female victims of sexual assault.
00:59:52.086 --> 00:59:55.956
So part of that could have been just been, she was a woman in 1978.
00:59:56.547 --> 01:00:00.722
And not, I'm not to say that's not, these things don't ha don't still happen, and they do.
01:00:02.516 --> 01:00:06.206
And both can be true, but do you think that the situation has improved much?
01:00:06.447 --> 01:00:11.876
We still have a problem with missing and murdered indigenous women across the United States and Canada.
01:00:12.347 --> 01:00:23.206
As far as that goes the situation may not have improved much, but as far as the investigation, I think that in a lot of places, a lot of areas, I'm not saying across the board, there have been a lot of improvement.
01:00:23.211 --> 01:00:30.407
I think training, awareness, victim services have greatly improved in a lot of places.
01:00:30.516 --> 01:00:33.757
And there's a huge effort to do that nationwide.
01:00:33.876 --> 01:00:35.327
But there's still a long way to go.
01:00:35.726 --> 01:00:48.586
Just a few days before this, we're making this recording, the US coast Guard Academy has a scandal where the top commander of that institution was caught covering up decades of sexual assault complaints that happened at the military academy.
01:00:49.586 --> 01:00:50.427
Have we improved?
01:00:50.427 --> 01:00:51.447
I think we have.
01:00:51.746 --> 01:00:52.766
Are we where we need to be?
01:00:52.766 --> 01:00:53.427
Absolutely not.
01:00:55.827 --> 01:01:02.336
In the end, Marlene and Gabrielsson talked about going back to Alaska after she was raped so that she could feel safe.
01:01:02.936 --> 01:01:03.327
Yeah.
01:01:03.626 --> 01:01:07.891
That that part I, when she said that I, it's so ironic.
01:01:07.972 --> 01:01:17.831
Alaska, where I worked in the largest city in Alaska has, and this is true of the whole state, has some of the highest per capita levels of sexual assault in the country.
01:01:18.282 --> 01:01:22.121
And Alaska native females are disproportionately represented in that statistic.
01:01:23.505 --> 01:01:30.554
So a lot of work still to be done to make sure that indigenous women are protected appropriately.
01:01:30.664 --> 01:01:30.885
Yes.
01:01:31.014 --> 01:01:31.594
And all women.
01:01:32.764 --> 01:01:33.755
Yes, and all women.
01:01:34.574 --> 01:01:38.235
Rand's mother does not believe that Aykroyd killed her daughter.
01:01:38.295 --> 01:01:47.295
In fact, she was entirely super defensive about the idea that there was any sort of abuse of her daughter or anybody in the family, or any problems at all with Aykroyd.
01:01:47.414 --> 01:01:52.429
And it so pisses me off when mothers fail to protect their children from shit like this.
01:01:52.880 --> 01:01:56.269
Is she being selfish in pretending that everything was perfectly fine?
01:01:56.269 --> 01:01:57.469
Or what the hell is going on with
01:01:57.469 --> 01:01:58.130
that woman?
01:01:59.719 --> 01:02:03.710
I think it's selfish in a self-defense kind of way, in a denial kind of way.
01:02:04.250 --> 01:02:18.010
It's the same reason that the woman who alibied her husband in Aykroyd knowing that they just killed a woman that the fact that she would block investigation like that for years is pretty amazing.
01:02:18.570 --> 01:02:21.219
And why, rhonda's mother's protecting herself.
01:02:21.219 --> 01:02:27.289
She doesn't want to admit that she basically brought the guy in who murdered her daughter and allowed the abuse to happen.
01:02:27.869 --> 01:02:30.510
She's not gonna admit that to herself or anybody else.
01:02:31.699 --> 01:02:35.190
The alibi witness there, she's living in a rural place.
01:02:35.190 --> 01:02:38.099
She's maybe dependent financial support.
01:02:38.099 --> 01:02:40.449
I think they had kids what, where's she gonna go?
01:02:40.454 --> 01:02:41.019
What are they gonna do?
01:02:41.019 --> 01:02:44.650
How's she gonna get away from that guy that just helped murdered her murder, rape a woman?
01:02:45.289 --> 01:02:49.210
Obviously she knew what was going on, because it was big news in that area, right?
01:02:49.329 --> 01:02:50.530
This woman is missing.
01:02:50.530 --> 01:02:58.215
And then later she's raped and murdered and, her husband and her husband's friend show up with blood and talk about shooting her.
01:02:58.724 --> 01:03:00.344
So she knew what was going on.
01:03:01.315 --> 01:03:10.440
That aspect, people covering for other people it's heartbreaking, but I think it's human nature and it's not surprising in a DV relationship that happens.
01:03:11.103 --> 01:03:11.643
So he
01:03:11.643 --> 01:03:16.802
moved on to killing two people at once with Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders.
01:03:17.072 --> 01:03:20.193
That seems super risky to try and control two people at the same time.
01:03:20.583 --> 01:03:23.103
Do you think his buddy was involved in that one also?
01:03:24.193 --> 01:03:24.822
I don't think so.
01:03:24.862 --> 01:03:26.273
I don't think there's evidence of that.
01:03:26.273 --> 01:03:28.643
I think the buddy had moved to California by that time.
01:03:29.193 --> 01:03:37.818
These are two girls young and he's a big guy and he's got a weapon and he's got, He's got the element of surprise he may be the perv, they may joke he's the per'cause.
01:03:37.822 --> 01:03:39.648
He is the old guy at the teenage hangout.
01:03:39.648 --> 01:03:41.893
But they're gonna take a ride from him so they can get back home.
01:03:42.103 --> 01:03:43.483
And who knows how that went down?
01:03:44.262 --> 01:03:48.193
Maybe he's threatening one and kept the other one under control by threatening the other one.
01:03:48.193 --> 01:03:54.003
One of the other murders they suspect him of was actually a young woman and a young man.
01:03:54.052 --> 01:03:55.248
That's another issue of control.
01:03:55.253 --> 01:03:58.128
I don't know how he would've done that, but they're pretty sure he did that one too.
01:03:58.398 --> 01:04:00.347
We didn't profile that one'cause there isn't a lot known.
01:04:00.347 --> 01:04:05.237
They just know that the young woman, young man turned up at a Highway 20 pullout.
01:04:05.833 --> 01:04:06.822
Pretty same situation.
01:04:06.822 --> 01:04:09.853
I think that was maybe one of the ones where the clothing was cut.
01:04:10.003 --> 01:04:12.043
So I don't know.
01:04:12.043 --> 01:04:20.623
But it's not impossible, and I know that, a lot of those depend on securing one, one, threatening one.
01:04:20.952 --> 01:04:25.963
It doesn't seem like we know a whole lot about aykroyd beyond what's directly related to all these crimes.
01:04:28.043 --> 01:04:31.342
We know he grew up in the area he worked, which is very rural.
01:04:31.612 --> 01:04:35.733
There was a story from between 10 and 12 when he was a boy.
01:04:36.043 --> 01:04:47.222
His father was going to sell a litter of puppies that he had and Aykroyd took a machete and killed, cut up all the puppies so that the father couldn't sell them.
01:04:47.322 --> 01:04:49.932
That's an indication he was sadistic back then.
01:04:50.233 --> 01:04:53.143
We know he's as an adult, he's fairly antisocial.
01:04:53.143 --> 01:04:56.117
He had a couple of friends, and he had a friend who would be willing to kill with him.
01:04:56.538 --> 01:05:01.137
But his coworkers mainly thought he was a weirdo and most of them didn't like to be around him.
01:05:02.077 --> 01:05:05.648
We know that when he did have a living girlfriend with kids, he terrorized them.
01:05:06.038 --> 01:05:12.867
Which probably sadly also gives us insight into what his home life was like when he was growing up and
01:05:14.768 --> 01:05:29.347
we know he was actively raping and killing along that stretch of 20, between 1977 and 1992, is there any kind of estimation of how many more missing and murdered women he could be responsible for?
01:05:30.038 --> 01:05:32.288
I've seen guesses of 10.
01:05:32.668 --> 01:05:35.248
They're fairly certain four, but 10.
01:05:35.378 --> 01:05:41.583
When you look at the number of found bodies they had and the, they never found Rashonda Pickle.
01:05:41.733 --> 01:05:44.702
If you look at the 10, they think that's a possibility.
01:05:44.702 --> 01:05:47.552
And maybe there's some that weren't found like Rashonda.
01:05:48.483 --> 01:05:57.063
I don't know that there's a firm number there but a long time and with a lack of oversight and all the conditions that made him a perfect predator in the area.
01:05:57.112 --> 01:05:58.302
That was his hunting ground.
01:06:00.943 --> 01:06:09.342
I'm really interested in the fact that Rashanda Hass never been found and how that was probably his closest relationship of all of those victims.
01:06:09.342 --> 01:06:10.963
That was the person that he actually knew.
01:06:11.532 --> 01:06:14.922
I wonder if that's related to the fact that they've never found her.
01:06:14.972 --> 01:06:26.788
I think that the reason that we've never found her is because he knew her, that she was special to him or that relationship was different than just a random stranger off the street.
01:06:27.748 --> 01:06:31.512
Or like I, my theory is he found a place he liked to put her.
01:06:34.733 --> 01:06:48.052
And with K Turner, there was a little bit of indication that he might have gone and visit her body over time before he finally called the police and said that he found her officially, that he, that maybe he was revisiting the site, which I guess is a fairly normal serial killer kind of thing to do.
01:06:48.713 --> 01:06:48.893
Yeah.
01:06:48.898 --> 01:06:50.322
Lots of information about that.
01:06:50.373 --> 01:06:58.063
my theory about why he wouldn't give up rash, ANDA's resting places because it's a place he liked and there might've been others, o others there.
01:06:58.182 --> 01:06:59.413
That's just my personal theory.
01:07:01.972 --> 01:07:05.452
I hope that Marlene Gabrielsson feels safe now.
01:07:08.543 --> 01:07:09.293
I hope so too.
01:07:09.813 --> 01:07:17.277
She certainly feels vindicated although, sadly I know that she feels if they had listened to her way back in 77 that a lot of this could have been avoided,
01:07:17.548 --> 01:07:19.139
just an unspeakable tragedy.
01:07:24.637 --> 01:07:28.458
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